A lively young man with ruffled violet hair, wearing a Konohagakure headband proudly on his forehead charged at a lone, frail-looking, and short man in a white dogi and a long black ponytail. The Konohagakure ninja was accompanied by an unlikely handful of other warriors: a Tanigakure kunoichi with black hair and jasmine-colored eyes, an old, metallic colossus covered in moss that was a part of the Fennec's band of mercenaries, and a Sky Warrior clad in a cowl of cerulean feathers with a pointy beak for a mask. Together the band of warriors rushed at the feeble martial artist who found himself exposed to anyone without a dance partner of their own.

It all happened in a blur, the old man didn't seem to move much but whatever he did was incredibly effective as all his assailants flipped and rolled and got flung aside by invisible force. The flawlessness of the martial artist's movements left every single one of his attackers baffled as they laid and stared at the exposed old man with stunned looks before fleeing to shuffle into the chaos of the battle royale to avoid the martial artist's retribution. It didn't look like the man was capable of incredible feats of strength, though when they were tossed, it felt as if their own charge aided them in that venture.

"Old man…" a haunting, raspy voice filled the air, making the serene martial artist who stood with his head down and his hands placed and weaved on his hakama trousers in modesty straighten his back and turn for the chilling voice calling out to him.

"Time to reap your soul!" the voice continued to weave its web of intimidation. There was a certain creepy quality to it, that no matter how intense anything nearby or around the man hearing the voice was, the chilling call for bloody murder still reached them in its original form. Almost like it was artificially bolstered, though only up to a certain point.

Proximity was another factor. Being a skilled martial artist, Kamome Gan was not one to scare easily. He also usually was on top of having a perfect sense of his surroundings, which is why the suddenness of this foolish verbal challenge made him turn around and look at who or what was behind him. The old man's eyes widened as a fleshy burrowing noise preceded a painful resonance of pain in his chest. Steel dug under his breast muscle and spilled a splash of red over his white gi.

"Who have you scorned the most? That person is the one wielding this blade…" the voice whispered, this time intimately, right into Gan's ear before pulling the knife out and dashing back in one bountiful leap while Gan staggered and quickly turned around to defend himself against more daring knife attacks such as that one.

He didn't get a good look at whoever stabbed him. The only qualities and features he noticed in their limited yet profoundly painful time of acquaintance was the stroke of plentiful cloth–the figure was cloaked. Also, the touch against his shoulder when the assailant whispered to him felt sharp and artificial. Plastic-like. That suggested that the assailant was also masked. That voice. It didn't change pitch or volume, despite whispering right into Gan's ear. A voicebox to alternate one's voice and give it a sense of lifelessness. A way to be perceived less as a man and more like something inhuman. A tactic often employed by the Kirigakure Demons to mask their humanity and mortality.

Was this one of the famed and bloody Kirigakure assassins of the past? No. Such a professional would've struck a killing blow immediately. It wouldn't have been hard for him to open an artery or strike a vital organ that'd have forced Gan to resign from the competition. No. This assailant was either not a professional assassin or assassination was not in his mind with this plunge of the blade. He struck to hurt, to toy. A serial killer?

Gan didn't bother himself with reading the news or paying to buy books that detailed the investigations into these mysterious and depraved monsters. He had too much training and self-improvement at hand and he respected life too much to spend it gasping at horrific descriptions of crimes and scare tactics. He lived in the here and now. The problem was that scare tactics had found him in the here and now, and these chilling tales of men devoid of morality and common decency became all too real for Kamome Gan.

With his eyes closed, Gan turned around with a wide-range sweep of his right leg. It hit something solid, ruffling. Cloth! His hand locked around the heel of the cloaked figure and slammed him over his head while the martial artist's arms manhandled the assassin like a malleable mass of dough. Flopping and rolling and slamming and mangling him in mid-air.

"Incredible!" the announcer finally noticed the bloody engagement between the veteran martial artist and the serial killer. "From the first look, it wouldn't appear as if Kamome Gan should be capable of such incredible feats of strength, however, do not be fooled, ladies and gents! Kamome Gan is the master of the Fluid Fist martial art style. What he lacks in physical strength, he more than compensates by shifting his opponent's weight and using their own strength against them. A master of the Fluid Fist masters kinetic energy itself!"

A bright gash of silver made Gan pull back instead of continuing his performance of the most masterful utilization of shifting weight and fluidity of motion in all of the martial arts. It was true that Kamome Gan lacked the physical strength and speed to keep up with all the powerhouses of the world, however, what he lacked in physical strength, he could fill in with knowledge of how weight shifted and moved, how kinetic energy was born, acted and then transformed into something else. He may not have been able to race with the light or leap over mountains, but Kamome Gan was more than experienced enough to read his opponents' moves well enough for his very human perception to carry him through and he knew more than enough of how various forces and laws of this universe functioned to rob them of their own inhuman strength and employ it against them.

"Such an annoying old man…" the serial killer clad in black corrected how his flashy ogre mask hung over his face to prevent their true identity from being exposed.

"You said something about your knife being the tool for vengeance for someone I've hurt. Could you elaborate perhaps?" the old man pulled the right side of his gi off his shoulder since it stuck to the clump of blood leaking from under his right breast and impeded fluid motion. "I may not have lived a flawless life, but until today I have slept calmly. If I have hurt someone enough for them to deface themselves like this and take up such underhanded methods of retaliation, I would like to know their scorn."

"That's not how this works, old man!" the serial killer stuck out his tongue through the gap in between the ogre mask teeth to lick the blood off the knife's edge. "Don't you know who I am?"

"I do not! Based on that information, I can only surmise that you are unremarkable in the world of martial arts. That is why your appearance is so baffling to me. I have only fought and lived my life surrounded by martial artists. Many of them have perished, and some of them have risen to grand heights. It hurts me to see someone I may have known and admired become a miserable specter, a nameless symbol of nothing!" Gan struck the first devastating blow, though it was with his tongue rather than his fists.

The masked butcher broke into a restrained cackle that took no time at all to become a mad peal of laughter. Clutching his wound, Kamome Gan raised his eyebrow, inquiring what the killer found so hilarious in being offended right in his face.

"Truth is, I've not the slightest clue who you are," the killer explained, relaxing his knife-wielding hand to linger loosely and drawn to the floor like a clock's pendulum. "You see, this mask and this cloak, this blade represents the Scorn Reaper. The idea behind this gimmick is that anyone who feels slighted in life takes this cloak and mask up and kills in the name of the Scorn Reaper. That being said, while I took up the mantle to kill a specific someone, that person isn't you. I merely struck because I thought I saw you wide open and that you'd be an easy person to kill. I thought to scare you a little by suggesting that I was here for you, but since you don't know what this mantle represents, you sort of ruined the joke."

"I see, the youth truly is rotten beyond repair," Gan closed his eyes with a sweaty look of disappointment. "In my day, titles were something a martial artist wore proudly. They belonged to that person alone. While we did foster students, they earned their own titles and accolades and forged their own path as martial artists with their fists."

"Don't be that ruthless, old man," the iteration of Scorn Reaper cackled with an ecstatic-sounding voice of a psycho that smelled blood draining from the man in front of him. "There actually was an original, you know. He carved a mountain of hundreds of bodies so that his successors could instill fear. And through everyone that takes up the mantle and kills in his name, the Scorn Reaper remains immortal."

With a vital breath exhaled, Gan kicked his aged body, soaring toward his opponent with a swinging kick. The reaper tilted his blade to catch the old man's kick with the blade's edge, but the old man's leg locked the blade in between the thigh and the calf. Gan lashed out with an upward swinging backhand smack, but the flexible cloaked serial killer leaned out of the attack's way. With the two settling in their fighting stances at extremely close distance, they prepared to collide once more. The reaper slashed a couple of times with blitzing silver arcs but these were just distractions for his actual attack, carefully controlling the space between the killer and himself, Kamome Gan avoided the knife while maintaining flawless balance.

The killer's cloaked and gloved with a black leather hand reached out and grabbed the lapel of Gan's left gi side. The slasher attempted to roll backward and flip his enemy over, but Gan shifted his way about, forcing the killer to roll forward instead. Baffled by the shift in direction and discombobulated by a forceful roll outside of his control, the slasher shook his head while a flurry of blows came from the back. Gan's fists only hit the ruffling black cloak with the reaper slipping to the edge of the cloak and attempting to tangle the old fighter in it like a raging bull. Impressively enough, Gan's fists had no actual weight to them, thus he did not become entrapped by the rustling cloth and withdrew his strikes.

The weightless old man took it to the air with a swing of his entire leg, but this wasn't a conventional kick, instead, it was a sort of sweep. A kicking clothesline that flattened his opponent on the ground while Gan transitioned to a low sweep and sent his downed opponent skidding across the ground toward the other warriors.

"Behind you!" a crazed scream made Gan's heart shift to his heels. It was too late to respond as the knife caught him underneath the right shoulder blade. Grunting and spitting up blood, the hurting martial artist stumbled forward. "You know, the funny thing is–while I didn't come here looking to kill you specifically, I've come to realize I really don't like your smug attitude, old geezer. There may still be some use to the Scorn Reaper when I kill my mark, so it's best if I deal with it now."

"Enough of this foolishness!" Gan cursed through effort and torment. "Killing in of itself isn't wrong. As a martial artist, I would be hypocritical to criticize it, but killing in the name of some other madman, some butcher… Focusing on pure bloody murder rather than overcoming your rival by surpassing them… That is sacrilege to all I hold dear!"

It was true that this killer's unorthodox methods and unusual ability to disappear in the crowd and scramble like his joints didn't feel the slightest amount of stress alarmed the warrior to no end. But he would have to teach this masked menace a lesson that his toxic vengeful sadism had no place in the rankings of true warriors. The Scorn Reaper shambled toward Gan. Because of his long cloak, there was no way to perceive his footwork and at that moment, he truly appeared like a vengeful spirit returning from the grave.

The serial killer reached out for a grabbing barrage of stabs but a light blow of the swing breeze at his wrist made him lose balance and fumble like a helpless, tripping child still learning how to walk. Gan took it up to the air and flattened the reaper with a kicking clothesline before grabbing hold of the cloak in mid-air and turning the killer around a full rotation in the air, finishing it up with a dreadful slam into the ground that cracked with the boom of a thunderbolt and made the surrounding fighters wince and turn their attention to the wrathful veteran and the flattened and reeling serial killer.

"You wear that long cloak, which gives me ample space to grab and manhandle you. You have no skill in martial arts to speak of and while your skills moving in that cloak and not tripping over yourself is admirable and with that knife, you are always a threat to respect, ultimately, our styles are a mismatch for you. No matter how much blood I lose, you can never defeat me!" Gan proclaimed while backing up from the reeling and writhing killer.

It took a long while for the Scorn Reaper to gasp with a full breath and grunt in pain as he struggled to peel himself off the ground. It was sheer madness and psychopathy that led him to scramble back to his feet and rush at Kamome Gan with a mad flurry of slashes and stabs. Gan slipped and bent his body to slip in between the thrust and planted his hand onto the surface of the serial killer's mask, pulling his head down to slam it into the floor with a devastating crack before swinging his foot over his own head and slamming it down like a hammer to the back of his opponent's head.

Seeing his chance to disable his opponent, Gan slipped his leg over the right arm in an attempt to trap it into an armlock and break it by the elbow. Much to his surprise, the old geezer realized he was handling just a handful of cloth, as the killer had slipped away. Gan looked all over the sizeable cloak for his pummeled opponent, but couldn't find anything. Further away, behind an erected rock pillar, the Scorn Reaper pressed his back to the stone platform with a terrified wheeze and listened on to when the old martial artist would move on to other opponents.

He still had someone to kill. It was too early to give it all up in the name of killing one irritating old man!

Kamome Gan stumbled with two grievous stab wounds, feeling excruciating pressure and twinges building up in his right side where the Scorn Reaper's blade found its mark underneath his breast and under the shoulder blade, nearly signing off his whole right side of the body. And so, the serial killer was a skilled butcher too, it seemed. Even in failure, Kamome Gan wouldn't leave this encounter the same as he entered it and this victory couldn't have felt emptier to the martial arts veteran.

The old timer collapsed to his knees, looking up at the hazy clouds over his head and the countless grains of beige sand dancing all around them. The chaos of the surrounding battle royale gave them life and granted them perpetual motion. Bouts like these weren't why Kamome Gan took up martial arts. There was no fame, no skill, and no lessons to be learned from them. Just meaningless bloodshed and brutality. Even more ridiculous than that, there were no winners in fights like these.

"Hey, old man!" a bashful voice made Kamome Gan raise his tucked chin and turn around to see the same violet-haired young boy with a Konohagakure headband and a blue, black, and white tracksuit. "I still want to settle our fight from earlier, but I see you're not in the best condition. What do you think? Can we still go, or are you tapping out?"

"Heh…" Kamome Gan cracked a grin. What a curious youth. Even when their previous engagement couldn't have been labeled under any definition of being "a fight", he still challenged the martial artist. Even if attacking from behind yielded the only plausible way to win, he asked the old man what he felt about it. What a crappy ninja, but what an absolutely reinvigorating soul to encounter!

"A Konoha ninja? I've met a few Strong Fist users in my day. There is simply no way one of your school of martial arts can win against my Fluid Fist. What do you think? After hearing this, can we still go or are you tapping out, boy?"

With wide smiles on both of the warriors' faces, the two dashed at one another. The young Konohagakure ninja sought to learn more impressive fighting styles and moves to improve his own growing taijutsu arsenal as well as to leave his own mark on the already established rankings of the world's strongest while the old man fought to reinvigorate his faith in the next generation and its ability to carry the torch burning bright and long.

In matches like these, there were no losers.