A burly man with vein-ridden powerful but not by any means oversized arms dashed through the battlefield. Having found a potential moment of vulnerability in an opponent directly in front of him, the dashing martial artist swept the foot. His glare tightened with intense focus as he canceled his sneak attack prematurely and rolled scrambling back. Black metallic spikes burst forth from the ground, injuring the opponent whom the martial artist's intended target was fighting, but also nearly skewering the martial artist himself.
"That was a cheap shot," a shinobi dressed in a red and black dogi over a tight charcoal-colored bodysuit turned around, holding a double-blade sword in his right hand while his left one tapped his own shoulder with a sword that looked more like a clobbering stick equipped with jagged thorns from all sides. "I thought all of you pussy martial artist folks only fought to defend yourself or whatever…"
"The martial arts I practice preach a different approach," the burly brawler stood up and cracked his knuckles, taking a mixed stance that seemed optimal for both wrestling and shooting attacks. "Physical aggression is key to winning any battle."
The man didn't look like any of his more sportsmanlike peers. His cargo pants had armored steel frames and knee guards, protecting his thighs and calves from broad sword and knife strikes while also protecting the weak point in his knees. He wore a blue zip-up bodysuit and a bomber-style leather jacket over it. Not much of the man's strict and spiky white hairdo stuck out from underneath his cap, though his lively brown beard found no such obstructions.
He attacked with a certain ruthlessness, hitting quickly, developing instantaneous aggression and hate toward any chosen opponent, and, as the swordsman swiped and deflected the man's attacks from his vitals with the aid of the handle of his swords, it became apparent that this martial artist didn't strive to win any martial arts competition or fight for technical excellence. He fought to disable and/or kill his opponent, whichever came first.
The swordsman vaulted in mid-air, surrounding himself with countless arcs of silver light where his double-blade sword began its own crusade to chop and maim. The blinding speed forced the martial artist on the defensive and multiple bloody gashes opened up all across his body, spouting blood at once. Had the cap-donning martial artist not produced a knife at the very last second from within his sleeve and blocked the stroke that'd have carved his heart out–he'd have collapsed with fatal injuries.
"Interesting, it seems both of us subscribe to similar philosophy in battle," the martial artist grumbled while collapsing on one knee until he could weather the storm of moderate blood loss and will himself back into the fight. "It's embarrassing to admit it but, I didn't expect you to match my pace."
Having landed on both feet, the swordsman that managed to simultaneously dance with both a double-blade katana sword-staff and the Sword of Thorns swiped his weapons to the side to splatter the blood stuck on them around him. "What's the point of just defending yourself, right? A battle is just a collision between two aggressors and the one that's more aggressive and more powerful comes out on top while the other one collapses and is crushed under the pressure."
"You are so very unlike many samurai I've met in battle," the martial artist who seemed to dress and equip himself more akin to a mercenary stood up and turned around, pulling out a combat knife that wasn't styled like either the short blades samurai and some ninja used or like the kunai blades.
"That's because I'm no samurai," the robed ninja turned around and twirled his double-blade sword to a reverse grip position behind him while he chose to measure distance with the Sword of Thorns. "I've learned swordsmanship from one of the best, but right now, I'm a ninja."
The two combatants rushed at one another, each brimming with peerless aggression and seeking a clash that would resolve their collision. Something that the robed ninja didn't expect was his opponent stopping halfway and extending his hand, revealing a sealing tag attached to the pad of his fighting glove. A storm of chipped and shattered tiles rushed to the swordsman's eyes, upper body, and face. It was a meaningless attack in terms of injury potential, but it was a deceitful distraction.
A double-hand slam to the top of the swordsman's head slammed him down onto the chipped tile set of the arena with enough force to bounce him off the ground. A left-arm smack to his jaw, a double spinning backhand accompanied by a brutal push kick to the abdomen of the temporarily stunned and blinded swordsman sent him flying.
"Oh, look at that!" the announcer leaned over the rail of his stand, pointing out the noteworthy moment to the audience of overwhelmed onlookers. Mansuru Senka, a battle-proven master of the Contact Fist martial arts style of combat, has just showcased what makes his specialty such a deadly fighting style. A no-nonsense, no-etiquette, full-aggression approach to battle that instead of shying away from exploiting vulnerabilities, exploits them and targets them specifically! Sadly, Araki Endo from the Allied Ninja is headed for an elimination!"
A loud thud followed by the collective gasp of the audience interrupted the passionate announcer. It also gave him a whole different matter to report. "What's this!? Just when the battle seemed set and its conclusion–clear, the Five-Tailed dolphin-horse statue from the Chaos Factor used its own body to block the elimination! What could be going on here!?"
"What the…" Endo cursed and snarled, writhing on the ground as he struggled to remove the chipped shrapnel and dust from his eyes while feeling painful bumps all over his body. "The… Chaos Factor…?"
The Five-Tails statue just stood tall and observed Endo as he rose to his feet, rubbing his eyes and shedding tears that would liberate them from dust and debris. At last, her cumbersome new body that the Conductor imprisoned Mana in served to some use. The moment she heard Endo was due for elimination, she moved as fast as she could and got there in time. Endo… That meant that the rest of Stars should've also gotten here too.
This made things incredibly more complicated, as Mana was improvising as she went along, still undecided about which side she should put all of her chips on. She felt like being torn apart in different directions, like being drawn and quartered, but it took little pressure to fully stand behind the action of preventing Endo's elimination.
"What the fuck gives!?" Endo snarled, raising his double-blade sword to aim at Mana while he turned his Sword of Thorns in the direction of the opponent he had left behind in an unresolved bout. "Why would you step in the way and keep me from getting eliminated? You guys are our enemies, not to mention you can only advance to the next round by letting as many people get eliminated as quickly as possible. I don't remember you from Amegakure either… Just who are you?"
A spray of blood splattered all over Mana's face as she tried to contemplate an answer. Endo coughed up a mouthful of blood, staggering forward as the tip of a knife stuck out from his side. The Sword of Thorns fell down on the ground with an audible clang while the apprentice samurai staggered back and leaned over his front, finding it difficult to stand straight and flat-out impossible to move his left hand anymore. Slow and methodical taps of military boots made Endo turn around and face the opponent, who flung his knife at him from behind.
"The insignia on your headband isn't one I recognize. I don't believe in fighting just because, when I fight, I fight to kill so I'll be taking that when we're done," Senka Mansuru declared while approaching Endo and taking his mixed fighting stance signature to the Contact Fist martial arts style.
The Five-Tails statue stepped over Endo, lowering her horns in opposition to the approaching martial artist, but this freaked Endo out. The Allied Ninja dashed onward and butted his head into the chin of the statue to throw its head off his path so that he could once more stand in front of it instead of underneath it where the statue wanted to keep him in order to protect him.
"Cut this crap, Chaos Factor scumbag, or I'll smash you to bits right after this guy!" Endo sneered, with teeth coated in crimson. "This is my fight, so stay out of it!"
"There it is, the pride of a martial artist, the pride of a samurai, the pride of a warrior that has led every opponent I've ever faced to ruin," Senka smirked in mockery. "I may not be the strongest, the fastest, or the most experienced combatant on any battlefield, but this silly bravado is the reason why a Contact Fist master will prevail in any combat situation."
"This logo is the logo of the Allied Ninja!" Endo pointed to the sash tied around his waist where a metal plate with the Allied Ninja insignia gleamed to provide a feast for the eyes. Snarling, the injured swordsman dashed at his opponent, but Senka Mansuru became fluid like water, abandoning his stiffness and raw power to instead flow around his opponent's charge and ensnare him, as well as his sword-wielding arm. After he dropped Endo, Senka thrust the entrapped arm to pin the Allied Ninja down to the ground with his own double-blade sword.
"That's the second vital point. Both of your arms should be disabled and you've lost enough blood to pass out, it seems…" Senka noted Endo's whited-out eyes and a powerless slump. It didn't appear that the Contact Fist master was content with just knocking Endo out, he sought to pull his knife and Endo's own sword out and cause a grievous blood loss that'd end up claiming Endo's life in mere seconds. The only way to eliminate someone was to either finish them off in the ring or to ring them out.
Just as Senka's arm hovered over his military knife, he noted a lively sparkle of spiritual chakra emitted from the statue's body. Stunning herself and risking losing her essence meant nothing if Mana could protect Endo's life. She will risk it all again by using another spiritual chakra cannon shot.
"You care about this man for whatever reason, don't you? Perhaps you are some sort of Allied Ninja double-agent in the Chaos Factor? No, you wouldn't be stupid enough to show your hand like this. It must be something else…" Senka threatened to pull the knife out if Mana was to attack him with her spiritual chakra blast, earning the Five-Tails statue a deadlock of sorts where Senka no longer attempted to finish Endo off in order to preserve his leverage and Mana couldn't attack him either to keep Endo alive.
"The more warriors of different creeds and backgrounds I meet on the battlefield, the more disgusted I grow," Senka sighed, relaxing his tense body and moving his hand away from the knife, reaching for Endo's forehead protector tied to his waist instead. "So many different breeds of warrior and none of them can do what is necessary. None of them can move past the sentimentality and just complete their objective. That is why none of you here deserve the honor of being the greatest warrior, because a warrior's greatness is measured in their deadliness."
Before Senka could grab the headband, a bare foot cracked into his face, sending him rolling wildly into a faraway mountainous ridge erected by the chaos of the battlefield, raising debris from underground. Growling like a wild animal and frothing from the mouth, Endo scrambled on all fours before straightening his back out. This was just like during survival drills back in the Allied Ninja HQ, he had abandoned consciousness yet his body still fought.
"While I appreciate the ruthlessness, your struggle is meaningless. Without the use of your arms, you won't be able to swing either of your swords," Senka Mansuru wiped the blood off his face and his trampled nose. Despite wicked injuries, it didn't appear like they at all disturbed the martial artist. As an answer to his concerns, Endo leaned down and bit the handle of his the Sword of Thorns, picking it off the ground in his teeth. "Hmm…" the Contact Fist master muttered in acknowledgment.
In a blinding flash, a splatter of blood sprayed in the air as Senka coughed and grunted, flying backward from the violent force of impact flinging him diagonally up. Having covered the entire distance between them, the snarling berserker with a sword in his teeth turned around and dashed up, creating a bloody zigzag and lacerating Senka's body with merciless slashes before planting his foot right into the Contact Fist master's face and stomping the rag doll down into the ground with enough force to shatter the arena floor and send concussive shockwaves in all directions.
Stumbling, with a nearly caved-in face that was gushing red, Senka Mansuru still sought to rise to his feet but Endo rolled with a slash of the sword imbedded in his mouth before spinning on his knees with his mouth pointing upward, creating a metallic whirlwind of chopping slices that dyed the veteran's whole body red. Flipping over his front, Endo stomped his foot down on the discombobulated martial artist and smashed the back of the head into the ground with enough force to leave a crater.
Still growling, Endo punted the fallen martial artist, leading to him flying out of bounds and planting outside of the arena grounds by the protective border between the spectators and the berserker swordsman.
"Araki Endo from the Allied Ninja has eliminated the martial artist Senka Mansuru, there are now 151 competitors competing in the battle royale!" the announcer said his piece.
Mana looked around, she found it hard to believe that the rest of the Stars could've noticed Endo struggling with his life on the line and none of them stepped in to help him. Then again, she couldn't see any of them fighting, and, until she heard Endo was here, Mana had no idea that even Endo had signed up for the tournament. A chilling realization began crawling up her back, though it was just an imagined phantom feeling since Mana couldn't feel much of anything at all in this stone prison of a body.
Where were the rest of the Stars?
With a slow stagger, one step at a time, Endo began moving toward the statue he had left behind. A fusillade of metallic clangs drew Mana's attention as the Five-Tails' statue dashed in between a storm of spikes and armor pieces and her teammate, covering him up with her own body.
"What are you doing? He's completely out of it, we can eliminate him with little trouble at all!" Drasko hissed. Without answering, Mana let a jolt of spiritual chakra pass down her stone body, threatening the ghastly suit of possessed armor that she'd employ every trick available to her and fight him directly to protect Endo.
"He's one of your teammates, isn't he? One of those guys we attacked to snag you from back in Amegakure," Poru noted, approaching Mana and joining Drasko's side. It seemed like the growing ranks of the Chaos Factor and all this talking of events familiar to him were snapping Endo out of his berserker state. Tuckered out, the swordsman fell to his knees, unable to lift or move his arms because of the blades sticking out from the vital points in his body.
"What's going on here?" Endo looked up at the rear of the statue that had put its stone body on the line to protect him on multiple occasions.
"It's me," Mana sent a telekinetic pulse. "A rogue ninja has misplaced my mind and trapped my soul in this body. He's forcing me to compete on the Chaos Factor side and win. If we win the tournament for him, he'll return all of us to our real bodies."
"M-Mana!?" Endo gasped in shock. "Damn… Then the others are wasting their time. Then again, given what you said, maybe not completely."
"The others? Where are the rest of the Stars, Endo?" Mana turned her cumbersome stone head around to look at her injured friend.
"So that's how it is, then?" Vatee taunted Mana, slithering by the side of the other two Chaos Factor members. "You've made your choice? After everything we did, after we taught you how to fight in this body and protected you while you've fired your spirit off at that serial killer… After all that, you're still going to betray us?"
"It's not looking good for you where you're standing, Mana," Galdva descended on a whirlwind, transitioning into a hover above the ground. "We gave you plenty of space because we know what you were going through. But now it's time to make a choice. Eliminate this Allied Ninja and help us return to our bodies or stick to him and keep fighting against the entire world."
Mana scanned her surroundings, more than enough warriors were surrounding them looking to exploit the fact that Endo lost the use of his arms and had been beaten up and perforated with weapons a few times. He was an easy enough target that even going through a Five-Tails statue to get to him wasn't that difficult of a job.
"The others went to Konoha, they were betting on your friends being able to help find you," Endo said in a weak voice. His injuries were really getting to him. He had little fight left in him now that he regained consciousness.
"They abandoned the mission?" Mana found that difficult to believe.
"You've gone missing. We figured the Chaos Factor kidnapped you, but we thought they were going to use you as leverage to prevent us from signing up for the tournament. You're our friend, we've been through thick and thin together and we've saved each other's lives many times over. Fuck the mission, the Stars don't abandon their own. That's why I'm sticking with this stupid squad of losers, because I believe in it," Endo tried his best to sound strong and threatening to the rows of surrounding enemies targeting him and Mana for easy eliminations. "Boss lady thought someone should sign up, I volunteered, since I'm the best-suited fighter for a blood fest like this… I wanted to help them save you but… I know what I am. I'm no hero that gets to save the girl, I'm a killer born and raised."
"I know who I am too," Mana spread her front and hind legs and lowered her horns to the ground, ready to gore the first person coming closer. "Me against the world, those were always the odds…"