"Hey, you!" a delinquent voice speaking directly inside the mind of Jonisucho, the master of the Hand Fist martial arts style, froze the martial artist dead in his tracks and made him stiffen up as if washed by a cold stream of a waterfall. The martial artist jumped and turned his body around half of a circle to confront a potential attacker, but nothing seemed to be coming his way.
"Just what on Earth…" Jonisucho mumbled to himself before hearing alarming clanking and cluttering all around him. The martial artist dashed back with a bountiful backward hop that brought him to a short skid that required a full turn of his right leg to put to a halt.
The fact that Jonisucho moved proved to be most fortunate, since directly in front of where the sources of noise all came to collide, there was a pile of clashing armor chunks and pieces. Bladed gauntlets with claws as long as short swords, a spiky helmet, spiked shoulder pads, and a clobbering chest part. Oddly enough, all of this armor operated separately.
"So badass…" Jonisucho muttered under his nose, admiring the bodyless collection of ancient armor assembling with the force of mind and willpower alone, almost as if protecting and equipping upon a disembodied spirit, which, it just so happened, was exactly Drasko's case.
"You've messed with the rest of the Chaos Factor, why!?" the voice resonated in Jonisucho's head with a malicious reverb that caused torment to whichever wall of the skull the mental signal bounced off of. This put the martial artist on a bit of a backfoot against the armored foe.
"The Chaos Factor? I don't know what you're talking about, dude," Jonisucho grunted out, covering his head with his defensive hand to shake off the vertigo of a rampant and boisterous telepathic signal of the spirit embodying the ancient, jagged armor.
"The serpent and the dolphin-horse, will you deny it?" Drasko amplified the signal, forcing Jonisucho to stagger back to put some distance between them. Anything to numb the reverberating signal down, if only just a little to numb the squeeze put on his brain. A spirit could inflict as much hindrance and irritation on the brain with telepathic communication as a loudmouth could to one's body by yelling into that someone's ear.
"Oh, I don't get what's your problem, dude! That badass snake lady was in trouble and I helped her out!" Jonisucho shook the telepathic grip over his head off and took a defensive fighting pose in case the unstable spirit inside this set of armor chose violence.
"Stay out of our way!" Drasko clamored with a potent mental pulse. The living set of armor waved its right side, thrusting a glove to fly forward with its wrist blades looking to skewer the Hand Fist master. With both feet on the tiles, Jonisucho turned his body while maintaining impeccable balance. The jagged gauntlet bullet missed Jonisucho narrowly.
Furious by the failure, Drasko thrust the second gauntlet like a follow-up bullet, but Jonisucho swatted it aside with an adamant palm slap and a robust shout leaving his strong chest. Just as Jonisucho was about to reply, the shin guard and the knee guard slammed directly into him, prompting the Hand Fist master to cover himself up and suffer the slam of three blades on the knee guard put embedding into his blocking forearm and ripping his torn shirt up while splattering blood on the rest of his body.
Both of the wrist blade gauntlets hurled back from behind, but Jonisucho turned around with a spinning roundhouse, swatting both them and the leg parts away at the same time with one well-placed strike. The pieces all hung in mid-air and redirected, washing forward from the front like an incoming blizzard of jagged shrapnel. With grit uncharacteristic of most fighters, Jonisucho adopted a defensive stance and puffed his chest, swelling his body red.
With resolute shouts and tough smacks, the Hand Fist master parried, blocked, or deflected every incoming piece of broken armor or spike or blade, suffering only skin-deep grazes all over his body. While this gave Jonisucho a more war-torn appearance, the flame in his eyes burnt hotter than when the fighting started.
"Tell me one thing, armored dude, this spirit that's puppeteering all this junk, what kind of person were you when you were alive?" Jonisucho wondered out loud, still burning with the resolute fire of a martial artist, ready to answer all challengers.
"I am still alive, clown! And I was the leader of my band. I saw myself as a conqueror, but the other mercenaries and the ninja villages thought of us as a criminal organization. No matter what they thought, we were to rise above being common criminals, we were to truly own the world! I was to become a conqueror!" Drasko declared.
"That's… So… Badass…" Jonisucho dragged a thumb underneath his eye, scraping off a lone crystal teardrop. "My heart breaks to decimate one such as yourself! Can we truly not see eye-to-eye?"
"Winning this tournament means returning to my old body. I have killed friends for money, for glory, and for leadership. I've betrayed my best friend, stolen his woman, and stabbed him through the heart just so I can set myself up for my path of destruction and conquest. If I have killed just for the sake of getting to kill some more, think about your odds of appealing to me with your pathetic whining now!" Drasko caused another resonant migraine in Jonisucho's head.
"I see, in that case…" Jonisucho's melancholic look became emotionless and distant. Like a child who signed off their freedom and whole childhood to work in a factory, Jonisucho clenched that which he treasured most in the ironclad grip of his fist and squeezed it until it was no more. This Jonisucho was a fighter more than he was a man.
The answer of the Hand Fist master was swift, he leaned in between two incoming gauntlet strikes and thrust both of his fists into the chest plate, leaning his entire body forward while slamming his fist inward. A quick jab sent the rushing helmet flying, an uppercut left the returning wrist blade gauntlet spinning in the air while a high kick punted it away like a play ball. A resolute punch fired the chest blade like from a cannon, hurling it hundreds of meters off until it slammed against the protective wall of the outside area, red-hot and smoking.
A leaning slam of his entire forearm broke the right gauntlet, leaving the metallic pieces that connected to make the armor piece clink and clutter by Jonisucho's feet while the martial artist repeated the same attack from the other side and shattered the knee and shin guard, then grabbed the armored boot out of thin air and rocked the airborne shrapnel off his sight as if smacking a ball away with a baseball bat.
"Tidal Rockfall!" Jonisucho bellowed, leaning his entire body back before exploding with a thrust of his whole upper section, holding his arms up and, instead of striking with them, leaning his whole body into his opponent while steaming with vivid life force energy from his swollen, red body. "Cyclone Squall!" Jonisucho yelled out, jumping up with a turbulent roundhouse that seemed to create a swirling air vortex that dragged the chaotic mess of steel chunks and broken blades in before scattering the shrapnel in all directions.
After disposing of all traces of Drasko's armor around him, Jonisucho took a fighting pose and scanned his surroundings with a solemn expression. It would have taken a single mistake, for Drasko to pull just one wrist blade back and then strike from behind when Jonisucho felt safe for the martial artist to be in some real trouble. It wasn't the sight of jagged, ancient armor that greeted Jonisucho, but the sight of a fleeting golden spirit slowly burning away like a flame in the middle of a downpour. It hummed with unintelligible noises but Jonisucho couldn't hear the last voices of his foe as his disembodied soul and mind burnt away.
"And it appears that the martial artist Jonisucho has eliminated Drasko from the Chaos Factor! This leaves the Chaos Factor with only two remaining members, both of whom are pressed to a corner and don't look like they're having the time of their lives at all! Could the Chaos Factor become the next faction to face a complete wipeout!? Unlike the rest of the factions, the Chaos Factor didn't even bring ten whole competitors, whereas some brought at least ten with the ninja bringing almost twice that many! This could result from that decision!" the announcer ruled it and made Drasko's elimination official.
Hearing his voice, it wasn't the fact that Drasko was out that made Mana feel the most hopeless she's ever felt in what was to be the worst couple of days in her life. It was the fact that horrible man as he was in his ordinary life, Drasko was left disembodied and burnt out in the material plane as nothing but a spirit dragged out and laid bare. It was a fate that she too may have been doomed for, but… Maybe that would have been preferable to being trapped inside of a bulky stone body and never being able to feel like her own self again.
"Tsk, that fool!" Vatee resonated her thoughts through to both of them. "He should've stuck with us!"
"I'm sorry, dear chap, you wouldn't treat a fellow bloke with a smoke, would you?" the dashing spy Codename: Bird Watcher approached a middle-aged, average-sized, and round-bellied, balding man donning a white shirt and a sweater and the most ordinary pair of farmer slacks and looking as lost in the battlefield as could be.
"Oh, um… Well… Certainly…" The balding man began browsing his pockets to pull another smoke like the one sticking out from the right side of his mouth from which a grey trail smoldered in a gentle, wave that reached out for the clouds above. "Please, be my guest, sir…" The strangely average-looking man pulled out a carton and extended it to Bird Watcher.
"Whoa, Next Door Delight. That's a women's brand, isn't it?" Bird Watcher scratched his head. "I didn't know you were a man after my own soul."
"Em… You and me? No, sir… I don't think we are alike at all. It's just… I'm sorry, smoking these just makes me… Feel calm… You know? Everything around, all the noise, all the violence… It makes me so anxious that it feels like I'm going to pass out but… When I smoke these, they smell so soft and the paper is so tender and silky-smooth… It's like something inside me calms down, you know?" the awkward chubby began clumsily tripping his way through words, sentences, and thoughts with no structure, rhyme, or reason.
"I meant keeping a pack of girly smokes to offer to the ladies to be prepared and to look considerate dear chap," Bird Watcher tapped the weak and soft shoulders of his newly met friend on the raging battlefield. "I too usually keep a carton of smokes Menats for the ladies, When I felt myself up before the competition, I thought I had five cartons, but I must have only taken four, not counting the Menats…"
"Five cartons, oh dear… You're quite the smoker, sir…" The chubby wiped the sweaty back of his neck with a worried look.
"And you don't look like much of a fighter at first glance, but you've survived way past half of the competition already. Looks can deceive, dear old chap," Bird Watcher winked to the chubby, making the poor and awkward fellow get all flustered and nearly eat his own hands while stumbling on his toes and tapping his heels at the tiles. "Well, if you're short too, that's no problem at all. I'll go looking for my good fortune elsewhere."
"N-No! P-Please, wait!" the round-bellied man called out to the spy, who was about to turn and walk away. "I… You're right, I'm not much of a fighter. I stayed hidden the whole time. I've got some more cigarettes left in my old hiding place, but it caved in. Maybe you could help me move some rocks around and get in, I'd give you a carton in exchange for your help. I can't take much more of this noise and all this violence… It makes me… Anxious!"
"Then you shouldn't have signed up for this event, my pal," Bird Watcher shrugged. "Some slobber knocking is bound to occur during a martial arts tournament. There's no surprise there."
"B-But I… You see… I need to win. I need this patch of land to open up a business. Come, I'll tell you all about it on our way to my hideout," the balding man waved his hand, inviting the dashing spy to follow him. "You see, my wife and I used to have a business together. We ran an inn on Fair Valley Island in the Land of Water archipelago. I promised her I would keep our family business alive, but I cannot afford land and you must either be granted land by a noble or be of a higher social caste to own land on the Continent. This tournament is the only chance someone like me has to own his own land."
"If memory serves, you came here with the faction of serial killers…" Bird Watcher observed with a sly smirk on his face. "That's quite the group to hang out with."
"Oh, I'm nothing like them. It's just that… You know how it is, sir. Someone like me stands no chance of winning a single fight. I need backup and it's not like… It's not like anyone else will take me in. All of those men and women in that terrifying group are outcasts. Just like me, they're worth nothing and every step they take is a surprise to them and the society around them. They're not meant for anything, so they choose to do something and see how far they get," the round man pointed out.
"They're a group of outcasts alright. Murderous outcasts," Bird Watcher noted.
"Well, to be fair, sir… I'd rather own my inn in a drab and dreary land plagued and haunted by serial killers who are the rule of the land than fail the memory of my dear old wife. It's not fair what those bandits did to us, it's not fair how Kirigakure couldn't be bothered to send ninja to cast them out. It's just not fair…" The balding gent became visibly more worked up the more he spoke.
"There it is, sir… The rocks that fell over the entranceway to the tunnel. If you can move them, I have some supplies, tools, and several cartons of cigarettes. My name is Kita Esatoko, by the way," the man extended his sweaty and shaking hand for a shake. When his friendly gesture was left unanswered, Kita pulled his hand away and dragged it over his balding head, swatting even more of his greasy remnants of hair off to the sides. "It's okay, I know you spies don't just give out your real names. You're Codename: Bird Watcher, right? It's a strange codename. Doesn't sound very threatening at all, I'm sure there's a story behind it."
With a flick of his hand, Bird Watcher pulled out a little handheld gadget which he twirled in his hand. It was a little stick, shaped a bit like a flashlight, except instead of a beam of light, it beamed a focused scarlet laser that cast its way clean through stone, melting a hole through the natural obstruction in seconds. Stuffing the little gadget back in his pocket, Bird Watcher pressed both of his gemstone cufflinks, revealing the glow of a miniature sealing glyph on both of them.
With equal skill to an experienced bartender, Bird Watcher twirled a can of gel in one hand and a plastic hair comb in the other. Pointing it at the rocky wall, he sprayed a tiny swirl before dragging the comb and evening the spread across most of the damaged and melting wall. Bird Watcher let the swirling dents in the fabric of space-time absorb the can of gel and the comb back where he pulled them from. All while methodically walking a few steps back and leaning to pick up a stone off the ground.
Before the chubby newly met man hanging out with serial killers could stab him from behind with a kitchen knife, Bird Watcher instinctively grabbed hold of his hand and flung the balding killer over his shoulder, slamming him back-first into the gel he spread across the wall. The impact caused a terrible rumble and a blast to resonate, revealing the gel to have been explosive and requiring a modicum of shock to set off. The stone rumbled and gave way, offering no resistance and turning to pebbles large enough to fit in one's hand as opposed to the proper boulder-sized obstacles they were before.
Whining and squealing like a gutted piglet, the round man scrambled deeper into the underground tunnel, leaving the knife he held on to fallen on the ground behind him. With a slow step and a look on his face that showed that Bird Watcher just didn't feel like he wanted to be bothered, the spy approached the lone fallen cigarette that the thrown serial killer left behind, leaning to pick it up off the ground and inspect it in between his fingers.
"Love, I've met a bloke going by the name of Kita Esatoko. He claimed to be a property owner in the Land of Water archipelago once. I believe he is exactly the case of "show me who your friends are and I'll tell you who you are". His friends, of course, being a bunch of serial killers. I've got him inside a makeshift cave of rubble. Probably doesn't have an exit. Be a good sweet pair of cheeks and run a background check on him, see if he's got a bounty on him, and send some aggressive advertising in the way of any potential market or black market dealers. Who could have known this mission would end up being a networking exercise too?" Bird Watcher flicked the women's cigarette away before pulling out a kunai dispenser and making sure that it was loaded with a stock of kunai knives before doing some basic battlefield maintenance and stepping into the cave where the frightened serial killer with busted ribs scurried off to.