A haunting visage presented itself before the martial artist Jonisucho. A feminine shape with malleable and twisted joints and a ghostly twitch to her movements appeared before him. The skinned and greasy, jawless hippo head that Aizuru the Trial Killer concealed her disfigured display underneath had been lost in the chaos of the battle. Now, only greasy black hair that measured all the way to the floor beneath the feet of the slouched and jerking woman obscured her hidden frontage.

"Seriously?" Jonisucho sighed in frustration. "I attract the freakiest fighters…"

Content with his odds faced against a woman who appeared to struggle just to stay standing, Jonisucho put up his dukes and rushed the opponent that presented herself and issued him a challenge. Instead of covering herself or putting her defenses up, Aizuru brushed her hand across her hair and revealed a stitched-together, rotten and mushy face with an obscured lower half. Aizuru's lower jaw looked almost like a part of a hi-tech snorkel, except it looked wrong somehow. Reversed.

Unlike the snorkel which the gadget attached to Aizuru's lower jaw reminded of the most, the round plastic container with a visible and sharp tube-like protrusion didn't inhale and filter the air but exhaled that which was contained within the plastic tube. A cloud of murky black gas sprayed directly into Jonisucho's face, coloring the very blood within his veins pitch black and freezing the attacking martial artist up in place. Pale in complexion and bedecked with a network of standout black veins, shaking with bulging eyes and aghast with his shocked expression, the martial artist succumbed to slumber.


Jonisucho's consciousness returned to him one fraction of a sense at a time. The first thing he noticed was his own consciousness. The martial artist realized he was still alive, and that he was still lucid long before mustering up the courage to peel his eyes open and face the cruel reality. The crude stiffness of his back came before light seeped through his eyes as well. Being ever the feisty brawler, Jonisucho's eyes shot wide open with no consideration for the terror he might have come face-to-face with.

When the master of the Hand Fist martial arts style woke up, he met Aizuru eye-to-eye. Chompers that looked like Aizuru collected them from dozens of different people before assembling herself a spare set to replace her own, which she had already lost pressed against the gas-spraying gadget ready to employ it again at a moment's notice. Her eyes bulged wild and bloodshot, but Jonisucho's glare withstood that of his sadistic opponent.

With crude yanks, the laid-out martial artist attempted to employ his arms to attack the madwoman, however, his arms just jerked but failed to make significant strides in terms of movement. Outraged, the martial artist turned to look at them, realizing that the serial killer strapped him to the rocky surface that he laid flat on his back. The serial killer perched on his chest turned her head sideways like the world's most demented puppy while staring at him with eyes that seemed like they'd pop from all the pent-up pressure and spit yolk-like bile that boiled within them right in Jonisucho's face.

"Jonisucho-san. The master of the Hand Fist martial arts style. You've devoted your entire life to studying a martial arts style that's as nonsensical and inconsistent as your personality. You say that you live under the code of honor, best defined as the "rule of cool", yet what is cool remains inconsistent and entirely dependent on the occasion. In the same way, your fighting style is called "the Hand Fist" style, yet you cannot take into consideration that every fist is made of a hand, so the name of your martial arts style is an oxymoron in itself. Today I have decided to grace you with a test of your mettle, a test that will free you from the constraints of inconsistency, self-delusion, and nonsensical rhetoric," Aizuru spoke with an artificially augmented voice that filtered through the gadget she was biting into.

"You're lucky my mojo hasn't woken up yet, missy. As if a bunch of leather straps could keep me down!" Jonisucho boiled, answering Aizuru's mad stare with ire.

"Your muscles have been numbed by a paralytic agent of my own concoction. Unfortunately, I made sure that it wouldn't affect the pain that you will experience during the test. Since you've lived your life in the delusions that you've allowed to define your entire essence, you cannot undo such conditioning without an excruciating sting. In just a few moments, the pendulum blades I have placed above the key tendons of your arms will liberate you from the crux of your paradoxical self-delusions. You may choose to accept my gift, however, if you accelerate your maturity, you may remove your arms quicker yourself by tensing up your shoulders and pulling your arms in. The tight straps and the numbed muscles around your tendons will result in a gruesome removal of your arms, however, despite it being far less clean, the removal will be much quicker. Some people also appreciate the amount of control I give them in permitting them to test themselves…" Aizuru pointed out, crawling like a spider across Jonisucho's body and the stone platform she laid him out on all the way to his freakishly relaxed arms.

The instant that the volume of Aizuru's voice went down, twin pendulum blades swung right past the middle of each of Jonisucho's arms. The blade on the left side came so close to cleaving into the side of Aizuru's head that it rustled and clipped some of her wild and greasy black hair. The terrifying swing of the pendulum blades dazed the look on Jonisucho's face, even though they were a fair fist's distance away from cutting into his skin.

Possibly not too keen on how close the blade came from cleaving her scalp and skull, Aizuru crawled up the platform and turned around to observe Jonisucho's test from the head side of the platform.

"Goddamn it!" Jonisucho snarled, shaking around and testing which parts of his body he could still tense. His body was a chiseled machine which Jonisucho was intimately familiar with. Because he spent a couple of decades hardening it up to perfection, he knew well the results he could achieve by hardening just specific muscle groups. However, true to her word, Aizuru's gaseous paralytic agent had left him unable to tense most of his muscles or move around in any significant way.

By the time Jonisucho realized the severity of his situation, and the fact that he was just as screwed as the serial killer holding him captive in front of an appalled audience told him he was, the pendulum blades had completed a few more swings to each side, coming close enough for Jonisucho's skin to feel phantom grazes at the outer layers.

"Just because you don't understand what's cool and what's not, that doesn't give you the right to hate things that are cool!" Jonisucho barked out, knowing all too well that his captor heard him loud and clear. "You fight in the most uncool way imaginable–paralyzing and entrapping your opponents and then ruining cool blades, flames, and chains by making them into lame traps meant for terrified and sniveling fools! Your style makes a mockery out of cool people by making them uncool and killing them in uncool ways! For that, you deserve to have your ass kick…!"

Before Jonisucho could finish cursing his opponent, the pendulum blades passing by his arms dug into the soft tendons of his arms. In the beginning, they merely sliced through the skin and severed a few layers of underlying flesh, but their weight would drag them ever lower with each successive swing. In a dozen of minutes, they'd be slicing through the last of Jonisucho's arms.

"Do you really think that you have the time to debate the philosophy of coolness with me, Jonisucho-san?" Aizuru wondered with sneering mockery in her voice.

"Hmph… You think you've robbed me of coolness, but that's the one thing you will never take away from me. You say that my rule of cool is inconsistent, but you misunderstand that part of coolness is framing!" Jonisucho snickered with a content smirk plastered on his face. The cheer and confidence in her opponent's expression seemed to confuse Aizuru, since she turned her head to the side with a wide-eyed look, expressing her curiosity. "For example, you might think that playing by your killer's rules as a badass dude is considered lame, but I'll say that it's badass as fuck! That's because it's the one thing your killer won't expect from a cool dude, and by surprising the bastard, you show your defiance. And defiance… Is badass!"

A fleshy ripping noise made Aizuru space out for a few seconds as an absolute excess of blood washed all over her face like a torrential wave and shut her eyes and mouth for a second. Even if it took the Trial Killer a few moments to wash the gore and bloody bile off her face, Jonisucho stood before her liberated from his binds after ripping the relaxed muscle from his bones yet keeping his arms, in the most general and liberal matter of speech.

"That's not…" Aizuru was about to say something when a stamping foot dented into her face and sent her rolling and dancing off of the tile set and wreckage scattered across the arena. With a thunderous slam, the serial killer planted into a sticking-out lump of rocky debris and stayed dented into the rock in a crucifix position. It was only when her own body caught up to the extent of the damage she had suffered that she vomited blood and ground organs from her mouth, spitting out the gadget she used in spreading the paralytic gas against her wishes.

"Did you really think that just because my fighting style is called "Hand Fist" I wouldn't know how to kick? You must be even thicker than I thought… Kicks are fucking badass as shit! Why on Earth would I not use them!?" Jonisucho rammed his head into Aizuru's shattering the wreckage of debris she got stuck in and crumbling the helpless serial killer before him.

However, the inevitable follow-up in Jonisucho's finishing touches didn't come. Waving front and back, with a face drowned in blood and dirt and covered by his messed up, excessive pompadour hairdo, Jonisucho's stood around as if he had fallen asleep.

"Oh, no!" the announcer bawled out, grabbing his forehead with his free hand. "It appears that contestant Jonisucho is in some sort of haze and unable to finish off his opponent! This must be a result of the excessive blood loss he's suffered after being stabbed by the Haunt earlier, as well as his newly gained injury of stripping the flesh of his arms from the bone! The painful shock, combined with the excessive blood loss, must have simply turned the martial artist off entirely and it couldn't have come at a more inopportune time!"

"This is my opportunity, time for a little jolt to the system!" Aizuru wheezed and gargled through a mangled mouth full of blood and busted teeth as she flicked her long pianist's fingers, only to reveal needles underneath her artificial fingernails. With a tender hug consisting of wrapping her arms around her own body, the Trial Killer jabbed the needles into her own skin and pumped herself full of drugs that she kept in the tiny plastic containers inside her body.

Just a few blinks after the injection later, Aizuru the Trial Killer flung her body into the air, wrapping her flexible arms around Jonisucho's shoulders before completing the flip and hauling the unconscious yet still-standing foe of hers far away. Flapping and feeling weightless, without a sign of life, Jonisucho slammed against the protective wall on the area outside of the arena's bounds. Meanwhile, Aizuru the Trial Killer fell on all fours, like an arachnid, and skittered away with a pair of terrified and bulged eyes to prepare her next trial for her next target.

"What a misfortune! The incredible martial artist Jonisucho, the master of the Hand Fist, who has showcased incredible skill and defied the odds many times throughout this tournament in his clashes against Uminawa "The Haunt" Derk, and the Takigakure ninja Kyutosu Nagare has been eliminated! With this victory of Aizuru the Trial Killer, there are only 60 competitors left competing for a spot in the top 16, and Jet, the Messiah of Martial Arts, is the last martial artist in the battle royale!" the announcer yelled out while the audience reeled and tried to digest the unsightly and torturous victory of a serial killer they've just witnessed. Straps and muscles of Jonisucho's maimed arms still laid in the arena and spread the pool of blood underneath them ever wider while the pendulum blades that Aizuru had prepared still swung around where she left them.


Charging past the ruins of a collapsed Cursed Warrior, the heat-proof mechanical golem under the employ of Fennec's band of mercenaries rammed the wreckage with so much force that the ruined frame of the super-weapon flew out of the arena and slammed against the audience stands. Screams, crying and bellowing came from the audience stands as the Sun Disc arena staff rushed to the aid of the crushed or pinned-down spectators.

"Nice!" a tall and slender, tanned mercenary with a single handful of hair growing out from the very top of his bald head like a lone patch of grass and a body wrapped with a spiked chain as makeshift armor pumped his fist while seated on the golem's shoulder.

"This should give us so much more space to fight!" Shakshu, a massive and obese man wielding a cinderblock attached to a wooden rod, a brutal excuse for a warhammer, exclaimed in joy alongside his comrade.

"H-How dare you!?" a woman of black hair with violet fading to violet ends, tied to a ponytail, lilac-colored eyes, and a Tanigakure headband, exclaimed. She wore a sleeveless, vivid, and baggy purple dress underneath the desert-style flak jacket uniform and tied a large, fern-colored scarf that dragged and hung behind her like a cape. "You would endanger innocent lives just for that?"

"That's rich coming from a Tanigakure kunoichi. Isn't your village best known for razing a village of settlers that was decimated by war by the time you burnt it down?" the chain-wielding mercenary stuck out his tongue at the kunoichi with scathing mockery.

"I come from Kagero Village, you insensitive prick!" the Tanigakure kunoichi flipped out with her face tensing and twisting in a look of primitive wrath. It was evident that she had homed in on this trio of mercenaries as targets for elimination and that she wouldn't stop going until they paid for their mockery and haphazard approach to human life.

"Hmm? You were born in Kagero Village, yet you work for the very ninja village that razed your home? Talk about pathetic. Some people will stoop to any lows just to stay alive…" Shakshu sneered at the woman, who winced with a pained look on her face. From the looks of it, nothing that the chubby warhammer-swinging mercenary said was something that the poor woman wasn't reflecting on herself during her downtime.

"You asshole!" the Tanigakure kunoichi swung her arms wide open, revealing a handful of kunai whizzing through the air in a wide arc aimed toward the pair of mercenaries. The gigantic mechanical golem moved its heavily armored arm in front of the incoming flurry of blades only for the knives to bounce off of the armored shell.

"Heh, that bitch's attacks sting even less than her attempts at virtue signaling at us," the patch-haired baldy chuckled with a monkey-like mocking sneer. A cascade of thunderous blasts shut him up as the mechanical golem staggered back, overwhelmed by a blast of magenta-colored flame.

"Hey, hey… What was that just now?" Shaksha wondered, pointing at the leftover flares and cinders that still lingered in the air.

"What does it matter? This mechanical golem is completely fireproof! It doesn't matter if the fire is normal, red, blue, or green… No amount of heat and no burning gases will affect it. That being said, Khinzira told us to not fight in groups to avoid mass eliminations…" the chain-wielding mercenary replied.

"Yeah, talk about a woman who can actually back her threats and orders up… Let's leave the big guy here to take care of that kunoichi," Shaksha nodded with the two taking off at flickering speed. The Tanigakure kunoichi emerged from the smoke and cinders of the resounding blast, ready to chase after them, but the mechanical golem reached out with its hands to wrap them around the kunoichi and squeeze her innards out from her body with its ungodly strength.

"Fire Style: Ladybug Migration!" the Tanigakure kunoichi chanted out before completing a set of hand seals, extending her right hand with an O shape formation of her fingers. The ninja breathed in deeply and spat out a stream of magenta-colored flames. A swarm of magenta-colored fireballs laid siege upon the entire upper body of the mechanical golem, but it didn't seem effective at all.

"What!?" the Tanigakure kunoichi gasped shortly before the armored hands slammed against her from both sides and extinguished all traces of light around her. A tremendous burst of magenta flames exploded from the clutch of the golem's hands, prying it open and leaving the golem weighed down with smoldering smoke from the burns searing its gauntlet-armored clay chunks for hands.

"I see… You're entirely a being of clockwork and mechanics. My venomous flames can't have any effect on something that's just an armored clay construct…" the kunoichi expressed her frustrations while slipping out from the opened clutch of the golem's hands. Just as she landed on the ground, the golem's instinctive punt caught her head-on and sent her flying off. The speed of her departure from the arena was so intense and unstoppable that she hit the upper teeth and construction edges of the Sun Disc arena before breaking them with her skull and flying off to the premises of the town built around the arena.

"Ooh! What a gruesome and painful-looking elimination! The clockwork golem under Fennec band's employ has eliminated Tentoichi Emika, a kunoichi from Tanigakure with the curious ability to burn the venom she uses in battle with flames! Sadly, it doesn't appear that a golem of clay, clockwork, and thick steel armor much cares about venom!" the announcer shook his head with a wince. The morbid manner in which the kunoichi was cast out from the arena seemed to make everyone who saw it share her pain through phantom sensations.