Cornab Thunderbone gripped his bone mace tightly with both hands, despite being easily able to crush all opposition with just one hand. It was as if he meant for the second hand to restrain his bloodlust and prevent him from charging forward and beginning wildly swinging his spiky mace around and bathing in a bath of crimson viscera. With his lower jaw shaking from boundless fury, he took a bold, ground-shaking step forward, instilling fear into the cornered swarm-baller.
"Your little mechanical insects are incapacitated. You're all alone. I fully intend to make sure you pay for the transgression in denying me another layer to make my mace even thicker. But I won't crush you all at once. First, I need to tenderize you and put your bones through the test to see if they're worth decorating my mace with," Cornab declared while boldly approaching the terrified Rinden.
Bellowing from the bottom of his chest, Cornab Thunderbone swung his mace horizontally, overwhelming the heroic athlete with his imperceivable speed while appearing directly within pitching distance and thwacking his mace straight into the general face and chest area. Young Rinden's body morphed to better accommodate the demands of the iron and bone coated with chakra as the pro athlete passed out long before the inertia sent him flying.
"Hmph… Everything shattered, just a flappy sack. No good at all," Cornab Thunderbone muttered to himself while staring off into the sky with the cover of his right hand and tracing the trajectory of the soaring pro-athlete. Seated in pedal flying zeppelins with wooden frames and extended cloth sheet wings, the healers of the Sun Disc arena staff pedaled off into the skies to chase after the removed from the battlefield competitor.
"And it's over! As it could have been expected, with Cornab Thunderbone's ability to disable Rinden's shuttlecocks with a field of electromagnetism, Rinden had little response to the conqueror's brutish power and tyrannical battlefield presence!" the announcer ruled in Rinden's elimination. "With two swift eliminations in a row, Cornab Thunderbone reduced the number of competitors still fighting on to a measly 33!"
"Measly? There is nothing measly about the remaining competitors. These are not just the strongest, but also the craftiest and those with the best survival instinct. Oh, I can't help but fall in love with them!" Manshuri, the Dream of Abundant Love of the Salvari, clapped her hands together and pressed them to her blushing cheeks while shaking in excitement with black eyes glowing with singular thick pink beacons of light for irises and pupils of the Salvari woman.
"Hmm…" the mechanical and otherworldly humming distracted the tanned Salvari and prompted her to face a uniformed Exterminator with the head of a rectangular plastic gadget with bars protecting a massive speaker found within the very core of its head, where the brain would have normally been. With the Exterminators being entirely artificial creatures of experimental and fringe, highly questionable science, all that space meant for a brain could have been better utilized if a mere microchip replaced the brain. "You Salvari don't quite look like monsters, but you don't look very human either. I can't quite put my finger on it, which are you, men, or monsters," the Exterminator produced a plastic-sounding rub by stroking the thin plastic bars on its head with leather gloves that concealed its segmented artificial fingers.
"Does it matter? Monsters deserve love too, you know…" Manshuri put her foot down and ran her hand over her hair, propping her massive single braid of coffee-colored hair to flap upward before gently brushing back down on her fit back. "All living creatures do!"
"Hmm… That's where you're wrong! Monsters are an abomination against nature. Anything abnormal is an error of the natural order, and it is our sworn objective, the sole reason for our existence, to destroy it. Monsters lay waste and abuse their size and power wherever they go. Something this vile deserves to feel the terror they inflict upon the innocents they crush before being eliminated," the Exterminator insisted, pulling his leather gloves off and revealing his clacking, metallic, segmented fingers while adopting a wrestling stance in front of the Salvari.
"You poor thing! So much hatred in your heart… Let it be known that you weren't born knowing how to hate, you were taught it. That same way, that hatred can be rooted out and love can once again fill the void in your heart that the absence of hatred will leave," Manshuri proclaimed and took up a fighting stance.
"Exterminators are ruthless slayers of monsters. They are not living beings capable of love. Your conflict with me is based on a fundamental error that will lead to your inevitable defeat, not-human, not-monster," the sonic-based Exterminator boldly stated.
"I am Manshuri, the Dream of Abundant Love. My love is infinite, meaning that I can even teach cyborgs to love," Manshuri declared, erupting with a golden-colored flame of dharma that bloomed around her like a lotus and ignited the golden light to beam through her eyes like a lighthouse beacon attracting anyone seeking the warmth and serenity of being loved.
"To be human is to be fallible and foolish," the Exterminator proclaimed while elongating his segmented metallic fingers by revealing each segment to be connected to wires, almost like each finger on both his hands was a jack plug. "That is okay, for that is why you have the Exterminators to take care of you. Our infallible voice of reason will do what is necessary!"
Exterminator Model: Ultrasonic Repellant leaned its head forward, booming a visible ultrasonic shockwave that ripped and crushed stone debris in its way into dust and threatened to overwhelm the Dream of Abundant Love without leaving her any space to dodge the impending attack. Manshuri braced herself, but the vicious ultrasonic wave snuffed out her golden flame of love like a typhoon blowing away a campfire. Yet the Salvari did not submit to the vicious demands of the ultrasonic shockwave, accepting the cuts and rips that came along with it instead of letting it blast her away to a farther range where its effects were weaker.
"An example of human fallibility is the idea that love is a suitable power to survive in combat with," Ultrasonic Repellent boomed with an artificially augmented, mechanical tone while staying prepared to unleash another resonance of his ultrasonic wave at a moment's notice. "However, love deals no damage to your opponent and damage is necessary to destroy your foe. Also, love as much as you will, one cannot dodge sound, even if they are faster than it. Not when you are confined to the bounds of the arena."
"You are right," Manshuri grumbled while correcting her stance after her body was put through the indomitable test of an ultrasonic shockwave scrambling her internal organs and nearly making her blood boil from within. "Love doesn't hurt anyone except the one that carries it within their heart. Love isn't reasonable, it isn't a rational weapon to bring into a war zone. However, that is why it is beautiful. It exposes you to harm proudly, but you are happy to make that sacrifice because you know you will not cause harm to another human being and bring nothing but happiness. Love makes you vulnerable, but, like a virus, it is contagious, it spreads and fills those you love and it makes them share that pain with you, disarm, and become vulnerable with you. That's because love is warmth, love is life itself. To live is to love and if you are alive, I believe you too can love!"
Manshuri became enveloped in a bloom of golden light that stunned even the eyeless Exterminator in place and began slowly pushing him back, one step at a time. The quasar of golden bloom expelled pink clouds of dust that smelled of a field of flowers after abundant rainfall and brought tranquility into the hearts of all who smelled it. When the golden light subsided and permitted vision to all beholders, a large mirror wrapped around and held suspended in mid-air by red ribbons wrapping around Manshuri's body and reflecting the rippling, mirage-like image of a lotus blooming in the field of gold coins appeared behind the Salvari.
"Mirror of Kama!" Manshuri chanted before taking off toward her opponent. Exterminator Model: Ultrasonic Repellent leaned forward and expelled an ultrasonic shockwave that clashed with the rushing force of the Dream of Abundant Love. Shocking the Exterminator, Manshuri grabbed the sonic sound wave and ripped it apart like it was a gentle silken sheet put in front of her. The sound wave shattered with a grisly metallic shriek like a panel of glass, with the idol of love charging through for an upcoming beatdown.
Golden sparkles lit up on her shoulder blades, they sizzled up, forging a pair of golden mechanical arms that appeared to be statuesque and decorated from shapeless bars of gold. Confronted by a rush of a four-armed beat down, the Exterminator found himself on the back foot. Gaining some distance with a backward dash, the Exterminator extended his jack plug fingers and weaved them around Manshuri like leathery strap binding. The plug segments plunged into Manshuri's body, stunning her in place and shattering the Mirror of Kama into shards of solid light while spilling a few trickles of the Salvari's blood.
"While ultrasonic sound is impossible to block, affecting the very water that most of your body is made from, it is even more devastating when the shockwave comes from within one's body and seeks escape. This is how battles are won, through strategy and intent to harm your opponent, not foolishness like the power of love. Loving your enemy will only lead to your defeat!" Exterminator Model: Ultrasonic Repellent declared, casting a grungy ultrasonic shockwave from each of his jack plugs. The sudden emergence of solid sound waves caused Manshuri's body to bloat and bubble as if it was boiling from within before sound escaped from her body through every orifice and even every skin pore with a suppressed howl, ripping and spouting blood from the ruptures that the desperate sound seeking escape caused.
Manshuri collapsed on her front, shaking and bleeding profusely through her eyes, nose, mouth, and random patches of her ruptured skin. The accumulating pool of blood made quick work of soiling her baggy white trousers and cropped halter top, though the latter wasn't easy to spoil, already having been blood-red, to begin with.
The audience gasped and sent waves of conflicted emotions. Without a doubt, the Dream of Abundant Love was one of the crowd favorites. Seeing her outmatched and overwhelmed like this by a mere machine bolstered by human corpse parts and augmented with mere deadly gadgets and weaponry drove the audience into a bit of an outrage. However, that outrage died down some when they saw Manshuri picking herself up, writhing, and crawling for a few strokes at first, before transitioning into an elegant roll and spin that put her back into a levitating meditative position.
"It feels hurtful to shatter your silly human dreams like this. That is why I will permit you to stay on the wrong path and continue to fool yourself, as long as you are shown that love on a battlefield is dangerous and will only lead to your early and unnecessary demise," Exterminator Model: Ultrasonic Repellent hummed with a robotic tune after seeing the Salvari pick herself up.
"Hmph…" Manshuri grumbled before bursting into a restrained fit of laughter while doing her best to clutch at the direst of wounds. "That's why love is so powerful. You don't need to win for it to spread. Love is a gift that stays with everyone that it touches. Even if you weren't capable of it before meeting me, love is a part of you now."
"If this drivel allows you to deal with loss easier, then so be it…" Exterminator Model: Ultrasonic Repellent extended its jack plug fingers and made them vibrate with intense sonar sensations. At the same time, he tunneled the vibrations with a central sound wave from the head speaker, splitting the vibrating sound ripples into ten separate beams of sound. Even Manshuri, in her sense of transcendence over the ordinary affairs of a battlefield, was left in a state of shock when she saw ten rippling sonar mirages of Ultrasonic Repellent rise before her.
"Extermination Art: Ultrasound Imagery!" the Exterminator chanted out before the sonar doppelgangers vanished with a fusillade of sonic booms. A crack hit Manshuri head-on, sending her flying off while a cascade of vanishing, flickering in and out of vision supersonic mirages ganged up on her and began a vicious mauling, passing her airborne body in between each other, sending her flying into the air and bouncing off of hypersonic airwaves formed from the sonic booms left behind by the movement of the ultrasound clones.
Propelling from one another like living missiles, the ultrasonic clones slammed themselves one after another against the airborne and helpless Dream of Abundant Love, flattening her in the grassy area outside of the arena bounds with the final ultrasonic doppelgänger dispelling themselves with a point-blank sonic boom burst and planting the battered Salvari into the ground.
"Umm… Yes, as much as I don't want to believe it, it's true!" the announcer's voice overpowered the outrage and the rampant boos. "Manshuri, the Dream of Abundant Love of the Salvari, has been eliminated by the Exterminator Model: Ultrasonic Repellent!"
"Hmm… That Manshuri is unbelievable. I don't think I'll ever understand her approach to fighting! She had every tool to defeat the opponent, why did she barely show any of them off?" Dashula, the tall and muscular Salvari with bountiful facial hair, tanned skin, and a robe of majestic tiger fur while hosting a massive black cobra slithering all across his body like a living belt that held his furs and robes together, grumbled in complaint while approaching Bishiyari from the side.
"That's because you are different people, Dashula. Make no mistake, Manshuri can be a formidable combatant, but her ire is reserved for those who know yet undermine love, not those who need it. Spreading her boundless love is more important to her than winning battles, she feels no pleasure in defeating opponents, but she is still Salvari, a Goddess of the Arena," Bishiyari replied while accepting the defeat of his precious second half without looking too disappointed.
"Whatever, that Exterminator looked powerful. I think I kind of want to fight him, whether he's Manshuri's little pet project or not," Dashula declared. Spinning his mighty trident in between his fighting arms, the Salvari took off with a bountiful leap and appeared before the Exterminator without wasting too much time between fights or giving the Exterminator some time to get itself together after a fight. "Hey, my name's Dashula. Even if Manshuri wasn't fighting you for real, you look strong. How about we fight next?"
"Hmm…" Exterminator Model: Ultrasonic Repellent reeled back. This came as something that not even he was ready for. Even if it made little sense to fight one of the more human-looking Salvari, he would still never bow down from a fight. Something was off. "You're another one of those Salvari. Why would that woman not fight me seriously? Why would she tell me all those things about something as meaningless as love instead? I mean… Love is pointless in battle, it leaves openings, it makes you vulnerable and it eliminates your strength and ability to crush your enemy. Why would a powerful warrior like her choose it as her weapon against me?"
"Huh? Who cares, haven't you heard a word I said?" Dashula waved his hand out as if trying to snap the Exterminator from its hypnotic daze. "I said I want to fight! Come on, it's going to be fun! You look like someone who could push me to the limit, what do you think?"
"Hmm… I feel absolutely no intent to fight. I see no meaning in it. What is the point of fighting, what is the point of conflict? Why do we fight? Why do we slay monsters? Is it not so that the humans we protect can feel love in our stead? Ugh… What is that painful emptiness inside me!?" the Exterminator clutched its chest area and ripped it open, revealing a fleshy lump stitched together over some rotating and pumping machinery while it ripped the stitches apart as if trying to peer inside its own heart. Something that he had, though not for its capacity to feel love. Rather, for its function of delivering vital fluids and chemicals by pumping them throughout the cyborg's body.
"That feeling, it's love!" Manshuri shot her fist into the sky while seated on the litter that the healers lifted off the ground to take her to the infirmary in. "It's the warm relation with all the people you seek to protect. It's a fuzzy little bundle of worry for every life affected by the battles you are waging. Care for it, nestle it, make it grow and rage like wildfire, and love to your limits and beyond!"
"I am… Malfunctioning. This love is a virus infecting my systems and corrupting them to their core. My primary function can no longer be served. I am obsolete…" Ultrasonic Repellent proclaimed while unraveling its segmented jack plug fingers and thrusting them into various connections and crevices throughout its body. Sharp and faint white sonic blades plunged out from the ravaged systems as the Exterminator employed his ultrasonic weaponry to ruin his own body.
Just as Manshuri cried out in despair and desperation, jumping out from the litter that the healers were carrying her off in, a round and expansive ultrasonic shockwave field expanded from within Ultrasonic Repellant's body, breaking it apart from within with a self-destructive last gesture in defiance of love's presence.
"An unexpected development! It seems like the unique approach to battle from Manshuri, the Dream of Abundant Love, has left the Exterminator's rational and robotic psyche in shambles! So abundant is Manshuri's love, that it seemed to have imprinted even on an insensitive, murderous cyborg slayer who previously proclaimed itself to be incapable of feeling anything like it! As a last nod to Manshuri's efforts to teach it love, Ultrasonic Repellent acknowledged that it too could feel love and that the pain of love was too much for its cold, dead heart to bear! What a poetic end to the last of the Exterminators, to self-destruct after acknowledging and lamenting their humanity!"
"Damn it," Dashula cursed, snapping his finger as a substitute for a fattier swear word. "Got one over me again…" he admitted while shaking his head in disappointment that he was outwitted by someone whose fighting style he still couldn't fully get behind or fathom.