A smoking and rumbling blast erupted from the point of impact where the combination of ninjutsu and taijutsu in a projectile shape hit Armasar. Before she covered her face up, because it was more efficient and rational than augmenting her body and wasting chakra, Mana's skilled eyes did notice the ginger boy weaving a hand seal successfully. She hoped that he would have substituted out of the wave of projectiles in time but something made her doubt Armasar's success, he may not have had much time to sufficiently focus on possible objects for a substitution nor had items to substitute with.
Once the smoke, dust and the annoying aftereffects of crackling sparks of lightning that persisted in the air, electrifying the atmosphere, cleared, a sight of injured and bracing Armasar met the audience. Mana groaned to herself worryingly, the recklessness of this young man made her both relate and despise this young man. Areas of ruptured and lacerated flesh ran all over the boy's body, as the lightning projectiles appeared to have shattered into hundreds of smaller cutting lightning edges.
"My God", Mana exclaimed in horror.
"Wait a second… What's that"? Meiko pointed at Armasar's shaking frame, still static in the same pose of defensive block. The detail that interested the redhead so even forced her out of her comfortable relaxation and made Meiko take a few steps towards the arena just to get a closer view, not because she couldn't make out the detail but because it was so unbelievable.
The area under Armasar's flesh looked padded with a gooey liquid substance, instead of blood from under the lacerations all over his body only goops of water fell out before imploding into more liquid drops and wetting all over the ruptured ground beneath Armasar's feet. The boy grunted in pain after the persisting lightning in the air still shocked his body painfully, making him break his defensive stance and tumble forward.
"Hmph, so you used that to soften my blows before", Gasco straightened out and cracked his neck and knuckles before stretching himself out, before beginning to plan and prepare for the next outbreak of fists flying and genin doing their best to knock each other out. "I wondered if you'd use it, given that I use Lightning Release ninjutsu enhancing my taijutsu", he added.
"Yeah… I encased myself in it while I was sealed, didn't waste any time", Armasar grinned cheerfully before scratching his itchy nose.
"What is that"? Kiyomi scratched her head in confusion.
"It looks like… Water under his skin", Meiko curiously and quite rudely pointed at Armasar. The rest of the teams were discussing this odd technique as well so, as usual, exchanges of blows and techniques were followed by genin discussing what they have just seen and exchanging information of possible weaknesses of such strategies. It was because of audience like this that it may have been wise to hide one's real combat abilities for as long as possible…
"He coated himself with layers of chakra infused water under his skin to pad blows. It's a similar strategy to using layers of fat to protect oneself, he must've fine-tuned the substance to redistribute blunt force, making himself a perfect close distance brawler", Mana noted. "While he did take some damage from Thunderstorm Fist, it didn't come from inside his body, like it did for Neph-T, it came from underground, meaning the jutsu had lost part of its force. It still must've hurt like hell".
"Yeah, the guy definitely has pain tolerance to spare", Meiko laughed out before relaxing again as the room died out. The audience was waiting for what next the two young men had in mind.
"Your no-guard confirmed hit close range strategy, added to your water armor, may be effective against a slightly worn me. That being said, you're still forgetting one thing – you'll never walk up close enough to utilize it", Gasco coldly stated the fact before he raised his hand up in the air and once again channeled lightning through his fist, preparing to punch the ground again and send another wave of lightning projectiles rumbling through the ground. A ruthless jutsu aimed to cut up and shock his opponent even more.
"Thunderstorm Fist"! Gasco shouted out as he punched the ground with his enlightened fist unleashing the crescent shaped lightning projectiles all around him. Once again, a dust-raising, deafening explosion rumbled around the arena.
Moments passed after the technique seemingly detonated and the rubble raised by it was beginning to clear. A blond and black flash blurred from out of nowhere, appearing behind Gasco and surprising the towering brawler. The Getsugakure giant swiftly turned around, grabbing two chokuto blades in his hands. With a small squirt of blood dripping and trickling down his hand and his arm coming from a shallow wound on Gasco's hands, that was all the damage that Neph-T had inflicted.
"Useless"! Gasco taunted the kunoichi, tightening his grip and augmenting the narrow areas of his hand that were required to break the chunks of steel he held in his hands into hundreds of steel shards.
"Bendigo Fisticuffs"! Armasar yelled out, as the smoke completely cleared, revealing the ginger fighter having moved in right behind Gasco in the exact moment when the giant turned back to defend against Neph-T. The ginger threw a wild combination of strikes at Gasco's back, punching without stop, without mercy, without any semblance of any mental limits or restraint. The horrifying look at Armasar's whited out eyes as he delivered the punching combination made Mana shiver, it was like the young man dropped any semblance of humanity when he delivered those punches.
Gasco stood there, stumbling forward and backward, before his dazed and confused eyes regained clarity and he jabbed at Neph-T's direction, completely ignoring the ginger brawler throwing punches right behind him. Just when Armasar had concluded his combination of blows the maroon flash of sealing technique of the tag scrolls enveloped the boy and sealed him, completing the tag. Being shaken by Gasco's powerful blows, Neph-T trembled and tumbled over before pushing her body up to perform a kick at Gasco's gut. After suffering the pain for just a moment and shoving the girl's foot away, the Getsugakure giant backhanded the Kumogakure kunoichi aside sending a splash of blood splattering over the arena floor – a petrifying sign that augmentations have failed the kunoichi and she had taken some damage.
"Wow, they're moving and making decisions so fast, I'm kinda getting lost here", Meiko spoke up quietly, her voice was quite affected by the rather gruesome sight in the arena.
"And to think that Armasar timed the tag at the right moment, concealing the maroon flash in the light of the lightning projectile exploding, coordinating his three seconds with his teammate to perfection like that", Kiyomi sighed feeling bad for the poor Kumogakure kunoichi who appeared to be too proud to give up. Usually, a failure of augmentations such as this one signaled that a fighter was beginning to feel the exhaustion of the battle and further augmentations could lead to further failures or loss of chakra control, temporarily and otherwise.
"Gasco is just on a whole other level. I could barely even see Armasar's punches and Gasco perfectly augmented his body in each and every spot targeted for a punch, completely neutralizing the force of Armasar's taijutsu technique", Mana looked down at her twitching thighs and trembling hands. From what she could tell, solely from the chakra signatures, Gasco's chakra was the smallest out of the Team Phobos trio and yet he was such a fearsome ninja…
Neph-T stood back on her feet, tripping over herself and trembling, she wiped the blood trickling from her nose and her cracked lip before bravely meeting the cruel and emotionless eyes of her opponent who just kept standing there, having an answer for everything that his opponents threw his way. Her previously busted hand rose up in the air, now patched up using bandages that she carried with her, a tirade of sighs echoed through the audience. Who could have blamed the girl for quitting, really?
"Yes, contestant Neph-T, do you surrender"? The Hokage's assistant overseeing the exam fights asked for a clarification.
"I do not. I want to ask, how tight is this building really? Can you maybe have a barrier ninja erect a barrier around it"? Neph-T asked, her voice clearly betrayed that she was in a significant amount of pain.
"I don't think that's up to the rules. Ring outs are very much a way of elimination, if you can use barrier ninjutsu, please use it, if you deem it necessary. That being said, we cannot do anything of the sort", the assistant shook his head firmly.
"But my true fighting style is quite taxing on the surroundings when used indoors. It may raise the temperature several thousands of times over, I'm sure that the audience won't feel very comfortable in these conditions, plus the whole building may melt away", Neph-T grumbled in frustration.
"I assure you, this building has withstood sterner stuff than you. This gym was built with combat drills of Konoha High students in mind, plenty of them moved on to becoming medical ninja and even working for the ANBU, your worries are pointless", the assistant shrugged. "As for endangering the audience, if your technique lacks control, it shall not be permitted. A real ninja contains their destructive effects to where cataclysmic, world-ending jutsu barely even look stronger than a pocket bomb. A technique lacking such control is incomplete and shouldn't be used until perfected in training".
The mentor of Team Alto raised his hand, adding his own input into the brief interruption of the battle. The tall, simply dressed man had managed to conceal himself in the surrounding teams, avoiding Mana's gaze when she glared at the curious Kumogakure team earlier. Given the man's shut-in stance and the strange angle that he wore his red beret on his head at, making it conceal most of his face, it was not too tough to justify.
"Excuse Neph-T, instructor, she is able to restrain the effects of her heat emitting fighting style, she'd be a poor ninja if she wasn't able to do so", the man calmly explained before turning at his pupil. "Girl, this isn't the time or the place for your games, you have your opponent in front of you, no need to open your jaws any wider", he said to her.
"What does that all mean"? Meiko looked at her teammates in confusion, "Why would Neph-T lie about the range of her ability like that? Is it another diversion from the details of her fighting style"?
"Not necessarily, I think it's much more disgusting than that – she wanted to attack all of us as well. Didn't you hear what her mentor said? She was trying to deceive the instructor about the true nature of her ability so that when she killed an innocent bystander with it, she'd be innocent because the use of her jutsu was justified", Kiyomi grunted expressing great amount of disgust at Neph-T's attitude. Judging from the anger reflected in the blonde's eyes she'd have enjoyed switching places with Gasco in that arena.
Mana looked down, if Kiyomi's guess was true and Neph-T was simply a sadistic savage trying to kill people for no reason, just to eliminate future competition in the middle of an exam, that would've made the extent of sadistic premeditation of such caliber almost too baffling for her to understand.
The way in which these ninja fought was completely different from the mindset Mana harbored. Neph-T was concealing as much of her abilities as she could, just so her future opponents wouldn't have a chance analyzing them, she also secretly plotted to kill weaker bystanders by indirectly attacking them if she was forced to pull this jutsu out at any point. That may have been disgusting and immoral but it was how a true ninja thought, it was how Mana was expected to think out there in the field.
Neph-T hunched over as her body began to sweat profusely, washing away the blood trickling from her wounds and making them look like they were bleeding more intensely than they actually were. Then, Mana was beginning to feel it, an intense, dominating presence of heat that made it barely possible to breathe. It was not a rise in temperature to the extent that the Kumogakure kunoichi previously described, it was controlled to an extent, however, it was still something that'd kill an ordinary human bystander instantly.
"Hmmm"? Gasco emitted a strange sound of curiosity as he glared at Neph-T with an odd look of interest that quickly changed his cold and calculated ordinary look. "I see what you're trying to do, it's a very original way of molding chakra but… You are just needlessly stressing your body like that", he warned his opponent.
"That's because I'm not done yet, jackass"! Neph-T yelled out, she was clearly struggling like she was holding weight above her head that she could barely even lift. With so much heat being thrown out from her body, the inner burning feeling was absolutely unbearable. "As sensei said, I can build an armor around my heated body to protect the surroundings before I really go wild", she grinned before weaving a bunch of hand seals.
As the girl's clothes singed away, a dark and immensely hard and heat proof layer of dark material covered her body like a suit of armor. The exposed areas of Neph-T's body began brightening rapidly like they were covering something intolerably hot. At this point, the kunoichi was just a star with a layer of skin and narrow strips of flesh dragged over it. Neph-T's glow was too bright for Mana to even look at her directly, even if the armor she had enveloped over herself and her own skin dimmed the unsurpassable shine.
"I see", Gasco closed his eyes before raising his fist in the air and letting lightning chakra envelop it. "You've developed a ninjutsu that begins, develops and dies inside your body, secreting heat through your chakra pores as an aftereffect. That armor appears to be a variation of the Transformation Jutsu, needless to say – much higher rank. I assume the rise in temperature of your body, and around it, as well as the energy produced in such a process inside your own body is the goal of this jutsu".
"You idiot, you won't dare puncture the armored layer now. If I'm busted open, it won't be blood that'll come out, it'll be a burst of radiation and heat more intense than any weakling around can take"! Neph-T smirked, as her mouth opened blinding light seeped through, just like the shimmer leaking through her eyes.
Without saying a word, Gasco winded up his fist and charged at his opponent. Mana didn't even risk augmenting her body to even bother looking at what was transpiring in the arena. From brief looks at Kiyomi and Meiko, the two girls were staring right at the source of all that light.
"Thunderstorm Fist"! Gasco shouted out as he unleashed his fist, charged with Lightning Release chakra, aiming to unleash those same crescent shaped projectiles from inside his opponent, skewering her from inside, like he did before.
"White Nova"! Neph-T shouted as she answered Gasco's gamble with an augmented to the brim and intensified punch of her own. As more and more chakra built up in Neph's arm, the dark layer of hardened skin that covered and protected the people around Neph-T peeled off, revealing the burst of energy contained inside Neph's body.
After the resulting explosion and flash of light cleared out, Mana finally dared to look. She was surprised by the fact that she barely had to augment herself to survive the aftereffects of the clash between the two, that was how in tune their chakra control was and how precisely they channeled their prodigious skills solely through their opponent.
The sight that was revealed, to the magician after she finally dared to look was a sad one. Neph's body laid sprawled out on the floor, covered up in her mentor's white coat as her own clothes got singed off. The whole arena that was erected by Dorimi previously was completely totaled and laid in smoldering piles of rock all over the place. Gasco was kneeling and holding his own burns and bruises as he was definitely brought down to his knees and was having trouble standing back up.
"Both contestants: Gasco Patura of Getsugakure and Neph-T of Kumogakure have been eliminated via ring out, for the sole reason of the fact that there is no more ring left to compete in", the overseer of the semi-finals ruled after pointing at both competitors. From where Team Phobos was initially observing the battle, Gasco's male teammate – Doma, ran up to him and helped him back to his trio.
"It's fine, you'll be back into the finals once that Dhaogu guy wins the match for you, you did well", Mana could make out the one with the fiery temper explaining to his clearly injured and a bit dazed teammate. While Doma was right and Gasco would only be eliminated from the whole exam in the case of Dhaogu losing the tag match for the whole team, the thing that surprised Mana the most was how soft and friendly the trio she feared was with the members of their own team.
She had so often thought of Team Phobos as some inhuman monsters, quite frankly, their abilities certainly qualified them as such. They were masters of their strange unseen jutsu and excelled at their fighting styles. Gasco's "Perfect Augmentation" defense only proved Mana her point further, but there was a very soft hint of humanity inside those three, whenever other ninja of their village were concerned. Gasco clearly held back from seriously crippling Armasar for life, Doma was clearly less crazy and more leader-like when comforting his own team and the trio did appear to have this warm bond of kinship between each other.
The overseer then slowly walked up to the center of the has-been arena and weaved a bunch of hand seals before extending his hands to the sides, making sealing glyphs light up in the air in round circles where his palms were positioned.
"Remote Unsealing Jutsu"! he chanted but then was interrupted by Armasar's team mentor, yelling something out unintelligibly.
"Won't you repair the arena? What's the point of unsealing them both like this? They'll just be ringed out as well"! The well-built and plenty scarred jounin expressed his outrage.
"A part of being a good ninja is being able to defeat your opponent without making a ruckus. Big and flashy techniques like this, even if they are controlled, will be useless on an assassination mission. Consider this penalty for wrecking the arena, it will only be repaired for the next match", the instructor firmly stated before resuming his remote unsealing and setting off the seals, making them light up with maroon flashes.
As the bright flashes of light took shape in the air, Armasar simply landed on the arena floor, Dhaogu however quickly weaved a hand seal, right after realizing that he was a good meter in mid-air and about to touch the floor – it was very much an instinctual desperation move. Sand began seeping from Dhaogu's sleeves, boots, and his baggy pants.
"Water Style: Paradise Oil"! Dhaogu chanted as he spat out blobs of liquid goo that looked mostly like sunflower oil, covering the sand and giving it an odd gold-like color. As the sand rushing from the boy's boots slipped them off, Dhaogu's naked feet softly touched the gooey mush of gold colored sand and his own secreted oil before slipping on it, in a comedic fashion, and tumbling over on his back and down off his golden cloud of oiled sand.
The audience just observed the oddball's antics for a while in silence, trying to wrap their minds around what had just happened.
"Well, I suppose, technically, Dhaogu's back and head hit the floor a bit later than Armasar's, the winners are Gasco Patura of Getsugakure and Dhaogu of Sunagakure"! the overseer declared pointing at the poor frail Sunagakure boy who was struggling to scratch his aching from the fall head and keep his squirting tears inside his eyes.
"We'll now declare the next match, before leaving on a break, we'll erect the arena again and make some slight adjustments in the meantime", the instructor turned at the big screen, that appeared to still be functioning, as it must've been built to withstand harsher conditions.
The names on the screen shifted around and rolled one over the other before the screen became static with a random collection of names:
"Wakizashi Meiko (Team Hokage/Konohagakure) & Deiji Daidao (Team Hawthorn/Konohagakure) VS Sugemi Nara (Team Hawthorn/Konohagakure) & Gentib de Vitt (Team Scuti/Hoshigakure)"