Baiso scratched his head, letting his hefty hand sink in the rough embrace of his thick, spiky hair as he pondered on where he should have looked next for the supposed informant dummy. The burly recruit sealed every few steps with a strong stamp of his foot at the metal door keeping something important away from him, or so it seemed, but every time he kicked down the door nothing of significance was there.

An ornery roar filled the air. Baiso tried to track the source of this dreadful noise instead of focusing on picking through the rubble and junk filling the prison quarters but only received a stiff, metal sole of a boot planting on his face which pushed him rolling aside with ground-shaking power as the crazed humanoid berserker landed on his two feet, just barely keeping the upper half of his body standing, judging from his stance.

"Hey, hey…" Baiso grinned with a smug look as he stood up and wiped his busted nose and cracked forehead, staining his boulder-sized fist with red. "You just don't know when to quit, do you?"

Araki Endo growled like an animal, his fists were shaking from the unnatural tonus present in them. The blood running down the young man's body passed right over the iron rod that he held in his hand and dripped off each of its long ends. The heaviness of the blood dripping off of the young man's body weighed his spiky hair down and his eyes were whited out. It appeared as if though the body of the apprentice samurai could fight long past the time when his mind checked out.

"Just what sort of training did you do at that God Sword's place, huh?" Baiso chuckled, cracking his knuckle. "Seems like a joint I'd like to hit one day…"

It didn't look like Baiso was going to take Endo's chances at brawling with him at this point seriously. He was, after all, a figure who reveled throughout his life at being the toughest and strongest bastard around and he loved nothing more than when his opponent's tried to contest that. Whenever some fancy trickster came knocking with some unnatural set of techniques and deceit, Baiso tended to struggle but he was fine with that because he knew his role. He knew all that he would amount for in this life which made things a whole lot easier.

No iron rod swinging pipsqueak was going to out-hardcore him and he had nothing to learn in the art of unadulterated violence but everything to teach the world that sheltered itself away from such things.

Baiso and Endo took off at the same time, Endo growled and snarled as he twirled, lighting his iron rod up with the faint blue glow of base chakra as it coated the weapon as it spun around the apprentice samurai's body and smacked into the soft and mushy right side of Baiso's jaw, halting the man-beast's advance and throwing him off his senses. The monster of a man struggled and shook his head, trying to get himself together as the sock had clocked all semblance of sense and reason out of him. It used to be just the way he liked it but…

This wasn't just mindless animal instinct working Endo through this. No… The youth's movements, the impeccable footwork, the complete control over the tide of battle. He was more aware, more skillful now than he ever was when he was mindful and awake. The boy had a heart of a swordsman pumping the blood of honor and discipline but an attitude of a self-righteous brat punk that got in the way of that. By putting that punk to sleep, Baiso liberated the pure will, the honor, and skill laying dormant within.

It was dark, too dark to tell where the storm of hits was coming from but it was coming. The scent of blood filled the air, painful twinges made it impossible for Baiso to see a thing even in the few flashes of light he could get to illuminate his blood-coated opponent. Such a mindless state of pure willpower and skill was only possible to warriors who were commonly rubbing their backs at the shaving limits of life itself. Araki Endo was a man who had been brought to the brink of dying daily and came back from it, something Baiso did not know because of the pride he had in being unbeatable and impossible to match blow to blow.

Now the only possible move was one of desperation, Baiso rushed onward, arms spread out and scooped his opponent, no matter what position he caught him in. The swelling in his eyes made that impossible to tell but the burly brute made sure to put as good of a squeeze on his opponent as he could. Now that he knew the nature of his opponent's berserk power-up, he didn't need to worry about animalistic tendencies such as biting and clawing because no honorable swordsman would resort to such dishonorable methods.

"Gonna squeeze all juice out 'a you…" Baiso whispered to the ear of his opponent as the two got closer than they've ever been before. The burly brute locked his arms around the thin yet athletic bloody pulp as he put the squeeze on. Eluding his grasp in such tight quarters was next to impossible.

With a hop and a skillful toss, Baiso repositioned his opponent into a half-rack position hanging over his shoulder as the brawler continued to hop repeatedly, yanking and rattling young Endo's bones into what must have been mere dust at this point. Loss of balance… Baiso stumbled forward, walking into a stone wall augmented by steel beams and bust through the stone, leaving splatters of crimson over the rubble. The slippery worm smacked him across his ears, making him lose balance and control while he slithered out of his grasp and kicked him into the darned wall.

And then he was gone…

Pain… Silence. Pain… Silence. He was using his environment. Endo was no longer just an honorable swordsman colliding with an unstoppable force having accepted his own mortality and gambling on the chance that he would not die instead of fearing his demise. A blow to the outer knee sent Baiso down on the ground, just inches shy away from a pile of stone but a stomp to the back of his head made sure to finish the job. Again and again… After more than twelve stomps and there being no more stone rather than ground chalk on the floor the pain was no longer something notable.

The burly brute dragged his arm across his face and flung a wet arc of blood behind him. Jackpot. Most of it splattered behind him, hitting stone but something splat far closer to home. Baiso's weighty hand extended and grabbed a handful of spiky hair and enveloped around a coconut cranium of sorts, pulling him in for a ground-shaking punch to the gut.

After the impulse shockwave ringing through the entire prison calmed down, the brawler had to collapse on his back into a throne of rummage and straighten his arms and legs out while he wiped the blood off his face and worked on getting in control over his battered body again. Had his opponent not engaged everyone at once in the beginning, had he played his cards just a little bit better, he'd have actually done him in. Him… Baiso the Burly Brawler, the Monstrous Brute.

Not once has he met his match growing up amongst either the bullies of the Taro Island or in the prison of Jiro Island. Not even the self-proclaimed taijutsu experts amongst the ninja he faced as a mercenary could seal the deal. With each opponent and each beatdown taken only adding to the toughness of Baiso's knocking ringer and every mug he bashed in making him more and more frustrated and assured of his own unmatched penchant for violence.

Almost… Almost but not yet… What a crazy guy…

"Shit, it's gonna really suck but… I don't wanna get booted out of a gang after just finding one," Damisan shook his head, talking to himself as he fixed the cylinder covering his head and face as all the talking to oneself had made it shake and threaten to slip off. The walking assortment of prosthetic's pulled his artificial arm out from under the cloak and aimed it right at the scavenging upperclassman of his.

Smoke breathed out in jets around the end of his arm while rings of blue chakra bursts pulsed from the section of his prosthetic at the elbow. He could have simply fired off his hand as a form of rocketing punch, retractable via the steel wire but that would not have sufficed. The distance was too great for this manner of attack to be efficient, the enemy too tough to get done-in like that. He had to get rid of his own arm like that…

"Megaton Rocket Punch!" Damisan growled out as his right arm prosthetic separated from his body with a hefty pushback, sending him stumbling back ever so slightly as it blasted off picking up speed toward his scavenging opponent.

Stein noticed the flashy light show and performed a few hand seals, placing his hands on the ground and raised a wall of dirt and stone to block Damisan's attack. As cool as his mute act was, the upperclassman had underestimated Damisan. After all, the impaired recruit would not have gotten rid of his artificial arm unless the trade-off was of an extraordinary wallop.

The arm bashed against the wall and proceeded to send shocks that reverberated through the entire structure before lighting up with a bright, sky shade and going up in flames and a mushroom-shaped cloud while crackles of lightning chained up across particles of superheated, electrified air in the surrounding area.

Stein was tough, Damisan had not seen detonating one of his prosthetic limbs kill a ninja yet but he was used to it deciding a battle. He avoided using it in the beginning stages of the battle, perhaps that had something to do with it. There were better things to do in the early stages than to get rid of one of one's own arms. And yet, Stein laid flat on his back with only extensive damage to his clothing and patches of burns as well as a sense of broken bones and shattered ribs. His awkward pose on the ground suggested that much, at least.

Seeing his chance, Damisan reached out for the pile of rubble that his opponent was picking through, extending the hand of his left arm and shooting it out to pull himself up to it while his opponent was down. Did Stein just stomp with his feet? A stray stone crushing his arm answered that question. The enigmatic recruit grunted as if he could feel pain in his artificial limb. Despite none of his limbs being natural, he felt disgruntlement when they were smashed to pieces, not to mention the aggravation of realizing that he was no pinned down to the ground and within his opponent's reach.

Stein scooped his legs in a round whirl and picked himself off the ground, ripping his tattered top aside as he began weaving hand seals. A burst of chakra emanated from Damisan's foot as his other foot shifted, popping out three bird-like claws at the end which he used to both stamp at his Earth Style favoring opponent and rip at his exposed chest like a bird of prey.

A painful-looking gash spouted trickles of blood as Stein rolled back as if hit point-blank by another explosion. Damisan turned his attention to his smashed and trapped hand, zipping himself to the location to attempt and free his hand to give him some more movement, at the very least, given how he was now in his opponent's field. The noises of rumbling and whistling directed the enigmatic recruit to turn around and catch a boulder with his prosthetic arm like a ball of rags and smash it in between his artificial fingers as he deflected another but the rushing barrage of stones was too great and another boulder hit him straight in the chest – right where the soft spot was and where it would have hurt had Damisan's nerves not been singed off and deadened.

The boulder took Damisan flying with him. Throwing the rags that he wore for concealment of his body-wide extensive scars and revealing him to the cruel world that mocked and made fun of him when they wanted to do so and gave him pitiful looks when they didn't. Their greatest act of mercy was feeling pity for Damisan which only made him feel like the monster that they made him out to be whenever the world wasn't feeling merciful and lobbed insults at him.

The sharp noise of steel wire reeling in to no end informed the fallen recruit that the hand smashed under the first boulder had been now left where it was trapped while his remaining prosthetic snapped, leaving it behind. He could still rid of this arm too but the resulting explosion would be muzzled due to the absence of a part of the explosive.

Stein's breakthrough gifted him a few precious seconds that the Iwagakure recruit utilized in scouring the pile of rubble for the gadget that he needed but Damisan wasn't about to give him that much leeway. Base chakra colored flares pulsed from his feet as the desert-born dashed onward as if riding the buzzard's wings. Damisan tackled Stein down on the ground, bashing his broken prosthetic against his face before ripping a cord out of it and making it light up just like the last one did.

"Sun Lotus Arm!" Damisan bellowed, detonating his second, damaged prosthetic while pinning Stein down to the ground and riding the blast of his own creation now as armless as the scar of the desert Fennec had left him after bringing his own brand of justice to Damisan's village.

The armless recruit morphed his feet to resemble those of birds, giving himself hooked claws to pick through the rubbish so that he could locate the unfortunate gadget that had left both him and his opponent losing pounds of their flesh just to find it. Stein tackled Damisan from the side, out of sheer instinct the Land of Wind recruit almost tried raising his arms to intercept the goring charge but he seemed to have let it slip his mind that he just blew both of his arms up.

The Sun Lotus Arm had torn a few muscles out, leaving grievous flesh wounds over Stein's body. Before Damisan could identify the best place to hit his opponent at and begin stomping and kicking in that direction, a trio of boulders began levitating and spinning around Stein as if he had become some kind of human, vertical buzzsaw. Damisan felt a breeze washing away at his face. His cylinder cracked and shattered, forcing the recruit to scream out in shock and try to wrap his arms over his face, cradling his hideousness and crawl away into hiding but…

The light, the truth being out there burnt like he was a creature of the shadows. Like he was the last trace of the shadows being burnt to cinders by the emergence of the morning light. Stein stared right at him without uttering a word, whether because he couldn't or because he persevered the unsightly visage before him didn't matter. Now his crew would see Damisan if he showed himself to them! That couldn't happen! That must have never happened!

Screaming into the sky, the armless recruit dashed behind a nearby pillar and fell to the ground, beginning to quake erratically and drool as he fell on the ground. The shadow and cover provided him the secrecy that he needed but the truth was already out there and Stein had seen it. It didn't matter… It wasn't like he could tell anyone… Though… Who knew what the upperclassmen crew of misfits spoke of when they were alone.

With the corner of his true face, Damisan peeked from the cool shade that he hid in and saw nothing but a bowl of a cement mixer upside down. The fact that his enemy was gone meant that Stein used that distraction and moment of desperation to locate the gadget inside that cement mixer and bolt. Even when he was all alone, walking out into the clear with his face exposed felt like his flesh was burning all over again. Fire and light, they were all the same…

A desperate plight filled the air, an unintelligible grunt as Damisan kicked the cement mixer with his clawed prosthetics and tipped it over, spilling all of its filthy contents out and leaving it with a ripped hole on the side that Damisan could stick his head into and wear the bowl as his new mask. It weighed heavy, pulling Damisan to the ground with a mean hunch but the light was no longer stabbing heated needles into his pores. He was safe again…

Still, Stein had fled with the item. That meant that the enemy team was ahead of them in terms of objectives and that Damisan had royally messed up. His face might have been safe from being seen by his newly met compatriots but they won't like the fact that he came in short for their gang this time. They'll kick him out for sure, no matter if they knew his true face or not.

A blue pulse emanating from his feet sent Damisan dashing across the forest surrounding the construction site toward the location of the next objective. He had no idea which location Stein would have rushed off to but both of them landed their stiffest shots at one another meaning that there was still a chance that Stein was hurting enough to take him down and take the gadget away from him. Ultimately, the gang with all five objectives would be the one to win, not the one to find the final prize.