Rolling through the skies, the owl-like Sky Warrior positioned herself diagonally above her opponent before extending her hooked brass claws and taking a plunge down to secure a good grip. A growth of flesh and cartilage thrust itself from underneath the onmyoji's garment and moved in just in time to block the clutching grip of the owl's brass claws. The growth had a mouth-like opening up front and a line of banana-sized teeth. The mouth gaped wide open as the owl-like Sky Warrior ripped the growth to shreds by fluttering her owl-feather cape and pulling her knees up to rip the fleshy growth apart with her brass claws.
Another handful of growths flung themselves forth from the onmyoji's chest, biting at the feathered white and black cape that the Sky Warrior used to hover and fly over the arena like her peers. Opulently evading a couple of chomps, the Sky Warrior grabbed hold of one of the many fleshy growths before they could retreat into the onmyoji's body and pulled him up into the sky for a brief ride. Vaulting over in a loop after reaching the highest point she could get to, the flying warrior flipped overhead and slammed her opponent into the ground face-first.
Much to the shock of the aerial warrior, six more arms sprung forth from the chest of her opponent to absorb most of the shock. The produced limbs split open and splattered with blood and broken bones from the power of the impact, yet they withered to dust momentarily after the onmyoji used his hands to reposition himself for a proper response. Not feeling content with her opponent responding to her, the Sky Warrior looped in mid-air once more and spread her owl-feather cape.
A myriad of axe heads coated with green Earth Style glow manifested in mid-air and buzzed right at the exposed front of her opponent. With a cocky smirk, the onmyoji produced more of his fleshy growths to block the incoming projectiles, but the axe heads thudded with a deafening and meaty punch as they tore clean through both the cancerous growths and the onmyoji's own body. The stunned magician gargled up blood while falling down on his back.
"What an incredible display! The reserved and cool Sky Warrior Neshja has coated her weapons with Earth Release, skyrocketing their mass and power to where axes became heavyweight clubbing weapons rather than cutting projectiles, packing all the weight of a mountain in a single compact package. Not even a shifty magician like Mikoto could predict such a crafty attack, it seems!" the announcer let the audience in on the know why the axe heads were so effective at obliterating all mounted defenses. "Moreover, to protect the arena and the entire Sheikhate from the devastating aftereffects, Neshja dispelled the coating right after the axe heads did the bloody deed but before they hit the ground!"
The audience cheered for a few seconds before suddenly quieting down, with some spectators grabbing their mouths and belching in disgust. The magician's wounds began bubbling with thick white liquid as the holes twitching and spouting blood began filling up with the same cancerous growths that Mikoto the onmyoji magician could produce effortlessly to assist him in combat. Before any of them could blink, the magician stood back up with all of his fatal wounds completely healed and not a sign of a scratch on him.
"Went straight for the kill there, no fun at all…" Mikoto complained, cracking his head sideways and then cracking his knuckles.
"What magic is this? Moreover, what did you mean by testing if my body is to your liking?" Neshja asked with certain authority and aggression, treating the earlier exchange as a proper establishment of her superiority over her opponent in combat. To her confusion, Mikoto flipped her the bird before sticking his tongue out.
"Ain't telling!" he exclaimed in a childish voice. "I've got neither the time nor the intention of explaining myself to you. I'd rather finish testing the limits of your body until someone interferes with this game of ours."
Utterly relaxing his body, Mikoto dropped forward before tensing up just before dashing like a human missile toward his opponent. Neshja slit her finger across her feathery cape, producing a bloody smear on the white feathers where she cut it open on the chakra-coated feathers that now functioned like razor blades. A smoky pop produced a variegated owl of green and white colors with orange, tiger-like stripes on the back. The building-sized owl hovering over the arena and flattening contestants that didn't brace themselves with its gusty wing waves flapped its wings forward.
A sharp howl filled the Sun Disc arena, producing a sizeable vortex that engulfed the entire arena and began sucking the unlucky contestants into it, intending to put them under the complete control of Neshja and her hunting partner. Unfortunately for the Sky Warrior, her onmyoji opponent clapped his hands together and shot out fleshy strands in each corner of the arena. The connected tissue strands forced an opposite rotation to the magician's body, which canceled out the vortex with a thunderous pop.
Thrusting himself forward, Mikoto hammered his fist at the top of the giant green owl's head, rocking it down to the ground before mounting it and preparing to rip it apart, starting with the wings of the giant avian predator. With a distraught look on her face, Neshja dispelled her summon and entered freefall alongside her opponent, who extended his hand and splintered it off into an entire club of interconnected fists. The wave of arms washed over the Sky Warrior, clobbering her aside while drowning her out in the ocean of pale and rotting limbs.
"What an impressive familiar you've produced…" Mikoto's voice echoed through the sea of rotting flesh as the collapsing limbs flopped together and connected into a singular, larger arm from which Mikoto himself appeared. The magician burst forth from a pulsing blister before unleashing a beatdown of technically sound close-distance strikes. In one go, the unorthodox magician managed to prevent his opponent from using her feathery cape to glide again and disarm her while delivering some brutal-sounding strikes in return.
"Familiar? I've no idea what you're talking about!" Neshja answered with a distraught tone as her opponent was mocking her in hand-to-hand exchange, perfectly anticipating each move and answering with just the right counter each time. Whenever anatomical shortages befell Mikoto, the wicked magician just produced more limbs from the cloud of arms that hovered over the hectic fighting stage as the two headed for a rough landing. "Yohashi is the Spirit of the Night's Hunt!" the overwhelmed warrior answered.
Vaulting horizontally to slam his opponent's head through the mountainous ridge erected by Lord Mifune's secret technique, Mikoto smiled. The two drilled straight through, demolishing the rocky spike with one blow before the onmyoji allowed the toothed growths to carry him aside, acting like tendrils under his total command. Coughing, panting, and grunting, Neshja rolled out from the rocky wreckage of the collapsed ridge.
"The game of semantics was bound to occur with so many warrior cultures clashing. We all employ the same energy, who cares if we magicians call it mana, the ninja call it chakra and you call it spirit energy? So spare me that babble…" Mikoto waved his hand in indifference. "Instead, show me more of what your body can do!"
Fluttering her cape behind her and channeling chakra at just the right time to coat and harden it when it was in the right position, Neshja produced a tunneling airwave that swept her forward while she turned her feet out toward her opponent. Mikoto winced and began frantically moving around while fending off the many thrusts and jabs of the brass claws by producing fleshy growths to place in their way while Neshja ruthlessly shred everything in her path to bits. With a metallic clang, the claws of the Sky Warrior fashioning herself after an owl locked firmly around Mikoto's throat.
The Sky Warrior flipped backward, tossing her opponent into the air with so much force that the air pressure completely paralyzed the onmyoji in place while he flew airward. Neshja spread her caped wings and flung a barrage of owl feathers imbued with Wind Release energy that flew straight at the airborne magician and skewered him in mid-air. The total number made Mikoto look like a pin-cushion. Waving her wings, Neshja took it to the skies and began slicing and dicing her opponent by swinging her cape about like a weapon under her employ. The coated feathers truly made the caped wings act like a living weapon as the frozen magician collapsed to the arena floor in pieces, cut apart like sausage.
"The Sky Warriors show no mercy today!" the announcer yelled out. "We've seen already that this competition is not for the faint of heart, yet none of us could expect this level of brutality, even if it is delivered with such elegance! It appears that Mikoto the magician has been eliminated, permanently, and the number of remaining combatants is 162…"
Neshja flung her wings, producing a whirlwind from the coating of Wind Release energy that then scooped up the separate slices she had reduced her opponent into. Before the meaty chunks could be scattered outside the arena, however, each slice of Mikoto whited out with rot and began dripping puss before turning into a thick liquid and connecting. The thick clump of pus soon turned to a cocoon of rotten flesh, like a lone, round, pulsing muscle that hollowed into a thin membrane and tore open, spitting out Mikoto's fully clothed body out.
"Oh my! The magician Mikoto has been reborn from his own remains!" the announcer gasped in surprise. "I may have announced the news of his elimination prematurely! The remaining number of competitors remains 163!"
"Hmm… That ain't a half-bad body. I've never possessed a woman before, so this could be fun…" Mikoto shivered with a curved smile that stretched across his entire face. "Alright then, let's get to work!"
Before Mikoto could attack his opponent, who was fending off attacks from other opponents scorned by her devastating gales that interrupted many other bouts, a tight chain wrapped around his body from behind and locked him in place. With a cartoonishly exaggerated look of confusion, the wicked onmyoji looked down to see a thick network of rattling links the size of an anchor chain tied around him with a gaunt man with shoulder-long black hair and a thick mustache holding the other end of the chain. The interloper was dressed in a worn-out military coat and had the triangular hat of a ship captain hanging on his greasy black hair. His skin looked mud-colored and diseased and his eyes bulged out from his face, which gave him a mean and ghastly appearance.
"I ain't never seen anything like yerself, but it's clear that yer bad news, lad," the pirate said in a rough yet higher pitched than it was usual for a man's voice. "I usually turn my ire toward other pirates, but I'll more than gladly take you out if that means avoiding meeting an immortal beastie like you in the tournament! So says captain Trean "The Blessed" Baecher!"
"Seriously? You just had to step in and mess with my body hunt now?" Mikoto pouted by blowing out his cheeks like a child.
"Out you go, runt!" captain Baecher swung the massive chain he had wrapped Mikoto in over his head, surprising the audience with his surprising level of physical strength for someone of his gaunt stature, and released him to fly out of bounds. The magician Mikoto snapped his fingers midway out of bounds. Reality itself shattered like a sheet of glass that one drove a disc saw through a couple of times. However, instead of the fabric of reality collapsing, only the chains holding the wicked magician appeared to have been cut up into pieces with incredible precision and unmatched clarity in the cut that was unnatural given the adamantine material one was cutting.
The onmyoji split apart fleshy strands out from his body, engulfing the entire Sun Disc arena like a spider's web of rotten and dried-out veins. This stopped him from flying out of bounds. The twisted magician, who became more and more of a problem with each new, uncanny ability he revealed, snapped his fingers once more. Captain Baecher twitched, stunned in panic as his vision began sliding apart vertically and horizontally. Repeating his earlier stunt, Mikoto cut apart the fabric of reality itself around captain Trean Baecher, however, only the captain himself fell down split into a dozen disembodied pieces.
"A double elimination!" the announcer yelled out. "Mikoto the wicked onmyoji magician has been eliminated because growths attached to his body touched areas outside of the fighting arena, meanwhile captain Trean "The Blessed" Baecher has been murdered by the eliminated competitor immediately after!"
"Wait, what?" Mikoto turned to the announcer. The melee official froze in terror, realizing that in a sick turn of events, he may become the next victim of the magician's unorthodox reality slicing technique and meet the same fate as the deceased pirate hunter captain. "Oh, well… I guess you're right…" Mikoto snapped his fingers, instilling a sense of dread in the audience, who frantically began looking around to see who next was cut down but then realized that this was just a flashy yet moot gesture. "Although…"
The announcer bawled out in shock as Mikoto's body tore apart from within, revealing a faceless and rotting ghoul, littered with tentacles from inside and flapping about with vain attempts to chomp and rend some flesh off of some unaware audience member that came too close for comfort to the suddenly revealed monster that laid inside of Mikoto.
"This is my true self, I am Honerisu, a Lesser Demon. The magician Mikoto the onmyoji was just a vessel I used for this tournament. Do you still think that I touched the area outside of the ring?" the faceless mass of tendrils and fingerless limbs surrounded with rings of cartilage that seemed to serve as hammering maces of the rotting Lesser Demon body-snatcher wondered out loud, turned at the announcer.
"W-Well… It was your growths that touched the areas outside the arena and not Mikoto's arms or legs, besides, it doesn't matter what skin you choose to wear for the tournament, if it touches the area outside the ring–you're eliminated," the announcer made his ruling after turning to the Sheikh who pointed his thumb down for the abominable monstrosity.
"I see…" Honerisu deflated and began leaking back into the torn-up body of Mikoto. A lone hardened bone needle struck out from within the ripped flesh and, connected to a strand of cancerous tissue began sewing the ripped body back together though it seemed like the overall damage to the body had been too grievous and that the body would need replacement sooner rather than later. "Oh, well… It was worth a try, I suppose."
The announcer gulped down in panic as Mikoto began shuffling uncannily toward one of four exits from the arena before freezing in place again. Frightening the very souls out from their husks, Honerisu's vessel flopped down in a haunting backward lean that seemed to ignore the concept of a spine while flashing a line of fiendish teeth at the audience and the other contestants alike all of whom have stopped their squabbles to see this calamitous entity off the arena.
"Or maybe… I should just eat all of you, take the most alluring body here, and then butcher the rest as compensation for my wasted time?" Mikoto wondered in a chilling mix of two voices speaking at once in a husky and disgruntled tone.
"I don't know about that, Honerisu…" another member of the magicians' group in a black robe and armor covering his chest and forearms and fashioning a long and pointy hat said, making the competitors around him split to the sides to let the two see each other. "You're a strong and terrifying demon and all but… I'm certain that I would crush you inside the most powerful body here and if you insist on resisting, you'll have 160 other competitors to worry about, all intent on stopping you. By all means, though… Go ahead and struggle."
The torn up and ruined body of Mikoto stared at the blue-eyed magician with long and spiky blond hair topped off with a ponytail tied to the back with black face paint and mint-green skin before sighing and settling somewhere deep down inside of his vessel, which allowed unnatural Honerisu's regeneration take over and patch the ruined body back together before sealing the tear forever.
"Just kidding…" Mikoto shrugged while making an unnatural jesting expression that could have only been achieved by an internal force tugging and pulling the facial muscles of the possessed magician from inside. "You know me, Quinton, besides, you wouldn't want to crush me. Not until you figure out a way to deal with me without killing off your dear brother, that is…"
"Don't feel too comfortable. That will be easier accomplished with all magicians gathered together at a nexus location and pooling their efforts together!" the monumental magician who seemed to make even a Lesser Demon such as Honerisu reconsider his murderous intents let the possessed vessel leave the arena's premises with one final note for its trip to wherever it lurked.
"Well… With this little nightmarish episode, both captain Trean "The Blessed" Baecher and the wicked onmyoji Mikoto have been eliminated and the remaining number of competitors in the arena now remains 161!" the announcer declared to the chilled-to-the-bone audience that took several moments of tended-to hype to resume its unruly chanting and cheering and return to a festive mood.