"And it seems like we've got a collision of some serious powerhouses in the southern area of the ring! The rogue ninja from Iwagakure, Ishigane Gyori, has collided with the self-named Hero Man! This is a truly an irresistible force meeting an immovable object type situation!" the announcer directed the audience's stares to the southern part of the arena where Hero Man threw a rapid flurry of blows that thundered out with booming shockwaves upon colliding with Gyori's obsidian Stone Skin to no effect.
"What did you do just now?" Hero Man inquired, staring at his fist while looking baffled. This was the first time that he had met a force that his fists couldn't budge from place or shatter when needed. "Your skin changed color."
Gyori opened his right palm and pressed his left fist to his open hand while taking a stout and balanced stance reminiscing those of ninja monks from the Earth Temple. "Your strength and toughness felt like they'd surpass mine when we first collided. That's impressive since I am a ninja who spent most of his life honing his taijutsu skills. It is entirely possible that you could meet any shinobi on an even battlefield. But what sets us ninja apart from superheroes is our ability to employ ninjutsu. Earth Style: Stone Skin hardens my body exponentially, responding to the amount of chakra channeled for the technique. This is the great equalizer that makes me invulnerable to the likes of you."
"Sorry, pal, I've never met an obstacle that I couldn't move. Moving and lifting big things is the essence of what makes a hero!" Hero Man struck a flashy pose with his hands pressed to his hips as he beamed an ivory smile to the stands where the audience marveled at his splendor while Guard Woman smacked her forehead and shook her head behind her colleague.
"How can you sound this inspiring and certain and be this wrong?" Guard Woman sighed. Despite their menial bickering from time to time, she now needed to rely on Hero Man to keep her in the competition against this Iwagakure rogue ninja seeking to eliminate her.
Hero Man vanished, disappearing into the sky and, seemingly, out of mind. In a blink, a sonic boom shockwave shook the entire arena. The quake rattled everyone's sense of balance, but it was one of many like it to come before and after. The warriors braced themselves and kept on brawling. Gyori pressed his knuckles to his sides and tempered his body. His opponent had vanished from sight and begun a ceaseless barrage of aerial battery and flying tackles, yet all of his blitzing attacks merely caused ripples to Gyori's impenetrable Stone Skin without harming what was inside. Granted, what was inside was almost as tough as the shell protecting it already.
"Stop pummeling him!" Guard Woman called out to her fellow hero. "Just throw him out of the arena!"
Hero Man plunged with a low blow, looking to scoop Gyori's feet and trip him up to make him easier to throw out. Unfortunately, he only swept through thin air as Gyori rolled himself into a human cannonball and shot into the air with an aerial evasive roll. By the time Hero Man turned to confront his opponent, a devastating kick slammed into Hero Man's jaw and rattled him into a stagger. With Hero Man's guard down, Gyori dug his fist into his opponent's ribs, then thrust his foot to Hero Man's shins. Despite the valiant effort, the irresistible hero didn't fold up and trip over himself. Emanating with an aura of chakra bursting from his obsidian skin, Gyori whipped his leg into the side of Hero Man's head. Not even a crushing kick to the temple felled the adamant hero.
Gyori vanished, matching Hero Man's speed as he delivered light-ray kicks from all sides with matching intensity to the first rocker. He tried to find Hero Man's weak spot where his body wouldn't have been as shot-proof, but nothing seemed to work. The overwhelmed superhero shook, rattled, and flinched, he rode the airwave that sent him flying back but he landed straight on both feet and dragged across the arena, stopping with his heels teetering over the edge.
"You'd be smart to let me eliminate this woman. She has broken her limits already and is in burnout mode now. Her fight is over. No need to follow her out. I'm sure you superheroes have a goal to accomplish here in Agbarah like everyone else," Gyori adopted a spiritual pose of prayer while letting his obsidian skin retract to preserve chakra.
"Leaving a damsel in distress doesn't sound very heroic to me," Hero Man dragged the back of his fist across his chiseled jaw to wipe the slobber and snot off of his face and offered the audience a lightly bruised reassuring smile. "Besides, no one has ever accused Hero Man of being smart!"
"A damsel…?" Guard Woman staggered to a standing position and put up her dukes with hefty panting. "You're going to get it now…"
"I came here for an easy elimination. It seems like I'll have to work for it, but I'll get two in return. You should blame yourself for this, you're all tapped out yet you insist on dragging your friend and one of your top warriors away with you," Gyori gave Guard Woman a stern stare of greyed-out eyes. Being from Earth Country, Guard Woman knew these eyes all too well as they were common amongst workers that have spent most of their lives breaking their backs in the mines underground. Eventually, these eyes lost color and most of their sharpness, one was lucky to see anything at all after such a condition affected them.
"Do not listen to him, Guard Woman!" Hero Man clenched his fists and blew out his chest. "He is just a foul and deceitful villain, trying to get inside of your head! Words often make me confused too, it's important to see things clearly in trying times like these!"
"What is he even talking about?" Gyori turned back to Hero Man. Even his greyed-out and dulled stare betrayed the confusion he felt well enough. What seemed even odder was that the audience appeared to eat this routine up and cheer for the beefy man despite his inspiring words meaning absolutely nothing given the context.
"What a curious team-up!" the announcer pumped his fist. "Hero Man and Guard Woman come from very different places, countries that have lately been feuding with each other, but these two managed to come and work together to rescue more people in trouble! This team-up proves that Earth Country and Lightning Country can work together!"
"What are you on about!?" Gyori roared from the bottom of his lungs, breaking his monk-like stance and twisting his expression with rancor. "Lightning and Earth Country can work together!? You cretins, Kumogakure invaded Iwagakure and robbed it of its autonomy, forced its ninja to abandon their allegiance and work for the enemy! Now you say that somehow I'm supposed to just shrug it off, force an ignorant smirk on my face, shake hands and say "Water under the bridge"!? Yeah, I'll work with Lightning Country, when Kumogakure ninja leave Earth Country, apologize and compensate for the havoc they've wrought in Earth Country!"
Overcome by his ire, Gyori weaved a hand seal and encased his body in a white glow that soon cooled off into an obsidian void while the rogue Iwagakure ninja dashed toward Hero Man. Gyori's horizontal push kick made Hero Man's eyes white out and forced air to heave from his lungs as Hero Man took off the ground and threatened to crash into the stands. Hero Man tensed up his body and took off into the air by thrusting his feet down and forming a sonic book underneath his feet that propelled him into the air instead of letting him crash out of bounds.
Gyori turned around with unrelenting fury seeping out from his pores, thrusting another destructive push kick straight into Guard Woman's chest while the heroine attempted to sneak up on him and attack from behind while the ninja attacked Hero Man. With a painful cry, the woman rolled back throughout the arena and ended up cradled and battered in a pool of her own tattered uniform and blood, covered with bruises and looking unconscious.
"Oh, no! Guard Woman looks absolutely out of it after that thunderous kick! Unless she comes back to her senses soon, just about anyone can tip her over the edge and eliminate her in this state!" the announcer yelled out with a hyped tone that was rising in volume. The audience picked up on his emotions and joined him in creating a booming wave of excitement for the developing events.
Gyori rushed to punt the heroine out of bounds, as was his original intention, but Hero Man swept up from the skies and collided with him midway in a shoving power struggle. The audience stood up and leaned closer to the action, unable to stay in their seats as thunderbolts began sizzling from the epicenter of the collision as booming bubbles of concussive force expanded from them that ground tiles and dirt to mere pebbles but the two kept on shoving. Then… Both of them just staggered and flopped on their faces on the other side.
The audience's roars quieted down. The spectators began turning to each other for support or clarity, wondering if anyone understood what was going on in the arena and why these two powerhouses just appeared to pop right behind each other's backs and trip over their own incredible power only to lose balance and fall flat on their faces. Hero Man and Gyori both laid on the ground for a second, simmering in their loss for words and confusion about how they should've felt. Both warriors stood up and turned to each other, blinking and wondering what had happened. One second, they were just trying to force each other away, the next, they seemingly just… Walked through one another.
"Dear connoisseurs of martial arts, only in this spectacular extravaganza of violence can you witness such incredible meetings that'd never occur under different circumstances! It seems like fortune couldn't permit either of these two men to move from their positions, so the very laws of physics caved in and forced them apart by having them both shove each other aside unimpeded! It seems like resolving their clash at full force is just impossible under the very laws of nature!" the announcer reignited passion and life into the audience.
"Do you understand what happened?" Hero Man nuzzled his aching neck after the mean fall he caused on himself.
"More or less, I have a theory, yes…" Gyori sighed, having vanquished his boiling ire from before. "When I put all my effort into it, it is impossible to move me with my Stone Skin active. If you haven't been full of yourself with your statement that you can lift and move anything with your might, that means that we've entered a deadlock. Essentially, both of us have become immovable at that one point in time and a collision of such forces is impossible under the laws of nature that govern all things. If neither of the two opposing forces can be moved an inch, they'll just move through. Our struggle broke the reality we inhabit and forced it to reset, in a way."
"You lost me at "theory", honestly. Either way, I will not let you eliminate Guard Woman!" Hero Man made his stout declaration and flexed his muscles so hard that they curved the fabric of space-time and elevated him into a humming hover above the ground. In a blink, encased in a flash of light, Hero Man took off toward Gyori. This time, the rogue Iwagakure ninja leaned to the side, dodging the blow, and just wrapped his arms around Hero Man's back, squeezing him in a bearhug with the most strength he could muster.
"This is… Nothing! This is… Nothing!" Hero Man wheezed out through pain and tear but Gyori didn't give his opponent the chance to prove it, he flung Hero Man into the air and then round-housed him on the way down before working through hand seals. "Steel Style: Shuto-Uchi!" Gyori yelled out, chopping his hand in a downward swing. The crack split the ground open and forced a steel edge of an unrefined sword to burst out through the crack that then repeated Gyori's motion and slammed to the back of Hero's Man's head, flattening him into the ground.
"They call me "rogue ninja", although I have never turned my back on my country. When Kumogakure took over, I left and took sanctuary inside the Earth Temple and trained with its monks. I never served the occupant, I never surrendered. The Will of Stone is still alive in me, and yet I am the rogue?" Gyori once again took a prayer-like pose to compose himself. Looking at the swollen and bulked-up superhero from Lightning Country made Gyori treat Hero Man as a scapegoat for all of Kumogakure's abominable deeds in Iwagakure, yet deep down Gyori understood this was wrong.
Feeling the vibrations of stressed tiles and shifting dirt underneath them, Gyori swung his foot and slammed it down while clapping his hands together. "Earth Style: Ground Pillar!" he chanted out as a cylindrical pillar of soil encased in Earth Release chakra slammed into the bottom of Hero Man's chin and forced him to stand on shaky feet with rolling and unsteady eyes. Still encased in his Iron Skin, Gyori rushed to the hero with a crash to his jaw, and elbow to the core of his ribcage, and then a chop to split his helm. Seeing Hero Man absolutely battered and unresponsive, even if, somehow, he still stood on feathery feet, Gyori thrust a low punch to the hero's gut and shot him out of bounds.
"Earth Style: Subterranean Voyage!" Gyori made his hand seals and liquified the surrounding ground around him as he swam toward the unconscious Guard Woman. The scorned shinobi burst out from underground with an uppercut that flung the limp and unresponsive heroine swinging vertically out of bounds in a rough landing.
"Hero Man and Guard Woman have been eliminated! The remaining number of competitors fighting in the arena is now 159!" the announcer raised his hand, gesturing at the staff rushing to remove the fallen heroes and haul them off to where they could get patched up and the injuries requiring immediate attention could've been mended.
"Death! Death to all who seek to stand in Fennec's way!" one of Fennec's hired swords fended off many sword fighters with a dance as wild as it was deadly. Equipped with frame devices on all of his limbs that had multiple curved blades attached to them and wielding a sword in each hand, it seemed like when this deadly mercenary moved, there were no openings to attack him from. Everything around his vicinity was either the tip of a blade or the edge of one.
Voiceless, a towering and masculine shape approached from behind. The samurai and ninja seeking the elimination of the armored warrior turned around and fled, leaving Fennec's dog to deal with his own additional problem. Behind the short yet athletic man with steel and brass armor rings and tattered cloth scarf and belt stood a tall and haunting man in a dull jumpsuit. When the rough, unshaven mercenary of unkempt desert hair realized someone had been blocking out the sun and turned to confront the sneaky assailant, his eyes widened and he rolled for distance.
The towering man wore the skinned face of another man. The flaying was clean, there were no tears to the rip and the face truly hung like a genuine mask to disguise the identity of the burly killer. His victim wasn't someone in this tournament. The rotten discoloration on the mask and the dried blood suggested that he flayed the mask long before the start of the tournament, though not long enough ago for the mask to completely fall apart. Without saying a word, the juggernaut pointed to the Fennec's merc with the index finger of his leather gloves.
"The serial killers are as haunting as ever! Here literally, as this killer is known as the Haunt in the Land of Water!" the announcer pointed to the sluggish yet silent and terrifying man. "He usually butchers his victims with a sword or a knife, yet he appears to be unarmed! Who knows, maybe the reason he confronted the fearsome mercenary Fazif, the so-called Scarecrow of Swords, is because he is clad in swords head-to-toe and can afford to spare one for the serial killer?"
"You want a sword, mute?" Fazif smiled with tired and baggy eyes and straightened his back out while putting up his hand and pointing a rolling blade's tip right at the killer to hold him at bay until Fazif attacked. "I'll give you all the swords you can handle, and more…" the Scarecrow of Swords claimed while circling around the killer.
"You should have attacked either one of the others, the ones wielding conventional weapons!" Fazif vaulted in a horizontal glide, swinging his body like a living shuriken while unraveling all the mechanical blade frames to position his swords in perilous angles for such an attack. "My swords aren't meant to be used like normal blades, they are a package deal with the gear I use. They have no hilts or anything to hold them by!"
The Haunt staggered back as a net of shallow, bloody cuts covered his body. His bodysuit tore open and his flesh rend and splattered with meek splashes of red where Fazif had cut him, but this only appeared to discomfort the giant killer. Lightning-fast, his arm shot out and grabbed Fazif's throat, lifting the Fennec's favored merc into the air and then grabbing one of his forearm blades with his hand.
"Y-You fool… Didn't you… Hear what I… Said?" Fazif wheezed while thrashing in the grip of the powerhouse serial killer, to no avail. An ear-raking snap made Fazif's look blank out in disbelief. The Haunt had broken off one of his swords and just grabbed it by the other end in the crudest manner imaginable. Severe damage to the hand wielding the uncomfortable, hilt-less blade didn't seem to bother the killer one bit.
In a blink, Fazif became like a defensive hedgehog, turning in place both vertically and horizontally while throwing wild swings with the many blades around his whole body. This caused grievous damage to the Haunt's mask and made the giant stumble back, squeezing his little chipped-off toy blade even tighter and splattering blood from his own hand onto the tiles.
"I'd have let you go for saving me the hassle of having to kill all of those other swordsmen earlier. Now, I'll do Land of Water a favor and send you back to Rarorenga prison limb by limb…" the Scarecrow of Swords made a promise to the serial killer clutching one of his own chipped-off blades in his hand and seeking to extend his killing spree with it.