"Come on! They have already eliminated Rere and Fazif! They were some of our better contenders! If they eliminate the big guy too, Fennec will see Agbarah like he sees his ears!" a short woman in a black and greasy mohawk, scantily clad in subtle armor plates waved a weapon that was a hybrid stuck in between a polearm and an ax over her head. A musclebound mercenary wearing the mask of a chipped human skull leaned and covered up, like a child protecting himself from a bully by the side of the rambunctious mercenary.
"Instead of barking orders you should start scoring eliminations yourself!" an agile and armored female mercenary spared a moment to look at her noisy comrade before resuming her barrage of arrows from the top of a morbidly obese, giant that was missing the top of his head all the way to the lower jaw. That shortcoming, while looking extremely morbid, provided Fennec's chosen mercenary an excellent perch point to rain arrows down onto the arena from.
"That's why I hate mercenary squads. No subordination…" the woman in black cursed while raising her weapon to defend against a sword-wielding attacker and swat him aside with her heel. "You're not entirely wrong, though. If I eliminate people faster than they can eliminate all of you, maybe we can still salvage this qualifying round!"
Having settled on this primitive strategy as her plan, the woman in black darted forward. She rolled and slid underneath several attackers that felt threatened by her rapid dash and defended themselves. Looking for the weakest of prey, the mohawk'd woman slammed the other end of her brass polearm into the ground and vaulted herself over a crowd of brawling warriors to get a better look at the available roster.
Almost immediately a tall and slender individual of a dark complexion, wearing a red flak jacket with white numbers and the name "S-Bone" slathered on the back of the flak jacket, stood out. Primarily because of the unnatural height of this one, and also, because the mercenary noted this one belonging to the group of athletes whom the announcer introduced as having no actual combat experience during their group's introduction.
"Mine!" she cried out, thrusting the front of her polearm down and aiming for the back of the slender giant. Alarmed by the focused battle cry startling him from right behind him, S-Bone jumped up and staggered back, falling flat on his rear and mumbling out a pathetic wail. The polearm's thrust embedded into the tiles right in between his noodle-like legs that spread apart in a snap.
The mohawk'd mercenary instantly pulled the blade of her polearm out and took a defensive position, expecting her opponent to kick up or try to sweep her and a dozen other competitors with his legs that could've served as a dragon's tail based on their length and slender build. Instead, the athlete just scrambled with a miserable crawl back and began bumping into other warriors that were duking it out between themselves.
"Sorry, sorry… I'm not too used to being on the ground and this is a kind of emergency…" he began babbling and excusing himself which, in terms, only made everyone around the curious denizen of the Lightning Country only scratch their heads in amazement how such an inexperienced competitor could've survived this long when some much more skilled and famed warriors bit the dust already. "What's your problem, ma'am, you could've split my head with that sort of reckless slash!"
"What's my problem?" Fennec's mercenary shriveled her face, looking utterly baffled. "You're in a life-or-death battle here. Splitting your skull is exactly what I was aiming for! It's literally what they pay mercenaries to do."
"What is this? Kindergarten league?" the slender athlete pushed his tall body off the floor and stood back up while picking a rubber ball only barely wider than his head in radius off the ground and tossing it up and down in his hand. "This is a competition. The terms are that eliminated competitors are out. Killing is unprofessional. Nobody benefits from that. You're hurting your own sport here, ma'am."
"My sport is war. You win a game of it when you kill enough people for the enemy team to decide to pack their shit and go home," the mercenary spun around her polearm in front of her and once to each side, then flung it into the air and scooped it out, salvaging an elegant motion just so that the ball-player didn't leave her in the dust in his showcase of skill with his weapon of choice. Even if hers was a tool for murder and his was a literal ball of rubber, the mohawk'd woman would not be outdone by this absolute goon.
Just as she once again clasped the polearm in her hands, the mercenary charged forward, this time spinning it around in textbook slashes that were swift enough to turn the blade into a silver blur. Usually, it took no time at all for the silver to become blood-red on a bustling battlefield. Pain! Sudden and uncompromising. Burning and absolutely stunning sensation that spanned her entire face. The woman staggered back and felt a warm splatter of red drip from her nose. It took a while to notice it since her entire face felt like it was on fire. It took a few touches for the mercenary to reassure herself that her face wasn't flattened.
"Hmmm… Normally, slamming the ball right into my opponent's face would be a gross foul. Yet, as you've reminded me before, we're playing an entirely different game altogether here, aren't we? This isn't a dunkball court but a fighting stage," the slender and noodly-armed athlete loomed over his much shorter opponent and extended his arms that played around, passing the ball from one arm and foot to the other as if it was a part of his extremely gaunt-shaped body.
Grumbling, the mercenary charged again, putting out the blade of her polearm up-front but once again a blinding, concussive smash into her face made the mercenary fall flat on her rear and drag across a good distance on the arena ground, past multiple pairs of battling warriors who just vaulted over her or moved out of her way. As the mohawk'd mercenary picked herself up and peeled her busted and bleeding face off the ground with watering eyes that didn't let the eyesight line up straight anymore, a sudden realization hit her.
"Those limbs… You're outranging a polearm with them?" she exclaimed with a tone that was a mix of shock and frustration. Faced against ninja or samurai or any other breed of warrior, even most desert bandits and raiders only used swords or axes or different close to mid-range weapons. All of them fell short of a polearm's range. And yet… This gaunt asshole outranged her with nothing but his arm and a rubber ball, thrusting it over her polearm all the way at blinding speed.
"Holy shit, you really weren't kidding about that violence stuff. You're willing to take all that and come back, aren't you? If one of us did this to a player, they'd have to sit out a game and that week's training on top. You're something else…" the dunkballer rolled the rubber ball around, passing it in between his hands and rolling it over his shoulders, slamming it onto his feet and then scooping it off with the free boot. Never once losing contact of the ball with his body. "To answer your question, yes. Dunkballers that are serious about the game go through every limb lengthening practice in the book to gain an advantage over the other players. Sports may not be as edgy as your war stuff, but they can get even more competitive sometimes."
"More competitive, you say?" the female mercenary cringed and dashed at the dunkballer. In a single move, she thrust the whole of her polearm to its other end and pressed her hand to the brass tip, maximizing the reach of her weapon to around four meters when the approximate length of the dunkballers limbs was barely approaching three. The eyes of the S-Bone whited out and blood splashed from his mouth, having just outranged his foe twice in a row, he didn't expect such an improvisational method of attack.
The mercenary, meanwhile, having found her opening, slipped the polearm back to a proper grip and began styling on the man. Twirling it about and slashing him or bashing him with the other end all over. The announcer was an imbecile for letting them know these fools had no combat experience. Massacring the gaunt dolt like that felt like bullying in the most pathetic kind of way. Even the rambunctious mercenary was beginning to almost feel bad about it. Almost.
Everything went black, then a flashing star of red light gleamed in the middle, followed by an entire constellation of red pain spots to follow. When the vision came back, the mercenary found herself lying on her back—struggling through the numbness in her entire body. The slam of the ball must've been so intense that it nearly sprained her neck by stretching it out too much. Despite the blurry vision and a severe case of teary, bloodshot eyes, the sprawled warrior woman gnashed her teeth with a slurred, husky grumble.
"How did you survive? You didn't even try defending yourself, my blade should've gone through the heart…" it was only when she finished that sentence that she noticed the tall and slender baller standing in a standard kicking position with the rubber ball spinning on his tensed foot after S-Bone used the leg to shove the ball into the mercenary's face. Only when the tripling vision aligned could the fallen mercenary notice the fact that the rubber ball was flatter and had a noticeable gash in the middle. "You put the ball in the way of the thrust to the heart…" she answered her own question.
"Together with the ball and the flak jacket, your weapon only pierced a bit of the skin and got stuck somewhere in the ribcage. Still hurt like hell though… I'd rather sit the rest of the game out but this doesn't seem to be the timeout kind of game," S-Bone grumbled, caressing his chest where the blade had penetrated the flak jacket and left a shallow gash in his chest. "Your bummer was that you didn't know the rules of dunkball. Dunkball is played by two teams of five players. There are plenty of rules that protect the players, but the gist of the game is about putting the ball through the horizontal hoop at the peak of the mound's pillar. The major problem is–the ball must be always contacting a player, or else the other team gets the ball. That's why long limbs, arms, capable of passing the ball around between players, and legs, capable of taking the player as far as possible and assisting them in leaping a sky-high Land of Lightning mountain, are necessary for success. Also, the only way to put the ball through the hoop is to dunk it, so dunkballers shove it hard and incredibly fast, as you've found out already. That's why they build the hoops out of solid stone and reinforce it with titanium plates so that they hopefully last an entire game."
The dunkballer leaned down, spreading his feet apart as he passed the rubber ball onto the dominant hand. The mercenary blinked a couple of times in awe as the ball seemed to glow with pristine golden light and emit rays of sunshine from all directions. Almost as if the dunkballer had encased it in a unique form of Lightning Release chakra coating and supercharged it with raw chakra to where it became a compact star of energy within the athlete's hands. The lengthy and thin legs coiled and tossed S-Bone into the air, swooping long past the Cursed Warriors and the Sky Warriors and any other aerial breed of fighter. The pro athlete flipped and vaulted, passing the golden ball between hands but never losing contact.
The skies became dark and shrouded in clouds, which was utterly chaotic to the scorching deserts of the Wind Country. Jolts of lemon-colored lightning began cracking down from the intense build-up of energy as the dunkballer styled in mid-air, captivating the attention of the entire stage and forcing the Sky Warriors to perch or land lest they risked being flung aside by the chaotic forces at work, being conjured for the ultimate dunk. Pebbles began quaking at the battle-tested arena, and the rampant chakra that provided the rubber ball its golden gleam became a shining singularity of light that attracted debris as pebbles that rose from the ground turned to stones and then boulders. The shining star of the glowing rubber ball became irrelevant as a radiant sphere of light flickered around the body of the dunkballer, giving him a majestic appearance that contrasted with his surroundings.
The energy radiating off of S-Bone released surges that turned everything into contrasting shades as if reversing all color by a chaotic filter affecting all of reality. The warriors on the ground all stopped fighting and turned their attention to the majestic dunking action that was being alerted to by the quaking land. The blackened skies twisted around the all-consuming star of radiance and vivid thunderbolts roared all around the land as the dunking excellence dawned in between the dunkballer's hands.
The golden aura became a flashing, blazing nova of energy. Like a divine avian, S-Bone hatched from the star of brilliance and began rolling, vaulting, and diving, enveloped in an aura that resembled crimson, raging fire. A testament to the absolute and unrelenting force of concentrated dunking power.
"Golden Dunk!" S-Bone chanted out as a chorus of mysterious, higher voices bolstered the volume of the proclamation of his exalted technique worth a point in the game of dunkball.
"Run!" an audience member wailed.
"This will be the end of all of us!" a woman screamed out, smacking her jaws and withdrawing within the stacks of her thick hair for protection against the incoming apocalypse.
"Don't worry, while indeed professional dunkballers pack enough raw force in their legs to propel them outside of our galaxy and their supreme dunking power propels our sportsmanship as a species to the realm of the divine, their years of training and dedication at mastering the ball allows them to channel that unlimited raw chaotic force into just dunking the ball through the hoop! You might feel a light tremble and cover your ears but you should keep your eyes open for the Golden Dunk is quite a spectacular light show!" the announcer leaned in closer in his stand, having traveled to the Land of Lightning and spectated more than one game of dunkball and seen all the different dunking techniques from various dunkball superstars of the Lightning Country.
An azure gust blew from S-Bone's left, slamming into the dunkballer's side and halting all of his unlimited potential for maximum dunkage and leaving the athlete suspended in mid-air. The fallen mercenary blinked a few times, wondering if she maybe had died and entered the afterlife, which is why all of time seemed to have stopped for her. The gentle breeze of azure light blew S-Bone aside like a man of straw and smacked him into the protective boundaries outside of the arena's bounds. It took no time for the warriors to return to their heated competition once the threat of mass destruction of the Golden Dunk had been dealt with.
With a twitching lower jaw and a downward turn to her lower lip, the mohawk'd mercenary turned to the side to the source of the azure wind and saw a man dressed up in a full set of kendogu equipment and wielding a shinai. The warrior carried himself around clad in a thick, violet padded robe, face mask, and shoulder protectors signature to those practicing kendo, padded hand and forearm protectors, breastplate, and faulds. The "men" style helmet and its protective bars were so thick that the man's entire face was obstructed, though his shiny blue eyes pierced through as if completely unbothered by the shadow. The kendoka's eyes were clear, as textured and radiant as gemstones, though they were the only thing seen on the kendoka's face.
"Men-Uchi!" the kendoka exclaimed with the croaking and strict tone of an aged gentleman. Once his strike motion has concluded, the kendoka bowed to the open space where he had flung his opponent out of bounds and placed the shinai over on his shoulder pads. "Man… You just wouldn't stop talking," the kendoka exclaimed before patting his thigh guards and nonchalantly walking away from the scene he had just stolen.
"Oh! What an unexpected development! The representative of martial artists from around the world that seek to preserve the Sun Disc and its sanctuary of martial arts ways, practicing the art of kendo, Mentare Kotedo, has eliminated S-Bone, the dunkballer representing the pro-athletes with a single stroke!" the announcer explained what had just happened to the anxious and unruly audience of spectators. "It is said that a kendo expert practices all of their techniques, even the most basic sword forms, at least 108000 times a day each! After a lifetime of grueling practice, even a simple Men-Uchi swing is perfected into a flawless art form. Nothing to be added, nothing to be taken away! Not even the tumultuous force of the Golden Dunk can compare, it seems!"
The obese giant lacking its upper jaw stomped its feet closer to the numb mercenary and leaned down, bringing the armored archer lower to her comrade's level. The archer grabbed hold of the fallen mercenary's hand and pulled her up to watch her until her comrade could recover.
"Unbelievable. Even some poser sportsman almost eliminated me, and then that kendo guy just swatted him aside without even making contact. Just the airwave from his swing…" the humbled mercenary muttered in disbelief. The semi-headless giant scooped up her polearm and began scratching his rear with it, accidentally breaking it, but it wasn't like its owner was in any condition to wield it now.
"That's why you should stick with the squad, Kanoka," the archer spared a glance at her numb comrade. "Don't forget what's at stake here. If Fennec wins this land without needing to go to war with Sunagakure and Agbarah at the same time, we'll have our homeland and won't need to fight for money anymore. For once in our lives, we're fighting for something bigger than ourselves, and I won't let anyone's vanity ruin this for all of us."
"Don't underestimate me," Kanoka the mercenary sat up with a head that still felt and looked woozy. "I may not be able to swing my weapon around anymore, but my kick can still punt your little friend here like a ball of rags!"
The semi-headless giant darted across the arena like a playful child while the archer seated atop its missing upper jaw flung arrows in all directions. Some arrows had sizzling explosive tags attached to them, others had different seals carrying entire ninjutsu techniques sealed within the tags. Together the Fennec's forces were still very much in the game, despite suffering some noticeable losses in some of their bigger hitters early on.