A young woman with bubblegum pink hair stopped in place in the middle of a bustling battlefield, captivated by the sight of a tall young man in a flashy shirt kicking and slamming a ball up. The orange-haired rebel performed all sorts of wacky and impressive movements, often picking fights and vaulting over opponents to keep his ball in the air. Even when he tripped up over a handful of passionate competitors he couldn't normally see, the pro athlete seemed dedicated to keeping the ball in the air even if he had to put his limb and life on the line.
"Excuse me," the woman approached the pro athlete, who found a comfortable rhythm pumping his fists into the ball like twin pistons to keep it airborne. Sometimes he put a greater amount of force into his bash just to have enough time to deal with whatever was coming at him before having to send the ball into the air again. "What are you doing right now? Why are you so obsessed with playing with this ball?"
"I'm an airballer. Playing airball is what I do best. I've got no clue about this whole battle royale stuff you guys are doing, so I'm sticking to my guns here, missy…" the spiky-haired young man pointed out with a certain roughness to his voice and tone as he visibly didn't appreciate the distraction. His voice translated that he was struggling to play an endless game of airball at the same time as he was talking to the curious ash-haired cat.
"Hmm… Your approach seems logical from first sight but… How does it translate to winning?" the young lady scratched her cheek. Out of the entire bunch of the magician group, she was someone who stood out as she wore an azure Nakotsumi Mana-style stage magician uniform and appeared to be mimicking the stage magician's general vibe and style. If it weren't for the difference in build with this copycat being taller by a comfortable margin than the stage magician being flattered through imitation as well as gentle differences in eye and hair color and facial features, a much flashier and more childish color scheme of pink and azure to her outfit, the two may have been truly tough to tell apart.
"Don't know… Don't care!" the orange-haired rebel to the societal norms of wanton violence declared through physical strain.
"You must be mocking me. There must be a secret…" the pink-haired magician lady clenched her silky-skin fists with an offended expression on her face. She slipped her hat off and sent it skidding across the arena floor. A handful of blades that lacked any leather straps or handles to be held by sprung forth from the hat like a bouquet. Each sword in the bouquet had a red gemstone attached to its balance center. "If you don't tell me, I'll make you show it to me!" she declared.
The swords all popped out of the hat, twirling in mid-air, and forming a rough star shape as the copycat magician appeared to have unnatural control over the magical swords and positioned them like a sun of steel rays in front of her. "Blade Sorcery: Morningstar!" the magician girl proclaimed, extending her hand and commanding the vertical buzzard of living sword formation to point their tips at the poor overtaxed airballer and plunge right at him.
The flashy athlete stretched his face out in terror, bending and contorting his body to avoid getting impaled but desperately trying to catch the falling ball and kick it with the tip of his foot just to get some precious airtime to it. In airball, a ball wasn't supposed to touch the ground. The team that had the ball fall on their half of the square lost a point. Since there was only one team in this game and the entire arena was the side of the square of that one team, the moment the ball bounced off the ground–the airballer felt like his game would be over and he'd be forever down one point.
Swinging around without altering their angle, the swords went back, prompting the airballer to hop through the middle loop and roll. Tripping over his own feet and desperate, he jumped up to the same formation of swords he had just avoided to get a leg-up and serve the ball with an upward double hand slam.
"Blade Sorcery: Needlesnake!" the sword-commanding young woman in a stage magician's uniform waved her open hands, flashing red sealing glyphs surrounded by a ring-shaped circuit decorated with foreign symbols all around that flew in the center of her palms and the back of her hands, almost as if permeating her whole hand. The swords shifted formation, queueing up in a serpentine coiling line with the first blade, leading the charge for the rest to follow. The airborne airballer grunted in pain as the slithering swords slashed him open and the frontal sword caught him by the collar of his flashy airball uniform shirt and kept him suspended in mid-air while the ball threatened to flop onto the floor just outside his reach.
The airballer growled, jerking his whole body forward and cutting the collar of his uniform shirt just to catch the falling ball with the toes of his kicking foot and punt it into the magician girl's face to bounce off it and stay in the air. Not only that, the diagonal shoot positioned it just perfectly above him to make it easier to keep the ball in the air for the next action. The stage magician of the magicians' group staggered back with a face that was beaming red and lightly bruised. A drool of blood-red peeked from her nostrils as the blades scurried to retreat around her.
"Blade Sorcery: Suit of Swords!" she grunted, creating a spiky island-like formation that had tips of swords pointing in all directions around her. The crimson circuits and sealing glyphs inside of the ring-shaped patterns glowed with intense light when she commanded the swords, passing on a corresponding glow to the rubies decorating each sword in the formation.
"Hmph… You're a one-trick pony, missy…" the airballer grumbled, hopping off the ground to nudge the ball up with the tips of his fingers without bothering to grace his opponent with a look. "Sorry for the gross foul, but you kind of forced it on yourself by being a real party-pooper. Plus, there's no ref to rule me back, so… Stick to your own business, or else…"
"You're the one to talk!" seething, the young woman in a magician's uniform pressed her arms to her sides and hips with an unhealthy blush to her usually pale complexion. "You're not even fighting back, just bouncing that stupid ball up and down!"
"That's 'cause that's how I make my bread, missy. Bouncing the ball in the air up and down helps me keep my little sisters fed! And then some, I guess…" the tall ruffian smirked with the left side of his face while keeping his eyes on the very literal airborne ball.
"It appears that there may not be a trick, after all. That being said, after finding out the breed of simpleton I'm dealing with, there's no way I'm letting you go! My pride as a magician's apprentice wouldn't allow it!" the pink-haired young lady boldly declared with a grumpy expression. "Blade Sorcery: Shuri-Sword!" she chanted, splitting her swords apart in a wide formation and sending them hurling and spinning horizontally in grand velocity toward the disgruntled airballer.
Each metallic buzz instilled utter panic into the hearts of anyone standing nearby. Like the wings of a rabid wasp, a primal fear instilled into the ancestors of each living man or woman, no matter the breed of warrior or clan. Only a meaty thump and sloshing splatter of blood followed. The grievously injured airballer spat out blood and flopped on his back, soiled and smeared in blood and dirt. His eyes had lost trace of consciousness for a moment, though it was possibly for the better as he couldn't see the ball smacking across the ground and rolling to the side.
The pink-haired magician stood in place, stunned by the gruesome sight for a moment. Her eyes became soaked in regret to the points of crystal teary dots forming around the lower eyelid and threatening to spill over the cheek. Something in seeing this resolve to keep doing a simple action over and over again being quashed mercilessly like this… It felt wrong.
"Blade Sorcery: Sword Nexus!" she chanted, positioning the swords vertically in a hover around it and making the formation rotate around her like planetary rings. At the same time, she dealt with the dirty feeling in her chest. The magician's apprentice in a stage magician's attire waved her hand and sent a sword to smack the ball with the blade's dull side. The ball bounced off the ground slightly, and the magician's apprentice waved her hand, sliding the lone blade underneath and smacking it from below. Using the sword as a paddle, she sent the ball flying into the air again.
What was she doing? She didn't owe this dirtbag anything? Why was she entertaining his lunacy by playing airball while he lay knocked out and unconscious, bleeding out on the stage in front of her? Why was she feeling bad for him? It wasn't her fault he took part in a battle royale of the world's strongest warrior breeds while being just some damn good limber airball player!
A massive obsidian tentacle decorated with glowing fuchsia patterns swung in from the side. It wrapped around the unconscious airballer and thrashed about wildly as if building up momentum to fling him to another continent. The stage magician gasped in terror as a colossal Cursed Warrior kraken singled out her unconscious and injured opponent for elimination. Her hand aimed without thinking.
"Blade Sorcery: Bladebreak!" she chanted out once she realized what she'd done and deliberately concluded the command. The swords around her body moved out of tight orbital formation and became a sun of swords again, buzzing vertically like separate teeth of a saw disc and slashing at the kraken's tentacle with sparking results that spilled boiling orange liquid in all directions and left the limp airballer splatting down on the side.
Why did she choose one of those Cursed Warrior monsters as her enemy!? Even her master may not have been on this creature's level, she certainly wasn't! Stupid! So stupid! She was just courting death or even worse–elimination of embarrassment for her master! What if he sent her away and refused to teach her any further? She was risking everything, her life, and her career, for this loser and his own cluelessness! A smack of her sword with the dull side sent the ball up high into the air.
She deserved everything that was coming at her!
The tentacles of the cursed kraken began slithering across the arena floor, attempting to create a smaller, self-contained battlefield where it had pinpointed its next prey. By establishing control of the arena, it would establish control over the tide of battle. Even now, the difference in battle power was immense. With the cursed squid controlling the battlefield as well, this will resemble a hunt and an execution more than a battle.
"Blade Sorcery: Shuri-Sword!" the perky stage magician extended her hand, commanding all of her swords to become slicing buzzards and hurl at the oversized foe of hers. Some blades hurled vertically, slashing at the slithering tendrils to remove them or cut them up, meanwhile the horizontal ones slashed at the body of the colossal stone squid. The black kraken emitted a haunting and reverberating moan while the swords slashed at its body with flocks of white sparks and silver flashes of light. A few of its fresher and thinner tentacles split off of its stony body in hefty chunks, throwing the colossus off its balance.
With a notable pant to her motions, the azure stage magician kicked the ball up with her foot, shooting it off into the air before staggering back. She didn't exactly have infinite stamina, and she had used her strongest sword command twice already. While it proved incredibly effective against the fit yet inexperienced a tad quirky airballer, it seemed to only aggravate the Cursed Warrior. Not to mention the fact that she wasn't really trained or used to keeping a latex ball in the air.
With a shocking and instant clasp, an insurmountable pressure locked around the magician's waist, lifting her off the ground. The stage magician tried to grunt and release some of the pent-up hurt in her chest, but the stony grip held it all locked in. Almost like someone had filled her belly with water and then pinched both ends it could come out from, letting it burn painfully in her system. The coal-like body of the colossal squid warrior felt like being stuck in between two rocks, as opposed to merely just a rock and a hard place. Not even in her prime could the pink-haired magician's apprentice use her Suit of Swords technique in time to intercept such a sneaky and fast tentacle wrap.
A dull and shrieking thud made the pink-haired magician cover her ears. It was like nails through the chalkboard, though when she looked at the upper section of the tentacle about to squeeze her innards out, it became apparent that the noise came from one of her swords stabbing into the middle of the tentacle. The noise was the cacophony of a tempered blade running through chakra-coated coal.
"H-How could this be? I… I didn't…" the magician's apprentice ground her teeth in torment. The iron-tight grip around her stopped, almost as if the kraken could issue no further commands. Much to her shock, covered in blood and with a torn shirt that no longer had a clean spot to read any of the sponsors advertising themselves on it, the fallen airballer returned to life and sprung up to the tentacle to kick the bottom of the sword he had just kicked into it. The second kick forced it all the way through the tentacle, making the coal appendage crumble into lumps and free the magician's apprentice to flop on the ground and surround herself with swords.
"You… I knew I couldn't command my swords without the use of my hands," the pink-haired magician turned to the risen airballer, who took over passing the ball into the air again to keep it there. "Why did you help me? I injured you."
"I tend to not hate the players but the game," the bloodied and grazed airballer grumbled while wiping the sticky blood off his mouth. He tore his shirt up and grabbed one sword out of thin air to cut it up into strings he could wrap around the most grievous wounds. "I don't think you're a very hate-worthy player, in any case, missy."
"Just so you know, the ball hit the ground when I knocked you down," the magician's apprentice beamed a strict glare, almost as if to stomp on the risen airballer some more for going through the trouble to put her in his debt.
"Damn… Guess we're down one point…" the athlete complained while wrapping his wounds up with a cut-up shirt and instantly soaking them in blood. Though the improvised battlefield treatment helped to halt the bleeding somewhat.
Infuriated, the kraken waved its tentacles about, slamming a larger one right at the two unexpected comrades that found themselves united against a common, insurmountable foe. The tendril of the Cursed Warrior was certainly hefty enough to squish both of them together with a good slam, though the pair dashed to the side with the athlete using his nimble and strong legs to slide while the magician's apprentice pressed two swords horizontally together to glide on them like a surfboard.
"We're? You seem to think I'm on your team or something?" the pink-haired magician lashed out, sending a storm of her swords hurtling toward the Cursed Warrior, only to bounce off its thick central body. It appeared that the thinner, fresher body parts had lesser sensitivity.
"I recognized the regret in your voice. Plus, you helped us to only be down one point, didn't you?" the athlete snickered to himself while taking a leap onto the tentacle to bounce off it in order to slam his wrists into the falling latex ball. Directed toward the Cursed Warrior, it bounced off of it, emitting a boisterous thud but leaving no mark that it dealt any damage.
"Shut up and do as you're told!" the magician's apprentice snapped back with visible offense at both the insinuation and the fact she had no means of debunking the accusation of becoming addicted to continuing the airballer's passion of passing the ball up and down. "I've noticed something interesting in this creature from when you kicked the sword into its tendril. Hit your ball with one of those "fouls" of yours in between where I stick my swords, can you do that?"
"As long as the ball stays airborne…" the injured airballer grumbled. "I'm not losing this down two points. One you can attribute to a lucky shot."
"Ugh… Blade Sorcery: Knit!" the pink-haired magician extended her hand, emitting a red glow from the markings on her white gloves. Two decorated with rubies swords stabbed in between one of the thicker tentacles. The airballer slammed both his hands into the ball to send it crashing in between the marked spot. With a thunderous crack, the tentacle collapsed despite being much thicker than either of them could scratch earlier.
"Holy smokes! I think I get the fascination you people have with this battling thing…" the airballer cheered for their impromptu team-up. "How did you do that?"
"I've noticed that the creature was incapable of controlling its limbs once you embedded my sword in between its center and the limb. My guess is that it uses some sort of mana connection between the core and the limbs, by inserting a mana-coated tool in the middle of the circuit, you break the connection," the magician girl explained before turning to scold her unlikely partner. "Please do try to keep up!" she barked out since there were more than a handful of ruby-decorated swords etched in various pieces of the Cursed Warrior.
"Alright!" kicking and slamming the ball down with hammering pounds, the airballer made a simple latex ball come in like a wrecking ball and shatter the kraken's limbs and even massive chunks of its central body with each slam. "What's a mana again?"
"Tsk…" the pink-haired magician placed her hands on her hips. "Chi, kenki, guts… Chakra? What do you pro-athletes call it, anyway?"
"No idea, missy, I just hit the ball really hard. The moment I try to do more than I'm paid for, I mess things up…" the airballer waved his hands out in front of himself, shaking off the responsibility of doing anything more than he's been doing until that point. "Crud, did we actually make that thing retreat?" the airballer gasped in amazement as the battered kraken began slithering away while spraying jets of tunneling airwaves infused with fuchsia chakra from its beak at the bottom section of the body.
"Yes, we did. Though I'm in no hurry to give chase. It won't last long in this state anyway," the magician's apprentice panted hunched over while her swords hovered in untidy formation around her. "I'd best find my master. I was wrong to split from him as it is."
"Wait, you're going off on your own?" the airballer cried out, punching with a fist pump into the air to propel the falling ball back up without looking at it. Professional airballers simply had a feeling of where the ball was at all points.
"That's right, I've discovered your secret now. The source of your obsession with playing with this ball. I've got nothing to research here anymore," the pink-haired young lady in an azure stage magician's uniform turned around and began threading toward a blinking clump of dust where she thought her master to be.
"B-But… There is no secret…" the airballer's right eye twitched with a nervous tick. "Hey, say, what's your name?"
"Bebe, Minara Bebe," the magician's apprentice turned back for a second.
"Cool! I'll let my agents know to talk to the venue guys to let you in if you ever want to see an airball game!" the battered airballer gave the pink-haired young lady that put most of the trouncing on him an enthusiastic thumb up.
Bebe clapped her eyelids a couple of times with rapid blinks, blankly staring at the airballer. "Your name?" she asked when it became apparent that he didn't understand why she held herself up and what she wanted from him by trying to peer a hole through him. "I'm not just going to watch all the airball games, just trying to catch a glimpse of a hopeless idiot like you."
"Seriously?" the airballer lowered his hands, having the ball smack right at the back of his head and nearly flop on the ground again, prompting the athlete to scramble and kick it up a few times before he got enough control back to kick it higher up again. "I'm like… A big deal in airball… Don't you know even a little?"
"No clue," the pink-haired missy shook her head with a straight face.
"It's Danro, Danro Barebare…" the crushed airballer mumbled while standing there deflated and drained of most of his blood and fighting spirit. "Gee, you're just ruthless, missy," the athlete spoke to himself while watching the magician walk off and command her swords to assist her in defending against any attempted eliminations and follow-up attacks. "That's why I don't chase girls and stick to airball."
Danro hopped up to push the ball ever so slightly higher with the tips of his fingers.