Priskom vanished from his location, leaving behind an afterimage in which a crawling superhero with a black bodysuit and glowing neon fuchsia patterns dived with an aerial kick. Immediately the hero began looking around to locate the leader of the Chaos Factor. Still, a wind-up steel fist attached to sturdy metallic coil springs smacked into his back, swatting the superhero aside.
The leader of the Chaos Factor took this second of solace from the irritating superhero to look around and scope for how well his team was doing. He didn't like the cracks and arrows embedded into Mana's tall frame. Her size was just as much of a hindrance as it was an advantage, as despite packing a wallop and warranting considerable stage presence, she was also a cumbersome and attractive target. Maybe it was for that reason that a superhero clad in a full black, silver, and green bodysuit and breathing gas that hardened into dry yet sturdy goop on contact with air found her as a viable attack target.
Despite the handle that Mana had gotten of her new body, its massive frame still left her too cumbersome to nail the slippery and agile superhero who appeared highly skilled in his one trick, using its solidifying mucous gas to provide himself with the surface to slide on, a means of entrapment, a membrane to propel himself off of and even as a shield to absorb blows. Judging from the thunderous cracks of his blows, Mana's statuesque body felt the weight behind the hits the superhero was dishing out too whenever she exposed an opening to exploit.
The lean superhero stopped pummeling Mana's new colossal frame for a while to stare at his fists as if feeling the twinges in his wrists. Just when Mana galloped clean through the wall of mucous, the superhero was no longer where she had last registered him. Even if he had a winning strategy, the toughness of Mana's body must've made the superhero feel like continuing the bout wasn't worth the effort, as eliminating one giant statue-person didn't warrant shattering one's knuckles over.
"What the heck is going on?" Vatee let out a boisterous telepathic signal that reached the rest of the Statumen. Priskom evaded a couple of ambitious assaults from surrounding warriors to gain a better perch point and to scope the situation. The serpentine member of the Chaos Factor found herself tangled in wire. Priskom bent his head to the side in confusion after witnessing a combination of freak accidents hitting the tangled member of the Chaos Factor with a chip off of a devastated rocky ridge flying off and smashing right on top of her and a buzzing half of a shattered sword bouncing off of her marble-like scales.
Just who or what was her opponent and how were they doing that?
Before Priskom could receive his answer, he witnessed a plain samurai with messy black hair and a stubby goatee who was previously duking out with the Cursed Warriors and the Exterminators having found his way to the head-shaped Galdva of the Chaos Factor. The samurai wielded a curious blade of mustard color with jagged edges that were black and of coal-like texture. Whatever its chemical composition was, the crooked teeth of the sword ignited easily and whether it be something that the samurai emitted or the very alloy they forged his blade from, this ignition caused devastating explosions with each slash. A hazardous fighting style such as this posed a danger even to a Statuman capable of further bolstering their toughness with spiritual chakra augmentation.
A man dressed in a black leathery overcoat that couldn't have fitted the climate of a scorching desert any less and covering his face in a cartoonish cloth mask with a top of a fedora that neatly hung over his head found his way to Poru, the Tiki totem-looking member of the Chaos Factor. The serial killer in an overcoat with a cartoonish mask charged Poru with a swipe of his hand. Instead of bothering to dodge, Poru took it and threw a hefty cross of a massive Tiki statue fist back. Sparking graze followed by a mean and screechy noise of steel dragging across the stone that was tempered by spiritual chakra distracted the nearby warriors. The thunderous crack of Poru's fist smashing right into the serial killer's face and sending him flying made them wince.
The serial killer's fedora hurled off to the side and became lost in the heat of battle. The fallen serial killer returned to his feet supernaturally, almost as if elevated by a telekinetic force, while metallic and segmented gauntlet fingers clacked against one another.
A bulky ball with an armored exterior and machine-like core thwacked into Priskom's side, bouncing off of him. With a confused stare, Priskom turned to the arena to notice any eyes that were directly peering at him and challenging him to a fight. Instead, his body froze in place as sixteen locks popped out of the mechanical sockets of the highly technical ball and emitted jolts of electricity vibrant enough to engulf his body and send him flopping and rolling down his perch point.
A young boy in a white uniform and khaki shorts rushed closer to the fallen Statuman and scooped his overpriced fancy ball off the ground in a net. The boy with shoulder-long brown hair and violet eyes looked around to find the next target to lob his hi-tech taser ball at. When he wound his net back to lob the ball at the next thing his eyes fixed upon, he found his net stuck in place.
"What kind of sport has people throwing these things around?" Priskom tilted his head off the floor while his wind-up hand sprung back into the shoulder, pulling the net alongside it and throwing the poor athlete off-balance. A cracking thud from the left wind-up fist sent the boy skidding across the ground without his precious net.
"Taser Ball!" the boy wiped the dust and grazing off his chin and nuzzled his aching elbows from the asphalt burns of grazing across the tiles from an intense hit. "You must use the net to catch the ball or else you'll get tased!"
"What a ridiculous game. And they have children play it?" Priskom examined the, admittedly, impressively put-together steel net that'd have served as a sophisticated and pristine staff for a warrior. Instead, it found itself donning a loop at the upper end, where a heavily insulated rubber net found its place.
"I'm not a child!" the boy stood up in defiance. "Give my net back!"
"Hmm… Admittedly, all that shocking you must've endured preparing for this nonsensical sport must've built up your body to take some punishment. Even if I held most of my strength back to not murder some random boy who's just playing some sports games in his spare time, you took a hit that'd have shattered every vertebra and left your spinal cord in shambles," Priskom muttered. "You can have your net back, boy,"
While the Taser Ball ace seemed over the moon about this proclamation, what he didn't expect was for Priskom to shoot his net-holding hand into the air and swing it with however much force his wind-up, spring-like arms let him put into it. The poor boy's eyes went dull, and he became pale in terror when his only tool of restraining the jolt of his signature ball went over the clouds and threatened to land on another continent.
"No way!" the taserballer clamored while rushing past Priskom and chasing clouds in an incredibly unlikely attempt to get his net back. The young man scooped the tasing ball off the ground, almost immediately crying out in pain as the unrestrained shock coursed through his body and shot off with rabid lightning jolts in all directions.
"Now, where was I?" Priskom wondered, shooting off his hands with the spring-like mechanisms to drag himself over the mountainous ridge where he could observe the rest of his teammates and assist one of them if needed. That was when his eyes fixed on Drasko and the opponent he chose. Priskom's painted, oversized, human-like eyes tightened with focus, defying the method of their making through the abominable way the Conductor has breathed life into Priskom's body.
"Ashoka!" Drasko released haunting grunge of rubbing metallic claws and shifting gearwork that somehow resembled human speech. It was not speech per se, though one could decipher a method to the grungy madness if one did their best and possessed the auditory perception necessary.
A bare-chested, sculpted juggernaut of physicality with tanned skin and four times the size of an ordinary man with tall and spiky pink hair with occasional neon-blue strands styled after a blazing flame turned around. The exalted conqueror whom Drasko had challenged held a building-sized column he held over his shoulder like a mace. Despite being the signature weapon of choice to where it granted him his nickname of Ashoka the Obelisk, the column, shaped like a king chess piece, was polished and pristine clean to where one wouldn't have been blamed for making the mistake of presuming this was the first time this peculiar, monolithic weapon was being swung around.
"Who addresses Ashoka the Obelisk, the Monolith of the West?" Ashoka's eyes wandered the rich and boisterous arena of fine challengers to spoil his undefeated streak before his eyes fixed on a spiky collection of separate, hovering armor pieces that appeared to have been suspended by a supernatural, spiritual flame in mid-air with just bloodthirsty red eyes beaming as a beacon through the slit of the samurai-style metal helm. "My challenger appears to be gifted with so much confidence he stripped his armor to face me. That is interesting, though if you are so brave, why hide?"
"Ashoka!" Drasko clamored with the shriek of metallic teeth rubbing against each other as the jagged gauntlet equipped with wrist blades thrust for the conqueror's jugular. The mighty conqueror didn't see it necessary to swing his signature column, instead, he deflected the thrust with just his oversized forearms that eclipsed even his boulder-sized biceps in thickness and size.
"My, my… I've become so famous even a suit of armor can speak my name," Ashoka joked while kicking the central chest plate of Drasko's unique body aside with a push kick and taking a stand in direct opposition to the bloodthirsty Statuman.
"This is amazing, Ashoka. I could have never dreamed that I could settle things with you here!" Drasko released an awful metallic hiss and lunged toward the towering juggernaut. The wisp of soul flame carrying and holding the metal armor together lit up as bright as it ever has, thrusting the right gauntlet into the floor and igniting a flock of sparks where the wrist blades cut into the floor. Drasko let out a warrior's howl, erupting his gauntlet from the ground to impale Ashoka below his ribcage.
A shrill metallic blare signaled the shattering of Drasko's blade upon touching Ashoka's muscle and grazing through the skin, only to meet an immovable mound of muscle underneath. In a single step, Ashoka slammed the obelisk pillar down onto the piece of moving armor. A blink later, the mighty conqueror of the western lands was calmly waking away behind his possessed metallic foe. Emitting a clamorous clang, Drasko turned around and raised his unbroken left gauntlet.
"Running again, Ashoka!?" Drasko asked before a deafening toll of a gong threatened to drive the entire arena deaf with a sonic shockwave that rippled with a visible reverb to it. The armor pieces comprising Drasko's body scattered apart all over the ring while Ashoka tilted the obelisk pillar he had swung faster than the eye of most warriors could track it over his shoulder.
"Only one man was ever delusional enough to think that Ashoka the Obelisk would run from any man… Drasko, isn't it?" Ashoka turned around, looking at the chest plate that had suffered the most damage and had unraveled like a crushed soda can from the merciless impact of the mighty conqueror. "So, you've thrown your humanity away to become… This? I must admit, the only quality of yours that never ceases to impress me is your ability to disappoint when one thinks you cannot disappoint any further and sink any lower."
"Don't you dare lecture me, coward!" a shallow rasp echoed through the arena when an azure soul flame caught the scattered gauntlet and raced it across dozens of colliding warriors to slash Ashoka's cheek with a skin-deep cut in passing. "We both know you're terrified of facing me on the battlefield! That's why you rushed to execute the settlement's elder and claim Karingit. Now you try to evade me again!"
The separate armor pieces began a wild dance around the strapping conqueror, slashing and biting at him from all directions with movements that only a poltergeist detached from a singular body could achieve by hurling armor pieces at one's opponent. The violet and bronze robe hanging over Ashoka's trousers received a couple of droplets of blood sprinkling from shallow cuts all over the body of the displeased conqueror, who stood in place with his mighty pillar on his shoulders with a sullen look on his perturbed face.
"Don't talk in too many words, Drasko. It's very hard to understand it when you do. I could've sworn you accused me of beating your proud warrior tribe too fast just now…" Ashoka grabbed hold of the possessed helmet and pulled it in for a devastating headbutt. A thunderous crack followed a pathetic metallic clang that signified the helmet of the piece of armor that Drasko's spirit possessed, falling folded into an unrecognizable piece of scrap before Ashoka's feet.
"You must've thought yourself so lucky to have avoided me on the battlefield, though I will admit, you attacking the Karingit was a daring move!" Drasko continued his relentless assault without skipping a beat. The detached combination of separate armor pieces, each with a separate mind of its own, danced about to gouge or cut open a more grievous wound than the aggravating cuts that the Statuman had mustered until that moment.
The sinewy conqueror swung his hammering fist to deflect an incoming thrust of Drasko's gauntlet that sought to stab the conqueror's eye out. This was a trap, however, for the incoming gauntlet switched its position and turned its other end instead of the point of its wrist blades and attached to Ashoka's forearm, stretching and malforming to the point where the metal itself was about to tear from the tension of the conqueror's musculature which it could not fit. Still, the possessed gauntlet turned Ashoka's left arm to the side while the greaves attached themselves to the conqueror's calves, preventing him from moving.
The remains of mangled and bent armor rose with a vaguely humanoid shape of living flames filling what remained. It was an impressive show of spiritual chakra to fill a discarded suit of armor as opposed to embodying a statue and relying on it as a host. With a desperate battle cry, Drasko sent the shrapnel and battered armor parts rushing at the entrapped conqueror in a blizzard of steel shrapnel and a flurry of scrap blows.
By the time that Drasko was done, Ashoka had a shiner on his right eye and a trail of blood leaking from his left nostril. His lip was busted and swollen and steel shrapnel was sticking out of his exposed chest with a lot more noticeable traces of blood decorating the hanging loose robe on his waist and thighs. The flashy and spiked hair of the subjugator also hung looser, with a few strands hanging over the decorated face of the column-swinging brute.
"If you want to know the truth, I was excited to meet Drasko, the famed sadistic megalomaniac of the Karingit tribe. I never intended to harm a single warrior fighting back against me among the Karingit. None except for you, Drasko. Your tribe was full of honorable warriors, as eager to learn philosophy as they were to master another weapon. From the start, I knew they would accept my faith and join my flock. You… Butcher of thousands, if not tens of thousands. Never to be accused of an honorable act in your entire life. I always knew I'd have to smite away," Ashoka said with a firm and unshaken voice, looking right at the pair of glowing lights occupying the soul flame possessing the shattered and ruined scraps of armor that Drasko once inhabited.
"Liar!" Drasko hissed, throwing a chipped-off piece of broken wrist blade and carving at the entrapped conqueror's chest. "If you were so eager to smite me for my crimes, how come you've eluded me on the battlefield?"
"Because we both know you weren't looking for me as hard as you were looking for the women and children, the old and the sickly amongst my flock," Ashoka leaned his head down to bring it closer to his enemy's eye level. It was also a challenge for the conqueror of an adamantine body extended his neck and opened it up for attacks. With Drasko's unique ability, all the wreckage of his armor was his weapon. Every single chipped-off piece and a lump of scrap of it. "You were always more obsessed with having the highest body count than you were with conquering the strongest warrior. Just another way in which you differed from your tribe."
"Enjoy your self-righteousness for as long as you will have the chance to, Ashoka. You will curse that tempered body of yours because I'll strip every pound of flesh on it off!" Drasko clamored, smashing several devastated lumps of scrap together to form something resembling a hefty wrecking ball of steel and jagged edges that could soften the invincible body of his opponent. "What a twist of irony, you tried so hard to elude death at my hands at the Karingit settlement only to find it here, while I thought the Conductor's sick experiment to be the end of me where it has given me my chance at retribution!"
The wrecking ball hurled right at Ashoka's face, in what would prove to be the first smash out of many thousands needed to soften the flesh up for proper punishment. Yet both the entrapped conqueror and the living suit of armor became stunned with shock when a marble statue of a dolphin-horse slammed its head in opposition to the incoming lump of jagged scrap and received a fair number of threatening cracks on its forehead for the trouble.
"You dare!?" Drasko hissed, disassembling his scrap around the humanoid-shaped soul flame.
"You guys never did tell me who you were before the Conductor found you," a telepathic signal spread in Mana's voice throughout the rest of the Chaos Factor members from her new cumbersome body. "I don't think that working alongside a handful of mass murderers will sit right with me, even if it's the key to returning to my true body."
"The Five-Tails? No… It's just a statue, what is the meaning of this?" Ashoka the Obelisk wondered, having found his opening to slam the entrapped arm of his into the floor and forcefully yank the forearm out of the trap before using his freed hands to peel the gauntlets off and turn them to sheets of ruined scrap as well.