"You…" a strong telepathic signal emanated from the head of the Five-Tails statue that Mana's displaced spirit now inhabited while her actual body rested inside some test tube in the Conductor's facility. Ashoka twitched, realizing that the strange statue that had stepped in to assist him was in fact addressing him. "Tell me what you know about Drasko. You two seem to share a history together."
"You would address Ashoka the Obelisk this way?" the oversized mound of muscle flipped his column club over on his shoulder and stepped to the statue's side. The size of this man was so ludicrous that he made Mana look like his pet when the two stood side by side. "Let it be known that I am under no obligation to tell you anything. However, you have aided Ashoka and you have therefore earned the Obelisk's favor."
"I don't care about your pride, macho nonsense. Just tell me what you know about Drasko," Mana turned her snout at the spiky-haired goliath. The telepathic signal coming from her became so intense that the transmission of the telepathic waves could've been visible as a halo sparking around her head that took a hotter hue approaching, being bright red at its most boisterous and fearsome.
In a snap, Priskom landed by Drasko's side. His bouncy feet absorbed the shock of his impressive dash wholly, which resulted in the leader of the Chaos Factor landing without a thud or as much as a tap. Drasko glared at his superior, though this could've been only perceivable by observing the flame of spiritual chakra rustling as the core that kept the mangled pieces of armor and ruined scrap floating in mid-air.
"I knew it was a bad idea to trust her with the fate of our bodies," Drasko let out ear-raking metallic grunge by rubbing two jagged pieces of mangled armor together in a way that let out an intelligible sound resembling human speech if one listened what the sound suggested.
"You trust no one. You would have come here alone if the Conductor recruited nobody else," Priskom replied before turning to Mana. "Mana, listen here, you are putting the fate of all our bodies in jeopardy. I won't pretend like Drasko was or is a good man, but neither you nor the rest of us deserve to live the rest of our lives in these bodies because of the sins of a man we didn't choose for this mission."
"This bores me," Ashoka yawned. "I'll leave you strange folks to settle this by yourselves." Just as the musclebound giant turned around to walk away from the scene, a marble tail rumbled in his way and spewed pebbles and dust off of its surface in its motion. The conqueror of the western lands sighed and turned to Mana's back.
"You have quickly squandered the favor that Ashoka the Obelisk granted you," Ashoka said with a tone that was approaching the venue of being threatening.
"Mana… You're not going to be able to return to your old body by just making enemies out of everyone here, including those whose interests align with yours. Would you really let a man's enemy tell their story?" Priskom tried reasoning with Mana again, knowing full well that if the Chaos Factor was to succeed in the goal set by the Conductor, they'd need to work together.
"If the man himself won't," Mana leaned her front lower, preparing to dash in a headstrong tackle and challenge the Chaos Factor herself if needed.
"Ashoka the Obelisk does not repea…" the mound of muscle turned to Mana's rear only to receive a bucking straight in his face. The frame of the Five-Tails statue was shimmering with the gleam of spiritual chakra emanating from its core and surrounding it like a lively aura. It bolstered the kick to where even a man such as Ashoka the Obelisk staggered from the hit.
"I thought I told you I don't care about your macho pride. Whether or not you repeat yourself, whether your fragile ego is hurt or not. Tell me about Drasko," the Five-Tails statue turned sideways to hold both sides of the argument in between her. Ashoka on the right, Priskom, and Drasko on the left. This wasn't a position she preferred or was used to. Mana would've liked to be the voice of reason, the mediator in any situation, and here she was just butting into an argument to make enemies of both sides.
Moving his hand away from his face, the fearsome conqueror noticed blood streaking from his cracked forehead and spoiling his friendly muttonchops and flawless, constantly solemn, and displeased face. Growling, Ashoka flexed his muscles and stomped his left foot by adopting a widespread and balanced stance. A potent aura of energy leaked out of the scorned conqueror.
"I'll tell you everything you want to know, Mana, let's just make it through this stage first," Priskom extended his hand as a friendly gesture to get Mana to join back to his side as opposed to taking on the entire world all alone and crumbling her new body away under the insurmountable pressure.
"Don't you dare scoff and bare your teeth at me!" Drasko clamored, sending a hailstorm of metal pelting Ashoka and forcing the mighty man to brace for impact. The disassembled formation of ruined armor soared through the air, a bent out of shape and mangled greave stuck to a boot stamped down and clashed with Ashoka's pillar, sending the enraged conqueror sliding across the ground.
Drasko's spiritual flame extended with tendrils across the battlefield, scooping up fallen chunks of armor and shattered equipment of warfare and making it work for his cause. Greaves and gauntlets began pelting and battering Ashoka, prompting the towering presence to whirl his pillar out in front of him to absorb the blizzard of steel with only deceitful shots to the back reigning the indomitable conqueror in. Despite sharp and devastating jabs to the kidneys from behind, the stout Ashoka stood staunch and immovable against Drasko's peculiar assault.
Priskom pressed his bouncy arms to the side and bent his legs. A pair of metallic buckler platforms shot out from the back, slamming against the ground and shoving the entire assemblage of steel and stone gliding across the stage toward the grounded emperor of the west. Priskom wound his arms back, letting the shoulder pieces detach from his body and shift vertically in front of his opponent before his spring arms began running rampant across the area with an invisible yet crushing barrage of blows aimed at the exposed side of Ashoka.
The fearsome conqueror swung his pillar in a wide yet strong one-armed smack to swat the irritating gnat away. Priskom glided with elegance, vaulting over the pillar while his legs swung and detached from his body, swinging around with both his detached hip and boot attached by a bouncing coil that fed the swinging, saw-like motion. One of the legs wrapped around Ashoka's waist like a bola and locked him in place while the other thwacked him in the jaw and made the giant stumble to the side.
"You couldn't have picked an easier enemy to eliminate?" Priskom scolded the comrade he didn't choose for himself. A surge of spiritual chakra burst forth from the quartered suit of armor and stone while the wind-up warrior threw his entire body at Ashoka's core in a reckless tackling charge. Ashoka put his arm out in front of him and blocked the rush, wincing in pain as his aching ribs acted up.
Ashoka's gargantuan musclebound hand reached out and grabbed a chunk of Priskom's helm, pulling the leader of the Chaos Factor in for a thunderous headbutt that emitted a golden halo shockwave from the pressure of the slam. Shoving Priskom aside, Ashoka drove his elbow into the Statuman's chin before roaring and taking a bountiful leap into the air, bringing his hefty pillar down with a double-arm frontal slam that scattered Drasko's assemblage of metal and dispersed the spiritual flame to insignificant specks of blue flame.
Immediately after his boots touched the ground, Ashoka decked Priskom's back before swinging his pillar upward with a notable fiery aura around it that sent Priskom into the air like a soaring comet of blaze. The immovable conqueror turned to the Five-Tails statue that drew his exalted blood and placed his terrifying pillar firmly over his shoulder.
"When you make an enemy out of the world, beast, you must respond to their action, or else you risk becoming a laughingstock!" Ashoka clenched and shook his fist out in front of him while his seething eyes whited out and veins ravaged his muscular body. Without waiting for Mana's response, the conqueror dashed toward her, making a valiant attempt at shattering her already chipped and cracked body with a slam of his pillar.
A burst of spiritual chakra thrust Mana to the side, evading the crushing slam. Her equine body allowed her to bounce off of the ground and redirect the momentum into a mortifying tackle to the conqueror's side that made Ashoka hiss and drag across the ground. Humbled, the conqueror had to slam his pillar into the ground and drag himself across to prevent from getting ringed out. The total weight of his injuries made Ashoka the Obelisk remain in his lowered position for much longer than he wished to before he could straighten his back again and flip his pillar over his shoulder to its favored position.
Just as Ashoka recovered, Priskom landed nearby with burns and grazes across his façade while Drasko dispelled spiritual flame reassembled into a larger combined blaze, and began accumulating armor and scrap from across the entire stage once more. In their current state, the Chaos Factor would have to work together to eliminate the conqueror.
"I have no clue what you are or what you are fighting for, but your feeble stone bodies crumble away all the same as flesh, so your convictions are weak and faltering, whereas my faith is strong!" Ashoka thundered his proclamation, swelling up in power before taking a sky-bound leap and rolling in mid-air, only to bring his obelisk pillar down aiming in the general vicinity of all three of his opponents. Despite him not trying too hard to make the blow connect, judging from the speed and the distance the slam had to accumulate force, he didn't have to connect it.
A metallic chink made Ashoka grumble and look down, only to see a lump of scrap smacking at his body and sticking to it. It was just a sign of things to come as scrap began sticking to him bit by bit, with each sheet of metal and piece of broken armor the giant comet of destruction slowed down more and more. Mana took a daring charge, having realized that Ashoka had come the closest he'd get to hovering in the air and that the force of the impact was now the weakest. Her forehead slammed firmly against the crashing obelisk pillar.
The wild, heated chakra leaking out of Ashoka's body surged through his obelisk, making it heat up and blaze with black and tiger-colored hellfire but the spiritual aspect of chakra leaked from Mana's Five-Tails façade and coated her statuesque body to answer Ashoka's crashing slam the best she could. While Drasko's rushing armor hindered the airborne conqueror willing to bring an end to this struggle, Mana's spiritual chakra-infused tackle emitted heliotrope lightning cracks from the point of singularity where her forehead and the Ashoka's clubbing pillar collided. It was Ashoka's fiery chakra coating against Mana's spiritual chakra.
Usually, chakra would've always triumphed over either just physical or spiritual chakra, but this time it wasn't that simple. Right now, Mana had help, Drasko's help and his undying hatred for the prideful conqueror, and Priskom's devotion to returning the Chaos Factor back to their bodies. With Mana, Drasko and Ashoka locked in an immovable, eternal deadlock, it seemed like time itself had stopped, though the chips and cracks deepening and spreading wider across the Five-Tails statue's bulky frame alarmed Mana that her physical coil wouldn't last much longer.
"That's where you're wrong, Ashoka," Priskom called out to the boastful conqueror by tucking the springs around his arms back to the very limit. The jolts of heliotrope lightning fired off in all directions from the Chaos Factor leader's body, forming a shiny coating around it that crackled with electric sparks and shimmering particles. The Statuman put all the time he had on his hands to good use by reattaching his swinging spring legs and building up the resolve for his finishing blow. "Because your faith is centered entirely around yourself. Your religion is solely about praising you! Meanwhile, all of us, flawed as we are, have come together for a common goal. The goal of returning to our bodies. No amount of pride can surpass that indomitable will!"
With an impressive battle cry, Priskom shot out his hands, whirling in a light violet hurricane of ethereal gale surrounding them and enhancing the strength of the swinging and shooting springs. The open palms rolled around Ashoka's crushing pillar and slammed straight at the giant's chest, throwing him off balance and making Ashoka flinch and cough up blood. Immediately, Mana felt the relief of the head-splitting pressure of Ashoka's heavyweight slam against her. The plates encumbering Ashoka scattered aside, though Drasko had long since relieved them of his possessing essence.
Not content with just stunning the conqueror, Priskom's hands locked a tight grip around his body. Before Ashoka could recover, Priskom relaxed his body and let the springs unravel and shoot his body to where he had launched his wind-up hands to. The heliotrope whirlwind around his arms expanded drastically and surrounded the Statuman's entire body, creating a wide typhoon of spiritual chakra energy that lashed out with unstable lightning jolts.
Turning his boots and thrusting the springs attached to his legs in instantaneous, momentous flicks, Priskom thrust his body with air dashes so rapid that they turned his body into a red and black ray of light that flashed up and opposed to the direction where Ashoka's body would've flown out into the orbit. Utilizing this desperate yet swift method of aerial movement, Priskom battered Ashoka a few times in mid-air to position him directly above the desert while a finishing double ax handle slam sent the arrogant conqueror crashing down into the sands below with a calamitous quake.
Priskom had exhausted himself so much that Drasko had to form a sliding platform out of sheets of scrap and ruined armor plates to slide the leader back onto the stage. With a mean and judgmental look, Drasko stared at the tuckered-out leader of the makeshift squad from up above but when Mana stepped up over the worn-out Priskom and leaned her head down as a signal that Drasko was forgetting himself, he turned around and faced the chaos of violence brewing behind them instead.
"You're lucky that it would grant me no satisfaction in destroying this vessel of yours, girl. I wish to kill my enemies utterly and crush their spirits. I can only achieve that by snuffing you out in your actual body. Rest easy, for now…" Drasko warned Mana about her intervention. Just because the three of them somehow overcame Ashoka the Obelisk, that didn't mean that Drasko had forgotten the fact that Mana interfered in Drasko's duel in the first place and expressed her very vocal distaste of the sense of the man she had gotten until that point.
"Unbelievable! The team known only as Chaos Factor has been laying it low until now, but they kicked the gate down with a bang by eliminating the Emperor of the West–Ashoka the Obelisk himself! It is rare that the man matches his pride and Ashoka the Obelisk had created his own religion centered on praising him as a god, yet some would say that the man and his achievements truly match even that ludicrous amount of pride! Either way, with the elimination of Ashoka the Obelisk, there are now 155 warriors still competing for the right to back up their pride!" the announcer hyped the audience up as the pillar of sand shot off into the sky from the tremendous slam that Ashoka had hit the ground with and hung in the air while riding the capricious desert winds, mucking up the clarity of vision somewhat.
"Mana," Priskom turned to the Five-Tails statue while his uncoiled arms and legs lay sprawled out pathetically by his sides. By dozens of centimeters at a time, the worn-out Statuman was retreating the springs back to his body and winding his limbs back up to be usable once more after burning them out so much with this last attack. "Drasko is a terrifying man. A mass murderer with an alarming body count to rival that of Carnage Fici's, that's true. But he is the only man like that amongst the Chaos Factor. We don't have time for me to tell you their stories, but please trust me on this. Some of us are just as innocent and undeserving of losing our bodies to the Conductor's whims as you are. Vatee is a troubled young woman grieving the death of her little brother, Poru is a young Konoha genin just looking for his missing father and Galdva is a family man looking to return to his old body and to his family. They don't deserve to lose their bodies and their old lives because of Drasko's crimes."
"You're trying to appeal to that self-righteous woman with the hero complex that I no longer am," Mana replied, stepping over Priskom to guard him with her own body while he reset his limbs back into place and got back on his feet. "Instead of relying on me, you're better off fighting for them yourself."
"You're wrong!" Priskom returned to a kneeling position, rushing through his recovery just so he could scold his squad mate. "It's not your body that makes you who you are. It's the soul that the Conductor has no control over and cannot destroy. I see in how you throw yourself in danger to protect people that Nakotsumi Mana is still there. It is very much my goal to make sure she returns to her real body, as it is to return the rest of us. Your soul is strong. Very few can control spiritual chakra so much that it rivals other people's complete chakra. This tells me that deep down, you still believe in what you are doing. That the Conductor hasn't yet broken you. We could use that strength of spirit in this tournament if Vatee, Galdva, and Poru are to return to their old lives."
"And what about you?" Mana turned her head back. "What kind of man are you?"
"I'll tell you that as well, if we survive this stage," Priskom dismissed the question by taking his place by Mana's side and preparing to plunge into the chaos of the tournament once again.