A flashy and muscular superhero dashed across the arena. The outer sides of his fleshy arms had been equipped with steel wings that behaved like blades when the hero sliced with both of them separately. Though, based on the split logo of a lightning bolt that had been carved into the surface of the blade plates, the initial impression of the hero's equipment suggested that they were meant to be connected to a massive heater-type shield.
The hero wearing a steel cowl on his head like a mix between a mask and a helmet showcased this ability when he pressed his arms together and connected the blade plates into a shield, hunkering down. A ball of red steel with round openings on all of its segments that flashed with magma-orange and fumed like an advanced nuclear fusion engine would slammed into the connected shield, expelling a vertical halo of blaze. Pressing his shoulder to the heater shield, the adaptable superhero withstood the force of the ball's push with just a few inches of grazing slide back and repelled the ball by separating the shield back into separate blade plates which deflected the ball off into the distance.
The superhero looked around, trying to peer into who slammed this flashy nuclear fusion engine packed inside of a play ball at him, but there were far too many suspicious athletes remaining in the arena to cast suspicions. The airborne fusion-ball burst with black-as-tar skate blades that began buzzing around the hi-tech ball gadget and whirled it back to a broad-shouldered ogre clad in armor based on similarly styled technology. The athlete looked like a cave troll himself, though the cumbersome armor he used during his silly sports games made him appear like an actual juggernaut with a thick and round helmet connected to the shoulders and chest section with black iron wires and tightly positioned obsidian bars shielding off the player's face from the armor.
The superhero sassed for a second, thinking it through if attacking this dreadnought was worth the hassle and just when he gained some pep to his step, the ground underneath the giant began to melt and bubble. This made the cowled shield hero stop with a taken-aback expression. The cumbersome giant thrashed about but, by the time he began resisting meaningfully, he had been submerged by the thighs in molten tiles.
The hand equipped with half-filled syringes for fingers emerged from the muck in which the professional athlete playing with nuclear fusion engine balls found himself stuck in. The hand wrapped itself around the helmet, desperately trying to squeeze at least one needle inside through the bars, but the helmet only let out flocks of sparks and demonstrated grazes that scratched the paint. The few needles that made their way inside merely brushed against the athlete's skin, injecting none of the corrosive drugs that were contained within.
"Finally, I think I gave that crow-asshole the slip. Time to get me a new sucker. So much junk on you… That's fine, I love a good challenge!" a semi-molten man dressed in rags and donning a western-style hat emerged from the muck from the waist up and pulled himself out. As if teasing his newest victim, the syringe fingers tapped the points of the needles against his own face, letting a few corrosive drops trickle down his already miserably disfigured and corroded skin. "Though, damn, I'll need me a can opener for this."
"Pitch!" the athlete yelled out, baffling the serial killer who had chosen him as prey for a second. When the hi-tech ball slammed into the back of the crooked man's rear and vented the nuclear heat accumulated within with a fiery halo, nobody was confused anymore. The howling nuclear burn consumed the man's rags, leaving him kneeling and wheezing on the ground in the nude. Whatever sick stuff the serial killer was into apparently included grievous self-mutilation as the first area where everyone's eyes unwittingly wandered revealed just a scarred and plain patch of eroded and rotten skin.
With the mechanized ball returning to the player, it gave the athlete some time to burrow himself out by literally forcing his feet out from the hardened stone and dirt, emerging in dirtied and grazed play armor and pounding his open hand in front of the kneeling and bruised, miserable-looking, self-induced chemical burn victim.
"Call it a draw?" the coughing killer winced before even hearing the answer.
"The game I play is called Fusion-Ball. In it, staunch and powerful men use energy-coated bats to send a nuclear-fusion-powered ball with whirly blades that can bring it back to the play field from even the upper layers of the atmosphere. The reason that is necessary is that often that's how high the ball goes after a pitch. You really should've found yourself a more helpless target," the armored juggernaut looked around to find his black stick that looked more like a battering club and took a pitching stance. "Surrender now or it won't be the play ball I'll be sending flying."
"Cool story," the gargling and pus-eyed serial killer burped while writhing on the floor and struggling to stand up even on his knees. "Did I tell you I sometimes throw up?"
"You sometimes throw u…?" the fusion-baller tried making sense of what his opponent just told himself before a bile of thick corrosive gunk flew straight at his face and splashed into his eyes and through the thick helmet bars. Howling in pain, the human tank staggered back, trying to squeeze his own fingers in between his helmet to caress his burning eyes.
In his excruciating panic, the athlete did the killer's work for him by disconnecting the helmet from the armor system and hauling the massive dome aside only to scratch his own melting eyes out and wipe the mixture of blood, pus, and tears leaking out. Oddly enough, despite the horrific injuries, it pleasantly surprised the athlete to still see clear shapes when he moved his hands away from the burnt eyes. Everything was black at first, but then clear images began patching through.
It began with old and mossy sandstone underneath his feet. The noise of conveyor belts was buzzing all around him, but the athlete hadn't recovered enough to see them just yet. Everywhere around him were stacks of hay, just like in the farm Land of Fire settlement farm he grew up helping around his aunt in. There was a certain welcome woody smell in the air. Though in a few successive whiffs, it all went vanished in the blaze of engine fire. It wasn't the nuclear fusion fire that the fusion baller was used to. It was from the supermassive platform of an epic-sized metal girder that extended well into the sky and had conveyor belt branches, rolling crystals, stones, and ridges overflowing with chemicals that rained down from the sky.
Despite seeing all those things so clearly, the injured fusion baller still could only see pitch black when looking at the sky, as if the floor and this odd transformation of the fighting arena were all just stickers plastered on a black sheet of paper.
"What a trip, huh!?" that revolting, grating voice came out of thin air as a blaze of green flames lit up directly in front of the still recovering athlete and the killer's haunting and a malformed shape emerged from the flames with a soaring knee strike. The hit cracked like thunder, making the athlete stagger back with his arms raised behind his back and showing his fangs like a rabid animal, the pus-eyed corroded killer charged onward, thrusting both of his needle hands into the chest area of the armor yet earning only sparks again.
Silver blurs spewing sizzling torrents of chemicals whirled all around, though the athlete's armor held firm and the tanking dreadnaught hunkered down with his armored arms covering up his exposed head. The burnt killer snarled, thrusting his whole arm into the ground and causing it to disappear up to the elbow. The blazing trail of chemical flames followed up to the hunkered athlete and engulfed him. A definitive thud made the fusion-baller look down and witness the collapse of a massive armor plate off his body. The pattern repeated until the tanned youth with a pristine, sculpted body stood in the chemical blaze as nude as his mad assailant.
A slick, metallic noise ripped through the air just as emerging from underground rebars punched through the chiseled thigh of the athlete, once again, the pattern repeated until the skewered and tormented athlete hung suspended in the air, impaled on countless tree-thick rebars and prime for a finishing blow. Like some amphibian freak, the corroded killer leaped atop of the rebars, balancing on top of them with his feet and leaning down at the impaled and struggling fusion baller.
"Open wide… No, wait, that's my part…" the gleeful killer taunted his tormented victim before thrusting his own needle hands into his lower jaw and then ripping it clean off, exposing just an open upper jaw and a gullet so overflowing with noxious chemicals that it glowed from within and sprayed trickles through the corroded holes in the killer's mutilated flesh.
Unexpectedly to both parties, before the ballooning stomach could blast the corrosive bile and melt the exposed and impaled athlete to charred and mangled remains, a feminine, cybernetically augmented voice rang through the air.
[Presence of narcotic substances in the system detected. Injecting a counter-agent and relaying the offense to the referee. Please observe proper fair play procedures.]
"Well, fu…" the jawless killer swished with his maimed mouth and a flappy tongue.
Out of sheer instinct, a mechanical armored gauntlet grabbed hold of the serial killer's face and with a mechanized piston applied enough pressure to make the sadistic man scream from the mixture of his own thick blood, corrosive bile and the accumulating mechanical pressure nearly crush his head immediately. Whether he was screaming out of terror, anguish or ecstasy remained impossible to tell.
The fusion baller couldn't see anything, but his first instinct was to grab hold and not let go. He swung the corroded captive over the shoulder, wielding him like he'd swing his stick, and slammed him onto the other side. He could hear the splatter and sizzle of the leaking drugs that the killer used to induce the narcotic trance where he tortured and killed his victims leaking out. Also, clacking of rolling teeth and fleshy splurge of a caving head. He wasn't sure just how alive his opponent still was, fortunately enough, he won't have to. Turning around and continuing his rampage, the armored athlete smacked the burnt and maimed killer around over and over again until he felt a significant drop of weight in his armored hand.
"Please look away, please look away! Who am I kidding, some of you came to see this exact type of thing! Contestant Ryoku Genshi slammed his opponent left and right until his opponent's leg could no longer hold and split from the body!" the announcer yelled out.
Not being the one to take chances, Genshi felt around for wet and meaty sensations and then punted at the stack of flesh when he found it–sending it flying well outside of the arena's bounds. The blinded athlete collapsed to the ground and began searching for his helmet. He'd need it if he was to finish the tournament.
[Damage to the optical nerve detected. Sending the message to the referee and the team coach. Meanwhile, providing the user with substitute sensory input,]
The helmet's countermeasures to corrosive drugs searing holes in Genshi's eye sockets and melting his eyes clean out included jolts to his brain that replaced vision with an orange monochrome display, with accurate measurements and calculated precise information. This wasn't the first time that roughhousing during playtime had made the helmet switch on to sensory input mode, though Genshi's case was a bit more gruesome than a shaken optical nerve.
He'd be finishing this tournament. Even if he wasn't doing his case of proving the value of his sports and that it's not some savage meat grinder that the public reputation suggested it to be any favors with this gory display…
"Contestant Fusho Yakubu from the serial killer bunch has been eliminated! That leaves us with 141 competitors left in the ring!" the announcer did the headcount once more to the cheers or disgusted hurls of the audience that had undergone a series of mixed feelings about the chilling violence of the last bout.
A violet-haired young man with tanned skin and spiky violet hair skidded across the ground on his back. Gritting his teeth and covered with bruises, he scrambled to return to his feet only to realize that Kamome Gan, whom the Konohagakure genin was brawling it out with, wasn't pursuing him any longer. Wiping the blood and slobber off his lip, the scrappy youth stood up and began scanning the immediate surroundings for signs of his opponent.
"Huh… That's weird. Vanishing tricks just didn't seem like the old geezer's style…" the young man mumbled to himself.
"Young boy… Run!" a husky yet familiar voice reached the curious ears of the young Konohagakure ninja who sought the opponent he was having a time of his life scrapping against for some time now. With a rich smile of childish excitement, the young man turned around toward the voice only for that cheerful façade to shatter with a shocking blow when he saw the old man beaten down and crippled, in the hand of a most exotic combatant.
A hovering dwarf with a body completely devoid of hair, peanut-colored skin with simplistic face paint motifs decorating his stern face held the old man clenched in what appeared to be a fraction of a wing-like flap with a bladed end. Despite his simplistic and hairless appearance, the undergrown man wore an extravagant outfit that had four massive flaps several times the man's size and expanded behind him like butterfly wings though each of these "wings" had blades attached to the end that made them look almost like hands with blade-fingers.
"Let go of him!" the spiky-haired genin growled, shaking his fist out in front of him as if it was something threatening to the member of Fennec's crew.
"Huh? Small-fry?" the peanut-skinned, hairless dwarf turned to the side and acknowledged the young man's presence. "Konoha, huh?" he noted the insignia on the boy's forehead protector. "Perhaps worth finishing off yet. Very well…" the dwarf who spoke with a rather high-pitched tone that one would've bet belonged to an old man tossed the battered Fluid Fist specialist to the side and turned to the Konohagakure ninja with his full splendor. With just a flap of his knife butterfly wings, the Fennec's mercenary sent compact whirlwind sandstorms howling in random directions.
One of these sandy gusts caught the Konoha ninja and forced him to hunker down and brace himself. All oxygen instantly left the boy's lungs, sucked out through the nose while the wind stuffed sand grains down his airways and made the poor youth wheeze and cough. Just a mere flex of this mercenary's combat potential already reduced the young Konohagakure ninja to the ground, wondering how he could have ever been so foolish as to challenge him.
With a blank stare, the mercenary flapped his wing, sending a washing wave of wind and ripping sand particles flying the boy's way. This time, however, the Konohagakure ninja rolled to the side and finished his evasive roll with a slide on his feet that let him easily slip into an offensive Strong Fist counter. Flying at the winged mercenary from a distance, the brave Konoha genin tried punching him directly with a soaring fist, but a flap of the knife-wielding flap of mercenary's unorthodox outfit sliced his way as a counter. Canceling his motion mid-attack, the Konoha ninja shifted to an evasive spin and brushed past the mercenary and his armed wing.
Having done so, the Strong Fist user from Konoha unleashed a flurry of strikes before back-fisting the hovering mercenary into a backward swoop as at no point did the feet of the hairless dwarf touch the ground.
"How's that? It should teach you to bully old men, even if he's shooting kinda hard…" the spiky-haired teen made a cool look, expressing silent satisfaction with the results his offensive had wrought. When noting the old man's strength, the charismatic boy began rubbing the various sore spots where the Fluid Fist specialist found many openings in the boy's style during their previous collision.
"Hmph…" the peanut-skinned, browless exotic warrior smirked, showing clear emotion for the first time. "What exactly was that meant to teach me, brat?"
"Huh? You look like a complete wimp, surely you should have taken more damage from that…" the violet-haired teen scratched his fluffy head with an outstretched and exaggerated expression.
"I told you to run, young man… This mercenary is no common thug. You cannot damage him in conventional…" Kamome Gan, the veteran Fluid Fist specialist, spoke up while slowly peeling his battered and bleeding old bones off the ground to assist the young boy whose proficiency in taijutsu re-inspired the old timer's faith in the next generation after a massive disappointment of having faced the utter, uncompromising sadism of the Scorn Reaper.
The old man couldn't finish his sentence as a sandstorm engulfed his body and raised him off the ground, clawing at his throat as oxygen swooped out of his chest at a drastic rate that made the old man's chest deflate and his body threaten to implode on itself while only sand grains poured down from the localized calamity into the old man's orifices, tearing bloody wounds in his eyelids, nose, and mouth.
"That's enough yapping from you. Old shit-stains need to know when to kick their feet up and die," the Fennec's mercenary gestured with sideways turned hand with inward curled fingers, manipulating the sandstorm engulfing the old man.
"I said STOP IT!" the spiky-haired teen in a flashy tracksuit came in with an aerial cross soaring through the air. The fist cracked into the jaw of the hairless mercenary and drove him hovering back, though when he turned to peer back at the teen-aged ninja there were no signs of injury on his lip, his jaw, or his nose.
"You spoke about teaching lessons before, brat. It seems I'll be the one teaching you today. The first and most important lesson–if you make a request, you need to have the position of strength and the appropriate standing for your request to warrant respect. Shouting loud is no replacement for these things at all," the browless man closed his eyes, showing pointy black marks on his eyelids. "Then again, perhaps it is fruitless to teach lessons to someone that's about to drop dead."