A samurai with grey hair wandered through the arena, focusing his distant stare on the nearest warrior to him but always sighing in disappointment when another warrior met weapons with that competitor, and it seemed as if the entire world remained ignorant of the elder samurai. The disgruntled veteran of decades of spotless service to his lord emitted another sigh, though this time it wasn't because he was ignored, but because the sight of a bloodied warrior with a ruined set of armor met him.
"You're a Sky Warrior, one of those that challenged one of those Cursed Warriors, correct?" the samurai slammed his sheathed sword into the ground, embedding it while he crossed his legs and rested in a meditative position before the fallen Sky Warrior.
"As much as I don't want to admit it, I must give up this fight," the Sky Warrior with variegated brown ailerons that had spots of tear, molten patches, and places where armor was just plain missing, laid before the elder samurai without his falcon-themed helmet that had been so bent out of shape that it was functionally useless. "Eliminate me or leave me lying here, it makes no difference."
"I've eliminated far too many back in my day. I know it's not quite what you meant but… Perhaps that is why I never enjoy seeing the end of the journey of another warrior," the elder dressed in a white dogi with a silver-colored cape and greyed-out hair said.
"Those Cursed Warriors, they don't deserve to win…" the Sky Warrior coughed up, against all odds managing to sit up and see the seated veteran eye-to-eye. "They are all violence. They have no code and don't care about those they trample on. Instead of doing away with me or throwing me out of the ring, they just thrashed me and left me lying like a piece of trash! That's no way for a warrior to lose."
"I, for one, am glad that those stone monsters didn't finish you off. Then you'd have died a fool," the old man closed his eyes and rested his rugged coarse stubble chin by tucking it into his chest. "As long as there is life, there is hope. The only pointlessness, the only disgrace is death, and doomed is the soul that delivers it. As someone who delivered it freely at the whim of a silky-handed lord in my day, I would know. After my passing, a thousand ogres will wage war for my soul as I've been damned by thousands, so I'm due to burning in a thousand hells."
"I'm the one on the verge of death, yet I wonder whose soul out of the two of us truly is broken," the warrior with a chocolate-colored mohawk that rested underneath his falcon-shaped mask normally stood up ripped a handful of bronze feathers from what remained of his armor, determined to fight until the end. "We are warriors, old man, you may have forgotten it over the years, but the only end for us is that on the battlefield. The only curse you suffer from is that of being too good to have died when you were good and ready, leaving you to stumble into the true hell for any warrior–old age. We don't always have to take lives, but it is an inseparable part of what makes a warrior. Come now, old man, show me out the right way."
With a brave battle cry, the falcon-themed Sky Warrior charged at the seated old man, who remained in his cross-legged position, as if slumbering. Kicking off of the ground, the falcon soared one last time until the end of his flight which led all the way within the old man's reach. Compared to the skill of the old swordsman, the falcon may have moved so slow that all time had stopped as when the old man willed his weathered body to move, he moved unobstructed and without delay. The man grabbed his sword and pulled it out of the ground, adopting a sword-drawing stance and drawing the sword while swinging his scabbard and the blade.
"Divine Punishment Style: Ring of Nirvana!" the old man chanted like prayer, as his sword, coated with a tremendous amount of kenki, cut through the black void and formed a silver halo of sanctity that sent the falcon flying overhead and planting outside of the ring's bounds. Upon the completion of his sword-drawing technique, the old man slammed his sword back into the ground and rested his back on it. From the outsider's perspective, it was as if the old man had never moved from his spot as all of this transpired in an irrelevant fraction of a moment.
"Konishi Gokojin eliminated Giniata of the Sky Warriors! This leaves it at 135 competitors!" the announcer reported the latest development even though he, like the rest of the audience, couldn't quite perceive the exact details related to the Sky Warrior's elimination.
A towering individual fully clad in armor with a massive horned helmet, who had fully embraced the appearance of a demon, began a methodical approach toward the man he had noticed amongst the crowd. After his miraculous rescue of the warriors trapped underground, Signal Man wasn't quite at his peak anymore and left forced to fend off threats who couldn't have cared less for the tremendous rescue he had pulled off and the dangerous magician he had left scurrying in fear of the hope's light.
The cumbersome, metallic pounds of the armored feet made Signal Man turn around and left his face, half of which had been visible through the rips and tears in his bodysuit-style uniform, gasping in awe. This armored behemoth was one of Fennec's mercenaries, yet this one hadn't spoken a word to anyone yet and remained reserved and unbothered by the proceedings in the fighting ring until now. Could it have sensed that the warriors had all been softened up already and moved in for a streak of eliminations?
A layer of long and greasy black hair stretched from the bottom of the black-horned helmet of the walking suit of armor. The layer was so thick that it might have fit such a walking goliath, but it would have been beyond excessive to any ordinary-sized man. What was even stranger, the hair wasn't reserved to hanging behind the demonic armor suit's back. A handful of strands shot out from its abdomen, seeping through from underneath the armor.
Lashing, the armor grabbed hold of Signal Man's right wrist and reached out to wrap around the rest of the limbs as well. Thrashing, the superhero struggled for some leeway, but the greasy strand of hair caught his heel and softened him up with resounding smacks, swinging him across the region of the arena and slamming the battle-worn superhero around on the ground. This softening allowed the concealed behind his armor mercenary to wrap more of his hair around the weak spots of Signal Man, leaving the beaten superhero at his opponent's mercy.
"Let go of me, scoundrel!" Signal Man struggled in the hair's tight grip. This was no ordinary hair, as Signal Man's strength was not that of any ordinary man either, yet he failed to stress the greasy tendrils wrapping around him. It was as if each strand of hair was alive and seeping strength out of it, adding it to the demonic raw power of the hairy suit of armor.
"It is now your turn to be eliminated. I have predicted it," the armored demon finally thundered with a low-pitched, draconic voice.
"My turn?" Signal Man ceased resistance for a moment, surprised by the choice of words of the mercenary who concealed themselves inside this suit of armor and employed strength-draining hair tendrils to do their bidding.
"The tides of the future are like an unraveled scroll for me to read. I've divined each elimination and, so far, all has been proceeding as per my predictions," the hairy suit of armor explained. "Though I'm afraid you're showing too much will to follow your fate as being the next to go. If I don't act now and eliminate you, someone else might lose and ruin my prediction."
"Heh…" Signal Man chuckled as the giant searchlight he had left underneath beamed a dominating ray of light that slammed its radiance straight into the front of the armorer demon, burning through the hair that wrapped around Signal Man while simultaneously restoring and super-charging the superhero's strength by coating him in a layer of radiant energy that beamed through every orifice in his body. Stumbling, the flinching suit of armor fell flat on its back, staring off into the sky as if life had vacated the suit of armor.
"This is the ultimate power of hope! The power to defy prediction, defy logic, and exceed expectations! You may not realize it yet, but you rely on that power too, mercenary. You hope for your predictions to always be correct, so you interfere and use your tremendous power to make them come true. You yourself defy fate daily!" Signal Man postured in front of the fallen suit of armor, winding back for another strike before a tunneling drill smacked into the side and sent Signal Man flying to the side and grazing a ridge on the ground.
It wasn't so much the fact of interference that surprised Signal Man, but the identity of the interloper. Standing by his side was a muscular superhero with a steel cowl on his head, a mix between a mask and a helmet, with steel wings equipped to the back of his hefty arms that appeared like blades, though were shaped like trapezes that could easily connect to a heater-type shield. Signal Man hadn't expected to be attacked by another superhero, the fact that each of the factions had common causes for winning this competition sort of implied that they'd be sticking together.
"War Man, what are you doing? We're both superheroes fighting for Agbarah to become the base of all superhero activity. I know that you, like me, seek to establish a superhero base here, the first-ever superhero village!" Signal Man hovered above ground even though the radiant energy that had coated him before was fully gone now, dispersed by the powerful tunneling rip of War Man's surprise attack.
"That's right, but not all superheroes will be welcome to join. There's no place in this superhero village for your mindless postulating about hope and justice or the half-measured pacifism of rescue work from frauds like Guard Woman. Hero Man's incompetence is a disgrace to superheroes everywhere and I know you would like him to lead this new village of heroes just because he was the first to don a cape and tights and distinguish himself from the other warriors," War Man declared, positioning his metallic cowl at an angle where shadows cast from jagged rock pillars of the arena's ruins left his eyes compromised and obstructed by the shade.
"You fool!" Signal Man shouted, pulling out the flashlight from his utility belt and crushing it in his hand, letting the pent-up hope to leak out and coat him, just like the searchlight he had used previously had coated him before. Engulfed with the radiant light of hope, the super-charged Signal Man soared across the distance between the two heroes with a left hook that slammed against the outer side of War Man's shield wing.
The collision emitted a thunderous shockwave and raised pebbles from the ground, flinging them in all directions like bullets, while the two superheroes struggled in their clash of strength. "Wasn't it because of Hero Man that you abandoned your career and donned a costume?" Signal Man barked out, throwing a rising uppercut that separated the blades from connecting into a shield and kicked War Man away, only to point his finger at him and unleash another burst of light from the underground searchlight.
The mighty beam that shot out into space caught War Man with its outer side and flung him out of its embrace, covered in flares of sizzling hope's light. Signal Man brought himself down to the ground, clutching the licks that ached throughout his body that he had suffered during this battle royale. "We're all in this together, War Man. Unless we all work together, we will lose and no hero, no matter what they see as the future for superheroes, will get Agbarah. In that case, it won't be us that will pay the price, but the civilians we fail to save!"
"You still don't get it, do you?" War Man stood up, wiping the traces of blood off his lip and brushing the ethereal flares of light surrounding his body. "Superheroes aren't supposed to be rescue workers. To establish a village that uses us as some rescue force is the same as not getting our village at all. We've got it in us to be a military force, to truly make changes worldwide. I'm not the only ninja to leave my village and don take up the uniform. Many among us are soldiers, and many among us want larger, systemic change, while all you're willing to do is play catch-up and rescue victims of the same oppression we seek to shake. You and anyone like you are impotent and you're a danger not just to the title of a superhero, but to the people you save as well."
Signal Man reached for his utility belt while War Man charged forward with his steel blades interconnected into a shield formation. The battle-worn, hope-fueled hero pulled out a flare stick that he cracked and made a beam with a sky-scraping beam of hopeful light in all directions.
"Hope Quasar!" Signal Man yelled out, flinging the lit-up flare of hope at the superhero insisting on playing out their petty civil war in the middle of the most important battle in their faction's history. The first time that all heroes have come together.
War Man braced for impact behind his immovable shield and dashed forward. The flare formed a rotating aerial projectile that beamed intense beams of light from either of its ends and rotated in mid-air, slamming the ray at the incoming shield every time one of its ends turned to face it. War Man's shield seemed to barely take any hurting from that as the ninja-turned-hero persevered the Hope Quasar and disconnected the shield to knock the aerial flare aside with one half while driving the blunt side of his right blade into Signal Man's face and forcing the superhero out of bounds.
"What a betrayal!" the announcer howled out, grabbing hold of his head out of shock at what he was seeing. "War Man eliminated Signal Man, another superhero belonging to his own faction! What is the meaning of this? What is going on amongst the heroes of the superhero faction? With this elimination, 134 competitors remain in the battle royale!"
War Man turned for the fallen suit of armor that just laid there flat and stared off into the sky throughout his brief clash with the bruised Signal Man. However, just as War Man approached to eliminate the fallen Fennec's mercenary, the clunky goliath sat up in one motion, making War Man halt and raise his blades, ready to defend himself. The hefty suit of armor stood up and loomed over the superhero who measured up to barely three times his size despite his own impressive bulk.
"It is not yet your time to be eliminated, you will make it further than this," the enigmatic psychic suit of armor predicted with a low-pitched voice before turning around.
"As if I'm letting you just walk away!" War Man grumbled, charging after the fleeing mercenary but the hair hiding underneath the armor became unruly, sticking out from every crevice and drowning out the armor as they turned the district of the arena into a ruinous black bog of hair. War Man sliced around, but his slashes seemed to merely sift through the hair rather than cut them, the blades running alongside the hair instead of through them. In just a few passing moments, the suit of armor was out of sight, though not out of War Man's mind.
"My, my… What a freaky sight we have here. Why I must have you caged to entertain my people in Gold Country!" a dandy with a curved mustache and a round belly approached a tall warrior with arms protruding from his back all the way from the shoulders down to the waist. Both the back and the front of this Salvari warrior had faces protruding from them as if this Salvari had been molded together from ten different people.
"Greedy…" the Salvari warrior declared, swinging a golden mace that one of his twenty arms wielded. A collection of black shadow-constructs rushed out in front of the mace to protect their "lord", creating a human-shield wall that scattered and dispersed upon contact with the backhanded swing which raised a fiery wall of red flames, consuming the shadow-men and burning them all into nothing. "Insolent…" the Salvari warrior muttered while chopping relentlessly with a dozen hands, yet failing to cut the man who had irked him so, only slicing through these shadowy men.
"Oh, my… But where are my manners? Long Ben Everyman's the name, Pirate King used to be the game," Long Ben introduced himself with a gentlemanly swing of his hat as he bowed to the many-limbed Salvari warrior who, unlike many of his peers, didn't possess an exuberant display of facial hair. The Salvari was blue-skinned and clad in far more golden accessories because of the massive excess of limbs to decorate. This granted the blue-skinned Salvari a majestic, almost divine appearance. "Then again, perhaps I am too hasty beating myself over acting gentlemanly in front of some desert savage?"
"Esteemed audience of spectators, direct your attention, if you will, toward the north-western wing of the arena, where a ground-shaking meeting is taking place! The greatest of the Salvari warriors, two of the most selfish yet most powerful men of their respective factions collide as Long Ben Everyman, the one and only Pirate King, meets Bishyari, the ten-in-one supreme protector of the Salvari!" the announcer directed the audience's attention.
A previously unheard number of cheers and deafening clamoring took hold over the arena. The sheer, all-consuming noise made it impossible for any warrior to fight, as one wouldn't have been able to think straight, let alone hear one's own thoughts. In this boisterous cacophony of cheers, the audience revealed their one and only true crowd favorite.
HAPPY NEW YEAR!