"Hey, kid!" a boisterous yell spread from a fair distance to a short and plump teen with spiky black hair and olive-colored eyes. The kid dressed in a flashy jacket over a plain black shirt with violet-colored stripes and a distinct number "15" on his back turned to the loudmouth that was calling him out with chagrin. The boy had to tip his head upward to let the beak of his cap to let him see the face of the approaching opponent clearly. "You're one of those athletes, aren't you?"
The approaching young man was a ninja dressed in a space-blue sleeveless bodysuit that extended from his heels all the way to the neck and then split off into a long spread collar. He wore a Sunagakure protector tied around his right arm and had spiky and messy sand-colored hair. The most curious feature about the approaching ninja was the fact that his entire body had been littered with horizontal scars that looked like they'd been made from healing after grievous and deep cuts into the flesh. They reminded a lot of self-inflicted scars, though the base assumption that no one in their right mind would self-inflict this many wounds that cut this deep dispelled that theory.
The facial expression of the approaching youth was calm and smug, though a simple examination of this scarred face relayed it was just a floodgate to a bottomless pit of flooding madness. It was one of those faces that looked steady at first, but no one would've made the mistake of assuming that it wasn't about to snap at any second. A wooden and dry palm leaf umbrella hung on the back of the approaching Sunagakure ninja like a sword.
"That's right, I'm Haisube Hansha, an ace player of Reflect Ball for the Nature Country Olives," the boy pulled the beak of his cap up and flipped a crystal club over onto his shoulder while striking a pose similar to the ones he showcased when being photographed or sketched for the magazines.
"You're a disgrace to this ring. I suggest you get gone until you make me mad and make me force you," the Sunagakure ninja approached the baffled teen and leaned over him, making Hansha lean back and put his free hand up to keep the encroaching shinobi at a respectful distance.
"I'm sorry, Mr., but I can't do that. All of us pro-athletes banded together to build an amazing stadium here that will band people from all around the world to see the amazing sports events we'll be hosting here. And then, one day, we will host the world's largest sports events where all the best athletes in the world will compete here under one roof, a lot like how this even hosts all the mightiest warriors. That's why no pro athlete will back down, no matter what. These United Games mean more than our lives to us!" the plump boy raised his crystal club and put it horizontally in front of him to make the disrespectful Suna ninja back away.
"Tsk…" the Sunagakure ninja's eyes glistened with something more malicious and deep-seated. In a flash, his foot stomped right at the forehead of the young kid and pushed him with sufficient force to make it seem like he was shot from out of a cannon that tried to launch him into space. The boy's cap flew off and rolled in mid-air while the poor youth himself slammed into some rocky debris far away in the distance. "Even if this must've broken all the bones in your body and left you a wreck for life, this is me showing restraint, brat," the Sunagakure ninja hissed and turned around to walk away from the scene of what looked like a crime of grisly murder.
The sound of a ripping blast of a focused thunderbolt made the Sunagakure ninja stiffen his shoulders before frantically rolling to the side. When he scrambled back to his feet and scanned the chaotic arena for his assailant, he could only make out a racing, sky-piercing beam that hurried in his general direction. Tsking with his tongue, the Sunagakure ninja began running away, hopping or vaulting over the surrounding combatants and obstacles in his path until he could follow the beam's path to a sky-bound whirligig with a reflective gemstone and a flat mirror-like back aimed at the sun.
"Reflect Ball, huh…" the Sunagakure ninja wheezed in a mocking tone to himself as he turned toward the underaged pro-athlete he just left scrambled and battered in a resting place of a crumbled mountain of debris. Just as the sand-haired shinobi expected, his enemy was there, bruised and dirty, but back on his feet. "Runt… You're tougher than I gave you credit for!" the Suna ninja exclaimed with mania oozing from his tone before sliding down under the defensive swing of the boy's crystal club that hit the brunt of the coming beam and split it off into fractions of smaller rays shooting off toward the separate corners of the ring.
"You have to be perceptive to catch the glimpse of a beam of light and react to it to swing your club in time. You must be precise in swinging it at the right angle to reflect the beam at all four bases at once and score. Even more so, you have to be tough to withstand missing the swing or to not have your arms break and shatter from the backlash of your own swing," young Hansha answered as he turned to his opponent with a dirty and bruised face.
"Hmph…" the Sunagakure ninja stuck out his tongue while his eyes morphed and bulged out, overflowing with psychopathy. A gale blew from behind the sand-haired warrior and, in a blink, the tough boy splattered his own blood from many ravaging lacerations and fell flat on his back with a blank stare that stared off at the sky. Turning his mad gaze up, the Suna shinobi once again made a gale escalate from behind him and shoot off into the sky, homing in on the do-hickey that caught the light on its rear end and focused it into a powerful laser beam meant to be split and reflected as rays at separate corners of the arena.
The gadget shattered into pieces and its junk scattered all around the ring, though everyone was too absorbed with their own bouts to pay too much mind to a bunch of scrap being flung all around them.
"Incredible! What a precise and subtle method of attack!" the announcer hyped up the unorthodox technique of the Sunagakure ninja. "Sunagakure as a ninja village does not have a great variety in bloodlines and abilities found amongst its ninja. Most of them are puppeteers, Wind Release specialists, or employ the sand itself to work for them. And yet, despite having such common beginnings, budding talent still finds places to surprise an occasional beholder!"
The sand-haired psychopath from Sunagakure turned to the announcer's stand with a grim look that would've instilled the fear of God into someone. However, his look switched back to a more acceptable and solemn expression, ditching the lunacy in a blink, when he realized that, as a true professional, the announcer didn't betray the nature of his technique and hamper his efficiency in battle. It would've taken either a skilled chakra manipulation specialist or someone with superhuman perception or chakra sensory to read into the invisible carnage that the Suna shinobi wrought on the battlefield.
"In the… United Games… Everyone… Everyone will compete…" the Sunagakure ninja jumped up startled, turning to the quivering and bleeding like a stuck-pig boy who wrestled himself off the ground against his better judgment. The sand-haired ninja blinked a few times in a blank look of awe at the boy's resolve, but then came the usual blood-lusted hysteria reflected off the young man's face. The face of a dreadful fiend that dreamed of sucking the marrow from human bones, molded into the attractive face of a pale-skinned young man and carved with markings of savagery in the scars he bore. The toughness of this kid was entertaining. It was stimulating.
The Sunagakure ninja extended his hand, reaching outward, unlike before when his technique reigned completely unimpeded, the plump kid sprung into an evasive roll. The suddenness and crudeness of the motion spilled and smeared more blood on the sandy arena floor, but, despite myriads of microscopic grazes on the arena floor, young Hansha earned no more shredding lesions.
"Huh… You've figured out the range already?" the Sunagakure ninja blinked a few times, overcome by shock. Instead of answering, the young Reflect Ball ace flung his crystal club, swinging right at the nose of the shinobi, sprinkling a shower of blood from the broken breather. He took a dive under the bloody shower to grab hold of his club and move in close in the few seconds he had before his opponent could turn off the shredder again.
"Your technique doesn't just slash like a sword, it shreds and grazes around the slashing marks, like sandpaper. Yet the right wing of the Reflector lacked these grazes, meaning that your technique couldn't reach that far. You'll pay for thrashing a million ryo worth of technology!" Hansha clamored with confidence as he swung for the fences aiming at the center of his opponent's face. However, his hands trembled at the last moment before the crystal club could connect.
A high-pitched slam echoed through the place from where the two collided, but it wasn't because the club smacked the Sunagakure ninja off the bounds like a rag doll. It was because of Hansha's hands dropping the club, unable to hold it. The kid collapsed on the ground, holding his hands out in front of him and crying in pain as his fingers twitched frantically. It was almost as if the boy had absolutely no control over it and the flesh on his hands was turning black on sight.
"Wh-What's going on…!?" Hansha cried out in a high-pitched and whiny tone. He may have been toughened by the grueling training of a pro athlete and made to mature beyond his years by his career but, in the end, he was just a kid.
"Damn… That club of yours got me pretty good. Can barely control the nosebleed there… Too bad for you…" the Sunagakure ninja grabbed hold of his leaking nose and turned to the side, leaning down to let the spraying bleeding drip somewhere off to the side. A curious detail caught the teary eyes of the Reflect Ball ace. When the blood touched the sandy tiles, it sizzled and let out a foul odor as it vaporized away in violet smoke.
"Y-Your blood…?" Hansha muttered while falling down and rolling in terrible pain as his hands blistered and the boils burst immediately, spilling warm and white bile while the flesh turned black and almost charred-like in texture and began unraveling from the bone.
"That's right, runt. Ever since I've been born, my mother tried poisoning me and fed me every brand and type of poison known to the Wind Country. Scorpions, spiders, even the off-shelf industrial stuff. All of this was to spare me from the pain of my father's abuse and give me some eternal rest already. Little did both of them know, I ended up tougher than they gave me credit for. My blood, however… It's worse than any poison or acid available. It's every type of poisonous, venomous, and corrosive imaginable and has the effects of every poison and venom at once. Too bad for you, 'cause your little club got soaked in it after breaking my nose and your fragile little hands touched it," the Sunagakure ninja pulled his hands aside, spraying a shower of blood from his broken nose in the air as it began dripping on the fallen and crying boy.
Feeling like his nose began to swell and clot up, having only soaked Hansha in a few sprinkles of the most horrific and corrosive substance in the world, known only to him and Sunagakure, the psychopathic shinobi thrust his fist, expelling a shredding Wind Release current from his hand, and socking the crippled and horrifically envenomated boy in the core of his charring and blistering flesh and sending him out of bounds.
"Athletes and their little games have no place on a warriors' battlefield. You may excel at your little games, but we're the aces of the game of war," the Sunagakure ninja clamored out in psychotic laughter before turning to search for the nearest pro athlete to abuse.
"Jari, the ninja from the Sand Village, eliminated Haisube Hansha, the pro-athlete, leaving 132 contestants to duke it out and determine the 16 strongest amongst them!" the announcer declared, leaving the audience shifting uncomfortably in their seats after yet another gruesome display of violence. They may have been used to martial arts bouts. Sometimes those even got weapons involved. But this class of violence was on a step of its own and no one wanted to see teenagers subjected to it. "Don't you worry, ladies and gentlemen, the eliminated contestants will have the best standard of care available to the Sheikhate and the mystical concoction of the oases waters our healers employ heal even the most extreme fire and boiling oil burns!"
While this attempt to lighten the darkened mood eased some worries and get most of the audience interested in the upcoming match-ups, it wouldn't have been able to purge the grisly sights that caused this distress to the audience in the first place.
"Hey!" Rinden, the brave swarm-baller from Gohangakure who has proved himself already by eliminating Sweets Jin, the master of Eight Fist fighting style, earlier stepped up. Never too far away from him, his swarm of shuttlecocks washed in and surrounded both him and Jari from Sunagakure. "The way you ruined that young boy's chances of ever playing his favorite sport is unforgivable!"
"Huh? What are you on about? I didn't even cut myself to shower him with my blood. He busted me open all by himself…" Jari scratched his messy hair with one hooked finger at first, then, he transitioned to both hands, rummaging through his sand-colored hair frantically. Having nearly grazed his own scalp like that, the Sunagakure ninja shrugged. "Oh, well… At least another pro athlete showed up. Maybe if I mess you up bad enough, more of you will step up and I won't have to sweat looking for you?"
"You are a horrible man!" Rinden proclaimed, pointing at Jari with a bold accusation. "To defeat another person and become an obstacle before their greatest dream is one thing, but to forever dash their hopes of pursuing that dream… That is another thing entirely. Sports is something you can do for fun, for friendly competition or to heal as well, and you've robbed him of all of that forever!"
"You're pissing me off with all that yapping now…" Jari shoved an index finger into his ear and waved his other hand in dismissal. Rinden's Swarm Ball uniform ripped open as grievous wounds opened up in his solar plexus area. It was as if a massive drill had just been thrust into his abdomen, with the surrounding areas being polished with sandpaper and littered with shredded grazes. Coughing up blood, the swarm-baller fell flat on his back, succumbing to Jari's invisible Wind Release current technique. "Don't think I'm done with you yet, you pansy!" he warned the fallen and injured athlete.
However, before Jari could take off and attack Rinden from up close, the swarm of different shuttlecocks washed him over as the ring of their swarm tightened, overwhelming the Sunagakure ninja and forcing him to cover up. With a grunt of frustration, Jari sent a turbulent tunnel of Wind Release current to rotate around him and shred its way through the swarm of shuttlecocks which gave him some leeway, but ultimately only left him standing on wobbly feet, with a ragged and torn bodysuit and a grazed body that let out noxious vapor from each of its countless scrapes.
"You're in for it now, sissy!" Jari growled with a psychotic expression slathered on his face. "Now you've got no way of beating me. You can't get up close to me because of my noxious blood, but you can't stay further away either, because I'll get you with my Wind Release current."
Jari covered up his bruised face as he began chuckling uncontrollably. The chuckling escalated and grew into a full-on fit of laughter that spiraled out of control into a mania. The shuttlecock swarm began spreading and buzzing around the area where the ninja and the pro-athlete collided and forced Jari to hurl his Wind Release currents in the wildest, spiraling trajectories just to get some breathing air. Despite his valiant efforts, the Sunagakure ninja was fending off a hail of bullets that dug into his flesh and dusted his bones in the fracture zones, reducing the Suna shinobi to a kneeling mess.
"Lucky for me, a net is a reasonably long-range weapon!" Rinden exclaimed, appearing out of nowhere from the swarm as he secured his Swarm Ball net around Jari's neck and hurled him sliding to the edge of the arena before swiping the shuttlecocks out of the air and sending them in swarms at him. Jari scrambled to return to his feet by the edge of the arena, but the rushing barrage of shuttlecocks overwhelmed him and flung him out, only to fall flat on his back in the out-of-bounds area.
"The Swarm Ball player Rinden scores his second elimination!" the announcer's voice ripped through the arena grounds with the audience chanting wildly, believing that the gruesome effects of Jari's blood would leave their minds soon enough after the psychotic Sunagakure ninja hit the out-of-bounds area. "With the Sunagakure ninja Jari eliminated, there are now 131 contestants fighting it out in the arena!"
"I may not have known you, Haisube Hansha, but as a fellow athlete, I felt responsible for making the man that smashed your dream answer for it. Even if it's frightening, I will stand up to any big and scary warrior and make our dream of the United Games come true!" Rinden proclaimed, swearing this to himself with a fist bump to his chest while the rabid shuttlecocks began buzzing wildly all around him.