The chubby, white-robed man with moss-colored silk sleeves removed his arms from behind his back, revealing one of them to be armed with a wooden rod. From the first looks, Ishikawa Bando didn't look all too frightened by a mere stick but underestimating someone who survived this long wasn't something that defined a potential Top 16 fighter.
Bando was about to draw his sword when some invisible force pulled on his heel, turning him over and causing the worn-out samurai to fall flat on his back. By that point, the strange chubby with the triangular hat of a pirate captain was already in mid-air and hurling down with a vicious stomp. Bando rolled aside and gripped his sword, but something was wrong. It was like he was stuck in place. Paralyzed. As if Bando was a puppet and the strings that permitted him movement just refused to twitch.
"Huh…" the chubby leaned forward with an open jaw, blinked a few times, and scratched his eyes when Ishikawa Bando vanished without a trace right before his eyes. It was as if blotches of the environment soaked and covered the ronin up like the surface of the bog he submerged under. All that the veteran swordsman needed for this was a single-hand seal. "He's gone… I thought samurai were honor-bound soldiers."
A crude yank pulled the overweight pirate in for a stomp of Bando's sandal across his face. The pirate's flabby cheeks and mouth unraveled because of the uncompromising smash to his teeth, while the pirate himself shot, rolled, and bounced off like a rubber ball and smashed into some nearby rubble.
"That's an interesting fighting style. People see a stick and most of them assume you're too poor to afford a sword. Even someone like me who fought plenty of hitmen and commanded my own secret ninja organization took a few embarrassing grazes before I picked up your trick. The childish things are sometimes the most difficult to spot," Ishikawa Bando spat some blood aside while flinging his katana away, effectively disarming himself.
"What's this!? Ishikawa Bando, who fights on the samurai team, discarded his weapon! Is he planning on relying on his skill in ninjutsu!?" the announcer slapped the upper right corner of his forehead before nervously wiping the sweat trailing down his forehead. Because of the chaotic nature of the battle royale with over 100 active fighters brawling it out, it was a rare occasion that the announcer found the time to acknowledge one or another important development, though a samurai disarming proved to be one of those times.
"To use a weapon against you would be too troublesome. Maybe if I was at full strength, I could sever the line but… You've got my sword all tangled in your wire. It's not just any rod, you're fighting with a fishing rod," Ishikawa Bando tore open the bandages wrapped around his exposed and swollen forearms, revealing sealing glyphs tattooed on the sides of his wrists and forearms. Given the ronin's background as the head of the Secret Ninja Tribe of Iga, all the ink decorating his scarred and chiseled body was related to seals concealing hidden weaponry or sealed techniques to deploy when he didn't have the time for hand seals or chanting their name.
A heavy stone shifted from the pile, slipping off and down on the ground with the dirty and grazed with minor bruises pirate revealing himself to be well. He had lost his captain hat in the messy wreckage of his crash, though the round pirate didn't appear to be too worked up about it. He just stretched his head to the sides and cracked his neck, rolled his knuckles, and cracked them before picking the fallen rod back up.
"My father was a fisherman when I was kidnapped by pirates to be exploited as cannon fodder. I didn't have much time to learn how to fight so I used the tools and skills I knew to shape a dangerous fighting style that effectively dismantles opponents I faced most often in the seas–armed warriors, be they pirates or sailors," the pirate captain explained with a content squint of his eyes and a polite smile on his face. "Countless died hooked and tangled in my line, but don't think that you were the first to figure out that fighting me with a weapon is hopeless and challenging me hand-to-hand was the key…"
Wrapping his arms around his knees and rolling into a human cannonball, the pirate captain shot off into the air, bouncing off of the ground and propelling himself at the disarmed samurai. Before he even made contact, the pirate unraveled and began spinning around vertically, creating a draft of attracting air currents that threw opponents off balance and pulled them in closer to the nimble pirate fisherman.
With blinding speed, the arms of the pirate worked like a machine gun, slamming into the stiff-moving samurai's ribs and utterly crushing them to powder. Instead of blood, however, Ishikawa Bando spat out smoke of dust just microseconds before his entire body disappeared into a dust cloud and a lone sheathed katana flopped out from the smoke with the scabbard having taken so much damage from the sudden beatdown that it shattered into pieces, leaving just an exposed sword rolling around on the ground.
Time seemed to halt. Colors became bland before a crossing flash of light brought vividness with a metal screech. With two windmill shuriken in hand, Ishikawa Bando dashed past the pirate captain and ripped his clothes up while opening the pirate's chest and back with deep carves of the shuriken slices front and back. Bando straightened his back and shook the trailing blood off of the windmill shuriken he held in each hand, turning around and flinging both of them at the pirate parallel to one another.
The fisherman pirate dropped to his knees with one hand for support. He leaned under the path of the first windmill shuriken but the second was so neatly concealed underneath the first that the ducking pirate had little option but to raise his hand for a block and grunt in pain when the blade imbedded itself through his arm and splashed crimson splatters across the pirate's face.
"Hmm… You've got a rock-hard body, fisherman's son, I'll hand you that. My windmill shuriken would've cut through the arm and sliced clean through the rest of the body of most opponents," Ishikawa Bando acknowledged his opponent's toughness. "Then again, I'm beat half to death, so my throwing arm ain't what it's supposed to be."
"Indeed, I commend you, samurai," the pirate straightened his body up with a light push of his right arm that positioned him up straight. He didn't bother to pull the stuck shuriken out and open the bloody floodgate. He'd just have to sit through the rest of this competition with a cross-shaped blade stuck through his forearm. "Seeing a swordsman, a samurai who's supposed to fight with honor, not to mention one beaten to an inch of their life, I fully expected a simple victory. Yet you've pushed me to a wall I only reach warring against other pirate captains."
"That so?" Ishikawa Bando stretched his right side, trying to gnash his teeth through the dislocated shoulder, the burns covering his body, and the cuts. To count just those was to forget about a lifetime of cuts, bruises, shiners, burns, and scars of all sizes that were dragging the old ronin down for a long sleep.
The chubby pirate began waving his hands and moving as if performing warm-up exercises or doing yoga right in front of his opponent. This baffled Bando but given how short of tricks he was right now, disarmed and having spent and flung away his windmill shuriken too, he didn't risk trying to interrupt an ace technique he had no idea about with an empty arsenal and a half-assed response.
The fisherman's son thrust an open palm, then lightly moved it face forward to his own face. With the free hand of his injured arm, he tapped it, forming a fist that howled with air pressure. All of this air pressure only grew larger and more ferocious when bolstered with more chakra, or guts, as pirates knew it. Going through a myriad of exotic-looking hand seals, the pirate captain completed his combination with a forward thrust hand seal resembling an open tiger's mouth, launching the compressed air pressure with a ripping white gale that expanded into a gigantic tiger-shaped construct of compressed air.
"Catfish Mouth!" the pirate chanted, coining a name of his borrowed technique from the Leaf's own Strong Fist taijutsu style. Without a doubt, the pirate encountered a Strong Fist user employing the Daytime Tiger before, adapting the technique with what he had and, instead of relying on pure taijutsu mastery and opening the Inner Gates, the pirate captain employed the borrowed technique raw and bolstered only by his own physical strength and speed.
"Damn it…" Ishikawa Bando grumbled, covering himself up and bracing for the absurdly powerful impact of the all-devouring tiger's mouth. Weary glued his feet to the tiles, his thighs burned with so much fatigue that they completely refused to move one step to the side. Not that even multiple dashes would've done the trick. "Heh, stupid spirit… You had to go ahead and ruin my death wish. Now I don't even have the will to keep fighting and looking for my death anymore. I guess if I'm not looking to die, this whole tournament is useless. Time to begin my new life then…" Bando smirked and lowered his guard.
A vicious howl threatened to deafen both the surrounding combatants and the spectators in the audience as they covered their ears and dove behind or under anything nearby. A whirling dome of unraveling air pressure ripped through the arena, flinging the unconscious and ravaged body of Ishikawa Bando out of bounds to be scooped up by the pink-robed, shrouded healers and quickly carried away to the infirmary.
"The pirate captain Lao Zhuzi has just eliminated Ishikawa Bando from the competition! The samurai to split the cursed flame, the man who held his arms up, no matter what, the founder of the now-defunct Secret Ninja Tribe of Iga! Yet even brought to his wit's end, Bando brought one hell of a fight to Lao and now the master of the Catfish Mouth technique finds himself in the same position he sought to exploit–wounded, worn out, and at the edge of the arena! Will someone fall for the same trap and attack the captain, lured by the prospects of an easy elimination!? Right now, we have 119 fighters still left in the competition, but this is bound to change at any moment!" the announcer reported.
A man was sitting patiently on his bent legs, hands neatly placed on his lap. While violent chaos brewed around him, this martial artist dressed in a tight black bodysuit with lime-colored lightning-shaped motifs spread throughout and a baggy black dogi, rocking a pompadour hairstyle and donning a red headband tied around his forehead appeared to be meditating about something. It certainly felt like an odd tactic in the middle of a battle royale, but it lasted this martial artist this long.
Unpleasant, corrupting miasma lingered around the area where the man silently meditated, having turned off all bonds to the physical world around him. It was this choking scent of mania persisting like a shroud that made the other fighters unwillingly wander off and around the area while a silent dread stalked his next target. Haunting noises of shambling feet and a chilling wind brushing against nothing solid in particular, only stirring the eerie aura of the surroundings emanated from behind the meditating martial artist, but it didn't seem to disturb the man's meditation.
Not even when the blood-curdling face of The Haunt appeared behind the meditating man with a sharpened chunk of stone, he held over the fighter's head did the meditating pompadour move an inch or open his eyes. A shocking crack resonated through the area, making some of the bruising fighters turn toward that awful sound and temporarily postpone their violent bouts to gander at this harrowing sight.
"What the fuck gives, you asshole!?" the martial artist in black dogi turned around to look at the looming threat of Uminawa Derk, the serial killer who terrorized the Water Country archipelago with relative impunity and had a background with the notorious Demon Corps of Kirigakure. Completely unbothered by the grim appearance of his opponent or his size, the man with a split and ruined pompadour stood up and approached the inhuman dread measuring up before him. "You wanna go?" the fighter grumbled while shaking the crumbled pebbles from the smashed stone platform out of his baggy clothes.
Instead of providing his opponent with an answer he demanded, Uminawa Derk took a step forward. Almost immediately, a jumping kick to the face rumbled with a ferocious sound and made the stunned serial killer stagger back. Looking confident about his skill, the martial artist performed several katas, switching stances with textbook and elegant motion before crossing his arms by his waist and expelling a lively shout from his chest. A forceful shockwave resonated around the martial artist, sparking the surrounding air with minor sparks of red electricity.
The Haunt began walking forward again. Defining madness and expecting something different from before to come out of such a bold approach. A fluid yet stiff right kick that flexed at the very end, perfecting the economy of motion to rock the serial killer's neck again greeted the approaching killer while the martial artist transitioned to a straight punch to the solar plexus that was undoubtedly meant to shut his opponent down and leave him open for a proper pummeling.
Except for the part where it didn't. Instead, a bold and muscular arm reached out within grabbing distance, and a hand covered by fingerless gloves locked around the fighter's throat, elevating him off the ground. Swinging and dangling his feet around, the choking martial artist delivered a couple of kicks to the side of The Haunt's head, rocking him once from each side, but this proved fruitless and there was no pain or humanity shining through the flayed mask that Uminawa Derk wore. The eye holes were black, as always.
The killer raised his hand, straightening it and making it look like a pretend blade. With a revolting, fleshy rip sound, The Haunt proved that there was nothing pretend about it as he impaled the martial artist on his flexed hand. Shocked, the choking fighter spat out blood. It didn't seem like The Haunt was quite finished with his rampage, as he flipped the fighter over his head and flattened him on the other side, punch-stabbing him under the breast again and pinning him to the floor as Derk's hand cracked through his opponent and embedded into the tiles and the ring itself.
Unlike the feeble victims he disposed of similarly in his home country and the prison, this flashy martial artist wrapped his legs around The Haunt's arm and placed his feet to the killer's face, forcefully numbing the arm with a push that cracked both The Haunt's neck and his dislocated shoulder, causing the serial killer's whole right side to go numb. This freed that tagged and bleeding fighter to roll backward and slip off his baggy dogi from his shoulders, performing another kata while flexing the core of his body to become adamant.
The gaping wounds under the fighter's right breast and in his waist shut closed as if eyelids commanded him to close. Barely a drop of blood more sprinkled through the tight bodysuit of the martial artist as he performed more kata and transitioned through different stances to adopt the right one, from which he could execute his planned attack.
Without dashing or moving one bit from the ground, instead drawing balance for additional power from it, the martial artist shoved his right foot into The Haunt's cheek, where the numbed arm didn't let the killer defend himself. With Uminawa Derk staggering back, his opponent spread his legs for a bountiful step that brought his center of balance as down low as possible. The red sparkles became so intense around the area of the shooting right cross that the fist itself looked to be bright red, like molten metal. A vibrant shockwave of red light burst outward through the Haunt's back after the devastating punch to the liver connected. Immense force transferred cleanly through the serial killer's body, causing severe damage to his organs. This time it was Uminawa Derk's mask hole that spewed blood-colored bile and soiled the flayed face he wore.
"Lunging Moon!" the martial artist barked out after a successful connection of his punch to the gut of the monstrous man. Even the immovable demon that was The Haunt staggered on the knees and went limp like a sack of potatoes. Yet again without jumping, instead using the ground under his feet for balance and additional force, the fighter tossed a high front kick to the chin that completely ripped The Haunt's flayed mask to skin shreds and exposed the dirty face of Uminawa Derk underneath.
Despite the titanic toughness of the serial killer or his size, the kick shot him into the air. Seeing his opponent airborne, the martial artist switched between different kata until he could take a lunging stance and wind up another devastating straight right. It had to be at just the right moment–just when the center of Uminawa Derk's back was perfectly vertical to the horizontal cross. The fist of the man with the ruined pompadour turned boiling red again and emitted a shine that felt scolding just to look at.
"Lunging Moon!" the martial artist shouted out while crashing his lunging straight punch and all the force packed therein straight into the exposed back of his falling foe. The force dented Uminawa Derk backward and sent him shooting across the arena and smashing straight into the protective wall outside of it.
"Incredible! Jonisucho, the many-times world champion of the Hand Fist fighting style, has eliminated the horrid Haunt! Both fighters were incredibly skilled with their hands, but in the end, the polished skill and mastery of Jonisucho prevailed over the confident savagery of the Haunt! 118 fighters still competing for their spot in the Top 16 and moving on to the main course of the Top 16 tournament!" the announcer's voice growled, hyping up the crowd.
The medical staff didn't exactly break their necks at the pace at which they hurried to assist Uminawa Derk. A few bolder masked staff members gently tried creeping up on the fallen giant, but when The Haunt sat right up and turned to the nearest approaching staffer, the terrified healer shook his head frantically, and all the approaching healers scurried off. The Haunt stood up and gazed at the chaos brewing in the arena for a few passing moments, but at some point, when a curious audience member checked on if the Haunt was still standing–there was no more trace of him.
In that way, The Haunt earned his place rent-free in the minds of the audience members trying to find him. Like a hornet that flew into the room on a hot summer day, it didn't let the beholder breathe without checking around every corner around them, for if The Haunt didn't decide to resume his senseless ripping in the audience stands.