Something rancid and inhuman awakened within the choking Pirate Lord. In a rather ungentlemanly feat completely unlike him, L'Ollonais threw swung his feet forward and then stomped them at the back of the stone platform he was being hung by. Using his feet for counterbalance, the breathless Pirate Lord pushed his neck and head off just a few centimeters, but it seemed to be just enough for what L'Ollonais had in mind.
Thrusting his head back, L'Ollonais shattered the stone pillar, causing a tremendous imbalance in the loop that was wrapped around his throat. The veteran buccaneer forced his fingers into the loop and widened it through sheer force, pulling away from what could have been his end if he drained more chakra by continuing to support his body and preventing the steel wire from slicing his neck.
"Foul and sneaky woman. I'll let you know you're acting against your own best interests here…" L'Ollonais croaked, bent over in a hunch while flexing his numbed limbs as the tight squeeze around his throat deprived them of an alarming amount of oxygen. "When my back is against the wall, an uncanny monster is awakened within me. I'll assure you that you would much rather be dealing with L'Ollonais the gentleman than L'Ollonais the Bane of the Rain."
"Oh, I'm well aware of your exploits, L'Ollonais," the spy woman smirked with a decent effort at masking her disappointment while reeling the steel wire back into her gadget that spewed it in extreme amounts. "If I had any decency of my own, your raids on Amegakure would have appalled me. Did you really need the company of eight pirate captains to rob disaster relief supplies, though?"
"It wasn't to help me fend off the Amegakure ninja. I needed their ships for more space, to carry off more loot. Every village and every country sent their own relief packages, which was well over 260 trillion ryo we made out with. It took L'Ollonais the gentleman to plot this job and L'Ollonais the Pirate Lord to rake us off the piece of that pie," L'Ollonais barked out, throwing his arms to the sides after massaging his numb wrists and shins to regain some freedom of motion and feeling in his limbs.
Instead of rushing toward his opponent, L'Ollonais charged toward his weapon. Using the claw launcher gadget in her pouch, the spy in the red dress shot out a hook that attached itself to a wing of a bypassing Cursed Warrior and went along for the ride. Strangely enough, the grip of the steel hook didn't seem to register with the condor-shaped Cursed Warrior. Having gained enough altitude, the spy woman reached for the pouch attached to her other thigh, pulling out a horizontal cone attached to a puffy and bloated bag. A device that looked like a fancy perfume spray.
The claw attached to the Cursed Warrior snapped open, releasing the female spy into a daring flight through the air as she pressed her legs together, masterfully rolling and shifting directions of her turning to manipulate the red strands of her dress to prevent flashing something she wouldn't have wanted to showcase. In this daring aerial pirouette, the spy woman aimed the cone of her perfume spray at the running Pirate Lord and squeezed the sack below it hard.
A mechanical rattling sound accompanied a spewing line of black nails that sprayed from the center of the cone. The conical shape of the gadget streamlined the spray of the improvised nail-gun gadget and sent the obsidian bolts ripping straight at the intended target. The spy woman was quite the sharpshooter too, as even with her impressive flight trick, she nailed the back of her opponent just as he picked his fallen saber off the ground and prepared to turn around to block the incoming hail of nails.
"Campeche Ruse!" L'Ollonais' skewered lookalike wheezed out before collapsing into a puddle of crimson jam. Upon landing on her heels and leaning down to her knees from the inertia of her superhuman landing, the spy codenamed Kotlin just tsked with her tongue and straightened her back, turning and aiming around her with her nail-gun spray before dropping it to the side looking for a swift gadget switch.
"Delabara Chopper!" L'Ollonais yelled out from a farther location than Kotlin would've anticipated it from. Kotlin turned around, slashing with a flat blade of tempered steel in hand, having slipped it out from her revealing red dress in an instant. And yet, despite the flawless utilization of crossed belts and leather frames concealing dozens of different gadgets underneath her tight red dress, Kotlin swiped at thin air.
A large protruding piece of debris split, revealing the true L'Ollonais to be lurking behind it. Kotlin raised her right eyebrow, wondering just what her esteemed and highly feared target had in mind. That was when she realized that something was off. Not only did she feel a tremendous lightness in her entire body, but it appeared as if though she had grown massive. No… Perhaps the entire battlefield had shrunken down before her?
"Wh-What's going on!?" the announcer bawled out, leaning over the railing while he screamed from the top of his lungs, expressing an apt amount of shock given what he was witnessing. "L'Ollonais had utterly skewered the spy codenamed Kotlin to tiny bits, quartering her to pieces while hiding from behind a rock!"
"Quartering me to pieces? What is that greaseball talking abou…" Kotlin mumbled to herself before turning her head down and blanking out in a state of disbelief. Her gorgeous and subtle jaw shot wide open in a most unladylike expression of untold awe and her alluring tiger-colored eyes went blank and dulled out. It wasn't that Kotlin had turned her head down, she rolled her entire head down and witnessed the fact that her body had split into pieces.
Oddly enough, L'Ollonais didn't truly quarter her, nor did he spill a drop of her blood. Her body parts looked perfectly fine, almost as if they were always intended to be this way. The stumps where they were chopped up and severed, sent bouncing about on their own way, had been wholly covered with baby-smooth, sun-kissed skin. What served as a similar source of shock to Kotlin was the fact that she didn't lose the feeling in any of her limbs. In fact, when she tried acting upon those feelings, the appropriate limb, severed and sent bouncing away like a balloon as it was, moved appropriately to Kotlin's command.
"See? I told you I'd be beheading you after all…" L'Ollonais tossed the back of his saber over his shoulder. "You think you're so agile, sneaky, and smart, but no one expects getting turned into a doll and disassembled like that. People's reactions make me feel richer than I actually am every time!" the Pirate Lord guffawed in a manic cackle, leaning over to prevent the stretch in his gut that made it feel like the laughter would split his innards open from the pressure.
"What is this technique!?" Kotlin muttered, proving that her severed, floating head worked alongside her torso and the lungs contained within just fine, despite the two parts being more than a few paces away from one another.
"It's a technique used by the locals of the Delabara Island, found far away to the South-West. The locals use this technique to baffle their attackers, they make bears and foreign raiders scatter into pieces while they make their getaway to safety. That's what kept that island safe throughout the centuries, even though the locals are a bunch of naïve, weakling hicks. A captain under my employ by the name of Sancarlot learned it from the locals by pretending to be a starved and helpless shipwreck survivor, then brought it back to me. Since the island is now mine and I killed Sancarlot to prevent anyone else from learning the technique–I am the only living user of it at the moment," L'Ollonais opened himself up by spreading his arms out to the sides and bowing, almost challenging the helpless Kotlin to make a move on him somehow, if she even could.
"Why am I not surprised that the salt of the Earth under your flag uses an escape and rescue technique for violence?" Kotlin rolled her eyes, acting disinterested in her current predicament as her body parts continued to bounce apart further and further from each other.
"That's true," L'Ollonais waved the tip of his sword at Kotlin's floating head. "Oddly enough, it never occurred to the Delabarans to use their hidden technique like this…"
L'Ollonais reached for his belt, throwing the back of his coat backward as he pulled out a wide, pipe-shaped barrel of a hand cannon and aimed it at the left arm of Kotlin. With a vicious bang, the cannon spewed an explosive marble wrapped up from explosive tags marauded off of the bodies of dead ninja thinking they could challenge L'Ollonais on his turf–the vast oceans washing the shores of the main continent and the rich archipelagos of islands around it.
The explosive ball ripped with a gruesome blast, tearing the severed arm up to leathery strips, almost like a balloon that popped utterly. To Kotlin's shock, her own severed arm collapsed to useless leathery rags down on the ground while L'Ollonais playfully rolled his hand cannon in his hand and blew into the fuming end of the barrel.
"Checkmate, spy-lady. I like to be efficient, so I'll hand the village you've scorned your head while keeping you alive and maximizing the payout!" L'Ollonais snorted out with wild, bloodshot eyes of a monster that lurked underneath the façade of a gentleman that the mysterious woman codenamed Kotlin awakened in him.
Methodically turning around and aiming his hand cannon while adopting a solemn and immovable look to his face, L'Ollonais blew up every spare part of Kotlin's keeping only the woman's head that he scooped out of the air where it hovered and pulled closer to his triangular captain's hat. With a shrill howl, space-time bent and swirled from underneath L'Ollonais' hat, absorbing Kotlin's head and sealing it away in a different dimension from which L'Ollonais could call it out at any time convenient to him.
"Umm… Well… Because of battlefield removal, I'll have to make an executive decision and call this in favor of Pirate Lord Green–Hideo l'Ollonais! 109 remain, ladies and gentlemen!" the announcer raised his right arm while the audience scratched their necks and looked at each other, wondering if they enjoyed the sight of this quirky bout that turned violence up to eleven at first, then stunned with impressive inventiveness and daring acrobatics only to end up extremely gimmicky.
A despondent swordsman dressed in a long teal bodysuit worn over the standard Kirigakure gray turtleneck haunted the arena with calm and collected steps. Unlike any other swordsman, this one carried his sword by holding it by the handle and placed it over his right shoulder, still sheathed. Despite rather unimpressive and standard attire for a Kirigakure ninja, the tall and slender man had rebellious platinum-colored hair with flashy tips that were colored like the yolk of an egg.
Oddly enough, no one that this Kirigakure ninja passed with his nonchalant and slow-paced strut across the arena bothered to engage him in battle. It was as if the suave aura that this one exuded shook off potential challengers alongside the bemused and stoic look of his brown eyes that lacked any pupils and relayed that this guy just couldn't be bothered to do anything more than yawn and slack around and if someone forced him to–he'd complain incessantly but not too much because any degree of honest effort seemed to be beyond this wandering soul.
"You should give up!" a critical voice called out to the Kirigakure swordsman, who dragged his feet all over the place. Upon being spoken to, the Kirigakure ninja stopped and looked up with all the excitement of a sloth. On top of a piece of rocky wreckage perched a shirtless man with a nest-like haircut and bright brown eyes. Despite being aptly dressed for the weather when rating him from the waist up, his lower half was a different thing entirely, being bundled alongside layers upon layers of fuzz and feathers decorating incredibly baggy trousers. Rubbery bands segmented the bloated trousers into sections and the Sky Warrior's legs seemed far longer than they should've been proportionate to the rest of his body.
"I guess…" the Kirigakure ninja yawned. "Okay, take care…" he turned around and began slowly dragging his feet like a shambling zombie toward the rightmost corner of the arena.
Making no noise, the Sky Warrior kicked off of his perch point and whirled around with what was to be a wicked roundhouse, far surpassing the one with which he eliminated his first opponent–a mercenary from the Fennec's crew wielding gunblades. With his free hand, the Kirigakure ninja weaved a couple of hand seals, picking up a wild gust that seemed to drain the inertia and the kinetic energy from the very roundhouse kick he was being attacked from behind with and formed a howling white gale around him.
Having lost all semblance of force behind his turn, the Sky Warrior flopped on the ground only to be sucked into the howling vortex, chewed up by the horrid wind, and spit right out rather unceremoniously. The platinum-haired Kirigakure ninja turned around with a slight downward tip to the corner of his lips, relaying a speck of irritation behind his usually blank stare.
"I liked your idea, so I was going to give up. But now that you've attacked me, I guess I'll have to deal with this challenge. I don't enjoy exerting myself too much, so you're going to get it for bothering me…" the brown-eyed ninja took his sword off his shoulder and extended his arm out with his still-sheathed katana sword.
"Typhoon Release? That's not one of the five basic elemental natures, so it must be an Advanced Bloodline. How could a carefree sloth like you learn something like that?" Ozigi the Sky Warrior wondered while picking himself off the ground and adopting a kick-favoring pose by raising his left leg and bending it by the knee while shielding his chest.
"Huh? What are you on about? That one's nothing special…" the eyes of the Kirigakure ninja squinted with disappointment and bother while his mouth dragged into a frustrated long face. "Man… Exerting yourself sucks so much…"
The Kirigakure ninja vanished from the place, stunning Ozigi with how suddenly he took initiative after expressing frustration at putting effort. Only blurs of teal and platinum relayed the fact that the Kirigakure swordsman was in motion. Floating around his unassuming opponent hundreds upon thousands of times, the Kirigakure swordsman appeared behind him upside down and sheathed his sword again before landing gracefully on his sandals and turning around while tapping his sword on his right shoulder.
"Are you going to defend yourself at all?" he asked nonchalantly while Ozigi burst into showers of blood when all the cuts revealed themselves. Grasping his sides and frothing blood from his desperate expression, Ozigi couldn't decide if he wanted to try to crawl away from the absolute monster he accidentally bumped into or to stand up and fight as a true Sky Warrior.
"Th-That's the Swift Release commonly practiced by Konohagakure and Kumogakure ninja!" the announcer called out a familiar technique just to explain to the stunned audience what had just happened. Even the trained eye of a Sky Warrior couldn't track his opponent's movements while employing this unruly movement technique, so a common spectator of martial arts competitions had no hope of seeing through anything at all. As far as their perceptions were concerned, the Kirigakure sloth stopped existing as soon as he moved one muscle.
"S-Swift Release… That's… Another Advanced Bloodline…" Ozigi coughed up while standing back up. His upper body was severely drained of energy, but the sheer force of his lower half let him pull himself together and force his limp upper half off the ground. "An Advanced Bloodline that drastically boosts one's movement speed likely employs Wind Release, so does this Typhoon Release of yours so it is possible that a single shinobi could learn both Advanced Bloodlines but… How can an unmotivated bum like you pick these monstrous abilities up?"
"Are you really just going to yap your mouth and keep making me exert myself and do all the moving around? Jeez…" the platinum-haired Kirigakure ninja rolled his eyes. He vanished yet again, becoming a swift blur, and even with full knowledge of Swift Release, all Ozigi could do was hunker down and keep bolstering his body with chakra while dashing around and making it harder for his opponent to pin him down.
Ozigi covered his front up as the image of his opponent froze before his eyes. At that moment, the Sky Warrior believed it was because of his impending absolute death as the monstrous swordsman from Kirigakure was quick enough to cut him tens of thousands of times before Ozigi could register a single movement, and yet he kept on pacing around, inflicting measly skin-deep cuts. It was only after a couple of blinks that the Sky Warrior realized that the reason his opponent's face stayed static before his horrified eyes was that his opponent stopped still directly in front of him.
"Whatever, man… This ain't worth the hassle. I'm going home," the swordsman sighed and turned around. "Takao got eliminated already, and he was the one who wanted to take part in this stupid tournament in the first place. I just wanna kick back and take it easy. Take care."
"T-Take care!" Ozigi freaked out when his opponent approached the edge of the arena and plunged his hands into the water, throwing it over his face to wash it down and refresh his sweaty and sandy pale face. "Just what kind of warrior are you?"
"The kind that hates this dry and scorching weather," the Kirigakure swordsman whined while removing his shoes and hopping off of the side of the arena, bouncing around and enjoying the cooler touch of the pool against his feet. "Man, you're a real downer aren't you, you got yourself a legitimate win against one of the Seven Ninja Swordsmen and all you can do is complain. You should enjoy your life more, cause then you'll hate it when someone like me comes at you trying to kill you and you'll die not having lived your life at all. Think about it next time…"
Stunned and bleeding out through thousands of skin-deep cuts, Ozigi watched the Kirigakure swordsman just walking away on the water's surface and into the aqueduct underneath the spectator platform that led the water to an oasis garden outside of the coliseum.
"Umm… It appears that Jin Mugakure has declared this competition "annoying" and left the arena on his own terms! As an audience with standards, we won't stand for this and count this as an elimination! Just narrowly, Ozigi the Sky Warrior avoided defeat against the overwhelming odds of facing one of the Seven Ninja Swordsmen! If that's not entertainment, I don't know what is!" the announcer turned to the audience which, despite his best attempts to salvage the situation by making Ozigi's survival seem more impressive than it actually was, looked more confused by the aloof behavior of the legendary ninja swordsman more than anything else.