"Wind Release: Beast Tearing Gale Palm!" a feminine voice called out from the northern side of the arena. A kunoichi with a sleeveless, long, and checkered pink kimono wound her right arm back. A mass of Wind Release chakra surged through the arm, creating a bestial construct of bright blue chakra with sharp talon-like claws. With reckless abandon, the young woman swiped her chakra-construct arm with a hammering smash aimed at Hideo l'Ollonais who was walking away from an attempt at his life.
With a troubled expression, the Pirate Lord pulled his saber out and waved his right arm with a carefree, elegant, and almost weightless motion. It seemed as if the flexibility that defined his light movements had transcended his arm and came to define the rigid steel of his blade as the saber swung about like cookie dough. It switched its color to a bright pinkish hue and became much puffier in texture, almost like it was molded from actual dough as opposed to steel.
The pink dough sword flapped about, swinging fast enough to accumulate weight in the upper portion of the sword and becoming almost hammer-like. "Macaron Blade!" L'Ollonais chanted out, swatting the crashing Gale Palm aside from squashing him and leaving it to smash to his left while he wound his flabby cookie blade back and swung it forward. With a delicious pop, the dough detached from the sword hilt and spun in a homing motion toward the young woman in a pink kimono and long black-colored hair. The young woman gasped as the macaron dough wrapped around her and appeared to stick to her like actual cookie dough.
"Young lady, I'll have you know that even if you are a woman, I don't take assaults against my personage lightly. A true gentleman must respect himself, after all. Otherwise, his peers and the grander society at large won't respect him," L'Ollonais pulled his coat forward while spitting in his open white-gloved hand with jarring holes and running his hand across his hair to make them appear slicker and more orderly. "I shall need to hear a believable reason you've attacked me because your sneak attack came suspiciously close to that other slimy wretch I've captured. Have in mind, young lady, that I am not above employing torture to get my answers."
"That woman you've captured, she's got a bounty on her head, dead or alive, in both Konohagakure and Kirigakure. She's a notorious spy who doesn't work for any single country's administration but accepts contracts from criminal organizations and missing ninja," grunting through her efforts to wrestle herself out of the macaron dough she ended up wrapped in, the woman of blush-colored eyes showed her teeth that appeared to be more resembling canine fangs than it was usual to see on a person. Given how such concepts as hosting Tailed Beasts, the Inuzuka or the Nekomata clans both existed, some bestial features to a ninja's appearance weren't entirely an alien sight, but this young lady had neither of Inuzuka nor Nekomata clans' other signature features and appeared to be fully capable of concealing her canines before which was why this revelation struck as confusing now.
"I see, I am grateful for your decision to give me so much valuable information, young lady," L'Ollonais bowed with elegance and grace, befitting a gentleman he thought himself to be. "If you agree to cease your hunt for the status of being the one to best the fabled Pirate Lord Green, Hideo l'Ollonais, I shall release you and we can both be on our way. I'd say you've redeemed your temporary, youthful lapse in judgment."
"Sorry, old man…" the young woman grinding her canines with a face strained with effort and eyes that began shifting from tranquil, blush-colored irises without a pupil to something more predatory and primal growled. "You've been in more than one tough fight already and you're holding yourself back in each one, lying to yourself about being some gentleman type. I think I can actually take you now, and if someone doesn't, we might not get another shot as sweet as this!"
"Do you really think that…?" Hideo l'Ollonais sighed, crossing his arms with boundless confidence oozing from his tease that never wrapped up as, with a resounding pop, the macaron bindings restraining the wild woman snapped into torn strings and flapped around. The noise and splatter of the candy dough made L'Ollonais cover himself up and stagger a few steps back. "What bestial strength…!" the Pirate Lord gasped to himself.
"Beast Halo Dance!" the freed woman snarled, crossing up her arms to her sides as the flesh on her bones began tearing and bursting with white fur coming up from underneath. The arms of the young woman lengthened a great deal because of this partial transformation. Snow-white and pure fur-covered arms of black skin that grew into steel-sharp, elongated talons at the end that seemed fully capable of flaying a man with one good swipe.
Blazing masses of flame surrounded the young lady's arms, igniting them up to the forearm as she swiped them and sent flaming rings smashing into the ground where Hideo l'Ollonais stood just now. L'Ollonais dashed away, bolting with impeccable running technique and waving his arms by his side as if he had not a single care in the world. No matter how fast he thought he might have been, the kunoichi wearing a headband with the "ZZZ" carved onto the metal plate dashed at him with her bestial arm wound back.
Without his sword at the ready, L'Ollonais couldn't have performed the enigmatic Delabara Chopper that did the sneaky spy in just a few moments earlier. With his left arm bent behind his back, L'Ollonais leaned away from the first savage swipe, pulling a hand cannon out and shooting straight at the second swiping hand. The kunoichi from Yumegakure grunted in pain as the aftershock from the point-blank hand cannon blast reeled her wolf arm back while forming a concussive blast between her and her target.
Having skidded farther back from the partially transformed Yumegakure kunoichi, L'Ollonais grabbed his belt and crudely yanked it out. Lashing with it like a whip, he swung it over his head while channeling his guts to coat it wholly before sending it to wrap around the young woman's forehead. The partial transformation began affecting the rather subtle beauty of the young Yumegakure girl as her fangs began malforming the proportions of her face and her eyes adopted an animalistic appearance while rippling her usually tender and pale face with veins.
"Tortuga Woolding!" L'Ollonais shouted out, sending a wave of guts washing across the leather strap as he pulled it back and put the squeeze on the young woman's head, driving her to her knees and leaving her helpless as the leathery strap threatened to squeeze her eyes out from the sockets or utterly crush her head, whichever came first. The energy flowing through the belt strap made the torturous binding nearly unbreakable unless opposed by a greater influx of chakra.
The Pirate Lord's gaze tightened with focus as his opponent's head pulsed with a fleshy twitch. Something malicious was occurring underneath the young woman's skin. Her entire head appeared to become washed out in the overflowing chakra leaking from her body as if her contours had become mere inky blotches and her bodily shapes and build were malleable. The immense chakra pressure from whatever this chakra molding method was caused L'Ollonais' belt to rip to shreds, despite the overwhelming coating that the Pirate Lord had applied.
Snarling and drooling from the mouth, frothing and exhaling vapors that smelled of blood and guts, the young kunoichi curled over and began tearing her very flesh apart with her metallic talons that took no time at all before turning blood-red from her own viscera. This unorthodox method of self-mutilating combat confused the Pirate Lord and made him stagger back. Throughout this engagement, he had squandered a lot of his usual arsenal, locking him out of a lot of his usual techniques. It may have been that his opponent was now open to employing her hidden aces, whereas L'Ollonais played out his hand already.
Instead of exposed nerves and muscle tissue, underneath the bubbling and morphing skin of the Yumegakure ninja was more fur. The animalistic kunoichi tore her flesh apart and tossed it away like some skinsuit, with patches of her skin, hair, and flesh sticking to her hooked metal talons while her newly revealed white canine face licked the gore still stuck to her claws.
"And we've finally seen it!" the announcer turned his attention to the bout between the Pirate Lord and the Yumegakure kunoichi at last. "Tenro Neruko is a kunoichi from Yumegakure. Not to be confused with the Dream Country, or the Land of Dreams, a desolate and rancid island far away to the northwest, Yumegakure is a ninja village in the outskirts of Fire Country ruled by the Tenro Clan. Members of the Tenro Clan can transform into wolf-like creatures and they employ this devastating hidden technique in combat alongside their ninjutsu techniques! This is exactly what we're witnessing right now! How will the weary Pirate Lord, who's been the target of many challengers and spent so much fending them off, already will answer this odd transformation technique?"
Fully transformed, Neruko swiped her claws and send a splattering splash of blood at the taken-aback Pirate Lord. She howled as if calling out to the moon that was hours away from rising, causing the blood to shine as if it had been decorated with glitter particles. Without warning, each drop of blood ripped with a devastating blast that tore the coat and the shirt off of the chest of the Pirate Lord and left him stumbling out of the blast zone shirtless, with only his messy hair still keeping the ribbon that held it together in a ponytail-like style to reflect on his self-prescribed civility.
"Incredible! It appears that Neruko Tenra can employ Explosive Release, an Advanced Bloodline technique! While the wolf form of the Tenra Clan allows the user to keep their intelligence and skill of their human form, it might be difficult to employ some ninjutsu because of the lack of subtle fingers and thumbs, capable of finer and more precise motions like hand seals! Brilliant contestant Neruko appears to have bypassed this limitation by channeling her Advanced Bloodline ability through her literal blood!" the announcer worked overtime to prevent the spectators from rendering themselves bald by scratching their heads too hard out of confusion as to why spontaneous explosions were occurring in the arena, given how Neruko lacked the tongue or the physiology to explain much of anything she did and Hideo l'Ollonais was not too familiar with finer aspects of ninjutsu to put it all together himself.
"Push me to a corner, will you?" L'Ollonais wiped the blood off his cracked forehead and his busted lip, realizing that the intense heat from the blast had cauterized his wounds and dried the blood dripping from the grazes and cuts on his face and body. "I'm afraid that you won't like what comes out very much, landlubber!"
Pressing his hands together and weaving his fingers, Pirate Lord Green drew an excessive amount of air into his lungs, inflating his exposed chest to several times its usual capacity. He choked up, realizing that the air this deep into Wind Country was too dry to draw from the humidity of the air to perform Water Release techniques. Hideo's folly gave Neruko an opening to pounce across the air with a turning mid-air push kick of her hind leg.
Neruko's entire body which had been drenched in the blood of the flesh she shed to assume her form lit up with a blazing glow. The werewolf kunoichi leaped into the air, swinging her captive around her axis before focusing on the blazing glow in just the arm that held Hideo l'Ollonais in it. The focused Explosive Release let out an outward concussive wave blast that, added to Neruko's newly gained physical strength of her werewolf form, allowed her to fling l'Ollonais across most of the arena, smashing through rocks and swatting many competitors aside like pins.
Roaring and snarling, Neruko dashed in pursuit of her opponent, or her prey, as she saw it, pouncing across different altitudes and stacks of debris while using an all-fours canine stance for movement. Wheezing and coughing, l'Ollonais dragged himself off the ground and straightened his back, preparing to confront his approaching opponent. He smacked his hands together in a clap. Turning into a collapsing pile of crimson syrup while Neruko swiped her talon claws about with mindless and rage-led thrashing, burrowing through the sticky pile of red and sweet goop in mere seconds.
"You should have been more mindful of where you moved the battle to after you gained control of it, filthy beast," L'Ollonais noted, forming a finger formation that resembled no hand seal that any ninja had ever employed and looked more like an accessory of an exuberant pose rather than an element to aid one's meditation. "Tortuga Cutlass!" L'Ollonais barked out, drawing in jets of nearby pooled water as opposed to attempting to draw humidity from the drenched desert air itself.
This time, the thin and focused stream that spewed out of L'Ollonais' mouth cut deep into Neruko's flesh, cutting through her on its way up like an actual sword would have, if not more successfully. The glowing red eyes of the snarling beast bulged out, and her expression changed to profound sadness as the horrified werewolf whined out a pitiful wail and collapsed on her back with her tongue flopping out. L'Ollonais approached the fallen beast and plunged his hand into the werewolf's exposed innards, pulling out the slender frame of the kunoichi whose flesh she previously shed to assume the bestial form.
Raising the unconscious body of the young woman over his head and displaying the opponent he had bested for all to see, L'Ollonais raised his voice so that every craven looking for an easy and worthwhile elimination to weigh their chances more carefully.
"As I have plunged this maiden from the chest of the beast she's turned into, I shall plunge the heart out of my next challenger if you show me not another way!" L'Ollonais declared before flinging the nude yet dripping with organs and viscera and slumbering body of the young woman to the warm pool of water outside the arena's bounds.
"Pirate Lord Hideo l'Ollonais has defeated Neruko Tenro, the werewolf kunoichi from Yumegakure!" the announcer declared. "With a bold proclamation to boot, if more challengers seek to test the Pirate Lord's mettle, they'll meet the real man labeled the Bane of the Rain, as opposed to the cold and calculated gentleman the Pirate Lord has become after becoming a noble chief of countless pirate crews!"
A bird-shaped Cursed Warrior of a black, cracked body littered with glowing mosaic patterns with segmented finger-like wings and a massive head with a crown of four spikes on the top and a long, hummingbird-like beak soared over the battlefield, spinning its wings about and creating an azure dome shockwave that swatted dozens of brawling competitors aside. The Cursed Warrior had taken some damage before, making it go absolutely nuts as it soared on what it considered to be its swan song.
A ball of polished red steel shell with round openings flashing magma-orange from inside slammed into the core of the flying Cursed Warrior. Whirling jets of nuclear fusion flames shot out from the venting openings of the play ball's sides and the mechanical ball smashed into the soaring super-weapon with a fiery halo and a deafening crack. The hummingbird-shaped Cursed Warrior spread its finger wings to the sides and clamored with a high-pitched wail that resonated with varied pitches and quaked the ground from the intense vocal vibrations.
Suddenly, the play-ball sprouted black blades on the side, like wings, expelling more jet fuel from the venting fumes as it forced its way through the Cursed Warrior and high into the sky, turning around and navigating in a majestic arced trajectory only to be caught by a broad-shouldered goliath wearing armor built out of similar technology to the play-ball. The gutsy Fusion Ball ace Ryoku Genshi, who was blinded by his earlier encounter with Fusho Yakubu, the serial killer who sent his victims to a drug-induced trance where the serial killer haunted their tripping visions and finished them off.
Guided only by the sensory input of his helmet, Ryoku Genshi found the largest target around and heaved his play ball at it, figuring that he couldn't have possibly missed something that large. His incredible gamble played off, even if he was aiming toward the vague orange outlines detailing the sky-bound opponent he was dealing with. The Cursed Warrior littered with countless chained explosions before flinging away various body parts and wing segments and collapsing to the ground, utterly broken apart.
"Unbelievable! What grit, what determination to see the game through to the end!" the announcer shrieked out, seeing another Cursed Warrior fall to the most unlikely of opponents, the audience went absolutely wild as this colossal ten had become the crowd favorite alongside the Salvari who always had the soft spot in the spectators' heart due to being local heroes and adored as the gods of the arena. "Ryoku Genshi, the Fusion Ball powerhouse downed Cursed Warrior Batsula!"
Stuffing the nuclear fusion powered play-ball underneath his armored armpit, panting and bleeding from his eviscerated eyes but adamant about seeing the game to the end for the sake of his sport and for the sake of these hollowed grounds of entertainment becoming the home of the World Sports Games, Ryoku Genshi stumbled but kept pushing on. With a clamorous roar, holding his play ball in his armpit, he charged with his shoulder put up and tackled a whole heap of contestants that the Cursed Warrior Batsula was just flinging around.
"We've got 106 contestants remaining in the battle royale, yet already there are signs of extreme fatigue and weary in the survivors! To survive until the end in a competition this gruesome, one must be more than just tough–they have to be clever as well, but if you try your hardest to avoid battle, you'll become a target for all the scorned meatheads that try to plow through all competition! There just doesn't seem to be a winning strategy! You just got to be the very best warrior to come out on top!" the announcer said while scanning the battlefield for more noteworthy encounters.