"Such an inspirational story!" Serius exclaimed with his fist pressed to his armored chest. The conqueror's lip quivered while semi-formed tears undulated on the man's lower eyelid. "And did you overthrow the tyrannical Iron Country government as you promised?"
"Gee… I wonder about that…" Sachiko sighed with a husky groan, shaking her head full of bitter disappointment. To help her opponent catch on, she spread her arms and glanced herself down to accentuate the plain uniform attributed to someone working in the service industry and the lazy and undignified way she carried herself around with.
"B-But how! With the power of that little boy from the sky, you should have been invincible!" Serius barked in disbelief.
"I was. Plenty of other people weren't. At the end of the day, it was just another failed rebellion. It didn't take the samurai long before they realized the nature of my ability. They started hurting people I wasn't aware of, that weren't included in my ability. After I did a quick headcount of how many people I got killed, I became frustrated, I wanted to wind it back and save some lives, but the others wanted to press on and get this insurgency over with. In the end, our differences only furthered the divide and drove more people away from me. It's ironic but for a lady with the ability to turn the world around me into cartoons that can't get anyone killed, I'm responsible for more deaths than most manslayers," Sachiko grumbled, pulling on her collar with her finger to get some light breeze in and scratching her sandy neck.
"And yet you still live, despite your insurgency failing. Not only that, you are fighting alongside the Iron Country samurai you opposed…" Serius observed.
"Well, it's not like they could ever kill me, right? I cut all that kiddy rebellion stuff out and opened my own business, the Shogun was content at leaving it at that. Eventually, samurai even started showing their faces at my café…" Sachiko groaned. It was almost as if she knew how treacherous to her own childhood ideals all this sounded.
"So, what was it that the Shogun promised you to get you to fight for him?" Serius wondered. "Does he hold someone dear to you captive?"
"Have you met me?" Sachiko replied with an irritated grumble. "It's not like a woman who turns the world around her into cartoons is all that endearing to people. Not to mention, all the people I've lost making all the worst choices in life. I've long since begun to think that my life was better before I received this mark…"
"Ah! So the Shogun knows of a way to remove it?" Serius gasped in surprise. "I know the odds of you telling me, your opponent, this is are slim, but… Is there a way to remove it?"
"Heh…" Sachiko chuckled through a mean growl. "There is. After all my rebellious youth years, I've sought the world out for a way and I was so done with my life that I even told it to the Iron Shogun when we met to discuss this very tournament. He agreed to help me put those conditions together after we win this patch of land for him."
"A way to undo what someone so powerful has done? A ninja from outside of our very planet?" Serius shook his head in disbelief.
"Just like Ichi's parents alluded to, our ancestors used to fight those guys on somewhat even terms back in the day when the two clans went to war. Ancient knowledge was preserved in the Fire Temple that teaches how to remove Cursed Seals. Seals like the one Ichi placed on me are meant to fulfill a certain purpose. Once that purpose is fulfilled, the seal usually fades away. If the seal is meant to see someone killed, it disappears when that person dies. Ichi placed the Cursed Seal on me in order to protect me against the cruel world that would see me harmed. The monks believed that if I find someone I feel safe and protected with, if I feel true happiness, the seal would disappear," Sachiko explained, extending her wooden sword out as a challenge to the conqueror.
"Sounds to me like what you're looking for is true love," Serius smiled, crossing his arms. He knew that no martial arts stance and no weapon he might employ would help against the world of charm and whimsy that Sachiko could create through imagination and awareness alone.
"Yeah, but there's a major problem with that. Turns out that most phases of loving someone are also locked behind an age restriction in the world of cartoons. The accursed ability that protects me against the world also protects me from that which would undo it. I've lived most of my adult years numbing my consciousness with sleep and bad habits and yet a groggy fusspot you can't sleep with is a kind of deal breaker for most men," Sachiko sighed, deflating into a shriveled stance of self-loathing as she physically forced her head to stay up with her hand.
"An arranged marriage won't solve your problems, Sachiko. Don't worry though, now that I've heard your plight, I shall do everything within my power to help you!" Serius declared, pointing his finger at the woman with a dashing facial expression. A light shade of red flushed across Sachiko's cheeks as no one before had ever chased after her this way despite all the disadvantages, quirks, and dangers. She lived in one of the dourest and most frigid countries on Earth, under an extensively oppressive military regime that considered most ordinary people second-class citizens, was constantly irksome and sleepy, numbed and frustrated by her losses and all the wrong ways in which her life had taken her and she was searching for true love despite being unable to experience an important for most people part of it.
And yet Serius, someone clad in golden armor and thinking himself to be the King of the Continent and Seas of the World, the One and Only of His Kind, owning all that is, sought to conquer Sachiko's heart despite everything penned down as a con of that conquest.
"Well then, shall we work together?" Serius asked, extending his hand.
"That's what it's all about, isn't it? You just want to use my ability to secure your victory. I'm warning you, don't cross this line, unless you're willing to make a fool out of yourself," Sachiko clenched her fists and wiped her eyes which were moistening up while drawing a line on the sandy tiles in front of her with her heel.
"That is not what I meant by that. Before I can help you, I must win this tournament and make sure that nobody has a claim for my land," Serius insisted, calmly walking over the line that Sachiko drew on the sand and approaching so close to the woman that the two of them could have touched their noses if either of them leaned forward just a bit. "As King of the Continent and Seas of the World, the One and Only of His Kind, I own all that is, however, if my vassal I've entrusted taking care of this land hosts a tournament and loses that land to somebody else, that person has a rightful claim for my land. If I do not own all that is, I won't be able to help you as well as I could at the peak of my power."
Blushing, Sachiko took longer and longer steps back. Her legs extended like rubber, reaching handfuls to dozens of meters behind her as her right heel kept drawing new lines in the sand and the waitress swordswoman kept backing out from committing to proximity to the armored conqueror vying for her affections. Bold as ever, Serius took a step forward, seeking to cross yet another line just before he realized he was stepping off the arena's bounds. In a blink, a golden lance thrust out and into a grassy patch outside. Serius' teeth reared as he struggled far more than he should have kept himself pinned above ground outside of bounds. Cartoon physics must have taken over and even this balancing act was demanding supernatural effort on his part.
"Playing hard to get?" Serius wheezed out, leaning his entire heavyweight body forward to make his golden lance bend like a twig and then throw him back as it snapped back. The corners of Sachiko's lips turned upward as she couldn't help but feel impressed by how imaginatively Serius was adapting to her gag shenanigans and playing along the bent-out-of-proportion rules. "I'm afraid not trusting me will only prolong your struggle to rid yourself of this seal."
"It's not that I don't trust you," Sachiko admitted. "It's more that I know working with you will not work. You will never see me like your true love. You don't even see me that way right now. You don't want to protect me, you feel obligated to protect me because I'm someone you "own", isn't that right, King of Everything?"
"Is there something wrong with that? How does the fact that I feel indebted to protect like a shepherd protects their sheep makes you feel less safe?" Serius panted, leaning over after narrowly overcoming his most recent silly near-elimination.
"I'm an employee working in the service industry, silly. I know how devoted and passionate people are toward things they're obligated to do! As if I could ever feel safe under someone obligated to protect me!" Sachiko replied. With an elegant leap forward, she attacked her opponent with her bokken only for Serius to pull out a wooden stick of his own, and fend it off with a copycat fighting style and stance. The two became bound in a perfect deadlock of fencing skill, each finding openings and narrowly overcoming them while spraying sweat with cartoonish droplets sprinkling all over.
In an unexpected turn, Sachiko extended her hand and ceased the fencing competition before a crucial moment that might have settled it, even if it might have gone either way. From her rear, the silver-haired waitress pulled out a water bottle and turned it around in her hand, preparing to drink from it. Seeing Serius respecting her decision to take five, yet yearning for that sweet-looking refreshment, she offered it to the conqueror who appeared dumbstruck by the kindness and generosity shown to him. Yet, when he opened the water bottle, an outlandish amount of fizzy torrents blew him away, forcing him to rip his robe off his chest and tie it down to his fighting stick to improvise a kite and glide back into the bounds. Something that would've failed miserably were it not for the toon physics.
Dripping with fizzy foam and winded, Serius persisted in his attempt to win Sachiko over on his side. By now it became painfully obvious to the conqueror who prided himself on being able to speak the preferred language of any warrior that he could neither replicate Sachiko's uncanny abilities nor overcome them through any different fighting style. The only way for him to achieve his goal was to bend Sachiko's cartoon world while doing his best to play by its rules.
Yet once Serius straightened his back and reattached his majestic cape, letting it dance free in the air, and looked around, he could no longer see Sachiko anywhere near him. It was as if the woman had fully vanished from sight. For a moment there Serius wondered if the groggy waitress returned up onto the cliff he flopped from to go back to sleep and stop influencing the world around her with her reality-warping toon conversion abilities.
The ground underneath Serius' feet began rumbling. A ridge extended from a faraway region of the arena, burrowing through under the tiles and straight at him, as if a mole man was pursuing the conqueror. Leaning back and preparing to employ the full force of his imagination, Serius halted, overcome by terror when the burrowing dirt ridge reached him and stopped. The dirt popped, making Serius dash aside, but it wasn't some hairy mole monster that burst from underground–it was Sachiko herself with cartoonishly embellished and raking at the eyes with vibrant color lips. Oversized comic hands grabbed Serius out of thin air and slammed him down in front of the woman like a stack of pancakes. The conqueror felt utterly powerless against the manhandling, as if force wasn't even a factor it had considered.
"If you really intend on marrying me, gimmie a kiss!" Sachiko teased Serius, leaning toward him while extending her swollen red lips in his direction as if she had intended to drown him in them. Closing his eyes, Serius leaned forward for a peck, wondering if it could have been this easy, but a gigantic black wooden mallet with white frilly decorations slammed into his face with a wicked swing that would have sent him flying and crashing outside of bounds.
Serius forced his hand behind his cape. He was a warrior who answered challenges with the same weapon and the same fighting style that his opponent chose for combat. In the real world, he carried with him many weapons and had thousands of different ones sealed away for an odder challenge he couldn't have possibly predicted or prepared for. If Sachiko's toon force abilities made her embellish reality, they must have allowed him to similarly add some broad strokes to it as it pertained to his true level of preparedness.
"What is that!?" the announcer grabbed his head to prevent his veil headdress from slipping off and floating away and leaned over the edge to turn to his right as if leaning down some more offered a superior viewing experience. "The conqueror Serius has just pulled out an unexpected giant whoopee cushion!"
Turning around fully, Serius slammed his whoopee cushion against the barrier and let his careening body slam into its welcoming and soft embrace. The cushion emitted a clamorous fart before propelling Serius back into the arena. Emboldened by this gag, Serius flew back to the eastern wing of the arena head-first and looking straight ahead without a hint of shame. Upon landing, he dragged his boots to the side in a half-circle, entering a challenging martial arts stance and revealing a golden javelin that he drew and assembled from twin separate golden rods from behind his back.
A lone wooden box with a paper tag that read "Smooches Inside" met all this hype and bravado. Serius' eyes rolled back, and he nearly lost his balance, smacking his golden javelin on the ground, he rolled back his sleeves while strutting up to the wooden box and examining it from all sides.
"Not this time! Two can play at this game!" Serius proclaimed, reaching behind his cape to the limitless void of items that the cartoon physics allowed him to employ. From his rear, he pulled out a sheet of paper and a feather dripping with ink from its tip. He placed the sheet on the box and began scribbling down on it with the feather. A single line that read "Return to sender".
A comic-book-style postman driving a bicycle with lined-up parachutes and wooden frame paper wings descended from the air and attached hooks from his toon bike to the oversized box. After the cartoonish postman began going to town on the pedals, his bicycle took off into the sky and did an impressive aerial turn, before positioning his bike above a certain point in the arena and detaching the hooks. Eager to witness the hilarity of his idea, Serius dashed to where the box was due to fall.
"Huh?" Sachiko looked up as the box that crashed as if it weighed ten thousand tons slammed directly in front of her with the widespread toon parachute doing little to slow down its dive. "Damn, it came back…" she sighed while looking around at the paper tags attached to the box. Shrugging, Sachiko pulled out a bright and colorful crowbar and undid the nails keeping the top of the box attached, pulling herself over and onto the box to remove a gigantic black mallet that read "10 000 tons" on its side.
"I guess I'll have to keep it," Sachiko sighed, slamming the mallet down in a blink and flattening Serius into a human pancake with leather shoes spread from the side. Stunned by being flattened faster than he could comprehend what had happened, Serius tried wiggling his legs to escape the miracle-making woman long enough to inflate his body back into shape, but he could only drag his feet inches at a time. With a single bound, Sachiko landed near the horrified and flattened conqueror and scooped him up into a frying pan, flipping him in the air a few times like an actual pancake and then flinging him straight out of the arena bounds and into the watery outside section.
"It's an elimination!" the announcer pumped his fist into the air. "Sachiko Tanogen fighting on the side of the samurai has eliminated Serius the Conqueror! Just like that, this leaves 98 competitors rumbling in the arena!"
Yawning and scratching her bottom, Sachiko walked off to find a quiet corner to turn off her awareness and spare everyone around her this world of color and whimsy that she carried with her everywhere she went. After the flattened and humbled conqueror surfaced from the water, his body had returned to its ordinary shape and proportions and all he could feel was the calm splashing of the water he disturbed outside of the arena bounds.
"What a woman…" Serius mumbled to himself as his helmet leaned to the right, partially obstructing his view and leaving the emperor no other choice than to fumble to correct it so that he could swim back to where the healers were already waiting for him. While Serius didn't need immediate medical help, he was due for a quick checkup just like all the eliminated competitors were and the healers must have still been curious about what effects the constant flicking of the on-and-off switch of cartoon physics had for his anatomy.