A thick in flesh, bone, and sinew buccaneer with wrinkly skin that's been kissed by the sun during long voyages across the oceans took a bold step forward with his right hand and aimed a hand cannon that looked like it was large enough to serve as a cannon on an actual pirate ship. The man balanced its barrel on his left arm while stretching his dry and torn lips into a rich smile that tested the integrity of the weathered coating of skin that protected the flesh and nerves on his skull.
The buccaneer closed his right eye as if he needed more aid in accurately nailing a shot with a weapon this large and destructive aimed at a target so close to him. The marauder was aiming his hand cannon at a bundle of dry leaves, a cloak that its wearer intended to help in camouflaging themselves in this arena and avoiding battle. When the hand cannon went off, the pirate's dreadlocks and braided beard decorated with ribbons split in the middle and rustled backward and their tips caught on fire. A heatwave halo pulsed vertically outward around the hand cannon's barrel.
Tapping, rolling, and patting his black as a raven's wing hair and beard locks, the large pirate bawled with laughter at the sight of the cannonball crashing into the concealed combatant and blowing up with a fiery dome that expelled a mushroom-shaped cloud into the air while trembling the very foundations of the arena that the battle royale was taking part in. The bloodthirsty buccaneer waited to see whom exactly he nailed with this devastating shot from behind but the camouflage cloak only fell daintily from the sky while burning up from the few scorching patches all over its surface with no body to show for all that flame and clamor.
"Scoundrrrel!" the pirate turned his body halfway around him, turning his shoulder to the area directly behind him, expecting someone to follow up and exploit this opportunity of a failed sneak attack by eliminating the sneak attacker. "This battle rrroyal is meant to deterrrmine the strrrongest warrriorrrs! Don't you darrre hide out therrre like a cowarrrd and trrry to cheat yerrr way thrrrough!"
"Maybe staying hidden is someone's way of fighting and if they remain hidden while others butcher each other, they deserve to win?" a youthful and perky, feminine voice came from a location that was tough for the out-of-loop pirate to determine on the spot but he felt sure that it came from nearby. Especially so since this young woman was directly responding to his spiteful mockery of her skillset and the essence of it.
With a twitchy jump, the titanic pirate turned to the right, directly where the voice he heard came from. With his left hand, he pulled another, smaller hand cannon from under his leather belt and fired a round satchel from it. After bumping against the rock, the projectile blew up with a hail of shuriken serving as shrapnel from the hand cannon blast. Electrical crackles spewed from a perforated musical horn attached to a brass elbow and a thick rubber hose.
"A gramophone? The sneaky wench is playing games with me!" the buccaneer seethed with a growl. A meek snapping sound distracted the pirate's attention, revealing a hidden catapult mechanism slamming its elbow carrying one of many massive boulders scattered across the fighting stage to slam point-blank into his face. Before it could do so, the marauder's quick draw instinct proved superior as he blasted the boulder and the catapult contraption to bits with an explosive hand cannon blast before it could slam the boulder in his face.
"I won't lie, I kind of hoped you'd be out of ammo after firing that once. Your hand cannons don't look like repeaters," the feminine voice once again reached the pirate's ears from difficult-to-ascertain locations. She could've been hiding somewhere behind one of the countless rubble chunks or just laying sprawled on the floor with a concealing camouflage cloak laying over her and her opponent would be none the wiser.
"I'm familiarrr with yerrr storrrage arrrts of witchcrrraft, wench. I've caught a bounty hunterrr once, a ninja, so afrrraid of the big and scarrry Tarrrbeard!" The pirate Tarbeard lifted his arm and showed his hand cannon that he just discharged light up with a sealing glyph on the side, replacing the cannonball he just blasted from the barrel. "I've spent my entirrre life building up a rrreputation as a turrrbulent and violent man so that I neverrr have to employ violence again. Nothing makes me flarrre up like some sassy wench with no clue who she's dealin' with!"
As if on command, Tarbeard's shoulders and back lit up with vivid tongues of flame half the size of his own, nearly four meters in height. His expression twisted with wrath and madness, stretching his dry and wrinkly exterior while the reflections of specks of his own flames danced in his deep brown eyes. Tarbeard lifted his right foot in the air, bending it by the knee like a sumo wrestler ready to take his position. A jet of flames ran down Tarbeard's body and channeled into the sole of his leather boot. With a mad croak, Tarbeard stomped his foot into the ground.
"Rrring of Chantico!" Tarbeard bellowed, sending fractures across the surrounding area that radiated with a warm, orange glow before bursting with skyward heat waves. A ring-shaped wall of fire expanded all around Tarbeard like a horizontal pulse, engulfing all foolish enough to stay within the vicinity of the terrifying pirate captain. With a twitch of his eye, Tarbeard registered a slight movement that turned into a mad dash for the life of his opponent.
A young woman with a skintight umber-colored skinsuit, dark harem slacks, a leather loincloth, and a deep green poncho cloak dashed away from the impending immolation with a waving camouflage cloak in hand. Her short chestnut-colored hair spiked up behind her as a result of her speedy dash and with the fringe of her hair splitting apart, Tarbeard made out a Konohagakure headband on the fleeing young woman. After realizing she wouldn't outrun the pulsing wall of flames, Budoki Erumo hopped up and wrapped herself in her concealment cloak, coating it with chakra and riding the forceful wash of flames.
"A Konoha ninja?" Tarbeard followed the young woman getting rag-dolled into a rocky obstacle behind her while the flames passed through and around her. Grunting and with hurry behind her evasive action, Erumo rolled and returned to her feet, wiping the licks of flame that caught on to her clothes and hair off while flinging the irreparably singed cloak away. "Now why would a Konoha ninja hide and set some miserrrable trrraps?"
"Gee, why would a ninja hide and set traps? I don't know, it's a real banger you've posed here…" Erumo grumbled, patting herself down to dust off some traces of grime and char off her and to feel out the extent of the minor damage she took from an attack that could've seriously ruined her day. Having been caught out in the open and exposed, the Konoha chuunin drew a kunai and took a low position, drawing her body as close to the ground as possible while spreading her legs wide to expand her balance as much as possible.
"That's not a fencing pose you'll find in the Land of Firrre. I've been arrround the worrrld, and it's how fencerrrs fight in the Land of Lightning," Tarbeard's eyes squinted and scanned his meek-looking opponent.
"Land of Lightning has the best swordsmen. It's not treasonous to admit that, so when I had the chance to study there for a bit, I took it. It's difficult for a ninja from one village to earn the opportunity to study ninja arts in another. After all, that ninja and their abilities will become an asset to another village, so most masters don't entrust their secrets to foreigners," Erumo replied, glad that Tarbeard's curiosity earned her a few additional seconds to plan this fight out. She didn't ask for this fight, nor did she prepare for it. That meant that she'll need to set up and trap this guy on the fly, which was the least favorite scenario of the Konoha's standout trapping kunoichi.
"Multi Kunai Jutsu!" Erumo crossed her forearms in front of her, unwinding her arms to fling a duplicating handful of kunai at her opponent who quickly holstered one of his hand cannons to draw a saber massive enough to cleave a horse in two with no struggle. Tarbeard swiped his saber to the side and thought he'd easily deflect the incoming hail of knives, but, instead of coming straight at him, they came at an awkward arc which led to them wrapping around the blade's edge and Tarbeard's forearm. The buccaneer's left eye bulged out with an expression of pain and discomfort as the blades of a few kunai dug into his forearm while plenty of others tried to wrestle his saber out from his hand.
"String Reeling Jutsu!" Erumo chanted, revealing shiny steel wires attached to the rings of each kunai. The original kunai she flung had steel wire connected to them, which meant that the duplicates produced by her technique did so as well. Now Tarbeard ended up utterly entangled in an entire mess of steel wire strings coated with chakra and threatened to cut him like a razor if he tested its mettle or made the wrong move. "Multi Shuriken Jutsu!" Erumo finished her combination off, slipping a quintet of shuriken onto random steel wire strings. With quick flicks to the points of the shuriken, Erumo sent them sliding across toward Tarbeard while they quickly multiplied en route to cover the entire system of wire.
It was only when the shuriken came much closer that Tarbeard noticed little dangling attachments to each shuriken. Each of them came equipped with a tiny string of wire and an explosive marble tied to it. It was a unique delivery mechanism, so Tarbeard couldn't help but bawl his heart out with an utterly satisfied look on his face before sinking into a chain reaction of devastating explosions from the detonating explosive marbles.
All that blasting left the district of the arena sunken in dust clouds that leaked off the central dome where the brunt of the blast was and permeated up to the knees before settling down on the tile set. When the central cumulus of dust finally began raring out, it revealed a lightly peeved Tarbeard covering himself up with a sneer. His red military coat suffered some wear and tear and light burns decorated most of his thick and lumbering body.
"I would appreciate it if you cut the name-calling. I know you might see me as an underdog because of my sex, but that's not a reason to be a prick," Erumo smirked with a tilt of the left corner of her lip. She had plenty of time to set her follow-up traps up before her opponent got over the wear and tear of her last diversion combination so she could allow to tease him a bit. Often she needed to tease opponents to the point of tunnel vision for her to not waste her traps in battle.
"Don't misunderrrstand me, wench. Some young lassie from Konoha went ahead and kicked the asses of two out of thrrree Pirate Lords. It's because of herrr and herrr cohorrrts that Akimichi Frrrancho's position as Pirrrate Lord Rrred is up for grrrabs. I don't just rrrespect brrrawlin' dames, I owe my success to them," Tarbeard grumbled while wiping the char off his face with the scraped elbow of his military coat. "It's you who stands to learrrn a thing orrr two about rrrespect, lassie!"
Erumo's eyes widened to a hypnotized circle of whites as her pupils dulled out. Her facial muscles relaxed at once. Sticky wetness warm to the touch began sifting through Erumo's fingers, which prompted the young woman to look down and witness bubbling black tar bursting through the cracks between the tiles and submerging the entire world into a horrific ocean of viscous carbon. With a deafening ring of ignition, the surface of the tar lit ablaze, crawling up Erumo's body and the bodies of the warriors duking it out around her. Panting in terror, the Konoha kunoichi witnessed the warriors burning down to petrified coal statues that still rustled with an open flame like living torches.
The pirate captain known as Tarbeard stood nearly forty meters tall with the tar sifting into his colossal body which began adopting abstract qualities and transforming shape. Tarbeard's entire face split into two halves vertically by the middle, giving way to a mouth of bestial teeth that could crush and grind bone to dust and canines that could rip flesh like a butcher's knife. Flaps of sticky tar adapted to become Tarbeard's beard and dreadlocks and the terrifying pirate hunched over to the front so that his body could support additional hanging pairs of arms leaning down in front of him.
Tarbeard's skin began to stretch and tear, showing exposed flesh and nerves underneath with flaring amber eyes with snake irises opening up every couple of meters down the complex pattern of skin tears. The fingers of the eldritch buccaneer turned to claws several times larger than an ordinary man's. Patches of oozing tar hung and splashed about, coating and partly concealing the uncomfortable and otherworldly nightmare that Tarbeard was going through. The hideous colossus took a single step forward, forging a mountain range of obsidian with exploding lids that shot skyward waves of magma into the air. Tarbeard's rear end proudly taunted its transformation into a dinosaur-like tail appendage that grew scales and fishy fins.
The lifeless stare of Tarbeard's human eyes sprouted outward from his torn face on snail-like tentacles while the hardened tar coating the backside of his abstract grisly form erupted with molten magma and booming pyroclastic flows. This macabre vision vanished without a trace at a moment's notice. With lucidity returning to her clouded mind and senses, Erumo covered her eyes and shook her hazy head before realizing that she's become entranced by the closest thing a pirate could muster to genjutsu. It was only in Tarbeard triggering a trap she's set up earlier that the vision was so abruptly concluded.
Meanwhile, Tarbeard held firmly to his memory of taking one step forward to his horrified and helpless opponent before hearing a loud pop and seeing a bent steel pipe appear in front of him and draw him in like a bag of garbage. One flash and a supernatural swirl of air later, another pipe flung Tarbeard into the air on a straight course out of the arena on the whole other side. Shutting his rational mind off and surrendering to his twitchy trigger fingers, Tarbeard drew one of his hand cannons and blasted at the ground closing in front of him in slow motion, drowning everything in flames and a concussive airwave that violently swept him back onto the fighting stage.
Grumbling and writhing on the floor with aching sides, Tarbeard sought to peel his humiliated face and second-youth body off the floor to find his dance partner to repay her the favor. He had her beat. His terrifying aura kicked in just in time. Tarbeard saw hardened seamen surrender entire fleets to him and port towns evacuate upon breathing in the aura of the absolute bane he brought about. It was because of this infamy and calamitous feeling he instilled within anyone facing off against him that Tarbeard didn't have to do much butchering and torturing anymore. This wench got a lucky shot… Tarbeard refused to surrender his aspirations of becoming a Pirate Lord to a lucky shot.
Erumo realized that one of her better trap configurations failed when she didn't hear the announcer count Tarbeard out. So much planning and so much setup went down the drain. A summoning glyph on the floor that registered proximity and called forth a wide duct pipe with a sealing tag with a vacuum Wind Release ninjutsu sealed inside placed on the front and a transportation seal placed on the bottom. The result was that the swirling pull of the vacuum dragged the target inside while the transportation seal sent them tumbling out from the second pipe placed wherever Erumo placed the sealing glyph to. It should have been a guaranteed clutch elimination. It should have been…
Slipping her poncho off her shoulders, Erumo twirled it over her head in mid-air and weaved a hand seal. "Cloak of Invisibility Jutsu!" she chanted, turning the cloth hanging over her head into a perfect camouflage tool for her current location. Her thighs still shivered from fright and her breathing was still uneasy after that sudden shock. Even with full knowledge and adequate experience of the ninja arts, Erumo failed to wrap her head around Tarbeard's technique.
Her tongue wouldn't even twist to describe what happened as a focused technique. That was nothing like genjutsu, even though it was wholly illusionary. The pirate captain didn't weave a single hand seal or put any focus into that horrific eldritch vision he put her through. Not to mention the fact that there wasn't a medium to transfer the illusion. No. There was a medium and Erumo has been feeling it since the start of this clash. It was Tarbeard's Killing Intent. A kunoichi of her caliber kept her wits around her facing powerful Killing Intent, to a certain degree, she could even filter it out to completely ignore the Killing Intent of a less skilled opponent or one whose actual sadism and lean to psychopathy isn't what's being sold.
That was Tarbeard counted on. If the captain dwarfed his opponents in strength, he left them paralyzed with his Killing Intent. If his opponent was powerful or experienced enough to overcome that paralyzing effect, Tarbeard subconsciously seeped this murderous aura inside the Killing Intent and used it as a delivery mechanism to corrupt his opponents and have their minds utterly collapse from within. It might have even been more terrifying to more skilled opponents because they couldn't fathom why their entire world began unraveling before them. In being less sophisticated than it takes to execute proper genjutsu, Tarbeard might have created a unique, raw form of illusionary arts that might have even left true master illusionists speechless.
Had Erumo not spent an unhealthy amount of time imagining how she'd come to capture or defeat Nakotsumi Mana and studying genjutsu with Yushijin's help, she'd have had no hope of deciphering the intricacies of Tarbeard's ability. With Mana going rogue and hurting Guru Ayushi, breaking Kouta's heart by dumping him, and then running off to join Allied Ninja, a foreign ninja organization that effectively meant she went nuke in all ways except the legal letter of the law, Erumo saw it only as a matter of time. She'd have never thought that she'd get to employ that expertise on someone who, most likely, had little to no clue about what exactly he was doing in terms of illusions. Based on the pounding heart and twitching chills running up and down her body, her shaking breaths, sweating, and exhaustion that didn't fit the amount of workout she put her body through, Erumo suspected that her body told her to sit this out.
This was a Pirate Lord class opponent she ended up facing off against. Pirates didn't abide by the rogue ninja classification and ranking system. Certain pirates with high bounties may have had little to no combat ability. This one, however, was every bit the pain in the rear that Akimichi Francho or Hideo l'Ollonais was. And yet… Mana not only survived but managed to defeat Akimichi Francho. If Tarbeard's rattling was to be believed–she must have even defeated Aomura Flint, Pirate Lord Blue too. Erumo's body temperature began changing, bit by bit, the spill of cold sweat stopped making the concealed young woman shiver. Instead of panting with pale and shaking lips, Erumo's mouth was grinding her teeth.
If Mana can defeat a Pirate Lord, Erumo couldn't possibly measure up to that spoiled, stuck-up fop if she did what her instincts and training told her and stayed hidden. This lug even employed illusions, a different form of them than any ninja illusionist, but this presented a challenge about as unique as Mana's own unnatural, primal genjutsu that directly assaulted the brain. Not to mention, Tarbeard saw himself as the next Pirate Lord, meaning that every other aspect of his abilities must have been at the very least comparable to Mana's.
Even if she was jeopardizing the mission objective by refusing to stay safe and setting traps up to boost her team's chances of victory, with Kusagoro, a Konoha Sannin on their side, they needed no more boosts to their chances. This tournament was Kusagoro's and Tarbeard was Erumo's. With a calmed-down heartbeat and a cloak produced by a throwaway Ninja Academy technique that rendered Erumo invisible, the trapster kunoichi crawled onward to find Tarbeard and finish him.