"Havana Fleet!" Tarbeard yelled out, winding both his sledgehammer fists back before they began rapidly punching the air in front of him while the signature rampant blaze expanded across Tarbeard's black hair, his head, shoulders, and back. A Sky Warrior dressed in metallic armor with a fuzzy white fur cape and decorations who had significant trouble flying because of his choice for a gliding suit crossed his wings and began taking a mean licking of concussive airwaves.
That was the least of the Sky Warrior's troubles, however, as Tarbeard's flaming disposition and wrathful machine gun fists sparked the creation of chaotic fireballs that twirled, arced, and whirled through the air in unpredictable trajectories and blasted with packed firestorms at whatever surface of combatant they came into contact with. The owl-like Sky Warrior was a nimble and capable combatant, though, without a clear read on Tarbeard's chaotic hail of fireballs, he couldn't avoid damage for too long. The pressure only got worse as Tarbeard continued to punch, losing more and more of his sanity and control to become a punching machine of pure violence. With his grinding teeth and whited-out eyes, Tarbeard appeared like a savage, demonic ogre, splintering bones and crushing skulls with its massive mace without mercy.
The wannabe Pirate Lord stumbled, falling to one knee, but this was not because of his exhaustion. Tarbeard couldn't quite determine what was going on and his rational mind had to conquer his mind back from the paws of his violent urges until he realized that the ground under his feet had shifted. The fallen Sky Warrior grumbling and rolling about on the ground and doing his best to avoid the expansive field of flames noticed his opponent's faltering, though only after fleeing to a safe distance from the cumbersome buccaneer.
Without warning, the ground underneath Tarbeard's feet shot upward. The owl-like Sky Warrior's goggles rolled out forward and focused on the peculiar sight. Four entire square meters of the ground where his opponent was just standing got flipped and flung into the air, attached to a thick bouncing spring. With his peerless scouting goggles, the Sky Warrior turned his attention to the sky where Tarbeard had punched through the clouds with his head. The toss had enough of a diagonal angle to it to threaten a ring out. Either way, the Sky Warrior took this as his cue to leave and seek a more favorable opponent.
"Come to me, Rrrevenge!" Tarbeard growled, slipping a tiny knife from his back pocket and slashing his thumb, then spraying his squirting blood drops in front of him. The skies became clouded with dust and a loud, almost explosive pop made the crowd gasp. From thin air, the pirate captain had called forth his flagship vessel and firmly planted his feet on its deck. Despite a slight wobble because of his titanic build, the dark-haired scoundrel burst forward into a dash across the deck and rolled down, stuffing himself inside Revenge's cannon and popping off with a halo of burning ash left behind.
A deafening crack stunned the surrounding warriors temporarily as the living cannon ball crashed back into the arena's bounds while his ship with its crew still in it poofed away with only a widespread wall of lint to suggest that it had ever been here, to begin with. Tarbeard patted his hands from the gunpowder dust he was covered in while looking around for his obsessive little opponent.
"Come out, don't be shy! What arrre ye waiting forrr? Come out, face me!" Tarbeard ripped his military coat open, exposing his chiseled body and slapping his chest as a challenge to the vexing little trapster whose signature style he recognized. "If yerrr gonna come out and make a statement like it's not overrr between us, don't just stay hidden! Come out and fight me!"
"And here I thought we had a connection," a voice rang from an unidentified location, likely from another speaker horn concealed as a distraction. "I thought you'd know me better than that."
"Suit yerrr damn self, broad!" Tarbeard growled, pulling his military coat apart to expose the paper tags lined out underneath. Digging his seaman's teeth into his right thumb, the pirate captain forced a bigger opening on his recently made wound as he smeared blood across the sealing tags that lined up his coat. The air became cluttered with pops and puffs of smoke from which heavy barrels slammed down on the ground. Raving like a ferocious beast, Tarbeard began frantically kicking them everywhere before clenching his fists and winding them back behind him.
"Forrrt of Madeirrra!" Tarbeard barked out before slamming his boulder-sized fists together and igniting his back, shoulders, head, hair, and beard again to send a one-time burst of hectic fireballs spinning uncontrollably in all directions. Once a fireball touched one of the gunpowder barrels, a deafening kaboom colored the arena blaze red and sent wooden shrapnel ripping in all directions. The leftover flame from the explosion caught up to a handful of other barrels, and the field of flames, alongside the hectic fireballs expelled from Tarbeard's body, caused the field of barrels to go up with rampant blasts.
One of them rung frighteningly close to Erumo, forcing the young woman to move unless she wished to spend the chakra necessary to bolster her body through a field of fire. Before she could flee too far, another barrel burst and sent her flying right back to where she stood up from. Erumo's heart sank to her heels when she heard her own scream leaving her lungs. Despite the entire district of the arena sinking into smoke and flames and making a ruckus that'd leave an active minefield during a blitz shy as a schoolgirl sitting next to her crush, Erumo didn't foster any hope that her opponent didn't hear that.
He was simply too bloodthirsty and violent of a man to miss out on the pleasant ring of a painful grunt.
With the taste of blood in her mouth and her ears ringing, feeling the cold brush of the dry desert wind against her bloodied patches of exposed skin and the burn in her sand-soaked grazes, Erumo peeled her busted body off the ground despite the quiver in her knees. A deafening blast rang in her ears and the young woman sank in a cloud of smoke as Tarbeard's quick-draw instincts kicked in and he pulled his hand cannon and sent a lone deadeye blast directly at her. Despite a content smirk on Tarbeard's face, what fell flat from the cloud of smoke from his cannonball blast was just a piece of busted debris. Erumo substituted herself from taking a direct hand cannon blast to the body and potentially passing out on the spot.
"Ninjas…" Tarbeard grumbled, scratching his temple with the barrel of his oversized hand cannon before stuffing it back into the pouch on his leather belt. The field continued to combust in an open flame that eventually licked another gunpowder barrel, which went off into a tumultuous firestorm and began dropping flaming wooden shrapnel that lasted at least until the next barrel went off.
Pulling his saber out, Tarbeard rushed forward to pursue the trapster kunoichi. Rushing into the fray where he last tagged her substitution, Tarbeard looked around frantically before his brown eyes locked upon a shrouded feminine figure who used the poncho she used to wear as a headscarf to shroud the vision of her face. Tarbeard pulled a hand cannon with his free hand and sent a shot her way. A deafening boom ripped through the area, but only a high-pitched noise of shattering glass followed it. Tarbeard had shot through a glass wall panel.
Snarling, the hefty buccaneer turned around to intercept an attack from behind he inevitably saw coming but his opponent wasn't there. Instead, the surrounding ground lit up with white light, illuminating a sealing glyph in the area that left him trapped in a white ethereal wall of light. An impassable chakra barrier resisted Tarbeard's attempts at forcing his hand through and slamming his shoulder into it. The sealing barrier glyph was hexagonal, with an Arabic oil lamp placed on each corner and spreading gentle white mist that accumulated over the impassable hexagonal barrier.
An impulse of weakness resonated through Tarbeard's body. His own burdensome body mass became too unbearable for his knees to hold, so the tall and bulky pirate wobbled as if he was about to collapse. His eyelids felt heavier than his own body while the seaman struggled to keep his eyes from rolling up, which, he knew, would knock him out. With his final lucid impulse, Tarbeard slipped his hairy hand inside the pocket of his coat, pulling out a handful of syringes and slamming them into his thigh. A moment later, he slumped in an undignified position, flattening his face against the impassable wall of light in front of him.
"Just when Buck "Tarbeard" Drummond seemed like he pushed his opponent Erumo Budoki, a Konohagakure kunoichi to the corner, his shifty opponent knocked him out with a clever combination of some sort of knockout gas and barrier sealing techniques! We don't see ninja employing sealing ninjutsu often, because of the complexity of the subject and the lack of visible reward for the risk of such an underwhelming specialty, but this young lady just floored the audience with her style! It's ironic, but, despite doing her best to remain unnoticed, she's about to become a genuine superstar in this arena. That's if she can find a way to eliminate Buck "Tarbeard" Drummond while he's still asleep!" the announcer howled out to a wave of cheers and clamoring from the audience.
From the looks of it, Erumo was well aware of her predicament. The better, more rational part of her mind just told her to let it be. Leave and conceal herself, then lick her wounds and set more traps up for when she'll inevitably become discovered in the future. Now that she took some mean licks from fighting Tarbeard and having the fact in mind she was not an active hand-to-hand combatant but instead a technician who relied on setup and flawless execution of her plans, she'd be a desirable target for any lowlife looking for a cheap elimination that'll push them forward and one step closer to being in the Top 16.
And yet… She was one step away from victory. If this was a battle out on the field, she'd have won. One of her more proactive combatant teammates would have taken the battle from there, after Erumo so graciously handed it to them on a platter, like she always did. The ever-handy Erumo… That's all she was. Setting up and supporting her team to success far beyond their scope and reach. The ultimate tip of the scales who received nothing but a tip of the hat and a thank you in return. Would she be content with this type of victory? A victory in all but the official seal of the announcer's word alone? No! She had to win for real. Drummond had to be eliminated by her own hand. Taking no shortcuts and not accepting half-measures was the only way she'd eventually humiliate Mana for hurting her friend's feelings and going rogue.
"Earth Release: Rolling Rock!" Erumo weaved four hand seals and weaved her hands together to make the ground underneath her feet rumble. At the same time, a tiny pebble spewed out and rolled a circle around Erumo, growing to a boulder triple her size in the process and turning solid before her. With an explosive tag in her palm and blue chakra flames around the tips of her fingers to help her force this rock to roll, Erumo slammed her hand against the boulder and sent it tumbling into the impassable light barrier.
A chilling glass-shattering noise accompanied by an electric sizzle accompanied the thunderous slam of the rock against the wall of light. Given the nature of the barrier, since the rock carried Erumo's chakra signature, it passed clean through the barrier and cracked against the fallen and humbled pirate. Something was wrong, however… The boulder had utterly decimated upon impact against Drummond's body. The pirate should have been out cold and relaxed. He should've been just a bag of bones which the rolling boulder should've taken for a ride all the way to the edge of the arena and then splashing to the artificial lake outside it.
And yet, a shifting shadow behind the smoke relayed the terrifying image of a standing Drummond. His round eyes glowed with torch-like light, while a wicked golden smile colored his face. When his intangible black shadow peered at Erumo from that wall of smoke, the young lady realized she had made a grave mistake in awakening this demonic ogre of a man.
"Have you hearrrd the storrry of my blockade of Jyujin Town?" Tarbeard's voice grumbled from the smoke as it sifted, yet Tarbeard's black, shadowy image didn't reveal a mere man behind the smoke. Tarbeard's body had been tainted by a black shade, human, yes, however, his features were twisted beyond recognition. The buccaneer's eyes glowed like torchlights, and so did his mouth and nostrils. His facial muscles had contorted to inhuman configurations, giving the pirate captain a spine-chilling, creepy appearance.
Fearing another illusion, Erumo weaved her hands and performed the genjutsu canceling technique, yet she felt only a faint sliver of chakra fade from her system. Almost as if the technique didn't compete against anything physical. As if no illusion affected Erumo and this terrifying dread she was facing was the worse than the most haunting nightmare ever–it was wholly real.
"After capturing a Land of Waves vessel that was carrying indentured servants and sending them on their merry way on an island in the Land of Water archipelago, my crew needed medical supplies so I had my fleet corner Jyujin Town, a port town of a nearby island…" Tarbeard raised his hammering fist over his head, bursting into vicious flames so hot that they became golden instead of the usual blaze color. The flames that contrasted the shifted, shadowy appearance of the pirate's body coated the tips of Drummond's hair, and his beard and leaked down his shoulders and back but focused entirely around his fist where it formed a pulsing heatwave bomb around the clenched hand.
Realizing the trouble she was in, Erumo gritted her teeth with a sneer and dashed to the side, removing her scarf and running her hand through it to make it provide her with as much camouflage as possible. Her poncho had taken a decent amount of damage and was far too short for a full Cloak of Invisibility Jutsu to work, but it could still have given her a slight edge she'd need to clutch out an escape with her rear end intact. A crescent howling firestorm raged through in front of Erumo. The flames nearly licked the tip of the young woman's nose as she stopped in place, terrified by Tarbeard's supercharged perception and raw output of his power.
"Don't you darrre rrrun away, I wasn't done telling you the storrry. That's awfully rrrude of you…" Drummond mumbled with a malicious tone of voice that would've made blood freeze in one's veins despite a notable lack of volume. "As insolent as you arrre, so was Jyujin Town. Those bastarrrds thought that Kirrrigakurrre would send a ninja parrrty to scatterrr my crrrew. They werrre just eight-thousand sea miles away, afterrr all…"
Not feeling like sitting there and listening to the story, Erumo leaned down and touched the ground beneath her feet while weaving a hand seal with her free hand. "Earth Style: Hiding Like a…" she chanted before an oppressive shadow loomed over her and obstructed the red and golden light from the surrounding flames. Tarbeard had appeared directly in front of her and grabbed Erumo by her mouth, raising the young woman in the air and away from touching the ground where she could easily escape like a mole.
Erumo's hands and Drummond's raced to their waists at the same time. Erumo struggled to slap her opponent with an explosive tag to free from his grip before Tarbeard immolated her from within by sending flames down her mouth and airwaves, while Tarbeard's free hand raced for his belt pouch. When Erumo felt the cold press of a hand cannon's barrel against her exposed waist, she realized she lost the race against Drummond's augmented instincts.
A deafening bang turned off Erumo's consciousness in a snap. She didn't much feel the pain of getting blasted off and smacking sprawled out on her back from taking a point-blank hand cannon blast to the gut. The few bits and fleeting moments of her consciousness returned to her, Erumo could only cough up noxious gunpowder fumes and spit the belching gut blood to the side to prevent choking on it. Strutting up to the incapacitated kunoichi with his hand cannon holstered, Tarbeard continued while his wild, semi-blazing in licks of golden fire hair waved on all sides, as if suspended by some supernatural force in the air.
"Forrr theirrr insolence, I placed a blockage overrr theirrr entirrre porrrt. A trrrusted mate of mine deliverrred them the message–maybe the Mist will send someone to liberrrate them, but all theirrr ships will be burrrnt by then and all theirrr heads will be mounted on the brrroken masts and stuffed with candles to glow like torrrchlights by then. Jyujin Town agrrreed to not only give me theirrr medical supplies, but all theirrr finest drrrugs too, because of my rrreputation as a terrrifying man. Despite being desperrrate and just waiting arrround to be crushed by the Mist ninja, just sitting therrre with a pointless blockade of mumbling and tirrred men, I ended up not only with the supplies I asked for but loaded with the finest drrrugs that can jolt a man's body and mind too," Tarbeard's facial muscles relaxed and his straight back and his chiseled and tense muscles relaxed, leaving him in a bit of a hazy and weakened slump as the desperate drug cocktail he stuffed himself full of wore out.
"People like you hide and trrry worrrking from the shadows. I can underrrstand and somewhat rrrespect that. Makes people affrrraid of what they can't see, distrrrustful of the corrrnerrrs theirrr own eyes can't rrreach… But when people like me come, they see me coming, they look me dead in the eye and they beg forrr merrrcy, and that, I believe, is by farrr the strrronger effect. Rrreputation like mine packs a rrreal… Kick to it…" Tarbeard wheezed and panted before punting Erumo's crippled body out of bounds and slamming it against the outer wall, warding off the spectators in the audience from the action in the arena.
"What a rollercoaster!" the announcer howled out with his fist pumping in the air. "Not for a second did I have a clear idea of who was going to win! The tide of the battle just kept shifting from one side to another and both warriors gave it their all, but in the end, the Pirate Lord in the making Buck "Tarbeard" Drummond is victorious, eliminating Budoki Erumo, the Konohagakure kunoichi, and leaving 94 competitors still duking it out for their spot in the Top 16! He's just lucky that the battle royale has no rules against doping!"
Tarbeard's knees wobbled, forcing the sturdy man to put all his effort into keeping them from buckling. "What a brrroad… Nearrrly sent me packing," he mumbled to himself while pressing his hand against his feverish face while suffering all the hurt he accumulated during this last tumultuous battle and the aftereffects of shooting himself up with a handful of random drugs all at once to jolt himself awake and grant him the edge he needed to win.