A woman with ivory-white skin, that was plentifully bestrewn with tribal tattoos, crawled over the hectic battlefield, swinging sickles left and right. Her eyes pulsed with intense red light while the noxious black miasma oozing from her converged in additional pairs of arms. Constructs of black dharma holding aethereal obsidian sickles that oozed with black oily corruption unless they had to cut. At which point, they hardened in a blink.
"Come on! Where the fuck are you, you bastard!?" she growled. The banshee swung her sickles wildly in all directions and fended off attacks while leaping and stomping over anyone in her way. Anyone who didn't look like Jet, the Messiah of Martial Arts. The one responsible for eliminating her fellow Salvari powerhouse and making a fool of the Salvari group.
Out of respect for everything that Darthkama stood for, Shakali did not attack and butcher the prodigious martial artist on sight back then. She gave him a chance to retreat but warned him that the next time she set her eyes on him–that'd be the end. Next time, she wouldn't let him get off easy. Though honor was such a highly subjective and relative concept. Right now Shakali saw nothing wrong in spearheading toward Jet and merely deflecting and fending off all the other challengers. Amongst the Salvari, Shakali was something of a tireless berserker, so never resting easy until Jet is parted with his head sounded like just another day in the arena.
"Outta my way!" Shakali cursed, focusing all six of her arms into a hammering smash of her sickles. To her surprise, the battered Sky Warrior took off with a swoop high into the air before answering her with a swipe of the myriad of blades acting like feathers to sustain his glide. The battered avian now had a busted, eagle-shaped golden mantle and only a handful of feathers he had when he first faced Yushijin in a high-octane ninja dogfight in the air.
The lively response from the broken competitor made Shakali place her sickles crossed in front of her and defend herself. Lest she shed some blood before even meeting Jet. Knowing how wild she got whenever she got a scent of blood, hers or that of her hated enemy, Shakali would rather resort to slowing down and blocking rather than shrugging cuts that would merely graze her off and power through. Right now was one of those rare instances when Shakali favored control and restraint over going wild. She couldn't afford to let the reins slip from her hands until Jet was in her sight.
With a tomboyish grunt, Shakali skid a few meters back as a flock of sparks spewed out from the point of impact where Atsabola struck her cross-shaped block. The black, shadowy dharma splattered thick as blood and sticky as oil, wrapped around Atsabola's battle-damaged suit. Thusly it made the flying gear hang even heavier on the Sky Warrior's body than it did before.
"You're signing your own death warrant, asshole!" Shakali growled. The bloodthirsty banshee splattered her shadowy dharma arms to the sides while brandishing her sickles in front of her as a warning to the staunch Sky Warrior who challenged her, despite the wear and tear of his condition.
"No one tramples over the Sky Warriors! The Sky Warriors soar above everyone else," Atsabola proclaimed, raising a shaking clenched fist as black ooze that soaked his suit dripped off of the few colorful razor feathers he still kept.
A deafening crack spread across the arena. It was like a tolling bell that stunned most of the surrounding warriors and made them turn to the source of the noise. With a grinding pair of lines of filed, razor-sharp teeth, Shakali stood above the Sky Warrior with her bare foot stomped down atop of Atsabola's head. Blood was squirting out from the opening in the golden eagle head mantle. A sign that Shakali's stomp nearly crushed the Sky Warrior's head whole. After stepping off of the crushed Sky Warrior, Shakali lifted him in the air with one shadowy arm and flung him out of bounds. With this out of the way, she proceeded to continue her rampage across the battlefield, mashing blades and seeding glorious concussive violence everywhere she could set her bloodthirsty eyes to.
"Ouch! Maybe the Sky Warrior Atsabola made a mistake challenging such a terrifying opponent without having an opportunity to recover from his gaudy bout with Aozora Yushijin?! The Dark Mother of War, Shakali of the Salvari, crushed Sky Warrior Atsabola, leaving 92 competitors remaining in the battle royale!" the announcer yelled out to much cheering from the audience, which demonstrated evident favoritism toward the native Salvari warriors.
On a wing of the arena further to the north-east, an elderly man with a stubby red goatee and thick mustache, wearing a spotty and regal cloak over his shoulders and a slick, bun-shaped silver crown decorated with jewels observed the chaos from the back of a camel. Normally, such a sight would've alerted one to an easy target as nothing about this man suggested him to be much of a combatant, however, the camel's head had been surrounded by an oval, skull-shaped iron coating with little fires rustling in the camel's eyes, expelling smoke from its mouth. Blazes also spewed from underneath the camel's hooves with the magnificent and strange animal being of shiny black fur. This demonic appearance was most uncharacteristic of its kind.
"Quite a show down there, isn't it?" a man with slick and wet black hair, dressed in a dandy suit the back of which extended all the way to his heels approached the conqueror from the side and stuffed his mouth with a paper roll cigarette. "Would you mind entertaining me? I carry my own light, but your steed is very amusing."
"You shall have your fire from underneath Zafar's hooves, pitiful creature! You dare approach Utumir, the Sword of the Iron Scorn, from the side as his equal?" the outraged conqueror mounting an iron-skull, demonic camel spat vitriol at the well-dressed gentleman asking for a light from his left side.
"I guess I'll have to light my own damn smoke," the gent sighed and put up his right arm, letting a watch with a shiny, reflective surface show from underneath his cuff link. A flashy beam of light shot off from the watch's flat surface. A focused laser of sunlight gathered and augmented by chakra sealed inside of the gadget, beaming straight at the tip of the gent's cigarette.
This show of man taming and channeling the power of sunlight made the fiendish camel of iron and brimstone rumble and turn in opposition to the gentleman who merely puffed his smoke. The spy then pulled the cigarette out, pinched between the two fingers, and aimed it at the freaky steed. A devastating, tunneling blast completely obliterated the paper smoke, blasting out toward the camel and its rider and washing them aside. Hit by the brunt of the uncompromising force of an augmented gunpowder blast, the camel flipped over and, alongside its rider, skid down the mount onto the arena tiles and closer to the ground level where all the action was taking place.
"Oh, be quiet with your business and pleasure," the gentleman reached to his ear, where a tiny black communicator plug could have been seen from certain angles. "As I've told you at the headquarters, I can multitask. Does the client need Utumir dead or alive?"
It wasn't entirely clear what the muzzled speech from the other side of the communication link replied. In reaction to that response, the dandy gentleman removed his watch and pulled another one from his inner suit pocket. This one had a glass surface with a segmented black ring and glowing red sealing glyphs atop of each segment. Upon pressing the glass panel with the index and middle finger, a puff of smoke came out from the watch. Without wasting time to let the smoke clear, the gent grabbed a red gas tank from its thickest cloud and slipped it over his back.
Upon being securely slipped over, the gas tank slipped out a pair of aerodynamic, thin wings and shot a stream of burning fuel from its lower end. The beam propelled the mysterious gentleman into the air and, once he gained control over the jet flight device, sent him on a homing course toward the fallen conqueror. Meanwhile, the fallen tyrant writhed on the ground and wrestled himself out from underneath his demonic mount, struggling to return to both feet.
With mechanized rumbling, the fiendish camel stood up and took its place in between the homing jetpack-wearing competitor and his master. The little rustling fires in the camel's eyes died out. Before the incoming hellfire, there was a brief sign of the dreadsome things to come, the smell of gunpowder in the air, and the alarming clouds of smoke seeping from the iron helm mouth of the mechanized beast.
"I hear you. I hear you, woman…" the airborne gentleman barked out before slipping his hand into the inner pocket of his suit and pulling out a small and compact dispenser. Instead of the brutish and devastating hand cannons that pirates used or the kunai and shuriken dispensers that some criminals, unable to use these tools by themselves, or unacquainted with the ninja arts, used, this tiny little gadget spewed precise thick senbon shots coated with a thin layer of the wielder's chakra.
Despite the extremely unlikely chance that such a meek shot of a mere thick needle could deal any lasting damage to the structure of a mechanical behemoth such as the fiendish ironclad camel conqueror Utumir mounted, a widespread ring of a concussive shot emanated from the back of its iron skull and rocket the head back. One moment later, the mechanized steampunk beast blew up in a spherical, blazing firestorm while the dandy gentleman turned another lap around the scene of destruction. Conqueror Utumir, however, got hit point-blank by the explosion. The roaring destruction enveloped him whole and swatted the conqueror aside, smashing him through the rubble.
"I hope you didn't ruin your haircut, pulling at it, worrying for me," correcting his trajectory, the gentleman landed on the ground and slipped his jetpack off his back. While approaching the cornered and worn-out conqueror, the spy fixed his suit and bowtie. He kept his extremely precise senbon dispenser aimed at his opponent. The sealing glyphs that sapped the user of a bit of his chakra to coat the fired senbon and made it impossible for anyone else but the person with the right chakra signature to use the gadget shined from underneath the cover of the spy's hand.
"I am Utumir, the Sword of the Iron Scorn, the Act of God. You are but a loathsome insect. And exactly like an insect, you will die squeaking in flames. If I were to burn, my ashes would be stored in a jewel-studded urn and treasured in a majestic mausoleum for years to come. Your ashes will be blown away and swept from anything they cover like the irritating trash that it is," the conqueror seethed pure hatred while stumbling with a notable limp toward his golden cane that had rolled off further to the side after the calamitous blast earlier. "No one will even know whose ashes they're sweeping off. Had it not been my foot that crushed your miserable life, history would not even know your name!"
"I'm not much of a god-fearing chap, but I'm sure that even the pretentious bastard could stick an act together with a working leg," the spy aimed his compact senbon dispenser before a loud rumbling underground threw him off-balance. It was as if the arena section they found themselves in was shifting from underground. The result of this earthquake was that the senbon shot came off drastically off to the side and merely dug through a random chunk of debris.
Mechanical limbs sprung forth from underground. Burrowing out from underneath piles of rubble and chomping down around the spy's limbs with toothed excavator bucket mouths while the very familiar elongated neck and iron skull burst from underground and chomped down at the exposed shoulder. Aggravating the quaking and rowdy rumbling further, the mechanized camel emerged from underground with its flesh and fur completely burnt off.
With his golden, gemstone-encrusted cane in one hand and a saber in the other, Utumir limped up in front of the trapped spy held suspended in the air by the mechanical arms of the conqueror's fiendish mount. The spy appeared genuinely surprised by how well the mechanical beast resisted his attempts to free himself. Because of the fact that he was wearing his storage seal watch and had no way of catching a ray of sunlight in the current position of his arm, he couldn't even scorch his way through the steel trap he found himself in.
"The swing of my sword commands towns and settlements under my rule. It makes the strongest military commanders in the world shiver and take their own lives rather than face my wrath! It is a grave disservice to my glory to stain my blade with the remains of the likes of you," Utumir cursed the spy, preparing to strike him down with a grisly cleave into two.
"Honey, I'll have to put you on hold. I've got Gigajin's sloppy seconds here to deal with," the spy pressed his head to the metal arm keeping him suspended to pause the communications with the support table and turn all his attention to the grumpy, broken conqueror with a sword over his head instead. "Don't worry, take your time. I'd rather not hang here all day, so make it a good, clean cleave, will you?"
With malice flaring in Utumir's eyes, the conqueror pressed the handle of his saber tighter, pumping chakra through it enough for a visible fiery coating. However, seeing the defiance and mockery in his opponent's eyes, the conqueror held his sword raised over his head longer. The tyrant pumped more and more chakra into it and expanded the Fire Release chakra coating to dozens of times the length and width of the saber it was coating.
"When you burn in hell, you can witness my wrath elevating me far beyond even Gigajin. In time, my sword will cast him down to you to fuel the furnace both of you will cook in with his bones," Utumir spewed hatred before bringing the colossal flaming blade down and engulfing both the classy spy and his trusty mechanical camel. The apocalyptic flames crumbled the stone which the mechanical beast hid underneath and melted both stone and metal alike before scattering the remains as mere dust.
Utumir panted with sweat pouring down his face and dripping to the scorched ground before him. Looking shocked, he raised his head and gasped at the realization that the gentleman pestering him this afternoon was lying before him sprawled on the ruined ground, still intact. If it weren't for the tongues of flame covering the man's suit, it would seem as if he took no damage from that last attack despite Utumir's best attempts to smite the spy.
"Bloody hell," the spy coughed and stiffened up, pulling his arms in and peeling himself off the ground. With a swift motion of his hand, he undid his suit and slipped it off his shoulders, tossing it aside to burn away from his body. "I thought this suit was supposed to handle just about anything short of the end of the world. I must have spited my clients to get sloppy seconds of everything. From wronged tyrant wannabes to shoddy production."
With the black, smoldering suit hitting the ground, a notable gash on the front lapel betrayed where Utumir's blade had struck the spy. When the classy gent stood up, the skin on his face hung loosely in a torn scrape. A wondrous thing was that the other side of the skin was blue and covered with rigid metallic patterns. This prompted the spy to tear the damaged facial mask off his face and throw it away, revealing an entirely different face of a middle-aged man underneath.
"Now look what you did, you've gone and ruined my suit. I get it, you grew up as Gigajin's lapdog and gave your life to the bloke for the sake of his empire, now you're pissed at the world and whatnot. No reason to ruin a perfectly good armored fiber suit. I feel naked without it," the spy who recently shed his face and armored suit cracked his neck to the sides.
"To the hell's deep with you!" Utumir wailed with the ghastly tone of voice of a man who's lost his mind, swinging his cane in an attempt to bash the spy's head open while the shifty operative slid down underneath the swing of the golden cane. Having positioned himself on the other side, he pulled out a square-shaped radio device and prodded Utumir with the antenna. The prod sent a lightning jolt down it and shocked Utumir with such a ridiculous voltage that it shot off a thunderbolt into the skies. This stunning light show left the conqueror crumbling on his knees before his opponent.
"Next time, when a bloke asks you for a smoke, you oblige. Like this," the shirt and bowtie spy pulled out a golden lighter and flicked it to ignite a flame before tossing it at his kneeling opponent. Absolute silence reigned in before a deafening shriek came out from inside the golden lighter and a blinding flash of light stunned everyone around the vicinity. A desolating blast sent Utumir the conqueror flying out of bounds, skidding across the surface of the water and smacking his head at the outer barrier.
"Alright, I'm back, love. That's right, Utumir is ready for pickup. No, unfortunately, someone else got to him first. I think I saw our old friend Jyujin Gyozarro in need of a dance partner and I do hate to keep people hanging," the spy replaced his busted communicator and stumbled to the nearby debris chunk for a brief breather and an actual smoke. "Is there a reason my suit caught fire? I thought it was supposed to be completely fireproof. Some of our competition actually breathe fire, dear, don't you forget it. Yes, I did have my flask in the pock… Don't get sassy with me, love."
"In an explosive resolution, the spy Codename: Bird Watcher managed to eliminate the conqueror Utumir, the Sword of the Iron Scorn, and a rival of conqueror Gigajin himself! It appears that despite bringing some serious powerhouses like Cornab Thunderbone and Emperor Wulithmes, the conquerors are now left with just three members! Then again, when everyone in your faction won't settle with the entire world in their hands, I don't think that any tears are being shed amongst these rival warlords!" the announcer incited moderate cheering amongst the audience for the explosive back-and-forth bout between the super-spy and the robot-camel-riding conqueror.