A hairless, muscular man wearing a plain, white oriental long coat and carrying himself in a respectable stance of a stiff and straight back and arms bent behind his back strutted across the arena, dodging out of the way of a stray fireball or a lightning bolt and rolling aside from a ground-shaking explosion. He wasn't aware that he has become a target of another warrior who noticed the martial artist's lack of engagement and challenge and became offended by it.
Master Butofa took a few steps more before freezing in place. The brewing cacophony of the turbulent battlefield made picking out the noise of a heavy object coming straight for him from sky-high almost impossible. The martial arts master prepared to vault backward but, the moment he bent his knees for the evasive action, a food cart smashed on top of him.
"That's how I roll!" an airborne competitor proclaimed while hovering above the ground in a parachute sprouting from his bag. He was a short and bald middle-aged man with darker skin, wearing a brown sheepskin jacket and baggy military-style trousers. With one swipe of his military knife, the spy cut himself loose from the parachute as he stood in front of the wreckage of the food cart.
The bald shorty pulled out a notebook from the back of his trousers and a pen from one of his pouches, scrolling through the notebook, he began scribbling down. This one was the type to read aloud everything he wrote down. "My name is Xerxex Turbo and by now you already know the deal. I hate posers, pretenders, and stiffersons that are afraid to take risks because I live my life to the extreme. This guy right here thought he could slide through the battle royale without fighting anyone, and that just ain't cool. And, if you asked me, that's why you've got a crashed food cart on top of you right now because food cart surfing is my third favorite extreme sport."
After scribbling his little note down, Xerxex pranced up to the fallen food cart, skipping all the separate debris and wreckage piles, and put the notebook on the floor. Pulling out a little mirror from the front pocket of his open jacket, Xerxex began checking the reflection in the mirror for reference while he scribbled down the image he saw with his free hand, trying to record the moment on a blank page. A compressed airwave blasted the food cart away, sending Xerxex rolling and his little tools of self-expression scattering to all sides.
Patting his chiseled physique, decorated with scrapes and bruises, Master Butofa walked out from the wreckage and faced the spy head-on. "You mistake my philosophy. I am not avoiding conflict because I am incapable of sorting it out. The reason I do not fight is that my martial arts style is meant to be used for self-defense and to protect those that cannot protect themselves. It is not meant to incite more conflict and put more suffering upon the weak."
"See? That's why I never liked any of that martial arts mumbo jumbo. The whole self-defense schtick didn't really jibe with me," Xerxex replied while pulling himself off the ground and dusting his exposed chest and abs under the open jacket off with a pat. "I live for the moment and to the fullest. If you're not being extreme and testing your limits every second of every day, you're wasting the life you were given."
"You have taken a right turn in life, but you have driven that road too far and missed the true destination where the path to a happy life leads," Master Butofa adopted a flexible martial arts stance after going through a handful of katas.
Xerxex reached for the inner pocket of his jacket, slipping a kunai dispenser out, but, by that point, Master Butofa was close enough to his opponent to grab his arm and throw his opponent into the air with one fling over his shoulder. Positioning Xerxex to a stretched-out horizontal position directly above him, Master Butofa exploded into a barrage of chain punches, decimating his opponent's ribs before hitting a backhanded forearm strike to send Xerxex skidding across the tile set battered and bruised.
After Xerxex peeled himself off the ground with a bloody drool hanging from his lip and rushed at Master Butofa with wide haymakers, the martial artist began dancing around his opponent, punishing each undeserved power strike with a swift jab to each of his openings. Every time that Master Butofa struck him, Xerxex winced and his knees buckled. He struggled with the immediate instinct to collapse and lick his wound but responded with another desperate swing.
Diving under Xerxex's straight, Master Butofa slammed an open palm strike into the spy's chin, raising him off the ground and utterly disarming his broken body in the air before throwing his entire body into a shoulder slam and a double palm thrust that once again sent Xerxex crumbling down. This time, the sturdy adrenaline junkie rolled around and writhed on the tiles some more before even beginning to mount some sort of return to his feet.
"You have no fighting style. You just swing your arms like an angry bonobo," Master Butofa waved his hand. "Also, you have no adaptation skills. Whenever I fight an untrained opponent, their body usually picks up some of my moves through sheer fighting instinct. Your body completely abandons all grace and mastery of martial arts and stubbornly resorts to your nonsense. Not only do you have no martial arts training, you don't have any talent for martial arts. It would be easier to teach a wooden board my Art Fist style than someone like you. It's unique how utterly untalented you are."
"Yeah, well…" Xerxex stood up and waved his thrashed-looking notebook before him. "At least I got this back."
Master Butofa leaned his head to the side, confused why Xerxex would seek this silly little notebook of his where he recorded all of his ridiculous stunts. Flipping through his scribbled pages, Xerxex revealed a particular page, depicting him soaring above a bridge over a canyon with a bicycle and a bungee gum attached to his back. A loud pop startled Master Butofa. In a snap, Xerxex burst from the smoke, riding a bicycle straight at him.
The martial arts master elegantly skidded his feet off to the side and picked up a fallen piece of food cart wreckage with an elegant and unified with his evasive action move. As Xerxex would have passed him by, Master Butofa thrust his piece of wreckage straight into the wheel of the spy's bicycle, flipping Xerxex over his front and causing a deafening pop at the front of the bicycle. Xerxex yelled out before flying into the same wreckage pile he left the martial artist in previously.
Looking at the piece of wreckage in one hand, Master Butofa discarded It before pushing the bent and broken bicycle away from his sight with his foot. After going through a handful of martial arts katas, Master Butofa adopted a wide and balanced martial arts stance in front of the pile, anticipating the return of his opponent, at which point the martial artist could put on the finishing touches on their encounter.
A handful of iron balls with sizzling rope tips rolled out from the wreck, forcing Master Butofa to flee from their blast range. A vicious rip grabbed the martial arts master and flung him into a nearby rocky wreck like a boring toy flung by a petty boy. Scrambling out from the wreckage, Xerxex returned to a wobbly stance on his feet, stomping the back wheel of his bike to send the wrecked bicycle turning in mid-air. A spin kick directed the wreck of metallic frames at the martial arts master.
Having been sufficiently worn out already, scraped and bruised, and still in the middle of standing up, Master Butofa caught the bike wreck with both hands only for the wreck to receive a skating dropkick after Xerxex unsealed a skateboard from another one of his stunt diary pages. Kicking the skateboard up to his hands, Xerxex swung the board for a slam. Master Butofa caught it with both hands, but that appeared to be precisely what Xerxex wanted. A muzzled pop from down low and a painful shock made Master Butofa stagger back.
It wasn't a kunai launched from the usual handheld kunai dispenser model that stuck out from his waist; it was some sort of glass kunai imitation with a green vial inserted in its core. Within moments of its tip puncturing Master Butofa's gut, the green liquid within the vial surged into the martial artist's system, causing him to fall flat on his back and pass out.
"Damn," Xerxex exclaimed, clutching his busted ribs and nursing his broken nose and cracked lip. "Seeing all those crazy monsters flying over my head, wasn't sure if the goods the suits gave me would actually deliver. Guess whatever they cooked up knocks even hardened badasses out."
The spy picked up his stunt diary and slipped it back in under his jacket. Then, with a frontal roll, Xerxex scooped up the knocked-out Master Butofa into a fireman's carry position and stumbled his way to the edge of the arena, throwing him off his shoulders and out of bounds. He could hear some rumbling behind him. It was likely that someone had followed him to the edge of the arena, having smelled his blood and decided he was an easy elimination.
Rolling his knuckles and cracking his neck to both sides, Xerxex turned around and turned his lips wide into a bloody smile that spilled red all over his chest, keeping up with his broken nose. "Bring it on, I live for this shit!" he dared his pursuers to live in the moment as he did.
"What an upset!" the announcer howled out. "Master Butofa was one of the more technically sound martial artists here with an inheritance of a martial arts style that sees its history span out all the way to the origins of the concept of the arts of fighting! It appears that the guts and an adrenaline-junkie attitude of the spy Xerxex Turbo won out in the end. It's a fun fact, you might think that Xerxex Turbo is the first spy to sign up with his actual name as opposed to their business codename, but Xerxex Turbo is actually his codename! Or, rather, the pen name he uses on his published work that inspires people striving to live in the moment as he does but who lack the stones to actually pursue the lifestyle and would rather read about it!"
"No one thought Xerxex Turbo is his actual name…" a woman in the spectator stands squinted, leaning at her companion that she came to see this once in a lifetime even with.
"It doesn't get more obvious than this that he made it up," her friend agreed with an enthusiastic nod. "Still, this spy is such an oddball. I think I must prefer that other one that dresses sharply and acts so dashing…"
"I don't know, think about all the unforgettable adventures you'd get into with Xerxex Turbo. Even your pastime would be thrilling!" the spectator shrieked, closing her eyes and imagining snowboarding in the Land of Snow during an avalanche alongside Xerxex Turbo.
Back in the arena, a tanned and athletic mercenary wearing a golden cowl shaped like a coiled cobra with a bare chest and waist with a large battle axe hanging on his back and a long scimitar-style sword in his right hand stepped up to a tall and burly man with curly blond hair, a sleeveless white shirt that had a wide logo of a lamb with a head that had a sprout of clover-like leaves at the top like a crown. Both men looked like they could cause some hurting, but the mercenary from the Fennec's group looked like his body had been suffering to produce this athletic build, whereas the martial artist in a sleeveless shirt looked broad and thick in flesh rather than exhausted and starved by his athletic build. Both of them had a handful of visible battle scars decorating their bodies.
The mercenary with the cobra cowl reached his free hand for his battle axe, hurling it across at the martial artist who only slipped down under the projectile and approached his opponent with arms open wide and ready to grapple. Because of how open this fling of his battle ax left the mercenary, the grappler could land an overhead haymaker that rocked the cobra-cowl mercenary and left his head ringing. A knee to the solar plexus and another hook to the head later, he seemed ready for manhandling.
A cutting upper elbow put the mercenary up in the air, but the martial artist with the clover-lamb logo grabbed hold of his opponent's arm in mid-air and slammed him over his side and shoulder into the ground on the other side. A fleshy rip stunned the grappler. He felt a painful twinge at his nose and lip and staggered back as his face spilled with red from the gash. Behind him stood another mercenary he hadn't seen before, not even amongst the Fennec's mercenaries. He was dressed similarly to the cobra-cowl mercenary, except instead of gold, his armor was obsidian black and he clenched the battle ax that the mercenary had flung earlier.
"I see," the grappler noted his situation. "So, the reason you threw that ax earlier wasn't just a mistake. You put distance between yourself and your comrade's weapon. If I hadn't turned around in time, he'd have appeared out of nowhere and cleaved me in two…"
"What comrade?" the cobra-cowl mercenary asked with a teasing tone. The martial artist blinked a few times before realizing that the axman was missing again and that the battle ax hung embedded into the tile set and was entirely unattended again. Where was the other mercenary with the spiky dragon cowl and black armor? Did he only manifest when the swordsman called for him to appear?
The grappler martial artist charged at the Fennec's mercenary, but his charge was cut short. The spiky dragon helm mercenary appeared before him out of nowhere again and blocked his charge with the rod of his ax. The two entered a power struggle before the grappler spun and flung the shadowy ally of the cobra-cowl mercenary away. A searing pain made the grappler stumble forward with his back stiffened as the fling left his back exposed and the swordsman with the golden armor carved into it with a free swing.
Keeping up with both mercenaries when they seemed to appear and disappear out of the blue and it was impossible to tell who was fighting and where they were and what weapon they were wielding was beginning to hang heavy over the martial artist's head. The blood loss was beginning to become the third brother in this unorthodox combination of warriors. Just as the grappler turned to the swordsman to engage him, he rolled aside, dodging a swing from the axman, who appeared directly behind him and wielded the discarded ax again. Just as the martial artist completed the roll, a firm stomp on his back sent him tumbling forward and left him fallen on his front on the tiles.
"This man is my doppelgänger from another dimension. Both of us have developed an uncanny ability to switch places between our respective dimensions, and, with enough training, have awakened an ability to coexist in either of our home dimensions at the same time. We are like a two-man army in one," the swordsman taunted his opponent, brandishing his long scimitar and sending sparks his way that smacked into the face and eyes of the fallen grappler by dragging the sword along the surface of the tiles.
"That's not very sportsmanlike…" The grappler staggered, barely returning to his feet with his nose and lip split and bleeding excessively, and now the vicious gash in his back made things even more difficult for him.
The two mercenaries danced in perfect tandem. Appearing and disappearing in blinks. When either of them was present, their respective weapon was in their hands, whereas when they were not, they remained etched into the tiles. Blink. The swordsman swung his scimitar with a rising swing, cutting into the grappler's chin. Blink. The axman slammed his ax into the martial artist's shoulder, nearly splitting a chunk of his body off with one cleave. Blink. The swordsman slammed his sword down with a jumping slam. Blink. The axman did the same.
The swordsman raised the cut-up and bloodied to a pulp body off the ground, looking for any signs of a fight left in it but finding it difficult to tell what body part he was looking at exactly. Disgusted by the coordinated work of himself and his alter version, the swordsman flung the martial artist out of bounds for a quick win.
"What a grisly sight! Fennec's mercenaries prove that they're not out of the fight yet! With a trippy fighting style to behold, they eliminated Onikain, the practitioner of the Gentle Way Fist style of martial arts! While a powerful and free-form style, it's not very suited to handle multiple combatants and appears to be best suited for sports-type competitions as opposed to battle royales! Given the accomplished career of Onikain, perhaps he'd have fared better in the Top 16 competition, but such is the nature of battle. You never know the terms you'll be fighting on and you must train your body for all sorts of competition. A true warrior to inherit Agbarah must be skilled in all fighting forms and able to fight outside of their comfort zone!" the announcer ruled another elimination. "This brings the number of competing warriors in the arena down to 87! Martial artists better get their game together, they only have three competitors left in their entire faction!"