Time halted, and space attained an inverted hue. A shrouded magician moved swiftly with a bold attempt to skewer a short and chubby, bald pirate with nails and eliminate him. All was not that simple, though. The tall, tanned woman with a muscular build and a brown scarf around her head froze herself. Her halt was unrelated to the temporal tampering. Based on her twitching and grunting, it was something much simpler.
Lao Zhuzi, the Fisherman's Son, turned around with a kind look on his face and confronted the magician who attempted to skewer and eliminate him. Slowly, he put up his index finger and stroked it across an invisible, thin yet sturdy line. Only after a wayward glance past the archaic fishing rod on the pirate's back did the magician Vospyka realize that she's been restrained in a network of fishing line.
"My, my… I'd have liked to take it easy for the rest of the competition after the grueling battles I've survived. Though, I guess, I deserve nothing more than what I get after living a life of plunder and having such an easy time adapting to it," Captain Lao Zhuzi shook his head in disappointment that he was confronted by an opponent of Vospyka's caliber after surviving encounters he had no right of pulling through, including one against a Cursed Warrior.
With the free hand of his injured arm, Lao Zhuzi tapped his dominant wrist, forming a fist that howled with air pressure. All this air pressure only grew larger and more ferocious when bolstered with more chakra, or guts, as pirates knew it. Going through a myriad of exotic hand seals that looked nothing like the hand seals ninja employed, the pirate captain completed his combination with a forward thrust hand seal resembling an open beast's mouth, launching the compressed air pressure with a ripping white gale that expanded into a gigantic tiger-shaped construct of compressed air.
"Catfish Mouth!" Captain Lao Zhuzi, the Fisherman's Son, howled and let the jowls of ripping air pressure loose on his opponent. The gobbling wave of air pressure swallowed Vospyka up, ripping and tearing through the network of weaved fishing line despite its coating and swallowing the unfortunate magician whole. The devastating aerial jaws tore through the magician's defenses, ripping her clothes and freeing her dreadlocks while violently flinging her injured body aside.
The worn-out pirate captain thought that after causing the magician this much trouble and busting down her façade of invulnerability, the mystic of nails would consider him too much of a hassle and leave him be, searching for an inferior opponent. Sadly, this was not the case, as Vospyka charged forward like berserk cavalry, driving a gigantic nail into Lao Zhuzi's gut and flinging him away with it. Drilling through the air, the nail spun the impaled pirate captain before screwing into the protective wall outside of the arena's bounds while Vospyka dusted her hands off.
"Getting caught off-guard was unexpected, geezer," Vospyka mumbled to herself after straightening her back after the charge. She glared at the grievously injured pirate veteran while the healers comedically struggled to unscrew the nail drilled into the wall. "Your trick taught me a valuable lesson. I will do my best to never be caught like that again. You did well to hammer that lesson into my ribs. I hope you live through this, old man."
"The magician Vospyka has claimed another contestant!" the announcer declared, observing the healers swinging massive hammers to break down the section of protective wall whole to liberate the impaled buccaneer and take him away to the infirmary. "It speaks volumes of Captain Lao Zhuzi's experience that after tangling with superheroes and ninja, the seemingly invincible Vospyka took her first mean licks against a pirate!"
Further near the central region of the arena, where Mana and Vatee had hunkered down and struggled for survival in their stone bodies, a thunderous slam and the succeeding crumble made the pair turn toward a collapsing mountain of rubble to witness the clockwork golem under Fennec gang's employ busting through the debris and looking for easy prey.
"Tsk, Fennec's crew!" Mana's mind rang with potent telepathic booms that reached Vatee without question. While attacking someone this massive and tough out in the open like this, given the state of the body Mana was imprisoned in, was not the brightest idea, it may have been an even worse one to leave Fennec's crew alone and count on never facing them again.
Right now, because she had no better choice, Mana still counted on managing to fulfill both of her objectives. She wanted to come as close to fulfilling her mission as an Allied Ninja before compromising between her mission as an Allied Ninja and her chance to return to her old body. Obviously, she'd need to make that call in the end, but right now she still wanted to ensure that the Fennec's crew didn't win the tournament. She could work on a way to fix the irreparable mess of being unable to win herself despite it being the only way to return to her body when the choice couldn't be postponed further.
Mana dug herself into the tiles, spreading her cracked and busted feet wide, and brought her head down, channeling the spiritual chakra in her busted snout. The armored golem swiped its hand and flung a blizzard of rocky debris her way. Normally, the rushing stones would have brushed off the stone body, but she suffered too much damage already. The stone body went stiff. It was like Mana couldn't control it anymore, with her concentration being on blasting the golem away with a spiritual chakra attack.
Loud and ear-raking crumbling alerted Mana to the fact that the limbs of her stone prison had chipped off of the sides. Her head felt too heavy to move. Something hinted to Mana that if she forced movement in her head, she'd lose it too. It was unclear how much more punishment her statue body could take before Mana's spirit leaked out into the wild and eventually dissolved. That would have been the moment all hope truly died.
With its hand raised and aimed at Mana, rushing like a front pro athlete aiming to carry the ball to his opponent's side of the court, the golem charged forward, pushing through mounds of debris and opponents that stood in its way alike. It was only when red glints lit up in Vatee's eyes and the golem's sides began to petrify slowly that the golem's rush slowed down.
"Are you insane!?" Vatee hissed. "I thought I told you to keep your head down!"
"You have your reasons to get back to your body, I have my mission and my ninja way and neither of them give me leeway just because my soul has been displaced," Mana replied with a telekinetic rumble while Vatee wrapped her segmented serpentine body around the armored golem in an attempt to restrain it while Mana's statue body recovered and hid.
It was all for naught, as the golem overpowered Vatee and grabbed her head and tail pieces separately, yanking her with one forceful rip and tearing the tomoe-shaped segments to scatter independently apart like beads of a cheap necklace. Mana's soul sank to the heels of the ruined statue she inhabited as she sought her lone ally and protector in this cruel blood fest fall in pieces like just a lifeless hunk of busted rock. Vatee's spirit leaked out in the form of ethereal emerald tendrils that washed and whipped against the golem's body of clockwork, gears, and steel plating but the stumbling golem swatted the last attempts of Vatee's fading soul to obscure its vision and give Mana a fighting chance away.
"No, Vatee-san, focus! Don't waste your efforts, focus on staying together! Focus on yourself, don't forget who you are and what you're fighting for! Your spirit can still survive for some time even without its body!" Mana tried pleading to the second to last surviving member of the Chaos Factor, but her telepathic signals couldn't reach anything. The displaced magician knew that maintaining one's existence after being reduced to just a spirit was possible, she had done so once on the Moon. If only Vatee focused on what was important if only she maintained concentration…
Vatee was gone.
"Oh my, it looks like trouble in the central region!" the announcer reported, turning his attention to what could have been the final moments of this accursed body that the Conductor forcefully tethered Mana's soul to. "The clockwork golem from Fennec's group has ripped apart the body of Vatee from the Chaos Factor! There are now 55 competitors left in the battle royale and it appears that soon enough there may only be 54 left as Mana from Chaos Factor seems to be completely wrecked and in no condition to fight as well!"
A part of Mana blamed Vatee for getting involved with all that she had at stake. She fought so valiantly and so hard, facing opponents that were out of this world just with the toughness and focus of her spirit. She wasn't a warrior in her civilian body, not as far as Mana was aware. The only way of fighting she knew was by employing her spiritual chakra, a method she picked up on from the other Chaos Factor members, just like Mana did after her displacement. She had everything to lose, everything that mattered, yet she put it all on the line just to prevent Mana from throwing her life away.
Who knew why she did what she did? With Vatee gone, no one will ever know if she saw something in Mana or if she truly thought that her odds of survival were much greater with Mana acting recklessly than they would have been with Vatee abandoning her and working alone. Could Mana truly blame Vatee for lacking concentration to keep her spirit tethered to the physical plane with how lacking focus she herself was? With how frantic her own thoughts were and how utterly hopeless and alone she felt?
What was she trying to prove here? Maybe deep down Mana knew that there was no hope for her to return to her body. That her fate was as good as sealed the moment that she fell into Conductor's hands. After all, the Conductor was a criminal and it would have been foolish to trust him to stick to his part of the deal. Even if he was truthful with his declaration that he'd have returned the Chaos Factor to their original bodies, Mana would have had to win the entire tournament for that to happen. A hopeless and naïve dream…
Especially when put against her objective as an Allied Ninja. Her mission was to ensure that neither Chaos Factor nor Fennec's crew won the tournament and got the Agbarah Sheikhate as a reward. Maybe this lashing out was just Mana's last hurrah, a serenade to her dead hope of achieving anything with a last, fruitless attempt at defeating Fennec's crew and making sure that the horrors that Damisan told her about wouldn't come to pass further south-west of the country. Playing a minor part in preventing Fennec's horrors from reaching more people wouldn't have been the worst legacy to go out with…
Now all that Mana had was blame. Self-loathing and knowledge that she was the reason Vatee wouldn't see her family again. Who was she kidding? Her own mind was nowhere near as focused as it was back on the Moon. As if she could pull herself together and keep her spirit from evaporating in the hostile realm of the physical plane without a body…
The clockwork golem approached the shambles of the collapsed Five-Tails' statue and put its dukes up, ready to hammer and smash them to bits until the vapors of Mana's spirit left the ruined statue just like Vatee's spirit faded away from her torn-asunder body segments.
"Wh-What cruelty! For some reason… Despite looking at a statue being crushed, stomped, and ruined, it feels as if I'm looking at a human being ravaged… I just… I just can't explain the feeling!" the announcer yelled out when the hammering fists went down and smashed the body of the Five-Tails' statue to bits. A stomp crumbled the front right leg, another downward smash snuffed out the hind right leg. With a jumping stomp, the golem reduced the left legs to bits before picking up the head and slamming it against the gear that spun by its head and crumbling it away in between the grinding ridges.
Ethereal vapors of indigo and sapphire blues leaked out from the ruins. Just like with Vatee, the clockwork golem swept and plowed through the tendrils of Mana's spirit, trying to rip it apart and make it as difficult for it to stay together as possible. Rumbling, kicking, and thrashing, the golem tried punching and pounding through that which was grounded in the mental plane and was only temporarily trapped in the physical one.
Mana's essence stretched like molten cheese, encompassing the golem as if vaguely attempting to dissolve it in its final vengeful throes and play her part in stopping Fennec's takeover of the desert before her spirit vanished. Her soul was as helpless to defeat the monster of gear and steel as a nasty thought was in its attempt to kill someone. Ripping and plowing through the shapeless indigo mass, the golem scattered it away into vapors that vanished at once. Until the soul was no more.
"It's over! The Chaos Factor has been eliminated! Fennec's clockwork armored golem has finished off both surviving members of the Chaos Factor! 54 competitors still fighting it out for their spot in the Top 16!" the announcer ruled in, making Mana's elimination official.
A ground-shaking beam of violet light scanned the ground where the spy Hit Boomslang just was. The scanning beam popped an inflated balloon dummy, adopting all the signature traces of the veteran spy and burning the popped dummy up as it deflated. The Exterminator Model: Night Vision, who had adopted some features and body parts of the blown-up Cursed Warrior Batsupu, whom it defeated, scanned around for Hit Boomslang.
"We really shouldn't be fighting, Mr.!" the Exterminator spoke with an artificially augmented feminine voice. "I have no quarrel with humans and, because of my upgraded lens, I can now see well enough during the day to tell monsters from humans!"
"So then stand down and let me dismantle you," Hit Boomslang soared from a stack of rubble and embedded his knife into the side of the Exterminator's upgraded with Cursed Warrior parts body. "Throughout the years, I've had my run-ins with hi-tech weapons of mass destruction and behemoth machines. It is my sworn duty to take one of you to my employer to see if you're not a weapon to surpass those we've faced before!"
"Sorry, but I cannot allow you to do this, even if it means that I'll have to eliminate a human person!" Exterminator Model: Night Vision shook and jerked, tossing Hit Boomslang aside only to lose him again in the resulting cloud of dust. When the dust settled, Hit Boomslang was nowhere to be seen. Hidden beneath a box with a hi-tech reflective surface that perfectly matched its surroundings.
Despite being unable to spot its opponent, the Exterminator launched a few warning blasts from its upgraded camera lens and caused a few raucous explosions in the vicinity. Rolling aside, Hit Boomslang slipped out from underneath the hi-tech cardboard box and shambled back to his feet. While the camera lens capable of channeling destructive energy beams after the upgrades raced to target the elusive spy, Hit Boomslang raced to a safe distance before pulling out a bundle with an antenna from his front pocket.
After vaulting over the nearby stone, Hit Boomslang hit the button on the gadget he had pulled out, setting off vocal beeps and blinking red lights all over the Exterminator's body. All the areas where the lights beeped and blinked were areas where Hit Boomslang could place remote explosives after attacking and etching himself to the Exterminator's body with a combat knife earlier. What the Exterminator saw as a fruitless attempt to attack him with a mere knife was, in actuality, Hit Boomslang's clever scheme of placing explosives in various key areas of the Exterminator's upgraded body.
Emphatic booms nearly deafened the audience and the nearby contestants, pressing them to the floor as a handful of fireballs swallowed the Exterminator whole. While the grievously damaged body, covered in salvaged Cursed Warrior body parts still scrambled around like a beheaded chicken, Hit Boomslang skidded closer to the discarded camera head and attached it to an air balloon that quickly retrieved the asset and took it away to the lab for examination.
"Alas, man turned out to be the most deceitful and deadly monster in the end. May this be the lesson that…" the Exterminator babbled out before Hit Boomslang hissed with an unintelligible expression of annoyance and let the camera float off into the sky and shoot off toward the horizon. After a certain distance between the camera and the body, the lump of salvaged parts and biological material that once comprised the young woman that was dissected and turned into an Exterminator collapsed lifeless on the tiles and allowed itself to be eliminated with a mere kick.
"It's over! The veteran spy Hit Boomslang has eliminated Exterminator Model: Night Vision by detaching the Exterminator's headpiece, which proved to be a key control panel piece that controls the rest of the body! I don't think anything in the rules forbids a competitor from taking an opponent's body part away for analysis, so I cannot disqualify Hit Boomslang for working on his mission during the tournament, either. Maybe the rules should be revised for future events to avoid such unfortunate events in the future?" the announcer ruled the Exterminator's elimination.
No matter who lost and ended up just a little short, no matter the stakes, the battle royale continued and raced toward its latter end. The incomparable battle fest was rushing toward its conclusion and even knowing the dangers they faced, the audience still insisted on sitting through it to the end, just because this was the grandest combat event they had ever laid their eyes upon and risking death was an acceptable risk in exchange for seeing it to the end.