The raggedy magician flung his heavy magical tome while pointing at it with an open palm and expelling rainbow-colored luster that reached all the way to the grimoire and touched it, enveloping it with sparkling rainbow light and frantically sifting through the pages. After flipping through multiple chapters, the book settled on a specific page spread and turned its pages for the magical swordsman to see.
Before he could read from the extra-dimensional, mystical pages of the grimoire, sky-blue cloth wrapped around his eyes, blinding the man while it tied tightly around his back. The magical swordsman grunted in shock, yet this feeble-looking woman seemed to have snuck up on him from behind and was completely manhandling him. Almost as if she turned him into a part of her cartoon world, a world the rules of which she defined herself.
"I don't want to fight you, handsome. I know you don't know me all that well yet, but maybe if we play a little game? How about pinning the tail on the donkey?" Sachiko teased the blinded magician before forcefully spinning him around until his features became a washed-out blur and a colorful black and silver tornado erected where the magical swordsman sealed inside a cartoon spun with speeds that defied the laws of physics entirely.
"Don't play around with me, woman! If you keep up your games, you'll get hurt! Step out from the arena on your own and I won't have to turn the spells of the Trope Grimoire against you!" the raggedy hunk bellowed before realizing he felt very sick, as his stomach felt like it was still turning long after he stopped. It seemed that any degree of supernatural toughness had been left behind in the real world, and he left it by the gate when he checked into the world of whimsy and cartoons.
"Oh? You want to stab me? That's a little extreme for a first date, but I'm flexible. I'm willing to try whatever you're into, just give us a chance, okay?" Sachiko clapped her hands and winked with an honest request.
"I see I cannot reason with you. You believe yourself to be invincible merely because you dictate the rules of this cartoonish world of yours. However, even cartoons are subject to tropes. The pages of this grimoire have sealed within them the recorded powers of the Author Force, the very power of tropes used to meld the story of all existence. This claymore of mine is embedded with the gemstones that are conductive to spells and mysticism, making this sword the perfect conduit for imbue with magical power. That means that this sword, imbued with the outerversal powers of the tropes, can hurt even you and undo this whacky world of cartoons. This is your final warning, woman," the stubborn magical swordsman pointed out while waving the massive claymore he still clenched in his right hand around.
"Whatever you say, I'll yell "warm" or "cold" for you, okay? Here we go, now you're cold!" Sachiko cheered for her playmate she wished to court with playful claps while slowly moving back through her cartoonish castle that had a chunk bitten out of it from back when the magician used his mystical trope bubble to corrode its southern wing.
"Whatever, I'm done warning you. I'm coming for you with serious intent to take you out now," the grizzled magician snarled while reaching to pull the wrap off of his eyes but a gigantic mallet socked him from above, reducing him to a flattened pancake state with an exaggerated pair of wobbly boots on the lower side flopping around.
"No peeking!" Sachiko complained, hiding the mallet away behind her waitress' apron.
"Unfortunately for you, I've used some spells sealed inside that grimoire already. Therefore, their mysteries are known to me by heart. The Spoon Bending spell is one of them, I'm afraid!" the magical swordsman dragged his right foot in a half-circle, having mysteriously blown back up to an ordinary state from his pancake form until his feet were at around the width of his shoulders. Placing his claymore out in front of him horizontally, the magician dragged his hand across its blunt side, imbuing it with bubble gum pink-colored energy that washed with tiny tendrils like blades of grass.
"Are you going to try stabbing me now or are you just going to stand around there?" Sachiko pressed her hands to her hips. Her rabble-rouser opponent prepared to charge before his cheeks blew out and he nearly hurled. Pressing his finger to the center of his lips, the magical swordsman somehow just barely kept the contents of his stomach down. His entire world was still spinning after the time this woman spun him around to stun and confuse him with her silly game. No matter how tough he was or how polished his senses were, when the laws of the cartoons took over, he became dizzy even after one little spin.
"If I can't catch you, I'll make you come to me!" the magician barked out before stabbing the ground with his pink light emanating claymore. The mystical bubble gum shine expanded throughout the entire battlefield terrain, imbuing it with the same glow. With the magical swordsman clenching his fist, the very surface of the ground underneath the feet bent over, forcing anyone with a pair of feet fixed on solid ground to move alongside it. "Now I've got you!" the magician yelled out while thrusting his sword exactly where he thought his opponent was.
Pain. Stars, rainbow streamers, and floating hearts burst forth from a void of darkness as the mystic swordsman felt once again able to remove his blindfold with it having loosened significantly and white light beginning to seep through into his numbed eyes once again. Manic chortling of the waitress samurai leaning over the butt of a worn-out and obese village horse and slapping it with an open hand in uncontrollable laughter greeted the rough rider when he removed the cloth tied over his eyes. He felt his whole face swelling with a notable zone of numbness shaped like a horseshoe right in the center of his face.
"Silly you, you're supposed to pin the tail on the donkey, not your date, handsome," Sachiko teased her flattened and humiliated opponent while he peeled himself off the ground with a woozy head. Not since he was a child tending to the farm of his parents was the mystical swordsman hurt by the kick of a horse. He's slain outerversal demons that challenged the Authors themselves and stole their books of tropes, he's even beaten them and made out with those same grimoires as trophies. And here a mere middle-aged, depressed waitress samurai was mocking him!
"Hmm…" the mystical swordsman sighed and sheathed his claymore behind his back. Not even his trope magic seemed to do the trick here. "Very well, I agree to go out on a date with you. However, I beg you to understand that winning this tournament is incredibly important to the magicians. We can establish a Nexus Arcane Tower here on the three-dimensional plane of this universe and use our incredible powers to help ordinary people with their lives. We can protect them from their mundane third-dimensional threats like bandits and terrorists, cure diseases, and teach you the mysteries of all of reality that we've come to know upon becoming masters of mysticism."
"Huh? It's that important to you…?" Sachiko shriveled down, scratching her blushed cheek. "Well, I suppose the Iron Shogun doesn't really have anything to hold over my head now. I've found my darling, whom I can feel safe and loved with, someone who can help free me from the censored existence of cartoons and help me live an ordinary life. That was always my wish."
"The entire point of the Nexus Arcane Tower is to help people. If all I need to do to help you is go out and spend some time with you until you can feel safe and loved, that's something I can do," the magical swordsman extended his hand and commanded his grimoire to return to its position tucked underneath his armpit.
"But how can I know I can trust you not to stand me up when I don't even know your name?" Sachiko pouted with worry apparent on her face.
"If I truly had malicious intent, I would have lulled you into a false sense of security and tried attacking you while you were dazzled by my faked charm. My name is Omobito Tabahaku and I promise to take you on a date and see if we can break your Cursed Seal together," Omobito turned his glare away, almost like he was a tad ashamed of his sincerity. The soft and squishy feelings really weren't Omobito's area of expertise and he'd have competed against another unimaginable Eldritch demonic monstrosity before signing up for a date and giving his best shot at just having a good time with another eager participant of the joyful bundle of activities.
"Fine, but I'm holding you up to it," Sachiko approached Omobito, pinched his cigarette, and pulled a good, heartful puff from it. Colored with a double-sided smear of her worn lipstick, she gently placed the smoke back into Omobito's confused and lightly ajar mouth before turning and walking away. After reaching the edge of the arena, the samurai waitress just lightly hopped off the edge and walked into the service facilities while wiping her sweaty forehead with her folded black apron.
"Umm… I think that's it!" the announcer declared, waving with his arm toward the northeastern section of the arena where Sachiko walked off. "Sachiko Tanogen has surrendered and left the competition, leaving Ichijiki Muramasa as the final samurai representative in this battle royale! An unexpected development from one of the most easy-to-underestimate competitors, Sachiko Tanogen leaves the arena undefeated, but hoping to become vulnerable soon in the arms of true love!"
Meanwhile, on the western wing of the arena, a muscular giant with wild, spiky orange hair and a Konohagakure uniform that had to have been a few sizes too small for him based on how tightly it hung on him rampaged around, switching between multiple opponents, looking for someone fun to entertain him for a while. Kusagoro wasn't one to mess around with weaklings, so he had resigned himself to fending off whatever idiot came looking for a challenge while patiently waiting to advance to the Top 16. It just so happened that multiple challengers noted his passive behavior and wrongly interpreted it as weakness.
"This savagery, this unruly power!" an Exterminator with a round, metallic head and a flat, rectangular widening plastic platform for a neck, googly eyes and an elephant-like trunk that resembled the hose of a vacuum cleaner exclaimed. "Surely this man must be a changeling monster in disguise!" he surmised before grabbing his hose nose and pointing it at Kusagoro.
The rampant Jugo powerhouse froze in place as a powerful pulling flush of vacuum dragging him back to the Exterminator froze him mid-dash just before he would have trounced yet another fool getting in his way. Having been caught unaware, Kusagoro found few options for escaping the sucking conical tunnel of vacuum, so he surrendered to it and turned to face the Exterminator while rolling back his sleeves for an engagement.
Not content with just waiting for a devastating dropkick to eliminate it, the Exterminator pulled out an extension tube and slammed it onto the end of the hose. Instead of coming into close contact with the Exterminator, Kusagoro slammed against the extension tube and instantly grabbed hold of it. With inhuman strength, he crushed the extension tube and wrestled the sucking tube to the ground while winding back one arm to pound the Exterminator's head clean off the shoulders.
With a flick of a switch somewhere on its body, the Exterminator forced the vacuum to blow instead of pulling, creating a shrieking white-out wave of vacuum that tore the flak jacket off of Kusagoro's swollen chest and ripped his tight black bodysuit in a few spots. While the Exterminator clearly expected to blow the Konohagakure Sannin out with this savage vacuum wave, Kusagoro withstood it by merely pushing his hand out in front of him and sifting through its concussive blowing force.
"Impossible! This setting of my vacuum should have blown away even a 200-meter titanic monster off its feet, even a Tailed Beast would be grounded against this vacuum wave!" the Exterminator babbled with a robotic voice that slurped from a speaker in its mechanical head and had to make its way all the way out the vacuum hose before being heard.
"I'm no mere monster or a titan… I am a MAN!" Kusagoro bellowed, slamming a step-in uppercut into the mechanical body of the Exterminator and breaking the artificial monster hunter with one blow, shooting stray pieces of broken parts in all directions while a deafening shattering noise threatened to rob anyone near the site of Kusagoro's serious punch of hearing.
With a roundhouse, Kusagoro sent his battered and already defeated Exterminator with an entire artificial body cluttered with failures. Soaring through the air, Kusagoro morphed his feet into gatling platforms that shot out chakra beams and acted like jet boots in a way that allowed Kusagoro to pursue his opponent into the skies and pummel him until he was satisfied, even when the Exterminator already looked like it was beaten with all of its fighting resolve crippled and just waited to be eliminated.
"Make no mistake, you vacuum-toaster, man is the strongest, most dangerous creature in the world. And I am the strongest man in the strongest ninja village, making me the No. 1 strongest warrior in the world and the strongest and most dangerous creature alive!" Kusagoro proclaimed while obliterating more and more of the Exterminator with spinning jet roundhouses that ripped and busted more spare parts off of what was once a man, dissected and assembled into this mixture between man and household appliance machinery.
With the flames of his jet boots sustaining Kusagoro's flight, he smirked after grabbing hold of the collar of the Exterminator's uniform in mid-air and staring down at the pathetic and broken steampunk lump of dissected human flesh, plastic, and metal in his grip. With ruthless yet ultimately playful punches, he battered more and more of the Exterminator's round, metallic head until it cracked open, just to look inside.
"Hmm… Disappointing. I thought your face would be really messed up and creepy to look at, but there doesn't seem to be much of anything but scrap inside there. Oh well, at least your eyes look funny. I've killed many people, not all of them were people the village wanted me to kill, but I've never seen dying eyes quite like these. It's like tearing one of my son's stupid fluffy toy bears, honestly," a cruel, full-teeth smile colored Kusagoro's cheeks before he ripped the steampunk science experiment apart with bare hands and let the ripped spare parts clutter down on the arena.
Feeling like he had to make a final statement, Kusagoro threw a vertical high kick and a few more roundhouses to flatten and bang the metallic core of the broken Exterminator into a miserable state similar to a crushed soda can before extending his arm and morphing it into quintuple chakra cannon.
"Chakra Lupara!" Kusagoro chanted out with sadistic glee before a conical blast of pure chakra obliterated the Exterminator without leaving a trace of it. The Konohagakure Sannin landed on his feet, letting his transformed forearms, shins, and feet return to normal while he playfully scanned his surroundings for any eager participants who wanted to challenge him. "Heh, I don't even think I've killed anyone in this tournament."
For some reason, Kusagoro found this observation to be immensely hilarious as he broke out into a wild fit of laughter, completely losing control of himself and surrendering it to the peal of hilarity, stretching him out and making his eyes tear up. Whatever those Exterminators were, the people that they were strung up and assembled from must have been long dead, maybe even before the procedure that made them into whatever they were. That meant that all Kusagoro did in reducing that thing to ash was liberate a trapped soul inside of a shell of metal and plastic.
If anything, Kusagoro was being merciful. His sissy son, softy wife, and his sissy son's annoying ex-girlfriend he still looked up to could have eaten their hearts out. Kusagoro was a beacon of mercy and masculinity!
"Oh! With this flashy display, Kusagoro Jugo, a Konohagakure Sannin has made a statement that he is still very much in this competition and willing to stake his claim for a spot in the Top 16! Exterminator Model: Vacuum Cleaner has been obliterated without a trace, resulting in a merciless elimination! Something to note is that the position of Sannin is an esteemed post amongst the ninja villages. Each village can only have up to three Sannin at any given time, and they are elected by the Ninja Council. Currently, Konohagakure is notably short of a Sannin, but some villages haven't ever produced ninja that rank up to that level so that only shows the type of competition the ninja have sent here to this event!" the announcer explained to the curious spectators who seemed taken aback by the wild strength and savagery of a competitor that sat mostly still for this entire blood fest.
"Nicely done, Kusagoro-san!" the cheerful voice of a flashy Kumogakure ninja saluting him with a thumb-up distracted Kusagoro from enjoying the adoration of a stunned and aghast audience. "I believe we are the only two ninja left. While we are from different villages, it is in our common interest to preserve the reputation of ninja in the international stage of all warrior creeds."
"Piss off, shrimp," Kusagoro waved his hand in dismissal of the lively Kumogakure youth. "If you want to see ninja winning this whole thing, you'll have an easier time if you just throw yourself out and watch me breeze through from the spectator stands."
"Whoa…" Yoibetsu-N gasped and nearly choked up on his own breaths after forgetting to breathe for a second. "A genuine Sannin addressed me… So intense!" unable to help himself, the Kumogakure ninja chuckled to himself and turned around to face the noise of a brewing battlefield with a smirk of satisfaction with this interaction with one of the absolute titans of the ninja world.