"Those blades let you build up some impressive speed," Captain Morgan smirked after slipping his hands inside his coat and letting them linger there. The pirate thought his opponent would take off after seeing him as much as twitching his finger, but that wasn't the case as Wayna stood still in her pre-dashing position, making Morgan freeze up too. "Normally, a method for movement such as this would only be effective on an icy surface, however… Your skates are special, it seems. You can skate on just about any surface, can't you?"
"That's just how we move playing Skate Ball. Not only that but we constantly get thrown into and through icebergs, so we know how to take a bump too!" Wayna Nunnon replied with a blank face, accentuating and elevating the tone of only the last part of her response before taking off at last.
The skate-baller turned into a purple blink that multiplied all across the arena with each purple flash bomb connected by scarlet speed lines. Captain Morgan braced for impact, taking the first blow in stride and riding the force of impact while transitioning it into momentum to draw his hands from inside his coat, revealing two water pistols loaded with booze in each hand. Smirking with contentment, Morgan sprayed the booze out in streaming shots from both water pistols, but he wasn't clueless enough to be aiming at his speeding bullet of an opponent, instead, he aimed at the ground.
Before Wayna Nunnon could dash up to Morgan for a follow-up strike, she appeared from thin air, apparently having lost all her speed and balance as the booze made the ground both sticky and slippery at the same time, throwing her smooth skating off-balance as the buccaneer employed his alcohol manipulation to make the booze pool up instead of getting absorbed and spreading too far out. With his opponent stuck in place, Captain Morgan smirked and pulled his arms, still double-wielding, to the sides.
"Devil's Honey: Reload!" he chanted out before throwing a spinning solebutt straight into Wayna Nunnon's chest and blasting her off for an off-balance skid across the arena. The water of the artificial lake out of the arena bounds began to bubble and rustle in unrest. With torrential jets it shot in the air and swirled toward Captain Morgan, washing straight inside the barrels of his water pistols, filling their reservoirs up with water that Captain Morgan's ability turned into booze for his techniques.
Having successfully reloaded his water pistols, Captain Morgan leaped forward and took the offensive, spraying his liquor forward. Wayna proved herself to be just as nimble as she previously claimed, scrambling together and kicking off the ground into a skating dash that escalated with each successive kick. After missing the initial shot, Captain Morgan pulled his pistols back up and refused to waste any more booze on her.
Wayna raced across the arena with sharp, stone-slicing noises filling the stage. The enthralled audience that was once again reminded of the thrill of observing such a high-octane battle after a decent break now couldn't envy Captain Morgan's position. Being inside this arena with those headache-inducing noises raking at the ears all around you would have driven any lesser man mad with fear. Least of all things, it created the sensation of being trapped in a cage and being helpless.
However, Wayna wasn't as numb-skulled as her simplistic fighting style and brawly build suggested her to be. She knew nothing would've prevented Captain Morgan from repeating the same move and covering even more ground around him in sticky muck trappings. While it would empty the pirate's reserves again, Wayna recalled Captain Morgan using a much larger caliber water rifle before, meaning that he wouldn't be locked into reloading again. Rushing forward head-first was a trap for naïve fools. Not only would it have reduced viable angles to approach the pirate from, but it would have also earned Wayna more bruises.
"How 'bout this then!?" Wayna kicked off into the air, spinning vertically and rolling horizontally to add to the momentum before transferring it all into her kicking left leg and swiping it with a flash-speed horizontal kick.
Morgan stiffened up with his guns held in his hands, but not yet aiming. Everything about this attack baffled him: first off, Wayna took to the air and shut herself off the precious footing she could have used to accelerate even faster or redirect herself if necessary, also, her kick looked at least fifty meters short of even coming close to reaching Morgan from there… Sharp pain made Morgan wheeze and for his gaze to blank out, coughing up and spraying blood from a cut in his chest, the pirate captain staggered back. Accustomed to quick bar jigs, Morgan's feet scrambled in time to keep him standing and his wobbly knees tensed up just in time to keep his masculine frame from collapsing on the ground where his blood made a foot-wide pool.
Morgan's plastic water gun barrels chipped with a dull noise, revealing that some of the cut sliced into their frames as well, damaging them and prompting Captain Morgan to test them with a few squirts off to the side. This only revealed that they spilled a third of what they fired off through the cuts in their frame, making them even less efficient from that point on.
"Whoa! Contestant Wayna Nunnon just landed a nasty hit on Captain Morgan with some kind of invisible kick! How will this injury change the momentum of the battle!?" Rajul yelled out, hyping up the audience.
"That wasn't a bad attack, for a civilian," Endo grumbled with his crossed arms, shutting himself off from the battle for a second with closed eyes. "Nowhere near as tough as an air projectile from a coated sword, though."
"So that's what it was…" Genshi mumbled to himself. "Air…"
"It isn't as unimpressive as Endo plays it off to be," Mana pitched in. "To generate a ranged projectile of cutting air currents with brute force and momentum alone requires immense physical strength and skill in accumulating speed and then transferring it in just the right way without wasting any of the garnered momentum. Honestly, learning a ninjutsu technique that does something like this would be much easier at this point."
Gnashing his teeth in pain, Morgan fumbled to his knees, but this wasn't a sign of aggravated injury. Instead, Morgan took a cheap shot aiming at Wayna's knees, prompting the speedy skate-baller to take off into a skating dash again. With skill and precision, Morgan fired a few direct and controlled squirts at the ground, creating patches of sticky floor, just like before, however, much smaller in volume and less dangerous to destabilize his opponent. That was fine with the pirate captain, however, as he revealed the true purpose of those smaller puddles–to direct Wayna to a desired patch of arena ground where Morgan could land a shot.
"Agh!" Wayna exclaimed in pain, stiffening up and falling to one knee when the spray of alcohol slammed against it with concussive force, hard enough to trip her up. Spinning his water pistols around in his hands, as he turned his arms to the side and called out for the artificial lake whirls to reload them with water he could turn to booze, Captain Morgan advanced toward his temporarily crippled opponent. However, instead of waiting for the water pistols to reload and wasting this opportunity, Captain Morgan flung his guns into the air and pulled out a pair of flintlocks from underneath his coat.
With a menacing glare, Captain Morgan let his opponent have it, unloading everything that his flintlocks had stored inside them and riddling Wayna Nunnon with burned gunpowder holes in her armored bodysuit. This reduced the skate-baller's protective gear to torn rags with the padded sections revealing the underlying hardened pads while the torrent of bullets dragged the downed athlete across the floor in a black trail of scorched gunpowder. After emptying his flintlocks, Captain Morgan stuffed them back in his coat pockets and lifted his hands to catch the reloaded water pistols.
"I see, this man's fighting style has stricken me as a bit odd. Water or booze, squirting it from a water gun won't do much damage unless you employ ninjutsu techniques that make your water hard as an aqua drill. In that case, a water gun wouldn't cut it to launch it fast enough. I figured that Morgan should have some method of actually dealing damage to his opponent, as opposed to just soiling them in alcohol," Damisan observed, nodding to himself now that Captain Morgan showed more of his underlying arsenal.
"Flintlocks? That's his damage source? Pathetic," Endo snarled in disgust.
"Oh, Endo… Never change your worm-brained ways. Think about it for a second–if your alcohol is weaker than ordinary hand cannon, why use alcohol at all? What property of alcohol would make it a worthwhile tool to combine with gunpowder?" Asuka teased Endo, looking to enjoy Endo's attempts to work it out thoroughly.
"Hmph… Even if he's going to put the fact his booze is flammable to good use, it's still child's play compared to Fire Release ninjutsu or chakra coating. Just an overpriced and weaker knock-off of the real deal," Endo dismissed Asuka's pitch of the threat that Captain Morgan posed as non-existent.
"Well, at least Captain Morgan made it through the battle royale…" Asuka shrugged, hitting her squad mate where she knew it would truly hurt.
"What was that now?" Endo reared his teeth and rolled back his sleeves before displeased glares from the surrounding spectators made him wise up and realize this wasn't worth the hassle. Patting his robe down, Endo settled back into place. "One of these days, I'll cut that tongue of yours out," he said with a calmer yet still solemn tone.
"Oh! Contestant Wayna Nunnon is back up after receiving that dangerous combination! It appears that despite the fact she's taken a dozen direct hits from Captain Morgan's flintlocks, the bullets failed to penetrate her skin! What impressive toughness!" Rajul pumped his right forearm in the air, reporting the fact that Wayna rose off the ground, slightly trembling and aching all around as the salvo of blasts could only cover her with bruises and only damaged her bodysuit and its thick padding.
"Your knee is on fire," Captain Morgan noted nonchalantly while spinning his water pistols in his hands and stopping them with firm catches of the handle.
"So it is…" Wayna smirked, patting the smoldering knee with stiff taps and extinguishing the blaze, revealing a mean-looking burn on the patella area of her knee.
"I wonder if you'll be able to keep up all the bolting around with that knee of yours," Captain Morgan took aim with one of his water pistols while holding the second one up and close to his body, just in case his opponent blitzed him and he needed to respond in an instant.
Wincing in pain, Wayna attempted to dash at Captain Morgan, but the flaring-up torment in her right knee made the skater fumble her speed accumulation. The injury slowed Wayna Nunnon down so much that Captain Morgan simply aimed at her and emptied both his water pistols at once. Because Wayna was approaching so slowly, and let the escalating pain in her knee, as well as the coating of booze all over her body, disorient her, Morgan quickly swept her calves and slammed her down, pulling out a piece of flint and a knife as he withdrew. One swipe of both in opposite directions later, the flint sent a hectic flock of sparks that ignited a violent burst of flames, throwing both combatants back.
"Oh no! A flawlessly executed move, however… Captain Monmouth Morgan has become a veritable fireball himself! It seems that he forgot the fact that his water pistols were leaking a fraction of the alcohol he shot at his opponent!" the announcer reported, referencing the fact that it was both combatants that suffered the violent explosive rip of the concussive blast, not to mention the firestorm that singed up the alcohol coating Wayna Nunnon and Captain Monmouth Morgan.
With a breakdancing twirl, Wayna Nunnon swept her foot and sent a slashing air projectile that split the flames and the smoke, revealing her with shallow burns covering her entire body and her padded bodysuit wholly burned off. Wayna Nunnon stood before her opponent with a sleeveless black tank top, covered with minor bruises and moderate burns that meshed with the ample scar tissue she's patched herself with throughout her career skating, busting through iceberg pillars, and brawling it out with the other skate-ballers. Wayna's previously restrained dreadlocks now dangled and rustled wildly under the full control of the wind currents and air pressure rampant in the arena. She had removed her thick vizor, revealing lively brown eyes underneath.
Likewise, Captain Morgan slipped off his military coat, revealing himself underneath it all to be a man of average build, ranging more to the slim side because of his taller-than-average height and average musculature. The blast force and the resulting fireball had singed the pirate's eyebrows, since he lacked the protective visor Wayna had before throwing it away because of excessive damage, and burned up the ribbons holding his pigtails. Captain Morgan's black and greasy hair now stuck to his sweaty face and body with a carabin rifle and a large water rifle crossed behind Captain Morgan's back and a couple of reserve flintlocks crossed on Morgan's chest.
"For someone who doesn't look like he goes the distance too often, you took that blowback like a champ," Wayna commended her opponent with a smirk that a street brawler showed when they felt the warm-blooded fingers of berserker madness crawling up to their throat after their face became covered with a crimson mask.
"For someone with a given-out knee and unable to fight, you're showing me a lot of sass," Captain Morgan pulled out his water rifle and aimed it at Wayna. His trigger-happy finger stopped when Captain Morgan looked around the trails of smoke and smoldering tongues of flames around him. Firing his alcohol right now might not have been too smart, lest a repeat of the previous firestorm was to occur.
"You should speak for yourself. Though it's not sass, that's made me notice. It's curiosity. What do you fight so hard for?" Wayna Nunnon wondered. "The motivations of fragile folks who might break under pressure always intrigued me."
"Why? Gold of course. Gold bars, gold coins, golden armor, weapons, and artifacts… In other words–booty!" Captain Morgan vaulted his water rifle over his shoulder, restraining himself from attacking too early and triggering another blowback. From both sides, impressive pyres of the blown-up water pistols he dropped nearly measured up to his own height where the heat made the alcohol-filled hand cannons burst and burn up.
"Ah, I see… Not that I would mind some of that myself, but I'm doing this for acknowledgment and fame more than monetary gain," Wayna Nunnon admitted. "Victory here means the validation of my existence, the acknowledgment that the sport I've pursued excellence in my entire life is no less impressive or worthwhile to excel at than any other profession or creed in life. That is why it will take more than a blown-out knee to keep me down!"
Making true of her proclamation, Wayna Nunnon hopped on her arms, surprising Captain Morgan as she did so, and began twirling her body around in a break-dance-like manner, delivering a rapid flurry of skate kicks in the air that was too slow and didn't have enough momentum to build up to the point of compressed air blades, but carried a wallop regardless.
Captain Morgan put his shoulder out, gnashing his teeth and weathering the resounding beating of empty concussive air pockets coming his way. Wayna must have thought him trapped by all the fire and ash, too afraid to use his alcohol, and thus she saw this as her chance to put as much damage as she could in. However…
Morgan's water rifle pumped out an intense torrent of just ordinary water, sending Wayna dragging across the arena while doing a great deal to chill off some of the melting stone and airborne cinders that could have ignited had he used alcohol. This surprisingly ordinary usage of his water gun both shocked the audience to the point of a wave of gasps and howls but also covered the arena in an intense screen of white vapor from the cooling stones and sandstone tiles.
While Wayna still laid on her back, stretched out on the floor and wincing in pain, clutching her burned and bruised sides after just having been crudely swept off her feet, Morgan appeared from the white smoke with a bandit's knife dangling in the air, looking to pin her down to the ground for a coup de grâce. Wayna rolled back, adopting a hand-stand position again before turning left and right to deliver a slicing and dicing combination with both her feet, still equipped with Audra skates.
Morgan exclaimed in desperation and staggered back, protecting himself from a particularly dangerous swipe with his knife, but losing it in the process. Just a single break-dancing skate kick cut his knife into two pieces, no different than it would have split a log of wood. Wayna pushed herself off the ground, turning in the air and delivering a spinning kick that narrowly missed Morgan's eyes and nearly blinded him permanently as the fallen on his rear pirate crawled backward like some kind of inverted spider, desperate to save himself from being filleted.
Another blast of water gun tried putting more space between them and give Morgan some opportunity to catch his breath and formulate a plan, but Wayna sliced through the toughened stream of water and slashed Morgan's chest, bringing the pirate captain down with a horrific grunt, and a splatter of blood that became mixed and extra droopy with all the water pooling in the arena.
"Down! Captain Monmouth Morgan overextended and paid the price! It's as of yet unclear if he is out, but Morgan is down!" announcer Rajul reported the collision between the two combatants that had transpired in the veil of white vapor. After the vapor cleared out, the sight of the downed pirate captain laying in a pool of his blood and panting Wayna, down on her knees and clutching her aching burns and bruises, greeted the audience.
The battle may not have been over yet, but it wasn't too far from getting there.