Captain Monmouth Morgan aimed with his pumped and loaded big plastic water gun and sprayed a steady stream. As it went on, the thickness of the booze being sprayed and the distance made the trajectory of the hooch stream broaden its reach and become more of a tight spray than a direct stream. Ready for a struggle against her opponent, who got an unexpected whiff of a second wind, Wayna dived to the side for a roll.
Knowing that the condition of her swollen and scorched knee wouldn't allow her the luxury of speedy skating, the skate-baller completed her evasive roll with a handstand and pushed herself with a horizontal vault, putting her arms to work to throw her entire body around and maximize her evasive potential. Feeling the tension in her hands, Wayna spun herself around in place with improvised breakdancing moves until she stopped in place, frozen in an upside-down position with her left leg bent and ready for a pump. After delaying the strike for a good second, accompanied by a pained grunt, Wayna sent her skating kick onward.
"Still trying the air-cutting attack? I don't think it's going to…" Captain Morgan threw his gun over his shoulder, but before the pirate could finish explaining why Wayna's attack wouldn't work, Wayna's attack worked. The bubble that Captain Morgan stood on burst, splattering sticky and sweet alcohol all over the place, with the pirate captain suddenly finding himself weightless and falling to the floor level.
"Wow! Contestant Wayna Nunnon compensated for the injury in her knees by putting her arms to work with repeat, upside-down rotations that built up enough momentum to deliver the cutting long-range attacks!" the announcer explained to the baffled audience what exactly had happened and why Wayna pulled off a less powerful, less accurate version of her earlier move, despite implications that she shouldn't have been able to.
"I've got you now!" Wayna exclaimed, diving toward the fallen pirate, recovering and attacking while her opponent pulled himself off the ground. Soaring through the air, Wayna snapped her right leg back to perform a flying punch with an amped-up cross to Captain Morgan's face that hit the pirate captain with a satisfying crunch and indented his face.
Wincing in pain and leaking blood from the wound in her knee, Wayna Nunnon turned around with a skating pirouette and delivered a spinning backfist, then rode the wave of momentum to spin her body into a proper position for a jumping skate kick. The kick slammed against the front of Captain Morgan's neck with a meaty thud, spraying blood from it, but the seaman's toughness and forceful resistance by amping his toughness up with the pirate version of chakra kept the kick from beheading Morgan outright or slashing his throat too deep.
Stumbling with grisly wounds and bleeding so intensely that he lost balance for a second, Captain Morgan crumbled to his knees only for Wayna Nunnon to commit to her breakdancing routine and start spinning, shifting from spinning on her back to spinning on her rear, meanwhile, using her arms for hand-standing and throwing sharp, slicing kicks her opponent's way. The scene where the two combatants collided became a bloody cyclone of shining Audra steel and bloody squirts.
Wayna Nunnon went on to put her head to work as well, switching to an upside-down position while standing on her head and arms. The combination of slicing attacks raised the overwhelmed pirate captain into the air, lacerated and tattered. Based on the tensed-up muscles and pumping veins on Wayna Nunnon's forehead, shoulders, biceps, and chest, it was apparent that she had resolved to finish the fight with this attack, skidding on her rear at the lowest level, Wayna performed a couple of dozens of horizontal break dance kicks before vaulting backward into a standing position, slashing Captain Morgan vertically in a crescent-shaped back flipping kick.
Completely overwhelmed and whited-out, the pirate captain lifted off the ground and flew out from the ripping dicing kick cyclone, hurling close to the edge of the arena and planting on his back with a bounce off the ground that only aggravated the pirate's countless wounds. Meanwhile, Wayna stumbled and collapsed on one knee with a wince. The young woman whined in pain, unable to touch her burned knee with her hands unless she was willing to risk it getting infected. She gave everything she had for this attack, knowing that opportunities like this one might not have presented themselves.
"This may just be it, ladies and gents! Such a ferocious combination of kicks and cuts, it's impossible to imagine that anyone could have survived it! Then again, the contestants of the Succession Tournament have surprised us countless times before! I'm not entirely sure if Captain Morgan is out of the fight just yet! I still sense a semblance of fighting spirit in him, the question is–is his body in any shape to satisfy it!?" Rajul reported to the audience, pulling out a spying glass to zoom in on the image of the downed pirate and the pool of blood accumulating underneath his sprawled, whited-out, and open-mouth body.
Explosions lit up each barred pipe leaking water into the artificial lake in the arena. Suddenly, the ongoing fight looked like the least of the audience's worries, and even Rajul was caught off guard, nearly stumbling out of the announcer's platform. Boats flew out alongside the bursts of water now that the floodgates were opened, boats full of pirates surrounded the arena and flailed weapons and rifles in the air with each boat containing a lone cannon which they used to blow their way into the arena through the pipes.
"What the…!?" Endo stood up, grabbing the hilt of his sword and stepping over the head of the spectator in front of him, preparing to hop off and engage the emerging pirates before Shige-H called out for him to stop. "Are those guys the ones looking to interfere with the tournament?" he growled, staring at the developing scene of pirate boats surrounding the arena.
"What's going on, is someone interfering with the fight?" Genshi called out, looking around but registering no activity, suggesting that the pirate mooks that sailed their way into the artificial lake outside of the arena's bounds weren't notable enough to stand out amongst the visual input of the surrounding audience for Genshi's visual sensors.
"These are… Pirates," Damisan's eyes squinted. "Certainly not who I expected to see messing with the tournament."
"I don't think they're messing with anything," Mana shook her head. Having sailed on the ship of a Pirate Lord, it occurred to her that everyone might have misrepresented the true intentions of the crew surrounding the arena.
"Yeah, they're not attacking, despite having a clear cannon shot on Wayna Nunnon. They could light her up in an instant and she might be too tired and injured to do much about them all. And yet… They are neither stepping inside the arena nor attacking from outside its bounds. I think they're here for… Cheering for their captain?" Shige-H scratched her head at the strange sight.
"W-Well… These scoundrels invaded the premises, but… Until they either step inside the arena or attack a competitor, they haven't technically broken any rules yet…" Rajul scratched his head equally as confused by the senseless shouting and cheering with weapons and loaded rifles raised in the sky. A handful of the seafaring ruffians aimed their cannons into the air and fired again, trying to revive their captain with a mad cannon salvo, but Captain Morgan remained down.
"Umm… Not that I don't trust your judgment of how much more a fighter can take, but could you maybe do a count to ten?" Wayna Nunnon shrugged, turning to Rajul.
"That won't be necessary, competitor Wayna Nunnon!" Rajul yelled out, leaning over the railing of his platform. "With each passing second, Captain Morgan's fighting spirit dwindles and fades out further. He might be done before I'm done counting to ten!"
"This is bad! Captain hasn't been down for this long except for the times he overdid on his rum!" one pirate stuffed his grubby hands inside of his mouth, chattering on his chipped fingernails with his teeth.
"Forget it, boys! There's only one thing that can reach our captain now!" another pirate barked out, pulling out a fat bag and slicing it open with his knife. As the pirate placed the bag over the edge of the boat, compromising its balance, golden coins spilled out from the bag like guts from an open belly. "Only booty can wake the good captain up now!" the pirate declared as the rest of the crew observed the sacrilegious act with their hands over their heads, with a few having dragged their bandanas down to cover their eyes.
A deafening roar filled the air, chilling Wayna to the bone and making her spine extend straight like a board as she tucked her neck in and turned toward her fallen opponent. Captain Morgan was screaming in pain, unable to move but still conscious! It was as if the meek smell of gold ripped from someone's money-grubbing hands spilling out from his control and plummeting into the bottom of the lake breathed new life into Captain. With a shaking hand, through raw force, Morgan tilted his water gun and unscrewed its container, spilling it over his face, almost rum-boarding himself.
Captain Morgan's hand went deep into the pocket of his trousers, pulling out a lighter that would have served to ignite cigars. The buccaneer flicked the lighter alight and sent a burst of flames washing over upper chest and throat–cauterizing the slit throat from where a part of Wayna's skate had embedded into it by turning it into droopy scar tissue and burning it sealed.
Before Wayna Nunnon could react, her opponent was back on his feet, wiping the sticky liquor off his flat and pale face with a long smile and bulging bloodshot drunkard's eyes. "Flintlock!" Captain Morgan exclaimed, raising his hand over his head with a slight waving, coming from the booze hitting the pirate's brain and numbing the excruciating pain that would curl his body over. Someone from his crew flung a flintlock for their captain. After grabbing the gun and lowering the hammer, Captain Morgan aimed off to the side and blasted from his flintlock, sending the treacherous worm that spilled his gold into the lake flying out from the boat with a scorched upper body and a bullet etched in their forehead, not yet cracked through the skull.
Captain Morgan pulled out his water rifle, wielding it in one arm while turning it to the side, while the flintlock aimed straight at Wayna Nunnon. With her muscles fatigued and her body having given everything it had during the last attack, the skate-baller didn't feel confident that she'd be able to do much in terms of interception of the captain's next attack, leaving her trapped on one knee before him. More like a victim or a target than his opponent.
"Devils Honey: Reload!" Captain Morgan yelled out, surging a small whirlpool in a rushing jet that filled up the water rifle with booze and readied it for battle again. Having reloaded and set himself up for a successful finishing move, Captain Morgan aimed his water rifle and his flintlock at Wayna Nunnon, who just panted on one knee and stared back at him with an exhausted and pain-ridden look on her face.
"Devil's Honey: Hellraiser!" Captain Morgan exclaimed, firing from both weapons at once. Crying out in pain, Wayna turned for a diagonal roundhouse, sending a wave of pus and blood shooting from her burned knee while collapsing on the ground. Drunk off his mind, the pirate barely even registered a tiny smack of a dull air pocket hitting his wrist and turning his flintlock just a few degrees off to the left and closer to the spraying booze.
A cascade of fireballs converged into a raging conflagration, rising and stretching out skyward as more and more infernal bubbles joined in with each bullet launched from the flintlock that just wouldn't stop firing as if Captain Morgan was possessed, and only death could make him stop shooting. Square on her back stretched out and unable to stand on either her arms or legs, Wayna Nunnon observed in awe as the wildfire of a dozen blasts sent a rag-doll flying out of the blast zone and slamming against the wall on the area outside of the arena bounds, flopping into the lake face-first.
Captain Morgan's crew, the stunned spectators, and even the winner of the match herself all stared at the scene in complete silence and shock, not peeping as much as a squeak even when the firestorm dimmed and only a black scorched field of empty and charred tiles revealed itself and the image of the debilitated Captain Morgan floating in the water face-down made itself painfully apparent.
"It's over, ladies and gents! Contestant Wayna Nunnon has defeated Captain Monmouth Morgan and eliminated the final pirate from the competition! She moves on to the quarter-finals!" Rajul exclaimed, raising his left hand to gesture at the winner, who finally stretched her abused body out and enjoyed the sudden sense of calmness as she caught a breather on the sun-scorched sandstone.
"What happened? My visor completely whited out!" Genshi grumbled, rubbing the scalp of a puppet he wore that enabled some semblance of ocular sensory and obscured the extensive wounds that blinded him, sustained during the battle royale.
"Wayna-san swept her foot, sending a weak slice directed at Captain Morgan's wrist. While it didn't even break the skin, alongside the grievous wounds on his forearms already making them more susceptible to harm, they were enough to redirect Captain Morgan's flintlock to cross its firing line with the spray of rum from Captain Morgan's rifle, resulting in a point-blank ignition and a massive explosion. Wayna Nunnon won," Mana explained as briefly as she could.
"I'm so glad for her," Genshi nodded with relief apparent in his expression. "The more athletes move on, the higher the chance that our dream for the World Sports Games will come true."
"Her struggle was admirable," Endo nodded, crossing his arms after settling back in his seat.
"Well, it's not like she could have helped it at all," Asuka shrugged with a sigh. "If she did nothing–she'd have ended up on the receiving end of the same blast. Even if she'd have survived it, her days as an athlete would've been over for good."
"So, Mana, what's your assessment? Do you think you could take guys like these in a fight?" Damisan turned to the magician.
"I'd say so," Mana nodded, answering in all earnestness. "I've stood my own against Pirate Lords and most of the time I've been impaired each time I fought one. I don't think this is the best competition this tournament can offer, but I believe I could have beaten either of these competitors without much trouble."
"Good," Damisan nodded.
"Hmph, don't get too excited over some small fry. Keep your eyes peeled on the next match. It's going to have one guy you should watch out for," Endo warned his teammates not to slack off. Intrigued by Endo speaking so highly about someone who was neither himself nor someone who had earned Endo's respect, Shige-H looked down at the poster advertising future matches she held clenched in her hand.
"The Curse Walker VS Granny Bantou?" Shige-H reported. "Which one is the troublesome one exactly?"
"The Curse Walker…" Mana muttered. "He's one of those Cursed Warriors, the weapons of mass destruction that we've encountered in Boulder Town, isn't it? They were dominant in the battle royale."
"In that case, let's hope this Granny Bantou can keep this Curse Walker occupied long enough for him to showcase most of his abilities. No matter how considerable he may be, we should be able to figure out countermeasures given enough time and we're likely due for a break after the second-round matches are over today," Damisan said with a nod and turned his attention to the arena where the support staff quickly carried Wayna Nunnon off to the infirmary while a few more bickered with Captain Morgan's pirate crew so that they could treat the pirate's wounds in the infirmary as well. Some veiled folks quickly scrubbed the char and blood off the tiles to the best of their ability before the next match could start.
"And now, folks, for our next match!" Rajul alerted the blabbing and rustling audience by speaking up and in terms silencing the crowd. "The lone man amongst the crew of bona fide monsters! A mound of muscle and wrath with a disposition so nasty and blood-thirst so fierce that it makes one wonder who's truly the veritable monster in the Cursed Warrior crew! The rampant, unstoppable scrapper with glowing, energized hands who extinguished more than a few lives in the last stretches of the battle royale–the Curse Walker!"
The audience looked around, shifting their attention between the different open gates, wondering which one the Curse Walker would enter through and how such a berserker soul would enter the arena. Based on the wild and thoughtless look of the Curse Walker, it didn't appear like the man cared much about theatrics, however, despite this, he was plenty intimidating regardless thanks to his disposition, appearance, and unruly power alone.
"Look, there!" someone in the audience pointed at the sky, smacking their cheek with their free hand in awe as what appeared to have been an obsidian meteorite decorated with glowing neon light patterns hurled toward the arena from high in the sky. In a blink, the living meteor smashed onto the ground and stood in a charred crater in the shape of a bare-chested, absurdly bulky man in a long robe barely covering his shoulders and stretching down with long gray strands. A man of floating, long dark hair, glowing eyes, and mouth and forearms coated with gold, with neon patterns decorating organic mace-like clubs capable of crushing a warrior's head alongside its high-grade helmet.
The man amongst titans–the Curse Walker made his entrance.