Putting up his dukes, Ryoku Genshi leaned forward and tucked in by the knees. Genshi's prosthetic limb inflated like a balloon, as did the armored shell that Damisan had Genshi clad the rest of his body in so that only two parts of his body weren't the only protected spots on his body. A sharp howl escaped the venting tubes present on the prosthetic leg while the armored shell around Genshi's remaining limb blew compressed air out in a condensed airwave.
The aerial shockwave sent Ryoku Genshi soaring forward, shocking Damisan that the athlete went on the offensive against the samurai. With his fists by his sides, Genshi unleashed a flurry of punches against his opponent. No one even saw Ichijiki Muramasa drawing his sword, however, everyone saw his sword move like a fluid phantom. Everyone heard the deafening clangs resonating across the entire district and spreading far into the vast desert continent like raging thunderbolts from a cosmic storm.
"Whoa! Ryoku Genshi is on the offensive! Ichijiki Muramasa's only defense against his opponent's attacks is his sword, meaning that he is inclined to block those attacks! This can only mean that the athlete's target is his opponent's sword!" the announcer reported to the audience that already felt besieged by the influx of visual and auditory stimuli.
Like a master fencer, yielding no ground to his opponent, Ichijiki Muramasa mocked his opponent by wielding the two-handed katana with one hand while blocking his opponent's attacks. Elegant in motion and emotionless with his judgmental stare, the samurai proved to be a worthwhile dancing partner to Ryoku Genshi, who desperately pushed his workhorse's body to the limits to break through. Having had enough mockery, Ryoku Genshi burst a small aerial pump from his feet again, back-dashing twenty meters or so while tilting his foot.
Instead of using the aerial shockwave expulsion to dash around the arena at incredible speed that was unusual for the pro athlete before the prosthetic replacement, Ryoku Genshi pumped the tunneling air wave straight at his opponent, shooting condensed air from his prosthetic foot like a cannon. Ichijiki Muramasa placed his sword in front of him and leaned forward as if preparing to tackle a rough autumn breeze rather than a raging airwave that should strip flesh from the bone without effort.
Suffering no damage, Ichijiki Muramasa stone-walled the aerial shockwave, skidding back fifty meters before straightening his body and swiping his sword to the side with a scoffing glare back at his opponent. Ryoku Genshi gnashed his teeth. While his hope for a miraculous victory and stamina bordered on infinite, he didn't expect to see his opponent completely brush off his bread-and-butter method for an improvised offensive.
"I wouldn't expect a blunt axe like yourself to know this, but a samurai's sword is his very spirit. You cannot break the blade if you haven't broken the man," Ichijiki Muramasa taunted his opponent, more so to avoid the athlete continuing to embarrass himself with fruitless effort to break the sword that was coated with the indomitable kenki of the samurai.
"That is very kind of you to point out," Ryoku Genshi smiled. "I wouldn't have stopped trying if you hadn't told me that."
"Before you said that I wasn't a kind person. While I believe you to be right with that assessment, I don't think that you understood my heart as a swordsman," Ichijiki Muramasa looked straight at his opponent. That relaxed look felt like being miniaturized before a titan that quickly grew to colossal proportions and threatened to squish Genshi like a bug. The look of a predator that paralyzed Genshi's body and made it feel like Ichijiki had no openings to exploit, despite the fact he stood wide open.
"Your heart?" Ryoku Genshi grit his teeth, squirming in his predicament like a worm impaled on a fishing hook, about to be flung to feed the voracious lake dwellers. "From where I stand, you're no different from the resistance of the other village folks. I've faced those condescending looks, even back when I was still a farmer on my parents' farm."
"Oh, so you used to be a lowly farmer? That is peculiar to hear…" This proclamation was the first thing in Genshi's arsenal that broke through Ichijiki's indomitable façade.
"Peculiar? How so…?" Genshi wondered.
"It would have never occurred to me that someone would be so foolish and degenerate as to move down the social scale. To choose to become a useless mouth-breather, to take money and time from peasantry that rightfully belongs to their lords while playing games with rag balls like a child… The technology you use in your gear and ball could have been used to bolster the military power of your lord, yet you chose to play childish ball games with it," Ichijiki Muramasa lost a semblance of his cool, adopting a proper, two-handed fighting stance by widening his legs and bringing his sword up vertically by his eye level. "I take no pleasure in using my sword to punish insolent peasants. However, I do not hesitate before doing so. Still, striking you down is like plunging my very soul into a pile of filth. Utterly revolting…"
Much to the shock of the audience and Ryoku Genshi himself, Ichijiki Muramasa straightened his back and sheathed his sword, adopting a hand-to-hand fighting kobudo-style stance. The disavowal of his blade even made Ryoku Genshi break his fighting stance and composure in return.
"What's this!? The peerless warrior swordsman, the heart of the sword Ichijiki Muramasa, has sheathed his sword! Does he believe that he doesn't need it against an opponent like Ryoku Genshi!?" the announcer howled out as the audience rustled in discussion about what could have been the meaning of this gesture.
"What are you doing?" Ryoku Genshi barked out. "Why did you sheathe your sword? If you don't intend to use it, it's the same as if I broke it before!"
"I wouldn't use my blade to strike down a prostitute, I would use my hand. Likewise, I wouldn't cut someone of the same despicable standing," Ichijiki Muramasa said. "In case you are unaware of your standing in society, athlete, let me elucidate you. At the very top sits the lord: it might be a Shogun, Sheikh, or the Feudal Lord, depending on where in the world you are from. Then there are the samurai, the esteemed warrior class bound by the code of loyalty, and the bushido, the exalted protectors of the land and their lord's honor. Below are the peasants, the chaff of the people, however, they are not without their use–they work the land that their lord owns yet lends to them for the duration of their lifetimes, or until the lord decides to take it away, and reap its benefits, serving their lord and the people."
"I'm warning you right now, if you underestimate me, you're up for a grave disappointment and embarrassment to this Shogun you revere so much," Ryoku Genshi interrupted the swordsman as he took a break to breathe in.
"The likes of you don't even measure up to the very bottom of the social caste system. Merchants, artists, craft workers, harlots, and other untouchables are pointless bottom-feeding parasites that offer nothing of use to the people or their lord. All they do is leech on the resources that the peasantry produces for their lords," Ichijiki Muramasa continued. "The fact that you, someone brought up as a peasant, a servant of the lord, lowly yet necessary for the system to work, would willingly remove yourself from the system and become a parasite that feeds on its fruit, the very flesh and blood of society, is unacceptable and abhorrent."
"Don't think that I'll hesitate to attack an unarmed opponent!" Ryoku Genshi proclaimed, focusing his scoping gadgets on the location of his opponent and taking off with hefty pumps of compressed air venting from his feet once again. Ichijiki Muramasa let out a Kiai shout, followed by the sound one would have expected to hear from an explosion. Without moving his body or shifting his balance at all, the samurai thrust his arms forward and redirected both of Ryoku Genshi's arms while opening up the pro athlete for a counterattack. Genshi coughed up blood as his opponent's open hands thrust into his shoulders like spears.
After pulling them out, Ichijiki Muramasa clenched them into ironclad fists and made his forearms disappear. Merciless thuds of utter battery followed, revealing countless fleshy indentations all across Ryoku Genshi's body as the samurai unleashed a barrage of chain punches all across the open body of his opponent. Grabbing him by his gear, Ichijiki Muramasa flung Ryoku Genshi over his shoulder down on the ground and then drove his fist into the center of Ryoku Genshi's chest, finishing his counterattack combination.
With his back straight, Ichijiki Muramasa bowed to the flattened body of his opponent and stepped away, maintaining his identical kobudo stance in case his opponent would stand up resolute to keep going despite being vastly outmatched.
"I was wrong, young man. Your offense is far greater than I initially suspected. You were gifted with outlandish strength and toughness. You could have offered those gifts to your lord to become a soldier in their ranks. Your bloodline had the opportunity to ascend on the social ladder, but you chose to remove yourself from it entirely. That is something so despicable I cannot, in my right mind, let you leave this arena alive. Your very existence is a challenge to the caste system upon which we have built our very society. Just like a miserable peasant rebel worm, you must be crushed as an example to like-minded fools," Ichijiki Muramasa proclaimed while staring down at the sprawled-out body in front of him. The mechanical lenses of the scope narrowed down and closed, rebooting the system as Ryoku Genshi scrambled to return to his feet, panting with a bloody mouth and a pair of impalement wounds in his shoulders where Ichijiki's open hands went in.
"I have faced dismissal and mockery my entire life, for the sake of acknowledgment, I will break even the caste system itself if I have to!" Ryoku Genshi growled, resolute to bust down the impassable barrier before him and validate his existence before the heavens themselves. The amped-up young man connected his prosthetic arm with his armored arm together before inflating them with a build-up of condensed air.
The burst came out in a white-out, roaring shockwave as two tunneling air waves connected and weaved together to form a more powerful and strident blast which drowned out the entire section of the arena in a white vertical pillar that reverberated with such strong vibrations outside that it bent air and made time-space itself ripple from the sudden and intense build-up of gravitational pressure at a single point that was quick to dissipate past the effective distance of the blast.
"He's pushing it," Damisan squirmed in his seat. His voice only reached his teammates when the rumbling aerial blast wave settled down and spread out evenly. "I don't think he's noticed the wear he's putting his gear through with these attacks. As expected, his boundless hope and stamina to boot are proving to be more of a problem than an advantage."
"Still, if there was ever a time to go all-out, it's when the samurai's sword is sheathed. Your boy-toy got his fight made easy for him. A samurai robs himself of most of their combat potential by sheathing their sword," Asuka said in a tone that she tried making sound bored, but the jealousy in her voice still defined its color and taste.
"Even without their swords, samurai are skilled combatants. The battle is far from being decided just yet," Shige-H observed.
The rumbling dome-shaped blast that still reverberated where Ichijiki was split with decisive hand motions of the samurai undoing the rowdy rotation that began sucking his lungs dry of oxygen by drawing it out. The samurai's lone eye widened in surprise when he saw Genshi hovering in the air with a fist wound back and ready to strike. Ichijiki moved his arms up to redirect the incoming attacks again, but Genshi thrust his fist with another aerial concussive blast from a farther range, socking Ichijiki before finally descending with a relentless barrage of blows.
Continuing his passionate series of attacks, Genshi raised his foot for a push kick only to expel a burst of condensed air, then transition into a point-blank prosthetic arm air wave shot that blew Ichijiki Muramasa off his feet and sent him careening toward the western edge of the arena. Dashing up to the samurai, Genshi set off multiple triggers in his prosthetic arm that expelled smaller blows of air before delivering a strong uppercut without aiming it directly at his opponent. The punch formed a tornado that began drawing in dust and water alike with the resulting typhoon thrashing the samurai about as it dragged Ichijiki into the air.
"That's some impressive gear you've put on him!" Shige-H yelled out, trying to remain audible in the face of a raging whirlwind gale that was ripping the tiles, gravel, and jets of water alike and sucking them into the calamitous vortex, even making the audience hold on to their seats to avoid getting dragged into the fray against their will.
"I've used the spare parts from my favorite puppet in this," Damisan replied while keeping a close look on the procession of the battle as the beaming light show was still banging deep inside the eye of the storm, relaying that the two were still colliding strong inside of that whirling madness with the typhoon reaching out into the lower atmosphere merely providing a backdrop for a more intimate hand-to-hand exchange. "The key in this explosive air wave power is contrast. Opposing sides of the sound wave spectrum, opposing levels of air pressure, etc. The armor over Genshi's intact arm provides one extreme of the spectrum, whereas the prosthetic arm provides the opposite. When working together, they can create truly devastating phenomena, however… The gear itself suffers the recoil from the aftereffects, as it is with most puppets."
A rowdy blowout ripped the rapidly ascending skyward tornado apart, with the two fighters splitting to the opposite sides. Despite finally separating, the competitors didn't exactly position around the center of the arena with Genshi landing at the center with Ichijiki finding solid footing on a farther westward section of the Sun Disc colosseum ring. This was relevant as it put elimination via ring out on the table for Genshi if he pressed on his offensive pressure.
"Oh! It appears that competitor Genshi still has more surprises in store for us, as despite losing his Fusion Ball equipment, he's somehow secured weapons of his own to bolster his impressive physical abilities and make them closer match his bottomless willpower and unrestrained ability to hope for victory even against the most invincible of foes!" the announcer's voice overpowered the claps from the audience that decided to applaud the rowdy exchange of blows between the two combatants before returning to their seats from wherever the catastrophic whirlwind had dragged and flung them off to.
"He's putting up a fight, as expected, but he's not heeding my advice. The overwhelming presence of his opponent must be getting into his head," Damisan theorized.
"Your advice?" Asuka turned to her teammate.
"Yeah, because his prosthetics are not a part of his body, the pressure that builds up inside them isn't spread out evenly all over the body. That means that every use of their abilities damages them more and more," Damisan explained. "If these same techniques were used by a ninja, the blowback from the aerial shockwaves would resonate evenly across the user's body, mitigating the recoil. That's why puppets using the same abilities aren't quite a match for ninja using those same techniques as ninjutsu. In most cases, it might not matter, as puppets might end up dispatching of their opponents before the wear and tear sets in. However, relying on the long game and his bottomless stamina and willpower is exactly Genshi's style, so while the gear I offered him was the strongest I could equip him with, it's not a perfect match for him."
"I see," Shige-H nodded to herself. "Genshi isn't alternating between his prosthetic limbs, letting a disproportional amount of recoil damage build up in his arm."
It didn't take a genius analyst to determine this, meaning that even Ichijiki's lone functioning eye could pick up on the fact that Genshi's prosthetic arm had heaves of surface-level scratches and grazes despite Ichijiki never having targeted the limb for an attack once. Meanwhile, a meek trickle of a handful of blood drops squeezed through the armored layer coating Genshi's biological arm too, as his biological limb ended up suffering the blowback from his armored arm the same way his prosthetic arm did when the two worked together.
"Tell me something, young man," Ichijiki wondered. "Does my insistence on refraining from drawing my sword bother you?"
"What do you care!?" Genshi barked back at the man who took umbrage at Genshi's life goals, aspirations, and his very existence, scoffing at Genshi's dreams based on some arbitrary caste system some rich fops came up with. "If you want to draw your sword and fight seriously, do so. I'm not the boss of you!"
"You've shown remarkable physical strength, speed, toughness, and character. All things that make a fine soldier. I am merely wondering if you could have become a soldier given the right circumstances, as opposed to the pest that you are. A true warrior would wish for their opponent to not hold back and go all-out. It would infuriate a true samurai at the fact that their opponent refuses to draw their sword," Ichijiki explained why he asked it.
"Doesn't bother me," Genshi dismissed Ichijiki's implication. "I came to this tournament to validate my life's dream and to build a venue for World Sports Games to take place. An arena where athletes could show off their craft, entertain and excite the crowds, and make them wonder about the limits of their own bodies. Obviously, martial arts will be a welcome part of the Sports Games too!"
"I see…" Ichijiki sighed, unable to conceal his disappointment. "So there was never hope of you cutting it then. To think that you intend on spreading this virus of disobedience, this madness of defying the caste system to a broader audience. It is for the best that I kill you here and now."
"Threaten me all you want," Genshi returned the aggression to his foe. "It won't change the fact that sports will always inspire people to question and explore the limits of their bodies more than oppressive use of military force will. The athletes will promote and encourage their growth whereas the samurai intend to rule and suppress the people! That's a dream worth fighting for, that's a dream worth risking my life for!"
The conflict between the two competitors was getting heated and escalating to more and more personal heights, despite starting as a relatively impersonal affair, a collision out of necessity. Against the direct desires of each combatant, their clash became a collision of their ideals for the spectators who observed the procession of the second match holding their breaths as the competing fighters had already primed it to surpass the bonkers opening match.