"The last match of the second round has reached a deadlock!" Rajul announcer, wrapping his scan around the roughed-up arena, where Hit Boomslang was waiting for his chance to strike somewhere, and the vast space above it, where Yenisel Saturona was gliding with his rocket and kicking his ball around to let it accumulate the speed necessary for a good wallop.
Four separate boulders rumbled with the dull noise of shifting rock. When Yenisel looked down to see what that noise was all about, fear made him jump up in startlement. Just like the plastic turret that served as a distraction before, these boulders were now transformed into armored, hollowed-out bunkers with chunky black metal barrels sticking out through the firing ports.
Immediately the glide-baller put his ball to work, kicking it into the air and then looping the rocket he rode around to punt it toward one of the bunkers, causing the entire stone structure to explode in a violent burst of force that flung rocky debris in all directions and left a crater where the bunker once was. This did little to protect Yenisel against the rest, though.
Before the blitzing young athlete could scoop his ball back up, gather speed, and position himself for another good shot, the turrets opened fire, forcing Yenisel to bob and weave his rocket, roll and loop around, and employ every manner of evasive action known to him. Yenisel was skilled at this, when playing Glide Ball he needed to avoid the unwanted attention or shake off pursuers constantly, but his pursuers were never two-meter tungsten rods fired from six separate black metal dispensers.
When a whizzing rod slashed Yenisel's cheek, opening up a shallow gash and shedding some blood, the pro athlete realized that he'd be unable to shake off this heat. As a last act of defiance of his inevitable defeat, the glide-baller turned his rocket and offered it as a blocking platform, putting it between him and the relentless stream of fire. Within milliseconds, deafening thuds blanked Yenisel out and the rocket-fueled glider he used was ripped to shreds with a concussive burst flinging the athlete off the air and hurling somewhere toward the crater in the center of the arena, made by his own ball earlier in the match.
The makeshift hollowed-out rock bunkers aimed at the bunker, but the angle was too awkward for them to be able to shoot inside it. Besides, after chasing Yenisel for so long, they must have been running short on ammunition already. This gave the fallen athlete the breathing space to peel himself off the ground, panting and grunting as he felt up his aching ribs and checked his burning joints for any dislocations or fractures. While the fall certainly busted something and bruised most of everything else, Yenisel only felt plenty of nervous numbness resonating through his body. He'd fallen and broken things too many times before to confuse fractures with anything else, and none of the malady he experienced currently was because of any fractures.
This was the most pitch-perfect twenty-meter fall executed in the history of his sport. Yenisel's only regret was that he didn't execute it during an official Glide Ball arena, during an official match, leaving it stuck in the rich and likely much more colorful history of notable events that have occurred in the Sun Disc arena, rather than the achievement his textbook fall actually was.
Light flickered and passed down the fit body of an advancing spy, moving from his masked head to the fingers and toes in bright white halos. As the halos of light passed through the area of Hit Boomslang's body, it revealed the spy's stealth bodysuit used to reflect it and camouflage him in the first place. The right straight slammed directly against Yenisel's chin, a hook to the gut bent the athlete over, and then a roundhouse sent him flying so high that the glide-baller flew out of the crater.
Despite the pain resonating through his body, Yenisel rolled back and picked himself up before the bunker turrets could take aim at him and skewer him with those rods. Fleeing as frantically as a man fleeing for his life would have looked, Yenisel dashed and tumbled, throwing himself like a pile of wet laundry behind one of the bunker turrets. The two other turrets didn't stop firing in time, obliterating the bunker mound Yenisel hid behind and causing a downpour of rock and gravel.
"It's strange to see a spy revealing himself before committing to an attack. And here I thought that I was the only one with a dramatic flair," Mana observed from the spectator stands.
"Contrary to you, it doesn't look like the spy has a choice," Asuka replied to Mana's observation. "Given how his suit is making light bypass his body, quick movements must be hampering that process. That's why he de-cloaks every time he commits to an attack."
"There are ways to overcome that drawback, he could have used his kunai dispensers from afar, firing kunai at Yenisel while staying camouflaged," Damisan noted.
"Hit's plan must have been to lure his opponent into the open, where his bunker turrets could pick him off. He was looking to inflict more damage, so he attacked from close range so that he could wrap the match up faster by letting the turrets finish it off," Shige-H said, uncovering the thought process behind the veteran spy's actions.
Hit Boomslang manifested again, directly in front of his prone opponent, stomping down with his foot on Yenisel's abdomen. Yenisel rolled off to the side, beginning a cursed shuffle with his impeccably hard and nimble feet, dodging an endless skewering stream of tungsten rods coming his way from the rapid-firing turrets. It was only when Yenisel heard audible clicks and both turrets hung their cannons down like they would have gone limp that he took a breather and collapsed on his knees to catch a breath.
His opponent would not allow him that luxury, it seemed. Hit Boomslang revealed himself from his camouflage from directly behind Yenisel and slammed a double ax handle slam to the athlete's back before round-housing him away into a nasty skidding slide, inching him closer and closer to the arena's edge.
Cracking his knuckles, Hit Boomslang didn't enter camouflage again. Instead, he chose to reserve power in his stealth suit and slipped his mask off, revealing a rugged and hairy head that had wraps of bandages around the side of his face where the serial killer Bambi stuck a knife into Hit Boomslang's eye. Gnashing his teeth in pain and with a body covered in shallow bruises, Yenisel dragged his body off the arena floor and put his dukes up to match the violent disposition of his opponent.
"I'll hand it to you, kid, I didn't expect you to take a beating this good," Hit Boomslang admitted. "Either you're made of sterner stuff, or I really am getting old."
"You know what…?" Yenisel chuckled, wiping blood off his lip with a childish cackle. "I didn't know I'd fare this well either. I guess when you glide around in the air and survive falls from the sky and hi-speed collisions daily, not to mention dealing with those merciless Gs and wind currents, it toughens your body up more than you could have known. When I first stepped into this arena and looked around, you guys felt like crazy monsters and I wanted to stay away from you all…"
"And now?" Hit Boomslang wondered with his fists in a boxing position, panting, and all too glad to have a chance to chat and get a second wind for a sec.
"All of you still seem crazy to me, heck, even this audience is a few bolts short, cheering for murderous children and serial killer dolls, but… I don't think I'm afraid anymore. I think I'll just do what I do best and play!" Yenisel claimed, turning his attention to the ball that laid in the wreckage of one of the bunker mounds.
"Let's see how you feel after some of this…" Hit Boomslang's eyes rolled back. Whited out, the spy opened his mouth to scream, but his saliva had thickened to a thick, white, and slimy state where it seemed to stick his mouth together. Veins popped out and riddled across the veteran spy's face and extended lower down his body, but the thick bodysuit obscured them at that point. The weave of the black, metallic chain-mail-like bodysuit that Hit Boomslang donned became brighter and brighter still. Before Yenisel began wondering if this was some kind of optical illusion–the suit turned red hot and vented trails of steam.
"It heated up!?" Yenisel staggered back, repulsed by the idea of wearing something that could boil its wearer alive.
"When our body reaches the point of dehydration, it enters a stressed state that enhances our performance beyond its ordinary threshold. This advanced Mark IV Stealth Bodysuit can heat up to where it begins to rapidly ventilate all fluids from the wearer's body, recycling their sweat to heat them up even more," Hit Boomslang explained with a raspy and higher-pitched voice, revealing just how much stress this function put his body through.
The spy-turned-mercenary launched himself at Yenisel at incredible speed, riding a trail of evaporating sweat and precious fluids, as if his joints were venting steam to propel him even faster forward. With this sudden burst of speed and injuries all over Yenisel's body, the glide-baller found himself unable to keep up. Before Yenisel could put his impeccable footwork to work, a swift leg sweep flipped the tables and removed the sense of balance that was so precious to most brawlers on the ground.
The athlete's right arm shot down to substitute his failing legs that had been kicked away from connecting to the ground. The plan was to use his right arm for support and throw both feet at Hit Boomslang's chest, sending him tumbling back and buying some more time. Yenisel gasped, mid-fall, realizing that the kick that swept his legs was so powerful, it rendered his legs completely numb and as efficient as flapping rags.
Instead, a knee strike to the center of Yenisel's chest blanked the glide-baller out, spacing out his glare to a bland and faded-out glare. It was like this one kick had killed the glide-baller, but only for an irrelevant fragment in time. Then, with his hands weaved together, Hit Boomslang slammed his arms at the back of Yenisel's head with a double ax handle slam, rocking the athlete's body face-first into the arena floor with enough oomph to blow out and shatter the tiles and grind him into the gravel underneath. A small puddle of blood began gathering underneath the face-down athlete around the head area while his fingers twitched from nervous ticks.
Hit Boomslang backflipped and vaulted over his left shoulder backward to put some space between him and his opponent and twisted something around the center of his chest, sealing his Stealth Suit from exhaling vapor and making it emit a green ethereal pulse that sounded and looked cool. So cool, in fact, that the emission chilled the atmosphere in the desert fighting pit by a few degrees and left layers of frost over the arena floor where the green emission rubbed against it.
"Some kind of coolant solution," Damisan noted. As the resident engineer of the Stars, he had a keener eye for that sort of detail. "He deactivated the forceful dehydration function and cooled his body off."
"From the looks of it, he replenished his bodily fluids as well. His face shows no sign of dehydration, and it came from a turn of a crank of some sort…" Shige-H added, using her own expertise as a medical ninja. "I must admit, when I first heard of the idea of a group of people competing against ninja by employing gadgets and cutting-edge technology, it seemed ludicrous to me. But… The equipment these spies are using is impressive, I must admit."
"It's better than the knives and throwing stars we use, that's for sure. Still, if the fancy-pants lords want the best bang for their buck, they should just give that gear to the super-powered soldiers that have been serving at their beck and call for centuries already," Asuka crossed her arms, denying the spy his moment in the sunlight of adoration.
"Contestant Hit Boomslang is applying more pressure on contestant Yenisel Saturona! With brutal precision, he's keeping the athlete away from his playing ball, effectively shutting the young athlete off from both of his tools. With his rocket destroyed and his ball away from reach, Yenisel Saturona's prospects for victory are looking very slim!" Rajul reported on the tide of the match to the audience.
"I wasn't… Aiming for the ball…" Yenisel huffed out while pulling himself up. In what came as a big surprise to the rest of the arena, as well as his opponent, the glide-baller revealed a hardened aluminum shaft in his right hand, that he twirled in front of him like a staff before slamming it down and opening it up, revealing a professional and classic model of a Glide Ball glider.
"Back to basics, huh?" Hit Boomslang mumbled to himself, drawing a military-style knife and adopting a staunch knife-fighting stance. With the revelation of Yenisel Saturona controlling another glider once more, Hit Boomslang now found himself at a dire disadvantage in speed and versatility. Not to mention that keeping the athlete off his ball would become a task that's not worth the effort he'd invest to accomplish it successfully.
After twirling the glider to catch the wind and kicking off the ground, Yenisel swooped off the ground and caught the wind current that would carry him onward. Hit Boomslang reached down to pull on a handful of strands of steel wire, connecting them to a network of steel wire that rose and created a field of invisible wire, meant to entrap speedy combatants inside. Yenisel proved incredibly skilled and nimble on that glider, much more so than he was even gliding on that accelerating rocket-fueled glider. Bending his neck, tucking in his knees, twisting and turning his body in painful-looking ways, Yenisel glided through a minor opening between a few strands of wire and socked the ball.
Startled, Hit Boomslang tumbled off to the side for an evasive roll, hearing only a resounding crack when the ball slammed against the wall of the rock bunker that had run out of ammunition to shoot. While it lacked the pent-up power and speed necessary to blow it up as Yenisel did earlier, that proved to not be the athlete's intention. Instead, the ball bounced off with a rubbery thud and slammed at the back of the veteran spy, throwing him off-balance and sending him into a fall on the frontal side.
Emphasizing on this successful hit, Yenisel Saturona turned his glider to spear straight for the fumbling spy. The glider carried Yenisel Saturona up to Hit Boomslang just in time to slam both his feet into the bloodied face of the spy and plant him down with a soaring stomp, letting go of the glider just to stamp the spy-turned-mercenary into the ground. Riding the same momentum, Yenisel bounced off his opponent's floored body and grabbed hold of his glider again, soaring to gain control of his ball again, kicking it in between his feet, bouncing it with his head occasionally, and escalating the ball's velocity by catching up to it by gliding across the different wind currents in the air.
Yenisel Saturona turned a full lap around in the sky, arming his playing ball for another devastating, albeit less so because of the reduced speed potential of his current glider, punt. However, by the time he was ready and tried seeking out his opponent, Hit Boomslang was nowhere to be seen again. This seemed odd because Yenisel saw Hit removing his mask which allowed his Stealth Suit to cloak him fully. Then again, Hit Boomslang proved skillful with deception and concealment long before utilizing the camouflage function of his Stealth Suit.
As the athlete tried keeping his eye peeled for any signs of flickering light or unnatural spots on the ground that could have betrayed a hasty attempt at hiding, he felt a tough tug on his heel. A quick look down made Yenisel freak out–dancing reflections of sunlight telegraphed the fact that there was a loop of steel wire tied around his ankle. Appearing from underneath a reflective, sand-colored sheet, Hit Boomslang pulled a handheld taser gadget and pressed its electrodes against the bundle of steel wire he held in his right hand.
Sizzling and humming, the electricity jolted in both sides, passing down Hit Boomslang's body, though, because of the properties of his suit, harmlessly grounding itself, and shooting up the strand of steel wire, shocking Yenisel Saturona on his glider hard enough for the resolve of the athlete to be tested. While Yenisel didn't let go of the aluminum glider, he lost control of it and began plummeting alongside it, with both the athlete and his glider giving off whiffs of black smoke on their spiraling trail down.
Racing up to the location where Yenisel Saturona was falling, Hit Boomslang raised his right leg in the air, splitting his legs vertically and booting with a horse-like kick straight to Yenisel Saturona's gut, making it seem like the veteran spy had impaled his opponent with his kick after a terrifying fall. Turning his vertically raised leg around, while still holding his opponent stuck on it, Hit Boomslang slammed his foot down with a thunderous crack, smashing Yenisel Saturona flat into the floor head-first.
While the audience gasped and rustled, the loopy and limp body of Yenisel Saturona skidded across the floor with his eyes closed and his jaw wide open, making how much fight was still left in the young glide-baller a questionable fact. With soldier-like ruthlessness, Hit Boomslang punted Yenisel's limp and sprawled body to fly, bounce, and roll across the remainder of the arena, headed straight toward the edge and undoubtedly carrying enough momentum to fumble over the edge and submerge into the lake outside of the arena bounds, unless the uncontrollable fumbling stopped.
Ever since it started, the final match of the second round came the closest it's ever been to its end.
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