The audience stared at the smoldering rubble in anticipation, holding their breaths. The loudmouth announcer was the first one to draw breath in order to do his job. "Contestant Wayna Nunnon delivered a decisive strike, stomping down on the Curse Walker with authority, but did it finish the job!?" Rajul bawled as if informing the audience what they expected to find out.
With his head down, the Curse Walker shot right out from the smoke, splitting it into a vertical halo before dispelling and scattering the dust with its intensive charge. Disappointing both the audience and his skate baller opponent, the Curse Walker didn't show any visual signs of weakness or injury. However, its aura was flaring up differently, as if split in half and blazing equally on the left and right, albeit absent down in the middle.
With her opponent attacking her with so much murderous intent and so openly, Wayna took an elegant leap forward, transcending the tackling brutality of her Skate Ball roots and transitioning into the field of figure skating. The Curse Walker's shoulder let out a shrill shriek, spewing sparks as the elegant skater did an aerial split over the Cursed Warrior's side, slicing into his shoulder before clapping her skates together and sliding down his back.
Despite showing no sign of pain, no rumbling, roaring, or grunting, no flinching or slowing down in his movements, Wayna's slide across the Cursed Warrior's back left a slit of the Curse Walker's robe and a visible graze across his chunky and black back, spilling traces of glittery, golden liquid. The damage to the Cursed Warrior's outfit revealed the black patches of the Curse Walker's skin to resemble interconnected scales of charcoal, all bundled together to form an obsidian armored skin layer.
With gusto, Wayna skated a full circle around her opponent at an impressive speed that left the Cursed Warrior unable to keep up with her acceleration and nimbleness and slammed a skate blade into his back again. This time, the Cursed Warrior tumbled forward from the slam directed at his back. Regardless of it, the Curse Walker's expression relayed no emotion more complex than mere wrath and the desire to rip his opponent apart and destroy her in the most complete way she could be destroyed.
In an impressive show of mastery of her craft, Wayna turned around and engaged the exhaust pipes on her armor, shooting herself back in another circle. However, this time her speed had more than doubled compared to the last lap, and she didn't merely lap around her opponent, but drew a circle around his back and then slammed against his back with another straight kick. Like a furious spinning top, Wayna continued to pick up more and more speed and draw circles around the Curse Walker's back, slamming against it again and again before the Cursed Warrior could recover from the previous strike and turn around to answer Wayna's attempted battery.
"That's pretty cool," Endo smirked at the sight of Wayna's boundlessly accelerating dance of push kicks against the Curse Walker's backside, hoping that one of those push kicks would leave another glittery mark. "She's redirecting the momentum from the previous kick to give her footing for the following one. That's why each lap is faster and faster. It's something I could probably use to a limited degree in swordsmanship, but without the liberated footing of skating, I could only pull off one lap before friction takes its toll and slows me back down."
"Doodle Dance!" Wayna Nunnon exclaimed as she leaned down, making her current moves stand out from her earlier combination of looping push kicks. The armor pieces around her thighs let out a stressed squeak and lightly tilted up, relaying how much force and tension the skate baller was putting on the line. Accompanying her Doodle Dance, chakra skates switched their form again, becoming chipped like a buzz saw.
Instead of merely slamming against her opponent with a looping push kick, the grounded pro athlete delivered a series of front-dashing backflips, slashing with her jagged buzz saw skate blades as she did so and drawing blue loop de loops in the air. The audience covered their ears, stressed by the high-pitched squeak of Wayna's jagged chakra skate blades cutting against the scaly charcoal back of her opponent. Whether it be because of luck working on his side, or some kind of show of clever strategy, the Curse Walker let go of the ground and let Wayna's jagged loop de loops take him for a ride in the air, going wherever the back flipping buzz saw took him.
"Oh, I see… The movements look like a child doodling loop de loops on a sheet of paper… Doodle Dance," Damisan observed while gently nodding to himself.
This time, even the staunch Curse Walker let out a grumble, as the looping force of impact and the momentum that dragged him around sent him flying and planting firmly on his face. After completing her frantic series of absurdly complex and elegant flip-kicks, Wayna flopped on one knee as her greaves expelled fumes from the side and the blue chakra flares flickered, slipping through the cracks in her armor. Asuka's eyes focused on it with a narrow squint.
"I wasn't aware athletes named their signature moves too. It makes sense for samurai to strike fear into their opponents' bodies upon hearing the calling card of a terrific swordsman that's slain a thousand men with this very same technique, but athletes?" Endo leaned back in his seat, stretching his arms to the sides and shifting his feet stacked on top of the headrest area of those sitting one row lower than him.
"Probably a marketing thing, it's strange that Genshi doesn't do it. Then again, given his current condition in mind, Genshi probably cannot perform most of his signature Fusion Ball moves," Damisan pondered out loud while the audience cheered for Wayna's highly athletic and flashy performance that managed to bring even the terrifying Curse Walker face down on the floor.
"It's common for ninja too. It's a must for adequate focus for performing the technique. It takes a lot of time and practice with a specific jutsu before ninja can merely focus on the technique's name in their head, wiping all other thoughts, instead of speaking it, to be able to use the jutsu," Shige-H joined in on the topic.
"Her chakra skates… What's the story with this gal? She's not able to mold chakra herself, right?" Asuka changed the topic while the Curse Walker peeled himself off the ground and turned to face his opponent again, only to see Wayna Nunnon blitzing him with blurry, supersonic laps across the arena. Positively infuriated by the breakneck pace of his opponent, the Cursed Warrior let out a thunderous roar that sounded more akin to a thunderclap combined with the sound of a tank firing a shell into the air than a human battle cry.
"It seems so. I've not had a look underneath the plating, but I'd wager the weave down under's decorated with chakra storage seals, supplying chakra to the skates to keep them flaring and working," Damisan answered Asuka's question.
"Did you see that suit's reaction after her signature move? The plates parted and let out steam and, from the looks of it, the whole thing was heating up and flaring chakra underneath. Could be a design flaw, or merely what's necessary to make the damned thing work, but it doesn't seem like she can do too many flippy-flips without her chakra skates shutting down for good. I wonder if she can skate on rock half this well on steel skates," Asuka pointed out something her keen eye's noticed in Wayna's weary reaction to her own move.
Continuing to roar with battle madness, the Curse Walker charged forward with its arms spread to the side in a double clothesline position. With a blitz of some high-speed movement, Wayna tricked the dashing behemoth with a transparent afterimage and raced ahead to the other side of the arena, only to feel the ground rumbling beneath her feet and almost feel the heat and tangible malice radiating from her opponent and caressing her back. Stricken with a case of cold sweat, Wayna realized that if she hindered her own aerodynamics by turning back to check on something she suspected, the Cursed Warrior would get its hands on her.
"Wh-Whoa! The Curse Walker revealed itself to be able to keep up with Wayna Nunnon's speed! The goliath's trailing right after her! But will it be enough to catch up!?" Rajul exclaimed, caught equally off-guard as the pro athlete by her opponent's agility on his feet.
With a vocal, mechanized grunt, the Curse Walker stamped down on the ground, causing a collapse of the arena grounds and for the ruined tiles and sandstone chunks to shuffle and tremble. The mighty Cursed Warrior threw a left uppercut, propelling a hook of tunneling aerial shockwave that swept up the debris created by his stomp and hurled it into the air. The audience held their breaths, realizing that the speed advantage Wayna Nunnon had couldn't have been enough to keep up with her opponent's destructive mid-range attack.
Wincing, Wayna Nunnon leaned forward, turning into a human bullet and shooting herself onward with a cerulean burst of chakra and some kind of energizing gas afterburner that sent her shooting ahead and just narrowly made the rumbling debris whirlwind miss sucking the skate baller in and battering her with chunks of rampant rock. The resulting boost in her blitz made Wayna Nunnon circle the arena in a millisecond, erecting a wall of flames in her trail that made the Curse Walker cover and stumble back toward the center.
"Phew… That was a close one," Wayna huffed out, crumbling to one knee and examining her open and ventilating armored boots. With a tender press of her hand, she slipped the loose armor plates back into place and shut the armor down before returning to her feet and turning around to face the Cursed Warrior. "Now would be my turn, right?"
With a swing of both her arms, Wayna kicked off into a swift skating dash, moving all the way to the edge of the arena where the fiery trails of her earlier burst of speed persisted and kicking it up into acceleration so rapid that a wall of howling gale hit the audience head-on and the high-pitched cry of the wind made it uncomfortable to observe the match from afar. Based on the reaction of the Curse Walker, the whirlwind created by Wayna's speedy dash made the pressure inside of the storm unbearable and kept him floored to the ground.
After speeding up to what she deemed to be sufficient, instead of dashing at her opponent with a straightforward kick, Wayna kicked off the ground, taking flight and riding on the wings of momentum she'd accumulated. After reaching the apex of her bound, the skate baller flipped over her front and fell with a dive kick. However, instead of slamming the chakra skate and cleaving into her opponent, Wayna's dive kick sought to slice through him with a diagonal slash down to the ground, with the blade's edge skidding across the body of the stupefied goliath.
With gnashed teeth and a furious long face, the Cursed Warrior put his chest out and spread its arms to the sides, as if intending to smash Wayna's head in between its arms, like an egg caught in between two sledgehammers swinging from opposite sides. That was when the Curse Walker let out a mechanized rumble and tilted off the ground, chest first.
"Impressive, she's displayed the ability to kick projectiles of cutting air before with her ordinary steel skates. It is only logical that her ability to kick air would improve with a boost in speed and solid chakra skates," Shige-H nodded in admiration at how hard the skate baller was fighting back against an opponent seemingly out of her league.
"Even a point-blank hit won't cut it…" Endo grumbled, almost sounding insulted that the skate baller was wasting his time, even though he was spectating this match for free.
"It's not about the hit itself," Asuka pointed out. "When she kicks, the cutting air becomes compressed, like a crescent pocket. When her influence over this pocket wanes, the air's looking for escape and spreads out everywhere. This expanding air pocket sucked the Curse Walker in and prevented his counterattack–he's wide open now."
Kicking off with one heel, and then following with the other, Wayna Nunnon dashed off into another skating lap to build up more speed for a heftier impact. Each lap occurred in a dozenth fraction of what the earlier one took, and, after a handful of laps, Wayna Nunnon directed herself toward a straightforward dash at her sucked-in opponent, kicking off the ground into an elegant pirouette. Switching between the winding leg and the kicking leg, the airborne, twirling skate baller unleashed a barrage of spinning kicks with her chakra skates, slashing at the Curse Walker's open chest, but only achieving an eruption of grazing, fiery sparks and cutting the robe of the walking weapon of mass destruction.
"O-Oh my! That's not the effect you want to see in a climactic battle! The Curse Walker looks completely unharmed, despite the athlete Wayna's clever entrapment!" Rajul called out with anguish in his voice that suited Wayna's dire situation. "Unfortunately for her, the Curse Walker proves to be just as immovable as the inevitable doom that his colossal peers bring about!"
Wayna leaned down, putting the weight of her whole body onto her dominant leg before taking off in some more laps to accumulate speed. Her adamantine expression was overflowing with as much determination as it was with sweat. After building up some serious speed, Wayna shot at the Curse Walker from an awkward, diagonal angle she didn't expect him to be able to react from. Like a hornet flying into an oncoming truck, Wayna bounced off the Curse Walker with only a minor sting on his shoulder from her kick.
With a pained grunt, the skate baller extended her arms. At first, it appeared that she did so to soften her landing, however, the armored plating on her gauntlets opened up and slid back, releasing a halo pulse of chakra stored in the suit's storage seals. This softened Wayna's landing, allowing her to touch the ground with her forearms, slamming her wrist blades against the ground while she spun her chakra skates like twin battle axes, whirling around the Curse Walker and seeking to grind him down to nothingness with relentless upside down skate cleaves.
With a bemused and perpetually peeved look on his face, the Curse Walker threw a quick uppercut, knocking Wayna off her feet. The audience gasped, recoiling away from the noise of Wayna's injured grunt after the uncompromising blow caught her right in the chest, where the armor was meant to be the thickest, however, based on the horrific cries of the plates, it nearly undid the technological marvel Wayna's sponsors supplied her with.
Exclaiming brutal grunts, and stomping with the authority of a meteor crash, the Curse Walker put its dominant foot down, drawing balance from the ground underneath his feet, and threw a backhand that thwacked the airborne and stunned skate baller aside, skidding and dragging across the floor hastily toward a possible ring out scenario. With bruises on her face and dented armor, Wayna engaged the vents on her greaves and gauntlets, expelling a halo-shaped pulse of chakra and stabilizing herself on the western edge of the arena.
Gnashing her teeth and barking out a primal battle cry, Wayna lashed out and charged at the Curse Walker, seemingly throwing care for her life entirely out the window and engaging her opponent in the kind of slugfest that the Curse Walker wanted and excelled in. With a crazed smile on its face, the char-scaled behemoth rushed onward and slammed a devastating haymaker down into the ground, one that meant to smash his opponent to bits and break her into a gory stain, buried underneath the ruined plates of her own armor.
With a nervous grunt, Wayna stopped just in time to see the devastating blow whizz past her face and feel the tunneling shockwave around it, helping the skate baller imagine the considerable force packed inside that punch. When it hit the ground, it was as if a bomb had dropped in the center of the arena, with the whole place whiting out in a bright flash and an explosive burst knocking her aside. Pushing himself into a mad and thunderous cascade of stomps forward, the Curse Walker threw a punch that didn't even reach the overwhelmed athlete, however, just the force of friction and the sudden stoppage let out a deafening bang that burrowed a nasty, cone-shaped crater and sent Wayna for a tumble. She'd have screamed from the immense pressure manhandling her had she not been slipping in and out of consciousness.
"W-Wait up! This battle's taken a much higher gear! Both competitors have thrown caution into the wind and have just started swinging at each other with devastating consequences! I know that this is the type of slobber-knocking slugfest that this audience has come to expect from the Sun Disc events, but… Given the Curse Walker's title of a Living Weapon of Mass Destruction… It makes this announcer worried about the level of boundless annihilation such a beatdown would produce!"
With a smile that suggested grand admiration at the scope of his own destructive potential finally having a chance to be unleashed, the Curse Walker extended his right arm out with his hand pointing up and his fingers cupped. The air began to ripple and whirl around his open hand, drawing jets of sharp wind from all around that caught and dragged in the surrounding debris as well. With a shrill song of astounding energy compacted into a whirling singularity, a teal energy field, surrounded by whirling jets of debris, formed in the Curse Walker's open hand.
Still floored and struggling to peel herself off, Wayna Nunnon just stared at her opponent, channeling his destructive attack with little to no opportunities for her to respond. Instead of firing it at her like an energy beam or throwing the raging teal energy field as a bomb at her, the walking weapon clenched his hand, snuffing out the energy field for a second, only for it to seep out from its golden fists in a swirling, black appearance and a surrounding gray outline.
Roaring with bloody madness and wishes for his opponent's utter destruction, the Curse Walker slammed both his hands together, transferring some of that energy field onto his other fist as well, before taking a balanced boxing-like stance and throwing two strained and packed with power blows. With each complete punch, each of his punching arms projected the whirling black energy wave toward Wayna Nunnon and let it encompass the whole fighting arena, like a black hole that's swallowed the entire ring, but instead being surrounded by the halo of light it entrapped, this black burst wore the crown of debris and crushed rubble that it whirled and tossed around like shrapnel.
This mortifying attack made the staffers protecting the audience intervene, positioning themselves on the protective wall and erecting yellow chakra barriers in front of them, which managed to contain the calamitous destruction of the unleashed Cursed Warrior. This stage of the battle ended the same way as the first one, however, this time both competitors had vanished inside that black void of packed destruction.