After checking up on Genshi and Mana, the Stars returned to the sandstone corridors leading to the arena. The hallways were restless and rowdy, flooded to the brim with steps and meaningless chatter. Cheerfully tipsy and hyped spectators alike were bouncing back to their seats after the fighting stage underwent terraforming repairs and was ready to host the following match.
"Wayna Nunnon is going to be fighting next, isn't she?" Damisan wondered out loud, breaking the silence that had reigned amongst the Stars. "She's an athlete, like Genshi, right? I wonder if she also received some sponsor attention. She's in a lot better condition than Genshi, after all."
"Sure, but her sport includes skating around on blades. She may not be a slouch, but she's not exactly warrior material either," Endo shrugged. "Although, coming up with a way to attach swords to your feet is an interesting idea."
"It doesn't matter," Asuka shrugged. "She's fighting that Curse Walker guy, remember? There's just no way she'll beat him. I'd have hesitated to place the bet between him and fresh Mana, now, this entire tournament might be a wash."
"Hmm… We still don't really know who hired all those Cursed Warriors," Shige-H pondered, scratching her chin. "If what Mana told us is true, Cursed Warriors are weapons of mass destruction available only to shadowy underworld sources. Even seedy revolutionaries could only get their hand on one and thought it would be enough to send the Kumogakure forces packing off the Land of Earth. The kind of influence it would take to build an entire team out of them…"
"Hmm… Should we be worried about that?" Damisan wondered. "Maybe we should press Mana to win the tournament and treat those Cursed Warriors as enemies?"
"That might not be the case," Shige-H disagreed politely. "Remember that the death-defying members of Fennec's crew murdered the previous pilot of a Cursed Warrior to get their hands on Batsudoru. That means that these two factions aren't cooperating. If there's no love lost between them, we've got no reason to treat them as an enemy. However, what exactly the mysterious hand behind these Cursed Warriors means for the fate of the Land of Wind, if they were to win, remains unknown at the moment."
"All this useless scheming… There'd be no use for it if Mana cut the crap and just cut everyone down. She could win this damn thing if she applied herself!" Endo grumbled, crossing his arms and turning away with a pouty expression when a young Agbarahan child grabbed the hilt of his sheathed sword and hung on it like it was part of a playground. After a few moments of Endo neglecting to address the toddler hanging on his sword's hilt, the kid's mother apologized with a bow and took her youngster off and into her hands, rushing off ahead and back to her seat.
"At last, ladies and gents, we're back! After the first half of the quarter-finals, we return to oversee the final two matches that, hopefully, won't get interrupted!" Rajul clamored, addressing the audience while the Stars were still rushing to their seats. "For the next round, we've got a player of Skate Ball and a passionate professional athlete who managed to elude big scraps in the Battle Royale with the help of her excellent mobility, yet proved her worth against the ruthless captain Monmouth Morgan in the earlier round–Wayna Nunnon!"
Wayna Nunnon shot from the backstage area, effortlessly swooping out of the backstage corridor before the bridge even extended and connected to the arena. Damisan and Endo froze in place, as the sudden appearance of the competitor interrupted their attempt at taking a seat while her new and improved sports gear wowed Damisan. In a manner not unlike Ryoku Genshi's sponsored suit, Wayna Nunnon was clad in metallic braces, yet more fitted over her brawny body over a black spandex undersuit. Red and purple armored chunks covered Wayna's arms, shoulders, head, and chest with her head donning a V-shaped red visor and her armored pieces connecting to her back through rubbery wires fashioned like dreadlocks at the back of her head.
"Those blades aren't steel, they're pure chakra," Asuka pointed out. True to her observation, Wayna blitzed like a human bullet atop blue, axe-shaped ethereal chakra blades flaring up from the soles of her boots. Her legs had loose golden rings surrounding her thighs and calves that appeared magnetized to her suit, across those rings there were open scrolls decorated with sealing glyphs stretched out–the most likely source of power behind Wayna's chakra armor.
"Hmph, once again, those sponsors supplied their favorites with military-grade ninja village technology," Shige-H grumbled. "I wonder which country had their military secrets leaked to clad out this athlete and turn her into a skating war machine?"
Wayna's newly gained upgrade allowed her to blitz across the surface of water, as she sliced the water's surface with minimum resistance or rippling. It was all part of the incredible gains in speed her gear permitted reaching. After leaving the crowd stunned, Wayna crossed her arms in front of her and kicked off the water's surface with a warm and bountiful spatter. The pro athlete twirled in mid-air, pirouetting herself toward the fighting arena before gracefully landing on the edge.
Immediately upon landing, Wayna's back piece spat out the dreadlock rubber wires and fired chakra jets, propelling her forward and allowing the skate baller to accelerate and skate across the edges of the arena again, slicing through reinforced with chakra sandstone like it didn't provide her with any resistance. After a few laps, Wayna Nunnon pirouetted herself closer to the center of the stage, slowing down to a standing position, and disengaged her chakra skates, tapping her feet on the ground more firmly.
"And now, the ruthless brawler who tore its way through all opposition and is yet to meet its match! A man who appears cursed to walk the Earth amongst its gigantic, mountainous companions! The gold-fisted juggernaut of the Cursed Warriors–the Curse Walker!" Rajul turned toward the opposing side of the arena, where the extending bridge platform was supposed to connect with the arena and make a pathway for the Curse Walker to take the stage.
Unfortunately, silence reigned in. Rajul permitted himself the luxury of blinking, then dared to do so twice. Despite tempting fate, the charismatic, loud-mouthed announcer missed nothing of note, as the Curse Walker didn't show up or emerge on the bridge platform when it connected with the stage. Before Rajul could wonder where his competitor had gone, a gasp came from the crowd, then a few muzzled screams. Quickly, Rajul turned toward the noise, feeling obliged to report whatever had occurred, but the sight left him breathless. At least at first…
"C-C-C… Curse Walker!" Rajul chanted out, gesturing with his hand toward the arena. Curse Walker stood on the staircase that split the rings where the spectators were seated, almost as if the imaginary spotlight caught him before he could find himself a seat. With loud, thudding stomps that rattled the sandstone foundation underneath and cracked the steps that Curse Walker tread on, the monstrous man descended to the protective ring and stepped over it, standing tall and burly enough to place its massive foot on top of the protective wall.
With a bountiful leap, the Cursed Warrior flung himself into the fighting stage, causing a tremorous ruckus that would have knocked Wayna Nunnon prone, had she not stood on her own two feet and spread her legs apart wide enough to keep balance, against all odds. Rajul let out an unintelligible lamentation that the neatly rebuilt fighting stage now again had blocks sticking out and shaken out of place, showing visible signs of damage after Curse Walker's leap.
"For whatever reason, even the Curse Walker, a competitor who saw theatrics to be beneath him and wholly unnecessary, now chose to make his way onstage through the spectator stands area! In any case, now that both competitors have made their way to the ring, how about we get it on and begin the second half of the quarter-final matches!?" Rajul threw his arms up in the air, inviting the audience to cheer and make havoc.
"We should take note of this," Shige-H warned her team after the audience's hype died down somewhat. "Whether it be Mana or Genshi, this Curse Walker has proven himself to be too dangerous to confront without countermeasures in place. Especially now that most of Genshi's armor is dysfunctional and most of Mana's chakra's spent."
"You don't need to tell me that," Damisan replied without turning away from the heavyweight, burly goliath looming above the agile skating bruiser on the stage. "I didn't intend to let either of those two face off against this guy without a game plan."
"I'll have a pleasant laugh when the skater slices that lug up and all your neat plans go up in smoke," Endo smiled, leaning back and lifting his feet over the headrests of the unfortunate spectators seated directly beneath him.
The gong tolled, announcing the beginning of the third match of the quarter-finals!
A short and plump, wrinkly granny crossed her legs while sitting inside of a comfortable commander's chair and observing the abyssal vista of the ocean washing the shores of both the Land of Fire and the Land of Water. All around the senior chief in a militaristic-style uniform, decorated with medals of exemplary service with the insignia of all the ninja villages, were tin soldiers of metal and clockwork gears, pumping steam from their joints as they strut with mechanical rigidity, fulfilling their orders.
For a steampunk submarine resembling the shape of a colossal water beetle, the vehicle in which the accomplished, militaristic granny traveled in didn't shake or squeak at all. Not that any noise could have frightened any of the five human pilots, dressed in standard Cursed Warrior pilot uniform, consisting of a white dress shirt, black trousers, and a red uniform blazer, who stared boldly through the portholes into whatever corners of the abyss the gleaming steampunk water beetle's eye-lanterns enlightened.
The decorated commander was twirling the strand of her curly gray afro while focusing on the transparent images reflected in her glasses–a direct transmission from the Sun Disc arena from the eyes of the Curse Walker. The Curse Walker was the last competitor representing the interests of the enigmatic commander, causing her to pay greater interest than usual in this competition. It wasn't like the granny general to lose battles, yet her military operation in the Land of Wind was showing signs of going awry.
It was only when a spiky, black-haired pilot turned around and glared straight at his commander that the accomplished officer tilted her glasses and directed a look at the disobedient pilot. It wasn't like them to show fragments of personality or question their commander's orders. Nor was it like them to be distracted from their work. Some foul interference was afoot here.
Before the commander could bark out some verbal scolding and test out the all-but-confirmed theory of unwanted intervention, the commander found herself in a dark, dim temple. Calling the location a temple was being generous, for its floors only had loose and moist black blocks and endless rows of columns in all directions. The ceiling either flat out didn't exist or was too tall to peer with the human eye from the ground level. Each pillar in this chamber had a lone, flickering torch, providing miserable licks of light that prevented complete blindness.
"Tenma, is it not enough that you've fumbled your pitiful little plot to claim Agbarah, that you now have to stand in my way too?" the grandma asked with a high-pitched, squeaky voice that, despite vague associations with a kind voice of a loving and tenderly grandma, had the slicing, no-nonsense strictness of an accomplished and ruthless military commander.
Clacks of metallic boots tapping against the moist stone blocks of the temple alerted the displaced granny toward the direction of the interloper. As evidenced by her calling the name of the Conductor out, she either anticipated the mental intrusion of this particular visitor or put it together that it was indeed Yamanaka Tenma who was behind this mental displacement committed against her decorated personage.
True to the granny's suspicions, a leather-clad, vaguely humanoid-shaped bundle of brain matter stuffed into a tight leathery bodysuit and an amplifier device that looked like a collar with a metallic mask at the top, walked out into the light, into direct view of the militaristic granny, who only lifted her right eyebrow, as if questioning if her partner in crime would truly be so needlessly dramatic and expect her not to catch on immediately he was behind this mental attack.
"Forgive me the intrusion, but I needed to reach you and you tend to surround yourself with those clockwork tin soldiers these days. I used one of your submarine pilots for a transmission tower to reach your mind," the Conductor pointed out, speaking through rowdy telepathic signals that normally would have been so intense they made the air around the Conductor's amplifier piece ripple, like pulsating magnetic waves. However, although both the Conductor and his elderly acquaintance now occupied a mental plane of existence, the Conductor could choose how the mental realm of his architecture would react to his tremorous telepathic signals.
"If you've come here to request that your folly with your feeble and mentally unstable Statumen remain between us and not reach the attention of the Lodge, you needn't worry. You've proven yourself most useful and loyal to our organization, so you stepping out of line in some misguided attempt at an underground power grab will hardly affect your standing. Repeated strikes against your loyalty, however, might make your position in the Lodge… Questionable," the grandma tapped the ground beneath her feet with a cane, maintaining an ironclad expression with stiffly pressed lips.
"I'm not the one with the historical record of wavering loyalty. We both know that you're loyal only to your boundless ambition of world domination. I didn't come here to bargain for my involvement in the Succession Tournament to be kept a mystery, I came here to suggest that I would keep yours to myself if you did the same… However… Now that I peer into your mind… You… Actually received approval from the Lodge?" Tenma continued to rumble telepathically, for his entire body had been composed of brain matter, raw, wrinkly muscle of concentrated brainpower, leaving him with no mouth to speak with.
"I did… A triumphant commander never leads their troops into battle without the approval and support of their king," the granny closed her eyes, looking a tad disgusted by the fact that she served as a footsoldier of the organization uniting both terrifying figures of the underworld. "If you bothered asking the Lodge's permission, you'd have likely received it too. Then again, given how you intended to use Agbarah as real estate for your questionable scientific practices, I can see why you instead decided to work behind the Lodge's backs."
"And not even you know for what purpose the Lodge requires the Sheikhate…" Tenma spoke, in his usual manner. The ability to peer into the minds of everyone within the reach of his mental signals made notions like asking questions entirely obsolete. Yamanaka Tenma didn't ask, he stated the fact, even if that fact was unknown to him before he read it out in the open.
"If I had to guess–they wish to provide shelter to the settlers of the Land of Wind. Also, a footing from which to launch a campaign against this Fennec character. You know how the Head and his soft heart is…" the granny chuckled.
"You're a dateless old hag, the oldest in our organization by far. You've fought or at the very least taken sides in every war and you remember the faces of the First People and saw them hand down chakra to their inheritors. You don't put your precious Curse Seal monolith machinery in peril for the sake of some common desert dwellers," Yamanaka Tenma spoke with such disdain in his tone that it could have almost been perceived as a threat if the granny general continued to withhold information and take him for a clueless imbecile.
"Perhaps not, but I am quite fond of the idea of waging all-out war against this Fennec pup. If we're lucky, blood will flood the desert and we can squeeze a good few years out of this conflict…" the granny, with a surprisingly stiff back for her advanced age, chuckled to herself. "I want a good, brutal war. The Lodge wants to shelter the innocents who suffer from Fennec's campaign. We can both get what we want…"
"Not if your pet project fails," Yamanaka Tenma scoffed. "He's your weakest Cursed Warrior."
"Not necessarily," the decorated war grandma shrugged. "I've just never put him to a proper test in the field. He's never had to put down a rebellion or brutalize an opposing side in a gang war, like the rest of my armada. Before the Curse Walker, I've never even imagined it being possible for a human Cursed Warrior to exist. The Curse Walker is an important first step in me mechanizing my army at long last. Despite my attempts, I still needed to keep the pilots around. The tin cans aren't bright enough to control heavy machinery yet. I'm also sure that they cannot be trusted with heavy artillery. Too trigger happy and prone to existential crises."
"You really have fond feelings for that runt. Well… I'd have never thought such a thing possible," Yamanaka Tenma scoffed with mockery after feeling up the fondness radiating from the warrior granny's thoughts.
"But of course, I still recall the heroic freedom fighter who crossed the Archipelago and sought me out in the Land of Whirlpools. He didn't want merely just to pilot the Cursed Warrior, he wanted to host the curse of aging and malady that I imbue those mounds with himself," the general admitted, standing firmly in the face of bold scrutiny of the telepathic menace before her.
"Hmph… You've never even thought of it before. That checks out. All those centuries of warfare experience and you're still as rigid with your approach as always," Tenma scoffed, with a hint of amusement in the signals he radiated.
"Obviously," the granny commander confirmed it. "The curse of aging and illness that I transfer to my gear legion isn't meant for people. That's why I purge it from myself, silly. However, what Daedalus proposed sounded like a chance to test if I could finally be rid of those pesky pilots and replace them with superior and entirely inhumane Cursed Warriors. While the Curse Walker lacks the destructive power of his peers or their presence, it's an important first step in purging all traces of humanity from my command."
"Hmph… I'll be awaiting your debriefing with the rest of the Lodge. Oh, and… I thought you might want to know, it was the Allied Ninja that your own grand grand grand grand grand grand grand granddaughter is bossing around that foiled my plot," the Conductor looked like he was about to walk away and let the mindscape he constructed fade away, before promptly turning around.
"Really?" the granny stiffened up with her arms bent behind her back. "And here to think I always pegged Yoshina as an underachiever…"
"It was really annoying… Don't get in my way again, or else it won't be your body who faces my retribution, but your vulnerable mind," Tenma rumbled before the torches attached to the columns all snuffed out and left the war granny in complete darkness. With a hasty twitch, the senior general snapped awake in her chair. The pilot was still staring at her with those deep blue eyes, the Conductor still had the young man in his clutch.
"D-Damn it…" the granny croaked, realizing that her body had been under the Conductor's control. "Tenma… You… Ingrate…!"
With twitches of valiant resistance, the plump grandma tried resisting, reaching for her service saber and drawing it. However, the submarine must have been too close to one of the islands with Tenma's amplifier towers, making his mental commands nigh impossible to resist. After drawing the saber, the granny pressed it to her throat and crudely pulled her arm to the side, opening her throat and sending a shower of arterial red that bathed the cockpit of her submarine.
Just like that, the poor submarine pilot used as a flesh puppet by the mind-controlling, leather-bound, humanoid brain collapsed on the floor, panting with a sweaty face. The pilots abandoned the task of controlling the ship, maniacally jumping to aid their fallen general, only for the wrinkly old hag to cough up blood and blink with life in her eyes.
"This is why… I want to mechanize my workforce…" the hag wheezed with a husky voice, proving herself more lively than even her reputation in the underworld implied.
