Mana glared at the heavily armored opposition standing before her. While she may have seen Ryoku Genshi brawling in the arena during the Battle Royale, her memories of her time trapped inside a statue body were blurry and unreliable. Still, she didn't remember Genshi's armor looking this bulky. This wasn't merely a restoration of his Fusion Ball armor, some upgrading was undoubtedly involved as well.
From the moment the match started, Ryoku Genshi tossed the fusion ball sphere into the air and extended his arms forward. Both of his mechanical fists withdrew inside the armor, leaving the arms hallowed out like cannons. Heavy rumbling came from the vertical jet blades used to fire propellant fuel and help the cumbersome armor maneuver while dashing and gliding, suggesting that something was shifting, or rather loading, inside those stationary blades.
The disappearance of Ryoku Genshi's hands and the hallowing of his arms shocked Mana and caught her off-guard, since, as far as she could remember, only one of Ryoku Genshi's arms had been blown off during the Battle Royale. At least… Only one of them should have been missing… With hefty metallic thuds, the twin cannon arms split twice, forming a grand total of six smaller barrels, all pointing toward Mana.
Before the hairs on the back of Mana's neck could even finish rising, the armed athlete went off in a wild fusillade of barrage fire, unloading a wild bombardment of smaller fusion ball spheres. The battlefield sank in chaos of explosive bursts, debris, and smoke. The dreadful sound of reeling steel wire made the audience come alive and focus on the match again after being overcome with shell shock from the sudden eruption of noise and violence so early in the morning.
Mana zipped out of the smoke and airborne gravel, clutching a string of steel wire attached to a kunai that hooked onto the ground, and let her elegantly dash and vault out of harm's way, dodging the bombardment in her area and forcing Ryoku Genshi to have to adjust his aim and therefore slow down his attack. The pointed barrels snapped back, rolling backward across Ryoku Genshi's shoulders and pointing diagonally up as if they weren't his arms, but shoulder-mounted guns. The Fusion Ball ace jumped, clapping his feet and causing them to transform into tank-like rolling belts.
"His legs too!?" Mana gasped to herself, freezing for just long enough for Ryoku Genshi to roll sideward, unloading a barrage of aerial supporting fire that rained down from above and engulfed the entire area of the fighting stage Mana was in. Having approached the edge of the arena in a mad, mechanized skid on his tank belts, Ryoku Genshi stopped with sparking grazing across the sandstone tiles and let the belts unravel, forming mechanized, thick puppet armor legs while the belt withdrew inside the armor and Genshi caught the falling fusion ball, inserting it into a slot on the chest armored piece of his suit.
"Genshi… What did you do?" Damisan muttered, staring in disbelief from the sidelines. Back when he first met the desperate and crippled young man in the infirmary while looking for Mana, Damisan could relate to the circumstances of a promising yet unlucky young man caught in the crossfire of a battle larger than him because of a naïve dream and paying the toll for his misfortune in his youthful vigor. However, never, not even for one second, could Damisan have bet that this same young man would willingly pay the price again for the sake of victory in that battle.
Then again, perhaps Damisan and Genshi weren't too different in the end after all. Maybe Damisan was wrong to assume that a more well-adjusted man, with proper guidance and wisdom by their side, could have made better choices than he did. After all, did Damisan not run off to fight the same battle that had crippled and disfigured him immediately after the damage to his body was undone by nothing short of a celestial miracle? As much as Damisan wanted to hate Genshi and curse his youthful foolishness and brash head, Damisan saw too much of himself in the foolhardy athlete to do so. Could he have ended up hurting Mana just like Genshi was right now in his blind, single-minded pursuit of victory?
"We need to pull Mana out!" Damisan exclaimed, turning to his comrades, who looked at him as if he was mad. "This isn't right…"
"What do you mean?" Shige-H asked him straight. "I'm sure that Mana survived this blast, she's craftier than that. Besides, she hasn't even shown a single trick yet."
"Huh… And here to think you actually fooled me into thinking that you and Mana being an item won't be a problem for this team or our mission," Asuka rolled her eyes. "Are you going to cause a scene every time your girlfriend gets her shit kicked in, 'cause it's kind of part of the course, you know? She's kind of crazy like that."
"That's not what I mean," Damisan shook his head with vehement objection. "It's wrong for us to force Mana to fight she wants no part of against a man who is gambling and surrendering more and more of his body for the sake of victory. There's nothing positive that can come out of it. Either Mana's going to get hurt, or she's going to break emotionally. This isn't her fight, it's supposed to be mine! I'm the only one who can knock some sense into Genshi because I've been through what he's going through and only I can tell him what he's doing is wrong!"
"Well, too bad you're not a competitor unless you want to cosplay as your girlfriend. Still, as weird as that would have been, it's a bit too late for that switcheroo. Even if you could have tried some substitution shenanigans, we've got A and S-Rank ninja spectating the match. They wouldn't let a foolish trick like that slide, because they've got a stake in this tournament too," Endo pointed out. "Just leave it to Mana. She's never been someone who wants or likes to fight, but she's fought perhaps the most out of all of us. Just leave it to her already and follow your own advice–observe the fight from the sidelines instead of breaking your neck trying to tackle it yourself."
As the smoke began clearing out, the audience gasped in excitement and scare as Mana lay prone on the ground, struggling to push herself off with scrapes over her body and tears over her dress. Panting and wincing in pain, Mana stood up on wobbly legs, having suffered way more damage than a ninja should have from a mere point-blank artillery blast. The revelation of the extent of success of Ryoku Genshi's attack had even appeared to disappoint the mechanized Fusion Ball athlete himself. He rolled his vizor up and revealed his whited-out eyes, surrounded by chemical burn scar tissue.
"I know I missed that attack. If you suffered this much damage just by getting splashed by a blast shockwave, you might not survive a direct hit intact. I don't want you to lose limbs or die because of your persistence, Mana-san. If you truly won't use chakra, then I will accept your surrender. My care for your well-being and happiness triumphs over my sportsmanship," Genshi yelled out. "If you truly don't believe in what you're fighting for anymore, I'll accept that!"
"Don't you dare!" Mana barked out, stunning Genshi with the strictness of the response he received. "I can't believe your stupidity… Sacrificing your healthy limbs just to replace them with prosthetics, not because of necessity, but seeking power and efficiency? You idiot!"
"That's right, it's the price I had to pay for the sake of my dream for the Sports Games, Mana-san," Genshi replied, sounding like he was trying to convince himself just as much as he was convincing Mana. "Let's face it, I could never defeat you or any of the other semi-finalists by myself. The only reason I defeated Muramasa-san was that he refused to use his sword against a chonin, I also couldn't have beaten Yoibetsu-N if he hadn't been exhausted from the earlier match and if you and Damisan-san haven't guided me to victory every step of the way…"
"We could have kept guiding you!" Mana flipped out. "You didn't have to sacrifice your body for victory! What is such a victory even worth!?"
Pain and anger began bubbling up inside Mana. Her heart may not have been wholly into this match in the beginning, but… Seeing Ryoku Genshi sacrifice his healthy arm and leg for the sake of sponsored prosthetic replacements so that he could fit and utilize this drastically upgraded fusion baller armor to the peak of its abilities infuriated her. The young man she believed in and whose dream she supported wholeheartedly gave up on it himself. He gave up on himself… Now, even if he had a chance to win, he'd never enjoy the fruits of his labor again.
"I'm no fool, Mana-san, even if you take me for one." Ryoku Genshi shut his black vizor down in a fruitless attempt to conceal the tears running down his blinded eyes. "I know all too well that I can never again play Fusion Ball, because I'm no longer a man. There's nothing fair to any competitive game I'll be playing from now on. No sports federation will accept me as an athlete, my pride wouldn't allow me to accept me either, even if I am to be in charge of the World Sports Games, however… Even if I cannot enjoy my dream myself, I'll create that dream for everyone like me who isn't fortunate enough to get the chance I've been offered! So you're right, Mana-san, I'll sacrifice my arms, my legs, my eyes, my tongue, my ears… I'll sacrifice my entire body, any number of pounds of my flesh and I'll replace it all with screws, nuts, and bolts if that's what it takes for other athletes to have their moment of glory!"
"You wondered earlier if I no longer believe in what I'm fighting if I consider my reasons for participating in this tournament obsolete… The answer is no," Mana looked up, trying to find the faded look in Ryoku Genshi's eyes. "My reason for fighting right now is to crush this metal shell and punish the sly tongues that whispered into your ear until you began believing any of this was a good idea. You said you agreed to accept my surrender, well, I will never accept yours. I will never allow you to win this way, you'll have to beat me to a pulp until I cannot move anymore before I let you win at the cost of your lifelong dream. I won't let you tarnish your life for the sake of acknowledgment."
"Good luck then, Mana-san," Genshi answered in a tone of bitter disagreement. "From where I'm standing, it's your back that's against the wall and you're the one foolishly insisting on not taking this bout seriously. Chakra is your best and only solution to winning this match and proving me wrong."
"You'd like that, wouldn't you?" the tips of Mana's lips tilted up a few degrees. "For me to submit to the easy, short-term solution and prove you right? Still, it's cruel of you to ask me to sabotage my chances for victory in the finals by spending chakra on fruitless attacks."
"So… You've figured out?" Genshi smiled.
"I knew it…" Damisan hissed out bitterly, smacking his forehead with an open hand.
"What are they talking about?" Asuka leaned forward in her seat to address Damisan.
"If I wasn't involved with Mana and focused on guiding Genshi to victory, I'd have protected him against Mana's genjutsu first of all. Given Genshi's blindness and reliance on gadgets and radars to navigate, that's already easier than it should be. Granted, I'm not sure if I could have done something like that with just the scrap I have on me, but…" Damisan began rambling, working through his grand emotional investment in this match.
"I see, so it's more than likely that Genshi's sponsors supplied him with gear that protects against Mana's genjutsu," Shige-H summed it up.
"It's probably impossible to protect against all of Mana's advanced genjutsu techniques by just shutting off one's sensory, she's on a whole different level of illusions, after all, but… They probably gave Genshi some kind of way to snap himself out of an illusion too. His radar system has to be connected to his brain centers to relay information to him and bypass his blindness, so it probably can jolt him out with a good shock straight to the gray matter…" Damisan theorized. "That's probably what I would have done, anyway."
"Wow, you'd make a good shady corporate sponsor agent," Asuka heckled her teammate.
"Hmph… What useless garbage," Endo scoffed. "The raw destructive power of Mana's ninjutsu would smash that armor and that puny man to bits."
"Easily," Shige-H agreed. "Though the sponsors must be counting on Mana saving up her strength and refusing to use her strongest techniques to have them available for the last match. In her boots, most competitors would simply take it for granted that they'll defeat someone on Ryoku Genshi's caliber and already think of the following match, especially given that it's the most important one."
"Heh, it's difficult to imagine Mana scrounging and crawling for chakra. Usually, her resources are just vast enough to wash anything aside with high-ranking illusions and ninjutsu," Endo smirked to himself, acknowledging the tough situation Mana was in.
"So, by showing restraint and holding her ground on refusing to fight with genjutsu or ninjutsu, Mana may have saved her chances at the finals," Shige-H summed it up. "It takes around two whole days for dipped chakra to replenish. If Mana were to keep spending now, she'd have never recovered it before the finals tomorrow. Even worse–she'd not have made much progress in this match if she tried to end the match with a quick illusion."
"Alright then, Mana-san, show me what a ninja is worth without their chakra and supernatural powers. Samurai and ninja act so superior and smug, as if they're chosen by the gods to wield their unnatural powers. How about you prove it by holding your own against me without them right now?" Ryoku Genshi exclaimed, slipping his mechanical hands back out of the shoulder-mounted cannons and sliding them back in the place of his arms. Compartments on the outer side of the arm parts slid off and locked into a new place as a slick hiss began emitting from the opening in the thick valve running through the mechanical arm.
Continuing his transformation, Ryoku Genshi slipped out a rotating saw disc and carefully brought his arms down low, narrowly grazing the spinning saw edge against the tiles to cause sparks. With a vicious burst, the sparks ignited the gas flowing through the open valve, heating the rolling saws to a hot red that was painful to even look at. Meanwhile, the compartment of the heel of his prosthetic leg slid upward, revealing a triplet of exhaust pipes similar to those sported by Wayna Nunnon.
With an afterburner trail, the exhaust pipes fired a scorching jet that sent Ryoku Genshi shooting forward while he swung his saw blades with a cross-shaped slash, aiming for Mana's chest. The members of Stars in the audience blanked out. Incredible speed like that was impossible to track without chakra augmenting one's perceptive abilities and it was equally unfathomable for one to be able to react to it without chakra augmenting one's agility.
"Wh… Where did she go!?" Ryoku Genshi spaced out, realizing that all the radar signatures detailing Mana's vitals had vanished from his view. "W-Wait, she's… Behind me?"
The ninja and capable warriors in the crowd who could follow the action transpiring in the arena cheered, congratulating an excellent exchange of blows. With crystal clarity in her eyes and impressive tranquility for someone in a mortal predicament, Mana vaulted over the broad mechanical shoulders of the reinforced sports machine, taking it into the air where it would have been much more difficult for such a heavyweight structure to pursue her. Even if the burners could send Genshi flying, his speed would only be a fraction of what he'd be able to achieve on the ground.
"Heh…" Dashula, the Salvari finalist, smiled ecstatically, like a sheepish little monkey that had just pulled a fruit heist of the century. "So, the Gladiatrix has shown off budojutsu that's taken her to the top of the Ascension Gauntlet."
"Was that… Chakra?" Ryoku Genshi wondered, panting with a struggle breathing steadily inside his suit of armor. "I… My sensors didn't register anything…"
"Alright!" Rajul exclaimed, pumping his fist with Mana gliding in the air and almost ready to land after a graceful vault over her front. "I'm not really sure what happened there, but… That seems to be the incredible skill in explosive and uncanny power and speed, also that unbelievable endurance of someone with a body so slender and short, that brought the Gladiatrix to the top!"
"Tsk… I'm not going to let you get away!" Genshi yelled out, aiming with his right hand as if he intended to shoot from the tips of his fingers. Instead, the entire forearm detached from the heavy metal arm and fired toward Mana, connected on a thick metallic wire. An ironclad grip locked around Mana's abdomen as she had no option to maneuver in the air without the help of her Mystical Wings jutsu.
"Ack!" Mana exclaimed in pain, feeling the iron fingers as girthy as a banana wrapping around her waist as if Genshi's hand were trying to squeeze the paste out of her. Painful twinges followed by gruesome sounds of churning muscle and twisting flesh left Mana in painful shock with the taste of blood in her mouth. Instead of reeling the ninja magician back in, Ryoku Genshi whipped his elongated forearm to smack her against the protective wall outside the arena's bounds.
Desperately clutching to the wire, Mana pulled herself up and further away from the wall so that she didn't have to run across it with her feet or hit it with her head and get eliminated. Getting more and more aggravated by Mana's pitiful resistance, Genshi hooked the arm over his top and slammed Mana into the ground with a devastating pound that fired a shockwave of compressed air from the point of impact.
"This is the fruit of my sacrifice, Mana-san!" Genshi exclaimed, dashing forward with three vertical streaks of afterburner extending from each of his mechanized shins as the armored Fusion Ball athlete blitzed forward. Genshi pulled his wrist back, lifting Mana's limp and loopy body off the shattered floor and leaving it suspended in mid-air while Genshi blitzed front and back, cutting her on each dash front and back with his heated disc saw wrist blades.
"I realize that you mean well, Mana-san, but your preaching is infuriating to someone who doesn't come from a position of privilege you have! It's easy of you to dismiss my sacrifice when you never had to make the choices I was driven to!" Genshi exclaimed turning his back on Mana's bloodied and downed body while swiping his wrist to the side to splash streaks of red off the heated saws that were losing their heat and vented smoke while slowing down their rotations. "Therefore, if all you have to show is preaching and judgment, you will never match the inner and external strength of someone who's made those tough choices and sacrificed everything to be where you are, as opposed to being handed those chances by fate or good fortune."
"Contestant Mana is down and bloody!" Rajul bawled to the audience, who went quiet in shock at the violent scene they just witnessed. Even amongst the hardened warriors and past contestants of the Succession Tournament who were spectating the semi-finals, there were plenty of those who would have advised the battered young woman to stay down and accept defeat. "Can she return to her feet? We don't exactly do a count of ten here very often, but… As things are now, I can't tell for certain if she can still fight or not!"
The audience held their breath, waiting for Mana to either pull through and continue the match, or succumb to her injuries and humiliation and accept defeat. No one would have blamed her either way, but she had to give her answer both to Genshi's ideological challenge for her reasons for fighting and believing in herself and for his abilities and the incredible combat capabilities of his new and improved Fusion Ball suit.