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A crossbow bolt launched from outside of the arena lanced through the air and thunked into the ground in front of Chaos. There was a small glass bulb directly below the arrowhead on the shaft of the bolt, filled with an explosive solution. It shattered due to the impact. There was an explosion.

When the dust settled, Azure appeared. He wasn't wearing what a shinobi usually wore. He wore a leather jacket and other such modern clothing. Embroidered on his clothing was the image of an Egyptian-looking eye, crying a teardrop of blood.

Knives and kunai hung from bandoliers and other belts that crossed his body at altered angles. He carried a crossbow in his hands, the originator of the exploding bolt. It had a small box attached to it, a clip filled with bolts; he was carrying a modern auto-crossbow.

"I will not fight this battle as the Kage. You face the former leader of the ‘Crying Eye’. We shall see who has the strength to be the Kage."

Azure wasn’t sure if Chaos ever saw him as he was originally. Before joining Gaioh, Azure was the leader of a group of ‘world hoppers’ called the Crying Eye Runic Hunters. Yes, he was the son of a powerful ninja clan and had the Angel Program forced upon himself, but he also discovered a truth about his world (that it was a part of sea of endless worlds) and found a way to leave.

As the leader of the Crying Eye, he found countless treasures across the great expanse, from worlds that faded as quickly as they formed. He saw and fought against many creatures as he tried to obtain his own measure of godhood. But eventually he came back, tired from his constant struggles across countless planes of existence.

He helped the crippled Gaioh return to its former self, having been gone during The Great Ninja War. He planned on using Gaioh’s ninjas as another arm in the Hunters, but he pretty much dissolved the organization a year ago, so there wasn’t any real point to continue his original plan. Now he would fight Chaos as Chaos truly was, a small creature trapped in a single world like all the others.

"I have never risked everything."

He said as he raised his crossbow and pointed the tip at Chaos. The wind blew across the arena, ruffling the trees and grass. Azure sighted along the arrow.

"That is what makes a leader."

He fired.

Azure pushed off the ground and rocketed upwards. As the vines started forming, Azure used them like stepladders to go higher and higher. Eventually he reached the top of the canopy, running up the side of a large vine bridge, and leapt into the sky. His feet settled on nothingness, a few meters above the forest. He scanned the mess of vegetation beneath him.

"I need not risk everything to lead. In fact, if I risk everything, I am already dead."

A hail of exploding bolts caught the exploding tag carriers, causing their flaming wreckage to fall to the ground. Hopefully the flames would catch the forest on fire, but Azure wasn't holding his breath due to the known fact that these 'demon vines' were quite resistant to fire... kind of like redwood.

Azure reached to his belt and pulled off a cylindrical metal container. He pulled the pin from it and dropped it into the forest below. Before it dropped past the canopy it started shooting off a yellow steam. Azure had come prepared with a concoction brewed up during his years off world, an organic-liquefier gas bomb.

The water slid into the container and mixed with the gas, diluting it and making it inert. Azure took aim and launched another bolt, this time into the container, destroying it. The explosion caused the water stream to shatter and rain down upon the forest, its first shower since its creation.

Azure ejected the expended clip from his crossbow and loaded another. He stood there in the air, thinking for a moment on how to dislodge Chaos from his forest lair. It was the first time Azure saw Chaos use water to fight, ruining the previous attack that would've destroyed Chaos' forest. Azure managed to burn a few feet of forest canopy before water stopped the spread, which seemed a pin p***k when he scanned across the being that lay before him.

Azure dodged to the right, rolling across the sky as if it was the ground, as the spears flew past the area he once occupied. He stood up and grabbed a black orb on his belt. He pressed something on it and tossed it down to the canopy below.

Right as it hit the outer edges of the forest, it jerked suddenly upwards. With similar quick movements, it flew around the vines. Small red lights lit up along the central equator, tiny streams of harmless light beaming out of them. It was some sort of tiny, about the size of a tennis ball, nimble scouting drone.

Azure was trying to find Chaos' location.

The drone continued to weave about and around the thick jungle vegetation as it tried to find Chaos. It was hard to find anything in this mess though, as heat sensors would just detect the sweltering background condition of the jungle, so it could take a while. Azure scanned from the sky, but he could barely make out where the ground was, so he was having just as much trouble.