The ridiculous man distracted himself from his troubles by making a fool of himself on a nightly basis. His acts continued to escalate in intensity until he was killing dozens of people every night. The gang leaders who had been having trouble keeping up with him stopped trying and turned their attention to other problems. He seemed completely untouchable, after all.
The ridiculous man found it amusing how quickly his reputation was spreading throughout Grandebelle, and after some time had passed, he realized his bizarre new fame was actually working in his favor. The street gangs offered him food, shelter, protection, money, anything he wanted, as long as he stayed out of their way and bothered someone else. The people of the Pit wondered how long the insanity would continue, how long this pathetic person with delusions of grandeur would last, how long the Pit's criminals would endure being toyed with by some silly little man. Indeed, the ridiculous man's very existence was a humiliating stain on the reputation of the criminal organizations and gangs that ruled Grandebelle.
The white organizations who controlled everything in the Pit came together in a rare showing of unity, designating the ridiculous man as a common enemy and agreeing to take him down. Each organization sent a single, powerful hunter after him to punish him for his foolish pride.
The Pit Razors sent out the ultimate product of their assassin academy, a young lady whose very footsteps reverberated through the air and shattered bones. The Cut Throats sent an emotionless killer with a machine-like mind and a heart of cold steel. The Knife Slaves sent out a ghostly man in a green cloak, a phantom with a thousand knives hidden up his sleeves and a burning need to punish the wicked. The Pit Kings sent out a young boy cursed with a monstrous body and an eternal hunger that could only be sated with blood. And the Chosen Ones, the strongest force in Grandebelle, sent out a disgusting, corpselike man with a persistent cough and the power to transform himself into an evil cloud of poisonous gas.
The five hunters were powerful enough to bring down entire organizations by themselves, but they didn't know each other well enough to trust one another. They decided to work separately and slowly encircle the ridiculous man in the hopes that he wouldn't spot them coming. Once he'd tired himself out from a night of fighting, they'd attack simultaneously and capture or kill him.
The ridiculous man was completely oblivious to his impending doom. He spent every moment of daylight wandering around and spending time with friends, talking about nothing of real importance and doing nothing productive at all. When night fell he took on a group of professional killers known as the Band of Leaves all by himself. He cackled madly as he cut them apart, laughing louder than he had ever laughed before. Of course, the Band of Leaves stood no chance and knew it. But the ridiculous man ignored their pitiful attempts at surrender, preferring to absorb the energy from their corpses instead. He was careless as always and most of the Leaves managed to escape when he fell for a distraction, but the few who remained, including their leader, were quickly killed.
When the sun rose again, there wasn't a single person alive in the Sanctuary of Leaves except for the ridiculous man. He left the cold and empty office building and wandered through the streets, bumping and bouncing over every obstacle in his path as he headed towards his temporary base of operations in the warehouse district. Onward, he thought, onward.
The pink sky grew bright and the streetlights flickered off. The ridiculous man detected a group of powerful auras in the distance, the hunters closing in on him, ready to play a game of killing and being killed.
The Pit Razors' champion came forth first. The young lady, called the Wind of Death, was the most ruthless of the five hunters. But she held back, confident she could kill the ridiculous man any number of times before he had a chance to react. He laughed loudly and turned to face her.
WOOSH!
He saw the wind whip up behind her, then felt the slicing pain of an unseen blade. Just before the blow struck home he spread out his aura far and wide, absorbing it all and creating a shield that was easily twice his height. The next attack cut through the air in rapid succession, missing him by inches. He did a foolish little dance with his little switchblade and came close to tripping himself in his effort to appear more menacing than he actually was. The Pit Razor moved forward warily, taking note of the way the ridiculous man handled himself. She knew that despite his ridiculous nature he was actually quite skilled with that tiny knife, and that alone made him a force to be reckoned with.
A second hunter stepped into the fight, the Knife Slave known as the Knife Demon, a tall man with black hair streaked with white. He wore a simple green cloak and carried two long blades in his hands. The ridiculous man paid him little attention, however, as the Wind of Death came towards him with an explosive burst of speed and strength. The ridiculous man managed to avoid her attack, but found himself unable to move fast enough to escape getting skewered by the Knife Demon's weapon. He laughed at the ridiculous situation and let out a strange, high-pitched wail that broke his foe's spirits. The Wind of Death's head exploded in a burst of purple energy, and the Knife Demon clumsily retreated to the shadows to recuperate.
The Cut Throat, a man called Sovereign, launched his attack next from a distant rooftop. Equipped with a set of binoculars, he released invisible bursts of psychic energy with cold precision that penetrated the ridiculous man's body with enormous force. The little man collapsed, spraying blood everywhere. But he wasn't out of the fight yet. He took cover while playing up his distress. Then, he secretly rebuilt his body into something like a flexible metal shell that could absorb Sovereign's attacks with ease. His new self reemerged from a shadowy alleyway, ready for more.
The Pit King, a young boy named Ceyah, came forth next. He had pale skin and tiny black horns growing out of his forehead. The ridiculous man stared at him in disbelief. He couldn't be more than ten years old! It was hard enough dealing with adults. Now he had to kill some kid?! How unfair was this? The ridiculous man laughed a sad, hollow, ringing laugh at his own misfortune. This is what I get, he thought.
But the young Pit King didn't care one bit what the pathetic little clown was thinking. He just came running forward, transforming into a shadowy black reptilian creature with a long tail and long arms. The ridiculous man flailed his limbs around, trying to find an opening to escape. But no matter how he moved he found himself getting slashed at by the Pit King's claws. Sovereign and the Knife Demon followed suit, relentlessly attacking the ridiculous man with concussive bursts of energy and a stream of razor-sharp throwing knives. The absurd man screamed again and threw himself backwards, battered and brought low by the deadly flurry of blows.
The last of Grandebelle's five hunters saw it was time to step in and finish the job. The Chosen One, known as Black Smoke, appeared as a sinister green fog that closed in on the battlefield from all directions. The ridiculous man spun in circles, desperately dodging Black Smoke's terrible rain of toxic waste, getting torn apart by the Knife Demon's countless blades all the while. One of his legs was split open. An eye was gouged out completely. A knife was lodged in his forehead all the way down to the hilt. The hunters thought they had won. But even this wasn't enough to take the ridiculous man down. Much to his foe's disgust, the tiny little man slowly wedged the blade out of his skull and roughly crammed his body back together like he was a living cartoon character.
Then, taking full advantage of his enemy's confusion, the ridiculous man lunged at Ceyah, pinning him down before transforming his fingertips into suckers which clung to the child's face and drained him of his life force. Sovereign released a destructive burst of power towards the two as they grappled on the ground, but the ridiculous man harmlessly bounced away from the explosion with a smile on his face. He laughed hysterically after landing and struck a pose like he was about to leap off a building. The Knife Demon charged from behind, readying his blades. But his mind was deep inside an illusion created by the ridiculous man, and he chopped the weakened Ceyah to pieces instead of his intended target.
The three remaining hunters realized the battle was hopeless. The ridiculous man had effortlessly repelled their attacks and taken two of them out in a matter of seconds. But with each of their respective organizations' honor on the line, none of them wanted to retreat. They decided to stake it all on one last desperate attack.
Black Smoke swirled high above them, blocking out the sun. The ridiculous man broke into a mad scramble, heading straight for Sovereign. He was laughing and cackling madly as he ran, but his opponent didn't seem amused in the slightest. In fact, Sovereign was calculating the best way to kill him and quickly moving towards the correct answer.
The Cut Throat tried a new tactic, launching a barrage of tiny bolts of energy from his fingertips that pierced the ridiculous man's body like a wave of invisible splinters. Right on cue, Black Smoke invaded the ridiculous man's frail form through his wounds and began to rip it apart piece by piece. But even this wasn't enough. The ridiculous man released the full strength of his aura with a hateful screech, exploding in a purple ball of energy that obliterated everything around him. He staggered, blinded and incapacitated by the destructive flash. All that remained of the ridiculous man was a brain and a skeleton protected by an invincible psychic barrier.
The Wind of Death was a headless corpse. Ceyah's small body had been sliced to ribbons. Sovereign and the Knife Demon were reduced to piles of ash and scattered gore. Black Smoke's evil energy dispersed with the wind, leaving a dark green stain in its wake.
The ridiculous man's skeleton stood tall in the midst of the carnage, slowly reforming its organs, muscles, and skin. He felt his power returning to him slowly, as well as his sanity. He laughed, high-pitched and maniacal. He was the strongest man in the Pit, a hunter of hunters.
The fool found his flimsy little switchblade and walked out into the street with an obnoxious grin on his face. After a moment of silence, he started singing a silly little song to himself. "I'm really the greatest, I can do no wrong..."
