9

Of course, bunnies couldn’t jump to the moon. That amount of jumping power didn’t exist in the realm of biology, and Usagi, necromanticist and Fighter of the Rabbit, did not possess that exceptionally superior of a physique. The realm above the skies should have belonged solely and incontestably to the elder Tatsumi brother, the Fighter of the Dragon. Rabbit’s incursion had been a feat beyond miracle. How then, had the necromanticist soared to such heights?

He had the help of a dear and trusted friend—Sharyū, the Fighter of the Monkey.

Or to be more precise, he had the help of her corpse. Alive, Monkey would almost certainly never have helped him in that way. Alive, she had been a pacifist beyond compare, and she had never used her powers for such a purpose—nor had she ever even considered it. Now that her undead corpse existed only to serve her precious ally, all her restraints had lifted. The hero was once said to be capable of putting an end to any war on earth—perhaps even beyond—were she to decide to finish it by force rather than seek a peaceful resolution. Now, freed from any moral boundaries or physical limiters, she would do anything for her so-called friend.

Her first duty was to hurtle Snake’s head as hard as she could into the skies above the abandoned city. Throwing any object straight up was not such an easy task for most people, but it was for her—most feats that would have been difficult for others came easily to her. Rabbit’s only worry had been that she might throw Snake’s head into orbit or beyond, but even that outcome wouldn’t have been ruinous. From the moment Rabbit had gained the allegiance of Monkey’s corpse, he secured a decisive advantage in the battle. A small mistake here or there wouldn’t prove his downfall.

The dead hero proved herself still capable of heroic feats, and Snake’s head traced an almost perfectly vertical path and narrowly avoided breaking free from Earth’s pull. The purpose of the throw was, as Dragon had surmised in his final moments, to provide Rabbit a bird’s-eye view—much like Chicken’s birds had once provided her—so that he could see the state of the battle as it reached the final act.

One reason he chose this course of action was because Snake—cornered by Ox and Tiger—had lost his quarry, Rat. Monkey had thrown Snake’s head to hunt down her own former ally, with whom she had shared a hideout. That in itself was ironic, but the greater irony played out when the head’s descent led it right into the arms of its brother and genetic match.

Their reunion was entirely a product of happenstance. The chances against it weren’t astronomical—at least not literally, as this was a head, not a meteoroid—but it was akin to winning the lottery.

A more romantic view would attribute the chance occurrence to the intangible bond between twins inseparable in their childhood and on the battlefield. Perhaps, even after death, the younger brother wanted them to be together.

On any other trajectory, Snake’s head still would have looked down at the arena from above his older twin; Dragon would have been revealed to the necromanticist regardless. But had the severed head not clamped onto its brother’s arm, Dragon might have been able to narrowly evade the leaping Rabbit’s killing strike.

Rabbit didn’t actually leap that high, of course. Monkey had thrown him too. This time, she aimed for that exact place.

The toss was almost out of a cheerleading routine, except without the cheer. While she had been living, the ever-serene pacifist would never have thrown the severed human head or the man with a better physique than her own, yet now she did both without hesitation—even with the understanding that Rabbit wouldn’t hesitate to kill Dragon. Now that she was dead, it wasn’t a matter of what she understood or didn’t understand. Her place was but to unfeelingly carry out Rabbit’s commands. If Rabbit had asked her to throw him all the way to the moon, she might have dutifully done so.

When gravity pulled Rabbit back to ground, her role was to catch him. As for Dragon—who had been split in two by Rabbit’s crude twin blades, Sangatsu-usagi and Shiro-usagi, or March Hare and White Rabbit—his two halves retained the power of flight, even in death, and as such required no catching. Besides, Rabbit didn’t coddle his new recruits. All of his friends held equal standing, whether rookie or veteran to his team. He didn’t play favorites, instead issuing orders equally to all—for the new recruits, this made for a kind of on-the-job training.

Even as he made his rapid descent, Rabbit quickly issued a command to Dragon’s separate halves—to make full and free use of their power of flight to go to their brother’s aid. Rather than send them away, he could have used them to carry him safely to ground, but the duty of the leader was to believe in his team—and he believed that Monkey would catch him.

As he plummeted downward, fulfilling his leader’s duty, he counted on his fingers. “Rat, Ox, Tiger—only three are left.”

Unaware of Team Rabbit’s impending charge, Ox and Tiger continued their standoff with Snake’s headless, armless corpse. In truth, the three weren’t in a true deadlock—Dragon’s read of the situation had been accurate. If Ox and Tiger wanted to flee, they could have. But that option was closed to them by Ox’s warrior pride and Tiger’s rage at nearly being killed. The moment seemed like it could have stretched on in perpetuity.

Then, as if dropped by a bomber plane in the far-off skies, the upper and lower bodies plunged down and shattered the standoff.

The lower body landed, cracking the pavement, while the upper body hovered roughly one meter off the ground. The pair made for a surrealistic splatter-flick sight. That Dragon had achieved flight, one of mankind’s great aspirations, might have once made him the subject of envy, but Ox regarded the dead man’s severed upper body, floating forlornly without its lower half, with unbridled contempt. Elevating the sight from splatter-horror to a grotesque and surrealistic farce was the object cradled gently in its arms—a severed head with an identical face. More than anything else, Ox despised the way Rabbit made playthings of the dead.

But unlike Snake, Dragon had been freshly killed, and blood gushed from where he had been cut open. Tiger’s Drunken Fist was more fueled by blood than booze, and the sight somewhat sobered her rage. She even growled in anticipation. These were not the habits of a fighter, but those of a drunkard—yet she didn’t leap into battle. Realizing that the stalemate had now made a dramatic turn for the worse, she backed away.

When Dragon plummeted from the skies, so too did Ox and Tiger’s fortunes plummet. Their two-to-one advantage had become two-to-two.

Rather, it was four-to-two.

They faced four opponents: Snake’s headless, armless corpse; Dragon’s upper body; Dragon’s lower body; and Snake’s head, currently in Dragon’s arms. Even worse for Ox and Tiger—though they had no way of knowing it—Rabbit had issued Snake a new command. Snake now shared a mission with his brother; the twin scourges of the battlefield were reunited in battle.

The younger twin had been instructed to kill Ox and Tiger. Up until now, Ox and Tiger could have broken free from the fight simply by running away. Now that option was blocked to them.

Rabbit was bringing the war to an end. The necromanticist hadn’t pulled Snake off his pursuit because he was saving the sleepy boy for later. Rather, as a result of the severed head’s aerial reconnaissance, he had narrowed down the youth’s escape route and sent the nearby Monkey to deal with him.

The Twelfth Zodiac War neared its final stages, and only four challengers remained. Rabbit only needed to kill Rat, Ox, and Tiger, and the victory would be his. This called not for restraint but for a swift conclusion. When he considered that all Rat had done so far was scurry about, only Ox and Tiger truly stood between him and victory.

None of this was lost on Ox. Now that the necromanticist had set all his forces to attack, the swordfighter knew the Zodiac War was drawing to a close. He understood that to stall for time only risked the arrival of further reinforcements.

“Tiger,” Ox said. “Do you have any bright ideas? Some kind of special ability that can get us out of this? Maybe you can fly or glide along the ground.”

“Sorry, all I’ve got is my Drunken Fist. I don’t have anything that can deal with enemies who refuse to die even after I rip them to shreds.”

“I see. Well, don’t feel bad. I don’t have anything either.”

Perhaps less than any other warrior of the day, Ox had no special ability—the saber-wielder just killed—and he might have been the least suited to this kind of aberrant adversary. But even if Rabbit weren’t a necromanticist, a meeting between him and Ox could only conclude with one of their deaths—they possessed two distinct forms of genius that the swordfighter could never reconcile.

“I’m not much for trickery,” Ox said, “and it’s been a while since I’ve had to devise some strategy—but there’s a time for everything. I want you to take a look at that floating half. Do you recognize that thing strapped to its back?”

Confusion in her voice, Tiger said, “Isn’t it a flamethrower like his brother’s?”

“If anything, it’s the opposite—an icethrower. The tank probably contains liquid hydrogen.”

“So? What’s liquid hydrogen do?”

“Don’t you see? It can—”

But before Ox could finish, the battle started. The opposing side’s wordless strategy session had concluded first—more likely due to the brothers’ lifelong history of teamwork than to the necromanticist’s leadership.

The elder twin threw his younger brother’s head like a shot put ball toward Ox. Rather than lodge any complaint at the indignity, Snake’s mouth opened wide, ready to sink his teeth into the swordfighter. Even at three centimeters long, a snake will try to swallow a man.

Slicing the head with his saber wasn’t an option, and catching it posed an unnecessary risk. He could have dodged the head, but doing so would put it somewhere behind him, and he couldn’t predict what would happen next. It was a small object, and if it hid somewhere out of sight, dealing with it would become far more difficult. The head might come at him from the shadows and bring about a repeat of the same crisis from which he’d just escaped. Worst case, the thing could bite him on the neck.

Left with no other choice, Ox kicked the head straight up. It was the appropriate response but also exactly what the twins had wanted him to do. As the head spun upward, its eyes acted as a 360-degree panoramic camera. What Snake’s head saw, it transmitted not only to his headless, armless body, but directly to Dragon’s two halves as well, with no need for Rabbit to act as interlocutor. With Snake’s head in the air, they secured an overwhelmingly advantageous view of the battle.

Certainly, Dragon’s upper half could have simply thrown the head into the air, but he also sought to create an opening in Ox’s guard. The two deceased twins intended to settle this fight before the head came back down—or rather, Rabbit intended it for them. The necromanticist instinctively sensed that a prolonged fight against the Natural-Born Slayer would not be to his advantage. Just as he was Ox’s natural enemy, Ox was his.

“I am Tatsumi the Elder, the Fighter of the Dragon. I kill for the money.”

“I am Tatsumi the Younger, the Fighter of the Snake. I kill for the money.”

That was what they would have said had they still been alive. Ox and Tiger prepared themselves for the twins’ attack—coming from three directions.

“I am Ushii, the Fighter of the Ox. I just kill.”

“I am Tora, the Fighter of the Tiger. I kill with drunken power.”

Though the two were expert fighters and favored champions, their announcement did not strike the corpses with awe. Nothing could deter the emotionless attack of the undead. When the rush came, it was dizzying, and more varied and three-dimensional than any Ox or Tiger had ever faced.

Not only did Dragon have a bird’s-eye view of the battle, he possessed the power of flight. Though only his upper body had been floating from the start, his lower half carried the same ability, and it jumped from the ground; then without its feet touching the ground, it leaped again in the air, like a video game character’s double jump.

Not only did its attack come from an impossible direction, the zombie’s joints pivoted in unnatural ways. At the same time, Dragon’s upper half hurtled at Ox from directly above with a twirling corkscrew punch, and Ox could only defend himself.

Their enemies came not only from above, but from below as well. As dragons attacked from the skies, snakes struck from the ground. In their earlier battle, Snake had come at Tiger with a snake fist stance, but now he attacked the woman like a snake itself, rolling and slithering nimbly across the ground.

Feeling every vibration not just with his feet but his entire body, he unleashed a merciless flurry of kicks upward toward Tiger, even as she was on her hands and knees. Between the view from the head in the sky and the vibrations of the earth, he could read her every movement. Like Ox, Tiger could do nothing but defend herself.

Improvising their tactics, Ox and Tiger stood back to back, eliminating any blind spots. They had to be master fighters to be able to defend themselves from this unprecedented and omni-directional assault—but the Tatsumi brothers transcended mortal limits.

Even had the twins been less capable, circumstances prevented Ox and Tiger from making an effective counterattack. The pair could only defend, without use of saber-edge or claws, because the more they sliced and shredded, the more their enemies would increase in number. They understood that one mistake would mean a repeat of their near-death experience.

By remaining calm and focused, they could hold their defenses. No matter how varied and three-dimensional the assault, the zombies were sluggish. Ox’s saber and Tiger’s Drunken Fist could handle the task—yet it was only a matter of time before they slipped up.

Another strike against the temporary allies was their relative lack of experience on the defensive; both favored the attack. Ox and Tiger were even less accustomed to a defensive battle than they were to fighting as a team—and defense could only carry them so far. Brawny, stalwart Horse had specialized in defense, but he too fell to Rabbit’s forces. Unless Ox and Tiger came up with a plan, nothing would reverse the course of this battle. Even if the situation prevented an attack—Wait, Tiger thought, the situation prevents an attack?

Then Tiger finally got the idea.

“The liquid hydrogen,” she said with a growl.

At last, Tiger had made the connection—she was late, but not too late. She acted immediately. Her target was not Snake’s legs with their endless kicks, nor was it Dragon’s lower body, which assailed Ox with scissor kicks from unorthodox angles. Her target was Dragon’s top half, which doggedly reached for the swordsman’s neck. Specifically, she was after Yuki-onna, the icethrower Dragon wore strapped to his back.

She didn’t know the weapon’s clever name—a reference to the yokai known as Snow Woman—or what its liquid hydrogen could do, but the way Dragon refrained from using the weapon, despite this all-out assault, struck her as peculiar. When she had faced Snake one-on-one, the headless zombie hadn’t hesitated to blast her with his liquid fire.

Was the weapon malfunctioning? Tiger dismissed that notion. No, some reason was forcing Dragon to refrain from using the icethrower.

The zombies could only continue their ghoulish, unfeeling attacks because their corpses refused to stay dead—in other words, even though they had already lost their lives, they made a clear effort to avoid any injuries that threatened to end them for good. If Dragon used the icethrower amid the confusion of the melee, he risked hitting his own lower body and Snake’s headless, armless corpse. They were willing to risk hitting each other with their punches and kicks, but not with that weapon.

Because freezing them would stop them for good.

On her hands and knees, Tiger roared and leaped toward Dragon’s floating upper body, and the two beasts clashed. Just as she had done with his brother’s flamethrower, she ripped the tank from Dragon’s back. She had to tear through the strap, and her nails left deep scratches in the tank and even accidentally tore off one of the floating corpse’s arms, but once she had Yuki-onna and the tank full of liquid hydrogen, that would be of little concern.

This time, she wasn’t about to drink the tank’s contents—she had a different purpose for the liquid hydrogen.

At that very same moment, Snake’s head—the would-be panoramic camera—was nearly upon Ox again, falling down at him from straight above. The swordfighter would now have to defend himself from unfamiliar attacks coming from three different directions at once. If Tiger were clever and dastardly, she could have waited for him to succumb. Had she done that, she could have put an end to not only the brothers Dragon and Snake, but her most formidable adversary in the Zodiac War.

But Tiger was not clever, nor was she dastardly. She raised the cracked canister high and hurled it with all her might. When it hit the ground, the suddenly vaporizing hydrogen exploded into a subzero cloud. Not a sky burial or a cremation, the cryonic preservation nevertheless proved itself almost too effective against the corpses.

Snake and Dragon, in all their parts, were frozen solid into an ice-sculpture menagerie. No follow-up would be needed. Dragon’s upper and lower halves lost their power of flight and came crashing down and then shattered against the ground, as did the newly severed arm. Snake’s headless, armless corpse, already on the ground, took a direct hit from his also plummeting head, and both shattered. Not only their bones, but their skin and flesh and everything were reduced to shaved-ice-sized slivers. The twins’ bodies scattered and comingled so that there was no telling which brother was which. They were countless, and they were one.

The brothers would never be separated again.

Having broken free from the tangle just in the nick of time, Ox said, “I’m glad you picked up on my idea.” Then, without bitterness, he added, “Although you could have said something first.”

Tiger’s tricky maneuver, which took her weaving through their enemies, made for flashy display, but Ox deserved equal regard for keeping them occupied until the last possible moment. If he had broken away even a moment earlier, the severed head would have instantly transmitted its panoramic view to the others, and at the very least, Snake’s headless, armless corpse would likely have escaped the deep freeze.

Tiger growled. “You’re one to talk. How the hell was I supposed to know what to do when you’re so damn vague?”

“Those corpses could still see. I didn’t want to spell it out in case they could hear too.” Ox sighed. “I’m just not used to having to pull any tricks like that. I should stick with what I know. At least it all worked out this time.”

Provoking him, Tiger said, “What would have worked out for me was you being flash-frozen along with those freaks.”

Returning the provocation, Ox said, “Is that so? I haven’t forgotten my promise to challenge you to a duel.” When Tiger didn’t say anything back, he added, “But I think we’ll be extending our temporary partnership for just a little while longer. You’ve noticed, haven’t you?”

“Of course I have. That old man Sheep was much better at hiding than this one.” Then she roared, “Hey! Come on out, you bastard!”

Then, as a wild hare might emerge from its burrow, Rabbit appeared from behind a sculpture in front of a nearby building, not out of obedience but by his own volition—or maybe he was obeying. He remained impossible to read.

Despite a pair of minions being reduced to frozen smithereens, Rabbit appeared unafraid. He stepped toward Ox and Tiger as his usual composed self, armed with an inexhaustible will to kill, along with those two giant blades—Shiro-usagi and Sangatsu-usagi—the cursed weapons with which he had created so many corpses. Rather, the curse belonged to him, not his weapons.

To Rabbit, Ox said, “I trust you won’t complain about facing the two of us—after all, you’ve been fighting on a team yourself.”

Whether or not Rabbit was listening, the necromanticist ignored the comment and announced himself.

“I am Usagi, the Fighter of the Rabbit. I kill with distinction.”

His demeanor was perplexing given the circumstances—he had come to join his minions in their fight but arrived only moments too late, only to find himself thrust into an unexpected crisis. Having sent Monkey after Rat, he now faced Ox and Tiger alone. When confronted with this hopeless battle, he showed no signs of despair—but how could one lose hope when he’d gone his whole life without having it?

Such a fighter was beyond Ox’s understanding, and though Tiger herself was a renegade, she was made of different stuff. All the more reason to fight.

Though nations would be won or lost based on its outcome, the Zodiac War was also a battle for survival.

“I am Ushii, the Fighter of the Ox. I just kill.”

“I am Tora, the Fighter of the Tiger. I kill with drunken power.”

For the second time in the same day, Ox and Tiger announced themselves together.

Though Rabbit was a living man, he—like his corpse allies—remained unperturbed by the display of conviction from two expert warriors. Wielding the twin blades, he attacked as if this were routine.

But to fighters like Ox and Tiger, his movements were clumsy; they could have handled his attack with their eyes closed. Compared to the Tatsumi brothers, he might as well have been a bunny bounding in for a snuggle—but Ox and Tiger were not about to go easy on him. They met his attack with blade and Drunken Fist.

Two swift saber slashes struck Rabbit; then after the briefest delay, so did two swipes of ten claws. Rabbit’s body fell into eight pieces.

Rabbit failed to offer an interesting fight, but he was a necromanticist, after all, who employed corpses to do his fighting—and he went with no prolonged death scene either; no villain’s dying scream, no final words. That was it. The vast gap in ability and skill left Rabbit no time to feel surprise. In the face of Tiger and Ox—who was fighting ability distilled into human form—Rabbit stood not a chance on his own.

Thus died the mysterious man who had thrown the Twelfth Zodiac War into a greater turmoil than any combatant had done in the history of the event.

Not missing a beat, Ox said to Tiger, “Well then,” seemingly feeling no deep emotion at the killing of this formidable adversary; no matter who the enemy, no matter what curse they bore, once dead they were of no further concern. “Would you rather take a short break first, Fighter of the Tiger?”

Licking the necromanticist’s blood from her nails, Tiger said, “Don’t make me laugh, Fighter of the Ox,” as if Rabbit had never mattered to her at all. “This blood has me nice and drunk. Now, put up a good fight, will you? I want to have some fun.”

“All right. Then our alliance is now over,” Ox said, removing a glove and throwing it at Tiger. “It’s a duel.”

Rabbit had been killed. He had been sliced into pieces— that much was true.

But before he was sliced into pieces, he had bitten his own tongue off and instantly choked on it. That he had made no dying scream and given no final words was a matter of course.

Rabbit had killed himself, and the wounds left by the nimble saber slashes and the savage claw swipes came after his suicide.

One might ask, He’s dead—so what the heck does it matter how he died?

In normal cases, that would be true. But Rabbit wasn’t normal—he was a necromanticist who wielded control over those he killed.

What would happen when a man like that killed himself?

Ox and Tiger were about to find out.

Ox and Tiger vs. Rabbit

End of the 9th battle