11

Real Name: Eiji KASHII

Born: February 2

Height: 181 cm

Weight: 72 kg

Nickname: The Natural-Born Slayer

From his first battle at the age of five, Eiji has killed every enemy he faced. From the start, people called him a natural, and his claim over the title became absolute—so much so that to this day, the only time anyone else is discussed as being a natural is in comparison to him.

His use of the saber is as magnificent as it is precise. Despite lacking any other weapons or remarkable abilities, Eiji can turn the tide of any battle. He has earned the reputation of bringing certain victory to whichever camp draws him to their side.

Eiji himself feels no particular allegiance to country or ideology and acquits himself as a common soldier. To him, winning is a foregone conclusion—what he holds far more important is how to end war. As the warrior who brings a swift end to any conflict, he would have liked to talk to Monkey, who kept wars from reigniting.

He calls his saber Gobōken—bayonet—and though the weapon isn’t anything special—it was a mass-produced item—he treats it with great care and respect.

Eiji is slim but has a rather large appetite. He doesn’t know how to cook and chooses to dine out instead. As a warrior, he abstains from alcohol and knows a lot about restaurants where he can eat alone.

This was no time to wallow in sentimentality. Besides, mercy killings such as this were a common occurrence on the battlefield—now there had merely been one more. Killing Tiger before she turned into a zombie hadn’t significantly changed the situation Ox was in. He needed to remain calm and clearheaded and make his next move.

Ushii, the Fighter of the Ox, knew all this. And yet, for one uncharacteristic moment, the Natural-Born Slayer held his gaze on Tiger’s lifeless body. Except he hadn’t been himself for more than just this moment—yes, an ally suffering a grave injury was cause for distress, but he had never before lost control like he did when Tiger was stabbed.

He had carved up Rabbit’s corpse without regard for the consequences. He fled combat, and he shouted. None of these were familiar experiences to him. Maybe it was because he saw something in her that reminded him of that girl he met on the battlefield.

Maybe Tiger wasn’t her after all, Ox thought.

The girl’s questions carried the unsophistication and purity of youth. How do you do everything so right? How can I do what’s right?

Ox still remembered being taken aback when he was confronted by the questions, which he had never asked himself. Mostly that was because no one else would have been so rudely presumptuous as to spring such sweeping questions on the Natural-Born Slayer—but the encounter was refreshingly unexpected. Practically everything in his life went as expected and according to plan, and he had been starved of anything bearing an element of surprise—and so he met that refreshing question with a serious answer.

“First, decide to do the right thing,” he had said. “Then do it.”

By giving form to his outlook and saying it aloud, he felt as if he’d had an awakening. If his genius had been lacking in any way, this was the moment it became complete. In truth, after this encounter, his accomplishments became even more remarkable than before.

I had been rude to treat such a strong warrior as if she were a naive, innocent child. Even though I never drink, I should have liked to make an exception and share one with her.

Though he had been shaken, Ox was still the Natural. Tiger’s body only captured his eyes and his empathy for one brief moment, and his mournful prayer lasted just one more, then he refocused his attention on the matter at hand. He was not so overcome by sentimentality to consider giving the woman a burial. He was in the middle of a war held only once every twelve years, and another corpse than hers more urgently required being put to rest.

Usagi, Fighter of the Rabbit … even dead, you’re still fighting. In a way, death is supposed to be a release for us warriors—but I suppose a necromanticist wouldn’t understand. Even so, to make a puppet out of your own corpse is beyond insanity.

But as much as Ox rejected Rabbit’s thinking, he understood it to a point. He knew what the necromanticist was attempting to do. Rabbit, recognizing his certain defeat, had chosen to take his own life, but not because he figured he was going to die anyway and could at least take the other fighters down with him and spoil the war’s outcome. No, it wasn’t that at all.

In death, Rabbit sought victory.

Rabbit found a loophole in the Zodiac War’s rules—or if not a hole, then part of its intended design. The judge, Duodecuple, had stated that the only condition for winning the Twelfth Zodiac War was to collect all twelve poison jewels swallowed by the combatants. As much as the contest was a battle royale, direct combat was ultimately not required to win—the only need was to collect the jewels. The rule was simple and broad in scope, capable of providing an exceedingly fair match between greatly varied competitors.

But for all that the rules didn’t mention killing, the only way to obtain another fighter’s jewel was to reach into their stomachs for it, which made killing a logistical inevitability. The only exception came from challengers like Sheep, who didn’t swallow their jewels—but that tactic was clearly out of bounds.

The war would conclude with one of two possible results: all eleven fighters aside from the winner were dead, or the battle went on past the time limit, and any fighters still alive at that time would succumb to the poison and die a pitiful death.

Certainly, some fighters might have survived the poison—though Ox was not among them. Dog, whom Ox hadn’t encountered, had neutralized the poison inside his body with the intention of outliving its effects. Ox could imagine the slim possibility that Horse—whose skin had been tough enough to repel the Natural-Born Slayer’s attacks—might have been resilient enough internally survive the poison, but even had Horse survived—or if any other fighter did in some other way—they wouldn’t have been able to collect all twelve jewels and would not have qualified as the winner.

But to examine the situation from the flipside, any fighter who met the conditions of victory would be the winner—even if that fighter were dead.

This interpretation of the rules—as extreme as it was—led Rabbit to take his own life before he could be killed. He had regarded his life with the same unfeeling attitude he had toward the lives of others. As if merely deciding to take a left turn upon seeing that the right turn was blocked, he recognized that he had no chance at winning alive and instead chose to seek victory dead. Before he ended his conscious existence, he imprinted himself with one command—collect the twelve jewels.

Ox thought, The judge could have prevented this mess merely by saying that death was grounds for disqualification—but the organizers could never have imagined the necromanticist would do this.

Or perhaps they had, and this was part of the advantage given to Rabbit. From what Ox had seen, he speculated that all twelve fighters held their own unique advantages against the rules.

Except for myself, that is.

For Ox to desire some advantage above and beyond his incredible innate talents was perhaps shameless. It could be said that his opponents hadn’t been given advantages but rather handicaps to even the match against Ox.

No, I did have a significant advantage—by meeting Tiger. If we hadn’t fought together, and if I didn’t have her help, I would be dead.

In any event, Rabbit had in effect lost the Zodiac War, then created for himself a loser’s bracket from which he could remain a contender. That being the case, when he stabbed Tiger in the stomach rather than somewhere more vital, he might not have missed his aim—if he was aiming for the jewel she had swallowed.

I can see his logic. If I remove any emotions from consideration, all of Rabbit’s actions can be explained. He’s not just showy and bizarre for the sake of it—though unusual in his looks and his methods, he’s making all the right moves.

But why was the man willing to go this far? The winner of the Zodiac War could make any single wish. But as long as there was life, there was hope—what wish could a person want so badly to be willing to die for it? If he wanted something that badly, shouldn’t he have given up on the contest and applied himself to finding some way to survive?

What had Rabbit decided to do, and what was he doing?

Ox’s questions lingered, but he cleared them from his mind. I don’t think I’ll ever solve this mystery. Even if I tried to find out what he sought by coming here, I’d have nowhere to start looking. If we couldn’t reach any mutual understanding while he was alive, we surely can’t now that he’s dead. In the end, it doesn’t matter. All I can do now is give him a proper funeral.

Giving Rabbit a funeral might have sounded like a kindness, but Ox really meant a cremation. Incinerating the necromanticist’s corpse was the only effective option left to Ox now. Theoretically, he could also freeze the zombie, but liquid hydrogen, or something of the kind, would be hard to find in the abandoned city.

Not that finding fuel and a fire starter will be easy. A gas station might still be my best bet. I could also go from car to car and siphon the gasoline, but that would take a while.

This time, he would have to face the corpse alone, and he remained unaccustomed to devising tricky strategies. As he tried to do so, his thoughts were interrupted.

“What—?” he even said.

He had put enough distance between himself and Rabbit that he thought he’d have a little more time before all the little pieces could catch up—and when Rabbit appeared, it wasn’t in pieces.

The carved-up chunks of the necromanticist’s corpse had reassembled themselves into the shape reminiscent of a man.

However, the form was only human in rough outline. The mass of parts shared a similar silhouette with Rabbit before his death, but in places all over it had been assembled wrong. His left arm was inside out, his right arm swapped with his left leg, his eyes lodged in his stomach, the top of his head protruding from the bottom of his back, his fingernails jutting out from his chest, his tailbone stuffed in his mouth, his heart exposed, and his fingers crawling around—everything had been so thoroughly jumbled, it was harder to find a part situated in the right place, like a plastic model put together by the whims of a builder lacking instructions or a finished picture.

Part hodgepodge and part patchwork, the parts were bound together by blood vessels and muscle fibers—among other binding agents like coagulated blood as glue, stripped-off skin as wrapping, bone fragments as bracing, and ripped-out wisdom teeth as pins. Though their arrangement was haphazard, the pieces were held secure so that they wouldn’t fall apart.

Rabbit’s blades, Shiro-usagi and Sangatsu-usagi, were there too, included like any other body part. The pieced-together corpse was using the weapons like crutches to help him walk. Since his arms—one of which was actually a leg—were in no shape to hold them, the weapons had been fastened in place with a couple lengths of small intestine.

He isn’t even a zombie anymore—he’s an abomination.

Through his many battles, Ox had seen dead bodies in terrible, grisly states, but this was the first time he had felt the urge to look away.

Here, too, Rabbit’s logic was present. Unlike Dragon and Snake, the necromanticist hadn’t the power of flight, nor had he experience with slithering and crawling along the ground. After being chopped up into many pieces, he must have reasoned that the fastest way to catch Ox was to reconstruct himself and walk just like was normal—although of course there was nothing normal about the amalgamated corpse’s sluggish shamble.

Disturbing as Rabbit’s appearance was, it gave Ox hope.

Being nearly strangled to death left me focused on that tactic—I’ve been assuming the corpse would attack me in pieces. Depending on the former fighter, a zombie might not consider remaining split up to be an effective choice. If that’s the case with Rabbit, chopping him up again might work to my advantage.

It might, but it wouldn’t get Ox anywhere new. He might be able to buy himself some time, but it would never finish Rabbit off.

I can’t afford to waste my time on this man—not that he’s leaving me a choice.

Rabbit was an opponent he’d already defeated. The Zodiac War was still ongoing, and the matador wouldn’t get anywhere tied up by Rabbit.

No matter how masterful a fighter Ox was, no matter if he always decisively took the most appropriate course of action, he lacked information. He didn’t have any special ability like the Eye of the Cormorant that could give him a bird’s-eye view of the battle. He couldn’t see the current state of the other warriors—or of the war as a whole. He didn’t know that only he and one other fighter remained alive.

He knew of six that had died—Tiger, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Chicken, and Boar. From Chicken’s extra jewel, he could assume that she had killed one other, and from what Tiger had said when she mentioned Sheep, the old man was likely dead. But whether or not any or all of the other fighters were still alive, Ox didn’t have a reason to waste one extra moment on Rabbit.

So then I’ll carve him up one more time and search for a gas station while he’s putting himself back together again.

The idea of chopping up Rabbit again was unpleasant—taking his saber to the vulgar monstrosity felt akin to desecrating a corpse—but he saw no other effective option. Though Rabbit’s humanoid construction had arrived faster on two feet than it could have crawled, the animated corpse was not speedy by any means, and its movements were relatively predictable. Besides, no matter how strong were the bonds between the zombie’s various bits and pieces, Ox only needed to cut along the seams and they would fall and scatter.

Again Ox wondered, What wish was so important that he was willing to make such a monstrosity of himself?

The lurching, shuffling monster was nearly upon him now. Rabbit raised the blades that had served as his crutches.

Ox analyzed his attack. No point in aiming for the vital parts, like the head or the heart. It wouldn’t even give me any peace of mind.

Instead, Ox focused entirely on dismantling the corpse. Before Rabbit could swing Shiro-usagi and Sangatsu-usagi down upon him, Ox’s masterful slashes split the monster into six pieces—first the head, then the four limbs, and finally, he split the zombie’s torso in two.

A corpse jumped out from the cleft.

Springing out at Ox like a grotesque jack-in-the-box was none other than Sharyū, the Fighter of the Monkey—once a hero, now a corpse. Ox grunted as she tackled him and took him to the ground with superhuman strength.

So, Monkey, you’re already dead, Ox thought, realizing his fatal error.

His mistake wasn’t failing to presume that Rabbit had killed the pacifist and turned her into his pawn. Ox lacked the information that could have enabled him to make that assumption. But he should have foreseen the possibility that some other corpse was hidden within the patchwork monster.

The gruesome sight of the model kit gone wrong distracted his thoughts from realizing it at the time. Because Rabbit had utilized some of his own body parts to hold the rest together from the outside, the golem should not have been the same size as Rabbit had been when he was alive; a hollow must have been inside there somewhere. If only Ox had realized there was a space for something else to occupy, he might have guessed that another of the necromanticist’s minions—not necessarily Monkey, but somebody—was hiding within.

More likely than not, Rabbit hadn’t simply been using the woman’s body as filler to occupy the empty space—creating a place to hide her was the goal all along, so that when the unsuspecting Ox approached to cut him apart again, Monkey could pop out and catch him by surprise.

To say that they had caught him by surprise was understating it. He hadn’t the slightest suspicion that another body could have been inside there. He had made a total and complete blunder. If only he hadn’t let the gruesome sight distract his attention and cloud his thoughts …

No, even if I had managed to suspect another corpse was inside, the moment it turned out to be Monkey, my suspicions wouldn’t have made any meaningful difference.

The dead hero pinned Ox down with unbelievable strength, preventing him from making the slightest movement. For being so small in stature—petite enough, after all, to have hidden inside the other corpse—Monkey possessed incredible raw physical power. Even accounting for the lack of inherent restraint all Rabbit’s corpses shared, Ox was made painfully aware of just how much latent ability the pacifist had once kept bottled up—and was now being compelled to unleash.

While I fled with Tiger on my back, Rabbit summoned Monkey and joined their bodies together. He’d done such a horrifying mess of reshaping himself because appearing like a normal human hadn’t been his goal. He wanted to construct a vessel in which to hide a human body, like prehistoric man once built houses out of mammoth bones.

Ox remained calm and analyzed his situation, not because the master had time to spare, and not because careful thinking could find him an opportunity to regain the upper hand. No, the Natural-Born Slayer was coming to terms with the reality that he had no way out.

When Monkey tackled him, his saber clattered to somewhere out of reach, and the slight-figured zombie had him completely pinned to the ground. She wasn’t holding him in any kind of lock or hold; she was just that strong. If she had felt like it, she could have flattened his arms and legs into the pavement.

The only reason she didn’t try to harm him was not because she had been a pacifist in life—it was because Ox had already been defeated. At the edge of his vision, Ox saw the pieces of Rabbit’s corpse slowly reassemble. The process was going to take a little time, but with his prey captured, Rabbit could afford to take as long as he needed.

I see what he’s doing, Ox thought in realization. He doesn’t want Monkey to kill me. He wants to kill me himself. He wants to gain control of me with as little damage done as possible.

The future that Tiger had feared now bore down on Ox. He would become one of the walking dead, as had Boar, Dragon, Snake, and Monkey—or as some disfigured creature like Rabbit—stripped of consciousness, free will, or creed. He would keep on battling, following his leader’s every command.

In that sense, it wouldn’t be that much different from my life now. I’d still be a lowly soldier, just dead instead of alive—but I would no longer be doing the right things, and I don’t want that.

Ox remembered what he had told the girl long ago. First, decide to do the right thing. Then do it. Now that he’d been bested, the words sounded so self-important.

Right now, the right thing is to do what? To kill myself? All I have to do is decide and do it.

Even if his arms and legs couldn’t budge, he could still bite through his tongue, just as Rabbit had done. Of all the actions he could ever take, suicide seemed the least like who he was. But what other choice did he have?

Pain shot through his face.

Correctly sensing his determination—or rather, indecision—Monkey slammed her forehead against Ox’s chin. With a single head-butt, she had prevented Ox’s suicide—by shattering his teeth.

Without teeth, he couldn’t bite through his tongue—although in truth, he might not have been able to go through with the deed. Either way, she had removed the option by using the least possible force and doing the least possible damage.

I suppose losing all my teeth won’t make any difference when I’m a mute zombie. I don’t use them as a weapon either—though I doubt losing them will help my looks.

The taste of iron filled his mouth. The moment Monkey’s corpse fell into Rabbit’s clutches, the Zodiac War might have been as good as over. I don’t know how many other fighters are still alive, but I don’t think Dog or Sheep will be able to put up much resistance.

Who else was there? There should have been one more. The pain in Ox’s mouth made it hard to gather his thoughts. Then, as the recollection began to form, a voice spoke.

“I am Nezumi, the Fighter of the Rat. I kill inexorably.”

That’s right, the Rat. Ox turned his head in the direction of the voice. Standing there was the boy who had appeared sleepy from the beginning and still appeared sleepy now. The youth seemed too young to be a fighter—though Ox, who had seen his first battle at the age of five, was hardly the person to judge whether or not the boy was too young.

Why had he come? Ox had seen no trace of him in the war. Why should he make his appearance now? The battle was all but wrapped up, and the boy could do nothing to change it. There was being in the wrong place, and there was this. It was almost laughable.

The boy had shown up as if to save Ox from certain death, but surely that wasn’t the case. No one—save for the drunken Tiger—would be so foolish as to come to the rescue of the Natural-Born Slayer.

“Looks like I’m not too late,” the boy said. “Finding Sheep’s body took me longer than I thought it would. Well, I wasn’t trying to find his body exactly. I was trying to find these.”

The boy held out a handful of grenades—the Shūkaiokuri that Hitsujii, the Sheep, had brought into the fight—weapons so destructive that even Monkey had feared them.

Rabbit’s corpse was gradually but steadily piecing itself back together, but until it had finished, it couldn’t go anywhere. Monkey had Ox pinned down, but she couldn’t move without releasing him.

The boy had said he wasn’t too late, when in truth he was perfectly on time. This was the only moment that could have worked—this specific timing and none other. Never again would the opportunity arise to eliminate both Rabbit’s and Monkey’s corpses at once. Of course, Ox would be eliminated with them, but he had already accepted his death.

Ox didn’t know what kind of person Rat was or how the boy had managed to get there. He didn’t know—or care—if Rat was the most dastardly villain on Earth, who had watched and waited for his chance out of pure cowardice. What mattered was that the boy came bearing weapons perhaps more suited than any other for destroying the undead.

“I’m not sure this will give you any peace of mind,” the boy said, “but I was only able to bring these grenades here because Tiger killed Sheep. Everything that’s about to happen is thanks to your ally. Now, do you have any final words?”

“No,” Ox said without hesitation. “Just do it.”

Even if Rat were the world’s worst villain, even if he were a coward, Ox felt certain he’d rather have the boy win than let Rabbit walk free. He could imagine no worse future than one where the necromanticist, with Ox’s and Monkey’s corpses in tow, went from battlefield to battlefield creating zombies en masse.

Ox would decide to do right, then he would do it—just as Tiger had done as he took her life.

He said, “To me, this is what’s right. Spend your life doing what you believe is right.”

He closed his eyes.

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

After Ox announced himself, Rat paused in silence, then rolled all his grenades into the group and quickly distanced himself. Ox saw how Rat could have survived—the boy could run with terrific speed.

Now that I think about it, when the Jade Emperor created the zodiac, the rat claimed the first spot by hitching a ride on an ox.

What happened here wasn’t all that different from the legend, but Ox didn’t mind it happening to him. The boy’s attempt at giving him peace of mind had been a bit of a stretch, but it had proved surprisingly effective. Winning the Zodiac War seemed unimportant now, and he felt no regret conceding to the boy.

What will he wish for? Ox wondered. And why do I get the feeling I’ve met him somewhere before?

The grenades exploded.

The former arms dealer’s implied threat on the observation deck had been no lie or exaggeration. With far more destructive power than seemed possible from objects that fit in the palm of a hand, the explosion disintegrated Monkey, Rabbit, and Ox, and even the nearby Tiger, along with everything else in the area. All that remained were the eleven murky-black jewels they had once held.

Added to the one carried by Rat, who had taken shelter back in the sewers, that made twelve.

The Twelfth Zodiac War had ended.

Rat vs. Ox

End of the 11th battle