2

Real Name: Michio TSUKUI

Born: May 5

Height: 177 cm

Weight: 52 kg

Michio doesn’t believe in fighting with weapons and instead prefers to bite his opponents. His vicious teeth, capable of pulverizing anything, have been called the “Mad Dog’s Vise,” which is greatly feared.

He works as a daycare teacher and, by all accounts, earns raves from parents and kids alike, but in secret, his real profession is finding children who possess certain gifts and delivering them to the organizations who want them. When, due to an oversight, he once let a little girl slip into the hands of a man who was nothing more than a pedophile, Michio risked his life to rescue her. He took her in as his adopted daughter and works hard both at daycare and on the battlefield to earn enough money to give her a proper upbringing.

In his personal time, he is an avid calligrapher. At first his works earned little regard, but through perseverance and practice, in time he acquired a bold, masterful brushwork that silenced all his detractors.

The Zodiac War was not confined to any specific area. The starting point had been located in a high-rise in the center of a city abandoned solely for this purpose, but once begun, the battle could go anywhere—even, for example, across borders. In fact, the previous Boar, who won the Zodiac War twelve years prior, deliberately brought the battle into a large, densely populated city and embroiled tremendous numbers of innocent bystanders in the fight.

Dokku, the Fighter of the Dog thought, The way Boar created an advantage by using the mass confusion and riots as a shield—I could learn a thing or two from that. Not that I’ll be able to use that same strategy this time. With this time limit, we’re not going to be able to stray far from where we are. Even though we separated at the start, we all share the same interest in remaining in close enough proximity to stay in the fight.

And so, rather than follow the example set by the previous winner, Dog chose the opposite approach. He decided to bide his time and hid in a secluded location where he could keep distance from the other fighters and remain safe from discovery. With his bared fangs, he made for a brutal, savage figure—and in truth, he had that side as well—but he was also shrewd and cool-headed.

When you think you know what to do, sometimes you need to do the opposite.

Because this Zodiac War had a considerable number of eager combatants, Dog thought it would be more prudent to let them slug it out among themselves and to only take action himself once their numbers were whittled down and less could be left to chance. While Dog possessed the strong pride of a warrior, and he believed he could best each and every one of the other fighters by his own strength, he resisted that temptation. He could keep his pride in check to find a more certain victory.

I shouldn’t have to worry about Rabbit, judging by how he killed Snake before the battle had even begun. He’s nothing more than a killer, and he doesn’t have what it takes to survive a Zodiac War. That leaves Ox as the biggest problem …

Aside from Ox, the only fighter who concerned Dog was whoever had blown apart the floor. That trick caught all the other combatants off guard—Dog included. But who was it? Dog knew he shouldn’t act until he learned the answer.

Well, I’ll wait. That’s my prerogative. Deep down, every dog wants to wait. And that’s what I’ll do, until we’re down to three fighters at the most.

But this logic wasn’t the only reason Dog was so ready to accept settling in and waiting out the Zodiac War. There was another, more dominant reason, relating to the rules of the game—specifically, the conditions for victory. Though the rules had been as much of a surprise to him as to anyone else, they served him better than he could have ever wished for.

The fighters had all ingested their jewels and now had to claim them from each other. Unless they got their own jewels out, the protective coating would dissolve and the poison would begin eating them from within. Duodecuple explained that the poison would kill them in twelve hours, but certainly they wouldn’t all drop dead at the exact same moment. Not even the organizers of this grand event were capable of formulating a capsule with such time-bomb precision for each individual fighter. No, as time passed, the poison would work its way into every corner of their bodies. Dog suspected that after ten hours, the act of fighting would become difficult. Furthermore, the effectiveness of any poison differed from person to person. Some might even begin to show the effects even earlier—and it was that fear that would pressure the fighters into avoiding the cautious play that was typical of the early stages of Zodiac Wars past.

But Dog was different.

Because when Dog fought, his weapon of choice was poison.

He’d led the world to believe his signature style to be his powerful bite delivered by the so-called Mad Dog’s Vise, when in reality his weapon of choice was the poison that coated his fangs. The secret wasn’t so hard to hide when all who had encountered it did him the favor of dying.

His body could naturally produce a variety of toxins that, when introduced into his enemies, produced effects ranging from death to more death. The process did involve biting his victims, and by that measure, the public’s image of him was not entirely baseless.

As an accomplished poisoner, Dog had immediately recognized the murky-black stone as a form of poison, and by the time he’d taken it into his mouth, his body was already at work producing the antidote. In other words, Dog was not currently poisoned. The jewel had been completely neutralized, and Dog was in full health. Forget twelve hours—Dog could remain here in wait for as long as his stamina allowed. The oppressive time limit would restrict the battle to the ghost city, but Dog alone was free from the rules of the game. Still, he knew he couldn’t go too far if he wanted to strike at the right time.

This feels a little like cheating, but I’m not going to feel guilty over it. I’m going to use this advantage to the fullest.

At first, this position of privilege tempted him into thinking he might remain hidden until the very end, when any remaining fighters had been so ravaged by battle and poison they could hardly stand, and then he would arrive in peak fighting condition. But the situation he faced wasn’t quite so ideal—if he waited until the very last moment, he would risk the poison jewels dissolving in his opponents’ bodies entirely. Just as poisons affected different people in different ways, each person’s stomach held differing levels of acidity. Once any jewel dissolved completely, reconstructing it would become an impossible feat, no matter how much of an expert with poison Dog was. He wasn’t familiar with all his opponents, and there was no rule against a warrior having excess stomach acid.

And so, rather than wait for a certain amount of time to pass, Dog decided to stay in hiding until his opponents had been reduced in number. Until there were three fighters, or maybe fewer, he would stay here—here in this perfect hiding place, where no one would ever find him.

“I fooooound you,” sang the voice.

Dog had chosen to hide in the underground parking lot of the same abandoned high-rise where the fighters had assembled, not because he thought it so close that no one would think to look there, but simply because it made for an ideal hiding spot due to the darkness and the great number of vehicles whose owners were no longer here—perhaps no longer anywhere. Rather, it should have made for an ideal hiding spot, but Dog had been found out before the first half hour had passed.

“I fooooound you,” the voice had said in the sing-songy manner of a child playing hide-and-go-seek. But this was no child. This was a woman—a warrior. She was unknown to him, and she was hugging a trident-like weapon to her chest.

Shit! Dog thought, understandably panicked. The same qualities that made the underground garage an ideal hiding place also made it a disadvantageous arena. Between the darkness and restricted sightlines, Dog would have trouble putting his close-quarters biting style to good use. Even worse, it offered his foe free reign to wield her long, slender weapon.

And the battle is only just getting started, damn it. That slow-acting poison probably isn’t having any effect on her at all.

Dog had hoped to face opponents who had been weakened from the toxic jewels, but now he was facing an enemy who was still at full strength.

He cast the doubts from his head and was beginning to rise to his feet when she said, her words tumbling out, “Ah! Oh, please don’t misunderstand. I mean you no harm.”

Here she was, standing before him, facing down at him, having him at a complete disadvantage, and she was stopping to explain herself.

“My-my name is Niwatori … of the Chicken, and I … I wanted to see if we could team up.”

Team up? Dog reflexively furrowed his brows. I guess she did respond to Monkey’s offer.

He recalled what had happened before the floor collapsed. Monkey was joined right away by that sleepy-looking boy … then Ox, then that giant man, and this woman. Dog’s profession relied on reading people, and he turned his analytical eye on her. She seemed meek, yet her clothes were both gaudy and revealing. If anything, they felt like a costume she had been forced to wear. Was she not here because she wanted to be?

Dog asked, “You say you want to team up?”

“Y-yes,” she answered. “Everything got left up in the air when we were scattered, but …” As she continued, her voice got quieter and quieter, as if she were losing the courage to speak. “But this is a battle royale, and I still think starting in teams is obviously the best idea. So, that’s why … why I …”

Dog took this to mean that she hadn’t been looking for him in particular. She’d only happened to find him first after the split, and she’d come with her guard down, hoping to form a team.

Didn’t she stop to wonder why, if “starting in teams” was so “obvious,” Monkey was the only one to initiate that move?

Chicken seemed to have not yet realized that a single winner meant that team play and betrayal came as two sides of the same coin. Maybe she had accepted Monkey’s invitation not because she shared the same pacifist intentions, but rather out of a simplistic strategy born of short-term thinking.

“We can join forces,” she explained, “until we’re the last two left. Then we’ll have a fair fight, one-on-one. It’s as easy as that. So please, won’t you join me?”

She seemed to earnestly believe it a mutually beneficial agreement to which refusal was inconceivable. But rather than accept right away, Dog thought it over.

He saw little benefit to be derived from teaming up with such a foolish girl—especially considering his unique advantage as a master of poison. On the other hand, responding to her offer with a flat refusal might turn this encounter into a fight he’d rather avoid. Though she might have been foolish and lacking in prudence, she was still an elite fighter chosen for the Zodiac War. Dog figured her prowess in battle must have been considerable to make up for her stupidity.

Even if Dog were to defeat her in combat, it wasn’t guaranteed to be an easy fight. An injury in this early stage of the battle might upset his plans for the long game—and it was now, when his advantage was not yet actualized, that Dog was at the greatest risk of being eliminated.

He began forming a plan. My best move might be to pretend to join her, then immediately steer us to a location where I can kill her before we happen upon any of the other fighters.

It was a fiendish plan utterly lacking in humanity—in other words, a very human plan.

Then she added, “Please. We have to hurry. We’re in danger. Terrible, terrible danger.” Worry beset her face, leaving no trace of the warrior showing through. “The terrible, frightening man with the two long, giant hatchets, he—I can’t even believe it—he’s a necromanticist! He’s killed Boar, and he already has a team of three!”

Niwatori, the Fighter of the Chicken, explained that she possessed a special power that had earned her a place among the twelve—or perhaps had been the reason she was forced into being there. She called the power her “Eye of the Cormorant.” She could commune with all species of bird, and it was through that ability that she had found Dog in his underground hiding place.

Now that she mentioned it, Dog remembered seeing a pigeon perched on the ledge of a ceiling beam inside the car park. Wherever a bird could go, whether outside or indoors, was effectively within her field of view. Even if the organization behind the Zodiac Wars wielded enough power to clear an entire city of its residents, their reach didn’t extend so far as to restrict any birds from flying in or out.

Just as Dog’s powers over poison provided him a powerful advantage over the other fighters, so did Chicken’s vision for her. Through her Eye of the Cormorant, she had witnessed the fight between Rabbit and Boar—and she had seen its end. With the help of Snake’s corpse, Rabbit had killed Boar, then left with his two undead allies.

When Dog heard this, his first thought was, She really is stupid. No matter how badly Chicken felt compelled to tell someone about the spectacle she had witnessed, she should never have revealed the nature and extent of her special powers so openly to another fighter whom she’d only just met. This was an incomprehensible lack of caution.

Her power was truly enviable and would have served as a tremendous boon to any fighter. If it were up for sale, he’d have been the first in line. But it would give her no advantage in close-quarters hand-to-hand combat. As long as he remained near her side, he could fight and win against her at any moment. He could kill her anytime he wanted to, and she posed no threat to him whatsoever. He could use her for all she was worth, and once he’d wrung every bit of advantage from her special abilities, he could kill her at his discretion. As long as he didn’t wait too long, she’d be gone before she could ever stand in his way.

No, the problem now was Rabbit. What had Chicken called him—a necromanticist? To think that such a person existed. The more he killed, the more fighters he would have under his command. He was a killer and a creator. A creator and a horror. Such a power was superior to Chicken’s, of course, but possibly even Dog’s as well.

By turning his defeated opponents into his minions, this creator of the undead could construct an alliance that would never betray him. The obstacles other fighters faced in forming alliances—and the drawbacks in doing so—were practically nonexistent to him. He would never have to keep an eye over his shoulder for the moment his allies would turn on him, and the more he killed as the Zodiac War progressed, the larger his alliance would become. Theoretically, as a worst-case scenario, the fight might end up as eleven versus one. Even worse, Dog’s talents as a master of poison would mean nothing against Rabbit’s minions. No poison existed that could kill someone who was already dead. Although he didn’t know it for sure, and wouldn’t unless he tried, Dog suspected that biting those corpses and injecting his venom would have no effect at all. He would be forced to fight the former warriors in straight-up hand-to-hand combat.

If it comes to that, I’m already sunk, but just to make things worse, the poison jewels won’t likely be having any effect on them either. Corpses don’t produce stomach acid.

Rabbit’s “allies” were free of the limits imposed by the deadline. Were they the only ones?

Chicken’s Eye of the Cormorant, my ability to manipulate poison, and now Rabbit the necromanticist—this isn’t happening by mere coincidence.

Dog was finding it more and more likely that the organizers of this Zodiac War had devised the rules and the setting to match the combatants’ special powers. Each fighter held some advantage over one or another of the constraints of the battle. Victory would rely upon how they used their advantages.

Okay, so the rules aren’t so simple as Duodecuple made them out to be. Now, what do I do about it?

Whatever Dog did, it would have to differ from what he had been doing. Putting aside the issue of how to deal with Chicken, he could no longer afford to hide until the Zodiac War’s final stages. If Dog were to remain inactive, Rabbit would put his advantage in numbers to work as he and his minions coldly and systematically eliminated the other fighters. Worse, anyone they killed would join their ranks.

Everyone he defeats joins his side. What is this, a boys’ manga?

It took no great leaps of imagination for Dog to picture what would happen when he finally emerged from hiding only to find Rabbit and his minions—if not eleven strong, then at least seven or eight.

All those fighters, with all their distinctive traits, under his absolute command … Just because it’s easy to imagine, it’s not any less chilling to think about.

No, if Dog was to act, he needed to do it soon. Now, even. He needed to put a stop to Rabbit while the killer still had only two corpses at his beck and call. Dog had faced three-on-one fights in his line of work. Not often, of course, but he had. And right now he had Chicken on his side. Three-on-two was far more commonplace. Nothing special about that, save for the fact that this time zombies comprised the majority of the opposing force.

“Chicken,” he said.

“Y-yes?” she replied.

“Can you see where Rabbit is right now? With your ability?”

“O-of course,” she said, pride edging into her voice, stammer or no. “I’ve been keeping track of him. I’m keeping my watchers a fair distance away so that Rabbit won’t realize he’s being watched, but the birds have made following him, Boar, and Snake their top priority.”

“All right. Listen, I hate working with others, but just in this case, I’ll make an exception for you. I accept your offer.”

In not so many words, I’m doing you a favor—and I’m the one in charge.

Whether or not she got the subtext, she broke into a huge grin and said, “And—and Rabbit?”

“We’re going rabbit hunting. We’ll kill him.”

“All right! Yeah!” Chicken said, complete with a fist pump. “We can do this! We’re gonna make it all the way to the end!”

Dog didn’t intend for their alliance to go that far. He only meant to work together until they’d defeated Rabbit, or maybe just a little while after. Of course, he didn’t say as much.

“Well then,” Chicken said, offering an innocent handshake. “Let me introduce myself.”

“I am Niwatori, the Fighter of the Chicken. I kill by pecks.”

“I am Dokku, the Fighter of the Dog. I kill in bites.”

Now, just how can I use her?

As he met her slender hand with his, Dog’s mind went to work on that cruel calculation—of when the drawbacks of having her around would outweigh the usefulness of keeping her alive.

As the two pursued Team Rabbit, Dog decided to exchange information with Chicken. Of the Zodiac War’s twelve combatants, roughly half were unknown to him. Information was as much a part of this battle as anything, and as an alliance, sharing what they knew was important. Besides, Dog wanted to gain Chicken’s trust, and to do that, he needed to act as if he’d actually bought in to this partnership. Anyway, it had to be more interesting than the small talk she had been offering.

“You know that song ‘Furusato,’ right?” started one nugget. “How it starts out with the lyrics ‘the mountain where I chased rabbits, the river where I fished small carp,’ and people often mishear it as, ‘the mountain where there’s tasty rabbits’? Well, if the person in the song was catching carp, if you really think about it, sooner or later they probably did eat those rabbits too. And I bet they were tasty.”

Maybe this was just her way of building his trust.

“I know five of the fighters,” Dog offered. “Ox, Dragon, Snake, Monkey, and Boar.” This was the truth. He saw no problem in giving real information to someone he was going to kill regardless. After all, she might feel obligated to give him information in return that could be invaluable. “The most dangerous is Ox. How can I put it?” Dog thought for a second. “He’s incomprehensibly strong. No one has ever stood on a battlefield against him and survived to tell about it. People call him the Natural-Born Slayer.”

“The Natural-Born … Slayer?”

“That’s right. He’s a top competitor, no doubt about it. You’d have to be as good in a fight as me to take him on unprepared. If you stumble across him, I suggest you run.”

“Okay,” Chicken said, though she didn’t seem to grasp the severity of the threat.

No matter. You’ll be dead by my hand before you get the chance to run into Ox.

Dog continued, “As for the Tatsumi Brothers—that’s Dragon and Snake—there’s nothing to say about them. The twins made for a hell of a team together, but one is already dead, and either’s not half as tough on his own.”

“I see.”

“Now, Monkey …Well, you saw who she is. She’s a pacifist—a real bleeding heart. I can’t stand her myself. A disgrace of a warrior, if you ask me. She makes her living going into war zones and mediating the disputes. Her peace treaties have brought many a war to its ceasefire.”

That’s going to be your downfall too, Dog thought. You shouldn’t have attempted to sign on to Team Monkey, and you really shouldn’t have come to me.

“To us mercs,” Dog said, “she’s bad for business. I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s participating in the Zodiac War because she thinks she can end it.”

“Do you think she can?”

Dog didn’t answer. It seemed impossible, but some small part of him feared she could, and another almost hoped she would.

“I don’t think we need to talk about Boar,” Dog said. “She’s just Rabbit’s slave now. She could do this thing with her guns she called ‘Making It Rain’ that you wouldn’t want to be on the wrong side of. You could even say it’s lucky for us that she died so early.” Then he asked, “So, Niwatori, who do you know?”

“Oh, I, ah, don’t know much about anyone. Just rumors I wouldn’t trust. I’m sorry. I-I wish I could be more helpful.”

This was a bit of a letdown, but Dog hadn’t expected much from her anyway.

He wasn’t feeling particularly crestfallen, but then Chicken added, as if just remembering, “Oh! But, Dokku-san, don’t you wonder about that boy?”

“Who do you mean, that boy?”

“The sleepy one. You know, that one who kept dozing off? He didn’t seem like the fighting type.” She paused, then said, “I don’t think he could be much older than fifteen, do you?”

Dog wasn’t sure Chicken was in any position to say anyone else didn’t seem like much of a fighter, but she wasn’t wrong. That kid seemed out of place among the fighters, like Rabbit had with his bloody blade, only in a much different way.

Dog asked, “Do you think we need to be wary of him?”

“No, it’s not that I think he’s tough or something like that. It’s just—I feel like I’ve seen him before. In some other context. Do you get that feeling?”

Now that she mentioned it, he did have the vague sense of having seen the kid before. But he didn’t know where. Had they shared a battlefield? Had they been allies or opponents?

“Oh!” Chicken exclaimed. Dog turned to her and noticed a sparrow perched on her shoulder. “Oh, Dokku-san, this is bad. Rabbit’s team has split in two!”

When Dog heard that Rabbit’s team had split into two, he assumed that meant that Rabbit, in essence their commanding officer, had sent the two reanimated corpses off on their own. Instead, it was Boar—the woman with the twin machine guns—who had peeled off from the other two. With blood oozing from the gash in her chest made by Rabbit’s giant blade, Boar roamed the empty city, her eyes as lifeless as the ghost town streets. Gone was any sign of nobility in her shambling gait, no trace of her in there anywhere at all. She was, in every sense, a walking dead. This wasn’t some high-class lady out for a stroll, but an eerie monster on the prowl.

“I’m sorry,” Chicken said. “I lost Rabbit and Snake. I think he might have realized he was being followed.”

She sounded embarrassed, but as far as Dog was concerned, she’d already done more than could be expected of such an inexperienced fighter. But if Rabbit had figured out that the birds were watching him, why would he send Boar off on her own like that? Why wouldn’t he try to hide her—or at least hide the fact she was undead?

Is this a trap?

Maybe Rabbit was using the unsteady and feeble-looking woman as bait to draw out other fighters whom he and Snake would then ambush from behind. All warriors, no matter how skilled, were at their most vulnerable when already in a fight. No matter how bizarre Rabbit might act, judging from the way Chicken described his takedown of Boar, the man was not crazy.

Well, to use his own ally as bait requires a certain kind of crazy.

The mad dog would have to be willing to go even further if he wanted to overcome this adversary.

“Niwatori,” he said.

“Y-yes? What is it?” Chicken asked.

“Give me your arm.”

“Like this?” she said uneasily, but she offered her arm.

Without another word, Dog bit, sinking his teeth into her flesh.

She gave a startled shriek, but the anesthetic coating on his fangs should have numbed any pain. The procedure was over in less than a second. Dog released her arm and said, “How do you feel?”

“How-how do I feel? I don’t even know what you did to me.”

“Just a little performance enhancement.”

When Dog bit his targets, his poison produced many effects ranging from death to more death—but not necessarily limited to death. Not all toxins had to be deadly. Some could be used for doping.

This one Dog called the “One-Man Army.” The drug drew out its user’s latent potential, but it was strong stuff and could push a body too far. For that reason, Dog would never consider subjecting himself to its effects. But it would give Chicken a boost—for a time, at least.

His plan was this: he would send out the powered-up Chicken to face Boar—the bait—alone. It didn’t matter who won; he just needed Chicken to put up a decent fight. What was important was for Rabbit and Snake to reveal themselves. Then, Dog would ambush them. When Dog sank his teeth into Rabbit, they would not be filled with doping drugs, but lethal poison. It would mean certain death for Rabbit. Doping or not, Chicken would surely be killed by one of their three opponents, but that would only make things easier for Dog in the end.

Then, fresh from the hunt, I’ll return to hiding.

While Dog was lost in such sinister thoughts, a confused Chicken was swinging her arm, testing its inexplicable, newfound strength. “W-what is this?” she said. “What is this?”

“Stay calm,” Dog said. “All I did was unlock power you already possessed. Steady yourself. Control it.”

“C-control it,” Chicken said in that same nervous, rushed voice as before. “You mean, like this?”

Those were the last words Dog would ever hear.

Having crushed open Dog’s head with her bare hands, Chicken let out a deep sigh and said, “I can’t believe that took so long. But it’s done now. I finally got that boost.”

She plunged her hand into his now-exposed neck cavity and found the poison jewel, as good as new. “Dokku-san, I know I told you I didn’t know anything about the others, but actually, I knew about you.”

She knew he led others to believe that biting was his fighting technique when in fact he was a master poisoner, and she even knew about his most secret concoction, the One-Man Army. Dog believed he had kept his secrets hidden, but he was wrong to think he could hide anything from her Eye of the Cormorant.

Going into this battle, Chicken was well aware she lacked strength and experience. That was why she spared no effort in digging up as much information as she could on every fighter who had a chance of participating in the Zodiac War. She hadn’t made first contact with Dog by mere chance—she had him in her sights from the start. And now that he’d fulfilled his role in her plan, she killed him.

One reason for her betrayal was that she didn’t want to risk him bestowing the One-Man Army, or some similar boon, on any other fighter. But at her core Chicken just didn’t trust anyone else—she might need to use someone from time to time, but never would she consider actually teaming up with another person. When she’d raised her hand to ally with Monkey, she’d done so with a heart full of betrayal.

All the way to his end, Dog had perceived her timidity as nothing more than that. But timidity didn’t always equal weakness. For Chicken, it was something closer to strength; fear gave her the determination to take any action necessary in the name of self-preservation.

That didn’t mean she was without gratitude. She bowed her head in respect to her fellow fighter and spoke—although he was in no condition to reply. “Thank you, Dokku. Because of what you’ve done, there’s now a chance I can win this. If I do, I’ll erect a statue in your honor. I promise you.”

She had already forgotten what his face used to look like, but men weren’t really about their faces, were they? As long as the statue had fangs like his, that should be good enough.

Now that that was over with, she turned her attention to the roaming, machine-gun-wielding corpse. “On to the next one. Here I come!”

Chicken vs. Dog

End of the 2nd Battle