The dust from the collapsed ice maze settled, revealing a scene of brutal attrition. Kuzan stood, his breath pluming, facing down the one-armed Katakuri and the exhausted, kneeling Ace. The air crackled with a tension that promised a final, bloody conclusion.
"Still standing?" Kuzan's voice was heavy with weariness and a dangerous edge of irritation. "Your stubbornness is truly world-class."
"We're not done yet," Ace coughed, pushing himself up, his body trembling with the effort.
Before Kuzan could move, two new figures landed silently in the ruined arena, their arrival shifting the balance of power completely. On one side landed Jozu, his massive frame radiating an aura of immovable strength. On the other, Vista, his twin swords held at the ready, his expression one of polite but deadly seriousness.
Jozu cracked his knuckles, the sound like boulders grinding together. His eyes took in the scene: Katakuri's missing arm, Ace's battered state. His gaze hardened as it settled on Kuzan. "We finished our dance. Looks like you're having a little trouble with yours, Aokiji."
"Former Admiral," Vista corrected smoothly, a hint of steel in his voice. "It would be disrespectful to his new associates to use his old title. Though, it seems you've made quite a mess here, Kuzan-dono."
Kuzan's eyes narrowed. The situation had just gone from difficult to dire. Ace and Katakuri were formidable. Jozu was a defensive nightmare, a living wall of diamond. And Vista was a swordsman whose skill was praised even by Mihawk.
"Ara ra..." Kuzan sighed, a genuine note of exasperation finally breaking through his composure. "This is becoming a real pain in the ass."
"You hurt our family," Ace growled, a flicker of flame returning to his fist, bolstered by the arrival of his comrades. "This is what happens."
"Indeed," Katakuri stated, his voice a low drone. Even with one arm, his presence was immense. He saw the new future, the multiple threads of combat intertwining. It was chaotic, but it was a future where they had a chance. "Four against one. The odds are no longer in your favor."
Kuzan laughed, a short, dry chuckle. "Odds? You pirates and your romantic notions. This isn't about odds. This is about power."
He stomped his foot, not to attack, but to assert his dominance. A wave of absolute cold pulsed outwards, a warning shot. "Come on, then. Show me the combined power of Whitebeard's children and Big Mom's leftovers."
The four commanders didn't need a signal. They moved as one.
"I'll take the lead!" Jozu roared, his entire body shimmering into its flawless diamond form. He charged forward, a living battering ram designed to absorb Kuzan's initial assault and shatter his defenses.
"We'll open a path for you!" Vista called out, his blades already a blur. He and Ace flanked Jozu. Ace unleashed a continuous stream of fire, "Shinka: Shiranui! (Sacred Fire: Sea Fire!)", creating lances of flame that forced Kuzan to focus not just on Jozu, but on the heat melting his ice constructs. Vista moved on the opposite flank, his slashes not aimed at Kuzan himself, but at the ice under his feet, shattering his footing and disrupting his movement. "Rose Rondo!"
Kuzan was forced into a defensive posture, creating walls and spears of ice to fend off the three-pronged assault. He was a master, but even he couldn't perfectly defend against a physical powerhouse, a Logia user, and a master swordsman all at once.
This was the opening for the finisher.
"Now, Katakuri!" Ace yelled.
Behind the chaos, Katakuri focused. His remaining arm swelled, transforming into a massive, Haki-blackened drill of mochi. His future sight locked onto the single moment Jozu's inevitable clash with Kuzan would create.
Jozu met Kuzan's hastily erected ice wall with a thunderous "Brilliant Punk!". The diamond commander shattered the wall, the force of the blow sending a shockwave that made Kuzan stumble back a single step.
One step was all Katakuri needed.
"Mochi Guri!"
His spinning drill of an arm shot through the gap created by Jozu, a blur of white and black aimed directly at Kuzan's chest.
Kuzan, his balance broken, couldn't dodge completely. He twisted, bringing his own Haki-coated arm up in a desperate block.
The mochi drill slammed into his forearm. The sound was a horrific screech of grinding Haki. Kuzan's ice-cold defense met Katakuri's peerless hardened mochi. For a moment, it held.
Then, with a final push from Katakuri, it broke.
The drill tore through Kuzan's arm, ripping a ghastly wound and continuing onward to graze his ribs before Katakuri pulled it back.
Kuzan staggered back, clutching his savaged arm, his breath coming in ragged gasps. The wound instantly tried to seal with ice, but the sheer kinetic force of the attack had done its damage. He was heavily wounded, surrounded, and facing four of a Yonko crew's strongest commanders.
He looked at them—Jozu, an unbreakable wall; Vista, a whirlwind of steel; Ace, a relentless inferno; and Katakuri, a prophet of destruction.
Kuzan stared at the four commanders, his mind working with the cold, analytical speed of a blizzard. The wound on his arm was severe, a gaping tear that even his Logia nature struggled to fully seal. He was bleeding, tired, and surrounded. A lesser man would have broken.
But Kuzan was not a lesser man. He was a former Admiral.
"So this is it," he breathed, a cloud of frigid vapor escaping his lips. "The new generation... showing its fangs." A slow, dangerous smile spread across his face. "Fine. Let's see if they can break."
He abandoned any pretense of a measured fight. He plunged both hands into the ground, and the entire battlefield erupted. This wasn't Ice Age. This was something more desperate, more chaotic. "Frozen World: Pandemonium."
The ground didn't just freeze; it came alive. Colossal, writhing tentacles of ice, each one as thick as a galleon's mast, erupted from the earth, whipping and thrashing in every direction. The air filled with a storm of ice shards so dense it was like a solid wall. This wasn't a technique designed to defeat them with precision. It was designed to separate them, to break their formation, to turn their coordinated assault into four individual struggles for survival.
"Don't let him split us up!" Jozu bellowed, planting his feet and acting as an anchor, his diamond body weathering the storm of ice shards. He grabbed Ace, keeping the fiery youth from being thrown by a lashing ice tentacle.
Vista flowed through the chaos, his swords a blur, slicing apart any tentacle that came near him. "His control is becoming frantic! He is wounded!"
"Don't underestimate him!" Katakuri warned, his future sight overwhelmed by the sheer number of random, chaotic threats. He was forced to rely on pure instinct, his one remaining arm a whirlwind of hardened mochi, deflecting and shattering the ice constructs.
In the heart of his self-made pandemonium, Kuzan moved. He ignored Jozu—a wall he couldn't easily break. He ignored Ace—whose fire was a direct counter. He ignored Katakuri—whose future sight made him a frustrating target.
He went for the swordsman.
He appeared through the swirling ice storm directly in front of Vista, his wounded arm already reformed into a jagged, cruel-looking blade of blood-tinged ice.
"Your elegance is a liability in a storm, swordsman," Kuzan's voice was a low growl.
Vista, ever the master, was not surprised. His sabers were already moving, crossing in a defensive block infused with a powerful layer of Haki. "Passe-Fleur!"
The ice blade met the twin sabers with a high-pitched scream of stressed metal. The force of the blow was immense, far greater than Kuzan's previous strikes. Vista's feet dug trenches in the ice as he was pushed back.
"Your strength is admirable," Vista grunted, straining against the incredible pressure.
"This isn't about strength," Kuzan retorted, pouring more power into his attack. The ice blade began to creep past Vista's swords, frost spreading down the Haki-coated steel. "It's about conviction."
From the chaos, Jozu saw his comrade in trouble. "VISTA!" He charged, aiming to slam into Kuzan from the side.
But Kuzan had anticipated this. A massive wall of ice, thicker and denser than any before, erupted from the ground, blocking Jozu's path. It wouldn't hold him for long, but it didn't need to.
Kuzan broke the clash with Vista, not by overpowering him, but by sidestepping. He flowed around the swordsman's defense and, in the same motion, swung his other, unwounded arm. It wasn't a blade this time. It was an open palm.
Vista, his balance thrown from the sudden release of pressure, couldn't react in time. Kuzan's hand slapped squarely against the back of Vista's sword-wielding hand.
"Ice Time."
It was the same technique he had used on Katakuri, but applied with surgical precision. A wave of absolute cold shot up Vista's arm. He cried out in shock and pain as the frost didn't just cover his skin, but seized his very muscles and bones. His grip on his beloved sabers, Gryphon and Foil, faltered. The swords, masterpieces though they were, clattered onto the ice, their hilts covered in a thin layer of frost.
"A swordsman without his blades," Kuzan said, his voice cold as the grave, "is just a man."
Before Vista could even process the loss of his weapons, Kuzan delivered a brutal, Haki-infused kick to his chest. The blow was clean and powerful, lifting Vista off his feet and sending him flying out of the icy pandemonium. He crashed heavily into a distant, half-melted gingerbread wall, slumping to the ground, his right arm frozen and useless, his body wracked with pain. He was defeated.
Jozu finally shattered the ice wall, his diamond form roaring with rage. Ace and Katakuri regrouped, their eyes wide with disbelief. In the span of ten seconds, in the midst of their four-on-one assault, Kuzan had not only survived, but had surgically and decisively removed one of them from the fight.
They now faced a wounded, bleeding, and utterly furious former Admiral. The odds had just changed again.
The fall of Vista sent a chill colder than any of Kuzan's attacks through the remaining commanders. They had the advantage, the numbers, the momentum—and in a flash of brutal, world-class efficiency, he had torn it away.
"He's targeting our specialties," Katakuri stated, his single eye narrowed. "He froze the swordsman's hand. He's not just fighting; he's dissecting us."
"Then we stop giving him pieces to cut!" Jozu bellowed, his voice a furious roar. The diamond commander's rage was palpable. Vista was his brother, one of the oldest of their family. "I'm ending this! ACE! KATAKURI! BACK ME UP!"
Jozu didn't wait for a reply. He became a living avalanche of diamond, charging headlong into the heart of Kuzan's icy pandemonium. The thrashing tentacles of ice shattered against his body, unable to even scratch his flawless defense. He was a force of nature meeting another, and he would not be stopped.
Kuzan, breathing heavily, turned his full attention to the charging behemoth. He knew Jozu was the most difficult to damage but also the most straightforward. There was no trickery, just overwhelming physical power. "The walking vault... You're a bigger fool than your brother if you think a simple charge will work!"
He raised his hands. "Ice Block: Giga Partisan!" He didn't create small spears. He ripped colossal, jagged spires of ancient ice from the very bedrock of the island and launched them like torpedoes at Jozu.
Ace and Katakuri moved in sync. "Kagero!" Ace roared, sending a wave of heat to intercept the ice lances, weakening them mid-flight. Katakuri, seeing the future trajectory, unleashed a volley of hardened mochi bullets—"Mochi Hadan!"—that struck the weakened points of the ice spires, causing them to detonate prematurely.
The coordinated support cleared a path. Jozu, unhindered, closed the distance. He cocked his fist back, his entire arm a single, massive, multi-faceted diamond. "Brilliant Knuckle!"
Kuzan met the blow head-on. He coated his own fist in layer after layer of dense, Haki-infused black ice, a technique that mirrored armament itself. "Ice Glove: Black Glacier."
The collision was apocalyptic.
A dome of black and white energy erupted, pulverizing the ground and shattering every remaining ice construct in the area. The sheer force was so great it sent Ace and Katakuri sliding back. In the center, Jozu and Kuzan were locked in a stalemate, a contest of absolute defense versus absolute cold.
Cracks, impossibly, began to appear. Not on Jozu's diamond form, but on Kuzan's glacier-like gauntlet. Jozu's physical strength, focused into a single point, was immense.
But Kuzan had been waiting for this. The moment of total commitment.
"You're strong, Jozu," Kuzan grunted, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth from the sheer strain. "But you're just a rock."
He wasn't trying to win the power struggle. He was holding Jozu in place. With his free hand, he slammed his palm onto Jozu's diamond chest.
"Ice Time: Deep Freeze."
It was a gamble. A massive expenditure of his remaining energy. He poured his power into Jozu, trying to bypass the diamond exterior and freeze him from the inside out, just as he had with Katakuri.
Jozu roared as an alien, invasive cold spread through him. For the first time, he felt a chill that wasn't just on the surface. But his Haki was immense, his will forged over decades of war. He fought back against the internal freeze, his body glowing with a faint, defiant light.
"It won't work!" Jozu bellowed.
"It doesn't have to," Kuzan gasped.
He wasn't trying to freeze him solid. He was trying to create a weakness. A single, microscopic flaw.
Under the combined stress of the physical impact and the invasive internal cold, a tiny, almost invisible fracture line appeared on Jozu's diamond shoulder, near where Aokiji had first shattered it years ago at Marineford.
It was all Kuzan needed.
He broke the stalemate, throwing himself backward to create a sliver of distance. In the same motion, he created a single, thin, perfectly sharp needle of ice. It was no bigger than a sewing needle, but it was imbued with all the Haki he could muster.
He flicked it.
The needle shot forward, faster than a bullet, aimed not at Jozu's head or heart, but at that single, infinitesimal crack.
Jozu, his senses still reeling from fighting off the internal freeze, didn't even see it coming.
The needle struck the flaw.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then, a horrifying, crystalline cracking sound echoed outwards. The fracture spread from that single point, spiderwebbing across Jozu's entire upper body in a fraction of a second.
His diamond form, the ultimate defense, shattered.
He reverted to his human form with a strangled cry of agony, shards of diamond flying from his body. His arm, the one that had been the epicenter of the attack, hung limp and broken, covered in a thick layer of frost. The backlash was immense, the shock of his ultimate defense being compromised sending him to his knees, coughing up blood.
Kuzan did not give him a moment to recover. He appeared before the kneeling commander, his face a mask of grim determination. He delivered a single, brutal, Haki-coated kick to the side of Jozu's head. The diamond commander collapsed, unconscious before he even hit the ground.
But the victory had come at a catastrophic cost. The effort of creating the flaw and breaking Jozu's defense had left Kuzan utterly spent. He stood over Jozu's fallen form, swaying on his feet. His right arm, the one that had blocked the Brilliant Knuckle, was a mangled ruin of black ice and bleeding flesh. His body was covered in wounds, and his breathing was a ragged, painful wheeze.
He had defeated three of the Bloodline Pirates' strongest commanders. But as he looked up at the remaining two—a furious Ace and a grim, one-armed Katakuri—he knew he was running on fumes. The powerhouse was beginning to crumble.
The fall of Jozu plunged the battlefield into a momentary, shocked silence. The sight of the unbreakable diamond commander lying broken on the ground was a psychological blow as much as a tactical one. But silence, in the presence of such men, was a fleeting thing.
It was broken by a roar.
"JOZU!" Ace screamed, his grief and rage manifesting as a nova of pure flame that erupted from his body, melting the surrounding ice into a boiling lake and sending tidal waves of steam billowing into the air. The temperature of the battlefield skyrocketed.
Kuzan, swaying on his feet, raised his head. His mangled arm hung uselessly, and his breath hitched with every ragged inhale. He looked less like a conqueror and more like a pillar of ice about to collapse.
"Still... coming?" he rasped.
Katakuri answered for them both. He didn't speak. He acted. This was their final chance, before Kuzan could recover even a fraction of his strength. He saw the path to victory, but it was narrow, and paved with sacrifice.
"Ace! Everything you have! Burn it all!" Katakuri commanded, his voice sharp with urgency.
He didn't wait for the flames. He shot forward himself, his one remaining arm transforming, elongating, becoming a massive, Haki-blackened drill of mochi. He was closing the distance, forcing a melee, preventing Kuzan from using any more large-scale freezing techniques.
Ace understood. He didn't create a swamp. He became the firestorm. "Enjōmō!" he roared, unleashing a continuous torrent of fire that boxed Kuzan in, creating a searing cage with Katakuri at its center. The heat was so intense the very air shimmered, and the ice on the ground sublimated directly into steam.
Inside the inferno, Kuzan roared in defiance. He couldn't create massive constructs, but he could become the storm. He met Katakuri's charge, his good arm a blade of black ice, his broken one a crude, club-like appendage.
The two combatants became a blur. Katakuri, with his future sight, was a phantom of precision, his mochi drill deflecting, parrying, and striking. Kuzan, running on pure instinct and battle experience, was a force of nature, his ice blade clashing against the mochi drill with a sound like screeching glaciers.
It was a beautiful, deadly dance. Katakuri would see an opening, a flicker in the future, and his drill would lash out. Kuzan would counter, his movements economical and brutal, his ice blade leaving deep, freezing gashes on Katakuri's mochi form.
But Katakuri wasn't trying to win. He was creating an opportunity.
"ACE! NOW!" he bellowed.
Through a gap in his own flames, Ace unleashed his final, desperate attack. He poured all his remaining will, all his grief for his fallen brothers, into one perfect spear of fire. "Shinka: Shiranui!" It was condensed, focused, and hotter than the sun.
Kuzan, locked in combat with Katakuri, saw it coming. He had two choices: take the full force of the fire spear, or break off from Katakuri to defend against it.
He chose to break off. It was a fatal mistake.
As he turned to create a desperate ice shield, Katakuri abandoned all pretense of defense. He had seen this future. This was the moment of sacrifice.
"This ends," he whispered.
He didn't attack with his mochi arm. He lunged forward, his entire body a weapon, and tackled Kuzan. He wrapped his body around the former Admiral, his awakened mochi flowing, sticking, and hardening, creating a prison of his own flesh.
"Kagami Mochi: Final Embrace!"
"What are you doing?!" Kuzan roared, struggling against the living cage, feeling the searing heat of Ace's fire spear just moments away.
"My duty," Katakuri stated, his face inches from Kuzan's.
And then the fire spear hit.
It slammed into Katakuri's back, not Kuzan's. The heat was absolute. The mochi, for all its resilience, was still a food-based substance. It flash-cooked, then carbonized, then vaporized in a blast of white-hot energy.
The attack tore through Katakuri, and its remaining force, blunted but still immense, slammed into the trapped Kuzan.
The explosion was catastrophic. A pillar of pure white steam erupted into the sky, a monument to the clash.
When the steam cleared, the scene was one of absolute devastation.
In the center of the crater lay Kuzan. He was conscious, barely. His body was a ruin of third-degree burns and shattered bones. The ice that sealed his wounds had been melted away, and he was bleeding freely. He had survived, but he was utterly, completely broken. He couldn't move, couldn't even form a sliver of ice. He was defeated in all but name.
A few feet away lay the charred, smoking remains of what was once Charlotte Katakuri. He had taken the full, concentrated force of Ace's attack to ensure it hit its mark. He had seen the only future that led to Kuzan's defeat, and he had paid the price for it without hesitation.
And standing over them both was Ace. Tears streamed down his face, turning to steam before they hit the scorched ground. He was the last one standing, victorious but heartbroken. He had won, but he had lost a brother to do it.
He collapsed to his knees, his fire completely extinguished, the silence of the battlefield pressing in on him, heavy and absolute.
The pillar of steam hissed into the sky, a violent, temporary monument to sacrifice. As it slowly dissipated, it revealed a scene of utter devastation.
In the center of the crater lay the unconscious form of Charlotte Katakuri, his body charred and broken, the price of victory paid in full.
A few feet away, Ace was on his hands and knees, his body wracked with tremors, the last of his fire extinguished. Tears of rage and grief carved clean paths through the soot on his face. He had won. He had brought the monster down. But the silence where Katakuri's presence should have been was deafening.
A groan of immense pain cut through the silence.
Ace's head snapped up. Slowly, impossibly, Kuzan was pushing himself up. His body was a catastrophe of third-degree burns and shattered bones. His left arm was a mangled ruin, and his legs were twisted at unnatural angles. He wasn't rising through strength, but through sheer, stubborn will, using a hastily formed, crude ice crutch to prop himself upright. He stood, swaying, held together by little more than frost and fury.
He was a wreck. He was defeated in every practical sense. But he was standing.
Ace forced himself to his feet, his good arm hanging at his side, his broken one a dead weight. He faced the former Admiral across the crater, the two of them a portrait of mutual destruction.
"You..." Ace gasped, his voice raw. "You're still... standing?"
"Just... barely," Kuzan rasped, his voice a dry crackle. He coughed, a spray of blood misting in the cold air. "That mochi-man... He had the conviction of a true captain. He saw the path and walked it."
There was no mockery in his tone, only a flat, weary statement of fact.
"Don't you dare talk about him," Ace snarled, a flicker of weak flame dancing on his knuckles before dying out. "You did this. Was it worth it? Was joining that... that traitor worth all this?!"
Kuzan looked at the devastation, at the fallen bodies of Jozu and Vista in the distance, at the unconscious Katakuri nearby. His gaze was tired, ancient.
"Worth," he mused, his voice hollow. "You pirates talk about family, about dreams. But you bring storms wherever you go. Sometimes, a storm has to be met with a blizzard. This... this is just the consequence of your choices. And mine."
He pushed off his ice crutch, taking a single, agonizing step. "It's over, Fire Fist. I can't fight anymore. And neither can you. Your family played its hand. And lost."
"We haven't lost anything!" Ace roared, but his body betrayed him, and he stumbled, catching himself before he fell.
"Haven't you?" Kuzan asked softly, gesturing with his head towards Katakuri's still form.
The words hit Ace harder than any punch. He had nothing left to say. There was no energy for a final attack, no will for another charge. There was only the bitter, freezing truth of their battle.
Kuzan turned, his movements slow and torturous, and began to limp away from the battlefield. "Tell your captain... this was a costly lesson. The world is changing. And the lazy justice of the past... is being replaced by something colder."
He faded into the smoke and steam, a broken ghost leaving a broken battlefield. Ace didn't have the strength to stop him. He could only stand there, defeated in his victory, surrounded by the silence of his fallen comrades.
Elsewhere on the shattered island, the fight was one of cold steel and burning fire.
Marco, his blue flames of rebirth clinging to Shiryu's form, had forced the sadistic swordsman into a direct confrontation. The game of cat-and-mouse was over, replaced by a brutal, head-on clash.
"No more hiding, killer," Marco said, his taloned feet digging into the cracked gingerbread ground.
"I don't need to hide to gut a chicken," Shiryu snarled, the blue flames an irritating aura he couldn't shake. His invisibility was useless. He charged, his cursed nodachi, Raiu, a blur of Haki-infused death.
The following exchange was a masterclass in offense versus defense. Shiryu's slashes were impossibly fast, each one aimed at a vital point—the neck, the heart, the eyes. Marco, with his own formidable Haki and combat experience, met each blow not with a weapon, but with his own body. His flame-wreathed wings became shields, his talons parried, his kicks deflected.
CLANG! SCHREEE!
Sparks of blue and black flew with every impact. Shiryu was faster, his swordsmanship more refined and lethal. But Marco was a phoenix. Every cut Shiryu managed to land, every deep gouge that would have crippled a normal man, was instantly cauterized and healed by the blue flames of rebirth.
"Annoying!" Shiryu roared in frustration, leaping back. "You just won't stay dead! It takes all the fun out of it!"
"That's the point, yoi," Marco said calmly, a shallow cut on his cheek already sealing itself shut.
Shiryu's patience, already thin, finally snapped. He wasn't just a killer; he was a sadist. The thrill was in the finality of the cut, the terror in his victim's eyes. Marco denied him this, turning a murder into a chore.
"Fine! If I can't kill you in one cut, I'll carve you into pieces so small even your flames can't put you back together!"
He abandoned all finesse, pouring his Haki into a single, devastating overhead slash, aiming to cleave Marco in two from head to toe.
Marco saw it coming. And he saw his opening.
He didn't dodge.
He met the slash, not with his wings, but with his shoulder. The Haki-coated blade bit deep, slicing through flame and flesh, grating against bone. The pain was immense, but Marco ignored it. With a defiant cry, he allowed the blade to lodge itself in his shoulder, and in that instant, he grabbed Shiryu's sword arm with a vice-like grip.
"Got you," Marco grunted through clenched teeth.
Shiryu's eyes widened in shock. He was trapped. He tried to pull his sword free, but Marco's grip was like iron.
"My turn."
Marco's leg, wreathed in a swirling vortex of blue fire, swung up in a powerful arc. "Phoenix Talon: Blue Flame Comet!"
The kick, carrying all of Marco's strength and momentum, slammed squarely into Shiryu's chest. The impact was like a cannonball strike. Shiryu's ribs cracked, and he was blasted backward, ripped from his own sword's hilt, which remained stuck in Marco's shoulder.
He tumbled through the air, coughing up blood, before crashing into the ruins of a cookie wall. He pushed himself up, clutching his chest, a look of pure, unadulterated hatred on his face.
Marco stood, pulling Raiu from his shoulder with a grunt of pain, the wound immediately beginning to smolder and heal. He held the cursed blade in his hand.
Shiryu, disarmed and wounded, met Marco's gaze. This fight was no longer enjoyable. It was costly. He was a pragmatist above all else. With a final, venomous glare, he melted into the shadows, his Devil Fruit finally reasserting itself as Marco's clinging flames died down. He had vanished.
Marco stood alone, holding the enemy's sword. He had won the duel, driven the killer away. But he knew, with a sinking feeling, that a snake like Shiryu wasn't truly defeated until he was dead. And now, that snake was loose on the battlefield once more.