To take the question a step further, at what point could a person be said to have died? Even when a person’s heart stops, if their heart can be restarted within five minutes, their brain might not be affected. If a person’s brain stops functioning, modern medical science can keep their body alive. What about judging by volume? The human liver accounts for a miniscule portion of the body, but remove it, and that person would have a lot of trouble staying alive. A haircut doesn’t hurt at all, but a person’s hair still contains their unique DNA. When children lose their baby teeth, can those teeth be considered separate lives? What about a corpse? Even a body declared dead, with its pupils dilated, still retains warmth for a time. Is that warmth entirely separate from life?
As a question of bioethics, the subject may never be settled, but fortunately for Rabbit and Snake, the necromanticist had no ethical code, and the corpse no consciousness—neither found themselves troubled by the matter. By Rabbit’s unfeeling orders—no lingering warmth to be found in his machinations—Snake, the headless corpse, would prowl the abandoned streets until he caught the escaped rat.
Someone hiccupped.
With footsteps even more faltering than those of the corpse, a drunk woman moved into his path.
The Zodiac War had progressed beyond the initial standoff phase—where the fighters felt out the situation and each other. Partly, this was due to the handful of fights that had already broken out here and there, but the bank fire started by Snake became the deciding factor. The blaze spread across a far wider area than just the vault itself, with plenty of combustible material to keep the fire burning for quite some time.
A giant column of smoke rose like a beacon above the abandoned city and commanded the attention of the remaining combatants. Its message was clear: like it or not, the battle was not merely half over—it was entering its endgame.
Neither was the message lost on the drunken Tiger. Following the smoke plume, she staggered there from the park on tottering legs. Skunk drunk and wearing next to nothing, the young woman made for a repulsive sight, but Snake had no reaction. The repugnance he might have once felt toward her was nowhere to be found in him.
The corpse didn’t need to feel anything; he simply mechanically followed Rabbit’s instructions: to kill any warriors who stood in the way of his search for Rat. That his opponent was a young woman, or a drunk, didn’t concern him—nothing did.
Tiger growled at him, then slurred, “Huh? What’s with you? Did your head fall off somewhere?”
She regarded the zombie with a bewildered tilt of her head—tilting so far that hers too might have been about to fall off. Tiger was as yet unaware that a necromanticist was among the fighters, and stumbling across a roaming, headless corpse should have come as an extreme shock to the drunken woman, but that was the extent of her reaction—either because her blood wasn’t doing a good job of reaching her brain, or the alcohol was doing too good a one.
“Wait, I remember you,” she said. “You’re that guy with that badass weapon on your back.” Then she laughed and pointed a mocking finger at him. “You got killed before we even started.”
The insult, of course, didn’t anger him. Had he still been alive, he would have likely been enraged—he had despised this kind of woman before his death—but he had no likes or dislikes now; no prejudice and no disdain.
Seeing that he wasn’t going to respond, she continued, “Well then, what am I going to do with you? This is complicated. I’m not good with complicated.”
She had no idea what to make of this walking corpse—either she didn’t know anything about necromanticists, or she was too drunk to remember.
Then Snake attacked.
“Whoa!” she said, performing a backflip out of Hitokage’s blast of flame. In her state, whether she had easily or only barely evaded the liquid fire was hard to guess, but either way, she failed to stick the landing, instead crashing flat on her stomach in a sloppy heap.
Sensing the vibration from her impact, Snake released another burst of fire at her. But the drunk, more herself on the ground than on her feet, skillfully rolled and dodged the merciless attack.
“This isn’t the circus,” she said, distancing herself from the corpse. “I’m not jumping through fire for you.”
Then the wielder of the Drunken Fist got on all fours, as she had done when she faced off against Sheep in the park, and let out a long, menacing growl. Tiger was more savage beast than fighter, but the corpse couldn’t be intimidated.
Instead, like a machine stuck in a perpetually looping routine, the zombie simply adjusted the aim of his flamethrower’s nozzle to keep it trained on her.
She clicked her tongue. Still trying to get a rise out of him, she said, “What drunks need are cold showers, not hot ones. Anyway, my throat’s parched enough as it is without you drying it up any more. Besides, what I drank burned enough on the way down already.”
Nothing. He aimed his flamethrower, ready to unleash fire hot enough to melt the asphalt around her. Then, as he was about to squeeze the trigger—
“I am Tora, the Fighter of the Tiger. I kill with drunken power.”
Before he could finish squeezing the trigger, his arm was gone. The corpse felt no pain when her sharp claws ripped off his limb, nor did the trauma send him into shock. He didn’t try to go after it either.
But when a weight suddenly lifted from his back, even the corpse reacted. She had relieved him of not only his right arm but his flamethrower as well.
This time, the drunk woman made the landing, though in a three-point stance. In one hand, she had the flamethrower and its tank. “What’s in this anyway? Alcohol, isn’t it? Well, it’s mine now.”