Real Name: Nagayuki TSUMITA
Born: November 11 (officially)
Height: 164 cm
Weight: 58 kg
Nagayuki fights alongside his younger twin brother, but as the elder, he takes the role of the leader. The two are physically identical in every way, and the only reliable way to tell the twins apart is that Nagayuki refers to himself with the brash honorific “Ore-sama.” Anyone who knows this fact has no trouble discerning which brother is which, but since they don’t typically try to pass as one another, this doesn’t bother them.
As fighters, the Tatsumi brothers don’t particularly adhere to any code; as long as an agreement over payment can be reached, they will fight for any country, on any scale, in any war. Their conduct, often unbefitting warriors of the twelve houses, has frequently earned them various punishments, but they show no signs of reforming.
The following is a defense statement Nagayuki made while covering for his younger brother in a Hearing of Censure: “Even when the wealthy are heavily taxed, those taxes are ultimately used for their own benefit. We’re just redirecting that money to more proper ends.”
The brothers disgrace their profession through their heinous deeds, but the money they sweep up from the wealthy class they pour into philanthropic endeavors. They might use blood money earned through a mass slaughter to save a single child in dire need. This isn’t because they’re some form of chivalrous thieves or people of virtue, or are good deep down, or run hot and cold like tsundere or anything like that. They simply find a kind of decadent amusement in blowing through the money earned through bad deeds on righteous purposes. They always remain mindful of not allowing their good deeds to change them into good people.
His icethrower, Yuki-onna, is the complement to his brother’s flamethrower, Hitokage, and its tank is filled with liquid hydrogen. Though he may not say it, he considers his weapon harder to use than his younger brother’s.
Let us take this moment to sort out how many poison jewels were in each fighter’s possession at this point of the Twelfth Zodiac War—though keep in mind this will serve only as a snapshot of the contest’s current state.
With the spectacle of all the killings, it could be easy to forget that the winner would be the fighter who held all twelve poison jewels—including the one he or she swallowed.
Rabbit remained in the lead by having secured three jewels in addition to his own: those of Boar, whom he skewered; Monkey, whose lungs he’d collapsed; and Horse, who suffocated in Snake’s fire. Though the necromanticist hadn’t killed Horse himself, he possessed a near comprehensive awareness of his minions’ actions and was able to claim the jewel. Excavating the vault’s burned-down remains took some effort, and cutting open Horse’s Stirrup to retrieve the prize necessitated creative thinking, but Monkey’s mountain magic came in handy there.
Rabbit’s allies worked as a cohesive unit, with each member’s strengths complementing the others’ deficiencies. Their biggest missing asset was common sense, but seeing how none of the combatants—whether dead, alive, or undead—possessed that trait, Team Rabbit would have to go without.
Ox held the second highest number of jewels. He had killed only Chicken so far, but she had already claimed Dog’s jewel, which brought Ox’s count to three. Tiger held two—her own and Sheep’s.
Even the drunk hadn’t forgotten her part in the Zodiac War—although her altered state kept her from questioning why she had found the prize in his pocket and nothing in his stomach. Regardless, she held two jewels.
You may think that left Rat and Dragon on the bottom, with only their own jewels. But that would be forgetting that Dragon had used his relationship to Snake to claim an extra jewel, after Rabbit killed his brother before the contest began. Because of this, Rat was alone in last place, and Dragon was tied with Tiger.
Claiming his dead brother’s jewel might sound like nothing more than an underhanded ploy by an unscrupulous man, but the action hadn’t been without risk. Some of his opponents viewed it as the act of a coward, or worse: a fool. Nothing good would come from that sort of attention. At its core, this Zodiac War was about taking and stealing each other’s jewels. Anyone who started the game with the jewels of two participants became an enticing target from a cost-performance perspective. That he would become a target was as plain as day.
Dragon had put himself in the crosshairs—and yet, the elder twin had come this far without a single fight.
If you think about it, that was very strange—highly disconcerting even. Now that the contest was approaching the endgame, his initial bounty no longer stood out from the pack, but at least in the early stages, he should have been a likely target. And yet he hadn’t fought Rat or Ox or Tiger or Rabbit or Horse or Sheep or Monkey or Chicken or Dog or Boar.
No matter how much he tried to shun fighting, confrontations were not typically so easily avoided. Take the pacifist, Monkey, who was forced into a situation where even she had no choice but to fight. And even Rat—who held the least number of jewels—chanced across Monkey, stumbled into Chicken, got chased by Snake’s corpse, and talked to Horse in the bank vault. Despite all the encounters that arose between the gladiators, not one fighter had seen Dragon after they scattered at the start.
Did he do such a superior job of hiding during the initial deadlock—so much so that he remained hidden from even the Eye of the Cormorant and the necromanticist’s search? The idea seemed farfetched, but he was, in fact, somewhere completely out of sight.
From the moment the fighting broke out, the elder Tatsumi brother took to the skies—higher than the skies even—where no one could see him.
He wasn’t exactly in hiding but was openly surveying those beneath him with his arms crossed. This was his special ability, the Heavens’ Holding. Whatever bird’s-eye view Chicken’s Eye of the Cormorant offered of the ground below, that downward gaze could never have seen Dragon circling on high like an ancient pterosaur. Dragons were fantastical creatures that lived in the skies; always the watchers and never the watched.
Even now Dragon observed the battle in the ghost city far below, between Ox and Tiger, and Snake, his dead brother. He’s certainly being put to good use, Dragon thought. First immolating Horse, then strangling Ox and Tiger at the same time—he would never have been able to pull off such an extraordinary performance when he was alive. But …