Not only did Dragon have a bird’s-eye view of the battle, he possessed the power of flight. Though only his upper body had been floating from the start, his lower half carried the same ability, and it jumped from the ground; then without its feet touching the ground, it leaped again in the air, like a video game character’s double jump.
Not only did its attack come from an impossible direction, the zombie’s joints pivoted in unnatural ways. At the same time, Dragon’s upper half hurtled at Ox from directly above with a twirling corkscrew punch, and Ox could only defend himself.
Their enemies came not only from above, but from below as well. As dragons attacked from the skies, snakes struck from the ground. In their earlier battle, Snake had come at Tiger with a snake fist stance, but now he attacked the woman like a snake itself, rolling and slithering nimbly across the ground.
Feeling every vibration not just with his feet but his entire body, he unleashed a merciless flurry of kicks upward toward Tiger, even as she was on her hands and knees. Between the view from the head in the sky and the vibrations of the earth, he could read her every movement. Like Ox, Tiger could do nothing but defend herself.
Improvising their tactics, Ox and Tiger stood back to back, eliminating any blind spots. They had to be master fighters to be able to defend themselves from this unprecedented and omni-directional assault—but the Tatsumi brothers transcended mortal limits.
Even had the twins been less capable, circumstances prevented Ox and Tiger from making an effective counterattack. The pair could only defend, without use of saber-edge or claws, because the more they sliced and shredded, the more their enemies would increase in number. They understood that one mistake would mean a repeat of their near-death experience.
By remaining calm and focused, they could hold their defenses. No matter how varied and three-dimensional the assault, the zombies were sluggish. Ox’s saber and Tiger’s Drunken Fist could handle the task—yet it was only a matter of time before they slipped up.
Another strike against the temporary allies was their relative lack of experience on the defensive; both favored the attack. Ox and Tiger were even less accustomed to a defensive battle than they were to fighting as a team—and defense could only carry them so far. Brawny, stalwart Horse had specialized in defense, but he too fell to Rabbit’s forces. Unless Ox and Tiger came up with a plan, nothing would reverse the course of this battle. Even if the situation prevented an attack—Wait, Tiger thought, the situation prevents an attack?
Then Tiger finally got the idea.
“The liquid hydrogen,” she said with a growl.
At last, Tiger had made the connection—she was late, but not too late. She acted immediately. Her target was not Snake’s legs with their endless kicks, nor was it Dragon’s lower body, which assailed Ox with scissor kicks from unorthodox angles. Her target was Dragon’s top half, which doggedly reached for the swordsman’s neck. Specifically, she was after Yuki-onna, the icethrower Dragon wore strapped to his back.
She didn’t know the weapon’s clever name—a reference to the yokai known as Snow Woman—or what its liquid hydrogen could do, but the way Dragon refrained from using the weapon, despite this all-out assault, struck her as peculiar. When she had faced Snake one-on-one, the headless zombie hadn’t hesitated to blast her with his liquid fire.
Was the weapon malfunctioning? Tiger dismissed that notion. No, some reason was forcing Dragon to refrain from using the icethrower.
The zombies could only continue their ghoulish, unfeeling attacks because their corpses refused to stay dead—in other words, even though they had already lost their lives, they made a clear effort to avoid any injuries that threatened to end them for good. If Dragon used the icethrower amid the confusion of the melee, he risked hitting his own lower body and Snake’s headless, armless corpse. They were willing to risk hitting each other with their punches and kicks, but not with that weapon.
Because freezing them would stop them for good.
On her hands and knees, Tiger roared and leaped toward Dragon’s floating upper body, and the two beasts clashed. Just as she had done with his brother’s flamethrower, she ripped the tank from Dragon’s back. She had to tear through the strap, and her nails left deep scratches in the tank and even accidentally tore off one of the floating corpse’s arms, but once she had Yuki-onna and the tank full of liquid hydrogen, that would be of little concern.
This time, she wasn’t about to drink the tank’s contents—she had a different purpose for the liquid hydrogen.
At that very same moment, Snake’s head—the would-be panoramic camera—was nearly upon Ox again, falling down at him from straight above. The swordfighter would now have to defend himself from unfamiliar attacks coming from three different directions at once. If Tiger were clever and dastardly, she could have waited for him to succumb. Had she done that, she could have put an end to not only the brothers Dragon and Snake, but her most formidable adversary in the Zodiac War.
But Tiger was not clever, nor was she dastardly. She raised the cracked canister high and hurled it with all her might. When it hit the ground, the suddenly vaporizing hydrogen exploded into a subzero cloud. Not a sky burial or a cremation, the cryonic preservation nevertheless proved itself almost too effective against the corpses.
Snake and Dragon, in all their parts, were frozen solid into an ice-sculpture menagerie. No follow-up would be needed. Dragon’s upper and lower halves lost their power of flight and came crashing down and then shattered against the ground, as did the newly severed arm. Snake’s headless, armless corpse, already on the ground, took a direct hit from his also plummeting head, and both shattered. Not only their bones, but their skin and flesh and everything were reduced to shaved-ice-sized slivers. The twins’ bodies scattered and comingled so that there was no telling which brother was which. They were countless, and they were one.
The brothers would never be separated again.