Real Name: Kanae AIRA
Born: January 1
Height: 154 cm
Weight: 42 kg
Kanae claims to use the Drunken Fist technique, but the true style only imitates drunken movements—the consumption of alcohol is not actually required. It would be more accurate to say that she took up Drunken Fist as an excuse to drink. In truth, she possesses extensive knowledge of martial arts beyond her favored method. The Aira are a military clan focused on hand-to-hand combat, and Kanae is quite a remarkable warrior, even among them.
One downside to the Drunken Fist style is that its users are often told they don’t look strong, but Kanae in turn believes that only the truly weak need to make a show of strength. Naturally, over time, she became less and less of a visible threat. One could go so far as to say that making a show of weakness was her defining feature. She was incredibly, exceptionally good at it, even if it wasn’t a conscious act.
Her fingernails were her only weapon, and being killed by her was a terribly painful way to die. If a survey among her peers asked whom they would least like to face on the battlefield, she would be ranked higher than her relatively infrequent deployments would otherwise suggest.
She likes to keep elaborate decorations on her nails, but before she goes into battle, she always removes her polish. She just wouldn’t feel right killing her enemies with decorated nails.
On her days off, she likes to go shopping with her lady friends, and they inevitably end up going out for drinks.
As perplexing as the White Rabbit and as bewildering as the March Hare, Usagi, the Fighter of the Rabbit, ended his remarkably spirited performance as if snatching defeat from the jaws of victory—but his loss was not caused by a failure to take the battle seriously. The necromanticist’s thoughts were impenetrable to others, and he was a thoroughly odd man, but if nothing else, he approached the Zodiac War in total earnest.
Though his enemies would have preferred a less enthusiastic adversary, he hadn’t blatantly cheated as did Sheep, and he hadn’t actively avoided the fighting as had Rat and Dragon. Viewed objectively, none had matched Rabbit’s diligence in pursuit of the war.
A man like that had most definitely not revealed himself to Ox and Tiger out of simple incaution.
Most observers would likely consider his death the result of a foolish mistake. Though Rabbit had correctly concluded that his minions Dragon and Snake required reinforcements, he could have pursued Rat—the other remaining, and less threatening, enemy—and sent his strongest asset, Monkey, to kill Ox and Tiger instead. Surely that would have been the better strategy—despite his tremendously advantageous ability to befriend those he killed, the necromanticist’s actual talent for combat was decidedly lacking.
In hindsight, Monkey would also have arrived too late to prevent the twins being frozen, but the overwhelmingly powerful fighter would have forced Ox and Tiger into their toughest battle yet.
That said, sending Monkey after Ox and Tiger was only the right choice if winning the Zodiac War was Rabbit’s sole concern. If you looked at it from Rabbit’s perspective—that of a necromanticist who took a medium-term rather than a short-term view—his goals should become clear. Granted, putting one’s self in the mind of that mad hare might be a stretch for an upstanding citizen, but the key point is this: winning the Zodiac War wasn’t going to end the necromanticist’s battles.
No matter how strange or how inscrutable the man was, Rabbit was a warrior. Once he won this war, the next would be waiting. When he won that war, then would come another. As long as he kept on winning, he would have to keep on fighting; such was a warrior’s fate.
His necromanticist’s instinct was to secure the undead allies that might give him a needed advantage in the next fight. There was no telling how much easier his next battle would be with the Natural-Born Slayer on his side—or even Tiger of the Drunken Fist. Their corpses would eventually rot, but they would remain valuable for some time.
Rabbit viewed fighting—or in other words, making corpses—as his only way of making friends. He sent himself to join the fight against Ox and Tiger not because he believed his help was needed—he had come with his dual blades to finish them off. Though he trusted his allies, this was something he felt he needed to do himself. Were they anyone else besides Ox and Tiger, he would have left them to the twins.
When his corpses killed for him, they could go too far—an inevitable consequence of the zombies’ lack of any restraint or inhibition. When Snake roasted Horse to death, Rabbit lost his chance to befriend the stalwart warrior—and harness Stirrup, Horse’s defensive ability. The necromanticist had ultimately found a use for the birds shredded and killed by Boar’s machine guns, but if he left Ox and Tiger to his undead and unfettered helpers, he risked his new friends becoming damaged beyond usefulness. And so, he decided he would be the one to finish them off.
With the Zodiac War’s end in sight, he turned his attention to what would happen after. Such presumptive thinking came with its advantages and drawbacks, but as a warrior he had to think that way—as such, his decision to join the fight wasn’t an outright mistake. If any flaw existed in his reasoning, it was the assumption that Ox and Tiger couldn’t possibly defeat the Tatsumi brothers with such haste and relative lack of injury.
He didn’t base this assumption on the brothers’ lifelong history as a team or their close connection as twins—the necromanticist simply hadn’t imagined that the free-willed pair of Ox and Tiger could prevail over the undead who had no free will. With no minds of their own, Snake and Dragon would never betray each other, but Ox and Tiger should have—at least at some point—been at odds. He couldn’t have conceived his allies would be so ignominiously routed.
When faced with this impossible truth—that living people too could forge bonds of trust, Rabbit knew he had lost—and so, he chose death.
But he didn’t choose death out of despair.
For the necromanticist, the Zodiac War was not yet over.
Seeing Tora, the Fighter of the Tiger, as she was now, it might be hard to believe, but at the time she first went into combat she was a deeply contemplative and serious woman—too much so at times. Raised in a military clan and tutored on their training grounds, she was taught that fighting, with its barbarism and violence, was her path.
When she ventured onto the real battlefields, she thought and felt in too much earnest. Unable to switch off her mind, she ruminated over each of her commanders’ orders. She found herself thinking, Why do people have to fight each other? and How much worth is in a life? It only progressed from there. As she danced through blades and bullets, she tormented herself with thoughts like Do humans deserve to live? and Wouldn’t the world be better off if we went extinct?