Real Name: Michio TSUKUI
Born: May 5
Height: 177 cm
Weight: 52 kg
Michio doesn’t believe in fighting with weapons and instead prefers to bite his opponents. His vicious teeth, capable of pulverizing anything, have been called the “Mad Dog’s Vise,” which is greatly feared.
He works as a daycare teacher and, by all accounts, earns raves from parents and kids alike, but in secret, his real profession is finding children who possess certain gifts and delivering them to the organizations who want them. When, due to an oversight, he once let a little girl slip into the hands of a man who was nothing more than a pedophile, Michio risked his life to rescue her. He took her in as his adopted daughter and works hard both at daycare and on the battlefield to earn enough money to give her a proper upbringing.
In his personal time, he is an avid calligrapher. At first his works earned little regard, but through perseverance and practice, in time he acquired a bold, masterful brushwork that silenced all his detractors.
The Zodiac War was not confined to any specific area. The starting point had been located in a high-rise in the center of a city abandoned solely for this purpose, but once begun, the battle could go anywhere—even, for example, across borders. In fact, the previous Boar, who won the Zodiac War twelve years prior, deliberately brought the battle into a large, densely populated city and embroiled tremendous numbers of innocent bystanders in the fight.
Dokku, the Fighter of the Dog thought, The way Boar created an advantage by using the mass confusion and riots as a shield—I could learn a thing or two from that. Not that I’ll be able to use that same strategy this time. With this time limit, we’re not going to be able to stray far from where we are. Even though we separated at the start, we all share the same interest in remaining in close enough proximity to stay in the fight.
And so, rather than follow the example set by the previous winner, Dog chose the opposite approach. He decided to bide his time and hid in a secluded location where he could keep distance from the other fighters and remain safe from discovery. With his bared fangs, he made for a brutal, savage figure—and in truth, he had that side as well—but he was also shrewd and cool-headed.
When you think you know what to do, sometimes you need to do the opposite.
Because this Zodiac War had a considerable number of eager combatants, Dog thought it would be more prudent to let them slug it out among themselves and to only take action himself once their numbers were whittled down and less could be left to chance. While Dog possessed the strong pride of a warrior, and he believed he could best each and every one of the other fighters by his own strength, he resisted that temptation. He could keep his pride in check to find a more certain victory.
I shouldn’t have to worry about Rabbit, judging by how he killed Snake before the battle had even begun. He’s nothing more than a killer, and he doesn’t have what it takes to survive a Zodiac War. That leaves Ox as the biggest problem …
Aside from Ox, the only fighter who concerned Dog was whoever had blown apart the floor. That trick caught all the other combatants off guard—Dog included. But who was it? Dog knew he shouldn’t act until he learned the answer.
Well, I’ll wait. That’s my prerogative. Deep down, every dog wants to wait. And that’s what I’ll do, until we’re down to three fighters at the most.
But this logic wasn’t the only reason Dog was so ready to accept settling in and waiting out the Zodiac War. There was another, more dominant reason, relating to the rules of the game—specifically, the conditions for victory. Though the rules had been as much of a surprise to him as to anyone else, they served him better than he could have ever wished for.
The fighters had all ingested their jewels and now had to claim them from each other. Unless they got their own jewels out, the protective coating would dissolve and the poison would begin eating them from within. Duodecuple explained that the poison would kill them in twelve hours, but certainly they wouldn’t all drop dead at the exact same moment. Not even the organizers of this grand event were capable of formulating a capsule with such time-bomb precision for each individual fighter. No, as time passed, the poison would work its way into every corner of their bodies. Dog suspected that after ten hours, the act of fighting would become difficult. Furthermore, the effectiveness of any poison differed from person to person. Some might even begin to show the effects even earlier—and it was that fear that would pressure the fighters into avoiding the cautious play that was typical of the early stages of Zodiac Wars past.
But Dog was different.
Because when Dog fought, his weapon of choice was poison.
He’d led the world to believe his signature style to be his powerful bite delivered by the so-called Mad Dog’s Vise, when in reality his weapon of choice was the poison that coated his fangs. The secret wasn’t so hard to hide when all who had encountered it did him the favor of dying.
His body could naturally produce a variety of toxins that, when introduced into his enemies, produced effects ranging from death to more death. The process did involve biting his victims, and by that measure, the public’s image of him was not entirely baseless.
As an accomplished poisoner, Dog had immediately recognized the murky-black stone as a form of poison, and by the time he’d taken it into his mouth, his body was already at work producing the antidote. In other words, Dog was not currently poisoned. The jewel had been completely neutralized, and Dog was in full health. Forget twelve hours—Dog could remain here in wait for as long as his stamina allowed. The oppressive time limit would restrict the battle to the ghost city, but Dog alone was free from the rules of the game. Still, he knew he couldn’t go too far if he wanted to strike at the right time.
This feels a little like cheating, but I’m not going to feel guilty over it. I’m going to use this advantage to the fullest.
At first, this position of privilege tempted him into thinking he might remain hidden until the very end, when any remaining fighters had been so ravaged by battle and poison they could hardly stand, and then he would arrive in peak fighting condition. But the situation he faced wasn’t quite so ideal—if he waited until the very last moment, he would risk the poison jewels dissolving in his opponents’ bodies entirely. Just as poisons affected different people in different ways, each person’s stomach held differing levels of acidity. Once any jewel dissolved completely, reconstructing it would become an impossible feat, no matter how much of an expert with poison Dog was. He wasn’t familiar with all his opponents, and there was no rule against a warrior having excess stomach acid.
And so, rather than wait for a certain amount of time to pass, Dog decided to stay in hiding until his opponents had been reduced in number. Until there were three fighters, or maybe fewer, he would stay here—here in this perfect hiding place, where no one would ever find him.
“I fooooound you,” sang the voice.