By turning his defeated opponents into his minions, this creator of the undead could construct an alliance that would never betray him. The obstacles other fighters faced in forming alliances—and the drawbacks in doing so—were practically nonexistent to him. He would never have to keep an eye over his shoulder for the moment his allies would turn on him, and the more he killed as the Zodiac War progressed, the larger his alliance would become. Theoretically, as a worst-case scenario, the fight might end up as eleven versus one. Even worse, Dog’s talents as a master of poison would mean nothing against Rabbit’s minions. No poison existed that could kill someone who was already dead. Although he didn’t know it for sure, and wouldn’t unless he tried, Dog suspected that biting those corpses and injecting his venom would have no effect at all. He would be forced to fight the former warriors in straight-up hand-to-hand combat.
If it comes to that, I’m already sunk, but just to make things worse, the poison jewels won’t likely be having any effect on them either. Corpses don’t produce stomach acid.
Rabbit’s “allies” were free of the limits imposed by the deadline. Were they the only ones?
Chicken’s Eye of the Cormorant, my ability to manipulate poison, and now Rabbit the necromanticist—this isn’t happening by mere coincidence.
Dog was finding it more and more likely that the organizers of this Zodiac War had devised the rules and the setting to match the combatants’ special powers. Each fighter held some advantage over one or another of the constraints of the battle. Victory would rely upon how they used their advantages.
Okay, so the rules aren’t so simple as Duodecuple made them out to be. Now, what do I do about it?
Whatever Dog did, it would have to differ from what he had been doing. Putting aside the issue of how to deal with Chicken, he could no longer afford to hide until the Zodiac War’s final stages. If Dog were to remain inactive, Rabbit would put his advantage in numbers to work as he and his minions coldly and systematically eliminated the other fighters. Worse, anyone they killed would join their ranks.
Everyone he defeats joins his side. What is this, a boys’ manga?
It took no great leaps of imagination for Dog to picture what would happen when he finally emerged from hiding only to find Rabbit and his minions—if not eleven strong, then at least seven or eight.
All those fighters, with all their distinctive traits, under his absolute command … Just because it’s easy to imagine, it’s not any less chilling to think about.
No, if Dog was to act, he needed to do it soon. Now, even. He needed to put a stop to Rabbit while the killer still had only two corpses at his beck and call. Dog had faced three-on-one fights in his line of work. Not often, of course, but he had. And right now he had Chicken on his side. Three-on-two was far more commonplace. Nothing special about that, save for the fact that this time zombies comprised the majority of the opposing force.
“Chicken,” he said.
“Y-yes?” she replied.
“Can you see where Rabbit is right now? With your ability?”
“O-of course,” she said, pride edging into her voice, stammer or no. “I’ve been keeping track of him. I’m keeping my watchers a fair distance away so that Rabbit won’t realize he’s being watched, but the birds have made following him, Boar, and Snake their top priority.”
“All right. Listen, I hate working with others, but just in this case, I’ll make an exception for you. I accept your offer.”
In not so many words, I’m doing you a favor—and I’m the one in charge.
Whether or not she got the subtext, she broke into a huge grin and said, “And—and Rabbit?”
“We’re going rabbit hunting. We’ll kill him.”
“All right! Yeah!” Chicken said, complete with a fist pump. “We can do this! We’re gonna make it all the way to the end!”
Dog didn’t intend for their alliance to go that far. He only meant to work together until they’d defeated Rabbit, or maybe just a little while after. Of course, he didn’t say as much.
“Well then,” Chicken said, offering an innocent handshake. “Let me introduce myself.”
“I am Niwatori, the Fighter of the Chicken. I kill by pecks.”
“I am Dokku, the Fighter of the Dog. I kill in bites.”
Now, just how can I use her?
As he met her slender hand with his, Dog’s mind went to work on that cruel calculation—of when the drawbacks of having her around would outweigh the usefulness of keeping her alive.
As the two pursued Team Rabbit, Dog decided to exchange information with Chicken. Of the Zodiac War’s twelve combatants, roughly half were unknown to him. Information was as much a part of this battle as anything, and as an alliance, sharing what they knew was important. Besides, Dog wanted to gain Chicken’s trust, and to do that, he needed to act as if he’d actually bought in to this partnership. Anyway, it had to be more interesting than the small talk she had been offering.
“You know that song ‘Furusato,’ right?” started one nugget. “How it starts out with the lyrics ‘the mountain where I chased rabbits, the river where I fished small carp,’ and people often mishear it as, ‘the mountain where there’s tasty rabbits’? Well, if the person in the song was catching carp, if you really think about it, sooner or later they probably did eat those rabbits too. And I bet they were tasty.”
Maybe this was just her way of building his trust.
“I know five of the fighters,” Dog offered. “Ox, Dragon, Snake, Monkey, and Boar.” This was the truth. He saw no problem in giving real information to someone he was going to kill regardless. After all, she might feel obligated to give him information in return that could be invaluable. “The most dangerous is Ox. How can I put it?” Dog thought for a second. “He’s incomprehensibly strong. No one has ever stood on a battlefield against him and survived to tell about it. People call him the Natural-Born Slayer.”
“The Natural-Born … Slayer?”
“That’s right. He’s a top competitor, no doubt about it. You’d have to be as good in a fight as me to take him on unprepared. If you stumble across him, I suggest you run.”
“Okay,” Chicken said, though she didn’t seem to grasp the severity of the threat.
No matter. You’ll be dead by my hand before you get the chance to run into Ox.
Dog continued, “As for the Tatsumi Brothers—that’s Dragon and Snake—there’s nothing to say about them. The twins made for a hell of a team together, but one is already dead, and either’s not half as tough on his own.”
“I see.”
“Now, Monkey …Well, you saw who she is. She’s a pacifist—a real bleeding heart. I can’t stand her myself. A disgrace of a warrior, if you ask me. She makes her living going into war zones and mediating the disputes. Her peace treaties have brought many a war to its ceasefire.”
That’s going to be your downfall too, Dog thought. You shouldn’t have attempted to sign on to Team Monkey, and you really shouldn’t have come to me.
“To us mercs,” Dog said, “she’s bad for business. I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s participating in the Zodiac War because she thinks she can end it.”
“Do you think she can?”
Dog didn’t answer. It seemed impossible, but some small part of him feared she could, and another almost hoped she would.
“I don’t think we need to talk about Boar,” Dog said. “She’s just Rabbit’s slave now. She could do this thing with her guns she called ‘Making It Rain’ that you wouldn’t want to be on the wrong side of. You could even say it’s lucky for us that she died so early.” Then he asked, “So, Niwatori, who do you know?”
“Oh, I, ah, don’t know much about anyone. Just rumors I wouldn’t trust. I’m sorry. I-I wish I could be more helpful.”