The screen of the laptop in the Blue Line Bar flickered with a harsh, surgical light. The feed was grainy, captured by a hacked security camera tucked into the rafters of The Pit—a concrete arena two stories beneath the Chiyoda district.
On the screen, the club was a hive of violence. Men in expensive suits sat behind reinforced glass, sipping whiskey while two fighters in the center ring tore into each other for sport. Surrounding the ring were Ryo's "Cleaners," thirty professional enforcers armed with tactical batons and suppressed sidearms.
"Look at them," Eagle muttered, leaning over Kenji's shoulder. "They think they're safe because they're underground. They think the concrete protects them."
Suddenly, the lights in the arena didn't just go out—they died. A low, heavy hum echoed through the speakers as the signal jammers Hitoshi had planted earlier took effect. The screaming crowd fell into a confused, terrified silence.
Then, the emergency red lights kicked in, bathing the arena in a bloody, rhythmic pulse.
In the center of the ring, the two fighters were gone. Standing in their place was a single shadow. Hitoshi didn't wear tactical armor. He wore the traditional black robes of a man who had accepted his own death long ago. The porcelain Hannya mask caught the red light, its frozen demonic grin looking more alive than the men surrounding it.
"He's crazy," Hiroki whispered, his eyes wide. "There are thirty of them. He's just... standing there."
Ryo Kenji appeared on the balcony above, his face contorting into a mask of pure rage. "You! You dare come here?!" he screamed, his voice cracking. "Kill him! I want his skin for a rug! Kill him now!"
The enforcers moved. They didn't engage one by one like in a movie; they swarmed.
Hitoshi didn't flinch. As the first three enforcers lunged with batons, he moved with a fluid, terrifying economy of motion. He didn't swing his blade in wide arcs; he kept it close to his body, the steel singing a short, sharp note every time it moved.
Schlick. The first man's hamstrings were severed before he even realized Hitoshi had moved. Thud. A palm strike to the second man's chest didn't just knock him back—it collapsed his sternum.
In the bar, Naomi turned her head away, but the sound was inescapable. The speakers picked up the wet, heavy thuds of bodies hitting the concrete and the clinical, rhythmic shing of the Kuzuryu blade.
"He's not even breathing hard," Kenji rasped, trying to sit up despite the agonizing fire in his leg. He watched Hitoshi move through a hail of gunfire, using the enforcers' own bodies as shields with a cold, calculated precision. "He's... he's doing the Kuzuryu style. But it's different. It's faster."
"It's not faster, kid," Eagle said, his voice grim. "It's just that he isn't trying to save anyone. He's only trying to clear the room."
On the screen, Hitoshi reached the foot of the balcony. Ten men lay in various states of ruin behind him. He looked up at Ryo, the red light reflecting off the white porcelain of his mask. Ryo reached for his twin axes, his hands shaking so violently he nearly dropped them.
"Ryo! Get out of there!"
The voice came from the arena's intercom. It was Kiato, watching from his ivory tower across the city. His voice was no longer calm; it was sharp with a rare, crystalline fear. "Fall back! It's a trap! He's not here for the drugs, Ryo—he's here for the blood!"
Hitoshi didn't wait. He leaped, catching the edge of the balcony with one hand and swinging his blade in a terrifying vertical arc. Ryo scrambled backward, falling through a set of double doors just as the blade turned the mahogany railing into splinters.
Hitoshi landed on the balcony, his robes stained dark. He didn't chase Ryo. Instead, he turned and looked directly into the security camera. For a second, it felt like he was looking through the screen, straight into Kenji's soul.
He raised his blade, the blood dripping slowly from the tip, and then—with a single, powerful strike—the screen went to black.
The silence in the Blue Line Bar was absolute.
"That," Eagle said, closing the laptop with a definitive snap. "Is the man you wanted to be, Kenji. Still think the mask fits?"