The Interception
The baton spun through the air toward Tanaka's head.
Moto's scream was raw, and he was too far away.
Najo threw himself into its path.
The baton hit his chest with the crack of shattered stone. The force launched him backward — he dug his heels into the dirt, gritted his teeth, and skidded to a stop on his feet, the weapon gripped in both hands.
Bizure clicked his tongue. "Not charged enough, it seems."
On the ground, Moto pushed himself up. "Stay back," he rasped. "Leave them out of this."
A shadow fell over the courtyard.
Using the black and green kimono as a makeshift parachute, Snake descended from above, landing cleanly between Moto and Bizure. He didn't look at the General. He walked to Moto, extended his arm, and the viper coiled around his wrist struck — fangs into Moto's neck.
Moto gasped.
Bizure laughed loudly. "They told me you were ruthless, Snake, but attacking your own ally while he's down — you're worse than I heard!"
But Moto wasn't dying. The bite was concentrated adrenaline. His veins surged, pupils dilating as the rush overrode the pain and exhaustion. He pushed himself to his feet, breathing steadying, aura flaring back.
Snake pulled his arm back. "Finish this fast. I don't know how long it lasts in your system before the crash."
Moto clenched his fists. "I have to fight him alone. I won't risk your lives to save mine and then just watch you get hurt."
Bizure watched with a smirk, curious where the sentiment would land.
Snake looked over his shoulder at Najo and Tanaka. "Were any of you forced to be here?"
"No," Tanaka said.
"Never," Najo said.
Snake looked back at Moto. "You can't control that."
The hardened edges of the guilt loosened. Moto looked at Najo — and Najo's expression carried the specific weight of a callback neither of them needed to speak aloud. The day Moto had refused to leave him behind to face his father alone.
"Okay," Moto said. The resolve settled into his face, clean and certain. "But this one is personal. Just do one thing — make sure he doesn't get that baton back."
Snake was quiet for a moment.
Then one of the smaller snake tattoos on his forearm literally slithered off his skin. It crossed the air between them and coiled itself around Moto's right arm, settling into the flesh.
Moto flinched. "What is this?"
"A heat shield," Snake said. "Permanent ink. It'll protect your arm when you go all out." He paused. "But it'll burn away as you use it. Don't waste the clock."
The tattoo glowed a fierce, burning red as Moto channelled into it. At the very tip of the snake's tail, the ink had already begun to fade.
Moto drove forward — a blur — and drove a fire-engulfed punch into Bizure's gut.
Bizure planted his bare feet. The force and heat transferred straight into the earth. The ground beneath him hissed, cracked, formed a small burning crater. The General was untouched.
The Unseen Spectator
Aemon and Lilly arrived at the edge of the courtyard and regrouped with the others. Aemon listened to the tactical situation and closed his eyes, activating Spirit Vision.
Nearby, Byron in his massive red-furred form was tearing through the collapsed ruins of the prison — hurling boulders aside, hands bleeding from the jagged stone, roaring Thando's name.
Bizure retaliated. He grabbed Moto with both hands and slammed him toward the ground. Moto bent his knees on the way down, using his feet to absorb the shatter of impact, then executed a flawless spring off his back and drove a sharp kick directly into Bizure's knee.
Bizure stumbled, recovered, threw a massive hook. Moto dodged and countered. Bizure lunged to touch him and redirect the force — Moto saw it, pulled his punch at the last millisecond, and expelled a blinding gust of smoke into Bizure's face instead.
From the sidelines, Joy popped its eyes out the side of Aemon's head and stared into the smoke.
Through his Spirit Vision, Aemon saw Martin — the spirit of the Glitch Blade — hovering at Lilly's shoulder in spectral form, watching the fight. Joy tapped Aemon's shoulder rapidly and pointed. Martin was pointing a trembling finger at Moto.
Aemon leaned forward, squinting through the dissipating smoke.
Bizure landed a devastating kick to Moto's side, sending him skidding across the dirt.
"Stop playing around!" Najo shouted from the sidelines. "The adrenaline won't last forever! If it were me, I'd have packed this guy up long ago!"
The Ungrounding
Moto wiped the dirt from his face and charged back in.
Bizure grinned, planting his left foot firmly as he pivoted for the same devastating kick.
Moto had been waiting for it.
He ducked low, sliding under the sweeping leg. In one fluid motion he ripped off his torn vest and threw it over Bizure's planted foot.
Bizure's eyes widened.
His bare foot wasn't touching the earth. He was standing on cloth. He was ungrounded.
Moto's tattoo-covered arm blazed a violent, blinding red. He grabbed Bizure with both hands and pulled — lifting the massive General entirely off the ground. He leaped up with him, hovering above Bizure for one suspended moment, and drew back his fist.
Bizure panicked. Mid-air, he reached out and grabbed for Moto's arm — trying to redirect the damage back through him.
Moto slapped the hand away.
The tattoo burned out completely as he did, vanishing from his skin. The shield was gone.
He put everything into his right arm and drove the punch into Bizure just below the chest.
BOOM.
A pillar of roaring flames erupted and swallowed the General whole. The courtyard scorched. Bizure hit the ground and the crater around him turned to glass.
The battlefield went silent.
Moto landed, arm smoking, breathing hard, looking down at the unconscious General.
The Spiritual Flame
Aemon stood frozen.
Through his Spirit Vision, he had watched what no one else could see. When Moto's final attack detonated, the flames hadn't only burned the physical world. They had raged across the spiritual plane simultaneously — violent and indiscriminate, consuming both realities at once.
He looked at Martin. At the hand-shaped burn scar seared permanently around the spirit's neck.
The pieces came together all at once.
Moto hadn't asserted dominance over the Glitch Blade through physical strength alone. Because his fire burned across realities, when he had grabbed the hilt in the tunnels and held his flaming fist to it — he had reached into the spiritual plane and choked the ancient spirit into submission.
The most terrifying part: Moto had no idea he could do it.
The Rubble
The adrenaline crashed. Moto's knees buckled and he dropped into the dirt, clutching his right arm. The skin where the tattoo had been was blistered and smoking, but Snake's ink had done its job — the arm was still there.
Najo reached him first, grabbing his uninjured arm and hauling him up, letting Moto lean on his shoulder without comment. Snake walked past and gave him a single nod.
The moment was cut short by a thunderous crash nearby.
Byron in his full gorilla form was tearing through the collapsed ruins with bleeding hands, hurling boulders the size of carriages aside.
"Thando!" The roar echoed across the quiet battlefield.
"He was inside when it came down," Aemon said, already running. Lilly went with him.
Najo passed Moto to Tanaka and stepped forward. He brought his hands together, and the massive slabs of concrete parted — earth-shifting where Byron's brute force couldn't reach.
Deep beneath the debris, in a small hollowed-out pocket of rock, they found him.
Thando was battered, bleeding from a cut on his forehead, coated in dust. But he was breathing. He coughed violently as Byron reached in and lifted him free.
"You idiot," Byron said, reverting to his human form as he set his friend down. "Why didn't you get out when you felt the tremors?"
"Cicada blew my cover." Thando wiped blood from his eyes. "I heard him making a call just before the walls came down. I had to scatter the ink birds. We needed eyes."
"A call to who?" Najo asked.
Thando's eyes went suddenly wild. His connection to the ink birds was still active. His face drained completely.
"No," he whispered. "She didn't just send reinforcements."
He looked up.
"She came herself."
The Sovereign's Garden
Before anyone could process the words, the cracked, scorched earth beneath their feet began to shift.
Green shoots pierced through ruined stone and glassed-over crater. Within seconds a massive wave of flowers bloomed across the entire courtyard — lush, vibrant, coloured with a richness that had no business existing in this place. A cool, impossibly sweet fragrance rolled over the battlefield and settled into everything.
The rebels looked around in confusion, weapons lowering. Across the courtyard the surviving prison wardens reacted entirely differently — they dropped to their knees, some weeping with relief, others smiling with the particular expression of people who have been waiting for exactly this. They knew what this meant.
Snake didn't relax. He went very still, eyes narrowing.
Thick vines and bright petals wove over Bizure's unconscious body, burying him in blooms until only the very top of his stomach was visible.
Tanaka, mesmerized, reached down toward a bright blue flower near her leg.
Her fingertips grazed the petal.
The flower shrivelled. The blue bled out into a sickly, brittle brown — and the decay spread outward like a sentence, the entire courtyard of blooms wilting and dying in seconds, the sweet fragrance curdling into the foul, suffocating stench of rot.
The rebels watched the life leave the earth all at once. The air felt hollow.
Behind Moto, a rebel dropped his weapon. His voice was barely a sound.
"She's here."