Narrator
Toji stood at the entrance of an abandoned factory, Soya and Natsugu draped across his broad shoulders.
"Damn… coming back here doesn't bring back good memories."
A complex expression settled across his face as he scanned the building from top to bottom — the site of his first major trauma, worn down further by years of disuse.
"At least I got my revenge before coming back."
The gate was pushed open and he walked inside with the easy air of someone who had already decided nothing here could bother him.
"Took you long enough. Twenty minutes I've been waiting," a voice carried through the darkness.
Zoro.
"I'd like to see you try. You handed me all the difficult work and disappeared," Toji replied.
"Don't be upset — I had to farm aura." Zoro stepped out of the shadows, fully visible now.
"What are you talking about?"
"Don't worry. You wouldn't get the reference anyway."
Toji let the argument die and simply dropped both bodies onto the floor.
They were outside the Zen'in estate now. If those two woke up on their own, that was fine — actually, that suited things perfectly.
"So what do we do now?" Toji asked.
"We wait."
"Sorry?"
"We wait. I have no idea how long the anesthetic lasts, so we sit here until they come around."
A look of profound boredom descended over Toji's face.
"That's going to be genuinely awful."
"Not necessarily."
"How do you mean?"
"While you were taking your time, something was set up to keep us occupied. Come see."
Toji followed deeper into the factory.
What he found stopped him cold.
A large television connected to a Super Nintendo. One cartridge sitting in the slot — but not one to take lightly.
"SF II?"
An incredulous smile spread across his face.
"Should be enough to pass the time, right?"
He turned and found Zoro watching him with obvious amusement.
"Yeah… I think it will."
Street Fighter II occupied a special place in Toji's life. When it came out, the sessions had been long enough to warrant skipping classes entirely. The arcade managers eventually noticed and implemented a ban during school hours.
It had no effect whatsoever. Kentaro was asked to purchase two arcade cabinets, and Kentaro — naturally — agreed without hesitation.
If not for Zoro's intervention, that would have been the year Toji failed school.
"Been a while since we played." Toji's tone had already shifted into something confident and slightly smug.
"A reminder — you have never beaten me," Zoro matched him effortlessly.
"That's because you used Observation Haki to read my inputs the entire time. Now that I can do the same thing, don't expect it to be that simple anymore."
"Fine. Show me what you've learned."
Zoro crossed to the television and switched it on.
"By the way — how is there electricity in here?" Toji asked, settling down.
"There isn't. I ran everything from an outlet outside."
"How is that remotely possible?"
"Not that complicated. You just need… a lot, a lot, a lot of extension cords."
"Haha! Fair enough."
"Alright, enough conversation. Let's violence."
---
Several hours passed without interruption.
4 a.m. The twins had done nothing but play, round after round, pushing both physical reflexes and Observation Haki to their limits in the search for any edge over the other.
The score had not budged from perfect balance.
Fifty matches. Twenty-five wins each.
Then — a movement registered through Haki.
"Hm." Zoro caught it first.
"He's waking up." Toji had already picked it up too, through his own naturally heightened senses.
"Final round gets postponed." Zoro set down his controller and stood.
Toji did the same. Controllers down, both of them moving toward the two bodies with the calm, unhurried purpose of people finishing something long overdue.
Soya and Natsugu were both awake by the time they arrived, already on guard, reading the space around them with the alertness of people who'd woken up somewhere they didn't expect to be.
Confusion first. Then, when both of them registered the faces looking down at them, confusion became anger.
"You — who are you, and why are we here?" Soya's voice, bristling with the particular arrogance of someone who had never learned to doubt themselves.
No response from either twin. Natsugu stepped in.
"You have a death wish, ignoring us like this — and you were careless enough to leave me my weapon." His katana came out from the scabbard Toji had brought along with him.
A long pause. Then the twins finally spoke — but not to answer anyone.
"Puhahahahaha! See? I told you he'd say it!" Zoro doubled over.
Both Soya and Natsugu flinched at the reaction.
"Bwahahaha! 'You must have a death wish.' I genuinely did not believe you'd be right," Toji wheezed.
"Hahahaha!"
"Puhahaha!"
"Hohohoho!"
"Ah! Ah! This is too much."
Two full minutes of it.
Natsugu had missed the joke completely at first. When the realization arrived that they were laughing at him, something inside him broke through.
"YOU SONS OF BITCHES, HOW DARE YOU MOCK ME?!"
Cursed energy erupted outward from him in a violent burst.
Soya, who had stayed quiet through the laughter, let his own flood out to match.
The outburst drew the twins' attention back. The laughter started fighting to stop.
"Alright, alright — Toji, come on, focus."
"I know, I know — haha — I'm trying."
A few controlled breaths. Composure returned.
Hoods and masks came down, revealing faces that neither of their two guests had seen in ten years.
Needless to say, recognition hit hard.
"So it's you… the trash." Soya's voice had gone cold and flat. What sat behind his eyes was nothing but the intent to remove something he'd always considered an impurity in his bloodline. "You came back on your own? Good. That just means I can finish what I started ten years ago. Euthanizing monkeys."
Natsugu felt the anger rise alongside something uglier — anticipation.
Neither of those things landed anywhere near the twins. Both of them had already moved on.
"Slow or fast?" Zoro asked.
"Three hours ago I would've said slow without hesitating. But I want to get back to SF II, so I'm not spending time on these people." Toji was already done with the conversation.
That reaction didn't surprise Zoro at all. The cold desire for drawn-out revenge had faded on his end too, somewhere between the 30th Street Fighter match and the smell of an old factory at 4 a.m.
What were Natsugu and Soya, really, to them now? Mosquitoes. The kind that made someone sick as a child — worth nothing more than the second it takes to crush them.
"Which one do you want?" Toji asked.
"Hmm." Zoro performed the expression of someone making a genuinely difficult decision, with roughly the same energy as choosing between two pairs of shoes.
"I'll take Natsugu."
"Then Soya's mine. Let's get this done."
"MISERABLE WRETCHES!" Soya had run out of patience entirely.
"INSIGNIFICANT SPECKS OF FECULENT SCUM!" Natsugu right behind him.
Both of them charged at once. Neither of them understood it would be their last action.
Soru
Toji vanished from the space where he'd been standing and reappeared in front of Soya in the same instant, leg already raised, Armament Haki coating the limb from heel to shin.
BOOM!
CRACK!
SPLASH!
Three steps. That was Soya's death.
First: Toji's foot drove into the abdomen with full force.
Second: it pushed through.
Third: it erupted out through the back, bones and organs reduced to fragments in its path.
Blood burst from the exit wound. The cursed energy surrounding Soya extinguished, and his eyes went empty before he finished falling.
"Damn — that was more than needed. Armament Haki was overkill. Now my shoes and pants are a mess."
Zoro, watching from several meters back, provided the correction.
"No — it was the right call. A kill without Haki on a sorcerer that powerful leaves a cursed spirit behind."
"Is that right? You never told me that."
"Did I actually forget to mention it?"
The two of them continued the exchange with complete ease, as though nothing in particular had just happened.
Natsugu was not having the same experience.
'How? How is this possible?'
He had just watched a sorcerer of the Zen'in clan — a proper sorcerer, with cursed energy, with training, with lineage — die without resistance. Killed by a target without a single trace of cursed energy.
'This can't be real. I'm still dreaming.'
The trembling started in his hands and spread outward. His legs were barely keeping him upright. The cold moving through him wasn't the air in the factory.
Fear had found him completely. And then fear found somewhere else to go.
"So the lesson here — if you're ever dealing with a high-level sorcerer in a kill situation, Haki or a cursed tool. Non-negotiable. Understood?"
"Yeah, I get—"
Both of them registered the smell at the same moment.
"Sniff, sniff — what is that?" Toji's hand went to his nose.
"Sniff. Smells like actual shit," Zoro confirmed.
He followed the source back to Natsugu and understood.
"No. Are you serious. You actually went in your pants."
Toji looked over.
"That's disgusting."
Natsugu looked down and found the confirmation, but the humiliation barely registered. The fear was louder.
'I have to get out of here.'
The katana hit the floor. He turned and ran.
Three steps.
Soru
"Where exactly do you think you're going?"
Zoro materialized in front of him before the fourth step could land. A hand closed around his throat, fingers tightening, and then his feet left the ground.
Both of Natsugu's hands grabbed at the grip. Neither moved it.
"Does this feel familiar to you?" Zoro didn't particularly expect an answer. "Last time I was up here and you were down there."
The squeeze tightened gradually. Terror built across Natsugu's face in stages, and the tears came without him seeming to notice.
"But it's over now. Our vengeance ends now."
Crack.
The neck gave cleanly. Both arms fell to his sides. Zoro released his grip and the body hit the ground face-first, the state of his clothing visible to anyone who cared to look.
Which didn't improve the mood.
'Tried to make that look clean, and he had to go and ruin the whole thing. No aura gained from this whatsoever.'
A turn toward Toji, who was already waiting.
"Finished. Let's go finish the tournament."
"Good. Get ready to lose."
"Dreams aren't reality, kid."