Tokyo didn't bleed that night; that night, Tokyo lost its color.
Jin Kurosawa gripped the steering wheel. His knuckles were white, but to him, they appeared a pale, lifeless gray. The rain streaming down the windshield fractured the city's neon glow, but the famous ambers, crimsons, and violets never reached his retinas. There were only blinding white starbursts and pitch-black shadows.
Achromatopsia. The price had been paid.
His body, forced into that superhuman state of focus—GL-3 Limit Over—at the construction site, had temporarily shut down the cone cells in his eyes. The world was now an old, scratched film reel: Black, White, and Gray.
He removed his right hand from the wheel and brought it to his chest. His ribs throbbed. Tank's fist hadn't even connected; the sheer wind pressure of the punch had been enough to fracture his thoracic cage. His gaze drifted to the glove compartment. The lid was open.
It was empty.
That emptiness hurt more than the crack in his ribs. The custom Obsidian Pistols... those masterpieces he had balanced with his own hands, barrels forged from cold-hammered steel... they were now lying sixty meters down, buried amongst wet concrete and rusting iron.
"Where are we going?"
The voice came from the passenger seat. Klara (Number 309). Her voice trembled; wet hair was plastered to her forehead. Jin looked at her. Her face was white as lime—a flat, ash gray in Jin's eyes. The fear in her eyes held a sheen that even this colorless world couldn't dull.
"To the safe zone," Jin said. His voice was as monotonic as the rhythmic slap of the wiper blades. "I need to analyze."
"You couldn't kill them," Klara stated. It wasn't a question; it was a horrifying realization. "They... They don't die. No matter what you do, they don't die."
Jin didn't answer. He shifted gears hard, making the engine snarl. There was no such thing as immortality. They had simply been struck with the wrong tools.
By three in the morning, they had reached the safe house. The basement workshop reeked of rust, machine oil, and ozone. Jin stepped beneath the flickering fluorescent lamp. The light was too harsh for his colorless eyes, but he needed to see the details.
He unslung the scabbard from his back. He laid the Obsidian Katana onto the white cloth covering the table.
SHHHINK.
The blade slid from the sheath. Its jet-black body swallowed the fluorescent light. Jin adjusted the loupe over his eye with the precision of a jeweler and began to examine the blade's cutting edge—the Hamon line.
He held his breath.
There it was. A flaw too small for the naked eye, but mountainous to a swordsmaster.
There were microscopic chips in the steel where the blade had entered Tank's underarm muscles. And at the point where he had struck V's neck—what V called "Armored Skin"—the steel edge had rolled back by a thousandth of a millimeter.
Jin set the loupe on the table. He braced his hands against the surface.
Math doesn't lie.
Obsidian steel was the hardest processed material known to man after diamond. It could slice titanium. It could split Kevlar like butter. But tonight, it had struck biological tissue and sustained damage.
"Not skin," Jin whispered to himself. "Organic armor. Chitin-based alloy."
Then he thought of Tank. The bullets flattening against his chest... The sword getting trapped between muscle fibers...
"Not muscle. Hydraulic fibers. The density is so high it absorbs slashing energy. Piercing damage is insufficient."
Jin slammed the sword back into its scabbard. Hard.
The logic of the hunter had collapsed. Elegant assassinations, silent deaths, one-hit kills... those were for humans. The things he was facing were walking tanks.
Jin opened an old, dusty chest in the dark corner of the workshop. Inside, there were no polished, elegant weapons. Out came rusty, heavy, ugly tools.
A Pneumatic Nail Gun: Modified to drive steel into construction columns. Tungsten-Tipped Construction Nails: Armor-piercing. A High Voltage Shock Coil: Capable of knocking out a bull.
Jin picked up a tungsten nail. He weighed it in his hand.
"If you can't cut," he whispered, "you shatter."
At the same moment, in a cold storage warehouse on the other side of the city, beef carcasses hung from the ceiling like a frozen forest. The temperature was minus 18 degrees.
Radar lay in a fetal position on the concrete floor. The bandages around his ears were soaked in black liquid. The explosion at the construction site had shattered the equilibrium crystals in his inner ear.
"Sound..." Radar moaned. "It's still... still ringing."
His world was spinning. He couldn't hear the city. He could only hear the high-pitched, unending RINGING inside his brain. Their greatest weapon was now their greatest weakness.
At the far end of the room, Tank had pulled a carcass off its hook. He was biting into it without cooking it, without waiting for it to thaw. The CRACK of his jaw pulverizing frozen bone echoed through the warehouse.
Tank stopped. He probed the muscle in his chest with his hand. The bullet core from Jin's pistol had been pushed to the surface by the contraction of his muscles. Tank plucked the bullet out like a splinter. It was flattened into a coin.
He flicked the crushed lead to the floor—Pling—and continued eating. His metabolism was screaming for thousands of calories to heal.
And V... The Leader.
He stood before the rusty mirror of the warehouse. He touched the thin, white line on his neck. The trace left by Jin's sword. The skin hadn't been cut, but the tissue underneath had been crushed by the force of the impact.
"Interesting," V said. His voice was calm. His breath hung in the air as steam.
"What's interesting?" Tank asked, his mouth full. "I should have crushed him. I should have plastered that little insect to the wall."
"The metal..." V said, looking not at his reflection, but remembering that black steel. "Obsidian. It swallowed the light." V peeled off his glove and bent a rusty scalpel on the table with his fingertips. "That technology isn't on the market. It's not on the black market. There is only one place that can forge that: The 'Underground Forge.' That is the Neutral Master's work."
V turned around. "That Master doesn't make weapons for just anyone."
"He's not an ordinary hitman," V continued. "Hitmen finish the job and run. This man... This man analyzed us. He worked Tank's joints. He targeted my neck. He blew out Radar's ears."
V walked over to Radar. He nudged the man gently with his foot. "Get up. You need to heal."
Then he turned to Tank. "His rules are his weakness. He sees us as 'Prey.' He sees us as pests disrupting the order."
V pulled a map from his pocket. He marked the Shinjuku subway line. "If this 'Executioner' loves order so much... Let's give him some chaos. Let's see if he can ignore the smell of burning in his gray world."
Down in the tunnel line C-4, the underground world had a unique scent. A cocktail of a million people's sweat, the asbestos dust of decaying brake pads, and the damp fur of sewer rats. But for Tank, this scent was just an appetizer.
The giant walked through the darkness of the tunnel. The gravel between the ties pulverized under his combat boots. He wasn't wearing worker coveralls; he wore the wide, gray coat V had given him, but his muscles stretched the fabric to the tearing point. The yellow maintenance lights on the tunnel walls elongated Tank's shadow, transforming him into a mythological beast.
He stopped. This was the critical point where the tracks curved.
Tank crouched. He touched the cold, greasy steel rail. It was vibrating. He could hear the muffled roar from the distance.
Thump-thump... Thump-thump...
The morning maintenance train or an early shipment locomotive was approaching. He didn't need to use a bomb. Explosives were loud and left traces. Tank knew his own body was an explosive.
He gripped the base of the rail with his massive hands. His biceps swelled like steel cables woven into ropes. The veins beneath his skin moved like worms.
"Hrrrgh..."
Tank roared. The sound echoed in the tunnel. And in that moment, the laws of physics bent. The massive steel rail, cast to carry tons of weight, began to twist between Tank's fingers like a wet spoon.
Metal ground against metal. SCREEECH. The sound was as nauseating as a bone snapping.
The rail curled outward at a 30-degree angle. A simple, crude, and deadly sabotage. Two bright lights appeared at the end of the tunnel. The train was coming.
Tank didn't step off the tracks. He simply took one step back into the shadows, merging with the wall.
When the conductor turned the curve, he saw the horrific twist in the rail, but it was too late to hit the brakes. The metal monster slammed into the bent rail.
BOOM!
The sound wasn't an explosion; it was a scream. The locomotive's front wheels launched off the track. The train's body, weighing thousands of tons, ground against the concrete tunnel wall. Sparks... sparks so intense the tunnel was momentarily illuminated like the core of the sun.
Cars telescoped into one another. Glass exploded. Metal sheets tore like paper. Power lines snapped, wrapping the tunnel in blue arcs of electricity.
Tank inhaled the hot wind and metal dust hitting his face. This smell... Ozone, burnt grease, and pure chaos.
Tank smiled. There were still pieces of the previous meat between his teeth. "Dinner bell rang, Judge," he snarled.
It was now four in the morning back at the safe house basement, where Jin tightened the final screw.
The object on the table was no longer a construction tool. The Pneumatic Nail Gun had been transmuted by Jin's modifications into a grotesque weapon. Safety valves removed, barrel widened, and a high-pressure CO2 tank—cannibalized from an industrial fire extinguisher—strapped beneath it.
The magazine didn't hold standard nails. It held Tungsten-Cored Drills, created by Jin sawing off and sharpening industrial drill bits for hours.
It was ugly. It was heavy. It was crude. It was exactly what he needed.
Jin reached for a rag to wipe the black grease from his hands. But he stopped.
He raised his head. The air leaking in through the basement's small ventilation window had changed.
Jin's eyes saw gray. But his nose... his nose told him a story colors could not.
First, he picked up the Ozone. Electrical fire. Acrid and sharp. Then Mercaptan. That rotten egg stench added to natural gas leaks. Pungent. And underneath it all, mixed with the city's wet concrete scent, a very familiar, metallic taste. Blood.
But this wasn't the scent of a random accident. There was "intent" in this smell carried by the wind. There was an "invitation."
Jin stood up. In his gray world, the scent of the chaos outside filled the room like a red mist.
"They are burning the forest," Jin said. His voice echoed in the empty room.
Klara stood at the top of the stairs, watching him. "Are you going there?" she asked. "They are waiting for you."
Jin picked up the other tool from the table. The High Voltage Shock Device he had built from an old neon sign transformer and a car ignition coil. The copper electrodes at the device's tips trembled, as if eager to come alive.
He mounted this onto the armor on his left arm. He threaded the cables under the plating and connected them to the trigger mechanism in his palm.
"It's good that they're waiting," Jin said, slinging the heavy tool bag over his shoulder. He pulled the black mask over his face. The visor turned the gray world even darker. "Because the moment the prey thinks the trap has sprung is the moment they are most vulnerable."
Jin opened the workshop door. The sound of rain flooded in. But this time, the rain wasn't cleansing. It was trying to extinguish.
Shinjuku station was burning. And amidst the smoke, those massive shadows—visible even to Jin's "gray" eyes—had set the banquet table and were waiting.
Jin opened the pressure valve of the modified nail gun. HISSSS.
"Let's start."
By four-twenty, rain draped over Tokyo like a shroud as Jin Kurosawa's 1969 black coupe glided into a dark alley two blocks past the police barricades, silent as a ghost ship. When the engine's growl cut out, all that remained was the rhythmic, maddening tapping of rain on the metal roof.
Jin released the steering wheel. He looked at his hands. The dried blood stains on his gloves appeared pitch black to his eyes. The blue and red lights of the police sirens reflecting off the windshield detonated on his retina as violent white and gray lightning.
His world was still colorless. But the rage inside him was clearer than it had ever been.
He reached for the hard black plastic case on the passenger seat. He popped the metal latches. CLACK. CLACK.
Inside the case, nestled in black foam, it waited: The "Oni" mask. The lightweight, aerodynamic assassin mask was gone. That mask was for hunters. And the hunter had failed atop that construction site. This new mask was for soldiers.
Its surface was matte, crafted from bulletproof polymer. Two wide, cylindrical air filters jutted out from the jawline like tusks—gas mask intakes. On the forehead, two slightly protruding, horn-like structures concealed sensors. This wasn't a face; it was a warhead.
Jin lifted the mask. He felt its weight. He placed it over his face.
HISS.
Airtight seals locked onto his jaw and forehead. The damp, wet smell of the outside was instantly severed. It was replaced by the scent of sterile, filtered oxygen.
The Heads-Up Display (HUD) engaged. SYSTEM INITIALIZING... VISUAL MODE: HIGH CONTRAST (ACHROMATOPSIA SUPPORT)
The gray world suddenly sharpened. Shadows became deeper blacks, light sources became starker whites. Jin now viewed the world through the cold, emotionless lens of a security camera.
He got out of the car.
He opened the trunk and pulled out the "Grotesque" tool. The Modified Pneumatic Nail Rifle. The tool was heavy. Ugly. The red CO2 tank (now appearing gray) welded underneath, the wires hanging from the barrel, the duct tape wrapped around the grip... This wasn't a weapon; it was an industrial murder instrument.
Jin heard the metal clang against his armor as he slung the weapon over his shoulder. CLANK. He strapped the High Voltage Unit made from the car coil to his left arm. He secured the cables under his armor to the trigger mechanism in his palm.
He stood alone under the rain, like a metal statue. He looked ahead at the metro station belching smoke. That was no longer a station. It was an arena.
While the police cordon had built a wall of flesh at the main entrances, firefighters were trying to evacuate panic-stricken civilians. Shouts, radio chatter, and sirens formed a chaotic symphony.
Jin used this chaos as a smokescreen. Two hundred meters north, he stood before a rusty maintenance grate behind an old building.
He jammed the crowbar into the grate. His muscles tensed. SCREEECH. The rusty metal groaned open.
The air blasting up into his face was the breath of hell. Hot. And scented.
Jin could "taste" the intensity of that smell despite the mask's filters. The Scent Behind the Masks protocol began analyzing in his brain:
40% Ozone: High voltage cables severed. Sharp, electric. 30% Mercaptan: Gas leak. High explosion risk. Cloying and sulfuric. 20% Burnt Plastic and Flesh: The friction of the train... and what was inside it. 10%... Intent: That familiar, metallic, artificial pheromone.
Jin began to descend the stairs. With every step, the heavy rifle on his shoulder banged against the railing. TONK... TONK... TONK...
In the past, he would have punished himself for this noise. "Silence is life," he would say. But now, this sound was a manifesto. "I am coming," it said.
When he reached the tunnel floor, the temperature was near 40 degrees. The fans inside his mask began to whir. Jin gripped the nail rifle with both hands. He opened the safety catch—which was actually a gas valve.
HIIIISS... The pressure chamber filled. The weapon began to "breathe."
He moved into the impact zone of Tunnel C-4, which had become a graveyard.
The derailed train had scraped along the tunnel walls, pulverizing concrete blocks, and finally come to a halt as a giant heap of twisted metal. Cars had telescoped into one another like an accordion. Glass had exploded; seat cushions were scattered everywhere.
Severed cables dangling from the tunnel ceiling showered blue sparks as they touched the ground. Jin saw these sparks as blinding white flashes. With every flash, the shadows of the wreckage lengthened and shortened, as if the pile of metal were breathing.
There were people lying on the ground. Some crawling away. Some moaning. A man, his face covered in blood—a thick, black liquid to Jin—grabbed Jin's boots.
"Hel...p..."
Jin stopped. He turned that expressionless, demon face toward the man. Data streamed across his visor: THREAT ANALYSIS: NEGATIVE. STATUS: CIVILIAN. CRITICAL.
The human inside Jin said, "Stop, stop the bleeding." But the Butcher inside said, "If you stop, Tank crushes him too. And you."
Jin pushed the man's hand away with a slow but decisive motion. He didn't speak. He saw the light of hope die in the man's eyes clearly in his gray world. That image hurt more than the crack in his ribs. But Jin took that pain and used it as fuel in the furnace of his rage.
He moved on. Passed through the train cars. Through those narrow corridors where metal was twisted and glass was crushed, approaching the maintenance station at zero point.
The sound came from through the smoke.
BOOM...
A second of silence.
BOOM...
This wasn't the sound of a collision. This was a conscious, rhythmic impact. The beat of a drummer calling for war.
Jin moved behind the wreckage of the last car. The tunnel widened here. An old maintenance station. The air was thick with smoke. The emergency lights on the ceiling cast a pale, ghostly whiteness (to Jin) over the scene.
And right in the center... He was there.
Tank.
The giant was stripped to the waist. His body was a map made of gray and black shadows. The wounds Jin's pistol had opened were closed, replaced by hard, calloused tissue. Tank was slamming a meter-long, thick steel pipe into a concrete column next to the tracks.
BOOM...
The concrete shattered and crumbled. But Tank didn't stop. His eyes were closed. As if he were in a trance. Or... waiting for something to arrive.
In the corner, there was another movement in the shadows. Jin focused his visor there.
V. The Leader sat atop a train car. His legs dangled over the edge. He was toying with a radio. He was very calm. As if he had snagged a front-row seat to watch a play.
And Radar... He wasn't there. Jin turned his head. Scanned the tunnel. He knew Radar navigated by sound. With his current ear damage, he must be hiding.
Tank sniffed the air. He stopped hitting the column.
He turned that massive head slowly toward the corner of the wagon where Jin was hiding. He smiled. His teeth shone like white knives in the gray darkness. Tank threw the steel pipe to the ground. CLANG. He spread his arms wide. He offered his ribcage, that massive target board, to Jin.
"Welcome, little insect."
Jin stepped out from behind the wagon. He didn't hide. He rested the nail rifle on his shoulder. But this time, he didn't aim the barrel at Tank's chest. He aimed it at his kneecap.
V looked down from the top of the wagon. "A new toy?" V said, his voice dripping with mockery. "What are you going to throw at us? Staples?"
Jin didn't answer. He took a deep breath under his mask. Filtered, sterile air filled his lungs.
He placed his finger on the trigger. He opened the CO2 tank's valve all the way. THIISSSSSSS.
The sound of compressed gas drowned out all other noises in the tunnel. Tank's smile froze for a moment. This sound... This wasn't the sound of an ordinary weapon. This was the sound of a high-pressure hydraulic system.
Jin passed a single sentence through his mind: "Theorem one: If you can't cut, you drill."
And he pulled the trigger.
PUFF!
There was no gunpowder crack. Only the sound of air tearing. The 15-centimeter Tungsten-Tipped Steel Nail, sharpened by Jin's own hands, launched at near-sonic speed. Target: Tank's right kneecap.
Tank hadn't even cared about the projectile. He had tensed his muscles, expecting the bullet to flatten and fall as usual. But Tungsten wasn't lead. And a sharpened point wasn't a sphere.
CRUNCH!
The nail pierced Tank's stone-hard skin. It split the muscle fibers. And it buried itself right in the center of the kneecap (Patella), deep into the bone.
Tank's eyes went wide. A second of shocked silence. Then...
"AAAAAAAAARRGH!"
The giant's scream shook the tunnel. Tank collapsed onto his right leg. Black blood oozing from his knee dripped onto the concrete.
V jumped up on top of the wagon. His mocking smile was wiped clean. "What is that?"
Jin pulled the bolt handle of the rifle. (Bolt-Action). CLACK-CLACK. A new nail was chambered.
The eyes behind Jin's mask watched Tank writhing in pain in the gray world. And for the first time... Jin felt like the hunter.
"Theorem proved," Jin's metallic voice said.
Tank tried to stand up, roaring, but his leg wouldn't support him. Jin took another step closer.
The Underground Hymn was over. The Butcher's Symphony was beginning.