The creature thrashed Hayato like a ragdoll, slamming him repeatedly against the concrete floor with brutal, bone-rattling force.
"Damn you..." Hayato gritted out, sinking his teeth straight into the writhing muscle of the monster's tentacle.
The creature let out a high-pitched screech of agony, involuntarily loosening its grip in mid-air.
Capitalizing instantly, Hayato seized the thrashing appendage, yanked himself forward, and drove a crushing kick square into the creature's jaw, embedding the monster flat into the concrete wall.
Hayato landed lightly on his feet, wiping a trail of dark blood from his mouth.
He glanced back toward the holding cell corridor, where Shisui stood glaring with dark, murderous intent at Eliza.
"Things are about to get really ugly," Hayato muttered under his breath.
"What did you do?!" Shisui demanded, his fists clenched so tightly his knuckles turned white.
"It wasn't me! It was all Hayato!" Eliza claimed, holding her hands up in mock innocence.
"Do you honestly expect me to believe a word out of your mouth?" Shisui barked.
He closed the distance instantly, throwing a lightning-fast straight right. Eliza ducked smoothly under his guard and delivered a whip-like kick to his chest, sending Shisui skittering back against the wall.
Shisui caught his breath, his eyes narrowing. Taekwondo...? No, the mechanics are different—far more lethal.
"Did you really think you could defeat me?" Eliza sneered, her red lips curving into a cold smile. "I am Number 3 of the Loop."
"Number 3, huh?" Shisui stripped off his heavy coat, letting it hit the floor as he dropped into a low, fluid stance. "Guess I don't have to hold back anymore."
A few yards away, Hayato was locked in a high-speed melee with the bio-engineered horror. Both were going toe-to-toe against each other.
The creature thrust its massive bone-blade straight for his heart. Hayato parried the strike with his own bone-blade, the collision throwing off sparks. The beast whipped its tentacle arm forward to disembowel him, but Hayato swung his blade in a silver arc, cleanly severing the writhing mass of meat.
The monster howled. Hayato smirked and lunged in to finish it, but in a horrific display of cell division, the tentacle instantly regenerated, whipping back around to strike Hayato square in the ribs.
The impact dislodged the bone-sword from his hand and launched Hayato flying through the air, crashing through the doorway of the holding cell.
Hayato tumbled to a halt beside the metal chair. "Hey! Wake up!"
Ethan's eyes snapped open. He winced, clutching his temples as the grogginess of the tranquilizer wore off. "My head..."
He blinked, looking around in utter confusion.
"Hayato? What are you doing here?"
Before Hayato could answer, the monstrous frame of the bio-mutant filled the doorway.
"What in the hell is that?!" Ethan murmured.
"A little human experiment gone wrong!" Hayato replied, scrambling to his feet.
Ethan locked in immediately, his fighter instincts overriding the residual dizziness. As the creature charged into the cell, Ethan grabbed the heavy iron chair he had been strapped to and hurled it with full force.
The monster's bone-blade sliced the chair cleanly in two. But Hayato was already airborne, driving both boots directly into the creature's face. Landing on the floor, Hayato swept his leg out, kicking the monster's knee to shatter its balance.
As the creature stumbled forward, Hayato launched a straight flying knee into its jaw, grabbed its throat with one hand, and hammered a rapid barrage of bare-knuckle strikes into its snout before the regenerated tentacle slammed him back in to a wall.
Ethan stepped in seamlessly, stepping past the monster's guard to drive a heavy right hook flush into its cheek. The sheer force made the creature stagger—an impressive feat against a bio-engineered brute.
Ethan pressed the assault with a rapid combination, but the creature's instincts kicked in; it ducked under a roundhouse and swung its massive bone-blade in a wild circle. Ethan backflipped away, creating distance.
"You okay?" Ethan asked, dropping into his stance beside Hayato.
Hayato dusted off his sleeves with a grin. "Never better."
"Let's put this thing down," Ethan said firmly.
"Hold that thought—I just need to retrieve my bone sword," Hayato said, pointing toward the hallway.
Ethan stared at him. "Your what?"
"Keep him busy for a second," Hayato requested.
"Make it quick. I'm not sure how long I can keep a giant blade-arm monster occupied with bare hands!"
The creature lunged again, driving its bone-blade downward in a executioner's chop. Hayato leaped aside, letting the blade plunge deep into the metal floor grates.
Ethan acted in an instant—jumping directly onto the spine of the embedded blade to pin it to the floor. The weapon stuck fast. Seeing a heavy spiked containment chain dangling from a nearby hoist, Ethan grabbed the steel links, swinging them like a whip across the creature's chest.
He sliced through the reaching tentacle arm, but the flesh bubbled and regenerated almost instantly, whipping out to slam Ethan violently against the concrete wall.
Meanwhile, Hayato jogged down the corridor and bent over to pick up his bone-sword.
Suddenly, a massive shadow fell over him as the red alarm rang.
Hayato turned just as a boulder-sized fist came hurtling toward his skull. He ducked by a hair's breadth, the wind of the punch whistling past his ear.
"Who are you supposed to be, big guy?" Hayato asked, looking up at the towering executive standing over him.
"Me...?" Harold rumbled, his massive frame blocking the light. "An insect like you isn't worthy of knowing my name."
Hayato grinned. "Is that so?"
BOOM!
Without a fraction of a second's warning, Hayato drove a straight left flush into Harold's face.
Harold barely managed to raise a massive forearm to block the blow, the force pushing him back a step. Harold retaliated with a heavy right cross, but Hayato swayed beneath it, driving a lightning-fast counter-punch deep into Harold's ribs.
Harold stumbled backward, gasping for air.
"Look, big guy, I'm a little busy right now," Hayato said cheerfully.
He snatched up his bone-sword and sprinted back toward the holding cell.
Inside, Ethan was barely holding the line, diving and weaving past the continuous onslaught of the creature's blade and writhing tentacles.
The monster struck the support beams above, sending heavy metal debris crashing down. Ethan kicked a falling girder out of the way, but turned right into the path of a blindingly fast tentacle strike.
SWOOSH!
Before the appendage could crush Ethan's throat, a silver flash severed it clean off.
"I'll take it from here," Hayato said, stepping between Ethan and the monster.
Ethan wiped a smudge of blood from his forehead and nodded. "All yours."
Hayato rested the heavy bone-sword casually over his shoulder, looking the beast up and down. "I'm back! Miss me?"
WHAM!
The tentacle regenerated instantly, whipping around in a blind spot and blasting Hayato sideways through the drywall once again.
A crowd of lower-ranking Loop executives watched the chaos unfold from a safe distance. Not a single one dared step into the crossfire between Eliza and Shisui, or Hayato and the unleashed mutant.
"Hayato!" Ethan yelled, taking a step toward the hole in the wall.
Suddenly, a towering shadow fell over Ethan.
Before Ethan could turn, Harold's massive hand clamped around his throat, lifting him off the floor like a ragdoll.
"Another bug," Harold grunted, squeezing his grip.
The bio-mutant turned its glowing eyes toward Harold and Ethan, preparing to attack them both, but Hayato came flying out of the ruined wall like a missile. He landed a brutal double-dropkick straight onto the creature's face, driving it directly into the cluster of watching executives.
The monster let out a bloodcurdling roar. The executives panicked, breaking formation and running for their lives. The sudden movement and noise shifted the beast's hyper-aggressive focus entirely onto the fleeing men, and it began slaughtering them indiscriminately.
Hayato picked himself up from the floor, rubbing his neck as he looked over at Ethan, who was still pinned in Harold's iron grip.
I've got a small window before that freak finishes off those guards and turns back to us, Hayato calculated, his grin returning.