Chris jumped out of the van and dashed his way to Yokosuka Ladies.

He couldn’t believe he was willing to run right towards death instead of enduring another second inside of the van with Ryder.

What was the plan? There was no plan…

He was going to have to help Takato takedown Domingos here and now. If Domingos won, or even worse, managed to get a hold of Takato’s Relic then it would be another massive problem he and Tayte would have to deal with down the line.

He cut into a narrow street, pushing bystanders out of the way, and ignoring their scornful rebukes.

The race brought him to the entrance of the hostess club. It was a black granite stone door frame with the flashing sign of the club’s name on the top. He reluctantly walked down the stairs and reached the glass doors.

It seemed… normal. He could still hear the serene jazz music being played from inside. The night was breathing out cool air but Chris felt intense heat rising in his gut and making its way to his chest.

‘Death’ kept popping up in his head over and over. The fight with the twins had already felt so long ago for Chris, he seemed to have forgotten about the uncomfortable, gnawing feeling.

He slid open the glass door.

The cabaret was populated with blobby abominations. Some of the creatures were slumped in the loveseats, some on the floor struggling to get back on their feet, and others ramming into the walls—they all made the same horrific, guttural wails.

Chris fished around in his brain for the right Relic that would explain what he was seeing. And just when a name started to form, Takato jetted in his direction.

His face impacted with Takato’s back and they tumbled onto the purple carpet.

Chris got up first, groaning and touching his jaw. He shot a look at Takato as he scrambled back to his feet. “Aren’t you going to apologize?” he asked.

“You want me to apologize for being thrown like a paper airplane?” Takato rasped, rubbing his head, and then pulled out his contacts from the corner of his eyes.

“Well!” The hulking grave-robber shouted, getting their attention. “Chris is here! I’m surprised—”

“Me, too,” Takato said and glanced at Chris. “I was expecting him to just run away.”

“Do you want me to leave?” Chris hissed with an angry smile. “I’ll leave right now.”

“No, no, stay,” Domingos said. “The music’s nice. Food’s good, so are the drinks. Can I get you something?”

“Your Relic actually would be great, thanks.”

“How about you try taking it from me?”

Chris patted his hip and felt nothing but his skin underneath—there should’ve been metal. He frantically checked again and then realized he had forgotten to equip his holster and new gun.

He heaved a sigh and got into position. Equipping his grappling stance.

“Should we try to rush him down at once?” Takato asked Domingos.

“Sure, but you go first.”

“I already did go first, did you not get hit hard enough by me earlier—?”

A rogue, flying chair silenced Takato and sent him to the floor.

Chris looked down at his incapacitated fighting partner, the broken chair, and then back at Domingos who had his arm stretched forward.

“Enough talking,” the brute said.

Chris wondered if it was too late to play dead.

Domingos banged his chest with his huge fist and let out his mighty warrior cry. “Come on!”

“Screw it!” Chris dashed forward, letting out a less daunting war cry, and readied a fist. Once he stood before the massive man, he froze.

Domingos looked down on him with a devilish smile.

Listening to his brain’s screams of panic, Chris lowered his fist and prepared for a kick. He swung his foot but stopped before it touched his thigh. He pulled back again and looked up at Domingos to find the same look on his face—brimming the type of confidence one would have against a laughably weak opponent.

Allowing another switch, Chris raised both his hands with open palms and went in for a grab. A sting in his chest caused him to halt and pull back.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Domingos shouted with a wave of terrifying anger in his tone. “Be a fucking man and attack!”

Chris breathed in and out and began his assault.

He punched Domingos in the chest with everything he had, hit his thigh with a kick that sent a violent reverberation throughout his entire body, and grabbed Domingos’s collar with one hand and arm with the other.

Chris shifted his weight to his heels and pulled but nothing happened. Domingos stayed fixed in place. His expression was just as still.

Against his better judgment, Chris repeated the combo and ended up in the same situation, whereas Domingos didn’t move an inch.

Raising two closed fists now, Chris unleashed a flurry of punches onto Domingos’s chest until fatigue took over. He pulled back and looked at Domingos.

Nothing.

Launching a straight punch into Domingos’ face, Chris staggered back, hissing and shaking his hand. The jab did nothing. He tried again, this time with a strong left hook. An uppercut. A cross. A spinning back fist. Even a couple of slaps.

Zilch.

The man remained unmoved from his spot. Unhurt. His expression was unchanged.

Chris ran back and removed his fleece jacket. He locked eyes with the immovable man, trying to keep his bravest face on. After dropping his jacket onto the floor, he sprinted toward Domingos and leaped into the air for a dropkick.

His feet hit Domingo’s chest, but that was about it.

Chris flopped roughly onto the carpet and Domingos stood in the same place.

With one hand on his hunched back, Chris forced himself back on his feet. “Okay, we both know how this is going to go. You’re going to say your lines and I’ll say mine,” he said. “You’re going to say, ‘Is that all you got?’ and then I’ll stupidly say, ‘No, I’m just getting started’ and then I’ll attack again, and then you’ll say, ‘That tickles’ and then I’ll be like, ‘That wasn’t even my strongest move’ and then we go on and on and on. So, can we just skip to the part where you put me out of my misery?”

Domingos cracked his fist. “Now we’re talking.”

The giant, hazel-colored fist sped into Chris’s face like a freight train.

There was no pain as everything flashed black and he was flying through the air. Landing on something soft, Chris was staring at the elegant ceiling lights illuminating the room as the first hints of pain started to signal from his cracked nose. The blunt pain spread across the front of his skull, convincing Chris that he took the Shinkansen to the face instead of a human fist.

The scene became so silent that Chris was drifting off to sleep.

Not getting up seemed to be the best option. He stayed put on whatever squishy surface he was lying on.

Then, Takato’s bruised face appeared in his eyeline. He was yelling but no sound came out. Chris wondered if it was just the pestering curse or Domingos had hit him so hard that it blew out both of his eardrums. The latter seemed more plausible for him.

Takato grabbed him by the collar and pulled him back to his feet. He was still yammering words that Chris couldn’t hear.

Chris looked back down from where he was lying and saw a blob with short, stumpy legs and arms on the carpet with a human-shaped imprint on its… body.

Wincing, he studied it and identified it as the Nuppeppo yokai meaning Domingos had the Relic of the same name. With the outside world deafened to him, Chris easily sunk into deep thought asking himself that if his ability was turning others into such creatures what was stopping Domingos from turning him and Takato into Nuppeppos?

He looked back at Domingos, standing in the same spot and eyeing the two with an insidious smile. Obviously, he wasn’t taking the fight seriously but Domingos was different from Adisa. He didn’t like to play with his food. He wasn’t the type to savor his meals.

Takato gave up trying to communicate with Chris and stood up straight, stretching his neck to the side to summon his Relic.

“Impundulu!” Chris was able to make out from reading Takato’s lips.

A glowing green slit appeared on the muscle between his neck and shoulder and a handle popped up. He grabbed it and pulled out a black ancient-looking axe with markings all over its single blade.

Lime green lighting blasted from the ceiling and into the Relic, charging it up. Takato ran at Domingos and swung the thunder-enhanced weapon at him—finally forcing him to move from his spot.

Despite his incredible size, Domingos was nimble on his feet and evaded Takato’s attacks cleanly.

Every swing from Takato sent off a cluster of lightning in multiple directions—bouncing off the walls, carpet, furniture, and the blobs of flesh. There was green lightning flickering off almost every surface like an extravagant Las Vegas show.

Then, Takato’s electric blade connected with Domingos’ chest.

Chris watched as the two stood still.

Takato’s neck was cranked up and he had a disturbed look on his face while Domingos had the expression of a kid minutes before the start of summer vacation.

Still staring, Chris squinted and stretched his neck forward. Domingos’s entire torso was covered in expanding, globby skin that was swallowing the axe. Now, Chris noticed that Takato was trying to pull his sinking axe away from the globby mass.

“Lukwata,” Chris shouted, but couldn’t hear it. He equipped his Relic and rushed at Domingos. Leaping into the air, he bashed the shield into his face.

It made him stagger only a few inches away, but it was enough for Takato to pull his axe free.

Then, the sound of the chaos came rushing into Chris’s ears at once, staggering him for a moment. The music that the Impundulu’s lightning played around the room was intense.

Chris and Takato exchanged looks and then began their team attack on Domingos.

“Cula!” Takato shouted and a powerful lightning bolt shot from the axe, dashed across the carpet, bounced off Chris’s shield, and struck Domingos. The behemoth fell onto his back.

Chris halted before Domingos—who was still clad in his globby breastplate—and raised his shield into the air, each hand held on to an end and he rammed the top part of the kite-shaped shield into his forehead. A pint of blood squirted out.

But that was the only hit Domingos was going to allow him to get.

On the second thrust, Domingos grabbed the shield in his hand and launched a ferocious punch at the delicate spot between Chris’s legs.

Curling up, Chris backtracked to groan and reevaluate his life choices as Takato continued the attack.

Takato landed a successful jumping kick at Domingos’s face and then swung an electrified sideways slash that forced him back a couple of feet but was absorbed by his armor of skin.

As he tried to blink away the black dots appearing in his vision, Chris directed his gaze at Takato who took on a firm pose and held up his axe, gripping the handle with both hands like a baseball bat.

He twisted the handle of the axe once using his hands and said, “Kunye!”

Lightning collected around the blade and it increased in size. Takato twisted the handle again and said, “Kubil!” The lightning grew and the blade doubled in size as it released thunderous growls like a revving engine.

Chris picked up his shield off the floor and ogled at the bizarre sight with his mouth open and noticed that Takato was counting in Zulu with every twist. “What the shit—?”

“Don’t just stand there!” Takato shouted. “Cover me!”

Chris averted his gaze to his side and detected Domingos pulling himself up.

Domingos began running in an instant.

The sight alerted Chris. He clenched his jaw and gut like he was about to do a plank, enduring the pain in his groin, and dashed in Takato’s direction, trying to beat Domingos.

The big man pulled a fist back.

Chris made it in time and blocked the heavy attack with his scaly shield. Feeling the reverberation do a tour of his entire body, but he managed to remain firm.

“Isithupha!” Takato shouted. He was somewhere between six and eight. His blade was enveloped in a ball of chaotic electricity and now triple the size it was before—looking a bit comical. “Move!” he ordered.

Chris ducked and rolled out of the way, and stayed on the carpet to see his companion swing the enlarged and electrically charged blade point-blank at Domingos.

There was no chance to see where the blade hit. What followed was an epic discharge that blanketed Chris’s vision in white for a moment as if a mini-nuke had gone off.

When the white began to fade away neither of the Fighters was at the spot he last saw them. With his ears ringing, Chris turned his head all the way to the entrance, and the glass door was shattered. He spotted Takato’s legs sticking out the bottom part of the door.

He got back to his feet and dawdled towards Takato.

Takato sat up, disoriented and badly scathed. Once he realized Chris was approaching him, his face contorted and he scowled back at him with his radiating green eyes. “What the hell are you doing? Go finish off Domingos, you idiot!”

Chris halted and whipped around.

A grotesque occurrence was taking place. A suit of burnt, lumpy skin was slipping off Domingos’s frame as he got up, piling on the carpet before him.

There was an opportunity to attack, but Chris’s body wouldn’t obey his orders.

Domingos looked to be in better shape than Takato. The man was indestructible. Possibly, even unkillable.

“Why aren’t you using your Relic’s abilities?” Takato shouted from behind, out of breath.

“You’ve got lightning flinging around everywhere I can’t be using water-based attacks!” Chris replied without turning back.

“Are you serious right now?”

“Very!”

“Man! I really wish Tayte was here instead of you.”

“Me, too.” Domingos agreed and then, with both arms, he lifted the lump of burnt flesh off the carpet and shaped it into a ball. He pulled it back for a throw.

It moved way too fast for something so heavy.

The condensed ball of flesh smashed into Chris’s face and he was down on the carpet again, going through the symptoms of a concussion.

As he felt the pain of a splitting headache, two Domingoes appeared in his vision, and they grabbed him by the throat and lifted him up. He sensed a giant hand reaching into his pocket and pulling out his cellphone.

The Domingoes fused back into one.

“You’ll never figure out the code,” Chris said with a vulpine smile.

Domingos held the cell phone up to his face and it unlocked.

A million curses directed at the evolution of technology went off in Chris’s head.

“Chris, I’ve known you for a while, and let me tell you the downside of being someone as methodical as yourself,” Domingos explained as he waved Chris’s cell around in his hand. “It makes you hopelessly predictable.” He messed around with it, tapping repeatedly on the screen until a city map appeared and a glowing dot beaconed at a spot.

Chris made a face as he looked at the tracker he set up for Tayte’s cell.

“I’m going to go say ‘hi’ to your little girlfriend. It’ll be fun to see her again. This time I’ll make sure to break more than just her phone.”

“You leave Tayte alone—!”

Domingos slammed him into the carpet. As he crushed him by pressing him down he whispered, “Shhh… listen. I won’t have to break too many bones if she surrenders and forfeits her Relic immediately. And if her resistance persists, well then, I guess I’ll have to cope without the Kamaitachi. How much she suffers is up to her.” He let go and walked off.

Chris let out violent coughs as he rubbed his crushed throat and then looked over at Domingos. He walked through the broken glass door, pushing Takato back onto the ground by stomping on his face on his way out.