"Urgh!!" Kazuki was blown away by Kuroyuki's dark energy blast, his attacker then followed up with a choke while raising Kazuki's body up into the air.

"This is what happened to me when you guys abandoned me just because Kotetsu is a coward," Kuroyuki powered up his fingernails with darkness just like all the time. "Sayonara, Kazuki,"

Kuroyuki was about to blast Kazuki's head off with his dark energy, when suddenly a huge and sharp vine pierced Kuroyuki's left arm.

Spontaneously, he pulled back his bloody hollow arm and released his opponent while screaming in pain. Kazuki dropped onto the ground, then got grabbed by another vine to his right side.

On the right was Hoshikawa, with his plant-element zodiac sword. He helped his choking brother to stand up, albeit weakly.

"Take it easy brother, you're gonna be fine,"

"What... are you doing here?" Kazuki coughed heavily.

"I followed you through the night, then waited for the perfect time to help," he answered. Shortly after, Kuroyuki recovered and called his hunters to his position.

"Brother? ... This is not fair..." Kuroyuki grew more angry than before. His wound was healed to near perfect condition, even though he's still in pain. "After all you've gone through... then you have a brother coming to save you?! You're living too easy!!" he ordered his hunters to bounce back to attack the Itsuka brothers.

"Brother, I need your light," Hoshikawa was preparing to defend them both.

"You got it," Kazuki focused his energy to power up his blade, he raised the blade up into the air and conjured a mini-sun a dozen meters above their heads. In the middle of the night, Kazuki's sun can be seen by warriors from base 37, alarming them.

Hoshikawa, following up with Kazuki's sun, conjured giant cacti from the ground. Kuroyuki's hunters were recklessly attacking the Itsuka brothers, while Kuroyuki himself took cover behind a special shield made from dark power because he knew exactly what's gonna happen.

"Fire!!" Hoshikawa then ordered the giant plants to eject their spines in rapid succession, all of Kuroyuki's hunters in the area were struck with the cacti spines, immobilizing them to the point of purifying their hosts' souls.

Kuroyuki, enraged, releases his shield and prepares to transform. He raised his right hand to scratch his own chest, but then immediately stopped when a mysterious figure suddenly appeared beside him, holding his hand.

The man was wearing a hoodie and a mask nearly hiding his whole face. From his left hand, his sleeve was oozing with an unfamiliar green liquid that turns the concrete beneath the man into vapor. After warning Kuroyuki to "Don't overdo it," the man then calmly stared at Kazuki and Hoshikawa who's ready for any threat.

"Ah yes, a pair of brothers. How lucky you both are to still have one another in the middle of this catastrophe that is the Ookami curse. I've seen some... separated with one of the two dies or became possessed... still some cuddled to their deaths... such tragic stories..." the man kept on rambling while his dripping hand started to make a hole through the concrete. He then placed his right hand onto the roof of a broken car, and with the same liquid, the roof began to melt and corrode.

"Who are you?" Kazuki hastily asked the mysterious man who seemed fed up with the question and decided to slash the car in half with the help of his crystalized corrosive liquid.

The man sighed, then answered their question, "I'm someone's both older, and younger brother. Get this, how about you say hi to my dearest little brother on your side. He desperately needs it... see you around, Itsuka brothers," the man with Kuroyuki then vanished in the dark of night. Soon after, a search team finally met with the Itsuka brothers and bring them back to the recovering base 37.