The Wolf and the Bat

Shirotsuki Gin watched in horror as Marius severed Sun’s arm, a macabre smile stretching across his face.

“Sun!” Akiko screamed.

The Vitagia of the Squadron 3’s captain erupted with the fury of a solar flare, thickening the air around her and raising the temperature of the room as her rage intensified.

“You bastard!” A strange silvery light began to emanate from Gin’s hands. “Prepare to die, vampiric scum!”

Drunk on fury, she lunged at Marius in search of vengeance for what he had done to Sun, while Kaito and Akiko rushed to tend to their mutilated comrade.

Marius hastily raised his sword, barely managing to intercept the she-wolf’s furious assault. The black blade took the full force of the platinum-light claws, sending the young vampire skidding backward until his body slammed into the wall behind him with enough force to crack it.

“Not bad for such an unripe fruit,” Marius mocked. “And that’s without tapping into the wolf’s full potential. What a shame. Since the Eternal Night began, you ceased to be worthy rivals for a Dracula.”

“And that bothers you?” Gin asked, letting out a soft chuckle.

“Of course it does!” he replied indignantly. “I am a warrior, after all.” He slid his fingers across his bloodstained chest, where the hole left by Sun’s blade had already regenerated, though it was still slick with blood. He smeared it across his face, tracing the heptagram of the seven demonic virtues upon his forehead. “…And I am chosen.”

“So it’s true. You serve Lord Macabro, and you were involved in the creation of the spell.”

“I would love to claim the honor of that discovery, but unfortunately I’m only… how do humans put it? A scapegoat.”

“To protect whom?”

“I think we’ve talked enough.” Marius straightened his back, lowered his center of gravity, bent his knees, and adjusted his posture into an offensive stance. “I’m already bored. Besides, there’s no point in conversing with a dead woman.”

“Says the walking corpse.”

Their gazes locked, blazing with fury and bloodlust. Without another word, they lunged at each other, intent on taking the other’s life.

Marius struck first. His sword thrust pierced forward, and with a twist of the blade he pinned Gin, grabbing her by the neck and slamming her against the wall behind her.

“Too slow,” he sneered, sliding his long black tongue across her cheek as his fangs gleamed. “You know, your blood doesn’t smell like the rest of your clan’s. Are you… impure?”

“Get away from me, you disgusting monster!” Gin snarled, spitting in his face.

“A half-breed inherited the wolf? Interesting…” His drooling maw opened wider. “I wonder what your blood tastes like…”

“I said get away from me!”

Gin broke free by crushing his wrist between her palms, snapping it in half. She followed with a kick to his ribs, knocking him away from her and separating him from his weapon, which remained embedded in her body.

Marius’s severed hand regenerated from the stump like a lizard’s tail. He flexed his fingers, opening and closing his fist as he adjusted to the renewed limb.

“You’re quite strong for your age,” he commented.

“And you’re quite weak for a Dracula,” Gin replied as she slowly pulled the sword from her abdomen, tearing her own entrails in the process.

With her belly split open and her organs spilling out, Gin raised her new weapon triumphantly—the black sword, its blade now drenched in her blood.

“You wanted to taste my blood?” she asked before launching another attack. “Then enjoy your meal!”

Gin calculated the exact moment Marius would blink. In that fraction of a second, she moved at the speed of a stellar flash, driving the sword straight into his open jaws, forcing him to swallow the hilt. She followed with a relentless barrage of punches, shattering bone after bone, the sickening crunch echoing in rhythm with each blow, and finished with a merciless kick to his groin that dropped the tyrant to his knees.

“Is that all you’ve got, arrogant little prince?” she taunted between labored breaths and satisfied laughter.

Gin focused her Vitagia into her hands, manifesting a pair of silver wolf claws that gleamed like lamps.

Marius staggered back, narrowly evading Gin’s counterattack as she slashed again, aiming for his abdomen.

Marius gripped the hilt of the sword lodged in his mouth and carefully pulled the blade free, his twisted movements accompanied by spurts of blood.

“You’ll pay for this, damn wolf!” Marius growled. “Those claws… they’re not just concentrated Vitagia enhancing your body, are they?”

“It’s a technique called Mythic Mimic,” Gin revealed. “It imitates the power of a Jinrou’s beast-mode claws without requiring a full transformation.”

“Interesting. The fact that you’d reveal that speaks to your confidence. Perhaps you truly can pose a challenge to me… or at least entertain me.”

“You’re still trying to act cool,” Gin said with an arrogant grin. “But the rookie’s right—you’re scared. And I know because I can smell fear.”

“And I can taste it when I drink my victims’ blood,” Marius laughed. “It gives it a special sweetness. Seems we’re not so different, are we? Both predators who enjoy instilling terror in our prey.”

“Don’t you dare compare me to a monster like you!”

Marius merely chuckled as he once again manifested the purple substance that coated his body, forming clothing—a replica of the Night Knight uniform: jeans, boots, and a leather jacket. His, however, was mauve instead of black and clearly made of a thinner material, not lightning bull leather.

“I truly despise hearing Jinrou deny their own nature as monsters,” he said. “As if humans see you any differently than they see us vampires.”

“Typical of your kind, thinking yourselves superior to the freaks you are,” Gin replied mockingly, tracing her index finger down her cheek to mimic a falling tear. “Perhaps that’s part of the curse you suffer. Poor, wretched souls. By the way, thanks for covering up. It was getting uncomfortable fighting you naked.”

“Is that humor meant to hide your nervousness?”

“I think you’re just bitter. After all, you’re an old man despite looking younger than me.”

“Jealous of the eternal beauty of an immortal being?” Marius scoffed.

“How sad, yet understandable. It would be a shame for such a lovely face to wither with time… but don’t worry. I’ll burn this rose before it ever gets the chance.”

As he spoke, he slid his right palm along the edge of his sword, coating it in his silvery blood. Upon contact with the black steel, golden flames ignited, engulfing the blade.

Gin crossed her arms and turned her back to him, shifting her weight backward into a deep arch. Her chest faced west while her arched spine pointed east—a stance that favored defense by minimizing impact points while enabling powerful upper-body offense, though at the cost of mobility.

“That immortality you brag about ends tonight!”

Marius slipped between Gin’s ankles, passing through her stance. He grabbed two of her dangling entrails and yanked hard, dragging her body before hurling her into a wall, then another, and finally pulling her upward and slamming her into the ceiling with all his strength.

Gin became embedded in the concrete, her organs still spilling from her abdomen.

Without giving her a second to regenerate, Marius crouched, gathered his strength, and leapt upward, driving a brutal punch into her shattered midsection. Both of them burst through the ceiling and vanished from the room, leaving the rest of the Squadron 3 behind.

To illuminate the dark night sky—now stripped of stars and moonlight—people began releasing floating lanterns, decorating the void with drifting lights of varying colors and designs. Amid this sea of lights, Gin and Marius exchanged blows, neither landing a decisive hit, until the lone she-wolf wrapped her arms around her enemy in a crushing embrace, exerting enough force to shatter his ribs and spine.

Disoriented by pain, Marius dropped his weapon and clawed desperately at Gin’s back. She shoved him away and sent him flying with a powerful kick to the chest.

Both combatants, having lost the momentum that had carried them skyward, succumbed to gravity and plummeted toward the ground. Gin maneuvered midair, aiming for a communal swimming pool. Though the impact shattered her ribs and knees and sprained her ankles, it was still preferable to hitting solid ground.

Marius was not so fortunate. He failed to regenerate his bones in time to control his descent, and he lacked the Vitagia needed to transform into a bat. All he could do was watch as the asphalt rushed up to meet him.

A cloud of dust erupted across the Shibuya crosswalk, followed by a rain of debris. From within a massive crater, a writhing mass of flesh and blood struggled to reassemble itself—what remained of Marius.

Suddenly, a vortex of darkness manifested mere centimeters from the crater. From it emerged a hellish figure wreathed in emerald flames—the monster who had led humanity to victory in the Battle of Tijuana. Gi Kaito. He had awakened the power of the Avenging Phoenix, intent on crushing the dying vampire once and for all.

“For someone who bragged so much, you ended up as a pile of trash, kid.”

“Y-yo-you damned old man…” Marius growled weakly.“You wouldn’t dare…”

“Nah. I totally would,” Kaito spat and without another word, he raised his Vitagia-charged fist and brought it down mercilessly upon the mangled mass that was Marius, a twisted smile etched across his face. “Punishing Hammer!” the old man roared, ablaze with combat fire.

Several kilometers away, Gin emerged from the water, her injuries already mending, ready to rejoin the fight—when the ground suddenly trembled beneath her feet. From the corner of her eye, she caught a flash of light. When she turned, it erupted into a massive green explosion, the shockwave and thunderous sound nearly hurling her back into the pool.

“What the hell?!”

Gin had been so absorbed in her battle with Marius that she was unaware of the events unfolding in parallel.

As the lone wolf rushed toward the origin of the explosion, a magical manifestation of intermediate grade was recorded at Night Knight Headquarters in Tokyo. Its Vitagia signature matched an authorized access record, allowing it to bypass security and form a portal from which emerged the severed head of a vampire of the Canus race.

General Natori arrived on the scene immediately. It took her only a few seconds to understand the message conveyed by the severed head. She ordered the tracing of Vitagia residue and commanded all available squads to mobilize toward the origin point of the spell.

What had begun as a routine patrol for Squadron 3 became one of the most significant operations in the history of the Tokyo division of the Night Knights.