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KAIZEN
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Before Jules, there was Kaizen.
Before Kaizen, there were many,
but none so strong as Wrath.
The Beast of the Apocalypse clawed the ground and heaved for air. Blood filled its lungs. Dry gasps turned to desperate gurgles. Kaizen knelt down beside it. Sisyphus would be proud.
Tears welled up in the Beast's eyes. Kaizen's stomach dropped, though he couldn't explain why. He thought a trace of guilt, or perhaps even remorse, passed across its wretched face.
The Beast mouthed something to him that Kaizen couldn’t decipher through the mucus and blood. He drew his blade. Sorrow filled him as he went to work, but he realized the sadness belonged to someone else. Rukia?
Kaizen rose from his prey and brandished the trophy by a tuft of its fur to his allies. What used to be the Beast’s neck dripped steaming blood and drenched Kaizen’s clothes and sandals. Veiny eyes rolled to the back of its lifeless head.
Two beautiful women with emerald eyes limped over to Kaizen. They each wrapped an arm around the other’s shoulder for bracing. Another man, covered in jewelry, rushed to support them before they collapsed.
“Kaizen. It’s time to summon Wrath.” Greed’s golden necklaces, rings, and bracelets shimmered in the eerie light.
“No. We do this without him.” Kaizen pointed the decapitated head over to the raging battle beside them. “The Virtues will contain the other Sins.”
“How’d an idiot like you manage that?” Envy asked. Her injured right eye reflected Kaizen’s image like a mirror, but not her left.
Never the left eye. That one always cuts right through me.
“Everyone hates Pride, the fucking prick,” Lust said through gritted teeth.
“Kaizen, Lust and Envy are weak,” Greed said.
Envy pressed her remaining hand against the nub of her severed elbow. The mirror of her right eye faded and transitioned to the stump. It reflected the white world around them. “I’m fine.”
No. Best to remove you three from the playing field. “Then heal them with your fancy jewelry—”
“You’re gambling our lives,” Greed snapped. Lust suppressed a bloody cough.
“Heal them. That’s an order, Greed. Then come join me.” Greed scowled but obeyed.
The Seven Deadly Sins had clashed amongst themselves many times over the past few decades, but they always ended in a stalemate. This battle would finish the war, but Kaizen wouldn’t accept any liabilities during the final fight, family or not.
He turned his back on his friends while they healed, and he left them behind.
The endless sunlight of Purgatory beamed onto Kaizen’s broad shoulders. He approached the Throne Room gates, which stood alone with no structure to support them on any side. The twin golden doors stood fifteen feet tall and appeared to lead nowhere.
He studied them. Kaizen was the latest incarnation of the Seventh Deadly Sin, Wrath. And I will be the last. After envisioning these doors in decades of nightmares, Kaizen pushed them open without hesitation for the first time. They screeched against the white marble floor and traced a small black scuff arc in their path. Interesting.
Perched high above him, four thrones overlooked Kaizen inside the white, marble temple. Rather than a ceiling or dome, the columns supported an ethereal disk of the night sky filled with stars, the three moons, and a floating globe tilted on its axis. If what the Magi say is true, Rukia, that actually is the Earth.
The Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse had already abandoned his throne. He floated above the ground and beneath the Earth. Kaizen studied him for any sign of vulnerability. The other three Horsemen, still perched on their monolithic thrones, shifted their attention to the intruder.
But not Death, the heartless bastard. Earth had captured his sole attention.
Famine slouched to one side of her throne and rested her head upon a bony hand. She would have pressed the skin of her cheek against her clenched fist, were her flesh not so taut and rotted away. Her time of plague long since passed, she sat, bored, awaiting the next Rebirth. As always, she wore sparse clothing to showcase her hollowed ribs while her hip bones jutted past her exposed and protruding vertebrae.
Looks like Pride didn’t get her pregnant after all, Rukia thought. Her words echoed in Kaizen’s mind, but he ignored her poor timing for humor.
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Conquest gazed down upon Kaizen with mild inconvenience. As far as he was concerned, the war was over, his enemies vanquished.
He looks like the type of general who inherited his position, Rukia thought again. B-because he is. Get it?
I didn’t laugh at your first joke. I won’t laugh at this one. Be serious, Kaizen replied. His eyes rested on Conquest’s missing arm, and he grinned, reminiscing.
Then why’re you smiling, Little One? the fox asked.
Not because of you, Kaizen thought. Something I did while you were…gone.
Kaizen sensed her scoff at both him and Conquest. Always adorned in the finest imperial armor and regalia. Impractical fool.
He’s the least dangerous, yes, but why do he and Famine seem so…bored? He looked down at his own robes. Wait, that insult wasn't meant for me, was it? Rukia's cackling filled his mind.
Kaizen shifted his attention to The Third Horsemen, the only one he still respected. With a grin and a gleam in his eye, War stared past Kaizen with intense focus. Curious, Kaizen turned around. The twin doors he’d entered the temple through were gone. Instead, he could see the infinite marbled expanse of Purgatory and the battle between the Holy Virtues and the Deadly Sins behind him. Greed, Lust, and Envy had been dragged back into it and teamed up against Pride while the Virtues battled Sloth and Gluttony.
War was built like a smithy; thick arms, thick wrists, and a thick chest. Scars engulfed his body, with many covered up by his unkempt, auburn hair and massive, braided beard which crept past his navel.
This guy never wears a shirt, Rukia thought.
At least he’s distracted. Kaizen ripped his katana from its sheath and stepped further into the temple. He glared at Death again. His blood boiled. Kaizen snorted two deep breaths to calm his rage.
Getting too angry this close to Death—
I know, Rukia, quiet. I’ll keep him at bay.
Death ignored Kaizen. Kaizen and Death had met before, but not in The Horseman’s ascended form, so he studied Death’s newest features. Now eight feet tall, Death appeared more inhuman than Famine. The flesh on his face flayed backwards to his scalp and ears to reveal teeth, nasal cavities, and eye sockets; all smooth, white bone. His ghostly hood shifted and breathed like smoke or mist and shrouded most of his hideous face, thank Kami.
Death reached up one bony finger towards Earth. A soft white stream of energy swirled out of the Earth and into his finger.
“It’s over, Death.” Kaizen approached the center of the temple. “We’ve usurped your Harlot, slayed the Beast, and—”
“And we’ve opened your Sealsss,” Famine hissed. Kaizen’s arm hair shot up. Her voice was shrill and dripped with acid, as if her spit itself were toxic.
“Setbacks were…inevitable.” Kaizen gestured back towards the civil war. “Your army lies fractured, though.”
Death granted Kaizen a most uninterested glance before turning back to his task at hand.
Arrogant prick, always looking at us like ants. Kaizen polished his blade with his bare hand to remove the last drops of the Beast’s blood from it.
“For how many more ages will you serve as his lapdog, Conquest?”
“I serve no one but the laws of Fate,” Conquest snapped. “A commoner piece of trash like yourself can’t comprehend a life without servitude to others, to other people, whereas we answer to higher powers. You exist solely to serve us, of—”
“You know,” Kaizen waved a hand through the air to swat away yet another rambling tirade. “I heard you’d’ve paid an arm and a leg to win your last campaign. Guess you got a deal.” Kaizen waited.
Well, that certainly shut him up, Rukia thought.
“And Famine,” he continued. “How long will you let yourself be starved and plagued by Death? Unless of course, you’re into that whole maso—”
Famine shot out of her throne and unfurled massive black wings, each ten feet in span. One was covered in mottled, rotting feathers. The other was mostly just bone, with some scorched leather clinging on for dear life. Kaizen squeezed his sword grip.
“Know your place, Sin,” Famine said. Beneath her, Death continued to drain the world. “You were given free will to a point. You are free to suffer the consssequences of your actions, but no one has the power to defy Fate.”
As she spoke, a lone black feather floated down. It boiled with rot and plague and drifted carelessly toward Kaizen.
“Oh, but there is a way to change every event.” The feather floated within feet of Kaizen. “To prevent it from happening, to change its outcome. You’d be surprised at what I’ve learned this Cycle.”
He lobbed the Beast’s head at the feather. They ignited into flames on contact. The resulting inferno splattered onto the bottom step of a staircase that led up to the thrones. It burned away at the white marble like acid and hissed like Famine’s speech.
“See? Nothing can last forever. Not even this temple.” Kaizen reveled in every opportunity to talk down to this old bag.
“And, War, how many more Cycles will you let Death prematurely end your global conflicts? Surely you feel how we feel.” Kaizen gestured towards the rebellion behind him. War smirked. Kaizen ascended the staircase, careful to avoid the smoldering remains. Conquest rose to his feet and drew his silver-and-gold warhammer.
Clumsy with just one arm, aren’t you?
“You dare lay foot on the Altar of the Gods!?” Conquest shouted.
“Your kind is forbidden from this holy space!” Famine wrenched out twin short swords from the bones of her wings. “Your very presence, it desssecrates me. I will plague you and your entire family in the next incarnation for this blasphemy and—”
“You will both permit The Seventh’s approach.”
Famine and Conquest both balked at War. Famine’s contorted face betrayed her bloodlust. Conquest’s betrayed his noble bloodline until he remembered to shut his gaping mouth. War slouched back into his throne and stretched out his legs before him with a smug grin. With his hand on the pommel, War wobbled around his battle ax. The edges of its two heads chiseled the white marble with each rotation.
It appears he agrees with our sentiments, Rukia. She growled back.
“If you two are of such faith,” War continued, “then you shouldn’t fear a Sin squaring off against the most powerful Horseman. Or would you? For Kami’s sake, shut yer fuckin’ gaper, Conquest.” Conquest shut his fucking mouth. “Call me sentimental, but I’d really like to see more carnage before I hibernate for millennia…”
“...And if either one of you interfere,” War stroked one long tug on his braided beard with his free hand and smiled warmly, “I’ll collect yer fuckin’ head.” Conquest sat down. Famine lingered for a moment, then snapped her wings shut so fast a gust of wind blew Kaizen’s long crimson hair in his eyes. He swept it back behind him and regained his vision, and she now sat on her throne, too.
That went surprisingly well, Little One.
All the pieces are out of play and now it’s just us on the board. Kaizen gave War a subtle, customary bow of respect, then ascended the final steps to the Altar with his katana, the Sound of Fury, still drawn. He halted ten paces from Death and the Earth.
“Death, I know you’re listening, you bastard. I challenge you to a duel of honor.”
He received no response. Fine. To Hell with honor.
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