#sanzu

"It's about consequences."

(300 words, based on an Unlimited event)

Shibuya Inferno.

Everyone is fighting in the tournament for their own reasons. For their own way in. Takemichi for his girl. Baji and Chifuyu for the tiger. The Haitanis on Kisaki's chess board for Roppongi. All of them clawing at the outside of Under Shibuya trying to find a door. But Sanzu?

He's already inside.

He takes a drag from his cigarette, exhaling a plume of smoke. He doesn't give a shit about Shibuya. Or Roppongi. It isn't even about revenge. Not really.

It's about consequences.

The consequences of dismantling the only real family Sanzu ever had. And he's already counted every load-bearing beam in Sinker's operation. He knows which ones will bend and which ones will break.

He's deciding which match to light first. He's not the only one running the math. There's someone else counting the same beams, for reasons that don't concern him. Sanzu observes him the way you observe the weather.

But the timing isn't ripe yet. No, the conditions have to be perfect. The dry tinder. Which way the wind happens to blow. The gasoline and the lighter. The way it all has to align for Under Shibuya to implode and fold in on itself.

Sanzu has patience in spades. This is, after all, a long game. Years in the making. Nothing is going to stand in his way. Not Sinker, not the foreclosed future of what Toman could have been. What its leader could have been. What Sanzu himself could have been.

Tonight is just one piece moving on the board. One move closer to tsumi. And then the king has nowhere to go. Game over.

Sanzu stubs out his cigarette, exhaling the remnants of that last drag. He pulls his black face mask back up onto his face and disappears like a phantom into the shadows.