Sid exited the vehicle and walked over in Travis' direction. Before he got too far, he stopped and picked something from the ground. It was Blood Berry, the beam katana that the guard stole and tried to use against Travis.

"Forget something?" he said, throwing it to Travis, who caught it with his right hand. "You should watch your step."

"I got a little careless is all," Travis responded. "Doesn't matter. I'm still alive, right?"

"True, and I noticed you left those executives alive too. Are we going against company policy here?"

"Company policy my ass. I don't give a shit about what the association thinks about the way I fight. I got my own rules."

"So I see. Tidas warned me about that. No matter; we all have our own rules and practices as assassins. There's no point in relying on someone else to tell you how to fight, right?"

"That's right. Seems like you don't agree with your boss on everything, eh?"

Sid chuckled. "Well, hate to say it, but it's my job to follow orders. As the assassin ranked last place on the list, I have to test each individual challenger to see if they're worthy to compete. So far, none of them have ever defeated me in a duel."

Travis activated Rose Nasty again and adopted an offensive stance. "Well, I hope you're ready to meet the first!"

Sid reached into his pockets and pulled out two small cylinders, one in each hand. The cylinders opened up, expanded, and grew what appeared to be receivers on one end and a beam emitter on the other. A bright orange beam emerged from the emitter. It was just as Travis suspected; they were beam katanas.

"Dual beam katanas, eh?" Travis asked.

"That's right. Seems you're not the only one who got a hold of such a weapon. This weapon is called the Hyacinth. My trusty pair of beam katanas."

"Aha. Can't wait to see them in action!"


Travis tried to rush Sid with a running slash, but missed when Sid dodged the attack with a quick sidestep. He quickly wheeled around and blocked a slash from Sid, and then found himself blocking a violent and rapid flurry of blows that seemed uncharacteristic of someone using such bulky weapons. It was all Travis could do just to stand his ground.

Travis found an opening where he could back off and regain his stance. Sid's combination of speed and power caught him off-guard and put him in an uneasy defensive position. He made another rush towards Sid, this time attempting a double downward strike to increase the probability of a hit. Sid dodged the first slash and blocked the second one, leaving Travis in an awkward and vulnerable situation.

Travis attempted to correct himself by bringing his sword back and striking low, hoping to connect with a double upward strike; however, Sid performed a quick sidestep to dodge both swipes, again leaving Travis vulnerable. Sid took this opportunity to unleash another flurry of strikes on Travis, who was totally unprepared and frantically blocked as many hits as he could.

Travis backed off again. Damn it, he's too fast. I can't break him. I'm gonna need a new strategy.

He moved toward Sid using gallop-like steps, using both caution and momentum in an attempt to throw off Sid's concentration. When he got close, he performed a wide variety of horizontal and vertical slashes, striking from as many angles as he could.

Sid blocked every slash perfectly, but was caught off-guard when Travis dealt a flying back kick to his chest. It connected and sent him reeling back a few steps, and Travis immediately jumped in and dealt multiple slashes, putting Sid on the defensive.

Sid jumped back to regroup. "You're not bad. Most other assassins would've been dead by now."

"Yeah, well, I'm not most assassins," Travis scoffed. "Don't forget, I've reached top rank twice in a row."

"That's true. But now, it's time to get serious." Sid clamped the two katana hilts together. They clicked into position, and the sword beams combined into each other to form a much larger and longer blade. At this point, it had assumed the form of a broadsword.

"Damn," Travis said. "You guys don't fuck around, do you?"

"No, we sure don't. This will be the true test."

Sid charged forward and swung the Hyacinth straight down. Travis rolled out of the way and the Hyacinth struck the ground with full force, creating a large crater and setting off several car alarms in the first and second levels of the garage.

Holy shit, Travis thought. Can't let that thing touch me. I bet I can beat him if I use the weight of his sword against him.

Sid charged again, and Travis met him halfway with a downward strike. Sid blocked it, then struck with a backward horizontal swipe. The force sent Travis reeling when he tried to block the attack.

"Come on, Travis," Sid taunted. "You're better than this. Attack me!"

He came forward with the broadsword once more and swung. Travis dodged the swing, then the return swing, then deflected the third swing with both katanas. This put Sid off-balance and gave Travis enough of an opening to rush in and drive one of his katanas through Sid's stomach.

Dropping the broadsword to the ground, Sid tried to speak through the guttural sounds and the blood dripping from his mouth. "Amazing…you really are the Crownless King. I had…a feeling it would end like this."

"It's been fun," Travis replied. "But I have to take the rank sometime."

"Yeah, I know. I'm happy, though. I got to see you battle, in the way that I had always heard about from the previous ranking fights. Now that was a true honor." He coughed up some more blood.

"Yeah. Thanks for the battle. Good night....Sid." Travis pulled the one katana out of Sid's stomach and, with the other, sliced his head straight off. It flew away and rolled right under one of the parked cars, whose alarms had all but ceased.


A black limousine came down from the second level of the parking garage. It stopped in front of Travis, and Sylvia stepped out of the backseat, as did the NUAA corpse disposal crew.

"Congratulations, Travis," Sylvia said. "You are ranked twenty-fifth by the NUAA."

"I have to admit, he gave me quite a sweat," Travis replied. "He definitely knew what he was doing."

"Yes. It's such a shame that he had to die for the sake of something like that."

Travis glared at her. "Oh, you're one to talk. You're the one who hosts these fights. Hell, you fucking killed one of my opponents yourself in the last game."

"Well, you know how the rules are. We don't allow mercy amongst assassins."

"Don't give me that shit again. I told you before, they're our fights. We set our own rules, and we end them the way we wanna end them. I hope we're clear on that this time around."

Travis started towards the exit. On his way out, he watched the disposal crew clean up Sid's body. It gave him a feeling of intense anger, a feeling he hadn't felt in over a year. But it was all coming back to him now; he knew at this point, this feeling would be coming back to him a lot in the near future.