Shingen Yashida's swordsmanship was no match for Isshin Ashina—his technique still had room to grow, and limited talent and modern life's limits on martial training held him back. But had he been born in the Sengoku period, his skill might well have rivaled Genichiro Ashina's. The environment simply hadn't allowed him to reach that ceiling.
While Bella and Natasha watched from a distance, the battle below burned fierce and hot.
Shingen led from the front. He swept his twin katanas in wide, relentless arcs, letting out a sharp shout with each kill. He crashed through the ninja lines like a storm—left, right, forward, back—and the sight of it lit a fire under the yakuza enforcers. They came howling in behind him, shoulder to shoulder, overwhelming everything the ninja threw at them until the defensive formations began to buckle and give ground.
Then, from the rear of the ninja lines, a tall, powerfully built figure stepped forward.
Wolverine—Logan. His eyes burned a deep, savage red. From the backs of both hands, three adamantium claws extended with a sharp, familiar snikt.
"Useless. Every last one of you," he snarled at the ninja around him.
Natasha frowned. "Why is Logan here? Is this something you arranged?"
"No," Bella said slowly. "I had nothing to do with this. Something about him feels... off. Hard to tell from here. Let's get closer."
She couldn't pin it down—Logan just felt wrong somehow. Dissonant, like a note played slightly out of tune.
A moment later, Logan and Shingen Yashida faced each other, and the fight began. Both sides—ninja and yakuza alike—stepped back without being told, leaving a clear circle for the two leaders to settle things.
Bella and Natasha watched from the shadows.
After only a handful of exchanges, Natasha's expression shifted into open suspicion. "Logan trained me for a while, back when I was younger. His fighting style then was nothing like this."
Bella had already formed a theory. "Before, he relied on his mutant ability—all power and speed. Now he's fighting with technique and precision?"
"Exactly." Natasha's voice was serious. "The Logan I knew was all heat and momentum, a fighter who threw himself into battle on instinct. This one has the air of an assassin."
While they analyzed the scene, the fight below was tilting heavily in one direction.
Shingen's swordsmanship was excellent—intricate, responsive, adaptive. Against Logan's claws, he held his own, defending calmly while searching for openings.
The problem was that his opponent was better. Sharper technique, faster reflexes—and most critically, no regard for his own survival.
It was like fighting something with infinite health. You couldn't wear it down.
Every time Logan's claws connected, Shingen's body took real damage—stamina dropping, reactions slowing, muscles failing. And Logan? Stab him through the chest and he was back to full strength in under two seconds.
A seasoned fighter with a full toolkit—technique, power, speed, experience—combined with effectively unlimited health. Shingen Yashida now understood exactly how brutal that combination was.
The metallic clash of steel rang out in rapid succession—clang, clang, clang—as Shingen held on with both hands on his katana, defending against Logan's relentless, storm-like assault with painstaking care.
After twenty-plus exchanges, his left leg had been pierced through. Three separate gashes from adamantium claws opened in his side. The only thing that had bought him any time at all was the fact that his own katana was also forged from adamantium, which gave Logan a reason—if only a small one—to be cautious. Without that, he'd already be dead.
Blood loss compounded by sustained combat had nearly spent him. His head swam. The katanas that had once felt like extensions of his arms were growing impossibly heavy; he could barely lift them.
That was the bleak reality of fighting a near-invincible opponent as an ordinary human, no matter how skilled.
The closer Bella drew, the more clearly she could feel it—something churning inside Logan's body, or perhaps his soul. Two wildly different presences: a seething, feral heat and a glacial, creeping cold. The combination made no sense. It was wrong in a way that went beyond the physical.
She had noticed something similar in the streets of Tokyo earlier in the week, but she'd been... distracted at the time, her attention not fully collected. Now, examining him clearly, the wrongness was unmistakable.
Logan looked like a man whose body had been seized by an external consciousness. Mental domination was one possibility. Possession was another. Or something had simply taken over entirely—a full displacement. She couldn't determine which from the outside.
She tried what had worked with Sadako: reaching gently toward the consciousness sleeping beneath the surface. Nothing. The attempt failed.
Logan's mind was a storm of fractured signals. Alongside the cold, controlling presence that had claimed the body, there was a tangle of other half-awake mental traces—fragments and echoes too jumbled to sort through. Without disturbing the controlling presence, Bella couldn't isolate Logan's own sense of self from all the noise.
She pressed her lips together in frustration. Based on what she was sensing, Logan—even without external possession—probably wasn't entirely mentally stable on his best day. He'd just been keeping it carefully hidden.
Her probe was subtle, the psychic disturbance barely a whisper. But it was enough. "Logan" caught it.
His eyes moved—a quick, sharp scan of the surrounding area. He'd felt the surveillance, and more: he recognized the distinctive signature of that particular psychic presence.
It took him back to Izu Ōshima. To the woman in the tengu mask with the greatsword at her back.
He had always assumed Bella and Shingen Yashida were working together—everything he'd seen pointed that way, from subduing Sadako to the melee on Izu Ōshima to the battle happening right now. Still reeling from the chaotic influence of Logan's fractured subconscious and the serious wounds he'd sustained before this, the entity paused its assault on Shingen and quietly began tracking for a new enemy who might be about to enter the field.
Ogun.
His counter-scan reached her at the same moment. Neither of them had the edge on the other—if you could find me, I could find you. Psychic signatures couldn't be faked. Bella had never expected this thing to still be alive, let alone to have taken up residence inside Logan's body.
"You've spotted something," Natasha murmured. "What are you going to do?"
The two of them were lying flat on a rooftop at no more than 50 meters (164 ft) from the battle. Natasha was wrapped in her high-tech stealth suit; Bella had layered an invisibility ward over herself.
Bella exhaled slowly. Ogun had forcibly seized Logan's body, and the strain had cost his spiritual form significantly—but what he'd gained in the exchange was a body of extraordinary physical capability. That more than compensated for the damage.
Without Magneto's particular abilities, engaging Wolverine directly was going to be a serious problem.
The tools Bella had for dealing with spirits and souls might not be enough against Ogun on equal footing. She needed outside help.
"Shh." She pressed a finger to her lips, then launched herself backward from the rooftop in one silent motion, putting five hundred meters (1,640 ft) between herself and the fight before pulling out her phone.
She dialed Professor Charles in New York.
Quickest path to a solution.
"Professor. Are you familiar with Wolverine—Logan? He's run into some trouble."
"Go ahead."
Bella kept her voice low and walked him through everything she'd observed in Hiroshima—Logan's behavior, the wrongness in his psyche, all of it.