The crimson Orochinagi and the Yin-Yang Orochinagi slash collided under the horrified gazes of tens of thousands of spectators.
In the end, Cloud's even more "unreasonable" fusion of two divine bloodlines prevailed!
The gold-and-purple slash cleaved the crimson flames cleanly in two!
The residual energy slammed into Kyo Kusanagi's disbelieving chest!
"Pfft—!"
Kyo spewed blood and flew backward like a kite with its string cut...
He had lost.
Lost without understanding how.
Lost so completely he was questioning his entire existence.
He lay amid the rubble, staring at Cloud who was calmly lowering his hands, then at the purple flames flickering on Cloud's left palm—flames that were hauntingly familiar...
Kyo's mind went blank.
"Why... how...?" He forced out the words.
Meanwhile, in the spectator stands.
In the Yagami Team's rest area.
Iori Yagami watched that purple flame—his unique, one-of-a-kind purple flame—bloom even more bewitchingly in another man's hands...
For the first time, that perpetually arrogant face showed... the blank expression of someone who'd just been NTR'd.
His brain was filled with nothing but ten thousand alpacas stampeding across the plains.
"My... fire...?"
He murmured to himself, feeling his entire worldview shatter in this moment.
When Cloud's voice—dripping with smugness and Versailles energy—floated down like a final verdict: "You honor me with the match"...
The entire Tokyo Dome fell into a silence lasting dozens of seconds, as if time itself had frozen.
Defending his title!
Cloud, the "Brick Warrior" from South Town, this enigmatic and melodrama-ridden "second young master" of the Kusanagi clan, had once again claimed the KOF championship in even more dominant, even more bizarre fashion than the year before!
With a textbook-perfect, practically legendary clash of titans, he had defended the honor of the King of Fighters!
"He... won?"
"Holy crap! He won! Cloud won again!"
"That final move—that fire-and-ice combo attack—what even was that?! Absolutely badass!"
After the brief silence, applause and screaming exploded like a tsunami, nearly ripping the Tokyo Dome's ceiling apart!
Streamers and flowers rained from above, transforming the arena into a sea of celebration!
Yet within that feverish ocean, a few people stood frozen as if petrified.
...
In the rubble of the arena.
Kyo Kusanagi—who had just experienced his brief moment of "mid-battle breakthrough, protagonist reclaimed"—now lay staring at the sky with a vacant expression.
His mind was blank.
He didn't care about winning or losing anymore. Didn't care about the deafening cheers.
Only one deeply philosophical, utterly baffling question remained in his head—
"Why...?"
"Why would my lost-and-found little brother... be using my eternal rival's azure flames?"
"And why does he use them even more smoothly than the goddamn original?!"
He couldn't figure it out.
He really couldn't.
Unless...
An utterly absurd yet somehow "logical" thought struck his nearly-crashed brain like lightning!
Unless...
My "little brother" isn't just my dad's handiwork?
What if he's the shared "love child" of my dad... and Iori Yagami's dad?!
HOLY SHIT!!!
Once this thought appeared, it galloped through his not-so-pure mind like a wild horse!
He was already mentally writing the scene—
On a dark and stormy night, his suave and dashing father Saisyu Kusanagi and Iori's equally wild and cool father Yagami Tsuki got drunk together, and then...
"Urgh—!"
Kyo felt his stomach lurch violently.
He thought he might have stumbled upon some earth-shattering secret capable of upending the entire "Three Sacred Treasures" worldview!
...
Spectator stands. Yagami Team rest area.
Iori Yagami—the proud, solitary "Child of the Moon"—had also plunged into deep self-doubt.
He watched the man on stage, golden divine flames blazing on his right hand, purple azure flames on his left, and those eyes usually filled with madness and killing intent now held... the same "confusion" as Kyo's.
He'd heard about Cloud's "origins."
Saisyu Kusanagi's "wild oats" sown outside the clan.
At first, he'd scoffed at the idea.
But after witnessing Cloud's pure "Flames of Kusanagi," he'd grudgingly accepted it.
After all, that shameless old Saisyu doing something like this? Totally expected.
But...
But now, what the hell was this?!
How could a Kusanagi bastard son use the Yagami clan's most closely-guarded secret—Yagami Azure Flames?!
Unless...
A thought even more absurd, more melodramatic, and more saturated with NTR energy than Kyo's exploded in Iori's brain!
Unless...
My... my mother... gave my father... a nice "Kusanagi-green" hat?!
And I... actually have... a half-brother with a different father?!
KA-BOOM!!!
Iori felt his worldview shatter completely, then get stomped into the ground a few dozen times and spat upon for good measure.
He was already mentally writing the scene—
His noble, elegant mother, on a night of thunder and rain, and that visiting "challenger" Saisyu Kusanagi, engaged in certain indescribable, forbidden acts of betrayal...
And then... Cloud was born?!
"No... IMPOSSIBLE!!!"
Iori's fists clenched until his knuckles cracked! The purple azure flames within him grew wildly unstable from this extreme psychological shock!
He felt like... he was going insane.
He'd rather believe his father and Saisyu were secret lovers who somehow produced Cloud, that hybrid, than accept that his father might be wearing a lovely green meadow on his head!
...
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