Left with no choice, the Clente family, unable to hold their position any longer, began a retreat. After abandoning more than half their dead, they escaped from Japantown.
While the Kiryu-gumi and the Clente family were caught in a brutal gang brawl, neither side knew that just a short distance away, inside a nearby high-rise, several people were watching the entire scene unfold through massive floor-to-ceiling windows. They had witnessed everything from beginning to end.
Leo walked into the room and stretched out his arms. The Falchion armor detached itself from his body and transford into a sleek silver suitcase, resting quietly on the floor.
"Good show?"
"That was fucking glorious," Jackie said, almost dancing with excitent. V and Lucy, being won, acted a bit more reserved, but from the looks on their faces, it was clear they were equally thrilled. Their gazes toward Leo now carried a hint of admiration and respect.
V couldn't help asking, "How the hell did you pull it off?"
"That? Not that hard, really. You could've done it too."
After learning from Rogue that the Clente family and the Kiryu-gumi were set to et at the Imperial Hotel, Leo began planning. His plan didn't require anyone else—he could handle it alone. Though the intel said the eting would happen at 9 PM, Leo arrived two hours early. It wasn't that he didn't trust Rogue; it was simply that things often didn't go as expected, and arriving early reduced the chances of unforeseen variables.
He didn't walk straight into the Imperial Hotel. Instead, he hid in a location where he could observe the entrance. Sure enough, the Kiryu-gumi arrived early. The Clente family, on the other hand, showed up right on ti. After a round of friendly discussion at the entrance, the two sides entered together.
It was at that mont Leo activated the optical camouflage of his exosuit and slipped inside with them. mbers of the Clente family and the Kiryu-gumi each stood guard on either side of the hotel entrance, not fully blocking it. Leo didn't even need to do anything flashy like climb walls—he just strolled right in.
He followed Kiryu Zanma and the Clente leaders all the way to the luxury suite. While one of Zanma's n scanned the suite for bugs, the others waited outside. When the scan was complete and everyone else stepped inside, Leo activated Ti Zero, entering the room without touching a single soul.
By the ti the effect of Ti Zero ended, Leo was already quietly standing inside the luxury suite. And yet, from start to finish, neither Kiryu Zanma nor the Clente mbers noticed that soone who shouldn't have been there was now in the room with them. Leo maintained his optical camouflage and stayed hidden throughout their discussion.
When Clente finally conceded and agreed to pay compensation to Kiryu Zanma, and both sides reached consensus and prepared to leave, Leo revealed himself. He killed Kiryu Zanma and his three bodyguards.
Leo had the ability to wipe out everyone in the room—but he deliberately didn't. His goal was to make the Kiryu-gumi believe that Clente had assassinated Zanma. That's why, after seizing Clente, he neither hard him nor left the room. He simply stood at the door in full Falchion armor, which could shrug off even rockets. So even if his body was exposed, he wasn't worried about one of Clente's n pulling out a bazooka and blowing his head off.
He didn't speak to Clente—there was no need. All he had to do was stand there and wait for soone to hear the gunfire and rush in. Whether it was Kiryu-gumi or Clente's n didn't matter. Even if Clente's crew opened the door first, Leo had ways to get them to turn on each other.
As it turned out, he didn't need the backup plan. When his helt's built-in tactical HUD showed two Kiryu-gumi soldiers approaching, Leo calculated the timing and distance, then shoved Clente aside. As expected, the mont Clente was freed, one of his n impulsively opened fire on Leo.
Even though Leo's exosuit could withstand bullets, standing still wouldn't push the plan forward. He dodged the incoming rounds, which then struck and killed one of the Kiryu-gumi n who had co to check out the noise.
What followed fell into place naturally. No matter how hard Clente tried to explain himself, the fact remained—they had killed a mber of the Kiryu-gumi. Add to that the corpses of Kiryu Zanma and his three bodyguards lying dead in the suite, while Clente and his people hadn't even lost a hair… What were they going to say?
That Kiryu Zanma wasn't killed by them, but by a mysterious armored figure? That the deaths at the door were just a misunderstanding?
Would anyone buy that?
Unless they had the script in advance, no one would believe such a ridiculous coincidence.
Soone might ask, "Wait, wouldn't there be surveillance in a luxury suite like that? Can't they just check the footage to see who really did it?"
But that's the thing—rooms like those were ant for private business between big shots. Of course, there was no surveillance installed. It's like how a CEO doesn't install a cara in his office to let the security team monitor his every move.
And so, just as Leo had planned, when the Kiryu-gumi's wakagashira returned to headquarters with the surviving mbers, they imdiately declared war on the Clente family.
Despite Clente's repeated denials and efforts to communicate through various interdiaries—including a ssage passed to Wakako Okada in Westbrook, hoping to broker a ceasefire—the response from the Kiryu-gumi was three simple words:
"Tora Tora Tora!"
The sa code the Japanese Navy had sent to headquarters after the surprise success at Pearl Harbor in WWII. The aning was obvious: no peace, only war.
The entire Kiryu-gumi was now consud by a fanatical desire for revenge. Even if soone within began to suspect sothing was off, no one dared voice it—not out of fear of being wrong, but out of fear of tenchū—heaven's punishnt.
In their world, to question the clan's vengeance was to risk being seen as a traitor to divine justice itself. And that kind of doubt didn't earn a slap on the wrist—it earned a bullet.
Clente's gestures of goodwill were all ignored. He was left with no options. Though he had never wanted to lead the family into a two-front war, it was now unavoidable. He could only try his best to prepare.
What happened at the Imperial Hotel in Japantown didn't go unnoticed. The Manuel, Juan, Gonzalez, Hernandez families, and Gustavo of the Valentinos all saw it as a rare opportunity. If things went well, they might even drive the Clente family out of Heywood entirely.
Currently, the Clente family occupied Vista del Rey—one of Heywood's three districts. Technically, Heywood had always been the domain of the xican-Arican community, and Vista del Rey should've belonged to the Valentinos. But a few years ago, a significant internal conflict broke out among the major Valentino families.
That civil war deepened the rift between them, further fracturing the Valentinos. It was during this period that the Clente family made their move and took over the area.
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