Koto announces the fight for Group D's second round: Hiei vs Mukuro. Hiei is already waiting on the battlefield; Mukuro meets him there.

Hokushin comments that since these two fighters are allies, "This match will benefit us."

But Yusuke hits his head with a fist and scolds him: "I keep telling you not to think on those terms." He also reminds Hokushin of his defeat in the previous round, and the bald man stutters, embarrassed.

Jin, Suzuki, Touya and Rinku try to convince Kurama to go to the infirmary, but the redhead refuses: "I want to watch the fight between Mukuro and my friend Hiei."

On the battlefield, Hiei unsheathes his katana. Mukuro asks him if he has found his answer: "You told me you don't have a reason to keep on living."

"I don't need an answer," Hiei snaps back. "Nothing matters to me anymore."

Hiei remembers what Mukuro told him about herself while he was recovering from the duel with Shigure. "Among all cores I've ever met, you are the one I feel more comfortable with; now it's your time to touch the core of my being," she told him then. "I was abandoned right after birth. Naturally, I was sold. I lived as a slave and never met my parents." Mukuro's flashbacks show images of her young self walking through a blizzard, wearing a short, ragged dress and shackles chained to her wrists and ankles.

In a stormy night, she ran away, throwing herself in a river to escape enslavement. The right half of her face was already deformed, bionic limbs replaced her right arm and leg. "I tried to get rid of the shackles, but I couldn't. So I decided to keep them, as a symbol of my hatred."

After that Mukuro started training hard, cloaking herself in hatred and sacrificing whomever stepped in her path. Other demons decided to follow her as her subordinates, and she eventually became as strong as Raizen. But still she kept the shackle around her left wrist.

Back to the present, Hiei initiates the combat, swinging his katana at Mukuro, who dodges easily. "What is your goal?" he asks. "Haven't you freed yourself from your disgusting past yet?" He hunts her in the air, trying to slash her, but she moves faster and avoids all strikes.

"Neither you nor me knows what love is," he thinks. "We never received it from anyone. All we've had were cold eyes staring at us." Again he charges with his sword and again Mukuro evades his attacks. "We go on living among all this revulsion," he muses. "I don't know why you and I hit it off."

At last Hiei manages to cut a slash at the collar of Mukuro's clothes. "The two of us, we live only for the fight, you hear me?" he tells her.

Mukuro jumps in the air and makes punching gestures, and Hiei is bombarded by explosions of scarlet energy. He uses the katana to cut through the energy and defend himself.

Watching the combat on the giant screen in the stadium, Koenma remarks at the intensity with which the two fighters are attacking, both physically and verbally.

Mukuro uses the same technique to explode two small mountains to Hiei's right and left, and huge chunks of sharp rock fly in his direction. He cuts them down with the katana and swings the sword at Mukuro again. She dodges, makes a gesture to punch him, but seems to reconsider and lands on the ground a little away from him, not attacking.

Hiei snorts. "Mukuro... why don't you use all your strength against me? Haven't you freed yourself from captivity exclusively to fight? That's something you should be proud of. If you can't, then there must be something holding you back."

"Enough," she warns him.

"You don't have any special technique. All you have is a woman's core. I pity you." Mukuro's ki flares violently around her in scarlet waves, but Hiei goes on: "You mean nothing!"

Mukuro punches him hard in the stomach, and her energy traverses his body, which is thrown back high and far, crashing against the top of a rocky mountain and rolling down back to the ground, painfully hitting the mountainside several times.

He lands on his knees, his sword gone, his tank top in rags. He tears it off and stands up, and wills black fire to come from his bandaged arm. In the stadium, Kurama's eyes widen as he recognizes the preparation for the Ensatsu Ken.

Mukuro recognizes that power too, and comments calmly: "If you came from the Ice Country, it is ironic that you were born with energy provided by fire."

"My power comes from having being born with a different nature," Hiei counters. "I will channel my hatred to melt the ice with my fire."

"Hatred?" she frowns. "But that's not it. You've already proved you don't hold grudges, Hiei."

He attacks with the Black Flames power, and Mukuro responds by sending her scarlet ki likewise. The two energies clash between them.

"What you carry is a great longing for your birthland, isn't it, Hiei?" Mukuro goes on, sending only enough energy to deflect Hiei's, and as his attack gradually fades into nothing, so does hers. When that round is over, he is breathing hard; she isn't.

Hiei changes tactics and charges with fast punches targeting her face, but she blocks them all with her arms. In the stadium, Botan thinks Hiei has the upper hand, since he's attacking more than Mukuro. "You think?" says Koenma. "I see it differently."

In fact, Mukuro doesn't seem to have any trouble evading Hiei's socks. "If you can't get me with your two eyes, why don't you use the Jagan, the eye conceived by Shigure's hands?" she challenges him. That enrages Hiei, who attacks more brutally, but Mukuro manages to capture his fist in her grasp easily. "You had the Jagan implanted so you could search for your teargem? Or to look for something else that you don't want to reveal?"

He tries to kick her face then, again not having any success.

"What you are looking for is something that is deep inside you," she thinks, jumping back and making a gesture that cuts a luminous line right beside Hiei, from the ground to high in the sky.

In the stadium, Touya wonders what that line can possibly be. Kurama explains that he has heard rumors about Mukuro's ability to cut space itself. Jin asks him what he thinks it will happen now, but Kurama says all depends on her plans in this crucial moment, and he admits not to know what those could be.

Mukuro cuts several lines near Hiei, who has to use his speed not to be hit. Soon they're surrounded by a dome of space-cutting lines and Hiei is therefore trapped inside. Twice his back brushes the lines, wounding the flesh.

Touya, Jin and Kurama watch anxiously. "If Hiei crosses one of those lines, his body will be torn into pieces," Kurama tells the others.

"Let it be over," Mukuro thinks. "I don't wanna fight you anymore. The more you insist on fighting, the narrower your space will get."

"I see I have no alternative," says Hiei, ripping off his bandanna and untying the bandages on his arm. Koenma's eyes widen; Kurama and Yusuke watch tensely; Koto is so frightened to recognize the preparation for the Kokuryuuha that she starts stuttering unintelligibly on her mike.

The Jagan opens and Hiei's body is covered by black flames. He points the arm with the Black Dragon tattoo towards Mukuro. "This power belongs to Makai. If I use it here, it becomes stronger, terrifying."

"Hiei, child of Ice," Mukuro challenges. "If you enjoy playing with fire, then come."

"Sincerely, I didn't want to use this against you," he admits, and the next moment he summons the Kokuryu.

Botan, Koenma and Yusuke flinch as they see the colossal Black Dragon erupting from Hiei's arm and soaring toward Mukuro. The beast dives to devour her, but she holds its mouth open using her hands and feet. The noise of fangs jarring against the steel of her shackle can he heard over the dragon's wild roar.

The Kokuryu flies high in the air, carrying Mukuro between its teeth. For a moment she seems to have trouble keeping its mouth open, but at last she screams Hiei's name, scarlet ki bursts from her hands, and the dragon's head is torn in two.

Yusuke cringes, watching the enormous dragon being slowly ripped apart, head to tail, as if made of fragile paper. When the ripping hits Hiei, time seems to slow down as his body is thrown back, obviously in great pain.

He falls face-first on the hard ground, and Mukuro lands near him. "Are you satisfied now, Hiei?"

Hiei gets on his feet with difficulty.

"This technique is too cruel on you, who were born in the Ice Country, Hiei; it's a burden too heavy on your body," she says. "Hiei, you lost."

Hiei acknowledges his defeat, and Koto declares the combat finished; Mukuro is the winner.

"I don't believe it," exclaims Botan. "Hiei lost the fight. He couldn't defeat Mukuro, not even with the Kokuryuuha."

"I think those two are okay now, Botan," says Koenma.

Kurama keeps watching the two fighters as they stand facing each other, and he utters Hiei's name in a low voice.

"Amazing," Yusuke sighs. "You guys are fantastic."

Back in the battlefield, Mukuro tells Hiei, "Honestly, the last thing I want to hear is that this defeat is an incentive for you to try and overcome me someday. This would be very sad."

"I know," he agrees. "I don't want to fight you anymore."

She looks down at her left wrist and is surprised to see cracks in her shackle.

"All hatred is water under the bridge," Hiei says. "You don't need that anymore."

The shackle breaks and falls to the ground.

"It's still too soon for us to throw everything away," he tells her. "What do you think?"

She agrees. Hiei tries to walk to her but can hardly stand. She helps him to kneel down and holds him in a loose embrace. They both close their eyes.