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But my absolute favorite part was how Hama found a way to add yet another layer of complication to the old Hard Master assassination plot. To think that originally it was just a way to explain Snake and Storm's bloody rivalry. Storm Shadow was a bad ninja who murdered his sensei. But every time Hama revisited the story he added another character into the mix and some "surprising" complication. It wasn't Storm Shadow who killed Hard Master after all, it was Zartan! And the real target wasn't Hard Master, it was Snake-Eyes! Zartan just mistook Hard Master for him because their heartbeats were too similar. Except... Zartan was there just to cover for Firefly's ass because of course all these random Cobra guys were around back then and knew each other. Just how many people did Cobra Commander send after Snake-Eyes...? It started resembling a Monty Python sketch at a certain point. And I love how Firefly, this 7D chess playing forgotten ninja master, simply gave up after he saw a practice match between Snake-Eyes and Storm Shadow. He sensed Snake's power level when he was the bigger man and let his bro win. He went back to Cobra Commander who was an understanding boss who didn't simply tell his assassin to fuck off and finish the job when he came back with this ridiculous story about another ninja snuffing out a candle on the assassination target's head and that meaning Snake-Eyes was the better ninja.
