Chapter 27

The two men threw blow after blow at each other, Jason landing a right hook to Yuzo’s cheek, causing him to fly to the side. Catching himself before hitting the ground, the cuts on Yuzo’s face led to streaks of blood mixing with dirt as he rolled down his face. As he fell, his armor chipped and clothes tattered.

“H.”

Appearing in front of Jason, Yuzo, in quick succession, landed two blows to Jason’s wounded gut, causing him to lurch forward coughing blood.

“O.”

Jason gripped at his throat with one arm, pushing the vomit and blood back down. With his other, he parried Yuzo’s strikes: a left jab, parried. His right cross slipped. An uppercut tanked, barely being skimmed by Yuzo's volley of strikes.

‘I got him.’

“R.”

Grabbing his brother's shoulders in a moment of reprieve, Jason slammed his forehead into Yuzo’s nose, causing blood to pour from his face, causing him to grit his teeth. Cracking the bone back into place, Yuzo started to smile, licking the blood coating his teeth. “I’m not letting you get another letter.”

In an instant, Yuzo had teleported himself onto the roof of Yama’s palace. Jason, bewildered at his sudden retreat, called up to Yuzo, coughing blood as his crest flared wildly. “Who’s the coward now?!”

Out of earshot, Yuzo whispered mudras to himself, raising his hand to the sky:

“Vajra Indra-Sakra: The Sun.”

From the abyss of the sky overhead, as if it had been pierced by an arrow, rays of sun cut through the fabric of the night, causing the snowflakes and snowfall to melt as light from the heavens was cast upon Naraka.

Yuzo screamed as if he were to tear his throat.

“This is my win! This is my world, Jason! My place to be the hero! I won't let you take this from me!”

The beams of light coalesced around his hand, forming into an orb, compressing itself smaller, smaller, yet smaller still.

After a few moments, the ball of energy spiraled in his hand, emitting a heat and energy that cascaded across the ground. The raksha, Jason, and even Yama himself stood still.

“So this is what the sun looks like. It's beautiful, no doubt.” Yama said, arms folded with a soft smile on his face.

Breathing deeply, Jason’s aura flared: ‘This is it.’

Gazing up at Yuzo, battered and falling towards him, Jason’s expression softened.

‘I have to beat him again. In a moment like this, why am I feeling hesitant? Even as he’s trying to kill me… after I promised I’d live for myself…’

Jason’s teeth clenched before a knowing smile pressed across his face.

‘Who am I kidding? This fight was over before it began.’

He cracked his neck before readying his stance.

'It's a pain though; I wish we would've been able to stick around a little longer. I could see him through college, watch him and Emma patch things up, and spend just a bit more time with my friends down here.

‘Honestly though…’

Yuzo began to fall from the palace, throwing his arm forward as the ball of energy in his hand began to scorch the ground below, blackening the inlaid stone of the palace.

As he reached Jason, Yuzo looked into his eyes and slammed the ball of flame into him. Jason didn't fight back as it tore through his letterman jacket, then his jersey.

The flames melted his silver chain, searing the metal “Y” into his skin. The blaze eventually burned into his skin.

Then, they melted through his chest, turning the burn scar across his chest into ash.

As the dust settled, the brothers stood together as silhouettes to onlookers. The light from Jason’s crest had faded; Yuzo held up his limp body with his gauntlet, which had nested itself directly through Jason’s chest.

“I guess… That’s match point, huh?” Jason spoke through a waning breath, the air around him singed with the smell of burnt flesh as the heavenly light faded. It left only the black of the sky and a resumed snowfall to punctuate the silence.

Lifting his hand as he shuddered, Jason reached his hand up to Yuzo's head, rustling his hair.

Then, he smiled. Looking into his brother's eyes.

“Thanks, Yuzo. I had fun. I...”

Jason's head then dropped.

His body had gone limp, sliding off of Yuzo’s arm and hitting the scorched ground with a soft thud.

‘Honestly, I had fun letting it all go for a while... But I wish that I was able to tell him I’m sorry. Tell him that I love him, no matter what he chooses.’

As the light faded from Jason’s eyes, Yuzo’s lip quivered as he began to fall into an anguished sob, whispering to nobody but himself endless apologies.

…

“Jason!!!”

Within moments, Biji had arrived to where the brothers had fallen, pulling Jason into her arms. Blood and ash pooled onto her robes from his chest.

Tears started to stream down her face as she slammed her hand into his still and tensed body.

“You asshole…! You promised me; you just promised me… And then you go and do this?”

Biji’s crest began to glow with both the cosmic light of Ukali and Biji’s blue light as electricity surged through Jason’s body in vain.

By the time Panka, Uddi, and Loba arrived, Biji and Yuzo had started to cease their respective sobbing and gone still.

As the three looked on in a pained silence at the corpse of their friend, the cosmic light of Jason’s crest in their bodies began to fade, pooling around his chest for a moment before fading up into the sky.

…

‘It feels like there's something I'm forgetting here… something important.’

Touching his face softly as his warm breath was smothered by a black cushion, Jason found himself in his childhood apartment. He could feel how much younger he was in this place as he hid behind a black couch cushion, peering into the living room.

In front of him, his parents stood in the harsh light of the living room, arguing animatedly.

“You’re awful, you know that? You treat the children like they’re supposed to do all the things you want to do and be who you want them to be! I'm sick of watching you try to turn my sons into screw-ups like you!”

“I treat the boys poorly? Neither of them are even 6 years old yet, Tsukino, and you’re already screaming at them daily because they don't do enough for you! But yeah, I’m the selfish one. I want my boys to succeed! To become strong, instead of becoming weepy little servants for their mother!”

‘... I forgot about this fight. It feels like it was a lifetime ago. Why am I here, now of all times? Reliving such a pointless fight they had?’

A feeling of wetness started to run down Jason’s hand.

Turning behind him, scrunched deep into the couch cushions, was Yuzo.

As Jason looked at his brother, he didn't see the man that he would eventually become: the lack of light in his eyes and the age and exhaustion of his face.

He saw a soft, squishy young boy, whose cheeks had become red and eyes glassy with tears as he desperately tried to stop himself from crying.

Jason’s eyes went wide, his throat dry.

‘I get it now. I get why I'm here.’

Standing up, Jason lifted himself from behind the couch, pulling Yuzo up with him as he approached his parents. The two continued at each other's throats before feeling a small hand on each of their legs, causing them to pause.

Looking down at their small, innocent son, the two began to tear up, reaching for Jason as they burned away.

The children were left alone, standing in a room that, too, began to burn away. until they were left in Jason's dying mind, which began to shift from one scene to another;

The basketball court. The kitchen. The apartment. The championship court. Yuzo’s room. The mountains of Naraka. The warehouse.

Jason looked at his sniffling younger brother on the floor as he wept and held his chest, the child’s breathing hyper and dry.

Eventually though, the shifting stopped; they were back in the wooden room at the hideout.

Softly, Jason put his hand on a crying Yuzo’s shoulder.

“I'm sorry, Yuzo.”

Looking up at his older brother, the baby version of Yuzo, too, began to burn away.

“I’m sorry for what I’ve done for you. For making you my excuse to die.”

Clenching his fist, the hideout, too, was surrounded in an inferno, as Jason appeared to himself as his adult form.

“I’m done running, for the first time in my life…”

As everything burned away, he could hear the voice of Biji and the others calling his name.

‘I want to live. Not for them, not for you, but for me.”