Rei and Uriel Explode (レイとウリエル爆発 / Rei to Urieru Bakuhatsu)

Rei stepped forward, and the storm lost its grip on him. Blue white fire crawled over his skin in living veins, starting at his wrists, racing to his shoulders, and pooling in the hollow of his throat until his entire silhouette glowed like a furnace wrapped in rain. Every drop that landed turned to steam before it could slide down, hissing off his collarbone in thin, angry curls that mixed with the smell of scorched earth and wet iron. Mud bubbled under his boots, the ground itself recoiling from the heat.

Hajime tried to stand, but the cracked rib bit down hard, folding him back to one knee. Izumi was already there, sliding a palm between his shoulder blades to steady him, green light flickering beneath her skin like moss in a snowstorm. Her eyes never left Rei.

Across the crater, the Forsakers closed the distance, boots sinking into the swamp that used to be moss.

Shinji reached him first, two hundred pounds of scar tissue and bad decisions, cleaver raised high. He swung like he wanted to split the world in half. Rei slipped inside the arc and fed the liver a straight punch, then another, then a third, all to the same bruised square of flesh. Shinji’s lungs collapsed to a wheeze, blood frothing at the corners of his mouth. He still reached for Rei’s neck, trying to smother the fire with raw weight and muscle.

Rei clamped the back of Shinji’s skull with one hand and drove a knee up effortlessly. The impact was a wet, hollow sound. Teeth shattered against teeth. Blood poured over Rei's knuckles and wrists. Shinji dropped to his knees, exhaled a ragged snarl, and stayed there, one hand clawing at the mud like he could still fight.

Orange wires snapped through the air next, glowing like heated steel. One nicked Rei’s throat and carved a shallow line across his collarbone, blood welling hot and immediate. Another sliced his thigh, parting skin in a perfect curl that peeled back like wet paper. He caught the throat wire with an open palm, steel biting deep into flesh until it grated on tendon. He yanked. Takumi skated forward on mud, boots slipping, eyes wide with fury and pain. Rei met him with a powerful uppercut to the solar plexus. Breath died in Takumi’s chest. Rei ripped the wire free, flesh and all, and flung him sideways through a curtain of false bodies. The mirage shattered into glittering shards that dissolved in the downpour, Takumi landing hard on his cracked ribs with a sound like breaking wood.

Golden silhouettes rose from the flanks, hands of light reaching for wrists, ankles, eyes. They left blistering handprints where they touched, searing through Rei’s sleeves and raising welts on his forearms. He slipped through the angles, knuckles turning a face to dust, elbow writing across a projection’s temple. He stepped onto a shoulder of light and dropped both heels into the mud.

Then the world remembered gravity.

Iovah stepped forward, and the air turned to wet iron. Rain hung between blinks. Mud tried to set. Rei’s boots sank ankle deep, the suction pulling at his calves. Iovah threw a short right with the kind of authority men spend lives earning. Rei shaved the line and answered with three punches, one to the ribs, second to the chest, with the third sinking and staying, knuckles grinding cartilage until Iovah’s breath hitched. Iovah’s head came in tight, forehead splitting Rei’s lip wide open. Blood flooded his tongue and mouth. He spat and showed his teeth.

The pressure bled off in a ring of force. Hanging rain fell all at once. Iovah’s stance slid half a step. Rei’s palm flew under the sternum and lifted him airborne, causing him to land outward in a dark flower of mud as he let out a guttural sound.

Shinji crashed into Rei's hip for a tackle, arms cinched, trying to smother the aura under mud and muscle. Rei sprawled through shoulders and spine, hooked an underarm, and turned. Shinji’s shoulders hit first. Rei’s elbow found the back of his neck. A wet crunch sound followed. Blood and rainwater mixed into a pink slurry that ran down Shinji’s spine.

A blade of sound zoomed in on a kidney. Rei palm slammed it. The knife screamed as it met the earth. He shoved Hikari away by the collarbone. With a force so strong it gave with a soft pop, her arm hung wrong. Blood streaked her jaw from Izumi’s earlier vine.

“You wanted to play, right?” Rei said, voice low and steady. “You'll die right here.”

Light formed into a shield and met a straight punch, blowing apart into warm grit that vanished into the rain. Rei kept Iovah in view. Gravity rebuilt, heavier now. He walked through it, boots dragging but never stopping.

They traded like men who knew the cost. Elbows and short punches, forearms grinding against forearms. Blood jumped from split knuckles. Teeth clicked. Ribs shifted. Rei’s knees kept finding the same rib until breath scraped raw. Iovah anchored and answered with a hook that lifted Rei an inch off the ground. He landed laughing, blood on his teeth like war paint, the cut on his lip reopening with every grin.

Shinji stood again because some men are built wrong. He threw like he wanted to push his limits. Rei loaned him two seconds of hope, then repossessed it with a straight that walked the jaw sideways, again. Shinji’s head snapped back. More teeth were scattered across the mud. He dropped again, this time face-first, blood pooling under him.

A wire kissed Rei’s cheek and wrote a thin line in red that burned cold in the rain. Rei immediately shot blue white flames that engulfed Takumi. Screaming, helpless, skin sizzling. An incredibly timed left hook followed. His feet left the ground as his head came plummeting down. Takumi managed to roll, clutching his side, orange threads flickering out like dying embers.

Iovah did not raise his voice. “I've trained with commanders before. There's something off about this one.”

Rei’s eyes were pinpricks. The flame crawled louder, licking at the edges of his vision.

Hajime watched through one good eye and could not stop the tremor in his hands. “He is not showing off,” he rasped, voice thick with blood. “This is Rei.”

Izumi did not blink. “I hope he's okay...”

Rei tied Iovah up in a clinch, feeding the gut with knees that sank to the hilt. The stomach became a wall that had learned humility. Iovah still found the back of the skull with a compact hook that tilted the world. Rei rolled his neck to keep sight and smiled like nothing happened.

Shinji dragged himself up and dove for the waist pitifully. Rei took the neck and squeezed until the eyes rolled back, then let go before his pulse could die out. Shinji hit the mud and stayed.

Megumi lifted a hand. “Enough.”

Rei stood with his hands down. The flame crawled over his shoulders and across his back, wanting another minute. His fingers shook with excess power, looking for a home. His pupils were blown wide, black swallowing blue. The battle was high still, burning behind his iris like a second sun. Blood ran from the cut on his lip, from the slice on his thigh, from the burn welts on his arms. He did not wipe it away.

He looked at the man on one knee and the woman refusing to let him fall farther.

He let his shoulders lower by a fraction.

Iovah spat a mouthful of blood into the rain. He opened and closed his cut hand like he was reading a map of the night. The palm was a ruin, fingers bent wrong, bones grinding.

“You fight like judgment wearing a man,” he said, voice gravel. “You could have ended us. You did not.”

Rei’s mouth thinned. The grin behind it did not die. “You came to take him,” he said, chin tipping toward Hajime. “Next time, bring your resolve.”

Silence pressed in. The storm filled it.

Iovah stood. He did not sway. “Forsakers. Fall back.”

They moved like wounded wolves, one dragging another. Their footprints filled with water. The clearing exhaled smoke and steam and the rot of torn roots.

Rei shifted like he might follow. Izumi cut the thought before it formed.

“Rei. That's enough!”

The flame listened to that voice. It settled. Heat bled off him in slow ripples. He took a backward step. Knees loosened. He caught himself on one hand, head hanging, rain hissing off his shoulders.

Hajime crawled to him and set a palm on the ground to keep the world from floating off. “You absolute maniac,” he said, laughing until he hurt again. “Thank you.”

Rei breathed out something that was half laugh, half shiver. “It's been a while since I've used anything beyond the basics.”

Izumi took his jaw in her hand and turned his face to her so she could see the pupils. Small. Bright. The high draining, but not gone. She did not smile.

“Don't do that again, 'kay?”

Rei blinked up at her. "Don't worry about me. There's a reason I'm the most feared around."

Footsteps crossed the high roots. Lanterns moved through the canopy like slow green comets. Voices called names down through the leaves. Ropes uncoiled. The forest allowed itself a breath.

From the tunnels, Mira stepped out, cane sinking in mud, eyes sharp. “Thank goodness.”

Kenta followed, one arm swinging, cleaver in grip. He stood by Hajime. “Are you okay?”

Akari ran forward, water skin in small hands. She splashed Rei’s face. “Here, drink up.”

Jiro emerged last, old blade nicked.

Rei’s fire finally guttered. Steam lifted off his bare forearms and was gone. He breathed like he had sprinted through a mountain and out the other side.

Hajime straightened slowly until his back found a line that pain could live with. Izumi took one last look toward the trees where the Forsakers had vanished and let the green in her hands dim to nothing.

Far beyond the trunks, five shadows walked in the rain and did not speak for a long time. When they did, it was not about losing. It was about what came next on their plan.

Morning cut a white seam along the broken roots. Steam rose lazily from the earth like breath finally taken. Rei rolled his shoulders once, slow, like unloading a weight the storm could not see. Hajime drew a long breath and let it hurt. Izumi threaded her fingers, healing the group.

Afterwards, they said their goodbyes and began heading toward Solarii.