Fai-Deng struck first, his fists flaring with energy as he launched two steaks of lightning at his face.

In an instant his body reacted, both his hands surging with the power of his internal engine, and he deflected both strikes with two counter Dragon Tooth strikes. Still, the impact of the light against his flames sent him flying back, and though his stance remained unbroken, the Tiger’s eyes were the next thing he saw.

His fists’ impact were like two gongs slamming against his skull. He felt his body buckle as the electrified jabs smashed against his chest, and only after three attacks found their mark was he able to counter with a flaming roundhouse kick that sent the Tiger Disciple to the ground.

The Dragon’s Tooth…he could feel the power of the flame flow through all his body, energizing his limbs. He channeled it almost without thinking. Thought, right now, was secondary to the pure rage that sang through him unhindered with every sting of the Tiger’s strikes.

Fai-Deng struck low, attempting to sweep his legs with a spin kick that caught XJ-V’s left foot as he jumped to avoid the blow. He saw Fai’s downward strike as soon as he hit the floor, looking up to see the Disciple bathed in sapphire threads of his paralyzing lightning – lightning that would travel directly through his chassis and crush his internal systems like a vice.

He saw his death. He saw it, and his limbs reacted.

As the fist of the Tiger came down his rose to clench his wrist, and the light of the Disciple’s hand fizzled out into the charged air.

But Fai had anticipated the trick. He pushed through with a side kick that slammed into XJ-V’s skeletal ribs and sent him tumbling to the far-left wall of the hearth.

Though he felt his legs buckle beneath him, XJ-V stood ready. His eyes were focused. Present. Any pain he felt was absorbed by the fire burning within him.

As Fai lunged again with a scream of rage spilling from his lips, XJ-V felt the power of the Qi flow through him. This time he watched, he waited. He looked into the eyes of the Tiger and anticipated. The hatred that burned in there was giving away more than the boy could know.

XJ-V met his flurry of blow with a series of high blocks that dimmed his Lightning Claw strikes with every impact. Slowly the power of the Tiger began to fade away, even as the intensity of his punches never faded once. XJ-V kept his hands high, shielding his face, taking in the power of the Tiger’s strikes like a living shock-absorber, and when the Tiger spun to deliver a series of wild, frenzied kicks, XJ-V felt the hard stone of Dragonpyre’s wall on his back.

His body was failing him. But so was Fai’s. The threads of power arcing through his veins was visibly thinning – like a series of shrinking barbed wire that was slowly dissolving with every block the Cog made.

He took it all. All the punishment the Tiger sent flying at him. And when the boy stopped to reel back and shoot a final beam of light at his chest, he caught the sight of Feng-Lung still lying on the ground, his body twitching as the lightning of the Tiger still surged through him.

And, without a single word, XJ-V lowered his guard.

The Tiger’s claw found his chest. It found it and broke apart the front of his metal chassis completely, throwing charred pieces of his steel plating aside and singing every piece of wiring that covered the engine at the center of his being.

The smile that stretched across Fai-Deng’s face was that of a child who had been given some long sought-after gift.

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“You – see – your death!”

XJ-V felt the fist of the Tiger bury itself deep within his chest until it found the fiery core of his being.

Fai clenched his teeth and focused his Qi – channeling everything he had into a final, decisive discharge of energy that would short circuit XJ-V completely.

“Vengeance!” he roared, his face filled with the otherworldly light of his channeled power.

But the satisfaction of the Tiger was short-lived. In the moment of his victory, his fingers tensed. The lightning that had served him well thus far now shrank to nothing, and a very different power now traveled up his arm from the points of his fingertips.

XJ-V closed his eyes and re-directed his Qi. He felt it pool beneath his heart, and from within his broken chest and the sea of wiring that hung from his innards, an infernal light seethed.

Fai-Deng’s eyes went wide as he watched the fire from the Cog’s chest creep up his arm and sear the skin from his bones. He felt muscle crisp and melt away. He felt his fingers coil and turn to ash within the Cog, and as he moved to retract his fist, he felt the Cog’s firm hands fly to clamp down on his arm and hold it in place.

“L-let me go!”

The shriek was that of a slowly dying creature. XJ-V’s eyes glowed with red-hot intensity. In the eyes of the wriggling, flopping Tiger, he was a demon bathed in an infernal light.

The feet of the Tiger struck out at the Cog’s waist. His free fist beat against him, tearing at his shoulder and arms, flailing out and striking at anything – anything that could release him from the grip of this beast of steel and fire.

But all his strikes were in vain. He had used up his Qi. The Universal Dao had forsaken him.

“Ah-ah-AHHHHH!”

He fell to his knees before the Cog and screamed with rabid intensity. His scream echoed through the halls before the sight of the Eternal Dragon. His legs began to spasm uncontrollably. His eyes pleaded up at the Cog, now. The hatred that had once filled them was gone. The Cog saw only a desperate child now – not a tiger, but a cub. A cub wailing for its life.

XJ-V’s hands shook as he felt the boy’s skin strip away within his chest. He looked into the boy’s eyes through the red-haze of fury that dominated his mind and knew, as only his kind could, that he could let his fire blaze and flare through the boy’s body. He could take his head in his hands and watch his flesh crisp and peel away, until there was nothing but those pleading, pitiful eyes.

Those eyes…

Eyes that now showed him a different person. Someone without any hatred at all. Someone who looked at something beyond them, standing tall, a barrier they could not pass through.

XJ-V’s hands began to shake as he watched the boy’s pupils dilate. He felt the life of Fai-Deng fade away beneath him.

But more than that, he felt the boy’s fear. And then he saw something all so clearly:

Symmetry.

He unclenched his hands and let the boy slip from grasp. Fai freed his charred arm from the Cog’s chest as the flame that burned at its center now calmed to a soft, benign glow.

The boy stumbled back and fell to his knees, looking with strange, unbelieving wonder at the blackened twig that was his arm.

It was at that moment that the doors of the hearth were thrown open with power, revealing two figures in pristine robes – one of crimson, one of tan.

“M-Master…” Feng-Lung groaned from the ground.

Both men stepped slowly into the hearth, saying nothing. Their eyes equally trained on the two Disciples in the center of the room, one kneeling before the other, though both their faces were transfixed with fear.

“Finish it,” Fai-Deng whispered from the floor, completely ignoring the entrance of the two Masters.

XJ-V’s feet wavered.

“I said finish me!” the boy screamed again, letting his lifeless arm fall. “I will not live as an invalid! I will not live bearing the mark of your curse, demon!”

The Cog could barely move. The red-haze of his anger had long ago abated. It was as though XJ-V had only just entered the room along with the Masters.

Through a very new agony he looked at his hands. He could not control their shaking. He could not look passed them to the eyes of the boy again. He knew those eyes would remain in his mind for a very long time.

“DO IT, COG!”

“…no.”

XJ-V turned away from the boy.

“Dragons do not kill Tigers.”

Amidst Fai-Deng’s subsequent cries from the ground, XJ-V simply walked away. He did not look at Feng-Lung’s astonished face as he rose from the ground and tried to reach him. He did not look at Longhua and Yoma-Dur’s strict faces as they followed him.

“Master,” he said as he passed Longhua. “I go to the dark.”

He did not stay to see his Master’s response, nor did he hear anything more. He simply walked back out into the rain.

He did not stop until he was back inside his room, and he felt his systems finally shut down.

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