Have you ever been in a fight?

This will be my second proper fight, the first being in a crumbling Lucky Plaza.

There, I remember feeling at home in the fire, it could never faze me. This body was meant to sit in flames as if it were nothing more than a cosy blanket on a cold winter night. The only threat to me was innocents being harmed, but I was never in any real danger. At least, I don’t think I was.

The repressed memories of the pain I endured in Lucky Plaza resurface when I saw Ashen posture up for a fight. I remembered when Ashen showed up to that desolate land. I remembered the punches he threw and the stings on my body it left. I remember the bruising on spots no one could see, which healed back almost immediately. I remember concrete falling on me, and if I were anyone else, I know that would have been lights out. The painful memories of looking at charred bodies and knowing I had failed turned the blaze of anger brewing in me to an inferno.

It settled in then how much weaker everyone else was compared to me. How much I held back throwing punches and tossing Ashen around, because I knew any more force and he’d be as good as dead. I knew that was a line, no matter how badly I wanted to, I couldn’t cross. I remember the anguish as the realisation fully sank in, when broken spectacles and charred clothing littered the floor of the ruins of Lucky Plaza.

The weight of the corpses manifested into the weight of failure that hung on my neck that day. I wondered if I could have ever saved them, if my eyes had been on them instead of being distracted by Ashen. Would I have ever been able to save them? To me, a fight isn’t about strength, it never was and I think it never will be.

The battle is in my favour. It’s two on one, and I’m strong enough that raw force will trounce him. There are at least three ways I can think of off the top of my head to stop this man, but it all comes back to lethal force. But I can’t. I could rip his heart out and burn it to a crisp, but that’s not the point. I need to stop him, but that doesn’t mean I can kill him. Or everyone I love will continue to be in danger.

Which brings us to the fight on the rooftop.

Fights are simultaneously fast and slow. Every motion is quick, but the strategising, the pain, the gathering of will to do what needs to be done and dehumanise the foe before you is an exhausting process in the mind.

I dashed towards the remote immediately, thunder and rain scoring my movement. I shut down the bomb and neutralise this fiend and it’s all over. But he didn’t want to make it easy. From under his jacket, he threw down a bomb from which smoke erupted. I stopped in my tracks, not really sure if there would be an explosion or if it was just smoke. I decided to take it slow, just use infrared vision and heat sensing to find him through his smokescreen. Of course, by the time I did that, I found myself looking at a multi-coloured figure running towards me, before uppercutting me.

With gloves that sparked with every collision to my body and a rapid surge of strikes I struggled to keep up with, it became clear that he was trained- stronger than our last fight. Whatever strength enhancements he had, he had dialled them up to eleven for this fight. In raw ability he was nowhere near me, but the difference in his training closed the gap. Maybe he did have a point about me.

I made some distance and scattered fire to wall myself off from him, taking some time to recover and plan. Charging wouldn’t work, I needed to keep his mind occupied. I winced a little. I felt his blows. He makes a military grade strength enhancer, and he still thinks himself ungifted.

‘We should hit back.’ Sol suggested earnestly.

It’s not like I didn’t agree with their assessment, but I didn’t know how much he could take with his so-called strength steroid. I’d have to estimate. I could knock him out, crack his skull or even hit his head off his neck. But it’s not what I could do, it’s what I should do. I need to hold him back, not end his life, no matter how much I want to.

That’s what a hero does.

From a distance, tiny metal pellets flew at me, forcing me to dodge to the right out of range of my wall of fire, where he blitzed towards me with his mask now on. As I’ve done before, I tried to use my tail to catch and fling him, but he jumped out of my range, tackling forward. With minimal force, I tossed him off my body and onto the now soaked floor.

‘On our backs!’ Sol warned as beeps became audible through the rainfall. The charged explosive on our back sent me sprawling back onto the ground. I groaned, when the realisation of how much pain I was undergoing struck me.

He could actually hurt me.

Hearing his grunting and footsteps, I looked up only to see his combat boot kicking towards me swiftly, sending me flying.

Pinning me to the ground, he began punching down on my cheeks aimlessly, propelled by unparalleled bloodlust. I laid there foolishly, taking the hits and gauging his strength, as if I was still invincible. With every punch, he tried his best to put a hole through my face. He threatened to break apart every bone in my body like a wild beast, mindlessly hitting me as if I was just a way to relieve stress. He picks me up like a rag-doll just to slam me back into the ground, with maximum force he slams his knee down into my right arm. A crack and my scream echoing into the night sky.

“Did you forget what pain feels like?” He asked violently.

‘Move!’

The cacophony of words snap me out of my reverie, giving me the right state of mind to move out of the way of attacks. Before he can make another flurry of blows, I combust the air in front of me to create distance again. Hunched over and panting, I clutch my now broken arm.

‘Fuck. I’m so sorry. Shit. Fuck.’ I apologise to myself and Sol.

I hadn’t broken a bone in my life. Much less when I was practically invincible. But I tried to be merciful, and now I’m in shambles. It’s pathetic how much he got away with just because I wanted to show mercy.

I scanned the area and realised the button was standing quite a distance away from me, taunting me. So close, yet so far. I have to get that and my work will be done. But now I’m on the back foot and bruised whereas Ashen has practically no damage.

‘It’s fine. I can help you. But you need to trust me.’ I nod and give up control of our body to Sol.

My partner is oddly silent as I let them take the reins of our body, but I don’t question them. Ashen stares me down from a distance, sizing me up once more, cautious as this body of ours uses its good arm to reach for the broken one.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

And in one forceful tug, tears it off.

The pain is the worst I’ve felt in my life. Blood spurts right out like a geyser onto the ground, mixing into the rainwater like paint. I want to scream, yell, the taste of iron in my mouth and the smell of it infecting my senses. But Sol has full control of the body right now. Faintly, I can see Ashen struggle to comprehend the situation through the pain and tears. He flinches and doesn’t move forward.

And that’s his last mistake. With a vicious scream, a new ebony arm grows back in a blaze of glory, my tail slamming onto the ground in anguish. I stretch the new fingers and clench the new hand.

It’s like wearing a shoe you haven’t broken in yet.

I can’t dwell on the feeling, though. There’s a psychopath regaining his composure after the scene I just put on him and I don’t have the time to rip off another arm unless it's his.

“What the hell are you?”

I wish I knew.

I stare him down, and for a moment he falters. A shaky step backwards.

For a moment, I almost feel sorry for him. Terribly sorry.

“I wish we could have talked this through before you did all this.” Slowly, I creep towards him like a spider does to trapped prey in her web. I don’t know if Rose could have helped him, but maybe the Salamander could have. The remorse drags down on my conscience. It’s strange, this new arm has never slung a school bag around its shoulder. This arm has never held the door open or had its hand held by another human. It has never felt the weight of a corpse in its grasp. Has never held the hand of a dying old woman. It has never clutched a girl tightly and protected her from explosives.

The first thing it’s going to do is inflict pain.

After all that, I rush him down. I’m not a comic book speedster. But I’m fast, nonetheless. Far too fast for Ashen to dodge when I’m trying. The anger in my chest begins to manifest itself as a searing rage that wants to reduce the world to ash for trying to hurt everyone around me. I can hear my heart pounding in my ear again, my fists being lit up with flames.

I can hear the screams of Lucky Plaza, I can see Gabriel falling, I can taste the sand in my mouth as I tumbled onto the ground of the beach. The bitterness of those memories turns into flames of perdition to make him suffer.

On instinct, he swings a punch in my face, and instead of dodging I slam my cheek into it. All this time I’ve rolled with the punch. Now I’m actively resisting it. With a sharp inhale, he pulls his hand back and clutches his wrist.

“You’re so weak, I don’t even need to hit you back.” I smile and taunt. "You've only been hurting us because we allowed you to."

He was literally shaking in his boots as he looked at me, perhaps wondering if he could rip off his hand and regrow it like I could. Then, I notice tears streaming down his face. Maybe it’s rain, but the way he’s panting and breathing tells me they are tears.

“Fight me! Hit back! You fucking asshole! Fucking hit me! Come on! Do it lah! Fuck you, hit me!” He screamed through wheezes and gasps for air, spit drenching me. Hunched over, he looks so much smaller than me. Perhaps he’s always been this small.

“Sure.” We say. Sol and I are perfectly in sync now. And there's not a living creature who can stop us.

Like opening the floodgates, a gush of pulsing anger forced its way through my body, spurring me into action. My body was ready to move on its own, crush him within an inch of his life to prolong his suffering, only killing him after subjecting him to the torture and agony he had inflicted on others. He should have to experience the suffering he's inflicted on everyone tenfold.

With monstrous force, I struck back hard. He can take it. He’ll have to take it. Try as he might to block, I have a full extra limb in my tail. If he blocks a fist, I’ll use the next. If he barely dodges an uppercut, I’ll swipe his feet with my tail. With sufficient heat, I watch his jacket burn and his screams echo as I burn his arm, watching his metal exoskeleton melt away. He’s trying desperately to block or get away, but he can’t. He almost falls, but I catch him with my tail. Before I send him flying again anyway.

He doesn’t even deserve the right to fall on his own.

I am fully in control of the fight. The fear in his eyes betrays his attempt at villainy. Now I see a coward in front of me, who takes out his pain on others. The kind of person who lets anger and bitterness get the better of them, the kind of person I could have been in another life.

This unrelenting power is enough to let my anger take the reins.

‘He’s not a threat anymore.’

That’s the kind of power bestowed upon me. Enough to be the executioner. To take him out right now.

‘He’s not worth it.’

But that is not heroic, that isn’t my justice. It’s not the right thing to do.

‘He never will be.’’

Sol and I simultaneously came to that same conclusion. With surgical precision, my fists had lit up on fire and I had set his jacket ablaze. There was something satisfying about watching him panic and throw it off, leaving him without his bombs and whatever else gadgets he had in there. With a swift swing of the tail, we sent him flying to the ground, probably barely conscious.

“Do you want to know what I see when I stand over you?” I hiss, pinning him down with one knee on his stomach. “I see a narcissist who hurts others because he was hurt. Because he feels if he suffers, so everyone else has to.” He’s trying to catch his breath, but his whole body has gone limp. Whatever made him stronger was either wearing off, or I’m far more powerful than I ever realised.

“You’re so arrogant you think your suffering must be everyone else’s. You’re a monster, through and through. And by the end of tomorrow, no one will worship you, or hate you, or even know you beyond the people already close to you. Your life will end with you as a nobody, and you will absolutely deserve it.” The venom spitting from my mouth, I can’t tell if they are my words or Sol’s or a mixture of both. I want him to agonise over every minute he has spent alive and scheming.

“Fuck… God… Just kill me.” He coughs out, blood mixing in with the saliva. By God, did I want to. He was going to kill the people I love, all because he needed emotional release. Because instead of seeking help, his instinct was to wage warfare on the world.

“I’m not the one who makes that decision.” I said, getting up from the garbage beneath me and walking towards the remote on the ground. He heaves, gasping as he attempts to get back up. I refuse to face him.

“Stand down.” I warned, walking over to the button. “It’s over, Ashen. It’s over.” From his pocket, he took out his phone to check the time. I walked over and looked at the now cracked screen. 8.13 P.M. Clearly, he had overestimated the time he would last in a fight against us. We could have wiped him out at any point. I pitied him. I know how much he’d hate to find that out.

“There’s… one more thing… you should know.”

I was about to turn to face him, curiosity getting the better of me, when I heard an explosion.

I feel the heat.

The smoke has risen.

From Carissa’s window.

“I lied.” He said, smiling, with claret liquid trailing from his mouth.

A timebomb for catastrophe echoes in my brain.

Without a second to lose, I jumped down from the roof, rushing straight for the house.