Akarui and Matthew faced off in the center of the ancient ring, two silhouettes ignited by the cold light that filtered through the clouded sky. The air between them tasted like metal and old stone—electric with expectation.
"Just know that I'm not going to be holding back. This'll be a quick climb to the top for me," Akarui said, voice even, stance coiled like a spring.
Matthew answered with a curt nod and slid into his fighting posture, every muscle ready.
"Hmph, and all out performance from the rookie? This better not be pathetic," Amor scoffed from the stands, arms folded like a shield.
"Akarui's a strong guy! But I don't know how strong Matthew is yet," Shade admitted, still grinning but watching with a predator's curiosity.
"The thing about this fight is, regardless of the outcome, Matthew isn't going to be trying his hardest at all," Amor declared, teeth bared.
"Why is that?" Shade asked.
Akarui settled into his stance, shrugging off Shade's question with the kind of confidence that smelled faintly of challenge. "I won't go too rough on you, zombie boy."
He clasped his hands together until his fingers looked like a crushing maw—an odd, intentional geometry—and then pushed forward.
"Lethal Dragon Style: Killer Roar!" Akarui bellowed. His arms thrust a towering column of compressed air; it howled through the arena like a carved wind. The blast gouged the earth, snapping boulders and shearing turf as it rushed. Matthew made no effort to dodge. He took the full force head-on and slammed against the far wall, the impact creating a cratered scar in the stone.
Matthew hauled himself from the ruin as if dust were nothing but a cloak. Akarui closed the distance in a pulse—hands a flurry—and hammered a series of precise strikes across Matthew's face before finishing with a spinning kick that knocked him to the ground. Matthew rose again faster than anyone expected.
"Was that air manipulation a gimmick?" Amor asked, incredulous.
"No, a fighting style. A very interesting one at that," Mustang replied, appraising.
"Psh, Matthew has something up his sleeve as well," Amor sniffed.
Without fanfare, the weapons appeared—two long, curved blades erupting from Matthew's wrists, arcing outward with a thirsty gleam.
"Is that a gimmick?" Shade called out.
"No, it's his weapon." Mustang's voice was a flat annotation.
Matthew lunged, wrists a blur. Akarui danced back through a few slashes, flipping clear of the worst. The blades skimmed the earth, carving twin arcs of displaced air that screamed toward Akarui; he ducked them with narrow escapes. Matthew came again—slashes faster, each carrying the hiss of danger. One nicked Akarui's cheek, a line of hot pain.
Then, mid-swing, Matthew did something fluid and impossible: one blade vanished into his arm as if swallowed back into flesh. The motion misdirected; Akarui's guard dipped for half a breath. Matthew's other blade sprang from his calf like a viper's fang and drove a razor arc across Akarui's arm. Akarui stumbled, thrown back by the deception.
"You got me goo—" Akarui began, the word cutting off as Matthew surged, a storm of slashes—kicks and slices braided into a violent rhythm. Several wounds opened, scoring Akarui's shoulder and chest before he spun away and regained distance.
"Ling: Pulse Break!" Akarui shouted. He leveled his left palm—pale and almost spectral in contrast—and the air around it surged with a pearly intensity. A white dragon-shaped aura formed with his hand as its maw. From that mouth blasted a light-speed orb of condensed radiance. It struck Matthew with an earsplitting detonation; the light detonated the dust into a blinding bloom. When the brilliance fell away, a choking cloud of grit lay where the duelists had been. Akarui folded his arms as the dragon-aura slipped from his limb and coalesced into a small, luminous dragon that hovered protectively around him.
"So, that must be his gimmick..." Amor observed, voice threaded with new respect.
"Actual light, huh. That could be strong," Mustang mused.
From Akarui's right arm, a counterpart took form: a dark dragon of shadow, equal in size to the light one. The pair orbited him like twin sentinels—one sun, one void.
"Child's play," Akarui said, a smile just ghosting the edge of his tone.
"I told ya'll he was strong!" Shade crowed, pride ringing in his voice.
The dust plume cracked open and Matthew shot out—like an arrow loosed from a taut bow—both blades snapping back into place on his wrists. He closed with impossible speed, and before Akarui could fully brace, his blade slashed across Akarui's chest with a clean, searing cut.
"Shit—" Akarui cursed. Reflex took him—he leapt back in a single, sharp motion. The light dragon rose to meet him like a board underfoot; Akarui landed atop it and rode the creature as though it were a speeding snowboard, streaking across the arena on a ribbon of luminescence. The dark dragon melted into shadow beneath them, folding away into the gloom.
Akarui hung in the air for a heartbeat, perched on his little comet of light as it carved a path across the arena. Below him, Matthew's face was a mask—no emotion, only intent—and it made Akarui's knuckles whiten on the dragon's shimmering back.
Alright, he's actually tough and he can't die? I might as well unleash hell on him. The thought was a sharpened blade in Akarui's mind. Without warning Matthew's wrists were a blur; the air around him shredded into a storm of razor slashes that tore outward like a hail of invisible blades. They streamed toward Akarui in a sudden, blinding rain.
Akarui ducked and danced, but the sheer volume forced him to flatten out on his stomach atop the light dragon, trying to make himself a smaller, harder target. The dragon's head turned, twin orbs of luminescence flaring; it spat a pair of compact spheres of radiance that struck Matthew square and detonated in fireworks of force.
"Blow em up." Akarui's voice was a clipped order and a prayer all at once.
The light dragons answered like obedient artillery, disgorging volley after volley of concentrated light. Each orb struck Matthew, detonating into blinding blossoms that ripped grooves into the stone below. Akarui barked a final, urgent instruction. "Dang, make sure to MAKE SURE he stays down."
From the shadowed corner the darkness dragon's head emerged—coiled and brooding—its maw opening as it drew in shadow. Mustang watched with a cool eye. "And he's a strategist?" he observed.
"Hmph, I still doubt he'll win this." Amor's confidence was brittle as glass.
The dust boiled and then—cleared. A glittering sliver of wind unspooled through the grit, a single, monstrous blade of air that sheared the cloud of dust clean away. When the haze dropped, Matthew stood revealed: the blades on his wrists had merged into one enormous, barbed blade on his right arm. The slash had come so fast and so perfectly that Akarui's only option was a reflexive leap.
The light dragon that bore Akarui took the hit. The blade sliced the luminous creature in half; the glow evaporated like mist, and Akarui still felt the kiss of the cut across his side as the shock threw him loose into the air. His body spun, a helpless arc through gray sky, and Matthew readied another sweeping wind-razor to finish the motion.
"Matthew might kill the rookie." Mustang's voice carried a raw, momentary edge of worry.
"If he dies to Matthew of all people, maybe it's for the better." Amor's tone was merciless.
"Akarui!" Shi Ji's scream cracked the air.
"He wouldn't die like that." Shade's answer was fierce, almost defiant.
Akarui twisted his body mid-fall, a desperate, painful contortion that just barely let the second wind-slash whistle past. The blade still caught him—ripping across the flank of his arm—and he slammed into the arena floor in a spray of grit and pain. Blood flecked the flagstones where he hit.
"Dammit.." Akarui cursed, flat and furious. He lay there for a breath, hands clawing at air, then forced his lungs to keep going as he gripped his injured right arm.
Matthew walked forward with the terrible calm of inevitability.
"Don't get cocky... Zombie." Akarui rasped, anger warring with the ache.
"He most definitely lost." Amor's verdict was clipped.
"I think you forgot about something." Shade's voice came quick and bright, as if he'd been saving a card.
"Dang: Darkness Breath." Akarui saluted the sky from his prone position—call and command fused in his weary voice. From the far corner, Dang, the darkness dragon that had been coiling and charging all along, lunged. It opened its maw and disgorged a massive orb of shadow. The black sphere carved the air like a comet of night, gouging rifts through soil and stone as it rocketed full-tilt toward Matthew.
The darkness impact detonated in a cataclysmic bloom. A pillar of shadow towered up, punching through the roof of dust and even tearing the cloud cover aside. The shockwave rolled outward; Shi Ji tumbled ass-first onto the stone, Miriam's dress whipped like a flag as she clung to it, and the stands rattled under the force of the blast. Mustang, Amor, and Shade stared at the aftermath—three people and a crater where the world had been rearranged.
"He has a ton of destructive capability," Mustang said, voice low with the appraisal of a veteran.
"I could top that." Amor crossed her arms, and though it sounded blusterous, there was the glint of a challenge.
"All of this new stuff makes me want to fight him again!" Shade grinned, eyes alight.
"Your friend really is powerful." Miriam's tone was small but sincere.
When the dust finally settled the arena was a new geography—an enormous, smoking crater gouged into the ancient stone. Shi Ji scrambled to his feet, breathless. "Woah! The arena!"
"It fixes itself." Mustang's reply was a practical, almost rueful fact.
"I-Is Matthew okay?" Shi Ji asked, voice fragile with worry.
Something moved in the crater: a hand, then an arm, the remnants of flesh and charred bone crawling like regrowth. From the blown-out pit Matthew hauled himself up—not whole and clean, but staggeringly regenerative. Where the blast had flayed him there were raw, bleeding edges that knit together like a wound being rewritten. The giant wrist blade still gleamed on his arm; the rest of him was a grotesque sculpture of burned flesh and exposed structure that, horrifyingly, mended on the march. The arena around him healed as well, the smashed stone knitting back into place as if obedient to his passing.
"God dammit!" Akarui swore, rising through the blood and pain. He bent at the waist, hands braced on his knees, every breath a razor. Bits of his armor and skin left a dark sheen on the stone as he prepared to stand and face the thing that should not so easily be felled.
Matthew lifted his wooden staff with a slow, practiced motion. The arena held its breath. With a single, fluid flick the heavy blade popped free, arcing through the air and seating itself perfectly onto the staff. In an instant the weapon became something else — a great, curved scythe that gleamed like a sickle moon under the gray sky.
Akarui's shoulders slid down in one long exhale. "Aaaand, I surrender."
Amor's brow climbed. "He surrendered?"
Mustang watched them both with a coach's unreadable calm. "He fought hard, and he was flashy, but he couldn't outlast Matthew. He took more hits than he could take. It's wise that he gave up right now."
Matthew gave a casual sign — almost lazy — and the scythe's blade clicked free. Like two obedient things reassembling, the blade split cleanly into its twin halves and slid back into Matthew's forearms with a sound like leather settling. He moved as if taking apart and putting back together his own shadow.
"Aaaw! Akarui, you should have fought until you were knocked out!" Shade pouted, glaring at the fallen rookie with the exaggerated disappointment of a brat who wanted a show.
"I've been knocked out too many times recently! I'd rather stay conscious, thank you very much!" Akarui shot back, scowling but relieved.
"Lame," Shade sneered, but it was the affectionate jibe of someone who'd watched a good scrap.
"Say what you want," Akarui muttered, pushing himself up and flexing through the ache in his ribs.
"Alright, exit the arena. I want to see... Shade fight Amor now." Mustang's voice clipped the moment like a command.
"Shade and Amor: "Alright! My turn!"" the two called in near-unison — excitement and challenge wrapped tight.
Miriam watched the exchange, eyebrows raised in faint amusement. "They're both very eager to fight I see.."
Akarui planted himself on a low step beside her, folding his arms and letting the adrenaline ebb into a comfortable smirk. "Someone might actually be knocked out in this fight."
"When did you get there?" Miriam asked, turning in surprise.
"I'm a fast mover," Akarui replied dryly, as if the answer were obvious.
Mustang's hand sliced through the air like a finishing bell. "Shade, Amor, get into the ring."
They obeyed — Shade bounding forward with that wild grin, Amor stalking with coiled intensity — and the arena's old stones waited for the next spark to fall.