Both warriors drove their blades into their stomachs simultaneously. From Lucien, a miasma of heated fog exuded from his body and enveloped him. From Phoenix, ash rose from the ground and surrounded his figure with various weapons. The only thing common from the both of them were the flames surrounding their bodies - flames of pure hatred. Lucien's form grew two large avian wings, made of burnt-black flesh and soot-ridden feathers. A pair of colossal arms unfolded from his lower middle back, seemingly made up of thousands of thrashing arms all amalgamated into two limbs. Two of the arms withdrew Lucien's .50 Desert Eagles while others picked up his 2-gauge shotgun. One even reached into his holster to draw his Mateba revolver. Whatever demon Lucien had become laughed in a thousand different tongues. It unfolded its wings as they were set alight with corrupted cobalt flame - as did his sword, who's flames only heightened and seemed to whisper with every crackling ember emitted from it. He took his grenade launcher out from his belt with his left hand. With the wings, the massive limbs and the flaming sword paired with the grenade launcher, he looked like some demented Angel of Eden. From Phoenix's body came wings slightly smaller than Lucien's, but burnt brightly in the sulphurous fog. A pair of cobalt-flame wings spread from his back in a blaze of glory, along with six tails of the same flame growing from his lower back and draping around his body. A small firestorm swathed him through the blue fire, shapes of different weapons appearing in the swirling cinders: a chainsword shaped like a bastard sword, a crystalline single-edged longsword, a makeshift post-apocalyptic blade with a human skull at the base of the metal holding a fuel barrel - these were but a few of the blades that danced around Phoenix. He withdrew his own blade from his stomach, which became engulfed in what could only be described as a self-contained firestorm. Blood boiled on the ground and steam rose through the air just from its mere presence. Cobalt fire swirled tightly around his katana, the Oriental runes upon it glowing as bright as the sun itself. If Lucien was a twisted Angel, Phoenix was an avenging demon come to purify with his flames. Every shot fired from Lucien and his massive appendages collided with a solid afterimage of Phoenix, comprised of ash and destroyed in a blaze of fire. He was a blur of flame, leaving only shadows of ember where he was last. He cut through the revolver rounds and the Deagle bullets, but when he sliced through an anti-tank round it exploded in his face and kicked up a dervish of dust. When it cleared, Phoenix stood taller with some kind of militaristic exosuit beneath his large overcoat. It was definitely not there before, yet it had somehow burnt into existence like Phoenix's sword. Angered by this, the transformed False Prophet roared in a thousand tongues. He rushed forward, propelled by his Eldritch wings, and fired a biomass grenade from his grenade launcher in a calculated spot behind Phoenix. It worked as planned - Phoenix was sent flying forward towards him. He slashed and left a scorching scar in the air that burnt the very hydrogen around them, but somehow Phoenix used his own flaming wings to twist himself in mid-air to avoid the crescent wave of blasts... No, that was not quite it. It was as if his wings were absorbing the superheated fire itself. Phoenix sailed into Lucien's right wing and drew his sword in an upward Iaido draw slash in mid-air, a wave of explosions radiating from his blade and ripping through the False Prophet's right wing and Angel-Arm. He slammed into the amputated wing and slid on the ground with it, his wings burning brightly as they incinerated the fleshy appendage beneath them. He then flipped off of it when it was no more than a few smouldering cinders, doing the same to the cut off arm before it could regenerate. Now furious at the loss of his wing, the berserker Lucien had become whirled to face Phoenix. He slashed upwards with his sword, summoning burnt-black bone spikes from the ground. The other pyro stabbed the ground with his katana, turning the earth around him to ash and bringing forth dozens of ash sparrows with blue fire in their eyes. The sparrows bombarded Lucien and detonated every time they impacted him, but when they were all gone all Lucien saw was the impaled corpse of Phoenix. He moved forward to devour the body, only to see the corpse be whisked away by a fiery wind, turning it into ash. Yet not turning it to ash... For it was ash all along. An ashen copy of some kind. Before Lucien could do anything, a superheated spread-shot tore through the back of his left knee and brought him down to one leg. Immediately after, Phoenix slashed and shot at the remaining wing and the Angel-Arm, incinerating chunks with every blow from both bullet and blade. Now knocked out of his rage, Lucien raised his head up once more to ask again: "Who are you?" Phoenix promptly replied by raising himself up with his wings and roundhouse kicking Lucien into the side of a nearby house, sending him through the wall and into the flaming wreckage. The man strode into the house with his wings still burning, yet they were slowly fading away and getting smaller. Lucien, bloodied and burnt, coughed up boiling blood as he looked back up at Phoenix. And through his pain he heard a child crying. Phoenix quietly brought his hands to his helmet and undid the magnetic locks, taking off his heavy mask and looking down at Lucien. He was no more than a young man, about 20 with tanned Filipino skin and short, spiky black hair. Yet even in the firelight Lucien could see the prominent greys within it, as well as his light hazel irises. Light hazel and black hair. Like his own. He took a closer look at the man as he burnt, and shed a single bloody tear. "I'm sorry, Mikhail..." he quietly said. The man had so many similarities to his brother - the brother he had murdered out of vengeance all those years ago, Mikhail Danet. The brother he had killed in what seemed like another lifetime after massacring his home - the bloodstained settlement they had been battling in. It was only fitting that his dead brother took his life after all these years. A final act of vengeance. "I'm so sorry..." Lucien coughed, "I could not even protect Alister..." "You did. You protected him to your last breath." "...what?" Lucien was perplexed by the man's answer. "I could not... Find him... Lost here in the Dojo..." "I am not your brother, Lucien." "Then who... Are you?" The armour seemed to burn out of existence as it had before, the remnant embers of Phoenix's wings waning and fading away. Now that he was out of his armour he was much shorter, still only around 5'7. He looked much more like a boy - a boy that resembled Lucien's brother... "Al... Alister?" ""He said to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts rise in your minds? Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have," he said quietly just as he said earlier, "I am Alister no longer, Lucien. When you died I took upon your fire. I came here to the Dojo and created a new name for myself. I loved, and I fell victim to my own hatred when that love was taken away. I destroyed just as I created, and I am sorry for becoming the very monster you had not wanted me to become. I lived the life of a peacekeeper, the life of a war commander, the life of a martyr and the life of a pariah. My name is Luis Franco, legacy to the dead Lucien Farcòn, name taken and bastardized in honour of my mentor. But I lived as the Cobalt Phoenix... And died as such." The baby's crying got louder as Lucien remembered his promise to his dying brother. The promise to take care of his son when he grew up, to teach him the ways of the dying world. To ensure that he would prosper, survive, and never become a monster like him. "No... It is impossible... Alister... I am so sorry..." The entire area around them faded away in a rush of flames, bringing them back to the Ko Rudo Mountains. Lucien would most likely not survive... But Phoenix knew there was another way. Master and apprentice would be reunited once more. He took Lucien's sword and held it to his dead heart. His body had died long ago, falling from orbit and into the oceans of the Golden City. He had rested in the depths of Terra only to be awakened partially as a spirit; a mere ghost to keep watch over the Dojo's gate. But with the arrival of Lucien, something had sparked within what remained of Phoenix's bosom. A deep guilt and sense of treachery to himself and those around him. So he would live once more through Lucien and atone alongside his mentor. Phoenix drove the living sword through his rotted flesh as the illusion broke, his face returning to the waterlogged skull with runes etched upon his bones. He fell to the ground as he saw ash beginning to gather around Lucien, repairing his limbs and feeding him the biomass of everything his flames had consumed over his lifetime. He would become the Phoenix once again. They would become the Phoenix together. [spoiler]Closed. Open to comments or questions on what the Hell just happened. [/spoiler]