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"Put me down. I won't die."
Firefly looks down at the wincing face of the man in her arms as she hovers mid-air.
"But...you will still feel it. The explosion."
Frankly, she doesn't know how Blade will survive being ripped apart and possibly eviscerated to smithereens.
A short laugh spills from his lips. Bitter as always.
"I would like to see...if this one can manage it."
To kill him.
He doesn't say it. But they both know it.
Her lips thin.
She wants to object. But all the Stellaron Hunters have an unspoken rule and common understanding not to interfere in each other's goals.
She of all people should know him best.
"...I'll be at the spot where we reconvene."
"Go."
She looks at him one more time. Elio's script hasn't said he will meet his true end here.
She'll probably see him again. But...
He sighs. In that same tired, aggravated but unbothered way she's heard him do many times.
"I am used to it. It will be over, in a flash. I would not feel it."
She stares at him quietly, then turns.
Her armor lifts into the air.
One...two...
She counts eight seconds before the shattering blast of heat closes in behind her. Nearly hot enough to melt her suit of armor.
... I'll see you again, Blade.
He'd told the truth.
It's over in an earth-shattering explosion, tearing apart his senses in blinding light and a piercing sensation that's over before he can think.
He'd lied.
The grotesque remains of his body, more pieces of dirtied, mangled flesh and blood than anything resembling a person, pulse and move along the floor inhumanly. More abomination than man.
His consciousness is gone, but returns slowly when his body reknits itself into one from its grizzled remains strewn everywhere during the explosion.
Blood seeping in reverse into rapidly forming muscle. Dust solidifying back into bone. Skin reforming itself over flesh that remains bared and suspended in a half-living state while it gathers tiny pieces from all over the place, dragging them back towards the gored hollows of his body. In a way he feels all too much in horrifyingly long, visceral seconds that ought to be years.
He watches, and bites down on a bone-deep keening urge to make any sort of sound, when the last of his guts twist, spitting out stray bits of shrapnel which had been embedded sharply in his flesh, causing it to remain bleeding.
He raises a trembling hand to grab onto that final piece. And tears it out without hesitation.
A muffled shudder struggles in the heaving confines of his chest.
But he's finally done.
His stomach starts knitting itself back together, until his vision is no longer a puddle of red, but smooth white skin faintly crossed over with old scars.
There's no sign of the explosion or melted skin on him anywhere. Shuhu's blessing leaves marks on his skin from sole wounds, but extreme ones like this cause his entire body to reform itself.
It even fades away some of his scars, as though trying to recall what he looked like once before his body went through the change.
Blade lies flat on his back, gasping as he learns to breathe again. His mind weighs heavy, still in disbelief that his body remains whole after the impossible ordeal.
His clothes are gone.
He sits up slowly, hair swinging at his back in the same long dark curtain. Restored even to the same length.
He finds a fresh set of clothes outside the building. Firefly must have left those for him, knowing he would return.
He nearly stumbles as he walks. His feet don't feel like his. This body does not belong to him. The phantom sensation of losing his body still has not caught up with his mind.
More weapon than human.
He picks up his sword on the ground - the one thing not destroyed in the explosion.
His body weighs heavy and moves uncoordinated, like a newborn unused to its limbs.
His mind waits in cold, hardened silence for the disconnect to bridge.
It will pass in an hour if he's lucky.
Briefly, he wonders if the blade of Nihility can end him.
And wants to laugh.