Rewind

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Chapter 31

"Is this going to be a new thing?"

Blaze had been in a middle of training when a familiar calm voice made him miss hitting the dummy with his flaming punch.

He turned and scowled at Ice, who was innocently leaning against the door frame to the training arena.

"Haven't you ever heard of knocking?!"

"I doubt you'd be able to hear me with all this destruction. And who knocks on doors for training rooms?" His brother gestured at the ruined dummies around them and with a flick of his hand, froze one of the burning ones by the far right, "Commander won't be so happy when he sees this."

"They're meant to be destroyed." Blaze deadpanned.

"Yeah, but not so... soon." Ice sighed and shook his head, "Anyway, I came here to talk about this whole avoiding thing with Tanah."

"I'm not avoiding him." He insisted with another harsh punch to the dummy, "I'm actually doing him a favor by trying to get out of his hair like he always wanted!"

"You guys should talk-"

"Oh, he tried. But I already told him I won't be talking to him until he removes that stupid probation!" He emphasized this with another powerful punch, causing the dummy to fall to the ground, the stand now broken from the force, 

"But of course, he wants to be a stuck-up leader and told me I had to learn my lesson or else I'd just be abusing my connections for being his brother! What a-"

"Blaze." His brother interrupted him with a warning tone, "Tanah is only doing what he thinks is right, like how you're always fighting him with what you think is right."

Blaze turned to him, temper already rising, "He's being a self-righteous jerk just because I didn't listen to him! This doesn't have anything to do with the mission- this is his stupid pride talking because he can't handle someone not following orders all the time!"

"Our friends almost died, Api!"

Blaze froze at the sudden exclamation, before his eyes widened in disbelief.

It seems like Gempa was not the only one who blamed him on that possible disastrous outcome. 

Ice seemed to understand the sudden shock and quickly amended, "I'm not taking any sides. I just think-"

"You just think that I almost got our friends killed too. That it was all my fault." Blaze scowled stalking forward with his fists ablaze, "That I totally deserve this probation because I'm out of control!"

"I didn't say that-"

"You might as well have!" The dummy behind him suddenly burst into flames and Ice flinched, "You know what- if you guys want to see me mess up so bad then let me show you what it's really like to be out of control!"

And the frozen dummies all burst into flames spreading more fire around the arena. Ice looked around in panic, "Blaze! What are you doing?!"

Blaze was a little surprised at the manic laugh that burst out as he summoned more fire balls.

He should be worried at the sudden alarm that shrieked around them, but all he felt was the exhilaration of watching everything be consumed by flames.

It felt right.

It felt amazing.

He felt powerful.