"Well Class 3 isn't anything to scoff at!" Ben responded as he used [Ice Blocks] and from his shield, a big cube of ice hit Ragna in the chest
"You think you can beat me with this loser shit?" Ragna sneered.
His sword punched into the ice cube hovering between them, and the blade lit up with crackling light. [Thunder Encloakment].
The cube detonated. Shards sprayed across the arena like shrapnel, and Ragna lunged straight through them. He switched the spell into attack mode, and his electric part of the blade streaked through the dust and left a thin red line across Ben's cheek.
Ben touched his face and stared at the blood on his fingertips. Then he grinned.
"Not bad," he said. "Pretty good for a human."
He looked up to find the point of a sword an inch from his eye.
Ben threw his shield up just in time. The blade screeched against the metal, sparks flying. But the shield was too high, and his legs were wide open.
"Gotcha," Ragna whispered.
He dropped low, wrapped both arms around Ben's left leg, and heaved with everything he had. The ground rushed up to meet Ben, and he hit it hard.
"Guh!"
POW!
Ragna's boot snapped Ben's head sideways. He stood over him with his sword raised, breathing hard, his shadow falling across Ben's face.
Ben spat blood onto the dirt. When he looked up, he was laughing.
"That hurt, you brat," he rasped. "But I have to thank you. For standing right there."
"What?" Ragna froze, an [Aqua Blade] prepared to slice him up.
Ben lifted one finger and pointed at the sky.
Ragna looked up, and his stomach dropped.
Twenty cubes hung above him, blotting out the light. Each one was big enough to flatten a mountain, and there were twenty of them, stacked in the air like a ceiling about to fall.
"Boom," Ben whispered.
They fell all at once.
"Run. I have to run". Ragna's legs wouldn't move. There was nowhere to go, because the shadows covered the whole arena. ''And I don't have a single long-range AOE that could wipe out all of them at once.''
''Am I really going to die like this? Crushed by a bunch of stupid cubes?''
His head sank slowly. The roar of the falling cubes grew faint, and a memory drifted up from somewhere far away.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________
A small Ragna ran circles around the orphanage yard, a toy plane held high over his head. He made engine noises as he banked left and right, completely lost in the game.
BUMP!
He crashed into someone and tumbled backward. The plane skidded across the dirt.
"Ragna!" Cinister crossed his arms and scowled. "Watch where you're going! You can't just run around with your eyes closed."
"Yeah, yeah, I know." Ragna rubbed his head, then noticed the little girl sitting in the dust. Light glowed around her face "Sorry! Are you okay?"
He held out his hand.
She hesitated before taking it. "Thank you," she mumbled, shy. "You look like the heroes in my storybooks."
"A hero?" Something sparked in Ragna's eyes, small but bright.
The girl smiled, cheeky and a little embarrassed. "Maybe one day you'll be my hero."
________________________________________________________________________________________________________
FWOOSH!
Fire swallowed the orphanage. Orange light flickered over the faces of the children huddled in the street, coughing and crying. Everyone had made it out except one.
Ragna stood frozen with tears streaming down his face. Then he spun toward the doors.
"No! I can't let her die!"
"Ragna, wait!" Cinister shouted. "Ragna!" He cursed and ran after him.
Ragna charged into the inferno. Heat slammed into him like a wall. Burning planks crashed down around him, and he dodged and stumbled forward, coughing, until he reached the dormitory door.
From behind it, he heard her crying.
But the fire in the hallway had grown into a wall of flames, and there was no way through. Ragna's hands trembled.
"I can't leave her. But how do I get past this?"
"Honestly, you're so dramatic."
Cinister appeared beside him, soot on his face and three buckets of water in his hands. He gave Ragna a crooked smile. "Fine. I'll play sidekick, just this once. Now put that fire out and go be her savior."
"Thanks, Cini!" Hope flooded Ragna's eyes. He grabbed the buckets and threw the water over the flames, which hissed and shrank. A narrow path opened.
The room was thick with smoke. In the far corner, a small figure sat huddled on the bed with her knees pulled to her chest, sobbing into her arms.
"Natalie!"
Ragna crossed the room in three strides and scooped her up, careful, as if she might break. "Please tell me you're okay. Please."
She lifted her tear-streaked face and looked at his pale and frantic and streaked with soot. Slowly, a small smile appeared.
"I'm okay," she whispered.
The breath rushed out of him. "Good. That's good! that's really good!" He laughed shakily, and a tear ran down his cheek. He hadn't realized he was crying again.
Natalie reached up and pressed one tiny finger against his lips, shushing him.
"You really did become my hero."
________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Ten years later, the sun was warm over the new orphanage. Fresh paint covered the walls, and laundry swayed on the lines in the yard. Ragna and Cinister stood at the gate in their traveling cloaks, surrounded by the children and the caretakers who had raised them.
Ragna cleared his throat. "Alright, everyone. Cinister and I are heading off to the academy. We're going to graduate, I promise."
"You're going to graduate," Cinister muttered. "I'm going to carry you through it."
Then the crowd parted, and someone shoved through it and slammed into Ragna's chest, arms wrapped tight around him.
"Natalie?"
"I'm going to climb the Tower too!" she said into his shirt. Her voice shook, but she didn't let go. "So you have to come find me. Promise!"
Ragna looked down at her. For a moment, he thought of a small girl in a burning room. Then he grinned and rested his hand on her head.
"Don't worry I'll find you even if it takes me, all 100 floors" he said quietly. "And I'm going to become a hero for everyone who needs hope. That's a promise."
________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The memory dissolved like smoke.
Ragna lifted his head. The cubes were almost on him, so close that he could feel the air they pushed ahead of them.
"I'm not done yet. I made a promise."
"[Aqua Blades]!"
The air split with the sound of rushing water. A hundred blades of water burst into being above him and flashed upward in a glittering storm. Each one found a target, and each cube shattered at the same instant.
Ragna gritted his teeth. Every blade was a thread pulled taut in his mind, and a hundred threads were tearing him apart.
"Dammit," he hissed, sweat stinging his eyes. "Controlling a hundred swords by hand is too much."
Behind him, dirt scraped against stone. Ben was pushing himself off the ground, wiping blood from his mouth with the back of his hand.
"Then I guess it's time to finish this," he said, almost gently.
If I keep splitting my focus, I'm dead. So I'll bet everything on one move.
"Fine," Ragna muttered. "Let's gamble."
He shut out the other fifty blades and poured everything he had into the rest. They screamed upward in a tight spiral and slammed into the falling mass. Ten cubes burst apart, and glittering shards rained down across the arena.
But ten were still falling, and every blade he had left was spent.
"I can't cut them. Then I'll have to parry them. One by one, if I have to."
He raised his sword and looked up, ready to take the full weight of the sky.
Snow drifted down.
Soft, pale flakes spun through the air where the cubes had been. Ragna stared. The sky was empty, and not one cube remained.
"What...? I didn't touch them."
The [Aqua Blades] had cut them down on their own, without any command from him.
"Hey," Ben said, and his voice had lost its mockery. He was staring at Ragna with wide eyes, pointing. "What is that on your back?"
"Huh?" Ragna twisted around, and his breath caught.
Two rings of blue fire hovered behind his shoulders, spinning slowly and throwing cold light across the ground. They hummed with a power he had never felt before. Each [Fire Ring] had amplified his spell to three hundred percent of its strength.
"Honestly" a familiar voice sighed from the trees "I'm always stuck playing your sidekick."
The branches rustled. A hand pushed the leaves aside, and a pair of glasses glinted in the sunlight. Short, wavy white hair came into view, and then a lazy, crooked smile.
"But being the sidekick of the greatest hero ever?" Cinister said. "I suppose that's an honorable title."