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ArabicArknights: It Can't Possibly Be My Fault... Right? — Chapter 29
Chapter 29: Like Fireworks
“Whoa, she’s actually doing this?!”
Kai stared at the shifting formation, genuinely startled by the sheer scale of the cruelty. Across the scarred battlefield, the Reunion Movement soldiers who had just been halted by Skullshatterer’s command suddenly erupted. Columns of unnatural flame swallowed them whole, igniting almost simultaneously across the front lines.
Why…?
Skullshatterer fell to his knees. He stared at the hellscape unfolding before him, his masked face tilted upward in absolute, bewildered despair. The megaphone slipped from his limp fingers, hitting the rubble with a sharp crack and emitting a burst of noisy, dying electronic static. His legs simply gave out.
“Everyone, fall back!” Ch’en barked, her voice cutting through the rising panic as she ordered the Lungmen Guard Department officers to retreat. She planted her boots firmly into the dirt, her jaw clenched tight enough to crack teeth. Her right hand clamped down hard over the hilt of the crimson sword at her waist, trying to steady the blade’s violent trembling. Even a seasoned officer like her hadn’t anticipated a slaughter of this magnitude.
The fire was utterly unnatural. It didn’t scorch cloth or blacken flesh; it bypassed the physical entirely to incinerate the soul. A Reunion soldier thrashed in the dirt just a few yards away, clawing at his own chest. There were no blisters, no melting armor, yet the man arched his back in excruciating agony, screaming as if his very essence was being roasted alive.
“Help… help me… please…” the soldier wailed, his voice tearing at the edges.
Ch’en’s knuckles turned white around her scabbard. Every instinct, every ounce of her ingrained justice screamed at her to step forward and pull the man from the blaze. They were thugs, terrorists, enemies of Lungmen—but no living creature deserved to die like a dog in an invisible oven. Yet… she didn’t move. The crimson sword beneath her palm suddenly ceased its trembling, growing dead and heavy, as if expressing its deep disappointment in her hesitation.
“Medical squad! Assemble!”
“It won’t go out! Smothering it doesn’t work—these flames have no physical substance!”
While the Guard Department hesitated, Rhodes Island was already moving. Enemy or not, the core principles of the pharmaceutical company did not allow its Operators to stand idle while lives burned away in front of them.
“It’s a highly volatile form of Originium Arts. It bears the signature of Talulah’s fire, but the structure is entirely different from anything we’ve recorded.” M3 analyzed the phenomenon with cold precision, her eyes darting across the screaming masses as her mind raced to formulate a countermeasure.
“Ah! Damn it, it’s spreading!” a Rhodes Island Operator yelled, stumbling backward. Sparks of the phantom flame had latched onto his tactical vest. Panicking, he tore at the buckles, shedding his heavy equipment and kicking it away. The moment the vest hit the dirt, the ethereal fire seemed to lose its connection to his life force, flickering aimlessly before starving itself out.
“Do not come into direct contact with the flames!” Amiya’s voice rang out, clear and authoritative over the chaos. “Frost-type Casters, suppress the area! Use your Arts to freeze the ignition points!”
A volley of chilling Originium Arts swept over the vanguard. The frost magic worked, biting into the unnatural heat and slowly suffocating the flames, but the efficiency was abysmal. Rhodes Island only had a handful of Casters deployed, and there were thousands of burning Infected writhing across the battlefield.
It was then that Kai finally returned to the main line. He strode past the kneeling, catatonic form of Skullshatterer, pausing just long enough to deliver a sharp, ringing slap across the commander’s face. The crack echoed, instantly shattering the daze in Skullshatterer’s eyes.
“Are you awake now?” Kai asked, his tone flat but urgent. “If you are, get up and follow me. I can save your people.”
Without waiting for an answer, Kai kept walking straight toward Amiya’s position. Behind him, Skullshatterer ignored the stinging heat on his cheek, scrambling to his feet and chasing after the man’s shadow.
“Mr. Kai! You’re back.” Amiya’s tense shoulders dropped a fraction, relief washing over her face. “You aren’t hurt, are you?”
Kai waved a hand dismissively. “I’m fine. Let me see what we’re dealing with first.” He crouched down beside one of the writhing Reunion soldiers currently being treated by a sweating Caster.
“Kai, the fire is contagious. Watch your proximity,” M3 warned, stepping close to guard his flank.
Kai didn’t reply, offering only a brief nod. He leaned in, his eyes narrowing as he studied the dancing, ethereal embers. A strange, humming resonance echoed in his chest. It felt intimately familiar, a near-perfect match to the sensation he had experienced when he first hijacked Talulah’s techniques.
Should I try touching it?
Kai hesitated, glancing over his shoulder. “There’s a reliable way to extinguish this now, right?”
“Yes,” M3 answered directly. “But the process is agonizingly slow. It requires sustained frost spells to chip away at the thermal energy bit by bit.”
Kai nodded. As long as there was a safety net, he could afford a little risk. Then, ignoring the collective gasps of the medics around him, he reached his bare hand directly into the phantom fire.
The flames eagerly licked at his skin, spiraling up his wrist. Amiya lunged forward to pull him back, but M3 gently caught her shoulder, shaking her head.
Kai kept his hand steady, closing his eyes to isolate the sensation. The fire wasn’t consuming oxygen; it was feeding on vitality. A sharp, stinging prickle dug into his palm—not hot enough to blister, but deeply, uncomfortably agonizing, like a thousand microscopic needles threading through his veins.
Alright. Let’s see if this works.
A heavy, sulfur-colored aura of mana flared to life around Kai’s body. The moment his energy touched the fire, the flames froze. The aggressive, spreading inferno suddenly turned docile, shrinking down into a harmless, flickering ember that pooled obediently in the center of his palm. Kai casually flicked his wrist, and the flame dissolved into the air, vanishing as if it had never existed.
“Mr. Kai… how did you do that?!” Amiya asked, her eyes wide with shock.
Kai frowned, rubbing his thumb across his palm. It wasn’t the fact that he could extinguish the fire that bothered him; it was why it felt so effortless. He had sensed it the moment he stepped onto the battlefield—an innate, magnetic pull over the inferno. It was the only reason he had confidently promised Skullshatterer a miracle before even testing the flames.
“Probably just a coincidence,” Kai lied smoothly, keeping his theories to himself for now. He would cross that bridge when he got to it. Right now, the clock was ticking, and thousands of lives were being used as kindling.
However, absorbing the flames one by one would take hours he didn’t have. He needed raw output. He turned and waved the Doctor over.
“You’ve thought of a way?” the Doctor asked, jogging up to the frontline.
“I have,” Kai said, extending an open hand. “But I’m going to need some Sanity Potions. Hand them over.”
The Doctor immediately crossed his arms, flatly rejecting the demand. “Not a chance. Didn’t I just give you one? Look at your arm. If you overdose and drop dead right here, how am I supposed to explain that to Kal’tsit? She’ll hang me from the landship’s bridge. Besides, I ran out ages ago. I only packed a few for this operation.”
Kai clicked his tongue, thinking fast. “Fine. Then do you have any raw Originium? The pure, unrefined stuff. If you don’t have that either, I’ll just go snap a couple of crystals off the nearest mine.” He reasoned that if his body could process liquid sanity supplements, crunching on some Originium rocks shouldn’t be much different.
“You can eat that stuff too?!” the Doctor asked, his voice cracking in sheer disbelief.
Kai shrugged. “I don’t know. How will I know if I don’t try?”
He stared at the Doctor. The Doctor stared back. The standoff lasted for ten agonizing seconds before the tactician finally threw his hands up in defeat.
“I give up! Here!” The Doctor shoved a glass vial into Kai’s chest. “This is the absolute last one, I swear to Terra I’m out! If your heart stops beating in five minutes, I’m abandoning these people and having an Operator drag your corpse back to the medical bay for an autopsy.”
Kai grinned, catching the vial. “I knew you were holding out on me. I smelled the mint on you ten minutes ago. Don’t worry, I have a good feeling about this.”
“Are you part Perro? Fine, whatever, you’d better be right. Go on. Go be their savior,” the Doctor grumbled, rubbing his temples.
A savior…
Kai hadn’t really thought of it like that. He just… wanted to fix this.
Pulling out the half-empty bottle he had saved from earlier, Kai popped the corks off both vials and downed the bitter, astringent liquid in two massive gulps. A violent, numbing chill rushed through his mouth, followed instantly by an explosive surge of vigorous mana flooding his circuits.
Wasting no more time, Kai turned away from the medics and walked toward the only stage large enough for what he was about to do—the open sky.
Prina used to be an ordinary carpenter.
At least, he was before he contracted Oripathy. Even now, lying in the dirt with his soul burning away, he still felt a cold knot of fear and anger whenever he remembered that dark day. He never figured out how he had been Infected, and he never found out which of his neighbors had reported him.
All he remembered was the roar of the Ursus soldiers kicking his front door off its hinges. They had beaten his eldest son into the floorboards, stormed into his bedroom, and dragged him out by his hair.
They stripped him naked and threw him into the freezing street. The people he had built chairs and tables for, the people who used to smile and call him ‘Good Old Prina,’ crossed the street to avoid him like he was a walking plague. He hadn’t even had the energy to feel betrayed then; the pain was too much. The lead officer had driven a steel-toed boot into his stomach twice to ensure he stayed down. Curled up in the gutter, he listened to the whispers and pointing of his once-kind neighbors as they hurled insults and spat at him.
He remembered hearing his wife begging for mercy, followed by the sickening crack of a baton striking bone. He had desperately wanted to roar, to fight back, to tear the soldiers apart, but all his throat could produce were pathetic, wet whimpers. Finally, they picked him up like a stray dog and threw him into the back of a transport truck bound for the Originium mines, packed shoulder-to-shoulder with other ‘damned’ Infected.
How he survived the mines, how he was intercepted and recruited by the Reunion Movement—that was a story for another time. Like every broken soul around him, Prina had been drawn to Reunion’s fiery ideology. He had slowly learned to take pride in his scars, to wear his Infection like a badge of honor, and to fanatically worship the woman who promised to burn the old world down: Talulah.
But today, the leader he revered above all else had abandoned them to the fire.
His heart was shattered. The betrayal hurt far worse than the ethereal flames currently roasting his soul. Prina lay flat on his back, too exhausted to thrash and roll like the younger recruits. He just stared up at the ashen sky, letting the fire consume him, waiting for the end.
Until… he saw him.
A figure was stepping through the air, ascending into the high sky as if climbing an invisible staircase. Prina’s vision was blurred by tears and heat, making it impossible to see the person’s face. But he saw the figure raise a right hand, and a massive, sweeping wave of mana washed over the battlefield.
Is it… Talulah? Prina’s fading mind grasped at a desperate hope. She hasn’t given up on us…
As the silhouette climbed higher, Prina suddenly realized the fire ravaging his body didn’t hurt quite as much. The flames were peeling away from his skin, drawn upward by an invisible magnet. He watched in awe as the deadly fire gathered toward the figure’s outstretched hand, radiating a light that was unexpectedly warm, like the morning sun breaking through a winter storm.
His consciousness began to slip. No, I can’t pass out yet, he told himself, biting his lip to stay awake. I have to see my brothers and sisters saved.
He stared intently at the man in the sky. All around him, the agonizing screams of his compatriots had died down. Thousands of Reunion soldiers were lying in the dirt, looking up in stunned silence.
High above, the stolen flames condensed into a dazzling, hyper-dense ring of light resting in the figure’s palms. The man gripped the volatile energy with both hands and hurled the massive orb even higher into the stratosphere.
A second later, the sky detonated.
BOOM.
It was just like fireworks. Prina had spent his whole life in the slums and the mines; he had never actually seen real fireworks before. But as the sky lit up in a stunning shower of harmless, cascading embers, he felt certain that if they existed, they must look exactly like this.
“So beautiful…” Prina murmured.
The last of his strength finally gave out, and the darkness rushed in to claim him. But in the final fraction of a second before his eyes closed completely, he thought he saw the silhouette falling from the sky, plummeting back to the earth alongside the dying sparks of the fireworks.