Chapter Nineteen: Brothers; Part One

The person standing before me was my big brother, Raito, the one who should've died the day I turned. I simply stared at him in disbelief as he rose to his feet. He felt for his hood and his eyes widened when he no longer felt it there. "Well...not like you weren't going to find out eventually..." He ruffled his white hair and I remembered how it used to be dark brown.

"I don't understand...why..?" He looked at me, a confused look on his face. I didn't even notice there were tears falling down my cheeks. "Raito...you're alive... I thought I had killed you... I would be happy...but..." I looked down, clenching my aching chest as I quickly looked back up at my brother's face. "Why are you trying to kill me, Raito?!" I yelled to him as loud as I could, my voice echoing off into the distance.

Raito's eyes widened at my question, not with surprise, but with anger. "You really don't know..?" He said with a slight growl in his voice. I noticed his right palm glowing and I quickly tried to jump, but before I could, he fired a weak beam of plasma at me. I fell on my back, groaning from the painful heat on my gut. My eyes widened and I quickly rolled out of the way as the spot I was laying was pummeled with a barrage of plasma beams from the sky. "How could you not know why?! Are you really that stupid?!"

I ended up having to flash to avoid his beams. "Of course I don't know! You had everything! The brains, the looks, a great girlfriend, a career, I looked up to you! Why are you doing this?! What's wrong with you?!"

"That's precisely the point you moron!"

"Ugah!" I grunted as he flashed to me and punched me in the gut, right where he had shot me before, making it hurt ten times worse, and he was still in his Element Drive somehow. I coughed up a bit of blood as I crashed into a small mountain, holding my gut and coughing as I fell to the ground, rolling on the ground in pain as the red mark on my gut steamed.

Raito walked towards me, his hands glowing again. "You say I had everything, but you really have no idea at all." I looked at him, gritting my teeth in pain, my eyes filled with anger and sadness. "Your life was so easy... You didn't have to worry about anything. Not a care in the world... No one expected anything of you. You were a total loser who couldn't get accepted by a college to save his life. Your grades were subpar and girls hardly ever looked your way. If you cleaned yourself up to look like you do now back then, you might've at least gotten a girlfriend, but you couldn't even be bothered to do that. You just locked yourself away in your room and stayed there unless you were called upon. You gave up." I looked at the ground, biting my lip as I remembered my previous life. "The reason I wanna kill you is not only because your life was so easy, but you were so pathetic as to give up and keep it that way! Not to mention you tried to act like you knew everything about me, when in reality you didn't know shit!"

He pulled his hand back, a ball of plasma forming in his palm, and he fired a beam of plasma at me from it. I stood up, deflecting it with my arm, and I flashed in front of him in the blink of an eye. "You goddamn hypocrite..." I punched him in the face as hard as I could, sending him flying and tumbling back into a mountain. "Don't you dare...try to act like you know shit about me either!" My body sparked heavily and my eyes glowed, angrier than I had ever been in my entire life in that moment, and I felt a surge of energy.

He stood up, growling with anger. "Am I wrong?!" He shouted at me as he fired another blast of plasma.

I fired a bolt of lightning, cancelling it out. "My life may have been easy, but you really think I liked the way my life was?!" I clenched my fists so hard they almost bled. I couldn't tell if my arms were shaking from rage or from how many sparks I was giving off. The sky above us grew dark with clouds that were nearly black. "I hated it... I hated every second of my life! I just wanted it to end!" I fired another bolt of lightning at him, and he flashed, avoiding it. This time, I was the one firing a barrage at Raito. "I was all alone..!" My voice cracked. "I closed myself off because I was tired of being rejected by every single person I interacted with!" I fired one last lightning bolt. "Even you..!"

"Oh boo hoo." He scoffed as he deflected my last lightning bolt. "Having a ton of people isn't all that great Sanda. The more people you have the more people you have that expect things from you!" He fired a blast of plasma and I dodged it, firing a bolt of lightning in return, but he deflected that one too. "People were always expecting things from me! Good grades, kind personality, excellent manors, I was so sick of it! And then...even you..."

I shouted, not hearing the last thing he said. "Even so! I'd rather have that than nothing at all!"

He glared at me and fired a barrage of plasma beams again. "It's absolute torture! Something you could never understand!"

I growled, encasing my body in lightning and deflecting his beams before flashing to him. "You're the one who could never understand!" I punched him in the face and he punched me in the gut, both of us grunting in pain, but we stood our ground. Both of our eyes started glowing, his glowing brighter than the natural glow they already had as we charged balls of our elements in our hands again.

"Don't assume crap when you don't know shit about me!" We both shouted in unison as we fired blasts of our elements at each other point blank, causing a massive shockwave and a small explosion, both of us crashing into the ground again. As I flew back, I saw the sky, noticing it was raging with lightning of both yellow and mint green colors.

I caught myself and began flashing back and forth with Raito, punching him, kicking him, shocking him, everything I could do to leave a wound, and he did the exact same to me, blasting me back and forth with his plasma at times. We were both covered in bruises, burns, and had blood dripping from several parts of our bodies. We panted heavily, though neither of us wanted to stop, letting nothing but our rage for one another do the talking. I flashed to him once again as he flashed to me, slamming into one another and our elements collided.