BLUE FIRE AND TWISTED METAL

Everything happened so fast, it was like he wasn't even there. 

The horror fit its bloated, grotesque body through that too-small door, falling to the ground in an awkward heap. Despite being struck with a dart, the thing slid its many hands around against the floor and reached for secured crates to help itself back up again. It being awake was a true testament to its monstrosity.

Cifer's neck cracked. A fury flew up the man's inner thigh like someone had turned on the boiler and Matt was touching the pipes. Too dazed to pull away immediately, his overexerted body leaned against that increasingly sweltering heat as though it made perfect sense to do so. 

It didn't. This was fucking crazy. He wished he was back home with Guise right about now, and hated himself for not thinking about the man again until just now. 

"Behind!"

Matt didn't need to be told twice. That fire started sizzling right through Cifer's pants, threatening to burn him like it had back when he was wearing those shackles. Heavy limbs used the blond savage as leverage to shove himself away. Tumbling slightly sideways and to the floor, Matt couldn't help it; he coughed wildly, splattering that familiar black substance across the train floor. 

… Fuck. How'd it get this bad? Oh, right. The Cradle.

Unseemly gurgling came from what he assumed was the beast getting closer to them, but Matt was facing away. The floor under his bare hands heated up and bit his palms, snapping him out of his stupor enough to drag himself as far behind Cifer as he possibly could. 

The man propped himself up with a crate against his back, vision faltering and splitting into two. What little lights were still working in the car inexplicably went out, but it didn't remain dark for long. 

No, a brilliant explosion of blue and orange flames lit the place up in a mesmerizing glow. With Cifer's arm outstretched, a ball of fluctuating fire teeming with life manifested itself before Matt's eyes. The blond snatched it out of midair, smoothly extending his arm down and out as the flames vanished and a long, familiar-looking blade was summoned in its wake. 

Laughter. Thick and slurred, filled with nostalgic resentment and comfort all at once, escaped Matt like a bat out of hell. 

"... We're so boned."

Not because the creature had finally found its footing, but because there, in Cifer's hand, was the blade that was intrinsically tied to the source of his ex-friend's terrifyingly destructive power. His long, thick blade with a repurposed handle that Cifer had smelted himself, with his bare hands, in an uncontrolled trance. It may not be a great sword, but if any other man were to hold it, you may mistake it for one. 

That monster of a blade had impaled Matt once. Now, Cifer's anger made the blade hum its melodic, vibrating song again. PTSD flashbacks made the room contort in his mind; for a moment, it was like he was watching a teenage Cifer's back, standing in the exact position they were in now, whilst the man was facing down a hundred enemy soldiers and Matt's guts were hanging out. 

But the train came back to life when that undead thing broke the scenario in his memory. Didn't make him any less freaked out, considering his hands were desperately clutching his innards and trying to stuff them back in for a good while before reality bled back into his consciousness.

SKREEEEEE!

Something went flying and bounced off the wall, splattering the ground with something dark and familiar. Foul, rotting, and black as night. Matt's brows drew together tightly as he searched for what it was, catching that thing leap away from Cifer as though the man were some kind of monster himself. 

He spotted a bloated, rancid, dismembered arm off to his left and realized. He'd been reliving an old memory and gotten separated from what was happening around him. Cifer had moved so fast, Matt's non-supe eyes missed it entirely. He may not have spotted the arm were it not for the glowing embers that steadily burned the limb where it had been severed. 

"Don't melt the fucking—"

"Hang onto something, Princess!"

Oh, fuck. No. He wasn't being serious, was he? 

"Just set it on fire!"

"That's not going to stop this train from getting us in range!"

"Range for what?"

The creature stopped spazzing out and leapt onto the ceiling. It twisted its entire head around full circle before it lunged at Cifer and the man brought his blade up to meet those terrifying claws. Cifer and the beast exchanged a flurry of attacks; the creature's claws occasionally slipped past Cifer's defenses, slicing open the exposed flesh on the blond man's chest. The man struggled to hold his ground under the relentless assault, and eventually, it threw him off his footing.

Melting boots dug into the ground from the force that him pushed him back. His blond locks ignited into gorgeous flames, the edges of his coat bursting alight right along with it. Practiced movements regained his balance just in time not to be beheaded. He ducked, slashing out with his blade and catching another arm in its path; the limb went flying and started on fire from the violent heat of the man's blade. Another ear-shattering cry made Matt wince, and Cifer shifted to the side, gaining the upper hand just as it swiped wildly at him again.

"Palace!"

Cifer's muscles tightened and his teeth bared themselves as he hissed smoke out from between them. The man reaffirmed his grip on his blade and, using raw brute muscle, he parried the claws trying to disembowel him. Metallic scratching grated against Matt's ears—the claws created sparks that flew off in all directions as they slid across Cifer's sword. And because of where those sparks originated from, tiny fires broke out whenever they landed. 

For a moment, Matt thought the man would advance on the opening he'd just created as the creature crumbled in on itself and lost its balance again. It would be easy just to take off its head, stab the fucking thing with that inferno of a sword and watch it burn. But Cifer did the exact opposite of that. 

Instead, the bastard shifted himself so he was using his barbaric forearm to point the tip of his blade at the thing. 

"You can't be serious—" Matt pulled himself away from the crate. His eyes stung and lungs screamed, both from the spreading fires and the smoke. 

"Hang onto something."

He'd barely backed away when the intensity of the heat radiating off Cifer set the man's fur coat ablaze, incinerating it completely in a matter of seconds. 

"Are you crazy? You'll kill us!"

The horrified alpha heard a voice in his head. 

Don't even joke about that! He's derailed more trains than I can count. He's psychotic. If you want to die, do it by yourself! Jump from the train if you want to, but don't take the rest of us with you!

He was really gonna do it, wasn't he? Curses he hadn't spoken since he was a boy flooded his lips as he scraped himself further back, wincing when the heat made the metal around the blond's immediate vicinity glow red. 

Something that was more tied down than everything else, quick!

Matt's eyes squinted in the orange-dark, smoke obscuring not only his breathing, but his sight, too. Despite the fires and the melting glow of Cifer's wrath filling the room with light, the toxic, airborne sludge from burning steel covered in paint and other treated substances was enough to drop Matt flat against the floor. 

The man army crawled away from Cifer and the snarling creature that was too close to Cifer. A burst of light and its ugly gurgling cutting off abruptly told Matt the thing ignited from the mere proximity to that demon of an alpha. 

Matt wanted to argue this was enough, that they could just jump out of the train, but with the way the train still moved silently, he wondered if that was even an option. Well, he didn't wonder for long. Cifer's fire changed from orange to blue. The man's body exploded with fire, his skin glowing with the light produced from the power of his hellish momentum as he shifted his arm into an upper arc. 

The undead thing was nothing more than a pile of ashes on the molten floor, and Matt had wedged himself between two incredibly solid looking objects, positioning to grip them tightly. And yet, he did so in a way that he wouldn't trap himself when everything went to shit. 

Cifer swung, and a thick, brilliant streak of gorgeous, deadly blue plasma flew from his blade as he super-heated everything and cut through the very air itself. Metal melted like butter under its touch, slicing through the train car with blood curdling ease. One swipe to his left, then Cifer spun around and repeated another swing to their left, and soon enough, the car shredded itself apart. 

Matt couldn't help but let out a shout as the cargo car screeched and disconnected from the rest of the train. It made his ears bleed, but he had no time to cover them, considering the entire segment of the train and the few cars attached to them derailed, twisting and crumpling sideways on the tracks before they went flying off the side of the mountain entirely. 

Up became down, and down became up. The secured cargo, shaken and jostled like a bartender making a drink, threw his body to the side despite his preparation and attempt to hold on. He was positive he shouted, but the deafening sound of a fucking train crashing swallowed his cries.

Then the weightlessness came. And the sickening sensation of falling. They were tumbling through the air, down the sharp edge of a mountainous cliff. As Mattias' grip failed and he lost his life-saving hold, he reached uselessly in the air for something, anything, to hang on to. 

He could have sworn he heard his name being screamed with raw desperation, but the rushing air and crashing metal drowned it all out. The train fell faster than he did, and for a few breathless seconds, he resolved himself to die. 

But a hot, burning hand reached out and grabbed his biceps, giving his body whiplash from how hard it snapped back. Blackened vision and overwhelmed senses failed to register the steaming, solid body pressing against his. Cifer had stuck his blade into the side of their ruined car, but as soon as he'd seen Mattias go flying past him, the man yanked his blade out, grabbed Matt and wrapped him in both his arms. Unbeknownst to the smaller alpha, the blond willingly let his sword go flying from his hands.

It vanished into the night, clanging off the rocky cliffs and into the inky abyss below.

The two of them fell in unison together, and for a blessing, Cifer's impossible heat and massive frame chased the biting cold of an early Russian winter out of Matt's bones. 

… § … 

It's easy to die from a train rolling off the side of a mountain. Too easy. So easy, in fact, that Mattias was sure he had died. It would have made more sense to him. Mattias Kohler was not, nor had he ever been, a supe. And whilst a supe could use their enhanced abilities and reflexes to survive that kind of fall, he most certainly couldn't. 

It was easy for a weak, dying man to—well. Die. 

So why wasn't he dead?

Lungs gasped in a breath of total agony. He screamed. 

Or he tried to, anyway. But his ears were ringing and couldn't hear a goddamn thing. Something had broken their fall—something hard and stabbing into his left side, but softer and more forgiving to his right. His body thrummed with agony; fresh burns stung in the wicked cold, bruises and likely at least a busted rib or two made it hard to breathe. He was so fucking dizzy, his world burst into several versions of itself. 

For a long time, Matt could do nothing but lie there and wait. Shit, maybe he even passed out? It's impossible to tell. But, after a while, the smell of smoke vanished and the sounds of cracking metal eased to a low, teetering crawl. 

Digits twitched with testing impulses; they didn't seem broken. Wrists followed suit, forearms and shoulders, then his neck. It crackled like shattered glass when he lifted his head, but other than the dull ache, it didn't seem like he'd broken it at all. 

He wouldn't be able to move his body right if he had. It didn't matter, anyhow. You weren't supposed to move with a potential head injury, but he did it anyway.

Boots with melted soles twitched as the agonizing test expanded. So far, so good. It was slow to respond, but he could move his legs. Matt opened his eyes, but when he realized his world was still off kilter, he shut them again. Carefully, he felt for the surrounding things; some items were soft, others, not so much. A shipping container of civilian items? 

Is that what saved him? No way. He isn't a supe. That—

Familiar heat permeated from under his body, and a sickening sensation froze the burning air in his lungs and his rancid blood in his veins. 

No. He didn't. Couldn't have. 

"… Cifer?"

The man's name flew from his lips like a stuttered prayer as his fingers shifted to feel the more solid mass under him. The sound of his own voice sounded warbled and faint to his ears as he brushed whatever he was partially laying on. It was warm, flesh-like, familiar, and worst of all, the more he shifted, the stronger a familiar scent broke through his smoke fried nose. 

Roasting marshmallows, chocolate, graham crackers and a hint of hot caramel. A blood. A stupid amount of blood.

Shit! 

Matt couldn't survive, but Cifer could. The son of a bitch broke his fall. Moving purely out of adrenaline and instinct, Matt's unsteady body sat up and he dragged his stinging limbs to life. They say men can do extraordinary things when they're on the brink of death, or when someone else is dying, too. Matt can't rightly explain how he got himself upright in those folded, decimated ruins of a crate, but he did. 

One hand snaked under a bruised, steaming, and sliced up arm that was sticking out from under him. His teeth were likely to shatter from how hard he clenched them, exertion playing itself out of his throat as he wrenched Cifer's nude body up and out of the rubble. 

With sheer force of will, that sickly, battered man dragged the blond brute out into the open.

Sharp eyes opened and found only a somewhat swimming world, illuminated by the glowing embers of the ruined train cars that had all piled up on one another. Some crates were still burning, but the melting snow had doused others. It took a moment for him to take it all in, but his brain caught up eventually.

There, amidst all the twisted metal and destruction, stood Matt with a hulking man, passed out and draped over his back. Behind him, the imposing, unstable cliff-side of an unnaturally made mountainside. In front, an endless sea of trees, snow, forgotten bodies of the dead and nothingness for as far as the eye could see. 

Yeah. They were so fucking boned.