Fire Legend 8; Home Stretch

"Finally. Back Home," the Kasaigami would say, manifesting his thirteen foot hulking body from the rays of the Blood Orange Sun, "The Top Of Mt. Elios." This was where the Fire Sanctuary was, but he was at a higher point. The grand mountain that once stood strong and tall in its own magnificence was given life, will, and purpose of its own as one of the living landscapes of the Veritas, not unlike its cousins, the Great Alps, or its elder brother, The Hyperion Colossus. The living volcano is a turtle-esque creature harboring tusks of pure molten heat and a burning hearth within the grandiose volcanic structure piercing the heavens atop its back. Now that it is no longer under the influence of The Insanity and kept at bay by the Kasaigami, it became a moving, growing, evolving being that casually roams the Corona Badlands as the Kasaigami's mobile home. It is the younger sibling of the Guardian of the Fire Sanctuary, the Hyperion Colossus, just as Mt. D'Stroi is. Mt. Elios rests upon Venetia, the Volcano Isle when it is returned to its original space, and sits next to the natural volcano that Venetia harbors. The mobile volcano atop the floating island is set upon the ground when Venetia lands and allowed to walk off into the Corona Badlands when Titus seeks to watch over all the land. Occasionally, he will take Mt. Elios off of Venetia, the Volcano Isle and roam around.

Right now, however, Titus was just happy to be back home. He had yet to enter the Fire Sanctuary, but he enjoyed the heat of the hearth of Mt. Elios, where he first began his Legend a long time ago. "It Is Good To Be Back!" Titus said heartily, hovering over the volcano.

There to greet Titus in a burst of red and black flames was his daughter, Tetra, who had been waiting for him for some time. "Hey Dad," Tetra said as Titus got comfortable, "... Weren't We Supposed To Be Training, Or Something?" She gave her father a sly look as she said, "You Were The One That Said We Should." He was off doing other things for a very long time, and Tetra was waiting just as long as her mother Garnet -- now returned to Misery -- was. "What Have You Been Doing All This Time?"

"Daughter!" Titus said with a hint of surprise, chuckling nervously. "Ahahaha, Yes, Well, You See..." He'd been off doing a LOT of other things whilst Misery and Tetra were supposed to be training with each other... But he lost track of how long he'd been gone for real. "... Er, Well, I Have Been Training, As Well! I Did Say That I Would Train With You After You And Your Mother Worked Out Your Issues..." Somehow during that time Garnet returned to her form as Misery Des Gloomi, and it might have been because of how pissed she was. But Misery was still his wife all the same. She was the same Garnet that was the Souzenryoku Of Fire.

"But Yes, I Have Been Training All Of This Time. Haha." He laughed nervously again. "How Long Have I Actually Been Gone?" His consciousness was not with him as he was off somewhere else meditating, and even within the Blood Orange Sun. Wherever his consciousness was is where Titus himself was, but he was also present in other places simultaneously. He must have lost track of time.

Somehow, Tetra didn't buy it. "Training, You Say?" she'd inquire, "... Dad, It's Been Three Years." Tetra figured that he was off doing important things, but didn't expect him to be gone THAT long. "We Were Supposed To Be Done Training A Very Long Time Ago. Mom And I Finished And She Got So Pissed That She Turned Back Into Misery Waiting For You." That was the story they were going with. "But Yeah, I've Just Been Chillin'. I Haven't Really Been Bothered..." Tetra was a bit lazy sometimes. Her Will wasn't the same as her parents'. "... But I Did Really Miss You," she'd say tenderly, hugging his giant leg with her tiny, small body. "Glad You're Back, Hopefully To Stay."

"THREE YEA--" He stopped himself, composed himself. Deeply inhaled, heavily exhaled. "... Yes, Well. Time Certainly Does Move Differently In Other Realms And Such," Titus said a bit shakily. This was the first time he was actually wobbly in his speech rather than firm and assertive. "... Ah, But I Am Back Now, And We Can Make Up For Lost Time!" He laughed loudly, as if trying to drown out the guilt of being gone doing other things for three years straight.

When he was hugged, he wrapped his arms around his child and returned the warmth tenderly, bending over to match her height when he embraced her. "I Will Not Be Making Such A Journey Again, Nor Will Be I Be Stuck Elsewhere For That Long Anymore."

Tetra let go of her father after they hugged and she returned to being mellow. "Yeaaaah, Sooo..." In three whole years, Tetra had learned and trained a lot. "Dad. I Think I'm Really Adept With My Fire Element Now Since I've Been Training And Learning For Like, Three Years." She was confident in her abilities and had been off doing... 'Stuff'... Of her own. "So I Don't Think I Need Anymore Training. Did You Have Anything Else In Mind For Our Bonding Time?"

Titus narrowed his eyes at his daughter, but kept a smile on his face as she said she'd completed her training. "Oh, So You Think You're Hot, Huh?" Titus laughed, this time heartily. "Well, Daughter, It's Been Three Years Since I've Seen You. Why Don't You Give Daddy A Presentation Of Your Skills?" He was sounding like his father now. He wasn't particularly fond of it, but he understood where the spirit of 'testing the child' came from. "That Is, If You Think You're Bad." He grinned at her, eyes still sharp.

Tetra scoffed. "Pfff, What Do You Take Me For?" she asked, placing her hands on her hips, "What Do You Want Me To Do, Daddio? I'll Ace It, Whatever It Is." Tetra certainly had confidence in her skills, despite how somber she seemed before. Her will flared up when she was challenged, and she was willing to do whatever her father wanted to in order to exceed his expectations of her. "Lay It On Me."

"Hit Me," Titus said bluntly. "Just One Time." He looked at her with a serious yet playful expression, wanting to see if her so called 'Three Year Training' had paid off any. "You May Begin Whenever You Are Ready." He was prepared as he was, but took on a meditative position, lifting his legs into a crisscross in the air and hovering above the volcano.

Tetra knew that was going to be a challenge, but she played it off like it wasn't. "No Problem," she said with a mellow confidence, "Easy Pickings." She doubted herself secretly, since her father was the Fire God and everything... Not just some dude that had fire powers. The Fire GOD. So, being a child, she was actually pretty unsure.

But that wouldn't stop her. Tetra summoned her blades, Jealousy and Vengeance, from her fiery red angel wings. "Alright, Pop, Don't Get Had Too Quick, Now." Tetra raised her sword, Jealousy, which had the spirit of Divine Wind in it, and she would be consumed by a holy gale. "I'm Telling Ya, I've Really Improved." She was more telling herself that than anything. Without further ado, Tetra lunged at Titus with a bursting force behind her, her sword ready to stab at him as she was launched toward him.

"Mm." That was the only noise made as Titus closed his eyes and went into a deep meditation, awaiting his daughter's attack. Using the wind element as opposed to using fire was a smart first move, and he was pleased with her judgment. Wind also made her faster, which she would need in the long run.

However...

As soon as Tetra burst at Titus, he transformed into pure fire with a quick combustion, immediately being blown away by the powerful wind that Tetra kicked up, something like a candle being blown out. After that, he was completely gone. 'You Will Have To Do Better Than That To Strike Me, Dear Daughter,' Tetra would hear in her head. The emanations of the land were part of Titus, the Magnus Ignis, and he could synchronize with the brainwaves of others using his own.

He did not appear again, but he was still around the land... Somewhere.

"I Knew It Wouldn't Be That Easy," Tetra said to herself, lowering her eyelids. Her father disappeared and was nowhere to be found in all the land... And she didn't want to go looking for him, either. However, the clever little girl did come to a different conclusion in her wish to not pursue her now not present father.

"... One Hit, Huh?" Tetra mumbled, smiling deviously, "I Think You Should Have Made It A Little Harder Than That, Pops!" Tetra raised her swords into the air and lunged toward the ground at a high speed, aiming to stab the swords straight into the ground and strike her father, who was ALL of the Magnus Ignis -- the entire Corona Badlands. With her stabbing into the ground, she would hit him no matter where or what he was, because he was everything in the land. Being omnipresent had its flaws, it seemed.

Titus was both impressed and scared for a moment, as his daughter figured out something he hadn't even thought of. He WAS indeed the entire land, and striking the ground or anything in the land would count as a technical hit.

He should have made this harder.

But he wasn't going to let his daughter slip by just like that. Titus was just going to have to pull some tricks that were a little out of bounds... And very creative.

The Magnus Ignis did not appear as Tetra soared toward the ground, but the ground did suddenly melt and erode, sending her plummeting down into a pit. Before long, a geyser of lava burst upward and shot Tetra back up into the air, sufficiently blocking her from her strike and also saving Titus from getting hit so easily.

'Clever, My Daughter,' Titus spoke in her head, 'But You Must Know That You Get That Creativity From Me.' As he spoke, he would appear up in the air beside her, still in his meditative position and still in a fiery form. "As Well As Your Willpower," he continued to say, meeting Tetra at the same height she would be launched into. Titus did nothing but hover there, burning.

"Tch... I Had You," Tetra said, swiping her sword of the wind element, Jealousy, in the direction of the burning figure, "There's Plenty More Room For Me To Hit Something Else, Ya Know." Tetra expanded her wings after swiping at her father with one of her swords, using the force of her swipe to give her a propulsion from her torque and sending her spiraling into the air. She suddenly disappeared, converging with the very wind itself using her 'Divine Wind' power.

'You're Not The Only One Who Can Combine With Elements, Dad!' Tetra said, knowing that there was no way he was going to be able to avoid the very wind itself. Though Tetra did have to technically be within the wind and not just part of the air to count it as a real strike, she knew, she could still expand her presence within the air to become a powerful wind that would blow across a large portion of the Land Of Great Fire.

And so, she did.

Still spinning even after becoming the wind, Tetra created a massive tornado out of herself that would threaten to touch down unto the Magnus Ignis and ravage the land, giving her the victory over her father's trial.

The sword blade passed through Titus as it did before, the wind flickering him out briefly as it passed over him. "... Why Didn't I Make This Harder For Her...?" Titus said to himself as Tetra became a tornado before his very eyes. "Burn Out," he said, using one of his techniques against the oncoming tornado. Before it could even touch the ground, the heat in the atmosphere would drain it dry of all of its built up energy, slowly uncoiling the spiraling wind into a gentle halt.

"I Am No Slouch, Myself," Titus said to his daughter, "But I Commend You On Your Efforts. You Are Doing Well To Make Me Have To Use A Technique On You." 'Burn Out' allowed for the Magnus Ignis to remove either by force or by nature whatever energy was subject to it, causing it to essentially cease at its core in whatever form it had taken. In this case, the wind itself would be brought to a calm, burning out its rotation and halting it completely, leaving Tetra without her cover.

Magnus Ignis appeared before his daughter again as a burning entity that sat in a meditative position with eyes closed. "There Is A Reason Why You Cannot Best Me, Despite How Easily You Believe You Should," Titus said wisely. "When You Understand Yourself And Myself Fully, Then You Will Know How To Pass My Trial." Titus flickered out, disappearing from the area again.

Tetra found herself spinning to a halt against her will, feeling tired and drained of a great deal of energy though she hadn't used but a smidgen to conjure up the tornado. She took on her physical form again and sighed, listening to her father's words before he disappeared. "... Dammit," she cursed, wondering how she was going to hit someone that could cause her energy to run itself dry all on its own. "... Wait A Second," Tetra thought, smirking deviously again, "I've Got Control Over Light, Too!" And what her father COULDN'T do was stop the light from touching everything in the land. There was no way it was possible.

So, Tetra decided upon using her 'Holy Light' to hit her father, glowing and releasing a huge blast of lustrous light from herself that spread far and wide, basically over the entire area that she could be seen in. Her light shined brightly and strongly, leaving Tetra like a beacon of sorts to a light brighter than the sun.

Again nearly confounded by his daughter, Titus did the only thing that he could think of that would stop his daughter from overcoming his trial with a simple solution at her disposal. He really didn't want to make this easy for her, but she was proving to be making it so whether he wished it or not. He underestimated her.

But, he wasn't done yet.

"Burn Up," he said, commanding the very light itself to be burnt to cinders as it left Tetra's body, particle by particle being erased upon contact with an entropy of which kept it from leaving a certain vicinity of the area, essentially forcing the light to both halt and darken in that immediate area. Tetra herself would still be aglow, but the radiation coming from her would be all but erased the moment it left her body, causing her to seem as if she were in a bubble of heat that turned her invisible to the outside and darkened the inside.

Titus sighed heavily, flickering in from out of nowhere with a look on his face like he was really stunned at the fact that he had to do something like that to prevent his daughter's prevalence. "... She's Making Me Be Reeeaaally Cheap," he said, understanding that he was burning and stopping light itself from moving with his mastery over the flame alone. After sighing with relief, though, he returned to a state of humble meditation and said, "But I Haven't Even Used Any Of My Stronger Techniques..." He knew that this had nothing to do with how powerful he or she was and everything to do with how creative or adaptable one could be given their situation, but doing something like that on the fly was pushing it for him.

"Oh Well, I'm Not The Fire God For No Reason," he reasoned, smiling humbly to himself and awaiting what his daughter would do next. The moment she stopped radiating light, he would stop burning it up before it touched anything.

Tetra continued to pour out light for a little while until she noticed that the area around her was getting darker and not brighter the more she exuded. "... No Freakin' Way," she said to herself, underestimating the extent of her father's power. "Is He... Burning My Light Before It Touches The Ground?" It was literally unbelievable. Something like that wasn't even heard of in physics, but when one thinks about it, it is very possible for light to burn up. Just not in this fashion.

Whatever the case may be, he was doing it and she was losing energy as he burnt up her light. So Tetra stopped pouring out light for the moment, breathing heavily. "This Is... Unreal Right Now..." she said through heavy breaths. "... But I'm Not Going To Lose!" Her eyes lit aflame with a burning passion to succeed, and the will inside of her drove her to use the most maximum of her potential to deal with what was coming at her. "... I Think I'm Starting To Understand What You're Talking About..." Tetra said valiantly, raising her sword of fire, Vengeance, and igniting it with Sacred Fire, "Father." Instead of trying to work against him, she was going to try to assimilate WITH him. As long as she made a clear and decisive impact on him, it didn't matter if it was because of a physical strike or a harmonious resonance. It just had to touch him.

"Sacred Fire..." Tetra prayed, the outline of her golden soul surrounding her and shining intensely, "... Let My Flame And My Father's..." She furrowed her brow, angelic wings and a halo sprouting from the golden soul of the Goddess that was within her, "BECOME ONE!!" She opened her eyes with the burning passion and let her soul harmonize with the atmosphere around her. She was doing it -- a Soul Resonance.

"Symphony Of Souls!" Tetra cried, her soul matching the vibrations of the area in perfect harmony. The flames that came from her sword would sprout into plumes of flares that extended outward into every direction, riding each and every wavelength current that passed by and creating patterns in the sky that matched how the heat in the air was moving. "Soul Synchro!"

Her Will and her father's Will... Would become One. Even if he rejected the flames, she would connect with his power as he used it, causing it to trace back to him and successfully touch him. Or so she hoped.

The Fire God could control fire perfectly, but he knew that during a Soul Synchro, that control was a gateway to connection between one's energy and another's. His daughter just might have bested him in using that.

He gazed upon the Sacred Fire with happiness as the flames made all sorts of designs in the air to match the heat, which of course Titus was not using his influence to control at the time. He knew that he could simply escape from this by going off elsewhere, but that wouldn't stop the flames from coming. If he used his own soul to combat the Soul Resonance, their souls would clash and that would count as a solid hit. No matter how he looked at it, his daughter had accomplished the task. She passed his test.

"Well Done, Daughter," Titus said as he allowed the Sacred Fire to harmonize with him and his energy, "This Is Truly What It Means To Understand Us Both. Your Mastery Of The Fire Element And Your Soul Prove To Me That Your Training Has Been Sufficient." Embracing the flames and letting them engulf him, the Magnus Ignis performed a Soul Resonance with his daughter, Tetra. They would both feel each others' power coursing through them, and in that, their Family Bond would deepen. "Next Time, I'll Give You An Even More Difficult Task! Hahahaha!" Magnus Ignis appeared to his daughter in her own flames, his face smiling and his body fiery and ethereal. He'd wait for her to calm down to continue speaking with her.

After hearing her father's words, Tetra's soul withdrew back into her body and the flames of Sacred Fire burnt away into the air. "Heh, Score," Tetra said, floating back down to the ground. "See? I Told Ya I Was Legit." She dispersed her swords back into her wings from whence they came and withdrew her burning red wings back into her body. "So, What's Next On The Bonding Agenda? I Feel Like I Learned A Little Something Today." One thing was that her father was not the Fire God for no reason. Another was that she was not his daughter for no reason.

"Next..." Titus began to say, "... We Go Back Home. Training Is Finished." Titus would hover to where his daughter was and begin to flicker out like a flame, taking her with him as he disappeared from the place where they were and back to the Fire Sanctuary.