Twenty-One
- Suikoden II, Chaco and explosions
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"Of course it's real!" Chaco said, yanking his hand away and clutching it jealously to his chest. "I stole it fair and square."

"Yeah? Who'd you steal it from, then?"

"Not telling."

"Bet you didn't steal it," Futch said triumphantly. "Bet it's not even a real Rune."

"It is so!" Stung, Chaco lanced one wing out and smacked Futch on the shoulder with it. "It is so a real Rune and I'll prove it."

"Oh yeah? Dare you to. Bet you can't."

"You're on!" Chaco leapt from Futch's bed to the windowsill, perching there, his clawed toes clutching at the sill. "Meet you at the training grounds, slowpoke." And pausing only to flip Futch a terribly obscene Winger gesture (it meant, loosely, 'may you contract an STD so awful your wings rot off') Chaco dove out the window, Futch's affronted cry following him as he went.

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The training yard was nearly empty, except for a couple of Blue Knights in one corner stolidly working through a few hundred rounds of shield drills. Chaco landed on the hard-packed earth with a little skitter of claws and waited impatiently, his wings flaring out around him, his hands fisted on his hips.

He didn't have to wait long before Futch burst out of the castle, his boots unlaced and his hair still mussed. "Had to put my boots on," Futch gasped, pulling to a halt in front of Chaco. "Okay, so prove it already."

"I will, stupid human." Chaco turned around, sighting on one of the deep-sunk battered and burnt wooden posts on the opposite side of the field. He screwed his face up in concentration and then, dramatically, flung his right hand up over his head.

Nothing happened. Well, nothing happened except Futch waited a beat and then snickered, not bothering to hide it. Chaco's scowl could have peeled the bark off a tree. "Shut up," he hissed.

"Make me," Futch said, now laughing openly. "Go ahead, roast me with your Fire rune, I deserve it!"

"Shut up!" Chaco yelled, and then, when he was too angry to speak, it was as if something grabbed his right hand and dragged it up over his head, and fire exploded outwards in all directions as the rune shimmered into existence in the air over him.

Flaming arrows pelted the courtyard in all directions, leaving little charred black spots burnt in the earth. The two Blue Knights yelled a warning and threw up their shields, deflecting a handful of the missiles, and Futch instinctively dove for the one spot on the field that was safe, dropping to his knees at Chaco's feet and clinging to Chaco's legs. "Make it stop!" Futch screamed, trying to be heard over the roar of the fire. "I believe you, okay, so make it stop!"

"I caaaaaaan't!" Chaco screamed back, screwing his eyes shut and cringing away from his hand, stuck so high in the air that he seemed to almost be dangling from it. His wings were pulled as tight against his body as he could manage. Fire splattered everywhere and the two Knights had abandoned the field to them, and any second now someone was going to come out and see what he was doing...

The rune flickered and faded, and three last flaming arrows pocked the earth around them. For a moment they were both still, Futch huddling on his knees and clinging to Chaco's legs, Chaco trembling and frozen in a crazy parody of a rune-salute. Eventually they both tentatively cracked their eyes open to survey the damage. The earth of the courtyard was pitted and blackened by the fiery impacts in a circle twenty feet all around them, with only the tiny space in the center that just barely contained them both. Chaco was panting. Futch swallowed.

"You are going to get in so much trouble," Futch breathed, and he threw himself backwards and to his feet, nearly losing an unlaced boot in the process. "You are going to get in so much trouble!" he screamed over his shoulder as he fled back into the castle, and after a moment Chaco squawked in equal fear and bolted into the air, heading in the other direction just seconds before the two Blue Knights could return with help.