I coughed blood. Was this where I’d go? Was this what would do me in? No. Not yet. Fire swarmed the construction site in its entirety, aiming for every vehicle still there, sweeping into them. The Rider didn’t need to be on his Ride to bring it forth. He just needed his fire to do the work.

Omaeda, finished battering Ichigo, was interrupted in his trek to my fallen body by a massive backhoe loader. Blazing, burning, and incandescent with flame, the construction vehicle bludgeoned Omaeda from behind. Having none of that, he spun to meet the thing only for a hook to wrap around his leg and drag him back.

A positively immense excavator was dragging him backwards, wrapped around its shovel was the chain from the destroyed industrial crane. Omaeda swore and reoriented himself to snap the chain only for a forklift to interrupt him from the side, striking him with dozens of burning planks of wood.

Unimpeded, only further enraged, he still snapped the chain. Gogetsuburi was swung around and, with immense force, decapitated the shovel of the excavator, swinging back around to destroy it and the forklift.

Even as the burning backhoe loader returned to run him down, Omaeda’s only response was to jump above it and crush the thing from above, flattening it with so little effort. Or, apparent little effort, as for the first time since the fight had begun, I finally caught him sweating. If the heat wasn’t getting to him, the exertion of it all was.