Gilded Ashes-Chapter 335: Houseplant

Raizen stared at him.

"Hit you."

"That’s what I said."

"You want me to hit you."

Kenzo stood in his stance - feet wide, hammer low, weight centered - with the relaxed patience of someone who could hold this position for hours and had done so many times before. For Raizen, he looked like a boulder that had decided to grow arms and pick up a weapon.

"I’m not going to hit a Phalanx" Raizen said.

"Former Phalanx. And you’re not going to hit me either way, so I don’t see the problem."

"That’s - that’s not the point. You could get -"

"Hurt?" Kenzo’s eyebrows rose. The word seemed to genuinely amuse him, as if Raizen had just expressed concern about the structural integrity of a mountain. "Raizen, I’ve taken direct hits from fortitude nine Nyxes. I fought through a collapsing bridge with four broken ribs and a dislocated shoulder. I once blocked a Nyx’s hand shaped like a siege hammer with my forearm because my weapon was on the ground and I didn’t feel like picking it up." He tilted his head. "You weigh about sixty kilos and you’re holding nothing. I think I’ll survive."

Raizen opened his mouth to protest.

"Just try" Kenzo said before anything could escape Raizen. "Worst case, you miss. Best case, you learn something."

Raizen didn’t move. His feet stayed planted, his arms stayed at his sides, and his face carried the expression of a student who’d been asked to punch his teacher and was experiencing every possible reason not to, all at once, in reverse alphabetical order, from Z to A.

The lizard had turned inside the pocket - not peeking out, not raising its head above the fabric. Lying on its back, belly up, tiny legs folded, staring at Raizen through the pocket’s opening with the upside-down gaze of something that had been watching this entire exchange and had formed opinions.

Strong opinions.

"He could’ve trained a sack of potatoes and gotten better results already" the lizard said. Its voice was muffled by the fabric but perfectly audible to Raizen, each word delivered with a weariness that suggested the creature was suffering physically from what it was witnessing. "At least potatoes don’t apologize before they even try."

"Shut up" Raizen whispered, barely moving his lips.

"No, really - a potato. Just sitting there. Doing nothing. And it would STILL be more useful than you right now, because at least the potato isn’t wasting a Phalanx’s time with -"

"I said shut -"

"Get it together already!" The lizard’s voice pitched upward, a genuine plea wrapped in exasperation, the tone of someone who was watching a disaster unfold and couldn’t look away. "I’m dying of secondhand embarrassment in here! My scales are cringing out! I didn’t even know scales COULD cringe!"

Kenzo watched Raizen, not understanding what was actually happening, but his expression didn’t change.

Something snapped inside Raizen’s chest. Not the cosmic, membrane-tearing snap from the summoning - something smaller and more practical. The snap of a person who’d been insulted past their tolerance threshold by a creature the size of their thumb, and whose pride had finally overridden their common sense.

Esen mentioned something like this before. He was almost proud of knowing a word like that.

Ragebait, was it...?

He pulled off his jacket, walked to the root where his swords lay, crouched, and tucked the lizard - still on its back, still ranting, tiny legs gesturing - into one of the jacket’s side pockets. He folded the jacket once, set it on the root, and straightened up.

He stretched his hands, rolled his wrists, cracked his knuckles one at a time, the sounds popping through the quiet forest air.

His swords stayed on the ground. Kenzo had said hit me, not fight me. Bare hands. Should be fine.

He stepped in.

The first attempt was embarrassing. He knew it was embarrassing while it was happening, which made it worse. He threw a jab toward Kenzo’s midsection - light, hesitant, the punch equivalent of knocking on a door you’re not sure you’re allowed to open. Kenzo didn’t block it or parry it or deflect it. He just stepped to the side, one easy lateral shift, and Raizen’s fist passed through empty air with the conviction of a wet towel thrown at a wall.

He reset. Tried again. A cross this time, aimed at the shoulder - and it was somehow even weaker than the first one, his arm pulling the punch before it landed, his body refusing to commit the full force because somewhere deep in his muscle memory lived the absolute certainty that hitting a Phalanx was a fundamentally terrible idea.

Kenzo watched the second punch miss with the expression of a man watching a newborn puppy try to climb a staircase.

From the jacket, a rustle. The lizard had shifted - just enough to poke the top of its head above the pocket’s edge, spikes flat, one disappointed eye visible. It watched Raizen with the focus of a creature preparing to say something that would make the situation significantly worse.

"Okay, okay" it said. Just loud enough. Just barely loud enough for Raizen to catch it across the five meters of open ground between him and the jacket. "I see how it is. Big guy over there believes in you, wants to train you, takes time out of his day to come down here and stand in the mud..."

The eye blinked. Slowly.

"...and you’re just gonna stand there like a boring decorative houseplant."

The word houseplant hit different.

Something in Raizen’s posture changed. The hesitation didn’t disappear - it got overruled. Shoved aside by a flash of irritation so hot and so specific that it burned through every rational objection his brain had been constructing for the last two minutes. The lizard had found the button, the exact button, the one marked ego, and it had pressed it with all four feet.

Raizen moved.

He stepped in fast - genuinely fast this time, weight forward, hips turning, his body committing to the motion the way it committed to things in real fights. He went low, ducking under the line where Kenzo’s guard would be, aiming a hook at the ribs from an angle that would’ve caught most people off-balance.

He didn’t expect Kenzo to be faster.

The hammer moved. Not a swing - a twist. Kenzo’s hands rotated on the handle with a fluidity that had no business existing in a man that large, redirecting the weapon’s massive head from resting position to active arc in less time than it took Raizen to process what was happening. The feet shifted. One step - smooth, precise, opening the angle, turning Raizen’s committed attack into a lane that led directly into the hammer’s path.

The heavy iron head came around in a flat, lateral sweep aimed at Raizen’s torso. It was already moving too fast to be a warning and too committed to be pulled back, the full weight of forged metal accelerating through an arc that would end wherever Raizen’s body happened to be when it arrived.

And it didn’t show signs of stopping.