The gangbangers of the ABB automatically stepped back when the Cape appeared amongst them. They were used to seeing freaky things when it came to Capes; their leader frequently turned into a humanoid dragon for crying out loud!

Still, they had never seen a woman seemingly made entirely out of fire! Blue fire at that!

She stood tall, as tall as any of the men, blue flames making up the entirety of her body. The heat was so intense that the street was melting beneath her feet as she walked, and the gangers could feel themselves start to sweat profusely even from several meters away.

"Who the fuck are you?!" the leader of the group of gangsters barked fearfully.

"Call me…Pyroclasm." The voice of the woman was tinged with the crackle of flames, "You can all either surrender…or you can get hurt. Your choice."

"Fuck you! Kill her!" the man barked, prompting the members with guns to pull them out and open fire at the flaming woman with reckless abandon.

A curtain of blue flames sprung up around the woman, absorbing the fusillade of bullets before vanishing, leaving behind scorched ground and puddles of melted lead.

"Are you done?" Pyroclasm asked coolly, "My turn then."

Swiping her hand through the air, a wave of ordinary orange flames erupted around her and engulfed the gangsters, who let out a chorus of shrieks. When the flames died down again, the gangers were lying twitching on the ground, clothes noticeably absent and their skin not even scorched.

"This is the only warning you will receive." The fiery Cape informed them, "Leave Brockton Bay or suffer the consequences."

Sprouting a pair of wings made of red fire, she shot into the sky and vanished from the ganger sight.

Later

PRT HQ

"What do you have?" Emily Piggot asked brusquely as she stormed into the meeting room. Armsmaster and Miss Militia looked up at her from the table they were sat at.

"Over thirty members of the ABB were attacked by a female Parahuman identifying herself as Pyroclasm." Armsmaster started, "She ordered them to surrender before they attacked her with handguns, which were blocked by a 'curtain of blue flames,' which was apparently hot enough to melt lead bullets. In case you didn't know, Director, the melting point of lead is 327.46 degrees Celsius. These flames were hot enough to melt the bullets in an instant."

Piggot scowled. "Pyroclasm…it sounds like a villain's name."

"To be fair, there aren't very many names available for fire using Capes that don't sound villainous." Miss Militia reasoned, "I'm just glad she shoes to stay away from anything remotely like Burnscar."

Grimacing, Piggot had to agree. The psychopathic Burnscar of the Slaughterhouse Nine was a very good reason why Pyrokinetics were treated with care and delicacy in case they went off the rails like she had.

"What happened after that?" she asked.

"Pyroclasm counterattacked." Miss Militia replied, "She unleashed a wave of orange fire that only destroyed the gangbangers' clothing before issuing her ultimatum to them and flying away on wings of red fire."

"Yes…this ultimatum is troubling." Piggot said with a frown, "What could she be planning to do with them if they don't leave Brockton bay?"

"It's a moot point." Armsmaster pointed out, "The BBPD have got ten of them on Illegal Possession of Firearms and the rest have signed confessions for cases of robbery, assault and several other charges for past unsolved cases, so they will be leaving the Bay for prison once the judge signs off on the order."

"It's the principal of the thing, Armsmaster!" Piggot was exasperated with his inability to comprehend things like this, "An unknown, unaffiliated Parahuman has issued an ultimatum to the ABB. Just how well do you think Lung and Oni Lee are going to take that?"

Miss Militia winced at that. "Not well. He might just go on another rampage and we can't stop him."

"We are understaffed compared to the number of villains in the city, so we could ask for more reinforcements." Armsmaster opined.

Piggot snorted. "And the end result would be a great deal of excuses and perhaps a few new Wards, but no Protectorate transfers, which would do us almost no good whatsoever, unless they were a month or so away from turning eighteen. No, we can't do that. What I want done is for the city to be combed for this 'Pyroclasm' character and she is to be instructed to come in for questioning. Those ABB gangers were not actually breaking the law when they were attacked. What did she look like?"

"That's…she was covered in blue fire. That's all we got from the ABB gangers." Miss Militia said with a sigh, "It could be similar to Purity's light or it could be a Breaker or Changer form. For all we know, it's a man who Changed into a female form to throw us off."

"Urgh…" Emily hadn't thought of that, but she doubted it. Most shapeshifting powers changed Parahumans between their original form and another, inhuman, form, not into other genders.

At least not in the last thirty year history of Parahuman abilities. There had been that body possessing Cape in Newfoundland, Loki, who could take the form of anyone he had possessed, but he was well and truly dead; he'd been killed by Jack Slash five years ago.

"In any case, step up the search for Pyroclasm. I want her brought in and a member of the Wards or Protectorate ASAP." She said.

"Director, that might not be a good idea." Miss Militia cautioned her, "Shadow Stalker only stays because her power isn't especially powerful offence-wise. Pulling what Armsmaster did to Shadow Stalker on this Pyroclasm character could be a Very Bad Idea, especially if she goes off the deep end. Fire users often have a mental weakness built into their powers for some reason."

Piggot frowned. This was true. A surprisingly high number of fire-using Capes either became villains or suffered a mental breakdown at some point from overuse of their powers. It had never been explained to her satisfaction why that might be.

"…Fine." She allowed, "At the very least though, I want her in here, answering why she did what she did, as soon as possible."

The Next Day

The Docks

Pyroclasm, otherwise known as Taylor Hebert, flew across the sky over Brockton Bay's Docks area on her red fiery wings. She had heard on the news that about thirty ABB gagsters had been sent to prison for various offences.

Good.

She was tired of seeing her Dad come home day after day looking defeated when he lost more workers to the gangs, tired of seeing the Dockworkers Union grow closer and closer to becoming controlled by the Empire or the ABB and tired of nothing ever being done by the Protectorate or the police to curtail the power of the gangs.

'A bunch of paper tigers, the lot of them.' She thought angrily, 'Well then, let's see how the gangs handle someone who isn't willing to play nicely with them.'

Ever since she had triggered three months previously, she had become more ruthless and focussed when she covered herself in her blue fire. It was like she became a different person altogether.

Her power, the ability to control fire, wasn't as simple as it sounded. She actually controlled seven flames that had various different effects. The blue fire was the one that couldn't harm her body no matter what and acted as a defensive shield, although it couldn't be used offensively for some reason. It also made her more focussed and more ruthless when she wore it.

Orange fire, like she had used against the ABB the previous day, could be used offensively, but only destroyed inorganic objects. She could even limit it to 'destroy only fabric' or destroy only metal' like she had the previous day.

The red fire was a bit of a mystery to her. She could use it offensively, but it didn't burn or melt anything. It was completely inert, seemingly without any special properties.

The other flames were green, white, black and yellow, none of which she had tried out before. Taylor got the feeling when she reached out to them that she couldn't control them well at the moment.

A loud roar came from beneath her and she looked down to see Lung, the Dragon of Kyushu, flapping his wings and launching himself up at her, almost fully transformed into his dragon form while still being small enough to fly.

"DIE!" he roared and unleashed his own flames at her.

Instinctively, she raised one hand and shot a burst of her own red fire at him. The two bursts of flame collided and, as much to her own surprise as Lungs, her red fire absorbed the other flames in the area before vanishing.

'An anti-fire flame…so cool.' Pyroclasm thought with a grin. This robbed Lung of his little flame parade that he liked to use. Now all she had to worry about was getting squashed like a bug in his talons. Yippee.

"'onna 'ill 'ou!" Lung roared as he beat his wings strongly and came at her. She surrounded herself with a shell of blue fire just before the taloned hand would have struck her. Instantly, the azure flames seared and scorched the offending limb, making Lung shriek in pain and draw back, smoke coming from his damaged limb.

Pyroclasm dropped her shield and glared at the leader of the ABB. "You have been causing my home to rot for years, Lung!" she spat at him, "Now you will leave here and never return!"

"'uck 'ou, 'itch!" the Dragon of Kyushu snarled back. His talon had almost finished regenerating already.

Her fist clenched in anger and to her surprise became surrounded by shimmering yellow flames. Drawing her fist back, Pyroclasm thrust it at Lung, sending a concentrated beam of flames at him. He tried to dodge, but lost his arm, leg, tail and wing. Seeing a look of pained shock on a draconic face was priceless, even more so as he plummeted down through the roof of a warehouse.

'What the hell…? That wasn't fire, it was…plasma?!' Pyroclasm thought in shock. It had been plasma, pressurised into a beam that had cut through Lung's armoured scales as if they hadn't even been there. She made a note to herself to not use the yellow 'flame' against anything other than Lung and Endbringers.

Touching down on the roof of the building opposite the warehouse Lung had crash landed in, she didn't have to wait long before the dragon man crashed through the doors as if they were made of tin foil. He had bulked up as he had regenerated his four missing limbs, with even thicker scales than before.

"Lee!" he boomed.

Pyroclasm's eyes widened as the black jumpsuited figure of Oni Lee appeared on the roof near to her, his leering mask only a few feet away. Then he charged forward, pulling the pin from the grenades on his bandolier as he did so. She threw up a wall of red fire just in time to neutralise the majority of the explosion. She was still sent stumbling by the displaced air pressure, right into Oni Lee's waiting knife.

Her flame armour melted the knife, but not before it pierced it and scored a cut on her lower back, making her gasp in pain. The tele-duplicator teleported again, leaving his copy to be consumed by Pyroclasm's blue flames.

A roar reminded her that Lung was still a problem. Pyroclasm could also hear him climbing the building she stood on, which was a pain. She took flight, avoiding another suicide bomb clone attack by Oni Lee by doing so.

'Teleporter/Duplicators are a pain.' She thought as she hovered above the two ABB Capes. Lung with his strength and regenerative capabilities combined with Oni Lee's ability to suicide bomb without limit was a troubling team up.

"You know, this is becoming tiresome." She called down tauntingly to the two of them, "All the damage you've done to me amounts to a little scratch. Seriously, this is getting boring. Might as well finish it here and now."

Inside, she mentally reached out for the orange fire and unleashed a great sphere of it at the two capes. It exploded when it struck the building Lung was standing on, the orange flames consuming the building, all of Oni Lee's knives and grenades, as well as most of his bodysuit before he could teleport away.

Lung roared in fury as he was dropped back to ground level, Oni Lee appearing next to him almost stark naked.

Not a pleasant sight.

Lung gestured impatiently at Lee, who dissolved into dust after a moment. Evidently he had gone to rearm himself…and hopefully replace his bodysuit. The last thing Pyroclasm wanted to look at was Oni Lee's junk.

A feeling drew her attention inwards, where the green fire beckoned. She held out her hand, causing an emerald green spear made of flames to appear. Grabbing it, she pointed the point at Lung with a scowl. She altered the outer appearance of her flames so that whatever flame she was currently using was her eye colour to make herself look more intimidating.

"You don't want to get hit with this, Lung." She warned him as she drew it back, "Dodge it if you can!"

With that, she threw the spear down at the ground. She aimed it away from Lung but it seemed to have its own mind and tried to angle straight at the Dragon of Kyushu. With an act of will, she wrenched it back on course, landing it ten meters from Lung.

Upon impact, it exploded, releasing a seven meter wide pillar of green flames that stretched into the sky. The stone and concrete around the pillar started to melt and bubble from the extreme heat. After a moment, the green flames died down and vanished, leaving a deep pit in the ground.

Lung, meanwhile, had enhanced his growth until he stood head and shoulders above the warehouses. Pyroclasm groaned to herself. Lung was a stubborn bastard, so she'd actually have to hurt him. She had been hoping that little display would have made him retreat. Ah well. Time to dish out some pain.

She created another green fire spear and drew it back, ready to throw.

"You really should know when to retreat, Lung." She said softly before she threw it straight at the centre of Lung's chest. He countered with a massive gout of his own flames that met the green flames midway, but were parted easily by Pyroclasm's attack. The spear struck Lung's chest and exploded, surrounding the Dragon of Kyushu in a pillar of powerful green flames, even as Lung screamed in agony.

After a moment, the flames died away as they had done before, leaving Lung scorched all over, arms flopping uselessly at his sides as he first fell to his knees, and then crashed face down to the ground, reverting back to his human form and size.

Landing atop another nearby building that was unaffected by the fighting, Pyroclasm panted heavily. It seemed as if the extra energy to cover a building-sized Lung had been drawn directly from her reserves, which meant she was slightly exhausted at this point.

'Jeez…I underestimate how powerful Lung is…' she thought as her heavy breathing abated and she stood up properly once again, 'Arrogance will get you killed every time. Good thing he was more arrogant than me this time around.'

She was about to fly off when the sound of something being fired hit her ears. She looked around and was struck by a pair of bolas that wrapped around her arms and torso.

"What the…?!"

Looking at the direction the bolas came from, she spotted a familiar blue-armoured figure wielding a very distinctive weapon. Armsmaster.

"What the heck is this cord made of? Tungsten?!" Pyroclasm growled as she struggled against her restraints.

"A special Tinker-made alloy derivative that is especially resistant to heat, actually." The leader of the Protectorate ENE replied somewhat smugly.

"So the leader of the paper tigers finally puts in an appearance…after I beat Lung." She sneered, "What is the meaning of this?!"

"The Director wants to have a word with you." The Tinker replied, "Regardless of whether you want to or not."

"I'm going to have to disagree with you there." Pyroclasm spat back and she stoked her flames, making them flare hotter, melting the alloy that Armsmaster was so proud of in less than thirty seconds.

"So then," she said as she crossed her arms, "what now?"

So here we have it, my twentieth Worm ficlet/snippet. I'll be putting up a poll to see what the priority of second chapters will be. Make sure you check my profile in the next day or so!

Red Flames: Neutralise any other fire or plasma. Cannot burn or melt anything else.

Orange Flames: Able to eliminate any non-organic matter they touch. Cannot harm organic matter.

Blue Flames: Defensive fire that cannot be used to attack yet is able to sear and burn almost anything. If used as armour, enhances the user's ruthlessness and focus.

Yellow Flames: Concentrated plasma fired as a beam that swiftly burns through its target.

Green Flames: Concentrated fire that is fired as a projectile, exploding on impact to cause serious damage to the target. Instinctively seeks out the enemy of the wielder.

White Flame: ?

Black Flame: ?

Mover: 4 (Able to grow Pyrokinetic wings to fly. Can also fly using jest of fire from the feet.)

Blaster: 6 (Able to fire beams of plasma and spears of fire that can cause serious damage)

Shaker: 6 (Can summon a black flame able to burn through almost anything, although it is very, very difficult to control)

Striker: 4 (Able to emit a white flame that heals wounds, cures diseases and purifies infections.)