1.1

"Choking smoke of darkest delight,

Burning flesh of animal's fright.

Smoking form of Hell's might,

A demon of hate stalks the night."

1.1

Strength isn't something you're born with, it isn't some natural talent, but something that takes time to cultivate; like a farmer tending to his land. Taylor Hebert grew up believing her parents to be the greatest in the entire world, strong and kind in equal measure, and willing to do anything to protect her from the dangerous city they lived in. It was only after a single incident, a single moment in time that should never have happened, that took her mother away and left her burned and broken in the middle of the street.

She spent two weeks in agonizing pain, the flames that had so gently caressed her skin left behind marks that would not cool, and no doctor or medicine seemed to fully take the pain away. It was after those two weeks that Taylor's second act was allowed to begin, as she sat alone in her dark room where no one could see her private torment. The curtains of her room had been pulled shut, the sun made her body burn, and her bed was now covered in a sterilized sheet meant to insure she wouldn't get sick.

While she was still Taylor Hebert in name, her body had been changed and forcibly covered so much that only those that truly knew her could claim to recognize her form now. She was still skinny and tall for her age but her right arm was now completely encased in bandages that crawled up her neck and ended just below her eyes. The doctors had been forced to shave off some of her long curly hair, the last thing she had left from her mom now, and the rest now had several streaks of stressful gray running through them. Yet it was her eyes that changed the most; not in appearance but more so in intensity. What was innocent was now hard and full of a simmering anger; the eyes of someone that now knew hate in its purest form.

"Has there been any news about what happened to her?" Taylor remembered overhearing some of the nurses gossiping when they thought she'd been knocked out by the supposedly pain relieving drugs; they never worked and pain kept her from sleeping for any prolonged period of time.

"They say it was a fight between Lung and the leader of the E88; the PRT got there near the end but they say that the entire street was practically a war-zone. Thankfully there weren't that many people hurt..."

Taylor clenched her bandaged fist at those thoughtless words, the pain from such an action made her mind light up in a rage induced focus that was becoming her new norm. Thankful that there weren't that many people hurt? Her mother had been murdered by two people that should have been either jailed or put in the ground long before such a thing could happen! The PRT and Protectorate should have killed those two, should have mutilated their flesh and taken their heads as trophies! They should have...!

A spark of heat shot up through Taylor's bandaged arm and with it came clarity from her sense of turbulent rage. The heat grew and grew, compressing itself into her clenched fist, and with it she watched a dark fire sprout forth as if by her own will and wrath. As such Taylor watched the fire with wide eyes, the reality of her situation now clear in a way that it hadn't been before, and with this realization came forth a means in which to act out her newest and most primal desire.

The doctors had told her that her lungs and vocal cords had been damaged in the accident; she had screamed them raw and bloody. Talking would prove to be painful until such things fully healed, but for this she could bear the pain.

With a voice that crackled like embers and sounded like smoke, Taylor laughed as the fire reflected itself into her eyes. Had her father not been drowning in his own misery, unable and almost unwilling to look at the last living memory of his wife for fear of the pain, then perhaps he could have prevented what was to come. Instead Taylor was allowed the fester and the fire raged all the hotter.

When it was finally snuffed out, Taylor found the bandages burned away and the tips of her fingers now looking more like claws of blackened and smoldering stone than flesh and blood.

She laughed until she could taste blood.

1.1

Days passed by as Taylor sat alone in her room, her father no doubt still at work without the intent to come home before he thought his daughter would be sound asleep, and all the while she focused on this new gift she'd been given. She focused on the hate that had turned her heart into a smoldering furnace, like she'd replaced her living heart with the sun itself, and each time it became easier to call forth the fire. What had before taken a near maddening rage now came forth at but a controlled spike of irritation or annoyance. The best part was that the flames weren't normal, they didn't just burn uncontrollably until there was nothing left, they were able to be molded, shaped, and the hate burned in joy.

"How does the quote go?" Taylor rasped aloud, standing up from her bed as she placed a black glove over her right hand, "Oh yea. Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean."

Despite not being home for more than a few days, despite the doctors telling her that her body needed time to heal and any activity at all could put her in danger, Taylor walked out of her house with smoke trailing behind her like some watchful spirit. The sun was setting of course, all the real monsters came out at night, and the streets were quickly abandoned to a more unsavory lot. The kind of people that Taylor's anger fueled mind saw as responsible for everything that had gone wrong in the last few weeks.

It didn't matter that they couldn't possibly have been involved, nor did she care for how they came to be in the gangs that they were. In her mind, a young woman's mind that had just gained a power that made her more than any normal human, they were just as guilty as Lung or Kaiser. They all deserved to die or, if she was feeling kind, be burned as she was burned.

Such dark thoughts for a girl no older than thirteen.

The first group she ran into was in the Empire's territory, the closest territory to her own home and the fastest to get to without using public transportation. They were your typical Neo-Nazi's, as pale as can be with either blonde hair or shaved heads, and more than a few of them were sporting tattoos with some words and symbols best left undescribed. Like all gangs they hung out in the alleyways or store fronts, their hate music blaring over a stereo, and just watched what few people remained walk by as fast as they could. Some would get a slur thrown their way if their skin wasn't PANTONE 11-0601, others would have a gun flashed at them if they walked too close, but it didn't take long for one of them to act out in violence.

Taylor watched from shadows of her own as a young man of darker skin came walking down the street, a backpack hanging off of one arm while his gaze was too fixated on his phone to notice the danger he was now in. Her now burning gaze, a sign she found that allowed others to tell when she was using her powers, tracked as two of the shaved head thugs got in the way of their prey. They knocked the phone from the man's hand, ripped the backpack from his shoulder, and roughly manhandled him towards the rest of their racist group and the alleyway that they took for themselves. Taylor also noted that what few people saw what was about to happen did nothing to stop it; not even so much as pulling out their phones to call the police.

Thus, seeing no one had the will to do what was needed or even right, Taylor called upon another power that had come to her in the days since her anger brought forth the dark fire from within. Her thin form, a form she got from her mother that held only minute aspects of her father grew hotter from within and turned to smoke without. She molded this form into something terrible, standing taller than any normal man and possessing teeth of smoke on a lipless face. Four horns appeared atop her new head, two curved back into a pair of Ibex-like protrusions being long and thick and two curving forwards to frame the sides of her face.

The lowly members of the Empire Eighty-Eight, people who followed the ideals of a man that would sooner take his own life like a coward than face the consequences of his actions, let out their anger and frustration on a man that did nothing to deserve it. Cowards themselves that couldn't handle the hardships of their own lives, who saw all those that were different as the enemy, huddled around a single man and beat him as hard as they could. Within a matter of minutes they had broken his nose, busted his lip, fractured his arm, and were now quite literally kicking him while he was down. All the while shouting such things that no human should call another.

FIRE!

All those in the alley, even the man that was now just barely even still awake, stilled as a single oppressive thought burned through their minds and rooted them in place. It was pitiless in spirit, ruthless in its domination, and crushing for any soul not strong or pure enough to stand before such a force. As one they all looked to the dead-end of the alley, a place that no normal person could have gotten to without having to get past the Nazi trash that always stood guard, and that's when their eyes gazed upon horror so bone chilling that it nearly crushed their minds.

"What the fuck?" the oldest and longest serving member of this group of gang members cursed, his thinning blonde hair swept back out of his eyes while his face was practically covered in tattoo hate speech.

There stood Taylor in her smoky form, eyes blazing like fires and maw opened to the furnaces of hell itself, and at the sight of these animals Taylor allowed her control to snap. Blazing forward in a way that the mortal mind was unable to comprehend, a claw of smoke slid through the hardened bone of a man's chest with the ease of passing through water. The meat inside his body was burned almost instantly, sending cooked chunks splattering against his friends as they screamed, and within a matter of moments the rest of him was consumed.

Shock and horror dominated the mortal men as the burnt corpse of their friend fell to the ground in an unrecognizable heap; barely looking human anymore. What came next was even worse.

A man with his head blown apart from a single strike, spraying smoking brain matter and burning skull fragments against a nearby wall.

Another had his entire body slammed in the concrete ground with enough force to shatter almost every bone and crack his head wide open; it would take him another ten minutes of pure agony to finally die.

Two more were set ablaze by a mere touch and their screams made the more weak willed of the survivors try to flee.

Taylor reeled back her arm, calling forth the fire to shape into a single whip but with two glowing ends, and brought it down upon the escaping cowards. They burst into flames upon contact and didn't stop screaming until their flesh was melted from their bodies and the underlying meat was thoroughly cooked.

More profanities were screamed, a few even tried to attack her, but all fell until only one cowering man remained. This man, this animal who thought he was so much better than all others because of the color of his skin, was the very same man that had been in charge. Where before his eyes held scorn and hatred for those not like him, where he would beat a person to death if they so much as looked at him wrong, were now filled with the terror that only seeing a real life demon could bring about.

Taylor stood over this sniveling creature, mind filled with the images of her dead mom and the pain being burned alive had brought her, and brought her clawed hand down upon his chest. His screams were like euphoria to Taylor, the smell of his skin cooking would have made her mouth water if she were still in her human form, and when she pulled her hand away the swastika tattoo over his heart was now permanently marred by the sizzling shape of her hand.

The man passed out, sirens could be heard in the distance, and with one last look at her work Taylor vanished into the night like the smoke she was now made of.

That night her burns stayed cool and she slept peacefully for the first time in days.

She dreamt of the dark figures' praise.

She smiled.