Chapter III – Fire Hazard

My dream was really odd. In the dream, I had stumbled upon an Ancient Greek temple with a large ivory and gold statue of Athena all the way in the back. "Looks like I made it in time." My dream self said, running up to the Athena Parhenos. Upon the shield was a wormhole of sorts.

"Alright. Now it's time to get this thing sealed up for good." My dream self said, trying to sound confident, but not doing such a good job of it. The other me raised sword-sized key and pointed it at the swirling dark portal. And that was when things started going wrong.

The portal acted as if it had a will of its own. As soon as the dream version of me raised the weapon, the gateway acted up, attempting to inhale me into its dark depths.

"This cannot be happening! What's going on?!" the other me screamed as he stabbed his weapon into the ground to keep himself in place, cloak flapping madly in the direction of the portal. I wanted to reach out and help, but this being a dream, all I could do was watch as I struggled to stay anchored to the ground.

A rock flew my way, too fast for me to dodge, especially in my current situation. It slammed right into my forehead, causing me to let go of the only thing keeping me in place. As I let go, the weapon disappeared in a haze of flames, leaving behind embers that seemed to be unaffected by the air currents as they slowly floated down to the ground. I woke up screaming as I was pulled into the portal's hungry maw.

I slowed my breathing down to normal as I tried to understand what had happened in my dream. After a while, I gave up. Now that I wasn't thinking about the dream, I started to realize that I was hungry as my stomach growled. "Time to go eat, then. I guess." I said, getting off of my bed and out of my room. When I got downstairs, which led to the living room, I found that Bob and four girls were in the room. Upon seeing them, I immediately remembered what had occurred yesterday.

"Hey there, guys. How's it going?" I asked casually, silently walking up to them while they weren't looking. They all jumped in surprise, except for Blake, who just continued reading the book she seemed to have been reading for a while now, considering that she was pretty much halfway through the thing.

Once everybody got over their surprise, they all started asking me questions at the same time. "Whoa, guys. One at a time. I just woke up and even if I weren't that tired, I could only hear one question at a time." I said, putting my hands up to stop the flow of questions.

"How are you feeling, Jordan? Anything feel a little off?" Bob asked me. "Nothing really, although I do feel a slight burning sensation all over my body." I said, shrugging my shoulders. "What kind of burning?" Yang asked, curious. "I can't say for sure. It just feels like I'm on fire without the fire." I answered. "That's odd. I wonder how you even survived that blast in the first place. That shouldn't have been possible considering how you don't have an Aura or anything to protect you." Weiss said.

"Not quite. There was still some of his cloak in front of him as he was turning when the fireball hit. Look at it. It's not even damaged one bit." Blake, the quietest of the group, said, putting her book down. None of us even noticed her closing the book at all. I swear, it's always the quiet ones you have to watch out for. Now that I thought about it, it seemed true. I examined my cloak and there was no sign of any kind of damage whatsoever.

"That's odd. This must have some magical properties, then." I said, mainly to myself as I put it back on. "You're really quite observant." I said, nodding towards, the black haired girl. She nodded back in response.

My stomach growled again. "Okay. Anything else we want to talk about, let's do that during breakfast." Bob suggested, get up off the couch. "Where's Elenar and dad?" I asked them as we headed into the dining room. "Oh. They're probably still asleep in their room. We were all waiting for you for as long as we could and decided to get some rest. It was kind of late into the night when we got back here." Bob answered. "Oh. Okay." I said back, pulling out a box of cereal. After getting all set up with whatever each person was going to eat, the previous conversation continued.

"I still have no idea how I am feeling nonexistent burns, though. How is that even happening at all?" I asked, looking at my arms. "I have a few ideas, but they would only make sense where we are from." Ruby said, going through her bowl of cereal. "Like what? Hit me with what you've got to say." I said, before drinking the milk from my bowl.

"Well, there is something to do with Dust. And then there's also Aura protecting you, which had already been discarded as a possibility." The red cloaked girl said, finishing off her bowl. "Dust? You mean the stuff that's made of dead skin?" I asked. "Don't even go there, Jordan. We don't need to disgust our guests like you did last time we had people eating over." a voice said from the dining room door. "Sorry, dad." I simply responded, a little downcast, which I immediately recovered from.

"Now what was this talk about dust?" Steve asked, sitting at the table. "Well, there's dust with a lower case "d" and then there's Dust with a capital "D." Ruby said, putting down her bowl. "Let's not try to confuse them. Dust doesn't seem to have any uses here. I'm checking for signs of it, but my Scroll isn't getting anything." Weiss said, holding up a white object that looked like a combination of a smartphone and a tablet.

I didn't really get what they were talking about, but it seemed to be getting us nowhere. "Okay. How about we get back to the main subject at hand and then we could save this part of the conversation for another time? Agreed?" I said, putting my palms flat on the table. Everybody nodded.

"Actually, other than those two theories, I have nothing." Ruby said. "Alright. How about magic?" Bob suggested. "I thought you didn't believe in magic." I shot back. "I don't really believe in that kind of stuff, but it is the only possible solution. That creature that attacked you yesterday obviously wasn't human." he said back, slowly shaking his head. As I was thinking about that, I suddenly sneezed. A fire exploded into existence right in my bowl as I sneezed.

Everybody, including me, jumped back in surprise, pushing chairs over in the process. "Whoa! How did that happen?" Weiss asked, trying to protect herself from the heat that was rapidly filling up the room despite the fact that the fire remained the same size and color. "I have no idea." I answered. When the fire didn't die out, we started getting worried as the smoke alarms went off. "Jordan, do something." Steve said, getting out of the room. "Where are you going?" I asked. "To get your stepmom. I'm going to calm her down. I know how much she hates it when any alarm goes off." My dad answered.

"Alright." I responded, turning my attention back to the small fire in my in the bowl where my cereal had been earlier. I tried concentrating on the fire and putting my energy into it if possible, but nothing happened except for it getting slightly bigger. "That was not what I had in mind." I said, backing up.

"Here. Let me do this." The Ice Queen, I already felt like calling her that, said, drawing her rapier. As it turned out, it was more than just a rapier. It had a revolving chamber similar to that of Leon's gunblade, which I only knew of because I had played Kingdom Hearts before. Which brought up the Keyblade that I had seen myself wielding in my dream. "Not now." I thought, putting that new information away for another time to focus on the current situation. I am such a weapons nerd sometimes.

When the chamber stopped rotating, it had stopped on a slim white triangle. "You all may want to back up." Ruby said, doing that. The rest of us stepped back as well, not knowing what was going to happen. Right at the instant, the snowy white girl froze my flames, turning it into a crystalline structure. "Now that was awesome." I said, picking up the frozen flames. This was so worth preserving, so I stuck it in the freezer.

"Alright. So what now?" I asked after putting the fire away. "Now…. we should probably get that little problem under control." Weiss said, putting away her weapon. "That's not going to be much of a problem if he learns how to control that power." Yang said. "Power? What power?" I asked, confused. "Just follow us. You'll get this down in no time." The blonde said, heading towards the backyard. "Um. Okay. I guess." I said, as the rest of us followed along.