Hello, everyone! Sorry it took me so long to update, but I've had a super busy week, but soon, Spring Break will be here and then I'll have a ton of time to write and everything! Anyway, I hope you enjoy this next chapter!

The only person to now know of my new name was Alik because I simply believed that he was the only one to care. He still addressed me as "kid", but he seemed excited at the news. The other guards and people who worked in this base still thought of me as a nameless beast, but I no longer cared. I knew that there were kind souls out there, Alik and Anya being the only examples I knew of so far. Training continued on normally. I was being trained every day, switching off between combat, poison, and stealth training. I was finally starting to show some improvement with my combat skills, managing to land a few hits on the Headmaster occasionally. It was extremely satisfying every time I managed to kick or punch the cruel man. Combat training was the only time I could let out my anger and frustration towards him, so I always attacked as violently as I could. Only during one day of combat training, one month after I had started my training, something odd and mysterious happened.

It had begun as any other normal training session. Little talk and a lot of fighting. We were going at each other with venomous vigor, throwing punches and kicks at each other in any way possible. I was about to block a strong punch that the Headmaster threw, but I lost my footing, slipped, and couldn't react in time to keep myself from getting hit. As a result, the Headmaster landed a brutal hit on my lower jaw, knocking my head back and causing me to fall over onto my back with a loud thump. I let out a small grunt of pain, clenching my teeth and just lying there for a moment, letting my head stop feeling dizzy, and sitting up, spitting some blood out of my mouth and holding my jaw. I glared at the Headmaster, and he scoffed, "A clumsy mistake on your part. You must keep solid footing, always, and be prepared for attacks even when you do lose your footing. Why must you always mess up that simple task?" I opened my mouth to answer, but before I could say anything, he cut me off and answered for me, "Because you don't think. Your clumsy errors are what make you such a weakling, and will only kill you later."

I clenched my fists, narrowing my eyes until they were only tiny slits. I had trained tirelessly for every single day of my young life, for a month now without complaint. He had no right to call me weak, not after how good I had been doing. I was now feeling more furious than I had ever been at that point, and my vision seemed to be filling with red at my rage, the temperature seeming to rise slightly with my increasing anger. Before I could even think about and know what I was doing, I swiftly jumped up and launched myself at the Headmaster, punching his stomach and blocking his swings with my other arm. I used my leg to make him fall to the floor, and once he was down, I pinned him to the ground as best as I could, tightly clutching his shirt collar and holding my other fist back, preparing to give him a good punch in the face. "Don't. Call. Me. Weak," I hissed with my teeth clenched, my low, venomous voice scaring even myself. The Headmaster wasn't looking at my face, though; his attention was on my fist, staring at it with slightly widened eyes. When I finally regained control of my emotions and my impulsive actions, I suddenly realized what I had done. I had no idea that I did such an action during my rage and had been confused. It was weird; it was as if someone else had been controlling my body while I was angry.

I looked to my pulled back fist and widened my eyes in fear. It was on fire. Flames were wrapped around my small fist, lashing at the air but never harming my skin as they gently licked it. I freaked out by the sight and jumped off of the Headmaster, waving my flaming hand in the air and trying to put the fire out. I slapped at my hand a few times and the flames were finally snuffed out. I carefully inspected that hand that had spontaneously lit of fire, aside from it feeling slightly warmer from the fire; there were no burns or anything to show for the flames. I was completely and utterly baffled. Fire was supposed to hurt, burn and melt off the skin, why didn't it hurt me? I looked up at the Headmaster, who was now standing up and was looking at me thoughtfully with a wolfish smirk on his face. I shifted under his gaze, his devilish expression frightening me and making me doubt all that I had been told about Hydra. "Well, that was . . . interesting," he said after a few moments of tense silence, "What was that?"

I looked at the ground, "I-I don't know. . ."

"You need to attack with that much vigor all of the time," he said, the frightening smirk still on his face.

So, he was talking about my sudden burst of rage, resulting in the fight. Why wasn't he concerned about, say, my hand randomly catching fire? I looked away, not liking the dark look I noticed in his eyes, but I briefly glanced at him as I asked, "Do you know why my hand randomly lit on fire like that?"

His grin widened, "Yes. It was included in your genetic code. A genetically enhanced gene we extracted from a fire-controlling mutant."

"Why didn't anyone tell me about that earlier?" I asked, slightly freaking out about this new fact on what I really was.

"You wouldn't have understood us at the time, and it wouldn't have produced such . . . favorable results."

I raised my eyebrows in puzzlement. His small explanation and the fact that they hid this huge secret from me made me doubt the people who lived here even more. What other dark secrets was this base hiding? "O-okay," I said quietly. No wonder I had always been scorned here, how I had always been regarded as a lesser being. I was a flame-conjuring freak of nature.

"How did you summon them?"

The Headmaster's sudden question made me snap my head up and look at him, "Summon what?" I was still so overwhelmed from this new revelation.

He rolled his eyes, "The flames, you imbecile!" I could tell by the harsh and cold tone in his voice that he was losing his patience with me.

"I-I," I tried to scour the back of my mind, trying to recall what had happened, but I had no recollection of anything during my rage. "I don't know. I got really mad and I didn't even know what I was doing until after it all happened. . ."

"I see. . ." the Headmaster said in disappointment, glancing at a small clock on the wall to see what time it was. "Class dismissed. Forget tomorrow's poison training, you will be working on figuring out how to summon your flames."

I nodded, "Okay." At that, the Headmaster stalked out of the room, moving with swift, long strides. I hung back a bit, thinking about this training session. It was so odd, so strange, if I had been told that it was only a dream, I would have easily believed it, but it couldn't have been one. The experience was too vivid, too real, and too painful. My jaw still throbbed from his punch, and my hand slightly stung from when I tried to put out the flames on them. I sighed and finally walked out into the hallway. I had no idea on how to process all that had happened, but I knew that I'd have to get used to this whole "summoning flames" business. I entered my prison of a room and plopped onto my hard bed, just lying there wide awake until my eyelids finally became heavy and allowed me to sleep.