Author's Note: As always, feedback is appreciated.
II: Spark II
The fire inside me screams, and this time, I don't hold it back.
I exhale, and the sky catches fire.
It starts as a ripple—a distortion in the air, like heat haze magnified a thousand times over. Then, with a sound like reality itself being torn apart, the firmament ignites.
The clouds overhead disintegrate, flash-boiled in an instant, leaving behind nothing but a yawning, empty void. The atmosphere shudders, warping around me as invisible waves of heat roll outward, crashing into one another, feeding into something unstoppable. The oxygen in the air combusts spontaneously, burning away before anyone can even take their next breath.
The sky is no longer a sky. It is a furnace.
A hurricane of fire roars into existence, stretching from horizon to horizon, coiling like a living thing, burning white-hot. Thunderheads of plasma boil above me, electricity dancing in furious spirals through the inferno. Lightning doesn't strike—it erupts, bolts of raw, unnatural power lancing downward, each impact carving new craters into the city below.
I hear the screams—distant, broken, meaningless—as those still standing collapse beneath the sheer, crushing weight of the heat. Skin blackens, peels away, muscle exposed before it, too, is reduced to nothing but ash and vapor. Metal wilts, structures twist and snap, steel skeletons of buildings sagging like they've been sculpted from wax and left in the sun too long.
The rivers that once cut through Brockton Bay, the last veins of life still flowing through the corpse of the city—they die next.
Water cannot exist here.
It flashes to steam, bursting upward in plumes of white-hot vapor, taking with it the last remnants of those who had tried to escape across its bridges, leaving only a glass-smooth crater where it had once flowed.
I feel it all. Every molecule boiling, every object collapsing, every mind dying. And still, the flames spread.
I tilt my head back, eyes wide, arms outstretched as the sky itself bends to my will. The auroras that had once shimmered harmlessly above are now ribbons of living flame, coiling like burning serpents, their light casting unnatural, writhing shadows over the ruins below.
The earth itself begins to break.
Beneath me, the very bedrock fractures, molten fissures splitting the city apart, lava gushing from the wounds in slow, pulsing waves. Entire streets sink, dragged into the churning magma below as gravity itself begins to warp under the sheer, incomprehensible force of my power.
The Protectorate is gone.
Their bodies are still here. Some charred, some convulsing, some reduced to silhouettes burned into the crumbling walls. The fight is over.
I hover in the heart of the storm, breathing in the destruction, my heart hammering in my chest.
The fire inside me loves it. I can feel its hunger, pressing against my thoughts, whispering to me in wordless, primal urges. The fire wants more. The fire wants everything.
It whispers to me, urging me forward, urging me to end it all—to reduce this place, this world, to nothing but cinders. And for one, terrible moment, I think I might.
I force my gaze downward, locking onto the figures below—what's left of them.
The Protectorate and New Wave are ash. Only Armsmaster is still standing, visor cracked, one gauntleted hand gripping his halberd so tightly his servos whine in protest. His armor is scorched, the blue plating covered in soot and heat-warped in places. I see him reach up, tapping something against his ear—his comms.
"Dragon! I need containment now!"
His voice is tight, clipped, breathless from the scorching heat. His armor is an impressive technological marvel to withstand the same flames that burned a city. He's hiding it well, but I can feel the tension running through him. He's afraid. The thought twists in my head, bitter and strange.
Armsmaster. Colin Wallis. Brockton Bay's great protector, its shining knight in armor, its unshakable enforcer of law, afraid of me.
The fire stirs at the realization, a pulse of dark satisfaction running through me. I barely recognize it as my own.
I focus on him. And I see.
His mind is open, his thoughts pressing against mine like static. The moment I reach for them, they break apart—memories spilling out, unraveling in front of me like a series of tangled threads.
A flash of memory pulls me away from the chaos, revealing a moment from earlier in the day, before everything spiraled out of control. The film of memory unspools in my mind like a film reel, bringing me back to the sterile, fluorescent-lit confines of Armsmaster's office at the PRT headquarters. The walls are lined with schematics and blueprints, a testament to his relentless pursuit of knowledge and control.
Armsmaster sits in his office, his brows furrowed in thought as he scans a report on his desk. I can feel the tension crackling in the air, thick enough to slice through. A junior PRT agent stands before him, shifting nervously, clutching a folder like it holds the key to salvation.
"She's missing," the agent stammers, his voice trembling slightly. "There was an incident at Winslow High—some sort of potential trigger event." I can see the gears turning in Armsmaster's mind, a predator sniffing out a target. I watch his expression change, a flicker of concern igniting in his eyes.
"Details," he commands, his tone brokering no argument. The agent swallows hard, fumbling through his notes. He reads aloud about an anonymous tip received earlier that day, an unsettling report detailing how a student had been locked in a locker full of hazardous waste.
I feel a wave of anger and betrayal at the thought. They had no idea what was happening to me, how close I was to breaking. More importantly, I can feel the air grow heavy with the weight of impending doom, and I hate how powerless I am to stop it.
Armsmaster frowns, tapping away at his keyboard rapidly. A holographic display pops up, showing a dark-skinned adolescent. Even on camera, arrogance radiates from her. Sophia Hess.Shadow Stalker,Armsmaster's thoughts whisper insidiously. Her only response when Armsmaster questions her regarding the report is a oroll of her eyes.
"It's just bullying," she dismisses. "The girl will probably be fine." I feel a surge of rage. They're dismissing me, downplaying my suffering. I want to scream at them, to show them the pain I've endured, but I remain silent, trapped in the depths of my own mind.
But Armsmaster doesn't buy her facade. I see the determination in his eyes as he flags the situation for immediate review. "I want surveillance on Winslow," he orders, his tone firm. "We can't ignore this."
Sophia opens her mouth to respond, only for a metallic shriek to silence her. She looks away from the camera, and the feed terminates abruptly. Before Armsmaster can act, an explosion rocks the city, a deafening roar that shatters their world.
I can't help but feel a sick sense of satisfaction mixed with horror. I was the catalyst for this disaster, the embodiment of chaos. And as the first drone feeds come in, revealing the crater where my school once stood, Armsmaster's face goes pale, and I know—he realizes that the worst has come to pass.
The briefing room at the PRT headquarters is filled with the quiet hum of anticipation. Screens line the walls, flickering with data feeds, city surveillance, and recent parahuman activity reports. The room is packed, too packed. The Protectorate and New Wave have assembled in full, a sign of how serious this situation has become.
Armsmaster stands at the front of the room, his expression set in stone. His halberd leans against the table beside him, its polished surface reflecting the cold fluorescent lights above. Miss Militia sits to his right, her fingers tapping against the side of her holstered weapon. Battery and Assault murmur quietly to each other, while Dauntless, his expression grim, focuses on the holographic projection of Brockton Bay in the center of the table.
Across from them, New Wave is just as tense. Lady Photon's arms are crossed, her normally calm demeanor edged with concern. Brandish stands beside her, face unreadable, while Glory Girl fidgets impatiently, shifting her weight from one foot to the other.
"We have reason to believe a new parahuman has triggered," Armsmaster begins, his voice clipped, professional. "A major event at Winslow High School led to a complete loss of contact with the area. The drone feeds show this."
The screen flickers, displaying the last images from the Winslow site. A crater. The entire building is gone. Twisted metal and scorched concrete are all that remain. The ground surrounding the ruins is charred black, as if something seared the very foundation of the city itself.
"Jesus," Lady Photon mutters, leaning forward.
"How many casualties?" Brandish asks, her voice betraying no emotion, though her fingers tighten into a fist at her side.
"Unknown." Armsmaster adjusts the settings on his wrist-mounted interface, shifting the display. "There were at least several hundred students inside at the time. Initial reports indicate no known survivors."
Miss Militia exhales sharply. Assault mutters something under his breath and looks away. Battery reaches out, squeezing his arm briefly.
"The power signature…" Dragon's voice comes in over the comms, crisp, professional, yet laced with concern. "It's unlike anything we've seen before. The energy output matches high-tier pyrokinetics, but there's something else. Some kind of… undefinable resonance. We don't know if this parahuman is aware of what they're doing, or if they're even still alive after the explosion."
"Has there been any movement since the event?" Dauntless asks.
"None," Dragon confirms. "Which means either they didn't survive their trigger, or…"
"They're still unconscious," Armsmaster finishes grimly.
Before anyone can respond, the lights flicker. For a single, terrible moment, silence falls. Then… An explosion.
The shockwave hits like a hammer. The building shudders violently. Alarms shriek through the hallways. The lights cut out entirely for a breathless second, replaced by the eerie red glow of emergency lighting. The Protectorate's comms explode with frantic voices.
"Unidentified energy surge detected—"
"—we're losing containment—"
"—it's spreading—!"
Through the reinforced windows, the sky turns red. No, not red. Orange. Yellow. White. Fire erupts in the distance, consuming the horizon. Brockton Bay is burning.
Dragon's voice returns, now laced with urgency. "I'm detecting catastrophic energy output from the Winslow site. It's spreading across the city. We need immediate response teams on site—"
Another explosion. The floor trembles. Smoke begins to seep into the room through the ventilation shafts.
The command center erupts in unbridled chaos.
"Status report!" Director Emily Piggot's voice cuts through the confusion, sharp and commanding, but there's a waver underneath—something bordering on fear.
She has never seen anything like this. The live satellite feed is unbelievable. Winslow is gone. Not damaged, not destroyed, but erased.
At first, the thermal imaging had been blinding, the explosion registering hotter than anything ever recorded in the city. But as the flames began to settle, the true extent of the damage became clear.
Entire city blocks obliterated. Thousands dead. And at the heart of it, a single girl. Taylor Hebert. Unregistered. Untrained. Unimaginably dangerous.
The camera feed zooms in, capturing her silhouette in the ruins. She doesn't look human.
Her skin glows, hair drifting in weightless embers. Heat distorts the air around her, waves of shimmering fire warping her form. She is barefoot, standing on molten concrete, and yet she does not burn.
"Jesus Christ," someone mutters.
"PRT units are on site," an officer reports. "We've already lost a team; thermal surge took them out before they even got close."
Piggot grips the table, knuckles white. "How many casualties?"
A tense silence.
"The explosions hit the most densely populated areas of Brockton Bay," Armsmaster begins. "The most recent population census showed some 323,750 people lived in the areas hit directly."
He pauses, and another tense silence reigns. "Current estimates suggest 100% casualties in those areas. More, if you count collateral damage."
"She burned three hundred thousand people alive," Piggot exhales, shaking with rage. "And she's still standing."
The statement hangs heavy in the air.
She turns to Armsmaster, the leader of the local Protectorate, his face grim beneath his helmet.
"We need to contain her."
Armsmaster's voice is level, but even he looks rattled. "Containment might not be possible."
Piggot's temper flares. "Then we kill her."
No one argues. The silence is broken by an explosive tremor that makes the building shudder. Alarms blare anew and chaos reigns.
"Shit," Assault mutters, pushing back from the table.
"Everyone move!" Armsmaster barks, already activating his armor's defensive protocols. Miss Militia shifts her weapon into a heavy-duty rifle, her expression hardening. The heroes spring into action, shoving their chairs aside and moving toward the exit as another tremor rocks the building.
The comms are a chaotic mess of voices.
"—fire is spreading faster than we can track—"
"—whole districts are going up—"
"—it's too hot—"
That last statement cuts through the noise like a blade. Armsmaster stops at the doorway, pressing a finger to his earpiece. "Say again?"
The responding voice is ragged, panicked. One of the PRT's field agents.
"The fire! It's not just spreading—it's… alive. The air itself is burning. We can't even get close!"
The Protectorate forces push their way onto the rooftop helipad, where their transport choppers are already spooling up, preparing for immediate deployment. The cityscape before them is a nightmare.
Walls of flame stretch high into the sky, consuming everything in their path. Entire districts are reduced to smoldering ruins in seconds. The river glows a sickly orange, the surface on fire, sending up thick plumes of black smoke.
Dragon's mech, a sleek, reinforced VTOL, hovers nearby, its thrusters struggling against the violent thermals radiating from the inferno below.
"This isn't natural," Battery murmurs, shielding her eyes from the glare.
Armsmaster doesn't respond. He's staring at the epicenter of the destruction—the crater where Winslow used to be. A column of white-hot energy spirals upward from the center, a storm of fire and psychic energy so dense that even his sensors struggle to process it.
Then, deep within the maelstrom—
A figure.
"She's still there," Miss Militia breathes.
A shape floats within the inferno, barely visible through the flickering haze. Armsmaster's HUD struggles to maintain a lock, as though the energy itself is resisting observation.
Me. My body is limp, suspended in midair. The fire radiates outward from me, pulsing in sync with something unseen, something vast. It isn't just power—it's a force of nature.
"Is she unconscious?" Lady Photon asks, her voice tight.
Armsmaster adjusts his scanner. "I think so. But if she wakes up—"
Before he can finish, the flames suddenly pull inward, collapsing toward the figure at the center. The sheer heat cuts out in an instant. The air grows still.
Then I open my eyes.
A shockwave erupts outward. The flames reignite, surging like a living beast. The Protectorate's transport lurches sideways, turbulence slamming against the hull. Dragon's VTOL struggles to stabilize.
I look down at the ruined city below me. I stagger, grabbing my head. Then I scream.
A psychic detonation rips through the air. The remaining windows of the PRT HQ shatter. The choppers veer wildly off course, pilots struggling to maintain control. Dragon's mech crashes against the rooftop, metal groaning under the strain.
Miss Militia falls to one knee, clutching her head. Assault staggers, stumbles, then drops bonelessly to the ground. Battery grits her teeth, hands pressed against her temples.
Below them, the city burns anew. The fire explodes outward, consuming more ground in an instant.
"She's too powerful," Dauntless gasps, his voice barely audible over the chaos. "We can't contain this."
Armsmaster clenches his jaw. His gauntlet tightens around the shaft of his halberd.
"We have to."
The memory fractures as I rip myself free, my entire body trembling with fury. I can still feel his thoughts, his mind open and exposed to me. And for the first time, I see how much he regrets it.
How much he hates that he didn't act sooner. That he let it happen.
I could kill him. Right here, right now. With just a fire whispers at the edges of my mind, eager, urging me forward. I see him shift below me, gripping his halberd, gaze locked on mine. His helmet hides his face, but I see the set of his jaw, the way his fingers flex against the hilt.
He knows. He knows I just looked into his mind. Knows what I saw. And he's waiting. Not to run. Not to fight.
To see what I'll do. The fire screams at me to end it. To let it consume him. To let it consume everything. I almost do.
The fire inside me rages, but I hold it back, force it into submission. The world beneath me is ruin—molten streets, collapsed buildings, the charred bones of a city that once stood whole. The sky, once dark with smoke, now glows a furious orange-red, the atmosphere itself ignited by my power.
I hover above it all, the flames flickering along my arms, my breath tasting of ash and cinders. The screams have faded, the city growing eerily silent, save for the distant crackling of things still burning.
I close my eyes. Then, the ground shudders. A tremor, deep and violent, rips through the ruins below. For a moment, I think it's another building collapsing, the foundations finally giving way to the heat.
Then, another tremor. And another. A pulse, rhythmic and deliberate. Footsteps. No. Something bigger.
The air grows heavy. Thick. The heat in the atmosphere—my heat—begins to churn, colliding with something just as potent, just as raw. I feel it before I see him.
Then, from the fire-lit streets below, he rises. A figure in the smoke, first just a silhouette, then something larger, something monstrous.
The flames part around him like a living thing, curling away from his form—not because they fear him, but because he is more fire than flesh.
And when he steps forward, the ground splits open beneath his weight. Lung. He is not the man I once saw in photos, the brute in dragon-scaled armor, the warlord of the ABB.
He is something else now. Something more.
His body is a mountain of shifting scales, plates of molten metal burning bright along his chest and shoulders. His arms are thick with muscle, each clawed hand big enough to crush a human skull. His back heaves, enormous wings of fire-laced bone spreading outward, trailing embers in their wake.
And his face.
His eyes, glowing slits of molten gold, lock onto mine with something terrible and ancient burning behind them. His mouth, now more maw than human, parts—revealing a row of serrated, glowing fangs, steam rising between them.
Then, he roars.
The sound is not human. It is a shockwave, a thunderclap, a declaration of war.
It shakes the entire city. Windows that somehow survived my onslaught shatter into dust. A building on the periphery of the city buckles and collapses under the force of it. Even the fire in the sky flickers, the very air shuddering beneath the weight of the sound.
And in that roar, there is a message. A challenge. A threat. I breathe out slowly, my own flames curling at my fingertips, responding to the heat of him, the presence of him.
Lung tilts his head, watching me, measuring me. He knows. I know. This city isn't big enough for both of us. And only one of us is leaving it alive.