Open Hostilities

[Narrator]

A woman crouched near the dark precipice of a run-down five story apartment building, watching the alley below with eyes that smoldered liquid orange.

[Cyclone]

Richard Ferguson turned down that very same alley and walked at a brisk pace toward the other end. He wasn't wearing his uniform, or anything that might reveal who or what he was.

[Pyroclast]

Valdis waited for the perfect moment, then stepped into the light and leaped out into the empty air in front of her. Her body instant began transmuting itself into viscous, molten lava.

[Cyclone]

Richard looked up just in time; something about the air stirring, perhaps, or maybe it was the lava's glow that caught his peripheral vision. He stopped in his tracks, just shy of where the largest portion of the molten rain fell. A few droplets still feel toward him, but a shearing shield of wind threw those aside easily enough.

[Pyroclast]

The lava quickly gathered back together into a single pool, which coalesced into a humanoid female shape. Every spot on the pavement that had been touched by the lava, however briefly, was seared black. "You've been bad again, haven't you, Captain?"

[Cyclone]

Richard glared daggers through her, gathering up a ball of wind energy in his right hand. "I don't know what you're talking about, Princess." He extended his hand and released the built-up energy, which expanded and blasted most of the alley after it had struck Valdis. Dumpsters were overturned, part of a fire escape was ripped from the building it was attached to...and humanoid form before him was splattered into hundreds of droplets.

[Pyroclast]

...which pooled together once more, this time behind the cover one of the dumpsters. "Oh, I know where you've been. I know where you go on these evening outings."

[Cyclone]

He didn't say another word. His eyes just narrowed further as he fired a long, whirling cylinder of air from his other hand to crash into the dumpster.

[Pyroclast]

Val anticipated the move and melted back into a flat pool, letting the dumpster and the wind blast both fly right over her. She partially reformed out of the pool, and one of her already amorphous arms lashed out like a whip of lethal liquid stone.

[Cyclone]

"Damn it, stop this nonsense already, Valdis. Your kingdom has fallen, and you're not getting it back. I was just following orders." He sidestepped quickly, stopping against the wall of the alley. The lava missed him by a couple of feet. He moved back to the center of the alley, and a spinning envelope of wind instantaneously surrounded him.

[Pyroclast]

"Then you're just a guilty as The General!" Her other arm whipped out straight forward to try to push through the cyclone, though the lava was blown aside by the winds.

[Cyclone]

Richard snarled and flew right at Valdis, trying to crash into her at full speed.

[Pyroclast]

She liquefied herself, splitting off left and right into a half-ring shape, avoiding the strike completely. "I'm sure you're a successful man, Richard. So when you could have any mutant woman you would want, why do you seek out human whores?," she asked as she gathered herself back together.

[Cyclone]

"Shut up, bitch." He abruptly landed on his feet and hastily constructed two more wind spheres, throwing them at her without bothering much to aim. He was too angry for that.

[Pyroclast]

A smoldering arm shot up to one of the undamaged fire escapes, which she used to swiftly pull her mass up and out of the way of the wind attacks, which carved deep furrows into the walls.

"Why do you always kill them when you're done with them?," she asked, turning fully human again on a third floor landing. A lot of the metal on the guard rail that she used to swing up with was slagged. She inhaled deeply and breathed out a long, powerful stream of flame.

[Cyclone]

Rick sent up a blast of wind with a wave of his hand to divert the flame for a moment, giving him time to step out of the way. "That doesn't concern you, rebel." Now he looked pissed. Another wind sphere snapped the fire escape at a point two stories above where Val was standing. The whole section came tumbling to the ground to fall on top of other wreckage.

[Pyroclast]

There wasn't really any movement underneath the heap of debris, but after a minute or so, Rick would be able to catch sight of some lava oozing out from underneath the mound of snapped metal. It didn't move towards him, though; instead, it slid across the ground toward a drainage ditch. Two spots burned bright gold in the last bit of lava that flowed down, and they spoke a silent promise.

[Cyclone]

I'll be keeping my eye out for you too, bitch.

He had began fathering more wind energy in his hand, but it was useless. There wasn't any defeating her this time. He released the energy, and then heard the sound of police vehicles not too far away.

He could, of course, command them to leave...but the fewer who knew about his outings at night, the better. Instead, he opted to fly away from the scene, keeping his aura burning as low as possible, as he avoided streetlights and headed back towards HQ.