New York.

Isaac looked up the wall of the alley, black against the slightly-less-black of the night sky.

He was back in ****ing New York!

The reality of the terrible situation was still sinking in, despite the very immediate and permeating awareness of the cold that pierced his flesh. Not one year after he’d left this stinking city and it’s spiteful winter and he was back. Again. In winter.

Knives of frigid night air stabbed at his skin as Isaac began removing his overcoat and clothes and stuffing in them into a storage container. He cursed through his teeth. ****ing winter! ****ing cold! ****ING FEDS!

Just when he’d thought he’d made good with a large payday from the oil job, he’d spoken to his contacts at the bank to find out that his money- not just from that job but ALL of HIS money was gone. Well, not technically gone, the sniveling weasel had said, just out of reach. “Frozen assets” or “locked accounts” or something like that. Bull****. He’d been robbed. It was his money, and they’d taken it from him.

Heat rose in Isaac’s face, both from anger and to stave off the cold.

Then some suits from the FBI had contacted him. Said they knew about his involvement with the casino thefts in Nevada; the prison break in New York; the oil well in Saudi Arabia. Said he’d racked up quite the prison time, but they’d opted to freeze his cash flow instead. Heh; probably couldn't think of a way to keep him in prison anyway. But his money was gone. Unless…

Isaac stuffed the last of his clothes in the fireproof container, locked it, and tossed it in a nearby dumpster.

Unless he cooperated. Unless he traveled to New York. Unless he took care of a problem for them.

He turned back to the concrete wall. Apparently, this whole block was the storage site for some big-time organized crime s***. It was critical to underworld dealings in the area, but was completely untouchable to the feds. But he wasn’t a fed, just someone forced to do their dirty work.

Red glow gave way to white heat as Isaac melted the wall out of his way. Destroy the entire block. Completely. Including any safe rooms or underground bunkers. Then he would have access to his money- HIS money again. And first thing I’ll do is move it to someone who can actually keep hold of it.

The room behind the wall was empty and abandoned. Broken furniture and crumbling walls filled the space in haphazard arrangement under a thick layer of dust. But they were all flammable, as well the rest of the building, undoubtedly.

There are two great things about fire, Isaac mused: it’s warm, and it doesn’t need help to spread.

Ripples of heat exploded into the air as Isaac raised his temperature beyond anything that was needed to melt the concrete and rebar of the outer wall. The room instantly became an oven, fabric and wood bursting into flame and plastic melting into puddles. Isaac relaxed back to a red glow, letting the flames swirl around him before writhing their way through holes in the ceiling and walls into other rooms to grow and spread. He soaked in the warmth for a few seconds, then left the fire to its work and burned another hole deeper into the center of the block.

Lisa Wilson smoothed the front of her navy jacket. “A few signatures please, Mr. Hadden. I’ll then send these back to the city,” she made a faint smile, then turned for the door.

“Thank you, Ms. Wilson. Are you sure we can’t use first names yet?” Devon asked from his chair.

She turned back around, walked to the front of the desk, and then tapped on the name plate upon it. “I’m afraid not, Mr. Hadden. As I told you last month, if Mr. Hadden troubles you then I may use sir instead,” Lisa explained with a succinct annoyance.

Devon glanced at the nameplate. Devon Hadden. Manager. He’d been a volunteer supervisor before with a small stipend. For a couple months now he’d been manager, slightly larger stipend. It was official, city recognized. Heck, more than a few politicians like the mayor and a senator, a couple city police sergeants, even some other volunteer organizations had visited since the Block Party. Change had come to Sanctuary and they were thankful and seemingly eager to have their face in a positive shot on the newspaper.

Odessa was Texas. This was New York. This was a worldwide crossroads. All were welcome.

Devon had a feeling the community outreach and lack of Order helped. He was also quick to point out there were many contributors to Sanctuary’s changes like Officer Cafas who’d helped start the police involvement in the area again. Volunteers like Juliette, Richard, and numerous others helped those who lived and visited often. Things were clean, programs were being run, and security were paramount. More than a few mutants participated in the neighborhood watch now. Then there was-

“Ms. Wilson, as long as you know it’s nothing I’m requiring. Thank you for these. I’ll be sure the grant fund reports are looked at first,” Devon smiled.

“Thank you,” Lisa grinned. “Mr. Hadden.” And out of his office – a shared volunteer office really – she went.

Devon opened the first, checking the itemized list with the spreadsheet he, Lisa, and a few others maintained on their system. Most grant money the mayor had authorized went toward different programs, including aiding long term foster care or psychological treatment. He was handling a few more of those major one on one cases now, some of them even outside of Sanctuary’s jurisdiction. It was nice to have the state’s backing. The government wasn’t all evil and orange…

---

Minutes passed and there was a moment when Devon started to question his surroundings. It was late. Few knew how pressure systems worked between the seasons but he knew them well. High pressure in summer meant clear skies and high temperatures. In the winter, those clear skies persisted but were met with cold and often dry air. Low pressure brought cool air and moisture in the summer, but warmth and rain or snow in the winter. Colliding systems? Storms.

Was it getting warmer outside? His eyes gathering darkness studied the world beyond the window.

“Devon!” Drew’s voice sounded from the hall. He heard a group of quick foot falls as well.

“What’s going on?” he asked, rushing out the office and closing the door quickly behind him. Ted a.k.a. Rocky, Drew, and more than a few others were in the lobby. One of Richard’s robots beeped as it came down the stairs. That was a danger alarm beep.

“There’s a building burning at the end of the block. It’s one of the-“ but Drew was cut off as a slight tremor disturbed the building.

Tempest was already moving down the hall. “Please everyone stay inside and follow our procedures. It could be an accident but in case of danger we practice for this,” he said quickly, nodding to Drew and a couple other adults. Lisa returned his nod; it was her job to contact authorities. “Ted, what was that?”

“Felt like building collapse,” Ted replied, opening his eyes. His terrakinesis was ever helpful.

Tempest nodded again, “Keep things standing here.”

“One of the old shop warehouses, Devon,” Drew remembered to finish his sentence.

As Devon opened the golden Sanctuary doors, kept sparkling clean and illuminated, he saw the heat coming from down the block. Part of a building had collapsed. It wasn’t the entirety of the old furniture building. It seemed like a lower portion was gone and part of the remaining higher floors had collapsed without support. Lower level fire? Arsonists would use explosives, right?

Someone had been trying to destabilize things in the area ever since the Order had moved out. They’d tried before but Tempest and Cafas had stopped that investigatory bit of theft. The Block Party had deterred at least one fight due to the wide variation of attendees. There’d been at least one break in a couple weeks after that, but otherwise it’d stopped.

The slightly-less-black night sky was growing gloomy gray as Tempest urged clouds to gather. He willed the cold air down and pushed himself along in a terrific gust, eager and worried as he ran. A couple cars up the street had stopped, a woman getting out of hers. That was Mrs. Varin – her building was two over from the furniture warehouse.

“Damn,” Tempest swore as he saw the building up close. It was glowing, a glistening flicker over the blackness of his pupils. The front doors were still barred and chained though part of the ceiling had indeed collapsed and it looked like one side wall had as well. Rushing around, he found the alley.

There was a partial hole on this side that made Devon quirk a brow in question. Fire danced from it and a number of twisted bits of rebar stuck out from the concrete that had melted far quicker than that around it or the rest of the building. Tempest’s eyes widened. This wasn’t just a fire.

Tempest pulled and the quiet clouds broke. It was only small flurries now but the snow would come. He needed it colder. Both hands went up over his head, spinning and then he thrust them outward, sending a rushing gust of wind that blew flames, stone, concrete and even the nearby dumpsters flying away. They crashed loudly though perhaps not as loud as the fire roaring within.

Tempest inhaled deeply and pulled again, drawing moist air from the south and urging it to the clouds. This was going to be an icy, frozen blizzard, churning like a nor’easter all the meteorologists would surely report on. It would spin and snow in this tight mile, heavy flakes blanketing and ice eager to coat all that had once felt heat. Fronts would collide.

Another dispersing gust flew against the flames of the opening.

Tempest was coming.

So far, this hub of criminal activity looked like nothing more than an abandoned building. Oh, well. It burned just as easily.

Isaac pushed his way through a corner support, feeling the building tremble and shift as he melted the concrete pillar, then dove through the next wall as the fire-weakened structure collapsed behind him. Getting up, he looked back through the hole to survey his work. Roaring flames at least 15 feet high whipped into the sky, silhouetting the jagged landscape of debris and the skeletal shapes of the few lone walls still standing amongst their fallen brethren. Not bad.

Satisfied with the destruction of the first building, Isaac began to turn back to the rest of the block when he felt something that set his teeth on edge. A draft. Spinning back to face the burning landscape again, he saw the once-hungry flames battered sideways by wind. By COLD wind. And flakes of…. snow? Isaac glared at the sky with burning hate. Snow!

S***! Winter could go **** itself. There was still warmth in this new building he was currently setting on fire, but the wind and snow would mean that fire would need help. He’d have to be the one to collapse the buildings now.

Fine. Isaac turned away from the wall to face the room. It was already engulfed in flame, but seemed to have been kept in better condition than the ones before it. The furniture wasn’t in pieces, the ceiling wasn’t crumbling, and there weren’t as many holes in the walls for the fire to spread through. **** it. He’d just have to make his own.

Flames pawed at Isaac like eager pets as his glow increased from dull red to bright crimson to blinding white. Locating what looked like the most stable interior wall, he charged it with a snarl, paneling withering away from his touch like dead leaves. The wall gave way without a fight and Isaac barreled forward, clawing his way through anything that looked remotely load-bearing. Fire followed behind him, spreading out from his trail of destruction as the building groaned in protest.

Isaac was searing his way through the steel I-beams surrounding the apartment’s central elevators when he felt the shift. The beam he had just finished dropped half an inch with a sudden crunch, then began tilting to the side with a slow, grating growl. Instinct took over and Isaac flung himself to the ground in a huddled position, cooling himself as fast as he could. Colder. Stronger. Now.

He was almost down to 500 C when the ceiling above him collided with his back. The crash came in waves; multiple, distinct, hammering blows as each floor of the building added its weight to the one before it. Over and over until the ruins finally came to a rest.

Ow.

That hurt.

Hopefully nothing was broken. Isaac slowly shifted his limbs in the cramped space beneath the rubble. Owww! Curses echoed in the settling dust. But nothing broken. Just bruised. Everything bruised. Isaac gritted his teeth. He’d have to manage.

The concrete slab pinning him to the ground was unmoving in its weight and pressure, but in the end it was no different than any of the columns Isaac had melted through on the way here. Metal and stone bubbled away as heat radiated from him, turning the surrounding ruins to slag.

He stood, slowly. Still nothing broken. Still everything sore. He surveyed the wreckage. The flames in his wake battered against the freezing wind, but they hadn’t had as much time to spread and looked to be gradually loosing. But another building was down, completely destroyed just like those pricks wanted. Isaac turned to the next wall still standing and began melting a path.

It wouldn’t be hard. As the low pressure built and converged on the high pressure, heavier snow began to fall. The temperature was in the teens now, Fahrenheit anyway. Tempest used that energy to pull the colder air down from above. The resulting fluctuations helped urge the shifting winds around him and he kept concentration on a circle of buffeting winds in twenty feet around him.

Tempest didn’t feel most temperature change. The cold didn’t bother him, but occasionally an errant current of heat would flow through his circle. He couldn’t stop all of it without expending some effort. Heat from fire was far beyond the normal. Without his protective breeze and the buffeting winds to keep the fire at bay, he’d do more than sweat.

The fire was dying in that half-crumbled building between the cold and snow, let alone Tempest’s application of buffeting gusts. The second building made Tempest almost lose his footing. It collapsed and fire roared into the sky. It was a couple stores and some offices above. Thankfully it was late on a weekend. Still, what if someone was working late? He charged through and around the ruined beams and stone.

“Stop!” Tempest screamed, a gust of wind howling out from him as it caused the fire before him to gout, flicker and die on the debris in its path. His black hair danced atop his head as the wind spun around him, eyes black as night affixed to the man glowingly approaching the next building: Ms. Varin’s building.

The falling snow stopped as Tempest took it. It rolled and spun, heated from the fire to water and immediately frozen into icy shards and hail that Tempest flung at the man some hundred or so feet away. Tempest wasted no time after the icy spray to hook his left arm, sending a sixty mile per hour gust at the heat mutant to knock him away from the building and back toward the road.

“People live there!” Tempest screamed again as thunder roared above in match to its angry son.

Isaac was a few yards from the next building when the blizzard yelled at him.

>>”Stop!”

He turned just in time to catch a glimpse of a figure standing in the rubble before getting caught in the face by a spray of sleet. The freezing impact of ice pellets tore into his skin with razor blades of cold before being vaporized by his own heat.

Mother- he didn’t even have time to finish the thought before a sudden blast of wind caught him from the side, tearing him out of his swath of destruction and sending him tumbling across the ruins. Jagged pieces of concrete , wood, and metal jabbed at his bruised and still-warm flesh until his tumble came to a sliding, grinding stop on the asphalt of the nearby street.

“SON OF A-“ a very explicit description of the figure’s parentage spewed out onto the pavement. Isaac spat, raising himself to a crouched position on his hands and knees. So that’s why they needed him for this job. The building wasn’t just some warehouse that could be firebombed by random vandals. It was protected. Isaac looked up at the man who was now obviously the source of the wind and cold. Protected by some freak of nature mutant, so they needed another mutant to fight him. Great.

>>”People live there!”

Yeah, right. Whatever. Even if that wasn’t a bold-faced lie, he wasn’t exactly being paid to care. What he was being paid- or rather blackmailed- to do was destroy the block, and this guy was hindering that effort with infuriating cold. Time to remove him.

Isaac shifted his stance to a runner’s crouch and let his pain and anger turn to heat blazing down his arm. He plunged it into the asphalt, the tar bursting to flame at his touch, and scooped it in a wide swath, gathering a mass in his hand. Then he leapt forward, tearing the molten glob from the ground and flinging it at the demon of wind and cold. Cooled, bare feet shot across the ruined landscape as he charged after the projectile. He was going to see how well a wind mutant could fight after a few blows to the head.

It was clear now the glowing man wasn’t shooting fire or creating it mentally – he was hot. His skin burned with the heat of some inner furnace. Scorch marks were left as he rolled and tumbled through the ruins of the empty shop building. The snow around him melted and the asphalt sizzled.

He had a foul mouth too. Apparently he hadn’t heard about Sanctuary’s local leader. Was this some low life hired by that gang? It likely wasn’t a gang, of course. Organized crime with mutant hirelings was far worse.

The man’s arm burned as he got to his feet and crouched. Tempest’s posture shifted to a bent knee and raised arm posture as he watched. It was interesting that the man was naked, importantly because his feet weren’t melting into the ground yet his arm could plunge into the street and burn the tar. Molten rock was an easy weapon for this guy. Well okay then, but he had to keep parts of himself cold enough not to melt through the street.

The burning merc flung the liquefying rock with relative ease. He was charging forward even! Tempest performed his best airbender maneuver by throwing his hands down and jumping aside with a sudden downward gust. The buffeting winds around him continued, snuffing flame and making it otherwise dance at its fringes. There was no way close combat was going to happen, not with how hot the merc had to be.

Tempest quickly alighted on a broken piece of wall or floor some further 60’ feet further back into the ruins of the two buildings. It was hard to tell unless you were under the half remains of the ceiling from the first building. Now he could handle natural earth temperatures but even Death Valley didn’t turn stone to a molten state. Best to keep him back, but also away from the actually lived in buildings.

Wind rushed through the loose snow at the edges of the ruined building, throwing numerous flakes into the flames and against the warm stone. Steam sizzled up even as the snow above continued, adding more moisture to the air. Yet, Tempest had urged for cold. It’d be in the low single digits in a moment. Flickering red and white danced in the darkness of his eyes as he tossed sheets of cold air into the steam and pounded the fiery mercenary with icy blasts. Whatever evaporated he demanded meet that cold air. Icy fog would blanket the man even as the gusts continued.

Tempest could only toss a gust or icy blast when he wasn’t about to fling molten rock, of course. He clearly knew this, his posture obviously as it had been before his first dodging jump. This clearly wasn’t Tempest’s first firefight.

"Yeah, run you little b****!" Isaac sprinted through the rubble, charging after the wind mutant. He let his arm swing wide and catch onto the first thing that hit it, melting into the random piece of rubble and flinging a molten glob of it at the man. Isaac snarled; the prick couldn’t dodge forever.

He leapt over a piece of collapsed wall, his arm ready to tear another projectile from it, when he was hit full in the face by a blast of unnaturally cold air.

F***!

Isaac quickly ducked into a small alcove in the rubble. A sheet of smoldering drywall shielded him from the freezing wind as he crouched and burned to shake the feeling of icy claws from his skin. Small bits of splintered wood burst into flame at his feet, but any fire that ventured beyond the shelter of the drywall was instantly snuffed out. He stayed there for a few seconds, letting the rage grow and seethe inside him.

Hatred for the cold.

He sunk his hand into the ground, gathering a glowing lump of steel for his next projectile.

Hatred for the man who brought it.

Isaac emerged from his shelter a furious crimson. There would be no more hiding from the wind, no more bowing to the cold. The cold would bow to him. He let the glowing chunk of metal fly with a roar, then stalked to a nearby slab of reinforced concrete jutting from the rubble. Twisted beams of rebar suck out of it like broken fingers. Isaac wrapped his fist around the longest one, then brought his other hand down in a blazing white that severed the bar from the concrete in a splatter of super-heated metal and rock. The steel bar came loose in his hand, the red glow of his body seeping into the new weapon.

He turned back to his opposition. The man kept running, kept dodging, taking him further from his work. Isaac narrowed his eyes and ran after him, though now taking more care where he placed his heat-softened feet.

You wanna run? Fine! Run, you little *****! Isaac’s gaze shifted to behind the man, to the sheer face of the un-burnt building on the other side of the alley. We’ll see how well you dance when you’re back’s against a wall.

Someone was upset.

Little b****?

Devon knew from his education and training that the diction one used was often the language that they’d learned growing up. Little b**** sounded like a verbally abusive father, older brother, or neighbor boy. He wondered how often this hot head had heard it.

Tempest dodged again, jumping into a gust and bringing the cold to bear on the man. He ducked away but he was not hidden. The increasing heat fluctuation of temperature was clear where he’d gone. While otherwhere the snow and cold proved a dampening or smothering blanket, especially with sheets effectively turned to rain, here there was still a furnace of rage.

There he was, red with rage! Another piece was flung forward with an eager roar. Was this another charge? Tempest flung it into a rising pile of twisted melt and sleet, struggling to freeze when not overly warmed, and soared further back toward the first building. At least they were retreating from where people lived. There was a great deal of snow coming down now, not that it bothered Tempest. It was concentrated and biting as the temperature had reached zero.

Black eyes narrowed as they watched the merc strive forward. A steel bar? This man had no idea what he was dealing with. The sky was Tempest’s weapon but the ground was not a friend to the mercenary. The heat was clearly making the ground beneath him unsteady. He was putting Tempest into a tough position.

Both of Tempest’s arms went out in a flourish as he flung them out and up in wide arcs. At the apex above him his hands became fists and met together as he pulled them down before his face, as if he was going to fight this guy. As if hand to hand was even an idea. Ugh, as if.

Thunder boomed as lightning cracked down from the sky. The block went bright white as the snow and ice caught the light of it all. He sent it directly for that steel bar, an easy conductor. Tempest didn’t put all his energy into it; he wasn’t out to kill this guy. Not yet anyway…

More importantly it would take advantage of the already present heat and instability of the ground. It did, sending rock and concrete out around the fiery man. Cold gusts pushing negative ten collided on there too, pulled by Tempest’s will. This was a dangerous storm and it was his to command; he had to control it.

The snow kept falling as thunder echoed more often now in the clouds above.

The bolt of lightning hit the rebar in Isaac’s hand with an ear-splitting roar. It shot through his body with explosive force, crashing into the ground and sending him flying backwards over the rubble. When he finally came tumbling to a stop, he was over halfway back to the unburnt portion of the block again.

For a while, Isaac just lay there, struggling to breathe as his ears rang.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu-

So this guy could do lightning, too. Great. Cold, wind, lightning, and who knew what else. How was he supposed to fight a guy who could control the f***ing weather??

Isaac groaned and rolled onto his side. He looked up, scanning the side of the building he hadn’t gotten to. Probably wouldn’t get to, now that he had to fight this prick to reach it. He coughed and raised himself up onto his knees.

Then a though occurred to him. Maybe he didn’t have to fight this guy. It wasn’t exactly in his contract. All he had to do was destroy the buildings, and right now he was much closer to them than weather jerk was. Of course, it sucked tucking tail and running from a fight. He glanced back at the figure in the ruins. Yeah, he didn’t even want to think about how much it galled him. But it was worse not to finish a job.

He looked back at the brick wall in front of him. All he had to do was get there. Last time, the weather mutant had blasted him away with sheer wind. So he’d need to stay out of the wind. Cover was lacking, though; the rubble between Isaac and the next building had collapsed pretty flat. Fine. He’d just make his own cover.

Isaac laid back down on his stomach and began to burn. He could feel the beginnings of weariness as he did so, but he pushed past it. Past temperatures that melted steel. Past heat that melted concrete. Hotter and hotter until he was floating on a thin layer of molten rock. Reaching forward, he pulled himself down and forward, the heat from his body melting the rubble in front of him as he clawed his way through it in a crude breaststroke. With each motion he pulled himself into the ground, fighting his body’s natural buoyancy on the dense liquid rock.

Keeping himself just high enough to breathe but low enough to stay out of the wind, he pulled himself closer to the building. Only another 30 yards or so and he would be in the clear.

After all there was one thing buildings were made to do: they kept weather out.

As snow piled on the icy layers of the smoldering ruins of the two old storefront buildings, abandoned to better times, the cold winds continued to beat back at the smoke twirling up into the localized blizzard. Tempest stood resolutely on what had once been a retaining wall for the plumbing of the first building’s bathroom. The mercenary went flying from the electrical shock as concrete chunks exploded out a few yards in each direction.

Devon almost felt bad. He was still too angry at this thermal battery who’d almost toppled a building where people actually lived. There was a young first grader Markus in there. More than few older residents, long residents of the area, had shared stories of what these few blocks had been liked in the past. This place had known chaos and war. It had finally known some peace.

And this guy had ruined it.

This needed to end now and Tempest was ready. When this guy stood up…

The snow began to glow like a fire lit in a gentle wooded glen. That ended fast. Tempest could see the temperature skyrocked; the snow and ice melted almost instantly. The air was red with the heat of it. Was this guy going to explode?

Tempest rushed forward, jumping into individual gusts to carry him along. The ground was collapsing in on the man, falling snow melting and hissing long before it hit the glowing rock. He wasn’t trying to explode like a bomb; he was swimming! His anger was suddenly overcome with a curious respect. This guy had tricks; he was trained with his abilities that even surprised Devon. Did this gang really want everyone out that bad to hire someone like this?

The heat may have melted the snow and it could evaporate the water, but that moisture didn’t vanish. Tempest pulled with his will as he clawed his hands, drawing them toward his chest. With a roaring yell, two gusts of wind howled past him. They caught the moisture into clouting snow and hail. Some of it melted before it the mercenary but that was okay.

The near zero temperatures of the snow storm had been well primed. The air mass descended in a microburst as Tempest kept the sleet and ice coming. He pelted the molten concrete. He bombarded the mercenary trying to hide in his destructive swimming pool. Even if it melted, Tempest held it and threw it back down while pushing for the temperature to get even colder.

Across the street, the temperature fell to -8 but there as the storm swirled around the combative Tempest, a pain was developing behind his eyes. He wasn’t going to let up now. This was why he trained and pushed himself. He didn’t need to summon the ice after he’d manufactured the storm, but the prolonged use…

Tempest’s dark eyes twitched as they reflected the swirling orange of the frozen evocation before them.

Water is one of the worst things for warmth. Its high specific heat means that it takes a lot of energy before increasing even a single degree. Metals and ceramics may seem though, but the best they can do is withstand or block heat. Water absorbs it and doesn’t give back.

And torrents of ice-cold water were tearing into Isaac. Even in his semi-submerged state, blasts of freezing sleet and snow stabbed into his back, biting, clawing, melting, and then re-forming into another wave of ice and stabbing and biting and clawing all over again. Isaac tried to focus on getting to the building in front of him, but the ice was coming down in sheets now. He fought to keep the stone around him melted as blast after blast of winter hell rained down on him. Heavier and heavier and-

“ENOUGH!” Isaac roared, tearing himself from the molten earth and spinning to face the weather mutant. The job could suck it. He no longer cared about the deal. There was no more thought of keeping in cover or staying safe. There was only rage and the cold. And the cold needed to die.

Isaac’s face twisted in hatred as he willed himself to higher temperatures. Hotter and hotter, anger driving fatigue from his mind. It wasn’t safe to burn this hot, but he didn’t care anymore. The cold had to end.

Before, he had kept himself to temperatures that could just barely keep the rock melted. That was child’s play now. The heat the radiating from his body passed beyond melting rock, beyond melting the strongest of ceramics, beyond melting anything even theorized by man. Everything burned here. Everything.

The water didn’t stand a chance.

Superheated steam exploded away from Isaac, scalding the wreckage around him. Nearby rubble melted like wax in an oven and pooled beneath him. The very air surrounding him glowed in a blinding white aura, turning the freezing wind into a blowtorch that blazed up and through the wall of the building behind him.

Isaac had to close his eyes against the searing radiance of the heat and it was impossible to breathe, even for him.

But he wasn’t done. Not until the cold was ended for good.

He lurched forward, stumbling awkwardly between standing and kneeling, struggling to keep balance on the shifting lava. He couldn’t see, but he could feel the wind and where it was coming from. Who it was coming from. Step after halting step he continued, rubble giving way in a wide crater before the heat of his wrath.

No more ice! NO. MORE. COLD!

Tempest jumped back with practiced grace and equal amount of concern as the malign mercenary maneuvered from his molten millpond. His shout was enraged and the sudden wave of heat that followed was second in intensity only to the rage upon the man’s face. No, it was third to the churning, raging furnace the merc induced.

Any attempt to batter him with ice and sleet stopped immediately. Tempest pulled the cold air to him and focused on the buffeting ring of winds around him instead. Protection was key; this guy was completely out of his mind. At least he wasn’t hurting anyone…

Of course, the buildings weren’t the target any more. Tempest was. This was terrifying.

The man kept screaming as he came forward, melting all around him. Tempest retreated in two quick jumps. He was getting a little dizzy both from the prolonged concentration and the pure need to move. It even hurt to look at the air around the man. Moisture died. The temperature was beyond anything he’d witnessed naturally. The air sucked in toward him and shot upward-

The blinding brightness of the boiling bastard seemed to coincide with an idea, a desperate one anyway. What anger Tempest had had was purged by the dangerous luminescence. This needed to stop and it seemed the mercenary’s idea of stopping was destroying everything. The glow reflected in Tempest’s dark eyes hurt, black almost silver in the light. He couldn’t look directly at its origin any longer.

It didn’t matter.

What Tempest focused on were the rising, super heated air currents. He pushed his will against them and sent them colliding with the frozen air from above, the chilling moisture from off the water. They smashed together with a thunderous clap above. Lightning flashed repeatedly as thunder boomed again. He sent the air spiraling.

Unfortunately for the mercenary he was already creating the beginnings of a draft and Tempest was only too eager to use it to his advantage, forming a cyclonic cloud that would have taken him far more energy and time to devise especially in the middle of a blizzard. It wasn’t merely thunder in the snow any more, not merely a stormy blizzard. It raged over the hot head and Tempest fought with his strength to hold it there, letting it pull sheets of icy cold air from above down onto the man.

As the pain between his eyes started to make everything blur, Tempest screamed, “Stop!” A hand cut a furious horizontal line before him sending another gust in attempt to knock the man from his not-so solid footing and into the localized tornado.

His cheeks were wet, but it wasn’t raining. No snow felt through his protective winds. There was salt and copper on his tongue.

“Stop, please!”

Isaac stumbled and landed on his knees. The exhaustion was starting to eat at him. Burning this hot was an uphill sprint under the best of conditions, and he had already expended a large amount of energy fighting and setting buildings on fire. Not even his anger could mask the weariness for long.

But he couldn’t stop. Not yet. The cold was still there- he knew it. Waiting just outside the range of his furnace, ready to swoop in once he was too weak to fight. It had to be destroyed. It had to.

He got to his feet, then stumbled again. It was no longer a matter of willpower. It was a simple matter of physical capability.

S***! No! NO!

And then the wind changed. Isaac had been using it to guide him to the weather mutant, but now it suddenly moved sideways, with the wind behind him moving in an opposite direction. Swirling. Pulling. Isaac let his eyes open and saw the white-hot air being torn from around him into a whirling vortex of flame, but hotter than any natural fire on earth. Streams of lava and molten debris were sucked into the cyclone, eroding his footing. Isaac crouched, fighting to stay on the ground. He couldn’t lose, not now!

The gust of wind took him. Blindsided, Isaac was swept into the hellfire tornado by a blast of wind that caught him in the face and sent him stumbling backward. His feet lost contact with the ground as sprays of liquid metal and rock battered his weakened skin. The world was a tumbling, colliding mess of brilliant white and orange fire with no footing.

Isaac’s vision swam. He fought to regain control, to find something to grab onto, to maintain his heat, but he had simply burned too hot for too long. The exhaustion won. He gave a last gasp for breath. He felt his fire die.

The world went black.

It didn’t stop immediately.

The moment the heat started to drop, Tempest could tell. He saw it in the air but felt it in the way he had to strain his power to keep this super-heated inferno spinning during the localized blizzard he’d conjured to support this battle. He let it slow, let it fall, let the winds stop spinning and they dropped the rapidly cooling mercenary.

The glow faded and Tempest could look at him directly. The lights went out and it was clear the man was asleep in darkness. It took a moment to tell, but he was still breathing. Not only could he see the breath disturb the air but the merc’s chest rose and fell with steady grace. Great, at least there was that. After all this at least he wasn’t dead.

Devon wanted answers. Who was behind this? Why?

He found a broken rebar to lean against. A few moments of concentration started to raise the temperature, to let the moisture recede back naturally. The winds slowly calmed. It’d take a few minutes, but the blizzard would return back to a small storm. The heavy band of precipitation and cold would quiet. Tempest wished he could have summoned it faster, saved more of the two buildings and prevented any damage to the third. Even now he wished he could end it sooner.

His attention snapped back to the mercenary yards away. Had he said something? The melted floor, ground had solidified now. Tempest approached warily. Water was freezing, icicles forming from the moisture that had collected around on the debris. It was a mess. But the man – the naked man – had clearly said something.

“...cold…” he muttered, whispered almost. Great, yeah. It was cold. Of course it was cold. It was his fault it was this cold.

Tempest didn’t know much about this guy except what he’d perceived in the last couple minutes. No doubt however it was too cold if the man couldn’t generate heat for himself. Every mutant had issues and some had serious needs. The warmth around him was dying rather quickly but he still seemed to be generating some heat. Exactly how hot was this guy?

As Tempest came within a couple feet it became clear.

Pretty hot apparently.

Devon pinched the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes a moment. He needed answers before he turned this guy in. Also, he wasn’t about to let the guy freeze to death because of the storm. The guy was a furnace, cooling quickly. Maybe that was the best place to heat him with a little help of course. Sanctuary wasn’t an option.

---

“I’m glad you’re coming around,” his tone was colder than the temperature around them, far colder. In fact, the words seemed to come through on waves of orange and yellow.

Cal was in a fire. Tempest had risked it after throwing the svelte merc into a car and zipping away. He took up in one of the old warehouses and bettered one of the fire rings in it. It had been there when he’d first found the place, but he’d taken a few extra precautions.

This was a basement had a dirt floor, like many old buildings in New York. In the center there was an overturned furnace from decades ago. There was some rust, okay a lot of rust, but it worked. The ring was dug out in the dirt of the basement, a little moist being this close to the water and the radiant heat melting the permafrost. The fire was drying it out quickly now. Whoever had originally made it had piled up old concrete blocks around the furnace just in case but more likely because they also absorbed some of the heat. It wasn’t bad.

Devon had moved them away to the edge of the building. He was pretty dirty now, ensuring they weren’t close enough to help the guy go out wandering without some warm support. He’d thrown in all the kindling that he’d had, and a couple bags of charcoal he’d grabbed at a nameless 24 hour shop on the way. Every now and then he’d toss in some wood. He had enough.

All that was after he’d blasted and broken off pieces of the rusted furnace. Then he’d tested – awkwardly – one of the merc’s toes. Nope, didn’t burn with a match. Up the fire went and then in with the merc.

It was like a bathtub, but with fire and heat. A hot bath had been a consideration but keeping it hot and not letting the guy drowned sounded difficult. This seemed to be working. It was 400 hundred Fahrenheit and quickly climbing.

Meanwhile the rest of the building was in the low teens and getting out of the basement meant climbing in the cold or jumping out with the aid of a few gusts… Of course, Devon had had to drop the guy down the only hole but hopefully he’d buffeted the drop of 20’ well enough. Nothing looked swollen after all, no new bruises either.

Glow sticks in a myriad club colors circled them in a thirty foot radius. There was also a fire extinguisher, a few jugs of water, a 6 pack of that canned air that blew really cold. Devon had grabbed whatever the store had that made sense. New apartment party he’d told the cashier. He sat near a blue glow stick, shirtless, and clearly unaffected by the cold. The flickering light of the fire could be seen in his dark eyes.

“You need to tell me why,” Tempest continued, “Or that furnace will be your coffin.”

The sharp strike of earth against his back shoved Isaac out mindless oblivion and into a hazy world of ache and fatigue. He made a small groan of protest, barely opening his eyes. Dull, grinding pain flooded his mind as each individual bruise tried to shove its way to the forefront of his attention. He was hungry, too, but more than that he was tired, drained of all energy with a fatigue that pressed against the back of his eyes.

He needed rest. Whatever was going on wasn’t that important. Apathy and weariness softly pried his fingers from their grip on consciousness and he slipped back into blackness, giving no thought to the fact that the ground beneath him was smooth dirt instead of the rubble of the collapsed building.

Soft pangs of sensation came from random bruises. Then nothing. Then… warmth? Fire? Thoughts started to form in his head even as he tried to enjoy the heat. Was this the fire he’d caused in the apartments? Had he won? But… there had been the wind, and he’d had to keep the fires going himself. Then he’d been swept up and… Had he…?

Isaac forced his eyes to open to the pain and weariness. He was in a fire, yes, but it was different. Thoughts struggled to pull themselves together. He was in some kind of container, and above it was a ceiling lit by muted neon light. He pushed himself up against the inside wall of the container to get a better look around. He was in some kind of large room, dimly lit by… huh. Glowsticks. There was a large hole in the ceiling, some kind of trench, and-

>>”I’m glad you’re coming around.”

Him. The man responsible for all the cold and pain.

Anger pushed against his fatigue as Isaac brought the man into focus through narrowed eyes. He wanted to burn, to leap across the room and punch that stupid face in with iron and fire. But he was just too tired. Instead he just glared at the man and his theatricality. God, he’d even taken his shirt off to try to appear more manly.

>>”You need to tell me why, or that furnace will be your coffin.”

Isaac sneered. The words were stern, but they were just talk. There was no torture, no threat. This was a place of comfort. Isaac was unrestrained. Sure, he was too tired to move, but this idiot didn’t know that. And what did the guy have? A fire extinguisher and a bucket of water? Tools to protect himself, not interrogate a prisoner.

“Oh, no. I’m so scared,” Isaac said in the flattest monotone he could manage. He may have even rolled his eyes a little.

“Sure. I’ll tell you.” Isaac let himself slide back down into the fire, not even looking at the man. “Your mom wanted me to. I was going to say no, but… damn, that p**** is just too good.”