The building across the street from Charlie’s special bar was a bit of a safety hazard. It was a cheap “Mexican” food restaurant that had ignored so many health code regulations that Charlie wasn’t even sure how it was still open. What was more amazing to her was that people still chose to eat there.

So, needless to say, it came as no surprise to her when it burst into flames. According to the whispers from the people that were standing across the street, waiting for the fire truck to arrive, it was either a grease fire or a fire started by chemicals too close to the fryer. Neither option surprised her.

Still, it was strange how many people were just standing outside, watching the building burn down. Although, she did recognise that she was just one of them, so she couldn’t really pass judgement.

”Has anyone called nine-one-one yet?” Charlie asked the woman next to her, suddenly aware of the fact that there was a distinct absence of sirens. Typically, that was the first reaction of anyone viewing a disaster, but the crowd around her didn’t really seem like the type to jump in to help a situation.

The woman turned to her and cocked her head. “You know, I’m not sure. It might be good to do it just in case no one has.” Her voice was surprisingly calm for watching a building burn down in front of her.

With a raised eyebrow, Charlie shook her head and dialled the emergency number that popped up at the bottom of her phone screen. It only rang a few times before someone picked up.

”Hello? Yes, I need-”

“Oh. My. God,” someone cried. They were far less calm than the woman had been. “I think there are still people inside!”

Charlie stopped mid-sentence and frowned. There was no way that the fire department was going to get there before the roof on that little restaurant collapsed, not matter how quickly she made the phone call. ith a groan, she spoke as quickly as she could and then hung up.

She had been on a roll, too. Not one death in over two weeks. 

Jude had learned long ago that the trick to finding the best ethnic food was to find the dirtiest, grimiest, seediest place that he thought his stomach would be able to handle. He'd also learned to really like this new job of his, which had remarkably flexible hours. If he was gone or more than an hour for lunch, it was his paycheck that suffered and not his position. So long as he hit a minimum threshold, he could dig his own debts.

He'd also taken to walking a lot.

He'd walked back from Bupkiss, Canada. It'd taken him months to do it and the habit of walking every day turned out to be a surprisingly difficult habit to kick. It cleared his head.

One lunch hour, Jude finally found a hole in the wall questionable enough that even he considered passing it by. El Chaparral. At least, the dinge left on the wall around the missing letters let him fill in the blanks and that was his best guess at what the name should have been.

Okay. Sure. Why not Mexican?

But... what was the crowd about? And the smoke. And the... oh. Huh. It was on fire.

> “I think there are still people inside!”

Jude bumped into a blonde with a phone as he took two heroic steps forward before he stopped. He wasn't an X anymore. He wasn't obliged to jump into a burning building.

"Whoah. Yeah. Take a step back, kid. Go get your churros elsewhere."

"But... there are people in there." He looked around at the crowd. Really. Was no one going to do anything?

She'd been pressing the "end call" button when she was pushed forward. Charlie stumbled into the street, clutching at her phone for dear life. Sure, she'd only had it for about a month, but she really didn't want to lose another one. She did that enough as it was, considering the fact that they were often stolen when she died.

A car raced by the place where she had been standing just a second before as she stepped back onto the curb. A millisecond longer and she would have been roadkill. Angrily, she turned around to see who the culprit could have been.

In that sea of people, her guess was as good as anyone's, so she took a deep breath as she resigned to letting it go. There were clearly more important matters at hand. Like the teenager that clearly did not understand what happened when you went into burning buildings.

Standing next to the three people that had already crowded around the boy to try to deter him, Charlie placed her finger dead in the middle of his chest. "Listen, kid, I get that you want to be heroic and all that s**t, but this really isn't worth potentially dying over. Leave it to the professionals, 'kay?"

She stepped away from the crowd and dropped her jacket, wallet, and cell phone in a pile at the mouth of a little alleyway. They were the only things that she actually cared about saving from a burning building. "Watch these for a sec, will you?" she asked the woman that she'd initially asked about the police. In response, the woman merely shrugged. It didn't exactly fill her with confidence, but it was better than running into the building with them or leaving them completely unattended.

"Alright, the police and fire department are on their way, so just sit tight, or whatever. Just please don't run in, okay?" she took a deep sigh as she prepared to make herself the biggest hypocrite in history. She knew that (in a way) she would be alright but to everyone else, she was just some woman running into a burning building alone. All she could do was trust that they wouldn't be stupid enough to think that they should follow her.

Without looking both ways, Charlie ran across the street toward the fire.

There was a scream. Or maybe steam? Either way the small group of people arguing with Jude stopped and all looked at the building. Was it... going to explode? Somehow the tension in the small group of onlookers ratched up a notch.

And then a small woman felt the need to tell him off.

Jude looked down at her finger as it jabbed into his chest. His power was satiated, but gave a lazy flick where they contacted one another through his shirt.

Mutant.

She thought she was a professional. That was cute. He'd probably logged more real-world mission time than tiny had spent on getting her nails manicured each week.

"Yeah. As a- hey!" She was already walking away!

The people around him snickered and her felt his cheeks heat.

He marched after her where she shed her clothes, gearing up to say something nasty, probably, but she turned away ignoring him AGAIN and waltzed across the street.

"She must be a mutant or something." The woman shrugged an apology at Jude's flapping mouth. "Just stay here with the rest of us mere mortals, sweety."

"No!" He knew he was being petulant. He knew it was a bad idea to follow her without knowing what her power was. He. Did. Not. Care.

Jude scooped up her stuff, which the woman shrugged at, and he deposited it on the far side of the road in a dumpster full of what Jude could only guess was cast off food items that not even this restaurant would use.

That'd teach her.

Heat or pressure or something made the back window pop outward and Jude realized that this was it. This was the moment where he decided if he was a hero or just some guy.

He grabbed the door handle and started a long, angry stream of curses because holy mother of everything stupid that was hot. Ahhh! That was going to leave a mark!

Jude yanked his shirt off over the back of his head and wrapped his hand up in order to grab open the door. A wall of fire and smoke rushed out to meet him. Hm. He wished he had a water bottle or something to wet his shirt down.

He dashed in through the back, arguably the worst of the fire since it likely started there, and started looking for survivors.

Charlie didn't look back at the crowd as she stepped toward the big, flaming building. She'd worn her tough act in front of all those people, but as she felt the heat of the fire on her skin, she began to hear her heart speed up.

Her nerves could stick it, though. She began to channel whatever fear she was feeling into adrenaline and kept going. She was going into that building no matter what. There were worse ways to die, after all. She would know.

With a deep breath, she pulled up her socks and opened the door of the building. The handle was scalding, but she powered through the feeling of burning flesh with just a wince and a little yelp. There would be a lot more of that to come.

She was immediately greeted by a rush of orange flame, hungry for the oxygen that she'd just let in. The door slammed shut behind her and she had officially just trapped herself in a burning building.

"Call out if you're in here!" she yelled down the hallway before bursting into a fit of coughing. Immediately, she wished that she'd brought her jacket with her to cover her nose and mouth with. Instead, she settled for her quickly blistering hand.

There was a muted response just a little ways off, so Charlie ran forward as quickly as she could manage while crouched below the smoke. She was careful to stay away from the burning walls or any other large patches of fire.

The restaurant was just a little one, with a dinning room, a kitchen, an office, and two upper levels. The second level was used by a yoga group, and the uppermost level was only used for storage. As far as Charlie knew, there were no yoga groups in that day, so it was mostly just the first floor that they had to worry about. The dinning room and the kitchen both had great fire escapes, but the office did not.

The blonde ran into the cramped little room, having managed to successfully avoid the fire for the most part, and found three workers trapped in the cramped little room. "Come on, I'll lead you out of her," she said and nodded toward the door.

Cautiously, the three of them stood, and Charlie took a deep breath followed by a coughing fit as she prepared to go the way she came.

Fire did not feel good.

He should have figured it out that her power wasn't heat resistance or fire manipulation when he'd burned his hand on the exterior door. Jude's eyelids were sweating. His eyes were burning from the smog and the heat. His clothes were drenched immediately as his body attempted to keep up with his cooling needs.

Tiny had the right idea, leaving her important crap outside.

Maybe she was a pro firefighter. And her power was making butterflies or something dumb like that. Jude made himself push on, despite seeing no living people that needed rescuing, through what was obviously a grease fire that wasn't going to quit any time soon. Actually... did that lump of charcoal just blink?

He grabbed at the thing that used to be a person and hoisted them up despite their screams.

It was terrible. This was all terrible. Jude shouted one long guttural hero shout as he charged out the back door, kicking it out and coughing and gagging once freed.

The smells were terrible, weirdly like beef and chemicals. Jude detected a faint hint of extra rubbery, too, and noticed that the soles of his shoes had melted. And that his pants were on fire. And that he regretted every life decision that put him here.

Saving people was stupid. He was stupid for coming.

Worst of all, he felt cold. So cold.

Emergency rescuers were arriving at the scene. He was relieved of his rescue and bustled away. He kept trying to activate this power. Was it healing? X-ray vision? It felt like a lock and he just couldn't line the tumblers up correctly to turn the key.

Something was... missing.

Charlie hated being burned. She’d tried to convince herself that it wasn’t as bad as she’d remembered it being, but really, it was excruciating.

Each time that one of the three people stepped close to the fire, she stepped in front, taking the brunt of the flame. It was horrible, but she pushed through, using the blisters, the searing pain, and the intense cold to spur her on. Thankfully, they were able to make it to an exit.

Emergency personnel were on the scene, ready to help, so she ushered the people out of the building. She held the door open for them, feeling her hands get even worse, somehow. Was it possible to burn an already burned patch of skin?

The four people tumbled through the door that Charlie had pushed open and were immediately greeted by emergency personnel. Charlie felt herself being lifted and some sort of blanket being wrapped around her as she shivered on the ground. The blanket really didn't do much to keep away the cold. By that point, she knew she didn't have all that long left to live.

She was placed on a gurney and wheeled toward one of the ambulances parked in front of the building. Already, she could see that the people she'd led out of the building were receiving help, and the firefighters were putting out the flame. No lives would really be lost that day. 

Except...

"What the hell, kid? I thought I told you to stay outside!" Charlie demanded through a hoarse voice as she saw the brunette kid from the crowd earlier be wheeled past her. He did not look alright. In fact, he looked to be in worse shape than she was. There was no way he had very long. What a damn shame.

Jude wasn't feeling so good. Moving was an absolute effort. Breathing, even more so. He was rooted in place with his eyes transfixed, despite the attempts to make him lay back on a gurney.

He was having trouble making his eyes decode what was happening to the gurney with the lump of charcoal he'd brought out from the back. It was a person. There wasn't much at all like a person there, if he ignored the eyes and that terrified him. So he made himself look it in the eyes. It looked... scared. Terrified, in fact.

The more that Jude looked, the more evidence he could decipher of personhood— remnants of clothes and teeth, but it wasn't moving. The eyes did not blink.

Eventually the paramedics came to the inevitable conclusion that there were people who might be saved and this was not a person on that list.

They closed the eyes and a soft rattle whistled from the lump of charcoal. Now there was nothing left to make it a person.

He. Had tried. It wasn't enough. It was never enough.

> "What the hell, kid? I thought I told you to stay outside!"

Wracked by a sudden coughing fit that finally robbed him of the strength to stay upright, the medical team swarmed him and tiny, both.

He'd wasted his time saving someone who hadn't lived. He'd thrown away his life and comfort... for nothing.

As a final act of defiance, Jude held up one finger and hoped the blonde would see it.

She didn't look much better.

He would see her in hell.

The waste-of-a-life teenager was clearly not going to last long. Charlie realised that she shouldn't have wasted one of her last breaths addressing him. It wasn't going to do any good.

It would, however, compel him to hold up a burned finger in response to her comment. Lying on her stretcher, she chuckled to herself. Well, at the very least, he got to be a teenager for his last few breaths. It had been forever since she'd been a teenager. She had almost no recollection of what it was like. 

She did, however, hope that it had been like that. Using his final moments on the earth to stick it to the (wo)man one final time. Good on him.

The world was growing fainter. It was almost over. It was al-

---

GODDAMN F***ING COLD!

Charlie shot awake a second later, on the floor of the bar. Was it winter? Since when did Roger keep the basement so goddamn cold? She drew herself into a ball and rubbed her bare skin, trying to regain some warmth. 

As she finally stood and gathered her clothes from the little box in the corner, she tried to remember where she had last been. As much as she hated the cold, it was helping to jog her memory a bit. She spotted the faulty air conditioning unit as she did up her pants and adjusted the shirt she'd found in the box. She had been...

Oh! In that burning building across the street! She'd... left her clothes somewhere. She needed to go get those. There were actually a few expensive things that she would maybe be able to salvage for once. That would save her quite a bit of cash over the next month. With a new mission, she marched up the stairs, grabbed an unattended beer, and went back out into the street. 

All she had to do was remember where she had left her things...

He wasn't aware enough to understand what was happening. Jude faded in and out throughout the loading process. 'Everyone seems in a hurry, he thought. The ambulance doors slammed. And he flatlined.

---

He was falling. It's not that he felt like he was falling. He was actually falling.

That was new.

Jude's personal effects, burned as they were, continued to the hospital between two very confused and earnest paramedics, one of whom had defibrillation paddles in hand.

He landed butt-first on the hood of a car, back of the head into the windshield second-- buck naked in the middle of the street, New York.

The car swerved his skin made a skreee sound as he was dumped from the hood out onto the sidewalk in front of a bar, dazed.

Old Town Bar, the neon lights buzzed. The driver was out of the car in a flash, and unlucky for Jude there seemed to be some kind of emergency nearby so some of the gawkers from the fire came to see what all the new commotion was about.

Jude cupped himself, embarrassed into anger. He was concerned by his nudity, yes, but sometimes mutant powers were funny like that. They may or may not apply to clothes. Mostly the teen was unsure about how he'd gotten there. The driver said Jude had appeared out of thin air, but the teen couldn't remember doing so.

There was one question on everyone's lips: what the hell was he been doing here, now, and buck naked?

Fresh air was a nice improvement from the musky smell of the bar's basement. Charlie stood on the street, sipping the beer she'd swiped from someone's table as she examined her surroundings. She remembered pieces of the fire, but it was a little bit hazy. She thought... she had saved a few people? Whatever helpful mood that had caused her to do a thing like that had passed.

The fire was mostly out and there were still firefighters ensuring that it wouldn't start back up again. It seemed like her work there was done. All she needed to do was find her stuff and then be on her way.

Despite the fire having been mostly put out, there was still a large crowd gathered across the street. They weren't looking at the building, though; instead, they were gathered in a circle to look at something on the ground.

Charlie pushed her way forward to get a look at what was going on. There, on the ground, buck naked and cupping himself, was a teenage boy. He seemed familiar.

Oh! She knew him! He was...

Ah, shoot. He was... related to her? No, that definitely wasn't it. He was... that kid that ran into the building after she'd warned him not to. Yes, that was it. Only, if her memory wasn't completely screwing with her, the last time she'd seen him, he'd looked a little more crispy. How did he get from that to this?

"You okay, kid?" Charlie spoke above the other conversations, raising an eyebrow as she looked at him. He looked cold and embarrassed. It was just too bad that she'd left her jacket elsewhere so she couldn't drape it over him.

"Hey!" He barked at the gawkers to move away and scrambled as best as he could to his feet without letting himself go. It would not do to get arrested for indecent exposure. His head was killing him from where it'd bounced off of the driver's glass windshield, his butt seemed okay. More padding.

"You hit me with your car!" Jude rounded on the driver, who was half out of his door. A quick glance showed the vehicle appeared to be unharmed. Jude was the squishier of the two.

"Uh. You fell out of the freaking sky, kid."

Jude opened his mouth to tell the man how very much not-a-kid he was when he heard a woman chime in.

> "You okay, kid?"

He did a double take at the speaker.

"You!"

He let go of himself so that he could shove the small beer toting blonde. He was mad. The kind of mad that made a man stupid.

"This is your fault." He insisted.

"What? She just got here."

There were murmurs from the crowd. Jude wasn't sure why exactly this was her fault. Maybe it was that she called him kid at the wrong time. Maybe it was the blinding headache and all the people who cared more about watching him make a fool of himself instead of helping him.

"Wait. Didn't you run into that fire? I thought you were on that ambulance?"

>>"This is your fault."

Charlie quirked an eyebrow as she surveyed the kid. He definitely had a bit of a mouth on him. Maybe he was going through something? She didn’t know, but she did know that she wasn’t about to let herself be scapegoated again, especially for something that she definitely didn’t do.

”He’s clearly delusional. I just got here,” Charlie said sharply, letting her beer fall to her side as she held it lightly. Either he was going crazy from whatever just happened to him, or he was onto something. Maybe he could heal, or something? Maybe he was also immortal?

Whatever it was, it still wasn’t her fault. She’d specially told him not to go into that building, and now there they were, dealing with the fallout from his decision.

Idiot.

"Wait. Didn't you run into that fire? I thought you were on that ambulance?"

Charlie just shook her head. Now he’d done it. She was going to slip away and enjoy the rest of her day death-free, and now she was being questioned by a group of people. She was just glad that the days of public burning and stoning had passed. Even a night in the drunk tank was better than any of those options. And a hell of a lot less painful.

”No, you have me confused. I just got here.” She was getting annoyed. Couldn’t she just have left well enough alone? She had done enough good for one day. Now she was stuck in some stupid loop with a bunch of nobodies.

“Pretty sure it was you.”
“Yeah, I think so, too.”

With a groan, she stepped away from the crowd. ”Look, I don’t really care, okay? Sort it out between yourself. I have a jacket to find.”

Where on earth had she left it?

What a waste of a beer and a waste of a person. Jude's temper flared, but a man caught his shoulder before he did anything too terribly stupid.

"Dude." The man stopped Jude with a shake of his head and the removal of his outer tee shirt. It was the first kindness Jude had experienced today, which upon seeing the man's expression, Jude downgraded to sheer pity. Or maybe disgust. Was he white knighting the woman? Bad things could still come in small, pretty packages.

"He took your jacket."

Take exhibit B. The freaking tattle tale.

Jude slipped his pity shirt over his head while he tried (and failed) to figure out what life choices he could have done differently when a exhibit B leveled her chipped red nail polish finger at him.

"You asked me to watch your stuff." She shrugged. "I watched it get taken by that guy."

The shirt was long for a shirt, but as a dress it turned out to be very, very short.

This wasn't a mercy. It was a very stinky way to frame his indecent bits.

Something popped and fell to the ground across the road, like a window that finally gave up after taking too much heat. Ah. The burning building. The waste of freaking space and time and energy.

And... foggily, Jude did remember putting tiny's things in a certain dumpster.

He turned and smirked at her before walking back toward the building with one hand for decency and one hand for a proper prom queen-like 'I care about the little people' goodbye.

"Nah. She just got here. Couldn't have been her phone either."

"He took your jacket."

"I'm sorry?" Charlie hissed as she turned around. He took her jacket? No wonder there was something off about the kid. What kind of a**hole took a woman's jacket! He had clearly had clothes, too. Before, anyway. Plus, if he had stolen it for a purpose, this clearly wasn't it.

She'd turned around and her eyes were following the pointing, chipped nail polish covered finger over toward the boy who was trying (and failing) to cover himself with a short shirt. Charlie's hands balled into fists. Oh, someone was going to get it.

>>"Nah. She just got here. Couldn't have been her phone either."

As if he wasn't already on her ****list. That was too far. 

Charlie's eyes grew wide, and her face twisted in anger. She pushed through the little crowd and grabbed the teen by the shoulder. He wasn't going anywhere on her watch. 

"C'mere, you little ****," she growled. A horrified gasp erupted from the crowd behind her. Charlie turned back exasperatedly and flipped them a certain finger. There were several people filming it. Wonderful. Now her face would be plastered all over the internet.

Her fingers dug into the boy's shoulder as she looked his dead on. It would have been a lot cooler if she'd been taller than him. "Alright, ***hat. Where'd you put my stuff?"