Some days, it was just one fire to put out after the other.

Most days, it was a figure of speech.

Today, it wasn't.

Sveta was not sure who started the fire, but it was very clear that it had not been accidental. She was doing the rounds, visiting the safe houses that Haven kept up - some on the record, some off. She had checked them regularly lately, especially since the attack on the Mansion. Since Travis. Most were occupied at the moment, but some stood empty, stocked and ready in case they were needed. She was just checking an apartment on the sixth floor of an old brick building in an unsuspecting neighborhood, when the fire started. The building was officially empty, but the upper floors were still in decent repair, locked from down below, which made it a decent safe house. Haven kept it that way. Sveta had reached the apartment through the fire escape, unlocking the lock installed on the window. And then, somehow, there was smoke. And fire. Both from the window and from the hallway the apartment opened to. Shit.

Rex didn't know who started the fire either. That was a priority only after the fire was put out. Rex was rather more concerned with how quickly the fire was spreading.

The fire engines made good time responding to the fire. Rex and his men leaped out of the massive vehicles after they staked out their area of works. their sirens were no longer blaring, but white and red lights bathed everything in a heavenly or hellish light.

With a quick perusal, it looked like the fire hadn't reached a critical mass just yet. It likely wasn't in danger of spreading to other buildings, especially the surrounding also-brick buildings. Still, there was no time to dawdle. "With me," Rex said to a couple of his men and he pulled his face mask back down.

Lately Rex had been taking the forefront of these excursions into buildings. He didn't hide the magical abilities he possessed, but he didn't advertise them either. Most people didn't notice anything different. Lt. Vidales praying and quoting scriptures when running into a burning building? That meant he wasn't a pyromaniac sociopath. Rex doubted any of them realized his prayers were protecting them, quenching fires that got too close. That was fine. He didn't need the glory. He just needed everyone to make it out alive.

With that in mind, he and his colleagues made short work of the front door and charged in, seeking to determine if there was anybody in the building.

Sveta swore. She moved to the window first. The building was locked on the gorund floor, so the best way out was... Not the window, apparently. How was a metal fire escape even on fire?! That defeated the entire damn purpose. Also, the laws of physics.

Goddammit.

She moved to the hallway door, but the handle was hot, even through her glove. Sveta hissed, pulling off the glove on instinct, waving her hand and swearing in Russian. The smoke was thicker now. She picked up a towel to hold it to her face. Somewhere in the distance there were sirens. For lack of a better idea, she picked up a frying pan and banged on the door. She knew better than to try to open it.

"HEY!!"

The clanging of metal and a woman's voice cut through the building and Rex and his men zeroed in on it. Of course that meant climbing six flights of stairs, but that was part of their training. Leg day was life and death.

Rex was the first one out of the stairwell and immediately saw a blaze down the hallway. The hairs on the back of his neck raised. The fire was indeed a blaze. Flames covered the floor and were licking up the walls and even the ceiling, mostly in front of a few doors. The strange part was that the fire went about a third of the way down the hallway and then just...stopped. As if it decided to not continue advancing down and filling up the hallway.

"Ramirez," Rex said to one of his men. "Let them know we found the fire and there's at least one person up here. Potentially unnatural fire activity." The clanging was louder now. It was clearly coming from the direction of the fire.

"Dawkins, watch my back," Rex said to the other man.

"Fire department!" Rex roared down the hallway as he approached the waves of heat and flame.

"Lieutenant, this isn't procedure!" Dawkins began arguing, but Rex cut him off.

"This will work," Rex said. God willing.

Rex surged toward the flames and just before he struck them, he finished speaking a verse. "...and by night in a pillar of fire!"

His own flames burst into existence around the firefighter in a personal vortex that hungrily devoured the fires that got too close, leaving him undamaged. He laid one heavily gloved hand on the door handle and jiggled it to see if it was unlocked even as his own flames lashed at the door.

"Back away from the door!" he yelled.

Fire department. Great. Right now, she would take it. Sveta backed away from the door, which was predictably (and securely) locked. She was not even sure they could break it easily. Damn. It would be horribly ironic to be done in by her own safety measures. He coughed, eyes watering. There was the sound of roaring flames outside. She expected the hiss of water or something, but so far, nothing came.

"I don't think this is a normal fire!"

The door was locked. Rex wasn't surprised. None of this seemed like it was going to be easy. As his personal fire whirl blazed around him and battered at the door, Rex held up his right hand and began focusing on the inscribed glove on it. Small etched words on the glove began to glow with golden-white light that was fairly overshadowed by the light of Rex's fire spell, but it didn't matter. The light just meant there was juice in the glove.

When he felt like he had enough power thrust into the glove, Rex tapped his hand against the door by the handle and casually blew a cantaloupe-sized hole in the door, sending some scraps of the door flying outward. He shoved his arm through the hole and reached around to unlock the door, thanking God for the leather to protect him from door fragments, and then withdrew his arm.

With the door unlocked, Rex kicked it open and rushed it, allowing his whirling flames to vanish as he stopped the spell. A quick glance showed him there were no flames in this room, just a woman who didn't look exactly happy with her situation.

"It definitely isn't, ma'am!" Rex bellowed over the noise of the fire as he extended a gloved hand to her. "Might be a mutant! It's okay, I can handle fires, even non-normal ones. Is there anyone else up here? Or in the building?" he asked, temporarily shutting the door behind him to try to keep the fire out as he momentarily regrouped.

There was an explosion and Sveta backed away. That was... alright, at least the door was open. The fireman made his way inside.

>>"It definitely isn't, ma'am! Might be a mutant! It's okay, I can handle fires, even non-normal ones. Is there anyone else up here? Or in the building?"

Sveta didn't take the extended hand. She held her ungloved hand to her chest.

"This building is supposed to be unoccupied. I was just checking on the real estate..." Through the fire escape, oh well. She can explain later. "Let's hope it's not a mutant..."

Rex nodded sharply. Good, there likely wasn't anyone else around then. Neighbors reported the building anyway, not an inside call.

"Understood," he said over the sound of flames. "Let's get you out of here then!" Rex beelined for the window to check for a fire escape and then realized the problem. The fire escape had become a fire access.

Metal was burning. There was nothing natural about this at all. Rex froze for a moment to figure out their options. Even if he managed to put out the fire on the fire escape, he couldn't do anything about the heat. It would take a long time for it to be cool enough for them to safely make it to the ground. The hallway was covered in flames though, but none of those materials should be as conductive.

"Ma'am, I'm going to need you to follow close behind me," Rex said as he strode back toward the door with the hole in it. "And get as low as you can to the floor so you don't breathe in much smoke. I'm going to hold off the flames but I can't keep it up for long."

Then Rex began to pray. It wasn't overly loud, but a person could hear references to saints and the Heavenly Father and pleas for flames to be extinguished as Rex channeled magic into his fire-quenching prayer. He hadn't used it on the way into the room because with so any rampant flames, they usually restarted any section of fire that he put out. He could only target so much space at once. His goal was to focus just on the area in front of them and then move quickly enough to make it to the end of the hall and past most of the flames. Once they got downstairs, he could stop the magic.

However, if this was indeed a mutant's fire, or another mystic's, Rex wasn't sure how effective his prayer would be, if at all.

"Let's go," he said as he marched into the hall.