GOLDEN AGE | ON HIATUS

XV | WILDFIRE

[ 15 ]

HE LIKED THINGS that went boom. There was a certain satisfaction in watching everything go up in flames, engulfing the problem whole. Sure, it created more problems, but Wildfire really couldn't find it within himself to care very much. Call him bad, call him charming, but whatever he was, he thrived in destruction. Jasper Lee slurped destruction up like grandma's chicken soup - that bring to say, in large gulps, no matter how hot it was. He couldn't help thinking that he was a reverse Elsa; the heat never bothered him anyway. Cold, on the other hand? Ew.

This time, however, watching everything go boom was decidedly not very fun. Not when a throbbing pain in his shoulder told him that a flying brick had collided with him, creating a bruise that hurt like hell. Jasper Lee liked things that went boom, granted that they didn't hurt him. After all, he considered himself a fragile little thing, a mere spark in the fizzing gears that made up Semper City, though his current situation suggested otherwise.

Instead of weeping in a corner as a braver man would've done in his position, Wildfire stood up and dusted himself off, not weeping in a corner, partially because there were no more corners left for him to weep in - the bomb, he supposed it was a bomb, wasn't it? - either way, the bomb had blown the corners of the floor away. They were lucky had the explosion had occurred on one of the top floors, avoiding a crisis as the building almost certainly would've toppled onto them, had they been on a floor closer to the ground.

Instead, they got a lovely look at the smog-filled sky, since the brick had crumbled in spots to reveal Semper's dingy dark skyline, not as high as New York's, but nothing to be scoffed at, if one was an urban enthusiast. Wildfire wasn't, but he didn't have much to compare it to, given that he hadn't really been granted the chance to see the skyline in other cities. Anyway, he liked it.

He silently praised Crux's expensive idea of making the entire building fireproof, which had originally been done to stop him. It was demeaning, but had now proven itself - he knew that if it hadn't been, they'd all be dead. As much as his life was sometimes tragic, such as the time the Grandmaster had taken away his personal toaster after a delivery of 4000 Birthday Cake Poptarts had arrived in the lobby, to the horror of several interns, Jasper didn't particularly want to die.

Leaning against the wall, he sighed, tensing as an idea hit him. Less of an idea, really, than a growing thought, and Wildfire forced himself to his feet, running towards the exit door on the other end of the corridor. He didn't make it very far, however, because it was in that moment that he, as reckless and type-B as he was, was struck with common sense. That didn't happen very often - no, Jasper found that the sensation was actually a pretty foreign one. For a moment, he considered listening to that common sense and sit down, let his injuries be attended to, maybe even have a cup of tea before he did anything rash.

But that was before he saw a pair of gloved hands reach out from the cracked wall, a line of wire, like a tightrope walker might use, in their palm. Wildfire presumed it was tied around a hook of some sort, embedded in the brick outside. Something like that would be a gamble, but if it didn't turn to rubble immediately, it would make a decent hold. This person didn't shy away from a gamble, obviously, given that they were breaking into a room with four superheroes and the director of a vigilante organisation that ruled over an entire (large) city, not to mention the SWAT team.

Also, a supervillain and countless menaces to society, but Wildfire supposed they were on the same side, given the anonymity.

A figure had appeared for a second, wearing a ski mask along with creepy unnatural contacts that turned their eyes into purple cat-slits that caught the light. Jasper readied his hands to send a fireball barrelling into their torso, but that was all it took for them to disappear, zipping down the tightrope as if it were suspended on something other than air over a massively busy road. Wildfire stopped warming his hands, unable to send more than a gust of hot air into the direction that they'd been a mere moment before.