Fire

As a young child, Videl had been repeatedly forbidden to play with fire. It was a dangerous game, her parents had always reprimanded, and she was far too young, far too human to outsmart something so feral. And so, it was very peculiar when fire decided to play its own little game with her.

The roof was collapsing, leaning all its weight against what remained of the walls. What remained of the walls were nothing more than crumbling debris balancing on top of each other, leaving less than two meters of space between the roof and the floor. And still, people were screaming for help in a room ahead, where the heat intensified to make the building almost like a giant sauna. She crawled to where they were, determined to liberate them. Determined to liberate herself along with them.

It was not the flames that were eating this building that played with Videl. It was something else, and she was sure it must have enjoyed their little escapade so far. The game started with fire as the predator, and she as the prey. It followed her, crept undetected like a stalker, in the form of a man in a costume with a bucket on his head.

Surely, it would show up any time now. It would not make her wait so long. She suspected that it was fond of its punctuality and expected her to be equally impressed.

By the time she had reached the room, the screams and yells were appeased into low grunts, and she was almost certain that the victims had been smothered by smoke already. However, she quickly realized she was wrong with her latter assumption.

Her object of vehemence stood in the middle of the room, supporting the breaking wall with one hand, and the other ushering the people out of the window.

This fire was infuriating. Once it had mimicked her trail and caught up to her, it would provoke her with its damning dance and cringe worthy speech, until she suffocated from their idiocy; until it burned her with embarrassment that her only choice was retaliation.

“What are you doing here?” she yelled right across the room.

The cape attached on his back swerved gracefully as he turned around to look at her.

“Videl!” he proclaimed. “You should get yourself out of this building immediately. It will burn down soon.”

She was hot with anger, surely a reaction that he reveled. It did not make sense to her why he must remind her of the obvious as if he thought she was the naïve one of the two.

“You should leave me alone to do my job,” she said, stalking up to him, and helping one of the smaller children to reach the crushed window. Outside, the firefighters had assembled a cushion to encourage the people to jump from the low-rise building, rather than evacuating them to the exits which would take far longer.

“I’m afraid I won’t be able to do that,” he announced once again, and Videl pondered angrily why he must talk so loudly. Was he in such desperate need of attention? As if those neon colours he washed his costume with did not turn enough heads already. “Now, if you please, follow the rest out of the window. This building will surely collapse any minute now.”

He pulled aside a layer of fallen debris effortlessly; it ignited further irritation from Videl with his display of superhuman ability, which she knew she could never do. The last of the trapped civilians had escaped with that last aid from Saiyaman. And Videl felt a spark of abhorrence at his gentlemanly actions as if he was completely oblivious to her increasing antagonism.

“Please…” she managed to choke out, smoke clouding the room. “Next time, stay out of this.” It was not exactly a plea and not a request either. Her intonation was like an order, regardless of her first word.

Saiyaman, however, disobeyed. “I’m afraid I’ll always come when I’m needed,” he explained.

“You’re a publicity material. Not a hero,” she set him straight, determined and angry. “You’re never needed!”

“You need me now,” he said, voice quiet and certain, that she almost lost it within the raging madness in the room.

Then the shame washed over her, more overwhelming than the hungry flames that ate away the building. His words ate away her pride.

She was Videl Satan. She never needed anyone to save her. To protect her.

All she ever wanted to do in that moment was to make him go away.

She moved so fast, not even the flames could prevent her from reaching him. He feigned a surprised look before blocking her attacks nonchalantly, most likely wanting her to think that she had caught him off guard. But she was smarter than that. She tried to smother him, using her fists and legs like extinguishers, but his stealth allowed him to escape, as much as it allowed him to crawl upon her.

“Videl, we must escape this building. Now is not the time to fight like this,” he called out to her.

“No!” she said. “Because you’ll leave immediately, and I won’t have the time to talk with you.”

She sent him a punch, a biting one that produced a sickening sound on his face. Yet he remained unbothered.

“Then you’ll only come back during another crime scene, ready to embarrass me again,” she continued accusingly.

“Is that what you think? I’m trying to embarrass you?” he asked, and Videl could only feel more infuriated with his lack of attention.

There were more blows between the two that the ravenous flames now only became a glowing backdrop around them.

So ignorant of her surrounding that when Videl’s aggressive offenses ebbed away into a tight embrace from her opponent, she could not comprehend why in the world he would do such a thing. Her vision darkened, the light of the flames vanished, and the air became foggy, musty and closed. She could not move away.

After a few seconds of silence, she moved her head and found that she now lay on the ground, trapped between the concrete floor and the large frame of the superhero.

“Videl, please don’t move,” he whispered, husky, low… and nervous. “Part of the ceiling just collapsed.”

She breathed out, unsure of what to do, unsure of what really came over her that she had decided to fight him within a burning building. That had been foolish.

Under him she calmed down for a bit, knowing full well that he was the only barrier she had from the crushing force of the ceiling. She was so close to him, feeling warm, even though his efforts of avoiding her eyes were too obvious and uncomfortable.

It was a really strange game, if she thought about it. There were moments with the fire when its heat confused her into thinking it was not unsafe, because it was warm and beautiful. It was very beautiful that it was unfathomable why she had become so angry in the first place.

Sometimes the fire was so benign that Videl was tempted to reach out and touch it; it was so alluring and attractive in its warmness and kindness when it destroyed those who wish to harm her, and saved those in her care.

With a smooth motion, he crouched up, bringing the unimaginable weight on his back up from them and throwing it away to the side. There, the flames consumed it hungrily.

He left her stunned, burned to her spot, unmoving. He left her unable to execute her rescue, because he had already done it for her.

He held her and together they escaped the fire, and the dangerous consumption of the building. Right when her feet touched the ground, she retracted herself from his touch as if he had scorched her skin.

And his selfless favour left her ashamed once again, that all she could feel was fury. This emotion sizzled so hot, sometimes she thought she could kill him.

But she never could even if she tried.

For a moment, Videl became distracted by the fire men and the survivors giving her their gratitude. When she turned around, he was nothing more than a speck in the clouds.

Always he knew how to save himself, pulling away from her grasp, and dissipating into the air like smoke. He escaped only to return later when he would taunt her again. He remained faceless to her; nameless too because he kept hiding behind that foolish pseudonym and the idiotic costume. How she would like to strip him of all of those; how she wished he would just stop hiding from her.

Videl frowned despite the success of her rescue… his rescue, and swore to herself that she would do whatever it took to uncover him, find his true name with a face to match. Frustrated, she turned to leave.

The game would always conclude in one way. She would be left in a state of bewilderment, antipathy and curiosity all at the same time. He retreated into the skies, taking his heat with him, and his dance and his words. She was left standing on solid ground - feeling like a bed of soft ashes right after a flight - gaping at the empty space before her. Cool and breathless.

Confusion came again to her by then, because she could never acknowledge the emotion her anger was truly hiding.