Yellowstone National Park was
awesome, but I wasn’t hear for sightseeing. Carl was taking samples from one of
the geysers when I landed.
“The fuck do you want, airhead?” He
asked, looking over his shoulder.
“I’m hear to pick a fight,
flamebrain.” There was no love lost between our elements.
He stood, then, a fist coming up
and igniting into a jet of red-orange flame.
“Easy, we’re not going all fight to
the death. This ain’t Game of Swords or whatever. I just want some practice.”
“Practice. Fighting me.”
“Sure.”
“Why?”
“We have dangerous jobs, sooner or
later we all cross paths. Might be good to know how to handle one another.”
“You want to practice fighting me
so you can learn how to kill others of my kind.”
“Whoa.” I held up my hands in
surrender. “Not like that. I’m not into killing anyone. But our people do bump
heads, and I’d like to be able to defend myself and not have to resort to
killing.”
He took a long moment, considering
me, then he brought up another jet of flame from his other fist. “All right, Reilly,
but I fight with fire, so you might get burned.”
I took a deep breath, deeper than
normal, filling myself with extra wind from the breeze. I made a wall of solid
air in front of me, and summoned lightning to my fists. Arcs of electricity
jumped between my hands.
“Let’s do this,” I smiled.