The Present

Police sirens echo throughout the city, the sound of the sirens growing ever closer to the city bank. Near the bank, sitting on an apartment rooftop was Fire, a 23- year- old average looking delinquent, with short messy red hair, mean looking red eyes and an overall average looking figure. He was enjoying a cigarette during his 5- minute break from work.

“I guess I’m up”

His hair and eyes would suddenly flash green and he’d run into the rooftop door and come out the front door of the apartment within seconds. A green trail followed him as he was running towards the bank.

He stops in an alleyway near the bank and looks at the front entrance. It’s swarming with police. Police cars lined up, policemen ready. Fire was sure he could see snipers on the rooftops.

-Can’t go in there without my identity getting blown

Fire thought as he looked around for anything that could help and he spotted a costume shop. Looking through his wallet, he sighs and walks towards the costume shop.

“Release the hostages and we’ll try to come to an agreement”

“Shut up! Unless you want a pile of corpses”

The police were trying to negotiate with the bank robbers but they were having none of it; they had a clear goal in mind. The money in the vault is what they were after, how many people got hurt in the crossfire was irrelevant. One of the hostages was trying to make their way towards the entrance of the bank. The one that looked to be the leader of the robbers aimed his m4 carbine towards the ceiling and fired a few warning shots.

“That was a warning shot, the next one won't be!”

Overcome with fear the man quickly rejoins the rest of the hostages, not wanting to lose his life. The leader of the robbers now looks at his men.

“Hurry it up you bastards!”

“We’re grabbing the money as fast as we can, boss!”

“Not fast enough, we don’t have time to be picky.”

The robbers continue to empty out the vault as quickly as possible, while the leader keeps everyone in line.

Fire exits the costume shop, wearing a skeleton mask that only covers the upper half of his face. His wallet is now almost completely empty after having to spend his hard earned cash on this halloween mask.

“Damn what an expensive mask… YOUR STORE IS A RIPOFF!”

Fire yelled while swinging his fist in the air angrily at the store. After getting his anger out of the way, he now runs into the bank right through the front entrance and stops just a few meters away from the leader of the robbers. The leader of the robbers looks shocked for a second but then regains his composure.

“Hey kid, it's not halloween yet, where’d you get that dumb mask?”

“I’m not a kid, I’m a hero and I'm here to stop you guys.”

“A hero eh? What’s your hero name?” The leader says with a mocking tone

“Um….. My hero name is….um…. Element? No… that’s not it… um Elem, Yeah that’s my hero name. Elem the elemental hero!”

“Do you think this is some kind of joke kid? This gun here is very real.”

“Yeah, I know.”

The leader of the robbers looks shocked. He aims his gun at Elem, but suddenly he sees the hero disappear. All he sees is a green trail going behind him.

“I’m real fast ya know.”

The leader of the robbers spins around and fires a shot at Elem. Elem quickly runs around the shot and delivers a punch straight to the man’s face, taking his gun in the process. The man flies back and slides along the floor until he hits the wall.

“I’m not actually faster than bullets ya know, I’m just lucky I could tell you were gonna shoot me.”

“W-What are you?”

“I told you, didn't I? I’m Elem the elemental hero!”

The other robbers rush out of the bank vault to support their leader. There are 5 guys, 3 of them have their guns pointed at Elem and 2 of them have their guns pointed at the hostages. The leader of the robbers quickly gets up and takes out a pistol pointing it at the hostages.

“Don’t aim at him! If he knows you’re gonna shoot, he can avoid the bullet. Aim at the hostages!”

All the robbers point their guns at the hostages and get ready to shoot if given the order. Elem looks at all of the robbers, numbering 6 with their leader included.

-I can’t risk the hostages by trying to take them down with speed again.

Elem’s hair and eyes that can be seen glowing under the mask fade from green to a red color. He takes out a cigarette from a cigarette pack in his pocket, he puts it into his mouth and snaps his fingers. After the snap a small flame ignites on his thumb, which he uses to light the cigarette. The bank manager, angry at the sight, gets up.

“HEY, YOU CAN’T SMOKE IN HERE!”

“Oh sorry, Guess I’ll leave”

Elem turns his back on the robbers and starts walking towards the front entrance.

“NO DON’T GO… Fine, I'll allow it…”

“I thought so.”

Elem looks at the robbers again, pulls out a pack of pocket tissues and raises his arms like he’s surrendering.

“Look guys, I'm giving up, don’t shoot the hostages. Pretty please?”

“What makes you think we’ll do as you say? Get on the ground or we’ll shoot the hostages!”

Elem, kind of annoyed at the robber's response, tries to open the pack of pocket tissues but the pack bursts open and the pocket tissues fall onto the ground around the robbers. He caught one as the pack burst and has it in his hands now.

“What if I show you a magic trick? Will you let the hostages go then?”

“Fat chance, but please feed my curiosity and show us this trick.”

Elem takes the cigarette now almost completely burned up out of his mouth and flicks it towards the robbers. He then rolls the tissue into a ball and covers it with his hands.

“I’m gonna make this tissue… disappear!”

He raises his hands up to his face and blows through the small hole between them and as he opens his hands, little burning pieces of the tissue fly around before burning to ash.

“That wasn’t any trick, you just used your power to burn the tissue. Like that would impress anyone!”

“Oh but you see, that was just a distraction from the actual trick!”

Elem pointed at the tissues near the robbers feet, surprised they looked down and saw that the cigarette he had flicked towards them had caused the tissues to catch fire.

“Thanks for waiting, the magician will see you now.” Elem says in a playful tone.

Elem raises his right hand up and the flames from the tissues grow to about 2 meters of height and engulf the robbers. The robbers, thinking they’re gonna be burned alive, panic and flail their arms. In that instant Elem’s hair and eyes flash to green again as he runs through the now dying down flames and knocks the robbers out one by one. Until the only one left standing is the leader of the robbers.

“L-Look man, d-don’t hurt me. I’ll give you anything you want…. Money… Power…. anything!”

The leader of the robbers begged, not wanting to be hurt. Elem turned his back to the man and began walking towards the door.

“You guys didn’t even put up a real fight.”

Elem grabs his pack of cigarettes from his pocket and takes one out. Using a small flame from his thumb to light it again. The leader of the robbers takes aim at Elem’s back using the pistol he took out earlier. Elem, thinking he has won, isn’t paying anymore attention to the leader of the robbers and is just walking away.

“Behind….. You…”

Elem’s hair and eyes flash to green as he quickly turns around and the leader of the robbers pulls the trigger. The bang from the gunshot echoes through the bank, terrifying all the hostages who thought it was already over. The bullet grazed Elem’s left arm as he wasn’t fast enough to avoid it completely. After regaining his balance Elem zips over to the leader of the robbers and grabs him by the shirt. Not saying a single word he quickly delivers a few solid punches to the man's face, knocking him out.

After dropping the guy he turns towards the hostages who all cheer and clap with excitement. Elem can see a little girl and her mother, an old man with a walking stick, someone wearing a hoodie with silver white hair sticking out, a shiny bald head with a dragon tattoo and some average looking people all in the group of hostages. The bank manager walks over to him and extends his hand that has roughly 240 euros in it.

“Here I know it's not much, but accept this as a gift for saving us.”

“Don’t want it, I didn’t do it for some sort of reward. I just did it because I wanted to help.”

“But sir… You risked your life to save us, please accept!”

“NO! I don’t want any sort of reward. As long as everyone is fine that’s a good enough reward.”

Elem would slap the manager’s hand away. Elem looked at all the hostages.

“Whoever warned me about that gun…. Thanks!”

All of the hostages look confused. They would whisper among themselves and then one of them loudly responds.

“We didn’t hear anyone warn you about that gun.”

“What… but I heard you…”

“You must just remember it wrong, sir!”

Elem ponders about that voice he heard. After looking at the clock on the wall he realized that his break was already over and he ran out of the bank right as the police stormed in. Elem makes his way closer to the north end of the city. A green streak ran into an alleyway near a big tech food store. Fire walks out of the alleyway. There’s a visible hole in the sleeve of his hoodie from the bullet grazing his arm earlier.

-I’m lucky that the bullet didn’t actually hit me. It would be weird to go to the hospital with a bullet wound right after Elem the hero got shot.

As fire was about to enter the store, his hair and eye color would fade back to their normal red color. Luckily there doesn’t seem to be any customers around and so he quickly gets to work at the cash register. His boss John walks out from the employee break room, looking a little annoyed at him. He looks like a typical gangster, wearing a black suit and top hat almost everywhere he goes. His blond hair slicked back and a scar running across his left eye make him look extra badass.

“Your break was 10 minutes too long, Fire.”

“S-Sorry about that boss, I lost track of the time. Ya know how it is.”

“You gotta get over this bad habit of yours Fire. I don’t want to fire my best employee over something so little, but your breaks always run longer than they're supposed to.”

“I’m sorry boss, but ya know I always get my work done despite that.”

“Yeah I know, that’s why I haven’t taken it out on your paycheck….yet.”

Fire chuckles nervously and John shakes his head.

“There’s a few boxes you need to move in the back, get on it as soon as possible.”

“You got it boss.”

-Fish and Bits, the tech/food store I work a part time job at. Going to college, doing hero work but also earning enough money to actually live is a struggle to say the least.

Fire goes into the back, making sure John wasn’t around. They don’t have any cameras in the back. It presented the perfect opportunity for Fire. His hair and eyes change to a green color and he runs around moving the boxes he was supposed to move within seconds. After he has done his hair and eyes fade back to red and he would head back out to man the cash register. Fire works a basically solo shift. The only other person there during his shift is John. Fire would tend to the customers needs and run around doing anything and everything asked of him for about 4 hours, taking the occasional smoke break here and there.

At around 10 PM Fire was closing up the store when the news started playing on one of the TV’s in the store.

“The super fast fire hero who has saved people around the town for about 2 months now has officially given us his name- Elem the Elemental hero. Just today he saved about 24 hostages from 6 armed gunmen trying to rob the Piten city bank. It was also reported that….”

“That hero sure is brave, risking his life like that” John’s praise sounded like music to Fire’s ears.

“I don’t think he was risking his life honestly, he’s way stronger than those guys”

“Fire…. Thinking like that is what gets people killed. It never hurts to be careful.”

“Yeah yeah John, The store is closed, so I’m heading out.”

“Alright, stay safe out there”

Fire exits the store and goes into the alleyway to pick up his skeleton mask that he has hidden behind a trash can. He puts it on and his hair and eyes become green. He does a few quick stretches and starts running.

After arriving at his apartment building and running inside, he unlocks his apartment door and walks in. His hair and eyes slowly turn back into a bright red color. He takes his hoodie off and throws it onto his couch. The couch has a spring sticking out of it, clearly not in the best shape. He cannot complain, he got it practically for free. He does not have enough money to keep his apartment in good condition regardless. He flops onto the couch and turns on the TV.

“Even more bodies have been found hung and stabbed in the woods, 20 people are still reported missing. The police are dubbing these cases the shadow mur-” The tv goes silent after being turned off.

“Boring”

Fire closes his eyes and enjoys the silence the TV now gives off. Slowly he’d doze off.

It’s cold… Freezing even, running through the woods, having only a small flicker of fire lighting the way. A siren suddenly goes off, one that echoes throughout the entire forest. Turning around there are flashlights looking around, searching for you. You keep running, suddenly tripping and landing on your face in the snow.

-It’s so cold

You keep running, gunshots ringing through the woods as bullets fly past you. You see lights in the distance, it could be a city or maybe it’s a village. It doesn’t matter what it is exactly. What’s important is that you make it there. You’ve been running for what seems like hours when in reality it’s most likely only been 10 minutes. As you think you’re about to reach the village suddenly a gunshot rings out and hits you in the back. You fall, rolling down the mountain and crash through the ice of a frozen lake below. Reaching out for help you almost see a person through the ice, reaching back at you. You begin to black out when-

Fire suddenly sits up breathing heavily as his forehead is covered in a cold sweat.

-Another nightmare… Probably the 4th one this week

Fire gets up and does some morning stretches. He checks what time it is on his phone. It’s 7 am and he has enough time to make some breakfast and do a quick lap around the city. Breakfast was as usual a cup of instant noodles, a sandwich and some instant coffee. He’d munch on his instant noodles while taking some bites of his sandwich. Ding, his phone vibrates with an annoying notification sound. His first lesson is canceled due to the professor having family matters.

-More time to patrol the city, I guess.

Fire finishes his breakfast and gets his hoodie off of the couch. Realizing he never took the skeleton mask off after getting home.

-It only covers the upper part of my face so I didn’t even notice it

His hair and eyes transition to a light green color, using his speed he does a lap around the city. He doesn’t notice anything off at first glance. With the extra time he has because of his first lesson being canceled he can thoroughly check every corner of the city.

After a few hours of running around, helping old lady’s cross the street and getting cats out of tree’s. Elem’s second lesson is about to begin so he heads towards the college building. The college has cameras of course but there’s a blind spot on the cameras almost nobody knows about. Fire takes the blind spot in, runs behind a tree and walks out with his usual red hair and red eyes. He stuffed the skeleton mask into his bag, having the bag over his shoulder via one strap. While walking towards class he can hear people talking about him, well his alter ego to be exact.

“Did you see the video about that Elem guy saving those hostages in the bank?”

“Yeah, he was totally awesome”

“He might not truely be a good guy though”

“Maybe he’s doing it for the fame”

-No… I’m not

“I wonder who he is, I mean someone who doesn’t show his face can’t be trusted. Right?

-I can be trusted actually

A slight grin would grow on Fire’s face from the major ego boost he’s getting. Fire would reach his class and would go sit down at the very back, the lecture doesn’t start for another 5 minutes but he likes to arrive early. He takes out his phone to look at the news. It’s flooded with stories about him saving the hostages from the bank, there are few missing persons reports sprinkled in between but mostly it's about him. He’d get caught up in reading the witness accounts of him. They said things like: “I’m glad he showed up when he did.” and “Thank god we have someone protecting the people!”. He’d get a little grin, letting the news go to his head. The sound of a notebook hitting the desk would snap him out of his trance. Looking towards the source of the sound, he sees Ellie.

Ellie’s a friend he made while going to college. She’s quite a bomb of energy, at least that’s what Fire sees her as.

“Hey Fire, you get here early again?”

“Yeah, just a little.”

“You always show up early, it’s like you have nothing better to do.”

“Well, I really don’t.”

“How’ve you been? You haven’t actually shown up to class for like 2 weeks.”

“I’ve been doing fine really. I just needed a little time to work, the bills don’t pay themselves after all.”

“Oh yeah that's right you have a job at… What’s it called again...Um..”

“Fish and Bits”

“Yeah! That’s it, the tech-food shop!”

Fire would stare at her as she was speaking. She’s beautiful, her long blond hair, those gorgeous green eyes and that amazing smile she always has while talking to him. It always makes him feel at ease.

“Have you been eating right? You do have a well balanced diet right?”

“Yeah. A well balanced diet of instant noodles and microwaveable hamburgers.”

“That’s no good Fire! You have to take care of yourself. I have told you that if you ever need to, you can call me and I'll whip you up a nice meal at home.”

Fire shrugs off her last statement. It’s almost time for the lecture. Finally he gets a chance to listen to one. He’s been having to take time off due to work of course, but what he doesn’t tell anyone is that he had to take time off because of his hero duties as well.

“Have you heard about the new hero in town?” Fire asks, hoping for an ego boost.

“Yeah, I think his name was Elem. What about him?” Ellie answers with a puzzled look

“Well, I just wanted to know what you think of him. You know he’s doing his best to protect the city or so I heard.”

“I think it’s dangerous. He’s running head first into danger and for what? To protect the people of the city? I mean, sure it’s a noble cause but he must have a family or someone that cares about him right? He should think about them before he acts. And also-”

Fire couldn’t even get a word in, as she kept rambling on about the dangers of being a hero and the trouble that it could cause. Fire wouldn’t even care to listen if it was anyone else, but since it’s her. He keeps an open mind.

“Plus, I think……”

“Yeah I get it, I get it. I think him putting his life on the line is quite brave and heroic. I think he’s doing the right thing.”

“Oh, is he really now?”

A deep voice suddenly responds to Fire’s statement from in front of him, wanting in on this conversation about the hero.

“I think he’s just being foolish, I mean risking his life for a noble cause isn’t wrong or anything. He should just be more careful about it.” The red eyed man says with a rude tone.

“Who the hell do you think you are, just cutting into our conversation like that?” Fire snaps back at him with an angry tone.

Fire would feel a little mad at the man. He also feels threatened by the man’s height. Fire would scan the man with his eyes. About 180 centimeters tall, give or take a few centimeters. Short but neatly clean and straight white hair, which compliments his beard quite nicely. His red eyes look like they’re shooting knives right through Fire as he speaks. The weirdest thing however is the long kind of bulky looking wooden staff he has leaning against the table. Fire chuckles a little, might turn out to be an interesting conversation at the very least.

“Oh sorry, I forgot to introduce myself. I’m (Lord) Vozirdius Jebediah Cerstiful the Third.” The man proudly introduces himself.

“Lord Voziridus… Jabadaba… Cersi… What kind of a name is that?” Fire’s tongue would be twisted in knots because of the hard to pronounce name.

“Coming from a man who’s named after flames I find that offensive. Just call me Vozird, that's what most people call me.”

“Wait, how do you know my name?”

“Duh, he was listening to us speak, how else would he know your name, dummy.” Ellie retorts back at Fire’s stupid question.

“Oh true, I am kind of oblivious sometimes, well it’s nice to meet you. Your highness.”

“Oh please, I’m not a king nor am I a prince. I’m just Vozird.”

Vozird reaches out his hand for a nice friendly handshake. Ellie shakes his hand happily. When Fire touches his hand, he feels absolute power. A shiver runs down his spine as the feeling of being crushed by this power weighs on his back.

-Does this person hold that much power?

After letting go of his hand Vozird turns around and sits down for the lecture. Fire still feels frightened but stays calm and also gets ready for the lecture.

Unbeknownst to them during their carefree history lecture. A hooded figure was busy robbing an armored bank truck that was on its way to the Piten city bank. Blasting high concentrations of water at anyone trying to stop him. Knocking them off of their feet. This hooded individual made off with 40 thousand euros while fending off the police and managed to escape into the sewer system.