27 Heated Battle I

By the time Rule arrived in front of the mid-rise apartment building, the fire was raging on. Flames were rising up in the night sky like walls of liquid fire, melting through the apartment building's structure, glowing white and yellow and letting a haze of black acrid smoke in its wake.

The inferno was casting an intense red glow over the entire block as people were clustered around, gathered at the foot of the building. Some were standing there, gaping at the spectacle or filming the entire happening; while others were futilely dumping entire buckets of water into the raging blaze, trying to extinguish the fire.

To no avail.

It would take much more than some gallons of water to put out the flames.

Eyes blazing an ethereal red blaze, Rule stepped out of his scooter and jogged to the front of the building.

Closer, the heat was more pronounced and intense. It seeped into his costume as he came to a stop at the foot of the building in fire. By then, the crowd gathered around had taken notice of his appearance and turned to regard him even as he began taking stock of the situation at hand.

'17 people caught inside the buildings.' He analyzed.

Correction, there were 15 living people inside the building. The other two were lying on the ground unresponsive, flames engulfing their bodies. He presumed they were likely dead or would be really soon as they no longer registered to his power as alive.

He wrote them off as unsavable and moved on.

Among the people inside, one of them was who he presumed to be Firefly, located on the fifth floor; the other one was someone fighting him, either a hero or an enemy of his.

Being a crazy arsonist doesn't endear you to people, who would have thought?

"MY BABY!!!" The scream of anguish of a woman briefly took his attention away from the fire.

A nondescript blonde woman ran at full sprint toward the building. However, before she could try to go inside, she was stopped by a man who hugged her from the side, holding her back.

"LET ME GO!!!" The woman screamed, frantically trying to wriggle herself out of the man's hold.

The man grunted, "Please, stay still! Don't go in the building!"

Another man quickly came to the help of the first one when the woman began to struggle against the first man's restraint. Together, the two men managed to subdue and restrain her.

Struggling to free herself from the grip of the two men who were keeping her from rushing ahead… "M-my son! Kevin…- he's… he's inside! He's trapped inside! Ple-please! Please!... My child!!! Let me go!! LET ME GO!" She howled between broken sobs.

"The firefighters are on the way, ma'am! We can't let you run into the fire, it's too dangerous!" Yelled the first man.

"Everything is going to be alright," Shushed the other one, "Please, help is on the way. Stay put. I know it must be painful but there's nothing more we can do but wait and try our best to prevent the fire from spreading."

The young mother broke down on the ground and began sobbing loudly.

At this scene, something inside of him snapped.

Rule promptly acted, his attention turning in the direction of the red fire hydrant he knew was standing on the side of the street, just 5 meters or so ahead of the building.

'I can use this.'

He has never done this before. But what better time than right now was there to do an improv?

With a burst of telekinetic force – {Almighty push} – he cracked open the hydrant pump. Steel, metal, copper and ductile iron gave up under the blast of repulsive force that sent the remnants of the fire hydrants flying through the air.

The loud creak and groan created by the hydrant's explosion startled the people on the scene as water wildly surged forth, splashing everywhere on the streets and making the crowd turn their attention from the fire to the spectacle.

Next, Rule tried to tightly grasp the water that was wildly gushing around and splashing everywhere on the ground. He tried to compress, direct and control the water with pure telekinesis.

To no avail. A great majority of the water kept thrashing around, gushing out of the ground like a fountain.

But he couldn't manage to do it, struggling against a force that was far more powerful than his telekinesis alone could handle. And so, Rule gave up on his hold.

'That won't do.'

Rapidly, he decided to change track and instead, created a rectangular telekinesis forcefield around the opening he created by removing the fire hydrant. He boxed the water bursting forward into the forcefield, trapping it up.

This time, it held true thanks to his forcefield. The water was still gushing forth, but not thrashing and wildly splashing everywhere like before. Instead, it was shooting up in the air like a geyser.

Next, Rule began constructing a tower, staking a box of rectangular forcefields on top of another one. He repeated this process again and again and again. Each time, he shrunk the forcefield's area down. From 2 feet (60 cm) at the base to only around 4 inches (10 cm) at the top by the time he deemed it good enough.

It took him less than approximately one minute to do this.

And now, he has his pressurized hose.

Rule exhaled and with a fist gesture, he tightly locked the feeling of his mind maintaining the entire forcefield construct in the back of his head – keeping that pressure in the background in a manner of speaking so that it could be manageable and he'd be able to maintain the construct up subconsciously, even when doing other things simultaneously.

It was going to put a strain on his mind later for sure, and next morning, he'd certainly wake up with a killer headache, no doubt. But in the moment, doing this much was necessary.

He'd manage.

With his index and middle finger close together, Rule held up his hand in the air.

"Everyone!" He yelled, "Get out of the way!!" And roared.

Thankfully, people heeded his warning and began to scatter away from the scene, the two men even helping to pick up the despondent woman from the ground, giving him the space to act.

Rule dropped his hands.

A jet of pressurized water surged forward, shooting through the construct and easily clearing the distance between the street and the apartment before splashing against the flaming building. The water doused the front entrance that had already been partially melted by the fire.

Steams whirled in the air at the contact of water against fire. With another hand gesture - a closed fist this time – he broke open the wall and front entrance. The building's exterior split open; stones, pieces of vinyl, fiber cements, bricks, wood and stucco giving up against the telekinesis burst of {Almighty push} as the debris crashed against the flooring inside.

Rule let the water splashed around the open surface, dousing out the fire inside, before stepping into the complex himself once the heat was more manageable and the fire around him was more or less put out.

Next on the agenda was evacuating the people stuck inside the building.

Then, he was going to beat the living shit out of this wannabe arsonist.