Handling the Heat || Emi Ikehara

She decided to walk to her destination.

She did her best to look inconspicuous as possible on her way there. From the clothing she wore being casual, perfect for making it look like she was going to spend the evening hanging with friends, to the pace she was traveling in. It was her way of applying the scant amount of knowledge she had about being a villain. She didn't like that she knew things like that but she may as well use it. 'Just a little bit more.' She picked up her pace slightly, the small backpack she had bouncing with each step she made.

As the destination of her outing slowly came into view she had to suck in a deep breath. 'No...not yet...' She thought as she did her best to push down her latent pyromaniac tendencies. 'Just a bit more, talk with whoever I'm meeting and then I can get to burning, please, just a little bit more.' Shaking her head and putting on a smile that hid her struggles to control the urge to burn she reached the school in which she promised to meet her fellow villain.

"She shouldn't be that bad...I hope." She muttered the last part under her breath.

Emi stared at the school with an uninterested stare as she took a deep breath. She didn’t like schools that much especially with what she went through. All she wanted was to help, but instead they looked at her like she was a criminal and treated like one. She clenched her fist as her stoic expression slowly morphed into one of hate as she slowly began to pull back her hand, intending to fling a ball to preemptively get the fire started. She paused when she heard a female voice say her online name. “Ah, yes, that’s me, but when offline I go-” She began to say, before pausing as she looked at who she would be committing a crime with for tonight.

Her mouth opened and closed silently as she thought of what to say about her physicality. “That’s unfair!” She declared after a few moments. “Why is everyone I meet so much taller than me?!” She cursed at the heavens, shaking her fist dramatically before looking dejected. “It’s not fair dammit. I’m 19 but I’m so small.” She huffed before smiling at the girl who was doing a fine impression of an ice cream slowly melting under the summer sun. “Sorry about that, I just didn’t expect you to be taller than me,”

With a smile and a flourish of her hand she began introducing herself. “Yes, my name online is TheLine, it’s an obscure joke, but I usually go by War Crime. You must be ParaSyte, it’s nice to meet you.” She held out a hand for a hand shake.

“Please don’t remind me…” She slumped at the reminder of her less than ideal height. “A part from the milk one, I haven’t heard those. I might try to do that some other time.” She paused as she processed the girl’s words. “You mean drink milk right? I don’t think you eat milk…” She found herself absently correcting the girl’s words. “Anyways, again, it is nice to meet you, sorry for going off about my height.” She apologized to the melty flesh girl.

She let her hand be shaken by ParaSyte. Her hand felt like it was holding onto something akin to liquified sponge, if such a thing existed, or perhaps one of those non-Newtonian fluids, like cornstarch and water.

“Ah well, my Quirk has to do with why I named myself War Crime.” She explained. “Let me demonstrate, though you might want to step back a bit.” Looking around them for random onlookers, she took a few steps back and knelt on the ground. “My Quirk is called White Phosphorus and it makes my body generate a chemical called White Phosphorus.” Making sure there was enough distance between the two she slowly wiped her hand against the concrete.

A small blaze suddenly came to life as her hand passed over the piece of sidewalk. “White Phosphorus is extremely flammable, being exposed to air is enough to cause it to light up and to make things worse…” She watched the small fire die out. “The fires it causes are hot enough to burn to the bone, hard to extinguish, and it’s smoke is extremely poisonous.” She stood up. “That’s why it’s outlawed for use in war and using it is a war crime. That’s why I’m called War Crime.”

“Well yeah, that’s pretty much true for all fires.” She started to explain. “Now I can’t remember if this is true so I may be wrong, but I remember reading that in a fire, more people die because of smoke inhalation than actually burning.” She crossed her arms. “When people inhale normal fire smoke it hurts their lungs and may kill them.” She looked at where her fire had died out. “When people inhale my smoke, well, they’ll definitely die. Because it’s not really smoke, it’s poison.” She ended her explanation with a solemn look on her face.


“Hmm, if I had to guess, at best we have two-maybe three minutes before the firemen get here.” She guessed as she looked at the school in thought. “If there isn’t much traffic in the streets we’ll probably only have two minutes. Once we start this fire we have to run immediately.” She considered about taking things from the school. “Hm, probably right, what we could do is look around first then set fires after, I also do want to look for a good spot to start the fire so it doesn’t look like a person did it.” She paused. “Unless you want to make it look like that this was a deliberately started fire and not just faulty wiring or some chemicals.”

“Ah, idea!” She pounded her palm with a balled up fist. “Schools are essentially businesses anyways, so they might have some money laying around. They might even have some equipment that we can make use of, like first aid kits or something.” She looked at the gate. “Right so shall we get started? It was said that you needed a host, I don’t exactly get what that means beyond acting like a carrier for you. So let’s see what your quirk does.”

“I mean it shouldn’t be that hard, just start the fire somewhere that a fire would start.” She tapped her finger against her lower lip in thought. “Like a fuse box, or near electronics, make it look like it was faulty wiring or bad devices that made it start the fire.” She said, listing examples of where fires could be started. “And we’re only using my stuff to start and spread, the rest should be all natural flame. Nobody should be able to tell that dangerous banned chemical flinging was involved.” She paused. “At least, they shouldn’t be able to.” She added. She was mostly sure that her chemical trail would burn up in the fire and leave nothing but burns and ashes. “By the time they get here my stuff should’ve dispersed, or at the very least masked by normal smoke and the fires.”

“Yeah I can kinda see that, you’re kinda doing an impression of an ice cream melting...oh speaking of, you want to get some ice cream after this?” She asked. “Yes, yes, I have blood inside, apart from the thing that makes my Quirk work, just normal regular human.” She considered things briefly, on the one hand it would be weird housing someone else in her body, it was just something that didn’t happen everyday. She looked at ParaSyte. On the other hand, she could see what normal outside temperature was doing to her, what more when things really started getting heated?

Making her decision she pulled up the sleeve of her left arm. There, a number of scars sat on upon her arm. “What’s another scar anyways…” She mumbled as she held her arm forward for the girl. “Right, here, make a cut anywhere on this arm.” She thought it over. “Mouth...should go a little bit under my ear so we can communicate better. It’ll also make it easier to do this I’m going to ask of you.” She took a deep breathe. “If I ever get lost in the flames, meaning if it ever looks like that I’m dangerously fascinated with fire, yell at me to snap me out of it, okay?”

“Yeah...let’s hope.” She murmured to herself, wincing as she watched ParaSyte’s Quirk go to work. Watching someone turn into liquid mass and then get sucked into your body was probably going to be the weirdest thing that Emi would ever experience, let alone see, in her lifetime. In the span of a few seconds she was ‘alone’ and the younger girl had delved inside her like she had been told she does. She breathed out, not even noticing that she’d been holding her breath this whole time, as she felt a strange coolness in her body, like suddenly being dunked into a tub of cold water but inside.

“A little weird huh?” She said as the coolness went away and she shuddered. “Yeah, a little more than a little.” She experimentally rolled her shoulders and flexed her arms as if to test if there was anything different. “Right...let’s get going then?” She reached into her bag and pulled out a featureless mask with holes for her to see through and put it on. “Let’s go.” With confidence she walked up to the gate, put her hand against lock, and grinned behind her mask as she began to blast it with her unique brand of flames.

It didn’t take long for the lock holding the gate closed to break under the attack. “And just like that, we’re in!” She declared, pushing the gate open and stepping through. “Now, where too first?”

“Yep, very weird.” Emi muttered as she heard ParaSyte’s voice come from below her ear. The more time she spent like this the more time the weirdness affirmed itself and the more she got used to it. Emi wasn’t exactly sure whether this was a good or bad thing. She shook her head, freeing herself of thought on how weird this was and focused on the task of burning down a school. “I guess we aren’t in a rush yet. Though I’m not sure what we could bring along exactly.” She hummed to herself as she approached the school while thinking. “Not sure about having a laptop, maybe in one of the teacher’s desks? We’ll see once we go round the school a bit.”

“Unless I’m mistaken that would be the principal, though I guess that’s more for the school side of things.” She answered ParaSyte as she inspected the school’s doors for wires and electronics. “Business side it’s usually something called a school board, a group of people that handle how things are run.” Upon not finding anything she places a hand on one of the doorknobs and tries turning it. “Just as I suspected, locked.” She announced when she felt the knob resist.

Without another word she placed her hands on the doors’ knobs and fires away again. The locked doors swing from the direct application of force and flame before she steps in and leaves the doors to smolder. “We’re in.”