Fire and Hose

In an instant, fire burst into the room.

My line of sight was immediately covered by the bright orange and yellow flames of a sizzling, free-flowing fire. It had come from a nearby room, gathering in the door frame that separated us. I could feel the edge of my skin slowly heating up. Sweating all over my body, the room's temperature instantly jumped up.

"Oliver, get back."

"Roger."

Raising her arm, Mana conjured a heavy stream of water from the palm of her hand. Like a garden hose, she aimed it through the door frame, trying to extinguish the flames. In a similar vein to before, water vapour covered the ceiling of the room in a cloud of smoke.

In a fight between two contrasting elements, neither side had an overwhelming advantage, although the water was slightly more effective.

Neither Mana nor I had seen the esper yet. Based on the direction of the flames and the movement of its flow, it seemed that it wasn't a directed attack like Mana's. Instead, it looked like it was all emanating from a single source, equally in all directions.

Based on what I could tell, I assumed that the enemy esper was producing fire all over their body, simply heating up the entire area. As such, we'd just need to find them and spray them with Mana's water. The only slight difficulty was searching for them.

"Oliver, can you pinpoint their location?"

"I can try, but the EM-waves that you're producing might mess with it."

Putting my back up against the searingly-hot wall, I tried to quickly calculate the position of all nearby EM-waves. I could feel my clothes slowly burning as I leaned against the building. In the end, I was able to get a general area, but the ultimate location was foggy.

"We'll have to go through to that room."

I told Mana something that we'd both basically figured out from the beginning. I wasn't able to get any precise information for my scan anyways.

"Stay behind me, I'll try to cover the fire as much as possible," Mana instructed.

"Alright."

As the flames grew in ferocity, Mana stood up straight and increased the strength of her water. Cooling the space in front of us, we tried to create a condition where we'd be able to push through.

After a few moments, it was finally cool enough for us to get through without being significantly injured.

With Mana running through first, she created sufficient cover for me to follow.

"Shit. Oliver, there's a very low quantity of EM-waves here, we might have to re—"

"It's fine."

Suddenly, the fire died down in strength. Like a weak little candle, it was no longer strong enough to be a threat to us."

"You managed to calculate a null equation?" Mana questioned, in shock.

"Just a partial inverse. I don't have enough information for null."

"Ah, I was too caught up in calculating my own affinity that I didn't even consider weakening his."

"It's fine, you were the one that bought me time so I could do so."

Making our way through the building, we caught sight of the esper who was trying to escape through the back exit.

Concentrating her power, Mana conjured a faster, thinner stream of water. Like that of a pressure-cleaning, she was able to use it like a blade. Shooting it directly into the enemy's leg, she cut him down as they tried to run.

Falling to the ground, the esper held their leg in pain as blood poured out of the wound. They shouted in despair, but no one was here to hear them aside from us.

As I made my way closer, I could see that they were a young boy. With a hood over his head, it was pretty clear that he was part of the terrorist organisation.

"H-how did you get an inverse?"

Based on the difficulty it was, I assumed that he was either a D or C rank esper. His fire was actually quite powerful, but he couldn't control the direction or the density. In the end, the simplicity of his calculations was what caused him to be defeated so easily.

"You're part of the terrorists, aren't you?" asked Mana.

"S-so what if I am? This city's government is a piece of shit. I'd rather live in a city run by dogs than them."

Letting Mana do the speaking, I looked around the area, seeing if I could find anything interesting within the abandoned building. It looked like it'd been out of use for a long time. Everything from cupboards to shelves was empty, nothing of interest was in sight.

A few minutes later, a few members of the local police arrived at our location. They made their way over to us and began restraining the esper.

"Thanks, Mana, we'll take it from here."

With that, Mana and I left the building, continuing on our walk to the designated location.

I decided to start some casual chatter.

"So Mana, how come you dress so casually at work?"

She suddenly blushed.

"What do you mean casually, pervert."

"Eh?"

What I said was definitely true though. With a short checkered skirt and the Spectrum-Judgement jacket over the top, she exposed very much of her legs to the outside. Granted, I assumed that the reason was that it allowed for extra mobility, although I would've assumed that shorts would've been better than a skirt in that regard.

Squeezing the bottom of her calf were white socks with an 'SP' designed on the front. I was never given the outfit, but I was surprised that they even had their own sock design. If that was the case, I was confused as to why the members wore their school uniforms all the time.

"I didn't mean it in that way."

She looked at me with a somewhat embarrassed but also angry expression.

"Stop looking at my legs!"

"I'm not."

They just fell into my line of sight.

"Ugh. I don't wear much since it's annoying to walk in wet clothes."

"What about shorts?"

"I just like wearing a skirt, okay? Does that answer your question?!"

"I didn't mean it in such an interrogatory way."