The Crimson Phoenix

Mind blowing 'Flames'.

“Hey Leo,” James greeted cheerfully. Tracy called him into her room to see Leo, “I can see you’re looking good. Wow, smooth face and handsome as always…” James commended Leo. Leo closed his eyes and shook his head with resignation. Tracy just face palmed and was frustrated with how foolish James could be. It hadn’t dawned on James that Leo shouldn’t be that ‘handsome’ yet. Tracy and Leo gave him irritating looks. Seeing this, James at this point became confused.

“What?!” He asked while searching his brain for what he said wrong, “I’m only complimenting Leo on how handsome he… wait you shouldn’t be handsome yet, you should still be barbecue. You should still be wrapped up…” He blurted as he realized what was happening. Leo rolled his eyes. ‘Why must you always say barbecue!?’ He thought to himself.

“Did you get a surgery?” James asked. Tracy decided to leave the talking to Leo because if she replies to James, she’ll either insult him or hit him for asking a stupid question.

Leo sighed. ‘I feel your pain Tracy’ He thought to himself. “I’ve always called you guys since the day I got out of the hospital. If I was to go through surgery, I would’ve informed you guys first.” He replied helplessly. James and Tracy were still puzzled as to why he healed so fast.

“Then how did this happen?” Tracy inquired. He took his time to explain to her.

“It had something to do with the accident itself.” He started. Tracy and James were shocked but they said nothing and they decided to listen attentively, “When Dr. Cartel and I built the Lightning absorber we couldn’t find a good storage source but we still took our chances with a big, truck battery… or so I thought.” Leo explained and his look became stiff.

“I had no idea that Dr. Cartel had tampered with it. He didn’t want to take his chances with a truck battery so he decided to add a capsule containing a chemical substance into the machine. When we tested the lightning current absorber, it was working perfectly at first but the substance reacted and kept the lightning bolt going, causing it to go into overload. When the machine couldn’t take all that electricity in, it exploded. But before that, I happened to find the capsule and I saw electric currents getting fatter and fatter inside it. I was about to run but the thing exploded before I could, exposing me to the substance.” He summarized.

Tracy and James might not have believed him if they hadn’t seen a video of Leo being blasted away in a ball of flames. After ten seconds of silence, Tracy finally spoke. “So you’re saying that your super healing happens to have something to do with that substance you saw?” Tracy asked. Leo nodded in affirmation but James didn’t believe him.

“Hold on, how sure are you that that’s what caused it? It could be something else.” James didn’t want to believe that something as strange as that could be the only cause of his healing abilities.

Leo sighed and explained further, “I was already sure enough about it but when I went to THRL and confronted Dr. Cartel, he confirmed it and said that the compound that gave me super healing was a project of his on gene enhancement.” Tracy’s eyes were wide open.

“You returned to the man responsible for your current state?! Leo are you crazy?!” She yelled. ‘Ugh not again’ Leo thought as he facepalmed. He wasn’t expecting Tracy to have the same reaction that Molly had when she heard Dr. Cartel. He sighed and decided to explain.

“Relax. Dr. Cartel didn’t mean any harm and he would’ve been the one who had the accident instead of me. If he died, I wouldn’t forgive myself for giving an idea to an innocent head scientist and being responsible for his death.” He said. Everyone was quiet for a while before Leo broke the silence.

“Anyways, Dr. Cartel explained what the substance was and the side effects on the human body.” At this point, he shifted his eyes away from the laptop’s screen and looked sideways, “But the information regarding the substance? Well, that’s classified.” James and Tracy gave me unamused gazes. Leo looked at them and he was helpless. “What!? I can’t reveal a classified scientific project to you. I even got to know about it because of my predicament. What I can tell you, is the effect the substance has on me.” He decided to try to extinguish their curiosities. They shifted their heads forward to listen and observe. ‘Shameless idiots.’ He thought to himself as he looked helpless.

“You’ve seen one of the effects already,” he said but Tracy and James looked at each other then, at him as if they were puzzled. “Ugh, the super healing abilities.”

“Oooh!” they said in unison upon realizing the fact. Leo shook his head and explained further.

“Another one is super speed. I happened to save a woman and a baby who was about to be hit by a van in less than 0.6 seconds and I took down the three armed robbers in the van at the time on my way home.” He revealed. This was a blow to both Tracy and James and shock filled their hearts. Seeing this, Leo decided to take it slow. “I also have super strength and Dr. Cartel’s hypothesis claims that I might have an affinity to lightning or fire or both.” He doesn’t know how to take things slow. James passed out while the shocked Tracy started to laugh. She didn’t believe him at all.

“Leo, stop joking. So are you ‘captain flames’ now or what?” She asked still laughing. Leo looked unamused and kept staring at her as she was laughing. After seeing how serious Leo was, Tracy stopped laughing. “You’re not kidding are you?” She asked. Leo sighed, brought out a lighter and pressed the lighting button. A bright, big, and yellow flame burst out of the nozzle. The flames were supposed to be small, depending on the burning intensity the lighter was tuned to, but the size of the flames was more than what a normal lighter could make.

The flame was about two centimeters wide and four centimeters in length. Tracy was shocked but Leo wasn’t so surprised, since something bigger had occurred to him. He moved the lighter away from him and the flames became smaller. Leo then came to realize something.

The further away the flame was from him, the smaller it would become. Tracy was staring at her phone screen with total blankness, she was shocked beyond compare.

The flame suddenly touched his thumb and Leo began to shake his thumb vigorously to get the flame off but it didn’t leave it. This caused Tracy to panic.

“Oh my God, put it off, Leo!” She exclaimed. Leo kept shaking his thumb and he even rubbed it on the floor but the flame wasn’t extinguished. After some time, Leo realized the most shocking thing, he didn’t feel any pain. He stopped trying to extinguish the flame and he slowly observed his thumb.

It wasn’t burning and the flames sat there quietly, burning like a candle flame. Leo felt a warm sensation moving around his body.

“I don’t feel any pain.” Leo said. Tracy’s eyes were widened to an extent they looked like they could fall out of her sockets at any moment. Even Leo was surprised.

He made all his fingers converge and the flame spread to all the other fingers. He moved his hand around and the flame grew longer as his finger moved and returned to its normal length when his finger stopped moving. With a thought, the flame covered his whole hand. ‘Am I a superhuman now!?’ Leo thought to himself. His whole hand was burning but he wasn’t feeling pain… on the contrary, he felt good. He felt refreshed and he felt a connection to the flame. He felt it calling him and trying to tell him something. It felt like… he could feel a soul in the flame. It was faint but he could feel it.

He thought of something and the flame took the shape of a burning mini lion. Seeing this, he tried using the flame to project a dragon’s head and it worked. The flaming dragon head covered his fist. Leo was both surprised and not. It felt like he was used to this whereas he had no idea what he was even doing.

Leo clenched his fist and punched the air and the dragon head went forward and it turned into a flame projection of a wingless Chinese dragon. It was long and was moving according to Leo’s thoughts. It flew around him and followed his thoughts.

“This… this is… this is awesome!” He exclaimed. Tracy who was watching him had already joined her brother and passed out too. The mini flame dragon was hovering around Leo and was giving out low roars. It was around three and a half feet long and a width of four inches.

Just as he was enjoying playing with his flaming dragon, he suddenly heard a knock on the door. He shook slightly, as he was frightened, causing the dragon to roar at the door and prepare to attack. This made it touch a shirt that was hung inside Leo’s wardrobe. The roar wasn’t that loud but whoever was at the door would be alarmed.

“Leo… What’s going on in there?” It was Molly. She was a bit worried about the roar she heard. Leo panicked and tried to kill the fire that was burning his cloth. He stomped on the cloth quickly took it to the bathroom and opened the tap on it. After extinguishing the fire, he took his bandage, wrapped his head again with it, and went to meet his worried aunt who was hitting the door and warning him to open the door.

“Hey, aunt.” He said, putting on a normal face and with a thought, his flame dragon dissipated. Molly pushed him aside and walked into the room with an angry expression on her face, “Hey…” Leo yelled. She Ignored him and looked around while her nose was twitching, she was sniffing the air… she didn’t have a keen sense of smell, but she liked to give the impression that she did.

“What were you doing? And what was that roar I heard? And Why do I smell something burning?” She interrogated. His heart was beating so fast but he maintained a cool look.

“I was in the bathroom, the roar you heard was from a dragon in the movie on my laptop and something must be burning outside.” He lied and looked out the window, pretending to search for the ‘burning stuff’ outside when it was his very own shirt. Luckily, aunt Molly bought it.

“Sighs, your food is ready and I need you to supervise little Kate with her study. I’ll be out for a while. Your uncle will be at home but he’ll be busy.” She said, then left the room, “One more thing,” she stopped at the door and gave me a look, “Don’t ever lock the door again. Unless you have a new girlfriend.” Leo grunted. That last part got to him. ‘Why would I need a new girlfriend when I already have a loving one? Besides, no girl would date a barbecue… I just called myself a barbecue, didn’t I? Damn it James’

He went back to the bathroom and gave his half-burnt T-shirt a look. It was still slightly smoking.

He shook his head, “That was my third favorite T-shirt.” He said to himself and left the room.