Chapter 198 Cloudfire.

Chapter 198: 198 Cloudfire.

Cloudfire radiated heat like an atomic bomb, that was the reason he was rarely let use his powers.

S-class elementals weren’t just guys who could throw fireballs. They were walking, breathing natural disasters. And right now, hovering twenty feet above the melting asphalt of the precinct courtyard.

Looking like a localized supernova. I checked my no-watch wrist, hoping time would favor me.

I would have been absolutely terrified if I hadn’t explicitly come prepared for him. But being prepared didn’t mean this was going to be easy.

Cloudfire didn’t waste breath on heroic banter.

The elemental thrust both hands forward. A continuous, blinding torrent of white-hot fire erupted from his palms, roaring toward me like a rocket.

"Glacia, back!" I roared, throwing my hands up.

Unlike others I could just put metal between us, it’d melt in seconds, had to get creative.

Instead, I reached deep into the bedrock of the city, violently ripping up a massive, thirty-foot slab of the street itself—asphalt, dirt, concrete, and the iron water mains buried within it.

I ripped the entire chunk of earth upward, slamming it down vertically like a riot shield just as the plasma stream hit.

The force pushed the massive slab of earth backward, sliding across the pavement and digging trenches into the plaza.

The asphalt on the front of my shield instantly liquified, running down the rock in rivers of slag.

From the corner of my eye, I saw Glacia step out from the cover of the rooftop ledge.

Her face was a mask of cold fury. She swept her arms in a wide, elegant arc, summoning a barrage of razor-sharp icicles the size of javelins, hurling them directly at Cloudfire.

The moment the icicles got close to the billionaire, they vaporised like nothing. Cloudfire didn’t even flinch. He didn’t even look at her.

"Don’t engage him directly!" I yelled over the roaring flames. "I have it handled! Fall back and keep Rubbernecker on ice!"

"Sir, your suit!" Glacia gasped.

I looked down. The lapels of my suit were actively smoking. The black tie had crisped into black ash at the edges.

Goddammit.

I gritted my teeth, stepping out from behind the glowing, half-melted slab of earth.

If I stayed purely on the defensive, Micheal would just have Cloudfire cook me inside my own magnetic field. I needed to go on the offensive.

I extended my hands, locking onto the frames of three city buses parked a block away.

With a violent, tearing screech of tearing steel, I ripped them through the air, sending the projectiles hurtling toward the cape from three different directions, aiming to crush him in a junkyard compactor.

But he simply spun in mid-air, a violent cyclone of plasma whipping outward.

The fire sliced through the buses like a lightsaber through warm butter.

The buses were instantly bisected, their metal frames glowing cherry-red before turning to molten slag that rained down onto the courtyard in a sparking shower.

I reached out to magnetically catch the falling, molten steel, planning to whip it back at him like a shrapnel.

But my powers stuttered.

The liquid metal slipped right through my invisible telekinetic grip, splashing harmlessly onto the pavement.

My stomach dropped. The Curie Point.

I didn’t know a lot of physics but readers and Rhea had made me learn a couple very important concepts.

From what I know. It was a fundamental law of physics, the one glaring weakness of my power set that I guarded with absolute paranoia.

Magnetism degrades under extreme heat. When magnetic materials get too hot, their structures randomize, and they completely lose their magnetic properties.

Cloudfire wasn’t just trying to burn me. Micheal was using him to superheat every ounce of metal in the plaza, actively stripping away my ammunition.

If the temperature got much higher, I wouldn’t even be able to lift a paperclip, let alone hold my own against an S-class elemental.

I was officially on a ticking clock.

Cloudfire raised his hands above his head.

The air pressure in the courtyard plummeted as a massive, condensed sphere of blinding, swirling plasma began to form between his palms.

It was a miniature sun, growing larger and more unstable by the second. The pavement beneath him literally began to bubble and pop.

"Alright, you overgrown matchstick," I snarled, sweat pouring down my face. "Let’s see how you handle a vacuum."

I dropped my focus on the heavy machinery and zeroed in on the infrastructure beneath the plaza.

I locked onto a water main and a massive, gas line intersecting directly beneath Cloudfire’s hovering position.

With a brutal, twisting exertion of raw magnetic force, I violently ruptured both pipes simultaneously.

The result was instantaneous.

Thousands of gallons of pressurized, freezing city water erupted upward like a geyser, violently colliding with the ambient, superheated air surrounding the elemental. At the exact same microsecond, the ruptured gas line ignited.

The courtyard vanished in a massive, concussive explosion of subterranean fire and rapidly expanding, blindingly thick steam. The shockwave knocked me flat on my back, the deafening roar rattling my teeth in my skull.

The entire plaza was instantly plunged into a choking, zero-visibility cloud of boiling white fog and black, oily smoke.

Now.

I scrambled to my feet, my lungs burning as I sucked in the scorched air. I couldn’t see Cloudfire, but I could feel the intense, localized pocket of thermal radiation burning through the smoke like a beacon.

I reached into the specialized, lead-lined pouches stitched into the lining of my ruined suit jacket. My fingers closed around the cold metal of four specialized, heavy-duty canisters Rhea had built for me back at the lab.

I threw my hands up, magnetically launching a massive, tangled web of structural rebar and police cruisers directly into the center of the smoke cloud, creating a loud, clattering decoy.

A heartbeat later, a blinding beam of plasma tore through the fog, instantly locking onto the decoy and melting the massive ball of scrap metal into glowing slag.

While he was distracted by the decoy, I flicked my wrists, sending the four canisters whipping through the air.

I curved their trajectory, using my magnetic field to guide them through the thick, swirling steam, aiming to hit him from his blind spots.

Cloudfire somehow sensed the projectiles at the very last second. He spun, backhanding the air. A whip of fire lashed out, striking the first canister mid-flight.

It detonated prematurely, showering the empty air in a burst of hissing, chemical foam.

But the elemental had overcommitted to the swing. He couldn’t reset his stance in time.

The remaining three canisters slammed directly into his chest, back, and left shoulder in rapid succession.

They shattered on impact.

He shrieked as a massive, pressurized deluge of specialized, fire-retardant foam burst over his blazing body.

But this wasn’t just standard fire-extinguisher foam.

Rhea was a mad-science genius. This was a highly concentrated chemical compound designed specifically for S-class thermal threats.

The moment the foam made contact with the plasma, it violently absorbed the plasma.

The hissing, expanding suds aggressively drowned the white-hot fire, suffocating him and rapidly dropping his plasma cold.

Cloudfire flailed wildly, trying to ignite a fresh spark, but the foam was already chemically hardening.

The suds calcified, expanding and solidifying into a dense, rock-like shell that encased him from the neck down.

The blinding light of the elemental died out. The terrifying, ambient heat of the courtyard vanished, replaced by the freezing chill of Glacia’s lingering ice.

Cloudfire dropped from the air like a literal rock, hitting the ruined, half-melted asphalt with a heavy, unceremonious thud.

He lay there, trapped inside a hardened, chemical cocoon, as cold and inert as a lump of coal.

I stood there for a long moment, chest heaving, wiping a mixture of sweat and soot from my forehead. I looked down at my ruined suit—I couldn’t keep this up.

Khonsu better get here quickly. Now, where was I?

A sudden, earth-shattering explosion blasted outward from the ruined lobby of the Metropolis Police Department.

I slowly turned my head toward the smoking crater that used to be the precinct’s reinforced glass doors.

The massive, pulverized slabs of concrete and twisted steel girders were violently heaved aside. Mister Invincible rose from the wreckage, slowly levitating into the freezing night air.

His pristine, golden uniform was torn and dusted with ash. But it was his face that made the blood run cold in my veins.

His jaw was set in a rictus of pure, unadulterated hatred. And in the depths of his eyes, the blank, empty stare was gone blazing like dual laser sights in the dark.

Oh, right.

Him.