Forbidden Love

“Give me your purse or I’ll shoot you! Now, come on!”

 “Please, don’t hurt me!”

I block all the exits with burning fire. “It’s my turn to ask you to give me the purse.”

 The mugger grunts and fumbles with his gun, emptying his clip at me. I form a wall of fire in front of me, turning the bullets to dust just before they reach me. He’s blown back against the wall in a fiery explosion when I release my fire wall. He hits it with a grunt and slumps on to the floor. I pick up the purse and hand it to the victim.

 “Thank you miss, thank you so much!” She exclaims, throwing her hands around me.

 I gently peel her off, “No problem.”

 I escort her to her car, scold her about going into dark alleyways at night, and propel back up to my perch atop my favorite rooftop. Just as soon as I sit down, I hear a bank alarm sound in the distance. I sigh and contemplate just letting the cops take care of it, but after a few seconds I stand up. If this is who I think it is, the cops won’t be able to take care of it.

“Come on Icestrike, pick up the pace, we don’t have all day!”

 Icestrike grunts, grabbing handful after handful of cash from out of the vault. “Good boy. You are SO good at listening.” Shift says, chuckling a little.

 “At least he’s good at something.” Electrora chimes in.

Icestrike’s team burst into laughter, but it’s short lived as I appear in front of them. “Big talk from the witch who knows, what? One spell? You can talk smack all you want after you learn to control your powers instead of them controlling you.”

 “Blaze.” Electora hisses.

“Electora. Always wonderful to see you! About as wonderful as being bitten by a rabid dog.”

She screams in anger, throwing a glowing green orb at me. I dodge it, and it hits the wall behind me, melting straight through. Police sirens sound in the distance.

 “We don’t have time for this.” Shift says. “Icestrike, take care of her. And do it right this time.” He grabs Electora and Force’s shoulders, all three of them and the money disappearing into thin air.

“Just you and me.” I say grinning, bouncing fire up and down on my palms.

“Just the way I like it.” He answers.

With a flick of his wrist, an explosion of snow blows me back and covers the entire bank in a sheet of white for several seconds. When the snow dies away, I see him on an ice staircase, quickly rising to the ceiling. I follow close behind, firing knives of fire at him. He crashes through the glass ceiling, sending a shower of glass down on me. I duck and cover my face, the glass pricking my skin as it falls to the ground. The moment the last piece of glass falls past me, I quickly zip out through the hole in the ceiling. I’m blinded momentarily by the sun and Icestrike takes the opportunity. He pushes a wall of ice at me, and, just as I throw up my hands to melt it, it hits me hard, flinging me through the air. Blackness blinks in and out as I try to stay conscious. Just before hitting the ground. I manage to propel myself up, breaking the fall. Stars start dancing across my eyes. I see Icestrike land ever so gracefully in front of me as I struggle to stand up, leaning against a nearby trash can for assistance. A concerned expression crosses Icestrike’s face before leaving as if it had never been there.

 I shake my head, clearing it, before puffing out: “That all you got? You must be tired from ass kissing all day because you usually pack a much harder hit.”

He shoves me against the wall of the alley and pins my wrists against the wall with cuffs of ice. He brings a dagger up to my throat and whispers in my ear, “I don’t think you want to see how hard I can hit.” My heart skips at least three beats as I stare into his eyes for several tense moments.

 “Well now I REALLY want to see that.” I whisper back. “So will you show me or are you going to keep holding this knife at my throat that, we both know, you’re never going to use.”

 I burn through my bindings and kick him away from me, swinging out punch after punch, but he dodges every hit. Finally, one connects, sending him stumbling back a few steps. He swings his legs behind mine, knocking me to the ground. We chase each other into the sky in a savage dance, flinging ice and fire at each other, becoming bruised and bloody. After a while, I start to get tired and slow, blocking fewer shots. Icestrike starts forming something big and before I can even catch my breath, hundreds of ice arrows are flinging themselves down on me. I create a bubble of fire around me, noticing a slight jab in my side as I do so. I barely manage to keep my bubble up through the barrage as the jab in my side starts burning like nothing else ever has. The moment I can, I let the bubble up and slowly look down at my side. An ice arrow is sticking out of it, blood oozing down my body. I glance up at Icestrike, who’s frozen in place, staring at my side. We lock eyes just as everything goes black.

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While still staring in horror at the damage I’ve caused, Blaze’s fire burns out and she collapses, tumbling through the sky. I race after her, ice flowing out in front of me faster than ever before. I grab her just before she hits the ground and gently lay her in the grass.

 “Blaze? Can you hear me?” I quietly ask as I press my hand down on her wound, trying to stop the gushing blood. Her pulse is barely there. Ever so gently, I place her on my shoulder. Ice flows out of my palms like the blood gushing out of her body as I race against time. I dive for the first hospital that I see and burst in without a second thought.

 “Someone help!” I yell frantically. “I need help, please!”

A nurse rushes up to me and quickly calls his colleagues over. I just barely hear him ask a question over the thrum in my ears: “What’s her name?”

I open my mouth to tell him before realizing something. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything about her. And I’ll never get the chance to learn.” I whisper.

 I hear more talking but a couple of police officers rushing towards me catches my eye. I rush quietly out of the hospital, catching the name of it just as I leave: The Reboyn Memorial hospital.

My siblings took her death about as I expected, but to my surprise, they congratulated me with only a few backhanded compliments. Of course, she wasn’t dead. But they couldn’t kill her if she was already dead. For four days of depression and confusion at feeling depressed about almost killing the person who I had tried to kill my entire life, I wandered around the city. Not wanting to go out at all but not wanting my siblings to think that something was wrong. I kept going back to the hospital, too scared to do anything but stand in front of it. I also kept questioning why I was doing this, and why I cared so much about someone I had fought my entire life. Finally, I found myself at her hospital bed.

 “Hi. It’s the person who almost killed you!” I awkwardly tell her sleeping body, still the lingering hint of a flirtish smile on her lips.

“Sorry about that by the way…” The only sounds to be heard are soft beeping of the equipment and the lull of voices just outside the door. I gently take her hand in mine.

 “Our parents fought each other their entire lives. And ever since we were young, we’ve been fighting. You’re a hero and I’m a villain, that’s just the way it’s had to be.” My voice becomes hard. I clear my throat. “But, as time went on, I started to look forward to fighting you. It was the only thing I ever really looked forward to. YOU were the only thing I ever looked forward to. And it has taken you nearly dying, or to be more specific, me nearly killing you, for me to realize that I love you.” I pause to take a deep breath, and feel the world take one with me,

“I love you.”  My voice cracks.

 Several emotions attack me at once as I realize exactly what I’ve just admitted. Confusion, happiness, guilt. Everything all at once. After a moment of simply gazing at her face, I kiss her forehead, before quietly slipping out through the window. As I’m leaving, I take one last glance back, and I could almost swear that she smiled.

 “Where have you been?” Electora demands the moment I enter our hideout.

“Out for a walk.” I respond calmly, pushing past her just to be met by my brothers.

 “The question was rhetorical, brother. A chance for you to explain yourself.” Shift tells me.

Force super speeds at me and punches me into the wall, knocking the breath out of me. And Electora suspends me in air before I have a chance to catch it.

 “Why is she still alive?” Shift asks calmly, his eyes betraying his demeanor. “She was supposed to be dead, and yet, a little birdy told me that she is alive and well. And with you by her bedside, kissing her.” He gets within a few inches of me, his breath hot on my face.

“I won’t explain my actions to you anymore. To any of you. I want out.”

“You can’t just get out of being a villain. It’s who you are.”

“No, not anymore. You do not get to say who I am; I get to make that choice.”

Shift punches me, and I feel my nose crack.

 “You would leave your life, and us, your team and family, for HER?” He spits out the last part like it’s venom.

 “I would do anything for her.”

I fight with all my might to get out of Electora’s grasp, finally breaking through enough to fire an ice ball at her, knocking her against the wall. Force flings me against the wall again, kicking me over and over as I feel my bones break. In a haze, I manage to create enough ice onto the group to cause him to slip. Shifts grabs my shoulder and I stumble out onto an unfamiliar landscape. He punches me, knocking me down. I try to stand up, only to fall again. He kicks me hard several times.

“You’re a villain and she’s a hero. Even an idiot like you can see that you can’t be together.” I sling a pitiful snowball at him just for him to dodge it with ease.

“After I’m done killing you, I’ll kill her. And just know that it will be as slow and painful as I can make it. Even though the ugly toad deserves even less than that.”

Something starts burning inside of me, making me see red and suddenly feel regenerated. I catch his leg as he goes in for another kick, holding onto it as he tries to pull away. I start serving punch after punch, not even bothering to use my powers. As the red starts to leave my vision, all I see is a bloody, disfigured version of my brother, lying on the ground groaning.

 “Please… We’re fam…” I drive an ice dagger through his heart before he can finish his sentence. I wipe my bloody hands off with his shirt.

“We were never family.”

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When I woke up at the hospital the day after the incident, my heart hurt worse than the stab wound in my gut. I had no idea why and yet, I still felt that way. I felt a lot of ways about him, but none of them I could explain. I knew that I needed answers, so the moment I stepped foot out of the hospital, I started searching. Finally, about a month after the incident and weeks of searching, I found him, sitting on the edge of a rooftop. If someone had told me even a few months ago that I would be walking up to my enemy, who had nearly killed me, and I was happy and excited about it; I would have laughed in that person’s face. Yet here I am. I sit down quietly beside him.

“You’re ok? All healed?” He asks, staring straight ahead.

 “Yes.”

 He nods once and clears his throat, “I…” He begins but I kiss him. For a moment, he doesn’t return it. But just as I’m pulling away, he grabs my face and pulls me right back. I break the kiss first, and stare into his baby blue eyes.

 “Before we go any further, I need to explain…” He starts, but I put my finger over his mouth and stop him.

 “I know. I heard everything that night in the hospital.”

 His eyes light up and he opens his mouth, but I stop him once again.

 “I love you too. More than I can properly put into words. But there is something I need to know before we go any further.”

 “Anything.”

“Your name. Your real name.” He smiles, his whole face lighting up in a way I’ve never seen it.

 “It’s David.”

“Mayuri. Nice to meet you...” I mockingly shake his hand before he pulls me into another passionate kiss.

The End.