Andrew is rubbing his cheek where Cecil had punched him. He thinks how violent Cecil had gotten, rather than thinking that the reason she's violent is that because he's been nothing but brazen with his choice of words.
As he's about to tap Cecil's shoulder and apologize to her again, he hears the bell ring, and his blue eyes reflect a bright orange color. Everything slowed down around him and instead of tapping Cecil's shoulder, he grabbed her wrist. He runs into an alleyway, dragging Cecil along. The roaring inferno that he caught with his eye growing louder as it got closer to them.
The screams of the people only served to add to the inferno's bellowing howl and Andrew hears that Cecil is one of them, shouting at him, but he couldn't figure out what she's trying to say.
As he turns around to check on Cecil, Andrew sees the very moment that his arm and Cecil get swallowed up by the bright inferno. The image scorches his eyes, numbing the agonizing pain of his arm being burned.
"CECIL!" Gritting his teeth, Andrew powers through the sharp pain that reached his bones. However, that's not all he pushes into the back of his mind. The thought that Cecil could be nothing but a burnt corpse frightens him into a cold sweat.
But all his fears dissipated into smoke when he hears Cecil cry out to him as well. Drew pulls Cecil out of the inferno and he sees her well and good, which he can't say the same for his arm that's holding her wrist.
"Andrew your arm!" Cecil pointed out with a rattled voice.
"Let's worry about that later, we need to get to higher ground," Andrew replied grabbing the ladder from a fire exit in the alleyway and pulling it down. "C'mon!"
Even though he's the only one who seems to be hurt by the flames, he made Cecil climb up the ladder first before he did himself.
"That's a relief, you're-" Andrew's cut off.
"What do you mean 'that's a relief'?! Think about your arm, moron! Why are you the only one burned too!? -Agh raise that arm of yours!"
Cecil pulled Andrew's satchel off him and rummaged through it, taking a canteen out and using it to douse her handkerchief that she then gently caressed against Andrew's burns.
There was an air of silence between the two as they sit on the fire exit. Cecil is busy treating Andrew's arm with such delicacy unknown to him that he almost mistakes her for a different person entirely, and that left him speechless.
"… Thanks," was the only thing Andrew could say in this situation as he rubs the back of his head with his good arm and while he smiles at Cecil.
"Go on and say it, 'I didn't know you were the sensitive type'. I'll punch you later," Cecil muttered quietly while ripping off the sleeves of her clothes and using it to wrap around Andrew's arm. "There, that should do it. At least you'd avoid an infection."
"I wouldn't make fun of you for this Cecil." With his good arm, he reaches out and petted Cecil's head. "Now, we need to get to the rooftops to figure out who are the people responsible for this -actually Cecil, this is a bit much to ask but you'll need to inform the rest of the city about this."
"Do you think you can handle them by yourself? You're-"
"I can't, that's why I need you to inform the others."
"Then why are you going to go out there and find them?"
As Andrew and Cecil go back and forth, they're walking up the fire exit until both of them are on the roof of the building.
"We don't know what they're planning and they caught us by surprise, didn't they? Stalling them now will give us time for the others to prepare against them."
"Do you even know where these people might be?"
"I have a strong hunch that they're around the bell tower. It rang as the inferno came."
"… Fine, but you better not do anything reckless you hear me?! I tore my favorite shirt to patch your arm, you better cherish it." After giving Drew another earful Cecil walks up to the ledge of the rooftop.
Mich Gewahren Flugel
"Fly."
Cecil uttered before propelling herself into the air using the strong winds billowing from her feet. From that single word alone she's able to cast a spell that lets her not just levitate but also travel across the sky.
It's no wonder that she wears spats under her medium-length skirt.
"Alright, I'll be counting on you to call in reinforcements!" Andrew starts leaping from building to building, and thankfully the gaps weren't all that huge. He thought about how it would make things a lot easier for him if he had the same affinity as Cecil.
He then hears her distant and cranky reply, telling him to screw off and not die before hearing the loud whistles of the wind propelling her away.
As Andrew continued to jump from rooftop to rooftop, he's shocked at the sight of a second wave of flames drowning the west-side, creating an even more infernal scene. It didn't harm anyone, in fact as Andrew grew closer to the bell tower, he hears complaints rather than screams of fear and concern. It eases his mind and helps take out some weight off his shoulders knowing that he's the only one who seems to have been affected by the fire, though he begins to wonder why.
"Feels like I'm a protagonist -Yeah right, I need to get my head out of the clouds," Drew says to himself while wearing a cheeky grin.
Drew likes to keep a positive air around himself despite whatever grim situation unfolds before him, because to him succumbing to it is a step to admitting he had lost, but that's exactly what happens to him.
He drops his cheery appearance upon seeing Erize in the distance, bleeding and beaten yet still standing. He suddenly picks up the pace, now running with reckless abandon. It's a miracle neither of his feet got caught by the shale or by a ledge.
Unlike with Cecil, Andrew is experiencing everything in real-time. He feels his haggard breathing drying his throat, his heart sinking to his stomach when he sees Melissa, the very same figure in red that he saw before, raising her broken rifle and firing a spear of flames towards Erize.
Words could not express how bloodshot Drew's eyes were. Like a hawk he narrows his focus to that red spear alone while running across shale rooftops, and in one swift motion, he leaps forward into the red spear's direction, drawing his blade at it. Deep blue flames vented from the pitch-black sword upon shattering the red spear into shards of ice. He had frozen fire itself with his strange blue flames.
Seething hatred. That's all there is. That's all Melissa could see. And that's all she could feel towards Andrew as well.
"YOU-" Drew shouts.
"-CERULEAN WITCH" Melissa yells.
Andrew immediately makes a dead-sprint towards Melissa, not listening to Erize cry out for him to calm down. There are no relaxing Drew's nerves after seeing Erize this hurt.
The crimson witch, instead of falling back or retreating to fire at a safer distance, chooses to also charge towards Andrew. Surprisingly she blocks his sword swing with her rifle and follows it up by striking Drew's side with the stock of her gun.
She then kicks him in the stomach to push Andrew back. However, he didn't budge from the kick. Melissa wonders why causing her eyes to look over to her rifle and seeing that Andrew is holding onto her rifle with his bandaged arm.
The same bloodshot eyes suddenly came over Melissa, as if they weren't already.
"GHN- GET YOUR HANDS OFF MY RIFLE, WITCH," Melissa shouts as she suddenly goes in to bite Drew's arm. Her fury couldn't compare to Drew's and it all stems from seeing his blue flames.
Andrew, with all the cold hate he has right now for the witch, pins her down against the shales by tripping her balance with his foot, and then pushing his weight forward. It results in Melissa getting knocked on her back and her rifle getting pressed against her chest with Drew's arm serving both to keep Melissa down and as a muffler for her mouth.
They stare daggers at each other, Drew with his piercing cold glare, and Melissa with her murderous scowl filled with nothing but disdain.
Andrew doesn't care to understand the unreasonable contempt Melissa has for him, how could he when this person had hurt someone precious to him? What's more, he now dreads the thought that their first encounter wasn't a coincidence, but Melissa making herself known to Drew and that she knows those precious to him. That alone further stokes the anger growing in Drew's heart.
"Drew- Drew that's enough! Ease up on her!" Erize begs as she moves towards the two of them.
"I can't. If I do, she's going use that chance to attack me. Why are you defending a witch, Erize? Especially one that attacked you," Andrew replied, his voice stressed with anger. It wasn't towards Erize, but to Melissa, as she bites deeper into his bandaged arm to the point that blood begins to seep through the cloth.
"At least try to reason with her, please Drew?" Erize insisted, causing Drew to relent and hold up 3 fingers.
"Three minutes. She has three minutes to talk." And with that Drew suddenly brought his knee down on Melissa's gut, knocking the air out of her and causing her to release her bite. Then with his other leg, he stomps down on the tip of the rifle's barrel which Melissa is holding. Her fingers were crushed because of that.
"Don't make me repeat myself. First question, why did you turn the Belltower into a magic construct?"
Andrew asked the question while Melissa is still in agony, screaming in pain. Because she continued to only scream at him, Drew grinds his shoes against Melissa's already crushed fingers.
"To find you! -and kill you, Cerulean Witch!" She answers in-between her pained screams. She curses Andrew, telling him that he should've died in the inferno she made, and as she continued to curse and scream it looks as though her eyes were on the verge of tears.
"I'm not a witch. I'm not the person you're looking-"
"You think I'd fall for that again!? You're just wearing that face -I saw your flames! Even if you pretend to be a different person, even if you change your voice, you're- YOU-"
Drew suddenly pulls the rifle back, trying to pry it away from Melissa to which she responds by suddenly clamming up and holding onto the rifle as if her life would end if it was taken from her. She glared at Andrew, now with hate and fear in her watering eyes. He hears her whimper 'no' under her breath.
"Let go. I'm confiscating your weapon. You're going to be imprisoned." Andrew once again tries to take the rifle away, and Melissa's hand that got crushed under Drew's foot was the first to give.
"It's already broken, I can't use it!" Melissa shouts with a nervous voice while becoming submissive just to let her have her rifle by her hand, rather than it to be taken away from her. Tears welled in her eyes but didn't break.
"You think I'd fall for that? I saw you fire Luin's spear from this. Now, stop resisting or you'll be executed on the spot." Andrew in all his cold-hearted logic that ignored Melissa's quiet cries forcibly parted the rifle from her arms.
It was then that the witch's blazing eyes were finally doused by her tears. She cried loudly, like a child having its treasured toy taken away from her. The rifle was indeed precious to Melissa, as she shouts to Andrew, calling him the cerulean witch one more time.
"How much more do you plan to steal from me?! -That's all I had left! What else do you plan to take from me!?"
She got up, her legs shaking as much as her voice. She tried to run up to Drew to tackle him but then Erize got in-between the two and hugs Melissa.
"Oi! Oi! Stop it okay? Stop!" Erize felt suffocated, not because she's doing her best to hold Melissa, but because she's trying to sound positive in light of the cruelty she sees that made it hard to do so since she has to, someone has to.
"Give it back! That's the only thing I have left of them! Don't take it away from me!" Melissa continued to cry out, her shaking but deafening shouts were painful to hear for Erize as she now knows the essence of Melissa's intentions. She wanted to soften her hold, but couldn't.
"You tried to kill Erize didn't you? She's as precious to me as this rifle is to you. You reap what you sow."
By this point, Andrew was talking out of impulse. Even though he knew both in mind and heart that he's beginning to see what he's doing is wrong, he can't seem to muster up anything to take it all back.