" Where are you taking us to?"
" The place that'll show you how his ability works."
Jade took her iPad, stood up, and lead the way to the next room.
Jody and Sera rise from the chair and followed her.
" If he is like me, why did he keep it from me then?"
Jody decided to ask Jade a question, Jade paused for a second before turned her face back to Jody.
" I expect a plausible answer, Jade."
Jody said, " It wasn't just because it's classified, was it? What's the point of hiding away from me?"
"...."
Jade has been silent for a second, sighed. before she replied.
"..."
" It's complicated. But what I can tell you by far is that... His ability is one of the most dangerous. And it kills one of our greatest forces long time ago."
"......"
A new puzzle has been added to the Jody&Sera investigation.
Jade then return back to lead them the way.
" We're here."
They are standing in front of the glass room, inside, it was a totally empty room with a dark wall. The floor was entirely flood with water....well... more like effluent.
They spotted a pedestal...a single pedestal with something on it.
Looking closely, it was a giant rock. Its detritus are scattered everywhere on the ground.
Like it has been blown up.
" A destroyed rock? What are you showing me?"
Asked Sera.
Jade didn't answer, she instead informed the scientists in the controlling room on the opposite side.
" fill the air. 5%"
Suddenly, they heard a sound of the air running in this black room through the automatic vent inside.
Then something they familiar with happens.
Jody and Sera were astonished.
The rock was ignited. The detritus on the ground was also ignited. Every piece was on fire.
Not the ordinary orange fire, but it was The Red fire.
However, that was not the point that made their eyes freeze.
The main thing was...
The dust, which initially on the mirror was moving away from every direction and flowing into the middle of the room as if they were sucked up into the same space.
They saw effluent seperating into a clean water and the orange dust before the dust began to float up and joined with the big floating dust in the air.
The detritus was shaking from slow...then faster...faster...and faster...
And finally.
They all jumped up from the ground and went back to the giant rock same as the dust which being sucked into the peice.
They went back to where they came with the reverse sound of an explosion.
Right now, there was just a burning rock on the pedestal which fire getting smaller and smaller.
The floor right now was only flooded with just a clean water.
Needless to say, they just witnessed another of the reverse phenomenon.
Just exactly like what had happened in China.
Jade turned on the reverse footage of what just happened on her iPad.
" You see it reverse. But if we reverse the video, it is just a rock exploding."
Looking at reverse video footage, it actually was.
" So what actually is this?! I'm confused!"
Said Sera.
".... It is 'Demolition'. Not just a physical way. But it is demolition to all. Including the 'Entropy' of that object."
"......"
"......"
" What?"
Sera was perplexed.
" Entropy can not be destroyed."
Another person abruptly walked into the place, he stepped into the room from the other side.
He's an Indian man, wearing a white scientist fit. No doubt, he's the chief of Thrak's scientist.
"....."
" I'm Vega. I've been studied about this ability since we've found him. In the future, I also need to study about yours. Let's get to the point real quick. We don't need to know each other more than that. My job here is to explain Syd Barrett's ability to you guys."
He picked up the remote, opened the big projector.
Jade then sent the video from her iPad onto the big screen.
The video reveals footage of Syd Barrett since he was young.
He's using this flame ability in the lab.
Vega then talked while the footage was running in the background.
" This is a flame which he can summon it on a finger tip... Just like your air-bullet..."
He said, " but instead of shooting like yours. It will burn everything it comes to interact."
Jody gazed back to the room, but this time the fire was no more burning on the rock.
" The fire disappear?"
" Because the air has run out."
He said, " To make the fire occur, we need the right condition."
" Which is?"
" The fire triangle. The three elements a fire needs to ignite. Heat, Fuel, and Oxygen. His ability allows him to produce heat. The object doesn't matter what it is, to this ability, they all consider as a fuel. But-."
" Not with the oxygen."
Jody started to understand something,
She glared up at him.
" You need oxygen to make the ability works. If it ran out... The fire will stop. That's why they draw the air out of the room."
She said.
" You're catching up things fast. I'm impressed."
He said, " But as you know, It's not a neutral fire. However, its behavior is the same."
" Then what do you mean about the Entropy? "
Asked Sera.
" Like she said. The fire can destroy anything it comes in touch with. Literally every aspect. But the strangest thing is how it destroyed the object's Entropy. As far as we know... If we consider each object to has time for its own, and its time is related to its Entropy. What his fire does is that it will fill a large amount of energy to annihilate the object. So much that it can destroy the objects Entropy. It may seem weird but surprisingly, It doesn't violate the second law of thermodynamics. Since the Entropy of the system is still increasing. Because the ability does more work to the object than its requirement for turning back its state... Like the air-conditioner..."
" Or refrigerator..."
Asked Jody.
Vega nods down to her.
" Wait, wait. Sorry for interrupting. But can you please make it more simple to understand?"
"......"
Vega sighs.
" There is something in the world called 'Entropy'. And the popular definition of Entropy is that it measures the disorder of the system. When time goes by, the disorder increases. And the big rule here is, Entropy of the system cannot be decreased. However, there's another definition that better describe Entropy. It is the measure of how 'Spread out' your energy is. You know that energy tends to spread out, right? "
" Okay....and?"
Sera felt like her head just been hit by a brick, but she kept listening.
" Like the nature of the heat. It flows from hot to cold. Now that is allowed because the entropy is increase because the energy spreads from one place to another. However, Think about the air-conditioner. It can turn the mixing temperature back into the properly hot side and cold side, can't it? So the Entropy is decreased? Well, precisely yes ONLY for the inside of the room. But in the big picture, You need to plug-in electricity to make it work. Yes?"
" uh, huh..."
" That's the answer. You need to afford a bigger amount of energy into the air-con to make it does work for you. And its work is to decreased the entropy of the air inside. However, the Entropy of the big system when combined, the outcome is Entropy is still increasing. His flame works the same way.... You can compare his flame to the fridge, but instead of making the hot food cooler, it reverse the objects time."
"......."
" What the hell are you saying?"
Seeing Sera still not understand, Vega then used another explanation.
" Just know that his fire can destroy time. Okay?"
" Ooooh. I see."
Sera nods down.
" So that's why the bullets ran back into the pistol when I shot him. Because the bullet interacted with the fire."
" And here's the reason why his ability is too dangerous to pull out."
Vega said it with seriousness.
" You are lucky that time, Seraphina Gilmour. According to the report, I don't know what made you think like that but it is a very good decision to throw your pistol away."
" His fire behaves exactly the same as normal fire. Lucky for you that the speed of how spread the fire is also up to the heat conduction of each object. You need to see the heat as a fluid body, like water. But instead of flowing from the higher ground to lower, heat flows from hot to cold...which means..."
Vega paused, then looked into their eyes.
" It can spread everywhere around."
As Vega said that, both Jody and Sera realized.
The danger that was just in front of them, but they're completely blinded to it.
" If you didn't throw away a pistol at that time. Sera, you would have ended up like those bodyguards."
"......"
Sera's heart pounding heavily. She's panting.
" If Syd Barrett activates his ability right here, while we're talking...that's the end. Usually, when we get burned, we find a way to stop it...looking... for water, go for some piece of cloth to smother it, or trying to blow it away. But when we get burned by his fire, we are dead...Because our Entropy is destroyed...our time gets destroyed, everything on your body will be destroyed... Everyone else will see that we are moving backward, but from our perspective, we no longer there."
"......."
" How do you know? Have you ever tried?"
" No. But many of our subjects do."
"..."
" Wait... Don't tell me that..."
" We often used the prisoners in every prison around the world as a subject on experimenting Syd Barrett's ability. It wasn't a waste. And... Nobody cares about the criminal scum, do they?"
Sera went completely silent.
She shouldn't have asked that.
" That's... That's opposing the human rights!"
Said Sera.
" Oh yeah? Then will you take those prisoners, those who killed, stolen, raped, or corrupted back to your house?"
"......."
" Stop talking like you care, that's ridiculous."
"......"
Sera has been silent.
" Hold on... If our time gets destroyed...wouldn't we just be freezing right there? "
Asked Jody.
" You have to look at the time like it's a match stick."
Vega actually whips out a match stick and showed it to them.
" From the bottom, it is your past. On the top, it is present. Once we lit up."
Vega lits up the match.
" The fire goes all the way from top to bottom, Present to the past. Before....there is no fuel left..."
He shook to stop the burning and thrown it in the trash can.
" With all of this ability, it grants him a little talent too."
"What is it?"
Asked Jody.
" The sense of heat. He can feel the heat in the area."
" Just like Jody's hearing?!"
Said Sera.
" Oh...yeah... I have been reported that you can hear things better than others, right Jody? Well, I'd love to study that. After I finish with him first."
He added.
"......"
" Now I know why he jumped out the van as his clone showed up to us..."
" What?"
Sera twisted her eyebrows.
" If the fact that he can sense heat. Is real, and he is THE FIRE... It will explain a lot that the heat he obtained by the ability...is extraordinary. Because I almost died by his fire, I know how hot it was... If you're left in there a little longer... Well... I don't want to imagine about it..."
" That is what I'm gonna say to you next either. Jody Johanson."
Vega said, " Because his body has tremendous rate of energy consumption. More than average people."
" What does that mean?"
Asked Sera.
" It means that when activating his ability, he can pull out a lot more energy within his body than other ability users like you guys."
" How much is that energy consumption?"
Asked Jody.
"....."
Vega looked up before gazed his eyes to Jade.
She nods down to him, allowing him to reveal it.
" 1 thermal power station."
" WHAT-?! "
Seraphina dropped her jaws.
" His body cells works faster than other people...A LOT. his metabolism consumes a huge load of energy a day. Didn't you notice why he always eating?"
Asked Vega.
" Yes. but... 1 thermal power station?!... Are you kidding me???? That's IMPOSSIBLE for human! "
" You're saying that you aren't gonna believe us?"
" No..."
Suddenly, A memory which Jody helped him pick up his white hair popped up in her mind...
" Vega. Isn't all of this result any side effect in his body?"
" Yes, it does."
Vega explains, " The older he gets, the faster he died. The fire user never lives up to 40 in the record of humanity. It also results his body to grow faster than usual. Like uh, have long nails although just cut them yesterday...or having a white hair growing on his head like old people..."
"......."
(... So that was the result of his power?....)
" I've studied... Been through a thousand times of experiments, It depends on the size of the object. If it's too small, it'll turn into ash and only get reversed just a little."
It has come to a final, Vega turned off the projector.
" It's okay if you are getting confused. There're lots of debates on this time inversion thing among us, scientists, too. And I'm not ashamed to say that our knowledge today has not yet ready to fully understand it. We are not prepared enough to reach the truth of The Elementalists like you guys."
"......."
" Any questions?"
Asked Vega.
".... I know I have a lot... But just couldn't come up with it right now... I need to make up my mind first."
Jody said.
She's starting to understand what Jade had said. His ability is truly too dangerous to use. He couldn't use it often just like everybody else in the team. Because it can spread to everyone around, cause a huge destruction, and created a huge loss.Many innocent people who know nothing would have died without being realized... Or even his teammates like her.
" Good. You better be. Or you can ask Syd Barrett himself. He's the owner. My job here is done. I need to go back to work."
Vega then walked back into the scientist's room.
"......."
" So this is why you want me to work for Thrak?"
" precisely. Because your ability is a big counterpart for Syd Barrett's fire. You are the Key, Jody. Nature has designed your ability to be one of the two-person who can go against him. That is the fundamental of Elemetalists. All of you are born with the ability which opposing each other."
" Who's the other?"
" The Water."
Jade says, " His fire interacts with any objects EXCEPT one thing... Water. That's why he pours water on you. Because the fire won't get on your body."
Sera eyes widened, same as Jody.
They see now... So that's why Syd pours the bucket of water all over Sera.
But with Jody, he couldn't directly do it like that. Because that time she was suffering from the heat which came from both inside and outside her body.
Jody would get a stroke and might die quicker from the immediate change in her body temperature.
Syd chose to pour the water around her instead, not to let the fire came in, that's a good decision.
" But that's a matter of time. We'll provide the best offer for anyone working with us. Jody, you can be trained. And I believe you have a huge potential just like the agents."
"......."
"........"
" Let me think about it. I can not answer you now."
Said Jody.
"......"
" I see... It's a matter of time."
" Hey... Despite all of this, what is my importance more than just the team's healer?"
Sera asked the question.
Right now it's her turn.
" A team's Joker?"
Mickey Mannix spoke from the other side of the room with Toshi tried to hide the laugh next to him.
Sera sighs, she turned to him.
" Wow. That's crazy, Mannix. But you know what's crazier?"
" yeah? "
" The fact that Nobody asked for your opinion."
When Sera said that, Toshi flipped his side.
" OOOOOOOH...Sheeeiiiiittttt BROoooo.lmaooooo "
He laughs at Mickey.
" This shit burn so bad the fire truck isn't enough Haaa! Sell OUT, Bro! "
" Thanks, Toshi."
Said Sera, smirking at Mickey.
The Jewish boy covered his face, indeed embarrassed.
Sera turned back to Jade.
" In your case, Seraphina Gilmour. Your ability is one of the rare categories we have."
Jade slides on the Ipad screen, showing a picture of a weird symbol to her.
" What is this?"
" Your ability is something we call the 'Hidden gem' type. The same category as Toshi."
!?
" It may not seem dangerous at first sight, but if consider it carefully... Your ability is very useful if you know how to use it properly. And you proved to us that you know your ability well. The way you created infinite ammo for using. You can take Collin's corruption evidence back home without the need of bringing the real one. And you can do self-healing. Which... Stands out from many agents we have."
Jade explains, " Your ability allows you to be a perfect agent. And it is more dangerous than you think. Please consider it carefully. If you come to work for us in the future, we can grant both you special privileges in the society or anything you request."
"......"
"......."
Both of them went silent.
" Take your time. Until this mission end. You can decide whether you would join us or not. But I can guarantee your safety as long as you're staying in silence. If you go around writing some books to expose us...then we have no choice... Don't forget that we can approach you in everywhere on earth..."
That is a warning.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
On the outside, in the aircraft storage session.
Syd Barrett was standing still, waiting for his team. Hand scrolling through memes on social media.
But he was not the mood now.
Sighs.
He put it back into the pocket because he sensed someone approaching him from the front.
It was Roxxy Barrett, his sister.
"...."
" I didn't expect that it'll be this fast. Sometimes destiny just wants to pull up an epic prank on you, brother."
".... This is one of my life biggest bruh moments."
Syd said, shooking his head.
" I always tell you. You may fool a stranger, but you can not fool people close to you."
" Hey. This ain't my mistake. There's no choice left. That bastard and his ability... The only way to kill that immortal clone is to use my ability."
Said Syd.
Roxxy didn't reply, because he's right about it.
" Brother, don't you think it's a destiny that makes you meet with Jody? It's confirmed that she is the wind."
" !? "
Syd was surprised.
" Really? "
" Yes. The system just updated. The upper acknowledge her, but still a secret from the lower."
She showed him the phone screen. There's a picture of Jody in the Thrak's classify server.
" Huh...glad I did my job perfectly."
"....."
Though he said like that, Roxxy knew that he had something he wanted to let out.
" Brother... What will you explain to them?"
"... Jody and Sera?"
" Yes." Roxxy sighs, " They are both eager...and have high ambitious. See, I told you they won't let it slipped."
" They aren't stupid. They will understand. My man Vega will handle their curiosity for me."
Roxxy twitched his cheek.
" ouch-"
" Stop acting cocky. You need to understand that you just built a hard feeling between you and them."
"...."
" At least an apology. It isn't hard to say, is it?"
"......"
" Stop telling me what to do. Hey! I'm older than you! "
" Age is just a number, You once said it yourself."
"...."
The boy is completely stunned.
"....Alright... Then I'd told them my ability is too dangerous so much that it's useless to bring out. How about that?"
" Then what about 'Cassie'…?"
When Roxxy mentioned the name 'Cassie', the air around Syd Barrett changed into the other hand... Something that even his close friends don't know he has it like others...the sadness.
His eyes speak for itself.
"..."
" Jody has already met 'her'."
" That's bullshit."
" Syd... She can accurately describe her appearance."
" She told you?"
" Yes. On the plane... And that made me know you also lie to her that you know nothing about it."
"...."
Roxxy got closer, put her hand on his chest, another hand on his face.
" She is still around you. The fact that you didn't see her doesn't suggest that the others don't. If the wall between you and them still remains, it'll forever change their perspective on you. Better fix it before it's too late. "
"....."
Roxxy puts her hand down, sighing.
" Or else Cassie will just handle it in her way...which is unpredictable... I'm just afraid it'll affect our working relationship in the future."
" You sound like you're interested in them."
".... Yeah, just a little... They're kinda better than I thought."
Roxxy replied with awkwardness in her voice.
" So this is a person who suggested me to stay away from Jody, huh? Look how the change of heart."
Syd Barrett rubbed her head, smirking.
" You always say don't trust a single person outside the family. I just worry about you...but maybe a little overact."
She said.
Roxxy remembered that time she had to co-operate with Jody to defeat Soo-Min ( Recall: The chapter 'Parasite' )
That event changed her perspective on Jody Johanson... Maybe she's not like others.
And Sera too, maybe Sera is the only girlfriend in her life which gives her a comfortable vibe whenever she's talking to.
" Remember that day you said to Sera? That you usually acted like a mirror, whatever they do to you, you do the same back to them? "
" I said that? "
" Well, I have evidence in the CCTV."
" Oh...okay..."
" Now I believe they're approaching you with good intention. They're not the same as people in our line of business. Sure, they know how to avoid being deceived... But they're not trained to deceive others... not like most of us..."
"....."
" Whatever you're deciding, Syd. I'll always with you."
Roxxy touched his back.
" Can't believe I just been taught by a brat."
He said.
Roxxy smiled.
"....."
But then, she and Syd gazed to the left, they sensed someone was coming after them.
And they his crewmates. Josy, Sera, Mickey, and Toshi... And Jade behind them.
By looking at the wristwatch, it's around their expectation that they'll finish by this time.
" Syd."
Jody was the first person who called out his name.
" We need a proper talk."
.
.
.
.