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Rumi knows she’s being followed. As she walks down the alley on her way to the other side of her patrol territory, Rumi turns her bunny ears towards the sound of the noise. Yeah, that is definitely the sound of someone’s footsteps behind her.
She turns to face the person behind her. It’s a young woman with bright, flaming green hair, dressed in a white jacket and knee-high black socks.
Rumi is about to aim a kick with her strong legs when the woman blocks her, flames appearing in the air before Rumi’s kick could land.
“Ow!” Rumi can feel the heat of the fire, close to singing her skin.
She grits her teeth and pounces forward, planning to come up from the other side and tie the woman’s hands together with a piece of rope. The woman responds by grabbing the fire from her hair in her hands and coming at Rumi with her teeth bared.
Rumi stamps on the ground with her powerful leg and breaks up pieces of asphalt beneath her opponent.
The woman stumbles backwards, thrown off for a second.
“You’ve been making a lot of trouble around here,” Rumi says with a wide grin. Her heart is beating fast, the adrenaline is rushing through her veins. “Now it’s time for you to face justice.”
The woman scowls. “What are you talking about?”
“Don’t play dumb with me,” Rumi says, approaching her and raising her leg. “You’ve been causing havoc around here for days.”
“Are you serious? I’m not the villain.”
Rumi freezes mid-kick. “You’re not?”
She rolls her eyes. “No, of course not. I’m a hero, just like you.”
“Then why are you attacking me?”
The woman bristles, gesturing in frustration with her fire-laden hands. “You came at me first!”
“You were following me!”
“Because I wanted to know where you were going.” She puts out her fire and places her hands on her hips angrily.
“Who are you, anyway? I’ve never seen you before.”
She puffs her chest. “I’m Burnin, the soon-to-be top female hero in the city.”
“I’ve had that title for years,” Rumi smirks. “You think you can beat me?”
Burnin smirks back. “I just did.”
“That did not count.”
“Burnin! What are you doing?” calls a voice down the alley. “Stop wasting time and come back here.”
It’s a voice that Rumi recognizes immediately, the current number one hero. She glances towards the voice and sees the muscular man standing at the front of the alleyway.
“You're with Endeavor?” Rumi says in a low tone to Burnin.
“Yeah, so what?”
“You’re just a sidekick,” Rumi says. “How are you going to outdo me?”
Burnin looks at her with a hard expression on her red-orange eyes, a smirk playing on her lips. “You’ll see.”
***
The second time Rumi meets Burnin, it’s during the middle of a fight.
Rumi is battling a villain who had ransacked a local store. She has the masked man cornered up against a wall when suddenly the man gestures to someone behind her. Maintaining her stance trapping the villain, Rumi turns her head to see the accomplice standing at the front of the alley. It’s another masked man--tall and skinny, with fuzzy orange ears poking out from under the burglar mask.
Rumi goes still.
It’s a fox.
A rabbit’s natural enemy.
The man with a fox Quirk makes a noise, somewhere between a snarl and a yip. He lunges at Rumi with his teeth bared, his claws airming directly for her throat.
Rumi gears up for an attack, lifting her leg to make a kick.
All of a sudden, Rumi sees a flash of fiery green hair in her vision as another person appears on the scene. The villain yelps. The fur on his arms has caught on fire, and he drops to the ground, attempting to put out the flames.
While he’s on the floor, Burnin approaches the villain and captures him, locking his hands together with a pair of handcuffs.
Burnin turns to Rumi and gives her a grin.
Rumi grits her teeth. “Hey, I had it under control,”
“Yeah, right,” Burnin says. “You were about to be dinner.”
There’s something about Burnin that is utterly infuriating. Maybe it’s the way she looks at Rumi with a gleam in her fiery eyes or maybe it’s the way constantly grins like she’s winning at a game. Either way, Rumi can’t get enough.
“I could have handled it,” Rumi insists. “I didn’t ask for your help.”
Then she remembers.
“Hey-- where’s the other guy?”
Both of them turn around to see the other masked man behind them scampering up the side of the building. Rumi chases after him, leaping forward with all the strength in her legs. She doesn’t scale buildings often, but she is able to do so by putting one foot over the other, hopping from the lowest apartment balcony to the one above it.
Burnin follows after her, surprisingly quick for someone who doesn’t have the super strength contained in every fiber of Rumi’s muscles.
“This is your fault,” Rumi calls down below. “If you hadn’t distracted me--”
“--my fault? I’m just doing my job,” yells Burnin. “And you know what? I’m doing it better than you.”
“Oh yeah?” Rumi says.
“Yeah, yeah I am.” She’s gaining speed as she clambers over the side of the railing, Rumi can tell from the way her voice is getting closer. “I’m rising in the rankings, you know-- ahhh!”
Rumi glances down to see Burnin falling, her fingers having slipped off the railing. She swoops down and wraps an arm around Burnin’s waist, catching her before she falls to a definite death.
Rumi holds on to Burnin, conscious of the way their bodies are touching, the warmth of Burnin’s body close to her as she holds her, supporting them both through the strength of one arm on the railing while the other keeps them both supported. Burnin isn’t smiling anymore, her cocky grin replaced by a flush-cheeked expression of relief. She’s breathing hard, Rumi feeling every inhale and exhale. Burnin’s waist fits perfectly in Rumi’s grasp, and the other woman’s hands are curling around Rumi’s arm, clutching on to her with sweaty fingers.
They stay like that a moment, staring at each other.
“So this is your plan, huh? Slowing me down by forcing me to catch you?”
“Yeah, you got me,” Burnin says in a joking tone, “I’m sabotaging you. I knew a strong-armed lady like you,” Burnin’s eyes linger on Rumi’s toned upper arms, “wouldn’t be able to resist playing the hero.”
“I am a hero,” Rumi points out. She hoists the two of them--her arm muscles straining more than they have in a long time-- onto the nearest balcony and releases Burnin.
Burnin flashes her that grin again. “So am I. And I’m going to catch that man first.”
She follows through on her word, scrambling up to the balcony to confront the villain.
***
Burnin was right; she is rising in the rankings.
Rumi checks the report every week and sees the woman’s ranks getting higher and higher. Even though she’s just a sidekick and her accomplishments are often credited to Endeavor, the woman has made some headlines of her own. “Burning superhero saves girl from burning building, huh?” Rumi quotes the headline from one of Burnin’s latest feats as they’re facing off against a villain at the local park.
“Yeah, and when’s the last time you saved someone from a burning building?” the other girl says.
“I saved you from falling off a building,” Rumi reminds her.
Burnin blushes, actually blushes, her cheeks staining bright pink. “Maybe I’ll start falling off of things more often. That way you’re too busy saving me to get any work done.”
“Then maybe I won’t catch you next time.” Rumi retorts.
Burnin gets to the villain first this time, capturing him just a second before Rumi has a chance. “That's another point for the Endeavor agency,” Burnin says triumphantly, giving Rumi her see-if-you-can-beat-that grin.
“Don’t you get tired of that?”
“Tired of what?”
“Working for someone else all the time?”
“Well, I like being part of a team.”
Rumi huffed. “Teamwork is for weaklings.”
“Weaklings?” Burnin marched right up to Rumi and stared her in the eye. “I’ll show you, I’m not a weakling. Let’s spar.”
“Spar?”
“Yes. A fight, to see who can beat who.”
“I know what a spar is.” Rumi was taken aback; she couldn’t remember the last time she had been asked to spar. She usually worked alone and didn’t have the time or energy to go out of her way to practice fighting, when she already had to do so much of it at work.
“Fine, let’s do it.” Rumi glanced around at the park. It was a nice open space, with hardly any pedestrians to get in the way and a soft ground that Rumi could easily break up with a stomp of her foot.
She stretches her legs.
Burnin takes a position across from her, lighting up both her hands with flame. “Let’s go.”
Burnin is fast. Not anywhere as fast as Rumi is, but fast nonetheless.
She’s put a lot of work into this, Rumi can tell, as she spars with the other woman.
Burnin nearly lands a hit on Rumi, who dodges just before the fire can touch her skin. “Old age making you slow?” she teases.
“I’m only older by ten months,” Rumi says through heavy breaths.
Burnin laughs. “And how do you know that?”
Rumi doesn’t answer the question, because she isn’t about to admit that she’s been going through Burnin’s accounts on social media. She sends a stomp into the ground, breaking up the soil.
Burnin dodges, moving out of the way of the crack running through the ground. She is a quick learner.
Rumi hasn’t felt this way in a long time--really and truly alive , the blood rushing quickly through her veins and her body alight with excitement.
To be honest, most of the people she came into contact with weren’t able to keep up with her in battle. Some of the most talented people in the city-- heroes and villains alike-- had easily fallen when faced with her strong limbs and super senses. She had stopped having one-on-one matches with anyone but her trainer a long time ago. Rumi found most of her opponents to be underwhelming and, frankly, boring..
Not Burnin.
What Burnin lacks in speed she makes up with pure lethality, her body flaming from any part she chooses. Her ablaze state makes it hard for Rumi to get a kick in without burning herself. Rumi’s hand-to-hand combat style is compromised by the fact that if she were to make contact with Burnin’s skin while it is alight, she would be instantly burned by the 2,000 degree flames.
Rumi’s not worried, of course, not when there’s a recovery center five minutes away where she could heal from injuries. Still. Burnin is a walking threat, danger seeping through every pore in her skin, and she knows it. It’s in the way she fights and the way she speaks and the way she moves. She is made of pure fire and Rumi can’t stop watching, hasn’t been able to stop watching since the day they met.
Rumi wonders if Burnin feels it too, the energy between them.
Burnin whacks her straight in the middle with a blast of hot air. Rumi is knocked over, her legs giving way and her back hitting the ground with a thump. She lies in the grass, staring up at the twilight sky. Her head feels weirdly fuzzy.
“Miruko.”
Rumi blinks and sees Burnin standing over her, looking slightly concerned.
“Well, that’s a move I’ve never seen you use before.”
“It’s a new one,” Burnin says breathlessly, before breaking into a grin. “Ha. I win. You have to admit I’m not a weakling now.”
“I never thought you were.” Rumi admits. She sits up, pulling grass out of her hair.
“Really?” She looks uncertain all of a sudden, her eyes widening.
“Really,” Rumi says. “You’ve got talent and you’ve got guts. Burnin, you’re amazing.”
Burnin cocks her head. “Amazing enough to be the number one female Pro Hero?”
She reaches a hand out to Rumi to help her get up.
Rumi takes her hand and lets Burnin pull her to her feet. “Too bad I got there first.”
Burnin hasn’t let go of her hand; Rumi doesn’t know whether it’s on purpose, or Burnin simply forgot to let go. Either way, she likes the feeling of Burnin’s hand in hers, soft and dry. Burnin’s skin, when her Quirk is not activated, is hotter than most people’s but not hot enough to burn. “Just you wait...”
“Yeah, you can try.”
“I have to go now.” Burnin looks down at their joined hands as if she just noticed, and lets go.
“See you around, Burnin.”
“Call me Moe. It’s my name.”
As if Rumi hadn’t known that from looking up all of her information. “All right. See you around, Moe.”
***
The last place Rumi expects to see Burnin is at her local bakery. But here Rumi is, standing in line waiting to get her weekly helping of carrot cake, when she notices someone out of the corner of her eye.
It’s impossible not to recognize her, with the bright-green flames she has for hair. She looks like another person, in civilian clothes, her posture more relaxed, leaning back in her chair wearing a gray hoodie and boldly patterned leggings paired with athletic sneakers. She munches away at a chocolate cupcake.
Moe looks up and makes eye contact with Rumi across the room.
Her demeanor changes, her face quirking back into that grin Rumi is so used to looking at.
“Miruko!” she calls. “Over here!”
Rumi waves at her across the room.
She had planned to go straight home after this, taking her cake with her. But now Moe is out of her chair, approaching Rumi. “Hey. Fancy seeing you here,” says Rumi.
“What are you doing here?”
“I live just across the street.”
“Hm. So you come here often?"
“Yeah. Their carrot cake is delicious.”
“Carrot cake? How can you stand it? It’s just....vegetable cake. “
“Come on, it’s not that bad. At least it’s not over-sweet, like chocolate.”
“The chocolate isn’t over-sweet, it’s dark chocolate.”
“Fine. You let me have some of your cake and I’ll let you have some of mine and we’ll see whose is better.”
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
Moe takes a seat at the nearest table. Rumi sits down in the chair in front of her, placing her cake on the table. Moe leans towards her, looking skeptically down at the cake between them.
Meanwhile, Rumi is staring at her. Without the mask, the angles of her face look softer. Moe has long lashes--green, like her hair--framing her eyes. She’s pretty, Rumi realizes, with a strange feeling in her stomach.
“You look different,” she blurts.
Moe stares at her blankly.
“In a good way,” Rumi adds. Then, to distract from the awkward silence, she hastily gestures for Moe to hand her her plate. Rumi cuts a slice of carrot cake for her, placing it carefully. It should feel odd to be serving cake to her competitive rival, but for some reason it doesn’t.
Moe hands her one of the chocolate cupcakes in return. Her fingers brush against Rumi’s as she reaches across the table.
Rumi takes a bite of the cupcake. The chocolate is sweet but with just a hint of bitter, that adds a bit of sharpness.
“Hmm,” Rumi says. “Not bad.”
“See, I told you it would be good. Better than this,” Moe said, eating the carrot cake.
“And yet, you’re eating the whole thing.”
Moe nods and shovels another bite of cake into her mouth.
Rumi’s eyes linger on Moe’s lips, watching her hungrily lick the last of the icing off of her fork.
“So you do like it,” Rumi said.
“The icing is the good part,” Moe gives her a grin.
Rumi recognizes the fluttering in her stomach and thinks, Oh no.
***
Rumi hears Moe coming before she sees her. Her voice is unmistakable-- loud and laughing, as she talks to her fellow sidekicks from the Endeavor agency. Rumi feels her heart starting to pound, evidence of the feelings she has only recently realized she has for Moe.
Rumi turns her head to see the group walking down the road, right past the spot where she’s patrolling. Moe isn’t looking in her direction; she’s busy conversing with her companions. Rumi’s bunny ears turn in the direction of the sidekicks, easily picking up their conversation.
“Oh, it’s Miruko again,” says one of Moe’s teammates, a man with horns on his head. “Let’s go in the other direction.”
“Miruko?” Moe suddenly pauses and glances into a mirror. She adjusts her clothing, no doubt wanting to look as sharp as possible in front of her rival.
“We don’t have time for your flirting.”
Rumi’s heart skips a beat. Flirting?
Moe puts her hands on her hips. “I don’t-- what are you talking about?”
“Seriously, it’s getting annoying,” chimes in Moe’s other teammate, the man wrapped in bandages. “Just ask her out already.”
Rumi can’t believe her ears.
Is it true? Is Moe flirting with her every time she comes up to her and challenges her to a competition? Is Moe’s constant teasing and goading her way of getting Rumi’s attention?
If so, it has worked.
“You’ve got this all wrong. She’s my rival . I’m not interested in her.”
Her teammates exchange a look, unconvinced.
Moe sighs, crossing her arms in front of her. “Besides, she’s not interested in me.”
Rumi stares in astonishment. Moe has no idea how wrong she is.
“Moe,” Rumi calls across the road.
Moe jolts and turns around, her cheeks going pink when she makes eye contact with Rumi.
Rumi walks up to Moe, putting on a smirk. “So, you've come this way just to see me?"
"I'm here because of work, that's it." Moe raises her eyebrows. She leans against the nearest wall, trying to give off a casual air.
"Hmm...then you're here to steal my spotlight again?" Rumi moves closer to her, her arm against the wall. "But why would someone as talented as you need to do that?"
"You're just as talented," Moe shoots back.
"No, you are," Rumi says.
"No, you."
They stare at each other. Then Moe bursts out laughing, and the sound is so infectious that Rumi can't help but laugh, too.
Rumi leans closer to Moe. She's so close that she can see every wisp of flame that originates from Burnin's head and hear every shaky breath she takes. "You're wrong, you know."
Moe frowns. "How?"
"I heard what you said earlier. About me not being interested in you."
Moe takes a sharp breath. "So...you are?"
"Yeah. I think you're the hottest girl in this city," Rumi says.
Moe laughs. "The hottest ?"
"Yeah." Rumi says. They grin at each other.
The gap between their faces is but a few inches. It's Moe who closes the gap, leaning in to press her lips against Rumi's.
Rumi kisses her back. She tastes like pure heat and passion. Moe kisses the way she speaks, hard and focused, like this is a competition. Rumi meets her with her own mouth's movements. Rumi curls her hand around Moe's collar, tugging her downwards. There's sparks going through Rumi's body; she feels the excitement buzzing through her.
When she pulls away, it's so that the two of them can both take gasping breaths.
Moe touches Rumi's hip-length white hair, wrapping a tendril around her finger. "You know, I've wanted to do this a long time."
"Yeah? Since when?"
Moe flushes. "Since the day we met."
"So this whole rivalry was just a way to get my attention?"
"Oh no, I'm still going to beat you. One day."
She has that irresistible spark in her eye. Rumi kisses her again.
"Burnin." An angry voice interrupts their moment. Rumi glances over to see Moe's boss stomping up the sidewalk, looking furious.
Rumi releases Moe, taking her arm away from Moe's waist. "Oooh, looks like someone's in trouble," she teases.
"And it's your fault." Moe straightens up, fixing her askew collar.
"Hey, you kissed me ," Rumi reminds her.
Moe flushes again, then rolls her eyes. She turns away, ready to face the furious number-one hero.
"Moe," Rumi says, just before Moe can walk away. "There's a festival this weekend-- maybe you and I could go, you know, together?"
Moe takes Rumi's hand and gives it a squeeze. "Yeah. I'd like that."