Ryo felt nothing was better than relaxing after a tough game of Soccer. He had spent the last three hours at Hana High School, playing against the school’s rival, the Yokohama F-Marinos. Although it was mentioned what school and city they had come from, Ryo could have cared less. All he had cared about was beating them. And he had. His sudden front snap kick, perfected from a year of fighting against the Dynasty, had proven to be a major help in winning the game. The entire team had thrown a victory party, which involved pizza and coke, and even a water hose party outside.

Chenoa Desio, the defender, had grabbed the hose and had swung it around his head, taunting the other players. One thing led to another and soon the boys were having a free for all. From what Ryo could remember, not one single boy was dry, not even the coach.

He smiled to himself as he stretched against the back of the couch. It felt good to use his energy for something other than fighting. He enjoyed soccer, and being forward was the best position in his opinion. Though he had to feel somewhat sympathetic for the goalie. He had lost count how many times Alonzo Desio, Chenoa’s older brother, had broken his nose from the ball getting kicked against it.

A sigh came out of his mouth. As of now, he was alone in the living room. He had learned from Mia, upon entering the house a half hour ago, that Rowen had gone to the university, to talk to an advisor about possibly starting classes early. Even though Rowen was in the 11th grade, because of his SAT scores, the principal had wanted him to take at least two courses at the local college. Ryo was hoping he’d succeed. As far as he knew about Sage, the blond haired Ronin had gone off to teach a class at his father’s dojo, and most likely wouldn’t return until later tonight. Kento and Cye had gone off surfing. A smile came to the Ronin of Wildfire’s face. It had taken Cye a few months to teach Kento how to swim, then finally to surf. But he had pulled it off, and he had been so patient with Kento as well. And because Kento had almost mastered it, Cye had baked him a wonderful treat called Rice Pudding cake. Kento had eaten every bite of it. Which was fine with Cye. As for Mia, she was in the basement, tending to the laundry.

Ryo glanced over at his tiger and grinned at him. “Just think, boy. We have the TV to ourselves for once.” He picked up the remote control and began to flip through channels, hoping to come across something that looked remotely interesting. He came across such movies as: Lord of the Rings, Troy, A Night to Remember, Ransom, and then some. The same old shows were on, which was getting rather boring to him at this time. Why couldn’t the producers come up with something new for once?

He flipped to another channel and his eyes widen at the sight of a building burning in the background, a safe distance from the American reporter speaking. There was a Japanese voice overhead as the reporter spoke into the microphone.

“No one is sure how the Jelly Bean Factory exploded into flames just a quarter to six this evening. Even as firemen are desperately attempting to conquer the flames, it seems that even more flames continuously erupt through the inferno. There have been no casualties reported as the factory had been closed today for inspection. Those who had been inside the building had managed to escaped just in time with their lives, and are thankfully unharmed.”

The camera turned and came upon a rounded elderly man with wire frame glasses, who held a handkerchief to his forehead. “I don’t understand it. I was in my office, just waiting for the inspection guy to come and check us out, when suddenly I heard screaming from somewhere, and suddenly there was this loud explosion. I am still not sure how the staff members and I got out alive and unharmed, but we did. It was nothing short of a miracle!”

The camera switched to another survivor who basically said the same thing, before moving onto a witness. “I had just been coming home from a walk with my dog, when I heard the explosion. I turned my head and my mouth just dropped. All the flames and smoke.. It was so heavy it was hard to breathe.”

The camera moved back to the reporter again. “There you have it. The fire has been going on for the past two hours now, and no one has any information to how it started. I am certain that the Fire Marshall will have answers for everyone when the time is right. This is Jarod Davis, reporting from KPIX 5, signing off. Back to you, Bob.”

Ryo’s mouth was wide open with shock, and he slowly realized it had been hanging open for the past five minutes. He slowly closed it, his eyes still wide, as he turned his head to look at White Blaze. “White Blaze, would I be nuts if I said, that doesn’t feel like an ordinary fire?”

The wise tiger stared back at him as he rumbled in agreement. Somehow White Blaze had been sensing the same thing, though he wasn’t sure on what could have started it all. He did know, that whatever happened, the Ronins would be sure to help out if danger came to the world once again.

Ryo leapt to his feet, having decided to tell Mia the news. He knew she might be interested in this. He ran out of the living room, though he banged his knee on the coffee table. “Oww!” he cried out as he held his left knee, and half ran, half hobbled his way toward the basement door.

Rubbing his knee, he headed down the steps, descending lower and lower. At last he reached the basement floor and began to walk toward Mia, the pain in his knee momentarily forgotten. “Mia! Something weird happen in San Francisco today!”

Mia had been loading the washer with Sage’s clothes as she turned to regard Ryo. An eyebrow raised as she wondered what he could have been so excited about. “Oh really? What, another earthquake?” she asked him.

He vehemently shook his head. “No, a fire broke out at a factory, more like an explosion. No one knows how it happened or even why.”

Mia added some detergent as she felt somewhat confused. Why would Ryo be frantic about a fire that had been started somewhere far away? She shook her head as she set the timer on the machine and closed the lid. “Ryo, I can understand your fascination with fire and all, but if you think the Dynasty is involved, I highly doubt it.”

Ryo again shook his head, feeling somewhat flustered. “That’s just it, Mia! I know it wasn’t the Dynasty. For one thing, the Ronin armors hadn’t felt the evil from Talpa to begin with as they usually do. No, that fire wasn’t caused by faulty wiring, nor by someone throwing a bomb into it.”

“Gasoline then?”

Again he disagreed with her. “No. For some reason I feel this is different.. Mia, I’ll be honest with you. At the time of the fire, I had been playing my soccer game.. I had somehow felt more energy than I usually do during a game. In truth, I had not felt that much energy since I fought Anubis the first time I had gotten out of the volcano.”

Mia allowed all of this to sink into her brain. She could not understand what a burning building had to do with Ryo, when they were thousands of miles apart. It didn’t make any sense at all. Sure, Ryo could draw his power from the heat of fire, but he had to be near them to do so. So how could he have drawn power from that long of a distance? “So what are you saying?” she asked bluntly as she bent down and began to gather dry clothes from the dryer.

“I’m saying, that I feel the one responsible for that fire, may indeed be human, but with some remarkable powers. And I intend to find out who that person is.”

Rowen shook his head at Ryo as he was rather amazed. No sooner had he returned home from such a long interview at the university, when Ryo had practically jumped on him. The Wildfire bearer had begged him to log him onto the internet, to search for any power that would cause fire to come forth. So now, the two of them were in Rowen’s room, with Rowen aiding Ryo in his search. Though to be more precise, Rowen had to teach Ryo had to access the internet.

As it was, Ryo had never bothered with the internet. He simply did not have time for it, and preferred to play soccer or even the Playstation 2, rather than spend hours on the internet for enjoyment purposes. Though, Ryo was a fast learner. Already he had learned that the www did not stand for wide world wresting.

After a quick half hour tutorial lesson, Rowen stood behind Ryo as he watched him. So far Ryo was entering in fire power into the search bars of the Mozilla Firefox internet browser. But so far all that came up, was information on artillery and on church revival groups, as well as a few other sites, which explained nothing at all to Ryo.

Rowen was pondering something though, as Ryo tried again and again to find what he was looking for. He knew that if Ryo found nothing within the next few minutes, he would become too impatient and therefore give up, insisting the internet was a bunch of crap which didn’t have the correct information. The bearer of Strata decided to speak up before Ryo could start cussing. “Ryo, you mentioned earlier that you think someone may have the power to start fires of their own accord.”

“Yeah, what about it?” Ryo asked in annoyance. He was starting to become frustrated with this thing as he scrolled through the websites provided. It didn’t seem plausible how one could not be what he was looking for!

“Type in pyrokinesis, Ryo,” Rowen replied as he folded his arms against his chest. He carefully spelled the word out for him, just in case if Ryo could not spell it.

Ryo rolled his eyes, not understanding the scientific word that his friend spoke. However he did type in the word and clicked enter. The internet browser produced the results and Ryo saw the first website with the captioning underneath: was able to start fire by looking..

“Click that link, right there,” Rowen directed him. Ryo complied and the website came up. As the two Ronins stared at the screen, Ryo had learned that pyrokinesis was a mental ability that enabled a person to start or control fires just by thinking about it. Not many people had it, and those that did were rare indeed. For the next hour and a half the two of them studied all the information given about the ability. When at last they had read all they could, Ryo turned to look at Rowen, one eyebrow arched in wonderment.

“I should have known you’d have the answer to what I was looking for, Rowen. How did you know what to look for?”

“Well, to be honest,” Rowen stated, “when you said you believed the fire was started by someone who had the power to do so, I remembered the word, pyrokinesis, actually means just that. Think about it: pyro which is a word understood for fire, in certain circumstances, kinesis, which means movement. Add them together and you come up with all the information on a person with the ability.”

“That’s amazing,” Ryo smiled. “Now our only problem, is finding the one responsible for setting that building on fire. We don’t know whether it was intentional or not. But if it was, then who knows what else they’ll destroy?”

Rowen nodded his head as he stared at the website momentarily. “You’re right. But first we need to find out who and where this person is. We can do nothing without some kind of investigation.”

Ryo nodded in agreement as he exited out of the website. The moment he did, an error came up: Mozilla Firefox not responding! His eyes immediately widened with panic. “What did I do?!”

Rowen raised one brow. He couldn’t help it as he wanted to laugh. Poor Ryo, he knew nothing of computers at all. “It’s okay, Ryo. The program just stopped working for now. It does that sometimes.” He pressed alt, ctrl, and del, and selected to close the program down.

“So, it wasn’t my fault?” Ryo dared to ask.

“No, it wasn’t. Man, you gotta learn to chill, Ryo.” Rowen shook his head at his friend. “Anyway, let’s go and tell the others what we found. I think they just pulled into the driveway just now.”

By the time Kento, Cye, and Sage had entered into the house, they were barely given a chance to either change out of their wetsuits, or even shower, when Rowen and Ryo had poured the news on them. Like Mia, they had at first been confused about the distance between the two countries, and how Ryo had been affected. That is, until Rowen had told them that the cause of it had the ability of pyrokinesis. Sage and Cye understood what it meant, however Kento was a bit clueless. Once Ryo had explained it to him, he nodded in understanding.

“So, then we just look for this person and stop them from causing fires?” he asked, ignoring the fact he was dripping water onto the carpet.

“Basically,” Ryo said with a nod. “Though I have no idea where to start.”

“Well, I seriously doubt we could advertise this: Hi, have you been causing fires to suddenly occur just by thinking about it? If so, call this number!” Sage said, sarcastically.

They all knew he was right. The problem of finding at least one person would be extremely difficult as none of them knew where to start looking. Cye wondered if perhaps Mia’s grandfather would have information on anyone with that type of power, but at the moment he did not wish to bother her, as she was still tending to laundry. Still, something had to be done. He did not know whether this person was evil or not, but whether they were or not, chances were Talpa would try to use that person for his own benefit. He looked up at the others. “I say we better start looking right away then. If we know about it, you can rest assure that Talpa does too.”

Rowen nodded his head. “Cye’s right. And I can bet I know what you’re thinking there too. I’ll ask Mia to check her grandfather’s files. In the meantime, I’d say you and Kento better change.”

Ryo looked down at the wet carpet and smiled just a little. “Yeah, before Mia chases you two with her broom.”

“Right,” Kento smirked at the two as he and Cye headed up the stairs to their room.

Sage watched them go, his mind somewhere else. He had not mentioned that, while he had been observing the students training at his father’s dojo, he had a vision. It was rather a frightening vision, one he was certain to give him nightmares. He had seen a girl arguing with someone about an ingredient they were going to put into the candy that was being made. Apparently, from what the Ronin of Wisdom could tell, this ingredient was actually poison. From what Sage could see, the man had wanted to poison everyone, just so they would have to buy his special medicine in order to become well again. The next thing he saw, was the girl storming out of the office, and then out of the building, and shortly after that, as the vision continued, the girl had turned and faced the building with such an intense look of rage upon her face, as the building suddenly exploded into flames.

He shook his head, allowing himself to come back to the present time. Ryo was already going into the kitchen, and Rowen was dialing some numbers on the phone. He ran a hand through his hair. He needed a shower to cool himself down. Only then would he be able to tell the others of what he had seen that day. And so, saying nothing to anyone, he quickly headed up the stairs.