I awoke back in the hospital after fainting earlier that day.

Within the hospital room was Susan, Ray and an old friend from my childhood, Bucky Faulkner.

"Rodlin, don't ever do that to me again", Susan said.

"Sorry, didn't mean to trouble you and Ray with my bodily ailments".

"What no welcome wagon for an old friend?", Bucky said.

"My apologies Bucky".

I turned to Susan and Ray to introduce them to Bucky,"Susan, Ray, this an old friend of mine Bucky Faulkner, Bucky and I went to military school together".

"Yeah, I remember those days in Arnold Dillman military training school, that hellhole stole most, if not all of our precious years, but there was our childhood friendship that survived in that muck water swamp of a school".

"And there was Lucele Harlow".

"Lucele Harlow?".

"That blond haired, blue eyed girl in our class remember, we used to talk about how one of us was going to eventually get with her".

"Rodlin did", Susan said.

"Huh?", Bucky asked.

"Rodlin dated Lucele before he met me, when we started our relationship, she broke up with him and vowed revenge against us".

"No kidding, what happened to her?".

"She tried to kill us, and eventually failed, ending up in Saint Kathrine's Insane Asylum".

"How could you?".

"How could you do those things to a poor, innocent, beautiful woman?".

"Bucky, we had no choice, she was going to kill us and everyone else", I shouted.

"Well, it's nice seeing you Rodlin, but I've got business in town to deal with".

Bucky walked out of the room, but left the door open a bit, to hear the conversation between Susan and I.

"Rodlin, we have to formulate a plan here".

"What do you mean?".

"We suffered an extremely close call today, and it was by only luck that we managed to get you safely here, without anyone finding out you are Firerain".

"I understand, and believe me we'll figure something out to fix this situation, I promise".

"A fake promise", Bucky whispered to himself.

"So it appears that I finally have a reason and a way of crushing Rodlin, interesting".

Just then a docter was walking back to the room with an infected cell, containing the tainted sample of DNA, extracted from my body, on a simple slide.

As he was moving toward the room, the infected cell set on the slide slipped off and cut Bucky's arm, and then split in half, one half on the floor, the other no where to be seen.

"Sorry sir".

"Yeah, well watch it".

After patching up Bucky's arm with bandages, he went off into my room with the slide from the floor, and Bucky went into the open city.

"Mr. Centari".

"Yeah".

"It appears as though the problem we have is an infection".

"An infection?".

"Yes, as you can see here on the slide, this is a sample of a cell infected by some foreign DNA, it's unique because it contains two strands of foreign DNA particles, this is most likely making your body attempt to destroy itself".

"I see, so what do we do?".

"Well, the answer is simple, the process isn't, we have to remove all traces of this cell and the DNA within it that merged with your DNA, that will allow your body to repair itself over time".

"Now this procedure is dangerous, so I will now ask your permission before performing it".

"You already have my permission doctor".

"Alright then, we must get you into surgery for the operation immediately".

Meanwhile inside a bar on the streets, Bucky was getting a drink, when suddenly his body started reacting strangely to the half particle of the cell.

Quickly he removed the bandages, and pulled out a bloody slide from his arm, to find the particle was gone.

Then his body started to react to the substance, rapidly changing, his arm muscles grew to a limited amount, and his hands held orange fire within each palm, cut back in energy, due to the fact of only half of the cell residing within his body.

"At last, tonight I go after that tiny flicker personally".

Bucky threw an orange fireball at the wall, which caused it to set ablaze it's pictures and wall paper.

"Out, out you pyro, out of my bar", the bartender exclaimed to him.

"Do you have a fever friend?".

Bucky grabbed him and set him and his apparel on fire.

"Because your burning up".

Bucky then walked out of the bar onto the streets, and the city.

The persistent cold will encourage the seed to continue it's fight.