3 Chapter 3 I already knew that.

All conversation and clinking of silverware stopped as the entire room turned to look at my duplicate.

"How long have you been able to do this?" mother asked, staring suspiciously at the copy as the gears turned in her head. She was starting to figure out how I kept getting away from her.

"Dunno." I said meekly, dropping my head and crossing my arms. "While."

Ruval's chair squeaked across the ground as he pushed it back, standing and walking over to my duplicate. A bright orange spell circle appeared before his hand as he leveled it at my duplicate. "Can you move it or is it stationary?" Ruval asked, sounding intrigued.

In answer, the duplicate waved at Ruval.

"He can't talk yet." I said. "I tried to give him vocal chords but he blew up." That had been a rather interesting experience. The explosion sounded like a scream. That meant I was on the right track, but I needed to work out the kinks.

"What else can it do?" Ruval said, an inquisitive fire alight in his eyes as he studied the results of my magic.

Smiling at my older brother's sincerity, I climbed out of my chair and scurried over to the duplicate. "He looks just like me and can move around like I can. And then there's this!" My duplicate held its hand out and a flaming sword grew into being.

"He can use his own fire to make stuff!" I said, basking in Ruval's awed expression. It was very hard to get my brother to do anything other than smile politely, so the fact he was inquisitive spoke to how cool my clone was.

Not that I needed someone else to tell me my clone was cool. I already knew that.

The duplicate's fire sword was sucked back into its body as it held up its other hand. A small fireball shot out of its palm, but snuffed out before it got ten feet away.

"He can shoot out his fire, but he can't replace it. I have to be nearby to refill it or it'll use itself up." I explained, pointing out the subtle imperfection on the duplicate's face now that it was missing the fire needed to be a perfect replica of me. "Oh! I can also do this!" I said excitedly as Ruval watched on.

The duplicate's form was surrounded by flames. At the same time, I covered myself in fire and tugged at my duplicate with my magic. I felt my body shift into flame. When the fire around me faded, I was in a different position.

"I can switch places with my duplicate! I can't go through solid objects though. The fire I turn into needs a path to get where it's going. I can turn myself into fire without a duplicate active, but I can't see or hear anything when I'm in that state, so I need some of my own fire at my intended destination so I don't get lost and wind up reappearing around anything nasty. I can sense where any large gathering of my own fire is so I navigate that way. I can use Wind to speed myself up while I'm made of fire too!" I explained, loving the way Ruval's jaw opened and closed like a fish.

"How did you figure this out?" Ruval asked breathlessly.

I shrugged. "We're Phenexes. Two of our signature powers are related to fire, and one of those uses fire to heal our wounds. It isn't that much of a leap to think we can exist as pure flame. Just don't try to bypass any barriers when you're only fire. I ended up with my arms where my legs should be and had to cut everything off with Wind blades so they would heal correctly." That wasn't a pleasant experience.

"You what!"

I cringed at the shriek that sounded like a screeching Ringwraith. Slowly turning around, I realized that everyone else was still in the room. Mother was on her feet and staring at me with a panicked gleam in her eye. Standing as she was, her pregnant belly was visible, but my focus was on slowly backing away from the murderous aura wafting off her.

"I…Um…It was a figure of speech?" I tried, taking several more steps backward as actual heat waves radiated off of her body.

Mother's breathing sounded like an enraged bull's as she said, "You are grounded until you die."

"Ryrova, can I have a word?" father said as he stood and gently guided mother from the room, the fire spilling off of her parting as it fell around him. The door to the hall closed behind them, leaving silence in its wake.

"I'll remember you fondly, little brother." Raycal said sarcastically.

Ruval continued to inspect my flaming creation while I panicked internally.

Mother looked pissed. I doubted she'd let me out of her sight for the next ten years, which would really screw with my plans. I needed to get stronger and to learn all I could and experiment with my power. This world was an anime in my last life. While I didn't watch the entire show – the third time there was a breast-based power-up I lost all interest – the mere fact that it was a magical anime meant bad things.

By 'bad things', I was of course referring to the fact that almost every single one of them possessed an unstoppable enemy that showed up sometime around the third season and casually wiped a city off the face of the planet. On the plus side, I was born into a family whose powers were so absurdly broken that we should be at the top of the food chain, but neither my parents nor my siblings were creative enough to do anything with their power other than 'burn things hot'. Credit where it was due though, Ruval was exceedingly good at burning things hot. He was in the top ten fighters in the Rating Game scene – big, organized slugfests where devils could compare dick sizes without anyone getting permanently maimed…most of the time anyway.