A.N: I made a little change, on here Cecil has a control available that allows himto teleport to the Pentagon when he needs it. It makes more sense to me.
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Johnny knew he should've woken up an hour ago. He'd even heard the faint buzz of his communicator when Cecil tried pinging him at eight sharp. But it was Saturday — the sacred day of sleeping in — and for once, he figured the world could survive a few more hours without the Human Torch getting yelled at by a grumpy government guy.
Unfortunately, Cecil didn't share that logic.
With a sudden flash of blue light, a portal opened beside Johnny's bed, humming with static energy. The smell of coffee and cheap cologne filled the air as Cecil stepped out, trench coat fluttering.
He took one look at the sleeping mess of blankets and muttered, "Unbelievable."
Johnny groaned under the covers. "Go away, Cecil… it's Saturday."
"Yeah," Cecil said, adjusting his sunglasses. "And last I checked, villains don't take weekends off."
Johnny didn't move. "Tell them to send me a memo first."
Cecil sighed, then pulled a small device from his pocket — a sleek black remote with a single glowing button. "You brought this on yourself."
Before Johnny could react, Cecil pressed it.
A piercing supersonic frequency erupted through the room. Every window rattled, every cell in Johnny's body vibrated, and he shot up like he'd been struck by lightning. "AHHH! WHAT THE HELL, MAN!?"
Cecil calmly pocketed the remote. "Good morning, sunshine. You've officially broken your personal record for getting out of bed."
Johnny rubbed his ears, glaring. "You could've knocked!"
"Yeah," Cecil deadpanned. "That'd be less fun."
Johnny slumped back onto the bed, muttering, "You're lucky I can't set fire to government agents…"
Cecil smirked. "You can try. I've got five more of these." He tapped the remote.
Johnny sighed, finally dragging himself up. "Fine, fine. Lemme get dressed before you vaporize my brain cells."
"Make it quick," Cecil said, opening another portal. "You've got a full day of training ahead of you."
(Pentagon – Training Room)
The teleportation hit Johnny like a brick wall. He stumbled out of the portal, coughing. "You really need to warn people before doing that…"
Cecil chuckled. "Consider it part of the conditioning."
Once Johnny regained balance, he noticed the chamber around him — a massive steel arena lined with heat-resistant plating, rotating drones, and laser sensors calibrated to his exact energy output. It looked like a cross between a NASA lab and a warzone.
Johnny blinked. "Okay… this is new."
"Brand new," Cecil confirmed. "We built it to test your limits without blowing a hole in D.C. Think of it as your playground — or prison, depending on how you perform."
Johnny gave a crooked smile, sparks dancing over his fingers. "Guess it's time to see how much fun a government playground can be."
Cecil smirked and crossed his arms. "Just remember — this isn't free. You work with us, you get paid. You slack off again…" He patted the sonic remote in his pocket. "I wake you up louder."
Johnny rolled his eyes, stepping into the center of the room. "Man, you really know how to motivate people."
"Worked, didn't it?" Cecil said as the observation glass sealed shut.
Suddenly Johnny heard how the alarms of the room blared, and how the training drones activated, meanwhile, Johnny grinned, with flames igniting around him in a brilliant orange glow.
"Alright," he muttered. "Let's heat things up. FLAME ON!!"
The moment Cecil gave the signal, a dozen drones activated around Johnny. They moved in smooth, coordinated formations — their red lights glowing like hunting eyes as their plasma cannons charged.
Johnny cracked his neck, as the fire of his body reacted to it. "Okay… they look angry. That's cute."
With a burst of flame, he rocketed forward, his fists blazing as he slammed into the first drone, shattering it midair. Metal shards scattered like sparks through the training room. Suddenly, another drone swooped down — Johnny spun and unleashed a fiery kick that sent it crashing into the wall.
Cecil watched from the observation booth, with his arms crossed. "He's got raw power…" he muttered.
Johnny turned, trying to track three drones circling him at once. So he shot a fireball, but missed them by a mile, then had to duck as one grazed his head. "Whoa! Okay, not cute anymore!"
He overcompensated, blasting a massive wave of fire that vaporized two drones — and nearly melted a section of the wall. The control panels in the booth flickered for a second.
Donald frowned. "He's not even controlling his output."
Cecil smirked. "Nope. He's just swinging his arms like a moron."
Down below, Johnny tried to regain rhythm. So he darted upward, leaving a flaming trail, but his movement was too erratic. His dodges came a second too late, and his strikes were too wide.
Another drone zipped past him, landing a hit on his back. He let out a grunt, his flames flaring stronger in reflex. "Ow! Alright, you wanna play rough?!"
He grabbed the last drone by its metal arm and punched through its chest with an explosion of fire, sending it crashing into the ground. Smoke filled the room, and the emergency sprinklers hissed before the system automatically shut them off — heat resistance or not, Johnny had just made the room ten degrees hotter.
Johnny floated down, panting, covered in soot and sweat. "Heh. Told ya I could take them."
Cecil's voice came through the speakers. "Yeah, you took them. About as gracefully as a drunk rhino with a flamethrower."
Johnny blinked, raising an eyebrow. "Wait—what?"
Cecil appeared through a holographic projection, tone flat. "You've got firepower, kid, no question there. But you move like someone who's never fought a real fight. You got no structure, no awareness, and specially no technique."
Johnny crossed his arms, a bit defensive. "Hey, I won, didn't I?"
"You survived," Cecil corrected. "There's a big difference."
Donald appeared beside Cecil's hologram, adding, "If those drones had been human — or worse — the people around you, let's say 20 people, half of them would've been collateral damage and would have at least second-degree burns."
Johnny looked down at his hands, the flames flickering weaker now. He didn't answer.
Cecil sighed, rubbing his temple. "Don't take it personally, kid. You've got potential. But potential doesn't save lives unless you learn how to control it."
Johnny smirked faintly, wiping his forehead. "Guess that's what you brought me here for, huh?"
Cecil gave him a small grin. "Exactly. And trust me — we're just getting started."
As the smoke cleared, Johnny looked up at the training drones being replaced by new ones descending from the ceiling. His flames reignited, as he felt a mix of frustration and determination burning in his eyes.
"Alright then," he muttered. "Round two."
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Hours bled into one another as Johnny training passed.
What had begun as a chaotic, hot burst of raw power slowly turned into something measured. Cecil and Donald didn't rescind the drones — they just tweaked the program with smaller waves, faster reaction times, unpredictable patterns that forced Johnny to stop relying on brute force and start thinking in fractions of a second. The training room became a metronome of repetition.
However, at first things were ugly for him. Johnny missed more than he hit, his dodges were late, and his wrists burned from over-forcing every motion. Cecil's voice came through the comms with clinical bluntness. "I have my team analyzing you every second, and for what they tell me, you should reduce your output. Think on microbursts, not sustained flames." Cecil took a breath. "Basically, aim, Johnny. Heat without direction is heat wasted — and heat wasted gets people hurt."
So Johnny learned to breathe. He learned to turn the flare in his chest into controlled pulses instead of an all-or-nothing inferno. First, he practised short, snapped bursts of flame to knock drones off balance rather than trying to incinerate the room. Then he worked his footwork beneath the flames — little pivots and slides on the reinforced floor so his momentum fed his strikes instead of fighting them. Then Donald put up holographic targets and time-windows; Johnny started hitting them. He did dozens of repetitions until the movements stopped feeling foreign and began to feel like muscle memory.
Cecil would observe with a folded arm, occasionally calling out corrections: "Lower your center of gravity on the sweep," or, "Exhale on the release, don't push from the throat."
Meanwhile, Donald and the team tracked his metrics — heart rate, heat output, precision percentages — and every time Johnny shaved a few points off the margin of error it showed up on the screen like a tiny victory.
They cycled through drills: close-quarters grappling with flame-shielded dummies (learn to protect, not just to burn), aerial interception sequences (learn to read trajectory and anticipate), and coordinated flanking with remotely operated allies that forced Johnny to time bursts to milliseconds. Sweat mixed with soot; the scorch lines on the walls became part of the day's progress report. Each mistake taught him a new variable, while each correction tightened the loop.
By the time the ceiling lights slid to a warmer tone — a signal for another set of maintenance drones to come online — Johnny could feel the change. His attacks were shorter and cleaner. He wasn't just outputting heat anymore; he was shaping it around intent. A kick no longer sent a drumbeat of collateral sparks; a palm strike no longer flared into a careless bonfire. He was starting to move less like a flamethrower and more like a focused flame with its own leverage, timing, and economy of motion.
Then, exhausted and wired at once, he tried something he hadn't planned.
He'd spent the last round doing fast jabs, little knives of flame that peeled sensors off a drone's chassis. As the last target spiraled and sputtered out of the air, Johnny stilled mid-hover and let the motion that had filled the hour slow. He visualized — not just fire, but shape: a thin edge, a weight, the way a blade felt when swung.
So he curled his fingers as if he was gripping a hilt and pushed. The flame at his fingertips didn't just spray; it condensed. The heat of his body braided in a way he hadn't forced it to before, coalescing into a bright, humming ridge a foot long — a blade of living fire, hard enough that it cut through a practice drone's sensor housing cleanly with a searing hiss.
Johnny's breath hitched. The construct held form for a second, then dwindled into sparks. He quickly tried again, this time slower, as he tried to thought of things that reminded him of the sword, like steel rather than flame. This time the fire took on a thicker silhouette: a gleaming edge, and when he swept it down the drone folded like paper.
He grinned as he saw how his fire sword teared through the metal like if it was butter, despite the fatigue.
"Cecil," he panted over the comms, voice edged with disbelief. "I— I made a— a sword?"
Cecil's reply came less surprised than analytical. "Not a sword exactly — a fire-form. But yes. That's new trick, kid. Well done, only don't get clever yet." Donald voice suddenly appeared as he streamed new data from the scientists and investigators team. "It makes sense that you can form determined forms with your fire, material cohesion is electromagnetic in nature after all. Your constructs seem to maintain form through tightly focused thermal gradients. However, their structural integrity will vary with ambient temperature and your exertion levels."
Johnny ignored the lecture and experimented. A short, heavy block of fire formed into the shape of an axehead at his command; he swung it and felt the weight as if it were iron. He shaped a thin rapier for a quick thrust. Each construct dissolved into embers when he relaxed, but while it held, it felt tactile, obeying his will. He mimicked the silhouettes of real melee weapons — swords, axes, spears — and each time the room responded with obedient carnage: drones sheared, bolts fused, armor peeled away along algorithms that Robot eagerly logged.
He did not try to form anything remotely like a projectile firearm; the forms were blunt, martial and elemental. The idea of manifesting a gun never crossed his mind in those seconds; what excited him was close combat, the artistry of motion and the new vocabulary his fire had just offered him.
When his chest finally slowed and the constructs guttered into a scatter of glowing ash, Johnny hovered in the soot-kissed quiet and felt an unfamiliar steadiness. It wasn't mastery — not yet — but potential had teeth now. He flexed his hands, sensing the residual warmth. With practice, those fire-forms could become extensions of his body: swords that bit without tearing, axes that cleaved, shields that flared and dissipated impacts.
Cecil only said, after a long pause, "Good. You have improved a lot today. However, remember that control is weapon enough on its own. Focus on it and don't lose it."
Johnny let out a ragged laugh, with equal parts exhaustion and exhilaration. The training lights dimmed; as beyond the observation glass, the Pentagon hummed on.
Shit, now I can create weapons from thin air in essence. I feel like a God. Thought Johnny as he lose conciousness because of all the exertion and fatigue catching out with him.
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