BOOM!

FWOOSH!

CRACK-CRASH!

The two-story building wasn't just partially collapsed, it was still being destroyed by the fire raging within it. Such was the intensity of the flames, the handful of middle-aged men who had tried and failed to get deeper into the building to save those trapped within, weren't even aware of Clang, Miss Toontastic, and me approaching them from behind.

She's dead, I thought, grimly, looking at the ferocity of the fiery blaze eating away at the foundations of the building.

"It's the gas main!" a short stocky moustached old man in a fleece yelled to the other men, "The fire'll spread to the whole street if we don't cut it off at the main!"

"Where is it?!" shouted one of the men.

"Over there!" the old man shouted, pointing beyond Clang, Miss Toontastic, and me to the far end of the street corner.

The old man, and the sweaty red-faced men, all took sight of the three mice before them.

"We're here to help!" I shouted.

There wasn't time for deliberation. Lives needed to be saved. The old man and the handful of men came to the unspoken decision that the safety of the people, and not us mice, was the priority.

"Toontastic!" I shouted, above the sound of the mayhem all around us.

Miss Toontastic whipped round to face me.

"Help him find the gas main!" I shouted.

Miss Toontastic took a half-second to consider what I said, then fixed me with a look of determination, and then a nod. She turned to the old man.

"Let's go!" she said.

She offered the old man her hand, which the old man took without hesitation. Together, with Miss Toontastic helping the old man along, they hurried off down the street in search of the gas main.

The remaining men looked from me, and then to Clang, who had switched to hoisting Soaks over his shoulder (gripping Soak's by the thick leathery folds of his were-salamander-hide).

FWOOSH!

Another huge burst of fire shot out of the building. The men backed away.

"That's it," said one of the men, "There's nothing more we can do! We need to get everyone to a safe distance!"

"A boy's mum's in there!" I shouted back, "Did you get her out?!"

One of the men shook his head, a look of despair on his face.

"We heard her screaming!" the man shouted, "We tried gettin' to her but it's been too long!"

The men backed away from the building, and also gave Clang and me a wide berth, and saw to making sure the people watching nearby were aware of the danger they were in.

"We need to get everyone away from here!" one of the men shouted, "This street's not safe!"

Despite no longer being normal, I still felt powerless to help the situation. I looked ahead to the fiery blaze atop the collapsed building debris, and asked myself if it was worth running into that fire to try and see if there was still some small chance of saving that boy's mother, and anyone else that might be trapped in the building.

But I had no power left to give. Which left – THUD.

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Clang had dropped Soaks to the ground.

"Keep a watch on Soaks," Clang's voice rang as his golden mask took on a somewhat liquid texture beneath the light of the raging fire ahead of him.

Clang charged towards the blaze, going up the fallen debris and into the domain of fire.

Seconds passed. If there was any sound of Clang moving around somewhere within the building I couldn't hear it.

After about a minute I had already triple-checked on Soaks to make sure his unconscious, limbless body was still right where Clang had dropped him.

Further down the street I caught a glimpse of Miss Toontastic knelt beside the old man.

Miss Toontastic had yanked away the gas main covering, and had started to reach down into the ground to get at what was likely the valve to shut the gas main off (without tools to get the job done, her superhuman strength would have to make up the difference).

Another explosion rumbled from somewhere within the collapsed building. My hope for Clang to make a quick return diminished. He was tough, but I wasn't sure he was tough enough to last so long somewhere within the fire.

CRACK-CRACK

The building began to fully collapse in on itself.

"CLANG!" I shouted desperately.

A horrible grinding sound filled the air as the building was on its very last legs.

"Get away!" someone yelled from behind me.

I started to back up.

FWOOSH! CLANG!

I saw something shining and gold and tinged with silver hurtling out of the collapsing building just before the last of the brick and mortar toppled down with an almighty crash.

And there, in the middle of the street, was Clang.

He'd survived.

But in his arms was what remained of the boy's mother. Her body was horribly burnt and covered in a thick layer of what looked like soot.

I sprinted over to Clang and he turned to face me. There was sympathy in his golden eyes – a sense of defeat.

The woman in his arms had a great deal of her skin burned away – her face badly burnt too.

Dead? I thought, in stupified horror.

And then I heard it.

A gasping, desperate noise.

She was still breathing.

Clang set her onto the ground, likely because his arms, where he had held her, had continued to cook at her flesh.

"I tried!" Clang's voice rang with a desperation I hadn't heard from him before, "I'm sorry! I'm sorry!"

I fell to my knees.

Is this it? I thought, Is there nothing we can do?

"MUMMA!" came a shrill cry.

My heart felt like it was being torn apart. The boy who had asked me to save his mother squatted down beside me.

He continued to cry, seeing his mother in such a wretched state no child should ever have to see.

No, I thought.

I refused to accept there was nothing I could do.

I had the power. There had to be something. Anything!

Working mostly on dumb instinct, I brought my hands to the mother's horribly burnt skin and willed for the power to fix her.

At first it was nothing more than a hopeless wish – little more than begging for something I knew to be impossible.

But then I felt it. A wriggling sensation in my hands.

The power threw up alarm bells in my head telling me that what I was doing was not just dangerous, it was going to do something likely as irreversible as killing me.

Good, I thought, that means I can still do more!

I kept pushing, far beyond the threshold and any thought of being careful with the power.

And then I felt it. My hands up to my wrists unravelled into thick strands of sinew – just like the Slip-suit, but no longer something external from me. My hands were sinew.

Part instinct, and part conscious decision brought about by my experience of using the Slip-suit, the medical knowledge, and the healing power – I willed the sinew strands to reach over as much of the boy's dying mother as possible.

The more the sinew reached over the burnt flesh, the greater an internal sense of the mother's life vitals I was aware of. She was on the brink of death – perhaps only by sheer dogged determination she hadn't already given up and let herself pass into oblivion. She had something to live for – I could sense it in every desperate beat of her failing heart. It wasn't that she had any awareness of what I was doing to try and save her. It was merely her dying wish to stay alive for her son, something she wanted so deeply it was hardly a rational thought and something far deeper, far more profound. She had heard her son crying her name and that was what was making her cling to life with every last bit of strength available to her. And if she was trying so much not to give in, to not surrender herself to defeat, then who was I not to keep fighting too?

The sinew which had taken root in my hands spread over most of the mother's dying body. I continued to push the power further than I thought it possible for me to do. My arms were turning a dark red, and taking on sinew-strand-lines which contoured the musculature.

Pain joined this process. That's how I knew the power had really started to work the way I intended it to. Pain was a necessary part of healing. Of growing strong again – stronger than what came before. Rather than run away from it, I had to embrace it to move forward. There wasn't any other way.

The agony of the mother's charred flesh healing became my agony. And my body in turn was changing, taking on a dark red form all over as if I were becoming the Slip-suit, rather than simply wearing it.

But there was still time to stop. The power was telling me as much.

The pain climbed until I found myself letting out a scream at the top of my lungs.

A threshold was reached. If I didn't stop there would be no going back.

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