Future God

Lamplighter frantically patted himself down, then looked up at the two Girls before him in alarm.

Slowly, his hands stopped moving.

The Girl beside Starlight, whose delicate face looked almost angelic, held a small silver metal rectangle and smiled at him.

"Looking for this?" the Girl asked.

Lamplighter went pale.

The Girl was holding his lighter.

The greatest flaw in Lamplighter's Psychic Powers was that he could control fire but couldn't create it.

He could turn a candle's feeble flame into a raging inferno. But if there was no fire around him, his Psychic Powers were useless.

Without it, he had nothing going for him beyond a body stronger than an ordinary person's.

And when it came to physical strength, Starlight was exceptional even among Espers. He was no match for her.

Worse, the situation was far more dire than he had imagined.

After the alarm sounded, two men with fierce expressions burst through the door.

Neither looked like someone to mess with.

One was a boy of seventeen or eighteen with a black metal bat over his shoulder. He looked every inch the delinquent who spent his days getting into fights.

The other was worse: a delinquent who had grown into a street thug. In Lamplighter's experience, bald men like him were often the most ruthless, heavy-handed troublemakers around.

Starlight had clearly come prepared. Two Espers against one weren't enough for her; she had brought two enforcers as well.

Lamplighter knew the girl beside Starlight had to be an Esper. Neither of them had touched him; they had stayed several yards away the entire time.

Yet somehow, that Girl had stolen his lighter.

And the enforcers they had brought specifically to deal with him were surely no ordinary street thugs. They had to be supervillains working for some organization.