Phoenix Holdings was a shell, a name on paper. To make it a weapon, Mo Chen needed capital, infrastructure, and intelligence. Her daily burning quota of $50,000 was a start, but it was slow. She needed a bigger bonfire.
Her first target was the wreckage of the Thorne empire. The family's assets were being liquidated by the government to pay fines and compensate victims. Mo Chen, as a primary victim, had a legitimate claim. But she wasn't interested in cash settlements. She wanted the physical, the tangible, the burnable.
Through a series of shell companies and anonymous bids, Phoenix Holdings began acquiring the oddest lots from the Thorne fire sale: a warehouse full of obsolete corporate server hardware, a fleet of decommissioned company cars, the entire contents of a Thorne-owned textile mill that had been shuttered for a decade.
Her Nevada hangar began to fill with the spoils of her first conquered enemy. It was a scavenger's hoard, and she was the dragon sitting on top of it, ready to burn it all down.
Her first major burn was the textile mill's inventory. Bales of unsold fabric, industrial looms, drums of chemical dyes. She spent a week systematically destroying it. She used her [Immolate] ability to incinerate the fabric, the plasma cutter to dismantle the machinery, and the sledgehammer for everything else. The work was grueling, a daily meditation on destruction.
[$2.1 million USD in physical assets destroyed. Weekly quota exceeded. Personal funds increased by $10,500.]
The money was secondary. The act itself was the point. With each burn, she felt her [Minor Pyrokinesis] grow more responsive, the flames leaping more eagerly to her call. The system was rewarding not just the act, but the scale and consistency of her commitment to consumption.
She was no longer just burning for survival. She was burning to grow stronger.