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“Abbott and Costello.”

“Okay.”

“Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.”

“Okay.”

“Power Man and Iron Fist.”

I snort. “Well, now you’re just being deliberately provocative…”

“I’m just saying, is all,” The Torch murmurs. “When you think about it, whilst we’re a classic team-up, we’re not necessarily the classic team-up.”

“How about if we buy a couple of recliners and a table soccer game and a duck and share an apartment across the hall from a couple of cuties who never quite scaled the celluloid career ladder?”

“I hate chicks with celluloid. They need to hit the gym.”

I stare at my companion. Johnny stares back. “What?”

“Nothing. Just… yeah.”

It’s half past midnight and the building at the Soho address is an eerie, black, ten-storey monolith, surrounded on all sides by similar tenements, tightly packed in neat rows. The Torch and I are perched on the edge of a roof belonging to one of these other residences. We’re sharing Tacos. Far below, the streets undulate with the flashing red and blue lights of patrol cars, but this stakeout, purposefully conspicuous, is also unfortunately superfluous. The – how do you say? – supervillain who is targeting these properties hasn’t been deterred by an extensive police presence on previous occasions, and the likelihood that tonight will be any different is supermodel slim. That’s why the experts have been called in; experts being us, if you hadn’t already guessed. At least the building has been evacuated, as per the perpetrator’s instructions. Therefore, when he shows up The Torch and I know we can engage our quarry without fear of –

Tingle.

I duck.

Crunk.

“Ow! What the…?” The Torch drops his Taco – extra hot, naturally – and grasps the side of his head as he reels. At his feet lies a scattering of soil and shards of terracotta, and the remains of some rather pathetic-looking tulips. “That’s a flowerpot! Is that a flowerpot?”

“That is a flowerpot, yes,” I agree. “I think she was aiming at me, but that’s the advantage of tingling spider-sense.”

“She?”

I point. Directly across from us a burly figure is leaning out of a darkened window, shaking a mastodonic fist. “Pre-vert!” an only-just-female voice yells. “I’m bein’ spied on by pre-verts!”

The Torch grimaces. “I think she means you.”

“I think she’s remarkably prominent for someone who shouldn’t be loitering in an apartment that was supposedly evacuated,” I note. Then, with a sigh, I swing forward on a silvery web-line. “There’s always one, isn’t there…?”

The woman in the window shrieks, evidently less than delighted to see a masked man sweep through the air towards her. I know the feeling. Mine are usually packing pumpkins.

“Pre-vert! Pre-vert! Pre - ”

“Look, lady – and I’m using that honorific on trust rather than observational evidence, believe me – can you quit it with the sonic boom? I’m on official surveillance. Honestly. I wouldn’t lie. When I lie my nose grows, and in a mask this tight that’s just asking for lewd and inappropriate comments, comprende? Everyone in this block was given instruction to leave, so - ”

“You think you can screw me outta my own home?” the woman barks, snatching up another flowerpot from her sill. “I told that ditzy little tramp she could take her cheque and chew on it, and that’s the end of it! Eugenie-May Riddleditch ain’t nobody’s fool, y’hear?”

I flip in midair to avoid the pot hurled at my head, then land upon the wall directly above Eugenie-May Riddleditch’s window. “Hey, hey, enough with the plant-pitching already! You think Batman has to worry about being hit with flowerpots? No he does not. I - ”

But then? All hell breaks loose. And I mean that kinda literally.

A billowing cloud of flame erupts from overhead, sudden and violent, but I’m already moving, relinquishing my grip on the wall then twisting at the hips and snatching out at the whalesome harridan beneath me, all in one fluid movement. Fire scorches brick in my wake – one inch away from extra hot Spider-Taco – and then the wood of the window frame catches alight with an explosive flare. I roll, instinctively protecting Eugenie-May, and manage to swing clear of immediate danger with just a charred tush for my trouble.

Eugenie-May is squealing and wriggling like a hippo in mud. I think about dropping her. Honestly. Just for a second. But with great power comes great liability, so I don’t. Instead I deposit her on the roof of a neighbouring building, duck away from an intended slap, and another, and another, and then, with an exasperated “Rassin frassin…” snare her in a web cocoon, paying particular attention to the region of her super massive black hole of a mouth.

“Rrre-vrrrt!” Eugenie-May snuffles. “Rrre-vrrrt! Rrre - ”

“La la la la la not listening la la woah woah la la…”

I whirl, scowling beneath my mask. My first thought, born from my customarily short fuse, is that I’m going to douse Johnny Storm in the nearest water butt for trying to flash-fry me. In my defence, he has previously: the goof thinks it’s funny. But even as I spring forward and arc back towards the now-burning tenement before me, common sense prevails. Obviously it’s not The Human Torch who’s attacked me in this instance. It’s the – how do you say? – supervillain we’ve been conscripted to tackle. And now, when I glance up, I see The Torch embroiled in a midair confrontation with the perpetrator, and our enemy’s identity is revealed…

…and his name is Firebrand.

This living Molotov Cocktail is a dime-a-dozen hired thug rather than a megalomaniac of questionable mental faculty, but he’s a tricky proposition nonetheless. Clad in a slim-line suit of scarlet and gold body armour – a skinny-butt Iron Man if ever there was – Firebrand propels himself at formidable speed by jets in the soles of his boots, and can unleash violent torrents of flame from nozzles on the backs of his wrists. This fire is generated via a sophisticated circuit of piping that’s threaded throughout an inner layer of his suit and filled with compressed butane, which ignites upon contact with a trigger in his gauntlets in a similar fashion to the mechanics of a standard flamethrower. Impressive – well, to a science and engineering geek like me it is – and certainly fearsome in most circumstances, such as any situation where I’d have to face him on my own. Fortunately that’s not the case tonight. Comparing Firebrand to The Torch is like balancing the specs of a pocket calculator against a Dual-Core laptop. Ever since Johnny Storm was a reluctant member of an ill-fated excursion into outer space that exposed him to cosmic radiation, he hasn’t just possessed the paranormal ability to manipulate fire – he is fire. And, all my good-natured jokes at his expense aside, the guy’s an ace; you don’t survive all these years of Doctor Doom’s murderous attentions, not to mention those of Ben Grimm after burning strategically placed holes in his boxer shorts, without being capable of holding your own.

“Keep your distance, hotpants,” Firebrand snarls, his voice menacing beyond the faceplate of his scarlet mask. “I’m getting paid a pretty bundle for bringing the house down, but I’m more than happy to do you and the wall-crawler for free!”

The Torch laughs as he wheels in a circle, his entire body consumed in a sheathe of flames, a flickering golden trail in his wake. “Uh… yeah. Sorry to your spoil your plans, genius, but I think you’re overlooking the fact that I’m already lit up like Christmas – and there’ll be no more of that either!”

Firebrand turns back towards the tenement below and expels twin gusts of flame from his wrist-blasters – too fast and too distant for me to counter – but The Torch is alert to the danger. Speeding forward, he thrusts out a hand, his expression creased with concentration beneath the curtain of his fiery veil… and Firebrand’s flames abruptly flare and sweep out harmlessly in all directions apart from their original course, before fading in a shower of sparks and soot. Firebrand curses and makes another attempt to ignite his target, but with an identical result. The Torch drifts in a lazy spiral, arms outstretched. Showboat.

“Seriously,” he murmurs, “is that all you’ve got?”

“Just getting you into position, creep…”

Firebrand suddenly rears up and guns his boot jets, spearing towards his foe at a speed The Torch wasn’t anticipating. He also isn’t expecting Firebrand to attack head-on; with a few exceptions – the most notable being the aforementioned Ben Grimm, the ever-loving Thing and his teammate in the Fantastic Four – he isn’t used to anyone being able to approach him when he’s alight. Clad in his specially lined armour, Firebrand doesn’t have that problem. The villain slams into a startled Torch before he can take evasive action, sending him spinning downward – towards me, who is at that moment swinging up!

“Careful, matchstick,” I yell. “No checking out on me until I’ve got that ten bucks in my little red mitts!”

I flip sideways, instinctively avoiding my stunned friend’s trajectory before snaring his ankles with a perfectly placed web-thread and arresting his fall. I then have to somersault clear of another assault by Firebrand, yelping as I feel a bolt of flame singe my feet. All of a sudden I’m experiencing great empathy for the plight of extra hot tacos – let alone barbequed chicken, hot dogs, buffalo wings…

Shaking his head groggily, Johnny glances up from where he’s suspended in a web hammock between the cornices of two adjacent buildings. He grimaces. I bet he’s so glad Ben isn’t around to see him get cold-clocked like a novice. Overhead, my preternatural speed and reflexes are keeping me a step ahead of Firebrand’s attempts to cook me, but I’m finding it impossible to weave close enough to my enemy to land a blow without being overwhelmed by deadly flames. Smoke is curling from the eye-slits of the villain’s mask and from the joints of his armour, and he’s emanating incredible heat, keeping me at bay. My webs are also proving redundant, charred to cinders before they can snare my quarry. It’s a stalemate; fortunately the advantage of a team-up is that two heads were better than one…

“Hey, hotpants. Get ready to be extinguished!”

Firebrand turns to see The Torch circling him, and snorts. “And how are you planning to do that, idiot? This works both ways. I’m as immune to you as you are to me.”

“I’ve got a nova-flame that begs to differ,” The Torch declares, “but that’ll likely take out half the neighbourhood. So instead, let’s try this…”

The Human Torch’s ability to mentally manipulate fire – pyrokinesis – had already curtailed his foe’s efforts at causing the tenement below to catch ablaze; now he steps it up a level and concentrates his attention on Firebrand himself. Focussing his energies he begins to siphon away every last iota of flame and ambient heat the villain is generating, absorbing it into his own body and then expelling it harmlessly into the night sky. Firebrand roars and stabs furiously at the operating mechanisms on the palm pads of his gauntlets, unleashing two full torrents of searing flame… but to no avail. The Torch is more than capable of dealing with this threat – and that leaves Firebrand, no longer surrounded by a protective aura, utterly vulnerable. Realising that he’s been outmatched and now desperate to escape, the villain whirls in midair… and finds himself face-to-masked-face with me.

“Telegram for a Mister Firebug,” I cry. “Message: get snuffed!” And then I connect with a punch to the jaw so fierce it causes Firebrand’s helmet to detach from the collar of his suit with a gasp of steam and spin around like a gold and scarlet top whilst the man inside exhales a muffled squeal – and then sags unconscious into my arms.

“Nice catch,” murmurs The Torch. “So, we save the building and the Berlin twins’ finances, stop the bad guy… and you even find time for fringe benefits.”

I glance down at Firebrand, whose face is snuggled against me chest. “It isn’t what it looks like. We’re just good enemies.”

“I wasn’t talking about him – I was referring to your new lady-friend.”

He points down below, to where Eugenie-May Riddleditch is still snared in a web cocoon, her expression – what can be seen of it – quite decidedly livid. I sigh.

“Actually,” I say, “as much as I’d love everything to be wrapped up that neatly for once… there is one more piece of business to attend to before we can file this under cooked. Tomorrow morning we’re going to pay a house call…”