Family of Steel - Man on Fire

[Proto Man]

The smile on Heat Man’s face melted away to reveal an expression you’d expect to see one someone’s face if you tripped them or kicked their dog. “Those arrogant fools were trying to undermine the entire region in their pursuit of shiny rocks! I tried to tell them that I’d done enough surveys to know there aren’t diamonds in these mountains, but they wanted to go ahead with their dynamiting anyway. Do you know what would happen if you tried dynamiting below and around an active volcano like this one?”

“So you killed them?” Proto Man stated--his tone somewhere between a question and a demand.

“The operation they wanted to perform would have destroyed a twenty square-mile radius if they burst the volcano. There are wildlife that inhabit this area that you can’t find elsewhere in the verse, and many of the natives who cling to an existence use trails in this range to avoid inhospitable terrain. When I told them I would stop them, they took me prisoner and plotted to end me!”

“So you killed them?”

Heat Man’s entire body seemed to be trembling, and he must have been emitting heat, as the air around him seemed to ripple. “What would you have done, Proto Man? Died? Spent your days sealed up in a small, black cave with no escape?"

"So you burned them alive? Are you too physically weak to have dealt with them without slaughtering them like chattel?"

"I was saving lives!” Heat Man rasped. “Dozens would have perished if they hadn’t stopped their activities. I let them down humanely!”

“You burned them alive!” Proto Man retaliated as his left hand converted into a buster cannon. “I don’t think that falls under ethical execution methods.”

“Is that why you are here, Proto Man? To hunt me down like some cat burglar and put me out of my misery so you can avenge a few of the worst examples of humanity?”