We compare quiescent and flare X-ray spectra of the RS CVn binary \sigma Gem obtained with the Chandra and XMM-Newton grating spectrometers .
We find that in addition to an overall 25 % flux increase , which can be ascribed to variations in the system ’ s quiescence activity over the 15 months that passed between the observations , there is a hot plasma component of kT _ { e } \ga 3 keV that arises with the flare .
The hot component is manifested primarily by emission from high charge states of Fe and by a vast continuum .
The cooler ( kT _ { e } \la 2 keV ) plasma remains undisturbed during the flare .
We find no significant variations in the relative abundances during the flare except for a slight decrease ( < 30 % ) of O and Ne .