Post by Pyro on Aug 30, 2006 5:33:05 GMT -5
((Flashback written with Kaylan NPC assistance - many thanks.))
----
He had walked out of the children's home three months ago. They'd not made any effort to stop him and hadn't bothered to report him as a missing person. It was the way things went with certain establishments. The departure had been mutually beneficial. The home lost one of their biggest trouble-makers, and the boy got his much-longed for independence.
It had come at a cost, but he was too proud to admit defeat.
Besides, reasoned the fifteen-year old John Allerdyce, who was shivering in a doorway, his coat pulled around him tightly, this arrangement was infinitely better. Who needed central heating, or a bed, or even regular meals?
He felt like crying, but swallowed the tears back and tried to close his eyes for some sleep.
"Well, what do we have here."
Running his fingers through scruffy curls, Dave looked down at the skinny little runt who was in his doorway. His doorway.
The streets could be a harsh place for kids to live, and the seventeen well knew it. He'd been living out there for three years now, had become accustomed to the life, and he'd gotten to know all the locals. Everyone knew the natural order of things, and he'd managed to clear out his little niche in the city the only way he knew - with his fists.
Apparently, though, not everyone knew the way things worked in this little scrap of the neighbourhood, cause there was some kid shivering in his spot.
"Who the fuck are you?"
The boy, thin and undersized even before he had come out on the streets, cracked open his eyes and looked up.
"I'm John," he said, answering what seemed, in his tired state of mind to be nothing more than an innocent question. In the three months he'd been out here, he'd never once encountered any trouble worse than a fight with another kid his own age over an abandoned bucket of KFC.
He'd lost.
Raising his eyebrows, Dave looked down at the kid and cracked his knuckles. He was a big guy, who knew it, and generally he didn't have to explain himself. The guy sitting on the ground actually reminded him a little bit of himself when he'd first started out, not that it counted for anything. He had a reputation to maintain, and that particular doorway was sheltered from the wind in a way that did actually help on a cold night.
"That's nice, John. I'm Dave. And that's my spot." He hoped that the kid was going to be reasonable and not make him beat his ass. Cause there was no question about how it would go.
He might have been cold, tired, hungry and more than a little intimidated by the bigger boy, but something cracked in John at that point, prompting him to reply in a way that he'd never otherwise have done.
Perhaps it was BECAUSE he was cold, tired, hungry and intimidated.
"Don't see your name on it," he retorted. "There's other doorways, and I got here first. I'm just passing through and I'll be gone in the morning. So if you don't mind, I'm just gonna close my eyes and go to sleep now."
He closed his eyes, his heart pounding painfully in his chest.
They were almost never reasonable.
Dave didn't want to beat the snot out of them. He didn't enjoy beating the snot out of them. Well, sometimes he did, but in general it wasn't something that he did because he liked it. It was a necessity, the kind of thing that had to be done to keep them all off your back. Give a finger to one, and the rest would take an arm.
"You don't see my name on it, cause most people are smart enough to get the fuck out when I tell them to." His voice was low and even, the kind of threat that was even more real because there was no attempt at sounding menacing. It was a simple statement of fact. John would get out of his doorway if he valued his pretty face.
"So if you don't mind, you're going to move to one of those other doorways, or I'm going to have to beat the shit out of you." Again, simple statement of fact - in fact, Dave just sounded conversational when he said it. It could be... unsettling to some people.
Unsettling to some people, yes. But John, despite his youth, was not 'some people'. He was John. And he had had enough. He opened his eyes again.
"You want a fight?" he said, sitting up into a more comfortable position. "Dude, I can give you a fight if that's what you want." He wasn't scared of the concept and, to be fair to him, had held his own against the bullies at the children's home on more than one occasion.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out the plain Zippo lighter that he'd found only a day or so before. He was fascinated by the thing and had already found it curiously therapeutic to snap it open, flick it lit, then close it with a satisfying metallic 'clink'. He was thinking of stealing some paints from a hobby shop, maybe customising it a bit.
He lit the flame and looked into it casually.
His tendency to pyromania had been one of the reasons the children's home had been glad to see the back of him.
"Seems like you're the one who wants a fight, kid." Dave looked down at him with amusement written all over his face. Look at you! What are you going to do? When the scrawny little kid flicked open the Zippo, though, he actually did laugh.
"That supposed to scare me? Ooooh, look out, what are you going to do, set my pants on fire?" He was tempted to start with the kicking right then and there, but it just felt too easy.
"Come on kid, get up, don't make me do this." His shoulders shook with amusement still.
Why can't they just be reasonable?
"I'm not making you do anything, dude." John shrugged his thin shoulders easily and snapped the Zippo on and off again. "And I don't particularly plan on doing anything either. So why don't you just go away and leave me alone to sleep? I promise you I'll be gone in the morning."
On. Off. On.
He stared at the flame. A few days ago, he'd noticed that the Zippo seemed to have something of a malfunction, because he'd been staring into the flame, and it had flared up briefly and then settled down again. If only that would happen again now, it might look impressive enough for this jerk to leave him be.
The flame merely flickered steadily.
"I can't do that, kid." Squatting down to look through the flame at John, Dave shook his head. "If I let you stay here, everyone is going to try it on, and I can't have that."
Reaching out past the zippo, the big guy grasped John's coat and pulled him up to stand. Understandably, this was not the kind of action that would go down well, but it was the kind of thing he had to do. He towered over the kid, and though the coat added some bulk, it was obvious that the younger man was pretty scrawny. Wiry strength or not, this wasn't going to be a particularly difficult fight.
"Now, are you going to make me give you a kicking, or are you going to fuck off already?" It was said in that same conversational tone.
If John had been in the sort of position to have heard Jean Grey's recent speech regarding mutants and the manifestation of their powers, what happened next would probably have made much more sense.
"Mutation often manifests at puberty, frequently at times of heightened emotional stress."
There had never been a more heightened moment of emotional stress for the young man as he was hauled off his feet. He yelped in surprise at the suddenness of the movement and as if in response, the flame on the Zippo flared suddenly brighter and became more of a fireball than a flame.
"Huh."
That's interesting.
Apparently, the kid had a good reason for moving on in the morning. Right now, though, Dave would much prefer that the little mutie freak move on right about now. He drew a fist back.
"You going to fuck off, you little mutie freak, or do I have to fuck you up?" He was definitely not using a conversational tone now.
"I'm not a mutie freak," said John, who was staring in confusion at the lighter in his hand. "I didn't do that." Danger bells were screaming in his ears at the sight of the bigger boy's fists, but he was, at the same time, aware that confrontation was unavoidable now. "I didn't do that," he repeated.
"Well I sure as hell didn't do it." Dave looked around rather stupidly to see if anyone else was in their little alley, but there wasn't a hint of life other than them and a couple of rats. And he was pretty sure that they hadn't changed that flame. "And I don't see anyone else around here that could've done it, so maybe you should just move on now instead of in the morning." His eyes narrowed suspiciously, and his hands stayed where they were, one gripping John's shirt and the other drawn back and ready to strike.
John could have pleaded with the bigger boy not to hit him, but knew it would be futility. He could have tried fighting back, but knew that he would lose anyway. If there was one thing John Allerdyce wasn't, it was stupid.
Instead, he closed his eyes and took the full force of the first blow to his face. He tasted blood almost instantly as his nose and lip began to breathe. Terror filled him. I'm going to die like this, he thought, wretchedly. In this alleyway..
Then instead of terror, a strange sort of calm came over him. He flicked the lighter in his hand on again and took the flame into his palm, willing it into a fireball again.
To his surprise, it did.
"Let go of me," he said, and his tone was deeply menacing.
"You fuckin' mutie freak." Dave didn't let go.
The bigger boy didn't have anything against mutants in principle. Quite a few of them lived on the street, and some of them could be quite handy at times. The problem was when someone came and took his spot, refused to leave, and then on top of that turned out to be a mutant.
He didn't consider the possibility that John could be dangerous. Didn't consider the possibility that he could get himself killed over a doorway, and if he had considered it, it was doubtful that his actions would have changed. Dave lived by a loose code, but he'd always known that one day he'd die by it too. The streets weren't exactly kind, and they weren't the kind of place that you wanted to live for seventy years.
He didn't let go of John, even though there was now a fireball sitting in the kid's palm. Instead, he tried to strike again.
"I said," John repeated, in that same calm, cool tone, "let go of me."
He let the fireball fly towards his attacker.
Scared and uncertain, unknowing of his abilities, unsure of the power he could potentially wield, John had no control over the fireball, and it engulfed Dave within seconds.
One moment, he was swinging at John, and the next he was stumbling back screaming, patting at his clothes to try to put out the fire. It wasn't just his clothes, though, all of him was alight - and all he could see and feel was flames.
The stink of burning hair rose up as Dave dropped to the ground and rolled around. It didn't connect in his mind that it was coming from him, nor did he realise that the sounds he could hear echoing off the walls of the buildings were coming from his mouth either. All he could think of was the time a fireman had come out to his class when he was seven, and had told them to stop, drop and roll.
He was rolling around, panicked and screaming, but the flames didn't seem to be going out. All he could feel was the pain, all he could see were the flames, and all thought of John, and of his doorway, of his friends on the streets and his reputation were replaced by a desperate plea for it all to go away.
Eventually, the screaming stopped.
When the screaming stopped, so, for the briefest moment, did John's breathing as the realisation of what he had done, what he was, began to sink through his moment of confusion.
The stench of burning flesh sickened him to the stomach and he dropped to his knees and threw up violently. He stared at the charred corpse, the boy he had just killed and knew at that moment what it was to experience total, absolute terror.
He'd just murdered someone.
Wiping the vomit from his face, his whole body shaking, John snatched the lighter shut and stumbled blindly out of the alleyway, not knowing where he was going, only knowing that he had to go there.
----
He had walked out of the children's home three months ago. They'd not made any effort to stop him and hadn't bothered to report him as a missing person. It was the way things went with certain establishments. The departure had been mutually beneficial. The home lost one of their biggest trouble-makers, and the boy got his much-longed for independence.
It had come at a cost, but he was too proud to admit defeat.
Besides, reasoned the fifteen-year old John Allerdyce, who was shivering in a doorway, his coat pulled around him tightly, this arrangement was infinitely better. Who needed central heating, or a bed, or even regular meals?
He felt like crying, but swallowed the tears back and tried to close his eyes for some sleep.
"Well, what do we have here."
Running his fingers through scruffy curls, Dave looked down at the skinny little runt who was in his doorway. His doorway.
The streets could be a harsh place for kids to live, and the seventeen well knew it. He'd been living out there for three years now, had become accustomed to the life, and he'd gotten to know all the locals. Everyone knew the natural order of things, and he'd managed to clear out his little niche in the city the only way he knew - with his fists.
Apparently, though, not everyone knew the way things worked in this little scrap of the neighbourhood, cause there was some kid shivering in his spot.
"Who the fuck are you?"
The boy, thin and undersized even before he had come out on the streets, cracked open his eyes and looked up.
"I'm John," he said, answering what seemed, in his tired state of mind to be nothing more than an innocent question. In the three months he'd been out here, he'd never once encountered any trouble worse than a fight with another kid his own age over an abandoned bucket of KFC.
He'd lost.
Raising his eyebrows, Dave looked down at the kid and cracked his knuckles. He was a big guy, who knew it, and generally he didn't have to explain himself. The guy sitting on the ground actually reminded him a little bit of himself when he'd first started out, not that it counted for anything. He had a reputation to maintain, and that particular doorway was sheltered from the wind in a way that did actually help on a cold night.
"That's nice, John. I'm Dave. And that's my spot." He hoped that the kid was going to be reasonable and not make him beat his ass. Cause there was no question about how it would go.
He might have been cold, tired, hungry and more than a little intimidated by the bigger boy, but something cracked in John at that point, prompting him to reply in a way that he'd never otherwise have done.
Perhaps it was BECAUSE he was cold, tired, hungry and intimidated.
"Don't see your name on it," he retorted. "There's other doorways, and I got here first. I'm just passing through and I'll be gone in the morning. So if you don't mind, I'm just gonna close my eyes and go to sleep now."
He closed his eyes, his heart pounding painfully in his chest.
They were almost never reasonable.
Dave didn't want to beat the snot out of them. He didn't enjoy beating the snot out of them. Well, sometimes he did, but in general it wasn't something that he did because he liked it. It was a necessity, the kind of thing that had to be done to keep them all off your back. Give a finger to one, and the rest would take an arm.
"You don't see my name on it, cause most people are smart enough to get the fuck out when I tell them to." His voice was low and even, the kind of threat that was even more real because there was no attempt at sounding menacing. It was a simple statement of fact. John would get out of his doorway if he valued his pretty face.
"So if you don't mind, you're going to move to one of those other doorways, or I'm going to have to beat the shit out of you." Again, simple statement of fact - in fact, Dave just sounded conversational when he said it. It could be... unsettling to some people.
Unsettling to some people, yes. But John, despite his youth, was not 'some people'. He was John. And he had had enough. He opened his eyes again.
"You want a fight?" he said, sitting up into a more comfortable position. "Dude, I can give you a fight if that's what you want." He wasn't scared of the concept and, to be fair to him, had held his own against the bullies at the children's home on more than one occasion.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out the plain Zippo lighter that he'd found only a day or so before. He was fascinated by the thing and had already found it curiously therapeutic to snap it open, flick it lit, then close it with a satisfying metallic 'clink'. He was thinking of stealing some paints from a hobby shop, maybe customising it a bit.
He lit the flame and looked into it casually.
His tendency to pyromania had been one of the reasons the children's home had been glad to see the back of him.
"Seems like you're the one who wants a fight, kid." Dave looked down at him with amusement written all over his face. Look at you! What are you going to do? When the scrawny little kid flicked open the Zippo, though, he actually did laugh.
"That supposed to scare me? Ooooh, look out, what are you going to do, set my pants on fire?" He was tempted to start with the kicking right then and there, but it just felt too easy.
"Come on kid, get up, don't make me do this." His shoulders shook with amusement still.
Why can't they just be reasonable?
"I'm not making you do anything, dude." John shrugged his thin shoulders easily and snapped the Zippo on and off again. "And I don't particularly plan on doing anything either. So why don't you just go away and leave me alone to sleep? I promise you I'll be gone in the morning."
On. Off. On.
He stared at the flame. A few days ago, he'd noticed that the Zippo seemed to have something of a malfunction, because he'd been staring into the flame, and it had flared up briefly and then settled down again. If only that would happen again now, it might look impressive enough for this jerk to leave him be.
The flame merely flickered steadily.
"I can't do that, kid." Squatting down to look through the flame at John, Dave shook his head. "If I let you stay here, everyone is going to try it on, and I can't have that."
Reaching out past the zippo, the big guy grasped John's coat and pulled him up to stand. Understandably, this was not the kind of action that would go down well, but it was the kind of thing he had to do. He towered over the kid, and though the coat added some bulk, it was obvious that the younger man was pretty scrawny. Wiry strength or not, this wasn't going to be a particularly difficult fight.
"Now, are you going to make me give you a kicking, or are you going to fuck off already?" It was said in that same conversational tone.
If John had been in the sort of position to have heard Jean Grey's recent speech regarding mutants and the manifestation of their powers, what happened next would probably have made much more sense.
"Mutation often manifests at puberty, frequently at times of heightened emotional stress."
There had never been a more heightened moment of emotional stress for the young man as he was hauled off his feet. He yelped in surprise at the suddenness of the movement and as if in response, the flame on the Zippo flared suddenly brighter and became more of a fireball than a flame.
"Huh."
That's interesting.
Apparently, the kid had a good reason for moving on in the morning. Right now, though, Dave would much prefer that the little mutie freak move on right about now. He drew a fist back.
"You going to fuck off, you little mutie freak, or do I have to fuck you up?" He was definitely not using a conversational tone now.
"I'm not a mutie freak," said John, who was staring in confusion at the lighter in his hand. "I didn't do that." Danger bells were screaming in his ears at the sight of the bigger boy's fists, but he was, at the same time, aware that confrontation was unavoidable now. "I didn't do that," he repeated.
"Well I sure as hell didn't do it." Dave looked around rather stupidly to see if anyone else was in their little alley, but there wasn't a hint of life other than them and a couple of rats. And he was pretty sure that they hadn't changed that flame. "And I don't see anyone else around here that could've done it, so maybe you should just move on now instead of in the morning." His eyes narrowed suspiciously, and his hands stayed where they were, one gripping John's shirt and the other drawn back and ready to strike.
John could have pleaded with the bigger boy not to hit him, but knew it would be futility. He could have tried fighting back, but knew that he would lose anyway. If there was one thing John Allerdyce wasn't, it was stupid.
Instead, he closed his eyes and took the full force of the first blow to his face. He tasted blood almost instantly as his nose and lip began to breathe. Terror filled him. I'm going to die like this, he thought, wretchedly. In this alleyway..
Then instead of terror, a strange sort of calm came over him. He flicked the lighter in his hand on again and took the flame into his palm, willing it into a fireball again.
To his surprise, it did.
"Let go of me," he said, and his tone was deeply menacing.
"You fuckin' mutie freak." Dave didn't let go.
The bigger boy didn't have anything against mutants in principle. Quite a few of them lived on the street, and some of them could be quite handy at times. The problem was when someone came and took his spot, refused to leave, and then on top of that turned out to be a mutant.
He didn't consider the possibility that John could be dangerous. Didn't consider the possibility that he could get himself killed over a doorway, and if he had considered it, it was doubtful that his actions would have changed. Dave lived by a loose code, but he'd always known that one day he'd die by it too. The streets weren't exactly kind, and they weren't the kind of place that you wanted to live for seventy years.
He didn't let go of John, even though there was now a fireball sitting in the kid's palm. Instead, he tried to strike again.
"I said," John repeated, in that same calm, cool tone, "let go of me."
He let the fireball fly towards his attacker.
Scared and uncertain, unknowing of his abilities, unsure of the power he could potentially wield, John had no control over the fireball, and it engulfed Dave within seconds.
One moment, he was swinging at John, and the next he was stumbling back screaming, patting at his clothes to try to put out the fire. It wasn't just his clothes, though, all of him was alight - and all he could see and feel was flames.
The stink of burning hair rose up as Dave dropped to the ground and rolled around. It didn't connect in his mind that it was coming from him, nor did he realise that the sounds he could hear echoing off the walls of the buildings were coming from his mouth either. All he could think of was the time a fireman had come out to his class when he was seven, and had told them to stop, drop and roll.
He was rolling around, panicked and screaming, but the flames didn't seem to be going out. All he could feel was the pain, all he could see were the flames, and all thought of John, and of his doorway, of his friends on the streets and his reputation were replaced by a desperate plea for it all to go away.
Eventually, the screaming stopped.
When the screaming stopped, so, for the briefest moment, did John's breathing as the realisation of what he had done, what he was, began to sink through his moment of confusion.
The stench of burning flesh sickened him to the stomach and he dropped to his knees and threw up violently. He stared at the charred corpse, the boy he had just killed and knew at that moment what it was to experience total, absolute terror.
He'd just murdered someone.
Wiping the vomit from his face, his whole body shaking, John snatched the lighter shut and stumbled blindly out of the alleyway, not knowing where he was going, only knowing that he had to go there.
