InsaneJournal

Log: Human Torch and Pyro
Who: St. John Allerdyce and Jonathan Storm
When: March 15, 2008
Where: Washington, D.C.
What: Pyro and the Human Torch throw down. Puh-leeze. It needed its very own log.



Pyro was in his element, and it meant that there were flames everywhere. He needed this. He needed to fight, and it meant that he was setting people on fire left and right----civilians, police officers, anyone who came near him. He was blowing up cars because it was fun. He'd gone so long feeling helpless that he needed this exercise----but he was still holding back. He could blow up cars but he didn't dare touch the buildings. This was their Washington; he wasn't going to destroy it. Not unless he was told. But the sapiens? The mutants that Xavier had rounded up? Please. They were all fair game.

He was dressed in his long brown leather coat with the flame detailing, feeling perfectly badass with the ignitors meticulously strapped to his arms. He had enough lighter fluid to last a lifetime. No one was going to fuck with him.

Johnny Storm didn’t seem too concerned about the insanity surrounding him. Granted, he never seemed too concerned about anything, but this was one of those times when he should have been feeling outnumbered and worried, assuming he’d been born with the ability to feel those things. Those were the sorts of things he left up to his sister who he might have displayed some concern for, if he hadn’t known that she was perfectly capable of taking care of herself. So, instead of hovering around as backup for her, he took to the sky, blasting the Brotherhood members that hadn’t fallen yet and having to tone down the flames to drag the ones who had to Suzy’s forcefield.

He wasn’t particularly one for massive carnage and bloodshed --- or at all one for that sort of thing --- but the area that seemed to be engulfed with flames caught his attention most quickly and he started in that direction, still aflame to avoid the repercussions of getting hit by a stray bullet. And when he saw the cause of all the fire, Johnny literally groaned. “Aw, crap. Are you kidding me? Aren’t you supposed to be preserving all this for your buddy, Magneto?”

Pyro turned sharply, creating a crescent of flames in the grass. The Human Torch? Xavier had nabbed the fucking Fantastic Four? And of all the people in the world, he had to come head to head with motherfucking Johnny Storm? Any Brotherhood member or self-proclaimed supervillain worth his balls knew Johnny Storm. The son of a bitch reveled in fame.

"Sometimes stuff has to get dirty before it gets clean again," he said over the roar of all that fire. The guy was completely in flames. Pyro once knew a girl who had pretty much the same powers, and he didn't seem all that concerned right about now. "You come to stop me, Storm?"

“That was pretty much the point,” Johnny said --- although, maybe if he’d thought this through a little better, he’d realize the one crucial mistake he was making at the moment. But he seemed to have some sort of mental block against thinking things through. Or maybe it was just laziness.

But he’d heard of Pyro. Sort of. Johnny didn’t really pay much attention to what he considered the small fish, more concerned with his superhero fame, attention, and showing off. And from what little he did know, Pyro couldn’t even create his own flames. Weak. “Nice flame thrower,” he offered, off-handedly. Or whatever the hell it was Pyro had strapped to him.

Pyro flashed a grin. "You bet," he said, winking, before he thrust his hands out and used his powers to chuck Johnny into a bus.

That was the last thing Johnny had been expecting and the initial impact hurt like a bitch, before his flames started burning through the side of the bus and he landed inside, the vinyl seats going up in flames first and the rest of the bus following before it turned into its own mini-inferno.

And still he stayed in fire-form, though about two minutes passed before he climbed out of the mess of melted plastic and metal. “Dude. Not. Cool.” He sounded disgruntled, his pride bruised, but hardly out for the count.

Pyro spread his hands helplessly. "Dude, too bad." This time, he was using his powers to throw Johnny up into the air and slam him back down into the ground, and in the back of his mind he was wondering if he could use them to tear Johnny to shreds... separating the flames from their human shape. It wasn't as easy to manipulate Johnny as it was to use his powers otherwise, but Pyro was relatively fresh to the fight and full of pent-up energy.

"I control fire, you stupid shit."

Johnny groaned (that hurt, he was not amused, and he’d be damned if he was going to let this asshole fire-controller with a vat of lighter fluid strapped to his waist kick his ass). But, oh, that was right, hitting the ground hard hurt.

He lifted his head, glaring at the younger man. It might have been difficult to tell what with his eyes being made of flame and all, but it was definitely a glare. Shoving himself back up, he used his own powers, or rather, his own flames, as a weapon, hurtling them in Pyro’s direction with enough force to knock anyone else back and sear through clothing.

"Shit!" Pyro started to duck, but he wasn't quite fast enough, and he was hit hard, hurtling back against a small tree. The moment he could compose himself he was trying to use his own powers to control the stream and direct them back at Johnny----but that wasn't exactly easy. He didn't burn if he was in control of the flames, but he hadn't been, and now, good chunks of his coat were burned away. The only thing that kept him from going up like an atom bomb was the fact that the lighter fluid he carried was protected by fire-resistant casings.

“How’s that feel, douchebag?” Johnny grumbled, even as he was focusing attention towards trying to put out some of the flames in their immediate environment before they caused anymore damage. The good news was that the flames thrown back in his direction didn’t hurt him. The bad was that being around this much heat and fire was going to make it incredibly difficult to power down. Once he got it through his thick skull that that would be a good idea anyway.

So Pyro couldn't actually hurt him with fire. Great. Just fucking great. He'd have to tear him apart as long as he was on fire. Focusing on holding Johnny's flames back was easier when Johnny was trying to put out fires at the same time----and John could focus on exactly what he wanted to do: tear Johnny apart by manipulating his fiery body not as a whole unit, but as individual sections. Stretch him, mold him, break him, if he could.

“You’re not even immune to fire, are you? What can you---” Which was right about when the sharp pain of Pyro attempting to rip his body apart. And Johnny literally screamed, though it was muffled, once he realized what was happening, making a futile effort to shut his flames off. Though the combination of Pyro being in control of the flames around his body and the energy he’d picked up from the surrounding fires.

Pyro might not have been so cruel under normal circumstances, but Johnny was picking on him and he didn't take kindly to that these days. "I can do this, motherfucker!" he snarled, and with a surge of energy he was prepare to rip off Johnny's limbs----

Except it didn't happen.

It didn't happen and Pyro seemed to lose his connection to Johnny's fire. Something seemed to ripple the air for just a moment, a dull, barely-there sound. He took a slow step back, looking down at his hands. "What the fuck. What the..." He flexed his hands and flames leapt to life, but when he attempted to throw them, nothing happened apart from the effort blowing the flames out. No. No, no, no.

Well, it was about damn time. Johnny had been expecting Pulse’s powers to kick in at some point, and had also been informed that they probably wouldn’t affect him… given his non-x-gene status and all. And that seemed to be the case, because Johnny’s flames didn’t go out even though he definitely felt the lack of pull --- and was more than grateful for it.

“Not having so much for now, huh, jackass,” he said, climbing back to his feet now that the pain was gone. And then he was up and creating a circular wall of flame around Pyro, walking through that wall and looking something akin to… no, he definitely looked smug.

This was hell. This was hell and he was going to face his death with fire, Pyro thought. The irony was cruel and no amount of belittling torture from the last six months could prepare him for this kind of feeling. Surrounded with his element but unable to do anything with it. What the fuck was going on?

He was normally impervious to the heat of the flames but with this wall of fire he felt his skin get hotter than normal, start to blister. He wasn't in control, the fire wasn't his, and he knew that he hadn't blown out his powers. He couldn't have. There had to be something going on.

Slumped on his knees, Pyro looked up at Johnny, horrified. "You son of a bitch, what did you do----?!"

“Oh, get up,” Johnny snapped, actually annoyed. He was pretty sure that if Pulse had been all of two seconds later he’d be missing a limb. And while the ladies might be lining up to play nurse to him, he didn’t really want to go through life without his limbs.

He grabbed Pyro by the front of the coat --- the unburned part --- reducing the heat of his flame form so that he didn’t burn right through the material and dragged John up to his feet. “Come on. We’ve got a nice SHIELD cell waiting for you.”

Pyro actually chuckled, though there was no humor in it and it was genuinely unhinged. "No... no, I'm not going to prison again," he said, smacking Johnny's hand away and backing up. Uh-uh. No way in fucking hell. And a SHIELD prison? Gwen had been chipped in a SHIELD prison.

Johnny crossed his arms, letting Pyro back up all he wanted. He was going to have to stop sometime or risk being burned alive. Then again, the guy sounded a little… not right in the head, judging from his tone of voice. “Uh huh. Sorry. SHIELD prison for you. Let’s go. I’ve got other people to round up. And better things to do than waste my time chasing down you dirtbags.”

"I said I'm not going." And it looked like Pyro was going to back into the wall and purposefully burn himself alive before he went to prison.

“Other option is burning alive. That’d probably hurt,” Johnny said, rather casual about the whole thing. “A lot.”

"You bet," Pyro whispered, back far enough that the edge of his coat had caught fire.

Okay. Shit. Johnny hadn’t really expected the guy to be psycho enough to deliberately set himself on fire. “Alright. That’s far enough. Don’t make me knock you out and drag you there.”

Pyro took another step back. He was shaking, the flames were creeping up his back and it hurt, but he knew he'd rather die than go back to prison, and if he had to die... he'd go up in flames.

---But then suddenly, he was able to feel the fire in a way that he hadn't been able to before. The dull pulsing hum in the air, barely audible, was suddenly gone and he felt his powers surge back to life. All of a sudden, the wall of flames was imploding on itself, rushing harmlessly around Pyro, closing up, and ending up as two balls of fire in his hands. And Johnny.. stupid Johnny was still on fire.

Screaming with the relief of having his powers back, he threw the Human Torch into the air and slammed him as hard as he could back into the ground. "Teach you to motherfucking mess with me! The fuck I'm going back to prison!"

And then, he was practically leaping on top of Johnny, kicking him viciously in the side and not caring what it did to his clothes or to his skin.

Someone could have informed Johnny that the power-outage wasn’t going to last ---- or maybe they had and he just hadn’t been listening at the time (there were some pretty hot superheroes and military women they’d gotten to team up with who’d been around during debriefing). So when the fire when out, Johnny wasn’t prepared for it. And he definitely wasn’t prepared for being thrown against the ground again and tackled.

The first few blows landed home without him even thinking to defend himself against them. And then it took another few seconds for him to realize that he needed to fight back. Going to grab Pyro by the coat and shove him back did…. pretty much nothing. Not when he was still aflame.

It torched his coat pretty nice but Pyro could still throw him down, and all he seemed to care about now was hurting him as badly as I could. "I said I'm not going, did you motherfucking hear me?!" Just before he punched him in the face, even if it singed the skin of his hand.

…This guy was apeshit crazy. That was about as coherent as a thought as Johnny could muster. And, had he not been in flames, by now, he probably would have been spitting up blood.

Johnny coughed, unable to defend himself when his entire body was technically being controlled by someone else. And it was that last blow that hit home hard enough to knock him unconscious. Which was, ironically, the one thing that made him automatically turn off the flames and would have enabled him to fight back.

When the flames were gone, Pyro looked utterly confused. He backed off, hands in the air like he'd accidentally killed him. His clothes were in burned tatters, his skin blistered and red in places. Breathing heavily and still trying to find his sense of balance, he brought himself up to stand.

---And then, just for good measure, he gave Johnny Storm one last solid kick in the face.

"Told you."