Be careful what you wish for.

[xp_pyro]

I was always trying to be the good boy, y'know? I had my mom who worked nights as a cleaner, and prayed herself to the bone, and cradled her rosary beads as if they meant more to her than her kids, and I had my dad who worked days as a janitor, and so they were usually equally as tired and irritated as one another.

I had two elder sisters, one of whom got out, and the other who got onto crack, and that was fun. Every moth we would go on pilgrimage around New England to catch up with Mom's family and my cousins would kick the shit out of me, and I wouldn't tell anyone cause we had enough trouble as it was.

I usually had to take care of my younger siblings: two brothers and a sister. Good, large Catholic family that we were. And one day, I was cooking their lunch, and some fat spilled from the pan onto the stove, and whoosh, boom, fire. And it couldn't happen. It just couldn't. We didn't have the time, or the money to worry about such things, so I told the fire to stop.

And it did. There was some marks on the stove, mostly black smoke stuff, nothing I couldn't explain away, even if it did get me a cuff over the ear. So I started practising my power, in secret. Seeing what I could do, what I couldn't. Never burnt myself: I don't think I can be, but there you go.

I couldn't do it at home, with Mom proclaiming that mutants were against God's will, so I did it around the place. Now, I went with a gang. We weren't that pretty, and we weren't that smart. We were tough and proud and stupid, and we beat up people cause they looked funny or they looked at us funny, or we heard they were queer or a mutie or something. So, at times, I'd book and tell the gang I had stuff to do, and go practice honing my ability somewhere nice and secluded.

Then the gang nearly got busted one day, when I wasn't there. So they blamed me. They thought I was selling them out to the cops, or a rival gang, or something: after all, where else had I been going?

They beat me up. I dropped my lighter in the struggle, and I probably wouldn't have used it anyway. Because then they really would have killed me.

I ditched the gang, went back home, and got called up to this place a few days later.

The rest you know.

I doubt my folks even noticed that I've left.