Leader of the Pack
"In my mind's eye, my thoughts light fires in your cities." - Charles Manson
Magneto regarded Pyro appraisingly as the young man walked toward him. "So, the prodigal one returns," he drawled.
"What? I don't get a hug?" Pyro smirked at his own wit. "It's done," he reported. "Atlanta went up in flames."
"We heard. It's all over the news." Mystique stepped out of the shadows. She smiled strangely as she went up to Pyro, then, suddenly, she struck him. Before he could react, she slipped a garrote around his neck and tightened it just enough to make him start gasping for breath. Magneto moved to stand in front of him then. The old man looked furious.
"You foolish, headstrong boy!" Magneto snarled. "My orders were simply to destroy the local headquarters of the Friends of Humanity. But you go and pull a stupid stunt like this!" When he saw that Pyro's face was starting to turn a sickly shade of blue, he gave an almost imperceptible nod to Mystique and she released the young mutant.
Pyro immediately fell to his knees and took in much-needed lungfuls of air. He choked and coughed for several minutes then he unsteadily got back on his feet. "What the fuck?! I thought - !" he sputtered. "I thought it was what you wanted!"
"Never, ever assume to know what I want again!" the older mutant sneered. "Because of what you did, the human authorities are on the hunt for you! Now they know who you are and what you're capable of. You won't be able to pass yourself off as one of them again, not for long anyway."
"So what?" Pyro exclaimed. "I don't want to pass myself off as one of them! I'm sick of all these missions you keep giving me where I always have to be among humans, sneaking around, pretending to be one of their kind! I want to be out there like you, fighting the war in the open! I want them to look at me and know what I am and be afraid!"
To his surprise, Magneto smiled. "You think you are ready to lead? Is that it?" He looked at Mystique. "My dear, our little Pyro here is trying to assert himself. Shall we let him?"
She shrugged in a bored manner. "Why not? As long as he understands he gets more than a spanking when he fails."
"I won't fail!" he swore and glared at her. "What is it?" he eagerly asked Magneto. "What do you want me to do? I'll do whatever you want. Just give me more responsibility and stop treating me like a kid, damn it!"
"We have new recruits," Magneto told him. "Train them."
"What?" He wasn't sure he had heard correctly.
"You'll be in charge of a team. Teach them everything they need to know. Teach them to be soldiers. And, once I've judged that they're ready to be fighters for our Brotherhood, I will let you plan and undertake any mission you want." Magneto waited for Pyro's answer to this proposal.
Pyro didn't even have to think about it. "Fuck, yes!" he said. "You've got a deal, old man! I'll train the best team of Brotherhood soldiers you'll ever see!"
Magneto shook his head in cold amusement. "Pride goeth before a fall," he quoted softly.
"I'll make you eat those words!" Pyro growled. "Hell, I'll ram them down your fucking throat!" With Mystique's scornful laughter in his ears, he went off to find his soldiers.
"Hey, Hack!" He approached the bespectacled technopath who was in charge of all things electronic in their camp. "Where are the new recruits?"
The other mutant seemed surprised that Pyro had spoken to him, let alone known his name. "Uh, they're with Marble, I believe. He always takes charge of the new ones."
"And where is this Marble?"
"Over at the south end." Hack pointed out the path he was to take.
Pyro nodded in acknowledgment of his help. He made his way to the southern part of the Brotherhood's mountain retreat and found what he was looking for in a small clearing. A group of seven mutants; who all looked to be about his age, give or take a few years; were listening intently to an older mutant as he explained a few things to them.
"There are three people you gotta watch out for in the Brotherhood," Marble said to them. "First, there's Magneto, of course. He may be old, but he's a tough son of a bitch. He's one of the most powerful mutants on the planet, so don't piss him off. In fact, just stay away from him as much as you can. Believe me, you don't want him to notice you, especially if you've just fucked up.
"Next, there's Mystique. She's the naked blue one, so you can't miss her unless she's copying someone else. She's a shapeshifter, you see. That woman's as mean as a snake, maybe meaner. She isn't really around much since she goes on missions a lot, but, when she is around, just be extra careful and don't get in her way. She will kill you for breathing if she decides she doesn't like your face.
"Then, there's Pyro. He's this punk kid, but he's pretty tight with the old man. He's a vicious little bastard who'll burn your face off if you look at him funny, so don't you ever -"
Pyro had heard enough. He interrupted Marble's orientation speech. "- Talk about him behind his back?" he finished.
Marble visibly stiffened. Slowly, he turned around and faced Pyro. The other mutants also focused their attention on him.
"Pyro! Didn't know you were there!"
"Obviously," he agreed in a dry tone. He studied the recruits he was supposed to train: five anemic-looking guys and two mousy girls. They didn't look like the fearsome team of warriors he had envisioned. But, fuck it. He was still going to train them. He had a point to prove to the old man and the blue bitch. He was going to train these dirty little fuckers and turn them into soldiers for the Brotherhood, even if it killed them.
He glanced at Marble. "You're done here," he said dismissively. "I'm taking over."
"Okay." Marble looked relieved that Pyro was letting him walk away unscathed. He started to back off.
"Hey, Marble?" He halted when Pyro spoke again. "Why do they call you Marble?"
"I can turn my skin into a rock-like substance," he answered. He wondered why the other mutant had asked him that question.
Pyro looked at him. "Does that mean you're fire-proof?"
He never even had time to reply, or to activate his mutation. Pyro's igniters roared to life and fire consumed him. He was nothing but a stinking mess of ashes in just a few minutes.
Pyro turned to his shocked audience. "Welcome to the Brotherhood, boys and girls." He smirked when he saw the fear in their eyes. "I'm the vicious little bastard who'll burn your fucking faces off if you don't do exactly as I say. Do we understand each other?"
They nodded nervously.
Pyro pointed to one of the male mutants. The mutant's pale skin turned paler and his stringy red hair suddenly stood up straight, bristling like a porcupine's quills. "You," Pyro said to him. "What's your name and what can you do?"
"I – I'm Jesse," he stuttered. "I can – sort of grow these quills from m-my body." He gave a brief demonstration of his ability.
"You know the one thing there that you said wrong?" Pyro stared at him.
He gulped. "N-no. What did - ?"
"Jesse!" Pyro spat out the name like it was something incredibly dirty. "That's a human name. Are you human?"
"I'm – a mutant," he admitted.
"You're a mutant." He nodded. "Then why the fuck are you calling yourself by a human name? Again, what's your name?" Pyro shouted right in his face.
"I don't know!" he exclaimed brokenly. "I've always been Jesse." He looked terrified.
"Then what are you doing here, with mutants?" Pyro's voice became deceptively soft.
"My p-parents. They threw me out of the house," he said. "I don't have anywhere else to go." He sounded ashamed when he made that little confession.
"So you thought you'd join the Brotherhood and we'd take you in, just like that." Pyro sneered at him. "Wrong! You earn your place here! You prove you're worth something, you deserve to be a mutant, and you won't end up like Marble who was fucking stupid enough to think that he was safe here. The Brotherhood isn't safety. The Brotherhood isn't home. We're not going to protect you from the world. We're an army, and we're waging war against the world. We need soldiers. Not whining little runaways who don't have anywhere else to go." He glared contemptuously at Jesse. "When you sign up here, you're signing up to fight. If you don't have what it takes, walk away now."
No one moved.
Pyro was pleased. He still might be able to make something out of these losers, after all. If they could survive through that little speech, maybe they could also survive the hell he was planning for them.
For the next few weeks, he trained them, drilled them. He taught them everything he had learned from both Magneto and Mystique, and some other things that he had picked up while he had been in Xavier's school. He taught them violence. He taught them cruelty. He taught them to be like him. The fear they had of him slowly turned to respect. Finally, they started looking at him in the same way he looked at Magneto. And he knew that they would follow him wherever he would lead them. He liked that knowledge. It made him feel powerful.
Finally, he thought that they were ready to be shown off to Magneto. And they did put on quite a show. The leader of the Brotherhood actually smiled at him after their demonstration of powers. "I think," he said to Pyro, "that you should take them out. Let them have some fun after all this training. You can crash a party in the next town."
He smiled, too, and nodded. He understood.
He announced their presence at the Friends of Humanity rally by launching a gigantic fireball into the night sky. Hundreds of hate-filled eyes turned to them.
"So, what's the plan?" Spine asked. His entire body was covered with rigid, needle-sharp quills. He looked almost hungry as he surveyed the humans before them.
Flames erupted from Pyro's igniters. The angry glow of the fire turned his eyes to shadows.
"We kill them all."
the end