A/N: Really people! I need reviews telling me what mini-story from Timed Challenge: X-Men to enlarge!

This is...Different compared to what I normally do but, hey, it's Pyro. What did you expect?


Burning Down The House: The Used

Click. The lighter had been his fathers, a stupid bloke if there ever was one, and Pyro had gotten it back when he was still St. John. In fact, he had gotten it the day that the Voice appeared.

His parents had gone to bed early, and John couldn't sleep. So he'd gone down stairs in search of something to do. It was his parents fault really. They knew that he had an obsession with flames, the lighter shouldn't have been left out on the kitchen table.

And then, it wasn't really John's fault that he had grabbed the lighter either. It was the Voice. He had told him to do it, had told him that he wouldn't get in trouble, and the flame was just so pretty.

Click. He had turned the lighter on, and then off, and then on once more. It made such a nice noise, the sound of metal on metal, and he was sure that a gleeful look was on his face. It was so nice, so fun, he just couldn't help himself.

And then the little voice in the back of his head told him that his father would try to take it away from him, told him that he had to keep it, told him that he had to hide it. So he had.

He had hidden the lighter uner his pillow and in the morning he told his parents that he hadn't seen it. It wasn't his fault. The voice told him to lie, it said that there wasn't anything wrong with lying, that it was for the best. And he believed it.

Click. It was his lighter now, it had been since the day it happened. And the voice was proud of him. So very, very proud of him. And St. John wasn't there anymore, the voice wasn't proud of him, now it was just Pyro.

And Pyro liked the flame, that beautiful flame, even more then St. John had.

Click. And he still had that lighter. The one that belonged to his, no, to St. John's father. He still loved to watch the flame dance, watch it twirl when the wind caught it, because it was something that he could control. Something that no one else but he could.

And it didn't bother him that it had burnt down his house, St. John's house, because it hadn't been his fault. It was the voice's.

Click.