A fill from the Tiger and Bunny Anon Meme. Prompt: Yuri learns to control his powers, and balances his life with his growing madness, with his end goal being to envelop himself in the mantle of Lunatic.
Rated T for abuse, some language, and violence.
A standard flamethrower propels fire forward. The operator releases a flammable gas into the air, and then ignites it. Unless you've got some very unfortunate wind, the flame doesn't engulf the operator. It stays forward, on attack, and the operator stays out of harm's way.
Yuri's fire isn't like that. He tries to ignite just his fingertips, but the flame naturally reaches back, trying to engulf his knuckles, his palm, his wrist. It will burn upward like a candle if he twists his hand the right, but it always spreads further along Yuri's body, rather than out into the open, as Yuri's flesh is its natural fuel. After getting home from the hospital, his first few attempts to control it just stoke it, and the flame jumps erratically. Sometimes he sets off the fire alarm, which thankfully isn't connected to the fire department itself. Yuri can just reset the alarm keypad and in then, in the worst cases, eases his mother back into bed with gentle reassurances that Papa stopped it, and they're safe.
He knows it's wrong to lie to his mother, but he's just trying to survive the darkness long enough for something to make sense. He can't handle this right now. A lie is easier. Otherwise, he knows his own fire is going to swallow him whole.
His high school knows that Mr. Petrov passed away, burned alive by a terrible gasoline fire in his garage. Well, that's what Yuri told the firefighters, and that's what the firefighters told the mortician. Hero TV says that Mr. Legend has retired (because there's no way Hero TV can say their invincible hero is dead) and entrusts the safety of the city to his fellow heroes, who all make passionate speeches about carrying on Legend's legend.
The conflicting messages don't help Yuri's mother, who most days can't tell if her husband is alive or dead. For example, she'll ask Yuri where his father is. Yuri looks at her until she remembers the truth, and then runs screeching from the room. She cries herself out of energy, and when she next wakes up, the illusion is back in place. Yuri finds he can maintain it if he likes, make excuses and dodge questions, and earn himself a few more hours of peace.
It's not easy. And it doesn't make it any easier for Yuri to return to school.
The long stripes of his father's fingers are as healed as medical science can make them. There will always be a burn. The only pain is phantom at this point, but Yuri can't really tell the difference between hurt felt and hurt remembered every time he sees that angry red scar. Seconds before the bus arrives, in shame and fear, Yuri paints his face with his mother's makeup. They have the same Lady Fair skin tone, and the scar vanishes under the thick concealer. Yuri feels like his face is about to slide off at any moment, and between each class, he runs to the bathroom to check that it's all still in place, nothing smudged or sweated. Like he could actually do touch-ups at school, where anyone could walk in and see.
Teachers and friends offer "anything he needs." The phrase is so open-ended that all semblance of what Yuri could ask for just drains right out his ears. Anything he needs could include doctors for his mother, repairs to the hated garage, payments for utilities that month, food for that night. But he doesn't ask for anything, in the end. It doesn't matter.
All of his classes go in one ear and out the other, and the only thing that gains any traction in his mind at all is his Government and Politics class. The teacher is explaining tax brackets, but Yuri flips forward to the section on criminal justice.
Misdemeanor.A minor criminal act as defined by a governing body. Frequent crimes defined as misdemeanors include vandalism, petty theft, reckless driving, or trespassing.
Felony.A major criminal act as defined by a governing body. Frequent crimes defined as felonies include murder, rape, and burglary.
Murder.
Murder.
Self-defense.Some states permit the use of lethal force against another person when that person demonstrates a danger to others, such a person's family.
Self-defense.
Murder.
Self-defense.
Murder.
Self-defense.
Murder.
Yuri arrives home one day to find a car parked outside his house, in the street. It doesn't look like a police car, at least. When he reaches the front door, he hears his mother screaming.
He rushes inside and finds her crumpled on the couch, a very distraught-looking man in a suit trying and failing to comfort her. Yuri shoves the man into the hallway, hoping that he mumbled some sort of apology or "excuse me," before returning to his mother's side. She wails at him, thankfully without words, and tries to fight Yuri off as he takes hold of her shaking body and half-pushes, half-drags his mother into her bedroom. Once at the threshold, she decides to use it as a fortress, and flings herself inside, barricading the door behind her. Her sobs fade.
One problem solved. Now for the man in the hallway.
"Absolutely tragic," the man says. He has a very sincere resonance in his voice. "This is all very difficult for her."
Yuri asks what the man wants.
"I'm sorry, I didn't introduce myself," the man replies, passing Yuri a business card in lieu of giving his name. Yuri doesn't even glance at it. "I am the executive producer of Hero TV. There's interest in gathering Mr. Legend memorabilia for a museum. I came here with an offer for the Legendmobile and any hero suits your father had at home."
Yuri understands this is about money. Soulless, heartless money.
"It will be a lease to the potential museum. The property will be owned and operated by Hero TV, and the lease will come up for renewal every few years. Then you can choose to extend the contract or take the items back into your private possession."
The man shows Yuri the contract. Yuri sees a lot of it is in fine print, but he also sees the number. With quite a few zeroes. And the dotted line where his mother is supposed to sign.
Yuri explains his mother is in no fit state to handle these kinds of documents. After the display Yuri's mother provided when the businessman asked her about her husband's death, he is inclined to believe Yuri. But in a small voice, Yuri swears that if he were allowed to sign that lease, he would in a heartbeat.
The businessman leaves, and a week later, he returns with a brand new contract that Yuri can legally sign with all sorts of provisions for minors and a special bank account co-signed by Hero TV until Yuri turns eighteen. He does read through the entire contract, but he finds no offensive, entangling clauses, so, as promised, Yuri signs.
When the man folds up the contract, he takes a deep sigh. "I don't know if I can express how much your father did for this city. It feels wrong to try and put a price all of this, but for all the sacrifices that he has made… and that you have made… Well, you shouldn't worry about money anymore. You at least deserve that peace."
Yuri briefly wonders if this man knows, but his tone and phrasing sound so compassionate that Yuri just stares at his sneakers. True, money won't be a problem. Between this new museum lease, royalties on products that use Legend's image, and life insurance payments, the Petrov family could sustain their current lifestyle indefinitely.
"And if there's anything you need from me, anything at all, please don't hesitate to call."
With those words, Yuri suddenly doesn't want to see the businessman's face anymore. He doesn't even answer the door when the truck comes the next day to steal away his father's superhero car and spare costumes. Yuri just packs it all in the hated garage and then opens the garage door when he hears the doorbell ring. From a little window in the bathroom, he watches the movers shrug, steer the car into a large truck, secure it, and then drive off
It's easier that it's gone. If anyone comes by, Yuri won't have to explain why Mr. Legend's car is in his garage. Besides, it gave him a good excuse to scour the entire house and pack everything about his father into three boxes: Useless junk, like his toothbrush and razor, to be thrown out. Legend stuff, to be sent away. And mementos, to be packed in a box and hidden out of sight.
There's a lot a few streets over. Paved, nothing on it, screened with trees. He has no idea what it's for or why, just that it's deserted. Yuri takes an electric camping lantern and, donning a dark hoodie, sneaks out of the house.
He drops the hood in the lot, checking one last time for witnesses. In the pale lantern light, Yuri glows and ignites his hand. He tries again to push the fire off of his hand, into the open, but the fire just grows. With no fire alarms to worry about, Yuri swallows the fear and pushes harder, trying to force the fire off of him. The flame reaches further down his arm, to his wrist, past his wrist.
The instant Yuri feels the heat, he stops, drops, rolls, rolls and rolls and rolls and rolls and knocks over the camping lantern. Finally he stops rolling, and realizes he is unburned. His hoodie fared far worse, the entire lower part of the sleeve charred off.
Yuri pulls off the hoodie and leaves it in a pile on the ground. He ignites his hand again, and pushes at the flames. The licks of fire crawl down his hand and up his arm, but he doesn't even feel them. As an experiment, Yuri finds a dead branch and ignites the end. Once a little blue flame burns on the end of the stick, he extinguishes his own fire and holds the branch near his arm. His skin prickles with too-close-to-the-campfire pain. Yuri drops the stick and stomps it out.
He's fireproof to his own fire. But once that fire ignites something else, Yuri is just as flammable as the rest of the world. His fingers tremble as they trace the edge of his scar. That means the scar is his own fault. If he hadn't burned his father, his father could never have burned him…
Yuri's not sure exactly how long he stands there, but the stars shift and he knows he needs to be home soon. But, the issue remains of his hoodie. How best to dispose of a charred hoodie where no one would ask questions?
Half from inspiration, half from desperation, Yuri took three steps away from his hoodie, ignited his hand, and then swung it down in an enormous tomahawk chop. The flame flew off his hand, a wave of fire slicing right through the mass of dark cotton and polyester. The synthetic fibers burn with an unpleasant odor, but burn they do, until nothing remains but ash and a black mark on the concrete. The wind will take care of the ash. The mark will be blamed on less reputable teenagers.
Yuri goes home.
The only thing he feels like studying are law books. He has no interest in anything else. He just accumulates Sternbild law codes, rulings, dissents, records, anything in the public domain, creating a mental hierarchy of damnation. No matter how many additions of assault and battery and robbery and extortion and fraud and drug abuse he adds to the list, in varying degrees, they can never eclipse Yuri's crime.
Never.
There's a history teacher—a teacher who years later, Yuri will forget the name of—who notices Yuri's interest in law, and asks if he wants to be a lawyer someday. Yuri doesn't want to be anything, but it's so easy to nod his head.
"You know, law and society are inseparable," the teacher says. "Any lawyer worth his salt is going to need a healthy grounding in other disciplines, mathematics, science, literature…" He produces a book. "Philosophy."
Yuri forgets the teacher, but he remembers the book. The Social Contract by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He remembers every word.
Well, all the important ones, anyway.
The death penalty for criminals may be considered from this point of view: it is to avoid being the victim of murder that we consent to die if we become murderers. Every wrongdoer, in attacking the rights of society by his crimes, becomes a rebel and a traitor to his country. When a criminal is put to death, it is as an enemy rather than as a citizen.
It's a miracle that Yuri has escaped discovery for as long as he has. But if anyone had bothered to ask his opinion, he would have rather used his miracle to make Papa well again.
Traitor. Enemy. Murderer.
Self-defense…
Murderer.
Murderer.
Murderer.
Yuri gets by flinging the fire. He builds it up on his hand, and with a sufficient force, whips it off of his being and into open space. He's got a range of twenty or so feet, and increasing the more Yuri practices, but after each night he goes to practice, he feels like his arms are about to fall out of their sockets. He's going to need to find a new way to control this power.
He's not entirely sure why he's bothering to try and control this power at all. He justifies it that some NEXT powers are unpredictable and flare up at odd times. He needs a baseline of practice so he won't go up in flames in the middle of class. But learning how to throw fireballs doesn't feel like learning to control the power, not directly.
He has no idea what he's doing.
His grades pick up. He makes them pick up. Because kids with good grades don't have insane mothers. Kids with good grades don't have abusive fathers. Kids with good grades aren't murderers. No one thinks there are problems at home if he has good grades. It helps that before the murder, Yuri was never a social butterfly, so a somber style of dress and sullen appearance aren't too far off his norm.
Study hard. Stay alive.
Get into college.
It just happened. It was more natural to send off the applications and fall in line with the rest of the class than somehow explain that he had no real interest in attending college, and draw unwanted attention onto himself. There's one school close enough to commute from home, so he can take care of his mother as he attends class. That one gets his deposit and confirmation of attendance.
One of his friends—more of a smokescreen than a friend, yes—one of his smokescreens was so overjoyed by his college acceptance letter he became a NEXT with the power to turn orange juice into vinegar. Everyone else teases him over the uselessness of that power, but the guy turns it around.
"You're just jealous because I'm a NEXT," he crows. "And you're not!"
Which sparks a discussion about what kind of NEXTs the boys would want to be and why. They eventually take notice of Yuri.
"So what kinda NEXT would you want to be?"
"Are you a NEXT?"
Yuri says no, he's not a NEXT. And if he were, he'd want time powers. When pressed, he just answers again, time powers. Stopping time. Turning it back. Stuff like that.
No, no reason. Yuri just thinks time powers are cool.
Yuri caught his hair on fire once.
Through regular practice, he finds that his natural fireproofing extends to very thin, tight material. Anything too thick or loose catches and burns, so he buys a long-sleeved compression shirt and matching leggings. Maximum range of motion, nothing to burn. Flinging fire is growing more natural, too. Now, all it takes is a jab to push the flame off of his hand and into the open air, no arm-swirling catapult.
Seeking a larger practice space, Yuri discovers that a shopping center near his college doesn't have any security cameras or night watch trained on the parking lots. Past the hours of midnight, he can practice there in peace. Any burns will again be blamed on students of his college, but so long as there are no injuries and no debris, investigations will stay light. In this new area, Yuri opens with a barrage of flame, rapid-fire cannon shot flying at the furthest distance he could muster. Yuri sees the world ignite with a blue filter, and suddenly there's heat on his face. Shrieking—and flashing back, his father's hand, right there, right there on his face—Yuri drops and rolls until the flame is gone.
With the fire gone and his heartbeat gradually returning to normal, Yuri touches the charred ends of his fringe. When was the last time he had a haircut? Other thoughts, from his mother to classes to these secret practice sessions usually occupy his thoughts. He hasn't thought about grooming beyond standard hygiene and concealer in a very long time. In light of this accident, he should get a short style. Clean-cut.
But then again… Yuri drops his hair and traces a burned corner of his eye. Yes, he has a tendency to burn from the eyes when using too much of his power. But then, wouldn't a long hairstyle be the perfect deterrent against people assuming that he might be a fire-type NEXT? Just a bit of caution, ponytails, barrettes, and skull caps, and Yuri could remove himself from a list of potential suspects.
…Why on earth would Yuri be part of a group of suspects? Suspects for what? It's been a few years since Mr. Petrov died in that 'gasoline fire,' what use did Yuri have for disguises?
Because the world hasn't seen the last of me.
What exactly that means is lost on Yuri for the moment. He leaves for the night, because he needs to cut off the scorched ends of his hair.
His mother wastes away. She rarely moves. If she stands, it's only to cross the room and sit quickly in another location. Yuri has to help her to bed, and not because she screams and resists him, but because her knees shake too much to support her weight for that long. She forgets to eat with increasing frequency. She thinks she made dinner for the family, but really, all she did was clink dishes together and put them on the table, and then scrape them with a fork and knife until 'finished.' And short of causing another screaming match, Yuri knows no other way to make his mother eat.
He tells her he was practicing cooking today.
"Oh? You're getting so grown-up, Yuri. Such a fine young man. Well, I did already have dinner…"
Please, Mama? Just a few bites. He wants her to try it, this heavy, nutrient-rich dish.
"All right, if it means that much to you." She'll eat a few forkfuls of whatever Yuri made, appraising it. "You're improving, Yuri! Remember just last year when you forgot to put the top on the blender?"
Yuri doesn't tell his mother, but that was nearly six years ago now. The real world is becoming more and more distant to her. And even though she only eats about half the plate, his mother laughs and insists she's done.
"No more, Yuri, or I'll burst! At least if you practice more dishes like this, I won't worry about you eating poorly when you grow up."
Yuri makes a stupid joke about a healthy dinner earning a big dessert, and his mother laughs, and even as he regrets the lie, he knows that this will last his mother a through the next day.
Yuri is constantly seeking spaces to practice, looking for areas with different qualities that might let him experiment with a wider variety of flames. He finds another site, an area under a highway, cement beneath an exit ramp, and burns away the stray weeds and scraggly bushes. He's working in miniature now, trying to manipulate each individual tendril of flame. He sits cross-legged beneath the overpass and holds out one hand, sending little licks of blue fire skating around, like snakes crawling along the surface of his skin, wrapping up and down his fingers.
He wonders about the possibilities of this fire. He can throw fire, yes. He can manipulate it around his body. Like squeezing blood out of a cut, Yuri uses his other hand to surround his burning one and drip the fire down. The flame hovers an inch above the pavement, about the size of a baseball, dancing, a fire without fuel. With his hands, he squeezes it down into a little marble, smaller, smaller, smaller, until it's as small as a painkiller.
He sweeps it away.
FWOOOSH.
The pellet explodes in a gigantic fireball, blue and green flames spreading in all directions. Yuri has beat the flames out of the underbrush with his jacket, and at the end of it all, burn the jacket, too.
Yuri experiments during summer break, trying to create other pellets, alter their force and intensity, and even the shape; for instance, he crafted a few long, slender rods, a few as long as his forearm. He can throw them like javelins, but for the increased power, Yuri sacrifices accuracy and control. He's just no good at spear-throwing.
Well, he can never afford to sacrifice control. But seeing his fire take the form of a more conventional weapon sends his thoughts in unconventional directions.
Yuri's professors adore him. A model student with excellent grades; humble, deferential manners; morals that are sound and most importantly consistent—even when faced with ethical paradoxes, when Yuri answers, he never answers hypocritically, and never with a sense that the knowledge of 'right' and 'wrong' is his alone; he listens respectfully, praises others when they are clever, and directs praise for himself toward his mentors. He's recommended for various internships at esteemed law offices, a nigh-miraculous number of options for a college senior, but lots of very powerful people have come to believe in him for some reason.
His charade is extremely effective, then.
One of the internships is highly recommended by his pre-law advisor, and it's an idea that fills Yuri with absolute revulsion. He's been offered the chance to work with the Justice Bureau's Hero Department, assisting and shadowing one of the prosecutors responsible for convicting criminals arrested by heroes. He's avoided Hero TV as best he can for so long, maybe not the ads, but the show itself, he hasn't seen an episode in years. And how he'll be working directly with the show?
His stomach churns. His hands shake. His scar aches.
But with a sense of looming destiny, he takes the job.
