DISCLAIMER: The characters in this story belong to Marvel. No infringement intended, blah,blah,blah. Please, please, please do not reproduce this story in part or in whole anywhere without at least asking me first! Thank you...

ONE

Rebirth

"Oh, Simon…"

Barbara felt as though she had waited so long for this one moment of satisfaction. She reached one lace-clad arm up to clasp around the back of his neck, pulling him down to her for a lingering kiss. He resisted at first, but soon yielded to her undoubted charms. He was putty in her hands. He was her toy, her puppet and she savoured it. Her crimson lips parted slightly to show her even, white teeth, and he was hopelessly lost.

As he finally allowed his base instincts to seize control of him and reached for her, she let out a low moan of pleasure and in a deep, throaty, sensual voice, she said...

"I SAID GET OUT!"

St. John Allerdyce cringed at the sudden explosion of voices into his peaceful little fantasy world. He'd been typing like a man possessed, desperate to bring 'Bountiful Bodice' in line with his publisher's tight schedule and had gleefully lost himself in the slightly sleazy world of beautiful, blonde buxom Barbara Bailey. Now, however, he was jerked uncomfortably back to reality.

"Now, honey, don't over react…I was only out all night…"

"GET OUT! And don't come BACK!"

The wall that divided John's apartment from his neighbours was as thin as tissue paper. For the last six months he'd been forced to endure listening to every cough, every sneeze, every punch, every soft plea for him to stop, and it had done precisely nothing for his already agitated frame of mind.

John was…displaced. There was no other word for the way he felt. He was faintly aware that there was something seriously wrong with the simple fact that he was actually alive at all. Confused, tangled memories left him lying awake at night, sweat pouring from him as he anxiously tried to piece together what had happened.

Some nights he had memories of being ill, terribly, fatally ill. The Legacy Virus. He remembered spending time on Jonathan Chambers' island, the colony for others who, like him, had been dying. He remembered searching for a cure. He remembered Senator Kelly. He remembered the sensation of his whole body being torn apart at a cellular level.

And seconds later, he'd remember living a life of opulence back in Australia. He was a person of importance, a man of means, someone who mattered. But how could that be?

The reality, had he but known it, was simple.

When Wanda Maximoff, in her madness, had altered reality and mutants had ruled the world, her confused thoughts had brought back St. John Allerdyce, back from eternal sleep. He'd been freed from the curse of the Legacy Virus and her altered world had instilled him as one of the rulers of Australia. When everything had returned – with the obvious exception of those mutants whose powers were forever lost - to the way it had been, she'd simply forgotten about him, leaving him back in the tiny apartment he'd always lived in, with a tangled web of memories that he only half comprehended.

Wanda had maybe forgotten about the fact he was dead, or perhaps she had chosen to give him a second chance. She'd remembered him as a young man living in a one-roomed apartment in a New York slum and that was how she left him.

John had always had something of a crush on Wanda and whilst she had never reciprocated, she had certainly developed a certain fondness for the mutant known as Pyro, treating him perhaps more kindly than some others would. She could see beyond the complex layers of madness, could see the shy, socially awkward young man beneath the lunatic. Thus it had been that her mind had remembered him and had resurrected him.

If he had known that his return to life was her legacy, her gift to him, he would have wept. However, he did not know this, merely lay awake at night, his anxiety growing daily as he tried to disentangle one set of memories from the other and tried to work out just what was going on in his life. Truth told, he had actually worked out the truth on more than one occasion but, not understanding it, hadn't accepted it as reality.

He stared at the mostly-completed manuscript laying next to the battered old typewriter. Other writers used computers these days, but John had a sentimental soft spot for the personal touch. Besides, if he set up a computer here, he'd be burgled within the first fifteen minutes of getting it home. He was a good writer, his sleazy romance novels sold well, even if they were denounced by the serious critics as little more than 'bubblegum for the eyes'. Why should he care? He wrote what people wanted to read and it paid the bills. But he knew that there was something more to life than this constant stream of drudgery.

He just didn't know what.

Despite his apparent confusion and some early days of uncertainty, he'd re-connected with his mutant powers fairly swiftly. Some things you knew instinctively and John had known that he had the ability to manipulate flame, which he'd re-discovered purely by chance after setting fire to a pan of oil on the small stove in the boarding house's kitchen. In a panic, he'd wished the flames would die down and sure enough, they'd obliged. That had been the first door to his locked memories opening, allowing a tangled mess of realisations to come tumbling out.

Never mentally stable even at the best of times, John had struggled for several weeks to deal with the onslaught of returning knowledge and awareness, but eventually had managed to shore everything back up behind that mental door. He knew that ultimately he'd have to metaphorically roll up his sleeves, wade in there and deal with what he found, but right now, he was able to keep it at bay.

Except at night, when he lay on the narrow, uncomfortable bed in the dingy, damp room that he called 'home'.

Then the dreams, the nightmares, the memories – then they came. All at once, like a marauding gang of criminals, slamming into his psyche with a vengeance.

Thus it was that not only was he displaced, he was also sleep-deprived, managing at best two hours a night. He'd tried sleeping during the day just to fool the memories, but they were smarter than he gave them credit for.

The argument next door continued and John sighed, pushing the typewriter away from himself and lowering his head onto the table to rest on his arms. The beautiful Barbara wasn't going to get the satisfaction she so desperately craved, not whilst Mr and Mrs McShouty next door were banging on at each other so loudly.

Didn't they care that her sexual appetite went un-sated?

Clearly, judging from the ever-increasing volume of shrieks, they did not.

Barbara and her lace-clad arm drifted out of his imagination and instead, he became aware of an overwhelming, almost gnawing hunger. When had he last eaten? He'd not gone down to the convenience store for several days now that he thought about it. He didn't particularly enjoy going out of this place. 'Mutieville', they called it. A slum. A cesspit of depravity. Mutants mixed with the lowest of the human caste. Muggings, rapes, murders and other crime were at the highest here than in any other part of the city, although arson was surprisingly low. This was partly down to the fact that John had barely left the limited sanctuary that the apartment offered him. Had he gone out more, there was a statistically high chance that arson crime might have exponentially increased.

He padded on bare feet over to the cupboard. There was a loaf of distinctly mouldy bread, but picking through the slices turned up one or two that could just about be salvaged. Divesting them of crust-mould, John dropped them into the toaster and opened the small fridge. A lump of cheese that could break walls, a six-pack of beer that the previous owner had left there and which John still hadn't opened and some sludge in the bottom tray which may once have been lettuce, but was now campaigning for equal rights as a new life form.

He closed the fridge and re-opened it in the insane hope that when he did, it'd be neatly packed with delicious, nutritious food, in the way that Antipodean soap opera fridges always were.

The lettuce-beast remained.

"Bollocks," he said, aloud. "This means….shopping."

Shopping was one of the two things that John hated more than anything else in the entire world. It involved having to leave his apartment, it involved having to talk to people and it involved parting with money, the OTHER thing that he hated more than anything else in the entire world.

It was either that or starve to death.

He was seriously tempted for a few moments, but was jerked out of that reverie when his toast popped. He ate it as it was, not being in possession of anything to spread on it and glanced up at the clock on the wall. He was somewhat startled to discover that it was, in fact, just after nine in the morning. He'd been writing solidly for a good ten hours. Perhaps he should try grabbing an hour's sleep, then he could go to the store.

Fifteen minutes of lying on the uncomfortable bed, both listening to the row next door and battling with a fresh wave of memories left him with the conclusion that the concept of 'sleep' had simply been a bad idea. Instead he grabbed a rather threadbare towel and headed for the communal bathroom. The shower, which could possibly have managed its own stand in Ripley's Believe It Or Not rattled and clattered like it would explode any second, but eventually managed to achieve the grand status of a lukewarm dribble that he could at least get moderately clean under. He got out and towelled himself dry, staring at the man in the cracked mirror, almost without recognition.

He wasn't particularly tall: maybe 5'10", 5'11" at the most. He was slender – no, he was thin, partly down to lack of good nourishment, partly down to his own level of nervous energy. His metabolism burned calories faster than he could put them into his mouth.

His skin was pale, the shock of hair a dirty, ash blond – although he'd been toying vaguely with dying it some other colour, just for a change – and his blue eyes were over-large in his face. Several days worth of blond stubble made him look slightly older than his twenty-six years, but he didn't bother shaving. The nights of insomnia had taken their toll on his appearance – he looked tired and even a little haggard.

He pulled on his clothes again and locking his apartment door – not that he had anything worth stealing, but old habits died hard – headed down the stairs towards the street. A young woman was slumped on one of the steps near the ground floor, sitting in a puddle of her own vomit, a heroin needle in her limp hand. Mutant or human? John didn't know, but he felt a momentary sympathy for the girl, who couldn't have been more than eighteen. He'd seen her around before, knew that she had a room on the first floor.

Gently, he shook her and was relieved when she mumbled something back. At least she wasn't dead. He took the needle from her unresisting hand and gingerly helped her up, putting an arm around her and taking her back up the stairs. He (rather shyly) felt in her coat pocket for her room key and opened it, depositing her on the sofa. He put the syringe into the bin and left her there, closing the door behind him and carrying on his way.

If he thought HIS life was hell at times, it only took a moment to put it into perspective. She'd be dead before the month was out, of that he had little doubt. She'd be dead and her room would be taken by another kid who'd no doubt die the same way in as little space of time.

It was such a waste of life.

He knew, deep inside the quagmire of madness and confusion, that at one time he'd not given a second thought to burning a building with people still inside, that he'd taken life in the name of Magneto.

Always in the name of Magneto.

If one memory had remained clear and untouched, it had been the memories of his employer, of the Master of Magnetism, of the man who had given the near-insane pyromaniac the chance to actually be someone rather than just fester on the streets much the way he was doing now.

But Magneto was gone. Long gone. He must be. Otherwise surely he'd have come to find John?

Maybe, the young man considered as he made his way down the litter-lined street, he'd done something wrong, something to make Magneto angry. Maybe this life of purgatory was some sort of punishment for bad behaviour. He had, after all, frequently been reprimanded by the Boss for his somewhat…over zealous approach. He had very clear memories of such reprimands. That word seemed a curiously mild one for the fits of rage that Magneto had displayed when the pyromaniac had taken things one step too far in an almost childish eagerness to please.

Those memories were VERY vivid.

John could picture Magneto's face with ease. Before what he had come to think of as his 'sort of death', he had hero-worshipped the man. Every word was a pronouncement, every thought was a grand idea, every action was to be admired. John had desperately wanted to impress Magneto, a trait he'd carried over from his confused childhood. He'd spent a lot of his formative years trying to please parents, teachers, peers – often with disastrous results, especially when his mutant powers had emerged.

Even now, he realised in increasing gloom, he was trying to please his publisher, trying to please his readership.

Whatever happened to pleasing himself?

His wandering feet had brought him to the store that served the east side of the slums, a small, grimy little shop that stocked basic provisions and one or two luxuries. He picked up a basket that was falling to pieces and mooched around the shelves, his mood blackening by the second. Along with the basics, he treated himself to a bar of chocolate.

As he put the slab into the basket, another memory slammed into him.

"Don't feed him chocolate, for God's sake – he'll get hyperactive. Are you listening to me, Wanda? A hyperactive pyromaniac is the LAST thing we need in this situation!"

"He needs to keep his blood sugar up, Father. He's been working for sixteen hours without a break"

"I told him to go rest."

"He just wants your approval. Here, John, eat this."

"He's an idiot."

They squabbled around him as he obediently ate the offered candy bar. Obedient was, after all, what Pyro did best.

It had, as Magneto had correctly surmised, sent him into a state of hyperactivity from which he'd had great difficulty coming down. But it HAD stopped his blood sugar levels from crashing dangerously low, so it all balanced out really.

As he paid for his provisions, he grabbed one of the tabloids from the rack and threw it onto the pile. May as well see what was happening out in the Big Wide World. Even if the Big Wide World didn't seem to be particularly bothered with him any more.

He made his way back to the apartment building more slowly than the speed at which he'd gone to the shop. He really wasn't feeling terribly enthused with his life right now. He needed a purpose, a reason to carry on – because right now, he was painfully and uncomfortably aware that he was lacking direction.

He witnessed a gang beating up a youth and almost idly sent a plume of flame in their direction to break it up. That had been a mistake, because the gang had turned its attentions to him. He'd dropped the bag of shopping and for the briefest of brief moments, had let rip with a series of fireballs that had sent the gang packing and had caused considerable damage to a derelict building on the street corner.

But it had felt good.

John reclaimed his shopping, and carried on home.

When he got there, he checked his mailbox. There were a couple of letters from his publisher, an instalment cheque for the last manuscript he'd submitted – hooray – and one envelope hand-written and addressed to "John Allerdyce". This aroused his suspicions. In all formal correspondence, he used the name "St. John". Much as he hated it, it was his given name and had a faint air of the slightly-more-interesting-than-plain-John about it.

He turned the envelope over in his hand, but there was no sender address on it. It felt like it contained something small and hard and he slid it into the top pocket of his ancient, but beloved, denim jacket and made his way up the stairs. As he passed the door of the junkie's room on the first floor, he stopped and knocked.

A few moments later, she opened it and peered out suspiciously. She looked exhausted and confused, but a faint flicker of recognition crossed her face when she saw John standing outside her door.

"Hey," he said, in his broad Australian accent. "Look, I picked something up for you whilst I was out." He offered up a loaf of bread and pack of sliced ham, some fresh tomatoes, some non-sentient, fresh lettuce. "Have a decent breakfast, eh?"

She blinked, hesitated, then opened the door wide enough to take the food from him. Acting on an impulse that surprised him, he gave her the chocolate as well. Her eyes shone with bright tears and she gazed up at the young Australian for a few moments before quietly closing the door.

She didn't say thank you.

It didn't matter.

John sighed and made his way up to his apartment. He noticed, with a sense of bitter irritation, that someone had, indeed, tried forcing the lock whilst he'd been gone, but had clearly been disturbed. He unlocked the door and went into his room, fighting down the sense of irrational loathing he suddenly felt for his life.

This was it, he thought. This was the bottom of the pile for mutants AND humans. When you slid this far, there wasn't anywhere left to go but start the slow climb up – or just die.

Much as he hated his life, much as he was lacking direction, he didn't particularly want to die.

Not again.

He unpacked his shopping, put the kettle on and munched on a stick of celery as he sat down on the end of the bed. He pulled the handwritten envelope out of his pocket and tore it open.

A small key – a safety deposit box key, by the look of it, attached to a small keyring – fell out onto the bed. Puzzled, John took out the note that was inside as well. It was the address of the building in upstate New York where the deposit box could be found, and the handwritten words 'It's time' on it. He turned the page over several times, puzzling as to where it could have come from.

He picked up the key and weighed it thoughtfully in his hand. The keyring to which it was attached had a motif on it that had been mostly worn away with age, but which he felt he recognised. He placed it in his palm thoughtfully and stared at it.

"It's time," he murmured. "For what?"

Two days passed.

In that time, the girl from the first floor had been taken away in a body bag, her throat cut. John had been deeply upset when he discovered that nobody – including himself - seemed to even know what the girl's name had been and had shed a few tears for her on the grounds that nobody else would. When the police had half-heartedly gone from door to door to see if anybody knew or cared about what had happened, the young Australian had been anxious and agitated, his face tear streaked and miserable, and they'd penned his name high on the list of suspects.

After they had left, having managed to extract his promise that he was going nowhere, he began shoving what little he owned into a holdall. "It's time," he said to himself, repeating the words over and over like a mantra. "It's time."

He owned depressingly little and there was room at the top of the holdall for his ancient, battered typewriter, which he put in because old habits die hard. As he zipped the holdall closed, his eyes rested on the Zippo lighter on the table.

It would be the easiest thing in the world. If he set it up right, he could make it look like an accident. Nobody investigated such situations in depth here at the bottom of the pit.

He sat down, hard, on the floor and buried his head in his hands. The buzz of insanity, which had always ebbed and flowed with his changing moods had reached a deafening crescendo in the last two days and he felt as though there were some sort of itch he needed to scratch.

He unzipped the bag again and hauled out the typewriter. Putting a sheet of blank paper in, he closed his eyes for a few minutes, then typed.

Couldn't live with the guilt.

St. John Allerdyce

He took the paper out of the typewriter and folded it up. He would drop it through the door of the cop station when he passed it. They'd all be called out to what he was fairly certain would be a spectacular blaze anyway.

He'd died once.

He could do it again.

He stared at the pile of manuscript that was only thirty pages short of being 'Bountiful Bodice'. He could stop here, now. Finish the novel. Throw away the safety deposit key and never follow this crazy idea through.

Or he could take a chance.

He picked up the holdall, this time without the typewriter, and slung it over his shoulder. He gathered the Zippo up, cradling it almost lovingly. A quick flip opened the flame to him and he looked at it thoughtfully, before snatching it into his fist. He pocketed the Zippo and took a deep breath.

He patted the manuscript almost affectionately, then exited his apartment for the last time.

Heading down the stairs, his fist still clenched, he felt a peculiar sensation. A cross between anticipation and anxiety that set a nest of vipers squirming in his stomach.

"Hey, Allerdyce."

The voice belonged to the landlord, a grotesquely overweight and unpleasant man who John had studiously avoided whenever possible. He paused and turned to look at the man.

"I told the cops that nobody would leave this buildin' and that includes you, Allerdyce. Where d'you think you're going?" The landlord jabbed one pudgy finger into John's chest. The mutant winced slightly.

"I needed some fresh air, Mister Lucas." The windows in his room had never opened. He'd complained once and nothing had happened.

"Why the holdall? You doin' a runner, boy?"

"I'm going to the gym." The speed of the lie startled him.

This elicited snorting laughter from Lucas, which made John's brain start to pulse.

"Sure you are, and I'm the king of bloody Australia. Go on. Get back up to your room, kid. You ain't going nowhere." Lucas fumbled in his shirt pocket for a cigarette and slid it between his blubbery lips. A muscle started twitching underneath John's left eye. "I made the cops a promise and there's a good pile of cash in it for me."

"Smoking's bad for you, Mister Lucas."

"So's killing a kid and trying to do a runner. You know you're their number one suspect, right?"

"It can kill you, you know."

"Ah, shut the hell up." Lucas patted his pockets, clearly searching for his lighter. The tic under John's eye got stronger and he leaned forward, a maniacal grin spreading slowly across his face.

"Need a light?" he said, and uncurled his fist.

It was, as John had predicted, a most spectacular inferno. He'd actually revelled in the sensation of his own fire tickling around his face. Lucas had fled, but most likely hadn't made it out the back door before the ground floor had been buried under the collapse of the poorly built ceilings anyway. It had been the first full release of John's mutant power since his confused return to existence, and he loved every second of it.

Laughing like the lunatic that he was, he had stood there, in the centre of the blaze, flames radiating from him in all directions. He manipulated them into shapes, into animals, into weapons, letting his power free, no longer denying it.

Eventually, the time came for him to extract himself before the whole building collapsed and he retreated to within a short distance of the apartment block, where he could maintain the blaze for several more minutes until he was sure that nothing would be done to save it.

The police station was also, in line with his prediction, empty, and he slid the note under the door. St. John Allerdyce was dead.

Long live Pyro.

Giggling to himself, the mutant swung himself up onto the next bus out of the slums, heading for upstate New York.

He stared out the window of the bus, watching the slums thin out into the highway and settled himself back, closing his eyes and allowing himself the rare luxury of relaxing.

"It's time," he said, softly, his fingers gently caressing the key in his hand. "Hell, yeah."

The journey into New York City took an hour or so and on arrival, Pyro slid easily off the bus. The numbers of people and the bustling crowds alarmed him initially and he slid into a side alley to catch his breath. He'd been secluded out in his own little patch for so long, that being in such a built up, densely populated area was something of a surprise.

His first trip was to an ATM. He'd long ago created a bank account under his nom de plume 'David Allyson' which he used for transferring cash into. He'd left a nominal amount in the 'St. John Allerdyce' account for payment of bills and the like, but not much. A withdrawal wouldn't alert the authorities to his continued existence, so he took out a couple of hundred dollars. With the cash, he did several things.

First of all, he went against his own principles. He took himself into a menswear store and kitted himself out in an all-black ensemble of hard-wearing denim and cotton, finishing the look off with a pair of combat boots that added a couple of inches to his height. Then he went to a fancy, up-market hairdressing salon and had his hair cut and, greatly daring, coloured as well. For a laugh, he had it dyed flame orange, with streaks of red and yellow. The hairdresser, who was a flamboyant sort of chap himself greatly approved of this and threw himself wholeheartedly into the venture. The finished effect was wild and crazy and John loved it. He hopped next door into the barbers and rather nervously submitted himself to a wet shave.

When he emerged a little later, he both looked – and felt – like a new man. Like a phoenix from the ashes, Pyro had been reborn.

Finally, he made his way towards the huge building where row after row after row of safety deposit boxes stood, looming like ranks of metal giants.

He looked at the number imprinted on the key. 4781D. Aisle forty seven, locker 81D. John wandered amongst the boxes, which were fairly large in size. The place was mostly deserted; only a couple of other people were around and they all glanced suspiciously at him as he passed by.

Let them look.

Clutching the key in his hand, John turned down into aisle forty seven, his heart starting to pound with anticipation. Maybe some long-lost relative had left him a fortune. Maybe it was the keys to a fantastic mansion somewhere – perhaps the mansion he vaguely recalled of in his dreams of Australia.

He pulled to a stop outside locker 81D. It was a tall locker; narrow, but probably big enough, John's graphic imagination suggested, to hold a man. His heart thumped a little louder in his chest. Perhaps there was a corpse in there.

He had to sit down on the floor at that point and deal with a mild panic attack that crept up on him and dragged him down into its clutches. He hyperventilated for a few moments until he forced himself back down into calmness again. There wouldn't be a corpse inside the box. There wouldn't be.

"It's time," a voice seemed to whisper inside his head and, unsure if it had been his own inner voice, or someone else present, John rapped at the side of his head with his knuckles a few times as though he could clear his head.

"It's time."

He got slowly to his feet and brought the key to the lock of the box.

It fit perfectly.

Swallowing, John turned the key in the lock and stood back a little, allowing the door of the deposit box to swing slowly outward. He squeezed his eyes shut and then, after a few seconds had passed and no cadaver had fallen forwards onto him, cracked one eye nervously open.

What he saw brought tears to his eyes and he reached out a trembling hand to touch the contents of the box.

A light gust of air lifted his spiked hair out of his face and broke his concentration. He turned around and stared as a figure came into view in the aisle behind him.

John's mouth opened and closed a few times, then he pointed at the safety deposit box.

"You kept it," he said, simply.

"Yes, John. I kept it. And now…" The figure laid a hand on the young man's shoulder. "It's time."

"Yes," agreed the young mutant, turning his attention back to the flameproofed uniform and kerosene-based flamethrower in the safety deposit box. "Oh yes. It's time."

(c) S Watkins, 2006