KK, all! YAY I'm writing fanfics again! Ok, I just watched X2 for the tenth time, and now I must write! == Alright, this is a fic about our favorite little flame-head! Yup, it's Pyro time! Tee-hee. It's a bit AU-ish, but that's ok. It's Pyro/New Character. This is my first fanfic on a movie( I usually stick to the FF series! ), so be gentle! No flamers plz! (And, yes, I do realize the irony of asking for no flamers when writing a Pyro story... --;;;) And on with my fic!

My Scarab Jewel
 by LadyKinsei

Chapter One: Siren's Song

"Pyro! Dammit, get back here!"

He ran and ran, flaming embers littered around the grounds. 'Why can't you control your temper?' 'Quit it, show off!' 'Now, John, you know you can't keep showing off anymore.' All the voices in his head chimed in his ears as if Orora were blowing a gale. 'Fuck!' he thought. 'I hate this fucking place!' They hate me, was all he thought.

Ever since he came to the Xavier Institute, he felt he didn't belong. He was so different from all the others. He only had two whom he considered friends in the thousands of students in the Xavier Institute--Bobby and Marie, aka Iceman and Rogue.

Iceman was so possesive of her, he thought. So intrigued, like a cat watching a goldfish. Yes, Rogue was very much like a fish to him--or more an electric eel, thought he. An eel so slippery and elusive and dangerous, yet so beautiful that one has no other choice than to become entranced with it. Too much of a touch and he'll be sucked of all life, all memories and powers, and yet that's what Bobby most loved about her. Her unavailability, her sense of...

He shook his head, he was getting way to ahead of himself. He looked back some. How far was he from the institute, he wondered. He had never much been outside of it with it's security cameras and high walls. 'Not to keep humans out,' he thought. 'To keep us in.'

That was another thing he hated about the institute. Why hide myself when I am someone to be known, he thought. I am the powerful, I bend fire to my will; I can do anything and those stupid, ignorant, powerless humans should know that. Who better to show the power that mutants have than me? That was another thing he hated. The fact that he was no better treated or respected than any other child in the school, like the little girl, Marissa, who screams and the whole school shakes. Or the boy, Andre, who's tongue is like a lizard.

"Fuck," he cursed under his breath, flipping out his dinosaur lighter. Humans, he thought. They think they're so fucking smart because they don't have powers. "Ooh, I have a gun! Get away from me you freak!" he mumbled mockingly. As his anger grew, the faster his pace grew, fast into the bustling streets of downtown. Sidewalks were crowded, cars speeding by, children crying because the lady at the counter gave them the wrong flavor of ice cream. The words of Proffessor X rang in his head.

"'Control your temper, John,'" he mumbled. "'Quit showing off, John.' 'Stop making such a big fuss about everything--you know I only want to help you...'" He shook his head angrily. "Yeah, piss off, cueball..." He was walking quite briskly, as was normal for him in the heat of anger. He was a very emotional person, something that he didn't admit to--which made him even more emotional. Even his friends thought so. "'John, man, don't start up trouble again.' K'eh, trouble... It was their fault in the first place," he said, thinking about those jack-offs in the food court at the museum the other day. And now he'd set most of the training grounds on fire; they'd kick him out for sure this time--

"OOF!!!"

"Hey--watch where you're going!!!" he screeched.

"Well, sorry, but you were the one running--ugh, my paints..."

He looked up at a female voice, seeing that the one who he run into was indeed a girl. Her long dark hair was tucked beneath a rasta-like beanie. Her clothes were very bohemian with her white peasant blouse and jeans made of various patchwork denim. Her long fingers fumbled around for various tubes of acrylic paints and brushes. She looked up, her big brown eyes in a slight glare. "You know, you should really watch where you're going," she snapped.

He shook his head and quickly got up, brushing himself off with his familiar frown. He reached into his pocket. "Hey--my lighter!"

"Lookin' for this?" she asked, holding his lighter in her hand.

"Hey, gimme that," he snapped.

Her mouth dropped open slightly. "You arrogant jerk, not even a please? Geezus, chivalry really is dead--now hand me that brush over there. It's the least you could do after knocking me down--"

"Me?!" he practically screamed, causing a few more onlookers than he would have liked. "You were the one who knocked me down--"

"And I apologized--geez you should learn to control your temper..."

"Well, gimme my lighter--"

"No brush, no lighter."

"What? Get it yourself." She sighed and rolled her eyes. "Fine, then, I have a new thing to light my incense with." She cooly got up and walked away, leaving the brush behind.

"Alright, alright!" he said, running to grab the brush. She took it and tossed the lighter to him.

"Was that so hard?" she asked childishly. "You really shouldn't smoke, you know."

"I don't smoke," he said, absent-mindedly flipping the lighter on and off.

She smirked with full lips. "Just a pyro, eh?"

He scoffed at those words. "You have no idea..."

Her long hair ruffled slightly in the breez. "Got a name?" she asked.

Pyro looked up beneath his brows. What was her deal? "Pyr--uh, John--John Allerdyce."

She held out her hand, the gold bangles on her wrist tinkling together slightly. "Sherry Dannuk, nice to meetcha."

He shook her hand. "What kind of name is Dannuk?"

Sherry shrugged. "What kind of name is Allerdyce?" He laughed slightly. Here she was, knocking him left and right and he didn't even care. Well, at least she wasn't trying to be insulting. He then noticed the her leather messenger bag, covered with buttons and patches that read things like "It's obvious my inner child is in charge of things here," or "Not the brightest crayon in the box, are we?" A keychain that read "If Barbie is so popular, then why do you have to buy her friends?" hung next to a shrunken head with dreadlocks.

"Uh... What's with the..."

She looked to where he was pointing. "Oh, that--hahahahaha... Yeah, my parents were travelling Egyptians, they used to travel all the time--this little beauty she picked up from a Jamaican Voodoo man, in Morocco."

"A Jamaican Voodoo man in Morocco?" he asked. "That sounds like the start of a bad joke..." They both laughed.

"Well," Sherry began. "I guess a shrunken head is better than having an oversized head," Pyro found himself laughing in spite of himself. "I hate that, that big head thing... There's this one girl at my school that I sit behind with a big head... She looks like a St. Bernard." Now they were both laughing, a semi-rare occasion for Pyro's sense of badass humor.

"What is your obsession with heads?" he asked; you moron, you're acting like Bobby, he mocked himself mentally.

The girl shrugged. "I guess I was just noticing how nice yours was."

He stopped entirely and smirked in a bit of disbelief. "... You like my head?"

She smiled, her teeth like pearls. "Its a good head!" They laughed together. In his mind, though, he was thinking 'Man, who are you right now?' Oh, well, he said to himself. She seems pretty cool for a human, I guess... He almost jumped when she took his hand.

"Hey--what are you doing?"

She wrote a phone number on his hand, as well as the words "Call me!" in small print. "You gimme a ring some time," she said. "I'd like to paint your picture..." She wrote down her address on his wrist. She flashed a smile; he noticed a few freckles on her high cheek bones. She walked away.

"Hey--wait a minute!" said John, running to catch her. She turned and stopped. "First, you knock me down, then you get mad at me, then you call me an arrogant jerk, then you compliment my head, and now you're giving me your phone number and address?"

She looked up slightly, as if thinking about it. It didn't take long before she nodded, smiled and said. "Yeah, I am. Later, Pyro," she said jokingly, walking down the busy sidewalk.

He stared after her, looked away, and then looked back to see she had just turned the corner. He looked down at his palm before looking back again, a puzzled look on his face. "What the hell just happened?"

There he was, standing in the middle of the sidewalk corner, scratching his head and staring at his hand. I think this is the first time I've gone from pissed to downright confused within three minutes... She was definately the strangest girl he had ever set eyes on, so incredibly random it was hysterical. He couldn't even begin to imagine how this day could be anymore random in its events. He jumped at the hand on his shoulder.

There Logan was, standing right over him. "Nice barbeque job, kid, now get in the car."

"John, we understand that you want to be known, but setting the campus ablaze is no way to get attention," said the Professor. "You have something special, all mutants do, but you tend to want to show off your powers. You're not better than the others, you know..."

He kept his head low. "Yes, sir," he mumbled.

Professor sighed. "You are here to learn control of your powers; it seems that you are also here to learn to control your temper." He rolled in his wheelchair towards him. "Listen, what happened in the training grounds today was an accident, and I assume you know how to learn from your mistakes, is that correct?"

"...Yes, sir."

"Good; as punishment, I assign you to groundskeeping for a week, and detention for the remainder of the month. Is that clear?"

He clenched his fists behind his back. "... Yes, sir." Professor nodded. "Good, then. Alright, run along." Pyro nodded again, and turned to exit Professor's office. The second the doors closed behind him, he slammed his fist into his palm angrily. Groundskeeping? he thought. What kind of sick torture was that? Not only was he going to get all sorts of grief from the others, but he was going to have to be dealing with dirt and flowers all day.

Pyro looked up to see Bobby and Rogue walking together. Rogue was the first to notice. "Hey--John!" she said, rushing up to him. "We saw what happened--"

"Dude, the whole south lawn is totalled," said Bobby. "What's your detention time?"

"For the rest of the month," he replied dryly as he proceeded down the hallway, Rogue and Bobby on either side of him. "And I get to do groundskeeping--however the hell you do that."

Rogue laughed. "It's not so bad, you could have gotten a lot worse." Pyro shrugged. "I'm serious--you know, you can't have a bad temper all the time... It doesn't do any good. Least not here..."

"Yeah, well, it's their own fault..." He trailed off. There was a long silence.

Bobby then looked at his left hand, seeing there was something written on it. "Hey, what's that?" Pyro looked down and pulled his sleeve over his wrist. "Nothing," he said, speeding up his pace.

Rogue caught his wrist and rolled the fabric of his sleeve up. "Is that a phone number?" she asked.

"And an address...?" Bobby trailed off, slightly confused, slightly impressed. "When did this happen?"

He ripped his arm away and rushed off upstairs, his cheeks flaming red. Dammit, he thought. I knew that girl was gonna get me in a spot... Pyro burst into the dorm that he and Iceman shared, flopping on the bed as the couple burst in. Rogue flopped on his bed and read the adress and number again.

"So who is she???" she asked excitedly.

Pyro gave a half-groan, half-sigh, but then smirked and figured--hey, what's the harm? He propped himself up on the pillows and looked at the writing on his wrist, Bobby coming around on the right side of his bed, Rogue tracing the numbers with her gloved hand. "Okay," he sighed. "Her name is Sherry Dannuk, she's about three inches shorter than me, very long, very straight dark hair, brown eyes, high cheekbones, and has an obsession with heads..."

Rogue squealed in delight and hugged Pyro close. "That's so great!!!" she said, letting go. "What happened? When you were running around in town today? How did you meet?"

"Rogue--easy!" Bobby said. "Let him answer one first..."

He laughed, unbelieving that he was sharing a 'normal teen moment' with his two best friends. "Okay, okay... Alright, so I'm walking down 6th, and I guess I'm walking kinda fast, and all of a sudden--BOOM--we crash right into each other. I yell at her for not watching where she's going, she calls me an arrogant jerk and bribes me with my own lighter--she said I had a nice head and gave me her phone number because she wants to paint my picture."

"Ooh, artistic type, eh?" Bobby asked as Rogue sprawled out over Pyro's crossed ankles. "She's pretty?"

He suddenly laughed hysterically, causing a few eyebrow raises on the parts of the couple. "Man--it all happened so fast, I couldn't even tell... I'm pretty sure she was, she just kinda gave me the number and took off. Only thing I really remember is that she smelled like that Patchouli oil that Storm uses on her hands. Smells just like it..."

"Just like that, huh? Sheesh..." She ran a hand through the brown and white tresses atop her head. "She seems to have a lot of nerve, huh?"

"She tried to steal my lighter--that takes no nerve, but stupidity."

"But she gave it back," Bobby pointed out. "Right?"

"Tch--yeah, after I picked up her stupid paintbrush for her..."

"Well, you did knock her down," Rogue said.

"I did not!!!" He growled and flopped back on his pillows. He sighed, "Okay, so maybe I did..."

"So, you gonna call her?"

He raised an eyebrow at her; what kind of a question was that? Honestly, he didn't even know her. What reason would he have to call her? She'd just find out he was a mutant, freak out, call the police and he'd have even more things crawling around his ass to deal with. "... I dunno."

"Dude," Bobby began. "If this girl is nuts enough to talk to you in the first place, she deserves to get a call." Pyro laughed and punched him jokingly. He shrugged. "Maybe, I will... I have no idea, honestly, she's just... I don't know--she has this weird thing and... I guess its that her... Ugh, this is fucking frustrating..."

Rogue beamed. "Speechless over a pretty girl?" Pyro shot her an 'I hate you' look. "Hahaha, it's okay, just give her a call, okay? Or at least think about it--PROMISE you'll think about it. You promise?"

He looked, Bobby and Rogue staring at him intently. He wasn't going to win--that was the cold fact of it. He'd never get them out of his hair if he didn't call this Sherry girl. If he lied, they'd know and beg and poke and prod him until he did. There was no way out; besides, he had to admit, she was kind of charming--in a rude, irritating kind of way...

Pyro sighed. "Alright, I promise I will call Sherry later tonight."

"Yay!" Rogue squealed, clapping her hands together. "This is gonna be so good for you. Seriously, maybe she can cool off that hot head of yours..."

"Har-har-har, very funny." Rogue ran off, leaving the two in the dorm.

"So you really gonna call her?" he asked.

"What other choice do I have?"

Bobby motioned to the phone. "Why don't you call her right now?"

He sighed--there was no good reason not to call her, after all, it was after six. He then shook his head. "Nah, she's probably eating right now."

"So, just leave a message--c'mon, John, what are you so afraid of?" Okay, this was more like it. Bobby and him just talking, without the strings of Rogue attatched to his hip. It was good to have his friend back, but he knew that it wouldn't last for long. He really liked Rogue, that was no doubt, but he often got tired of Bobby constantly putting her in front of their friendship. But, then again, he thought. Maybe it's not so bad having someone like that. Maybe the idea of him having a girlfriend wasn't so incredibly rediculous. But trusting her? That was a whole new issue. Yes, trusting a human in general was a very dangerous thing. Then again, she didn't have to find out about it either. It was easy enough to hide--as long as she doesn't piss me off too much...

Frustrated with his inner thoughts, he groaned and leaned over to pick up the phone. "Alright," said Bobby, rubbing his hands together. John looked to his palm and dialed the number. "If she doesn't pick up within three rings, I'm hanging up," he warned as the phone rang.

All of a sudden, a female voice picked up. "Hi." It was Sherry. He raised an eyebrow.

"Do you always answer the phone like that?" he asked.

"Like what?" came her voice over the reciever. Bobby gave him a thumbs up and walked out of the dorm to give him some privacy.

"Like you know that it's me," he said.

"But it is you," said Sherry, in that voice of je-ne-sais-qui. He could almost hear her smiling. "So, decided to call me, huh? How many of your friends did it take to convince you?"

"Hey! How do you--" he heard her laughing. Calm down, don't let her make a fool out of you, he thought. "Ugh, so what's up?" he asked, not knowing what else to say.

"Well, nothing much I guess. Just working on my latest terracotta sculpture. I love art, it's kinda what keeps me going? It's like... I don't know, it just fuels the fire within, you know?" John laughed--okay, he thought, I admit it, she was very charming. What are the odds that she keeps on mentioning fire? "You have such a great laugh," she commented.

"Uh... Thanks, I guess..."

"So," she said. "When are you coming over to my house so I can paint you? Hey--how bout tomorrow? It's Friday. Where do you go to school? I'll meet you there and we can, like, take the bus to my house and stuff."

Oh, shit, he thought. Not this week--I have detention... "Well, I'm kinda busy, here..."

"Xavier Institute???"

"What?" he asked, a bit panicky. "How'd you know that?" Jesus Christ, don't tell me she's able to read minds, too...

"...It's on caller ID... Hey, isn't that the prep school?"

Prep School? That was a laugh. John Allerdyce in a prep school had to be the richest thing he'd ever heard. "Uh, yeah, I go there--I'm calling from my dorm."

"Cool!" Sherry said. "I go to Lincoln High--it's an Arts Magnet school, perfect for me, huh?"

"Haha, yeah, I guess..." Hearing her voice made him feel like he was a normal teenager--nothing constricting him from the outside world. He loved his power, but thought it as a curse at the same time. No, he thought, humans are the curse...

"Why don't I come and visit you some time at your school?"

He shrugged. "Sure, why not? You know where it is?"

Sherry laughed. "It's pretty hard to miss, dontcha think? When's a good time?"

"How bout tomorrow?" Hey! said his inner voice. You know you have detention tomorrow... So she'll come when I'm done, he argued back.

"Around 4 maybe... S'ok with you?" He could almost hear her smiling again. "What?" he asked after a long silence.

"Nothing, it's just that... Well, you're a whole lot nicer over the phone is all..." She giggled slightly. You dumbass, you shouldn't bring her to the school--she might see something. He sighed.

"Hey, listen... Let's not hang out at the X Institute, okay? Like... I dunno, we can go get coffee somewhere instead, okay?"

"What, you can't bring non-preps there?" He shrugged. "Kinda-sorta... It's complicated."

"Hee-hee, okay, sure. Still tomorrow at 4? Or would later be easier for you?" How does she keep doing that? "I guess that a curfew is kinda the rule there, huh?"

"How'd you know I was planning on sneaking out?"

"I dunno, you just seem the type of person to sneak out. You're like an army training course--a real challenge. I think maybe that's why I find you so incredibly fascinating..." Why is she talking to me like this???

"Uh... Alright."

"Great. How bout that coffee house at the corner of 6th and Park, it's called La Boheme, you know it?"

He laughed inside. How perfect for her? "Okay... Uhm... How's sixish? That's when I can fake a stomach ache and get out of dinner." Sherry laughed.

"Sure, sounds great. I'll meet you there at sixish. Don't you dare be late!" He could hear her wink over the phone. He laughed. "Alright, I guess I'll see you tomorrow then..."

"Okay, see you tomorrow. G'night, John Allerdyce."

He laughed. "G'night."

AUGH! Kewl! This is like my first X-men Movie fic ever! Plz don't be too harsh. Ooooh, what will happen between our Pyro and the elusive Miss Sherry Dannuk??? OOooooOOOOooooOOooooOOOOOOooooo..... lol, kk please R&R! No flamers, please--and, the irony again... Grr... lol thanks for reading my fic! Chapter 2 should come up soon.