Yeah... this chapter is a bit late. To make up for its tardiness, I made it extra long. Hope you like it, it's an important chapter. Thanks to everyone who's been supportive so far.

Also, I have a proof reader now. Her name is Shius, and she is awesome. Many thanks to her, she showed me just how many mistakes I've been making.

Every nerve that can thrill with pleasure, can also agonize with pain.

~Horace Mann

It hurt.

I haven't ever gone with burns untreated before. I always got to the hospital or got them patched up at a reasonable time, but I had been wandering for four days with open wounds on both my face and arm.

And it hurt. Dear God, do burns hurt.

One was festering on the side of my face, rotting, searing, throbbing. I was scared to take off the gas mask and expose the wound, because I was afraid to see the infection.

I knew it had to be infected. I could feel it slowly killing me. Luckily the burn on my arm wasn't infected, in fact, it was healing quite nicely. The scabbing made it uncomfortable to bend, so I held it straight at my side and used the other hand for stuff like picking up objects. Other than that it was fine.

The sun was not fine.

The sun was ridiculously hot and made everything seem fuzzy. I was in the middle of nowhere, my face was horribly wounded, and I was running on an empty tank (food wise.) On my fifth day of wandering across the country side of what I thought was New York, I fainted, either from blood poisoning, heat stroke, or just plain exhaustion.

I was walking down a paved road when it happened, wheat fields on both sides of me. My knees gave way. The midday heat encased me like a blanket and suddenly the road looked like a lovely place to sleep. 'Fuck.' I shut my eyes and I was unconscious before my head even smacked against the pavement.

...

I was expecting to wake up in a hospital again, like the past two times I've blacked out. I was expecting to wake up fully bandaged and on a heavy dose of pain meds.

That didn't happen.

I woke up in the back of a crappy camper-van that might've smelled like pee. Someone was driving up front and listening to horrible music. I felt around till I found the gas mask and tethered it to my belt so I wouldn't lose it.

"Don't you dare die in my van."

I said something to show I was awake and in pain, and not dead.

The man shouted back, "We're 'bout 20 miles till the nearest 'ospital. Won't be long now. Lucky ya aren't dead yet with tha infection. Lucky I was willing ta stop and pick up a sheila like you too, most people would'a drove on."

Whatever he really said went in through one ear and out the other, but it was something around those lines. His accent was irritating but I didn't care enough to try to figure where he was from, or even make a reply. I just writhed around the van's floor till the vehicle rolled to a stop and some paramedics carried me into the hospital.

They took my clothes and mask and gave me a hospital gown, bandaged me up, then shoved needles in me, and then tried to get a name out of me. I didn't tell them, but not many other people could fit my physical description so it couldn't have been too hard to identify me.

After a heavy dose of drugs, I slept for a week. You can guess what I dreamed about.

...

Medical report:

The Infection was treated just in time and the blood poisoning wasn't too bad. The arm healed perfectly and will be expected to function on a normal level with scarring kept to a minimal, though still visible. Facial trauma is highly notable and requires constant attention, and without proper treatment the infection could relapse. Patient fusses over the bandages and often tries to take them off, much to the nurse's dismay.

Vision in left eye must be tested when the patient is in a more functional state, along with current mental health.

Patient does not react well to pain medication- she suffers from hallucinative side effects. Test to make sure the medication is the cause of this.

Patient is delusional. Highly aggressive. Best kept sedated.

Estimated hospitalization time is two months.

-Doctor Eli Drake of burn ward, 07/14

...

The police showed up when I was still bedridden and too drugged to tell left from right. I was told by one jackass of an officer with an over sized mustache that as soon as the hospital would allow it, I would be arrested and charged with twenty four cases of arson, and ten plus murders.

I wondered if they thought that I murdered my friend and my father. Does it count as murder if it was on accident? I almost asked, but the man kept talking and my mouth felt dry. I blocked him out, whatever he had to say I already knew or had heard before.

By using the firefighters trademark, I got blamed for all his fires. The trademark had been in use for five years, so it was suspected that I had been starting these fires since I was thirteen. They expected that I was able to start all of the fires, including the ones up to one hundred miles away from where I lived. It was ridiculous, but I didn't deny it.

No one would believe me if I said that, and I had started fires, just different, unmarked ones.

And... I kinda, almost wanted to be arrested. I deserved it. I was guilty and every conscious second I was reminded of this. It was all I could think about.

Sometimes, when I would gaze over to the chair next to the hospital bed, I'd see that greasy guy I ran into at fifteen. He'd smoke, stare at me a bit, and recap the situation as if I didn't know, making sure I couldn't forget what I had done even for a second.

"You're losing your mind dear." He'd finish, and the statement couldn't be truer.

Sometimes when I looked at the empty chair, I'd see my father, crying silently with his face turning away from me.

One time I can recall a pink stuffed animal- like creature holding candy and rainbows. That I had no problem ignoring because it was simply too crazy and unrealistic.

Sometimes though, it'd get really bad. I'd see my firefighter, in full uniform complete with his painted gas mask. He'd be covered in soot and blood, not an inch of clear skin, just splinters, burns and bone.

The corpse only hummed various rock songs, (its) eye holes staring at nothing.

"I'm sorry."

It, I refuse to call it he, for it wasn't real, It wasn't him, far from it, the real body would look so much worse.

"God damn I'm sorry. I'm fucking sorry." Nothing.

Even when my eyes grew wet and I called his (its) name, praying that my own hallucination, my own twisted imagination, would be kind enough to respond.

When I told the nurse I was having hallucinations she said it was just a side effect of the medication and the infection (which I was handling nicely). However, I wasn't so sure at this point that that was the case. Eventually, I just stopped looking at the chair, and the hallucinations mellowed so I didn't pursue it any further.

The only reason I'd look at the chair at all was to check if my mother sat in it.

Not once did my mother visit me in the hospital. She didn't call, visit, or send mail, and that was a good thing because I wouldn't have been able to face her. The less reminders of home the better. I could imagine my mother trying to pick her life back up after losing her technically ex-husband and his house to fire, and her daughter to the law.

She'd be fine, I concluded. She wasn't stupid and could make it on her own, as she had been.

~I've cried, and you'd think I'd be better for it, but the sadness just sleeps, and it stays in my spine the rest of my life.

~Conor Oberst

After a week and a half in the hospital I got a letter other than court information. It was from RED again, and I could only barely remember the first letter I received from them two years earlier. I shoved the envelope it in the bedpan and ignored it, never laying eyes on it again.

I regret not reading it. I regret not asking who delivered it too, but whoever did probably gave me the newspaper as well.

The newspaper was delivered anonymously. It was a report on my fire, and the headline clearly read-

TWO DEAD IN FIRE, MORE INJURED AND SERIAL ARSONIST FOUND

My breath hitched and I choked on air.

The title I could read clearly, but everything after that simply turned into what could've been Chinese for all I know. The drugs made reading small print impossible.

TWO DEAD IN FIRE, MORE INJURED AND SERIAL ARSONIST FOUND

I ripped the newspaper into tiny pieces. After the paper was reduced to scrap, I realized something and made a useless attempt to piece back the article as if it could still be read.

Two dead in fire.

I thought, I thought, that three were in the building. Didn't two firefighters go in to get my father? Am I making that up? Do I know which two died?

"Yes, you know very well who died." My hallucination spoke for me, materializing out of the air in the chair next to me. I knew that if I started to converse with these hallucinations regularly, I would officially lose all my marbles. I paid the man with shoulder length slicked back greasy hair no heed. If I ignored it long enough, it'd go away.

"Bitch, don't ignore me." He threatened. I didn't like being bullied by own head trip. I looked away and shut my eyes.

"I'm calling you." It persisted. I vowed to stop taking the pain medication.

The voice changed into one much more familiar, a voice that used to be friendly but the malice stuck. "Look at me you slut, don't pretend you don't know what you did."

I called out for a nurse.

...

After two weeks in the hospital, I decided I wanted out. It was stuffy. It smelled funny. There were no matches anywhere, and I didn't like the nurses and doctors looking at me as if I were a carrier of the plague. I can see why they didn't want to stick close to me, I had just been titled a 'serial arsonist,' but it stung none the less.

What I would've done before was just give my friend a call and he'd probably just come and sneak me out, probably bringing me a spare pair of clothes while he was at it.

I would've given anything to get out of that damned hospital gown. I would've given anything to find my gas mask too. I asked the next nurse who changed my dressings where the hell my stuff was. I think I scared her because she walked back out of the room without saying a word.

Eventually, after a couple hours of telling myself I would do it, I got up. My legs felt like jello and by head started throbbing, but it was really fine, a lot better than I had been feeling. I walked out the room and into the hallway. No one was there. The halls were empty, empty and white and silent. I chose a direction and limped that way.

I just needed to find my clothes and mask, just needed to know where they were. I found myself in the main lobby, searching through various closets with a few other patients giving me odd looks.

"Hello Si-... Uh, Miss? Can I help you?" A young male nurse from the desk asked.

I ignored him and kept on looking. I wouldn't be able to leave until I had my stuff (mainly mask). "Um, I'm not sure you should be out here, why don't I take you back to your room?"

I gave him the middle finger and walked -more like stumbled- onward.

"Ma'am I may need to call security, you're not allowed to do that."

"Where is my stuff?"

"I'll find you your stuff, just come with me."

"No, find it for me first."

"We keep all of our... clients personal possessions in the storage room 'till they are free to be released. When you leave we will give you your clothes back. Okay?"

Another nurse helped him return me to my room.

Another day passed and I was still hellbent on finding my clothes and getting out of there. I had no idea when they initially planned to release me, but when they did I wouldn't have a chance to do shit because I'd be whisked straight into a jail.

I deserved prison but I didn't want to go anymore, for various, obvious reasons that include being less comatose.

I tried escaping the hospital twice, each time making a detour to the 'storage room' where my stuff was supposed to be. Each time I got tackled, sedated, and woke up much later right back in the room.

When they say only bed rest, they mean it. I think they also believed that I was off to start a fire or murder other patients as well, so they were extra eager to catch me as soon as they saw me walking about.

The third time, I planned a bit more.

It was about noon, and a nurse had already seen to my needs. I waited until she left and I walked out of the room and searched for the nearest fire alarm. I pulled it.

The reaction was immediate. Total evacuation. I hid in one of the lavatories as the staff pushed everyone out the door, and it took awhile.

I searched the halls until I found a room labeled 'storage room.' Inside I found various clothes, and on the top shelf next to a couple oxygen tanks, I found my mask. I don't think the clothes I took were actually mine, but they fit and that was close enough. I rummaged around the storage room (which was kinda like a lost and found) and by luck I came across a lighter. It wasn't a fancy zippo or personalized lighter, no, it was just a crappy bic you'd pick up at a corner store.

But it was good enough. At this point the rest of the hospital was probably realizing this wasn't a real fire. I didn't have enough time to start something serious, but I did have enough time to grab one of the socks from the 'lost and found' and burn it. I held it close to the smoke alarm and didn't take it away till it was about all burnt up. Then I lit another sock and did the same till the smoke detector detected smoke and the sprinklers went off.

I pocketed the lighter with a sense of accomplishment. There. That would keep the fear of fire alive for at least a few more minutes.

As the chaos and evacuation continued on, I left. I squeezed past the crowd of sick people surprisingly well as they gathered outside the building and looked for smoke. And as the fire department showed up (the staff were very pissed when they found out it was a hoax) I walked down the street.

The bandages covering my face had to be a dead giveaway that I belonged in the hospital, but once I got past the mob no one tried to stop me. If any staff noticed me limping away, they didn't stop me, probably because they were scared of me.

Good. They should be. I could've started a real fire.

The next day, the wanted posters were already out, my face in every newspaper. I was a wanted fugitive. I think I liked it, at least at first.

~Question everything. Learn something. Answer nothing.

~Euripides

...

I took the bandages off myself. It was in the lady's room of some gas station, the lady next to me stared at me to make sure I was a lady, and to make sure I wasn't dying or about to mug her. I paid her no attention and only hoped she hadn't been watching the news lately.

Under the bandages was exactly what I was expecting.

More scars.

The lady, now washing her hands, still staring, gasped and offered to call an ambulance.

I denied the offer and examined my face. The left side of my face was simply more torn up even worse. The new burn overlapped the old one with dark red. It hadn't healed yet, and still should've been covered, but I didn't care enough to bother. I didn't want to touch it either, it was still swollen and scabby and it hurt like a bitch, but I washed it in the grimy gas station restroom, put on my ever useful gas mask, and left.

...

The next thing I did was go find my mother. It took me a week to get back to New York and find her. It was a week of hitch hiking and long walks, along with desperately avoiding the police. I think I had been hospitalized in Pennsylvania, a good distance away.

The problem was, I didn't know where my mother was staying, assuming she was still in New York. The only place in the whole damn city I could think to go, was home, which technically wasn't even in the city, it was on the edge and it was a pile of ash.

I remember standing in the clearing that once was my house, the yard a mess. I remember falling apart again and crying there for an hour. I also remember a car pulling up and my mother, wearing a sundress that she hadn't fit in for years, came out with a bouquet of flowers in her hand.

When our eyes met she dropped the flowers and yelled in Japanese. It took a while for her to calm down. She wiped at her eyes and I adjusted my mask.

"What are you doing back here?"

"I wanted to see you... This was the only place I could think to go to." I kicked at the charred wooden remains of my shed.

"They'll find you here."

"The police?"

"Yes! Of course! You so dense sometimes."

"Why do you care if the police find me?"

She took a long moment to answer. "Because you could get capital punishment, I don't want to know you, but I don't want you dead."

"I'm sorry."

"I told you you were going to prison." She said spitefully. "I told you, long ago."

I agreed that she had been right all along. She walked to me, took the stupid gas mask off my face and put her hand on my cheek. She eyed the new trauma. She looked me in the eye with a twisted and backwards expression, like she was trying to be disgusted but couldn't quite do it.

She always was a bad actor. She sighed. "Get in car."

I did.

She took me to her hotel room, closed all the blinds, and put a 'do not disturb' sign on the door. The first thing she did was shove ointment on my face as if I was still a little child that couldn't do it myself. She still had a motherly touch. She gave me a meal too, then forced me into the shower and gave me a new pair of clothes (a t-shirt, hoodie, panties and her only pair of jeans). They didn't quite fit, but I was thankful because the one I had been wearing stunk like rotten cheese. She washed the hospital clothes too.

Around midnight, after I napped for a long time, she woke me up and handed me a piece of paper with an address on it. "I'll be moving here. Don't visit. Don't mail. Don't call - lines will be tapped."

I nodded.

"Your father's car in parking lot, here's key. If police catch you, say you stole it."

I nodded and looked down to meet her eyes.

"You're a grown up now... Where has the time gone?" She cried and I even attempted to hug her. It didn't work, but the gesture might've been comforting. I shrugged.

I put the gas mask on again, pulled the hood over my head, and made way to the door with my extra change of clothes and a few other products my mother thought I needed. Before I left, I turned around and mumbled through the mask. "I didn't do it on purpose."

"It doesn't matter if you did it on purpose or not, you in trouble you can't get out of."

"Dad..."

"He died long before house fell. Smoke got him."

"I'm sorry." I put my hand on the doorknob.

"I don't care. Go now, don't get caught, don't be stupid - you are smart, could've gone to law school."

I scoffed. "That's a lie."

She smiled a sad smile. 「さあ、行きなさい」

「・・・さようなら、お母さん。」 I left, got into my dad's car which was much too nice for a person like me, and drove off.

~If you're going to be crazy, you have to get paid for it or else you're going to be locked up.

~Hunter S. Thompson

Sometimes, when my emotions got real bad, or when I hadn't slept in a few days, I'd see my firefighter friend in the passenger seat of the car. Sometimes he looked like a corpse, sometimes not.

I'd turn on the radio to a station that always played one of the songs he'd liked to hum, and then ignored him- no, ignored it. I knew it was dangerous to acknowledge the hallucination, it wasn't healthy to call it a he, and it certainly wasn't healthy to even have hallucinations in the first place.

"If you didn't use my trademark, you wouldn't be in this mess to begin with. If you didn't use it, they wouldn't have assumed you started the other twenty-three."

"I know." There goes my no talking to the hallucinations rule.

"You don't know I'm dead."

"If you were alive then you'd be starting fires and using the trademark too, I'd see you in the newspapers." I reasoned with – ultimately – myself.

"Yeah... s'pose so." It seemed sad and I'd ignore it and it'd go away.

...

Within a year, I was number seven on the America's top most wanted list. I kept myself relative in the news by continuing my hobby, and numbering each fire I started before I left them. I never stayed in one place. Always moving, always changing the license plate on the car (by stealing others) and always being smart.

Or, as smart as I could get. There were times I'd zone out and then suddenly a whole week was gone, what I did during those weeks I have no idea. I always had a new number to mark the next fire with afterwards though.

I have whole weeks missing from my memory, several of them. Sometimes I forgot to eat or sleep too, and sometimes I'd black out and realize I was suddenly in another state. Sometimes I'd black out and come to with blood covering my hands and a body in the back seat, wrapped in white sheets and smelly to the point it was unbearable to stay in the car.

Okay, the last one only happened once, but it is still noteworthy and it scared the hell out of me because I didn't know when, or why I did it. I don't even know who I killed.

I had dozens of close calls with the police, so I thought maybe it was a cop, but I now doubt that.

By two years, I had built myself a new flamethrower. It wasn't like my old one, it was more efficient, and had a fancy compression blast, albeit it didn't get used much. At this point I was using my third car, I wouldn't use one for too long or else someone might recognize it. By year two I was on the top ten most wanted list in Canada too, though I scarcely remember staying in Canada at all.

Whenever I had these memory gaps, I'd be followed by hallucinations as well. I definitely broke the 'no talking to the hallucinations' rule. After one particularly big fire, I got in the car and started driving. After about a mile or two, a man in a red suit materialized out of fucking air in the passenger seat and I nearly crashed the car.

"Pardon, mon ami, I did not wish to startle you."

"Who the fuck are you!?"

"I suggest you keep driving, the fire department will show up momentarily." I did just that and repeated my previous question.

"I, chère fille, am simply inztructed to keep an... eye on you. Thought I'd introduce myself." I scoffed and then treated him like any other hallucination.

"I'll tell zhe employers you may not be... a good choice." I ignored him and eventually, when I looked over, he wasn't there anymore.

I was honestly scared for my own sanity. My best friend was now a flamethrower, when I thought of my face I thought of a gas mask, my hallucinations supplied nearly all my conversation, and I couldn't remember anything.

I needed help.

I couldn't get it

It scared me.

I dealt with this fear like I deal with every other emotion; with a match.

...

I was twenty when I made it to the state of Texas. Texas is hot. Texas has little rain, and is very dry. Texas burns great.

Ever heard of a little town called Dianne? It's nothing but dust now. It was a tiny place, it's police force consisted of two men and it's fire department was the next town over's fire department.

The Dianne incident is what finally scored me as the number one most wanted in America. It was also my one hundredth fire. And it is also what got me caught.

I was camping out in a field a few towns over, sleeping in the car. Suddenly someone was screaming for me to get out of the car and hold my hands up. I was caught. My freedom burned out like a matchstick. I got out of the car and had twenty guns pointed at my chest, and I knew it was over. I wasn't even that upset.

One hundred is a damn fine number.

"Look's like you caught me." I said more to myself that anyone else. I hoped they'd just shoot me so we could skip the whole 'justice system' drama. They did no such thing.

But still, one fucking hundred is nothing to shabby. My friend would be proud.

...

I was tried within four weeks. I was found guilty of 100 cases of arson and 83 cases of manslaughter, along with countless damage done to private and public property, disrupting the peace, and a thousand other things. I don't remember doing or committing most of these but I don't doubt I did every single thing they pinned on me.

83 deaths, and I only remember three of them. That Greasy Man (who wasn't counted on the list), my father, and my friend. 83. It felt like someone shot me with 83 bullets. And then it felt like nothing.

The court lasted two days, it seemed like twenty minutes.

I hadn't even tried to use the insanity plea, because capital punishment sounded better than life in an insane asylum. I was placed on the death row, and I was the only woman on death row. I did not see my mother, or any other visitors. For awhile, I did not even feel. Not a thing, it was a comfortable numb.

I turned twenty-one while on death row, and I didn't notice. I didn't notice how the hallucinations came more often, or how they got weirder and weirder to the point that they might've come out of children's cartoons. I hated it. All of it. The things I hated most were the food, the color of the walls (grey) and the colors of our clothes (orange), and of course the absence of my mask and flamethrower. Sometimes a few of the asshole guards thought they could get some easy sex from me, and damn they are pushy. If you're a guard, you can get away with anything, and they knew it, but I wasn't a scared fifteen year old then, and I was able to handle myself a little (a lot) better.

I still hope they burn in hell.

Several times I tried making a noose out of my bed sheets, I tried choking on my food, I tried to drown myself in the shower rooms, but nothing worked, I couldn't end it. I had to wait for our justice system to do it for me.

I would've been desperate enough to kill myself with a spoon if I didn't get that life saving visit.

Her name was Miss Pauling. She was young, and pretty, dressed in purple (which looked like a beautiful change from orange) and wore thick rimmed glasses. She looked at me like a person, and upon first laying eyes on her I decided I liked her.

"Hello-" (my name) "-I'm here to offer you a job." I couldn't fucking believe it. "And this job would... save you from your current predicament."

"How?" I asked from the other side of the glass.

"Leave that to me, all you have to know is that RED has a large sum of power and money. And Saxton Hale." I just stared at her.

"All you would have to do it set stuff on fire, and we'll help you escape and give a whole new identity so you can get on the right of the law."

"How?"

"Just say yes, we'll get you out of here to sign a contract and you'd work for RED, fighting BLU."

I hated to sound like a broken record, but I had to ask again "HOW?"

"Don't worry about that, I'm offering to pay you to play with fire." She smiled sweetly, intoxicatingly, and I found myself saying "hell yeah."

...

And suddenly my schedule changed, within three days I was to be sent to another prison.

I was cuffed and put into a van and it drove away and I never arrived at that 'other prison.' The back door of the van opened and Miss Pauling held out her hand to me out. "Welcome to RED Pyro."

Thanks for reading, hope you liked it. Next chapter will be up at some point next week. For anyone who is wondering, the Japanese dialog towards the middle of the story is simply the mother and daughter saying goodbye. Did anyone like the sniper and spy guest appearances? Yes, no?

Either way, have a fantastic day.