Chapter Text
You are two years old when your mother moves with you to America. You can hazily remember her hand clutching yours, burying her face into your tiny body. Her hair is straw-coloured, and you can remember running your chubby fingers through it. There are few belongings to your name.
You are four years old when she finds a rich man that takes you both in, and is quick to spoil you as if you are his own child. There are hushed murmurs of his staff, talking about how the last wife was carted away because she was crazy, burning away with strange flares. It wasn't long after the Great World Blaze, either. Burnish, they spoke, though the word speaks to something lingering in the back of your mind.
You are four and a half years old when your step-father comes home blithering drunk. The screaming starts, almost nightly. It goes on for weeks but then suddenly ends. The reason why it started is unknown, but it's alright. You start attending etiquette schools, and you keep to yourself among the rich kids from birth.
On your fifth birthday, you are given a good celebration, the cake is delicious and you make yourself sick, but a strange feeling starts setting in – you're certain you're a boy, and you weren't always like that. Soft skirts are fought against, to the dismay of your nanny. You quiet when you can wear pants and shorts, and it's brushed off as nothing too terrible. Your name starts to sting, but you can ignore the burn.
As you age up to seven, something seems wrong in your limbs – it's not the strange pulling in your body, wanting the rough boyhood that the boys at school have. It's not proper for a girl to want to rough-house and tumble in the dirt, covered in scratches and bruises. Hard-earned playtime with skinned knees. So you keep the irritation to yourself, you read books under the trees. Voracious, your teachers call you, and you simply sink yourself into schoolwork and your free time into books. You lie to yourself that everything is okay.
It is early April. The flowers are starting to bloom among small leaves, snow is almost a memory and you clutch your raincoat around you as you splash through puddles in stolen moments. Your long hair is pulled up into the hat, pale green-white strands slipping out. You're left alone outside. The screaming has stirred up again, and it's been a constant daily occurrence. Some of your fellow classmates have been taken out of class, the word of Burnish slipping back into day-to-day life. Your mother has no issue with them. They are people trying to live their lives, just with the added challenge of being humans made of fire.
Life is mundane, you grow into a 'fine young lady' as your step-father says. You speak once of your distaste of it, that you are not a lady and instead a young strapping lad. Everything you say is what you hear the mothers and fathers and teachers of the boys in your class say. You feel jealous, you don't want to be the polite girl, silent in her place. You fight the dresses and the skirts and the jewellery. You wear it anyway, when your step-father glares and puts you in your place with only a few sharp words. Smoke chokes you for the first time that night.
Your mother smiles, calling you her little man once, knowing that her husband is incredibly displeased by it. It is your secret, and your mother learns how to plait your long hair back in a way that makes you happy to look at your reflection. Glee chokes you instead of the growing hatred for yourself that you didn't realize was there. It is nice. Any happiness dies that evening, hearing that it is you he screams about, accusing your mother of corrupting your innocence. You keep any wish to be a boy to yourself and cry yourself to sleep among damp pillows.
Something flickers in you as you grow, unchecked. When you get angry, you spit ash and taste smoke, and you feel like it's the end of the world – that you'll burn up in flame. You want to. It'll leave nothing behind, and for a period of time your books you read are about morbid topics. They aren't fit for a ten year old, but you live for it. It's all you can do to read. Going up in flames is reassuring – there will be almost nothing left. You don't realize anything else could be at play now. It's hard to grow up to face the truths your body has for you.
You are eleven when you hear the house staff speak about the Mad Burnish – how they've terrorized cities and towns, burning down what they want. You ignore it, but you can't ignore the unsettling chill in your bones when you hear the newscasts your step-father listens to with a sick smirk on his face. He speaks highly of the Foresight Foundation. The founder, Kray Foresight has been praised for his rescue of a child your age – someone named Galo Thymos. His face looks like yours – soft and rounder than any of the boys. But he's very clearly a boy, from the very way he's dressed, and you're so, so jealous of him. You forget of Galo Thymos in time, like the rest of the world. He's forgotten in Kray Foresight's world, using his name to step to fame.
It is late April, you are twelve, when you catch the scent of smoke in your home – and it is not the fire going in the living room. It's paired with the scent of copper, harsh and foul. Your step-father is screaming, but his voice is different – pained. There is no anger, only begging and tears. It's a sound that will live with you for the rest of your days. Your body tells you to run, and you're caught frozen until you go to investigate it. Your mother's hands are surrounded by bright flames. They are alien, bright neon pink and cyan. Her eyes leak the same kind of flames, crying and spitting the fire. You and she are both frozen until her head tilts down to look at the charred remains on the kitchen floor. Neither of you speak, but you understand.
It is mid June, and you and your mother have made excuses for his disapearance – the police open an investigation and find nothing. Your mother smiles, showing you how she's gaining control of her new powers, making you black things that glisten like glass. You find a name for yourself, and your mother is so, so happy to call you her son. For the first time in years, you feel so much lighter. You have to move though, you can't afford the same kind of lifestyle, and remarrying again would raise too many questions about your mother's new status. The Burnish have started to be rounded up by the authorities, and it makes your blood run cold. You have a sneaking suspicion to what will happen to you as you almost daily choke on coals.
The worst comes, and your mother pulls you from your bed, giving you a backpack stuffed with the things you and her will need. She chops your hair off, messy and short – boyish and you love it. Your clothing is protective, and she gathers you up in her arms. You don't know how Miss Fotia can gather it up – she's always looked so weak, and you aren't exactly light. You are thirteen, after all. She carries you from the house, a scared light in her eyes. You go into hiding.
It is a month before the stress is finally what makes you catch fire, spitting and seeing stars. The blaze is strong, surging forth and dooming you. Neither you or your mother can return to the life you had. You are reborn in a pyre of your own making – Lio Fotia. It is a name you murmur, and it's all you will be called by. Your mother leads you on, and you start meeting more Burnish on the run. You forge a quiet community along a quiet section of the Canada and American border. You meet many people from all walks of life, and it's an overwhelming amount that are like you, or like those of the same gender, or all. Or none. It's scary, and you see so many that you want to do something.
You are fifteen when the community thins drastically – there are technologies that finally came into play, terrorizing the Burnish communities at large. They were there previously too, but often their results were tests, the mice in labs being the same humans that made up the home you dwell in. Many casualties happened until they were finally perfected. Your mother goes missing, and you can't do anything about her. The only thing you can do is sharpen your fangs and claws and go to war against the Foresight Foundation. You give into the fire's will to burn and burn and burn. You will not compromise on killing. You will never kill without great need or a great terrible cause.
You hear about the Mad Burnish in the camps and little towns you move through, a reverance in their voices. There is no fear in their voices, unlike how you heard about Mad Burnish before you burned too. Freeze Force is now a division that speaks to a new city's mayor directly. Your gut twists as you start hearing the horror stories of what Kray Foresight is capable of. You start going to war on your own terms, honing the skills you will carry into the future.
You are twenty one and a half when you finally meet Mad Burnish. You intercept their fight with those chasing them. It's chaotic indeed, and you are quick to overtake their opponents with ease, and yet there are no casualties where you are involved. Your head is held high as you introduce yourself. The leaders introduce themselves to you, and are quick to call you Boss.
Everyone is so skinny, and you do your best to feed everyone, but honestly you live off the constant rebuild and replenishing of your body by the fire's teeth. You go hungry often. You feel guilty when you crack open a can of something to put in your stomach, knowing others are going hungry, but it's the best you can do. It goes on for months, and you stay back, keeping your small communities running, a member of the Mad Burnish. You burn when you can, steal and take what you do. You always leave enough for others and a way out.
It's been a wild handful of months, and you finally get news on where the Burnish are kept, and you steel your resolves with Meis and Gueira and you plan. You plan on hitting pharmacies in Promepolis – a place you hate because Kray Foresight is behind its foundation, but it's also a place where Burnish live under the radar. You know Burning Rescue is fair, but you plan on Freeze Force to also catch wind of your plans. You wait for the right time, and it just so happens you turn twenty two days before hand. You don't say anything, no one knows your age aside from the fact you quietly say you're in your early twenties when prompted.
You are twenty two when you meet Galo Thymos, and his dumb luck and charisma are quick to take out everyone, even easier than you all had made it. You do admit he put up a good fight, and you weren't going to go down easily, but in the end you do, and a part of your mind is ten years younger, feeling a strange kind of way. Galo Thymos – the kid Kray Foresight rescued. You can only hope Galo is wise enough to catch what is going on, either that he will burn up in his naivety.
Your mind goes blank as Vulcan's slimy jaws snap shut around your dimly lit future, but you can only begin to future fan the spark you lead into tommorow.