Real Slave Name: St. John Matthew Allerdyce
Note: Despite what people think, it’s not Saint John. St.John is pronounced Sinjin, and the fact that no one seems to be able to say it correctly is most irritating to the mutant. But considering the fact that it's an Austalian based name and he's made an effort to get rid of all spottable traits of his Australian heritage, he doesn't complain too much anymore.
True Codename:
Pyro
Occupation:
Terrorist/Escaped Fugitive
Age:
30
Date of Birth:
03/25/1999
Member Group:
Brotherhood
Sexuality:
Straight-ish
Hometown:
Sidney, Australia
Face Claim:
Ben Foster
Tell us about your gift.
St.John is a rather unique fire mutant, with a strange type of pyrokinesis. Though he doesn’t have any other powers, that is more than made up for the fact that he has complete control over any fire within a hundred yard radius (though that distance may increase as he grows and his power develops). He can direct it, turning it into missiles or bullets, alter its intensity (though fire doesn’t generally burn cold, he can make it colder than usual, and the highest he can make it burn approached supernova levels at the moment), and most unusual of all, he can alter its shape with little effort on his own part. Able to create human figures made of fire who move like real people but under his complete control, as well as animals such as dogs and cats and birds, and then larger figures like flame dragons and knights, when he was younger St.John’s favourite past time when he’s alone and cold had been to create storylines in his mind and use the fire to act them out. He still does such a thing occasionally, when he’s suffering from writers block or other such problems.
The fire also appears to talk to him. Though some would call him crazy for suggesting such a thing, the term is a relative one and not entirely true. No words are used, but he knows what the flames need and when the need to escape. They control him as much as he controls them, using his emotions as an outlet and his voice as a master to play around with. In fact, his emotions, and even his body (which a supernaturally high body temperature, plus inability to sweat and to burn), are so closely linked with what he considers to be his element, that telling them apart is only growing harder as he grows older. Having come into his powers at a very young age, and have them gradually affect others within him having any emotion towards such effects as he grew older, he had fully embraced his power long ago. Consequently, his control over such a dangerous and volatile element is greater than it really should be for someone his age, but still has plenty of room to develop. The fire is his greatest addiction, and any flame can be enough to distract him completely and what's more, he's never actually appeared to have had to learn how to do anything. The fire tells him what to do ('Pyro' is the fire when they are controlling one another in equilibrium). Burning things is his favourite past time, and he feels sadistic joy every time he plays with it. He’s a pyromaniac. Short and simple. And, as some would say, slightly clinically insane.
When fully unleashed, however, his power is incredibly destructive (something which is only helped by the fact that he doesn’t know when to stop himself). Though only able to control a hundred yard radius around him, that doesn’t mean that any flames he has lit will die out if he moves beyond range, if he roots them. Now, they will continue to burn at the same intensity, but will no longer be under his ability to manipulate them. Placing hungry flames onto an area where fuel, heat and oxygen are in plentiful supply can create a colossal disaster (similar to the bush fires he may have accidently had something to do with back in Australia). Being unnatural, even if left to be free, the flames would take more than human input to put them out again.
Every mutation has its weaknesses, and St.John is no exception. The fire relates to his emotions and his emotions relate to the fire, which means that he’s a hot-headed boy with a short temper, and when he gets angry any flame in the nearby area can flare up out of control. Though his emotions have become more fully under his control since he was a teenager, on occasion they can still flare up. High levels of rain puts out his flames almost instantly, and the cold affects him, depriving him of the heat his body almost entirely runs on and leaving him feeling ill. Too low temperatures (for him, which are warmer than for other mutants and humans) can cause his internal organs to shut down as they don’t get the heat energy they require, killing him slowly and painfully. Too high altitudes rob him of oxygen quicker than other people would, and the water... He doesn’t like the water at all. Or the dark, but that’s another matter entirely. His greatest weakness though, as already mentioned, is the lack of ability to create the fire himself. He’s entirely dependent on another source for that. For his more complex creations, such as human figures, he has to be able to see them as well as having them within a hundred yard radius (luckily, however, being able to see them does include watching them on video footage, he’s found out).
Potential and Class::
Stated as being a class four mutant when he first set foot into Xavier’s, St.John has only grown in potential as time has passed and the fire consumed more of his willing mind. While only able to control one element (and his inability to create it) don't make him omega, his ability to make it do absolutely anything he wishes with little affect on himself (in fact, the difficulty depends on the size of his creations or the amount of them) is greater than most other elemental mutants. During his own little experimentations with his gift, the idea of a unique brand of teleport using the light speed of the fire molecules and his own ability to move it wherever he wants, is something that he is working on. However, he utterly loathes being made to control his power, and simply wishes to give it free reign... something that everyone other than him can see as being a bad thing entirely.
Height;
5’7½“
Build;
While waifish has never been a word anyone would use to describe st. John, no one will ever mistake him for a bodybuilder. Wiry and naturally lithe, his body displays the signs that malnourishment in developmental years was a common factor.
Hair;
Natural ash blonde, but the habit of dying it brown evolved from living on the streets, and he hasn’t discarded that yet, particularly now that he is a sought-after escapee. Since his escape, St. John has made several failed attempts to grow his hair back out, but finds himself at odds with an irrational compulsion, and ends up bringing it back to institution (short) length.
Eyes;
Grayish-Blue. Plain and simple, until he plays with fire - then flames flicker in those depths.
Distinguishing marks;
Burn marks on his hands from a house fire when he was three and his mutation hadn’t fully evolved, scars left over from the time before he knew how to fight back, along with a number of much newer ones courtesy of the torture he was subjected to while incarcerated. Additionally, he now bears a 3-inch bar code tattoo with the digits "A 3678372 pk" (forcibly) tattooed on the inside of his right bicep, also courtesy of the detainment facility.
Clothing wise, he keeps to the warm and the comfortable, enjoying the feel and security provided by leather (but refusing to wear black leather on the simple principle that it makes him look utterly ridiculous). With a lack of money, fashion labels and the like aren’t his top priority, and he generally steals what he needs and make sure that it’s long lasting. His accessories are more important, however – twin flame throwers strapped to his wrists and a matching Zippo lighter (not currently in his possession).
History:
For the first three years of his life, everything was normal for Australian born St.John Allerdyce. The youngest in a family of four, he grew up and developed as normally as can be measured for a infant, showing early signs of intelligence and obviously being the love of his family (except for his sister, but older siblings are always somewhat jealous of the youngers). Due to the fact that right from the start, luck was not something the boy had, life did not last in that manner for longer. When he was three, a teenage gang, high on drunks and filled with alcohol, decided it would be fun to play around with fireworks in the street outside of the family house. The result of which was a fire spanning the entire street, of which few people survived. St.John was one of those few (suspicions have been that his mutant ability, though still dormant at that time) was already active in his body and protected him from the heat and the smoke until a firefighter was able to get him out. With the rest of his family dead, the young child was adopted by his mother’s sister and her husband.
His aunt and uncle weren’t the nicest of people – his aunt a somewhat depressed and neglectful person who barely exchanged two words with the boy unless he had to, and his uncle an abusive alcoholic, St.John grew up with the knowledge of how to look after himself and a deep fear of the dark and of being seen. He spent most of his time outside, playing in the sun and enjoying the heat of his relatives house in the Australian bush. Before a time when he actually realised it to be strange, his companions were small puppies made of fire, fire which occasionally lit things around him. They had to leave that house when he was eight, and one of his little friends decided to set fire to the outback. One of the famous Australian bush fires (at least one) was his doing. Despite the panic of his relatives and his uncles conviction that it was his fault, St.John never had a hatred of the flames.
Instead of moving to another spot in Australia, the family instead moved over the ocean to a small city in America. St.John hated it. It was cold, wet, and people at school taunted him for his accent and for his inability to understand the most simple of social ideals. He became even more withdrawn, and more of a loner, concentrating instead on the friends who didn’t tease him (created with a lighter he had stolen from his most loved teacher back home), and on attempting to mask his accent. By the time he managed to sound like an American though, he was already disliked. But considering the fact that he was somewhat used to being alone, it did not upset him as much as it could have done for someone else.
The bullying grew worse as he grew older, with the people around him taunting him for his small, thin stature (most of the money his aunt made went on alcohol for his uncle, and she often forgot he existed). There was one boy in particular, a thick-headed, future American-football star, who took delight in picking on him. Eventually he snapped back, unable to keep his emotions from erupting from him, with help from that precious lighter. Aged thirteen, and he set another boy alight after he and his friends decided to beat on him on the way home one day. How his uncle found out such a thing he’s never found out – he ran before the police got there, and after the bullies friends had sped off, but his uncle still did and in response, handed him a bag with a change of clothes and twenty dollars, and then kicked him out. St.John managed three days before he went crawling back, hungry and wet and utterly terrified and the strange city, only to find that apartment abandoned. They’d both left, and chances were they wouldn’t come back.
It was that moment that the boy finally decided that he utterly hated other people.
The twenty dollars he spent on dinner and on a train to the next city. There, he encountered other homeless people who made him see the reality of living on the streets, and of making money off the streets. He was given tips before they abandoned him, all out to look out for themselves. He managed to survive, however, picking up ways to make money, and also in the quiet solitude provided by older buildings learning how to control the flames more, making them come when he wished them to (unlike other mutants, St.John had grown up with such a gift that had only developed with him. He is one of the small percentage that didn’t have a shocking hormonal opening to his powers). He moved between homeless shelters, squats, and when he got older the dorm rooms of university students (money would pay for a good fake ID, and he could easily pass for someone older in order to be taken home at night for somewhere warm), until the X Men found him and took him to Xavier’s.
At Xavier’s, though he instantly disliked being confined and having people asking him questions, and being around others his age, he made his first real friend, Bobby Drake. It’s practically expected that after nothing of the sort before, such a ‘friendship’ would develop into something he didn’t understand (but then again, he didn’t understand friendships either). With a reputation at Xavier’s as the near uncontrollable, ADHD bad boy, who couldn’t be bothered with any lessons other than English, he was still considered a loner other than his friendship with Bobby and, later on, the friendship-ish relationship with Rogue (who he grew to dislike somewhat after she and Bobby started dating, stealing his friend). He remained at the institute longer than he had willingly remained anywhere in years, until he met the mutant named Magneto during the Alkali lake disaster. Earlier that day, he had finally received the flames taste of freedom after burning Bobby Drake’s neighborhood and the much hated sight of human cops, and he was still buzzing from that even with his innate fear of flying.
With the master of magnetism’s words and descriptions of himself which St.John had known for years to be true (being a god amongst insects), added to the slow separation from Bobby due to Rogue and the fear of emotional pain such a thing would bring, St.John cut his losses and changed sides. He left Alkali Lake in the company of Magneto and Mystique, and soon found himself to be one of the youngest, yet still higher-ranking, in the Brotherhood, and finally able to use his powers at his full potential. He gained the respect of mutants much older than himself for his actions, and his efforts against the cure, and despite the faint niggling hint of failure, refused to back down and give up his freedom.
Such freedom was completely liberating and not something he had ever imagined he would have to give up again. But he did, though not willingly...
After years of marauding by Erik's side as a proud mutant terrorist and Brotherhood member, St. John was captured by operatives of the government agency D.O.M.A.I.N. Being that the mission their mission that he had encountered them on had been a black op and being that he was a known terrorist with a long list of warrants to his name, Pyro found himself imprisoned in a remote island detainment facility off the coast of Alaska, known more by it's eponymous nickname as the "Mutant Guantanamo". He was interrogated (read: violently tortured - physically and psychologically) daily for the better part of three and a half years. They say that sometimes it only takes a single spark to ignite the fires of insanity, in this case St. John was exposed to a flat out raging inferno.
He waited... for more than three years he waited, convinced that they would come for him - Magneto, the Brotherhood, hell Bobby and his goddamn X-twats. But to his utter shock, it was was not Erik that came in guns (metaphorically speaking) blazing to break him out, but two Brotherhood outcasts, the brother and sister Rattray. Upon his escape, Pyro immediately retreated into the underground mutant (and occasionally human) community. Technically maintaining a neutral status, he’s kept an eye out, and had no worries about flaming a human or two during his nights out clubbing and shagging, just as he had no concerns with hiding where he was. After what he feels was a betrayal (as well as abandonment and rejection) by the Brotherhood, St. John has been hesitant to declare any new allegiance, though he has gravitated towards the Rattrays and their Black Watch as they share his utter contempt for flatscans and the dominance of the Homo Superior race.
Personality
St.John has all of the symptoms of an affectionless psychopath. He has no concept of other people having feelings, or being able to react in the same way that he can, and is unable to care about anyone or anything except himself. But then again, in his life, so far that is no one but himself. He is a liar, however, and can act perfectly interested in someone else if he can get something out of it, but emotions and feelings are foreign concepts to him - and feel akin to sandpaper on bare skin. He doesn’t see any harm in any of his actions, even after burning someone and leaving them dying on the floor of an alley, and can’t think ahead for consequences for more than himself. That’s not to say he doesn’t understand the wants of others, especially when what they want in him. He delights in experience carnal pleasure and of people wanting him to give it back to them, and is incredibly open minded about the entire thing (despite having no belief about relationships or emotions being involved with sleeping with others).
Perhaps one of the main things to see about St.John is the fact that his arrogance appears to know no bounds. He looks down on everyone and everything around him, not even bothering to pass judgement. He’s never exactly been a social bug, and prefers his own company to that of other people for the most part, but occasionally there can be an exception. He has a dry sense of humour, sometimes considered to be cold and cruel, and alienates people with a bad boy attitude and rude style quicker than most other people can manage. And yet somehow, he is one of those people who is able to gain respect and hold control of others if the situation calls for it. He knows the details of survival better than most, and as proved by his quick rise to being one of Magneto's lieutenants, he can pass those over to others easily, and to hold onto their respect after the thing holding them all together has vanished. People who treat him with respect are those he feels are deserving of his time and his words. Even during his stint at Xavier's, where he was known through the grapevine as being the crazy little pyro, he had people respecting him and not giving him any hassle. Over the years, he's manage to build up ways to alienate people and make them afraid of him so that he's not the one to get hurt.
Another thing to note is his excessively possessive nature: Though he doesn't actually enjoy taking on any sort of dominant role, once he has something, he refuses to let it go without a fight. If someone tries to take his lighter away, for example, that someone will burn. And the same can be said for his little notebook of scribbles and stories. Growing up with few personal items has left him unable to let go of, or share, items which he has now... and that includes people.
But when given the opportunity St.John’s harsh exterior may break open a little to show some of the slightly playful side within him. One person managed to see such things: Bobby Drake, but a better example is fire. If you wish to see a more innocent, playful side of him, give him a flame. Though he may burn you to a crisp (and everything around to a crisp), he will do it with laughter in his eyes and an honestly innocent expression., like a child, playing with his favorite Christmas toy. His creations out of the fire are able to distract him from near on anything, and the entertainment he finds when he lets them play with others, is a fascinating (if sadistically sick and disturbing) thing to observe. Without the comfort of the flames, or without his lighter, a desperate and more vulnerable side of him will emerge – the type of character who longs to just be able to give himself over to someone else and have someone else care for him. But upon the lighters return, that will vanish completely.
His changes in his personality, especially the sadistically insane part of him, don’t make him get along well with other people. Not that he knows how to relate to them at all, of course. He doesn't understand the concept of people actually being nice, but on that note, his time at Xavier’s made him feel more open and weaker than at any other point in his life. It’s one of the reasons he left – his hatred of feeling weak and of being caged. Fire cannot be caged or controlled, after all, no matter how hard people try.
What makes you...you?
The thing that St.John likes most about himself, and about the world around him, is his mutation and fire. While he has always had a somewhat pyromaniac attitude towards any sort of flame, when his mutation manifested fully, he found himself in love with it even more. He adores using it to burn things, both living things and items that have never been alive and never would. A thing he likes which is completely unrelated to his mutation is writing. Though he never saw any point in school to bother trying and rarely did the work in class, the art of putting his thoughts down into words on a piece of paper for others to read is something that he can’t get enough of – both writing factual and fantasy (mainly Gothic romances for the latter). Linking onto that is his love for reading, especially the old style gothic horror stories and modern science fiction. He also has a bit of an addiction to chocolate, as well as loud punk music and, of course, sex (especially for the latter, when he doesn’t have to be in control – the freedom of being able to give it up, just for a bit, works wonders). He’s a slut, pretty much, but as long as people want him he’s not complaining. And finally, there is his love for money. Having been without it for years, he now has a tendency to hoard it rather than spend it, no matter how much he may need to.
One of Pyro's main dislikes are flatscans (humans, by their more common name, but being as there is little "humane" about them, he doesn't feel they deserve the title). As they have never done anything but use and abuse him, his hatred of them is practically expected. He can’t help but have a bit of fear for them as well, left over from years of abuse and inability to control his own gifts. Rules and regulations also irritate him more than they do others; he hates the idea of being confined or controlled in anyway – fire is an element which cannot be controlled and which shouldn't be controlled, and his nature is to simply go against them in any way that he can. Though people don’t expect it, another on his list of dislikes are cigarettes and smokers. While natural smoke is something he adores, reminding him of flames and other such things, contaminated, poisonous smoke like the kind coming from cigarettes is more than a little disgusting. Then there is also his hatred for politicians, both mutant and human. In his own opinion, they don’t have a clue what they are talking about. People thinking they understand him also irritate the hell out of him (unless they think of him in a good light, of course), come to think of it, as well as artificial lighting. Give him a candle over a lamp anyday of the week.
Considering his rather extreme similarities to the element he has control over, it is hardly unexpected that one of his main fears is water. More specifically, large expanses of the stuff. Despite being born in Australia, he never learnt how to swim and has an inborn fear of it even before his mutation evolved. Another fear is of the dark – routed back in childhood where bad things would happen when the lights went out, and still not completely discarded. And then there is the threat of being 'fixed'. Threats and comments from his childhood about him deserving a straight jacket haven't vanished completely from his mind. Though he remained stalwart and stone-faced during his internment and subsequent torture, he lived every day in fear - not of having further pain inflicted upon him but rather that they would inject him with the "mutant cure" chemical.
Most of his past is a secret, except for those annoying psychics at Xavier’s. He refuses to answer any questions about it and will sooner burn someone rather than let anything about it slip. He attempts to keep his inability to create his own fire a secret as well, simply because he considers it a weakness that should not be broadcasted, and has learnt through his own experiences why he should keep it to himself.
Sean • 29 • PST • NOA PM
Allerdyce, St. John, Pyro
