@saintarsonist
The skyline of New York stretched out around him, a high that Johnny craved. He could forget the horror that he’d seen down below as he took in a breath, burning like a second sun, and expelled all the fire he’d just absorbed. He was running so hot all oxygen had been burnt away, no way for him to breathe, but in this moment he didn’t need it, he was fire. Pure flame, elemental, everything that made him him burnt away. No more Johnny Storm, just the Human Torch. Absolute peace and absolute oblivion. None of the other ways he’d found to obliterate himself were as good. Johnny felt shaky as he flew back down to ground, kind of like it had used to be when he was first starting out and he’d ended just about every fight passed out on the floor. But the Fantastic Four were done, it wasn’t like he had to conserve his energy in case Doom or Namor called in for a not-so-friendly chat, so why not give it all when people needed him? At least he was still good for something.
The third fire he’d been called out to today, this was pushing the line of dangerous, but this one had been the worst of the lot, a high rise of residentials, the kind of call he would never say no to. With the smell of smoke in the air and the exhaustion Johnny could feel in every bone of his body, he felt off, a weird sense that something was wrong about this one, something was different, crackling on his skin as he stumbled the landing, nearly falling to the ground. Steeling himself, he waded his way through the crowd towards the firefighters streaming in and out of the building, and tapped the first guy he saw on the back, “Hey, man, good job out there. I, uh, I’m pretty good at tracking the point of origin of a fire, if you want me to take a look inside?” Then his eyes widened. “Wait. Pyro? What? Back up. The X-Men fight fires now? I thought some of you liked starting them better.”











