PiB AU Scourge and Fuego 🧊🔥
Some thoughts I had for a backstory concerning my request muse Scourge and @firestcr !! This is just an idea ofc, so if this doesn't work for you that's totally fine <33
it's okay to rb this btw!
info under the cut:
This is inspired by the Hawkstorm MAP, which is one of my favorites!
In this AU, Scourge and Fuego are siblings from the same litter, born in a small town just an hour or so out from Mexico City within a run-down, dilapidated hut. Their mother, a stray, does her best to care for the two with limited resources, and they have a fairly normal childhood at first, getting along well. Scourge (then Tiny) is raised as a girl, as that is his assigned gender at birth. He is often adorned with a flower, the anemone, which symbolizes the idea of being forsaken, which is pure coincidence to their reality, but foreshadows his fate.
One night, during a particularly devastating storm, lightning strikes a tree close by to their hut, and it catches fire. The fire spreads with extreme speed as their mother wakes to the roar of the flames and tries to get her children to safety, but can only carry one through the rapidly deconstructing building. Tiny does his best to keep up, but is barred from following as debris collapses, blocking the path to his only exit. Nutmeg flees with her remaining kit, devastated as she assumes Tiny has been crushed.
Fire has destroyed their home and Rusty's only sister, yet he is born from the ashes, and as Nutmeg eventually succumbs to her own burns and smoke inhalation in town, Rusty is taken in by townsfolk and named Fuego after his pelt and past. As he is raised, more and more of the incident falls from his immediate memory, but he never forgets the death of his littermate and mother, promising to carry them within his heart always as he becomes the hero that the town deserves, fighting evil as he travels place to place. As he outgrows the collar handed down to him by townsfolk, he no longer wears it, but keeps the item out of sentimental value. He gains a partisan to utilize as his favored weapon.
It's unknown how Tiny was able to escape that night and survive, but he did make an escape, bearing horrific burns that would result in hair loss, troubled breathing, as well as skin and nerve damage. Fortunately, some of his fur would grow back, but not the full amount, giving him a more mangy appearance and earning him the name El Chupacabra by locals. This treatment comes to the exact opposite of Fuego's, as Scourge decides to give himself a third name for shortness' sake and to keep his anger within his title. This is when he begins to realize he is a tomcat. To him, Tiny is dead as well, though more metaphorically.
He becomes an outlaw, bearing a hatchet ready to kill and a collar of bone and tooth to settle his new look. Though he is a bitter opponent, a few select strays admire the tenacity and fierceness of his work, occasionally grouping with him for resources in hopes of food and shelter, but they are not fully loyal. At a true sniff of danger, they flee, leaving Scourge alone in his mission to rustle livestock and commit vicious theft and killings.
Scourge remembers the night vividly in trauma, and knows who Fuego is. He harbors resentment for his brother, but will not openly acknowledge that he knows Fuego. Instead, he acts as the antagonist, and the opposing force to all that Fuego has built as a reputation. If Fuego is the hero, then El Chupacabra must be the villain.