He thought for a moment that perhaps the whole world was in flames, but he was wrong, only momentarily, and it was odd, because Ray Toro isn't wrong about a lot of things.

It's just a matter of perception; there are a million layers to this world, but the majority of the people in it limit themselves to just the one they find themselves stood upon. Ray's not like that, Ray's never been like that - he can't see everything, he reckons not a single soul besides any form of God like being can, but he can see a great portion of their world, and a great deal more than the guy sat in class next to him can.

But this time, his perception failed him; there was something off in the flames, something innately unnatural, something unfamiliar, something off, and something in the way the flames kept rising - a fire greater in force than physics should have allowed it to have been, however, in this case, it seemed that physics had no place here, and the fire was not one of chemical components, but one created out of nothingness and another kind of power altogether, sitting a little out of the frame of reality, but burning through the layers into the one most life sat upon.

Ray knew then to run.

He wasn't much of a runner, much of a coward, much of one to standby, but common sense didn't go over his head, and he knew this fire was greater than he'd ever be, stretching out through brick and mortar and making ash of the building before him.

He was one of the many pairs of fixated eyes, bright with the reflection of flames burning bright: ensnared in the destruction and chaos, hell on earth, and in form pure like strong alcohol, purging and scolding what life it could get its hands on.

Words were nothing in comparison, the world seeming to fade out in its presence, people transfixed upon it, with open mouths and even wider eyes, gazing upon the fire as if it was the eighth wonder of the world and not in fact, as it was, a fire in the girls' dorm room.

Perception, Ray had been right about that, not that he'd expected much different - it wasn't a matter of arrogance, but intuition, and he'd learned to trust himself more than anything else on this earth.

Ray broke his gaze away from the flames and hearing seemed to return to him within seconds, coming to terms with the scene around him: firefighters, and gaping students, and screams muffled in the mess, a kind of hell on earth, a star headline if anyone would make it out alive.

He turned his back upon the flames, and gave a shove to the guy beside him, who seemed to gasp for air as he turned to Ray, as if submerged underwater and not in the grasp of flames, but Ray didn't have much time to fret and worry over the details; he knew there was more to that fire than ash and flame, and he knew that it was his perception of it all which changed that.

"Get everyone to look away, get people out into the car park, away from it." He told the guy, who was still staring at him in disbelief, clutching his arms as if Ray was some sort of hero, some sort of saviour: a beacon of light in the darkness, but Ray was little more than the one holding a torch, if anything. "Get people to help you. Don't look at the fire, get away."

The guy seemed too panicked to search for an explanation, pulling the guy to his side and gaining his consciousness in his actions, and with Ray's trust in the guy he didn't even known the name of, he found himself turning to the fire department, they'd been called at least, and thank whatever kind of God belonged to this world, because their masks seemed to alter their vision, protecting them from whatever kind of curse lay amidst the flames, because there was an essence of magic to this now, and Ray was certain.

He wondered if water would even put them out, or if all efforts were to be futile, and he wondered what he could possibly do about it, as he alone was the only one seeing all there was to this, besides the one who had caused it, and Ray found that to be the blaringly obvious fact that the flames had sought to shield from him.

Someone had done this, this was no natural thing, and Ray's heart began to hammer in his chest as he came to accept that somewhere here stood someone responsible for flames and destruction before him. He wondered if he even wanted to be acquainted with someone of such apathy, or perhaps carelessness, but he knew he had to, and he knew he could find them, or at least he hoped so.

He turned his back to the flames, focusing hard and seeing with his mind than his eyes: the campus laying itself out before him, and amongst people drifting away, only a part of one layer of Earth, humans, to put it simply, he found two people, free from the flames, attempting to move people away, at the other side of the campus, and he focused harder, finding himself perhaps a little too relieved to identify them as Gerard and Mikey Way; they were different than the rest of the students here, but still, Ray found himself certain that they weren't capable of this, and again, Ray was usually right.

He found his head spinning, his vision blurring a little, panic flooding his mind as he found no one else supernatural or different in nature, and leaving him with no answers, until he focused closer to the flames, and a body lying on the ground outside the girls' dorm: an open window two stories above it, and little hope left in Ray's head, as he sacrificed his sanity, focusing his head harder away from reality and the flames as he began to run towards the building.

The air seemed to change as he felt himself nearing the body, and Ray found his whole body tensing as he came to recognise the scent: one of death, one of decay, and it was in that moment that Ray came to realise that the man who'd caused this, had also caused his own demise.

Ray stood there, unsure of what to do, whether this was some sort of suicide mission, or a mistake or what, as a dead man could prove no help to him, and this man was dead, Ray was certain, because Ray was always right.

But in coughing and spluttering, and the way the figure moved, it seemed not this time.

Ray didn't have time to overthink this and what it could mean as the man stumbled to his feet, glancing back at flames behind him and perhaps coming to realise just what he'd done. He glanced up towards the window, the one he seemed to have jumped from.

His whole body began to shudder a little, and he threw the contents of his stomach up onto the pavement before him, the world seeming to twist and contort as the man seemed to fight and struggle with the grip he held on his consciousness, and the grip of death, the grip of the flames, pulling him down, and said consciousness away and out of his reach.

Until, perhaps in some form of conclusion, the man threw up once more, however in the aftermath, this time standing still and strong on his two feet, turning away from the fire, and Ray found himself terrified for the first time in his life as he saw the same fire burn in the man's eyes: not as a reflection, although it was meant to be perceived as one, but in this level of reality, it seemed as if the man pulled every string, and the fire burned not just in his eyes, but threw him, and the fire was perhaps even a part of him like the blood in his veins.

Ray lost focus, concentration, 'reality' coming back to hit him in the face, and he came to see things as they were 'meant' to be, and he saw the man before him at face value: on fire, screaming, but above all, alive.

And he came to realise that in that moment that although this fire was his, a part of him even, he still most certainly could not control it.

And Ray had one hell of an idea, figuring that perhaps maybe this man was the start of this all, the eye of the storm, the fire itself: the key to starting and extinguishing it, and with one hell of a stupid idea, Ray found himself turning away from the man, running perhaps faster than before, grabbing a fire extinguisher laying at the front of the building and struggling a little to carry it, but putting all he had into aiming the device at the man, who again, spoke nothing, consumed even more so by the flames.

Ray cursed under his breath, before approaching him, and aiming the extinguisher at him, closing his eyes as he did so, focusing on a layer of reality, of perception where it was all quiet, where he was alone, a plane only he could existence upon: sounds of the world, sounds of people and screaming, burning ringing only faintly, perhaps ever present in his ears, and time seemed to tick by all too slowly as he finally found the fire extinguisher empty.

It fell from his hands onto the floor, his eyes forced upon and back upon the world: the man before him falling back against the wall, no longer on fire, and in fact, Ray found himself astounded to see no fire at all: the world almost unnaturally dull in contrast to flames that had burned so bright, too bright.

Ray had been right. This time too.

But the man before him, still stood there: shaking, breathing, and Ray focused elsewhere, and there was indeed a beating heart inside that chest, a pair of lungs too, but an unnaturalness about his soul, magic, power, and it became evident that he had no idea what he was doing with it, but in that moment such complications were irrelevant.

All that mattered was that the man before him was still alive: despite all odds, despite flames, despite a jump from a window two stories above, despite the contents of his stomach puked onto floor beside him, despite death itself, he stood there, shaking, shuddering, scared, now deathly cold, shivering in fact, but alive.

The man was alive and Ray couldn't shake the notion that seemed as if this man, barely a man, no older than twenty, had perhaps looked death in the eyes and declared a firm 'no', holding on tight to himself.

Ray hadn't thought that possible. Ray was wrong.

Everything about him seemed wrong; he existed differently to the rest of the campus, to Ray, to Mikey and Gerard, he was different still, there was more to him, something that scared Ray, but perhaps nowhere near as much as it could scare the man who just found it being to surface in him.

The fire had saved him. Ray found himself certain of that: the notion clicking into place with a kind of unspoken logic the very moment it crossed Ray's mind. The fire, however, was a part of him. He'd saved himself. A part he couldn't control.

Ray focused his mind, reality wrapping itself back around him: everything chatter and commotion as meters away, firemen offered no explanation as to the sudden end of the flames. Others ventured into the building, now safe from the flames, but no one was safe from what it had already done, because inside the building lay the real source of screaming, in form of four bodies laying still, still like the man, but these four would never get back up again.

"What happened?" The man spoke, catching Ray by surprise, stumbling towards Ray as if he was some sort of saviour, someone who knew all the answers, but Ray was not, not this time.

"I feel like you're going to have to explain that to me." Ray began, gesturing for the man to step closer. "Come here, you're shaking, you didn't mean this, did you? You don't know what you're doing, you don't know what you did."

The man seemed to fall against Ray, letting him support his weight. "You won't believe me, but I found this book, a 'spellbook', I laughed it, and I tried some spell, some fucking words in some bullshit language I couldn't read - I was bored-"

"And it worked..." Ray wondered aloud, his mind whirring, as what he'd wanted the least in the world became so obviously apparent to be the one answer here.

"How?" He exclaimed, turning back to the building, and shaking as he heard the screams.

"I don't know." Ray choked out, "come on, what's your name?"

"Frank-" He choked out, before he seemed to lose grip upon reality, his legs losing grip upon the grass below in the same moment, leaving him falling to the ground once again.

-

At first, he couldn't breathe, choking on his own breath and the forced opening of his throat, and air that seemed to have no use, only drying out his mouth as his vision refused to focus, and the words spoken around him remained as sounds, noises, simple, brutal, with no meaning, no purpose.

And still, he couldn't breathe.

It wasn't like before, it was perhaps even something like the opposite, because in that moment, his every vein, every nerve, every cell of his body wasn't burning with the most hellish kind of fire, instead it was deadly cold, as if heat was a foreign concept to him, as if even the world around him was foreign, as if the fire had indeed purged him of all that, he took a moment to wonder if he could even breathe.

He took another to wonder how he could still think straight with the apparent lack of oxygen going to his brain - it was a question he couldn't quite answer, and it seemed to put the world on pause, even if just for a second.

Frank needed that second.

He closed his mouth, he counted to three, and opened it again with everything he had left in his body: eyes bursting open wide and settling upon the world, colours all a little too bright, as if they might burn through his eyes, and fuck, a gasp of air like a punch to the face: harsh inside his lungs like it didn't belong there.

Frank fought that urge, lying on his back and focusing on breathe, insisting upon the exchange of oxygen and various other gases that Frank hadn't paid enough attention in school to name, and with time, with every breath, he found himself making sense of the world: colours and shapes linking back to memories, his mind seeming to click into place and sound fading in, and face above him soon becoming one he could recognise.

"...Frank?" The words finally made sense of themselves with his name; the man leaning over him making himself obvious as the man that had watched him burn and puke his guts up onto the pavements - he didn't even know the man's name.

"What's..." He exclaimed, words seeming to burn into his throat as he uttered them, "your name...?"

"Ray, I'm Ray, I was there, I-"

"Yeah." Frank nodded, his whole body seeming to shake a little as he sat up, attempting to make more sense of his situation, however his head seeming to ache and burn as he attempted to pull back details from before, before the fire, what he'd done, almost as if the fire was protecting its secrets or something else Frank couldn't quite get himself to believe.

"Where am I?" He continued, finding the walls around him to be rather blatantly unfamiliar in nature.

"My room." Another voice spoke up: a tall, lanky dude appearing out of what appeared to be nowhere. "I'm Mikey, Mikey Way. And you caused one hell of a fucking mess-"

"It's not his fault, he didn't know what he was doing." Ray turned to face Mikey, narrowing his eyes, finding himself protecting Frank for no other reason than that it felt natural, like he was supposed to do so, and Ray had this habit of trusting his instincts, and of course, not without reason.

"How can you not know what you're doing when it comes to magic like that- fucking strong ass fucking magic, you fucking..." Mikey trailed off, shaking his head as he came to meet the hopeless kind of distraught look in Frank's eyes, "you set fire to a whole fucking building, you killed four people."

Frank gasped, attempting to figure out some form of apology, some form of response or something, but the words lodged in his throat, and he ended up swallowing them unintentionally.

"He nearly killed himself in the process; he didn't know what he was doing. Fuck, Frank, can you even remember?" Frank shook his head in response, pulling his eyes away from the two and taking in more of his surroundings.

"Then why does he seem pretty fine? He passed out, okay, but there's no fucking scars, or-" Mikey was always the one to doubt things, which was kind of ironic as he was the most doubtable being of all, but Ray reckoned Frank wasn't quite ready for the dropping of the vampire shaped bombshell yet.

"It's this fucking fire, Mikey, you didn't see it; he was on fire, I tell you, it was a part of him, he was the fire, it engulfed him, it burned him, burned out his insides I think too. He should have burned, but there's not a scratch... and you know I know these things, Mikey." Ray met the lanky man with a sort of indecipherable look in his eyes that had Mikey nodding and changing his tune within instants.

"I still... I... I feel a little like I'm burning on the inside." Frank finally conjured the power of speech from somewhere he didn't quite know, but this time Mikey was nodding at him, as if he believed him even.

"He's... I...?" Mikey went a horrible shade of white: paler than he already was and Frank wasn't even sure that was possible. "I think..."

"Yeah." Ray nodded, "he has to be."

And Frank was about to inquire as to just what they seemed to think he was when the door burst open, revealing a guy with pink hair and a kind of stern expression that seemed out of place, contrasting his appearance.

"Gerard-" Mikey began, addressing the man who'd walked in, only for Gerard cut him off with a certain degree of knowledge in his voice.

"Frank," he met Frank's eyes, his expression softening a little, "Frank Iero." He continued, not even butchering his last name, which was certainly a first.

"H-hey..." Frank trailed off, getting to his feet and meeting Gerard's gaze with a certain trust, "G-Gerard?"

"Gerard Way." He finished for him, "Mikey's my brother, Ray's our friend. And, well, I-"

"How did you know his name?" Mikey asked, glancing at Ray with another 'look' in his eyes.

"I'm vaguely aware of him." Gerard began, the tone in his voice making it evident he was lying, but the aforementioned tone was only quite so evident to Mikey.

"Are you 'vaguely aware' of what he is?" Mikey snapped, glaring at his brother.

"It's not like..." Gerard paused for a moment, looking over Frank's face once more, "come on," he added, his tone hushed, "he can't not know."

"I don't know." Frank interjected, his eyes meeting Gerard's with sincerity.

"It's... obvious... it's just there..." Gerard looked between the three with a degree of anxiety, "Ray, you know what I mean?"

"Vaguely..." Ray began.

"Vaguely." Mikey scoffed, looking at his brother like he didn't know him at all.

"It's... about him... he's... a witch, that's just... you can feel it..." Gerard began, having not expected the sudden shift in Frank's expression.

"The.. the fuck?"

"That building didn't set itself on fire." Ray offered an explanation. "You did and you know how."

And suddenly Frank's mind was on fire with a light too bright and the faint outlines of a room: a library, books, music in his ears, Jamia elsewhere, and that one book: crimson in colour and different from the rest, just different somehow, unexplainably so, much like Frank himself.

-

hey pals lmao this got a bit serious lmao plot overload @ me calm down lmao. votes and comments would be nice though v nice tbh. love u pals !!!!