#are there more revenge stories? probably. maybe i'll expand on them another time

[byanyan]

ㅤthinking about byan using arson as a tool for revenge... they learned about the concept of arson and were shown how to do it at age nine, when a group of older boys from school invited them along to burn down an old abandoned building (and then were subsequently abandoned themself, left inside with no warning wherein they were burned quite severely, though not nearly as badly as they could have been). the first time they did it themself, they were eleven, mad at the world, and staying with a rather nasty foster family. the house was set ablaze, everyone lost the majority of their belongings, byan scarred their hands permanently with burns (and their foster sister kit was hurt far worse), and on top of going to the hospital and quickly being removed from the care of those foster parents, they were also put into mandatory counselling.

the first time they ever used arson as a form of revenge rather than in a fit of rage, however, it was on the home of a teacher who was particularly awful to them. he effectively picked on them, never treated them fairly in class or in their grades, and always managed to make them feel dumb and worthless. he always seemed to especially love making fun of their mistakes when they would read out loud or when they failed to spell something correctly. at age twelve, byan was still rather quiet and timid, just trying to keep to themself and survive, and this man was only making their life more miserable and their anger harder to contain. so one night, after he humiliated them in front of their entire class because they misunderstood the topic they'd written an essay on, they set his house on fire. it didn't burn to the ground like they'd hoped, but it did more than enough damage to be satisfying. unfortunately, the incident was traced back to them and they were placed on probation, made to continue their mandatory counselling, and were enrolled in anger management classes.

another time, it was revenge on a man who attacked them on the street. they were no stranger to such a thing happening by fifteen, but it was the first time it happened since they had killed someone in self defence in a near identical scenario. this guy, they managed to fight off with less difficulty and managed to get away only mildly injured, but it triggered an episode of ptsd that made the next several weeks absolute hell. it was probably just shy of a month later when they spotted the guy again and, without really thinking about it, they started lurking, effectively stalking him the whole night, even staking out the bar he spent hours inside of, until they found out where he lived. after waiting another couple hours to ensure he was asleep, they broke in to his apartment, started a fire in the kitchen, and took off. as far as they know, he survived, although to this day they're not so sure they wanted him to.