Title: Skintight

Author: Ri-Ryn

Genre: Angst/Horror

Word Count: 705

Rating: M* (Content suitable for Mature Teens) / +T

Disclaimer: World Trigger belongs to Ashihara Daisuke.

Summary: There shouldn't have been anything worse than the death of Jin-san. No one said you die every time you put a black trigger on. No one said it swaddled you in dead flesh as it possessed you with one blue eye.

Warnings: Past torture description. Psychological harm/mental health issues. Depression. Angst. Gore? Some Body Horror. Hatred towards 'loved' ones. Homicidal/suicidal thoughts.

A/N: Uh… It's been awhile with school and all. And if you know what's happened with Xeric? Yeah, it took a while, honestly, and a lot of introspection to continue writing even thought my thoughts on the issue remain unchanged. In the meantime: enjoy this for an early Halloween. I'm working on an Apocalypse no Toride parody-AU for World Trigger. Anyone interested?


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The regret was not in letting Jin Yūichi die; it was not getting there long after or before they ever killed the young man.

Someone else during the rescue could have touched him- Jin could have ripped the trigger from any other familiar Trion body and done this to them.

Osamu hated the blue eye so blinded by pain is still saw him clearly and dissembled like an apology enough to last Osamu's lifetime: because Jin-san died right there and then.

On the other hand, perhaps it was foresight. Either way he wishes he were the one to kill him, to physically feel it for this. Perhaps it would have been more amicable than brutalizing Jin-san and, subsequently, Osamu himself.

Osamu doesn't remember the first time using the black trigger, using Jin. He blacked out, no voices heard. It felt much like he imagines drowning to feel like, something that he contemplates bi-monthly because he has heard it's an agonizing way to go.

He does not want to feel agonizing anymore.

It takes half a year after Jin dies, after all of Border tries to don Jin before they call Osamu. He is grieving, after all, at this point. Moreover, he should not have the Trion for this.

He cannot say anything, only cries without a voice when he takes it. Jin is the standard Border trigger shape. It is blue, like Jin-san's eyes, with four black veins running through it and feels everything like the last vestige of death should not unless given a final form.

Osamu wonders how Yuma can stand wearing his own father.

It is clear, what to say while holding Jin, and he hasn't the time to wonder after he speaks if the others ever made it that far.

"Trigger." Osamu wishes he took a closer look at Jin's body before touching him six months ago although he doubts it would have helped.

A constant, searing pain rips through his absent eye and ear. They must be severed from his body because he only desires to die and it only gets worse. Rightfully so: the nails of his index fingers and thumbs have taken leave, extracted straight out. Pain was a precise enough way to depict what they had done to his legs below the knee; strings of fire must be what keeps the shambled mess of meat attached. His left lung was in a constant state of submersion, waiting instead to drown out his consciousness if some force lurking did not circumvent that.

It must be Jin. Osamu can only abhor Jin-san's abductors or the man himself that much and the former are already dead, too.

There is nothing to say of why he feels empty sans the sutured stomach that cradles acid adoringly. He is dying in vain, vision devoid of light and sight and blood battering him from beneath his own skin.

He passes out the second time he uses Jin, except this time he remembers everything, even that he would pass out two seconds after Jin is activated, not from Trion exhaustion but mental and physical depletion.

Border had cataloged his appearance. Osamu is dressed in Jin's old Trion body, glasses gone and one eye sinfully identical to that bastard's. Special features of Jin? It takes dying slowly ten more times, seven of them so he remains conscious, to learn he inherited a variant of Jin's foresight.

It must be limited, they say in disgust, because his Trion is low. And nothing else is special; it's still his old Raygust with all previous optional triggers installed permanently now.

Osamu would kill every Border executive before using Jin as a black trigger again; he kept telling himself.

Two seconds of foresight weren't worth it.

Neither was the combat advantage it gave Osamu; the amount of things he would accomplish while dead inside it.

Osamu cries while holding the knife over his wrist vertically parallel to his veins this time and the tub full of warm water next to him.

He doesn't need to live through death for two seconds while wearing fuckin' Jin Yuichi to know he won't do it and continue to live as the captain of A-02 and the second black trigger user of Tamakoma.


fin