Telescope - Cage the Elephant: watch?v=9OCEh6g6whc
Had to change my updating schedule because of up and coming testing, but I think I'll keep it because that means I can get chapters out with more quality and get closer to your relationship with Dabi! I get motivated by any sort of comments so if you can let me know what ya think, I'd love it. :^)
I'm gonna try my best on writing Twice's dialogue in character. It's easier to write Mr. Patchwork over here because he's more witty in da dry way, but Jin's genuinely kinda funny so...
Honesty is the best policy, they said while shimmying their hips with no care towards the fragile child hung mid-air due to the force of his esteemed and congratulated father, medals clinking around a throat that did nothing but spew vitriol and no measly awards making their way onto him for enduring. A prodigal son is the namesake in which he was branded forevermore, searing hot iron branding him as a virtuoso chosen to be wrung through the wire, vomit-inducing fists buffeting his worn chest and wracking pitiful frogs from his throat.
It turns out being beaten half to death wasn't as bad as it was made out to be, until Enji had come upon his little brother puffing his chest up proudly like a baby penguin: blue, red and yellow blankets wrapped around his chubby cheeks in an offbrand imitation of All Might, roaring triumphantly on top of Touya's faux fainted chest while Fuyumi jumped up from her pillow prison of doom and joined him boisterously, a picturesque moment in time that had all but been mutilated to shreds once his brobdingnagian hands had come to cement themselves onto his already bruised shoulders, barring him from ever seeing his siblings.
Lagging behind even in a momentary lapse of judgement to meet his mother's eyes was met with a death sentence, Rei's soothing aura of ice that met the proportions of a sugarplum fairy gingerly twiddling her ballerina flats on a make believe land existed no more, what had once granted him nothing but an oxymoronic amount of warmth and comfort had truly been razed to the ground, genuine disdain filling her features when met with his pleading eyes. Enji Todoroki, otherwise known as the eminent human flamethrower Endeavor, held no mercy in the depths of his tarnished and muddied soul.
There was no mercy behind closed doors, no signs of the cool composure he had kept up in front of awestruck kids that held no amount of experience in the subject of what goes on behind a hero's mask, his searing fists wielding a temperature not even close to mirror his ice cold exterior in front of flamboyant, flashing lights and cameras.
Any other person would expect magma stirring heavily inside the caverns of his being, threatening to erupt with the expulsion of its molten rage from years upon years of ruthless "training". That wouldn't be the case, considering it all came to a boiling point on January 11th when an amniotic sac swam as if it were an all-knowing, primordial jellyfish holding the secrets of the unknown. At the crisp age of 3 a bell tolled and rampantly whispered his fateful role within the household, a sneeze emitted from Shouto's button nose shot out an assortment of icy-blue fractals across the floor, broiling a toy he had gripped in his left hand to a blackened puddle of ooze.
The magnum opus that his father had craved for countless years had been brought into this world flawlessly, even managing to present his quirk a year earlier than the average child, scooping him into his dumbstruck state of temporary gratitude; clear globs lit the wicks of his tear glands, a vigorous smile booming laughter at the discovery.
Soon enough, he was thrown to the side as if he were just another piece of revolting manure on the bottom of his boot, in favor of his darling masterpiece at the age of 10. Rei's impassioned cries for him to hold off for at least a couple of more years were heeded, even if only to the bare minimum of one year, it seemed as if Endeavor was to genuinely train him and not beat him to a pulp like he was. That is, until he got just a little more older.
Soon enough, he was forbidden from fawning over his tiny younger brother who he affectionately dubbed "shortcake", comparing his split red and white hair to a strawberry shortcake he had only heard of through classmates, unable to cross his father's dietary restrictions. Daddy dearest's scornful face was imprinted into the back of his closed eyes, as if everyone in his family had him being hit over and over again erased from their minds, marking the time when teenage angst settled in.
His twin was the archetypal sort of people-pleasing girl that craved any sort of admiration, especially if it came from father, skipping to the beat of her own played drum in line with the disciplined child quartet he had accomplished to have, jumping at any sort of prestige she gained at school and turning to only see his burly back turning away from her. The old him had taken the beatings in stride and felt a sick sense of accomplishment in enduring the hardships that were wrongfully burned into his head, the old him didn't feel his insides rearrange themselves mentally and writhe in place on particularly lonely nights, he never had to worry about starving to death in the middle of nowhere without any person to give a rat's ass about him.
Hissing rang out from a boiling stove kettle, shouts of terror lifting their mother away from them, never to see them again in a sanitarium. Dabi ran away from the palatial traditional Japanese mansion tainted with the morbid hair-raising cries, tasting nothing but numb taste buds in the back of his mouth tingling with pain, and out came the reanimated corpse of the eldest son of Enji Todoroki, into his reincarnated life.
"You look just like her," a breathy noise permeated the atmosphere, "So... weak, and cold," a booze-filled mouth rasped onto his neck, the sound of a clinking belt being unbuckled clumsily.
All of it rushed back to him in a single snap of the neck, cyan-eyes becoming unfocused with the blur of time that should have irrefutably ended ticking eons ago, teeming angst that was locked away in a place that he once called home. The shouts of someone or something near him simply seemed so far away, when he was rooted in place in his bed after a nasty argument with his parental figure. Snaps clicked and reverberated continuously past the rush of wind, ringing in his ears already far too occupied with keeping his entire body tensed like a spring being coiled in steampowered machinery, gears clashing onto each other making like forks scratching plates horrendously.
"You can't just keep running!" was nimbly ignored with the sweep of his thundering soles pounding the unrecognizable, unbearably monotone rooftops again and again.
Grief spurted out in dribbles from the clenching of his heart, barely aware of the instinctual urge to pump out any sort of glossy coating onto the whites of his eyes, even when there was no room for any tear glands in his eyes, not after his life had been forged into existence by his own hands. Detached and strung out, he finally snapped out of his fragmenting reverie: long fingers coming out to clasp his baby brother's tiny hands yet he failed, shards disintegrating into nothingness and becoming one with the void, no mercy being given for the wronged man who had not come to terms with his floodgates free from oppression, another figure screaming for his attention but taking it into their own hands, shoving him away from his dream-like position.
You let out a strained cry in the effort to rely on your teeth clamping onto your bottom lip, turning your head to a distinct hole driven into your flesh, bile rising to have pleasantries with your tongue and stomach acid swathed your already swarmed senses. Subsonic combustion arose into the air, metal and blood meeting each other in a warm embrace due to the gift of deflagration expelling a clean bullet into your shoulder. Turning one's back on the grievous injury, you stood your ground with a guilty grimace and gripped Dabi's shoulders in your last ditch effort to get him to realize the case at hand.
"I'm sorry for being a piece of shit, and I will make it up to you in whatever way you want, but if we don't skedaddle right about fucking now-" another shot was fired towards your two figures, graciously deciding to take pity on both of your horrid states and bounce off the nearby grimy fire escape, imperceptible red strings of fate crossing along your shaky leap towards yet another man that would change lives as well.
Opaque tendrils swooned from impregnable mystic dragons borne from mist, streaming tails lashing around Jin Bubaigawara's upper torso and kissing parts of his head in their departure to the heavens above, a pleasure to behold and to watch them float out of his nicotine-filled cancer stick absentmindedly. He supposed that the moment red velvet curtains laced with venomous satin had parted and let the maestro compose what would become of his life, the man's trusty fountain pen had slipped from his sweaty yet focused fingers, obsidian ink spitting all over curved, concise lettering masterfully detailing how exactly fucked his life would end up to be.
Sort of poetic, really, since he lost his original self he can't tell if he's merely an impostor standing in place for the real him. Only his other self would gently run his words across his back as if it were a spring onsen rushing spirituality in waves, and even then Jin had no amount of evidence that told him the other him was a byproduct of the original he had stolen, nothing but a parasite through and through.
Once the psychiatrist his parents hired had uttered the simple words, multiple personality disorder, bags of various belongings were kicked to the curb as if they were nuisances, his body along with them. Labels had ruined his entire life, the real you's life too, dribbled into the nooks and crannies on his neck, drenching him in disgust just as his mother and father had been when they threw him away like a piece of garbage.
So color him surprised when he had been frantically tipped over by a rush of two bodies slamming into his apartment building, fresh off the mint Mevius One's 100 box clattering onto a mossy crack of the flooring, and for the first time in years his thoughts weren't followed by an echoing voice of his. Bewilderment trailed off of his slightly agape mouth, prominent lines infused from the splitting of his head folding in tune along to his eyebrows, but for once he didn't question why the unconscious globs of his being burned with the intensity of being awakened in a lava lamp. Jin immediately jumped up to his feet, generic slippers slapping with a floppy sound, and he rushed every fiber of his being to make his way over to the absolute strangers making wonderful love with the grimy asphalt on the roof.
Sirens clamoring in sound waves colored red, white and blue flashed across the neighboring apartment buildings, orders being sounded as clear as day to the law enforcement attempting to catch up to his fallen parkour hotshots, and he knew what he had to do. Without having to think twice, he lifted the both of them to their feet even when there were incoherent mumbles being brought from the Hot Topic connoisseur dead on his feet, slamming the metal door behind them and frenetically barricading the entrance with a broom kindly abandoned by a forgetful janitor.
At least the people on the lam knew better than to ask pointless questions that would needlessly sap his already fried patience, cordially stepping in time behind his long strides, not suspiciously going at breakneck speeds but speed walking his way casually to his messy flat (and even if the black haired one was suspiciously in a daze, he didn't notice).
He nearly had heart palpitations when his sweat-slicked fingers brushed his pocket only for no keys to be in sight, a stifled cackle following soon after, the only confirmation he needed to know he had been pickpocketed was when the person in the risque attire jingled his keys in their fingers. A small gimme that, and his humble abode was presented to the lovely criminals that he had just invited to his home, leftover cardboard pizza box riddled with grease stains applauding their arrival and the rather tiny amount of space he had to himself was cheering.
"Just have one question," you inquired with the raise of a brow and your index finger pointing to the skies. "Are you usually this naive or are you gonna get a move on in skinning our bones?"
The half-dead goth raised his head in synchronized movement to yours, the two of you directing your stares towards your perturbed savior adorned with repeated stitches from the top to the bottom of his forehead. A scratch of his bristly chin accompanied by a questioning hum soon followed, his snow-white hair further accentuating his sickly pallor, contradictory gibberish muttered under his breath. This only served to step onto Dabi's miniscule amount of patience, a sigh coming into fruition with the straightening of his spine and audible cracks resounding in the room, his mostly unmarred hand landing on one of his knees.
"You need a little more time, princess? Or you need a dictionary?" was sarcastically said with the flourish of one of his skinny but long hands, spotlight coming to rest on Bubaigawara.