A/N: This was inspired by the idea that people's traits change over time, that eye color can change more than once (mine changed twice growing up), that hair color almost always changes and can go lighter, that we all go from baby to adult teeth. It's headcanony and expositiony and Soul-centric. The title was simply my need for a title, and the idea the song fits. Thank you Soundgarden.

Blow Up the Outside World

Someone tried to tell me something
Don't let the world bring you down
Nothing will do me in before I do myself
So save it for your own and the ones you can help

His eyes hadn't always been red, just like his hair wasn't always white, and his teeth weren't always sharp. And he definitely had not always thought that these things made him cool.

When he was born, he'd been pretty much bald, so his baby pictures told him, with wisps of platinum blonde hair and the same gray eyes most babies were ushered into the world with.

By six months old, he had short, light blonde hair and honey brown eyes. As his teeth grew in, they were completely normal. Some said he was the sweetest, most adorable child they had ever seen. Adults used to coo over his chubby cheeks and angelic smile.

It was at six years old that it all started to change, when his eyes started to tend to mahogany and his recently lost front teeth were replaced with two sharp white spikes. His parents, shocked by the new teeth, had taken him to the dentist in concern; it had been dubbed a genetic anomaly, harmless. Back then, Soul had just been happy he didn't have a cavity. It wasn't until a few years later, as more and more of those too sharp teeth grew in, that he'd come to realize what they meant. Other kids called him a shark monster. He hated his teeth. He hated them.

It wasn't just his teeth, either. His eyes stayed mahogany for only a few years until they went red when he was around nine, at the same time that his light blonde locks started to go white. For awhile, his white roots and blonde ends looked even more unnatural than the white ever could, so he'd begged his mother to cut it off, cut it short, and she had reluctantly agreed. Now, the other kids called him a demon, and adults whispered that he was a freak. He no longer cared. They were all fakes anyway, totally uncool. Who needed them? Not him.

So what if he was different? So what if he'd never be like Wes? His older brother had white hair, too, though his eyes had stayed mahogany, and his teeth were straight and perfect and not sharp at all. They never called him a demon, but an angel, with the beautiful music he played, the haunting, sweet melodies of his violin entrancing hundreds, thousands. Only Soul was a demon.

It wasn't just his looks though, it was his music. When he played as they asked him, played the pieces they wanted in the ways they wanted, they called him talented. When he played what he wanted, the pieces he chose or composed in the ways he saw fit, they called him a monster. His music was dark, morbid, some said, insane, insisted others, ugly, garish, harsh. His parents begged him, then threatened him—he must play what they asked, as they asked. The disappointment in their eyes, in their voices and countenances and even postures was palpable, almost overwhelming. They had never asked for a demon son. Why couldn't he be an angel like Wes? But how could he play like an angel when he looked like the devil? How could he make sweet music when there was only darkness in his soul?

By twelve, he had decided he was too cool for any of it, too cool for all of them. He was different and if they couldn't take it that was their problem. So what if he still felt like a freak and a failure inside? It didn't matter. He put on his armor. Aloof. Above it all. He was a cool guy and cool guys didn't worry about what a bunch of assholes thought. They could all go to hell. Wasn't that where they were anyway? No wonder he looked like a demon. What else could this hell have produced? Wes was the freak with his angelic looks and heavenly music. Soul? Soul only looked like he belonged. Soul represented truth, what was, rather than all the fakeness, the facades, the pretense. He hated his life. He hated them.

It was later that same year that it all fell into place. Angry at his parents, at their looks of disappointment as he'd refused to play for a crowd, wishing he could destroy himself, his life, the world, he had gone to punch a wall in despair. He had skewered it instead as his arm flashed and a blade appeared in its place. He was in his bedroom at the time, alone.

Afraid at what had happened, he had the presence of mind to lock the door after he managed to work his arm free. He slid to the ground. Freak. He was a freak. Or he was dreaming? Or hallucinating? He closed his eyes. Willed the blade away. Opened them. It was still there, black and red and menacing; his entire arm was now a weapon. He hit his head against the door once, twice, causing a confused Wes to ask if he was okay. "'M fine, just dropped something," he insisted. He couldn't show his brother this, couldn't show anyone. He fell asleep against the door, confused, overwhelmed. He really was a demon.

When he awoke, his arm was normal again and he thought it must have been a bad dream. Then he saw the gouge sliced into the wall. No, of course, not a dream; he'd just descended deeper into this hell that was his life. He covered it with one of the band posters his parents hated, the ones they insisted he strip from his walls. He might not understand what had happened, but it hadhappened. His arm had become a blade, a weapon.

Weapon. Such things existed, human weapons. He had heard of them, vaguely, like rumors of a cult in your hometown that no one ever really saw but everyone insisted was there. Weapon. Was that what he was?

He looked it up. The Internet became his best friend. His parents had always forbidden him to use it at home, so he went to the library at school. Human Weapons were not a blocked topic, so he searched, and read, and learned.

Soul really was a weapon, must be. It was the only thing that made sense. Though he didn't come from a weapon family, sometimes a recessive trait showed up after generations. That must have been what happened with him. Sometimes, weapons could have odd coloring or features. That had clearly happened with him, too. Weapons could go to some place called the DWMA to learn how to control their abilities. The DWMA was in Nevada. Well, that was promising. Tuition was waived for the first year and a living stipend was given—this was long enough to ensure powers could be controlled. Even better. For those who wished to continue, NOT students paid tuition and cost of living, but EAT students were fully funded. EAT students were the elites who wished to make a career with the organization itself, or in other forms of military or law enforcement. Well. That didn't sound so bad. Clearly, he wasn't going to be making a career in music. Yeah, this could be good. This could be really good. He would go; it didn't sound like his parents could stop him since the DWMA could take custody of minors with the weapon or meister trait if said minors wished to go to the school, something they had worked out with most world governments long ago. Yes, he could do this. He would do this and maybe there he wouldn't be a demon or a freak. Maybe.

The first person he went to was Wes. After a week of practice, he could sometimes make his arm change when he wanted to, so Soul showed his brother what he could do, told him what he wanted. His brother was surprised, but not afraid. Wes told Soul that if that was what he wanted, to go to this weapon school, that he would help him, but that he should go to their parents. Soul refused and, reluctantly, Wes agreed to help him anyway. When Soul left home just shy of thirteen, it was with his brother's and grandmother's aid—he left a note for his parents, but he could not face them. Wes was concerned he would abandon his music, had insisted that he liked it and that Soul shouldn't give up on playing. Soul figured he was trying to be nice and said he'd try to practice, but it was half-hearted. If he never saw a piano again it might be the best thing that could happen to him—this was a new life and he intended to make it a fresh start. No one at his new school would know him as the other Evans boy, the demon, the one who would never measure up to his brother. He'd just be Soul. He could be cool. He could be accepted.

Soul knew he was probably lying to himself, but he planned to make the best of this chance, this clean slate. Maybe he couldn't change who he was. Maybe he couldn't change the world, make it less of a hell. But he could change his place in it, find somewhere he could exist where no one called him demon, find some place where he wasn't constantly failing to live up to expectations, find some place where he could just be. To think the DWMA was somehow a paradise of tolerance, that he would be embraced in all his dark strangeness, was a vain hope, he knew that, yet even still, this place, this haven full of freaks like him, it was his only hope. In the end, it couldn't be worse than home.