cigarette smoke.

oh yee of ire and ashes

ACT I, PART I

SPITTING OUT FIRE AND TREMBLING UNDER BLUEBERRY BURNS. he is shrouded in hate and hate alone. color his skin to bruises and he laughs and laughs 'til the sky goes white and then he cries 'til he can't. red-turned-black and blue-stained he says he follows the man who paralyzes with a taste and the girl says she does the same. she does not lie, he does. he is of ire and hellflame doubled over in a body too small to contain its ever-present heat. so he burns until his skin cooks itself.

LAUGHING AND LAUGHING UNDER WHITE BLAZES. mother would be disappointed, he's turned into the monster (so disappointed, but not surprised). his heart shrivels up and dies ― it dies when he was too young to truly understand how lover and hate are two sides of the same damn coin - so different but if one cannot be without the other. heroes and villains stand on the same stall -- burning and icing with burn-salve and crying until tear-ducts are sewn shut with melted salt-water and the identity he has known is buried under the soft dirt of a grave. 

FATHER WHAT HAVE YOU DONE? he wants to scream out. his brother is all grown up - no, he was always grown. four and an adult, far too quiet and shaking. littlest brother does not cry - he copies the one of blueberry burns and blood-red hair and hellblue eyes. littlest of frost and fire, the one who has bore sight to him of ire ashes. fear is curdled in frostfire's two-toned soul.

FAILURE RESULTS IN ALCOHOL RUNNING THROUGH HIS SKIN. aparently, this group of misfits think the same, so they all get almost-blackout drunk (all except the bartender) after the fall of number one. the number one hero, number one villain. leader waxed poetic about killing his sister and mother and grandmother and grandfather by accident, about killing his father on purpose. double-or-nothing argues about how tragic and wonderful his childhood was, about how he had so many friends and about how he was so lonely. vampire chokes up about how mother and fatehr and sister hated her but she loved them so, so, so much she just wanted to become them, why did they not understand. lizard says they treated him like trash for his scales and teeth and claws. magician says that the heroes killed his children, that they left them ― helpless, barely ten, twins ― trapped under rubble; he says he saved both of them, they did not survive (they sent him to prison for illegal quirk use). he-no-she says they called her a freak for being in the wrong body. then there is him. he was bred, he tells them, quirk marriage. the first failure of three and one success. tells them how the man he called father set him death and he sings yee of ire and ashes father of broken parts, he says his sister wanted to have a normal family, that middle brother wanted to leave, of how he wouldn't know youngest all that well, because youngest is perfect ― and the little he knew was because he was a second choice if perfect fails. he tells them of mother, who wilted away and could not stand the sight of him, too-much like the monster that haunted her. 

THEY TELL HIM HE'S PART OF THEIR FAMILY, THAT THEY WANT TO HELP HIM. he does not tell them who the monster is.

I SUPPOSE I SHOULD SAY IT'S NICE TO MEET YOU, ENDEAVOR? he bites out amidst the chaos. the little bird looks at him with wide eyes. golden and pretty ― flanex and guilded they are rubber and concrete. leader will be livid with him, but he does not plan his own survival, nor that of the monster in human skin. ingenous and hateful he knows that he will die, that he is a tragedy in two, he does not tell the monster who he is under the scars and scars and scars. he thinks the monster should know, but its never cared about anyone but the masterpiece. 

THIS IS CRUEL, HE KNOWS. leading the bird as its plucked of all its red-like-his-hair feathers. it's a shame he's forgotten how to love - sister loved them, brother and Baby Brother loved him. they are gone now so it matters not. just as it matters not that the bird will betray them; everyone will die (either by his blueberry burnt hands or under the dear of the one who made them).

FATE DOES NOT UNDERSTAND HIS GAME, SIMPLY BECAUSE THIS ISN'T ONE. he's going to die like a martyr, what an idiot. mother in all her glory would look at him and through her kindness she would spit in his face and call him a monster, irredeemable, he knows. she need not see his face to know he looks like the monster-in-human-skin that hid her away in a white-like-snow room. so he does not say hello; he will only say his final goodbyes once he sets the monster to burn (before, because he's not going to survive that). fate and her cruel hands strike him in the face at the sight of his brother - not the littlest - giving them information. that's not what sets the noose around his neck. it's that middle boy is now a man, and get talks about how monster killed him, but he does not see that he is right in front. hellfire-blue eyes and white skin and purple hands. baby-babble turned stutters and trembling limbs.

SO, TODOROKI NATSUO, YOUR DAD MUSTA PISSED YOU OFF FOR YOU TO. WANNA KILL HIM THIS BAD. but the boy-turned-man does not look nor speak. until he does, of course. gritted teeth and bitten tongue i just want him dead, okay?

CHEERS! he says, to hating the devil wandering amidst the humans. he does not say that last part. little brother, boy-turned-man quirks his lips up. yeah. he also doesn't say (but it's there in his eyes).

END SCENE