No one in their right mind would describe Caesar as buff. They would say scrawny if they were being nice about it, otherwise use a word that starts with an f, and ends with getting decked in the face. Having the narrow waist of a courtesan, and the long, elegant fingers of a pianist doesn't help his case either. But one does well not to underestimate Caesar's strength, which is paired with the skill of an experienced street fighter and the confidence of a lunatic.
To the detriment of humanity as a whole, Caesar is quite aware of his own attractiveness, often mentioning it in unrelated conversation. His face defaults to a cocky grin so punchable, that it could provoke a nun to a shootout. But these smiles never seem to reach his eyes.
His hair is an oily-black mess, perpetually looking like Caesar just got out of the shower. In contrast, Caesar himself is about as pale as one gets. He avoided the sunlight like the plague even before his... unfortunate condition. His skin is crisscrossed by scars, the ones on his face, for instance, are from an incident when his opponent brought a knife to a fistfight. The scars are occasionally intercepted by patches of elaborate ink-patterns; Caesar has tattoos pretty much all over his body: on the side of his neck, on his shoulder, back, both of his arms and even on one leg, starting from his ankle, crawling up to his hip. They are all nonfigurative, with no meaning, he just thinks he looks hot with them, and he is right. He got piercings—two in one ear, one in the other and one in the right eyebrow—for the same reason.
It was a piercing cold January morning, 1998. Caesar, local stray mutt was preoccupied with barking, howling and clawing at something in an alley way. And not even four "SHUT THE FUCK UP" yelled down from a nearby balchony was enough the quiet him down. That's when a middle aged, very hungover man stumbled down the staircase to chase the goddamned dog away. But once in the alley curiosity got the better of him, and the man leaned over to check what's in the communal trash that got the dog so worked up.
It was a newborn baby wrapped in newspaper.
The boy was taken to Angelic Way Boys' Home, and got the name Caesar Vitali. Caesar in honor of the dog he owed his small, frostbitten life to. And Vitali, because it was Monday. If he had been taken in on a Tuesday he would've been a Bacchi.
Now, there was nothing 'angelic' about Angelic Way.
The very building looked like a prison with barred windows and two-man tall walls, the top covered in barbwire. And the caregivers were nothing more than prison guards on social worker pay. They ruled the orphanage with an iron fist--'fist' being the keyword here. Because... why not? Who was looking? The even had a so called 'White Room', an agonizingly small hole with padded walls. On paper it was a place for troubled children to 'calm themselves down', but in practice it had the same functionality as solitary confinement.
But while the caregivers paid special attention to anything concerning the optics--clenliness, chores, silence after curfew--they had little care for the inner workings of an all boys society. Oh, you're getting regularly beaten to a pulp? Good riddance, figure it out! Aren't you a man?
Really, it was just a shithole through and through.
As a kid Caesar spent more time in the medical wing than anyone else, including the nurses who worked there. Saying he was a 'sickly child' would be the understatement of the century. He was on death doorstep so many times that the caretakers lost count and Caesar lost interest. Constantly dying of something--be it pneumonia, extreme fever or anemia--was simply his way of life for the first ten years or so.
After a while his health took a turn for the better, but he was still much smaller, skinnier and paler than other boys his age. And they noticed. Oho, they noticed.
From an early age Caesar acted like he was allergic to any and all types of authority. The futile rebellion--he called it a 'backbone'--earned him harsh punishments from the adults, and made him a prime target for the other kids. And there is no cruelty like the one of adolescent boys.
The nights were the worst. During the days Caesar could make a habit of avoiding his peers. But he had to share his room with seven of them after he was kicked out of the medical wing. [...]