….
The boy woke to white ceiling tiles and the sharp, sterile sll of antiseptic.
For a few seconds, he lay still, staring upward, trying to piece together where he was and how he had ended up there.
The answer didn't co - but the pain did.
It felt like breathing through a straw, and when he tried to swallow there was sothing in his throat.
Tubes?
He could feel them snaking down past his uvula.
Instinct kicked in, he lifted his hand to pull them out and froze.
What the fuck.
That wasn't his hand.
Purple-black skin stretched over knuckles he didn't recognize, held together with tal staples.
The joints worked when he flexed them but it looked like sothing out of a horror movie.
Like soone had taken burnt at and sewn it back together.
Before the panic could really set in, a monitor across the room flickered on.
?...?The man on screen wore a ventilator mask. Half his face was in shadow, but his eyes were visible.
He reconginsed him instantly.
All For One!!??
The na sat in his head like a rock.
But he didn't say it out loud - he couldn't. Not with the tubes running down his throat, the presence of them stealing even the smallest attempt at speech.
["Ah. You're awake. Three years is a long ti to sleep."] The voice ca through tinny speakers, too smooth. ["Welco back, Toya Todoroki. Or perhaps... welco to your second chance."]
Toya Todoroki? Three years?
The na echoed in his head, unfamiliar and yet unavoidably his. Then the mories rushed in all at once, sharp and disorienting, snapping the pieces into place.
Being called Toya Todoroki suddenly made sense.
["Don't stress yourself. Your body was extensively damaged.
["Dr. Garaki perford miracles keeping you alive. Without our intervention you would have died on that mountain. You should be grateful—"]
Grateful?
["You weren't preserved out of charity. You were chosen. There is power in you – power wasted on a society that asured your worth and found it inconvenient. I can refine it. Strip away the weakness that held you back."]
[The heroes who failed you will watch everything they built collapse. And your father… he will be forced to confront the masterpiece he tried to discard.]
The words kept coming but Toya had stopped listening.
Sothing was crystalizing in his head, cutting through the fog.
One thought, simple and bright.
He didn't want to die.
That was the only thing that mattered.
Revenge didn't or the recognition of this so-called father.
Heroes, villains, whatever this man was offering - none of it did.
Just: he wanted to live.
His fingers gripped the bedsheets, and maybe due to the movent, the staples pulled at his skin - alas, he barely cared to notice as he was scanning the room now.
There was a door on the left, and sounds of guard outside visible through the window shadows.
Two caras in the corners and so dical equipnt everywhere.
["Of course, this doesn't an you're entirely out of danger."] All For One continued. ["Once you agree to cooperate, Dr. Garaki will need to perform a few more operations, to ensure your body can withstand what cos next. Training will begin imdiately. With my guidance, your life can be extended… and your true potenti-"]
Without even basic acknowledgent to All For One's words, Toya ripped the breathing tube out of his throat, while the blood drops spilled.
Alarms went off imdiately.
His lungs spasd, trying to rember how to work on their own, and he rolled off the bed as the door burst open. The guard took one step inside–
Toya lifted his hand and blue flas sparked to life in his palm.
They flickered unevenly, small and unstable - nothing like the inferno they were ant to be. Under different circumstances, that weakness would have infuriated him. Now, it worked in his favor. The flas were too frail to consu him.
The guard reacted - but Toya moved first.
He twisted his wrist and sent the flas snapping toward the doorfra. Dry wood caught instantly, blue fire racing upward in a violent bloom. The guard recoiled on instinct, shielding his face as heat and smoke swallowed the entrance.
Toya didn't wait to see more.
He ran.
His legs nearly buckled on the first step. The floor felt unstable beneath him, his balance distorted, muscles weak from disuse. Even his breath burned.
Every movent pulled at stitches and grafted skin that hadn't finished knitting together.
Even with the flas reduced to a weak, unstable output, the heat still bit into him. His own quirk scraped against nerves left raw and oversensitive, tearing through fragile skin as if punishing him for daring to use it.
Pain exploded through his body - It was worse than he rembered.
Worse than Sekoto Peak.
Nevertheless, he kept running.
There were a few more guards to which he burned through them, in fact everything that's in the way, until suddenly he was outside.
Rain hit his face.
He stood there gulping air, his whole body shaking.
Behind him the small one story building he set on fire is still burning, blue flas reflecting in puddles on the asphalt.
Luckily, nobody ca after him.
…they were letting him go?
He understood that much.
Seeing he rejected All Of One's offer, he must have decided he was worthless without their support and cooperation.
A failure. Half burnt dead man walking.
We will see about that.
He walked off.
….
After several hours, the rain stopped, but his hospital gown was already soaked fully attaching to his thin fra of bones, as he was still moving aimlessly.
His bare feet hurt to the point of bleeding and leaving behind his trail of steps soaked in red.
Sowhere in the back of his head he knew what he was supposed to do next.
Go ho, see that his family had moved on without him and finally break down completely.
He looked at the empty street and thought:
Fuck that!!
He continued walking instead, with no destination and plan.
All his focus was just one foot in front of the other because stopping ant giving up and he wasn't ready for that.
….
The city at night looked different than he rembered.
Neon signs blurred by rain, dark alleys, while his thoughts ran randomly-
Yeah, it's raining again. I an what is the season? Also what's the year? Who is the president of the USA?
….
For five agonizing hours, Toya had been… Walking.
He had shuffled nearly fifteen kiloters away from the unknown facility where he had woken up, driven by a pure desperate instinct to reach a safe place for now.
Several tis, people saw him and crossed to the other side of the street.
To them, he was simply a nightmare in the flesh:
A strange kid with ssy bone-white hair, drowning in an overgrown gown. His skin was the worst part - creepily mottled purple, stretched right from his jaw to shoulder.
He looked like a victim of a quirk accident who shouldn't be standing.
Yet, nobody dared to approach him…
I am fine…. Just need to hang on for a little more….
….and then….
His stomach twisted in hunger.
When did I eat last? Must be years, right?
From sign boards, he noticed in his last turn, he was deep in the Yamanashi Prefecture, blocks away from the main transit hubs.
Then he stopped.
…?there was a house in front of him:
A normal traditional single-story house, nothing in comparison to the Todoroki estate he was used to, but sothing about it felt pulling.
Toya climbed the steps and banged on the door with his fist.
Nothing.
He banged again, harder.
BANG. BANG. BANG.
Shuffling inside.
BANG. BANG. BANG.
"What the hell!" soone yelled from inside. "Who bangs on soone's door at this hour?"
The door swung open.
An old man stood there in yellow pajamas, white hair sticking up at weird angles. But more than anything else he was short…. shorter than Toya.
The old man looked annoyed as hell until his eyes landed on Toya and he went very still.
Gran Torino.
The na surfaced in Toya's head without him knowing how he knew it.
"Taiyaki." Toya said.
"What?" the hero stared, his sharp eyes taking in the staples, the burns, and the skeletal fra.
"Taiyaki." Toya repeated.
His vision was starting to blur at the edges. "...I will buy you so tomorrow…. just let crash out now…."
The words made no sense, a feverish hallucination of a debt he didn't owe.
And then sothing in him gave way.
It's not that he gave up.
He was just releasing… that the sheer force of will which had carried him for five hours is simply being evaporated.
…Why though? Standing before this stranger yet familiar face of an old man in ridiculous pajamas, and knowing his background from the show, he felt like he could finally stop.
So he did.
His legs folded, the ground rushed up to et him.
He heard the old man swear, yet those tiny hands caught him, and then everything went dark.
But this darkness was different.
This was just exhaustion.
….
On the other hand, Gran Torino stood in his doorway holding an unconscious burned kid, rain falling around them both.
"Well, shit–!"
He said, already pulling out his phone while checking for a pulse with the other. And once he was sure the kid was alive, he dragged him inside.
To him, the boy was barely bones, and despite being taller, he doubted he weighed more than him.
Nevertheless, for him the kid was practically a holess nobody, so he dumped him on the couch–
"Ugh, I just bought that…"
Water dripped everywhere.
Gran Torino stood there for half a minute, hands on his hips, staring down at what he had just brought into his house.
Burns covered most of the visible skin, while the purple grafts held together with surgical staples.
He should call an ambulance. No. He should be calling soone from the Hero Association even prior to that.
That was the smart play. Hand over him to the system, so that they can check his background, and decide whether he was worth saving.
Instead he pulled out his phone and scrolled through his contacts until he found the right number.
"Chiyo? Yeah, yeah, I know what ti it is.
"Listen, I need you to co over.
"What? No, not , I'm fine! I've got so kid here who looks like he crawled out of an incinerator.
"Can you? Yes, now. I wouldn't be calling at this hour if it could wait.
"Thanks."
He hung up and went to find his first aid kit.
….
By the ti Recovery Girl arrived twenty minutes later, Gran Torino had the kid stripped out of the wet clothes and wrapped in blankets.
The burns were worse than he had thought. Almost his entire lower body was damaged.
Chiyo walked in with her dical bag, took one look at the kid on the couch, and her lips pressed into a thin line.
"Sorahiko, where on earth did you find this child?"
"On my doorstep."
"Your doorstep." She set her bag down with more force than necessary. "And you didn't think to call an ambulance? A hospital?"
"I called you, didn't I?"
"Oh, wonderful. Because I'm so much better equipped than an entire ergency room." She was already pulling out her equipnt, her movents brisk and efficient despite the scolding tone–
"Honestly. You heroes and your tendency to handle everything yourselves."
Gran Torino scratched the back of his head. "Just take a look at him, will you?"
….
.
[To be continued…]
★─────⇌•★•⇋─────★
[Author: Mass Releasing the first 7 chapters!!]
User Comments
0 comments from readers