….
The boy woke to white ceiling tiles and the sharp, sterile smell 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 come - but the pain did.
It felt like breathing through a straw, and when he tried to swallow there was something 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 metal staples.
The joints worked when he flexed them but it looked like something out of a horror movie.
Like someone had taken burnt meat 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 name 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 time to sleep."] The voice came through tinny speakers, too smooth. ["Welcome back, Toya Todoroki. Or perhaps... welcome to your second chance."]
Toya Todoroki? Three years?
The name echoed in his head, unfamiliar and yet unavoidably his. Then the memories 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 performed 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 measured 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.
Something 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 movement, 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 cameras in the corners and some medical equipment everywhere.
["Of course, this doesn't mean 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 comes next. Training will begin immediately. With my guidance, your life can be extended… and your true potenti—"]
Without even basic acknowledgement to All For One's words, Toya ripped the breathing tube out of his throat, while the blood drops spilled.
Alarms went off immediately.
His lungs spasmed, trying to remember 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 flames sparked to life in his palm.
They flickered unevenly, small and unstable - nothing like the inferno they were meant to be. Under different circumstances, that weakness would have infuriated him. Now, it worked in his favor. The flames were too frail to consume him.
The guard reacted - but Toya moved first.
He twisted his wrist and sent the flames snapping toward the doorframe. 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 movement pulled at stitches and grafted skin that hadn't finished knitting together.
Even with the flames 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 remembered.
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 flames reflecting in puddles on the asphalt.
Luckily, nobody came 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 frame 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.
Somewhere in the back of his head he knew what he was supposed to do next.
Go home, 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 meant giving up and he wasn't ready for that.
….
The city at night looked different than he remembered.
Neon signs blurred by rain, dark alleys, while his thoughts ran randomly-
Yeah, it's raining again. I mean what is the season? Also what's the year? Who is the president of the USA?
….
For five agonizing hours, Touya had been… Walking.
He had shuffled nearly fifteen kilometers away from the unknown facility where he had woken up, driven by a pure desperate instinct to reach a safe place for now.
Several times, 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 a chaotic combination of crimson-red and bone-white hair, drowning in an overgrown, soot-stained t-shirt. His skin was the worst part - creepily mottled purple, stretched tight over his bones and jagged with raw, unhealed scars.
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 something 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!" someone yelled from inside. "Who bangs on someone'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 name 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 frame.
"Taiyaki." Toya repeated.
His vision was starting to blur at the edges. "...I will buy you some tomorrow…. just let me crash out now…."
The words made no sense, a feverish hallucination of a debt he didn't owe.
And then something 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 meet 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 homeless 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 someone 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 time it is.
"Listen, I need you to come over.
"What? No, not me, I'm fine! I've got some 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 time 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 medical 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 emergency room." She was already pulling out her equipment, her movements 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…]
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[Author: Mass Releasing the first 7 chapters!!]