He remembers being very, very small. For someone who is currently seven, it is an interesting claim to make. He's never really told anyone since he doesn't actually spend a large amount of time around people who are interested in anything he has to say. Nonetheless, he remembers being very small. Because of that, He knows things that he probably shouldn't know.
Things his father thought he had forgotten.
Like the weeks of testing, the years of waiting, hoping, praying for his quirk to come in. He remembers their teacher stressing the importance of their quirks. He remembers the ashy way his mouth tasted when all of the others came into their quirks.
He remembers watching them all dwindle away, disappearing until he was the only one left.
He remembers the numerus.
His stomach feels engorged as he walks calmly back through the building, barely paying attention to the stark white walls and the tiled floors. The feeling is unpleasant, nearly as bad as the impatient wrigglings of the three foreign quirks protesting their imprisonment deep inside his gullet. It's like acid reflux at the back of his throat, acrid and foul.
Collecting the two other quirks had been harder than the first. He had managed, of course, he always did, but the last boy had been his age and had died immediately after He ripped out his quirk.
Seeing the boy's dead eyes had been hard.
He can feel Consume snickering inside his throat.
He raises his hand to his mouth, spitting again, careful to keep the mess inside concealed. Checking his hand, he is once again unsurprised to find it filled with bloody salvia.
It's to be expected really. He continues walking.
His father named his quirk Consume when it first came in, primarily because it was so harsh on his body. Izuku hates his quirk. Hates it in the brief seconds when he allows himself to feel the consuming rage in his mind - the moments when he is outside of his father's immediate reach.
The moments like this are fragile stolen seconds where the boy who doesn't exist peers out from eyes that aren't his into an unknown world. These are fragments of time where he can think thoughts he otherwise wouldn't dare.
Except, for some reason today - the moment doesn't end.
Everything proceeds normally. He did what his father demanded and now stands in precisely the place he had been directed to for extraction. He stands there. Waiting at his extraction point. Waiting.
Hours pass.
When the sun starts to eek its way past the horizon and the sky begins to grow dark, he is more confused than he has ever been in his short life. There are rules in place when living with his father. Specific rules. Rules that he has never - not once in his entire life seen broken. No one has ever simply not done as his father instructed.
It's the cold that startles him out of his confusion. It's freezing and he knows that staying outdoors much longer might cause him to become sick. While he isn't certain what he should be doing currently, his father's rules are enough to guide him. He isn't supposed to allow himself to become ill.
He's been hunkered down in the alley adjacent to the hospital for perhaps three hours, long past when his pick up should have arrived, and so though his first steps away from the alley are hesitant, he can't help the bloom of excitement thrumming through the veins. Its steadily getting darker at this point but he is still overwhelmed as he wanders quietly down the walkway. He's never been outside before. Not really. Not like this.
There are buildings here that tower over him, reaching so high the small boy nearly cannot see the top of them. There are poles with lights that flicker on as the darkness encroaches around them, and if he closes his eyes for even a moment he can feel the weight of thousand of quirks sleeping quietly inside the bellies of their owners.
Consume grumbles as it observes, riding around at the back of his mind like a hungry lion leashed only by the force of his will. In that moment he is near certain that if he wanted to he could claw the quirk out of every person nearby, yanking their balls of light out and dragging them into his own stomach, gorging himself until he bled with light from every orifice like his father does.
He doesn't even want to but still, Consume sits inside him, urging despite the nausea rising inside him.
His stomach recoils at the thought, recoils as Consume licks its chops tempting him with thoughts of power. He drowns the thoughts out as much as he can, and attempts, nearly enraged with the futility of it, to suppress Consume once more to the easy-going near passive state it had been in this morning. His quirk is always worse after having been fully used.
He knows very few things about the world outside the compound. Outside of the retrieval missions, his father assigns him, he has never left the facility. Instead, much of his time had been spent studying and training so despite his certainty that he needed to find some sort of shelter before it got much colder, he was very much lost on how to actually accomplish such a thing.
By the point that he decides to ask someone where he should go, there are very few people on the street.
He buries his hands in his pockets and allows the faintest signs of shivering to overtake him. Is he going to freeze to death, he wonders as he tries to warm himself, the first time he ever steps outside of his father's influence?
That would be the height of irony, he thinks bitterly.
Despite the pressing issue of the decreasing temperature, he finds his attention snatched away from the cold when he passes by one of the few stores still open despite the late hour. Making, a split-second decision, he ducks into the building, his chilled skin shocked by the rush of warmth.
There is a small box, he notices, sitting firmly against the wall. It's very thin and across it are picture-moving, speaking, pictures with words scrolling across the bottom in black and white kanji. He is fascinated as the words appear in succession as the people speak, disappearing suddenly only to be replaced as the lady and the man continued talking.
...other news, All Might has been reported to have taken a much-needed vacation to the Isle of Mann. There is no current information on the expected return of our hero's prompt return to the country. Fortunately, the hero commission should be announcing a press conference anytime soon regarding the current situation. Many are wondering if, during this period, Endeavor may finally have the chance to demonstrate why exactly he believes he should supersede the number one hero position.
Thank you for that update, Vanessa, this is Jim Collins with the weather for this evening. You better grab your coats if you're heading out in the morning folks, it supposed to reach a chilly nineteen degrees Fahrenheit by eleven tonight with predicted lows in the sub-tens across the Mustafu area. There is a large cold front moving through the area, currently, meaning these temperatures will likely continue on and throughout the weekend-
"I can turn it up if you want, kid," he nearly jumps out of his skin as he suddenly realizes that he isn't alone.
"What?" His voice is gravely from disuse. he isn't allowed to speak very frequently at home. He wants to cough to clear his throat, but the acrid burning behind his teeth lets him know that that would be a back idea. He doesn't want to be coughing up blood in front of strangers.
"The television, kid. I can turn it up if you want to watch the news." The man looks at him again. The man pauses for a minute, giving him a once-over.
"Oh." he stares back, a bit confused. "It's okay."
"Alright." The man continues staring at him, and so he takes advantage of the moment to give the man in front of him a similar look over. His nose is large and is overtaken only by the thick wire-rimmed glasses perched across. The glasses hide away alert brown eyes. The man's face is even further obscured by a thick wiry beard. Finally bored with his observations, he shifts his focus to the remainder of the building.
Though it seemed odd, he could see dozens - perhaps hundreds of books lined up in the spaces around the counter. Large numbers of them appeared to be duplicated.
"Is this a library?" He asked aloud.
The man snorts, loud. "No. This is a bookstore."
"How peculiar," he murmurs as he looks around once again, this time with more interest than before. He had been to his father's library many, many times before but he had never considered before how the books in the library had come to reside within it.
Suddenly, he felt a brief wave of worry that perhaps he had missed other more significant things simply because they were outside of his frame of reference. He frowned, heavily, annoyed.
"We double as a midnight study spot for high schoolers in the area," the man continued blithely. "No one much comes in this late though, not during this time of year. You had better be getting home, kid. Christmas is soon, yah know. Just around the corner. That means the store closes a bit earlier, so I'll be shutting everything soon."
The frown on his face persisted somewhat when the man said a couple more words he was unfamiliar with. High schooler? Christmas? He supposed it didn't really matter. "What if I can't?" He asked a bit hesitant.
"What do you mean 'can't'?" The man repeated.
"I can't get home and it's cold outside. I'm not supposed to stay outside when it's cold. Father says I'm not allowed to get sick."
The man blinks at him foolishly. "Are you saying you're lost, kid?"
"No, I'm not lost. I just don't know where I am." The man looked a bit startled at this point and seemed to have decided coming to the side of the counter where he was more important than remaining behind the counter. He dropped to his knees so he was at about eye level with the small child.
"Did you wander off from your dad?"
"No, I was doing something and no one came to pick me up. It started getting really cold so I was looking for somewhere warm."
"Where were you doing something?"
This line of questioning made him a bit nervous. One of the rules was to never speak of the hospital visits, never speak about what he did to those patients, so he kept his mouth shut and shoved the sudden rush of terror down and mumbled out a mild, "I don't remember. "
It was easier here to fall back on the lessons his teacher taught him. Easier than breathing. Easier than thinking. He let a few tears well up in the corner of his eyes, looking up through long lashes with glistening eyes despite the similar height between the two.
Those lessons echo inside him.
Most people will underestimate you, he remembers, mostly due to your age and height. Average citizens aren't likely to consider the danger associated with even small children due to the influx of quirks in this day and age. Due to your height, some people will think you are younger than you are. Take advantage of any and every opportunity presented. Categorize those weaknesses, notice the hitches in breath from exhaustion, and the way a body instinct flinches from pain. Learn the way other people express emotion.
He doesn't know what will happen. He has three foreign quirks pulsing in his belly, stretching him out as an overindulgent meal might. He's outside of his father's control for the first time in his life, speaking to someone he neither needs to trick nor impress and for some reason a wave of exhaustion hits him so quickly and overwhelming the false tears in his eyes suddenly become real and the back of his throat begins to ache.
"I-," he manages before sudden wetness overwhelms his face and reaching up he feels drip dripping from his eyes, "I don't want to go back."
Because although it's only been an hour maybe since he left that alleyway, and while he is near certain permanent escape is near impossible he suddenly wants it with a fire in his belly and an ache in his chest that has absolutely nothing to do with the only thing that matters about him.
This time he's the one who wants something.