Chapter Text
The astronomers said, 'Give us matter and a little motion and we will construct the universe.
It is not enough that we should have matter, we must also have a single impulse,
one shove to launch the mass and generate the harmony of the centrifugal and centripetal forces.'
There is no end to the consequences of the act.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
The figure huddled into the corner of the metal shipping crate is a shivering, frail wisp of a thing, pale skin smeared dark by grime and worse, hair matted and ragged, blood at his temple and painting down the side of his face, his fragile wrists bruised dark by heavy cuffs. The last is a good sign as any. Even as she watches, the young boy grits his teeth and struggles against the binding again, back to one wall to keep himself from being snuck up on, stick-like legs drawn up as he fumblingly attempts to draw his legs through the cuffs to bring them in front of him, panting at the exertion, doubtless injured more than she can tell.
He’s thin enough that she can count his ribs even on the poor-quality security feed, weak enough that sweat is streaking the grime on his face, his nails are ragged, bleeding and torn, and on second glance the blood on his chin and on his teeth are likely not his own. The scene on the television screen before her is colorless, black and white, but she can picture the scarlet painting his pointed chin and teeth and making a fearsome mask of his face from the head injury, bruises purple-black on his skin. The boy is a canvass to display violence: his own, and that wielded against him.
Throughout the boat, other Omega children weep for parents long left behind, other Omega adults scream at the injustice of their stolen lives, but apart from a few breathless curses in a foreign tongue that are barely picked up by the microphone, the boy refuses to join their chorus and draw more attention to himself. A wretched, abandoned little creature… but a survivor, it seems.
He would hold potential even if the Port Mafia hadn’t been called in for other reasons to take him. With a look and a quiet nod, Kouyou dispatches one of her enforcers towards the shipping container, her hands carefully folded within the wide sleeves of her kimono.
“Unless your man has abilities, he ain’t getting far.” The fetid breath of the smuggler is noxious and his proximity unwelcome, and Kouyou shifts her stare towards him, chin high and body drawn taut as a bow. The ignorant man has no idea what threat her poise hides. “Little bitch don’t look like much, I know, but I had to knock him out just to shove his scrawny ass in there. When we picked him up from the streets, we figured him for a whore after a bit of training, but once he woke up, I knew he’d be of value to the Port Mafia.”
He’s a simpering idiot trying to gain favor, all the while digging himself and his crew deeper into trouble.
The boy on the screen tenses as he hears footsteps approaching his little cage, and he presses himself back against the corrugated metal and bares his teeth like a rabid dog, pulled in on himself defensively. As the door grates open with a shriek of metal, the boy’s brow furrows in concentration, his thin chest rising and falling rapidly in fear.
“Approach, but do not engage.” Kouyou’s command is quietly given over the earpiece of her man, and he nods to her unseen voice and steps into the room.
Kouyou can hear his legs crack, when he finds himself suddenly smashed to the floor, the boy’s cuffed hands clenched in front of him in his attempt to control his ability, skin bleaching paler even as she watches. Ability users, Omega males, either one of those would be a rare find—but to find someone who is both, and at young enough of an age to be trained into both classes? This child is a potential treasure.
“How many saw his ability?” Kouyou asks idly as the boy flings himself out of the box, limping too much for his escape to be a sprint, listing to the side slightly until his shoulder is braced to the containers he passes as he runs. The first guard to try and tackle him is snatched by the wrist with the boy's linked hands and flipped behind the boy’s back as if he weighs nothing, until he crests the top of the arc and suddenly crashes down like a stone, his arm snapping.
Another disabling attack, but no follow-through for the kill. Fascinating. Potentially troublesome, but he’s young still.
“Everyone. Woke up packed in with the others and everyone went flying. When the guards showed up he tried to fight them too.”
A pity, that.
The interior of the freighter is a maze of shipping containers stacked high. It’s clear that the boy has no idea how to get out, he’s only concerned with away for now. Heading him off won’t be difficult, but as the rest of the smugglers pound in his direction, their voices raising, the boy hunkers down into a crouch and throws himself into the air, before crash-landing on top of the shipping containers. Three shipping containers high, perhaps eight meters in a jump. Impressive. He crumbles to a heap on top of the container, clutching his leg as best he can in his cuffs, and now Kouyou can see the ragged tear of fabric, the blood staining his pants. They shot him at some point, frightened enough of a cornered omega child that even in captivity they tried to kill him.
It puts paid the idea that they brought him to the Port Mafia’s attention as some sort of tribute. They’re asking her to remove a threat, while framing it as a favor to her organization. It’s grating that this man expects her to take that at face value like the naive young woman he takes her for. Were she an Omega herself, would he even bother speaking to her?
“Come with me, and call your men in.” Kouyou sweeps out of the room without waiting to see if the coward will follow her, unconcerned at having him at her back. Even a sub-executive such as herself has nothing to fear here from smugglers and thugs.
The boy isn’t coming down, huddled away from the edge where they can’t site him to shoot, his power smacking down any who try to climb up to him, and Kouyou can at least appreciate the attempt at tactics while he resituates himself and gets a lay of the land he’s found himself in. Drifting in, the smugglers clear a path for her, and Kouyou comes to a stop a few paces from the shipping container. “What language?”
“Something European.” How utterly uninformative.
It’s one of the others that answers her, hat clutched in hand as he greets a ‘lady.’ “French, I think. I heard a couple words from him when he first went in the box.”
Excellent. As an information broker of the Port Mafia, Kouyou and her girls are fluent in a number of languages, the better to pick up information from unsuspecting politicians and businessmen. French poses no problem. Kouyou inclines her head slightly to him in thanks, before turning back to the ship’s captain. “I believe this concludes our business, then.”
The Golden Demon makes no sound as she flickers into life, a deathly shadow behind Kouyou, but the screams ring briefly through the ship nonetheless, casting a terrified silence over the victims in their boxes with the eerie echo of death. Behind Kouyou, every one of the ship’s crew save the captain are run through and spliced apart with ease, as Kouyou averts her head slightly to avoid the noxious breath of the captain as her blade runs through his stomach.
He pisses himself. The men who think themselves most Alpha often seem to.
“You can come down now, boy. I have a gift for you.” Kouyou calls out in French, twisting the blade neatly to send the captain crashing to the floor, blood burbling from his lips.
It’s a few moments before she receives an answer. She doesn’t hear the boy land behind her, because he doesn’t touch down. Feet skimming above the floor, blood trickling down his leg from the poorly bandaged gunshot wound to drip to the floor from a pointed toe, the boy stares at her as she turns, letting the captain crumple behind her.
“Are you… like me?”
Eye to eye now, the boy looks older than she originally thought by a few years. He’s small for his age, but perhaps only three or four years younger than her, closer to thirteen than to the nine or ten she might have guessed. Even with his face a mask of blood and dirt, he’s a fine-boned little thing, high cheekbones and pointed chin, and now away from the security screen she can see beneath the dirt that his hair is an appealing copper-red, with blue eyes framed in thick lashes that would make him the envy of any one of Kouyou’s girls. With some care, some food, and some time he may well become the absolute portrait of idealized Omega beauty, small, well-proportioned, and delicate.
A little French stray, snatched up and intended to be sold into prostitution by fools who don’t understand that the oldest profession is best served by those who use it for their gain, rather than those pressed into it against their will. Fools who were completely unprepared for a Gifted Omega.
An Alpha herself, Kouyou knows not to underestimate an Omega. She has a small army of them in the brothels across Japan; informants, assassins, spies, all sweet smelling and smiling until they slit your throat or poison your cup, all under her protection and her care. This boy, with a sweet face and potentially devastating offensive ability, could be so much more.
“I am Gifted, yes. And I come from an organization of others like us.” Tilting her head slightly, Kouyou watches the boy watch the Golden Demon, something like reverence in his eyes. It’s flattering, his unfeigned appreciation for her gift. She remembers the first time she met another Ability user and the impression it left on her, and the silent spectre floating behind her now has captivated him. “You could do well within it, with more freedom than others of your gender could dream of, if you will learn to control your gift. If you can leave your life before behind you.”
“What life?” The boy sneers, but Kouyou can see it’s not at her. Whatever his story truly is, she can guess at it. This ship is proof of what life can be like out there. Omegas who ended up on the streets or were left unattended long enough to be snatched up by criminals and shipped around the world like cattle. This child was surviving on the streets as a petty thief and a scavenger, she would wager on it. He could thrive within the Port Mafia, though. It’s a miracle no one else found this child before he came to them—the Order of the Clock Tower, or Proust. But that French fool would never lower himself to look in the slums, and certainly not at an Omega.
“Your name, for one. Your family, whatever you have of one. Even your language. You cannot have ties to the missing boy from France, even if no one is searching for you. And know that you will have to work. You will have to fight.”
“...But I will be free?”
What a sweet, naive boy. In the manner that he means… yes. But everyone has their leashes, their obligations, the things that tie them down. Her mate learned the cost of trying to break free of the Port Mafia, and so did Kouyou as he died, their bond severing. Still. It is better than the life he would have outside of Kouyou’s care, and she inclines her head slightly in agreement.
She likes that it doesn’t take him long to decide, some impulse that sends him slowly lowering himself the rest of the way to the floor, standing barefoot among the carnage around them. His small hands fits in hers neatly, as she frees him from his captivity and draws him carefully away, mindful of his injuries.
She will have her men sink the ship with everyone onboard once they’re away—the deaths of the cargo and the crew alike are necessary now, to keep this child safe and hidden.
“Come now. Let’s get you home, and find you a name.”
That night, Chuuya Nakahara is born in the brothels of Yokohama, a vicious little creature with a dead man's name, loyal to the woman who rescued him and to the organization that let him live free.