Rejected Prodigy

Prologue: Mass Exodus

As Aizawa walks down the street, he notices how normal the day has been. Annoyingly sunny, not too hot-- but not too cold, either. Just, 'meh'. Walking into a convenience store he visits frequently for energy drinks and eye drops, he bumps lightly into a kid wearing a gray hoody and white face mask. The kind used to cover the nose and mouth. He noticed the kid was holding what looked like cough syrup.

'That explains the mask, huh.' Aizawa just brushes off the tiny "sorry" from the child and continues his venture towards the eye drops. While looking over the various brands of eye drops, he wonders whether he should try a new brand.

'This is too annoying. Why do they have to have multiple brands, it's just eye drops.'

As he stands contemplating his decision, he doesn't notice a slight ringing in his ears. Just when he was about to pick up a bottle, a soft ticking sound spikes his interest.

'Why does that sound like a –'

**KABAM**

Fire rushes into the small store as the noise from the explosion ricochets off the windows, causing them to burst from the sudden rush of air. Mass chaos consumes the small store as the costumers all try to leave at once. Aizawa instantly found himself by the front of the store ushering everyone out, trying to avoid anyone from getting trampled. As the last of the costumers leave, he looks around. He can't help but wonder where the small child went.

'Did they get out?' He thought to himself. 'Maybe they left before the explosion?'

He took one last, quick glance inside the store. Flames curled around the interior, radiating heat so hot that even being slightly close to the door caused his eyebrows to singe. Just then he notices the small frame of a person running around the interior, seemingly unfazed by the flaming merchandise surrounding them.

"HEY WHAT ARE YOU DOING?! GET OUT OF THERE!" Aizawa shouts towards the small figure. As he tries to walk into the burning store, the figure turns their head slightly towards him. He takes two steps into the store, but is then instantly stopped when the ceiling collapses in front of him.

A few seconds pass as Aizawa tries to pry his way into the store, his hands burning as he tries to remove the ceiling out of his way. Preoccupied by the obstical, he can't see into the store any more. Just when he was about to throw a piece of ceiling away, everything stopped.

The fire, the heat, the crumbled building, the destruction. Gone.

'What the hell?' Aizawa froze, the pieces of ceiling in his hands had disappeared, and were back in the place they belonged. 'Wait. What?!'

The building looked just the way it had when he first entered. Not a bit was missing. There was no heat, no flames, and no burning merchandise. He looked down at his burnt hands. Except, they were no longer burnt. He clasped them a few times to test if they hurt, but they were his normal hands.

'What the hell just happened?'

The customers stood just as confused as him was. The first person to reanimate was the store owner. Their sobbing body hastened into the store as they started checking every inch of their store. Slowly all of the costumers walked into the store to hesitantly assess the damage with their own eyes. Except, there was nothing wrong.

'It's like it never happened.' Aizawa thought eyes squinting. 'Who did this? And why?' As he thought this, he heard the owner cry softly by the register. It seemed like everything was where it should have been, but maybe not?

"I'VE BEEN ROBBED!" The owner suddenly shouts, his eyes wide at the change drawer. Recounting it he exclaims again in anguish.

'Well, it seems one thing is missing.' Aizawa thinks. "How much is missing?" He asks the owner. "It's not much, maybe about..." He recounts the drawer quickly, "$200." The owner sighs, "I guess it could have been worse. Argh, and just when I thought my store was doing pretty well this month! Haaah." The owner sighs and wipes his face with a handkerchief he procured from his pants pocket.

Aizawa peers around the store, then speaks up. "What do you mean by 'doing well'?" He asks the man. "This month had been going rather well for me! I was starting to have a real profit from the local students. After this, though, I'm just going to have a regular month. Oh, well. I'll just file a police report to get some insurance coverage." The man replies sighing softly. Aizawa puts his hand up to his chin. Something was up. "I could've guessed this was going to happen." The owner spoke suddenly. Aizawa glances at him. "What do you mean?" He questioned squinting at the man. "It's weird, though. I never told anyone, besides my family, that the shop was doing well this month." The man wonders aloud, looking to the ceiling with his arms folded. He looks at Aizawa and continues, "There has been an increase in theft recently. All of the stores that have been robbed all said that they were doing well until the robbery occured. Each time, though, the stores have reported the theft as being rather minor, only a few hundred at a time." The man finishes, looking towards a costumer that came to him to ask him questions.

'I think I remember a bit of that on the news." Aizawa slowly takes the cue to leave, and walks towards the front of the store. Just then, the image of the small child in the flames flashes in his memory. Aizawa freezes. He instantly looks around. 'Where did the kid go, are they ok?' He thinks. Not seeing the kid anywhere, he decides to talk to the police that have just showed up. The police look just as confused as the rest of the bystanders. After asking them a few questions, he concludes that know one knows anything more than he does. As Aizawa walks away from the crowd he overhears some strange bits of conversations.

'What were all those screams about?'

'Why did everyone suddenly leave the store?'

'Fire? Where was the fire? Maybe it was small?'

Aizawa stopped. 'How the hell did they not see the flames? How did they miss all of the billowing smoke? The fire was huge!' Aizawa looked towards the store, eyes squinting in concentration. After a few seconds, his eyes slowly widen in realization.

'The fire was never there. It was someone's quirk.' The realization hit Aizawa hard. It all seemed so real! How could he, and all of the customers, see the same thing? Whoever this person was, they must be strong if there quirk can confuse twenty people all at once without being seen. As he was slowly walking down the street, Aizawa was deep in thought. 'The whole incident only lasted about five, maybe ten minutes at most.' Recounting all of the events of the past twenty minutes in his head, Aizawa was stumped.  'Maybe it was more than one person? There was no way that someone made all those people hallucinate an explosion of that size AND steal money from the store without being seen at all.' 

'Or maybe they were seen.' This thought stopped Aizawa in his tracks. He slowly turned towards the small store now in the distance. 'That kid... No way.' He thought while scowling. He saw a potential suspect and had done nothing to stop them.