He listens quietly, his arms coming to cross with the spares slack at his sides. "You're building an assumption of how my world operates based on examples from outside contexts. You're not wrong that there are a lot of adults that aren't able or aren't willing to protect us, but it doesn't seem fair to infer "child soldier" from hearing that I chose to train my Quirk into something that could be useful."

As a demonstration of sorts, the ends of his tendrils lift, and split, and split again, each one becoming an ear or an eye, one of them a mouth that speaks more clearly than the main one behind the mask.

"I'm not a soulless monster, and neither of my friends, and the villains that we fight aren't either."