Work Text:
"Oh my gosh! What happened next?"
Izuku tried to tune out the horrified gasps coming from the opposite side of the classroom as he wrote in his notebook. Unable to properly focus, he settled for detaching from reality, and started staring out the window. It was happening again. It's only been two months since the first year of UA began, but Uraraka was already set to ruin whatever friendships Izuku has built so far. The most the greenette could do, at the moment, was block out the noise of his life crumbling, like it always did.
The rest of the class was huddled around one girl's desk as she shared some of her middle school memories.
"Why would Midoriya bully someone as sweet as you, Ochako?" One girl cried.
"I-I...I don't know, Mina. I mean...he did say my quirk was weak, once. B-but he probably didn't mean it!" Uraraka stammered, nervously waving her hands in front of her.
"What else did he fucking do that he 'probably didn't mean'?" Bakugo snarled.
"U-uh...he did...um...he once got the whole class to ignore me for a week..." Uraraka shyly admitted, eyes lowering as tears formed from below her eyelashes. Damn; she was a good actor.
The air grew tense in the classroom as her classmates seethed in fury for their friend. Oblivious to the fact that none of this was true, and that Uraraka was actually the one who bullied Midoriya in middle school, they plotted against him.
"Then let's ignore him for a month. Midoriya was horrible to you, so he deserves the treatment that was forced on you, but worse." Someone called out.
Various sounds of agreement rose from the crowd of students, and they put their plan into immediate action. For the next week it went like this:
You have to do an project with Midoriya? Make him do the work and, no matter what, don't engage with him. At all.
You have to spar with him for hero training? Don't speak, don't look him in the eye, and do the assignment as needed.
DO NOT TALK TO HIM NO MATTER WHAT.
The following Monday, Aizawa entered the room and explained that the hero course was holding a talent show in a week, and everyone has to participate.
Izuku was already falling into the familiar routine of disassociating during class because he already knew everything that was being taught(the perks of taking online high school and college courses) while purposefully getting average grades so he doesn't stand out, no looking anyone in the eye, not trying to talk to anyone since they clearly didn't want to engage with him, and automatically doing what he was told. Some of this concerned some of his classmates; the ones who were slightly suspicious of Uraraka. They felt sick when they realized how quickly and easy he shut down, how he would immediately do the entirety of assignments that were meant to be group projects; like this was normal.
Izuku truly was used to this treatment. It just sucked that Uraraka decided to continue tormenting him even after he got a quirk. Being quirkless was what made him useless, and things were supposed to be different now. But nothing had changed. Of course it hadn't. So he had to make do with he had. He couldn't fight back normally. No; Uraraka didn't deserve that. She deserved something much worse.
Two things would be required for his plan to work: One of the many songs he's written over the years, and permission from his Mom to talk to one of her many connections from being a secretary at multiple different quirk therapy offices.
One week later🤭:
The majority of Class 1-A grouped together to perform together as a band, but some people were stragglers. Mina did a dance solo- garnering a standing ovation-, Tokoyami shared some of his poetry, and Izuku sang.
Class 1-B started the show off with a play similar to the one they did a the School Festival, and the Class 1-A band went next. Mina and Tokoyami had their own share of the spotlight, and, before he knew it, Izuku was next.
When Present Mic called his name, his didn't enter the stage from backstage; oh no. He walked up the stairs from somewhere in the crowd, and Class 1-A's jaws dropped at his appearance. Gone was the timid little broccoli they thought they knew, and now they had a buff cinnamon roll to deal with.
This green bean had gotten an undercut, which revealed the multiple piercings that he's had for years(but no one knew about, thanks to the bush that he had called hair. He was wearing a tank top, showcasing the full-sleeve tattoos on both of his arms. He'd always changed in the bathroom stalls instead of the locker room, so it makes sense no one knew. But- GOD DAMNIT, HE LOOKS HOT!!!
"Hey," Izuku smirks into the microphone, causing wayyyy too many girls to turn into tomatoes. So, ahem, he had apparently been manually forcing his voice to seem like he still hadn't hit puberty, and the sudden pitch drop really threw his classmates off. "Hope you don't mind, but I brought a friend with me."
A woman walked up on the stage, and Izuku passed her the microphone. "Hello, students! My name is Kiaya Myouken, and my quirk is Memory Projection." She gave the microphone back to Izuku, and he grinned.
"Ms. Myouken is here today to help clear some things up. I have a classmate who has been spreading false rumors about me bullying her in middle school, when, in reality, I wasn't. So I will be singing a song for you guys, and Ms. Myouken will be showing the memories I give her access to as the song goes on. Enjoy the show!" Placing the microphone back on the stand, Izuku grabbed a chair for Myouken to sit on so she could focus better, and let her activate her quirk on him.
Approaching the microphone once more, he signaled for the music to start.
[Castle of Glass by: Linkin Park]
[Start the song before you continue reading, as I wrote the song into the story in a specific way to accommodate descriptions and such. Try reading the words in the regular text that are under certain lines of the song, and you should be done reading that by the time that part of the lyrics are done. So you should be able to listen to the song and read at the same time. It's a bit hard to explain, but I think you'll know what I mean if you try it. Hope you guys like it!]
Instantly, a screen popped up above Izuku, showing Uraraka laughing at him, and whispering behind his back(this was merely a scratch on the surface of the mountain of trauma he likes to call his childhood). Then popped up the times she had manipulated the people around her to believe Izuku was hurting her. His classmates watched what he went through; how often he became a shell of himself because everyone hated him.
Then people started getting physical with him.
It started slow; a firm slap to the cheek by a random girl once every other day. But then it picked up speed. He would be shoved into lockers by angry dudes he'd done nothing too, and he'd be beaten to a pulp by the school's top students-aka, the kids with the most powerful quirks. Damn, those days hurt like a bitch. He has plenty of scars to prove it. But he's saving that for later...(😏)
Take me down to the river bend
The majority of the female population started blushing at the sound of his voice(I don't blame them, ngl).
Take me down to the fighting end
Wash the poison from off my skin
Show me how to be whole again
The entire crowd witnessed kids following Izuku home, dragging him to streams and partially drowning him, and other kids using their quirks on the thin eight year-old boy. One student had wings, and he grabbed Izuku and dangled him over the edge of the roof of their school.
Fly me up on a silver wing
Past the black where the sirens sing
The same kid also dropped him into a pool, once, despite knowing the greenette couldn't swim. He only survived because they dropped him close to the edge, and he managed to stop flailing enough to pull himself out.
Warm me up in a nova's glow
And drop me down to the dream below
Class 1-A, the class who had seen this sweet boy finally opening up too him after thinking that the bullying was over, watched what he had dealt with for his entire life; the years of trauma he endured. They felt so guilty for listening to Uraraka and ostracizing the boy from their class.
'Cause I'm only a crack
In this castle of glass
Hardly anything there for you to see
The students watched spider lilies being left of his desk, along with different variations of 'go kill yourself' written on the wood table. Not-so-fun fact; Izuku knew hundreds of different ways to die because of those notes. The crowd now knew this fact because they saw memories of the partial suicide notes he'd written in his journal on particularly bad days...
For you to see
....and they saw his attempts.
Bring me home in a blinding dream
Through the secrets that I have seen
Wash the sorrow from off my skin
And show me how to be whole again
The projection changed to show Izuku breaking down in full-body tremors as he looked in the bathroom mirror and saw his bloody reflection, horrible slurs permanently carved into his skin. Quirkless slurs. The poor boy collapsed into heart-wrenching sobs as he fell to the ground. His entire body was bloodied and bruised, and everyone watched as he had a panic attack while he expertly took care of his wounds, covering the bruises in makeup, and went home to greet his tired mother with a fake-ass smile.
'Cause I'm only a crack
In this castle of glass
Hardly anything there for you to see
Then showed Izuku singing this very song on a rooftop, smiling painfully while some students secretly stood behind him. He took off his shoes, and stepped onto the ledge, turning around to look at the kids who thought he hadn't noticed them. He flashed them his signature smile, before saluting them and gracefully leaning back and off the ledge. He looked so peaceful as he fell. A hero caught him before he hit the ground, but it was the only time he had gotten that close to actually dying.
For you to see
They watched him illegally getting full-sleeve tattoos to cover the hundreds of white lines he had from self-harm, and the ear piercings he was able to hide with his unruly hair. They saw him, still dealing with the bullying, but completely disassociating and going through tests correctly, then deliberately going back to change some of his answers so that he didn't get perfect scores. Hell, they saw him graduate middle school and high school through free online courses before he even finished Aldera Junior High's seventh grade class. They even saw him purposefully posing in the mirror with a copy of his bachelor's degree, which was clearly a memory from today considering the fact he was wearing the same clothes.
The projection stopped, and the focus turned to the singer, who was crying now.
'Cause I'm only a crack
In this castle of glass
Hardly anything else I need to be
Tears streaming down his face, Izuku raised his hand in a fist, closing his eyes and pouring all his emotions into the lyrics. He was trying to show that despite everything he's been through, he's survived. He. Is. Not. Useless.
Some people were crying, other were videoing the entire thing. Someone had an Elastic Quirk, and they used it to raise a phone in the air and livestream the whole solo.
'Cause I'm only a crack
In this castle of glass
Hardly anything there for you to see
For you to see, for you to see
Izuku opened his eyes, gaze locking with his mother who sat in the front row. She was sobbing, hard, and Mistuki Bakugo was beside her, holding her friend while tears leaked down her own cheeks. Somehow managing to keep his voice from cracking, he continued the last verse of the song. Activating One For All: Full Cowling, Izuku finished strong.
The crowd erupted in cheers, and Izuku turned around, receiving a makeup wipe from Myouken who had taken it out of her bag. Back turned to the crowd, he removed the concealer from his face and grabbed a small container from his pocket. He carefully took out a colored contact from his left eye and put it in the container.
With a deep breath, Izuku turned back around and walked up to the microphone for the last time, gulping at the silence that dawned after people saw his face. He had a massive scar that covered a right side of his forehead, and stretches down in a jagged, diagonal line; it crosses over his left eye and ends at the edge of his cheek. The injury caused him to go blind in his left eye, and the iris turned white because of it.
"This is me. For the first fourteen years of my life, I was quirkless. I was tormented by my classmates, the main verbal abuse coming from Ochako Uraraka. I developed my quirk on the day of the UA entrance exam, and Uraraka decided that I didn't deserve to be in UA because I was still a worthless Deku, in her eyes. Two months after school started, I was finally making friends, and she spouted some shit about me bullying her in middle school because of her quirk. Ironic, eh? So things went back to the way it was in middle school, and I am so fucking tired of being treated like shit!" Izuku, eyes reflecting his anger, tried not raise his voice as he explained some of what the crowd had seen. He failed on that last part.
Taking a deep fucking breath, he continued. "Yes, I graduated middle school and high school before I was thirteen, and, yes, I have my bachelor's degree. That's actually a new addition. I finished my college courses earlier today."
Myouken said something that no one else could hear, and Izuku stepped aside so she could approach the microphone. "Oh, and before some of you start talking bullshit about how Midoriya might have made this whole thing up and I found a way to fake those memories, please know that I, Kiaya Myouken am a lawyer and I could lose my job from trying to fake something as serious as this. Trust me, that is not a risk that I would want to take. Everything you have seen here today is 100% accurate."(Is this something that can actually happen irl, I don't know. I'm an uneducated Dekusimp who doesn't bother to do research on stuff like this, cut me some slack)
With that, Myouken and Izuku exited the stage, the lawyer leaving the grounds entirely, and Izuku reluctantly facing his heartbroken mother. He hadn't told her about any of this, so he could only imagine how she was feeling.
Later that day, Nedzu called Izuku into his office and offered to take the teen on as his personal student, which the greenette happily agreed too. Class 1-A apologizes, Urabitch is expelled, and they all live happily ever after. Izuku becomes the number one hero, and Mineta Minoru dies a horrible, painful death. You're welcome.