Chapter Text
It’s a quiet afternoon when Izuku’s phone buzzes.
He’s curled up on the common room couch, half-listening to the faint hum of conversation and the occasional flip of textbook pages nearby. Most of the class is either out or studying in small groups, and the mood is calm.
The message comes from an unfamiliar account. There’s a "block" option at the top of the screen, but he doesn’t press it. Not right away. Curiosity wins out.
It’s just a video. No caption, no context. Frowning, he instinctively mutes the audio—just in case—and taps to play. A few seconds in, his heart skips a beat. The screen shakes in his hands.
"No way," he breathes.
He blinks, hoping the image will disappear. It doesn’t. His fingers tighten around the phone.
This can’t be what it looks like.
There aren’t many people around, but he suddenly feels like every pair of eyes in the room is on him. The video keeps playing. His pulse is hammering in his ears, his chest tight. He flinches hard when a hand lands on his shoulder. With a jolt, he pulls away, and his phone slips through his fingers. It hits the carpet with a soft thud. Izuku scrambles after it, practically dropping to the floor. He turns off the screen before picking it up, heart still racing.
"Midoriya?" Uraraka's voice is tentative. She’s standing behind the couch, arm still half-extended. Her expression is frozen, uncertain. She clearly didn’t mean to startle him like that.
Izuku forces a chuckle as he rises, shoving the phone into the pocket of his hoodie. "Sorry. You just surprised me."
"Startled people don’t fall off couches," Todoroki remarks from his seat, eyes narrowing slightly.
Izuku doesn’t have a good reply for that, so he just smiles weakly.
"It’s fine, Deku!" Uraraka jumps in quickly, trying to smooth over the awkward moment. "I just wanted to ask you something about the math homework—the one with the graph. But if now’s not a good time…"
"No, no, it’s fine!" He waves his hands a little too quickly. "Happy to help!"
He moves to follow her to the study desk, acutely aware of the glances following him across the room. If they knew what he just saw—if they knew what was on that video—they wouldn’t just be glancing.
"You sure you’re okay, ribbit?" Tsuyu asks, watching him from her seat.
"Yeah. I promise. You can all go back to what you were doing," he says, trying to sound breezy. "Really, I’m fine."
The tension gradually lifts. The others return to their conversations and textbooks. Izuku exhales in relief, but the unease gnaws at him for the rest of their study
Luckily, he manages to keep his emotions at bay until he’s back in his dorm room. He didn’t act perfectly normal – his friends’ occasional concerned and questioning glances are proof of that – but he didn’t behave abnormally enough for anyone to address it. He’s glad that they were the only ones who decided to have a late night study session, otherwise this would’ve been a lot more disastrous. Because even though Izuku likes every single one of his classmates, he knows that not everyone is as considerate of his feelings as his closest friends are. He’s grateful to have them.
And Uraraka figured out how to solve the exercise herself after he explained the theory a bit. That would normally make Izuku smile, but the moment he locks his door, he can’t stop himself from frantically turning on his phone.
It’s not real. He must have been hallucinating. Why does his phone take so long to turn on? He hopes the fall didn’t break it. The screen doesn’t seem cracked and even if it was, he has a screen protect-
His breath hitches when he sees the smiling faces of him and his friends that are part of his Lock Screen wallpaper. He can’t really be relieved because this means that he can check to see if the video really exists. He really hopes it doesn’t. He sits down at his desk and unlocks his phone with shaking fingers.
He’s exhausted. The only reason why they studied so late was because his amazing friends waited for him to finish his training. He was exhausted. His muscles still ache, even while sitting on the comfortable pillow of his chair. He could’ve just imagined it.
But he sees the unknown account after scrolling down a bit through his messages.
He taps on it and, and there’s a video. But there’s a message too. Izuku stops breathing.
‘I know your secret.’ It says.
Maybe it’s still something else – he presses play on the video and turns up the volume.
“G-guys!” Izuku winces at the high-pitched, shaky voice. “W- we can talk about th-this, r-right?” The boy smiles and flinches when his back hits the wall, a look of trepidation on his face. The other kids surrounding him approach further. There’s seven of them, too many - even if the boy wasn’t weak and small, even if he had a quirk, he couldn’t fight them all.
“There’s nothing to talk about, Deku!” Kacchan says. His back is to the camera, but his voice is distinctive enough for Izuku to recognize it anywhere, even if he didn’t remember this happening. He lets off an explosion with his palm which makes younger Izuku flinch and the other six middle schoolers snicker. Kacchan only scoffs.
“You’re pathetic! You’re scared of the sound of a fucking explosion. You’re fucking useless!”
“Ka-kacchan I –“
“Stop talking about heroes!” The taller boy snarls, placing both his hands on younger Izuku’s shoulders. His uniform starts to smoke. Younger Izuku starts shaking. Kacchan starts unbuttoning izuku’s gakuran while the quirkless kid tries to hug the clothing to himself. That is stopped by the two laughing boys closest to him, Takahashi and Uchida. They grab one arm each and hold them against the wall.
Younger Izuku struggles a bit but stops fighting back after a few tries to free himself, his only movement is the shaking of his entire body. The boys’ grips must be the only thing holding the weak boy upright. And Izuku doesn’t remember anything aside from his fear and desperation, but younger Izuku sure looks like he’s about to collapse. He…he really looks pathetic.
“You don’t even fight back!” Harada says, delighted at younger izuku’s behavior, as if it proves everything those other boys ever said about him. Maybe it does.
Younger Izuku is even smaller than he remembers. His hunched position sure doesn’t help, but even compared to the seven other kids, Izuku looks like a small child with a rail thin body that makes his chubby bobblehead seem even more unnaturally big.
Kacchan finishes unbuttoning younger Izuku’s black jacket. He aggressively pushes it down izuku’s shoulders, eliciting a yelp and constricting Izuku’s movements even further. With nothing covering them but Izuku’s sleeveless undershirt, his shaking shoulders are even more obvious.
He has a few older scars and some fading bruises on the visible skin of his upper arms. But compared to how he usually looked in middle school, Izuku thinks his skin is unblemished. Not for long though.
“Pl-please.” Izuku says shakily, looking up at Kacchan, in the eyes if Izuku remembers correctly. Izuku’s voice is weak and quiet. “D-don’t do this. I’m sorry about the presenta-“
Kacchan places both his hands on Izuku’s shoulders, cutting him off. He tries to break free again, but it’s futile; he’s too weak. “Shut up, damn nerd!”
There’s smoke coming from beneath Kacchan’s hands and Izuku whimpers, fighting weakly against the hold, but that aggravates the pain, Izuku remembers, and makes the burnt area larger in the end. He bites his lip instead and looks pleadingly at Kacchan and then around at each of the other six kids. But they just laugh at him even more, making fun of the tears streaming down his cheeks and the pathetic expression on his face.
Younger Izuku stops looking at them after a while, staring at a spot on the ground, his whimpers becoming sobs he can’t hold back.
Because it hurts, Izuku still remembers how much it hurts. His own hands are on his shoulders, arms crossed over his chest. The scars are under his shirt. Some of the scarring is hidden beneath other scarring made by a quirk he can’t control, but it’s still there. It won’t ever go away.
When Kacchan is satisfied, he releases Izuku, which tears more of his skin off and makes Izuku scream. Takahashi and Ushida also release their hold on him. As expected, he falls to the ground immediately, sobbing louder which increases the volume of the other kids’ laughter.
Kacchan goes to the sink in the back of the classroom and washes his hands. This time, half of his face is visible and it shows disgust, and an anger that still hasn’t been let out enough on Izuku. Some of the others kick at Izuku, who’s curled up in a tight ball that doesn’t help much because he will have fresh, dark colored bruises in addition to the burns when he looks at himself in the mirror at home.
“What is going on here?”
His middle school arts’ teacher doesn’t appear in the video – only her voice can be heard. She seems to be standing directly beneath the device recording this.
“O-oh, Miss Sato!” Harada barely sounds surprised as he turns around. Izuku doesn’t uncurl from his stupid, useless balled-up position, but he looks up hesitantly - at the teacher, Izuku remembers. Younger Izuku averts his gaze again, letting his head hang in defeat, lifting a hand to smother the sound of his hiccuping. Because, this teacher won’t help. “De- Midoriya attacked us because he was angry about his grade. Especially Bakugo…” Kacchan scoffs, arms crossed. There’s still blood in the sink. “He couldn’t do much damage, of course!” Hanada adds hastily. “But Bakugo still had to defend himself.”
“I see.” Miss Sato says in understanding, voice sweet and concerned. “You should all go get checked out by the nurse.” The boys start walking away, exchanging smug looks and smirking at Izuku’s hunched form.
“Midoriya!” The teacher snaps once they’re gone, voice full of her dislike for him. Younger Izuku flinches, hard. “Detention for the rest of the month. Report to Mr. Ushida tomorrow!” Izuku flinches. Younger Izuku flinches too, but nods his head anyway. “You aren’t in kindergarten anymore, answer verbally!”
“Yes, M’am.” His voice is hoarse from all the crying.
“This is your last warning.” She says coldly, all her sweetness gone. “If anything like this happens again you’ll go straight to the principal.”
“Y-yes, Miss Sato.”
“Now hurry up and get out of my sight. School is long over.”
Izuku scrambles to his feet, almost falling several times and hurries out of the classroom before she can reconsider sending him to the principal.
Izuku’s phone screen’s black now, but he remembers putting on the uniform once the cold winter air hit his skin. The fabric made the pain worse, but it covered up the wounds. He remembers hurrying home and breaking down completely in the empty apartment. His mom didn’t arrive home until late at night so he had time to cry as much as he wanted.
He remembers wishing for a quirk, not to become a hero, but to maybe not be hated that much. But he also remembers thinking that if everyone, even his teachers, could see how bad he was, maybe it wasn’t just because he was quirkless. Because he knew that not every quirkless person was treated like this. There weren’t many his age, but he saw some young people without quirks on social media, proudly posting photos of themselves and their friends, saying things like ‘being quirkless doesn’t make you different’. The comments were mostly supportive.
He still remembers that day. They had been tasked with presenting their favorite celebrities and Izuku chose All Might.
He shouldn’t have… he really shouldn’t have, looking back on it. He should’ve known that Kacchan would choose All Might too, should’ve known how much it would bother him that Izuku did the same. But he was so excited about the task. School had become a source of pain by then, but thinking about this presentation was something that made him smile like…like All Might. And he thought that maybe, maybe, if his presentation was good on a topic he knew so well, maybe then his teacher would like him more.
It didn’t work. His teacher publicly announced his grade and everything he did wrong in his presentation. The entire class snickered and Izuku was fighting back tears. He had put a lot of effort into the presentation, but it wasn’t enough. Nothing he did was ever enough. And Izuku being humiliated in front of the class wasn’t enough for Kacchan. Hence, what happened in the video.
But Izuku is over this. It was a long time ago and both of them changed a lot since then. Despite how much of a jerk he used to be, Kacchan will become a great hero one day. That’s why it’s worrying that someone has a video like this.
Izuku sniffles. He grabs a tissue from the tissue box on his desk to wipe the tears and snot away. He didn’t even realize that he was crying while watching it. He snorts. But of course he was. Even though he didn’t have any reason to. This was humiliating, sure, but he should be more worried about the possible consequences for Kacchan.
He watches parts of the video again, trying to figure out how it was recorded. It doesn’t take long to see that the video could only have been taken by a camera on the wall, most likely a security camera. But Izuku doubted anyone would’ve gone out of their way to inconspicuously record what happened. If it was any of the kids in the video, they would’ve just used their phones.
The person who sent this video got access to security camera footage. To footage that Izuku was sure had long since been deleted.
He stops watching the video to look at the sender’s profile, only to stop in his tracks when he sees another message.
‘Do as I say if you don’t want this to get out.’ It says . Izuku’s breath hitches.
The person who sent this… they committed the crime of hacking a school’s security camera system. They are most likely a criminal, if not a villain. They have to know that he’s a UA student – why else would they have decided to blackmail him of all people? They might be doing this to get information on school affairs. Or maybe they want him to do other things that might hurt people.
And hurting others isn’t worth it just to keep his weak former self secret.
Sure, people might think him less capable, they might even suspect him of having gotten his quirk illegally and they might resent him for having cheated his way into the hero course. It’s embarrassing how scared Izuku was from some middle schoolers, how much he whined about minor injuries caused by children, how little he tried to fight back. There are so many people who had to go through much worse and there he was, acting as if it was the end of the world.
It might even make Aizawa question whether he belongs in the hero course… he might even be expelled. But becoming a hero is not worth it if he has to actively hurt others. That would make him a villain. He’d rather not be a hero if it meant becoming a villain.
“But…” Izuku thinks out loud, knuckles on his chin. “Kacchan…”
That’s the thing. Because even if this happened in his first year of middle school, even if Kacchan changed, Izuku knows of UA’s strict policies on bullying.
Kacchan must know too, a traitorous part of his mind whispers, because he never really tried anything on campus. He shakes those thoughts away because they aren’t fair.
He starts typing the message.
And UA might not care about the video, since this happened before UA. But if there’s a chance that they do, Izuku has to try everything in his power to prevent that from happening.
‘What do you want me to do?’ He taps send, fingers shaking.
He won’t do anything that could hurt anyone, but he’ll pretend to agree to get some time. It doesn’t take long for the symbol that shows that the other person’s typing to show up.
‘Cut the word ‘useless’ into your skin and record it.’ Izuku drops his phone again.