Check out my new fanfic---- Harry Potter: Cleaver
BONUS CHAPERS ARE BACK!!!!!!!!!!!!
500 PS IS THE GOAL
***
A few days later.....
Rain poured over Musutafu.
And through the rain... a certain green head was walking towards his school.
Izuku Midoriya walked through it with an umbrella in his hand and his phone in his other hand.
Because of course his phone was in his hand. This was Izuku. The boy who can fill thirteen notebooks with hero stuff in an hour.
Being a nerd was Izuku's life form, and information was his oxygen.
He scrolled through the news feed as he walked toward the metro station. Article after article after article. Every major outlet. Every minor outlet. Every blog, every opinion column, he read it all. And all of them were about the same thing.
About how the HPSC was on fire.
Not literally. But by every other metric — media scrutiny, public outrage, legal exposure, political abandonment — the Hero Public Safety Commission was burning. The operational logs that Nezu had submitted during the trial had been made public by order of the Supreme Court, and the fallout had been nuclear.
"HPSC DELIBERATELY WITHHELD INTERVENTION DURING UA SPORTS FESTIVAL ATTACK":::Mainichi Shimbun
"CODE RED: HOW THE COMMISSION LET A STUDENT DIE":::: Asahi News
"'EXTRACTION OF REMAINS': THE HPSC'S PLAN FOR AKIRA SHUZENJI"::::Tokyo Broadcasting
"CALLS FOR MADAM PRESIDENT'S RESIGNATION GROW AS COURT DATE APPROACHES"::::Yomiuri Online
"FORMER HPSC OPERATIVES SPEAK OUT: 'WE WERE TOLD TO STAND DOWN'"::::NHK Investigative
Izuku scrolled past them. He had read them all, again and again. He had read the full text of the operational logs when they were published online. He had read the legal analysis. He had read the expert commentary. He had read the opinion pieces from retired heroes who called the HPSC's conduct "the most egregious institutional failure in the history of Japanese heroics."
He had read everything.
And he still didn't know what to think.
His grip on the phone tightened.
Is this what the real world is?
The question sat in his chest like a stone. It was heavy and uncomfortable.
In Izuku's mind, since the day he first saw All Might save a hundred people with a smile, the world was simple.
There were good guys and bad guys. Heroes and villains. People who protected and people who destroyed.
The government was supposed to be on the side of the good guys. The HPSC was supposed to protect heroes. The system was supposed to work.
That was what he had believed. Before the Sports Festival. Before the trial. Before the operational logs were released to the public.
While still in thought, he stepped into the metro station, where Izuku found a spot near a pillar and waited for the train. His phone was still in his hand. He had stopped scrolling, but the headlines kept cycling through his mind like a news ticker that couldn't be turned off.
His thoughts drifted.
Back to the Sports Festival, when Akria did the whole blood oath thing. Back to the blood oath.
At the time, Izuku had been conflicted. The speech had been undeniably, overwhelmingly powerful. The crowd's reaction had been genuine. The emotion had been real. But the message had troubled him, the same way it had troubled All Might in the observation room. Fear as a tool. Killing as justice. A hero who was defined not by the people he inspired but by the villains he terrified.
It went against everything Izuku had looked up to. Everything he believed in. Everything All Might represented.
But then Izuku remembered the crowd.
And then the trial. The operational logs. The truth about what the HPSC had done. They had let Akira fight alone. They had ordered their operatives to stand by. They had calculated the political benefit of his death and decided it was acceptable.
The system that was supposed to protect him had decided he was expendable.
And Akira's words echoed in Izuku's mind. Not the blood oath. Something he heard him talking about.
"The system doesn't fail, Momo. It works exactly the way it's designed to. The question is who designed it and what they designed it for."
Izuku hadn't understood it then. He was beginning to understand it now.
The villains used the system. The second chances, the rehabilitation programmes, all of them — they used them. They committed crimes, go to prison, served reduced sentences, and came back. Again and again and again. And every time they came back, someone new got hurt. Someone new lost a father, a mother, a child.
And the heroes? The heroes followed the rules; they captured villains alive and handed them over to the system. As in the process they trusted.
And the process gave the villains back, and the cycle continued, and the heroes who questioned it were told to be patient, to trust the institutions, to believe that justice would come.
Alas, justice never came. That was what the man in the crowd had been screaming about. That was what the woman with the photograph had been crying about. That was what Akira had understood at fifteen that Izuku, at the same age, was only just beginning to see.
Soon the train arrived. The doors opened and Izuku stepped inside.
The carriage was quiet today, as the rain streaked the windows and the city moved past in a blur of grey and neon.
As he was sitting there, lost in thought, he felt something.
A nudge on his leg.
Izuku looked down and saw a kid.
A kid was standing in front of him. He was small, maybe seven or eight years old. Round face with wide eyes.
"WAAAAAAAAA!!" the kid yelled, his voice piercing the quiet of the carriage like a siren. "YOU'RE ONE OF THOSE THREE GUYS THAT DEFEATED THE MONSTER, RIGHT?!?!"
Izuku blinked.
Every head in the carriage turned toward them.
"What?" Izuku said. Eloquently.
"THE SLIME MONSTER!! AT THE SPORTS FESTIVAL!! YOU AND THE EXPLOSION GUY AND THE ICE GUY!! YOU BEAT IT!! I SAW IT ON TV!! MY MOM RECORDED IT!! I'VE WATCHED IT LIKE FIFTY TIMES!!"
Izuku's brain short-circuited.
Someone remembered me??
Not All Might. Not Endeavor. Not Akira!!! But him??
"I- I- yes?" Izuku managed. "That wa-s that was us? I mean, that was me? I mea- That was who?"
The carriage murmured. People were looking at him now and realized who he was.
"Hey, it IS him...."
"The kid from the Sports Festival..."
"The one with the bone breaking fetish..."
WHAT????
Izuku thought.
Izuku was overwhelmed. His face was red. His hands were waving. He did not know how to react to this.
"It- it wasn't just me! Kacchan and Todoroki were-"
"You were amazing, kid!" a man in a business suit called from across the carriage. "My daughter follows U.A. She said you guys saved a whole section of civilians!"
"We- we just did what anyone would-"
Just then, a woman's voice cut through the noise.
"Excuse me."
The chatter quieted. The crowd parted slightly.
A middle-aged woman stepped forward. She was a motherly-looking lady with a kind smile on her face.
She stopped in front of Izuku and asked.
"Do you by any chance know the Akira kid?"
The carriage went silent, as every person was listening. Every ear tuned to the name that had defined the past week of Japanese news.
Izuku managed to compose himself enough to respond without stammering.
"Y-yeah," he said. "He's our class president."
The woman smiled, looking relieved.
She reached into her purse. Ruffled through it. Her hands moved with the careful deliberation of someone handling something important. She pulled out a scarf.
It looked like a homemade scarf made with all the love in this world.
She held it out to Izuku.
"Can you please give this to him?" she said. "I've been trying to get it to him, but after the attack, the security at U.A. is so strict, and I don't blame them for it. So if you could do this, I would be really grateful."
Izuku took the scarf carefully.
"Of course!" he said. "It would be an honour!"
Then his curious side took over before his manners could stop it.
"But... why?"
The word was out before he could catch it. He immediately slapped his hand over his mouth.
"Sorry!! You don't have to share it if you don't want to!! I shouldn't have asked!! That was rude!! I'm so sorry!!"
The woman laughed at his silliness.
"No problem, dear," she said.
She pulled out her phone. Scrolled for a moment. Then turned the screen toward Izuku.
It was a photograph of a middle-aged man. He had a wide smile, and was standing in front of a house with a small garden, his arm around the lady in front of Izuku.
"He was my husband," the woman said.
Her voice didn't crack. But it got noticeably sadder.
"He was killed during one of Muscular's rampages many years ago."
Izuku's hands tightened around the scarf.
"The man who took him from us... he was never brought to justice. He escaped custody. He disappeared. And we were told to wait. To trust the system. To believe that someday, somehow, the process would work."
She looked at the photograph on her phone. At the smiling face of a man who would never smile again.
"It never did."
She put the phone away. Looked at Izuku. And the sadness on her face was replaced by something else.
A smile.... a smile full of relief. As if she had found her peace.
"This is a little thank you," she said. "From my son and me. For bringing peace to my husband's soul."
Izuku held the scarf, and somehow it felt much heavier.
The weight of what it represented was everything.
He looked at the woman. At her smile. At the relief in her eyes. At the quiet gratitude of someone who had stopped believing in justice until a boy with a fire quirk and a blood oath had given it to her.
This.
He thought.
This is why I became A HERO.
Not for the fights. Not for the quirks. Not for the rankings or the fame or the power.
For this. For smiles like these. To protect those who need it the most.
Be it the All Might way, or be it the Akira way.....
The train moved on. The rain continued. The city blurred past the windows.
And Izuku Midoriya held a red scarf in his lap and began, for the first time, to understand what exactly was Akira Shuzenji.
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Start of a new arc!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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