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Aparently, all of 1-A were dumb motherfuckers.
Aizawa probably should have expected some sense of being sheltered when it came to certain topics, but he never thought they’d be this blind.
“You know, I wish I was quirkless sometimes. They get away with so much more than we do. I bet if I didn’t have a quirk, they’d let me off with homework more often.”
He shouldn’t have expected anything different. But there he was again, disappointed with no expectations.
He slammed his papers on his desk, drawing their attention.
“We were going to learn about hostage situations, but I feel like there’s some,” He paused, searching for the right word, “Other matters we need to discuss.”
A student, the one who’d made the remark, raised their hand.
“What are those ‘matters’?”
Aizawa raised a dismissive hand.
“You’ll find out sooner or later. I’ll need to step out for a while to call someone over, I trust you to be well behaved.”
He managed to shoot them a glare just before the door closed behind him.
He sighed and mentally prepared himself for a talk with Nezu.
This was going to be really fucking annoying.
Convincing Nezu to bring in Midoriya was easier than he’d expected, but he still had to come up with an excuse as to why Shinsou and Monoma had to come along with 1-A
(“They both struggle with their quirks, it’ll be good for them to understand how others feel so they know they’re not alone.”)
The kid was about fifteen minutes away, so he collected the others from 1-B and 1-D and returned to the classroom.
“We’ll be having a.. Guest in to talk to you about their experience and you’ll take notes. If I hear a single baseless complaint, you’re out.”
The class stayed silent.
“Right. He should be here any moment.”
The door was kicked open, a panting greenette the cause.
“S-sorry ‘m late.” He huffed, attempting to regain his breath.
Aizawa tilted his head in respect.
“No problem, Midoriya. You were called here on late notice, after all.”
Midoriya nodded his head, attempted to regain his composure and walked up to the front.
Aizawa took a seat on the floor next to the wall, waiting for him to start.
“Well, first things first, I’m Midoriya Izuku and I’m quirkless.”
Mutters immediately broke out, but for a reason beyond Aizawa, Bakugou was silent. As someone obsessed with quirks, he thought he’d be the first to speak out. Obviously not.
“Eraserhead-San called me here to explain the shit I’ve gone through because of my lack of a power.”
As a teacher, the man probably should berate the officer in training for his language, but every single person in the room had definitely sworn before and it was a pointless endeavour.
“At first it looked like nothing changed. My mother didn’t seem any different. But at school it went to hell. The other kids used their quirks on me a lot. Some of them were fine, there was this boy with a empathy quirk, that didn’t hurt, but there were also things like spikes, rock body and kids get creative. Especially the girl with telekinesis.”
He paused for a breath, gaze drifting across the room.
“She used to help when our classmate with a wing quirk would lift me up and drop me.”
A collective wince spread across the room with an uncomfortable silence.
“The teachers saw, obviously. It was pretty hard not to when a student comes in with a broken arm. They didn’t care though, they liked to mark me down on tests then call out what I got. Back at home my mother mistreated me but I didn’t know it was anything wrong.”
Looking at Todoroki’s reaction, he should probably talk to him about that stuff later.
“Then I had enough. I tried to off myself. Didn't work, of course. Eraserhead-San found me. I wanted to try to live just so that his effort wouldn't be wasted, but things got worse at school."
"I used to get suicide baited around two times a week, but it went up. I know I'm not the only one who's had spider lilies on their desk before,"
He made brief eye contact with Shinsou, but carried on.
"It went up to almost every day, and that wasn't including the online stuff."
He sighed and looked at the floor.
"Then someone told me to my face that I would be better off dead. Wasn't the first time, but it was the worst. So I tried again."
He let out a hollow laugh.
"Broke a ton of bones and was hospitalised again. That sucked, but I had one more visitor than usual, the guy that tried to stop me."
Midoriya leaned forward.
"He was the only one. Well, I suspect there was someone else, but I never got round to figuring out who they were."
Pushing back Aizawa's chair, he stood up.
"And I get that, sometimes, it seems easier to be quirkless, but it's really not. If it weren't for that stranger, I'd probably be long dead from medical negligence.”
He clapped his hands once, a vicious smile plastered on his face.
“And that’s about all I can think of. Now, Aizawa, I gotta get back before Nezu and Tsukauchi commit arson on my middle school.”
He, with the lack of a better word, strut out the door, leaving a class of enlightened students to wallow in enlightened shock.
Aizawa himself was stunned. He hadn’t heard the full thing when he’d met Midoriya before, and the extent of it was concerning, to say the least.
He forced himself to stand, brushing non-existent dust from his legs and straightening up.
“I get that it’s difficult to put yourself in other people's shoes sometimes, but empathy is a crucial skill to becoming a hero. You need to understand why people become villains.”
His eyes scanned the room.
“For some people, stealing is their only chance of survival, for others an addiction. For a lot of them, villainy’s because, like Midoriya, they’ve been beaten down so many times they couldn’t take it. Even before quirks cropped up, crime was the only direction for some people to turn to, and a lot of people just don’t understand that.”
There was a solemn silence, side by side with an unhealthy dose of guilt.
“We can only try our best to make this place liveable for those who suffer meaninglessly.”
And with that, Aizawa left them to stew in their thoughts, ignoring the fact that the lesson still had half an hour left.