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Midoriya adjusted the camera in front of him until it was aimed properly at his face, then settled back in the chair, hands folded in his lap. Iida, Todoroki, and Yaoyorozu sat beside him. They were all dressed in black, fitted clothing and in the background of the video other similarly dressed bodies could be seen passing in and out of frame.
Midoriya smiled. “Good morning Japan. I know everyone has been wondering what happened to us, the cursed class 2-A. You’ve all come up with such interesting theories! I must admit, my favorite may have been the ones where people thought we were executed by the hero commission. I wouldn’t put it past them after all.”
Midoriya flipped open a notebook that lay in his lap, glancing over the writing before passing it off to someone behind him. All that was seen was a gloved hand that vanished quickly back out of view. “We debated for a while how we wanted to do this. If we wanted to reveal ourselves at all. But, well, if you’re seeing this video then you know our decision.”
He spread his arms out with a sweet smile, and Yaoyorozu and Iida both looked at him with soft looks while Todoroki still looked at the camera. The smile dropped from his face as he brought his hands back to his lap. “So many people thought we’d gotten scared and ran off. I’m offended, you know? I would never run away from this. Some of you were far more correct though, thinking we may have turned to villainy.”
Midoriya leaned forward with a sharp smile. “You see, we thought about this for a long while. Ever since the sports festival, we wondered but then summer camp and the big fight happened! And we realised that your heroes don’t care as much as they want us to think they do.”
He sighed, something like genuine regret in his eyes. “We thought we could be wrong though. So we stuck it out, decided to wait and see.” Something cold bled into his eyes after that, and his hand clenched into a fist. “We were disappointed. I don’t know how many people paid attention when the raid against Overhaul and the Yakuza occurred. I was one of the students on internship with the heroes involved. Did you know they were so willing to abandon an abused child so that they could get more information?”
There was disgust obvious in his face, and anger was clear in the other three as they listened to him talk, even if they had almost surely heard it before. “A little, abused girl. And they cared more about making things as easy as possible for themselves, as though it wouldn’t have been so simple to get her away without damaging the mission. They were fools and a child paid for it in blood and fear.”
Midoriya closed his eyes briefly and took a deep breath, letting some of the tension bleed out of his body as he opened them again. “That was what had me deciding heroes were something I couldn’t trust. Now you may be thinking to yourself ‘oh deku that was many months ago, why now?’”
He sneered, something bitter in his voice. “Did you know that Hīrōsukūru accepted a quirkless student not all that long ago? Of course you did, because you loved to talk about how she died, didn’t you? How even after she made it into the hero course, she just wasn’t strong enough. She was killed in an accident because she couldn’t hold her own. You know that’s not what really happened though.”
His fists were clenched so tightly the knuckles had turned white, and Todoroki and Iida both reached out to hold his hands, rubbing over the back of them until they had relaxed. Behind him, someone walked into the screen and placed hands on his shoulders, though their face wasn’t visible. Midoriya sighed.
“She was targeted during a training exercise, where her opponent purposefully and more than willingly attacked her and did not stop when it proved obvious she was injured, did not stop when she bled and screamed, did not stop until she died and her partner in the exercise stood by and did nothing. Now, you may wonder, if that’s true, why didn’t the school faculty do anything?”
He scoffed, a mocking twist to his lips. “She was quirkless. No one cares about the quirkless. You know that though. When Hīrōsukūru came forward to inform the public about the incident, everyone said that it only made sense. She was weak. She wouldn’t have made it as a hero. Other hero schools, like Ketsubutsu and even the oh-so-prestigious Yuuei agreed. Thought it was to be expected.” The person behind him squeezes his shoulders before releasing him and moving back out of view.
He fell silent and after a few moments of silence, Yaoyorozu spoke, voice soft. “Izuku told me about it all after the incident so I..did my own research. How could I not? It was so hard to believe that a murder like tha would just go ignored. But..it wasn’t all that unusual of a crime, was it?”
There is something hurt and searching in her eyes as she leaned forwards, looking into the camera. “There are so many quirkless people who are abused, assaulted, ignored, killed, refused treatment at hospitals. It’s horrifying, they’re people just like we are and yet when I look into it I find that people treat them as though they’re nothing !”
She gestures broadly with her hands and after a moment another person comes into view, taking her hands and squeezing them gently. The person leans down and the face is recognisable as Uraraka, another student. She does not speak, only looks coldly into the camera.
Yaoyorozu takes a deep breath and relaxes, mirror to what Midoriya had done earlier. Iida takes over. “I didn’t want to believe it at first. Heroes have been my entire life, and I looked up to no one more than I did my own brother. I..am ashamed to admit that I too was not entirely surprised when the quirkless hero student was killed. I foolishly believed she was weaker than quirked people. I was wrong.”
He looks away from the camera for a moment, and Uraraka gently pats him on the shoulder before walking back out of frame. He sighs and turns back. “I’m horrified by what I found. There are articles, complaints, video footage, and even photographs that record civilians, hero students, and even heroes being indifferent and oftentimes cruel to people known to be quirkless. I didn’t want to believe heroes could be like that, but I was wrong. I know that now.”
There is a determined set to his mouth and his back is straight and stiff as he looks into the camera, something like sorrowful determination in his eyes. “I will not let this knowledge go to waste. I will not stand by and let it keep happening while doing nothing.” Iida pauses, and then sighs. “This doesn’t..mean as much to me as it does Momo, and especially not as much as it does Izuku. It is not why I made this decision. But it’s important. And it certainly contributes.”
He shakes his head and then gestures with his free hand for Todoroki to say his piece. The dual toned boy nods slightly and looks at the camera, hand clenching slightly around Midoriya’s. “I was not surprised by what Izuku told me. My father is Endeavor, I’m sure you all know him. The number one hero.”
He narrows his eyes slightly, but his features don’t otherwise change. “My father is not a good man. My father abused my family. Your precious number one hero is an abusive person, who drove my mother to harm her own children and wanted to force me to become the next number one, whether that killed me or not. My father looked down on my sister for not having a powerful quirk and belittled my brother for being quirkless. Endeavor killed my oldest brother because strength means more to him than anyone ever will.”
Todoroki’s eyes burn with cold fire, barely concealed hatred lining his face. “It doesn’t surprise me that heroes are capable of being cruel for no reason, considering the one I lived with is a monster. He is a bastard who is willing to hurt or kill anyone that gets in his way of being the number one.”
He sighs and leans back in his chair, and after a moment Midoriya takes over again. The green haired boy pulls his hands free and leans down, pulling a thin folder from under his chair. He flips it open and pulls out the first page. “In the last year, 1,074,169 people died in Japan. 461,892 of those people were killed due to collateral damage, villain attacks, or other crimes. 60,045 of those people were quirkless. That’s 13%. There aren’t very many quirkless people in Japan, and yet 13% of the people killed were quirkless. This number includes both Japanese citizens, and tourists. Think about that for a moment.”
Midoriya remains quiet for a few moments, looking into the camera. After a few seconds of silence he picks up where he left off. “290,991 of those people either had mutation quirks that weren’t pretty or they had quirks that society views as villainous. That’s 63%. More than half of the people who died were either quirkless, or had quirks society doesn’t like. Now, you may think that’s a coincidence. It’s not. I’m going to play a clip for you.”
The screen goes black for a moment before footage that seems to have been taken from street cams flickers to life.
A young woman with some sort of mutation quirk walks into view. She wears a jacket and has her hands in her pockets. Thick spines protrude from the back of her head and down her spine, with smaller ones jutting out from her jawline. A second pair of eyes can be seen under the main ones when she looks around, smaller and glowing a toxic yellow-green.
She seems taller than normal, lean and lanky. Nothing happens when suddenly someone drops down, kicking her hard in the back of the head. The woman stumbles and falls as the assailant grabs a plank of wood from the ground and slams it into her, one of the spines breaking off accompanied by a spurt of blood and a shriek of pain.
The attacker goes in for another hit when a shout causes them to pause, and a hero runs on screen. They’re a small-time hero with a simple quirk, recognisable as Antimony, a metal working hero. He appears to prepare for battle before faltering, lip curling up in faint contempt when he sees the woman on the ground. After a moment of silent staring, he shakes his head and walks away, ignoring how the woman cries for help.
The following five minutes involve the criminal continuing to beat her, stopping only after she is limp and bloody on the ground. They then drop the plank and turn, running out of view.
The footage ends and after a moment the former hero students can be seen again. Midoriya stares into the camera with tired eyes, and his companions have their jaws clenched. His voice is quiet when he speaks. “This is not the only instance like this. Heroes see people with apparent mutant quirks and choose not to save them. They see people use their quirks in self defence and find them to be villainous and so leave them to die. The quirk registry is publicly accessible, and people with these kinds of quirks, and the quirkless, are targeted by villains and criminals. Because they know heroes are a hell of a lot less likely to interfere when it’s people like that. Children are targeted and assaulted because of their quirks or lack thereof.”
Yaoyorozu picks up after him. “I looked into this as well. I looked for cases brought up that involved victims of crimes that were quirkless, had mutation quirks, or had so-called villainous quirks. These are survivors for the record, or those who are going to court for non life-threatening crimes. Almost all of these cases ruled in favour of the defendant. Quirkless people one their cases if there was no possible way for it to go the other way. People with mutation quirks or ‘villainous’ quirks won a bit more often, but usually still only when there was a lot of evidence in their favour. These parts of society are horribly discriminated against.”
Midoriya took over again. “We refuse to stand by and do nothing in a society like this. We have decided it can’t be fixed from the inside.” He smiles, and it’s all teeth. “You knew us, once. Now? You may call me Achilles. With me now are Frostfire, Crusade, and Genesis.” He gestures to Todoroki, Iida, and Yaoyorozu in turn as he says their names.
“Together we are Hiraeth. The class 2-A you knew is gone, and we are here to take its place.” He leans forwards, forearms resting on his legs as he stares straight into the camera. “We are going to tear down this society, no matter what it takes. We aren’t going to let things go on as they are for any longer.”
Midoriya tilts his head, and a multitude of bodies come into view, standing behind the four fully visible. It’s clear the entire class is present and maybe a few more, hands resting on shoulders and the backs of chairs. “Good luck, heroes. We’re coming for you.”
The screen goes dark.
Izuku bit his lip as he stared at the edited and finished video, mouse hovering over the upload button. Shoto and Hitoshi both leaned over his shoulders, Hitoshi’s fingers gently smoothed over the scars on his arms. He sensed more than saw as Mina walked over and dropped her chin to rest on top of his head.
They were all quiet before Izuku said quietly, “Is this really a good idea? To out ourselves like this? I mean, as it is they just think we were kidnapped or killed or whatever so the second we post this, they’re going to know. They’ll be after us now, if they see any of us they’ll-“
Mina puts a hand over his mouth and from opposite him Fumi huffs in slight amusement. He smiles faintly as Mina speaks, voice bright. “We’ll be alright! We’ve got you after all, and we have each other, and we have Mei making us babies and we’ve got friends back at Yuuei! We’ve got this. Besides,” she adds with bemusement, “I want them to know who destroys them.”
Her hand falls away to lay over Hitoshi’s and Shoto’s on his shoulders, and Dark Shadow slides up over his hand holding the mouse. Fumikage walks closer, leaning against the table. “We place our trust in you, Izuku. We trust you will lead us through the pervasive darkness and into the light.”
Izuku laughs quietly and Dark Shadow giggles as well, voice soft, “What Fumi means is we know you won’t let us down and we know we can trust you’ll do what’s best for us.” Izuku smiles at them both affectionately, and after taking a deep breath clicks the upload button.
Dark Shadow nuzzles against his stomach and the others lean against him. After a few moments of staring at the uploading screen he pulls away and stands up, rolling his shoulders back and popping his knuckles with a quiet sigh. Ochako, Tenya, and Denki all come over and pull him over to the large mound of blankets and pillows they’d piled on top of cushions instead of multiple couches.
Izuku let himself be pushed down, going willingly as Tenya pulled him to lay partially across his lap. Denki flopped down over his legs and Ochako draped herself across Tenya’s other side. A quiet laugh had him looking up and he smiled when Jirou laid down in front of them.
The rest of the group gathered around them, Hanta leaning against one of the propped up pillows with Shoto’s in his lap and Tooru, Yuuga, and Fumi all curled up together. Izuku smiled as everyone fell into place, letting his eyes fall shut as someone’s hand carded through his hair.
Yes , he decides. For these people, I would let the world burn. For these people, I will be the one to bring it down.
Izuku checked the video the next morning, having posted it at 10am the previous day. It hadn’t been a long video, only about eleven minutes. And yet, it already had 10 million views. When he checked the software he had included on the account before posting, he found that both the site itself and various other hackers had attempted to take it down. He grinned. They had failed, just like Mei and Momo had said they would.
After a moment he scrolled down to the comments, reading through some of the top ones.
YellowCross
I..don’t know how I feel about this. I mean, I know the HPSC is pretty bad. And it honestly doesn’t surprise me that much that heroes could be too. But I think this is taking it a bit far?
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Z3phyr
Yeah..like, it’s pretty fucked up all the things the HPSC has done, and seeing that video just reinforces that, but I feel like attacking people and turning to villainy isn’t going to help anything
MushaMusha4Ever
Anyone who thinks this is okay is fucked up, how can you support villains?? They’re obviously editing videos n shit in order to make us think heroes are actually doing stuff like that. You really wanna support people like that, the fuck is wrong with you people?
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gu1ltyl&
Edited??? What the fuck are you talking about, he literally read off statistics (which can be collected on public sites by the way!!) and showed video footage and you want to say they’re making this all up? What’s wrong with you ?
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MushaMusha4Ever
Of course they made it up! Heroes wouldn’t do things like that, they’re here to protect us! They’re just too cowardly to admit they got scared and so ran away, so they’re blaming anyone other than themselves instead.
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gu1ltyl&
Wow, I didn’t realise people could be this stupid. It’s literally so fucking obvious that heroes do shitty things, half the times villains help people that really need it more than the heroes do.
thick_thighs_save_lives
Look,,,y’all can disagree with me all you want but these kiddies be fucking badass, out here deciding to revolutionise a fucked up industry, I approve.
N1ght_T3rr0rs
It’s about time a group really came out to do some good!! I hope you get all the help you need for this, I can’t wait to see what you guys do. Raise hell, make them suffer for what they’ve done to us.
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pog_lord
You really shouldn’t be cheering them on, it might prove dangerous for you. Who knows what the repercussions will be for supporting a villain gang.
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N1ght_T3rr0rs
Is that a fucking threat?
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pog_lord
Of course not. That’d be foolish.
MidnightMayham
I..don’t know how I feel about this, but they’ve got a point? That video was horrible and it looked pretty real…the statistics sound pretty reasonable too. I don’t know. I don’t think I have enough information to really know what to think.
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squidroni
Yeah I get how you feel :/ I don’t know what to think either but honestly what they’re saying makes sense? And I can’t really blame them, especially not Todoroki, if what they said is true.
Izuku smiles and turns off the laptop, turning to face his family. They all look back at him, smiling. Izuku bows dramatically and as he straightens he purrs, voice sweet, “I wasn’t sure what to expect, but we have supporters already, more so than there are people against us.”
Everyone exchanges excited glances and Izuku tilts his head, clasping his hands with a dark grin. “Welcome to a new era, Hiraeth.”