Text"U…Uraraka?"
"Oh, morning Deku! How'd you sleep?"
"I… I slept okay. I uh… Sorry to throw this on you first thing in the morning –"
"It's ten-thirty."
"… I need a favour."
"Sure. What d'you need?"
"I… I need you to tell everyone to meet me in the living space in an hour."
Somehow, when he said that to Uraraka, Izuku had felt once he was in front of his classmates, things would be easier to say to them. Like the words would become easier to string together the more he spoke. Almost like talking to her was practice at talking to people again, now that the excitement of arriving at the dorms had warn off. He was a little shaky, but that was more to do with the subject matter, rather than any inherent resurgence of his inability to speak to people.
The nerves were there before he met with his class, though that was to be expected. Anyone would be nervous in his position, so he didn't beat himself up over it too much. He kept rehearsing what he was going to say, a bit like he was about to perform a dreaded middle school presentation all over again. Presentations that had him feeling nothing but utter terror as he got up in front of about twenty unblinking, judging eyes who listened with unflinching focus as he spoke.
It had been a long time since then though. And he had improved a lot more when it came to public speaking, hadn't he?...
Now that he was here though, he was fully aware of just how wrong he had been.
Lying had been the one thing Izuku had always hated about getting his Quirk. It had always been a comparatively small price to pay, and he knew that he wasn't lying just to make things easier for himself and for All Might, and he wasn't doing it because there was some sort of immoral goings on around the Quirk. He understood the necessity of it. It didn't mean that he had to like it though.
That was why, in a way, everyone learning about the fact his power wasn't his was almost a relief. Because it meant that he could finally come clean about it.
He had never liked lying. It was just one of those things that he didn't like doing. It wasn't even that he was raised specially to despise lying, or had grown up where he'd be severely punished if he did lie. He just didn't like it. Honestly had always worked out for him, and he always did his best to be just that.
All Might's request had changed that. And even though he disliked it, really, who was he to argue with the man who bestowed such a great power onto him, and the number one Hero – His idol – At that? His mentor had been round much longer than he had, and he'd had One For All for longer than Izuku had been alive. He understood it all more. The Quirk, the world, the risks, and the dangers of this power falling into the wrong hands. There were certain dangers to being so open with One For All, risks that were just unavoidable due to the nature of the power in question. So when All Might asked him to keep it a secret, Izuku had agreed without question.
That secret was out now though.
It hadn't been a surprise at all that All Might had, to put it as leniently as possible, been concerned about Izuku's plan to reveal One For All officially to his classmates. He seemed to recognize that they couldn't hide the exact nature of the Quirk any longer. Toga's charade had blasted that option right out of their hands, but to be outright about it could still lead to troubles, and the less concern that there was about One For All, the better it would be in the long run. Not only for society, but for Izuku himself. Now, more than any other time since the green-haired boy inherited the Quirk they had to tread carefully, and be sure about what they were doing.
One For All couldn't be explicitly stated, or revealed. How it exactly came into existence didn't have to be explained either. If any of the students were more observant, they might notice the associated names of 'All For One' and 'One For All' and make a link, somehow. So, One For All was still referred to as 'Super Power', to try to avoid exposing that particular link. Nor was the fact that it was All Might whom bestowed the power onto Izuku revealed either. People would put two and two together, and might even blame Izuku for All Might's retirement. It wasn't likely, but it wasn't something All Might felt that his protégé should risk.
'Super-Power' was a Quirk that could be bestowed onto others, and gave its user immense physical strength. Izuku was Quirkless before he received his power. That was the story both All Might and Izuku agreed on. It wasn't the whole truth, but it was far more than ideally should have ever been revealed. Izuku also included the many months that he spent refining and honing his body to accept such a tremendous power. And the nature of how he first used it. None of that was crucial to the secrecy of One For All, and the less lies that he left hanging in the air, the better he was going to feel.
Mina had insisted on revealing that she had been told about the Quirk as well, and had also said nothing. It wasn't her place to accept blame for something that she had had absolutely no part in, but she explained that feared that people would end up angry with Izuku for not revealing his secret to them, but if she was there, it might soften the anger directed at him. At least, that was her hope. He wouldn't be on his own, at the very least, in the hostility directed towards him. With a reason like that, Izuku couldn't turn down her request.
But there just wasn't any. More than anything, people just looked confused.
Everyone was there, with the exception of Bakugou. No one had been able to coax him out of his room when Izuku had wanted to make the announcement. He wanted everyone to understand. He felt like he owed it to them – He'd kept it from them all from the very day that they met.
So he had explained, fully, to the best of his ability. He explained everything, from his training, to receiving, to first using it, and learning how to control it. His Quirkless nature, and his desire to be a Hero, more than anything else in the world. He spoke as earnestly as he could, having to be stopped by Mina several times before his ramblings went into a completely different tangent to the one that he was supposed to be on.
Where he could, he spared no detail, and where he couldn't, he did his best to be vague. No one ever interrupted him while he spoke, raised their hands to ask questions, or even seemed to move, outside of blinking automatically. His story went by without incident, to an onlooking crowd whom just sat there. Listening. Processing.
And now that he had told them… They just looked at him.
From the faces of everyone he had just explained the situation to, he could see that not everyone was entirely convinced. Really though, he couldn't bring himself to blame them. What he had just said went against all known research into their societies superpowered phenomenon. Really, what was he expecting them to do? Jump up immediately and respond that they understood and that it was entirely logical? Accept that the foundations of everything that they believed in wasn't as sturdy as they had always thought? That with what he possessed within his body, the very definition of what a Quirk was could be changed?
Of course not. They just looked at him.
Like they'd been the victims of some kind of joke. Several of them blinked. The others had raised eyebrows. And some looked like their minds had just been blown from the inside out. There wasn't any one general consensus, although confusion seemed to be the most common one. That and bewilderment. Some even had momentary disbelief, or at least struggled with the implications that the story suggested.
Silence hung strong for a while whilst they all processed the information dump they had received.
"…So, lemme get this straight." Kaminari was the first one who actually broke what had ended up being about five minutes of solid silence.
"U-Uh… G-Go ahead."
"You were born without a Quirk, and got one from somewhere else."
"R-Right."
"And, what, that's why your bones break when you use it too much?"
"K… Kind of." The bone breaking seemed to be exclusive to Izuku, he noticed. All Might never suffered from it, and as far as he could tell, none of the other users did either. Which was both humbling and encouraging when he really sat down and thought about it.
"… Who did you even get it from?" Tooru ended up pitching her voice in. Her feelings were the most difficult to tell, on account of her non-corporeal face.
"I… I've been asked not to say anything." He answered, hesitantly. He didn't know how his classmates would take that as a response – He had to admit, it made him sound suspicious.
He couldn't blame his classmates for looking at him like he was trying to pull a trick on them. When he had been told by All Might himself about the very nature of One For All, he had to take a few moments before he could fully accept what he was being told. Even during his year of training, honing his body to accept this power, he couldn't quite believe it. A part of him always expected All Might to turn around and laugh, revealing it to be nothing but one long, elaborate joke, because it so fundamentally went against everything that centuries of science and research had told him about Quirks.
His anxiety probably would have blow over and turned him into a full-on stammering, awkward, useless, awkward, stumbling, awkward, incapable, awkward mess, were it not for Mina holding onto his hand as he spoke. Every time it felt like his heart was going to blow up, or his face made a particular motion that gave away his nerves, she would squeeze his palm gently, like a small reminder that he wasn't here alone.
Were it not for that, he honestly doubted he could say all these things to his classmates.
"…Don't take this the wrong way, Midoriya." Yaoyorozu spoke up. "But… Is there any way you can prove this?"
She wasn't accusatory, nor did she sound angry. More than anything, she honestly sounded curious. Yaoyorozu was a person who prided herself on her intellect, so it made sense that she would want to learn about the power Izuku reported to have, but she wanted proof of what he was claiming.
"Not like he's got much reason to lie, Yaomomo." Mina stated, rather flatly.
"I'm not accusing him of that. It's just… This isn't something that you hear every day."
It wasn't like both sides were being unreasonable. Mina didn't like the implication that her boyfriend was a liar, and Yaoyorozu was inquisitive by nature. She wouldn't just accept this without proof, nor did Izuku expect her to.
Frankly, he'd be slightly alarmed if she did.
"Recovery Girl has X-rays of my joint." He explained. Unlike his classmates, he still kept the pinkie joint that the rest of them traded in for their Quirks. An X-ray would prove pretty much everything that he was saying. A simple litmus test to prove his authenticity. "She knows about my Quirk. I-I can ask her to show anyone who wants to see, if you want."
"Don't bother."
The class turned their attention towards Uraraka as her words settled down with everyone in the room.
She looked towards Izuku, and towards Mina, and for a genuine moment, both of them thought that Uraraka was just a second away from lashing out at the pair of them. For lying, for keeping secrets, for whatever other reasons that she had to be angry with them.
And Izuku was ready to accept those reasons. No matter what they were. Everyone in the room had their reasons to be angry at him, livid to the core if they wanted to be. He didn't really have much of a right to protest against any anger that any of them might have had. After all, it was all valid.
"I believe it."
Izuku found himself waiting for a smash to the gut that just never came. He found himself with his eyes wide open, blinking, hardly, a couple of times, before the auditory message made its way to his brain for interpretation.
He had expected anger. Words expressing betrayal. Hurt feelings. Confusing. Disbelief. Accusations of lying. But none of them had come.
"U-Uraraka?"
"It… Would kind of explain a lot." The Zero Gravity Quirk user pointed out. She still looked rather dazed and confused, but with the pieces all laid out in front of her, it let her put things together slowly, like it was a jigsaw puzzle. A complicated puzzle that didn't have ever single piece, but it was a puzzle that one could at least start to make sense out of. "But I didn't think anything like that was ever possible."
"You saw that guy All Might went up against, didn't you?" Sero said. "It was like he had a bunch of different Quirks."
"And Ragdoll." Ojiro added. "Didn't she end up retiring because her Quirk got stolen?"
Obviously, the Tail nor the Tape Quirk users hadn't made the link between One For All and All For One, but the mere mention of that particular adversary made Izuku shiver. Both at the memory of his encounter, and in anxiety from the subject manner.
The reactions had… Certainly not been what he'd been expecting. But then again, he'd had no clue what he was supposed to expect. Mina had assured him that his classmates would understand, but somehow, it felt too easy, too simple and straight forward. He'd been so terrified about his classmates learning about his power, that in his head, he'd come up with all sorts of monstrous and horrific outcomes. And they had built themselves up int eh back of his head for so long, they had somehow cemented his fears, without him ever even thinking about them.
"If someone can take Quirks… I suppose it wouldn't be too great a leap to assume Quirks can also be given to others." Yaoyorozu speculated, quite correctly as well.
But they just weren't happening. Everything that Izuku had thought, almost predicted would happen… Simply wasn't happening. One by one, his classmates talked with one another, and began to speak directly to him. He remembered.
"Am I the only one who doesn't see a problem here?" Tooru asked.
"I don't see one." Tsuyu stated. "Granted, I'm still incredibly curious about where you got this Quirk from, Midoriya… But if you've got it, someone must have trusted you enough with it. It's ridiculously strong Quirk after all."
He remembered the last time he'd been so afraid that it made him anxious to his very bones. Made him imagine things that would never happen, no matter how hard his own imagination tried to convince him that they would.
"Hell, if this is all true, I'm honestly insanely impressed, Midoriya." Kaminari grinned.
"Getting into Yuuei without a Quirk that you were born with – That's gotta be a record or something, doesn't it?"
"Your dedication precedes you, Midoriya!"
"An impressive rise from the crypts of darkness."
"Holy crap, you're actually awesome!"
Mina had been right. It had taken them a while to get their heads around the idea, but once they'd managed that – They accepted it. They accepted it, and him, despite his Quirkless origins. They accepted everything that came with it, without ever even batting an eye.
And of course, she would know. When he admitted his own Quirkless origins to her, she had been the first one to accept it. She accepted him, despite all his fears, and everything in his life up until this point telling him his Quirkless nature made him inferior. Despite his own insecurities, his actions and achievements spoke for themselves. And his classmates were doing the exact same thing.
Izuku felt another squeeze on his hand as Mina glanced at him with a big smile on her face. " I told you they'd take it well."
Of everyone there though, one person found themselves unable to take everything as well as everyone else. One person who struggled to accept what was happening, to accept all the cheers with a smile, because it was all too much. Because everyone around them was just so… There weren't words. There just weren't any. All the people around him… In such a contrast to what his life had been like….
And that was Izuku himself. There was no smile. No laughter from him.
Just a wobbly pairs of lips, weak knees, and more tears running from his eyes than ever before in his life, as his own joy reduced him to sobs.