I looked up Japanese, Buddhist, and Shinto funeral rituals since I have no personal experience with them and tried to be as accurate as I could. If I got something wrong or missed something please let me know so I can fix it.
The limited-edition, fully mobile All Might action figure was probably the most monetarily valuable thing Izuku owned, it was one of only three thousand in the world due to the difficulty of making an action figure with thirty different joints, it was made even rarer due to a communication mistake a hundred of those three thousand were painted with All Might's first costume.
Six-year-old Izuku had promised himself to never let it go when he had somehow won it from a contest, however in the face of the South Side Inferno (as it had been named) such a thing meant absolutely nothing to him, other than it would pay the lump sum he needed to get a roof over his students head again.
Upon signing the work contract with Uraraka almost two weeks after the fire he couldn't find it in himself to regret it for a second, words could not describe how thankful he was to Uraraka-San for taking the job, he had been through a lot of companies by the time they first met. It was rather hard to find someone willing to work in the South Side, or for someone quirkless, and twelve.
Izuku might have had some "stern" talks with his students so they knew not to bother any of Uraraka-San's employees, he was surprised by the lack of pushback but chose to accept it, though in the following days Izuku did notice that the South Siders had been treating him differently.
It started when he first returned three days after the fire he was met with many thank you's from just about everyone involved, Izuku had been understandably flustered but did his best to brush it off and got to work putting his first plan into action.
Izuku had tracked down the owner of the land by asking his students and brought the property for a steal, property rates often drop in the face of tragedy and it wasn't that high in the beginning since the South Side was a red-light district.
The next was to organize a mass funeral for the victims, which had been a hell of an ordeal mind you even with his mom's help.
Organizing a funeral for one person was difficult but for sixty-eight? Near unthinkable. But sixty-eight people had died that night or in the days following and Izuku was determined to give them all their last rites.
First, he tried to get as many of their names as he could and track down family and friends for them, he was sadly disappointed by finding few who cared or some not having any people left to care.
The second was to find a crematorium able to handle sixty-eight corpses at once, the fees would be large but he still had some money left over from selling the action figure to cover the funds without dipping into the money for Uraraka-San.
The third and most daunting task seemed to be finding a priest to bless the bodies and oversee the whole thing, after trying two temples he went to a monastery, and one of the elder monks thought it would be a good teaching experience for the younger disciples.
When the funeral service actually began a week after he bought the land it was surreal, Izuku had been to a funeral once before for his grandmother but this had been, expectantly, on a whole different scale.
Due to the circumstances, the beginning of the funeral was held on the grounds of the old apartment complex after the rubble had been cleared away, more people came than he expected but he welcomed them since most had helped him with the physical preparations.
The service itself took a long time as the last rites were performed for all sixty-eight people, and for thirty-seven of them he was the only person to take care of the physical portions, it was a very real struggle not to break out crying when he picked out the bones from the ashes to offer to one of the young disciples.
Night had long pasted fallen when they finished placing the last urn onto the altar (Izuku had spent the previous day setting it up with the help of his students) once everything was all over Izuku, the elder monk and the three young disciples he brought with him were putting out the candles they'd lit earlier so everyone could see.
Putting out the last candle he turned to the four and bowed to his feet " T-thank you for helping m-me wi-ith service today." Izuku said, his voice had gone hoarse from praying for so many people, the man hummed back " I don't think I've ever held such a ceremony before... " the man mused, his voice in a similar state " But I believe the experience shall be enlighting." He added then bowed to Izuku in turn.
" I'll pray we won't have to repeat it." Izuku told him and the man nodded sagely, the four of them left in silence making their way to their respective homes.
Since the day of the funeral the people in the South Side, regardless of ailment or faction apparently held a great amount of respect for him now, he couldn't count how many of the families came up to him to thank him for allowing them to give their loved ones something like a proper funeral.
The people seemed to welcome the idea of Izuku building a new complex and followed through on not bothering Uraraka's employees, they were also thankful to Izuku for letting the people left homeless from the fire stay in the community center and giving them food.
There were a lot of events that happened in the following week where their respect for him was clear, especially when he was teaching his students full-time again, weary of this sudden change Izuku got together his nerve to ask someone about their change in attitude towards him.
The gang he confronted laughed at him before one gave him an answer " Kid, do you really think you're the first goodie-goodie that's come here to strut his stuff?" A sleazy bluenette asked moving to lean on Izuku's shoulder " N-no." Izuku replied only slightly uncomfortable with how close he had gotten.
" Yeah, no shit," he spat taking a long drag from his cigarette " We get all kinds of "upstanding" citizens come rocking up and sticking their stuck-up noses in our business. Religious nuts are the worst of them fuckers." The man explained unintentionally blowing some smoke in Izuku's face.
His nose scrunched up at the smell but he said nothing, the man grinned showing off a row of sharp teeth " Know the big difference between those dickheads and your punk ass?" The man quizzed and Izuku shook his head " They're shallow selfish pricks, the whole lot of them." He told him rolling his eyes.
Izuku blinked turning to the other three gang members for some clarification, a man that looked like a goblin (Kenji, Izuku remembered) spoke up " Most of those just come here to make themselves feel good or for the karma," Izuku frowned at that " They come down to help the "less fortunate" and to "save" our souls, stay for about a week max before going back to their lives with that heartwarming feeling of doing something good. Then some of them that will brag about how good of a person they were for handing out a couple of sandwiches." Kenji elaborated.
The bluenette scoffed waving his clawed hand " They can't stick around in our little hell hole for more than some kind of fucked up day trip." He joked taking another cigarette out since he'd finished the first
" Regardless of who they were, missionaries, goodwill, social workers... Would go on preaching about how much they "cared" about "helping us become better" but as soon as shit got real they took their bullshit and fucked off back to where they came from." He informed.
Izuku proceeded to scowl at that and hated that he could believe them and that it was so believable after what happened with the aftermath of the fire, he flinched when the bluenette poked his chest with a claw then said " You on the other hand. Not only have you stuck around for way longer than those pricks, but when everything went to crap like it always does here you didn't just stick around, you fucking did something about it."
The bluenette moved so that he could look Izuku in the eye " Look, we aren't the sharpest tools in the shed, fuck Kenji over there couldn't spell his own damn name before you came along," he commented jabbing a thumb towards the goblin man, Kenji humbly nodded not denying the claim.
" But we know a good thing when we see it, and anyone with a working brain cell knows you don't bite the hand that feeds you." He told Izuku, Izuku could partially understand what the man was saying but still found it hard to grasp it as a whole, were they really just listening to him for being a decent person?
The bluenette upon seeing Izuku's doubt dropped the pretense " It's not that complicated kid. Think about it like that symbiotic relationship crap you went on about on Wednesday," he brought up and Izuku probably shouldn't be so happy they were taking his teaching seriously enough to apply it to real life situations.
" You take care of us and respect that we have adult lives and problems that can't always be solved legally, we respect you for not being a bitch about everything we do behind your back, and if you want us to do something that isn't batshit crazy, we'll do it. Simple as that." He illustrated for him.
Izuku immediately became flustered but honored by the bluenette's statement, the fact anyone outside of his family respected him so much to just listen to him because they trusted him was just a bit too much for him to handle, so he made his excuses and went home that day feeling a bit lighter.