It wasn't all bad, though. Kuzuma had told them all that I had a quirk... that apparently changed via person, as they were given quirk descriptions. So the bullying charges were dropped. Most of the children got 2 months worth of detention, and after showing my injuries from the fight itself, the brown short child and flash fire child were given multiple-day suspensions. They gave both me and Kuzuma dirty looks as they walked out.
Hanami himself seemed beyond mad at Kuzuma, grabbing his child with barely constrained anger as he walked out. I hoped that led to the conclusion it seemed like it was heading to when they got home.
Lastly was us. As we left, mom gripped the chair, as her tears welling up.
"Mom-" I started.
"I'll sue him. I'll fucking sue him."
"Mom, we-"
"He had no right to give you a punishment of any sort. That bastard just wanted to punish you for winning. He thinks he can get away with this? I'll-"
"Mom we don't have the money to sue him." I said, trying to calm her down.
"Then I'lL FUCKING-"
"What, mom? What are you going to do, huh? Kill him? Put a pen in his throat?" I said, as I started choking up. "How does that work out for you? For us?"
Inko fell silent for a moment, before opening her mouth. I interrupted.
"I'll tell you," I said, tears starting to sting my face. "Kill him, you go to court, and your name gets blasted in the papers. We don't have money fight the case, so you go to jail for heaven knows how long, but not before we're bled dry.
"Meanwhile, I'm at home, with no one at home. When I come back, they'll talk about you behind my back, about how you're so violent, and it's no wonder I ended up beating those kids, never mind the context of that situation. And then I won't be able to get into a good school, or if I do, people always look at me different.
"Finally, when I get a job or you come home, we're worse off than ever before. I can't land a job because you killed someone and this is Japan, and-"
"I get it!" Mom said, crying as she sagged in her wheelchair. "We can't do anything, I get it. I can't do anything. I'm sorry, okay?" she cried, breaking down as we left the school, surprising me and Gojo, who I had forgotten had existed.
"I just... I feel like I've done nothing but fail, Izuku. Fail you. I couldn't become a hero, I couldn't support you when you said you wanted to be one, I couldn't help you when you were being bullied, I couldn't...I couldn't even get you your autograph, for crying out loud!
"In the end, I couldn't save you from getting hurt by that villain, and I...I..." Mom didn't finish her sentence as she broke down even more, openly sobbing as we made it to the street corner by our apartment.
"Mom...that's..." I trailed off, unable to know what to say, tears streaming.
"Maybe...maybe Hisashi left because he knew I was a failure..." mom cried.
"Hey! That's enough, ok?" I shouted, shocking her and losing my cool that I had just got back.
"You're better than Hisashi ever hoped to be! That loser tried to take everything away from us, but all he managed was our money! He was so insecure, that when he lost custody of me, he resorted to trying to steal our Netflix!
"Yeah you might fail, but when you lose you're gracious, classy even! Hisashi on the other hand? When he fails, he resorts to the pettiest of comebacks! That's why he left; because deep down, he knew he was wasting your time!
"You're my mom, not my bastard of a father, so how...how...could you be a failure?" I shouted fully breaking down as we made it up the stairs, somehow.
Mom was in shocked silence for a moment, before showing a small smile.
"I'm glad...so, so glad..." Mom said as tears started running down her face, "That my child thinks so highly of me.
"But who taught you how to cuss?"
"Bakugo."
Suspension sucks.
You think that it wouldn't, right? I mean, a day of no school. What's the downside of that, right? Can't see your friends? Not a problem when you don't have friends. Have to catch up on schoolwork that rushes in after? Maybe an issue for a high schooler, but for a middle schooler, there wasn't much work in the first place. So what's the issue?
It's the thinking.
If you have nothing to do, no friends, and no technology, you don't have anything to do but reflect on how you got here. And that pushes you to be a better person...supposedly.
For me it just made me want to cause a felony against a quirk supremacist.
Like I know what I told mom, but I'm 10 and she's paralyzed. At worst I'll go to juvie for a few months, so might as well, right? Wait, do we have a relaxed prison policy for children with felonies in Japan? I mean Korea has one, but still...
Ugh. Aggression really messes up a day of doing nothing.
"Well, we can always train in the playground," Gojo said as he popped back into my life.
"...Yeah, I guess." I sighed out. "I've got nothing to do, anyways,"
"I'm going out, mom," I said as I put on some proper clothes and opened the door.
"Be back by 4," Inko yelled out from the living room. "And buy some weights for me when your out."
"Weights?"
"I want to increase the weight of things I can control, so this is kind of needed."
"Ah, right." I said as I closed the door.
"Should I use weights for training as well?" I asked Gojo as we walked out of the building.
"Wanna stay 4'10 the rest of your life?"
"...Could've just said no," I murmured as I walked down the stairs to the ground floor.
I made my way to the playground, walking around aimlessly. As I came across a relatively empty lot, I told Gojo that I was there.
"Ok now," Gojo said, "Today we're going to be working on that cursed energy efficiency."
"My efficiency?" I wondered as I walked around the sandbox.
"Yeah, your efficiency," Gojo said. "You're using too much cursed energy in your fights. That glow that your seeing means that your cursed energy is amplified to extreme degrees in those areas, making it harder to hurt you in those areas.
"Now I think you can guess what I'm about to say, so you tell me why that's a bad habit," Gojo said with some snark in his voice.
"I'm spending too much when I'm fighting, huh?"
"Yep!"
"You're a bit of a bastard, aren't you?" I muttered, coming to a stop by the jungle gym.
"I'm your bastard, though."
"Hmm," I smiled to myself. "At any rate, you're saying that I have to use enough to get the boost, but not enough for the flow to appear?"
"Exactly," Gojo said with a smile. "Quite smart, are we?"
"I thought you noticed," I said with a smirk as I started focusing.
First with changing the analogy. If I'm using too much, then maybe changing the image was key. Instead of constant rain, constantly being wet would suffice.
Opening my eyes, I activated my cursed energy. The glow was still there.
I deactivated it. It was still leaking out. I tried getting it to circulate. Still, it persisted.
Growing frustrated, I imagine bottling it up, if nothing else to stop it from leaking. If anything I started leaking more.
"Why are you leaking again?" Gojo asked with concern.
"I don't know," I said, getting angrier. "Look, I'll- I'll try to fix it later, can I get some time to myself please?"
"Umm...sure," Gojo said, uncertainty in his voice.
I'm alone for a while, trying to gain a hold on my cursed energy and failing, growing more frustrated each time.
It had been so easy to get it right the first time, and the times after. What was I missing? Why couldn't I catch a fucking break?
After five minutes of no luck, I slumped down by a bench and yelled in frustration. Just when things seemed to be looking up, everything came crashing down. I can't even use my powers anymore.
"Bad week, huh?"
I turned my head to see a furry.
No, I think those are only for things that aren't horses. Unless...
Anyways, I saw a girl about my age, maybe a year older than me, with two horns coming out of her head. She had blonde hair, and wide eyes. There was also the beginnings of what seemed like a tail.
"I am Pony. Do you want to have a talk about it?"
"Wow, that is... good. Bad. Sorry, no Japanese I speak good."
I had just unloaded to Pony the basics of my current situation. And how I got my scar. And I may have let in a few details with said basics...
Ok I basically told her everything.
In my defense though, she's a very good listener.
"Yeah. Honestly, I'm kings of unsure how to go from here. I'm trying to see the bright side of it but it's just... is there even a good side to this? Should I even look for it?"
Pony looked at me cluelessly. I realized that she probably understood too little to really give me any feedback.
"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have expected a foreign child to understand my language. I'm so embarrassed, ha.
"Well, I'll just..." I stood up to leave, only to feel a pull on my shirt. It was Pony, with a...phone? I guess foreigner parents are more lax about giving their children technology, especially when they're settling in.
She typed furiously for a few minutes, then pressed play. I soon learned that it was a text-to-speech function on her phone.
"I think that you shouldn't be looking for a ray of hope.
"My dad and I had to leave the country after my mom's drinking got out of control and mutant quirk hate started overflowing in our area. The job dad set up for us got filled by the time we came in, and because we left in such short notice, he doesn't speak good enough Japanese to land a job anywhere else.
"Topping it off, my mom, being the petty girl that she is, drained all the money in their joint savings, so dad is now poor, and mutant-quirk hate is worse here than America. Something about the culture of conformity, my dad says.
"Is there a bright side that I'm missing? Other than being alive somehow, of course. Of course not. My recent life has been a pile of poop.
"There is no hope, only endurance. That's what my dad told me. Of course the storm will pass, but when it's all around you, it's best to look for an island or just forget about solace entirely and keep moving forward.
"So I suggest you keep moving forward." I finished reading.
It made sense, now that I thought about it. If cursed energy was about letting the emotions flow through you, trying to find something good about it instead of just accepting the situation for what it was went against it's very nature.
While looking for the bright side did good for morale, moving forward got you out of the storm in the end.
Something clicked, and my cursed energy stopped leaking from me, the glow around me completely fading. However, I still felt the cursed energy circulating at it's normal strength. I had done it, and I couldn't have done it without Pony.
"Wait," I asked. Why did you decide to talk to me if you're still getting hate for being a mutant?"
She gave it some thought, before typing in the translator: "I want to be a hero when I grow up, so I should start helping now to get in practice."
"Huh," I said in amazement.
Putting away the phone, she looked up at the sky. The wind blew for a moment, and for a moment, as her hair blew, I thought that she was beautiful.
"What's your name, by the way?" She asked me, still looking at the sky.
"Midoriya," I said, still in awe. "Midoriya Izuku."
She paused for a moment, then opened her phone again. The translator's voice rang out.
"Which name is the last name?"
Hi, hello. How are you. I'm here again.
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But yeah. Tell me what you liked about this chapter, what could be improved on, the whole nine. Bye.
