Maddison sighed as she was awoken by the overwhelming feelings of others leaking in through the thin walls, getting up she shuffled into her bathroom to get ready for the day and put on her uniform, on her way out of the complex she caught the hint of self-loathing from one of her neighbors and paused outside their apartment.
Upon hearing the sound of them getting ready to leave she quickly ran back around the corner and then waited for the door to open before walking out as if for the first time "Oh, good morning, Ren-San." She greeted the willowy owl figure, Ren's head turned on a swivel to her and they greeted her in return with a soft coo, the cloud of self-loathing loosening its hold over them.
Maddison knew that this kind of thing wasn't much in the eyes of most but she knew these little interactions helped lighten peoples' emotional load more often than not, and the brief chat she had with Ren had left the avian with a bit of a spring in their step, with an empath quirk like hers it was impossible not to notice.
Being able to know how people were feeling through her five senses might be a nice quirk if she could turn it off for even a few seconds but she supposed that it was the tradeoff for it being so accurate in how others were feeling, it was near impossible to explain her quirk, so she often had to dumb it down when she did try to warn people about something.
For most empaths she understood they needed time to figure out what each emotion was, but every feeling was so visceral for her that she knew instinctively what a good emotion was and what were the bad ones, it was a problem when she was a toddler because she would point to anyone that had a 'bad' impression and say they were evil.
The worst time was when she was eight and met the math substitute teacher and she yelled he was a child predator, the man was indeed a pedophile, but she faced a lot of criticism because empath quirks 'aren't that accurate, and it wasn't like she could explain how she felt the difference in emotions since it wasn't like she could just point to a metaphor.
It just wasn't that simple, like knowing what color the sky was by looking up, it was a complex mix of all five senses that left a very specific impression on her that her brain could process almost immediately, her parents were sympathetic to her plight and tried to keep her from too much human exposure so she could have time to recuperate.
But a car accident had left her alone years ago, the foster system wasn't kind to her in the two years she was in it before running away, living in the South Side wasn't quite the best since the people here always seemed to be struggling in some way, saying that it bred negativity and misery was an understatement.
But she could feel the people themselves weren't that bad deep down under all the layers of hate and grief or whatever emotions they were feeling, and the few people that were dangerous were easy enough to find since their toxicity was clear as day to her and she could avoid them with little trouble.
That was one of the few things that kept her alive since she has been on her own despite being in the arguably most dangerous area in Japan, her quirk was both a blessing and a curse in that way.
The worst thing about her quirk was when she met someone that her quirk told her needed to be saved, the first time she met someone like that was a woman that threw herself in front of a train, she was three at the time and she has met many people caught in that same thick miasma of near death as that woman and despite her best attempts she rarely could talk them out of whatever they planned.
Even though she only saved one or two people from themselves she still tried even if the failures never left her consciousness but at some point, she knew that some people just couldn't be saved from their self-destructive mindsets that dug them deeper into their negativity… well that was what she thought before she met Deku-Sensei.
Deku-Sensei's emotions were an odd but not unfamiliar cocktail of self-loathing, anxiety, desperation, and a speck of hope she had come to associate with two-toes though she was surprised by the minor amount of suicidal and self-harming compulsions since two-toes usually had those things in spades at Deku-Sensei's age.
But the thing that surprised her was his impact on the people around him, calling the way he changed the people around him the butterfly effect wasn't a close enough parable, what he did was so, so much more than that.
In the end she started calling what happened the Deku principle, through exposure to the individual known as Deku-Sensei can cause acute changes to the affected party, the degree of the changes was determined by the amount of contact between the two which is especially effective with multiple meetings over a longer period.
With her quirk she could see it work firsthand as Deku-Sensei basically sucked the misery out of someone by just being around them, it wasn't obvious at first because of how minute the changes were in the people, but the ripples started to be noticeable, changes that didn't dissipate even when Deku-Sensei wasn't around the way such changes in mindset usually would when the cause was gone.
Dabi was the biggest example of how the Deku principle was a real phenomenon, when she first met the man, she could see he was dripping with a type of self-hatred, paranoia, and anger that almost always led the person to violence and the way he wore those emotions like a second skin made it so that it was near certainty, but Deku-Sensei put Dabi in just the right place to ease that anger.
It was slow but the negativity drained from the man as he interacted with everyone day-to-day, he had some bad days and Deku-Sensei's presence made Dabi annoyed, but his emotions weren't nearly as toxic as they once were, she could even feel it as he was begrudgingly gaining fondness for Iguchi-San and the softness he felt for all the children, a feeling he was trying to hide from himself out of some kind of guilt.
And that wasn't even beginning to touch upon how he changed the very environment of the South Side as a whole, places often held the weight of the emotions from the people who lived there, so she noticed when the years of built-up suffocating oppression was dissipating before her very eyes.
It still baffled her how one person could change so much and uplifted so many people of their personal prisons by just coexisting with them, and she wasn't even thinking about how much he changed the other red-light districts and their people but it had to be similar to what happened to the South Side under his watch, but it did give Maddison some hope that maybe people weren't so one-dimensional and could make changes for the better.
Maddison was drug out of her musing when she felt the razor-sharp feeling of panic lash across her skin, her head whipped to where the feeling was coming from and she ran towards it, the shop she worked for was nearby the edge of the South Side and so got some outsiders bold enough to dip their toes into their territory.
Turning a corner Maddison saw little Aki being carried off by a woman surrounded by nefarious intent that wanted to do unsavory things that made Maddison's skin crawl, she felt frozen for a second having only encountered this kind of thing once before, and when she about to scream for someone to help she choked on a wave of protective fury that could've only come from one person.
And judging from how Aki's eyes lit up she wasn't the only person who noticed because almost immediately Aki bit down on the woman's arm, the woman cried out and Aki took advantage of the distraction to kick herself out of the woman's arms and ran over to Deku-Sensei, and though the boy was smiling Maddison could feel that he was seething and that his aura was pulsing with his outrage.
Maybe if Maddison did not know what the woman had planned for Aki, she might have felt a small amount of pity for the dumb woman for what she had unknowingly unleashed upon herself.
Deku-Sensei had made a list of rules back when he started teaching out of the community center, it was a small set of rules that boiled down to no criminal activity around him when he visited and there had only been two new rules added to that list, the first was made after two gangs foolishly fought on his property and Deku-Sensei was quick to clarify that his property was neutral space.
The other rule was more of an unspoken law that was silently enforced after the SSI, any child in Deku-Sensei's territory is to be considered his regardless of who their parents or guardians were, and Deku-Sensei does not tolerate anyone that threatens his children.
Deku-Sensei never said anything about it but it was clear from his actions alone that he had a major soft spot for the children he finds in the districts, the simple and pure joy he got from playing with them was so all in compassing it often made her eyes water, so it was only logical that when someone was idiotic enough to try anything Deku-Sensei's rage was so cataclysmic that even those without empathy quicks could feel it.
The woman however must have been blind though as she walked right up to him with a mask of politeness but before she could open her mouth "What do you think you're doing?" Deku-Sensei calmly asked, with venom only she could see dripping from his mouth "I'm so sorry about my daughter. She has been throwing tantrums all day." The woman lied trying to appear embarrassed by 'her' wayward daughter.
Aki, not having any trace of fear since she spotted Deku-Sensei confidently stuck her tongue out at the damned woman from behind Deku-Sensei, while Deku-Sensei's grin turned sharper "Oh? That's funny… I don't remember ever marrying you." Deku-Sensei coldly pointed out, his phantom smile not falling from his face as he tilted his head innocently to the side.
"What?" the woman said shocked, and Maddison could feel a little glee nipping at the edges of her fingertips from Aki "Little Aki is my child, her biological mother passed years ago, and I certainly never married you so please enlighten me why you think you can take my daughter from me?" Deku-Sensei questioned, and Maddison could tell it was starting to sink in for the woman that Deku-Sensei wasn't going to just roll over for her.
The woman dropped all pretense and began scowling "Listen you brat there's no way that kid's yours and unless you want me to make your body feel like it's on fire you're going to fuck off." The woman hissed her hand reaching behind Deku-Sensei for Aki only for Deku-Sensei to grab her wrist and he dropped his smile, and the cloud of anger turned to smog as his rage boiled over.
"Do not touch my child." Deku-Sensei all but hissed at the woman and maybe the woman would have kept pushing but by now they had gotten the attention of multiple people, all of whom were very clearly not on her side and Maddison could feel their own protectiveness over Deku-Sensei overlapping and mixing to the point that aside from Deku's she couldn't separate anyone's feeling from anyone else's.
"I highly suggest you leave… now." Deku-Sensei advised, and the woman must have had a shred of self-preservation and she quickly backed off, pulling her arm out of Deku-Sensei's grip and ran off unknowing of the few wandering eyes still on her, by nightfall the woman would disappear off the planet if she was smart.
The Vespas would find out who she was and tear her life to ashes, even if she hadn't provoked Deku-Sensei the Vespas were strictly against child predators and they would sell the woman's information to the highest bidder, the criminal underworld was often divided into two groups, the ones who hurt children and everyone else.
It wasn't quite justice and Deku-Sensei would never stand for it if he knew… but it was better than letting the woman get off scot-free so she would keep her mouth shut and instead turned her attention to Deku-Sensei, the boy's anger wasn't gone but he quelled it to the point it was unnoticeable if you didn't know how to find it and he instead was focused on cheering up Aki.
As quick as Deku-Sensei's anger filled the area it was replaced by the boy's care and compassion, leading Aki back into the inner bowels of the South Side where it would be safer, and Maddison couldn't help scoffing at the thought.
As far as the world knew the South Side was the most dangerous part of Japan and those people were right… to a point, it all depended on whether you had Deku-Sensei's favor and if you followed his rules, because when Deku-Sensei was watching it was probably the safest place in the world.
Izuku: I just don't know why anyone would be scared of me?
Maddison having seen the embodiment of Izuku's fury which was nearly Eldridge-like in its size and presence that it stands out in a sea of violent people: Stares
Izuku shrugs and goes back to grading papers: It must be because of Юррй-сан and the other gangs I teach.
Maddison: Sure.