The bottle was cold against my palm. Condensation dripped between my fingers like the last of the battlefield’s heat finally bleeding out. I tipped my head back and drank in long, greedy swallows. Letting the water hit the back of my throat hard enough to sting. My ribs still vibrated from the last shield impact. The inside of my skull felt like someone had filled it with static and broken glass. Ten million points. Still on my forehead. Still white. Still mine.
The roar of the crowd was a dull ocean behind the blood in my ears.
Footsteps on sand. Light, quick, familiar.
Ochaco: Izuku.
I lowered the bottle and turned.
Ochaco stood three metres away. Cheeks flushed scarlet. Gym shirt clinging to her skin in damp patches. Her hair had unravelled. strands stuck to her forehead. Her eyes were so bright they looked wet. Behind her, the rest of the girls from 1-A filtered in like they’d rehearsed it. Tsuyu with her tongue curled thoughtfully against her lower lip. Mina bouncing on the balls of her feet. Jirou tugging one earjack like it was a worry bead. Momo smoothing her hair with trembling fingers. And Tooru, invisible except for the floating UA jacket tied around her waist and the faint shimmer of my energy film catching the stadium lights.
(Thanks to their training izuku's film last longer and she can choose wether to be invisible or not)
They stopped in a loose half-circle. Close enough that I could smell sweat and burnt sugar and the faint ozone of too many quirks in one place.
Ochaco spoke first. Voice a little cracked from screaming orders.
Ochaco: We’re all through. Most of us. They were a lot of teams and we took most of the spots.
She laughed once. Short and stunned.
Ochaco: majority of class 1a made it, Izuku.
I felt my face heat up.
Mina stepped forward. Hands on her hips, horns practically glowing.
Mina: Do you have any idea how insane that was? I mean, I’ve seen crazy, but that was next-level, world-ending, holy-crap-we’re-actually-gonna-win-this-thing crazy.
Tsuyu tilted her head. Calm as ever.
Tsuyu: You carried us, kero. Literally and figuratively.
Jirou gave a sheepish half-shrug. Ears pink.
Jirou: I thought my heart was gonna explode when you snatched those headbands mid-air. My sound map couldn’t even keep up with you.
Momo’s voice was softer, precise. But there was a tremor in it I’d never heard before.
Momo: The training you designed, those two days before the festival, the circuits, the reflex drills, the way you made us run until we puked and then run some more… it paid off. We moved like a single unit out there.
Tooru’s sleeves flapped as she waved both arms.
Tooru: I got three headbands while invisible! Three! People were swinging at air and I just, bam, bam, bam!
I opened my mouth and nothing came out for a second. My tongue felt thick. Heat crawled up the back of my neck and settled behind my eyes.
I tried again.
Izuku: You guys did that. Not me. I just… pointed.
Ochaco took another step closer. Close enough that I could see the tiny freckles across her nose that only showed up when she’d been in the sun too long.
Ochaco: Don’t do that. Don’t shrink it. We trained like hell because you believed we could be more than canon fodder. And today we were terrifying.
Mina nodded so hard her horns bobbed.
YOU ARE READING
Shattered Light: A Neglected Izuku Story
FanfictionIzuku Midoriya, neglected and bullied due to his lack of a quirk, endured abuse from his family and friends, especially his twin sister Izumi and Katsuki Bakugo. One fateful day, when locked outside his home, Izuku was kidnapped and taken to a secre...
