Work Text:
In which the Narrative is determined to make Midoriya Inko an Anime mom, a headcanon list:
Midoriya Izuku is a shounen protagonist; shounen protagonists have several universalities between them, one of these being absentee or dead parents. It is not a very nice universality, but that’s not the point of this AU.
The point of this AU is that the narrative keeps on trying to kill Midoriya Inko. (It doesn’t succeed)
Since Izuku turns four a series of Progressively Escalating incidents keep occurring in the Midoriya household. At first, no one makes the connection between the Midoriyas and the incidents, by dint of said incidents being so huge in scale, as befitting of An Appropriately Tragic backstory. Like that mass villain attack that occurred at the mall on Inko’s birthday. And that hostage situation at Tokyo-Disneyland. And that bank robbery after Tokyo Disneyland. The narrative works very hard but Midoriya Inko Does Not Die, because she has common sense and BNHA has things like actually competent law enforcement.
So the first few Tragic Events don't work very well. Well, decides the Narrative . We’re still going with the tragic story. It keeps trying, which in turn means some harrowing years for Inko, who must dodge everything from hostage situations to random falling debris to random falling teapots as the Narrative gets progressively more frustrated. It means equally harrowing years for Izuku, who is a) a total mama’s boy, b) in direct vicinity of 70% of these incidents, and c) keeps watching Inko get hostaged.
He really doesn't like it when his mom gets hostaged. Little Izuku gains rapid expertise at stepping on feet, biting fingers, and wielding frying pans at the monthly burglar.
As Izuku grows older and his Tragic Backstory is yet again continuously deterred, the Narrative increases in both output and creativity. Despite all odds Midoriya Inko is still alive, kicking, perpetually anxious but undoubtedly proud and present for her son. Where is the tragic backstory? How is the tragic backstory not working?
(Everyone working law enforcement in the Midoriya’s general vicinity is up to their necks in overtime, that’s how.)
In any case, the incidents increase.
They escalate from once every few months, to once every month, to once every week.
There is a month when Izuku is eight where it’s as if the last four years of incidents have suddenly got together and condensed into a bowling ball pinned to strike at the figure of his mother. She gets into five separate hostage situations and three housefires; her office collapses twice in suspiciously contained natural disasters. Lighting strikes her kitchen thrice, somehow, despite being a clear day. This is followed by a stray meteorite. Then there's a string of robberies, and being transported into the Void, or outer space, or possibly an eldritch abomination’s stomach.
You can tell the Narrative is getting Really frustrated. In any case: correlation is not causation, but sometimes it’s not even– it’s just that regular reasoning makes buttfuck sense.
"Hey kid,“ asks the police chief, when Inko and Izuku are sitting in his office with a bedraggled group of heroes, house newly dragged out from the Void and five tramautized robbers in tow, "When did you say this shit started? Are you sure your quirk didn’t come in?”
(The police chief is not the most sensitive of people; in his defense he really needs a drink.)
Izuku looks at him. Inko looks at him. The timing… matches.
Anyway, Izuku, as befitting for an eight year old who loves his mom and thus hates all the random disaster, is naturally upset about this. He wanted a quirk so badly, but not this kind of quirk. He chews his fingers and thinks about it with a pit in his stomach all the way home and through dinner, up until the next burgler tries to climb in through the window and Izuku needs to focus on shrieking and punching him in the face.
(Midoriya Izuku does not have a quirk. Honestly though, the narrative makes a good enough supernatural substitute)
(“Hello,” sighs Midoriya Inko, pressing the speed-dial to the police chief as Izuku nails the bugler with a frying pan. “Yes, there’s another one.”)
Izuku blames himself. Midoriya Inko, in response, makes an executive decision to not to be taken hostage.
Some backstory: Midoriya Inko, when in the face of terrible disaster, reacts to it like a normal person, which is to say: with a lot of screaming and tears and possibly fainting. Repetition has dulled some of the screaming and tears. The last time her office collapsed around her ears, all Inko did was shriek momentarily being making sure her work had been saved beforehead. Midoriya Inko has never really considered herself a fighter before– she is small and anxious too prone to being rolled over – but now her Izuku’s gone quiet and hunched. He blames himself when it’s not his fault and she is not going to get kidnapped and hostaged.
Inko, of course, does get hostaged eventually. This time she isn’t compliant.
These are the facts:
1. These villains are not very imaginative; their base of operations is one Inko has stayed in before. Several times.
2. It is 1:30 on a weekday afternoon and Izuku will need to be picked up from school in two hours.
3. She’d already had a good cry this morning over a failed project proposal.
The base is, in Inko’s very experienced experience, really unguarded.
Midoriya Inko steals the guard’s key straight from his pocket when he isn’t looking, lets herself out of the cell after an anxious fifteen minutes, finds the nearest unbarred window (unbarred because the heroes had broken it as an entry point to rescue hostage conference group a month ago, inko included) and tediously drags herself into fresh air.
Then she finds the nearest payphone and calls All Might’s personal phone from memory.
Midoriya Inko first met All Might when Izuku was six and a villain crashed her shopping trip. He helped pull her, and the other fifty people in the grocery store at the time out from under the detritus.
Midoriya Inko continued meeting All Might in the subsequent years of housefires, hostage situations, freak accidents and more freak accidents. Honestly, she's spent more time with All Might than anyone but his sidekicks. All Might is very dedicated to his job and Inko is very often his job.
He’s a very nice man and Inko has made him dinner a few times, as a kind of apology to getting his hero costume constantly ruined with snot and tears and fearful gripping.
Izuku loves him a lot; All Might is his favourite hero, and he always feels better knowing that whenever mom’s in trouble All Might is there to help.
So Inko calls All Might.
Then she calls the police chief.
She makes it on time to pick up Izuku at 3:30 sharp.
Midoriya Inko goes and takes self defense lessons. She goes and takes police procedural seminars. She herds Izuku to quirk counseling, and then regular counselling, and then disaster relief counselling. She works with the police and gets herself a tracker that activates when she presses it, just in case of anymore kidnapping/ hostage events. She gets a pro-hero assigned to her, like witness protection, and they’re pretty much guaranteed an Incident every two days.
Very nervously, she asks All Might for fighting tips.
And she’s terrible at it at first. Fear and hesitance is ingrained, and she hates hurting people. But experience breeds improvement, and no one’s getting more experience than Inko. No one. None. She’s already experienced with police procedures, and evacuation procedure, and every hostage situation procedure there is in the book, and even beyond that she already has a very niche but cultivated skill set, which is to say: dodging.
Inko is very good at dodging. She has a long history of dodging collapsing buildings, dodging collapsing debris while in collapsing buildings, dodging tea pots, lightning strikes, meteors and anything that follows the laws of gravity. If it is vulnerable to the laws of gravity it has probably tried to fall on Midoriya Inko’s head.
This works in her favour: it is really, really hard to actually get a hit in on Inko.
At first, Inko is clumsy and jumpy. Overall just bad at fighting, and sneaking, and not panicking. But she's caught in dangerous situations so often that eventually she develops a sense for them. She’s always on the scene when heroes fight. She’s always on the scene when villains fight. At a certain point she gains a a near intuitive understanding of action flow and monologue timings through sheer repetition. And also: being trained by All Might.
Little by little, Inko gets… very very good.
Like, already has the villain KOed and in handcuffs before the pro can move good. She learns to use a mixture of her quirk and her defense lessons together; she has no shortage of practice.
She never looses her nervousness, though. Inko’s an office lady, not a hero. She’s never wanted to be a hero – not the kind on TV in their spandex and flashy quirks. Her fists tremble and her stomach always heaves like it’s going to upend in her throat, and the villains underestimate her for it – up until she clips them in the head with cinder-block. Mainly Inko uses her skills for self defense. Sometimes the heroism is inevitable because of mass scale Incidents and Hostage Situations, whereupon Inko is the first responder due to being on the scene at the time of. Every scene. All the scenes. If there’s a major villain in town you can bet Inko’s gonna cross paths with them, guided by some mysterious leading star of the Narrative.
Eventually the police department just goes: WHELP, you know what, and throws a hero licence at her. “You might as well keep it,” the police chief declares, and adds a helpful phone number to a hero costume company before legging out of there to get himself a drink.
So I’ve talked a lot about Midoriya Inko; a tangent. I feel like we should talk about Izuku as well. Midoriya Izuku grows up perpetually done and perpetually anxious, a social outcast but not a bullied one. Everyone remembers that time with the dragon, and that other time with the possible aliens, and also the cultural festival where Midoriya’s mom fucking slammed a villain to the ground so hard with her quirk the asphalt dented.
Midoriya Izuku has a quirk: ( he doesn’t. Midoriya Izuku is quirkless but does the specifics really matter?) it’s not one he wanted but it’s one he got.
A few side affects, by dint of proximity statisitcs:
a) really good at dodging things
b) extremely versed in police procedures
c) the memorization of of every possible villain base layout in the city.
d) first name basis with 90% of the police department and every hero in the district
e) extremely jumpy, vaguely stuttery, will whack/ tazer/ smack with frying pan before questions. Sometimes looks like he recieved 0 hours of sleep and got hit by an errant lightning bolt, which is exactly what happened.
Midoriya Izuku wants to be a hero
He’s wanted this since he was little. He wanted to be cool and save people with a smile. As he got older the “save people!” urge still existed, but mainly it’d transitioned to “Help Mom!”
In this AU Izuku still gets One for All from All Might. He’s known All Might since he was like, six, however. All Might is a family friend. All Might comes to dinner on Fridays. Izuku and All Might are THE Midoriya Inko protection squad.
For his part All Might gives Izuku OfA because he knows Izuku has a good head and a strong heart but also: look if anyone ever needed OfA’s strength it’s probably him. Like: Midoriya my boy what do you mean you and your mother accidentally discovered an illegal fight ring on your way to the dentist????
Being All might is suffering.
Midoriya Izuku basically becomes Immune to weird things happening. The slime villain? Doesn’t even register on his radar. He’s coming home after school through the alley shortcut, and the hairs on the back of his neck prick up. Before Slime there can think of closing the distance, Izuku whips around and sticks a tazer into him, no mercy, and then peers around to see if Inko decided to meet him half way or anything. She didn’t, so he just kind of shrugs, then shuffles around to see if there are any OTHER villains trying to jump him. Then he dials the police and goes home. He meets up with Inko; the two of them narrowly avoid a suddenly swerving car.
But no, really. Villain attacks are so part of every day life that when the league of villains attack at the training simulation Izuku’s just like, whelp. That’s Wednesday for you.
He gets more apphrehensive when All Might struggles against the Noumus though. That’s a shock that’s really not good for his heart. It means they’re dangerous, and Izuku has an alphabetized list that proves every single villain organization in the history of ever has tried to kidnap his mom.
Izuku is naturally high-strung for the next few days.
The Leage of Villains do eventually kidnapp Midoriya Inko, mainly because of her connections to All Might. Sadly for them Midoriya Inko has also by then mastered the art of getting out of being kidnapped and hostaged. At this point she’s also learned to punt One Incident against Another. This is to say, when the heroes reach the hideout they find Shigaraki and AfO and the Noumus already KOed via a meteor and a truck collision, both of which Inko had deftly dodged.
“Uh,” says All Might.
WHY screams the Narrative.
Very weakly, a noumu struggles upwards. Inko waves her hand and smacks it with a cinderblock. It goes down again.
The out of precinct heroes stare. The in-precinct heroes, all of whom are on first name basis with Midoriya Inko (and possibly were her former protection detail/ present occasional coworker) make a note on the number of meteor strikes for the betting pool.