A/N: {Smashes through your computer screens}

NEVER FEAR, FOR I AM HERE!

…With the Vigilante!Inko fic you never knew you wanted!

CATCH!

Greener Grass

Prologue

Feather Touch

Midoriya Inko is fifteen and pregnant. She's fifteen, and pregnant and her parents (Oh how high their righteous horses stand) had kicked her out for being a 'whore'. She's fifteen, pregnant, and homeless.

But she isn't helpless and she sure as hell isn't stupid.

She'd been on the fast-track to an Ivory League College before her world had flipped, and she was still on that fast track. Her teachers had been informed about her pregnancy, been told that she'd moved in with a non-existent Family Friend after her parents had kicked her out, and they sympathized even while they judged her, but Inko kept her head high and she diligently kept her grades up throughout the school-days. And, after school, she would spend a few hours at the local library, throwing herself into the books available, drowning herself with purpose so that she didn't drown in despair.

And, when that was over, she went hunting.

Her Quirk had never been particularly strong. It wasn't flashy, it wasn't powerful, it couldn't do too much at all. But it was useful. She could move and pull things to her from a full three-hundred-and-sixty degrees, no matter if it was in her line of sight of not. As long as it weighed less than a half-gallon of milk, she could move it.

And wallets, pocket change, money, were all far lighter than her weight-limit.

So, every night, after she'd hidden her things within an abandoned building near her school, in a tiny, half-buried cupboard that hid her backpack and the few clothes she managed to keep carefully clean, Inko would dress herself in a dark blue, overly-large hoody, her green hair in a tight bun under a purple beanie, clothes baggy enough to hide both her gender and slowly-growing stomach, and a wide gray scarf around her neck that hid her face. She would pull on these clothes, and she would slip through the shadows, the many, many maps and blue-prints she'd memorized in her library-times brought up to the fore-front of her sharp mind. And, sliding through alleys, around stalls, even through the occasional window, she hunted. For money, for food, for the little things that people with steady jobs and homes and lives took for granted, like deodorant, shampoo and conditioner, socks and underwear and unused bedding.

And she built herself a home, built herself a place to rest and sleep and keep her precious few items carefully tucked away.

Inko was fifteen, pregnant, and homeless, but she was smart and practical and vicious, because the life growing within her was her baby and she would burn the world down to make sure they were safe and healthy and that they never doubted how much she loved them. She regretted falling into bed with her callous Class President, Saichi Udo. She regretted listening to murmured promises and sly smiles and whispered sweetness. She regretted letting him take her home that night, the both of them tipsy and hot and reckless. She regretted not making him use protection, blinded by her crush and his bright smile and cute freckles and wild, curly hair.

But she would never regret the child in her womb.

It all carried on for the entirety of her first trimester and well into the second, the thieving. She only did it a few nights a week, changing those nights randomly, and never on weekends, but people began to notice. It became slightly more difficult to Pull change and wallets from people, and she'd nearly gotten caught on a few occasions when her target turned out to be a Hero or police officer in Civilian clothes.

But Inko had been graced with a soft, wide-eyed face and the aura that made people think of a sweet, baby bunny, inherited from her mother who had a weak Attraction Quirk. It meant that, when confronted, all she had to do was blink widely up at them, hands curved protectively around her growing stomach, and a meek question of what they meant for them to back off rapidly, especially the males. The females who confronted her weren't as quick to back off, because faking a pregnancy was something female criminals could get away with without suspicion from men, but they still backed off eventually.

(Where would those naive creatures be, without women to watch their turned backs and hide their poisoned knives behind sweet, demure expressions and gentle words?)

But still, she would have to move to places with better pickings, or at least, easier ones. Luckily, summer vacation offered the perfect excuse to disappear. She didn't have any close friends (especially since she became pregnant and no boy stepped forward. High school was vicious), her parents didn't care and, beyond them, the only ones who would notice her vanishing for the next two months were the Librarians, and they would, no doubt, be relieved that she was finally "relaxing".

So, the day that school let out for the summer, Inko collected all of her sparse belongings, hid herself within her Thief Costume, and slipped through the city towards the darker, less-patrolled areas, where criminals, drug dealers, villains and vigilantes tended to roam. There, no one looked twice at her slightly dirty, too-big clothes. No one tried to see beneath her hood or the wide scarf curled around her neck that helped cover her face. They were all hiding in plain sight as well, after all.

What was one more shadow in a place of darkness?

Inko managed to secure herself a tiny, hole-in-the-wall apartment with what she'd managed to save up (Not all of it, of course. She had a bank account in a heavily Hero-Patrolled area, where her full savings were tucked away. Better safe than sorry, after all, and with a baby on the way, there was no reason to risk their future.). She got herself a part-time job at a little market, the owner a kind woman named Mimi who had a Mutant Quirk that made her look like the spider-version of a Centaur, her massive lower body that of the relatively harmless Golden Garden spider, the bright golds and blacks patterning her skin in a shimmering, downy-soft layer of almost-fur.

("I get all the horror-movie looks and none of the danger," Mimi liked to joke, her six black eyes crinkling as she smiled, teeth black and curved inward like fangs and her smaller, leg-like appendages at the corners of her mouth spreading out in a grasping-motion. Inko thought she was very pretty, and made sure to tell her so, and, even if it was completely honest, she would have lied just to see that soft, wondering expression on the older woman's face.)

She had a job, she had a home, and she had a future as a productive member of society awaiting her, as long as she kept her grades up and stayed off the radar of the law.

It is, of course, as soon as this all becomes apparent, that her world once more gets turned upside down.

It starts like this:

She's in her Thief costume, shuffling across a roof with a wad of cash hidden between her swollen, aching breasts and a hand resting unconsciously on her lower back as it aches. She's just bending over to pick up the heavy-duty plank of wood she hid on various rooftops so she could safely cross from one to another, when there's a cry from the alley below her and the sound of a scuffle. Curiously, she pokes her hidden face over the edge, and finds one of the other Shadows cringing fearfully against the wall of the building she's on, trying to keep a syringe from being plunged into his neck by a larger, better dressed man who did not belong in the Shadow Zone.

"This'll just hurt more if you struggle, asshole," the well-dressed man growled, and Inko's eyes narrowed as she realized that the only reason her fellow Shadow hadn't been injected by the strangely glowing purple liquid, was because he had some sort of metal-based Quirk that turned his arms into literal crowbars. He'd done a good job, bracing his elbows against the stone behind him so that the crowbars could be kept locked, but they wouldn't stay that way for long, and who knows what happened to his actual arms if the metal bent too far or, heaven forbid, snapped.

Inko didn't think what she did next was considered Vigilantism. She didn't think of it as illegal. She thought of it as defense, as saving, and it happened as instinctively as an act of that path should.

So, she stuck a hand over the edge, and Pulled the syringe from the Strangers hand, yanking it viciously into the air and making the man snarl a curse, jerking his head up to glare at her, and open his mouth to yell-

The heavy plank of wood she'd been in the process of collecting slammed into his face, sending him to the ground in an unconscious sprawl, blood spurting from his broken nose and mouth as pieces of his teeth made soft clink noises against the ground. Her fellow Shadow was gasping for breath, trembling still as he slumped against the wall. Carefully, gently, Inko loosened her hold on the syringe, a soft headache beginning to bloom in her temples from a mix of Quirk-Overuse from her long night, and the hormones boiling in her bloodstream that were trying to urge her to burst into tears.

The syringe landed on the unconscious Stranger's chest with a soft thump, and rolled back and forth for a moment, before going still. Police sirens could be heard, rapidly approaching, and Inko quickly made her way to the small ladder that lead down into the alley. Her fellow Shadow jerked to look up at her as her feet finally landed on the ground, her ankles achingly swollen beneath the heavy rolls of her pant-legs.

"Th-thank you," he whispered, his Crowbar Quirk finally either reaching its limit or releasing now that the danger was taken care of. Inko gave him a silent nod, and glanced toward the direction of the Sirens. Her fellow Shadow did too, swallowing thickly as his heavily bruised (possibly broken) arms curled over his chest defensively. "Go," he whispered to her, gray eyes darting to her and away quickly, before he could even try and catch a hint of her face. Plausible Deniability. "Q-quickly. Go."

Inko bowed to him, short and shallow so he couldn't see her rounded belly, and darted past him, exiting the alley and crossing the street to another one, slipping past dumpsters and taking a sharp turn into a tiny path that was narrow enough her shoulders touched the walls on either side of her. It was just in time too, because just as she disappeared completely from sight, the police arrived on the scene, blue and red lights sending shadows against the walls and Shadows scurrying or hunching over themselves, making wide, skittish eyes flash, cat-like, in the harsh lights.

Inko thought nothing of her latest adventure, except to be glad that she'd managed to help.

At least, until it kept happening.

A mugging here, stopped by Pulling the knife from the attackers hand and hitting up upside the head with a fist-sized rock she'd Pulled and dropped. An attempted rape here when she un-flinchingly Pulled the attacker's dick hard enough to tear something internally and leave him screeching and then unconscious from the pain, the woman he'd been attacking giving him one extra-hard kick to the mangled limb before rifling through his pockets and throwing his wallet up to Inko on the fire-escape with a fierce grin and a 'you get 'em, girl' that almost made her panic before considering that she doubted a man would ever do something that vicious to another man. A lost child carefully lead back to their parent by a hovering origami crane that she'd tucked some spare money into.

Before she knew it, a few weeks of this... this Shadow Defense had passed, and, suddenly, she saw a description of her Thief Costume on the news.

The Feather Touch Vigilante, they were calling her. Named for his light, near-unseen touch against his enemies. Defender of the Forgotten. Protector of the Lost.

It had a decent ring to it, she decided as she absently restocked the shelves. And, if they were looking for a male, they would never think that the pretty, pregnant teenage girl had anything to do with it.

And, as she put another can of chicken noodle soup on the shelf, Inko smiled.

A/N: The BNHA fandom is lit af and I am helpless towards its splendor…

I also haven't seen this yet, so have at ye!