Finally, time to start quickly publishing this shortfic (it ends at chapte 13) since DoA is almost done being published. Have fun :P
(***)
It has been years since Midoriya Inko was known as Mischief.
In her prime, she was one of Japan's most notorious and infamous thieves, using her quirk to obtain numerous shining (or not) things that didn't belong to her. Starting from the world's biggest diamond that just happened to be in Japan at the time and ending with the Prime Minister's wig, stolen from him in the middle of his public speech.
(the wig part was a part of a lengthy story full of explosions, car chases and hero fights, whose only real impact on her life was her decision to never again get drunk with Mitsuki Bakugou, because it made accepting her best friend's dares feel like a good idea)
She was commonly described as a cross between Catwoman of antique comics (especially her villain suit's aesthetics) and a stereotypical gentlemanly thief, robbing the wealthy and giving to the poor. Like Robin Hood or Oji Harima, the Peerless Thief of the Dawn of Quirks era.
She was, frankly, as famous as a villain can be, and treated as a sort of a public entertainment due to the bloodless nature of her crimes that also tended to target nasty people.
On one occasion, Japan's Number Three Hero grabbed her in his quirk, only to ask her for an autograph and let her go. On another, it got a bit icky, because the yakuza leader that she tried to rob actually faked the deed that made her target him, only to have her invade his compound so that he could propose to her.
She ended up flinching each time the name Abegawa Tenchu Kai was mentioned in her vicinity AND she could barely look at the manholes. It was, surprisingly enough, connected.
Unfortunately, she wasn't immune to bad life decisions.
Regretfully, her first serious love affair ended with her and her lover (she was going to discover waaaay later that he was actually All Might undercover) separated by some villain attack, and Inko (well, she had a different name and a different surname back then) never finding him again.
Not knowing his real name or that he even had another name contributed. Him not knowing her real name or that she even had another name contributed as well.
She discovered soon after that she was pregnant. Yes, that made things a bit complicated to her, but it stopped being important whatsoever the moment her maternal instincts kicked in. Yup, she would kill for her baby. Slowly and brutally, if needed.
She did return to her villainous career afterwards (Mitsuki was a good babysitter), only to take a bit bigger cut out of her villainous deeds, because she needed to make sure that her son was going to have a secured future.
Izuku was four years old when she ended up running into All for One, the demon lord of Japan, the archvillain, the Symbol of Evil etc, stealing his heart in the process.
Literally and metaphorically.
He was apparently instantly smitten by Inko accidentally (accidentally) pulling his still beating heart out of his chest when she freaked out after suddenly feeling his little murder intent aura.
She then freaked out and tried to put the heart back inside.
If she knew what sort of dick AFO actually was, she would have instead framed it and sent it to All Might, signed as 'proof that All for One has a heart'. Which is a funny ancient reference until you realize that she would also give him the home address of a certain former vigilante that could track the position of someone by being given a chunk of their flesh.
Together with a suggestion to call a certain number and tell the person on the other side where and when the battle was going to happen, because Inko looked forward to seeing All for One be brutally murdered, probably with popcorn in hands.
But she didn't know any better back then. And thus, one thing led to another, and a few years later they ended up having a very messy divorce, AFO all but threatening her if she doesn't give him the kids they had together (namely, Asa - age 11 - and Aiko - age 6).
Somehow the part of it that pissed her the most was that he didn't even want Izuku, simply because he was, what, quirkless? That absolute, quirkist jerk.
Outwardly, Inko caved in. Fighting All for One and Gigantomachia at once? Madness. All for One alone would have wiped the floor with her.
Of course, she also told Asa and Aiko that she was going to get them back and that All for One just started a family war that was going to make his two centuries long war against the descendants of his brother look like a walk in a park.
But the first thing she had to do (before showing All Might how the hell you actually deal with demon lords) was to make sure that Izuku was safe. Her adorable baby boy that she realized way too late that he was bullied in school for quirklessness, because he was such a little angel that he didn't want to worry her.
(or, probably, to avoid having her committing a two digit number of murders in his name because that would make his dream of becoming a hero a tad bit harder to achieve)
She was going to protect him. But she also had to get Asa and Aiko to safety before All for One fills their heads with some stupid supervillain ideas. This led to a rather complicated conundrum that she had to solve posthaste.
She had to keep Izuku hidden well enough that All for One wouldn't manage to find him. And, regretfully, he knew about all her 'normal' acquaintances. So, she had to improvise. And improvisation was her forte.
Said improvisation led her to confronting a certain businessman. In his own bedroom. At 3am. No, she didn't knock. She entered through the window, despite it being a penthouse on top of a skyscraper, with one of the best security systems she had ever seen in her life.
"I know that this is a bit of an unexpected appearance, but yes, I am Mischief." Inko announces when the man switches the light on. Who the hell returns to his penthouse at like 3am? At least the business suit seemed to imply it was some late business meeting. "We know each other."
She is, naturally, wearing her black bodysuit, together with complimentary fake cat ears, fake cat tail and her little long stick of death. Black, with some dark green highlights. Mischief's back in the game, folks.
"Uhm." The man blinks at her, clearly dumbfounded by the appearance of the supervillain that was long thought dead.
"I have saved your life during one of my past heists and I remember you telling me that you owe me for it. I never collected that favour, so I'm going to do it right now."
"Well, err, that's naturally understandable, but what exactly do you…" He tries to say.
"I have a certain piece of shit to slowly and brutally murder for daring to lay a finger on my children…" Inko announces. "... which is going to include a very detailed presentation on how many body parts, including testicles, count as small objects for my quirk to pull them towards my hand with a speed of up to fifty kilometres per hour."
Her host shivers visibly. Good. He should know that she's treating her children very seriously.
"While I'm going to be focused on that, someone needs to keep my son, Izuku, safe. Someone not publicly connected to me in any way." Inko then continues. "'Keeping him safe' includes making sure that he gets accommodations and education of proper quality so he doesn't lag behind his peers."
The man in front of her is wealthy enough to achieve that, most certainly.
"He is quirkless, and was bullied over this, but he loves quirks, is extremely intelligent and wants to be a hero despite his quirk status." Inko then says. "Questions?"
"Uhmm, I'm not sure if I'm the right person to…" The businessman tries to say, but she doesn't let him. The 'questions' part was entirely rhetorical.
"Great." She cuts back, before throwing one of Mr. Compress' (he was such a helpful young man) marbles onto the floor. It decompresses, letting Izuku out. They already said their goodbyes earlier, and she really has to leave as soon as possible. "I'll be back in a year at worst. If you mess up, expect your testicle privilege to be violently revoked."
Then she jumps out of the window. It's still the 30th floor, but she doesn't appear to mind it, somehow.
There is a prolonged silence in the room. Izuku's looking down, decked from feet to the top of his head in hero merch, especially that featuring All Might, the present Number One Hero and the Symbol of Peace, clearly looking as shy as humanly possible.
"Well…" Rikiya Yotsubashi, CEO of Detnerat Company and the Grand Commander of the Meta-Liberation Army, manages to speak a few seconds later. "... this is awkward."
(***)
The positive side of something utterly impossible happening to you less than twenty minutes after a general meeting of the MLA executives, is that none of them managed to get very far and could be promptly resummoned for an extension of the meeting.
Even if it was 3am.
You just had to add 'it's an emergency' clause to the summons.
"We…" Rikiya Yotsubashi says, while entering the room. "... have a small problem that I really need your advice on."
Trumpet and Curious are sitting on the side of the table. Geten and Skeptic on the other.
"That problem being…?" Trumpet asks, with one of his well-trained public smiles on his face. He is probably worried underneath.
"I entered my bedroom…" Re-Destro replies while sitting down. "... just to see Mischief standing right in the middle of it. Her villain outfit and all."
Silence in the room.
"I think I read that comic as well…" Trumpet replies cautiously. "... but don't you think that calling us here at 3am to talk about classics of adult entertainment of the prior generation is a bit…"
Curious slams him in the head (lightly) with her Flattener. It looks like a hammer. It can explode when she wants to. This time, she didn't want to, but the threat is clear.
"Am I supposed to believe that you didn't read it?" Trumpet asks back, massaging the top of his head. He is as fearless as a politician can be - being a politically radical revolutionaire gives you a solid boost to fearlessness, typically.
"Everyone did, but this doesn't mean you're supposed to talk about it during serious meetings." Curious replies calmly. "Grand Commander, I assume that this was an odd way of breaking the ice, what's the actual reason for the meeting?"
Re-Destro sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose.
"First of all, we've all agreed that 'breaking the ice' pun is forbidden." Re-Destro says, Geten clearly glaring at Curious over the table. "Second of all, I was serious. Mischief was there. She said that I owe her after she saved my life years ago and that in return I'm supposed to take care of her son for about a year. That she needs to, errr, use her quirk to amputate testicles of someone that dared to touch her children."
Everyone at the table shivers visibly at the images.
"We have to decide as soon as possible what to do with the child, because for as much as I do owe Mischief my life and I intend to repay the favour properly…" He would do that even without the threat of being castrated, he has standards. "... I simply do not think that having him here is a good idea, seeing how many classified things are happening in this tower."
"I can keep secrets, I promise!" Midoriya quickly (and with worry in his voice) says. "My family has a lot of them too."
"Well, that's quite reasuraaaaaahhh!" Re-Destro almost falls off his seat in shock, most of the people in front of him rising from their seats in surprise. The Grand Commander, having a lifetime of supervillainy behind him, composes himself almost immediately. "Wait, how long were you there?"
"Uhm, from the start?" Izuku shrinks a little. "The man you left me with looked scary so I decided to come ask you, Yotsubishi-san, to leave me with someone else."
…
"Amplivolt is the head of my security, how did you just casually evaded hi…" Re-Destro almost face-palms. Mischief's son, she had no stealth quirk and yet somehow managed to evade the heroes for years. He then wants to say something potentially nasty, but then remembers Mischief's threat. "... you know what, he is a little scary looking, but that doesn't meant that you can…"
"A-Amplivolt?" Midoriya blinks at him. Then he freaks out a little. "S-Sorry for c-cutting in, I'm just, uhm, is that a hero name? I never heard of him."
… goddamnit. Mission abort, mission abort. They can't let him know about the MLA.
"Just a friendly, uhm, nickname." Re-Destro dodges the bomb thanks to his decades of experience as both a supervillain and a successful CEO. "You heard everything? From the start?"
Midoriya nods, suddenly looking very disheartened.
Testicles, Re-Destro. Be diplomatic.
"I understand that I might have come a bit… heartless, speaking with my, err, work colleagues about how to deal with you." Re-Destro quickly says. "However, I assure you that we were simply going to talk about arranging proper accommodations for you. This place, well, it's not exactly the best place for a child to be in. There are way too many classified documents lying around, and you can expect lawyers to eat me alive if I permitted you to be around them without a background check."
The Detnerat Company's Legal Department might or might not be the closest thing this branch of the MLA has to an internal security department. The MLA warriors trembled in fear when the word 'lawyer' was said.
"Oh, I, uhm, understand." The kid (still decked in ridiculous amounts of hero merch) shrinks further. "I'm very sorry for walking around unattended, and…"
"What's your meta-ability?" Geten, with a subtlety of a rampaging elephant on drugs, asks. To him, it was like asking your name.
"Uhm…" Painful subject to the kid. "... I don't have any."
Now, that's awkward. Geten looks like he just found his personal enemy, but hey, testicles.
Re-Destro is about to ask why the kid actually knew what the term meant (despite it being used only in some historical documents nowadays), but that's when Midoriya manages to open his mouth again.
"W-What's your quirk, sir?" He asks Geten, clearly expecting to at least get something out of the situation. Oh, right, Mischief said he loved quirks, yeah.
To be honest, Geten would have probably used more quirkless slurs than words in his answer, but it was the one subject he genuinely loved to talk about. Because out of everyone in the MLA leadership, he was the closest to being an actual quirk supremacist.
"It's called Ice Control." Geten replies with all the smugness that he could possibly gather. "It allows me to manipulate all ice in at least a kilometre distance around me. My manipulation is extremely detailed thanks to years of hard training. I've yet to hit an upper limit of weight of the ice I control and I actually managed to make my quirk reawaken, allowing me to create ice by rapidly freezing water in the vicinity. My meta-ability makes me…"
He was probably about to say some version of 'superior to someone quirkless like you' but Midoriya didn't let him do it.
"That's so cool!" He lets out, staring at Geten in sheer amazement. Geten actually stops speaking, because he certainly didn't expect that reaction. "You're practically invincible near large bodies of water! You could be a Top Ten Hero easily! Can I ask you a question? Can you use clouds?"
…
"Say that again?" Geten asks, staring at Midoriya with too much shock to radiate his innate superiority complex and/or his tendency to look at people with weak quirks as insects and people without them as something less than insects.
"I mean, if you can freeze water, it's not unfeasible to expect you to be able to freeze water vapour of sufficient density, right?" Midoriya asks as if that was the most obvious thing ever. "This would give you, especially if it was a water-dense rain cloud, potentially millions of tonnes of ice to manipulate even if there wouldn't be any rivers or lakes around!"
…
Geten opens his mouth. Then he closes his mouth. Then he raises his index finger. Then he opens his mouth again. Then he closes it again.
Then he stands up from his seat.
"I got to go, uhm, test something. Right now." He announces. And oh, yeah, Re-Destro recognizes the look on his face. There is no stopping him now. Geten found a way to make his meta-ability stronger.
"Yes, but could you at least…" Re-Destro says, but that's when Geten jumps out of the open window. "... use doors."
…
"There are perfectly fine doors in this building, why does everyone keep ignoring that fact tonight?!" Re-Destro complained loudly, pinching the bridge of his nose. "First Mischief, now Geten, and… wait." He retracts his hand and stares at the people in front of him. "Wait, tell me that he at least used the doors to come in."
Silence.
Goddamnit.
"Alright, so ignoring the fact that Geten just jumped out of the window on the 30th floor, we have decisions to make." Re-Destro decides to move to a different subject. "Namely, who is going to take care of Midoriya for about a year, because to be frank, we might want to be absolutely serious about it to avoid angering his mother and give him something interesting to do in the meantime."
Silence.
"Look, it's like unpaid, errr, almost unpaid internship." Re-Destro says again, Trumpet, Curious and Skeptic exchanging glances. "Don't do that to me."
"Are you sure that he doesn't know a bit too much already?" Skeptic decides to prove his utter lack of decency by just stating that openly. "I mean, aren't we all a bit of public figures?"
"Well, Midoriya, did you recognize anyone but me?" Re-Destro decides to ask the boy in question.
"Of course I did!" Midoriya completely ignores the unspoken threat in Skeptic's words. "That's Koku Hanabata, head of the Hearts and Minds Party! I'm going to vote for you when I get voting rights, sir!"
Once again, there is an awkward silence in the room. Trumpet looks like hearing that from a quirkless kid decked in a hero merch gave him some very complicated feelings that he wasn't sure how to unpack.
"Uhm, why?" He ends up asking before the kid can start listing other people in the room.
"Well, your party is pretty much the only one in the parliament that criticises the present Hero System." Midoriya quickly replies. "I love heroes, because they are awesome, yeah, but there are many people in the industry that aren't. My uncle, errr, Akaguro, tends to complain about how HPSC is just ruining the heroics. The Hearts and Minds Party is the only group that calls HPSC out on things, and it demands reform to the system, and that's a great idea!"
Once again, awkward silence in the room. It almost feels like the natural state of it for the night. But eventually, Trumpet clears his throat.
"I errr, thank you for your words of support." He speaks, using all his trained charisma to appear… normal, while doing so. He's not even lying, just shocked, and thus defaulting to his experience as a politician. "It's always great to see the younger generation be actually interested in the future of our country."
Midoriya is clearly beaming at the response, despite (most of the people in the room are good at reading others) clearly not feeling like it was all that genuine. Trust issues?
"The woman next to you is Chitose Kizuki, head of the Shoowaysha Publishing." Midoriya then moves over to another subject. "One of the biggest publishing houses in the country, which is famous for re-releases of various historical books that the HPSC found 'questionable'. Their censorship went so far that it's hard to find a historian writing about the Dawn of Quirks without having at least several of Shoowaysha Publishing prints in the bibliography of their books! I have almost all of them in my bedroom!"
…
"We've printed hundreds of books, you're trying to tell me that you have almost all of them in your bedroom?" Curious is doing her best not to stare at the kid in shock.
"Yes!" Midoriya doesn't appear to have caught up on Curious total look on shock. "Mom keeps saying that I could open a library and a hero merch museum out of what I have in my room alone."
Curious appears to have no idea how to react to that either. To be honest, Re-Destro himself has problems imagining a, what, 16-17 years old (at best) kid having a small library of books of ancient political radicals in his room?
"You're also a very successful journalist, and I really like your writing style!" Midoriya then casually keeps unrolling the package of surprises that he clearly is. "You're no longer welcome at governmental press conferences ever since you wrote about potential links between Lady Nagant and a number of high profile assassination of HPSC enemies after she went renegade and to be honest, I think that you were entirely right and the fact that government tried to censor you merely confirmed it!"
process stops working. She glances at Skeptic with an unspoken 'save me, I don't know what to do' on her face.
"Well, now a big question." Skeptic decides to help her. "Who am I?"
"You're Tomoyasu Chikazoku, board member of Feel Good Inc.!" Midoriya promptly denies expectations again. "This country's biggest telecommunication company! And while you're officially just a board member, you're suspected to be the most influential person to it, treated by some as a grey eminence behind its official CEO!"
Skeptic stares at him. He actually uses his hands to pull his hair up to be able to stare at him more successfully.
"Wait, how the hell do you know me?!" Skeptic then demands to know. "I have almost no public presence, and… how?!"
"Well, I, uhm, I was injured by a friend of mine, due to being a useless Deku…" He adds quietly, before returning to his normal volume of speech. "I had a lot of time, and, errr, I was a bit bored, so I decided to read about a random major company and find out as much as I could about it from my laptop, and it just happened to be Feel Good Inc! I know your board members, the heads of your major departments, the list of officially existing facilities, the trajectories of your communication satellites and…"
"I'll take him!" Skeptic quickly shouts to Re-Destro, interrupting Midoriya. "I'll gladly use an additional assis…"
"No way!" That wakes Curious up. "If he actually read all those books and a number of those using them in their bibliography at such a young age, then naturally, Shoowaysha Publishing would…"
"He…" Trumpet adds calmly. "... talked with me first."
Re-Destro, once again, pinches the bridge of his nose as his three lieutenants are having a vocal free-for-all over Midoriya Izuku. Midoriya in the meantime appears to stare at the chaos in front of him, looking like Re-Destro would probably look at an alien invasion, or All Might coming to ask him for an MLA membership.
He just doesn't compute the concept of several successful adults vying to have him spend his time with them.
Re-Destro cuts the chatter short, by raising his hand. Before turning to face Midoriya.
"Did you ever hear…" He says. "... about a man known as Destro?" Because honestly, unless the kid was bullshitting them, he was actually an interesting young man to know. And, hey, he gave Geten a new idea on how to make his quirk stronger in like ten seconds after knowing him, Yotsubashi is a veteran CEO, he knows talent when he sees it.
"Of course I did." Midoriya replies, slightly quieter (probably over still not computing). "Real name Chikara Yotsubashi, head of the Meta-Liberation Army, an organisation fighting for the rights of the quirked, back then called metahumans, during the Dawn of Quirks. He was eventually defeated following a brief civil-war, only to write a Meta-Liberation War book in his prison, before commiting suicide. I actually have one of Shoowaysha Publishing reprints of it in my room!"
… is there a hidden camera in the room or what? Is this Skeptic's idea of a practical joke, or…
"What's your opinion on his ideology?" Re-Destro asks another question.
"Well, he is treated as pretty much a terrorist nowadays, but I don't think it's fair." Midoriya replies. "I mean, quirks are beautiful, and awesome, and almost everyone has them today, but they are still treated by law as if they were something… err, alien? Quirk laws forbidding their usage aside from heroics or very strict licence systems are pretty weird to me?"
He actually shrinks a little, the last sentence coming out as a question. Is he afraid of talking about a villain like that? Then again, Trumpet and Curious were actually against HPSC, so he was giving them a benefit of doubt (or just said a lot, and then felt like it was too much).
"I mean, err, we have laws that forbid assault, theft or endangering others willingly, quirk or not quirk, so making an entire separate set of laws forbidding quirks while claiming that allowing people to use them in public would cause anarchy feels kinda, err, illogical." Midoriya eventually adds. "And I can't help but wonder if many villains would still be villains if they could use their quirks to earn money legally, without going through all the procedures needed to obtain a licence which is, I mean, it's almost impossible to do unless you have a perfectly impeccable record and a lot of money for all the proceedings and paperwork, and even then you can be refused if you have the 'wrong' type of quirk, so it's a bit… bad?"
He is clearly slightly fragmenting under the stare of four people, each of them extremely influential and powerful.
"I mean, I know he is a villain and so on, but, like, I can understand his ideology as one that got a lot of ideas right?" He ends up, clearly hoping that the stares would finally cease. Or at least before he shrinks too much.
Re-Destro, after a few more seconds of thinking, sighs loudly.
"We're keeping him." He announces his verdict.
"YES!" Skeptic and Curious shout in unison, raising their fists together. Trumpet is much more reserved, but the smile leaves no doubts about his opinion on that.
(***)
Midoriya Izuku: *starts giving MLA quirk analysis tips*
Heroes throughout the country: why do we hear boss music