It's been awhile. There's no plot-changing stuff in this chapter sadly, just a lot of set-ups. Hope you enjoy my version of Hisashi :3
Inko woke up to smell of burning eggs and a panicked shout of a man. When she fluttered her eyes open, the floor of Izuku's room had turned into her own bed.
Her memories took time to catch up, but she eventually remembered crying herself to sleep in Izuku's room every night, hugging every single object that reminded her of her son. She faintly recalled Hisashi carrying her to her bed last night.
"Hisashi..." she rolled her husband's name on her tongue absentmindedly. It felt like she was forgetting something.
Hisashi...
Burnt eggs...
The slow realization couldn't have hit her harder than her face planting to the floor in pleasant surprise.
He was back!
Her husband was back!
"Hisashi!"
She pulled herself up and stumbled her way to the kitchen. Smoke flew out of the entrance straight into her mouth, forcing a violent cought out of her.
"Inko?" Hisashi's sweet, sweet voice she had dearly missed called out to her. "G-go wait on the couch. I-I'll cook for us today. You just sit."
Inko had half a mind to pull him out of the kitchen and salvage whatever she could of their breakfast, but she also had another half telling her to just listen to the man and rest. In the end, the soft couch was much more tempting than the smoke trying to burn her lungs off.
After a whole ten minutes of what appeared to be a war in the kitchen, Hisashi finally returned to the safe homeland that was the living room.
Looking at the war-torn mishmash of food in her plate, it made her reconsider if they should have ordered a delivery instead. Hesitantly, Inko took a bite out of it, encouraged by Hisashi's expectant eyes.
She had already lowered her standard for the taste, but even that didn't prepare her for the assault on her tongue. Aware of the eyes on her, she braved herself and swallowed the food, shuddering as it made its journed down her throat to her stomach.
"Y-you have improved, honey," she forced a smile.
"Have I?" Her husband grinned proudly.
Silently, she swore she was never gonna let this man touch a stove ever again.
To distract him while she hid the nasty existence under the couch, Inko asked him about his life in the states. Hisashi excitedly listed off the things he'd done and what he'd missed about Japan after being away for so long. The topic about American heroes inevitably shifted to their son.
Perhaps it was too much of a wishful thinking to not expect him to bring it up. He came back all they way from across the globe after all.
"It was my fault," Inko admitted. Even if she wasn't directly involved, it was partly her inaction that led to Izuku's suicide.
Hisashi gently took her hands in his and patted them, his eyes kind and patient as he pulled her head onto his shoulder.
"Tell me everything."
And so she did. She dumped on him every lump of painful truth from her throat, she choked on air as she recounted the events that led to that day, and she cried on his shoulder. And cried. And cried.
She'd been ignorant of her son's suffering. This was her punishment, to carry this guilt for her entire life.
"Inko, what do you want to do now?" Hisashi asked once she calmed down, his gentle fingers caressing her hair. This gesture used to be so romantic, but now it was just soothing, a form of comfort she'd so dearly missed.
"I don't know," she answered him truthfully against his shoulder. "I'd always thought I'd watch Izuku grow up, give him advice about girls, see him make his own family..." she listed on, wistful of what could have been.
"What about your dreams?"
She chuckled in spite of herself. "I'm not like either of you boys. I don't have big dreams. I just want to live a nice life, you know?"
"Then why don't you come with me? To America?"
Inko blinked and sat herself straight. She looked into his eyes. There was no joking there. He was serious.
"I... I don't know a lick of English. How can I live there?" Inko tried to argue.
Hisashi shook his head.
"We have language interpretors, so that's not an issue. But that's beside the point." He pulled his hands away from hers only to rest them on her shoulders.
"Inko, what do you have left here? We don't have any relatives, and I know it's killing you to keep living here. I don't want to leave you like this when I have to go back. Please, come with me."
Inko listened to his plea, trying and failing to find any reason why she should object.
She knew he was right. There was nothing this country could offer her except to be a reminder of her failure as a mother. As she looked around the living room, she faintly remembered a laughing child's voice of times long past. A voice neither she nor anybody else would hear again.
She sighed, finding herself in his gaze once again.
"Alright. I'll go with you."
With great reputation came a great deal of applications from heroes who wished to be a staff at UA.
From Nezu's experience, these applicants could be loosely categorized into three groups.
First were the teachers. Pro-heroes who wanted to retire or didn't want to deal with on-field business generally went into this category. Wanting to educate the next generation was the common feeling among these people.
Next was what Nezu liked to call the "normal people who just wanted a job". These included but were not limited to; cleaners, cooks, handymen, security guards, the list went on. These were the people who wouldn't mind much if they didn't get to work here. Though the pay certainly contributed a lot to the reason they applied in the first place.
Then there were the rejecters. While UA prided itself in getting an infinite number of applicants each year, it also didn't shy away from offering a position to heroes deemed suitable for the job. It wasn't uncommon for some of these heroes to reject the offer for multitudes of reasons. This was usually nothing to be concerned over.
All Might himself rejecting the offer however...
"Have you found a successor, then?" Nezu had asked All Might during their secret discussion disguised as an interview.
"No, I haven't," the lanky man replied, his eyes not once leaving the action figure made in his image. He had been holding it since he entered the room.
Nezu didn't poke, for there was no fun in getting the answer handed to him. No, no. He'd rather figure it out on his own as to why the pillar of modern society himself was grieving like a father who'd just lost a child.
It was a long stretch of silence, accompanied by the pitter patter of Nezu sipping his tea to (failingly) elicit an annoyed reaction from the man, before All Might finally deigned Nezu worthy of hearing his voice.
"I'm thinking of opening a centre for quirkless children. Less and less people are born without quirks nowadays, but that doesn't mean they don't exist. I'd like to remedy that."
That had been yesterday.
Today, Nezu sat behind his desk with a pile of folders decorating his line of sight. While it was easy to assume All Might was just looking for possible quirkless candidates for One For All, it was equally likely the man was simply acting on his guilt.
After all, not many quirkless children died from suicide a week ago. And very much so if they'd conveniently chose the spot All Might would later be identified in for simply not smiling.
It was all over the news! The All Might, handling criminals with not so much an emotion on his face. Just pure, calm and controlled anger. Pro-heroes were instilled with a sense of self-preservation, so they stayed out of the man's way. Whatever civillians or reporters unlucky enough to catch his attention that day, they'd be having nightmares for days to come.
Or that was what the news claimed.
Regardless, something had set off All Might's anger, and that something was a dead boy fifteen years of age, whose picture smiled back at Nezu through the folder in his hands.
Midoriya Izuku.
He committed the name to memory.
Li Zhanyu was a man of many names. Dad was how his children called him. Tao was his name as a Wild Bunch researcher. He didn't have the name for a concerned adult yet, but he'd look into it after his session with Takato today.
"Your parents told me you've been having episodes of headaches," he began as he looked at the boy sitting before him.
While the room was made to be as child-friendly as possible with all imaginable colors in the rainbow spectrum, having an adult towering over a nine-year-old obviously still felt unnerving. If not, then Takato wouldn't find a reason to fidget every second and looking like he wanted to be anywhere but here.
"I guess," the boy answered, eyes refusing to meet Zhanyu's own. "It comes and goes. Sometimes it's bad enough I pass out."
"So I've heard," Zhanyu nodded, noting it down on his clipboard. This had happened before when the boy first activated his quirk, likely emotionally related.
"Have you been feeling troubled recently. Like from that day..." He vaguely referred to the suicide, not wanting to be reminded of it any more than he wanted to scar the poor boy.
Hearing that, Takato grew silent before he slowly nodded.
"I read the newspaper. Midoriya-san is quirkless."
Zhanyu carefully broached the topic, noting Takato wasn't bothered by the act itself but rather of the person's circumstance.
"Do you feel sorry for Midoriya?"
Takato nodded. "He's a lot like me, but he never got his quirk. I don't like how everyone else bullied him just because he's different. He doesn't have people like Jen or Juri either. It... It scares me. Would I have been the same if I didn't have my friends then..."
Zhanyu smiled softly and patted the boy's hand. The gesture thankfully comforted the boy enough to bring out a thin smile on his lips.
"My wife always tells me to not dwell on the what-ifs," Zhanyu said. "If you keep wondering about what could have been, you lose sight of what is right in front of you."
Takato frowned, looking down with clenched fists. "I know you and everyone else in the Wild Bunch cares about me, but it's just unfair. What happened to Midoriya-san was wrong."
Zhanyu nodded, agreeing wholeheartedly with the sentiment.
"You're a nice boy, Takato. And you're right that it's unfair. Which is why the government and everyone else are trying to do something about it. So leave it to us adults, okay? Your job now is to be a kid, not worry about stuff like this."
Takato slumped in his seat, looking much like how his own children would on their bad days. Zhanyu held his breath, trying to call upon all his many experiences as a father.
"Takato, look at me." The boy did as told, though not without a defeated grunt. "Do you remember? When I first met you, my son was the one who treated you that way. But then you became fast friends. Do you know what that means?"
Takato shrugged half-heartedly, to which he replied with a smile.
"It means that people can be good just as they can be bad. What happened to Midoriya was regretful, and it could have easily happened to you as well. But that doesn't mean every quirkless person out there are treated unfairly."
"I guess," Takato said, pursing his lips. "Doesn't mean I can't be upset about it though."
Zhanyu assented to that.
"If you still feel bothered by it, I'll be here to listen."
Takato looked up and drew his lips into a thin smile. "Thank you, Tao."
"Alright, now let's talk about other side-effects we might not have noticed..." And they went on to talk about various stuff regarding the boy's mental and physical health.
When their session was done, Dolphin took over to check on Takato's proficiency with his quirk. The boy loved this part of their check-ups the most, so the laugh that Zhanyu heard later was much more the nine-years-old that he was.
That evening when he drove Takato home, he briefly glanced at the boy beside him. The boy's favorite plushy, Impmon, wasn't there. Zhanyu chalked it up to him just forgetting it at home, but recalling all the time Zhanyu had seen the plushy glued to the boy, it kind of made him curious.
Makino Ruki remembered when she was denied her freedom in her own body, a dark time when she could only lay down on the bed like the handicap that she was. But miracles existed in this world, and it manisfested to her in the form of her quirk.
It coursed through her vein, coaxing her medically paralyzed body into moving whichever direction she willed it to. Today, the direction was the general hospital, a place filled with similarly paralyzed patients with no hope to walk again.
"You mean I can play football again?" The child a few years younger than her asked with big, wide eyes. His parents watched them from the sideline, their expression just as hopeful as their son.
Ruki nodded, bending down so she was on eye level with the wheelchair-bound boy.
"You can not just play football. You can run, jump, and even climb trees." She smirked. "I heard you were a good climber. Saved a kitten, didn't you?"
"I did!" The boy nodded enthusiastically. He turned to his mother. "You hear that, mom? I can climb again!"
Ruki smiled when she saw the boy's mother rolling her eyes good-naturedly.
"Yes, yes. I heard."
The dad didn't smile, only concern etched across his face. "Will the process be painful?"
The nurse accompanying them shook her head and patted Ruki's shoulders as if she was proudly presenting a trophy.
"Not to worry. Our Ruki here just needs to hold your son for a few second and voila, he'll walk again."
"He won't feel a thing." Ruki nodded in confirmation before adding as an afterthought. "Actually, he still won't feel anything at all after this. He can walk, but he'll still be physically paralyzed.
"It is permanent, right?"
The boy looked annoyed when his mother went on to ask another question. The nurse offered him a candy to placate him which he gladly accepted.
Ruki nodded again. "You won't need to refresh the quirk or anything, but just be sure to stay away from nullifying quirks. My quirk would be cancelled until the nullifying effect is taken care of."
That seemed to satisfy the parents. The boy too was nearing his patience limit.
He grumbled. "I don't care about how the quirk works. I just wanna walk again."
"Alright, I hear you, kid." Ruki complied to his demand and held out a hand. "Give me your hand."
They held each other's hand in silence, invisible tension filling out the room.
Though nobody else could feel it, Ruki's quirk zapped from inside her straight to her palm and into the boy's hand. The boy's eyes widened in surprise, no doubt having felt the foreign quirk coursing through his body. With her job done, Ruki stepped back to allow the boy to test his legs out.
Her quirk only required a will to work. It was the boy's desire to walk that fueled it and forced his immobile legs to move again.
The boy stumbled forward one step, using his wheelchair to hoist himself up. Two steps. Another step right after another. Wheh his hair tickled just under Ruki's nose, the boy turned around to dash around the hospital room, jumping on bed and the like.
"I can walk! I can walk again! Mom, dad! I can walk!"
"That's not walking, that's running!" His dad said back at him, happy tears pooling in his eyes. He and his wife hugged each other, sending Ruki a silent thanks through their sobs.
In a violation of patients' privacy or something, she wouldn't know, the nurse beside her took out her phone to snap some photos of the running boy and showed them to the parents.
Ruki smiled at the scene, glad she was able to help another person who was just like her all those years ago.
Alright, this chapter has been cooking on my folder for months and only today I added Ruki's scene. Burning out is no joke (;;;・_・)
But anyway, do I still have enough brain juice for the next several chapters? Kinda. I might not be able to post on time, but I do have a rough outline of what's gonna happen for the next four chapters.
Regardless, I hope you enjoyed and a good day to you.