Chapter Text
Izuku sniffled, snot dripping down his nose. Inko sighed as she stared at her baby boy, tears welling up in her eyes, as she placed a bowl of steaming hot katsudon in front of her son - his favorite. Izuku stared at it listlessly, pouting slightly as Inko wiped his snot away. He reluctantly took a bite, and then another. After a few seconds of hesitation, he started devouring his food. He was feeling not quite better, especially not with the unchangeable diagnosis of the quirk doctor, but at the very least a little bit lighter.
Inko smiled and ruffle his hair gently.
“You know, Izuku, there is more than one way of becoming a hero. After all, if you do something that will make people feel better, you are already one-”
And while Izuku knew in his own childish way that his mother was merely trying to comfort him, that small but pure and unyielding hunger for heroics inside of him even at such a young age had already latched unto her words as a means to an end.
He idly stared at his food as he thought of the endless possibilities.
As luck would have it or as if the universe itself nodded to his resolve and decided to provide him the opportunity, the very next day, Katsuki gets injured beating up Izuku’s bullies.
“Kaa-chan,” Izuku implored, with the utter seriousness fit for the apocalypse. Or in this case, the inattention of his mother. Inko stifled a chuckle as her son pouted.
“Yes, Izuku?”
Her son sighed petulantly, his cherubic cheeks gaining a tint of red at having to explain himself yet again.
“Can you teach me how to make a rice ball?”
“Of course.”
Inko placed a little stool near the kitchen sink for her son to stand on, as Izuku brought out one of his tiny notebooks that he normally reserved for his future plans as a hero. He eagerly turned to the first page, and Inko smiled at his enthusiasm. "First, cleanliness is a must. We want to avoid all the bad, very bad germs getting into the yummy food we'll eat." Izuku nodded seriously as he wrote down each word.
Inko washed her hands and then dried them on a clean towel that hung on their kitchen wall. She grabbed their rice container and placed it near their rice cooker. She then pulled out a small measuring cup lined with numbers. Inko used the cup to scoop out rice grains from the container, and then showed it to Izuku. "We use this cup here to measure the rice we'll be cooking."
"This number here-" Inko pointed to a line. "Means that there is one cup of rice. When this is actually cooked, it'll grooooow just like you will when you're older." She spreads her arms and Izuku giggles, copying her. "By then, it'll be actually be two cups of rice, enough for maybe both of us when we're not too hungry. Before all that, we need to wash the rice first."
Inko then dropped the grains into the pot. She placed the pot inside the kitchen sink, turning the knob and letting the water flow into the pot. Izuku tiptoed just a bit to observe how she rinsed the grains.
"We need one cup of water for every cup of rice, so you could use a cup again to measure the water. But Mama will show you a super secret hero technique." Izuku gasped with all the amazement of a child idolizing their mother. "You have a hero technique too, Mama?"
"Of course! All Mamas need their super hero secrets because we love our kids so much." Inko declared as she pressed a kiss unto his head. "The secret is this little pointer finger right here, and that first little line you see on your skin by the tip of your finger."
Inko carefully drained the pot of any excess water and then sunk her finger until it was barely touching the top of the grains. "If the water reaches that line when your finger is touching the rice, then you have enough water. Tada! Exact water, no need to measure."
Izuku clapped, and then very carefully wrote that down what Inko said in his notebook outlined in red "SUPER HERO TECHNIQUE - DON'T FORGET!!"
"Now we put this pot back into our rice cooker and make sure it's turned on, and we patiently wait. When we hear the small ding or we see this small circle here light up, we know that it's done." Inko points to the front of the device with the words WARM and COOKED.
"While we wait for the rice, we can prepare our yummy filling. Can you please get the tuna, the mayo-"
The day after that, Izuku gave Katsuki his favorite rice ball, as his best friend grumbled over his scrapes and wounds.
His best friend scowled as he grabbed the rice ball, and bit it aggressively with all the power of his tiny body. Izuke stared, fascinated, as the scowl slowly turned into a tiny smile with each bite Katsuki took.
Izuku blinked, and blinked.
He smiled – and inexplicably, the future shifts.