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2018-09-27
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The Long Way Forward

Summary:

Inko has one Quirk. That's it. Only one. She's an unremarkable woman with an extremely remarkable son, and there's nothing particularly special about her.

At least...that's what people think. Truth is, she's lived a lot longer than most and will continue to live past them. All because of a Quirk. Her original Quirk.

Not the Quirk given to her by a man called All for One.

Notes:

(See the end of the work for notes.)

Work Text:

She wasn’t known as Midoriya Inko, not yet at least, when she originally met Him. Things had been chaotic, terrifying then. She’d been focused on surviving, on moving forward. In getting through a society that was rapidly changing.

The Age of Quirks had come, and no one was prepared.

She’d heard whispers of Him, horror stories. About His avarice, and his ‘offers’. A Quirk, but if you took it, you were his. A deal with a devil, but a deal many were taking. Even though Quirks were in a minority then, Quirks meant power, and power meant safety. Power meant you couldn’t be pushed around or hurt. A Quirk meant you could survive, even though you had to swear yourself to Him.

And she made that exact mistake.

A minor gravitational Quirk, allowing her to float small objects to and fro. A Quirk, she realized later, that He’d given up because it was just so weak. He could steal better, hoard stronger telekinesis Quirks. Nothing He ‘gave’, she noticed later, only later, was something He couldn’t improve upon.

But she’d taken it, said she’d follow Him, because He gave her that Quirk, He gave her that power and safety. And why shouldn’t she follow Him? Why shouldn’t she be loyal?

A simple reason.

He was, is, and will always be, a monster.

So she turned against him, and followed someone better. The first true Hero.

One for All. Midoriya Yuuto.

Her husband.

 

 

Unfortunately, Yuuto doesn’t live very long, not the way she does, not the way He does. Yuuto’s legacy though, the legacy of One for All…That keeps living. Keeps living the same way she does, the same way He does.

Because here’s the irony, here’s where she’d been wrong.

She did have the Quirk, but like Yuuto’s, like His, it’s an invisible Quirk.

Quirk: Complete Immortality.

She could have done without discovering it via being shot in the face though.

 

For the next five generations of One for All, for the next five of her husband’s successors, she works in the shadows to help them. It’s only around when Reo passes One for All off to Shimura Nana that she’s forced to leave. That she can’t keep on helping the One for All users, for the most aggravating of reasons.

The utter bastard known as as All for One, her brother in law, the fratricidal jackass, realizes who she is. Realizes that the advisor, the trainer, the mentor to the five successors, are all Yuuto’s wife. That she, who had accepted a Quirk from Him, is still alive and fighting against him instead of keeping her vow.

And well, Inko can admit now.

She’d have to have left even if All for One hadn’t noticed her.

After all, how do you explain to your great granddaughter why you put her grandmother into foster care? Especially when your great granddaughter is succeeding your husband’s legacy?

Inko is certain the gods are laughing at her.

(Izuku makes her even more certain of that).

 

 

Nana’s accession and His discovery lead to her leaving for the United States, and she spent almost thirty years keeping her head down, and living in a country where a full ninety percent of its population had Quirks. Difficult to feign no Quirk and have a normal life, but she had to. He knew she had a gravitational Quirk from Him, and knew she had a native immortality Quirk. She had to keep her head down and hope He forgot about her.

And eventually He does, because Nana dies, and her husband’s legacy passes on once again, but it’s worse this time, so much worse. Because every other time, it hadn’t been one of their descendents. It hadn’t been her great grandchild, or grandchild, or child before. Yes, Reo, Hinata, Sora, Kei, and Kiyome had been her friends. Yes, they had been her students. But they hadn’t been her’s, not the way Nana had been.

But now the Symbol of Peace is All Might. She’s not entirely sure why he’d originally made his debut in the United States, and his antics had damn near given her a heart attack, but he’s obviously the new One for All user. She knows Yuuto’s power as intimately as she knows her own, and All Might has it. The strongest so far, and maybe the one who’ll be enough to destroy Him?

She hopes so, because if not, the decision she made to return to Japan and take advantage of an old plan of her’s and Yuuto’s would be stupid.

But...but with Nana’s death. That last little bit of her husband and her, the last of their descendents is gone.

So why not use his frozen sperm to get herself pregnant?

It’ll be fine.

It’ll work out.

 

She’s assured when Izuku is four that he’s Quirkless.

She’s assured when Izuku is nine that All for One is finally dead.

Neither of those assurances are true.

 

 

Izuku is fifteen and has One for All.

Izuku is fifteen and All for One is alive (and at least not well).

Izuku is fifteen, and Nana had a grandson, and that grandson had tried to kill Izuku.

Izuku is fifteen, and All for One knows he exists.

Inko looks at Yagi-san’s bowed, injured figure and sighs.

“Yagi-san? We have a few things to discuss before I can even begin to contemplate allowing Izuku to live at UA. And they all start over two hundred years ago and a war between my husband and his elder brother.”

Notes:

Yuuto is a name that can mean Person who Helps or Helpful Harmony which seems very apt for the first OFA user.

She does put the name Midoriya Hisashi down on Izuku's birth certificate (since she's not willing to take a chance with Izuku's life).

No, Nana and Toshinori are *not* aware of Inko's existence (not until Inko tells Toshinori at least) and no, AFO is not aware that Izuku is his nephew.