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Midoriya Hisashi - formerly Shigaraki Katsurou and one of the most feared men in the world, the monster lurking underneath every hero’s floorboards whether they’ve heard of him or not - is brought low by a singular child.
A singular child with the brightest smile he’s ever seen and his mother’s nose.
Izuku toddles toward him with a determined expression and a heavily-chewed Ingenium action figure, the other chubby fist holding onto the coffee table for balance. Hisashi’s on the floor with him, legs sprawled out in front of him and grinning wide enough to make his cheeks hurt. His son’s eyes have finally settled into Inko’s brilliant green and nearly match the Wild Wild Pussycats onesie they got from somewhere, but the shock of white curls and freckles is all him.
Hisashi may or may not have lied to his wife when he said Izuku’s hair would get darker as he got older because, even a month away from two, it’s still just as pale as his own used to be. It won’t be a big deal, he thinks, because Masaru’s son is just as blond as his mother and that’s not an issue. Maybe he can shuffle it away as a mutation.
Izuku stumbles over his legs and lands in his lap with a high-pitched shriek of laughter, flailing limbs clipping him in the ear and squirming enough that it’s difficult to make sure he doesn’t knock his head against the floor. Hisashi makes an effort to kiss every single one of those freckles.
He almost feels like he’s getting slapped in the face with his past, if he’s being honest. He only has one picture of his family left, before his brother’s illness started showing more physical signs and everything else happened, and it’s kept carefully away from where Inko can get to it. But, trapped between them, is Kichirou.
Hisashi worries about it more than he’d like. Worries about the risk of it being genetic.
It’s not that this is his only child, though - biologically, maybe, but not the only son. Tenko’s going to get bored of Kurogiri at some point, so he needs to slip away soon to give him just that little bit of attention to keep him on track. If he can manage to shape him just right, there’ll be no need for his son to get involved in the grudge match with One for All.
“’Sashi.” Inko says, leaning against the doorway into the kitchen with a warm smile and breaking him out of his thoughts. “Dinner’s ready if you want to get Zukkun into his chair.”
Hisashi very carefully doesn’t make a face. His wife sees through it anyway with a laugh, heading back into the kitchen and leaving him to wrangle their child. Not that he minds overly much. Sweeping Izuku out of his lap and into his arms, he stands and blows a raspberry against his stomach.
His son laughs again, in the ear-piercing way he’s not sure he’ll ever get used to, and they follow Inko a moment later.
---
Izuku starts talking, not even a week after his second birthday but late enough that it worried both of them for the longest while, and doesn’t stop.
His favorite word is why, closely followed by a curse he definitely didn’t learn from their family. Hisashi will be the first to admit that he loves it. He loves sitting down with his babbling son and explaining as much as possible despite the fact that the same questions run Inko ragged. Loves going back and forth with Izuku while the television’s on the news, pointing out the different quirks and how they work.
Tenko is a quiet child, withdrawn and so very angry at the world, and Kurogiri makes a point out of only speaking when spoken to. Which is fine, because he needs that out of both of them. But there’s something delightful about the way his son doesn’t seem to be developing a filter. Hisashi can only encourage it.
He spares the briefest thought that Izuku might get his own quirk and the sheer amount of analysis that goes into it from how greedily the boy soaks up information. And dismisses it out of hand. If anything, he’ll turn out quirkless because of the extremely unstable nature of All for One or end up with something harmless and invisible like Kichirou did. Or his mother’s quirk, gentle despite the fact that several things count as both small objects and torture.
Either way, Hisashi still had a good two years before they had to worry about that nonsense.
---
Hisashi was wrong.
Hisashi has never been so wrong in his life.
It starts like a normal weekday, at least, which means he’s up at the crack of dawn when Izuku wakes up so Inko can sleep in. He spends a few hours with his son, talking about whatever has his interest at the moment, before beginning breakfast and the chore of wrangling him into clothes that aren’t All Might related. Masaru calls, asking if he can drop off their son as well through the cacophonous chaos in the background of the call that only barely exceeds his own.
Hisashi does so once Izuku’s ready for school. Tunes out the talk about the number one pro hero like he was born to do so and disrupts an argument about when he son is going to get his quirk. Finally drops the boys off and collapses against the steering wheel for a moment of respite.
But he’s got other things to do today, none of which involve a nap despite how badly he wants to sink into bed next to Inko and not wake up for the next century.
When he gets home that night, immaculately blood-free and missing a cufflink because Tenko threw a fit, it’s quiet. Too quiet. But the house also smells like cinnamon and vanilla and he can hear his son’s voice, low and babbling excitedly. Hisashi wanders to the kitchen after taking his shoes off and is rather surprised to find Inko bent over the oven, stabbing a toothpick into the middle of a western-style cake as his son watches on.
“Dad!” Izuku says as soon as he catches sight of him, abruptly launching himself out of the chair and into his arms. Hisashi nearly drops his bag in an attempt to catch the gremlin before he hits the floor. “Dad, look. I got my quirk!”
And grubby little hands smack against his cheeks before he has time to blink.
Hisashi isn’t proud to admit that he panics. It’s not a slow panic, either, it comes quick and seizes in his chest, beating against his ribs with every shallow breath. Because he can’t feel All for One. There’s a great big void of nothing where his quirk should be and it’s only a passing thought of relief that he met Inko in his true face before it’s consumed by the fact that he cannot feel his quirk.
His wife takes Izuku out of his arms, cradling him against her side with a soft murmur Hisashi can’t hear correctly.
But, slowly, the feeling comes back. He takes a breath, then another, and shakes the lingering traces of terror from his bones. When Hisashi comes back to himself, his son is staring at him with huge, worried eyes and the threat of tears and Inko has a knowing look on her face, like she knows the reason he was panicking or something close to it.
“…Dad?” Izuku asks, wobbly. Hisashi takes another breath.
“Alright.” He says, stepping forward to wrap his arms around his family. “It’s okay, Izuku. That’s a brilliant quirk, baby, you just startled me is all. There’s nothing wrong.”
His son starts crying in earnest, burying his face into Hisashi’s dress shirt with a high-pitched sob. He strokes the back of his head in what he hopes is a soothing manner, shooting a glance toward Inko. She shrugs a shoulder, leaning further into him.
“It runs in the family, on my mother’s side.” She says, like an entire classification of quirk like what he just experienced is no big deal. Hisashi wants to take it apart and put it back together again to see how it works, but he can’t just take it from his son. He’ll have to find someone to experiment on. Inko rubs a circle into Izuku’s back, pressing a kiss to his temple. “It’s pretty distant, though, so I never thought it’d show up.”
“Alright.” Hisashi says again, pulling back so he can look Izuku in the face instead. “Hey, you wanna tell me what you’ve found out about it so far, Izu?”
That, at least, gets a teary laugh and more babbling.
---
They settle on Suppression for a name and Izuku bounces from terrified that he hurt Hisashi to excitedly trying to find the limits. From what he can tell, it interferes directly with someone’s quirk factor when he touches them, effectively making them quirkless for a period of time - five minutes, at the longest, currently. Other erasure types don’t seem to dive as deeply as that, though - the one he managed to get his hands on could only make the target believe they couldn’t access it.
Izuku chooses a pair of gloves to not accidentally use his new quirk when he doesn’t want to. Hisashi doesn’t know how they ended up with the most garish pair known to earth as a whole, but apparently All Might-themed gloves are made available to the unlucky citizens of Musutafu. At this point, he’s considering just murdering the hero in his bed so he doesn’t have to deal with the sheer obsession his son exudes.
Izuku also, somehow, finds a hero with a quirk like his own immediately after that. Because of course he does.
They’re young and underground and the subject of multiple whispers around his side of things from the sheer nature of his work. The name’s kind of cheesy, for a hero, but Hisashi has also been indulging his son with the old UA Sports Festivals and research binges about where the winners have ended up, so it’s partially his own fault. Still, it’s sort of cute to see his son running around with the brightest pair of plastic goggles he’s ever seen and pretend to help people.
He has to say, though, a breather from hearing about his nemesis all the time is not something he’s going to take for granted any time soon.