Chapter Text
Inko Midoriya was worried.
To be fair, she worries a lot these days. Having a kid like Izuku will do that to you. Not to say he’s a bad kid - she wouldn’t trade her little ball of sunshine for anything.
However, her son wants to be a hero. It's a noble goal. One she can respect - especially given her status as a moderately successful underground hero herself - but that won’t stop her from worrying.
After all, Izuku is a kind, selfless little boy. You could say he has the true heart of a hero. That sounds great at first, but it’s those types most likely to die in the line of duty. The kind of people who refuse to leave people behind, refuse to leave even one life unsaved, to do everything they can until they can do no more.
And that’s not to mention his current lack of a quirk. Not that he won’t have one - he hasn’t turned five yet, and late bloomers exist - and not to say that that would make it fine - even the strongest quirks don’t make you invincible - but a quirkless hero?
It's not impossible, but the uphill battle he’d have to fight would be incredible.
These were the thoughts swirling in Inko Midoriya’s head as she cooked breakfast, before an amazingly cheery voice knocked her out of her head.
“Mom, look!”
She turned, only to be met with Izuku, her little ball of joy, staring up at her with bright stars in the center of his eyes, beaming with the biggest smile she’d ever seen him wear.
“I got my quirk!”
---
One short doctor visit later, it’s confirmed. Izuku’s got a quirk.
Unfortunately, they aren’t entirely sure what it is. Izuku himself claims two changes - his eyesight has improved, and his body feels strangely fluid. The doctors were not much help there - besides confirming the presence of quirk factor in his blood, and giving him an eye test that showed his eyesight was better than normal, but only barely beyond the limit of normal humans, they did not discover much.
Of course, none of that stopped Izuku from filling as many pages in his notebook as he could with notes, tests, and experiments about his quirk and its uses.
He quickly discovered an increased sense of spatial awareness and faster reflexes, which he could easily act on with surprising precision for a four year old.
However, not all was good. One day, a few weeks after receiving his quirk, Izuku was watching his mother cook dinner in the kitchen, when she dropped the pork she wanted to fry into the oil a bit too forcefully, causing a splash.
The resulting oil burn on her arm was nothing she was worried about - she’d been cooking for decades at this point - but the sudden cry of pain from her son definitely was something to worry about.
As she turned, her first thought was that he must’ve snuck up closer while she was focused on cooking, and gotten hit by the splash as well, when this wasn’t the case, and he was still seated at the table, she was concerned.
As she went over to check on him, the concern grew - he had a burn, and not only did it look exactly like hers, it was in the exact same place on his body, but mirrored.
It was then she remembered - just about a year beforehand, Izuku had been diagnosed with a rare medical condition: Mirror-Touch Synesthesia.
Mirror-Touch Synesthesia is a sensory processing disorder that causes one to experience sensations they see others experience mirrored on their own body. For example, if someone with the condition witnesses someone else get poked in their left arm, they will feel a phantom sensation of being poked in that spot on their right arm.
Izuku himself had gotten used to this condition a while ago, being born with it, and had also gotten used to hiding his own reactions to not get called out as weird by the other kids at school, so Inko had nearly completely forgotten he had it.
Calling up the doctor, she was informed that no, wounds being mirrored completely is not normal for people suffering from Mirror-Touch Synesthesia, even if he has a particularly strong case of it.
The only remaining possibility is that it has something to do with his quirk. What exactly that is remains unknown, though it could be simply that his improved eyesight has more to it than previously thought.
Whatever the case, the doctors have no solutions to offer, and neither does Inko, so she advises Izuku to just be careful and that’s that.
---
Four years later…
---
Izuku trembled in his seat. He kept his eyes towards the front of the room. He wasn’t focusing on the clock, but he didn’t need to. His improved eyesight allowed him to take in his whole field of view at once in perfect clarity.
School was almost out. It was a Friday, which meant the weekend. And the weekend meant a break from his torment.
He tried not to wince as he noticed someone in the front pinch their own arm. Reacting would make it worse.
He’d never understand what was so fun about torturing him with his condition.
It hadn’t been so bad after he’d gotten his quirk. Other than the incident with his mother, he hadn’t directly witnessed any injuries. That was, until several weeks later, when Kacchan got into a fight with another kid, and Izuku was there to see it.
It's surreal, suffering injuries you watch inflicted on another. Izuku felt like he’d never get over how strange it was for the marks to form on his body, the pain coursing into his system from who knows where.
It wasn’t long after that he became the school bullies’ favorite plaything.
Every time they wanted to beat a kid up or have a fight, they’d grab Izuku if they could, and make him watch. Make him suffer. It was strange, the viciousness of elementary school kids. A likely combination of entitlement and lack of understanding of the pain others can experience, but strange nonetheless.
Izuku endured in silence.
His mother didn’t know. He didn’t want to bother her. He was never sure of what she actually did for a living, just that it had obscene hours, and left her almost constantly tired, bar the occasional week breaks she got.
He couldn’t bring himself to burden her when she was clearly already dealing with so much.
So even as his condition advanced, and all it took was a look of hatred directed at him to make him feel pain and draw black scars on his torso, he never spoke up.
Until one day he got home from school after a particularly bad situation. The other victim, the one he’d been forced to witness, couldn’t even walk after. Izuku was used to a lot of pain at this point, so he was able to make his way home. If everything was going to be normal that day, his mother would be out at work, so he didn’t even bother making himself look presentable before walking back. That was a mistake. As he walked into the house, both his and his mother’s eyes widened.
“Izuku! What in the world happened to you?” she spoke, horror slowly filling her voice.
Izuku’s mind was on overdrive. He wasn’t prepared for this - he was still mentally recovering from the attack.
“I- I, uh -” he began to stammer out, before he swayed forward, pain he had been suppressing flowing back in full force as he began to experience a panic attack.
Noticing his pained movements, she quickly swooped in and swaddled him with a slow and careful hug.
“It’s okay honey, Mom’s here now. I’ve got you. Just breathe. Can you do that for me? In, count to four, out count to four.”
Izuku tried to focus on his mother’s voice as he began to control his breathing.
“There we go, in and out, just like that.” she cooed, hugging him tighter, only to loosen up when he flinched from the pain of his scars being pressed in.
As he began to stabilize himself, his emotions once again surged to the forefront. He began to choke back a sob as the last remnants of his wish to not involve his mother held on - but she noticed.
“It’s okay Izuku. You can cry! Crying is good. Just let it all out.”
At his mother’s words, Izuku finally let go. The emotions he’d been holding in for years poured out of him like a waterfall. He sobbed violently, choking out patches of sentences -
“Why me?”
“What did I do?”
“Why do they hate me?”
It was only a few minutes when he passed out, whether that be from finally letting the pain take him, exhaustion, or relief at finally not holding in such a secret anymore, but it felt like hours to his mother.
She quickly moved him to his bedroom and laid him on his bed, but not before putting him in more suitable sleeping clothes, giving her the opportunity to witness the horrible patchwork of scars, new and old, across his whole body.
A violent anger rose within the depths of her being at the sight.
People - likely other kids no less - had hurt her child like this. And for what reason? Izuku didn’t seem to know if his choked cries from earlier were any indication. That left two possibilities: discrimination based on his condition, and general senseless bullying. Maybe even both.
She may have just retired - in fact, it's the reason she was home early - but that didn’t mean she’d lost her contact network. As an underground hero she had direct connections to several police departments, legal firms, private investigator organizations, and information brokers throughout the local region.
As Izuku slept soundly in his room, his mother worked tirelessly to ensure not only would nothing like this happen to her child ever again, but also the school system responsible for facilitating and allowing it would not emerge unscathed.
She spent hours researching, making calls, and sending emails. Beyond getting justice for her son, she also had to come up with a plan for his future. He’d always idolized heroes, All Might especially, and it had been clear that his dream of becoming one was ingrained into the very core of his being. Inko thought it quite unlikely that he’d have a change of heart even considering what he’d been through, but she knew she’d have to ask to make sure.
Thus she planned out two paths forward for him. Either way, he’d be pulled out of school. She knew he was a smart kid, and had even considered switching schools before to foster that, but now the choice was clear. Then, if he had a change of heart, and decided against being a hero, she’d send him to the best school she could afford with her long term investments stored up from paychecks over the years. If he still wanted to be a hero, she decided she’d set him up with online schooling and train him.
She finally understood that as a mother there would be no way she could stop worrying about her own child, and the only thing she could do was make sure he was as prepared as possible for his choice of lifestyle. It was a freeing thought. She wasn’t a top tier hero, but being underground and her quirk being what it is meant she had to rely a lot on tactics, strategy, and good old quirkless martial techniques.
Combine that with the connections she had and she knew she could put together a perfect plan to make Izuku as ready as possible to enter a hero university when he turned 18.
Checking the time, she realized how late it's become and decides to turn in for the night.
But as she goes to bed, light reflecting through her window draws her eye to a shelf on the wall of her bedroom. On it lies a display case containing an old family heirloom of hers. It’s a blindfold - of exquisite make, but simple design. Primarily white, with a red pattern embroidered diagonally upon it. It gives her an idea, but that can wait until morning.
The next morning, Izuku wakes to the familiar sound and smell of breakfast cooking. He nearly falls off the bed as the memories of what transpired yesterday hit him all at once, but he holds strong.
As he gets up and walks to the kitchen however, he notices something. His just-woke-up brain fog clears much quicker than normal and he feels… refreshed? It's an interesting feeling, especially given the suffering he’s been through in the past few years.
Turning to look at him as he enters the kitchen, his mother seems to notice as well.
“You must’ve slept like a baby, huh? You can’t bottle up your emotions like that. Letting them out is healthy.”
“Y-yeah. Thanks, Mom.”
Sitting down, she finishes up plating breakfast and sits down across from him.
“Of course honey, you know you can talk to me about anything, right? If you hide something like this from me again I’ll be very sad.”
He nods, and goes to pick up his chopsticks, but she holds up a hand to stop him.
“Hold on. Before you eat, I have a gift for you.”
Grabbing something from the counter behind her, she holds it out for him. Taking it in gentle hands, he turns it over, observing the excellent weave of the small piece of fabric.
“It’s a family heirloom of mine, passed down for who knows how long. If you couldn’t tell, it's a blindfold. I thought it might help with the pain.”
Tying it over his eyes, Izuku is surprised at how it seems to selectively obscure his vision. If he doesn’t focus, he only sees silhouettes, which would definitely prevent his condition from triggering, but by focusing his quirk-enhanced eyesight he can see almost as if it wasn’t there. It was perfect.
Trying not to cry again, he manages to choke out a response.
“T-thanks, Mom. It’s perfect.”
“Yeah, it really fits you, kid. Almost better than it fit me.”
Izuku’s eyes went wide behind the blindfold at the unknown voice speaking to him.
“Wha- who are you?”
His mother looks at him confused.
“What are you talking about, Izuku honey?”
“You can’t - “
“No, she can’t hear me.”
Izuku nearly leaped out of his chair as he heard the voice again and finally noticed who it was coming from.
In the corner of the room, where there was nobody before, there was a man wearing what looked like the garments of ancient Chinese royalty. In addition, he had on the exact blindfold Izuku was wearing, and a tattoo of a centipede could be seen coming down across his right cheek.
“Izuku!” his mom said, a bit louder and with a bit of worry behind it.
“I’m fine mom - “
“No Izuku, your face! Go look in a mirror!”
Izuku was confused but he did as she said. Once he got into the bathroom, he stopped cold. The exact tattoo he saw on the strange… ghost? Was on his face as well.
“That’s not the only one.” The strange ghost? Said.
“Wha-”
“Check your back and left leg.”
“Doing as he was told, Izuku saw there were two more centipede tattoos, one running along his spine from the base of his neck to his tailbone, and another one that wrapped around both of his hips before coiling around his left leg.
“I’m not sure exactly what they are, but I think it has something to do with our quirk.”
“Our -”
“Yeah, our quirk. You’ve inherited my quirk, little descendant. It’s a bit of a special one.”
Izuku’s brain was running at a thousand miles a minute at this point. Ideas about his quirk, this strange ghost - no, his ancestor, ideas about the blindfold and how it triggered this, the tattoos, everything was happening just a bit too fast. Turning to the man, he was about to unleash a mumblestorm the likes of which the world has yet to witness but he was stopped by a held out hand.
“I can tell you have a lot of questions. Moumantai (take it easy), little one. I will answer them, in time. Your first priority should be your mother. Make sure she knows you’re alright, then you can tell her about me.”
“You’re sure? I don’t have to keep you a secret?”
“Of course not. It's your mother we’re talking about here. You can trust her, right?”
“Y-yeah. You’re right.”
“Hăo! (Good!) Now go. She’s waiting.”
Entering back into the kitchen, he’s met with his mother’s concerned glare.
“Izuku honey -”
“I'm alright. There are a few more centipede tattoos in other places, but none of them hurt, and I don’t think they should be a real problem. At least according to my… ancestor.”
One of her eyes quirks up at that, but before she can speak, you continue.
“Putting on this blindfold seems to have awakened something in my quirk. I can see and hear a man who claims to be my ancestor. He’s wearing what look to be royal robes of chinese make, the blindfold, and has the same tattoos. He claims I have the same quirk as him.”
Inko looks perplexed, before she relaxes a bit.
“Did he give you a name?”
Izuku hesitates before hearing the man behind him.
“Ying Zheng.”
“It’s Ying Zheng.” he says, repeating after the man.
“I see. Well, I’ll look into our ancestry records later, but for now let's finish breakfast and have a nice long talk about your future.”
The implications of that leave him a bit worried, but the food’s gonna get cold, so he digs in.
After breakfast, Inko asks Izuku to wait in the living room for her. He does, and notices Zheng leaning against the wall to his left, arms crossed. Before he can ask how whatever Zheng is can even do that, his mother walks back in, and sits down across from him.
“Alright honey, first I just want you to know that whatever the outcome of our conversation, I'm pulling you out of that school.”
“But-”
“Nope. No buts. They allowed you to go through so much pain without even so much as a single concerned email to me. In fact, I’ve gotten in contact with some legal help to see if there’s anything we can do to punish them for this, but I'm not sure. And before you ask about money, we’ll be fine. I’m finally able to start collecting on some investments I made a while back, so we’ll be set on money for the foreseeable future.”
Izuku nods.
“Now, here comes the big question. I know it's been your dream since you could speak to be a hero. Is that still true?”
He makes to respond immediately, but hesitates, closing his eyes and thinking.
Does he still want to be a hero? He doesn’t think anyone would blame him either way - people have become disillusioned after much less than he’s gone through. Taking a good long look at himself in his mind’s eye, he comes to a realization. His resolve is not shaken. It’s a core part of him, the desire to help people. He’s always wanted to be a hero, and nobody can take that away from him.
He opens his eyes, full of fiery determination. Of course, Inko can’t see them on account of the blindfold, but Zheng can feel his determination.
“Hăo! Tell her your decision, little one.”
“I do. My dream is still the same.’
Inko gives him a knowing smile.
“I expected as much. Stay here, I need to get something.”
She gets up and walks to her bedroom returning with something that makes Izuku double take. It looks like a hero costume.
“I know I’ve never been too open about my job, and, well, this is why.”
“You- You’re- You're a pro hero?”
“A mildly successful underground hero, yes. And I made the decision last night that if you still wanted to be a hero I would set you up with online classes and begin training you myself.”
Izuku’s heart feels like it's stopped.
“R-really? You’d do that for me?”
“Of course honey. I know there’s no way I can stop you from becoming a hero, not with that unflappable determination of yours, so I felt the best decision I could make, the one that would let me sleep at night, would be to get you as prepared as possible for that life.”
“Thanks, mom. I’d say you don’t know how much this means to me, but you probably do.”
“Don’t thank me just yet honey. I may not be a top-level pro, but if you think this training is gonna be easy, you’ve got another thing coming.”
Izuku gulps at that, and he hears Zheng let out a booming laugh.
“She’s right, kid. If the feelings I'm getting from your mind are any indication, you’re aiming for the top. That’s a long and tough road. Tell her I’ll help train you.”
“You will?”
His mom looks at him quizzically.
“Ah, sorry, Zheng was talking to me. He said he’d help train me.”
“I see. Well then, let's get to it. We need to set up a training schedule. Tell Zheng to provide any input he can about the best ways to train your quirk.”
~~~
The next few years of Izuku’s life were something of a blur to him. True to her word, his mom withdrew him from normal school and got him on online lessons. The flexible schedule this gave him allowed for a packed training regimen.
In the beginning it was mostly conditioning, and Izuku quickly grew to love the gym as a sort of home-away-from-home. While he was working out he could clear his mind and focus solely on improvement. It was great. The only thing that beat it, in his eyes, was sparring.
As an underground hero without a quirk that provided direct battle power, his mother was impressively skilled in melee combat, and did her best to teach him the basics despite not being a trainer herself.
Izuku took to fighting like a fish to water. His spatial awareness and combat instincts were off the charts, to the degree that Inko often felt like she was fighting a veteran in a kid’s body most of the time. She often found herself in a situation where she would have lost a spar had Izuku’s body been able to keep up with his mind, or his reach had been a tad bit longer.
Zheng had assisted throughout the process, contributing mostly by designing exercises for his quirk. Those consisted primarily of reflex and awareness training, and making sure he kept the blindfold on at all times. He was getting close to almost forgetting it was there, he was so used to wearing it at this point.
Zheng had also made a point that he couldn’t be around all the time - he wasn’t exactly sure what he was, being some sort of genetic memory ghost, but he often went to ‘sleep’ for days or more at a time. Izuku could call for him when needed by meditating, so Zheng opted to take a backseat for a while and rest while his training progressed.
Izuku was fourteen now, and it had been months since Zheng had last appeared of his own volition. But as Izuku sat up from the bench, finishing his last set for the morning, he saw Zheng leaning against the far wall of the gym. Before he could react, Zheng spoke.
“I think it is finally time, little one.”
Izuku was confused.
“Time for what?”
“Time that I teach you in earnest. Your body is finally ready to begin learning the martial art I created - one specifically designed to take advantage of our quirk.”
Izuku vaguely remembered Zheng mentioning his martial art - he’d learned a lot about Zheng’s history in the first few weeks after he manifested.
Zheng was an ancestor on his mom’s side who lived a few hundred years ago - born less than two decades before the outbreak of the early Quirk Wars that threw the world into turmoil. Zheng quickly rose to power as a regional warlord during the chaos, and managed to unite several bordering regions into a remarkable well-run pseudo-state, before he was killed by what he thinks must’ve been an assassin sent by a rival.
A vicious smile formed on his face as he thought of the possibilities - he knew there was more to his quirk than Zheng had let on at first, but he was content to train and not ask about it after his initial questioning had been expertly dodged by the cryptic ghost.
“My martial art, Chi You, is formed from five styles. Each is named after a different tool of war: Spear, Halberd, Sword, Armor, and Crossbow. Before you learn any of the five styles, however, you must learn the basics, and the true power of our quirk. Remove your blindfold.”
Izuku was stunned. He hadn’t removed his blindfold for a reason other than bathing or sleeping in years at this point. It was basically a feature of his face at this point. But he trusted Zheng, and did what he said.
“Now wha-”
Before Izuku could even finish his sentence, his eyes were drawn to the others in the gym. It was early in the morning, but later than most went due to work, so there weren’t many others in the gym at the time. What drew his eyes, however, was what he could see in them. Flowing lines of energy, slowly shifting and moving, and flashes as what looked like stars moved around at cruxes in the flow of energy.
Looking down at his own body, he could see it there too, although given his relaxed posture and lack of movement, there was a lot less activity.
“This is the true power of our quirk, little one. I call it Qi Sight: The ability to see the flow of energy throughout living things. It will open up many doors for you, but the training will only get harder from here. I believe you are ready. Do you?”
Izuku took another look at the other gym-goers. The stars were beautiful. He thought back to his goal, and his journey. He was going to be a hero.
“I do.”