Chapter Text
When Inko Midoriya got pregnant a few months after her sister, she was ecstatic. The idea of having her baby grow up with her sister's child made her feel safe; a guaranteed friend for life.
And they were, the kids grew up attached to each other doing everything together. They lived in the same neighborhood and went to the same school, making them inhumanly close to each other. Izuku and Haru were more like brothers than cousins.
And their families were just as close too.
Inko's husband had decided that the family life just wasn't for him and left shortly after Izuku was born, leaving the boy with a fatherless existence
Well, that would be if it weren't for Haru's father Reo. A mathematics professor at a local college who loved Izuku almost as much as he loved his own son. He treated Izuku like he was his own kid and It filled the seemingly unfillable whole his father had left behind.
Reo's favorite thing was letting the kids help plan his lessons for his lectures, they kept things interesting. Because of those kids, his class had a beach-themed day where they had to dress up and do beach-related trigonometry problems. Even if the idea was silly, his students had fun that day and he had fun as well. He was then dubbed 'the fun professor' much to his delight.
He used to reward the kids with math books instead of ice cream and it seemed like as the kids grew so did the knowledge in their heads. And Reo was proud! His kids were smart as hell and he did that, he really felt like he was winning as a father. Ever time the kids came home with A's on their tests or a gold star on a paper, Reo would let the kids read more highschool workbooks and do more worksheets, and for some reason the kids loved it. Even at the age of three, when he first introduced the reward system, the kids were in love with it.
Inko was happy. When her husband had left, she had been down in the dumps. She felt worthless and disgusting for not being able to keep someone to help raise her son. Towards the end of the relationship, she would have even let her husband keep abusing her, keep hating her as long as he loved her son.
And for a few months, it worked! Her husband helped care for Izuku. He didn't ever show it but Inko had even assumed he liked the kid. And then she found out what happened, while Inko had been at work, Hisashi had his girlfriend over. Inko didn't even know he had a girlfriend and she might have overlooked it if it weren't for how she found. Izuku, the ripe age of three had decided to get a glass of water during the night and had walked in on daddy and someone who wasn't mommy doing weird things on the couch. Izuku left before they noticed, but he made sure to tell his mother everything in great detail.
She had kicked him out before Izuku got back from daycare the next day.
But where Hisashi failed, Her sister Yumi and her husband Reo had stepped up. They were a family and there wasn't a single day where the kids were apart.
And on Haru's fifth birthday they were happy.
It was two weeks after his birthday when shit hit the fan.
It was a Saturday. Inko and Izuku were in their apartment, Inko cooking lunch, and Izuku doing one of his workbooks. Haru was at the doctor today, leaving Izuku to do his workbooks in front of the Tv. Inko and Izuku had been eating lunch when Inko got a call from her sister.
She was crying.
"Inko... I can't,"
Inko looked over at her son who was eating his food while working on some sort of equation. She stood up and left the room. "Yumi what's wrong?" She sped into the bathroom and shut the door behind her. "Is something wrong with Haru?"
"Yes, somethings wrong with Haru!" Labored breaths could be heard from the phone. Her sister was panicking.
"Calm down, ok?" She sat down on the toilet. "Take in a breath." Her sister complied and a second passed before Inko continued. "Now, what's wrong?"
Another shaky breath traveled through the phone before her sister muttered out. "Haru is quirkless."
Inko almost dropped her phone.
___
Haru's life had become a living hell. People hated him without knowing him. His teachers treated him badly. The students were even worse. And he was only five!
The only person who stuck by him was Izuku.
While Izuku loved quirks, he loved Haru even more. He never once treated Haru badly, and even though Haru was a grade above him, he tried his absolute hardest to keep up with what his classmates were doing. And they terrorized him!
His classmates who praised heroes were acting like villans, and it was stupid!
Izuku had reported his cousin's classmates but to no avail. They got no punishment.
And they never did.
Some day drunk teens had heard about a quirkless kid from a nearby school from one of the boy's siblings. They were furious, why did that worthless idiot deserve to breathe the same air as the quirked? The answer in their minds was they didn't. They went to the boy's school and waited for school to end. He was only in elementary school, but why did that matter. They had overheard some leaving kids make fun of the kid and they watched as he waited by the gate.
They punched him hard. And kicked him. Threw empty beer bottles over his head. And punched him some more. People just watched from the sidelines, not willing to risk their lives for the quirkless kid. At some point, some green-haired boy had tried to stop him, but they just pushed him away. But the boy was relentless and eventually, they just decided to hit him over the head with the last one of their bottles, effectively knocking the boy out.
Someone had called the cops and the teens kept trying to kick the boy even as the officers started pulling them off. Ambulances were called and Haru and Izuku were carted away.
Haru died later that night.
Izuku didn't know if Haru had a chance. If his injuries could have been healed if people moved faster. He questioned often if the doctors didn't try as hard with Haru due to his lack of quirk. But he would never truly know, no one tells the truth to a child. But he did know that not everyone was created equal.
And it was something Izuku hated.
___
Yumi and Reo moved away. It made sense. They loved Inko and her son, but they couldn't be in a place that caused their family much pain. They knew they were abandoning someone who saw them as parental figures, but in their moment of hysteria, they couldn't care less. Right after Haru's funeral they left but not without leaving something behind.
Reo left behind his textbooks for Izuku, he didn't need them he was moving back to his own town where he would be helping at the family business. He left all of them for all the subjects he had, which were quite a few. He didn't want anything that he used when he was a professor. All of it reminded him of how his son used to help him make his lesson plans.
Instead of anything Physical, Yumi left her sister with advice. She had pulled her sister aside before she was to leave.
She looked at her sister and began with a grim look on her face. "Inko if he doesn't have a quirk by five and a half, then lie."
Inko looked at her sister in confusion. "What do you-" Yumi cut her off.
"If it looks like he may be quirkless, don't let him be. Don't go to the doctor, don't get Xrays, and don't wait for a quirk to manifest."
"Yumi that is-"
Her voice rose in annoyance. "Illegal, no shit." She ducked he head down and looked around to make sure no one saw her before she continued in a quieter voice, causing Inko to lean in to understand what was being said, "I love Izuku and Quirklessness tends to run in families. If someone in your family is quirkless, then the parents tend to have gotten their quirks late and the rest of the family has weaker quirks, both apply to us." Yumi took in a breath. "Look, I don't want to Imagine that Izuku is quirkless, really I don't, but registered quirks can be changed if he gets a new quirk. Most kids have their quirks changed multiple times before adulthood."
Inko's face was dripping in shock.
"Trust me Inko, a fake quirk is better than no quirk." Before Inko could even respond Yumi and her husband had left.
___
Izuku had surpassed five and a half with no developments on his quirk. He was far too distraught to even think about the formation of his own quirk, but that didn't stop the other kids from thinking about it. Inko had heard the rumors from the other children and decided to follow her sister's advice.
Izuku had always been smart and thanks to Reo, he was already doing math at a college level. He loved to learn and had devoted himself to his studies during his grief so Inko was pretty sure she could pull it off.
The hardest quirks to understand were mental quirks. They were hard to test for especially intelligence-based quirks. Most of them were trigger-based Inko learned. They needed some sort of stimulus to be activated, like one girl he had read about had her IQ increase based on the type of tea she drank.
So the idea that her son had a quirk that boosted his intelligence with no trigger was an interesting one. It couldn't be tested for necessarily and was believable enough because her son was already very smart. Izuku's past report cards seemed to be enough evidence for the government, and one week after becoming five and a half, he officially had a quirk.
Izuku Midoriya
Quirk- Super Intelligence.