#while izuku of course is the spitting image of inko

[pencilofawesomeness]

The Midoriya Twins from Singularity by WinterMoonlight

I've been wanted to draw fanart for this fic for a while now, especially as an excuse to draw Satoru with his eye scars, and I figured it's one year anniversary (and Satoru's canon birthday lol) was a good occasion for a little sketch. Both Izuku and Satoru benefit from having a brother so much and I weep at how wholesome they are.

(By the way Singularity is a great JJK x MHA fic where several JJK characters get reincarnated in MHA and it's so good and I cannot recommend it enough. We get fun new character dynamics AND it does canon character dynamics so well. Consider this the tip of the iceberg of my propaganda.)

[pocketramblr]

Pocket you cannot leave me hanging like that, what happens after the DNA test comes out as a match?

1- The next night, the broker Izuku would prefer to not acknowledge comes back with a new piece of paper. "Well?" Shigaraki asks, and the broker waves his hands. "It's a boy." Dabi grabs the paper. "Match between Midoriya Izuku and... Person 2? Giran, what-" he stops, looks at Izuku, and tilts his head. "All Might's secret lovechild?"

2- Shigaraki buries his head in his hands at the worse mental image. Magne pats his back, Twice calls Dabi both an idiot and a genius, Toga questions how Giran got All Might's blood to test. Spinner and Compress turn to Izuku, and he shuts them down immediately. "No. I am not. Ugh, Todoroki thought that too "

Dabi gets so mad at that, he storms out without a word. Izuku thinks that's kinda weird, but Giran just takes the paper he dropped. "I didn't, Toga, that's mine. And it was a spit test, not blood."

Magne points out that spit is kinda just filtered blood, and Shigaraki yells at them all to shut up. Then, he asks Izuku about Todoroki- and his weaknesses.

3- Izuku has had to deal with Shigaraki wanting info on Bakugou out of him for the last day, and he's at his limit now. He snaps, Shigaraki snaps back, and it's only when Spinner tries to break in to point out that Todoroki was the other one who fought Stain. That's a good enough redirection for Izuku to ask if Shigaraki isn't super annoyed by the stain cosplay thing, considering their mall conversation. Giran sits down next between Magne and Compress, who fill him in on how Izuku's been the last day- refusing to let Toga spoon-feed him, but begrudgingly allowing Spinner, though they suspect that will be different now. Giran says Spinner is one of the better choices for Izuku to try and use for sympathy to get an out, since he does have Stain's approval, and Spinner is, as far as Giran knows, the only member who hasn't killed anyone yet. Smart. Compress says it runs in the family, but Magne says it's absolutely no thanks to Giran at all.

4- Giran lights up a smoke, with that gun lighter of his, and Izuku cuts off when he sees it, wary, until he just lights a cigarette and puts it away. He does ask though, "Giran, right, the broker? You give them the equipment too, you gave Mustard his gun?" Giran tells him he gave Dabi a gun, actually, and Mustard stole it. The others laugh. Izuku doesn't. He's mostly glad he heard any other name to use for the broker than Hisashi. But then Giran says that it sounds like Izuku's smart, and wonders if Tomura would have an easier time swaying Bakugou to his side using that. Either way, he'd be useful with some of Giran's training- and a short leash. Izuku's very unhappy with this idea, but Shigaraki's unhappy with him and says he might just do that, since it'll piss him off. Once Sensei makes sure he isn't OP, of course.

5- Izuku has a miserable next day, as usual. That night, Giran doesn't visit. Instead, the door knocks just before All Might crashes through the wall. Edgeshot knocks a lot of people out, then pauses looking at the piece of paper that fell from the bar. It's almost as disturbing as the teenage corpse floating inside of Kurogiri. But Izuku's hugging All Might, so everything is fine- aaaand they've all been wrapped away. Well. At least All Might can make AfO feel pain for it. Nine UA students commit vigilantism and get Izuku to a hospital. Inko is immediately brought over- though the hero Edgeshot does pull her aside while Izuku's in surgery, with a few questions.

+1- After Izuku gets his casts off and can go home, he gets a text from an unknown number.

"Hi kid. Like I said, even chances you'd get picked up. You can ask your friends how they knew, it was patches storming out in a hissy. Also like I said, you owe me a favor. Later, though. For now, just don't block this number?"

Izuku immediately blocks the number.

Cities away, Giran laughs and pulls out a second burner phone.

"fine, I get it, one helicopter parent is enough. Take your space."

Izuku glances to the door, behind which he knows his mother is getting ready for visitors from UA, that she isn't sure he's safe there, and holds his phone so tightly it breaks.

[scribblestatic]

After the girl breaks down into tears, all of the stress from the day crashing down on her all at once, she stays sobbing even after All Might hugs her.

“You’ve done well,” he says, and he means it.

As she said, she’s done many things wrong. Invaded privacy, hacked illegally into systems, broke information laws. And yet, she saved the lives of one of U.A.’s students at the expense of her own privacy. She has solved case after case and brought many to a belated but still present justice. Even more, she’s opened his eyes to his faults—that his image, his idea of the Symbol of Peace that he’s always held up...that it will crumble. That he should have been preparing others for it to crumble rather than holding onto it until his last breath.

And Aizawa makes that point extremely clear to him and the policeman after the girl has been put away in a holding cell to sleep off her exhaustion.

“So, the two of you knew about a potential leader of the villain underground, and neither of you thought it’d be a good idea to tell any other hero about it?” Aizawa looks absolutely livid, maybe a moment away from using his Quirk and making his hair float. “I had to hear it from some teenager who hacked into one of my student’s phones?”

Before Tsukauchi can answer him, All Might holds up a hand to stop him.

“The fault is all mine, Eraserhead. While I had thought I had finished things with All For One...it’s clear he’s still lurking around, just as I am.”

Some of the anger clears, but just barely, to give way to questions.

“All For One?”

It’s hard...to say what needs to be said. To explain why the man’s name is what it is, and how it relates to his Quirk. To explain how, since the beginning of Quirks, One For All users have battled the man just as an unrelenting force combats and immovable object. He watches the anger slip from Eraserhead’s face into plain confusion and disbelief. It’s hard to finally tell someone who isn’t Sir Nighteye, who isn’t Tsukauchi, who isn’t Nedzu or Recovery Girl. But it has to be said.

That must be part of the reason why Kobayashi requested that Eraserhead be there. Because these sorts of explanations will be inevitable, and he better get used to it now rather than later.

“So. Users of this...One For All Quirk have been fighting this same guy for centuries. Meaning he’s over 200 years old.”

“Yes.”

“...And you really, honestly thought more heroes shouldn’t know about this.”

“...It was as Kobayashi said. I was blinded by my own desire to hold up the pillar for as long as I could. I wanted...” He looks down at his hand and clenches his fist. “I wanted more than anything to hold onto my mentor’s legacy. To become the Symbol of Peace that Japan needed. But...again, as Kobayashi said. What kind of peace is this? I’ve never seen it...not until now. How wrong I’ve been all this time.”

Eraserhead is quiet for a moment, but then, to the man’s surprise, he actually pats his hand against the older hero’s arm. His expression is still scrunched, still processing, still comprehending everything, but there’s a growing understanding.

“Well. At least you get it now. No point in whining about the past. But.” The man’s face firms up. “Recognize that now, we have to get the kids ready as well. This is more than Shigaraki and the League of Villains. More than you finding your successor. This is something they’ll have to face now, something they’ll be directly affected by that has never occurred with any hero class before. Not even mine.” He stuffs his hands into his pockets then. “I won’t be saying anything about you Quirk being passable or anything. But I will be telling them about the 200 year old villian cryptid.”

“That’s fair...I appreciate you for...taking this so well.”

“Don’t get me wrong. I’m going to need to drink, heavily, at some point this week. I’m just glad your head’s finally out of your own ass. And...” He glances off to the side. “I’ll need to pull mine out of my own.”

Tsukauchi huffs, amused, but All Might looks surprised. “What...I think you’ve been reasonable—”

“I haven’t. Just accept that part and we’ll not have to talk about it from here on.”

Because Aizawa knows now that he’s never really understood much about All Might at all. That his dislike for the man was on unfounded ideas that, even if he hadn’t thought his Quirk was better suited for heroics, he caused the rest of the world to think it was. That All Might was the reason he’d had to crawl his way up from General Heroics, because the sponsors who helped fund U.A. back then and still now only look at the physical without recognizing the usefulness of non-physical Quirks. All Might wasn’t attempting to facilitate that. Instead, he was trying to live up to the reputation of a woman no one remembered any longer. Someone who All For One had wiped off the face of the earth, but who All Might still adored with all his heart. Repercussions of his actions or not, All Might was only focused on saving others.

He’d have to look into Shimura Nana.

“Well, we at least have this out of the way. Eraserhead, I do have to ask that you hold back on telling the students until other teachers are aware of the situation as well,” Tsukauchi says.

“Yeah, of course.”

As the two start discussing future courses of action, All Might looks back down the hall, absentmindedly messing with his suit cuff. It isn’t until he feels a hand on his that he looks down, finding Tsukauchi looking back up at him with a knowing smile.

“We’ll work things out with her. Don’t worry.”

All Might frowns “I know...but...” He looks back down the hall. “It doesn’t feel right for her to go to jail.”

Eraserhead doesn’t say it right then and there but...he agrees. Despite her illegal activities, instead of locking her away, they’d be better off ushering her in the right direction. Especially someone so actively attempting to do good instead of actively going in the other direction.

“I can’t say exactly what will happen from here on, but I promise. We’ll work with this as delicately as we possibly can. Still, illegal Quirk use is just that. She’s done this for us, but she does have to be held accountable for her actions. At least, if she does get charge, it will be as a minor.”

There’s a twist to Tsukauchi’s face that says he’s not quite satisfied with what he’s saying, but he does have to say it. It’s the truth of the law. That’s just how that is...

Except when it isn’t.

“When Kobayashi woke up, she told us a few other things, including her identity.” Tamakawa pressed a folder into his hand, watching as Tsukauchi opened it and read it. All Might was present again, and so was Eraserhead, given a break from the day’s classes due to the length of his late-night rescue mission.

“She’s...well...” Tamakawa’s ear flicks. “From what she said herself, I’m going to keep using she/her since she seems more comfortable with it, but if she were to speak with someone less accepting—”

“She’d be identified as a male,” Tsukauchi finishes, blinking at the papers in front of him.

All Might chokes on his own spit, tasting copper at the back of his throat while Aizawa’s eyebrows raise.

“Right. Kobayashi Chouko exists as her stage name at Tea Cats Cafe. Really, her name is Midoriya Izuku, 15 years old, a first-year at Yamagura High School. She’s an A and B student, and despite working illegally at a cafe, she has been on the higher average of the grades that typically come from that school. Most importantly though...” 

Tsukauchi’s eyes scan over the words on the report, before stopping at one point and staying there. He turns to Tamakawa in mild disbelief.

“She’s Quirkless.”

“Well, that drops several potential charges that could’ve been risen against her,” Aizawa hums, hiding his grin behind his capture weapon.

After all, in a world full of Quirks, it wasn’t often for someone Quirkless to show out like this. Not that they couldn’t but so many of them had been beaten down by hate crimes and physical and mental abuse, most of them end up dying or killing themselves rather than breaking into U.A.’s firewall.

“Quirkless...no wonder it was hard to find her. With how much she was doing, even I was sure she had a Quirk for...well, if not intellect, at least some sort of hacking ability,” Tsukauchi scratches at the back of his head, a tad cowed.

“And, from a recording she gave us, we have a potential hate crime and a blatant disregard for child labor laws on our hands,” Tamakawa adds, his ear flicking again, a frown on his cattish face.

“That still leaves the other things she’s done. Still, I think...her particular set of skills could be attractive to a particular principal that we know of,” All Might hums, his chin in his hand. “Perhaps U.A. and the school could work on an agreement, and we can keep her jail stay to a minimum.”

“Right, that’s another thing I was thinking about, and this makes it worse.” Tsukauchi frowns. “Since she’s Quirkless, she doesn’t quite have a method of defense. Her having the USB taser was a blessing, but now...it’s likely that it’s more dangerous for her to be here than it would be if she were at U.A. If the villains were to attack her here because she refused Shigaraki, unless there’s police on her...well, even then, it’s likely that she’s as good as dead or kidnapped.” The detective over at his old friend firmly. “So if you have any ideas, I’d be glad to hear them.”

Midoriya Izuku spends three days in a holding cell. 

She’s let out for exercise and everything just fine, and the food is bland but edible, but she’s stripped of her comforts after waking up, before she confessed further. Without her wig, her hair only reaches the tippy tops of her shoulders, and she doesn’t have the comfortable weight on her chest of the chest pads she’d bought. She doesn’t have makeup on anymore, so her dark circles are plain as day, and her lips no longer glisten with gloss.

She feels stripped. Ugly. Like she’s not herself at the moment.

She’s not sure why she doesn’t seem to want to snap back fully into Midoriya. The male son born to Midoriya Inko, the boy who grew up wanting to be a hero, the boy who gave up on it. She knows she and the male idea of her self are the same, but the longer she’s spent as Chouko, the more she feels like something...clicked.

Like she had been seeing everything in her life just fifteen degrees off, and everything clicked into place. She hadn’t been uncomfortable being referred to as a boy before, but now, the idea of it brings a tingle of distaste.

She wants her long hair back. Wants her breasts back, too. She knows that those things don’t make her a girl, but...well, the mind is an unreasonable thing, and those things bring her comfort.

So despite being called Midoriya, in her mind, she corrects them to Kobayashi. Izukus to Choukos. Izuku, as sweet of a name as it is, as adoring and caring of a name, can also be changed to Deku in an instant. Chouko though, a ‘butterfly child’... It’s the name of someone who loves herself. A name that cannot be ugly. Someone who doesn’t exist purely on the love of their mother. It’s the name she’d come up with on her own.

She doesn’t hate Izuku, she just loves Chouko more.

But she can’t be Chouko right now. Chouko has long hair and pretty gloss and breasts. She makes people look twice and is full of surprises. People listen to Chouko, even All Might! But as Izuku, no one really listens. Not her school, not Black Tea, not even her mother. But that’s who she is right now. Izuku.

And yet...Izuku can’t shake her off anymore. It no longer feels like a switching, but instead a stripping. Like trying to think of herself as Izuku and what he represents is scratching at her skin and trying to pull it off after she finally found it and put it on. Even without the long hair and creepy fans and sassy sweet attitude, Izuku is still Chouko. Even now, with his shorter hair and slumped shoulders. With unglossed lips and no foundation. She’s still Chouko, like the skin has seeped into the old one and melded with her.

And maybe that was it all along. Maybe a part of her discomfort and not belonging...maybe all of it was because she just hadn’t known who she really was. Or maybe she’s just connected all of her good feelings to this persona she’s made and it’s all a mess and she’s really just messing with herself because she could never be...

Or maybe.

She just still has questions. Still has things she doesn’t fully understand about herself and who she is, and maybe, she just needs to keep seeing where this route will take her. How she develops from here on. 

But as it stands, she would prefer to be called—

“Midoriya.”

Well, not that.

She blinks from her place on the tough but barely comfortable bed and looks over to the door. There, a policeman she doesn’t recognize is standing there. The slot in the door is open, so she can see him outside.

“Put your hands through the slot, then turn around once you’re cuffed. You have a visitor.”

She hums and stands up, walking over to the slot and following the policeman’s directions. The air outside of the cell is cooler than the air inside, so she shivers a little. Cool metal cuffs lock over her wrists, and she pulls them back through and turns around, just as she was directed.

The door creaks open behind her, and the policeman directs her to leave. With one hand on her shoulder, he directs her down the plain halls to a single room. There’s a table behind closed bars, hard and bolted to the floor. On one side, there’s an empty chair just for her. On the other side, a familiar mouse-like body. Principal Nedzu of U.A. waves a paw at her as the guard unlocks the cell door and leads her inside. She doesn’t break eye contact with him as the guard locks her cuffs in place, chaining her hands to the table.

The principal doesn’t speak until the guard is standing outside the bars.

“Kobayashi-san, I’ve heard quite a bit about you.”

She feels her eyes widen a little at the sound of her more appreciated name.

“Ah, and I’m a...a really big fan. But...for the record,” she says in her lower voice, not confident in using the falsetto while the guard is there, without her wig and chest and everything else. “I still don’t regret it.”

“Hahaha, I imagined you wouldn’t. Despite your criminal exploits, you did save one of our first year heroics students through your indirect action. For that, I’m very grateful.”

“Ah...uhm...you really don’t have to thank me for that. I was just thinking I’d rather he not be killed.” She shrugs. “It was the most I could do.”

“Because you can’t involve yourself physically?” the principal asks. There’s not a hint of malice in his tone, just a simple question directly referring to her Quirklessness, but it still makes her flinch.

“Yeah, because of that.” She moves her arms in as noodle-y of a fashion as she can manage it in the handcuffs. “These arms are as good as string beans.”

“But your brain on the other hand,” Nedzu says, his eyes gleaming with mischief, “can govern your hands into hacking your way through our government-grade firewall.”

“To be fair, just smacking government on the name doesn’t do much. I hacked into the police system as well and they’re ‘government’. All it means is that they put wood in front of an already chain-link fence. It’s not so much better.”

She hears the guard grunt outside the bars, but, in a spark of her underlying nature, something she usually doesn’t have without her preferred clothes on, she sticks out her tongue, not turning around to face the man. But the principal sees it clearly and laughs openly at the gesture, much to her embarrassment.

“That’s hilarious! But also, our firewalls were made to be more sturdy considering we’re protecting the futures of our heroes.”

“It’s more like a government army recruitment project, but one I still sort of approve of in a very...kind of screwed up way. But still.” She shrugs, and her hand reaches up to twirl her hair, but the cuffs clang before she can reach close enough. That sobers her quite a bit, and her voice drops back lower, not realizing it had risen. “It’s a system that can’t afford to be broken or the world will fall into chaos.”

“Hmmm...very interesting point of view. What would you say your overall goal is in regards to heroes?” The mouse-like creature laces his padded paws.

“I guess...”

She thinks, dimly back to the South African model she had mentioned to All Might, Eraserhead, and Tsukauchi. While Quirks had initially thrown their society into chaos much like the rest of the world, and xenophobia ran rampant for a long while, they never really connected into the militia-like mindset like the Americans, and subsequently, Japan. Instead, after much time and adaptation and conversations over laws and agreements, South Africa became a haven for people who wanted to use their Quirks nearly freely.

Their model promoted having mental and physical health professionals quickly adapt to the new philological and mental developments happening around them. Instead of viewing Quirks as weapons, though the army there certainly does, as far as the general public, Quirks are a muscle. They are a part of the person’s body like any other part of their body. And, with certain restrictions, they can be used freely.

Unlike Japan, it’s not a crime to slide across the ground to get to work faster as long as you’re sliding in the bike route markers on the streets or sidewalks. New lanes were developed for people who preferred to float themselves and their company from place to place, a very green way of living. A new app had been developed so certain work places could allow for teleportation Quirk-users to have a queue so they could safely and suddenly appear at a designated spot at work without knocking into anyone else.

Quirks were allowed for use in industries outside of heroics. Fire eaters and water users became firefighters. Precision Quirk users became well-known internationally acclaimed doctors and architectural technicians. It took a while, but Quirks that affected the mind became a heavily regulated but popular subset in therapeutics.

That isn’t to say South Africa is a complete utopia. They, like any other country, have their faults as well. But in a post-Quirk society, they rank higher than even  Sweden and Finland in happiness, lack of crime, and lack of poverty. Meanwhile, the American system has had a steady increase in high villain activity, violence, hate crimes, and suicides. And so, Japan adopted the same poisons.

“What I want is something easily attainable.” She looks the mouse-like creature straight in the eye. “I want a Japan that doesn’t need heroes as much as we do now. I’m not going to say we could ever get rid of them, nor do I want to be rid of heroes...I’ve grown up with them, so of course I think, in part, that they’re necessary. And...well...I’m a fan of heroes. I like them. I don’t want to completely eradicate the idea of heroes. But what I want is more...just more. A better way of doing things. And it’s not as though it’s out of our reach.”

“Several countries now have adapted to having Quirks, and yet it’s as though our developments have inched along for the last 200 years. You know, Japan was once one of the fastest-adapting countries in the world? When Commodore Matthew Perry forced Japan out of isolation, we looked at how much the world had changed. How far behind we were. And we immediately began to adapt. We adopted things from Americans, from the Dutch, from the Netherlands. We reached out and grabbed what we could so we wouldn’t be beaten down by countries stronger than us. We became better because we learned.”

“And I truly believe we can still do better! I think Japan can keep learning, but it’s time to learn from someone other than the Americans. But before we can even do that, we have to try and clean up the mess we have now. I want to change Japan for the better, and I know I’m too weak to do it alone, I can’t do it alone, it’s absolutely impossible, so if I could just...if people could just...”

And there, she runs out of steam. Her head bows down and she stares at her hands.

But as she stares, a white, padded paw pats on them, and she blinks, looking back up to the mouse creature’s eyes. They are beady and dark, but shining with an eager light.

“Well then, Kobayashi Chouko, I have a proposition for you.”