Chapter Text
Shizuoka prefecture, 8:43 AM
It was a warm, bright, cheerful Saturday morning, and Bakugou Masaru was enjoying brunch with his long-time friend, Midoriya Inko.
It had been some time since he had seen the woman - he was stuck in a seemingly endless torrent of paperwork, so the reprieve was much appreciated. Not to mention Inko's own busy life - being a single mother and all.
Masaru had met Inko during their first year of high school: they had been in the same homeroom class and had been paired together for a group project. They instantly hit it off - Inko was just about as nervous and kind-hearted as she is today, Masaru, however, was far more reserved in his teenage years. While their relationship remained mutually platonic, that didn't stop Mistuki - who had become Masaru's girlfriend during their third year of high school - from being jealous of how much time they spent with one another. This was quickly cleared up when Inko revealed to her that she had been dating Hisashi for a few weeks. Mitsuki was baffled an embarrassed but she quickly reconciled with Inko, and the pair soon became friends.
They, of course, attended each other's weddings, as best man and bridesmaid respectively. Inko called him the minute she found out she was pregnant, and vice versa, when Masaru learned of Mitsuki's pregnancy. They brought their children over to each other's houses regularly, and the boys bonded immediately. They would chase each other around the house with their figurines, sometimes the parents would play the role of villain and the kids would be the heroes. He didn’t get to spend as much time with the boys as he would have liked – his job as a detective left him little free time. The instances where he would spend time with them were some of the greatest moments of his life.
He should have seen the signs - he should have seen how horrible a person Hisashi really was. He should have warned Inko about the shady people he often saw the man talking to when he left for work. The trust and respect he held for the man blinded him to his true nature. Because of this, Inko and Izuku had been hurt, gravely so…
Masaru shook his head; best not to dwell on the unchangeable, both of them were alive and well now, that's what matters…
Twelve years ago – Izuku: age four. Two weeks after Izuku's visit to the quirk doctor.
"You mean to tell me that my son doesn't have a quirk?" Hisashi’s voice was cool and calm, but the rage and disbelief in his tone were clear. He strode past his suitcases, having just arrived home from a business trip.
"I-I'm sure he has a quirk, perhaps the scans were wrong-"
"They're specialists, Inko, they'd never be wrong!" Hisashi pinched the bridge of his nose, features contorting in rage.
"But there was that case a few years back where a child who was thought to be quirkless - he even had the pinky bone - suddenly displayed a healing quirk! He could only heal mortal wounds, so he'd never been able to discover he had a quirk until then! Perhaps Izuku is like that boy-"
"-that's wishful thinking, Inko, a one-in-a-million chance!"
"Regardless if he has a quirk or not, Izuku doesn't deserve anything less than our complete and total love and support!"
"Inko, don't you understand?" He took his wife by the shoulders, heartbreak etched onto his sharp features, "this society has no use for people without quirks! What in the hell can he do that will contribute in any meaningful way? He'll be an outcast - a dishonour to us!"
Inko was crying now, glaring at her husband with malice.
"There are plenty of roles Izuku could play in this world of ours - you don't need a quirk to do anything!"
The arguing continued until Inko’d had enough – she stormed upstairs and crawled into bed with Izuku, wrapping her arms tightly around the boy, sobbing quietly into his hair.
"I'm sorry, Izuku..."
Two years later – Izuku: age six.
Satou Asahi, a rookie police officer on his last patrol of the day, scanned the streets beside him. It was late afternoon, around 5 PM, when he started hearing shouting over the radio show he was listening to. He turned the volume all the way down as he neared the house, placing his car into neutral on the other side of the street, two houses down.
A tall, dark-haired man stood in the doorway of the home. He had jet black hair and wore a crisp black business suit - he looked somewhat familiar to Asahi, but he was too far away to make out any details. He was arguing loudly with a shorter woman with elbow length – green hair, (it shouldn't surprise him, really; his girlfriend had a serpentine tail instead of legs, but still, geen wasn't exactly a commonplace hair colour). The man stood in the doorway of the house, while the woman stood on the stairs of the front porch.
"Don't do this!" Another man called - a brunette wearing thin, black glasses.
Bakugou Masaru: a well-respected detective, his quirk allowed him to forcibly get a truthful answer out of someone once he asked them a question. His quirk began to lose effectiveness after a few questions but could regain it with a certain wait time. The wait time depended both on the length and amount of questions he asked, but was generally around an hour or so after five questions, though he rarely needed to ask more than five questions. He had quickly gained the favour of his colleagues, and they would often go to him when a case started to go stale or was becoming too large to handle without calling in federal agents. Asahi himself had met the man on numerous occasions but had never worked with him.
"Hisashi, he’s your son goddamit!" He shouted.
What angered and shocked Asahi was the state of the child – he was maybe five or six, with a similar hair colour to his mother, unconscious and bleeding from the head. The boy was tucked beneath the man's - his father’s - arm, his clothes ragged from an obvious struggle.
Asahi reached for the walkie-talkie in his car, reported the situation and location, and hastily exited the car, drawing his stun gun.
Several of the neighbours had exited their homes to investigate; one woman reached for her phone – presumably to call for the police, while her husband called an ambulance.
“GET OUT OF MY WAY.” The man roared, his rage emphasised by the small tendrils of smoke escaping his lips.
'A fire-breathing quirk?! This could get much worse much faster than I thought.'
“Sir!" Asahi called, grabbing the attention of the three adults. "Please, just put the boy down and we can- "
Suddenly, Hisashi dashed out of the doorway and past his wife. Bakugou tried to intercept him but was shoved to the ground, Midoriya using his own son as a makeshift battering ram.
Asahi couldn’t take a shot – the man would likely shield himself with the boy, so he instead opted to shoulder barge the man, staggering him, and whipping him right in the temple with his stun gun.
Hisashi grunted, fixing his deep green eyes onto Asahi. He opened his mouth and Asahi rolled out of the way just in time before the hedge behind him caught alight. The man's quirk wasn't as strong as Asahi had feared, but it was still a fire quirk, one of the most dangerous and unpredictable of all quirks, he couldn't afford to underestimate the man.
Bakugou came up behind him and grabbed the child from Hisashi's grasp, and Asahi was finally able to tackle the man. He forced him onto his stomach with his face in the grass and quickly handcuffed his hands behind his back.
Mrs Midoriya was sobbing, clutching her child for dear life. Shit, he completely forgot about the kid!
"Ma'am, is your son alright?! Is he breathing?" He shouted. The woman checked the boy over and nodded, before burying her face into the boy's neck. Bakugou had an arm slung protectively around the woman's shoulders, and shot Asahi a grateful look.
Asahi had never been more thankful in his life to hear the wail of police sirens - he wasn't sure how much longer he could hold the raging demon of a man beneath him.
The car screeched to a halt behind him, and he heard footsteps rapidly approaching.
"Shit! There's a fire, get the fire department!" A female officer called to a neighbour. The elderly man obliged, retrieving a phone from his pocket and dialling 119. She then proceeded towards the three people huddled on the lawn.
"Give 'im here, Satou-Kun." Another officer called, Kurokawa-San, he recalled.
"Careful, he's got a fire-breathing quirk." Asahi advised.
"I heard, which is why I brought these," the man held two things in his hand; a small scrap of fabric, and a roll of duct tape, "the fabric is a mix of Kevlar and Nomex - the stuff firefighters wear."
Before Kurosawa could cover Hisashi's mouth with the fabric, however, he noticed the man's wife - Mrs Midoriya, had approached.
"Why...? Why would you do this, Hisashi?" She asked, confusion and anger as clear as the tears on her cheeks.
The bastard had the gall to laugh. "Why? I was doing us a favour, a useless son would do a great dishonour to his family - quirks are everything in this society, after all. I was simply trying to save us the trouble. Not like anyone would have missed him anyway."
It took all of Asahi's willpower not to punch the bastard then and there.
Kurokawa stuck the fabric in Hisashi's mouth and secured it to his head with a layer of duct tape.
"Try and set us alight no, ya crazy bastard," Kurokawa taunted.
Together, Asahi and Kurokawa hoisted the man off of the ground and made their way to the car. They loaded the man into the car and told Kurokawa and the other detective to take him back to the station, while Asahi took everyone's statements. He made his way back over to the woman and placed a hand on her shoulder.
She turned to him then, tears in her eyes, and simply said: "Thank you."
Bakugou was upstanding, holding the boy bridal style. "It's Satou, right? Thank you, so much, for what you did back there."
Asahi smiled, "just doing my job, cleaning the scum outta the streets."
The ambulance and the fire department arrived a few moments afterwards, the paramedics rushing for the young boy, and the firemen for the hedge. The fire had almost completely died down, but it was nearing the Midoriya's house and the neighbour's car, so they set to work immediately. Asahi explained the situation to the paramedics, while Bakugou and Mrs Midoriya entered the ambulance with the child. Asahi made his way over to the pair.
"Here's my number," he handed the woman a sticky-note, "call me when he gets out of the hospital, if you ever need anything, or if you hear from Hisashi again. I'll be in touch"
"Th-Thank you... I'm Midoriya Inko, by the way." The woman extended her hand. "And thank you again for what you did."
Asahi took her hand, "I'm Satou Asahi, and there's no need to thank me."
"Do you have another sticky note? I'll give you my number"
After that exchange, Asahi returned to his car. It had been a long day, so Asahi was going to return to the station, give his statement, text Inko to check up on her, and then get drunk off his ass.