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Midoriya Inko considers herself a reasonable woman with reasonable wants and reasonable needs, and right now, she needs to kick her ex’s ass into treating their son properly.
She doesn’t want Hisashi back. She doesn’t even want his damned child support money, though a sullen part of her knows she needs it. She doesn’t want the humiliation of asking the lawyer she works for to help her with hiring a private detective to track her soon-to-be-ex-husband down - though said lawyer is certainly happy to do it as Izuku is a delight in the old man’s life and this is the exact kind of situation that made him go into family law in the first place. She doesn’t want to be beholden to anyone or anything.
Inko doesn’t want any of this.
But Izuku… Izuku, who doesn’t know how often she’s shouted at Bakugo Mitsuki over the phone, who never wants to admit where his bruises came from, who has no idea of the war path his mother has started against his school district also with the help of her employer…
Izuku who is brave and brilliant and self-effacing and kind right down to his bones still wants his father to acknowledge him. To email him. To just call him on his birthday.
Just that. Nothing more.
It’s been two years since Hisashi even managed that bare minimum, but Izuku still wishes for it, still wants it, even though he’d swear he didn’t if she asked him directly.
Izuku never asks his mother for anything, really. He likely doesn’t even remember he’s asked for this, in a moment of feverish delirium a month ago when nearly his entire class caught the same flu - that his birthday ‘party’ might be more than just the two of them this year, that his dad might be there, too.
It’ll be a pitiful excuse for a ninth birthday party, even if Hisashi does show, but it’s more than Inko’s managed for her son these past few years since the deadbeat left “to go work in America” not long after Izuku’s Quirkless diagnosis.
And he will show or Inko will know why not. She’s called - the phone number still connects, but goes straight to a generic voicemail; she’s emailed - not one but four different email addresses, including the one she vaguely remembered he only used for mailing lists right when they got together; and she even sent letters to the office of the company where he’d supposedly relocated - returned to sender three times, the last with a handwritten ‘seriously lady we don’t know who this is’ noted on it. The private detective was a last resort, one that deep down she’d honestly expected to fail, but felt still worth a try.
Thus, getting a call that random Tuesday morning from said detective, a seemingly harmless elderly woman who was an absolute bloodhound when it came to tracking down deadbeat spouses/parents of any gender (Inko really wants to be just like her when she grows up), rather shocks Inko. Sato-san, “call me Hitomi, dearie,” reveals Hisashi’s whereabouts as unsurprisingly still in Japan, though oddly and somehow infuriatingly still under his own name as if uncaring that certain abandoned family members might have a damned good reason to track him down. Sato-san provides Inko with two likely physical addresses, as well as a post office box, then thanks her for the business and wishes her well as she “gives that rat bastard whatfor, dearie!” and hangs up the phone before Inko can get out a response or even ask where to send payment. Oh well, her boss likely had uh… Hitomi’s(?) information on file. Inko will worry about that later, after dealing with the aforementioned rat bastard.
For now, she has approval for a surprise day off, and Izuku is safely at school - ugh, safely what a joke considering the crap excuse for an institution of learning that place is, and Inko has a bus (and an ex) to catch.
Now, one would think in the day and age of Quirks and heroes and villains and all the drama that the aforementioned can create, that it would be second nature for folks to steer clear of the associated drama as a matter of course. It is almost commonplace for one’s commute to be diverted due to an unexpected sinkhole or for one’s lunch break to run long because the cafe was held up by some idiot with a ski mask and noodles for hands. Folks expect it; folks look out for it; and most people can see the event coming from a mile away even if they can’t avoid it.
Inko should have avoided the conflict ahead. And yet, Inko, with her own mundane enemy in mind and her head down to follow the directions on her phone’s GPS and earbuds blaring out a glam metal band she pretends she’s never heard of in polite company, misses every warning sign that sensible people should steer clear of the address she plugged into her GPS. Instead, she walks right past two police barricades and a host of sidekicks, all utterly focused on a battle that she even doesn’t notice until it is right in front of her.
Until he is right in front of her.
From a side street directly next to the post office where Hisashi clearly did keep a box, Inko emerges just in time to see her ex strike out with an arm twisted into something immense and monstrous and aimed straight for the Number One hero’s left side.
It’s something like instinct and something else like sweet vengeance when Inko screams Hisashi’s name and yanks with her Quirk with years of buried rage and hurt behind the pull.
Her Quirk isn’t that strong. Everyone knows that. Hisashi certainly knows that. But it doesn’t need to be strong just then. It just needs to be a distraction. It just needs to be strong enough.
The rat bastard misses his strike, either due to that distraction or pulled off course by her will. It doesn’t matter which. It just matters that he does, in fact, miss.
And the hero does the rest.
Later, when the dust settles and questions are asked, the officers and sidekicks who allowed her to pass unchallenged will find themselves all describing her in much the same way - quiet, unassuming, small, unremarkable. Easy to miss.
Easy to underestimate.
Hisashi once would have said similar things, though far more unkindly. Useless. Weak. Plain. Forgettable. Things he might also have said about the son he didn’t want, one born without any quirk, let alone a glimmer of his father’s powerful centuries-old legacy, to a wife he’d claimed only for the barest disguise of domesticity. After all, who’d look for a villain like All for One to have the proverbial suburban life?
No one bothers to ask All Might what he thinks about the unexpected lynchpin to the downfall of his greatest enemy, but if they had, the first word that comes to mind is tiny - in his head, he all but hears Nana laugh that really Toshi everyone is tiny compared to you and frankly seven feet of height is just excessive what did you eat after I was gone, damn kiddo?
That first impression isn’t wrong. The second is the thought that counts, however. For he thinks he would call her fierce , and that would surprise even Inko if he tells her. (He does eventually and she stares and checks his forehead for a fever, and he laughs and laughs and kisses her.)
In the end, Izuku doesn’t get a visit from his dad for his birthday after all. Instead, All Might is invited.
One week later, Inko tells Izuku the truth about his father. The trial will be taking place sooner rather than later, and she knows all too well that her son will follow the news of any major villain captured by his heroic idol. Better to warn him, even if it’s going to cause Izuku pain initially.
He takes the news surprisingly well.
Two weeks after that, Yagi Toshinori is invited back for dinner.
One month (and several panicked discussions with his closest friends as the Symbol of Peace is painfully out of practice with all of this what the hell should he do damn it David this isn’t funny and Sasaski don’t you dare laugh) later, Toshi invites Inko on their first official - though Inko absolutely has been counting their weekly dinners as unofficial ones - date.
Izuku’s shovel talk when he arrives is surprisingly intimidating. Inko couldn’t be more proud.