Chapter Text
When the baby that will be Izuku is six months old, his parents are dead.
Both of them lie in their house, blood pouring over the floor around gored bodies.
There is no infant body with them, dead or otherwise.
(There is dust, there is DNA left behind, but it is useless. It is scattered around the entire house as if attempting to invade and there is nothing but destroyed cells left behind and scrambled DNA.)
Police investigate and assign detectives but they never find a lead. They never find what happened to the six month old baby. The family was small, unimportant, their case eventually is shifted over into unsolved files and left to grow dusty until future evidence presents itself. There is possibly even outside influence hindering the case, malicious.
But for right now, a small woman with long pink hair curls over a six month old in her arms and cries.
“I'm sorry I was too late to save them too.”
She stroked his forehead, moving green curls out of the way. Tears slid down her face and the infant sniffled loudly. He knew something was wrong. Fortunately he was a calm baby, not howling or crying despite knowing something was wrong. He didn't know her face. He didn't recognize any face. But he still looked at her with trust and fear.
“You shouldn't trust strangers so easily, kiddo.” She kissed him on the forehead and watched his hair shimmer, turn pink. “...no no, go back sweetie.” She tapped his head, her eyes fluttered and rolled up into her head briefly,
strings dots DNA and distributing replacements strings wriggling and shifting taking extra bits into herself to not hurt him
and his hair shifted back to green slowly. Far slower than the change had happened.
She walked around the hotel room, bouncing him on her hip, unsure what to do.
“I can't let you go.” She whispered to him. “They'll find you. They'll hurt you.”
The baby stared up at her with watery eyes and she felt mothering instincts she'd never felt before well up in her chest.
“Oh darling,” She bounced him again. “You're going to be so powerful.” She breathed shakily. “Look what you can do. So talented!” She swung him around, ignoring the skin of her hands shifting and changing where tiny hands pressed against them. “But people want that power.” He burbled a little and she stared at him.
“Honey, people are going to want to hurt you.” She closed her eyes and pressed her forehead to his.
Strings flying behind her head, not what she needed, she was there to observe, not to change.
She opened her eyes and they were rolled up into the back of her head, fluttering and twitching. Muttering and murmured jargon spilled from her lips as her hair shifted, rippled, slowly turned the same shade of green as the infant in her arms.
Bit by bit her entire body rippled, changed. It was slow, disturbing, piece by piece in a horror show that would disgust even the strongest of stomachs. She changed, shifted, bones grew smaller and stouter. Her organs shifted, moved, redistributed inside her. Her skin trembled, twitched, changed shade.
After twenty long, long minutes she stopped.
Her eyes stopped twitching and she looked at the infant in her arms. He wasn't crying. He was staring at her with wide, wide eyes. He could feel it. Feel what she did.
She sighed and placed him very gently on the bed before going to the bathroom. Twisting roiling materials pooled in her stomach. Usually she could reuse them, ‘recycle’ them per’se, but it had been so long since she had to change her entire body's makeup and base it around someone else.
She threw up and white, red, fleshy pulp came up and up and up and she nearly gagged but her throat shifted thoughtlessly to let it spill out without hindrance. Disgusting.
Again without thought strings shifted and moved and the skin fell off her tongue, tastebuds remaking themselves. She spit the leftovers out while making a face. Her quirk was disgusting. Plain and simple.
She looked up, sitting on the floor and leaning against the toilet. On the bed sat the poor, poor infant with a quirk so similar to hers that people wanted it. Wanted him.
She sobbed quietly. She didn't wish this on anyone. She didn't want this child to have this same cursed quirk.
She sat up shakily, limbs and body different than the ones she'd used for the past few decades. She walked over to the bed and picked him up. Now he was crying, silently, because she'd left him alone. Once he was in her arms he cried out loudly. She had another new face now. He didn't recognize her.
She tapped him on the cheek. Wiped his hair clean
shifting strings and making them tremble and dirt and germs flew off
and his crying stopped. So he
could
sense when she used her quirk. She smiled down at him, sorrow and regret and resignation.
“I'm sorry, sweetie, but your parents are gone.” She hugged him close, feeling questing hands stretching and touching and shifting her strings until she put a firm hand on them. “People… people will want to hurt you, and you're going to end up hurting people.” She closed her eyes. “But not if I can help it. I'll try to keep you safe, sweetie. I'll try to teach you how to control it. It's not like you can hurt me.” She smiled bitterly and watched him pick the strings of her neck apart, pull them into beads and pieces curiously.
His parents had been smart in not giving him direct skin contact. An ordinary person would not have survived.
Her neck dissolved under a curious infant's hand, two inches around where his tiny and touched. Her neck fell into pieces of blood and flesh. He made an upset cry and she shushed and soothed him without knowing what she was doing. She heard her own wheezing breath as her windpipe was exposed.
“Don't worry honey, you can't hurt me.” She shifted strings and let them back where they were supposed to go. Her neck still had a hole in it, but a quick redirection of her strings had it regrowing.
Curious green eyes stared as he patted her neck again and- he did it instantly.
“Thank you, sweetie.” She nuzzled his face. “Lesson one: if you're going to do something, always make sure you can change it back.”
She had a long journey ahead of her. She barely knew how to be a person, much less a mother, and hiding a child was going to be hard. But she could do it.
She would do it. She would never let him get hurt. She had a new body, a new face, and now she needed to go make a new name and new life.
Again. At least this time she wouldn't be alone. And hopefully he'd never be alone either.
Izuku always remembered green. Green hair, green eyes. Pale skin. A soft, worried smile.
His mother wasn't actually his mother, but she was ever since that day. In every way that counted.
What Izuku loved most though was when Inko's green hair faded into a gentle pink and her green eyes turned brown. Because he'd giggle, tug on it, and then make his own “strings” match and his hair and eyes would change to match.
Pink hair was nice! It was soft and happy and friendly. He loved it.
She didn't let him use his quirk in front of other people until he was four. Then she told him very firmly that his “quirk” was going to be the same as the one she told people she had. She changed her hair and eye color at will, with enough time. That was it. That was all people could know.
Izuku nodded seriously and practiced changing his hair and eyes until he could do it without slipping up and doing anything more.
Then did it at school, two years later than most other kids, but purposefully in front of everyone. He did what she'd told him to and acted surprised and thrilled and had even ended up crying tears of joy, getting too caught up in himself.
His mom picked him up from school, bemused.
“Did you have a fun time, sweetie?” She ruffled his hair, watching it change. He wasn't supposed to have control over it yet so she'd suggested he keep it changing a lot to help him look inexperienced with it.
“Yeah,” He blushed.
“Maybe too much?” Inko teased, smiling softly down at him as they walked. “The school called me to tell me your quirk had shown up and you had to go to the school counselor because you couldn't stop crying over it.”
He buried his face in his hands and wished he could pull his hair over his eyes.
“What'd we say about the tears?” Her eyes crinkled up in amusement. He giggled.
“Not too many or they seem fake.” Izuku ducked his head when she ruffled his hair again. “I'm sorry, I just got um- really happy? Even though I knew I was being fake.”
“That's fine, Izuku, just remember to try and keep a lid on it.” She leaned down and picked him up. “It just sounds like you got too into it. Which is great! You're a natural little actor, you.” She nuzzled his cheeks and he whined.
“Moooom! I don't like faking though!”
Inko propped him up on her hip and looked him in the eyes worriedly. “Izuku, you know we have to-”
“No! I know that!” He kicked and complained. “But I… don't like it.” He buried his face into her shoulder. “I know we have to be super careful because people will be mean. I just still don't like doing it.” He huffed angrily.
Of course he knew. His mom didn't hide things from him. Or if they did, he knew she was hiding something, and he knew she would tell him when he was allowed to know. Because she didn't hide anything from him unless it was really bad and not “child appropriate”.
He knew his real parents were dead, killed by mean people. He didn't know how, but he knew she would tell him when he was older.
He knew his “real” name was not Midoriya Izuku. He knew she would never tell him his first name because it would be too dangerous. If even he didn't know, it would be even harder to find him. (And even so, it wasn't his real name. That old name was just the first name of several that he'd had.)
Inko's eyes softened and she kissed the top of his head where his hair had just turned orange.
“Izuku, sweetie, that's perfectly alright. I'm glad you don't like lying. It'll be hard, but it's not something you need to give up. Lying is necessary sometimes. That never means that you have to get used to it or like it.”
“...do you like faking?” Izuku asked quietly. Sometimes… when his mom did things, when she changed to do jobs or things Midoriya Inko couldn't… he thought she might.
His mom was very quiet for a long time, walking home and not talking.
“I don't think I like faking.” She said eventually. “But remember honey, I'm very old. I've been faking everything for a very long time.” He felt her shrug. “I'm so used to it… I feel safer, when I'm faking.”
Izuku thought about that. Thought about his mom pacing the house at night, scared, worried over things that could happen, about people and things and accidents. He thought about how everything she did was carefully planned. About how she didn't let him be himself outside of their home. About how she was never herself, because she had to be his mom.
“You're not faking being my mom, right?”
She was puzzled for a long while, obviously thinking that over.
“Well, in any way most people care about? I am. You know that.” She patted his back. “But inside? I don't think I ever was.” Even back when she'd first picked him up from a dead man's arms, she'd felt an unsteady warmth in her chest.
Izuku felt tears building in his eyes and he sniffled loudly. “Reaaaaally?”
“Oh sweetie, yes. I love you my little Izuku.” She stopped walking and hugged him tightly. “I've never faked that.”
Izuku burst into sobs. It took a panicked Inko several minutes of hugging and frantic assurances before he managed to calm down to sniffles.
“Looks like crying is going to be a thing.” She giggled snottily and then with a mischievous look started crying too. He whined and looked concerned. “Aww Zuku, if you're a crier it only makes sense that your mom is a crier too!” She cried with a happy grin and blew a raspberry into his neck.
Izuku squealed loudly in soggy laughter and wriggled like a child possessed, trying to get out of her stranglehold on his sides.
Life was frightening, but it was good. As long as they were together.
They'd be okay.
Izuku grew up knowing what his quirk was.
His mom said her quirk wasn't named. Neither was his. He promptly named them once he was old enough to put the proper words together.
Biokinesis, he named hers. The ability to control DNA. To change it. Of course, she couldn't just change someone's DNA and make things happen, there were a lot of biological steps and processes she had to deal with in the meantime to do it. It made her slow. It meant it took her centuries to gain the expertise she had with her quirk now.
Izuku's was the same quirk, but better. Faster. With the additional luck of having an experienced teacher to help him learn.
He named his quirk Bio-Switch. He could control DNA and change it, but unlike his mother when he did it all the changes happened at once.
He didn't have to make the changes happen. They just… did. It made his quirk dangerous.
So dangerous.
One time he was practicing on Inko and he accidentally erased an entire section of his mom's DNA.
The section of human DNA that, apparently, decided where and how the human heart was present. His mom had shuddered and next thing he knew, she had a fleshy, pulsing growth half the size it was supposed to be on the outside of her abdomen.
Thank god for his mom's quirk being so powerful and intuitive, because she'd regrown her heart within seconds. Getting rid of the sudden new growth had been… disgusting.
And that was one of the tamest incidents his quirk had caused. DNA could change anything in the human body. There was no limit to the body horror and gore he'd seen, trying to figure out his quirk. On himself. On his mom. Never on anybody else.
She didn't feel pain, not unless she wanted to, and she was so experienced with her quirk that using it on herself was completely reflexive. She was the safest person to practice on. He didn't like it, and he lost many nights sleep because of what he did, but he had to know. Had to learn.
Because what his quirk could do when used properly, was amazing. And he learned everything from Inko. Because she knew the good and bad. She knew.
His mom didn't work. She stayed at home where she could be paranoid in peace, in her own words, and she liked being a stay at home mother. But stay at home moms didn't make money and Izuku did not have a father.
So sometimes they got weird letters and his mother ate all the food in their cupboards and shifted everything, changed herself to whoever or whatever she needed. And sometimes she took his hands and shifted everything in him until he was someone else too. It used to be hard to keep his DNA the same, to keep himself from changing back. But he got used to it.
Then she would take his hand and walk him to dark places. Nobody bothered her. He didn't know why or how. Everyone in those places knew.
He wasn't sure what they knew. When he asked, his mom told him to wait until he was older. He'd nodded and just kept to her side.
She always fixed people. She never hurt people, on those missions. Even when they were dark and scary and bad people. She fixed them. She put her hands on their bare skin and instructed him to hold his hands there too. Then she would reach out to their “strings” and change things.
Izuku watched, and learned, and observed.
His mom could do anything.
Anything with DNA, she could change, fix, destroy. It took time, it took effort, and she had to have literal centuries to learn how to do it. But she could do anything. Izuku had watched her regrow limbs. Regrow organs. Put people's bodies back together from scraps.
Every time, afterwards she took a large bundle of cash and walked out, Izuku holding her hand.
She only let him practice healing with his quirk on her. Specifically because her quirk, and specifically because she made him watch her gain the injuries to begin with. So that he knew what they were. So he knew how to avoid it happening to him.
Inko refused to let him hurt people. Izuku refused to hurt people. So they worked together to help him understand his quirk and learn to control it. So that he would never hurt anyone. It just unfortunately meant that he saw every single way his quirk could go horribly wrong.
Growing up, Izuku loved heroes.
His mom wasn't fond of them, but she wasn't fond of anyone except him, and she was fine enough with helping foster his love and adoration for them. Even if it meant taking on extra jobs to afford his Silver Sentry bedsheets and Turtle Titan action figures and All Might clothes.
When Izuku was ten years old he asked Inko why she was fine with him loving heroes, with wanting what heroes had, she’d smiled and ruffled his hair. Because it was something unplanned, unsure, unsafe. His mother didn't do unsafe.
“Everyone needs a dream, sweetie. Realistic or not. Something that can come true or something just fantasy.” She hugged him around the shoulders and leaned her head onto. “I've never had a dream, and it's always weighed on my shoulders a bit. I just wanted to survive. I'm glad you have something to look up to, something to strive for.” She stroked his hair.
“But… I can't become a hero.” Izuku said quietly. “It's… impossible.”
“Who on earth told you that?” Inko drew back and looked at him askance.
“I… I just… figured because w-we're always hiding and it's t-too risky…” His mom grabbed his chin and gently forced him to look up.
“Izuku. Who told you that you couldn't be a hero?” She asked softly.
“...a lot of people.”
“What did they say?”
“...that my quirk, the quirk they think I have, is useless.” He felt his eyes tearing up. “A-and my real quirk is- is a secret and I'll n-never be able to- to use it to hel-help people.” Izuku's nose started feeling runny and his mouth was trembling almost too hard to talk. “Ev- even though I want to! I wan-want to help people like you do!” He started sobbing. “I want- I want to be like All Might and m-make people fffeel safe just be-because I'm there.”
“Oh Izuku…” Inko cupped his face sadly.
“I w-want to make people ffffeel safe.” He felt snot running down his face before his mom wiped it away gently. “I… I don't want. Anyone to be scared around me.”
I want to make you feel safe. Because you never do.
“Izuku, honey...” She hugged him close to her and he felt how chubby she'd gotten lately, the weight she'd gained because she hadn't needed to use her quirk very often, because she had time and money to eat all the food she wanted and more. Izuku preferred it over how skinny she was in the past.
“B-but I never can. B-because my real quirk can't- I can't use it. Not without- it's-” He squeezed his eyes shut and hugged her back as tight as he could.
“You can become a hero, Izuku.”
His brain stalled. “What?”
“You can do whatever you want, Izuku.” Inko pulled away and held her son at arms length and stared him in the eyes seriously, smiling. “If being a hero is what you really want, we can figure it out. We can figure out how to explain your quirk as something else. Hair and Eye Color is just- it was just a convenient excuse. Something to keep you under the radar.”
“You're getting older now, Izuku. You're allowed to start thinking about making your future. Before… before I was trying to just- make sure you had a future.” Her eyes closed and tears began to spill between her eyelids. “Because you were in danger, as a child. You're still in danger. But soon you're going to be able to protect yourself.” She opened her eyes and smiled wisely at him.
“You're always going to be in danger, dear. But it's up to you to decide what you do with your life. And I'm going to be right behind you every step of the way. Because, Izuku, sweetie.” Inko paused to laugh and sob briefly.
“Sweetie you're my dream. Whatever you want, whatever you need, I will be here. Even if you show your quirk to the world. Even if you go underground and live in a mountain cave for the rest of your life. Even if you become a hero. Even if you become a villain. You're my dream and I love you, sweetheart.”
Izuku cried loudly and tackled her, squeezing her tightly.
“I don't- I don't want to give up- what we have.” He told her, many long minutes later, when they'd both stopped crying and left to go cuddle on the couch with tea.
“What is it we have?” Inko asked, tilting her head curiously.
“I… being Midoriyas.” Izuku said slowly. “Being… Izuku and Inko. With harmless, “useless” color changing quirks. It's nice. It's…”
“Stable. Safe.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, becoming a hero will be hard without using Bio-Switch, honey.” Inko commented patiently. “It won't be impossible, but it will be… very difficult.”
“I'm willing to do it.” Izuku said quietly. “Besides, well… thanks to you, thanks to what we've lived through, I know how messed up the hero system and the law are.” He leaned back against the couch and breathed in hot steam. “Everyone… if I didn't have Bio-Switch, everyone saying I have a useless quirk, that I could never be a hero…”
“It would be a different story.” Inko nodded understandingly, then a dark look appeared in her eyes. “And you're going to tell me who has said that to you, because it is not alright to say those things to a young child.”
Izuku looked down shamefully, knowing she was mad at him for not telling her about the hassling before. “U-um, anyways, I just… I keep thinking. There's no heroes with… ‘useless’ quirks, or any quirkless heroes either. You either have a hero quirk or you don't.” He sipped his tea with a serious expression. “And… it's wrong. You don't need a hero's quirk to help people. You didn't need your quirk to help Mitsuki-san when she got hurt and lost her job. You don't need a quirk to be nice to people, to be kind. You can just- help!” He huffed loudly and then looked at his smiling mother sideways. “What?”
“Mmmm, nothing, sweetie,” She brushed one of his curls behind his ear. “That's just a lovely line of thought in this day and age.” He blushed. “Well, if you're going to be a hero… you're going to be in the limelight to some degree, unless you go underground.”
Izuku nodded firmly. His mother had always been sure his fondness for heroes was backed up by understanding. He knew all about underground heroes, even knew more about them than normal people usually found out.
“I… think I'd like that.” He smiled. “I wish I could be a hero like All Might, but… I don't think the attention would be good.”
“Perhaps not.” Inko nodded seriously. “I'd support you if you did, but… being an underground hero will be easier. And safer.”
It always circled around to being safer.
Inko used strings and beads to explain her quirk. To change DNA, she rearranged the strings and the beads connecting them.
It happened on such a tiny, minuscule level that she claimed it used to give her migraines constantly. After all, DNA strings and the nucleotides that made them up were so incredibly small that the human mind often didn't even comprehend it.
Her quirk's limitations and problems meant that, if it weren't for her power and experience, there would be little to no immediate effect.
Izuku was taught, growing up, with strings and beads. Inko bought and made countless models and figures and taught him everything she knew about DNA and biology. He was still learning to this day because the human body was an incredible, complex thing.
When he was old enough to have a grasp on his quirk, when he'd stopped using it on accident, Inko told Izuku to come up with his own metaphors. Strings and beads worked for her. It was likely that he could come up with something that helped him more.
It took him years but eventually Izuku realized computer code worked better for him.
When his mom changed someone's codes, there was no change to the computer systems until the codes were run naturally later, in which case glitches could pop up. She had to add in codes that caused them to run forcefully now for anything to happen.
For Izuku, his coding happened instantly, which was what made Bio-Switch so much more dangerous. Once he made the changes the entire computer system was already affected. At least he still got to keep the strings metaphor, though it was strings of code for him.
Izuku got headaches when he used his quirk too much because it was just so much. Every time he touched DNA he saw lines of code running in the back of his head. He couldn't stop sensing it.
There was just so much, so many tiny codes, everywhere, that just thinking about changing codes was hard. There was so much to take into account, so much to do, so much to keep an eye on.
It was more accurate to say that using his quirk didn't cause headaches, controlling it did. After even a small amount of practice Izuku's brain hurt and he felt such mental exhaustion his mom just patted him on the shoulder and let him take a nap.