Alley Cat (Ch 2) (Patreon)

Hisashi Midoriya hums to himself as he prepares dinner for his lovely wife, excited for the news he has to share with her. Sure, the initial meeting with the doctor was a disappointment, but when she said that she could fix their son? And they get paid for it? Well, today has shaped up to be an amazing day! And with the two of them having the house to themselves for the near future, maybe they can work on having a second normal child…

Just as he begins plating the fish and rice -simple, but everyone around knows that Inko is the best cook in the neighborhood so anything else pales in comparison anyways- he hears the front door open, announcing the entrance of said wife. He smiles at hearing her announce her return, perfect timing!

“I’m in the dining room, dinner’s ready!”

Yes, the apartment isn’t all that large, and she would have seen him within a few seconds of walking, but it’s the thought that counts.

Inko smiles as she walks into the kitchen and sees the home cooked meal waiting for her, only to frown in confusion when she only sees two plates. “Honey, where’s Izuku’s food?”

“Ah, I actually have to talk with you about that,” Hisashi waves off her question, causing her frown to deepen.

She hesitantly takes a seat, noting that Izuku hasn’t come to greet her like he usually would. Did something happen when they went to get his quirk checked? She can’t think of anything else it could be, but what might have happened?

Hisashi takes his seat across from her, putting his hands together and bowing his head. “Itadakimasu!”

Inko doesn’t eat, instead staring at her husband as he starts in on his own meal. When it becomes clear that he has no intention of continuing the previous conversation, she takes it upon herself to speak up. “Hisashi, where’s Izuku? Even if he’s sleeping for some reason, we should wake him up. A growing boy needs to eat to grow up big and strong!”

The man sighs in resignation, laying his chopsticks across the plate before folding his hands together. “Well, when we went to the doctor’s, I was told some concerning news regarding Izuku.”

Inko’s blood freezes, her mind rapid-firing a dozen different versions of the worst case scenario before she forcefully pushes them away. There’s no point in causing her to stress about what ifs when she can just ask at this very moment! “And…what news did Mr. Garaki have to say?”

“Huh?” Hisashi looks confused for a moment before his face lights up in understanding. “Oh, no, we didn’t go to Garaki, it was just a check-up so I brought him to someone closer.”

His admission causes a red flag to raise in her mind, and she crosses her arms on the table as she leans forward. “Hisashi, my family has been going to Doctor Garaki for fifty years. I know him, I know how well he does his job. Loyalty counts for something, which is why we always go to him, even if the distance does put him a bit out of the way.”

Hisashi rolls his eyes, not deigning to argue the point. Goodness knows they’ve talked about it enough in the past that they can probably recreate each other’s parts from memory. “Well, Izuku was…quirkless.” He shudders, and Inko just stares at him for a moment as she processes.

Their son is…quirkless? All at once Inko is hit by a sense of melancholy, mourning Izuku’s chance for a normal life. She has nothing against the quirkless, her aunt was quirkless, but she knows exactly how people will treat him now. They’ll look down on him, they’ll insult him. And his dream…poor Izuku must be crushed! But wait, what was it Hisashi said? Izuku was quirkless?

“What do you mean by ‘was’?” She doesn’t know why, but a bad feeling is building up in her chest.

Hisashi just shrugs as he goes back to eating. “Well, they don’t know how long it will take, but the doctor said that there might be a procedure that can give him a quirk!”

Inko is stunned. There’s…no way that’s actually true, right? If it is, then there definitely would have been enough of a commotion that everyone would know about it! Parents wouldn’t be worried about what kind of quirk their children would get, because they could just undergo the procedure to get a new one! No, it’s an unbelievable claim.

One that Inko realizes Hisashi fell for.

“Hisashi,” she starts off tentatively as she tries to work out if her husband was always so gullible while trying to tamper down her anger, “was there anything…else, that I should be aware of? For example, where our son actually is?”

“Hmm?” He waves his chopsticks dismissively and her anger spikes. “Oh, she said that she needs to keep him for observation while she tries to give him a quirk. It’s still in the testing phase, so she needs to monitor everything-  oh!” He exclaims like he just remembered something before pulling out a stack of bills.

“I did forget something! Since it’s an experimental procedure, apparently we get paid for having Izuku participate! We can finally afford to take that trip to Paris that you always talk about!”

Inko looks at the stack of money that’s easily more than she makes in a month, her bad feeling morphing into a sick sensation that permeates throughout her body. “Hisashi…” she starts before taking a deep breath. I’m sure it wasn’t intentional. Apparently my husband is just an idiot.

She starts again, speaking calmly. “What hospital did you go to? Don’t you think this is something that you should have talked with me about? And, most importantly, how can you not find this incredibly suspicious!?”

Ok, so that wasn’t as calm as she hoped, but she doubts that anyone can blame her. After all, from her point of view, it sounds like her husband sold their son for human experimentation! But surely she’s overreacting. Her husband couldn’t be that dumb, could he? Unless…is he one of the people who look down on the quirkless? It’s rare enough that she wouldn’t have ever known. But…

She shakes her head as he tells her the name of the hospital, pushing her chair back and leaving her dinner untouched. She doesn’t think she could stomach the food right now. At his questions of where she’s going, she scowls, her anger and frustration finally pushing through her calm facade.

“I am going to find our son. I don’t know what you were thinking when you decided to do this, but I am incredibly angry!” That’s an understatement, but working in customer service means that she has a great deal of experience in hiding that anger. So much so that she’s long become accustomed to hiding it in her daily life as well. Mitsuki likes to joke that by the time someone sees Inko angry it’s already too late.

Something that Hisashi hasn’t seemed to pick up on, despite their many years of marriage.

He grimaces as he raises his hands in surrender, watching his wife as she grabs her keys. “Ok, ok. I can admit that I should have told you, but I was just too excited that there was a chance to fix our son! I mean, can you imagine having a quirkless child? Our lives would be ruined!”

Finally getting confirmation of what she suspected, Inko’s face hardens. “I don’t know why you’d think that,” she says with a tone cold enough that it could chill drinks. “Even if our son is quirkless, he’d still be our son. And we would still love him and be a family.” She eyes the man across from her with a wrinkled nose. “Or…at least I would.”

With those words hanging in the air, she walks out the door, intent on finding her son at the very least, if not bring him home should this doctor seem to have ulterior motives. Leaving behind a confused Hisashi, who can’t wrap his head around his wife’s words.

Does…she really not think their son being quirkless is a problem?

`~`

Left alone with his thoughts, Hisashi hasn’t managed to fall asleep. Instead, he sits on the couch, a beer in hand, while he waits for his wife to return. No matter how much he thinks about it, he just can’t figure out why Inko doesn’t see what’s wrong with having a quirkless child.

It couldn’t just be that she doesn’t know what will happen, right? How people will ostracize them. How they’ll lose their friends, their social lives, maybe even their jobs! Having a quirkless is just…it’s basically painting a huge target on their backs. And forget whatever reputation they had before! They’d just be known as that family, those parents.

He huffs, taking another swig and scowling when he doesn’t taste anything. He gets up to toss the bottle on top of the pile of his previous drinks while getting another, twisting off the cap while he walks back to his seat. But he stops when he hears something. 

It’s faint, but rapidly getting clearer, closer. It’s the sound of sirens. He frowns. “I hope it’s nothing dangerous, Inko still hasn’t come back.” But, well. If it was actually dangerous, then they’d call for a hero, not the police. So he doubts it’s anything to really worry about.

But as they get closer, he starts to wonder. And when they sound practically down the street, he’s convinced that whatever is going on is nearby. But he never expected the reason to pull the front door from its frame and storm in with her hair floating, rage burning in her eyes.

Inko storms up to him, hand outstretched as she activates her quirk. He feels what she pulls, and he pales, letting out a squeak of protest. “I-Inko, wha-wha-what are you d-d-d-doing?”

She doesn’t answer his question, instead asking one of her own, enunciating each word carefully. “Where. Is. Our. Son?”

“W-what do you mean? Di-didn’t you go to check up on him?”

She doesn’t have a chance to answer, being interrupted by the entrance of the police coming through the doorway. “Ma’am! Please, don’t do anything rash.” The female cop with rainbow-colored hair asks with her hands raised in a cautionary manner.

Hisashi rapidly nods in agreement while the other cop, a burly man with eyebags, speaks. “Please, we understand your feelings, but I promise that we’ll do everything we can to find him.”

Huh? What are they talking about? What happened? Hisashi wonders, desperately hoping that his wife will come to her senses and let him go.

“And how, exactly, are you going to do that? I was listening, all you have is a dead doctor. You don’t even know what this woman looks like!”

Hisashi startles, really wishing he knew what’s going on. Dead body? What!?

The male doctor lets out a slow breath. “That is why we need you to not act rashly. Your husband is the only one who saw her, so we need him to tell us everything that happened.”

Inko stares deeply into her husband’s eyes, and for a moment he feels her hold loosen and he breathes a sigh of relief. “Hisashi,” her sickly sweet voice makes him tense up once again, “do you remember our wedding vows?”

His brows furrow, wondering if she somehow thinks he cheated on her. It doesn’t make sense, but with the drunken haze filling his mind, it’s all he can think of. Unfortunately, that means he doesn’t remember their wedding vows at the moment.

“That’s ok,” she says, taking his silence as a no,” because I do. And I remember exactly what I warned you would happen if you ever hurt our family.”

Her quirk fully activates, pulling the objects she grabbed towards her.

People always underestimate Inko’s quirk, Attraction. To most, pulling small objects towards you is a weak quirk. What most of them fail to realize, is that it doesn’t matter what she pulls, it will go to her. Often-times she’d attract one of her son’s toys while he hangs from it, so he essentially flies towards her.

It’s also how she pulled the door out of the wall, she used her quirk on the hinges which means the door was simply there, not attached to anything. And it’s not like the door was heavy, so she could toss it aside quite easily.

But what does that mean for something that’s attached to a person? It means that whatever she pulls will be pulled. Depending on her mood, the attracting force can be stronger. Depending on how hard she wants to pull, the force can be stronger.

That is to say, when she uses her quirk on her husband, it doesn’t take more than half a second for her to fulfill her wedding vows.

He hurt their family, their child.

So Inko makes sure he can never have a child again.