Prologue (Part Two)

Earth Year 2211 A.D.

Near Endo Village, Chiba Prefecture

Planet Sol-Three (Local Designation: Earth)

The drive from her home of Tattoin, in the Shizuoka Prefecture, out to her mother's home in the village of Endo, in the Chiba Prefecture, took three hours on a perfect day, and with the amount of traffic Yokohama saw on a good day, she knew that there was no such thing as a perfect day.

Inko had seen enough trauma injuries to know just how dangerous late-night driving could be, so she preferred to take her time, which almost always guaranteed a fourth hour, but she felt that the trade of slower for safer was worth it.

Her car was nothing special, simply a red, older model sedan that she'd bought as a student and never had the heart to trade in for something newer. It had four doors, one engine and it ran, which was more than enough for her needs.

She'd meant to leave earlier in the day, arriving at her mother's home late enough to share dinner, but she'd agreed to cover Mila's shift at the hospital, which had then ran late thanks to a building accidents, and now, instead of being late at night, it was early in the morning, having not long turned one o'clock, and she was still twenty minutes away from her mother's home, the same house that she'd grown up in.

Her hands were clenched around the steering wheel, tight enough that her knuckles had turned white back at the hospital and remained that colour ever since. Had she been calmer, she would've worried about bruising the palms of her hands.

Senna…

Almost two years they'd been together. All of that, just casually thrown away at the end of what was easily the worst week of her life. First thing on Monday morning, she found out that she'd lost out on the position of Senior Student Nurse at her hospital, responsible for creating and overseeing the schedules for all of her peers. Chiyo was a lovely girl, and Inko knew that she'd do a great job, they were friends after all, but she wouldn't lie and say that she hadn't wanted the job for herself.

On Thursday, she'd finally heard back from her gynaecologist and received her test results.

Primary Ovarian Insufficiency.

She was, for all intents and purposes, infertile, and it was likely that she would never be able to conceive, let alone carry a child of her own.

And then, earlier today, she'd been surprised when Chiyo had told had that she'd just seen her girlfriend arrive. She'd been even more surprised when she'd found her and one of the new interns sharing an on-call room, with the lights out and their clothes off.

She'd turned on her heel and walked away, ignoring the calls for her to, "come back", and told Chiyo that she was leaving for the weekend. Chiyo hadn't protested when she'd seen them trailing her, and simply told her that she was overdue to take some of her vacation time, and that she didn't want to see her before next Monday.

She hadn't bothered with the radio, simply driving in silence, through the forest and farmland that made up the Chiba Prefecture.

She took a breath to steady herself and tried to force her body to relax.

If she gripped the steering wheel any tighter, she'd tear it off of her dashboard.

Away from the bright lights of the city, the only source of illumination was the meagre amount provided to her by the headlights of her car, and what came from the crescent moon of the night sky.

If it had been any other night, or during the day, Inko knew that she wouldn't have noticed it. Had the night been cloudier, she would've assumed that it was simply a trick of the night sky, or perhaps even a shooting star.

But as it was, all Inko could see was a giant ball of fire.

And then, there she blinked, and there was a lot more than just the one to be seen.

The pitch black of the countryside's night sky lit up, and for a moment, Inko found herself frozen, her car simply rolling down the road as she took her foot off of the accelerator, and simply watched as the largest ball of fire she'd ever seem passed almost directly overhead, so close that even in the safety of her car, she could feel the heat from it, and she continued to watch as it crashed, tearing up the field behind her, continuing to blaze.

This was a bad idea, her mind told her.

Things just didn't fall out of the sky, her mind told her.

And when they did, you definitely didn't get up close with them, her mind told her.

She turned her car towards it.

Her car hadn't been designed for off-roading, and the drive was bumpy, if thankfully short. She didn't know what she expected to find when she drew closer, but a big hunk of metal wasn't it.

Still dressed in a pair of white sneakers and the pale blue scrubs she'd been wearing for her hospital shift, Inko trudged her way across the field, through wet mud and destroyed pieces of trees, as her clothes grew blacker, browner and just plain dirtier with every step she took.

It was cold and dark, and a part of her just wanted to get back in the warmth of her car and continue driving, but it wasn't often that you got to see a fallen star up close, so she was curious.

And that was before she heard the crying.

Crying that was coming from the inside of the fallen star.

Only the star wasn't a star.

It was a ship - an alien spaceship!

Aliens were a hotly debated topic nowadays, with quite a few people believing that they had to be real. Some people even thought that they walked among humans, blending in with the populace, or at least, they had done so in the past, and that the changes made to the human DNA of their potentially hybrid children, were what might've given the rest of the human race their Quirks to begin with.

But Inko paid no mind to any of that.

The moment she heard crying, she went into what she affectionately dubbed, "Nurse Mode". Moving swiftly around the ship, paying it no more mind than she would a damaged car, she located the front, where a glass bubble, (or what she at least assumed was glass), was located. As if sensing her presence, the bubble split open, sending a mass of liquid splashing down around her, as the crying grew louder.

It was a baby.

Sitting in the middle of the glass ball, with only a white blanket wrapped around its shoulders to protect it from the elements, was a baby, crying at the top of its lungs.

Inko looked at the tiny little thing, soaking wet, its few dark curls were plastered to its - his, she noticed, as the blanket shifted - head. Desperate to help, she reached inside and scooped him up, immediately rocking him in an attempt to calm him, and she was rewarded, not only with him quieting almost immediately, but with a look at his gorgeous green eyes, a shade of emerald much brighter than her own, that sat above a diamond-shaped cluster of freckles.

He was beautiful.

"Shh", she rocked him, "it's okay, it's okay… what are you doing out here all by yourself… and where are your parents?" She looked at the mass of metal in front of her, "And where are you from?"

=== === === === ===

Ima Midoriya was accustomed to being woken up at odd hours of the day and night.

A nurse of over forty years' experience, Ima had seen everything and done most of it. She'd outlived her husband, who'd been gone for nearly five years now, and the two of them had raised a brilliant daughter, who had followed in her footsteps and become a talented nurse in her own right.

A Paediatric Nurse, choosing to work with children instead of adults, but there was no accounting for taste.

She could only pass on so much.

Her husband had been a journalist, and he'd always been just that bit slightly disappointed that Inko had followed her into medicine rather than following him into reporting, believing that she would've made a talented investigator, but Inko had always been at her best when she was helping people directly, and her parents had both known that.

The point was, very few things in life could manage to surprise her.

Which was why the pounding on her door had her on full alert the second she heard it.

Sherubi immediately started barking in response, racing past her, out of the bedroom, and down the stairs towards the front door, and with the noise she was making, Ima was glad that she had no neighbours close enough to hear her.

"I'm coming! I'm coming!"

Her calls went ignored, as she wrapped her fluffy brown dressing gown around her, covering his nightdress and made her way downstairs after the dog, pausing only to slip her feet into her slippers. The pounding on the door continued, despite her calls for it to calm down, and after taking a moment to fish the right key off of her chain, she pulled open her front door, and allowed her frantic daughter to barge straight past her, as the dog ran in circles around her.

"Honestly", she grumbled, as she shivered from the cold air that was rushing into her house, "Inko, where's your key?"

"I'm sorry, but I couldn't find it and then he started crying and I couldn't get him to stop, and I wanted to get him out of the cold-"

"He? Who is", she blinked, as she took in the bright white bundle in her daughter's arms, "Inko Midoriya", that same tone had kept Inko in line as a teenager, and never once failed to convince her to tidy up the mess beneath her bed, "have you stolen a baby?"

Inko hadn't been pregnant. She saw her daughter at least once a month, and she might've been retired, but that didn't mean she'd gone and become simpleminded in her advancing age.

"What?! No! I mean, it's just, I was driving, and there was a fire, and then all the water, and just him and his blanket, and oh my gods, you wouldn't believe-"

"Inko Midoriya", she ground out, in a tone that often came before Inko found herself regretting everything she'd ever done, "did you steal a baby?"

"I, uh… maybe?"

"Maybe?"

She shrugged, biting her lip in worry when the baby in her hands startled, "I'm not sure".

Ima simply sighed, taking a seat on her sofa, "Start talking".

=== === === === ===

"So, you were driving here?"

"Yes, Mother".

"And you saw a falling star?"

"Yes, Mother".

"Only, it wasn't a falling star, it was apparently an alien spaceship?"

"Yes, Mother".

"And this baby", she pointed towards the baby, who was still wrapped in his blanket, tucked into Inko's arms, "was inside?"

"Yes, Mother".

"Then you took him out of the spaceship, realised that he was probably an alien, panicked, fled and then decided to bring him here?"

"Yes, Mother".

"Well then, why didn't you just say that", she scoffed, as she reached for her tea, "honestly girl, that was much less time consuming than your version of the story. Wouldn't you say so, dear?"

Inko sighed, "Yes, Mother".

"Well then, what are we waiting for", she finished the last of her tea, "give the boy here and go get your coat. Once you've done that, your father's old truck is inside the garage, you can drive", she wrinkled her nose, "I never liked the dratted thing".

"Wha- what? Mother, where are we going?"

"We can't just leave the boy's… spaceship… in the middle of nowhere now, can we? We'll pile it onto the back of your father's truck and bring it here", she waved off her daughter's rising concerns, "we can hide it in one of the fields out back".

"M- Mother?"

"Honestly dear, you really need to learn to be more articulate. You're a nurse and you should learn to speak more clearly", tired of waiting, Ima took the baby from her grip with a practiced ease, "now, hurry up. Izuku and I are waiting".

She blinked, "Izuku?"

=== === === === ===

It didn't take them long to retrace Inko's steps. She always took the same route into Endo from Musutafu, and she'd driven these streets with her father so often, that she often felt she could do so in her sleep, and she already knew that the particular turn off for Izuku's spaceship would forever be ingrained into her memory.

Not even a half hour had passed, and she had already changed his designation in her mind from, "The Baby", to "Izuku". The Midoriya Family, of which they were now the last, had often used similar names, and Inko also learned that had she been born a son, and not a daughter, her parents had planned on giving her the name Izuku, but now it was to go to the baby she'd picked up in the middle of the woods.

"Oh my", Ima murmured, as Inko pulled up alongside the crashed ship, "now that is impressive".

And it was.

The glass ball she had seen earlier, wasn't a ball, she realised. Now that her adrenaline had worn off, and she'd calmed down, she could clearly see that it was instead the top half of an egg-shaped pod. The pod was encased in a pentagonal shell of a silver-grey metal that wrapped around it, which Inko assumed was designed to protect it, but with her knowledge of spacefaring vessels, it could simply have been decorative.

Within the pod, which no longer held what Inko assumed was not, in fact, water, all that remained was a thick cushion layer of black, padded material.

"I wonder what it's made of".

"-Tt-", Ima made a clicking noise with her tongue, "most likely something we've never heard of. Else our old pre-Quirk space programmes would have used it", she shrugged, bobbing Izuku on the nose when he started, "I doubt it's made of stainless steel".

The two of them paused for a moment, looking over the craft in front of them, made of a material that was quite possibly unknown to their entire planet, and despite that, they both knew they could never tell anybody.

Not without putting Izuku at risk.

Inko didn't quite fully understand everything that was happening, but she already knew that she wasn't going to let anything happen to him. She liked to think that the people that made up her government were nice people. The kind of people that wouldn't harm a child, but at the same time, she watched the TV, and heard the horror stories that had happened when Quirks were first revealed.

If there was even a one percent chance of that happening to this, cute, innocent baby, then there was no way in hell that Inko was going to turn him in.

"Alright that's enough gawking", Ima moved to settle the baby - Izuku - Inko's mind corrected onto the front seat of their truck, securing him in place with a pair of crossed seatbelts, "let's get this thing loaded already. We take any longer and the main road's going to be loaded with every idiot salaryman on his way to work".

"Right", Inko agreed, "we'll need to use our Quirks though".

"-Tt-, like that matters. No one out here can see us. We'll be fine".

"Alright then", Inko gestured towards the main body, "after you".

Inko called her Quirk, Minikinesis. It was a slightly upgraded version of her mother's Quirk, which granted Inko the ability to summon objects into her hand, but only if they were small in size and relatively close. Ima's version helped her to move similar objects about, but she needed physical to make physical contact to do so. She called her Quirk, Tactile Attraction.

Neither of them were out of shape, but they lacked the physical strength required to lift the ship directly. If it weren't for the help that their Quirks provided, they wouldn't have been able to load it, but as it was, it took them over fifteen minutes simply to lift it and secure in their truck, which was parked less than five metres away.

Izuku was a little saint throughout it all, she decided, barely making a peep beyond the occasional stir, settling into Ima's lap without a fuss as they drove him home.

=== === === === ===

Ima made fresh tea when they returned home, the sun was still not ready to rise, but they both knew that neither one of them would be able to sleep.

Izuku had awoken once they'd parked up, and insisted on Inko rocking him, while she paced up and down her mother's sitting room.

"What do we do now?"

Ima chuckled, idly scratching behind Sherubi's ears, "What do you want to do? Take him to an orphanage?"

Outraged, Inko pulled Izuku closer to her, "What?! No!"

"Why not?"

"Because he's…"

Ima smirked, "Yes?"

She looked down at his smiling face, as he played with the collar of her scrubs, "Because he's mine".

"I've still got a lot of friends in medical; I can arrange for a birth certificate for the boy easily enough. We'll just register him as a home birth. No one out here knows that whether or not you're pregnant, so no one will notice. The only issue for you is back home".

Senna's face flashed in front of her eyes, and it left a bad taste in her mouth, "I was thinking about moving", she looked down to Izuku, who had now found the shoulder strap of her bra and seemed to be fascinated by his own attempts to grasp at the fabric, "a fresh start might be nice".

"You'll need things: clothes, formula, diapers, a stroller and a car seat, and that's just to start with", Ima told her, ticking them off her fingers, "there's toys and vitamins and bibs and a million other things that normal people would have bought months ago".

"We don't even know if he can eat our food", Inko despaired, "what if he starves?"

"Oh, I know for a fact that you've got a brain in that head of yours, girl, do try using it", Ima pinched the bridge of her nose, "he can obviously eat our food and drink our water. He'll be fine".

"How do you know that?"

Ima sighed the sigh of those forced to suffer the presence of fools, "Think on it. Any race capable of space travel would never send a baby out there alone, without knowing if they could survive the planet they landed on. He looks like one of us, and that's not an accident. Nor is the fact that he can breathe our air. Whoever sent him here, did so knowing that he would blend in and survive", she tilted her head as she regarded her new grandson, "I wouldn't be surprised if sending him here was some sort of act of desperation".

"So… you don't think that he might be the sign of an invasion?"

"-Tt-", she clicked tongue, "invaders send soldiers, girl. They send warriors and weapons, and when they're advanced enough for space travel, I'm guessing they've got some pretty impressive weapons to match. Let me tell you what invaders don't send - babies".

"Right, right", Inko nodded to herself, "that makes a lot of sense".

"Yes, I usually do".

"Okay then", Inko nodded to herself, "can you make some calls now, please?"

"No! It's barely three AM! Office hours don't start for another six hours yet, honestly, do use your head will you".

=== === === === ===

Izuku Midoriya was born on the Fifteenth of July 2211, according to his birth certificate, with his mother listed as Inko Midoriya, and without a father, his file simply contained a note listing his father as a man known only as, 'Hisashi'. She'd known a boy in town called Hisashi when she was younger, and she'd had quite the crush on him as a pre-teen, but when she was still in high school, he'd moved away for university and she hadn't seen him since.

As far as names went, she supposed it would do.

A notification was sent to the local registration office, along with copies of Inko's documents and updated copies of her insurance forms, which now listed her son.

He was added to the Midoriya Family Registry, and after a visit to Ima's home from a member of the local office, which had Inko needlessly terrified. The young man that had been sent to see them spent his entire visit visibly unnerved by Ima's forceful nature, and after a shorter visit than was strictly considered appropriate, wherein he was given only the barest amount of information and brow beaten into submission, he hurried out the door, glad to be gone.

And just like that, Inko had a son.

Izuku Midoriya.

"They're through here".

She looked up from where she and Izuku were sat on the floor.

They'd used the day Izuku had landed as his actual birthday, but they had to assume that Izuku was a few days, if not a few weeks or months older than that. He was already capable of sitting up under his own power, whereas a newborn would still be struggling to lift his own head and learning to roll over.

Her mother had chosen a pair of grey trousers and matched it with a bright yellow cardigan, while Inko had chosen a pale pink cardigan and blue skirt, in an attempt to look more normal and homely. Her mother's guest, dressed in a pale-yellow polo shirt and a pair of tan trousers, was Taro Henkao, an old friend from her days as a nurse, and one of the most impressive surgeons of his time.

His Quirk, Iridescence, had aided his career as a plastic surgeon, as he could minorly adjust the colour tones of any object he was holding, and his Quirk worked for materials that were both, organic and synthetic. He'd often used it to adjust skin tones, shades of eye colours and on rare occasions, hair colours all the way to the root, at the request of his patients.

When Ima had called him, Taro had been confused to say the least. It wasn't uncommon for people to want to change the way they looked, or to make slight alterations to their children's colouring. He'd made a lot of money privately adjusting eye colours and skin tones for children whose parents could afford it. His Quirk couldn't change a colour completely, only adjust it, adding slight highlights or making slight shifts, adding bits of contrast or softening out a stronger colour. It also helped his vanity, he was almost eighty years old, but he'd constantly been adjusting his hair for decades, so that it kept its glossy black sheen, despite the fact that he probably should've been greyer than grey by now.

Still, "No-Nonsense Ima", was the last woman he ever expected to contact him in his retirement, asking him if he could adjust the colouring on a newborn baby boy.

"Inko", Ima said, as they stepped fully into the room, "this is Doctor Henkao. Taro, this is my daughter Inko", Inko merely waved, while Henkao bowed in greeting, a soft smile on his face, as he registered the room's fourth occupant, "and this little man, is Izuku, my grandson".

"Hello there, little one, ma'am".

"Doctor", Inko smiled, while Izuku's head switched back and forth between his mother and the newcomer, before he reached out, wanting her attention back, and she picked him up, tickling his tummy.

As Izuku erupted into laughter, Inko rose to shake the doctor's hand, letting him get a closer look at his patient.

"Thank you for coming, Doctor".

"Of course, it's my pleasure", he leant in for a closer examination, "and you little man, look very healthy".

"Perfect health", Ima told him brusquely, half-bragging, half-matter of fact, "I've honestly never seen a healthier child", she shrugged, "what do you think?"

"Visually I'd agree. I'd usually like a patient chart, but I trust your judgement, Ima. If you're both ready and have somewhere we can lie him down, we can get started", he half-shrugged, "I do apologise for the rush, but my wife and I are on our way to visit our sons, and we need to get going".

Ima waved him off, "Don't apologise, you're the one doing us a favour".

"I need to ask", Inko said, "this doesn't hurt, right? I mean, Izuku will be okay, won't he?"

"With most of these adjustments", Taro began, speaking clinically, in the way doctors were known to do, "even my younger patients were also undergoing other procedures and were sedated the entire time, and wouldn't have felt a thing. A few of them were done on waken patients, and they reported an itching sensation, but otherwise, they were unharmed. It was worse on their eyeballs, but I'm told that won't be an issue here".

Inko swallowed, "Oh, okay then", she nodded her head, "I think my mom set up a space in the kitchen?"

"I did", Ima agreed, leading Henkao by the arm, "come, it's just through here". She'd spent a few minutes earlier that morning clearing her dining table of its usual clutter and laid out a baby mat for them to rest Izuku on.

"This should do nicely", after taking a moment to check that the table was sturdy, Taro turned to address the three of them, "now this won't take long, but it is draining on the body. Little Izuku will likely fuss as well, so Inko, I'll need you to try and distract him, while Ima helps hold him down, so that I can keep in contact with his hair", he glanced at the mother-daughter duo, noting the identical shades of green in their hair and in their eyes, while Izuku's eyes were a few shades brighter than theirs, his hair was completely black, without a trace of green present. "It is just his hair, you want doing, correct? A series of dark green highlights, the same shade of your own".

"Yes, thank you".

"Don't you dare touch those beautiful emerald orbs, Doctor Henkao", Ima warned him, "you mess with those, and my little girl might just pull your eyeballs out of your sockets".

"I'll consider myself warned then", he chuckled dryly, before letting them settle the boy on the table, and pressing his fingertips to the boy's hairline, preparing to brush them slowly through his locks, "and here we go".

=== === === === ===

Author's Notes

While Inko and Izuku live in Musutafu, named for Mustafar, Darth Vader's chosen home world in Star Wars, Ima Midoriya, Inko's mother and Izuku's grandmother, lives in the small village of Endo, named for Endor (and their forest moon), the place where Darth Vader was cremated after he died. In line with that, as a young adult, Inko moved to Tattoin, before later relocating, which is a name based on Tattooine, the planet on which Vader was born.

Ima (今) is a name meaning, "Now", which I thought went well with part of Izuku's name meaning of "Old Story".

Taro Henkao's surname is portmanteau of the words, "Henka", meaning "Change" (変化), and "Kao", meaning "Face" (顔), which I felt was a fitting choice for a plastic surgeon.