Chapter 1: Prologue
Let's start at the beginning, shall we?
We come to our protagonist for this journey, Izuku Midoriya, the biggest quirk and hero analyst in Japan, maybe the world. All Might's number one fan, entering a hospital, on his 4th birthday. Inko Midoriya had scheduled the appointment for him many weeks in advance, so he'd be one of the first to get a meeting with the doctor to discover his quirk.
The day would not go the way anyone had planned.
"I hope my quirk lets me be like All Might!" Midoriya said as he pumped his first in the air, almost hitting his mother.
"Alright Izuku, calm down a little. We don't need to be hitting anyone trying to do their job now do we?" Inko asked. She had always seen him so lively, but today was special.
"Sorry mom, I'm just so excited!" The young man answered.
"Sorry for the wait, Miss Midoriya." The doctor entered the test room, and took a seat at his desk. He began to input the regular outcomes of every new quirk user, until he noticed the large eyes focused on him. Inko noticed them as well, but was prepared for what was coming.
"Hello, yo-"
"YOU'RE THE QUIRK DISCOVERY HERO, DOCTOR QUIRK!" Midoriya almost screamed. Inko just sat smiling at her son as he finally realized why they weren't at their usual hospital. She had gone out of her way to make his quirk discovery as memorable as possible, and had spent weeks getting this meeting.
"You've confirmed over a thousand quirk appraises, and have been 100% correct of all of them! You've even confirmed the quirks of some of the pro heroes, like Present Mic and Midnight! Rumors say that you know what All Might's quirk is! It's so cool! Since you can tell what everyone quirk is by a touch, containing villains is easy! Not to men-" Doctor Quirk was definitely taken aback by the sheer amount of information the young man was mumbling out, but soon came to appreciate his enthusiasm.
"aHEm" Inko coughed and nudged the analyst to break his rant, and gestured for Doctor Quirk to continue. Izuku looked up at his mom, and pouted a little, obviously irritated that she had interrupted his praise, while the hero just smiled.
"Well, I guess that'll work for introductions'" he chuckled out. "Alright then young man, let's find out exactly what your quirk is. First.." He pulled out a blank form and turned to Inko.
"For the hospital records, I must fill out a form with not only Young Izuku's new quirk, but as well as a few generations back of his family." He stated.
"Of Course, does it matter if there's an order?" Inko asked. She remembered this when she had hers registered, it being one of her favorite parts of the ordeal. Getting to trace back you family's powers... It was like going through a candy shop.
Your future power chosen from the past.
"Not at all. I don't need specifics, just the names of each quirk and who had them." Doctor Quirk stated as he readied his pen. They didn't need to go back far, but just enough to get a broad enough idea of what to expect.
"My father's Quirk was Low-Regen, and I directly inherited my mother's quirk, which is Gravity Pull, where we can pull small objects towards us." Inko informed him. She waited for Doctor Quirk to finish writing the information. He gestured for her to continue.
"My.. Husbands father had Heat-Vision, and his mother had Mist Breath, while he had a mutated combination of the two and got Fire Breath." Inko hesitantly told Doctor Quirk. He finished writing that down and gestured for Inko to come close, so that Izuku couldn't hear.
"I understand it isn't my place to ask, but how come you hesitated?" Doctor Quirk, soon putting the pieces together. Before he could apologize for intruding her personal life, Inko said quietly, yet firmly;
"We're going through with a divorce. He wants to go work in America, and he hasn't been the same since we had Izuku." She said with barely detectable bitterness in her voice.
"I understand, and I'm sorry for your troubles. I wish you luck in that field." Doctor Quirk said and leaned back, motioning to the hyper child to sit on a medical bed.
"Alright young man, now that all paperwork has been filled out, it's time to find out what your quirk is." He stated happily. His good mood was enough to get the young boy moving, though, unseen by the Midoriya's, his smile faltered only for a moment, when he felt a sensation he had rarely felt.
'This child... No... He's got a full family of users. It's nothing.' He reasoned, and continued his job.
Izuku practically flew to the bed, and sat giddily waiting for Doctor Quirks instruction. The man rolled his chair over next to the boy, and placed all of his fingers on his temple. Soon, faint blue lights came from his fingertips, and the doctor began to search the brain for the boy's power. After a few minutes, the light died, and he removed his hands. He simply stared with curiosity at the young boy, then turned to a cabinet with supplies. First, he took out a needle and gauze, and took a small blood draw from the boy, then told him to retake his seat with his mother.
He took the blood to his table, and ran two different tests. One, a he put half the vial into a computer to scan for mutated, quirked genes, while the second was that he felt the blood with his own fingers. Normally, the head was the easiest way to read a quirk, but just to make sure he wasn't having quirk issues, he did a direct scan of blood. After getting the same reading, he washed his hands off, and disposed of the blood. Doctor Quirk then wheeled over to the green-haired pair, and held his hands in his lap. He looked at Inko with unreadable eyes, and stated what he found.
'So it was... and wasn't.. nothing after all..'
"In the past, What I found in your son would've been common, but now, it is even rarer than finding a quirk that could make anything." He waited for Inko to digest the information, before her small smile slowly faded. Izuku didn't understand what the doctor meant, so he spoke up.
"Does that mean I have a really rare and cool quirk? One that'll help me be a great hero!?" He asked, almost jumping in the air.
Doctor Quirk hated this part of the job. This boy was so bright, so full of energy, and would probably have been heading to a top hero school in his future.
But that future was no more, it seems.
He simply looked at the boy with sad eyes, and said twelve universe stopping words;
"The rare part isn't your quirk..."
"It's that you don't have one."
( . . . )
Izuku became silent for the remainder of the meeting. Not only was his dream practically shattered in front of him, but those 12 words were the ones he had never thought to hear. How could this be? He was so focused on being a hero, no one else in his class had been tested as quirkless. Thankfully, any questions Doctor Quirk asked could be answered by his mom, which she did to help Izuku sponge in all the news.
"I'm sorry, Doctor, but could you explain? Maybe a little more... Exact?" Inko asked, feeling her own heart crushed at the news. She was torn from hearing that her child was not only without power, but without a chance to become his sole goal in life.
Doctor Quirk sighed, and pulled up a few test results onto the screen, for Inko to see.
"Well, it's quite a grey area. You see, once quirk appraisal tests were just starting, doctors around the world looked for any possible clue to show if someone had developed a quirk. One, was that they almost always appeared around a child's 4th birthday, with a few mutation exceptions. Almost like the child need to grow a little more before it's powers are brought to light." Doctor Quirk stated, and pulled up a screen with Izuku's bone structure.
"The second, most identifiable way, is to examine the body structure of the child, and search for any signs of evolution. The most identifiable way was discovered to be the absence of a second joint in the pinky toes. It's a rather useless joint, and scientists could prove that if someone has only one joint, then they would develop a quirk, which brings me to the grey area."
Inko nodded in agreeance, as this was common knowledge. Having studied all about genetics during her time in college, she wanted to become a nurse, to help kids develop their powers. Now, all that knowledge was going to be wasted, because the one child she was looking forward to teaching, wouldn't be capable of receiving it.
Inko examined the image of his pinky toes, and gasped slightly at why Doctor Quirk was so distraught.
"After doing my read on the boy, I came up with nothing. This has only happened a few times, when I have been requested to examine the quirks of en-captured villains. They had proven to have had a power, yet my quirk could not identify it. This is the first time it has happened to a civilian, however."
Doctor Quirk zoomed in on Izuku's X-ray of his toes, and showed that his pinky toes, in fact, had a single joint.
"While Izuku's skeleton has evolved to a single joint, and overall should be deemed to have a power, there simply isn't anything there. I thought, maybe, maybe, that there was a chance my quirk was acting up, so I ran a normal test as well as a blood test. Based on your tests and the x-rays, there is no way you should be quirkless." Doctor Quirk finished, and handed the file to Inko, which slowly took, and began reading. Next, the doctor pulled up her own file from the system, and allowed Inko to compare them.
Low and behold, almost everything about the two, at least in the 'Quirk Registry' section, was practically identical.
The only difference being, that Izuku didn't have a quirk like hers.
Or his fathers.
Or anyone else.