Work Text:
Izuku takes a detour after the slime incident to just sit in the woods, he just wants to take a breather and calm down after the shit day it has been. He is kicking some rocks down the path when one goes off into the bushes and dings against something metal. Curious, and worried it's an illegal hunting trap again, he goes to check it out.
He finds a very small shrine and the metal he heard was a bell the rock hit. He doesn't remember ever seeing a shrine here but his mom did tell him the forest and most of Japan changed after floods and the quirk war caused a lot of damage a long time ago. A lot of small shrines got destroyed because they couldn't find protection like the bigger ones people went to for safety and new ones for quirk based kami got made.
This seems like one of those quirk war era shrines that were hidden away and forgotten once the war ended. Izuku can't read the name for the deity on the sign due to age but there is 'Yo' for 'giving' visible and some items and faded art he finds show a protector of some kind; a person with long white hair and a naginata with children behind them as they face a monster of some kind.
(Izuku thinks they kinda look like the one photo he saw of his uncle.)
Izuku looks around and steps on something so he looks down. It is a protection seal the quirkless (or none meta humans as they were called during the war) gave their children in hopes to keep them safe from people that killed any quirkless people they found during the war. A red (protection, strength, peace, and power) kirin (justice and wisdom) that was later stolen and twisted after the war to still mark the quirkless as red shoes now.
Izuku realizes this is the shrine of a quirkless protection kami and is in awe he found it. He quickly cleans it up the best he can and leaves what little yen and food he has as an offering before he leaves because it looks like it will rain soon.
Planning on bringing more supplies to clean it properly later, he hears the bell ring clearly and turns back around to find the man from the art is now there. Both are confused at what is happening.
Izuku is confused and worried he accidentally summoned a god.
The Kami, Yo, as in Yoichi the first OFA user , is confused because last he knew he was very dead and very, very not a kami .
Izuku does the polite thing and offers his house to avoid the rain so they take the tiny shrine and go (it's only the size of a 16H, 12W, 8L box. So not very big.)
Yoichi agrees to figure out what is going on. He was just chillin in the OFA quirk with the others until he just dips and appears 'alive' and by his nephew.
He meets Inko and is flustered by her being nice and he is terribly socially awkward after hundreds of years both dead and only the other visages as company. Lucky for him, Inko likes them kind of dumb and cute.
Izuku is stuck witnessing in horror as his mom is flirting with a god and the god is flirting back, badly, and it’s working !
Yoichi notes:
- Him 'sleeping' as Yo is him going back into the quirk. He gives all the tea and drama to the others. Nana tells him to steal Inko as revenge jokingly but he takes it seriously because he is 1) petty and 2) she is cute and makes nice food.
- He’s not very good at flirting but he has 7 other people to help him and one of them is Nana. His chances of it being a good pick-up line or flirt attempt are pretty good! Inko finds it very cute.
I think the other visages would find it hilarious he became a kami for fighting against his brother during the war.
Why I want Yoichi to have a Naginata
At one point in the quirk war he ends up in a museum with the second OFA user (the one that saved him and has gear shift as his quirk) to try and retreat from a fight when they find a school trip that was there hiding too. Yoichi picks up a naginata on display (NOT a replica, a real one) and defends the kids as Second is fighting most of the guys chasing them.
Yoichi wasn't that strong as he was sickly and weak, but he still defended the kids against sloppy, untrained quirk use and a few kids got some blurry photos/videos of him protecting them and shouting that he'd fight his brother as many times as it takes to protect the innocent and non meta.
He became known as a non metta defender, as people do in times of war when they need a symbol to be behind. Because they only had the museum kid's pics and stuff, the naginata is what he is known to fight with.
The red Kirin was just added later as the legend of the first hero grew and spread, same as the design of the naginata he used changing with each drawing made.
Not actually the first hero but a kid heard his name was Yoichi which means Yo 'giving' and Ichi 'one' so 'first hero' is what he got called before history lost his name.
How did Yoichi even get a naginata for Izuku?
Yoichi just... willed the blade he has to change its look and let Izuku use it or he just used his old rebellion bank account to buy it.
The naginata Izuku gets and learns to use can connect or disconnect to be dual wielded blades, a double sided naginata, or one blade can be taken off/covered to be a single blade naginata.