Chapter One: Walurusu: Origin

please end me i can sink no lower as a writer

"Young Midoriya…you, too, can become a hero walrus."

As it turned out, One For All had a nasty little secret. The Quirk hadn't quite been powerful enough for its previous wielders to have to undergo the kind of training Midoriya Izuku had had to, so when he received the Quirk from its strongest wielder to date – All Might, who alone was probably responsible for forty percent of its power – he'd been subject to a very unusual side effect that only manifested when breaking his limbs using one hundred percent of its power.

One For Walrus.

"A-ahh, Deku-kun, um…"

Call a scientist! he tried to scream, but of course he couldn't. Walruses cannot scream. He did, however, make a lovely-sounding grunt that brought to mind a dying lawn mower engine.

"Midoriya-kun! Is this your true form!?"

Yes, I am absolutely, totally naturally a walrus! he wanted to yell, but only succeeded in bumping a tusk (painfully) against the wall.

Inexplicably, perhaps for the sake of some divine plot, he hadn't transformed fully the first time he'd had to use One For Wa…One For All, during the entrance exams, and during the attack on the Unforeseen Simulation Joint, only his affected hand had turned into some sort of flipper.

Now, however?

It was just after his summer tournament match with Todoroki Shouto, whom he'd attempted to fight off long enough to convince him that the power in his left side was his own and not his father's (something the heterochrome fought fiercely for no apparent reason – you can throw frickin' fireballs! do it!) – but when he'd broken all five fingers on one hand, he'd become a walrus in his entirety.

The good news was that he'd won due to the sudden appearance of incredibly thick, ice-repellant fat and 1900 extra kilograms of weight (putting him at a large specimen of Pacific walrus) as well as some lovely meter-long tusks that had allowed him to chip effortlessly through the ice Todoroki had tried to trap him under and simply body-slam the lightweight out of the ring.

The semifinals had him up against Katsuki Bakugou, who by now had obviously witnessed Izuku's transformation and who had undoubtedly cooked up a plan to defeat him.

What he didn't know was that Walrus-Izuku – Walzuku? Izurus? – could still use One For All.

He himself hadn't been certain of it, but the mysterious, several-meter hole in the wall (extending through several other dressing rooms) hadn't gotten there by accident. All he'd had to do was channel the power into a body slam, and the reinforced walrus-body had taken the shock for him like a champ.

Part of him almost wanted to stay a walrus.

Hell, maybe he would.

"Alright, you fuckin' nerd! Get out here and – "

"RRRRRRRR"

"What!?"

"On one side of the arena, we have the Blasting Bastard, the Asshole Arsonist, the – "

"What did you just fuckin' call me!?"

"Bakugou Katsuki!"

Present Mic's sonorous voice, amplified by his Quirk, boomed across the stadium, drowning out Bakugou's indignant – no, furious screams.

"And on the other…the Madman Manatee, the Superpowered Seal, the – "

"Actually, Odobenus rosmarus is more closely related to the – " the biology hero, Eco, tried to interject, but nobody heard him.

"Midoriya Izuku!"

"Hey, where is he?"

"Don't tell me that's him!"

Crap, Izuku thought. Now that I'm a walrus, I get to experience firsthand the discrimination against nonhuman species…how does Tokoyami deal with it?

"I have a human body," Tokoyami Fumikage told Hagakure Tooru, who had just asked the exact same question fifty meters away. "Midoriya has become a walrus in his entirety."

Ignoring the cacophony of boos and jeers aimed his way, Izuku crawled…waddled…somethinged his way up to the starting ring on his side, standing…sitting…somethinging with his head held high, putting on a brave face for the crowd…insofar as a walrus could make facial expressions beyond murder. Opposite him, Bakugou punched the palm of one hand, sending a chain of explosions crackling up his arms, but –

I'm not afraid anymore, Kacchan! Because…I'm a walrus now! And my people will never abandon me!

"Start!"

God, that's loud.

Without hesitation, Bakugou took off, charging straight at him, but Izuku stood his ground, waddling forward a little to take the impact with absolutely no effect on him whatsoever and turning Bakugou's cocky glare into an expression of utter shock.

"Wha - !?"

"And it seems like Bakugou Katsuki has completely underestimated the inertia of two thousand kilograms of walrus! To absolutely nobody's surprise! Really, how stupid is this kid!?"

"Shut up!" Bakugou screamed, whipping his head around, but Izuku bumped his leg with the front of a tusk, lurching uncomfortably forward, and his childhood best friend and current rival jumped. "You bastard! You can move!?"

Of course I can move! Walruses aren't immobile, you ignoramus! – but it came out as incomprehensible grunting, and the crowd started to boo again.

"Get that animal outta here!"

"What's it tryin' to do!? Kill him!? Boo!"

Kacchan literally just tried to blow me up, but one grunt and this happens.

"Put 'em down, ref!"

"This is child murder!"

"I'm calling the Geneva Convention!"

"Hey, listeners! The Geneva Convention wasn't made to combat the existence of students-turned-walruses in Japanese high school tournaments! Furthermore, it's not something you can call!"

"Fine," Bakugou growled, from the arena, and he aimed both palms at Izuku, bracing himself as he screamed: "Death murder explosion three thousand!"

With a colossal bang, a wave of lethal heat and force surged forth from the other's hands, and Izuku, even in his walrus form, knew he had to do something…!

One For Walrus: Nikolskoye Никольское SMAAAASH!

His mentor and predecessor typically shouted the names of American states and cities, but as a Pacific Walrus, Izuku felt the need to promote one of the natural homes of his people, the Russian island peninsula of Nikolskoye Никольское, located in the Bering Sea approximately one thousand one hundred and twenty-eight (and one-third) kilometers east-northeast of the focal point of the Sea of Okhotsk, assuming that the Sea of Okhotsk's geographic projection was mapped to a two-dimensional plane and graphed as an asymmetrical ellipse that failed entirely to adhere to Rolle's Law and somehow introduced a variable labeled "b" in the middle of its equation without any sort of context. (It also spilled the coffee of all mathematicians in a three-kilometer radius, causing four cases of second-degree burns.)

Not that anyone could hear him, but it's the thought that counts!

With the strength of all Pacific Walruses behind his smash, Izuku was able to not only nullify Bakugou's explosion but counter it entirely and then some, blasting his opponent across the arena into the stands opposite him, where Death Arms caught the falling Bakugou and held him up like a kid who'd just caught one of the many foul balls hit by the Cleveland Indians in 2016.

"And with one hit, Midoriya Izuku uses his Nikolskoye Никольское Smash to SMASH Bakugou Katsuki out of the ring! An incredible victory, and a completely unsurprising one! Really, it's actually unfair, pitting that idiot up against the raw power of a walrus!"

Nobody asked how Present Mic knew the name of Izuku's attack; Izuku himself didn't think he wanted to know. They also didn't point out that the "ring" was actually a rectangle, something that had been bothering Geometry Hero: Proof for the entire tournament, to the point where he'd had to purchase a protractor from a nearby vendor to hold onto like a stuffed animal. Just in time, too, because his screaming had really been starting to irk Aizawa, whose telekinetic murder-scarf twitched with bloodlust.

"Hey, you walrus sympathizer! Just who the hell do you think you are?"

"My name's Present Mic! And with just one scream, I could paint the walls red with the blood spouting from your ruptured eardrums!"

Before his fellow announcer could make good on this promise, Aizawa erased his Quirk, taking over with a conventional microphone.

"I am deeply sorry for my colleague's…indiscretion. In fifteen minutes we will be presenting the winners with their awards. Please remain seated…or don't. I can't say I care."

"Aww, come on, Eraser," Present Mic whined, still de-Quirked. "It's no fun if I don't get to murder at least thirty civilians every year!"

"…How the hell aren't you in prison yet?"

"The legal system! Hey!"

Little did Aizawa – or anyone else, for that matter – know that Present Mic hid a dark secret behind his Quirk.

Tokoyami was perfectly humble during his acceptance of third place, whereas Todoroki received a round of boos and screams from the crowd for his dead silence and utter refusal to acknowledge the way All Might hesitated before awkwardly placing the award on his chest and stepping delicately over to where Bakugou lay (arrogantly mute Bakugou, who received an even worse reception than the stoic Todoroki).

"Midoriya, don't you think it was a little overkill to hit them that hard? They're both still unconscious," Tokoyami pointed out. "As a walrus, your weight and physical strength are both exponentially higher, and – "

"Nonsense! Excessive force in the pursuit of victory is perfectly acceptable!" All Might boomed, before Izuku had a chance to speak, and shot the walrus a wink.

That might be why Todoroki and Bakugou aren't saying thank you. I guess you can't really do that when you've been knocked out.

"And now – the moment you've all been waiting for! First place goes to…Midoriya Izuku!" Aizawa, napping, had accidentally allowed Present Mic the use of his Quirk, but to everyone's relief, he hadn't screamed yet.

Yet.

"Young Midoriya…you've come so far from the days when you struggled to haul a measly six hundred kilograms!" declared All Might.

You literally made a fourteen-year-old haul a refrigerator with a Quirk-empowered grown man on top, but okay, measly.

"I guess you could say you're a real haulrus now!" the number one hero went on, and everyone within earshot rolled their eyes. "No, seriously – I've got some moving to do this weekend, do you think you could - ?"

Izuku grunted angrily. All Might blinked, then apologized and went on. "Anyway! Congratulations on your victory in the Yuuei Academy Summer Sports Festival! We know you'll go on to do great things with your strength, quick thinking, and intelligence!"

He'd just relied on being two thousand kilograms and having a literal superpower to brute-force his way through the last two rounds, so unless the definitions of "quick thinking" and "intelligence" had changed, Izuku thought this was quite a stretch indeed.

Still...despite the jeers, despite the hate, he'd won an overwhelming and decisive victory that day, the walrus champion versus the humans' champion, and hopefully, with this validation of walrus strength, he'd set the first stepping-stone (…waddling-stone?) on the path for a peaceful human-walrus coexistence.

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