Excuses for absence at the end notes. On with the show.
'I have no mouth, so HOW AM I SCREAMING!?'
A high pitched wailing echoed in the large open space of the testing hall followed by the unmistakable sounds of bones and sinew shifting and rearranging in ways they definitely shouldn't.
'Just when I was getting used to having feet again,' bemoaned Izuku as the corresponding appendages retracted into his calves. This feeling was exacerbated when his hands dissolved into his forearms moments later only to be replaced by long bony protrusions that tapered slightly into a pair of long hook-like claws the width of his wrist and extended down to the ground.
A sharp shock of pain between his eyes was his only warning before his vision split in two and his eyes began to travel along his body before coming to rest at his shoulders. Another split and his face opened wide, revealing a third larger eye, shaded by a trio of spikes along his brow.
The flesh of his back and sides began to rend and roil, forming gaps, twists and spikes along his waist and spine. The remainder of his skin shifting texture and colour to an uneven, almost scaly, surface of mottled green crust and leathery, misshapen nodules.
Unbalanced by his sudden lack of feet (or ears for that matter) his instinctive attempt to lean forward to regain equilibrium caused his … Claws? Bone spikes? Mantis hands? Mantis hands to pierce the smooth concrete that made up the ground. On the plus side he was no longer unbalanced, on the negative, he'd just put two divots into the, previously pristine, floor.
Doing his best to look sheepish (as much as a face that is taken up entirely by a gaping eye can), Izuku turned back towards his quirk therapist and medical attendant, his three eyes making contact with several of Kensa's.
"Well that was quite a show!" Kensa exclaimed, the majority of his eyebrows raised.
A chirruping squeal was Izuku's response.
Having worked with deaf and non-verbal people during his education, some quirks leaving few alternatives when it came to communicating, Kensa metered his responses accordingly.
"This is certainly smaller than your explanation described. Is this the same form you took previously?"
Relieved that his accidental property damage seemed to be of little concern Izuku shook his head indicating the negative before adjusting the positioning of his arm spikes, so as not to cause further disrepair.
"You mentioned that your sternum and collar bone were the affected areas in the incident of emergence. Perhaps different bones denote different transformations? Either way more research is needed and we do not have anywhere near enough time left in the session to explore prolonged usage."
Izuku, who had been bouncing slightly in place, either very excited or testing his current level of mobility, lifted one arm spike and waved it to garner attention.
Pointing the limb towards a set of industrial scales, which appeared to be for measuring freight loads, he let out an inquisitive chirrup (From where on his body he was still trying to figure out).
"You believe your mass has changed?"
An affirmative squeak.
Shikaku activated the weighing equipment and Izuku scuttled onto the platform.
"92 Kilograms!" Kenta exclaimed, "Quite the weight gain for a rather scrawny middle schooler."
Whether the jibe registered with Izuku was anyone's guess as the smooth back of his right claw had found its way under his chin and quiet, high-pitched buzzing could be heard.
Deciding to wait and see how long this apparent rumination could go Kensa and Shikaku were surprised to see it come to a sudden stop as Izuku suddenly bent his knees and leapt clear over them, landing softly, if somewhat gracelessly, behind them.
Raising both arms and screeching shrilly in celebration he promptly forgot about his apparent lack of feet and fell to the floor.
At least that's how he experienced it.
4 days later Izuku found himself sweating profusely, legs screaming and a stitch the size of Yokohama begging him to cease this torturous act immediately.
Having only jogged less than a kilometre down the road from home this was a testament to his distinct lack of physical fitness.
Following his second counselling session Shikaku had relayed through Kensa the message that Izuku would need far more stamina if he was going to utilise certain aspects of his quirk, much less get into a competent hero school.
Kensa's followup advice of starting small with exercise and working his way up to further goals was looking much more appealing, however Izuku's mindset refused to take things so slow. He had 10 years of catching up to do in 10 months which meant he'd have to work 10 times harder.
2 days, 3 torn muscles and a not insignificant reprimanding from his mother Izuku decided it was probably better to try the incremental approach with some minor plus ultra-ing when he felt he could get away with it.
Experimenting with his quirk's transformations at a nearby beach/garbage dump, which he resolved to clean up parts of if he had spare time, had revealed that his bones would revert back to their original state after his transformations ended. It had also revealed, by accident, a way force to a reversion to his base form which he had staunchly refused to talk about.
Practising transformations into different forms had left him with a greater appreciation of his standard physique as well as greater proprioception. He'd noticed himself tripping less, and one time he'd even caught a pencil he'd knocked off of his desk before it hit the ground.
Unfortunately even that amount of noise had drawn Kacc- Bakugou's ire.
School had reopened astonishingly quickly, considering that amount of damage it had incurred, which meant being in proximity to what, or should he say who, had inspired such a drastic change in his life. Thankfully his genuine brushes with death had left his one time friend's threats of violence/dismemberment/exploding/etc. lacking the usual flight response.
That may have been partially due to the anti-depressants his psychologist had prescribed him after his abridged explanation of his long trip off of a short rooftop.
"DEKU YOU DAMNED SHIT WEASEL, QUIT BEING SO ANNOYING IN CLASS!"
"Mmhmm," answered Izuku.
"OF COURSE YOU CAN'T YOUR ENTIRE FUCKING EXISTENCE IS ANNOYING!"
"Mmhmm," answered Izuku
"ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME YOU GREEN MOUSE TURD‽"
"Mmhmm," answered Izuku, somewhat impressed by Bakugou's ability to enunciate an interrobang.
Bakugou narrowed his eyes further than usual.
"The fuck's got into you damn nerd?"
"Mmhmm," answered Izuku.
Hands alight with sparks, Bakugou slammed his palm on Izuku's desk, not caring for scorch marks left behind.
"LOOK AT ME WHEN I'M TALKING TO YOU, YOU INEFFECTUAL SHRUB!"
'There's a 500 Yen word, can we get a thousand?' mused Izuku, staring blankly at the soot left on his desk he's have to clean off next time he was on cleaning duty because everyone refused to do his desk when it was their turn.
Reaching for Izuku's shirt collar Bakugou screamed "DEKU-!" before being cut off by the bell signalling the end of lunch.
Having become more deft at moving through crowds thanks to his somewhat improved self-awareness Izuku managed to avoid further antagonising from Bakugou after classes let out by fleeing the instant the final bow of the day had been announced by the class president.
After much blood, sweat, tears and unidentifiable glowing fluids had been shed, the 10 months had come and gone faster than a caped man in yellow spandex hunting for sales. Looking back on his journey, Izuku felt both over and underwhelmed by his current state of standing in front of UA's enormous entrance gates.
'Wonder if it's too late to go back to the train station and hope a villain squashes me-'
"MOVE OVER ASSMUNCH!"
'Oh yeah, forgot he'd be here.' thought Izuku, shifting to the side, seemingly automatically, allowing a familiar, explosive blonde to pass by.
'I should be heading in but my limbs seem not to be getting the message.'
"Hey are you alright? You're here for the hero test right? You should probably head in yeah?"
Unused to such cheerful zeal being directed at him Izuku's eyes were the only part of him that moved to the pink cheeked, bob haircut that seemed to be attempting to usher him towards the testing auditorium.
Jolting suddenly back into full awareness, his neck audibly cracking at the speed his head turned towards the girl, Izuku tried to form a smile and attempted to nod.
With a grimace and odd sort of jerky head tilt, Izuku began to progress to where the girl was pointing with a stilted, shambling gait which seemed like it would be rather painful to attempt with normal joints.
As such it certainly was quite painful and Izuku settled into a less unnerving method of walking shortly after leaving the sight of the girl that had woken him from his nervous funk.
Finding the seating section for his school, seeing Bakugou seated there and choosing to sit in the aisle instead Izuku settled in to wait for the introduction to begin.
"WHAT IS UP LITTLE LISTENERS, WELCOME TO UA HEROIC'S TEST, YEAAAAH!"
Dead silence echoed through the room.
"Heh … ARE YOU READY TO FIND OUT WHAT YOU'LL BE UP AGAINST?"
Somehow the room became even more quiet.
A loud yet concise explanation about disabling robots, for points, in a city followed interrupted only by a bespectacled boy with questions about an unexplained 4th automaton and the construction quality of the facilities due to peculiar creaking sounds coming from the aisle staircase.
One bus ride later and a group of teenagers of all shapes and size gathered in front of a colossal mock cityscape which could surely house a few thousand people if the infrastructure and utilities were functional.
Spotting the girl he had likely unnerved earlier Izuku debated whether he should attempt to quell her unease with an apology and well wishes of good luck in the upcoming fracas. His decision was made for him when glasses boy nominated him as the source of the creaking and made to castigate him for causing distractions.
Thankfully he was saved by the cacophonous announcement that it was time to "START!"
High strung as he was already Izuku bolted through the crowd for the entrance, grabbed hold of his right wrist in his left fist and twisted it as hard as he could.
A low pop, a short pain and a familiar rearrangement of body parts later, gone was Izuku and in his place was a bipedal, green and black, reptilian creature with side-facing eyes, large horns, large claws, and large teeth.
All of the above accoutrements found themselves buried in a nearby robot that had wandered closer to investigate the bone-crunchy noises and instead found itself in 2 pieces to match the number emblazoned on its side.
A heavyset tail took care of a one pointer that had followed the ruckus and the mini missiles of a three pointer detonated on the chitinous crown of the beasts head doing little other than creating smoke for the Midoriyasaurus to leap through and crush it under 2 and a half tonnes of pseudo-lizard.
Izuku both loved and loathed this form as it only involved a bit of growth and shifting with very few disappearing extremities.
The problem is that it tended to tear apart a lot of shirts if he forgot to remove them before initiating it.
A short while away in a dark room filled with screens, a group of observers commented about great initiative and how odd it was to see a hulking monstrosity wearing teal track shorts.
After racking up a few more points and utilising his armoured bulk to take the brunt of a few projectile volleys that would have otherwise hurt other examinees who had priorities that didn't include exploding, Izuku huffed a growl of fatigue.
He had discovered early on in his experimentation that larger forms burned through his stamina like the fossil fuel engines of the pre-quirk era; The bigger they are the quicker guzzle up his vitality.
Shunted from his thoughts by a sudden quaking of the ground below him foretold the coming of an absolute behemoth of a robot.
Clearly this animate skyscraper was the 'Arena Hazard.'
Deciding that being crushed by multi-storey tank treads was not a way he wanted to go Izuku turned to depart but was stopped by a groan of pain emanating from the path of the metal madness trundling towards him.
Aborting his escape and, against several instincts that should be urging him otherwise, ran headlong towards the sound.
Catching a glimpse of one human shape caught under debris in his forward peripheral vision and another in his rear peripheral vision Izuku made a split-second decision.
Shifting the debris with well-applied force from his tail Izuku mentally apologised for his next course of action to the figure, whom he now recognised as the bob haircut girl who'd been messing with the laws of physics throughout the test.
With the gentleness of a mother crocodile shifting her eggs Izuku picked up the girl in his jaws and with a calculated flicking motion, threw her through the air at the, now also recognised glasses boy, with remarkable precision.
Thankful he hadn't torn her outfit much Izuku turned his gaze back to the encroaching doom to gauge if he could make it out of the way in time.
Only to be crushed by a fist the size of a shipping container.
Going to have to stop ending these with cliffhangers or the effect's gonna stop being … effective.
Health took a massive dive, motivation went with it. Currently writing this at 10 past 5 in the morning because even more new meds stuffing about with sleep and internal workings.
Not much to say except for how this feels kinda rushed and writing is definitely not my forte but who else is gonna write this wumble.
The inspirations for the transformations will become a lot more obvious next chapter. Would try to draw Mantis Imp Izuku or Midoriyasaurus but big surprise, can't draw for cashews either.
Big time jump will have a few flashbacks to make context so Izuku isn't just pulling things out of a fundamental orifice.
There will be body horror later on.
Maybe mild, maybe worse, not sure, perspective's a bit skewed
WouldYouKidnapA: Gonna have to be a teasey bitch a bit longer but there will be lots of broken bones and interesting consequences.
Wash your hands, don't panic buy toilet paper, be safe, try not to kill anyone.
