That following Monday Izuku had dreaded what Kacchan's response to last Friday's incident would be when he next saw him next in class. As soon as the ashen blonde had kicked open the classroom door Izuku had shrunk down in his seat, even though he was actually several inches taller than Kacchan just one irritated look from him was enough to make Izuku cringe down and try to be as small, as beyond notice as possible. When the other boy sat down at his desk with an irritable grumble Izuku instinctively flinched ready for some sort of verbal or physical assault...but it never came.
He peaked over at his classmate who was looking up at the ceiling as if it had personally insulted him.
Had Izuku been blessed by the gods? Why hadn't Kacchan blown up at him for...saving his life? Did he...did he not recognize Izuku in that Sludge-quirk form? He had been more or less a blob of slime but he had thought Kacchan might have seen him before when his body had solidified.
"Hey Bakugo! I saw what happened on the news!" a lanky classmate said and ambled over, followed by a couple others. "They say you held off the villain and All Might saved you!"
"Hmph." Kacchan grunted, only glancing at the others for a moment before he dismissed them in his mind, "Yea, I did. Blacked out just before All Might...punched the freaking mutant."
"So cool! You were unconscious but still managed to get free?" a girl cooed, Kacchan rolled his eyes but nodded along. To Izuku it looked like he was trying to concentrate and play back last week's events.
"Yea,I did!" he finally nodded, his feral grin splitting his face as what he remembered and what others had told him slotted into place to his satisfaction in his head, "Just means I am already going to the best Pro Hero as soon as I get out of this dump."
Izuku let out a sigh of relief at those words, Kacchan had no clue that he was involved in his rescue. If he had, it would have just made Izuku's life worse. Being saved by a 'Quirk-Stealer'? Kacchan would have made sure that he understood his 'place' under the Explosive-quirk user's foot. Which meant he could plan for the U.A. University Entrance Exam without being bothered…
While their teacher droned on, Izuku jotted down a plan of action for becoming a hero in his notebook.
Step 1: Train
Step 2: Pass the U.A. Entrance Exam.
Step 3: ?
Step 4: Become a Pro Hero.
He tapped his pencil against his lips as he thought, twirling it between his gloved fingers. A vague outline to be sure but he at least had three goals well defined, once he entered U.A. he would be able to analyze the additional obstacles and hurdles to graduating as a hero from the school. For now, he just needed to focus on 'Step 1'. All Might had told him to train...to work for confidence in himself and his quirk. So, what did he know about his quirk's weaknesses? He began to write more on the paper.
Quirk: Mutate.
Weaknesses:
Requires skin-to-skin contact. User (Me) is unable to prevent quirk from self-activating.
Requires a Mutation-type or Transformation-type quirk. Emitter-type quirks will not be copied.
Transformation-type quirks appear weaker than original copy.
Once a quirk is copied will remain active for 1 hour or until User (Me) is rendered unconscious. Until then User (Me) is unable to 'turn off' the copied quirk.
The more quirks absorbed or 'full body' quirks copied results in harder control and greater drain of stamina.
Drain in stamina leads to inability to move and eventual unconsciousness.
He had tried so many times to 'turn-off' his quirk he had by this point in his life accepted that there was no way to prevent his quirk from activating or deactivating the quirks he had copied. With how he avoided direct physical contact as much as possible most of the times he had had the chance to 'practice' were when his mind was panicking from an accidental brush or touch. No matter how hard he had tried to concentrate his quirk slipped through his fingers every single time.
He did not like the thought of increasing his hourly limit for copying another quirk but if he was going to be a hero it would prove useful. He identified dropping unconscious, or worse, in the middle of a fight or rescue operation was the most extreme liability of his weaknesses. For now he needed to prioritize that, perhaps once he got into U.A. with better quirk teachers he could fix his quirk's time limit and on-off switch. He went back to his plan of action and wrote more under 'Step 1'.
Step 1: Train
Increase body stamina (Primary).
Increase quirk time limit (Secondary).
Izuku was already the tallest student in his class, just shy of being six-feet tall. Despite not exercising his body wasn't a string bean, he thought his quirk might have something to do with that, but he wasn't particularly strong either - just average. If he wanted to train he needed to focus on his endurance and preferably somewhere private where Kacchan would not find him and if he copied a quirk he could test it privately without violating the quirk usage laws. Fortunately, he knew of a place which might just fit his needs, he had passed by it a few times but had not been there in months.
Dagobah Beach. It was more or less abandoned so it was a great hideaway, but it also was littered with scrap and junk from illegal dumping. He could take away the scrap building up his body and test out any quirks he copied on the junk heaps. It would be the perfect place to train for the Entrance Exam.
Once school was over for the day he waited for Kacchan to leave before he changed into a modest set of workout clothes, a t-shirt that said 'Working' on it and a pair of shorts, and a sturdier pair of gloves for his hands. Then jogged down to Dagobah ready to be greeted by years worth of trash and refuse.
"It's...clean." Izuku mumbled as he jogged up to the railing surrounding the concrete tidal barrier. His last memories of the place had been a complete and utter disaster zone but now...now it looked like a pleasant place to sit and read for an afternoon. Who had done this? Had the local community finally come together to clean this place up? It must have taken a hundred people or more. There was the faint trace of tire tracks in the sand, whoever had been here had left recently likely with a truck full of what should have been Izuku's junk. He huffed and rubbed a glove over his face, "So much for that plan…"
Now that he thought about it, he had not actually planned what to do with the junk once he removed it from the beach. He was still too young to rent a truck after all.
His eyes wandered over the beach scenery and fell on a small ray of hope, there was still a small patch of junk that had been left untouched. Just a couple of oversized tires, a few metal barrels, odds, ends, what looked like an industrial sized fridge that had lost its shine to a plague of rust and half of a car. He sighed. "It's not what I expected...but better than nothing."
Izuku hopped down a set of stairs to the sandy beach itself and jogged over toward the patch of junk, but as he got closer he heard and saw something. The industrial fridge was shifting slightly in the sand, and he heard grunts from behind it - as if someone was trying to lift something very heavy. Someone was trying to lift and move the fridge, it was definitely more than Izuku could have handled on his own - the best he might have managed was to push it over and then push it up the beach. Immediately he worried that whoever was trying to move the massive appliance would hurt themselves and without really thinking he picked up speed and once in front of the fridge bent down and helped grasping it. Maybe two people could lift it instead of just one.
"Hey! Do you need help with this?" he asked.
"What? Oh, please if it's not too much trouble." Izuku was surprised when a woman's voice returned his question, but his mind was too occupied by the task to really think too much on that, "Okay, on the count of three. One...two...three!"
Izuku clenched his teeth together as he lifted from his knees, his arms and back muscles immediately protesting but he pushed it aside as the fridge lifted out of the sand. He shifted his hands again for a better hand hold, it weighed a lot more than he had expected. "Got it?"
"Yea! I got it. Now...just we'll do this one step at a time...back to the stairs." the woman replied through equally clenched teeth, she sounded like she might be around his age "Okay, when I say left step back with your left foot."
"Wait, do you mean my left or your left?"
"Oh, shit. Your left. My right. Okay, we go this...right...left...right." the woman spoke her cadence, each of them walking in step with one another rather than risk stumbling and dropping the fridge. He had helped his neighbors move before so he knew not to lift with his back or move his body back too far or twist while he walked. After what seemed like an hour but was probably only a few minutes at most they reached the stairs.
"Hold on! We are at the stairs." Izuku brushed the back of his foot against the concrete stairway, "Um, uh, how about we put it down and lay it forward? That way we can just push it up?"
"Sounds like a plan," he could easily picture that she was smiling by the tone of her words. Slowly they set the fridge on the ground and Izuku let out a breath of sweet relief, immediately stretching his arms so they would not cramp up from exertion later. "Thanks for the help, guy! I didn't want to use my quirk to lift that thing and because of you I didn't."
He felt his cheeks redden at the praise but immediately pushed his nerves down and took a calming breath. He was happy to help. He was happy to help. He was happy to help. He shifted to the side and walked around the fridge, "Happy to...help…" He swallowed.
He had craned his head downward to look where he had expected her head to be, most women his age were shorter than him - except it wasn't there. What was there was powerful core muscles and a very generous cleavage barely constrained by a black sports bra which he knew courtesy of several holes in her teal tank top. Like a robot he shifted his gaze up...and up...and up, passing yet MORE sights to see. The rest of her low dipping cleavage, two arms bulging with muscle that looked like could snap him like a twig, broad shoulders which had an orange-colored ponytail draped over one side, and an extremely beautiful face set with teal eyes - and a smirk.
"I get that a lot...especially recently." she shook her head and chuckled to herself at what was a private joke. He continued to gape at her, she was… so tall, much closer to seven feet than he was. She looked like an amazon, a quick glance at her feet before he looked back up at her also showed him that while she was built like a brick house the curve of her thighs and legs could kill him. He did not like to be touched by strangers at all but as his core wrenched his mind flashed images of her just grabbing him and completely smothering him against her in an all mighty hug-
"Y-you alright guy?" the woman asked, now looking a little embarrassed. She tried to laugh it off but it came out more than a little forced sounding. She brought up one of her hands and pushed it toward his arm, "I didn't break you-?"
"Wait!" Izuku felt panic flood his veins but his warning was too late, he felt her fist jab against his exposed arm in a playful punch.
Huge. Limb. Grip.
They weren't so much as words that passed through his mind as his quirk activated, but a sort of sensation of the quirk he had unwillingly copied from the person he had touched. It happened in an instant but it kind of gave him a very slim warning of what kind of quirk he was dealing with.
Immediately he felt his hands tingle and stretch, he felt pain as the gloves he wore briefly constrained his growing digits for a few moments, the sound of stretching leather filled his ears before they burst apart into shreds. His hands continued to swell larger for several seconds before they were almost comically oversized. After the initial rush of expansion was over he noted in his mind to write down when he could about the quirk he had copied. Despite the new size of his fists they did not feel any heavier, his wrists should have snapped like twigs but they were easily able to handle the weight. He glanced at her hands, which had gone to her mouth in sudden shock, they were normal sized.
"Sorry please forgive me. Please. I didn't mean to..." he bit down the word 'steal', "...copy your quirk. It's an invasion of your privacy, again please forgive me!" he sighed, frowned and bowed franticallyin front of her for good measure. Accidents with his quirk did happen but he still felt miserable about them every time - at least when it was not a villain.
"You copied…" he looked back up at her and noticed her face had paled, the look opened a pit in his stomach. She seemed to notice however and shook her head before she continued, "You...you just copied my...Big Fist-quirk?"
"Um, yes." he answered, looking over his enlarged hands. He really should clean his nails more often, "My quirk...it just lets me copy Mutation-quirks and Transformation-quirks."
"You're sure it was onl-I mean you're sure you copied my Big Fist-quirk?" she asked again, taking a step closer to him, panic and seriousness expressions clashing on her face. She put her hands out to either side of herself and activated her quirk as they grew - larger than Izuku's had grown. He looked at his hands again, they were...really big. What kind of answer was she fishing for from him?
"Yes? Um…" he paused before he continued, "With Transformation-quirks I...well, my quirk essentially converts them to a Mutation-quirk type. When it does that it...takes some of the power of the quirk in the conversion process...so that's why my hands aren't as big as yours?"
He hoped that response would satisfy her, and she seemed to calm down as she looked lost in her thoughts for several seconds. Slowly she said, "You...you don't have to apologize. I, uh, should not have punched you like that." she shook her head with one oversized hand, "Can you, uh, deactivate my quirk?"
As he always did he flinched slightly before he responded, wary if she would suddenly become very angry with him, "No, I can't. I'm stuck with your quirk for about an hour...n-not that I mean that in a bad way." he flushed again as he realized his words might have come off as just a tad insulting, "Your quirk looks like it would be great as a quirk for a Battle Hero. You could throw a normal punch and embiggen your hand as you swing surprising your opponent. Restrain villains in the palm of your hand. With the extra gripping power that you have-"
"Pfft." a smile crawled on her face as a giggle escaped her lips, Izuku immediately felt another pang of embarrassment - his quirking muttering storms would be the death of him one of these days. Oddly she waved her hand at him, "Sorry, sorry. It's just I've...well, my quirk isn't actually anything special, is it? My hands get big and I punch things."
"What!? Your quirk is great!" his embarrassment swept away by a whirlwind of shock at her sentiments towards her quirk, "It really is! It might not be flashy but it-it has so many applications! I wish I had your quirk over mine!"
"Haha, alright if you say so. It's just," her smile widened as she continued making Izuku's pulse quicken, "I don't get complimented for it very often. Thank you...though it looks like you have my quirk."
She teased him with a poke across his chest with an oversized finger which made him stagger in the sand, immediately after doing so she shot her hand back and gasped, "Oh, no. I did it again. I'm sorry, is your quirk-?"
"Oh, no don't worry about it. Once I copy a quirk it's fine. It's not like my hands will get twice as big or anything like that. It's like...I copy the original 'file' for the quirk and it only will want to copy the same quirk again after it gets 'deleted' from my body. I wish I could turn it off but like I said I'm stu-um, I mean I wish I could shut off my own quirk but I can't. It's always...on.." he shut his mouth. He had almost insulted her quirk again. He was only supposed to hate on his own quirk, not someone else's.
"Really? You can't ever turn it off?" she asked, her expression softening and something like pity entering her beauti- normal teal eyes. They were normal eyes. Nothing special or inviting about them. Nope.
"Yea…no matter how hard I try...I hope someone at U.A. could help..." he nodded choppily, but then shook his head "That's actually why I am here. I, uh, wanted to train my body stamina and my quirk so I can pass the Entrance Exam."
"No way! Me too! That's why I cleared out this beach!" her eyes lit up and she took a step closer to him, he struggled to keep his sight focused on her face as her cleavage -heaved- with that step. Her words made him pause.
"Hold on...you cleaned this...all of this by yourself? Last time I was here it was-"
"An utter trainwreck of a trash heap. Yea, I know and yea I did." she grinned proudly, bringing up one of her arms and flexing her biceps. Izuku felt his eyeballs bounce in their sockets in unison with each rise and fall of her muscles. She paused, let her arm drop and grimaced, "Oh, guess I kind of stole your opportunity to train, huh?"
Removing an entire beach worth of junk and scrap...that certainly would explain why her body seemed so...robust. To do all that...how long had it taken her? He had heard this place was still a dump only two months ago. It sounded like it had just been her. He had expected being able to clear up a sizable amount of the scrap over the next ten months...but the entire beach in a fraction of that time was amazing.
"You're amazing." he muttered, too loudly it seemed as her eyes widened and her lips pursed for a moment before she shook her head.
"O-oh. Um. No, I'm nothing special," she twirled her pony tail in one hand, "I wouldn't have even started if it hadn't been for...my trainer. He, uh, showed me this place and took the trash away."
She continued to grasp for more to say.
"Oh, wow. I lent you my quirk and I didn't even get your name. Haha…" she coughed, "It's Itsuka Kendou. By the way." She paused and looked at him. Oh, she was probably waiting for him to tell her his name.
"Izuku Midoriya...it's a plea-it's nice to meet you...Kendou-san." Izuku replied, clenching his oversized hands together as he tried to strangle his nerves.
"Likewise…" she coughed again and offered her hand to shake but pulled it back when he noticed him flinch again.
"Sorry, sorry. It's a reflex." Izuku stumbled out his excuse but he still felt like the pit in his stomach was trying to swallow him whole. He could tell in her eyes that he had...insulted her? Hurt her? Made her feel bad? It should be safe now that he had copied her quirk...but a part of him still screamed at him to avoid her touch.
"It's fine, it's fine. I can understand." she huffed, her eyes darting anywhere but at him for several moments before resting back on him. "I know it's not much...but do you at least want to help me...with the rest of this junk? Together?"
Together? Like, together-together?
"Yes!" he stopped himself from shouting, "I mean, even with my...your...quirk being used? Are you sure?"
"Like you said! You wanted to train your quirk, well here's your chance to do that." Kendou winked at him and smiled again. He did not argue any further than that.
Between the two of them working together they were able to clear out the rest of the junk that remained on the beach and bring it up the barrier wall to be taken away. There was a moment when Kendou's quirk finally had worn off and he had dropped a large scoop of scrap back on the beach. To his surprise though Kendou had quickly offered to 'top him off' again with her quirk, when he had tried to protest she had brushed his worry aside and poked him on the nose with an embiggened finger. It felt just as weird as the second time but...it wasn't a surprise and he actually did not feel guilty about copying her quirk.
Just as they had carried the last barrel up the stairs Izuku spotted a large truck backing up to the pile they had assembled off the beach. The driver cab door opened and Izuku had to double-take as he thought a walking skeleton had hopped out - it was actually just an extremely emancipated man with long blonde hair and shrunken eyes. He walked up and began to greet Kendou, "Young Kendou. It appears tonight we can cele-"
His words guttered and died when his eyes shifted to Izuku, a moment later an eruption of blood came from his mouth. He was ready to call an ambulance to help the man but then Kendou chuckled and waved it off. "Don't worry. He does this all the time. He's fine...sort of."
"Al-... . Is my...trainer I told you about." she gestured to the skeleton man who had walked closer. He still looked like he had seen a ghost or something with how pale he was. "This is Midoriya, he had the same idea you did to clean the beach...we just beat him to it."
"Y-young Midoriya. Ahaha…" Mr. Yagi swallowed, the smile on his face looked like it would collapse in a stiff breeze, "...sorry about beating you to the punch-I mean, the clean up. Aha. I'm sure you wanted to train for the U.A. Entrance Exam."
"Oh...how did you know I wanted to train for the exam?" Izuku asked, surprised that the man knew about that. Kendou seemed equally surprised.
"Oh, uh, well. It's every young man and young woman's goal these days isn't it? Aha. To get...to get into U.A. University?" his smile collapsed and became more like a grimace, more blood seemed to seep between his teeth as he spoke.
"Yea, you are right." thousands of applicants from across Japan applied to U.A. every single year but only about forty or so ever made it into the Hero Course. It was the top university in Japan, with such graduates as All Might himself it had a gleaming reputation. "Guess, I'll have to find some other way to get ready…"
"Nonsense." Mr. Yagi waved a hand in front of him, "This beach can still work out for you. Help you prepare for the exam."
"How? All of the junk is gone." Kendou asked, equally as perplexed by Izuku by the man's response.
"Ah, but I see two right in front of me." Mr. Yagi's smile returned, in earnest this time, and pointed one finger at Kendou, "Young Kendou here can help you learn fighting and sparring with your...quirks."
"S-she can?" "I can?"
Izuku and Kendou asked at the sametime, he squirmed for a moment at the thought of...of...feeling Kendou's skin against his again. It filled him with equal amounts of hope and fear.
"She can." Mr. Yagi nodded, his finger pointing out behind them toward the sea, "Secondly, swimming is a great exercise. It will certainly do wonders to strengthen your body for your quirk."
Part of Izuku wanted to know how the man knew he wanted to strengthen his body for his quirk, but that was pushed aside and beaten down by the next thoughts flooding his brain.
He. Would. See. Kendou. In. A. Swim. Suit.
He wasn't a pervert of any kind. Really, he wasn't.
He was still a young man with hormones who was interested in the opposite sex.
"S-sounds like a plan."
