"Calm down. It will only hurt-"
Mire. Ooze. Slime.
Izuku did not want to use his quirk. He never wanted to use his quirk. He tried to squash it down inside of him but as he had so many times before his quirk activated without his consent no matter how loudly he screamed in his head to stop. He would have had an easier time trying to pin down the wind.
"Huh?" the monstrous body of sludge rasped around him, Izuku could feel its -mass- trying to surround him - one disgusting tentacle pushing against his mouth as it tried to smother him. It had burst from the sewer grate and had leapt for Izuku immediately, the high schooler had tried to make a run for it but it had caught him immediately. At that moment though he wasn't scared what this sludge villain would do to him, no, Izuku worried what his own quirk would do to himself.
All it took was a single touch.
"MMMMPH!" he yelled into the sludge tentacle as his own body began to...gooify. He felt as his skin, his muscles, his nerves, his bones - his everything - mutated. To an outside observer it would have looked like his body just disappeared - an amorphous blob of sludge replacing him which looked not unlike the villain that had assaulted him, if with a lighter green hue to his slime, smaller teeth, and green eyes. His school clothes from Aledera High, backpack, a pair of black gloves, and the notebook he had been clutching swirled within his new body, moving as if caught in molasses.
If he had a stomach at the moment Izuku would have vomited.
Instead he slipped out of the villain's tentacles and more or less splattered across the bridge wall as he slowly came to grips with his lack of bones, nerves, and everything else. One of Izuku's eyes bobbed in his body, looking back fearfully at the villain whose quirk he had unwillingly copied. The villain slipped back like a slimy tide in the opposite direction down the tunnel, shock apparent on its 'face' before a thought seemed to strike it - then it smiled.
And laughed.
"Hahaha! Oh kid!" its maw grinned wider as it sloshed toward him, its own madness filled eyes looking him over, "You...you are going to be my hero!" It laughed again, its wheezing voice echoed at Izuku from all directions as he started to finally pull himself together, literally. "Get All Might's autograph for me. Will yah?"
Then the villain turned and surged away down the opposite end of the tunnel disappearing before Izuku could piece together the words it had said. He did not have to wait long to find out, as he heard (despite not having ears) someone else jump through the same manhole the villain had emerged from.
"I am here, villain!"
All Might.
Izuku's idol.
Whose face was plastered over practically every inch of his bedroom.
The hero he had looked up to for as long as he could remember.
Who was here now, fist raised and ready to deliver one of his superpowered punches.
Called him a villain.
His already threadbare will snapped at those words.
"V-villain...All Might called me a villain...a quirk stealing villain…" Izuku's voice bubbled out of his maw, two small rows of normal looking teeth lining it. He didn't know where in his body he was getting the moisture for it but tears formed around his floating eyeballs and floating up to the surface of his slimy mass and dripped down. The minor semblance of his normal body he had tried to form collapsed and he once again splattered across the floor of the tunnel.
"Are you-? Are you crying?" All Might's serious face faltered, his iconic smile fading a little as he looked down at Izuku. His upheld fist dropped slightly though he kept it at the ready. The sludge villain he had been chasing before had been filled with a manic aura and evil intent. The tension of the iconic hero chase drained like air from a balloon. The hero seemed to catch himself as he played back the sludge's words in his head, "Well, yes. I called you a villain. You robbed a bank after all."
This whole situation was starting to feel awkward to Toshinori.
"Kacchan was right...everyone was right...my quirk...I'll never be a hero…" Izuku continued to bubble, his body pooled around All Might's shoes.
It was then that the hero spotted something sticking out of the sludge and grabbed it swiftly - it was a notebook. He shook it a little to get some of the sludge off but despite the burns, water marks, and sludge stains left on the pages the title was still clear enough to read.
"Hero...Analysis for the...Future?" All Might spoke the name on the title, "Is this your's...uh, young man? Do you...want to be a hero?" He took a wild guess on part of that.
"I wanted to be a hero...but...b-but you called me a villain! T-that's like getting blacklisted or a burn notice!" Izuku continued to cry, "All because...all because of my copy quirk!"
'Copy quirk? Hmm. I know I'm not as smart as David but something doesn't seem right about this. My Civilian-In-Danger-Save-Them-Now senses are tingling.' All Might looked closer at the sludge. Now that he got a better look, this new...sludge, was different looking. Well, as different as a mass of sludge could be. Sure, he had reduced villains in the past to blubbering babies with just the threat of one of his punches - and he had equally been fooled by crocodile tears. He trusted his gut (not his literal gut as that one had been destroyed, but a more metaphorical gut) a little bit too much at times but right now his gut was telling him to not punch.
And All Might really liked to punch.
"Young...man. It doesn't matter what kind of quirk you have. As long as you use it with good intent in your heart. You can be a hero!"
Izuku stopped crying, almost, immediately his eyes swiveling in his body to focus on All Might. As if in response to that single strand of hope Izuku's body began to pick itself up from the ground, shifting and forming a much more humanoid shape similar to his normal body's outline. Tentacles became arms and legs. His eyes and maw placed themselves in the center of his mass that looked like his head, complete with his bushy hair. His clothes floated just underneath the surface of his sludge but at least they were floating where they should have been. His thoughts raced in his head at that single sentence from his idol.
You can be a hero.
"You...you really think so?"
"Of course!" All Might's smile widened, his metaphorical gut had been right after all he noted as he looked down at the shape of a young man in front of him. He had been so close, too close, to actually harming an innocent. If the boy had tried to run in fear then Toshinori would have punched him in an instant - and the hero would have regretted it for the rest of his life.
"T-thank you, All Might!" Izuku bowed, he had no spine so his top half just shifted forward at a perfect 90 degree angle before he sloshed straight again - he didn't have lips but he was certainly smiling. Then his wits and common sense took turns slapping him upside the head, "Oh! O-oh no! You were chasing that villain! The villain with the sludge quirk, he ran off that way" both of Izuku's arms slid over across his torso so they were side by side sticking out of his chest and pointing down the opposite end of the tunnel, "He ran off after he...used me as bait...after I copied his quirk..."
Izuku slumped toward the ground, his form losing some of its consistency. He had helped the villain get away from All Might, THE All Might! Sure, it had been a complete and utter accident but for Izuku it was just another nail in his back for why he did not like his quirk at all.
His quirk had manifested shortly after his fourth birthday - after waiting with so much excitement and dreams in his little heart and soul. He had been at school playing with Kacchan and some of the other children outside when he had tripped and fallen down. One of the teachers who had a Squid mutant-type quirk had rushed over to him and helped him stand back up. Unfortunately, that gave her head the appearance of a cuttlefish with eight pairs of tentacles sprouting from the lower half of her face in addition to her two normal arms. As soon as she had bent down to wipe some of the dirt off his face, his quirk had activated and in moments he had sprouted a head and tentacles similar to her's. Except he had panicked not knowing what to do with so many new appendages and his tentacles had run wild, knocking down Kacchan and a couple other children.
After an hour his body had returned to normal, but he somehow knew after that incident his life would never be normal again. So had begun years of torment and wishing he had manifested ANY other quirk.
"Don't worry about it. I should be apologizing to you! I chased that villain down this way. I almost smash-...err, well let's not talk about that." All Might laughed and stuffed down the thought of almost splattering the boy across the tunnel and then scooping him up into a bottle to take to the police. "What's your name?"
The off-green sludge perked up as All Might addressed him again, his form gained some of its lost consistency as he bowed again, deeper in apology this time "Izuku! Izuku Midoriya! I-It's an honor to meet you!"
With his eyes to the ground, Izuku could not notice the steam beginning to seep from All Might's form, but the man himself certainly did! He needed to make an exit - and fast!
"Young Midoriya! RememberwhatIsaidtobeaheroyoumustactlikeahero!" All Might half-rambled, half-stumbled his words out as fast as his enhanced body would allow him before he bent his legs down low and then up as he jumped away. Izuku shot his eyes back upward through his gelatinous skull to watch as his idol soared through the air and away in a single bound before he could ask anything else...or even get his autograph.
"Aaaah! I didn't get his autograph! He took my notebook! He...he was right there…" Izuku moaned and brought his hands to his face, instead of stopping as they would if his head had been solid they simply melded into his head. He burbled, "Right. Some kind of...ooze mutation."
After the 'Squid Incident' his mother had taken him to a doctor to have his quirk analyzed and classified. From describing what had happened the doctor had summarized quickly enough that he had a copy subtype quirk, but when they had tried to activate it again they had run into trouble. He had tried to copy his mother's Pull-quirk but after touching her hand and trying to use her quirk nothing had happened no matter how hard he had tried to pick up his All Might action figure.
One of the nurses had a mutation-type quirk that covered his body in shaggy hair and made him look like a dog. When Izuku had touched him his body had immediately erupted with hair and his face had become canine-like. When the doctor had tried to get him to turn the quirk off he couldn't, no matter how hard he had strained and wiggled his body in his chair. After an hour he returned to normal and then the doctor had him touch another nurse's hand and she had a quirk that let her extend her arms by six feet. As soon as Izuku had done so his arms had shot out in front of him and nearly knocked the doctor out of his chair. However, when he had tried to turn off the arm-quirk he couldn't, his arms remained longer than he was tall for another hour until it had worn off.
The doctor had taken some of his blood and let him and his mom leave, and it was a few days later he had called back with the final results of his quirk.
He called it, "Mutate".
"Right, gotta get out of here before a-another villain shows up." Izuku muttered to himself, his arms reformed at his sides. The gloves he normally wore floated just underneath the sludge of his hands, normally he used them to stop himself from touching -anyone- but like this his mass was too far spread out, it had no shape to rest in. After getting his quirk and when puberty had hit he had always been taller and physically fit despite minimally working out and how much stamina he needed to replace with food after using his quirk. He theorized it was his body's way of preparing itself for the event he suddenly sprouted new appendages that might crush his body, or in reaction to those changes.
He thought more about what his quirk could do, what changes it had made on his body and how he had seen the villain use it. He did not like to use his quirk but no matter how much precaution he took accidents happened. It helped out when he grew too many arms or suddenly had metal skin. "I don't need legs. I can just...slide across the ground. Like a slug or a ball of jelly." Izuku sighed.
On the bright side he still had plenty of time before the mutation he had copied wore off. He just needed to find somewhere he could 'expel' his belongings floating in his body and not be naked in public when the quirk timed out.
He oozed his way forward, keeping his torso still in a vaguely humanoid shape though his lower half just became a mass of sludge. He kept to the side streets for the most part, keeping to the shadows in case someone he knew saw him and taunted him about looking like a giant booger or something, or worse someone else mistook him for the villain. Despite never being sludge before he was making good time but when he heard an explosion several blocks away he stopped. Two more explosions followed the first, and Izuku was far too familiar with the way they sounded. He had been up close and personal to similar ones over the last fourteen years.
"Kacchan?" Izuku muttered before instead of moving toward home he surged toward the source of the explosions.
He should have been worried that someone else might mistake him as the villain that had attacked him earlier but he quickly saw that he did not need to worry at all. The crowd gathering around the entrance to an alleyway could see that between the two sludge-like figures, only one was holding a young man with ashen blonde hair and an explosion quirk hostage.
"Kacchan!" Izuku bubbled and swept forward, instead of going around or through the gathering crowd he went underneath them, his belongings dropping from his body as he made his form thinner and less cohesive - flowing between the legs of the onlookers until he was able to reform himself into a human shape at the front surprising the hero keeping the crowd back, that Izuku noticed with an edge of fanboy glee was Death Arms.
"Wh-? Hey who?" Death Arms sputtered, but Izuku was not looking at him, he was looking at the alleyway where Kacchan and a larger, sinister version of himself was writhing amidst smoke and flames.
"H-he's in trouble! Aren't you going to do something to help him?" Izuku bubbled, turning to face the hero. Izuku felt the shape of his face form more distinctly close to his normal one than it had so far in his mutated body. He felt like his normal self, not a copy of the villain ahead of him. Maybe it was the pleading look on his face that stopped Death Arms and made the hero frown and shake his head.
"We can't kid. It's too dangerous. We've called in help to-"
"He'll die before help arrives though! You're a hero, you have to do something!" Izuku pleaded, his face gaining more consistency as his emotions swelled up inside of him. As a need to act grew and grew.
"I tried, kid. That thing is immune to my punches!" Death Arms growled, anger starting to form on his face at being talked down by this random kid, and frustration at not being able to do a thing, "I can't help him!"
You can be a hero.
All Might's words echoed in Izuku's mind again. He looked away from Death Arms to his struggling childhood friend and that need...that need to act pushed up stronger than before until it felt like he would burst.
So, he bursted.
His body surged forward like a miniature tidal wave, around the hero and straight toward the alleyway. Thanks to his mutated body he barely felt the fire around him and didn't really need to breathe so he did not choke on any of the smoke. He was moving faster than he normally could at all with his normal legs. His normal body couldn't twist into a shape almost like a drill and slam into the villain with enough force to stun it. His normal hands would have just slid through the villain's sludge, instead his tentacles slipped through the minute space around where Bakugo's body was held by the villain and once fully wrapped around his childhood friend slid and pulled him out of the villain's grasp.
They both only managed to crash down to the ground a few feet away but without his quirk Izuku would have never even managed that.
"GRAAAH!" the villain roared, its body twisting angrily in the air as it glared down at them, recognition only making his 'face' seem angrier "My distraction! I'll kill you! I let you live so you could distract-"
"Detroit Smash!" All Might, in all of his heroic glory seemed to fill the alleyway as he brought his fist down onto the villain, the torrent of wind caused by the punch nearly swept Izuku away but he was able to latch onto Kacchan's body and keep himself barely anchored.
For him it was worth it though to see his idol scatter the villain and save the day with a punch and a smile.
Everything after that seemed to move around him as a blur. The heroes who had been standing by rushed in. Bakugo was alive but weak so he was taken to the hospital. The media was all over All Might interviewing him on how he had saved the day. Izuku wilted under the reproachful words of Death Arms and Kamui Woods for rushing in and putting everyone in danger. Izuku had only managed to get out of that when he felt the copied sludge-quirk begin to wear off and had explained to both heroes he needed to change before he was naked in the middle of the crime scene. He had expected he would have felt sticky after being living sludge for an hour but surprisingly he felt clean, like he had taken a shower clean, once he returned to normal. Back in his normal body he had somehow crawled his way home and passed out on his bed before his mother could ask him why he was late getting home.
He slept and slept some more, only a couple times waking up and fearing he was oozing down to his bedroom floor. He had to pinch himself a few times each time but, no, he was still flesh and blood and had his All Might pajamas on. Somehow he fell asleep again and stayed that way until he heard his mother knocking on his door.
"I-Izuku, honey! Wake up! W-w-we have a guest!" his mother's voice shakily sounded through his door. He wondered what kind of guest they would have on the weekend. If it had been a surprise visit by his father she would have sounded more excited...not nervous. He quickly put on a set of clean clothes and went out to greet their mysterious guest. He almost tripped over his feet when he saw All Might drinking from his mother's good teacup at their living room table.
"All Might!" Izuku jaw dropped. All Might was in his living room. He pinched himself sharply but quickly proved he wasn't dreaming.
"Ah, Young Midoriya! I am here in your living room! Ahaha!" All Might laughed and strode over to Izuku where his feet had rooted in place. He had accidentally copied a root-quirk before but his feet felt more stuck now than they had then. To the side his mother looked like she wanted to faint but an iron grip on their couch kept her steady. "It is good to see you looking...looking like yourself!"
"I-I-I!" Izuku stuttered, but stopped when the legendary man held out something for him to take. Izuku looked at it closely...it was his notebook, the one All Might had taken earlier...and he had signed it! Gently, as if it would turn to dust in his hands he reached out and took his notebook reverently, "T-thank you, sir."
"You have a good head on your shoulder's Young Midoriya, I read as much in your book. You also have the spirit of a true hero, rushing forward into danger when no one else would." All Might paused and grinned down at him, and Izuku felt each and every word sink into him like his body was still made of sludge. The hero continued, "I want to give you something. Something I know will help you become a hero! I want to give you..."
Izuku leaned forward, hanging on All Might's words.
"...some advice!"
"Advice, sir?" Izuku asked, he felt like he would faint but he had to know what All Might had to say to him. He just had to.
"Yes! While you have many good qualities of a hero...what you lack is confidence in your abilities. Namely, your quirk! You have a good, strong quirk, Young Midoriya. Yet, I get the impression you are afraid of it. If you overcome this fear and train yourself, I believe you can become a great hero."
All Might...thought his quirk was a good quirk. A strong quirk. Izuku had never heard those words uttered before by himself or anyone else in his life. Or maybe he had been shutting out any praise of his quirk because of what it did to him and how others reacted to it? He had never believed in his quirk before and he felt it would take time for him to do so. At least for now...he could believe in All Might who believed in his quirk, who believed in Izuku.
"I'll...I'll try, All Might, sir." Izuku said and swallowed hard.
"That's all you can do to start! The Entrance Exam for U.A. University is in ten months. Go...Plus Ultra!"
Next Chapter: Izuku heads to Dagobah Beach...but what he finds its not what he expected.
