Chapter 1: Twice Chosen
Izuku stared in horror at the sight of his childhood friend turned bully suffocating to death. The Slime Villain that All Might had saved Izuku from was somehow free once more and now holding Katsuki Bakugou hostage while simultaneously drowning the blonde with its mass. And the fact that the villain was free at all could only mean one thing…
This is my fault. The greenette's eyes widened in horror. I must have caused All Might to accidentally drop the bottle he trapped the villain in when I grabbed him.
Then, for just a moment, the boy's green eyes locked with Bakugo's red; red eyes hazed over with fear and panic, and a plea. In his one-time friend's panicked gaze, Izuku recognized his silent plea immediately; Bakugo was begging for someone to save him.
Before the Quickless boy even knew what he was doing, he found himself past the security cordon set up by local heroes and sprinting straight for the Slime Villain's towering mass. Rushing forward, ignoring both the local heroes' frenzied concern and the villain's scorn, the boy called Deku by his classmates dodged around two whips of slime launched by the villain before hopping up and across a series of increasingly tall mail and news boxes to avoid the extended gooey mass of the murderous slime-man. Then, once he was as high as the scenery could take him, the green-haired boy stared down the villain's solid right eye and with all his strength launched his heavy yellow backpack as a projectile into the large target.
However, before Izuku could put the rest of his plan into action; scrambling up the foe to try and claw his one-time friend free, everything just stopped. Every hero that had tried to stop the Quirkless boy was frozen in place, the dull look in their eyes telling the boy that they weren't conscious of this change like Izuku was, the same situation applied to both Bakugo and the Slime Villain as well. Even the nearby wildlife; birds, rats, cats, and even a rabbit the greenette could see in a cage through a nearby window were all frozen in place.
… Until they weren't.
"I have to say," the rat turned its red eyes up from the closest sewer grate to stare at Izuku. "I find myself mystified by your choice of action."
"Eeep!" His legs frozen-stiff, Izuku squealed eloquently in response to the turn of events.
"That child has been nothing but cruel to you ever since you were five and here, now, you have the perfect chance to let him suffer some of the pain he has consistently forced upon you all these years. Yet you move to help him, why?"
"B-because that's not who I am." Izuku bristled with indignation at the rodent's words, his anger overcoming his fear at the situation. "Katsuki is a jerk but he doesn't deserve to be drowned to death by some scum-bag villain. I won't stoop to his level and pretend preying on others because they can't stop you is ok!"
"Interesting." The same voice spoke, this time out of a bird frozen flying above the entire incident. When it spoke again the greenette noticed that this animal had primarily white feathers and red eyes, similar to the white fur and red eyes of the rat. "Then I presume you had a plan after clawing the slime away from your personal tormentor's face?"
This time Midoriya winced slightly. "Kind of… I was mostly hoping Katsuki would be able to produce a big enough explosion to launch us both out of the villain's grasp…"
In response, the pidgin merely turned its head and laughed with its mystifying genderless voice.
"I think we both know that would not have worked." This time it was a cat sitting on a windowsill nearly a block away and two stories up, the same colors as the first two speaking animals and still the same voice. "Now that you are stuck in this predicament, are you regretting your choice?"
"No." Izuku answered immediately with no hesitation but all resolve. A response that caused the cat to cock its head in confusion.
"Then why?" The rabbit spoke despite the glass separating it from Midoriya, the voice sounding uncharacteristically confused and exasperated. "Why did you act so rashly with so little regard for your own life or health, knowing there was little you could realistically do?"
"Because Kaachan's eyes were begging for someone to help him; to save him. And… because my legs moved on their own before I even knew what I was doing. Because even if I know I can't do much, I know I can do something to help!"
The plethora of animals that shared the same voice were quiet for a moment before bursting into an uproar of laughter that left Izuku blushing.
"My goodness, this is so unlike me." Said the Rat.
"Usually you goody-two-shoes, hero-types are my associate's bread and butter." Spoke the Bird.
"I usually prefer those with more primal survival instincts or at least wiles and cunning." The Cat chuckled.
"And that most assuredly is not you, child." The Rabbit insulted good-naturedly.
"However!" They all spoke in unison before all but the rabbit vanished. "I cannot help but take a liking to you child, so I think I'll risk Sol's vexation for taking one of his beloved potential Lawgivers."
Suddenly, without warning, Izuku choked on a startled yelp as all the animals appeared right on him! The Bunny had somehow teleported right on top of his head and was nesting in his green hair. The Cat was balancing on his frozen out-stretched throwing arm while both the Bird and Rat were perched on either of his shoulders.
"From this day forth you may save whomever you desire, Izuku Midoriya!" The shared voice of the four Beasts echoed through the green-eyed boy's head and deep into his soul. "For on this day, you are Exalted beyond all Humanity! For this day you are raised as a Champion of Luna, one of my Chosen! Now take your Second Breath!"
At the end of their announcement, the Four Beasts dissipated into a fine, powdered-white luminescent mist that immediately flowed into Izuku's nose and mouth as time resumed and the young teen remembered he needed to breathe. With his Second Breath, Izuku Midoriya changed and the World changed as a result.
As the last of the mist was absorbed, a glowing silvery-blue perfect circle shone into existence on the boy's forehead, followed close at hand by a pattern of tiger-like stripes of a similar color that glowed into existence all across his body. Speaking of; Izuku's body morphed and surged with strength as the one-time powerless child instantly channeled the new power he felt inside him through his body, causing his five senses to sharpen significantly but his hearing most of all, his body to enlarge and increase in muscle mass to the point that the boy could feel the newsbox beneath his feet about to buckle and collapse, and a pillar of silver light flared out of him before slowly coalescing into a gleaming silver figure.
All of that, however, was mere background noise to Izuku as he focused on his newfound strength and his desire. As the tiger-like silvery-blue pattern settled on the green-haired boy's face, his eyes patiently roamed over the Slime Villain's surprised expression as well as Katsuki's panicked and unbelieving eyes. Then, just as the newsbox was about to collapse under his increased weight, Izuku tensed his leg muscles and launched himself right at the slime man who was still blinking away stars from the backpack that had hit him in the eye. Before the villain could even react, Izuku impacted the villain's mass with the force of a small car and the grace of a predatory mammal.
Izuku's leap trajectory put him within a yard of Bakugo's outstretched arm while his force and momentum saw him plowing through the villain's viscous mass with little problem, and as he did so the green-haired boy lashed, grabbing the explosive blond's wrist before the pure inertia of his jump dragged Bakugou out of the villain's grasp with Izuku.
The explosive teen had to bite off a curse as said inertia also nearly yanked his arm from its socket but was able to take his first real breath of fresh air since the ordeal began so the pain was worth it. What wasn't worth it in the blond's mind-eye was who had come to his rescue and what they had used to do so. All of this, Izuku could instinctively tell with just a single glance at his childhood bully as his newly-empowered legs caved in concrete with his landing and he used his newly increased mass to break Bakugo's momentum safely.
The explosive blond was obviously preparing a tirade but it was cut off when an enormously powerful force smashed into the surprised Slime Villain knocking him out instantly as well as forming a short-lived vortex of air pressure that instantly put out all the fires that the villain's hostage had accidentally started.
"I really am pathetic." Izuku's enhanced hearing picked up on the voice he recognized as All Might even through the background noise. "The lesson I left you with… I should practice what I preach!"
- An Hour Later-
Izuku stared down at his now digitigrade legs with a shocked sense of awe at… well everything that had changed about him in less than an hour. Sticking out of his mop of green hair a pair of similarly colored rabbit ears stood anxiously at attention, twitching at every little sound he heard within hundreds of yards with a terrifying degree of accuracy. Sticking out of a new hole in his school pants, a green and black tiger-striped, cat-like tail with what the boy could only call 'bunny-like volume' swished back and forth nervously less than a yard off the pavement. And, as Izuku carefully hugged his own body forcing himself not to freak out, he couldn't ignore the razor-sharp claws that failed to cut his seemingly thicker skin but did serious damage to his school uniform.
All things considered, Izuku was both dreading and chomping at the bit to get home and take a better look at himself in a mirror. The excitement of finally having a Quirk, finally having the chance to be a Hero warred with the fear of looking into a glassy surface and not even recognizing himself. So he kept his head down, avoided looking anywhere that might possess an excess of glass, and navigated with his enhanced hearing which recreated the shapes of everything around him or in his way almost perfectly.
The green-haired teen released a manic giggle when he realized he was describing echolocation. He was using freaking echolocation to avoid the possibility of looking at his reflection before he got home. Izuku was so overjoyed and distracted at the sudden discovery that he failed to note a sudden influx of information received by his enhanced hearing that painted the picture of a sudden mountain of muscle appearing right in his path.
"Ouch."
"Ouch."
A young and an older voice sarcastically expressed pain with little emotion; the younger doing so because his forehead hit muscle mass as hard as steel coil and the older because the tiny bump caused his pre-existing injury to throb painfully enough that he had to revert to his smaller form with a puff of smoke.
"All Might?" Izuku looked up for the first time since he was released from police custody.
"Izuku Midoriya; young man." The smaller, skeletal form of the world's Number 1 Hero smiled wanly at the young fan. "When we spoke earlier today you truly believed in your own Quicklessness, and yet you still rushed straight into a dangerous situation to try and save someone when heroes were already at the scene. Can you tell me why?"
A sense of Deja Vu ran through Izuku's head as he… tried to remember the last time this question was possessed to him and the memory failed to actualize. The circumstances of what happened before his Quirk awakening felt more like something out of a hazy, half-remembered dream. So like a dream, Midoriya put it out of his mind.
"I- I just…" The greenette tried to put words to his feelings. "My legs… they were moving before-"
"Before you even knew what you were doing?"
Despite the trickle of blood running down the side of his chin, Izuku got the impression that All Might was beyond happy with his answer.
"Young man, you now possess a wonderful Quirk but I want to let you know that even before it manifested you changed my hypocritical mind. When I saw you rush to that other young man's aid, even before your Quirk manifested, I knew that I was wrong. That you could become a true hero with just your Heart alone!"
Tears were running down Izuku's cheeks as soon as his idol praised his Quirk and by the time All Might said the words he had been desperately hoping to hear for years, he had fallen to his knees bawling with happiness. When the skeletal blonde reached down to give him a hand back to his feet, the greenette took it.
"You have the true essence of a Hero in your heart young man, that is why I'd like to ask if you might be my successor and carry my power into the future to be used to continue saving others?"
"Yes! I'll do it, yes!" Izuku beamed a teary smile up at the aged hero that slowly stalled as confusion set in. "Wait, what?"
-Chapter End -