Chapter 4 - Starting Line
After a week of waiting with no word from All Might, Izuku was starting to feel a tad antsy. The Lunar knew that he had destroyed enough villain-bots to qualify and, after some reflection, he suspected that there was an aspect of the test regarding helping other participants that was intentionally not communicated to them, so he suspected his endeavors in that field were not without merit either. But still, old insecurities didn't just fade from the ego and, on nights when he didn't fall asleep content with being his soon-to-be adopted sister's anti-nightmare pillow, he would lie awake at night staring at the ceiling as his mind concocted scenario after scenario of not getting into UA, of All Might being disappointed in him and demanding that he pass on One for All before vanishing from Izuku's life… Just like Hiashi, and just like nearly everyone that had ever called him friend when he was still 'Quirkless'.
…But most of the week he didn't have time to wallow in his worries because Eri's official boarding with the Midoriya family had finished being fast-tracked and the shapeshifting teen was focused on helping his mother child-proof their apartment in anticipation of a visit from a Child Services inspector to check up on their home and sign the final pieces of paperwork necessary to grant Inko Midoriya legal foster parent status in the eyes of the Japanese Government. Together the two Midoriyas had wrapped every sharp edge they could imagine might be a potential danger and safely covered all the outlets in the apartment. In addition, they cleaned their home from floor to roof in a flurry of manic energy and triple-checked the expiration dates on every food item in the fridge and cupboard.
And they made sure to do all that work while keeping Eri entertained and her mind off her fears of 'bird-faced men'. For Izuku it was incredibly difficult for him to fall into a downward spiral of self-doubt and depression while he had a young life so reliant on his presence. So, instead of letting his negative thoughts take hold, Izuku spent every moment he wasn't helping his mother, training, or sleeping trying to get the small albino to smile.
Every time Eri showed wonderment or expressed her contentment but couldn't bring herself to smile, Izuku felt his chest constrict painfully with the desire to shift and felt some dark feeling within him grow. And in his unremembered dreams a caged beast, a chimeric mix of a horned rabbit-tiger, familiarized itself with the scent of a mere mortal that dared cross sacred lines.
Two days after the Child Services visit went off without a hitch, exactly one week after the UA Entrance Exam, the Midoriya Household was surprised to find a small white envelope barring the red UA seal in their mailbox. Strangely for Izuku, however, was the sense of calm that fell upon him at the sight of the envelope even as his mother started chewing at her lip in anticipation and Eri watched the nervous woman with bewildered red eyes. The reason for Izuku's calm was… that he could have sworn that he had dreamed this entire series of events the night before.
The greenette was unsurprised when he opened up the envelope only for a small, round metallic object to drop out in place of a written letter. He was unsurprised when a projected recording of All Might appeared and covered his room's wall. He was unsurprised, but very pleased, to hear he passed the written exam in the top ten percentile and had earned enough villain points to guarantee his acceptance to UA. He was surprised, however, to learn that Uraraka had tried to give some of her points away to him in return for his actions against the Zero-Pointer, and he was surprised by the end-scoring result of the practical exam included in the holo-message.
Izuku Midoriya: Villain Points - 55, Rescue Points - 75
Katsuki Bakugo: Villain Points - 77, Rescue Points - 0
Enjiro Kirishima: Villain Points - 39, Rescue Points - 35
Ochaco Uraraka: Villain Points - 28, Rescue Points - 45
Ibara Shiozaki: Villain Points - 36, Rescue Points - 32
Itsuka Kendo: Villain Points - 25, Rescue Points - 40
Tenya Ida: Villain Points - 52, Rescue Points - 9
Tetsutetsu Tetsutetsu: Villain Points - 49, Rescue Points - 10
Fumikage Tokoyami: Villain Points - 47, Rescue Points - 10
Yosetsu Awase: Villain Points - 50, Rescue Points - 6
Izuku was surprised to see his name squarely entrenched at the top of the top ten by such a large margin but was more surprised to find Bakugo's name right beneath his. A part of the shapeshifting teen had still thought the sheer amount of experience the explosive blonde had over him with Quirk usage would see his one-time bully's name placed in the number 1 spot, an expectation born of years of watching Bakugo being praised for the worth of his Quirk and not of his actions.
… the green-haired Lunar was not surprised, however, to learn that the explosive teen had managed to pass the practical without earning a single rescue point. That was such a Bakugo thing to do that Izuku couldn't help but let out a snort of laughter.
The shifter-teen then realized that he would have to see his one-time friend on Monday, the first day of the new term, and would have to deal with the ire of the other teen for taking the first-place spot.
"Shit." The Lunar cursed and immediately received a stinging smack on the back of his head.
"No cursing in front of Eri," Inko spoke idly with a smile, her eyes gleaming with joy at the sight of her child's success.
Izuku and Inko woke early for the first day at the Lunar's new school so they could call and speak with both Detective Tsukauchi and Officer Niijima, arranging for the policewoman to take both Izuku and Eri to UA once more. At the same time, more thorough security measures were being set up around the Midoriya residence. About an hour and a half before the first school bell, the dressed-down police officer pulled up in front of the apartment complex housing the Midoriya family and sped off once the waiting Izuku with Eri once more asleep in his arms climbed into the back of Niijima's vehicle. This time the woman was driving a slick, silver Mercedes that drove nearly silently instead of a commandeered squad car.
After a quick drive to the prestigious academy's front gates, Izuku thanked the plain-cloths officer before carrying a slowly waking Eri into UA proper. While the halls of the school might have been confusing to the Lunar if it had been his first time walking them, his past experience with visiting the building's nursery granted the greenette context and it wasn't long before he stood before the large sliding door of the Class 1-A homeroom.
"How disrespectful! Remove your feet from the top of the desk immediately! This is not behavior befitting of a UA Heroics student!"
"Hugh? You talking to me you damn background character? What the fuck is up with the way you're talk'n, what middle school did you crawl out of?"
Two loud voices, both ones that Izuku recognized, seeped through the large door and the green-haired teen could already feel the beginnings of a headache just from hearing the bickering of Bakugo and the bespectacled boy with the Engine Quirk. It also didn't help Izuku's considerably shorter temper that the raised voices had roused Eri's stress as she was now clutching harder to the teen's uniform, just a step away from burying her head into the crock of his neck out of fear.
Her very real near-terror at something as mundane as entering a new class for the first time… Izuku felt something break inside of him. Eri didn't deserve this, to feel afraid of every dark alley, every new experience. She was a child and deserved the same chance all children deserve to feel a sense of wonder at the world around them.
Unconsciously, unknown to Izuku Midoriya, the greenette's left eyebrow twitched violently as an urge; something dark and monstrous but born from righteousness bubbled up in the teen's protean heart and soul but was held in abeyance only by pure willpower. But, like a cunning creature, the urge did not just leave, it instead stalked and probed the edges of the teen's will like a proverbial apex hunter waiting for the right moment to spring forth.
"It's ok, Eri," Izuku spoke quietly, his own voice sounding slightly hollow to his own ears but soon regained vigor. "Some people are just naturally loud and rowdy, and that is something that people like us, who like it quiet, have to learn to live with. No matter how loud anyone in my class is, I promise none of them will hurt you and I'll be near the entire time if you get scared. Ok, sweety?"
"Mmph." The small albino's agreement was muffled by Izuku's uniform jacket but the teen could sense the girl's nervous acceptance so he quietly opened up the door to the homeroom and stepped in, closing it behind him.
Luckily for Izuku, he entered the room at the tail end of Bakugo's argument with the self-introduced Tenya Ida. Unluckily for the Exalt, the cause of the end of the argument was his entrance into the room and the turning of all the eyes within to himself and the child he was carrying.
"Deku, you cheating shi-"
Bakugo's raised voice was drowned out by a cacophony of noise from the rest of the class that all amounted to;
"Aww! Cute!"
The raised, and nearly in sink, chorus of all the girls in Class 1-A echoed through the room and beyond. The loud proclamation was immediately followed by a crowd of the fairer sex of 1-A as they surged from their seats to get a closer look at the girl Izuku was carrying.
But as Eri ducked her face into the Lunar's shoulder, slightly wetting the fabric there with the first sign of tears, and just before Izuku felt that monstrous urge take root, an older male voice cut through the loud, excited chatter of the swarming girls.
"That's enough! Homeroom has now officially begun!"
With a twitch and rotation of his ears Izuku tried to seek out the source of the voice, one he vaguely recognized, as a distraction from the growing urge for violence seeping into his psyche from his repressed urge.
While to most of Class 1-A the voice seemed to come from every direction, with his rabbit ears Izuku had little trouble with determining the actual direction that the voice came from, something that the Lunar noticed two of his fellow classmates also noticed. Peering around the teacher's desk with the shirt, dark-haired girl with head-phone jacks for earlobes, and a very tall teen with a mask covering his mouth and multiple arms, the trio of teens spotted a yellow sleeping bag filled with the stuffy form of the Pro Hero Eraserhead- Shouta Aizawa glaring slightly at the direction of the other students as if he could assign detentions with will alone.
"Twenty whole seconds waiting for all of you. I'll tell you this now, that is unacceptable for a Pro Hero. In a real scenario, twenty seconds might mean the life or death of a civilian, the collapse of a building, or even a villain getting the upper hand against you when trying to hurt or kill you."
As the Pro Hero and their teacher stood up off the ground and pulled a UA gym outfit out from behind his desk Class 1-A went quiet as his words were digested by the teenagers. Izuku, on the other hand, couldn't help but feel like he had already internalized the point that Eraserhead was trying to convey; after all, when he had first met Eri he only had a few seconds to decide how he was going to help her. That experience had taught him the necessity of acting quickly and decisively in addition to intelligently.
"Here, all of you put on your gym uniforms and meet me on the sports field out the back of the main building." The tall, dark-haired man gestured to the outfit in his hands. "I'm going to have all of you perform a Quirk Apprehension Test to get a good look at what we are starting with."
"But Sensei," Ochako stared at the teacher with wide, confused eyes. "What about the Opening Ceremony?"
"And all the info on school services we are supposed to get?" Izuku backed up his new friend's concern getting a grateful smile in return from the girl.
"UA gives its staff some serious leeway when it comes to the Hero Courses, the administration understands that the lessons young, aspiring heroes need cannot always be taught in the way traditional schools teach mundane subjects. So forget about the Opening Ceremony, it's a waste of time and you all only have a limited amount of that here at UA."
The scruffy-looking man paused in his speech for a moment to grimace slightly.
"As for the info on school services, I forgot to pick up the print-outs I had requested made for you all. If you want your print-out before heading home today, then come with me after homeroom and I'll give you one, and a note to excuse your tardiness to your next class. For the rest of you, your print-outs will be waiting on your desks first thing tomorrow. Now go get changed and meet me on the field."
As the rest of his classmates filed out of the room, some like Uraraka and the pink-haired girl more pleasantly with smiles and waves while others like Bakugo and Ida were less pleasant, Izuku instead waited patiently for them all to depart while making eye contact with his teacher. An act that the Lunar could see lit a spark of approval in the Pro Hero, likely because Izuku didn't need to be reminded of the special circumstance who was being held in his arms.
"Midoriya," Aizawa addressed the protean teen once the other students had left the room. "Considering the circumstances surrounding your foster sister, as you know she has been cleared to accompany you to UA until such a time that security around your residence has been shorn up. This decision was not made lightly but because of the level of security here and because my Quirk will more than likely prove useful once Eri's Quirk has been identified, this plan has been approved. As your classmates deserve to understand why she'll be here while they are learning, I will be telling them the very basics of Eri's situation, avoiding your small act of vigilantism of course. Everything else is up to your discretion on whether to share or not. Do you think you can convince her to stay with me so you can go get changed?"
"I'll try Aizawa-Sensei, and thank you for agreeing to help Eri. I appreciate it beyond my ability to express. We'll be in your care." The greenette bowed his head deeply, an act that Eri tried to mimic after staring up at the teen for a moment.
After expressing his gratitude, Izuku took a knee next to Eri and grasped both of her hands in his.
"Eri, sweety, I need you to do me a favor and stay with Aizawa-Sensei while I do hero class stuff." Izuku pulled the white-haired child into a deep hug after she faintly nodded her head in affirmation. "Thank you Eri, I promise that it won't be for long. You'll even get to watch as I do Sensei's training!"
With the girl's red eyes looking marginally more lively at the prospect of observing training, Izuku led the child to stand by Eraserhead's side before departing the room. The last sight he saw before he slid the large door closed, one that put a smile on his face and a skip in his step, was the dark-haired teacher reaching down with one hand and a gently look on his face, and Eri, after momentarily looking up at him with wide eyes, gingerly reaching up to closer her fingers around a few of the man's outreached fingers.
Izuku was so happy with Eri's display of trust in others that he smiled the whole walk to the boy locker room, through the quick process of changing into his gym uniform, and during his job out to the sports field. Once out, and ignoring the straight-laced Ida's chastisement about running in the halls, Izuku quickly ran through his pre-workout stretches, limbering up his fluffy legs and trying to ignore how the gym shorts rubbed against his fur. When Aizawa exited the building with Eri at his side, Izuku directed a quick wave and grin at the girl that she shyly returned before the teacher began speaking.
"1-A," Aizawa's gruff tone drew the attention of the class. "Let's address the elephant in the room first; this young lady's name is Eri, she is currently in witness protection and being fostered by Midoriya's mother. For the next few months, she will periodically be accompanying Midoriya to UA for the purpose of ensuring her protection and furthering a case revolving around her. Any other questions you have you will have to direct towards Midoriya out of class, and only if he feels comfortable with sharing. I also shouldn't have to remind you that speaking about this to anyone outside of the Hero Course or staff will be considered a felony and prosecuted harshly. Am I understood?" Eraserhead emphasized his point by flaring his Quirk, his eyes blazing red and his hair floating ominously around his head. "Now onto your first test of the term; before we can work at surpassing your limits, we must first know what those limits are. That will be the purpose of this Quirk Apprehension Test. Midoriya step into the center of the circle."
Izuku did as asked as the teacher reached into a bag at his side and pulled out a baseball.
"Midoriya, in junior high I assume you were asked to complete the generalized fitness test. Do you remember your max distance on the ball throws?"
"Around fifty or so meters. Circumstances were… different than they are now." Izuku winced at the memory of his life pre-Protean.
"Irrelevant." Eraserhead shook his head. "Whatever circumstances are different from then and now don't matter to me because I find it illogical to stifle one's creativity with their Quirk by banning Quirk use during that test. For the rest of the homeroom period you all will be competing in a Quirk Apprehension Test; use your Quirks however you see fit to secure the best score you can in every exercise. Midoriya, as the top scorer in the Entrance Exam, I want you to demonstrate by throwing that ball as far as can. You can use your Quirk as you will but must stay inside the white circle and must be in a good enough condition to do the rest of the test so don't pull that trick that left you covered in bruises like in the Entrance Exam."
"Yes, Aizawa-Sensei." The champion narrowed his eyes as he shifted into a throwing stance.
Once he was in a good-enough position, Izuku began channeling his silver power, both into his strength and into a transformation. At the same time, the Ninth wielder of One for All gently opened the floodgate to his inherited Quirk but only allowed a trickle of the multicolored energy within flow into his body causing a crisscross of red lines to form on his skin of a moment, in contrast to the glowing silver tiger marks that normally appeared when using Protean, before fading and arcs of silvery-green energy began transitioning across his body instead.
Once his control of One for All was firm, Izuku triggered his transformation. Before Class 1-A's eyes, the green-haired teen bulked up and hunched forward as green fur the same color as his leg fur and hair sprouted all across the teen's body, all in the span of a few seconds. At the end of the transformation a green-furred, somewhat small (for its species) silverback gorilla marked with Midoriya's tiger marks and sparking with sliver-green energy stood in the spot that Izuku had been in. The shifted teen took a few moments to get refamiliarized with his current shape's musculature and balance before winding back with his two-time empowered, gorilla-strong arm and launching the baseball with an enhancing hip twist and decent form considering his shape.
The ball flew over the hilly horizon with a sonic boom and the Lunar had to enhance his eyesight with a quick bit of localized shapeshifting to even follow the arc of the ball after the first few seconds. As the teen watched the ball disappear into the distance his other, non-enhanced but still sharp sense picked up on the wide eyes and mutterings of his classmates that only got easier to decipher when he returned to his normal hybrid form.
"1254 meters," Aizawa commented before flipping his tablet to show the class the digital distance counter. "Well done Midoriya."
"Wow!" The pink-haired girl next to the shapeshifter and the boy with spiky red hair exclaimed with a wide grin. "We get to use our Quirks all we want, this is going to be so much fun!"
Izuku was about to smile in response to the bubbly girl's enthusiasm when the hairs on his neck prickled at the sudden appearance of a very irate presence. Immediately the greenette came to the conclusion that his classmates' words were not appreciated by their sensei.
"Fun you say?" The scruffy man's usually tired tone shifted into sounding unnervingly ominous. "We'll see how fun you find it when I expel the lowest scoring of you lot at the end of the test, won't we?"
The assembled teens were stunned into silence for a moment before Uraraka's high-pitched concern cut through the tension.
"What?! It's our first day! How can you justify expelling us?!"
"Again Uraraka," Aizawa smiled wickedly. "UA gives its Hero Course teachers considerable freedom in how we prepare our students, even if that means expelling one or two of the ones with no aptitude for the work so I can better motivate the rest of you. Any more questions?"
When only silence answered the dark-haired adult he nodded his head before turning his attention to the tablet in his hands.
"First up, we'll be starting with the 50-meter dash. Remember to utilize your Quirks to the very best of your abilities. Our first pair competing will be…"
Izuku found Aizawa's Quirk Apprehension Test very useful for getting better acquainted with his Quirk, especially considering that everyone else had been using and practicing with their own Quirks far longer than himself.
Ida's Engine Quirk allowed the blue-haired boy to take off running at a decent speed and keep up that speed for some time but it couldn't compare to the sudden blast of speed that Izuku was able to give himself by channeling Protean and One for All's strength into his back foot, causing a crater where it had been dug into the dirt and allowing the greenette to cross the finish line in 2.1 seconds.
That same strength would have also allowed Izuku to easily jump over the sand pad on the standard long jump but he also tested his protean powers by shrinking down, hollowing out his bones, and growing green feathers, transforming into Violet-Green Swallow to fly over the entire sand pad. For his first attempt at self-controlled flight, Izuku thought that clearing the test and not crashing was pretty good.
In the Ball Throw, the Lunar cheered out loud when Uraraka's ball cleared the freaking atmosphere to award her a score of infinity. In the same vein, the greenette had complimented the dark-haired girl with the Creation Quirk for knowing how to make an actual hydraulic rescue tool off the top of her head for the grip strength test, then he secured the third-place placement underneath her, and the boy with the Dupli-Arms Quirk by transforming into a boa constrictor, wrapping his body around the grip and flooding his serpentine form with silver power while squeezing as hard as he could.
No one in the class could compete with the short, purple-haired boy with grape-like hair in the Side Step Test, his sticky-bouncy hairballs were too useful in the situation but Izuku was able to take second in the test by turning into a kangaroo and jumping quickly side-to-side. And in the Long Distance Run, Aizawa had to tell the greenette to stop twelve laps after the rest of the class was too exhausted to continue, leaving him the undisputed victor of the test.
In the seated toe-touch Izuku had tried to mimic the form of the pink-haired girl, Mina Ashido, once her considerable flexibility became apparent. Temporarily removing four of his ribs and increasing his flexibility with his silver power, but even that had not been enough for the shifting teen to beat the pink-haired girl's practiced flexibility, he did take second place however.
In the final test, the prolonged Sit-Up Count, Izuku had taken first place again though Bakugo's sheer stubbornness and the very athletic, friendly redhead both managed to give the Lunar a run for his money. Ultimately, however, Izuku's enhanced stamina allowed him to keep pushing his body even after the other two couldn't go on.
At the end of the test, Aizawa-Sensei flipped his tablet and showed Izuku and his classmates their rankings, causing the greenette to direct a smile of congratulations toward Uraraka and the taller, dark-haired Momo Yaoyorozu who were both standing near him.
1st- Izuku Midoriya 11th- Ochaco Uraraka
2nd- Momo Yaoyorzu 12th- Koji Koda
3rd- Shoto Todoroki 13th- Rikido Sato
4th- Katsuki Bakugo 14th- Tsuyu Asui
5th- Tenya Ida 15th- Yugo Aoyama
6th- Fumikage Tokoyami 16th- Hanto Sero
7th- Mezo Shoji 17th- Denki Kaminari
8th- Mashirao Ojiro 18th- Kyoka Jiro
9th- Eijiro Kirishima 19th- Toru Hagakure
10th- Mina Ashido 20th- Minoru Mineta
"Oh thank goodness!" The invisible girl, Toru Hagakure, breathed out a sigh of relief; one that the girl with the Earjack Quirk responded to in kind.
"For real." Kyoka Jiro's shoulders sagged with relief. "Eighteenth and Nineteenth place is rough but we're in class with some monstrously powerful Quirks."
Monster. Monster. Monster.
'How long?' A voice that sounded eerily familiar but unrecognizable said in his head. 'How long will you wait? How long will you allow that sinner to stay free? How long will you allow others like him to continue to exist? You know. You know that all you need to do is let me OUT. I'll HANDLE THE REST!"
"Midoriya?"
'Oh…' Izuku felt like he should be slightly more… unnerved or concerned about his revelation, instead he felt too calm. 'I know that voice because it is mine. It sounds like the me that got pushed around on the playground by Bakugo that SINNER for being Quirkless.'
"Usagi? Usagi!?"
'I've got a point…vill- SINNERS/TRANSGRESSORS should be-'
"Midoriya!" A voice reached through the fog that had settled on his mind.
Shaking his head, Izuku refocused on the present around him. All his classmates bar Uraraka and Yaoyorozu looked like they had been walking back to the main school building but had stopped to look fearfully at something behind the still greenette. Speaking of the girl that had taken the Entrance Exam with him and the dark-haired beauty that had gotten second place in the test they had just finished, both were standing next to him just a few feet away with wide eyes and somewhat scared expressions on their faces.
And Aizawa-Sensei…
Shota Aizawa was standing between Izuku and the rest of Class 1-A, his legs spread in a battle posture and his arms gripping his capture weapon tightly. Eraserhead's Erasure Quirk was casting a baleful red light from within the teacher's red eyes and while Izuku could feel One for All cut off from his control because of the teacher's Quirk, his Protean Quirk felt absolutely fine. Also, the man's mouth was moving…
'He's talking to you, idiot…'
"-ok? Are you losing control of your Quirk? I understand that you only recently became able to use it but I need to know if you can return to normal or if you need to go to the nurse's office?"
'Return to normal? What does he mean r-' The green-haired teen glanced down at his hands correction, claws and also took notice of the scorpion-like tail and stinger composed of dark green chiton that had replaced his rabbit tail. Also of note were the two squid-like tentacles that were pawing at the ground in front of him but reaching all the way from the middle of his back on either side of his spine. And now that he had noticed the changes to his hands and body, the Lunar also could feel the needle-like teeth that were grinning out from his lips and slightly unhinged jaw, and the shark-like fin-crest that now adorned his head in the place of some of his hair.
All things considered, Izuku was rather sure he must have looked like some sort of nightmarish creature right out of a cautionary fairy tale. Though to the teen's relief, Eri didn't look even slightly perturbed by Izuku's transformation, her faith in the greenette so complete that it extended to him even in his current monstrous shape. It was a faith that the shapeshifter felt warm his heart, he didn't think he could handle it if he accidentally made his new sister afraid or worried.
Dredging up some more willpower, Izuku forced the fogginess in his head to abide so he could focus on his teacher and the current moment. Once that was done the greenette found coaxing his Quirk to return him back into his regular hybrid form; his tail returning to its regular fluffiness, his tentacles retracting back into his back, his teeth morphing back to their regular omnivorous-human appearance (a change the teen hid from sight for his classmates' sake by closing his mouth for a moment), and his head turned back its normal human shape with rabbit ears.
"I apologize Aizawa-Sensei," Izuku smile shakily and rubbed the back of his head sheepishly. "I just got lost in my head thinking about Eri's case and new transformations to try with my Quirk."
The young man was still slightly unfocused and out of it at the moment because of his near breakdown, and as such he failed to notice that as he spoke his newly dubbed Essence within him reflexively flowed from his core into his mouth and out of his body inside of his words. Almost as one and in unison the student body of Class 1-A relaxed as the words of the Lunar settled in their ears, making total sense to them and preventing them from thinking negatively of the greenette for the sight they had just witnessed.
The only ones immediately present that weren't affected by the wave of passivity that Izuku unknowingly entranced 1-A into were the teacher present who had some training in identifying and resisting even unknown mental influences with willpower, both Tenya Ida and Katsuki Bakugo who just glared at the greenette even as their peers turned to continue the trek back to campus, and a trio of girl whom had been more worried for the green-haired Lunar instead of afraid of him.
Ochako Uraraka looked at the bashful smile that Izuku had worn while explaining himself to Eraserhead, and she had seen that it was false and hiding a deep-seated worry in the idea of losing control, a worry nearly identical to her own. Momo Yaoyorozu looked into the young man's eyes and regarded a deep sense of loneliness, one that she also felt nearly constantly. And Mina Ashido spotted in the shifting teen's body language a deep sense of self-apprehension, something she had once felt almost constantly.
"Midoriya-san," Momo broke the silence with a small, genuine smile. "Congratulations on achieving first place in this test, and apparently in the Entrance Exam as well. I must say that your Quirk looks fascinating, could you tell me a bit about it sometime?"
"Ya Usagi!" Ochako's enthusiasm felt infectious, bringing a sparkle of excitement to Izuku's eye. "I didn't get to see much of it in the Entrance Exam but wow! Can you transform into any animal?"
"You've shown off turning into a snake, a gorilla, a bird, and obviously you propbs can turn into a rabbit." Mina gushed, counting with her fingers. "Your glowy marks remind me of a tiger, can you turn into one of them? What about a dolphin? Or a lion? No! What about an elephant!?"
"Well yes, I can turn into a tiger but I can't just transform into anything I want." Izuku smiled at his classmates as he walked with them towards the main UA building and past their slowly relaxing teacher but idly patting Eri on the head when she ran up and embraced him in a hug before returning to Aizawa's side. "I know that I've got a lot of animal shapes I can turn into but I havent quite identified the full extent of species I can change into just yet. For some reason, I find certain shapes almost effortless to turn into while others take more-"
Shota Aizawa watched with glowing red eyes as four of his newest class disappeared into UA. In particular, his focus zeroes in on his newest problem child as he momentarily transformed into a green-furred rabbit, then into a tiger, and then back to his regular hybrid form; the Pro Hero's eyes, his active Quirk watching every transformation.
"What the-"
"- hell is up with that kid's Quirk?"
Half an hour after the first day of UA's new semester let out, Headmaster Nezu listened to the teacher of Hero course 1-A attentively, his eyes narrowed slightly and his brain racing a mile a minute.
"I mean, in the past you've admitted that Erasure doesn't work on every kind of Quirk." The other teacher present in the room, his new instructor for Hero Fundamentals Yagi Toshinori; aka All Might, spoke up. "Maybe Young Midoriya's Quirk falls into that category?"
"I wouldn't have a problem with that explanation if Midoriya's own description of his Quirk didn't involve what he describes as a 'pool of silvery energy' that he draws on to fuel his abilities. I've faced off against a good number of individuals, Heroes in spars and villains in the field, who describe their Quirks with stockpiles of energy similar to how Midoriya describes his, and my Erasure has always worked against their Quirks." Aizawa paced back and forth. "And that feeling I got when the kid froze up there at the end of my class. I can't describe how unnerving it felt just to stand near Midoriya at that moment; like I was just one bad call away from being hunted like an animal."
"Hmm…" The Headmaster rewind the video recording of Aizawa's class. "I'll have to see if I can arrange to find myself in the same room as Midoriya if he has another episode. If the feeling he radiates is primal or instinctual in nature then I'll likely have an easier time identifying it."
The unidentifiable, hyper-intelligent animal stopped speaking and tuned out the conversation between Eraserhead and All Might as it slowed the playback of the video right after the greenette's episode. The sentient rodent's beady eyes flickered back and forth between the student-in-question as he spoke his explanation and his classmates who, in an incredibly unnerving fashion to Nezu, all turned away from Izuku Midoriya in a momentary almost uniform lockstep as they walked back to the main campus.
"I will admit, however," the white-furred creature paused the video on a close-up of the potentially troublesome but interesting first-year's face sporting a sheepish grin. "That I might have more pressing concerns in regards to Young Mr. Midoriya."
A.N:
That's a wrap. This chapter took some time to get typed up even though I had most of it written for some time now. The new job doesn't leave much time for working on my stories but I'll keep working at it.
For those of you familiar with Exalted third edition, you might have an idea of what's happening to our lovable cinnamon roll but for those of you who want to avoid madness, allow me to explain! The more powerful Exalted given power by the gods of the different celestial bodies suffer from an ancient curse laid on them from the Exalted version of the Greek titans, specifically those that were killed in the divine revolution despite being considered immortal before that. This curse is represented in the game by a stat called Limit that, when you reach 10 Limit your character suffers what is called Limit Break. Unlike the FF Limit Breaks, the Exalted ones are absolutely a bad thing to the Exalted because it causes them to become momentarily insane in any number of ways. To make a long story short, Lunar Exalted's Limit Break is generally referred to as a Monsterous Urge and most of their momentary insanity options involve giving into your repressed rage and the desire to let the monster within out to terrorize the world.
For those of you curious, Izuku's Limit Trigger (what has the potential to raise his Limit) is; Hurt or Traumatized Children.
Up next I'll be working on getting the Steel Dragon Interlude 1 out. I'm hopeful that I can get it out early next month. Otherwise I'll likely update this chapter to respond to any prudent or thought-provoking reviews.
Have a nice week,
Glader signing off.
