Chapter 4: Beach side training
Tsuyu gazed up at her phone from underneath the snug warmth of her blankets; a smile spreading across her face as sleepy eyes gazed over the text message Izuku had sent her, saying that he would come over today to pick her up for their first day of training. She had initially been worried about what had happened between him and the police, remembering well the silence that had instantly appeared when the pro hero had taken them away. She hoped that at least nothing bad had happened and maybe they really only wanted to question him about the attack, Izuku did say he was near the epicenter.
Tsuyu sighed; resting her forearm on her head as she lay on her bed, "everything's fine" she said to herself "and he's coming over soon".
A boy was coming over to her apartment, and he was picking her up.
She felt her face heating up as thoughts filled her mind. Her knees rubbing together in unfamiliar anticipation, as she hugged her phone to her chest.
"Tsuyu; get up!" her mother yelled, pulling her from her inner thoughts as the look of happiness and embarrassment were replaced with her usual deadpan.
Reluctantly she pulled the covers off of her and leaped out of bed, performing a kick up with practiced ease she looked out over her room. She had done her best to tidy up, but there's only so much you can do with a partially collapsed ceiling and exposed insolation. Even now she could see the faint trail of her breathe as through the half destroyed room she could hear the erratic sound of wind smacking against the garbage bag taped to her window. The thin sheet of plastic doing little to stop the cold from getting in, though she was thankful the power was back on so she didn't have to worry too much about her siblings being cold.
Turning now to her vanity, whose glass had frosted at the edges and whose wood was adorned with gymnastic ribbons from a more pleasant time. Normally she didn't like looking at herself all too much; everything from her massive hands, stooped posture and beady eyes had never sparked in her the idea of beauty. It's what made what was happening seem almost unreal. She had asked Izuku to train, almost knowing that he would refuse, no one ever wanted to hang out with her, she never had the time for it anyway and even then no one could ever see past "this".
But he had; he had accepted, he wanted to hang out and train with her.
The thought leaving her to look herself in the face, her newly acquired feature shining back at her.
"Was this all of this thanks to you?" she asked herself as she looked into her strange, new eyes. Before the blast her eyes had been just like the rest of her families, bulging and off-putting. But now they shinned and she finally had something she could call beautiful and it might have just given her, her first friend.
'But that was the least of the changes she had to deal with' she thought to herself as she remembered having to show off her new power to get her parents to take her to the hospital. First time she had ever seen a look on their face that wasn't as placid as her own.
But the memory of how her father had treated Izuku sparked a flame of anger in her. The first person in years to speak to her like a person and that was how he acted. But then again she shouldn't be surprised as she turned from the mirror and moved to leave.
Turning to the door she looked to the picture of the bunny hero Mirko on it, the lecherous image stapled to the front of a dart board as she felt a twinge of irritation well up inside her at the sight. Taking a dark from her vanity she threw it, placing it dead center between her eyes as she huffed in mild amusement. Pulling the door open she strode into the hallway of parents apartment. Walking into the living room she could see her parents were getting ready to leave while her younger siblings were sitting at the table.
"Make your siblings some food" her father ordered, not even bothering to look at her as she walked to the kitchen. Not bothering to replay she walked to the kitchen, her process was almost unconscious and nearly robotic as she prepared to do the same she had done so many times before. She decided on cereal with milk, something easy and as the milk poured into the bowl she felt a light tug on her shirt and looked down to see her little sister Satsuki who looked at her with expectant eyes.
"Come see what I drew" she said as her little hands pulled her along to the kitchen table. Tsuyu helped her back into her seat where she showed a picture that she thought was supposed to be Tsu, Satsuki and Samidare all smiling on a green field, sun high in the sky with big smiles on their faces. Tilting her head sideways she could see that she had drawn little streams of water coming from her hands like a sprinkler.
"I made it so you could get better" she said with a big smile, her eyes shining with an innocence that made her heart melt.
"Do you like it?" she asked, her body bobbing in her seat from anticipation.
It was moments like this she was glad she had learned to mask her emotions so well as she smiled and gave her little sister a hug, letting her little arms wrap around her neck. She would never cry in front of her parents. She would not give them the ammunition.
"I love it, in fact after I'm done making breakfast I'll put it in my room so I can see it every day" she assured, squeezing her tight.
"Speaking of rooms, were you talking to your boyfriend in there" an accusatory voice said as Tsuyu looked across the table to see her little brother Samidare, his hair covering one of his eyes as he looked at her. That stopped Tsuyu for a moment, her body going stiff before she released the hug and walked back to the stove.
"He's not my boyfriend" she answered back, not even looking back at her little brother.
"You better not have a boyfriend" she heard he father croak and she could tell he was staring into the back of her head.
"She doesn't have a boyfriend dear, besides she'll be too busy preparing for her entrance exam in a few weeks" her mother said, placating the old toad.
"I still don't see the point in it. It's not like they'll ever let a heteromorph be real hero. She'll be a side show at best" her father huffed.
Tsu meanwhile just continued to do her job, gently placing the bowls down for each of them even as muscles tensed underneath her clothes and a burning glare sat just behind her placid eyes. As the door opened and closed, the apartment was bathed in silence, interrupted only by the sound of her siblings eating while she faced the sink, the rage finally allowed to show itself.
But her mother was right; she would train, she would be ready and when the time came she would never look back.
It had been three days since Izuku had talked to Mineta on the roof of his home and his diminutive friend had told him he knew just the spot for him and Tsu to train their new powers. Izuku had been very thankful for his friend's idea because he honestly had no idea where they could have gone.
Sure there were gyms that allowed for people to train with their quirks, but those were only for pro heroes as it was illegal for normal people to use their quirks. Not to mention that those places were prohibitively expensive regardless.
And it was for that reason that the two boys were now walking down the new bustling streets of Mustafu. It was rather surreal for the green haired boy, the once noisy streets once filled with the sound of cars was now filled with sound of people walking, with abandoned cars littering the sidewalk to allow emergency personal to get through and people walking around them like water flowing around stones. Even now, nearly a week after the blast he could still hear the distant sound of emergency vehicles, and helicopters flying overhead had become a much more common event.
This, he found out was all because the explosion that had rocked the city had released a massive electro-magnetic pulse that disabled all vehicles not hardened against it, which included the railways they would have usually used to get around. Even now he couldn't even guess how he survived it.
"You said she lived around here" Mineta questioned in a slightly tired tone, bringing him back from his internal thoughts. Izuku looked behind him to see him begin to lag behind, the long walk apparently doing a number on his little legs.
"We've only been walking for an hour, don't be a baby" he chided. "Besides I think we're here"
As Mineta's final tired moan ended they arrived to an apartment building much like his, though this one had been relatively closer to the blast and the pair could see the effects plainly with solid cracks running the across and along the walls and he wondered if the building was even safe to be in. Up and up they walked to the fourth floor and lightly knocked on the door, hearing several voices inside and the sound of shuffling before the door opened part way and stopped only by a chain lock on the inside as a cyan eye peered out.
"Glad you made it" she said as the door closed again as the sound of her unhooking the chain rumbled against the door before it opened again to reveal her.
She was wearing a thick green jacket, which looked warm in the late winter air. Her hair was tied back in an elaborate knot and as always her face was an unreadable expression as she stared at the two of them.
"Nice to see you again Izuku, and you too" she said looking at each of them when they heard a soft giggling further inside.
"Is that your boyfriend" a young girl playfully giggled, she looked to be around five years old and as she pulled her hands to mouth a wide smile spread across her face. The girl wore a stained shirt that reached down to her knees and her large beady eyes watched the two of them with obvious curiosity.
"No Satsuki" she answered back as her eyes went momentarily wider as she looked back inside her apartment. Before she could say anything else another child came into the hallway. He looked older, around ten years old and wore a bored, disinterested expression as he leaned against the wall of the hallway.
"Does mom and dad know that you're leaving us alone to be with boys" he said, the boys demeanor instantly changing from whatever look Tsu was giving him.
"No; but I'm sure that your smart enough to know what will happen if you tattle" she said in an all too calm voice, leaning down to her little brothers level.
"Now remember what I told you. Don't open the door for anyone, don't touch the stove and your lunches are in the fridge. Set it for a minute and a half; don't put metal in it and if you forget anything I wrote it all down on the kitchen table" she said to her siblings as she turned back around to the boys.
"Now let's get going" she said closing the door behind her and moving past the two boys as they their eyes moved between the retreating form of Tsu and themselves.
"Oooh she feisty, make that two weeks' worth of fast food" Mineta joked as Izuku gave him a playful shove as they raced after her.
[40 minutes later]
When you think of a beach it evokes images of crystal blue waves, soft sand and cute girls in skimpy bikini's. But what they had arrived to was a far cry from that. No actually it was the polar opposite of that; trash piled up fifteen feet high as seagulls squawked and picked at everything that looked edible and a lot of what didn't. Tires, rusted out cars, furniture and every kind of appliance the mind could think of, you name it and it was there.
As the trio stared out at the dump around him Izuku noticed a small plaque on a graffiti covered stone that acted as a divider between the sidewalk and the beach that read "Takoba Municipal Beach Park".
Izuku pinched his nose as the smell assaulted his nose; the stench lessened somewhat by the cool morning air as he looked towards his short friend.
"When you said you knew a place, I was not expecting this" he grumbled.
"Oh and what did you say to me about complaining" Mineta laughed, giving a smug smile to the taller boy "this place has everything you need".
"This place is a dump" he said, pointing out the obvious.
"You said you wanted a place where people wouldn't notice you two practicing, a place with access to water and a place to train you strength and endurance. All of that can be accomplished here." Mineta explained as the third member of their group spoke up.
"But how are we going to train if we can't even move ten feet without stepping on trash" Tsu questioned and Izuku could only agree.
"I made a deal with my uncle who works at the dump; he'll drop off one of those big industrial dumpsters every day and all we need to do is fill it up" Mineta huffed.
"So were going to do the cities job for them?" Tsu said snidely, which to Izuku's surprise was the first emotion he had ever heard from her.
While the two of them went back and forth, Izuku went over it in his head. Yeah the majority of their "training" would basically amount to community service but wasn't that the point of being a hero, serving the community?
"If we want to be heroes it starts with doing the stuff no one else wants to. We'll clear a way to the ocean first so Tsu can train her quirk, after that we'll spend the first half of each day cleaning and the second half training" he said, slamming his fist down into his open palm.
The bickering duo stopped for a moment as they thought about his proposal before eventually nodding in agreement. No sooner that they had, did they hear the blaring beeping of a large truck backing up.
With a loud bang the industrial dumpster was laid out on the side of the road and seconds later a portly man stepped out of his truck. He was a middle aged man in his mid-forties with a five o'clock shadow and balding purple hair.
"Alright here it is, I'll be back in six hours" he said slapping the container like a gong. Turning around he reached into the cabin of his truck and pulled out a box filled with garbage bags and tossed it at Mineta make the young boy stumble back as he caught it.
The trio gave their thanks to the man and made their way down onto the beach and got to work and were immediately surprised. Izuku's first target was an old fridge, looking hard at it he took a second to think about how he was going to lift it without hurting himself, doing his best to stretch all the while.
Gripping the edges with uncertainty he straightened his back, lifted with his legs and nearly threw it into the air, shocking the boy so much he nearly stumbled over. Surprise washed over him like a wave by this as he looked around to see both Mineta and Tsu looking back at him with a similar expression.
"Midoriya, since when have you been so strong?" Mineta questioned, confusion drenching his face as he stared at the green haired boy who struggled with that question himself. As if to test how strong he was Izuku removed one of his hands and balanced the fridge in the other, lifting it over his head.
"I have no idea" he said in bewilderment of his own sudden increase in power as he walked back to the container and placed the fridge back down with similar ease. Turning around he saw how Tsu similarly displayed a level of strength that she didn't know she had as she lifted a stove with similar lack of effort.
This sped up the process greatly and provided a good amount of entertainment as the two watched Mineta struggle to lift objects that were now easy for them. By the end of the second hour they had cleared a path to the ocean and filled the container till it was almost overflowing and began switching to training.
"Are you sure the water won't be to cold" Izuku worried, afraid that his new friend would get hypothermia.
"Don't worry, I came prepared" she answered as she undid her large jacket to reveal a form fitting green body suit that hugged her curves. Izuku responded by looking away, his cheeks tinged red as thoughts enter his mind.
'Damn you Mineta, you have corrupted me' He thought to himself, only to see said boy looking on without a hint of shame, giving the frog girl a big thumbs up and a slightly bloody nose.
"This suit helps keep my body temperature regulated, so I'll probably be good for about an hour before I need to get out." she explained, either not noticing or caring about the short boys antics.
Again this new information sent Izuku's mind ablaze with ideas as he pulled out a notepad from his pocket and began writing things down, forgetting entirely his former embarrassment as he got closer to Tsu and began inspecting her suit.
"What's it made of, where did you get it, how much did it cost" the questions came a mile a minute before he regained control of himself; his face turning even redder then before.
"I'm just gonna go… over there" he groaned, quickly walking away, the embarrassment growing too much to bear as he disappeared behind a tower of trash.
With only a hint of blush in her cheeks she turned to look at the only other person there that even without a mind reading quirk she could tell what he was thinking.
"So how long have you known Izuku?" she questioned, hoping to draw the boys mind away from her body.
This seemed to have the desired effect as his lecherous face turned more serious at the mention of the emerald haired boy.
"Oh me and him" he said half seriously, pointing in the direction Izuku had left. "We've known each other for… as long as I can remember" he said with a smile on his face.
"But how did you meet, you two don't seem very similar?" continued, her trademark lack of filter being formally introduced to the smaller boy.
"Yeah well, looks can be deceiving" he huffed, only to feel the unblinking gaze of girl on him, making him sigh as he explained how they first met.
"I transferred to his school when we were still in elementary school. When I first got there we didn't really interact much but that changed when I unfortunately got the attention of the school bully" he said with a flippant wave of his hand.
"So he saved you?" she continued to question, pressing a finger to her lip.
"Yeah… he did" he said with a small smile.
"I had just gotten my quirk" he explained, plucking one of his hair balls from his head and throwing it at a piece of trash, making it stick to it.
"I got a little too excited and when I was at the park I threw one without looking" he said as he began to laugh at the memory of that day, despite himself.
"Got him right on the head" he said pointing to a spot on his own as an example. "He and his buddies came running looking to beat the hell outta me."
"And he stopped them?" she asked, showing she was still listening.
Mineta breathed through his teeth as he explained how Midoriya stood up for him, only to get beaten up for his trouble.
"After that I tried to thank him and you know what he said?" Mineta asked turning to look the girl in the eye as Tsuyu shook her head.
"That's what heroes do" he said with a sad smile, sad at how his best friend had always wanted to be a hero and how the universe had decided to answer his prayers in the worst way possible.
"After that, we've been best friends ever since" he finished as Tsuyu stood there, thinking over the story he had told her.
"But it wasn't all bad; his mother ended up having to shave the ball off, leaving him with this big bald spot for a few weeks, the whole school thought it was hilarious" he laughed as Tsuyu nodded his head, her mind finally made up.
"You're alright" she said, confusing the shorter boy as he looked up at her.
"When I first met you, I just thought you were a chronic pervert" she said, making Mineta sag his shoulders.
"But I can see you're more than that"
That struck the smaller boys so fast he was afraid he might get whiplash as he stared into the frog girls eyes.
"Izuku told about how you saved him after the blast, carrying him on your back." She said with a smile that to Mineta felt as though the clouds had parted and light shined upon him.
"He seems like a really good guy so … thank you for saving him" she beamed, while Mineta felt like he could die right now and be happy as he stood their stunned.
"No it's nothing Asu…" he tried to say before being cut off.
"My friends call me Tsu" she said as she offered her hand to Mineta.
"Well my names Minoru Mineta, nice to meet you Tsu" he said with a smile as he shook her hand. After that the two separated with Tsu jumping into the water with a leap that would have made an Olympic long jumper green with envy and Mineta started the process that he was not looking forward to.
Further down the beach, Izuku was navigating through the trash piles, doing his best to breathe through his mouth as his turbulent mind continued to harass him. Even after his talk with Mineta he was still uncertain if he could become a hero, or even if he had the right to.
Izuku slapped himself hard, letting the sting sink in as the pain brought his mind back to the present, his friend had put his faith in him and he was here now so there was no point in thinking about it.
Looking around he pulled out his notepad from before and flipped it until he came to a page labeled "My quirk and its uses". He had spent the last few days trying to figure out what his quirk was capable of and had unfortunately came to find out his new Achilles heel.
The memory bringing up phantom pain as he recalled trying to shower after Mineta had left, only to feel like he was being doused in acid, the image of his mother's face as she saw her son screaming in pain and convulsing on the bathroom floor would certainly never leave him.
'Note to self, sponge baths for the foreseeable future' he lightly joked to himself as he looked over what he had written down.
So far he knew that he could absorb electricity, having practiced on a couple batteries with arcs of blue seeping out as he drained them. But now he needed to find out if that was all he could do. Sure if all he could do is drain than maybe he could get a job disarming bombs or shutting down a villain's hideout but that wasn't good enough.
He needed to get stronger for them. He needed to make this worth it.
He had spent the last few days looking up heroes with electrical quirks, how they first manifested, what they could do with them and most importantly for him how to draw the power out.
Looking out at the dump around him he spotted a broken lamp sitting on the rusted out frame of a car. Stretching his arm out he focused, trying to pull that warm feeling back to the surface as he began to hear the ever more familiar sound of electrical discharges as arcs of energy danced between his fingers. He focused his eyes on the lamp; feeling the heat of his powers on the palm of his hand as the heat became hotter and hotter until.
BZZT!
His arm was pushed back by the recoil as he felt the heat jump from his hand and accompanied by the sound of electricity as a bolt of lightning leaped from his hand and slammed into the lamp, shattering it even further and leaving nothing more than smoldering shards of ceramic. Izuku pumped his fist in the air as he confirmed that not only could absorb electricity but also expel it. He looked down at his hand, the feeling of his power still fresh in him as he began to look for something else to shoot.
This went on for an hour or so, as Izuku experimented with his powers as he shot at anything that seemed breakable. This was so that he could figure out how much he could expel and to his surprise even after so long he didn't feel the least bit tired or that he was running out of juice.
'Unlimited lightning bolts?' he wrote down in his notepad as he put it away and settled trying to practice with his other ability he had taken to calling radar pulse. From experimenting he found that it had a range of about fifty meters and while his lightning bolts only required him to focus his energy in his hands, this like its name was a full body pulse launching in every direction.
Feeling the energy in his body, he held it for a moment, letting the power saturate every inch before releasing it, feeling everything from Mineta and Tsu to the stores and lights on the other side of the road. But that's when he felt it, an energy that felt different to anything else he had experienced. Following that strange feeling and shifting through the decaying piles of trash he came upon a pile of trash that seemed to radiate at the seams.
He could almost physically feel the pull now as he slowly began peeling away bags of trash, making certain that one wrong pull would not see him buried in the putrid mass. With one last pull the faint glow became bright as what he saw was a piece of jagged metal imbedded in a microwave that pulsed almost like a heart.
Izuku had heard about this on the news, something about contamination that came from the blast. They had said that they react violently to quirks and to notify the police if any were found. But as he gazed into it he couldn't help but want to touch it. It was as it was calling to him.
Like a moth to a flame he cautiously walked closer and tentatively reached out as the pulsing grew faster and faster and just as the tip of his finger touched it the piece of metal it erupted in a flash of light and disintegrated. Izuku tried to pull his hand back but the energy seeped into his arm.
'How was that possible' he thought to himself as the message the news said contradicted with the evidence before him. Had they lied or did they simply not know.
As Izuku looked at his arms he felt the power of the shard flow through his body and immediately felt stronger and unconsciously released another radar pulse where he felt another source of power, though to his dismay was deep in the water.
This was all so strange, what kind of power did that blast awaken in him and what connection did these things have with it?" he questioned, wracking his brain for an answer it couldn't provide.
Frustrated at that he pulled out his phone and decided that he had enough training and began to walk back to Mineta.
"Hey Mineta how goes your trai…" Izuku began to say as he turned the bend to see Mineta lying on his back with blood coming from his head.
"Mineta!" he Izuku yelled as he dashed to his friend "Mineta, Mineta speak to me!" he shouted as he tried to figure out what happened.
'Was it an accident, was it a villain, were they still here, and where was Tsu?
All these questions swarmed his mind as he heard a light grumble coming from his friend as Izuku thanked god he was alive, only for his ears to assault by the most high pitch yell he ever heard.
"DAMN THAT HURT" Mineta screamed as he slumped back to the ground, staring at the sky and breathing heavy.
"Mineta what happened" he asked again and his only response was a shaky hand pointing away from him where his saw a large pile of his balls stacked into a pyramid.
"Training; over did it, ow" he groaned as he peeled himself off the sand. Standing on wobbly legs and with Izuku focused on Mineta neither heard the sound of splashing water as Tsu leaped out and landed with a puff of dust.
"I heard screaming, what happened" Tsu asked as Izuku explained what had happened which she like always didn't really react to, watching silently as Mineta rubbed his hands into his face.
"Well have you had any luck with your new quirk" Izuku asked pulling the conversation back as Mineta slowly got his bearings.
Tsu nodded as she extended her arm towards a car door while Izuku could begin to see droplets of water coalescing in her palm before a ball of water about the size of a baseball launched itself at incredible speed, hitting the door like a gong and leaving a sizeable dent in the metal.
"Wow" was all he could say as he fought his inner quirk enthusiast to not go into another muttering rant about the intricacies of her quirk when he was reminded of what he felt earlier.
"Hey Tsu while I was training my quirk I found something strange" he said which peeked the frog girls interest all with the grape haired boy who had finally gotten all his dogs barking.
"I have this ability that allows me to see the electrical signals of things around me, from phones to people and when I used it I found something that when I touched it made me feel stronger" he tried to explain, talking about how it disintegrated, how he felt that strange power flow into him and how he could sense another one of those things coming from underwater.
"But didn't the news say they were bad for people with quirks?" she asked which Izuku nodded at.
"Oh so the governments lying, why am I not surprised" Mineta quipped, crossing his arms over his chest.
"Maybe their lying or maybe there's something else going on." He said trying to reason his way out of the conflicting information.
"All I know is that I felt a pull towards it and it didn't hurt at all" he said flexing his hand unconsciously.
"I'm just telling you that it's there if you decide to try. I don't know how it will affect you but if we want to be pro heroes we need to be at our bests and if those things can make us stronger then that's what we need to do" he reasoned.
Tsu thought about for a moment, her finger on her chin as she thought over it until she shook her head, believing that it was too much of a risk before adding a caveat.
"I'll try and see if can get it out of the water without touching it" she said as she asked where he had felt it, pointing to a small rock formation half way down the beach. With another leap Tsu was back in the water leaving the two boys to wait.
As Tsu swam through the ocean she thought about the power Izuku had talked about and wondered if she could possibly have a similar ability.
'We both got our power from the blast so there might be chance' she thought. While it was true that no two quirks were exactly alike, the nature of their emergent quirks might make that rule no longer airtight.
As she swam she focused on her new power and the feeling of all the water around her. All her life she'd had an affinity for the water due to her quirk but now it like having lived your entire life with gloves on and then suddenly having them come off as she released her sonar pulse. An exhilarating chill washed over her as she felt everything around her, from the smallest fish to the pieces of trash that floated through the water and all the power that water held. Surrounded by so much it was difficult to focus on only one place but as she did she began to feel what Deku might have been talking about. A shifting of the current that pulled her towards it and with a few more flutter kicks she came to the rocky formation which she soon discovered was a large chunk of concrete with pieces of rebar's sticking out of it along with a glowing shard of metal.
Tsuyu then felt the strange pull Izuku had talked about, its warm pulsing seeming almost hypnotic and it take a great deal of self-restraint to not reach out for it immediately. Pulling her eyes way she looked around for anything to grab it. Swimming around she eventually found a pair of barbecue tongs sitting on the ocean floor.
Quickly she scooped up the tool, giving it a few quick clicks together before heading back to pulsing shard, where again her eyes fell upon its pulsing form, promising warmth in such cold depths. With shaking hands she got closer and closer as the pulsing grew faster and faster and as she looked down to her hand she saw she had dropped the tongs. And seeing them fall away and with light filled eyes she grasped the shard.
It had been five minutes since Tsu had left and Izuku was beginning to get worried as he paced back and forth. Maybe she got caught on something or the shard had hurt her. Fear began to seep back into him; he couldn't take another person dying because of him as he began to hyperventilate. He was only stopped when hand grasped his arm as he looked down to see Mineta looking at him.
"She'll be fine" he said, flakes of dried blood chipping off of his skin as he scratched his head. With a sigh Izuku relented and just as he did a form leaped from the water and high into the air. Both Midoriya and Mineta looking up and watching the form sail through the air and land with a hard boom kicking up sand and obscuring her. Both coughing and waving the dust out of their faces as Tsu finally entered her view.
"Hey what happened? You were down there a long time" he asked.
"I'm sorry" she said "But when I saw tried to grab it I…" she tried to explain before a look of confusion fell across her face.
"Hey did you guys get shorter" she asked as the two looked to each other in confusion for a moment.
"No, you're just standing up straight" Mineta said as Tsu looked down at herself and her mind went blank. For the last four years of her life her frog quirk had become more and more dominant and she had been forced to spend every moment stuck in that half bowed, velociraptor pose, her spine molding into the posture of a frog.
Immediately she stretched as far as she could, her arms reaching to the sky and leaning back as she felt muscles she had forgotten had existed stretch with her. She stretched so far she fell over, falling to ground with a thud as the two boys moved to see if she was okay.
And she was okay; no, more than okay as they saw the girls lips pull back into a large smile, the first true emotion the pair had ever seen on her. She laid there for a few moments longer, arching her back against the sand and cyan eyes peering past the boys and into the sky as the limitations of her body finally lifted.
"Yeah, I'm okay" she said, still smiling as she lazily offered her hands to the boys to help her up, to which both immediately accepted. Getting back to her feet she felt a wave of relaxation she had not thought possible as she rolled her shoulders as she looked at Izuku with half lidded eyes that looked like the greatest high of her life.
"Sorry, tried to grab it with some tongs but…" she said, shrugging her shoulders. "It called to me"
Izuku could only nod his head in understanding, while he didn't like the idea of these shards having such a profound effect on them, he couldn't lie that he did enjoy the experience.
"So how did it feel" Izuku asked.
"It was… amazing" she whispered as the sound of screaming and gunfire filled the air.
Well that's chapter four down, and i'd like to thank everyone who has stayed with me this far. Your reviews give me the motivation to get these chapters out in a reasonable time. Also for reference of the heights of some of our characters our grape boy in the OT he is 108 cm tall. But since here he's an actual character not just a perpetual gag i figured a more reasonable height would be nice so now he is 138 cm tall. Or for my american audience he's gone from 3'6" to 4'6"