What If Deku Fused With Every Dinosaur Quirk at Once

 The rain hit the reinforced steel roof of the transport carrier with the sound of a thousand drumming fingers. Inside the dimly lit cabin, the air was thick with the scent of ozone, wet Kevlar, and nervous anticipation.

 

Izuku Midoriya sat near the loading ramp, his emerald eyes fixed on the vibrating floorboards beneath his red, iron-soled boots. He was rhythmically tapping his thumb against his index finger, a physical manifestation of his racing mind. Around him, the familiar faces of Class 1-A were cast in the harsh, red tactical glow of the jump-lights. They were silent, a stark contrast to the usual boisterous energy of the U.A. dorms. Tonight wasn't a training exercise. It wasn't a patrol. It was a surgical strike.

 

"Stop muttering, nerd," Katsuki Bakugo’s gravelly voice cut through the low hum of the carrier's engine. He was sitting directly across from Izuku, his gauntlets resting heavily on his knees, his crimson eyes narrowed into sharp, dangerous slits. "You’re giving me a damn migraine."

 

Izuku snapped his mouth shut, heat rising to his freckled cheeks as he realized he had been audibly analyzing the structural schematics of their target. "Sorry, Kacchan. I was just... reviewing the blueprints again. If Dr. Garaki’s secondary lab is truly buried beneath Mount Shishizaki, the limestone deposits could make large-scale shockwave Quirks dangerous. The structural integrity—"

 

"I know how to blow things up without bringing the roof down on my own head, Deku," Bakugo scoffed, though the tension in his shoulders betrayed his own anxiety.

 

To Izuku's left, Shoto Todoroki adjusted the temperature-regulating collar of his hero costume. "Midoriya is right to be cautious. The intelligence Nighteye's former agency gathered suggested this isn't just a hideout. It's a bio-forge. If Garaki has been manufacturing High-End Nomus here, a cave-in might be the least of our worries."

 

"Both of you, eyes front," Shota Aizawa ordered, standing near the cockpit door. The erasure hero looked even more exhausted than usual, his capture weapon coiled tightly around his neck like a sleeping serpent. The red light cast deep shadows into the bags under his eyes. "We are here in a strict support capacity. The primary breach will be handled by Mirko, Edgeshot, and Kamui Woods. Your job is containment and civilian extraction if we find any test subjects. No one engages a High-End alone. If you see one, you fall back, you signal, and you wait for the heavy hitters. Am I understood?"

 

"Yes, sir!" the class echoed in unison.

 

Izuku clenched his fists, feeling the thrum of One For All humming beneath his skin, a dormant reactor waiting for the flip of a switch. He could feel the ghosts of the past wielders in the back of his mind—a warm, watchful presence. They had trusted him with this power, and tonight, he intended to use it to rip out one of the League of Villains' most vital roots.

 

"Two minutes to drop!" the pilot called over the intercom.

 

The transport banked sharply, descending through the dense, storm-battered canopy of the Shishizaki mountain range. Izuku stood up, adjusting his respirator and pulling his hood back. He took a deep breath, letting the cool, conditioned air of the cabin fill his lungs.

 

Focus, he told himself. Save who needs saving. Stop whoever gets in the way.

 

With a mechanical groan, the rear ramp of the carrier lowered, revealing the violently swirling tempest outside. Rain lashed into the cabin. Below them, nestled into the jagged rock face of the mountain, were the massive, rusted iron doors of a forgotten mining facility—the front for Garaki's nightmare factory.

 

"Go, go, go!" Aizawa barked.

 

Izuku surged forward. Green lightning sparked to life around his body, tracing the lines of his muscles as One For All: Full Cowl - 8% activated. He leaped into the storm, the wind howling in his ears, and plummeted toward the earth.

 

 The Breach

 

The landing was chaotic but precise. Mirko had already arrived, her powerful legs shattering the fifty-ton iron doors of the mine as if they were made of brittle glass. The echoing boom of the impact was immediately swallowed by the thunder above.

 

"Keep up, UA brats!" the Rabbit Hero yelled with a feral grin, disappearing into the pitch-black maw of the cavern.

 

Izuku landed softly in a crouch, his iron soles splashing into a deep puddle of muddy rainwater. Bakugo landed next to him with a controlled burst of explosions, hissing as the rain turned to steam against his palms. Todoroki followed, a gentle ramp of ice sliding him safely to the ground.

 

"Move in, formation B!" Tenya Iida commanded, chopping his arm forward.

 

The interior of the cavern was a stark contrast to the raging storm outside. It was eerily quiet, the air smelling of wet earth, iron ore, and something undeniably chemical—a sharp, antiseptic stench that made the hair on the back of Izuku’s neck stand up.

 

Emergency lumen-strips flickered to life along the cavern walls, casting sickly yellow light over the rusted mining equipment that had been pushed aside to make way for sleek, modern reinforced corridors. They had found it.

 

"Pro heroes are pushing the vanguard," Aizawa spoke through their earpieces, his voice crackling slightly due to the dense rock overhead. "Class A, secure the outer perimeter rings. Watch your corners."

 

Izuku took point, his enhanced agility allowing him to silently bound from stalagmites to metal scaffolding. His Danger Sense—the Quirk of the fourth wielder, Hikage Shinomori—was dormant. That in itself was terrifying. A facility this important shouldn't be unguarded.

 

They moved deeper, navigating a labyrinth of steel corridors bored directly into the mountain’s bedrock. They found holding cells, empty but stained with dried blood. They found operating theaters covered in dust.

 

"It looks abandoned," Uraraka whispered, floating lightly beside Izuku to avoid making noise on the grated metal floor. "Do you think they knew we were coming?"

 

"Garaki is paranoid," Izuku whispered back, his eyes darting to every shadow. "He wouldn't leave a facility completely empty. He'd leave a trap."

 

As if on cue, a sharp, needle-like pain pierced the inside of Izuku's skull. Danger Sense didn't just activate; it screamed.

 

"Get back!" Izuku roared, instinctively summoning Blackwhip. Six tendrils of dark, crackling energy erupted from his arms, wrapping around Uraraka, Iida, and Todoroki, violently yanking them backward.

 

The ceiling above them didn't just collapse; it detonated.

 

A localized implosion charge, hidden within the limestone bedrock, tore the corridor in half. Thousands of tons of rock, steel, and concrete rained down. Izuku pushed his Quirk to 30%, channeling the power into his legs to launch himself backward, but the floor beneath him gave way.

 

"Deku!" Bakugo yelled, his hands igniting in a massive flash of explosions in a desperate attempt to blast the falling debris away.

 

But it was too much, too fast. A massive slab of concrete clipped Izuku's shoulder, sending him spinning into the darkness below. The roar of the collapsing mountain was deafening, filling his lungs with thick, choking silica dust. He fell for what felt like an eternity, tumbling down a secondary ventilation shaft that had been ripped open by the blast.

 

He hit a sloped metal chute, sliding at breakneck speed before being launched out into open air. He twisted like a cat, relying on Full Cowl to absorb the kinetic energy as he crashed onto a cold, hard tile floor.

 

He rolled, skidding to a halt against a heavy steel console.

 

For a moment, the world was spinning. His ears rang with a high-pitched whine. He coughed violently, tasting copper and dust. Slowly, he pushed himself up to his hands and knees.

 

"Kacchan? Aizawa-sensei?" Izuku tapped his earpiece.

 

Static.

 

The cavern walls were too thick, and the collapse had completely severed his line of communication. He was cut off. Alone.

 

Izuku stood up, wincing at a sharp pain in his left shoulder. He took in his surroundings, and his breath caught in his throat.

 

 The Heart of the Lab

 

He hadn't just fallen into a lower level; he had fallen into the sanctum sanctorum of Dr. Garaki’s operation. The room was massive, easily the size of a football field, with a vaulted ceiling supported by columns of polished steel. The walls were lined with advanced computer mainframes, their screens casting an eerie, pale blue glow across the sterile white tiles.

 

But it was the center of the room that drew his eyes and refused to let go.

 

Arranged in a massive circle were dozens of cylindrical glass vats, each large enough to hold a truck. Most of them were empty, shattered, or filled with murky, stagnant water. But in the very center, elevated on a raised platform and connected to hundreds of thick, pulsating cables, was the master vat.

 

It didn't contain a Nomu. It contained liquid.

 

The substance inside was thick, viscous, and glowed with a terrifying, luminescent amber light. It bubbled sluggishly, looking like liquefied fossil resin, swirling with veins of crimson and gold. The ambient heat radiating from the vat was immense, making the air in the room waver and shimmer.

 

Izuku cautiously approached the main console overlooking the vat. He wiped the dust from the primary monitor, his eyes scanning the rapid streams of data scrolling across the screen.

 

PROJECT: APEX-CHIMERA

STATUS: Gestation Incomplete. Quirk Factor Synthesis at 99.8%.

COMPONENTS: Theropod, Ceratopsian, Ankylosauria, Pterosauria, Mosasauridae, Spinosauridae... [Expand for 142 additional prehistoric genotypes]

OBJECTIVE: To create the ultimate, self-sustaining biological siege engine. By isolating and amalgamating the Quirk Factors of mutants possessing extinct prehistoric traits, the resulting serum will permanently overwrite the host DNA, creating a Nomu unbound by modern evolutionary limits. A true dinosaur.

 

Izuku felt a chill run down his spine that had nothing to do with the temperature of the room. Garaki had been harvesting Quirks from people with dinosaur-mutations. He had spent years boiling them down, synthesizing their DNA into a concentrated soup of prehistoric apex predators. If this serum was injected into a High-End Nomu... it would be unstoppable. A walking extinction event.

 

"Fascinating, isn't it?"

 

Izuku spun around, dropping into a low combat stance, green lightning flaring instantly. Danger Sense hummed, a steady, localized warning.

 

Stepping out from the shadows of the shattered vats was a tall, unnervingly thin man. He wore a pristine white suit that seemed completely untouched by the dust of the cave-in. Half of his face was obscured by a polished silver mask that covered his eyes and nose, leaving only a pale, thin-lipped mouth that was currently curled into an arrogant smirk.

 

"Dr. Garaki was quite furious when he had to abandon this facility," the man said, his voice smooth and echoing with an unnatural resonance. He lazily raised a hand, dressed in a white leather glove. "He tasked me with retrieving his magnum opus. I didn't expect a pest to fall through the ceiling. Let alone U.A.'s little golden boy."

 

"Who are you?" Izuku demanded, keeping his center of gravity low.

 

"You may call me Kinesis," the man replied, adjusting his cuffs. "And I am under a very strict timetable, child. The League requires that serum. So, you are going to stand aside, or I am going to compress your internal organs into the size of a golf ball."

 

"I can't let you take this," Izuku said, his voice devoid of fear, replaced by the iron-clad resolve of a hero. "This is going to be destroyed. Right here. Right now."

 

Kinesis sighed, a sound of genuine disappointment. "Heroes. Always so dramatically obtuse."

 

The villain snapped his fingers.

 

Instantly, the gravity in the room seemed to invert. Izuku felt an invisible, crushing force slam into his chest, like he had just been hit by a runaway train. He was launched backward, crashing violently into one of the steel columns. The metal buckled under the impact.

 

Telekinesis! Izuku’s mind raced as he gasped for breath. But the sheer kinetic output is massive. He didn't even move his hand that time!

 

"I can manipulate kinetic energy and gravitational pressure with a thought," Kinesis said, slowly walking up the stairs toward the amber vat. He withdrew a large, metallic containment cylinder from his jacket. "You are outmatched, boy. Stay down, bleed out quietly, and perhaps you'll survive until the rubble is cleared."

 

Izuku pushed himself off the bent pillar, spitting a wad of blood onto the white tiles. "Not... a chance."

 

 The Clash

 

One For All: Full Cowl - 45%!

 

The cavern was suddenly bathed in blinding green light. The air snapped and popped as static electricity arched off Izuku’s body, shattering the glass of the empty vats nearby. With a sonic boom that cracked the floor tiles, Izuku vanished from sight.

 

He reappeared directly above Kinesis, twisting his body mid-air to deliver an axe-kick straight down toward the villain’s skull. "St. Louis Smash!"

 

Kinesis didn't even look up. He simply raised two fingers.

 

A shimmering, concussive shield of telekinetic energy bloomed in the air. Izuku's iron sole slammed into the barrier. The force of the impact created a massive shockwave that blew the computer consoles apart and sent loose debris flying like shrapnel, but the shield held. Kinesis merely grunted, his knees bending slightly under the immense weight of the Smash.

 

"Fast," Kinesis murmured. "But primitive."

 

The villain thrust his open palm forward. A localized gravitational repulsion wave blasted outward. Izuku was thrown back, but this time, he was ready. He deployed Blackwhip, latching two tendrils onto the ceiling rafters, arresting his momentum and swinging himself back into the fray like a pendulum.

 

"Smokescreen!" Izuku shouted.

 

A thick, impenetrable cloud of purple smoke erupted from his body, instantly flooding the raised platform. Kinesis cursed, waving his hand to clear the smoke, but Izuku was already moving, utilizing the erratic bouncing technique of Gran Torino to ricochet off the walls, floor, and ceiling, attacking from every conceivable blind spot.

 

Manchester Smash!

Shoot Style: Crescent Kick!

 

Izuku battered the telekinetic shields. Each strike was heavier than the last as he began to passively charge Fa Jin. The rhythmic booming of his attacks echoed like artillery fire in the massive chamber. Kinesis was being pushed back, step by step, his smug demeanor evaporating into genuine frustration.

 

"Enough!" Kinesis roared.

 

The villain threw both arms wide. A massive, omnidirectional shockwave of telekinetic force exploded outward. It tore the steel panels from the walls, shredded the pipes overhead, and instantly dispersed the smokescreen. Izuku was caught in the blast, the kinetic force feeling like a solid brick wall slamming into his entire body. He was thrown viciously across the room, tumbling across the floor until he hit the base of the central amber vat.

 

Izuku groaned, clutching his ribs. He could feel at least two of them were cracked.

 

"You little freak," Kinesis spat, breathing heavily, a trickle of blood running from his nose—a sign of overusing his Quirk. "You've ruined my suit. I am done playing with you."

 

Kinesis raised his hands toward the ceiling. The massive steel rafters groaned in protest as the villain ripped a fifty-ton steel support beam from the roof. With a flick of his wrists, he hurled the massive beam directly at Izuku like a javelin.

 

Izuku’s eyes widened. He couldn't dodge. If he moved, the beam would smash directly into the amber vat behind him. He didn't know what that serum was made of, but if it spilled and mixed with the chemical fires starting around the room, it could trigger a biological catastrophe.

 

He had to stop it.

 

Izuku planted his feet, digging his iron soles into the cracked tiles. He pulled his right arm back, the green lightning turning chaotic and wild as he forced One For All past his safe limits.

 

Don't think about the pain. Just protect!

 

"One For All... 100%!"

 

The muscles in his right arm bulged, the sleeves of his costume shredding as the sheer power of the stockpiled energy threatened to tear his body apart. As the massive steel beam descended upon him, Izuku stepped forward and threw a devastating uppercut.

 

"DETROIT SMASH!"

 

The resulting shockwave was apocalyptic. The air pressure alone warped the space around his fist. When his knuckles met the steel beam, the metal didn't just bend; it disintegrated. The shockwave tore through the beam, reducing it to twisted shrapnel, and continued upward, blasting a massive hole through the ceiling of the cavern.

 

Kinesis was caught in the backdraft. The villain was lifted off his feet and hurled backward with the force of a hurricane, slamming into the far wall of the cavern and slumping unconscious to the floor.

 

Izuku stood frozen, his right arm shattered, dangling uselessly at his side. He gasped for air, the adrenaline beginning to fade, replaced by blinding, agonizing pain.

 

"I... I did it," he wheezed, his vision swimming.

 

But as the dust began to settle, a terrifying sound reached his ears.

 

CRACK.

 

Izuku slowly turned around.

 

The shockwave from his 100% Smash had been too much for the room. The concussive force had radiated backward. The massive, reinforced glass of the master vat holding the Mesozoic Quirk Factor was splintering. A spiderweb of fractures raced up the fifty-foot cylindrical tank.

 

"No..." Izuku whispered, his eyes wide with horror.

 

He tried to run, to use Blackwhip to pull himself away, but the recoil of the 100% Smash had paralyzed his nervous system. His legs wouldn't obey.

 

With a deafening, crystalline screech, the entire front of the vat exploded.

 

 The Genetic Fire

 

Thousands of gallons of glowing, amber liquid crashed down like a tidal wave.

 

Izuku was instantly engulfed. The sheer weight of the fluid slammed him to the floor, pinning him under its viscous, crushing mass. He tried to hold his breath, but the liquid was unnatural—it moved with a parasitic sentience, surging into his mouth, his nose, filling his lungs.

 

He expected to drown. He expected the burning agony of suffocation.

 

Instead, he felt fire.

 

The Mesozoic Quirk Factor wasn't just a chemical; it was a concentrated, liquified archive of DNA. It was designed to latch onto biological matter, hollow it out, and rewrite it. But the serum had never encountered a host like Izuku Midoriya. It had never encountered a body saturated with the ultimate Quirk-absorbing sponge: One For All.

 

Inside Izuku’s body, a microscopic war began. The prehistoric serum attempted to aggressively mutate his cells, to turn him into a mindless, chimeric beast. But One For All—a Quirk designed to stockpile and assimilate power—reacted violently to the intrusion.

 

It didn't reject the serum. It devoured it.

 

Izuku’s eyes snapped open beneath the glowing amber tide. They were no longer human. The irises had shifted from forest green to a blinding, piercing gold, and his pupils had snapped into sharp, vertical slits.

 

His mind was violently violently pulled into the Vestige Realm.

 

Izuku found himself floating in the endless, dark void of One For All, surrounded by the floating chairs of the past users. But the realm was in utter chaos. The First User, Yoichi, was standing, looking up in sheer terror. Nana Shimura was bracing herself as the very fabric of their mental landscape shook.

 

Above them, tearing through the veil of the void, were monsters.

 

Massive, glowing silhouettes made of pure, raw energy were flooding into the core of One For All. A colossal Tyrannosaurus Rex roared, its jaws snapping at the dark sky. A Spinosaurus thrashed its massive tail, sending ripples of power through the void. Flocks of Pteranodons screeched, diving and weaving around the past wielders. Triceratops, Ankylosaurs, Velociraptors—an entire prehistoric ecosystem of Quirk factors was pouring into the stockpiled energy.

 

"Ninth!" Yoichi screamed over the cacophony of monstrous roars. "It's assimilating! The stockpile is integrating everything! It’s too much raw data!"

 

"I... I can't stop it!" Izuku cried out, clutching his head as the minds of a hundred ancient beasts crashed into his own consciousness. It was a sensory overload of pure, primal instinct. Hunger. Rage. Survival. The desire to hunt, to bite, to tear.

 

In the physical world, the amber liquid around Izuku began to boil away, vaporized by the sheer, ungodly heat radiating from his mutating body.

 

The green lightning of Full Cowl flickered erratically. It surged, spiked, and then, violently, shifted color. The emerald arcs turned a deep, blood-red, crackling with an intensity that melted the floor tiles beneath him.

 

Izuku’s body was being torn apart and rebuilt at a cellular level. His shattered right arm cracked sickeningly, the bones forcefully snapping back into place, reinforced by something far denser than human calcium.

 

He let out a scream, but it didn't sound human.

 

It started as a boy’s cry of pain and devolved into a guttural, rattling hiss that vibrated in his chest. His skin felt like it was on fire. Along his forearms, across his shoulders, and down his spine, his epidermis hardened, tearing through his hero costume as patches of thick, emerald-green reptilian scales pushed through the skin.

 

His boots exploded. The reinforced iron soles shattered outward as his feet elongated, his toes snapping and reforming into heavy, three-toed talons tipped with black, scythe-like claws.

 

The pain in his lower back was the worst. It felt as though his spine was being pulled out of his body. With a wet, tearing sound, a thick, muscular tail burst from the base of his tailbone, covered in heavy armored plates and ending in a cluster of sharp, bone-white spikes. The tail slammed into the ground, cracking the bedrock.

 

His jaw unhinged with a sickening pop, elongating slightly as his flat human teeth were pushed out, instantly replaced by rows of serrated, backward-curving fangs.

 

The primal instincts of the Quirk factors overwhelmed his human consciousness. He wasn't Izuku Midoriya, the hero-in-training, anymore. He was a cornered animal. He was an apex predator trapped in a cave.

 

Izuku threw his head back, his golden, slit-pupil eyes wide with wild, feral terror and absolute rage. He opened his jaws, and from the depths of his mutating chest, he unleashed a roar.

 

It wasn't a scream. It was a concussive blast of sheer, prehistoric fury. The roar was so loud, so deeply resonant, that it created a visible shockwave. The remaining glass vats in the room pulverized into dust. The computer consoles exploded in showers of sparks. The very bedrock of Mount Shishizaki trembled, the acoustic force traveling up through the stone, shaking the trees on the surface.

 

The effort, the pain, the absolute exhaustion of the cellular rewrite was too much. The blood-red lightning flickered and died. Izuku’s eyes rolled back in his head, the golden glow fading.

 

He collapsed forward, his heavy, scaled body hitting the floor with a dull thud. His massive spiked tail curled instinctively, defensively, around his unconscious form. The room fell deathly silent, save for the crackling of electrical fires and the hiss of evaporating serum.

 

 The Fossil Recovered

 

Three hundred feet above, in the ruined upper levels of the facility, the ground was still shaking from the monstrous roar that had echoed up from the depths.

 

"What the hell was that?!" Bakugo yelled, his hands sparking aggressively as he blasted away a massive boulder blocking the collapsed ventilation shaft. "Sounded like a damn Kaiju!"

 

"Less talking, more blasting, Bakugo!" Aizawa commanded, his hands bleeding as he physically hauled rocks out of the way. He was panting, his usually stoic face twisted in a mask of genuine panic. "Midoriya is down there! Keep digging!"

 

Suddenly, a massive shadow fell over them.

 

"Stand back, young ones!"

 

All Might, in his true, muscle-bound form, dropped from the hole in the cavern roof. He had pushed past his daily limit the moment he heard the cave-in, desperate to reach his successor. Steam was already radiating from his skin, but his iconic blue eyes were burning with fierce determination.

 

"Carolina Smash!"

 

All Might crossed his arms and swung them outward in a massive cross-chop. The air pressure obliterated the remaining tons of rubble blocking the shaft, clearing a massive, sloping hole down into the lower levels of the laboratory.

 

"Deku!" Bakugo yelled, not waiting for the dust to clear. He leaped down the shaft, using small explosions in his palms to control his descent. All Might and Aizawa were right behind him.

 

They hit the floor of the decimated laboratory, their boots crunching on broken glass and pulverized concrete. The air was thick with purple smoke, chemical fires, and the strange, metallic scent of ozone and blood.

 

"Midoriya!" Aizawa called out, his glowing red eyes scanning the darkness.

 

"Over here!" Bakugo shouted from the center of the room. His voice was strangely tight. It lacked its usual explosive anger. It sounded... horrified.

 

All Might and Aizawa sprinted past the shattered remains of the computer consoles, arriving at the raised platform where the central vat had once stood.

 

Bakugo was standing frozen, his hands hovering uselessly at his sides, staring down at the ground.

 

"Young Bakugo, what is it? Did you find—" All Might froze, the words dying in his throat.

 

Lying in the center of a puddle of evaporating amber liquid was a body. It was wearing the shredded, recognizable remnants of Izuku’s green hero costume. But the body inside it was completely wrong.

 

Where there should have been pale, freckled skin on his arms and back, there were thick, overlapping emerald scales that shimmered in the flickering light of the electrical fires. His boots were gone, replaced by terrifying, raptor-like talons that gouged deep grooves into the concrete floor. And curled protectively over his torso, resting heavily on his back, was a massive, reptilian tail covered in armored plates and tipped with lethal bone spikes.

 

All Might dropped to his knees, his massive hands trembling as he reached out. "My boy... Izuku... what has happened to you?"

 

As All Might’s hand brushed against the boy's shoulder, Izuku shifted in his sleep. His head turned slightly, revealing his face. His freckles were still there, but his jaw was slightly elongated, and a sharp, serrated fang poked out from his bottom lip.

 

Slowly, his eyes fluttered open.

 

Aizawa tensed, his capture weapon rising like a cobra, ready to restrain a monster.

 

But as the eyelids lifted, they didn't reveal the crazed, dead eyes of a Nomu. They revealed a pair of striking, luminescent golden eyes with sharp, vertical slits. The eyes blinked, entirely devoid of human understanding for a fleeting second, burning with the cold, calculating gaze of a prehistoric predator.

 

Then, the golden slits widened in confusion. The feral hardness melted away, replaced by the soft, terrified vulnerability of a sixteen-year-old boy.

 

"A... All Might?" Izuku’s voice rasped. It was his voice, but underneath it lay a strange, dual resonance—a low, vibrating growl that vibrated in his chest like the purr of a massive jungle cat. "Kacchan...? Why... why does everything smell like copper?"

 

Izuku tried to sit up, but the sudden shift in his center of gravity threw him off. He felt a massive weight dragging down his lower back. He turned his head, his golden eyes locking onto the massive, spiked tail attached to his own body.

 

He stared at it. The tail twitched, mirroring his shock.

 

Izuku’s breathing hitched. The golden slits in his eyes dilated in sheer, unadulterated panic.

 

Before he could scream, the sheer exhaustion of the mutation dragged him back under, and his eyes rolled shut, his mutated body slumping limply against the cold laboratory floor.

 

All Might stared at his unconscious successor, the boy who held the fate of the world in his hands, now permanently wearing the skin of a beast. The Symbol of Peace looked up into the darkness of the cavern, a singular, terrifying thought echoing in his mind.

 

What have we unleashed?

 

 

The first thing Izuku Midoriya registered was the smell.

 

It wasn’t the familiar, comforting scent of the U.A. infirmary—that warm blend of sterile rubbing alcohol, Recovery Girl’s peppermint gummy bears, and freshly laundered cotton sheets. No, this smell was sharp, clinical, and aggressive. It burned the inside of his nostrils with the stinging bite of bleach, iodine, and heavy-duty industrial disinfectants.

 

But beneath those chemical odors lay something else. A complex tapestry of scents that his brain shouldn’t have been able to decipher. He could smell the cold, metallic tang of oxidized titanium walls. He could smell the faint, bitter aroma of old adrenaline and stale sweat baked into the floorboards three rooms away. He could even smell the distinct, iron-rich hum of blood pumping through the veins of the armed guards standing down the hall.

 

Guards?

 

Izuku’s brow furrowed. He tried to open his eyes, but his eyelids felt incredibly heavy, as if they were lined with lead. A low, rhythmic beeping sound pulsed in his ears, perfectly in sync with his own heartbeat. But even the sound of the heart monitor was wrong. It didn't sound like a digital beep coming from a speaker; it sounded like an acoustic wave physically vibrating against his eardrums, painfully loud and distinct.

 

With a groan that scraped against the back of his dry throat, Izuku finally forced his eyes open.

 

The light was blinding. He squeezed his eyes shut, hissing as a sharp ache pierced his skull. He blinked rapidly, and as his vision cleared, he realized the room wasn't actually that bright. In fact, the lighting was quite dim. But his eyes were drinking in the ambient light like a sponge, magnifying the soft glow of the overhead LEDs until the room was illuminated with crystal clarity.

 

He was lying on a reinforced medical bed in the center of a large, sterile room. The walls were made of thick, brushed steel, not drywall. There were no windows, only a massive, floor-to-ceiling slab of reinforced polycarbonate glass that separated his room from a darkened observation deck. Above him, a cluster of high-definition security cameras whirred quietly, their red lenses tracking his every micro-movement.

 

Where am I? Izuku thought, his heart rate beginning to climb. This isn't a hospital. This is a containment cell.

 

The heart monitor beside him began to beep faster.

 

Izuku tried to sit up, placing his hands flat against the mattress to push himself upward. The moment his palms pressed into the memory foam, a strange, tactile sensation rushed up his arms. The skin on the back of his hands felt rigid, unyielding.

 

He lifted his right hand, bringing it up to his face.

 

His breath caught in his throat.

 

Tracing the line of his forearm, starting from his wrist and wrapping around his elbow, were patches of thick, emerald-green scales. They were hexagonal, interlocking flawlessly like the finest chainmail, shimmering with an iridescent sheen under the clinical lights. At the tips of his fingers, his fingernails had thickened, tapering into sharp, dark points that looked less like human keratin and more like predatory talons.

 

"What..." Izuku whispered. His voice vibrated oddly in his chest, possessing a strange, dual-layered resonance—a human vocal cord layered over a deep, guttural bass.

 

The memories of the Shishizaki mountain raid came rushing back like a collapsing dam. The telekinetic villain. The 100% Smash. The shattering of the amber vat. The burning, agonizing sensation of the Mesozoic Quirk Factor fusing with One For All, tearing his DNA apart and knitting it back together into something monstrous.

 

Panic, cold and sharp, flooded his system.

 

He threw the heavy, weighted medical blanket off his legs. He needed to get up. He needed to find All Might. He needed a mirror.

 

Izuku swung his legs over the side of the bed. His bare feet hit the cold, sterilized steel floor. But as he tried to stand, something was catastrophically wrong with his center of gravity. A massive, unfamiliar weight anchored his lower spine, throwing his equilibrium completely out of balance.

 

As he pushed himself up, his torso pitched forward uncontrollably.

 

"Woah—!"

 

Izuku plummeted face-first toward the floor. He threw his hands out, his enhanced reflexes kicking in. He caught himself on all fours, his newly clawed fingers gouging deep grooves into the brushed steel floorplates with terrifying ease.

 

He crouched there, breathing heavily, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird.

 

Why am I so heavy? What is pulling me backward?

 

Slowly, agonizingly, Izuku turned his head to look over his shoulder.

 

Trailing from the base of his tailbone, ripping straight through a modified slit in his hospital gown, was a tail. It was massive—at least five feet long—and as thick as a tree trunk. The top of it was coated in the same emerald scales as his arms, but layered over the scales were heavy, bony osteoderms, forming a thick, defensive armor. At the very end of the muscular appendage protruded four terrifying, bone-white spikes, reminiscent of a Stegosaurus's thagomizer, blended with the heavy club-like mass of an Ankylosaurus.

 

Izuku stared at it in absolute, frozen horror.

 

He sent a tentative, panicked neurological command to his lower back. Move.

 

The massive tail twitched. The heavy bone-spikes scraped against the steel floor with a sound like sharpening knives.

 

"Oh my god," Izuku breathed, his golden, slit-pupil eyes dilating in terror. "Oh my god, I'm... I'm a monster."

 

He scrambled backward, trying to get away from the appendage, completely forgetting that it was attached to him. The sudden, frantic movement caused the tail to whip wildly to the side.

 

SMASH.

 

The heavy, spiked tail slammed into the vital signs monitor beside his bed. The expensive piece of medical equipment was instantly obliterated, reduced to a shower of sparks, shattered plastic, and twisted wire.

 

Izuku yelped, covering his head with his arms. The loud noise, combined with his hyper-sensitive hearing, was agonizing. The smell of burning ozone and fried circuit boards assaulted his nose, causing him to wrinkle his face in disgust.

 

The acrid smoke from the broken machine drifted up, tickling his nostrils.

 

Izuku rubbed his nose. A strange, prickling sensation began to build in his sinuses. It was a completely normal, human feeling—the undeniable urge to sneeze. He took a sharp, hitching breath, his chest expanding.

 

Ah...

 

The sensation built up, faster and more intense than any sneeze he had ever experienced. It felt as though a localized hurricane was building in his lungs.

 

Ah... CHOO!

 

Izuku violently sneezed. But the force of the expulsion was not normal. The sneeze expelled a localized blast of pressurized air that blew the shattered remains of the heart monitor across the room.

 

But worse than the sneeze was the physical reflex it triggered.

 

Just like a person might flinch or blink when sneezing, Izuku’s mutating nervous system reacted to the sudden, explosive intake and output of air. A dormant, newly forged neural pathway fired in his brain.

 

From the space between his shoulder blades, two massive, fleshy mounds surged upward beneath his skin. With a sound like a parachute snapping open in gale-force winds, two colossal appendages violently erupted from his back.

 

The hospital gown was shredded into confetti.

 

Izuku screamed as the appendages extended outward, nearly spanning the entire width of the containment cell. They were wings. But not soft, feathered wings like Hawks’. These were leathery, terrifyingly massive wings, supported by an elongated, mutated finger bone—the unmistakable anatomy of a Pteranodon, but layered with thin, durable scales and a membrane of thick, red-veined flesh.

 

The sheer wingspan knocked over a tray of surgical tools and smashed a heavy floodlight near the corner of the room. Izuku, overwhelmed by the sudden addition of massive limbs, lost his balance again. He became hopelessly tangled in the ruined hospital gown, his heavy tail, and the sprawling, leathery membranes of his new wings, collapsing into a panicked, flailing heap on the floor.

 

"Help! Someone! Get them off!" Izuku cried out, thrashing on the ground like a trapped bat, his tail repeatedly denting the steel floor in his panic.

 

A loud buzz echoed through the room, and the heavy titanium doors hissed open.

 

"Midoriya, calm down!"

 

Shota Aizawa rushed into the room, his capture weapon flaring out around him like an angry halo. Behind him was Recovery Girl, looking utterly exhausted, leaning heavily on her syringe-cane. Trailing behind them, ducking to fit through the doorway, was Toshinori Yagi, in his skeletal, deflated form, alongside Principal Nezu, who sat calmly in the pocket of Toshinori's oversized yellow suit.

 

"Aizawa-sensei!" Izuku yelled, his voice cracking, the leathery wings flapping erratically as he tried to untangle himself. "Sensei, please! Erase it! Use your Quirk! I can't control it!"

 

Aizawa’s eyes glowed a furious crimson, his hair levitating as he activated Erasure, locking his gaze onto his thrashing student.

 

Izuku waited for the familiar, draining sensation of his Quirk factor being temporarily shut off. He waited for the wings to vanish, for the tail to disappear, for his body to return to normal.

 

Nothing happened.

 

The wings remained extended. The tail continued to twitch. The scales on his arms caught the light.

 

Aizawa blinked, deactivating his Quirk, his eyes wide with a rare expression of utter bewilderment. He activated it again. Still nothing.

 

"It's... it's not working," Aizawa muttered, stepping back. "I'm looking right at him. His Quirk factor should be suppressed. Why are the mutations still there?"

 

"Because they are not an active Quirk, Shota," Nezu spoke up, his high-pitched voice carrying easily over the sound of Izuku’s panicked breathing. The chimera principal hopped down from Toshinori’s pocket and walked calmly toward the flailing boy. "Erasure halts the emission or activation of a Quirk factor. It cannot erase permanent biological biology. You cannot erase Ojiro's tail, nor Tokoyami's bird head. Midoriya is experiencing the exact same phenomenon."

 

Izuku stopped struggling, lying on his back amid the wreckage, his massive wings splayed out across the floor. He stared at the ceiling, his golden slit-eyes wide. "Permanent? What do you mean permanent?"

 

Toshinori rushed forward, dropping to his knees beside Izuku. He didn't care about the sharp spikes on the boy's tail or the terrifying talons. He placed a gentle, warm hand on Izuku’s shoulder, right next to the base of the massive leathery wing.

 

"It's okay, my boy," Toshinori said, his voice trembling slightly with suppressed emotion. "You're safe. You're in Tartarus's absolute-maximum security medical wing. You've been unconscious for three days."

 

"Three days?" Izuku croaked, looking at his mentor.

 

"I told you the boy would panic if he woke up alone in a titanium box," Recovery Girl scolded, shuffling forward. She tapped Izuku’s scaled arm with her cane. "Now stop thrashing about, sonny! You're raising your heart rate, and with your new metabolism, you're going to give yourself a cardiac event. Retract those wings."

 

"I... I don't know how!" Izuku panicked. "I just sneezed, and they exploded out of me! How do I put them back?"

 

"They are a biological manifestation of an absorbed Quirk factor," Nezu explained patiently. "Think of them not as a Quirk, but as a muscle you've never used before. When you sneezed, you triggered a sympathetic nervous response. To retract them, you must consciously relax the base of your scapula and envision the mass compressing back into your cellular structure."

 

Izuku squeezed his eyes shut. He took a deep, shuddering breath, trying to ignore the hyper-sensitive smells of the room. He focused his mind on his back, isolating the sensation of the heavy appendages. He imagined them folding, deflating, shrinking.

 

Slowly, with a wet, grotesque sound of shifting cartilage and retracting flesh, the massive leathery wings folded inward. They compressed against his back and seemed to melt directly into his skin, leaving two long, red marks along his shoulder blades, but otherwise disappearing entirely.

 

Izuku slumped against the floor, panting heavily. The tail, however, remained, lying thick and heavy against his leg.

 

"Good," Nezu smiled, though his beady black eyes held a heavy seriousness. "The tail, however, seems to be a permanent fixture, much like the scales and your ocular changes. Come, Midoriya. Let us get you into a chair. We have a great deal to discuss."

 

 The Diagnosis

 

Ten minutes later, Izuku was seated in a reinforced titanium chair in an adjoining briefing room. Getting into the chair had been a humiliating ordeal. His tail made sitting normally impossible, requiring him to straddle the chair backward, resting his chest against the backrest while his heavy, spiked tail draped over the seat behind him.

 

He was wearing a pair of incredibly oversized sweatpants that had been hastily modified with scissors to accommodate his tail, and a loose black t-shirt that stretched uncomfortably over his broadened shoulders.

 

He felt entirely alien in his own skin. He kept catching his reflection in the dark glass of the observation window. The boy looking back at him was terrifying. His hair was still a messy mop of green, but his eyes... his eyes were the eyes of a predator. Golden, glowing, with vertical slits that adjusted rapidly to the lighting in the room. When he closed his mouth, a sharp, white fang noticeably protruded, resting against his bottom lip.

 

Aizawa stood leaning against the wall, his arms crossed, watching Izuku with a clinical but deeply concerned gaze. Toshinori sat in a chair nearby, his hands clasped tightly together, radiating guilt.

 

Nezu stood on a large conference table, a holographic projector humming to life beside him. It displayed a complex, spinning double-helix of DNA, pulsing with both green and red light.

 

"First and foremost, Midoriya, you are incredibly lucky to be alive," Nezu began, his cheerful tone completely absent. "Dr. Garaki is a madman, but his genius in the field of Quirk genetics is terrifying. What you fell into was not a completed Nomu, but rather the fuel for one. We have dubbed it the 'Mesozoic Quirk Factor'."

 

The hologram shifted, showing a massive, silhouetted beast that looked like a horrifying amalgamation of a T-Rex, an Ankylosaurus, and a dragon.

 

"Garaki spent decades harvesting Quirk factors from individuals possessing mutations related to prehistoric biology. He didn't just want one dinosaur; he wanted all of them. He liquefied these Quirks, breaking them down into their absolute basest genetic components, and synthesized them into an aggressive, parasitic fluid."

 

"A parasite?" Izuku asked, his voice still rumbling with that unsettling bass.

 

"Exactly. If any normal human—or even a Pro Hero with a standard Quirk—had been exposed to that serum, their cellular structure would have been instantly overwritten. The conflicting DNA of over a hundred different prehistoric predators would have caused a catastrophic cellular collapse. You would have melted into a mindless, formless mass of aggressive biomatter."

 

Izuku swallowed hard, the sharp fang digging slightly into his lip. "Then... why didn't I?"

 

"Because you hold the ultimate wild card," Toshinori said softly, looking up. "One For All."

 

Nezu nodded, tapping a button on the projector. The hologram shifted to show the core of One For All, a swirling orb of multicoloured light.

 

"One For All is, at its core, a Quirk that stockpiles power and assimilates the Quirk factors of its wielders," Nezu explained. "When the Mesozoic serum entered your bloodstream and attempted to overwrite your DNA, One For All recognized it as an invading Quirk factor. And so, it did what it was designed to do."

 

"It absorbed it," Izuku realized, his eyes widening.

 

"It devoured it," Aizawa corrected grimly. "Recovery Girl has been analyzing your blood work for three days. Your quirk didn't just absorb the serum; it broke it down, indexed it, and fused it with your own genetic code. It acted as an operating system, organizing the chaotic genetic data of a hundred different beasts so that it wouldn't kill you."

 

"But in doing so," Recovery Girl sighed, adjusting her visor, "it permanently altered your baseline biology. You are no longer fully human, Midoriya. Genetically speaking, you are a Chimera. A fluid amalgamation of human and prehistoric DNA, held together by the stockpiled energy of your Quirk."

 

Izuku stared at his clawed hands. He clenched them into fists, feeling the terrifying strength coiled within his new muscles. "Fluid? What does that mean?"

 

"It means your body is now a genetic armory," Nezu said, pacing across the table. "The scales on your arms, the changes to your eyes, your teeth, and that magnificent tail—those are your new baseline. Your body has adopted traits from the Ankylosauria, Dromaeosauridae, and Theropod families as a permanent defense mechanism."

 

Nezu paused, locking his black eyes onto Izuku. "But the wings you manifested earlier? That was an active manifestation. Your DNA is so malleable now that, with the right trigger, you can actively shift your genetic structure to manifest traits from any of the prehistoric Quirks assimilated into the stockpile."

 

The room fell silent. The weight of Nezu's words hung in the air like an anvil.

 

"Any of them?" Izuku whispered.

 

"Garaki's notes indicated the serum contained the genetic markers of over one hundred and forty distinct prehistoric species," Nezu said softly. "Raptors, Pterosaurs, Spinosaurids, Ceratopsians... the list goes on. You possess the biological blueprints for all of them, powered and enhanced by One For All."

 

Izuku felt the room spinning. It was too much. He was already struggling with the immense burden of mastering One For All, of living up to All Might's legacy. Now, he was a walking Jurassic Park, a mutant whose body could sprout wings, claws, or god knows what else at a moment's notice.

 

"I'm a monster," Izuku murmured, his heavy tail drooping over the back of the chair, the spikes resting against the floor. "I look like a villain. How can I be a symbol of peace when I look like a Nomu?"

 

"Do not say that!" Toshinori barked, standing up so fast his chair clattered backward. The skeletal man marched across the room and grabbed Izuku by the shoulders. He didn't care about the scales. He didn't care about the fangs. He looked straight into Izuku’s golden eyes.

 

"You are not a monster, Izuku. You are a hero. A hero who threw himself in front of a catastrophic bio-weapon to save his team and the civilians above. You took this burden upon yourself so that no one else would suffer." Toshinori’s voice wavered, tears pricking the corners of his sunken eyes. "You are more of a hero now than you have ever been."

 

Izuku’s breath hitched. A strange sound rumbled in his throat—a low, clicking purr that he couldn't suppress, an instinctual reaction of comfort to his mentor's touch. It embarrassed him, but Toshinori merely squeezed his shoulders tighter.

 

"He's right, problem child," Aizawa said, his voice flat but entirely sincere. "You look different. Your tactics will have to change. Your costume will definitely need a total overhaul. But you are still a student of U.A. High. You are still my student. And we are going to teach you how to control this."

 

Izuku looked down, wiping a tear from his eye with the back of his scaled hand, being careful not to scratch his face with his talons. "Thank you. I... I want to learn. I have to control this."

 

"Excellent," Nezu clapped his paws together. "Because the physical changes are only half the battle, Midoriya. Recovery Girl, if you please?"

 

Recovery Girl tapped a button on her tablet. A new set of readouts appeared on the hologram. They were physiological charts, showing Izuku's heart rate, caloric burn, and brain activity.

 

"Your internal organs have undergone a massive shift, sonny," the elderly heroine said, her tone all business. "Your bone density has increased by four hundred percent. Your lung capacity has doubled. But the most pressing issue is your metabolism."

 

She pointed to a rapidly spiking red line on the graph. "Maintaining these permanent mutations, let alone shifting your DNA to manifest new ones, requires an astronomical amount of energy. Your caloric burn rate is completely off the charts. If you don't consume enough fuel, your body will begin to cannibalize its own muscle tissue to sustain the mutations."

 

Izuku felt a sudden, sharp pang in his abdomen. As if on cue, his stomach let out a loud, rumbling growl that sounded eerily similar to a large animal roaring in the distance.

 

He suddenly realized how empty he felt. It wasn't just normal hunger. It was a hollow, aching void in his core.

 

"What... what do I need to eat?" Izuku asked, his mouth suddenly watering.

 

"Protein," Recovery Girl said bluntly. "Massive amounts of it. But given the predatory nature of the dominant DNA strains in your system, specifically the Theropod markers, your digestive tract has restructured. You require dense, raw protein. Meat. And a lot of it."

 

Izuku blanched. "Raw meat? Like... raw?"

 

"Cooked meat breaks down the essential amino acids your new biology demands," Nezu explained. "We have already updated your dietary requirements with Lunch Rush. But you must be aware, Midoriya... this hunger is not just physical. It is psychological."

 

Aizawa stepped forward, his expression grave. "You have absorbed the instincts of apex predators, Midoriya. The urge to hunt, the urge to dominate, the urge to protect a territory or a pack. Those instincts are now hardwired into your brain. When you get hungry, when you feel threatened, or when you feel your classmates are threatened... those primal urges will try to take the wheel."

 

Izuku thought back to the Vestige Realm. The deafening roars, the chaotic clash of a hundred different prehistoric beasts fighting for dominance in the void of his Quirk.

 

Hunger. Danger. Pack.

 

The words echoed in his mind, simple and primal.

 

"I won't let them take over," Izuku said, his voice dropping into a low, determined rumble. "I am Izuku Midoriya. I have One For All. I am the one in control."

 

"We believe you," Nezu said gently. "But control takes practice. For now, you are medically cleared to leave Tartarus. However, until we can properly gauge your stability, you will be on restricted duty. No independent patrols. No combat exercises without direct faculty supervision."

 

Izuku nodded slowly. It made sense. He was a walking variable. He couldn't risk manifesting a T-Rex jaw in the middle of a crowded street if he sneezed or panicked.

 

"Aizawa," Nezu turned to the erasure hero. "Escort Midoriya back to Heights Alliance. The rest of Class 1-A has been informed of his survival, but we kept the details of his mutation classified to prevent a panic. They are expecting him."

 

Izuku’s heart plummeted into his stomach.

 

Class 1-A.

 

Uraraka. Iida. Todoroki. Kacchan.

 

How were they going to react? They had left a normal, freckled boy in that cave, and what was returning to them was a reptilian mutant with a spiked tail and the eyes of a killer.

 

"Let's go, Midoriya," Aizawa said, tossing Izuku a heavy, oversized trench coat. "Put this on. It'll hide the tail for the car ride. We have a long drive back to campus."

 

 The Drive Back

 

The black U.A. security SUV drove silently through the rain-slicked streets of Musutafu. The storm from three days ago had finally broken, leaving the city washed in the orange hues of the setting sun.

 

Izuku sat in the cavernous back seat of the SUV, which had been modified by taking out the middle row of seats to give him room. He sat awkwardly sideways, his heavy tail resting on the floor mats, the trench coat draped over him like a suffocating shroud.

 

Aizawa drove in silence, his eyes fixed on the road, though Izuku could see him occasionally glancing at the rearview mirror.

 

The silence in the car was deafening, mostly because Izuku’s new ears were picking up everything. He could hear the hum of the SUV's alternator. He could hear the friction of the tires rolling over the wet asphalt. He could even hear the faint, rapid heartbeat of a stray cat hiding in an alleyway as they drove past.

 

It was overwhelming. His brain was working overtime, trying to filter the massive influx of sensory data.

 

"Sensei?" Izuku finally spoke, his deep, resonant voice breaking the silence.

 

"Yeah, kid?"

 

"Do you think... do you think they'll be afraid of me?"

 

Aizawa didn't answer immediately. He signaled, taking a slow turn onto the highway leading toward the U.A. campus.

 

"Fear is a logical response to the unknown, Midoriya," Aizawa said evenly. "When you walk through those doors, you won't look like the friend they know. You look dangerous. And quite frankly, you are dangerous."

 

Izuku flinched, his tail wrapping tighter around his leg.

 

"But," Aizawa continued, his eyes meeting Izuku's golden slits in the rearview mirror, "they are heroes-in-training. They have faced down villains, Nomus, and madmen. They know you. They know your character. It might take them a minute to adjust, but if they truly fear you, then they haven't been paying attention to who you are."

 

Izuku looked down at his scaled hands. He traced the hexagonal patterns of the emerald scales. They felt hard, like bulletproof glass, yet sensitive to the touch. This was his body now. He couldn't hide from it. He had to own it.

 

"Besides," Aizawa added, a faint hint of a smirk touching the corner of his mouth. "Bakugo has been an absolute nightmare for three days. He nearly blew up the common room twice demanding to know where you were. I think he'll just be angry you got a new power-up without him."

 

A small, genuine laugh escaped Izuku's lips, though it sounded more like a series of rhythmic, clicking growls. "Yeah. Kacchan is probably furious."

 

The gates of U.A. High loomed in the distance, the massive glass structures of the campus reflecting the sunset. As the SUV passed through the security barriers, a sharp pang of anxiety spiked in Izuku’s chest.

 

Danger, the primal instinct in his mind whispered.

 

No, Izuku fired back mentally. Home. Safe.

 

He took a deep breath, trying to calm his racing heart. As the SUV pulled up to the front steps of the Heights Alliance Class 1-A dorm building, Izuku pulled the collar of the trench coat up, obscuring the scales on his neck.

 

He didn't know how to control the beast inside him yet. He didn't know what it meant to be a chimera. But as he looked at the warm, yellow lights spilling from the windows of the dorms, he knew one thing for certain.

 

He had to try.

 

The SUV shifted into park.

 

"Showtime, kid," Aizawa said, unlocking the doors.

 

Izuku opened the heavy door and stepped out onto the pavement. His iron-hard claws clicked softly against the concrete. The heavy, spiked tail dragged behind him beneath the trench coat. He took a deep, steadying breath of the evening air, smelling the familiar scents of his classmates drifting from the building.

 

He walked up the steps, raised a trembling, scaled hand, and pushed open the front doors of Heights Alliance.

 

 

 

 

The heavy wooden doors of the Heights Alliance dormitory loomed before Izuku like the gates to a fortress. For the past year, this building had been his sanctuary. It was where he studied, where he laughed, where he learned what it meant to have a family outside of his mother. But standing on the concrete steps, wrapped in an oversized, beige trench coat that smelled distinctly of Aizawa’s coffee and dry-cleaning chemicals, Izuku felt entirely like a trespasser.

 

Inside, the warm, golden light of the common room spilled through the large glass windows. Izuku could see his classmates. They were scattered across the plush couches and armchairs. Tenya Iida was standing by the kitchen island, rhythmically chopping the air with a rigid hand as he lectured Denki Kaminari and Hanta Sero about proper hydration. Mina Ashido was laughing loudly, tossing a throw pillow at Kyoka Jiro. Shoto Todoroki sat quietly by the window, reading a book.

 

It was a perfectly normal Tuesday evening.

 

Izuku swallowed hard. The sharp, unfamiliar fang resting against his bottom lip snagged on the flesh. He tasted a microscopic drop of copper.

 

Danger, the primal, reptilian voice in the back of his brain whispered. Many heartbeats. Enclosed space. Unknown variables.

 

Izuku squeezed his eyes shut, trying to block out the overwhelming sensory data. With his newly mutated hearing, the thick glass and reinforced walls of the dorm might as well have been made of paper. He could hear the hum of the refrigerator compressor in the kitchen. He could hear the faint, high-pitched scratching of a stylus against a tablet from Momo Yaoyorozu’s room on the third floor. He could hear twenty distinct, thumping heartbeats, each beating at a slightly different cadence.

 

"You can't stand out here all night, Midoriya," Aizawa’s flat, tired voice came from the bottom of the steps. The Pro Hero was leaning against the U.A. security SUV, his hands shoved deep into his pockets. "Ripping off the band-aid is the only way forward. Go inside."

 

Izuku opened his golden, slit-pupil eyes. He nodded slowly, the movement feeling stiff.

 

Beneath the heavy trench coat, his massive, five-foot tail twitched nervously, the heavy bone-spikes at the tip clicking softly against the concrete. He reached up with a scaled, clawed hand and grasped the brass door handle. He pushed it open.

 

The immediate wave of warm air carrying the scents of cooking rice, laundry detergent, and human warmth hit Izuku like a physical blow. The primal instinct in his mind flared, categorizing every scent, tracking every movement.

 

The door clicked shut behind him.

 

For a moment, nobody noticed him. The chatter continued.

 

Then, Eijiro Kirishima, who was walking out of the kitchen with a plate of leftover katsudon, froze. The red-haired boy’s eyes went wide, the plate tilting dangerously in his hands.

 

"Whoa... Midoriya?" Kirishima breathed, his voice cutting through the ambient noise of the room.

 

Instantly, the common room fell dead silent. Twenty pairs of eyes snapped toward the entryway.

 

Izuku stood frozen on the doormat. He looked terrible, and he knew it. His face was pale, save for the dark circles under his striking, terrifyingly unnatural golden eyes. His green hair was unkempt. The oversized trench coat swallowed his frame, but it couldn't hide the strange, bulky mass hidden beneath it, nor could it hide the emerald-green scales that crept up his neck like a jagged collar.

 

"Deku?" Ochaco Uraraka was the first to move. She stood up from the couch, dropping the magazine she had been reading. Her brown eyes were wide with a mixture of immense relief and profound confusion. "Is that... really you? We've been so worried! Mr. Aizawa said you were in a special hospital, but he wouldn't tell us what happened!"

 

"I... I'm back, Uraraka-san," Izuku managed to say. His voice, layered with that strange, guttural, vibrating bass, echoed through the quiet room. It sounded like two people speaking at once—a teenage boy, and something massive and dangerous.

 

Several students flinched at the sound.

 

Minoru Mineta, who had been sitting on the floor, scrambled backward until his back hit the sofa. "Dude, what happened to your voice? You sound like a villain from a horror movie!"

 

"Midoriya!" Iida marched forward, his engines whining slightly in his calves. He stopped a few feet away, his arms chopping rapidly. "It is wonderful to see you safely returned to us! However, as Class Representative, I must inquire about your physical state! You look severely unwell, and your eyes... they have undergone a radical pigmentation shift!"

 

"It's... it's more than just my eyes, Iida," Izuku said softly, looking down at his feet. He couldn't hide this. He didn't want to hide this. He couldn't live bundled in a trench coat forever.

 

Izuku reached up with both hands, allowing the sleeves of the coat to fall back, fully exposing the thick, interlocking emerald scales and the dark, predatory talons at the ends of his fingers.

 

Gasps rippled through the room.

 

"Whoa," Kaminari whispered, rubbing his eyes. "Dude... are those scales? Did you get hit with a mutation Quirk?"

 

Izuku took a deep breath, filling his newly expanded, double-capacity lungs. He unbuttoned the trench coat and let it slide off his shoulders. It hit the floor in a crumpled heap.

 

Without the coat to bind it, Izuku’s newly formed anatomy was freed. The massive, thick tail, covered in armored osteoderms and tipped with four lethal bone-spikes, dropped to the floor with a heavy, resounding THUD that literally rattled the teacups in the kitchen.

 

Izuku stood before them in a loose black t-shirt and heavily modified sweatpants, completely exposed. The patches of scales on his arms, the sharpened fangs resting against his lip, the feral, golden eyes, and the sheer, prehistoric mass of his tail.

 

Silence, absolute and suffocating, descended upon Class 1-A.

 

"Ribbit," Tsuyu Asui broke the silence, tilting her head, a finger pressed to her chin. "You look like a dinosaur, Midoriya."

 

"That's... essentially what happened, Asui," Izuku said, scratching the back of his head, his claws clicking against his scalp. "During the raid... I fell into a vat of experimental Quirk fluid. Dr. Garaki was trying to make a dinosaur Nomu. The serum fused with my DNA. It permanently altered my body."

 

"Permanent?!" Ashido shrieked, running up to him. She didn't look afraid; she looked fascinated. She hovered her hands over his scaled arm, looking for permission. Izuku nodded slowly. She touched the scales. "Oh my gosh! They're so hard! It feels like touching actual armor!"

 

Uraraka stepped closer, her initial shock wearing off. She walked around him, staring at the massive appendage resting on the floorboards. "Deku... this is... wow. It's huge. Does it hurt?"

 

"No," Izuku said, his shoulders dropping a fraction of an inch as he realized they weren't screaming in terror. "It's just really heavy. My center of gravity is completely messed up. I keep feeling like I'm going to fall backward."

 

"It's kind of... cute, actually," Uraraka smiled warmly, trying to lighten the mood. "Like a big, spiky lizard tail!"

 

She reached out to pat the side of it.

 

The moment her hand made contact with the scales, an instinct buried deep within Izuku’s newly rewritten brainstem fired without his permission. Threat detected at rear. Defend.

 

Izuku didn't consciously move. His body reacted on its own.

 

With blinding, terrifying speed, the tail whipped horizontally, an automatic reflex designed to sweep the legs out from under a flanking predator.

 

"Look out!" Izuku yelled, his eyes widening in horror.

 

The tail swept across the floor, catching Uraraka squarely behind the knees. She yelped as her legs were literally taken out from under her, sending her tumbling backward toward the hard hardwood floor.

 

Before anyone else could react, Izuku’s newly enhanced predatory reflexes took over. He vanished in a blur of motion. His clawed hand shot out, catching Uraraka firmly by the waist just inches before her head hit the floor.

 

The room froze again. Izuku was breathing heavily, his golden eyes blown wide, his tail curling defensively around his own legs. Uraraka was staring up at him, her face flushed, her eyes locked onto the sharp fangs in his open mouth.

 

"I'm so sorry!" Izuku blurted out, quickly pulling her back to her feet and taking three massive steps backward. "I didn't mean to! It moved on its own! It's an instinct—I haven't learned how to control the nerve impulses yet! Please don't touch it!"

 

Uraraka brushed off her skirt, her face a bright shade of pink. "I-it's okay, Deku! I shouldn't have touched it without asking! You just... you moved really fast. Like, faster than usual."

 

"He moved like a beast," a dark, shaky voice came from the floor.

 

Mineta was curled into a ball, pointing a trembling finger at Izuku. The purple-haired boy's face was pale with terror. "Look at his teeth! Look at his eyes! He's not Midoriya anymore! He's a monster! He's gonna eat us in our sleep! I read about this in a manga once—the mutant DNA takes over and he's going to swallow us whole!"

 

"Mineta, cease this inappropriate panic immediately!" Iida scolded, marching over to stand between Izuku and the trembling boy. "Midoriya is our classmate and our friend! He has suffered a traumatic biological event, and we must be supportive!"

 

"I'm not getting eaten for friendship!" Mineta shrieked, running behind Momo Yaoyorozu’s legs.

 

Izuku felt a cold knot form in his stomach. Monster. The word echoed in his head. He looked down at his claws. Mineta was an idiot, but he wasn't entirely wrong. The instinct to strike had been so fast, so utterly detached from human thought.

 

Heavy footsteps thudded down the stairs from the boys' wing.

 

Katsuki Bakugo emerged into the common room. He was wearing a black tank top, his hands shoved into his sweatpants. He stopped at the bottom of the stairs, his crimson eyes locking onto Izuku.

 

The air in the room grew tense. Everyone knew Bakugo’s temper, and seeing his childhood rival turned into a literal monster was bound to elicit an explosion.

 

Bakugo marched across the room. The crowd of students parted for him. He stopped right in front of Izuku, ignoring the massive spiked tail, ignoring the scales, and staring directly into Izuku’s golden, slit eyes.

 

Bakugo leaned in and sniffed the air. He scrunched his nose in disgust.

 

"You smell like a damn zoo," Bakugo growled, his voice low and dangerous. "What the hell did you do to yourself, nerd?"

 

"K-Kacchan," Izuku stammered, intimidated despite his new physical mass. "It was an accident. The serum—"

 

"I don't care about the nerd science," Bakugo interrupted, poking Izuku hard in the chest. "I care that you vanished down a hole, made All Might dig through a mountain crying like a baby, and came back looking like a villain's wet dream. You think a few spikes make you tough now, Deku?"

 

Izuku straightened his back, a strange, low rumble beginning to vibrate in his chest. An instinctual challenge response. He forced it down, clamping his jaw shut. "I'm still me, Kacchan."

 

Bakugo stared at him for a long, calculating moment. Then, a sharp, aggressive grin spread across his face. "Good. Because if you think you're getting a pass on our sparring matches just because you got a little scaly, you're dead wrong. I'm gonna blast those spikes right off your back."

 

Bakugo turned around and walked toward the kitchen. "Don't trip over your own tail, lizard boy."

 

A collective sigh of relief washed over the room. If Bakugo was treating Izuku like normal (or at least, his version of normal), then the rest of the class could too.

 

"Well," Yaoyorozu said, clapping her hands together, a warm smile on her face. "I think this calls for a special dinner. We were about to eat, Midoriya. Are you hungry?"

 

At the word hungry, Izuku’s newly modified stomach let out a monstrous, echoing growl that sounded like a cello being dragged across gravel.

 

Izuku blushed furiously, covering his stomach with his hands. "Actually... yeah. I'm starving. But... Nezu said my diet is a little different now."

 

"Different how?" Sato asked, stepping out of the kitchen with an apron on. "I can whip up a high-calorie protein shake for you. Got some chicken breasts too."

 

Izuku grimaced, remembering the coolers Aizawa had arranged to have delivered to the dorms earlier that day. "It's... it's in the special fridge Aizawa-sensei brought in. The one with the bio-hazard lock."

 

The class followed him into the kitchen. Sitting next to the standard dorm refrigerator was a large, heavy-duty industrial cooler locked with a keypad. Izuku punched in the code Nezu had given him.

 

With a hiss of compressed air, the cooler opened.

 

The smell hit Izuku first. To the rest of the class, it smelled faintly of a butcher shop. To Izuku, it smelled like pure, intoxicating energy. His pupils dilated until his eyes were almost completely black, the golden ring shrinking to a razor-thin edge. His mouth flooded with saliva.

 

Inside the cooler were massive, vacuum-sealed bags of raw, thick cuts of meat. Beef, venison, and what looked like an entire flank of wild boar.

 

Izuku reached in, his clawed fingers easily tearing through the thick plastic of a bag containing a massive, three-pound cut of raw beef.

 

"Midoriya, wait, let me get a pan going—" Sato started, reaching for a skillet.

 

But Izuku couldn't wait. The primal, predatory hunger that had been suppressed by IV fluids in the hospital for three days suddenly roared to life. His logic centers dimmed, replaced by the sheer, unadulterated need to consume.

 

Izuku lifted the raw, bloody mass of meat to his face. His jaw unhinged slightly, his serrated fangs flashing in the fluorescent light. He sank his teeth into the raw flesh, tearing off a massive chunk and swallowing it almost whole.

 

"Oh my god," Jiro whispered, covering her mouth, her face turning pale green.

 

Izuku didn't stop. He tore into the meat like a starving animal, blood staining his chin, his golden eyes darting around the room, tracking his classmates' movements.

 

Kaminari, completely oblivious to the danger, reached across the counter to grab a stray slice of bread near the cooler. "Damn, dude, you really don't want to cook that first?"

 

As Kaminari's hand came within two feet of the meat cooler, a switch flipped in Izuku's brain.

 

Competitor. Stealing food.

 

Izuku froze. The piece of meat dropped from his mouth. He planted his hands on the counter, leaning his upper body over the cooler. The pupils in his eyes dilated wildly. From deep within his chest, a terrifying, echoing, rattling growl erupted. It was a sound that belonged in a jungle millions of years ago—a territorial warning that vibrated the dishes in the cupboards.

 

Kaminari snatched his hand back as if he had been burned, stumbling backward until he hit the opposite counter. "Whoa! Chill, man! I wasn't taking it!"

 

Izuku blinked. The red haze of instinct cleared, snapping him back to reality. He looked down at his bloody hands, then at Kaminari's terrified face.

 

"I... I'm sorry," Izuku choked out, wiping his mouth with the back of his arm, deeply ashamed. "I didn't... it's a resource guarding instinct. My brain... it thought you were trying to take my kill."

 

"Kill?" Kaminari squeaked.

 

"Okay, everyone, give him some space," Todoroki stepped forward, his voice calm and level, cutting through the rising panic. He subtly positioned his right side toward the counter, ready to use his ice if things went wrong. "Midoriya's body has undergone severe trauma. He needs to eat in peace. Let's go eat in the dining area."

 

The class slowly filtered out of the kitchen, casting nervous glances back at Izuku. Only Todoroki and Bakugo remained in the kitchen doorway.

 

Bakugo scoffed, leaning against the doorframe. "You better learn to put a leash on that mutt inside your head, Deku. If you growl at me over a piece of steak, I'm gonna fry it while it's still in your mouth."

 

With that, Bakugo turned and walked away.

 

Izuku stood alone in the kitchen, surrounded by raw meat, feeling more isolated than he ever had in his entire life. He finished his meal in silence, terrified of the beast that was pacing just beneath his skin.

 

 

 

 The Morning After: Gym Gamma

 

The next morning, the sun had barely crested the horizon when the alarms in the Heights Alliance dorms blared.

 

Class 1-A dragged themselves down to the common room, bleary-eyed and clad in their P.E. uniforms. They found Shota Aizawa standing in the center of the room, fully wrapped in his yellow sleeping bag, drinking from a jelly pouch.

 

"Good morning," Aizawa said, his voice flat. "Get your gear. We are heading to Gym Gamma. Today's curriculum has been modified."

 

"Sensei, it is barely six in the morning!" Iida protested, adjusting his glasses. "Physical training is scheduled for the afternoon block!"

 

"Standard schedules no longer apply to this class," Aizawa replied, his gaze shifting to the back of the group.

 

Izuku stood there, wearing a specially modified P.E. uniform that Momo had created for him using her Quirk late last night. The pants were baggy, with a reinforced opening for his massive tail, and the shirt had open slits on the shoulder blades, just in case his wings decided to make an involuntary appearance. He looked exhausted. He hadn't slept at all. Every time he tried to lie down, his tail made it impossible to get comfortable, and his enhanced hearing kept picking up the micro-movements of everyone in the building.

 

"Midoriya is biologically unstable," Aizawa addressed the class directly. He wasn't one to sugarcoat things. "He possesses the permanent physical traits you see, but within his Quirk factor lies an entire ecosystem of dormant mutations. If these mutations trigger randomly in the field, he becomes a liability to himself, to you, and to civilians."

 

Izuku stared at the floor, his tail drooping heavily.

 

"Therefore," Aizawa continued, unzipping his sleeping bag and stepping out. "Before he is allowed back in a classroom setting, we must document exactly what triggers these mutations, what forms they take, and how much control he has over them. Class 1-A, your job today is observation and containment. If he loses control, you restrain him."

 

"We're treating him like a villain?" Uraraka asked, frowning.

 

"We are treating him like an unexploded bomb," Aizawa corrected sharply. "Move out."

 

Twenty minutes later, they stood inside the cavernous concrete expanse of Gym Gamma—the Training Camp of Cementoss. Massive concrete pillars and complex terrain structures dotted the massive indoor arena.

 

Aizawa stood atop a raised concrete platform, looking down at the class. Izuku stood in the center of the arena, his bare, clawed feet gripping the concrete floor.

 

"Midoriya," Aizawa called out, his voice echoing in the vast space. "The medical data suggests that your mutations are directly tied to your emotional state and the activation of One For All. The stockpiled energy acts as a catalyst for the dormant DNA. I want you to activate your Quirk. Five percent. Just a basic Full Cowl."

 

Izuku nodded. He took a deep breath, squaring his shoulders. He closed his eyes and dug deep into his core, feeling for the familiar, warm pool of stockpiled power.

 

One For All: Full Cowl - 5%.

 

He flipped the switch.

 

Instantly, energy coursed through his veins. But it felt different. It didn't feel like the pure, clean surge of kinetic energy he was used to. It felt thick, heavy, and hot.

 

Red lightning erupted around his body, violently tracing the lines of his muscles.

 

Izuku gasped, his eyes flying open. The golden slits in his eyes narrowed aggressively. His heart rate spiked. The sheer power of One For All wasn't just circulating; it was aggressively feeding the prehistoric DNA in his cells.

 

"Hold it there," Aizawa commanded, his eyes glowing red, ready to erase if necessary. "How does it feel?"

 

"Hot," Izuku grunted, gripping his arms. "It feels like... like my blood is boiling. The energy... it wants to go somewhere. It wants to change."

 

"Let's test his reaction speed," Aizawa said over his shoulder. "Bakugo. Front and center."

 

Bakugo grinned fiercely, stepping out from the crowd of students. He stretched his shoulders, small pops of nitroglycerin echoing from his palms. "Bout time. Alright, lizard boy. Let's see if those spikes are just for show."

 

"Bakugo, standard sparring rules," Aizawa warned. "Do not aim to kill. Midoriya, I want you to evade. Push your speed. Let the Quirk flow into your legs."

 

Bakugo didn't wait for a countdown. He raised his hands, ignited a massive explosion, and launched himself forward like a human missile, closing the fifty-foot gap in less than a second.

 

Danger, the primal instinct roared in Izuku’s mind. Flee. Evade.

 

Izuku channeled the red lightning of One For All directly into his legs, preparing to jump out of the way. But as the energy flooded his lower extremities, the dormant DNA reacted.

 

Izuku felt a sudden, agonizing pressure in his feet. The bones in his toes cracked and shifted violently.

 

With a wet, tearing sound, the middle talon on each of his feet violently elongated. They curled upward, hardening into massive, six-inch, razor-sharp sickle claws—the defining anatomical weapon of a Velociraptor.

 

Izuku didn't just jump; he vanished.

 

The physical mutation, combined with the 5% boost of One For All, generated a level of explosive kinetic energy that defied physics. Izuku launched himself backward, clearing a distance of sixty feet in a single bound, landing cleanly on top of a massive concrete pillar.

 

Bakugo soared through the space Izuku had just occupied, landing hard and skidding to a halt. He looked up, his eyes wide with shock. "The hell? He's faster than before."

 

Izuku was panting heavily on top of the pillar. He looked down at his feet, staring at the massive, terrifying sickle claws that had ripped entirely through the fabric of his shoes. They were clicking against the concrete, twitching with a life of their own.

 

Speed. Pounce. Tear, the instinct whispered.

 

"The physical mutation alters the output of his Quirk," Iida analyzed aloud, furiously writing in a notebook. "By shifting his anatomy into a more digitigrade structure and developing those raptor-like claws, he vastly increases his traction and explosive jumping power. Fascinating!"

 

"He didn't do it on purpose, Iida!" Uraraka pointed out worriedly. "Look at his face!"

 

Izuku was hyperventilating. The pain of the rapid bone growth was subsiding, but the psychological toll of his body shifting against his will was terrifying.

 

"Midoriya!" Aizawa called out. "Can you retract them?"

 

"I... I don't know!" Izuku yelled back. He tried to focus on his feet, trying to command the bone to shrink, just as he had done with the wings. But the adrenaline in his system was too high. The survival instinct refused to relinquish the weapon.

 

"He needs to calm down first," Todoroki noted. "His heart rate is too high."

 

"Screw calming down!" Bakugo roared, propelling himself straight up toward the pillar with consecutive explosions. "We're in a fight, nerd! Block this!"

 

Bakugo reached the apex of his jump, leveling his gauntlet directly at Izuku.

 

"AP Shot: Auto-Cannon!"

 

A rapid-fire barrage of concentrated, armor-piercing blasts tore through the air, screaming directly toward Izuku.

 

Danger. Lethal force. Armor.

 

Izuku threw his arms up in front of his face in a desperate cross-block, bracing for the burning impact of the explosions. He channeled One For All into his arms, hoping to reinforce his muscles.

 

The red lightning surged. The DNA answered.

 

The scales on Izuku’s forearms didn't just harden; they erupted. Massive, heavy plates of bone burst through his skin, locking together like tectonic plates. The sheer mass of the bone forced his arms to double in thickness, forming a virtually impenetrable, spiked shield of solid osteoderms—the defensive plating of an Ankylosaurus.

 

The AP rounds hammered into Izuku's crossed arms.

 

Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!

 

Smoke and dust enveloped the top of the pillar. The concussive force echoed through the gym.

 

Bakugo landed gracefully on the ground below, grinning, expecting to see Izuku blown off the pillar.

 

The smoke cleared.

 

Izuku was still standing there. He hadn't been moved an inch. His forearms were smoking, the thick, heavy bone plates blackened by the explosions, but they were entirely uncracked. Izuku lowered his arms, staring at the massive, club-like bone shields attached to his body with absolute horror.

 

"Unbelievable," Yaoyorozu whispered, covering her mouth. "The density of that bone structure... it completely absorbed the kinetic and thermal energy of an armor-piercing attack."

 

Bakugo’s grin vanished, replaced by an expression of pure, unadulterated fury. "You blocked it? You blocked my AP shot without even taking a scratch?! Don't mock me, Deku!"

 

Bakugo ignited his palms, preparing to unleash a massive, full-body blast. "I'll melt that stupid armor right off your bones!"

 

Izuku panicked. The beast inside him, however, did not. The beast recognized a persistent threat. The beast decided that defense was no longer viable.

 

Threat escalating. Eliminate.

 

Izuku let out a guttural, terrifying roar. He leaped off the pillar, plummeting directly toward Bakugo. He pulled his right arm back, the red lightning flaring to 15%. He was going to use a Smash. He was going to end the fight.

 

But as he channeled the power, the chaotic DNA misinterpreted the intent. It didn't funnel the energy into his fist. It funneled the energy into his cranial structure.

 

"Midoriya, stop!" Aizawa yelled, seeing the rapid, grotesque swelling in Izuku's neck and head.

 

Mid-air, Izuku screamed as the bones in his skull shifted. A massive, heavy frill of bone exploded from the back of his neck, tearing his shirt to ribbons and locking his head into a forward-facing, unmovable position. Simultaneously, three massive, ivory horns erupted from his face—one from his snout, and two massive, three-foot-long spears of bone above his eyes.

 

A Triceratops.

 

Izuku couldn't see. The sheer weight of the horns forced his head down. He couldn't stop his momentum. He was a hundred-and-sixty-pound boy wielding the biological weaponry of a ten-ton siege engine.

 

Bakugo’s eyes widened as the living missile of bone and scale plummeted toward him. For the first time in a long time, Bakugo realized he couldn't blast his way out of this. If those horns hit him, he would be skewered.

 

"Bakugo, move!" Todoroki yelled, unleashing a massive ramp of ice to knock Bakugo out of the way.

 

Izuku missed Bakugo by inches. He hit the ground. The force of his landing, combined with the forward momentum of the massive horns, drove him face-first into one of the reinforced concrete pillars supporting the gym's upper level.

 

CRASH!

 

The impact was catastrophic. The massive Triceratops horns plunged deep into the solid concrete, embedding themselves up to the hilt. The kinetic force of the impact created a shockwave that cracked the floorboards beneath him. The entire concrete pillar spider-webbed with cracks, groaning under the sheer stress of the blow.

 

Silence fell over the gym, save for the sound of falling dust.

 

Izuku was stuck. The heavy bone frill around his neck prevented him from looking up, and the horns were firmly wedged inside the concrete. He pulled, thrashing his massive tail behind him, but he couldn't dislodge himself.

 

Suddenly, the red lightning around his body flickered violently.

 

The toll of forcing three massive, spontaneous biological mutations in less than two minutes caught up to him. His newly supercharged metabolism crashed. It hit him like a physical wall. His blood sugar plummeted to dangerous levels. The energy required to sustain the raptor claws, the ankylosaur armor, and the triceratops horns evaporated.

 

Izuku let out a pathetic, whimpering groan.

 

Without the energy of One For All to sustain them, the mutations aggressively and painfully retracted. The bone frill melted back into his neck. The horns dissolved, shrinking back into his skull. The armor on his arms vanished, leaving behind raw, sensitive scales. The raptor claws retracted back into his toes.

 

Without the horns holding him up, Izuku collapsed to the floor in a heap. Steam poured off his body, his skin radiating intense heat. His breathing was shallow and ragged.

 

Aizawa dropped from the viewing platform, his capture weapon unwinding. He approached Izuku cautiously, placing two fingers against the boy's neck to check his pulse.

 

"His heart rate is through the roof, and his core temperature is dangerously high," Aizawa reported to the stunned class. "Yaoyorozu, create thermal blankets. Sato, I need sugar packs and high-calorie protein bars immediately. The mutations burned out his reserves."

 

The class rushed into action.

 

Bakugo stood a few feet away, staring at the massive, perfectly circular holes bored completely through the reinforced concrete pillar. He slowly looked down at Izuku, who was shivering violently on the floor, his heavy tail curled around him for warmth.

 

Izuku cracked his golden eyes open, looking up at his teacher. "Sensei... I... I couldn't control it. Every time I used my power... it just took over."

 

Aizawa knelt down, his expression hardening. "This is exactly why we are out here, Midoriya. You are treating One For All as a blunt instrument. When you do that, the primitive DNA takes the energy and forms a weapon based on raw instinct. You are a passenger in your own body."

 

Aizawa stood up, looking at the rest of the class. "Today was a failure of control. Midoriya is a danger to himself. Until he learns to synchronize his conscious mind with the predatory instincts of his Quirk factor, he is suspended from all hero training exercises involving other students."

 

Izuku squeezed his eyes shut. A single tear escaped, rolling down his cheek and catching on the sharp fang resting against his lip.

 

He wasn't a hero anymore. He was a wild animal, locked in a cage, waiting for his instincts to tear him apart from the inside out.

 

Hungry, the beast whispered in the darkness of his mind. Weak. Must feed. Must grow stronger.

 

Izuku curled tighter into a ball, burying his face in his hands, terrified of what he was becoming.