The Apex Hero: Bioterror

Chapter 7

Their next heroics class had everyone putting on their suits and boarding a bus, with Iida attempting to herd them in an organised fashion, although the layout of the seats set that plan up in smoke.

With everyone seated and the bus moving, everyone passed the time by sharing more in depth details about their quirks, although the more cagey students like Bakugou and Todoroki refused to participate. Izuku took comprehensive notes on each of them until it was finally his turn.

"My quirk is a little more complicated than most. It's called Bio-shifting. Basically I can rearrange my genetics to a wide variety of results. Basically as long as I have an idea of what DNA to put where, I can do almost anything. Make myself faster, stronger, the claws I have, even my suit is just me rearranging my DNA to make myself look like that. I even have night vision, and I've been trying to cook up some thermal vision since I met Hagakure." The bio-bars Lunch Rush provided, packed with various reptile DNA helped with that.

Mineta, a student who's quirk was having sticky balls for hair, spoke up. "If you can mess with your genes, can you change your chromosomes and turn into a girl?"
Izuku hums and rubs his chin. "I've never tried that before. Let me try it."

His body and clothes melt into a black mass vaguely resembling a person, with a few tendrils popping out here and there as he rearranges himself. His voice seems to go through several inflections and tones throughout the process. "Put this here, move that over there, turn this around, aaaaaaanndddd done." When he regained his clothes and colours, although his complexion was still a deathly grey, he was in fact now a she, with... assets that rivaled Yoayorozu's.

When SHE spoke, her voice was silky and airy. "Well that's different. It's a lot harder than it looks too."
Mineta points an accusatory finger. "How do we know you actually have a womanly physique under there? You could be using your gene powers to just push a bunch of meat to your hips!"
"How dare you! I am an artist with my quirk. I'll prove it." She grabs the middle of her "suit" like she plans to rip it off, and despite many protests, she does so. But rather than a "womanly physique" it's a dark gelatinous pit full of tendrils and teeth that's screeching like a horror movie monster.

Mineta, who had been leaning forward as the suspiciously gooey textures of the suit were peeled away, launched backwards into his seat when he was confronted by gore rather than fun. "Jesus fuck!"

Izuku leans back in her seat as the gaping hole stitches itself shut, laughing heartily and earning a jealous glare from a certain punk rocker due to the... ahem, movement it caused. "That was awesome." She liquifies once again and returns to the default masculine state. "I should prank people more often."
Uraraka, holding a hand over heart, puts a hand on his shoulder. "Maybe don't. Your sense of humour is scary."

Arriving at the USJ was equal parts exciting and disappointing for some, because for some strange reason they thought it was Universal Studios Japan. Although Uraraka completely forgot about that detail in favour of geeking out over the space hero 13. When Aizawa questioned All Might's absence from the class, 13 said he ran into trouble on his commute and subtly held up three fingers. Something to take note of, but he decided not to draw any attention to it.

The rescue hero actually gave a rather moving speech about quirk usage, using her own Black Hole quirk as an example. She primarily uses it for rescue operations, turning rubble into nothing, but she could also reduce a human being to atoms if she felt so moved. It struck particularly deep with Izuku, as he was in the same boat. The same power he and his father would use to protect people could also be used to end civilisation if one of them decides to do much as cough maliciously.

Izuku isn't given much time to ponder that sobering thought for long, as some kind of black and purple smoke appears in the courtyard, several imposing figures stepping through. Things got out of hand very quickly after that, with what looked like a sentient smoking portal addressing the students after Aizawa leapt into the fray. 13 could have handled it herself, but Kirishima and Bakugou got in her line of fire and everyone was teleported away.

When Izuku exits his portal, he's falling towards a giant lake. Given how Blackligjt interacts with water, it was very unfortunate. "Water. It had to be water." After hitting the surface, the density of his biomass meant Izuku was sinking like a rock as his whole body was enveloped in a stinging sensation akin to sunburn.

Thankfully he sunk fast enough that he hit the bottom and could leap back up, piercing the surface of the water once again and using his air dash ability to land on the boat where he found Mineta and Tsuyu, both of which were giving him horrified looks. "What?"
"Dude, are you dying or something?"

Izuku looks down at his hand, seeing his biomass absorb the water and flake away. "Yeah, water doesn't really like me. Which makes this situation kind of shitty for me personally."
Mineta is a lot less calm about the situation. "Well that's just great. We're alone, we're surrounded by villains, and the scariest guy here is literally surrounded by his kryptonite! If All Might doesn't get here soon we're all gonna die!"

"That might still be an issue either way. That smoke guy was real confident about being able to kill the symbol of peace before he separated everyone, and someone that confident either has a plan or they're stupid. And the kind of person who could organise something like this doesn't strike me as stupid."

Izuku gently herds Mineta into a corner of the boat to cry and sob while he and Tsuyu do something productive. "Think you could jump all the way to the bank?"
"Maybe. If I can it'd be pretty close, and the villains might just get out and chase us. And I don't think I could carry you since you're making the boat lean. Ribbit. Could you change your genes to help with the water?"

Izuku looks over the edge of the boat. "Maybe. But it would take a while, and that's time we don't have." Izuku sighs, faced with a choice. "There's a facet of my quirk that I didn't explain before. Promise not to tell anyone?" Tsuyu looks over to where Mineta was laying down and pretending to be dead before silently nodding. "There's a process called Consumption where I can take something else's genes and add it to my own body. It makes it faster to replicate certain genetic traits that way."

Tsuyu starts croaking. And not her usual verbal "ribbit" tick, but actual croaking. "And how does... Consumption work? Do you need to eat maybe a hair or something?"
"A tendril comes out of my me and reduces the organic mass to chemical soup and absorbs it directly into my body." The croaking speeds up and Izuku can hear her heartbeat speeding up. "I'm aware it's a terrifying concept and I don't plan on taking anything without informed consent. I have standards."

"It's," Tsuyu swallows thickly "a horrifying idea. But if it's our best shot I can at least let you try."
Izuku shoots her finger guns. "Promise not to tell anyone I'm technically a cannibal now?" She delivers a deadpan stare accompanied by a racing heart. "Yeah, I'm not great at jokes. Don't worry, it won't hurt at all."

A single feeder tendril comes out of his back, although this one was different. Rather than a mess of tendons and sharp edges, this one was smoother and more vine-like, with a paper thin needle at the end. Custom made specifically for consensual Consumption. Thanks to the reptile bio-bars he's been eating, he had a few genes from certain types of lizards and snakes, meaning the needle was coated in a watered down venom that would act as a mild numbing agent and would solidify when in contact with air, discouraging any further bleeding.

He positions the tendril over a vein on her arm. "This might sting a little." He pierces a vein, sucking out the frog girls blood. Her mutated genes had a kind of distinct flavour to them, very different from the processed bio-bars and stray cats he usually Consumed. When he felt like he got a sufficient amount of genes from her, he pulled out the needle and it returned to his body. "How are you feeling?"

She tries to take a step but almost falls over, so Izuku helps her sit down. "Dizzy."
"Sorry about that. If it's any consolation, you don't taste too bad."
She gives him another of her deadpan expression despite the paleness to her face. "You should stop making cannibal sounding jokes. It's scary."
"Fair enough. Now let's see what I can do."

Black and red tendrils course over Izuku's body as he unlocks a new form. His hands and feet become large and webbed, more mass becomes focused around his legs, his biomass gained a kind of rubbery texture, his hood solidified into a cone shape and his eyes became perfectly round and glassy similar to Tsuyu's goggles. The final change was the metal mouth guard that usually acted as a simple ornament around his neck was now over where his mouth would be, and he could open it like an actual mouth, full of sharp metal-like teeth and a stretchy black tongue.

He would smile if his face was capable of it. He leaps high into the air, making the boat rock as gravity slowly reclaimed him, sending towards a hoarde of villains. "Prepare to die you aquatic fucks! Croak."