Growth
Took overhaul in what I think is an interesting direction regarding its potential. Let me know what you think of it!
Sorry that the chapter is mostly a progress report but I didn't want to gloss over how the MC was making his progress and just say 'ta-da it happened'.
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The explosion shook the ground beneath his feet, the air rushing from his lungs as he was thrown back against the wall. The crack of his ribs sounded in his ears. Ears ringing from the impact and head spinning he groggily rolled himself over, his hands pressing against the concrete beneath him as he threw up the contents of his stomach.
Gasping in a painfully shaky breath he looked up at the looming figure before him. The mix of organic and machine stood over him with shakily glowing eyes that shone a deep blue. Seeing the light flicker out he rolled over onto his back and putting his palm against his chest he felt a wave of reconstruction go through his body resetting him to the state before he was injured. Although the energy drain was immense he sighed with relief as the pain vanished.
Standing up he went over to a stack of cardboard boxes that sat against the far wall. Taking a nutritional bar from the stack took the wrapper off and threw it in the trash as the bar disassembled into fine earthen-coloured dust before flowing through his skin. Feeling his hunger vanish and his mind clear up he sighed with relief.
Two things, he had been learning his quirk better, and he had been trying to make a practice robot like those from U.A.'s entrance exam so that he could grow his fighting skills but it wasn't going very well. He had turned nine just a few months back and had been steadily growing his mechanical skills. Although that wasn't the main focus of his right now. That would be his quirk.
Standing up he walked over to the robot and placing his hand on it took it apart. Seeing it break down into its fundamental pieces and scatter to the floor. He had been trying to make a power core for the robot using his quirk but his precision with reassembling matter was not as high as he would have liked it. One of the main problems he had right now was controlling his output. When he took the quirk from Kai he took the quirk as it was, which meant that he had a quirk that had grown and been trained for around thirteen years yet none of the experience in using it. It made it very hard to do anything more complicated than resetting or breaking down.
As for the things he was learning, it was quite the list so far:
His quirk used his stamina to regenerate his body if he didn't have any matter to use in its such as nutritional bars. He could use them to reconstruct his arm without draining his stamina. It was just a lot harder.
That led to the other thing, the less he transformed the matter, the easier it was to do. For example, using meat was almost the same as using his stamina to reconstruct his body, if not slightly harder. While using a nutritional bar was more difficult. Using rocks and dirt, however, was practically impossible, yet theoretically could be done.
He had to take something apart to affect it, no matter what. He couldn't just change something, he had to disassemble it first then reassemble it. But it didn't have to be as explosive as he expected. Kai just seemed to lack care when he used it.
While he only needs one finger to make contact with something, the more of his hand that is touching it the easier it is to affect and the more precise he can be.
The deconstruction and reconstruction can happen at very very fast speeds but the more detailed he wants something to be the slower it will be.
Cracking his knuckles he looked out the shed that he was currently in. His father and him had built it after he 'awakened' his quirk, he had played it off as a late awakening and it worked. After all his irises changed from his mother's gold to a stunning golden orange.
He also was downplaying his quirk. He wasn't using it explosively in front of people, taking care to make sure he used it slowly to both practice his control and make it a lot less like Kai's, even if he was being excessive he was sure that Kai was on quirk registries even if he was an underground mafia member and he didn't want clues leading back to him.
He was only using his quirk on organic materials as well, he was planning to learn how to meld them with his body but it wasn't going well. It was a lot harder than he expected to make external materials be accepted by his body. Honestly, it was a pain in the ass but he didn't see why it wasn't possible. Kai could merge his body with others but he didn't really want to consume the neighbourhood kids for an experiment. Or their cat that they had picked up a month back. As annoying as the angry tabby was, but his mum loved her. Since she was alone in the house most of the time now with Nick spending his time in his new shed his mum liked the company. And the cat treated her nicely just hated everyone else.
Sighing he plonked himself down in a chair at the workbench and started fiddling with the mechanical parts of his failed robot trying to not look too dejected.
He was doing a lot more research into biology and organics to further his studies. The more that he could learn about the structure of things the easier it would be to properly bind them to his body. He had tried multiple times but had lost his hands more than once. It wasn't that bad though since he could just make them again. He was getting really really good at turning trees into nutrients for his body though.
One thing he could do was turn basic trees and grass into muscle and bone etc. It wasn't that hard since he knew the structure of both and was able to disassemble them. The reforming took quite a while however. He had attempted a muscular type of thing, with muscle augmentation but it was very hard to control and his body rejected the extra muscle causing it to act more like a hindrance than anything. Sighing he leaned back into his chair throwing the failed power core onto the bench.
He had also quickly abandoned the idea of multiple quirks, for now at least. One, effecting a quirk factor was very very hard, he could barely even edit his own. No matter what he did it would not leave his hands. He had tried to move it around his body or grow it but it wouldn't react to anything. His quirk factor was stuck in his hands. He knew that Kai had gotten more hands that he could use his quirk through. But wasn't willing to deconstruct a person to further his research. He also didn't have a body that could handle one, he had remembered how Kurogiri and the rest of the Nomu were modified by a doctor far beyond his skills. Maybe he should hunt the man down… no it was too dangerous… maybe later.
It wasn't going very well to be honest. It seemed that doing the more creative things with his quirk wasn't going to be as easy as he thought. He had made progress, just very very slow progress. It had only been a few months yes. But he thought that all the research he did beforehand was going to pay off. It wasn't going as well as he liked it though. Which sucked. At least he had goals to work towards. He wanted to be able to affect his own body to a much higher degree replicating muscle augmentation. He also wanted to be able to harden his skin etc etc. All things that WERE possible, just hard to achieve.
Later that night when he went back inside he saw his mum watching the news with a worried look on her face. Although his smile was nothing but a beaming grin. Quickly schooling his expression he contained his excitement and watched on.
Being broadcasted on the news was All Might standing tall and proud as he walked out of a ruined building. Holding a man his wrists in front of him. The man's hair was made out of a purple sludge that went down to his shoulders. His body was well-built and athletic and his chest was bare. A pair of skull knee pads over his combat pants.
As the text scrolled by under the depicted scene Nick listened to the news reporter's voice. "All Might has finally come out! The clash is over and Toxic Chainsaw has been defeated! Once again All Might has blown us away with his quick response time and another incident with zero casualties or even injuries!"
Tuning out of the reporter's rambling he went up the stairs to his room a smile on his face as soon as he closed the door. He was the same age as Midoriya if his knowledge was correct. He should be nine, and so was Nick so he was the same age as the main cast. He had to admit, he was excited about that. It wasn't the be-all and end-all but to have his thoughts confirmed was a bit of a relief. Now that he knew when things would be happening it was going to be easier to work around things and make a timeline in his head.
Feeling a renewed vigour for practising his quirk he sat up straight and slapped his hands on his cheeks. He didn't have time to rest now. Going to his desk he pulled the notes his father had given him on the Ironwoods. A mutated redwood that was harder than steel. His father based as a shield-based support using a similar molecular structure. Because of this, his father had a lot of research papers on how to assemble it using his quirk, which was similar to his in a way since it was able to bond together metals, his father simply didn't just have to actually think about the bonding, he did. While Nick did have to think he could do something similar. If he could adapt his skin to have a similar structure… it wasn't impossible, the tree was also organic. So that would make things much easier.
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Nicklaus ran his hand back through his hair as he put his other hand on the desk against the hard cutting mat he had beneath it, the cool plastic covered in chips from his failed tests. Turning on a voice recorder he spoke plainly into the microphone as he stated, "Test number 231, structure slightly modified. My body is not resisting changes, quirk is now resetting the body to this desired stage. Skin hardness has increased drastically."
After a lot of trial and error, he managed to start adapting his body, he started by growing and condensing his muscles and increasing the density of his bones. While it was hard he had surpassed most of the annoying roadblocks. One of them was that whenever he reset his body to heal it his changes would be reverted back to what he was normally. Doing that in the middle of a fight wasn't an option in his eyes. All changes made to his body however seemed to resist becoming permanent and his quirk didn't treat them as part of his 'base form' as he was referring to it. It took some mental gymnastics but he had managed to overcome whatever mental block was forcing his mind and body to refuse and resist changes. While it felt unnatural to a degree it no longer felt like he was different altogether.
He was also able to convert trees into more human organic structures. Meaning he was able to temperately bond them to his body to greatly increase his size and power. Although the strain was massive when he left the form he was able to convert most of the mass into energy to his body. He hadn't quite reached the level of Muscular's muscle augmentation he was hoping he could achieve something similar soon. Although he would have to get the matter from somewhere. As for non organics he had made progress but it wasn't nearly as much as he would have liked. He still couldn't properly bind them to his body without it being heavily rejected.
His mechanical skills had slowed massively once he turned his focus onto growing his quirk. Although he hadn't stopped he wasn't nearly as active as normal in his studies to do with those fields. He had given up on making a training robot, he had another idea in mind but he would get to that later. Once he was able to confirm whether or not it would be safe to do or not, the answer was most likely no but the idea was growing on him.
With his progress in being able to modify his body more permanently, he had managed to freely change his hair colour and facial structure. Along with the size of his body as long as he had had enough material. He could spend ages converting trees into the required biology but he wasn't really able to do that effectively and without it being rejected. Although it was an option it wasn't a practical one. He looked around fourteen maybe fifteen at his current height because of the minor changes he was making over time. But he had sort of stopped growing after he started modifying his body… maybe he was hindering himself. He would figure it out later. He had like four years before he had to do anything.
His parents had noticed his change once he had 'awakened' his quirk, how often he would spend reconstructing his own body and after a few years of worrying they let it slide deeming it safe enough for him to do without constant nightly checkups. The trips they had to the doctor recently had been endlessly helpful to him though. The doctor was just as excited as he was about his progress and offered all the papers and help that he could as well as making sure that everything was still growing correctly. Apart from everything getting denser instead of bigger causing his growth to stunt, there were no major issues. He would fix his height though later when he could better affect his body.
Currently he was saying that his quirk could affect himself and other living things. Despite that, he only had a large amount of control over the changes he made to himself, if he tried to change anyone else it would react much more volatile by nature but he was able to with difficulty. He did this because he didn't want to be dragged into a medical profession as useful as that would be he was planning on taking extra courses under recovery girl when he got into U.A. well… that was if he got in. But he didn't see why he wouldn't, currently, he wanted to stay close to the main plot of the story so he could keep his knowledge of future events secure. Knowledge was power after all.
Back to the test he was currently doing, he had made changes to the molecular structure of his skin and oh boy did that come with a whole wealth of issues and problems. The biggest one was despite changing his skin, which was fairly easy, he hadn't changed his DNA to grow the new skin instead of the old stuff, the way his body automatically tried to do. Meaning his body rejected it at a base level. He didn't know much more detail than that but it was a pain. After all his quirk just reconstructed matter… it didn't change his biology on a base level. That would take a lot more time for him to be able to do that. Although he was fairly confident his quirk had done its best to fill in the gaps here.
Leaving his arm against the mat he picked up a knife from the table and taking a breath, he swung down at his hand. He had disabled the pain sensors in case he failed like all the other tests but to his surprise, the knife's blade snapped against his skin. Even with his increased strength, he didn't even feel that much of an impact. Staring at his hand in disbelief he held it up to his face. He had done it… he had reassembled a part of his biology properly. Smiling widely he let out an excited laugh as he pushed himself away from the desk. He tried not to get too excited as it could go wrong in a few days but he held on hope. He had a doctor's appointment to make!
That and the second part of his plan, learning how to fight. He knew that the death of Kai would change some things, and as he was thinking that one night a thought popped into his head. Kendo Rappa. Champion of the Underground Masquerade. It was time to see if he get him to be his coach. Grinning Nicklaus stood up and walked towards his house. His athletic form was toned by modifications to his muscles and his steps were heavier from his denser bones. What he didn't see until he looked in the mirror however were the slight cracks in the skin under his eyes from his latest modification. Feeling more confident in his growth and his body Nicklaus had a place to be tonight.