The dark clothed man looked down at you blearily from over the top of his scarf.
"Are you alright, kid?" he asked.
His sharp gaze flicks to the bruises on your wrist as you hastily pulled down your sleeve over it.
It was too late, he saw.
#1 Aizawa'...
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"Are you sure she still has the same quirk she's always had?"
You blinked open your eyes at the sound of your dad's voice.
Two figures talked quietly in the doorway of your dark hospital room, their outlines framed by the bright hallway lights.
Dad, and... was that Tsukauchi?
"Positive," the man said. Tsukauchi's voice. It was him.
Your ears twitched, but otherwise you pretended to stay asleep.
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Aizawa sighed. "Then what's going on?" You were surprised by the hint of anger in his voice.
Tsukauchi flipped through a case notebook as he replied.
"The lab has a guess. In the past, when you've tried to cancel Eiko's quirk, nothing happened no matter which form she happened to be in. But have you ever tried using erasure while she shapeshifts?"
"Why would that matter?" Aizawa frowned. "Are you saying that Erasure does work on her quirk? But that would mean..."
"The only time she uses her power is when she shapeshifts." Tsukauchi finished. "Her shapeshifting transforms her into another heteromorph form- one that your erasure doesn't affect- until she uses her power to shapeshift again."
Aizawa's frown deepened.
"I've never encountered a quirk like that. Shapeshifters are always power-up types and erasure changes them back to their base form."
"That's because Eiko is the only documented case of this. Or at least, the only one who has lived."
The air temperature around Aizawa dropped abruptly. "What do you mean?" he asked in a voice that made glaciers seem warm. You could hear your heartbeat in the silence. Tsukauchi shuffled through the notes he had.
"There have been a dozen or so documented cases. But they all died before reaching their first birthday. Papers were published on it. The consensus seems to be that a heteromorphic shapeshifter has a mutation in their quirk genes from a mutagen they were exposed to at a young age, or even before birth."
"How did the mutation kill the others?" Aizawa demanded.
"A typical body cell can be replaced about forty to sixty times before it undergoes programmed cell death. The amount of times it can be replaced has to do with the length of the telomeres, or extra DNA. The longer the telomeres are, the more times the cell can replicate.
Anyways, for most people, being able to replace their cells around forty times is plenty for a long life. But a heteromorphic shapeshifter completely destroys and replicates every cell in their body each time they shapeshift. They reach the cellular turnover limit in an unnaturally short time. And as more and more cells in their body permanently die, their vital organs eventually fail. It's the same way people die of old age. Just quicker."
