Chapter 117: Ant Monarch (2453 words)
Somewhere in Japan lived a normal family with a single child, a shy girl with wavy black hair that covers her black eyes.
Her name is Tanaka Yoko, and her parents are Tanjiro and Hana.
In this world there are things called quirks which give ordinary people superpowers, over the years many villains and heroes alike rose form the masses and slowly integrated into society.
Yoko like most children her age has the dream of becoming a hero and safe innocent people, but Yoko is painfully aware that she was unsuited to become a hero.
She isn't very courageous nor does she a very strong sense of justice.
Then, after her fifth birthday she awakened her quirk which changed her life enormously.
Speechlessly starring at her reflection in the mirror of her room, Yoko lets her eyes trace along all the new and unfamiliar part of her body.
Every part of her body is covered in a chitin carapace of varying colors, the armor like parts are black while underneath it Yoko could see another layer of grayish armor similar to hundreds of thine scales which add another layer of protection.
Her human head got replaced by an ant one, which has two long antennas and a sharp pair of mandibles next to a mouth filled with sharp needle like teeth.
Two white, shining compound eyes stare back at her from the reflection of the mirror, they are calm like a white void and a similar colored mist seems to sway around them.
Instead of hair she now has thick, dark grey, dreadlock like tentacles at the back of her head and on her back hangs a pair of transparent insect wings.
Around the midsection of her torso, closely pressed against her body is another pair of arms that instead of hands only have three claws, but they are attached to her torso by very flexible joints that allow them to freely move around.
Her feet changed in a way that she now walks on the pads of her feet and her toes became three sharp claws.
Clenching her armored and now clawed hand into a fist Yoko feels the power dwelling within her, an unfamiliar confidence starts to spread through her which contrasted greatly with her timid nature.
Another strange thing was that Yoko didn't feel offput with her new appearance at all, on the contrary, she found it domineering, strong and strangely pleasing to the eye.
Then the door opens ad her mother Hana entered.
A wave of chaos ensued in the Tanaka household till Hana and Tanjiro finally came to terms that their daughter has seemingly turned into a humanoid ant.
In the afternoon they went to visit a quirk doctor to make a quick checkup on Yoko just to make sure she is fine.
From the doctor Yoko and her family then got informed that Yoko's quirk in fact was a transformation quirk and not a mutation one.
This meant that once Yoko ran out of energy she should revert back to her original form.
And indeed, on the way back home Yoko suddenly felt incredible tired knocking her out immediately.
Once she fell asleep her body started to revert back to her normal form.
Hana and Tanjiro were greatly relived to see their daughter return to normal, but what they didn't know was that even if Yoko was no longer in her ant form, she did take some little things from it back to her normal form where it became something permanent.
Over the next few years Yoko trained her quirk by continuously transforming forth and back between her two forms.
She also started to like being in her ant form more than her human form, but she didn't want to be looked at weirdly by her classmates, so she started to experiment with her quirk trying to achieve a partible transformation.
Years fly by and Yoko soon reached the age of fifteen.
Slowly but surely the more she mastered her quirk the more her personality changed.
It began with her losing her shyness and ended with her gaining a strangely domineering aura which affects even adults to some degree.
Yoko now stands at a height of 178cm, and she has a rather fit build with her black hair styled into dreadlocks that are bound into high ponytail.
Her black eyes have taken on a sharp look, gone is the timid girl who she once was, only a strong girl with plenty of confidence remained.
Wearing her school uniform Yoko walks home from her last day in school before the holidays.
She is currently pondering about something that was a big theme in her class.
Who is going to attempt to enter U.A Highschool and become a professional hero?
Many of Yoko's friends talked about this and of course the also asked her if she is going to try the Entrance Exam for U.A.
To this question Yoko couldn't give a definite answer, being a hero was a dream she almost forgot after she awakened her quirk, and the job would be sure to be dangerous.
The logical side of her mind wanted nothing to do with the dangerous stuff heroes had to deal with but something deep inside her, something she caried over form her ant form wanted to fight, to assert its strength and if she became a hero, she would meet plenty of strong opponents she could fight with.
Torn between those two sides she spaced out most of the day and made her way back home in silence.
'This isn't the first time this happened.' Muttering to herself Yoko recalls all the times her reason got canceled out by this strange almost primal urge coming from deep inside of her.
It kind of scares her, lately she realizes more than ever before how much she changed, and she was also aware as to why.
Yoko decided to call her quirk "Ant Monarch" as every time she used her quirk, she felt like she became something old, almost ancient whose power was just unquestioned, nothing like the ant queens who care for their hive and family, no an egotistical monster who only cared for power and defeating its foes.
Till now she managed to ignore most impulses that lead her to violence, a big part in this played her domineering aura which luckily scared away most people or brought back their reasoning solving the problem without her having to take physical action.
But lately she started to feel kind of restless, she tried to do more exercises, but it only worked a little to sooth her.
'If this goes on without me finding a solution then it is only a matter of time till I do something I will regret.' Letting out a tired sigh Yoko looks at the orange evening sky, she had unintentionally made a detour in order to think for a bit longer.
"Heh, now that I said it like that, do I even have a choice anymore? Well, it is better than becoming a villain, at least I'm going to get paid a stable wage." With a short laugh Yoko went home where she told her parents about her choice and reason to as to why.
Lying in her bed in nothing but grey shorts and a too big white shirt with an ant printed on its front Yoko covers her eyes with her arm.
Two distinct black antennas dangle above her, coming out of her forehead and around her neck one can see greyish black carapace that covers her torso down to her tights and forearms where they leave her skin free.
"Damn, now I got to study for the written exam if I don't want to fail the entrance exam." Letting her arm flop next to her on the bed Yoko stares at the ceiling of her room.
"And I also need to learn how to fight, but I got a strange feeling that that won't be much of a problem, a bigger one would probably be to show restraint, I don't want to accidently kill anyone, and I heavily doubt that this won't happen if I let my instincts run freely while fighting." With such thoughts Yoko fell asleep.
The next morning Yoko started to put together a study plan, distributing everything she has to learn over the few weeks she got till the entrance exam.
Researching things about fighting was also include on the plan additionally to her routine exercise.
Studying wasn't much of a problem since Yoko realized that she learned much faster when she told herself that those things, she's learning was nothing special and she would appear dumb if she couldn't even get those right.
It was as if she was provoking something with enormous pride which couldn't bear to think that it wasn't capable of doing something.
As for fighting, Yoko tried something called shadow boxing or in her case just shadow fighting.
At the beginning it was rather lack luster, but Yoko then started to imagine an enemy far superior to herself which was capable of simply dodging every of her attack and to tip it off this enemy had a constant mocking grin on his face.
Slowly but surely, she felt her blood boiling and her attacks became fiercer and more efficient.
This got a bit worse after a while and one time she was so lost in her imaginary fight that she didn't notice how she destroyed the entire garden, when she realized this, she stopped her routine shadow fighting and started researching about things like meditation and similar things.
Yoko found a few and tried them all till she decided on the one that wielded the best result in calming her mind and controlling her actions.
The final goal for this meditation is to be able to use it in the heat of battle, but this was exceedingly hard for Yoko as she's mostly fights with her instinct which was spontaneous and completely reactive.
The longer she fights the more lost she gets in it, additionally to this Yoko also realized that it was much harder to control her quirk during combat.
In her normal daily life Yoko could by now freely control her transformation and keep it up for and entire day, it only deactivated once she falls asleep.
But during combat she actively felt how her quirk got exhausted much faster and she can only hold her transformation for about an hour.
The more she transforms the faster she is exhausted this makes her partial transformation much more useful than she initially thought as it decreases the drain when using her quirk.
Finally, the day of the entrance exam arrived, and Yoko tiredly got up from her bed with her dreadlocks freely falling onto her back where they reach all the way down to her buttocks.
Performing her morning stretches Yoko goes once again over all the study material before going down to the living room to eat breakfast with her parents.
Because of her originally shy nature Yoko told her parents all about her quirk and how it influenced her and was the real reason as to why she wanted to become a hero.
Her parents, were surprised, but didn't shun her and instead told her that if she is already going to be a hero she should also try to be the best she could possibly be.
Yoko took this to heart and recalled it every time she almost lost control in her training, and she also recalls it now as she goes off to participate in the entrance exam.
The morning passes and in the afternoon, Yoko found herself in front of giant metal gate behind which lays an enormous training ground in the form of a city only without inhabitants.
'Well, the written test went by pretty fast, and it is already time for the practical one.' While going through the info's about this exam in her mind, Yoko performs some stretches.
She wears a dark blue sleeveless shirt with a sport bra underneath and a lose shorts and slippers.
'Narrowing it down to a few words it amounts to "destroy as many robots as possible without getting knocked out." Pretty simple, but isn't this a hero academy? Surely there is more to it than just testing our firepower right' Yoko's thoughts get interrupted by the loud voice of Present Mic.
"START!" He shouts.
Because of the suddenness of this, Yoko reacted immediately by growing out her wings and shooting off into the training ground without even questioning.
She caused a strong blast of wind which blows over all the other contestants and even throws some off balance.
Sitting in a dark room full of monitors which show pictures of all the different testing grounds are a lot of teachers who are prepared to grade the performance of this year's contestants.
Yoko's display of immediate reaction garners her a good amount of attention right at the start of the exam.
Flying through the city ground Yoko has a slightly disgruntled look on her face.
'Damn, it happened again. I really need to train my patience.' Zooming around a corner she sees a robot with dark green armor.
"Okay, time to measure my actual combat power." Unknowingly to her, an almost vicious smile has appeared on Yoko's lips as she dashes directly at the robot while black and grey carapace encases her whole body except for her head.
Craning back her left arm and balling her now clawed hand into a fist Yoko arrives in front of the dark green robot whose single red camera just managed to locate her.
"Eat this Robo-face.!" Her fist shoots out and directly impacts on the robot's head.
With the sound of cracking metal and shattering glass the robots head breaks into many parts before the rest of its body hit the floor where it short circuited.
"Hm, they are a lot weaker than expected, my hand doesn't even hurt." Yoko repeatedly opens and closes her hand trying to find any damage from hitting solid metal but fails to do so.
'Looks like I'm a lot stronger than I originally thought.' With that Yoko once again starts flying around the testing ground and beats up any robot.
Occasionally she came across another participant who found themselves in a predicament, in those instances, Yoko recalled the words of her parents.
"If you are already going to be a hero you should also try to be the best you could possibly be."
Using her flight advantage Yoko rescued or supported any of those unfortunate participants before moving on and massacring more robots wither armored fists or sharp claws.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone