Chapter 34 - Quirk Factor Cells

After the competition, Hiro said his goodbye to Mina and the others as he led the overly excited kids back to the orphanage. 

The Dean greeted them with a table full of sumptuous dishes when they returned. Most of them were ordered from a nearby restaurant, while the Dean himself made his signature mochi overload.

Everyone had a great time eating and chatting. The younger children scrambled over each other to tell the Dean what they did during the Sports Festival, as well as how Hiro crushed his opponents. The Dean nodded along to their story with a warm smile. He praised Hiro for his performance and the children for their vocal support.

Time quickly passed amidst the laughter and cheers.

On the bed, in the silent night after everyone has fallen asleep, Hiro finally had the time to further explore the evolution in his Quirk.

The Sports Festival is a three-day event, from May 2 to 4, Wednesday to Friday. Along with the weekend after, it gave him 4 days to experiment before classes resumed.

That time was neither too short nor too long.

The first thing he needed to do was familiarize himself with every cell in his body, just like how he did with every tissue.

His consciousness swept past his hair, skin, bones, muscles, blood, and every organ- closely observing the structure and function of the cells within them. 

He noted their different features; how they receive and process energy, their interaction with their neighboring cells, etc.

He manually directed the received information into the cerebral cortex of his brain, engraving it to ensure he wouldn’t forget. Using the theoretical knowledge from the textbooks and medical journals that he similarly stored there, he was able to identify the function of the cell that he needed to pay attention to.

Even though that was the case, the sheer quantity of cells inside his body made it impossible for Hiro to finish in a short amount of time.

At sunrise, he left a quick note for the Dean and Shara before heading out to find a secluded location. His body was moving almost entirely on autopilot during the whole period.

Except for a few cell types, cells typically have a lifespan of only 24 hours. To more quickly familiarize himself with them, he wanted to observe the cells from their conception until their death. To this point, he even rejected Mina’s invitation to watch the Sports Festival together.

He spent the entire day and night just lying on a bed in a cheap hotel. And by midnight, he finally had a thorough understanding of the 238 different types of cells and thousands of subtypes inside his body. 

Hiro lay spread eagle on the bed and exhaled a huge sigh of relief. Processing and absorbing so much information, if he hadn’t used his Quirk to boost the performance of his cerebral cortex and helped share some of the load, he’d definitely be sporting a massive headache.

Now though, he was just tired from using up so much energy. He checked the time, 1:06 AM, and then closed his eyes and instantly fell asleep.

A few hours later, he woke up at 5:30 AM according to the biological clock he set. 

After checking out of the hotel, he went to a 7-11 convenience store and bought loads of protein bars under the cashier’s odd gaze. 

When he got back to the orphanage, all the protein bars were gone and the energy he spent yesterday was fully recovered.

…

After making breakfast for the kids, he sat with them in the living room to watch the Sports Festival for the third year UA students on the television. But in the background, his mind was still occupied by his Quirk.

Now that he is familiar with all the cells in his body, he can proceed to the next step of the plan- to try and manipulate the Quirk Factor he detected during his battle with Shinso. 

Once again, Hiro expressed his thanks to the lanky teenager from the bottom of his heart. Not only did he help awaken his Quirk, but he also allowed Hiro to perceive his Quirk Factor in advance. Otherwise, it’d take him quite some time until he further mastered his Quirk to identify them.

After all, the Quirk Factor is a gene, a supernatural gene that is mixed in with other normal genes. And Hiro could only detect the presence of genes in his cell- he still can’t differentiate which is which. 

But because he had the opportunity to feel them, he was able to tell which of his cells had their Quirk Factor activated. 

And what he discovered fascinated him.

Every tissue in his body at least had 20% cells with activated Quirk Factors. And his muscle tissues, which he most frequently controlled with his Quirk, had more than 40% of said cells. 

He didn’t notice any differences when controlling them at the tissue level. However, when he tried to control each individual cell, the ones in the muscle tissue were distinctly easier to manipulate. Not only that, he could also more clearly perceive the genes inside the cells of said tissue.

In an instant, Hiro knew his next goal. He had to activate the Quirk Factors in all his cells.

Normally, this was easier said than done. He trained his Biokinesis for more than 10 years, yet he hadn’t even managed to activate his Quirk Factor in more than half of his total cell.

But that was then. Now, he had a more efficient option- his Quirk and its new ability to control cells.

His plan was simple. Thanks to being able to identify which cell had their Quirk Factor activated, he could control those cells to self-replicate. Then, to further increase the concentration, he’d make cells with inactive Quirk Factor undergo apoptosis.

Of course, Hiro was also worried about the side effects of this attempt. Therefore, he first experimented on a small muscle fiber in his feet.

Having reached the point where he can already regrow a severed finger in a second, Hiro could easily replace all the cells in that muscle tissue in just a few seconds. But for the sake of caution, he decided to take it slow.

As the concentration of Quirk Factor-activated cells in the tissue increased, Hiro found it more and more easier to control and perceive the other cells. It was like going slowly from a 360 pixel to an 8k pixel resolution.

At 80% concentration, he could even finally distinguish the different genes inside the cells of that muscle tissue. 

Hiro paused the process. He focused on the remaining 20% of the cells that still had an inactive Quirk Factor. Instead of causing them to self-destruct, he wanted to try another method that was now available to him.

His consciousness dived deeper into said cells. 

He penetrated the skin-like plasma membrane, entered the nucleus that resembled an egg yolk, slowly unraveled the X-shaped chromosome into the double helical DNA, and finally accessed the tens of thousands of genes.

Then, he activated and deactivated series of genes in the Quirk Factor-inactive cells to be identical to an active one.

Because it was the first time manipulating his genes, he was still unaccustomed to it. He’d sometimes even activate a neighboring gene by accident. Fortunately, it was easy for him to just turn it off after. 

Due to his inexperience, the process of activating the remaining 20% cells in the small muscle tissue became much slower.

But Hiro didn’t mind. He continued his gene editing activity while barely paying attention to the ongoing Sport Festival on the TV. 

When the Sports Festival ended with Mirio Togata’s win after a few hours, all the cells in that muscle fiber had finally been modified to have an active Quirk Factor.

Hiro didn’t find any trouble with his body after the operation except for a slight loss of energy. Still, for safety’s sake, he decided to wait until midnight to check for any abnormalities. When he found none, he started to undergo a similar process with the rest of his body.

Thus, on the day that classes resumed for UA, all the cells in Hiro’s body had their Quirk Factors activated.

A/N: Sorry for the late chapter. I had to touch up on my biology while writing this, and boy did that trigger a hell of a headache. I’ve simplified the concepts and removed most jargons to be more understandable with just a casual read so you (hopefully) don’t have to suffer the same fate I did.