The next day, without wasting any time, Dante was in the training room attempting to assume full body sludge transformation for as long as he can.
Rinji was sitting perched on a crate in the corner, a towel draped over his shoulders and a juice box in hand. He was swinging his legs idly. Today was his rest day, but he still wanted to watch Dante train.
Dante stood in the center of the room, shirtless and barefoot, sweat drenched his skin. His breath was focused and he kept muttering to himself, trying to concentrate.
"Do what dad told you… don't think about it… just become."
With a low grunt, he clenched his fists and his body started to melt.
The change wasn't violent and sharp anymore, it was a lot smoother now.
His flesh began to liquefy, dissolving into thick, dark red sludge that steamed slightly under the lights. It slithered across his form, encasing him. His shoulders drooped, knees shifted, spine elongated unnaturally. In seconds, his entire body had transformed. He had become a mass of living sludge, just like his father, only red.
Rinji leaned forward, eyes wide.
Dante stood, or rather, sat in place. He was holding his form. He didn't need to breathe in this form, he didn't have lungs after all.
One second passed.
Then two.
Then three.
The edges of his 'limbs' started to ripple.
Five.
Small bits of sludge started to seperate from him, sliding to the ground with wet slaps.
Six.
The form destabilised and with a loud thud, it collapsed. His body immediately reverted back to normal, Dante crashed down to one knee, panting hard. Steam rose off his skin as leftover sludge transporter into him.
He punched the ground, frustrated.
"Six seconds…" he growled, standing again.
"Hey," Rinji called gently. "That's still better than last time, right?"
Dante glanced over, breathing slowly. "Hmm, yeah that was four."
"See? Progress! Yay!"
He wiped his face with a towel, pacing back to the center of the room.
"I need at least a minute. If I can't hold the form, I can't fight with it."
He glanced at the mirror nailed to the far wall. His expression was calm, but something was off.
Little Dante?
"You're doing it all wrong."
Dante's eyes shot wide.
There he was.
Standing just a few feet away from him, arms crossed.
For a moment, Dante didn't speak. He blinked once, twice.
'You're… back.' Dante thought to himself, not saying anything out loud as to not appear weird to Rinji.
"Yeah," the younger version of himself said casually. "Been a little while, huh? Seems you took in that kid."
Dante clenched his jaw. He already knew what was coming. The ranting, guilt tripping, the nagging questions about morality. The whole "why haven't you become a villain yet?" Routine.
But surprisingly, none of that came.
Instead, Little Dante walked closer, his expression unreadable.
"I've been thinking. Watching. Studying all of your little failures."
Dante raised an eyebrow subconsciously. 'What?'
"Didn't you even listen to what dad said? You keep trying to treat the sludge like it's an extension of your body," the kid continued. "Bu that's the problem. It's not an extension, it is your body, think of the sludge like muscle. You keep trying to turn yourself fully into muscle. You can't just be muscle. You've also got to create various other factors like slightly harder sludge in areas like arms or so."
He tapped Dante on the forehead.
"You also cant just disregard your organs, you still need to function, idiot. It's pressure. Volume. Flow."
Dante took a slow step back, a little confused. 'You're telling me… you figured out why it doesn't work?'
Little Dante grinned, stepping into the middle of the room.
"If anyone knows how to use this quirk to its full potential, it's me. It's my quirk after all. And well, your intelligence seems to have played a part too I suppose."
There was a pause.
Then Dante thought quietly, '…Then show me.'
Little Dante didn't hesitate.
He stepped forward and when their eyes locked, Dante let his consciousness slip into Little Dante's control.
The shift was immediate.
His whole body started to ripple and this time, instead of collapsing or falling apart, the sludge didn't even drip down. His entire body shifted into a mass of sludge, tightening and solidifying in some areas.
The creature standing in Dante's place now was massive. Controlled.
But it was definitely Dante.
Little Dante, piloting this monstrosity, rotated his arms, dashed across the room in a blur, launching a whip of sludge that splintered the air, spinning and slamming a claw into a nearby training dummy, sending vibrations throughout the compound.
And the form held, it didn't waver at all.
No drips. No warping and seemingly no time limit.
He exhaled slowly, then shifted back into Dante's form, cleanly, effortlessly.
He looked over his shoulder with that familiar crooked smirk before giving Dante control.
"See?" He said. "You're trying to master something our dad already figured out. I'm not dad. But I'm you. And this sludge seems to prefer me." He gestured to his chest. "It listens to me."
Dante stood there in the center of the room, stunned.
'…Guess I should've trusted you a little more.'
Little Dante turned, walking back into the shadows.
"Then get to work. I'll start learning how to control detached sludge, so learn full body sludge transformation in the mean time."
And with that, he was gone.
Dante looked at his retreating figure with a hint of concern in his gaze.
Little Dante had never acted like that before.
Dante sighed and then stood back in the center of the training room.
He let go of the tension in his chest. Stopped clenching.
And then—
FWOOSH
His entire body dissolved into viscous, dark red sludge, rising and morphing as if he were fluid. The transformation came easily this time.
And this time, it didn't fall apart.
It held.
He moved forward.
It felt strange moving, it was like he was slithering more than stepping.
Then he tried jumping, which he did. Which was quite literally defying the laws of physics.
He shifted his form into a more humanoid shape while airborne and landed onto the ground with a squelch.
But there was a structure beneath the fluidity now, it wasn't just straight up goop, it had layers. He twisted, spun, lashed out with a long clawed arm across the room and then retracted it like a whip.
He was still solid.
His form wasn't wavering even though it had been thirty seconds.
He let out a low, rumbling laugh.
From the corner of the room, Rinji sat up with stars in his eyes. "Oh wow… you did it twice in a row!"
Dante turned, still in full sludge mode, giving the boy a casual thumbs up, which looked hilariously cartoonish coming from a hulking mass of dark red goop.
Rinji grinned. "You're not falling apart!"
Dante slowly shifted back into his human form, lacking his calm and collected expression, replaced with an expression of pure joy and excitement.
This was the most progress he'd made in years.
"I'm not," he said, breath steady. "I've finally got it"
Rinji ran over, looking up at him in amazement. "That's what you were going for, right? You finally did it! That was awesome!"
"Yeah," Dante said, crouching down a little. "I've been forcing it too much. Turns out… I just needed to relax a little."
Rinji tilted his head. "Really? That easy?"
Dante gave him a half smirk. "Seems so."
…
A/N : I keep forgetting to show this image but yeah here's the scene of Dante and Rinji buying ice cream lol