#i usually get around it by uploading the image last because sometimes. you gotta ramble in tags it's just how it is

[alackofghosts]

my favourite tumblr feature is if you take too long to type or whatever on an nsfw post that you are going to label correctly, it will simply eat the post anyway

[ibelieveinahappilyeverafter]

To Land On Your Feet - Chapter 03

I hope you guys enjoy this chapter! Sorry if it's an hour or two late across time zones; school was much busier than I was expecting it to be! (This version is even later since I passed out last night before I could hit upload.)

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Summary: Aizawa Shouta had a good life. He was a happily married pro-hero teacher, had two cats that loved to make his life difficult, and soon, if things went well, he would have Shinsou Hitoshi as a son. Thanks to an unexpected attack by a man with the League of Villains, though, Shouta is turned into a cat. While he had a fondness for cats, that never meant he wanted to be one, especially when no one seems to recognize him and his friends and family are trying to find him when he’s right there.

He had been planning to find a way to change back, but instead he ends up following Shinsou Hitoshi to the foster home he lives in after hearing some worrying information from the teen himself. Shouta himself was guilty of venting his frustrations to cats, but hearing that Hitoshi would be locked outside in the cold if he was late getting home was just another clue among countless that something was wrong. He has to get back to normal, but he’d be a poor hero and a shit father-to-be if he didn’t follow the kid and make sure he was okay.

Besides, quirks like this usually had a time limit. Right?

              <<First Chapter>><<Previous Chapter>><<Next Chapter>>

                                              Chapter Three

‘Alright, kid, if you have a secret secondary quirk that deals with hearing the thoughts of cats, now would be a great time to tell me about it.’ Shouta thought the words as loud as possible, unsurprised and yet still disappointed when Hitoshi scratched under Shouta’s chin as if he really was nothing except another street cat. ‘I don’t look that different as a cat, do I?’

“You’ve been through a lot too, huh?” Hitoshi’s voice was soft and quiet, Shouta frowning when the kid brushed over the scar under his eye. ‘Too,’ he had said. Shouta didn’t like that. “It’s okay. The scars always fade away eventually.”

Okay, that Shouta really didn’t like. He knew Hitoshi had a rough past with the way he spoke about some things, but the kid was so walled off it was hard to get anything personal out of him. Hizashi liked to call it karma, but Shouta was scared with how much of himself he saw in Hitoshi some days.

“Oh, hang on, I got just the thing for you!” Hitoshi moved to sit in the middle of the sidewalk as if he couldn’t care less, Shouta wishing he could laugh as he saw Hitoshi dig around in his bag before pulling out cat treats with a wide smile. “I feed the strays I see from time to time, so I always make sure to have a few treats on me. What do you say, buddy, want some?”

Right. Hitoshi, his student that he had a great deal of parental feelings for, was attempting to feed him cat treats. Blinking up at Hitoshi, and seeing the kid look so cautiously hopeful to the point he was holding his breath, Shouta withheld a sigh and moved forward to eat a few of the treats.

Really, it was a logical decision. His body was exhausted and, while this may be an entirely different story if he were human, the cat treats would go a long way in restoring his energy and settling his hunger. It had been almost a full day since he had last eaten anything, after all, and this was better than nothing.

If part of the reason he did it was so Hitoshi would look a little less worn down and tired, well, no one had to know that except him and maybe Hizashi when this mess was over.

“You’re pretty lucky, kitty. I usually leave earlier than this, but today has been… pretty bad.” The dark tone of voice had Shouta feeling more of those parental type feelings.

Since he couldn’t sit by the kid and offer him silent support, he settled for pawing at Hitoshi’s knee and giving a warbling meow that had him wincing. Honestly, how did people think he was an actual cat?

“Thanks for trying to make me feel better.” Hitoshi offered him more cat treats and a tired smile, Shouta only eating the treats to try and cheer Hitoshi up. “My…” Hitoshi trailed off, looking away for a moment before pushing out a sigh. “My teacher, Aizawa-sensei, is missing. He’s a pro hero who was on patrol last night and he didn’t come back.”

‘Oh, kid…’ No wonder Hitoshi looked stressed and worried. Shouta knew his homeroom was no doubt running amok and attempting to confront the villain that had done this to him, but he had hoped Hitoshi wouldn’t have to deal with the stress of this. ‘And I can’t even tell you I’m alright, huh?’

“It’s actually pretty funny.” The smile Hitoshi had on was hollow and fake and seemed to be a mirror image of the smiles Shouta once gave to Hizashi. “I didn’t learn about it until later, because, see, I train with him, right? He’s training me to get into the Hero course, so we train after school and he teaches me… everything, pretty much. He’s never late, though, but he was today. He was late and then half an hour passed, and he didn’t show up and I actually thought he just got sick of dealing with me.”

‘What?! Oi, kid, I know you have as many self-worth issues as some of my students, but you have to know by now that I wouldn’t give up on you! Isn’t that obvious? Am I not obvious enough?’ Shouta’s lecture came out sounding like yowling similar to his cats when they were angry, Hitoshi only laughing instead of looking properly chastised.

“You sound like Yamada-sensei,” Hitoshi grinned, trying to distract him with another cat treat. Shouta ate it out of pity and idly wondered how many treats Hitoshi kept on him. “‘S okay, Yamada-sensei came in around the time I started thinking that. I honestly thought Aizawa-sensei was dead for a few minutes with how he looked.”

‘Oh, Hizashi,’ Shouta sighed to himself, no doubt sure that Hizashi was worrying himself to pieces over this entire mess. The USJ incident hadn’t been that long ago and Shouta still saw traces of Hizashi’s fear from that event. It was in the way he hovered next to Shouta’s right where his vision was weaker, and in the way he sometimes flinched and tensed if he couldn’t automatically spot Shouta when entering a room.

“He offered to take over my training, but we just talked, instead,” Hitoshi said, rubbing at Shouta’s cheeks and almost managing to distract Shouta. Another thing to take note of, it seemed, was that his new body responded as a cat would to outside stimulus. “It was… bad. He didn’t even have his hair spiked back or anything and he was quiet. You probably don’t know this, kitty, but Yamada-sensei is actually Present Mic. Present Mic isn’t ever quiet, but Yamada-sensei can be, sometimes. This was a bad quiet, though.”

‘Not that I’m not grateful, but why do you never talk this much when I need you to? Do I need to start attaching microphones and cameras to cats before sending them your way?’ Shouta wished he had the words to complain, settling for swatting at Hitoshi’s hands when he started getting too distracted.

“You know, kitty, sometimes I wish I wasn’t so broken.” The words startled Shouta into almost jumping, his full attention now on his kid. Hitoshi didn’t seem to notice, staring off into the distance, instead, and seemingly lost in his thoughts. Shouta wished he could just properly frown or, even better, nudge Hitoshi to go back into the school or the dorms or the spare bedroom he and Hizashi had started unconsciously cleaning and decorating for a teenage boy who loved underground heroes and cats.

When Hitoshi started to gain that frustrated look of having too many thoughts that he didn’t know how to voice, Shouta tried for another meow, headbutting Hitoshi’s shoulder, thinking to himself, ‘Sorry, kid. If I was more careful then we could be having dinner right now and you two wouldn’t be worrying so much.’

“Thanks for being such a great listener,” Hitoshi smiled, looking to come out of his thoughts as he gave Shouta another scratch before glancing at his phone, frowning the moment he did. “Sorry, kitty, I gotta get home. I’ll be locked outside if I’m late again and the temperature is supposed to drop tonight. If I get another sore throat, then my teachers will find out about it. I barely snuck by with the last one.”

‘I knew you were sick that week! You kept insisting on physical training over quirk training and refused to even talk half the time.’ Now Shouta was glad he had kept sneaking the kid vitamin water that was good for that kind of thing. ‘Honestly, you’re lucky Hizashi was so wrapped up in work that week or…’ Shouta’s thoughts trailed off into a background hum as the words Hitoshi had said finally registered.

Locked outside. Locked outside when the weather forecast, last he had checked, was supposed to be near freezing. That hadn’t been a joking tone, either. That tone was simple, tired, and so matter of fact it was like Hitoshi had been complaining about how tomorrow would be chilly instead of sunny.

“Thanks for listening to all my rambling, kitty. Maybe I’ll see you again sometime.” Hitoshi gave him a smile before pushing himself up and brushing his pants off, starting to walk away from the school.

Shouta knew, without a doubt, that he should be working on getting to Hizashi and Nedzu and contacting the police. One of them, no matter how many it took, would realize who he was eventually. It was best to get this matter over and dealt with sooner rather than later, but Hitoshi was walking away as if he had the weight of the world on his shoulders, a longing, sorrowful, tired expression that he never let others see if he could help it.

Shouta’s body was moving before he could even think, new and unfamiliar paws breaking into a quick sprint that had him catching up and falling into step beside the now startled teen.

“Oh! You wanna walk with me for a while, then?” That tired expression seemed to lighten and Shouta knew, without a doubt, that he made the right choice. Hizashi would be okay; especially once Shouta explained why he had been gone for so long, but if he let Hitoshi leave on his own now, then Shouta would be a pretty shitty father-to-be – especially after hearing something like that.

“You know, you’re pretty strange, for a cat,” Hitoshi said after a few minutes of comfortable silence. “You’re not a normal cat.” The words had Shouta perking up as he shot his head towards Hitoshi, delighted that the kid might have realized who he was, even if it had taken him a while. “You’re some sort of god in animal form, aren’t you?”

Maybe it was a good thing he was a cat, if only so Hitoshi would never know he laughed at that. It was hardly Shouta’s fault, though. He just… he had never heard Hitoshi say something so childish. It was nice. It was good. It showed the kid was more comfortable than he had been all those months ago.

Jeez, it had only been a few months, but Shouta had already latched onto the kid as much as Hitoshi had latched onto him back. It had been hard not to feel something for the kid when Shouta first saw him at that Sports Festival. Even bandaged, high on pain medication, and fighting off a burning headache, Shouta had still seen so much of himself in Shinsou Hitoshi.

Hitoshi had come so far from that suspicious, beaten down teenager that had been expecting trouble and detention when Shouta had first approached him after classes were over with a proposition. Now here he was, against all odds, laughing and joking about a ‘stray cat’ being a god in disguise.

‘Do you even realize how far you’ve come, Hitoshi?’ The kid always complained about never seeing any change in himself, but he had come so far.

“I can tell you’re laughing at me,” Hitoshi pouted, dramatic and childish as he threw his arms about much like Hizashi might to make a point. “I mean, just look at how big you are! You’re probably as tall as me- Here, c’mere, kitty.”

Hitoshi prodded and nudged at him, careful and wary in a way that spoke of being bitten by strays before. Shouta made sure to butt at his hand before standing himself up on his hind legs just to satisfy whatever tangent the kid was on now.

“See, look at that! You already come up to my chest!” Shouta… did. He knew he had been turned into a house cat, but now he was re-thinking that he might be some sort of other big cat. When standing up on his hind paws he easily reached a little below Shinsou’s chest. Shouta had to be four feet head to tail at least- Actually, maybe it was four feet without the tail. “You’re either a divine creature in animal form or a big cat that escaped from the zoo.”

‘Your guess is as good as mine, kid.’ Hopefully the quirk that had been used on him didn’t have any delayed surprises. He didn’t want to know how this could get worse. ‘Come on, Hitoshi. Let’s get you home.’

Dropping back down to all fours and giving Hitoshi a nudge to get him moving, Shouta found himself content to listen to Hitoshi ramble about his day as he started walking again, complaining about Nemuri, who was his homeroom teacher, and the sub for Hero Ethics, which was the class Shouta usually taught. Hitoshi seemed to have so much to say and, luckily for them both, Shouta had a knack for listening to chatterboxes ramble about their day.

As they walked, though, Shouta couldn’t help but to think about how much better it would be if he was able to respond back, Hizashi on Hitoshi’s other side and adding to his stories to blow them even more out of proportion.

One thing was for certain; Shouta needed to find a way out of this mess.