Wow. (Dusts off fic) It's been a long time since I've posted anything here.

Well, here goes. Enjoy!

-Spirit

Elementary school passed with me spending a lot of time in a fish tank.

Unfortunately, I didn't transform into a lungfish every time I became a fish. Hagakure's increasingly confused body language was evident every time we walked to the same place we had collided before, and then we part ways, with her asking about my quirk while I just said that I didn't know what it was.

Because, honestly, I didn't.

I mean, what kind of quirk did all of this random crap to me? Summoning dragons? Turning me into a fish? Making it snow? Turning me into a fish? Summoning a punchy ghost that likes to go after people in white vans when they offer my candy? Turning me into a fish?

It was exhausting, trying to be normal. Still, the children in school remembered that one incident and never let it go.

But now, it wasn't just that one incident anymore.

I had cycled through clownfish, zebra fish, butterfish, something that looked like a magikarp, and a baby dolphin.

The baby dolphin had some of the girls in class swoon over my visage for a while (which was awkward as hell), but soon even the most animal crazed population of our class lost interest after I remained in that idiotic, wrinkled grey form for over an hour.

Still, I was known as the insignificant and troublesome kid that every school had. Hagakure still kind of stuck around, but made to avoid me when we were actually in school.

After all, why stick around with the most worrisome kid in the grade when their social status was still relatively afloat?

And every day, I trudged home, clothes damp (though at this point, I had gotten used to it), with pedestrians giving me a slight birth to avoid the smell of frozen fish.

I would take a shower, get rid of the fish smell, and then just collapse onto my bed because every day was so exhausting.

Homework waited until after dinner, when I would drag myself to my desk and scrawl out some chicken scratch and call it "poetry" for our Japanese class.

It wasn't too bad of a life. It was just very inconvenient and tiring.

And eventually, life faded into a monotonous grey.

…

Ironically, it was animals that made me understand my plight at the end of third grade. Specifically it was cats. Things that liked to prey on what I was for approximately a quarter of the day.

Maybe I still smelled like fish after being one for six hours. Maybe it was just the fact that I was a human. Maybe it was because this particular cat had a minor intelligence quirk.

Either way, the cat had it firmly in mind that human = food provider.

No exceptions.

Meow. A tabby cat, with well kept fur walked out from an alleyway, very consciously avoiding trash cans and other instances of refuse from human society.

I felt my bag get heavier. Looking inside, I saw the dreaded sight of brown pellets of cat food slowly fill my bag.

Meow. Another insistent mewl drew my attention from my bag to the cat that had its paws cutely clasped together in a begging motion.

I slowly walked away. My bag was really heavy now, for my nine year old body's wimpy arms to support.

Fine. I muttered, tilting my bag and pouring out the cat food in it. I was going to have to empty this bag anyways.

To my horror, the food kept coming. A veritable mountain formed under my bag, my folders and books spilling out amidst the cat food.

The cat's eyes lit up, before pouncing on the food and letting out an ear-splitting yowl.

Nyaaaaah~~~

Cats of all shapes and colors flooded out of the alleyways, answering their ringleader's call. They looked at me pouring a backpack full of cat food onto the ground.

The leader (the tabby cat that had first appeared), looked up, somehow realized that my supply of cat food was infinite, and stood up with both hind legs, paws stretched towards the sky.

Without anything else to do, I quickly dug out my binders and my solitary math textbook, before hugging it to my chest and dragging my heavy backpack with me, making my escape.

The cats followed.

…

"And reports of a supposed "Cat Cult" made entirely of stray cats have been ruminating across Japan, with the felines in question raising their paws in the air, praying…?"

The sounds of the television blared through my house, my father relaxing and drinking coffee on the sofa while my mother engrossed herself in another novel.

I crept outside, peering outside of my door.

No furballs in sight. I took this as a sign that they had lost interest in me and crept forward, approaching the stairwell.

I looked over it cautiously. Still no cats. Good.

I placed my toes on the steps leading downwards, before slowly transferring my weight onto the steps and making sure that my shoes made no noise on the concrete stairs. There was a small scraping sound, and I winced.

I peeked over the handles of the stairwell again. No cats yet.

I sighed in relief, before taking more steps in slow, measured movements. I held my breath surreptitiously, even if the attempt at minimizing noise through breathing just made me uncomfortable and didn't really achieve anything, in hindsight.

I almost tripped down the last two steps and caught myself by grabbing onto the metallic railings of the stairs. My heart almost leapt out of my chest, but I managed to take many deep breaths and calm down.

Then, with a piteous whine, my sweaty hand slid down the metal bar.

Oh no. I cursed inwardly, before-

Meow?

An inquisitive cat head peered up at me from beneath the stairs, and then made some motion with its head, ears twitching.

The sound of cats scrabbling up stairs soon greeted my ears, and I ran up the two flights of stairs, throwing myself upwards with great bounds and leaps, my attempts at stealth completely forgotten.

At last, I jiggled the unlocked door to my apartment open, slid inside, and kicked the door shut from my position on the floor. My backpack, somehow full of cat food again, spilled onto the floor.

I couldn't even go outside anymore. Anytime that I did, that same damn tabby cat would be waiting at the floor of the apartment, yowl and attract all of its comrades, and then pursue me relentlessly.

Judging by the feral glint in their eyes, they probably didn't have good intentions. Did I anger the cats by inflating their economy with cat food or something?

"Hey brat." My brother said, drawling from the entrance of his room. "What are you up to? You've gone outside and then ran back multiple times."

"The cats." I said, a haunted look in my dull eyes. "They're everywhere."

"Well, my quirk is telling me that they're not actually trying to main you, and… what? One of them understands Japanese?"

"Your quirk can let you copy the thoughts of animals? I thought it was only people."

"I wish." My brother said, scoffing. "Anyways, you should be able to yell through the door and negotiate. Tell the weirdly intelligent tabby cat that you're willing to negotiate, and that my quirk can help you understand them."

I nodded.

"Tabby cat! I've come to bargain!" I shouted.

My brother facepalmed. "They're cats. Stop talking to them like they're an eldritch god."

…

It was rather uncomfortable, leaning against a door, wearing an old set of my dad's fencing equipment. Hopefully the metal mesh of the mask and the tough cloth of the suit would protect me from claws.

Through relaying the tabby cat's surprisingly coherent thoughts (though 20 percent of it was about food), we managed to stop the cats pursuing us, in exchange for the self appointed "high priestess" of "the incarnation of Hachiman, god of plenty" (Or said equivalent in cat language).

My parents obliged, seeing the ridiculous situation that I was in and the horde of cats infront of our door.

That night, "High Priestess" shivering in discomfort from a bath, I fell asleep with a singular thought in mind.

"Maybe my quirk wasn't as random as I thought it was."

…

My quirk was actually not trying to assassinate me anymore.

Following the revelation, I had found that by simply acting with more confidence, I was slowly turning into a fish less. Eventually, I had stopped entirely, and spent the days remaining in third grade entirely normally. Somehow, I had… friends? Other kids stopped avoiding me, and even my occasional fish episode resulted in me turning into a more dignified animal.

It felt… nice.

But as I came home one day, I just felt so… stiff and fake, something ingenuine.

I tried to relax and stop acting so pompous and dramatic, but that didn't feel right, either. Something was pushing me to be more dramatic, to act with more flair and confidence.

And at that point, I realized that my quirk wasn't just turning me into a fish and giving me the ability to summon random monsters.

It was to act on other people's expectations. To copy them and reshape myself based on other people's whims. And I felt like a pillow squashed between two boulders, the cumulation of two opposing expectations.

And the next day, I woke up, the cat that was the cause of my rise in "confidence" staring at my face. I shooed her off of my bed, rubbed my face, and put on my best smile.

If I was to be reshaped by the beliefs of others, I may as well be on the positive side of that spectrum.

A short chapter, but it's the gateway into the plot.

If you managed to find this tiny spot of the internet that I inhabit, and actually made it this far, then congrats! Leave a review to tell me what you think!