Chapter Text
It was a pretty average day for Voice Hero: Present Mic; he had created many headaches (literal), received many headaches (metaphorical), and was about to inflict tinnitus on a not-inconsiderable number of people. This last part was due to an ongoing fight rather than any ill-will on his part, and honestly? Coming away from a fight with Present Mic with only tinnitus showed a level of self-control that he had worked really very hard for, thank you very much. And despite what many people might think, he wasn’t tired from the fight! He wasn’t tired from the night broadcast of Put Your Hands Up!, he wasn’t tired from marking essays and finishing his lesson plans for the coming week! All of those things together, however… Let’s just say that he was really hoping he could wrap this fight up quickly so he could collapse on his couch as soon as possible. Actually, Shouta’s place was closer – he could collapse on his couch and that would have the added benefit of giving him an audience to theatrically complain to. Unfortunately, the villains he was fighting apparently hadn’t gotten the memo that it was supposed to be an average day for him, and instead of being quickly and efficiently captured in time for Mic to crash at his best friend and definitely-not-his-long-time-crush’s place, they had turned him into a cat.
He didn’t realise that was what had happened at first – it would be a pretty wild conclusion to jump to. No, originally he just thought he’d overdone it and collapsed on the job. That was a much more reasonable inference to make when the floor was suddenly very close to his face. This is where he made his second reasonable inference – he was in no fit state to continue this fight. Thankfully, he had been responding to an alert rather than on any kind of mission, which meant that other heroes in the area would be turning up any second now he just happened to be first on the scene. Hopefully, the other heroes would be well-rested and more capable of handling this job. He was overtired and feeling the call of Shouta’s couch. That’s all (that wasn’t all). It was the paws that gave it away. Usually, when Mic looked down, he saw hands and feet. Two of each, if the day was going well. When he looked down now, he saw paws. Four of each. The day was not going well.
Oh God, he was a cat. A cat. He was a cat and he was on the street, far from home. Thank god four legs were faster than two or he might not have gotten away from that villain fight in one piece! Everything was so big now; a café had no business towering over him like a castle. He huddled next to a bin, (also towering over him) as shoes almost as big as he was went flying by on whatever errands they were doing with enough force to send his new body flying. This was made extra stressful by the fact that he was struggling to hear any of the footsteps that he knew were all around him. He could feel them; the impact vibrations moving up through his paw-pads and the whoosh of air displacement against his whiskers and fur meant he felt as though he was standing in the middle of a busy highway.
This was horrible, this was awful, and he wanted to cry - he could feel his chest rumble with the noise, but the most his ears could pick up was distant-sounding, nasally wail. He tried again, this time trying to inject some of his quirk into the noise, but whilst he certainly seemed to be louder, it didn’t feel anything like his quirk did when activated. It did cause a couple of shoes near him to flinch, and suddenly he realised that he had garnered quite a bit of attention as a small circle started to form around him. He felt the fur across his back stand on end and the strange sensation of his ears swiveling back. He looked up at the people around him, like a collection of Mt. Lady rip-offs and he decided that he’d make himself scarce as a few hands started descending towards him. He didn’t care that they probably meant well – he’d rather not end up in an animal shelter just yet.
Thankfully, running on four legs seemed to come quite naturally, and he found himself able to dodge in and out of the forest of legs with ease and quickly scurried away to hide behind a potted bush decorating the outdoor seating area of a nice restaurant. Okay, he needed to come up with a plan. Someone would have arrived at the fight scene he’d been caught in, and whether the fight was over by now or not it wouldn’t be long until someone found his hero costume along with his personal belongings. Once that happened they’d start looking for him. If the fight was over and the villains had lost, then whoever had hit him with this quirk would be taken in and the possibility of him being turned into a cat would be something the authorities would be aware of. If they hadn’t lost, then his hero costume and belongings would be found but they wouldn’t have any reason to believe he was stuck as a cat. The villains, however, would know what they were looking for and Hizashi didn’t feel like being found. Not by the likes of them. Would they try to ransom him? Kill him? Use him as a bargaining chip? He would much rather someone on his side found him, whether they recognised him or not. Even if he was stuck as a cat, if he was surrounded by heroes, he would be in significantly less danger than if he was wandering the streets. So, his best bet was to sneak into either his agency or UA as a cat and stay there until either: the quirk wore off, the villains were apprehended, or someone figured out what had happened. Also, animal shelters tended to have some very sensible spay and neuter programs that he’d rather not fall foul of. His first order of business, then, would be to figure out what street he was on and head to whichever of his options was closest.
He shook himself a little and then crawled out from behind the potted plant and started trotting off in search of a street sign that could give him an idea of his current location. The good news was that he found the sign quite quickly! The bad news was that he didn’t recognise it. He headed for a subway entrance next, hoping that one of the larger maps there would help, but it turns out that having to look at one of those maps from less than a foot up from the ground and without his glasses rendered it gibberish. Lashing his tail and growling low in his throat Hizashi cursed his luck before turning and heading into the subway – his ears could just about pick up the tinny sound of the announcements but not enough to understand them, which meant he was left with reading the destination of incoming trains at the platform as they scrolled across the screen, which was only just legible. After almost half an hour he finally saw one that would take him within a mile of UA and he could barely contain his relief as he hopped into the train carriage. He noticed a couple of people taking photos of him and a few looked like they were giggling – he supposed it wasn’t every day you saw a cat traveling unattended on the train, and he was sitting in a seat like a regular passenger but that was just so that he could see the screen! He didn’t want to risk missing his stop and he wasn’t confident he’d hear the announcement.
It didn’t take long to reach his stop but his relief was quickly squashed when he leapt off out of the carriage only to find the floor of the station was wet. The fur all along his body prickled with the uncomfortable sensation of cold wet concrete under his sensitive paw-pads and now that he was out of the carriage he could smell the scent of rain on the air. This day just wouldn’t give him a break! A quick check of the subway exit showed a deluge of rainwater running down the steps to the station and Hizashi resigned himself to waiting out the rain inside. He wasn’t walking a mile in that! Not barefoot (barepawed?) either way, it wasn’t happening! With a self-pitying meow, he headed back into the station and tried to make himself comfortable on one of the metal benches. He wasn’t very successful and soon started grumbling to himself as his tail flicked back and forth in agitation. He watched it briefly – he seemed to have kept some resemblance to his human form if the long, silky gold fur was anything to go by. Out of curiosity he lifted one of his paws and turned it over to see the pink pawpads, still wet with rain. With a flex, he unsheathed his claws and then retracted them again. With a sigh, he tucked the paw back underneath his tail in an attempt to fend off the cold.
A touch on his back had him howling and spinning around, claws out once again, only to immediately retract them as he recognised the figure in front of him.
“Ayo Shouta, my man!” He yowled, padding closer, his tail raised in welcome.
His friend crouched down in front of the bench so they were eye-to-eye and offered a hand for Hizashi to sniff. Hizashi skipped the sniffing and went straight for the headbutt and was rewarded with a scratch behind the ears.
“Sorry I scared you,” Shouta said, and thankfully his capture weapon was looped loosely enough that Hizashi could still lip-read.
“It’s fine!” Hizashi said, rubbing his head against his friend’s hand, “I just didn’t hear you come up behind me.”
He knew Shouta wouldn’t be able to understand him, but it was second nature to reply – he would have felt weird if Shouta said something to him and he just…stayed silent.
“What are you doing out here?” Shouta asked, reaching out with his other hand so he could scratch both ears at once.
“Oh, Shouta it’s awful!” Hizashi said, glad he could vent his bad day to his friend, even if his friend couldn’t understand him, “I’ve been turned into a cat! A cat, Shouta! And I don’t have my hearing aids or my glasses! Do you have any idea how difficult it is to navigate this city when you’re this small and struggling to see and hear? It’s impossible!”
Shouta was nodding along with a soft smile on his face as Hizashi yowled all of this at him; “The floor is wet, Shouta! I’m not wearing any shoes! And there might be villains after me!” As he said this, Mic realised that he had bigger issues than just complaining about his awful day to his crush, “you need to take me to UA, I’m not safe out here!”
Mic was so busy yowling that he didn’t notice as one of Shouta’s hands gently lifted off his head where he had been petting him to click his fingers loudly next to one of his ears.
“Are you deaf, kitty?” Shouta asked, his brow furrowing.
“Yes, Shouta!” Mic meowed, “And I don’t have my glasses!”
“Whoever let you outside’s very irresponsible,” Shouta said, running a hand over Hizashi’s head as he gave him a more thorough look-over, “you’re too clean to be a stray.”
“I should hope so,” Hizashi grumbled.
“No collar either,” Shouta said, eyes narrowing.
Hizashi decided it was time to use his theatrical talents and collapsed to the side to roll onto his back yowling, “I’m struggling, Shouta! Would you really leave a deaf and collarless cat to fend for himself in this awful weather?” Shouta scratched him under the chin as Mic continued, “Come on! Don’t leave me in this train station! Take me somewhere with central heating already!” He started batting playfully at Shouta’s hoodie string to hammer home how sweet and playful a cat he was.
“Come here, kitty,” Shouta said, finally, scooping him and holding him close to his chest.
Mic tried to show his appreciation by purring, but without hearing it was hard to tell if he was doing it right – he knew he was making a noise because he could feel the vibration in his chest, but he didn’t know if it was a purr. Also, he was still talking; “I don’t even care if I have to sleep in the teachers’ lounge, anything’s better than out here! Do you have any idea how big bugs are compared to me now?”
“You’re a chatty catty, aren’t you?” He replied, and now as well as lipreading, Mic could feel the vibrations of the words through Shouta’s chest as well, and something about that was making him feel a little flustered.
“Aha, yeah! That’s me!” Mic replied, ears flicking nervously, “bet you think it’s cuter now I look like this, huh?”
“Let’s get you somewhere warm and dry, yeah?”
“YEAH!” Mic replied and felt the shake of Aizawa’s laugh against his chest, which made him want to purr louder as he was carried to the subway exit. He and Aizawa both looked up at the still pouring sky and before Hizashi realised what was happening he was being carefully shoved into his crush’s hoodie, which was then zipped up behind him. Now, Hizashi wasn’t too proud to admit that he had imagined being held against this particular chest on more than one occasion, however, even despite being trapped in the form of an animal he could say that reality far outweighed imagination. Maybe it was because he’d had such a tough day, maybe it was because he was currently small enough to be fully enclosed in Aizawa’s hoodie, but he felt so warm and safe and cared for that had he been human he would have been in real danger of crying as he curled up against Shouta’s broad chest and poked his head out of the neck of his hoodie so he could look up at him, one of his paws shifting out to balance against his friend’s chest and landing right over his heart so he could feel the gentle reverberation of it beating.
“I love you,” he meowed, as quietly as he could. Still scared to be heard even if he couldn’t be understood. But it did feel good to finally say it out loud.