Chapter Text
Nate was, in a word, average. And he hates that word more than anything else. So when his crush Katie used that word when he and his friends were gathering bugs in the woods, he kinda lost it and marched into the woods to find the biggest, weirdest bug and show it off.
“Average, I’ll show you average. I’ll beat you over the head with average.” He climbs over a fence, blatantly ignoring the danger signs. “I just have to go deeper into the woods.” A bright light grabs his attention. A strange bug! “Yes! Come here you little weirdo!” Unfortunately, wildly running around in mountaintop woods can prove… deadly.
Nate opens his eyes and sighs in relief. “Thought I was a goner there. Stupid tree root.”
“Excuse me! You there, the dead one! Move along please!”
Nate turns, startled by the sudden loud noise to see some kind of djinn in a suit. “Wait, what?” He looks down at his body, now translucent and blue. “I’m dead?! Is this the afterlife?! Am I in the bad place?”
“Please form a single file line!”
Nate looks up to find lots of other people with the same translucent, blue and obviously dead problem he has forming a line and deadpans. “Bureaucracy? In the afterlife? This has to be hell.”
Nate spent the entire time in line worrying about his family. What would they think? What would his friends think? He was pretty deep in the woods too, they might not even find his body. “And your name is…”
Nate looks up to find himself at the front of the line. “Uh, Nate Adams?”
The djinn behind the desk sighs. “Your yokai name.”
“I don’t know how any of this stuff works, so just call me whatever. AS LONG AS IT'S NOT AVERAGE!” If Nate is going to be forced to spend his afterlife as some folk legend undead spirit thing, he’s not gonna be stuck with some blah name.
“Hmm. Above average huh? Inspironi it is. Next!”
After that, Nate was put into another room where he was sucked through a weird machine and spat back out. He appeared way more solid now, but he looked way different. His skin was now a bright red, his nails, both on his feet and hands were black and sharp, his hair was black and spikier than normal and he had a golden horn coming out of the side of his forehead. Even his clothes changed, going from his normal clothes to a black gi with a red belt, and on his feet were traditional wooden geta. In his hand was a black bug net, the pole leading to the end covered in small spikes.
A weird instinct takes over and he strikes a pose, swinging the big net over his shoulder and putting a fist to his chest with a smug grin, revealing most of his tether were sharper and his canines were longer. “Inspironi!”
Some kind of camera headed thing takes his photo. “Nice medal photo! Next!”
After getting his yokai medal and being told what it is and how it works, Nate is met with the suited djinn he met first. “Inspironi, you will now begin the human communication course, and immediately begin inspiriting humans with your ability.”
“Wait, I just go straight back to the human world?! Yes! What is my ability though?”
The djinn thinks for a moment. “Well, you can use your bug net to catch people's insecurities and boost their self esteem, and you can knock people out of a funk if they feel down and emphasize their unique features.” He knocks Nate (or Inspironi) off a ledge. “Off you go!”
Inspironi screams on his way down. “So far I hate being dead!”
Back on Mt Wildwood, Katie is searching for Nate. “Nate! Nate! Where are you?! Huh?” She comes across a large tree with a prize ball machine sticking out of it. “What’s a prize ball machine doing in the woods?” She steps closer to check it out when a mysterious voice speaks.
“Feed me.”