Chapter Text
It was a hot summer Saturday morning, and Todoroki Shouto was out for his daily morning run.
Usually, he would have one or more of his Class 1-A classmates joining him to keep pace, but today the dorms were dead silent. Everyone else was far too exhausted from the late-night movie marathon they had hosted in the common room. In the spirit of Halloween—or so Mina and Kaminari had insisted—they had stayed up until three in the morning watching Scream and various other American horror films on Netflix. Shouto, however, wasn't a big fan of staying up late; he had always been a dedicated morning person.
So was Bakugou Katsuki, his spiky-haired classmate and surprisingly steady training partner. Yet, when Shouto had offered to run together earlier that morning, the explosive boy’s response was anything but friendly. “I would rather drop dead than be seen running anywhere near you, you icy-hot idiot!” Bakugou had snorted, punctuating his refusal by hurling a heavy textbook straight at Shouto’s head. Well, at least Shouto could say he had tried.
The sun-drenched pathways lining the city streets were mostly empty, save for the occasional car humming past in the distance. As the rhythm of his breathing synchronized with his footsteps, Shouto found himself passing a charming local cat café. Curiosity piqued, he backtracked a few paces to peer through the clear glass window. Inside, several adorable fur balls were perched lazily on towering cat trees. Right in front of him, a pristine white Persian cat was curled up inside a mushroom-shaped wooden enclosure. Shouto gently pressed his palm against the glass, imagining how soft and dense the creature's fur would feel under his fingers. He briefly considered stepping inside for a moment, but he had left his wallet behind in his dorm room and was nowhere near finished with his morning route. With a soft, reluctant sigh, he pulled his hand away from the cool glass and resumed his run.
He was just about to round a familiar corner when he accidentally bumped into a young girl and her father, who were walking toward the neighborhood park across the street. The moment the little girl collided with Shouto’s leg, a sudden, blinding flash of light pierced his vision before dissolving into a swarm of shimmering, sparkling dots. When his sight finally cleared, the girl was bowing repeatedly in deep apology while her father did the same, offering embarrassed excuses. Shouto politely assured them that he was completely fine, apologized for not watching his step, and carried on with his exercise.
By now, he was only fifteen minutes away from the Heights Alliance dorms. The surrounding streets were beginning to swell with morning traffic, and the summer sun was growing intensely hot. Normally, the rising temperature wouldn't bother Shouto in the slightest due to the natural cooling power of his ice Quirk. However, something felt deeply wrong. His body wasn't regulating its internal temperature properly; instead, he was heating up exponentially by the minute, and his peripheral vision was starting to blur with dizziness.
Within five minutes, Shouto’s steady jog had degraded into a sluggish, heavy walk. The heat rushing through his skin felt searing and unbearable, almost as if invisible flames were licking at his body from the inside out. Suddenly, a sharp scream shattered the quiet neighborhood air.
Instincts taking over, the hero-in-training immediately snapped into action. He dropped into a balanced fighting stance and scanned the street for the source of the distress. A frantic old lady was pointing down the block, shouting that a purse snatcher had just grabbed her bag and was making a break for it. Shouto instinctively tried to summon a path of ice to glide across the asphalt and close the distance, but nothing happened—not even a frost pattern on the ground. Panicking slightly, he reached for his left side to ignite his fire, only to find his flames equally unresponsive.
Relying entirely on his physical conditioning, Shouto broke into a desperate full sprint toward the thief. He was closing in quickly, but the perpetrator suddenly took a sharp turn into a narrow, dark alleyway connected to a fast-food restaurant. Shouto skidded around the corner, his eyes sharp as he caught a faint flash of movement hiding behind a rusted metal dumpster.
He cautiously stepped forward to investigate, but as he rounded the dumpster, the space was completely empty. A sudden chill went down his neck as he felt a dark presence hovering directly behind him. He whipped his head around to defend himself, but he was far too slow.
SMACK. CRUNCH. THUMP.
Shouto’s head slammed violently against the concrete floor. The searing internal heat he had felt earlier surged back up his spine with agonizing intensity. As the brief spike of adrenaline faded, a thick, warm stream of blood trickled down his forehead; he had clearly been struck with a heavy, blunt weapon. The pain became torturous, forcing his vision to dark edges. With heavy, drooping eyelids, Shouto listened to the fading sound of panicked footsteps echoing down the alley before he finally succumbed to the darkness, slipping into an uncomfortable, deep unconsciousness on the filthy floor.
When Shouto finally woke up, a throbbing ache echoed through his head, his side, and his left limbs. The last clear memory he had was chasing down the thief who had robbed the elderly woman.
Now, all he could focus on was the agonizing pain in his body and the biting, freezing cold of the ground beneath him. When he tried to stretch his leg, it felt horribly stiff and awkward, pinned down by a heavy weight. Looking around, he realized he was trapped beneath a dense shroud of blue fabric—the exact shade of his favorite running shirt.
Confused, he looked down at his limbs to assess the damage, only to freeze in sheer shock. Where his left leg should have been, there was an extremely small, fluffy feline leg.
Pure panic flooded his mind. He scrambled to look at his hands, only to discover a pair of delicate, fluffy paws. Panic surging further, his eyes scanned the rest of his frame, taking in a coat of soft white fur splashed with distinct ginger markings on his left side. The horrifying realization hit him all at once: he had been turned into a cat. His heart, already racing from fear, pounded wildly against his tiny, fragile ribcage. What was he supposed to do? How could he reverse this Quirk effect? How could he possibly communicate to his classmates and Aizawa-sensei that he was alive and needed help?
Forcing himself to breathe, Shouto gathered his composure. He reasoned that if he could just drag himself back to the UA campus, he could somehow catch someone's attention and get help.
With a determined effort, the tiny bi-colored cat wriggled his way out through the neck hole of his discarded shirt. Emerging into the open alley, he realized night had already fallen. Hours must have passed while he was unconscious, turning his early morning run into a late-night nightmare.
Shouto took a few tentative steps on all fours, but his balance was completely off, causing him to stumble awkwardly into the brick wall. He tried to inspect the wounds on his legs, but his new, shorter neck made it impossible to see his lower body properly. Suppressing the sharp winces of pain shooting through his limbs, he took several more experimental steps, slowly adjusting to the mechanics of walking on four paws. Once he felt stable enough, the small cat set off on the long journey back to his school.
It felt like hours had passed as he trekked through the dark streets. The pain in his small legs grew agonizing, leaving faint trails of blood on the pavement with every limping step. To make matters worse, Shouto was starving, his tiny stomach rumbling painfully. Any normal kitten would have given up or curled up in a corner to sleep, but Shouto possessed an unyielding stubbornness and heroic determination. Still, his ambitious plan to reach UA before sunrise was starting to feel like a distant dream. His small paws dragged heavily along the rough asphalt, and the blood trickling from his head wound was beginning to dry, clogging his left ear and matting his shiny, dual-colored coat.
As he dragged himself past a local butcher shop across the street, his stomach twisted with hunger. The idea crossed his mind to sneak inside and steal a scrap of meat just to survive the night. However, before he could even reach the curb, a massive German Shepherd burst out from a nearby driveway, barking and howling furiously at the tiny trespasser.
Frightened by the booming noise, a surge of raw animal instinct flared within Shouto. His tiny body reacted automatically, fleeing from the danger despite his severe injuries. He sprinted as fast as his four small legs could carry him, driving himself forward with a single goal in mind: reaching the safety of UA.
When the massive, towering metal gates of UA High finally came into view through the darkness, a wave of profound relief washed over him. But the moment his goal was achieved, the last drop of his adrenaline vanished completely. His exhausted, battered little body gave out, and Shouto collapsed onto the cold ground just outside the gates, darkness taking over his vision once more.