Reincarnation was a bitch. Not the good kind, like a dog, or even a girl who rode you until you were seeing stars - just the bad kind, like a dog with rabies or a former friend who skips your birthday in favor of a party with far too much alcohol and way too many naked bodies.

Not that she would know, she didn't exactly get out enough to have friends who would do that to her, before.

Everything was Before and After.

Before she was almost an adult and now look at her.

After going through the process of being born all over again, she was pretty firmly in the newborn baby clothing section at a supermarket.

She was excited about being able to wear cute kids clothing again, not going to lie. Have you seen the little dresses with cute cats on? The mittens? If she could stay small enough to wear kids clothing her entire life she'd probably kiss her ancestors on the cheek for giving her a small stature.

This contradicted with her want to be tall, but until the adult section started making cute clothing, she wouldn't so much as glance in their direction, damnit.

Anyway. Reincarnation.

She had believed in it half-heartedly, Before. To be honest, it hadn't taken her long to figure out what was going on after being ejected from the warm place.

Breathing for herself was hard to get used to, especially with all the fuss.

She just wanted to crawl back up and-

Yeah, on second thought maybe not.

She'd just have to weather the storm and try not to offend her parents by making her first word 'fuck', like her last word.

...Long story.

Maybe she'd get lucky and be rich this time around! If she had anything over a billion though the moment she's put in charge of her inheritance she's donating it all to charity.

There were so many languages she wanted to learn! She didn't know where or when she had been born this time, so maybe she'd get to learn Russian or something.

Hopefully, she hadn't been born in the 1600s to peasants, but considering the blurry lights and sounds she suspected she was in a hospital or at the very least a well-lit bathroom.

She just had to wait and see, then.

She had forgotten about vaccinations. While very, very, glad she had been born to parents who seemed to care about her health and well being, she also loathed not being able to move enough to have a say in what was going on.

Lots of tears were shed. Her mother did enough shouting on her own, it was the actual child's turn to be the noisy one, damn her.

That was definitely something she had noticed about her house. Two parents, and lots of swearing from the one she had identified as her mother.

She assumed it was swearing anyway, her hearing was still kind of fuzzy and she couldn't make out language yet.

The woman didn't seem to be shouting at her husband or at her, which was nice. She didn't react well to shouting, and if it was directed at her she would get extremely emotional.

She cried when she was angry, and she was not a pretty crier.

Her feelings about her new parents were complicated. She wasn't sure she liked them just yet.

Shouting and large men freaked her out. Can you imagine how it feels to be a baby in the arms of a giant man, completely helpless and at their whim?

Logically, she knew he wouldn't drop her or do anything to hurt her. Her father seemed to be kind and gentle, and even her mother, yelling and all was soft with her.

Babies tended to have that effect, she supposed.

As she grew, her hearing and sight improved rapidly. By now she could understand that her parents were speaking Japanese and that the noises her mother made were indeed swearwords.

It was the first thing she wanted to learn in any language. Unfortunately, they didn't make picture books for cursing.

She had a good few nouns memorized, and that combined with her ability to read hiragana from Before made it surprisingly easy to get through her reading with zero stumbles.

She even found out her name! Katsuki. It sounded pretty, and she wondered if the 'tsuki' was written as 'moon'. The only 'ka' she could remember was 'mosquito', and she really hoped she was called mosquito-moon. Before, her given-name had meant 'bird'. Not very exciting.

(She would later find out that her name was written with the kanji for 'win' and 'self'. She found this very appropriate.)

She had been gaining more awareness of her own body lately.

Relearning to use her hands was annoying, but it was nothing when compared to her legs.

She wanted to walk!

She'd barely mastered crawling, and going by her parents' expressions, she had mastered it a bit too early. Still, she wouldn't mind being thought of as a child genius if she could just get her fucking legs to move their goddamn selves into a proper standing position.

Another thing she had sort-of expected, but still found annoying was that her parents seemed to be under the impression she was a boy.

She had realized this very early on, considering the decoration choices of her room, and the extra body part she seemed to have acquired when she was in the dark space.

Katsuki didn't know if transgender rights were a thing here. She didn't know when she was, and her only guess for a location was Japan. Until she figured it out, she would likely have to stick to male clothes which.

Okay, she wasn't pleased with that? But. Dinosaurs were pretty cool and they did come in colors. If she had to wear the colors that usually hung about in the men's section she would go mad.

Anyway, once she was an adult she could do what she wanted, and as long as she stuck to androgynous clothing she should be free of social stigma.

God, that was depressing. Here's hoping she's 100 years in the future and they've sorted out prejudice while she's been in limbo.

Her first word was indeed 'fuck'. Her parents were confused by the fact that their baby seemed to know how to curse in English.

Teething. She didn't feel like extrapolating on the subject.

Walking was a bitch, but not as much of a bitch as reincarnation.

She knew that cursing it was probably just going to make it worse, but fuck this.

The TV had been too blurry to watch before, but now that she was set up in a playpen in view of her parents, she could see it.

She could see fucking All Might on the goddamn news.

She had something of a midlife crisis, before realizing that in her case, it would be a newlife crisis. It didn't help.

She felt sorry for her parents having to deal with a hysterically sobbing baby that would occasionally burst into giggles because, really, newlife crisis.

Awful.

After that, she started paying more attention to her surroundings.

Finding out her last name was a bitch and a half.

She didn't particularly want to be kidnapped, thank you very much.

(Although, since she was a different person and not as aggressive, maybe she wouldn't be? A thought for later.)

Not only did she have to deal with the fact that she'd been reincarnated into a universe with superpowers, she also had to deal with the fact that she was meant to be one of the main characters of a story that wasn't meant to be real.

Fuck, at least she wasn't Todoroki. Poor son of a bitch.

(He'd be what, a couple months old right now? Goddamn.)

Katsuki wasn't really the planning type, and she didn't particularly feel like intervening with the plot all that much. Sure, there were things she could theoretically make better, but she didn't want to end up in a lab or worse, in all for one's clutches. So. She'd just take things as they come. Maybe make friends with Izuku because let's be honest, that boy was an angel.

Her inner All Might was disapproving of her choice to not act, but she wasn't selfless. She even had 'self' in her name, damn it.

Besides, children should leave adult stuff to adults. It wasn't her problem.