Chapter 32: Ch 32: So how’s the family?

"HEY, Aizawa! Guess what?"

"What?"

"No, you have to guess"

Aizawa's eye twitched in annoyance at his friend's loud commentary while the other one laughed awkwardly, the three of them were currently having breakfast in a coffee shop since it was Aizawa's turn to choose where they were eating, The three friends or colleagues at this point, Shota Aizawa, Hizashi Yamada, and Sekijiro Kan, better known by their hero names, Eraserhead, Present Mic, and Vlad King respectively were having a normal conversation as usual.

It was their day off from work, they recently had joined the renowned high school of the U.A that they once attended as students, but now they were hired as teachers, Aizawa and Kan had gotten the roles of Homeroom teachers due to their particular sense of responsibility and high standards for hero work and ethics while Yamada ended up being the English teacher due to his proficiency on the language.

Aizawa tended to say that he got the short end of the stick by getting the responsibility of a whole class when he was a sleepy and lazy person by nature, but it was something that he was grateful for. He would rather beat into the kids the actual danger and meaning of being real heroes so that they do not end up being suicidal with the excuse of saving people or being unprepared for the harsh world that awaits them.

Aizawa sighed in defeat as he reluctantly spoke "The students gave you the cold shoulder gain because they didn't understand your pun that only works in English?"

"Guh!?" Yamada clutched his chest as if he was punched as he spoke with a stutter  " N-noOo... That's for a-another ti-ime"

"Good guess though" Kan added as he bit into his sandwich.

"So? what's got you so worked up today?" Aizawa sipped through his coffee as Yamada composed himself in a flash and grinned at him.

"Guess who jus-"

"I'm not guessing again"

"...Do you know who just became a father?" Aizawa shook his head half-interested as Yamada's smile widened.

"This Guyyyy RIGHT HERE!" He loudly declared as he pointed his two hands at Kan, who rubbed his neck a bit embarrassed about the situation.

"Oh, Congratulations" 

"Thanks!" Kan spoke with a bit more of an upbeat tone than usual, after a bit more congratulations from Yamada who asked with interest, it wasn't a regular day when one of your colleagues got a new kid.

"So? how's the pipsqueak as we speak?"

"Oh! she is an angel!! Here" Kan immediately wiped out his phone from his pocket and immediately started fiddling with it "Her name is Himiko, isn't she cute?" he showed them a photo of Himiko smiling while hugging a rubber girl a bit too hard for her to breathe properly.

"..."

"She is cute, but isn't she a bit big? What do you think Aizawa?" Yamada pointed out as Aizawa nodded along with him.

"Yeah, looks to be about eight years old" He simply looked at Kan with a bit of a puzzled expression "Any explanation?"

"I did my best!" Kan's statement earned a chuckle from Yamada and an extremely annoyed look from Aizawa.

"Alright alright, don't have to chew me out for making a joke, We adopted her, the whole process has just finished this week and it has been both grueling and satisfying" Kan explained as he continued to show even more photos of his daughter.

"Unexpected but wholesome THROUGH and THROUGH! As expected of you Kan!" Yamada said as he stared at the images with a slight smile.

"Good luck being a dad" Aizawa said as he drank the rest of his coffee.

"Thanks! I'll be the best dad ever!" Kan said as his competitive spirit came forth, making both of his colleagues smile at how he got fired up even for the smallest things.

Kan was a bit of a goof and not very good at socializing with others, but he is a very caring and good person at heart, he has shown goodwill and is a reliable individual with a deeply honorable line of principles that he abides by. His adoption of a daughter didn't really surprise anyone since it was a consideration for his wife, who at the time was weak because of her quirk.

She was in a situation where conceiving a child would make her health deteriorate drastically, but he was facing a bit of pressure since having an heir was something commonly done in his family, so Kan choose the option that would satisfy all the parties involved. It helped a great deal that Himiko just happened to have a quirk related to blood, making her a possible heir at the moment 

Aizawa and Yamada both heard of the whole story of how he had been in this relatively small trouble that just wanted to get bigger over time, how he was going to overcome it and how he found out about Himiko herself.

"Oh yeah that was on the news like two weeks ago, was it?" Yamada commented as he looked at Aizawa for a bit of backup.

"Don't look at me, I don't pay close attention to the news to know that"

"C'mon it was new because it had THE Mizushima" Yamada spoke loudly as Kan nodded in acknowledgment.

"Anything Mizushima does is a target for the media due to his popularity" Aizawa added as he remembered how the media was hungry for news and a quirkless police officer was one of their targets at all times "That's why I don't like the media anyways, too bothersome, he agreed with me as well"

"Well that's kind of the reason I got to know of Himiko, so I'm thankful to him, though he waved me off a lot by saying that it was his duty" Kan said as he remembered his encounter with the cold-looking police officer, who kindly took care of most of the paperwork, by making someone else do it for him.

"He's not a man of many words"

"Touché"

 

---

"You want us to call you by your name?"

Tomomi was intrigued by Toga's question, the three of them were currently hanging out in Toga's room in her new house, she had asked Tomomi and Oka to come to visit her after the whole affair of her adoption was completed, she felt rather safe around her friends, especially those two, so her new parents had allowed them to come and visit her.

Although Toga herself was dumbfounded at how easy it was to convince them, shouldn't they try to stop her from doing it? Say at least how she should act in front of them? Check her room before they came home? Of course, when she asked about it her parents about that, both of them had an indescribable expression of both anger and pity.

As soon as her friends came into the room and talked among themselves the topic of her name came out, it wasn't anything weird but Tomomi had a bit of trouble digesting the new information that technically speaking, she wasn't called Toga anymore because her surname changed, she didn't want to keep a reminder of her old parents so she wanted to have Vlad king's surname, Kan. Of course, it would take time to get used to. But she wanted her friends to call her by her name.

"Is it impossible?" Himiko's question made Tomomi whip her head so fast as she spoke.

"No no no! it was just for confirmation" She waved her hands around in denial as she continue to explain herself  "One doesn't call just anyone by their name like that! So I wanted to make sure I wasn't deluding myself into thinking that I qualified as that"

"You called me by name like the first time we met" Oka rebuked with a grin.

"I was under a lot of pressure..." Oka's face was dripping with skepticism which made Tomomi hesitate for a bit "...some pressure that I forgot how to speak properly and it kinda just stuck"

"Really?"

"...Yes"

"I'll choose to believe you, and I did not correct you, so it's okay" Oka ended while Tomomi wiped the sweat off her forehead with a sigh of relief.

"He he he~ Am I now in the first name club?" Himiko's question made both of them look at her, then at each other, their eyes transmitted information to each other before they nodded.

"Guess you are" Oka said with a wide smile.

"You are welcomed?" Tomomi was unsure of what to say about their 5-second club.

"Thanks!" Himiko tackled them both onto the bed where they remained hugging her for a minute. Some tears may have been shed by the ash-blonde girl but it was something they kept to themselves.

Tomomi herself understood that Himiko was supposed to be a villain, but she couldn't help to find him endearing and likable when she was not forced over the edge by her so-called family, she was still a bit mentally unwell, but how could she not? Having tolerated six years of negligence and abuse that was not helped by society looks on villainous quirks would do that to anyone.

Himiko had a fascination with blood, it wasn't to the point that she could cut someone just to make them more 'beautiful', but she would definitely hesitate to clean any blood with anything besides her tongue. So Tomomi decided to look out for her as she already did for Oka, there definitely would be some people who would hate her for that mere fact.

[Well having a Pro-hero be your dad is a big help on that]

Their hug ended once Tomomi unwrapped her arms that stretched around all three of them, with a satisfying whip sound as it returned to its original size, All three of them looked at each other before giggling before Himiko got their attention again by clearing her throat.

"I will get something red to match!!!" Himiko declared with a proud look that made Tomomi raise an eyebrow.

 Oka was a bit confused so she asked "What do you mean?"

"You know how Oka has her red scarf and you have that red band on your straw hat that you both wear all the time?" Both of them nodded before a look of understanding flashed on their face, "So I will get something similar, is that alright?"

"Of course it is! Also, you don't have to ask us if you honestly want to do something! right?" Oka turned to Tomomi who agreed.

"Yeah, as for the matching thing, my dad gifted both of these red things..." Tomomi seemed to think for a second before coming up with an idea "...So I will ask him about it, you know? to keep up tradition or something"

"Thanks!" 

Himiko was happy, too happy in fact, she had the fear that maybe it was all a dream, the ability to do what she wanted to do with her friends without having to mentally tell herself to try to act as normal as possible was rare to such degree that she questioned whenever or not she even deserved to be this carefree.

Shouldn't she try to make it up to her friends who helped her? Thank her parents for putting up with her demands of a room for herself? She was truly in a dilemma. Tomomi herself had a bit of a hard time mingling with her due to this, she wanted her to interact with him like she used to, she didn't want a Himiko to become a 'yes man' for her every opinion on anything just because she was grateful.

[Or would it be 'yes woman'? I would literally say yes to many women but I don't know how I feel about this]

Brushing aside her thoughts, it wasn't like Tomomi could do much to make Himiko not be grateful, she thought that brushing aside the whole thing with a 'no problem' or 'it wasn't that difficult' would undermine the sheer amount of trauma she had and lead her to downplay her problems to herself.

After an hour of talking among themselves, they got to have lunch at her house, it wasn't something too impressive but it was legitimately tasty, Ms. Kan was nice enough to research Tomomi's quirk and got her and served her an extra big portion of food on a bigger place than the rest of them.

It is common to go to doctors for checks ups on quirks at an early age even once you got one registered, it was mostly for monitoring and checking up on some side effects and random shenanigans that quirks tended to display or some other factor that might have slipped up on the initial assessment.

In Tomomi's case, her quirk is known to absorb and use nutrients of food at a better efficiency than normal, but on one of the check-ups, they discovered, or most likely added after continuous observation of behavior, that every single action that she takes depletes three times as much energy than a normal person, this includes things like running, moving and sleeping.

That meant that she had to eat at least two times as much food as a normal person if she was going to live normally, and that didn't even count if she was using her quirk actively, which she does.

Tomomi thanked Ms. Kan for her consideration and ate happily while watching Himiko interact with her new mother, the girl was awkward while stuttering because of shyness while Ms. Kan just unabashedly showered her with compliments and love. Himiko looked at her friends for help on what to do in these situations, only for both of them to simply nod in approval while continuing to eat, leaving her to figure it out on her own.

After lunch Himiko gave her friends a bit of a tour of her new house, she was also familiarizing herself with the new house but at least she knew its layout, the tour didn't reveal anything new to both of them but it was novel to see the house of a Pro-hero, it contained a few guestrooms, a training room, a study, a kitchen, and two bathroom for both of its floors.

Himiko laughed a the fact that they had to stop at the bathroom for the weirdest reason ever, even Oka was constantly chuckling at the fact that Tomomi was simply fascinated by something so simple.

"My kin" Tomomi said while looking straight into the eyes of a rubber duck, she was holding it at eye level before turning to Himiko "Can I keep this one?" She said in a serious tone while turning her hand so the duck also faced Himiko.

"Of course, you can have one! just give it a good home!" Himiko said while trying to contain her laugh at the unexpected.

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"Nice!" Tomomi said as took off her straw hat, put the duck on her head, and put it back on the straw hat as if nothing happened.

Himiko and Oka rolled their eyes as they continued onto to explore other rooms while Tomomi was left pondering on the specifics of the world. She was pretty sure that her 'hat dimension' wouldn't have worked had it been a less comedic and useless item, she certainly didn't feel the weight and volume of the duck on her head, it truly felt like it just disappeared.

[Duck's a good finding though]

Her interest in the rubber duck was genuine.

Eventually, they had to say goodbye for the day, there were only so many hours on the day and Tomomi and Oka had to go to their houses as per usual. A sentimental goodbye was shared among the three friends even though they were going to be seeing each other the next day at school.

Simply put, they were overjoyed that their friend was happy, nothing more, nothing less. She would go to school as a normal student with no worries about her future or how she has to act, she was free to do whatever she wanted. That part made Tomomi feel happy for her.

---

 

[2 years later | June 18, 2382]

Two whole years have passed since Tomomi, Oka, and Himiko had become best friends, and the three of them had formed their tight-knitted friend group, Tomomi was a bit taken aback when she noticed that she had fallen into the three-friend group phenomenon that kids would form, it was truly a dilemma for her on how it happened but it did and she was not ashamed of it.

She could, in fact, be wrong in some cases.

Himiko's situation had turned out for the better through that pair of years, her instincts had calmed down a bit thanks to the access to blood that was facilitated by Vlad King and common human decency. Of course, for other kids, it was weird at first due to the whole drinking occasionally a juice box of blood.

But kids even while confrontational on occasion understood that she needed blood to some degree, and showing off her quirk thankfully made the cool factor prevail over the scary one. Bullying for having a villain-type quirk was there but having a literal heir of a samurai and the daughter of the ex-chief of police helped to make them stop, even if it was while grumbling.

Himiko herself had built up her confidence over time thanks to Oka and Tomomi, especially in the realm of strength since she also trained her quirk to be a future hero, which was interesting, she was hyper-focused on the individuality of every person yet she had a pretty common dream.

Well she wanted to make her parents proud and apparently, Vlad King was very supportive of it, so she was getting trained by her dad, which technically made all three of them training freaks to some degree. Anyways, Himiko was a very bright and cheerful person.

She built her own opinions that often clashed with Tomomi's more wacky ones, tending to be a voice of reason in decision-making since Tomomi was very prone to being either too naive or impulsive, it generally didn't matter but Oka tended to just follow along Tomomi's shenanigans and just improvising from there while Himiko tried to reason with them on other choices they could make.

Tomomi was grateful for both of them, she was sure that she couldn't brush off 6 years of school like nothing if she had no friends knowing most of the curriculum from top to bottom would've made all of that time wasted.

At the current moment, it was exam season, they were going for their final exam for their certificate that they indeed had passed elementary school, Tomomi herself was revising some of the things that they were going to be on the exam so that she doesn't have any chance to fail it, normally she would just wing it since she already knew most of the stuff in them.

Well if you exclude History since she is now from Japan. Modern history because she was three centuries behind her current era. Biology due to quirks being a thing in here. and Literature since she was again Japanese. In short, half of the subject required a bit of study time but it was elementary school, literally just attending basically guaranteed you to pass.

Oka and Himiko also studied with her since they were the ones that actually were learning anything new, they, of course, were after school in a random park with concrete benches and tables, and not a lot of people tried messing with them since apparently, they gathered a reputation of being trouble makers.

[Now I wonder why we have that reputation]

"Oi Rubberband girl!"

"For fuck's sake! For the last time, I'm not a damn rubber band!"

Tomomi and her friend turned to the not-at-all annoying voice at the same time, Yoshihama and his group of cronies stood there, as they did before, but what caught their attention was that they had some extra people with them.

Throughout her time in school, she had developed some sort of hate-hate relationship with Yoshihama, the kid with a strength-based quirk that was powered by solar energy. She had technically started it but it was to simply stop them from bullying Oka, from there on out, she had some sort of bout with him every month.

It was annoying, to say the least, she wanted to just pummel him so hard that he never show his face to her ever again, but she couldn't do that to a kid, maybe if he was like 20 she would, but a kid with less than a decade of experience on existing probably didn't know any better than to be annoying to either grab her attention or show that he is superior to her.

Their bouts weren't always physical, his or her parents would be called if that was the case, instead, she opted to have to play different games with him like chess, this world version of UNO, and other miscellaneous tabletop games to decide a winner. This actually had to do with her faking some of her losses, and that he had no hope of beating her in a physical fight.

She didn't want the kid to develop some sort of inferior complex by her being seemingly better than him at everything, so the tabletop games were good devices for that. She DID NOT want a type of rivalry or even an emerging villain from this dude, she was pretty sure it would take a lot more than losing to a kid to make you a villain but this was a manga world, complete and understandable logic wasn't it forte and she wasn't taking any chances on this.

[Well I still beat him 60% of the time so that's that]

"The heck you want?" Tomomi asked the grinning Yoshihama who simply chuckled at her before pointing at her.

"Today is your lucky day! I have a proposal for you Muzushima" That statement made her frown and her friends simply raised an eyebrow at his words.

"Is he always like this?" Himiko asked Oka in a whisper.

"Nah, normally he would get his ass kicked or declare the type of duel they would have at this point" Oka said while carefully putting her katana case in front of her, it only had a wooden practice katana but it was better than nothing.

"You talking to me is already unlucky, What do you have to say to me?" Tomomi asked with distrust since he never really talked so grandiosely as if he already won.

"I heard you were going to a backwater middle school, so I propose you attend an ACTUAL decent school like this one" Yoshihama flicked his wrist sending a flyer at Tomomi which she cathed.

She unfolded the paper and read it out loud "Shikersu middle school huh? I thought that was supposed to be a high school?" She said while scratching her head.

"It is! but they recently expanded their range of influence to middle school, they have specialized hero classes to prepare for the jump to high school in their new private middle schools" Yoshihama said with confidence as he pointed at himself.

"And I'm definitely attending, I just thought I might invite you formally since you are the greatest foe I have encountered yet!" Yoshihama ended with a look of determination to her.

Tomomi had a complicated expression trough the whole explanation, it seemed like Yoshihama had genuinely invited them to something decent for the first time in his life, but she didn't like the idea, she had told her parents that she didn't want to go to these type of private schools since the amount of trouble they would cause for her so she was better off to go to a normal middle school.

"I... Think I'm good, What about you?" Tomomi asked the two girls behind her who didn't even take a second from their books.

"Mom told me only 'young masters' go to private middle school to become heroes, whatever that means" Oka said while shrugging.

"My dad works at U.A I can't betray him like that, but~ that information will be useful to mess with him for a day or two~" Himiko added while laughing for a bit.

"I guess thanks for the info? But we are not going there at any rate"

"What? you a-are declining!?" Yoshihama said with trembling eyes, he looked absolutely betrayed about how Tomomi dismissed the whole middle school thing.

[What did he expect? I can't even make that decision without consulting my mom anyways so why is he so hurt]

"Ha... You really are going to A BACKWATER school just like that? someone like you?" Yoshihama questioned her while still pointing at her, even his friends looked a bit taken aback.

"Yes??? That's what I said... without the backwater part" Tomomi said, a bit tired of the whole course of events, she really should have just gone home instead of dealing with all this.

"Why? just why is someone so much better than me going to that type of school? MIGHT AS WELL go to a fucking CLOWN SCHOOL"

[Okay that's it, you no longer get the benefit of the doubt you damn brat!]

"FIRST OF ALL!" Tomomi raised her voice which made her friends look over to see what was about to go down "I WOULD GO to clown school, that sounds fucking awesome" Tomomi declared clearly with unwavering determination, which made Oka laugh and Himiko shake her head in disapproval.

[Probably as useful as a normal middle school just less boring]

"I-"

"Shut up" Tomomi's interruption made Yoshihama and his cohort flinch.

"SECONDLY,  I have the right to do whatever I want as long as I somewhat respect the law, so I will go wherever I want, and a normal middle school is what fits my plans, so go annoy some other poor souls and leave me alone, I gotta learn who the hell decided that quirks needed to be named" Tomomi said as she picks up her pen but Yoshihama steeled his resolve and pointed again at her.

"HA! I see that the mutant doesn't even know what's good for her, also the answer is Victor Fitzroy by the way"

*Snap*

Tomomi's pen snapped in half as she tried to contain the annoyance in her voice, the term mutant indeed exists as a description for the type of quirk one has, but the connotations of it are currently being called into question. No one would call someone else a mutant in a friendly manner, they would get mauled by an angry mob, and Tomomi would absolutely be part of the said mob.

[Who the hell would like to be called a mutant?]

"Those are some pretty words for someone in punchable range" Tomomi's cold words made Yoshihama frown, she started getting up and facing him.

"I'm five meters away from you" He stated, Tomomi simply looked unamused as he inspected him from head to toe.

"Your point?" She replied, which made Yoshihama grumble a lot more.

"You know what? Fuck everything! I demand one last rematch, winner takes all" Yoshihama said as his friends tried to stop him repeatedly, but Tomomi was already getting ready to get over this stupid scuffle.

"Alrighty then, it's on Lightbulb!"

"A final grudge match!"

"Fitting, since I kick your ass constantly"

"SHUT UP!"

 

 

Blonde_cat: what if my matching red thing is blood ♥?

Strawhat: last time I checked I was pretty sure you can't wear blood (◡‿◡✿)

Blonde_cat: I can't? or I shouldn't? 

AzureDrag0n: pls actually don't.

Blonde_cat: nobody can't stop me!

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