4 Chapter 4: Shorts 1

What you want to be.

"So what do you all want to be when you grow up? Izuku asked.

The four children, who were previously coloring, looked up at Izuku.

"I wanna be queen of the world!" Kiba said immediately.

"Well…" Izuku didn't want to tell her that that was impossible, she'll figure that out eventually.

He knew what it was like to have your dreams crushed after all.

"That might take a while so you should probably find a job you can do in the meantime," Izuku responded.

Kiba frowned before adopting a thinking position, with her head resting on her fist and her face scrunched up. "Hmmm."

The other kids all seemed to be thinking hard about this as well.

"I never really thought about it," Fu said.

"Me neither," Kei added.

"Well, what do you all want to do?" Izuku saw Kiba about to say something. "Besides ruling the world."

Kiba pouted.

"I wanna eat," Fu answered simply.

"I want to display my power for people to worship!" Kiba answered.

"I wanna...I don't know." Kei shrugged.

Eri stayed silent, thinking about the question thoroughly.

"Ummm." Izuku thought about their responses. Unfortunately, Fu's request would be difficult to find an answer for. His taste bugs were muted meaning that he could only ever taste things that had a very strong flavor, meaning he likely wouldn't find much success as a chef or a food critic.

However, Kiba's request did bring something to mind. Something that he was trying very deliberately not to think about.

"Well, you could be a pro hero Kiba," Izuku suggested wincing slightly. "Pro heroes get to use their quirks to help people and fight villains, and they can get very popular to the point where people basically worship them."

Kiba thought about it, her eyes widened more and more each second. Then she smiled. "Yes...Yes! That is a magnificent idea, caretaker! I shall become the number one pro hero! And then when the world witness's my power, they shall bow down and worship me! AHAHAHA!"

"Well, at least she has a plan now," Fu said. "I guess I'll do that too."

"Eh!? But didn't you want to do something with food?!" Izuku was surprised at how fast he went along with it.

"I can barely taste anything I doubt I'd seriously be able to get a food-related job," Fu said. "Plus as long as I eat a lot of food I'm practically unkillable so taking a dangerous job is ok I guess."

This kid is so...self aware. Izuku thought.

"I know you two can, Zom-be heroes!" Kei said. "And maybe I could be...a snake person!"

Everyone gave her confused looks.

"Dear sister, you are already a snake person. In fact, you are a snakes person. As in plural." Kiba said.

"No no no, not that kind of snake person! A person who takes care of snakes!" Kei explained.

"You mean a snake handler? Or a snake charmer?" Izuku asked.

"Yeah!" Kei said. "I could really slither into that job!"

Ok, I guess I could buy her a few books about snakes. And I could help Kiba and Fu train their quirks. Izuku was thinking about how he could best help these kids. What about Eri.

Izuku looked to Eri, causing everyone else to pay attention to her as well.

"So what do you want to be Eri?" Kei went right up to her, ignoring personal space as perusal.

"I...I want to help people. I think." The horned girl said meekly.

"Then you could be a hero like us!" Kiba suggested.

Eri shifted around nervously. "I don't really want to hurt people."

"Then what about a doctor?" Everyone looked at Izuku. "Or a nurse? Your quirk would be perfect for it!"

"My...my quirk?" Eri shrank back at the mention of her quirk. She still disliked thinking about and especially the thought of using it.

"Your quirk rewinds a person's body to a previous state, if you train your quirk enough then you could use it to completely heal people. You could bring back limbs or cure deadly diseases. You could save thousands of lives!" Izuku said.

"R-really?" Eri's eyes widened with hope.

"Of course." Izuku smiled brightly at her.

"Yeah Eri your quirk is amazing!" Kei said.

"Sounds pretty cool." Fu gave her a thumbs up.

"Indeed, quite a useful quirk. You shall be the greatest doctor in my world order!" Kiba said.

Eri blushed profusely and started muttering thanks.

Izuku smiled as the children seemed more excited, now that they had new goals in mind.

The best color

"I can't believe my siblings could be so blind!"

Izuku heard Kiba yell from the living room.

He put down his toothbrush and rushed ove.

After walking to the living room he saw Kiba standing in the, I'm mad, stance against all of the other kids. Her face in an adorable pout and her hands balled up in fist were down by her hips.

"What's going on?" Izuku asked.

"They're blind!" Kiba protested.

"We're not blind, we just have different opinions," Fu explained. "Kei said her favorite color was green, and Kiba started going on saying the best color was red. Kei kept saying she still liked green so Kiba put it to a vote and we all said we liked green more than red."

"Which is preposterous!" Kiba insisted. "Red is obviously the superior color, it is the color of blood! It is the color of passion! The color of my eyes! The color of blood! How could it not be superior!"

"I think she's just, green with envy about not being on the winning side." Kei proudly punned.

"Kiba." Izuku gave her a disappointed look. "You have to accept that other people will have different opinions than you. It doesn't make them wrong and it doesn't make you wrong. If you don't learn how to accept other people's opinions then you'll live your life constantly angry, and you'll never make any friends."

Flashes of Bakugo appeared in Izuku's mind.

Kiba didn't look convinced, however, a few more seconds of looking at Izuku's, I'm not angry just disappointed, face caused her to falter.

"F-Fine." Kiba looked away from Izuku. "Name one thing, one thing that's green, that's splendor surpasses all of that which I have said, then I will concede."

Immediately, everyone pointed to Izuku. Causing the teen's face to freeze in a shocked expression.

Kiba stared at Izuku for a few moments, before pouting and muttering. "I still like red better. But I guess green is ok."

Izuku meanwhile, felt his heart clench from how touched he felt and proceeded to pass out.

Big words.

"Ahahaha! Soon, caretaker, you shall feel the inescapable wrath of me! Kiba!" The vampire girl said. "You thought I would simply allow myself to be trampled like an insect!? Think again fool!"

Izuku and Kiba were playing Super Hero Bash Unlimited and seeing as Kiba had never played a video game before, she had been spending the last two hours getting beat into a pulp. Anytime Izuku notably went easy on her or let her win she would protest, saying she would beat him at full strength.

She had been relentlessly fighting him with her character of choice, that being Edgeshot, and to her credit had made some improvements. She learned that she had to rely on speed in order to win and that she would have to use it and run tactics against Izuku's character, All Might, who had super armor.

"Where did you learn all those words by the way?" Izuku asked her.

"Ah, impressed by my verbose way of speaking I see." Kiba gave him a smug look. "Well you see, when my quirk arrived, the memories of my past lives flooded into me, filling me with knowledge and experience from thousands of years ago! As such my vocabulary reflects the noble status I once carried in those-"

"She found a dictionary back when we lived on the streets and spent a year studying it so she could sound smarter." Fu interrupted her from the kitchen.

Kiba turned around and gave him a look of absolute fury.

However, looking away from a game your playing is never a good idea.

"Detroit Smash!" The one screen All Might said as he punched Edgeshot off the screen,

"GAME!" Said the announcer.

Kiba looked back at the screen with a look of anguish "NOOOOO! Curse you All Might! One day I will have my revenge!"

I really hope she doesn't hold a grudge against the real All Might for this. Izuku thought.

Training with quirks Part 1

"You can do it Eri!" Izuku encouraged her.

"That's right Eri you can do it!" Kei added.

Eri held the apple core firmly in her hand. She took a deep breath and activated her quirk.

Her horn started to grow, and both Izuku and Eri grew anxious.

"Just imagine a slow-moving river," Izuku said.

Eri's horn started to glow and Izuku held Kei back for safety.

The apple core slowly started to regrow some of the bitten off chunks of apple, however, that only lasted for a second and a half, before the speed started to increase significantly. In three seconds the apple was fully reformed, and before Izuku could tell her to stop, the apple vanished.

"Ah!" Eri groaned in frustration at having failed.

"It's ok Eri. No one succeeds on their first try." Izuku reassured her. "Now just try to turn it off."

Eri closed her eyes, she tried to focus on stopping the flow of power, like Izuku told her. After about a minute or so, her horn started receding...before Eri lost her grip on her power and her horn extended to full length.

"Ahh!" Agah!" Eri groaned as her quirk took its toll on her body.

Izuku grabbed the dart gun next to him and shot it at Eri's arm.

"Ah!" Eri cried out in pain. A few seconds later the dart's effects started to affect her. Her horn stopped glowing and fully receded back.

She fell to the ground and once Izuku knew it was safe, he picked her up and took her in his arms.

"Darn it! I was sure she had it this time!" Kei snapped her fingers. "Her quirk really took her by the horn."

"Eri's quirk seems to be immensely hard to control," Izuku told her. "But it's important that she's trying. Her quirk is so dangerous, and she's so afraid of it. Thank you for being here and encouraging her."

"No problem!" Kei saluted. "Me and Eri have a bond that's harder than stone!"

Izuku chuckled. She really needs to find some new puns.

"Caretaker! We have finished!" Kiba barged into the room. Sweating profusely and clearly tired.

Kiba and Fu had been training their bodies by doing basic exercises while wearing some special weighted clothes Izuku had bought them. These weights were made specifically for people with enhanced strength, and while they were very expensive(Especially for Kiba whose strength when fully fed with blood was ridiculous, so much to the point where Izuku had her start exercising without being full) it was nothing to Izuku's new wealth.

Kei wasn't doing any exercise, her quirk was simple. You look at her eyes, you turn to stone. Not much they could do about that. So her only job was to act as a cheerleader to the others.

Fu walked into the room, seemingly completely unphased by the exercise, which was to be expected since his stamina was seemingly infinite, and looked at Eri's sleeping form. "It didn't work?"

"She was able to control it for a second," Izuku said, pulling the dart from her arm. "It's not much but...she's getting there."

"Is she going to be ok?" Kiba asked, showing concern.

"She'll be fine. Her quirk drains her stamina, and the dart accelerates that drain. She's exhausted, but she'll only need some sleep."

There was a long pause. Everyone just stared at Izuku as he tucked Eri into bed.

"Let's go outside. I promised I would make everyone their favorite food after the training right?" Izuku forced a smile as he tried to lift their spirits.

There was a short pause.

"No," Kiba muttered.

"Huh?" Izuku was confused. Kiba wasn't one to refuse a nice bloody steak with fruit punch.

"It would...it would not be a true feast if everyone was not here!" Kiba said, resuming her confident persona. "We should wait for tomorrow! When she is awake."

The other two nodded, agreeing to the idea.

Izuku smiled at them. It was moments like this that made it feel like a family. "Ok. Then let's go to bed."