27 Birthday Party!

"...So~ any reason you did that?"

"Yeah..."

Tomomi rubbed her arm while avoiding her mom's scolding eyes, her mom kept staring at her trying to see if there was something else her daughter had to say, after a while, she sighed and patted her head, Tommi immediately relaxed and leaned into her hand.

"You know I'm not mad at you right?" Aiko said to her daughter, to which she looked down.

"Yeah..."

"But you could have said something about... this" Aiko said pointing at the current guest in the house.

"Well..."

Tomomi let a nervous laugh before seeing Oka currently staring in awe at the backyard of her house, she had the idea of bringing Oka to her house on her birthday due to Oka's parents not really celebrating birthday's due to... traditions? she wasn't so sure but that was Oka told her that they only we're giving her a special gift today, so she brought her home on a whim, or so it looked.

"... I do have a good explanation for this!" She said with a determined expression, her mom narrowed her eyes before beckoning her to continue.

"You see, two days ago Oka told me that her birthday was going to be today, so I had the idea of bringing her here, but I forgot to tell you..."

"Go on~"

"And I forgot that I forgot to tell you, so I thought I actually told you! but I actually didn't!"

Tomomi finished her explanation and Aiko looked at her, she was examining if she was lying as her daughter wasn't exactly good at hiding her intentions, once she found no trace of lying she smiled a bit.

[Guess she is still a kid after all]

She was beginning to worry about her daughter, she acted a bit too mature for her age which certainly isn't that uncommon but still was a sign of something pushing her to do that. but she certainly felt relieved especially when she gazed at her new friend running around the backyard.

"Well I'll forgive you, I was mostly mad because I actually wanted to give her a proper party, for your first friend" she finished and looked at Tomomi's troubled expression.

"What?" Aiko asked, Tomomi hesitated for a bit before voicing her concern.

"We don't have any friends though" she flatly stated.

Aiko's brain short-circuited for a few seconds before simply nodding. Tomomi's lack of friends was known to her, so she wasn't that surprised but she didn't expect Oka to be in the same situation.

[Although considering her situation, it shouldn't be that surprising... having a birthday party without friends would be kind of sad]

Aiko simply sighed at the declining rate of quirkless people and their subsequent alienation, it wasn't that bad before, knowing that her husband wasn't really annoyed or bullied for that, but in her daughter's generation, it was starting to become a problem that even she was sort of ignorant about.

"Ok, still should have told me"

"I will not forget to tell you next time"

"Sure you won't"

Aiko simply let Tomomi go to Oka to give her a tour of the house, even if it wasn't that big it would keep them occupied long enough for her to actually put something together for Oka's birthday. She simply took her phone and started calling one of the few numbers that she had registered there.

In a random alleyway in the middle of the day.

*Ring

A ringtone reverberated through the walls of the alleyway, and a figure with a trench coat walks away from the alleyway, leaving 4 people behind, one of them is simply shaking his head while mumbling something unintelligible while the other three are kneeling down, their hands being handcuffed behind their backs.

The man walking away searches the insides of his trenchcoat, after a second he pulls out his phone.

*Ring *Ri-

"Hello?" he answers in a completely firm yet neutral tone as he gazed at his watch to see the time.

"Takeshi~" A cheery sing-song voice was heard which made him relax his muscles as he started to put almost all of his attention on the phone in his hand.

"Aiko" Takeshi answered back with a voice filled with affection while remaining somewhat professional, with a slight smile he waited for her wife to begin speaking.

All three of the handcuffed criminals looked gobsmacked at his sudden change in demeanor, they looked at each other briefly before all three of them gave a very slight nod.

"I hope I haven't interrupted anything, dear~" Aiko answered almost whispering, Takeshi hooked his head even though there this was only a call out of habit.

"Don't worry about it, You're not interrup-"

"NOW!!"

Two of the criminals ran to tackle the closes officer while the third one lunged toward Takeshi, his jaw opened with a crack as it opened beyond normal showing a hidden set of shark teeth, he motioned his head to bite onto Takeshi's shoulders to tear them apart.

"YOU SHOULDN'T HA-"

*Crack

He suddenly stopped in mid-air but the momentum carried his head and legs forward, he barely got to look at his stomach where a piece of metal was slowly pushing onto the side of his stomach and just under his rib cage

"AGhhh-"

He spat a bit of blood as he was sent a few meters and crashed onto the walls of the alleyway immediately knocking him out, silence reigned for a few seconds before the other two criminals were also pushed onto the ground, their fighting spirits are already broken and letting themselves be recaptured.

How could they not? they saw their friend get obliterated by Takeshi who took out a Tonfa made of solid tungsten and basically impaled him in his liver in less than a second. so they surrendered to not suffer the same fate, they both thought of the same thing.

[H-he wasn't even looking!!]

"-ting anything"

"..."

Even when silence came from the phone Takeshi nonchalantly keeps his phone up to his ear, eventually, a heavy sigh was heard from Aiko who seemed somewhat familiar with the situation.

"Alright~" She said knowing Takeshi would not even acknowledge being attacked from behind as an 'interruption'.

[She glossed over it!] All of them, even the officer thought of that.

"Can you come home early~? We have a guest in our house!!" The emotion in her voice was clear, Takeshi himself raised an eyebrow at the surprise guest.

"Okay, Who's our guest?" Takeshi immediately agreed, he wasn't going to deny anything to Aiko especially being something so simple as to not do extra hours at work.

"Tomomi made a friend, like a real one!!" She shouted which made Toakeshi wince a bit.

"Awesome" was his answer, he smiled at the touch of his daughter getting to not be alone like him in his early years.

"Hell Yeah! so it's her birthday and her parent don't really celebrate it, so Tomomi brought her to me, but she forgot to tell me~" Aiko said quickly switching between moods.

"I see" Takeshi nodded approving of Tomomi's actions, "I'll buy a cake and a present on the way there, should I buy something else?"

"I already have good food, so maybe some candies for her way home? anything that you see fit, I'll trust on that" Aiko said as she started yelling something in the background.

"... Okay, I'll arrive in an hour or two" He motioned his partner to round up the criminals.

"Nice! see you later dear~" Aiko loudly exclaimed.

"See you at the house, Aiko" Takeshi ended with a smile.

As he was putting his phone away, hamada approached him from the side while pushing two of the criminals forward, and another one passed out on his shoulder.

"Sooo... we won't be doing extra hours today!?" Hamda said while wriggling his eyebrows trying to entice Takeshi.

"Yeah, My daughter's friend's birthday is apparently being celebrated in my house, and we were informed about it an hour ago" Takeshi explained as he was shoving the passed-out criminal in the passenger seats.

"Sound like us on our earlier days, anyways did you really have to deck him that hard" Hamada pointed at the shark teeth criminal who had a few droplets of blood slipping from his mouth.

"I was distracted" Takeshi answered, Hamada only showed a blank expression at his explanation.

"Whatever" Hamada dropped the subject.

"Let's get this over already"

"Aye aye, captain" at least he was looking forward to going home early. Takeshi simply chuckled at Tomomi successfully getting Hamada into pirates.

Oka's birthday party was pretty small, with only 4 people present it was pretty pathetic if Tomomi compared it to how 'normal' birthday parties were supposed to be, but she was used to it, all of her birthday parties only really had her Mom and Dad and occasionally Hamada, her grandparent on her father's side had already passed away while those in her mother's side were strange due to her mother.

[I would like if Oka had more people to celebrate with...]

Tomomi now steeled her resolve in making some friends so that her best friend could have better parties. Oka, on the other hand, was pretty surprised and happy about this whole ordeal, she never had a birthday party celebrated like this, at most she received some gifts but now she got a whole party for half the day? it was a pretty good upgrade.

When Tomomi and her parents actually bought gifts for her, she teared up, although she always hoped of spending time with people that cared about her, she never expected it to happen in a few months. She feared that maybe all of this was a dream, and had to be hugged by all of the people present to calm herself down.

Aiko and Takeshi took a bit of pity on Oka and gave Tomomi a pat on the back for her effort in stopping the bullying that Oka suffered, they still didn't quite like her resort to immediate violence but they didn't dwell too much on it, the situation resolved itself somewhat peacefully.

"So can I open these?" Oka asked as she saw the present on the table. She had already blown the cake candles and wished to remain friends with Tomomi forever.

"Well duh! they were yours the moment we gave it to you" Tomomi declared as if it was the most obvious thing in the world, making Oka slightly flustered. Takeshi and Aiko chuckled at their bickering, Oka simply unwrapped all of the gifts after having the assurance of all of them.

[Very cute] both of them thought.

The first gift came from Aiko or at least was requested by Aiko since Toakeshi bought them, it was a simple Turquoise kimono that degraded into a darker tone on the bottom, it had a pattern of falling sakura leaves on the lower side and an eastern dragon on its back. It was based on Oka's apparent ties to samurai and traditional ways of clothes, and her love for dragons.

Takeshi's gift was a red scarf, the scarf was very long, almost reaching 2 meters in length, the weird part about the scarf was its extreme flexibility and thinning, it looked made of a type of polymer rather than cloth or wool.

Apparently, the scarf was considered a 'lesser support item', the scarf was tear and cut resistant while providing warmth in cold environments by heating up slightly, but it was still airy enough so that it could be used even on the hottest day of summer.

Both of these gifts were received with extreme care by Oka who pledged to treat them better than herself, for which was reprimanded. Tomomi was very nervous since her gift was definitely worse than those of her parents.

Her gift was rather small, it was a sunflower hair clip, the only real characteristic apart from being clearly fake was its massive size, making it slightly comical and cute to wear. Tomomi used the hair clip since her hair was long, but because her rubber body made her hair rubbery and made it impossible to comb properly she had to cut it, rendering the clip a bit useless for her.

So she gave it to Oka in, she immediately realized that maybe giving things on that premise might be seen as her giving out the garbage to her friends, so she instantly paled and sweated while waiting for Oka's reaction to her gift.

Oka immediately hugged Tomomi while repeating 'Thank you' over and over again, Tomomi had to stop flailing her arms from getting surprised and hugged her back.

Oka liked the gift because she guessed that it was something that Tomomi liked very much by her scrunched face while talking about why she had to stop using it. Takeshi and Aiko thought about how nervous about her gift which made them smile and nod at the same time.

[Very cute] both were on the same frequency.

After having cake and playing for a bit longer, it was time for Oka to go to her home, as they were giving goodbyes with smiles on their faces Tomomi remembered something and decided to ask.

"What special gift are you getting from your parents?" Tomomi said, Oka immediately whipped her head back at her with her eyes clearly sparkling.

[These anime effects are a bit too clear, why is no one questioning them?] she dismissed her thoughts before focusing on Oka.

"At 8 years old, all samurai get their real swords handed to them by their masters! so I'm getting my own Katana!" She said while puffing her chest and standing proudly, Tomomi thought for a second before nodding.

"That's very cool"

"I know right!"

After talking for a bit, Oka agreed on talking to her parent so Tomomi could see their training and visit their house, she was very interested in it since she was getting trained by her own dad, and they both soon said their true goodbyes.