Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Shouta stood next to a cop car waiting for the raid to start. First, Detective Tsukauchi and a few of his officers would attempt to gain entry peacefully with a warrant. If no one answered or those inside refused entry, the nearest hero was free to kick down the door. Usually, the latter wound up happening. 

“Don’t do anything stupid,” Hizashi, or Pro Hero Present Mic, reminded him. Shouta flashed a look of annoyance at his husband. “I mean it. None of that reckless, self-sacrificing stuff. You aren’t the only hero here today.”

“Fine,” Shouta relented. Gunshots drew their attention back to the door. Refused entry it was. Why were criminals so illogical?

Once inside the industrial building, Shouta and Hizashi followed three other pros into a stairwell and headed for the basement levels. There were other teams that had been sent to search the main and upper floors, and he was sure a few had already been sent to the basement. 

At the door to B2, the sounds of fighting could be heard through the stairwell door. One of the pros they were with, Edgeshot, slipped under the door to check it out. A few seconds later, the door opened, revealing absolute chaos. Just one look made it clear that the majority of the criminal organization’s people were on this floor. 

“I’ll radio for backup,” Hizashi announced as they noticed what seemed like two other teams that were outnumbered and outmatched. Shouta didn’t reply as he and the other three jumped into the fray. 

There were, unfortunately, plenty of heteromorphic type quirks on the floor making the effectiveness of Shouta’s quirk a hit or miss. He grit his teeth when a woman with black talons tore through his sleeve, leaving shallow slashes on the skin below it. 

“YEEEAAAAHH!” Hizashi’s quirk-powered shout blew the woman across the large, open room and into another criminal. “You good?” Hizashi asked, without letting his guard down. 

“Yep. Superficial wound,” Shouta answered quickly, erasing the flame body quirk of the man Kamui Woods was fighting. The other pro gave him a quick nod of appreciation after restraining the flame criminal. 

What were these criminals even doing? For the most part, they were an amalgamation of several smaller organized crime groups. In the wake of the League of Villains and Overhaul, they had gotten the brilliant idea to work together. The thing is, it actually was a brilliant idea. Through teamwork, they’ve been able to cause more trouble than before. 

Combined illegal sales of drugs, weapons, support items, stolen goods, even people. The main downside to large organizations like this, though, was that it made it more difficult for them to hide. In a roundabout way, all of the groups teaming up ultimately made it possible to find their base. Actually performing the raid was proving to be a little strenuous. 

Because of the criminal history of one of the groups present, Shouta did not think much of it when he saw a slightly dazed young hero carrying a toddler. Beyond the rightful rush of anger at the implication, he was relieved that if there were kids being trafficked here, they were being found. The heroes and officers would be able to rescue them tonight. 

He wound his scarf around a woman with vine-like hair, his quirk causing the prehensile strands to fall limp. An officer rushed past him, indicating that backup was starting to arrive. Thank gods, he thought as he pulled the vine woman towards himself, knocking her out with a swift kick to the head. 

“Eraser!” Snipe shouted in warning. Shouta ducked in time to avoid some debris that someone with a telekinetic quirk was throwing at people. They went down as Snipe fired two shots through their shoulder, leaving them alive but incapacitated. 

Shouta let his eyes fall where the most people were fighting, erasing several criminal’s quirks at once. That gave the heroes and officers the upper hand. Once the odds were a little more even, he let himself blink and turned to scan the rest of the room. 

A pair of heroes were consoling a crying toddler while trying to move them away from the fight. Shouta was pretty sure it was a different kid than he saw before so that meant they were multiple kids here. He really hoped they weren’t getting caught up in any fights, despite the fact that they seemed to be popping up in the middle of them. 

“Do we know where the kids are coming from?” Shouta asked, grabbing the arm of an officer. 

“No, but we have officers looking while the heroes occupy the criminals,” the woman replied. “Please, focus on fighting. We’ll handle the rest and provide support.”

Shouta nodded and ran to aid Mandalay against the five people that had ganged up on her. The familiar chime of her quirk echoed in his mind. Three emitter quirks, one transformation quirk, and the grey guy has a skin mutation, she told him using her quirk Telepath. 

Shutting off four of their quirks turned the fight almost instantly. It almost irritated him how much people relied on their quirks. The only reason he didn’t really complain is the fact that it makes his job a little easier. He heard the ribs of the person he was fighting crack when he slammed them into the ground. What a shame.  

The fighting continued around him and he erased quirks left and right. Gunshots echoed through the large room from time to time and he fought to keep his attention on what was going on around him. A part of him just wanted to seek out Hizashi, but he knew it was unprofessional. He had to focus on the job at hand. 

Hizashi frowned when he realized he lost track of Shouta. Sure, he trusted his husband to be alright, but it still made him anxious. He pushed that aside to focus on the fight at hand. He couldn’t use his quirk, except for short bursts, since he could easily hurt his allies by accident. Instead, he focused on hand-to-hand combat. 

Currently, he was struggling to hold his own against a woman that secreted a slime-like substance from her skin. It coated her like some kind of armor. It was kind of force resistant… Like jello. He grimaced as some of it stuck to him. Gross.

Thankfully, the slime began to melt off her. Judging by her reaction to that, it wasn’t meant to happen. Which meant that Shouta was nearby. Probably. 

A familiar slip of fabric wrapped around her wrist. Yep! There he is! Hizashi wasted no time in knocking her out with a punch. Unfortunately, Slime Lady had a friend who leaped onto Hizashi’s back, winding an arm around his throat. “You bruised my girlfriend,” she hissed furiously. 

He felt her get pried off by Shouta. “Your girlfriend can handle a bruise, I’m sure,” Shouta scoffed. “At least nothing’s broken.”

Hizashi moved away as soon as she was pulled off him and he moved away a few paces to catch his breath. She struggled in Shouta’s grasp and the second her hand hit his face, her skin began to glow purple. She paused in her efforts. “Huh. Didn’t expect that,” she muttered. 

“Didn’t expect what?” Shouta demanded. Seemingly remembering that she was trying to escape, she resumed her struggle and bit down on his arm. Right where Hizashi remembered seeing him get clawed earlier. Predictably, he dropped her. 

They both ran after her when she sprinted off to the side in an attempt to escape. Instead, she accidentally cornered herself. She backed against the wall as they approached and held her hands out in front of her. The glow on her skin got brighter, appearing to concentrate around her hands. The flash of light it let off happened quicker than Shouta could activate his own quirk. 

Blinded and knocked off his feet, Hizashi groaned in pain. Retreating footsteps told him that the woman ran past them. The creative string of curses grumbled next to him told him that the same thing happened to Shouta. He tried to open his eyes and it took a few moments for his vision to clear. When they did, he looked to his side and the first thing he saw was a naked child. 

The child looked suspiciously like his husband. Oh fuck. Did Shouta turn into a kid? Hizashi sat up, panicked. Right next to the kid was his husband. He frowned, wondering where the kid came from. Were they hurt by the light? Focusing on the extremely young victim, over the fully grown pro hero, he checked them over for injuries. Not finding any, he shook them gently. 

The tiny face scrunched up, displeased, before their eyes opened and revealed bright red irises. Their hair was black and very similar to Shouta’s, except short. Their eyes looked to be the same color red as Shouta’s when his quirk was active. Ignoring the strange coincidence, for now, he helped them to sit up. When they moved, their hair shifted, revealing blonde underneath. 

“Where’d the kid come from?” Shouta asked as he sat up, still blinking to try and clear his eyes. 

“Um…” Hizashi hummed nervously as he put the pieces together. He shrugged off his jacket to cover the kid. 

“What?” Shouta turned, finally seeing clearly. 

“I think they’re ours. I think that woman had an offspring quirk,” Hizashi told him. 

Shouta glanced down at the kid, taking a closer look. He must have noticed the same things as Hizashi because his eyes widened. “We should… probably take them to a medic. Get them out of the way of the fighting.”

“Yeah,” Hizashi agreed, as the kid looked between them in confusion.

Chapter Text

Granted they were in unfamiliar territory, but Hizashi was almost taken aback by the look the medic gave them when they approached with Hizashi carrying a small child that was drowning in his leather jacket. “You too, huh?” the medic said once they were within hearing distance. 

Shouta bristled next to him. “Ah, so, I think they came from an offspring quirk,” Hizashi said quickly before Shouta could start an argument. 

“That’s what it’s looking like. One of them shares a quirk mutation with one of their parents and that’s what confirmed it,” the medic answered, moving forward to lift the kid from Hizashi’s arms. 

The kid didn’t make a sound but they did cling tighter to Hizashi, burying their face in his chest. The medic just sighed. “Yeah, the other two didn’t let me hold them either. I assume you checked them for injuries?”

“I didn’t see any,” Hizashi replied. 

“The other two were fine too, so I’ll leave the matter alone for now. The other heroes and their new kids were already taken to the hospital in a squad car to be evaluated. There’s a pediatrician there who’s worked with quirk kids before,” the medic explained. 

“Evaluated for what?” Shouta asked, narrowing his eyes. 

“Figuring out their age and quirks if relevant. A DNA test to verify that you’re the biological parents. Determining if they’re already developed to their age or if they need to be taught from scratch like infants,” the medic listed. “That sort of thing.”

“Shit, seriously?” Hizashi startled slightly when Tsukauchi spoke abruptly from behind them. “I fear to learn what kind of child could be produced from you two,” the detective said, shaking his head. “All right, let’s get you an escort to the hospital.”

“What about the raid?” Hizashi frowned. 

“Not a safe place for a toddler and you can’t leave them until we know the parameters of the quirk that created them,” Tsukauchi answered, leading them to a car. “Now get in.”

Arriving at the hospital, there was already a pair of nurses waiting for them at the door. They brought the heroes and the kid to a private room, instructing Hizashi to sit on the bed with the kid. In a flurry of activity, they took the kid’s vitals, dressed them in a small hospital gown, and told them that a phlebotomist and the pediatrician would be by in that order. 

The kid, a girl, they were told when the nurses dressed her, hadn’t made a sound yet. “She’s really calm,” Hizashi commented as Shouta pulled up a chair to sit closet. 

“They aren’t all calm. I saw one of the other kids bawling their eyes out earlier,” Shouta replied. 

“This is so strange. She looks so much like you,” Hizashi observed. 

“I think she looks more like you,” Shouta shrugged. “She’s all bright and curious.”

“But she has your hair,” Hizashi pointed out. 

“She has your hair too,” Shouta countered. The following stare-off was interrupted after a minute by a man in his 20’s walking into the room. 

“Hey,” the guy greeted. “I’m here to draw blood from the kid and the presumed parents.”

Shouta was a little concerned about how quiet the kid was. She didn’t even whimper when the guy took her blood. It wasn’t that she wasn’t afraid, because her lip quivered and her eyes filled with tears. She just didn’t make a sound. 

Soon after the blood guy left, the doctor came in. “Hello. I’m Dr. Fugawara. I’ll be giving the kid a regular exam while my quirk does its work. Then we’ll just be waiting for the results of the blood tests and going over information about quirk children.”

“What is your quirk,” Shouta asked, feeling illogically protective. 

“It determines the exact age of someone, biologically. So on a de-aged individual, my quirk would say how old their body is, not their mind,” the doctor explained quickly. “You’ll get an exact age and technical birthdate for the kid.”

“Oh, that’s neat,” Hizashi smiled. 

The doctor smiled back before taking a seat where Shouta had been before the blood guy told him to move. Politely, but still. “You’re awfully complacent,” the doctor said to the kid after checking her joints, ears, and eyes. “Can you open your mouth for me?”

“She’s been quiet since she… sprang into existence,” Hizashi offered, frowning a bit when she didn’t respond to the doctor’s request. “Is that normal?”

“Sometimes kids created by a quirk come out understanding language, sometimes they don’t. We’ll go over that more later,” the doctor answered calmly, using his gloved thumb to gently pull her mouth open. At the physical prompting, she opened her mouth enough for him to see. 

“She hasn’t even cried,” Shouta added. “There’s just been no sounds at all.”

“Hm… that’s a little concerning,” the doctor replied, feeling around her throat and lymph nodes. “We’ll check for any signs that she’s mute but she could just be a quiet kid. Or it could be the shock of suddenly existing, particularly in the middle of a battlefield.”

“Let’s take her out in the hallway for her weight and height. We’ll see if she can stand or walk too,” the doctor said, standing up. They followed, Hizashi still carrying the child, and the doctor led them a few meters down the hallway to a small indent containing measurement tools.

Hizashi reluctantly placed her on the ground when prompted. When he actually set her on her feet, he held on just in case she fell. “She seems stable. Remove your hands,” the doctor instructed. Hizashi did and the kid stayed upright. 

“Good, good,” the doctor said, writing something down on his clipboard. “Can you step over here for me, kiddo?” 

When she didn’t move, the doctor took her hand and carefully led her forward. Shouta felt a stab of worry before it was quickly smothered with pride as she walked to the scale without issue. “12.6 kg,” the doctor read and recorded the result. 

He led her over to the height tool on the wall and adjusted some things. “89 cm.”

They were led back to the room, Hizashi once again carrying the kid just for efficiency. A nurse was waiting for them inside with the blood results. The doctor took the papers from her and scanned through them while Hizashi and Shouta sat down again. 

“Congratulations. It’s a girl,” the doctor smiled. “According to this, she’s both of yours. Sometimes offspring quirks only use one person’s DNA. Or the DNA of one person and the quirk holder. Her other blood panels also show that she’s in perfect health.”

“Does that give us automatic parental right then?” Hizashi asked. “Because we’d technically be her biological parents.

“Exactly, yes,” the doctor answered. “Quirk kids became intentionally sought out a few decades ago and laws have been created on the matter and reviewed extensively. There are usually high regulations on people with a quirk like this unless the activation requirements are extremely specific. Generally, they need a license to ever use it. But the ones with the specific requirements don’t since it can’t happen often.”

“I’ve never heard of this,” Shouta frowned. He’d heard of offspring quirks before but he thought it was just an extremely rare quirk. Not that it was more regulated than other quirks.

“Yeah, we’ve looked into kids before and we thought our only options would be surrogacy or adoption,” Hizashi added. 

“As I said, it’s a highly regulated quirk. It’s also a controversial quirk. Many who have it don’t like to use it. There’s only one person who is licensed to offer their services in Japan. People usually hear about him through doctor recommendation,” the doctor explained. “Occasionally, those with the specific requirements accidentally run into people who meet those requirements and that’s how situations like this one arise. They usually aren’t as careful about prevention.”

“Legally, they are the same as a traditionally birthed child. You’ll have parental rights, there will be a birth certificate, she’s automatically a Japanese citizen, and most importantly, you get to name her,” the doctor continued. “However, if you want to give her up for adoption, that is also your right and a perfectly valid option.”

“No!” Hizashi protested. “She’s ours. Right, Sho?”

“We’re not putting her up for adoption,” Shouta said firmly. “This is abrupt but we’ll figure it out.”

“Okay. I’ll give you some time alone to discuss names while I go get an ultrasound machine to check her throat?” the doctor asked. The doctor nodded and turned to leave, stopping at the door. “Oh, by the way, my quirk tells me that she’s 3 years old to the day. So her birthday would be today, May 10th.”

Twenty minutes later the doctor returned with an ultrasound machine and the person who Shouta assumed was the ultrasound tech. “Did you decide on a name?”

“Aizawa Keiko.”

Chapter Text

“Her throat seems fine,” the doctor announced. “There aren’t any lesions or malformations in the vocal cords or trachea. Her blood panels came back fine so that rules out illness. Physically, there’s no reason for her not to be able to make sounds or speak. Maybe she’ll become more vocal later on. But it’s not a big deal if she doesn’t. There’s no reason to force her either.”

“We’re both fluent in sign language so we could just teach her that,” Hizashi shrugged. “As long as she’s physically okay, I’m not too worried.”

“Language aside, she seems like she’s where she should be developmentally. She can sit, stand, and walk. She follows instructions though she has to be shown or guided.” The doctor put his finger in her hand and encouraged her to make a fist. “Good grip so she will be able to hold things on her own. 

“There will probably be things she should be able to do but will need to be shown or guided the first few times, like getting dressed by herself or washing her hands,” the doctor continued. “I will warn you not to leave her in the bath alone until she’s at least six. We get a lot of emergency room visits from parents who left younger kids unattended, even for short amounts of time.”

“How will we know what all she should be capable of?” Shouta asked. “I teach teenagers. Not toddlers. They’re fairly self-sufficient.”

“Get a book or two on child development,” the doctor suggested. “When in doubt, you can google your questions too. Focus on getting your answers from child development sites or parenting forums. With quirk kids specifically, the averages should only be used as suggestions. Keep an eye on her the first few times you let her do something and don’t push her if she’s really struggling to do something you ask of her.”

“That doesn’t really help at all,” Shouta deadpanned. 

“No, I suppose not,” the doctor chuckled. “Quirk kids are essentially shoved into existence. It depends on the specific quirk that made them but sometimes they come out exactly as they look, educationally, developmentally, and socially. Other times, it’s a mix-and-match of abilities. And sometimes, they come out a blank slate, regardless of how they look. You just have to watch out for them and be attentive to their needs. Use your best judgment, like any parent.”

“That’s it?” Hizashi asked incredulously. “And what? We just take her home now?”

“You have to wait for her documents and discharge papers, but pretty much, yeah. Unless you have any other questions?” the doctor replied. 

“You basically just told us to ‘wing it’ when we asked our last question,” Shouta pointed out. 

“And I stand by that,” the doctor beamed. 

“I’m going to call Nemuri and see if the raid’s over,” Hizashi said, passing Keiko over to Shouta once the doctor left. She didn’t seem to protest being handed over. “And if she can bring clothes for Keiko. We can’t take her home in a hospital gown.”

“Uh.. okay,” Shouta replied, looking uncertain as he situated her in his lap. “If you’re leaving the room, find me some coffee.”

“Sure. I’ll see if they have juice too,” Hizashi responded as he dialed their friend and headed into the hallway. He asked a nurse where the cafeteria was while the call connected. 

“Where the fuck are you?” Nemuri screamed when she answered. 

“I’m at the hospital,” Hizashi answered. 

“I’ve been looking for you and Sho for twenty minutes you asshole! When did you leave? How badly are you hurt? Or is Shouta hurt?” Nemuri fired off her questions one after another.

“Maybe thirty ago. Actually, no. Forty-five minutes. We’ve been here for a half-hour, and it took fifteen minutes to get here. Neither of us is hurt, although Sho got some scratches. We were sent to the hospital after getting hit by an offspring quirk,” Hizashi answered just as quickly.

The line went quiet for a moment. “An offspring qu-- Are one of you pregnant?” she screeched. 

“No. We have a three-year-old now, though. You’re an auntie,” Hizashi said with a soft laugh. 

“Ohh… really?” Nemuri asked, her volume falling to something much softer. “Are they healthy? Did they get hurt in the raid? Can I see them?”

“I was actually going to ask if you could pick up some clothes and bring them here for when she’s discharged,” Hizashi told her as he found the cafeteria and walked in. 

“Yes. Yes, I can absolutely do that,” Nemuri assured him. “Oh, tell me about her.”

“Well, we named her Keiko and…”

Shouta watched the child on his lap with a healthy amount of trepidation. He worked with teenagers. Not toddlers. Granted, she was currently behaving better than most of his hell class but he still had no idea what to do now. Should he entertain her? Let her be? Talk to her?

Did she even like him? She let Hizashi hand her over but she’d also been tolerant of the doctor. Now she was just staring at him and he had no idea what was on her mind. He stilled when she suddenly leaned towards him. She reached a hand up and grabbed ahold of his scarf. 

Cautiously, he unwound part of it and handed it to her. He quickly ran through the villains he’d fought with it earlier. “Yeah, that should be fine. Just don’t put it in your mouth.” He wasn’t sure if she understood that or not but she did not attempt to put it in her mouth either way. Instead, she just held onto the end of it. Maybe she just liked how it felt?

After a few minutes of staring at it, she leaned into him and promptly fell asleep, still gripping the end of his capture weapon in her hands. It was admittedly adorable. Now, unsure of what else to do, it was Shouta’s turn to stare at her. 

Nemuri had hung up on Hizashi when he was halfway back from the cafeteria so that she could go give her statement and get to the mall. She was perhaps a little too excited to pick up some clothes and a few other things to last them a few days before he and Shouta could go shopping. He warned her not to go overboard and he is 85% sure she heard him. 

Expertly balancing two coffees and a bottle of juice, he opened the door to Keiko’s hospital room. He walked in to the sight of her napping on Shouta and Shouta dead asleep in his chair, an arm holding her in place. Carefully, he put the drinks down on the table at the end of the bed and made sure to get several pictures of the sleeping pair. Which he absolutely sent to Nemuri. 

When he got closer to wake Shouta, he noticed that Keiko was holding the end of Shouta’s capture weapon. He sighed, knowing it hadn’t been cleaned since the raid just happened. At least there wasn’t any blood on it. Ignoring it for now, he ran a hand through Shouta’s hair. 

“I’m back,” he said quietly as Shouta stirred. “I brought coffee.”

His husband inelegantly jerked awake at that, miraculously not disturbing the kid. “Coffee?”

“Nemuri said she’d pick up some clothes and a few basics for us. She’ll meet us here as soon as she can,” Hizashi informed him, passing over one of the coffees. 

“So we’ll see her next week?” Shouta joked. “Before or after she buys out the store?”

“I made her promise to be reasonable,” Hizashi defended. 

“Whose version of reasonable did she agree to?” Shouta countered with a grin. 

Hizashi paled. “Oh no.”

Chapter Text

Documents included a keepsake birth certificate and quite a bit of paperwork that the hospital would turn in to the proper offices on their behalf. The doctor inked Keiko’s hand, explaining that with infants they usually do feet but with quirked kids over the age of one, they do hands. She was cooperative as the doctor pressed her inked hand to the paper. 

While Shouta cleaned the remaining ink off her hand, Hizashi worked on filling out the paperwork. The doctor had already said that they could wait for their friend in the room and then turn in the paperwork at the checkout desk whenever they leave. 

“She has your talent of falling asleep anywhere,” Hizashi joked when she managed to fall asleep again after the doctor left. 

“Do you think she’s tired or just bored?” Shouta wondered. 

“Probably both,” Hizashi shrugged, still working on the paperwork. “Hey, it wants to know where you were born.”

“Shizuoka City General,” Shouta answered. They went back and forth like this until the paperwork was finished. The kid slept through it all. 

After they finished the paperwork, it still took Nemuri another half hour to show up. Sometime during that wait, Keiko woke up again and Hizashi gave her the juice he had brought for her. She finally made some kind of sound, though it was only an audible breath after drinking. As if she couldn’t drink and breathe at the same time. 

Eventually, Nemuri popped her head through the door. “Aw, she’s so cute!” she cooed once her gaze found the kid sitting on the bed with Hizashi. 

“Clothes, Nem?” Hizashi prompted. 

“Yes!” Nemuri stepped into the room adorned with shopping bags. “I got a few outfits because I didn’t know what she’d find comfy. And then there’s kids’ soaps and sippy cups and stuff in my car still. Oh! And I got plushies!”

Shouta gave her a flat look when she rifled through the bags and pulled out three plush toys, approaching Keiko with them. “Fair warning. She doesn’t talk and we aren’t entirely sure what she understands,” Hizashi told her. 

“What do you mean?” Nemuri frowned. 

“Quirk-made kids apparently aren’t always developed to the age they look like,” Shouta answered. “Since she hasn’t spoken, we aren’t sure where she’s at.”

“That’s all right,” Nemuri smiled, holding the toys out to Keiko. The kid looked at them with interest but made no move to touch them. 

“They’re for you, little listener,” Hizashi told Keiko, taking the nearest one from Nemuri and placing it on Keiko’s lap. Her arms instinctually wrapped around the blue cat to keep it from falling. 

“These ones too,” Nemuri added, placing the other two plushies on the bed at her side. Then she held the remaining bags out to Hizashi and Shouta. “And then these are the clothes.”

They both took a bag. “Is this a long sleeve shirt?” Shouta asked, pulling something blue out. “It’s May. It’s only going to get hotter as we get further into the summer months.”

“Yes, but read it!” Nemuri whined. “I had to!”

“Love my auntie,” Shouta read aloud with an unimpressed look. 

“There’s a black tee that says ‘daddy is my hero’ too,” she pointed out gleefully. They went through the rest of the options with Keiko. Although they weren’t sure if she understood that they wanted her to pick something, she seemed to gravitate towards a panda-themed outfit with soft, loose pants. 

Coaxing her into everything was fairly easy until they got to her shoes. There was a wordless, almost soundless disagreement. The one sound wasn’t even made by her, but rather the landing of the shoe she threw. Given that it was the clearest she’d made any opinion yet, they let her forgo the shoes. Shouta was going to carry her anyway. 

Once Keiko was dressed, they checked out of the hospital and headed home. 

“You go change out of your hero costumes. I got the kiddo,” Nemuri insisted, ushering her friends towards their room. Once they relented, she turned around to face the toddler standing by the couch. She didn’t look thrilled to be alone with Nemuri. 

“Hey, kid,” Nemuri smiled, trying not to let her nerves show. “Do you want to see what I got for you? Let’s take a look, shall we?” Not actually expecting a response, she headed for the bags she had put down by the coffee table. 

“This one’s clothes… this one’s kid dishes…” Nemuri mumbled as she rifled through the bags. “Oh, here are you’re other two plushies.” Keiko had been holding onto the blue cat since the hospital. Nemuri was pleased that she had picked something her new niece seemed to like.

She placed them on the coffee table and continued going through the bags. If she noticed Keiko moving closer, she didn’t mention it. “Here are some puzzles. There was this mom with three kids who suggested these for a three-year-old. Even if you can’t already read them, they should be a good tool for learning.”

(Aren't these so cute? I want some. Also, the cards have English on them too.)

“We’ve got some blocks,” she continued, placing the items on the coffee table. Keiko was standing right next to her now, looking at the toys with interest. “And then this, I just thought it was neat. It’s like a tablet for little kiddos. I wish I had this as a kid.”

(Seriously, this tablet is amazing. I made the picture bigger just so y'all could see the buttons.)

“Here’s some coloring books and a drawing pad because I wasn’t sure which you would like more. And then some crayons. And then I decided I should probably stop otherwise your dads would get mad at me,” Nemuri laughed softly. “Now, let’s see about getting these open.”

By the time Shouta and Hizashi came out of their room, Nemuri had gotten the packaging open and tracked down some batteries for the tablet. She showed Keiko how to press the buttons. Each button had a character and when pressed, a recording of the pronunciation played. If Keiko never spoke, maybe she could use this as a speech substitute. It even had katakana. 

For now, though, she was just pressing the buttons at random. “Well, that’s progress,” Hizashi commented. “Language geared toys were a good idea.”

“Not my idea but I’ll take it!” Nemuri said cheerfully as Hizashi came to sit on the floor with them on the other side of Keiko. Shouta opted to sit on the couch. 

Keiko looked at Hizashi for a moment before handing him the tablet toy. “For me? Ah, let’s see,” Hizashi hummed looking over the buttons. “Ke-i-ko,” he spelled out using the hiragana. “Keiko. That’s your name.”

She copied him, pressing the buttons to spell out her name. “Yes, Keiko!” Hizashi smiled. Their cat, Jellybean, chose that moment to jump up on the couch and climb into Shouta’s lap. It wasn’t their only cat. They had three. But it caught Keiko’s attention. 

She abandoned the tablet with Hizashi to sift through the pile of blocks she had been playing with while Nemuri tracked down batteries. She picked one out and handed it to Nemuri. It was the ‘ne’ block that had a cat on it. “Guys, she might understand language after all,” Nemuri said, holding up the block to show them.

“Or it could be that she recognized the picture,” Shouta shrugged. “We’ll just have to keep interacting with her to find out if she does and if so, how much.”

Keiko crawled into Hizashi’s lap as they talked and spelled out her name a few more times on the tablet toy. “Maybe we have to show her words first?” Hizashi offered. “Like how we’ve been having to show her how to do things before she can do them.”

“Maybe,” Nemuri agreed. “It can’t hurt to try.” And try Hizashi did. He spelled out his name, Shouta’s name, Nemuri’s name, and Jellybean’s name. All of which, Keiko copied. She did seem to forget the previous names once he showed her a new one and he had to repeat them.

Then Shouta broke the peaceful atmosphere. “What do we tell Nezu? We can’t exactly leave her home alone. We might have to take time off until we figure out care for her.”

Right… the rat god, Nemuri thought with a grimace. She had no idea what their boss would think of this. He wasn’t particularly fond of humans. Surely, he would make an exception for such a young child though?

Aizawa: I've only had Keiko for a few hours but if anything happened to her, I would kill everyone here and then myself

Chapter Text

After a while of teaching her names, which may or may not have been successful, they ordered takeout for dinner. By the time they finished eating it was late evening and Keiko seemed to be falling asleep again. “Kids are supposed to go to bed kind of early, right?” Hizashi asked. 

None of them knew so they googled it as the doctor had suggested. It seemed so. Nemuri pulled some strawberry-themed pajamas out of one of the bags for her to change into and they took her to the guest room they had. She figured out the shorts on her own but she struggled with the shirt. Hizashi helped her while Shouta evaluated the room for safety issues.

Some of the things Nemuri kept here had to be removed. There was a brief staredown at the bed before they decided to google whether or not she could sleep in a normal bed at this age. Full beds were in the clear since it’d be harder for her to fall off. Shouta tucked her under the covers, laying her plushies around her. 

“We’ll be just out there,” he told her, whether or not she understood. They turned off the lights when they left the room, but the door was left open just a crack. Partly to let in some light but mostly because Hizashi was worried she couldn’t reach the door handle to get out. 

“Time to call the rat god,” Nemuri reminded them once they’d filed out into the living room. 

“Shouta will you do it? Please?” Hizashi asked, flashing his best pout. 

“Coward,” Shouta huffed, pulling out his phone to call their boss and putting it on speakerphone.

It rang twice before it connected. “Good evening, Aizawa,” Nezu greeted. 

“Nezu,” Shouta responded in acknowledgment. “I’m calling because something happened on the raid today and Hizashi and I won’t be able to come in tomorrow.”

“Are you injured?” Nezu asked in what passed as concern for him. 

“Well… no,” Shouta admitted. “But there was a quirk accident.”

“Might I remind you that when that class of yours three years ago all got turned into dogs, you still made them attend classes like that until it wore off,” Nezu said. The smug smile could be heard through the phone. 

“Yeah but this is different,” Shouta grimaced. “We got hit by an offspring quirk and the kid it produced is only three. We can’t leave her alone but we need time to figure out a care solution for during the day. I’m sure we can find something by Monday so--”

“Nonsense,” Nezu said brightly. “Bring her to UA.”

“What?” Shouta faltered. 

“She can go to classes with you or Hizashi. Or other teachers can keep an eye on her in the staff lounge,” Nezu offered. “Or you could leave her in my office with me.”

Shouta was sure that the horrified looks on Hizashi’s and Nemuri’s faces mirrored his own. “Uh, I would much rather take her to my classes,” Shouta decided. “If I brought her, I mean.”

“You will bring her. I will not give you the day off,” Nezu chirped. “I will excuse you from the first period of the school day since I’m sure your morning routine will be off.”

“I still don’t think tha--” Shouta started. 

“I will see you both at school tomorrow,” Nezu insisted before hanging up. 

Shouta sighed. “Let’s… let’s get some sleep too,” Hizashi suggested. “We’ll need it.”

The girl woke up rather alone. This was a new experience. Everything was a new experience because yesterday she woke up for the first time. Before that, there was nothing. It was confusing but the two people she woke up with were nice. They took her away from the loud.

They spoke to her a lot, she thinks, but she couldn’t tell what they were saying. Everything sounded wrong and jumbled. They moved her a lot. Gently. She guessed that they were asking her to do things. They wanted her to stand and walk and drink juice. But they didn’t say that. 

They said ‘Keiko’ and ‘Hizashi’ and ‘Shouta’ a lot. Since the lady showed up, they added ‘Nemuri’ to that. Then the lady gave her something. And she found that when she pressed the buttons, they sounded like the grown-ups. The yellow one made the buttons say ‘Keiko’ and ‘Hizashi’ and ‘Shouta’ and ‘Nemuri’ and ‘Zeriibiin.’

That was when she realized they were letters. Like how C-A-T on the block spelled cat. There were letters like the ones on the buttons on the cat block too. When she pressed them, they said ‘ne’ and ‘ko.’ She wasn’t sure what this discovery meant yet. 

Either way, she was awake and she was alone. She did not like it. So she crawled to the edge of the bed and thought about whether or not she could make the jump. She decided to try, lowering herself down over the edge, and she did it! Then she headed off in search of the black one and the yellow one because they were her favorites. She felt safe with them.

She returned to the room from last night. She found the bags the lady had brought and the toys were still on the table. But not the grown-ups. The room right next to it was where they ate but they were not in there either. Her eyes got wet as she wondered if they were gone. 

“Keiko, sweetie, what are you doing out here so early?” She turned to see the yellow one and she ran to him to hug his leg. “Did you have a nightmare? Wait… do you have enough memories to even have a nightmare?”

She still didn’t know what he was saying but the quiet rumble of his voice was comforting when he picked her up and held her to his chest. “I suppose, I was going to wake you soon anyway. Nezu demands our presence. The mean mousie just won’t give us a break.”

He turned, taking her further into the room where they ate. “Let’s make coffee, okay? It is our morning offering to the grumpy Sho. It makes him a little nicer.”

‘Okay’ was a word she knew so she smiled. Soon, the black one came and she was passed to him along with a cup. He took her to the table they ate at before and sat with her in his lap. She had caught sight of the hair in front of her eyes earlier and realized it matched him. She held out a piece of hers so that she could see it better before reaching up for him. 

He watched her and made a puffing sound. Then he reached for her hair and pulled some out that was yellow. “You match Hizashi too.” She blinked in surprise, looking at the hair that was yellow and then at the yellow one. She matched both of her favorite people!

Then the yellow one came to the table with food. “What’s got you in awe? It’s just rice and miso soup.”

“She seemed pleased that her black hair matched mine so I showed her the blonde part that matches you.” The black one laughed after he spoke. They continued to talk to each other while they ate and she listened, not understanding but enjoying the sound. When there was no more food, the yellow one disappeared and the black one took her to the bags. 

He took clothes out of the bag like he did before at the clean place. She picked something out since that seemed to be what they wanted last time. This time she picked a yellow-and-white striped shirt and blue pants with flowers on them. She got stuck in the shirt again but he helped her get free. Then he carried her to another room that she didn’t know was there. 

It had another bed and he set her down on it. She watched as he wandered around the room gathering things, including the long scarf he had before. A door on a different wall opened and the yellow one walked in. Except now his hair was floating and he was wearing all black and his clothes were pointy. It was scary. So she ran away, obviously. 

An unhappy and loud sound followed her out the door. She decided to hide in the room she woke up in. Under the bed. She would never be found there. They were much bigger than her so they wouldn’t be able to-- 

So the black one found her very soon. He had laid down on the floor and held out a hand to her. He spoke quietly and she could make out ‘okay’ and ‘Hizashi.’ If he said it was okay, then it was probably okay. She scooched forward until he could reach her and he pulled her out from under the bed. The yellow one stood in the doorway looking sad. 

That made her sad so she wiggled out of the black one’s arms to go hug the yellow one. When he gently ran a hand through her hair, she decided that maybe he wasn’t so scary like this.

Chapter Text

Hizashi had been devastated when his hero costume scared Keiko. Thankfully, the matter had been resolved and both were fine now, although wary of each other. “We’re going to need to get her a car seat,” Shouta commented from the backseat with Keiko. “This doesn’t seem safe.”

“It won’t be for long. We can go shopping tomorrow since it’s Saturday,” Hizashi replied. 

“Could have gone today if it wasn’t for the rat making us come in,” Shouta grumbled. 

“Do you think she’ll handle being around all those people okay?” Hizashi fretted, glancing at them in the rearview mirror. 

Shouta sighed, dreading his class’s reaction to her. “We’ll see.”

“Hello, baby,” Nemuri cooed when they arrived in the staff lounge. Keiko seemed to light up in recognition, which was better than the nervous expression she’d had when they first got to the school. “Are you gonna go to hero class or stay here with Auntie Nem?”

“You have your own classes to teach,” Shouta chided. 

“And why wouldn’t she come to English class with me, huh?” Hizashi folded his arms. 

“Hero class is more exciting,” Nemuri shrugged and Hizashi gaped at her in mock offense. 

“Or she could stay in my office with me!” Nezu chimed in as he entered the room. “Hello. I wanted to meet the little miss.”

Nezu climbed up on the couch Shouta had set Keiko down on. Shouta cringed when her immediate response was to reach out and touch Nezu’s face. Their boss just chuckled. “I don’t suppose you’ve seen anything like me yet.”

“She doesn’t talk,” Shouta warned. 

“That’s perfectly fine,” Nezu dismissed with a wave of his paw. “I’m sure suddenly existing is quite overwhelming. I can see intelligence and curiosity in her eyes, though, so I am sure she will find a way to communicate.”

“It’s interesting that her eyes are the color of your quirk, Aizawa, rather than one of either of your natural colors,” Nezu pointed out. “Other than that, she seems to have rather distinct combined features from both of you. What ages did you two start talking?”

“I think maybe one or two,” Hizashi guessed. “Not well, but attempts at least.”

“I don’t know,” Shouta admitted. He did recall being a very quiet kid even when he was old enough to form memories. “Why?”

“She’s built from you two. Not just your DNA but the memories that make up your personality,” Nezu explained. “At least, that’s how quirk kids usually work. They need a starting point. They aren’t getting the physical and cognitive development that they would have had they been born normally. They are getting them from you. As a sort of base to build on once they have their own memories and experiences. Sometimes aspects are missed in their formation.”

“And when they’re missed you get partial or blank slates,” Shouta concluded, remembering what the doctor had said before. 

“Correct. If you can’t remember yourself around this age, I suggest asking your parents if that is possible. It might give you hints on what’s going on in her head,” Nezu smiled before hopping down from the couch. “I will be going now. I will see you later, miss Keiko.”

“Hopefully not,” Shouta muttered after their boss had left. 

Shouta stood outside the door holding Keiko, not quite ready to face his class. His co-workers had been bad enough. Yagi and Ectoplasm terrified her. Snipe tried to kidnap her, though she didn’t object. Thirteen came way too close to giving her a ridiculous amount of candy. Like he needed to deal with her first sugar rush today. 

Then there were those who left Keiko alone but bothered him. Vlad wouldn’t stop teasing him because he would have to be ‘soft’ now. Hound Dog begged Shouta to introduce them because he was worried about scaring her if he just approached. And Cementoss wouldn’t stop talking about building her a little playground on campus. 

A soft pat on his face brought his focus back to the present. Keiko was looking at him with mild concern. He nodded slowly. “You’re right. We can do this. If they’re trouble, I’ll just expel them.”

He pushed opened the door and walked into the classroom. Everyone quieted, presumably in shock. He reached the podium, turning to face them and all hell broke loose. 

“Aizawa-Sensei, why do you have a kid?”

“Doesn’t that kid look like Aizawa-Sensei?”

“Look at how cute she is!”

“Is it take your kid to work day?”

“How have you been hiding a whole ass child from us!”

“Does this mean you’re married?”

Flashing a quirk-powered glare at the class silenced them, but it seemed to intrigue Keiko. Well. at least that didn’t scare her. “You can ask questions for the duration of homeroom but you must ask your questions one at a time. I reserve the right not to answer them.”

It was quiet for a moment before Uraraka got the confidence to speak first. “Who are they? Are they your child?”

“This is Aizawa Keiko,” Shouta answered. “She is a product of a quirk accident that happened yesterday. Yes, she is mine.”

“How old is she?” Mina asked. 

“She’s three, according to medical professionals,” Shouta told her. 

Surprisingly, Izuku spoke next. “Do you mean she’s from an offspring quirk?”

“Yes.”

“Does she have another parent then? Because there’s usually two for offspring quirks, even if it’s the quirk user,” Izuku questioned. 

“She does have another parent.” He wondered if it would be better to specify now since she’ll be seen with Hizashi a lot. “Present Mic is her other parent. Two other pairs of heroes were also hit by the quirk, so she wasn’t the only kid created yesterday.”

“Why is she here in class? Wouldn’t the hero course be dangerous for her?” Iida asked loudly. 

“I wanted to stay home to figure out a care solution, but Nezu insisted I come in and bring her with me,” Shouta answered honestly. “This will probably be a permanent arrangement until she is old enough to go to school. I assume I can trust all of you to be mindful of her?”

“Yes, sir!” his class replied. 

“Good. Consider it training for working in the public around civilians,” Shouta smirked. 

The girl wasn’t really sure what to think of the place the grown-ups took her to. It was big and there were a lot of people. More people than she had ever seen. The black one took her away from the yellow one and the lady and eventually stopped outside a door. He looked scared so she tried to make him feel better. It seemed to work. 

Inside, there were more people. Smaller people than the grown-ups. Maybe not grown-ups at all. Then they all got loud and she understood why the black one was scared. Except, his hair floated and his eyes changed color and all the people were quiet again. Like magic. 

The black one and the smaller people talked back and forth. When it seemed they were done, the black one put her down on the ground and all the smaller people came closer. One that was very pink and poofy knelt down in front of her. “Hi, I’m Mina. You are so cute!”

Someone with red hair and scary teeth did the same. “I’m Kirishima. It’s nice to meet you, Keiko.” 

“She’s so quiet.” A very tall person with black hair like her black one seemed to say something. She didn’t like all the people and when another one in blue yelled at the others loudly, she ran to the black one and hid behind him. 

“She doesn’t talk and we aren’t entirely sure that she understands language.” The black one rumbled something as he pet her head. 

“All language or just Japanese?” the tall one spoke again. Whatever she said this time got the black one’s attention. 

“Oui, oui. Perhaps she knows French.” A sparkly person twirled which she thought was nice. 

“Fucking hell, why didn’t I think of that?” The black one looked down at her. “Keiko, do you know English?”

Her eyes lit up when the black one finally said something that sounded clear. She didn’t know what ‘Keiko’ or ‘English’ was but she knew ‘do you know.’ She nodded because then maybe he would speak like that again. “Great. You got Mic’s English.”

She frowned when he went back to speaking wrong. “Hi, Keiko.” She turned to see another yellow person with black like her. “Can you write?”

Could she? She didn’t know. She could spell cat. “My name is Kaminari.”

Names are… like how a cat is called ‘cat.’ And a dog is called ‘dog.’ So they are called ‘Kaminari.’ She pointed at him and he smiled. “Kaminari,” he said again. She pointed at herself. What was her name? “Keiko.”

She was Keiko? Did that mean ‘Shouta’ and ‘Hizashi’ and ‘Nemuri’ and ‘Zeriibiin’ were her grown-ups? She looked up at the black one. Which one was he?

The sky ringed and the black one picked her up. “Well, thank you for helping me figure that out. Enjoy your next class with Cementoss.”

Chapter Text

Hizashi froze when Shouta walked into the staff offices with an exasperated look. “What? What happened?”

“She speaks English. Not Japanese,” Shouta said flatly, moving to sit in his desk chair with Keiko in his lap.  

“Ohh… right. I didn’t actually learn Japanese until I was five,” Hizashi recalled. “I can’t believe I didn’t think to try that.”

“To be fair, I didn’t either. It was Yaoyorozu who suggested the issue being Japanese,” Shouta shrugged. 

“Hey, Keiko,” Hizashi smiled. “Do you know who I am?”

Using English, he saw actual recognition in her eyes. She hesitated a moment before shaking her head. “My name is Hizashi. I’m your uh… dad.”  

He looked up at Shouta. “Are we both Dad?” 

“I guess? But maybe different variations,” Shouta answered, clearly unsure. 

Hizashi returned his attention to Keiko. “Do you know if you can talk?” Her brows knitted in slight distress as she thought about it. “It’s okay. Do you want to learn to talk with your hands?”

She seemed confused but nodded anyway. He thought for a bit about what to teach her first and he decided to start with simple words she could use to convey what she wanted or how she felt. He would also be teaching her Japanese Sign Language, just while speaking English. He should probably teach her actual Japanese too but sign language would be a priority. 

“All right, so this means hello,” he told her while making the sign. 

Keiko was having a fun time. She was learning a lot. Like that her name was Keiko. And the yellow one is Hizashi and the black one is Shouta. They are her dads. Which is good. Because they are also her favorites. 

Dad Hizashi was also teaching her to talk with her hands. Which sounded weird at first but is nice now. She learned a lot of words, she thinks, but she only remembered the most important ones. Like ‘up’ and ‘food’ and ‘cat’ and ‘juice’ and ‘dad’ and ‘tired.’ 

Then Dad Hizashi said he had to go to ‘class’ and he left. It was sad. “Don’t pout. He will come back,” Dad Shouta said. He picked her up and sat her on his lap. “Help me grade papers.”

Dad Shouta spoke wrong a lot more than Dad Hizashi. Keiko guessed it was okay as long as he spoke right sometimes. She curled up against his chest, reaching for the scarf he had. Just like at the clean place, he took part of it off and let her hold it. She likes the scarf. 

Since Dad Hizashi would come back and she was comfy, she decided to take a nap. 

Shouta had handed Keiko the end of his scarf and not even five minutes later, when he looked down again she was fast asleep. “What is this a pacifier for you?” he muttered fondly. 

“See? Soft,” Vlad commented as he walked in, obviously having overheard that last bit. 

“She’s a three-year-old girl, Vlad. Obviously, I’m not going to be strict with her,” Shouta countered. 

“Still,” Vlad replied in a teasing tone. Shouta ignored him since starting a fight would probably wake Keiko. He graded papers until he ran out and then he moved onto next week’s lesson plan. Fifteen minutes into 3rd period, Keiko woke up. She did not seem pleased that Hizashi was still off teaching classes. 

Her version of a tantrum was quiet and non-disruptive but Shouta didn’t exactly like seeing her upset. So he pulled one of the juice boxes Nemuri had bought out of the backpack they had packed for Keiko. After he put the straw in and gave it to her, she seemed a little happier. 

Bribing your children was probably okay. 

Dad Shouta had set her down to color. She drew a lot of pictures and the one called ‘Snipe’ said they were very nice. She decided that she liked him. But he was not a favorite. When she started to get bored, Dad Shouta was still drawing on his own paper. This was boring and she didn’t like it so she decided to go find Dad Hizashi. 

She had watched the other ones come and go through the door and she was pretty sure she knew how it worked. She walked over to the door and grabbed the silver part that sticks out. It opened! She did it! Time to find Dad Hizashi. 

She walked and walked and walked and sometimes turned. But everything looked the same. She wasn’t finding Dad Hizashi and now she missed Dad Shouta too. This was not fun. 

When she tried to turn around and go back to Dad Shouta, she walked and walked and walked and sometimes turned but she wasn’t finding him either. This was very not good. She would never find them again. Her eyes got wet again and she was very sad and scared all of a sudden. Walking wasn’t helping so she sat down. 

Then the sky rang and a lot of doors opened. A lot of the smaller people, but different ones than the ones she met, walked into the hallway. Some noticed her and stopped by her. They talked and she didn’t know what they were saying because they were speaking wrong. It was scary and she just wanted her dads.

There was a loud sound and after a bit, she realized it was her. She was making the sound. More smaller people stopped and now there were so many she couldn’t see the hallway anymore. “Hey, that’s-- Move!” there was shouting now and made her more scared. And then one of the smaller people from before knelt down in front of her. 

“Keiko? I’m Bakugou. Where’s your dad?” She shook her head because she didn’t know. 

“Someone go find Aizawa-Sensei or Mic-Sensei now! The rest of you extras back up. What is wrong with you? Crowding a fucking child!” She wanted to be scared because he yelled and he spoke wrong but all the smaller people started walking away. It helped. 

“Kirishima and Mina went to get your dad. They’ll be here soon,” Bakugou said, not yelling anymore. She wanted them here now. She was still making noise and that was scary too. “Shit. You’re going to dehydrate yourself sobbing like that.”

“I’m not really sure how to approach panic attacks in toddlers.” The tall one spoke this time. 

“I have little siblings. As long as they don’t start hyperventilating, crying won’t hurt them.” There were more smaller people here than she noticed. She didn’t like that. Where were her dads?

Shouta was going to die. Whether he died of a heart attack or his husband killed him for losing their child had yet to be determined. He didn’t even know she could open doors! She was so quiet that he hadn’t noticed the change between ‘quiet because she’s like that’ and ‘quiet because she’s gone.’

The bell rang less than a minute after he left the staff office which really raised the stakes because she was so small and some of the kids at UA could absolutely trample her. Pretty soon after students started filling the hallways, Ashido and Kirishima ran up to him. 

“Aizawa-Sensei! Keiko’s in the hallway by the 2nd year gen ed classrooms,” Kirishima told him.

“She’s all by herself so we assumed she’s lost,” Mina added. “She was crying and--”

“Crying? Like with sound?” Shouta asked. Mina nodded. “Take me to her.”

Mina nodded and took off without another word. Not quite running since it was against school rules but speedwalking like a pro. Shouta and Kirishima followed, easily matching her pace. When they got close enough to actually hear a child crying, Shouta thought ‘Fuck it’ and ran the rest of the way. He found her surrounded by Bakugou, Yaoyorozu, Sero, and Jirou. 

He picked her up and held her close, letting her cry into his shirt. He was surprised to hear audible crying coming from her but focused on trying to calm her down. “It’s okay, Keiko. I’m here,” he reassured her, trying to soothe her in a language she knew. 

It didn’t seem to help much. He was at a loss for what to do until he got the idea to take his capture weapon off his shoulders and drop it over hers. She drowned in the coiled fabric but quieted instantly. She blinked up at him with teary eyes. “I’m here,” he repeated again. “You’re okay.”

Chapter Text

Everything was fine. The child was calm. Shouta had wiped away her tears. Hizashi would never have to know. At least, that’s what he thought until he entered the staff lounge and Hizashi was seated on the couch like some kind of pissed-off yakuza boss. 

Somehow, Hizashi already knew.

“Hizashi,” Shouta greeted, trying to come off as normal rather than nervous. 

“Hello, Shouta,” Hizashi smiled. “Would you like to tell me why witnesses reported you running from the staff offices with no Keiko in sight?”

Thirteen and Cementoss would pay for this, those traitors. “Well, apparently she can open doors. Which, if you recall, neither of us knew. Now we know and I will keep an eye out for any future Houdini acts.”

“Why didn’t you call me?” Hizashi whined, dropping the angry act. 

“I was focusing on finding our kid,” Shouta defended.

“Fine, that’s fair,” Hizashi relented. He smiled as he took in Keiko’s new accessory. “Wow, she’s really drowning in your scarf, isn’t she?”

“Getting lost scared her enough that she cried. With sound,” Shouta clarified. “I didn’t know how to calm her down but I figured since she liked my scarf…”

Keiko wiggled a bit, trying to get her arms free. Once she did she signed ‘food’ and Hizashi squealed. “Aw, she’s communicating intentionally! Yes, come eat. I have bentos.” 

“For me too?” Nemuri asked from the door. 

“Yes, for you too,” Hizashi smiled fondly. Shouta tried to remove the scarf from Keiko but she held tight. Hizashi laughed. “You aren’t getting that back.”

“I guess not,” Shouta sighed, setting her on the couch next to Hizashi and taking a seat on her other side. 

“Maybe you could get her one of her own,” Nemuri suggested. “Trade for your weapon. The toddler barter system is complex.”

“It’s clean and I have spares,” Shouta shrugged, accepting his lunch from his husband. 

“Yes, but perhaps Maijima could make one she can wear without tripping,” Hizashi said pointedly, handing Keiko an onigiri. “I don’t think she’d be able to walk in this at all.”

“Or you two should carry her everywhere like the princess she is,” Nemuri teased. 

“Soft,” Vlad stated, barely through the door. 

“She is a baby,” Shouta reminded him, watching Hizashi try to teach her the sign for strawberry as he handed her cut-up pieces of the red fruit. “She’s soft, so I have to be too.”

“Look, I’m not saying it’s a bad thing,” Vlad said as he walked to the coffee machine. “I’m just giving you a hard time because you’re you.”

Shouta rolled his eyes before turning to the toddler tugging on his sleeve. ‘Strawberry,’ she signed, holding out an apple slice for him. 

“So close,” Hizashi lamented. Shouta smiled and accepted the apple slice, making the correct sign for it as he did. He was nearly fluent in sign. His signing was definitely better than his English. She bit her tongue in concentration as she tried to copy him. 

Yeah, maybe he was soft for her. 

Keiko was very excited about hand speaking. She did the one for ‘food’ and she got food. The power she now holds is great. When Dad Hizashi showed her more words, she tried her hardest to learn them and remember them. Dad Shouta knew them too.

‘Egg’ was her favorite and she decided that was the most important one to remember. It was yellow, like Dad Hizashi, and tasty. When there was no more egg, she was sad. Dad Shouta gave her one of his and Dad Hizashi promised more later. 

“You ready to help me train my class,” Dad Shouta asked, still speaking wrong. She was getting used to it. She snuggled into the scarf that was still wrapped around her. “I’m not getting that back, am I?” 

She was picked up again by Dad Shouta and Dad Hizashi kissed the top of her head before saying that he was going to ‘class’ again. She thought that meant more boring waiting but Dad Shouta left the room too. He walked and walked and walked and turned sometimes and then they ended up in the room with the smaller people. 

“Hi, Keiko,” the pink one waved. 

“So cute!” 

“She’s like a little Aizawa with that scarf.”

“She literally is an Aizawa, Dunce Face.”

“Enough,” Dad Shouta rumbled, eyes flashing red again. She reached up to touch his floating hair but it fell on her hand before she could. “Get changed and meet me at Ground Beta.”

“Aizawa-Sensei, Keiko isn’t coming, is she?” the loud blue one stood up. “Wouldn’t it be irresponsible to have a child at such a dangerous location?”

“Do you intend to do anything to harm her?” Dad Shouta spoke back. Keiko didn’t know what he was saying but she could tell it was meant to be scary. 

“No, of course not, Sensei!” The blue one moved his arms in a way that was funny. 

“Then hurry up and go change for class,” Dad Shouta said before walking out of the room. He walked and walked and walked and sometimes turned and this time he ended up outside. How was he doing this? Was it his legs? Did she need longer legs for the walking and turning to take her somewhere? That had to be it. 

He walked some more and then they were in a city. Did they leave Dad Hizashi behind? She signed ‘dad’ to ask. “Me or Hizashi?” Dad Shouta asked, holding up one and then two fingers. She held up two fingers for Dad Hizashi. 

“He’s in class,” Dad Shouta answered. She frowned, frustrated that she didn’t have a hand word for ‘left behind.’ She felt her eyes get wet again. 

Shouta panicked internally when Keiko started to cry again after he told her that Hizashi was still in class. He hasn’t even had her a full 24 hours and it feels like he keeps making her cry. “It’s okay,” he tried. “We’ll see him later.”

“Is everything okay, Aizawa-Sensei?” Sero asked, definitely not managing to sneak up on Shouta if anyone asked. 

“I don’t know,” Shouta admitted. He didn’t even know what was wrong. Did she want Hizashi here? Did she want to be with Hizashi instead of Shouta? Did she not like him? He was really bad at English. And he kept making her cry. 

Sero looked between Ground Beta, Keiko, and in the direction of UA’s main building. “Hey, she just started existing yesterday, right?”

“Yes,” Shouta answered. 

“So she wouldn’t know much about places or travel,” Sero continued. “Most kids don’t anyway and I mean she got lost walking around UA earlier. I’m guessing she’s only seen the city when going between places. So maybe she thinks that we left UA entirely. Has she gone anywhere without both of you yet?”

The teen gestured to Ground Beta, which was basically a mini-city. That… made sense in a simplistic sort of way. Which is probably how she thinks. How Shouta should think to understand her better. “Do you think we left Hizashi?” he asked tentatively. 

She nodded sadly, repeating the sign for ‘dad.’ Shouta’s heart broke. “We didn’t. He’s just in class.”

“Does she know what ‘class’ means?” Sero pointed out as other students started arriving. Shouta hesitated to answer because he wasn’t sure. “Try telling her he’s inside and we’re outside but you’re still close to him.”

Shouta repeated it in English as best he could and she seemed to perk up at that. Shouta wiped her tears off her face for the second time that day. “Thanks,” he said to Sero. 

“I have 8 younger siblings,” Sero grinned. “I speak baby fluently. I’m happy to translate whenever you need.”

“I will probably take you up on that offer,” Shouta decided. He looked around to see that the rest of his class was present. “All right, let’s get started. For today’s exercise…”

Dad Shouta said that Dad Hizashi was inside and still close. Keiko was relieved that they hadn’t left him. The smaller people came back in different clothes than before. She started to lose interest as Dad Shouta spoke wrong to them for a long time. Sometimes one of them spoke back. She decided that outside was boring. 

When Dad Shouta finally stopped talking, four of the smaller people moved away from the others. The green one, the red and white one, Kaminari, and the tall, black-haired one that did not have a ponytail. 

“Ready?” Dad Shouta rumbled. The green one lit up with green sparkles and the red and white one had white clouds coming off his hand. “Start.”

Her eyes widened as they all moved. The green one jumped around really fast and was soon gone. The red and white one turned the ground to ice and slid away on it, also really fast. Kaminari ran normally and he was fast, but Keiko didn’t think he could keep up with the magic ones. The tall one had something that looked like Dad Shouta’s scarf coming out of his arm and he swung away. 

She grabbed Dad Shouta’s shirt with one hand and pointed after the smaller people with the other. Did he see? He had to see!

“Those are quirks,” Dad Shouta told her with a smile.

Chapter Text

“Those are quirks,” Dad Shouta told her with a smile. “You say ‘kosei’ in Japanese.”

She didn’t know what ‘Japanese’ was but she was finding that they used a lot of words she didn’t know, even when they spoke correctly. She turned her attention back to the city where the smaller people had gone. “Watch the screen.” Dad Shouta pointed to a box she didn’t see before. She could see the smaller people on it. 

Kaminari could sparkle too but it was yellow instead of green. “Woah, look at Deku go!” a pink and brown girl jumped with excitement. She looked happy. Happy was nice. 

“He’s gotten a lot better at controlling his quirk,” the blue-haired boy spoke next. 

The red and white boy made a super big slide out of the ice to get over something in his way. Keiko pulled on Dad Shouta’s shirt again and pointed. “That’s Todoroki. He can make ice and fire,” Dad Shouta explained. 

She poked him. “My quirk?” She nodded. “I can erase other people’s quirks.” She pointed to herself next. “You don’t have a quirk yet.”

She frowned. Why can’t she have one? That’s not fair. She held out a hand to demand one. “I can’t give you one. That’s not how that works.”

Fine then. She turned her attention back to the screen. She would get one later from Dad Hizashi. Soon, the smaller people came back and four more left. This time it was the blue-haired one, Bakugou, one with a tail, and the pink and brown one. The blue-haired one was super extra really fast but Bakugou could fly!

She leaned forward so far that she nearly fell out of Dad Shouta’s arms. He didn’t let her fall though because he is the best and very strong. She kept watching the screen and the one with the tail could use it to smash through things. And the pink and brown one could make things fly. But she didn’t fly, which was sad. 

The next four to go out were the pink one, the sparkly one, the red, spikey one, and the bird one. The pink one covered the ground with something slippery the way the white and red one had with ice. The sparkly one could shoot glitter from his tummy and fly backward with it. The red, spikey one just ran, but the bird one could fly too! Keiko wanted to fly…

“Um, Aizawa-Sensei.” The tall, black-haired one with the ponytail stood by them now. 

“Yes, Yaoyorozu?” Dad Shouta rumbled questioningly. 

“Midoriya-kun mentioned that Keiko might like merch of her parents but he pointed out how there isn’t any of you since you’re an underground hero. So I made something for her if that’s okay?” Whatever she said, Dad Shouta nodded. 

The ponytail person looked at Keiko. “Hello, Keiko. I made this for you.” She held up something dark and soft. 

Keiko looked up at Dad Shouta. “It’s okay. It’s for you,” he assured her. She took the soft thing from the ponytail person and it was a smaller version of Dad Shouta. She showed it to Dad Shouta in awe and he smiled and petted her hair.  “Thank you, Yaoyorozu.”

Keiko hugged Tiny Dad and the ponytail person smiled. “I’m glad she seems to like it,” she said before walking away. 

Shouta had watched with amusement as Keiko wrestled the doll into her capture weapon cocoon with her. It was easier said than done but she managed to figure it out just before he was going to offer to help. 

As interested as she had been in everyone’s quirks, when Asui, Jirou, Shouji, and Satou’s race started, she started falling asleep. She was out cold before they returned, wrapped up in his capture scarf, one arm around the doll and the other reaching out of the cocoon to hold his shirt. 

His students seemed to notice her sleeping state quickly, their chatter dropping to a softer volume. Not that he thought it would matter if she really took after him in sleeping ability. He appreciated it nonetheless. 

Faintly, he wondered if this much sleep was normal for her age, but he figured she was just created and everything is new and probably overstimulating for her. Plus he was half her genetic makeup and he napped a lot as well, even before he started doing hero work. He just really liked naps. Sleep deprivation due to his work just gave him an excuse. 

Asui returned first. Not unexpected for the obstacle course, but he was pleasantly surprised when Jirou came in second. She was learning to stay mobile while she made sound waves and it helped her get past obstacles without needing to stop. He sent off the last four. Hagakure, Mineta, Kouda, and Yaoyorozu. 

He had expected it to be harder, managing both his class and Keiko. Maybe it would be once she settled into existence. Or once she aged. She’d be a teenager eventually… Nope! He would not think about that. He would much rather she stay small and sweet. She’s just a little baby, he assured himself, holding her tighter. 

By the time his class ended and he handed them off to All Might, she was stirring. The large, muscled hero approached them, probably hoping she’d find him more tolerable in this form. “I heard she knows English?” Yagi asked. Shouta nodded, annoyed by the oaf’s very presence as usual. Yagi faced Keiko in all his star-spangled glory. “Hello, young one. How are you finding UA?”

She looked up at him with wide, terrified eyes before looking toward Shouta and signing ‘full’ which Hizashi had taught her earlier. He wasn’t wearing his scarf anymore so he resorted to hiding his face against her when he snorted at that. “Yeah, that’s how I’d describe him,” Shouta said, struggling to keep his tone even. 

Full. Full of hot air. Full of vanity. Full of bullshit. Full of hair-brained ideas. Full of… well, just a lot of undesirable traits. “What did she say?” Yagi asked, clearly confused but keeping that awful, fake smile plastered on his face. 

“She was just trying to describe you with the ten or so signs she learned over lunch. It was food-related. That’s all,” Shouta dismissed, straightening up. 

‘Dad,’ Keiko signed before pointing randomly. Obviously, it was the direction she thought the main building was in, but she was wrong about where it was. 

“Yes, we’ll go see Hizashi now,” Shouta promised, starting off in the correct direction. 

“Ah, goodbye then Aizawa,” Yagi called after them. 

“Go teach your class,” Shouta chided. 

Dad Shouta walked and walked and turned and they ended up inside where he did more walking and turning until they got to a door. “Hizashi is in here,” he said, holding her up to a window in the door. 

And he was. She could see Dad Hizashi standing in front of a bunch more smaller persons. “This is a class,” Dad Shouta told her. “He teaches them.”

Teaches… like when he taught her hand words earlier. But his hands aren’t moving now. He’s pointing at a wall and writing on it. But she thinks she gets it. ‘Class’ must be a room of smaller people. But then why can’t Dad Hizashi go to the one Dad Shouta kept taking her to? With Kaminari and Bakugou and the rest? They had magic, no, quirks. 

Dad Hizashi noticed her in the window and waved so she waved back. Some of the smaller persons were looking at her now. She hid in the long scarf that was still wrapped around her. Dad Shouta made a shushing sound and then they were moving again. 

She peeked out when she heard a door opening. They were in the same room that they were in before she got lost. Not the one they ate lunch in though. The Nemuri Lady was there, and the Block Man, and the Robot Dinosaur Man. “Ah, Maijima. I was going to go looking for you later. I wanted to ask if you could make a smaller version of my capture weapon for Keiko here. So I can get mine back,” Dad Shouta spoke.

“Sure. Bring her by for measurements on Monday,” the Robot Dinosaur Man spoke back. 

“Okay, Hizashi or I will do that. Thank you.” Dad Shouta pulled a second chair up to the desk he sat at before. “This time, you’re going to color here since you can apparently open doors.”

She was plopped down in the chair and he gave her the box of crayons and book of white paper. “Stay,” he told her, watching her for a bit before turning to draw on his own papers. Still hugging the Tiny Dad doll with one arm, she used the other to pull out crayons and draw the smaller people. From the class. The best class. With quirks. Magic.

She had drawn the red and white one, Bakugou, Kaminari, the pink one, the green one, the pink and brown one, and the ponytail one by the time Dad Hizashi came back. He picked her up from the chair and hugged her. “Ready to go home, kiddo?”

Chapter Text

‘Home’ was… the place from before. With the beds and the cat and where they had breakfast. Between the Clean Place, School, and Home, Home was her favorite so far. It had a cat and it was cozy and she could actually get around because it wasn’t so big.

When Dad Hizashi saw the Tiny Dad doll, he made a sound that was both nice and annoying. But it seemed to mean that he liked it. After they got inside Home, Dad Hizashi taught her more. He taught her more than just hand words. “Do you know what English or Japanese are?”

She shook her head. “They are languages. Languages are specific sets of words.” He pulled out the puzzle cards the Nemuri Lady had brought. “This half is English. Cat, Strawberry, Car.”

She watched as he laid out three cards. “This half is Japanese. Neko, Ichigo, Kuruma.” He laid out the matching cards. A pair made a picture of the thing. “They mean the same thing, just in different languages. Sign Language is what you are using to speak with your hands.”

That made sense since she already figured out that the buttons on the toy tablet were like letters. So… English and Japanese were how she should call them to tell them apart. She nodded to tell him she got it. “I’d like to teach you both Japanese and Sign Language,” Dad Hizashi told her. “And how to write in both English and Japanese.” 

He taught her, writing everything down so she wouldn’t forget, until it he said he had to make dinner. Then Dad Shouta picked her up and sat on the couch with her. “I will teach you about Netflix,” he told her with a smile.

They ate dinner in the living room since Shouta got Keiko started on a Disney binge. Netflix had multiple audios available for most titles, including English with Japanese subtitles. They fit in The Little Mermaid and one of the Winnie the Pooh movies before Hizashi suggested giving her a bath and putting her to bed. 

When he had looked it up online, most resources suggested a bedtime between 6 and 8. She had started to get tired around 8 yesterday so he decided they should probably go with that. Now he was facing down an angry, but quiet, toddler. “You have to take the scarf off.”

She shook her head aggressively. The doll was waiting for her in the living room but she still had Shouta’s capture weapon. “It’ll get wet if you take it in the bath,” Hizashi warned. Never mind the clothes he couldn’t get off if she didn’t give up the cocoon-like weapon. He’d wait until later to tell her she couldn’t sleep in it either. After it was already off. 

“Please, Keiko? For me,” he tried, giving her his most pitiful expression. Luckily for him, she seemed to be a fundamentally kind child because she gave in after that. 

Once he got her in the bath, he showed her how to clean up with soap and a washcloth. She figured it out rather quickly and everything was fine until she almost got soap in her eyes. Almost. Hero reflexes come in handy as a parent. He helped her with her back and finally, he washed her hair. She did not enjoy it and much like Sho, she was comparable to a drowned cat. 

He helped her into the strawberry pajamas from before after drying her off. Throughout the whole bath event, he showed her signs for things like soap and water while saying the word in both English and Japanese. It was efficient. 

Unlike Shouta, she enjoyed having her hair brushed and nearly fell asleep on his lap. They sat on the couch while he did this and Shouta watched with mild confusion. “She’s like you about hair,” Shouta commented as Hizashi pulled her hair into twin braids to keep it from tangling while she slept. 

“It’s relaxing,” Hizashi defended. Shouta just made a quiet sound of disagreement. When her hair was braided, they brought her to the guest room and tucked her in with her Eraserhead doll and the blue cat plushie that she liked. 

“Goodnight, Keiko,” they both told her, though she was already asleep. With a full day for her sudden existence to finally settle in, he felt amazed and lucky to have wound up with her. 

“What is with Nemuri and all the yellow clothes?” Shouta asked, exasperated when Hizashi came out with their daughter who was wearing another yellow outfit. 

“What’s wrong with yellow?” Hizashi frowned. “My hair is yellow.”

“Nothing,” Shouta said quickly. “I was just thinking that there are more colors out there and it’s weird that she keeps ending up in yell-- Is that a chicken?”

Shouta stared at Keiko’s shirt in confusion once she was set down on a chair. “It is,” Hizashi confirmed. 

“Why?” Shouta asked, dumbfounded. 

“Why not?” Hizashi shrugged, turning to get the food he made before waking her. 

“Are… chickens fashionable?” Shouta wondered aloud. 

“They just put a lot of different animals on kids’ clothes,” Hizashi explained dismissively. “I don’t know why but kids like it.”

Shouta made a contemplative face, accepting the answer. Did that mean there would be cats?

“First things first, room stuff!” Hizashi exclaimed, leading them into a relevant store within the mall. They decided to keep the full bed instead of getting her a toddler one since they’d just wind up switching her back to a full bed when she’s older. By the end of today, they would have all the things to make the guest room officially look like her room. Something fit for a kid. 

Hizashi took her over to the bedding first and Shouta watched with dismay as she willingly picked out a bright yellow set. He was sensing a pattern here. It wasn’t Nemuri, it was the child. Well, he’d just have to adjust, wouldn’t he? “Like you can complain. Your sleeping bag is yellow,” Hizashi pointed out. 

With that Shouta glared at him and guided Keiko over to the display of sleeping bags. “Pick one,” he instructed. 

“Sho, no! Don’t teach her your caterpillar ways!” Hizashi whined. 

“If she’s going to be napping at UA, she might as well be comfy,” Shouta countered easily. Hizashi sighed, admitting defeat. Keiko picked out a blue, rainbow-themed sleeping bag that could double as a pillow when compressed. 

Hizashi handled the actual furniture, picking out white pieces to match the bed and dresser that were already in the bedroom. He picked out a bookshelf that wouldn’t be too tall for her, some cube shelves and relevant containers to store any toys, and a small armchair for her to read in. 

Smaller decor items like curtains, rugs, lamps, pillows, and other such things were picked out by Keiko, sometimes with Hizashi’s help when she couldn’t decide. A lot of it was yellow. She also seemed to gravitate towards rainbows, dinosaurs, cats, and this muted, yellow dog character. After the third item with this dog character on it, he started to recognize it and point more out. 

A kitty night light, touch lamp was the final selection before Hizashi set things up with the store to be delivered a few after they planned to be home. The furniture, even disassembled, wasn’t something they’d be able to carry around while they shopped. Once all that was in order, they headed off to the next store. 

Nemuri had gotten a couple of dish sets for kids, the kind that have cute designs and are sized for kid-friendly portions. They got a few more. Nemuri had also gotten a few sippy cups and they had gotten several more. Hizashi had her pick out a smaller bento box. She chose one that had that yellow dog character on it and another one that had the Wild Wild Pussycats on it. 

That was all they really needed in that store and they carried the bags out with them. There were only two. The next store they went in had books. Hizashi located books and workbooks that he could use to teach her better while Shouta took her to pick out children’s books. He read the Japanese titles to her and they also found a section in English. 

He added a few to the stack that he vaguely remembered reading himself as a kid. He also picked out some harder books, still geared for kids, that they would be reading to her. They met up at the checkout counter, paid for all the books, and continued on their shopping journey. 

They spent a brief amount of time in a hero merch shop where they got her some merch of Hizashi’s hero persona. They also managed to find some of the tamer ones Nemuri’s marketing team put out. She picked out a few items of their coworkers too when she recognized them. Most of what they chose were posters and figures, but there were some other things mixed in. 

“Next is my favorite part!” Hizashi told her excitedly. “Clothes!”

Chapter Text

I kept forgetting to show the strawberry pajamas. She's been wearing the shorts version.

And here are the other clothes Nemuri got for her. Along with the Auntie and Daddy shirts shown earlier. 

Did I have too much fun looking for outfits for this story? Probably...

Am I sad because they don't make these cute outfits in adult sizes? You can't prove anything. *Sobs*

Anyway, lots of pictures in this chapter. Basically, just me showing off all the cute things I found.

“Why is this store so big if kids are so small?” Shouta complained as Hizashi led them through the store. 

“Because children grow quite a bit more than adults so they have a wider range of sizes,” Hizashi answered easily. “Here we are. This is the toddler section.”

Shouta zeroed in on something almost instantly. “This,” he said, making a beeline for it and taking it off the rack. 

“I don’t like clothes shopping. It’s boring,” Hizashi mimicked him teasingly. 

“Shut up,” Shouta grumbled. 

“Okay, but really, it’s cute. Get it!” Hizashi smiled, appraising the outfit. It was some kind of denim, overalls dress with a pink shirt, but the pocket on the chest was a cat.

Keiko tugged on Hizashi’s pant leg to get his attention. When they both looked down at her, she was holding a hot pink and blue gingham outfit with a whale on it. “Yes, we can get that,” Hizashi said, taking it from her to carry it. “Keep looking. Let us know if you need help reaching anything.”

“What about this?” Hizashi asked holding up a yellow shirt that read ‘little miss sassy pants’ in English and white shorts with yellow flowers. 

“But she’s not sassy. She’s pretty well behaved,” Shouta pointed out. 

“It’s still cute, and she likes yellow,” Hizashi argued. “Ooh, what about this?” And Shouta found himself looking at black pants with white geometric lines and shapes and a white shirt that read ‘pretty fly for a small fry’ in English. Shouta just shook his head fondly and kept browsing through the racks. It didn’t go unnoticed that both outfits were added to the collection he carried.

Meanwhile, Keiko had managed to find not one, not two, but three different dresses with dinosaurs on them. It was honestly a little impressive.

“Pick out some from this one,” Shouta told Keiko, carrying her so she could reach. 

“Athletic clothes?” Hizashi questioned. “Why?”

“In case she wants to train,” Shouta replied. 

“Sho, she’s three,” Hizashi hissed. “She’s not doing hero training. You don’t even know if she wants to be a hero.” 

“Sure, but she still needs exercise, right? These clothes are the most comfortable for that,” Shouta reminded him. Keiko picked out a pink and grey Nike outfit and a galaxy, tie-dye outfit. Hizashi rolled his eyes but put them with the rest of the clothes they’d picked out so far.

Next, they found a Disney princess display and Keiko picked out several of the Little Mermaid outfits. Hizashi tried to point out the other princesses but she was only interested in the mermaid. Was that Shouta’s fault for showing her the movie? Probably.

They followed her around as she picked out a pastel striped shirt with pale blue, denim overalls, a bunny-themed outfit with a grey shirt and pink skirt, and a purple tank top with a cat on it and matching tie-dye shorts. He felt a swell of pride when she picked out the cat outfit.

She also picked out a floral outfit that was mostly blue, white, and green, a blue dress with bunnies on it, and a Blue’s Clues outfit comprised of a pink shirt and blue shorts. “She has a better sense of fashion than you,” Hizashi teased. 

“Most of the outfits here are pre-matched,” Shouta countered.

“This is the cutest, ugly cat sweater I’ve ever seen, and do you think they have it in my size?” Shouta demanded, holding up a blue, polka-dot sweater.

“No, but I bet you could get Yaoyorozu to make you one if you asked nicely. She could probably even make a version in black to match your usual wardrobe,” Hizashi suggested.

It didn’t take long to figure out that next to yellow, ‘rainbow’ was probably her favorite color. If it could be counted as a color that is. Hizashi said it could. She chose a warmer outfit at Hizashi’s prompting that was a pair of blue sweatpants and a blue and white sweater with a rainbow on it. Hizashi insisted it was for just in case they went somewhere cold before winter comes. 

She also picked out a grey tank top with a rainbow on it and ripped, denim shorts patched with some sort of rainbow, glitter material. Then there was the grey dress with little rainbow arcs and the butterfly dress that had a different color filling every pleat in the skirt of it. She picked out a denim, overalls skirt that had rainbow embroidery and came with a navy blue and white striped shirt. 

There was a blue dress of which the entire upper portion was a huge rainbow arch. She even picked out some unisex outfits such as black sweatpants with rainbow stripes down the sides and a white T-shirt that both had a rainbow and read ‘rainbow’ in English. A gray and red T-Shirt with a rainbow on it and navy blue shorts covered in rainbow arcs. And lastly, black shorts with rainbow stripes down the sides and a black hoodie that featured a rainbow and read ‘good luck’ in English. 

A My Little Pony outfit and an Elmo outfit also made the selections because they were rainbow-themed. Shouta encouraged her to pick out a jacket which wound up being pastel rainbow stripes. Yes, it was nearly summer, but nights could get cold.

She did stray from rainbows long enough to pick a mix-and-match Powerpuff Girls set, a purple cat dress, a Winnie the Pooh outfit, a dinosaur outfit, a white and yellow outfit that read ‘strawberry milk,’ and a pink and grey outfit that read ‘princess squad.’

“Absolutely not, put that back,” Shouta said, glaring at the shirt that read ‘no one likes a shady beach.’ 

“It has dinosaurs on the shorts,” Hizashi defended. “And it’s funny.”

“Our child will not wear anything swearing adjacent,” Shouta insisted. Hizashi reluctantly put it back but pulled out one that read ‘cooler version of dad’ and came with camo shorts. 

“Fine,” Shouta responded when Hizashi held it up questioningly. It went unsaid that she probably was cooler than both of them.

Looking at hero merch clothes, obviously, they got several Present Mic and Put Your Hands Up Radio shirts. She got a couple of Wild, Wild Pussycat outfits. And she also picked out a Snipe hoodie and a Mirko hoodie. Other than that, she didn’t seem interested in many other heroes. 

After the hero merch, they decided that was probably enough clothes for now. Although Hizashi argued that there was no such thing as too many clothes.

1.  2. 

3.  4. 

(1 & 2 - These but they're Wild, Wild Pussycat-themed)

(3 - This but it's Snipe-themed)

(4 - This but it's Mirko-themed)

“She needs to wear shoes, especially once winter gets here. And even in this season, I don’t want her barefoot out of the house. So I was thinking we should get her some sandals first and then work our way up to closed-toe shoes,” Hizashi said. 

“Work our way up?” Shouta repeated, confused. 

“Yeah, like… a sandal that’s barely enclosed, then one that wraps around the foot more, then a soft material shoe, and then a regular sneaker,” Hizashi explained. 

“That might work,” Shouta agreed. They had Keiko pick shoes that seemed to ‘level up’ as Hizashi described. She picked two rainbow sandals and dinosaur, soft sneakers. They already had regular sneakers at home thanks to Nemuri. Getting her to try them on was a pain and a half but she was significantly less upset by the style of sandal they decided to start with.

“And house slippers,” Hizashi prompted. Keiko picked out a yellow kitty pair and Shouta made a note to ask Yaoyorozu for a black version of those in his size.

Hizashi picked out some socks, underwear, and hair accessories before leading them over to the backpacks. “We should get a little one for her to carry her favorite things and a regular size one for things that won’t fit in her little one and other things she needs,” Hizashi suggested. 

“What about this one for her?” Shouta asked, holding up a purple cat bag. “It looks like it comes with a leash.”

“You are not leashing our daughter,” Hizashi huffed. 

“Right, okay,” Shouta relented, putting it back. He picked up a similar grey cat one that did not have a leash attachment. “How about this one?”

“Okay. Now pick a regular one you don’t mind carrying that we can still easily identify as hers,” Hizashi told him, showing Keiko the cat bag to make sure it had her approval. It did. 

“Why me?” Shouta questioned. 

“Because I am fine with carrying a rainbow, glitter unicorn bag that lights up and sings but I imagine you wouldn’t be,” Hizashi smirked. Yeah, no… Shouta did not like the sound of that. He browsed through the larger bags until he found a black cat-themed one. It kind of matched the little one.

“I think that’s all. Let’s go pay and then drop all this off in the car. We can come back for the toy store and that should be our last stop,” Hizashi smiled. “Then we can go home and get her room set up. 

Chapter Text

“So how do we know which toys to get?” Shouta asked, holding a pouting Keiko’s hand. They put her sandals on her while they were at the car dropping off shopping bags. She was not happy. 

“I was just going to set her loose and say yes to anything that wasn’t a choking hazard,” Hizashi shrugged. “Legos would be a choking hazard unless they’re those oversized ones.”

“Got it,” Shouta replied, eyeing some shelves with suspicion. They let Keiko take the lead, although they browsed the shelves and displays too. They might recognize something she wouldn’t after all. Plus they have a height advantage. They can see more things.

The first thing she seemed interested in were these bipedal animals wearing clothes. ‘Barbies but cuter’ is what Shouta immediately called them. Hizashi helped her pick out 7 sets of the dolls and with 2 to 4 per set, she wound up with 22 animals. A mix of cats, rabbits, squirrels, red pandas, and puppies.

“You’re trying to make the families whole, aren’t you?” Shouta asked, watching them with a fond smile. 

“I-- Okay so she wanted this one with the school babies, and then the dogs, the red pandas, and the cats. But the baby squirrel and bunny need parents, Sho,” Hizashi whined. 

Shouta held his hands up in mock surrender. “I wasn’t saying anything about it. Just observing.”

Hizashi’s attention was brought back to Keiko when she handed him one of the accessory sets for the dolls. He frowned at the tiny pieces in it. Glancing at some of the others, he could see some that only had a few or no tiny pieces. “How about instead of this one, let’s get them a bed so they can sleep,” Hizashi suggested, trying to indirectly say no. 

She nodded and let him switch the sets. He had to do that a couple more times. He would just take the tiny pieces out of the few sets that had them. She could have them when she was older or once he knew that she wouldn’t try to eat random things. 

“If she’s getting furniture, there should be a house,” Shouta pointed out. “That one’s the biggest. And maybe the school one too.”

“And I thought I’d be the one spoiling her,” Hizashi hummed with an amused smile. 

“Yeah, well… I want her childhood to be better than mine was. We have more than enough money,” Shouta dismissed. “It’s logical.”

“It will be better,” Hizashi promised. “She has us.”

Keiko wasn’t entirely sure what was going on but she was having fun. Even if this place was big and noisy and even now that there were shoes on her feet. Dad Hizashi kept saying ‘shopping’ which seemed to be going into these places that he called ‘stores’ and choosing items to take to Home. Or at least Dad Hizashi said they were for Home.

Dad Hizashi or Dad Shouta would point to a bunch of similar things on a shelf, like a bunch of sippy cups, and then tell her to pick some. Sometimes they gave her numbers but she could only count so high before she got confused. 

Every store seemed to have a specific thing. The Home store had stuff for Home. The book store had books. Now the toy store had toys. It was easy to remember. And some stores had ‘carts’ while others had ‘baskets.’ Carts were much bigger than baskets. She didn’t know why. Only the Home store and the toy store have had carts so far. 

She watched as Dad Shouta put a tiny house into the cart. Or… a small house but bigger than some of the other tiny houses on the shelves. She didn’t pick it so it must be for him. If they both had toys, maybe they could play together. 

They both seemed to be done looking at these toys so they continued down the aisle. She stopped at some shelves that had lots of blocks and things that were not blocks but seemed to be used like blocks. She reached for one of the boxes and looked up at Dad Hizashi. 

“Hm. This one is for older kids,” he told her gently before pulling a box off a higher shelf. “What about… this one? It’s almost the same but without these little pieces. So it’s safer.” She looked to where he pointed on the first box’s picture. 

She nodded because she didn’t mind that. The one he picked had prettier colors anyway. She hadn’t seen it because it was too high. He put the box in the cart and they kept going.

“Why are there so many color sorting toys?” Shouta asked, looking at the surrounding shelves while Hizashi and Keiko picked out some activity books and coloring books. 

“To weed out the colorblind children so they can be purged,” Hizashi replied, making Shouta whip around to look at his husband in surprised horror. 

Hizashi glanced up from a pack of stickers. “What? You can make edgy jokes but I can’t?”

“I just didn’t expect that from you, Mr. Sunshine ,” Shouta said pointedly. 

“I can be edgy too,” Hizashi pouted before perking up again to show Keiko a pack of The Little Mermaid stickers that he found. 

Eventually, they moved on from the coloring and crafts area. Hizashi found some play dough but wasn’t able to explain what it was to Keiko. He tried but she only got more confused. He got it anyway, along with some tools for it, with the intention of just showing her later. 

“Can we use that outside our apartments?” Shouta asked after seeing Hizashi pick up some sidewalk chalk. 

“Probably not but I was going to get her a chalkboard, so it doesn’t really matter,” Hizashi assured him. 

Keiko found some dinosaur toys she liked, which was not at all unexpected. It was really only a matter of time. Shouta had been the one to find and suggest a tea set with fake desserts, which Hizashi would not drop. “Are you initiating the tea parties then?” Hizashi teased. 

“I will put the tea set back,” Shouta lied. 

Hizashi gasped. “Don’t you dare!”

While Keiko was looking at the biggest collection of stuffed animals ever, Dad Shouta walked up to her before making himself shorter. He held up the yellow puppy she liked and kept finding but this one was dressed as a kitty! Also, he was a stuffed animal, not a picture on something. 

“Do you want this one?” he asked and she quickly nodded. He brought it to the cart and she handed him the weird, yellow animal she found. “A giraffe? Okay.”  

She kept looking at the stuffed animals and picked out a Winnie the Pooh and the roundest cat she’d ever seen before deciding that was all she wanted. She handed them both to Dad Shouta. “How are all of these yellow?” he said, speaking in what she now knew was Japanese. 

It was okay that he kept speaking differently. Because Dad Hizashi said he would teach her to speak that too. Soon she would be able to understand.

“I found more language tools,” Hizashi announced to his husband as he caught up with him and Keiko in the stuffed animal aisle. 

“What’d you find?” Shouta asked. 

“Magnetic characters, both hiragana and katakana. And then the roman alphabet. They had a few other languages worth as well,” Hizashi told him. “I also found these keyrings with blank flashcards. I can fill it with words, English on one side, Japanese on the other. She can use it to study or to communicate. Not everyone knows sign language, unfortunately.”

“That’s actually a really good idea. Especially if she makes a habit of wandering off like she did yesterday,” Shouta replied. 

“Oh! And on my way here, I saw a music aisle. We have to get here some little baby instruments!” Hizashi exclaimed. “And probably bath toys too.”

“Lead the way,” Shouta responded, gesturing up the aisle. Hizashi took them both to the instrument aisle and Keiko seemed pleased to hear some of the noises the different items made. 

There was a mixture of toy instruments and functional instruments still designed for children. He picked out a functional keyboard. It wasn’t the same as a real one but it would be fine to learn with. To see if she liked music. Just because he adored music didn’t mean he’d force her into it if she wasn’t interested. 

Keiko picked out a xylophone that doubled as a piano, though not a functional one. She seemed to like the sounds it made because she kept pressing the keys that the packaging left exposed. Shouta stared at her blankly. “Oh, that’s going to get old fast…”

“But we’ll tolerate it. It’s the only noisy thing she picked out today,” Hizashi reminded him. “Count your blessings.” Shouta nodded in agreement and they left the aisle to look for bath toys. After Keiko picked out a set of floating sea critters, they headed to the checkout.

On the way, Shouta spotted waterproof, drop-proof cameras for kids. Like, functional ones. He picked up a yellow one. “I’m gonna teach her to use this. I want to see the world through her eyes.”

“Sho, stop! You’re going to make me cry in the middle of this store,” Hizashi complained, actually tearing up a bit.

Unrelated but I just realized I never posted their apartment layout!

12x10 Bedroom is Keiko's room. 12x11 Master Bedroom is Shouta & Hizashi's

The 11x10 Bedroom is actually their office.

Chapter Text

On the way home, Shouta texted Nemuri to ask if she wanted to help with Keiko’s room. She replied saying she’d be there in ten, even though she lived 20 minutes away. When they pulled up in the parking lot of their apartment complex, she was already there. 

“How many traffic laws did you break?” Shouta asked in disbelief. 

“They’ve only been broken if you get caught,” Nemuri replied without hesitation. 

“Okay.” Shouta decided to ignore that. “You’re helping me carry stuff up. Hizashi’s going to stay in the apartment with Keiko and make lunch.”

“Yes, sir.” She mock-saluted him before waving at Keiko as Hizashi carried her past them. “Still no car seat I see,” she commented, peering in the window. 

“Hizashi wants to order one. There weren’t many options at the mall,” Shouta explained. 

“That’s fair,” she said, gathering up some shopping bags. She gasped when she saw one of the stuffed animals Keiko picked out. “Ooh, I can’t wait to see what all you got!” 

“At least wait until we get everything in the apartment,” Shouta chided. 

Hizashi moved around the kitchen, preparing udon for lunch, while Keiko toddled after him. She seemed hyper-interested in everything he was doing. He’d already explained that he was just making lunch but she still followed him. There wasn’t any reason to keep her from doing that, so he just went about his task while being careful not to step on her. 

After two trips, Nemuri and Shouta got all the shopping bags up in the apartment. Nemuri was currently in the living room sifting through the bags and Shouta was trying to stop her. “No! You said I only had to wait until everything was in the apartment,” she argued. 

“I said ‘at least’ . Not ‘only.’ The furniture and home stuff aren’t being delivered for another two hours yet. We can’t put anything away if you take it out,” Shouta argued back. 

“We can… wash the clothes,” Nemuri suggested. 

“Why would we wash the clothes?” Shouta asked, sounding frustrated. 

“Because you’re supposed to?” Nemuri said as if it was obvious. “People try on the clothes in stores. Or even just touching them on the rack. Germs, Sho. People carry germs.”

“I second that, actually. Can you wash the clothes Nem got too?” Hizashi called from the kitchen. He handed Keiko a piece of sweet potato tempura to see if she liked it. She seemed to so he set aside a few for her portion. 

“Well, how was I supposed to know that?” Shouta grumbled. 

“That people carry germs?” Nemuri questioned flatly. 

“The washing new clothes thing. It’s not like my parents taught me anything. Remember the Dryer Disaster of Second Year?” Shouta reminded her. 

“I almost forgot about that,” she gasped in reply. “You set your house on fire.”

“I set my dryer on fire! The house was fine!” Shouta defended. 

“It wouldn’t have been. Fire spreads!” Nemuri huffed. 

“Children, please,” Hizashi interrupted. “No fighting. Just wash the clothes.”

There were a few minutes of quiet before that was broken by Nemuri. “You do know you have to take the tags off, right?” 

“I know that much!” Shouta snapped. Hizashi sighed and shook his head. 

Playdough was fun! She didn’t understand what Dad Hizashi was saying it was before but he got it anyway. She was playing with it at the coffee table while the grown-ups all sat around a basket of her new clothes. She wasn’t sure what they were doing. 

She already had lunch which was yummy and called ‘udon.’ Dad Hizashi said it was a Japanese word that was the same in English. Like how ‘okay’ is the same in both. It had noodles and lots of tasty floaty bits. Now she was playing until it was time to set up her room. Dad Shouta said they would do that when the ‘delivery people’ come. 

The playdough was squishy and soft. It could be used to make things, like blocks. But it could be any shape, unlike a block. She tried to eat a piece but Dad Shouta didn’t let her. The bit she licked tasted bad anyway so that was probably fine. ‘Not food’ and ‘do not eat this’ he had told her many many times after that. 

Instead, he showed her how to roll it out and cut out shapes. That’s what she was doing now. She has made a yellow heart and a purple cat and a green boat so far. She was rolling out some blue but hadn’t decided on a shape yet. 

“She’s really got a thing for rainbows,” the Nemuri Lady spoke. 

“She’s onto something there,” Dad Hizashi spoke next. “Why pick a favorite color when you can have all of them?”

“Her favorite color is yellow, isn’t it?” Dad Shouta spoke too. 

“She can have two. Yellow and rainbow make up most of what she chose. I think blue might be a close third.” Glancing up, Dad Hizashi and the others were still doing the thing with her clothes. She watched, confused, as he made a shirt smaller. 

“Are we folding the dresses?” The Nemuri Lady held up the butterfly dress Keiko picked out earlier. 

“We’ll hang those. I got kid hangers. Everything else will go in the dresser.” Dad Hizashi just finished speaking when the sky rang. It was different than the school.

“Hopefully that’s them and we can get started.” Dad Shouta stood up and walked to the door that takes them outside.

“This comforter is adorable,” Nemuri cooed as she helped Hizashi put the bedding on. 

“After you’re done with that, we’re going to move it from the middle of the wall into the corner,” Shouta told her. “It’ll give her more floor space to play.”

“Good thinking!” Nemuri said as she wrestled a pillow into a pillowcase. “How goes unboxing?” 

“I’m going to start testing my students by putting them in escape rooms made out of child-proof packaging,” Shouta grumbled. 

Soon enough the toys were opened and sorted into containers and the bed was moved to its new location. Between the three of them, they assembled the cube shelves correctly but somehow put the bookshelf together backward. They had to take it apart and do it again. They kept Keiko safe and out of the way by plopping her down on the bed with a stack of books. 

The two dollhouses were placed on the floor of the closet with a container of the dolls and their accessories. Since most of her clothes would be in the dresser until she was older, she could keep larger toys in here and even play with them here if she wanted. 

Nemuri, with her eye for design, hung the hero posters they had gotten her evenly. Present Mic, the tamest one they could find of Midnight, Snipe, The Wild Wild Pussycats, Lemillion, Hawks, Mirko, Fatgum, and Cementoss now decorated her walls. All deemed acceptable heroes that they’d both trust her with. 

She also had figures of the entire UA staff except for Power Loader and Eraserhead, simply because they couldn’t be found. There were also figures of the Wild Wild Pussycats, Mirko, Ms. Joke, Lemillion, and Suneater. Yes, they were proud of the two recent UA graduates. With the posters and the figures, she’d hopefully recognize them all and trust them too. 

“Can we put stickers on the dresser?” Nemuri asked. “It just feels like a lot of blank space in here, even with the posters.”

“Sure,” Hizashi agreed, sorting and putting away Keiko’s books and study materials. “I don’t mind. Sho?”

“Stickers are for decorating. It’s only logical to use them as they’re meant to be used,” Shouta replied, putting the containers of toy away on the cube shelf but in a pattern. 

“Great. Hey, Keiko. Can you come help me pick out some stickers?”

“Look at you, being all decorative,” Hizashi cooed from across the room. Shouta glanced up from the figures he had just started placing on top of the shelving unit. 

His eyes narrowed. “You got a problem with that?”

“No,” Hizashi shook his head. “It’s just cute is all.”

Shouta blushed and turned back to the figures, ignoring the soft laughter that came from both Hizashi and Nemuri. 

Since her books had been taken to figure out how much space was needed for them, Shouta set Keiko up with the chalk at the chalkboard. She figured it out pretty quickly and it kept her occupied. “I’m going to put these hair things in this,” Nemuri announced, holding a music box. 

“Sounds good,” Hizashi replied. “I just got it for the song. I didn’t have plans for the actual box part.”

Soon they were working on the finishing touches. Nemuri was hanging the yellow curtains, Shouta was writing her name on the doorplate and hanging it up, and Hizashi was spreading out the fluffy, yellow rug that Keiko kept petting back at the store. 

“Well, Keiko. What do you think of your room?” Shouta asked, picking her up. She smiled and wrapped her arms around his neck to hug him. He did not cry and neither did Hizashi or Nemuri.

Picture Time!

(I spend all day on this one drawing.)

Before anyone points it out, no I did not make the figures, posters, or stickers. 

I wanted fancier posters than I was capable of and then I can't draw anything as tiny as the figures and stickers with detail. 

Notice, the figures and stickers pixelated badly anyway. My brushes would have been too big, even at the smallest setting. 

I also don't have wood texture so I just added stock images to act as the color layer for the floor and doors.

Then I put a picture of a Japanese neighborhood in the window because I thought it would look neat.

Posters Not Pictured:

This is above her headboard. (And centered.)

And these four are on the unpictured wall. (Above the side of her bed) Centered clear across.

My Favorite Details:

A closer look at the stickers. Also, a star lamp. You know the ones that project stars onto the ceiling?

Keiko's chalk drawing. Am I the only one seeing a frog here? Kind of? I just scribbled aimlessly.

The UA family. Even Nezu and Recovery Girl.

...Oh shoot I forgot about Vlad. Let's assume his figure couldn't be found either. 

No one forgot All Might. That was intentional.

A reminder that this is the second year for Class A (Now 2A.)

Since it's early May, they just finished the Sports Festival.

Anyway, our canon third years are graduates now. Lemillion and Suneater are pros! (Sidekicks but shh!)

Keiko's family picture tucked away here. Also this kitty lamp.

Lastly, that's how her name is written. (Mentioned in a previous chapter.)

Chapter Text

The rest of the weekend was fairly calm after that. Hizashi, Nemuri, and Shouta all played with Keiko but she also seemed content playing by herself while they worked on case files and grading papers. Shouta managed to find a cartoon channel geared toward kids who are just starting to speak. And then Hizashi had shown her the workbooks he got her. 

She couldn’t write at all, they learned. But she could spell some words with preexisting letters, like the alphabet magnets Hizashi had gotten her. Not many words, but some. Enough that he knew she understood the concept. Reading was similar. She understood things that were verbally said better than things that were written down. 

And that was all in English. In Japanese, she was pretty much starting from scratch. When they figured out her limitation with reading, Nemuri offered to add little drawings to the flashcards Hizashi was making. Even if she couldn’t read it, she could recognize the image. 

Keiko seemed to find baths to be more tolerable once Hizashi added the bath toys to the process. After using hot glue from their office to seal the holes meant to shoot water, of course. Nemuri had mentioned that mold could grow in them if not dried out properly so he just decided not to take any risk.

The car seat was ordered from a store in town so it arrived the next day. Figuring out how to set it up in the car took longer than expected, even with Nemuri’s help. Keiko seemed amused from where she watched in the front seat. Obviously, they weren’t going to leave her alone in the apartment. She took a picture of their struggles with the camera Shouta showed her how to use. 

Now it was Monday morning and they were getting ready for school. Hizashi packed their lunches while Shouta packed their daughter’s bags. Both the little one and the full-sized one. Keiko stood next to him in her white dinosaur dress and sandals. The capture weapon was back in Shouta’s possession only because he promised she’d be getting her own later. 

“Are we ready to go?” Hizashi asked, stepping into the living room. 

“I think so,” Shouta decided. 

“All right, then. Let’s get going,” Hizashi replied with a smile. 

Keiko looked around the new room while Dad Shouta talked to Robot Dinosaur Man. There were lots of things. Some of them reminded her of her playdough tools. But with less color. “Can it be made a different color?” Dad Shouta spoke.

“Sure. The material can be dyed once it’s been created,” Robot Dinosaur Man spoke next. 

Knowing they were speaking ‘Japanese’ did not make it any less boring for her. So when the door opened and a pink-haired smaller person walked in, she had Keiko’s full attention. She looked up at Dad Shouta before walking away toward the smaller person. She probably won’t get lost as long as she stays in the room, she thinks. 

“Oh, hello, tiny baby.” The pink-haired one makes herself more Keiko’s height. “I think there’s an age requirement for the studio, or at least an implied one, so it’s odd that you’re here.”

“It’s temporary, Hatsume,” the Robot Dinosaur Man could be heard from the other side of the room. Not as loud as Dad Hizashi was once but loud. “She’s here for measurements.”

“Ooh, I can get started on those while you talk! What are you making? Can I help? Please!” The pink-haired one went back to being tall and hopped up and down. She seemed really excited. 

“A small capture weapon,” Dad Shouta spoke next as the two adults walked over to Keiko and the smaller person. “She really likes mine so I figured she would like one her size.”

“Excellent!” And suddenly Keiko was in the air. The pink-haired one had picked her up and she didn’t know these smaller people were able to do that. “Up you go!”

Keiko was on a table now. She was tall now! 

Shouta smiled, amused at Keiko’s blatant shock at being on the work table. Then she smiled and giggled and it was his turn to be surprised. Hearing her laugh was infinitely better than hearing her cry. He would’ve hugged her but Hatsume was already pulling out measuring tape.

“So what color were you thinking?” Power Loader asked. 

“A soft yellow,” Shouta answered. 

“Without the carbon fiber, I’m assuming?” Power Loader questioned while smiling at the two kids. 

“Yeah. She doesn’t need a weapon. Just a replica scarf,” Shouta confirmed. 

“That should be no problem. I can probably finish it by tomorrow afternoon,” Power Loader said. 

“She’s 89 cm tall,” Hatsume announced, jotting it down on a notepad. She also measured around Keiko’s neck and the width of her shoulders, writing down the numbers without saying them aloud. “She’s so little,” she commented as she finished up. “Hero kids are bigger.”

“Kids are pretty compact until they’re about 6 or 7,” Power Loader responded. “That’s when they start stretching out a bit and developing more adult-like proportions.”

Shouta picked Keiko up from the table. “Her size now is convenient. Easier to pick her up and keep her out of trouble than it is with my students.” Hatsume and Power Loader both nodded in understanding, recalling the times Shouta had been seen restraining or carrying various members of the hell class. “Speaking of, I should probably head to class. Let me know when the scarf is done.”

“Will do,” Power Loader replied with a smile. 

 “She’s back! Hi, Keiko, ” the pink one waved from where she was. Dad Shouta had brought Keiko back to the room of tiny people with quirks. She tucked her face into Dad Shouta’s scarf.

“Yes. As I said, she will likely be here from now on. Either with me or Mic,” Dad Shouta responded to her, looking tired. “You’ll be expected to behave as you’re normally expected to in class. Don’t let her become a distraction to yourself.”

“If she’s going to be here often, will she get a desk?” Kaminari spoke next. Keiko waved to him shyly. He smiled and waved back. 

“I could make her a smaller version,” the ponytail person raised her hand. 

Dad Shouta sighed. “Fine. But then we start homeroom.” 

Keiko watched in awe when the ponytail person came up to the front of the room and opened half of her shirt and jacket before pulling a whole entire table of… somewhere??? Where did it come from? What was the lights? 

“Oh no, Momo, you broke the baby!” Keiko didn’t check who was speaking, far more interested in the magically appearing table being placed next to the tall thing Dad Shouta stood at. It looked like the tables all the tiny people were sitting at but a little smaller. Keiko’s size. 

Dad Shouta put her down and she went over to look at it. She poked it. It was real. Then the ponytail person did it again but this time with a chair. Keiko walked closer to her and tried to touch her tummy where the chair came from but she was too short. The ponytail person put the chair down and made herself shorter like the pink-haired one did before. 

“This is my quirk,” the ponytail person said, holding out her arm and pulling out a round… doll? The ponytail person smiled and twisted the doll in half to reveal another doll. And then another inside that one. “I can make things.”

Keiko sat down on the floor with the dolls and put them back together, smiling when she succeeded. Then she was being scooped up by Dad Shouta. “Thank you, Yaoyorozu. You can go sit down now. And you, Keiko, this is your spot. Sit here.”

He placed her in the chair that the ponytail person had made which was now right in front of the table. She put the chubby doll on the table and turned it so that it could watch the class with her. Dad Shouta put both of the cat bags next to her where she could reach them. He started talking to the class in Japanese but this time he kept going on and on and on and on and… 

She got bored so she opened the little bag and pulled out the colors and a coloring book she had picked out to bring. She recognized some of the people in the book and that is why she liked it. The Robot Dinosaur Man was in here. Dad Hizashi was in here. The black-haired lady was in here. And a bunch of the dolls in her room were in here too. 

Dad Shouta was still talking and boring so she started on a picture of the bunny lady on her wall at home. Keiko wanted to make her blue even though she was not. Maybe she should try blue. It was a good color. Dad Hizashi was yellow and that was the best color. But maybe he should try rainbow too! She found a picture of him to color next.

(The Chubby Dolls)