"This is a terrible idea," Haruto said, staring at the "training ground" Bakugo had set up in the park.
"This is the BEST idea!" Bakugo corrected, gesturing at the obstacle course made of playground equipment and random objects. "We're gonna get SO STRONG!"
"We're three and four years old," Haruto pointed out. "We should be playing with blocks."
"Blocks are BORING! Training is COOL!"
"Kacchan spent all morning setting this up," Izuku said, clutching his notebook. "He borrowed traffic cones from somewhere."
"Borrowed?"
"Definitely borrowed. Not stole."
"The construction site down the street is missing traffic cones."
"Borrowed!" Bakugo insisted. "I'll give them back!"
"When?"
"Later!"
Tamaki, who'd agreed to supervise this disaster in the making, looked amused. "Well, at least they're motivated."
"They're going to hurt themselves," Haruto said.
"Probably. That's how you learn." She settled on a bench. "I'll intervene if anyone's actually in danger. Otherwise, have fun."
"Fun," Haruto repeated flatly.
"GO!" Bakugo shouted, even though nobody was ready.
He immediately sprinted toward the first obstacle—a series of cones set up in a zigzag pattern. He made it through three before tripping over his own feet and face-planting.
"I'M OKAY!" he announced from the ground. "THAT WAS TACTICAL!"
"Tactical face-planting?" Izuku wrote this down.
"It's called a recovery position!"
"That's not what that means, Kacchan."
"It is now!"
Izuku went next, carefully navigating the cones with the precision of someone who'd studied the layout beforehand. He made it through successfully, then turned to beam at them.
"Good job, Deku!" Bakugo called. "Now do it FASTER!"
"But I'll fall—"
"THAT'S HOW YOU LEARN!"
Haruto's turn. He walked through the cones at a normal pace, not rushing, not particularly trying.
"FASTER, HARU!"
"No."
"Why not?!"
"Energy conservation."
"That's BORING!"
"That's smart," Tamaki called from her bench. "Always conserve energy when you can."
Bakugo looked betrayed. "You're supposed to be on MY side!"
"I'm on the side of not passing out from exhaustion."
The next obstacle was the monkey bars, which presented an immediate problem: they were all too short to reach them properly.
"I've got a solution!" Bakugo announced.
His solution was to blow himself upward with small explosions to grab the bars.
"THAT'S CHEATING!" Izuku protested.
"It's STRATEGY!"
"It's definitely cheating!"
"Deku, if you're gonna be a hero, you gotta use everything you've got!"
"I don't have anything!"
"You've got DETERMINATION!"
"I don't think I can monkey-bar with determination alone—"
Bakugo had already moved on, swinging wildly across the bars and nearly losing his grip twice.
Izuku tried next. He managed to grab the first bar by jumping, hung there for a moment, then dropped.
"I can't reach the next one," he said, slightly out of breath.
"Use your CORE STRENGTH!"
"What core strength? I'm four!"
"Then BUILD SOME!"
Haruto walked up to the monkey bars, placed his hand on a nearby tree, and made a vine grow to the perfect height.
"That's ALSO cheating!" Bakugo pointed at him.
"It's using my quirk efficiently."
"It's the SAME as my explosions!"
"Mine didn't almost set you on fire."
"That was ONE time!"
"It was thirty seconds ago."
Tamaki was definitely laughing now, though she tried to hide it behind her hand.
The training continued with similar chaos. Bakugo attempted to blast through every obstacle. Izuku meticulously planned each approach. Haruto found the laziest possible solution using plants.
By the end, all three were covered in dirt and exhausted.
"That was AWESOME!" Bakugo declared, lying flat on his back. "We should do this EVERY DAY!"
"I'm dying," Izuku said from somewhere in the grass.
"You're not dying, you're TRAINING!"
"I can be both!"
"Quitter!"
"I'm four years old and you made me do fifty jumping jacks!"
"You stopped at thirty-two," Haruto corrected.
"That's still thirty-two more than I wanted to do!"
Tamaki walked over, looking down at them with amusement. "How do you feel?"
"AMAZING!" Bakugo shouted.
"Terrible," Izuku groaned.
"Tired," Haruto said.
"Good. That means you actually tried." She handed them water bottles. "Drink. You need to hydrate."
"When do we train again?" Bakugo asked immediately.
"How about we wait until you can stand up first?"
"I can stand up! Watch!" Bakugo tried to stand, wobbled, and sat back down. "Okay, maybe in a minute."
"Take your time," Tamaki said dryly.
The training sessions became a regular thing, much to Haruto's resignation. Every Tuesday and Thursday after his sessions with Tamaki, Bakugo would drag them to the park for "strength building."
"You're building character!" Bakugo would insist.
"I don't want character," Haruto would respond.
"TOO BAD! You're getting it anyway!"
Two weeks into this arrangement, Mina from playgroup showed up.
"Can I train too?" she asked, bouncing with excitement. "Please? I wanna get strong!"
"YEAH!" Bakugo approved immediately. "More people means more COMPETITION!"
"I don't think that's what training partners are for, Kacchan," Izuku said.
"Everything is competition if you're brave enough!"
Mina fit right in, bringing chaos energy that matched Bakugo's. Her acid quirk meant they had to be more careful about what she touched, but she was enthusiastic.
"Watch this!" She touched a rock, which immediately started dissolving. "I can melt through obstacles!"
"That's COOL!" Bakugo said.
"That's property damage," Haruto observed.
"COOL property damage!"
"I don't think the park service will agree."
They were proven right twenty minutes later when a park ranger appeared.
"Are you kids melting the rocks?" he asked, looking at the dissolving stone.
"Science experiment!" Mina said quickly.
"For school!" Izuku added.
"We're three and four years old," Haruto said. "We don't go to school yet."
"HARU!" They all turned to glare at him.
"What? He asked."
The ranger looked at Tamaki, who shrugged. "They're learning quirk control. The rock was already broken."
"Was it?"
"It was very broken. Structurally unsound. They did the park a favor."
The ranger looked skeptical but left them alone with a warning about proper quirk usage in public spaces.
"You almost got us in trouble!" Mina said.
"I was being honest."
"Honesty is overrated!" Bakugo declared.
"That's terrible life advice," Tamaki called from her bench.
"It's TACTICAL life advice!"
"Still terrible!"
A month into training, and Izuku had actually gotten noticeably stronger. He couldn't do a pull-up yet, but he could hang from the monkey bars for a full minute.
"I DID IT!" he shouted. "Haru-kun, did you see? I did it!"
"I saw. Good job."
"Time it!" Izuku told Bakugo, who was holding a stopwatch he'd borrowed (stolen) from somewhere.
"Sixty-two seconds!" Bakugo announced. "New record!"
Izuku dropped from the bars, grinning widely. "I'm getting stronger! Even without a quirk!"
"Told you!" Bakugo said smugly. "Training WORKS!"
"You were right, Kacchan."
"I'm ALWAYS right!"
"Let's not go that far," Haruto said.
"Name ONE time I was wrong!"
"Last week you said you could jump over the fountain."
"I ALMOST made it!"
"You got wet."
"That's not the point!"
"That's exactly the point."
Mina had been practicing her acid control, trying to melt things in specific patterns rather than just dissolving everything she touched.
"Look!" She showed them a leaf that had a perfect circle melted through it. "I did it! I made a SHAPE!"
"That's awesome, Mina!" Izuku pulled out his notebook. "How'd you control the spread?"
"I just... focused really hard? Like, imagined a circle and told my quirk to stop there."
"Visualization techniques!" Izuku scribbled. "That's similar to what Haru-kun does with plants! And what Kacchan does with explosion direction!"
"We're all using the same technique?" Bakugo looked surprised.
"Different applications, same principle!" Izuku showed them his notes. "See? It's all about mental focus and—"
"INFO-DUMP INCOMING!" Bakugo warned.
"Oh, right! Sorry!"
"Don't apologize, just keep going! I wanna hear this!"
They settled on the grass while Izuku explained his theory about quirk control being mostly mental discipline. Haruto had to admit, for a four-year-old, Izuku was remarkably insightful.
"So basically," Mina said, "we just have to think really hard about what we want our quirks to do?"
"And practice!" Izuku added. "Lots of practice! Your brain has to build the pathways, like—like a path through a forest! The more you walk it, the clearer it gets!"
"Deku's smart," Bakugo said to Haruto.
"I know."
"Like, really smart."
"I know."
"It's kind of annoying."
"I know."
"HEY!" Izuku protested. "I can hear you!"
"We know!" they said in unison.
Tamaki watched this all with a small smile, making notes in her own journal. When they took a water break, she called Haruto over.
"Your friends are good for you," she observed.
"They're loud."
"Loud isn't always bad."
"Gerald says the same thing."
"Gerald is wise." She looked at the other kids. "They push you out of your comfort zone. Make you engage instead of just observing."
"I engage."
"You tolerate. There's a difference." She poked his forehead gently. "But you're getting better. Two months ago, you would've refused to come to these training sessions."
"I still think they're unnecessary."
"And yet you're here every week."
Haruto didn't have a response to that.
"Character growth isn't just about getting stronger," Tamaki continued. "It's about learning to work with others. Trust others. Care about others."
"I care about them."
"I know. That's what I mean." She smiled. "You're doing well, Haruto. Better than you think."
That evening, Haruto recounted the day to Gerald.
"Bakugo made us do obstacle courses again," he said.
How'd it go?
"Chaotic. Mina melted a rock. Izuku almost got us in trouble with a park ranger. Bakugo set himself on fire twice."
Sounds productive.
"That's one word for it."
You enjoyed it, Gerald observed.
"I tolerated it."
You laughed three times.
"How do you know that?"
The oak tree told me. It sees everything in the park.
"The oak tree is a gossip."
The oak tree is thorough. There's a difference.
Haruto leaned against the balcony railing, watching the evening sky. "Tamaki says I'm getting better at working with others."
You are.
"I'm not trying to."
That's what makes it real, Gerald said. The changes you don't try for are the ones that stick.
"When did you become a life coach?"
When you started needing one.
"Rude."
Honest.
"Same thing with you."
Exactly.
Inside, his parents were making dinner. He could hear them talking, laughing about something. The cherry tree sapling rustled next to Gerald, content in its new pot.
Everything was peaceful. Normal. Good.
"Gerald?"
Yes?
"Thanks. For putting up with me."
That's what friends are for, Gerald said, because of course he did.
"You say that every time."
Because it's true every time.
Haruto smiled, giving the fern a gentle pat before heading inside for dinner.