1 Prologue

"WAAAHHHHHHH!!"

Within the slums of Musutafu, Japan, a baby's cry could be heard echoing throughout a small obscured street, only visible through the moonlight. At the origin of the shrill noise laid a child, swaddled in what seemed to be a blanket and laying on the step of an antiquated building that held a sign reading, "Kindly Orphanage". After a few minutes of wailing, muffled sounds of footsteps come from inside the orphanage, and then a squeak as the old wooden door opens. A frail, aged woman stumbles out of the open doorway, nearly tripping on the baby while trying to investigate the crying.

"Oh, poor child. How'd you get here?" The lady mutters to herself. She carefully picks the baby up, taking care not to jostle him too much, as she walks back inside the dilapidated building to rest him on a spare mattress in the corner of the room, passing by five other beds with four children sleep on them, while the leftmost bed is reserved for her. The spare mattress is situated right underneath one of the windows showing the street. As she lays him down, she notices a tuft of jet black hair on his little head. "Since I don't know your name, how about I call you Kuro." The baby dumbly looks at her, and then starts crying again. As she goes to lay on her own bed, she thinks, 'Who would be so heartless to leave such a young boy out in the open like this? If his own parents aren't willing to take care of him, then I will.' As she falls asleep, she slowly hears the sobbing dying down, assuring her that the baby is relaxing as she drifts into unconsciousness.

---------The Next Day----------

As the boy is awoken by the cascading rays of sunlight beaming through the dirty glass, he wobbles his head from side to side trying to figure out where he is. He sees the mattress, the old wooden walls, the crumbling ceiling, and realizes he's not at his house. So he starts crying again.

"WAH!"

"WAAAHHHH!"

"Would you just SHUT UP already!?" A young boy, short in stature with a deformed face and bright red hair, peaks out of his bed and screams at the child, only causing him to cry more. The loud cacophony, in turn, woke up the other three kids and the caretaker of the orphanage.

"Now, now, Ken, calm down. He'll be living with us for the foreseeable future, so be on good terms with him." The kind old lady says in a no nonsense tone as she gets off of her bed and walks over to Kuro. She picks him up, coddling him to her chest to try to calm him down, and walks across the room to go into the kitchen area. In the kitchen, she walks past the crumbling counter towards a fridge, from which she takes out a bottle of baby formula, and walks over to the sole table in the room, with the other four kids following suit.

"Eiko, will you please go grab a spare chair from the back?" The lady looks at one of the children and asks. The young girl, with red hair and an odd, jagged mark on her face, nods and runs off towards the back of the building. As they all start to sit down, the lady sits in the wooden chair that was slightly more stable looking than the rest of the chairs at the circular table. She starts to bounce him on her knee, calming him down enough for the lady to fit the tip of the baby bottle in his mouth. He greedily sucks on the bottle, seemingly not getting enough of it as if he's been starved for days. The girl named Eiko comes running back in, dragging a slightly less splintered wooden chair with her, or rather, behind her. It was floating behind her as if she had tethered it to herself, but there was nothing supporting it. As she comes closer to the table, the chair moves to the left of the table, and fell down on its side.

"Oh, sorry, sorry, I'll get it right next time." The girl whispered as she quickly up righted the chair using her hands.

"It's fine dear, nobody is going to punish you here. Besides, your quirk is one of the most useful ones I've seen, you just need to train it some more." The old lady replies as she pats the young girls head.

"Thank you grandma, I'll try harder." Eiko said while nodding, and ran back to her seat with her head down. While this was happening, Ken got up and put five premade meals into the only microwave in the kitchen, running it for a minute, and then taking all five out once the microwave dinged. Even though the packages should've been burning hot, he took them out with impunity, and just walked back and put them in front of everybody.

"Thank you, Ken, I would've done it myself but my back has been getting worse recently." The lady nicknamed "grandma" said with appreciation.

"It's no problem. My quirk is suited for hot things anyways." Ken muttered, trying to act strong but his blush was clearly visible to the old lady, who chucked a bit.

"Let's all start eating then, and you all should introduce yourself to our newest addition." The old lady said when they were all situated. "He already knows Ken and Eiko, so how about you two go?" She said as she pointed to the other two children.

"I'll start then, I guess. My name is Hayato. No quirk. No last name." One of the boys said, without much emotion. He was taller than the rest, without any visible muscle, and brown hair. His face was angled more than the others, giving the appearance of a pretty boy.

"I'm Satoshi. No quirk. And why are we introducing ourselves to a baby? I doubt he can understand us." A boy with blonde hair said. He was the shortest of the bunch, with a scowl on his face at all times. He had a large pale mark on his face, ranging from his left eye to his chin.

"Who knows, he might have some quirk to help him understand us. There's no harm in introducing yourselves." The lady responded, and then introduced herself. "I'm Ito Yukio, but you can just call me grandma. My quirk lets me see a persons birth date. Not very useful, but it can be used in identifying kids, so it works perfectly for an orphanage." As she says this, she used her quirk to find the birthday of Kuro, and figures out that it's on 2/23/XX.

Once they all finish their food, Yukio puts Kuro on the table, stands up and walks over to a calendar on the fridge, marking an X in red marker on February 23rd, to remind herself of Kuro's birthday. She then picked Kuro back up, and brought him back into the room with the beds, and laid him down again on his mattress. He quickly falls asleep, being full and content after eating.

Not much happened for a few hours, with the other kids doing chores and odd jobs for others in the slum, trying to make money to keep the orphanage running. Yukio, on the other hand, couldn't do many jobs because of her old age, so she went to the market and bought healthy foods, thinking that Kuro would only grow strong with good food, as well as gathering any money she found on the ground in hopes of being able to afford a proper bedframe for Kuro soon. At around six in the afternoon, they had all gathered at the table once again to eat dinner together, with Kuro still not being able to sit on his own seat, so he took his usual seat on Yukio's lap. Dinner continued as normal, until they had all finished and heard a knock on the door.

"HEY! OPEN UP!" A man could be heard yelling outside, along with more violent pounding that threatened to take down the already weak door.

"Oh no.... I don't have any money left to pay them." Yukio muttered, teary eyed as she realized she couldn't pay back the debt of the orphanage. "What am I going to do.... I can't just let these poor kids be taken and left alone again." She ran to the front door, nearly tripping on the way over, and opened it before it broke, only to see three tall, muscly men in tight black suits. They were in a triangular formation, with the one in the back having sunglasses on as well as a tail that looked eerily similar to an iguana.

"You know the drill. Pay up, or you're going to have to leave this trash heap. Are you going to make this harder than it should be, hag?" The knocking one said.

"No... I just..." She stuttered. "I don't have enough money right now, I just recently got a new kid and I don't have enough liquid funds to pay you." She was immensely regretting going to the local loan shark for enough money to pay last year's rent.

"You should know better than to mess with us like this, lady. It sure didn't end well for that old man we hung up on his own house last week." The tailed one said, with obvious mirth in his voice and an evil grin plastered on his face. "If you don't pay up right now.... we might just have to take one of those children as 'collateral', and you wouldn't want that, now would you."

"NO! Please... I'll pay you back soon.. I just need time." Yukio begged, but the men just barged past her into the building. She clung to the doorframe, as one of them bumped into her and nearly knocked her down. As she's getting back up, she hears a banging coming from the bedroom, and then silence. Her face immediately dropped, fearing for the worst, and adrenaline forced her body up and over to the room Kuro was in. As she walked in, she saw the opposite of what she expected. The big man was on the ground, shaking, as Kuro was fine and dandy, still asleep; however, there was now an odd shadow floating over him, pointing at the man as if to protect Kuro from him.

"A-A sentient quirk! Shit, you'll sell for a fortune!" The spectacled man said as he got back up, with greed apparent in his eyes. Although he's still a bit shaken, he walks over to Kuro to pick him up. When his hand was within a few feet of Kuro, the shadow hovering over him shot out to the mans hand, putting a hole straight through the middle of his palm. The man cried out and fell over, once again, but this time cradling his hand to his chest in an attempt to stem the blood flow. "Brat! I-I'll be back later for you! Don't think we're finished yet!" The man yelled in a bid to keep at least some of his dignity, as he scrambled out of the bedroom. Yukio quickly followed after. He yelled out for the remainder of the group, trying to usher them out the door, when the same shadow that attacked him popped out into the kitchen, where his group was. He was forced to watch in shock as the small, ball shaped shadow attacked his two minions, going straight through their ears and out the other side. The two suited men quickly fell to the ground with a thud, blood leaking through their ears and eyes. "S-Shit!" The loan collector yelled, before booking it out of the door without a look back.

"Wha-" Ken yelled out, as he saw the men drop. The other three children had a much similar reaction to the brazen killing of the two men right in front of them. Eiko was crying while the three boys just stared in shock. Yukio quickly came out of the daze she was in, and started to panic, thinking to herself, 'What do I do?? One of the children just brutally murdered two men...' and as she was panicking she ran over to the four paralyzed younglings and hugged them all as she led them out of the back of the building, covering their eyes.

"Shit, shit, shit. What do I do??" She muttered, trying to figure out a way out of any repercussions. 'I'll bury them. Nobody has to know, I'm the only one that knows Kuro did it, and nobody would believe the debt collector that a four year old put a hole in his hand.' She thought to herself, as she told the children to stay put, and went and grabbed a shovel. She quickly buried the bodies, leading the children back in so they didn't have to see anything anymore, as they were obviously already traumatized. "You can't say anything about this to anyone, okay? I don't know what happened to those two, but this orphanage won't be able to stay in business if anybody finds out. Please." Yukio told the children, warning them of the consequences if this secret got out to the wrong people. The children promised they won't, and Yukio quickly ushered them to sleep. She herself went to sleep shortly after, worrying about the future and what may come after her.

---------The Next Day----------

Yukio woke up to the sound of a baby crying, and remembered what had happened the day before. She put on a brave front, woke the other kids up, and then picked Kuro up and held him to her chest so he would calm down. The shadow ball had disappeared, but she was still slightly afraid of him, even though she had the feeling he wouldn't hurt her. She brought Kuro and the others into the kitchen, and had a similar breakfast to the day before, but with much more awkwardness in the air. She decided the best course of action was to let them figure things out themselves, since they weren't old enough to really understand the consequences of what had happened and she didn't want to scare them more.

The days continued on from then, becoming more and more normal as the kids had accepted what happened, and though they didn't get over it, they no longer had nightmares. Kuro was slowly growing up too, with only Yukio being nervous of what might happen to Kuro as he got older, and consequently, his quirk got more powerful. Oddly enough, the loan sharks never came back, so Yukio figured that the loaners were scared of whatever had caused two men to die in a simple orphanage.

Only time knew what the future would hold.