Driving quickly the family soon reached the hospital and met with Charlotte who explained what she had seen.

“His skin was cracking?” Isaac asked, shocked.

“Yes, his skin was also very pale and seemed to be withering but the captain arrived and quickly had them administered serum to stabilize him and return moisture to his body and he was taken to the ICU sector and is undergoing a power examination as well as a physical.” she said.

“Has there been any other news?” he asked.

Charlotte shook her head with worry present on her face.

Ruth was the most worried and was clenching her fists with tears building up in her eyes.

Suddenly her mother came and hugged her, picking her up and pushing her head into her nap, “Don’t worry dear, your brother will be fine.” Charlotte whispered.

Ruth began to sniffle and cry quietly in her arms. She sat down with the crying girl while Isaac distracted the 3 year old while carrying the 1 year old.

After about an hour, a doctor walked out and just behind him was Captain Stretch.

“Captain?” the parents said surprised.

“The captain is one of the leading specialists in elastic ability research. From the get go we had to call him in to check your child’s powers.” the doctor said.

“Then is he okay? Is Robin okay?!” Charlotte asked.

“Yes he is fine, physically he has no problems at all caused by the accident.” the doctor said.

“Physically? What does that mean?” Isaac asked.

“Well he was run over by a truck sir. We have kept him sedated so that his mind and body can rest for the day.” The doctor said.

“And what about his powers?” Charlotte asked. She had been there when she saw him drying up.

“That is the problem.” the captain said, taking the front.

“Problem? Is it serious?!” Isaac said, very worried.

The captain frowned as he built the next phrase very carefully. “For a safe civilian life he won’t have problems but for someone who will desire to do heroism, there are many.” he said.

“Is my brother's power weak?” Ruth asked with a worried expression

During the time they were waiting, they also put her through a power checkup which had not returned yet.

“It is hard to say exactly if it is weak or not but your Rubber and Hardening powers somehow found a way to merge instead of existing separately.” He said.

“I-Is that bad?” Isaac said paling.

“I don’t know but I can tell you this, they are definitely not compatible. His power is Hardening Rubber, this is because his body is made of rubber so the hardening effect happens based on the rubber elements.” the captain said and raised his fist and slowly his fist turned swollen and black. “We examined his body while it was hardened and after it had relaxed. The best comparison I can give him is tire rubber. That is what his power makes his body.” the captain said.

“How are the powers not compatible?” Charlotte asked.

“Well your husband can understand, hardening is an ability where you stiffen your body but rubber is a power that gives you rubber level elasticity and flexibility. The two don’t match, in a sense your son has Stiff Rubber. His elasticity and stretchability is greatly hindered by the hardening power. I can’t say more on this aspect because he has not used it but we did test his range. Each limb, including his torso, can only stretch about 1 meter.” he said.

Isaac felt faint and collapsed on the seat nearby.

Sadly, the captain was not finished, after a sigh and rubbing his head he continued, “Also, we identified his… well not weaknesses but the method he hardens. When Robin hardens he gains a lot of mass and his body inflates to a degree. This is because from his bones to the skin, they harden into thick rubber with a greater mass than his own. This uses up a huge amount of lipids in his body but not only that but huge amounts of water is also consumed to produce that extra mass.” He said and turned to Charlotte. “That is why in the ambulance you saw your child’s skin drying and cracking. He hardened completely and wasn’t ready for that level of hardening. This is where the problem comes in, the amount of water he uses for even a simple hardening without training, is almost equal to about 10 liters of water.” He said.

“Wha!” the parents said.

“I see you understand, the average adult human body is made up of around 40-50 liters. So that means that your son could, at most, harden weakly four of five times before being dehydrated. This is why I said he would face many troubles to do a job with heroism.” the captain said.

“Does… does this problem affect his rubber abilities?” Charlotte asked.

“Hmm… yes and no. Directly it doesn’t, there was no water loss when his body stretched but indirectly it can because dry rubber is stiffens. The more he hardens without refilling his moisture levels, the less and less he can stretch. That said, he has an interesting ability to be able to absorb moisture through his skin directly. Even if he doesn’t drink, as long as water is poured on his body, he can slowly recover.” he said. “That’s about it, his condition is pretty serious because of the dehydration but in about two hours his condition will stabilize after his moisture level gets back to normal levels. The sedatives are already wearing off, before he wakes up he will be moved to the normal care unit so you can meet him there.” the captain said and turned to the doctor.

“Thank you for the help captain.” the doctor said.

“It’s my pleasure, sorry to have to give you such bad news, good luck and take care.” he said and shook the hand of the parents before leaving the hospital.

The two were silent while the little five year old girl was nearly in tears that her brother was so hurt.

Soon her exam also came in.

“Congratulations, your daughter has a very developed and strong elasticity. Even at her age, her current range of stretching is nearly 40 meters and what’s more, because of a very small influence from her father’s hardening power, her rubber has a firmer tensile strength making it firmer and able to develop her physical strength far better than common elastic abilities.” the nurse said with a smile.

The parents force a smile and thank the nurse but that doesn’t cheer up the family, in fact it makes it even harder. Identical twins but one has an ability that will restrict his rubber powers, making them almost useless, and the other having enhanced rubber powers with a huge range for her age along with strengthened muscles making it easier to grow physically stronger. The parents already knew this was a recipe for disaster if it wasn’t taken care of very carefully.

The biggest problem was that the children were starting kindergarten this year. School is a lot less forgiving than it was centuries ago. The number of people with no power isn’t big but it isn’t small either, to protect them from the super powered children, there are classes of powered and unpowered children.

That said, this is the only division. They don’t separate children with nearly hero grade abilities, if it was possible to identify such a thing, from children with frankly useless abilities like producing soap or oil from your skin. For some children, this can cause arrogance when others praise them so much in admiration and this praise will eventually make them think they are the best and can do as they want.

What they want in the end, is to feel strong and sadly the weak children are the main target.

Soon Robin was changed to a normal room and they could visit him and after he fully woke up they told him.

3 months later September 7th

After getting out, Robin’s demeanor had greatly changed after learning about his powers. Like many children, they dream of becoming the next hero. Although many know it is impossible, for Robin, his mother had rubber powers. Given a lot of effort he could actually reach at least Strong man and if he was particularly good he could become a Brave man if his effort was large enough but after his parents explained just how hard it would be, he turned much colder.

The childishness in him drastically reduced. Not that it was gone, he still showed a very childish side with his younger siblings especially the 1 year old but he actually started unconsciously avoiding Ruth.

Her ability was actually enhanced by small parts of her father's power while he was hindered.

Tests showed that the core section of the Hardening power in their DNA was in the X and Y Chromosome, particularly 70% was in the Y.

Because of their peculiar situation of birth, they found out their father was the one who transmitted the XY chromosome that could have ended in a situation of XXY chromosomes.

As a result, Ruth kept the secondary characteristics of hardening, a simple 30% which consisted of the stronger muscles needed for the ability, while she gained her mother's full ability. To make it worse, the rubber ability for both of them had been greatly enhanced naturally. If there were no problems that they both would have had strong rubber bodies with the ability to greatly increase physical strength.

That said Robin got the core of the hardening ability and because it lacked 30% of its makeup it had to merge somehow with the rubber ability to make up the missing parts. That is how he ended up in the situation he was in. Frankly, if not for his mother's rubber power strengthening greatly when it passed to their generation, he might not even have elasticity and instead would have had faulty hardening.

Now they were going to kindergarten and would interact with others, it would probably get worse.

The first day was mostly introductions and learning about each other. The kid that got the most attention was a chubby kid who was also the tallest in the entire class for a 5 year old.

For a 5 year old, they would already be around 1 meter tall for an average child, even after the mutation with the powers, that average didn’t change much for more common people. Of course, this is common people, this kid isn’t common.

His name is Marcus Kong. The last name comes from his origins in the Kong Clan, a hero clan that always had the main focus to strengthen ape abilities. This isn’t limited to gorillas, from chimps to monkeys. Like all hero clans, they want to produce a hero, a pillar of the nation because with the status of a true hero clan they will get huge influence.

Marcus is one of the most recent children they produced with the power to actually accomplish this. He awakened his power at four and a half and his power was named King Kong. This is how ambitious his father was as it would label him the king of the clan. It wasn’t without reason though. The ability ‘King Kong’ isn’t simple, the ability was produced after over four generations of attempts. From the Great grandfather's age, the gorilla power family has wanted to merge giantification with Gorilla transformation. It succeeded with him pushing their family to very high status.

At present, he can transform only into a gorilla that is the size of a full grown gorilla but this is a huge boost in size and strength, which giants are known for.

Even if he was chubby, he was the most praised in the class, mainly because several children from the clan were also in the class and were his lackeys. Why was the clan even sending children to public school, because education of course. Brains can beat brawn if it is developed enough so having brain and brawn work together is even better.

That said, it wasn’t so much for a good two thirds of the class, though not outright visible. Most of the children admired him for this strong power. That said, the last third were politely called common level powers, or trash power users. These are people that could live without their abilities without missing them.

There are a large number of strange abilities in this category. Many of them are frankly useless when you hear about it.

Robin and Ruth were the most compared of course. Robin had introduced himself and his power. He called it Hardening Rubber but didn’t really show it off because of the backlash. They had actually expected Ruth to say the same thing but when she suddenly began to stretch they actually compared them favoring Ruth over Robin.

Under the table, Robin gripped his fists balling up his pants fabric in his small hands while his face turned red.

What he didn’t notice was Marcus looking at him. He looked between the two confused about their situation.

Once everyone was introduced they were told to find a seat they liked, Robin walked away from Ruth who tried to follow but when she was about to sit next to him at a table he stood up and coldly left to another table just next to that one. He looked at her, making her confused about his anger.

At that time, some girls came to sit with her and while the tables filled up, the remaining ones eventually filled up the seats, a few kids sat next to Robin as well.

Kindergarten isn’t a hard grade, most of the time it is just playing, learning words and reading. The hard part begins after a status quote is formed usually after a few weeks or months.

For Robin, this was set after about 3 weeks, during that time the teachers would give simple playful activities such as some handouts to learn spelling.

His first grade in grammar was 85 but his sister got a 90. After that was drawing, they had to fill in the correct colors, again she did a small bit better.

Math, reading, the simple science classes and all that, within a few weeks Robin slowly built up frustration to the point that he actually started to hide it inside. For the first few days he would try harder with an angry look, the following weeks he had a cold face as he worked harder.

At the start no one noticed until someone asked Ruth why he was so angry. When she said that her grades were a little better they still didn’t pay attention. Children didn’t really notice fine details though it was stored in their minds. Every so often they would look at him and when activities were handed out after being graded, a few kids would sneakily look at his paper before asking Ruth her grade.

Slowly they began to giggle and laugh, finding it fun to compare the two because of how hard Robin worked while Ruth worked with other people while playing and was still better than him.

Of course, this only made their relationship at home that much worse. The two were in a room together since birth but already he had done tons of things to separate them. He has cried and complained about wanting his own room. When it didn’t work he seperated all his things and literally grabbed a marker and drew a line through the room and told his sister, “This is my side, don’t cross it.”

Charlotte and Isaac didn’t know what was going on so they first asked his daughter but got nothing really concrete but they did hear that Robin didn’t make friends with anyone and whenever they got work back, some people would sneak over and peek before running off and soon the class knew what he had graded.

The hearts of the parents clenched as soon as they heard this. They instantly noticed how their son was being compared to their daughter. She personally didn’t notice but Robin had long since noticed their actions.

The next day they went to speak with consolers to figure out what to do but this was school. They can resolve it temporarily but it will come back again.

Sadly, they could not even resolve it initially, during playground time the very next day, Robin was pretty far off on a monkey bar. He was upside down with his legs up against the bar while he held on the bar with his hands between his legs.

“Urg!” he groaned as he forced his legs straight, stretching his arms with great difficulty.

From an early period after awakening, he noticed that stretching his body needed a lot of force so he could actually use his own body to train. Of course he was a child and his posture and attempts were very strange and poor since he was upside down instead of upright where he could more carefully take a good posture much less have a teacher to train him.

As he reached the full length of his arms stretching, which had a very high pull force, suddenly a pair of thick hands grabbed his wrists and pulled down, dislodging his hands and making him fall off the bars making the arms pull back.

They let go right after pulling the hands free making Robin fall on his head.

“Ouch!” he said, though it barely hurt since the rubber body had very high blunt force resistance capabilities.

A bunch of laughter suddenly sounded around them and Robin opened his eyes and turned to the perpetrator.

All around him were Marcus, in his gorilla form, and the other Kong clan minions.

“What was that for?” Robin said standing up but suddenly the big ape hand gripped his head and pushed him down.

“You should stay down there. It is where you belong.” Marcus said.

Robin quickly became outraged, “Why are you doing this?” he asked standing up again.

“I said stay down! Also why shouldn’t I do this? A reject that is always behind his sister in everything. Who cares about what I do to you?” He said grinning and this time shoved Robin to the ground.

“Ahaha, that’s right boss! You can do whatever you want just like the master said!” one of the minions said, clapping.

“A hero is above everyone and below one only, I will start my rise to a hero by making you be below me!” he said.

“Hero? You are just acting like a petty villain!” Robin shouted.

Before he could react, Robin was grabbed by his leg and lifted upside down.

“You want me to test how stretchable you are don’t you?!” he said and grabbed both legs in one hand and as he tried to grab the arm, a long rubbery hand suddenly stretched around his right hand and pulled back.

“Let my brother go!”

Everyone turned to find Ruth stretching and behind her, the other classmates looking from a distance.

“If you don’t let him go, I will call the teacher!” Ruth said with a glare.

Marcus glared at Robin and snarled, “You are lucky this time.” he said and dropped Robin on his head before shrinking back to his normal fat form before shaking off Ruth’s hand.

He and his lackeys walked off while Ruth ran over to Robin, “Are you okay? Did he hit you?!” she asked and reached to help him up.

Pa!

Suddenly Robin smacked her hand away, “Who asked you for help?!” he shouted and stood up before running another direction.

She was just stuck there looking at her brother. Her eyes began to glitter with tears when she heard some voices.

“How mean, Ruth helped him and he just hit her. She shouldn’t have helped him.” a voice came from behind.

“He really is the spoiled twin, he is nothing like Ruth.”

Ruth wanted to turn around to try and talk for him but her heart was tight and she was almost in tears so she just ran in the direction that Robin went but didn’t follow, she just circled around and found a small corner.

As for Robin, he found a different place and grabbed a strong object and kept trying to stretch his arms longer and with more force, poorly working his body until the bell called for playground time to end.