The Ereri Project!

Balls (Kindergarten Karate)

When the children arrived at the karate school that day, there was a thick white stripe of tape splitting the room in half. "Okay kids," Sensei Keith grins. "It's game day!"

Jean and Connie, the two chubbiest kids in their class, groan but Keith ignores those two in favor of feeding everyone else's excitement. 

"And you know what we're going to play first?" Annie spots a bucket of foam balls behind their instructor. She raises her hand. "You don't have to raise your hand to speak, Annie."

"Are we playing dodgeball, Sensei?" she asks.

"Not quite," Keith replies. "Since Eren broke his nose last week," Levi gives his "husband" an apologetic look but Eren just smiles in return. 

"I thought it would be a bad idea to have you guys throw things at one another. So we're going to play a slightly different game called Clean Your Room."

Everyone makes faces. "That sounds boring," Reiner says.

"I didn't even tell you how to play yet," Keith says. "Everyone gets one ball to start, okay? I'll split you up evenly on each side of the room and then you just have to throw as many balls as you can onto the other side. When I say stop, whichever side has less balls wins. Got it."

Everyone nods.

"Okay," Sensei Keith says. "Not everyone come get a ball and I'll split you up."

Once everyone had a ball, he counted the children. He makes a face like he's impressed. 

"Alright," he says. "Since there's an even number of girls and boys, why don't we split up like that; girls versus boys."

Immediately, everyone knows how bad of an idea that is. There's an electric current pulsing through the competitive glares Levi and Mikasa cast directly at one another, Eren standing oblivious to it directly between in. 

"Sir?" Armin raises his hand carefully. "I'm a boy, not a girl."

Sensei Keith takes a moment to register the fact that this child in front of him, with the shoulder length blonde hair, big blue eyes, and very feminine voice, is, in fact, a little boy instead of a little girl. 

"Right," Keith says. "I'm so sorry Armin, but do you mind playing with the girls?"

Armin frowns. "I guess not."

"I can split everyone up again if you want, but it's a little easier like this."

Armin shakes his head. "That's alright," he says and walks to the girls' side of the tape.

None of the boys dare make fun of Armin for being mistaken as a girl, lest they brave the rage they would no doubt face from Eren and Mikasa.

"Alright," Sensei Keith says and blows a whistle. "Clean your room!"

Immediately, like a firework exploding in the sky, foam balls of different colors fly toward the ceiling of the room. 

After about a half a minute, Keith dumps the rest of the balls from his bucket on the floor for the kids to throw.

It's chaos. The children are everywhere; leaping over each other, weaving between one another, balls are everywhere. 

Naturally, the girls have taken to passing balls off to Mikasa since she can throw the furthest, with Sasha as backup to get the spares that rolls elsewhere.

Whereas, the boys stay mostly spread out and all make an effort to throw as many as possible themselves.

It was completely by accident that a harder, heavier ball ending up making its rounds in the room. A soccer ball. 

Eren spots it just as it's making it's way toward Levi, who isn't looking. "Weebai!" he shouts and dives in the way of the ball. "Oof!" the ball hits his chest and he falls on the ground.

Levi turns around, his face stricken with an anguished grimace. "No! Eren!"

The raven haired boy kneels beside his husband and holds his hand. "It's okay Weebai, I'm fine, go on wifout me."

Tears well up in the smaller boys eyes. "No!"

Keith blows the whistle, having not noticed the small melodrama going on across the room. "Okay! Now who got the fewest balls?"

He looks around, but none of the children are excited, they've all crowded around Eren and Levi. Eren takes Levi's hand. "Go on Weebai, win for me."

"Guys?" Keith asks.

Levi's expression is earnest. "I can't, not unwess you can win wif us."

"Guys, seriously," Keith says. He sighs and walks over. He looks down at Levi and Eren, who are both on the verge of tears. "It was just a soccer ball, Eren, get up."

Eren blinks at him, suddenly back to normal. "It was? Okay."

He and Levi both get up like nothing happened, but still holding hands, while their instructor shakes his head. "Alright, who's gonna help me count all these balls."

The kids all look at each other. They all know their alphabet but counting is a little tricky in the higher numbers still. Levi and Mikasa both volunteer. Keith gets a bucket for each side, they count the boys' first. Levi counts, "One, two, fwee, four, five, six, seven..."

"Okay, the boys have sixteen," Keith says.

Then they go to the girls' side. Mikasa counts, "One, two, sree, four, five, sick, seben..."

"And the girls have sixteen," Keith say and smiles. "So it's a tie! Who wants to play again?"

The glare between Levi and Mikasa resumes as the kids get on their respective sides again.