Kaede looked up at the clock on the wall of her classroom, ten more minutes and she was out for the weekend. She tapped her foot anxiously against the floor, her pencil keeping the same beat on her desk as her mind wandered.

It had been a few weeks since she had gone home and caught her father crying. Since then she had been trying her best to be a little nicer to him, to try and get him to get out and do things, she even hung out with him a few times! Whenever she was around he was always full of smiles and stupid jokes, like usual, but the second she wasn't there, when he was alone and no one was watching, it was like he deflated. The smile slid from his face, his eyes lost their sparkle, and he became a pool of despair. She had snuck home at lunch time a few times to see if he cried his eyes out regularly, but not since then had she seen anything like the display before.

Though he wasn't a sobbing mess when she snuck home she would get to see him, see him as he really was without his fake mask of happiness. He would either be sitting on the couch watching daytime television shows or outside mucking around in grandma's garden. If any mention of Hero TV came on, the TV was either turned off, or the channel changed.

She had asked him several times since the incident if he would watch reruns of Hero TV with her, she really wanted to watch it with him. He had still come up with excuses like normal, and when she pushed too hard, he had actually snapped at her a bit. The memory made her cringe as she sat in her desk.

"Enough Kaede! I told you I'm busy, if you want to watch it with someone have a friend over or call your uncle!" he had raised his voice at her, something he almost never did in her entire life, and had walked out of the room, hat pulled down over his face, hands shoved in his pockets. He hadn't come back until the next morning after that.

Grandma consoled her, telling her that "Kotetsu is a menace, he used to do this all the time when he was a kid, leave and make everyone worry. Don't you worry about him Kaede; your dad is just being childish."

The memory had kept Kaede from realising the teacher was calling on her. She blushed and bowed her head "I'm sorry sensei, it won't happen again," she tried to pay attention for the last few moments of class, but her mind was full of worries.

The bell rang and Kaede stood, bowed, and made her way to the door as quickly as possible. She changed out of her indoor shoes, threw them into her shoe stall, and launched out of the doors planning on running home using her borrowed Hundred Power, she had been careful not to touch anyone with NEXT abilities all day so she could run home and check on her dad. Before she had a chance to activate them though, the cell phone her dad had gotten her (replacing her old flip phone that never got service), after begging for almost a year, rang.

It was a number she had never seen before, the area code was for Sternbild. The only people who knew her number were her friends and her family. She tentatively picked up, sound only in case it was some creep trying to show her his junk.

"Moshi moshi?" she answered, hoping if it was someone that she didn't know they would hear the Japanese greeting and hang up.

"Kaede? This is Agnes Joubert from Hero TV, I used to work with your father," came the cool crisp reply of the very well-known voice of Hero TV.

Kaede switched to video call and looked at the woman in amazement "hello!" she was too shocked, and shy, to say anything else.

"I hope I didn't catch you at a bad time, I'm hoping you aren't home from school yet though."

"No, I just left the building actually," Kaede said as she started walking towards her house, a solid half hour walk without her powers.

"Good good, I wanted to talk to you about your father, wanted to see how things are for him," Agnes' face was just as lively and vivid as Kaede remembered from Hero TV, she was a little star struck to be talking to the head producer, even if they had met before.

"My dad? Well…" should she be honest? That her dad was a wreck? That he didn't have any drive in him, that she was pretty sure he still worried about Barnaby every day, that he had balled his eyes out, that he still a year later wouldn't even look at or talk about Hero TV?

"I can tell by the look on your face you aren't sure what to say, don't worry, if you don't want to tell me that's fine,"

"N-no! I just… I don't know how to describe it, my dad he… he's the toughest guy I have ever met, he never cries, he always has stupid jokes no matter how bad the situation, even when we all thought he died he still cracked that lame one liner! But… he isn't like that, not really. He shuts himself up in his room a lot, won't talk about Hero TV or watch it. Barely talks about Barnaby even with lots of pestering," Kaede didn't know why she was telling Agnes all this, but somehow it felt right, like maybe if another adult, one that knew her dad for years, knew how he was acting, maybe then someone would do something about it.

"And here I thought I was calling to get your dad's help with something and it sounds like he needs it just as bad as we do!" Agnes sounded astonished as she spoke.

"Wait, you need my dad's help with something?" Kaede was the one to be astonished now, what good was her dad without his powers?

"Ya, let me tell you my plan, and you tell me if it sounds any good…"