Rei stood at her front door, clutching her ankle in her hand as she slowly pulled her leg up behind her back. She held it there until the muscles in her thigh started to burn, and then let the leg fall, releasing with it some of the tension she'd built up over the course of the day. With second term finished, she'd have more time to unwind during the next couple of weeks. For now, school could be an afterthought.

"Hi honey! How was your day at school?" Haruko asked as Rei stepped through the front doorway. Her attention had been pulled away from the watch she was tinkering with, its parts spread out over a towel on her lap. The giant television in front of her droned on about the fascinating world of kangaroos- a nature documentary she was really only using for background noise. "Did you get your report card today?"

"Today was alright, pretty much the exact same as every other day," Rei replied as she paused in the entryway to pull her shoes off.

"Oh pretty much? Give me some details about what was a little different today," Haruko said with an assumptive smile. "Did you meet a new boy? Or a girl. You know I support you no matter what honey."

Rei rolled her eyes in response. "No, mom, I just said pretty much as a figure of speech. Literally the only thing different from usual today was the fact that we got report cards, and now we have a two week break from school after tomorrow."

"I have been sitting here for way too long," Haruko said as she rose from the couch with a quick stretch of her back. The half-repaired watch sat on the cushion next to her, forgotten for now. "Alright, well let me see that report card. I expect to see all S's, but it'll be fine if you had a few A's or B's too. Just be sure to get those up if you have any. Now hand it over." Rei sighed and handed the report card to her mother with another roll of her eyes. "Hey young lady do not keep rolling those eyes at me." Haruko glanced at the report card and saw all S's. "Oh honey you have been doing so great! Just like always! I'm so proud of all the hard work you put in!" She said as pulled her daughter into a tight embrace.

Rei returned her mothers embrace and laughed, "Yeah mom, I know. You literally always tell me that. You sobbed for an hour when I scored a goal in a school football game when I was seven." She cringed at the memory. "People still won't let me live that down."

"Oh you know I can't help that. I get emotional when I'm proud. My baby is just so good at everything!" Haruko squealed as she pinched Rei's cheeks.

"We lost that game 2-13. I am 90% sure the other team let me score that as a pity goal. They didn't even bother trying to defend."

"Well, it was still an amazing kick regardless."

"I was less than ten feet away from the goal."

"Ten feet is a long way for a seven year old."

Rei cracked a smile, giving up with a defeated sigh. "If you say so," she groaned, swinging her book bag over her shoulder. "I'll be in my room. Call me when dinner's ready?"

"Sure. You go relax, sweetie. You've earned it," Haruko said, reaching out and fixing a rogue piece of her daughter's hair.

Rei pulled away awkwardly and made her retreat towards the hallway. "Thanks, mom."

Logan entered the code to the door of her house. She had just finished her commute home from school which she shared a large part of with her close friend Rei. Of course there was nobody to welcome her home, but that was to be expected. Logan would consider herself lucky if she managed to see her parents for a weekend every three months. She had grown up with a lot of baby sitters, but managed to convince them she could handle herself when she started middle school. The fact that the family of her close friend Rei lived right down the street really helped put their mind at ease enough to make that decision. It's not that Logan's parents don't care about her; they are just very busy people and they tend to struggle to find the time for her. Their company had transformed from a local small business to a global enterprise 7 years ago in a relatively quick time frame. Work loads skyrocketed and time at home hit rock bottom.

Logan grabbed a granola bar out of her, spacious would be an understatement, pantry. She headed from the main house to the guest house out back that she had claimed as her own. She enjoyed the feeling of privacy and staying in a smaller home made her feel much less lonely than the main mansion. Logan opened the granola bar as she walked through the living room to the smaller bedroom she converted to a gaming and computer lounge. She flopped down on her desk chair and pulled up one of her favorite FPS games. Logan likes to consider gaming practice for her friend group's extracurricular activities, but that's just her way of not feeling bad for being unproductive.

Logan played for about an hour and a half, but things turned sour when she was stuck on a losing streak for the final 30 minutes of that time. Eventually she fell enough to derank and decided it would probably be a good time for a break. She decided it was time to be actually productive and began working on a clothing design program she had been working on for months. She spent about an hour doing that before pulling out her phone and texting the "Main Bitches" group chat she has with her friends.

Logan: Hello my favorite bitches.

Izumi: Sup

Rei: Hey!

Logan: We should hang out. My allowance got deposited today so we should go to the mall for a shopping spree.

Rei: Hey man we are well off, but we are not that well off. We don't have enough money for that at the moment.

Izumi: I hate people

Logan: I can cover for you guys. Come on, I really want to hang out. I'm lonely.

Izumi: Alright well we can meet at our spot after dinner. That way there will be significantly less annoying people and you won't be lonely. Win Win

Rei: What do you mean by significantly less?

Izumi: Well there will only be about 1

Rei: Wait which one?

Izumi: You each make up about half

Logan: Hmm… I think Rei and I are about .25 and you are about a .5.

Izumi: I mean that's a fair opinion I suppose, so fair enough Ms. Mathematician

Rei: Okay I will let you know when Izumi and I finish dinner.

Logan: You should totally save me some and bring a plate to the spot for me.

Izumi turns the handle to the front door and kicks it open. "Everyone I am home! Your presence has now been blessed. I take my sacrifices in the form of sustenance." Izumi walks into the kitchen and hugs Haruko and Kohaku. "The best thing about staying late for robotics is that it means dinner is always just finished as soon as I get home!"

"I'm glad you made it home safe, you ran a little late today though. Normally you get home at the exact same time as your father, but today he made it in a full 10 minutes before you." Haruko teases. "Go ahead and get your sister for me Izumi. Kohaku dear could you please set the table for me my love."

"Okay!" Izumi and Kohaku respond in unison.

"POLICE! WE ARE COMING IN!" Izumi says as she knocks on Rei's door before busting in and tackling the girl in a hug.

"Ah you know dad got home before you today. You were running a little slow I guess." Rei laughed as she hugged Izumi back.

"Hey listen I wasn't aware it was a competition alright. Next time I will make sure I am home first. Can't let a geezer beat me afterall!" Izumi laughed as she helped Rei onto her feet.

"I Heard That!" Kohaku yells from down the hall. "Now get out here and grab some food. We get to celebrate the end of Rei's second term. I heard through the grapevine she got all S's."

"From mom. You heard from mom I got all S's." Rei replies as she walks into the kitchen.

"Ah I'm sorry. I can't just expose my sources like that. Would be very bad for business." Kohaku replied as he donned a faux serious expression. Rei rolled her eyes. "If you keep doing that your eyes are going to get stuck in the back of your head."

Izumi feigned a heart attack "Ya know, I didn't think a top tier biochemist such as yourself would buy into such conspiracies. I guess you just cannot trust the scientific integrity of anyone these days. Next thing you know mom is going to tell me that regardless of her astrophysics and engineering degrees she is a flat earther and gravity denier."

Kohaku set plates down in front of everyone at their respective spots on their kitchen island. He also created an extra plate and set it in the still slightly warmed oven so it would retain its heat. "You know I am never one for conspiracies. I study only the facts. That is how I know that America faked the moon landing."

Haruko snorted "I mean obviously the moon landing must have been faked. There is no way the moon actually exists because if it was it would have to be flat." She sighed when her laughter finally ceased. "Anyways, enough conspiracy talk for now. Izumi tell us about your day. I know you had a math test. How did you do?"

"I got a 72 on my test," Izumi says with a smile. Haruko, Kohaku, and Rei all lean over to look at Izumi in disbelief.

"YOU got a 72 on a math test. YOU?" Rei says as she walks over and puts her hand on Izumi's forehead.

"Wow what are they teaching you? You are way ahead of your age in math and science. I mean you are possibly the worst history student I have ever seen, but you know more math than most math majors. What kind of theoretical math does that school have you learning? And for you to be struggling with it?" Kohaku says with a shocked and very confused expression.

"Oh actually it was just like basic calc. Derivatives and such. It was a really easy test but I only need a 68 to keep an S for this term. I just made sure I finished about 70% of the test. You guys should know me by now. I do the bare minimum to get the best result," Izumi says with a shrug.

Haruko sighs. "You know I hate when you do that. You have so much potential and you should show people what you can do. I mean you might not have a quirk but your logical skills might as well be considered one. You should use it to your advantage more."

"Yeah really no kidding. Nobody in my bloodline has a quirk at all so I wish I had some kind of skill like that at least to compensate. I'm just left over here being completely normal in every way," Rei groans with a frown.

Haruko reaches over and pats Rei on the back. "You both know that it is perfectly okay to not have a quirk. Sure they can be nice and provide an advantage, but you can still be a valuable member of society without one. Just look at your father and I. We don't have quirks but we are well off. We also manage to help everyday people regardless of lacking powers just because of the work we put into research. In a sense the world is your oyster honey. You can be anything you want, even a hero! You just have to approach it in a different way and help people with the means you have access to."

Izumi's hand tightens around her fork. "Yeah I am pretty sure my biological parents would disagree with you on that one. They made it very clear they don't have to care for a child who can't continue their hero legacy. They also made it abundantly clear that you can't be a hero when you were born quirkless."

"It may not be possible to be a hero in the modern sense with it being a job field now. I prefer to think of heroes as people who just do heroic actions and help people though. You can help people without a quirk. Both of you can. It's all about finding the gifts you do have even if those gifts aren't a quirk," Haruko says with a frown. "Besides there is no saying it would be good to have a quirk. I mean what if you ended up with a quirk that makes you stay in people blindspots every time you drive. That would actually be worse than having no quirk at all," Haruko jokes.

Rei looks back down at her food. "I mean at least they could make a good get away driver I suppose."

Kohaku smiles and points at Rei. "Hey see look at that. That is what we in the field call ingenuity. Thinking outside the box. Creativity." He sets down his utensils and stands up from his chair, walking around to where Rei sits. "That just proves you definitely have unique abilities. People wouldn't think to find a use for that." Kohaku took a knee in front of his daughter, now eye level with her. "You might have inherited your mother and I's quirkless ness, but it looks like you adopted other traits from us too. We lead pretty satisfying lives and you and your sister can too," he says, before suddenly turning to look at Izumi. "Also Izumi you most definitely can be a hero. I'm convinced that your intelligence is a quirk anyways regardless of what the tests say." He gives them both a comforting smile as he stands back up. "That is its own superpower itself. You have so much potential. Both of you do. You cannot let what other people or society says get in the way of your goals and who you are. You have to push past them or find ways around the obstacles you may face."

The group finishes their dinner and Kohaku takes the plate back out of the oven. "Go ahead and give this to Logan."

"Wait we didn't even tell you that we were planning on hanging out with her tonight." Rei says with a questioning look. "You better not have tapped our phones."

"I'm a biochemist not a computer scientist or hacker," Kohaku says with a shrug. "Also I just know because of my exceptional observational skills. It's not that hard to know you are meeting up with her tonight taking into account the fact that you bring her dinner every night that her parents are away on business and they aren't coming back for at least 3 weeks." He raises one finger in the air, moving it like a detective connecting invisible pieces of some grand mystery. "Now you girls go have fun and be back by 10pm at the latest or I am going to come find you. I know you girls always hang out in their guest house instead of the main house due to my exceptional detective skills." He pauses for effect, then cracks a small smile. "By that, I mean noticing the guest house lights are always on and the main house always stays pitch black."

Rei and Izumi both laugh internally at his comments and give each other a knowing look that screams, "Oh he has no idea."

Rei sends Logan a text to let them know they are headed to the spot with food secured. They start walking off in the direction of Logan's house, but take a turn down a small handmade walking path. The girls follow the path for about half a mile until they reach the spot. As they approach they see Logan standing at the base of the ladder to their treehouse. When Logan spots Rei and Izumi she waves and heads up the ladder to the living room section of their treehouse.

The treehouse would be considered large for a treehouse, but nowhere near the size of a normal house. There are two stories. The bottom floor has a kitchenette, a small living room with a couch and coffee table that holds a small tv, and several steel trunks and file holders protected with bolt cutter proof locks. Upstairs a room with a pitched roof and short walls that prevent anyone above three feet in height from standing straight up against them. There are three trunks along the back wall that has a small window in the center. In the center of the room are three sleeping bags laid out in a circle. The treehouse is the home away from home for Rei, Logan, and Izumi as well as their sort of base of operations. Rei came up with the idea of making a tree house and Izumi took it as a personal challenge to design the greatest treehouse she could. Izumi's knowledge of engineering and construction paired with the essentially limitless monetary support of Logan's family fortune let them build what could easily be considered a miniature home. Logan even went as far as to make sure they could have solar panels, a generator, and wifi so the treehouse still had the luxuries she needed regardless of its small size. The only thing they don't have is a bathroom, but Logan has yet to stop suggesting they add one at every available opportunity. While Izumi can do a lot; digging into the ground trying to create some sort of septic system and setting up a system of water pipes so they could get running water was more than a little bit over her head. Right now they have a pretty good setup using rainwater purification that gives them the water they need for drinking or cooking.

All the girls sit on the couch in the living area and Izumi hands her plate over to Logan. "Ah man this is perfect. Thank you for the food by the way. But just us in our own little home. I mean we have everything we could ever need here. Except maybe a bathroom," Izumi glared daring Logan to continue down this path they get stuck on everyday. "But ya know it's great regardless. I like the off the grid vibe we have. Water isn't even that important anyways."

The girls sit around discussing their day. Rei talks about some of the comments she got at school that had particularly bothered her and she couldn't get over. Talking about it with her friends managed to ease some of her frustrations though. Once Logan finishes her food and sets down her plate, Izumi leans in. "Okay guys. We need to get serious now. We have two things we really need to discuss. We have collected enough evidence to bust that group of hooligans we have been tailing."

Logan quirks an eyebrow. "Hooligans?"

Izumi chooses to ignore her interruption and continues, "I think we should bust them this weekend. We need to make sure none of the files we are going to leave have any DNA or fingerprints, so we should go ahead and take the files to Logan's house tonight. That way we can go ahead and scan them for any sort of biological evidence and bag them for tomorrow." She pauses before approaching the next subject. "We also need to discuss our future plans. We only have one third of a year left in middle school. We need to make sure our highschool plans are set," Izumi says as she looks between her two friends, making sure that they're paying attention to what she says. "Getting into the business program at UA is our dream. It could help us make so many connections we could use in the future when we take over and expand on Logan's parents business." She gestures to Logan, who gives a nod in agreement. "If we don't then the company will support us regardless, but if we want to have any hope in implementing the policy changes we want we need connections and support. UA is how we get it, but the exams are hard so I am going to be tutoring you whether you want it or not." She stops for a moment, letting the gravity of it sink in. "We have to get in. The entirety of our future plans rely on us getting into that business course."

Logan smirks, "Babes don't even worry. My parents donate plenty of money to UA. Are you kidding? As long as I don't fail horribly I'm pretty sure I won't have any issues getting accepted. It isn't like we are trying to get into the hero class or anything. Business isn't even their main attraction."

Rei sighs, "Yeah well I don't have that option so I am going to be working really hard. You really should too Logan. Studying together could be fun at the very least. Plus it gives us more time to spend together as the group."

Logan's smirk falls. "Yeah but we already have a gig anyways for our group time. Studying is going to take away from that. Our outings are the best times of my life. They are always such an incredible rush."

Izumi turns to Logan. "I'm pretty sure that rush is just adrenaline from fights, but yeah I do enjoy being a vigilante as much as the next person. We could help a lot more people and the environment as a whole if we can manage to get our dreams to become a reality."

"UGH! Fine. I will study with you guys and we will put vigilantism on the background for a while. We should still do it on weekend nights though. Otherwise it's a no deal and I won't study with you guys." Logan compromises with a sigh.

Rei gives a soft smile as Izumi says "Well I think that is a pretty sweet deal. Now let's talk some more about our plans to take that group down tomorrow night shall we?"