When Yuga Aoyama first heard they'd be training with fellow student heroes from America, he found the idea très magnifiqu. After all, American superheroes had style.
But he was not matched with a hero who sparkled as he did. No, Yuga was instead partnered with a girl who wore casual clothes for a hero costume and woke him up an hour before class started so she could explore the city.
Despite the lack of proper sleep, Yuga did his best to appear parfait as they left the school grounds together, the young man already wearing his school uniform.
Traci Thurston was wearing the same clothes in the early Tuesday morning that she'd worn for practice the day before, as well as during her classes. Said ensemble was a t-shirt that looked quite loose on her, a pair of blue jeans, and goggles that hung around her neck.
It made no sense whatsoever to Yuga. The girl was jolie, even without make-up or beautiful clothing. With the right touches, and a proper costume, she could be étourdissante.
Feeling tense about the silence as they walked down the street together, Yuga chose to speak up first. "So, mademoiselle, how did you sleep last night?"
The girl was walking a few feet ahead of Yuga, so he wasn't able to see her face as she responded. "Eh, could have been better, could have been worse."
Apparently, that was all she had to say on the topic.
They wandered aimlessly for a few minutes when Traci said, "So, not that I don't love just walking around for no reason, but do you know any good cafes open this early?"
One of the many things Yuga prided himself on was his exquisite knowledge of local cuisine, especially that worth spending his money on. "Oui, there is a joli café just two blocks that way. Their pastries are très délicieux." Just thinking about how their authentic French macarons melted in the mouth made Aoyama want to get there faster.
To Yuga's surprise, his words made Traci laugh, the sound much kinder than he was expecting. "I'm currently flunking French class back home, but I'm going to guess that means that their food is really good."
Thus, they themselves sitting at an exterior table of Yuga's favorite cafe, each with a small plate of macarons in front of them.
Or rather, Yuga's were still there. Traci had devoured hers within seconds of sitting down.
Yuga was delicately nibbling at the edge of the most wonderful honey vanilla flavored treat when Traci asked him a question. "So, are you actually from France? Or do you just like peppering it into conversations to sound cool?"
For a moment, Yuga was truly stunned. In the entire time he'd been going to school this year, not a single student had ever asked him that.
Excited to finally explain his backstory to someone willing to listen, he began, "You see, my mère is from France, and I spent much of my time as a child there."
It had actually been some time since he'd thought of the place where he grew up, his eyes tearing up dramatically at the recollection. "I do miss it, but I would not give up my school or classmates to return." With that said, Yuga went back to eating his own sweets, before remembering something.
"Excusez moi s'il vous plait, but I have a question for you as well. You never told me yesterday what your Quirk is."
Their training in the morning had been something else.
She'd let him try and shoot her with his Navel Laser, but she didn't try and dodge. Instead, all she'd done was make hand gestures and say words Yuga didn't understand, and suddenly his laser would change direction out of nowhere or disappear mid-stream.
He'd exhausted himself trying to land a hit, but in the end all he had to show for it was a tummy-ache. His questions made her laugh again, the notes ringing through the early morning air with only an audience of one to appreciate their beauty.
"I'm Quirkless, actually." Then, she reached out with a hand, mumbled something under her breath, and a mug containing what looked like hot chocolate appeared out of thin air. "Also, I'm a mage."
[TRACI THURSTON/TRACI THIRTEEN! ANOTHER KID WITH NO QUIRK, BUT THIS ONE'S STILL GOT POWERS! SHE SPECIALIZES IN WHAT SHE CALLS 'URBAN MAGIC', AND HER BOOK OF SPELLS IS FULL OF TRICKS THAT VILLAINS NEVER SEE COMING! -Present Mic]
Suddenly, Yuga felt a little uncomfortable. He'd known that Quirkless heroes were accepted in America, where the ratio of Quirkless people to people with Quirks was closer to 50:50 than the 20:80 it was in Japan.
Still, his years in Japan had made Quirkless people more of a taboo, and he felt very bad for assuming she had a Quirk. "Mes excuses, Traci, for my assumption."
To his surprise, she just shrugged. "Don't apologize too much, Aoyama, it's fine with me. I've had magic so long that I honestly never really think of myself as Quirkless, y'know?" Then, she looked at a nearby clock. "Whoa, class starts in ten, we should head back."
Considering it had taken them half an hour to get to the cafe, Yuga was terrified of being late, well aware of how his teacher rewarded those who tested his patience. Traci, on the other hand, didn't seem fazed at all.
Rising from her seat, she walked over to the door of the cafe, then used some white chalk (that seemed to appear in her hand from nowhere) to sketch glyphs that were completely foreign to Yuga all around the door.
Then, when she opened it, what he saw inside was not the interior of the cafe, but instead a hallway of the high school, near their classrooms. "What are you waiting for?" she asked, still holding the door for him. Sure enough, when Yuga went through the door, he found himself back at UA. "That was fun," she told him with a slap on his back. "Let's do it again tomorrow!"
When Stephanie Brown had first met her huge, hulking partner for this exchange program, she'd despaired on what they'd find to do together after class.
Now that she was standing in the Class 1-A dorms, mixing some frosting. Nearby, Rikido Sato was carefully pulling out the first tray of cupcakes they'd made together. She was definitely still baffled, but happy.
"They look great," Sato told her as he inspected the frosting with a practiced eye. He set the hot tin on a nearby counter and grabbed another one next to it, these molds filled with uncooked vanilla batter. "They need to cool down before we can decorate 'em, so you can finish up the frosting at your own pace, okay?"
Not only did it turn out that the big guy was a master baker, but he was, so far, pretty nice as well. "Understood, captain!" Stephanie jokingly replied, idly shifting a lock of blonde hair behind her ear as she continued mixing the frosting by hand.
Sato was the one who suggested the cupcakes, and considering his sugar-based Quirk it made sense why baking was something he enjoyed to do in his free time.
They hadn't just gone straight to it after class, however. Stephanie was able to change out of her formal school clothes and into a purple hoodie matched with her favorite pair of worn down blue jeans.
There was no special reason for these cupcakes, but when Stephanie had suggested doing something to bring the classes together, Sato loved the idea, and suggested baked goods.
"This is weird to admit," she told him, "but this is my first time doing anything like this. I usually just eat take-out and snacks."
Sato was filling a third cupcake tin with batter, his back turned to her, but she could see how his back muscles tensed for a moment, just before he asked, "Your parents didn't teach you how? Is baking less popular in America or something?"
"I don't know," she said with a wince, debating whether she should drop this bombshell on him now or try and hide it.
Then, she remembered her hero codename and stifled a badly-timed laugh. She was the Spoiler, right? "I, uh, have a complicated family situation. My mom and I don't talk a lot, she doesn't approve of me being a vanilla hero. And dad...he's a villain, an E-list loser who goes by Cluemaster. I became a hero in the first place just to foil his schemes."
Talking about her dad wasn't something Stephanie did a lot of, unless she and her best friend Cassandra Wayne were in the mood for being sad together.
Since Sato wasn't facing her, she couldn't see his exact reaction, but more than anything she just hoped it wasn't pity.
Stephanie Brown hadn't become a hero to be pitied.
"I can understand that, I think," Sato finally replied. "My grandmother, on my mom's side, she was a villain. A really bad one, apparently."
He paused for a second before adding, "My parents don't talk about her a lot. But my mom...it was really hard to convince her to let me come to UA, especially after what happened with Bakugo."
Huh, Stephanie thought, they had more in common than she thought.
"Uh, if you don't mind me asking, what's it like being Quirkless?"
[STEPHANIE BROWN/SPOILER! THIS QUIRKLESS STUDENT HAS MORE HOURS OF HERO WORK UNDER HER GADGET-FILLED BELT THAN ANY OTHER FRESHMAN AT TITAN ACADEMY! WITH A QUICK MIND AND A GREAT KNACK FOR TECH, STEPH WAS A NARROW RUNNER-UP FOR TAKING THE ROBIN TITLE! -Present Mic]
Oh.
That question.
Stephanie decided to go with her standard answer. "What's it like having a Quirk?"
Even back in America, so many people had Quirks that it was the presumed default. Being born Quirkless was well on its way to being an actual disability, no matter how much Stephanie and those like her fought against that mindset and labeling.
"It means I have to work twice as hard as everyone else just to get to the same place."
Sato had finished pouring the last of the batter into a third tin, and had turned to look at her. His eyes drifted down to her mixing bowl, and he told her simply, "You're mixing too hard, you need to slow down."
Stephanie hadn't even realized that her stress with the topic had been transferred to the idle task she'd had her hands doing.
"Isn't that Drake guy also Quirkless?"
It took a moment for Stephanie to realize who he was talking about, but when she did Stephanie let out a sigh. "Yeah, neither Tim or I have a Quirk. There are actually quite a few others in the class who are Quirkless, but they all have powers of some kind anyway. We don't."
Now lost in old memories, Stephanie was looking past Sato, past the kitchen, her eyes unfocused. "Did you know I tried out for the Robin Program too? Got pretty far."
She didn't really know it, but Sato was looking at her in confusion. "What's the Robin Program?"
That broke her out of the trance, shocked that anyone could be unaware of it. "You know who Bruce Wayne is, right? Batman?"
That got a nod from Sato, at the very least. "Well, he's Quirkless. He wanted to reach out and offer help to kids like him, so he started two scholarship opportunities for Quirkless kids who wanted to become heroes: the Robin Program and the Batgirl Program. There's a rigorous physical and mental testing to pick the winners, and they get tutelage from Batman himself, plus they get to use the hero name they won.
"Our teacher, Nightwing, was the first Robin. The second one, Jason Todd...he's not around anymore." She didn't say more than that. Even having never met the dead teen herself, being even adjacent to the Batfamily made his passing a rough topic. "Tim and I were both training to become the third Robin, but he beat me."
Realizing how that might have sounded, she quickly added, "I don't hold it against him or anything! Honestly, Tim deserves it, he's an amazing hero. Better than I'll ever be."
To her surprise, Sato shook his head, looking at her like he'd bitten a burnt cookie. He pulled the second tray of cupcakes out of the oven, and said, "I don't know about that. We sparred yesterday, remember? I was afraid of fighting you all out at first, but you wiped the floor with me!" Then, thinking about what she'd just said, he asked, "Why don't you try out for the Batgirl Program? Or is there already one of those too?"
Ah, the question she heard from her best friend every other day. Wel, it frequently wasn't said, this was Cass after all, but the fighter was great at communicating through body language, and a punch to the shoulder said a lot.
"That's what my friend keeps telling me. But I don't want to be Batgirl, I want to be Robin! Honestly, she should be the next Batgirl. I bet if she entered the Program, she'd get it like that!" she exclaimed, snapping her fingers for emphasis.
Stephanie sagged, suddenly feeling very tired. "I don't know what I'm doing anymore..."
Suddenly, a spatula entered her field of vision, and she looked from the kitchen tool to the smiling guy holding it. "Well, I do. The first batch is cool enough to frost. You're frosting cupcakes."
The simple sincerity he said it with made Stephanie laugh, and she had to think, even if just for an afternoon, that maybe this was enough.
Maybe there was nothing to make up for. Nothing to live up to.
Maybe...she could just be Stephanie Brown.
