As the time before the American hero students returned to their home country rapidly approached, Tenya Iida was unsure of how he felt about it all. In concept, he couldn't deny that having the chance to share experiences with those from another culture, and to get a taste of the kinds of things their education focused on, were valuable for their growth. But the entire ordeal had done much to show how much Iida personally had to grow, as a hero and as a potential leader of others.
He had been given a team of classmates, put in charge of their success in the joint training exercises. But they'd lost the first round of the combat exercises, and done poorly in the investigative test as well. Tenya knew his team wasn't angry at him over these losses, but that didn't stop his disappointment with himself in the slightest.
There was also the matter of Avery Ho, his assigned partner. In many ways, she was everything he struggled to fight as the class representative of 1-A. Selfish, short-sighted, and arrogant. It was clear that Avery always thought she knew what was best for everyone around her, when she bothered to think about them at all. He constantly found her demeanor positively unheroic.
But there was another side to her. She had confidence, far more than Tenya had, and not only in herself. It was clear she trusted her teammates, and even Tenya himself, despite the fact they didn't know each other very long. She was quick to smile, and had a knack for cheering up those around her. Even the remarkably stiff-lipped Tenya found himself smiling more and more in her presence. He couldn't have imagined it a few weeks ago, but as he went over to her dorm room after classes ended for the day, Tenya realized he was going to miss her greatly.
"...no, I haven't had any changes with my Quirk." The voice was Avery's, and it was coming through the wall of her room, as Tenya stood outside in the hallway. He didn't want to be eavesdropping, but he found he couldn't bring himself to move after he started to hear her talking. After all, they'd agreed on this time, yet she was busy. Therefore, he would wait for her to finish her conversation. Even in his head, it was a bit hard for Tenya to argue that this didn't make him look good. "I know. I know. Please, you don't have to tell me again how much money it took to get me this Quirk, you've told me before...I've given you all the data I've gathered, I'll let you know when I have more."
It sounded like that was the last thing Avery wanted to say, and Tenya soon heard what he believed to be the sound of her throwing her phone against a wall. Realizing this wasn't going to get any less awkward, Tenya stepped up to the door and rapped his knuckles on it. "May I enter?" Avery grunted, which he took as her unsophisticated way of affirming a response, so he opened the door and found her sitting on her bed, looking at the wall, clearly annoyed.
"You heard all of that?" Avery didn't look at Tenya as she asked the question, and Tenya wasn't sure if she was angry at who she was talking to, Tenya, or both.
Feeling more awkward than he had in quite a long time, Tenya coughed to try and clear the tension in the room before admitting. "Only some of it." After taking a breath, he looked at Avery with serious eyes. "I trust you, as a hero and a friend, and I hope you would say the same of me. If you choose to disclose anything to me, know it will be kept with my utmost discretion." The truth was, Tenya was quite curious to learn what she meant by 'getting her Quirk', because it didn't sound as though she was referring to the natural process by which Quirks revealed themselves.
In response to Tenya's open display of friendship and trust, Avery rolled her eyes and grinned at him. "I appreciate it, but can you say anything without sounding like you ate a thesaurus?" Feeling embarrassed, Tenya was ready to give a heated reply, but Avery sped over that and started saying something else. "That was STAR Labs calling, the one from Central City. It's where I'm from." Even in Japan, STAR Labs was known as the foremost scientific research organization on the planet, renowned for their integrity and nonprofit status.
But what Avery had to do with them, Tenya didn't understand. She didn't seem to be the science-y type. "I lived there, in Central City I mean. That division of STAR Labs was the only lab in the world with the clearance to experiment on the Speed Force." At first, Tenya had thought that was just the name of Avery's Quirk, but as time went on he'd realized it referred to something else, the source of her Quirk's gifts, though he still didn't really understand it, and never truly would. "Something happened, about two years ago, and it infected a storm. Hundreds of people were struck by lightning, including me. We all got a connection to the Speed Force, whether we'd had Quirks before that or not. Before that day, I was Quirkless." The way Avery said it, Tenya could tell this wasn't something she shared with just anyone. In her tone, it almost felt like she was ashamed.
Tenya couldn't wrap his mind around that. Quirkless people, in his opinion, were no less special than anyone else. Prejudice against them always made his blood run hot. Seeing Avery looking almost scared to reveal that truth to him only made Tenya more determined to make it clear to her later that being Quirkless shouldn't be a source of shame. But she continued anyway. "That connection cleared up with most people...but not for me. Suddenly, I had the same powers as the Flashes, a Quirk that connected me to the Speed Force, permanently. STAR Labs observed me for a while, and only let me start attending Titans with the promise I'd keep them informed on how my Quirk was doing." There was a pause, where they both just breathed, before Avery said, her voice starting to crack at the edges, "So...yeah. That's me."
It was hard for Tenya not to focus on his anger. Ever since his brother's injury, dealing with his anger, something he'd worked on his entire life, had begun to feel almost unmanageable. But new ways of coping were helping, and after taking a few seconds to steady himself, Tenya made an effort to be kind, rather than angry. Looking at Avery, he told her, "I'm grateful you told me that. Do not ever think hearing it made me think less of you. If anything, it's made me only more impressed. Many of us have had our abilities since childhood, but you've only had two years to train yours. Avery Ho, I know you will become a wonderful hero." For the first time since they'd met each other, the young woman's walls fell down and she let herself cry into the arms of a friend, a steady hero willing to listen and be there for her, no matter what she had to say.
Mal Duncan had been waiting outside the dorm room in the chill autumn air for nearly half an hour before his assigned partner, Fumikage Tokoyami, exited his own dorm building and walked over. "My apologies," the bird-headed young hero began, "I had not seen your message. I'm ready to follow you." From the time they'd spent together so far during the trip, Mal was fairly confident the gothic teen had been deeply invested in one of his online horror stories, a regular late-night passtime.
After a few weeks of thinking it over, Mal had finally gathered his courage and texted his partner, asking to meet up outside the dorms. They weren't leaving, it was far too late for that to be safe at nearly midnight. They were just going to walk around the campus. Mal started walking first, and Tokoyami quickly fell into step beside him. Both fairly stoic in nature, they trodded along for quite some time before one of them said anything to break the silence.
"Did you wish to speak to me regarding Karen?" Tokoyami asked, as they moved out of eyeshot from the dorms. "Forgive me if I'm wrong, but it seems as though the two of you have begun a proper courtship." That was one thing that always made Mal want to laugh. Maybe it was the guy's taste in literature, but Tokoyami tended to speak as if he were in a gothic horror novel. Way more fancy than Mal was used to from any of his own classmates.
Now, it was true that Mal and Karen were finally dating, and it was going pretty well so far. But that wasn't the point of this nighttime walk. "No, Karen's got nothing to do with it," Mal began, as they started to approach the main school building. "It's actually..." Then, Mal heard something odd. It was weirdly familiar, and sounded like it was coming from underneath him. "Do you hear anything?"
Tension filled the air as Tokoyami replied, "Yes, I do." Both teen heroes stood ready for a fight...only for none to come. The sound abruptly stopped, and they were left feeling oddly foolish. "Perhaps," Tokoyami suggested, as they picked up their walking once more. "It was a gopher, or some other creature that lives in the dirt of the Earth?" Mal thought that was the most likely scenario, though for some reason some part of his brain was still screaming that it had been a sound he specifically recognized.
They both tried to put that out of their heads, and Mal started saying something he'd had on his mind for a long time. "I'm...reconsidering being Herald." That got a shocked look from Tokoyami, but Mal held up a hand and waved it around, as if to blow away his concerns. "Don't worry, I still want to be a hero. It's more...about my Quirk." As he tried to think of exactly how to phrase his thoughts, Tokoyami waited patiently, not trying to jump in and ask questions just yet. "I've never really felt like my Quirk suits me, y'know? It's good for mobility, and stealth, but I'm a brawler. I play football, and I'm good at it. Do you know what I mean?"
After a few seconds of consideration, Tokoyami weighed in. "I believe I understand what you are saying, even if I do not have the same issue. In fact, my Quirk suits me perhaps too well. I have always tended towards the dark and macabre, and my Quirk supports that interest by growing stronger the less light is around me. It is also strong enough, when I lose control, to turn things genuinely horrific. I've..." Tokoyami's voice trailed off, and Mal could see a truly haunted look in his eyes. "...learned, firsthand, how careful I must be, to avoid going down a dangerous path."
What he was saying reminded Mal of Raven, from Tim's team. She too had a dark source of power she had to work hard on controlling. "Yeah, seems like we've got the opposite problem," Mal concluded. "I've been looking into this hero, he's retired now, called Guardian. I love his costume, and the way he fought...it speaks to me." Looking back in the direction of the dorms, Mal let out a sigh. "As useful as my Quirk is, I've been coming to resent it. I don't want it to define me. Plus, I really hate the trumpet." It wasn't completely unheard of for American heroes with Quirks to not use them in their hero work, and instead focus on a different style of heroism.
Still, Mal knew that if he wanted to change everything about his planned hero career, he'd face a lot of pushback. From his teachers, from his teammates, and even possibly from Karen. It was an uphill battle, to put it mildly. But suddenly Tokoyami's hand was on his shoulder. "If being Herald doesn't make you happy, then do not be Herald. Trust yourself." Those were words Mal would try to cling to, in the coming months.
