Apparently, classification of powers was a way to keep supers in check in this city. It was so common knowledge that it wasn’t spoken about in class the entire time he was here… It was a subject of conversation outside of school, though. One that was constantly vying for change and restructuring of the laws due to its inherently malleable nature.

That, and it was extremely controversial.

The people in this city seemed to hate the idea of being classified by their powers, and not by their identities. It was one of the many reasons why supers were allowed to go around the city without many restrictions, however, so Liam didn’t mind it. Back in district 3, two supers in the same area meant either shit was about to hit the fan, or they were going to group up to fight an even bigger, shittier fan.

There was never something like this.

“It’s your fault you gained that power, Ezekiel! Now stick out your tongue and accept it like a man!” Wyland had the kid in a headlock, and unlike Liam, Ezekiel seemed to actually be struggling well against the teacher’s strength. “You’re crazy, old man! I don’t want to get stabbed on the tong- Ueek!?” The box came down on their tongue as they spoke, and the box shimmered for a few seconds before going inert. Wyland, stoic to everything going on, just separated himself from the shivering boy. “Finally we got a sample… This better not be the same for the rest of you!”

The class just remained silent, none too ready to talk after the strange appearance.

While Ezekiel was left whining, an extremely tired Wyland went to the desk again to get another box, setting the first down on a small piece of paper and writing something down.

He turned, and looked at the students before turning to Liam. Liam was the second to go, he guessed. When the teacher put the box down on his desk he put his finger inside the hole with little question. They had done this with Ezekiel as well but the poor kid wasn’t able to pierce his own flesh. They had to go with the tongue for the poor idiot. Compared to that, Liam was on easy mode… It was just a bit of blood, right? That didn’t mean anything in the grand scheme of- “Gloves off, kid. The needle puts a tracker on you as well, so you don’t do anything stupid.”

Damn, there were two problems in that sentence.

“Tracker?”

Wyland almost visibly deflated at the defiance. “Come on kid… Not right now. It’s one of the cons of being a hero in Utopia, they told you that at the beginning of school, right?” Liam nodded, vaguely remembering something about the heroes always being watched. He didn’t know that meant being injected with robots or something though. The idea of supers being kept on a leash being controversial was starting to make sense now that he was part of the controversy.

The first thing he was going to do was study up on common sense in this damn district, because he was having enough of these bombshells being dropped on him.

Hesitantly, he unwrapped the bandages from the tip of his middle, unsure about what the commotion his hand would cause. Fortunately, not many of them, only Wyland and the Bag girl who had not once stopped staring at him noticing his new dark, sharpened finger. Wyland’s brow furrowed at the appearance, and almost said something until he realized it was the skin on his hand, and not just another glove. Liam gave the girl a warning glance, before turning to his teacher. “Don’t make a scene, Wyland, just do it.”

The contraption went on about as quickly as it had been taken out, and Liam felt the piercing for a moment, along with a strange sapping of his energy. There was a shift in his body, just like when he had felt moments before death… inside him. that was more than flesh. Something was wrong, different…

Wyland noticed his confused face and grinned.

“It’s like magic, right? Focuses on the soul imprint inside the body with Techhea- err… District 2 energy.” Wyland said, before turning to another student.

…Huh.

“We really have souls… that’s news to me.” Liam muttered.

It was too quiet for the rest of the class to hear, but considering how Wyland flinched, it seemed to be another stupid thing he was supposed to know already. The rest of the class went along with it soon enough, and no one had been as resistant as Ezekiel, fortunately. The teacher seemed quite happy at that, and threw the rest of the cubes onto the desk dismissively. “Well, that’s covered. Now, follow me.” Scratching his head, he went for the entrance waving a hand for them to follow, and the class did

It was quiet while they walked in the halls, not even a whisper coming from the rest of the classes. The teacher had made it so Liam had walked right beside them as well, so no one had wanted to ask any questions… It just made the empty silence all the more oppressive

Liam didn’t understand, weren’t the rest going through the same as them? Looking at the rest of the class, it seemed the thought was mutual. The first one to speak was the stoic one with intense eyes, looking around the halls with intense curiosity. “Teacher, will we be the only ones to practice? I’d say we’d need about four classes if we want to make a full group… Will we at least be teaching with the neighboring classes?”

Wyland looked back in surprise. “Err, yeah… Classes 3-18 through 3-22. How’d you… ah, yeah… nevermind.” No one seemed surprised either, which shocked Liam. They were class 3-20, on the third floor of this school that was meant for the first years. He wanted to ask how the kid figured there’d be four more classes, and how they had been the neighbors, but… Wait, the guy wasn’t all that afraid of him, right? Did that mean he could speak more freely?

Considering the look he got from the class when he had turned around, likely not.

Luckily Wyland had decided to step in for him, in the worst way possible.

He smacked a fist on their palm, as if the man just suddenly had a genius idea. “Ah, yeah… I guess we can catch up Liam onto the rest of your powers. He hasn’t really had the chance to get acquainted with your new selves so… who wants to go first?” Wyland turned to the rest with a smile, and Liam once again cursed the fact he didn’t have the strength required to wipe it off their face. The first had been, unexpectedly, the Bag girl. The one he now knew was named Lidia.

Her hand raised meekly in the air, barely above her head. “I have laser vision. But… not really. Like, my eyesight can make things catch on fire. You can see what happened to my eyes…” Liam shuddered at the words, even when they came out meek as a kitten. Had that been the reason she had been keeping an eye on him all this time? Suddenly, he felt like a gun had been put to his head, which was somehow worse than even having Wyland next to him.

The second had been her friend, who nudged shoulders with Lidia.

Her eyes were slightly narrowed, but it seemed she was only slightly cautious of him, rather than scared. It seemed she really cared for the Bag girl. “I’m Emily, if you didn’t know that. I can heal people. Thanks for… saving Lidia yesterday.” Lidia turned to her loudmouth friend in horror, and they had a hushed whisper-fight while the smart one spoke next. “I have the intelligence enhancement, an all rounder with no specializations. You should know my name by now, Liam.” That got Liam to raise an eyebrow.

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

This kid was special, huh?

At least, he thought that until Wyland scoffed. “Don’t mind Leonard, all intelligence enhancement supers start off like this… real bother when you guard around Runetech, lemme tell ya… Half the tec- er, intelligence enhancers there act like they know everything, which sucks even more because the other half actually do.” Wyland muttered, earning an unimpressed look from Leonard. That didn’t quite make it into Liam’s head, though, because it was too busy being blown.

Screw the others, this kid was something else. His feet slowed, just enough to have the super smartass next to him. They didn’t seem intimidated, scared, angry… nothing. All that because they were smart? That was…

“That’s fucking cool, dude.”

If he had that power, none of any of this would have happened. He would’ve been smart enough to know beforehand, to not make a mess out of his life. This kid was just handed that power by a machine? Cool, and unfair.

“No swearing in the halls, Liam.” Wyland interjected.

Liam fought the weak urge to flip the teacher off, and kept pressing the kid in front of him. “You’re smarter now? How smart were you before?” He’d heard techheads were good with machines but Liam had thought that was it. It had been sort of like… As if that were all they were good for. He didn’t realize the power actually affected people in a way outside that. No one ever had an intelligence power back in district 3. The badlands wasn’t where the smart ones survived. Anyone smart enough to even come close would have already made the deadly journey out of that hell-hole…

It meant this was a new experience for the young badlander.

The kids behind him seemed nervous as he spoke, but his curiosity was too piqued to care. Leonard shifted the cuffs on their arm, a sign of nervousness he’d seen on a lot of people. “I was top of the class, though I see now that that wasn’t intelligence, per say.” Even when they spoke, he could see their smirk slowly rising, Liam just grinned. It was one thing to act like hot shit because of being smart.

It was another to literally have a power backing you up on it.

“I don’t know what the hell that means, can you dumb it down?”

The kid seemed glad to.

“Before I had thought the accumilation of knowledge was what was making me smarter, in a way I suppose it was, but that was more the byproduct of the process… With this power, my ability to process and extract information is near the level of precognition… You have little understanding of what i’m trying to explain, I apologize.” Liam just nodded along, unsure of what the hell was going on in this kid’s head, or what precognition meant. At least they had finally exited the school.

More specifically, they’d arrived to the front of the outside arena. Liam had only ever been to the gyms before for extracurricular activity. It had been in the first few weeks when he had foolishly thought acting more like the rest of the students would have gotten him a few more friends. It had failed spectacularly, especially since he’d never had to deal with a super the entire time he’d been there… Few nonpowered in this school could beat him in a fight back then.

Well, at least he had met Elliot there, so it wasn’t all bad.

This wasn’t anywhere near the size of that gym, though. The school building was massive, but what was truly impressive was the giant, dome-shaped building just to its side. It was around half the size of the actual school, which was impressive for something so hardly used in his experience. It wasn’t something he’d been explained about too much either, so he’d just called it the arena while he’d been here… Now that he was walking towards its entrance, he sorta wished he’d called it anything else.

It looked like an Arena, but that did not mean he’d be pitted against his classmates, right?

Wyland raised a hand “Well… Let me say a few things about the classes we’ll be with. I don’t know much about the students but I can at least tell you about the teacher’s.” Liam’s ears perked up, wanting to know more about the school staff. They only had one teacher per year, acting as more of an instructor while they were taught the core classes by advanced ‘A.I’ called the Intraweb. They just needed to ask the Intraweb questions to get explainations by multiple teacher’s offering multiple perspectives…

All apparently an enhanced genius in their own fields.

This meant that he only really ever seen Wyland work, so Liam couldn’t help but feel a tad bit curious.

Uh… One of them’s a real klutz, be careful around her. One’s crazy and doesn’t care about what happens to her job, don’t go near her… And don’t go near the other one, either. They give me bad vibes. He’s a real creep, that one.” Wyland’s mouth spat poison as he casually scratched his head, and the class had their collective mouths agape at the horrible words, unsure if they could even take them seriously.

Was Wyland just evil, or did the words have some sort of truth to them? Liam really hoped it was the former rather than the latter. Otherwise… The teacher went first, up to massive doors that seemed to open automatically to his presence. “Don’t fall behind, none of you have entered this place so I don’t want you getting lost. And uh, Liam…” The teacher turned to him, a worried look on his face. “Trust me when I say you want to be by my side. One of them is just… just…” They rubbed their temples in stress, which was enough explanation for Liam.

Staying almost shoulder to shoulder with the teacher, they entered, and for the first time Liam saw something he had expected from the district that pumped out superheroes. The school seemed normal, created with objects that seemed made as if no one was a rampaging hero… this place? The walls were lined with glowing spheres, and the material making up said walls was made of what seemed to be a bright white metal.

The group was in awe, watching the high ceilings move with energy as they walked down a hall, and Liam was no different.

He’d heard of steel created from energy stones, made to form melee weapons that could be held by even high-tiers without affecting their combat strength… Was this- “Energy reinforced titanium mixed with denser constructs… This is beyond super reinforced. But why is only the inside reinforced and not the outside? I can understand it for training but… Shouldn’t something this valuable be protected?” Leonard interrupted, his eyes wide with curiousity as his hand ran across the metal.

…Titanium? What the hell was that? Liam was sure he’d heard about it in old movies but he wasn’t sure what it meant, or that it had even been real. He waited for Wyland to answer but it never came, instead another set of metal doors opening in front of them. There was… not quite the scene he had imagined on his mind.

And then some psycho woman went in front of him with a grin.

“The natural awakened! Oh, my, what a curiosity.” Wearing a purple vest that seemed to hold all sorts of tools and equipment, she seemed just like the tech-heads he had heard ran the second district of Runetech, that and the way she carried herself. “I heard you fought away the Ego-death… quite an achievement for a little hero such as yourself!” She chuckled, as if what she said was funny. Her eyes told a different story, though. They were deranged, running up and down his body like a professional Jit-toy vendor. She was smiling but behind her eyes she carried a careful, calculative look…

One that interested him.

At least until Wyland pulled Liam away from her, shoving her away by the face at the same time. “Alright! You stay by me until all this is over, and the rest of you… Say hello to my friend, Mrs. Deus.” She pulled back with a ‘gah…’, stuttering back while trying to rearrange her glasses. Behind him he could see a group of students look on at the teacher with pity, some holding a hand to their face as if they were watching their child do something disapointing.

“Not cool, Wyland…” Mrs. Deus said, before turning back to Liam. Her eyes glowed a bit, and he couldn’t help but take up a fighting stance as a grin formed on her face. “Escape from this man’s clutches and come see me later, boy… I’m interested to see how you’re cloning power has anything to do with your new Ego form.”

What!? Oh, damnit.

He turned back to see the group, making sure none of them had heard.

Seemed everyone had.

“I-I don’t know what your talking about lady. I don’t got anything like tha-” He turned back to see the lady gone, running back to her class with surprising speed who had just dropped a bombshell like that. Wyland sighed, slapping Liam on the back as the boy wondered what the hell had happened…

“Told you to be careful around her, kid. Now, stay the hell here while I get an understanding of what the heck we’re gonna do. Same goes for all of you! I’ll be back.” Horrifically, Wyland went to the other teachers, leaving Liam to fend for himself against the kids behind him who were looking at him like… Wait, what?

They all seemed to look guilty, as if they had already known. Leonard, the only one not looking away, tilted his head. “I apologize. I saw you in the morning and it seemed quite obvious. I had no idea that was supposed to be private. I explained when Lidia entered the class.”

…Oh, what the hell. So why was he wearing these bandages, then!? “Shoulda told me that from the beginning, then… Need to get these things off. ”He rolled them off, no longer afraid of the backlash he’d thought he would get from-

Everyone screamed.