Friday is one of the best days of the week. A lot of people think it is the best day, period. It’s not hard to see why, with it being the last weekday, heralding two glorious days of the weekend. All you had to do was endure through the hard part at the start, then you were free. Hell, most people started their weekend on Friday. But for me, this friday was my first day back at school.
Kathrine had allowed me to spend some additional time off school, considering my bruises were still clearing up. That coupled with the fact that I wasn’t totally comfortable outside by myself had kept me indoors. My bruises appeared to be gone, but that’s because I was covering them with my power. Even though it had been more than a week since I was attacked, I still felt constant aches in various places. However, I couldn’t feel sorry for myself forever. I was missing classes, and that was what had made Kathrine finally force me to go to school.
Something that was making me nervous was my story, or more specifically how much the story had spread and how popular the story was. I wasn’t really close to anyone at school, so I hadn’t told anyone about the fact that I got mugged. Another thing I didn’t know was exactly how popular my story might be.
Fortunately for me I was largely ignored when I got dropped off at the school gate. I was able to go to my first class by falling in step with the crowd and no one even gave me the time of day until the roll was called. The teacher welcomed me back when I responded to my name being called, which was when people finally noticed I was back. I hadn’t realised my own lack of presence until then. Though that was probably for the better if this whole hero thing went through.
Being a hero was a full time job for the most part. There was the Sentinel, which had several such heroes. Orcus being one of them. Then there were the other groups. Advent, The Grey Apostles, and the Heroes of Yesterday to name a few. All of those groups consisted of heroes over the age of 18. The Sentry was the only team that had members under 18.
It was somewhat common knowledge that most of the current Sentry team went to Bitopia Grammar School. There they supposedly had systems in place to let the Sentrys go to school like normal kids, while at the same time letting them leave in the event of emergencies and letting them keep their identities secret. If I was largely ignored here, I could just excuse myself and go.
Anyway, I got asked a few times why I’d been away. Answering that question wasn’t something I’d thought about in advance, so I fell back on “recovering”, which seemed to satisfy their curiosity. The end result was me being left alone. It made me feel like I needed to work on my people skills, but I felt relief from not being the centre of attention.
Second period got me sitting next to Nathan, which was the best reason, if not the only reason I had to look forward to going back to school. He had curly brown hair and had an impish mouth that always seemed to twist a little too far for comfort. Regardless, he oozed charisma of a sort, and greeted me with a handshake and a “What took you so long?” as the roll was being called. I gave him the same answer I gave everyone else.
“Recovering from what?” Nathan followed up.
This was the furthest I’d been down this line of questioning. “Stuff.”
“You better be infectious. I’d love a week off.” His expression was completely serious. It got a chuckle out of me.
“No. Not infectious.” I pulled my collar down, subtly using my power to return a bruise to its normal colour. “I uh… got mugged.”
“Shit.” Nathan looked surprised. “Did you give as good as you got?”
Thinking about it made a feeling drop in my stomach. “No… not exactly.”
“That was a week ago, right?”
“More than a week.” I corrected.
“Well shit. You got hit hard. My condolences.” Nathan said. “There’s been some top quality drama happening in the time you were gone. If you’d been here two days ago you’d have caught the end of it. You want a catch up?”
“Do it.” I waved a hand gesturing to go on.
The teacher finished calling the roll. “We will be writing an essay in response to one of these questions today, in relation to the book I hope you were all reading as your homework.”
That got mixed reactions. I for one didn’t know which book she was talking about.
They continued. “Michael, you weren’t here when we got the novel from the library. Take this note and get a copy.”
I stood up to comply and stage whispered to Nathan. “Tell me later.”
“Break.” He confirmed before turning to the guy on the other side of him and rejoining their conversation I hadn’t realised he’d been a part of. He would definitely be missed if he didn’t show up for a week. I wasn’t sure how to feel about that. Maybe I needed to work on my people skills. One boring looking book retrieved and a period later it was break and Nathan invited me to hang out with him.
“Right. So do you know Jess?” Nathan asked as we walked through the corridor. “She was so-so popular, always wore glasses, had brown hair.”
“Brunette.” A girl corrected. I hadn’t realised we were hanging out as three. The other person was walking on the opposite side of Nathan, and was someone who seemed familiar, but I couldn’t place the name. She had her brown, no, brunette hair done up in a ponytail, and I could see blond in the roots. Her face was mouseish but round, she had a dimple on her left cheek, and had three moles on the opposite side of her nose.
“I don’t recognise the name, but I vaguely remember seeing someone like that.” I said.
“Good enough for me.” Nathan said. “She was the reason behind a shitstorm that involved all of the prefects. Basically, she hacked the system and got all their login details.”
The school I was going to, Merryfair High, was highly digitised. Everything from taking attendance to taking notes was all done on some form of computer. The school supplied every student with a working laptop, to be used for all purposes school related. All textbooks were still hard copies though. Which meant that everyone’s bags were still heavy. Regardless, getting someone’s login details meant you had access to their school email, their projects, and pretty much everything else as well.
I let out a whistle.
Nathan continued. “Yeah, but the crazy thing is: Jess didn’t use them, she distributed them. They all got sent to the prefects and was real particular with how she did it. Head girl got the head boy’s log in and vice versa. Both did some digging, and the head boy found out the head girl was cheating on her boyfriend. There was a whole lot of shit surfacing like that.”
“Were they a thing?” I asked.
“Nah. Head girl had a non-prefect boyfriend. But it turns out he was a beard and the head girl was kissing some other girl on the weekends. That relationship ended loudly and publicly. Great lunchtime entertainment.”
“Was that the worst thing that happened?”
“Not by a long shot.” The girl answered with a mirthful chuckle.
“But what a way to come out.” Nathan grinned at his own joke. “Then a video went viral of Jason kicking kittens over his fence and laughing about it. He was stripped of his role as a prefect and suspended.”
“And there was Geoffrey.” The girl prompted.
“That’s right. I was forgetting the name. Geoffrey stole some shit and bragged about it to his friends. It was all private until Jess emailed his log in details to another prefect and he got snitched to senior management. Then someone emailed the juice to everyone in the school from Geoffrey’s address. Turns out Geoffrey wasn’t the only one stealing and a whole ring of black market dealers got busted. There were arrests during class.”
Stolen novel; please report.
“And that was Wednesday, I’m guessing.” I said.
“Nope, that last one was on monday.” Nathan corrected. “Jason happened over the weekend, and the matter between Mr Head Boy and Ms Head girl happened days after you vanished.”
“Jeez, I really missed out. What happened on Wednesday?” I asked.
“More mass emails.” Nathan said with a glint in his eye. “Every teacher’s login details got sent to all the students. Suddenly everyone has perfect attendance and straight A’s.”
“I should’ve checked my emails.” I realised.
“Eh, don’t bother. The School shut the servers down and scrubbed that particular email from everyone’s inbox. Jess got caught ‘cause she was using a school terminal. But not before we found out how the headmaster treated his secretary. Oh, and he’s not allowed near kids anymore.”
“Fuck.”
“So the school is currently being investigated because of that and Jess was expelled on the spot. A PE teacher suddenly stopped showing up because of course he has. And now you have the cliffnotes version.” Nathan finished.
“I think Jess wanted to be expelled.” The girl pondered. “She was practically skipping out.”
“We all got sent home early as well, so that was pretty cool.” Nathan added.
“I should check my email.” I realised. I hadn’t opened my inbox since I got mugged. If I was lucky, I only had one or two hundred emails to sort through. “Fuuck.”
The break passed with more of the same. Witty banter, the first I’d had in a while, which was something I hadn’t realised I missed. The only people I’d had over the past two weeks were hospitalised kids, then my three younger foster sisters. I was justifiably starved for conversation.
The next class I had didn’t have anyone I knew in it, then there was another break. Lunch went the same as the first break, except for the fact that lunch was eaten. After that was physics with Mr Asher, the one teacher who had the ability to make the subject interesting. Though, that might have been bias on my part because of my power.
Best class or not, that period panned out much the same as the others had done. I had to pay extra attention just to keep up, then was given a load of homework to do if I wanted to catch up. Making things easier was the presence of the girl that had joined in on Nathan’s and my conversation at break, who I ended up sitting next to. Using the roll I was able to learn that her name was Sonya without having to ask her, which saved me the awkwardness. We talked a bit, but the conversation didn’t flow. Most of it was study related.
Guess Nathan was the X factor there.
There was just one period left when I saw something that threw my brain into chaos and made my body stop. It was a familiar face. They were wearing different clothes and had healed since I last saw them, but that wasn’t a face I was likely to forget.
“Michael, what do you have next?” Sonya asked again. We were just outside the door from our last class. Wait, again?
He was walking among the crowd, with his face well above the crowd. Not because he was walking with his head held high, but because he was just that tall. The bruise I’d remembered on his cheek had healed up, and his attention was directed at someone walking alongside him. He gestured, and I noticed bandages on his hand and wrist. My blood was running colder as he walked closer.
“Do you need to check the timetable?” Sonya pressed.
He passed me, somehow not noticing me even though I was stopped in the middle of the hallway and staring right at him. My blood was pounding in my ears. I could barely hear Sonya talking. He laughed at a joke and shoved someone’s shoulder, then paused. He glanced my way. I glanced away before we made eye contact.
I waited. Waited for him to call me out. Nothing. Then he wasn’t going to say anything, just walk up to me and finish the job.
… Nothing.
I looked back up. He was gone.
Was I lucky? Yes. Obviously. It had taken some time for me to realise that while I’d been brutally battered, he hadn’t broken any bones. Otherwise I’d be walking around with a cast on my arm and two moonboots. But this didn’t feel like luck. It felt like he’d noticed me. Then ignored me.
Did he even remember me?
“You’ve gone pale.” Sonya said, her voice gentle. She was right in front of me but I somehow didn’t notice her until she said that. “Do you need to go to the nurse?”
I stared back. I didn’t know what to do. “No.” But I said that anyway and left. I don’t know if Sonya tried to follow me, a torrent of panicked thoughts were giving me tunnel vision. I went to the school’s back gate, it was locked so I used my power to open it forcefully, and practically ran off of the school grounds. Kathrine was out, likely picking up the others from their various schools. That meant I would have the house to myself, so I went straight up to my room and curled up until I calmed down.
This wasn’t good. I wasn’t expecting to see him again. He looked young, but I hadn’t thought he’d be that young. I had no idea if the encounter we had had made him remember me and it wasn’t something I really wanted to think about. If I wanted to stand up to him, I should know how to fight.
I didn’t though. I was five seven and sixty kilos which was a twig in the wind compared to most. Neither of my powers worked in a fist fight. Sure, I could use telekinesis on things I touched, but that didn’t work on people. And being able to change the colour of someone’s skin wouldn’t exactly help in a fist fight either. Though now that I thought about it, I’d probably get some training if I ended up with the Sentry.
No. When I ended up with the Sentry. I’d chosen to do that, I needed to follow through.
That night I did two things. The first was checking in with Kathrine about the matter. She told me that they wanted to meet with me at the SRT tomorrow and talk me through all the ins and outs. Apparently there were a lot. Good. That was something to look forward to.
The second was checking my emails. The sight of three hundred unread emails made me internally wince. Scrolling through them, I found that most were clerical emails sent to inform me of scheduling changes and the like. The majority of the remainder were newsletters from various subscriptions that had somehow gotten hold of my email and teachers sending me the notes from each class. It was nice, it meant only one in every ten emails were worth looking at.
Three pages in there was an email that stuck out as odd. It had “No Subject” and was from J. McMaster. I hovered my mouse over it and saw the email was from “[email protected]”. This was probably part of the whole email fiasco Nathan had told me about earlier. Therefore I elected not to click it. Plus, there was always the chance of a virus.
Further back I found a whole bunch more emails from people I didn’t know. No doubt more of the drama I missed out on. The thing was, there was a full day between me getting the email from J. McMaster and the email from the headmaster, which happened to be the last of the login details sent out. It was curious. But it smelled more like trouble so I turned my computer off and went to sleep.
~~~
“Hello Michael. I am Zephyr.” The person speaking was fairly notorious amongst the hero crowd in Graceland. I recognised her immediately. Though that was because I’d brushed up on the local hero/villain climate since my interview with Orcus.
Zephyr was an incredibly tall woman, standing at at least 6 feet. She wore a loose dark blue robes which had the edges trimmed with silver. She didn’t have any sleeves, leaving her fairly tanned arms bare, and she had light grey singlet underneath the robe. She was barefoot, and wore a pair of harem pants a similar colour to the singlet that stopped above her knees.
She had a darker grey balaclava covering her neck and the lower half of her face. A lightweight wight helmet with a reflective visor covered the rest. The helmet had wings worked into the design on either side. I noticed that unlike the horns on Orcus’ helmet, those wings could probably be held onto because they flared away from the helmet.
It was the next day. Kathrine had dropped the kids off with a babysitter and we had come to the SRT. We entered from the same entrance I had before, where were promptly given a courtesy search and lead to the upper levels. Our escort had left us upon arrival.
“We’re here to give you the essential details you need to know before signing the documents and entering into a Transhuman organisation.” Zephyr gestured at the fourth person in the room, an older man of colour in a suit who had a receding hairline and growing waistline. At least he had the sense to shave his hair short. He nodded at us and sat down.
“My name is Carter, I’ll be representing the Regulation.” Then he opened a notebook and waited.
“Hello Carter. My name is Kathrine.” Kathrine looked at me.
“Yeah. I’m Michael.” I shrugged. “I’m sure you already knew that.”
As much as I wish what happened next was interesting, it wasn’t. Most of it was Zephyr and Kathrine going back and forth over detail after excruciating detail. From my point of view things could be put quite simply.
I would be given a public title and a costume as a Sentry, which I would be allowed a degree of input on the design. I would be required to show up at the SRT tower four days a week minimum to be on standby and to go on patrol if need be. I was under no legal obligation to keep my identity a secret, but it was recommended that I do.
Other people’s identities were theirs to keep. I could get hit with a lawsuit if I revealed someone else’s secret identity inadvertently. For every hour I logged on patrol or standby, I would be paid a certain amount, but it would be sent to an account I wouldn’t be able to access until I was eighteen. This amount would be multiplied if I participated in a dangerous event.
There was optional therapy available, should I choose to take advantage of it. One of the things that stuck out to me was the option to drop out of taking part in events after a certain amount of threat was recognised. Though, the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. It would be better to keep people paralyzed by fear away from the source of that fear that it would be to keep them in harm’s way.
Eventually, Zephyr handed a small stack of paper to Carter, who spent ten minutes reading through it while the rest of us waiting. After finishing Carter handed it back with a nod and began packing up. Zephyr slid the stack over to me.
“Sign there.” She told me. “Then you’ll be a Sentry.”
I took the pen and immediately hesitated. Before I could even click the pen I had to remind myself that this was the path I had chosen to take. I signed the contract using the signature I came up with in the moment.
That’s how I became a hero.