Wednesday, September 2
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I didn’t end up waking Bianca. It would have been funny, but neither of us was a morning person, and in the end, we’d settled on dual phone alarms, both of which required passwords to stop. That meant we both had to be awake, and as Bianca’s phone squawked at me in some sort of birdcall and I tried desperately to get her to wake up, I regretted my choices. If she didn’t want to be awake, it could be impossible to get her up.
After a minute of listening to the increasingly loud bird screech, I put the phone next to her ear and went to take a shower. She could deal with it herself! But the calls didn’t stop the whole time I shampooed and conditioned. Not until I’d toweled dry and gotten dressed did she finally turn it off.
“Breakfast? I’m thinking the SUB for burritos,” I said.
“Mfff. Whatever,” Bee groaned into the pillow. “Clothes.”
“No shower?” I asked.
“No time. Get me clothes.”
I tossed her the tank top and shorts she’d been in the day before. “They’ll do for now.”
As she climbed out of bed and tracked down a bra, I stared, not bothering to hide it. She still had an athlete’s build, but it had shifted from the more lean-muscled soccer athlete’s body to something with more defined, bulkier muscles that rippled under her skin. She was still plenty curvy, though, especially her hips, which I admired for a moment even after she caught me looking. “Did you change your workout routine?”
“Yeah.” She pulled on her clothes. “For the last month, I’ve been pushing hard—lots of weights, kickboxing for cardio, and practicing my fencing moves. I’m gonna try to stick with the club since it’s a place where I can strive for number one as long as I don’t enter any competitions. There’s a few guys there who are fast, though.”
“Well, you’re carrying the muscles well,” I grinned.
She hoisted her bag to her shoulder and gave me a quick kiss on the cheek. “Thanks, babe. Gimme five in the bathroom, then we can get moving. Lots to do today.”
The door locked, and a minute later, her voice came through. It was muffled from the door and her toothbrush, but I pieced it together. I thought she’d said, “Do you want to try getting Tractor-Beam-Girl as a mentee?”
I thought about it, but we had a good thing going with the two of us. “I don’t know. Let’s at least see what classes are like first before we commit to another thing.”
And speaking of other things…
“Besides, we’ll be getting contacted by The Narrator soon. We owe her some time with the kids this semester. Maybe she’ll let us be flexible and do just a little at a time,” I said. We owed her because she’d given Su-Bin and me ‘free childcare’ so we could pass Child Psych. A small part of me was looking forward to it. Unfortunately, that part was Rainy Day, and the rest of me knew it’d be a total waste of time.
“Yeah. I think Tractor-Beam-Girl could be a fun member for a trio, and Mindstorm said she was the hero with the most potential,” Bee said. She’d finished brushing her teeth and came across much more clearly. A moment later, the door opened, and she posed for a moment. “How do I look?”
“Good. Breakfast. Let’s go.”
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The Mister Felsic statue was crawling with supers, and the tension hung heavy in the air.
Flare and The Crumb were there; so was Milo, though Springlock was missing. Tearjerker had also decided to take the associate’s degree path, and Sara-N-Dipity glared at her from near the statue’s base. But though the older heroes and villains definitely had some conflict going, it was the freshmen I was most worried about.
Tractor-Beam-Girl looked like she was ready to kill Flare. On some level, I understood. Flare was very killable.
But on another level, she’d shown during the Orientation Episode that she wasn’t a soloist—not unless her beams did more than just hold a target in place. And with two dozen villains and heroes standing around at the statue, things could get nasty if she went for it.
Fursona’s plastic eyes looked at me, and I gritted my teeth and nodded grudgingly. “Fine. Fine, we can talk to her. Maybe we can calm her down or something.”
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We walked over just as she stood up and jammed a finger in Flare’s chest. He charged up a fiery fist. “Bad idea, Tinkerbell.”
“Hold on, hold on!” I shouted, pushing Flare back and grabbing Tractor-Beam-Girl’s shoulder. Fursona cleared her throat next to the supervillain, who paled and let his flames die out. Clearly, he didn’t want any of Fursona at this point.
Which still left the furious, tiny Tractor-Beam-Girl. She pushed my hand off her shoulder, shifting her glare to me. “I can deal with my own problems! I don’t need you stepping in for me all the time!”
I held up my hands. “Okay, just trying to keep this from turning into something that destroys half the campus. What’s your name?”
“Vicegrip,” she said, blushing. I held my tongue as she scowled. “I’m going to be a star. On my way up the little league leaderboards and everything, and I’m not scared of you or anyone.”
Okay, holy shit. It was like meeting a tinier, angrier version of me. Vicegrip had all the confidence I’d had that she’d move up, and a giant chip on her shoulder. Something was going to kick her ass, though, unless someone intervened. I shot Fursona a look, then sat on the bench. “Where are you from?”
“Yorkston.”
Oh. She wasn’t just like me. She was from the biggest superhero city in North America, although Tokyexico had produced a few exceptional supers in the last decade. “So you know what you’re getting into, then? You can handle all these villains by yourself? You didn’t get kidnapped by Iron Fist yesterday?”
Vicegrip’s fists clenched. “What do you want?”
“Just to give you some friendly advice. I grew up in a small town, and I thought I was hot shit when I got here last year. The thing is, everyone here’s got a year of classes on you. Flare’s got at least half of his minor-league kit, and he might have made it over the summer. I doubt it, but it’s possible. I’m not saying keep your head down. Make a name for yourself, just maybe without starting a massive showdown on day one, yeah?”
She wilted in her white armor, then looked away, refusing to make eye contact. I turned to Fursona. “Okay, that went really badly. You still want to try after class?”
“I hope so,” Doctor Jackson said, eying Vicegrip. “Magical Girl Understudy, thanks for getting in the way and keeping your composure. I’ll email you later today, so keep an eye on your mail. You too, Fursona. We're heading down into the theater, new heroes, villains, and vigilantes. Superpower Ethics will prepare you for resolving situations like this.”
As the freshmen filed down into the Department of Superpower Studies, Doctor Mays cleared his throat. “As for you older students, we’re heading down as well. I’ve got coffee going inside, so hopefully, you’re all ready for the boring Day One intro to the class. Room 105. We’ll start in ten minutes, so get comfortable, use the bathroom, find something to drink, and be there at 8:10. And no, that’s not going to be a normal thing, so don’t get used to it.”
I rolled my eyes and headed down the ramp. The coffee wasn’t bad, but Sara kept trying to corner me. I avoided her until she gave up just before time was up and sat in one of the comfortable lounge chairs that dotted the room. It wasn’t set up as a theater, but it could do it in a pinch.
I breathed a sigh of relief when the luckiest superheroine on campus finally decided to leave me alone, and thanked whoever was watching out for me that she hadn’t used her power to pin me down. She clearly wanted my vote, but I was already committed to Springlock.
At exactly 8:10, Doctor Mays leaned over his podium. “Alright, several of you have partners, whether they’re in this class or not. Either way, the class is pretty simple. For the first half, we’ll look at the different archetypes—Bruisers, Tanks, Speedsters, Elementalists, Geniuses, and Magicals—and work through their best duo, trio, and full-team compositions. We’ll spend six weeks on each team size, splitting the time between the six archetypes as best we can. Then, when we’re done, you’ll have a standard test on the material. That’s half your grade.”
I yawned. All of this was on the syllabus, but every professor in the world insisted on going over it. Plus, I already had my partner in Fursona, a Bruiser with a hint of Speedster to her. We complimented each other well, and I couldn’t see what good the first six weeks would do for us.
“The other half will be practical work outside of class time. You’ll need to find a partner for the first six weeks, a trio for the second, and a full team for the third, then run at least one Episode with them. After that Episode, you’ll need to write a three to five page paper on how the pair-up went, what you learned, and how you applied what we’ve talked about to them. You’ll also have a one to three-page paper due at the end of weeks two, four, eight, ten, fourteen, and sixteen.”
Fursona groaned, fidgeting in her seat. I didn’t blame her, even though it really wasn’t that much of a workload. Everything added up, after all, and 8:30 wasn’t the time you wanted to hear about a bunch of short essays. Still, they were short ones, so that was a small mercy, and other than the unit tests, there weren’t any actual exams.
I flipped through the syllabus, following along as Doctor Mays blazed through it. When he finished, he cleared his throat again. “Speaking truthfully, there’s not a single super in the TU faculty who can teach this class from experience. Jackson, Tennyson, and I formed the most successful trio in history, but our situation was unique. With two meta-power heroes and a space Elementalist, we handled combat wildly differently from what you’ll likely be doing.
“The big picture reasons for choosing Jackson and Tennyson as a trio, though, are things I think you can learn from. The fact is, when you’re looking for long-term teammates, you can pick a bunch of people you like, like The Triad. They run two individually powerful heroes in Underdelver and Lightbeam, but the reason they work well as a team is the pure happenstance of Underdelver and Tele-Portal being friends and Lightbeam meeting them early in their careers. There’s little synergy between Underdelver and Lightbeam without Tele-Portal.”
“So, what’s the other method?” Sara asked. Doctor Mays looked at her gratefully, and she grinned like it had been scripted.
“Instead of picking your partners based on who you like, think about what you bring to the table, and find heroes or villains who make that better—or who you make better. Synergy breeds success, and success creates room for showmanship.”