Thursday, September 3

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Bee and I finished up a Ramsey Fieri lunch and changed into our superhero personas. We’d been through Stage Combat with, oddly enough, an ex-professional wrestler named Doctor Boulder Vicente and a room that was an even mix of drama kids, wannabe badasses, and students I strongly suspected were supers. That class sounded like it’d be awesome. After that was Psychology in Action, which turned out to be focused on how the brain reacted to intense situations.

Then, this morning, we’d been in Superpower Legal Issues. It felt boring compared to Superpower Ethics and Combat Styles, but I kept my eyes open as we discussed the various laws that’d been proposed to restrict supers over the last twenty or so years. The class gave me an opportunity, though; I could learn a lot about APPEAL here that I couldn’t learn from Su-Bin, since she was biased.

And now—hopefully—was the highlight class for the semester. I wanted to shift from aggressive combat to working as a support hero with at least one Costume, and Extra Relations and Public Presentation looked like it’d be good training for that type of work. Plus, as a minor-league hero, I’d have more eyes on me before, during, and after Episodes, even when I was just fighting.

This class was going to be phenomenal, and I was ready to treat it like Superpower Ethics. Not the first few months, either, but the last ones, where we’d all gotten our shit together.

“Ready for this?” I asked as we worked our way down the secret tunnels below TU.

Fursona nodded.

Doctor Tennyson stood in front of the class in his silver super suit, writing on the whiteboard as we slipped into the room with minutes to spare. He’d piled textbooks in neat stacks, each about twelve books high. Flare, both the SSS candidates, and Sara-N-Dipity already had seats, along with a few other heroes and villains. I didn’t see Springlock or Milo, though. Did they have multiple associate’s degree tracks?

“Welcome. It looks like we’re all here, so let’s get started,” Tennyson said. “This class is, in combination with Doctor Jackson’s Superpower Legal Issues course, the most important class you’ll take at TU. In her class, you’ll learn how to handle the many legal issues facing heroes and villains. You’ll become an expert on the arguments your lawyers will use when you inevitably do something that causes the legal system to look at you. And, as she no doubt said, you’ll be informed about the big policies working their way through the North American government.

“In my class, you’ll learn how to avoid all of that, so you never have to use it.”

Tennyson clapped his hands. “Now, let’s get to it. Class is divided into a couple of different tasks. First, the reading. Please come to the front and pick up one book from each stack.”

‘Speechmaking: Dos and Don’ts,’ ‘How to Influence People Without Using Powers,’ and ‘Public-Facing Personas,’ along with a few others—this all looked like the kind of information I wanted. I scooped up the books and headed back to my seat.

“Okay, we’ll have assigned readings from each of these books. The chapters we’ll cover are in the syllabus. Normally, I know there’s a huge resale market for textbooks, and you’re all pretending to be broke college students. That’s not as true for superhero texts. Still, these are solid references, so I recommend you keep them, and maybe even read the non-assigned page numbers,” Tennyson said.

“Will this stuff be on the test?” Flare asked.

Tennyson laughed. “Yes. Speaking of the test, here it is. You will interact with the Extra population frequently in this class and report back to the class on your experiences. We’ll have two different tracks of interaction—one for heroes and one for villains. I’ll explain more after today’s intro lesson, but the idea is to get you used to being public-facing, let you make the most common mistakes, and discuss them in a learning environment.”

He turned to the board. “That brings us to the ‘three pillars’ set-up for the class. Every day, starting at 12:30, we’ll have twenty minutes of discussion about the previous week’s interaction task. Then, we’ll have twenty minutes to talk about the readings. The remaining thirty-five will be focused on new concepts, which the reading for the next period will reinforce.

“The goal of Extra Relations and Public Presentation is not to make you a star for the camera. It’s not to change the personas you’ve been building as a little league hero, or even into the minors. We’re going to tune those personas, give you the skills you need to build rapport with Extras, Henchmen, and maybe even other supers, and, of course, teach you how to handle situations that’ve gone wrong.

“So, since I’m in speech-making mode,” Doctor Tennyson said and laughed, “here’s the interaction task for this week. Find someone who hates supers and talk with them.”

“What?” Flare asked, jaw almost on the floor. “How are we supposed to do that?”

“Don’t be Flare,” Doctor Tennyson said. When the class laughed, he held up a hand. “Not that your persona is grating, but this task doesn’t have to be done as a super. You can use your secret identity to make it happen. Your goal is to learn why your person is anti-super.”

“What if I’ve already done this?” I asked. Actually, I’d done it twice: once with Su-Bin and once with Mom.

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“Then dig deeper. People don’t say it, but they often have deep-seated reasons. They’ll say it’s because crime is up, the world is more dangerous for Extras, or supers treat our job like a game. But there’s almost always a personal reason to hate supers, and it almost always has a kernel of truth to it. Find that kernel, come back to class, and tell us about it.”

For the rest of class, Doctor Tennyson talked about the common anti-super arguments and why they happened. The big one seemed to be ‘crime,’ which he said was symptomatic of a need for logic to take over from emotions. It was funny because, according to him, the emotional appeal of a personal story that happened to someone was more powerful than statistics, but somehow, the ‘crime’ argument kept being a thing over and over.

For some reason, the other big plays were appeals to authority. A few anti-super candidates and celebrities were out there, so people tended to quote them incessantly. I remembered Su-Bin’s parents. They’d been all about The Pherris Report, a show filled with anti-super rhetoric, and treated everything Pherris said like gospel.

By the time class was over, I had a feeling I’d be talking to Su-Bin soon.

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Bianca sat on my couch, a cartoon running quietly on the TV from inside a nest of blankets and pillows. I cooked. I was cheating. Since I knew Su-Bin was coming at 5:30, I could be Ramsey-Fieri until about 5:15. I wouldn’t be able to [Speed-Plate] the meals, but it’d taste right.

We'd wrestle the truth out of Su-Bin, even if it killed us.

“You ready?” I asked.

“Yep. Got my list of not-so-prying questions right here,” Bianca said. “How’s the chicken?”

“Solid. Totally respectable. I’ve got a timer set for when it’ll all be done. Nothing but sous-chef stuff now.” I untransformed, stirred the pots, and flipped the chicken in its pan. It’d be easy enough to make the meal a success. I’d cooked honey lemon chicken, mashed potatoes, and asparagus because the combo felt like a homestyle meal but with a little more flair than the rotisserie and container mac and cheese Mom made. It was intentionally simple by Ramsey Fieri’s standards but pushed the limits of what Anika DuPont could handle in the kitchen.

I’d just turned off all three burners, mentally high-fiving myself over the timing, when the doorbell rang. “I’ve got it!” Bee shouted, leaping off the couch and turning off the TV in the middle of a badly-animated 3-D kid playing in a rock band.

“Hi, Bianca,” Su-Bin said as soon as the door opened. “Hi, Annie. I’m still incredibly jealous of your current room, but I’ve got a solo one this year!”

“No more annoying roommate?” I asked from the kitchen.

“No more annoying roommate,” Su-Bin confirmed, sucking on her soda straw. She sat on the couch, right next to where Bee’s nest lay scattered, half on the sofa and half over the coffee table.

I rolled my eyes. “Bianca, clean that mess up before dinner.”

“Yes, mother,” Bee said, matching my eye-roll.

“I’m disappointed,” Su-Bin said. “I don’t share a class with either of you.”

“Nope. Busy schedules, and we’re all starting to get into our fields’ classes now.” I shoveled mashed potatoes into a mixing bowl and carried them to the table.

Su-Bin waited until I was halfway through carrying the chicken. Then, grinning, she asked, “Is there anything I can do?”

“No, just sit down,” I said. Then I hesitated, oven mitts heating up. “Actually, I think I saw you with APPEAL on Tuesday. What’s going on with them? You were out protesting, but I don’t remember that happening last year.”

“Yeah,” Su-Bin said as she found a chair at the table. She beamed, her smile from ear to ear. “Say hello to President Pak.”

“As a sophomore? No way,” I said. When she nodded seriously, I continued. “Well, congratulations. APPEAL is lucky to have you.”

“Actually, it was super-frustrating,” she said. “I knew Erik was graduating, so I spent the whole summer gathering data on effective APPEAL protests in other places, how to manage a college-level club, and which supers were causing the most havoc in Tokyexico. Then, two weeks before classes started, the only other candidate dropped out suddenly. So, I became the president by default, and all my campaign material and information is totally wasted.”

“That sounds rough,” I said. We filled up our plates—Bee looked a little ashamed when I glared at her for eating early—and dug in. The food was solid—not Ramsey Fieri’s usual top-restaurant-quality, but better than anything the TU Student Union served. The chicken had a nice tang to it, the potatoes had been peppered and garliced to perfection, and the asparagus still had a crunch that, so often, sauteed asparagus lacked.

“Last year, at the end of Spring Break, I asked you about why you were anti-super,” I said once the eating had slowed down. Su-Bin stiffened a little, and I hurriedly continued. “I’m mostly trying to understand why because I’m taking some law classes that want me to dig into the reasoning behind protesters. If I can get a jump on the subject material, that might help me understand.”

Su-Bin smiled sadly across the table, then shoveled one more bite of potato into her mouth. She chewed slowly, even though it was mashed potato; clearly, she was stalling. Then she shook her head. “I think I told you then. It’s about crime rates and safety.”

I hesitated. Then I nodded slowly. “I get it. I really do. My mom was anti-super for a long time, too. She watched a villain kill someone, and it stuck with her for a long time. Now, she doesn’t care as much, but she doesn’t trust the showrunners at all.” It wasn’t a lie—at least not technically.

“That makes sense,” Su-Bin said. She ate another bite of potato, stalling once again. Then she nodded. “Okay. My parents wanted to move back to Seoul after Launch Day. They made plans and everything—spent a fortune on plane tickets, sold the house and everything. But the day before they were supposed to go, the Ilneats decided that Seoul wasn’t recoverable, and they flattened it. It wasn’t financially worthwhile to clean it up. Launch Day had done too much, and people were all relocated already.

“So, my parents lost their homes twice. Once to Launch Day, and once to trying to recover their first one. But that second one was the Ilneats’ fault. Then, they moved into a smaller house near the outskirts of Thornton. They’d been living there for a while, and I was just a kid, when Man vs. Nature Four kicked off.”

“Oh,” I said, heart sinking.

“Yeah. They fought The Bear Lord in our neighborhood. After, they moved us into apartments while they MIRACLE’d up some new houses, but the program stopped working halfway through, and Thornton fell apart after.” Su-Bin took a deep breath, shaking a little. “The supers who fought The Bear Lord didn’t bother to follow up and see if Thornton recovered. It didn’t. And we got stuck in the apartment.”

Bianca stood up and offered Su-Bin a hug. The tiny Korean girl accepted, sniffling a little as Bee’s arms wrapped around her.

I stood awkwardly nearby. “I’m sorry. That sounds incredibly tough, and it makes sense. Can I share your story with my law class next week?”

Su-Bin’s eyes narrowed briefly, shining with tears of frustration and sorrow. Then they softened, and she nodded. “Yes. If it’s for a class. Just keep it anonymous. I don’t need APPEAL knowing everything. I’ve got a reputation for being logical and fact-based, and I can’t lose it.”

I smiled genuinely. “You can count on me.”