A superhero leapt across the rooftops, and Emmett watched from the seven o’ clock bus.

He turned in his seat to follow them, but they were gone as quickly as they appeared. It could’ve been Lux or Graynight. They were both active on this side of Adelphi, but Emmett couldn’t see well enough from the street.

Emmett turned back around in his seat, smiling—no one else on the bus had noticed, but he had seen them.

Then again, he’d also been lucky enough to look up at the right time. He’d been reading an article on his phone about the Summit of Heroes and their recent battle with the Antichampions. Their battle had started in Fallworth, but the Summit forced them into the surrounding desert where the most powerful teams of supers and villains had fought for two days, turning miles of sand dunes into craters and glass.

Reliable eyewitness accounts of such battles were scarce, but Emmett read all he could find, anyway.

Instead of going back to his phone, Emmett savored the moment and watched the streets of Eastside pass. When he was younger and riding the school bus, Emmett used to imagine himself leaping across rooftops and running faster than a car. Few days went by that he didn’t daydream about it.

But the older Emmett got, the fewer options he had: He wasn’t the son of an old god, didn’t fall into a vat of radioactive acid, know magic, or have any telekinetic powers... The closer he got to graduating college, the more absurd he felt even reading about superheroes.

He was almost an adult—a real adult. Now he only daydreamed about spontaneously getting powers every other day.

Still, no amount of growing up could wipe the smile off his face. This was the first super he’d seen in weeks, and he took it as a sign that it was going to be a good day.

Maybe even a good week.

~

The Eastside of Belport was made up of technology companies and their research buildings, as well as the satellite campus of Belport University.

It was also where Emmett spent most of his time.

He hopped off the bus on 34th Street, pushed back his dark, shaggy hair, and put in his earbuds and music. Then he pulled up his hood and started walking. He’d been on a synthwave kick the last few months, listening to artists like Starquake, Lime Profond, and Endure. It just fit—he was a tech major listening to new age music.

Pieces were falling into place for Emmett. He’d finally found a major he loved, was almost at the end of his degree, finally got an internship, and got out of the house. The music was a bonus.

Emmett walked down the street, ignoring the screens and advertisements that lined the buildings, while glancing to the rooftops in hopes of catching another glance of a super. Beauty cream from Gnosis, the latest phones from Aquarius, fusion powered cars by Masuel… Emmett ignored them all.

No more supers—not this morning, anyway.

Emmett sighed and followed the sidewalk onto campus.

Then again, it was a wonder why any supers were patrolling right now; what serious criminals got started this early in the morning?

~

The Eastside satellite campus consisted of half a dozen buildings, all devoted to engineering and health sciences. It was a self-contained mirror of the surrounding sector—its own little ecosystem. It even shared the love of glass that all tech companies seemed to have. Most graduates and promising students would get jobs and internships just a few blocks away, snatched up by the research and development wings of those companies.

Emmett still had to finish out the semester—it was the end of February with three months left to go—but he was lucky to have already landed an internship. It might not have been with one of the usual big name companies but his work with Dr. Venture was much more engaging than being just another proverbial cog in the machine.

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In fact, it had been harder to focus these last six months since getting his internship at the professor’s small lab. Classes felt like a grind compared to his work in the afternoon.

Emmett climbed the stairs of the A Building to his Product and Process engineering class, nodded to the two people he was cool with, and took his seat in the back of the room.

He toggled his phone to his police scanner app. It had been a relatively quiet week as far as supers went—some scuffles between long-time rivals like Shatterspike and Death’s Hand, and Isocauldron and Loverboy at the park on the West End. Honestly, those were the best kinds of super fights because they resulted in minimal collateral damage. Bystanders and taxpayers stayed happy, and capes and villains got to test each other and work out their creative differences.

Emmett listened intently, but after a few minutes of boring police calls he toggled back to music. Then he opened his notebook to last week’s notes and continued doodling in the margins. Sometimes it was wiring diagrams or schematics for inventions, other times it was tiny superhero battles. Today, Emmett continued his breakdown of the pieces of Arsenal’s armor. The former mask turned villain had specialized in battlesuits, and his current doodle was a mix of Arsenal’s third gen design with a few of Emmett’s own modifications—forearm lasers swapped out for sonic repeaters, afterburners changed to stabilizers.

Emmett kept doodling, even as the rest of the class filed in and as Professor Quinn started teaching.

He took his hood down and earbuds out, of course, and tried to listen as best he could.

But Emmett didn’t hear the professor pause and walk over behind him.

“Ahem.”

Emmett’s pencil froze, and he turned to see his professor standing beside him. Even with her tiny and composed demeanor, it felt like she towered over him.

“See me after class, Mr. Laraway.”

Emmett swallowed dryly. “Okay.”

~

Emmett had gotten by his entire life by staying away from the spotlight.

In grade school, he did just enough to keep A’s and just quiet enough that he didn’t stand out. But the further along he got in school, the more his teachers took notice.

At the end of class, Professor Quinn dismissed them, and Emmett made a point of slowly gathering his things so that everyone else would be gone before he talked to her. He slung his pack over his shoulder and walked up to her desk, which was almost comically oversized for her.

“What are we going to do with you, Mr. Laraway,” she said, adding a tsk, tsk, tsk at the end. “You’re a smart lad, but you can’t coast your way through life… even if you’ve managed to so far.”

Emmett shrugged an apology. “It’s just easier to apply things instead of sitting and listening.”

She nodded. “I understand. You might not think so, but I do. I was once a student here at Belport… But I want you to understand that not all applications are created equal.

“I know about your work with that Venture and his lab. His work isn’t science, and you would do well to remember that. Get what you can from him and move on to something stable.”

Emmett held his tongue and nodded, but he didn’t promise anything.

Professor Quinn must have seen through his facade because she waved him away without waiting for a response. “You have potential. Don’t waste it. Go on… and Mr. Laraway, I’m looking forward to seeing your final project.”

Emmett was already at the doorway when his step faltered. He hurried and continued down the hall.

Of course. That project—the one he’d totally forgotten about.

~

Emmett hiked down the stairs and out to the C building and his second class of the day, Machine Design.

Instead of listening to music and doodling, he spent the following hour half-listening and working on his project for engineering class.

Maybe Dr. Venture or Clara would have some ideas—not that the old man ever let him take any projects home to work on. The doctor was adamant that everything they worked on in his laboratory stayed there. He had a penchant for secrecy that bordered on paranoia.

Granted, Emmett wasn’t about to call Dr. Venture out on it. He wasn’t going to risk his internship.

At first, Emmett almost hadn’t accepted the internship. He’d never heard of Dr. Venture, and neither had any other student. He claimed to have ties to several big companies, but it wasn’t until he toured the doctor’s lab that Emmett believed it. The doctor and his lab were on another level.

As far as Emmett knew, he was the doctor’s only intern—Clara didn’t count. She was his daughter.

Emmett sighed and Professor Quinn’s words came back to him: “You can’t coast your way through life.”

For most of his life, that’s exactly what Emmett was doing, just coasting in the background, but Professor Quinn was wrong—coasting wasn’t what he wanted to do now.

It just felt like he’d outgrown his classes. Even his capstone classes were too easy.

So Emmett bided his time and paid attention as best as he could. He just had another couple hours to kill until going to work with Dr. Venture.

Only another few hours…

~ ~ ~