It was only at this moment did I realize just how awkward things would be when I finally made it to class. I mean I don’t know why it never came to mind considering that I would be walking into a class full of people, twenty minutes late, on the first day of school.

‘There is something wrong with me’, I berated myself.

Everything stopped as soon as I stepped into the room. The probably warm and comfortable tone within the room had immediately flatlined upon my entrance, leaving behind only a frigid and barren chill. I stood there, engaging in a horrifically long staring match with the other students before a woman spoke up from the corner of the room.

“Hello”, she greeted me.

She had long strands of blue hair which flowed down her face, nearly concealing a pair of gray owl-like eyes that sparkled in an almost gem-like fashion. Her chocolate completion glowed with a vigor which I’d only seen in pictures of my mom during their wedding day and the red tie dyed shirt and light blue jeans combo she wore gave the appearance of a sixties hippy as opposed to a teacher.

“Normally when students show up for their first ever class, they arrive early, rather than late Mr. Michaels, I’m guessing?'', she said almost lazily, as I walked up to the desk.

“Yeah, I’m sorry about that, it took a little while for the vice principal to call my name…and I got a little lost”.

. “Well if that’s the case then I guess it can’t be helped, take a seat and make some friends or something, after all you’re gonna be seeing them everyday for the rest of the year”.

I gave a curt nod in response before turning back and grabbing an empty chair near the back of the room. After seeing that I could successfully navigate myself to an empty seat, Ms. Krawford cleared her throat, silencing the room in response, and strolled across the room towards the board.

“Hello”, She announced, getting up from her chair, “Now that you’re all here I have a few things to say. Firstly, I’m your seminar teacher, Jacquiline Krawford. Nice to meet you. Secondly, you might be wondering what this class is necessarily. Well, ordinarily it exists as a study hall. Either that or the purpose of it is to teach you how to act like people. Normally you’d be assigned this giant stack of papers on how specific events make you feel, but I’m almost positive that you don’t want to do that and I have far better things to do than grade trash written up by a bunch of old heads who haven’t stepped into a classroom in decades. I’ve found that the most important aspect of this class is socialization; getting you comfortable with each other, and interacting. Because of this, seminars will be predominantly student-led. The overall format that I plan to stick to is; at the start of each class I will give you a few questions which exist purely as ice breakers if you don’t have any ideas on what to talk about. These are opinionated questions so tell each other what you think. During this class you can say, quite literally, whatever you want. My role in this classroom is as a conversation starter first and an administrator second, so after I’ve given you the initial prompts for the day I couldn’t care less about what you do. Talk, engage with each other, and build new friendships”.

“As I’m sure that you are all aware, this weekend is the Pentastros festival, so all of the prompts will relate to that”. And with that she fulfilled her apparent instructions and returned to her desk.

“You gotta love Krawford”, a voice to my right said.

Turning in the direction of the voice, I came face to face with an asian girl dressed in a red and black flannel with black leggings looking directly at me.

“I guess”, I told her, “At least I can’t say I’ve never had a teacher that’s struck me like her”.

“Yeah even among the teachers here she’s a bit different, but that also means that she’s the most interesting”.

“You’re talking like you’ve been here before. Are you a sophomore or something”.

"I’m a junior actually. I’m Sienna Entrano, nice to meet you”, she greeted, sporting a grin.

“Alexander Michaels, but most people just call me Alex”, I responded.

“So Mr. Michaels, aside from being late on your first day, tell me a bit about yourself, are you planning on going to the festival on Saturday”?, She asked, repeating the first question off of the board.

“Yeah, it’s actually this huge family tradition of mine-er I was anyway. I’ve been going for as long as I can remember”.

“It must really be a big deal then”.

“Yeah, definitely. I remember this one time my sister and I went a few years back and bumped into Damien Silvers at one of the desert stands. We spent the entire ride back just geeking out over that, but that’s enough about me for right now. You plan on going, right?”

“I'll pass,” She responded, plainly.

“Really?”, I questioned, “Why aren’t you? - If you don’t mind me asking of course”.

“I don’t know we’ve only known each other for…three minutes”, she said, making a point to check her phone, “I’m not too sure if I should be giving out my life story so freely, besides is me not going to the festival that surprising?”

“Well I mean it’s not like it’s the biggest celebration in the city or anything”.

“Wait it isn’t?! Oh geez professor, that’s news to me.”, She retorted, matching my tone. “But, if you really want to know so badly it’s simple, I’m not a fan of them”.

I’m not completely sure how I looked when I dropped that bomb, but given the fact that it made her eyebrow raise, I assumed that my face looked weird enough to warrant such.

“Is it that shocking?”

“No, I mean it's not like you told me that you don't like the most popular heroes in the country. So do you mind explaining".

“Do you remember that fight at the mall last week?", she asked.

“Yeah, a group of aerokinetic stormed into it, made that... compressed air dome around the mall and held everyone there as hostages, but they managed to get everyone out of their regardless, so what's your point?".

“My point is that even though they saved everyone. A quarter of the entire mall was decimated in their fight. That’s the issue with them, they lack accountability and the fact that we're rewarding their lack of self-control is what I hate about this.

“Buildings can always be rebuilt", I argued, "If someone dies then that’s the end for them, so it makes sense to focus more on the safety of a person than a mall. And what about all the people that they’ve saved, and all the good that they’ve done over the last couple decades, that deserves a lot of praise, don’t you think?”

“Not more than firefighters, or police officers. I mean if anything, they deserve even more praise. Think about it for a second, when a firefighter runs into a burning building they’re risking their lives without the knowledge that they have magical powers that can protect them if the worst happens. They’re just ordinary people who risk their lives because they believe that they’re doing what’s right, but we don't have festivals for them. We don't do anything even close to show them some appreciation.

“There’s a huge difference between a regular criminal or a house fire, and the things that Pentastros has to deal with. I mean all the supervillians that they fought in the last few years. Are we going to compare a house fire to Venom Demon. Y-you heard about the cities that he destroyed, right?"

“I know about Venom Demon”, she responded exhaling.

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

“Then how are we having this argument?” I asked, attempting to make my confusion of the subject clear. “You know how many people he killed, the communities that he tormented”.

“He ravaged the entirety of Central, I get that, but think about all the unpowered AEGIS members that had to fight against him, before Pentastros could arrive, think of all the people who ran to their deaths on a daily basis in order to protect innocent people. All I'm asking is why don't we celebrate them like we do with the others?"

Before I could prepare my next response, however, she raised a hand and continuing to speak.

“Look, we’re probably gonna go on forever if one of us doesn’t break this up anytime soon, so how about we agree to disagree and move on to the next question?”

I gave a short shrug, “Sure, since you went first, it’s me turn to ask you something”.

“These are all Pentastros questions. Given how you feel about them, do you wanna keep talking about the stuff on the board or shift gears to something else?”, I asked.

“You can use those questions if you want. I mean I don’t have a grudge against them or anything. I just think that the over the top hero worship is unwarranted”.

Okay, who is your favorite member of Pentastros?”

“Easy, it’s Rose”, she replied confidently.

“Rose”, I sputtered out, barely holding in my shock.

“Yes Rose, what's the matter with her?”

“Nothing, I just didn’t know that you like the whole bubbly hero gimmick”.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Every time she has an interview she talks like she’s speaking to children. Don’t get me wrong I have nothing against her, but that sickly sweet tone feels like she’s talking down to everyone else”.

“Yeah she’s definitely over the top and really weird, but she’s the newest member and despite that she’s done just as much if not more than all of the other members”.

“I mean, I see where you’re coming from, I guess. That doesn’t excuse the fact that she was-”.

“Mr. Michaels, Ms. Entrano, I would appreciate it if the two of you focused on the assignment”, Ms. Krawford called out from her desk.

“What was that about? We were on task, besides she said that this class was student led, didn’t she”, I asked.

“I don’t know”. She responded with equal confusion, “Anyway who’s your favorite?”

“Damien Silver’s”, I told her.

She let out a small laugh at that.

“What’s so funny?”, I inquired.

“Nothing, that’s a great choice by the way. He’s a safe pick, kinda like having vanilla as your favorite ice flavor”.

“Everyone's a critic”. I grumbled loud enough for her to hear before we quickly switched to the third question.

…

The remainder of the day passed fairly quickly and before I knew it the final bell excusing school had rang. I found myself swept away as part of the amorphous blob which rushed out of the school with speed that only fleeing students could reach, and before I knew it I stood in the center of a raised platform while the crowd gradually dispersed around me. A foot or so to my left, I noticed the golden bust of a woman’s head. It was designed very simplistically, but from what I could tell she was pretty; wavy hair, heart shaped face, and a wrinkleless smile. In front of her a plaque with a blocky engraving wrote out “Qui facti sunt velis, sed memento qui eras”.

“So this is Anastasia, huh”.

“Well what we think that she looked like anyways, apparently they’re not sure”, a feminine voice called out from behind me.

In a completely masculine tone, I yelped out and whipped around to see Mari smiling at me.

“God, we should put a bell on you or something”, I growled out.

“Has anyone ever told you that you sound like a chihuahua when you’re surprised?”, she said seemingly inquisitively.

“Why did you decide to sneak up on me again”.

“I thought it would be funny, turns out I was right”.

“Wow I really did luck out having you as a friend, didn’t I”.

“Aww, come now, we both know that you love me, but anyways what’s up Ryan and I didn’t see you during lunch. Don’t tell me you got lost or something”.

“No, of course not”, I said, turning my head to hide my blush.

“Good to see the time I took to give you that tour was well spent”, Mari taunted.

“Hey it’s not my fault this place is just a maze”, I retorted.

“Anyway, how was your day Mari? Got any easy A’s that you wanna complain about”.

“Alex, it’s the first day of school, if I really wanted to answer that question, we’d be here for hours. But it wasn’t all boring, I just joined the Speech & Debate club”.

“Well that didn’t take very long. Trying to pack your schedule already huh”.

“If I don’t start now, then when? How about you though? What did you get up to today?”

“Well it’s the first day, so not a lot of interesting stuff happened” I paused for a second before continuing “I had a pretty weird conversation with a girl though”.

“A girl?”

“Yes, and before you even start, I’m not interested. She acts way too much like you for that to be the case”.

“I don’t know what you mean, nothing bad could possibly happen from you having another me in your life. That just sounds perfect”.

“Hahaha, you’re too funny”, I said as sarcasm dripped from my voice. “Anyway, where’s Ryan?”

“He’s waiting for the bus to get here, he told me to meet him at the front of the school”.

“Well let’s not leave him waiting then. In the meantime though, when you first got here, what did you mean by what we think that she looked like?”

“To be honest, I have no idea. She lived in the early nineteenth century, and the only paintings of her that could have existed are more than likely destroyed”.

“So how did they make this then?”, I said, indicating at the statue.

“Eyewitnesses, you know people who had actually interacted with her, but you know how details can blur overtime, so we don’t know if she looks exactly like this”.

“You’d think that it would be hard to forget what your sibling looked like”.

“That’s a strange part of the story as well. According to history, her family doesn't exist.

“What? What do you mean by that?”

“Exactly what I said. There is no recorded evidence that her parents, children, or siblings existed to begin with, as far as history’s concerned, they don’t”.

“How do you even know any of this?”

“The internet, obviously”.

“Okay, but why did you look this up?”

“C’mon Alex, this is me we’re talking about. If I can help it I'm not going into situations blind”.

“Yeah, that’s fair, it just doesn’t make sense why you would put so much effort into researching our high school. It just seems like a waste of time to me personally”.

“I’m spending thirty-five hours a week here, if there’s a place that I should find out more about, then I couldn’t tell you”.

“Hey you two, over here”, a familiar voice called out.

I turned towards the direction of the voice and saw Ryan waving at me from a spot under a giant pine tree.

“What took so long, Mari I was about to go look for you two myself?” He teased her, smiling.

“It’s not my fault, it took so long. Tracking down this oaf was a lot harder than I thought it would be”.

“So you were right then; he did get lost”.

“No, I didn’t”, I interjected, “I just...wanted to take a walk around campus, you know, get a better look at the place”.

“Okay, bud, whatever you say” Ryan said.

“Moving on”, I started, intent on changing topics, “Did you get up to anything interesting?”

“Nothing much, but apparently I joined the football team”.

“What?!”, I exclaimed. “You don’t even know how to play football”.

“I mean it shouldn’t be too difficult to pick up”, he shrugged, dismissing the issue.

“How did that even happen?” Mari asked.

“Apparently the coach here knows my dad from a few years back, they got together and he started bragging about me. After that I’m sure you can put the rest together”.

“Are you sure about this Ryan?”, Mariana asked. .

“I’ll be fine. Just have more faith in me, after all I’d feel bad about proving you wrong twice in one day, Mari”

“And what did you prove me wrong about huh?”

At this point even a blind man could tell what Ryan was about to say, but instead of attempting to interrupt the incoming disaster, I took a seat and prepared to watch the fireworks go off.

“Obviously about Jack-of-all-trades being way better than specialist’s”, he replied cheekily.

“No, you did not. I told you several times that you bring a specialist out to any scenario and they’re powers will be far more effective”.

Ryan made a sound reminiscent of a buzzer on a game show before telling Mari “Incorrect, a Jack has powers that they can use for any scenario. You drop a specialist in a place where they’re not qualified, and they're practically useless”.

“Never change guys”, I told them, although I doubted they heard it since the argument had quickly regained the intensity that it had when I’d seen them this morning.

When the two of them got started on something, I swear it could last until the end of time. It wouldn’t do me any good at this point to try to interrupt them, as they’d more than likely try to make me pick a side, so instead I sat down in the lush grass, closed my eyes, and waited for the bus.

‘High school is going to be an interesting experience’ I thought.