“Hrmmmmm.” A blue-shirted, blonde technician looked at prisoner number 92681.

The technician could have sworn that Alexa was already awake, according to the panel, but frankly that would have been impossible.

Nobody woke up on their own from S-stasis, nobody escaped the mental prison designed by brilliant Super programmers like herself. The tech was feeling exhausted today. She had to work overtime as the system was showing way more glitches than usual that had to be fixed.

She decided to ignore the prisoner's brain pattern data, presuming that it was just another stupid glitch. Other panels showed that the Centralia simulation was still running at full capacity without interruptions and that the transfer was done. The tech tiredly rubbed her face, trying to stay focused, nodded to the SCA lawyer present and disengaged Alexa from the simulation.

"Welcome to the world of tomorrow!" The sim-tech announced, as Alexa groggily opened her eyes.

“What year is it?” Alexa hissed out, feeling that her mouth was incredibly dry.

An SCA lawyer wearing a black suit and tie stood in front of Alexa, glasses glinting. He held a clipboard with some documents in it.

“Hello, Alexa Terranova. You’ve been in S-stasis exactly one day of real time. We had to pull you out ahead of schedule because of several coinciding reasons.

One - the Equalizers have filed an injunction against the Superstate, saying that we have no right to imprison you since you haven’t actually done anything. They don’t normally stand up for villains that we reeducate with the accelerator with so much vigor. Truly extraordinary.”

The lawyer took a pause, flipping through documents.

“Two - there’s that one insane Equalizer Enforcer in Saint Mary. What was her name? Ah, yes... Verse Twenty-four Nineteen. She said she will murder one hero every hour until we release you, starting with the retired hero Joseph Kanard. Very scary girl.”

“Woo.” Alexa smiled. “Good old Cottie pulling through!”

“Three - you are legally a hero’s sidekick and therefore we had no right to put you through S-stasis without the hero in question having a say in it. Unfortunately, we could not reach Hero Resonance. She seems to have disappeared off the map and isn’t answering our calls. We are presuming she is deep undercover.”

“Can you put me back in for like five more minutes?” Alexa yawned. “I don’t feel fully reeducated yet. Feel like I might go out and commit some horrible Superstate-ending crimes again.”

“No.” The lawyer said with a frown, seemingly not approving her joke. “You’ve been declared innocent by the Superstate. All charges that the Five had against you had been dropped. You will be compensated one million S-credits for being hit several times by Nonpareil and for being one day in S-stasis, deposited to your hero’s account.”

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

“I have a hero’s account? I’m a Superstate citizen?” Alexa grinned brightly, silver eyelashes fluttering.

“No. You are an Academy Novitiate. If you graduate as a Hero, then you will receive your full citizenship," the lawyer explained.

“Don’t get your hopes up, girl. Many heroes, including myself, do not like you. We know that you were a part of some anti-SCA nefarious plot and that you got out through a legal loophole,” the tech commented from her station. “Every super on the planet knows you by one name only - the Doombringer.”

Alexa stuck her tongue out at the tech.

“To add to point number three," the lawyer cleared his throat, annoyed at the technician. “Hero Resonance made a formal declaration that you are to be her sidekick minutes before your arrest. We received an employment contract signed with biometric iris recognition yesterday. Unfortunately, it took twenty four hours for us to notice and process the said contact, as it was the weekend.” The lawyer readjusted his glasses. “You will get your Hero's Academy notification letter soon.”

“I just don’t understand why our brightest S-stasis re-educator would choose her as a sidekick of all the people! It doesn’t make any sense!” the technician grumbled.

“It’s because I’m cool and hip and have many heroic qualities, duh.” Alexa grinned at the tech.

The lawyer sighed.

“Is Nonpareil going to apologize for slapping me around?” Alexa asked, turning back to the lawyer.

“No. He has declined to comment on the situation,” the SCA layer replied.

“Well, it’s going to be his funeral then. Glad to see another dumb-ass sticking to his guns. It’s going to be quite the challenge to break one little, indestructible staple.”

“Considering how he will be one of your instructors, it is more likely that he will straight up fail you,” the tech said, not feeling convinced that Alexa could break Nonpareil.

“Please look into the light to acknowledge that you understand the terms of the compensation package and I will give you your own Hero’s silver card.” The lawyer handed the pen that was flashing green to Alexa.

“Pffff silver. This feels like a downgrade.” Alexa winked at the pen.

The tech raised an eyebrow at her, confused at what she was talking about.

The lawyer handed her the card and turned around.

“One more thing, Mr. Lawyer. I’d like a copy of my sim-data please. I know that you guys are going to purge it because of legal reasons and stuff, but it’s honestly... very special for me. My favorite instructor and best friend, Hero Resonance, is on there. She and I had a lot of fun in the sim! She taught me quite a lot about friendship, how to be nice to people, how to be a proper lady and a swell hero!” Alexa smiled softly, rubbing her hands.

“I’m afraid that we do not give out sim data," the lawyer replied.

“I’m willing to pay for it.” Alexa waved her new, silver credit card.

“Very well. The 100 petabyte data set will cost one million S-credits.” The SCA lawyer looked at Alexa seeing if she would pay up such an exorbitant sum for something so incredibly useless. After all, the simulations were incredibly complex due to their realism and only the S-Stasis SCA supercomputer could run the data properly.

Alexa nodded, giving the lawyer her card back. The lawyer smiled, having tricked the idiot girl out of all of her compensation money.

“Please give this girl her S-stasis simulation data on a usb data-drive.” The lawyer nodded to the technician.

The tech nodded, smiling mentally.

This girl was an absolute idiot, it seemed. She got lucky once, that’s all. Extracting anything of value out of the data she just purchased without having access to the SCA S-Stasis hardware and software would be akin to finding a needle in one hundred billion haystacks. By itself the data was useless, just a bunch of ones and zeroes. It didn’t run on it’s own! The reality of the world would soon crush this girl’s foolish dreams, the tech had no doubts about that.

The Tartarus system blinked angrily at the tech, asking for support. Twenty six toilet cleaning drones had stopped working this morning. It was an unprecedented disaster. She sighed tiredly, turning away from prisoner 92681.

She had to get back to her duties.

Why couldn't things just work right today?