9) Back to school

She brought the whole team to my house in one of her force boxes.

Partially so Manifest knew where I lived so he could pick me up as needed, but mainly because she had guessed I would be resistant to her latest scheme, as I had begun to learn how to say no to her.

“I don’t want to go back to school, I’m thirty seven.”

Shimmer looked around to her other teammates for support only to find Manifest giving his entire attention to his second slice of fresh from the oven apple pie with a scoop of vanilla on top.

Fable, whose farm girl outfit of the day of cut off overalls, straw hat, and checkered shirt I could actually see since I was in my own body, was outside playing with the crows with her two giant raven summons. Hugin and Mugin or something like that.

I was going to have to get that girl a gift better than a quickly eaten slice of Apple pie. While we had learned that her illusions didn't exist for the dead, it was only today that I learned that I could see them while in my own body.

It confirmed for me that I hadn't been walking around in my own dead body since Captain Gains killed me and four other children.

I was truly alive, which was throwing off what should have been an instant and hard no to going back to school.

T-Rex had refused to get out of the air conditioned van. Animals could smell the predator on him, or so he claimed. Fable had whispered that he was allergic to birds.

Finding herself all on her own, Shimmer ended up giving me a stern look and hit me early with her finisher. “It could help you save lives, and it’s free. Uncle Core said he would give you a full ride as long as you want to go.”

I sat down in my chair and ignored her for a bit while I dug into my soaked with melted ice cream slice of pie. Which I did not plan to admit tasted pretty good that way.

“You told me you can direct your regeneration to focus on whatever parts of the body you need fixed up the most. Having a medical doctorate can help you figure out what needs to be fixed first. Lives could depend on this. Are you even listening to me?”

I mumbled something at her. Yes, I was listening to her since she was also blasting me through our emotional link with earnestness, frustration, and annoyance. I knew her well enough to know that she wasn’t going to give up, but if she was going to win I at least wanted her to work for it.

Then Manifest laughed as Shimmer’s eyes went wide and she began to sputter. “T-Rex just said through the coms that she just wants you in Con U so you can buy alcohol when we go there next semester.”

Shimmer glared out at the van, “I don’t do lies Tee, and I don’t drink. Come in here if you want to be part of this conversation.”

Manifest finished the last of his pie and began scraping up the smears of melted ice cream, crumbs, and apple goo together on his plate. “Part of the reason we’re all going to school is so we can respond quickly to emergencies as a group. Everyone knows us, but you’re young enough looking for it to be plausible to be in university, and hanging out with us in the hope of getting a job as part of our support personnel. And learning to be a Doctor means you could save lives even if they aren't quite dead yet.”

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He pointed his fork at me. “Plus I read up on regenerates. You’re going to be around for something like another hundred some years even at a Rank 2. You got to keep learning new things if you don’t want to fossilize in your middle age.”

I stared at him for a moment. "Did you just good cop me to her bad cop." I pointed at Shimmer who began to protest there had been no such plan.

The Asian man just grinned. “More like reasoning cop to bully cop.” We both grinned. The girl got upset and we had to apologize. Which somehow led to me agreeing to go to Concentric University for a Pre-med program.

There really wasn’t a need for it. I had audited the anatomy classes online and knew what bits and pieces the body needed to have working to keep someone alive. Anything below the level of gross anatomy was below the threshold of what I could sense about what was happening to a dead body.

But what Shimmer wants, Shimmer gets.

Plus, Manifest was right. I was probably going to be around for a long time, and I had been sitting around the ranch doing the same old daily routine for years. I needed to shake things up a bit.

While Con-U wasn’t that far away, and the express tubes could get me there from near my house in about twenty minutes while I fiddled with my phone. Classes would keep me away from the ranch most of the day.

I needed a ranch hand.

When I tried to use that as an excuse to get out of going back to school. Shimmer took it as a challenge.

First attempt. A Cortex experimental robot designed for outdoor work. Core was more than happy to get his company to loan his goddaughter one to field test.

Animals don’t like robots.

Something about a machine walking around on it’s own just sets them off. An uncanny valley in which even the bots that could fool a human would still somehow set animals off. And Brute 1 Geese can tear robot limbs off with a little teamwork and leverage. I got to the bot in time to save the body where the “brain” was kept so it could survive to one day mature into a true AI.

One that hopefully wasn’t too traumatized.

Second attempt. A recent graduate from the Con U veterinarian program who was fascinated by a chance to study super animals in person in hopes of writing a paper on them.

Unfortunately, he didn't have any powers of his own. And the animals had started to figure out that something was up. The Crows bullied him, the Mice stole his stuff, and Chester bit him. At least he was smart enough to stay away from the now aptly named Murder Geese.

I offered him one of the fertile Goose eggs since they bonded with people who raised them by hand. But he asked if he could back later for it, after he had a place to raise it.

Third attempt. Shimmer called in a Witch.

Technically Brenda Scorn was a Mind 2 Empath whose abilities worked on animals of all kinds, but she had lucked out by also having a Rank 1 in Brute because being able to communicate emotionally with animals didn’t mean she could command them. And even animals could be dicks sometimes.

In Scorn’s view, most people were dicks which is why she choose to live deep in the national park rather than be around them. But Shimmer's parents had found her when she was a kid and took her in after she ran away from the foster care system back east. She had only been with them for a few years as a teen, but she and Shimmer had gotten close.

Shimmer called in a favor, and I got a lodger who parked her trailer off on the other side of my fields who I seldom ever saw. She wandered onto the farm after I left for the day, and wandered right back out most of the time when she sensed me coming back.

She pretty much laid down the law on the super animals. She fed the crows, carried the Amazon orders inside the house to the mice, took Chester out for daily rides, and smacked the geese around when they got riled up.

And what was I doing for the rest of the summer before University started?

Training to fight. In dead bodies.

Manifest had been thoughtful enough to collect a bunch of dead Talon trooper's corpses, which he got away with because they weren't technically human and he didn’t bother to ask. They ended up in cold storage at the Academy, the headquarters and training facility for most of the powered in Concentric City.

Apparently, from watching the footage from the police station, Shimmer’s Mom was of the opinion that I fought like a sleepwalking coma patient. And that I could do better.

So five days a week I got to be smacked around by Shimmer, a dinosaur, and several figures from mythology supplied by Fable and wearing karate gi’s so I could mostly see them. At first, Bravada was showing up for a chance to really cut loose on targets that could fight back and she didn't have to feel guilty about going full out on. But her daughter made her stop since I ended up spending most of the next day fixing the bodies back up to mobility.

At least for a while, I got to show a lady a good time.