Lecture Hall One

The Academy

Monday Morning

Instructor MacDonald strode to the front of the hall, activating the large projector screen via a small remote. On the theatre-sized screen, an image appeared showing four men standing shoulder to shoulder. One was quite diminutive, and two extraordinary only in how ordinary they were. One was a behemoth of a man whose muscles had their own muscles and their own postal code.

“Which of these individuals is the greatest, and most urgent threat?” MacDonald slipped the remote into his pocket and faced his students, hands clasped behind his back. Students began holding their hands up, habits developed over many years of public education firmly in place. MacDonald indicated students one after another by gaze and jerking his chin in their directions.

“The large one is obviously a brick type, thus seems the most visible threat.”

“I disagree. The small one seems to be either an energy projector or a mentalist.”

“What about either of the other two? We don’t know what their powers are.”

“I say the big guy would be my first target.”

The class proctor and head instructor waved the class to silence. “Arpan Singh, the brute up there, was actually a mentalist of no small ability who just happened to be nearly obsessed with bodybuilding. Paul Lacious, despite his diminutive stature, was our team's strongman. Philip and Renee were fraternal twins with a dual mind, that is one mind within two bodies and were energy projectors. I know that many of you are wondering why I so freely ‘out’ fellow metahumans, be they soldiers or heroes. I served with these men, they were my friends, and I have been to all of their funerals.”

“This picture does serve to illustrate several items: a, we tend to form generalizations about metahuman individuals based on stereotypes, and b, how do we categorize comparative metahumans? Quick review from last week, what are the broad divisions we assign to metahumans? Miss Bourgue.”

Sharon lowered her hand, speaking in a clear voice taught to her by her father. “Bricks, sometimes called strongmen or tanks, energy projectors, speedsters, energy manipulators, shifters, mentalists, and reality manipulators.”

“Correct. Today we are going to look at how we rate the relative power of metahumans. We do this for relatively obvious reasons if your team is sent to apprehend an individual you need all the information possible. Often this information needs to be dispensed extraordinarily quickly. Questions you might have: how much damage can this individual inflict, and what level of force is necessary? You do not want to be the hero responsible for turning a bank robber into a paste on the sidewalk if it was not absolutely imperative. The government, media, and the public take a very dim view of those who use excessive force and there is a massive difference between the level of force a police officer’s pistol can inflict when compared with many individuals sitting in this room.” MacDonald clicked through several slides on the screen as he spoke. Headlines from media focusing on instances of heroes and vigilantes using force that was out of proportion to the threat. El had seen most of the more recent articles, but a number were older than he was.

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“When the first powered individuals started to appear in the early 1950’s every government in the world created its own ranking system. There was no universal standard, even within a country. For example, at one point in the mid 60’s there were some thirty-two ranking systems used within the United States alone. In the 1970’s a concerted effort was made by academics and government agencies in the US, Canada, Britain, and Japan to create a single ranking and classification system. The committee assigned the task first had to resolve the seminal question, which: how does one evaluate and stratify the relative power levels of super-powered individuals?”

The viewscreen clicked to a new slide showing a bespeckled, balding Asian man standing before a classroom blackboard. “The solution came from a meteorologist, Dr. Tetsuya Fujita. He recommended applying his system of rating the intensity of tornadoes to metahumans by rating the amount of physical and property damage they can inflict upon an area in the span of sixty seconds.” Now the viewer began clicking through images of destruction, including several in which metahuman combatants still fought one another.

“The Fujita scale rates a meta on a scale of one to five. An F1 individual causes minor structural damage, no more than a person with a baseball bat or pistol: broken windows, cars dented, with minor damage to drywall. An F5 individual is capable of leaving complete destruction in their wake: reinforced concrete buildings are critically damaged, and multistory buildings collapse.”

The image scrolled over MacDonald’s shoulder stopped upon a single aerial picture showing a scene of urban destruction. To El, it appeared as though an angry deity had dipped his hand into the city and crushed a line of buildings a hundred meters wide and stretching over several kilometres. “This picture some of you may be familiar with, this is what happened when a pair of F4 individuals decided to have a disagreement. Put simply, they...broke Harlem before several teams arrived and were able to subdue one and drive the other away. The damage on this particular picture took all of two minutes.”

“There is a shortcoming of the Fujita scale though. There are individuals capable of tremendous destruction who are relatively fragile and able to be stopped by conventional means. Let us look at Antoni Romonov,” the picture clicked to show a melancholy man in a black turtleneck and dark pants. “Romanov was an F5 energy projector employed by the Soviets. In 1968 he was part of the Soviet efforts to end a revolution in Czechoslovakia. In a single blast, Romonov destroyed the city of Ostrava, killing a quarter of a million people.” MacDonald let silence descend in the lecture hall for several moments. “He was killed by a sniper bullet three days later. It is believed the Soviets became frightened of their monster and destroyed it before it could break loose.”

“Romanov would be able to destroy the city of Calgary in several minutes, yet was killed by a bullet fired from a normal rifle. How does that affect his rating? To resolve that question we come to the Coulson Scale. Devised by a member of federal law enforcement in the US, the Coulson Scale rates metas on how difficult they are to apprehend. It is a pragmatic measure of how heavy will casualties be among the good guys. A C1 individual is no more hardy than a normal human, standard weaponry will put them down. In the apprehension of a C2 meta there will be casualties, both wounded and dead, but the number should not exceed six. The number of casualties for a C3 individual is between six and twelve. A C4 meta will inflict significant loss of life on any force that confronts them.”

“To get a person’s Enhanced Fujita Scale we look at the product of their two ratings. Thus Romanov, while capable of immense destruction is relatively easy to stop, giving him an EF number of one-five. Some of the massive creatures the Japanese name Kaiju, that routinely emerge from rifts near the Bikini Atoll region approach an EF four-four.“ MacDonald looked to one side of the class to see one of his students raise his hand. “Mr. Murphy, what is your question?”

“What is your EF number sir?”

“Really? While that question is as impertinent as asking a lady her weight I will go ahead and answer it. My Fujita rating is one, yet my Enhanced Fujita number is an EF one-four.” MacDonald met the outspoken young man’s eyes and held them.

“So...we could take you out but many of us would be injured doing so?”

MacDonald purposely placed a cold grin on his normally friendly face. “Die Mr. Murphy, die. If all of you attacked me right now, most if not all of you would die arresting me.”