“The green onions are really the key,” Onfroi said. “Too many people underestimate the importance of the garnish.”

“Please, Onfroi, it’s chili,” Gill said. “We made it to use up spare ingredients.”

“I can still take pride in my work.”

“And he should,” Harley said. “This is damn good chili.”

Vell expressed his agreement by eating more chili. Onfroi had cooked an ogre-sized pot, so there was plenty to go around, even with their larger than usual crowd. Lee had visited Bruno and his three ogre roommates on several occasions, but had never brought Vell and Harley along until now. While still a pleasant evening, she wished the meeting were under better circumstances.

The dorm room the three ogres and one Bruno shared was currently stacked high with boxes as Roul packed his things and prepared to leave. While the school year was still a few days from ending for most, Roul was taking an early exit. Like a third of all Einstein-Odinson College freshman, he had found the curriculum too demanding, and was set to flunk out of the school. Rather than stick out the last few days and endure a torturous week of tests that could ultimately not change his fate, Roul had opted to take an early exit. Many other freshmen were taking a similar approach, creating the annual exodus known as the Freshman Flee.

“While we’re here, do you need any help packing, Roul?”

“Appreciate the offer, Vell, but I’ve got it covered,” Roul said. “Frankly I’ve seen this coming for a while. I’m prepared.”

“He’s at least smart enough to realize he’s stupid,” Bruno said.

“If only barely,” Roul sighed. “I saw the writing on the wall when I flunked my midterms.”

“Don’t be too disheartened, dear,” Lee said. “Failing out of the Einstein-Odinson is still more prestigious than graduating from most schools.”

“Still not going to make job hunting any fun,” Roul grumbled.

“Sorry we couldn’t get you a gig, bud,” Harley said. As Harlan Industries came together and the school year came to a close, they had hired on a few classmates, but Roul’s zoology expertise was not something their fledgling company could make use of at the moment.

Roul bore no hard feelings for them not solving his unemployment dilemma, and the conversation shifted back to more pleasant subjects. But while Roul would soon be free of the school, the rest of them still had exams to tend to, and the dinner wrapped up so they could get back to their studies.

While Harley broke off to head to the robotics lab, Lee trailed Vell for a moment.

“Vell, dear, would it be too much trouble for me to borrow your bookbag for these last few days?”

“Uh, sure, I mean, no, that’s no problem,” Vell said. “Don’t you have infinite storage space in your purse, though? Why do you need another bag?”

“For starters, I’m working on removing said pocket dimension from my purse,” Lee said. “It’s connected to the looper’s storage locker, which, as you recall, also contains a swarm of elephant-sized bees, an evil car, and a river of molten crayons. Among other things.”

“Oh yeah.”

“Which is all well and good for the utility it provides me when preventing daily apocalypses. Slightly less worth the risk when living a presumably ordinary life,” Lee said. “That, and I think I need to get used to carrying around something that actually has weight again.”

“Makes sense,” Vell said. “I’ll give it to you first thing tomorrow morning.”

Thanks to large pockets and also his extensive collection of summoning runes, going without a bookbag would be a minor inconvenience for Vell. Considering that Vell had died for Lee on multiple occasions, that minor inconvenience felt even more minor.

“Wonderful, thank you very much,” Lee said. She fell silent and was about to break off to get back to studying when they were approached by a familiar face -or rather, two equally familiar faces. The paired faces of Ibrahim and Samson practically ran up to them.

“Lee! There you are!”

“Yes, I’m here,” Lee said, slightly bewildered.

“What are the numbers on this Freshman Flee thing?”

“Uh, roughly thirty percent of students are preparing to fail out of the-”

“Not that number,” Samson said. “The other number!”

“The bad one!”

“Is there an evil number?” Vell asked. “I was under the impression we already dealt with today’s thingy.”

“Not literally bad,” Samson clarified. “The bad GPA. What is the GPA that flunks you?”

“Oh, a one point nine or less,” Lee said. “Why do you- oh.”

Ibrahim’s panicked expression had broken into despondence as soon as the words had left Lee’s mouth.

“What’s your GPA right now?”

“One point five.”

----------------------------------------

“As dire as it may seem, you’re not doomed yet,” Lee explained. She had gathered Ibrahim and Samson, along with some of their friends, to her and Harley’s dorm to review Ibrahim’s situation. She had helpfully prepared a display with a lot of helpful information, which she gestured to as she spoke.

“As you can see here, your grade point average is just barely within the threshold to pass,” Lee said. “While you’ve run out of graded assignments for the year, you still have your finals -worth a cumulative zero point five to your overall GPA. With a near perfect score on every exam, you’ll come in just above the threshold.”

“That’s good,” Ibrahim said. “I test well.”

Not that well, but Ibrahim was holding on to hope wherever he could find it. He was far from an idiot, but his obstinate behavior and carelessness at the start of the year had put him at a severe disadvantage, as had time spent away from his twin brother/study partner.

“We can do that,” Samson said. “You’re taking all the same tests as me.”

Kim briefly contemplated pointing out that Ibrahim had been doing all the same assignments the entire year and was still failing. She reasoned that particular snarky comment could stay inside her head, though. Samson looked stressed enough already. His lifelong dream of going to school and one day starting a business alongside his brother had already been shattered and reforged once this year. Kim didn’t need to be a part of breaking it again, even if she did believe it was already doomed to be broken.

Oblivious to the pessimism surrounding them, Ibrahim and Samson started to make plans to salvage the borderline unsalvageable situation.

“Alright, we’re both good at microprocessors, we can start there and get it to perfect before moving on,” Ibrahim said. “Vell, you know how algorithms work, can you give us a hand with that tomorrow?”

“I suppose I could-”

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“Now, you can’t,” Harley corrected. “No offense guys, but we all got tests too. We barely know what your tests are about and we barely have time. We’re not going to be any help.”

“Shit, okay, uh, fine,” Samson said. The recent phone ghost incident had proven that none of them were really useful when it came to computer engineering. But there were more people here now than there had been a few days ago. “Hold on though, what about you two?”

“What?”

Leanne lifted her head and did a poor job of hiding the fact she had been browsing her phone, as did Joan. While sympathetic to their plight, Joan and Leanne found it hard to be emotionally invested in the potential downfall of people they had met only a few days ago.

“You two,” Samson repeated. “You’re just here hanging out. You won’t have anything to do while these guys are taking tests anyway. Help us out.”

Leanne looked at Joan with a plea for help in her eyes.

“You know,” Joan said. “Speaking from experience, failing out of here isn’t so bad.”

She had not ‘failed’ so much as she had been forcibly expelled after assuming responsibility for the school’s principal getting put into a coma, but the end result was about the same.

“You work for a supervillain!”

“For unrelated reasons,” Joan said. “I could get a different job if...things were different. And, you know, you’ve got more opportunities than I did. You could even go back to school. Zeus-Stephanides takes a lot of Einstein-Odinson rejects.”

“I don’t want alternatives, I want help,” Ibrahim said. “Are you going to help or not?”

She almost refused on the basis of having no applicable knowledge, but broke at the last minute. Joan knew better than most how desperate someone could be to help a sibling.

“Fine. I don’t know how much help I’ll be, but I’ll try.”

Leanne let out a deep sigh and nodded to confirm her own participation. She couldn’t just sit there and be less helpful than the former murderer.

“Okay, where do we start?”

Joan looked at Leanne. Leanne looked at Joan. Both shrugged.

----------------------------------------

“Alright, I know I said I’d go first,” Joan said. “But-”

“But what?”

Leanne wasn’t much in the mood for excuses. The twins were trying to review a textbook, but they weren’t eager to hear excuses either.

“But it now occurs to me I haven’t really used many applied academic techniques since I was, you know,” Joan said. She cleared her throat nervously. “Evil.”

After waiting a moment for further elaboration, Leanne realized none was coming, and raised an eyebrow.

“Now, hold on, are you implying that you used to study in an evil way?”

“Sort of, yeah,” Joan mumbled.

“Well now I need to know,” Ibrahim said. “How do you study evilly?”

“Well, if you have a weighted grading average, you can wage covert psychological warfare on your classmates to lower their grades and make your own more impressive by comparison.”

“What the fuck?” Leanne said. “Did you do that?”

“Not here,” Joan said. “The Einstein-Odinson doesn’t use weighted grading.”

“Damn, there goes my plan,” Ibrahim said.

“Ibs.”

“Joking,” Ibrahim said. “Got anything a little more ethical in that head of yours?”

“Well, one thing I used to do was identify anyone as smart or smarter than me and cozy up to them,” Joan said. “Which isn’t inherently unethical. It was when I did it, but, you know-”

The piercing stare of Leanne interrupted Joan mid-sentence.

“That is not why I dated Vell,” Joan said. “Mostly. I was genuinely attracted to him before I found out his grades.”

“Sure.”

“Can we focus?” Samson said. “We’re not any closer to a solution than we were before.”

“Actually, that tip might be something we can work with,” Ibrahim said.

“You’ve already got a study partner, don’t you?”

“Yeah, but the thing is,” Ibrahim said. “No offense, but you’re not the smartest student in our class.”

“Oh no. No no no no no no,” Samson said. “Not her.”

Joan and Leanne shared yet another look, but a look of mutual curiosity this time.

“Well now we have to do it.”

----------------------------------------

“You are lucky you’re my brother,” Samson grumbled.

“I sure am,” Ibrahim said, as they climbed the stairs. Leanne reached the top floor and grabbed the door leading back into the halls.

“Alright, what dorm are we heading to?”

Samson rolled his eyes and pointed upwards. Leanne looked up, and saw that there was still a short staircase leading further up, leading to a door labeled “Roof Access”.

“Oh.”

Ibrahim took the lead, and ventured out onto the roof. The harsh roof of the dorm building was covered in a handful air-conditioning units, a few scanners for various experiments, and one minivan-sized nest woven of massive sticks and tree branches, beside which sat a small camping tent.

“Dimitra? You there?”

“Wauk?”

The squawking noise was followed by the sound of a zipper, and a massive, feathery head poking out of the tent. Two bright amber eyes stared out and scanned the group before exposing yellowed teeth in a broad smile.

“Hello boys,” Dimitra squawked. “Give me one second, I’m nude! Unless you came here to seduce me, in which case we’re ahead of schedule.”

“No, no, no thank you,” Samson said. “I mean, you’re, uh, nice, but no. We’re here about maybe studying with you?”

“Delightful! I’ll put most of my clothes on, then!”

The birdlike head retreated back into the tent, and they all heard loud rummaging noises.

“What do you mean ‘most’?” Leanne asked, with great concern in her voice. “Which clothing are you leaving out?”

“Socks!”

“Oh, okay.”

Their new study-buddy unzipped (the tent, not their clothes) and stepped into full view, digging talons into the roof and spreading her massive wings wide. The massive harpy towered over even Leanne’s prodigious height, though Dimitra’s gaunt frame and ragged feathers made her look far less imposing than her titanic size would suggest.

“There we are,” the harpy said. “How have you two been? We’ve barely talked since the group project!”

“Yeah, sorry, just a really busy life,” Samson said.

“I know the feeling,” Dimitra squawked. Everything she said was a nigh ear-splitting screech. Samson had initially assumed it to be a harpy thing, but having now met other harpy students, he knew Dimitra was just very loud.

“If you’ve got some spare time, we were wondering if you’d be in to a group study session,” Ibrahim said. “We can all work on getting ready for our finals together.”

“That sounds lovely,” Dimitra said. “Are your friends joining us? I don’t recognize them!”

“Oh, we aren’t actually in your classes,” Leanne said. “Or any classes, actually. We don’t go here.”

“We used to. Not anymore.”

“Delightful! Do you want to stick around anyway?” Dimitra crowed. “I have some theories on network architecture I’d love to get a layman’s thoughts on!”

“Sorry but we have other stuff to do,” Leanne said, without hesitation. Joan was hot on her heels as she turned around and headed back downstairs, away from the shrieking bird woman.

“Goodbye! Nice meeting you,” Dimitra said. “Alright then, down to business! Take a seat in the nest and get comfortable, boys, we can start with differential equations!”

Dimitra grabbed her books and started roosting among the knowledge. Ibrahim and Samson kicked aside a few piles of loose feathers and what appeared to be the skeleton of a rat, and tried to get comfortable amid the timber of Dimitra’s nest.

----------------------------------------

“Alright, that wasn’t a complete waste of time,” Samson said. In spite of having her volume permanently set to ten, Dimitra actually was very smart.

“We’re not doing that again,” Ibrahim said. He was still picking twigs out of his shoes. “Not without earplugs, at least.”

Both twins ear’s were still ringing with Dimitra’s shrill squawks. Any further knowledge from her would come at the cost of their hearing.

“Well you won’t need her,” Leanne said. “Now it’s my turn.”

“The way you’re saying that is scaring me,” Ibrahim said.

“You should be scared,” Leanne said. “Put on your workout clothes.”

Ibrahim looked down at the computer engineering textbook in his hands.

“We’re computer nerds,” Samson explained. “We don’t have workout clothes.”

“Then put on whatever computer nerd clothes you won’t mind getting sweaty,” Leanne said. “We’re going for a run.”

“A run, why the hell are we going on a run?”

“Exercise stimulates brain activity and improves memory,” Leanne said. “We’re doing a ten minute run, one hour of study time, rinse and repeat.”

“Okay,” Ibrahim shrugged. “Gives us a nice break from the books anyway. Fresh air, sunshine, probably good for us.”

“That’s the spirit,” Leanne said. “Oh, and one more thing: don’t try to keep up with me.”

----------------------------------------

“I told you not to try.”

In spite of the warning, Ibrahim’s ego had driven him to try and compete with Leanne. It hadn’t gone well for him. He was on his knees, gasping for breath, and sweating like a fountain.

“How are you- How are you doing that?”

“By running,” Leanne said.

“You lapped me three times and didn’t even break a sweat,” Ibrahim snapped. They were running the outer perimeter of the island, just alongside the beach, and Ibrahim had barely made it halfway around while Leanne had done multiple laps.

“Four times, actually,” Leanne said. “You were kind of wheezing the fourth time and didn’t notice.”

“How?”

“I do this a lot,” Leanne said.

“What, humiliate people?”

“I told you not to try and keep up,” Leanne said. “You’re the one flying too close to the sun, Icarus.”

Though he wanted to say something in rebuttal, Ibrahim wasn’t that clever. Samson was also making his approach, and so they put the conversation on hold. The more sensible twin had been taking things at a more measured pace, and while he had worked up a light sweat, he was not collapsing the way his brother was.

“She did tell you not to try and keep up,” Samson said.

“I should’ve known better than to think your friends were normal,” Ibrahim said. “My bad. Did we at least kill the ten minutes?”

“It’s been about five, but you look like you’re dying a little, so let’s just walk back to your dorm and get studying,” Leanne said. “And get you some electrolytes. I can actually see your muscles cramping.”