We arrive at the lecture hall, and I choose a place to sit down with Kyte and Brutus. The lecture hall was sparsely full, so there are plenty of spaces to choose from. I guess not many students chose to sit down and study here. Not that I'm any better, considering that we were making human pyramids for the last half an hour.

I open my bag and take out a book on law and start to skim through one of the chapters about civil procedures. Most of the stuff we learn here is common sense, but it's a lot to memorise. I ask Kyte to test my knowledge of various court procedures, so we play a little memory game while studying.

After a while, Brutus asks a question.

"Hey, guys."

"yes?" Kyte and I both reply.

"What happens if someone holds a judge at gun point in a court?"

"What do you mean?" I respond. Brutus explains.

"If someone were put on trial, and they see that the judge isn't in their favour. So then they walk up to the judge and pointed a gun at them, the judge wouldn't have the guts to call him guilty. So what would happen if the court were taken hostage? Would the defendant get be pronounced guilty or not?"

"Obviously Guilty. There's no way they'd get away with that!" I scoff, waving my hand. "You can't take guns to court in the first place, and there are security on trial as well to stop that."

"Ok, lets ignore the gun, then. The defendant is secretly really powerful. He overpowers the security with his bare hands then takes the judge hostage."

"But if he's dangerous, security would be improved!"

"But he wasn't arrested for being a criminal in the first place. Suppose he's on trial for tax evasion or something. So the court doesn't know they need more security."

"Even if it becomes a hostage situation, it would be handled like any other hostage situation. Heroes would arrive and sort things out. It's not like holding a court hostage would go unnoticed."

"He threatens that the judge has to make his decision before help arrives."

This idiot!

"Ok. So the Judge declares him not guilty, and the case is dissolved. Hours later, he's back on trial under heavily armed guard for both tax evasion and hostage taking."

"Correction! He's under trial for hostage-taking, but not tax evasion because the tax evasion matter has already been dissolved!"

I'm baffled.

"What? Nobody's stupid enough to fall for that! He's clearly guilty of tax evasion as well."

"But the judge cleared him of that, so he's not."

"Are you stupid? They can just call a re-trial or something."

"Ah-ha! But they can't! The double jeopardy clause!"

Double jeopardy refers to defendants not being able to be tried in a court for the same offense twice. It's a sort of safety catch of some kind.

"But if new evidence is found, the double jeopardy clause doesn't hold. You could certainly argue that holding someone hostage in front of a bunch of witnesses counts as evidence that he did, in fact, commit tax evasion."

"That only holds if the crime is serious! So regardless of how much new evidence was found, he would get away with tax evasion, and other non-serious offenses!"

I open my mouth. Then close it. A list of scenarios runs through my head.

"No."

"Oh?"

I glare daggers at Brutus' smug face.

"I refuse to believe it."

"And your reason?"

I turn to Kyte.

"Kyte! I choose you!"

Kyte looks up from his book. Then starts speaking.

"I'm pretty sure there's a rule somewhere that allows a trial to be re-done if it was interrupted by something."

"Where?"

"Dunno. But you don't really think people would be stupid enough to not have one, do you?"

After answering Brutus' question, Kyte returns to reading.

"Ha!"

I point my finger at Brutus.

Who's the smug one now?

Shortly after the argument stops,the lecture hall door opens, the head of Professor Vorsichtiger pops into the room.

"Are the heroics trainees here? I heard that they didn't have any instructors supervising them, so I thought I would borrow them again for a bit."

Professor Vorsichtiger looks around. Then, after realising that we were indeed the heroics trainees, he opens the door fully and walks over to the lecture podium.

All lecture halls have a large electronic screen. This screen is connected to a small computer that sits on the podium, and serves like a modern whiteboard.

Using an electronic pen, Vorsichtiger writes a note.

Heroics Trainees gone down to the proving grounds, in the labs.

If you see this, please head down there. - Prof. Vorsichtiger

"It appears there aren't many of you here. Oh well, I'll fix that. You lot follow me!"

Surprised, those of us who are studying in the lecture hall get up and follow him down to the labs.

"As most of you are aware, students and professors alike have taken -sigh- time off to complete a task sent out by a subsystem last week." Vorsichtiger shudders after finishing his sentence. "I too have recived such a task. Since I heard there was no-one supervising your studies, I decided you might as well help me complete my own woodcarving."

He wants us to carve some wood for him?

"Don't worry, It shall be perfectly good practice for you in your own studies. I would not have you do something completely unrelated, such as help me construct the thing. I simply want some feedback on it."

How is judging a woodcarving meant to help us in our studies?

"Excuse me, sir, but-"

"Wait."

As a student is about to ask a question on the matter, he silences them, then responds.

"You will understand shortly after you get inside. I will be next door relaying further instructions from there."

Professor Vorsichtiger opens a pale-blue door, half a metre thick, and gestures for us to walk inside.

The proving grounds has a solid concrete floor. Three thick metal walls surround the room, with the final wall made out of some strong glass. The metal had dulled over the years of use, and on the other side of the glass was a viewing room, where Professor Vorsichtiger was seated. A dozen machine claws had been folded up on the ceiling, and the room was lit by four large, rectangular lights that were protected by a thick layer of transparent plastic. The proving grounds was empty, except a large, pale cloth covering some object two and a half metres tall.

The sound of professor Vorsichtiger's voice echoes through a loudspeaker hidden somewhere in the room.

"Please wait for the heroics trainees from class two to arrive."

First year heroics trainees waere split into two classes- one and two- due to their number. Similarly, second and third year trainees were split into two classes as well- three and four, and five and six. The classes were randomly allocated, rather than due to ability or potential.

Moments later, the door opens, and more trainees in blue uniforms enter the room. A second professor enters the viewing room, mutters something to Vorsichtiger, Which I couldn't hear due to it being out of range of the microphone, and leaves.

"Now we are all here, I shall start."

As professor vorsichtiger speaks, a claw from the ceiling swings down, grabs the cloth, and pulls it off, revealing a large humanoid construct.

"This is the prototype Cypress-bot-one. I made it specifically out of wood for the competition. You will be testing its A.I, its mechanical power, its speed, and robustness."

An orange light appeared on the visor the robot had in place of eyes.

"Do go all out on it, since it has been programmed to apprehend any and all individuals wearing the heroics students uniform. Hahaha! It has various weaponry at its disposal, but they should all be non-lethal."

Cypress-bot raised its arms to its side, and bullets flew from it's fingers towards students nearby it.

"Probably, anyway. Good luck!"

The orange light- its "eye", if you want to call it that- span round its visor to observe the humans it just gunned down. Seemingly after observing they were still conscious, it fired another wave of bullets at them.

"Help!"

"Why would you program something to- Ack!"

I glanced over at the viewing room, only to see professor Vorsichtiger laughing with both his hands stretched high in the air.

This nutcase... No,  focus anyway!

Vorsichtiger certainly wasn't wrong. It would certainly be beneficial training. It may be the age of plenty, but combat robots weren't cheap. In order to make something like this, Vorsichtiger probably has some sort of creation themed ability. I watch as people in the front start engaging the robot, which was still spraying bullets at students.

A few bullets scrape past me, but, possibly due to the distance, they only sting a bit before bouncing off.

I think. How would a hero go about practically disarming someone? No, if it's a robot, and Vorsichtiger has given the go ahead, destroying seems to be the prefered option.

I could wait for it to run out of bullets, but that seems too cowardly. Water? No water in this room, too bad. Its armour is made out of metal plates, right? You probably can't unscrew the metal plates while its in combat, though. Hmm? Metal? No, plastic. It couldn't be metal because metal conducts electricity and-

I come to a conclusion. If it's a robot, you deal with it by removing 'that', right?

The battery!

Not wanting to waste this opportunity, I call to my friends.

"Kyte! Brutus, get behind me. We're going in!"

"Whats your plan?" Kyte reponds.

"For now, we charge into it!"

I raise my hands near my head in an X- shape. Then I rush towards Cypress-bot.

Blowing my own trumpet, I have pretty good "tenacity". When I was hit by a stray bullet earlier, I didn't feel too much pain. Hence, I'm either outside the effective range of the robot's finger-guns, or they don't do much damage. I choose to hope it's mostly the latter.

The robot takes note of me, and aims. Bullets fly everywhere in my direction, yet I keep pushing forward.

Ouch ouch ouch ouch ouch ouch ouch! Yea, they only sting.

However, as I almost get within reach of the robot, it lifts it's leg up. And a jet of fire flies towards my face. I stop my charge and close my eyes, coughing out the smoke I inhaled. When I open my eyes again, Cypress-bot has disappeared from my sight.

I hear some people say something from behind me.

"It flies!"

"Jet boots? No way!"

"Woaaah."

"Ouch! Not the bullets! Not my face! Aaah!"

I turn around and see Cypress-bot hovering above the crowd of trainees, spraying bullets down from above. It's far faster than I expected.

"Arg! Give me a boost!"

I do as Kyte asks and send Kyte into the air.

Superhumans can jump high already, but given a boost from another superhuman, Kyte soars through the air. His foot clips the robot's head, and Cypress-bot spins out of control. As it descends, a horde of angry hands grab onto the robot, swallowing up. The sound of clanging metal echoes through the room.

I walk over and help Kyte up.

Now I think about it, I wanted to take out it's battery, didn't I? But it's not exactly strapped on the outside, is it? Huh. Oh well. I guess I'll keep the weaknesses of a robot down to water then.

Professor Vorsichtiger's voice booms excitedly through the proving grounds.

"Haha! I see! Abundant mobility, but at the dear cost of durability. However, I can't tell how durable it was, since I'm not sure how much force twenty trainees can exert at once. I'll also need to improve it's midair balance if I want it to perform any complicated manoeuvres midair! Hmm. In that case, I'll send the rest out at once, rather than doing it one at a time. "

I freeze. Then slowly look over at the viewing room.

The rest? There's more?

In the viewing room, Vorsichtiger presses several buttons, and four holes in the walls appear. From those holes, mechanical arms take out four brownish-yellow robots, similar to the first. Vorsichtiger then holds the microphone towards him, and speaks.

"Meet Cypress bots two-to-five! Built very similarly to the first,  but each slightly different. Whahahaha!"

Four orange lights start to glow.