2.6

I move into an empty room in the tower over the next week or so. My dad gives in, conditional on frequent visits, and a couple trucks help me transport my furniture and whatnot from my room at home to the tower. Mom cries when I leave the house, and dad takes time off of work to see me off, which surprises me.

“Make, uh. Make us proud, son,” he stutters awkwardly. I nod.

The ride to the tower is the same as always, even if this time Rook isn’t waiting for me. Instead, I check in with the receptionist, and she gives me a card with a thin metal frame. It looks expensive.

I head over to the elevator lobby and take the first one up. A reader by the buttons beeps, and I swipe the card the receptionist gave me.

Stepping out into the common area of the dorm, I almost bump into Eva as she rushes through the small lobby and into another elevator with a bright red frame around the entrance. The cabin has two levels of rails bordering the inside, both of which she grabs onto as she squeezes in behind the other three junior heroes.

“Sorry, sorry!” She yelps, and then the doors slam closed, and a distinct whir sounds, getting quieter concerningly quickly.

Odd.

After dropping my bags in my room, I get a text from Rook imploring me to head to the training floor. It’s the second time she’s texted me, after her initial message making sure she has the correct number. I make sure to take the normal elevator.

When I reach the training floor, Rook is waiting for me, along with four humanoid drones identical to the one she uses for public appearances. Deep, navy glass carapaces, tall crowns, caged dresses and all. The real Rook stands off to the side, tapping away at her tablet.

All four drones are completely motionless. Blue lights flicker across their glass shells. It’s intimidating.

“So, uh. They seemed like they were in a rush,” I comment, walking up to one of the drones with my hands in my pockets. Up close, I can spot a reflection of myself in the glossy armored mask. It catches me off guard.

“Hm?” Rook asks.

“The other juniors,” I clarify, staring at my reflection. Paper-white hair, dark red irises, shark-like teeth. I hadn’t put much thought into my chosen appearance back in the warehouse, but looking at it now, it’s definitely bold. Still, I can’t bring myself to dislike it.

Actually, it’s the opposite. Where I would usually feel nothing looking at myself in the mirror, I feel a sort of warm satisfaction. The kind you get after you nail a guitar riff, or cook yourself a meal. Like, ‘I made that’.

Is this how Sera felt?

I scowl. Almost went a whole week without thinking about her. I don’t know how to feel about that.

“A home alarm went off. They are currently on a dedicated mission,” Rook says, answering my earlier question.

A home alarm. I know the Brightheart Hero Association sells immediate response alarms, but I didn’t know the USMC used them. Dad’s always saying he’s going to get one, but they’re… expensive. Mom always talks him out of it.

“What’s the mission,” I ask, turning away from the drone to see Rook looking at me.

“A disturbance in District 2, near the suburbs. Not your neighborhood,” she says, anticipating my concern. District 2 includes my neighborhood, as well as the city’s downtown area, where the plaza is.

“Do you want to watch? They should be broadcasting by now,” Rook asks. Hm.

“...Sure.”

She sits down on the curb, waving me over as she does. A drone flies into view, whirring softly and unfolding into a tiny screen. I don’t catch where it came from. It’s fast, and surprisingly stable.

Sitting down next to Rook, I watch as the screen flips through a couple different news channels.

“— Metahuman altercation involving the entire USMC Junior Division and an unidentified super terrorizing the neighborhood. Damage to the target building is substantial, but the fight hasn’t yet spread to the surrounding area, and according to the USMW a control squad is on the way. Here’s Josh with the aerial footage.” A well-dressed newscaster reads from a script, detailing the events playing in the footage next to him. The picture moves to fill the screen, and the sound of muffled chopper sounds and the on-site reporter filter out of the drone’s speakers.

“Thanks, Greg! The perpetrator appears to be a mutant super of some kind, and although he has yet to make any demands, he’s holding up well against our city’s heroes,” the reporter narrates as the bad guy throws a sofa at Rory. I catch a flash of light as he adjusts his construct to block, but he still goes flying.

The house itself is somewhere deep in the suburbs, standing out like a sore thumb with its caved in roof and collapsed walls. Furniture and splinters of floorboard litter the entire lawn, sometimes smoldering from weak fires.

The perpetrator stands somewhere near what would be the living room, inhumanly tall with deep red skin and a huge crown of tangled horns crawling around his head. He’s muscular to the point of seeming unhealthy, and even from the short time I’ve been watching the fight, I can tell the junior’s attempts to harm him aren’t very effective.

He’s not fast, but as I watch him catch Eva in a lucky hit and send her tumbling, I conclude that he’s definitely strong.

You don’t usually see mutant supers, especially not engaging in high-profile fights like this. The public doesn’t like anything too supernatural-looking, it digs at their paranoia.

It digs at mine, too. I can’t deny the shock of surprise that surges through me at the site of the perpetrator. I was too young to remember it at the time, but I grew up with footage of the first Disaster leveling New York.

The opposing super begins stomping towards a neighboring house.

I look over at Rook. She’s frowning. “Inneffective containment. It’s not part of the curriculum, so we haven’t touched on it much, but they need to practice minimizing damage.”

“It’s not?” I ask.

Rook shakes her head. “Not technically. Combat and rescue are taught separately, and the USMC sometimes forgets they’re not.”

“Can’t you… do something about that?”

“It would be irresponsible.”

On the screen, Rory gets back up and his constructs flare back to life. Plates of shining armor, a huge sword and shield extending from his costume. The enemy whacks him again, and he goes flying.

“Irresponsible?” I’m not sure I get what she’s trying to say.

“There’s an inherent power imbalance. I have the ability to enforce my will more effectively than any of the mundane people managing the USMC,” she clarifies.

“What if you’re right, though?” I counter.

Rook’s expression flattens. “That’s what everyone thinks.” She stands, and I barely catch Eva as she finally manages to knock the perpetrator over before the drone’s screen flicks off and it glides away.

“Let’s continue our lesson from yesterday,” she says, settling into a stance. I hop up from the curb, wondering if I accidentally touched a nerve.

—

After a quick lesson in hand-to-hand from Rook, she sends me to one of the office floors to pick up a package, and then back to the dorms.

My room’s still just a bunch of unopened boxes, but I manage to pull together half a chair to sit down and open the package.

It’s a laptop. A small, sleek-looking one that almost seems like it’s made of glass. When I open it, the welcome message displays my name, which is creepy, and then switches over to an OS I’ve never seen before.

There are only a couple apps, one of which displays an alert and seems like a classwork app.

So, no standardized classes? We just do the work on our own time?

I click through the app a little. Everything listed is review, at the moment. I haven’t really been paying attention in class recently, but I can probably manage something.

—

After about an hour, I hear commotion outside my room. The others must be back by now. I wonder if they won?

Probably, the news said the USMW deployed a containment squad. It was only a matter of time at that point. I try to go back to the worksheet I’m working through.

I don’t get very far before I hear a knock at my door. It’s not closed, so as I look up, I see Eva standing in the door frame as it creaks open. She’s wearing an expression I can’t quite decipher.

“Uh. Hi.”

“Hey,” I reply, closing the laptop. “What’s up?”

“I, uh.” Her face crumples a little. “Olivia said you were, um. A guy. Is that true?”

“I thought you didn’t like Olivia.”

“Not ‘cuz she lies.”

I study her face. She’s confused, probably. Not angry, though. At least not at me.

I’m not totally sure how to answer her. I’m not really sure myself. But…

“I’m not a guy.”

She nods. “Okay. Uh. Want help unpacking?”

Hm? “Sure.”

I spend the evening opening boxes and telling Eva about the stuff we find inside.

—

The next day, I wake up in the dorm. My room’s still a bit of a mess, so it takes me a minute to figure out where I am, but the muffled voices coming from outside help me put it together.

I crawl out of bed and into the kitchen to start digging around in the fridge, not really paying attention to the quiet, early-morning conversation happening around me. I manage to find toast, which is about all I think I can handle at this hour. Not that I know what time it is or anything.

Sitting at the kitchen table and chipping away at my breakfast, I find it’s not as awkward as I thought it would be. Olivia’s already left the dorm, and Eva’s back-and-forth with Rory stays fairly low-level.

Eventually, we all filter out of the kitchen. There’s a joint-lesson at some point, but besides that the daily schedule’s pretty lax.

Today, though, I have an appointment. After finished breakfast, I pull on a half-assed outfit and head down, via elevator, to one of the office floors.

The floor’s busy, even more so than the other few I’ve been on, and every so often I catch a glimpse of a computer screen, or a slideshow through the glass walls into a meeting room, talking about marketing. It matches what I’ve been told. Texted. By Rook.

I make my way across the floor toward an office near the back of the building. I don’t bother reading the label beyond the room number, and absentmindedly knock.

“Come in.”

I open the door. It’s a pretty typical office, with a desk and two cushioned chairs positioned in front. At the desk is an older, balding man in a nicely tailored suit. A small pile of drafting paper litters the desk in front of him, all of it adorned with seemingly different iterations of the same costume.

“Sit,” he says. I sit. The chairs are comfortable.

“So, I hear you’re in need of a costume.”

I nod.

“Good. I received an initial explanation of your abilities, but I’d like to listen to your interpretation as well. What can you do?” He slides a small notebook out from under his desk and clicks open a pen.

I guess that makes sense. “I can strengthen myself and regenerate.”

“Succinct,” he comments.

“It costs me body mass,” I add.

“Ah, there we are. That’s good to know.” He seems to write it down. “You’ll be fighting in close-combat, using martial arts and such. I was originally thinking an armored costume, but seeing as you’re female, I ended up deciding on a ‘femme fatale’ aesthetic.” He slides a design out from under the pile. It’s a black, skintight suit with arm and leg bracers, and a heavy-looking belt around the waist. Red stripes line the sides of the outfit, and the edges of the equipment.

My face twists reflexively. At least it has pockets? And a helmet, as a small design off to the side implies.

“I, uh. Dunno about this one.”

“Hm?”

“It looks a bit tight.”

The designer gives me a look. “I have the degree, not you.”

I scowl. “It’s my suit, don’t I get a say?”

“No, you don’t. You’re a public servant now, you have a presence in the public eye. The USMC dictates you must represent the best of the organization,” he says, sternly. It’s like he’s reading from a prompt.

“How does being a ‘femme fatale’ help me represent the organization,” I say mockingly.

“The current Junior Division needs a darker-themed character to balance out its cast. If this is all you want to discuss, I need to finalize this design,” he says, starting to shuffle away the papers scattered over the desk into a small folder.

He didn’t actually answer my question, but. Is there really a point in arguing? I sigh. “Can I at least get baggier pants?”

“I’ll think about it,” he responds.

I leave the designer’s office with an odd feeling roiling in my gut.