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“We need to quit doing this,” Alecia said, not meaning it more a statement of an ideal future.

“You’ve been saying that every two months for the last two years. Our answer has always been the same. Find a way, and we will follow you.” Justin answered just as he had every time she said that.

“You keep saying that Justin, but then you and Adrian go off and rob a bank or something. Then I get blamed as the mastermind because you used my equipment.” Alecia continued to follow the tired script.

“Maybe if you didn’t have the best stuff on the market we would go to someone else,” Adrian answered, putting on his most charming smile.

“Flatterer,” Alecia said mock flirting, it was a waste of effort with Adrian, but still fun in a way.

“Good thing too, otherwise you wouldn’t be keeping us around,” Justin said putting one arm around Alicia’s shoulder. Making her very aware of his greater height.

“I only keep you around for your abs,” Alecia said going in for a feel.

“Hands off, I’m taken,” Justin said, turning away from her grasp. The bell rang indicating the end of lunch, just in time to stop Alecia from trying harder to get a feel of Justin’s abs.

“Should we come by the lab today or will you not be needing us?” Adrian asked as he started walking in the opposite direction Alecia would be going.

“You can come by if you want, but I will be running an experiment all weekend, it won’t be very interesting from the outside.” She answered.

“See you Monday then, Adrian and I will rob a bank or something over the weekend,” Justin promised, with a mischievous grin.

Alecia didn’t hurry down the halls of Southeast Bluemont High for the gifted as she made her way to advanced physics. She arrived late, and no one cared, she would be sleeping the entire class unless there was a pop quiz or something. Southeast Bluemont called itself a school for the gifted, and to get in was hard for average students. If you were even vaguely affiliated with a superhero, however, there were no requirements to get in. Essentially it was Southeast Bluemont high for kids who will probably develop powers or have them already. The advanced courses took that to a whole new level.

The class had twenty people in it. Two of them didn’t have any powers to speak of; they were just that smart. Fourteen of them had intelligence boosting super powers. The last four were active sidekicks and probably learned a lot from their more intelligent partners. Of the intelligent supers, three of them were doing internships with her mother, Uriel. The class also had one active superhero and one active supervillain. Alecia was reasonably sure that she was the only one who knew about the superhero and confident about the villain.

Alecia took the only remaining seat next to Jessica. Jessica was the hero and a damn good one at that. Powers wise at least. She was smart, fast, and utterly ruthless in a fight. She did, however, suck at the whole teamwork thing, and that severely limited her effectiveness. It wasn’t her fault, high school sucks for a lot of people, especially if you were just that much different. Jessica had always been quiet, withdrawn, and unable to make eye contact even before she had powers. Now after being active for eight months, and having spent two days as Shrieks prisoner. Well now, she didn’t let guys touch her, ever.

Jessica had been voted by the ‘popular’ crowd, or as Alecia thought of them, the bitchy group, most likely to shoot up the school. It was one of the few things Alecia agreed with them on. It would be unfortunate if some asshole did manage to trigger a severe reaction from Jessica. So Alecia had taken it upon herself to try and mitigate the potential catastrophe. In other words, she was doing her best to become Jessica’s friend. It wasn’t for entirely altruistic reasons, an emotionally unstable superhero that needed treatment for her PTSD could prove to be something of a useful friend.

Befriending Jessia was proving difficult since Jessica wasn’t the trusting sort. But Alecia had been trying for the past two months, and it was working, slowly. Jessica was allowing Alecia to touch her, and judging by her pulse, was enjoying it. But the class had started, so there wasn’t any time for attempts at playful banter. Instead, Alecia proceeded to take a nap at her desk. The teacher didn’t complain, she always got perfect marks on all the tests and aced the presentations last month. Although she had winged that presentation, she had forgotten about it entirely until the class had started. She knew the two regular students kind of hated her; the intelligent ones were mildly jealous except the ones that thought she was a telepath.

After an hour and a half of what would have been an extremely boring class, if the teacher hadn’t frequently said wrong things. Not wrong by the current understanding of physics, but wrong by how the world worked. There was also some talk about super science, like Prysim’s new teleport tech, and it’s implications. About eight years ago Uriel had figured out science-based teleportation, teleport jamming fields, and teleport tracking. Making it useless for most all nefarious purposes. Three weeks ago Prysim was seen teleporting away, through a jamming field, without being tracked. Two weeks ago Prysimtech teleport modules hit the black market. Alecia had managed to make so much money off of the things that she had to open six new bank accounts, just to hide her profits across the globe.

When the class did come to an end, and Alecia blinked the tiredness out of her eyes. She once again tried to convince Jessica to get coffee with her after school got out. To her extreme surprise, to the extent that she dropped her bag. Jessica said yes. Alecia had to adjust her timetables mentally on the planned experiments for the weekend, something she was normally very adverse to do. However this was a special occasion, so Alecia did. Since they didn’t have their final class together, Jessica promised to meet her at the gates. Alecia’s last class of the day was P.E.

Whoever decided that P.E would best go on a Friday afternoon, in Alecia’s opinion, should be shot. Jessica didn’t have P.E. because she had a ‘medical exemption’ the schools euphemism for physical powers. Adrian and Justin also didn’t have P.E., not because of a medical exemption but because they were on the football team. Apparently it counted for the P.E. credit. The two of them had joined the football team in ninth grade, and immediately made varsity. They celebrated winning the first home game by coming out of the closet as a couple. A massive fuss was made that ultimately went nowhere because they were clearly the best players on the team. Some people did accuse them of using powers to cheat, but they tested negative, wholly human. That was bullshit; Alecia had given them their powers personally. It was her first go at human experimentation, and it worked perfectly.

Alecia was by no means out of shape, she was actually in good enough shape to keep up with the sidekicks. In an unfortunate, twist of fate the more athletic members of the class got a harder obstacle course than everyone else. By the end of the hour and a half, she was picking twigs out of her hair and cursing in Spanish to anyone who dared talk to her. She did take solace that her times weren’t too far behind those of the active sidekicks since she only ever fought when wearing power armor that wasn’t bad.

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