“Hey,” she said, waving a hand casually. She recognized Keli but not the other two. “How’d it go? Did I miss much?”
“You didn’t stay for the rules?” asked Keli in disbelief.
“I didn’t stay for dinner. I ate with some upperclassmen at the café. It was really cool. But really, what did I miss?”
“Well, our principal’s a supervillain,” Keli said, rolling her eyes. “He talked a lot about the Black Rapture and our duty as the future of humankind, blah blah blah really. The rules are in the student handbook we’re supposed to have.”
“Woah, wait, back up a sec. He’s a supervillain?”
“Ex- supervillain, obviously,” interjected Carrie. “You would know if you’d gone.”
“Eh, I don’t regret it really,” she said, shrugging. Seeing where Carrie was headed, she said, “Hey, you’re my roommate? What’s your name?”
“Um. I think so. I’m Carrie.” She walked inside the room, followed by Tess. Keli sat on the couch and got out a book (Nikki couldn’t make out what it was, but it had ‘vampire’ in the title). Gradually, other people started to trickle in as well—a tall, freckled caucasian girl with glasses and bushy auburn hair, who shared a room with Keli. Then a nervous- looking Chinese girl entered with a short Mexican girl with very thick glasses, who chattered energetically. Last was a scruffy- looking, dirty- blonde girl with long pigtails wrapped up in multicolored hair bands, who entered the single room at the end of the hall nearest to the bathrooms. Fifteen minutes more passed as people unpacked, talked, and trickled in to the common room.
“So!” said the redhead, stretching her arms up to the ceiling. “Who are you people?”
“We might ask the same of you,” said Nikki.
“Okay, sure, whatever. I’m Bridget Baker, and I have super strength.” Nikki raised an eyebrow at her. It seemed like an appropriate power for the girl to have— she was solidly built, almost like an Amazon, and well- endowed. She seemed to be positively brimming with energy.
The girl to her left, the short Mexican girl, clued in to the conversation. “Oh! Hi! I’m Anita,” she said, smiling. “I can fly! But not now, ‘cause I wear this special belt and boots.” Nikki now looked closely at the belt around her jeans, which seemed to be made of leather but with some sort of metal weight on the front. Her shoes were also customized. Both the shoes and the belt had a special logo on them, but Nikki couldn’t make out what it was.
Next to her was Carrie. “I’m Carrie Mann, and I’m tired of introducing myself.” A couple people chuckled. “I can summon spirit animals. I’ll show you later,” she added, seeing the curious looks on peoples’ faces. “I think I’ve exceeded my quota for today.”
“I’m Tess Larson,” said the girl to her right, “and I can generate static electricity.” She held up a finger, and a spark jumped from its tip to the metal rim of her glasses.
“She’s a Spark,” Carrie added. “None of you are going to get that reference, though.”
“Right. I have no idea what you’re talking about.” That was Keli. “I’m Keli Spencer, and I have… I think the proper term is aquakinesis? Hydrokinesis? Something like that. I can control water and I have gills.” She brought her webbed hands together and lazily drew them apart, strings of water hanging from between her fingers.
“Oh, it’s my turn, I guess. I’m Nikki Kivan, and I can generate magnetic fields.” She twitched her hands at the wrists, turning them back and forth in jazzhands.
“Ha! You’re like that guy, that villain dude from the comics…” pointed out Bridget. “I don’t remember his name, since I don’t read them, I just saw the movies…”
“I know who you’re talking about, and Magnetism isn’t exactly uncommon, as powers go,” Nikki raised an eyebrow. “Why does everyone think of him whenever I tell them? God… think of a hero or something, will ya? Anyway, whatever.” She looked at the girl to her right.
“Oh, m- me? Is it my turn? Um.” That was the girl with the rainbow pigtails. “Um. I’m, uh, Erin Stevens… um.”
“What’s your power?” asked Carrie.
“Uh. I can, well… I’m a lycanthrope,” she said, her voice almost a whisper.
“A werewolf?!” exclaimed Bridget. “Awesome!”
“N- not a wolf actually… I’m this sort of… fuzzy… bear.” She kept her eyes down, and Nikki noticed that she was deliberately covering the back of her right hand. Looking more closely, she could see that underneath her hand there was a flash of grimy white fur.
“Isn’t that technically not a lycanthrope, though?” mused Carrie. “I mean, the ‘lycan’ part of lycanthrope means ‘wolf,’ right? So if you turn into a bear, you’d be more like an ursathrope or something, I don’t know.”
“It’s a bit of a wolf-like bear,” she muttered, still not making eye contact.
There was a pause before the last person to speak— the Chinese girl— realized that it was her turn. She looked around, pushed her glasses up her nose, and blinked. The realization set in, and she exclaimed, “Oh! My name is Lucy, and I… well, I don’t know what my powers are actually.”
“What?!” exclaimed several people, Nikki included.
“How… how did you get in here, then?” asked Carrie.
“Um. It’s a… funny story. Do… do you want me to tell you?”
“Go right ahead!
“…I’d rather not… It’s kind of, not easy for me, you understand?”
“Can you try?”
“…Um. I guess… I went to this school last year. It was… a school for Empowered people, who hadn’t shown yet. When kids did, they moved them up to another class… my friends vanished one by one, until I was the last person left. Their tests were coming out positive, but I still don’t have any powers.” She shrugged. “I… They couldn’t figure out what to do with me, so they sent me home and I went to normal school. But then I got the letter from here, and, well, I dunno.” She clasped her hands together, her eyes lowered. “I hope you won’t hate me if I’m kicked out from here, too."
“Don’t worry,” said Keli, “Powers or no powers, we’ll treat you with respect.”
“You could have powers that you just don’t know about,” suggested Tess.
“I didn’t know there were other schools for supers,” mused Carrie.
“Well, most people don’t. The school I went to kept it secret until your powers manifested. Our parents didn’t even know.”
***
“…Well. Is that everyone?” asked Bridget. “Wait. Lemme see if I can remember everyone’s names. I’m Bridget, you’re… Nikki? Right. Caroline…”“Carrie.”
“Carrie, Tess, Keli… wait, hang on, I’ve got this…”
“Anita,” she offered.
“Right. Anita. Gotcha. Anita, Erin, Lucy.”
“My turn!” said Nikki. “There’s me, Nikki, and then… Carrie, Tess, Keli, A… Anita? Anita, Erin, Lucy, Bridget. Oh yeah, I’ve still got it.”
“Can I try?” said Carrie. “I’m terrible with names though, so you’ll have to forgive me. I’m Carrie, and you are… well, gol- darnit, I’ve forgotten,” she laughed, turning to Tess. This didn’t elicit a reaction from the group, so she stopped laughing and said “Tess, Um… Keli, right? Yeah, I know we talked earlier and all. I told you, I’m bad with names! Anita, Erin, Lucy… Aw. I know your name starts with a D…”
“No, it doesn’t,” said Bridget. “How could you forget me? I’m Bridget!”
“…Sorry, Bridget, you were the first to introduce yourself, I must have spaced for a second. Nikki. Right. That’s all of us.”
“And we have to remember, since we’ll be having most of our classes and things together,” said Nikki. “Well. What now?”
“I’m going to check my facebook,” said Bridget, standing up.
“Facebook. Pshaww, what a waste of time… wait, you got internet?” Carrie asked in disbelief. “How’d that work?”
“Oh, well, you just go to the bottom floor of the dorm building and ask the dean. They give you the password and everything.”
“But my computer wasn’t detecting any wireless networks before…”
“Maybe they turned it on since you last checked? I don’t know. Go ask.”
“I think I’ll do that,” she said, standing up. “See you guys later.” She walked into her room and left after a minute, carrying a laptop under one arm. Keli remained sitting where she was on the couch, reading her vampire book. Anita, Tess, and Erin retreated to their rooms. Nikki yawned and put in her iPod headphones, thinking to herself that she should be putting her free time to use while she still had it, but then shrugging and starting to zone out. The red-orange dorm was quiet for some time, the most noise coming in little tinny sounds from Bridget’s room as she played music from her computer, and from upstairs, where the red-yellow dorm seemed a bit more active.
Ten minutes later, the silence was broken when Carrie came running up the stairs again, holding her laptop awkwardly under one arm while the other held a sheaf of papers.
“Schedules are out! Plus I have internet,” she exclaimed, grinning broadly.
“Huh. That was fast,” remarked Nikki.
“Here, and here,” Carrie said, handing a sheet of paper to her and Keli. “I’ll go deliver the rest, too.” She scurried into one of the rooms. Nikki looked over her sheet, expression blank. They still had a day to go before term started, but once it did…
“Aw, geez!” she exclaimed. “Look at this! What’s with all the phys. ed? I hate phys. ed… and look! Two classes a day! No fair!”
“Get over it,” Keli told her. “I have lots of gym classes on mine too—I think it’s part of the curriculum. Like, physical training.”
“Why would they be—oh, right. For our powers.” An exclamation from the second room indicated that Bridget had found the gym classes on her schedule as well—although this was more of a whoop of joy than an expression of rage.
“What classes do you have besides that?” asked Keli. Nikki scrutinized her paper again.
“Oh, just the usual… well, there’s History of Superpowers instead of whatever usual history class we’d have in a regular high school, but yeah. Um, geometry, literature, science… I’ve got some free time most days, too.”
“I’ve got an ‘occupational free block’ pretty much every day, in the afternoon…”
Nikki scrutinized her sheet again. “…Huh. That’s funny, so do I. What do you suppose it means?”
“Oh, the occupational free?” That was Carrie, who had just walked into the room. “I asked about that, actually—it’s for any extracurricular activities, like if you’re joining clubs and things. Like, since I’m gonna take part in that musical they mentioned…”
“What, seriously? You can… sing?” asked Keli.
“Well, er, sorta. I like to, at least. I dunno.” She shrugged. “I think it’s a good way to meet new people or something.”
“Don’t be shy! You’re allowed to sing if you like it!”
“No she isn’t,” said Tess, coming up from behind. “You haven’t heard her singing. It should be illegal.”
“Hey!”
“It’s true,” she shrugged. Carrie playfully thwacked the back of her head.
“Stop that, you’re giving me a bad name,” she said, but she was smiling while she said it.
Nikki yawned. “Well, as exciting as it was meeting all of you, I’m gonna go get some shut-eye.” She opened the door to her room and sat down on the bottom bunk, swinging her legs up without taking off her shoes. She lay back, closed her eyes, and thought.
What a mess, she thought. It’s a beautiful mess, but a mess all the same. How am I going to remember all these names? Everyone seems like they’ve known one another for forever… actually, it seems like Carrie and Tess do know each other from somewhere. I’ll have to ask them about it. She turned over so that she was facing the wall. I mean, the only one that I’m even remotely familiar with is Keli… I just… hope they’ll accept me, is all.
She thought herself to sleep.
***
Nikki was woken up shortly afterwards by Carrie, Tess, and Lucy, who were gathering their stuff to get ready to sleep, and groggily she realized that she probably should too. She kicked off her shoes, changed into more sleep- appropriate clothes and brushed her teeth, rinsing the bitter taste from her mouth. She went to bed in short order, and this time slept all through morning.Nobody woke her up—when she opened her eyes and reached for her cell phone, it was 9 p.m. She experienced a momentary panic when she didn’t know where she was, and then panic again at having slept in so late, until realizing that she had no responsibilities for the day. She lay in bed uselessly for a little while longer until her brain convinced her that it was a beautiful day she was wasting. She threw off the sheets and got dressed, then stuffed her wallet into her jeans pocket and left the dorms to get breakfast at the café.
As she was heading out, she noticed that Erin was still in her room, hunched over a table and concentrating very hard on something. Her hands seemed entirely free of the fur Nikki had seen last night. Putting it to the back of her mind with a reminder to ask later, she descended the stairs and left the building.
She walked out onto the brick path of the main way, relishing the clear summer day—it wouldn’t be long, she reminded herself, before the warmth would succumb to Canadian frost. Oh, Canada. It didn’t seem that much different from home, really; just colder and with different trees. More differences would probably become apparent later.
The entered the café, where several students were standing around, sipping at coffee or munching on sandwiches and pastries. An upperclassman was even managing the cash register—she expected the café was entirely run by a student organization. She bought an underpriced coffee (discounts for students, for some reason, even though those were probably their only customers… just how did they pay for everything, anyway? Free food, free supplies…)
She stepped outside into the light and looked around for a table to sit at. She recognized a group of boys sitting at one of the tables—Kyle and Vitor, from the bus ride, as well as two other guys. Kyle waved at her.
“Hey, aren’t you Nikki? You looking for somewhere to sit?” he gestured to an empty seat at the table. “Join us! Guys, this is Nikki—she’s in the red-orange league, so she’s gonna be in all our classes.”
“Hey,” said one of the guys, who looked slightly imposing—he had shoulder-length brown hair and wore a loud shirt that had some band name on it. “I’m Kurt.”
“And I’m, um, Tyler,” said the other, who was smaller, with an acne-ridden face and messy brown hair.
“Nikki Kivan,” she said, aware that she had already been introduced. “So what’s up? What are we supposed to do today? I mean term doesn’t start…”
“…Till tomorrow? Yeah,” said Kurt. “I don’t know. I’m just chilling—I slept in ‘til eight- thirty. Apparently now’s your chance to sign up for clubs and things. There’s a fair in the social studies building caf.”
“Are you going to join any clubs?” she asked.
“Ah, well, I dunno. I was hoping to join a band, to be honest,” he said, laughing a little. “But I wonder if it wouldn’t be better to start my own?”
“We were talking about this before you came,” explained Kyle. “Like I was saying, I can write song lyrics, and I’m an okay rapper, if I can say. Plus I have like this program on my laptop that can mix beats.
“Yeah, that’s cool,” said Kyle. “Hey, do you think anyone in your dorm would want to play in a band? We could use some girls. Even out the gender barrier, y’know.”
“Well, Carrie said she could sing, or at least she thought she did,” said Nikki, recalling last night. “But she’s auditioning for the musical, so I dunno if she’d have time. I don’t know about Bridget either, but she seems more like the type that would want to play in a band.” She made another mental note to mention it to them—what was that, three now? Ask about Carrie and Tess, ask about Erin, and now ask about the band… she needed an iPhone or something to keep track of it all.
“Hey, speaking of the red- orange girls… I’m sorry if this sounds weird, but… are any of them hot?” asked Kyle, smiling guiltily. Vitor punched his arm, reminding Nikki of Tess and Carrie.
“Uh… no, that’s not really weird, but…” Nikki thought a little. “None of them are really all that hot, except…” Keli’s face flashed in her mind, with its delicate features, and she shook her mind to clear it, pushing away the image and blushing a little. “Um. Bridget, uh, has a big rack… so does Carrie, now that I think about it, but, um. I dunno. You’d be better off asking a guy, or seeing for yourself. I really… I don’t know.
“Doesn’t matter,” said Kyle, shrugging. “There’s plenty of choices. I’ll see for myself tomorrow. Thanks, though. Sorry if that was awkward, It was an awkward question to ask to a girl that I barely know, I know. You probably think I’m some sort of sex- obsessed pervert, right?”
"N- no! Not really, I have an older brother… I’m sort of used to it all.”
“You have a brother? How old?” asked Kurt.
“Um, he’s 20. He… he’s in the army.” Nikki looked at her shoes. Her brother was a difficult subject for her. “I- if we could, like, not talk about him, that’d be best.”
“Right! Sorry, I didn’t mean to bring up a sensitive subject.”
“No, I brought it up. Doesn’t matter.” She said. “I’m just used to guy talk, is all.” In fact, she found she got along better with guys on average. Perhaps it was because she was into motorcycles and metal and other, distinctly non-girly stuff.”
Tyler reached for his coffee cup, but when his fingers tried to close around it, they passed right through it. “Oh, geez,” he groaned. “Not again…”
“What’s up?” asked Nikki, with interest. He waved his hand back and forth, it distinctly passing through the coffee cup every time.
“It’s doing it again, oh, god damnit,” he said, as his hand stopped, solidifying with his fingers lodged within the cup. The top popped off, and he lifted his hand up, fingers embedded inside the cardboard. He grabbed it with his other hand and pushed; it came off, coffee pouring out the holes where his fingers used to be.
“This happens way too often,” he groaned, sucking on a coffee-covered finger. Seeing Nikki’s questioning look, he said, “I’m intangible. Or, I mean, parts of my body go intangible randomly; I can’t control it. It’s kind of a sucky power, to be honest… once, my legs went intangible up to my waist, and they had to dig me out of the floor. At least… at least I don’t go fully intangible. I’d fall to the center of the earth and get burned alive.”
“Well, technically you wouldn’t, actually,” pointed out Kurt. “Since I assume there’s no resistance, the laws of physics say that you’d pass through the center of gravity until you came out the other side. Equal and opposite reaction and all that.”
“What, really? Okay, that makes me feel a little better, but not much,” he said. “I mean, then where do I end up? The Indian Ocean? And that still doesn’t solve the problem of part of me suddenly becoming tangible while I’m falling. Let me tell you, it sucks.”
“Yeah, that does sort of suck,” admitted Kyle, “But hey. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”
“Why does gravity affect you if you have no mass?” inquired Vitor. All eyes at the table looked at him in surprise—it was the first time he had spoken the entire time.”
“What do you mean?"
“You heard me. If you have no mass, you won’t feel the pull of gravity, so you’d float, right? Simple science.”
“I don’t think there’s anything simple about that,” groaned Tyler. “I mean, of course, nothing’s simple with superpowers…”
“Right. I shouldn’t be able to generate magnetic fields,” said Nikki, “but, hey, I can.”
“What, really?” asked Kurt. “That’s seriously cool. Like Mag—”
“Yes,” groaned Nikki, pressing her fingers against her forehead. She held out her hand and concentrated on the metal chair a foot away from her. She started sweating, but then it moved an inch and she relaxed.
“Did you do that?” asked Kyle.
“No, it was the wind,” chided Nikki. “Yes, of course I did it.”
“Cool. You have a class B power like me and Kyle and Vitor,” said Kurt.
“Class… B?”
“Yeah. There’s three classes of powers… they say we’re not supposed to use them because they’re racist or elitist or something, I don’t know. Everyone uses them though, and I don’t see what’s so offensive about ‘em. Basically,” he said, “Class C powers are like Tyler’s, that affect only the Empowered person. Stuff like super strength or flight or stretching or my regeneration powers,” he said, pausing for emphasis. “They’re the most common; I mean, as common as having extremely rare powers is. And then there’s class B, which is all of us—it’s the ability to control things outside of yourself. Basically, telekinesis, and things like principal Luciparr’s light powers, Kyle’s fire powers, etcetera. And then there’s class A, which is the rarest of the rare—you see people with ‘em once in a blue moon. Those are the powers which affect reality itself.”
“Aubrey’s power is Class A,” Kyle added. Nikki thought that Carrie’s abilities might also be considered Class A as well.
“And there’s rankings within powers, too, although you can generally change those by working at it. The lowest is rank 3 and the highest rank 1, with an A-1 being pretty much god. Rank 3 indicates that it’s subconscious or extremely limited. I think we’re all mostly rank 3,” Kurt added.
“I might be rank 2,” Kyle suggested, a little meekly. He held out his palm, with a tuft of flame burning in it, to prove his point.
“I think you’re probably a 2.5, no offense or anything, we just can all afford to improve. Rank 2 indicates adept control, and Rank 1 indicates mastery.”
“Well, I think I’ve learned a lot more than I intended to today,” Nikki said jokingly. “What would powers like… mind control fall under, for example?”
“Hmm… I’d say B, since it’s power over thoughts… but I don’t know, actually. Maybe psychic powers should be their own subset.”
“Do you know anyone with psychic powers?” asked Vitor.
“No, but I’m sure they’re around. It’s one of the most commonly- displayed powers, y’know, in stories and things. Next to stuff like flight and super strength, of course.” That was Kyle.
“Huh.” Nikki stood up and walked to the trash can to throw away her now- empty coffee cup. “Well, it was fun talking with you guys, but I think I’m gonna go stretch my legs and check out that club fair you were talking about. See you tomorrow in whatever classes out leagues have together!”
------
Author's Note:
Introductions, pseudoscientific discussions complete with lampshade hanging, and exposition, oh my! This was one of the more fun chapters to write, if you can excuse the blatant wordcount-boosting abuse towards the top.
The boys were fun to write. xD They go like such: Kurt is a punk rocker/metalhead, and looks the part, but he's actually a really nice guy. Kyle is huge, football-player-ish, and loves to laugh and have fun. Vitor is short, cynical, and sarcastic. Tyler's geeky and a bit of a wuss. (there are four other boys in red-blue as well, which you will soon meet as well.)
No comments:
Post a Comment