High School, hell on Earth, four years of constant judgement. Warren was not looking forward to it. He wasn't excited when the bus began to fly, he wasn't excited when they found out that Sky High was literally sky high, he wasn't excited when Boomer, his mom's ex boyfriend, turned out to be the gym teacher and he was definitely not excited at the thought of having to go up onto that stage and perform for him.

In a few minutes Boomer was going to call out his name and everyone would begin whispering furiously about how he was Baron Battle's son, sure to be a Supervillain. They'd start wondering why he was even here because Sky High was a school for aspiring heroes not for people like him and the pretty blonde who'd smiled at him when going down the bus would look at him with horror.

No, Warren wasn't excited.

Behind him there was some sort of scuffle and Warren was jostled just a bit.

"Sorry love, you alright?" A concerned girl's voice said, tinged with an accent of some sort. She wasn't talking to him though and so he ignored it, or at least tried to. On the stage, a girl's Invulnerability was being put through the test through fire, car and more.

"Yeah I'm fine."

"Are you certain?" This time the accent was stronger, more pronounced.

"Yeah sure, hey are you British?"

"Blimey, how'd you know?!"

"You have a slight accent."

"Well to me you're the one with the accent mate." Now the accent had slipped from British to Australian but the boy she was talking to didn't notice and instead he just laughed.

"Yeah I guess. So are you new to Maxville?"

"Just transferred to Sky High from Hogwarts, apparently the grade system's different there."

"Oh my God, Hogwarts?! You mean it's real?!" Wait, what? This kid really believed her? What kind of idiots was he going to school with?

"Nah just messing with you dude." The accent had gone from British to Australian to good ole American. "Can't believe you fell for it Brian, I was in your class all of first grade!"

"You," Brian spluttered outraged. "Why would you do that?!"

"I was bored. Plus I want to be a stand up comedian so I'm practising my accents, next on my list is Scottish, I'm really looking forward to doing some research into the slang. Maybe even do a Doric one."

"But why would you just mess with me like that, mentioning Hogwarts?! That wasn't funny."

"If you'd seen all the faces that you managed to make in the last five minutes you'd find it funny too." She giggled. Warren suddenly wished he was standing behind them and had actually seen those faces she mentioned. It seemed a lot more interesting than power placement, that was for sure.

"Well it's not funny for me." Brian was outraged. Warren wondered if he was pouting in reality, the picture of him that he had in mind certainly was.

"Oh come on, I'm just messing with you because I like you. I've decided, Brian, that you and I, we're going to be best friends. Like Buffy and Willow, Harry and Ron, Shrek and Donkey."

"...Which one of us is Donkey?"

"Did you not hear the part where I said I wanted to be a stand up comedian?"

"So you'll be Donkey and I'll be Shrek?"

"Obviously!"

"...Okay then."

Was that it? Was this really how people became friends? Warren was jealous of Brian, that all it took for him to make a friend was for someone to bump into him and tease the boy. Warren certainly didn't make friends that easily, he didn't make friends at all. The only person even remotely close to being his friend was Mrs Zhao at the Paper Lantern.

"Brian this is the start of a b-e-a-utiful friendship."

"Great, mind telling me your name now?"

"My name is..." Warren wondered if Brian was anticipating this as much as he was. "Oh crap, I forgot."

"You forgot?!" Brian shrieked and Warren was glad he did because otherwise he would have to do it and that would be awkward. "How do you forget you own name?!"

"Well it's not like I talk to myself. Well I do but I don't address myself by name. Wait, I remember now, I'm Cecelia Meriadoc Woods, but you can call me Cece."

Cece. That was a nice name.

"You!" Coach Boomer yelled, his finger pointed at a point behind Warren and he finally got the excuse to look at the pair. He swivelled his head just in time to see a girl with black hair in pigtails, grey eyes and ridiculous denim overalls throw her hands in the air accidentally knocking the tall boy next to her in the shoulder.

"Me!" She proclaimed with the nicest smile Warren had ever seen, undaunted by Boomer's annoyance.

"Yes, you. Noisy Girl, come up here now."

She all but skipped up to the platform, grinning the whole way. When Boomer looked at her expectantly she raised a hand, the palm held up and screwed up her face in concentration, her tongue poking out of her mouth at the edge of her lips. Finally after a few seconds of nothing, a dribble of water began flowing from her fingers and then stopped just as quickly, coming and going in spurts. It went down to a few drops dripping like five leaky taps before stopping completely and she threw her hands up in the air again, a few drops of water that were clinging to her hand splattering onto Boomer's face and the class laughed as he flinched.

"Tada!" She smiled victoriously and Boomer took a deep breath and they all braced for the yell that was sure to happen.

"SIDEKICK!" He yelled and she flew off the stage onto her butt and shook a victorious fist

"Yes!" She walked back to them and held a hand out to the tall boy she'd knocked into before. "Brian, we're going to be in the same class!"

"Great." Brian scowled but Warren could tell he was happy about it.

"Emo Kid." Boomer pointed at him and then it was Warren's turn. He went up to the platform, showed off his flames and got the exact reaction he expected. Boomer called him 'Hero' making sure to say that as sarcastically as possible, everyone began whispering and everything in general sucked.

It was high school after all.

And that first day was a pretty good example of how the rest of his year went. The pretty blonde turned out to Alice Frost and she was his partner for all of Mad Science. Every day they would sit together in that one class, talk, do experiments and the second any of her friends looked their way she clammed right up. It was the same in the other classes only the others didn't even talk to him, they just cowered and looked at him nervously.

And every day during Lunch period he would sit at that one table that no one else came close to and watched as four tables away, Brian and Cece laughed and joked and played their way through freshman year, wondering what it would be like to be a part of that.

Same old, same old and it didn't look like it was going to change anytime soon.

Warren really hated high school.