*Arnold rises from the dead* I liiiiiiiiive!!! And I suck a lot, I know. School has been insane, and I've been working on this chapter bit by bit, and finally finished it up last night. Since I'm a day away from summer vacation (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!), hopefully I'll be able to update more often. If any of you have read my other stories, you will know that I say that a lot, and don't always follow through. But I'll try.

Hi, guys, I'm Sarah. (Yes, the Sarah in the story is essentially me.) I'll be betaing this story. I'm here making sure the author doesn't write anything that's blatently stupid. Of course, I'm only human....

Just kidding. She's a great author. Enjoy!

And she's back for round 2! Is anyone excited? Because I am…

It's a High in the sky. Now tell me-- could I think of that? Nossir, I couldn't.

Rumble

Power Placement

"You! Blondie! I'm talking to you! Get up here!"

I wouldn't have noticed Boomer at all if it hadn't been for the boy standing next to me giving me a sharp elbow in the ribs. Wincing slightly, I broke out of my reverie.

I'd paid attention to Principal Powers's welcome speech, but once Coach Boomer got on the scene, I stopped caring. The few people who'd been placed before me had fairly quiet powers (I think one was a telepath), allowing me to zone out without interruption of an explosion. Unfortunately, when I zone out, its takes a lot to bring me back (pain helps). And then it takes me a few moments to remember where I am. So it was about a minute before I hopped on the platform.

After rolling his eyes several times at me, Boomer asked, "Name?"

"Haley Lekarza."

"Power?"

"My mind has complete control over my body."

Silence. This always happens. And here it comes, the inevitable: Three, two, one…

"What?"

"Whatever my body has the potential or ability to do, my mind can force it to do."

Some kid's eyes widened, but Coach Boomer was unimpressed. "Sidekick," he said dismissively, making a note on his (ever present, according to my mother) clipboard.

With a shrug, I walked down the stairs. Some people whispered hotly, and the guy next to me told me that I should have been a hero, but, aside from being pleased with their reactions, I tried not to let my placement affect me. I'd known what I'd get ahead of time. My mother had warned me about Boomer. She'd gone to school with him, and he was only impressed by showy, flashy, "cool" looking powers like his own (in his own opinion, anyway. I mean, the ability to shout? Come on.) And only the ones who impressed him became heroes. My powers weren't showy or flashy. I couldn't even really prove that they even existed, because someone could always say that I'd trained to be able to do what I did, and that I was lying. So I shouldn't have felt disappointed. But I was. There was that sick, sinking feeling in my stomach, which I tried desperately to keep from showing on my face. The last time I felt like this was when Stacey Grant got the solo in the dance recital that I'd worked so hard to deserve. But my best wasn't good enough.

Even though there was little chance of Coach Boomer yelling at me again if I daydreamed, I paid attention as a pallid girl with curly black hair and black eyes stepped up onto the platform. After stating her name (Vivian Grey), the world exploded, only there was no destruction. Left behind were outrageous colors. Boomer was sporting baby blue skin with a pink and purple tracksuit, which clashed horribly with his blood red hair. I examined a lock of my own lime green hair, amused. Most people in the room had the same reaction. One boy was turning purple, he was laughing so hard (or, what would have been purple if the colors were normal, but the sickening brown of his face was growing darker and darker with each passing second.)

The next moment, it was all gone, back to normal. Except for the girl. She was no longer dull or boring-looking. She now sported a dusting of freckles on her face, which didn't look so pasty now that fiery red hair surrounded it and bright hazel eyes adorned it. And it was difficult to look depressing while smiling the biggest smile I've ever seen in my entire life (and that's including the teeth on that radioactive hippo my mother has a picture of in her sanctum.)

Vivian Grey struck a pose.

Coach Boomer finished rubbing his eyes, and then said, "So… you can change colors?"

"Basically, yeah. But I have to ask for their permission first."

Boomer just blinked incredulously at her. I guess he decided (along with half of the freshman class) to just write her off as a weirdo and move on. "Sidekick," he said, still looking like he didn't know what to make of her. More muttering. I heard the boy who'd nearly died laughing tell her that she should have been put into hero class just because of the show we all got out of it. She smiled that gigantic smile and thanked him.

Next up was the guy standing next to me, the one who'd saved me from further embarrassment (I had the bruise to prove it) and who'd reassured me after I got shoved unceremoniously into the loser track. He towered over me at what looked like six feet (though from down here, it's sometimes hard to tell), with blonde hair and brown eyes. He looked pretty nervous; he'd probably been freaked out by the harsh treatment of the people who'd gone before him.

He walked up the stairs like he was walking to the gallows. "Name?"

"James Griffin." Poor kid. I hope he does all right.

"Power?"

"I fly."

"Show me."

Clearly, this was the part he'd been dreading. He didn't argue or whine, just grimaced and turned around. There was a feminine intake of breath as he stripped off his shirt, but instead of a normal human back, a pair of enormous white wings protruded from his shoulder blades held down by a black harness. He pulled it off and jumped into the air. The girls (some more openly than others) stared at his pecs as he soared overhead.

All traces of anxiety (which, I realized, must have only been at the prospect of taking his shirt off in front of hormonal teenage girls) were gone from his face. He didn't even seem to remember that we were here. When he landed, the ecstasy was still on his face as he strapped his wings down again and pulled on his shirt. Suddenly, he was a normal human being.

"Hero!"

He walked off the platform with relief etched on his face, soaking in the congratulations (which probably were partly on having such a toned chest) and uncomfortably taking in the fact that the freshwomen were staring at him with a new appreciation. I just smiled at him and turned my attention to Coach Boomer once more, who selected his next victim: a tall Persian girl who stated her name as Kaitlyn before electrocuting the car that came out of nowhere and was proclaimed a hero.

A guy with the power of invisibility made the blackened outline of the car disappear.

The next one who went up didn't look nervous or excited. He just looked pissed. His expression said, "Fuck the world," and his dark eyes burned. There were red streaks in his black hair and flame tattoos climbing up his arms. But I didn't need him to say his name to know that this was Warren Peace, Baron Battle's son. I'd seen pictures of the supervillain, and this kid looked almost exactly like him. It was rather frightening.

With an animalistic roar that made the hair on my arms stand up, his hands and wrists ignited around his leather jacket. He threw a fireball at the shell of the car, which was reduced to ashes. His expression didn't change when he was proclaimed a hero; he just trudged down the stairs. There was a good two-foot radius of cleared space around him now, but he didn't seem to care.

The next kid got an encouraging pat on the shoulder from Vivian Grey. He winced a little at the touch. He too had dark hair and eyes, but he couldn't look more different than Warren Peace. His eyes weren't hard and hating, just soft and sad. Like Peace, however, he looked older than fourteen. His name was Reuven Goldberg. He said that he could see the future. When asked to prove it, he pulled out a mirror. His gaze turned inward for a minute, and then he pointed at a girl with strawberry blonde hair. "She's going to go next, and she has the power to read people."

Boomer looked a little put out. He could have lied to himself and said that she was not who he was going to choose next, but what was the point?

Reuven's eyes brightened a little. "I could tell you more, if you want."

"No, no, that's okay--"

"Your birthday's in December. You're family's going to take you to the Paper Lantern, where he works--"

"THAT'S ENOUGH!"

He wouldn't have gone on anyway. He'd just realized that he'd pointed a finger at Warren Peace.

After being proclaimed a hero (it appeared that Boomer would say anything to get him to stop talking), he stepped off the stage in favor of the girl he'd mentioned, whose name was Phoebe Jones. She explained that she could read people's expressions, body language, and moods like a book. She could also sense changes in the tone of someone's speech. "Subtleties," she concluded, "I read subtleties. It's almost as accurate as reading minds, unless someone is a fantastic liar."

Boomer rolled his eyes. "Sidekick." He pointed at the next kid, who seemed to vanish and reappear onstage. Only the wind and a multicolored blur marked his passing.

"Speed Stevens," he said, before the question was asked. A few people in the crowd snickered. "Like the drug?" I heard someone ask.

Either Speed didn't hear them, or he chose--wisely-- to ignore them. He didn't feel the need to state his power-- he had already shown off. Now he waited.

"Hero!"

Looking relieved and trying to hide it under a smug smirk, he 'sped' off the platform as the bell rang for lunch.

Everyone meandered into the hallway, out the door of the building with the gym and nurse and administrative offices, and into the sunlight. We were all talking to different people, trying to form as many alliances as we could before we had to face the upper classmen.

I began talking to a girl with dark brown skin, darker brown hair, and even darker brown eyes. She greeted me by saying, "Hey, shortie." Sticking out her hand, she introduced herself. "Shauna Jackson."

Glaring up at her, I assessed that she was about a half a foot taller than me. Maybe more. She was a big girl in general, wide through the shoulders, chest, hips, and thighs. Her feet were a quarter or a third larger than my own.

"Hey, giant," I replied, taking her hand and giving it a firm shake, letting her know that while I was short, I was tough.

"Fee fie foe fum."

"I don't think the cafeteria sells Englishmen."

"Damn. I'll just have to wait until I get home."

We then talked of our families ("Your mother is Nightengale? She saved my brother's life!" "Your brother stopped that bomb from exploding?"), our interests, our old schools, and in about five minutes, it felt like we'd know each other for much longer than that. While we spoke, we said short hellos to everyone else. By the time we reached the main building, we had become acquainted with every member of the freshman class, at least on the most basic level: names.

When we reached the cafeteria, the freshmen stopped, staring. This being only the second glimpse of the student body, it was a bit overwhelming. Most of us had gone to public schools, so we weren't afraid of crowds, but few of us had seen so many superpowered beings in one room. And the superpowers were showing, because no one paid attention to the rule of no using powers outside the gym. A pyro lit up to heat her chocolate milk. A small dog scampered around, eating the food that fell on the floor. A kid broke a piece of silverware and swore at his superstrength.

Most of the freshmen stood there with wide eyes, trying to take it all in. Vivian, however, didn't let anything faze her. She stopped for a moment in the doorway, looked around, then began walking purposefully over to a table, Reuven, more animated than he had been in the gym, following her, talking to Phoebe.

Most of the freshmen went straight to the lunch line, and Shauna and I followed suit, deciding we'd find a place to sit once we had food. Vivian came to the line then, and we began talking.

"Hey guys," she said in greeting. Everything was a little awkward. We barely knew each other, and Shauna and I had just clicked, so letting someone else "in" so early was a bit strange.

"Who did you go talk to?" Shauna asked. She was much more talkative than me, I noticed. Probably because she'd lived around most of these people growing up. Me, I lived a few streets away from the Peace residence. (That's the one thing we had in common-- we were both a tad underprivileged. But that's it.)

"One of my old friends. She offered to let me sit at a table with her friends, because I'd know practically nobody."

"That was nice of her," I put in meekly, cursing my shyness in the presence of new people. I did have cool, impressive, smart things to say; I just didn't say them around people I don't know.

There was a small silence. "Do you want to sit with us?" she asked, breaking it.

Realizing it would take me a year to answer, I let Shawna agree for us.

By the time we were halfway through lunch, I wasn't shy anymore. The table we were sitting at was filled with nice people who were easy to talk to.

Besides Vivian, Reuven, and Phoebe, there was Sarah, an illusionist (her form of 'hello' was to create a black cat out of nothing and have it wind its way around the two of us. I swear, I could almost feel it purr); Bomb, whose legal name was "Boom" (he had been allowed to name himself-- being obsessed with explosions, which were also his power, he had picked "Boom." Once older, he had been able to change to "Bomb" but nothing more normal; Emily (nicknamed "Emergy"), who could digest things quickly outside of her body and gained energy from it (eating food made her extremely hyper); Gary, who teleported in front of us to shake hands and show off his power at the same time; and Seth, a telekinetic, who made a spoon tap us of the shoulder and we had to shake it like a hand or else it would become depressed and throw itself in the garbage.

During lulls in the conversation, I looked around the cafeteria. I noticed that the freshman, unless they knew someone in the school already, were sitting with one another. It's nice to know that even though we go to a whacko school, things like cliques don't change, I thought bitterly.

Too soon, the bell signaling the end of lunch rang. Grumbling, the upperclassmen got themselves together, said goodbye to the freshman, and went off to their respective classes. The rest of us went to continue having our lives set in stone before we've lived them-- in other words, Power Placement.

By the time Shauna, Vivian and I (Reuven and Phoebe were still deep in conversation somewhere behind us) got back to the gym, someone was already walking up the steps. This kid was tall, and it was clear that he was still growing.

"Name?"

"Lash Livingston."

"Power?"

He stretched his arms up to the ceiling, grabbed one of the rafters, and pulled himself up. By stretching out his legs, his feet again touched the floor as he returned to his normal height.

"Hero!" Boomer's obvious enthusiasm for heroes and obvious disdain for sidekicks was beginning to get on my nerves.

Smirking and pumping his fist in the air (making it nearly touch the ceiling again), he jumped off the stage and exchanged high-fives with Speed, who, I noticed, was more than half a head shorter than his friend. That made me feel a little bit better about being friends with a tall girl.

Said giant was called up next, and it was then that I realized I didn't know what her power was. She promptly dropped to the floor in a dead faint, making almost everyone panic. One girl kept her cool and chucked a waterbomb at her, which I realized came from her hands.

She came to. Dripping, she grinned at the girl who woken her up, who's hands were still wet. "Thanks."

"You can make yourself faint?" Boomer asked, surprised in that bad way.

"Or ridiculously hyper. I control my energy levels."

He rolled his eyes. "Sidekick." Rounding on the girl who'd thrown the water, he asked, "Hydrokinetic?"

"Yeah."

"What's your name?"

"Krista Eaton."

"You're a hero."

Looking surprised at her abrupt placement, she said, "Cool."

A girl who looked frighteningly similar to Krista was called up next. They could practically pass for identical twins, but there was an almost unnamable difference between them. Both had eyes of the exact same color, but this girl's were colder. Her hair was the exact same white blonde, but it was somehow stiffer than Krista's easy waves. Looking at her, I shivered involuntarily. I'd noticed these two on the way to the cafeteria, but I hadn't looked long enough.

"Name?"

"Rebecca Eaton."

"Power?"

In answer, ice formed around her hands. She pulled a pin from her hair, froze it, and broke it in two.

"Hero." The girl allowed herself the ghost of a smile and began to gracefully climb down the steps. Looking a little troubled, Boomer asked, "You two related?" pointing at Krista. A chuckle ran through the crowd of freshmen. Anyone could see that.

"Yeah." She didn't wait for him to dismiss her. She might never have gotten a dismissal if she had waited. She turned back around and walked back next to her… sister? Cousin? Whatever they were.

A girl named Dawn went next and transformed herself into a large, majestic wolf, howled, and became a hero. Another girl could change her skin to steel, making her invulnerable and strong. Another hero. A kid named Dave lasered the wall with his eyes, and was named (you guessed it) a hero.

Next went a boy who walked with a limp so slight, many people had probably overlooked it. I struggled to remember his name.

It was just starting to come to me when he said, "Chris Cavall."

"What's your power?"

"It's not so much a power as a mutation."

"Show me, kid, we haven't got all day."

He rolled up his pant leg and began to take off the shoe on his left foot. This was a bigger production than it should have been because there was a whole contraption keeping the thing on. And what he revealed was not a normal leg.

First of all, it lacked a foot. The skin faded into nonexistence to reveal the bone underneath, which was elongated and very sharp looking. Boomer whistled, looking like he was admiring a piece of masterful artwork.

"Instead of two bones in the lower part of my leg, there is one thick, long, extremely strong and deadly sharp bone. With a good kick, I could kill someone." He recited all this like a robot, and looked like he wouldn't be happy with himself if he ended up mortally wounding someone.

Boomer didn't notice. "Hero!" he proclaimed, as Chris began the lengthy process of putting his shoe back on. Once he had replaced it, he appeared completely normal.

Well, so do we all.

~PPP~

Much thanks to my lurvly beta. Review! It's so easy! They put the button right at the bottom of the page JUST to make it easier for you!

I love you all (even if you don't review-- but I love you more if you do)!

-ATFPPP-