--
Phoenix was headed off to another high school. Somewhere that she did not want to be. She had had enough trouble at her last one, having finally gotten expelled for setting the school gym on fire, but in her defense, she didn't realize that the bleachers were so damn flammable and if she had, she would have never set her cigarette down on them. However, as it was, she hadn't known and had gotten expelled.
"You nervous?" Layla's always too damn cheery voice, especially for seven in the morning, was already grating on Phoenix's fried nerves, but she attempted to be civil.
"Not really." It was a complete lie and she knew it. She was terrified that this school wasn't going to work out, that she was going to be shipped back to her family and then put in jail permanently.
"Oh." She sounded almost disappointed, as if she had expected an all out meltdown.
"School systems and I don't really get along."
"Why not?" the question was innocent enough and Phoenix sighed before answering.
"I always seem to set stuff on fire."
Silence.
"That's okay, Warren does too."
"Oh?"
"He's a pyrokinetic. He sets things on fire all the time."
Phoenix smiled down at her newest friend and found herself thankful that they got along as well as they did. Layla returned the grin as the bus arrived at their stop.
"Usually Will flies me to school, but I figured you wouldn't want to be on the bus all alone on your first day," Layla shrugged as the folding doors opened and she stepped onto the bus.
Phoenix remained rooted to the spot for a moment, absorbing what her new friend had just told her. The only person in the entire world that had ever done anything to make her more comfortable had been Peyton, and they were family, had known one another all their lives. Layla had only met her last night and was already treating her better than her own family. She wasn't used to it. She liked it. Then she smiled and followed her new friend on board.
She sat next to the redhead, and they were silent for most of the ride until the bus started towards the unfinished bridge.
"Oh, did I forget to mention that the school is in the sky?" questioned Layla innocently as Phoenix looked at her in slight alarm.
"What?" she managed to get out before the bus dropped over the side and her stomach inconveniently set up camp in her throat.
"Yeah, that's why Will flies me." Layla smiled over at the brunette who had yet to utter a single syllable since they had entered the air but was only rewarded with a glare.
"Don't worry, at least you didn't scream," she teased as they got off the bus together. Phoenix just continued to glare at the back of Layla's head, wishing that she was a pyrokinetic and could set a certain Mother Nature's braid aflame.
"So where exactly am I going?" questioned Phoenix as she and Layla entered the halls of Sky High.
"To the gym for Power Placement."
"Power Placement?" She had never heard of such a thing.
"Yeah, so they know whether or not to put you in the Hero classes or the Sidekick classes."
"Sounds fascist," was the reply and Layla giggled.
"Oh it is, but you have to enter Power Placement, it's a rule."
"Well that sucks."
"You didn't have Power Placement at your old school?" asked Layla as she stopped at her locker.
"No, I went to a civilian school."
The redhead paused in her movements.
"Really?"
Phoenix felt her stomach tighten, worry seeping through her mind that Layla was one of those bigots that looked down on people without powers. It hurt her heart to think that the sweet redhead before her would think like that.
"Yeah." The answer was hesitant.
"So you've never had a chance to develop your powers?"
"I do sometimes at home, and when I'm running from the cops, levitation comes in quite handy when you have to leap over fences."
Layla smiled.
"You're gonna need a lot of practice to be able to catch up in just a year. Do you know anything about the hero world?"
"Sure," Phoenix shrugged, "both my parents have powers, and I hear stories from my cousins all the time."
"No, I mean like famous supers and not just Superman or Spiderman."
"Not really."
Layla sighed.
"That's okay, you're just gonna have to study really hard."
Phoenix nodded. She knew that she wasn't stupid; she could get the grades if she really wanted to.
"So what exactly is Power Placement?"
"Well…"
--
If she had known that Power Placement was going to be as unfair and judgmental as it was, she wouldn't have taken part in it, but Layla had only told her some small details. Like she'd have to show her powers to a teacher. That was it. She didn't say that she'd have to do it in front of the entire incoming freshman class and be judged before them like some insane Salem Witch Trial. It wasn't that she was ashamed of her powers, or didn't think that they were good enough, she just didn't think that standing on a platform in front of a sea of kids almost four years younger than herself being judged by the man she had dubbed Gym-Teacher-Man in her head; was really the proper way to judge on whether or not she was good enough to be considered a hero. High School was hypercritical enough without dividing the kids into two separate groups on their first day.
"I am Coach Boomer, otherwise known as Sonic BOOM!" Gym-Teacher-Man was standing on the platform, a clipboard in his hand, and was currently showing off his power. The inane ability to blast people's eardrums. Phoenix was not impressed.
"One at a time you will come up here and demonstrate your power for me and I will decide whether you're a hero or a sidekick. And yes, you will do this in front of the entire class."
He was attempting to look intimidating and Phoenix had to admit that if he wasn't wearing knee-high socks and shorts he might have pulled it off. But he only seemed to manage looking like a butch Richard Simmons.
"You." He pointed into the sea of freshman; and Phoenix, and his finger landed on a girl that couldn't have been an inch over five feet. Her blonde hair was chopped in a bob, the ends dyed black, her eyes a deep green. She was tiny, but didn't look intimidated at all. She stepped up onto the platform next to Coach Boomer and waited for further instruction.
"Go ahead, show me your power." Coach Boomer encouraged and she sighed before nodding and holding her hands out. Nothing happened for a moment or two until Phoenix got the strange sense of sleepiness and she couldn't quite remember where she was or why she was there.
The girl pulled her hands back.
Coach Boomer seemed to snap out of the same trance everyone else had been in and looked over at the girl appreciatively.
"Confusion waves, impressive. Hero."
The next victim was a boy that towered over Phoenix's own 5' 7" frame and he seemed much less calm than the tiny girl before him. He stood up on the platform and Coach Boomer waited impatiently for his show of power.
"Well?" he questioned harshly and the boy shook his shaggy hair out of his eyes before powering up. Well, it was more like powering down. He shrank. And shrank, and shrank, and shrank until he wasn't much bigger than a mouse. Boomer bent down to look at him.
"You shrink?"
"Yes," was the miniscule reply.
"You can't grow bigger?"
"No."
"Sidekick."
Several more kids went up and they seemed split down the middle between heroes and sidekicks.
"You." Coach Boomer finally pointed at her and she headed up to the platform, bored with the fascist situation that surrounded her.
"What's your name?" he inquired, noticing that she was much older than the surrounding freshman.
"Phoenix Hamilton," she told him and he looked thoughtful for a moment.
"You Wyatt's daughter?" he asked and she nodded.
"Unfortunately yeah."
"Specter's kid, this should be interesting."
Phoenix rolled her eyes. She was nothing like her father, powers or otherwise. While her father, Specter could become invisible and had the ability to freeze time with a flick of the wrists her own powers were nothing alike in magnitude.
"What can you do?" he questioned, and she sighed.
"I can levitate."
He didn't seem impressed but gestured for her to demonstrate and she did. She lifted off the ground a few feet before touching back down.
"That's it?" he asked her, having obviously expected more.
"No."
"Well then, show me the rest." There was a smile on his face as though he thought she had been teasing him with her levitation.
She closed her eyes and concentrated the best that she could. She imagined her mother yelling at her, her perfect sister getting praised for nothing at all, her entire family looking at her with the contempt that they felt whenever she rebelled and then felt the familiar pressure behind her eyes. She opened them quickly and gestured to Coach Boomer's clipboard. It came flying out of his hand and into her own, his hat following. She looked up at the baseball cap that had landed on her own dark hair in surprise; she had only been concentrating on the clipboard. She didn't know if that meant that her powers were growing or if that meant that she had simply concentrated a little too hard.
"Telekinesis?"
"Yeah." She was getting tired of all the questions.
"You can only move a clipboard and a hat?" he questioned her again and she sighed, shrugging.
"Obviously."
He nodded, taking his hat and placing it back on his own head before snatching up his clipboard and making a mark almost reluctantly.
"Hamilton. Hero."
Phoenix stood in shock before the entire freshman class. She would have bet money that she was going to be in sidekick classes. Never in a million years had she ever thought that she was going to be a Hero. Then the truth hit her like a ton of bricks. Her father. Boomer had placed her in Hero classes to please her father; in fact, she wouldn't have been surprised if her father had placed a call to the school to guarantee it.
She stepped down from the stage as Boomer gave her her class schedule. She looked down at the piece of paper and sighed. Her first class was Hero Terminology with Mrs. Turner. She headed out of the gym, black messenger bag and class schedule in her hands. She hated the school already.
She knocked on Mrs. Turner's door and the teacher greeted her with a soft smile.
"Well hello, you must be Miss Hamilton. Please, come in."
Phoenix stepped through the door as Mrs. Turner returned to her desk and surveyed the classroom.
"There is a free seat in the back for you; and welcome to Sky High."
She seemed nice enough, but Phoenix decided to reserve her judgment. Teachers only showed their true colors when, and only when, you were in trouble or failing.
"Thank you." But that didn't mean she couldn't at least try to be on her good side for now. She knew better than to intentionally piss off a teacher before she saw who they really were.
She headed to the back of the classroom and could feel the entire class of Heroes staring at her but she ignored it. She was used to being stared at. She sat in her seat and turned her head to watch the teacher, ignoring the few students, most of them male, that were still staring at her as though she were a monkey in the zoo.
"What?" she snapped at the nearest one when his staring became too much and he instantly turned his head to the front of the classroom, the rest of them following suit.
Gym teachers that enjoyed humiliation too much for it to be legal, students that stared for no reason at all, and a father that still had influence enough to get her in a certain class with something as simple as a phone call.
She supposed that's what she got in a city of the damned.
