--
Layla met her in the hallway to take her to the cafeteria but Phoenix was in a foul mood.
"How did Power Placement go?" the redhead questioned, but she sounded hesitant once she caught the look on her new friend's face.
"I'm in Hero classes."
"You don't seem too excited," was the reply as the pair entered the lunch line and started to fill their trays.
"The first question out of Boomer's mouth was, 'Are you Wyatt's daughter?' I could have screamed."
Layla nodded wisely, knowing that Phoenix had problems with her family, especially her parents.
"So you hate being associated with him?"
Phoenix shrugged as she picked up bottled water.
"His image is exactly the opposite of who he is. I don't like being associated with the fake persona and I don't like getting special treatment just because he's saved the world a few times. It isn't right. I mean, so what if he's powerful, you know? Why should that ever have any effect on the way people treat me, or the classes that I'm put in?"
"You think he got you in Hero class?" asked Layla as they sat at her normal table, so far being the only two there.
"I wouldn't put it past him--I mean, how would it look if Specter's daughter was dubbed a Sidekick?" Phoenix remarked with contempt, angry at the entire situation.
"I didn't know your dad was Specter." Layla sounded almost in awe, but at the glare she received from the brunette she instantly changed her expression to a frown, which made Phoenix laugh.
A boy Layla's age with messy brown hair appeared on the other side of the table, a sweet but wary smile on his face as he sat down.
"Hey Will!" Layla greeted him cheerily as Phoenix looked him up and down unsure exactly what it was that Layla saw in him.
"Hey Layla," he greeted in reply, casting a questioning glance at the brunette across from him before swooping down and giving his girlfriend a sweet kiss.
"Oh, Will, this is Phoenix, Phoenix this is my boyfriend Will."
Phoenix smiled as Layla introduced them and gave a tiny wave.
"So you're the boyfriend that I've been hearing about nonstop since I got here. Your girlfriend gushes, Will, I hope you have a long term plan to take care of it."
Will smiled.
"I tried so hard to fix her, but she is broken beyond repair. That's okay, though; I love her this way."
The pair exchanged sickly sappy smiles and Phoenix faked a gagging fit. Layla sent her a mock dirty look and gave a slight shove to her arm.
"Oh, don't be like that," she admonished and Phoenix laughed.
"No, you guys are cute." She shook her head as she dug into her salad.
"Oh, here comes the rest of the gang." Layla sounded a little too excited to be introducing Phoenix, but the brunette let it go, chalking it up to Layla's very sixties personality.
"Okay, Phoenix, this is Magenta, Zach, Ethan and Warren. Guys this is Phoenix."
Phoenix nodded to each in turn, a petite punk girl with, appropriately enough, purple hair, a very tall, almost albino looking boy with shockingly pale silvery hair, a shorter African-American boy in orange and just behind them a boy Phoenix's age with dark hair that hung in his face, one visible streak of red shining through it, soft brown eyes and olive skin. Phoenix felt her stomach do the smallest of turns. He was cute.
"Hi," she managed as they all sat in what seemed their predestined places. Zach and Ethan went next to Will as Magenta sat on the other side of Layla and Warren set his things down next to Phoenix.
Phoenix's eyes followed Warren as he sat down and she was trying her best to will them to look somewhere else, anywhere else, but they wouldn't until Will asked her a question.
"How do you like Sky High, Phoenix?"
She jarred out of her staring contest with the side of Warren's ribcage and focused her attention on the boy in red, white, and blue.
"Um, actually, I think it seems sort of fascist."
She could feel Warren's gaze on her now.
"Fascist?" he asked her, and she was startled by the depth of his voice. She turned to look at him and could swear that she felt the sense of a spark as their eyes locked.
"Yeah, I mean Power Placement is completely ridiculous. Dividing kids like that? Personally I'm not really into labels and giving kids, especially high school kids, a real reason to discriminate seems like a gross misjudgment of power."
"You're a sidekick aren't you?" His voice was teasing and yet she found herself offended.
"No actually, I was placed on the Hero track, but it shouldn't matter. We all have powers, we're all here to learn the same things, so what does it matter if Layla's power over plants totally dwarfs my levitation in aesthetic pleasure? Does it make her a better person or more important than me? No, it doesn't. High school is tough enough without giving kids labels on their first day."
Warren looked surprised, clearly not expecting her to be so passionate about the subject.
"So fascist is the first thing that comes to mind, sounds like a regular high school to me." His voice still held the teasing element to it and Phoenix finally joined in on the joke.
"Apparently you know the inner workings of this place far better than I. Very well, I concede to your point of view for now."
He sent her a strange look before the corners of his lips twitched up in a smile. She flashed him a grin before turning back to her salad, having effectively stunned the rest of the table into silence.
"I think that's the most I've heard Warren talk at this table in three years." Zach remarked off-handedly and the table lurched as Layla sent a well aimed kick his way.
"So what are your powers Phoenix, is it just the levitation?" Magenta changed the subject.
"Uh no, actually I have telekinesis but it isn't very developed. I mean it takes a lot of concentration just to move a pencil or a sheet of paper."
"So you can only move small things?" Ethan asked, slightly intrigued and Phoenix shrugged.
"Well, whenever my mother and I fight, if I get angry enough then sometimes whole sets of furniture will go flying around the room. I guess it just depends on my mood."
"So your powers are based on internal levels?"
"What d'you mean?" she asked in turn to Layla's question.
"Well, your telekinesis relies on you being angry, so maybe that's the trigger. I mean we all have triggers to our powers."
"What are all of your powers?" Phoenix asked the table at large and they each went around explaining their powers. Zach attempted to demonstrate, and though Phoenix didn't see a glow, she lied along with the rest of the table and said that she could. Warren didn't speak up until Phoenix looked over at him.
"What, you don't want to share?" she asked him even though she already knew what his power was. He turned his head lightly to look at her, his dark eyes tearing away from his book.
"Share what?" he questioned, clearly having heard nothing of the previous conversation.
"Your power."
"I'm a fire-starter."
"Really? Does it hurt?" she asked and he looked taken-aback.
"What d'you mean?"
"When you power up, does it hurt?" she repeated, and he blinked at her for a moment.
"No, my body was built to hold the heat."
She nodded and raised a hand hesitantly.
"Can I feel?"
He looked from her open palm to his bare forearm before shrugging, finding himself curious about this newest addition to their little group.
Her hand landed gently on his forearm and the same sense of a spark was felt for a second time where their skin connected.
"You're warm." She sounded almost surprised and his mouth quirked towards a smile again.
"Yeah, I have a temperature of 104 degrees at all times."
"What happens when you're sick?"
He blinked at her again as she removed her hand.
"What?"
"When you're sick, do you get even worse of a fever or does it go down?"
He blinked at her for the third time, unsure of why she would ever think of such a question.
"It goes down."
She nodded wisely as though she knew the feeling well.
"Interesting."
"I'm sorry, are you writing a paper on pyrokinetics or something?"
She shook her head in the negative.
"Then why all the questions?"
She shrugged.
"Just curious."
He gave her a small smile before getting up from the table and heading towards the exit, book in hand.
"That is the longest that he has ever sat here." Layla stated in awe and Phoenix looked at her curiously.
"Why?"
"I dunno, he always leaves to go outside and smoke, read his book in the quiet. He seemed interested in what you had to say, though."
Phoenix shrugged.
"I have that effect on some people."
Layla giggled.
"I'll just bet you do. What's your next class?"
"Uh," Phoenix glanced down at her schedule, "I have Mad Science with Mr. Medulla."
"Eww."
Everyone at the table winced and Phoenix looked around in concern.
"What?"
"Mr. Medulla loves picking on new students," Will told her as though it was a confidential secret.
"Yeah, he'll ask you all sorts of hard questions and not wait for an answer before grading you on your response." Zach nodded.
"I've never had a Mad Science class before, exactly what kinds of questions is he going to be asking?"
The group tried their best to inform their newest member as best they could before the bell rang, but they only had five minutes and as Phoenix walked to Mad Science all alone she was feeling less and less confident that she was going to be able to handle a Hero school.
She entered her newest classroom and took a deep breath as a man with the largest head she had ever seen came over to her.
"Hello, you must be Miss Hamilton," he greeted her and she nodded, assuming that he was Mr. Medulla.
"Yes sir," she replied with the smallest of smiles and he gave her a polite grin in response.
"Let's hope that you have the same Mad Science prowess that your mother did when she was a student here," he told her and she felt her stomach drop down into her toes, trying to escape through her shoes.
"Let's hope."
He pointed to her seat and she hesitantly sat down, feeling a slight bit of panic rise in her throat. She didn't know anything about Mad Science and he already expected her to be as good as her mother. She was in some major trouble.
More students started to file into the classroom and Phoenix was a little startled to see Warren was one of them. He had a passive look on his face until he saw her sitting towards the back and then one eyebrow arched delicately as he took the seat next to her.
"You're my new partner?"
She shrugged and looked around.
"Well it ain't Santa Clause, sorry to disappoint."
He gave her a questioning glance but didn't reply as Medulla started class.
Class was almost halfway over and somehow Phoenix had managed to get through that entire time without having to answer a single question, she only had to write down a few notes as Medulla lectured on freeze rays.
"Miss Hamilton."
The sound of her name was enough to startle her and she jumped slightly, her arm bumping Warren's.
"Yes sir?" she asked timidly in return, hating the fact that she wasn't confident in the classroom like she always had been.
"Can you tell me the difference between building a heat ray and the freeze ray that we are learning about right now?"
He clearly thought it a hard question and out of the corner of her eye Phoenix saw Warren shift his notebook just a little to the left and towards her, the pyrokinetic's slightly messy handwriting clouding the page. She risked a glance down before answering the question with the words from the page.
"Um, when building a freeze ray like the one in the notes you need a flux capacitor that will spin to the left making the chemicals inside freeze instead of heating up. And when building a heat ray, you need a flux capacitor that spins to the right to heat the chemicals, and you need a more flame resistant metal and…" she froze, unable to read the last part of Warren's handwriting. "…and you need to make sure that…um…you need a valve that won't kick back on you so that the flame never gets too close to you and can reach the intended target?"
Medulla stared at her for a moment or two, stunned, and Phoenix wasn't sure if that meant that she had answered well or completely terribly.
"Correct, but there was some hesitation, B." He graded her answer.
Phoenix let out the breath she hadn't even realized that she was holding, happy with her "B" and Medulla returned to teaching the class, pausing here and there to question other students.
Class ended fifteen minutes later and Phoenix had to jog to reach Warren in the hallway.
"Hey!" she called out to him and he turned to look at her.
"What?" he questioned in a bored tone.
"Listen, thanks for the help back there." She smiled at him but he shrugged and gave her a disbelieving look.
"What help?"
She paused, stunned for a moment.
"What d'you mean what help? You totally gave me that answer."
"Didn't do anything of the sort," he told her and she shook her head.
"Yes you did."
"No, I didn't," he leaned in a little closer to her and she noticed that he smelled like smoke, leather, and some sort of plant that she just couldn't name, "Medulla is too tough on new students. There was no way that you would have known that on your own, but if someone finds out I helped you and it got back to Medulla there goes my grade."
She nodded as he straightened back up and she finally put a name on the plant. Roses.
"Besides, I do have a reputation to uphold here."
He straightened his backpack on his shoulder and stalked away from her. She smiled gently to herself as Layla caught up to her and grabbed her elbow, linking their arms, already chattering away about her own classes.
