As Warren left the class, he thought he heard a faint sob coming from a little further down the hall.

Following the sound, he came to an empty classroom, whose door was slightly ajar.

There was another sob from inside the room, but it was muffled this time.

Warren opened the door and slipped inside, shutting it quietly behind him.

Scanning the room he saw Eris curled into a ball between two bookshelves at the back of the class.

The hood of her sweatshirt was pulled up and she was covering her face with her arms.

Her shoulders were shaking hard and Warren could hear her bite back another sob.

He walked over to her and knelt beside her, but she didn't look up.

"Are you okay?"

He wasn't completely sure why it mattered to him that she was upset, but he felt he should do something about it.

Eris pushed her hair out of her eyes and looked at him angrily.

Her cheeks were still red, but they were now slick with tears and she quietly hiccupped.

"Do I look like I'm fucking okay?"

"Listen. What Mr. Medulla did was completely wrong. He was just being an ass like he always is."

"No shit."

There was a short silence and then Eris spoke again.

"It's just so unfair. Everyone automatically assumes that just because my mom went crazy, it means I'm gonna be evil too. I hate it."

Warren nodded. "I can relate."

"How?" She spat. "Do you think you "get" me? You think you know what it's like to live with the shame? Please, spare me."

"No…"

"No? No, what?"

"No, I can relate because my dad was - is," he corrected himself. "A supervillain."

"Oh."

There was another short silence and then Eris shook her head.

"Well, I feel like an idiot now."

Warren offered her a small smile. It wasn't really a smile actually; more of a slight curve in his lips on one side of his mouth, but it was more than he gave most people. And it was a genuine smile, not a smirk and not an evil grin, so that counted for something too.

"You're not. I'm just surprised that you haven't heard of him. Pretty much everyone else in the school knows I'm Baron Battle's son. That's part of the reason why people avoid me."

Eris blew her bangs off her face and smiled shyly.

"Well, it's part of growing up in a rural town in Japan. That and having parents who don't want you to know about their lives. I'm relatively uneducated in the world of superheroes and villains."

"You grew up in Japan?"

"Yeah. My mom's Japanese and my parents thought it would be a good place for me to live, because not many people knew them there. Or at least, they didn't know about their super alter-egos."

"How long did you live there?"

"Up until two weeks ago. That's when I developed my powers."

"So how do you speak English so well?"

"My dad is American and he insisted that while Japanese would be my first language, I'd also be able to speak fluent English."

Warren nodded, slowly digesting the information. This was probably the longest conversation he'd had with anyone in a while. He didn't think that the one he'd had at the Paper Lantern with Layla really counted, because that was more planning out a way to piss off Will.

"So what about you?"

He looked up, surprised and realized that Eris was watching him.

"What about me?"

"Well, you have to have some kind of life story. That is, unless you were a cloned test-tube baby. You weren't one of those, were you? 'Cause they can be seriously screwed up."

She gave him a mock-serious stare and his smile grew a bit.

"There's not really much to tell."

Eris glared at him and swatted his shoulder lightly.

"C'mon. I babbled on for a good five minutes about my screwed up home life. Now you have to tell me something about yours."

"Well, you know that my dad's Baron Battle, right? So fairly normal life until he went to jail. Then it was me and my mom. Now it's me. Happy?"

She looked shocked. "That is the shortest life story I have ever heard. How come you don't live with your mom anymore? Unless it's because of something really bad and then you don't have to tell me."

"No. She just figured that it would be safer for me not to live with her. Especially now that her career has given her a lot of enemies."

Eris nodded. "I can relate to that. I don't live with my dad either."

"Why not?"

"Same reason. Too many of his arch-nemesis' know his real identity and he was afraid that they would use me to get to him. So he sent me to live here with my uncle."

"How come he didn't do that sooner?"

"Because he was in retirement before. But when my mom snapped, he came out of retirement to stop her. After she was put in jail, a lot of his old enemies found out he was back and began challenging him to fight them or they were gonna blow up the world and all that jazz. So he figured it wasn't safe for me anymore and sent me to live here. Also, he wanted me to go to Sky High so I could learn to control my powers."

"I'd say, from what I saw yesterday, you seem to have a lot of control already."

Eris laughed. "That? I was bluffing. This," she waved her hand and a basketball sized raincloud appeared in the air above her hand. "Is the biggest one that I can make. Hence, the reason I am a big disappointment to my mom. The whole rain and winds thing is her power, but apparently I don't have as strong powers as she did."

"So how did you get HERO placement then?"

She waved her hand again and the cloud disappeared. "I also inherited my dad's powers, but they are a lot stronger than my mom's."

"So what can you do?"

"A lot of stuff involving electricity. The biggest things are force fields and if I concentrate the energy, I can use it to melt things or cut through things. I impressed Boomer, because I used the force field to stop the car and then I cut it up into little pieces."

"Wow."

"Yeah, but you don't ever have to worry."

"And why is that?"

"Because my electricity powers are a lot like yours and my rain clouds only last for a little while."

Just then, they heard a bell ring out in the hall. Eris glanced at her watch and realized that they'd actually spent the last two and a half periods talking.

"Wow. Time to go home."

"Yeah."

Warren stood up and picked up his bag. Eris slipped her bag over her shoulder and was about to stand up, when Warren offered her his hand.

She accepted it and he pulled her to her feet.

He gave her a brief nod and another one of those small smiles and then walked out of the class.


Eris leaned against the wall and let out a breath that she hadn't realized she'd been holding in.

Then she shook her head angrily.

Why are you getting all lightheaded? It doesn't mean anything. He's not interested in you and even if he was, who are you kidding? Love never works out. Remember what happened to Mom and Dad? It will just be the same for you...

Biting her lip, Eris pulled her bag close to her body and then left the class.