Chapter One: Those Who Can't Do, Make PowerPoint Slides

Here's what you need to know about capes: I never studied them in high school.

In my defense, I went to high school in the early '90s. Powers hadn't been around long enough for parahuman scientists and psychologists to formulate conclusive theories—still haven't, really. There were the founding members of the Protectorate, obviously, and a bunch of other foreign no-names who showed up at Endbringer throwdowns.

On top of that, I'm not a complete nerd. Maybe I'm not up to date on the minutiae of cape life or how the PRT is structured or the history of the Protectorate, but I can do a decent rap on the fly. I can also breakdance like a mofo, and was the reigning Beyblade champion at my local gym until I sprained my wrist (while breakdancing).

So when they gave me the outline for what I was supposed to cover this year, I was kind of hoping they'd tell me exactly what to say. Is it really so unreasonable to expect some parahumans major to swing by and give you a rundown of the basics? You'd think at the start-of-term faculty training workshop they'd hand you a syllabus and maybe a thin yet comprehensive booklet containing all the relevant information you can zap onto slides at 3am the night before you start the unit.

What actually happens at the faculty training workshop is this:

I arrived late on a rainy Friday morning. My girlfriend and I both woke up at six on the dot, but the problem was that we both woke up at six on the dot. She was feeling frisky, one thing led to another and long story short, I spent thirty minutes longer than usual weeping on my bathroom floor and cleaning up mirror shards with my bare Vaseline-slick hands while she scrambled herself some eggs. Fortunately, it was a long weekend for the kids and Winslow was deserted, meaning I didn't have to compete for a parking space.

I signed in, collecting my nametag and lanyard from the beleaguered student parked outside the hall. He wasn't visibly tattooed, visibly Asian, or visibly splaying open my spleen with a swastika-emblazoned switchblade, so I could only presume he was roped in by the promise of brownie points rather than punishment duty. He did have blue eyes and majestically, almost certainly school policy-violatingly long blonde locks. Jury's out on whether he was hoping to take back the homeland, or was simply one lost soul in a little fishbowl who annotated Byron in secret. I'd recuse myself from said jury, obviously. I don't do profiling.

Armed with identification, I forged on at a brisk pace into the dimly lit, high-ceilinged hall. Right by the door was a buffet table, insomuch as five regular desks pushed up against each other with several curtains draped over them can be called a buffet table. Packets upon packets upon packets of M&Ms were piled on top of it.

Why are there so many M&Ms at faculty assemblies? Nobody knows. Maybe the administration thinks attendees are going to drop off like flies if they don't get their sugar fix. Maybe the candy is tinted Adderall, like my mother would hide in my mashed potatoes to get me to take my medication (I was twenty-four). The only events that have this many M&Ms are munches, though they're exclusively peanut and they're in communal bowls instead of individual packets. Now that I think about it I'm not sure the M&Ms are for eating, or that they are actually made of chocolate. I wouldn't know, because I don't snack on petri dishes.

I walked past that table. Seated up ahead in molded plastic chairs were my partners in pedagogy, being lulled into a stupor by the soporific tones of the lead facilitator. The guy I wanted to sit with was always in a stupor, thus immune.

The facilitator gave me the nod of acknowledgement—you're here, I'm here, neither of us wants to be—which I cheerfully returned. I plopped myself down in the empty chair next to Quinlan, about to thank him for saving me a seat when I noticed the chair on the other side of him was also empty.

No one ever wants to sit next to Quinlan.

Quinlan looks and smells like a down-on-his-luck elderly stevedore who cannot afford hot water and so performs his daily ablutions in a gutter flooded with vodka instead. His greatest fears are flannel tariffs, hepatic revolution and his own health insurance provider. Once, last Tuesday, I passed his classroom and witnessed him hooking himself up to a morphine drip that he'd brought from home while his entire freshman class watched in fearful silence. Before their innocent eyes, which had opened that morning expecting to encounter only polynomials and quadratic equations, he leaned back into his chair and cranked the dosage up as high as it would go. Also he was naked, but behind the desk so it was okay.

All of which is why I respect the man more than I respect my own father. I have never met another educator so committed to avoiding the act of educating that he periodically attempts to induce coma in the middle of teaching ninth grade algebra.

"'Sup, Quin-man," I said, cocking a fingergun. Just the one, though, or it'd cheapen the gesture.

Quinlan turns his head and double-checks my nametag. He double-checks his own nametag.

"Gladly," he grunted by way of greeting. His breath smelt like he'd been gargling hand sanitiser. "Gladly, Gladly, Gladly. Took you long enough. Did you bring my flask?"

It was technically my flask, but I'm a social drinker so he uses it more than I do. I reached into my messenger bag and produced the Lifegiving Beverage. This was why people kept me around.

He drank deeply. When he came up for air, he said, "Tastes like ass."

"I put a raw egg in it."

He sputtered, spraying droplets all over the front of his beard which he'd probably wring out in a pinch. "The hell'd you do that for?"

"I knew you'd skip breakfast, you old bag," I said, slapping him on the back. "You have to get your protein somehow. Athletes do it."

"Jesus," he said, disgusted, and took another long swig. "You're lucky I love the smell of salmonella in the morning."

Facilitators are attuned to this kind of unmoderated chatter, so of course the guy zeroed in on Quinlan and me. He seemed a nice enough fellow, soft-spoken, solidly built in a grey suit that showed off the bulk nicely. He had this wrinkly boiled cabbage of a face that loomed larger the longer you stared at it, and tiny deep-set blue eyes that only blinked when you blinked. Therapists probably wear a mask like his face when they explain to five-year-olds how their dog died, so as to ensure repeat business late into adulthood.

"Mr. Quinlan, is it?" the facilitator asked, teetering like a top as he pointed at Quinlan. "How would you describe your teaching style?"

Quinlan dragged a hand through his freshly tasered grey hair, considering the question in depth. "Intravenous."

"You mean the knowledge flows from you to your students?"

He looked bewildered. "No."

"Could you elaborate, then?"

"Legally," Quinlan said, "I'm not supposed to."

After a pause, the facilitator's finger skipped on over to me. "Mr. Gladly—"

"Mr. Gladly is my dad," I interrupted. "Please, call me Mr. G."

"Mr. G. How would you describe your methods?"

"Radical," I said. "Bodacious. I try to get students amped about the topic we're covering, show them just how cash money the humanities can be."

The truth is, the humanities aren't very cash money. I'm dead broke.

But the facilitator was pleased. "Good," he said, his voice charged. "Fostering enthusiasm is good. The humanities, you say? What do you teach?"

"Bit of this," I answered, "bit of that. Bit of everything, really."

"No, I mean what subject?"

"All kinds. Yesterday I taught the right way to eat Oreos. What you do is you open five packets of three, and you take all the cream out and just kinda smush it together into a ball. Then—"

"Mr. G." The facilitator cut me off. "What is your department?"

Nobody had ever asked me that before. I wracked my brain. "I'm not sure. Can a person ever truly know what their department is?"

"He teaches World Issues," Knott chimed in from down the row.

The facilitator's forehead creased. It was like the subduction of tectonic plates playing out over skin. "World Issues isn't a department."

"It's a subject," I said. "It's like Social Studies, only not lame."

"Hey," protested Adams, who got a diploma in 'Social Studies' from a degree mill and frankly wasted his parents' money from the moment he was born. Luckily for him, Winslow is strapped for dumbass gym teachers who peaked in high school.

"World Issues and Social Studies are identical," Knott said.

Oh, and 'Computer' is the same as Computer Science? Picture this: It's Thanksgiving dinner with the old extended family. The conversation inevitably drifts to what you do for a living. You tell them work at the local high school. Teaching—that most noble profession. Your mother-in-law asks, what do you teach?

You have to look her in the eyes and answer 'Computer'.

Computer! You teach teenagers how to touch-type! How to set up a blog! How to use a spreadsheet! When the android army descends upon us, they will be stymied by humanity's ability to program calculators that are somehow distinct from the calculator that already exists as a default application on most desktops!

I didn't voice any of this because, like all the other staff members, I am moderately terrified of getting into Judith Knott's bad books. A lot of people might attribute that to her arms, which are as wide around as tree trunks, or to her general musculature, which belongs on Female Teachers Moonlighting as Bodybuilders Weekly (I don't read magazines), but I attribute it to the time she slashed my tires after I told her she was mispronouncing 'psyche'. Yet another reason women shouldn't watch Hidden Figures.

"No they're not," I said instead. "I cover totally different topics."

"Like what?"

I reached for the first topic I remembered, which was the one I was supposed to teach on Monday but hadn't prepared a lesson plan for. "Capes."

"Oh really?" Adams said, folding his arms over his broad, polo-shirted chest. "You teach capes. Name one fact about capes."

Without missing a beat, I said, "They've been a force for both good and bad in the world."

"I think," the facilitator said, trying to take back the reins, "we're getting off track here—"

"Name even one fact about capes that isn't a vague generality."

I'm actually really passionate about this topic, I swear. I just can't spout trivia on command because I'm not a nerd.

Adams smiled like he'd won. Next to me, Quinlan did a key bump.

"Look," I said, with as much weary condescension as I could muster. "I obviously know about the subject I'm teaching, because I'm teaching it. If you want a sound bite, turn on the news."

"You think you're so clever, don't you, Gladly," Adams said.

"I don't think I'm clever," I said, reclining. "I think I'm cool. There's a difference, and that difference is why my students love me and yours hate you."

He stood up.

I hobbled into the classroom on Monday morning. "Hey guys."

"Hi, Mr. G," my students said, a chorus of mumbling.

The alert ones sat up. Their eyes were drawn automatically to my cast—or perhaps my face, which I hadn't had the chance to examine because I hadn't replaced my bathroom mirror yet.

"Bad news, boys and girls," I said, pulling a sour face. Ow. "I know I promised we'd be starting the capes unit today, but due to circumstances far, far outside my control, we're gonna have to postpone that topic."

Groans and sighs went round.

"I hope you're having a fun time frolicking in the land of the free, because today we're gonna be learning about democracy… through group projects!" I clapped the best I could while wearing a sling. "Let's break into groups of four, people!"

I knew this would make the majority of the class really happy and two or three kids really uncomfortable, but this is the price you pay for not having any friends.