Title: Help Save the Youth of America from Exploding
Rating: T, just to be safe.
Disclaimer: I do not own Sky High or anything or anyone to do with Sky High. So don't sue me. I mean, you could, but all you'd get is a deflated rugby ball and a computer that freezes every five minutes. So it wouldn't really be worth it. I also don't own the title, which the title of a Less Than Jake song.
Note: Just so as y'all know, this will NOT be a Warren/OC fic in any way, shape, or form. I included him in his role this chapter entirely for a single, lonesome joke.

Volume 04

After lunch came to an anticlimactic end with the ear shattering ringing of the bell, Mark ditched us ickle freshmen in order to race down the hall and perform athletic jumps over everything – real or imagined – in his way. Obviously, a sugar rush or eight had finally hit his system. Either that, or the drugs had kicked in. Or worn off.

I decided that if a senior could do sprint down the middle of the hall and make it look cool, so could I, and took off as fast as I could. Which was pretty fast, since I had grown up around male, rugby-playing cousins. I still looked like a dumbass, but at least I was a fast dumbass. And besides, I like running. Up until the point I stop, realize that I had forgotten to breathe the entire time and that's probably not good for my asthma, anyway. Then I don't like running very much.

I made it back to the gym first, of course. Because I'm mad cool like that. Also, I was running. I did take a detour to the bathroom, though, so when I hit the entrance my friends were within sight, meandering their way over reluctantly. I stopped short of the doors and peered in through one of the windows on the door, a habit that had developed the second I was tall enough to see through said windows. I hated to barge in on things, all loudly and everyone'd stare and I'd turn bright red. So yeah, windows were a good thing.

What I saw through the window was not so much. I jumped back from the window and shrank against the pillar next to me. "Hey, guys?" I stage-whispered across to my posse – heh, 'posse', – who were now just a couple feet away. "We were supposed to regroup in the gym, right?"

"Correctamundo," Rover said lazily. He had, at some point in their stroll through the corridors, gotten very friendly and now had his arms laid across Mickey and Vico's shoulders. Mickey looked slightly confused by this.

"Then why on Earth-" a quick glower at Rover ensured he didn't point out that we weren't actually really technically on Earth, "-is the gym filled with people not so much of the freshman description?"

Instead of answering with explanatory, soothing words, Rover grinned at me. "You're nervous!" he crowed. "You gotta be! You're speaking Californian again!"

I glowered and tried to kick him, but he danced away. He was right, too, that was the real dig. I've lived all over the country, so I tend to slip into accents at inconvenient moments. Californian – rather, lots of 'likes' and misappropriation of nouns as verbs – when I'm nervous, Southern when I'm confident, Brooklyn when I'm really tired and annoyed, that sort of thing. Rover thinks it's the coolest thing ever, since it makes it way too damn easy to tell what I'm feeling half the time. He says he wished all girls were like that, because he'd quit getting slapped so often. I personally think he'd still get slapped as much as he seems to have a talent for it. Maybe that's his second superpower.

Mickey, quickly shaping up to be the wise one of our unlikely gaggle, had pushed past us to peer in the window. "By George, she's right!" she exclaimed, and was rewarded with a giggle from Rover for sounding, quote, 'like an old British man'. Everyone else rushed forward to get a look as well, and someone rushed a little too enthusiastically, as the door swung forward and we all fell into the room.

We regained our senses quickly – well, except Vico, who I grabbed by the collar and dragged after us – and rushed to join the edgy gaggle of freshmen beginning to spaz out under the watchful eyes of older students. We must have been the last to arrive, as Boomer favored us with a sour glare and started talking immediately.

"Now that we're done with power placement…" We must had been gone longer than I thought. I shared a mildly horrified look with Vico. Trash and Rover couldn't care less about being late for anything (Trash because he once heard that time was created by human beings and didn't exist, Rover because he had this theory that if he was late for everything, perhaps he'd be late for death), but Vico and I had shared the award for perfect attendance all through elementary school, and you got disqualified for that just by being a minute late to one class. "…it's time to introduce a brand new 'initiative' Principal Powers came up with." You had to respect a guy who could speak in quotation marks. At least, I had to.

"In the spirit of 'togetherness' and 'school spirit'," he practically spat out, looking like the words were upsetting his stomach, "The principal has decided to pair all incoming freshmen with a sophomore 'mentor' who will show them around the school, help them with their homework, and so on." He obviously thought this was a stupid idea that was going to blow up, and I had to agree.

So did Rover, who decided to pipe up with a loud cry of, "Mentor? We don't need no stinkin' mentors!" in a cringe-worthy accent. I gave it what it was worth, wincing and sliding away from him as much as I could without being obvious.

"For that, Domino, you're first." He scanned the bored crowd of sophomores, looking for the perfect target. "Stronghold!" he finally barked out, pointing Mr. All American from lunch out to Rover.

"But-but… I don't need no stinkin' mentor?" he asked weakly. The coach glowered at him and opened his mouth, likely to belt out an epithet accompanied by a sonic blast, but Rover quickly held up a hand. "Yeah, yeah, I know," he muttered as moved over to stand by the Stronghold kid. I gave him a look, telling him through the power of my eyes and expression to play nice. In response, he rolled his eyes and mouthed, 'Yes, Mom,' at me.

Then Boomer went crazy, using his left hand to point out freshmen and his right to stab at a sophomore. Mickey got assigned some kid with shaggy hair who I coulda sworn had not been there a moment ago. I gave him a suspicious look and filed him under my 'to keep an eye on' mental category. Not that I'd remember for too long, it just gave me a sense of accomplishment to keep my mental desk free and clear of any memos. I was probably putting too much thought into the state of my mind for it to be healthy.

Vico, to his horror, got paired with a tall blonde poser-type with a sideways visor and the look of a concussed puppy. I had often seen the same look on Trash's face, especially after math class. Trash, for his part, got paired with a surly looking girl with purple streaks through her hair. Both of them had been at the table next to ours during lunch, so I used my superior deductive reasoning skills to figure they had been part of the group that destroyed Royal Pain.

I awaited my own assignment, chewing on the inside of my cheek. A bad habit, and one that occasionally had me swallowing bits of my own skin, but more comfortable than wreaking holy havoc on my fingernails. I chewed those two. My mom used to say I had an oral fixation, but I had complained that that made it sound sexual. She had stopped, but she had also banned me from reading anything more by Freud. Her loss. I could have been an award-winning psychologist, you know.

Finally, the finger jabbed at me. Last but not least! My eyes traveled over to see where his other hand was pointing, and found it aimed directly at… Tall, Dark, and Scary. Brilliant.

I somehow managed to drag myself over to the corner he was lounging against, partially terrified and partially wanting to smack him for keeping up the stereotypical disaffected youth stance. In the end, I settled for standing there awkwardly.

Tall, Dark, and Scary didn't seem to like the idea any more than I did. He stared down at me, and finally sighed and said, "War and Peace."

"Anna Karenina," I replied, confused. Why were trading Tolstoy book titles?

He glowered at me, and my memory clicked into place. Warren Peace, not War and Peace. I turned bright red. "Ah, um, that is, Jamie. Jamie Delaney." I very nearly stuck my hand out to shake, like the proper little girl I'd been brought up to be, but my subconscious caught that he had his arms folded a second before my own arm would have jerked up. Or maybe my precognition was finally making itself useful by forewarning me of social agony as well as physical. One could hope, eh?

Everyone was handed their schedule by hassled-looking senior, probably an office assistant of some description. This took a while, and the bell rang before she was finished. She had obviously had enough, and threw the remaining papers into the air and stormed away. I had already gotten mine (thank you, last name near the beginning of the alphabet!) so I split, giving my dear new mentor a vague wave as I sprinted across the gym. That run through the halls earlier had awakened my urge to dash to and fro. I reached the hallway, stopped, turned around, and ran back into the gym to wait for my friends.

Not that bad of a first day, I thought to myself. Sure, I had made a total fool of myself twice, but nothing truly horrifying. I should have remembered that the day wasn't fully over yet.