Thomas, sans his usual cape, was leaning back in his chair at the back of the class, feet on his desk, hands behind his hand, and bearing a confident smirk. A tired professor handed back math tests. When he got to Thomas, he held out his hand for the test, but the professor just left it face-down on his rather occupied desk. He picked it up, confident he did well.
To put it mildly, he did not.
"Psh, just like Einstein," he muttered to himself before crumpling it up and tossing it out. A few minutes later, he left the class, picked up his cape from the floor, and tied it around his neck. Right afterwards, he felt a tap on his shoulder.
"What is it, Andrew?" He sighed without even turning around.
"Hey, Thomas. I need to help Waqas move some of his inventions around the building and my second through six next best options are all going to be unavailable. Can I trust you to watch after Hang while he practices in the gymnasium?" Andrew asked.
"Andrew, have I ever let you down before?" Thomas said with a sudden change in mood and wrapped an arm around Andrew's neck.
"Yes."
"Um. Well regardless, you can count on me!" Thomas exclaimed and stood up straight with pride.
"Good, because if you somehow screw this up too, I'm going to get very angry."
Thomas gulped. "Right, right, don't worry, I'll watch him like a hawk.
Only a few minutes later, Thomas found himself slurping soda from a cup in the gymnasium bleachers while Hang tried controlling his fire powers. He took a glance down at the person he was supposed to be watching to find his back on fire. Thomas jumped out of his seat and ran down as fast as he could, tackled Hang, and tried to suffocate the fire with his cape. Once he felt no more sign of a fire, he breathed a sigh of relief.
"Thomas, what the heck are you doing?" Hang asked, more scared than angry.
"Your back was on fire. I just saved your life little dude," Thomas beamed.
"Huh? Oh, no, that wasn't an accident! It was part of a new move I was trying. You saw it already, right?"
"Yeah, totally," he lied, "But can you show it to me again? I was sitting pretty high up and I want to get a closer look. You get me?"
"Yeah. Now stand back." Thomas sat down in the front row and Hang got a safe distance away from him. "So something Andrew told me while I was taking the entrance exam gave me an idea. He said I couldn't use my powers to cross the Drill Field unless I could fly and I remembered that heat rises, sooo-"
"Whoa, dude, you can FLY?!"
"Yeah! Watch this!" Hang ran up the bleachers on the other side and jumped off one of them, sending him in a freefall towards the hard, buffered floor of the gymnasium. Thomas stood up to rush to his aid but before he could do anything, he saw Hang sprout wings of fire on his back and "flap" them to slow down his descent and finally touch the floor like a butterfly. "Ta-da!"
"That's not really flying, more like falling. Really slowly," Thomas told him. "...Still really cool," he muttered under his breath.
"I know it's not perfect but it's what I've got. And hey, that's my best attempt yet! Remember some of the first ones?" He turned to the side to show off some nasty-looking bruises that made Thomas feel guilty.
"Ha ha, yeah, those were hilarious…" Thomas trailed off, trying to play his ignorance off as intentional. "Good job on sticking it in the end, though. That could come in handy."
"Thanks, Thomas. That… means a lot coming from someone as cool as you."
"...Excuse me for a second." Thomas walked away from Hang, put one leg on a seat, and rested his chin on his fist, making himself look thoughtful. "HE THINKS I'M COOL!" Thomas thought to himself with a barely restrained excitement. "NOBODY'S EVER THOUGHT I WAS COOL! Okay, calm down Thomas. If he sees you like this he'd kick you to the curb faster than a tin can. Okay, okay, gotta look cool. What would someone cool do? What would he do?"
Thomas finally got up and walked back to Hang, facing away from him the whole time and with his arms crossed. "Yeah, I know I'm cool. And as a cool person, I just remembered that you're not worth my time, kid."
"What?!" Hang cried out, "Did I do something wrong?"
"Nah, you're just not good enough for me," Thomas told him with a barely noticeable hesitation. "...Unless."
"Unless?"
Thomas looked back at Hang with a smirk. "Unless you can prove you're worth my time."
"I can prove it!" Hang said, leaning forward.
"Then how about we ditch this place and you can acompañar tus palabras con dinero?"
"I don't know what that means but I'm in!"
"Me neither, let's go!" He grabbed his arm and led Hang out of the gymnasium and into the campus halls. He tried to think of something to do with Hang, but spotted the clock. "Uh oh, I'm gonna be late for Ms. Soap's class!" he said to himself, but then he remembered what he did. He would always skip class and sometimes drag Thomas himself along. With his mind made up, he kept going. "Oh well, time's-a-wastin'!" He said.
"But what about your class?" Hang asked, struggling to keep up with Thomas's pace.
"What about it?
"Don't you need to learn stuff?" Hang answered to Thomas's surprise.
"Naaah, and what do you care, anyway? You don't even have classes here!"
"True… but I should be practicing right now."
"Why? Because Andrew told you to? Gotta stick it to the man, always!" They then arrived in the cafeteria. The place brought back a vivid memory for Sthomas, one where he watched him go up to someone, take their tray, throw it across the room, and yell…"
"Food fight," Thomas told Hang as they approached a table, "You gotta yell that, or else they'll just get mad at you." Hang nodded, picked up someone's food, and threw it at someone else.
"FOOD FIGHT!" He yelled. All they accomplish is getting the entire cafeteria to give them dirty looks.
"Are they seriously trying to start a food fight?" Someone asked in annoyed disbelief.
"If those jerks want a food fight, we'll show them a food fight!" Someone else said and threw their food at Hang. Thomas thought to himself what the guy in his memories would do.
"Bring it on, I'm not scared of some punks!" Thomas shouted. This just got him and especially Hang pelted with more food. He grabbed Hang's arm and fled the scene. They fled all the way to the dormitories, very far away from the angry cafeteria patrons.
"That could've gone better. What do we do next?" Hang eagerly asked. Thomas rubbed his chin in thought when he saw a rich student walk by with a shiny watch and get into a conversation with her friend. It made him recall a memory, where he watched the man casually walk up to someone from behind, take their watch, and run away. Thomas smiled.
"Hey Hang," he turned to his apprentice, "You want that watch?"
"It's shiny, yeah, but it's way too expensive."
"What if I told you we could get it for free? The old five-finger discount?"
"What are you-" Hang gasped, "Thomas, we can't do that! That'd be-" Thomas slapped a hand over Hang's mouth.
"Shhhhhhh! If she hears you, we won't even get a chance!" He whispered. "Besides, I saw this one guy do it right in front of me, and he was the coolest guy ever!"
"I'm not sure stealing is cool," Hang whispered back.
Thomas took a considerable pause before replying "That's what I thought at first too, but look at me now! Let's get us a shiny new watch!" Thomas began to slowly tiptoe behind the rich student as they left their friend and egged Hang to imitate him. They snuck up behind the student together and Thomas reached for the watch, but the student turned around.
"Okay, that's enough, what are you creeps doing?" She asked them. They both froze and didn't say anything, but Thomas ripped the watch right off her arm anyway.
"FINDERS KEEPERS!" He yelled and ran off with Hang trailing off behind him. The student ran after them, screeching for her watch back, but they're too fast for her and lose her around a corner. Once safe, Thomas and Hang admire their newly-acquired watch.
"Wow. We really stole something," Hang said in disbelief. "Are you sure we even need this?"
"Of course we need it, it's shiny!"
Hang paused and thought deeply himself before asking Thomas "Hey, what time is it?"
"I dunno, lemme check my pho-" Thomas's phone was already in front of him when he realized what Hang just did. He then took another good, long look at the watch in his hands.
After taking a look around the entire campus, the student reluctantly returned to her dorm, only to find a cloth with something under it waiting by the doorstep. She lifted the cloth to find her watch.
With the sun going down, Thomas and Hang sat at a bench outside together.
"Dang, I'm all out of cool stuff for us to do," Thomas lamented.
"Well, you mentioned you saw a cool guy do cool things. Did he do any other things?"
"Now that you mention it… There is one more thing he did with me-" Thomas suddenly looks away and acts aloof, "But I don't think you're ready for it."
"What? I'm ready for it! I started the food fight, I ditched class and took the watch with you, I snuck out in the middle of the night with you and Kyle, am I really not ready for it?"
"Well…" Thomas turned back around with a smile. "You know the sports equipment closet?"
"Yeah?"
"Get the climbing gear."
Thomas had flashbacks to standing at the base of Burruss Hall, a building fashioned with many square points on top like a castle keep with his hero standing right beside him at the bottom.
"If I show you the coolest thing you could possibly do, will you finally leave me alone?" His hero asked him.
"Yeah, yeah, I promise, I just want to be cool like you!" Thomas pleaded.
"Alright, start climbing," he told Thomas and they both began ascending the wall.
"Uh, Thomas, are you sure this is safe?" Hang asked him.
"Of course it's not. It wouldn't be very impressive if we did safe things, now would it?" He told Thomas with a snarking contempt in his voice. Once they reached the top of one of its points, they looked out over the campus. The building wasn't nearly as tall as Slusher tower, but it was still considerably high up.
"So, now that we're up here, what did that guy have you do?" Hang asked.
"You need to jump off."
"He made you WHAT?!"
"I told you, he made me jump off! Right from this very spot!" Thomas exclaimed.
"How did you survive that? This is the kind of fall that kills you!"
"Weeeelll, Sean was walking by and portaled me so I fell into his vertical portal and rolled out a horizontal one he made right by the grass. The stains took weeks to get out, but I wasn't harmed!" Thomas explained.
"Then shouldn't we have gotten Sean for this?"
"But then he'd go snitch on us to Andrew. Besides, if you don't wanna, we can just climb back down."
"...Thomas, I don't know why you look up to that guy."
"What do you mean? He was cool, he was handsome, he did the most awesome stuff-"
Hang stepped forward and turned around to face Thomas. "He tried to get you to jump off a building! Would you consider that 'awesome'?"
"Sean was there-"
"Did HE know that?"
"...He, probably just didn't tell me so it'd be more thrilling."
"Are you even listening to yourself? He put you in mortal danger! Even if he did know, you could've died! That's not something friends do to each other!"
"He wasn't exactly my friend-"
"And what, this guy stole stuff too?! Are you sure you're not looking up to some kind of criminal?" During his rant, Hang began to slip from the edge of the building. "Whoa- WHOA!" And he fell off screaming.
"HANG!" Thomas yelled and ran right down the side of the building. He dove off it and catched Hang in mid-air. "Gotcha!" Then he realized he had no way to stop them both from falling and started screaming himself.
"THOMAS!" Hang yelled, hatching an idea, "GRAB A HOLD OF MY LEGS!"
"WHAT'S THAT GONNA-"
"JUST DO IT!" Thomas grabbed on as tight as he could. Hang ignited his fire wings and flapped them as fast as he could. Slowly but surely he slowed their descent until they were right above the ground, floating down like a feather. Thomas let go and landed safely while Hang touched down gracefully.
"...Wow." Thomas said to himself. And then he froze in fear when he felt a tap on his shoulder. "...Hey, Andrew…"
"Hello, Thomas…" Andrew replied, barely even trying to hold back his own anger, much to Hang's horror, "Enjoyed your little day off?"
"So, uh, how did you find out about that?..." Thomas played with his fingers while he asked. Andrew grabbed his shoulders and turned Thomas around to face him.
"Let's see, people tell me about an attempted food fight in the cafeteria, a student comes to me about her watch being stolen by some 'cape-wearing punk' and his friend, I check and neither of you are in the gymnasium, I hear screaming coming from the Burruss Hall, HOW DO YOU THINK I FOUND OUT?" He shouted.
"Heh, heh…" Thomas chuckled out of nervousness.
"OH YOU THINK THIS IS FUNNY? IS THIS ALL A JOKE TO YOU, IS THAT IT?" Andrew got up in Thomas's face. "BECAUSE LET ME TELL YOU SOMETHING, MISTER COMEDIAN, IF SOMETHING HAPPENS AND THAT KID ISN'T PROPERLY TRAINED, HE COULD DIE! HE'S GOT HIS WHOLE LIFE AHEAD OF HIM AND HIS BLOOD COULD BE ON OUR HANDS! IN FACT, IT ALMOST WAS WITH THAT 'STUNT' YOU JUST PULLED OFF!" Thomas stepped backwards, but Andrew kept moving forward to keep grilling him. "YOU KNOW WHAT? WE DIDN'T HAVE TO LET YOU STAY HERE! WE DIDN'T HAVE TO GET YOU A GRANT AND LET YOU JOIN THE TEAM! WE COULD'VE LEFT YOU OUT THERE AT THE MERCY OF MOTHER NATURE AND WHATEVER ELSE WAS OUT THERE! But no, we let you in… AND THIS IS HOW YOU REPAY US?!"
Then he turned to Hang. "And you! This is the second time you've caused a scene here. I told you not to act up again like this and you not only violated it, but did so FLAGRANTLY. I-"
"Now hang on!" Thomas interrupted. Andrew glared at him, but he continued to speak after a brief moment of shock. "I don't care about how much trouble I get for this, but don't lay any of it on Hang! Did you see what he did back there? The kid saved my life! If you're gonna blame anyone for this, blame me. It… it was all my idea anyway," Thomas said, putting his hands in his pockets and looking down.
"Hm. Then I think I will." He held his hand open. "Hand over your Defender ID."
"What?! No, but I-"
"Thomas, this is the last straw, hand it over!"
Thomas looks to Hang. "Uhhh, he risked his life to try and save me?" He attempted.
"He not only would have failed to do that, but got you into that situation in the first place. You're lucky I'm not kicking you out of the entire campus. Hand. It. Over." Thomas closed his eyes, fished out his ID, and handed it over to Andrew shamefully. "Hey, look on the bright side! You hated being bossed around by me, right? Well, you only have one last order to take from me!" With that, he ripped the card into shreds and tossed it on the ground. "Pick those up and throw them away. NOW!" He then stormed away, leaving Thomas and Hang alone again.
"...I never knew these ripped so easily," Hang said to finally break the silence.
"...They're not." Hang picked one up and discovered Thomas was right, it was made of a thick, stiff plastic. Thomas took the rest of it and put it away in his pocket. Then he sat down and buried his face in his hands.
"Hang, I'm not cool," Thomas confessed. "I'm so sorry. About all of this."
"...You wanna supervise me? I have a lot of practice to catch up on, after all," Hang offered.
Thomas sighed and got up. "I'd like that." Together, they headed back to the gymnasium.
Later that night, Thomas returned to his dorm and booted up his laptop like he did every night. He opened up his email and checked for new messages. Nothing but junk. He got to work composing a message of his own.
"Hey Jorge, it's me, Thomas again," he begins to type, "I messed up today. Big time. You know what, that doesn't even describe it. But, today, I did a lot of things you used to do, and… How did you manage to stomach it? I didn't feel cool, I felt awful, and I got the new guy into a lot of trouble he didn't deserve either. You know something? I don't think the things you did are cool anymore. I don't think you even liked me. That would explain why you haven't responded to a single message of mine in all the years I've-"
Thomas pauses to look through how many emails he's sent to Jorge. There's hundreds, and not one with a single reply. Thomas deletes his draft and turns off his laptop.
Meanwhile, in the main security room, footage of Kirby talking to a security guard, handing him boxes of pizza, and getting knocked out a cold by a security guard who snuck up behind him played on repeat on a large monitor in the center while the two security guards from the footage rammed a third's face against a wall repeatedly. Suddenly, the door opened.
"What in the world is going on in here?!" Andrew asked.