February. Spooky scary moral dilemmas p.1

"So, uh, remember. Don't trust condoms. They're only 16% effective. Abstinence is the only way to really make sure…"

"That can't be right," Dick said in a low voice to Gar and Vic.

They were in Murakami High's annual comprehensive Sex Ed seminar. Sex Ed in Jump City was, as a rule, abstinence-only, fear-based, limited, false, and/or around three years too late—often many of those things at . Light, who had drawn the losing number as this year's instructor, didn't make eye contact with the boys and didn't chastise anyone for being on their phones, and in fact looked outright thankful no one was paying attention to him for once.

"Again, condoms, 16% effective," he valiantly went on, writing the figure big on the blackboard. "Abstinence, 100% effective. Condoms have pores, and human, schperm," he coughed out, "can go through them."

Vic said, "It's not right, look." He showed his phone to Dick. "That info is for lambskin condoms, not the normal latex ones," Vic said.

"But this says even those are 16% ineffective," Dick said as he passed the phone to Gar. "He inverted the figure."

Vic snickered.

"In summary, again, abstinence is the way to go," the teacher wrapped up. Then he heaved a sigh of relief and announced now they were going to watch a video.

The video was a horrific series of descriptions of STD's, which ended without any indication of how to prevent them. Or even get them.

Gar craned his neck back towards Victor. "Condoms prevent these, right, Vic?"

Vic tried to remember. "Some, not all."

Gar's eyes went round. "Which ones?"

"Man, you have Google too," Victor responded, kicking the back of Gar's chair.

When the video ended, the seminar was finally over. The three rejoined Kori and Raven in the hallway, who were coming from the girls' side of the lesson.

"Did you guys learn anything new?" Gar asked them. "I didn't."

"Actually? No," said Raven."Miss Mae only talked about menstruation. She pretended nothing else existed."

"Damn. At least we got the scary pictures of diseases," said Vic.

Dick said, "I got more from the book that was mysteriously left on my bed when I was ten."

"Ten? That's so early," said Gar.

"Not if you're folding sex stuff in with puberty stuff," said Dick. "What, did you guys get the Talk from an actual human?"

"The library was my teacher," said Raven.

"You mean…" Vic prompted.

"Let's just say I've had an adult library card since I was in middle school," Raven said simply, not looking at anyone. "I didn't mean to find what I found. I just found it."

The others laughed as Raven nonchalantly took a swig from her water bottle.

"My uncle took care of the Talk for me," said Vic. "He told me way too much."

"Okay," said Gar, to signal he was about to launch into a story. "So Rita told me one day Steve was gonna give me the Talk, right? And I was dreading it for days. But then nothing happened, so I forgot about it. Then one day, like a month later, Steve bursts into my room, all nervous. He points at me, goes, You know what condoms are, right? I said, Sure. And he said Don't be an idiot. Then he left."

Kori felt hot even as she laughed with the others; she could tell they were all just pretending to be casual about this conversation. It didn't escape her notice that they weren't looking at each other, and the laughter between anecdotes was nervous. "My mother had always taught me," she said herself. "She managed before I began traveling."

Vic was laughing with his friends one moment, and the next, like a sign from the universe, Marcy came into his field of vision. Victor could always pick out his ex-girlfriend in a crowd very easily—she was the one keeping her gaze down and trying to scurry past as quickly as possible without Vic seeing her.

He almost felt he'd summoned her. Vic's uncle had given him the Talk when he started dating her. Not that he'd ever had the chance to put any of his new knowledge to work; they were only freshmen then, and they dated for four months.

And then the accident happened.

He tried to push the thoughts aside and get back into the conversation with his friends. He would gratify his ex by pretending he didn't see her, like she wanted him to.

Vic had been standing in line for his coffee for several minutes now. When some sort of internal clock told him the person in front of him was taking way longer than her allotted time, he put his phone away and tuned back to the world around him.

Apparently, the girl in front of him was short on money, and she was trying to convince the guy at the cashier to cut her some slack, all she wanted was a fruit bowl, he could keep the stupid complementary juice and let her pay a reduced price, to which he adamantly told her he was not allowed to do that.

Victor had noticed Jenny Hex at school before. She had a… peculiar way of dressing. It was a mix between goth and that Japanese fashion trend of dressing like little girls in a pretend tea party Vic could never remember the name of. Right now she was wearing a purple vest over a frilly black shirt, a purple and black skirt, and torn black tights. Her light brown pigtails bobbed angrily as she argued.

Vic heard the argument a while longer before he decided to take matters into his own hands.

He moved forward. "I'll pay the difference."

Jenny glowered at him, and sustained the glare while he placed his own order and paid for his coffee plus her two missing quarters. Vic didn't particularly care she wasn't happy with him. He'd done it to speed his own day along, not as a favor for her.

Her frown eased and she received her food, and she suddenly smiled at him.

"Since you helped pay my meal, come sit with me."

And she made his decision easier by pulling on his jacket to drag him along.

Since he'd arrived at the table by coercion, Vic was surprised when he found himself easily conversing with Jen.

She said she was going to her gym just now, but she was starving, she just wanted a few carbs to pull her through. Victor asked what gym she went to.

"The Dark Side Gym."

And Vic echoed, "The Dark Side Gym? We just got one in this city, right?"

"Yep, it's brand new." Jenny cocked her head at him. Her eyes were of a washed-out blue and they stared at him closely, in a way that reminded him of a cat that wanted something. "You've heard about it."

"I heard they're all super elitist."

"Well, my dad pulled some strings to get me in."

"Lucky," he muttered.

"My middle name," she smiled.

"So is it true it's like an obstacle course-based thing where two teams fight for a token?" Vic asked. Rumors about the gym said the exclusivity was due to it having questionable practices, letting people act as in a no holds barred match.

"No, it's like that, but a tad more illegal," Jen said, with a completely straight face. Swinging her bag on her shoulder, she smiled at him. "You wanna come with?"

"Uh…" Vic hesitated, "I don't know if it's my kind of scene."

"Well how will you know if you don't try it?"

Vic had been on his way home to do a ton of homework. But he found himself fascinated by the way his day could potentially change like this. Jenny seemed so carefree, she made him feel carefree too.

"Well… okay!" he decided.

He sprang from his seat and followed after her.

When they go to the gym, Jen used her ID to let them both in. She told Vic not to worry about it—the instructor liked her, he'd be fine with it.

If it had been a few weeks earlier, he would have worried he was out of shape, as he'd been out of the game for months at that point. Now, thanks to Dick's decision of making them train, he felt up for the challenge.

He'd trained hard the last few weeks, because he'd missed it, mostly, and also because competing with Dick was a fantastic incentive. He thought Dick had been thinking along the same lines about him. Of course, when Victor had actually gotten to Dick's training room, he and Dick both realized it was Kori they had to set their sights on. On the first day, she'd casually strode to Dick's squat rack and lifted the barbell as it was, before Dick could warn her it wasn't adjusted. That had been 300 pounds.

The three boys had stared. They had slowly turned from Kori to Raven, as if questioning why she looked unfazed. "Told you," she'd said. "Car, bare hands."

So Kori was their champion. Vic and Dick went toe to toe. Raven and Gar were slower on the uptake; they were the only ones who had never trained or pursued a sport. But Raven learned fast, and Gar was agile. Vic had faith they would get there.

Beyond the main desk, Victor followed Jen through a corridor. The sounds of cheering and whistles came louder and louder, until they reached a door, and walked out to a wide space, ending in a balcony. This was where everyone was. Jenny ran and leaned over on the railing. Below and around them was an entire stadium. People cheered to an arena all the way down below, where two teams wrestled each other for a flag in an elaborate, inter-divided obstacle course.

He was beginning to get what Jen meant by illegal. One of the players had broken off a bit of a Styrofoam obstacle and was trying to coke another kid with it.

Jen didn't let them hang. She pulled Vic back into the main building, where she stopped at the sight of a tall, bald man in a purple tracksuit. "That's the teacher," she told Vic, and made them run over. "Mr. Simon! Vic, Mr. Simon is our instructor here at the Dark Side Gym." She had put on a sweeter tone, one Vic had heard when she addressed some of their teachers.

Vic put out his hand. "Hi. Victor Stone."

The man shook it. "My name is Mr. Simon Jones, the P is silent."

"…The P where?"

"Mr. Simon, we have a four-people team today," Jen said.

"I'll choose your enemies carefully," the teacher nodded. "Victor, I don't know how much Jenny has told you. In my gym, we don't limit ourselves. We celebrate people's different capabilities here. Anything goes." The man smiled and leaned in. "I look forward to seeing you in action." He looked Vic up and down in a way that made him frankly uncomfortable.

Right, thought Vic, the prosthetics. This man wanted to see what capabilities those gave him.

Jen pulled him along through the building, and took him into a locker room, where she introduced her team. "That's Gizmo, the brains. That's Mammoth, the dumb muscle."

Victor looked at the two. He'd seen them at school, too. Mammoth was a hulking, hairy eighteen-year-old freshman, with ashen skin and long ginger hair. He was the kind of big kid people had expected to see go into football or wrestling, but he'd been content to keep detention as his only extracurricular. Gizmo was the eleven-year-old prodigy who'd been bumped to their high school; they said his temper tantrums cleared out any room he was in.

Neither of them were the people he'd expected to see here, especially little Gizmo… but he guessed it was the different capabilities thing again.

He also couldn't think those were their real names.

"Are we all using codenames?" asked Vic tentatively.

"Yes," replied Jen. "Keep up, Stone."

Neither of the others looked happy to see Vic there.

"What the frick, Jinx?" Gizmo demanded, pulling his green-rimmed goggles over his bald head. "We were supposed to go against Rock, Paper and Scissors! Now what loser team are we gonna get?"

Jen snapped, "That's up for Simon to decide, now shut up and look happy about our new teammate!"

Clearly, Jen ruled through fear.

"We didn't need a new teammate," grunted Mammoth.

Jen glared at him in turn. "As if The Fearsome Four doesn't sound so much better than The Fearsome Three."

Sure enough, when it was time for the match they were introduced as The Fearsome Four. They ended up going against The Card Tricks: Diamond, Club, Heart and Spade.

Only as they were going out into the arena Vic noticed Jen hadn't changed clothes, like he'd expected her to when they went into a locker room. It was too late to ask if she planned on fighting in a skirt. He guessed it was part of Anything Goes.

They went out into the arena. Mr. Simon had taken center stage, in an elevated podium.

"The rules are but one. Obtain the flag through any means necessary, then take it to the end of the arena. The winning team gets to keep the flag, and your enemy's undying hatred. And this box of chocolates from our sponsors at Mother Kettle's Candy Factory." He showed off the box to the crowd. It was a decent-sized box, twenty chocolates or so.

The fighting started when the teacher sat down; there was no whistle. Jen took the lead, shooting out to get the girl who had a heart on her shirt.

Mammoth took the Club, tackling the boy with an unnecessary amount of force. Gizmo waited until the one wearing Diamond got close enough, then he electrocuted her with a hidden gadget. Vic understood the anything goes motto more.

Spade went for Vic. Vic ducked under the boy's arms and held him off. He pushed Spade away and squared off; but the other boy suddenly shook and went down, electrocuted by Gizmo.

"What's the point of being so big if you can't even take them out properly?" Gizmo demanded.

Vic could, of course he could; he was holding back. He looked up. On the podium, Simon was frowning at him, looking mildly disappointed.

They Fearsome Four went through the door to the next stage of the obstacle course.

On the other side was a series of platforms, too high for a human stride. On top, needing you to crane your neck to see it, the flag was hooked.

…Even the arena didn't look like it was made with fairness in mind.

"How are we gonna get to that?" asked Vic.

Gizmo sneered at him. "You clearly don't know about Jinx."

Jen had ran to the end of the room. She broke into a run and lunged into a handspring that landed her on the first platform, and then a series of unbroken, precise flips took her to the top. She landed elegantly on her feet, collected the flag, turned around and bowed to the crowd.

On the ground, Vic whispered, "Whoa."

They hadn't noticed the other team get into this room, and by the time they noticed, Spade and Heart were tearing at the pole that held the platforms together. At the top, Jen's platform wobbled and she struggled to keep her balance. Vic's blood ran cold. If anything went, anything could happen.

He realized a second later they didn't really mean to knock Jen off the platform, only to knock off the other platforms and give her no way to come down before the clock ran out, but by that time Vic had made up his mind.

He ran to the door. Gizmo yelled at him to come back, because Club and Diamond were trying to keep him and Mammoth from jumping their teammates, but Vic ignored him. He grabbed at the ten-foot wall that separated them from the other section of the arena. It was painted acrylic, and just as he thought, his arms could break it off easily. The crowd got louder when he did. He fetched the material and laid it against the top platform, securing it until Jenny could slide down. Then he went back and knocked Spade out for Gizmo.

Vic and Jen laughed as they walked away from the gym.

"I still can't believe you tore down the divider wall!" she laughed.

"Hey, the Card Jerks broke the arena first," Vic laughed back, and took another chocolate from their half of the box. "Isn't it counter-productive that a gym would give out chocolate as a prize?"

"This isn't a regular gym, Vic," Jenny replied.

"I gathered that, funnily enough."

He hadn't felt so energized in a long time. Dick's training was different from football; the Gym had been another world still. There, he didn't have to think about whether he was using a fair amount of strength. He could use his edge. He could play dirty. "Not bad for a first day, huh?"

"Oh, I knew you'd make yourself useful. What'd you think, I chose you for your caring personality?" Jen stopped at the end of a street. "This is me. Unless you wanna walk me all the way to my front door. But you don't wanna risk your jock friends seeing you with me."

Vic laughed because of how off the mark she was. It was always a small comfort, to find out how little people on the outside noticed about your life.

That time he'd left his old friends on the football field was the last time he ever spoke to them. The next day, he'd glowered at them, and Seth had kept Zach from going over, and that was it for that. Now they were all pretending their friendship had never existed.

But he pushed all of that out of his mind to quickly reply, "Why would I mind being seen with a pretty girl?"

With a satisfied glint in her eyes, Jenny smiled, got closer and said, "You stink, Stone. You need a shower. See you in school!" And she skipped down the street.

Victor watched her for a moment, before shaking his head and going on his own way.

His mood somewhat deteriorated as he dragged himself home, because he knew his dad would be there. Silas Stone was still in his lab coat as he unloaded TV dinners on the kitchen counter. He grinned up at Vic when he entered, his overgrown grey moustache curving upwards in a goofy expression Vic hated. He kept smiling as he watched Vic get some filtered water from the fridge.

"How's the socket pain coming along?" Silas asked. "I see you can move your elbow more freely now."

"I could weeks ago."

"Huh." Silas didn't lose his bouncy tone. "Nice of you to tell me. We did agree you'd keep me in the loop."

"My doctor's up to date, so," Vic grunted.

He went through the fridge and blocked out his father. For fifteen years, Silas had never known what was going on with his son's life. He'd never known about Vic's nutrition plans or training routine or practice times. He'd never shown up to a game or a competition. Now, suddenly, he wanted to know everything, just because Victor was part machine. He'd had to become a cyborg for his dad to understand and care and see him.

"By the way," Silas started. "Friday two weeks for now, I'm hosting the annual research fundraiser thing. It's my turn, what you gonna do? You're gonna wanna be out of the house that night, as per usual, hm?"

"Yeah," replied Vic without listening.

What was he talking about? Oh, right, the annual fundraiser. Vic hadn't gone since he was a kid. He'd always had something better to do starting at age twelve. But this year, it was different. This year he had only freshmen friends who hadn't seen any good parties yet, as far as he knew. Maybe he could show them one—make it up to them for consistently being an asshole for the first few weeks they knew him.

Vic turned on his favor-asking voice. "Hey, dad? What if I came this year, with my friends?"

(Months ago, when Vic had still been recovering in a STAR Labs bed, when he'd been in pain and miserable and indifferent to everything, that was when Silas had bought him his car. Back then it hadn't cheered Vic up. How could it, when he was in pain, in denial, in horror of what Silas had done to him? Only way later, when he got back up and could bear to start thinking of the future again, making plans and feeling some acceptance and hope for his life, only then he'd come to appreciate the gift. The car was much nicer than what they had agreed on before Vic's accident. That was when Victor had understood Silas had decided to mitigate his guilt the only way he knew how: with gifts.)

Now Silas turned, and said, "Sure!" with emotion, relieved as he only got nowadays when he could do something for Vic.

Vic made sure to respond casually, nodding soberly in response. If he started looking too happy, Silas might start acting like a careless jerk again.

Comic book trivia: in the 80's Teen Titans comics Hive was known as the Fearsome Five, Rock Paper and Scissors are from the Teen Titans Go (2003) comics, and the Card Tricks are based on the Royal Flush Gang from Batman comics. The Dark Side Gym is based on the Dark Side Club from Terror Titans.

Miss geek: It's because I'm a crazy perfectionist lol. It took years because I wanted to write like 80% of all four volumes before I ever started publishing, so that I knew for sure I was gonna complete it AND because there's many things I set up in the early chapters that have to make sense with how I develop them later. …Like I said. Perfectionist.

I'm so glad you're enjoying this! Thank you so much!

Eris: Thank you so much! About costumes… the kids are at the stage of this ploy where they're kind of in denial about what they're doing/want to do. Having costumes would mean admitting they're trying to be superheroes, and they're not in a place where they can acknowledge that because they feel they haven't done enough to earn it. It's kind of a fragile place and making costumes would be like bursting a bubble, making them face what they're trying to do, and it's too much risk for something that may fail. Hope this makes sense! There's gonna be much skulking and many disguises, just not actual superhero costumes.