Chapter Eight

First Day of Almost Hell

Two days had passed since orientation at Pathfinder, where I learned a lot more about the campus and founding of the school. This year was essentially a trial run for an alternative to Imperium, meant for the students that were heavily considered for Imperium, but were ultimately cut from their program. It was explained to me that because this was a trial run, it was intended to be thrown away if proven unsuccessful. Because of this, the school had wildly lower funds than Imperium, allowing for what our teacher, Brutus called a more "rugged" experience, although he said that that would be necessary, considering the fact that we needed to prove ourselves of becoming worthy of the title of a hero even moreso. Really, I just think that means we get the old equipment and buildings and the like that Imperium no longer needed.

I insisted to my mom that I could get myself to school today on a city bus, but she objected incessantly. I eventually got her to say yes but not after some tears about her baby going off to a hero school like my dad wanted so bad. I hugged her and I left, all packed up and in my new clothes.

I wanted to leave alone so I could stop by Nathan's gym and see him before school, so I took a bus downtown and knocked on the gym door rapidly before unlocking it with the key Nathan had given me a couple months ago and jogged upstairs.

"Sensei!" I called out, hoping to hear him greet me back. I looked back down the stairs and saw his office was empty but his stuff was here, so he was too. "Sensei?"

I wandered around the gym until I came to the showers and finally found Nathan passed out on the floor. I threw my backpack off my shoulders and knelt down beside him, slapping his cheek.

"Hey, hey, hey, hey!" I said repeatedly as I nudged him. I saw him start to stir awake, so to finish the job I slapped him in the face, which definitely woke him up because a fist came flying toward my face. I just barely dodged it, falling backwards and scurrying away.

"God damn it Emmet, can't you knock?" Nathan said as soon as he realized who I was. He then looked around to where he was and waved his hand at me, realizing his mistake.

"It's my first day of school." I said flatly. "What the hell happened to you, why are you in the showers?"

"No reason, just did." Nathan mumbled as he slammed his eyes shut and rubbed his temples. "Congratulations, I guess."

"Thanks." I said sarcastically.

"Do you want anything?" He asked as he shielded his eyes from the light. I shrugged.

"Are we still training today?"

Nathan paused.

"Not today, Emmet." He said quietly. "Jesus Christ…"

"Are you drunk?" I asked, noticing the faint smell of alcohol.

"No, I'm hungover." He said, annoyed. I stared at him blankly. "It means I was drunk yesterday."

"Yeah, I know what-" I stopped myself. "Alright, I'll be here on Wednesday, okay?"

"Yeah, yeah, sure whatever." Nathan leaned his head back and closed his eyes. "Can you shut the lights off on the way out?"

I didn't answer and just grabbed my bag and left quickly, turning the lights off as I went. I left the gym and slammed the door behind myself, not even bothering to lock it. I caught another city bus as I went and it brought me to Imperium's front entrance, where countless kids were filing into the tall, glass building.

The building I was looking for, however, was behind the main one, a building that once housed an elementary school before Imperium had bought the place. I weaved my way through the crowd and to the parking lot to the left of the building, where I got a clear view of the dorms as well as Pathfinder's school building. I saw the rest of my class at that end of the parking lot, all waiting outside the building, talking amongst themselves. I saw that girl Amy again, along with Tanner and James, who I walked up to in hopes that I'd have some friendly people to hang out with.

"Roommate!" James yelled as I walked across the parking lot. He was talking with a girl who had big round glasses and long brown hair in a big braid that went over her shoulder, and she gave me a little smile as I approached. "What's up, man?"

James held out a hand like he was trying to arm wrestle, but I had no idea what he was trying to do. He raised his eyebrows and tilted his head toward the girl, which made me realize he was trying to look cool for her. I smiled dumbly and shrugged. James rolled his eyes.

Off to the right foot already.

"I'm Ellie!" The girl spoke up with a really small and quiet voice.

"Emmet." I introduced myself.

"What do you think the deal with this school is?" Ellie asked bluntly. I looked at James and he looked back to me, just as taken aback.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"This school comes up out of nowhere claiming to be an alternative school for kids who failed to get into Imperium. I just wanted to see what other people think about it, because I'm not one hundred percent sure myself what to think." Ellie explained. "I'm sure your experience was the same as mine. You got rejected from Imperium and some homeless looking guy told you that you were accepted into his super special school for kids who couldn't just go to waste."

"... Yes." I nodded slowly with James. Ellie shrugged.

"It's not like it matters, I'm here anyways." She said as she messed with her braid.

The bell rang a few seconds after she finished talking and I was already so socially drained for the day, I was relieved. I followed the class into the building where the teacher Brutus led us to a classroom with an enormously tall sliding door marked with a large number one, the same one I saw at orientation when we visited the classes. We filed in and saw our seating chart projected onto the white board. I sat next to a girl named Ri and a boy named Drew, that bird guy I saw at orientation. I took my seat between them and saw Amy was placed near the front of the class near James, Ellie, and Tanner.

"Hey!" I heard a sharp whisper from the next seat over from me. The girl, Ri, was smiling at me and cupping her hands over her mouth so I could hear her better. She was really pretty. Her hair was dyed a dark red and tied back into a messy bun and the hair poking out of it looked kind of like spider legs.

"Hey…" I whispered back.

"What's your name?" She asked me, still smiling, which made me smile a bit too.

"Emmet!" I laughed while I whispered, which made her laugh too.

"I'm Ri!" She said back. I nodded and gestured to the seating chart. "Oh, I know. I already knew your name too. I just really wanted to meet you."

I could feel my cheeks getting hot, so I buried my face in my hands. Ri laughed. I wanted to tell her no one's really wanted to meet me before, but I wanted to play it cool.

"I-" I was suddenly cut off by a loud voice from the front of the class, Brutus.

"Alright!" He shouted, shutting everyone up. "It's the first day of school, you know that, and I've been told a good way to get over the nerves is to do some ice breakers."

Shit.

Alarms went off in my head. They most definitely were not, if anything they made it worse. I have not met one person who likes ice breakers, so I legitimately do not know where he got that information from. They should be burned at the stake if they told him that.

"I'm gonna start, I'm Brutus, my quirk is Acid Spit, it lets me spit acid really far and I like to read books." Something about his demeanor told me he doesn't actually like to read books. As far as I could tell, he doesn't know how to read. "Now you little gremlins do it, I'm gonna sit down and probably nap, tell me when you're done."

He waved his hand toward a girl at the front row in a corner desk, indicating for her to start first, thus starting the first of many introductions.

"I'm Jordan Blaise, my quirk is Hell Hands, it lets me shoot fire out of my hands." She shrugged.

"And?" Brutus asked from his chair where he had a beanie over his face.

"And I like to light stuff on fire." She said simply and shrugged again. Brutus made a circle motion with his hand, telling us to get on with it. The next kid was a boy with cat ears and a tail.

"I'm Max Anceler, my quirk is Cat. I do cat stuff. I like to climb stuff." He said nervously. This went on for a bit.

The rest of the class went as follows:

Adam Breaker, quirk: Fast Arms, who has super speed, but only in his arms. He spoke extremely fast and tapped his leg so fast you'd think he had speed everywhere.

Claire Montgomery, quirk: Spider, who had most characteristics of a spider, including having eight eyes (she had normal glasses for her two normally placed eyes), six arms and two legs, the ability to spin webs, the ability to climb walls, and do basically everything else a spider can. Oh, also she was about seven feet tall. She seemed really friendly though, despite her appearance.

Amy Heather, quirk: Plant Manipulation, which lets her control plants. She was quiet and seemed pretty reserved. When she turned around to greet the class we locked eyes, which made me turn away immediately while blushing.

James Barnes, quirk: Harden, he can harden anything he touches to an almost indestructible degree. He seemed like a big superhero fan.

Ellie Sebastian, quirk: Computer, she can control and interface with electronics. She seemed very sure of herself.

Tanner Alba, quirk: Starlight, he can create light beams from his hands. I met him at orientation but now he seemed even more like a surfer dude.

Vana Black, quirk: Vantablack, she can do the same thing as Tanner, but with beams of darkness. She seemed really emo, but sounded very upbeat and happy.

Luca Singer, quirk: Mass Transfer, he can transfer all of his body mass into any part of his body he chooses. He looked like he lived at the gym.

Piper Grace, quirk: Charmspeak, she can manipulate people into doing things by telling them what to do. She seemed really shy.

Scott Ellis, quirk: Magic Satchel, he can turn any object that can hold things into a magic satchel that will hold anything he puts in it. He seemed like a nerd because of his superhero shirt.

Hope Kasady, quirk: Nail Fire, she can sharpen her fingernails and fire them like projectiles. She was very pretty, and was on her phone taking selfies because Brutus wasn't looking.

Drew Starling, quirk: Bird. He's pretty much just a bird guy. He seemed to really like skateboarding just based on his clothes.

Me.

Ri Masters, quirk: Copycat, she can look at someone and copy all of their movements as they happen. She also has an eidetic memory and remembers everything she sees or learns.

Mara Cade, quirk: Force Push, she can summon an invisible force kind of like a wall to act as a shield or a weapon. She spoke very matter-of-factly and seemed very serious.

Cas Winchester, quirk: Extend, who has a staff that he can infinitely extend or shrink to be pocket sized. He also seemed to be allergic to sleeves, because his shirt was the kind that didn't have any and was ripped all the way to the bottom on the side.

And that was everyone.

I was already exhausted at the end of this, but there was still about seven hours and some change left of the day. Brutus stood up and clapped his hands.

"Change into your PE clothes, we're going outside." Brutus told us as he left the room. We all looked at each other, confused, but we went to the locker rooms and changed anyway. When we got done, we followed Brutus out to the end zone of a football field, where he handed Adam, the kid with the fast arms, a baseball. "What do you think was the farthest you could throw a ball like this in middle school?"

"Like… two hundred feet? What's that, like seventy yards?" Adam asked. Brutus shrugged.

"Throw it, but put some extra flair on it." Brutus told him.

"Like, use my quirk?" Adam asked. Brutus gave an exaggerated nod. Adam shrugged. Faster than I could even register, he spun his arm around and tossed the ball across the football field, sending it soaring through the field goal and well past the boundaries of the school. Brutus got a beep on his phone when it presumably landed.

"One thousand three hundred feet!" The phone spoke, shocking all of us.

"You're all gonna have to get used to using these quirks as second nature." Brutus explained. My heart dropped. "I know in middle school you were told never to use them at school, but forget about that here. You're going to need to unlearn everything you know and push yourself further than you've ever gone. This school year is not going to be easy."

"Are we gonna get to try the ball throw?" Someone from the class asked.

"No, I only had one of those." Brutus said flatly. "I was just trying to prove a… I-I really don't know why I did that."

This earned a few chuckles, which seemed to piss Brutus off. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small object, then pulled something off of it and tossed it onto the ground. I stumbled back and fell onto my butt when I realized he had thrown a grenade. Everyone else in class started running backwards and ducking and yelling. For a second, I thought that was it for me, but then Brutus started busting out laughing.

He picked up the grenade and put it in his pocket.

"It's a dummy, you idiots." He reprimanded us. "You know, the whole point of this school is to shape you into heroes, the whole point of being a hero is to be selfless."

"Were you expecting one of us to kill ourselves by jumping on a grenade or something?" Amy asked from the crowd.

"Yes." Brutus said simply. We were all stumped and stayed silent. He then looked at me. "Get off your ass."

I looked around and saw everyone else standing up looking at me, so I scurried to my feet and dusted myself off.

"If you want to become heroes, you're going to have to start thinking about what you can do for other people. Yes, I was expecting you to jump on the grenade to save your fellow heroes because someday you may have to." Brutus continued as he slipped the grenade back into his pocket.

"Are your lessons gonna be filled with stuff like that, or-" I heard Tanner start to talk, but Brutus cut him off.

"If they're not, I'm not doing my job." Something about this guy seemed familiar, but I'm not really sure why. Like I'd known him, maybe? He doesn't seem like a hero, he's much too unprofessional looking for that. His hair was wild and his beard was long. None of his clothes fit properly, they hung on his body like they were about a size too big, and he didn't seem like he'd bathed for a while. "Follow me."

Brutus walked us across the football field at a brisk pace, leading us to a track that looped around the field. From his pocket, he produced a stopwatch.

"This track is four hundred meters around the football field. Quick Bolt, The Running Hero, can run that in about half a second. I know that probably sounds unreasonable for you lucky few, so let's dial it back a bit. The average professional hero can circle this track in about fifty seconds, I want you all to do it in at least fifty-five seconds today. That'll let me get me an idea of how much training you will need. By the end of the year I expect sub forty-five seconds from each of you."

The immediate thing that came to my mind was "uh oh". I didn't specialize in sprinting, I was a distance runner.

"What if we can't?" Someone asked.

"If you can't you're even more hopeless than I thought, but no worries, we can probably change that." Brutus answered coldly. "Probably. There's a reason you all were rejected from Imperium, and I suspect that if any one of you fail of this week's physical tests, they made the right choice on some of you."

He glanced at me, which might as well have been him kicking me in the chest and telling me to get out. I straightened my posture, trying to maybe look tougher and therefore more heroic.

"This is the first test of the week that we will be putting you all through today so we can get an idea of how far you have to become to be worthy of your status as a hero."

"What's tomorrow's test?" Ellie asked.

"Combat." Brutus said as he motioned for her to step up to the start line. She hesitantly stepped up and got into a running stance. None of us had any follow up questions, but we started mumbling. I felt something poke my ribs and I turned to see Scott, the magic satchel kid.

"He's wrong about Quick Bolt, he can run this in a quarter of a second." Scott said quietly. "He ran a track like this in his race against Tracer Round last year. His time was zero point two four seconds."

"... Okay?" I whispered back.

"Scotty boy!" Brutus said sternly. "Shut the hell up."

Everyone laughed quietly.

"Yes sir." Scott stepped back in embarrassment.

"Alright, when I click this stopwatch, you're gonna sprint around this track as fast as you can, got it?" Brutus asked Ellie. She nodded. The stopwatch beeped and she took off, faster than I expected. We watched her round the track in silence. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but it was a pretty awkward silence. When she circled back around she had a time of one minute and two seconds. She looked bummed when Brutus told her, but he reminded her that she's just starting.

One by one, we were all picked out to run the track, only three of us getting under fifty-five seconds, them being Ri with a time of fifty-two, Luca with fifty-one, and Max with an insane thirty-nine seconds thanks to his cat quirk. I was the last one selected, which I can't imagine is because Brutus saved the best for last. I stepped up to the line and took a deep breath before Brutus started my time. I started out sprinting, but quickly felt the distance runner in me start to come out. I kept sprinting nevertheless, and when I crossed the finish line I nearly collapsed. It truly felt worse to sprint four hundred meters than it did to jog a whole mile.

"One minute and one second." Brutus announced. I sighed, but it's not like anyone else could hear through my labored breathing. "You all did about as well as I expected. Tomorrow, we'll be doing combat training with your hero costumes. Imperium had them fabricated based on what you submitted for designs over the summer, and we'll be breaking them in. As for today, I just wanted to do a little pre-test, to get some idea of what I'm working with. Anyone who ran the lap in one minute or over, I'll be keeping my eye particularly close on you, however. Being 'not so bad' will only work for so long. If you don't shape up, you're going home."

After a few more minutes of Brutus talking to us about what it takes to make it here, we started walking back to class. The feeling of Brutus being someone I recognized never went away, but I figured it was just deja vu. When we entered the building and got into the locker rooms, I heard people start talking about their times.

"Dude, you're actually a beast." I heard Tanner say to someone across the locker room. I peered around the lockers and saw he was talking to Luca, one of the people who got a sub fifty-five second run. He was extremely muscular and tall, probably a good eight inches taller than me.

"I know." He said sternly, almost sounding mean, as he slipped his normal shirt back on. Tanner gave him a quizzical look and went back to minding his own business.

"I think we're all forgetting who ran that track the fastest." I heard someone say from across the locker room. I turned and saw Max, the cat guy.

"Don't be too proud, you basically cheated." Someone else called out.

"Don't hate me cause I'm beautiful, okay?" Max defended himself. "I can't help it that I was born with maybe the most practical quirk in the class."

"Keep riding that high, my man." Luca said loudly. "Let's see how you do in combat training."

Max laughed.

"I'm only messing around, I just wanted to see if Brutus would even let me run on all fours around the track." Max said. "I know you would have smoked me."

I turned to Max and he winked, letting me know he was still just messing around.

"Max, I'm pretty sure I would have smoked you too if I used my quirk." I heard Drew say. "I can fly pretty fast."

"Wait until I swat you outta the air, fly boy." Max said, drawing a claw out of the tip of his index finger. It wasn't particularly long, but the way it protruded from his finger was kinda gross.

"Max, that is disgusting." Another boy, Adam, said through a series of fake gags. I mean, I hope they were fake.

"Come on, this is nothin', boys." Max said as he retracted the claw. "That girl, Hope, I went to middle school with her. Should see what it looks like when she does her thing."

Max pointed to his left ear, where he had a long scar along the side of it.

"She's friendly, just don't piss her off." Max warned us.

"Speaking of middle school, any of you guys go with anyone here?" Tanner asked after chugging about half a water bottle.

"I went to a school a couple cities over with Luca." Cas spoke up. "Don't let his silence fool you, he's very sensitive."

I looked over and saw Luca crack a smile, making him look way nicer than before.

"I went to Jakku Junior High with Amy, that plant girl." Tanner said. "We got put together on a science fair project because I make light and she does plants.*

I almost asked about what she was like, but Brutus interrupted.

"How long does it take to get dressed?" Brutus hollered down the stairs. "Get back up here, we have a schedule."

We all shut up after that and went upstairs.

The rest of the day was almost exactly like every other day of a normal school. We had an "assembly" welcoming us to the new school, but since we didn't get to go to Imperium's auditorium, we were just in the cafeteria watching a sideshow on a projector while Brutus stumbled his way through it. He seemed to do much better when he wasn't doing real teacher stuff.

After the assembly was a math class where we got the syllabus and started a short lesson. After that, we had an English class where we also got a syllabus along with our first assignment. We received an autobiography about the ex-pro hero Mr. Glass Man, the invisibility hero. Which would actually make him the fifteenth invisibility hero at the time, according to Scott. Apparently, as of today, there are thirty-two active invisibility heroes across America. After this class was lunch.

Lunch on the first day of school was never fun for me, but it's especially not fun when there's only eighteen kids in your entire school. This cafeteria wasn't small, either. It was clearly made to house at least ten classes at a time, which made our small class of less than twenty look like we were huddled up in a corner. Usually, I'd sit by myself, but I felt as if I'd stick out too much if I had.

I scanned the lunchroom and saw a shockingly social classroom of kids who pretty much didn't know each other. Drew, Max, Cas, and Luca were sitting together, talking and laughing about something. James, Tanner, Scott, and Adam were also at a table, talking to each other. I was about to bite the bullet and sit on my own so I didn't have to bother anyone else who had already gotten to know people, when I heard someone called my name.

"Emmet!" I turned to see Ri sitting at a table on the opposite end from all the other girls, who were talking to each other. "I'm lonely, keep me company."

I nervously walked over and sat down.

"Hi?" I asked, unsure of why she'd want to sit with me.

"You looked lonely." Ri said through a mouthful of sandwich. "Also. I saw you on the car ride to school today at an MMA gym."

"Yeah, I get lessons there." I nodded as I took a bite of my food. Ri nodded too.

"What do you learn?" She asked. I explained to her that I mostly learned Jiu Jitsu. "If you want, I can teach you some stuff I know, I have an eidetic memory so I just, like, remember stuff I see. I know quite a bit of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu."

I thought about how Nathan said that he wasn't giving me a lesson today, so I nodded.

"I mean, I don't have lessons today, so I can totally do that." I said. Ri smiled really big.

"Great, it's a date!" She exclaimed. I smiled, not knowing exactly what she meant. "We can meet outside the dorms today after school and I'll show you some stuff."

For the rest of the lunch period, we talked about stuff we'd learned while doing martial arts. She was surprised at how much I knew, despite only having learned for a few months, but I explained how skilled Nathan was. She explained to me how when she was younger she used to watch old martial arts movies and then use what she saw and therefore learned to beat up her siblings, of which she apparently has five. I wasn't even totally convinced a human being could produce six kids, but apparently they can. I told her about how my dad wanted to become a hero and she told me her dad did too, so that was neat.

I felt pretty proud of myself after that lunch for making a friend, so going into my next class, History of Heroes, I was pretty confident. The confidence was kinda crushed when I started thinking she probably only talked to me to be nice. I pushed that thought to the side and just stayed happy that I had a friend. Brutus also introduced a new teacher, or I guess a teacher's assistant, Olivia. She was a college student from a hero university and she was very happy to be here.

Scott was also particularly happy with this class, he basically had something to say every few minutes about heroes. Brutus wasn't particularly pleased he kept basically interrupting, but we were all pretty amused. We actually may have learned more from Scott than we did from the class. I couldn't tell if he was just really excited for this class or if he wanted to look good for Olivia, but he kept on spitting facts.

That class was our last for today, meaning we all got to go back to our official new homes, the dorms. When I got to the dorms, I was pretty much immediately yanked back out the doors by my wrist. I yelped and turned, seeing Ri as she dragged me to a grassy patch outside the dorms.

"Oh, we're doing this right now?" I asked as she pulled me along. When we reached the spot, she let me go and nodded.

"I mean I would have waited, but I'm really bored." Ri told me. She threw up her guard and started gently hopping back and forth. I slowly took off my backpack and tossed it away, also throwing up my guard.

"I haven't really had any time to prepaaarree…." I trailed off as Ri started to mimic exactly what I was doing, down to my subtle fidget. "Whoa."

Ri smirked.

"Hit me." Ri said quietly.

"Uhhh-" When I moved my mouth, so did hers, adding to the weirdness.

"Come on, you can hit me, I can take it." Ri egged me on.

"Girls are soft…" I said, trailing off as she continued to mimic me. Ri scoffed and stepped forward, sweeping my leg almost faster than I could tell, sending me onto my back, wheezing.

"Who's soft?" Ri asked as she inspected her nails. I laughed and she helped me up.

"How am I supposed to hit you?" I asked as I brushed myself off. She shrugged.

"I guess you're not." She told me. "Put your guard back up, I wanna show you some stuff."

I did as she said and she stepped to me.

"You're shorter than a lot of guys, right?" She asked me. I nodded.

"Five foot eight, I think?" I said. She went behind me and grabbed my arms.

"Since you're smaller I don't really know if you can put as much force behind a punch as a taller person, so what you can do is use your elbows and knees." She demonstrated by moving my arm in a motion that mimed me hitting someone with my elbow. "You smell nice."

I furrowed my eyebrows.

"Thanks….?" I said quietly. Ri came back around to face me.

"Now throw a punch at me." Ri told me. I was apprehensive at first, but she rushed to make me feel better about it. "I can take it. Also, I won't use my quirk."

I threw up my guard and threw a right hook, which she caught with ease. I thought that was the end of it, but she punched me in the chest, spun around so I was facing her back, and then she yanked on my arm so hard that I flew over her back and went straight to the ground, ending up straight on my back again.

"Why me?" I wheeze.

"Don't be a baby!" Ri laughed. "That was krav maga."

I rolled over onto my chest and pushed myself to my feet.

"On the plus side, I think my back feels much better now." I joked. It got a laugh out of Ri.

She followed that up by showing me how exactly to do it, which basically meant doing it again to me, only slower. I never got a hit in on her the entire afternoon, because we were there for the entire afternoon. When we finally stopped, it wasn't because we were tired, though I definitely was, it was because Brutus yelled at us to get back inside to do our homework. I grabbed my backpack and started walking with Ri to the dorms.

"That was fun, right?" Ri asked me. I nodded.

"Yeah, of course!" I told her. Ri sighed in relief.

"I thought you might've felt emasculated or something like that." She said. I furrowed my brows.

"Why?"

"Cause I kicked your ass." She said as she held the door open for me.

"I mean, I let you." I defended myself as I walked in.

"Still kicked your ass." Ri branched off from me to walk to her dorm and winked at me. "Let's do it again sometime."

I smiled back at her and walked up the stairs to my dorm, glad that I'd had my first ever successful first day of school.

My new longest chapter ever! Two in a row baybeee! We're finally getting to the meat of the story so I hope anyone reading this hasn't checked out too hard. Leave a review or drop a follow if you want, either one would be hugely appreciated. And if you think you don't wanna leave a review because it won't matter, thank again, because I appreciate every single review that comes my way, I assure you. Let me know what you think because I will read it and I will appreciate it, even if it's constructive criticism.