Chapter Ten
Useless
The following month at school was more grueling than anything I had ever experienced. After our first session of combat training, we had more standard fight training against faux villains. It's not as if those were easy, they just didn't have quirks to kill you with, just their bodies. The faux villains were robots, about twice as tall as a person, but not humanoid at all. They rolled around on a big wheel, had two big arms, and a rectangular head. Brutus told us they were hand-me-downs from Imperium, and I believed it. The green paint was chipped on many of them, revealing the gun metal surface below it at many points, the metal plates on them were all dented beyond belief, and the red lights that adorned the head and the wheel well were either broken or hardly working.
My staff was invaluable for an exercise like this. Sure, maybe I could take down a person with my fists, but there's no way I could take down a robot, forget a villain that is physically larger than me or with a unique mutation or transformation quirk. I was right to assume the metal was heavy-duty because it took a heavy beating against the robots, allowing me to take a couple down. They weren't exactly hard to fight, in fact there was a button hidden on the back under one of the armor plates to deactivate them, they were just awkward. We did two lessons fighting them and not breaking them, then two where we each got to destroy them, because that was their ultimate purpose.
After those four lessons, we did a lesson on disaster rescue. Brutus called it the most important part of being a hero. Saving people is the number one goal, not looking good for the camera or fighting villains. We used a defunct facility belonging to a hero school from the next town over called the Abundant Disaster Zone to train at. It was an enormous structure almost reminiscent of a football stadium, except the inside was filled with a mountain, a city block, a muddy hill, and a lake. We spent an entire day saving mannequins from drowning, a landslide, a mudslide, a collapsed building, and pile-ups ranging from five cars to twenty.
By the end of the month, we were all spent. I hung out with Ri a lot, learning more about how to fight from her. She watched some videos of various heroes fighting with bo staffs to teach me some things, which I was jealous of. She could watch YouTube and become an expert but I had to actually practice? Yeah, okay sure. Part of me thought she wanted just another excuse to snack me around some more, this time with a metal stick. Ri was cool though, she let me hang out with her outside of school, which is something I'd never really done with other friends I'd had before.
The costume designers at Imperium basically told me they refuse to take my costume in for repairs because of how badly it was designed. Apparently it was super amateurish, with design flaws including but not limited to no head protection, little armor, flimsy material, and blandness. I guess they just put together exactly what I wrote down, because they designed it. They told me I was getting a new costume and they were making the decisions, not me. This left me only able to wear my gym clothes at hero lessons, so I looked pretty dumb next to everybody.
After the first month of school, we got a three day weekend, giving us ample time to recover from the last month of nonstop physical exertion. Of course, he also said that we shouldn't slack off so I got some pretty mixed signals. On the Friday of the three day weekend, I was up late doing homework well after James had gone to bed. After finishing, instead of going to bed I wandered out to the common room, hoping to find someone to hang out with. Brutus had also already gone to bed, and I had found out he slept in his own room in one of the hallways not occupied by any students.
While walking out to the common room, I saw Amy and her boyfriend Jason outside on the sidewalk, not yelling at each other but certainly arguing. Part of me wanted to walk back to my room and forget I'd seen anything, but another part of me felt what I'd felt when I saw my neighbor's house had been broken into. And another part of me felt what I'd felt a thousand other times before with my mom and other guys. My feet started taking me down the stairs before I could second guess myself and I opened the door, making them pause and turn to me.
"What's goin' on, guys?" I asked, smiling awkwardly. Amy scoffed and turned, crossing her arms. Jason looked me up and down.
"Is this one of your classmates?" Jason asked. He was tall, maybe about six foot two. He also definitely didn't look our age. If I didn't know he was her boyfriend, I'd guess her older brother. He gave me major creeps, and made me wonder about their relationship.
"Yeah, go away, Emmet." Amy turned around and looked at me, almost looking like she was pleading with me.
"Oh, come on babe, that's no way to treat your classmate." Jason took a big step towards me, causing me to flinch, making him laugh. "Don't worry tiger, I don't bite."
He held out his hand for a shake, which I obliged. Following that, there was a huge silence.
"So what're you guys up to?" I asked, breaking the silence. Jason chuckled and glanced over to Amy.
"We were just talking about a party I'm having tomorrow night." Jason told me.
"Oh, okay…" I said. Amy took a few steps towards the doors, but Jason grabbed her shoulder, stopping her.
"Really sorry if it looked serious, she gets a bit feisty." Jason laughed. I forced out a chuckle, but cringed inside when I looked at Amy. I shot her a half smile. "Can't be causing trouble with security like you out here, can I? What quirk you got anyways, man? Gotta be pretty cool to hang out with these guys, I think one of you is just a bird, right? Or am I hallucinating?"
"Babe, he's quirkless, leave him alone." Amy turned to Jason and muttered under his breath. She put a hand on his chest, but he stepped forward when she said it. I took another step backward as I flinched, but he simply placed his arm around my shoulder and pulled me close. I squirmed, but he laughed.
"Tell you what, Emmet." Jason told me. "You ever party before? Don't answer that, you're invited to mine tomorrow."
"Uhhh, I don't-" I started, but I was cut off.
"I'll pick you up with Amy at nine tomorrow, then." Jason patted me on the shoulder and walked back to Amy, who he kissed on the forehead. "I'll see you later, Emmy!"
Jason walked back to his car, leaving me and Amy standing outside the dorms illuminated only by dim flood lights of the building. As soon as he left, Amy put her hands on my chest and pushed me.
"Can you mind your own damn business?! " Amy yelled. I shushed her, not wanting Brutus to wake up, which made her roll her eyes. "Why did you even come out here?"
"I-I just thought something might be wrong like that one night, I just didn't want you to get hurt-" I tried to explain myself.
"I don't need you to white knight me, I know how to handle him." Amy told me, still clearly angry.
"Clearly not, that night it looked like he was about to rip your arm out of its socket!" I argued. Amy scoffed and turned to walk inside.
"Look, I've seen shit like this before and it never ends well, I just-"
"You do NOT get to tell me how to have a relationship, okay?" Amy turned around and poked my chest and pushed the doors open. I rushed after her.
"I didn't mean any harm, I swear-"
"Save your useless ass breath, okay Emmet?"
I paused for a second in the doorway while she rushed down the hall to her dorms.
"I'm sorry, I-"
"Leave me alone, asshole." She said as she pushed the door open to her room, which again was devoid of her roommate Claire, the spider girl, who I learned earlier in the month stayed at her parents' house on the weekends. She walked inside and flopped onto her bed, but didn't slam the door in my face, so I stood in the doorway awkwardly. "Go!"
"I'm really sorry." I said quietly. "I didn't mean to piss you off."
"Then why did you go out there and interrupt us?" Amy asked, sitting up on her bed. I sat for a second, thinking.
"I don't know, my legs just moved." Amy rolled her eyes.
"Yeah, listen, I know you're all buddy buddy with that Ri, so why don't you get out of here and go try to get into her pants instead?" Amy held out her arm, signaling for me to leave. I furrowed my eyebrows.
"Wait… You think I want to… Like, have sex with you?" I asked. Amy's mean look faded for just a second, but she buried her face into her hands immediately. "I just… My mom used to have boyfriends who weren't really cool dudes. They fought a lot, and when he grabbed your wrist the other night it kind of made me worried that the same things that happened to her were…"
"I'm sorry. I didn't think of that." Amy apologized, her face still buried in her hands. She lifted her head and half smiled. "I'm okay."
"Okay." I nodded. "I guess you don't want me to go to the party?"
Amy sighed.
"You can, if you want. And if you aren't a snitch. It's gonna be Jason and his senior friends, so it won't exactly be like Chuck E. Cheese or whatever you're used to." Amy told me. "Sorry, if that's not accurate, it just really looks like it."
"It's… Not far off." I muttered.
"Listen, whatever you think was going on that night, I promise it's a misunderstanding." Amy told me. "Can you like, please get out, though? I need to get changed."
I nodded and walked backwards, closing the door as I went.
"I'm sorry." I said before I walked back to the common area.
Useless breath.
The next day, I spent my time thinking about what Amy said to me. I decided I wasn't going to inject myself into situations with them and just let them handle it, because apparently it was more complicated than it seemed. Ri and I didn't train that day because she was at home, but we texted the whole day. I told her about the party and she said she was bummed I didn't tell her before she left yesterday. She did, however, tell me that all would be forgiven if I bought her ice cream when she got back.
That night, I was hanging out with James when Amy knocked on the door looking for me.
"Ooh, you got a date?" James tossed a paper ball at me as I left the room. I laughed, throwing it back at him.
"Nah, I'm going to a party." I said as I put a hoodie on.
"And you didn't invite me. I'm shocked, honestly." James feigned hurt, and fake cried as I left the room. When I closed the door, Amy was already walking down the hallway. I followed her downstairs where Jason was waiting outside his car. When I got outside, Amy stayed silent as Jason greeted her.
"Emmy!" Jason greeted me as he got back into the driver's seat. Amy hopped into the passenger seat, so I got in the back of the car, which was occupied by another guy, presumably one of Jason's friends. "Emmet, meet Dylan, he's an idiot."
Dylan didn't acknowledge me. I shuffled nervously in my seat as Jason turned around in the parking lot and started driving us to the party. We sat in silence for a good five minutes until Jason broke the silence.
"So, Emmet, what's it like being quirkless at a school like that?" Jason asked.
"Uhhhh, it's almost like normal school." I said. "We did some disaster rescue recently, and-"
"Jesus..." Dylan muttered under his breath.
"Dylan, shut the hell up and let the man talk. He's the one in hero school, alright, didn't you drop out in seventh grade?" Jason told Dylan, which shut him up. I never finished my sentence.
"So where's this party?" I asked, trying to break the awkward silence.
"Oh, it's down by this lake. It's super secluded, so no one can snitch on us for using our quirks." Jason explained. "We use them for party tricks a lot."
"Cool…" I trailed off. Amy stayed silent the whole ride, just staring out the window as we went. Eventually we pulled into a big section of woods marked as private property, which Jason told me was nothing to worry about because they'd been coming there for years. We drove for another ten minutes in complete silence, not even a radio. I was surprised when Jason pulled up to the lake and no one was there. It was pitch black.
"We're always the first ones here, we gotta get some shit outta the trunk so people actually show up." Jason said. "Emmy, why don't you come help me."
I reluctantly opened the door and stepped out of the car, following Jason to the trunk.
"Yeah, we just gotta grab some coolers." He told me as he popped the trunk. I saw three blue coolers, filled with what I assumed was booze. I grabbed one and started walking towards a picnic table by the lake. "I got a question for you, Emmet."
"Yeah?" I asked as I set the cooler down on the table. He did the same and leaned on the table.
"Why are you trying to fuck my girlfriend?" Jason asked, stepping closer to me, spitting in my face as he talked.
"I-uhh-what are you…?" He took me by complete surprise, I was completely speechless.
"Yeah, I'm not an idiot. She told me about how you came to her room that night. And apparently you came by again last night." Jason continued to step towards me as I backed away. "Why in hell would she ever want someone like you?"
"Dude, I'm really not-" Jason cut me off with a punch to the stomach that made me puke in my mouth and fall to the ground, on top of giving me what felt like an electric shock.
"Don't. Don't lie to me." Jason said through gritted teeth. "If I ever see you talk to her again, I'll kill you. You can't do shit to me, either. Quirkless little shit."
I gritted my teeth and jumped to my feet, ready to throw a punch at Jason, but he held out his hand and delivered another electric shock to me, sending me right back to the ground. He followed that up with a kick to the face, then one to my stomach. And then another. And another. And once he got tired of that, he kicked me in the face again, shocking the hell out of me one last time. In my daze, I thought he got bored, but Amy had gotten out of the car and pushed Jason away. I opened my eyes for just a moment just to see Jason push her away and walked back to the car, dragging her along with him. I couldn't hear what they were talking about, either because of head trauma or because they weren't talking. I really couldn't tell.
I rolled over onto my back in immense pain and used the picnic table to pull myself up. I could hardly use any of my core muscles, so I had to fight really hard to actually get up. I got to my feet and pushed the coolers off the table, seeing they were filled with nothing but ice. Blood poured from my face, from where I didn't know. It was probably from everywhere. I turned my head and saw Jason's car take off down the dirt road and out of the woods, leaving me completely alone.
I couldn't exactly tell what was going on in my head at the time. Tears started to get mixed in with the blood, so maybe it was sadness? But I was also seething with rage, so it was really anyone's guess. I pulled out my phone and looked at myself in the selfie camera to get an idea of the damage. Other than my nose gushing blood, my lip being split, and my eye swelling shut, I'd have to say it wasn't that bad. I thought about calling someone, but didn't want to bother anyone with coming out to the middle of nowhere to get me, so I just threw my phone in my pocket again and started walking.
Another fight lost before I even had a chance to fight back. As I walked along the dirt road, following the tire tracks to the main road, all I thought about was how easily I was taken down. Five months I'd been training, and I had nothing to show for it. If I left Pathfinder now, I'd be cutting my losses. A hero with real powers at some point will do what I want to do. It's not like anyone will even want to root for someone with no powers, I'm as good as dead in the event of a real villain attack. One shock, one punch, one anything and I'm irrelevant.
I should probably drop out.
Right?
Or maybe I was already sitting on all the power I needed. Right there in my drawer.
I know this was probably not the most eventful chapter but I had a lot of fun writing it and I've been sitting on this idea for a long time. Drop a follow or favorite and review if you'd like!
