Flying High
Chapter 3 – School Daze
By: CountessMorgana
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The daughter of Mr. Incredible and Elastigirl was not the first high-school student to be a super, and she certainly wasn't the first teenager to have a crush on a boy. Before Violet Parr and Tony Rydinger, before the ban on supers, before the Glory Days ended, there was Stratogale and Macroburst. And their story isn't quite as typical as one would expect.
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Run and tell all of the angels
This could take all night
Think I need a devil to help me get things right
Hook me up a new revolution
Cause this one is a lie
We sat around laughing and watched the last one die
I'm looking to the sky to save me
Looking for a sign of life
Looking for something to help me burn out bright
I'm looking for complication
Looking cause I'm tired of trying
Make my way back home when I learn to fly
Foo Fighters, "Learn To Fly"
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Riverview Suburb, Howard Residence. 9 September 1952
"Anyway, thanks for the tea, Everard. I'll see you later in the office. These patients... for once I just wish they'd just solve their own problems!"
"Not much future in practicing psychology if that happened. Ta, Rose."
At seven in the morning, Dr. Rose Cameron had graciously arrived in person to drop off a package for Dr. Everard Howard, an unusual but not entirely unheard-of event. She'd stayed long enough for a cup of tea before dashing off, and now Everard was reviewing the list of patients due for appointments that day, recalling their case files and previous visits.
One o'clock, Mrs. Kingston, who was overcoming her bout with depression with his help. Two o'clock would see Mr. Davies and his difficulties with anger management and drink. All things considered, Everard thanked God that he could mentally subdue Mr. Davies should the session get out of hand. Ah, there was Mr. Pollard at three-thirty, who still had problems relating to his adult son and new daughter-in-law even after the wedding was done and over with.
Hmm, bridging a generation gap. Everard smiled. Now that he could sympathise with. Unconsciously Everard's gaze was drawn upwards out his study doors and up the stairs in the direction of one particular room, from where emanated a loud thump and an agonized yell.
"BLEEDING HELL, I'M LATE!"
"Language, Mackenzie," Everard called automatically, quickly checking the clock.
"S'rry," came the muffled reply. Everard frowned at the time – seven-fifteen in the morning. Mackenzie's classes didn't begin until half-eight, and if anything the boy was early for once in his life. Wasn't he?
Mackenzie, at that moment, was clattering down the stairs in a state that had his uncle glaring in disapproval. School blazer only half on, tie knotted sloppily about the neck, bookbag haphazardly hanging off one shoulder, hair still damp from a hasty shower... Everard, yet again, regretted not sending his nephew to Eton. (Or better still, Ampleforth.) These American habits were getting more pronounced in the lad with every passing year. Even Mackie's voice, outside the Howard home and on missions, was indistinguishable from his Yankee schoolmates.
Lord, but Everard wished Kenneth and Mary were still alive to raise their wayward son. He himself was never meant for parenting, surrogate or otherwise, despite Psycwave's protests that he was doing just fine. (Everard did note that Rose demurred when he suggested she take over Mackenzie's upbringing, the twit.)
At half-past seven, Everard finally headed into the kitchen and voiced his curiosity.
"Normally I've quite a time getting you on your way to school at all, let alone on time. How is today any different?"
Mackie tried to explain through a mouthful of toast: "Upper school freshmen get that lecture hall on the third floor, south wing. They finally finished the repairs."
It took a moment for Everard to remember. An electrical fire had burned the hall in question during the holidays, which meant there hadn't been anyone in harm's way – highly fortunate, for the fire turned out to have completely gutted the interior of the lecture hall, and left the exterior walls of the building itself untouched. Very likely the fire would have spread to consume the entire school had it not been for the debut of... "Stormicide, wasn't it?" Everard asked. The young woman with gas-based powers was the subject of many jokes around the NSA.
Mackenzie nodded, taking another bite and saying, "S'pose we're lucky she got her arse there in time."
"Language, son."
Seeing his uncle's displeased expression, Mackie quickly swallowed before continuing. "Anyway, the east back corner seats are the best. Everyone tries to get them because by R.H. tradition, the guy or girl who gets there first secures the whole eastern half of the room for their side."
"Except with the gender divide closed, that tradition's rather obsolete now," Everard remarked.
"True, but going early still pays off. Amery and I'll be there when the doors open. All the kids are after those back seats, especially the scrub team. We're gonna have to run to get ahead of the bas— Uh, yeah."
"Absolutely not. I forbid you to go near those seats. You're to sit up front where your professor can keep an eye on you."
"You're joking, right?" Mackenzie asked, appalled, before shoving down the last of the toast and heading toward the door.
"Fix your tie, lad, and – what's this?" Everard asked, spotting a small box on the steps before Mackie could crush it underfoot.
Mackenzie paused with one foot out the door. "Huh. No clue."
"It's got your name on it," Everard said. Mackenzie immediately seized the package. A letter underneath it was addressed to Everard himself, and the doctor recognised the handwriting.
'Psycwave,' he thought grimly. Her odd visit that morning suddenly made more sense. This didn't bode well.
Everard's musings were interrupted by a joyful whoop from Mackenzie. The elder man looked up in time to see his nephew running down the path, laughing like mad, towards...
Dear Lord, was that a motorbike?
With a sinking feeling, Everard espied a set of keys in Mackenzie's grasp. 'Heaven help us all.'
Lying on the threshold were the remains of Psycwave's package and a second, opened letter. This one was addressed to Mackenzie, and in all likelihood forgotten by the boy. A cursory scan of that missive had Everard swiftly reading the one meant for himself. What Everard saw there had him crumpling the paper in anger as Mackenzie gleefully sped off on the new sports bike.
'That sanctimonious cow!'
With his nephew long gone, Everard went back to his list of patients, considering, before he decisively made a call and told the secretary to leave some mid-afternoon slots clear. Hanging up the phone, Everard had a feeling certain faculty over at Riverview Heights Prep might be dropping in before the day was out.
As for his damned colleague, he was going to have a very long chat with Rose once their lunch break came round.
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Main Street, Riverview
Dear Mackenzie,
You're sixteen years old, and I'm pretty sure you'll have gotten your driving licence by now. I also know about those corner seats – and before you ask, remember, I went to R.H. too, even won the east half that year for the girls. Good school, good times.
Here's something from me to you to get an edge on the competition. All the paperwork's been done and ownership is in your name. You're responsible for insurance and maintenance though, since I'm not that generous. Knock yourself out, kid!
Happy birthday, and make the best of it!
Rose
PS. Just don't try to do anything too stupid, or Everard will kill us both.
He'd really need to thank Psycwave later, Mackenzie knew, even if presents like his were really more run of the mill here. Appearances and displays of wealth were all part of living in highly affluent suburbs like Riverview or neighbouring Arcadia. (Nearby Bayside was seen to be middle-class at best.) Uncle Everard had once remarked that if he had wanted to live with the upper class, he'd have stayed in Britain with the rest of the old aristocratic families instead of these nouveau-riche Americans.
Still, there was one good thing about being a super and living in Riverview. Dollars to donuts the vast majority of Riverview dwellers were thoroughly absorbed with their own personal lives and fluctuating bank account statements. The odd hours kept by the Howard household had always gone unnoticed.
And speeding down Riverview's High Street, Mackenzie hoped it would stay that way. He quickly banished the thoughts from his head, as Riverview Heights Preparatory was directly ahead... And it looked as if he wasn't the only person arriving early in a new vehicle.
With a little manoeuvring, he overtook a silver fin-tailed sports coupe as the vehicles entered the school's student parking lot. Mackenzie spotted his friend and fellow soccer enthusiast Frank Amery in the driver seat waving, and grinned in response. Speeding up slightly, he beat Frank to the first prime spot in the row and the only one that younger students were allowed to claim. The rest would be filled by upperclassmen as per the unwritten rules of the school.
"No fair!" he heard Frank yell.
"All's fair in love and parking wars, Amery!" Mackenzie called.
"Especially when assignments are first-come first-serve!" came the grumbled response.
"Serves you right for slowing down back there," Mackenzie pointed out. "Maybe next time, Frank!"
"Next time my—Hey! Kintail! Wait up!"
Mackie was by then already halfway to the massive double oak doors to the main building. He tugged them open, sprinted inside, and maybe got as far as ten feet before he encountered a setback – he ran right into something.
Stumbling back a few steps, wincing from the impact, Mackenzie squinted at the obstacle and quickly realized what he had run into; not something, someone. A girl with curly blond hair was on the floor at his feet, one hand pressed to her forehead and groaning in pain.
"Watch where you're going!" Another girl said heatedly. This one had dark hair cut in a fringe in the front, with the rest pulled back in a plait. She glared at Mackenzie while helping her friend to her feet. Both wore the girls' version of the Riverview Heights uniform, complete with ascots and tailored skirts.
"Sorry, my fault," Mackenzie said apologetically, bending down to take the blonde's other arm. Blondie scowled and made to brush his arm away when something heavy bore down on Mackenzie's shoulders. The weight was gone quick as it came, but the girls still screamed. Mackenzie looked up in time to see both Blondie and Plait-Hair tumble to the floor and Frank Amery's stupid backside as the other boy landed with a solid thump.
Mackenzie was surprised Amery had the nerve to vault over the lot of them. Thankfully his so-called friend managed to avoid the girls – there would have been broken bones instead of frazzled wits if he hadn't.
"Frank!" Mackenzie yelled.
"Sorry!" But aside from the one verbal admission of guilt Frank didn't even pause. "Who's slow now? Might as well give up, Kintail!"
" 'Scuse," Mackie muttered, scrambling to his feet. He wasn't about to admit defeat to someone who literally leapfrogged over his opponents to get ahead.
"Oh, that's nice!" one of the girls shouted. "Leave us here, why don't you!"
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"They're not listening, are they?" the blonde said as Mackenzie Kintail disappeared up the stairs without answering.
"No," Enid agreed, once more helping her friend up. "But at least we managed to get those back corner seats before they did."
"What I wouldn't give to see their juvenile little faces when they see our notebooks and pens staking out our spots!" the blond girl began to laugh.
Enid smiled, and then a thought occurred to her. "Gemma?"
"Yeah?"
"Do you think they'll mind? That we got those seats instead?"
Gemma sighed. "Of course they will. There's just nothing they can do about it."
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"DARN!"
Mackenzie heard Frank before he saw what his friend was glaring at. Two of the prime seats in question, the same two seats the boys had been gunning for, had been taken. Each desk had a hardbound notebook sitting in plain view, and a fountain pen in the designated groove on top.
"Who the heck managed to get here before we did?" Mackenzie exclaimed indignantly. "I don't get my arse out of bed at six-thirty in the morning for nothing!"
"Don't know, and don't care," Frank grumbled. "This isn't going to go down well."
"Well you're right about that," Mackenzie muttered, pacing the floor. "Considering there's nothing we can do."
"Not entirely accurate."
"What?" Mackie caught a glimpse of Frank's trademarked 'up-to-no-good' grin just before his friend grabbed up the notebooks and the pens, opened up the closer of the desk tops, and stowed them inside. With that done, the lid was replaced and Frank settled into the seat, leaving the very back one for Mackenzie.
"There. Problem solved."
Mackie finally found his voice. "It is not! You just stole them! What are we going to do if their owners show up?"
"Assuming they do show up, we—" Frank paused at Mackenzie's glare— "Oh, all right, I will claim priority seating under the Code of Conduct of Riverview Heights Preparatory School, citing legitimate medical conditions, being diagnoses of claustrophobia and insomnia respectively."
Mackenzie blinked. "In regular English, for people who don't intend to become doctors or lawyers, you're saying we have a right to sit here because I hate enclosed spaces and you need to catch up on sleep?"
Frank considered this. "Yeah."
"Nobody's going to buy that. It sounds like bull."
Frank twisted round in his chair. "It's official bull!"
"Speaking of bull..." Mackenzie nodded towards the doors. "Look who just showed up."
"Who—?" Frank broke off as the new arrival announced his presence.
"Hey, YOU! Amery! Kintail!" a loud obnoxious voice boomed.
Frank's eyes widened comically. "Please God, don't abandon me now..."
Both Frank and Mackenzie turned to see a burly student and two equally muscular companions stalking toward them.
"Are you talking to us?" Mackenzie snapped.
"Ah, the testosterone brigade finally arrives," Frank quipped. "Looks like we have the dubious pleasure of meeting the captain of the scrub football team, Mr. Tom Pecker." The class clown seemed to take an inordinate amount of pleasure in drawing out the bigger teenager's last name.
"Shut up, Amery! You darn well know that I'm talking to you! Get out of those seats, 'cause they're ours! You two guys can go somewhere else!"
"Your seats?" Frank repeated in sceptical tones, before sniffing in contempt.
"We're not giving up so easily, Pecker." Mackenzie snapped. "Why don't you go harass someone who will?"
"Shut up, Mister Fancypants, before I flatten you!" Pecker yelled – and he seemed incapable of speaking in anything lower than a yell; he either bellowed or shouted.
"You and what army? Those gorillas there behind you?" Mackenzie shot back, gesturing at Pecker's companions.
"I don't need nobody's help to deal with the likes of you!" Pecker shouted.
"Really." Frank shook his head. "So why didn't you get up earlier like everyone else?"
"Don't give me that! I know what you're up to! You can get outta those seats now, or I'll make you leave 'em! Hey!" Pecker was getting increasing agitated, mostly because his intended victims were craning their necks to look behind him. "I'm not through with you guys! And what're you looking at?"
"Excuse me. What happened to 'ladies first'?"
Pecker started with surprise and turned awkwardly to face Plait-Hair and Blondie, the girls Mackenzie had run down earlier. It was Blondie who'd spoken, and Mackenzie could hear the low rumble from downstairs signalling the arrivals of the rest of the school's staff and student body. Seats all around were beginning to be filled by eager freshmen, but the group at the prime spots were in an impasse.
"I, um, I..." Pecker stuttered, clearly unwilling to fight either physically or verbally with a girl. "Er..."
"You heard her, Pecker," Frank said lightly. "Still some seats down the row. Why don't you go get those while they're still open?"
Pecker made a snarling noise and stomped to another seat, his goons obediently trailing behind him.
"Glad that's over," Mackenzie muttered. Plait-Hair was staring at him with the oddest expression; he wondered if there was a spot on his nose, or something.
"It's never over," Frank retorted. "This is Riverview Heights, where teachers are bribed on a weekly basis, the scrub team punches out random people at any given time, and no year is complete without at least one science lab getting blown sky-high. If anything, it's just started."
"I concur," Blondie said smoothly. "And I hope you'll pardon me, but you gentlemen appear to be sitting in our seats."
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"Well, you see ladies, I'm very much afraid they're our seats now," the short dark-haired boy said with a winning smile.
Standing beside Gemma, Enid stiffened. "We put our notebooks on to hold them."
"Do you mean these?" the boy asked. He produced their notebooks and pens from his desk, still wearing that impudent smile. Enid's gaze flickered onto Mackenzie Kintail (she'd recognised him instantly), who shifted in his seat and looked mildly uncomfortable with this turn of events. Nearly everyone else in the room was seated now, with a few last-minute stragglers drifting in. There were a number of vacant seats in the front rows, the immediate front before the teacher's lectern, and most students were naturally adverse to taking them. Enid eyed those seats warily, highly embarrassed, but Gemma was stubborn.
"We came early to get those seats," she whispered furiously, tossing her blonde head.
"Why do you want these seats?" the dark-haired boy asked unexpectedly, all teasing gone.
"What?"
"Well, we're here because Mackie there's claustrophobic and I'm an insomniac."
"Frank!" Kintail hissed.
"You are! Documented medical excuses!" Frank threw back at him, then turned back to the girls. "What's yours?"
"Insomnia my foot!" Gemma snapped. "You're only trying for an excuse to sleep through class!"
Raising an eyebrow, the Frank boy sat back with a challenging glint. Kintail snickered. "Doesn't everyone?"
"Fine. I'll play your game." Gemma sniffed. "I've mild scolionophobia, she's agoraphilic. Both 'documented medical excuses'. Will you go already?"
People were beginning to stare, the boys looked at each other and grinned, and Enid saw red.
"They belong to us. You get out!" Enid said loudly. Both Kintail and his friend Frank were taken aback, and someone at the front of the room hissed, "Hey, bell's rung and Kropp's on his way! Make up your minds already!"
"Right..." Frank murmured. "Since I don't really need to be here, and you—" Here he nodded at Gemma— "don't need to be here either..."
Before anyone could say anything, Frank had jumped to his feet, looped his arm through Gemma's and was striding off down the aisle with her in tow, pausing only briefly enough for the blonde to frantically grab her notebook and pen and for Frank to say cheerily, "See you in math class, Kintail!" He continued on his way with a very displeased Gemma, who, unlike Frank, wasn't even half as inclined to give up her seat just like that.
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Mackenzie watched nonplussed as Frank left with Blondie, leaving Plait-Hair to take the last window seat. She seemed to be in a bit of a daze, since it took the long-awaited entry of English teacher Bernard Kropp to get her to sit down.
Though every student present had met him before at various times, this was the first occasion that the entire freshman class, both boys and girls, were together in the same class. And despite most of his colleagues making the best of it by being encouraging, Kropp's opening speech could be more defined as a description of the power structure of the world in relation to 'his' classroom. This was followed by a description of their status in the great cycle of American Life, and ended with an admonition that he would not be accepting, from any of them, what he termed 'guff'.
After a brief moment of silence someone asked what 'guff' meant. The unfortunate soul was lambasted with five minutes of Kropp's spit-flying lecturing, and a detention on top of it.
Needless to say, if he wasn't there already, Mr. Bernard Kropp was immediately placed at the bottom of every student's list of popular teachers. Not even his declaration that the current seating arrangements would remain thus for the rest of the year, and that everyone should shake hands and meet the new permanent neighbours, boosted his ratings.
While Kropp went about riffling through his briefcase for the new class roster, and chatter broke out with people introducing themselves, Mackenzie murmured quietly to Plait-Hair, "Looks like that's that."
"I'd rather have it differently," she said, dark plait hanging down her ramrod-straight back.
Shrugging, he leaned forward and stuck out his hand. "I'm Mackenzie Kintail, how do you do?"
Plait-Hair glanced at his outstretched palm, and finally turned around in her chair to clasp it in her own. "Enid Gwynns, pleasure."
To be continued...
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Here's chapter 3 of this mad little tale, introducing characters that, while seemingly insignificant, do have some part to play down the road. Even Bernie Kropp, but we all know what happens to him in the long run (that man doesn't seem to have much luck with teaching and supers).
Many, many thanks to the lovely and fantabulous Spindle Berry, who took time out of her undoubtedly busy life to beta this chapter – here's to you!