“Do we have a good idea of their powers?” I asked, clinging to the topic of combat like a life raft.

  Akyo nodded, all business again. “Yes, I already looked them up. Their leader, Frost Phoenix, is a speedster.”

  “Interesting name for a speedster. Any relation to her powers?” I commented, curiously.

  Akyo adjusted her mask slightly. “Yes, she absorbs kinetic energy from her environment to fuel her speed. It keeps her safe at high velocities, and makes her leave a frost trail of drained kinetic energy when she’s absorbing a LOT.”

  I nodded. “Sort of like the inverse of how my power works. Very cool. Motion-shift.”

  She nodded. “Close, but more like motion drain to fuel her own motion. Their anchor is a combination shifter and physical enhancement named Bengal. Very fast, extremely tough, strong regeneration, and her shtick is, of course, turning into a humanoid tiger.”

  Candace shrugged. “Humanoid, but the furries would go crazy over her. She has HUGE tits in her morph form, and is a solid five on the ladder already, which is unbelievable for a second year.”

  I looked at Candace. “You are seven already, and you are only in your second year.”

  She nodded, beaming. “Yes, I am. Toot toot. That’s me tooting my own horn.” She mimed pulling a train whistle.

  Akyo shrugged, ever the pragmatist. “She has huge boobs because she is eight feet tall in that form. They are proportional.”

  Candace waved a dismissive hand. “Still, Jake seems to like muscular girls. I plan on getting him hooked up with someone by the end of the semester. If not one of us, then I will find someone else. His dick is my dick.”

  Mindy looked at her weirdly. “I don’t think the saying works if you are a girl.”

  Candace shrugged. “I saw it in a movie once. It means I’m invested in his success.”

  Akyo coughed, and I was grateful she was covering up my acute discomfort. “Moving on. Next, we have Caroline, who hasn’t chosen an ID yet. Physical specialist, very fast, and she can produce dense bursts of smoke that can render most people unconscious in a few seconds. She specializes in the staff.”

  I nod, seeing the pattern. “I am sensing a theme here.”

  Akyo nodded. “Yeah, they are all fast physical brawlers. That’s why they are doing pretty well on the group ladder for second-years. Twelfth place, mostly because of outlasting other teams.”

  “The last one?”

  Akyo smiled. “The last one breaks the theme. Quiet Code is an illusion cyberkinetic. Her cyberkinesis breaks a lot of rules, though.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, first, she’s not a coder. She asks machines to do things, and the machines are… uhh… happy to help out by producing their own code. That code is apparently a nightmare for anyone else to deal with, and she barely needs any sort of real computing power to do it. She can make a pocket calculator pass a basic Turing test.”

  I had an evil thought. “Is it persistent?”

  Akyo looked confused. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, is it like a gadgeteer effect, where she has to provide energy to keep it going, or is it like a tinker effect, where once she ‘convinces’ the machine, the change is permanent and real?”

  Akyo started tapping through her laptop. “From what I understand, the cooperativeness, or sentience, is active only while she’s influencing it. She can add instructions to continue self-coding after her influence is gone, but it has to be part of her initial ‘request,’ just like setting a learning algorithm. It doesn’t produce its own innate code unless she’s there to encourage it.”

  I nodded, a plan forming. “Tell you what. Introduce me to her… Quiet Code? If she can help me with a little coding problem I have, I would be more than happy to accept their stupid bet. So who is number five and six?”

  Akyo shook her head. “They don’t have five or six. Right now they are a team of four: three melees and a support.”

  Candace looked a little worried. “If we want to play the honorable game and match numbers, that means two people will have to sit out.”

  Both Sabrina and I said “Me,” at the exact same time.

  Abigail snickered. “Right. No, Sabrina and I will sit out. Me, because I have zero combat powers—my illusions are strictly for espionage and confusing drunk uncles. And Sabrina, because she’s even more of a secret background weapon than I am. She also doesn’t have the alchemical materials she needs to be combat-effective yet.”

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  Dammit, she was completely right. “I guess there’s no ‘Chair Guys’ in a team spar?”

  Mindy smiled. “No. Then again, against a melee-heavy team like this, you are kind of an ‘I win’ button if they can’t get to you.”

  “How do you figure?” I asked, genuinely curious.

  Candace sighed and patted me on the back with enough force to rattle my teeth. “Such a simple man. You might be physically fragile, but as long as you stay out of arm’s reach, you are seriously overpowered against most ranged attacks.”

  I shook my head. “Sure, under certain, very specific circumstances. But under certain other circumstances, so are you. You are aware that my only advantage comes from using a disproportionate amount of focus on a tiny amount of force, right?”

  She shook her head, not getting it.

  “Yep. I can make an air shield or a kinetic stopper for fire because fire has almost no real mass. That means with less than an ounce of force, I could stop it easily. Only a few ounces are needed to deflect most bullets or energy blasts off-course. But do you know what would happen if you tried to punch me?”

  Candace nodded, utterly serious. “You would disappear and reappear in your bed, fast asleep, because you’re a teleporter who specializes in strategic retreats.”

  She wasn’t technically wrong.

  “Okay, technically, yes, but if I didn’t have enough energy stored for a teleport, you would punch me and shatter every bone in my body. Your fist has too much mass for me to stop, and too much force for me to effectively deflect. So no, I am not a secret weapon or overpowered. I just happen to know how to screw with most alphas who rely on fancy, dancy ranged abilities. Bricks like you are my natural predator.”

  The girls started to move to their rooms to get ready for their next courses, but Akyo lingered. “You know, if you update your record to reflect Class Four tachyon manipulation, you are going to get moved out of Power Exploitation (Transformative) and into Energy Manipulation instead. It’s not as laid-back. You won’t have as much free lab time for…” She brushed her hands down her body, which was covered by the form-fitting armor I’d made her.

  “Your body?” I asked, deadpan.

  She blushed furiously. At least I could still fluster her occasionally. “Tech!” she snapped, her cheeks turning a delightful shade of crimson. “Time for your tech projects!”

  I nodded. “That’s not really a problem. Yeah, I have some projects I’m excited about, but I’m not a real tinker. I already have decent blueprints. Call me resting on my laurels, but I’m more intent on improving my team than myself. I know for a fact I don’t belong within a hundred miles of a front line, that I am a coward, and will never be a frontline hero.”

  Akyo sighed, her expression turning uncharacteristically serious. “I am going out on a limb here, but you are still repeating that s...stuff. Why? I get it, some s… slag badmouthed you, but aren’t you holding onto that way too hard?”

  I chuckled, but it felt hollow. “Actually, I’m not holding onto it that hard at all. I did for a long time, used it as an excuse for every failure, especially after my...spectacularly terrible attempt at playing superhero.”

  Akyo nodded, and sat down on the couch next to me, her leg propped up on the cushion. “Is that why you won’t date anyone?”

  I grinned, forcing the old, cynical mask back into place. “I am dating five girls right now. You’re all incredibly high-maintenance and expensive to equip.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  I thought about it carefully, trying to decide if I trusted Akyo enough for a shred of honesty. The mask slipped a little. “It’s like this. I have been friends with Christine since we were in Junior high. We weren’t lovers, but we were both theater freaks and had each other’s backs. Or so I thought.”

  “After High School, we decided to try and save up to get out of Empire City and move somewhere nicer. That’s when we hooked up. Things changed when she awakened, but it was… sort of okay. I mean, yeah, I had to get used to the fact that she could break me in half without trying, but hey, that’s the world we live in. I asked her to marry me, and she agreed. I was an idiot.”

  I shrugged, the memory still a dull ache. “Honestly, it was probably mostly my fault. I was convinced I was the next Elon Musk, which only got worse when I awoke too. My powers were weak, but I was convinced we’d be the next dynamic duo. I was living in a comic book.”

  “Things got more complicated. She slept with my cousin. I was stupid enough to cosign my voting stock over to her as an engagement present. She turned around and traded it to my cousin for cash and non-voting stock to fund her PR campaign to become a hero. There were really amazing fights after that. And me, Mister ‘The Love of My Life Betrayed Me’ Emo douchebag, blew my share of the money trying to play the rich, brooding superhero and failing miserably.”

  “Boom. Story of my life. I finally realized the PR game was everything, and because I had a huge potential variety of abilities I could simulate, I started playing the professional street-level alpha villain. A performer.”

  I shrugged again, the motion practiced and weary. “A couple of times, some of my clients got a little… Well, simulated violence can be a huge turn-on, you know, especially when the guy ‘beating’ you is actually making sure you look good doing it. But the whole power balance thing got in the way.”

  “What do you mean?” Akyo asked, genuinely curious.

  I sighed. “Almost every alpha is convinced they are the best at what they do. My power levels are incredibly low, but given enough time, I can come up with an effective counter to almost anything. Alphas are competitive. I didn’t realize that my most attractive quality to them was novelty. I was a challenge. A puzzle to be solved and then discarded. I’m competitive too, and I don’t need the stress. I refuse to be someone’s exotic trophy. So I decided I wouldn’t touch Alpha girls, at least not active power Alpha girls. The ones destined for the front lines.”

  “And since I have been putting every moment of every day into my classes, my team, and not getting killed, I am just not really on the dating market. It’s simpler this way.”

  “Active power?” she clarified.

  I nodded. “Yeah. Frontliners. Girls who are destined to go toe-to-toe with monsters or supervillains. I won’t marry someone I am probably going to wind up competing with, and I absolutely refuse to be the person who waits on the back line, praying they don’t die. I won’t be a ‘hero wife.’ My soul is already blackened. I couldn’t take it.”

  She nodded slowly, understanding dawning. “But you are willing to turn someone else into a ‘hero wife’ over you? You’re building armor to make us stronger, to send us into the fight.”

  I offered a weak, tired smile. “You noticed I wasn’t dating. And like I said, I am a coward. If I do meet and fall in love with someone, marry them and have kids… well, my greatest ability right now is my dash. I specialize in getting away from trouble. How could I ever ask someone to wait for me to run back home?”