1.3 – My power is…. capitalism?

Superhero Power : The Moneymaker

Grade: ????????

Type: Accumulative

This power enhances the physical attributes of the owner of this ability. Each physical attribute stacks with the amount of money in the user’s possession. Scaling is not linear.

Also unlocks ??? when 1,000USD is achieved, making the second half of this ability available.

Current bank account status: $5

What the fuck? What? Apparently, he would be stronger the more money he had. A simple power, but it sounded so useless, especially compared to the main character’s power from My Superhero Life.

How did this even compare… just enhanced physical attributes? That was nothing in the grand scale of things. Even if he somehow managed to get hundreds, no, thousands of dollars… Well, it depended on how much it scaled, of course, but he groaned into his hand as he looked upon it again, wishing it would get replaced by something else.

Such a useless, shitty power. Hopefully he’d be able to avoid the main quest line at least. There was only one quest that Nathan had to follow after all, and it was to achieve a happy ending six times, whatever the hell that meant. He would do his damn best to achieve it, but it wasn’t the priority number one.

Right now he needed to get that phone number from a classmate, and then he’d need to do much more, but he made a promise to himself. A promise of change, and he would do his best to uphold that as well.

He stood up and walked over to the door, and that’s when he realized that he didn’t even know when or where his next class was. He looked around once again, lost in the sea of bodies that walked through the halls, but he did recognize one person not far ahead.

Alicia, turning a corner on the right side of the giant hall. He rushed to follow, hoping that the next class would be a bit less boring than this one. Well, it wasn’t exactly boring, but he knew most of the stuff that they went through already.

How the hell do I make enough money to make my power mean something? He thought as he dodged the people around. The questions never stopped coming. How much money was even enough? Hell, he didn’t know most of this world’s structure except this school and the house of the main character. Did he even have a house in this damned video game?

The questions kept piling on and on as he walked through the crowd, making him anxious once again. He took deep breaths in and out, yet it felt like it was never enough. His chest tightened, and the corners of his vision became dark.

No, don’t faint on your first damn day. Stay calm, collect yourself, you’ll be fine. He spoke to himself as if he were calming down a child, yet it helped at least somewhat.

Surviving his first day at school would have to come first. Making money and thinking of all of these things could come later. As far as he remembered, the school day shouldn’t last that long anyway. He finally caught up to Alicia, who only gave him a glance over her shoulder, yet she didn’t say or do more. Honestly, that suited him just fine. The silent treatment was far better than what he was used to.

Finally, they arrived next to a door, and inside most of his classmates were already standing, though this time around it wasn’t just his class but another one as well. He didn’t know any of them, and that meant that they likely were from class 1E, the second-worst class.

There was also a guy standing at the opposite side of the hall, right in the middle. He looked over the students with a smile locked onto his face, his eyes scanning the crowd. This person… Nathan recognized him. This was a superhero.

He was one of the PE teachers back in the video game as well, called Deadlock. A strange name for someone who wasn’t even a marksman. He was a B-class superhero, which sounded kind of lame, but in reality it meant that he was basically a superhuman that most armies back in the reality Nathan came from would pay millions for.

Yet here there were two more hero classes above him. A strange world indeed.

“Hello students! The bell should be ringing any second now. Welcome to your first year in the Academy. My name is Deadlock, and I’ll be teaching you the PE class! While in your previous schools, PE mostly meant things like running or playing some sports games. You are planning to be superheroes, and so I will treat this class as such. You might have noticed in your curriculum that this is a three-hour-long session after which you are free for the day, and this is for a reason.”

Nathan looked at him, wondering just how extreme this would be. A 3-hour PE class? Why had the game never mentioned that? Suddenly he felt a pang of empathy for all of the students around him, but mostly for himself. He was not prepared for whatever was coming; he knew that.

“Now then, for the first exercise, let’s have a one-hour run around the whole gym.” He clapped twice. “Up you go! Clockwise, please! In a line.”

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The students looked at each other, the same confused expression echoing through the room. This lasted for a total of ten seconds before the teacher clapped once again, the sound somehow booming through the room. “I said run! Don’t make me repeat myself!”

And the first people began running. Soon the rest followed, the whole gym reverberating with the sound of a hundred feet hitting the ground in an irregular rhythm. It took about five minutes before Nathan began running out of breath.

Should have done more cardio. He mumbled and grit his teeth.

“Seriously, new guy, is this all you’ve got?” Alicia teased him, lapping him for the second time in such a short time already. The gym wasn’t that large, of course, but it was still damn impressive. He would perhaps even praise her effort if she wasn’t being such a bitch about it.

But he wouldn’t ignore it either. He looked at her, found the strength to show her his middle finger, and then sped up even more than her. For such a small person, she sure was fast, but Nathan had the advantage of being a good head and a half taller than her, and that meant his stride was far longer too. He quickly made distance, and in just a minute and spare, he was the one lapping her this time.

The difference was that while she made fun of him the last time she did so, he was barely catching his breath. He considered slowing down. Of course he did. Yet her smirk was a reminder, a stinging reminder of how people treated him before. Pure spite fueled him, and he wouldn’t be left behind again. So he continued running.

Minutes passed so fast that he lost the sense of time. All that mattered was putting one foot in front of the other. A foot here, a foot there. He passed his classmates several times over, but the only face he concentrated on was Alicia. He counted every time he lapped her. His chest hurt so much that he was sure that a heart attack was coming any moment now, he felt the bile rise in his throat, and yet he kept running.

Spite, it seemed, was a powerful motivator.