1.4 – Pair up?

“Hey Alicia, will you…”

She glanced at him and then cast one more look around them.

“What is it… what is it, big man?”

It was only then he realized that he had never introduced himself. “My name is Nathan, by the way. But I wanted to ask whether you’d like to team up.”

That got her attention finally. She looked at him from top to bottom and then looked away once again. “Nuh-uh, no fucking way. Go find somebody else, big man.” Alicia shooed him off, not even bothering to meet his eyes or seemingly remember his name..

He felt frustration rising up. Yet compared to how he used to feel about situations like this one only a day ago, suddenly he found himself not caring that much. It was as if a weight was lifted off his shoulders, one that he didn’t see or realize was there before. Now he did, and still, it was so easy to ignore it, to just not care.

Maybe it was just a fact that she was still a video game character to him?

“Listen, girlie, you are the only one.” He looked around, pointing to all of the duos that were forming into neat lines. There was barely anyone left, and those that did remain looked dubiously strong at best. “You are almost the only one without a partner right now. Seems like somebody here doesn’t have many friends.”

“Look who’s talking!” She said, punching him in the chest, though she didn’t put that much force into it. It still hurt, strangely. Once again he tried remembering what her power was, yet the fog didn’t recede. Would these blocks on his memory last forever, or what? Maybe his brain was damaged.

I can think about shit like that later.

“The point was, I need a partner, and it seems that so do you. How about you just put your ego aside for a second so we can stand in the damn line.”

“Will you stop talking to me if I do this for you?”

Aren’t you the one I’m trying to help, not the other way around? He groaned in his mind, but he ignored the insult and nodded. He also didn’t forget how she was the one to speak to him for the most part during the biology class. It was as if she had two moods that she switched between at random, following no pattern at all.

But that didn’t matter. Nathan was used to much worse, and so he could live with someone who was a bit moody.

“Fine then. Just this once, we can team up. But you stop bothering me if we lose.” She pointed a finger at him, poking him in the chest. “Oh, and if we lose, you buy me lunch for the whole semester. Deal?”

He fought to not roll his eyes. A hard battle, to be honest, but he conquered it after a great amount of trying and repeating some not very nice words in his head over and over again.

Even though she was a bit harsh, it still felt refreshing to talk to her. And though she had a barbed tongue, he found her personality so different in comparison to her in-game one that it made him far more curious than he liked to admit.

The line felt endless, but with so many duels happening at once, it moved fairly quickly. Nathan did his best to watch the fights happening before his own, yet there were so many people trying to watch that it was a bit hard to get a good look in. Even harder for Alicia, who couldn’t see from above their classmates.

As expected, the abilities of the heroes in this class and the one above it were far below what Nathan expected from the setting. There were battles in My Superhero Life that scaled buildings, hell, sometimes even fights that destroyed a good chunk of a town, yet these people… Sometimes he was questioning the usefulness of their abilities at all. Not always, and he was overdramatizing a little bit in his head, but it was hard not to get a bit disappointed at the sight.

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He was in a superhero world from one of his favorite video games, yet the people he would get to talk to would get the lame powers. There were a few exceptions, of course, and in general the people from the class 1E had abilities somewhat stronger, yet it made no difference.

To his surprise, however, there were several people who used their abilities in creative ways, showing that they truly were growing up by using these in their everyday life. Hopefully his enemies wouldn’t belong to that category.

An hour passed before it was finally his turn. It didn’t even occur to him until a few minutes ago that he would be fighting someone with a superhero ability while he himself was boosted by a whole 5 dollars worth, without any way to test how strong each dollar made him. However, he would just have to hope that his ability was one of the overpowered ones… even with just $5.

Alicia bumped into him with her elbow, whispering as they watched the last duel that was happening before their turn. “What’s your ability? We should probably come up with a strategy. See how those two sprang into action?” She pointed to the team on the left, who was pushing onto the other team. The team on the right basically was left without any point of reprieve, completely forced into the defense, which seemed to not be working out in their favor.