NINETY-NINE: Gym Class, I

The wordchain Lute had bestowed on Alden was fun, mind-blowing, and a total menace. He had learned to cascade juggle five balls from Gustavo during a couple of sleepless nights in intake. Under the effects of the wordchain, he discovered he could easily do it with pieces of crumpled notebook paper while he was walking up a flight of stairs. But sitting still in his Intro to Other Worlds class was proving difficult. People were so damn noisy. His stomach was so damn busy. Friction was so damn everywhere. He kept making micro-level adjustments to himself in an attempt to get away from his own clothes. He was wriggling like an eel at his desk, trying and failing to escape from the itchy tag Satan had stitched into the neck of his shirt. It hadn’t bothered him at all earlier. Now it did very much. And the waistband of his jeans was rough in one spot. And that girl making little noises with her straw while she slurped on a milkshake that was apparently bottomless… Giving up, he texted the expert. [Lute, what the hell? How do you use this regularly and not murder everyone around you?] His reply was a couple of torturous minutes coming. [It’s not hard if something interesting is going on. It’s only terrible when you’re bored.] The Intro to Other Worlds instructor was teaching them about sacred dirt mounds today. Nothing like a good alien dirt mound to distract you from the eight different ways your pants fit imperfectly—not. [Find something to concentrate on that doesn’t make you crazy. Physical sensations are better than thoughts.] He ended up practicing some of the gestures for the wordchain under his desk, as discretely as he could, and when class was finally over he raced to the nearest bathroom and used his promise stick lighting spell to burn the itchy tag out of his t-shirt. With a little too much enthusiasm. Now there was a scorched hole where the tag had been. It was a vast improvement. He had nearly two hours worth of study hall next. He’d been skipping it all last week, and he planned to do the same for the rest of the quarter. It was only required if your grades dropped, and he didn’t see that becoming a problem with this roster of classes. Two hours to kill. I’m suddenly extra graceful, and I need to use it. Or else I’m going to burn up all of my own clothes. But I shouldn’t wear myself out before gym time, so… He’d wanted to buy a few things to have on hand for skill practice. Instead of ordering them like a Rabbit of leisure, he could go get them himself and play with his new adroitness on the way. Sounds like a plan. He headed downstairs, got a small cup of ice water from the coffee shop, and shoved it in his hoodie pocket. That way failing to keep his skill active would result in some cold wet punishment. Then he headed off at ground-eating speed thanks to his trait. The wordchain was definitely made for motion. The more Alden challenged himself, the more it showed off. He could hop up onto the back of park benches and walk across railings just fine without it, but with it, it was like his feet were always glued exactly where he wanted them to be. He was so alert to minor balance issues, and making rapid adjustments felt second nature. Aww…I really want to meet up with Bobby or the parkour club and show off. He had to content himself with dashing along every narrow edge he could find as he left campus behind and headed for an area that the internet said was one of Apex’s best shopping spots. It was in a neighborhood with a large Chinese-speaking population, so Alden let his interface do a lot of sign translating for him. A busy boulevard lined with glossy, commercial shops gradually turned into a narrower street with more eccentric local businesses that catered to specific Avowed needs. Alden was fascinated by some of the local stores, and he wished he actually needed a bunch of cool magic toys instead of the mundane stuff that was on his list. He consoled himself by promising to come back when he knew which of the mundane items he wanted particularly magnificent versions of. An hour later, he was the proud owner of one clear plastic shower curtain, a cheap bedsheet, a four-pack of clear plastic ponchos, a roll of wrapping paper, a giant bottle of glue, a bunch of duct tape, two hundred feet of orange paracord, carabiners, a bubble umbrella, and a very large lightweight nylon duffel bag with backpack carry straps. There were more items on his I-should-experiment-with-these-things list, but he was running out of time, and one of the things he’d definitely wanted to acquire didn’t seem to exist. “I’m sure I am not the only guy on the island who wants a pair of thin, elbow-length gloves,” he said, stepping out of a costume and party supply store. “It’s probably not the most common request,” Jeremy told him. He had a date with his girlfriend, and he was trying to put on a tie. He had even bought one that wasn’t patterned with chocolate chip cookies. Kimberly Martinez must’ve been special. Behind him, Victor was lounging on top of a new cat tower that Alden was sure he was going to have to find room for in his dorm sooner or later. Jeremy turned around to look at the cat every three seconds. “None of the work gloves I tried were quite right.” They made his fingers stupid. Not having stupid fingers was a big deal for spells and wordchains. “And surgical gloves are too short and sweaty. Plus they’re going to make me look like, ‘Hi! Here I am to give you a medical exam!’” He’d bought some disposables anyway to have in his future Rabbit go-bag for backups. But for regular use, he thought he wanted something fabric, very thin, and perfectly fitted. And long would be a bonus, since it would protect his arm when it was preserved. A pair of opera gloves rolled down just a little so that they didn’t cover his elbows and impede motion had sounded like a decent start. “What about the opera-going ladies with largish hands and forearms? It’s a terrible injustice for me and for them. Anyway, I’ll find something better when I’ve got more time. Or just modify something. Your tie looks great.” “You think so?” Alden nodded. “And thanks for taking care of Victor.” Jeremy turned around to stare at the cat again. “I thought maybe I should take him to the vet. Because what if he’s sick and he just doesn’t look like it? But then, you know…veterinarians might not understand…” “Indeed. He’s a complicated cat.” ****** The mood in the men’s locker room was more tense than it had been on combat assessment day. The boys who were joking around were doing it with bravado that came across more as nerves than confidence, and most people were getting dressed quietly. Odd that it was so much more boisterous when we were all fighting for our places here, Alden thought, running his hand up the front of his gray unitard to seal it around him. And now that we’ve got them, it’s subdued. Or maybe it stood to reason that the group who’d made it in had taken the trials seriously enough to pass them. Even the guys who had acted like idiots at the party must care a lot about how they performed in the MagiPhys gym. “Why is it a morgue in here?” someone said suddenly. Alden thought it was the Bow Meister, Reinhard. “It’s just class. They’re not going to kick us out now.” “They do kick people out for poor performance. My dad said so.” “For failing courses and failing to level. Not for being terrible on your first day of gym. Somebody talk about something fun. Kon, did someone spell you quiet? Why are some of the globies hiding in the showers to dress? Does your junk look different in other countries?” In the stall next to Alden, Finlay cleared his throat. “I just don’t want to embarrass you all.” “He says a few minutes before a class where he’ll absolutely embarrass us!” Reinhard called back. “I can totally take him,” Kon said. “I can take every last one of you. If you’re asleep.” “Kon,” someone said, “this class is really going to suck for you, isn’t it?” “It’s fine. There are other subtypes that aren’t great at combat and rescue, so it’s not like I’m the only one in school. And by third year, I’m sure I’ll be able to destroy you all.” “He can still beat up the B’s, right?” That sounded like Sanjay. Thanks so much, thought Alden. A few people were agreeing, but Kon himself wasn’t among them. We don’t all know each other’s abilities that well yet, so I guess it’s understandable that some of them would think that surely any S could beat a B. Kon didn’t have any offensive or defensive abilities beyond a high-rank Adjuster’s physicality. And Adjusters weren’t known for their physicality. Him winning versus Max or Alden was dependent on circumstance. What would they let Alden use as a shield? Was there ground? How much time and space would Max be given to lay down his zones? I guess it’s going to be like that no matter who you’re dealing with to some extent. Years from now, when they all knew what they were doing and they’d refined their power sets, they’d still probably lose to Jeffy if they were fighting in the ocean. There were only a couple of B-rank Brutes at the school, and one of them was Aquatic. She had a special section on The Beat List for “sea days,” when everyone had to practice water battles and she suddenly became a serious problem for all the higher ranks to deal with. “I don’t think we’re dueling each other anyway,” Kon said. “I asked some older students, and they said they didn’t start fighting classmates until a couple of weeks in.” That suited Alden just fine. By some unspoken agreement, almost everyone left the locker room together. The same phenomenon seemed to have affected the girls, because they were in a chattery group outside their own locker room, waiting for stragglers to emerge. Alden spotted Maricel. She had her back turned to him while she talked with her roommates, but he could tell by her animated hand gestures that she was in her cheerful mode. I hope she’s actually feeling it. Vandy and Tuyet seem to want to be friends with her, too. His own roommate chat notification appeared, and he opened it to find Haoyu asking critical questions. [Haoyu: Astrid looks different.] Alden glanced at him. They were standing right next to each other, and Haoyu wasn’t obviously observing the target of his inquiry. [Lexi: Why are you texting us here? Isn’t this for roommate business?] [Lute: I’m interested in Astrid. Who is she? Is she beating you all up in your Avowed violence class?] I guess I should answer since I know the answer? [Alden: She morphs them. She was going minimalist when I met her on assessment day, too. It’s probably better than a sports bra.] [Lute: Now I’m even more interested in Astrid.] [Lexi: I’m going to ignore notifications. I need to focus.] [Haoyu: It would be fun if we could text all class. I’m not good enough at mental, though. I can’t do it and do anything else at the same time.] They entered the gym in a mass. Alden’s first thought was, Are they really giving us seven instructors? The gym was fully set up and prepared for them, and the instructors, wearing their own suits, were having a last-minute discussion together in the corner nearest the locker rooms. There were forty-one students—twenty-three boys, eighteen girls. Seven instructors still seemed like a lot. Alden’s second thought was, Torsten Klein is one of them. I hope he’s not an asshole to me. He also recognized Instructor Marion and Big Snake. It’s cool that Snake’s here. They said he usually teaches third years. Wait… Instructor Waker. Call him Instructor Waker. He was absolutely going to forget. “All right, everyone!” Instructor Klein called, clapping his hands together once for attention. “I’m glad you’re all here for your first day of school. Grab a seat. No talking for the next ten minutes while I explain this course and what we expect from you.” They hastened to sit down. Before the last butts had even found their perches, Instructor Klein was standing in front of them, arms clasped behind his back. His eyes were as sharp as Alden remembered from his interview, and his salt and pepper hair looked like it had been commanded by its owner not to fall into disarray. “We don’t believe in wasting time here at Celena North,” he said, his voice ringing through the gym. “We accept incoming classes as often as we can, so that none of you have to cool your heels for months in a regular high school before applying. We start power training you on the very first day you arrive, even if you’re a mid-quarter group. This is the School for Superhuman Talent Development. And this is the one course all of you have this term where we will be focusing on developing your superhuman talents. We don’t waste your time. You don’t waste ours.” Alden tensed, expecting the instructor to look over at the Rabbit who he’d literally called a time waster, but he never did. “Today is the fifth of November. Between now and the day the quarter ends on the twenty-first of December, you’ll be here every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for two hours. Twenty-one classes. Arrive ten minutes early, not ten seconds late. The only excused absences are if you’re on another planet or in the hospital.” He gestured toward Instructor Marion, who smiled and waved. “This is Instructor Marion. He’ll be here on Tuesday mornings from six to eight. If you’re struggling with something, send him a message to set up an appointment for that time slot to sort it out. You’ll only have access to a small portion of the gym, and he’ll only be tutoring six people during the Tuesday sessions. It’s first come, first serve until everyone has had their chance.” He scanned them all. “This class period is one hundred and twenty minutes long. You will be using your powers and your bodies a lot while you’re here, usually until they are exhausted. If you show up too tired to move, or with your main skills and spells already depleted, we will be extremely disappointed in you.” Jeffy gasped. Alden didn’t know what talents the Aqua Brute had other than high strength stats but he wouldn’t be at all surprised to find that he’d been showing off all day without considering what that would mean for class. “The regular course structure will be four, thirty-minute-long sessions. The idea is to get you all used to the gym and used to thinking about your bodies and your magic in new ways. We will be giving you the opportunity to experiment with your powers. The sessions will loosely mimic different types of hero work. You only became Avowed in the past few months. Most of you are at least seven years away from the start of your careers. At this point in your lives, it’s more important for you to discover what you’re capable of than it is to perform with perfect realism.” He pointed at himself. “I will be teaching you offense, single-target only for now. Instructor Waker will be running the self-defense session. Instructor Marion will be teaching maneuvering and positioning. Instructor Fragment will be giving you rescue problems to solve.” Alden examined Instructor Fragment. He hadn’t recognized the stocky woman until her hero name was used. He knew from reading the faculty list on the school website that she was a Ground Shaper who specialized in saving people from building collapses. A rare, emergency-work-only hero. It’s a totally different lifestyle than most people here seem to want. She lived on Anesidora and got called when she was needed, a bit like Haoyu’s parents but without the collective backing and with zero expectation of showmanship when she arrived. The downside, of course, was no fame, less fortune, and no off-island address. Alden was inclined to respect her without even having spoken to her. “You’ll rotate between each of us in small groups. Don’t dawdle when it’s time to move to the next thing. Learn to shift gears quickly. Instructors Wu, Ivanova, and Foxbolt will be our floating faculty. If they pull you out to work with you on something, give them your full attention. Don’t complain if they take up a great deal of your time. They know what they’re doing far better than you do.” He frowned at them all as if he were already anticipating complaints. “We have gym etiquette. Your interfaces will always provide you with a floor status notification in this space. Additionally, when you are in here with the floor off and you see a new person enter the room, shout, ‘Floor off!’ It’s a critical piece of information to be aware of at all times, so we like to have the backup call. At the moment, you’re new to this, so you’re naturally checking floor status all the time to make sure you’re doing the right thing. Within a few months, the gym will feel like a second home, and you’ll get laxer.” He cleared his throat. “From now on, do not use any powers or any degree of superhuman strength on the gym floor while it’s off. If you want to play with a harmless talent while the floor’s off, do it to the sides or up here on the bleachers. The white floor is where we do things that would be fatal elsewhere. Get it in your head that anyone visibly doing any kind of magic there when it’s not on is making a potentially deadly mistake, and scream ‘Floor off!’ at the top of your lungs the second you notice them. Maybe it’s nothing, or maybe they’re about to accidentally rip off a friend’s limbs. Don’t wait to find out. “Finally, don’t agonize over leveling. Students inevitably panic as soon as the first of their classmates gains a level. We will tell you when you need to worry, and we won’t even think of telling you to worry for at least six more months. The System’s management of any given Avowed can be somewhat…eccentric. Principal Saleh has been known to pop into classes on occasion and offer her unique perspective as someone who has ranked up. But the general consensus among some of the best levelers on Earth—the ones who’ve seen fit to share insights with the rest of us anyway—is that hard work at the edge of your abilities always pays off. So that’s what we’ll be having you do. We can talk about more creative, personal endeavors to push your limits when that hard work has become a matter of course for you all. “Now let’s get started.” ****** The instructors didn’t explain how they were breaking people into groups; everyone just got an assignment and went. But there was obviously some thought process to it instead of random selection. One group of ten was entirely Brutes, minus the class’s two speedsters. Haoyu was over there, looking laser focused as Big Snake explained something to them all. Another group was mostly Shapers and ranged weapon Meisters. Lexi was in that one. More than half of the group was S-rank. It included Maricel, Vandy, Tuyet, and Jupiter. A third group was more of a mixed bag, but they’d stuck both Finlay and Winston in it together. Alden was pretty sure the group he’d been put in was the struggles-to-deal-damage group. He, Max, Kon, Everly, and Astrid were in it with five other students he hadn’t properly met. One was actually the Shaper of Light who Alden had seen in the “odd birds” crowd on assessment day. I didn’t realize he got in. He wasn’t at the party. The Light Shaper hadn’t actually been good at anything, but he’d been on his way to one day being good at multiple impressive things—invisibility, creating high temperature areas. But he’d have to avoid a breakdown first. His forehead was beaded with sweat, and when Alden and Kon both said hi to him, he stared at them like a deer caught in headlights. If it’s this bad now, what’s it going to be like when we hit the other teachers? Their group was starting with Instructor Fragment in the rescue work section. In Alden’s opinion, it was the least intimidating. He tuned out the Light Shaper’s heavy breathing and listened with interest while Fragment talk about how important problem solving and creative skill use was for her job. She explained that they would be exploring ways to use their powers to protect other people from assault and to excavate them from dangerous areas. “This is really just the most basics of the basics and your first introduction to thinking about possible uses for your magic in these scenarios. You will make mistakes, and those mistakes will teach you even more than your successes.” They would be climbing a towering jungle gym of a scaffold and bringing down “victims” that were really hundred and twenty kilo sandbags. They were starting to talk about approaches to the problem for everyone, when Instructor Foxbolt tapped Alden on the shoulder. “Let me steal you for a minute.” She winked at Fragment, revealing that she had a magical effect applied to her winged eyeliner of all things. It flashed from orange to electric blue. But this was going to be my favorite part of the whole class period, Alden thought as he stared over his shoulder to where Astrid was climbing up the scaffolding. She was moving easily, and he wanted to watch her attempt the rescue. Naturally, she had more stats than him, but Morph was one of those Brute subclasses that didn’t necessarily come out on top in terms superstrength. They got a lot of choices for how to develop their shapeshifting, which was one of the reasons it was such a desirable subclass. Big’nLittleSnake was one of the most powerful superheroes around, and he showed off Morph combat abilities at the absolute maximum. A lot of morphers were more into impersonation or esoteric body mods that gave them utility in specific situations. Alden followed the instructor over to the bleachers and sat down when she patted the bench invitingly. “All right!” she said, picking up a tablet. “I’m Foxbolt. Adjuster. Lovely to meet you, Alden. We agreed that I would be the one to talk to you about your equipage for this course. Is there some particular object you’re absolutely dying to use as a main tool?” He shook his head. Right now, he was preserving a long length of paracord, with carabiners on either end. He’d wrapped it around his left arm and wrist like a homemade bracer. He’d also brought the duffel bag full of supplies he’d just bought, since he didn’t know if the faculty was expecting him to show up with things or not. “I have lots of different ideas I want to try. I don’t have a favorite yet.” She nodded. “The versatility of items you can use with your skill is one of your strengths, so experimenting with objects is good. But it presents some problems. If you use a different tool each day we meet, you’ll never gain a decent understanding of how to work with any of them. And the instructors’ advice will no longer be as useful from one class to the next because if they give you tips for defending yourself with something like an umbrella today and you show up with a sheet-shaped shield tomorrow—” Just bought potential sheet shields. And an umbrella. “—they’ll have different opinions on how it should be used,” she continued. “So let me tell you what we suggest.” She read some notes on her tablet and nodded to herself. “For offense, defense, and maneuvering, we suggest you pick a single tool or a homemade combotool that’s not much more complex than the thing you rigged for combat assessment. Take this week to figure it out if you need to, but we think you should commit to using it for the rest of term by next Monday. Feel free to ask us for advice. Even if you later discover that what you’ve chosen is wildly flawed, learning to work around those flaws has benefits, and it will give you ideas about what you might want to try in future courses. “As for your rescue sessions, Instructor Fragment actually encourages you to bring anything you like. The more the better. She points out that in a disaster relief effort, the ability to use any everyday object at hand would be invaluable. And in such a situation, you’d likely have many people to entrust you with them.” “That all sounds good to me,” said Alden. “About offense—” Foxbolt flashed her eyeliner at him before he could finish the thought. “Realistically, if we were sending you out to fight bad guys next...