Super Powereds: Year 2 (10 page)

“Nothing wrong with dreaming,” Gerard said. “In a perfect world we’d all make the cut and meet together decades from now to play a game of cards and talk about all the villains we’ve brought to justice.”

“Perfect world my ass,” Victor said. “That will definitely happen, just you watch and see.”

* * *

The bottle was now empty, and the two lone figures sat in Blaine’s house, watching through the windows as the wind whipped at the trees.

14.

Roy leapt for the fence, his fingers taking grip and his strong arms pulling him to safety just in time. The mother elephant was very unhappy and was making her rage known. Keeping careful hold on the phone with his left hand, Roy pulled himself up with his right. Eventually he got his footing and began climbing the tall steel fence as the elephant rampaged beneath him. Nearby, Vince and Alex watched nervously as Roy moved. It was pretty obvious why he had to be the one in the picture after this ordeal, but Roy still felt a tad bitter. When this was all said and done, he and Nick were going to have a very long talk.

* * *

Alice floated to the ground gently, Camille waving to her that the photo had been a success. She hurried over to the other two girls and tried to smooth her now wind-whipped hair.

“Okay, that takes care of Alice standing on a traffic light,” Mary said, dragging her pencil across the orange paper.

“How many left?” Camille asked.

“Six to go,” Mary replied. Alice checked her watch. That only left forty-five minutes until the deadline. They were really going to have to hurry.

“Let’s move then, what’s next?”

“We need Camille riding on top of a horse,” Mary said.

“Do we have any idea where to find a horse at eleven at night on a Friday?” Camille asked.

“No, but after tonight we will,” Alice said. They’d come this far, there was no freaking way they were going to give up.

* * *

“So, here it is ladies and gentleman,” Nick had said several hours prior, producing two pieces of paper from his pocket. One was orange and the other blue.

“Are we doing arts and crafts?” Alice asked. She was confused and more than a little annoyed. He’d led them to a small parking lot some ways into downtown. It appeared to be for a nail salon that was closed for the weekend. Lit only by a street light, Nick’s grin was positively devilish as he addressed his teammates.

“Nope: photo scavenger hunt, of sorts,” Nick replied. “On each page is a list of photos you need to take. There are requirements for specific people in some of them, so make sure you plan appropriately.”

“How exactly is this team bonding?” Mary asked. “Fun, sure, in the right circumstances, but I’m not certain what the point here is.”

“If it were obvious then you wouldn’t need to do it to understand,” Nick said. “Trust me, when this is all over you’ll be a much more effective team.”

“I guess we can give it a shot,” Vince said. Even he was having trouble concealing his disinterest.

“I’d hope so, I mean, with what’s on the line and all,” Nick baited.

“What do you mean?” Alex bit.

“Didn’t I mention? There’s a prize if you manage to complete your lists by midnight. Since it has been brought to my attention that you philistines don’t enjoy slasher cinema with the same gusto I possess, if you can bring me your pictures by midnight then I’ll swear never to hijack our events into horror movie marathons again.”

“Wait, seriously?” Alice said, light and hope sparkling into her eyes.

“I swear it on my love of sarcasm,” Nick replied. “But if you fail, then we’ll be spending tomorrow in a day-long fright flick fest.”

“Seems like a gamble,” Alex said. He was trying to play it cool but inside he was burning with desire to take the bet.

“Such is life,” Nick replied. “I’m going to be at Toady’s, the bar down the street. If you succeed, we spend the night relaxing in a nice lounge with the tab on me. If you fail then we go over the reasons why.”

“I get it,” Vince said. “This isn’t about pictures, it’s about seeing how we organize to accomplish a common goal.”

“Always at the top of the class,” Nick said. Of course, this wasn’t nearly the extent of it, but Vince at least had the gist.

“Then I’m in,” Vince said.

“Me, too,” Alice agreed. The others signaled their affirmation and Nick handed out the papers. They were left to separate and distribute responsibility as desired. Once upon a time he would have had to give out cameras too. Thankfully the dawn of the cell phone age had rendered such additions unnecessary. He stepped into his car and left them to debate, the teams already coming together just the way he’d expected them to.

* * *

Alex slid down from the piece of modern art carefully, still not certain who referred to a sheer vertical wall as art. He’d gotten his picture atop it, so whatever it was, it was crossed off the list. That was a good thing too, because time was quickly running out. The pictures weren’t terribly hard to get – well, except maybe the elephant one - but they had specific requirements and took time to drive to. A tickle in the back of his mind wanted to pay more attention to that fact, along with the requirements of people in pictures. It felt there was something there, something he should be paying attention to.

Instead he focused on getting down safely. Next up was a Vince picture then two more and they were home free.

* * *

Nick sat comfortably as the soft music filtered down from the speakers. Toady’s had a pleasant atmosphere with gentle lighting and comfortable seating. It was trendy enough to have people but not so popular that it was swamped. He held down the large area with ease as he waited for his friends to arrive. A quick check of his watch told him they had fifteen minutes left until the deadline. Part of him almost felt bad for them, knowing there was no way they’d be done on time. It was necessary, though: failure led to insight, which led to growth. They needed to fail. Better it be at some stupid little contest than somewhere that mattered.

Besides, he had some choice films selected for tomorrow.

15.

When Vince, Alex, and Roy finally arrived at the lounge, they found the girls already sitting at Nick’s side, a look of defeat on their pretty faces. Nick, on the other hand, looked like the cat that got the cream, drinking a soda and flashing them a winning grin as the three young men approached his section.

“I call shenanigans,” Roy thundered, bounding ahead of the others. “There was no way we could have done all that in the time frame you gave us. The places were all over town.”

“I hate to say it, but I agree,” Alex said. “I think you set us up for failure on this one.”

“That does sound like Nick,” Alice mumbled under her breath.

“We only beat you guys here by a few minutes,” Mary told them.

“Which was still a good half hour past the deadline,” Nick pointed out, setting down his drink. “Now, let me address your concerns. Did I set you up to fail? Well, it depends on what you mean by that phrase.”

“We’re listening,” Mary said.

“If you mean I did it knowing you would fail, then yes. If you mean it as I gave you a task that couldn’t be accomplished, then no. What I gave you was doable, I just knew you all wouldn’t be successful at accomplishing it.”

“How could you know something like that?” Camille asked, her voice only a few degrees louder than the background music.

“Elementary, my dear healer,” Nick told her. “I knew you’d go after this the same way most of you go after every problem: you’d pick a path and charge ahead blindly. At no point did it occur to you that there might be some strategy to implement in this particular task.”

“Like what?”

“For starters? You could have mapped out your routes a bit. Nearly all of my tasks had specific geographical markers required. If you all had taken the time to lay out a map, like so-” Nick pulled a folded map from his pocket and set it on the table in front of him. He unfurled it, showing a variety of dots scattered across the town’s surface. There were six different colors, each in locations the group was now more familiar with. “-you could have easily seen the natural clusters and plotted a path that had you doing one task after another, cutting down on travel time drastically.”

Alex stared at the dots, piecing together who was what color from the spots he knew various pictures had been taken. Something was nagging at him, and now that there was time to think he let that nag mature into a full-grown thought.

“You’re lying,” Alex said. “Roy is red, Vince is blue, and I’m orange, right?”

“Correct,” Nick confirmed.

“Then there was no ideal route. No matter what we did we’d still have to cross town at least twice. That trip alone would have put us over the time,” Alex pointed out.

“Correct again,” Nick agreed. “Which brings me to my next point. You formed the wrong teams.”

“How?” Roy demanded. “You gave us the papers with our requirement. All the boys were on orange and the girls were on blue.”

“I did do that, but I never told you how to split up,” Nick pointed out. “You just accepted the format that was given to you without applying any thought of your own.”

“Shit,” Alex said, his face still peering at Nick’s map.

“What?” Mary asked.

“He’s right. If instead of the red dot Vince and I had been paired with the white one we could have easily planned a route with almost no backtracking,” Alex said, pointing to the map to illustrate.

“But then how would we have known what pictures to take? The other team would have had the paper you needed for at least one person’s pictures,” Alice said.

Vince shook his head. “We were using cell phone cameras with digital displays. It would have taken no time for us to photograph the other team’s sheet.”

“Right again,” Nick said. “I’m starting to think you folks are smarter than you look.”

“So what, if we’d done all this prep work we had no idea we needed, then we could have won the bet? That seems pretty convoluted,” Alice accused.

“Does it? Does creating a real life demonstration of your natural failings in an environment with low consequences seem convoluted? Perhaps you’re missing the point of this little display,” Nick said, rising from his seat. “I wanted you to see what you all lack, which is planning and critical thinking skills. At no point did any of you try a strategy even remotely outside the box. You ran forward recklessly, focused on just doing things faster rather than smarter. The reason you lost tonight isn’t because you weren’t intelligent enough to figure this out, it is because you simply aren’t used to doing things that way. But you need to be, because if our previous test showed us anything, it is that these exams won’t boil down to pure power. We’ll need strategy, too.”

“Isn’t that what we’ve got you for?” Vince asked.

“Yes, and at the same time no,” Nick replied. “I’ll explain more later on; right now let’s just relax a little. The game is over so we can sit back and shoot the shit for the remainder of the night.”

“Works for me,” Alice agreed.

“Then tomorrow will begin the slasher marathon to end all slasher marathons,” Nick finished.

“Wait, you’re really going to make us do that? I thought it was just a threat so we’d work harder,” Alex said.

“Oh no, I always honor my bets,” Nick informed him. “Besides, if there are no consequences to failure then the lessons just don’t take as well.”

Vince turned to Camille. “If you want to jump ship to another group, I bet there’s still time.”

His tone was light-hearted and clearly meant in jest. Still, Camille turned an analytical eye toward her new comrades. Half of them were glaring at the boy wearing sunglasses indoors, and most of the others were staring fiercely at a map in dim lighting. Tonight had been one of the oddest training exercises she’d ever participated in, but she had to admit it had been successful in driving home a point to everyone. Besides which, she’d actually kind of enjoyed herself in the hecticness of it all.

Camille gave Vince a small smile. “I think I’ll stick it out for a while longer.”

16.

Vince yawned broadly as he walked into the concrete-walled classroom. After Nick’s movie marathon on Sunday he’d slept incredibly poorly. His dreams had been stuffed with monsters to the point where they slipped into the absurd. Case in point: one dream had him chased by a giant pumpkin wielding knives, while a later dream had him chased by a giant knife wielding pumpkins. The first had been scarier, yet curiously it was the second that jerked him from his slumber. He tried to shake off his weariness as he scanned for a seat; after all, this was the first day of his real classes. He wanted to be alert.

The classroom was more a circle of wooden benches than a lecture hall, all wrapping around a focal point where Professor Fletcher stood patiently. To be honest, Vince was more surprised there was any seating at all in a course on close combat; he’d expected more circles and days duking it out with fellow combatants. Still, after what he’d seen Professor Fletcher do, Vince wasn’t going to question his methods. Any man with that much skill was worth listening to.

Other students began filtering into the room one by one. Thomas took a seat next to Vince, and they were soon joined by Stella and Violet. Chad and Shane entered a few minutes later, followed by Michael close at their heels. Sasha walked in with Julia and purposely passed by Vince without even a passing glance. Jill, at least, gave him a supportive smile before joining her suite mates when she walked in. Roy ambled in near the beginning of class and plopped down in the closest space he could find. One of the last people to enter was the most surprising to Vince.

“Camille? What are you doing here?”

“They assigned me,” Camille said, glancing around the room nervously as she stepped farther from the doorway. Everyone seemed so much bigger than she. Bigger and stronger.

“That can’t be right, you’re a healer,” Vince said worriedly. “Let’s go talk to the professor and see-”