As I headed to my first class, materials acquisition, I set aside my gut instinct and really thought out the plan to worm my way into the Kellar Academy. I was no genius, but I was usually pretty good at coming to a snap decision that worked, if poorly, but if I gave it some real thinking time, I could almost always come up with something better.

  The biggest problem, if Glacier Girl actually decided to refer me, was to have a power that was useful enough that the BSA would want to provide my education for free, as a way of keeping me on the hook, but not strong or dangerous enough that they felt the need to keep me under lock and key or keep a permanent eye on me, because that would seriously cramp my future.

  At first glance, Pyrokinesis would certainly get me into their hallowed halls, but pyrokinetics were a huge danger flag for turning supervillain, which almost guaranteed constant, if subtle, surveillance in the future. The same is true of cryokinesis, and possibly even electrokinesis.

  In truth, just about any ‘kinesis’ I could simulate would probably put me on a watchlist or something. Not to mention, the first time I went into any kind of training, I’d probably burn through so much energy that I would be out of action for a week, and there was no way I could put up a meaningful display compared to someone with ether access. So what were my other options?

  I couldn’t simulate a widgeteer, that was for sure. Don’t get me wrong, I often pretended to be a widgeteer, because they made good villains. There was a world of difference between buying a cheap remote control car and merging a bunch of fake metallic crap onto it versus making an actual widgeteer-type drone.

  Then again, my brain was going a bit crazy with ideas as I slid into the stadium seating in the teaching amphitheater. True widgeteers were usually straight-line power-armor or superhero types. Their ‘gadgets’ were metaphorical representations that their power latched onto to produce an effect, and wouldn’t work if they stopped providing them with energy, whether that was immediate, by losing contact, or more subtle, like time. The upside was that their powers were cheap, since a metal casing and a banana peel, or whatever they used, didn’t have any actual expensive tech.

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  The downside, of course, was that they didn’t actually advance science in any reproducible way. They weren’t geniuses except in the most abstract way, and once the widgeteer was gone, so was their invention. Wizard-types were pretty much the same, but tended to use ingredients to cast spells instead of building wacky tech. It was the same sort of power, metaphoric representation; it was simply expressed differently.

  Now, super-geniuses were a different kettle of fish entirely. Their brains were enhanced by their superpower, and they could produce real, reproducible technology… that is, if you could somehow manage to keep up with their genius. Unfortunately, though, if they kept advancing their power and technology, they almost always went completely insane, at least from a human standpoint. Their motivations, especially after you passed the 200 IQ threshold, became almost utterly alien and often involved leaps of logic that were… well, bugnuts to anyone that wasn’t just as smart in exactly the same way.

  I was not that smart. Not even close. I KNEW I was stupid compared to even the better tacticians that ran the BSA. Even my ‘villainous’ activities were calculated to be beneath their interest level, or else I’d get stomped.

  The trick was to make myself valuable enough to train, while not being dangerous enough to watch… and now that I thought it out, I had the perfect scheme… err… plan to make that a reality, if I had the right referral.

  The best part was? If I DID have to pay back my education with public service, the smartest place to put me would be in R&D, well away from the battle line, a ‘chair guy’ in every possible way, while still doing my part to help out in alerts.

  I probably should have been paying more attention in Materials Acquisition, but the class was mostly a retread of what I already knew, so I spent the class time gleefully plotting out my rise to power and how I could manipulate the BSA into covering my finances for the next several years.