I glared at the class schedule like it had personally insulted my mother, all while shoveling away a mountain of grilled ham and cheese sandwiches. They were actually pretty good—a hint of mustard and mayo on rye with a delicious cheddar-gouda blend that spoke of a kitchen that gave a damn—but my mood was too black to truly enjoy them. My metabolism, however, was ecstatic. It had been days since it had seen this much processed pork product.

  “Something wrong?” asked Mindy as she sat down next to me with a 12” veggie pizza that looked like a garden had thrown up on a dough circle. One good thing about being an alpha, mostly you’d never have to worry about getting fat, although considering how much we tended to eat, malnutrition could potentially become a problem.

  I take it back. There were some fat alphas, but you’d have to regularly and grossly overindulge, or have a power based specifically around being fat. Where there was a will there was a way, though. I’d once seen a Class Three who could store kinetic energy in her adipose tissue. She was a lovely woman, and a living wrecking ball.

  I nodded, stabbing a finger at the offending document. “This is remedial?” I asked, pointing at no less than 6 classes I was expected to course load. Each was three hours, and I had to take three a day.

  “I was expecting like… actual educational courses, like business management and accounting, not a bunch of hardcore electives.” Advanced Anatomy? I could map the human body’s failure points with my eyes closed. Criminology? I’d practically minored in it on Vilnet.

  She shrugged. We hadn’t received our uniforms yet, and it looked like at least three of the classes would require them. “We have different courses. I think some of yours are probably support, like advanced anatomy. They have access to our original transcripts and our assessment results, so they probably want to like… improve your medicine or something.”

  She looked over her own schedule. “I have seven classes, five per day, but most of them are an hour and a half. It looks like I get remedial teamwork and uhh… Eastern studies? With you, though.”

  I swallowed another sandwich, the delicious cheese now tasting like bureaucratic indignity. “Okay, this class I guess I can get behind, fitness training. But it’s kind of irritating that they put me on it like I am not in shape and don’t know how to lift and train. Criminology I get, but what on Earth is remedial appearance? Do I have to learn to put on make-up?” I pictured myself in front of a mirror, clumsily applying eyeliner while a stern instructor yelled about contouring my cheekbones to look more heroic. My life was a joke.

  She smiled a little, a faint thing. “It’s probably a class on public relations. I mean, for remedial classes we might not even have more than a couple of teachers, and it’s only four weeks. Remember that a lot of these kids came from rich backgrounds, and even superhero families.”

  “Like you?” I asked, my tone softer. I was beginning to realize Mindy wasn’t the trust-fund baby I’d pegged her for.

  She shook her head. “Not like me. Sure, I grew up middle-class, but my mom isn’t a superhero, she’s a tier two multiplier. The only reason we had money at all was because she worked three jobs at the same time.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Then how did you afford…” I gestured around at the academy. The ‘associated fees’ alone were probably more than my entire villainous nest egg.

  She shrugged, a gesture of lifelong habit. “SSS? Scrimping and saving. When I was a teenager she went to bed every night with a recombination headache. When I awakened, while I was at college, I had a choice… finish my school, or try to work part-time as a cape influencer. I went ahead and blew my college fund on influencer, because when I popped as a class four I knew I could afford to finish school. Even if I couldn’t get a spot somewhere like the Flare, with a good experience under my belt I could at least join an emergency response team and maybe run a stream occasionally.”

  She shrugged again, as if downgrading her own life’s struggles to a minor inconvenience. “Before I popped I was kind of dumpy, but you know what awakening does. I won’t run a fantasy site, I am not a slut, but I know I could hold an audience now. But that leads me into something else.”

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  I polished off another sandwich, my body already feeling the energy debt receding. “Something else?”

  She nodded, her expression turning serious. “I am your sponsor now. All I really know about you is what you showed me. I am pretty sure that remedial teamwork will help us get it together as a fighter and support, but umm…”

  I glanced at her, reading the uncertainty. “You think we need some time together as people to learn about each other outside of remedial teamwork?”

  She nodded, looking relieved I’d said it. “Yeah.”

  “Not like dating, right?” I said, holding up a hand. “I don’t think either of us needs that kind of stress right now.” My heart couldn’t handle another Christine, and my bank account certainly couldn’t.

  She shook her head vigorously. “Of course not. Other than like… study dates, I guess. Most of the people here come from privileged backgrounds, so we might have to present sort of a united front. Besides, Dia… umm… someone vouched for you, and I am sort of interested in why. You don’t strike me as someone that hangs out in the wannabe circuit, how’d you guys meet?”

  Ah, the question I knew was coming. I had a carefully prepared story, a little nugget of truth wrapped in a thick layer of plausible deniability. “We were both dating the same girl. At the same time.”

  Her eyes went wide. “Did you know about it?”

  “Nope.” I let out a world-weary sigh that wasn’t entirely faked. “It wasn’t until she popped, ripped us both off, and kicked us to the curb that we met and compared notes. We kinda hit it off pretty well, since we were both huge supervillain fans, but it wasn’t until he came to me sorta messed up that I realized that he played the game. He knew I was a class two fixer by that point, and I patched him and his armor up.”

  I leaned in conspiratorially. “He isn’t really a kook, that’s just the LARP he plays to get gigs. A weird rant or two, scary armor, and cool special effects makes for good streaming. Right now, alpha oppression is pretty popular, but if something else comes along, he’ll probably switch identities and become like… Forestfire or something. We work-shopped some identities, but other than that we were just dudes that hung out together at the mall until he told me you felt like you owed him a favor.”

  “Was he hurt badly?” she asked, genuine concern in her voice. It was… nice. And terrifying.

  I shrugged, playing it cool. “Not more than I can handle, although he had to scrap his armor. That was a little expensive, but he’s got backups. You might not see Diabolus Firetrap for a while, though, since the identity was linked to the suit and replacing it will cost a bit.”

  “Does he have a lot of identities?”

  “A few. SSS likes to stay flexible, since they only hire men.”

  “Why is that?” she asked, genuinely curious.

  I grinned, this part was actually true. “That I know. It’s a stunt company that specializes in providing villains that LOSE. Sure, there are many more female than male alphas, but normies still run the show… who enjoys watching pretty women getting beaten up? There’s a place where that sort of thing is popular, but SSS doesn’t roll that way.”

  She nodded slowly, taking a big bite of her pizza as she processed the cynical, market-driven logic of it all. “That… makes a weird kind of sense. I mean, it’s kind of sexist, but logical at the same time. Do you plan on working for them?”

  I laughed, a real one this time. “I’m a guy that can repair armor. Even if I wind up being able to make a set of widgeteer armor for myself, do you know what people call normie-strength heroes and villains in super armor?”

  “Tin cans?”

  “Sardines. Lots of Widgeteers have done it, but unless they have some kind of physical enhancement, sooner or later they are always dead fish in a can, if only from the same kind of brain damage boxers and football players have to deal with.” I tapped my temple. “This is my only asset. I’d rather not have it scrambled.”

  She nodded, a look of understanding dawning. “See, that’s exactly the sort of things we need to learn about each other. So I suggest we take at least an hour a day, outside of our class schedules, maybe dinner?”

  “That we can do.” I looked around at the almost deserted dining hall. The silence was punctuated only by the hum of industrial refrigerators and the distant clatter of the kitchen staff cleaning up. “Probably right here. I mean, it’s seven, and this place is almost empty.”

  “Fancy students, fancy food. This place is pretty great for us, but a lot of these kids probably eat out every night or order in even if this place is technically free. Also the timing… The Alpha students, at least, probably have unusual schedules.”

  “So,” I said, finishing my last sandwich and licking a spot of cheese off my thumb. “Are you going to try and milk me for more information on Diabolus?”

  She shrugged, a honest gesture. “That was the original plan, but it sounds like you have lots of interesting things surrounding you as well. I owe him a debt still, but I didn’t develop some kind of crush on him or something.”

  I nodded, buffing my nails on my shirt as I leaned back in my chair. I grabbed my empty plate with the other hand, inspecting my work-rough hands, and said in my best, most melodramatic Bugs Bunny voice, “Monsters lead such INTERESTING lives.”

  She laughed, a bright sound in the empty hall. “I wouldn’t call him a monster.”

  I shook my head, my own smile fading. “Oh no, if you’re around for a general alert, you will get to meet real monsters.” And I wasn’t just talking about the Kaiju.