Super Powereds: Year 3 (104 page)

                “Perhaps one day, if you make it to Hero status, you can come back, and we’ll have a duel for real.”

                “Nice offer, but I think I’d rather just beat you here.” Roy threw himself to the side, smashing away the hammer and a few tendrils, and opening up a clean shot for Will, who had been scampering about on the sidelines. Roy had no idea what the tech-genius was planning, only that he’d seemed to be looking for a line of sight on the professor. If Roy was wrong, then they were screwed, since he was now firmly in a place to be grabbed. But trusting your team was also part of being the strongman. He had to believe Will could accomplish something that he couldn’t.

                The beam of light nearly hit Roy before striking Professor Cole directly in the chest. At first, it seemed like nothing happened, but then Roy noticed the slight drooping of all the cloth tendrils around him. He didn’t need the cue from Will; Roy knew an opportunity when he saw it.

                Rushing forward, he reared his bat back with both hands and prepared to swing. She’d told them to come with the intent to kill, and Roy wasn’t about to disappoint, though he did aim for the shoulder, just to be safe. He moved with all the speed he could muster . . . but it was a heartbeat too slow. Just as he got within swinging range, Roy heard the thunderous rustling of countless pieces of cloth converging on him at once. Every part of him was engulfed, and he was hoisted off the ground, his strength useless against the firm but pliable prison binding him. He couldn’t see, and he could scarcely hear a thing—at least until the wrapping on his face began to fall away.

                “Will Murray has been eliminated by injury,” Professor Cole announced. The last of the wrappings fell away, revealing Will slumped on the ground, arms dangling uselessly at his sides. “And Roy Daniels is eliminated by capture, though I can smack you on the head if you really need me to prove you’re out of this fight.”

                “No, I can admit when I’ve been beat,” Roy said. He felt himself being lowered to the ground, where the bandages slithered off him and began wrapping themselves back around Professor Cole.

                “You know, that might be the closest someone—besides Angela—has come to beating me in a long time,” she said, shaking her head as her face became less and less visible. “That beam of Will’s interrupted my central nervous system, and you capitalized without a second of hesitation. For a team that was thrown together, you did pretty damn well.”

                “But we didn’t win,” Roy said.

                “I meant what I said,” Professor Cole replied. “Get your certification, and the door is always open. I could use the practice, anyway. Now, get your team down to the infirmary; I’ve got another group of students to fight.” The excitement in her voice was palpable, a sentiment which Roy understood all too well.

193.

               Alice glanced in the mirror, pulled her still-damp hair back into a ponytail, and decided that would have to suffice for the rest of the day. Sometimes, she liked to stop by the dorm and primp a bit after her HCP classes and necessary shower, but after an exam day, she was too wiped out to do anything but trudge up to the surface and deal with her last topside class. At least, with Subtlety only having finals at the end of the semester, it meant that her testing was over for the week, save for when she had to jump in on other people’s trials. She’d put on a good showing as well, not that anyone was particularly surprised. Alice wasn’t certain how she’d stacked up in terms of overall power against the rest of the class, but she was unquestionably one of the top Control students in her year.

                Grabbing a backpack and pausing to tie her sneakers, Alice headed into the hallway, on track for the lifts. Her mind was still in a post-battle fugue as she made her way across the concrete halls, which was why she didn’t notice Angela’s presence until the older girl laid a hand on her shoulder.

                “Gah!” Alice yelped and jumped into the air, though she didn’t float or linger, simply dropping back to the ground as if gravity held sway over her.

                “Whoa, calm it down there,” Angela said. “I called your name twice.”

                “Huh?” Alice’s heart slowed down quickly; it was almost unnerving how fast she adapted to shocks and surprises these days. “Oh, sorry. Just had my exam, so I’m a little out of it.”

                “Happens to the best of us,” Angela replied. She too wore a slight sheen and damp hair that spoke to time spent training, followed by a hurried shower. It was essentially the heading-back-to-class uniform for HCP students. It might have marked them as suspicious, if not for the fact that many students showed up in their pajamas, meaning people who had just showered were hardly the most eye-catchingly different of the lot.

                “Anyway, tonight is the last chance for sign-ups on the rodeo,” Angela continued. “I wanted to see if you’d finally decided to come give it a go with me.”

                “I’m still sort of on the fence about it,” Alice admitted. While it seemed like it would be fun, she wasn’t sure how comfortable she felt in that sort of spotlight. After nearly three years of trying to blend in and go unnoticed, any sort of mass attention made her feel uneasy. “Sorry, I know you needed a partner and everything.”

                “It’s not a big deal. If you don’t want to do it, I’ll just join up with one of the other girls who asked me to be on their team. No hard feelings.” Angela gave Alice a soft punch on the shoulder, then started heading back down the hall.

                “Wait, you had other options? I thought you were just asking me because you needed someone to sign up with you?” Alice’s words stopped Angela, who turned back around with a furrowed brow.

                “Why wouldn’t I have other options? I do have my own friends, you know, many of whom work at the same bar as us.”

                “Then . . . why were you trying so hard to get me to do the rodeo with you?” Alice asked.

                Angela let out a long sigh and walked back over to Alice, promptly rapping lightly on her fellow blonde’s skull. “Because I like you, ding-dong. You’re a fancy bitch, but from what I’ve heard, you kick some serious ass. I thought it might do you good to cut loose and go a little wild. Your friends are nice people, but hardly the most unpredictable bunch.”

                “You clearly didn’t spend enough time around Nick before he left, then,” Alice muttered.

                “Oh, yeah, I heard some tales about that kid. Point being, he’s not here anymore, and I thought you’d like having some fun at the Cowgirl Rodeo. Plus, a thousand bucks is a thousand bucks, and we’d have kicked the shit out of those other broads.”

                “You really think we’d have won?” Alice could feel some of Angela’s enthusiasm leaking into her, but she wasn’t quite sure how to stop it, or, truthfully, if she even wanted to.

                “Two HCP gals like us? We’d have wiped the floor with all the others.”

                “I’m pretty sure we can’t use our powers in bull-riding or three-beer roping, whatever that is,” Alice pointed out.

                “What ‘that is,’ is a shitload of fun,” Angela told her. “You chug three beers, then spin around three times, and then you have to rope one of the bartenders carrying around empty keg shells. And we don’t need our powers to win. We’ve got years of training and physical conditioning under our belts that the others won’t have a prayer of matching.”

                “I think two of my other friends are entering,” Alice said. “So that’s at least one more set of HCP girls in the competition.”

                A devilish grin spread across Angela’s face, the kind that made Alice feel both curious and a bit terrified all at once. “Seriously? That’s awesome! I was really worried there wouldn’t be anybody worth taking on this year. If there’s going to be actual competition, then it will be way better than I was hoping for.”

                “I think most people would prefer the easy win.” Alice wasn’t certain whether she was included in that group or not anymore. Certainly, when she’d started off in the HCP, she’d have taken a win over a challenge any day, but it was a rare week when Alice didn’t find her thoughts drifting back to last year’s aerial battle with Violet, or her duel with the Sims. Strangely, those memories conjured excitement in her, a type of fire she wasn’t entirely sure she’d ever experienced before.

                “Most people are wimps and cowards,” Angela replied. “The best battles are the ones that push you to the edge, the ones that force you to find a way to get better, or stronger, or faster, all in the heat of the moment. That’s where greatness lives.” Angela shook her head, realizing she’d gotten a bit caught up in the excitement of having proper competition. “Anyway, thanks for the heads up. I’ll make sure to pick your replacement more carefully, now that I know there are real contenders showing up.”

                “Like hell you will,” Alice replied. “We’re signing up as a team tonight.”

                “Really? Did you find my speech that rousing?” Angela asked.

                “No, but I realized that, of everyone here, you seem to be the one who enjoys all of . . . this” —Alice lifted her hands and gestured to the concrete walls around them— “the most. It might be nice to have half as much fun as you do, if only for one night.”

                “Poetic and irresponsible,” Angela said. “I knew there was a reason I liked you.”

194.

               “Welcome, ye weary warriors, to my den of iniquity and ale. Partake all you like, as I hear you are in dire need of rest.”

                “Evening to you too, weirdo,” Alice replied, giving Nick a brief hug as the group entered his apartment.

                “What? I can’t get thematically in the mood?” Nick said, shutting the door and locking it firmly after Hershel and Mary had stepped through. Vince was already seated at the table, unpacking the bag he’d been tasked with carrying. “We’re playing ‘Stone the Villager’ tonight, so I thought I would talk old-timey.”

                “Iniquity and ale?” Mary asked, staring at Nick with an exasperated expression he curiously found he’d missed in his time away.

                “I provide the ale, the iniquity is on you lot to come up with. Though, Alice can save hers for tomorrow, since I’d hate for her to use up her whole stockpile before the big rodeo,” Nick said.

                “Don’t you worry about my iniquity, I’ve got loads of . . . wait, why the hell am I even humoring this discussion?” Alice shook her head and sat down at the table across from Vince. “Stop being an idiot, and let’s just play the game.”

                “Oooh, does someone perhaps have a touch of stage fright?” Nick walked over to the table, pausing to grab a soda from the fridge in the adjacent kitchen, and plopped down next to Alice. Once, he might have worried about such proximity sending the wrong message, but by this point, there were certain charades that weren’t worth the effort to keep up.

                “I’ve fought massive mechanical opponents, a professor of the HCP, and lived with you for two years. You think a little mechanical bull-riding can rattle me?”

                “To be fair, when you did those other things, you weren’t wearing skimpy jean shorts and a revealing top,” Mary pointed out.

                “Hey now, that was just Angela’s suggestion for a team outfit. I didn’t sign off on anything yet,” Alice replied. Of course, she already knew that she would, which meant Mary knew that as well, making the entire act of denial a pointless endeavor. Still, Alice persisted, because it seemed like the proper thing to do.

                “Personally, I’m just glad one of us is doing something fun for spring break,” Hershel said. He was setting up the board as Vince unpacked the components, carefully laying each tile down along the game board’s path. “All everyone else is doing is working.”

                “Jill said she had something fun planned,” Vince reminded him. “She even made us all promise to take next Wednesday off. Plus, there’s Chad’s normal day.”

                “Which will eat our Tuesday, so we need to make sure and tell Brenda,” Mary instructed. “She’s made it clear we can take what we want off, but only if we give notice.”

                “Right, we’ll tell her when we work tomorrow,” Vince agreed. “So, that’s two fun things right there.”

                “I reserve the right to see what Jill comes up with before I yield to the idea of it being fun,” Hershel said. “Though, Violet mentioned that she was bullying Will into helping, so that will at least make it interesting.”

                “Sometimes I wonder where he finds the time to cook up all those doo-dads,” Vince said.

                Mary snorted out an involuntary bark of laughter, causing the entire table to look at her. She took a moment to compose her before finally speaking. “What? He said ‘doo-dads.’ I’ve never heard anyone under seventy use, or even think, that word before. It caught me off guard.”

                “Vince Reynolds, one of the few men to take a telepath by surprise,” Nick announced. He quickly got up from his seat and hurried over to Vince, grabbing the silver-haired young man’s hand and lifting it in the air like a victorious prize-fighter.