B2 19-20 - Time's Up and Focus on Classes

19 - Time's Up

Friday, January 16

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“And then he kicked in my fursuit’s teeth and pulled my arm out of its socket!” Bianca grinned from a cushion inside her secret lair. “It was awesome!”

“I saw.” I didn’t think it was awesome. She’d gotten her ass handed to her in the final thirty seconds of the fight, and while her arm wasn’t broken, she’d be in a sling for a couple of days. Luckily, according to Rocko, supers healed quickly, so she’d be back in business by the end of next week.

“Battered, bruised Bianca,” I said, forcing a grin. She’d dragged herself back to my lair, and from there, we’d gone to the hospital. We had to make up some bullshit—neither of us wanted to do the ‘I fell down the stairs’ routine—and then the nurse made me leave the room for a minute. They’d gotten me less than 30 seconds later, apologizing, and then jammed Bee’s arm back into place. She’d screamed a lot.

“Oh, shut up. The things I do for you, I swear to god.” Bee winked. Then she got another grin, this one wicked—no, scheming. “While I’m recovering from my terrible injury, you’ll have to help me with everything! You can type my homework up, make me PB and Js, and even rub my shoulder when it’s sore.”

“I’d do that last one anyway.” I got up and started massaging her. Then I stopped. “Green apple again? Really?”

“You know you love it. Keep going.”

“I do.” As I pushed gently on Bee’s shoulders, I looked around. I’d never been in Fursona’s secret base, which she’d jokingly named Outback Stakeout Zone. She’d gone completely chairless, which didn’t surprise me, given how inconvenient sitting was with her animatronic tail. Instead, pillows and cushions lay scattered in the corners, some facing the ubiquitous TV screens tuned to Tokyexico’s news. One blared on and on about the turbo-buffalo herd and its migration away from the city, as well as the lack of D-wolver attacks.

“Sounds like the Man vs. Nature is wrapping up,” I said.

“Sure is. It’s about time, too. I missed home.” Bianca leaned back into me, pressing her ponytail against my stomach. She shivered as I moved my massage up onto her neck, lowering her head to let me rub. “We might actually get a spring break. Thought about what you’re gonna do?”

“I’m going home. Back to Riverside. I miss my parents a lot.”

Bee looked crestfallen, and I felt her suppress a shiver. Then she dropped her head onto her un-slung arm and sobbed; if it weren’t her, it’d look melodramatic. But I knew enough about her body language to take her seriously. “I can’t get home. It won’t be enough time to be worth the ticket.”

“You’re a superhero. Rocko’s paying you royalties, right?” I got a small cut of Heroics 101 and Small Town Super’s profits. It wasn’t enough to buy a plane, but it’d be more than enough to buy a plane ticket.

“Mom and Dad would know something was up. It’s a thousand dollars to fly, and I’m a broke college student.” Bianca rubbed an eye, then leaned back into me again as I sat down behind her. I wrapped my arms around her waist.

“So you need somewhere to go? No problem. You can come to Riverside with me. It’ll be boring, but you can meet my Mom and Dad.” I paused. “We should sign up for a ride-share soon, though. Two people are harder to fit in than one, and it’ll be busy. Some students came from the desert cites, and if they’re not flying, they’ll definitely ride-share with each other.”

“That’d be great. What’s there to do in Riverside?”

I stopped to consider. “Well, there’s movies, and the river, but it’ll be too cold for that in March. We could see the mountains, though, and if you want to suit up, we could hunt some megafauna out in the desert west of town. But mostly, we just hang out—“

“Ow!” Bee adjusted so her hurt shoulder wasn’t jammed against mine. I loosened my grip while she got comfortable again. “Yeah, that sounds slow. But nice. And honestly, our superhero lives are fast enough. I’m fine with slow time with you.”

We sat there for a while, my arms around Bee’s waist, and I sniffed her green apple and light sweat smell. I kissed the back of her neck, and she gently moved my hands up a bit higher. I smiled sheepishly; I’d been letting them stray.

“So, show me the rest of your place?” I asked.

I felt her stiffen in my arms. “I’d rather not. It’s not…I haven’t cleaned in a while.”

“Bee, I’ve seen how you leave my place. Clothes everywhere, make-up open on my sink, and black hair in my shower. Nothing there’s going to surprise me.”

“You’d be surprised how surprised you’d be,” Bee muttered. I moved to stand up, but she grabbed my wrists and pulled me back around her. “You put a boundary on me snooping for the present, and I’m putting one on you checking out my dorm room. Deal?”

“Deal.”

“Good. Now I can let you go. Let’s head to your place. We do our best planning in the green room, and all our notes are there.”

◄▼►

“Okay, type in ‘super watch’ on your phone. Tap the third link, then click ‘tell me about exciting new watches,’” Bianca said from the couch. “Enter your email—not the super one, but your personal—and then hit ‘accept all cookies’ and ‘accept all promotions.’ There should be a pop-up. Hit decline. It’ll boot you back to the main page, but this time, you’ll have a new watch in the seventh spot. Click the new watch.”

“Seriously? How does anyone find this shit?” The Super Watch site didn’t sell watches. You could add them to your cart, but you’d just get an email that your choice was sold out or discontinued if you tried to buy. Super Watch had another purpose. “And how did you find this site?”

“Research. You became a superhero as a kid. You were molded by it. By the time you knew how to look for stuff, you knew everything, or thought you did. I was eighteen. I merely adopted the suit. So I had to do some digging. One of my sources led me to Super Watch.”

“And what, exactly, is Super Watch?”

“It’s a fan site, but well-hidden and ‘dark.’ What gets on here isn’t policed by the Ilneats, although anything juicy gets out. Lots of speculation about hero identities, villains’ next moves, and the leaderboard. Hand me the phone, I’ll get logged in. I’ve got a reputation for knowing things, so me finding a video of Fursona in action? That’ll be big.”

“Then why are we using my phone?”

“Security. Deniability. And, most importantly, this whole scheme has been your idea, so your device is the one Theseus will find if he has a Genius backtrack this. That’s also why we’re doing it from your secret base. That way I have deniability.”

“Okay, that’s fair. Theseus was pretty pissed at you.” I handed the phone over and plugged in the drive we’d loaded our slightly-doctored video onto. We’d cut out most of the audio, leaving just the video and a few half-garbled lines to tell the tale. Rocko had offered to help us, especially once they saw how butchered the recording was getting, but the whole point was to look like amateurs.

We tinkered with the post itself; it had to be just right to grab attention, but not too much. We wanted it all over the fan site’s forums, but not leaked right away. Eventually, though, we had the following post.

Raw, Slightly Corupted Bodycam footage: Fursona vs. Theseus Round Two: The REVeNGENING

Hey, I dont think the episode is out yet, but I have some amazing footaage. Th e fight in the wight room last year was amazing, but this ones even better. I found this after itwas all over. It was on a button camera, and I think Fursona wore it into battle. Might be something new for Heroics101, but its all mine now.

Theres limited sound.When I downloaded it, the sound messed up, so I’ve only got a few lines in there, and they’re garbled. Still, scoop of the year, right? And it’s only January.

Theseus Destroys Fursona in Epic Battle.mp4

“Good enough. Posting it now,” Bianca said.

“Doesn’t that video name sound a little…lewd?”

Bianca laughed. “Well, yeah. It’ll catch more eyes that way. Now, let’s talk overall strategy. Hopefully this will make the rounds and get to either APPEAL or ‘DJ Smooth’ before the round table. That’ll put Theseus under the spotlight. Either way, we need a defense for your actions in the series finale—and I don’t think ‘It was a series finale’ is gonna cut it.”

She was right. I needed a better defense than that for sure. Luckily, I had one. I’d been working on it while Bianca spent the night in the hospital. “I’m sorry for what happened, but in both cases, I did what was necessary to stop a greater threat to Tokyexico University and the city at large. Professor Panic is the one at fault. He built his robot factory under the TUEAS Building, and rigged it to blow. He even set the timer on his explosives.

“And then, when I stopped him, he moved into a Student Supervillain Lair inside the Student Union Building and kept plotting. He knocked down Mister Felsic, he left tasers all across campus, and why? Because he couldn’t get over a relationship that wasn’t working. Meanwhile, I tried to evacuate the people under the statue, including you, ‘DJ Smooth.’”

Bianca thought for a minute. “That’s not bad, but let’s work on the ending. We need you to be more compelling as a hero than as a force of destruction, and that appeal to—ugh,Avan—might work, but we need more than that. You put Professor Panic in Almhurst, right?”

“Yeah. There’s a low-security wing for temporary holds and rehabilitation cases, and since the Man vs. Nature was on, no one wanted to try moving him to Riverside. Even his lawyers agreed—they wouldn’t make the drive either.”

“Perfect. Mention that he’s in Almhurst right now. That’ll drive sympathy.”

It took another twenty minutes to build the rest of the plan. Most of it was right there, but we planned contingencies for anything Theseus or Su-Bin could throw at me. Then we pulled up the Tokyexico Community Rankings, and I groaned. I was still 315th on the list, which made sense. I hadn’t actually done anything since last weekend, and if I wasn’t pulling Episodes, I wasn’t moving up. That’d change after the round table, though.

But clearly, Vigilant Vow hadn’t stopped. If anything, he was speeding up. When I went to find him, his rank sat at 272.

Bianca noticed my anxiety and gave me a side-hug. “Don’t worry about him. You can’t rush Episodes. The last time we tried that, we ended up at Tottergarten struggling for something to get you that Sara-N-Dipity gig. It was fun, but we don’t need a repeat. I’ll find you something—just focus on classes.”

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20 - Focus on Classes

Monday, January 19

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“How many of you went out and tried Episodes with your phenomenal new powers in the last two weeks?” Doctor Mindstorm asked. Almost every super-student’s hand went up. Fursona’s non-slung paw did, too; her ass-kicking at Theseus’s hands counted.

“Great. And how many of you…got your combo to work successfully?”

Fewer hands this time. Mine stayed up. Fursona’s went down. No surprise there. Theseus had all the minor league powers, not just [Power-Chaining]. He’d done exactly what Black Ice had done to me—either that or Fursona hadn’t even tried for a [Power-Chain] of her own.

“And, finally, how many of you had your combos broken?”

My hand went up, but Fursona’s stayed down. Gourmet’s went up, too, and so did Flare’s. The two villains had been active, and they’d been stomped down by minor leaguers, then.

“Every year, Junior Minor Leaguers get their combo power, and every year, they run off to find a minor league fight. And, inevitably, they lose. The biggest difference between little league fighting and minor league fighting is the cat-and-mouse game that happens. Since combos are so strong, fights revolve around rock/paper/scissors,” Doctor Tennyson said.

He clapped his hands. “An example, if you’ll indulge me. Doctor Mindstorm was a combo player in her very brief appearance in the minor leagues. She’d easily beat any hero who wasn’t on the lookout for her favorite [Power-Chain] because its finisher was already overwhelming. So, Mindstorm’s goal in combat revolved around safely launching that finisher. Mindstorm and other combo players are scissors.

“Her rival, Mister Felsic, came to power at the same time. He quickly learned to recognize and disrupt her combo’s steps with [Combo Breaker]. Mister Felsic, when combo-breaking, is rock.”

“And…all the heroes who tried to fight me without studying my most powerful combo, or who ran across me on the street and took a shot at…the fastest-rising minor league supervillain ever…they were paper. If they weren’t ready for me, they lost. A properly executed combo ends fights, sometimes before your opponent’s even fully set up.” Mindstorm smiled. “So, today, we’re going to pair up—hero to villain—and discuss each other’s preferred combos. Find the best place to disrupt your classmate’s move. But…only do it on paper. No fighting in the classroom.”

Fursona shrugged, grabbed Flare by the neck, and dragged him to a desk. Mindstorm snapped her head around to look at them. “I said ‘no fighting.’”

“Sorry,” Fursona said. “Just ready to hop to it.”

Gourmet sat down heavily across from me, biting a piece of jerky and chewing furiously. I raised a hand in greeting, and she returned the gesture. “Hi, Snack. Let's start with yours since you’ve used [Power-Weaving] successfully.”

Something felt off. This wasn’t the goofing-around Gourmet I’d known last semester. She seemed almost professional. Almost…Theseus-like. On the other hand, that meant we’d get something done. I pondered for a moment, shrugged it off, and talked her through one of my combos. Not the one I’d used on her and Polar Vortex, though; that one was too good to spoil completely.

Instead, I described my all-Rainy Day combo. “[Spotlight Strike] to [Check the Script], then [Thunderhead] and [Ride the Lightning]. It drops a pretty powerful finisher, especially in the right environments.”

“Easy. You used [Thunderhead] and [Ride the Lightning] on me. I can disrupt it without a combo breaker. I just need some blue raspberry Warhead candies.”

“What—no, don’t say anything. Let me guess. Blue raspberry sours give you electrical resistance? That seems like cheating to me.”

“It’s not. The instructions were to disrupt your combo. It’s disrupted if it doesn’t deal damage.” Gourmet grinned and chewed on her jerky. “But if you insist, I’d put a combo-breaker in between [Check the Script] and [Thunderhead]. I’m not gonna stop the [Thunderhead] damage bonus, but I could mess up your [Check the Script] since you’re using it as filler for the combo.”

I shook my head slowly. “Yeah, that’s the best spot to stop it. Enough commitment that it’d be hard to recover, forcing me to decide between starting over or finishing with a weakened combo.“

“And it’s hard for you to out-damage me without a full combo,” Gourmet said. “Now, mine is [Snap Into a Jerky] into [Bull Rush] into [Stampede Stomp] into [Furious Strike]. Nice and simple. Just try and stop that.”

“I did. If I time it right, I can [Quick-Time Change] and [I-Frame Transform] your[Bull Rush].” And what kind of power was [Snap Into a Jerky] anyway? Did it just change based on what she was eating?

“That didn’t actually stop my combo,” Gourmet interrupted. “I disrupted it myself when I backed off and took another [Snap]. That reset the whole damn thing, but I was one move away from comboing during our practice when they stopped us. You’d have been dead.”

I stuck out my tongue. “Okay, I’d put the combo-breaker right after the [Bull Rush]. It cuts the most damage off. I’m starting to think the middle of the combo is the place for disruptions. But that doesn’t make sense because Black Ice broke my combo after my third move. I’m not sure what’s optimal.”

“Stopping the combo is optimal,” Underdelver said from behind me. “Anything else is a bonus. It’s possible your opponent didn’t recognize the combo coming or didn’t feel threatened by it, so she let it go longer than she should have. But in the minors, the Triad followed a pattern. For Weavers, break early in the combo—around power use one or two. For Chainers, three or four is better. And for Geniuses with our [Systematic Chaos] bullshit, try to break if you get an opportunity. We don’t play fair, and it’s hard to see combos coming from us.”

Armed with our newfound knowledge, Gourmet and I went through several different mock fights, using different powers and trying different disruption points—all on paper, of course. By the end, I thought I knew how to stop her—and I’d kept a few of my powers back, so maybe I’d have the advantage if we fought again in the training room or in real life.

Class dismissed, and Gourmet grinned at me. “See you on Thursday, Snack.”

“See you on Thursday,” I said. The big girl hustled out the door, and I thought momentarily. “Wait. Combat Style Practicum isn’t until Friday.”

“Maybe she’s going to be at the round table like me,” Fursona suggested. “I’m going to wait outside the studio, and she’s Theseus’s friend. She could just be supporting him.”

“Yeah, that’s probably it,” I said, nodding. Then I hurried out, Fursona in my wake. I had studying to do for Child Psych.

◄▼►

Tuesday, January 20

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“So, by six months, a baby should recognize faces, be starting to reach for toys, and should be sitting without support. Unlike newborns, they’re a lot more interactive,” Doctor Roberts said. “And yes, the entire newborn and infant stages will be on next Tuesday’s quiz. I strongly recommend you look through the chapters on both stages and work through the hierarchy of needs for a child at each stage since you’ll need to classify different activities on a model hierarchy to pass the quiz.”

Su-Bin groaned; she hated this class more than I’d hated Algebra last semester, and I wasn’t good enough at this to pay her back for all her help in passing math. Doctor Roberts dismissed the class, and I stood up. “Lunch, Su-Bin?”

My strategy for making our friendship survive this Thursday was simple. Annie and Magical Girl Undergrad were separate people, and Su-Bin and Vice-President Pak were different people, too. If Annie didn’t interact with Vice-President Pak much and Understudy avoided Su-Bin, we’d stay friends. Hopefully. But I had a feeling Vice-President Pak planned to make that difficult, even if it was by accident.

“Sure. I’ve got some work to do for Thursday, but I can plan and eat at the same time. As long as it’s not cafeteria food.”

“Agreed.” The cafeteria’s quality had really taken a nosedive after Christmas.

We walked through the frigid campus; the icy air burned my nose, and my freshly-washed hair had frozen when I’d left home this morning. I tried to keep the conversation on anything but the impending round table. We talked about her roommate—she was okay, especially since she’d practically moved in with her new boyfriend, which gave Su-Bin space to just…exist and relax for the first time since she left home. She mentioned that her parents wanted her to move back in but that her work with APPEAL was too important.

“What about your classes? Wouldn’t living on the other side of Tokyexico impact them, too?” I asked.

“Well, yes. But right now, the priority is on making the campus safer.” Her voice lowered to a whisper. “The supers are always a danger to Extras—I hate that term so much—and we need to get things under our control again. I was digging around, and they didn’t even expel Magical Girl Understudy for blowing up the TUEAS building. Unbelievable. Either way, I can stay if I can prove to Mom and Dad that TU is getting safer. Otherwise, they’ll pull me out of the dorms, and I don’twant that.”

“I could see that,” I said. I took a deep breath and decided to leave the script for a bit. Bee wasn’t around to enforce it, after all. “I heard a rumor that Understudy got banned from superhero stuff on campus.”

“Yeah, I knew about that. It’s not enough, though. You know she cost the school—“

Twenty-eight million dollars in damages and another five hundred thousand in tuition for make-up classes because of the tools Professor Panic destroyed. I didn’t say that, of course, but I knew it.

“—Thirty million. Any Extra who did that would be expelled instantly.”

We arrived at the Student Union Building, and the giant vents washed hot, vaguely sterile air over us just before the smell of ‘food’ hit us. I wrinkled my nose and pointed toward the burrito restaurant. Su-Bin nodded. We stood in line. I ordered a veggie burrito, Su-Bin ordered a sausage and a large soda, and we found an empty table.

“Okay, so what do we do about this upcoming quiz?” I asked, trying to find a topic to pull Su-Bin off the round table and APPEAL.

“I think we should study for it on Friday or Saturday, Annie. There’s no way I can deal with it right now. I’ve got so much on my plate prepping for this round table.” And off she went again on another tangent about Extras’ rights and crime rates on campus.

I didn’t see any of it. Yeah, the series finale had been bad. But neither the Tokyexico University Student Superhero Association nor the Student Supervillain Society had acted up since winter break. I hadn’t heard of a single on-campus Episode, in fact. That alone was weird, especially after Ikenga’s New Year’s Eve speech about how things would get worse soon.

I filed that away for later, though. Instead, I focused on supporting my friend—and, honestly, on some good old-fashioned spy work. I didn’t want to crush her hopes and dreams on Thursday since she clearly cared so much about this round table. And I got that part, at least. As a freshman and a leader in APPEAL, she needed to prove she could handle it. Or at least, she felt she did. It felt a lot like me trying minor-league Episodes. I needed to prove I could win them.

After an hour, Su-Bin stood up to head to her next class. I had an hour, so I texted Bianca.

<We need a strategy adjustment. Going to push it all on Theseus - Understudy 12:45>

<Also, Gourmet’ will be there. Suit up for sure. Bring Tails with you - Understudy 12:46>

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