Super Hero Academy

by Simon Archer

  With a thick swallow, I confessed, “I love him, you know.” It hurt to admit it. “He might be Inferno to everyone else, but he’s still my dad.” I felt my eyes sting at the truth of it and glared at the sky while I tried to bury it all back down again.

  Andie closed the distance between us and took my hand in hers. She led me further down the alley, and after my head cleared a little bit, I realized we were headed towards the Stacks. The neighborhoods lost their luster the further we went, and I could feel the eyes of the poor studying the two of us from darkened, shuttered windows.

  “You don’t have to apologize.”

  But I felt like I did. “The world doesn’t know him like I do,” I said insistently. “He tries, Andie. He tries so hard, but he’ll never get it. He sends me letters all the time. Packages, too. Gemma doesn’t know. I don’t think Triton does either. They’d freak if they did, probably.”

  Andie frowned at that. “They watch you that closely?”

  I shrugged. “I can’t say for certain, but it seems obvious that they wouldn’t be happy about it. Right? They pulled me from that island for a reason, but contrary to popular belief, I don’t actually talk to Gemma very often at all, and Triton, even less. I don’t... until I met you, I didn’t really have friends, Andie. Only mentors and senseis and people I’d report to for status updates. We don’t... Gemma and I, we don’t discuss a lot of things, you see? I think she assumes that I resent him, but I... hell, I don’t know. I should. I really should.”

  “You don’t have to do anything, Nick,” Andie said as she squeezed my hand in reassurance. “It’s alright to love your dad. He’s all the family you have left, isn’t he?”

  “Yeah, but it’s not that—”

  “Tell me about the packages, Nick.” She smiled and led us into an apartment complex. It was an old cement building laden with carefully organized piles of chaos. Newspapers here, food bins there, and a whole row of recycling bins.

  “Well...” I rubbed at the back of my neck with my free hand and thought about how to explain it. My eyes scrolled over the peeling paint and faded wallpaper of the surrounding building. “Sometimes it’s just food or some toy or... or a book or something. But if he gets word that I’m struggling even in just... just classes, he’ll get creative.”

  “Creative?”

  “Yeah, well... okay, so when I was in my sophomore year of high school, he kidnapped my math teacher and threatened to hurt her unless she gave me a perfect A.”

  Andie snorted at that. It was so cartoonishly evil, it was probably hard to believe.

  “Once, he found out about this bully I had, and you know what he did?” Andie shook her head, so I went on. “He sent me a bottle of extremely deadly poison. Told me to put a few drops in the kid’s meal. I didn’t, of course, but that didn’t stop him from sending other things. Like a freaking ray gun, Andie.”

  Andie actually giggled at that, which was not the response I was expecting. Most people would be revolted to learn the truth of things, but she... she was different. She was so, so different, and I loved that about her.

  For the first time in a very long time, I smiled as I spoke of him because I was looking at her. She made it better, somehow.

  “I’d send him letters explaining that I had no interest in killing my bullies, and he’d send letters back apparently impressed by my choice of pacifism.” The exasperation hit me. I wasn’t able to talk about this with anyone for such a long time, and now it felt freeing to let it out into the air finally. “It’s hard to displease him, you see. My dad thinks I walk on water. He’s convinced I’m just playing nice to deceive you all, and that someday I’m gonna join his army once I’m properly trained and ready for it.”

  “Sounds like he’s proud of you.” Andie grinned as she clapped me on the back. “I’d be proud too.”

  “He’s got a funny way of showing it,” I grumbled, but this time, it was all in good fun. “I’m sure there’s a whole six-page letter in the mail waiting for me about his glory days at Valcav and all the trouble he and uncle Barbur... he and... say... where are we going?”

  We’d stopped in front of an apartment building, and as I stared at it in confusion, Andie fished for a key.

  “Oh, I wanted to bring you home.” She winked at me. “This was my apartment before joining Valcav, and I have a special surprise inside.”

  “A special surprise?” I asked as she opened the door and my mouth fell open in shock.

  Andie’s apartment was beautiful. Not at all luxurious, decorated with hand-me-down furniture she’d no doubt inherited from her parents and their collective efforts at a nice home, but it was comfortable. A place of solace. There were rainbow Christmas lights strung up on the walls which she flicked on with a switch. They revealed paintings covering nearly every flat surface. Each burst with color, some a vivid splash of rainbow colors, others a sharp contrasting twist of shadows.

  Stunned, it took me a moment to collect all the works surrounded us. “You paint?”

  Andie flushed at the tone of utter reverence in my voice, and she bobbed her head.

  “I dabble,” she said modestly.

  “You’re so... Andie, every time I think I know you, you surprise me all over again. I... wow.”

  She cleared her throat and dragged me away from all the beautiful paintings into a side room. It contained only an old sofa and a canvas stand. “Sit there. I want to paint you.”

  “Paint me?”

  “Yes, you.” She rolled her eyes, impatient now. “I told you, Nick. You’re sexy. I need to commit to memory. Now sit.” She shoved me onto the sofa, and I sat down with a huff. Like the kiss earlier, the wind had been knocked out of me. “It’s time to enjoy your surprise.”

  She vanished from the room only to reappear seconds later with a bag full of paints and a large canvas she’d apparently prepared some time ago. She whistled as she set the canvas on the rack and then arranged her paints and thinner in a neat little bundle beside her.

  “Okay, get comfortable. This is going to take a while.”

  I leaned back against the pillows on the sofa and heaved a heavy sigh of contentment. I’d never been painted before. I didn’t even know how to pose or where, but Andie seemed content with where I’d fallen naturally.

  “You can sleep if you like,” she said soothingly. “I bet you’re an angel when you’re sleeping.”

  “You’re the angel,” I told her. I yawned wide and stretched my arms out enough that I felt my joints pop. All the energy of the day drained right out of me. I hadn’t rested after my power use back in rescue class, and all the emotions leading up to this had me utterly exhausted.

  “Seriously, Nick. Take a nap.”

  “Don’t even think about giving me wings. I’m no angel.”

  “I’m the artist here.” She grinned and waggled a brush at me. “You just lay down and look pretty.”

  I hadn’t meant to give in so quickly, but I felt safe in her company, free of responsibility and all the demons I’d carried with me for years.

  “I think I’m falling in love with you,” I mumbled into the pillow, caught between the dangerous lands of sleep and awake.

  A giggle answered me. “I think I’m falling in love with you too, Nick.”

  Chapter 10

  “Nick, Nick, Nick!”

  I woke to the sound of Eric’s pounding feet running down the hall of the male dorm. He banged on the door with his fist and shouted, “Nick, wake the hell up! You’ve got to see this!”

  It had been about a week since the date with Andie. She still hadn’t revealed the painting to me. She claimed that she needed to take her time with it and that she had special plans for the reveal. Given how things had gone in that alley, I suspected I knew what at least some of those plans were. I caught her hungry gaze more than once the last few days, and to be fair, she’d caught mine as well. If anyone else had noticed the increase in tension, there wasn’t much said on the matter. Matt tried his usual tactics get unde
r my skin, of course, but with Andie as a solid focus in my life, I hardly even noticed him.

  That probably annoyed him even more, to be honest.

  Eric pounced on the door again and begged, “Nick, please.”

  I glanced at the time and groaned. Six in the morning and classes didn’t start until nine-thirty. Generally, I was the one waking him up for those, and it usually took me about a half-hour’s worth of insistence before he’d even start moving. To be up at six either meant he hadn’t slept a wink the entire night, or there was something so big going on that he couldn’t contain the madness. With a grumpy sigh, I got out of bed. I ran a quick hand through my hair and opened the door with a sour look.

  “Eric, what the hell—”

  He was sparkling again from head to toe and bouncing on the balls of his feet. “There’s gonna be a spaceship.” He snatched my hand and shook it which zapped me a little.

  I hissed and yanked my arm back, giving him a dirty look.

  “Sorry,” he winced and pointed behind him towards the north.

  I glanced over with a blank look and blinked again. There was nothing there. It was just an empty hallway.

  “I don’t get it,” I said and yawned wide. My brain was still trying to process the fact that we were awake now, and not at all sleeping like we wanted to be.

  Eric laid both hands before him and looked me dead in the eye. “Spaceship. Like. From space. With aliens in it.”

  “Aliens? Space? Wha?”

  So, it wasn’t a complete unknown. Alexandria, in particular, had been in communication with nations off-planet for over a century at this point, and the revelation that alien life existed wasn’t exactly a new one. Back in my grandad’s day, there was a hero super-genius named Doctor Delacruz who was obsessed with the idea of space travel. She eventually developed successful ship designs and, with a team of rather brave heroes, made contact with other worlds. She also brought back technology from those worlds and solved many of humanity’s biggest problems at the time: hunger, cancer, and even language barriers.

  There was a statue of her right in front of city hall.

  “Yeah, Nick, wake up,” Eric enthused. “A spaceship is landing at the school today. We’ve got an exchange student coming!”

  I blinked again as his words finally sank in fully and then dashed back into my dorm room. The revelation of alien life might not be a new one, but it was a rare sight all the same. I didn’t even know what most of them looked like. I’d seen images of tiny blue people as well as very tall gray ones, but they weren’t common by any stretch.

  Given how expensive it was to travel across the galaxy and how unsafe the planet was in the wake of dominating villains like my father, it was fair to say that these sorts of exchanges didn’t occur very often. In fact, the last visit I’d heard of had been when my father was still attending Valcav, and he still turned into a starstruck eighteen-year-old doofus every time he mentioned it.

  I scrambled for a set of clothes and was fully dressed in less than a minute. I ran out again in my socks, and Eric snickered and gestured toward them.

  “You’re gonna need shoes,” he said with a laugh.

  Between fumbling with my shoes and getting there, it was about five minutes before we had roused the girls. Ten minutes after that, all of us were waiting on a bench by the entrance to Valcav’s massive helipad on the gym roof. Kara was still exhausted, and she leaned her head on my shoulder for a light nap. Andie was doing the same on my left, but she was watching the sunrise instead of falling back into dreams. Both my hands were holding either girl’s, and I glanced down at both to kiss the tops of their heads.

  Kara didn’t notice, but Andie did. She glanced up at me and smiled.

  “Few more days,” she whispered, trying not to wake Kara. “I’m making good progress. I think this might be the first piece in a while that I’m actually happy with.”

  The last week had consumed me with a boyish eagerness that rivaled Eric’s. I sorely wanted to know how the painting was going, when I was going to see it, and if she’d settled for something a bit more masculine than an angel. “Did you go with the wings?”

  “I might have.” She shrugged, her smile turning a bit secretive. I couldn’t tell if she was serious or not. It was going to drive me insane soon, I was certain. “Kara’s seen it, by the way. I needed a second opinion. She said you look cute when you’re sleeping.”

  That made me roll my eyes.

  Kara roused just a little to slur, “S’pretty.”

  Andie snickered and reached over to pat Kara’s lap. “Thank you, strawberry.”

  I sighed and tried not to look too defeated. I knew she had to take her time, but I wouldn’t put it past Andie to extend the process just a little to drive me up the wall. She did love a good chase.

  “So Kara’s seen it,” I grumbled, “but I haven’t?”

  Andie jutted her chin at Eric. “To be fair, Sparkles asked me, but I said no.” I snorted at the nickname she’d given Eric. It suited him, really. “He can’t keep a secret to save his life.”

  Eric, who was busy watching the sunrise with all the attention of someone who knew for a fact that there was going to be a spaceship landing in it, bounced on feet, and then shrugged helplessly. He glanced back only a moment, too focused on the horizon. He didn’t want to miss even a second of the action. “It just sort of came out, Andie. Jack’s not a bad guy, and we were trading stories—”

  Andie elbowed me softly and pointed at Eric with an accusing finger. “Eric told Jack that you and I are dating.”. There was no real heat in her tone. In fact, it was playful. We hadn’t established we wanted it kept secret, and if it wasn’t apparent, then people really weren’t paying attention.

  Still, this was news to me. I lifted a brow at Eric’s back, who missed it in favor of the sunrise. “How’d he react?”

  It was Andie who answered, rolling her eyes. “You know how Jack is. His brain is probably brick too.”

  “He said you both deserve each other.” Eric shrugged from the window. “Not in a good way, but that’s Jack for you. I guess he’s lumped Andie into the same category because he didn’t seem overly stressed that you’re dating Matt’s rival.”

  “Still,” I argued, “it wasn’t a secret we were dating. So Eric’s still in the good books.”

  Andie shook her head and jabbed a thumb at Eric again. “Nuh-uh. He also told Jack about the painting. I know, because Jack later ribbed me about it. Guy’s convinced I’m painting a nudie.”

  I smirked at that, and Andie elbowed me with a little more force. This jostled Kara who grumbled sleepily. I wrapped a protective arm around her and laughed at Andie’s indignant expression.

  “Oh, come on,” I said as I stifled another chuckle. “There’s no way you haven’t considered it yet.”

  “Well... yeah, but that was for later,” Andie hissed out. “And I didn’t want Jack of all freaking people thinking about it. You know he’s gonna tell Brad, who’s gonna tell Matt, who’s gonna tell his sister, and then the entire girl’s dorm is gonna know. And they’ll demand to see it!”

  The idea of an entire girl’s dorm lining up to get a peek at my naked body made me chuckle again. It was ridiculous. No way that’d happen.

  “Well, charge them a pretty penny for it,” I told her as I wrapped an arm around Andie as well. She pretended to grumble at the attention, but I caught a tiny little smile at the corner of her lips. “I don’t whore myself out for anything less than two hundred, Andie. I’ve got standards.”

  She laughed, loud and boisterous. “That little, eh?”

  Kara’s soft whine at all the noise drew my attention. I rubbed her shoulder gently and smiled as she snuggled her face into my shoulder with a bit more enthusiasm. The redhead was a slow riser, apparently. She seemed determined to sleep until the very last minute.

  Unfortunately, Gemma, Triton, Adelaide, Efraim, City Master, and Hiro all walked down the hall a moment later and stopped abruptly when they n
oticed us on the bench. I smiled at Gemma and made a note of Efraim’s scowl at the back of my mind.

  It was City Master who gestured to the helipad and addressed us. “Eager to see the ship, are we?”

  “Are we ever!” Eric bounced again and pointed at the helipad. He was such a dork, sometimes. “I can’t wait.”

  Triton smiled and asked, “How did you learn of the exchange, perchance?”

  Efraim was still scowling at me, apparently determined to lay blame. But I nodded my head at Eric by way of explanation. The staff glanced at him instead, and Eric shrank at all the attention.

  “I’ve... got my ways?”

  Each of the instructors sighed. That seemed to be a good enough explanation as any, because City Master said, “Very well. Come. It has been a long journey for her, and she will need friendly faces. Be on your best behavior.”

  Eric nearly cheered before remembering where he was. He grinned from ear to ear, and his whole body sparkled with little zaps of electric energy in his excitement. “Y-Yes! Of course! Will do!”

  After rousing Kara awake again, the four of us followed the instructors onto the helipad, a safe distance away from the landing zone. Kara’s hand was warm in mine, and Andie had her arm stretched around both of us.

  Eric was pacing now. The sunrise had exploded into a brilliant golden hue, and as it stretched back along the sky overhead, it turned to a deeper shade of violet. I noticed Andie looking up, drinking all the colors. Had some of them made their way onto her canvas?

  “Her name is Aylin Ajlal,” City Master went on. “She is royalty and hails from New Sahana.”

  Eric’s eyes grew wide as golf balls. “She’s a princess?”

  “Indeed.” City Master nodded. “I must warn you, use tact when you ask about her home. Her exchange was funded by the Safe Harbor project.”

  That caught my attention. Safe Harbor was an Alexandria program designed to take in troubled refugees from war-torn areas of the world. Its first incarnation had failed, hence the Stacks where Andie grew up. Later incarnations proved more successful, granting refugees education and career paths to help the city grow more beneficially. Taking on an alien seemed ambitious which meant that it was likely the situation where she’d come from had been somewhat dire.