Katana at Super Hero High

by Lisa Yee

  “It was just a joke,” Beast Boy said, looking sullen for a moment, before his usual happy-go-lucky demeanor quickly returned.

  “Supers!” the teacher called out, ringing the miniature Liberty Bell that sat on her desk. “I want your attention. I’ve got some great news for you.”

  Hawkgirl sat up straight and folded her hands on the desk. Batgirl got out a computer pad to take notes. Cyborg set his memory circuit to record.

  “We will be embarking on an exciting new assignment,” Liberty Belle began. “It’s called ‘Know Your Place in Your World: A Legacy Project’! We will study your past and relate it to the present while forecasting the future. I know, right? Super exciting!”

  Not all the students shared Liberty Belle’s enthusiasm. Some Supers had been raised in households where their parents and grandparents were constantly talking about who they were and where they came from. Others did not have a super hero pedigree but longed to create one of their own. And still others saw this as just another boring homework assignment.

  “For example,” Liberty Belle said, looking around the room. “Bumblebee, you will explore your roots in Metropolis. Beast Boy, Africa, and Wonder Woman, Paradise Island. Miss Martian—Miss Martian, are you here?” She looked at the apparently empty chair and smiled at it warmly. “Miss Martian, you will write about Mars, and, Katana, you will explore your ancestry in Japan and your place in the world.”

  Katana nodded. Just what was her place in the world? she wondered.

  “This is going to be great!” Batgirl said. Her eyes shone bright as she adjusted the cowl Katana had made for her in Crazy Quilt’s costume design class.

  “I dunno,” Big Barda said, looking glum. “This is all about families, and what about those of us who don’t have any?”

  Supergirl, who was sitting across the room, had zoomed in on the conversation using her super-hearing. A note plopped down onto Big Barda’s desk. Let’s talk later, it read.

  The two looked at each other in agreement.

  In the dining hall that night there was the usual chaos. Arrowette shot an arrow through Cyborg’s tuna fish sandwich just as he was about to take a bite, and sent it flying. El Diablo heated up his undercooked chicken casserole with a fiery blast from his hand, and Frost cooled it down for him with a breath of cold air. Cheetah accidentally-on-purpose spilled her green Jell-O in front of Lady Shiva. Everyone laughed as Lady Shiva slipped on it. But Lady Shiva had the last laugh as she made a graceful acrobatic landing without spilling a single item on her tray. She bowed to the applause from the students at the surrounding tables.

  Parasite, the janitor, just grumbled at another mess to clean up. He hated cleaning up the students’ messes and wasn’t shy about letting them know it. But since he was on parole, he had no choice.

  “He’s forbidden to use his powers—the ability to drain others of theirs,” Bumblebee told Katana as she poured a pitcher of honey over her spaghetti while Batgirl tried not to make a face. Hawkgirl was talking so animatedly about Venezuela that Harley grinned enthusiastically and exclaimed, “I’m seeing a Harley’s Quinntessentials Web special here!”

  Big Barda and Supergirl had their heads together, but Katana could hear them.

  “I hate stuff like this,” Barda said. She pushed her mashed potatoes around on her plate and buried her vegetables.

  At first Katana thought Barda was talking about her meal. That was, until Supergirl put her hand on Barda’s shoulder and said, “I know. I’m an orphan, too. But don’t you want to know more about where you came from and what the history of your planet was like? I want to remember everything I can about Krypton. Now that it’s gone, it’s up to me to honor the memory of my home and that of my friends and family.”

  “You’ve got a reason to, but I don’t know if I want to write about my past,” Barda insisted. “Um, hello. My home world is called Apokolips. Its entire culture is based on warmongering. I was raised to subjugate any planet I came across. Not exactly school-paper material, do you think?”

  Supergirl offered her a smile. “I don’t know. That sounds very, um, exciting. We’ve all got to come from somewhere! Ooh, and your angle can be how you intend to be better than where you came from!”

  A slow grin appeared on Barda’s face before she good-naturedly swatted Supergirl away with her Mega Rod. The two girls laughed.

  Katana pushed her chair back and looked out the window as her friends continued to talk. She smiled because the cherry blossoms were in bloom, even though it was not the season for them. Thank you, Poison Ivy.

  The blooms made Katana think of her grandmother. She had been thinking about her a lot lately. What she knew of Onna was that she was strong and kind and loving. Her parents seldom spoke of her after she disappeared, and Katana didn’t even know how she died. Maybe this would be a great opportunity to interview them to find out more. Her mom and dad were both professors back in Japan. Surely they would open up to her if Katana said it was a class assignment, right?

  he next day there was a meeting of the Junior Detective Society. Everyone was present: Hawkgirl, Batgirl, The Flash, Poison Ivy, Bumblebee, and one special guest—Katana.

  Katana looked around Poison Ivy’s room. She had often admired how it was colorfully decorated and how there were unusual plants in bloom. Plus, there was always something bubbling in glass beakers as part of whatever science experiment Ivy was working on.

  Batgirl cleared her throat. “Let the special meeting of the Junior Detective Society come to order. Junior Detectives, please introduce yourselves as we welcome our guest, Katana.”

  Katana tried not to laugh as her friends introduced themselves. She wanted to blurt out “I know who all of you are!” but understood that they had their protocol. Her grandmother had taught her about that. Samurai had processes and procedures that were strictly adhered to.

  “Hawkgirl,” Batgirl said once the introductions were done, “will you please tell our guest what we have discovered?”

  Hawkgirl stood up, making sure to keep her powerful wings pulled in tight. She cleared her throat and took a small piece of paper out of her pocket. “Katana,” Hawkgirl began. “You asked us to help decipher the mysterious haiku from the conch shell.”

  Katana nodded. What have they discovered? she wondered.

  These Samurai swords

  Entrusted to Katana

  The story unfolds.

  “Batgirl has run the haiku through several decoder programs, and we have also spent numerous hours discussing its meaning. We believe we know where the swords came from, and in our sleuthing found the answer from someone who is among us.”

  Katana held her breath. How could someone at the school know where the mysterious swords came from? Who?

  Hawkgirl put down her paper and looked at Katana and said, “That someone is Parasite.”

  Parasite grumbled as he attempted to scrape the green gloppy goo off the high ceiling in the science room. It was particularly sticky this time, and he didn’t even want to know what the volatile violet lumps in it were. There were always mishaps (by accident and on purpose) at Super Hero High. But these happened at the science lab on an hourly basis, all under the guise of learning.

  Poison Ivy’s face flushed as the Junior Detective Society entered the room. She was glad it wasn’t her mess this time. A budding scientist, she was known to accidentally blow things up fairly often. Her mishaps were all in the name of science, though. For instance, she was close to developing a powerful truth serum from the pollen of the Lunaria Annua, also known as the Honesty Flower.

  “May we have a word with you, Mr. Parasite?” Batgirl asked.

  Katana looked around. A couple of windows were broken. The glowing green goop was starting to drip onto the floor. A desk was overturned. Cracked test tubes of bubbling blue liquids spilled on the counters. She was impressed. The room looked cleaner than normal.

  The purple-skinned janitor looked down at the group from atop his ladder. “Busy!” he growled, add
ing under his breath to no one in particular, “…always expecting me to clean up their messes!”

  “What if we helped you?” Poison Ivy suggested, picking up a mop. “We could talk while we help you clean.”

  When Katana saw Parasite hesitate, she added, “When we work together, things are more efficient and go faster.”

  “Yes,” The Flash said. “Then you would have time to relax and answer a couple of questions.”

  “Am I being accused of something?” Parasite asked. His eyes narrowed defiantly.

  “Not at all!” Poison Ivy insisted. “Quite the opposite. We’ve heard that you know a lot about the darker side of super hero history and lore—and no one knows the grounds of Super Hero High like you do.”

  Parasite puffed up a bit. “Well, I’m glad you think so. None of the teachers would ever think of asking me anything other than to clean up their classrooms. Okay, then,” he said, tossing some rags to Hawkgirl, who immediately began to carefully scrub the massive computer board that took up the back wall.

  Nimble Katana carefully cleaned the corners and hard-to-reach places, while Poison Ivy used her plants to exude a neutralizing counteragent to the chemical goo oozing all over the lab. And The Flash raced around so quickly that he was nothing but a red blur, but with each lap the room looked cleaner. Soon, the science lab was spotless and ready for a new day of destruction and debris.

  “So…may we ask you some questions?” Batgirl asked again, referring to her notes on her small wrist computer.

  Parasite looked around. The Supers had done a great job. Even he had to admit that. “A deal is a deal,” he said. “But I have things to do…and I’m awfully tired…not enough to eat. G’head, make it fast…hit me with what you got.”

  “Hit you?” Hawkgirl said, defensively making a fist.

  “Naw, I mean, ask your questions,” Parasite said, rolling his eyes. He relaxed against the teacher’s desk at the front of the room, but kept his hand on his mop just in case he needed to make an excuse to get back to work and escape the teens and their questions.

  The Supers sat in the front row and Batgirl began as Katana listened in.

  “We know there are secret tunnels under the school, and we have reason to believe that they go far beyond Super Hero High,” Batgirl said.

  Parasite gave an almost imperceptible nod.

  “We’ve seen the sign you wrote on the door near the cafeteria,” The Flash said. “So you must be familiar with the underground caverns and passageways.”

  “We’ve been there. We know they exist,” Hawkgirl said. “What we don’t know is exactly why.”

  Poison Ivy had been holding a Lunaria Annua. She handed it to Parasite, who awkwardly took it. Ivy smiled warmly at him. “You know so much,” she said sincerely. “Our friend Katana has a mystery to solve and could use your help. Will you help us, please, Mr. Parasite, sir?”

  Parasite sniffed the flower and tamped down a smile. He nodded slowly.

  Katana made a mental note to take a lesson from Poison Ivy. Parasite had spent years as a janitor at the school cultivating his image as a curmudgeonly ex-criminal…but now Katana wondered if his grumpiness might be tied to the fact that he was weak and exhausted. Parasite had to refrain from fully using his powers to drain the students and faculty of their energy, and that was hard for him. However, Katana could clearly see that Parasite, like most others, responded to kindness.

  “Super Hero High wasn’t always new and shiny,” he began. “And not fully funded like it is now. In decades past, the school was a series of odd buildings, some of them centuries old. Then suddenly, there was an influx of money—not sure where it came from. Some say it was a private donor whose family had been saved by super heroes—or maybe even a wealthy family of super heroes. No one really knows for sure—or maybe someone does….” Parasite chuckled as a smile crossed his mottled face.

  Batgirl glanced at her friends. She telegraphed them a look that said she had heard these rumors.

  Parasite took the teacher’s seat and, getting comfortable, put his hands behind his head. “But there was a new initiative to build this big bright school that we all know today.”

  Katana wondered how this related to the haiku and the swords. Was this just the beginning?

  These Samurai swords

  Entrusted to Katana

  The story unfolds.

  “Most of the old school was just mowed down to make room for the new one. But the underground mazes and rooms remained. The Super Hero High Historical Society didn’t want them touched; plus, by then they had expanded past their original uses. Over the years, more and more tunnels and secret rooms were built. Students created unofficial lairs as secret clubhouses, and more and more complex vaults had to be built to store villains’ confiscated super weapons. There was a need for this each time the school got destroyed by some evil being—which happened a lot more back in the old days. It’s so complex down there, no one knows the full extent of the tunnels and caverns.”

  “Water?” Batgirl said, seemingly out of nowhere. “Where does the water come from?”

  Parasite sat up and folded his hands on the desk like a teacher. “Water,” he echoed. “Ah, the old waterways. Yes, yes, that underground water system was used for various things before it was blocked off. At one time it was a transportation system to deliver supplies shipped in sealed pods from other countries. Later, some Supers who had swimming skills or water vehicles used it to access the ocean. But it’s been decades since the aqueducts were used.” His eyes narrowed. “Why do you want to know?”

  “No reason,” Katana said. “Well, we were just wondering. If someone wanted to send something to someone but keep it a secret, they could use the—what did you call them? Aqueducts? They could use the aqueducts, right?”

  “Water! Oceans! Who needs that wet mess?” Parasite grumbled, returning to his usual demeanor. “But yes, they could do that. The question is, why would anyone want to?”

  o how did you even know to go underground to find the swords?” Bumblebee asked. She smiled sweetly, then tried to knock Katana over by blasting her with one of her powerful electric beestings.

  Katana sliced the energy blast in half with her sword, but the residual jolt threw her several feet backward, slamming her into a wall with a hard thud. Her lightweight armor, based on a traditional Samurai design but fortified with the strongest modern materials, took the brunt of the impact. Katana dropped gracefully to the ground, ready for more.

  The two did this over and over again. Katana and Bumblebee were in phys ed at the moment, where students were teamed up to practice their powers and skills, albeit not at full strength.

  “More hitting! More throwing! Less talking!” Wildcat, the school’s coach, roared. “This isn’t a tea party here! We are learning to defend and fight! Lives could depend on it! Maybe even yours!”

  Katana ran at Bumblebee with her sword in hand, lunging at her friend. Bumblebee shrank small and dodged the sharp blade. Both laughed. Intense practice like this was always fun!

  “So, I can’t explain why I went underground, but I couldn’t stop myself,” Katana said as she did a martial arts tumble maneuver, landing in a fighting stance. In one hand she held her favorite shuriken, a sharpened four-point throwing star, and in the other were the titanium nunchakus her parents had given her for her birthday. “It was like someone or something was speaking to me, drawing me in. I was sort of like in a trance. All I could think of was that I had to find out who—or what—was calling me.”

  “It happens to me all the time,” someone said.

  Katana looked around but didn’t see anyone. “Miss Martian?” she said aloud.

  Slowly, the figure of a green teen appeared before them.

  “Hi!” Bumblebee said. The thick golden streak in her dark honey-brown hair glistened in the sun. “Want to be on our team?”

  “Really?” Miss Martian said. She looked at her shoes. “But I feel out of place here…and in most places, for that
matter. Reading minds isn’t exactly a phys ed kind of power.”

  “What you do is incredible,” Katana insisted. “Like how you led Batgirl and the other Supers to find me. If not for you, I’d probably still be standing in that aqueduct surrounded by swords, and I’d be all wrinkly from being in the water for so long!”

  Miss Martian laughed.

  “I asked Katana about why she was drawn to the swords,” Bumblebee said. “But she’s not sure. Do you have any idea?”

  Miss Martian nodded. She watched as Cheetah raced up the side of a building with Supergirl in hot pursuit. “There are times,” Miss Martian said, “when we are not in total control of our surroundings, and we let our senses and our thoughts access everything around us. It’s like when you are falling asleep. You are still thinking, yet at the same time, other thoughts come unbidden from the corners of your mind, and your other senses start to take over.”

  Katana nodded, remembering the dream that still plagued her.

  “From the impressions I got when trying to find you,” Miss Martian continued, “I felt that the conch shell was a message someone or something was sending you. It was very specific.”

  “What do you mean?” Bumblebee asked. She wrinkled her nose.

  “It was a message meant just for Katana,” Miss Martian ventured. “Did anyone else listen to the conch shell?”

  “The entire Junior Detective Society,” Katana told her.

  “And did they hear anything?” asked Miss Martian.

  Katana slowly shook her head. “No,” she said. “Just me.”

  Miss Martian looked at Katana and shut her eyes. “You know more than you know,” she finally said, before disappearing.

  “She talks in riddles,” Katana said to Batgirl. Katana was swinging her sword overhead so fast that Batgirl thought it might lift her off the ground like a helicopter. Though school was out for the day, the girls had decided to continue working on their powers and skills since they were having such a great time.