The busy atmosphere and constant buzz of radio and florescent screens. The flash of minor warnings and emergencies across a laid out city grid. The bustle to and fro and sat stock still at their posts, of staff relegated to make sure it all was correct and corroborated. The dispatch and control room for The Hill. For Kadia. Sending heroes scrambling to fight fires, stop criminals, save the injured, and entertain the needs of the populace. It was familiar, a good kind of frantic. It meant things were safe, controlled, understandable. But still, Aegis couldn’t hold back the scowl on her face anymore.

  Losing at her own test hurt, to a finger flick no less. Having to go half out against a trainee, and get her suit retailored. Again. Having to explain why a good chunk of The Hill’s power conduits were melted. Again. But all that was tolerable. Still good even. What wasn’t good was staring her in the face in holographic insistence.

  // Recommendation: Deploy highest class investigator…

  “Why can’t those assholes just take a class already?”

  “Because no one else had Stratosphere as a mother.”

  Techno was clacking in and out code for the dispatch room’s map table, making sure the power surge that was sent through much of the Hill didn’t harm the arrays or his finely tuned system. And that the call that had been received was actually on time. Because it was two days late.

  “The dispatch log is legit, they don’t appear to have a tie in to C.A.S.P.E.R. so we can only guess as to how much security they even have to begin with. Some people are just cheapskates.”

  “But two fucking days! That’s military hardware right there… if a little… Ughhh, why now?”

  The map screen was showing pictures of the crime scene and the stolen items, but not saying why they chose such busted things to take. Though the timing was sure apt, Saturday night as too many heroes sat and watched her and her students make fools of themselves.

  “Hey, you could just let it sit another day. It probably won’t hurt it any more than it already has been. They never even stopped operating so the evidence we need is probably already long gone.”

  “Who the fu…!? Grrrrrr! Fine! Can you tell Medi to take over? I don’t trust Para not to body my already hurting students.”

  “They didn’t seem hurt enough to beat you at your own game.”

  “You...! Just tell me where this place is!”

  “Alright. Looks like it’s just off dead center. 1305 Carver.”

  Aegis pulled out the near clear plastic slab that was her phone, mandated and appreciated for all it had on it. Tapping in the address and getting sent down into the bowels of Kadia’s industrial district. To a place called…

  “United Armors huh.”

  Only one day into the month and already Seth was waking up sore again. He didn’t know why using the whisper like he did hurt so much, but it took way more out of him than anything Para had done… well almost anything. At least they didn’t have to do anything else yesterday. After lunch he and the rest of the trainees hobbled back to the arena only to find Mediknight waiting to relieve them. Aegis had been sent on a call so they were free to rest. And everyone took the chance.

  Seth just sat in his bed, feeling around his ribs, making sure there wasn’t still a dent in his sternum, and letting the silence take over. Let the Garkah work through what was wrong with his technique. And just basking a little in the small victory. Till it was time to go back at it.

  Aegis met them back in the arena the next day. A little less chipper than usual. Either her interruption went poorly or she was still feeling the rib from technically losing her own test. Regardless, she was back and more than ready.

  “Okay. Today is a bit of a different day. First up is the proper critique of all of your fighting styles I wanted to do yesterday. I’ll be leading that as expected. But after that is course work… Led by Para.”

  The trainees grumbled and looked puzzled. They’d heard him talk about an education before but still didn’t understand what that was about. David raised his hand and voiced as such, but Aegis just shrugged.

  “I really don’t know. It will probably be some kind of study of villains or power types. That would make sense. But it's Para, so never let your guard down.”

  Aegis still seemed like she knew a little about what was coming, but could only speculate and dread it.

  “At any rate, that’s later. For now let’s get to fighting critiques. Also sorry this had to wait until today. Couple of thefts in the industrial sector needed attending to.”

  Seth could barely tell, but there was a bit of resentment in her tone.

  ‘Yeah, it went poorly.’

  Despite that, the trainees and Aegis moved off the line and on to one of the arena’s sideline benches. No sense taking up the central area for just talking.

  And it looked like the M.J.D. was up first.

  “You three… certainly took the inventive route. An ice slip and slide for an immobile teammate is technically movement based per the rules. It’s just incredibly slow. If I wanted it, Maya wouldn’t have even had to reach me for her to be sent barreling back into you guys. Also, you two were so caught up in your second attack that you didn’t even check to see if your first even landed. I mean having faith in your teammate is good in all, but don’t take your eyes off the battle. All in all, focus on speeding up your reactions and have just a scooch more independence in your strategies.”

  The three looked down a little, but were at least not discouraged. A blessing of their team up clearly given. Next was Kabar and Cleo.

  “You two. Okay, you really had me going there. Until you didn’t. Kabar, it might be a little too obnoxious to say, but you’re extending yourself way too much. Your lines anyway. Their whips right, flaming searing whips? Use them as such more often. I mean, I know you were limited in your usage but they can still hurt when not on fire. Keep them moving when you don’t understand your enemy, and don’t let the enemy use them against you. Maybe get a knife or something to cut them when things get hairy. And uh… try a less obvious move next time.”

  “Cleo. The straps are useful, I will give you that. And with some technicality they are movement related… in that they stop it like Maya’s armor. But they are also too weak, and you keep yourself at too great a distance. Anyone strong enough will just bull-rush through them like their just really bitey grass. And you seem to only be able to conjure a limited set of them. You need to get closer, focus more on how you can use them around you and not just around your enemy. Like, say use the straps to create a full body suit of leather armor and I’m already regretting telling you to do that… J-just diversify your attacks okay! Try augmenting yourself with them and not just immobilizing everything around you.”

  Kabar shrugged at the suggestions, but it was clear Cleo was already visualizing her full body leather armor and-

  ‘Oh god please get these thoughts away from me!’

  Aegis stepped up to Tabby and Alex next.

  “Good form, okay reaction times, but not understanding when to break off your attacks is going to cost you. Your flurries were getting blocked at every turn, but you kept at it. This has merits, you were the distraction after all, but you were just opening yourselves up to what happened. The same goes for you two.”

  Aegis moved to Marco and Zeleny.

  “Always strive to understand your enemies. I’m a flyer by blood, I know when someone is dive-bombing me just by sound alone. You should focus on what your enemy knows best and avoid their expertise if you can’t hope to match them in it. Also Marco you really need to up your reaction time. You could have used your air powers to missile straight down on me as I worked out my momentum, but instead you were surprised and got tossed aside. Your martial arts would have been better suited supporting the copycat crew then wasted on an ill prepared sneak attack. A little Occam’s razor maybe. And speaking of Occam’s razor.”

  Aegis moved up to Ohm, pulling out a piece of paper from one of her pockets.

  “Technomancer tabulated up your power usage. Here’s that bill I said you would owe.”

  Aegis handed off the page to a sneering Ohm, who looked at it briefly and back at Aegis before snapping back down to it with a look of pure monetary horror on his face.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  “18,000!!! It was just a few kilowatts, what do you generate and charge a premium!?!”

  “You pulled several hundred kilowatts through unsupported lines and narrowly fried everything along the main conduit! Most of that is repair costs.”

  Ohm deflated but kept sneering.

  “Let me guess, you’ve already billed my dad?”

  “Yup.”

  “Wonderful. You even need to critique me at this point?”

  “Yup. You overdid it. You pulled in too much power and went crazy from it. Its effective in a pinch, but as an opener it’s stupid. Without any self-control you leave yourself open to counter attacks. You’re more predictable, too focused on your enemy. Whatever it does to you, you need to mitigate before trying that again.”

  As she was about to continue, Aegis reached into her other pocket and produced another slip.

  “Almost forgot, here’s my tailoring and dry-cleaning bill.”

  Ohm sneered harder, he was getting bilked, but he also kind of deserved it. But at least Aegis’ arm padding looked actually new and not faded, or burned.

  “Now for you two blade boys. I’m going to commend your self-control to a point, but everything passed that is cowardice. I mean, I’ll admit I can get a little scary sometimes but there's limits. This mostly applies to you Razor. You held off because you saw Kaz holding off. You need to keep a bit of focus on your enemy, not just your ally. You need to find your own timing and then work out your attacks in tandem. Kaz you gave up a little too easy. You could have at least taken a swing, come on. The two of you are going to be getting a double session tomorrow. No spoilers, but you’re getting it twice.”

  Kaz took his criticism with a respectful bow, but Razor seemed to take his a little hard. Aegis finally turned to Seth, hamming a dismissive pout as he met her with the same smile as before.

  “So… what’s there to critique for me?”

  “Hmph. Maybe you don’t deserve one.”

  She folded her arms and turned her nose up in facetious curmudgeon.

  “Oh fine. You did okay. Kept up pretty good at least. Still feel you punch above your weight class. Your fighting style is all over the place though, and definitely hard to predict. But I almost think you’re showing off a little. You’ve been watching too much TV.”

  Seth’s smile flattened and tried to not look like he’d just been called out. But Aegis’ smirk caught more than enough.

  “So who was your favorite? Saw at least some moves that could have come right out of General Advance’s cartoons, but some of it looked a bit more niche.”

  The hardly justifiable embarrassment started to pancake that smile even further. But soon it leveled and lost angles to a reckoning unavoidable.

  “I… watched a lot of Tlatoani… before…”

  Seth didn’t even need to say anything more before that smirk gained laden parity. A respectful breath realigning it to the matter at hand, but the effect was clear across the both of them.

  “Well… you’d certainly found a good one at least. Still though-

  Aegis came in close out of her respect, bending over to get in Seth’s face and whisper with none of the joking around from before.

  “You’re holding back too much. You fought yourself more than you ever fought me.”

  Seth lost his barely regained angle, unable to hide beneath solemn memories. She was… a little too close for that.

  “H-how did you-”

  Aegis reared back up with a regained prideful smirk.

  “What, you think you get to this level without learning to hold back? I know you are capable of a lot more than what you showed off yesterday. Hell you didn’t even do half of what you did to Para. You could have fought a lot harder, but you didn’t. Restraining yourself is an art form, you’re going to need to learn to balance out to your opponent if you actually want to WIN a fight.”

  Aegis pulled back in one more time.

  “And if I was right, using that suit will only help so much.”

  Seth tried to say something, but could only take the loss. These heroes were too good at their jobs. But at least they understood the good reasons. She pulled back out and realigned with everyone before they could try and add favoritism to the ire already on him.

  “Alright, take what I said and prepare for tomorrow. We are going to let you fight something more your levels. But for now… I guess your Para’s.”

  Aegis filed the trainees into one of the ready rooms, modified with proper tabled seating and a projector. Almost like a regular classroom. Para stood at said projector, still as hardassed as ever, but somewhat dour. Seth sat near the back, he had maintained his place at the end of every line so he wasn’t spoiled for choice in where to sit. Once everyone was in, Para hit the lights and started whatever his presentation was.

  The projector hummed as the first slide showed itself. An old photo, looked to be 1940s. It was an odd group of G.I.s posing in front of a cargo plane. Seth actually recognized them, it was a team known as Mavers’ Marvels, one of the first official military units to be formed completely of supers.

  The Ember Harrier, later Burning Eagle. The team required code names and a few motifs stuck around. Fire and flight powers second to none, but few outward features to say as such, just an odd talisman around his neck that looked like a sword hilt. He ended up creating the UN’s super force after the war and then founding the League through it. Hence the famous speech.

  Corporal Advance, later General. They denied his first choice so he decided to climb the ranks officially. Momentum multiplication and near invincibility. Built like a tank and was always a bit over patriotic at the parades Seth saw him at. If he could put a flag on it, he did. And it wasn’t just the stars and stripes. He headed the US’s super force in the early days until Eagle started up the League. Then basically pulled the entire force in with him. He can be real insistent.

  The Neptune’s Call from back then was there too. One of the Gods’ Chosen. They were both precursor and competition for the League once it was set up, though with much smaller numbers. Each member was given a name that fit with their powers, in turn matching them with that member of the Greek Pantheon. They also liked to pass down those names to their, in turn, chosen successors. Though… this Neptune’s Call died on this mission if Seth remembered correctly.

  And lastly Outrider. An old fashioned sharpshooter with a fiery additive. He was ‘fast as a wildfire’ if the old comic strips were accurate. He just retired after the war, which was pretty understandable given the circumstances. The war was a lot even for normal people.

  “You’ve probably seen this photo before, the first team of supers ever assembled and officially recognized. Lt. General Mavers put them together to spearhead deep infiltration operations into Nazi Germany and combat their own attempts at a super force. 2 of them went on to lead the U.S. and U.N. super units, and later declare their independence. This team founded the League we know today. But what you don’t know is that it also founded what would become the greatest villain society this world had to contend with. The Terror Matrix.”

  Seth sure as shit didn’t know that, in fact most of the trainees didn’t. The only ones that seemed not taken aback by this were Kaz and Ohm.

  “Outrider, the one on the end looking like he walked into a western/world war costume department fire. Officially he retired after the fighting died down, citing battle fatigue. In reality he had seen the writing on the wall. Seen how Germany went about getting their supers, how the U.S. identified theirs, heard the stories of the programs the Russians had created.”

  Para flipped the slide, another old photo of what looked like a concentration camp, but with those stars and stripes flying overhead. People in stark white jumpsuits were lined up for roll call of some kind, a guard in heavy gear at every corner of the group.

  “Torture, blackmail, holding families hostage, even mental manipulation attempts. No one’s hands were clean. He couldn’t stand that people, his people, were being used and abused like that. Used as weapons of war. Couldn’t bear the thought of all out super warfare if another conflict broke out on the same scale. Even as nukes were coming to the forefront, he knew one man with the wrong power and no choice would be far worse.”

  Another slide. This one looked like a still from some early surveillance photography. A hooded figure with a smoldering lever action repeater leading a group of detainees out of one of the camps through a burned up fence.

  “He went off the grid, gathered likeminded supers, and fomented rebellion against military controlled programs across the globe. No one talks about this early team of his, much of the records were sealed or destroyed thanks to the Cold War. And a few too many saw his actions as honest and justified. Still, all we really know is that by the time the League was signing the Kashmir Peace Accords, Outrider was dead. Whether by his own hand or by the worst of the people he freed.”

  Another slide, a news headline from the sixties about a spree of fights all across the globe. The photo was a shot of Burning Eagle mid punch with a villain known just as Scrap. A junkyard’s worth of armor bulking up their form into a malevolent horned barbarian. This was a bad time, a lot of random robberies and full on attacks as the League was just starting to get together. The headline alone cementing the sentiment. “League Unable To Stop Onslaught”

  “The radical elements of his group took control just as the League was pulling together every country’s supers into actual hero units. They had stopped caring about his original goals, became more anarchic and destructive. Wanted to burn the system down rather than just save people from conscription and weaponization.”

  Next slide, and an iconic one. A mountain of rubble and gun barrels surrounded on all side by capes and colors. And at its top was a golden figure daring them to intercede and tell him he was wrong. It was the same picture from the foyer but seen in so much better a light. Gold Breaker giving his speech over the Tombstone, the massive atomic artillery battery the Terror Matrix tried to fire at the world. The ‘Epitaph to the era that bore their hatred’. And also the beginning of the golden age of the League if there ever was one.

  “It wasn’t till Gold Breaker’s condemnation that the Terror Matrix finally lost cohesion, what few elements that subscribed to Outrider’s original ideals either defecting before they blew up the world or going into hiding as their base crumbled around them. If you ever get the chance, Greenland isn’t as bad as it used to be. That was at least the beginning of the end for the Terror Matrix. Guilt and ideals winning out over evil.”

  Para hit the lights, a blank slide left on the projector.

  “I’m telling you all this because, as heroes, you will need to understand what motivates the people around you. You need to understand beforehand why someone does what they do, why they act the way they do. Leaving it unknown will only invite disaster. Outrider, instead of fighting against the injustice his people had suffered in the open, opted to hide and work from the shadows. This fit the situation, and I’m not decrying him. But in doing so he accepted all who he saved. Offered them a purpose despite the wrongs done to them. In committing to this, he ended up creating one of the most destructive villain societies ever formed. He wasn’t able to reign in those too broken or radicalized by the early programs and we all nearly suffered because of it.”

  Para was being overly serious, almost like he was trying to justify his own actions. But there was more to this that Seth couldn’t glean.

  “You need to both ask your fellow heroes and ask yourselves, why are you here? Why do you want to be a hero? If you can’t tell them, can’t work in the open, can’t understand who you’re working with, then you’d better get packing because you don’t belong here.”

  Para hit the lights again, now with a whole lot less veiled a threat. But still…

  “To that end I devised a course to get to the bottom of a few motivations I caught during your training. And I’ll start with the easiest catch all there is.”

  He hit the slide again… bringing up a picture Seth hadn’t seen before, but one he knew in greater detail than it ever could show. It was a burned welcome sign on an equally burned out wooded road. A truck turned on its side and shattered, sat in the middle as the road lazily meandered behind it. Sinking Seth’s heart deeper every time he reread that sign.

  Welcome to Frigateville!