I was looking at Doctor MacKillan, a woman whose office smelled of lemon-scented disinfectant and quiet desperation. For some odd reason, when I decided to start monkeying with my class loadout, they had assigned her as my new course counselor.
Probably because my previous one had quit or something after reviewing my nightmarish file, which read less like an academic transcript and more like a disaster movie script. There were still two days until the new term started, but the Academy tended to be very flexible with course loads, due to the special needs of its powered students. And by ‘special needs,’ I mean ‘tendency to accidentally explode or unravel the fabric of reality during midterms.’
“I want to go to the hunter track.”
She looked a little surprised, the way a zookeeper might be if the chronically depressed panda suddenly asked for a shotgun and a map to the nearest bamboo grove. “I thought you had your heart set on going full support? According to Mindy, you already have dozens of offers of sponsorship from corporations, some of which have very hefty price tags attached.”
I nodded, “I did, but I had it driven home to me just how fragile the situation is. I have a few advantages that nearly no other alpha possesses, and I no longer feel… good about the idea of sending teammates into conflicts without risking the danger myself.”
The unspoken part of that sentence was, ‘Also, I’ve recently been kidnapped by a pragmatic sociopath, watched an old man get murdered for his knowledge, and realized my only hope for survival is to become the very thing I retired from, just with better PR and a more flexible moral code. So, you know, character growth.’
“I was being selfish, trying to straddle the fence between a peaceful family life and the hero track, and while I am still not convinced about the whole model of modern morality thing, I am willing to become a soldier on the line against monster destruction. My grandfather was a real soldier with much less.” Or at least, I could do a convincing impersonation of one until the next existential crisis hit.
I’d researched Adrian’s claims, and while the adventure movies, fiction, and surface stories for children claimed a million different contradictory reasons for the crash, he hadn’t been exactly lying. Human history was filled to the brim with violence, warfare, and horror, to the point where it looked like we thrived on it.
If anything, the crash brought us together as a people more than anything else in history, even as it threatened to eat our world. Nothing unites a species like a common enemy. Did you know that in old New York in 1921, murders, violent killings, both domestic and crime-related, exceeded the number of deaths from any other cause? A cheerful little factoid I’d blueprinted during a particularly bleak insomnia spiral. And don’t even get me started on cities like Chicago and Detroit.
Hell, modern Detroit is more or less a lawless haven for supervillains, and even if it is better run and managed by a warlord with the uninspired name of Earth-Lord than the place was in 1918. The great Lakes have a lot fewer and smaller kaiju than the coasts, but even the lawless folks pulled together to beat back destruction. It’s amazing what you can accomplish when you’re not busy shooting each other over shoes or a favorable spot to sell illicit pharmaceuticals.
Even the modern-day criminal organizations were far less violent than they used to be. Sure, we had illegal drugs, but we also had pebbles, buzzers, blitz, and white-out, which were totally legal, non-addicting, and safe as long as you didn’t try to drive a backhoe or go for target practice afterward. I didn't like them, but I had tried buzzers myself, and the sensation was that warm feeling of having just made love, without the fun parts. Very popular, but not my cup of tea.
Most illegal drugs were illegal for very good health reasons, especially since even physical addiction was fairly easy for modern medicine to break. The real profit was in power-enhancers, cursed artifacts, and stolen super-tech. You know, the classics.
But if a cartel made it a regular practice to leave a trail of bodies behind them, sooner or later someone like the Hanging Judge or Specter would decide to clean out the lot of them, and those guys were both terrifying and thorough. They were technically supervillains because they had no problems attacking baselines and tended to leave their own field of dead, but as suspected class fives, few were willing to tackle them when things had progressed to the point that one of them decided to make an example. It was the super-powered equivalent of natural selection; if your criminal enterprise was too messy, a bigger, meaner predator would come along and cull you from the herd.
Sabrina had, in fact, gotten back to the school in a huge hurry. Apparently, the herbs and plants we had gathered had been enough, even without my contribution, for her to create some kind of salve that deadened her scent and essence signature, and she shocked the hell out of the wall guards when she simply rode in through the Jersey gates on an old bicycle.
I pictured it—a deadly, unknown, suspected feral alpha who’d just survived a kaiju-infested hellscape, pedaling serenely past fortified checkpoints like she was on her way to a picnic. It was the kind of absurdity that made me feel right at home.
And, of course, the moment I’d given her my own collection that the Maxwell collective had returned—no note, no apology, just a box of rare, probably-tracked plants left outside my door—she’d been off to the labs to work on her own power advancement. She hadn’t been out of the lab for days. I was starting to think her idea of a good time was a beaker, a Bunsen burner, and the screams of her own cellular structure as she forced it to evolve. That sounded... oddly familiar.
I sighed, “It’s like this. While my products are not exactly gadgeteer tech, they also cannot be mass-produced. Once I get some problems ironed out, I will probably get a day job designing custom costumes like Ochre, or maybe semi-power armor, custom jobs, and get to work on some bigger projects I have in mind, like possibly an inter-city wireless network.”
She leaned forward on her desk, “Wait, what? How would that work?”
I smiled a little, the expression feeling foreign on my face. “I don’t really understand programming logic, but I do know perfectly well how variable wavelengths and digital encoding work. It might have to work like an old-style telephone switchboard, but long-distance analog links, maybe even to other countries around the world, are perfectly possible without fragile hard links. Imagine if a class 6 kaiju shows it’s head, and monster hunter teams from Chicago, Empire City, and Sonic Beach all show up to give it an instant bad day? Zero casualties, even.” And zero need for a guy like me to be on the front lines, but we’ll keep that part to my internal monologue for now.
“The transport guild would throw a fit.”
“So? It’s not like they won’t still be needed; they just won’t be carrying as many messages, and they might be carrying a lot more physical goods. I have seen some of those girls; they could really use the exercise.” I’d seen them too. Lots of spandex, lots of deep-heaving breaths. It was a whole aesthetic. Mega-boobs and pencil arms. Some guys were into that, but I liked girls who tried to stay in shape. Not that they were deprived.
She laughed and started poking around on her keyboard, “You already have business management courses completed for your public ID. Unless you want to go for a master’s.”
I shook my head, “Not if I run a small side business. I got that figured out before I came to Kellar. I have zero desire to try to run a multinational. I also need free time and lab access, and as much as I hate it, I will need to pick up some serious STEM courses. Definitely advanced programming logic, and probably advanced biogenetics.”
She nodded, tapping at the keyboard. “You said you have an eidetic memory?”
I nodded, “Something similar to eidetic memory. I can flash freeze. That’s sort of my whole superpower.”
She nodded, “In that case, what you need are training labs, not classes, that and tutoring. Classes are there to help drive the information home, but I assume you can pick up nearly any book and memorize it in a couple of minutes?”
I shrugged, “Hours, if I really want to understand it. But yeah, that’s why I was thinking logic classes if I can get them, or yeah, tutoring and labs if they would work out better.” I could blueprint the hell out of a programming textbook, but understanding why the code worked often felt like trying to appreciate the structural integrity of a brick wall by repeatedly headbutting it.
She nodded, “You’ve already taken Kaiju tactics, what did you think?”
I sighed, “Good for taking naps or studying. Nothing but rote memorization of data. If 102 is the same, I am skipping it. I’d rather take biogenetics to figure out how to take them down; most of them are animals, and teamwork is a much better course.” I’d seen the videos. Knowing a Category Four Goliath has a secondary heart in its tail is great. Getting close enough to stab it without being turned into a red smear is the part they always gloss over.
“Power exploitation?”
I smiled, “A decent start, but I’d honestly get more out of something more hands-on. I am not a gadgeteer or a shapeshifter, and while I wasn’t truly mislabeled, I’d rather look into power exploitation, energy instead. It fits my power signature better.”
She nodded, “Good, I was going to make the same recommendation. Your sponsor suggested Doctor Kearns, and I can see why.”
“Doctor Kearns?”
She nodded, “Elemental energy production and motion. Firefly. Your sponsor said that some of your energy problems had been resolved, and that you would get a lot more out of physical power training courses. I was going to suggest advanced telekinetics, but I assume that’s still a no-go?
I nodded, sighing. “Kinetic transfer, you know that flash freeze and restore thing? more like an energy brick than a telekinetic, but the elemental courses might be more helpful, since a kinetic shield is a lot more like an elemental air product than telekinesis.” I was basically a fancy capacitor with a bad attitude and a caffeine deficiency.
She nodded, “You know that some of these classes are going to put you into contact with second and third years, right? Not uncommon, but you are getting a bit of a reputation, and reputation means rank challenges.”
I shrugged, a gesture I’d perfected to convey weary indifference. “Do I have to answer them?”
She shook her head, “Not really… your chosen path, even on the hunter track, is weird enough that your rank placements will probably have almost no effect on your eventual graduation options. On the other hand, it’s a good way to settle bets and favors, and it’s amazing training in most cases. Please pardon the expression, but dick-waving contests are sort of an important part of public perception, even if the majority of our graduates don’t possess them.”
I nodded, “On that note, is there some place to post requests for tutors or professionals from other tracks? I am still fairly broke, but I get the feeling I am going to need to look for a flack, preferably a baseline, to play interference, plus, you know, lab tutors.” Someone to handle the paperwork, the PR, and the people so I could focus on the important things, like not dying.
She smiled a bit brighter, “As far as hiring an agent, that is super easy… I mean, the non-alphas who come to Kellar are usually here specifically to train in the side-issues of dealing with alphas, and I can put in a call to one of the PR professors about that right away; he could find and send you some promising prospects, and working with you would actually offer school credits. Just give me a list of what you need. Specialist tutors are also offered credits or are even paid for by your grant, as long as they aren’t for academic probation. I will get you hooked up. Would non-alpha tutors work?”
I nodded, “That would be great.” A baseline wouldn’t be constantly trying to sense my energy fluctuations or challenge me to an arm-wrestling match. It sounded peaceful.
She smiled and tapped at the keyboard, and then printed out a tentative schedule. I took the sheet of paper. It felt suspiciously like a destiny.
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Power exploitation, energy lab, Doctor Richard Kearns.
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Advanced Biogenetics for Alpha Manipulators, Doctor Emmanuel Juarez.
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Introduction to alternative martial arts, Master Kelly MacTavish.
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Advanced artificial Intelligence and programming logic. Lab 603 (Instructor TBD)
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Radiology and materials lab (advisor tbd)
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Teamwork 102
“Two things… advanced biogenetics for alpha manipulators? That’s pretty on-the-nose, isn’t it?
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
She nodded, “It really is. Doctor Juarez offers that course specifically for the rare alpha manipulator who attends. We usually get one every couple of years. It’s technically a mandatory course, as are ABAM 102 and 103. Bio-manipulators capable of handling microorganisms, viruses, and bacteria are extraordinarily dangerous, so 101 is basically a safety course. You know, “Don’t release a plague’ and such.” She said it so cheerfully. ‘Don’t release a plague.’ Right up there with ‘look both ways before crossing the street’ and ‘don’t poke the eldritch horror with a stick.’ “I sometimes teach ABAM 102, since it’s usually micro-medicine, but Emmanuel handles 101 and 103 because it gets into pretty esoteric stuff.”
“And Intro to alternative martial arts?”
She laughed, “Your advisor, Bob, demanded that one. Alternative martial arts is a… sort of weird category covering a huge variety of mysticism, soul energy, mental resistance training, and some eastern concepts that he said might be very important to you.” Great. So after biochemistry, I got to go find my chi. My life was becoming a bad martial arts movie spliced with a worse biothriller.
I nodded slowly, “No instructor for Teamwork 102?’
She smiled, “More like floating instructors. Remember, teamwork courses are mandatory for pretty much every alpha student, and half of our normies take them as part of their support framework. We also have guest instructors, although we don’t start getting crossover students until Teamwork 105, year three.”
“Crossover students?”
She nodded, “Other Alpha academies, Supercop training facilities, and even emergency responder alpha training programs send alpha and promising baseline students here for our higher-level teamwork training. Kellar is the best for a reason.”
I sat up, “So, it looks good, I guess. Will I have enough time for free study?”
She nodded, “Courses and labs are about six hours a day, total. Considering your absolute lack of need for a study hall due to your blueprinting, you might even want to pick up some of the extracurricular stuff, maybe get your social interaction going a bit. We have teams, both baseline and alpha, for everything from political activism to air hockey, lots of clubs, and even sponsored clubs by people like the Transporter’s guild, tinker’s alliance, new Crusaders, and the Enchanted Forge.”
I chortled, “An Air Hockey team? Seriously?” I pictured a bunch of bored alphas using telekinesis to cheat at a tabletop game.
She laughed, “Not that kind of air hockey. Think soccer meets volleyball, with a hint of Quidditch and Blitz Ball thrown in. It’s a brutal sport, but it’s very popular, and a bunch of hunter and hero paths use it for training. It’s even pretty popular among the sports fan crowd, since most matches are televised. I am sort of surprised you’ve never heard of it.”
I shook my head, “Never really was a sports fan outside of extreme wrestling, weightlifting, and the winter games.” My hobbies had previously consisted of ‘brooding,’ ‘designing combat gear,’ and ‘avoiding arrest.’ And before that? I was focused since high school on professional contracting. Today's success stories started early and stayed focused.
She smiled, “Shall we wrap up then?”
I nodded, “Thanks, how do I look up the clubs and stuff? I am still kind of broke, but I might have time to look into an employment-placement program.”
She laughed, and then looked at me cautiously, “Wait, what? Seriously? I thought you were joking. Like a princess baby whining about being too broke to afford a twenty-thousand-dollar pair of Jimmy Choos. Have you talked to your sponsor?”
“Huh?” My eloquent response.
She sighed and slumped at her desk, a gesture that spoke of countless students who were geniuses in everything except basic life skills. “You’ve been letting her screen your contracts, right?”
I shook my head, “No, I figured that’s why I needed to find an agent.”
“Sweety, have you even asked her for your school account?”
“My what?”
“Your school account. Your allowance for personal expenses from your scholarship. Like what you use to buy shoes, ramen noodles, and stuff in emergencies? Where do your active rewards from school activities go?
She tapped her screen a few times. “This,” and swiveled the screen around so I could see. I blinked. Then I blinked again. There was a number with my name on the account. A number that started with a three and had several zeros after it. three thousand dollars? I quickly memorized the account number, my brain latching onto the digits with the desperation of a drowning man finding a life raft.
“Where did that come from?”
“Do you honestly think a full-ride scholarship, especially with certain extra-budgetary bonuses from specialty corporations, doesn’t expect you to have your own needs, like clothes, non-cafeteria food, transportation, and even sanitary stuff and books?”
I shook my head, feeling like the universe’s biggest idiot. “No, I thought it was just tuition.” I’d been subsisting on cafeteria food and the dregs of my villainous savings, which were roughly equivalent to the contents of a teenager’s couch cushions.
She shook her head, the picture of academic pity. “Go talk to your sponsor. She probably doesn’t know about hers either… the packet they give a sponsor is a gigantic folder full of paperwork. Stuff like marketing bonuses, team fundraiser income, and dividends that hit the school instead of directly to you go in that account, too. She has your pins and card numbers, but based on the fact that neither of your accounts has been touched, I bet she just lost them in the paperwork.”
“Tomorrow is the last free day before the new semester, and there will be a club fair in the arena tomorrow if you are interested. Wear a generic mask.”
I had a few bucks left from my ‘career,’ but I’d been saving them frantically until I could get a side income. It was nice, once I’d actually found out that Mindy had, in fact, had no idea that we were getting an income, and I was now the proud possessor of a Kellar student account with three thousand, three hundred, and one dollars in it. The one dollar was probably interest or some kind of joke I didn't get. Right now, though, Mindy and I were headed for the Arena to check out the club fair. I felt marginally less like a charity case and more like a person who had merely failed to read the terms and conditions of his own life.
“I can’t wait to see if there’s an art club. I like to think I am pretty good at ice sculpture, but all the techniques I know are kind of traditional… I bet there are actual frost alphas that might know power techniques for advanced sculpture!”
“So artsy.” I grinned. “I want to know what the enchanted anvil, the crusade, and the tinker’s guild are… also, weirdly enough, air hockey looks like a fun way to get in some extra physical training.” And maybe get hit in the head enough to forget my problems.
She looked at me in surprise, “Air hockey? Really? Oh my god, if you like it, you should totally go for it, a lot of hunters are also pro air hockey players, but the college scene is where it’s really at!”
“Wait, there’s a pro league? And a college scene?” My life was getting weirder.
She nodded, “There are eight academies nationwide, and some foreign academies. Kyoto, Drago, North Germany, Eyre, Saskatchewan, Paris, and the Godlings from Zealand.”
“Wait, aren’t Eyre, Drago, and Godling magic specialists?”
She nodded, “Drago and Eyre are, Godling is a mixed academy. But Air Hockey has specific rules and limitations that help each academy compete. I still can’t believe you never heard of it!”
I scratched my head and just grumbled something about my life story's writer never thinking about it as I followed her. “You really think it’s worth trying out for?” It’s not like anything was televised anymore.
She nodded, “There are a lot of rules and qualifiers, but with your air shield, you could be a decent goalkeeper, you are tough enough to be a guard, fast enough to be a forward, have some vertical, and you could even keep outriggers busy. Plus, you get bonuses for wins on your team to your group obstacle rankings, and you get good PR exposure.” She was speaking a different language. Outriggers? Vertical?
“As far as the crusade, they are a specifically Christian monster-hunting crew, sort of like the monster hunters, but a little more cautious, generally better-trained and equipped, but far fewer. Unlike the monster hunters, they take the religious aspects very, very seriously. If you git in, you fit in, but if you don’t, it’s probably not worth trying. Some of them even take vows of chastity, silence, celibacy, and poverty, but no one fails to take them seriously. They don’t get involved in crime-fighting, though, at least not the political side, although they have been known to take out homicidal nut-jobs, and they always end threats permanently.”
I made a mental note to avoid them. My relationship with higher powers was… complicated. And my current Dao was Motion, not Martyrdom.
“The Tinker’s guild basically sells temporary or one-shot specialty gear, spells, and stuff. Kind of a junk shop for superhero secret agent stuff. Some of your gear might be a good fit. The enchanted anvil, also known as the armory, though, is all about crafting permanent gear. If you decide to start custom-making armor for people, or weapons, you’d probably seriously want to contact them about it, because buyers tend to work through them to get what they want.”
“Do they take a big cut?”
She shrugged, “Beats me, probably not much though, since it’s actually run by summoners and crafters themselves. The anvil tends to have lots more enchanted items than tech items, though, but that might be because of the perceptions of the difference between enchantments and gadgets, though. I am not really sure how it all works.
I smiled and gave Mindy a kiss on the cheek, which almost made her squeak in surprise before she grinned at me, but I owed her for the ice cream party last week. And for not laughing too hard when I explained I’d been penniless by choice. “I will see you in a bit.”
The Tinker’s guild pavilion was surrounded by all sorts of, well, toys. Nothing dangerous, but definitely eye-catching, especially the little dog-fighting drones and 3d illusions. It looked like a Sharper Image for aspiring mad scientists. The Enchanted Anvil, on the other hand, looked like a reinforced pavilion right out of an old Renaissance fair, set up right on the asphalt lot, with the ringing of an anvil and smoke coming from someplace behind the curtain. It promised permanence. It promised things that didn’t explode upon first use. I was intrigued.
I just skirted past the Tinker’s guild pavilion. Yeah, it was probably fun, but I had zero interest in one-shot trinkets. I walked to the anvil, instead, where there was a desk set in front with a guy that looked like Gimli’s twin brother sitting out front, wearing actual old-fashioned chain-mail and a barbute helmet. He was either deeply committed to the bit, or he’d gotten lost on the way to a historical reenactment.
I looked at him skeptically as he eyed me, probably just as skeptically. After a moment, he snorted through his large nose and long beard, before turning back to his computer, where I heard the telltale beeps of a certain popular 3d side-scroller. So, a dwarf cosplayer who liked video games. This was my people.
“Just a sec,” he said, and I heard the level-complete notification, and he took his hands off the keyboard and mouse before looking me up and down. “Something I can help you with?”
I shook my head, “Just, would you be offended if I asked if you are manning the desk specifically because you look like you belong behind an anvil smashing Threodmir or Mjolnir into shape?”
He shook his head. “Not at all. The name’s Matt Lindbergh, Earth-Forger public ID. Or to be more exact, heat-based semi-metal manipulator.”
“Oh, that’s really cool… Molecular motion, and you gain manipulation after it’s molten?” See? I was learning. I could almost feel Graviton’s approving nod from across campus.
He nodded, “Yeah. I took Earth-Forger because…” he brushed his hand down his front, “I look like a dwarf, and Glass-Man wasn’t particularly intimidating. I am not a hero, though. I might look like a dwarf, but Gimli, I am not. Class 3 elemental controller. And I'm short, but not that short.”
I held out my hand, “Pleasure to meet you, Earth-Forger.” Finally, someone whose power didn’t involve reading my mind, kidnapping me, or forming permanent spiritual bonds against my will.
He nodded and shook my hand, “Likewise. What can I do you for? You look like a hero-type, you looking for armor or a weapon or something?”
I shook my head slowly, “Nope, I am a crafter type myself. I was more interested in seeing what kind of memberships, benefits, and that sort of thing the guild offers. I am shifting to the hunter track, but was thinking of setting up a side gig, especially if it can get me working with other crafters that might be willing to share techniques, ideas, and tech.” And maybe find a programmer who doesn’t faint at the sight of my UI schematics.
He nodded slowly, “Supertech, not tinker?”
I nodded, “Yeah, but it doesn’t slide so easily into the tech category. It almost straddles the line between tech and enchantment, to be honest, but since I don’t come from a sorcery tradition, it falls more on the geek side than the goth side.”
He nodded thoughtfully. “Well, that’s one of the reasons the guild is here. We try to catch every semester fair, either for recruits or people needing new stuff, but most people who awaken as tech wind up as tinkers instead of crafters. In the end, that leaves us recruiting mostly from the sorcery schools, like the Drago. Do you have any display pieces?”
“Display pieces? Umm...not really. I have a communicator, but my team is off-duty right now. We left our armor and stuff in our meeting area.” Mostly because my armor was currently a smoldering pile of scrap after my last bonding experience, but he didn’t need to know that.
“Our armor? You made armor for your whole team? As a first-year?”
I nodded, “I still have some… problems with it, like the hyper-extension locks and secondary feedback, and I still need to find a decent programmer to handle all of the UI’s, hardware extensions, and apps, as well as the AI and targeting systems, but most of the armor, strengthening, mylomar, hard locks, defensive systems, kinetic absorbers, and power systems are ready to go… but without a pet nerd, I have the team using unpowered suits.” I was basically a car manufacturer who couldn’t find anyone to install the radios.
“Wait, powered suits? Are you a power armor crafter? Like Iron Man?”
I shook my head, “Not yet. As I said, I can’t get it working without better software than I can create. So right now my team’s running around in silica-carbon Proxovan upgrade with extruded compressed titanium nanoweave on the stress points. That, and I can’t do that flying thing… not one of my gifts, and I am not a rocket scientist...yet.” ‘Yet’ was doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence.
“Yet?” He looked doubtfully at me.
I nodded and looked around. Noticing that no one was looking, I sparked a bit of carbon fuel between my fingers, so that a flash appeared, a bit like flash paper but more reddish. “Yet,” I said it with all the confidence of a man who fully intended to blueprint a jet engine until it made sense.
He laughed, “What was that? It was a little too fast to see.”
“You have micro-detection?”
He nodded, “I can detect impurities, even if I can’t create them. I recognize a lot of them. I caught a hint of carbon, but the rest was a blur.”
I nodded, “Nothing but carbon and a hint of magnesium.” The recipe for a really sad, tiny barbecue.
“So… do you have samples? Prototypes? If you can do what you say you can, the guild would love to have you… I mean, two at one school, now all I have to do is track down the other one, but she seems to avoid showing her face.”
“Two?”
He nodded, “Yep, heard rumors of a true crafter named ahh… Blueprint, or something? We managed to get a sample of her armor from a collector, apparently she blew up a suit, and some chunks of it got around. You haven’t seen her, have you? I heard she goes here.”
I sighed. Of course. My legacy preceded me, and it was littered with shrapnel. “Guilty.”
“What?”
“That’s me. I lost a suit, but that was some pretty primitive crap, so I didn’t work as hard tracking down the pieces as I should have.” A massive understatement. I’d been too busy having a nervous breakdown and getting recruited to villainy at the time.
“I have upgraded my custom version of carbonosilicates a lot since then, and added a lot more control nodes to it, but the basic suits are still like that, just with the hardened nanoweave. I just figured powered armor was ridiculous if it restricted your range of motion… individual strength points, like gloves and reinforcements? Sure… but most tinker power armor is utterly impossible.” It was a hill I was willing to die on, preferably not because my armor seized up and tore me in half.
His grin was huge, and he opened up the tent behind him. “Would you please step into my parlor, sir? I have someone who would very much like to meet you.”
I looked at him skeptically, my well-honed paranoia flaring to life like a Geiger counter in a uranium mine. “No.”
“No?”
I nodded and started looking around for exits, Mindy, or any sign of an impending ambush. “I have been kidnapped twice so far. I am not going someplace private unless my sponsor comes with me. Can you wait a few minutes?” It was the super-powered equivalent of needing a chaperone on a date.
He nodded, “No offense taken. That’s smart, and we can’t cut a deal with you without his approval while you are in training, anyway. Conflict of interest. I will be right here.” he smiled and picked up a hand-phone. I’d found a guild. Now I just had to make sure it wasn’t a cult.