CHAPTER 8

SCHOOL ON WEDNESDAY WAS SOMEWHAT INTERESTING.

The day started off with a pointless debate escalating into a physical fight in the middle of homeroom, with the culprits being Percy Pratt and Liam Crane and the result being both their parents getting called in. The sight of the Pratts and Cranes served as a reminder to Dang of the fact that most others at Star Harbor High came from rather high-brow backgrounds. For example, Harold Crane, Liam’s father, had served as Senator once before, and Percy’s mother was District Attorney. And as far as Star Harbor High was concerned, the Pratts and Cranes weren’t even the most elite of the families who had wards attending the school.

Another thing Dang found hilarious about the whole thing was that he’d once done a merc gig for Harold Crane, although at the time, he’d had no way of knowing there was a relation between Harold and Liam and it wasn’t until Harold came in that he made the connection and he spent much of homeroom attempting to recall everyone he’d ever worked for and if there was a chance they had kids who attended the same school as him. By the end of homeroom, he'd come to the conclusion that there were at least six students in Star Harbor whose parents he'd worked for in the past.

The squabble between Percy and Liam was hashed out fairly quickly once their parents had been called in, although both boys were still served detention to serve as a reminder to everyone else that the school had a zero tolerance policy for physical violence. This meant the two of them were the first students in the school to be served with detention that school year, a fact that earned both of them looks of reproach from their parents that suggested there would be a lot to talk about once they got back home.

Mr. Lincoln also informed them of their projects in the middle of homeroom. This, they’d all already had some sort of idea about. It was Star Harbor tradition that every year of students be assigned some sort of design or creativity project they would spend the entire year working on, and the intensity and requirements of each of these projects varied from year to year. If they were in Grade 9, they would have been more than fine designing cute little cardboard cut-out projects or fancy little projects involving rotors and homemade toy cars, but in grade 10, a lot more would be expected of them. And considering this was a pretty fancy school with loads of students with cash to burn, Dang knew a lot of the projects his classmen would come up with would be absolutely ridiculous and mind-blowing. This year however, there was no solo requirement for the projects and that meant that they could split into groups and work together on whatever ideas they had. Per Mr. Lincoln, they had the next two weeks to decide upon their groups, finalize what ideas they’d be going with and make a presentation that had to be approved before they got started on their projects. As he said this, groans filled the class, with most all too annoyed that the new school year was allowing no time for them to catch their breath, instead throwing them all right into the thick of things.

But, as if to counter the burdening news he’d just given them, Mr. Lincoln also announced a class field trip that was already being organized, one that was likely to hold in about two or three weeks, stating he’d have more to tell them once the details of the trip had been finalized. This news got most of the students excited, with them spending the rest of homeroom guessing where they’d be going on the field trip, with there being quite a lot of people hopeful that would be Disneyland and others who remarked that they’d gone to Disneyland far too often and were now sick of it.

Brian O’Callaghan saw this as an opportunity to gloat about just how much he’d been to Disneyland, bringing out his phone and showing anyone who cared the ones he’d been to, a stupid smile on his face the entire time.

“Here’s me and my brother at the one in Anaheim just during this holiday,” he said, swiping through images on his phone. “Oh, and here’s my entire family and I at the one in Florida last summer. Summer before that, we went to the one in Paris, they’re quite big on Ratatouille over there…it was fun. And then, a few years ago, there’s us at Tokyo, and then Hong Kong.”

“Isn’t that every single Disneyland there is?” Percy asked afterward, looking a little surprised.

“Is it?” Brian asked, feigning as though that was something he’d been unaware of. “I had no idea. I wonder where we’ll head next holidays. Dad’s been talking a lot about wanting to go on one of those shuttles that fly you into orbit and then bring you straight back. No idea if he’ll go through with it though.”

“Aren’t those like really expensive?” someone else asked.

Again, Brian feigned obliviousness. “Are they?” he asked, shrugging as he did. “Oh well, I suppose we’ll see.”

Daniel shook his head. “Show-off,” he muttered.

After homeroom, Dang, and Megan had Chemistry for first period of the day, while Dante was supposed to have Philosophy with Daedalus but he’d somehow vanished right after homeroom, as had Daniel. Dang noticed their oddness but asked no questions about it, aware that whatever it was they were up to, they knew well enough to not be reckless or to do anything stupid that would endanger the school. Not to mention, Dang had a hunch that Daedalus was simply interested in continuing to scan for anomalies and had probably somehow talked Daniel into giving him a hand. He’d also deduced that’s what the both of them had been up to when they’d left Civics class on Monday and though they’d said nothing of it to him or the others, he was fine with it.

Chemistry was a tad playful that morning. They were practicing titration techniques and though it was supposed to be fairly simple, there were a few others in the class who couldn’t help but get a little experimental with things, much to Ms. Perez’s disdain.

Nate Sharpe, the class’s embodiment of mischief poured more than the recommended limit of base, and mixed it in with whatever chemicals were within reach, with his mixture very quickly turning a murky shade and starting to foam, prompting both him and his partner, Elena, to hurry away from their table, watching from a distance as the content of Nate’s beaker bubbled over and spilled onto the table, a noxious odor very quickly filling the entire lab.

Luckily, whatever Nate had concocted wasn’t in any way lethal and it was fairly easy to clean although, the windows in the lab had to be opened up so the noxious odor could dissipate. Ms. Perez docked marks from Nate for what she described as frightening nonchalance and a total lack of attention, and then went on to pace the lab, watching what the others were doing.

For a while, things seemed fairly normal and as expected until only a few minutes later, Brian O’Callaghan yelped and hurried to his feet, backing rapidly away from a beaker that was smoking, and bubbling rather dangerously as it did.

“Should it be doing that?” Percy demanded, eyeing the beaker with fear.

“No, you moron!” Brian hissed. “What did you put into it?”

“Me?” Percy sounded offended. “I didn’t do anything. What did you do?!”

Ms. Perez sighed, and walked up to their table, grabbing their beaker and putting it in the sink, then opening the tap. In only a few seconds, the matter had been resolved. She turned to Percy. “You put too much sugar in and went over the recommended base limit. Not enough dilution.”

“See, I knew it was you!” Brian accused.

“You’re the one who put in the sugar!” Percy exclaimed.

After Chemistry was English and this was a general class, which meant they were rejoined by the others. For the class, they participated in a simple listening exercise that would be graded, with nearly everyone getting perfect marks except for Daniel who’d drifted off to sleep in the middle of the exercise and had been confused when he’d been asked questions by Mr. Peterson.

Dang had attempted whispering the answers in hopes that Daniel would pick up what he was saying with his enhanced hearing, but he’d clearly still been rather sleepy and had instead said a jumbled mismatch of sentences that left Mr. Peterson shaking his head, and Megan howling in laughter at Daniel’s dismay.

The rest of the day went pretty normally, ending with PE class where they just did fairly normal stuff like running laps around the court and also had to climb nets. At this, the gang excelled, although by now they already had a reputation for excelling when it came to PE, as could be expected of superhumans, even if that was something the rest of the school had no knowledge of. Once PE had concluded, as had the school day, they left together and stopped by Mr. Nguyen’s for slushies, only to find that he was away and it was his sixteen-year-old niece, Tara, tending to the store in his absence.

Tara welcomed them in rather warmly, and didn’t complain at all when they started their usual habit of just refilling the same cup, although she did warn them when Mr. Nguyen was on his way back to the store, not that it mattered much. They stuck around until Mr. Nguyen returned and had a laugh when he scolded them yet again for trying to put him out of business, embarking on a half-hour long lecture about why they needed to start getting separate cups and how it was more hygienic and better for them that way. Eventually, he gave up and asked instead how school had gone for them. By the time they left his store, the sun had set and it was dark out, and they headed straight for base.

Back at base, they trained and sparred amongst themselves for a bit while Daedalus got straight to work on something.

Dang went to him later to find out what he was doing.

“Just a firmware update,” he answered when Dang asked. “I’ve been getting a lot of false reads and mixed signals from the scanner recently, so I figured I’d run an update, make sure it’s not glitching out on us. We need the scanner in prime operational condition.”

“The false reads and mixed signals have anything to do with why you and Daniel have been running around school?” Dang asked, raising one eyebrow over the other.

Daedalus nodded. “Yep, something like that.”

“So you think there’s an anomaly at the school?”

“I don’t know anything for sure,” Daedalus admitted. “As I said, the reads aren’t enough to go off of. I’ve gotten signals but found nothing when investigating, except the one time I found a weird piece of stone in the janitor’s closet. But I’d just rather be safe about this whole thing than leave the school exposed to a potentially dangerous attack later on.”

“Alright then.” Dang nodded. “I trust you.”

Daedalus glanced up at Dang then, and gave him a nod.

The next day, there weren’t any classes on the schedule for them. This was because it was the day their class would take turns speaking with the new counsellor, a thing everyone seemed to dread and be unhappy about. Although there were those like Brian O’Callaghan and Nate Sharpe who’d written up scripts they intended to play out with the counsellor, even despite Mr. Lincoln’s advice that they all take it seriously and talk through whatever they had on their mind.

“I’ll talk about what I have on my mind, alright,” Nate said in a devious manner, giggling as he did.

When at last the time came for them to be called into the counsellor one after the other, Dang’s name was the first to be called. As Mr. Lincoln read his name off the list, he exchanged looks with Daedalus and the others. With a sigh, he rose to his feet, patting his hair down.

“Alright then,” he said. “Here we go.”