She was different. It didn't matter a single iota what I was; it didn’t matter to her.

If you passed a Super on the street, you'd never know. They look like us.

One people, One power...

I had to admit, it had a nice ring. It’s an idea that made me take the leap and apply, after months of agonizing uncertainty, and imposter syndrome.

We were the same.

The Paragon Academy believed so, too; they had a special intake stream for people like me – ‘category Z’. Sure, the stats were dire for Z’s; over 86% failed to graduate, and of those, 93% did not survive the first year post-graduation. But her effusive mantra kept sounding in my head as I read through the intake application forms. And then, again, when I finally received my acceptance letter.

“ONE PEOPLE! ONE POWER!”

She had hovered onto the grounds of the packed Hammerhead City stadium and declared this mantra to an additional home-viewing audience. Her diaphragm was so strong she did not need a microphone. I was watching on the TV, swearing she was looking down into my eyes, saying it directly to me, including me in her gated-off world. Then the moment broke as she did some mid-air aerodynamic twirls and spins -- like a gymnast on an invisible rope – which the social media commentators dubbed ‘space flipping’, and the stadium broke into cheering. Snapping the hypnotic hold she had over the stadium, she accelerated into the sky so fast it was like she’d been sucked up by an alien tractor beam moving in fast forward – but faster. And of course, there was the signature departure sound, a sharp spurt like a bottlerocket. The internet called it the ‘shuf!’ (like ‘shook’, not ‘shut’) and it spawned memes, which she at first said was ‘cute’ and later confessed irritated her, on a talk show:

“I’m still mystified that shuf! got the traction it did – I love those old retro comic text bubbles as much as anybody -- but for a little while it defined me and definitely had me questioning myself when I got up in the morning, my vocational choice, whether people were making fun of me, and brought on this deep, searching kind of identity crisis. Shuf! was on memes and t-shirts and everywhere but I realize now, I am not shuf! I am so much more than shuf!

At the Hammerhead City stadium, ‘shuf!’ caused a sonic boom, sending the TV broadcast to a ringing test pattern for ten minutes.

***

Outside, the sun hadn’t yet risen. My breath came out in a mist. Good thing I had grabbed a padded jacket last minute before leaving the house; I was wearing my Paragon-issue jumpsuit underneath, and it did little to shield the cold. These things were designed to vent body heat during physical exertion – glorified gym clothes – not get you through a cold winter.

A black Chevy rolled up and stopped in the driveway of the house next door, and an older man got out, with a dark crew cut. He’d moved here about a week ago. He was physically fit and I wondered if he was maybe a PE teacher or something.

This time he actually spoke to me:

“You live by yourself, Steve?”

He walked up to the dividing fence and leant an arm across it.

I wondered how he knew my name.

“Just me,” I nodded. “I haven’t been here that long, either, about a month.”

“I thought so. The neighbors didn’t seem to know who was living here.” He smiled. “I never caught you, but I knew there had to be someone because earlier this week those gadgets mysteriously appeared on your roof.”

He motioned up at my rooftop, where an array of outlandish aerials and satellites were set up. And what I used them for was even more outlandish.

When I didn’t say anything, he speculated:

“You must be able to pick up secret broadcasts from North Korea on those things. Unless you’re trying to talk to aliens.”

I always affected a projection of confidence when I talked about dangerous or sensitive subjects. Deflect suspicion with bravado or a joke. The problem was I relied on this strategy so much I was starting to create a very not-me alter ego. I answered non-committedly:

“Possibly one of those, yeah. But which one? Am I paranoid or am I crazy?”

“Well, kid, you tell me.”

He offered his hand over the fence, and I shook it. His name was Brandon Vega, and he was a forensic detective, a CSI cop. I wouldn’t have guessed, he didn’t seem like a cop. He seemed surprisingly patient and soft-spoken, and quick to smile. A real life Friendly Neighborhood Cop.

“This ended up in our mailbox by mistake,” he said, voice strangely hushed as if shy, as he handed me a letter. “It’s addressed to you.”

I did a double take. The letter was addressed to ‘Master Occupant’ and was indeed my address, and, alarmingly, had the Paragon seal. If Brandon was a detective, he would have known what it was.

“What a puzzle. I have to check with the post office. Looks like a mistake.” I stuffed it in my pocket.

Brandon just smiled, shrugging it off, but his eyes were very intelligent ad scrutinizing. It was obvious he didn’t believe this, and I immediately felt ashamed for trying to dupe him with such a dumb lie.

“Look, it’s the crack of dawn and I just got off my shift,” he said, mercifully dropping the subject, “and you look like you’re going somewhere, so we’re all out of sync. But if you’re free sometime, we have to get you on in for a meal – what do you drink?”

I imagined sitting around his dining table with him, probably his wife, as I tried to keep the conversation dancing around and around the Paragon thing, which he now knew, and I knew – and his wife probably knew – and it would be just another shameful dupe to pretend I didn’t know anything about it, while struggling to refuse beer or anything that would make me talk more freely.

“Water,” I said.

“So, you’d probably find us too boring,” he said ironically. He looked at me like he was reading my mind, in fact I sensed he knew more about me than I knew about him. And that wasn’t so far-fetched; he was a detective.

“Well, you know I talk to aliens,” I said quickly, “so you basically know all about me. I’m pretty boring myself, to be honest.”

“We’re boring too, so we all get along. You’ll be okay for dinner,” he reassured me. “And then there’s just my daughter,” he looked me up and down, “she’s about your age.”

Daughter? I thought. But I already had a girl in my life, and I didn’t want to do a thing to jeopardize it.

He carried on:

“It’s just a seat at the table, you don’t have to spill your guts. We’re not big talkers, either. Well, my daughter can be quite outspoken if she likes someone.”

“Okay,” I said, now stuck in my false projection and doubling down, forcing enthusiasm to breaking point. “Let’s do it!”

Pleased, he headed back to his front door.

“Catch you another time, Steve. And if you want to bring something, don’t. Just bring yourself.”

He waved a goodbye salute and shut the front door behind him.

*

The theme park was lit up against the red evening sky. Show crowds bustled under the neon signs; all the Natural kids enjoying their end of school year, high-fiving that final exams were done.

And we happened to have just started ours. We were about to step in and put our pens to the paper.

I parked the Academy-hire car on the other side of a line of carny vans, close to the exit.  Before switching off the ignition, I checked the fuel gauge. The car was gassed up in case we needed to flee. I turned to my associate, Summer.

She was a studious, even brooding blonde with brown eyes, and was a ballerina from age five, going on to win multiple Ballet competitions, until finally being disqualified from an adult show when the judges discovered her arabesque allongé had no anatomical limit. A family doctor certified that she was a Super; a super-contortionist, she could stretch and twist her body like rubber. She was a Flexer.

The Academy stuck us together as assignment partners, and we immediately clicked, being both high achievers and power-shy. I loved her policy of secrecy and that she had never, ever asked me what my power was. Purely businesslike, she assumed that when the time came, my power would manifest naturally for the correct job. We weren’t show-offs.

Now, we sat in the car, taking a couple of minutes to collect and prepare ourselves. The radio was jabbering: commentators offering their views on snippets of a speech delivered at the UN by a visiting Miss Venus.

Summer listened and then all of a sudden spluttered with laughter.

“What?” I said.

“Oh,” she sighed disdainfully, “those little microphone crackling noises you hear before the speech are the stilettos. The UN,” she repeated dubiously. “The shockwaves from her stilettos as she walked across the hall. Of the UN Assembly.” She said with mock grandiosity: “Could you imagine? Our newest Ambassador elect: Captain ‘choice footwear’.” Her voice got low and disinterested, “She dropped in from some arts and fashion festival.”

“Her glutes and quads would be made of steel to make those stiletto landings,” I pointed out, trying to appeal to Summer’s hobby, and added, “You have to admit, it’s very graceful.”

She countered a little testily:

“You don’t want steel pylons for a graceful landing. Steel can’t deform under pressure.”

I conceded:

“Okay, so you don’t follow her on Twitter.”

She gave a small sigh.

“She has this grand vision of ideal society where the rules are inverted. It’s called post-feminism and means trashy equals chic. I don’t follow that.”

Summer came from at least four generations of hardline, no-nonsense, drab-costumed, strictly utilitarian, ‘power-on-only-when-necessary’ Supers, and the new wave of post-Millennial showiness and increasingly skin-baring costumes seemed to quietly rub her the wrong way.

“She knows what she’s doing,” I suggested. “It’s clever. She’s so good at what she does, she can afford to wear a mini-skirt for a costume and not take herself seriously. It’s a calculating move to trick the adversary into underestimating her.”

She shot back:

“You mean she’s good at what she does? She’s the bouncy, cringey commercial break before the arrival of our next great Super.”

I winced inwardly and looked for a distraction. Luckily, the theme park provided many.

“Go time,” I exclaimed, unclipping my seatbelt. “Power ready!”

It was our last assignment before graduation, upon which our final grade hinged. I was practically trembling with excitement. I couldn’t help myself. The goofy, cavalier alter ego didn’t need compelling; it was coming out on its own from the excitement.

Summer on the other hand had nerves of steel (though her nerves were, literally, more like rubber) and merely scoffed.

“Leave the catchphrases until we get our grades. If we receive the top grade – as I anticipate we will – I will personally come up with a catchphrase for us. And you can figure out the cheer dance routine.”

“’Us’,” I repeated, catching her eye askance. “Are you possibly suggesting that after we graduate,” I swallowed, trying to sound casual and cool, like my ultimate Hero idol, Superblazar, “you want to team-up?”

“Let’s see you in action tonight, cadet,” she was being tongue-in-cheek since she too was only a cadet. “And then, if you impress, maybe there is a future for us working together. Wait until I make Captaincy,” she added coyly, “…and then hand in your application as my honorary sidekick.”

I remembered our mid-year exam, where I’d tried dismally to karate chop a gun, failed to disarm the actor-playing-bad-guy and almost got a dummy round blasted at my chest, when Summer – my exam partner – Inflated her body like a shield to catch the round (rubberizing herself made her almost invulnerable), saving the exam, and then shot me a very serious look that said ‘Why the hell didn’t you power-on?'

Back then, the incident felt very sour. But now, on reflection, it made me feel pride that she was my partner. Her response had been so fast, so reflexive, that maybe she wasn’t just trying to salvage our exam score…maybe she genuinely felt something for me, and was keen to save my skin or my feelings. She didn’t have to catch the bullet.

I replied:

“Honorary sidekick…” I repeated slowly, feeling for the sound of the phrase. “So, Captain Sagittarius and Cadet Rockwell.”

“Summer,” she said smartly and nodded at me, “Steve.” She pushed open the door. “Come on. Time lengthens…”

We got out of the car, both wearing our ordinary ‘civilian’ clothes. We wouldn’t get our official Superhero costumes until the grad ceremony. I’d had my measurements done and my costume was finished and waited impressively in the Academy showroom. I had designed it myself.

This was the first part of the test; get in fast. In a real life crisis, hostage lives were on the line. If we bought a ticket and waited in line we would have failed the exam.

Around the side, we stopped at an unmonitored barred fence away from the crowds, hidden around some tall bushes and below the metal scaffolding of the great serpentine ‘Booster’ gold rollercoaster. As fluid as water, Summer went thin through the bars, and twisting elegantly to reappear, reformed on the other side of the fence.

“While the sun is still up, Steve,” she said.

My brain was going a mile a minute. If the fence wasn’t barred I could probably have taken a running leap and ‘parkored’ up, but if I tried that here, my hands and feet were going to slip through the gaps.

“I know, ‘specialist’ power,” she drawled, reciting the excuse I’d given her so many times before. “I’d love a demonstration before graduation. The suspense is killing me. Literally, killing me.”

She was usually gentle, and kind of shy, but she was so grade-driven that exam settings turned her into a different person. But this was our last exam, then we could relax again.

The Booster rollercoaster clanked and hissed above, rounding with a chorus of screams.

Below, Summer’s legs stretched until her head appeared over the fence, while her arms ‘spaghettified’, arcing over the fence and coiling tight around my chest in a bear hug. My cheeks went hot, and not merely from having the air squeezed out of my lungs. I grabbed her arms for stability an instant before she gave a powerful, elastic full-body jerk to vault me at the fencetop. The top bar struck my abdomen, stopping me half over. Gasping, I pulled myself over and fell onto the ground.

Meanwhile, she was already hurrying into the park.

“Up and at ‘em!” she called back, giggling with nervous anticipation. The bubbliness was an act; she was trying to fit with the crowd. It was also really cute, unusual for her, and made my heart go faster.

I jumped to my feet and scraped the dirt off my hands. My hands were red and stung; she’d given me rubber burn.

Past the wheeling arms of the red ‘Tornado’ pendulum ride, there was a painted warehouse into a ride that was closed for maintenance. It used to house the purple ‘Phantom train’ ride, but the ride had been dissembled now, most of the ride parts and machinery hauled off site. Now the entry was roped off and a sign said:

Testing Zone 4A
Premises closed while testing in session:
X15SS; Z68SR

Those codes were our Paragon Academy student usernames.

“Summer, stop!” I called her. She doubled back, saw the board, and grinned.

“Nice find, Rockwell!” she said genially, clapping me on the shoulder.

I glowed.

We rushed past the testing sign, and a standing placard that said: You must be this tall to ride, before reaching the warehouse’s double doors, which was padlocked.

Summer cast a quick look around – the throngs of people moved briskly past us as we stood in the warehouse’s shadow – and in the time it took to blink, Summer stretched one finger very thin and picked the lock.

We cracked the door open and went into the building, where big ride props and machine parts stood in shadow.

“I think my back-up’s arrived,” a man was saying into a walkie-talkie. He was wearing a park maintenance outfit. “Uh, something weird is –” He came out of the dark and got a look at us. “Hey! You’re not allowed in here!”

One of Summer’s arms had already begun snaking around behind him. Lucky it was dark, her arm could flatten and trace the shadows. Her forearm lifted and made a sudden snapping motion, like an elastic band being released, which brought her fist into the back of his head. He made a small groan and crumpled forward onto the ground.

“Hey, not good!” I said, trying not to panic already. “How do you know he was a bad guy? He might be park staff! He might be a hostage sent as a messenger!”

Summer swept a hand impatiently over her brow, as if to neaten up her hair.

“Steve,” she tutted, “stop overthinking this. They’re not trying to slip us up. He’s a bad guy,” she nudged his shoulder with a foot. “This whole building is exam zone. They’re all actors.”

She beckoned me ahead.

“He came from that way. Come on!”

We passed the shelved ride parts and equipment to another locked door. A couple of voices murmured on the other side, a man and a woman. They must have been the actors playing the criminals we were supposed to take down, and probably guarding the actors playing hostages.

Summer turned her back against the door and stared at me.

“Last exam question, Rockwell: who handles the bust, and who pulls off the rescue?”

We’d talked about this earlier: one of us would go in and power-on create a distraction, give a signal command, and the other would follow, to confuse the bad guys.

I did everything possible to keep my voice assertive and level:

“I can go in.”

Literally, I could go in, but I would probably run into a bad guy with a dummy gun stationed across the other side of the room, and I had nothing up against that. It wouldn’t kill me but it would be humiliating as hell to drop before saving even one hostage.

Summer’s lips pressed together, seeing something in my expression. She was so businesslike and level-headed it was intimidating, but I felt another rush of gratitude she was my partner, even if she played loose with the rules sometimes, she always owned her decisions, and never panicked.

She was already picking the lock.

“No, I’ll go,” she said. “You take too long to do a perimeter sweep. It’s a criminal head count, not a rote memorization test. I know you want to check all the boxes by the book, but you have to learn to move first and then stop and think later.”

“We’ve got to move exactly according to plan,” I countered, “otherwise we’re going to surprise each other.”

“Try to be more flexible, Steve. Learn to improvise. Come in after me and we’ll finesse the plan as we go. And don’t be afraid to get power-happy, there’s no use-penalty in the grading criteria. Let’s start a small riot.”

She went to open the door.

My chest went tight. Desperate, I let out:

“Summer, wait…I don’t have one.”

She blinked.

“You don’t have a plan?”

“Power,” I said quietly. “No power. I don’t have one.”

Outside, the rollercoaster car clicked and rattled down the track, riders screaming. We both tensed, and relaxed again once it passed. Or, she relaxed. My tension didn’t lift.

She pronounced very slowly:

“Oh, you’re a Natural,” and looked at me as if she’d never met me before. “Hmmm,” she said under her breath. There was no heightened emotion in her voice, which was usual for her, but now it seemed oddly lacking. “I guess…that makes sense. I wondered why you kept going over the case studies so many times, like you’re terrified of making the tiniest mistake.” But she still looked puzzled as her eyes scanned my face. Her brows pinched above icy blue eyes. “How did you even get into the cadetship program?”

“I went through the category Z stream,” I said, stomach twisting into knots.

I had never planned to tell her I was a Natural, and now it just came out in panic like sand pouring out of a split sack. But if I hadn’t told her, we would get into another situation where I got into danger and she had to save me. This wasn’t a preparatory lesson, this was the real thing: the final exam. I couldn’t let that happen again. It was more important we were totally on the same page with each other, and that mean telling her the truth. If she thought I was keeping secrets from her she’d never trust me enough to let me work with her.

“The what category?”

“Z. The not X or Y category.”

Supers were admitted into category X for people with ingrained ability. Z stream was for people with no ability. There was also a Y stream for a rare slice of the Natural population who had been exposed to Super power, which had even less intake than Z stream, even more stigmatized as the bucket ‘dislocated’ students were dropped into because they didn’t fit into X or Z. The Zs and Ys made up such a tiny proportion of the student body the were practically invisible and most Super students just assumed everyone was X stream.

“Oh yeah,” she remembered out loud. “Holy shit,” she emphasized, sounding morbidly fascinated. I couldn’t understand it; she wasn’t angry. It seemed to be…okay.

“You wait,” she restated, in a kinder, maybe even pitying tone, “I’ll give you the signal, and…um…you do your thing. Honestly, two bad guys – what the heck examination board? Set us such a chill job. You’ll be fine.”

“Right on,” I said weakly, but she had already gone in, moving down a dark corridor, turning a corner and was out of sight.