Superhero CITY - The Test

Chapter Five (edited)

The atmosphere in the room was sombre. After our miserable ending in Duelling Strategy 211, nothing had been able to lift our moods. Not even the eccentric Tools training had been able to, despite being a favourite course that would regularly bring in famous heroes, sidekicks and lair support technicians to explain and demonstrate specific gadgets to us.

Now, the four of us were sprawled around Chuckie's and my dorm doing nothing.

"I can't believe Mr St John! We won, didn't we? And against twice as many people. Why does it matter that Chuck and Allie went down too, when their suits barely registered any damage?" Natalia kicked her feet against my bed where she had sprawled herself out in comfort as she ranted at us.

I had taken the critiquing harder than them; Natalia had been upset, Allison had appeared to have shrugged it off but we all knew that she was bothered under the façade, and Chuckie was taking it from an analytical point of view. But to me, it was a personal failure.

My voice was quiet as I responded to her, "because we left them exposed and unable to defend themselves from a critical attack. We won carelessly, and we could have killed half our team without thinking through it."

Chuckie sat up as I was speaking, a thoughtful expression crossing his face as he analysed something inside his head. "By rough calculations, we had very low chances at any kind of success in that fight. That we won at all was amazing – but not enough. We fought two against one and each team was evenly matched."

"What are you saying?"

"We need to improve our chances – massively – if we want for there to be any possibility for us to pass more than the first round in the Test."

"How can we do that?"

Now Allison butted in before her brother could even open his mouth to reply, her eyes bright and her hands shaking in excitement. "We need to start training as a team. We've only got two weeks to do so, which we know is designed that way on purpose to assess how well we can work under pressure and in with people we don't normally get to. The sooner we register our team with the school admin, and reschedule all of our classes to match, the sooner we can begin that training."

We all stood up and turned to face each other as she glanced down at her wristwatch.

"The office will still be open for another hour, until half past eight. If we hurry, we should be able to get everything done in time for tomorrow morning."

Natalia was already pushing her out the door before she'd finished, and we had to run to catch up with them. She sprinted the entire length of the school, from the dormitory building in one corner to the administration one at the opposite end. We were all out of breath when we got there, but that didn't stop her from marching inside and demanding to know who to speak with about registering Test teams.

It turned out to be, of all people, our vice principal Mr St John. I could see the girls' cheeks heating and all of our hands clenching as we recalled our embarrassment from his class only hours before.

It made for an awkward half of an hour as he signed us into the school system as a team. The first thing he did had been to link our profiles together under a Test team name, we ended up choosing C.I.T.Y Keepers simply because it was unusual enough that no one else would. It seemed to work with us and didn't sound lame, which was all the reason we needed.

Next, he fixed all our schedules so that they matched. The girls felt that since Chuckie and I already shared all our classes and that they were the most practical for battle training; four courses on fighting and tactics, three on weapons, and one on standard abilities.