Perennial

Chapter 12 -- Perennial

"Where were you last night?"

I've angled myself so that I'm leaning right over Psaqua's head. I turned off her alarm thirty minutes ago in favor of catching her off guard and waking her like this. I know I may get killed for it, but it's a risk I'm willing to take.

She blearily opens her eyes. "What?"

"Where were you last night?" I repeat.

She scowls and squints at me. "Why are you on my bed?"

"I'm not on your bed." I beam at her. "I'm on the ladder."

"Same thing."

"No, it's not."

"I was out buying drugs," she hisses and flips over in bed so she isn't looking at me anymore.

"Really?!" Wow. This place just got a lot more interesting.

"No!" Her explanation is followed by an attempt to kick me. (She fails miserably, since her legs are tangled up in her bed sheets.)

Amused, I raise a brow and then retreat down the ladder before she can free herself. "Anyway, you may be interested to know that breakfast is in ten minutes."

"Ten minutes?!" Psaqua shoots out of bed. "Why didn't you wake me up earlier? What happened to my alarm?"

"You got back late, and you looked so peaceful, so I turned it off." I inflect my voice with sarcasm.

"The sass isn't helping." Psaqua glares at me and comes down the ladder.

She's trying to give me one of those "death glares," but hers is only marginally scarier than Mr. Suit's was. She isn't quite as scary as the Overlord. I can't help but to not be intimidated.

It's after she rushes into the bathroom that there's a knock on our door.

I open it.

Outside is a tall woman, one whose defining feature is her pink hair. Megan.

"Hey, you!" She greets me excitedly. "Oh! I never got to say this before, the last time we met, but I love your hair!"

My eyes drift self-consciously to the bright streaks of red that frame my face.

"Um... Thanks?"

It must sound like I don't believe her because she quickly adds: "No, really. It looks awesome."

After an awkward moment of me staring at her like she has six heads, she gives an awkward laugh. "Well, I suppose I should just go ahead and tell you why I'm here."

"Yeah...?" I'm beginning to get impatient.

"The headmaster would like to see you. I'm supposed to take you to his office since Ma-- my brother says you get lost easily."

I narrow my eyes. Who ratted out my horrible sense of direction to Megan? In fact, who even knows about it? Who's Megan's brother?! "I've met your brother?"

She laughs uneasily. "Um... yes. He's in your grade. He's a sweetheart, though. Annoying, but hey, aren't all boys?"

"I guess." The only boys I have experience with are my family and the ones I've beaten up. (And Aether, last night, but that doesn't count. Does not count.)

"Well, if we want you to get to breakfast on time, we had better get going." Megan gestures for me to follow her. "Come on, the headmaster can be an impatient man."

I follow her down the halls and into the outdoors. The sun stings my eyes and the early morning air fills my lungs. This far from Paradis, I can take a deep breath without smelling car exhaust. It's kind of nice.

Megan chatters at me the entire stroll to the headmaster's office.

I try to pay attention, I honestly do, but it's hard to pay attention to what someone is saying when they're talking about something boring, like different ways to maintain brightly colored hair. If she wants me to pay attention, she should talk about something interesting, like whether or not DSHA is interfering with the rights of super-humans by forcing them to choose between training to serve the government in places like this or being turned into a lab rat.

Not soon enough, we approach the headmaster's office door.

"Go right on inside." Megan says as she pauses by the door, holding it open for me.

I thank her out of habit and walk inside.

She closes the door behind me.

Sitting at his desk is Valor, champion of justice. I'm actually a little unimpressed. Seeing his pictures in old newspapers makes him look epic. Seeing him in person is a huge let down. He's not even wearing that ridiculous costume right now.

His face is neutral, giving away nothing. If his office reflects his personality, I don't think I want to get to know him any better. Everything is spotless and clean. Absolutely nothing is out of place. There are no decorations in this room, not a picture frame, not even a vase. How boring.

"Perennial." He greets me. His voice is gruff and worn. If I had to guess his age, I'd say he was in his late forties.

"Headmaster Valor." I poison my words with a sweet tone.

"Yesterday I received a report from Phix about your inversed telepathy." He pauses. "Can you guess what else she told me?"

"No," I say calmly, professionally. "Not really?"

"She said you haven't trained yourself in using inverse telepathy at all. You've inadvertently given yourself the ability to completely control your own impulses and emotions. How you managed to do it to yourself at such a young age, let alone on accident, baffles me."

I shrug. "Hey, it baffles me too."

"Yes, I'm sure it does." Valor pauses. "You should understand that the presence of inverse telepathy in your mind is a sign of one of two things. One - this is the more likely option - that you were trained by a fellow telepath on how to use inverse telepathy, or two, that you really are telling the truth and your inverse telepathy just... happened."

"Personally, I'm leaning towards the latter," I say. I didn't even know inverse telepathy was a thing until yesterday.

Valor takes a moment to study me. I study him right back.

He really does look nothing like his son.

"We live in a rapidly changing world, Perennial," Valor begins at last, "A world where super-human abilities are becoming more rare but also more powerful. If inverse telepathy is happening naturally, that's something special. I wouldn't recommend telling anyone who doesn't already know."

"Why not?"

"If DSHA finds out, they may consider taking you out of the education program and placing you in a more... scientifically minded one - which, I believe, is what you were trying to avoid when you accepted our invitation to come to Icarus." Valor sighs. It's a tired sigh, the sigh of a man who's sick of needing to fight for everything. "There exists a delicate balance between the education program and the other DSHA programs. The right to properly educate super-humans in how to use their powers was a hard-earned one, and I don't want it to be taken away from anyone."

"I understand." How interesting. It looks like Valor likes living up to his name.

"Good. We already have the telepath with the highest recorded score on the Philips' Scale and a student with ability negation coupled with other powers here; we want to make sure we can keep you too."

"Okay." I nod. "Thank you for letting me know."

"You're welcome, but before you go, there's one other matter I'd like to discuss with you."

I slowly sink back down into my chair. "Which is...?"

"As you know, we've placed you in an ET class with your own age group due to the results of the testing they did at Midas before sending you here. We know you were trained by someone prior to coming here."

"Well, you're not wrong." I shrug. "It was a very good self-defense class."

"Perennial, this is serious." Valor says. "DSHA is the only government ordained entity that trains people like you and me. This means you've been trained by an outside organization, which is highly illegal. As a good citizen, if you have information on illegal organizations, you need to tell us. Please, do the right thing."

Do the right thing? Isn't that what I've always done?

"I don't know, a self-defense class is my story and I'm sticking to it." I look down at his desk. "Besides, there are a couple things wrong with that as your theory. One, what makes you think I couldn't have been trained in a good self-defense class? And two, it's not illegal to train in martial arts and the like as long as you don't illegally use your abilities with them."

For a moment I'm grateful my dad drilled me on the laws and regulations set by the government. He likes to say that if you're going to break the rules, you might as well know what they are.

"The reason these things are a concern, miss, is that you attacked a school," Valor explains.

"How is that a bad thing? I'm sure the children would've thanked me." I mutter that last part.

"This isn't a joke." Even though I'm not looking at him, I can hear the glower in his voice.

"You're right. This isn't." I raise my eyes up to meet his. "Right now I feel like you're accusing me of being involved with an illegal organization without much evidence beyond the circumstantial. Has it occurred to you that I may have attacked the school of my own volition without the influence of an outside party?"

Valor leans back.

I know there is truth to his claims. I know that he has to be suspicious of all pre-trained super-humans that come out of Midas or any of its sister facilities.

"Perennial, all I want is the truth. It's important, to both the safety of the students here, and to the public. If I have to call Phix in here to pry it out of you, then I will."

"You could. But I'm not sure it'd be worth it when she comes here and finds that you've wasted everyone's time by not trusting me." I point out. "Not to mention that would be very 'heroic' of you, Mr. Boss-of-the-Hero-School."

"Sometimes... you have to do bad things for good reasons," he says.

I tilt my head in mock innocence. "Like kidnapping children and indoctrinating them to be perfect little fighting machines for the government?"

"Is that what you really think we're doing here?"

"DSHA isn't always very forthright about its training programs. What am I supposed to think?" I reply.

He doesn't say anything immediately. When he does speak, it's only to dismiss me. "You better get going if you want to eat breakfast today. We'll continue this discussion later."

"Alright," I say, standing up. "Thank you, sir."

As I leave, he sighs, but it sounds more like a groan. (Or maybe he groaned but it sounded like a sigh. It's hard to tell which.)

I use the time it takes trying to find the cafeteria to absorb as much of our conversation as possible. It seems that the longer I stay here, the more interesting this place gets. There's more to Icarus than what first meets the eye.

It's no wonder that Aether feels that rules are flexible. From what I've seen of his father, Valor thinks the same way. He is, after all, keeping the extent of several of his students' powers a secret.

Speaking of which, I know that he's harboring at least three students that fit into the aforementioned category, and two of them are Psaqua (by process of elimination) and me. Who's the third, the one with both ability negation and other powers? And, given the nature of ability negation, how is that even possible?

Ability negation is the power to cancel out the powers of other super-humans, usually by tactile contact - touching. Perhaps if Valor hadn't mentioned something I find a little more pressing, I would look into it more.

But as things being as they are, thanks to Valor, I now know that DSHA is interested in hunting down unique super-human abilities, not in order to have an ace up their sleeve, but in order to... dissect us? Figure out how we work?

I mean, I've always known that DSHA was like that, being the Overlord's daughter and all. It's just that I thought they only used that threat on the criminal class, not on their own.

I know that the public's opinion of super-humans is constantly in flux and that DSHA is a civilian-run organization and is subject to whatever political jargon is in control at the moment, and therefore their treatment of super-humans is unpredictable at best.

But all this about experimentation reminds me of why I was at the school I allegedly burned down in the first place.

I shudder as I enter the cafeteria, despite how warm it is in there.

The reason I was in that school that night was because of the whole dissection thing, because DSHA wants to figure out how super-humans work for whatever reason or another.

I never want to become the subject of those experiments. Not if I can help it.