6 Ranking and Learning

I found myself in a combat cell across from the person who would be my first opponent. He was bald, with piercing blue eyes looking at me from across the room. It was a big cell, 70ft by 70 ft, with reinforced concrete walls and floors.

Looking at the man across from me, I thought about what I knew of him. 'I'm somewhat surprised I got the same first opponent Vince did, but I haven't changed anything significant yet so I guess that makes sense. His power was ice, and he uses it in a very straight forward power. My reflection should take care of everything he throws at me.'

"Introduce yourselves" came the voice of the female overseer watching us from the glass window.

"My name is Michael Clark" the man across from me said.

"Vince Reynolds."

"Nice hair" he said.

"Miss it?" I snarked back.

"Nah, like the feeling of the cold air on my head."

I shrugged, then waited for a few seconds.

"Begin" was heard from above us. As soon as that was said, Michael threw a punch towards me, shooting a blast of ice at me. As soon as the blast came into contact with my shields, it was thrown back towards him. Michael's reaction time was good, though, and he dodged out of the way of his returned attack.

"Well that's surprising, you can reflect things. Let's see how much you can take."

He continued throwing blasts of ice at me with quick jabs, one after the other, but my shield kept reflecting them back at him, forcing him to dodge. I got tired of standing there and charged towards him, pushing off the ground and changing my vectors to raise my acceleration. I arrived in front of him quickly and reached out to grab him.

"Knew you'd have to come closer eventually." Michael said before jumping back. I hadn't been paying that much attention to my surroundings, so I hadn't notice that all the ice I had been reflecting had been hitting the ground and freezing it. When I took another step to charge towards him again, I slipped on the ice and fell back. Michael took that opportunity to shoot another ice blast at me, probably thinking that with me off balance, my shields wouldn't work.

When the ice blast hit my lower body, it was reflected just like all the others. Michael was taken by surprise and the ice blast slammed into him, forming ice around him. Meanwhile, I quickly recovered my balance, although I was much angrier than I was before.

'This is the type of shit I need to be here for. I have zero awareness, even if I'm powerful I have almost no combat experience. He was ranked third of the boys in canon, but I still shouldn't have messed up like that.'

Stomping the ground, I shattered it, throwing shards of rock into the air before grabbing one and throwing it, modifying the vectors to amplify its speed. It quickly slammed into Michael, throwing him back into the wall and knocking him unconscious.

"Winner, Vince Reynolds."

Walking out of the ring, I was still annoyed it took that much effort to beat him when my power should've negated any way to damage me he had.

'I've gotten too reliant on my shields, I'm slipping into the way Accelerator was before Touma beat him. I can take a punch better than he can, but I still have the overconfidence.'

Shaking those thoughts away for now, I was led to the next cell I would be fighting in. When I entered, I found myself facing a young black man with short hair.

"Introduce yourselves" was heard once again.

"Thomas Castillo" he said simply.

"Vince Reynolds."

Neither of us seemed to have anything else to say and a "Begin" was heard before Thomas quickly summoned orange energy constructs. he summoned a giant hand before forming it into a fist and sending it towards me. Learning from my mistake in the last round, instead of letting it hit my shield I dodged it and charged towards Thomas. I closed the distance quickly and without giving him time to either expel more energy or bring it around to attack me from behind, I quickly threw a hard elbow into his stomach and as he was flying back increased his speed to make the impact harder, knocking him out.

"Winner, Vince Reynolds."

I was once again led out of that room and into another, where I found my opponent to be a muscular male with blonde hair and blue eyes.

'So this is Chad Taylor. He was ranked 1st every year of canon except the last one and has one of the most interesting powers to me. He has complete control of his body down to the molecular level. He can even fight while unconscious, having pre-programmed his body to do so. If there was a way for me to get his power, I would. I can't think of one right now, though.'

He stared at me with a neutral look on his face, as our observer said "Introduce yourselves."

"Vince Reynolds."

"Chad Taylor."

"Begin" was heard and as soon as it was Chad closed the distance between us in an instant as he threw a punch towards my head. Letting it hit my reflection, his hand was broken, although he quickly healed it.

He jumped back, but I followed him, quickly charging him hoping to make early contact. I wasn't fast enough, however, as he kept weaving around my attempts at grabbing him.

'Right, his reaction time is quick enough to keep up with speedsters and he can increase his perception of time.'

Changing tactics, I backed up before smashing the ground, similar to my first fight and sending multiple projectiles towards him.

He dodged all of them, even jumping between a group of them trying to sandwich him. As soon as he touched the ground, he ran at me again. This time, instead of a frontal assault, he jumped over me and tried to attack me from behind. Unfortunately for him, my reflection encompasses my entire body at all times, so I couldn't be sneak attacked. His fist once again ran into my barrier and was broken before being healed.

He gained some distance between us before saying "Your barrier appears to be absolute. It also seems omnidirectional, this leads me to believe this match is a stalemate. I can't put you down and you can't put me down."

'I can't think of a way to close the distance between us quick enough to take him out, if a single hit would even manage to take him out without it being lethal. He can fight unconscious, so he might be right that it's a stalemate. This is a bad match up for me without using Code: Unknown.'

"You may be right, how do you plan on ending it though?"

"Your barrier appears to work on all things physical and I do not have anything not physical in my power to use against you. I believe this is a draw."

As annoyed as I was at drawing with a freshman, he was right. It was a stalemate, this is a bad matchup for me using just vector control.

'It's just another thing to work on, increasing my speed and variability in attacks. At least in actual combat situations I could've just killed him by redirecting his blood flow at the moment he broke his hand on my barrier. I can't do that in a placement match though.'

"Fine, it's a draw."

"Match Drew, this was the final match of the day, both contestants exit to be given instructions."

Giving a nod to Chad, we both exited the room to find the Dean waiting for us.

"You both performed admirably. This match was the one to determine who would receive the top spot on the rankings. We are at somewhat unsure which of you to place at first or second, you both performed roughly the same in your other matches."

"Chad can be first. I don't need to be first, comes with too many annoyances."

'I doubt I'm even staying that long, but I remember that sophomore year the first ranked boy and girl had to host a river trip for the freshman. If for some reason I stay that long, I don't want to deal with that.'

"I do not wish to get first handed to me."

"Tough luck, I don't want it."

"Very well, I will accept first place, however, once I figure out a way to combat your barrier, I will want a rematch to see who is truly first."

"Sure, sure, whatever you say."

"Very well, Chad will be put as first on the combat ranking, while Vince will be put second." Dean Blaine said.

We both nodded our heads, before the dean led us to a room with a board where we saw the combat rankings already on the screen.

'I guess he works fast or someone was listening in.'

Already knowing where I'd place, I left the HCP and took the lifts back up to the main campus.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Heading back to the dorm, I went to sleep while thinking about ways I could vary my power. I didn't much feel like going to the party I was hearing about, so I just went to bed.

It was the next morning that I heard about something interesting that had happened. I had forgotten that in canon Vince was the one who solved this little problem, so it ended up ending a little differently.

Hershel's shifter form was that of an attractive male with muscles, as opposed to his overweight regular form. His alter-ego had found his way into bed with a girl who could make clones, which sounded like a lot of fun, but ended up switching back into Hershel in the morning so the girl found him in her bed.

The clone girl, who's name was Julia, ended up freaking out and had hit Hershel for a little while till he explained his power to her.

After that entire fiasco was dealt with he made his way back here in very little clothing as most of it was torn up by the change into his other form, who was a whole separate entity named Roy.

It was hilarious to me, not so much to Hershel. Eventually we had to go to our regular classes before finally making our way down to the HCP at the end of the day. Once we arrived, we entered a room where Dean Blaine was standing at the front. There was assigned seating and I wasn't sitting next to anyone from my dorm, which I didn't mind all that much.

"Good morning class, you should remember I am Dean Blaine and I will be teaching your Ethics of Heroism class. I do this every year, so no this isn't special treatment for your class."

As expected, Alice, being the kiss ass that she was, shot her hand up as fast as she could.

"Are you and the two coaches the only members on the staff for the HCP?" She asked.

"No, there are several other professors, but you don't work with them until your sophomore year."

"Why not" a girl with her hair put in a braid asked without raising her hand.

"Because you wouldn't get anything from it. Freshman year is focused on improving your bodies and minds so that you are ready to deal with the upper level courses and eventually being heroes. For those of you who stay, that is."

"For those of us who stay?" the braid girl asked.

"Yes, this training is harsh and we find that people often drop out and change their minds after encountering the type of work required for this program. That only accounts for the people who volunteer to leave, the staff also cuts people which will reduce the number."

After that he went into some information about when the class would be and went over the syllabus. I paid enough attention to get by, but didn't listen all that closely.

At the end of the class we were released and left to go to gym. This was the class I was looking forward to, as it was the one where I could really learn something that mattered. I didn't care about the ethics of heroism, I wasn't going to be one anyway unless it suited me. I needed actual combat learning, so that situations like with Chad don't happen again.

As soon as we got to gym, we were instantly put to work doing a lot of exercises. Push-ups, sit-ups, weights, we did all we could to train our bodies, with a lot of running mixed in. Some people seemed perfectly at ease with this kind of training, while others were struggling and gasping for air. I wasn't using any ability to boost my speed or strength, but even without them Code: Unknown made my body perfectly capable of doing this without breaking a sweat. It wasn't something I could turn off, so the weights were as light as paper to me.

Eventually we were put on the track, with girl's on one end of the track and boy's on the other, and told to run, with consequences coming to anyone who fell into the other group. Finally, Coach George called us over and told us to take a knee in front of him.

"You all look like shit. You did terrible today. That was excerise that wouldn't even phase a hero. This is just the beginning, the later exercises will make you look at this first one with happiness for how simple it had been. Before I allow Coach Persephone to take over, there are three people I want to see in the front, Chad, Vince, and Mary."

Standing up, Chad, Mary, and I made our way to the front. Chad looked perfectly fine, without sweating and like he had been sitting all day. Mary, on the other hand, was sweating and breathing hard. Her powers didn't affect her physical endurance at all.

"Take a look class. These are the people at the top of your group. The people you need to surpass. You may be asking why I asked Vince up here, but not the other rank 2 from the girl's side. That's because, despite the rankings saying he is below Chad, their fight was a stalemate. The gap between these three and the rest of you is so large that you're going to have to bust your asses to be able to catch up."

He motioned for us to return to kneeling, so we did and Coach Persephone stepped forward. She explained that the first semester would be focused on entirely physical training before it was split up into combat and alternative training, which was for those without extremely combat focused powers.

The top 5 of each sex were automatically in combat training, so that was something I didn't even need to think about. The annoying thing she mentioned was that people with higher ranks could be challenged to try to take their rank. I didn't particularly want to deal with challenges, but apparently you could only challenge within 5 ranks of yourself. That meant I'd probably be getting challenge by Chad a lot, but it would be a good opportunity for practice since he was a capable opponent.

We were dismissed, but before I left Coach George called out to me and told me to stay behind. Once everyone else left, he looked at me before saying "Vince you are a special case. You probably have the most powerful ability of anyone in this class, yet you could only tie with Chad do you know why? It's because you lack creativity, everyone else's powers are more straightforward than yours, so they have been having to think outside the box to get where they are now. Yours is so complicated, but you rely on just your passive reflection."

"I know that, I just haven't had an opponent that could actually make me use anything else." I answered honestly.

"Then Chad is a good sparring partner for you, I can tell that stalemate left a bad taste in your mouth. From now on, two days a week we will be working one on one on seeing what other vectors you can manipulate and training you to think outside the box." Coach George said.

'This works perfectly for me. I get one on one training with someone experienced who can help me work on further developing my abilities. He's most likely doing this because he works for Vince's adoptive father, so he'd want me trained. I'm going to have to avoid his father for now, he'll be able to tell I'm not Vince quickly and, even if I'm pretty sure I could win with Code: Unknown, my cover would be blown.'

"Sure Coach, that sounds great. I'm looking forward to it."

"See if you can say that once I'm done with you."

With our discussion concluded, I left and went to take a shower and head back to the dorm. Although, my thoughts were filled with the man who could be my adversary in this world. One of the most powerful heroes, who everyone thought was dead, Globe.