Chapter 146 - Humble Pie

Her students filed into the classroom in a rowdy group. After the behavior problems from the previous day, Sam had asked Fred to escort them into the building. The fact that Fred had ignited earned him some grudging respect from the other kinetics. The previous day they hadn't done anything worse than question her credentials, but she worried their disrespect might escalate into physical bullying. The twenty new talents were drunk on their power and tired of listening to a college age girl lecture them.

The primary troublemaker was Officer Chris Carroway, an ignited kinetic with a fondness for tight shirts and hair product. Sam's eye twitched as she felt his corona wash over the room in a subtle power move. Well, not subtle. Just invisible to anyone lacking the kinetic talent themselves. Come on, Mike, get over here and fix all my discipline problems. I know you love being the alpha man. She waited until everyone had taken their seats before she spoke. "Before we break into groups, I wanted to address some basic safety concerns. When flying, kinetics must exclude their heads and their legs from kinetic manipulation. Your inner ear has to be able to sense the direction of gravity and it cannot do that if you include your head in the upward push. You will become dizzy and run into buildings, as happened to some of you yesterday. Excluding the legs lets gravity keep your posture upright, otherwise your head will be the heaviest part of your body and flip you upside down. And once more, the EDA recommends flying in the head upwards position. Superman is a fictional character. Don't take flying advice from him. You can't see what is in your direction of flight when you do prone flight, which leads to running into things. Evolution wants us head up and feet down. Don't fight evolution unless you want to look like an idiot." She had written the speech and memorized it the previous afternoon. It was mostly based on the cold arrogance of Walter White, with some Severus Snape snark and some casual badassery from Vincent Vega. Hopefully it played well. And extra hopefully Mike would show up soon.

Officer Chris made an overly exaggerated expression of shock. "Wow, Turner, you hear the shade coming from Cadet Ponytail?"

Officer Turner, a large man, shook his head. "Keep it cool, man. She's only giving me the criticism I earned after tumbling down a wall."

"Well," Officer Chris said, "I take offense. This 'Centurion' is weaker than us after just a week of training."

Sam glanced to Fred, silently pleading for him to intercede. He nodded before stepping forward. "Unless you became a genius overnight, I am far better at kinetics than you, Chris." As the officer started to talk, Fred spoke over him. "When I have questions, I direct them to Centurion Wilcox. Believe it or not, brute strength isn't the same thing as knowledge or skill."

Officer Chris bared his teeth in something that might or might not have been a smile. "Better to have both, in my opinion. Seems like I've almost caught up to the teachers already."

Since Mike had still not walked into the room dramatically, Sam took a deep breath and channeled all the apathy of her tenth grade algebra teacher. "Then please come up front and lead the class. You obviously have a lot to teach the rest of us."

The snarl-smile fell from the officer's face. "I'm not getting paid to do your job."

"No, but I'm giving you the opportunity to show off how talented you are. That's what you've been looking for, isn't it? A chance to impress your fellow students? I'm curious myself about all the insights you've had that are better than what I learned from the Imperator. She was the most talented member of the Angmari Fleet for many years, but I'm sure you've picked up even more in the past week. Please enlighten all of us." Her heart was hammering in her chest as she maintained eye contact, letting the silence stretch.

Officer Chris, face red, cleared his throat. "Look, I'm not trying to make your job difficult than you already find it, so I'll just keep my thoughts to myself. Continue on with class."

Holy shit, he backed down. Sam nodded. "Does anyone else want to try instructing today?"

"If it's all right with you, Centurion Wilcox, I'd like to toss my hat in the ring. Promise I'll keep it to five minutes."

Sam leveled her gaze at Mike, who had walked in the door after she'd handled the issue herself. "Go ahead, Centurion Dombroski." She moved off to the side and watched as Mike sauntered to the open space they had pointed the chairs towards.

For a long minute, he eyed the students one by one, seemingly feeling no pressure whatsoever being the center of attention. "All of you seem to be progressing on schedule. That's good. I'm sure you're starting to think more highly of your abilities than you should. That's not good. This has become a dangerous world and none of you are invulnerable. To drive home that fact, I would like to conduct a quick exercise." Mike flashed a grin. "A hundred dollars to anyone in this room who can stand up."

As the words reached their ears, an immense force spread throughout the room, dominating everyone present, displacing coronas with a crushing pressure. Mike folded his arms and began to pace back and forth. "I'm not worried about losing any money. You see, the truth of the matter is that I could go on a rampage and no one in this room could stop me. The Imperator could step in, but all of you working together would still be helpless."

Officer Chris scowled from his seat. "Maybe that's true today, but we'll get stronger."

"Not you," Mike said. "Igniting is the end of your strength progression. You'll never get any stronger than you are today. In fact, over time your mind will get clogged up with precursor and your strength will decline. That's the cold hard truth. The scary thing, though, is that I'm not the biggest baddest guy on the planet. The man I fought in New York is. Me, the Imperator, and another the same strength as me faced off against Nallit together and he wiped the floor with us. The world now has monsters in it. Some people will think you're the monsters because of the power you have now. You might think it's me. But I'm telling you it's Nallit. We all just have to hope real hard that he doesn't decide to crack our planet open like an egg, cause we couldn't stop him if he really wanted to."

Mike snapped his fingers and the pressure on the room vanished. "Looks like I'll be keeping my money. The whole lot of you should pay attention in class so your employers are happy with your report cards. You might think it doesn't matter what we say about you now that you have superpowers, but the government is very interested in what we have to say about your attitudes. Best not to end up on a watch list, if you catch my drift. Anyhow, I have work to be about. Thanks for letting me talk to the class, Centurion Wilcox."

The plumber raised his hand in the silence left in the wake of Mike's departure. "Uh, Centurion? Are you writing reports to the government about us?"

Sam had never heard they were sending reports to anyone, but she imagined the government wouldn't refuse a writeup if they sent one over. Still, it couldn't hurt for them to think there would be consequences for how they behaved. "Don't worry about that, George, you have been an ideal student. Let's break into our groups."