Chapter 5: Electives

Ben looked at the dishes on the table and felt his stomach rumble. It all looked delicious. He took a few things off of each dish and put it on his plate before taking a bite out of some of them. 

"Hmm. This stuff is great!" Ben complimented the food

"Hehe. You can thank Forge and Dr. McCoy," Rahne said. "They created a machine that converts organic materials into food. Only way a school can feed so many different students from different backgrounds and with different diets."

"I see. So that's what those vending machines do," Ben finally understood where the granola bars came from earlier. The group began to eat and make small talk, discussing various things over dinner. The one topic that Ben was very interested in were electives. 

"Everyone has to take 4 electives. At least one based on their power and one based on a field they have some interest in. Supposed to keep us diverse but also help us make friends with others who have similar powers or interests," Illyana explained. "My electives are Teleportation, Magic, Weapons Training, and Design. The powers are all easy A's for me since I am pretty skilled in them while design is just something I am interested in."

"Cool. What about you guys?" Ben asked the other two as he ate a piece of caramel cake

"Elementalism, Hand-to-Hand Combat, Meditation, and Art," Amara gave the names of her classes. The 3rd of which caught Ben's attention. 

"Meditation?"

"Hmm. While everyone can activate their powers through stress, some of us have it worse than others. If I don't take the time to keep myself calm, I can end up causing an earthquake at school," Amara explained with a slight blush, embarrassed about her lack of control

"Again," Illyana and Rahne added with a laugh, not letting their friend off. Amara flicked a couple of napkins at her friends.

"Shut up! That happened once," Amara defended herself

"Try 3 times," Rahne didn't let her play it cool

"And wasn't one of those times because you..." Illyana started but stopped when she saw her friend glaring at her. 

'I'll kill you if you finish that sentence,' was what her face read. Illyana laughed and motioned like she had zipped her mouth shut, not exposing one of her friend's embarrassing moments. 

"And you Rahne?" Ben knew better than to continue down that line of questions so he turned to the last person. 

"Feral, Hand-to-Hand, Education, and Culinary," Rahne named off her classes proudly. "I want to run a school just like this in the future or at least be a teacher here."

"Impressive," Ben wasn't sure what he wanted to do in the future but he always felt impressed when other kids his age knew what they were going to do. "And you guys?"

"Gonna be an X-Men," Illyana stated, not really wanting to do anything else

"Housewife. Just want to sit back and let my man earn the money," Amara didn't mind sharing that she didn't really want to do anything in the future and just wanted to rely on someone. When she looked at Ben, she was glad that she didn't see any mockery like many people had when she told them. Most people figured she was being lazy and setting women's rights back but she honestly just had nothing she was passionate about so she was fine with not doing anything else. 

"Gotta find the right guy then," Ben lightly advised, not wanting to pry too deeply

"So what classes are you thinking of taking?" Amara asked, more interested in Ben now than just when she was interested in his looks at the pool. 

"Probably gonna take Elementalism, Feral, and Magic for power-based classes and photography for my skill," Ben thought it over and decided that those classes would cover the majority of his forms. 

The perk of his power is that he had a diverse skill-set. The downside was that he had to train with each form separately. He used Buzzshock the most so he had a pretty good handle on its powers and Humungosaur was pretty basic but the rest of his forms all had unique sets that needed further time or even mentorship to get them up to par. 

"Wait, you have more forms that just Buzzshock? And you can use magic?" Illyana asked when she noticed that he choose Feral class.

"Who is Buzzshock?" Rahne asked while Amara nodded from the side

"Ugh. How come I was raised in Hell-adjacent yet I am more tech-savvy than you two bitches?" Illyana questioned her two friends. "Ben is like... super famous. He has over 15 million followers on TikTok!"

Ben looked at the other two and also felt surprised that they didn't recognize him. 

"Raised in one of the religious houses where Pokemon was called 'the work of the Devil.' Don't even get me started on D&D," Rahne explained.

"My society is literally stuck in the 10th century," Amara commented. She was from a small country in the Amazon Rainforest that had been trapped in magic for years and believed themselves to be part of the Roman Empire. It was only a few years ago that the spell was broken and they realized that the modern world existed.

The duo pulled out their phones and looked up Ben to see who he was. They both laughed when they saw one of his videos while Ben turned to Illyana to answer her questions. 

"Yeah, I got several forms. A couple are more Feral so could use help with mastering those forms. Also have a few that use different elemental powers," Ben shared a little bit of info about his other forms. He would show them off during class so no point denying it beforehand. 

"And you can use magic?" Amara looked up from her phone and asked

"Yep. Long story short: Grandpa was a space cop, hooked up with Grandma who was an alien that's species could easily manipulate mana, some of that magical talent got passed down to me, and I learned a few spells from my cousin that fully became my Grandma's species," Ben explained the basic details of his family, though there wasn't much more he could share. It was not like he had a bunch of details. He had only seen his Grandmother a few times and she was only interested in his cousin since she became a full Anodite.

"Great. That means you can take a class with each of us," all the girls were happy to hear that they could each get a class with Ben. 

"Magic class only has one time that you can take it so we will definitely be in the same class," Illyana told him, not worried that they would be unable to be in the same class. Feral and elemental powers were the most common with psychic coming in third. They had the most classes to them. Luckily, all electives were held between mandatory classes and each of their classes were at different times so the pair would not have to worry about Ben joining the other girl's class over theirs. 

"Make sure you sign up for noon Elementalism class. That's the one that I take," Amara told him, making sure that he would remember to join her class

"Feral at 10:30. That's the one I am in," Rahne also made sure that he would not sign up for the wrong class. 

And just to be sure, the three girls had him pull out his phone and helped him sign into the private network at the school. The process was really simple. The username was Ben's full name and password was his birthday which he could change later. The trio helped him sign up for all his classes. 

Once they confirmed his classes and exchanged numbers, the group dispersed after dinner, letting Ben head back to his room. 

When he got back, Ben saw that Brian, Julian, and Santos were all there, playing games on a TV that was inside of Brian's closet. 

"Sup, man," Brian greeted him as his character had just died and he was waiting to respawn. "You eat yet?"

"Yep. Just got back from dinner," Ben took off his jacket and sat on his bed. "Had dinner with a few friends."

"You already made friends other than us? Moving faster than the triplets," Julian joked as he got a headshot on an enemy. "Who'd you eat with?"

"Illyana, Amara, and Rahne. Said they are our rivals," Ben told them while grabbing up his phone and checking out how his latest video was doing. But when he heard several 'you have been killed' messages, Ben looked up and saw his 3 teammates looking back at him. 

"You ate with those three!?!?" Julian asked in shock

"Yeah. That a Mean Girl issue or something?" Ben asked, not sure why they all seemed so surprised 

"Yeah. If you're Cady," Santos supplemented.

"Those 3 are famous. Illyana is the Ice Queen, Amara is the Succubus Queen, and Rahne is Queen of the Friend zone," Julian told him. 

"Illyana is very... intense so it's hard for guys to get close to her. Living in Hell for 8 years and losing part of your soul makes you like that. She is really only close with her teammates, Ms. Pryde, and her brother. 

Amara is the opposite. She is very open and dates a new guy every week but no one has managed to even reach 2nd base with her. She's a huge tease," Brian explained why those two were so popular and also why it was rare for them to eat with someone else.

"And Rahne?" Ben asked, curious about her

"Rahne is pretty and nice. A little too nice, though. She's friends with everyone but no one knows if she is interested in someone or not. She treats all guys the same which is why she is Queen of the Friend zone," Santos told him why Rahne was famous. 

"Wow. Sounds like I got lucky," Ben concluded but that made him even more confused. 'How did I end up with two of them liking me? Or at least Illyana likes me. Maybe Amara was just teasing me.'

Ben fell back on his bed, feeling confused by the whole situation. And while Ben was thinking about how the two felt about him, he was becoming famous on the school network. Plenty of people saw them eating and laughing together with some people even taking pictures. 

"Ben goes to our school now? Sweet. That dude is funny AF."

"You're missing the point. He was eating with Illyana and the others."

"Not just that, I saw Illyana laughing. It doesn't even take a full hand for me to count the number of times I've seen her smile. I've never seen her laugh before."

"Can you blame them? Famous, handsome, funny, and has cash. What girl wouldn't like him?"

"Don't forget strong. Have you seen how great Buzzshock is?"

"That's not all. I overheard them talking and he can shift into other forms and even use magic."

"Can verify that. The girls were even forcing him to take classes with them and making sure he didn't join the wrong one so they helped him sign up."

"Wow. Wonder how Sunspot and Elixir are gonna take this?"

"OMG, I wish I was taking their Elementalism class. That's gonna be awesome."

"Hope Ben can use water, otherwise Bobby might burn him to a crisp."

So while Ben was discussing with his teammates and new friends how he met each of the girls, the rest of the school was placing bets on which of the girls' crushes would be able to beat Ben first.