Mach: The Super Hero

2.3 Felix

“Don’t like all o’ this either, huh?” he asked.

“Just the military,” Michael pointed out, “the school looks pretty neat.”

“Neat?” He asked belligerently, “what’re you, dude? Twelve?”

Michael raised a very confused eyebrow. “Eh, no? Are you?”

“Yep!” the boy said, and suddenly cracked up laughing.

His face transformed into a much friendlier shape as he regained control of himself. Crossing his arms, the kid corrected himself. “Well, more like thirteen, but yeah. I’m surprised you weren’t intimidated, man.”

“Why’d I be intimidated?” Michael asked, only growing more confused.

“Oh, you know, black dude with super powers?” he asked, smirking. “Acting tough?”

“You’re not acting tough, you’re right to be angry. I mean, why’d they need a stupid chopper and so many soldiers? Overkill much?” Michael complained.

“Overkill? Man, I’m overkill,” the boy announced, slapping at his chest with no lack of pride, “those fools are just for show.”

Michael couldn’t help but c***k a smile. “Is that right?”

“Damn right,” the boy said, and his face flashed with an idea. “In fact, HOT damn right,” he added, opening his hand as he said it to generate a flame. “Name’s Felix, fire’s my thing,” he announced, waving his hand in the air so that the fire would dissipate.

The move scared the person on the line besides them. “Hey, watch it!” the girl protested.

“Oh, sorry, man,” Felix said, not even looking her way.

“Jeez.”

“That’s pretty cool! I’m Michael,” he greeted with an enthusiastic nod, “I have super speed.”

“No way! Really?” Felix grinned widely. “How super is it?”

“Train super,” Michael said, with a grin to match, and no less pride.

“Oooh!” Felix snapped his right hand’s fingers in excitement, “that’s fast!! Very cool.”

“Thanks! So, like, can you get burned?” Michael asked.

Felix scoffed. “Psh. I mean, sure, but once I master this thing, I’m never getting burned again.”

Michael looked up in thought. “Ha, right, so you can also control it? You’ll be able to keep any flame from touching you.”

Felix gave him a thumb up. “Ya know it! So, what grade’re you in?”

“Oh, I’m fourteen, so we’re just a grade apart, I guess?” Michael told him.

“Oh, alright! Cool. You look taller,” Felix teased.

“Maybe you’re just shorter,” Michael teased back.

“ID,” the soldier requested, startling Michael. He was having so much fun with the talk that he hadn’t noticed they had moved so close.

“Whoah, uh…” he tapped for his wallet in all the wrong places, “yeah, I got it, I got it, uh, hold on.”

“Hey kid, chill out,” the soldier said, trying to relax him with a smirk, “nobody’s going to hurt you.” Now that Michael looked more closely, the soldier seemed to be pretty young. Looked like a college guy. And despite the uniform, he looked very friendly.

Michael gave a nervous chuckle and finally found the ID card he had received in the mail. “Okay. I dunno, there’s so many of you. And the chopper, even.”

“Dude,” Felix called out from behind him, whispering. “Are you crazy? Don’t just complain to them!”

The soldier just laughed, even if mildly. His friend, who was checking someone else’s ID card, also chuckled.

The soldier held out his hand to take Michael’s ID card. “It’s ok, little dude. Freedom of speech and all that, you guys can say whatever you want. And so can we, by the way. Hey Jim, how much does the president blow?”

“Way too much,” his colleague replied, giving the card back, “but I’ll die for the bastard.”

“Chosen by the people,” the first echoed with another silly smirk.

Laughing along, Michael slid the card into a slot in a credit-card-reader-looking machine and watched all manner of unintelligible text coursing across the tiny screen. They were letters that Michael couldn’t make sense of. It did show a picture of his face that he had sent in during registration, and showed his full name.

“Alright, your registration is confirmed, mister Michael Chambers. Now, see these sensors?” he asked, pointing at the main hinges on the gates. Michael saw protruding cubes made of glass which were turned on the entrance.  “They’ll screen you when you go in and out. Just have your ID card somewhere on you, you don’t have to take it out. Oh, also try not to hide your face from the cameras,” he added, pointing at two cameras standing above the actual entrance to the building. “Remember just those two things, and you don’t have to worry about coming and going through here.”

“Really? You guys won’t be doing this every day?” Michael asked.

A third soldier -- who seemed to be standing by just to give the two moral support -- rasped his throat in mock shock. “You kidding, kid? This look in any way efficient to you? We got better things to do, you know?”

“Like stand around and make sure nobody comes up to hurt you,” said the soldier, handing the card back to Michael.

“Yeah, but we can do that just fine from inside those booths there,” his friend complained. “Where we have tv we can watch? Standing out here in the sun is the worst.”

Michael took the card while the turned over to his friend. “Really? Standing out here is the worst? You have never experienced anything worse?” he asked, and his friend quickly caught on to the inside joke being reference. He held his laugh with a quick snort, and just shrugged.

Michael didn’t much care about that, but rather the other thing. Since nobody had yet to yell at him to hurry up and move on, Michael took the chance to follow up and ask about it. “Who? Who wants to hurt us?”

The soldier moved Michael aside with his hand and then held it out for Felix’s card. Meanwhile, he did answer the question. “Kid, there’s always someone out to hurt you. Just make it easy enough and it’ll happen sure as sunrise.”

“Psh. Easy we ain’t,” his friend stated, confidently glancing up at the hovering helicopter, which was very far away.

“Not easy at all, and that obviously goes for anyone we’re looking out for,” the soldier said, winking at Michael. “Nobody’s going to hurt you, Mike.”

There was no defense against the man’s charisma, which came as a surprise. Michael had never met a soldier, but he always thought they would be much moodier, more on the side of gloomy. Or angry.

Michael felt legitimately better about the whole thing.

Taking his card back, Felix grinned in obvious agreement. “Maybe this ain’t gonna be that bad after all.”

Michael started up to go past the gates and smiled at the school.. “Yeah.”

Promptly, the two advanced together across the courtyard, to reach the proper building entrance. They were part of a dispersed crowd of those who had been checked ahead of him, and those being checked behind them.

So soon into their arrival, they suddenly heard a demanding yell shooting up behind them. “HEY HEY!”

Turning back to look at the source, they found one of the soldiers yelling up at a girl who was flying.

“What are you doing, girl? You have to go through down here. Here!”

“But I--”

The amiable tone was completely gone from the soldier who had been so friendly with Michael. The one seemingly just standing around. “No buts! Get back in the line!”

The girl followed the command, which was given without any g*n pointing despite the fact the g*n was well in hand. In both hands. It seemed like the man was ready to lift it up and put it to use at a moment’s nature, but that would just be his training.

 Michael and Felix turned around and headed back towards the door along with everyone else who had already gotten through the gate. Nobody was that intimidated.

“People always wanting to cut lines,” Felix commented, insulted.

“Well, apparently,” Michael paused for effect, “that’s not gonna fly.”

Felix laughed as they walked inside the actual building, past doors which were wide enough to fit a small crowd.

Once they had a good view of the inside, they both had to stop to take it in.

“Damn.”

“Wow.”

It reminded Michael of a mall, oddly enough. Thin glass bridges connected floors across both sides of the building each of which stretched for several hundred feet until they made a hard left, cutting off his view. There was a row of support pillars which trailed the building across its center, separated by several feet, and connected to the bridges. They were very wide squares which actually doubled as spiraling stairs. Above it all stood a ceiling made of slightly opaque glass which allowed enough of the sun through to make it look like the building had no ceiling, while still separating them from the actual weather. So it looked like they were outside, but felt like they were inside.

It was the best from both worlds.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a place this new,” Felix said, impressed.

“And so many people. How many you think are here?” Michael asked.

A familiar voice ambushed them from behind, in reply. “Reports talk about five thousand enrolled.”

“Tafari!” Michael greeted, beyond happy to see a familiar face in a sea of strangers. “Hi!” Michael greeted again, shaking his hand. “How’s it going, dude?”

“Well enough, man, ” Tafari replied, and glanced around content. “Place, looks good, huh?”

“Looks amazing. Oh, this is Felix.”

Felix offered a nonchalant wave. “Sup.”

Tafari nodded back at him but, true to his nature, paid him no further attention. “Okay, well, I’m gonna try and find our auditorium, Mac. You coming?”

“Right, yeah, they’re doing it by grade,” Michael recalled. “Nice meeting you, Felix. Hope to see you around!”

“I hear ya, catch around.”

Waving goodbye, Michael turned to Tafari and caught up at once.

Walking alongside his bulky friend, Michael kept gazing around and taking things in. “So, I’m assuming you know where to go?”

“Always assume I know,” Tafari said as he walked along, curving his lips in amusement, “and you’ll never be wrong.”

Michael shook his head, holding back a laugh, and followed the know-it-all.

On the first day of school, each grade was being gathered up in an auditorium for an official welcome and greet from each year’s coordinator. The coordinator was a teacher who had been selected to represent all the teachers of the grade, and every auditorium was on the ground floor. So the entire student body would be there at some point.

“This place is pretty big, huh?” Michael asked, rhetorically.

“Sure, but the bottom floors are the only ones that don’t involve hosting classes. And that’s counting the auditoriums which, if you ask me, should damn well count,” Tafari said, as if he had heard otherwise and was insulted by the notion.

“All the upper floors are classrooms?” Michael asked.

Tafari glanced over at Michael, preemptively amused. “Well, not everything’s a classroom, no. You got bathrooms.”

Michael rolled his eyes. “Really, dude?”

“Heh,” Tafari smirked. “There’s computer rooms and science labs and whatever. Specific class stuff. The first floor’s for students in grades six and seven, the second floor for grades eight and nine and the third floor’s for all the high-schoolers.”

Michael looked up in wonder. “I guess there are a lot of us.”

“Don’t feel like much the minority anymore, does it?” Tafari asked, and whether he meant it in a good or bad way, Michael couldn’t tell.

“How many are we?” Michael asked instead.

Tafari scoffed. “Mac, even if we’re just five percent of the population, that’s still roughly fifteen thousand people. Divided by three gives five thousand students that’re potentially here. Which is the number I said earlier, if you’re ever paying attention.”

Michael whistled, surprised. He had never thought of it that way. “Man, the term minority can really get kind of relative, huh?”

“Not when you get on the web. Or turn on the TV. Or--”

Michael laughed, shaking his hands for Tafari to stop. “I get, I get it.”

“It’s mostly when it’s time to vote, you know? That’s when numbers matter. I mean, think about it. Basically, everyone else’s gonna have main say on laws concerning us, n’ that’specially true now since most of us can’t even vote.”

Tafari sighed forebodingly. “Guess we’ll see how that turns out. C’mon, it’s right there.”