My Second Shot

The Mission

The projector was off, and in a way, Andy took his revenge.

But, the real question is, was the revenge really worth it? Or was it just not a revenge and some form of a great mistake?

"Who... did... that?"

Nobody responded.

He glared at Andy.

"It wasn't me, sir! You already broke my phone!"

"Hey, who... did... that?"

...

"Who the f**k did that?!" he screamed, as he went to the nearby shelf and kicked it to the ground.

Books came flying apart, as everyone screamed.

"Who did that?!"

He was now throwing markers around the classroom and I couldn't understand what was going on. All he was doing was punching the whiteboard, kicking walls, and throwing things around as he kept yelling.

What the hell, man?

So, this is what it truly was?

My enemy was never him... it was the students who did things like this that made his bad side come out. Okay, honestly, it might be him if that's the case, but still... what?

How is that even... how does that make any sense?

"Y'all wanna see something?!"

He walked out of the classroom. Oh, no... what was he planning if we was to leave like that? What did he have in mind about this? Was he really going to do something stupid?

"Yo, what was that?" Conrad asked.

"Dunno, man... he just lost himself or something!"

Suddenly, he came back and he had a baseball bat in his hand.

He walked to an empty desk that was in the center, and raised the bat. He then screamed, and slammed the bat on the desk repeatedly, as the desk started to slowly fall apart.

And, that was enough for all of us to evacuate and to our glee, the bell ringed! So, without a second thought, we ran out of whatever the hell that was, hoping all would be well tomorrow.

...

I made it out of the building and found her exactly where I expected - leaning against the wall near the side exit, on her phone, looking completely unbothered by the existence of time.

"Liz!"

She looked up. "Hey... how was-"

"Okay, so..." I stopped in front of her, still catching my breath. "You know how you warned me about Carter?"

"Yeah,"

"He broke someone's phone against the whiteboard."

She blinked.

"Then he started throwing markers around, kicked a shelf over. Left the room and came back with a baseball bat and destroyed a desk while screaming. Then the bell rang and we all ran."

Liz was quiet for a moment. "Was anyone hurt?"

"No, just that one desk. Andy's phone was broken. A lot of the classroom's utility is gone, but hey, this school's rich."

She looked back at her phone. "He won't get fired."

"How is that possible?"

"His class has one of the highest passing rates in Veyrath. The school needs him."

"So he can just do this?"

"Yeah."

"No way..."

"I know. I could switch sections I would."

I stared at her. "You would not."

"I would."

"You can't just leave Blake for that."

"Blake is good," she said. "A guaranteed five is better."

Jeez, she is pretty ruthless when it comes for things like this. Can't blame her, she wants to go all out, and that's how it should be.

I sighed and leaned against the wall beside her. After a second she shifted slightly so our shoulders were touching.

"As long as nobody does anything stupid, he's actually fine," I said. "I liked that book. Documentaries are also pretty good as well,"

"So basically, as long as anyone doesn't does anything stupid,"

"Yeah, hope Andy actually follows the rules this time,"

We stood there for a minute in the afternoon.

"Can you check over my application?" she asked without looking up from her phone.

"Of course. Just send it whenever."

"I'll send it tonight."

"Sounds great! Yeah! I'll make sure to read it and give my five star review!"

She nodded.

"Love you,"

She looked up and made a heart with her hands, quick and slightly self-conscious, then looked back at her phone.

She never actually said it back out loud. I didn't know exactly why and I had never pushed it. It was just a Liz thing, but what I do know is the heart meant the same thing, just in her own language. Honesty, nothing wrong with it.

"You're getting your decision tonight, right?" she said.

My stomach dropped slightly. "Yeah."

Colleges, they worked differently here. Instead of waiting for months, you just get the decision in one day. So, it was scary here.

"Are you scared?"

"A little. Nah, that's an understatement. I'm very scared. You know, what if I don't get in and stuff."

She put her phone away and took my hand. "You'll get it. I know you will."

"Liz..."

"You'll get in,"

"Yeah, I guess..."

She leaned in and gave me a quick kiss.

"Man," I muttered. "I am so lucky."

Suddenly, both our phones pinged at exactly the same moment.

I didn't need to check the notification to know what it was. The specific pattern was unmistakable. Somewhere across the city Graham and Conrad had gotten the same ping and were probably already moving.

It was none other than The Council.

I pocketed my phone and straightened up, as did she.

Senior year, it turned out, was not going to stay quiet after all.

...

Okay, so.... we got some biiig news.

The four of us are Conduits.

That is the word for people who carry elemental abilities passed down through family lines - from parent to child, to generation to generation, but in its heart, completely consistent and hereditary.

There are hundreds of us across Veyrath, organized into divisions and groups managed by something called the Council.

The Council is the committee of higher-ups who oversee everything.

They handle the legal protection, the operational assignments, and the logistics of keeping Conduit activity from becoming a public problem. In exchange, the groups they manage answer to them when called. It is a functional arrangement. I wouldn't say perfect, but it is pretty functional.

Our group is called Black Ops: Hourglass.

Liz is the leader of the group.

She is also, in every available metric, the strongest member, which I'm not surprised about. We have Graham, who can detonate a strike through solid ground, and Conrad, who can absorb and redirect more force than most people can generate.

But, yeah, she runs runs the team just the way she does normally. Just through ruthless precision, efficiency, and results that needed no explanation.

Oh, I completely forget to mention me!

Spencer... objectively the weakest member of the group. I do not say this to be self-deprecating, because it is literally true. Everyone, including me, knows it and we all made our peace with it.

The ranking from strongest to weakest is Liz, Graham, Conrad, and then me, and that order is not close at any step.

We got to the Council building in under twenty minutes. The chamber where they received groups was sparse and formal. There were long tables, high ceilings, and a massive courtroom of seats for the council members.

A senior member looked up as we came in. "Black Ops: Hourglass. Elizabeth, Graham, Conrad, and Spencer. Good to have you back."

"Good to be here, sir," Graham said, and gave a clean salute.

"We have an operation." He folded his hands on the table. "There is a warehouse on the eastern edge of the city running activity we have not been able to identify from the outside. We need it cleared so Black Ops: Examination can go in and do their work."

Black Ops: Examination was our sister group - the other half of what we did. Our conduit abilities ran toward combat and containment, and theirs ran toward detection, analysis, and intelligence gathering.

It was a good system in theory. In practice it meant we did the part that involved people trying to hit us, and they did the part that involved examining the aftermath. There are always imperfections in practice, but I don't mind it.

"Understood," Liz said. "We'll get it done,"

...

The warehouse was bigger up close than it had looked in the briefing folder.

It was four stories with corrugated metal siding, the kind of building that existed in the part of the city where nobody asked questions about what was happening inside.

We did a quick go-around before Conrad pointed toward the back.

"The back," he said quietly. "A bunch of entry points and the sightlessness are worse for anyone inside."

We moved around the perimeter and found the rear entrance: a loading dock with the door slightly opened, which was either careless or a trap. No point getting shocked, because we were going to find out which.

We got about ten feet inside before the lights came on.

"Stop right there!"

Two of them, coming from the left. They looked dangerous, armed, and not particularly happy to see us.

"Hey!" I put my hands up immediately. "Hey, guys, we're just - we were wandering around, it's a cool building, we got a little lost-"

"Wandering around, here?!"

"Yeah, it's just, you know, architecturally speaking, the corrugated exterior is really-"

Liz raised her hands.

Time slowed down - literally. Not for us - for them.

The two men in front of us decelerated into something between movement and stillness. Their were almost frozen as Liz showed no sign of struggle.

Meet Liz, The Tempo Conduit.

I'm gonna say this plainly: Tempo is one of the most dangerous Conduit abilities that exists. The ability to manage the flow of time on a designated target or area sounds a little abstract until you are standing in front of someone who just stopped two armed thugs with minimal effort.

I extended my hand and sent two clean bolts of lightning into the frozen targets, dropping them.

Meet me, the Lightning Conduit.

I generate and control lightning, not at god level, but at a level that works. One instance is this when Liz gives me a stationary target.

"Incoming from the back!"

Three more men were coming through a side door.

Graham stepped forward, dropped to one knee, and punched the floor.

The shockwave moved through the concrete like a ripple through water, hitting all three simultaneously. They went down hard and did not get back up.

Meet, Graham, the Shock Conduit.

He channels seismic force through surface, whether through the ground, through walls, through anything solid enough to carry the wave. Direct strikes from him hit will feel like detonations - yeah, that's how strong he is. Without debate, he is the most physically dangerous member of the group in a straight fight.

"We done?" Conrad asked.

"Spencer, behind you!"

Two more from the shadows near the entrance.

Liz grabbed my shoulder, and delivered a two-footed kick into the first one that sent him into the second.

A third came at me from the right.

I ducked back, caught his arm, and drove my elbow into him before sending a charge through my palm, knocking him out.

Graham sent another shockwave low across the floor, catching two more who came from a back corridor.

Liz slowed them mid-stumble and I struck them with lightning. Graham followed up with another shockwave. They were no match for the triple-combo, and they went down in a pile.

"Hey, you conduit losers!"

We turned to the source and found a man who was holding a rocket launcher.

"Eat this!"

He fired the blast, and Conrad stepped forward.

He spread his hands and his body lit up as the rocket hit him, started glowing, and disappeared into him entirely, the force of it pulling inward rather than detonating outward.

"W-what?"

Meet Conrad, the Energy Conduit.

His ability is kinetic absorption - he takes incoming force into his body, stores it, and releases it outward. Physical strikes, shockwaves, projectiles... whatever attack it is, he absorbs them and gives them back.

Conrad brought his arms back and released it in a yellow and orangish blast.

The blast caught the man square in the chest and knocked him off the railing.

"And that's a wrap," Conrad said, straightening his jacket.

We walked out into the night air and Liz went on her phone.

"I texted examination," she said. "They're on their way."

I put my hands in my jacket pockets and looked up at the sky for a second. Wow, it's been a while since I've seen the night sky and all the stars since I cleared out the mission.

First mission of senior year.

...

I found a patch of grass near the warehouse perimeter and laid down on it while Examination did their thing inside.

The sky was clear and the city noise was distant enough to be ambient rather than intrusive.

My phone buzzed.

There was a deposit notification - 20,000 VNS from the Council for our work

The Council was many things and warm was not one of them. But they paid on time and they kept us legally protected and in their own cold institutional way that was a form of caring.

I pocketed the notification and pulled up the admissions portal.

Man, it's time to see it.

Spencer Reeves, VIT Engineering Program.

Accepted.

I sat up so fast I nearly dropped my phone.

No way.

No way.

I got in...

I actually got in to VIT.

My actual first choice, the school I've been writing and rewriting answers to questions about for three months, the one I talked myself out of being confident about approximately forty times - they had looked at everything I sent them and said yes and I was going to go there and study engineering and-

"Congratulations."

I spun around.

Liz was standing a few feet behind me, hands in her jacket pockets, looking at me with a smile.

"Liz! You were here?! Look, I got in!"

"I knew you would,"

"Yeaaaa,"

"You're smart, capable, a good person, so would get in. Looks like we're going to the same school."

I turned to look at her. "Wait - you got your decision too?"

She held up her phone. It wasn't an acceptance letter, but it was something even better: a scouting offer.

...

...

...

"We're going to the same school," we said together.

"That's what I said!"

"No, I said it!"

...

...

"Spencer."

"Yeah?"

"We're going to VIT. Together. Both of us."

"Yeah, we are,"

I laughed - not at anything in particular, just at the specific feeling of a thing being exactly as good as you hoped it would be. She was still leaning against me and the grass was slightly damp, but the city hummed somewhere beyond the treeline and none of that mattered.

We leaned in and kissed.

...

...

...

...

I pulled back and looked up at the sky.

I had spent enough of my life waiting for the other shoe to drop that I sometimes forgot to just sit inside the good moments. Liz was beside me, our acceptances right there, the mission was done, the night air was breezing past.

My eyes were already getting heavy.

The grass was more comfortable than it had any right to be. Going home felt like a lot of effort for something that could just as easily happen tomorrow after school.

I closed my eyes.

Was this just what it felt like when things were actually going right?

Was this it? Was this just what it felt like when things were actually going right?

I had spent enough of my life waiting for the other shoe to drop that I sometimes forgot to just sit inside the good moments.

And this was a good moment - the kind of good moment that you don't want to let go of ever.

Hopefully, it doesn't become my last one.