“Anyone want to tell me why the ELC 1200 has such a short range?” Mister Dexter was looking directly at one of the girls in the front of the classroom where we were auditing remedial teamwork. The room smelled of cheap disinfectant and early adult anxiety.

  “Because of elves?” the dark-skinned brunette replied, looking a little confused. Her hawk-themed mask was slightly askew.

  He sighed, the sound of a man who had fought kaiju only to be defeated by a fundamental lack of common sense. “Sort of. Although if you don’t come up with a better answer, you might be repeating this class. The ELC-1200 uses ELF frequencies to cut through the q-brane interference. The problem is, it would be useless if the antenna were half a mile high. What is the other reason?” he glanced back at me, a glint in his eye. “How about we hear from one of the auditors?” He’d pegged me as the class know-it-all. Little did he know my knowledge came from a life spent actively avoiding the need for functional teamwork.

  I sighed, playing my part. “Because ELF in greater strengths is seriously toxic, like sticking your head in a microwave, except it’s at the other end of the spectrum. Gives you a hell of a headache before it gives you a hell of a tumor.” I’d once had to jury-rig a comms device during a job; the migraine lasted three days.

  He nodded, “Exactly. That’s one of the reasons you also want to keep your communications to less than ten seconds unless you were one of the lucky alphas with resistance to radiation across a broad spectrum.” He pointed at the screen, where an ELC-1200 pocket communicator was shown disassembled. “So remember. Twelve hundred feet, or around four hundred meters, is the absolute maximum that you can use to send data communications in combat, unless you are lucky enough to have a communicator on your team. That is why we are trained in Morse code.” Because nothing says ‘high-tech superheroics’ like desperately tapping out S.O.S. while a building collapses on you.

  “That’s why your combat team carries repeaters. If you don’t drop a repeater at least every thousand feet if you are going into active combat, you will lose connection with your backup, guaranteed.” It was Logistics 101. A lesson I’d learned the hard way when a client’s ‘foolproof’ comms plan had dissolved into quantum static, leaving me to fight two heroes and a very confused police dog on my own.

  I sighed, which reminded me of the downside of being support. I wanted to be the ‘chair guy’, the mastermind in the comfy chair miles from the action. But the chair had disappeared when quantum interference had gotten too strong for decent wireless communications. The world had gotten smaller, noisier, and far more personal.

  Now, if you wanted to actively engage with your team, you had to be close. This was a major focus of some of the courses, like combat logistics, I would be taking next semester, but remedial teamwork was sort of like combat logistics for dummies.

  Of course, if your team specialized in criminal interception, you might have a decent detective crew that fed you patrol and interception coordinates, but never came within a mile of a super-fight. But those guys were an entirely different team, and worked more like a police force… once they gave you your mission, you were done talking to them. You were on your own.

  In my case, if I got the job I wanted, I’d be closer to the action than I liked. Maybe not up in a super-criminal’s face, but that could happen too.

  Maintaining and coordinating contact with my team was going to be every bit as much my job as making sure they eat, train, and have all the tools they need to do their job. If the team leader was the quarterback, I guess I was angling for assistant coach. The guy who gets splattered with Gatorade if they win and fired if they lose.

  The teacher sighed, surveying the room of future casualties. “Alright. Thursday, we are going to be running our last exercises. Next Monday will be the final exam. Both of those contribute heavily to your total score for the course. Auditors, obviously, you won’t be taking the exam, but if you choose to participate in the exercise, a good subjective score will be reported for your introductory teamwork course next semester, assuming you don’t wind up in remedial teamwork again.” His tone suggested he didn't consider that a distinct possibility for most of us.

  “Chinook, Blueprint, could you please wait a few moments after the break?”

  I nodded, and the rest of the students started taking off. It was interesting the way that many of them, like me, were wearing somewhat shapeless ‘school uniforms’ that were basically form-fitting coveralls, except that most of them wore decorated masks.

  There were only three males in the class, and two of them were wearing brown coveralls instead of gray, which meant that they were either class one or two supports or didn’t have any powers, potential civilian contractors that still wanted to get involved in hero team work. Normies with a death wish. I could respect that.

  To be honest, most support teams were predominantly normies, even the ones that were close-in combat support. Much of our job didn’t involve using powers at all, and it was a little-known fact that for every professional hero, there were usually a dozen civilian supports, from mechanics to PR, detectives and researchers to emergency workers and crowd control specialists.

  Many of them trained alongside their teams, even if they were never going to get involved in the slug-fests of the primary combatants. They were the unsung, underpaid backbone of the whole ridiculous industry.

  It was an even less well-known fact that more than a few vigilantes were pure human, no powers at all, and yet they still managed to rack up scores against lower-class villain-types. Equipment, training, experience, and intelligence often made more of a difference than a random power or two. Powers were a lottery ticket; skill was a 401k.

  In the 90’s, there was a grimdark street vigilante named the Hangman, who specialized in taking out class two and three murderers in Kansas City, usually lethally. It wasn’t until after his death from cancer that his memoirs and legacy were discovered by his family.

  He wasn’t an alpha at all, pure normie, that got his start taking out and robbing drug dealers. He used the proceeds to get decent equipment, and using his talents and intellect, as well as enhanced gear, he took out over 21 known alpha killers as well as a score of normie serial killers and lethal enforcers.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  Even though he was technically a criminal, he was a hero to a lot of vigilantes and even normie police officers on alpha response teams. He was proof that you didn’t need a cosmic garbage disposal for a soul to make a difference. You just needed a good plan and a complete disregard for your own safety. A philosophy I knew all too well.

  After I went down to the front of the classroom, Mister Dexter was sadly shaking his head at Chinook, the young lady who had answered the question about ELF transmitters. Good-looking body, of course—a standard issue for most Alphas, part of the whole ‘optimized specimen’ package—and her mask was decorated to look like a hawk or eagle, with feathers and a beak painted on the front instead of a holo-disguise like a lot of us used. It was a classic look. Honest, in a way, the shifting digital masks weren’t.

  “I get that you want to go back to the nation, but even solos have to get a decent grounding in teamwork, especially if you ever get called on to help stop an invasion. If you don’t get at least a seventy on the written, you are going to be repeating remedial again, and despite being the right ethnicity and powerset to work as a solo, the nation’s not going to want to support you unless you pass at least introductory teamwork. You are good at working with a team on the exercises. All I can say is please stop worrying so much about your ranking and put in some study time before Monday.”

  She sighed, the sound full of frustration. “I am only rank twelve. If I refuse a rank challenge, I could drop a huge number of slots by year two. I am just not very good at memorizing all those little facts. I know that only fourth-year challenges really count, but if I can get to at least the top ten, next semester I get to start off with challenge restrictions and will have a lot more study time.” Her voice was tight, stressed. This was more than just grades; this was her future.

  “Sorry for eavesdropping, but challenge restrictions?” I asked, my professional curiosity overriding my general desire to avoid all human interaction. Information was currency, and the ranking system was the local economy.

  She turned and looked at me, her eyes opened wide, and she stammered for a moment, her mouth dropping open a little under the edge of her mask, before she coughed and nodded. “Ye..uhh...yes. Challenge restrictions. There are three restriction categories for the ranks. The top ten, which is category one, the runners, which are ranked eleven through twenty-five, and the strivers, which are everyone below rank twenty-five for each competition.” She was nervous. Was it me? My reputation? Or just the stress of talking to a stranger about her academic failures?

  I smiled, trying to look non-threatening, which for me meant not actively scowling. “Oh, tell me more, please.” Knowledge was power, and I was desperately low on both.

  She gulped a little. “Right, you can only challenge one category higher. So the strivers can challenge other strivers for rank, or the runners. You can only gain one rank for each challenge, but a lot of the challengers have specialty abilities or can build a combat load-out specifically for defeating a particular person’s weaknesses, like widgeteers.” She glanced at me, and I realized she’d probably pegged me as one. A fragile support. An easy target.

  “Even a rank sixty widgeteer could build a special weapon specifically designed to take advantage of a rank 11’s weaknesses, and if they win, they go up to rank fifty-nine and the rank eleven drops to rank twelve. There are also politics and cliques involved, and I am not particularly popular, so if the current rank thirteen knows she is not able to take my slot, she could ask a rank forty widgeteer to drop me a rank so she pops over me without a challenge.” It was a cutthroat system. I loved it. It was Vilnet with academic credit.

  Mister Dexter shrugged, a veteran of these petty wars. “Technically, doing that sort of thing is not discouraged, because it encourages teamwork… She could do the same thing.”

  Chinook nodded, “Yeah, but I am not that popular. Phantom Pane has already had me spooked twice by a specialist breaker to keep me out of the top ten, because she knows I can tromp her good because my powerset resists her echoes. If I can get into the top ten, though, only the top 25 can challenge me, and none of them can drop me easily.” Her fists were clenched. This was personal.

  I scratched my head, the gears turning. “Huh. The rankings seem like a game of rock, paper, scissors, lizard, Spock, devil, scout.”

  Mister Dexter nodded, a faint smile on his lips. “For the solos, it truly is. No one is going to challenge Flashworks for number one, because she’s a class five light elemental, but that’s why,” he looked seriously at Chinook, “getting teamwork specced is so important. Even if you can’t stay in the solos, a good teamwork ranking is often looked at even more seriously than the solo ranks.”

  “Devil scout?” asked Chinook, bewildered by my nerdery.

  I nodded, holding up devil horns and then a Boy Scout salute. “Yeah, even more stupidly complicated to prevent draws when larger groups are playing. There are even variants where you have to use both hands at the same time or toss dice. But that’s nerd stuff. So widgeteers are almost always at the top?” I asked, steering it back.

  She shook her head, “Nope. Usually, they are close to the bottom, because most of them are fragile. Easy knockout, even if they are wearing armor, because implied damage is judged.” She said it with a bluntness that was both refreshing and mildly terrifying.

  “Implied damage?” I knew the term, but I wanted her version.

  She sighed, as if explaining something very simple to a very slow child. “Yeah. If I punched you in your face with eagle claw in a duel, and you aren’t innately tough, I could easily put a hole through your head. Widgeteers are usually fragile, so even in armor, I could hit hard enough to splash their brains around inside their helmet.” She made a faint splattering sound with her tongue. I made a mental note never to get on her bad side.

  “So if I get in a hit that’s good enough that if I put actual pepper behind it, I would win, it’s counted as my victory. I mean, people still get hurt a lot, but rarely die. Usually it’s the tougher alphas that get the worst, though, because if I tap a support in their throat, it’s obviously a death blow… but two bricks pounding it out might have to really disable or knock each other unconscious. With big defenses and big attacks, it’s a lot harder for a Duel master to make a point decision.” It was a brutal, efficient system. I appreciated the elegance, even as I dreaded participating in it.

  Mr. Dexter nodded, “That’s why Flashworks is solid number one and Oahu is solidly number two. Flashworks can almost always force a point decision, and is almost completely invulnerable in her light form, and Oahu never gets a point decision because the more you hit him, the stronger and tougher he gets. Then again, Flashworks will be gone in two semesters. Once Flashworks is gone, you will probably shift to number eleven easily enough, and all you need is an ally that can counter a top ten or two.”

  Chinook nodded, “Yeah, but if I get top ten, it becomes that much harder for someone to find a breaker to knock me out of it.”

  He sighed, “My point still stands. These credits are very important. Please don’t make me see you again next semester.”

  Chinook nodded, her shoulders slumping in defeat. “I will do the best I can.”

  Mister Dexter turned to me, “Now on to you. I know you are just an audit until the semester ends, but I want to ask you a big favor.” He put his glasses back on, his eyes serious.

  “A favor?” I asked curiously, no idea what I could possibly do to help a teacher. My skill set leaned more towards controlled demolition and identity fraud than academic assistance.

  He nodded slowly, taking off his glasses and starting to rub the lenses with a cleaning cloth from his pocket. “Yes. I want you to participate in the teamwork exercises on Friday as support.”