I was surprised, and I noticed Chinook, who was halfway out the door, seemed equally gobsmacked as she turned to watch the conversation unfold. It’s not every day a teacher asks the class pariah to join the fun. Then again, I’m not most pariahs. I’m the pariah with a meticulously curated collection of villainous aliases and a metabolic debt that could starve a small elephant.

  “Why is that?” I asked, my voice the perfect blend of cautious interest and internal screaming. My life’s motto: when authority figures show interest, assume it’s a prelude to an audit or an assassination attempt.

  Mr. Dexter slid his glasses back on, the lenses catching the light and making him look like a particularly weary owl. He leaned against his wooden desk, which probably had a file on me labeled ‘Problem Child: Handle With Extreme Prejudice.’ “As you are probably aware, teamwork training is mandatory credits for support lines, even for research and logistics.”

  I nodded. Of course it was. Heaven forbid the guy who can reassemble a carburetor with a thought might not also be a natural-born leader in the field. The system loves a well-rounded pawn.

  “The problem is,” he continued, launching into what was clearly a well-rehearsed spiel, “remedial teamwork usually gets three types of students. Team-oriented rushes, like you and a few others, civilian prospects, and combatants that have… serious troubles with passing the basic teamwork classes. Often due to handicaps or an unwillingness or inability to study for various reasons.”

  He wasn’t wrong. The class was a glorious menagerie of misfits, loners, and people who probably thought ‘synergy’ was a brand of laundry detergent. My kind of people.

  “Civilians have it because they usually have a tough time during the combat exercises, not the schoolwork,” he explained. “Training to survive a logistics strike is very difficult, and a civilian has to be in top shape, both mentally and physically, to deal with it. A baseline or a civilian alpha with no physical enhancements has an uphill battle, but taking remedial teamwork before passing basic teamwork gives them a decent enough scoring boost, even if they still drop below the threshold in exercises. The school will consider them qualified for noncombat roles, especially if they can get through search and rescue training.”

  I nodded slowly, filing the information away in the mental folder marked ‘Potentially Useful Exploits.’ “But what does this have to do with me? I’m just here for the credits and the marginally edible cafeteria food.”

  He sighed, the sound of a man who has explained this too many times to too many disinterested parties. “We only have two full support alphas in the class. That means our teamwork training has only been able to field two full support teams of ten, which is larger by far than most field teams. With a third full support alpha, I could make that three teams of seven, which is not an unreasonable team size. When we need smaller team training, I’ve had some of the more versatile students taking on support roles, but they need to train as full combatants in smaller teams as well.”

  Ah. I was being voluntold to be the third wheel. The spare part. The human equivalent of that one weird screw you find in the IKEA box that doesn’t seem to fit anywhere, but you’re afraid to throw out. My heart swelled with pride.

  I sighed and shook my head, the picture of reluctant incapability. “I really can’t do it, not yet. Not that I wouldn’t be interested—the thought of trusting my fragile body to a bunch of combat-class jocks with something to prove gives me the warm fuzzies—but I still have no training, and I can’t afford the power expenditure. My battery life is worse than a discount smartphone.”

  He sighed and nodded, “I understand.”

  “However,” I said, pivoting before he could write me off completely. A little strategic usefulness never hurt. “That being said, if it’s during class time… I have a few abilities that might help in an emergency. I would be happy to keep an eye on things just in case someone gets hurt or an attack strays. You know, from a safe distance. Preferably behind a very thick wall.”

  “You can stop a stray attack?” he asked, a flicker of genuine curiosity breaking through his professional demeanor.

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  I nodded. “My healing is close-range only, but I have a bit more leeway with my ability to… let’s call it ‘soaking up kinetics.’ I’m basically a very expensive, metabolically costly shock absorber.”

  He nodded, “I meant to ask about that. Your power is odd. Powers usually come in clearly distinguished groups. How can stopping attacks, merging things together, and healing all be part of the same power?”

  I thought about it, running through a dozen lies before settling on a version of the truth wrapped in enough technobabble to sound plausible. How much should I explain? Just enough to be intriguing, not enough to be dissected. “Well, it’s all about motion. There’s a reason I call myself Blueprint. Normally, my power only works on the tiniest scale and burns a ton of energy to do something new. But I have an eidetic memory for micro-mechanical details.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I chuckled, a dry, self-deprecating sound. “How stuff is put together on a small scale. For instance, most humans are put together in the same way. If someone gets a cut, I already have a good idea of how their skin and muscle cells are supposed to work, and if it’s within a few inches, I can… encourage the cellular structure back into its proper alignment and help replace the damage with copied cells. It’s less healing and more like frantic, biological plagiarism.”

  “A few inches?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, that’s why I don’t call myself a proper healer. I can do surface stuff, but if your upper leg has a compound fracture, that’s probably too deep a wound. I also had to educate myself on exactly how humans are put together. Mostly from old anatomy textbooks I… acquired. Let’s just say my teenage years were weird and involved a lot of questionable Google searches.”

  He looked thoughtful. “If someone had skin cancer, could you fix it?”

  I shrugged. “Beats me, I haven’t tried. Maybe, maybe not… I mean, cancer isn’t technically damage; it’s something caused by your own body going rogue. I don’t know if I’d help it or just make it worse as I replicated the mutated cells. I’m not a doctor; I’m a guy with a sketchy cheat code. Maybe someday I might be able to, but I will need a hell of a lot of training first. It’s a lot easier to work with inorganic substances. They’re less… sue-happy.”

  He nodded slowly. “You really need power assessment and training.”

  A cold spike of alarm shot through me. That was not the direction I intended this conversation to go. I definitely did not want the BSA’s pet scientists poking at my unique, non-ether-based power source. The last thing I needed was a permanent residency in a subterranean lab next to the jar containing the Serenoid’s leftmost spleen.

  “Is that mandatory?” I asked, my voice carefully neutral, already calculating the fastest route out of the building and how many identities I’d have to burn to disappear.

  He shook his head. “Not mandatory, but strongly encouraged. While every alpha ability is different, there are broad similarities that can certainly help in training. Most elementals can project or solidify their element, use it as a defensive field, and many can use it for movement, for example. We have a decent database on how to train them.”

  “Unique powers like yours, though… well, we have a decent power database. If we can categorize your ability, we can try to match it to other, similar powers we have on record. That might offer ideas, training methods, and power expansions you might not otherwise consider.”

  “A database,” I said, my cynicism dial turning to eleven, “that might be cracked by any cyberkinetic with a grudge, that lists all of my exact abilities and possibly weaknesses? Sign me up for that identity-theft buffet. Do I get a free tote bag?”

  Mr. Dexter sighed, a man long inured to this particular brand of paranoia. “Nothing is guaranteed, and I understand your concern, but after a few years, most of that gets out as public knowledge anyway. There are five major wikis that I know of, which are basically rundowns of each hero and villain’s powers. We have some of the best security around, but nothing is perfect.”

  “On the plus side, though,” he added, trying for a silver lining, “it looks like you are clearly support. It’s unlikely you are going to build up a rogue’s gallery or a nemesis personally, and knowing a weakness is the best way of preparing to have it exploited, right?”

  I chuckled. “You sound like you have dealt with that exact thing.”

  He nodded, a shadow of past battles crossing his face. “I wasn’t always a teacher. I spent almost ten years as an alpha interceptor, and five years as a guard at the pen.”

  I nodded and finally noticed that Chinook had slipped out while we were talking. I wondered if our conversation about power assessment had spooked her. “I will consider it,” I said, noncommittally. “And I figure I have four years to decide, right?”

  He chuckled, a dry, rasping sound. “No, you have about two weeks. This is the Kellar Academy, not Empire City College. Power training is a regular part of all programs. Knowing which power training program you need to go into might help. You wouldn’t want to get shuffled into mass projection training or something that requires academic re-shuffling, you know?”

  I grinned. “I promise, any power training I wind up in will probably help me in one way or another. Like you said, my ability is unique… Who knows? Maybe learning to create a miniature fog bank might be as important as figuring out how to restart someone’s heart someday. I’m versatile like that.”

  Mr. Dexter chuckled. “Your choice. I will look forward to seeing you on Thursday.”

  He said it like it was a promise. I heard it like a threat.