Chapter 35 - The End of Eras

Art by YinYangMyriad 

My alarm rang at six o'clock in the morning, jolting me out of bed. At first, the noise from my alarm clock confused me, but I remembered that this was the first day of school. This was the start of my last year of high school, and it was time to make the most of it.

I climbed out of bed and walked towards the dining room. I was still a little bit worried about my senior year. All sorts of crazy things could happen, from failing my classes to not getting into a good college to being completely ostracized from the rest of the student body. The last one scared me the most. I didn't have many friends at school before, but now, the whole school knew that I was a supervillain. If I had any hope of making friends at school, it was gone now.

However, senior year did seem exciting in some ways. If nothing else, going back to school would be a new experience and a distraction from my loneliness. I could take government and psychology for the first time, and if I was lucky, the muffins that I had made could make it clear that I wasn't really a villain at all.

When I reached the dining room, I found Dad reading a newspaper and drinking coffee. "Jay, have you heard the news yet?" Dad asked.

"No," I answered, and Dad handed me the newspaper. I skimmed the article, and my jaw dropped.

Mr. Russell had been acquitted on all charges except for tax evasion, and he had been sentenced to five years of imprisonment. The fact that Mr. Russell had gotten away with all of his other crimes made me want to scream. Percy had given the police undeniable proof that Mr. Russell was a murderer, yet he was only in prison for tax evasion. It wasn't fair, but at least he had gotten some punishment for all of the horrors that he had helped the Academy inflict upon its students.

There was even more shocking information later in the article. Instead of trying to hold out for a little bit while longer on government funding, the Academy for the Research and Education of Superpowered Individuals had chosen to close its San Urbano location. Not only had we defeated the Academy, but we had also forced it to close. That was definitely a success.

The article reported that most individual superheroes previously employed by the Academy had not yet announced their reaction to the Academy's closure. However, several adult superheroes had already offered to help teach the former Academy students that still needed to complete their training. I liked to think that Vanessa, Declan, and Harper were among those heroes, but there was no way to know for sure.

I handed the newspaper back to Dad and tried to digest all of the new information. I was thrilled that the Academy was finally closing, and even if Mom hadn't quite gotten her justice, at least Mr. Russell wouldn't be able to hurt anyone else. I took out my phone and texted Harper the news, but she didn't respond right away. I put my phone back into my pocket, finished my breakfast, and then went back to my bedroom to finish getting ready for school.

I grabbed my backpack and my tray of muffins, and I walked towards the door. On my way out, Dad gave me a hug and said, "Have fun at school today, Jay."

"Thanks Dad," I mumbled. I headed out the door and towards the bus stop. A few other kids were waiting for the bus, but I didn't quite feel confident enough to talk to them, so I put my earbuds in and listened to music instead.

When the bus arrived, I sat near the back. Thankfully, nobody seemed to pay much attention to me, so I could listen to my music in peace. The movement of the bus almost made me fall asleep, but I turned up the volume so that Kele Okereke's voice could keep me awake.

As I stared out the window, I felt the bus rise into the air. At first, I was certain that my senses must have been deceiving me, but when I looked down, I saw that we were at least twenty feet in the air. Below us, Percy was standing in the middle of the street, causing a traffic jam behind us as he furiously wrote with the Reality Pen.

The bus suddenly flipped upside down, and I grabbed onto the seat in front of me as my stomach churned. The other kids on the bus were screaming, even when the bus flipped right side up again. I simply tried my best to hold on, confident that Percy would stop this madness eventually.

Hoping to talk to Percy, I rolled down my window, but it seemed like someone else had arrived first. "Seriously, Percy?" Declan said. "This is the best that you could come up with?"

"Declan?" Percy said. "Is that you?" I was confused for a few seconds, until I realized that Vanessa was with Declan. She must have been using her powers to make herself and Declan invisible to Percy.

"Yes, it's me," Declan said. "Could you please put down that school bus? Those poor kids must be freaking out in there."

Percy laughed and then said, "I'm having too much fun."

"Harper, Vanessa, let's execute our plan," Declan said. Percy looked around, searching for Vanessa, Harper, and Declan, but they were all still invisible to him. As Percy returned to his notepad, Harper shot up into the air and flew past the school bus. I briefly saw her fly right past my window before she soared over the bus and called out something unintelligible to Declan and Vanessa.

All of a sudden, the bus was engulfed in a sickly green light. The other kids in the bus screamed, but I merely looked down out of curiosity. Declan appeared to be using the blasts of energy from his fedora as a tractor beam, carefully lowering the bus to the ground. The bus slowly dropped, and it touched the ground without anyone being hurt.

As soon as the bus hit the ground, I leaned out the window and waved to my friends. "Jay?" Vanessa said. "Is that you? I didn't know that you were in there!"

I tried to respond, but the bus started moving again before I could talk to Harper, Declan, or Vanessa. When I looked back, I saw that the team had just realized that Percy had run off. Declan took off at super speed, and Harper and Vanessa tried to follow him.

For the rest of the bus ride, my classmates didn't talk about anything except for our encounter with The Gadfly and the three superheroes that had saved us. I put my earbuds back in and tried to ignore them. A few minutes later, we arrived at Carrie A. Nation High School, and I hopped off of the bus and headed inside with my tray of blueberry muffins.

My first class of the day was calculus. I quickly found my classroom and picked a desk near the back of the room. Then, I placed my backpack under the desk and starting passing out muffins to my new classmates. A few of the faces in the classroom were familiar, but there were also plenty of kids that I didn't know. I was surprised by how few of my classmates recognized me - clearly, most other high schoolers didn't pay much attention to the news. There was one face, however, that I never expected to see in my calculus class.

"Hi Terry," I said. "Would you like a muffin?"

Terry looked up from his book and said, "Hi Jay. I didn't expect to see you here."

"I didn't expect to see you either," I said. "It's nice to see you though. Did you see Declan, Vanessa, and Harper battling Percy on the way here?"

"No," Terry said. "I was on a different bus, but the girl that sits next to me was just telling me about it. Did you see it?" I nodded, and he said, "They all seem to be doing well."

"I'm just glad that Academy's gone for real now," I said.

"What are you talking about?" the girl next to Terry asked.

"Superhuman things," Terry answered bluntly.

"Are you two really superhumans?" the girl asked.

Terry nodded and then said, "I'm Prospero, and Jay's the Dastardly Demon."

I expected the girl to freak out, but instead, she said, "That's really cool. Can I get your autographs? I can't believe that you two took down the Academy." I reluctantly signed my classmate's binder with a Sharpie. "Thank you!" she exclaimed when both Terry and I were done signing.

My calculus teacher began to speak, and I rushed back to my seat. As he rambled on about limits, I thought about my friends. We had all gone our separate ways, but we were also still connected.

Some bonds can't be broken, and the friendship created when six teenagers take down an evil organization together is one of them.