The Next Page 2

Principal Bells, of course, didn’t think too fondly of Lincoln’s antics, and immediately checked him with a withering glare. Once the class was brought back to order, the Principal began to speak.

“Everyone in this class will be graduating from this academy in the next two years… unless, of course, you decide to play the truant, skimp your classes, drop out entirely, or become a villain.

In the hopeful event that none of you does such, we have put together a training session which will involve you being sent to various departments of the city to help out with civic duties.”

This was the day everyone had been waiting for. Well, almost everyone. For people like Mack, who had notably frightening or impressive powers, they usually were placed in “hero duty”, to be trained for active crime-fighting. For others like Lincoln, whose powers weren’t so impressive, they got “city-keeping”, which was more or less glorified community service.

Of course, Lincoln was sure he was going to be given community service. After all, manipulation of paper wasn’t really an amazing feat. He could actually teleport in a fashion though, but jumping into the pages of a book and re-emerging from the pages of another book in the same room. But that power of his was only impressive in a library, which was why he had been a favorite of the school librarian.

“Paper Tiger!” He looked up on hearing his code name. Students received code names which would be their public aliases when, or if, they became full-fledged heroes. Lincoln didn’t like his name, but it had stuck, so there was nothing to do but accept it.

The Principal was looking at him again. “You’re assigned to city-keeping.” Lincoln rolled his eyes. What else was new? “You’ll be assigned to work together with Trackball and Neon. Neon will be your squad leader.”

Okay, that was new. Trackball, Alex by name, was a whizz, but that seemed to be all there was to him: a super-nerd. Neon, given name Drusilla (most tims, she was just called Dru), was able to generate visible light from her hands, and her mood was often in stark contrast to her powers.

Lincoln was sure he could work with Alex, but Dru was scary. He sighed and shook his head, as others in the class gt their consignments. It was like the system of this academy was meant to keep some certain types of people down, and celebrate others, at their expense.

To be continued...

Thanks for coming!

That little boy,

@pearlumie