Green Lantern's Protégée

18: "Bow to your new queen!"

"Yeah, probably."

Mr. Zetters let out a groan as he rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands. The counselor was in his thirties with shaggy brown hair and brown eyes. He reminded Cyra of Shaggy from Scooby Doo. He has a little beard and wore black square glasses. Half of the time it seemed like he was hungover and the other half just really, really tired. Cyra liked him.

"Why, Cyra? Let's be straight with this: you have awful grades, is the post-child for being a horrible students, and obvious—like me—don't want to be here, so what's the deal? Why turn it around now?"

Well . . . Cyra liked him most of the time.

"In the little respect I have for you, it's not really your concern," Cyra grinned. "Just put me in the class."

Zetters sighed again. "Okay, you have to get at least a ninety percent on the test to get into the class and then they want recommendations, so good luck. I can arrange for them to test you on the fourteenth."

Cyra's amber eyes widened at his words. "Ninety percent? Like . . . more than half?"

"A lot more than a half," Zetters nodded apologetically.

"And the fourteenth," Cyra repeated, "that's in three days."

"Uh-huh."

"And what's on the test?"

"Mostly physics and Algebra l-ll. There will also be some geometry, I think."

"And that's for both of the classes?"

"Nope. That's just for the robotics class. For the programming class it'll mostly be math and some computer programming in JAVA."

"Oh . . . yay?"

Zetters smiled. "Good luck. You're going to need it."

Central City

October 11, 16:55 EDT

Wally was sitting at home, alone. For once he skipped out on a family dinner to sit in his room and drown in his own depression. The TV was playing the Real Housewives of Keystone when the phone next to his bed started to ring.

The ginger almost didn't answer it, but ended up putting the house phone to his ear and saying, "Hello, this is the West household and this is me, Wally West, how can I help you?"

"Well, you don't sound very happy."

Wally groaned loudly to make sure Cyra could hear it over the phone. "You have thirty seconds before I hang up the phone."

"I just called to say sorry about earlier."

Wally sat up from his bed. "Really?" he asked suspiciously.

"Well . . . it's part of it."

"Now it's only fifteen seconds."

"Alright, alright, I need your help with something."

"Ho ho ho," Wally laughed. "So you only want to hang out when you need my help with something, huh? Yeah, I'm hanging up."

"No—wait! Pleeeease? I really need your help."

"After you blew me off earlier?" Wally snorted. "I think not."

"Oh come on! I'm begging here."

Wally let his curiosity lead him. "What do you need help with?"

"Is that a chance of redemption I'm hearing?"