"I have no powers and not nearly enough training, but I'm doing this anyways. Being a super hero is amazing. Everyone should try it."
~ Clinton Barton (Hawkeye)
Well, being a super didn't seem so bad until I arrived in first period pre-calculus.
You see, Eldredge Academy ran a little differently than your average run of the mill American high school.
First off, we had no real sports. I mean – you could technically call our lacrosse team and tennis squad sports, but c'mon. Real American sports involved tough guys tossing a ball around and potentially getting concussions. Lacrosse and tennis are considered the rich man's sport in the public eye, which came to our next premonition.
Eldredge Academy was the most prestigious private school in the city, which was saying a lot because I lived in Washington D.C., where private schools popped up more often than public ones. Because of the high ranking of the school, they required a very high tuition, high enough to where only the very rich and powerful in D.C. could afford it, which also leads to the next problem.
Eldredge Academy was full of sons and daughters of senators and generals and ambassadors and everything in between. The other half of the school were children of high ranking doctors, dentists, and company owners. And after you counted that pool of extremely rich kids who were practically drowning in money and/or connections, you came to the small percentage of the school that was represented by students like me, scholarship kids.
You see, to be able to receive a full-ride scholarship to such a school like Eldredge, you had to have a perfect five point entry essay, a 3.8 grade point average in your last school, an outstanding grade on your entry exam, and much, much more that I can't even fully remember now.
Long story short, you have to be really intelligent to make it in on scholarship.
Now, I wasn't bragging about the fact that I made it in on a full scholarship. In fact, if some of the kids at this school found out that I was a scholarship kid, I would surely fall down the social ladder a couple rungs. The point is, I was no son of a senator or dentist. I was the son of Sharon Lauren Storm, and perhaps the poorest kid in school because of it.
I didn't mean to bash on my mom or anything, but I was just telling the truth. My mom worked as a waitress for a diner across the street from our apartment. She was only able to barely provide for the two of us by the fact that the diner was frequented by powerful people in the government, causing it to be a hotspot for tourism and meetings between power figures.
The only reason we were able to put good food on the table was my salary from Daniel at the comic book store (which included a bit of a bonus because, you know, I put my life in danger everyday as his sidekick).
The social hierarchy at Eldredge was also a bit confusing. Your parents' professions didn't always line up how powerful in the school you were, but it did boost your position on the ladder quite significantly. There were a couple exceptions to the rule, like me.
You see, to my fellow students at Eldredge, I was known as The Oliver Storm. Yeah, I got a capitalized italic 'the' in front of my name. I was, in short, quite popular.
Blonde hair. Icy blue eyes. Chiseled features. I was a hoot with the ladies at school. They thought of me as mysterious and smart, which was actually more attractive than you'd think with the new generation.
But as I walked in that bland Monday, I knew something was off. The students were whispering in hushed voices as Mr. Anderson sat at his desk, reading a book. I noticed the discarded worksheets on the desks and assumed that was what Mr. Anderson wanted us working on, but no one was even looking at them.
Instead, everyone was looking at their phones or talking excitedly with their neighbor about something or other.
"Olly!" My best friend, Ian Thompson gestured from our corner of the classroom.
Now, before I continue I must explain the complex creature that is Ian Thompson to you. Ian is, to say in the least, my best friend. He is smart – like insanely so. If he his mom wasn't the Secretary of State than he would've definitely made it into Eldredge with a full-ride scholarship, like me, but he doesn't know that. Ian is one of those people who try not to act smart, but occasionally they'll say something you'll have to be reminded at how smart of a human being they actually are.
Ian is a red-head, which, for some reason, does not subtract from his good looks at all. Like, red hair normally makes guys look like abnormally tall leprechauns, but not Ian. Perhaps the only reason girls aren't totally overtaken by him is his personality. Ian is a jokester and a conspiracy theorist. He could give you an illuminati theory relative to the best of them and prank the Headmaster at the same time.
He had that sort of look about him that made you immediately think "troublemaker," whilst I had that sort of look that made people think that I walked straight out of a YA novel, blonde hair, blue eyes, and a nice persona that could make everyone, perhaps except for Mrs. Solace, like me.
It was a wonder why we ever became friends in the first place.
"Olly, you've got to check this out, I've got a new candidate for possible Captain Impossible." He said, thrusting his phone into my face.
Ahh, and that's is probably the other reason why we make an unlikely pairing.
Ian Thompson is the single biggest enthusiast of finding out mine and David's identities that I have ever met (Well, out of the ones who aren't in jail or incapacitated). He comes up with a new candidate for Captain Impossible every so often. He wanted to be the first to reveal his identity to the world, just to say that he did.
You might be able to see where we come into conflict with this.
You see, supers have secret identities for a reason. For one, villains can't use anyone you know against you if they don't know who you know. Also, how are you supposed to live a normal life when everyone knows that you're a super?
I'm sure that I've mentioned this before, but a recent incident like this happened over in Empire and Iris Cities. Some girl called Meredith Temple released the identities of all the resident supers about a month ago, and the results were not pretty.
Most of the supers were young compared to most standard's, meaning they were still in college. I doubt that they could ever walk through a regular street ever again without being outed out as superheroes.
(And, as I stated before, Sonic, or, more accurately, Arabella Jones's, own father turned out to be the ex-mayor of Empire City. You know, the one who kidnapped all those supers two years ago and tried to make them turn evil? Yeah, that one.)
(The super event was dubbed The Revealing)
But that doesn't mean that there aren't some supers that release their identity to the public. Like Golden Eagle before, you know, he went crazy.
But I quite liked the life I was living in now, and so did David. That meant that I was to give no clue to Ian about who I was – ever. Man, if he knew White Lightning was sitting next to him at this moment, he would freak, that's for sure.
Ian showed me a picture of this twenty something year-old guy with dark hair and glasses. I knew automatically that this guy wasn't Captain Impossible. In fact, I remembered seeing his face in the crowd when we arrested Two-Face this morning (I have a photographic memory). It wouldn't take long for Ian to figure that out and start all over again.
But, since I was his friend, and I liked hearing his theories, I let him talk. "So, why him?"
Ian grinned, "His name is Earl Chambers. He works for the Washington Post, a job in which he has a ton of missed days from work. Being a newspaper writer would help him know the current news, and if Clark Kent was able to do it, then why can't he?"
It took me a moment to know who he was referencing. You see, comic book heroes have gone a little out of style nowadays. Everyone is obsessed with the real supers. I never got into the comic book heroes as much, even though I did work at a comic book shop.
I nodded, "Yeah, I hope this lead pans out."
Ian tilted his head. "Are you doubting me?"
"Well . . ."
Ian gasped. "C'mon, man! This is the best lead that I've gotten yet!"
"Really?" I scoffed, "What about that last guy? The one who worked for the manufacturing plant? Or what about the one who was already dead?"
"Okay, okay. I get it." He sighed.
I chuckled and turned to see what the other students were doing. I was surprised to see that most were on some digital news article app or even super related news websites.
"Hey, Ian?" I asked warily, and he turned to face me. "What happened? Why is everybody on their phones?"
Ian's face immediately brightened. He had that goofy grin on his face that was normally associated with super related news. I wondered for a moment if some other super had visited our city or if one had just saved the world, but it turns out that the news was more local than I thought.
Ian handed me his phone again, but this time there was a news article lined up.
Delinquent, vigilante or villain?
A new super has started to pop up around the nation's capital, and their controversial means of 'saving people' had the city in a storm.
I mentally sighed. Just great, I had another new super villain wannabe to deal with. But I was still intrigued, so I read on.
A new super by the name of Delinquent has been catching many of DC's finest in a pickle. This self-proclaimed 'vigilante' has been all over the city wrecking crime on some of the biggest names out of anywhere.
And, you want to know what else? This new super is a girl.
Just last night she sabotaged a shipping van from Paramount Pharmaceuticals, the medical company currently trying to settle lawsuits for patients who took pills for ADHD and ADD, and developed some very 'super' side effects. Yes, you heard right, some of the patients have developed super powers from their medicine line, which was been recalled until further notice.
She's also been seen painting graffiti murals on government buildings in protest to many of the bills that are being considered as laws. She's protested the Winters-Baker Bill, which would eradicate taxes for America's rich and powerful, and she's also painted a mural dictating Senator Klaus hanging innocent children in retaliation to his reaction to the crisis in Croatia.
And if there's one thing to say about this 'Delinquent,' it's that she is definitely not over yet.
I'd heard about the Paramount Pharmaceuticals incident not too long ago. They had a special prescribed pill for the treatment of ADHD and ADD in teens, but a lot of the kids who took the pills got sick. Like, really sick. Some of the ones who recovered weird powers, but definitely not as many as the news article implied. Only about one out of ten of the kids developed powers, but all the families are trying to get together to sue the company for lying about their clinical trials.
Even the murals were protesting things that were wrong. I couldn't exactly say that she was internally evil, like most villains, even if she was technically breaking the law.
"Cool."
Ian rebutted like I had hit him or something. "Cool? Just cool? Dude, there's this new kickass vigilante super and all you have to say about it is, cool? This is awesome! Plus, she's a girl."
I had to give my friend credit there. There weren't many supers that were women, even though there should statistically be just as many as the men. Villains that were girls were even rarer. I thought of it as like the same phenomena with serial killers. There were just way more male serial killers out there, it must've had something to do with their genes or something.
(Or maybe boys were more likely to put themselves in stupid situations where they had a chance of getting super powers or becoming evil.)
(Like, standing next to a lamppost in the middle of a thunderstorm.)
(Yeah, I was definitely asking to be struck by lightning.)
I studied the picture of the girl more closely. It was grainy security camera footage of her as she stopped the Pharmaceuticals van. She wore a mask that covered the top half of her face, and her black hair made the rest of her face look to be shadowed. From her stance I could tell that she was young, at most early twenties and at least fifteen. She was most likely just a teenager, like me.
Maybe a new vigilante would keep things interesting around here.