I pull on my gloves and strike a battle stance. Faking a few punches and preparing some trash talk, I hardly recognize myself in the cracked mirror that lines the wall. My pose, my actions, my black and red body armor all give me a new persona, a persona that looks significantly more intimidating than I feel. Granting myself a final glance in the mirror, I scowl, tense the muscles in my hands, and will the air around me to form a gyro ball between my fingertips.
The corners of my mouth slowly rise into a triumphant grin. Even though odds are against me, it looks as though I’ll be able to put on a good performance. That’s all that matters anyway. Not the game, not the result, the spectacle. If a competitor goes down with a show: banter, bloodshed, ruin, it doesn’t matter which team they were on or how poorly they fared. They’re still a hero the rest of the day. That’s what I want to be: a hero.
“Bottom of the ninth, two outs, bases loaded, and the score is tied,” I say to myself. “Electricity is in the air, ladies and gentlemen, as glorified Will Stronghold steps up to the plate and exchanges glares with the underrated and misunderstood newbie Discord.” I scowl at my reflection and pantomime resituating a baseball cap. “Discord winds up for the pitch,” focusing on the effect of shattering glass, “and...” I throw the gyro ball against the mirror. It hits its target with astonishing speed and the face of the mirror melts into water, swamping the locker room upon contact.
I sigh.
Without the mirror, the room’s fairly empty. They’ve left some sports drinks and energy bars out for the competitors, but I don’t feel much like eating. Still, I take a Gatorade and gulp down the bottle, indulging in the taste of liquidized plastic. Soon all that remains is the Gatorade, which still retains the shape of what had been its container.
Another heavy sigh. Not much to do now but wait for the call.
Anxiety turns to terror as time creeps by. I try to force my attention on the battle outside, on the sound of clashing metal and rustling bushes, but distracting myself from the situation at hand only seems to intensify my fears. Especially when I’m listening to Coach Boomer’s commentary blaring in the background. Horrible images form in my mind as I hear things like “Taking risks, aren’t we?”, “Ha ha! I thought he had it there!” and “That’s go’nna cost ‘em some time in Nurse Spex’s office!”
I’ve seen people get hurt in this game. Like, hospitalized hurt. Rumor has it one boy was even paralyzed once. Save the Citizen is not a game you take lightly. Especially not during the tournaments.
A muffled knock on the wall makes me jump. “Discord, you there?” someone hisses from the other side. It’s Emma Tate, the girl who’s assigned to be my partner.
I press my ear to the wall. “Yeah, I’m here.”
“Good. Step back for a second.” The wall opens up and Emma emerges, smiling.
“Emma, you shouldn’t be here.”
She laughs. “Please. It’s not like you’re naked or anything.”
“I could’ve been.”
“Right. As if you didn’t have enough time to put on shoulder pads and a breast plate. I swear Discord, it doesn’t even take girls that long to get dressed.” Her eyes widen when she looks around the room. “What happened here? It looks like a typhoon swept through.”
“I was practicing. I tried to control my powers and it didn’t work.”
“Oh.” She understands. I’m not the only one who has powers they can’t control. But that doesn’t make me any less frustrated.
“So what are you doing here?”
“You know perfectly well that on the other side of the gym Warren and Will are planning a strategy to defeat us. You don’t think it’s fair if we had a little bit of time to prepare ourselves?”
“Not when we’re breaking school rules to do it. You’re not allowed in the boy’s locker room!”
She waves her hand dismissively. “Please. We’re the villains. And in a real battle, the villains would have the most time to prepare.”
“I’m no villain,” I say through gritted teeth.
Emma looks over me sympathetically, taking care to avoid eye contact. “I’m sorry. That’s not what I meant.”
Of course it’s not, I want to say, but don’t. It would come off as sarcastic and snarky, and we’re supposed to be a team. So I shrug it off instead. “Don’t worry about it. I get that a lot.” Still, I take several deep breaths before I continue. “So how did you get in here anyway?”
“Wally Gable.” Emma smiles at me as though this is supposed to mean something. “You know: the guy who can walk through walls?”
“Oh. Right.” I didn’t know there was someone in the school who could do that, but it doesn’t surprise me either. If you looked hard enough, you could probably find someone here that could do just about anything. Take Emma, for example.
Emma’s a copycat. She has no superpowers of her own, but she can literally imitate the powers of the last person she sees. They don’t even have to show her their powers; she just has to make eye contact with them. That’s probably why Emma’s avoiding eye contact with me right now. Because if she did, she would get my powers and lose Wally’s, and she’ll need those to get back to the girl’s locker room before anyone found out she was in the boy’s.
“So what’s the plan?” I finally say.
“You tell me. You’re the strategist.”
“Well . . .” I have to think about this. Save the Citizen is a fairly simple game, but there’s still lots of strategy involved. Four students, called competitors, are divided into two teams, heroes and villains. Over the course of several minutes, the heroes will try to immobilize their opponents and rescue a plastic dummy that has been suspended over some sort of death machine. As the villains, it will be Emma’s and my job to stop them. “. . . If I were Will, I would fly up and save the citizen before the game really begins. It’s less climatic that way but, for their team, it’s also a lot less dangerous. Will won’t want to risk giving you his powers.”
“So you want me to take Will’s powers and guard the citizen?”
“Exactly. Don’t worry about Warren. I’ll take care of him.”
“But what if Will doesn’t let me make eye contact with him?”
“Get it. And if all else fails, find someone else who can fly in the crowd. I know Skye West and Ariel Kurtaneck are both experienced fliers. You can use their powers.”
“And what are you going to do?”
I smile. “Win.” I wave my hand, and a chessboard inadvertently materializes on the bench. All the pieces are sitting in their starting positions, as if they’re waiting for a game. “Chess?”
“Huh?”
“Chess,” I repeat. “You know how to play, don’t you? It doesn’t look like they’re going to be ready for us anytime soon, so why don’t we have a quick game?”
She stares at me blankly. “Fine,” she finally says.
My smile deepens. I knew she was going to say that. That’s the problem with Emma – she’s too predictable. Right now, she’s trying to make up for offending me. Referring to me as a strategist, agreeing to play a game of chess are all part of a bigger plan – one to unite us as a team before the real game begins.
Not that I don’t respect that. I’d much rather have a teammate with a plan, even a plan that goes against my own, than an idiot who acts randomly.
Emma and I take our places on opposite ends of the chessboard. “I’ll go first,” she says, sliding a white pawn up two spaces.
The first few turns are made in silence. The board changes as pieces are moved in and out of formation. I let Emma take several of my pieces, and she, in turn, loses many of hers. The game continues. I sacrifice a pawn for a pawn. Emma advances with a rook. I take control of the back corners. Emma is forced to fall back. I push my queen up several spaces.
“Why would you do that?” she asks, taking my queen with a bishop.
“Because sometimes, you have to lose the battle to win the war.” I advance with my knight, and she takes it with a pawn.
“Is that what you do? Make sacrifices until you win?”
I move a rook over three spaces, practically slamming it against the board. “I’m not a bad guy!” I must have a wild look in my eyes, but there’s no way Emma could know that. She’s still avoiding eye contact. “Checkmate.” I stand, pushing the board away.
Emma sighs. “That’s not what I meant. I’m just saying that there are other ways to win without making such drastic sacrifices.”
“Are there?”
She doesn’t answer.
“Do you want to know something? I’m one of the greatest strategists this school has ever seen. Mr. Medulla has put me against some of the simulations that are only intended for seniors. I’ve beaten the Alpha Simulation, the Sapphire Simulation, and the Quarantine Simulation. I can manipulate situations when I have all the variables; I can see things coming that others just can’t.”
She smiles at me and shrugs. “You’re the best.”
“Not if I lose.”
“We’re just children. Children are allowed to lose.”
“We’re not children. None of us here are children. Children should be running around, shooting basketballs, playing videogames, and… I don’t know. I don’t know what childhood looks like, but this is sure as hell not it.”
Emma furrowed her brow. Eventually she shrugged.
“Why did you come here?”
“What? The fact that I wanted to prepare a strategy isn’t enough for you?”
“Not if it’s a lie. I can’t very well coach this team if my teammate’s feeding me lies.”
She purses her lips. “I don’t like being alone,” she says simply. “Why did you sacrifice your queen?”
“I had to lose the battle to win the war.”
“I don’t believe that you believe this is war.”
“I don’t care what you believe.”
“Then you wouldn’t care that I lied.”
She has a point. But I don’t tell her that. “Only one person has ever won Save the Citizen as a freshman,” I say instead. “Ever. In the history of Sky High. That person’s name: Will Stronghold.”
“So?”
“So how can I win? I’m literally playing my first game against the only person who has ever won their first game. And now he’s a junior. And now he can fly. And I don’t even know how to control my powers.” We fall back into silence. “They’ve stacked the odds against me, you know.”
Her expression melts. “Discord, that’s ridiculous.”
“Is it? I’m a freshman, Emma, a freshman. This is my first game of Save the Citizen ever. And it’s during a tournament. If we win, we won’t go back to the stands. We’ll have to play again, and again, and again. And we’re playing our first round against Will Stronghold and Warren Peace, arguably the greatest team ever to walk the halls of Sky High.”
“You know all this is random.”
“Bull. Boomer’s not drawing names from a hat. He has no random name generator. He’s choosing.” She can’t really be that naive, can she?
“Okay.” The sympathy falls from her voice. “Let’s say you’re right, and Coach Boomer’s stacking the odds against you. Why would he put us together? Why wouldn’t he pair you with someone who’s, for all intents and purposes, useless, like... I don’t know, someone who could blow bubbles out their ears?”
“You don’t understand your powers any more than I understand mine. At least a bubble blower has control.”
“We can do anything,” she says.
“You can do anything,” I correct. “I can just get angry and hope something good happens.”
“Discord, you’re being ridiculous. If Coach Boomer really was stacking the odds against you he would’ve made you a . . .”
I raise an eyebrow.
“. . . a hero.”
I look at the ground. My eyes lock on my reflection, rippling in the water. “They’ll be calling us any minute now. You should get going.”
She must have felt pretty bad for me, because she doesn’t press further. The wall opens up, and she starts to head back to the girl’s locker room.
“Oh, and Emma?” I’m rolling the white queen gently between my fingertips. When she turns around, I toss it to her. “Don’t screw up.”
