Professor Why's Academy for Extraordinary Youngsters

Heroics 105: Modern art

                I've been on a lot of cruise ships. Typically, they're laid out in a pretty easy to understand way. The attractions are towards the top, the rooms are towards the bottom in descending order of expensiveness. It makes sense. I did not know this fact, but I had seen Titanic. When they heard a thud, the first thing to take on water was the bottom decks. Naturally, I assumed the villains were attempting to sink the boat, so me, Situ, and Summer all headed down after a great deal of persistence on my part to find nothing. Not even an engine room with coal fired stoves and hard-working musclebound sailors to aid our cause.

What is even the point of a lower deck if you can't recruit the swarthy engineers to punch villains? What I was left with was an empty portion of the ship that we were effectively hiding in during a hostage situation. We didn't know how many villains were on the ship, what their motives were, or what they were capable of, so operation Die Hard was off to a bit of a rocky start.

"There are three of them on the ship." Summer said.

"How on earth do you know that?" Situ asked.

"I sensed the electricity in their brains. Three people boarded since we arrived." Summer stated.

"Screw you." Situ replied.

"Do you want to know about their muscle-"

"Nope." Situ said.

"This could be useful information and I think-" I started.

"Please... just let me contribute." Situ said. I could hear a slight waver in her voice. This was very important to her, and even though the situation was probably life or death, I didn't want to bring it up again for fear of permanently crushing Situ's will to live.

"Agirlandtwoboys" Summer said as quickly and silently as she could.

"...Cool." Situ said, staring at her feet. "So you can tell that how?"

"The differences in size and muscle distributed across the body." Summer said. "Electricity moves the muscles, so I can sort of map out a person's physique."

"...And what gender do I look like from a distance?" Situ asked, still not looking up.

"Are you sure you want to know?" Summer responded.

"Yeah."

"You're a girl but you have more muscle than Flare." Summer said.

"YES! IN YOUR STUPID GINGER FACE YOU- My good friend Flare."

Situ's celebration was very real, and I felt very emasculated. At least we both had intel and 3 somewhat useful fighters. Maybe I'd just sit in the back and watch the girls fight the bad guys. You know... manly stuff.

We knew their number and gender, but we had no clue what they were capable of except that one guy made the ship go "boom". Therefore, this guy or girl who would from henceforth on be known as "the fantastic boom-boom" was our biggest threat. Summer and I had been gifted awesome powers of fire and electricity, that famously were not good at dealing with the more... volatile elements in the periodic table. If this guy was peeing gasoline or something, we could doom the ship, so our first goal was to find the Fantastic Boom-Boom and either silently take them out, or have Situ somehow take them on.

"I think we need to have a very important conversation about combat." I whispered as we snuck through the halls.

"You do not get the finishing blow on every enemy because you're "on fiiiyah"." Situ replied.