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The Next Best Hero- Part 4
🕑 Added 2022-07-04 18:00:05 +0000 UTCWe thanked Mr. Harocia for talking to us, and I thanked him for the lunch, then we left to go back to school.
After we got back to school, there was only a single period left before the end of the day, so we spent it talking about what our favorite parts of the museum were, and what we learned. “Alright class,” our teacher at the front of the classroom announced, “next Friday is the due date for your papers, and don’t forget to study for the upcoming test. I hope everyone took good notes, or at least knows someone who did.” The teacher chuckled and a few of the other students smiled a bit too. “The papers need to be in MLA format and at least two pages, not including Works Cited pages. If you have any questions, feel free to ask.”
One of the students raised her hand and was called on. “Um, can our papers be about anything from the museum, or only the Hero’s section?” The museum itself was dedicated to the Hero’s, but there was a small section about the more notable villains.
“While your papers can mention anything from the museum, its primary focus should be the heroes. That being said, you can use the topic of hero/villain relationships. Such as the bitter rivalry between Volta Mayas and the Hero Iconadon.” The student who raised her hand nodded her head and wrote something into her notebook. “Any other questions?”
I raised my hand and was called upon. “Is there a word count?”
“No, just make it around two pages, but no more than three.” The teacher answered. The teacher asked again if there were any more questions, but no one raised their hands, so we spent the rest of the class comparing notes with each other. Kevin and I got together to go over what we knew.
“You got those notes?” I asked sitting in the seat next to him.
“Yup, right here.” He said and pulled out some sheets of paper from his backpack. He handed them to me to look over. My heart sank when I saw them. The notes he took were mostly indecipherable chicken scratch, and what was legible was comprised of half completed thoughts and fragment sentences that made not sense.
“What’s this?” I asked, confused.
“It’s the notes.” He said.
“What does it say?” I asked passing it back to him, and hoping he could translate them for me.
He stared at the page for a second, “Uh, okay this part says that Fortis was the leader of the Three Cardinals.” He said, pointing to one of the hieroglyphics that he insisted were words.
“What about this one?” I asked, pointing out one of the fragments. “What is this talking about? I think it says something about the Shadows Legion?”
“Oh yeah, that was when the guide started talking about these crazy ninja groups that tried to overthrow China a few years back, and the Cardinals had to intervene.” He explained.
“Great,” I said pulling out a notebook and getting ready to take notes. “So, what happened?”
“I uh, I don’t really remember.” Kevin said. “My paper is going to be about their first battle, when they teamed up, so I didn’t think to write much down about the other stuff.”
“Dude…” I said upset.
“Sorry, but you can just do your paper on that too.” He suggested.
“Nah, I don’t want him to think we just copied off each other or something. Besides, I wanted to do mine on the original hero, and Novus Donum.” I told him. I copied what noted he did have about him, after he translated them for me, and then let him copy what I had. After that, I asked a few others for notes too. All in all, I was fairly confident in one thing… I did not have enough notes to write a whole paper on.
“I’m doomed.” I told Kevin as I sat back down. “Almost no one had any notes about him.”
“Well, to be fair, not much is actually known about him anymore.” Kevin said.
“What am I going to do?”
“Just change your topic.” Kevin said.
“We can’t, remember. We had to submit the topics of our papers yesterday.”
“Well, just ask Mr. Braddock if you can change.”
“I guess…” I said thinking. Eventually, class was dismissed, and I asked Mr. Braddock about switching topics.
“You can switch if you want, but since you missed so much of the tour, you might be intitled to go get another one for free.” He suggested.
“Really?” I asked. “They’d just give me another tour?”
“Yeah, just bring your Hero’s License to prove you were one of the Heroes who responded yesterday. You may need to bring the incident report to, if you have it.” He said.
“Okay, and what if they won’t let me retake the tour?”
“If they won’t, then just tell me and I can submit a complaint on your behalf to the school board. They can get reimbursed from the Hero’s Association and we can pay for you to take the tour again.” I thanked Mr. Braddock, and left school. The flight home was quiet without Kevin. Normally, we would go together, we live in the same neighborhood, but he was supposed to meet his mom after school at her office. So, I flew home alone. It was much faster without him though, because I didn’t have to wait for him to make his way around things too tall for him to jump over. I just flew up and over as fast as I could, and was home in just a few minutes. I live about ten miles away from school, just on the outskirts of town, but it only took me about three minutes to get there today; normally it takes me and Kevin an hour. I offered to carry him once, but he is afraid of going that fast and got sick; he hasn’t let me fly him anywhere since.
“I’m home!” I announced as I walked into my house and put my backpack down on the table.
“Marcel?” My mom called out. She poked her head out from over the couch.
“Yeah,” I answered. I walked into the living room and plopped down on my dad’s old recliner.
“Oh, you’re home early.” She said.
“Yeah, Kevin had to go meet his mom at her work, so I just flew home.”
“Oh, okay. How was the museum?” She asked closing her laptop. She was on it a lot, ever since she started working from home last year.
“I missed most of the tour. A villain attacked and I got called on to go out and protect the people in the street with a few other heroes.” I said.
“Are you okay?” She asked worried. Mom hated the idea of me becoming a hero, and fought me tooth and nail over it, and she has been worried about me ever since.
“Yeah, I’m fine, and nobody got hurt thankfully. Man, that guy was huge. He tossed a car like it was nothing and it nearly hit this old guy in the street.” I told her.
“Oh no no no. You know good and well I don’t want to hear that kind of stuff.” She said shaking her head. “Tell me about school instead.”
“Well, the paper on the museum is due next Friday, but because of that villain, I missed most of the tour, like I said. So, my teacher suggested I go retake the tour, and that the school would pay for it if they didn’t let me do it for free.”
“Well, that’s good. I’m sorry you missed the tour. I know how much you were looking forward to it.” Mom said.
“It’s no big deal. I’ll just go take it again over the weekend. I should have plenty of time.”
“Okay. Do you have any homework?” Mom asked.
“Nah, not today. I’m just gunna go play some video games and try to relax.” I said and stood up to go to my room.
“Alright then.” Mom said and opened her laptop to get back to work. I played games for a while, until I got hungry. Dad wasn’t going to be home till late tonight, so Mom and I decided to get pizza instead. She called it in, and I went go pick it up. I had a bit of time, so I stopped at an HA office (Hero’s Association) to fill out an incident report on the villain attack earlier. I landed outside, but before I could go in, I heard someone yelling.
“HELP!”
