Chapter 18
Finally, back into the swing of school, it wasn’t long before trouble erupted on the streets. I was out everyday fighting whatever supervillain or monster decided today was the day they would conquer New York. More often that not, I would only go save the day with just Clint. Occasionally we ran across other Avengers and some of my teammates. During the first week back, I missed all my math classes. Normally I wouldn’t have complained but we had just started calculus and I wanted to be sure I could past the test on it. I also missed a few Spanish lessons, so I had decided to ask Alyssa if she wanted to meet up some time and study Spanish with me. Mrs Abernathy must have noticed my dropping attendance rate. She called me into her office during my first study period on Friday. I would have been fine with being left alone – I had really planned to study for an upcoming French test – but I understood why she did it. I steeled myself as I knocked on Mrs Abernathy’s door.
“Come in,” I opened the door to the office. Mrs Abernathy was working at her desk as usual.
“Hey Mrs Abernathy,” I said, making my way to the couch.
“Good morning Abigail, how are you?” I sat down on the couch and took off my school bag.
“I’m tired to be honest. How are you Mrs Abernathy?”
“I’m good. You wouldn’t happen to be tired because of all the… extracurriculars you have been doing lately?”
“A little bit. Mind you it’s all been local so it’s not like I’ve been missing every period of school for the last week,” I saw Mrs Abernathy smile when she realised I knew why she had called me in.
“I do realise that I cannot stop you from going out and helping, I’m just making sure that you understand that I want to ensure that you are not setting yourself up to lose. We’re only a month away from the end of the year and I really don’t want to see you lose all the opportunities you can go for as a senior,” Mrs Abernathy said, “Abigail, you’re a smart girl who has a great responsibility to keep. I’m just making sure you’re okay. You said that you were tired and that your job was only part of it, could you elaborate on what else is making you tired?” Knowing that Mrs Abernathy had become a full on shrink, I allowed myself to open up.
“I guess after being Slingshot, being on the homecoming ball committee is also weighing me down a bit. I wasn’t even the one who signed myself up for it and yet somehow, I’ve gotten to be in charge of most of it. There’s not an hour that goes by that I’m not receiving any message from the committee group chat. I know that if I leave the committee now everything will go wrong and I don’t want the blame to come with me. Besides, I doubt I’d be able to. Commitment is one of the biggest values that I was taught. When you say you’ll do something, you stick with it until the end of the project. So, I won’t leave. And while the homecoming dance is putting a lot of pressure onto me, the thing that keeps me up is Hamilton,”
“The guy who’s running for mayor, the one who organised the apartment collapse,”
“That’s the one,”
“Why is he keeping you up?”
“I decided that as part of our mission my team and I would go to Hamilton’s announcement of his campaign. Let’s just say that my team made an impression on him, me specifically. Originally, we were just going to have a private chat together because apparently, I could teach him a lot. He called Clint last week after my last final to ask if I was okay with doing it on live television. I agreed to it. I had to. He sent a bunch of questions over for me to mull over so I’d be a little bit prepared for the interview. All those questions have been keeping up. I don’t want to say the wrong thing and give away what I know about him nor do I want to reveal who I am. And the pressure of not messing up what I’m saying. There’s so much that could go wrong,” I ran my hand through my hair, “Why did I say yes? I was so stupid,”
“You’re not stupid, you made the decision to be Slingshot. And you made the decision to go on live television. Maybe you should take a break from heroing for the next couple of days and let your mind relax. You’ll be able to think through what you want to say. Take a break from your homework as well,”
“Are you telling me to not do my homework? Because I’m pretty sure my GPA will drop if I don’t,”
“I’ll let your teachers know that you’ve been exempt from homework for the next two days,” Mrs Abernathy’s phone rang, “Excuse me Abigail, I better take this,” I let my mind wonder as Mrs Abernathy talked to the person on the other end of the room. I was aware that Mrs Abernathy was going to have someone come visit her shortly, but rather than listening into the conversation I took immense interest in one of the posters on Mrs Abernathy’s wall.
“Abigail,” Being directly spoken to pulled me back to reality.
“Yes?”
“I’m going to have someone come visit me shortly, I’m going to have to ask you to leave now. We can pick up this conversation later if you want,”
“Nah, I’m good Mrs Abernathy. I’ll try to relax,” I gathered up my belongings and got off the couch, “Have a nice day,”
“You too,” Walking out of Mrs Abernathy’s office I took a right to go towards my study class. I had only been away from school life for close to ten minutes meaning I had plenty of time to continue doing study for Spanish. As I left the administration area of the school I quite literally ran into Alyssa. She was obviously quite spooked by our accidental collision.
“Hey Alyssa,” I smiled at my friend. She didn’t return the smile.
“Hello Abigail,” She mumbled.
“Did you get my message, about meeting up for a Spanish study session?” Alyssa nodded, “Just let me know when you’re available and we’ll go to the same café as last time,” Alyssa nodded again before moving on.
I was in fourth period French when my implant started vibrating. Even though I’d been told by my councillor to not do any heroing, I still had a duty to check it out. I excused myself to Madame Lyons and went to the bathroom. Stassia gave me a knowing look. Since we’d become friends, the silent agreement was to take the others belongings should the classes change while one was out heroing. I smiled at my friend and left the French classroom. I made my way down the hallway to the nearest bathroom. Luckily for me, it was only a few doors down. I locked myself in one of the cubicles and touched my implant. My glasses formed over my eyes and immediately connected to Hawkeye.
“You better be on your way,” Hawkeye said, “I don’t think we’ll be able to hold onto this guy much longer without back up,”
“I’ll be right there, I’ll grab Fe on the way,” I said, knowing I wouldn’t be able to keep to Mrs Abernathy’s instructions, “Where are you guys?”
“Sending you the coordinates now,” Hawkeye said, “Hurry,” The connection ended, and I touched my implant to remove the glasses. I took out my phone and sent a quick text to Stassia telling her to get the both of us out of class. I waited in the bathroom for her reply. I didn’t have to wait long. Stassia replied that she’d meet me at the side entrance of the school in a few minutes. Knowing she would keep her word, I left the bathroom and headed towards the side entrance. Stassia soon caught up with me and handed me my backpack.
“How did you get us out of class?” I asked.
“Hacked the schools PA system to send a message to only the French Room. We’re meant to be going to the front office, but the front office isn’t expecting us to turn up,” Stassia replied.
“How did I ever do any type of heroing during class time without you?”
“You made unrealistic excuses of course,” Stassia shrugged as I opened the side door for us. We followed the path to a small hideaway to change from civilian gear to hero suits. Unlike me, Stassia’s hero suit was made with the latest Nano technology from Stark Industries. Her suit was able to condense into two simple bracelets that she wore on both wrists.
“You should think about upgrading to Nano tech,” Stassia said, noticing me pull out my suit from my bag.
“I’ve been thinking about using something similar to my implant,” I replied, “But Nano tech is probably a better idea,”
“You have an implant?” Stassia asked. I nodded before touching it. My glasses formed instantly.
“I developed it myself from some alien tech SHIELD found during my time with them,” I explained, “I may not be an engineer like you, but I can still make stuff,”
The villain of the day was a guy claiming to be some sort of Mole Man. From the looks on the Avengers’ faces, this Mole Man should have been an easy fight that didn’t require the assistance of my team. Ligero, Spider Man and Gecko had shown up fifteen minutes after Fe and I had. Red Bolt had joined in five minutes after that. Amongst the chaos, a superpowered robbery was going down. Knowing that someone had to stop the robbers, Captain America sent Ligero, Fe and myself to handle them. This gave Fe and me a well needed break from the main fight and let Ligero step back for a bit. Captain America had noticed during our training session at HQ that Ligero often found herself getting overwhelmed by her powers if she wasn’t conscious of what she was doing. Fe and I should have told her to take a break from fighting all together. Ligero looked exhausted but insisted that she was okay to help us. Staying close to the footpaths, the three of us made our way to one of the banks in Queens. Cap hadn’t been clear on which bank we were meant to go to, but thankfully there were enough civilians running away from the crime that we quickly found it. The bank robbers we faced were the stereotypical bank robbers you saw in films and on TV; black ski masks with matching black clothes and gloves. There were three off them. Without a closer look when I wasn’t fighting the robbers, I couldn’t really tell any obvious things about them. Having been trained to deal with small disturbances such as bank robberies, Fe, Ligero and I started the fight. Noticing that they were under attack, the robbers pulled out their weapons. A small part of my brain saw the similarities between the guns my bank robbers had and the guns and other weapons that the Vulture and his crew had made. Realising this wasn’t going to be an ordinary fight, I focused on my bank robber. I probably shouldn’t have. Within minutes, I’d taken down my bank robber and looked over to Fe and Ligero. Fe had pinned hers to the grounded and was currently making restraints. Ligero was the opposite way around. I watched as the third robber pulled up his ski mask above his mouth and whisper something into her ear. I was helpless to do anything as Ligero screamed. Her scream sent a shockwave of telekinetic energy out from her. Fe was hit first. She was thrown to the ground. Because I was distracted, my robber took an opportunity to push me off themselves. The push happened the same time the shock wave hit me. The added force of the shockwave threw me against the brick wall of the bank.
The last thing I remember about that day was being carried in someone’s arms, my right wrist throbbing and a ringing in my ears.