King Of Bad [Super Villian Academy Book 1] (8 page)

Adrenaline and embarrassment gave him more spring
than he expected and he flew over the top of the wall with his arms and legs
flailing. He tried to tuck into a roll as he approached the ground, but didn’t
tuck enough and landed on his back with a loud “
ooof
”
as the air was pushed from his lungs. The chorus of laughter didn’t help.

“Stop lazing around, kid. Get up and do the last
wall,” Coach barked.

Jeff saw that all the kids had clustered around the
third wall.

“Coach, you know, jumping really isn’t my thing,”
Jeff said.

Coach just nodded toward the wall.

Jeff looked at Source who gave him a sympathetic
look, but shrugged.

“Ah, shit,” Jeff mumbled and set up for a running
start at the next wall.

He rocked back and forth a few times to get some momentum
going, and then burst forward. Just before the wall, he sprung upward. He hit
the wall over half way up it, tried to use it to propel
himself
higher, but ended up scrambling and scraping as he fell back to the ground.

“Guess we won’t be calling him anything like ‘Jump’
or ‘Summit’,” Bake scoffed. Everyone laughed.

Jeff tried a couple more times to get over the wall before
Coach finally let him off the hook, but the jeers from the kids let Jeff know
he would never live his failure down.

Coach shrugged. “Maybe with training you’ll eventually
get over that.”

By the end of class, Jeff again realized he was no
super star. If he had a tail, he’d tuck it between his legs. Instead he went to
his last abilities class of the day, nameless.

“They aren’t calling you anything yet, huh?” the
Psych teacher, Sedated, said to Jeff as she directed him to a seat. Jeff knew
his nameless status had just been bothering him moments ago, but suddenly
didn’t care one lick. He shook his head and grinned at the pretty teacher.

“I like your black hair. It’s shiny.”

A few kids giggled, but Jeff grinned at the teacher
like a hyena.

Sedated’s
lip curled. “Who
recruited you?”

“Pyro.”
Jeff stared out the
window at a sweet little sparrow hopping along a tree branch. “It’s so cute.”

The kids erupted into laughter.

Sedated rolled her eyes at Jeff. “You’ve got no defense.
Are you sure you’re an S.V.? Pyro doesn’t really recruit; maybe she got it
wrong.”

Jeff held up his palm. His fingers were red and throbbing.
A loony laugh escaped him. “I’ve got fire.”

Sedated shoved a helmet onto his head and the world
snapped back into focus around Jeff. He blinked at his throbbing fingers. “Why
is my fire on?”

Sedated knocked on
the metal helmet he wore.
“Lead.
You’re
gonna
need to keep this with you, especially in this
class.”

Source leaned sideways from a seat next to Jeff.
“This is a psych class. Since you apparently have no defense, lead is the only
thing that will block psychic abilities from working on you. Sedated had you
all numbed up, that’s why your fire was on. You were trying to prove you’re an
S.V.”

Jeff sighed. No star here either. He needed to accept
that just like at regular school, here at S.V.A. he was bottom of the class.

Chapter 11

At dinner that night Source sat with Jeff, though he
proved to be little help in the defensive arena.

“Hey Boy-oh, a bit weak in the abilities, aren’t
you?”

“What do they call you?
Oh yeah,
nothing
!”

“Did you know the last S.V. to not be named on their
first day was back in
never
!”

Jeff tried his best to ignore the taunts. The food he
chewed tasted like sawdust. His throat was so dry he choked when he tried
swallowing it. He made pointless conversation with Source, but didn’t listen to
anything Source said in response. He hummed quietly to himself. But nothing distracted
him completely. Especially when Shake and Bake sauntered by.

“Careful, Source, you might get burned by fire-boy,”
Bake said.

Shake snorted. “More like blistered.
Maybe just singed.
Don’t think he has much more than that in
him.”

The fork Jeff held melted onto his food as his
fingers ignited. His temper flared out of control and he was helpless to rein
it in. Jeff stood so fast his chair tumbled backward. Flame licked from his
fingers toward Shake and Bake. Embers showered onto
Bake’s
tennis shoes melting through the rubber toes. Bake danced around, trying to
stomp on his own feet.

Water doused Jeff. His fire sizzled out and he stood
dripping onto the charred remains of his dinner. His senses back to normal, he
found the girl he’d seen playing with water the first evening he visited the
academy.

“Thanks,” he said.

She raised an eyebrow. “Why would you thank me?”

“For putting me out.
I was a
bit out of control.
Would have torched the place.”

“Some of us deserve it.” She looked pointedly at
Shake and Bake. Despite all the water that had fallen around him, Bake still
stomped on his own toes while he glared at Jeff.

Jeff looked back at the water girl.

“Control is a beautiful thing, flame boy.”

Jeff grinned at her.

“You’re
gonna
need a new
meal,” she said as she walked away.

Jeff watched her until she sat with a group at the
far end of the room. When he realized he was gawking he grabbed his warped and
buckled tray of soggy, charred food and headed toward the trashcans. Source
walked beside him, carrying his own water-logged food. Half of his tray had
been warped by heat. Jeff frowned at it as Source tossed it into the trash.

“Dude, I really lost control. I didn’t hurt you, did
I?” Jeff gnawed on the inside of his cheek.

“Nah, I stepped away once you pulled your incredible
hulk act,” Source said.

They got in line for more food.

“What do you mean?” Jeff asked.

“Well, you didn’t turn green or anything, but I think
you might have bulked up. You looked pretty scary, dude.”

Jeff looked down at his clothes to make sure they
weren’t torn and tattered from him having grown in size. They were damp, but
fine. He took a deep, calming breath. Only then did he remember his ice. He
shook his head at himself.

Then he saw the water girl across the room, laughing
with her friends. He thought he heard the bubbly quality of her laughter above
the rest of the room. “Source, who is she?”

Source followed Jeff’s line of vision. “Oh, that’s
Oceanus. Don’t even think it, kid. She’s already found a match.”

“What do you mean?”

“See the guy next to her?”

“The skinny red head?”
Jeff
hoped.

“No, the other one.”

“Oh, the Adonis?”
Jeff’s
heart fell. He’d no hope to thwart the god-like S.V. seated next to Oceanus.

“Not far off. People call him Set.
The
God of chaos, storm, wind.
He’s a great guy.” Sarcasm wrapped around
Source’s words. “Descended from a long line of S.V.’s Known he’s an S.V. his
whole life so came to the school ready to rule from what I hear.
Real nasty character, even for an S.V.
You don’t want to
piss him off.”

“Oh, I won’t piss him off. I don’t go looking for trouble.”
Jeff considered his life before the academy and realized that looking for
trouble was the only thing he used to do. He amended his statement, saying, “Much.”

His stomach knotted. Had the academy turned him into
a coward?

Source chuckled.
“Don’t worry. You’ll get a name and things will settle into some sort of
normal. Once we figure out what your root ability is, I’ll help you develop it.
Though, after your hulk impersonation, I doubt anyone will dare taunt you.”

Jeff felt the anxiety lift. Source was okay for a bad
guy.

* * * *

After a morning of enduring taunts and whispers, Jeff
arrived at Sherlock’s abilities class the next afternoon determined to earn a
name. Sherlock had new props out and stepped through the same process with Jeff
to uncover
a root
ability. Halfway through class, Jeff
felt desperation setting in. It became more and more difficult to concentrate
on the instructions Sherlock gave. Even the other kids seemed to have a hard
time keeping their attention on what they were doing. Jeff found them watching
him whenever he opened his eyes from “imagining” something new.

As the clock ticked away the minutes of class time,
Sherlock’s voice crept up an octave and he issued desperate, rushed
instructions.

“It seems to me your fire should be your root
ability,” Sherlock said. “But whenever you employ it, it isn’t tapping your
core energy like it should.”

They stood next to the levitation table.

“Here, catch this on fire.” Sherlock thrust a feather
at Jeff.

“I’ve got a better idea.” Jeff walked over to the
table with the three containers of water and snatched the glass of water from
Shake’s hand.

“Hey, I’m using that!” she said.

“I’m just borrowing it,” Jeff said.

Sherlock frowned as Jeff approached with the glass.
“I understand that manners aren’t a big thing here, but you can’t just snatch
things away.”

“But you only tested one ability with the water and
I’ve got two,” Jeff said.

Sherlock shook his head in confusion. “What do you
mean,
two?”

Jeff drew a deep breath that filled his lungs with
cold air. Holding the glass in front of him he blew on the surface of the
water. The glass frosted over as the top layer of water solidified.

Sherlock’s mouth hung open. “You’ve got ice, too?
Fire and ice together?”

“Though they are opposing forces,” Source said, walking
up beside them, “the elemental sources are in two different areas of the body.
So it follows logic to believe a person could generate the contrasting
abilities.”

Jeff raised an eyebrow and smirked at the
brainiac’s
explanation. He handed the glass back to Shake
who’d come over to observe his unusual combination of abilities. “Here.”

Shake grimaced at the condensation-covered glass, but
she and Bake returned to their table, the melting ice clinking against the side
as they walked.

Sherlock nodded thoughtfully. “But as far as I know,
nobody’s ever had conflicting abilities. Once he revealed fire, I automatically
ruled out anything with water. Source, where does the ability to levitate items
come from and what is the opposite of it?”

“What? I can
hover
things?”
Jeff asked.

“Oh yes,” Sherlock said, looking down at his notes.
“Along with fire and levitation, you’ve successfully manipulated element form
and you kind of made an apple shrink.”

“
Kinda
?” Jeff asked.

“Well, at first I thought it had shrunk, but after
class I realized you’d turned the core to mush so it had really only collapsed
inward.”

Jeff was stunned he’d been able to do all that
without training and with his eyes closed.

“Anyway,” Source said in answer to Sherlock’s question,
“hovering is a psychic ability. One gathers ions from the air, mentally, and
bunches them under the item they wish to hover. The more ions, the bigger the
item they can hover or the higher they can hover it.

“The opposite is gravity. That’s another elemental
ability.” Source turned to Jeff to explain. “Elementals are controlled through
your extremities, like your fire in your hands.”

Sherlock interrupted, saying
,
 
“
So, would it be logical to believe
that this kid could control gravity since he has elemental abilities?”

Source nodded. They both looked at Jeff. Jeff looked
back.

“What?”

Sherlock trembled with excitement, intimidating Jeff.
What if Jeff let him down? He had no idea what Source and Sherlock had just
explained yet they seemed to expect something big from him.

“Am I supposed to do something?” Jeff asked.

Sherlock pointed to the rock on the table.
“Using your elemental, hold that rock to the table.”

Jeff reached over and wrapped his hands around the
rock and pressed down with all his might.

“No, no, no,” Sherlock blustered. “I mean controlling
gravity through an elemental source; hold the rock to the table.”

Source suggested, “Your feet might be the best conduit
since they are on the ground and the table is on the ground.”

Jeff let go of the rock and shrugged. “I don’t get
it.”

“Feel how your feet touch the ground,” Source said.
“Lift a foot off the ground. Now, slowly put it down again and feel the force
that pulls it back toward the ground.”

“Whoa!” Jeff repeated the process a couple times.
Each time he got a better feel of the gravity that sucked him toward the center
of the earth.

Source smiled. “Good. Now, extend that force out to
the legs of the table, up to the table top and finally concentrate it around
the rock.”

About half way across the table the force had
scattered apart. “Wait, I lost it.” He started again, concentrating his energy
toward pooling the gravitational force and moving it where he wanted. Finally
he felt a lock on the rock. He looked at Sherlock and nodded.

Sherlock turned to the group. All the kids had abandoned
their own work and gathered around to watch. “Hogan, lift that rock.”

The burliest kid of the group stomped over to the table.
He grabbed the rock and pulled. The table lifted with the rock, surprising
everybody. The feather floated away and the 5-gallon bucket of paint crashed to
the ground and spilled a yellow river.