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The teacher who walked into Class Eleven for the next period took one look at Dex Harmon's crew scattered across the floor, groaning and clutching various body parts, and made a professional assessment.
You picked a fight with THAT kid.
The one who jumped off a building and dusted himself off.
What exactly did you expect?
She stepped over the nearest casualty, walked to the podium, and began the lesson as if the floor wasn't decorated with beaten teenagers.
Seeing the teacher completely ignore them, the bullies eventually realized that sympathy wasn't coming. One by one, they peeled themselves off the floor and slunk back to their seats, nursing bruised egos and various contusions.
In the back row, Dex Harmon was thinking.
Not about revenge. About something he'd noticed. Two consecutive teachers had treated the new transfer student with a deference that didn't match his supposed status. Langley had ignored a uniform violation he'd have punished anyone else for. This teacher had walked past a pile of beaten students without batting an eye.
Did I misjudge this kid? Does he have some kind of background I don't know about?
The question hung in Dex's mind as the period continued.
-----
Forty minutes later, the lunch bell was approaching. Students were already mentally checked out, bags half-packed, legs tensed for the cafeteria sprint.
Then footsteps echoed from the hallway, and the classroom went rigid.
The door opened. Vice Principal Song entered first, followed by four men in suits whose bearing screamed "government official" so loudly it was practically audible.
"Students, these gentlemen are leaders from the neighboring city's Education Bureau, here to conduct a research visit at our school. Let's give them a warm welcome!"
Song led the applause. The class followed with the mechanical enthusiasm of students who'd endured this exact performance six times in the last week. Visiting officials had become a daily occurrence since Frank Holloway's connection to Ethan Mercer had made Ninth Middle School the most politically interesting educational institution in the Republic.
The officials, hearing the applause, raised their chins and basked in the attention with the particular satisfaction of mid-level bureaucrats who didn't receive enough of it in their daily lives.
About a minute in, the lead official raised his hand to signal the applause should stop. His peripheral vision swept the room, checking that every face was directed appropriately upward.
One wasn't.
In the third row, a student had his head down, writing furiously on scratch paper, apparently oblivious to the visitors' existence.
Not wearing the uniform, either.
The official's expression curdled.
"Vice Principal Song, what is this? A prestigious institution like Ninth Middle School has a student who can't even be bothered to wear the uniform?"
His colleagues piled on, the way officials do when they sense an opportunity to assert authority.
"This is an embarrassment to Principal Holloway and a disgrace to our national hero, Ethan Mercer!"
"What kind of discipline are you running here?"
Vice Principal Song broke into an immediate sweat.
"My sincere apologies, leaders. This student, 'Will Yang,' is said to be a relative of Principal Holloway's wife. He just transferred today, and we haven't had time to issue a uniform yet."
The mention of a connection to Holloway cooled the officials by approximately one degree. They couldn't afford to offend Frank Holloway. Through his nephew, the man had a direct line to the highest levels of government. Mere city-level Education Bureau officials did not want to be on the wrong side of that equation.
Under normal circumstances, a quick apology from the student would have resolved it. The officials would have accepted the gesture, demonstrated their authority, and moved on.
The student did not apologize.
The student did not look up.
The student continued writing calculations on scratch paper as if four government officials were not standing at the front of his classroom specifically demanding his attention.
The lead official's face went from displeased to genuinely angry.
"Vice Principal Song! This student's character is unacceptable! No respect for authority! No sense of proper conduct! How could Ninth Middle School admit someone like this?"
Before Song could respond, the student whose calculations had been interrupted by the escalating volume finally looked up.
Ethan's expression was the specific brand of impatience that comes from a person who is working on Cybertronian manufacturing specifications and has been forced to stop by four men whose combined contribution to human knowledge wouldn't fill a napkin.
"Stop babbling. If you have something to say, say it. You're wasting everyone's lunch period."
The room stopped breathing.
"Respect for authority?" Ethan continued, his voice flat. "Are any of you qualified to teach me anything?"
Class Eleven collectively ascended to a higher plane of existence. The new kid wasn't just talking back to Education Bureau officials. He was dismissing them. In their faces. In their jurisdiction. While not wearing the uniform.
In the back row, Dex Harmon felt a cold smile form on his face.
This is perfect. The idiot is digging his own grave. The Education Bureau will have him expelled, and I won't have to lift a finger.
The lead official, who hadn't been spoken to like this since he was a junior clerk twenty years ago, abandoned all pretense of composure.
"Do you realize that with one word from me, you won't be able to attend school ANYWHERE in this province?"
Ethan looked at him. Considered the threat the way a person considers a weather forecast for a city they don't live in.
"I don't believe you."
The officials turned to Song with the synchronized fury of men whose authority had been publicly invalidated.
"Vice Principal Song, I shouldn't have to tell you how to handle a student with this kind of character. Do I?"
Song was trapped. If this were any other student, expulsion would be straightforward. But this student had been enrolled by Frank Holloway personally. Acting against him could end Song's career.
Not acting could also end Song's career, because the four men staring at him controlled the Education Bureau of the neighboring city and had enough political connections to make his life unpleasant in dozens of ways.
Song opened his mouth, preparing to deliver the compromise solution of temporarily removing the student from the classroom—
"Hahaha! Old Holloway, you really are something!"
A voice from the hallway. Loud. Familiar to exactly one person in the room, and terrifying to everyone else based purely on the company it kept.
"Forcing our national treasure to attend high school — nobody else in this country would have the nerve!"
Frank Holloway's voice came next, closer, with the dry amusement of a man who'd been dealing with his nephew's chaos for thirteen years and had stopped being surprised.
"Director Graves, please. National treasure? Giant pandas are more precious than that troublemaker."
"That's not fair, Old Holloway. The kid stirs up trouble, I'll grant you that. But in terms of contributions to this Republic, he doesn't lose to anyone alive."
The officials in the classroom heard the conversation and turned toward the door.
Then their legs nearly gave out.
They recognized Frank Holloway — the principal whose nephew had made this school famous. But the man walking beside him, the one Holloway was bantering with as an equal, was someone they'd never met but whose presence communicated everything they needed to know.
Because behind both of them, the top government official in Ashford City was following. Not walking beside. Following. With the specific posture of a subordinate who knew his place in the hierarchy and was comfortable staying there.
Whoever this man was, he outranked everyone in the building by a margin that made the Education Bureau officials' authority look like a child's play crown.
Frank entered the classroom, spotted Ethan immediately, and sighed with the weary affection of a man whose nephew was constitutionally incapable of going twelve hours without causing an incident.
"You little rascal. I just wanted you to attend school like a normal kid, and you actually managed to summon THIS one."
Ethan looked helpless.
"I had no choice, Uncle Frank. If I'd called you first, you'd have probably beaten me before listening."
He turned to Graves.
"Director Graves, a phone call to my uncle would have been enough. You didn't need to make the trip."
Graves waved it off.
"I still had business in Ashford City from yesterday. Don't worry about it."
The conversation was casual. Familiar. The easy back-and-forth of people who'd been through a crisis together and come out the other side with a bond that didn't require formality.
And then Ethan took off his hat.
-----
The face beneath the hat had been on every screen in the Republic for the last forty-eight hours.
The recognition was instantaneous.
"OH MY GOD! ETHAN MERCER!"
"Are you KIDDING me?! Professor Mercer is in OUR class?!"
"No WONDER he solved that math problem five different ways!"
"No wonder Langley ran out of his own classroom!"
"And that fight earlier — he took on TEN of them!"
"Forget ten! This is the guy who fought through the Aurelian Republic's DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE with his bare hands!"
"He dragged a HELICOPTER out of the SKY!"
"He destroyed FORTY FIGHTER JETS in ONE SECOND!"
The classroom descended into the specific variety of chaos that occurs when thirty teenagers discover that the quiet new kid who was filling their water bottles an hour ago is the most famous person in the country.
In the back row, Dex Harmon sat very still.
The pieces assembled themselves with the merciless clarity of a puzzle completing.
The teachers' deference. The casual fighting ability. The five math solutions. The dodge. The strength. The principal's nephew.
The kid he'd been bullying all morning was Ethan Mercer.
The kid he'd thrown a stool at was a super soldier who had killed two people on live television and could bench-press a truck.
Dex Harmon, who had spent the morning establishing dominance over a teenager he'd assessed as "small, broke, no threat," felt the blood drain from his face in a way that was both metaphorical and entirely physical.
The Education Bureau officials, standing at the front of the classroom, looked at the student they'd been threatening to expel and experienced a similar revelation, except their blood drained faster and further.
They had just told Ethan Mercer — the Republic's most important individual, the inventor of fusion technology, battle armor, and the Super Soldier Serum, the person whose safety was a direct priority of the Chancellor and the Bureau of Internal Affairs — that they would prevent him from attending school.
With one word.
The lead official's mouth opened and closed several times without producing sound, which was, all things considered, a significant improvement over the sounds it had been producing earlier.