A Guide to Being Super

Rule #13

Rule #13: Actually fight your nemesis (and try to win, it's kind of important).

It had been several days since my fight with Ike and things hadn't improved. He and I hadn't spoken and I had basically become a hermit. I didn't leave my room except to go to the bathroom and to go to the kitchen for food and I had been pretending to be sick so I didn't have to go to school and see Ike. Or Lena. What was I supposed to do about Lena?

I had informed Rachel of everything that had happened, and in turn she had told Dan, but we hadn't actually decided anything yet. Or maybe they had and they just didn't tell me. My hermit-ness had made me avoid training as much as I had been avoiding school so I wouldn't put it past them.

I just had no reason to go to either place. Even if Ike and Lena magically disappeared, that didn't mean that my troubles were over. I had realized, far too late, that I spent so much time mocking and making fun of people that other than Ike I had no other close friends. So if I went to school I'd just be that weird kid sitting by himself. That wasn't exactly ideal. And training... training seemed worthless. I wasn't sure if I was any match for Lena and facing Dan and Rachel seemed impossible. I'd much rather be in my room so that's where I was staying.

It took about a week of this beautiful little system (my mom was getting afraid that I had mono or something) for Rachel to get really annoyed. She had seen my fight with Ike, the girl always knew the best ways to spy on people, so she had cut me some slack but the slack had run out. She didn't care if I went to school but I couldn't ditch training anymore.

"Rachel, wouldn't you rather I stayed here?" I asked. "That way I leave you alone."

"To be honest, I don't care if you go to school. I don't care what you do at all, actually." She put a hand on her hip. "But for some reason the universe decided to give you powers and that's actually made you important to this city and I can't let you give up."

"I'm not giving up."

"Says the boy who only leaves the room to pee."

"I go to the kitchen too..."

"At some point in the near future, you're going to have to fight Lena," she said. "And if you don't want to die, which might lead to the end of the city if not the world, you have to train. There's no getting around that."

"But I just wanna stay in bed..."

"Jesus, it's like I'm the only mature one around here."

"Gee thanks."

"You just said 'I just wanna stay in bed,' you disqualified yourself."

"Fine," I said.

"Now come on, you need to train. Shit's going down and you need to be able to help."

"What shit is going down?"
"Dan will brief you. Now up."

"But if Mom sees me leave then she'll know I'm not sick."

"I'll sneak you out. You can stay home sick a few more days but you have to promise to train in the meantime."

"Okay."

"Good," she said, tossing me a t-shirt. "Now up."

I had to hand it to her, Rachel knew how to sneak someone out of a house (should that fact worry me? Nah, I'm not her father). As soon as I was dressed and (somewhat) presentable, she had me out of the house and into the car in two minutes flat. It seriously took longer for us to get into Dan's lair, where we were expected, than it took for us to sneak out of our own house with our parents home. It was impressive.

When we got there, I expected Dan to be all business and training ready. You know, cause I had missed a few days and we knew who Sinister Shadow was and everything. But of course he wasn't anything like that. Instead he was pacing the room alternating between giggling like a little girl and anxiously muttering to himself. It was like he was auditioning to be the Grinch or something.