Chapter 2: School Trip
It was 6:30 am and Jay was standing in the school parking lot with all of the other sophomores. The buses were there and sitting idle. It was time to hurry up and wait.
They had been there since 6 am. According to the itinerary, they should already be on the road, but when did things go smoothly on school trips? They weren't even on the buses yet; just standing there next to their bags.
Any teacher will tell you, arranging a trip with a bunch of students had a lot of moving parts. It's not like you could just jump in the family car and off you go.
Sam Houston had the largest student body population in Tarrant County with over 3,600 students. Over 1,000 of these students were sophomore students, and it was hard to track all of these kids.
According to the notice sent to parents both through the student tracking system and email, all students were to travel by the buses unless they attained special authorization from the office.
As it happens every year, parents took the trip to Austin and the first synching in the Multi-V library as a family vacation, and most of them didn't bother telling the school.
In their mind, "what did it matter?" It wasn't like the school could do anything. The library was open 24 hours a day 7 days a week, and it was open to everyone fifteen years old and up.
The parents could show up with their kids and let them go in.
The most the administration could do is send out complaint letters making unrealistic threats or waxing with grand moral speeches about personal responsibility and teaching the next generation.
Most parents just deleted the messages as soon as they received them without even reading the messages and barely looking at the subject line.
All the kids waiting in the parking lot knew they were waiting while the teachers and admin tried to figure out who was there, who wasn't, who was running late, and who wouldn't be coming at all.
To the kids waiting in the parking lot, the answer was easy. The notice said they were leaving at 6:30 am, so they should leave at 6:30 am. For the admin, things weren't so simple. There were legal issues to consider.
The Principal finally got everything sorted and the kids started loading the buses at 6:45 am. The buses finally pulled out of the parking lot just after 7:00 am. The trip to Austin would only take about 3 hours.
Jay found his three best friends on the bus, Danny Vo, Rusty Hernandez, and Jesse Powers. They were a motley crew, like a walking rainbow coalition.
Danny was Vietnamese, Rusty was half Japanese half Hispanic, and Jesse was half black half Philipino. Jay was just a white-boy mutt. Just take Europe, put it in a big bowl stir it around a bit, and out would pour Jay's cultural heritage.
Jay's mother had a hobby of looking into the family genealogy and she found the first member of the Reeves family from their line was a one-armed farmer and part-time law-man, James Reeves.
The four friends were drawing buddies. They were all initially interested in comics, manga, anime, and loved planning their future power hierarchy together. They would draw themselves in various "costumes" exhibiting their power as Lugals.
Jesse was actually 16, he was held back a year because he was always blowing off school to do who knows what. He missed his chance to go to the Multi-V Library in Austin last year.
He was older than everyone but also a year behind. He missed the best year to synch for the first time. That didn't mean he couldn't catch up, it just meant he missed a year of opportunities.
After a year Collectors would have synched with their second or third book.
Jesse wasn't worried. He had a plan to turn things around. He was going to find the comics section in the library and get a book about his favorite character Kennedy Zero.
Kennedy Zero was a self-made superman power-level character who gave himself his powers by using advanced technology to tap into the Zero field, a mystical energy field that existed on the quantum level.
Using a comic as your first synch was risky.
Comics had wild characters whose abilities could be anything from peak human to capable of destroying the universe with a blast from their nostrils. Anime, Manga, Manhwa, and other types of comics and cartoons were the same.
It was firmly established that even if you synched with a Superman or Goku or a similar character you would not walk out of the library able to bounce moons on your biceps, or explode to Super Saiyan Blue and blow up half the universe after an hour and half of screaming.
At best, you would come out with a very paired down version of their powers. A person might only get one aspect of their powers, not the entire power set.
Most people couldn't choose which of the powers they would get or if they would get the entire set of abilities.
Someone who tried to synch with Superman, for example, might wind up with his heat vision or speed, or x-ray vision.
A Goku fan might get the Saiyan Zenkai, their ability to get strong after each life and death battle, or they might just wind up with Goku's enormous appetite.
"There's no way you're going to get anything good out of synching with Kennedy Zero, Jess," Danny said.
"Bet," Jesse responded as he leaned back looking cool. Jesse was definitely the coolest in the group.
"You should listen to your friend, synching isn't as easy as you think," a feminine voice said behind the four friends.
They turned around as saw the one who was speaking was Alejandra Reyes, the only sophomore Collector at their school.
"When I synched for the first time, I saw a boy try and synch with Germy Jermaine, but instead of getting his disease immunity, he got his obnoxious smelly fart ability. It was gross," she said.
Jay actually laughed. He didn't think someone as pretty and smart as Alejandra would say the word 'fart.' In his mind, it was too crude a term for a princess like her, but it made him think highly of her.
"Maybe, but that boy didn't have my laser-like focus. I understand Kennedy Zero better than anyone," he said once more looking cool. On the inside, he was actually nervous.
He knew the kid she was talking about and the other kids just called him Scuzeme because he was constantly farting and saying "Scuze me," as if it somehow made his smelly farts bearable.
None of the girls wanted to date him and none of the guys wanted to be his friend.
For the last year, his parents sent him from one synching specialist to another hoping they could either remove, reset, or overshadow his stupid mistake.
"Listen to Alejandra, buddy, I don't want to shun you because you got Kennedy Zero's girl shriek," Jay said as he laughed. Alejandra also laughed at Jay's joke.
Kennedy Zero was a serious hero but whenever he saw a ladybug he would shriek in terror like a girl. The thought of this intimidated Jesse a lot; he began to reconsider his choice. Who would he choose if not Kennedy Zero?
"You're Jay, right?" Alejandra asked Jay suddenly and taking him by surprise. Jay had an unusual tendency when he was surprised by something. He usually got really suspicious and tried to figure out what the other person's angle was.
When Alejandra saw his face scrunch up and interrogate her with his eyes; she couldn't help but laugh. Her laugh brought Jay back to reality.
"What? Yes, I'm Jay," he said as he tried to figure out why the girl was laughing at him.
"Sorry, I didn't mean to laugh, but the last time someone made that face at me they accused me of trying to steal something from the store."
"Do I have a face?"
"Yes, we all do, it's common to all human beings, moron," Rusty mocked his friend.
"Alright everyone, if you need to take a bathroom break we're approaching the rest stop, make it quick." Mr. McQue, the Math teacher, said to the kids.
All the kids disappeared to both use the restroom and explore.
Jay on the other hand noticed Alejandra wasn't getting off the bus.
"You don't want to get out?" he asked.
"No, I'm fine here, you can go ahead." She reclined back in her chair and took out her phone to read something.
"That's okay, I don't need to go." He was lying, he had to go really bad, but every bit of his caveman DNA in his body was screaming, "Girl, boy stay, make girl like. Make babies, rule tribe, become big chief."
"You don't have to go?" She said with a knowing smile.
"No, I went earlier," he said.
"You don't even want to go on a walk?" she asked with a smile.
"Sure, we can go on a walk if you would like." He totally misheard her and this made her laugh.
"Okay, let's go for a walk."
Thus began Jay's realization of the dream every boy who ever went on a class trip had, "private time with a pretty girl who will probably agree to marry him in about five minutes." Well, things didn't go that smoothly.
"Thank you caveman DNA," he silently said to the inner him who was currently smiling a big toothy caveman smile and giving him a big thumbs up as if he were some kind of great hero.
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
FramJam
FramJam For those of you impatient about getting to the Multi-V library, don't worry! They'll get there soon. This is just a little character development.
What do you think of Jay and the other characters so far?
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone