บท 18: 『HighCollege』

It had been a day since she had made that decision to help Maxwell Lord with his designs for the future. He would do a lot of good, at the same time, he would get what he always wanted. He was going to break down a wall and jump into another world where his parents never died. Where the government hadn't taken them away from him.

The only thing she didn't quite think about was if the United States Government did get a hold of this project. If they were able to weaponize the zero-point energy, they could quite literally destroy the world, or even this reality as they knew it.

Just what in the world were they going to do if that happened?

These things didn't even rupture the surface of her thoughts. Was she naive? Not so much, did she care? Not quite. She was the 'impenetrable' Kryptonian who survived Kryptonite, who survived being mortally wounded by a inferior foe. Despite that usually disheartening others, it only boosted her own self confidence. Adults always believed that teenagers and children saw themselves as invincible or untouchable, undying.

Again today she wore black leggings, a pair of pumpkin shorts and a collared black dress shirt with an ocean green tie. However this time she wore a pair of combat boots, her usual pair of gloves, but they didn't have the symbol of House An on them anymore.

Most people who saw this on the daily, would think her entire wardrobe was made of the same clothes. They weren't necessarily wrong. This was her chosen fashion. Most of her clothes were dark colors, mainly black, grey or blue with a bit of a brighter almost pastel color.

Fixing her non-prescription glasses on her nose, she was walking beside Winn at the University of National City. Her eyes traced over the new environment she had only been to a day before.

There he was, Lockwood at the front steps of the University's main central building, something the students generally referred to as the College Hall.

"So you really knew how to choose your classes after you took that placement test," Winn chuckled as he was looking over the scores she had gotten last week. She had gotten all of the mathematic and literature questions correct, even the short answers for math were flawless. Though it seemed that Social Studies wasn't at all her favorite subject, ironically, as she wasn't even from planet Earth.

She would probably have no problem quickly learning World History, considering that would be one of the classes she would be taking. It wasn't necessarily a required course to get done well in the placement test.

"I know right," Hekate made a dullard smile, she looked like a nerdy buffoon.

Winn shook his head as they made their way over to the College Hall and stopped in front of Lockwood.

Ben looked down at her and smirked a bit seeing her again. "Ah, Miss Liades, it's a pleasure." He held out a hand to shake hers. "Still can't believe you originally came all the way from Midvale.. Let alone flew here on your own." He snickered outwardly to the two students in front of him.

There were always the tragic fates of teenagers who ran away from home in order to go to hollywood to make a star of themselves. However none of them really got that far in career or life that way.

Running away to California was dangerous, especially when hitchhiking. You never know who you can trust, or where you'll end up.

"It seems I have you as my first Class today Professor," Hekate grinned deviously up at the older man before looking over at Winn who was shaking his head and looking to the side.

Gripping her satchel, she looked back up towards Lockwood and raised a brow.

"You're looking at me to lead the way, huh?" He made his signature smiling duck face, with his head ever so slightly cocked to the side as he looked down at her.

"Welp, I'm going to go head to class, see you later Hekate." Winn would wave over his shoulder as he walked away from the duo. He was one of the few to quickly blend into the masses people on campus.

Once Winn was out of the way, Ben looked over her. His demeanor slightly changed and he appeared worried. "Are you alright?" He asked, he knew about what happened with the Intergang at the bank and hadn't really seen her all that much since. So he had no chance to talk to her about it.

"Chipper," She gave a thumbs up when he had asked this. It was in complete dismissal of his open fretting over the incident. "Let's get going?"

After brief hesitation, like he had just been hit in the gut, he nodded. The two made their way into the college hall and down a set of stairs. As they did so, the pathway diverged in two different linear directions, leading to classrooms and the other going to the cafeteria.

They both turned towards the classrooms and made their way towards the lecture hall where he was going to hold his class.

After a few moments they walked inside, a few seconds apart. There were already a handful of students present, so she walked up the steps while he moved behind the podium. No one thought anything of it, maybe the kid knew him or something. They weren't expecting her to sit down, open her satchel and plop a text pad on the desk in front of her.

Some of the people raised a brow. Was this for real? There was a little fourteen year old teen in their class. Was this one of those few high schoolers that get into college before even graduating? It was still strange as this was a university, it wasn't a community college.

Did they know the dean? How well connected was this kid?

Judgement and assumptions became an unspoken storm within Lockwoods class. Many people found it strange to have her around. That didn't matter, not at all, not to her.

As the lecture began, she didn't write anything. She kept her hand primed with a pen in hand. A pen with neon sky blue ink. It was a dollar store pen, she had a whole pack of them; all different colors.

However as soon as he started giving things that were noteworthy, she began to write. Everything she wrote down was not in english, it wasn't Japanese, and it surely wasn't any earthly language.

She was writing everything down in Kryptonian. Most people who hadn't seen it before, would just assume she was writing something in code or a made up language. It looked as if it was written in cursive and all of the characters were attached to one another.

It looked like someone had made knots around a singular line with symbols underneath of them which also connected.

There was this girl right beside her. She was eying the pad she was writing on, extremely curious. Though she seemed to be more familiar with the language than the other person who flanked her on the other side. The guy who was watching seemed curious, but quickly lost interest as he was called back to the lecture as Lockwood cleared his throat.

Glancing over from the corner of her eye, she raised a brow at the girl.

At closer look the girl had layered dyed Mint Green and black hair with hints of brown, thick dark brown brows that faded out at the sides and a pointed chin on her heart shaped face. She had a flat button nose, dark olive green eyes and pale peach toned skin. Her eyes were the shape of perfect large upward angled almonds.

The two bodies locked eyes for a moment, staring. Hekate wore little to no expression while the girl that was about four years older kept up her curious look.

"What'cha lookin' at, toots?" She asked curiously as Hekate suddenly picked up her nonchalant demeanor, resting an elbow on her pad, and her chin in her palm.

"A darkly dressed Hipster turned Gangster," the unknown girl tensed her eyelids at the teen with a lopsided smile. Her tone had a hint of arrogance, her accent clearly of the English Isles, but she was teasing nonetheless. "Never thought I'd see the day."

Raising her own brows she looked at the older person and snickered to herself. "Who knows, maybe I'm connected." Hekate openly teased, making somewhat of a turtle face as her upper lip overlapped her lower.

"Pfft. Connected, huh?" The girl with mint green hair grinned at her before a few moments, as if she knew something Hekate didn't. "What's your name?"

Hekate smirked a bit at her, seeing that expression and almost immediately recognizing it. "Hekate Liades."

"Oooh. Greek first name, latin last name. Hekate is the Greek Goddess of Magic and the last name is Latin for 'You Speak' which is rather interesting... Very unusual last name." The girl responded as she looked over towards Lockwood who was busy doing his lecture still. Her eyes then moved to Hekate who was writing while paying attention to her, not even looking at the paper. "My name is Paige Moriarty, pleasure to meet you."

Raising a brow at the name given to her, she didn't actually expect someone to be related to Doctor Moriarty from the movies of Sherlock Holmes. However she didn't say anything on that matter, considering Paige might think Hekate was making fun of her.

There were probably a lot of jokes already...

"Likewise," Hekate's head ticked to the side in the form of a sideways nod. Her eyes traveled along what Paige was wearing. Tan cardigan over a white dress shirt, red bow tie, a plaid pleated skirt that reached a few inches between her knees and thighs. She looked as if she was cosplaying as a Japanese school girl, Hekate began to believe that the moment she saw the brown loafers she was wearing. "Are you Japanese?"

"Yeah, my mum is Japanese, Dad not so much. We just moved to National City since my mom and dad found work here," She smiled at Hekate with a keen, almost genuine, interest.

"Oh that's cool, what do they do?" Hekate began returning the interest as she brought up the parents. She was rather curious of what kind of jobs they left England or Japan for.

"My dad's a Robotist and my mom's a photographer. She just got a job at CatCo, not sure where my dad works though." She didnt seem to have any concern about her father's work, even though there had been robots terrorizing the city as of late. "He was talking about coming to work here though as a Professor."

Hekate simply tilted her head to the side slightly and sponged the knowledge she was given, the trivia of a probable future friend. Though she was finding it hard not to talk about an alternate Professor Moriarty, "You got plans after class?" Hekate's legs would begin to sway idly beneath the desk.