Riverside City Chronicles | Book 1 | Riverside City [Capes & Cowls]

by VanDerHeyden, Paul C.

  “That’s the point. You’re mostly fluent in English, but they still make you take English, right?” she jokes and pushes him on the shoulder.

  “Ugh, I get it, but I still hate that I can’t roll my R’s. My dad makes fun of me enough for the rest of the world. Trust me.” He covers his face with his hands and sighs. “On to embarrassment!” he jokes, pointing down the hall.

  “You’re exagerrrrrrating,” she says, trilling the R in the word like the native speaker she is.

  He hangs his head in shame. “Bully…”

  She pats his back as they step into the class and move toward their usual seats in the back corner of the room. “Maybe you’ll get it today?”

  Mrs. Sanchez is a short woman. She has bleach blonde hair spiked up in a fauxhawk. She is from Spain and hasn’t lost her accent. She seems to have an ageless quality about her, she could be anywhere from 30 to 40 years old. She's also the Student Council advisor, so Dante spends a lot of time with her. Usually, they get along great, except in this class.

  Mrs. Sanchez has the class speak only in Spanish during her classes, every English word spoken is 1% off your next test, and she’s not messing around with that. Dante made that mistake in Freshman year, he got back his test which was marked perfect—100%—with -15% in big red numbers, leaving him with the first B he had ever received. He asked her in the hall after class and she just reminded him about her classroom rule. Ever since then, Dante just didn’t speak unless spoken to in Mrs. Sanchez’s class and even then, only in Spanish.

  Dante did not learn to roll his R’s in this class, though he did manage to bite his tongue in frustration, which elicited laughs from his classmates. Kat did her best to muffle her chuckles.

  As they leave the room he says, “Maybe my tongue is just too short?”

  Kat laughs. “Maybe that’s it,” she says unconvincingly.

  Chapter 29: STEM FTW

  Meanwhile, Theo goes to his Computer Programming class. He takes his seat in the corner farthest from the door, per usual. He swipes his student ID over the sensor on the desk, where an inkpot would be on an old desk there is a blue and clear orb, which scans his ID and generates a hard light keyboard and triple monitor setup. Theo puts silver rings on his two index fingers and then gets to adjusting his settings on the “PC”, if it could still be called that at this point.

  The rings allow the sensor to pick up finger gestures like a mouse would do, in addition, it registers other commands that would be used on a touchscreen device. Things like pinching to zoom out, expanding your hand to have something take over the whole screen, or a three-finger “flick” upward to dismiss a message. He enables the more advanced commands with a swirl of his right hand. He also links his aPhone to the rings.

  I haven’t used those standard commands since I was 10 years old in basic computer skills. This way is just so much faster.

  He relaxes his arms into a more natural position at the edges of his desk and then starts flexing his fingers in odd combinations of jerks and taps, his screen rapidly filling with code. Annoyed that he forgot, he reaches up to the center screen and twists it 90 degrees with a finger flick.

  That's better.

  Mr. Flaherty walks in quickly to class, he's a minute late, and sweating a bit. “Sorry class, I got wrapped up working on a project in the engineering lab and lost track of time,” he takes a large drink of water from a large bottle he has attached to his hip with a carabiner clip.

  Mr. Flaherty is one of the more popular teachers at RSCA, he teaches middle and high school level programming. He's tall, all lean muscle, and the coach of the RSCA's Nationally ranked Robotics Team. He's known for building a robotic assistant in his class affectionately named Gerry.

  Gerry walks around handing people tools in the engineering lab when they ask him to. Gerry is about three foot tall with a light bluish outer metal coating. He looks like a metal teddy bear with articulating fingers.

  Theo likes Mr. Flaherty as well as he does any other teacher with one exception. "All right class, it's that time again, I need a program written in C++ before the end of class. What is it going to be this year?" Mr. Flaherty asks while sitting down on the front edge of his desk.

  "Create a program that ranks the Capes in town by captures and losses for the last 24 hours, 30 days, and year? Incorporating documented requests for assistance, setting it up to auto-update every 60 minutes?" a small blonde boy named Dex, sitting in the front row, proffers. Mr. Flaherty nods his head.

  "That seems like an excellent challenge, I just so happen to have all of the information that you need on this network drive," he holds up his ring covered hand and an AR window appears in front of him showing the network path.

  "However, this data is encrypted with a basic cipher, so you can either figure that out or gather the data yourself from the FSA website, local news outlets, and local blogs. As long as your data is within 25% of what I have, you'll get an automatic 100% on the first test," he grins, "ready, set, CODE!"

  Theo LOVES this challenge every year, it's why he likes Mr. Flaherty so much. This time it was even something he cared about, unlike last year, which was a program to generate outfits for every day of the year for a supermodel/singer, Siren. A senior last year, Martin Tencent, did such a good job on that project that Siren hired him on as her personal stylist/data analyst, now he jets around the world with her, adapting his program as styles change every day.

  Theo has to admit, he's impressed by the bits of code he saw from Martin.

  Crap! I wasted a minute or so dreaming about last year's challenge. Get your game face on Theo!

  He grabs his earbud case from his pants pocket, pulls the earbuds out of the case, and pops them in. He starts Siren's new album, "Crashing the Market", using it as fuel for the challenge at hand. Siren sings a blend of modern pop and folk music.

  Theo decides that he is going to crack the cipher, he's good at puzzles, which Richter told him was part of his Inheritance. The cipher is based on the ADFGVX cipher the Germans used in WW1. The keyword was PERFECT.

  It takes about 30 minutes to make a program that cracks that cipher. It was easy when he figured out the root of the cipher.

  He spends the next 20 minutes of class compiling the data in Mr. Flaherty's drive, but something feels off, this is too easy. Something is wrong with this year's challenge, Mr. Flaherty wouldn't just give the advanced class all of the information this easily. Theo looks up and locks eyes with Mr. Flaherty, who just grins and points at his watch.

  Theo actually looks at the data he's compiling and finds that all of the numbers are scattered, Capes like Giant and Minute-Maid, who are retired, are listed as having four captures this month. Theo groans, it was a false flag operation, there was another cipher to solve that's scrambling the data he needs!

  Theo buckles down and gets that cipher solved, it was just a Cesarean Shift so it only took a few minutes once he noticed the trick in the data. With two minutes to spare, Theo finishes his code and runs the program… after about 30 seconds a table is generated for the last 24 hours, the last 30 days, and the last year respectively.

  Theo looks over the tables closely, smiling when he appears on both of the first two tables. Jinlong is at the top of the last 24 hours table with three captures, Nightmare is right next to him. On the second table, he’s about 10 people down with four captures, Nightmare is significantly farther down with three. He eventually remembers that he has to turn in the program, so he forgoes looking for Jinlong and Nightmare on the year list.

  Theo packages the program and deposits it in the class network drive with 30 seconds to go in class. Mr. Flaherty sees Theo glance up at him and shoots Theo a grin after checking the class drive.

  Mr. Flaherty hops off the desk and addresses the class, “I hope you all enjoyed going back to basics with me today, remember, even the most modern code today can be broken down to basic commands like you designed today. It looks like at least three of you did enough for the test credit, but
I might be pleasantly surprised. See you all tomorrow!” He exclaims as the bell rings.

  Theo gets up and stretches.

  I haven’t coded since the second week of summer. I was rusty and almost didn’t finish because of it. I’m glad I get to take the rings home during school, this holo-PC is just so nice when I have free time.

  He walks over to Dex and sits on the desk next to his.

  “Which route did you take?” Theo inquires with a small smile on his face.

  Dex looks at Theo and grins, “I figured Mr. Flaherty would go with my idea, he’s such a big Cape fan, so I’ve been thinking about this one for a while. I ended up compiling my own data from the listed sources, I don’t trust it when Mr. Flaherty is being too easy on us.”

  “You were right about faking going easy on us, it took me 30 minutes to crack the original cipher, only to have it be a cover for another cipher. It was rough.”

  “As I said, I don’t trust teachers being ‘Nice’,” Dex gets up and grabs his bag.

  Theo gently claps Dex on the back, “You’re right there. I’m guessing we’re two of the three he mentioned, who do you think the third is? I have my suspicions.”

  Without hesitation Dex replies, “Mab, she finished 45 minutes ago and has been on SuperSpace since then. I took a look over at her and she was browsing the fan page for Nightmare.”

  Mab and Dex are friends of Theo’s that he doesn’t really interact with if he isn’t at school. Theo, Dex, Mab, Kat, and Dante had a few Round Robin tournaments of Cape Clash during the summer, but he didn’t see them outside of that.

  Mab is what everyone at school calls Meghan Anne Becket. She's a shorter girl, with blue-black hair and pale white skin. She and Kat don’t get along all that well, but Theo always has fun with her. They enjoy talking about the games they’re playing at the time. Mab is usually in the midst of the Grandmaster League of whatever RTS is in vogue at the time, while Theo is usually playing the newest RPG.

  Dex is short for Dexter Dombrowski. He’s short as well, with blonde hair and pale skin that shows that he spends way too much time inside. Dex gets along with Theo and Kat, but has more in common with Dante, they’ve had almost every class together since first grade. Dex is the running salutatorian, to Dante’s valedictorian. Dex has a crush on Mab that has been obvious to everyone in school, except Mab, since third grade. Despite having a lot in common, they never seem to hang out together except to see Theo, Kat, and Dante.

  Theo waves to Mab as he stands up and starts walking away with Dex, “Let’s go and see Dante in AP Chem, hopefully, he has a table for the three of us.”

  Dex waves at Mab, who gives a gentle wave back.

  Chapter 30: Alchemistress and Lunch

  Dante has a table for the three of them, the only bad thing is that it’s front row center, Theo looks at Dante and shakes his head before walking to the back of the classroom, toward another empty table. Dante laughs a bit, grabs his bag, and heads back to join Theo and Dex.

  “Nice to see you, Dex, how’re you doing?” Dante asks.

  Dex fumbles his tablet and it falls a few inches to the black stone tabletop, still intact. “Oh, I’m doing just fine, still a fumble fingers like always, though.” He indicates his tablet on the tabletop.

  Dante chuckles, “I can see that!”

  The class fills up quickly, leaving only one seat open, the middle of the table Theo and crew left behind. A short, bronze skinned girl comes in as the bell rings; her name is Maka Nawana. She bounces along, her long brunette braids bouncing against her perky backside, until she takes the remaining seat. Maka has been the school mascot since sixth grade, a Roman Centurion. She is known for her bouncy personality and boundless energy.

  Maka sneaks a peek at Dante before she notices Theo smiling at her. Her face goes white as a sheet before blushing and spinning back to face the front.

  Everyone in class is nearly vibrating with excitement, except Dante who looks like he just remembered something horrible. A young-looking woman comes into the room and takes her place in front of the class. At her hips are a few orb shapes.

  “Good morning class, I’m Mrs. Anton, though you may know me better by my old nom de guerre, Alchemistress,” Mrs. Anton says cheerily, “It’s been almost 10 years since I gave up my old Cowl ways, but students still seem to be fascinated by that. What am I going to do? It’s part of why I’m such a good teacher. I’m not afraid to bend the rules to get the desired result.” She shows all of her perfect teeth as she smiles at the class. She proceeds to explain the classroom rules.

  Theo looks at Dante, who is sitting with a shocked look on his face, before snorting and whispering to him, “How did you forget your step-mom is your AP Chem teacher this year? It even has her name on the schedule that you laminated, I’ve seen it.”

  Dante groans and faceplants onto the table, “I must have a mental block on it or something. She even asked my permission before applying here, I gave her my blessing without thinking about it too hard,” he whispers back a lot louder than Theo did.

  “Do you have something to share with the class Dante?” Mrs. Anton asks, stopping her discussion of class procedure.

  “No mom...I mean ma’am!” Dante shoots upright and blurts out. The whole class bursts into laughter, though Theo and Dex do their best to keep their laughter to a low chuckle.

  “If that’s the case, please refrain from talking over me, now back to our lab procedure. As I was saying, goggles…” Mrs. Anton curtly continues her earlier explanation.

  “Kill me,” Dante settles his head on the table and whispers. Theo barely hears him but pats him on the back when he does. Dex doesn’t hear him and continues to focus on Mrs. Anton’s lecture.

  “It’s going to be fine,” he whispers, “Your stepmom is reasonable, she’ll be fine, plus she has the skills to pay the bills.”

  Dante groans for a moment and then nods.

  The rest of the day passes uneventfully until lunch, when Theo, Kat, and Dante come back together to discuss their first real day back at school.

  The RSCA “cafeteria”, if it can be called that, is set up like a food court. Two large hallways lead toward the center of the school, they open up to a massive hexagonal chamber where tables and chairs are set up for students to eat lunch and dinner. The ceiling, 90’ above the floor, is retractable; it’s open when the weather in this midwestern city is nice, but closed all winter and on rainy days in the other three seasons.

  There are eight different stations, two on each of the four faces of the hexagon that aren’t used for entry and exit from this area, each representing a different culture or country. The most popular stations are the Japanese sushi and hibachi along the eastern wall and the American gastropub along the western wall.

  When Theo and Kat come into the food court, they start looking for Dante. He’s not hard to find, he’s sitting at one of the centermost 8-person tables, his love of crowds showing loud and proud. He has what looks like an entire pepperoni pizza and is in the middle of devouring one of the eight big slices it is cut into.

  Kat drags Theo in toward Dante, “It’ll be fine, he got a table big enough for the three of us, plus Dex, Mab, and Maka with room for our bags.”

  “If it weren’t you holding my hand right now, I’d just grab food and go up to my room to prepare for this afternoon,” he runs his free hand through his reddish-golden hair, the color having shifted from its original red after his Awakening.

  Kat just laughs in response.

  ‘You’re playing dirty, you know that?’ Theo sends to Kat while looking her straight in the eyes, ‘You know I won’t leave you alone with him.’

  Kat stumbles a bit before Theo catches her, ‘What? Because of last night? I’ll be fine, we’re just Kat and Dante right now, not Nightmare and Inferno.’

  That’s what I’m worried about.

  He sighs, ‘Fair enough.’

  Theo and Kat set their stuff down at Dante’s table, and wave as they head over to the Indi
an station to get some curry. After a few minutes waiting for their food, Theo gets a stone bowl of some kind of curry the server recommended and Kat gets Chicken Tikka Masala. They walk back to the table, Theo carrying the tray with both of their meals on it.

  They settle into their seats before Kat grabs her bowl of curry, a bowl of rice, and a plate with naan on it. Theo is left with his small stone bowl of curry and a larger stone bowl of rice.

  Dante sniffs at Theo’s bowl, “That smells AMAZING, what is it? I’ve never seen anything like it on the menu of that station.”

  Theo gives a half-hearted smile, “I learned a bit of Urdu, enough to ask for Sana’s favorite curry, she gave me this stone bowl. I have to admit, it smells good, but I get the impression that after I stir this thing, it’s going to smack me in the face with heat.”

  Dante’s eyes glow, “That’s Phall...you can’t eat all of that, you’ll die.” He takes an even deeper sniff, “Oof, that’s made with Scotch Bonnet, you’re going to be in pain if you’re not ready for it. How about this, I’ll give you the other half of my pizza and I’ll take half of this delicious concoction you somehow got from my new favorite station.”

  Theo eyes Dante, “It’s really that hot? I took a spoonful off the top and it wasn’t too bad, I’m just worried that the bottom will be worse. You know what? You really seem to love this stuff and I haven’t had pizza in a while, so I’ll take that deal.”

  Theo and Dante work to split the Phall, eventually they pour half of the curry into the rice bowl, after removing half of the rice from that big bowl. Kat donated her plate for the rice to be dropped onto. Finally, Dante takes a big bite of the Phall. His face contorts and he starts to sweat profusely. He takes a large clump of rice with his hand and slams it into his open mouth, chewing it furiously.

  “You can eat this?” Dante asks Theo, who has tucked into his bowl with gusto, downing half of it in the minute that Dante was relishing the sight of his prize. Dante grabs his glass of milk and downs it.