Even after hundreds of visits, I’d never gotten used to the sheer size of Aegis Academy’s front gates. Looming at four stories tall, they seemed almost ready for war. I wondered what they thought they might have to guard against that the rippling, ivory-white metal needed to be a metre-and-a-half thick.

It looked a bit silly when the walls on either side stood at a pretty typical two metres or so, and I knew that they mostly stayed that way around the entire perimeter, barring a few exceptions like the smaller secondary entrances. Granted, the real preventative measure for trespassers was the invisible forcefield, but still. I always thought that the man who insisted that his hero team all style themselves like either Greek gods or classical heroes would be more stubborn about the aesthetic of his school. Maybe practicality won out.

Huge crowds were streaming in through the front gates, an endless tide of people flowing towards the (also absurdly massive) domed gymnasium visible in the distance. The long road to the day’s destination was flanked on both sides by regimented rows of gleaming silver statues, each one depicting the likeness of a hero who had some connection to the school. The signs called it “Lady Silver’s Long Walk of Remembrance and Tribute.”

Most people called it the Silver Road.

How many times had I walked down that same pathway, babbling questions about each figure? How many times had the man escorting me patiently indulged my childish curiosity? How many times had his explanations gone in one ear and out the other as my attention strayed to the next statue that looked even cooler than the last?

And yet it felt like I was here for the first time, drinking in the sight before me as if it was totally new.

Truth be told, it may as well have been.

Back then, I was just a kid with stars in his eyes and not a care in the world. Superheroes hadn’t truly felt real to me back then—all I saw of the cape world was the sparkly image they showed on TV. The colourful costumes and the witty quips. The heroic poses and the cool powers.

Now, I was older, wiser. I was someone about to take his first step to becoming a hero for real. Aegis Academy wasn’t a childhood memory anymore. It was a dream, a goal. I was here with purpose, now, and if anything that just meant I could appreciate the grandeur of this place even more.

Still had stars in my eyes, admittedly.

“Finally here,” Ashika spoke beside me.

“We’ve been before,” I said absently, even though I’d been thinking basically the same thing.

“You know what I mean.”

“Yeah.”

Ashika grinned. She was bouncing on her feet like a kid. “We’ve been looking forward to this for so long. It kinda doesn’t feel real.”

“In my dreams I walked down the road alone, at least.”

“Damn, that would’a been nice and theatrical, huh? Like something out of a movie.” She adopted a thinking pose, squinting at the gates. “I can picture it. A stoic hero walking the lonely road to his destination, the soundtrack from some cheesy cowboy movie playing softly in the background. It would suit you, Mr Drama Queen.”

“Drama Queen?! Me?!” I threw my head back and swooned, not at all dramatically. “Oh, to be insulted so cruelly by my best friend! How could this have happened?”

Ashika’s laugh was like music. “Yeah, the kid who used to run around school with a blanket tied around his neck and arrest other kids for eating outside the cafeteria at lunchtime isn’t at all dramatic. I remember when you tackled Martin Green.”

“Good times,” I said.

“Getting suspended at eight-years-old is a good memory for you?”

“Good times,” I repeated more forcefully.

We fell silent for a moment, staring each other down. I couldn’t tell you who laughed first, but my sides were hurting by the time we both managed to stop. It wasn’t even that funny, really.

But I felt better about everything, and I guessed she did too. That was what counted.

“Shall we go in?” I asked.

Ashika smiled grimly. “Might be late otherwise. Gonna take forever to get there with the way this crowd’s going.”

I stood on my tiptoes to get a look over people’s heads, and yeah, she wasn’t wrong.

The problem with the statues reared its head on days like this. Throughout most of the year, the school probably played host to a thousand people at most, though usually far less, and they were here almost every day, more than used to the spectacle of the walk down Silver Road.

For people who likely seeing it for the first time, it was awe-inspiring. Every step you took placed you in front of a new wonder of art, each with a new story to tell that surely had to be fascinating to anyone who had hopes of becoming a hero themselves. I couldn’t blame them for walking slowly, head-swivelling from side to side as they tried to take it all in. Hell, even stopping to gawk was understandable.

Still, it was a pain in the ass right now.

“Let’s take a detour,” I said, and started walking.

“Sure about that?” Ashika quickly followed, sticking close to my back. “This place always seemed like a maze to me.”

I smiled at her over my shoulder. “Know it like the back of my hand.”

Silver Road sliced through the academy’s grounds all the way from the front gate to the gymnasium at the very centre of the complex, which was just under a mile away. As the only path to do so, it saw a lot of traffic, especially on busy days. That didn’t necessarily mean it was the only route one could take, just the most direct.

Passing through the massive front gates, we took a right after the first administrative building came to an end. The path was wide enough to easily fit a van through, but it felt claustrophobic compared to the main road that could fit a six-lane highway. We moved quickly, and soon we were delving into the labyrinth that was Aegis Academy.

Ashika’s concern was not unfounded. The school had started off much smaller than it currently was, a single brutalist building thrown together with little more than the founder’s personal funds—pretty sure it was still around somewhere, actually—but as it grew in renown it got more funding. As it got more funding, it grew.

Unfortunately, it did not grow very well.

At first, the plot of land it was built on seemed massive. They thought they’d never be able to fill it up. Then they realised they needed training facilities, and lots of them. Regrettable events occurred, and a building for school lawyers popped up. Then a place for the counsellors and therapists. Then marketing. Security, first aid, equipment storage, and more.

In your average school all that might have fit in one building, but superheroes were larger than life existences, and life often had to grow to accommodate them. A famous op-ed on Capevine once claimed that every superhero needed at least five lawyers, and that seemed to track with just about everything.

Problem was, superhero schools were a relatively new thing even now. Aegis Academy was the first, in fact. They had no way of knowing they were eventually going to need all that. Surely they could just build stuff where and when they needed to, right?

Suddenly, fifteen years had passed since the academy’s founding, and the layout of the place was an absolute mess. Only experience could tell you that you could go around the legal building to find the little disused back alley that brought you before the underwater training facility. Not even the luckiest man would stumble on the tunnel that went under the admin offices—what the hell was it even there for?—and even I had only found the hidden staircase that brought you onto the roof of the firing range after hundreds of visits.

But I wasn’t complaining. For me, the nonsensical layout of the grounds only added to AA’s charm. Some of my happiest childhood memories were of exploring the place, squealing in excitement at my indulging father whenever I found some new shortcut.

My heart was soaring with nostalgia as we cut a winding route through the forgotten paths of the academy. Past the mark I’d made on a wall. Through a storage shed where I’d hidden from a security guard. Across a roof where I made sure to be careful of the pipes, painfully aware of the time I’d tripped over one and discovered that hot water mains were, in fact, rather hot.

Neither of us spoke a word until we found ourselves on a wider street that led back to the Silver Road, the din of the crowd washing over us.

“I love this place,” I said, looking around. “I don’t know what I’ll do if I don’t get in. Another school… it wouldn’t be the same.”

“You’ve got this,” Ashika said. She gave me a light thump on the arm. (Light for her standards; I was sure it would leave a bruise.) “You’ve got the hell out of this. You’ve got this more than anyone has ever got anything. Don’t go doubting yourself on me now, dork.”

“I’m not doubting. I’m just… I dunno.”

“Expressing your eternal and unaging adoration for a bunch of haphazardly arranged buildings?”

I snapped my fingers and pointed at her. “Bingo.”

“You’re such a dumbass.” Her smile took the sting out of the words. “Wanna go back to the main path?”

I nodded. She knew me too well.

We walked in silence at a more subdued pace than the one I’d been setting. Merging with the crowd, we only moved with the flow for a handful of steps before I stopped before one statue in particular.

I’d never actually seen it, not even in pictures, though I was sure I’d been invited. I couldn’t say why I’d avoided it. Maybe I knew it could never live up to the real thing, never replace that hole in my life, no matter how brilliant it managed to be.

It was brilliant, objectively speaking.

Valiant’s statue gleamed, polished so well I could see my reflection in it. There were no faults in the details: his long cape hung off the fasteners on his shoulders in the right place, the cuirass was the correct shape (smooth instead of the gaudy fake six-pack from the comics), and the roman-style war skirt fell to just above his knees as it was meant to. Even his polearm and the shield with his logo on it, locked together and held at his side, looked about the length and size that I remembered them being.

The only disappointment, to my surprise, was the mask.

It wasn’t inaccurate or anything, far from it. In fact it was as meticulous as the rest; a Roman centurion’s helm, complete with ruffles that made him look much taller than he actually was, an impressive feat when sculpting with the silver metal.

I just wished I could see more of his face than the serious line of his mouth. It wasn’t meant to be like that. He’d been a man that loved to smile.

It was a fantastic representation of Valiant.

But I couldn’t find much of Colin Shaw in the image.

Ashika’s hand rested on my shoulder and squeezed. I wiped my eyes and gave her the best smile I could, though judging by the wetness in her own gaze it didn’t do much to reassure her.

I took a shaky breath.

Valiant’s right hand was held up in a clenched fist, and I cupped my hand over it.

“Time to make you proud, old man,” I said.

Then I put one foot in front of the other, and kept moving forward.