“That’s some spirit, Anyways for the rest of you guys, continue working on those Project Modules I gave you. But before I send you guys on you’re own to study and work on them, let me ask you guys some problems to see if you’ve been doing some work.” Professor Reynolds. Took off his cufflinks, putting them in his shirt pocket behind the handkerchief, before rolling up his sleeves

“Can anyone tell me show me the Karnaugh Map for this as well design of the circuit ” Professor Reynolds wrote down the equation on the black board with some brand new chalk, before looking towards the other students. Jacob read the board

‘F3(W,X,Y,Z) = Σm(1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 10, 11)’

‘Piece of Cake’ Jacob thought as he internally grinned. He then took out his laptop to open it up, this went unnoticed by the teacher since most of the kids in Gotham High used Laptops instead of Textbooks, but it mostly depended on the teacher that they received for the class. None wanted to answer the question, even with some provocation from the teacher, but Tim raised his hands, easily solving the equation. Solving it perfectly. Professor Reynolds looked disappointed to the rest of them, but Jacob paid no mind, going back to building the software for Project Beta. The problem wasn’t the compression rather the lack of usage of compressed data once it was algorithmically simplified to save space. Jacob’s goal was to be able to used the compressed files like normal but that would need a special Algorithm to be able to accomplish that task.

“Woah, that looks…complicated Jacob” Tim said impressed, Jacob didn’t barely even heard him speak as he quickly achieved a state of focus that allowed him to ignored everything. When he was in that focused state, everything become perfectly clear, allowing his brain to operate in higher functions. He could do it normally but he would be easily distracted, and he it would take him a lot longer to do when he wasn’t in the state. It came with it’s downsides too, shutting off all of the emotions that he would normally experience. It also effectively cut off his sense of time passing as well as hunger to some degree. He could get hungry but his need for food was extremely minimized allowing him to so far abstain without food for at least 4 days, but Jacob theorized that he’d be able to survive without eating for a longer period of time if he chooses too. Otherwise his stomach was a bottomless pit.

“Jacob!” Tim tapped Jacob who looked at the new boy wonder before seeing everyone had left the classroom.

“It’s the end of class, Jacob. Let us venture off too Study Hall.” Jacob was confused as he usually just sat with Gwen during study hall, but not caring enough to think about it he reviewed his work before closing his laptop. Jacob packed up any of the things he had taken out during class, storing them in his book bag before walking out of the classroom with Tim who seemed jovial about walking with him. Once they were out, Jacob saw a figure but quickly realized that it was Stephanie who was waiting outside to the left of the doorway trying to act as nonchalant as possible

“Ready?” Tim asked Stephanie.

“Tim, I was the one waiting on you so yeah…. but why is Jacob coming with us, We’re usually by ourselves?” Stephanie replied, she looked disgruntled.

“Please, don’t let me take the time away from you guys.” Jacob smiled before walking off. The library was a little while away but he was in no rush as he wanted to talk to Link.

“Can you hack into the school’s server, and upload everything you have on the students, teacher, staff, and donors,” Jacob ordered.

“Of course, would you like something specific?”

“Nope just something that might come in handy for later.” Jacob looked around before entering the library, He wanted to be hidden so he went to one of the more unpopular sections of the library called the stacks. It held tons of books that have been outdated, damaged heavily or reasonably unimportant for some time, as it was one of the first parts of the library built by the money of the Wayne’s. They wanted Gotham to be one of the greatest cities in the world and hoped that with the amount books that his family collected, whether that was from buying or stealing, that it would generate a big enough surge of information to lead us into the future through the new and upcoming generations.

‘What an Idealist, though I wished it worked, we wouldn’t have to be at the mercy of the Amazonians’ strength, or the Alanteans’ magic. I’m not even going to think about any of the tens of thousands alien planet that possess some type of existential threat to society.’ Jacob reached the end of the libraries new addition to lively up the place as he saw a bunch of tables that were unoccupied. He went to take a seat but as soon as he did he saw. Someone’s shadow from one of the aisles, but he figured that he would be followed by the him. What he didn’t expect was for him to have company, causing him to sigh.

“There you are, you have no idea how hard is was to find you” Tim smiled. Jacob wasn’t relieved when he saw Stephanie and Gwen following him.

“I should’ve went to the school’s roof.” Jacob thought before opening his book bag. He felt the concerned eyes of Gwen but when he looked up to her, he just found her looking away.

“Well, now that we are all here. We need to discuss our project ideas?” Tim suggested plainly.

‘Was their a project? I don’t think I missed anything important..’ Jacob thought himself while seeing that the files had been loaded onto his laptop. He looked at them for a second before Tim sat next to them.

“You don’t remember, it’s for physics? Wow, were have you been for the past couple of days.” Stephanie mocked.

“Home.” Jacob replied dryly before looking at Gwen who seemed concerned.

“Okay so what should we do?” Stephanie said, her face began to look disconcerted at the looks exchanged by Tim and Gwen.

“Build an arc reactor” Jacob blurted out. The other three chuckled at Jacob before seeing him not join in.

“ To be able to build a nonexistent power source like that? That’ll be pretty interesting but I suggest we build or do something reasonable.” Gwen questioned, Jacob thought about it for a minute before revealing.

“I don’t know how. I can learn the premise and probably figure it out in less than a year probably less than 6 months but building it might take smidge longer. We can also build a simple robot. Your- well Bruce Wayne can get up some spare equipment right? I can get you a list, and we can break it into two parts. Hardware and, Software. When is the project do.” Jacob asked quietly.

“In a couple of weeks, but why don’t we do something easier?” Tim questioned back, Jacob looked at all of them, they looked disinterested in most of his ideas so he sighed.

“Then figure it out on your own. Delegate the tasks, and then give me what I need to do. I’m not asking to build Red Tornado. At most we do a simple non-sentient version of r2d2.”

“Jacob, don’t be like that. We just brain storming” Gwen tried to reason before looking away when he made eye contact.

“Gwen, you guys aren’t even making suggestions. So what I am supposed to do when you guys keep shutting my ideas down.” Jacob peered at her causing her to look back.

“Jacob.. look, calm down. I think we’re just all concerned about the projects that you’re offering. The physics project is part of a grander Science Fair project so we can totally do that. I’ll ask my dad to get us some equipment, and we all research how to connect a remote controller to the drone. Deal? Then, well devise who’s best at what and split off from there. For now research, and then we’ll talk about groups afterword” Tim suggested. Jacob nodded, though for the majority of the time he would spend his time coding software for Project Beta, while also devising a another Project to work on the future named Project Bleed edge.

‘I need suits, spandex looks to be unavoidable, but at least I can afford some good quality. I’m still not giving up the shorts though.’ Jacob thought before finishing up parts of the code. He made sure to channel his mind to avoid ignoring everything but the others still looked at him from time to time, especially Gwen. Jacob’s phone chimed.

“It’s Ms. Moon, she’s asking yo-”

“Shut up” Jacob whispered.

“I wasn’t even talking,” Gwen scoffed.

“I wasn’t talking to you, any of you. By the way, have you guys finished?” Jacob shook his head dejectedly. The rest of them had nodded, besides Gwen who looked a little unsure on what was going on.

“I hate computer science, and engineering. I am more a biology and chemistry student, so this is basically magic to me” Gwen admitted. Tim consoled her by grabbing and squeezing her shoulder, before Stephanie scoff to herself.

“Luckily I am a wiz in computers, How about you Casanova?” Stephanie asked smirking.

“I’m okay I guess?” Jacob shrugged before Tim took Jacob’s computer scanning the contents. Jacob had figured this might happened, but Tim soon gave it back after a couple of seconds.

“Okay, you are researching binary algorithms and compression sequences, is that what you were building code for earlier, compression software?” Tim asked intrigued.

“Sir, someone’s, correction something is trying to hack into sir’s laptop. Should I attempt to eradicate foreign threats?” Link asked.

“I’m not hiding anything Tim, you could’ve just asked to look, okay?” Jacob mumbled before thinking about it.

‘I wonder if Link could hack the Batcave from this?’ Jacob looked on his phone before texting to Link

You: Plant a scattered copy data of yourself inside the hacking tool, learn it’s protocols, and understand it’s data. Then just hide any important files before it fully gains access.

“So should we discuss?” Jacob looked at the three of them, Gwen looked the least disappointed but nodded while Tim kept the laptop in his hands a little long before giving it back.

“Uh sure. Since this Gwen’s least popular field we should give her the easiest task along with Jacob, since he seems to preoccupied. You guys do the software coding, if you run into any major problems. Stephanie, will be a call away and so will I.” Tim delegated the task before one of them rose their hands. Gwen quickly got up, and started packing with causing everyone to look at her weird.

“Gwen, you know we aren’t in class for another.-” Tim chuckled.

“Remember it’s the second semester, schedules changed and technically, we are late for class.” Gwen smiled awkwardly before getting up and packing. Jacob looked at the time, it was 10:50.

‘five minutes late. Professor Reynolds is going to make us all run now.’ Jacob complained before getting up as well and packing his Laptop. He left before the others, gaining a head start.

“Is it complete?” Jacob whisper.

“Partially, I was not able to fully scatter everything” Link responded. Jacob continued his way quietly, until he met up with Ned again.

“Wow you look annoyed.” Ned observed, Jacob was pretty annoyed being stuck with the three of them. What he found worst about it was his annoyance was mainly with Gwen. He didn’t know why he felt slightly fed up with her.

“I was just talking to Gwen, Tim, and Stephanie about a stupid project. So it’s not exactly the best the worst thing in the world Ganke.” Jacob offered up a solemn smiled before they both went in to the boy’s changing room. Jacob found his locker for the period before getting out his gym clothes that his mother had gave him the day prior out of the wash.

“I am so glad that I didn’t forget these” Jacob thought as he placed his gym outfit into the locker. He removed most of his clothes, but he felt stares coming from his side.

‘Ganke, are you staring at me?” Jacob chuckled before looking and there sat Ganke, gawking at him.

“If Liz saw you staring like that, I am positively sure she would get jealous.” Jacob joked before looking at his own body. He had obtain a wound from helping a kid from a mugging next to his apartment in Burnside and unfortunately protecting someone while fighting isn’t easy for him. Besides that the rest of his body was shredded, but still maintaining a body type that was more on the lean side.

“Dude, I knew you said you got a growth spurt, but you’ve been hitting the gym too? You planning on joining the wrestling team or something?” Ned asked. Jacob smiled awkwardly before ignoring him and quickly putting on his gym clothes that were still a little baggy even with his bigger size.

‘I’m glad I don’t like to dress like Professor Reynolds, or my body’s transformation would be a little harder to explain away. Now let’s get this over with’ Jacob walked out of the boy’s changing room while waiting for the rest of the people to come out and for class to start. Physical Education was a nightmare for most of Gotham Height’s students, especially when the majority of funding for the school was coming from Bruce Wayne’s pocket, his influence allowed him to push for a harsher physical program to be instituted even with the reluctance of the other member’s funding as well as the boards.

This way student of Gotham Heights wouldn’t look like the penguin. A discharged noise was heard from a whistle, and when Jacob looked it belong to Professor Reynolds, the coach for Physical Education.

‘I know where he gets his daily steps in’ Jacob had to channel all of his will from laughing as Profe- Coach Reynolds had lost his slacks and instead had adorned shorts so high that it seemed like a thick piece of red underwear. Coach Reynolds had also put on a similar shirt to what they had on.

‘He looks like a Biff shirt. It’s weirdly iconic’ Jacob quipped before looking at Cindy, she made contact with him before getting dragged along by Liz, and Stephanie.

“Why?” Jacob questioned, but it was a loud enough for Coach Reynolds to here, so he weirdly walked his way over stretching his hip flexors.

“Why what son, why aren’t you running, or why aren’t I yelling at you to run?” Coach Reynolds sarcastically smirked, before blowing a supersonic whistle into Jacob’s face.

“RUN FOREST RUN, and don’t let me find you slacking off Thompson, you may be the star Shooting Guard but I will give your minutes away and bench you.” Coach Reynolds threatened. All of the students in the class started running for the most part. Jacob had to pretend like he couldn’t easily run 60 mph which was harder than expected after seeing Ganke get tired after 5 laps around the whole gymnasium which was about the size of a quarter football field.

‘Ganke getting tired isn’t the problem. I am not sweating even a little bit, and so people are going to ask what’s up.’ Jacob looked around and he could only manage to find one solution, and so he took someone’s water bottle, and squeeze most of it in his mouth missing the rest to go on his body.

‘Now that Im wet it should be fine’ Jacob thought before handing back the water bottle. The kid didn’t look to please but being bigger than him, the kid was slightly intimidated.

“Gather up everyone” Coach Reynolds ordered, He blew the whistle to assert his seriousness making all, but the brave few (Which was all of them) to walk swiftly, making a circle around him.

“Let’s get this started.”