The summary test of just how well they can take a hit over, the trainees were patched up and sent to lunch. A rather well-deserved reward for surviving getting beaten up by one of the Elite. But they returned to find training canceled for the day, more urgent matter requiring Aegis’ attention. And few really objected to this as they hobbled back to their rooms. The next day they were rested, rehabilitated, and had recuperated some amount of pride in themselves. Tests are tests for a reason. Aegis met them in the arena yet again, thought a little less chipper than usual. Either since her interruption went poorly or she was still feeling the rib from technically losing her own test. Regardless, she was back and more than ready.

“Okay. Today is a bit of a different day. First up is proper critique of all of your fighting styles. I’ll be leading that as expected. But after that is course work… led by Para.”

The trainees grumbled and looked puzzled. They’d heard him talk about an education before but still didn’t understand what that was about. David raised his hand and voiced as such, but Aegis just shrugged.

“I… really don’t know. It will probably be some kind of study of villains or power types. That would make sense. But it's Para, so never let your guard down.”

Aegis still seemed like she knew a little about what was coming, but could only speculate and dread it.

“At any rate, that’s later. For now let’s get to fighting critiques. Also sorry this had to wait until today, got called in after lunch. Couple thefts in the industrial sector needed attending to.”

Seth could barely tell, but there was a bit of resentment in her tone. ‘Yeah, it went poorly.’ Despite that, the trainees and Aegis moved off the line and on to one of the arena’s sideline benches. No sense taking up the central area for just talking.

It looked like the M.J.D. was up first.

“You three certainly took the inventive route, an ice slip and slide for an immobile teammate is technically movement based per the rules. It’s just incredibly slow. If I wanted it, Maya wouldn’t have even had to reach me for her to be sent barreling back into you guys. Also, you two were so caught up in your second attack that you didn’t even check to see if your first even landed. I mean having faith in your teammate is good in all, but don’t take your eyes off the battle. All in all, focus on speeding up your reactions and… maybe more independent strategies.”

The three looked down a little, but were at least not discouraged. Next was Kabar and Cleo.

“You two, okay you really had me going there. Until you didn’t. Kabar, it might be a little too obnoxious to say, but you’re extending yourself way too much. Your lines anyway. Their whips right, flaming searing whips. Use them as such more often. I mean, I know you were limited in your usage but they can still hurt when not on fire. Keep them moving when you don’t understand your enemy, and don’t let the enemy use them against you. Maybe get a knife or something to cut them when things get hairy. And uh… try a less obvious move next time.”

“Cleo. The straps are useful, I will give you that. But they are too weak, and you keep yourself at too great a distance. Anyone strong enough will just bull-rush through them like their just really bitey grass, and you seem to only be able to conjure a limited set of them. You need to get closer, focus more on how you can use them around you and not just around your enemy. Like say use the straps to create a full body suit of leather armor and I’m already regretting telling you to do that… J-just diversify your attacks okay. Try augmenting yourself with them and not just immobilizing your enemies.”

Kabar shrugged at the suggestions, but it was clear Cleo was already visualizing her full body leather armor and ‘Oh god please get these thoughts away from me!’

Aegis stepped up to Tabby and Alex next.

“Good form, okay reaction times, but not understanding when to break off your attacks is going to cost you. Your flurries were getting blocked at every turn, but you kept at it. This has merits, but you were just opening yourselves up to what happened. The same goes for you two.”

Aegis moved to Marco and Zeleny.

“Always strive to understand your enemies. I’m a flyer by blood, I know when someone is dive-bombing me just by sound alone. You should focus on what your enemy knows best and avoid their expertise if you can’t hope to match them in it. Also Marco you need to up your reaction time. You could have used your air powers to missile straight down on me as I worked out my momentum, but instead you were surprised and got tossed aside. Your martial arts would have been better suited supporting the copycat crew then wasted on an ill prepared sneak attack. A little Occam’s razor maybe. And speaking of Occam’s razor.”

Aegis moved up to Ohm, pulling out a piece of paper from one of her pockets.

“Technomancer tabulated up your power usage. Here’s that bill I said you would owe.”

Aegis handed off the page to a sneering Ohm, who looked at it briefly and back at Aegis before snapping back down to it with a look of pure monetary horror on his face.

“18,000!!! It was just a few kilowatts, what do you generate and charge a premium!?!”

“You pulled several hundred kilowatts through unsupported lines and narrowly cut power to the entire base. Most of that is repair costs.”

Ohm deflated but kept sneering.

“Let me guess, you’ve already billed my dad?”

“Yup.”

“Wonderful. You even need to critique me at this point?”

“Yup. You overdid it. You pulled in too much power and went crazy from it. Its effective in a pinch, but as an opener it’s stupid. Without any self-control you leave yourself open to counter attacks. You’re more predictable, too focused on your enemy.”

As she was about to continue, Aegis reached into her other pocket and produced another slip.

“Almost forgot, here’s my tailoring and dry-cleaning bill.”

Ohm sneered harder, he was getting bilked, but he also kind of deserved it. But at least Aegis’ arm padding looked actually new and not faded, or burned.

“Now for you two blade boys. I’m going to commend your self-control to a point, but everything passed that is cowardice. I mean, I’ll admit I can get a little scary sometimes but there's limits. This mostly applies to you Razor. You held off because you saw Kaz holding off. You need to keep a bit of focus on your enemy, not just your ally. You need to find your own timing and then work out your attacks in tandem. Kaz you gave up a little too easy. You could have at least taken a swing, come on. The two of you are going to be getting a double session tomorrow. No spoilers, but you’re getting it twice.”

Kaz took his criticism with a respectful bow, but Razor seemed to take his a little hard. Aegis finally turned to Seth, hamming a dismissive pout as he met her with the same smile as before.

“So… what’s there to critique for me?”

“Hmph. Maybe you don’t deserve one.”

She folded her arms and turned her nose up in facetious curmudgeon.

“Oh fine. You did good. Kept your cool at least. Still feel you punch above your weight class a little. Your fighting style is all over the place, and definitely hard to predict. But.”

Aegis came in close, bending over to get in Seth’s face and whisper with none of the joking around from before.

“You’re holding back too much. You fought yourself more than you fought me.”

Seth lost his smile, unable to hide as much as he could before. She was… a little too close.

“H- how did you-”

Aegis reared back up with a prideful smirk.

“What, you think you get to this level without learning a thing or two? I know you are capable of a lot more than what you showed off yesterday. Hell you didn’t even do that whole assassin step thing you did to Para. You could have fought a lot harder, but you didn’t. Restraining yourself is an art form, you need to balance out to your opponent if you actually want to WIN a fight.”

Aegis pulled back, the ire of the other trainees still somewhat firm on Seth.

“Alright, take what I said and prepare for tomorrow. But for now I guess your Para’s.”

Aegis filed the trainees into one of the ready rooms, modified with proper tabled seating and a projector. Almost like a regular classroom. Para stood at the projector, still as hardassed as ever but… somewhat dour. Seth sat near the back, he had maintained his place at the end of every line so he wasn’t spoiled for choice in where to sit. Once everyone was in, Para hit the lights and started whatever his presentation was.

The projector hummed as the first slide showed itself. An old photo, looked to be 1940s. It was an odd group of G.I.s posing in front of a cargo plane. Seth actually recognized them, it was Mavers’ Marvels, one of the first official military units to be formed completely of supers.

The Ember Harrier, later Burning Eagle. The team required code names and a few motifs stuck around. Fire and flight powers are second to none, but few outward features to say as such. Just an odd talisman around his neck that looked like a sword hilt. He ended up creating the UN’s super force and founding the League through it, hence the speech.

Corporal Advance, later General. They denied his first choice so he decided to climb the ranks officially. Momentum multiplication and near invincibility. Built like a tank and was always a bit over patriotic at the parades Seth saw him at. He headed the US’s super force in the early days until Eagle started up the League.

The Neptune’s Call from back then. One of the Gods’ Chosen, a precursor group to the League with pretty limited numbers. Each given a name to go with their powers, in turn matching them with that member of the Greek Pantheon. They also liked to pass down those names to their, in turn, chosen successors. Though… this one died on this mission if Seth remembered correctly.

And lastly Outrider. An old fashioned sharpshooter with a fiery additive. He was ‘fast as a wildfire’ if the old comic strips were accurate. He just retired after the war, which was pretty understandable given the circumstances.

“You all have probably seen this photo before, the first team of supers ever assembled and officially recognized. Lt. General Mavers put this team together to spearhead deep infiltration operations into Nazi Germany. 2 of them went on to lead the U.S. and U.N. super units, and later declare their independence. This team founded the League we know today. But what you don’t know is that it also founded what would become the greatest villain society this world had to contend with. The Terror Matrix.”

Seth sure as shit didn’t know that, in fact most of the trainees didn’t. The only ones that seemed not taken aback by this were Kaz and Ohm.

“Outrider, the one on the end looking like he walked into a western/world war costume department fire. Officially he retired after the war, citing battlefield fatigue. In reality he had seen the writing on the wall, seen the super identifier programs in both the U.S. and Germany, heard stories of the programs in Russia.”

Para flipped the slide, another old photo of what looked like a concentration camp, but with the stars and stripes flying overhead. People in stark white jumpsuits were lined up for roll call of some kind, a guard in heavy gear at every corner of the group.

“Torture, blackmail, holding families hostage, even mental manipulation attempts. He couldn’t stand that people, his people, were being used and abused like that. Couldn’t bear the thought of all out super warfare, even as nukes were coming to the forefront.”

Another slide. This one looked like a still from some early surveillance photography. A hooded figure with a smoldering lever action repeater leading a group of detainees out of one of the camps through a burned up fence.

“He went off the grid, gathered like minded supers, and fomented rebellion against military controlled super programs across the globe. No one talks about this early team of his, much of the records were sealed or destroyed. And his actions were honest and justified. Still, all we really know is that by the time the League was signing the Kashmir Peace Accords, Outrider was dead and radical elements in his group were reforming into the Terror Matrix. They stopped caring about their original goal, became more anarchic, wanted to burn the system down rather than save their people from conscription and weaponization.”

Next slide, an iconic one. Gold Breaker giving his speech on the rubble of the Tombstone, a massive atomic artillery battery the Terror Matrix tried to fire at the world. The peak of the golden age of the League if there ever was one.

“It wasn’t till Gold Breaker’s condemnation that the Terror Matrix finally lost any ambiguity and became the full on villain society that it was, with what few elements that subscribed to Outrider’s original ideals defecting or going into hiding. That was at least the beginning of the end for it. Guilt and ideals winning out over evil.”

Para hit the lights, a blank slide left on the projector.

“I’m telling you all this because as heroes you will need to understand what motivates the people around you. You need to understand beforehand why someone does what they do, why they act the way they do. Leaving it unknown will only invite disaster. Outrider, instead of fighting against the injustice his people had suffered in the open, opted to hide and work from the shadows. This fit the situation, and I’m not decrying him. But in doing so he accepted all who he saved. Gave them legitimacy despite the wrongs done to them. In committing to this unbiased recruitment, he ended up creating one of the most destructive villain societies ever formed. He wasn’t able to reign in those too broken or radicalized by the early programs and we all nearly suffered because of it."

"You need to both ask your fellow heroes and ask yourselves, why are you here? Why do you want to be a hero? If you can’t tell them, can’t work in the open, can’t understand who you’re working with, then you’d better get packing, because you don’t belong here.”

Para hit the lights again.

“To that end I devised a few courses to get to the bottom of a few motivations I caught during training. And I’ll start with the easiest catch all there is.”

Para hit the slide again… bringing up a picture Seth hadn’t seen before, but one he knew in greater detail than it ever could show. It was a burned welcome sign on an equally burned out wooded road. A truck turned and shattered, sat in the middle of the road behind it. That sign read “Welcome to Frigateville!” and Seth’s heart sank.