"It's not who I am underneath, but what I do that defines me."

~Bruce Wayne (Batman)

"Now, remind me again why you were zip-tied to the top of an apartment building?"

"I . . . um . . . I kind of found Delinquent."

"The girl vigilante." Eric clarified.

"Umm . . . yeah."

"And then what?" Daniel eagerly gestured me on.

I sighed, knowing that the recount of the night was only for their amusement. "She knocked me out and zip-tied me to a pole."

Eric and Daniel both burst out laughing for the tenth time that morning. They'd had me tell the story about last night over and over again, while I obviously kept many detail back, they had still found a kick in the fact that I was beaten by a girl, without her even having to use her powers. I was seriously considering capital murder at that point.

"Guys, come on! Just because she's a girl-"

Daniel grinned, "How short was she again?"

"Yeah," Eric entered in, "And what did she hit you with?"

I groaned as their laughter bounced off the Man Cave's walls. I couldn't just have one day free of their ridicule, could I?

"You know, if we're done making fun of me, I still have school to get to. You know, it's at the same time almost every day." I reminded them, interrupting their laughter.

Daniel sighed sadly and wiped a fake tear from his eye, "Man, I still can't believe you got beat by a girl."

I decided not to mention the fact that it was actually his fault that she even knocked me over the head in the first place. If he hadn't called, and if she hadn't misinterpreted the conversation, I would have never been in that situation.

"Let's just go. You have a city to save anyways." I picked up my backpack and headed for the door, not even looking to see if Daniel was following.

Some days Daniel's huge ego and primeval views on the world made him every bit of the self-obsessed jerk the media made him out to be as Captain Impossible.

The ride to school included more pointless bickering that I would rather not enunciate on. But when I arrived at school, it was a bit different. To be specific, our Political Sciences teacher was way too excited to face a crowd of hormonal teenagers than she usually was.

I took my seat next to Ian before the bell rang, not the only one who noticed Ms. Horan's unfamiliar grin stretched across her face as she sat anxiously at her desk. In fact, she even looked a bit jumpy.

"Hey, what's up with Ms. Horan?" I asked Ian, who looked very confused.

He shook his head, "Dude, I have no idea."

Elise, whose seat was in front of Ian and diagonally across from me, entered and sat in her seat with her own uncharacteristically large grin on her face.

Ian immediately pounced one her, "Spill it, Cupcake."

"Hmm?" her mind seemed elsewhere, very unlike the detail oriented Elise I knew.

"Why are you Little Miss Sunshine this morning?"

She smiled slyly and blushed a deep red. "No reason."

"Oh, come on. You can't just leave us like that!" Ian exclaimed.

But the bell rang before Ian could get the reason for Elise's happiness out of her. And there was no way Ian would be able to get anything out of her when we heard the topic of discussion for today's class.

"As some of you know, the Presidential election is coming up." She was met with the groans of almost every student in the class. Every time any sort of election came around, we did something about it in class. But, a Presidential election was a big deal. I mean – that decided who our country's leader would be for the next four years (considering we don't impeach them or something).

(Or if they, you know, die.)

Perhaps the only students who weren't internally screaming at the thought of another semester full of political discussions were Heather Richards and Michael Pope. Heather's dad was only on his first term, so he was obviously running for a second. Michael Pope's mother was one of the Republican candidates that we knew were running. Though she wasn't polling very much, he was still very excited about her running. As you could tell, Heather and Michael would get in a confrontation or two about their parents.

"Now, don't groan y'all." – Did I mention Ms. Horan was a twenty-something from the very Deep South? – "This is a very important event that is happening in your lifetimes. The people you're watching on your television screens today could be the next leader of your country tomorrow."

Okay, she had a point, but how would you feel having to sit through video after video of the same old boring politicians saying the same old controversial slogans over and over until your brain hurt?

"What makes today interesting is that we officially have a third party joining the presidential race," she paused for dramatic effect, "the Remedists."

Seeing as school, homework, and my afterschool job as a superhero sidekick didn't leave too much time for watching the news, I didn't know too much about the Remedists, except for the fact that they were some sort of third party.

"Now, as you all know, there has almost always only been two parties, the Democratic and the Republican, since our great nation was first started, even if they went by different names at certain points. That's what makes the emergence of this third party so interesting and peculiar. Let's see, can anyone tell me what they know about the Remedists?"

Henry Urban, the offspring of old money and a kid who you could always expect a good joke from, rose his voice to comment, "They like to sacrifice children to the Spaghetti Monster!"

He got a good laugh out of the crowd and Ms. Horan frowned. "I want a serious answer, Henry." Ms. Horan was the type of teacher who gave you warning after warning, but never actually did anything about it. Which meant people like Henry could say things like that without getting into real trouble in her class.

Elise raised her hand, "Umm . . . Ms. Horan? I think I might know a bit about them." She nodded to let Elise continue. "Well, from what I've seen on the news lately, the Remedists are an off branch of the Republican Party that gained a ton of followers directly following The Revealing in Empire and Iris Cities and smaller events like it throughout the years. From what I've seen, they're more of an extremist version of the Republican Party – and extremely Conservative. Their spokesperson is some guy named Richard Head."

Man, the guy's parents must've really hated him to actually name him that. I mean – the first name is bad enough, but mixed with the last, he was doomed. People could call him a Dick Head and claim that they're just using his real name.

The class snickered at his name, while the others who didn't notice the significance of his name stared on in boredom and confusion.

Ms. Horan ignored the class giggles and applauded Elise, "See, look what happens when you take your head out of your smartphones and actually pay attention to the world around you – Ian Thompson."

Ian looked up from his phone screen, where I could currently see a news article about the Remedists splashed across the page. Ian smiled slyly, "Sorry, Ms. Horan, a man's got to text when he's got to text," and then he put his phone away.

(Could you see what I meant when I said that Ian didn't act half as smart as he was? Ian would rather be known as the slacker than be known as the overachiever.)

The teacher sighed as she pulled up a replay of this morning's news report. It was a normal for this class to re-watch news events, but today's headline was far from normal.

'Dick Head declares official candidacy for President.'

Yeah, his name was definitely going to get him votes from the immature eighteen year olds.

The video was set focused on Richard Head as he spoke at a rally, red and blue balloons and confetti falling form the sky behind him. A small flag flowing behind him showed a black peace symbol with two arrows crossed beneath it, set on a stark red background. Sure, because the Remedists couldn't get any more creepy.

"Citizens of our great nation, I speak to you not as a leader or as a revolutionary, but as your equal. For too long we've had to settle for mediocracy in our schools; our institutions; our homes. So, let us not have to settle for such things anymore. I am here to become the remedy to these mediocracies. It is clear that such things need to be fixed, for how can we trust those in power if we don't even know who they are? How can we depend on the people who swore to protect our city when there are scores more of people with powers like theirs trying to degrade our city?

"Yes, that's right, I am talking about the supers. If recent events have taught us anything, it's that these so called 'super-humans' should not be trusted. For every one superhero, there are thousands more super villains out to hurt us, as highlighted by the overcrowding of Alcatraz, the super villain prison set to isolate these terrifying individuals – a prison that isn't as secure as they would like us to think. When the identities of these some of these so called 'heroes' were released in The Revealing, we, as a nation, were shocked. A spy, a playboy millionaire, a street rat, a vengeful teenager, two children of super villains – these were the people we were entrusting our protection to? These savages? These children? How can we trust these teenagers to be our saviors?

"I'll tell you the answer: we can't. That's why my policy will be simple. When I am in office, every citizen of this great United States of America should need to sign their names on a roll of they have any type of unnatural power. Every super will be obligated to remove their masks or face the consequence of treason, the same goes for any person with these unnatural powers who refuses to sign this roll. We will for once and for all be safe from this super-human threat. Under my vision, we will for once and for all be truly equal under God."

The playback ended with a slogan written underneath the now terrifying symbol of the Remedists, 'Equality and Authority will be our Remedy.'

If you asked me, this new political party seemed more like a cult than any sort of governing party I wanted to lead our nation.

Their claims against the supers were barbaric and wrong. We saved their butts so many times from threats both super and regular, both foreign and near. How could they all of a sudden claim that we were all basically terrorists? How could they claim that just because someone was young with a horrible past and/or parentage that they weren't fit to save the people from evil?

I mean – you couldn't blame all the supers for the actions of only a portion of them. It was just like you couldn't blame the entire human race just because some of them are bad.

I wasn't the only one who looked shaken up by the news footage though. Elise's eyes were furious, as were a couple other kids in the class. Heather was sitting silent and seemed to be stuck staring off into space. Even one of Heather's secret service detail looked a bit upset.

(Yes, they had to stand through every one of Heather's lessons like that. Usually they were meant to be unnoticeable, but when you develop instincts like mine, you took note of every little thing in your environment)

It was obvious why the other students were a bit shaken up by the news footage as well, even if they weren't supers. He was claiming that the supers were untrustworthy because they were teenagers, like us. And just because they were perhaps really poor, or had a less than perfect previous reputation, they were also meant to be untrustworthy (oh, like all those politicians didn't have more than questionable pasts). He was suggesting that the entire millennial population was less than trustworthy.

"Isn't this exciting?!" Ms. Horan exclaimed, oblivious to her students' unexcited demeanors.

Now, don't hold it against Ms. Horan, she just didn't know any better. She probably didn't even hear what Richard Head was talking about, only the fact that he was entering into the race for President. Any new candidate normally excited Ms. Horan, but a new Party? Now that was reason for her to jump up and down on her feet.

"Okay, well, your project for the next few weeks will be to research this new political party and its forerunners. I want to know what its effects will be on the race as a whole and what this means for future politics. Choose your groups of four or less." Ms. Horan ordered, looking a bit glummer now that she realized our distain to the news footage.

Elise, Ian, and I immediately partnered up. There was no question about it. At the rare occasion that we were allowed to choose our own project groups, we always chose each other. Too bad we didn't have Mary in this class, otherwise she'd be our fourth member.

"Umm, mind if I join you?"

I turned around in my seat and saw Heather Richards standing hopefully at my side. I nodded immediately. Knowing the feeling of not having a group to fit in with, I understood what Heather was feeling. Besides, we still had room for a fourth member.

I could already hear Ian's condescending voice in my head, teasing me about never being mean enough to let a girl down for good.

But my mind was still on the Remedists and the fact that they suspiciously reminded me of a cult. They even had the crazed leader who was a great public speaker.

All I needed now was some big catastrophe to make my life even harder.