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After the lecture we were sent back to our new dormitory. I shut myself away in my room to think about what Mister Raposo had said, and try to think of the best way to pass his test. I couldn't really rely on the others. It might have gone against the spirit of the test, but I got the feeling that they believed his lie. If I could expose Mister Raposo's falsehoods we could all pass the test. Teamwork could come later.

I only left my room once that night, going to the small kitchenette at the end of the hall to look for some snacks. Ethan, Break, whatever you wanna call him, was just exiting the restrooms as I did. He shoulder checked me as we passed. Not nearly as hard as he could have, obviously, but hard enough to remind me of his continuing, if misplaced, anger. I'd tried telling him I had nothing to do with why he's angry but he's intent on being stubborn. Being unwilling to back down is probably a good trait for a hero to have, but I wasn't sure that applied to grudges.

I'd known Ethan for a couple of years; Erhaben started training him about two years after I first came to Spika, not long after I managed to convince Gillian Justinson, better known as the armored hero Camelot, to start training me. We'd never been close, him being a year older than me and us having virtually no interests in common. The only thing that could possibly unite us, our desire to become superheroes, had been torpedoed quite effectively by Erhaben's reckless disregard for resembling conventional teaching methods.

When I got back to my room I opened up my laptop and typed up a report, writing down everything I could remember from Mister Raposo's lecture.

A lot of the things that he said were lies. He kept a fair number of truths in his lecture - things I know are true, and things I'm assuming are true, like the stuff about Blackbird - but the threat of throwing us in Belvedere, the prison for the worst supervillains in the world was noteworthy. Don't get me wrong; It was a pretty intimidating threat in the moment, but given time to think afterwards it was obvious that it was an empty one. But it was a clue, a hint to the observant that he's not above lying to us.

He claimed that Spika's crime rate was practically non-existent, another lie. Not to say that Erhaben's reputation hasn't deterred some crime, but there will never be shortage of fools who think they and they alone are smart enough to get away with doing bad things where others have failed. They just need to avoid the attention of one mouse, and he can't be everywhere at once. Easy right?

The claim that Spika had never suffered a supervillain attack stood out as a glaring falsehood. True, few supervillains are brave enough to directly challenge Erhaben, even before he teamed up with Exabyte and Camelot, but it has happened. I know from first hand experience because I was there when it did happen. The Evil Robot turned up, back from the dead who knows how many years after two heroes - EmKathy and The Duke - sacrificed their lives in vain to destroy him. He'd tracked down his creator, hoping to settle some old grudges, and I had the misfortune to get caught in the crossfire.

I was in a coma for the better part of a month and still bedridden for a while after I woke. I was usually kept company by visitors, usually Gillian or my grandparents or on occasion my uncle. Never Erhaben.

Most of the rest of his speech checked out, which was probably to hide the lie about the robot. I'd worked with two of the greatest roboticists in the world and knew full well that making a robot so sophisticated as to perfectly emulate a living person is...not impossible, but kind of pointless. You might as well just hire some guy to be an actor at that point.

I opened up the encrypted communication program that Exabyte had installed on the computer and put in a call back home. Erhaben was the one who answered, which was a bit unusual. He always hated sitting around and usually made Exabyte or one of the Frankies man the comms.

"What do you know about Osrick Raposo?" I asked, not bothering with any formalities.

"Not a lot." Erhaben said. "He's a defense lawyer. Pretty successful one at that. Got lots of supervillain clients but I've looked around. Nothing shady or under the table going on. He's squeaky clean as far as I can tell."

"Is he a super?" I asked.

Erhaben shrugged. "These days the Registration only keeps files on criminals and the heroes they've got on hire. I could look if you need it, but it will take time."

I thought about this for a second and shook my head. "Maybe some other time. For now I need to know if the professor and Exabyte filled any orders for robots recently."

"Don't think so." Erhaben said. He started typing at the computer, probably looking for Exabyte's records. "Why do you ask?"

He listened attentively as I filled him in on Mister Raposo's test, then asked. "And you don't think asking someone else about it is against the rules?"

"You're the one who taught me that sometimes a hero needs to bend the rules to get the job done. If I can't find the answer on my own, I need to rely on the resources I have available. So who better ask than the Registration's best spy?"

"Information hero." Erhaben corrected with a smirk. He never liked being called a spy, so was always ready with a handy euphemism.

"Can you find anyone else who's filled an order?"

"I'll look into it. Anything else?"

"Anything about the Holy United African Empire's heroes, all the files we have on the Survivors and all public records about Bruja."

Erhaben raised an eyebrow at this. "That's all going to take more doing. I'll get the Frankies on it." The Frankies, Francis "Frankie" Moreno and Franklin "Frankie" Kaylin, were Erhaben's information guys. In spite of their tendency to bicker over their shared nickname, together with Erhaben there was no one better at digging up hard to find intel.

"So tell me about your day." Erhaben said, abruptly changing the subject.

"What? Why?" I asked, instantly suspicious. In all the time I'd known him, Erhaben had never asked about me or my day.

"Can a man not be curious to know about his son's life?" Erhaben asked.

Did I forget to mention that? Yeah, so Erhaben is my father. Most people don't make the connection since my fur is brown - like my mother's - while his is naturally white. It's a long, surkea story, but the short version is that I never met him before I was 13 and my relationship with him had not markedly improved since. That's probably obvious considering Exabyte is my sponsor for the Hero program and not Erhaben.

I stayed with his parents and tried to hang around my uncle's bar, hoping in vain to spend time with my father. I got to know my uncle, Adolfo, who for obvious reasons preferred to be called Alpha, I got to know Exabyte and professor Tomez and I got to meet Gillian.

"Any other man? Depends. You? Definitely not. Why the sudden interest in my activities?"

"I just thought it would be nice to learn more about you." He looked uncertain, not that I believed he was. Erhaben is a born liar and if there's one thing he has in abundance it's self-assurance. He wouldn't call himself Erhaben if he didn't.

"You've had five years to learn more about me. You've never shown an interest before, why start now?" I demanded.

"Why not start now? It's as good a time as any." He said.

I scowled. "Look, the 'attentive father' act is great and all, but I'm really not buying it. You've made it perfectly clear that you don't have time for me, and I can't imagine that your schedule has changed just because you've had a sudden attack of parental concern. Don't feel like you have to get to know me just because you accidentally contributed to my birth."

That came out a lot harsher than I meant it to but I didn't back down. I inherited my stubbornness from him after all.

"It was Gillian's idea." He muttered, looking irritated more than anything.

Of course it was. Gillian had been conspiring to unite us since the day I met her, but Erhaben was never short on excuses to avoid me.

Gillian had retired from superheroism two years previous after a particularly nasty run-in with Malicious Mind. In between helping Exabyte and professor Tomez retrofit the Camelot armor, which I'd redubbed the Vuoritorni armor, for my use she had apparently used her spare time to nag Erhaben into getting to know me. Well, if she was going to meddle I thought I might as well remind her why I don't get along with Erhaben.

"All right then. So let's get to know eachother." I said, "You wanna know about me? Today I went to the first class in this new program the Registration invented, because apparently some dumb class is a good substitute for instruction from actual heroes, and I got told I'd be expelled if I don't find a clearly non-existent robot and then I was thrown into the same building with three people I've never met and Ethan, who doesn't like me. And do you know whose fault it is that Ethan doesn't like me?" I could feel my anger bubbling up inside of me as my tail started flicking against the desk and my ears folded back against my head.

"I'm sure you're going to blame me, even though I've got no control over who Ethan decides to dislike." Erhaben replied coolly.

"Who else would I blame if not the person who is at fault? He doesn't like me because you were manipulating him and he wrongly assumes that I knew about it. And why's that, I wonder? Oh right, because Exabyte knew about it and professor Tomez knew about it and the Frankies knew about it. Basically everyone BUT me knew about it but somehow I'm the one he dislikes."

"I only paid Spinner to keep tabs on him. That's hardly manipulation. Besides which, it's still his decision to hate me for it, not mine."

"I don't know why I'm surprised that you're so against taking responsibility!" "You've always been like this! It's the airport all over again! Imagine my surprise when I get off the plane, hoping to see my father there waiting for me - so I can meet him for the first time - and he isn't fucking there!" I shouted angrily, veering off topic as my anger broke.

"I had important business to attend to. Sorry if I can't take the time out of my schedule of tracking Apex - so that he doesn't murder people - so that you, Alexander, would get to meet me. I'm sure Apex will rest easy at night knowing that in the Great Hierarchy of Important Things in this world his crimes are rated as less important than the happiness of Alexander Lind." Erhaben countered, unmoved by my anger.

"You are the worst person I've ever met!" I screamed.

"If you really think that you definitely chose the wrong career to study, because I guarantee you're going to meet a lot of criminals who are a thousand times worse than me if you're ever approved to work for the Registration." Erhaben said. In spite of my continually rising anger he remained calm, which only served to piss me off even more.

Without thinking I jumped out of my chair, grabbed the laptop and hurled it across the room as hard as I could. It smashed against the wall and fell to the ground, quite broken. A few of the keys had popped out and screen was heavily cracked.

My heart pounding, I instantly regretted it. I sank back into my chair and stared at the spot where the computer had been sitting. It wasn't that the computer was especially valuable: what few files I kept on there were backed up on my computer back home and I only really used it for communications, but I had thought that I was better than that.

It was childish of me to get so angry at Erhaben. Not even over something I might have the right to be angry over, but over something he was totally correct about; the job was more important than my feelings. Lives were on the line and he couldn't put me ahead of them. And I really had less room to complain since even without Erhaben I still met new family and friends that were as close as I ever was to my mother and my maternal grandparents.

Gillian had told me more than once that heroes are terrible at balancing work and personal relationships and would all too often find themselves putting the former ahead of the latter. I'm sure Erhaben probably felt as bad about it as I did, he just hid it better.

I still had some growing up to do, it seemed. I closed my eyes and pictured the Vuoritorni armor in my mind. I could almost see it, sitting there in the base's garage, patiently waiting to be called upon. It calmed me down a little, enough for me to move from the desk to my bed. The rooms weren't very large, and the others had probably heard my yelling. They probably thought I was crazy.

I didn't bother to turn out the lights, or grab a blanket, and as I lay there I thought about my future. If I wanted to be a hero, to save people and fight the good fight, I would need to do better, to be better.

I chose the armor's new name for a reason. Gillian had called it Camelot after the castle of King Arthur, a wise and just king in English folklore. I called it Vuoritorni, the mountain tower. It stood above the world, never seeking adulation - certainly never yearning for the attention of its architect - content to keep the people safe, proof against invading armies and the biting wind, but still reliant on others to thrive. I could not fail to follow its example. To uphold justice and protect people from evil. I could not act out like a child because 'daddy never loved me'.

Quite aside from being unbecoming of a hero... "It's just so cliché." I muttered to myself before drifting off into an exhausted sleep.