6

Part 6

After a few minutes of reshuffling, I was sitting in front of Ms. Hebert thinking on the project as outlined.

The subject of the assignment was simple. A basic presentation on how capes had affected an aspect of modern culture. Something my new memories helped a lot with as, near as I could tell, they came from a world that didn't have any superheroes in them.

Well not superhuman ones anyway. Not on anything that wasn't fiction.

...Well unless they hid it very very well anyway. I had to accept that possibility, particularly when everything I knew about my powers hinted that the sidhe myths might not be so mythological.

Huh, now there was an idea to draw on for a theme.

"So..." I said to my project partner, brining my mind back to the present, "How do you want to do this? Split things up so we're each responsible for part of it? Do it all online? Meet up after school?" I listed off.

"Can't we just... work on it in class?" she asked.

I blinked, "Well yeah, but I mean the after class stuff. If we split up the load then we can compare notes here if you want. Or we could arrange something so we can work together," I elaborated.

"Do we really need to do that though?" she asked me. "I mean, we've got two weeks to get the project done. Can't we just get it done in class time?"

I raised an eyebrow. So she wanted to slack off on it? Or maybe she just thought we could really do it in only that time?

Whatever.

"If that's how you feel," I shrugged, agreeing. "Okay! We'll try it at least. If it looks like we're getting crunched for time. We can always figure out something else later. For now let's just pick out a subject to focus on."

A thought hit me at once, "How about comic books?"

"Comic books?" she questioned.

"Why not?" I asked. "I mean they're huge up in Aleph right? Full of crazy things like aliens or super intelligent robots, but here on Bet they kinda just... died out." I explained. "It's not hard to see why I mean with real superpeople all around, but so many ideas have been lost. We lost fantasy to the mundane fantastic."

"Okay," she agreed like that.

Just like that. No real thoughts or arguments just... 'okay'.

I sighed, "You don't really talk much do you?"

it was more polite than saying 'I'm doing this alone aren't I?' at least.

Her cheeks went red.

"It's... not like that... it's just... you seemed really passionate about it!" she fumbled out.

I blinked.

Then tried to hold in a laugh, oh gods she was adorable.

"Well thanks!" I grinned. "Yeah; I am Nerd. Hear me Squee," I declared confidently.

"Okay seriously... if we really want to do this we need to plan things out," I said in a mildly more serious tone. "Since it'd be more about the absence of something, in how it decayed over time... We're going to need a cross comparative. Which means looking at the Earth Aleph comic culture. Which means a lot of time online," I half grimaced half smiled. "You have a computer?"

"Um... I could use the library?" she suggested.

"That works!" I agreed. "The library's got most of what we need anyway. So we could do some group work there later maybe?"

"Maybe?" she repeated seeming more then a little under confident.

She was shy. Taylor Hebert, heiress of the Demon of the Docks, was shy. It was so funny it doubled into both adorable and terrifying.

"Well you can decide on that," I offered. "For now... eh, since you've already spotted me out as a huge nerd, how about I go grab everything I know about it and we meet up on this tomorrow?"

"That's... fine, I'm fine with that," she agreed.

"Works for me then! For today... how about we just work out how we wanna do this presentation? Big old cardboard display? Powerpoint CD? Verbal? Maybe some leaflets?"

"Okay," she agreed.

The rest of the class went pretty well.