shallowness

Title: Career Day
Characters/Pairings: Magenta, Layla, Warren, Larry, Zach. Canon pairings, Warren/Layla implied.
Rating: G.
Spoilers/Warnings: Set post-movie. Magenta POV.
Word Count: 2,348
First Posted: February 2007
Summary: ‘Plan for a Super Tomorrow…Today!’ Magenta-style.

Disclaimer: These characters are not mine, and I make no profit from this fan fiction.
Notes: Written for pyroblaze18, with huge apologies for the delay. This is another case of a ficlet becoming something longer. Thanks to FridayAngel for the beta, all mistakes are mine. Lightly edited May 2024.

Career Day: shallowness

I took my seat next to Layla at the gym. I’d come in with her, and okay, I knew that Zach had kept a seat for me next to him in one of the rows ahead – Layla hadn’t noticed him – but I didn’t say anything. Just because we were dating, it didn’t mean I was going to lose focus and lose control of my future. Or spend all of my time with Zach.

Before he could make Ethan leave their empty row to come to ours, Larry was hovering at the aisle. I don’t mean literally, he doesn’t have a jet-pack – he was just looking like he wanted to sit in our row. I gave him a cool glance, or what Zach calls the Destructo Glare, because I knew exactly what Larry was up to.

“Are you going to just stand there?” Warren asked him. I have no idea where Warren came from either, but there he was. When he’s in a bitter mood, Mr Medulla claims that force of personality is an actual physical force. Larry side-stepped to give Warren room to pass him.

At my side, Layla perked up, raising her head from the brochure – she was probably the only student lapping up the ‘Plan for a Super Tomorrow…Today!’ that was being handed out in the halls.

“Hey, Warren,” she said, and smiled as he took the seat on the other side of her.

“Where’s—“ they both asked, and stopped at the same time. I raised an eyebrow.

“You first,” Layla said, because she’s polite. I rolled my eyes. Then I rolled my eyes some more, because, realizing that he’d lost this round, Larry had sat down next to me instead of going far away. Layla’s the one he’s crushing on, and has done since our first day as freshmen. Apart from the obvious, with him, I think it’s something about the color of their hair.

What I did next was pure weakness, I couldn’t help it, I sent a glance Zach’s way. Instead of the puppy-dog eyes of invitation that I was expecting, Zach made a ‘what did you expect?’ shrug. I think I glared a little at him then. I mean, you expect a little more sympathy from your boyfriend when your best friend’s biggest admirer decides to sit next to you, with added drool.

Anyway, I wanted to send Larry a message, something like: my shoulder is as cold as the Antarctic as far as you’re concerned, Rocky, so I physically turned my back on him, to tune into Warren and Layla’s conversation.

“So where’s Stronghold?” he was asking.

“He, uh, Will’s not coming,” Layla said, sounding faintly apologetic. Warren frowned a little.

“Why would he need career advice?” I said. “After all, he has a job waiting for him once he graduates. Superior Realty, remember? The best realtors in Maxville,” I guess I was being a little snide.

“Oh, yeah. Right,” Warren said, and slouched back a little in his seat.

Suddenly, I could feel Larry sort of leaning over me. He hadn’t powered up or anything, but there was a lot more proximity than I liked.

“Hey,” I exclaimed, but he paid me zero attention.

“Layla,” he said, “Maybe they could get us a job too.” He must have really good hearing.

“Huh?” she asked.

I gave Larry a disbelieving glare too, which meant I was close enough to see his pores. But I don’t really want to dwell on that.

“Landscaping,” he said in a voice that had kind of broken, but not enough to cover times when he was excited. Like now. “Think about it. You and me, we’d be a perfect team! I could deal with the rocks, you with the plants. The Strongholds could recommend us to their clients and we’d be set.”

Warren was snickering – in a minimalist, cool way – I was just spluttering, but Layla kept her composure, because, like I said, she’s polite.

“You’ve obviously thought about this, but I hadn’t really planned on landscaping as a career. Honestly, I don’t know what I’m going to do. That’s why I’m here.” She gave a little smile.

‘Here’, if you hadn’t guessed, was the Sky High career day. It was going to start off with a speech from Principal Powers, then some specialist career advisor called Golda Compass, and then there’d be exhibitions and stuff.

It was a little different from a regular career day at a regular high school, of course. We knew that our real careers would be saving the world – cue inspiring music – all of us, even sidekicks like me, and definitely people with slightly more awesome powers like Layla or Warren. Or even Larry. This day was about getting advice on our other jobs, the jobs that would help us pay the rent and go about our day-to-day lives. So, about half of the school had come together, blank slates, the only thing that we all knew was that we didn’t want to be teachers stuck here until we were older than Nurse Spex. Can you imagine? Just the thought of fifty more years of canteen food makes me gag.

“Magenta, why is he glowing?” Warren was asking.

“Who?” Layla asked, but I knew who Warren was taking about. The fact that he said ‘glowing’ kinda gave it away.

I tried to see if Zach was actually glowing, because sometimes it’s hard to tell, but Larry was still invading my personal space so that he could slobber over Layla, and blocking my view. Then I got it, and pushed Larry back into his seat. The smack of his ass in the chair and his gasp of shock were pretty satisfying.

“He’s jealous,” I said flatly.

“Aww, that’s cute,” Layla said without thinking. If her brain had been in gear that second, she’d have been much more sensitive around me.

“No, it’s not,” I retorted, “Why be jealous of Larry?”

Larry may have said something like, “Excuse me”, right then.

“Whatever,” Warren said. “I think your boy’s cooled down.” I snuck Warren a glare. He was pretty chatty that day. Not for a normal person, but he’s Warren, abnormal, even at Sky High. He doesn’t really chat, even though he talks more than he ever used to, especially around Layla. And Will. “Who were you asking about earlier, hippie?”

“Huh?” Layla said, and then added, “Oh, Freeze Gi—“

None of us know her name. She’s not in our year, and Warren never really introduced us, never brought her to sit with us, and nobody would let me or Zach ask about her. Zach hasn’t spotted them hanging out lately, come to think of it.

“It doesn’t matter, I mean, today’s not for everyone and I respect that,” Layla said. Then she did that thing where you change a subject really obviously. We’re always doing it, her, me and the gang. We tend to blunder onto awkward topics, and then because we’re none of us great liars, we shift gears like that replacement bus driver that we have. It’s really loud and obvious. “So, what do you think of this?”

She was waving the brochure like it was a flag of surrender in a gale force wind. “You know, apart from the fact that it isn’t even on recycled paper, which is a disgrace.”

“I haven’t read it,” I said honestly. Her eyes darted towards Warren. He took ‘Plan for a Super Tomorrow…Today!’ from her and scanned it a little.

“Pie in the sky,” he muttered eventually.

“I thought there were some pretty sound principles there, actually,“ Layla replied.

“Like what?” I asked, shifting in my seat to be more comfortable, not that school chairs were ever designed with comfort in mind.

“Well, when we choose a job, we have to think about something that we can drop to go deal with an emergency.”

“Brain surgery’s out, then,” Warren said.

“Bummer,” I replied. Layla rolled her eyes at us.

“It has to be something that suits us, but not a job where everyone knows each other’s business. Like being a journalist. You have to be able to keep your secret identity, well, secret.”

“That makes sense,” I had to admit.

“What do you think about the section on being a sidekick?” Warren asked. I could see that it actually said ‘Career Advice for Hero Support’ and I suddenly wished I’d picked up my own copy of the leaflet.

Layla was actually puffing up in outrage. Okay, not actually as in literally, but you know what I mean. Zach says he does, so I’m keeping this in. I, um, kind of had to show him this while I was writing it, because he thought it was a love letter to Larry or something, which is indescribably lame. Zach read what I’d written and handed it back to me with a silly grin on his face. As he left, my dad asked him why he looked so pleased, and my silly boyfriend said that he’s on cloud nine. He even did some silly hand movement involving pointing at me and then his heart. Really.

Maybe it was a little cute.

So, Warren had got Layla ranting, not my favorite sport, personally, but there you go.

“Can you believe that this is the first year that they’ve had a joint career day for heroes and sidekicks? In fact, sidekicks used to just get an hour in a class room, because it was their hero who got the final say about their futures!?”

“Well, it makes sense,” I said. I don’t know why – facing the Wrath of Layla is a bit like facing a giant robot on a rampage. Not that I’d know, I haven’t even faced a simulated giant robot. That’s for advanced classes.

She glared at me, but I persevered.

“Look, the sidekick has to work close to the hero, so that they can be there to support them when there’s a crisis, right?”

“But why can’t the sidekick decide what they want to do, and the hero work around that?” Layla demanded.

I wanted to say ‘monster-size egos’, and ‘who’s really important?’ here, but ever since Principal P. agreed to let us – Layla, Ethan, Zach and me – do a mixed curriculum, Layla’s got even more strident about the issue of, well, segregation. And it’s not like she didn’t have enough to say before.

“Maybe they could negotiate,” Warren suggested to her, “like you always do with people when you want to do something.”

“Oh!” she flushed right up.

“Anyway, Layla, not that I’m saying that landscaping is necessarily right for you, but you should work outside or with plants. That’s pretty obvious.”

“Maybe,” she said, speaking softly. “Actually, I was going to ask for info about positions at the Maxville Natural History Museum, they have amazing glass houses there.”

“The Natural History Museum,” I said. “Well, it could be worse…”

“What do you mean?” she asked. I think even Warren was a little interested, he was leaning forward slightly in his seat.

“As your sidekick, I guess I’ll be going where you go,” I said, using what I think is my reasonable voice.

“My—No, you’re not!”

“I so am!”

“No, you’re going to—to—“ She floundered, and I patted her arm.

“What? Work at a pet store? They’ll assign me to you, Zach to Will and Ethan to Warren.”

“Hey, why do I get the Popsicle?”

“Shut up!” both Layla and I said – this was our future that we were talking about. Way more important than Warren’s.

“Think about it, you can manipulate plants and I turn into an animal, we’ll be the greenest team ever to save Maxville,” I said. I’d had some time to get used to the fact that the green part was going to be literal. Layla was bound to pick the color for our uniforms. It’s not so much my color as it is hers, but I was going to have major say-so on the actual shade.

“I would love to be on the same team as you, but I don’t think we can be a hero-and-sidekick combo. I can’t work like that. I don’t agree with that kind of imposed hierarchy.” My best friend in the world looked almost tearful, and that, I guess, is why she is my best friend, her heart’s so big, and mine, well, sometimes it’s as small as a guinea pig’s. I had to try to make her understand the way things really are, even if it’s a lost battle with our gang’s idealist.

“I can do some cool stuff, okay, but my power is only useful in certain really limited circumstances. You, on the other hand, can do awesome stuff – you can make forests move, Layla! That’s just the way it is, and knowing that and admitting it doesn’t make me less of anything.

“Even if I’m your sidekick, I’m still going to be punk to your folk. I won’t think the less of me, even if you’re going to be the one in the spotlight, while I’ll have a utility belt.”

I know that this is a big speech, but it’s nearly over.

“But I insist on being there to help you, grounding you. You’re going to need me to give you reality checks as your friend, because I know you, your strengths and weaknesses. This is how I can help you save the world. Besides, I won’t keep scrapbooks of your greatest triumphs. Promise,” I said.

“When you put it like that, how can I say no?” Layla replied. I don’t think she was crying, I definitely wasn’t, but she might have hugged me if Warren hadn’t hissed,

“Comets!” which meant that Principal P. was coming to the lectern to tell us that today was about looking onward and upward to the future.

Zach asked me why I was writing about this, I told him that I thought it might be important, some day, when we were all grown up and ancient. But I promise that it’s not going into the front pages of a scrapbook.

END