Chapter 3: Highschool Once Again
Aria stared at himself in the mirror of the shelter's shared bathroom, tugging at the collar of a loaned school uniform like it was trying to strangle him.
Khaki pants a size too big. A white shirt that felt stiff enough to qualify as armor. And a navy-blue hoodie—his own—thrown over it all in protest.
"First day of school," he muttered, running a hand through his messy black hair. "Again."
He exhaled sharply and leaned closer to the mirror. The face staring back was still surreal. Sharp jawline. Smooth skin. Not a wrinkle or eyebag in sight. Just a teenage boy with too many thoughts and not enough caffeine.
Somewhere down the hall, someone coughed hard enough to shake a lung loose. A radio played static and old reggaeton. The building groaned like it wanted to retire.
He grabbed his bag—a beat-up backpack with only a notebook, two pens, a cheap flip phone, and exactly one emergency granola bar—and headed out.
Outside, Queens greeted him like it always did: gray skies, low chatter, and the smell of warm bagels from the corner cart. The city didn't care who he was. It didn't know he didn't belong.
That suited him just fine.
---
The subway ride was packed. Aria clutched a pole and tried not to fall into a businessman's lap. Ads for "RAZR2" and "Guitar Hero III" slid past overhead like relics from a museum exhibit titled 2007: The Pre-Snap Era.
He still wasn't used to it. Not the smell. Not the noise. Not the fact that, somewhere out there, a man in a cave was about to invent the future—or blow himself up trying.
He pressed his forehead against the cool subway door, staring out at the blur of tunnels.
"Just a normal kid," he whispered to himself. "Keep your head down. Stay off the radar. No powers. No plans. No explosions."
Then he stepped into Roosevelt High School.
And chaos immediately introduced itself.
Roosevelt High didn't look like the movies.
No shiny lockers. No choreographed hallway bullies. Just dull tile floors, fluorescent lights that hummed like judgmental bees, and students who all walked like they were already done with the day.
Aria followed the flow, clutching the printed class schedule he'd received from the front office.
Period 1: U.S. History – Room 209.
He found the classroom with two minutes to spare. A narrow room. Rows of desks. A wall-mounted TV wheeled into the corner like it hadn't worked since Clinton was president.
He hesitated at the door.
Teenagers were loud. Teenagers judged. Teenagers smelled like body spray and bad decisions.
Aria inhaled and stepped in.
Heads barely turned. Just a few glances. A girl with space buns nodded politely. A tall boy in the back was already asleep, mouth open.
The teacher, a balding man in his late fifties with a deep New York accent, pointed toward the front.
"You the new transfer?"
Aria nodded. "Yes, sir."
"Name?"
"Aria Saputra."
"Alright. Grab a seat. Don't screw around."
Warm welcome.
He slid into an empty desk near the window. The girl beside him gave him a once-over and tilted her head.
"New kid, huh?" she said, twirling her pen. "Cool name. You Indonesian?"
"Yeah," he said, surprised. "How'd you—?"
"My aunt's from Jakarta," she shrugged. "You've got the look. That Southeast Asian chill vibe."
She smirked. "I'm Liyana, by the way. And for what it's worth, you look like you'd be good at martial arts or something."
Aria blinked.
Something shifted.
The world didn't freeze. Nothing exploded. But he felt it—a flicker. Like someone pulling a thread loose inside him. A buzz. Faint. Under the skin.
The teacher's voice snapped him back.
"Open your textbooks to page seventy-three," Mr. Levine barked. "Let's talk about colonial America—so you all remember how not to run a government."
Aria flipped open the book slowly, still feeling… weird. His heart thudded with too much rhythm. His breath came easier. Focus sharper. Every creak of a chair, every pen tap, every whisper behind him—he heard them.
He looked at his hands. Same hands. But he felt… lighter. Balanced. Like he could stand up and cartwheel across the room, not that he would.
Liyana nudged him with her elbow. "You okay? You zoned out for a sec."
"Yeah. Just jetlag, I think."
Jetlag and what the hell was that?
Lunch Period – Roosevelt High Cafeteria
By the time the bell rang for lunch, Aria was running on adrenaline, cafeteria fumes, and the lingering anxiety of accidentally catching a pencil like he'd trained with ancient monks.
He hadn't eaten breakfast—too busy pretending to be a normal teenager in a world that still didn't make sense. So when he entered the cafeteria, the sight of food, questionable as it looked, nearly made him emotional.
He got in line behind a kid wearing a cape made of duct tape and a girl arguing with the lunch lady about gluten-free pizza.
Aria grabbed the "Chef's Special"—a slop of spaghetti that looked like it had dreams once—and scanned the room.
Roosevelt High's cafeteria was a noisy, open battlefield. Jocks roared at one table like they were in a WWE pre-show. The band kids had taken over the far end and were rhythmically beating forks on trays. A goth group sat in a corner near the vending machines like a murder of crows.
Liyana waved him over from a corner table.
He made his way there, careful not to trip or attract more attention. Still riding the high from not getting destroyed in English class—or worse, noticed.
"You didn't get sent to the principal's office," she said as he slid into the seat across from her. "That's a win."
"Managed to not die," Aria said, peering at the mystery spaghetti. "Another win."
"Two for two." She stabbed a fry and pointed it like a tiny spear. "By Friday, you'll be school royalty."
"God forbid."
Two others were already at the table. Liyana gestured with the fry like she was dealing out a deck of misfits.
"Zeke. He's probably rebuilding a computer inside his pen again."
Zeke looked up, nodded once, and returned to his sketchpad—where, sure enough, he had blueprints for what looked like a mini railgun.
"Bri. She'll talk if she likes you. Or if she thinks you're interesting enough to put in her comic."
Bri was short, sharp-eyed, and dressed like she raided a Hot Topic with taste. She chewed a Twizzler slowly, judging Aria like a casting director.
"He's got the main character energy," she said, voice flat.
Aria blinked. "That's… a weird thing to say to someone eating spaghetti."
"It's the hair. The eyes. The moody vibe," Bri continued. "You look like someone who gets thrown into another dimension or survives a tragic explosion with amnesia."
He fought not to choke on his food. "Right. Very specific."
"You do give off mysterious orphan energy," Liyana chimed in, grinning slightly.
"Wow," Aria muttered. "Loving this table already."
Bri smirked and scribbled something on her sketchpad. "You're already in the next issue."
Zeke added, eyes still down, "Also you caught that pencil like it was part of your job. No normal kid does that."
Liyana leaned forward, brow raised. "Yeah, that was freaky fast."
Aria shrugged, keeping it light. "Just lucky reflexes. I panicked."
They didn't push, but he could tell Liyana clocked it. She had the eyes of someone who paid attention—really looked at people. It made him a little nervous.
He bit into a roll and kept his expression easy. Inside, his mind was still whirring.
That compliment back in class—**"You move like someone who's trained"—**had done something. He could feel it in the way he sat, the way his limbs moved like they were wired tighter. Balanced. Responsive.
And when that pencil came flying, he hadn't reacted. His body had just… moved. Smooth. Automatic.
If he wasn't already weirded out by waking up in a new universe as a teenager, now he had to add "possible supernatural ability triggered by compliments" to the list.
But the cardinal rule of every survival story he'd ever read was clear: Don't say anything.
The moment someone finds out you have powers, you're either in a lab, on the run, or being "recruited" by someone who wears sunglasses indoors.
So Aria nodded along to Zeke's theory about converting ceiling fans into wind turbines and laughed when Bri showed him a comic panel of a kid being hit with cafeteria meatloaf like it was an Avengers-level threat.
All while quietly testing the way his fingers curled. The way his spine shifted. The tension in his legs, coiled like springs.
"Hey," Liyana said suddenly, snapping him back to the table. "You space out like that a lot?"
He blinked. "Sorry. Still jetlagged from… moving."
She gave him a long look but didn't press. "Let me know if you ever want a tour. This school's got a basement no one talks about and a second-floor bathroom with a ghost."
Zeke nodded. "The ghost's real."
Aria smiled, grateful for the change of subject. "I'll add it to the list."
Bri tossed a crumpled napkin at him. "Try not to die before the next issue. I hate rewriting character arcs."
After School – Behind Roosevelt High
The final bell screeched through the loudspeakers, and within seconds, Roosevelt High turned into a zoo. Backpacks slammed into lockers. Sneakers squeaked against linoleum. Voices bounced down the halls like dodgeballs on crack.
Aria kept his head low and moved with the current, one hand gripping the frayed strap of his backpack like it was a lifeline. Zeke had already vanished, probably headed to the library or his Frankenstein-tech lair. Bri gave him a cryptic nod—either a goodbye or a challenge; hard to tell.
Liyana, on the other hand, smiled and called over her shoulder, "You better not ghost me tomorrow, transfer boy!"
He almost laughed. Transfer boy, huh? A far cry from being called "sir" by co-workers and worrying about cholesterol.
Once outside, Aria didn't head for the bus stop. Instead, he cut across the edge of the field and ducked through a half-rusted gap in the fence behind the gym. Past the dumpster, around the old maintenance shed, he found it.
The abandoned basketball court.
The backboards had long since been ripped down, leaving only two crooked metal poles stabbing out of the cracked asphalt like broken limbs. Faded paint marked where a half-court once stood. Weeds poked through the ground like nature trying to reclaim its turf.
Perfect.
No students. No teachers. No cameras. Just isolation.
Aria dropped his backpack beside the chain-link fence and rolled his shoulders.
"Alright," he muttered. "Let's see what I'm working with."
He started slow. A warm-up. Feet shoulder-width apart, he squatted low into a fighting stance—right foot back, fists up. Something his body remembered more than he did.
He jabbed forward with his left hand.
Pop.
Clean. Fast. The movement felt natural—no lag between intention and execution. He pivoted and threw a right cross. The twist of his hips synced perfectly with his arm. There was power in it, not raw strength, but the kind that came from practiced mechanics.
Next, he moved into a basic one-two combo: jab, cross, pivot-step back.
His feet glided over the uneven ground like it was a dojo mat.
Then a high kick.
He pivoted on his left heel and brought his right leg up, cutting through the air in a wide arc. His foot stopped just short of a rusted trash can, and he held it there—for a second, perfectly balanced—before dropping it gently.
No wobble. No awkward recovery. Just clean movement.
"Okay," he breathed. "That's not normal."
Aria had been in his forties before this—knees that cracked when crouching, a back that complained after tying shoes. This was different. This body moved like it had been in training since childhood.
He stepped into a flurry: jab, jab, low kick, backstep, elbow strike. Then he spun into a fake feint and transitioned into a crouch.
Not perfect. A bit raw.
But definitely not a beginner.
He looked at his hands, flexing his fingers.
"That girl—Liyana—she said I moved like I had martial arts training. That was the compliment, wasn't it?"
He picked up a nearby stick and gave it a test swing.
It felt wrong—unbalanced. But the second swing? Better. The third? Fluid. His hands adjusted grip automatically. His shoulders shifted to absorb momentum.
"Wait a second…" he whispered.
He eyed a broken-down trash can about twenty feet away. Hefting a pebble, he flicked it lazily in the air and, without aiming, snapped it forward like he was flicking a coin.
Clang!
It ricocheted off the rim and spun into the dirt.
He stared.
"No freakin' way."
Aria grabbed another rock. This time, he closed his eyes, took a breath, and tossed it at a nearby soda bottle lying by the fence.
Clink.
Dead hit. The bottle spun.
No aiming. Just instinct.
That wasn't normal. That wasn't even muscle memory.
That was something else.
Every motion—the balance, the aim, the flow of force—it felt calculated. Like his body was running background physics simulations while he moved.
It wasn't superhuman. He couldn't fly or bench press a car.
But it was precise.
Efficient.
Deadly.
He took a step back and looked at his reflection in a broken window on the maintenance shed. Just a scrawny teen. Messy hair. Cheap hoodie. But now, something beneath that. Coiled power.
He muttered, "Compliments activate powers. But they have to be specific. Not just 'good job,' but… 'you move like a trained fighter.'"
He looked down at his hands again.
"Crap. This is real."
And with that came a chill down his spine.
This world—this city—it wasn't just New York. It was that New York. He remembered the little clues now. Stark logos on a billboard. Oscorp mentioned on the morning news. Even the tech kids talked about "Arc Reactor rumors" like it was a new conspiracy theory.
He was in the MCU.
Not the movies. Not a comic.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe.
And he was just some guy who woke up in it.
But now? Now he had something—his power. A slow-burn gift that required people to praise him in detailed, genuine ways.
And no one could know.
Because if the government found out? He'd disappear faster than you could say "Project Pegasus." And if the villains found out? He wouldn't even get a villain monologue before becoming a cautionary tale.
He clenched his fists.
This was a secret he had to keep. A tool to survive.
Aria slung his bag over his shoulder and started walking back toward the street. The orange glow of sunset bled across the skyline, casting long shadows over Queens.
He wasn't a hero. He wasn't a sidekick.
But he was something now.
And he was going to figure out what.