Plead My Case

Angelo felt like it was a long shot, but he'd gotten plenty of good advice, and even more encouragement. Everything Basilio had said to him felt like it was ringing in his ears as he stepped into the room, sitting down to wait for the proctor.

Was that even the right word? It wasn't a test. More like a job interview. All he had to do was convince them. Plead his case. Make a solid argument. Convince them it was worth making an exception for.

Because technically speaking it wasn't supposed to happen. People needed a degree to enter scouting. At least a high school diploma. He didn't even have that, wouldn't until June, but the idea of waiting that long sounded excruciating. He couldn't work. Not there. Maybe not anywhere right then.

Scouting, though. Scouting gave him options. Scouting was his best option.

He just had to convince them.

He'd dressed nicely--not a suit, but definitely business casual--and had already taken a seat, waiting for his interviewer to arrive.

Angelo was ready. He had reference material--even if none of it was visible. He had a list of people willing to vouch for him. And as Aranea walked into the room, he was really happy he'd seen so much of Amber and Lucy lately. Once upon a time, he'd been bothered by insectoid humanoids, but now he'd become desensitized to it. So he didn't even bat an eye when his interviewer was...

Well, big and spidery.

"I am," he said, giving her a nice, firm, practiced handshake. This was something he'd practiced for in all his years with his dad. Business meetings. Job interviews. And even if he'd never had an actual job, he still knew what he was supposed to be doing. "Angelo Genovese, and it's nice to meet you."

He knew very little about her, which was to his disadvantage. Normally he should have information on the recruiter. He'd know their name, how long they've been with the company, their credentials. He'd have information to work with. Instead, he was going in blind.

"I'm not sure where you want to start - from what I understand, this kind of interview isn't completely unheard of, but it's still pretty rare."

Back in Halcyon, Angelo would have thought something like would I be the youngest scout ever?, but on Manta Carlos? Not a chance. There was absolutely some scout out there who was a hyper-intelligent six year old who'd already aced through college.

But even still, it was sort of nice to hear that he was still, in a strange way, a rare breed.

It was also nice to hear that she wasn't just a random scout picked out of a hat. She was someone from the field he hoped to peruse, who had years of experience, and who knew what she was talking about. It gave him confidence that they were taking things seriously, and after a moment of consideration he opted to stand. It felt more... professional. Like a business man making a presentation.

"The best place to start is probably to mention that I'm from Halcyon City." He assumed she'd know what that was, if only because the scouts had been so heavy involved. It wasn't often that you had a few hundred non-powered, entirely human civilians to relocate into the US.

"Back there I was actually a teenage superhero, as strange as that sounds. It was a legitimate job there, and a teenager working it would be similar to doing an internship. We had a lot of autonomy, but we also had professionals keeping an eye on us and making sure we got training. We did a lot of work against super powered villains, but we also did a lot of more applicable training, like search and rescue, crisis management, and things like that. I think a lot of the skills I was trained in back there would be helpful in a scouting career, and that scouting would probably be the closest equivalent to my old career path. I got into heroing because I wanted to help people, and scouting should be able to give me that same level of accomplishment."

The way Angelo saw it, being the president of student council wouldn't help him far. It would be alright for paperwork, but that wasn't really a reason to let him double up, was it?

No, not really. The point was to prove that he had applicable skills, and that being underage (and not yet graduated) wasn't going to hold him back.

"There's no direct comparison to how superheroes were in our world, but a lot of the skills and training seem applicable. Definitely a lot less punching villains, or at least one would hope."

He smiled, trying to crack a joke and hoping it'd land properly.

"I worked for several months before my team was picked up professionally and given actual training, so I only had a few months with it. Notable search and rescue missions..."

He rifled through his brain, wishing that his perfect memory extended that far back. When you spent almost all your time working with flawless, perfect memories... well, normal human memories seemed pretty awful.

"We had a situation with a building collapse. The building was incomplete, and largely metal framing, and part of it had failed. The metal had twisted down and trapped a construction worker underneath. Normally they would have used professionals, but it was raining heavily and there were concerns about the worker's condition. A member of my team has the ability to absorb metal in addition to higher than average durability, and I provided on the scene radio support in order to coordinate his search for the construction worker."

He didn't say how that had ended. Maybe he should have picked a different one? One with a happier ending.

Angelo shifted a bit in place, worried he'd made a mistake bringing it up.

"We did," he said with a small amount of reluctance. "He'd lost his leg. My teammate isn't the best at first aid, so I had to head into the hole he'd made in order to tourniquet it and help carry him out." There had been a lot of blood. A lot of blood.

"But he lived," he said after a moment. "So it wasn't a total loss."

Any time someone died felt like a failure. When someone was seriously hurt, it still felt like a setback.

Maybe a better story would be better.

"Pre-training we did deal with something that was a bit more... Manta Carlosian," Angelo said. "There was a school that kidnapped kids. It was a kind of... malevolent, evil force. We investigated, and ended up realizing we couldn't get in without the school letting us in. That was why all the adults were struggling with it. Because the school didn't have a clearly fixed location. So we arranged a plan and let half of us get caught so we could follow the anomaly back to the source."

Maybe that was better. Or maybe she'd just think it was a risk.