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“Nerd,” I mutter under my breath, even though it’s weirdly hot and so dorky. Who the hell knew I had a hard-on for nerds?
Ellison shifts his eyes to me.
“Oh… I don’t… take notes,” I say. “My brain is my notebook.”
He pulls a notebook out and slaps it in front of me and even stuffs a pen into my hand. I stare at the pen with cutesy flower designs on it and uncap it, positive that I will be unable to use this pen for anything beyond drawing penises.
Then he turns to Deus, who becomes invisible the moment Ellison’s narrowed eyes settle on him. Lex just steals my notebook but doesn’t have a pen and seems to be contemplating what to use.
I vote blood but doubt that’ll fly.
“See what I deal with?” Valerie asks.
“They are clearly undisciplined,” Ellison decides.
Valerie sighs loudly. “August was perfect. Once upon a time, he was my little star child, and thenthishappened.”
“Hmm…” Ellison says, which weirdly feels like one of the worst jabs I think I’ve ever gotten.
He’s savage!
“Illusion manipulation can be seen in many different forms…” He hesitates as he stares at the lot of us. “Are you writing this down?”
“In my brain, I sure am,” I say as I pull a book out and crack it open, positive that I could read through this lecture and still end up just as knowledgeable, maybe even more so, by the end.
He rips the book out of my hand and drops it in front of him on the table. With a gasp, I call it to me, but he slams his hand down on it so now we’re in this tug-of-war battle where he’s holding it with all of his strength and I’m using my telekinesis to pull it to me. Of course my telekinesis is going to win out… I mean, how could he possibly think he’d be stronger than me? I movebuildings.I can lift things that weigh beyond anything he could imagine. This proper man with a rod stuffed up his ass isn’t going to win this war.
I give it a harder tug just to give him a hint of what I could do to him when the asshole lets go of the book. I’m pulling it toward me so damn hard that it slams right into my face, snapping my head back as my eyes water and my nose stings.
“I see you prefer to write with your blood,” he says as blood drips down onto the table while I stare at the horrible man.
“He’s fucking evil!” I cry.
“You okay?” August asks as he finds me a tissue.
Ellison slaps his clipboard down, making everyone jump as he turns back to his lecture. Valerie is just eating this up. She’s finally found someone even more evil than her.
“I grudgingly like you,” I realize.
Ellison gives me a smirk. “The feeling is not mutual.”
I grin at him as I realize that this is what a real villain looks like. Not those half-assed ones my parents frolic with. No. Only a real villain would punch a wounded man in the face with their own book.
“As I was saying, illusion manipulation can be seen in many different forms. Oftentimes, the user is weak enough that it’s only effective when the person isn’t directly staring at the illusion. Just like how you can perceive things in your peripheral vision without truly comprehending what they are. There are only four known illusion supers in the world. One is me, two can manipulate their appearances only, and the fourth can manipulate things she remains touching. All four of us have been thoroughly looked into, but what is happening here does not seem to align with their powers,” Ellison says.
“Supposedly,” I say. “I mean, take a look at me. When I was tested, I used my power to manipulate the test. If someone can use their illusion to make us see things, they could very well have stood there, pretending like they were fucking… juggling and no one would have been the wiser.”
Ellison gives me a curt nod. “Possibly. We also don’t know if the super can manipulate more than one person at a time. So far, only one person has seen the illusion in each case, but was that to fool the heroes into thinking that the super can only manipulate one person at a time?”
“Well, we know that there’s more than one person working together as well,” Deus says. “Because the man who hired me manipulates wind and it’s nearly unheard of for a super to have two strong powers that don’t connect with each other. Like August is a rarity.”
“Right,” Valerie says. “We can’t rule it out, but I believe you’re quite right.”
Ellison turns to us. “Often, people have to be quite close to someone to affect them with their illusion. For the other three illusion supers, they have to be within touching distance. For me, I can be about fifty feet away and still manipulate my illusions, but that’s much rarer.”
“So, I mean every place they’ve been where this stuff has happened has been recorded. Are there no recordings that show the same people in different locations?” Lex asks.
Valerie shrugs. “What’s hard about this is that a lot of the people are the same because we used the same guards and often the same camera crew. They’re the crew that has been with us for years… since August got famous. Now theHannah Showwould be impossible, there was an entire audience, but the rest were closed off to only people we’ve background checked.”
