They called him Powerless Steve. They all did. It didn’t matter if his full legal name was Stephen Baker, someone at that college once called him that once and that nickname just kinda stuck. The school wasn’t just a college for young adults with superhuman abilities, it was also accidentally a really good school for architecture. When you have mages conjuring constructs from the ethereal or telekinetics or people with alien force-field rings learning how to make objects that function in battle situations, it takes rigorous instruction in the principles of how mundane materials work as well. And there were all kinds of funding, both private and governmental, for the few institutions that could actually train the next generation of superheroes and super-soldiers and what-not, they only hired the best-of-the-best. If they got a future graduating class with a lot of people with like sonic powers, shattering screams, hypnotic wails or whatever, they’d hire the best vocal coaches in the world for the next four years as well, whatever it took to keep churning out those “capes”.
But Powerless Steve just wanted to be an architect and he got a free ride because his mom was a Higher-Up in their medical staff, you need to provide extra perks for the sorts of doctors who are expected to treat the injuries of a radioactive rage beast or walking skeleton that is constantly on fire, after a mishap during intra-mural rugby. Most staff did not take the institute up on that offer, of course, it was borderline suicidal to be there, but Steve was the rare exception. He dreamed of making the tall buildings instead of leaping over them and he figured, you only live once. Maybe his patriotic classmate The ReincarNationalist didn’t only live once but you get the general point.
So, he took all the mundane classes, though he was sensibly exempted from the phys-ed training sessions in the Holographic Battle-Barn and mostly hung out with peers whose powers were less physical like Invent-o or The Universal Translator. Having a roommate who could use magic-chi for the purpose of killing with a single touch certainly helped keep any superhuman bullies away.
Powerless Steve, you have to understand, when they called him that it wasn’t an insult. It wasn’t a label of derision, it was a goddamned badge of honor. To have the guts to walk with demigods and cosmic wonders with little more than the talents to draft a decent blueprint and the ability to fast-talk his way out of a fight, that was more than deserving of a superheroic sobriquet. Stephen Baker was just the name on a college I.D. card. Powerless Steve was a legend of mad resilience.
In the land of laser-orbs and x-ray vision, a normal-eyed man is often king or, anyway, Big Man On Campus. Our value is not in our power, it is in our differences, though doing term-papers for supermen never hurts, either. Hedging one’s bets is the most human thing of all.
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