Alison Kelvin earned her nickname honestly. Her parents had given up on trying to enroll her in social activities when she froze out half the skating team, leaving the frightened and bewildered parents to chip them out. Not that she didn't like ice dancing, but she preferred to do it in the privacy of her own room. Group sports, competitive activities, they just weren't her thing.

When her parents had enrolled her in Sky High, she could have been one of the most popular kids in school. Instead she sat alone, ate alone, participated in group projects only when assigned, and was the only person in her class to ignore Coach Boomer completely rather than giving him any sass. He didn't know what to make of her, so he allowed it. Few of the teachers knew what to make of her. Except for Mr. Medulla, who called her a highly intelligent youngster with sociopathic tendencies.

Warren had kept to the back of the bus when he first arrived, both out of natural inclination and the suspicion that everyone in the class already knew who he was. Heroes and villains didn't mix well. They didn't mix at all. They just didn't. Anti-heroes were the lowest you could go, after that you were outcast. He still didn't understand what his father saw in that woman. He didn't dare acknowledge that he just wished his father could settle down and be a normal super-person.

The reality of the situation was that half the class did know who he was, and only half of them cared. The rest of them were put off by the arms crossed over the chest, the lower lip sticking out in a not-at-all sexy way, and the scraggly hair that looked in desperate need of a wash. By the end of the first semester the entire school knew who he was, and they knew that he wasn't to be messed with. He had alienated every student on his own merits, nothing to do with his father. The knowledge was bitter comfort.

* * *

"I can't believe I let you talk me into this."

In four years, even Alison had to make some friends. Lillian was a sidekick, the ability to grow hair at will not being up to Coach Boomer's standards, but Ally didn't mind. They had been lab partners their junior year, and after a while she had realized that maybe the other girl's conversation wasn't so bad. She had spent the better part of that summer learning how to put makeup on and dress like a real girl. Her mother couldn't have been more pleased, at least until she found out that Ally had absolutely no intention of catching a boy. Her mother could be so traditional sometimes.

"Talk you into what?"

Alison hadn't been paying attention. She'd been keeping an eye on the Stronghold boy, who was acting strange enough for a Sky High freshman to earn her notice. A child of two of the most famous heroes in the world, sitting with the sidekicks? That was odd. More than odd, that went against the whole social order of things.

"Talk me into going out with Bradley for Homecoming. I mean, it's not as though he's asked me yet. But..."

"Lils, you've been googling over Bradley since sophomore year. Stop pretending you're not interested and just ask him out if he doesn't get around to it. This isn't the fifties."

Lillian pretended to be scandalized, but not very well. "I know this isn't the fifties! But it still looks slutty if I ask him out, I mean, I don't want to appear easy. What?"

Alison had grabbed her friend's arm. "Firebug's gonna pop," she told her with a mixture of wariness and unholy glee.

Firebug was what she called him, hothead was what everyone else called him. Warren was his real name, but everyone steered clear of such personal interaction. Except Stronghold, it looked like. Who hadn't been quick enough to dodge Lash's hand, and knocked the contents of his tray over Warren's head. He'd learned to wash his hair in four years, but now it was back to looking as greasy as it had when he was a freshman. Stronghold hadn't taken his cue to flee, and was trying to make peace with the bad, bad boy. It was all destined for a bad end.

"Uh-oh."

Alison quietly started to put up an ice shield between her and the impending violence. She didn't know what Stronghold was saying to him, but it didn't look like it was going well. Of course it wasn't going well, this was Warren Peace they were talking about. She made the ice wall a little higher.

"...your father is..."

That didn't sound good.

"Oh boy."

Lillian screamed as Warren started to light himself up, ducked behind Alison. The other girl calmly pushed her tray to one side and laid down another thin layer of ice between her and the fight.

"He's just one big ball of anger issues, isn't he?"

"How can you be so calm at a time like this?" Lillian hissed.

Ally didn't think it was that hard. If there was any danger, the cafeteria wouldn't be crowding around screaming for a fight. Warren had gotten onto the table by this point and was knocking things around, leaving little flickering trails of flame and ash as he went.

"Cute. I wonder if he knows what he's getting himself into," she muttered. "I wonder if he cares..."

"Alison!" Lils hissed. "I don't care. Can we at least get out of his range..."

Alison wasn't paying any attention. "If he actually hurts Stronghold and word gets out, he might finally get himself expelled from Sky High..."

"And then we won't have a brooding hothead in our class and there'll be one less at graduation, Ally, does it really matter? He's tearing up the cafeteria!"

"Relax, Principal Powers will be here any second..." She had turned around to talk to Lillian, turned back to see Stronghold lifting the lunch table and sending Warren flying across the room. Her eyes widened, a somewhat awed whistle escaping her lip.

"... I didn't think the kid was supposed to have any powers."

That got Lillian's attention. "Hm? Isn't he a sidekick?"

"That's what I thought. Looks like he got his Dad's super-strength after all."

The fight was over pretty quick after that. Neither of them could get a grip on the other, and Mr. Boy had gone running for Principal Powers. Alison turned back to her lunch with a bored little sniff as the woman came and marched both the boys to detention. It was Warren's first detention that year, which made it a record for his longest out of all four.

"One of these days he's going to loose that chip off his shoulder and he might just fall over trying to rebalance."

"What are you talking about?"

Alison sighed. "Nothing."

* * *

Warren had made cracks about fortune cookies and microwaves, but he figured he had to have tipped his hand with lighting the candle for her. She was a freshman, and since she was Stronghold's friend she probably knew about him already, but she didn't seem embarrassed about talking to him. She didn't seem scared of what he might do. She didn't seem intimidated at all or act as if he was the son of Stronghold's father's archenemy. Which, by the laws of association, should have made him her enemy. Although it wasn't all that enemy-like to offer to heat up her food for her. Oh well. He was outside of school, no one else was around to see him.

She was all right, for a freshman and a hippy. At first when she'd asked him to sit down he'd expected her to either scurry off in terror or try and convince them both that he wasn't bad, just misunderstood. After a few seconds he'd figured out that she was just lonely and desperate for someone to talk to. Lonelier than she looked; she might have seemed confident but without her friend around she was shy and quiet. Stronghold seemed to be her whole world. Bring up the kid and she couldn't stop talking. He listened, but he thought it was going to drive him crazy.

The lima bean story had been pretty funny, though. He smiled to himself as he kicked the wall of his bedroom.

It was sort of sad, really. She wasn't like most of the other girls at Sky High. She had a brain, and she wasn't afraid to use it. She had powers, too, but she was with the sidekicks, and he didn't understand that. Who would want to be part of the pissed-on group of underclassmen? It was bad enough being a freshman.

But she was still one of Stronghold's friends, and he didn't like the idea of getting to know anyone in that group. Or anyone in the school. If he'd wanted to make friends, he would have done it freshman year. He hadn't clawed his way to the position of feared loner boy for nothing. And she was still a sidekick.

He rolled over and thought about explaining it to her. For a second he held onto this dream where he explained to her that while being a sidekick wasn't anything bad, and being a hero wasn't anything special, it was better to be on top than underneath. And then she'd join the rest of the heroes, and maybe they'd hang out together a couple times. When he left Sky High, there'd be someone who remembered him the next year.

Nah. Wasn't going to happen, even if she did seem okay about talking to him. She acted all enlightened, and maybe she was a little, but there were all kinds of things she hadn't noticed. The candle. The fact that he'd talked to her without glaring. He hadn't been reading off the fortune, although he didn't think she'd noticed that either. And he had gotten it from a fortune cookie. One he'd read a year ago and taped to his desk. It was sandwiched between one of those never know if you don't try ones and the journey of a thousand miles schtick.

"Face it, Warren," he told himself, staring at the ceiling. "You're stuck."

Stuck being a nobody loser. Stuck being the punk kid. He didn't mind the punk part, but it was a lot easier when you had other punks to hang with. Everyone at Sky High was so clean they squeaked. He was down and dirty.

"I should have gone to real people's high school."

Where they would have avoided him for being super, instead of being a super-villain's son. Okay, maybe not.

So he'd enjoyed the conversation while it had lasted. You didn't see kids from Sky High at a middle-class back-alley joint like the Paper Lantern very often. And then he'd forget about it, because tomorrow everything would go back to the way it had been. That was high school, once they found a place for you you had to stay in it, and if you tried to get out they stepped on you.

Enjoy it while it lasts, Warren. It's not going to happen again.

* * *

"Did you hear what's going on?"

"I didn't think he even liked girls." "I didn't think he liked anyone."

"Do you think she, you know, slept with him?"

Alison was hating herself for having gotten used to the makeup. It meant she had to listen to conversations like this, all about the sex lives of the students who weren't supposed to be having sex in the first place, who was at the head of the social class, who needed to be taught a lesson this week.

Today they were all buzzing about the fact that Warren Peace had asked the supposed girlfriend of his archenemy, Will Stronghold, to Homecoming. And Lils was right in there with the chatterboxes, which meant Alison wasn't getting to leave the bathroom until she was done. Alison didn't care. She was curious what had made the most isolated boy in school, the bad boy of Sky High who never even went to school dances, ask out a freshman girl, but she didn't care. She wondered what he saw in her, what had drawn him out of his shell and over to her, but she didn't care.

"Are you kidding? Little miss goody two-shoes isn't going to sleep with the bad boy of Sky High. Besides, she's a sidekick."

Alison privately thought it was more that Layla was already making her opinions about what was right and good known, and they didn't include sleeping with anyone. In fact, she wasn't even sure the freshman girl had thought about the causes and consequences of sex in high school. Besides, there was Will Stronghold to think about. She'd seen the way the two of them looked at each other, after the fight and before Gwen got involved, and that was a piece of work right there. If it wasn't enough that Gwen had to be the prettiest and the thinnest, she also had to have the heir to the title of golden boy of the school. Despite the fact that he was a freshman.

Gwen hadn't much liked Alison ever since they'd gotten into a personality war freshman year, and Alison had pointed out that most high-technology gadgets, no matter how good they were, didn't stand up to freezing temperatures very well. As a result Alison herself was frozen out of the so-called elite social circles, but her blatant uncaring attitude meant she had a small crowd of followers herself. The difference was she didn't care to hang around any of them, or participate in anything beyond the mandatory.

But now she was curious why Warren had asked Layla to the dance. And why they seemed all chummy half the time, although a couple of times when she'd looked over Layla had been hanging all over him one minute and alone the next, the firebug disappearing into some nook or cranny of the building.

Teenagers. She was one, and she didn't understand them.

"I'm going to go to the source," she told Lillian. "Don't wait up."

"You're what?" Lillian tried to grab her as she went for the door, knocked over her nail polish. "Oh, no..."

She rose a pillar of ice to break its fall, partly out of consideration, mostly because she knew Lillian would be too distracted with finishing her makeup to follow. And they had twenty minutes till first bell anyway. She wanted to have this conversation without anyone around who was likely to repeat it, and as much as she liked Lils the other girl wasn't exactly good at keeping her mouth shut when she thought she had a juicy piece of gossip.

Warren was outside, as per usual, looking as though he was trying to quit a bad cigarette habit. She walked up and froze part of the sleeve of his jacket for a moment by way of greeting.

"Hey!"

"Hey."

Greetings accomplished, they stood there and stared at each other. In four years, they hadn't managed more than a handful of conversations beyond this point. Everything that they had talked about was school or homework related. She racked her brain for a diplomatic way to ask, then gave up and went with bluntness. Her reflexes were faster than his temper anyway. Probably.

"Why did you ask Layla to the dance?"

* * *

Warren knew he must not have heard that right. First Stronghold's would-be girlfriend, and now the Ice Queen? At least she didn't have a gaggle of friends to come sit at his lunch table and harass him. He didn't mind Layla, but that glow-worm friend of hers didn't know when to shut up.

"Why did I what?"

Wait a minute. Had she asked him why he'd asked a girl to the dance? Or was she asking, why Layla?

He didn't understand women.

"Why did you ask Layla to the Homecoming dance?"

She sounded irritated or impatient. Which, he thought, was more than a little unfair, since she was the one who had approached him. And he still wasn't sure what was going on, although he thought he had half an idea now. His arms folded over his chest, hips cocked on a slant, a smug little grin turning up the corners of his mouth.

"Why? You upset I didn't ask you first?"

The longer she stared at him the more he had to fight to keep from blushing. No sooner had the words left his lips than he realized what an idiotic thing that had been to say. The kind of thing Coach Boomer probably said in high school. What a moron. He was talking to the Ice Queen, why the hell would she want to go out with him?

She was probably just wondering why the punk loser who tore up cafeterias in fights with stupid freshmen was asking another stupid freshman to the dance. No, not fair, Layla wasn't stupid. Just really young. And he had gone too long without giving her an answer. Worse, he was just staring at her dumbly.

"You're impossible," she said, and turned to go.

"Hey, wait." Injured pride wouldn't let her leave. He had to salvage this somehow.

She looked down. Looked back up at him. "Get your hand off my arm."

He raised his hands to the level of his shoulders, eyes wide. "Sorry. Jeez."

"What do you want?"

He blinked. She was blinking, too. That question had come out of nowhere, or had it? Wasn't that what she was really asking? He'd lost track.

"I didn't ask her to the dance, for your information." Layla would probably kill him for telling, but this was the Ice Queen. Who was she going to tell anyway? "She came up and told me that she'd told her friend Stronghold I'd asked her to Homecoming, and begged me to do her a favor. All she wants to do is make Stronghold jealous. I said okay."

And now that he put it like that, it did sound pretty pathetic. He waited for her to say so.

She rolled her eyes, turned and walked away.

"It's not like I invited the rest of her loser friends!"

She didn't turn around. He threw himself against the pillar again and was about to start a full-on sulking fit when the bell went. Muttering curses to himself, he hunched his shoulders and lurched up the steps. That damn girl was already getting him into trouble, and it wasn't even Homecoming yet.

Maybe he could dig something out of storage for the dance.

* * *

Everything had gone wrong. Very, very wrong.

All she knew was that she had been standing there, abandoned by Lillian and Bradley and quite relieved to be alone, and Gwen had been about to make some stupid and insipid Homecoming speech. Again. She'd gotten gussied up at her mother's insistence and some inner nostalgia that acknowledged this was the Last Homecoming Dance Ever, but that didn't mean she had to enjoy herself any more than she had at the last three.

And then there were lights. And then there was armor, and laughter, and Royal Pain back from the dead. And Commander and Jetstream were going to save the day, except they hadn't. And now everything had gone wrong.

She was hiding in the girl's bathroom. She'd been one of a handful to make it out before one of Penny's clones slammed the grille shut, freezing her in place and running past. Of course, another clone had scampered up to finish it, but she'd been long gone by then. Maybe the others who'd gotten out after her had figured out a hiding place. Maybe they'd been captured and babified too.

What the hell was going on? This was supposed to be a safe place. Sky High was supposed to be where the heroes sent their kids to learn. It wasn't supposed to be under attack.

Stupid, she told herself. It's got a bunch of hero kids. We're all perfect hostages. You should be surprised it wasn't attacked sooner.

That's not the point. The point is that this shouldn't be happening. I shouldn't be sitting here on a toilet in my Homecoming dress, this beautiful homecoming dress, shaking like a leaf. And crying. She was crying, too. Stupid, don't cry. Like a scared little baby. But she was a scared little baby. Poor choice of metaphor. She shook some more, harder.

The door banged open, making her jump and bite her fist instead of squeaking. That would be Penny, or a clone, or Lash or Speedy (and why were they helping Gwen, anyway?) looking for escapees. For certain.

"Anyone in here?"

She hadn't seen Warren working for them, although it wouldn't have surprised her. Not with his dad being Baron Battle. He sounded bored. Or tired. He was drawling, could have been either.

"Any babies in here?"

No, stupid. All the babies are in the gym.

"Whatever."

Fear of being alone was greater than fear of Warren. She lurched to her feet, hands into the door and almost falling over in her haste to stumble out of the stall. "No, wait!"

He blinked at her. She looked at him, trying to make her eyes focus. Trying not to cry. He was just standing there. She reached up and pointed a shaking finger at him, frost already starting to form on the tip. "Don't move..."

"What are you doing?"

"I'm going to take you in. You can't get ... you won't get away with this."

"Get away with what?"

That wasn't what he was supposed to say. "You're not with them?"

"No, I'm not with them," he said, and then he grinned. And then he started to laugh. She balled up her fists and hit him on the chest, and it was that limp-fisted attack that made her realize how weak she was. Fear or hysteria had robbed her of what physical strength she had. "What makes you think Gwen would even talk to me, let alone recruit me for her crazy baby scheme?"

"Don't laugh at me," she said at the same time. "Stop laughing!"

"Hey," he said again, grabbing her wrists. "It's okay. We saved the day."

She blinked. "You. Saved the day?"

"Don't sound so surprised or anything."

That was the Warren she knew. Angry, sullen, and snappy. She looked at him, brushing her face against her shoulder rather than pulling her hands away to dry her cheeks. He looked roughed up and kind of sweaty, but he wasn't doing anything. Except holding her wrists. His shirt sleeves were pushed down so that she could see the edges of his flame tattoos around his wrists. His fingers weren't as tight as she had expected around her hands. And making her blush by the way he was staring at her.

"Stop staring at me," she whispered.

"Your makeup's running."

"Oh..." she said, then relaxed. "Oh, crap."

He smiled, just a little, just a quick one and then it was gone. Such an ordinary thing to say, though. They could have been anywhere, doing anything. Instead of at a high school Homecoming turned into a pitched battle.

She had to pull away from him to go over to the sink, though, and wash her face. There was some emergency makeup in her bag, mascara, shadow, lipstick. Lillian had taught her you could never be sure when you'd need a touch-up. Normally she would have just washed it all off and left it that way, but she wanted that makeup right now. Wanted some kind of camoflage that wouldn't let him see how pale her face was. Or how badly she was blushing. Or how she had been crying in the stall.

"What happened?" she asked after a moment.

He watched her for a second before he said anything. "Magenta, Glow-boy, and Ethan disconnected Gwen's anti-gravity disabling thing. I put Speedy through a wall, Ethan got Lash's head stuck in the toilet."

Giggles burst out before she could stop them. "You're kidding."

"Nope." He grinned. "Stronghold took care of Gwen."

"So..." she looked over at him, face fixed. Not as made up as she had been, but at least she didn't look like the Bride of Frankenstein anymore. "Everything's okay now?"

"Everything's okay."

They stared at each other for a few more minutes. She wasn't sure what to think. About any of it, least of all about the fact that she was now standing in the girl's bathroom at Homecoming staring at Warren Peace. Who was staring back at her. That seemed significant in a way she couldn't quite figure out.

"I wasn't surprised because you saved the day," she said, before she even knew what she meant to say. "It's not like you couldn't if you wanted to. I just didn't think you cared about anyone but yourself."

His face went from surprised to relieved to sullen again. Everything written all over his lips and eyes and the set of his jaw. "Well, I guess you don't know much about me then, do you?"

"No," she replied. And now she was giddy with being back in control, of herself and of the conversation. "You're not the kind of guy who lets people in."

"You'd know something about that, wouldn't you."

"Yeah." She stepped into him. "I would."

He was breathing heavy. From running around beating up villains, of course. She was kind of breathy herself. From being scared. He'd shaved, even put something that smelled like cologne on. Good cologne. His hands were clean. His nails were clean. His face looked like he'd moisturized. His eyes were dark. Pretty.

"I'd better get back," he said, and was gone.

Alison blinked for a second, wondering what just happened.

* * *

In the space of one night he had gone from zero to hero, and he was still a little dizzy from it all. The school was fine. The students were giddy with relief that they hadn't all been stuck as babies, although he supposed they would have been fine if they hadn't been turned back. Seeing as how they wouldn't have remembered it. He'd made Will and Layla deal with the little 'accidents.' They were going all gooey over each other anyway, might as well make them play house with the entire school. Domestic wasn't Warren's scene.

Neither was righteous and goody-goody, but the Commander himself had called him a hero. Warren wasn't sure how he felt about that. His dad would be pissed, but maybe his dad didn't need to know about that part. Not right now, anyway. And it wasn't as though the Commander had even realized who he was. Will Stronghold knew. But he was starting to think that maybe being a self-righteous jerk didn't run in the family like some things did.

They were back out on the dance floor, or what was left of it. The place was a wreck. No one seemed to mind. Mr. Medulla certainly didn't, as he stood up to give what Warren was afraid would be a tedious speech full of pathetic gratitude and hysterical giggling. It turned out to be a five second job, ending in something that sounded like boogie.

He didn't dance. But he could live with that.

Warren turned to go stand on the sidelines and watch Magenta pretend not to enjoy Zach making a fool of himself over her. The kids were all right, even if they were a little crazy. Maybe the rest of this year would be all right, too. Things didn't seem so bad anymore.

He wondered if the Ice Queen was still in the bathroom. She'd been really shook up, not that he could blame her. None of them had been expecting this, and even if he was used to picking fights he wasn't used to having to fight them for real. This had been real. More real than he'd wanted, real enough to make him scared when they'd seen Lash, Speedy, and Penny all lined up in front of them. Just for a second. Then he'd realized he'd been scared of three people who'd spent most of their high school careers scared of him and he'd gotten pissed. Mostly pissed. The fear still ran through him underneath, accompanied by a vulnerability he hadn't felt since he was five, and still hated. He still could feel his skin crawling. Still cold.

One hand colder than the other. Colder than it should have been. He turned around.

"Hey."

"Hey."

She looked good. Better than she had in the bathroom. She looked all right again, as calm and sure of herself as she always did. Her palm felt cold against his. Which was kind of okay.

Maybe not that okay. He squeezed her hand and lit them up, fire licking at his shirt cuff. If she was going to show off, so was he. His face flushed as he realized he was almost smiling. Better put a stop to that, along with the ice.

Cool vapor doused the fire. Flames melted the ice.

"You wanna dance?" he asked, guarded.

"Not really."

"Me either."

He tugged her over to the sidelines before she could change her mind about anything else. He didn't want to dance. Didn't want to be out in the middle of the crowd, but he did want her to come with him. Wanted it bad enough that his breathing had gone shallow and his chest hurt in a funny way that he recognized, but not from experience.

They stopped. Stared at each other.

"So, what brought the Ice Queen..."

"So, when did the Firebug..."

"Don't call me Ice Queen," she flared, tugging her hand away from his, or trying to. He latched on, didn't let her go.

"Don't call me Firebug."

They'd been talking over each other. They stopped. He wasn't even sure what she wanted to be called. Four years of high school and he didn't know anything about her. He wanted to, now. All of a sudden, in a rush of heat, he wanted to know what she wanted to be called. He swallowed around the confusion, the up-and-down that was still driving him, and forced himself to say something.

"It's Warren." Good, his voice was steady. "Just Warren."

He hadn't let go of her hand. He was getting dizzy.

"Alison." She smiled a little. "You can call me Ally."

"Ally."

"Yeah."

What was that he'd said about the path away from love, the loveless life, something? He couldn't remember. It didn't matter. The understanding he'd been waiting for in Layla's eyes seemed manifest in Ally's. And it could have been just Homecoming Night, the elation of not being a baby or stuffed in a locker or a smear on the pavement. Or it could have been real feeling. From both of them. He jerked her hand, wrapped his arm around her shoulders, and pressed his lips into hers. It was clumsy. It was a little boy's kiss.

Best kiss he'd ever had.

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