25: Keynote Speaking

Retelling the broad arcs of his life story, Slade went through a couple major times in his life: his troubled youth, his time at the institute, and his burgeoning career as a hero and hunter. At his current level of fame—plus the fact that modern technology existed—though, most of the information was already quite well-known. After around half-an-hour to forty-five minutes of talking, he wrapped it up with a nice little end cap.

To Nyssa, the talk consisted of only basic information but… she did have a very different bar after all. She had grown up watching it all happen first hand.

With tha main portion of his speech done though, Slade opened the floor for questions. Staff members began walking around with microphones as a wave of hands shot into the air. The first to ask a question was a young woman from Class One in Ryker and Electra’s year.

“Hi! First of all, amazing to hear from you, Slade. I’ve always looked up to you ever since I entered the academy. I just wanted to ask if you could elaborate on your personal journey with your power and any tips you have for improving your power’s output and control?”

“Ohh interesting question indeed. A little sad that I’m old enough for you to have admired me for so long, but I guess it’s life…” Slade chuckled while stroking his chin. “I think I’ll try and have my teammates answer this question too in the later panel because everyone has their own journey with this type of stuff.”

After taking a sip of water from the bottle provided at the podium, he walked back in front of the podium to face the audience. “My journey is quite complicated. Unlike many, where control and power develop together, my powers broke the progression a little and a lot of power came first and very little control. Therefore, I was put in Class Zero, a bit of a weird case, yeah? But over the years, the control of my powers progressed at a decent rate. What helped me personally, a lot of the time, was to try and make it into a game. Though I try to be easygoing, I can get quite obsessed with optimizing something. So, I made my practice into a game of sorts where I’d unwittingly dump hundreds, if not thousands, of hours into it.”

Continuing on with a few more small tips, Slade finished and apologized for blabbing on and on. Motioning towards the staff, Slade stood there as the next person asked their question. The next person, a young man, again, from the Class One section stood up with a microphone in his hand.

“Hello, I’d also like to thank you for coming to talk to us. Really enjoyable so far, and I’m looking forward to the rest of the itinerary today. I just wanted to know if you could share any details about your family? There seems to be a lot of conflicting information online about whether you have one or two siblings, and there’s no information about anyone other than you and your elder sister Roxanne.”

“Hmm...” Slade trailed off as a certain air of anticipation spread over the crowd once more. “A complicated question indeed. I guess the easiest answer I can give is uh... hmm. Well, I don’t know what information you’re looking at my guy, but I can start with the easy stuff. In any interview over the past fifteen years, Roxanne and I have always been consistent, it's just the interviews we did when we were younger that don’t line up. This is quite well-known I’m pretty sure.”

Looking over to Kaiser, Slade did a subtle eyebrow raise before walking over and whispering a few questions in his ear. Turning back to the audience, Slade raised the microphone back to his mouth for a second. “Sorry, I just want to ask real quick, one second friends.”

Watching as Slade and Kaiser exchange some hushed whispers, Nyssa leaned over and hid her face behind Celeste’s. Suppressing the urge to laugh, she also suppressed the urge to transform into a cat and run away. The jig was almost up! She hadn’t expected it’d come today, but she knew it would happen sooner or later.

It was fine though, she had already prepared for this eventuality when she decided to ask Kaiser if she could attend the academy. She had also given permission already for the information to be made public.

With everyone else in Class Zero knowing about her situation—and what was about to transpire—they all kept quiet and snuck a few glances towards Nyssa out of the corner of their eyes. Celeste, though, just hugged Nyssa and laughed along with her.

Keeping their laughs quiet so as to not attract too much attention, the two of them watched as Slade got the thumbs up and walked back to the center of the stage. Cheers began breaking out as they watched Kaiser return to his seat as well.

“Alright, as you just saw, I got the thumbs-up.” Slade laughed as the crowd settled back down. “So, Roxanne and I actually have another younger sister. She doesn’t quite have the same aspirations as we both do, to become world-class, world-famous hunters and heroes. Instead, she’s more of a ‘house cat’ type of person. So there’s pretty much no information about her.”

With the crowd still sitting at the edge of their seat, Slade sat down on the stage while letting his legs dangle over the side. “What else do you all even want to know?”

“Age!”

“Powers!”

“Name!”

Shrugging and shaking his head while listening to the various shouts coming at him, Slade let out an exasperated sigh. “Alright, let’s calm down now. I’ll just be brief. She’s currently sixteen, about to be seventeen, so she’d fall on the younger end of the non-graduate division.”

Pausing, Slade just let the crowd take their time with digesting the information. Just let everyone gossip it out for a few seconds. Hesitant to continue, he wanted to wait until the crowd had calmed down before he dropped his last bombshell.

Another handful of seconds later, he cleared his throat as a smile blossomed across his face. “In fact, she’s actually sitting among these very bleachers right now. So, I hope you’re enjoying yourself, Nyssa!”

With the crowd exploding into both cheers and gossip, Nyssa just shook her head while watching Slade push himself back up and walk back behind the podium. Unable to resist the wry smile tugging at her lips, she ignored the chaos in the Class One section adjacent to theirs and just leaned against Celeste.

Slade, at this point, just fielded a couple more basic questions before calling his team up for the next part of the agenda: a team introduction, a light questionnaire, and then... show matches!