"Embarrass yourself?" I calmly sat across from her under the watchful eyes of the entire class. To make myself more comfortable, I unbuttoned the top buttons of my shirt and, taking off my jacket, casually hung it on the back of the chair. "Don't get too cocky," my voice was steady, without a hint of worry. "Let's see who's stronger between us."
My confidence elicited an approving murmur from the crowd. Gina, watching my actions, grinned broadly. She leaned back in her chair, mirroring my pose, and sized up my arms.
"Oh, are we getting undressed? It's getting interesting," her voice rang out loudly, the girl was playing to the crowd, and the class laughed again. "You've got no shortage of courage, Hammer, I'll give you that. But courage alone isn't enough." She leaned forward, her face serious again. "Enough talking. Hand on the table."
I placed my elbow on the desk. Gina did the same, and our hands met in a grip. Her palm was warm, strong, and expectedly calloused—the hand of a real athlete. Mine, in comparison, seemed like the hand of a child, which elicited a new wave of laughter. The difference was obvious to everyone, and this was part of my plan.
It's easy to play on surprises, and if you can only make a first impression once, you can always correct it. Sure that the "homeboy" would turn out to be a feeble weakling? Oh, how happy I would be to prove you wrong!
A sporty guy, apparently from the football team, approached the desk.
"I'm the referee!" he boomed, placing his palm over our clasped hands. "The rules are simple: don't lift your elbow, don't lean with your body. Ready?" He looked first at Gina, who confidently nodded, and then at me. I just silently met his gaze. The crowd fell silent in anticipation. "On the count of three," the referee announced. "One... Two... Three!" he boomed after a second of silence, and in that fraction of a second, I felt crushing pressure. Gina's strength wasn't just great—it was insanely huge!
My wrist instantly bent, and my arm, with terrifying speed, went down toward the table's surface. I barely had time to tense my muscles to stop it a couple of centimeters from defeat. Damn, I thought she would try to feel me out first, mock me, and show dominance, not end the "fight" in the first second!
Laughter rippled through the class, turning into an approving hum in support of Gina. The girl smiled triumphantly, her face reddened from the effort, and she pressed even harder, putting the weight of her body into the movement. Damn, she turned out to be much stronger than I expected. Pure, brute force, significantly surpassing my seemingly decent strength. But that was her mistake. She was pressing with her bicep, like any amateur, relying only on one muscle, while my experience from my past life, the experience of a guy who spent years studying this sport, immediately told me what to do to defeat her, even being physically weaker.
Ignoring the pain in my wrist, I sharply twisted my torso, pressing into the chair and engaging my back and shoulder muscles, simultaneously turning my hand, trying to take a higher position—the classic "top." Her confident smirk faltered when my hand, which had been almost pressed to the table, froze in place. The pressure weakened because she was in an unfavorable position; her bicep could no longer work with maximum efficiency. The laughter in the class died down, replaced by surprised silence.
"What the..." Gina hissed through clenched teeth, trying to regain control.
This was my chance. I put all the strength my young body could muster into the movement. The muscles of my forearm cramped from the tension, but I ignored it; her hand slowly, with desperate resistance, went down. Centimeter by centimeter. I saw beads of sweat appear on her forehead, and in her eyes, confidence gave way first to shock, then to stubborn fury. She fought to the last, but technique turned out to be stronger than brute force.
THUD!
Her knuckles hit the lacquered surface of the desk with a dull thud.
In the ensuing silence, the referee's voice sounded deafeningly loud:
"The winner... is Hammer!"
I released her hand and heavily leaned back in my chair, trying to calm the trembling in my overstrained muscles. My forearm was on fire. The class erupted in a hum of incredulous voices. I raised my gaze to Gina. She sat across from me, breathing heavily, looking at her hand lying on the desk, then at me. Her face showed complete, absolute amazement... Yes, the girl definitely didn't expect this outcome.
"Not 'Hammer,' but 'Zik.' Call me that," my victorious smile must have looked incredibly smug, but I didn't care—I was enjoying this moment: the hum of the stunned crowd, the burning in my muscles, and most importantly, the expression of pure, unclouded amazement on Gina's face.
She looked at her hand for a few seconds, then at mine, then back at hers, as if she couldn't believe what had happened. The stunned silence in the class was broken by the growing hum of excited whispers.
"Did you see that?"
"How did he do it? He's such a weakling!"
"She let him win, it can't be!"
"Holy shit, he really beat Flash?!"
Suddenly, Gina threw her head back and laughed loudly. It wasn't an angry or humiliated laugh, but a sincere, joyful one. She stood up from the table, shaking her losing hand.
"So, Zik, huh..." she repeated the name, tasting it, and smirked again. "Damn... Where do you get all this craziness from, huh?" The athlete approached me and forcefully, friendly, slapped me on the shoulder. The blow was so strong that I probably would have staggered if I hadn't been sitting. "Alright, Zik. I admit, you're a real man." She looked at me with respect; there was no mockery in her eyes anymore, only lively interest. "The desk is yours. You earned it fair and square."
She stepped back, put her hands on her hips, and gave me a new, curious look, then licked her lips and said:
"By the way, you wanted something else, right? Have you figured out what exactly?"
Before I could answer, a sharp bell rang in the class, signaling the start of the lesson. Here, the bell was in the speaker and played in the classrooms, not in the hallway, as in my past life. At the same moment, the door opened, and the teacher—a strict middle-aged woman in glasses—entered the room.
"Everyone, take your seats! What's this gathering?" Her gaze strictly swept over the crowd gathered at the desk.
The students instantly scattered. Gina gave me one last quick glance, winked, and sat down at the neighboring desk with her friends. I moved to the desk I had honestly won while the teacher approached her desk. Scanning the room with her gaze, her eyes stopped on me.
"So, young man," she pointed at me with her pen, "be so kind as to come to the board. Let's get acquainted."
I briefly nodded to the class.
"Izekiel Hammer. You can call me Zik," my voice was calm and composed.
I looked around at the faces of my new classmates. Most looked with curiosity, some with envy. I caught Gina's gaze; she smirked and waved her fingers at me. In the third row sat Henrietta Osborn, who was looking at me with the same interest, but her red-haired friend in glasses, sitting next to her, on the contrary, immediately looked away and buried herself in her textbook.
"Alright, Zik, take your seat," the teacher said. "You'll get to know the kids during the break."
I silently returned to my desk. For the next ten minutes, the teacher, Ms. Davis, enthusiastically talked about how important algebra was, and I openly got bored. All this material had been covered and mastered by Zik three years ago, and my adult mind perceived it like the multiplication table to a mathematician. So, I just looked out the window, watching the wind chase autumn leaves around the yard, and pondered.
I liked Flash. The character she demonstrated didn't match at all with how I imagined a feminized bully with family problems. Gina was a confident girl, but she wasn't afraid to lose, and she had some kind of inner charisma that attracted even more attention, and her appearance only drew the eye more.
Hmm, they accepted me strangely. This class had been formed a long time ago, back in middle school, and the teacher only introduced herself to me. Were they warned, maybe? Probably so...
Wait! This was a combined school! Here, like in our world, elementary, middle, and high schools were often combined. That's why the teacher didn't introduce herself to anyone else; apparently, she simply worked as a math teacher for both middle and high school classes and had seen these rascals for several years already. Phew, I was already starting to build conspiracy theories, but no one except me looked lost, and everyone was quite accustomed to listening to the woman, not examining the unfamiliar classroom.
"Mr. Hammer!" The teacher's sharp voice pulled me out of my thoughts. "I see my story doesn't seem too interesting to you? Maybe you can retell the class what I've just been talking about?"
I slowly stood up.
"You said that today was an introductory lesson," I replied. "And for the last ten minutes, you've been talking not about the lesson's topic, but about how important algebra is." I paused for a second, then took a calculator out of my briefcase, showing her the screen with the inscription "2+2=4." "As you can see, I have no problems with math."
With these words, I calmly sat back in my seat. It was clear how Ms. Davis opened her mouth to explode in an angry tirade, but then I just looked intently into her eyes and slowly raised my finger, pointing to the barely noticeable hammer emblem on the breast pocket of my jacket. Her anger instantly evaporated. Her face changed color from red to pale; she swallowed and, abruptly turning away, continued the lesson in a completely different, quiet, and restrained tone.
I turned back to the window again. After all, I didn't come to this school to study. This knowledge was absolutely unnecessary to me, as it had been covered and mastered by Zik and me long ago, as they say, "in my past life," literally. Zik went to middle school, God knows, maybe a couple of times a week, but he "paid" the teachers with perfectly written tests and quizzes. I wanted to do the same, so the teachers should understand on the first day what path I had chosen so that there would be no questions or complaints later. The issue with the principal had already been resolved, if necessary...
When the bell finally rang, I didn't even have time to stand up before Henrietta Osborn approached me.
"Izekiel Hammer," she pronounced my full name, emphasizing the last name. "Henrietta Osborn. Nice to meet you."
She extended her hand to me; I shook it. The handshake was brief but firm.
"Just Zik."
"Just Henrietta," she replied, and a shadow of a smile flickered at the corners of her lips. With these words, she turned and left the classroom with that redhead. Before I could ponder this visit, Gina appeared beside me.
"I see our little princess has already managed to assess you," she chuckled. "That's Henrietta Osborn. Her daddy owns 'Oscorp.' Stay away from her if you don't want trouble. Her ex was hospitalized with a gunshot wound in the butt... This idiot thought she would forgive him for cheating with his cousin."
Such passions among young people in America... And the guy, it seemed, got everything from life; it sounded like a clickbait title for some video on orange-and-black YouTube...
"Thanks for the warning." I replied. Here was another fact that Flash wasn't a jerk here; she calmly explained and warned, which was even a little pleasant.
"No problem," she waved it off. "Hey, how did you do it? I still can't believe it. My hand is still buzzing!"
"Mine hurts too," I admitted honestly. "You're much stronger than I thought; I just used technique, and you only used brute force."
Her eyes widened in surprise.
"Technique, huh... Cool. Will you teach me?"
"Maybe. If you tell me how everything is arranged here."
"Ha, easy!" she grinned broadly. "After classes, I'll give you a personal tour. Deal?"
"Deal."
She winked and ran off to her friends, and I was left alone, pondering the oddities of the local education system. Why were we sitting in one classroom? I always thought that in American schools, students themselves went to different teachers' classrooms. That's how it was for me in high school in my past life, and especially in university. But here... we sat and sat. Well, I wasn't going to interfere in someone else's monastery; it was even more convenient this way.
No one else approached me during this break. Either they were afraid, or who knows, I didn't understand local customs; maybe it wasn't customary to get to know anyone here? Although there, Henrietta approached, so probably they were just afraid to get to know another rich kid, that's all.
After a few minutes, the bell rang, signaling the end of the break and the start of the English lesson. I pretended to listen, but I was looking out the window, just waiting for this day to end so I could return to my lab.
No progress was expected in the near future, but the experiments had really absorbed me, and my life this summer had turned into a crazy marathon of lab-kitchen-gym-kitchen-lab-room. I wasn't complaining, but such a thing was seriously exhausting, so I was a bit passive, you could even say sleepy, but it wasn't quite like that; I didn't have problems with sleep, and I hadn't had nightmares for a long time, which was good...
By the way, I still hadn't seen Peter, so the only option was that scared redhead in glasses. And she communicated with Osborn and wore glasses, and her character matched, as far as I could tell. In general, the local Parker, for some reason, had a mop of red hair, and this could mean many things: either two characters—Peter Parker and Mary Jane—had merged in her, or it was just a coincidence. In some Marvel universes, Mary Jane transferred to school in the last academic year. I wasn't sure if it was the same here, but at least I recognized the main characters, thanks to the comics and fanfics I read in my past life. And thanks to the MCU, although that's one Marvel cinematic universe I didn't want to thank, because it differed from the comics like hell, including the lack of logic...
Okay, what was happening now? Lunch? Hmm, I hoped there would be something edible in the local cafeteria, because I had already gotten used to high-class food and was literally addicted to our chef's cooking... And those ribs... Mmm...