Free Sensation: A Superhero Novel by Kevin Hardman Page B

trials were basically assessments of our powers.  On the first day, they separated us based on our abilities.  Out of two hundred of us, there were only seven flyers. 
    Unless you had another superpower (like super strength), a flyer could usually expect to have a recon role on most super teams.  Fly here, scope out this area, report what you see. Your primary role wouldn’t be to mix it up with the bad guys (although that happened just as often as not).  Thus, the flying trials would be pretty straightforward attempts to gauge qualities such as speed and perception.
                The first part of the test involved flying up to a comfortable height (whatever that was for each individual flyer) and then staying there as long as possible.  I flew up to what I judged to be about a thousand feet, then stayed there for four hours (or more specifically, until they called me back down).  I was proud to see them label my ability to remain aloft as “indefinite.”
    Next, I had to chase down an aerial drone and manually tag it with a homing beacon.  It led me on a merry chase for almost thirty minutes, through wooded areas, around abandoned buildings, and all over the testing grounds. It had been an effort not to display too much speed, but I’d had fun all the same.  I had assumed that they were judging my speed, so it was a bit of a shock when, after I was done, the test administrator - a flyer known as Sky High - began asking me odd questions.
                “Did you see the bear?” he asked.
                “Huh?”
                “When you were chasing the drone through the woods, did you see a bear?”
                Of course!  Being recon, flyers were expected to observe what was going on around them.  I went back over the flight in my mind, thinking furiously.
                “Yes,” I finally answered.  “I actually saw two bears - a mother and her cub.”
                Sky High grunted, apparently surprised, then went on with a barrage of questions that I believe I answered correctly:  “Did you see a mailbox…?  How many blue cars…?  What was the color of…?”  
                There were other assessments as well, but nothing I found too difficult.  In short, over a two-day period, I passed all the tests they put me through.  (Or at least I believed I did.)
                The third day was just for winding down.  The superheroes would discuss and assess the merits of each participant - maybe even meet with a few of them one last time - and let us know at the end of the day if we made the cut.  Someone mentioned that there was a paintball range on campus, so a few of us decided to play while we waited.
    The Academy’s paintball range, although in a well-forested area, was fairly high-tech.  Each player could be tagged out by getting hit with a certain number of paintballs.  The number of paintballs it took to tag someone out varied based on a computerized assessment of their abilities.  For example, the computer would tag me out with seven registered paintball hits.  For someone like Paramount, the number was one hundred hits, which was as high as the system would go.
                There was a break area set up where teams could rest between rounds.  It had lots of refreshments, as well as video screens that carried live broadcasts of teams currently competing.  There was lots of good-natured betting on which team would win each faceoff.
                There were six of us who decided to play together, three to a team;  it was a good match per the computer, which assessed our abilities as being comparable and pegged us all at the same tag-out level.  We were in the process of putting on our pads - my team was in blue, the other team was in red - and getting our gear when the prior combatants came into the equipment room.  One of the teams included