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(GM Post) Early January, 2025 Sampson's Sodas: Riverside Sampson's was a pretty nice place to hang out if you were a Claremont kid. It wasn't quite the mall, it wasn't quite the movies. But Michael and Sam worked there, and almost always at least one of them was there after school, which meant half off drinks and food at minimum. And if it was Michael working and you needed it, he'd pay for your meal and drink without a second thought. It wasn't a full arcade, but it had a few games. It wasn't a full sports bar, but you could wrangle the remote off whoever was working pretty easily. So the Claremont Students were always welcome at Sampson's, and Sampson's was always open for them to come visit. Today it was Michael who was working after school, in the lime green Sampson's polo, for the Claremont students who had made their way over. Another benefit of Michael being the worker was his homework was never far away, because he worked on it between orders. And that meant that Juniors, Sophomores, and Freshmen could all be tutored by him when they needed it. He didn't even charge for it. Sampson's itself was a store that catered to those highschoolers who were trying to be cool, who were too young for bars but wanted to join them, too old for play places and wanting to get away from them. It had a very heavy theme of wood in it's pizza bar style, high chairs on a bar, personally brewed, small batch sodas in barrels that were designed and crafted in the back of the brick building. A pair of pizza ovens could produce fresh made pies on order. The walls had sports team jerseys; a signed Andre Leroux Freedom Blades Jersey from his rookie year, a Freedom Comets jersey, a jersey from the Freedom City Rayguns's Andy 'Lancer' Tyler, and a Darrell Marks jersey from the Freedom City Heroes. And that wasn't counting the hockey and high-school jerseys on the display. Including one that Michael himself was always a little bashful about; his football jersey from his Sophomore year at Franklin D. Roosevelt High where he took the team to state as Quarterback. For Superheroes, there was a known AEGIS Contractor faculty in the back; the same place Michael had gotten his powers, but it wasn't talked about often. Even Michael was prone to dismissing talk about it, since it wasn't part of things that teenagers should really be getting involved in, and he believed fully in keeping the Soda shop separate from the AEGIS stuff in the back. Right now, Mass Lines was playing Young Punks, and Michael had one of the TVs tuned to the NJPW Wrestle Kingdom that had just aired; he was a big fan of Zack Sabre Jr. It wasn't that busy at Sampson's, only a few people were there, watching TV, working on homework, or eating and drinking. Not everyone that came to Sampson's was a Claremont student. In fact, the Claremont students probably didn't make up the majority as a general rule, not because it wasn't popular, but because there were so few of them. That meant the majority of customers at any given time were not superheroes or meta humans at all.