Varanelli ranted into the steering wheel as they rode to their lesson. "I can't believe he tried to cripple my talents. What an asshole."

"Sure, don't even mention the attempted murder."

"I don't want to hear anything from you. So just save your told-you-so attitude for never."

Mike rolled his eyes. At least this breakup started with her angry. Wait a minute . . . . "You're done with him, right?"

"Just be quiet, Ski."

"Come on, Varanelli. Have some pride for once."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

Mike ignored the warning in her tone. "That you keep letting guys make a fool of you."

"You're one to talk."

"Whatever," Mike grumbled. The rest of their drive passed in silence.

They arrived early at the designated meeting spot for that night, the south side of the Hot Metal Bridge. After parking in a garage, they walked separately to the bridge and stood apart. Tyler Marius stepped out of the shadows once they had settled in. "I trust you have not been drinking?"

"No," Mike said. "Contrary to what everyone assumes, I'm not an alcoholic."

"You do a good impression of one."

"There's a real issue to discuss. Greg Smith tried to brain push me less than an hour ago. That's after he tried sabotaging Varanelli by giving her an animas only charge."

Marius nodded. "I'll take care of it."

"He tried to kill me."

"I said I'll take care of it."

"Good." Mike paused. "What are you going to do?"

"That depends on how Greg reacts to the conversation. It could go a lot of ways."

Mike nodded. "You're just going to intimidate him. Right?"

Marius shrugged. "I will handle it however I think best, Mike. That's all you need to know." The man turned towards

Varanelli. "How are you handling all of this, Kendra?"

Varanelli made a face. "I'm handling it."

"If you find yourself feeling sad at any point, I want you to remember one thing."

"What's that?"

"You can do a lot better than Greg Smith." Marius winked and flashed a dazzling smile.

Varanelli shook her head, a smile gracing her face for a moment before fading away. "Getting a guy has never been the problem."

"Well, if it makes you feel any better, it is entirely possible my ex is hunting me with the intent of killing me."

"Actually, that doesn't make me feel better," Varanelli said.

Marius laughed. "In truth, it's the best case scenario. There were only ever four other Angmari who could match me. Poor Quincy died a martyr. Hafnym won't leave his politics to chase after me. That leaves only Cassandane or Wilson. I much prefer my chances against Cassandane."

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"Is she so much weaker?"

"On the contrary," Marius said, "she is the deadliest of us. But Wilson would murder me in my sleep without a second thought. Cassandane . . . she would have to talk first. Her curiosity wouldn't let her to do otherwise."

Jimmy appeared out of the night. "Hey guys." Not far behind him came Spencer. The two of them spread out, very obviously not looking at one another. You've got to be kidding me, Mike thought to himself. Jimmy, super casual, refused to meet Mike's eyes. Before he could crack Jimmy's aloof resistance, Srinivas arrived.

Marius wasted no time. "Tonight's trial is simple. Pickpocketing. You are each going to acquire the money from a wallet or purse without alerting the owner. The obvious way of going about this is to use kinetic talent. A touch of meme-casting could as a distraction. The rules are very simple. When it is your turn, you have only five minutes to pull off your heist.

You get to pick your target. You cannot be caught. And, of course, failure means you no longer get trained by me." A big smile. "But try to have fun with this. Could I have a volunteer to go first?"

Everyone froze into immobility at the request. Mike sighed. "Sure, why not."

Marius poked Mike in the forehead and a small charge filled him. Then he pulled out a stopwatch. "Your five minutes just started."

A spike of adrenaline stabbed at his heart as Mike activated the charge. Mind vasted and corona extended, Mike walked down the sidewalk towards where a group of people stood smoking outside a building. He slowed his pace to give himself more time to search with the feedback of his corona. His strange sense strained to the utmost trying to detect wallets. No good. One of the men, wearing better clothing than the others and attention directed towards two ladies who quite obviously were with the other guys, had a money clip in his pocket. The metallic item provided enough contrast with its surroundings for him to pick it out. The contents were a little less clear, but he got the impression of a hard square -- credit card? -- and a hazier something else. That something else he deduced would be cash.

Target acquired, Mike began exercising his corona to separate the cash. The man sensed something and began to reach for his pocket. No! Mike hastily used his corona to caress the nose hairs of the man, which caused the questing hand to shoot upwards to rub the nose with the back of a hand. Mike took the moment of distraction to push forward.

The money clip sprang tighter together, suggesting he had successfully dislodged the cash. The hand once more reached towards the pocket. Mike knocked the purse of one of the woman to the ground from its perch on her shoulder.

Everyone glanced towards the distraction and Mike sent the wad of bills flying through the air into his hand as he passed by. His hand closed around the cash and stuffed it into a pocket.

As the group watched the girl pick up her purse, Mike quickened his pace and then moved a street over to get out of their sight and, hopefully, out of their minds. The others approached him soon after. Tyler Marius held out his hand and Mike deposited his gains into it. "A little over three hundred dollars in a minute and twenty-four seconds. Well done, Mike."

The rest of the group took turns after that, each of them succeeding in their thefts in turn. Spencer beat his time record by snatching a tip left on an outdoor table as she walked past. Srinivas beat his cash record by popping open a vending machine to take all the bills inside it. Marius allowed that theft to count, but emphasized that the test was to steal from people, not machines. Varanelli had an inebriated man drop his phone, then levitated a crumpled handfull of cash from his pocket while he was preoccupied. The final one to go, Jimmy lifted a single dollar from where a woman had slapped it down on a bar to get the attention of a bartender. He turned it over to Marius with a comment about how they shouldn't be screwing over hardworking people.

Marius put the night's gains into his pocket. "Jimmy, you would not have done well training under my instructor. He had us kidnap targets for him. Military targets, for the most part. Then he had us torture them for information once we became comfortable with the abductions. By the end, we were destroying convoys and disabling space stations. You were able to say no to my instructor only once. He would then explain the consequences of defying him. If you ever failed to obey after that, your life ended. Not quickly and certainly not painlessly."

Mike recalled being told by Marius that he had been taught by a man who called himself by the name of a demon. "What was your teacher's name?"

"Nallit," Marius said. "The Angmari were not a religious people, but one of our neighbors, the Bersians, had a state religion that featured a small pantheon. The unusual feature of this religion was that all evil came from one creature: Nallit, the demon of hate. My instructor chose to name himself after such a creature and then he actually lived up to the name." Marius waved away the somber mood that had fallen on him. "Tonight we are going to be training using teleotics and kinetics without mind-vasting. I assure you, it will make all of you feel like incompetents. Your lack of skill has not been an issue in any of the training so far because your intelligence has been enhanced enough to overcome the deficit. However, you aren't actually learning any of the skills since you lose the gains you've made once your nous expires every night. You need to build skills with an unenhanced mind, then leverage mind-vasting to bring them to the next level."