The lesson Wednesday night proved frustrating. Mike felt just a hint of sympathy for Smith before remembering the pretty-boy had attempted to kill him. Animas didn't fall into line like a loyal soldier when a normal level of intelligence commanded it. The corona didn't even form uniformly, presenting a lumpy texture with roving weak spots scattered throughout. Pushing a coin across a table drew beads of sweat on his forehead from the mental effort. Their attempts to freeze water with gravitas didn't bear fruit either.

Mike only managed to perform the exercises without mind-vasting because he didn't use the nous when he received another charge from Marius. Telepathy had evaded his grasp once again. Then Jimmy vanished the moment the lesson ended, not giving Mike the chance to ask any questions about what he suspected. That was probably for the best. With Varanelli's current situation, he didn't think he could handle any more drama added to his life.

Brooding silence weighed heavy on the drive home. Back in the apartment, Varanelli briefly seemed as if about to explode, but she wrestled herself back under control and went to her room.

The next day passed in a blur. It began with him oversleeping, a product of the late night lessons, then rushing to work. As Thursday had been claimed by Srinivas as the day for his private lesson with Marius, the responsibility for inspecting every item of a large order fell onto Mike. He worked through lunch, motivated to an atypical extent by the fear that he would miss a shipment and have to deal with the fallout from management. His efforts paid off and he managed to leave work on time.

He raided the cupboards at home for anything remotely edible and put together the cheapest meal with the potential to assuage his hunger. Stale crackers with canned tuna, peanut butter on celery, and a bag of Varanelli's weird vegetable chips. Mike hastily put away the chips as his room mate arrived home. She shooed him away as she sat with a takeout bag. "Its a burrito, Ski, and no, you can't have any."

"It's fine, Varanelli, I'll survive on whatever I can scrounge up."

She snorted. "You could stand to skip a few meals."

"We're doing the passive aggressive thing, I see."

"We're trying to beg food on top of being late with the rent, I see."

"The rent won't be late this month." He gazed longingly towards the safety of his room before turning back towards the cupboards in search of something edible. "We should hit up the grocery store or something. Do that 'adulting' thing all the rage these days."

"So you can eat all the food I buy?"

Mike looked once more towards his room before yanking the freezer door open in a desperation move. The sole occupant for ages had been an open, freezer burnt bag of hot dogs: the final, desperate option of a starving man. He took out the bag, chipped two hot dogs from the frozen block, and put them into the microwave.

"Use a plate," Varanelli growled.

"Too late," he responded.

The rest of the time before they left passed with only the sounds of eating. They climbed into Varanelli's car and rode to that night's meeting spot on the north shore.

Due to the parking situation, they were the last to arrive and discovered Tyler Marius leading an animated discussion, hands pointing towards the stadium as if he were a tour guide. The group turned to look at them as they arrived. Seeing the approaching people were some of their own, Marius continued his story. "So I have been messing with this cretin ever since. A few days after that incident, I pulled the cap off one of the spark plugs. And the next time I saw the car, I disconnected one of the battery terminals as he drove past. I figured that was too easy to fix, though, so today I unscrewed his oil filter. That should be the end of that particular vehicle. The moral of the story is that if you shouldn't cut off people in crosswalks."

Marius clapped his hands. "But onto business. We have another trial. Tonight we are going to be hopping into the river."

"It's mid-October," Jimmy said. "That water is hypothermia temperature."

"Exactly. Staying neck deep for thirty minutes will kill you if you can't manage to generate heat with your kinetic talent. The trick is to vibrate your corona. This is typically taught submerged to prevent overheating. I'm doing the more intense version of the lesson, of course."

"And why is that?" Jimmy crossed his arms and stared hard at Marius.

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"Because I have no interest in training mediocre students. If any of you lack the capacity to live up to my standards, then you don't belong in this class. In less than ten year there is going to be an invasion of your planet by a people known as the Chekowan. The Angmari may be content to withhold exposure to the talents and rip your people off in trade deals, but the Chekowan come with the intention of ruling entire worlds. They are not kind overlords. They are by turns negligent and sadistic in their leadership. And unlike my own world, there will be no Angelship Navigator restraining their behavior. Your civilization will not survive without an army capable of meeting the Chekowan in combat."

Marius pointed out Mike, Varanelli, and Spencer in turn. "The three of you have been soldiers before." He stabbed a finger at Jimmy. "You fight as sport." He turned to Srinivas. "Yet this one, who has no martial experience whatsoever, has proven the most willing student so far. If none of you impress me, I will simply move on. I have ten years to build my army, so don't think I will hesitate to scrub the efforts of a single week." He turned in a circle, glaring at each of them in turn. "If any of you have a problem following my commands, leave now. Otherwise, follow me." He stalked away from them, moving downriver.

Everyone shuffled along after their instructor. They went perhaps half a mile down the walkway before Marius turned and led them to the side of the river. The secluded spot could barely be seen from the trail. "Strip naked and get in the water. I'll give you a charge as you go past me. Anyone not submerged in five minutes must leave."

For a few seconds, no one moved. Then Jimmy swore and removed his jacket. The rest of them began to peel off layers of clothing, turning to hide their bodies as they did so. Mike tackled his shoes and socks first, then hopped from foot to foot on the cold ground while he removed coat, shirt, pants, and boxer shorts. A brisk wind tickled his goose flesh as he glanced towards the water, doing his best to ignore the bodies around him. The river looked cold. He stamped his feet as his nipples turned painfully hard. "Marius, this is ridiculous," he said.

"It's a small trial," Marius said. "Grab a charge and jump in the water."

Mike touched fists with Marius, felt the charge come alive in him, and took a few steps towards the water. "How do I make myself warmer again?"

A telekinetic force launched him through the air, sending Mike tumbling towards the river to land twenty feet from his starting point. He sucked in a breath and held his breath before hitting the water. Then gasped in water at the shock of cold. He scrambled to form a corona around himself as his mind vasted and his limbs spasmed, sending him back to the surface to cough. Splashes and shrieks sounded around him as his fellow students rained down from the sky. Cold. Mike began swimming for shore, shivery limbs moving in tight motions, instinctually trying to stay tight to his core so that he wouldn't freeze to death.

He realized suddenly that thrashing with his arms and legs served no purpose when he had a massive charge of animas inside him begging to be used. With that revelation, Mike used his corona to propel himself through the water. Mike had almost reached shore when Marius levitated out to meet him.

"Don't try to pass me, Mike. The trial has begun. You either last half an hour or you die."

A voice he recognized as Spencer shrieked out then. "You psycho! Why did you throw me like that? I was getting in!"

"Enough with the melodrama. Use your coronas. Vibrate your molecules. Get warm."

Mike began to move his limbs again to tread water, needing the activity to bring life back into his numbing body. He didn't feel as cold as before, but only due to a lack of sensation. He had begun to feel a deep, stiff ache spreading throughout his body. This exercise could very well kill him. Corona. Vibrate his corona. Mike concentrated on the task. His corona typically felt like a zone of space around him which he could bunch up in places to impart motion. Such ponderous manipulations could not generate heat. Or at least not to any useful extent.

Analyzing it deeper, his corona seemed to be made of tendrils of energy linked between physical space and his mind. The tips of those tendrils wove together with their neighbors to form the sphere of control. Yet . . . twist the tendrils slightly . . . and they came untethered. Continue that torsion while introducing motion . . . heat. Not enough, but it was a start. Mike's shivers abated as exhaustion flooded through him. He reached out through his corona, maintaining the twist of the tendrils, and gave them a rapid shake, forcing as much vitality through them as possible. He narrowed his corona to cover only the area of his body and pushed with all his might.

He began to sink as a consequence of switching the mode of his kinetic talent and leaned back in the water to make himself as buoyant as possible, trying to force his legs to keep kicking even as sensation faded so that they felt like rubber extensions to his actual body. "Good thing I have a layer of blubber," he huffed.

"I do not feel guilty for keeping my burrito for myself," Varanelli yelled back.

"I didn't want your damn burrito! Would have been nice if you got one for me, but I don't eat your food!"

"Ha!" Varanelli could apparently think of no better response.

"And Jimmy!" Mike turned in the water to face his friend. "What the hell, man?"

"What?"

"You know what!"

Jimmy splashed closer. "Come on, you can't tell me not to go for someone just because you don't like her."

"There's history there," Mike growled.

"History means things are in the past. Besides, she came onto me."

"Not cool, Jimmy!" Mike realized his body no longer felt cold. In fact . . . . "Shit! Hot! Too hot!" The problem solved itself in moments as the cold around him absorbed the excess heat the moment he stopped producing more.

Marius laughed from his perch in the air. Splashed water and occasional exclamations filled the air for the next several minutes. Eventually, Marius gave them permission to leave the water. They scrambled back to their clothing and dressed in rapid movements. While reserving the majority of his scowls for Jimmy, he saved a few for Marius, who shamelessly flirted with a half-naked Varanelli. It had been a hell of a night already and the real lesson hadn't even begun yet.