After Marius left, Mike made a trip to the grocery store to stock up on some essentials. Normal, non-vegetable potato chips. Ramen noodles. Peanut butter. Bread. Cereal. Milk. Eggs. Energy drinks. Ice cream. Bagels. He criss-crossed the store like a lunatic, not working off of any cohesive list and not entirely competent navigating the fluorescent-lit, tile-floored space.

When Varanelli arrived, he sat on the couch eating a bagel smeared in peanut butter. She stopped to stare at the food in his hands, head tilted to one side. “Did you buy groceries?”

“I’m not up on my prophecies. Is me shopping for food a sign of the apocalypse?”

Varanelli kicked in his direction to force him to make room for her on the couch. She claimed her usual spot and pulled a burger from a takeout bag. “Did you give up on paying the rent on time?”

“Varanelli, I am shocked and deeply hurt that you would doubt my ability to meet my financial obligations.” He pulled out the six hundred dollars that represented his portion of the rent and held it between her face and her burger. She snatched the cash away and performed a rough count.

“Please tell me you didn’t sucker Srinivas into giving you a loan.”

“Srinivas was not involved.”

“You didn’t resume pickpocketing?”

“I earned that money.”

Varanelli put the loose cash into her purse. “Good enough for me.”

Once he finished up his dinner, Mike nodded towards Varanelli. “Tell me something. Would you really have gone to Susie’s folks if I didn’t pay on time?”

“Hell no,” Varanelli said. “They always treated Susie like a screw-up. When you dropped six figures on them they told everyone that Susie paid for them to put the new addition on their house. I think of their ‘great room’ as Susie’s memorial.”

Mike grunted. “That’s good to know.”

“I will find some other way to make your life hell if you are late with the rent again.”

“So you and Marius,” Mike said.

“Don’t change the subject.”

“The previous conversation reached its end. I need to pay the rent on time. Now we’re talking about you shacking up with a one man war machine.”

Varanelli refused to look in his direction. “Ski, you’re not my mother, so stop criticizing the guys I date.”

“I’m not criticizing. Just making sure you understand Marius is a nuclear weapon. Don’t set him off.”

For a moment, Varanelli looked to be on the verge of a snappy comeback, then she shook her head. “I know it’s stupid, Ski. Marius isn’t even my type. He just showed some interest at the right time.”

He nodded and stood to get ready for their class.

“Hey, Ski.”

“Yeah?”

“What do I do wrong in relationships?”

“You’re asking me?”

Varanelli laughed. “I must be desperate, right?”

A dozen punchlines churned through his mind before he set aside the notion of making a joke. “You try too hard. It shouldn’t be work to make someone like you. You’re a cool chick, Varanelli. One of these days some tool who puts product in his hair and wears skinny jeans is going to sweep you off your feet. Figuratively speaking, of course.”

She nodded. “I need to make them work harder.”

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Not quite the message he intended to send, but close enough. Before Mike could get three steps, Varanelli spoke again. “It’s been three years, Ski. You can go on dates.”

“Yeah. I know.”

“Just not with Spencer.”

“Easy there. I would rather perform a DIY castration.”

“Good talk, roomie.”

Mike shut himself in his room until Varanelli fetched him for class. They rode to that night’s destination at the incline’s parking garage in easy silence. An anxious Srinivas patted him on the back when he emerged from the car.

“Good to see you still taking lesson,” Srinivas said.

“Good to be here,” he responded.

Off a ways, Jimmy stood next to Smith. He nodded. “Hey, man, you got to tell Fred if you’re not going to be teaching class. No one at the gym knew you weren’t coming in tonight.”

Mike waved away the comment. “Someone will cover for me.”

“Usually I cover for you,” Jimmy said. “If you don’t teach lessons, Fred will make you pay for a membership.”

“Well, if I miss these lessons I don’t get superpowers. Easy decision for me.”

Jimmy huffed. “Look, man, I got Dwayne to cover your lesson tonight. Just make arrangements if you can’t do next week.”

“Sure thing, boss,” Mike said.

“And quit being weird about me hooking up with someone you never even dated.”

“I’m not being weird about anyone’s dating life.” Mike waved his hands around randomly. “Go on and mix it up however you want. I don’t care. I’m here to train.”

Marius chose that moment to walk out of the darkness. “Excellent sentiment, Mike Dombroski. Tonight’s trial is to keep up with me in the air. You obviously need to use your corona to provide thrust and altitude control, but you will also need to warm yourself. The tricky part will be hardening your exposed skin and eyeballs. The usual disclaimers apply. Fail and you’re done. Line up for your charges.”

Once each of them had received their allotment of power, Marius erupted skyward. Mike expanded his corona and pushed upward on his torso as he had been taught. Fierce wind buffeted him as he soared upwards, eyes squinted.

The upward race slowed when Marius reached twice the height of the skyscrapers across the river. Their route went horizontal then, taking them downriver at a furious pace. Mike’s eyes leaked streams against the cold air numbing his face. He managed to get within ten body lengths of Marius before the teacher dove down to pass beneath a bridge.

Mike followed, heart rising within him as he first plummeted and then bounced back upwards, moving faster all the time to avoid losing his teacher. His face felt as if someone continuously whipped it. In a moment of clarity, he suddenly managed to harden the exposed skin. His eyes took another thirty seconds to figure out. By then, he had fallen behind and had to put on a burst of speed to catch Marius once more.

During brief breaks from his forward acceleration, Mike switched to warming himself up by jiggling his molecules. He became almost comfortable with the exercise.

And then Marius went under a bridge, shot straight up into the air, and looped back, still gaining height. Mike took advantage of the change in direction to catch sight of the others. They formed a long tail behind Marius and himself, with Srinivas and Spencer bringing up the rear.

After a few more minutes of mad flight back in the direction of downtown, they touched down on the roof of the Highmark building. As they all came in, the group exchanged liberal high fives and hugs. In the excitement of the moment, Mike even forgot himself enough to bump fists with a red-nosed Spencer.

Marius let them relax for a few minutes and stare down over the edge of the building at the darkness below, marveling at their location and how they had gotten there. Then the lesson began in earnest. The first thing they had to do was break off chunks of concrete from the side of the building and then reattach them. Tearing a piece free proved simple: just impose a pattern with an absence along the break you wanted to make.

Putting it back together proved harder. As Marius explained the teleotic talent, it didn’t so much make things happen as it altered the probability that a potential action would occur. Cement in its natural state consisted of aggregate, or small rocks and sand, and a binder that adheres everything together. The chemical structure of a cement wall was likely to degrade over time, making it easy for them to break it with a touch of gravitas. They were just speeding up the timeline a bit.

But squeeze two pieces of dry cement together and they typically did not stick to one another. At a molecular level, chemical bonds might spontaneously form from time to time, but not in numbers sufficient enough to make a difference. So forcing the issue was an uphill battle requiring far more application of gravitas precursor and an even greater amount of precision in their use of it.

When they had spent some time at that task and made some progress, Marius switched to a lesson on telepathy. Mike managed to separate out a trickle of the nous engorging his mind for the exercise, then joined with the others in producing an incoherent stream of memetic noise.

Telepathy was hard. First, it couldn’t be trained in isolation. You had to get a partner to ‘listen’ and provide feedback. Then you had to adjust what you did based on the questionable advice you received. The second major problem was the fact that you couldn’t leverage the powers of mind-vasting. The particular variety of telepathy they were learning, meme-casting, involved creating packets out of nous that contained some simple, fundamental thought, then releasing them to scatter and find another host mind. Forming those packets had to happen away from the vasted portion of mind or the nous would just get sucked into the genius pool.

After several hours of practice, they flew pack to their cars. Then Marius topped them all up with a large charge and disappeared.