As the two least homophobic men, Mike and Woodrow shared his bed while Srinivas and Smith crashed on cots erected in the kitchen and living room. Varanelli refused to share her bed, but Tracy set her cot up in the same room as her. Spencer took the couch, wary of sleeping too close to Varanelli, while Cassandane set up a cot directly in front of the door, no doubt intent on making sure no one attempted to escape during the night. The overwhelming exhaustion made Mike irritable as he waited for the sleeping arrangements to be finalized. He needed sleep.

The moment everyone had been situated, Mike crashed onto the bed beside Woodrow and felt himself continue to fall through the bed into a deep sleep.

Only . . . not really.

He slept. Or at least his eyes were closed, his breathing steady, and his senses numbed. He did not, however, enter the mental nothingness or dream landscape of normal sleep. Instead his vasted mind began to obsess. It poured forth a replay of events from the previous day, moments that had haunted him brought to life for him to overanalyze. Fighting and killing men. Facing a monster with the sure knowledge of his own death. A hand on his back as the form of Marius receded below them. Thoughts joined in with the replayed memories. Had he deserved to be saved in place of his mentor? How could he presume himself capable of filling the role offered to him by Cassandane? Did he even expect to survive once Nallit sent people after him? It all spun in his head like an OCD tornado.

Vaguely, he felt his body breathing, turning on occasion. Warmth from the covers. Old man stank and snores from Woodrow. The ticking of a wall mounted clock. All of that came to him from an incredible distance. His mind was simultaneously asleep and wide awake. The lack of sense stimulus proved a fertile field for his manic ruminations, which paraded in circles the entire night.

Until finally his body determined it had achieved the minimal sleep necessary to function. Mike's eyes shot open and he exited the room. His stumbling woke Cassandane, who eyed him without expression as he found his way to the kitchen, where he went about finding food. "Damn fridge is full of health food," he muttered. Marius had set him on the healthy living track, he remembered.

"No one understands the cost of being a full paragon unless they become one."

Mike squinted through the space lit only by the fridge light towards Cassandane. "Mornin', boss. I take it all my sleeps are going to be terrible from now on?"

"An unavoidable side effect. Was this your first time sleeping since you ignited?"

"Funny story. I ignited while trying to lift a hundred tons or so of steel and concrete."

Even in the dark, he could see the outline of a smile from Cassandane. "What made you attempt to catch a building with only an attunement?"

"Marius was supposed to be on catching duty while I kept any kinetics off his back. I volunteered myself out of desperation." Mike took out the remainder of the hard boiled eggs and an energy drink. He wiggled the can. "Want a morning beverage? If you're not a Monster fan, I can figure out how to work Varanelli's coffee machine."

"I'm not sure what coffee is, but probably not." She paused. "I heard that this Earth has tea."

Mike grunted. "Sure does. Varanelli has an ancient variety pack that no one ever used." He opened one of the cupboards and pushed items around until he found the carton he sought.

Cassandane turned on the light to inspect the variety of teas on offer. An uncustomary grin lit up her features as she removed one of the individually wrapped bags and opened it. She inhaled slowly through her nose and nodded. "I used to drink tea before . . . everything. Do you have a cup?"

"We've got mugs," Mike said, pulling down the finest of the mismatched group to offer her. "We could heat some water in a pan, I suppose."

Cassandane placed the tea bag inside, filled her mug with water from the tap, and stared at it until steam rose into the air.

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"Or we could just use the kinetic talent," Mike said. He cracked open an egg and tossed it into his mouth. "Want one?"

"I do not. Would it be prohibitively difficult to pursue a diet free of animal products in your culture?"

"They call that kind of diet vegan. It's not super popular, but enough people do it that you shouldn't have any problems. I can scout out some options for you if you like."

"That would be appreciated." Cassandane took a sip of her tea and the contented smile reappeared. "This isn't even good tea, but it might be the best thing I have tasted in years."

Mike glanced at the paper wrapper. "So white tea is your thing? Without any sweetener?"

"A proper white tea's flavor is too delicate to appreciate with added sugar."

"You a loose leaf lady?"

"I do prefer loose leaf tea. Alliteration, not so much. It was a quirk of Nallit."

He cracked open his energy drink and took a slurp. "Do you think he is going to wait a month before sending people after me?"

"You won't have to worry about a serious threat for several months. It takes time to create and train paragons. Single or double talents won't be a threat to you, even in small groups." Cassandane tilted her head. "Do you understand the technique I used to briefly overcome Nallit?"

Mike shrugged. "You were using those extra dimensions. Open and loop."

"That is a correct and incomplete explanation." Cassandane held up her mug, pointing to a permanent stain from where previous contents had run down in a line. "Imagine that this line represents the open dimension. All of three dimensional space has been squeezed down to a single point on the line." She placed her finger at a midpoint on the coffee stain line. "Everything we recognize as our universe floats at this level. The exception is kinetic coronas, which for some reason appear to be denser than physical reality and will readily sink if we don't actively maintain their posture."

Cassandane moved her finger around the side of the mug. "This is the loop dimension. If we go far enough clockwise, we arrive back at our original point. Unlike this prop would lead you to believe, the loop dimension is extremely small. Our physical reality takes up most of the real estate by itself. The empty space seems to be a channel for the propagation of fundamental forces such as electromagnetism. Or at least it gets harder to move in the loop dimension when you are in a strong magnetic field.

"Typically, people use the loop dimension to do what is best described as ramming." She moved her finger around the body of the mug until it intersected the line. "You push your opponent's corona out of line with physical reality. Of course, since it is a small space, they keep going and realign. To prevent this, ramming is performed as a continuous effort. It isn't difficult to prevent an opponent from using their corona, though the cost is your corona is also tied up in this effort. The end result is neither of you can use the kinetic talent for a period of time.

"In contrast, most people use the open dimension to get upwise of their opponent and press downwise. The result is that you can use your kinetic talent while they cannot. The obvious trick with two dimensions available is to move into the loop dimension to slide past the opponent as you move upwise, then come back into line to push down." As she spoke, Cassandane placed her finger below the point on the line representing reality, then curved it in a half circle out to the side and them back onto the line above the point. "This is expected. There are two common defenses. The first is to shift out of phase in the loop dimension to block the upwise motion. That succeeds more often than not, but depends on good timing. The second defense is to repeat the same maneuver. If someone jumps you to the top, you jump them in turn. It has even odds of working at best and leaves you momentarily vulnerable.

"What I did against Nallit was to stack two coronas back-to-back and spiral upwise." Cassandane placed her finger below the point marking reality on the line, then moved it the entire way around the mug to cross the line at a higher point, then continued around for another and another loop, each time intersecting the line higher and higher. "We were moving his corona out of line in the loop dimension and pushing it very upwise. Then when the weight overcame our inertia, we moved out of the way and reversed the spiral to land on top of his corona, shoving it downwise." She reversed the spiraling of her finger to demonstrate. "The technique had the benefit of keeping our coronas in line a much greater amount of the time than our opponent's. While spiraling upwise, our coronas were between his and reality. The spiral downwise happened extremely fast. And throughout, we were in and out of alignment on the loop dimension in rapid succession like a strobe light. It requires a bit of experience to get the feel for how to do the technique. Once I have you trained on it, I don't think you have anything to fear from a kinetic." Cassandane took a sip of her tea and the smile returned.

In the background, phone alarms began to sound. Mike winked. "Watch this. OUT OF YOUR BUNKS! ON YOUR FEET! IT'S TRAINING TIME!"