Mike woke early Wednesday morning. He finished his breakfast of peanut butter toast and an energy drink before

Varanelli emerged from her room. She eyed him warily as she went about her morning routine. "How was your private lesson with Spencer?"

"Didn't happen."

A dramatic sigh almost succeeded in covering up a satisfied smirk on her face. "I know you hate her, but you will get in trouble with Marius if you slack off."

"Wasn't my call. She determined I was not in a suitable mental state for training and bailed."

"Can't say I blame her." Varanelli folded her arms. "Honestly, neither of you deserve the talents."

"Gee, thanks, Varanelli. Fortunately for me, this ain't about deserving. It's about hard work and a little bit of luck."

"Hard work? Really? I put in twice as much effort as you."

"Banging the teacher doesn't count as extra credit," he said.

A vein on Varanelli's temple twitched. "Just try not to screw Spencer again." The door slammed as she exited the apartment.

Fists clenched, Mike jumped back into his talent exercises. He froze water and blasted out memes while lifting the couch for several hours, gradually improving the time he could levitate the item of furniture to twenty seconds. When he grew bored of that, he retrieved the sticky notes and selected another exercise. The most interesting one he could find was blindfolding himself and navigating around blind. He poked around his bedroom for a few minutes, then decided that his pillow cover would make the best blindfold. That proved less comfortable than he had imagined, but it did prevent him from seeing, so Mike extended his corona and went about the business of eating an early lunch. Once he consumed some fruits and vegetables, he finished a bag of chips by levitating them into his mouth one at a time.

A glance at the sticky notes determined his next exercise: using gravitas and animas without nous.

Immediately upon starting, Mike was again struck by how bad he was without an enhanced mind. His coronal senses could barely identify a solid wall directly in front of him and when he lifted an object he had to use his sense of vision to compensate for the limited feedback. A full hour didn't improve his skill by much, if at all. His attempts to use the teleotic talent didn't fare much better. He couldn't freeze water at all, but breaking a metal spatula proved possible. Though even with something so simple did not go smoothly. The straight lines he intended became jagged cracks in the metal.

When he tired of that, Mike vasted his mind and went back to lifting things. Rather than the couch, he turned his talent on himself. With great effort, he could get off the ground for about three seconds. He discovered a much more entertaining exercise after that. By partially lifting himself until he only weighed a fraction of his normal weight, Mike could sail around the apartment like an astronaut on the moon. He soon discovered he could pull off some cool parkour moves. He spent several hours playing around, getting good enough that he could navigate through the space without touching ground.

As the door opened to readmit Varanelli, he called out to her. "Varanelli! Watch this! No, seriously, you have to see it!"

When he had her attention, Mike engaged his corona to lessen his weight with an upward force, then jumped up in the kitchen and seized ahold of the framing around the window. The wood creaked slightly under his lessened weight, but held together as he crouched there, fingers on the frame above his head and knees bent so his feet planted on the wall beneath the window. As Varanelli opened her mouth to make a rude comment, he kicked off with his feet as he dove forward through the air. Mike floated over the table, then pulled himself towards the fridge with one hand before kicking off at an upward angle. He seized the header dividing the kitchen and living room with one hand on either side, palms pressed together to provide the force necessary to keep him airborn. He cycled his feet as if running in mid-air, then when that didn't get a laugh, swung himself and let go so that he floated in an arc across the room. A kick at the couch delayed his downward momentum long enough for him to reach the narrow hall leading to two bedrooms with a bathroom between them. Mike planted a hand and a foot on each wall to keep himself above the floor. Then he propelled himself forward with weird multi-limb hops until he reached the door to Varanelli's room at the end of the hall. For the big finale, he spun himself around before letting gravity reassert itself.

"Is that what you worked on all day?"

"Don't pretend that wasn't cool," he said.

"Maybe a little. Look, can you give me some space? I don't want to do this right now."

Mike shrugged. "Sure. I can head out for dinner."

"Thanks." Varanelli sat down on the couch with her takeout bag as Mike headed out the door. He drove to a Thai restaurant and tucked away an order of Pad See Ew before texting Srinivas a message to meet at the incline parking lot. Once he made it to the parking lot, he reclined his seat and closed his eyes while singing along to classic rock on the radio.

Srinivas arrived not long after and he got out to meet his friend. "How is the QA going in my absense?"

"They send me Rico until we hire replacement."

"The intern from IT?"

"Yes. He is not so happy."

Mike shrugged. "The kid is getting a paid internship. He should be grateful. Anyway, we got some good training lined up for us. We're going to be doing white noise meme-casting. I want to see how it effects bystanders, so we're going to be walking through the south side while we do it. We're also supposed to heal knife wounds, which I'm not so sure about. I say we start off hardening our bodies instead of healing damn knife wounds. If that's all right with you."

Eyes wide, Srinivas nodded. "I do not want knife wounds."

Mike led Srinivas towards the nightlife hotspot of Pittsburgh. There wouldn't be many partiers out on a Wednesday night, but there were guaranteed to be some barhoppers. As they came among people, they took turns blasting mind-numbing white noise. The groups they passed would go from animated discussion to absent-minded silence in an instance, then blink around at one another in confusion before resuming it. Mike began to get a sense of the range of the effect. At full blast, he could discombobulate someone at twenty paces. Srinivas could only do about half that.

When they had done about half an hour of that, Mike switched their training to hardening their skin. He secured a sliver of glass from a street light by yanking it free with his corona, sharpened its edge with his teleotic talent, and then they worked on preventing damage from slices and stabs as they walked along the riverside trail. That proved almost too easy. "How about we do tiny little papercuts and try out the healing thing?"

Srinivas held out his hand. "Very small cut to start."

Mike put a centimeter long slice along the side of one finger on Srinivas. The Indian man sucked on his finger to get rid of the beading blood and the skin was whole when he withdrew it. "Easy."

So Srinivas gave Mike a slice that he healed in turn. They progressed in small increments. Slices became more serious until they stretched the entire length of an arm. Each one knitted back together with a little effort. The first stab proved more challenging to heal up. After Srinivas struggled with a puncture in his palm, Mike offered some advice. "You have to line all the edges of the wound back up. That's why the slices are easier to handle. With a stab the wound is three-dimensional."

"More complex inside," Srinivas said. "Veins all over place."

On the walk back to their cars, they practiced meme-casts. "Is it anger?" "Nope. Hunger. Your turn. Fear?" "Yes!" "No shit. Unfortunately, that was pure guesswork. We both suck at this."

They shook hands, climbed back into their cars, and drove off.