Willow Grace was a prodigy, and among the fifty or so people sitting in her class at that moment, not a single one of them doubted that fact.

As the daughter of Christopher and Anastasia Grace, she was about as Scottish as one could get. Her hair was a mess of ginger curls, her skin pale like porcelain, with freckles dotting almost every inch of her body. Her eyes were green, pure in color and piercing to look at. She was tall, thin, curvy, and truth be told… She was the kind of woman that every man wanted. She loved taking advantage of that fact. She was strong-willed, and had the confidence of a goddess. She could get whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted it.

And oh, was she smart.

Straight A's all throughout high school, which infuriated her teachers. Willow wasn't exactly the most… Attentive, well-behaved student. She was, in fact, in a full-on rebellious swing. Going out drinking, smoking pot, spray-painting buildings… She did it all.

She had mellowed out somewhat once University had rolled around, but she still held onto her rebellious attitude. She was wearing a leather jacket, jeans, and a white t-shirt, meticulously put together to look nonchalant. Her makeup was well-done, and her hair was pulled back into a messy bun to keep it contained and away from her work. She was sitting in one of the lecture halls of her University, waiting for her professor to arrive.

She chewed on a piece of gum absentmindedly, scrawling down notes in a large binder. It was beginning to near the end of the semester, and their final projects were coming up. She figured she'd work with her best friend, Blake, but it didn't really matter to her.

She'd pass with an A. She always did.

All of a sudden, a wad of paper hit Willow in the cheek. It was, of course, covered in spit, and part of it was disgustingly heavier than the other.

"Hey. Nimrod." A woman dressed in all black knelt down next to Willow, putting a hand on her back. Blake Medea was a perfect fit to be Willow's best friend. She hooked her up with drugs, even though Willow only did the lighter stuff, and told her where to go where she wouldn't be caught. Blake Medea was a criminal unknown to the law, and had likely stolen every piece of clothing she owned.

She was, like Willow, absolutely brilliant.

The two had been academic rivals, but socially inseparable, since grade eleven, when they’d both scored a perfect on their entrance exams. From then on, it was history.

"I'm going to be working with Shayne for this project. He's totally into me, and I bet you he'd dick me down if I did all of the work for him. God, you need to get laid. I can feel your virgin blood through your shirt."

For emphasis, she wiped her hand on the desk, smirking.

That was, of course, when their professor walked through the door.

"Hello, class." Doctor Erran said, a kind yet tired smile on his face. "You know what today is. Today is when you pick your partners for your final project of the semester. Please remember, it is worth twenty percent of your grade. Make sure you pick someone you can work well with."

Blake grinned, her black hair falling over her face as she pressed a quick kiss to Willow's head, then walked over to sit next to the wily jock named Shayne.

Likewise, everyone began pairing off in twos, and considering Blake had been Willow's only plan…

Most people were taken up rather quickly.

Willow watched her go, and after a moment, snickered and rolled her eyes. She stayed sitting, resting her head on one hand as she examined the chalkboard with disinterest. This project would be easy, and she just hoped her partner would be competent enough that she didn't have to do the whole thing. She could, she just really didn't feel like it. She planned on finishing it right away and then getting drunk with Blake.

That was pretty much their routine every few days, truth be told.

She closed her binder and leaned back in her chair, watching the people mill about the classroom, pairing off with their friends.

If no one approached her, she'd just take whoever was left.

"Willow?" She heard her professor’s voice, and turned to see him walking up to her desk. He looked over his shoulder to a student who hadn't moved, and who simply sat with a book in his hands.

"I see that you and Ms. Medea aren't working together for this project. Would you be willing, therefore, to work with Nych? He's a very quiet fellow, and I know that isn't usually your thing, but… He hasn't got many friends in this class. I'm afraid nobody will go up to him if you don't. He's exceptionally young to be in this program, he hardly even looks twenty, but he's very bright."

The professor seemed to sigh, looking her up and down.

"I know how brilliant you are, Willow Grace, and I know you carve your own paths. You don't listen to much of my instruction, but you ace everything anyway. So if you do this for me, I'll give you your A for attendance. You've missed a few days, and attendance is twenty percent in my class. I don't know what that would do to your grade, but I'm assuming you don't want to find out."

He scratched his beard absentmindedly, looking down at her with his pale blue eyes.

Willow looked up at him silently for a couple seconds, and then her gaze flickered over to Nych. She stared at him for a moment or two, and gave her shoulders a slight shrug as she stood up and collected her things. "Alright." She smirked ever so slightly as she looked at her professor. "You’ve got a deal. I'll go see if he wants to pair up with me." She didn't give a shit who this guy was, her professor was offering her bonus marks.

Blake was going to be so jealous. She knew her attendance grade was probably taking a hit too.

With that, she turned and walked over to Nych's desk. She dropped her heavy binder down onto it, looking down at him with condescension. "Nych?" She quirked an eyebrow. "Professor says you're smart. Want to be my partner?"

Well, she certainly cut right to the chase.

The moment Nych looked up, his gaze pierced directly through her. From the back, he looked like any nerdy kid who raised his hand for everything and always knew the answers before the professor even asked the question.

From the front… He was a bit disarming.

It was his eyes, for the most part. They were such an intense shade of hazel that they were almost orange, and that color danced around the veins of his irises like sprites on a carousel.

His mouth twitched a bit, and then he smiled.

His face was a bit narrow, and his hair was a deep shade of black, if shades of black were possible. His skin was rather pale, though it was free of blemishes or acne. The way he looked at her carried an overbearing sense of self-worth, which was unusual for the quiet kid.

"You're… Willow, right?"

Well. At least he paid enough attention to know that much.

"I'm planning on actually working on the project, not just doing something quick for the A. We have to come up with a logical reasoning behind a cure for a terminal illness, using a background in technology. Well…"

He pulled out a notebook, and when he opened it… There were almost Davinci level drawings within, beautifully showing whatever cryptic technology he meant to dazzle her with.

"I'm going to cure cancer. So are you in? Or are you going to ditch me?"

She stared at him for a couple seconds, and looked down at the notebook as she studied the drawings within. They were impressive, she had to admit, and she figured that the professor wasn't lying to her. This kid certainly seemed as smart as he looked. And even though she wanted to do something quick so she could go and party… She was never one to back down from a challenge, and the chance to show off.

She was Willow Grace. She was the smartest woman in the room, and she'd prove it.

"… Alright." She tilted her head to the side, a slight smirk coming to her lips. "I'm in. What do you have so far?"

Nych Haywiyth wasn't one to react much, but when she actually agreed to help him… That was a surprise. He'd asked tons of people to partner with him on the project, and even though everyone in the room claimed that they would love to see a cure to cancer… Nobody wanted to help him in his research. So he raised a brow, a bit of shock evident on his face. He sputtered for a moment, before turning back to his notebook.

"Well… Are you at all familiar with nanotechnology?"

So. This guy was a jack of all trades as well.

"Do I look stupid?" Willow quirked an eyebrow, grabbing a chair from a nearby table and yanking it over, sitting down as she crossed her arms in front of her chest. She tilted her head to the side, blowing a stray strand of curly orange hair away from her face. "I build robots, Nych. I'm also taking robotics and engineering courses, of course I know what nanotechnology is. What about it?"

She opened her binder, flipping through to some blank paper as she looked up at him. "… Well?"

It was at that moment that he grinned.

He liked this girl.

"Then you know we're having a very serious crisis right now involving transistors within computers. They're becoming so small that electrons can simply pass through via quantum tunneling, therefore halting our computing progress."

He flipped to a page in his notebook, where it showed exactly that.

"Well, my proposal is to build a robot that is the size of a current transistor, which should be impossible. It doesn't have to have many capabilities, just a hive mind and a few instructions. And those instructions…"

He closed his book with a smile. "Guess what they are?"

"Destroy cancer cells?" She tilted her head to the side, bracing an arm against the table and letting her head rest on her hand. "Alright. I see where you're going with this. Tiny robots to fight tiny cells." She scrawled a couple words down on her paper, crossing her legs. It did sound like a good idea in theory, but there was no telling how it would transfer over to real-world applications. Would it work?

"This theory had better work, you know." She tapped her fingers on the desk. "If my grade drops because of this, I'll be pissed."

She didn't seem like the type that was fun to anger.

He stared at her for a couple moments, and when he realized she was being serious, he chuckled a bit.

"So. I see you aren't much of one to read directions. Fine by me, I'm kind of the same way. The only requirement for the experiment is to have a logical reasoning planned out, not to put it into application. And this…" He said, dropping the very well-illustrated notebook in front of her, "Counts as logical reasoning."

"So I'll turn this in, but until that day, you'll help me in the experiments. I've heard you're brilliant, so I figure with two people… We might actually be able to cure this son of a bitch."

Hmm. He didn't seem like one to curse.

Her eyes followed the notebook, looking down at it as a somewhat pleased smile crossed her lips. So she didn't even have to do any of the work. Oh yes, she liked this kid very much. This was better than she could've hoped. Blake was going to be so jealous, and it would be hilarious.

"Alright." Her gaze lifted back up to him. "I feel like going down in history. I'll lend you a hand."

She seemed cocky and egotistical, but willing to put actual effort into his experiments. Which was nice, because if she was as brilliant as he had heard, she would certainly be able to lend a helping hand.

His eyes flicked over to Blake, who was currently sitting on Shayne's lap. Considering she was wearing a skirt, and was sitting in a very unflattering position… Nearly half the classroom had a good view of what was underneath.

"Will Blake be joining us? I heard that you two are nearly inseparable."

So he knew her decently well, enough to know that her and Blake were close.

"She seems to definitely have a thing for this one. I'll give it two weeks." Nych said, surprising her with his knowledge of Blake’s… Tendencies.

Willow looked over at Blake, and after a moment snickered and started laughing. He was totally right, and Willow knew that after Blake hooked up with him, whatever feelings she had would probably fade immediately. She just wanted to get laid, and Willow knew it. "Yeah. Soon as the project's done." She rolled her eyes, looking back over at Nych and examining his face. He was a lot more attentive than she thought he was.

She liked it.

"And maybe. If she comes, it'll probably just be to watch because she's bored." She shrugged her shoulders, twirling her pen between her fingers. "So, are we going to do anything today or are you still planning stuff?"

He raised a brow, looking at her with, again, a bit of a shocked expression.

"I, uh… Everything's set up, and there's really only one obstacle we'll need to surpass. We'll need to figure out how to program information into a robot so small, after figuring out how to build it. We’ll have to solve the transistor problem. After that, it's the home stretch. I've already got the information we need to store on the bot, and I've compressed it down to only a few bytes. It should be able to fit, once we build the thing."

He stood, collecting all of his things and shoving them into what looked like a laptop bag.

"Everything's set up in my private underground lab."

He had… A private lab?

She stared, and slowly stood up. "You have a private lab?"

She had always just done all of her work in the kitchen. Her parents, and Blake, all hated it. She always got in the way, and more often than not, she took apart the kitchen appliances to steal their parts for her own work. It was annoying.

"I can probably figure out the coding." She shifted from foot to foot, looking down at Nych. "I'm learning how to code AI. And I'm getting pretty damn good at it, if I do say so myself." She turned her head to look over at Blake. "Hey, skank." They were such close friends. "I'm leaving to work on the project. I'll see you later tonight. We still going to go to that old twenty-four-hour diner for dinner?"

Blake looked up at her, and slightly adjusted her skirt. It didn't do much to hide the fact that Shayne's hand was resting on her inner thigh.

"Don't worry, honey. You know I always come."

That was… Either very cleverly worded, or a very obvious innuendo. Nych looked to Blake with a strange stare, and Blake returned it with a hint of laughter in her eyes. "Have fun with the nerd, don't let him drag you out of the fun life."

That was when Blake turned back toward the guy she was actively trying to fuck in class, and was lost to them.

Nych nodded as they left the room, signing out with the professor.

"I have a private lab because the city, and the school, deemed my experiments 'too dangerous' to be demonstrated anywhere but underground."

"Oooh, fun." Willow perked up somewhat at the sound of that. "Are you blowing shit up down there?"

That sounded right up her alley. She had made miniature bombs before. Her parents owned a couple acres of land outside of the city, and there had been time and time again when her and Blake set off little explosions on their property. It was endless entertainment for them, and an endless annoyance for her parents.

Willow was a bit of a problem child.

She blew a bubble with the gum she had in her mouth, looking over at Nych. "Sounds fun to me. Wouldn't be the first time I singed off some hair."

Nych chuckled, looking to her with a bemused expression.

"I have blown things up, yes, but I most often work with electricity. I think you'll find my work rather fascinating. Sitting in a metal cage while millions of volts of electricity pass around you… It truly is an exhilarating experience."

He led her down the stairs, out through the corridor and into the common yard. His lab was on the campus property, but barely. It had been an old bomb shelter, built during the Cold War. Everyone knew that Canada would likely be safe, but many bomb shelters were built anyways. Just to be safe.

This one… It just so happened to be huge, considering it was meant to house thousands of students.

"I've gotta be back home at four." She said after a moment, looking over at him. "So I'll have to leave at three thirty since I need to bus back to my apartment. I live off campus with Blake, so." She shrugged her shoulders, carrying her binder under her arm. "My schedule varies. I'll get your number though and you can text me."

He chuckled a bit, looking at her with dubious eyes.

"I've heard how hard it is to get your phone number, Willow Grace. Be careful, or you might just begin to fall for me." He smiled as he walked ahead of her, pulling a ring of keys from his pocket and slowly going through them. Eventually, he picked one out, and slid it into the keyhole of a cellar door they had just made it to.

With a loud creak, he pulled it open, and lights automatically flicked on through the entirety of a very long hallway.

"After you."

"Fall for you?" She scoffed, rolling her eyes as she walked into the hall and started walking down it. "Nice try. Don't flatter yourself, kid."

She pulled off her jacket, holding it in one arm as she glanced around the hall. "This looks like a damn murder chamber. I wonder if there are any other tunnels underneath the campus." She tilted her head to the side, studying the cracks that lined the stone walls. "Maybe I'll go check out the library and see if I can find anything. Those tunnels would be fun to explore, I'd bet." She smirked slightly. They would be a good place to get drunk or high off their asses.

She had… Interesting priorities.

"Oh, there are. I've got a map down here, somewhere. I used to explore them, but eventually got bored of beer cans from the eighties and dead rats. So be my guest, if you want." He closed the door behind them, locking it as he began to walk down the hallway.

"I promise my lab isn't as murderous-looking as this hallway. I just never got around to furnishing it."

He chuckled as he glanced over to her, looking her up and down.

"So. Think we'll be able to cure cancer?"

"I think that's on you, isn't it?" She quirked an eyebrow, turning her head towards him as she looked him up and down. "This is your theory. I'm just helping you test to see if it works. If it doesn't, that isn't really on me, now is it?" Her voice was somewhat calculated. She was obviously quite intelligent, though it wasn't apparently obvious at first glance.

She just looked like one of the party girls that hung around campus. And she kind of was.

"So where's your place, then?" She changed the topic after a couple seconds of silence, looking forward again. "Do you live on campus?"

"I rent an apartment downtown. Not many people on campus really wanted me here, so I just decided to get my own place. I'm not exactly one of the popular ones, Willow. That's why I'm surprised you've decided to work with me."

It was obvious he didn't know about the attendance bump she'd get for working with him. And figuring that out would break his heart. He figured he would finally be able to make a friend.

"But I suppose you're right; this has been my pet project for a long while. I would just like to get a second opinion on the subject, especially yours. I've heard wonderful things."

Everyone had heard both the wonderful and the terrible things about Willow Grace.

At least her reputation was better than Blake's.

"Yeah, I've heard that before." She knew of her reputation. Her father was a successful businessman, and the Grace name was certainly known to some. She was making a name for herself too, both good and bad. She was a genius, and many people knew it.

Nych nodded his head, but had fallen silent.

She was very sure of herself. She knew she was beautiful, and would likely use that to her advantage. She also capitalized on her intelligence, and he knew that she was likely just using him now for the notebook.

Then again. She was helping him, when she didn't have to be.

The two of them were such polar opposites, but… He could see their partnership actually going somewhere.

They could do great things.

"Here we are." He muttered, making it sound nonchalant.

But oh, it was not.

The large room they walked into was bigger than a football field, and was a perfect square. There was a sliding ladder on every wall, because nearly floor to ceiling… There were plans. Paintings of technological blueprints or design work. The room was filled with tables covered in papers, sliding chairs, empty bottles of who knows what and a few pizza boxes and Chinese food containers.

"Pardon the mess." He said shyly, walking towards the center of the room. In the center sat a giant metal cage, with a bench on the inside.

"… Wow." Willow's breath left her, and she looked around the room with wide eyes.

It took a lot to impress Willow Grace.

She set her binder and jacket down on the closest table, taking a couple steps into the room and looking around it with visible awe on her face. She crossed her arms in front of her chest, tucking stray strands of orange hair behind her ears as she examined each poster and the cage in the center of the room. Nych was a very lucky man, because he was going to see a side of Willow very few people ever saw.

The side that was completely devoted to science, and was amazed and excited by it.

"I, uhh… I've been meaning to clean the place up, and straighten all of the papers, but… You know, I never really have time anymore with medical school, robotics classes, hospital volunteering, the works…"

He volunteered at the hospital? No way. It was almost impossible to get a volunteer spot at the hospital in Vancouver. People registered months in advance.

"So just kick anything aside if you need to. You can look at any of the paintings, if you'd like, most of them are just random musings…"

He fell silent again as he pulled his ring of keys from his pocket, unlocking the cage in front of him.

"… I'm impressed, Nych." The tone of her voice was different. Was it… Admiration?

She walked up to a random table, picking up some of the drawings and notes and flipping through them with curiosity. There was a clever gleam in her eyes, and she leaned against the table as she examined all of the pages. They were certainly impressive. The amount of research and work that had gone into everything in that room was astronomical, and it was just lying out there ripe for the viewing.

She looked towards him after a moment. "How many projects have you completed down here?"

He turned to her, a bit of a smile coming to his face as he pointed toward the far wall. What appeared to be just lines before became, apparently, dashes.

"Two-hundred and twenty-six. Most of them were small things, though. I've helped pioneer many processing units for modern computers, but I've also helped in medicine. My crowning achievement is actually in testing right now."

His smile finally widened, because this was something he was truly proud of.

"I cured Malaria."

"… You cured Malaria?" She gaped at him, and after a moment walked over to him. She looked him up and down, assessing him, and after a moment narrowed her eyes as she examined his face. "… How?"

He had her attention.

That was something quite few people were able to grasp. Willow usually didn't pay attention to anybody unless she found them to be truly captivating, and this time around it happened to be Nych. To cure Malaria was a huge achievement, and she sure as hell wanted to know how he had done it.

This time, Nych genuinely grinned, and began rushing around his lab.

He eventually came back with a large sort of tube in his hand, though it was sealed on both ends. And inside the tube… Were about fifty mosquitoes.

"Alright. So these babies are the answer. They have antimalarial properties, and therefore they can't contract the disease themselves. The nifty thing is that when they bite people, they also pass those enzymes on to the person who was bitten. So yeah, you've gotta deal with a mosquito bite for a while, but it gets better. When these guys bite you, they also pass on a specific set of genes I designed that make mosquitoes absolutely hate the smell of you. So you won't be bitten by mosquitoes again, while also being immune to Malaria."

That… Was genius.

She examined the tube with rabid fascination, tilting her head to the side and reaching up to lightly tap on the glass. "That's remarkable. It's like you vaccinate the mosquitoes themselves rather than actually give a vaccine to humans."

It was… A different approach. But it would work. And probably better than a vaccine.

"You could wipe it out completely with this method." She looked up at Nych. "They do pass on the genes to their offspring, right?"

He rolled his eyes, smiling. "Yes, of course they do. But I've got something better for you. These mosquitoes were designed to be highly fertile, so they’ll create more offspring than normal mosquitoes. And my personal favorite thing about them is that they feed on normal mosquitoes. Therefore, in a few generations, these genetically altered mosquitoes will have eaten every non-modded mosquito on the planet, and after that… They’ll die out themselves."

That… Was amazing.

"Did you know that mosquitoes are one of the only organisms that, if they went extinct, would not affect the world's ecosystem in the slightest? Mosquitoes make up such a small percentage of the food source of every animal that feeds upon it, they would hardly be missed."

He set the tube down on the table very, very carefully.

"In a few years, we can wipe mosquitoes from the face of the planet."

Willow looked at him incredulously, nodding along as he spoke. “This reminds me of the procedure called the Sterile Insect Technique. They've been using it with screwworms, moths, fruit flies, and they've been trying it on mosquitoes too." She grinned, obviously pleased to start going in depth.

"They sterilize the insects using x-rays, and the males go out and mate with the wild female population. But all of the eggs that those females lay aren’t fertilized, so it cuts the population in half and helps prevent disease and economic loss from pest insects." It was certainly something she was well-versed in.

She probably kept up on the news pretty well.

The smile that lit up Nych’s face at that moment was much larger than any he'd shown before.

"I can't believe you actually know about the SIT! I've contributed heavily to that project, especially with the recent development with my mosquitoes. They've started using the chemical repellent strategy, like I did, for the more hardy species. X-Rays work fine until a radiation immunity develops, or mutations fail."

He'd never met someone who actually knew about the Sterile Insect Technique.

"I… Well, I expected this partnership to be kind of awkward. We're pretty different, but… I kind of like you now."

She stared at him for a second, before she snorted and started laughing. "That's good. You're not as much of a dweeb as I thought you were." She poked his chest, smirking slightly and taking a step back. "Of course I know about it. It's kind of important, yeah? I fucking hate mosquitoes. Anything that spells their eventual extinction will be lovely for me." She shrugged, shaking her head with amusement.

"So." She looked around the room once again. "What else?"

She wanted to get the full-scope on the things this room held.

"Oh, a few things, but that's the major one. Right now I'm working on two things; harnessing the power of lightning for power consumption and, of course… The cure for cancer. I can actually demonstrate the first one for you." He said, smiling as he opened the door to the cage.

"Would you mind?"

He was about to show her something that not many people got to see.

It would definitely shock her.

Not literally, but… You get the point.

She stared at him for a moment, and after a second nodded and walked over to the cage. She sat down inside, and looked up at him once she was properly seated and comfortable. "Just saying, if you're gonna murder me down in your bunker, I'll haunt you forever and throw things off your bookshelves." There was a smirk on her face, and a teasing lilt to her voice. She was obviously just trying to mess with him.

There would probably be a lot of that in the following weeks.

"Alright." She sat up a little straighter. "Show me what you’ve got."

He nodded, closing the door and pressing a few buttons on the control panel located within the cage. A light blue glow began to take over the metal, and he sat down next to her.

"Just… Don't touch the side of the cage, and you'll be fine." He said, nodding towards the four walls and the ceiling made of what looked like fence material.

"Understand that this lightning is created via friction, just like it is within the clouds. Therefore, there isn't much electricity being put into the production of it, besides the minuscule amount used to create the friction. Now, watch this."

He pressed another button, and oh. The lab came to life.

From the ceiling, tens or hundreds of bolts of lightning began raining down on them, seemingly only focused on the cage. A green bar on the screen on the panel began to rise, and Nych shouted above the noise.

"See that bar? That's a percentage of energy needed to run the college for a month. We're already at ten percent, and we've been here for a few seconds."

Steadily, the bar kept rising, and the bolts of lightning continued to rain down upon them.

Finally, however, the electricity stopped flowing, and Nych pressed the same buttons he had before. The blue glow around the cage faded.

Willow grew more and more exhilarated the longer she sat in the cage. It was incredible. She felt like Nikola Tesla, sitting there in a cage surrounded by thousands of volts of electricity. She kept her hands on her legs, and after a second looked at Nych with a big grin.

"That was amazing." A laugh bubbled up from her throat. "Oh my God."

This was… Quite a different side of her. Far more mellow and laid back than the regular tough-girl persona she had on.

He nodded, smiling as he carefully opened the door to the cage. He did so with rubber gloves, because he never knew if any of the electricity would linger in the metal.

"Isn't it? It feels absolutely amazing to have all that control over lightning. Eventually, we'll be able to control the storms and get lightning that way, and won't have to use any electricity at all, including what's used to create the friction."

This man was, obviously, brilliant.

"I'm working on other things too, but we're not here for those. I'll tell you about them some other time, if you decide to stick around after this project is done."

Hmm. He obviously wasn't very self-confident.

"We're here to cure cancer. Ready to see what I've got?"

"Ready as I've ever been." She stood up, leaving the cage and being mindful not to brush up against any of the metal as she did so. She didn't want to wind up accidentally electrocuting herself, considering she still had a lot she wanted to do in life and didn't want her brain getting fried.

She had already made several breakthroughs in her own personal projects, but those didn't matter at that moment.

"Show me your progress." She crossed her arms in front of her chest and looked around. "Might as well get to work."