Scene 1 - December 9th

Interior MLED Compound, Early Afternoon

Quinn Kaufman

I growled at the flashcard Holly held up to me, which read ‘infrapterospinatus muscle”. “Is it... fuck...” I groaned, and allowed my head to flop down into my arms. “Why did I take Abnormal Anatomy and Organic Chemistry in the same semester?”

“I assume because it fit your schedule,” Holly said. “And you didn’t plan to become a superhero and eat up all your free time and then some.”

I let out another plaintive moan.

“Do you want to make a guess?”

“Something to do with shoulders,” I mumbled into the table. “That’s all I’ve got.”

“‘A rotator cuff muscle which externally rotates the pterohumerus of a metahuman’s wing’,” she read from the other side of the card.

“That’s the part that’s the shoulder,” I declared, lifting myself from the table. “I’m counting that as a win.”

“I’m going to put it in the ‘come back later’ pile,” Holly informed me.

“That’s fair.”

She shook her head with an amused smile. “Alright, next up...” She took the next card from the pile and showed it to me.

I stared at the chemical compound illustrated in neat sharpie on the card. “That’s a monophosphate,” I said. “Uh... adenosine monophosphate.”

“Are you sure?”

I hesitated. “...yes?”

She flipped it over. “Well done! Next up is Anatomy again.”

“Okay, but I get my reward first. That was the fifth that I got right.”

“No more than...” Holly glanced at the clock sitting on the table. “30 seconds, this time.”

“Alright.”

“And... start.”

I narrowed my eyes and focused on the area cupped by my hands, narrowing my sense of presence, and...

patch of space and 1.19 moles of nitrogen and 0.28 moles of oxygen and

...and white light began to fill my palm - slowly, carefully, so it didn’t blind us like the first time I had cast this spell.

“Fifteen seconds,” Holly said, softly.

“Not good enough,” I muttered.

“You’re doing really well, Quinn,” she promised me. “It’s only been a month and you’ve already got it down to less than 30 seconds!”

“I want to be able to just snap my fingers and make light, like you can,” I insisted. “I want it fast enough that it can be useful if I make it as bright as I know I can.” I wanted it to be usable as a flashbang, not just a flashlight.

She sighed. “Okay, one more try. But just one!”

space and nitrogen and oxygen and

That time it only took 12 seconds, then Holly stopped me. “Back to studying?” I asked as my presence registered Abe entering the common room, wearing workout clothes.

She nodded, taking the next flash card and raised it to me. “Back to studying.”

“Actually,” Abe said, coming up behind me and clapping me on the shoulder in a way that would have startled me before I got my powers, “it’s time for some sparring practice.”

“Come on, Abe,” I whined. “I’ve got finals starting in just five days!”

“You’re a smart cookie, you’ll do fine,” he told me. “Besides, you’ve been studying that crap for a week already - not to mention the entire semester. Sparring you’ve only been doing for a month.”

I sighed. “Fine. Sorry Holly,” I said to her. “Apparently I’ve got to go.”