One of the biggest surprises of their entire week came a mere two days later, taking the entire first year student body by storm. Friday morning found the usual group of fifty students, comprised from all three Dorms, piling into the Gym ready but entirely unwilling to find themselves subject to another three hour torture period of Professor Elliott's insanity.

When they arrived, however, they did not find Professor Elliott. Standing in the center of the room, his back to the students and his hands clasped at ease, was a man in a familiar stark white suit lined with blue fillings.

"Pick up the pace please, we don't have all day," said Crystal Zero lazily.

The students hurried forward, exchanging confused looks and shrugs.

When the movement had ceased, Crystal Zero turned around, his face still covered by his strange mask.

"Good morning, students. I am sure a good number of you are feeling a strong mixture of emotions at this time, confusion and relief possibly most prominent among them. To quell your feeling of confusion, I will offer you this explanation.

"You are in fact in the right place and at the right time, if only a few minutes late," he said, casting them a stern look. "However, Professor Elliott will not be joining us today, or for any future sessions for the rest of this semester. No, he has not been relieved of his job," he added, and Alec noticed some students only barely hiding their disappointment. "But, as some of you could have guessed at this time, with midterms coming up for the first through fifth year students, it is an exceptionally busy period, particularly for those areas focused on combat. As a result, while Professor Elliott and the rest of his team focuses on preparations for the upcoming mid- and end of term assessments, I will be taking over his post.

"For those of you who do not know, I am Crystal Zero, one of the Sentinels assigned to patrol your school for such time as the Bureau of Superhuman Affairs sees fit. While in this classroom, you may address me as Professor Zero.

"For today's class, we will be taking a different approach. As I have been informed, Professor Elliott has gone through many practical exercises with you, many involving far too many injured bones and an alarming number of explosions."

A ripple of agreement went through the crowd.

"Today, we will be looking less at physical combat, and more at a very useful, and in quite a few cases, highly necessary aspect of the application of our powers."

The ripple turned into a full-on gale of excitement.

"Today, we begin work on Precision," said Crystal Zero. "It is a means by which you will learn to implement your powers in ways that are still equally efficient, but on a much smaller scale. You might think it simple, but I assure you it is not the case. Even many fully certified Heroes today still find trouble easing down their level of output, so I must warn you from the outset that wiping away any smug sense of confidence you may have now will save many of you a trip to the nurse's office later.

"You may not believe it, but being able to use your abilities on a smaller and more concise scale can range from sometimes being simply convenient to even bordering on achieving the 'life' scale in a life-and-death situation.

"If you are a bearer of wind-based abilities, for example, attempting to whisk someone out of the way of an impending projectile can lead to you applying too much pressure and inadvertently sending your charge into orbit as a result. That is, by the way, a true and tragic story. Which is why we must learn to . . . dial it down.

"Now, I shall give you a practical demonstration. I would like several students to step forward if you are brave enough, no more than seven but no less than five please."

Eyes swiveled all around as students checked to see whether anyone they knew was confident enough to step forward. As it turned out, far less people were than they would have thought. Some even looked downright scared.

Alec, curious as he was, shrugged nonchalantly and stepped forward. Emboldened by someone finally stepping forward, several others pushed ahead as well, including Damon Messus, a girl he knew by the name of Hyacinth, and a few others, until seven of them had broken rank.

"Line up, shoulder-to-shoulder, please."

They did just that, Alec sandwiched between Damon and another Zeus boy. Both of them were taller and larger than he was, which left him quite uncomfortable trapped in the middle. Damon grinned at him, an evidently friendly gesture, and Alec gave a small nod in reply.

"And lastly, please raise your dominant arms. Balled into fists, wrists pointing to me."

It was even harder to extricate his arm from between his massive peers on either side, but Alec at last managed to heave out his right hand as Damon thrust up his left.

"And now, I ask that you all remain calm and please refrain from moving."

Cold air wafted from Crystal Zero's fingers as he raised his hand, like blueish-white steam. A quick glance around showed Alec that some of the students he was lined up with now looked as though they were deeply regretting their decision; even the students behind were drawing back somewhat.

Crystal Zero slashed his hand outward in a wide arc, and a gust of that same strange blue gas formed a wide crescent that struck every outstretched arm. Alec clapped his hand to his wrist as a stinging freezer burn seared his skin, though the pain wasn't as bad as he had initially thought. The words "what the hell?" were almost fully out of someone's mouth before they, like Alec, looked down at the spot that was now tingling. An elaborate, crystalline "0" was woven onto his wrist, as though a tattoo of diamonds had been stitched onto his skin.

Looking around, Alec saw the same awed look on everyone else's faces as he felt on his own, even Damon.

"Precision," Crystal Zero said simply, sliding his arms back into place behind his back. "And now it is your turn. All of you spread out around the Gym. I will come to you each in turn, you will tell me your specialities, and I will instruct you on what to do."

Ten minutes into the exercise, Alec had achieved nothing except lining his face in a thin film of sweat and steadily increasing his frustration to the point he felt steam would soon erupt from his ears. Though he knew perfectly well that there was no need, Crystal Zero had motioned for Alec to explain his capabilities to him, even though Alec was quite sure that he, like nearly every other Hero on this island, was perfectly aware of who he was and what he could do. Still, he feigned a credible image of politeness as Professor Zero listened to his report and finally informed him to fetch a stone from outside.

He had done that and set it at his feet as instructed, then began the process of trying to levitate the stone. Alec had assured himself that it would be easy; after all, everything Proxima Venus had inclined him to try had worked, and this was something he had been doing weeks before he had even met her. And yet, to his swiftly mounting indignation, it was proving impossible.

He couldn't understand why. He had been chucking rocks as large as boulders for nearly his entire tenure at Helix, what was going wrong now?

Alec glanced around to see if anyone else was having luck. Unsurprisingly, they were not. Ethan had been supplied a bag of marbles, which he was failing to levitate in the same way as Alec was failing to move his pebble. Farther away, Damon Messus had been given a candle. His powers were centered, from what Alec had gathered, on the absorption and redistribution of energy, and he was trying to shoot a stream of fire from his index finger to ignite the tip of the candle. So far he had suceeded only in producing a spark of fire that nearly set a girl's hair on fire, and producing a much larger plume than intended and scorching the entire candle to a puddle of melted wax.

Maddison, some ways away, was attempting to shift the density of a needle-sized bone from her hand. Though she was failing, it was impressive enough that she had managed to make a bone so small, given that her weapons were never smaller than her meat-chopper-sized daggers.

Javon was trying to heal a wound to his wrist. The objective was to simply heal the center, but leave the ends untouched. As it was, each time he tried he sealed the whole thing.

To his immediate right, a boy by the name of David Valentine was slaving away: Valentine had the ability to produce a unique kind of energy, which transformed any inorganic material it touched into energy of a similar composition, which would then dissipate into nothingness. It was a good thing that power couldn't work on anything living, because it seemed a truly horrible way to go. He was trying to dissolve the lower segment of an icicle Professor Zero had handed him, but the balls of energy he produced seemed unable to shrink beyond the size of tennis balls, which swallowed the icicles whole each time. And beyond him, Jeremy the Teleporter was trying to teleport less than five inches away into the center of a ring of frost Professor Zero had constructed.

He was actually managing to teleport, but clearly he wasn't used to teleporting anywhere a single step could take him; he kept overshooting and slamming into the other students.

At least he wasn't the only one failing. Still, he would have preferred to at least see some success to completely nothing. Alec took a deep breath and began to try again, failing for another five minutes straight before a shadow fell across him and he looked up to see Professor Zero staring down at him.

"No luck as well?"

Alec straightened up, a little abashed. "No sir."

"Intriguing. You and your teammate" — he indicated Ethan, who noticed the movement in his direction and looked up — "seem to be having the same problem, though for entirely different reasons. His powers are linked to his mental capacity, and unfortunately he lacks the delicacy needed to manipulate that many objects so small indepently at once. But you . . . You are the student who bested Shadow Shifter several months, leading to his incarceration, correct?"

"Yes, sir," Alec said, wondering why he was bothering to pretend not to know this.

"Yes, I heard about the wreckage of downtown you left behind. I also read in your file that you did quite a bit of damage to the training hall you were tested in for your Dorm placement, so much so that you even surprised Professors Vera, Wyatt, and Duncan. And of course, there was the immense damage to your playfield, leading to the recent renovation."

"Yes sir," Alec repeated bitterly, turning his eyes away. It was bad enough that he had had to live through those moments and the unwanted attention that came with them, but now they were being thrown back in his face when he had finally managed to leave them in the past.

"You misunderstand me. I'm not trying to make you feel ashamed about your lack of control. I'm merely indicating the pattern. Tell me, have you ever had trouble moving larger rocks as you did with this stone?"

"Well . . . no sir."

"And therein lies the problem. The wreckages of those moments leave behind the idea that you possess an incredible amount of raw power, which you have no significant control over. You produce more force than is necessary, and as such can easily move objects that require that amount of force. But objects as small as this, that require far less, you struggle with. In more mundane terms, think of it as trying to pick up a needle with chubby fingers."

"So what do I do?"

"Trim the fat," Crystal Zero said simply. "Thin your metaphorical fingers. Right now, you're producing too much force. You need to dial it back. Unlike most of the other students, yours isn't a problem of physicality, it's mentality. Concentration. Focus."

Alec breathed out deeply. Focus. He simply had to clear his mind and relax his breathing. Focusing on the stone below him, he reached out again with that invisible force that emanated from his body and reached out to the earth below. The rock did not move. Instead, it rattled slightly, as if a strong breeze had shifted it. Then it caved in on itself, exploding into dust.

"Oh dear," Crystal Zero said calmly. He looked around at the remainder of the class, all of whom looked as if they would start throwing chairs into walls if any were around. "That's good, that's good," he cried. "Angry faces means frustration. Frustration means effort. And effort leads only to improvement with time."

He clapped a hand on Alec's shoulder, and Alec felt a curious cold seeping beneath the fabric of his shirt to the skin beneath. It reminded him of how Wildfire's body temperature seemed to be much higher than normal as well. "Practice makes perfect, as they say. Why don't you go grab another stone and try again?" he said, as Jeremy landed on top of Hyacinth and both collapsed in a heap behind them.

"Professor Zero, huh?" Tony said, looking skyward. "Has a nice ring to it."

"It sounds stupid," Ethan said moodily, spearing a sausage on his fork

"Don't mind him, he's just grumpy he couldn't pull off the work," Charlie said with a grin.

"Could you?" Ethan shot back. Charlie's grin slipped as everyone turned to stare at him. They were all sitting around one of the benches at the side of the school, near a statue of a Hero from the 1900s called Meridian. As the bench wasn't large enough to accommodate the entire group, several of them had taken seats along the cold marble while the remainder perched on the blanket Reya had spread out along the lush grass.

"Well . . . no," Charlie admitted.

"He was supposed to use his powers to try to neutralize the nerves in one of his partner's fingers rather than his entire hand," Reya said. "Needless to say, it didn't work."

"I remember doing Precision," Trina said cheerfully. "Of course it's not as easy to do on a small scale when your powers are focused on something as vast as time itself."

"What were you supposed to do?" Alec asked.

"It was a simple exercise similar to healing wounds, but instead of speeding up the healing process, I was supposed to just rewind the wound itself to a time it didn't exist, instead of affecting time as a whole."

"Is that even possible?" Maddison asked.

"Well, given that I failed Precision, I'm probably not the best person to answer that," Katrina continued in that same cheerful tone.

"How about you?" Javon directed his question at Tony.

For answer, he merely pointed his finger at Charlie. In an instant, his fork, which was directly above the egg he was about to lift from his tray, began to glow with a lilac energy and sank right through the tray, egg and all. "Hey!" Charlie said indignantly, furiously trying to spear the egg and failing as the now-intangible fork continued to poke through.

Everyone laughed.

"Smaller scale was never an issue to me," Anthony said, releasing his hold on the fork. "It's the bigger things that cause problems. Learned a whole bunch of stuff in Precision class."

"I bet you did," Charlie said bitterly. Reya bumped his massive shoulder playfully, smiling.

"Speaking of Precision, while I'm glad we don't have to walk out of Gym class charred and bruised anymore, don't you guys think it's weird how they replaced Elliott?" Javon said. "I mean, the guy's been here for over fifteen years. Preparing for exams and teaching at the same time never seemed to be a problem for him before, what changed?"

"It is strange," said Reya. "He definitely wasn't happy about it either. I saw him this morning and he looked mad. It was scary. Do you think it has anything to do with . . ." She looked around and lowered her voice. "You know." She nodded pointedly at the Sentinel that was passing by some distance ahead.

"Be a mighty fine coincidence if it wasn't, pardner," Anthony said in a silly cowboy accent, tipping an invisible hat.

Alec did find it strange as well, although a part of him was undoubtedly relieved. The rest of him was still preoccupied with his own failings in class, however, a fact that Maddison seemed to have picked up on.

"Oh are you still thinking about that?" she said impatiently, nudging him with her foot. "We all had trouble with it, and for good reason. It was forcing us to reevaluate what we knew about our powers and develop an entirely new way of how to use them. It was bound to trip us up. You weren't the only one who failed. Get over it.

Alec released a small sigh. "Guess you're right," he said. He turned his attention back to his tray. As he moved to resume eating, his fork tumbled from his hands. It clattered to the ground, but almost instantly it bounced sharply from the ground as if something had launched it upwards. Completely unperturbed, Alec snatched it from the air.

"Wow," Charlie said, after a beat of silence. "You're getting pretty good at that gravity stuff."

Alec shrugged, with genuine modestly. "I've been practicing." And that he had been. It was difficult work, and he hadn't fully mastered it, but his efforts had bore some fruit. He would conquer this new challenge, and any other that came, in the same way.