The Lab…
Sunday Night
There were exactly two things Alex Carter currently could not do with magic.
First: he absolutely could not use Legilimency.
Mind-reading strictly required a mana pool significantly deep enough to actively sustain the invasive probing contact, and a massive level of intense mental discipline that strictly came from long years of heavy training.
He perfectly had the required discipline.
He definitely didn’t have the magical reserves.
Second: he could not safely perform true precision telekinesis on fragile objects smaller than a human fist without instantly destroying them with his current, highly volatile reserves.
This was the massive, annoying problem with Wingardium Leviosa.
The basic spell was literally the second one happily taught to tiny Hogwarts first-years, right after Lumos.
In simple theory, it absolutely should have been incredibly simple…
point your wand at a thing, clearly say the magic words, and the thing peacefully floats.
In actual practice, precision telekinesis was significantly more complicated than it ever actually appeared.
The famous feather exercise in rigid Professor McGonagall’s class was specifically designed for clumsy first-years, but what it definitely did not openly advertise was that actually performing it correctly…
with exactly enough fine control to smoothly move a highly delicate object without accidentally crushing it into dust or violently flinging it straight across the room…
required extremely fine, exhausting motor control of the raw spell’s magical output.
Alex had painfully tested this in the cold lab exactly two days ago.
He had carefully attempted to gently levitate one of the significantly less-irradiated bugs…
a very dull one, practically half-dead, barely even glowing.
He had smoothly cast the spell.
The tiny bug had successfully risen right from the table.
Then, his mental control had violently slipped for a mere fraction of a single second, and the poor bug had instantly compressed exactly as if brutally squeezed by a massive, invisible fist.
There had been a very small, incredibly unpleasant popping sound.
The surviving bugs in the nearby jar had instantly pressed themselves completely against the thick glass in a panicked way that Alex was fairly sure was absolutely not just emotional projection on his part.
So: definitely no Wingardium Leviosa for delicate bug collection.
Not yet.
When his mana pool finally deepened sufficiently enough to smoothly sustain the kind of extreme hair-trigger control that delicate magical work strictly required, he would finally be able to easily use magic for absolutely everything.
Right now, he was unfortunately still working with all the delicate precision of a massive steel sledgehammer.
Hence the cheap barbecue tongs.
He slowly made a neat note in his experiment log:
Telekinetic precision currently highly insufficient for safe biological specimen handling.
Manual methods strictly remain necessary.
Revisit immediately at 3rd-year equivalent mana depth.
Alex carefully set down his pen and looked quietly at the heavy jars.
Six full jars of Greg Arkin’s irradiated bugs, meticulously sorted by observed energy level…
the brightest glowing specimens safely in jar one, the dimmest, weakest ones in jar six. You are reading on novelping.com, the official source.
He had patiently spent the entire Sunday night lab session rigorously testing various small variations on his delicate extraction technique, methodically working slowly through the strict methodology one small, highly incremental step at a time.
The slow results were definitely improving.
The terrifying mortality rate had successfully dropped from a massive forty percent to a much more manageable twenty percent.
The total energy yield per long session had also increased marginally…
still incredibly negligible compared directly to what he had violently taken from Jeremy Creek, but it was actively trending upward.
More importantly, he was finally learning to physically feel the subtle difference between gently drawing raw energy and violently tearing it…
the massive difference between a careful sip and a starving gulp.
The gentle former left the tiny source diminished but totally alive.
The violent latter simply killed.
It was, Alex quietly reflected, exactly a bit like painstakingly learning to slowly pick a delicate mechanical lock.
Not the violent, brute-force approach of the aggressive Alohomora spell he had wildly used at the freezing river…
that was simply raw magic violently overriding a physical mechanical constraint.
This was significantly subtler.
This was actively, gently persuading the stubborn energy to smoothly move entirely on its own, rather than violently commanding it to.
The massive difference between violently breaking a dam and gently digging a channel.
He was definitely getting much better at digging channels.
Alex carefully closed his notebook, cleanly turned off the bright battery lamp, securely locked the dark storage unit, and walked quietly home in the cold Sunday dark.
Somewhere directly across town, deep in a humid stadium locker room whose strange meteor-rock sauna had been burning quietly and toxically for six long years, a desperate high school football coach was happily practicing casually making bright orange flames exactly with his bare fingertips…
and finding the strange, hot sensation completely, entirely natural.
Smallville High…
Monday
Clark Kent really wanted to play football.
It was a very simple want, totally clean and highly uncomplicated…
exactly the kind he very rarely actually got to have.
Most of his deep wants were incredibly complicated simply by what he actually was.
Deeply wanting to run meant aggressively worrying about accidentally running far too fast.
Wanting to be physically strong meant constantly worrying about being far too strong.
Wanting to simply be honest meant terrifiedly worrying about exactly what total honesty would eventually cost him.
But football was just football.
He genuinely loved the game.
He was incredibly good at it…
or rather, he had the massive, alien physical gifts to be completely excellent at it if he could just successfully manage to hold back exactly enough not to accidentally shatter anyone’s spine on the field.
And carefully holding back was absolutely something he had been rigorously practicing his entire life.
His protective parents had definitely said no.
Temporarily, pending further discussion.
Which largely meant his stubborn father had absolutely said no, and his loving mother was quietly considering whether to overrule him.
Clark was standing quietly at his locker, thinking deeply about the highly particular geometry of a properly thrown tight spiral, when Alex smoothly fell into step right beside him.
“Morning.” You are reading on g.com, the official source.
“Morning.” Clark looked curiously at his friend.
Alex was casually carrying a faded backpack that seemed slightly heavier than usual, and he possessed the highly particular quality of total, quiet alertness that Clark had quickly come to actively think of as his permanent baseline.
Alex was simply always alert.
Not nervously…
absolutely not the frantic way Pete got super nervous right before a big math test, or the frantic way Chloe got highly wired when she was aggressively chasing a new story.
Quietly paying deep attention to absolutely everything at a profound level of depth that most regular people simply didn’t ever bother with.
It was the one major thing about Alex that Clark couldn’t quite easily account for.
He was incredibly easy to be around.
Very easy to talk to.
Genuinely funny in a very dry, highly understated way that quietly snuck right up on you.
He was a very good friend.
He was also, Clark deeply suspected, someone who was incredibly carefully deciding exactly how much of his true self to actively share and exactly with whom.
Clark easily recognized the highly guarded technique because he had been desperately doing it his entire life.
“Chloe is currently in full investigative mode about the Arkin case,” Alex said smoothly, as they made their way slowly down the crowded, noisy hallway.
“She is aggressively trying to successfully trace the anonymous email that cleverly tipped her off about the foundry.”
“She definitely mentioned that.” Clark glanced at him carefully sideways.
“Any luck?”
“Not according to her.” Alex’s calm expression absolutely didn’t change a single millimeter.
“Whoever sent it clearly knew exactly what they were doing.”
A totally neutral observation.
Entirely neutral.
“Coach Arnold is actually holding open tryouts for the football team,” Clark said brightly, abruptly changing the subject with the highly transparent, eager hope of someone who really, really wanted to just talk about football.
“Wednesday afternoon.”
“I know. Chloe already complained loudly this morning about it completely taking over the sports section.”
“I was thinking of actually trying out.”
Alex’s expression still didn’t change.
“Your father explicitly said no.”
“My father is currently considering it.”
“Right.” Alex was deeply quiet for a long moment as they walked.
“What does your mother think?”
Clark grinned…
he honestly couldn’t help it, it just happened naturally.
“My mother thinks I desperately need to actually live my life.”
“Then I would highly suggest you listen to your mother,” Alex said simply, and turned smoothly toward his own class.
Clark watched him quietly go.