The Bunker

elementals: pre-training exam.

Monday morning dawned bright and glorious. We had survived the weekend, and now it was back to the real world. We didn't have any other "incidents" over the weekend, except when we went to order food after our meeting with the infamous ancient ones. Of course the cashier got our order wrong, then proceeded to ring our bill up wrong too. Naturally, Amy lost her temper and for a moment her eyes flashed a dangerous gold while she threatened to skin the poor kid alive. 

He looked like a high school student who'd never been yelled at in his life. In the end, Dylan stepped in, apologized, and steered her clear of the situation. Quinn and I smiled and tried to reassure him, but he was so traumatized that he gave us our meal for free and apologized a hundred times for his mistake. 

We ended up back at my place, reading through our files and asking Dylan questions. You wouldn't believe some of things we read. Scary stuff. We sat there dumbfounded and not entirely sure this wasn't some kind of hallucination. The Druid Master, the Faerie Queen, Angel Fire and the Master of Light. Saviors of the universe. We were a motley bunch. I personally thought Merlin and the eternally grumpy Warrior Queen had made a mistake, but hey, who was I to argue with people who were hundreds of years old. You know, wisdom comes with age, and all that jazz.

Quinn had slept over at my place, so I was happy that at least we were going to skip the usual phone call and harassment I had to go through every morning. I was also looking forward to driving his car.

"Dude, seriously, how do you run out of milk? The only two things a college student is expected to never run out of are milk and cereal. How are you failing at this?" Quinn cut into my morning musings, tutting at my nearly empty fridge.

Sigh. So we were skipping the phone call, but not the whiny harassment. 

"Yeah, I need to get some groceries" I replied casually.

"Dry cereal it is then." the fridge door slammed shut and Quinn huffed as he sat down and picked at his cereal despondently.

I got dressed as fast as I could, using night vision to spot my things around the loft and jamming them into my backpack haphazardly. My phone rang, buzzing loudly on the kitchen counter top. Quinn answered it when I shot him a look that implied that I was too busy being late to be answering phone calls.

"Hello?"

  "Hey...ummm ..H?" Amy's voice on the other side  

The reply came through the speaker loud and clear and I flinched visibly, as did Quinn. It seemed that in addition to general super hero awesomeness, we'd also gotten super sonic hearing. We were still adjusting, obviously.

"Nope, just your darling cousin on the line"

"Oh hey sweety, you slept over?"

"Mmm..yeah"

"Cool. Are you guys coming today? I just heard we have a surprise mock in Physics class today"

"Crap. Yeah we'll be there in five!" I yelled from across the room grabbing the car keys and making my way to the door.

"Oh hey H! Alright hurry up will you? She's in one of her lock you out of class moods" the phone said, at this point Quinn was just holding it up in the air like a walkie talkie.

"Be right there" Quinn replied getting up with his cereal bowl and we quickly moved out of the loft.

I didn't even have to fight Quinn for driving rights to his car, and we made it to university with just two minutes to spare. 

"Ah, Mr. Hoechlin and Mr. McGrath, I see you've decided to honor us with your presence today" was the first thing Professor Naves said when we stumbled into her classroom, right on time. Someone snickered and Quinn shot them a dangerous glare. The snickering dried up quickly.

I flashed Professor Naves my best smile. Quinn, always the troublemaker,  replied, "We're just delighted you actually let us in this time, Professor Naves." without a trace of fear in his voice.  The same idiot snickered again and this time it was my turn to glare menacingly at them. I caught a glimpse of Amy rolling her eyes at us. Nothing new there.

Professor Naves raised her eyebrows at us and looked like she might raise hell, but then a small smile tugged at the corner of her lips and instead she said, "You better sit down before I change my mind," then she turned around and our day had started.

Quinn and I sat down in our seats without any further argument. At least if I failed I could say I had tried. Before I could even look at my paper though, I heard Amy cough loudly from her seat and when I turned to look at her, she was glaring at me wide eyed. 

"What?" I mouthed quietly.

Her eyes went wider, if that was even possible, and then waved the exam sheet at me meaningfully.

I glanced back at my exam sheet and turned the page, and right there at the top of the second page the exam title jumped out at me, "Elementals: Pre-training exam" and then in small italics at the bottom: "We hope you studied, see you tonight at 22h!". The top right corner had some sort of symbol, a staff, much like the one Merlin had, a book, and some kind of jewel.

I felt the blood leave my face, and I'm sure I was so white that I could have been translucent. Having flaming red hair didn't exactly help my complexion. I looked back at Amy and she shrugged her shoulders at me, but she looked as scared as anything. I knew Quinn had just discovered the same thing when he gasped loudly and dropped his phone onto the floor with a loud clatter.

Before I could say anything to him, Professor Naves spun round from the chalk board and snapped at him, "Mr. McGrath, you are not allowed to open your exam sheet until I say it's time to start!"

"Oh...I...uh....I....think this is the wrong p..p...paper Professor Naves," Quinn stammered.

She raised her eyebrow at him, "Of course not Mr. McGrath."

"B..b...but Ma'am, it..it's...." He trailed off in confusion.

Professor Naves walked over to our tables and bent over to look at the exam paper. As she did so, she put her hand to her throat, and pulled out a bright pink roughly cut gemstone on a silver necklace that looked much like ours from under her shirt.

"Not to worry, Master of Light, you and your companions are here for a different kind of test." she said, lifting her gaze to glance briefly at Amy and I. The only thing is, she spoke directly into my head. She never even so much as moved her lips. My Physics teacher had just spoken to me telepathically, and I could tell by the stricken look on Quinn and Amy's faces that they'd heard it in their heads too. The whole thing happened so fast.

Then she straightened up while simultaneously tucking her necklace back into her shirt and said loud enough for the rest of the class to hear, "If you hadn't missed so many of my classes, then maybe the paper title would look more familiar to you Mr. McGrath." then she walked back to her desk and started giving us instructions for the test.

But I wasn't listening, I was too busy noticing that the guy on my right's paper was something to do with the conversion of mass into energy, which to be fair, I would have failed extravagantly at, but still.

I was also too busy trying to figure out how on earth someone had just spoken to me telepathically, if they could also read my thoughts, and also if I could it too.

But then I was brought back down to earth by the sound of Professor Naves clapping her hands together and saying that we could start.

I looked down at my paper and sighed, this was going to be a long day.

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