Sleeping on a cheap cot made for a rough morning. After using a cot for weeks on the Angelship, then sleeping on a couch the previous night, she had not anticipated the level of discomfort the creaky furniture could evoke in her. Its surface had been tight as a drum, making it little better than the floor. Her only blanket had been her leather jacket. At least one of the other women sharing the room had snored -- either Kendra or Erica, she thought. To make matters worse, breakfast did not include coffee.

"Bagels," Jess huffed.

"Any good toppings?"

Jess shrugged. "They have cream cheese, strawberry jam, and peanut butter."

"That sounds fine."

"No coffee, Sam."

She approached Cassandane, who was eating a plain bagel without using any of the available spreads. "What do you have to drink there?"

"A white tea called silver needle. It's quite good."

"Any chance you might help a sister get her caffeine fix?"

Cassandane inclined her head. "You are welcome to have some tea if you can find your own mug. This one is only for the boss."

Sam and Jess filled paper cups with water and brewed tea in sullen silence while raucous conversations happened around them. Sam scowled at the realization she would be teaching this crowd in a few minutes. Her quest to meet up with Cassandane appeared to have a major flaw that had only now become apparent to her: she didn't really want to be in an army. Especially one that would put her in charge of training a bunch of alpha male morning person types.

She caught sight of Mike laughing within the largest grouping, standing tall like he was the most popular guy in school. He noticed her attention and nodded. In response, she crooked her finger, inviting him to come over. Mike raised his finger in the 'one minute' sign and strolled their direction. Before he could say a word, Sam pointed to her nose. "You have something there."

Mike raised a hand to his nose. "Yeah? Did I get it?"

"Nope. I think you're just smearing it around."

"What is it? Jelly?"

"Something brown."

"I didn't have any peanut butter." Mike's eyes got squinty. "Are you fucking with me?"

"Brown noser," Sam hissed. "I saw the mug."

"Serious question now. How old are you, Sam? I'm assuming you graduated high school."

"I have a year of college on top of high school. Have you ever been on a college campus?"

"I have a bachelor's degree, so I might have seen a campus once or twice."

His momentary glance sideways whenever he delivered the line revealed his misdirection. Sam smiled as she went for the kill. "Do online colleges have campuses?"

"It's still a degree from an accredited school."

Sam shrugged. "And yet you have the same job as a twenty year old girl with a single year of college. I can't claim to be impressed, Mike."

"Of course, my greatest accomplishment wasn't academic," Mike said as he turned to walk away. "Only five Angmari ever made it to full paragon, you know."

As she sipped her tea, Jess gave her a nudge. "Don't scare him off before I decide if I like him."

"He's a dumb meathead, Jess."

"So far he doesn't seem like a bad guy."

She was saved the trouble of responding when Cassandane started to give instructions. Jimmy was sent to do finance things. Mike was training with Cassandane. Everyone else was training under Sam. It sounded simple enough, but when faces turned towards her in expectation, Sam froze. There were eleven students expecting her to enlighten them. The lesson plan she had scrawled down the night before with help from Cassandane remained hidden in her back pocket.

"Centurion Samantha," Mike drawled, "did you prefer the large lecture room for morning lessons?"

"Uh, yes?"

Mike clapped his hands like thunder booming. "Then get in there, soldiers. Sergeant Spencer, hang back a minute." When the hallway had cleared out a bit, Mike nodded towards Sam. "You're assisting the Centurion with classroom discipline until she gets her feet. Understood? Good. Now, Sam, my advice is to just teach. If anyone tells you that your lessons are too easy, you give them the 'master the basics before you move on' line. Call on Spencer to 'have a talk' with anyone giving you a hard time. You have a good crew in there for your first time running a class. Don't doubt yourself and you'll do fine."

She rolled her eyes. "I don't need your help."

"Then get to it, Centurion."

Without giving him any further opportunity to act superior, Sam strode into the lecture hall with Erica at her side, pulling out the hastily scrawled lesson plan as she did so. Erica glanced at the paper. "Want me to separate them into new and experienced groups?" At Sam's nod, Erica directed the formation of two lines of chairs with space in the middle for an instructor. On the one side, the experienced talents sat down: old man Woodrow, Indian nerd Srinivas, pretty boy Greg, dark beauty Tracy, curvy Kendra, and taskmistress Erica. On the other side sat their newbies: police men Cody and Joe on either side of a grinning Jess, male pattern baldness Fred, and too serious Sean.

After another consultation of her lesson plan, Sam went to each of the new people and charged them up. For all but Jess, it was their first time receiving precursor. Based on their awed reactions, she had gained some level of credibility by that act. She told them to experiment with the power for a few minutes while she worked with the advanced students.

Based on what Mike had told them, no one had been taught the synergies. Sam separated Tracy from the others and explained how to create a continuous effect kinetic field by pushing a little bit of nous into a field of animas so that an item kept moving in a specific direction. She demonstrated a few times on a crumpled ball of paper, then set Tracy to the task of replicating the feat. Good luck, Sam thought. With any luck, Tracy would be busy the rest of the morning and Sam would look like a genius for being able to pull of the trick. Next she took aside Woodrow and Erica to demonstrate creating a pseudo material construct. She pulled out some loose change from her pocket and handed a coin to each of them, then explained how they would need to replicate the pattern of their item with gravitas and then leak some animas into the pattern. As she explained, a replica of the penny appeared in her hand. Sam let it vanish before it could flicker away and reveal her lack of competence at the skill.

That left her with three advanced students she had to actually interact with: Srinivas, Greg, and Kendra. Sam hadn't figured out how to use the synergies that Srinivas could use yet, and both Greg and Kendra had only a single talent. She set Srinivas and Kendra to practicing their teleotic talent on additional pocket change she handed to them. Then she worked one-on-one with hot guy Greg practicing the kinetic talent. He had ignited, so his strength greatly surpassed hers, but he didn't have the ability to mindvast, so she managed to impress him anyway.

She bounced back and forth between her cute student and the newbies, who she recharged and let Jess manage. As they were all men, Jess had zero problems getting everyone to listen to her. Though it looked like most of the group was failing to take the lessons serious. Other than Sean, that was. Sean worse an expression that would not be out of place on a heart surgeon.

Sam couldn't actually claim that she did much teaching that morning, but at least she didn't embarrass herself. Yet.