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Early morning finds a young man working on three separate term papers, or at least, he was supposed to be. On the mahogany desk in his college dorm, countless papers lay strewn in disorder, covered with graphs, forgotten formulas and millions of words that needed to be counted and added together. Across the room, bubbling bottles of acid and other corrosive materials sit dangerously on his window sill, threatening to tip and plummet to a death on the ground below. Of the five beakers, three of them are a darker green color that leave off their own kind of smoke, while the two blue liquids leave a trail of spinning bubbles to be seen.

Clayton Forrester, a student in his final year at the private college has three term papers due in the next five hours, but a moment of insightful scientific judgment from the night before started him on his experiments, and now he is no where closer to being finished, and his room is practically destroyed. The expensive table with shiny brass fittings that he works on has countless holes eaten in it, and the expensive brass pieces are practically falling off from wear. To the left of the table, a bed covered in some white sheets with a blue blanket is still unkept from the last night it was used, and more papers lie on it, as well as a thick textbook or two.

Below him the racket of an all-night party rages on, as people drink countless kegs of beer, and the empty barrels are rolled out the windows. The college, nicknamed "Party University" by most that go there, is not the best college for a serious student, but one who has their mind constantly on other things or another who is a party-hopper does just fine. Clayton, being the first of the two, fits in quite well, even having the look of someone who couldn't keep his focus on something he needed to. Tall and thin, he has dark blonde hair that isn't completely messy, but not exactly brushed perfectly. A little bit of his bangs hangs down below his eyebrows; a product of little allowed time to keep himself presentable like he should be.

Outside as the party continues, black clouds roll over the large campus in very awe-inspiring, but vicious way. In the distance, thunder rumbles and lightening strikes the ground with all the force of thousands of volts of electricity. Inside, Clay is as calm as any man could be, adding one ingredient to another and mixing it carefully. In the background, a 45 skips back to the same four notes of Mozart's Moonlight Sonoata over and over like it had been for a good three hours, still unnoticed.

Not until another hour has passed does the firm knocking on the door become the sound that startles him from his work. Standing, he moves over to the door with his mainly neat hair and well kept outfit, shifting a beaker to the other hand, and freeing his first to open the door. Behind it stands a rather macho looking man, a third string member of the football team, but a friend of Clay's nonetheless.

Stepping into the room, the man isn't quite soaking wet, but he isn't dry either. He has dark brown hair and piercing blue eyes, but a smile graces his face, which seems like it should be nothing but serious. Taking a towel from a drawer he looks at Clay, talking with a high class Boston drawl, "What are you still doing here?"

Looking at the man somewhat inquisitively, Clay holds up the beaker, "Working, Zeak..."

Zeak Matthews, a man from upper Boston is also a well dressed man, with money behind him to support anything he could possibly want to do. He hadn't really wanted to go to college for any other reason than to be able to say he was on a college football team. Once there, however, he found a friend in Clayton when most of the others just recognized the name with money behind it. They had met in their freshman years while Zeak was trying to make himself a new, more popular image. Clay had been the only man who hadn't told him that he knew who Zeak was, and the Boston boy liked the thought of making a completely new impression.

"You missed your turn in for Applied Physics, you numbskull!" He hits Clay on the side of the arm with the back of his hand, shaking his head and moving over to lean out the window, barely keeping the beakers lined up there from falling, "Jesus, they're still at it? How long's it been now?"

Fumbling to put down the beaker in his hand, Forrester reaches for the others under Zeak, in an attempt to save something of his experiment, "Since yesterday morning..." Placing most of them aside on his table, he winces as one falls out the window and to the ground, chewing a hole in one of the kegs. Trying to think in his mind how long it will take him to mix another batch of the blue chemical, he looks up to the ceiling, the fluorescent lights seemingly glaring at him.

Zeak turns a moment later, sitting on this sill and crossing his arms, "Do you have any of those papers done yet? Because Professor Cristallson said that if you miss one more class, he's failing you for the whole year."

Cursing slightly, Forrester looks over at his clock, then back to the papers he'd written, laying all over his room, "I've got them mostly done..."

"Mostly...?" Zeak asks, raising an eyebrow and picking up the nearest paper. Reading over the first sentence or so, he smirks and sets it back down.

"Okay, so they're only halfway done." Turning back to his work, he slowly starts to gather everything up and put it all away in a wooden box he made, tailored to his own proportions and needs to hold all the beakers he would want.

Letting out a disappointed groan, Matthews shakes his head and picks up the papers, forming them into a stack before shoving them against Clayton's chest, "You've got a class in 8 minutes... if you run you can make it and maybe they'll give you half credit for this junk."

Looking at his friend for a moment, he finally sets down the beakers and takes the papers, running out of his room and leaving the door open to boot.


Finally getting outside the dorm building, Clayton hesitates under the awning for a moment, the rain coming down pretty well, and the thunder rumbling everything around, before taking off across the field towards the main class room buildings. At a full run, even a few minutes makes it seem like he's getting no where, the papers shielded under his jacket, and as he crosses one of the roads, thunder claps loudly around him.

As he makes his way across the field harboring the tennis courts and a volleyball pit, a flash of light as quick as a whip blinds him for a moment and before another second has passed, he lies on the ground, soaked and unconscious, one hand on his chest and the other at his side. The rain beats down on the man, his face drenched in a moment, facing one side, and his hair plastered to his forehead and his temple.



When finally waking up, all he sees is white. Gathering that he's probably blind or dead, he sits up, hoping to see the pearly gates of Heaven, only to see Zeak standing with his arms crossed and an unhappy look on his face, "Had to be you, didn't it?"

Stiffly moving himself back on the bed to rest against the backboard, Clayton looks around, finally realizing that he's in the hospital, "What? Why am I here? Did I hit my head or something?" Reaching up to look for a bandage or some indication that he's been hurt, he finds his hair going in all directions, and the days he has spent there leave him with quite a bit of beard.

"You lucky dope, you got struck by lightening and you've been in that bed for almost 4 days!" Pulling over a chair, he turns it to face Clay's bed, sitting backwards on it and leaning against the back.

Shaking his head, the hospitalized man looks over at Matthews, bewildered, "And how does that make me lucky?"

Sighing, Zeak tosses some cards and papers on Clayton's lap, shaking his head, "The Professor's all felt bad that you were out in that storm, so they all gave you passing grades on your finals... in fact, you got A's on all three. And what's with the goofy streak? Did you do that before?" Smirking, the dark haired man opens up a drawer and tosses some more cards at him, somewhat surprised at the amount of people from the college worried about him.

"Really? That's great... geez, what a way to get a good grade, though." Cracking his back loudly, and gaining a wince from his friend, he swings his legs over the side of the bed, the last comments lost in his thoughts.

"Yea, I guess so. Anyway, I'm shipping out with the Navy tomorrow, so I have to go home and pack," sighing, he offers his hand to Clay, who immediately shakes it. "Dad seems to think that I'd do better off serving my country then throwin' around the old pig skin, so I guess I'll see you around, maybe." Standing, Zeak gives him a bit of a sad wave before walking out.


Standing a bit shakily, Clayton moves over to a mirror over the sink, too out of his normal thoughts to realize his friend has left for good. Turning on the water, he splashes a bit on his face as a nurse walks in. She's an older woman, with a warm smile and she carries some sheets for his bed and a tray full of food, "Well, welcome back to the world. We thought you were in a coma there for a while, but the doc said that you'd been wore out and just needed rest. Tell me...," pausing, she looks at his chart, finding his name, but glancing over the rest of the pages out of curiosity, "Clayton, tell me how you're feeling."

Looking over at the nurse for a moment, before wiping the water off of his face, he shrugs, "I feel fine, why?" Oddly enough, he still looks like he hasn't slept in days, and his hands shake a bit, his body temperature down a few degrees from normal.

"Well, it's just odd for us to have a patient struck by lightening and have no problematic, outward effects. Most of the people who get struck in storms like that either die on the spot, or die later of burn injuries," the lady offers. She isn't the most comforting person on the staff, but she tells the truth and that gives her some leeway with the patients.

Shaking his head at the suddenly violent feeling, he looks back to the mirror to see a white streak in the dark blonde hair, now unruly. Following it down, he sees that it extends into his mustache and down to the bottom of his beard. Completely bewildered as to how it got there, he grabs a razor and starts to clean himself up as the nurse babbles on.

By the time he's finished taking the beard off and leaving the mustache, the nurse is done as well, talking away and standing there watching him, "You know something, young man... you should be glad that you're alive," she smiles, gathering her things and standing there.

Looking at her through the reflection in the mirror with a bit of a grin on his face, he turns to look at himself and reaches a hand up to touch the white streak in his mustache, a low, dark laugh coming from deep in his throat.