Training.

Considering the unseasonably cold weather and the -- he glanced at his watch -- two hour wait so far. Nate imagined that the others weren’t particularly happy about the situation either. Mind you they hadn’t been the ones that had betrayed their girlfriends schedule and vulnerabilities for a chance at revenge for that Halloween trick.

Shivering Nate checked the area again, trying to see a hint that she was on to them and trying to rescue her bike or set up a counter ambush, nothing.

The others must really hate him about now.

So, today is my turn to get ambushed. I wonder when they'll do it.

Kat was musing to herself in the laboratory as she attempted to work on what was effectively a master’s level experiment. Admittedly she probably didn't have all the grounding necessary to perform such an experiment, and she probably wasn't supposed to try anything quite so inventive, but the lecturer had said that they should choose their own experiment.

Such is the price of getting us to think for ourselves I guess.

Theoretically there was a lab supervisor keeping an eye on her while she made all of these preparations but in truth such people were generally post-grad students who had bigger worries than baby-sitting a first year. The fact that this was her third attempt at such probably didn't help in holding his attention either.

I bet there's a reason the basin keeps blowing up instead of just sizzling for a while.

There were of course more technical terms for what was going wrong but Kat didn't know them. She'd strayed far from what she'd been taught into areas that were generally considered ... unstable. Standing back she looked at her handiwork, trying to think of anything she might have missed in her preparations. 10 minutes past as she rigorously checked, and double-checked everything. Finally she was satisfied with a quick triple check to make sure the video feed was functioning, Kat activated her one-shot mercury screen and began.

Time passed and slowly the power contained within the room built up. Although she was not aware of it Kat was taking much more time than she had in her previous attempts. The overall effect of this was a significantly higher level of mana being generated in the room. An unfortunate side effect was that, due to the room not being as heavily shielded as a post-graduate summoning room, magic began to leak out.

The post-grad on duty at the time was Gazza 'The Nutter' O'Rourke. Fortunately for everyone involved his nickname was a reflection of drinking habits rather than general attitude to life and he followed the course of action most likely to get everyone through the incident without problems. First he activated security protocols on the area, shutting it to all but the related professors and a few other post-grad students tagged with fast response duties. Secondly he called the professor responsible. "John, we have a problem. One of your students has maxed out the shielding on summoning room 3" he ducked under a coffee cup that had decided to leave the room of its own accord "and there's some weird shit starting to happen." His voice was, understandably a little tense, which caused John to promise to be there as soon as possible. Thinking about all the possible results, Gazza then climbed under a desk and started shielding himself.

This is working! Look at the power!

Indeed the spell appeared to be working perfectly. Unlike previous attempts the reservoirs that were used to supply a duct that encircled the inner circle were sizzling away quite happily with no indication that they would go into flux and explode at any time in the near future. The level of control that had seemingly been impossible at lower power levels was coming easily now that there was a surplus of it. Power has to go somewhere though.

Oh shit, the power level is still building.

Hey... what's that?

Words that are spoken along side many major discoveries rang through her head. Unfortunately a moment later so did the sounds of a very large explosion.

John arrived in the viewing station mere moments before everything went critical. Fortunately long years of experience had given him reflexes fast enough to seal down the lab adding a great deal of power to its shields. As he watched things crash against his barrier both in the physical and astral world he was surprised by how little mana was being lost. Gazza should have been able to cope with this much excess quite easily but there he was still under the desk muttering "invisible" over and over to himself.

John's time as a professor and working on the seedier side of legality prepared him for the most likely result, his star students pulped corpse against a wall and perhaps a free spirit ready to do harm unto whoever was in reach. Carefully, shielding himself as much as possible both with cover in the physical world and pure force of will in the astral, John entered the summoning room.

It was certainly not what he expected, and was possibly worse. Kat was hanging suspended, raging torrents of mana flowing between her and a silvery looking blob that had appeared in the holding circle of this construct. The sigils of the permanently carved standard circle were pouring forth what could only be described as molten light and were seemingly being pushed well beyond their defined limits. Tearing his eyes away from Kat for a moment John saw that she had supplemented the permanent circle with additional sigils. The additional protection while crudely implemented was enough to keep the circle from overloading and attaining a catastrophic state... just.

Stepping forward he scanned the room looking for any outside influences that might be causing such an unexpected level of power, but there were none. Seemingly a previously untapped reservoir of power within Kat was being exploited and it was either calling forth or being used by this slowly coalescing blob. Then without warning the additional sigils started to overload and Kat began to scream starting in agony but towards the end seeming more like loss. Mana again washed out over John, this time though it was much reduced as the spell absorbed it and faltered. The light dimmed and then went completely out leaving John, an unconscious Kat and a completely trashed laboratory.

Stepping carefully into the now permanently defunct circle John shuddered at the new levels of astral static that now existed. It was going to take weeks of ritual hours to bring this back to its previous levels… still that was why they had a compulsory environmental magic course. With barely another look around he picked up the unconscious Kat and took her to the medical room for treatment.

Outside it started to rain.