What Maya actually wanted to do was cell enucleation — extracting a nucleus without destroying its host cell. Only that kind of high-difficulty work would truly push her perception ability to its limits. The frog egg exercises were low-grade, useful only for training fine chakra control, and not much else.
The school's conditions made anything more ambitious impossible. The frog she'd caught herself at the riverbank. Her forceps she'd filed down from a kunai, grinding it to the right gauge over several evenings. The only piece of equipment the school actually owned was the old optical microscope she'd shoved into the corner. No sterile cabinet, no temperature-controlled chamber — she couldn't even build those without the right materials.
High school, she reminded herself for what felt like the hundredth time. Get to high school first.
Half an hour later, Maya set down her forceps and rolled her shoulders. She drained the water tank, upended it, and scooped the frog into a small cloth bag.
"Don't worry, little one. I'll let you go after school. Sit still and don't thrash around."
She glanced at the beaker: a small heap of remaining frog eggs, black against the glass. Maya exhaled quietly. Amitabha. My apologies. She poured them down the drain.
She was washing her equipment when she remembered the chime. Hadn't her system notified her at lunch? She'd set an alert for every thousand influence points gained, heard it go off, and immediately gone back to thinking about something else.
"System — influence points display."
A window opened in her mind:
Influence Points: 5,327
Today's gain: +497
Breakdown:
Andrew — 19
Jamal — 5
Liz Black — 20
Matt Murdock — 322
Will White — 30
Principal — 13
Classmate C — 7
Classmate D — 3
Maya stared at the numbers for a long moment.
I placed second in the citywide mathematics olympiad last year, she thought. And collectively, you people managed barely five hundred points for that. But one afternoon of cafeteria gossip and you're all acting like I announced something world-altering.
She scrolled to Matt Murdock.
Three hundred and twenty-two points. More than everyone else in the building combined.
That's wrong.
Even accounting for Matt's superhuman hearing — the fact that he would have caught every whisper, every retold version, every rumor as it mutated and circulated through the halls — the raw number didn't track. Information exposure didn't convert to influence at that ratio. Not for a normal person.
Unless he isn't one.
She set down her forceps and held the thought still.
Superhuman. It has to be. Powered people generate significantly more influence per unit of exposure than ordinary people. Which means...
She filed that discovery and immediately moved to the next question: how do you scale it? The mutant population in New York was substantial. Magneto himself was active — notoriously, relentlessly active. But approaching Magneto at her current level would be roughly equivalent to scheduling a sparring session with someone who could dismantle a skyline without technically breaking a sweat. She had moderate chakra reserves, a short list of techniques, and a twelve-year-old's body.
Not yet. Figure out the indirect route first.
Her thoughts were cut off by the lab door swinging open hard enough to hit the wall. Nana came through it at speed, face flushed with excitement.
"Maya, you're an absolute genius. I told Liz and the cheerleaders they'd get to present the medals at the closing ceremony, and they fell over each other saying yes. When I got to the part about dancing in Central Park — they almost fought each other for spots on the list."
Maya smiled. "And the sports clubs?"
Nana wiped her forehead with her sleeve and waved a hand. "Please. One mention of cheerleaders in the audience and the long-distance run signup sheet filled up within twenty minutes. Boys." She rolled her eyes. "Completely predictable. I swear, even if we had a marathon, they'd all be fighting to register."
Some things really are universal, Maya thought.
The school ran male-only events in practice — not because of any formal rule, but because the facilities couldn't support much else. No space for baseball, volleyball, or badminton. Girls' events were limited to short and middle-distance track. Early in her term, Maya had organized high jump and long jump competitions for girls. Nobody came to watch. She'd tried a few more times, saw the same result, and eventually cut those events. Partly because of the resources. Partly because even winning them generated absolutely no influence points whatsoever.
An educational experience.
"Oh — Nana." Maya tilted her head. "You mentioned at lunch that you were going to confess to Matt. What happened?"
Nana's expression moved through three distinct states in about two seconds: anticipation, calculation, and then the slow deflation of someone who already knows the answer to the question they're asking anyway.
"I did it," she said at last. "I went straight to him. I even used Julia's line — I said, 'I like you, Matt! Let's tell each other how we feel!'" She twisted the hem of her sleeve. "And then Matt said... he said I was a really nice girl. That I was warm, outgoing, and kind-hearted. He said all this very sincere, very thoughtful stuff about me." She looked at Maya. "That's a yes, right? Because he said nice things?"
Maya looked at her for a moment.
How to say this kindly.
"Nana. You already know what it meant. I think you knew the moment he started the sentence." She kept her voice gentle. "He friend-zoned you. Gracefully — very gracefully, honestly — but that's what happened." She paused. "What I want to know is: when did Matt Murdock learn to do that?"
Nana's energy deflated entirely. But she still managed a weak laugh.
"When did he learn?" she repeated. "Maya. That's your fault. You've been doing exactly that to boys for two years. 'You're a wonderful person, but it's not like that for me' — they learn by watching. Matt learned by watching you."
Maya had no answer to that.
"Because of you, Maya," Nana finished, with a look that was roughly thirty percent accusatory and seventy percent resigned.