Jeremy had run through different scenarios, in his head, of what it would be like the first time. Sometimes he was heroically saving his entire literature class, leaving them in his debt; sometimes he was encountering something genuinely dangerous, the sort of thing that could kill even a junior, and battling it off himself; sometimes he's at graduation, making a final desperate burst to escape.

The first time Jeremy pulls malia feels nothing like any of those.

Jeremy is woken in the middle of the night by his tripwire. He looks around, straining to see in the dim light.

A pair of scratchers have crawled under the door. Easy enough to kill. His knife won't be of any use against their metal, nor will any of his glass shards, but nearly any spell should be good enough to do it. He reaches for his mana supply, forms a tiny bolt of force, and strikes at the one on the left, which stops moving.

He tries to draw some mana to deal with the second one, and--

--comes up empty. He's been draining mana pretty quickly in his classes, but he thought he still had enough to make it through a night. Losing track of how much mana you have isn't the sort of mistake you can make, if you want to survive -- 

--Focus, Jeremy. He has a plan for this. He rolls out of bed, grabs his tank, and reaches into it for a mouse. 

It squeaks in his palm.

Jeremy takes a deep breath, holding his knife in one hand and his pet mouse his mouse, which he has no particular feelings about, in the other. 

It feels like dragging a heavy object across the ground, at first, and then it feels like dragging a sled down a hill, and then--

--he hurls another bolt at the second scratcher, and it falls still like the first--

The mouse's body is still warm. He throws its body through the grate in his floor and into the void below.

He does sit-ups on his bed until he can't think straight, and by the time he's done he can fall asleep.