Spectrum: Act 1 recap

This chapter is to remind you guys (And me) of the current plot.

Spectrum Recap: Act 1

Maria Roth's parents were killed just after she got back home from school, when a Riftfallen Phoenix like creature burned down her home, she narrowly escaped with her life as she was placed in a hospital for the next 2 years to treat both her burns and the Ash Syndrome, a disease only people who get Ash, a magical artifact inside all Riftfallen inside of her bloodstream.

Maria; Who is now 15, gets out of the hospital and is sent to a boarding school, where she didn't make any friends, she heard of a school called Spectrum, a place where teenagers and adults can learn to combat the monsters themselves, since you have to be either a member of Spectrum or the Military to gain legal access to weapons, Maria joins for the sake of vengeance.

Her sister Sienna, a 5 year veteran at the school realizes that Maria is joining the academy and speaks to the higher ups to get her on her team, along with Maria's childhood friend and heiress to a large weapons manufacturing company, Lily Sterling, a somewhat tomboyish girl, Morgan Leland and a member of the house Goldshore, a remnant of the former collection of small fiefdoms that took up Rosewall before a counsel took over.

They hold a small fighting tournament using sword like weapons to gather information about how each one fares in physical combat, after losing two times in a row, Maria challenges Morgan to a fist fight instead, which the brash Morgan accepts wholeheartedly. Maria manages to win even with the size disadvantage thanks to a mixture of her recklessness and perseverance, but she pays the price and gets injured.

She wakes up to Lily in the hospital 3 days later, who helps her out of the hospital and lets them meet their sister team, a second team who will do missions the most often with them. This team had Jonah Delaney, a somewhat meek, but smart kid. Gabriel, who was friendly but also somewhat of a headcase, Erika Wolfe, who was friendly but quiet. And Florence Goldshore, Robin's younger brother and somewhat of a naive boy.

Sienna also introduces the other teams instructor, Ashley Willows; a woman missing one of her eyes. Thanks to Maria's injury, the exam was postponed a couple of days until she recovered from her head injury, but they are still able to get their weapons. Maria gets upset over her lack of funds and walks off after getting her weapon to go rest.

Morgan makes a quick detour to her old orphanage she grew up in, using some extra money Lily gave her to buy some food and donate it to them out of kindness. The kindly woman running the orphanage displays concern for her, but also notes her brother is seemingly missing. Morgan reassures her and leaves to go back to her dorm, where Robin tells her Maria is sleeping. Morgan complains to Robin after learning of her motivations that she was only in Spectrum to protect her brother, who seemed eager to go that she isn't motivated.

A week later, Maria has a nightmare and wakes up to realize that she was seeing a small apparition of a phoenix. This phoenix, named Gale, is a manifestation of a small amount of Ash from the phoenix after it partially possessed her as a last resort before it's defeat. It has somehow regained some aspects of his old personality and seems apologetic, Maria snaps and attacks it, partially destroying her room before storming off, where she finds Jonah. Jonah tells her to go eat to make herself feel better and she promptly agrees. She meets an Astrian named Cassandra and they get to know each other, sharing a sandwich before meeting up for her exam.

The exam is to retrieve a trophy hidden inside of a temple buried into a mountainside, they are given armbands that will extract them from the area if they're too wounded to continue. They get placed into pairs and everyone leaves in intervals of a couple minutes. Morgan and Lily, known to argue a bit about politics are paired together and it is nearly an hour of uncomfortable silence.

Morgan insults Lily over her inaction and the ethics of her father, Lily is insulted and it turns into a fight where Lily reveals that she was used to being bullied like this. Robin eventually shows up to stop the fight from getting any more violent, and Lily storms off wanting to quit. After leaving, Lily finds Maria, who convinces her to continue with her team instead.

Lily, Jonah and Maria are walking down the forest path before coming across a river, they attempt to cross it and are moderately successful until Jonah misses the rope and is carried downstream. Gabriel and Erika then arrive to come and help them, and they team up together to get to the temple. The sun sets and they are forced to camp for the night, Maria struggles to sleep and it awoken by the sound of Riftfallen wolves stalking the camp.

She warns the rest of her team and a skirmish ensues, everyone gets lightly wounded sans Maria, who's attempt at a gambit left her with a massive gaping wound in her arm that forces her vital warning to activate. This forces Maria to extract from the mission and leave the total group to 7. Lily gets a huge scar on one side of her face, but is still able to continue.

In the morning, they all arrive at the temple and head inside, they decide to split up in the labyrinthine temple to get each artifact, Robin and Lily leave together to discuss their lives and find it for themselves. They manage to get it, but it turns out that from the heavy rainfall the entire underground temple was really a sinkhole, and they were forced to hurry before it could collapse with them inside.

After waiting, everyone manages to get their relics and head back home safely.

Maria gets out of the hospital one night later, still quite wounded but able to walk, Sienna comes to meet her, but she's acting suspicious. Sienna asks Maria to come with her to Maria's dorm so they could discuss an issue together and Maria reluctantly accepts.

Sienna is worried about Maria's mental state, as her disposition is different from 2.5 years ago and it seems like she doesn't have a sense of personal safety, so she offers an ultimatum. Maria will leave Spectrum and go back to her school where she is safe, or Sienna will report her for mental issues and force her to leave instead. This upsets Maria, who then slaps Sienna and storms out of Spectrum in a rage presumably to rather quit than be kicked out.

Maria, now more calm and somber decides to visit said school to reminisce, before heading to her parents graves as she hasn't gone there before. Gale manifests and they discuss how his possession works, him revealing that since he technically possessed Maria, her being a living creature and possession being the main way Riftfallen tend to manifest, theoretically possible. Decides to tell her that he considers his lack of actions penance for him ruining her life.

Before returning to her boarding school, Maria decides to go look at her home one last time, even if it was rebuilt and repainted. She gets the feeling to explore the basement, since she's never been inside anymore. She finds the tattered remnants of her mother's scarf, and Ashley in a car who revealed that she's been following Maria at Sienna's request. Maria decided to go back to Spectrum under Ashley's team, instead of Sienna.
Lily also leaves Sienna's team to be with Maria, leaving them with Jonah and Gabriel, Maria's weapon is confiscated and she inherits Ashley's old weapon, named Sangris.

A couple of weeks later, Maria and her team decide to go eat lunch together, when Maria stops someone from bullying Cassandra. They have idle chat about school live and electives when Maria reveals that she's having some major money issues and doesn't want to rely on Lily for everything. Cassandra mentions they have an advanced cooking club that offers discounts and Maria gets psyched to join it.

Maria fails the cooking class horribly, so horribly she gets kicked out. Cassandra offers some condolence but Maria finds out a bout a club for people who like to fight, and as a boxing fan, Maria decides to join it. She finds Morgan as a member and a strange teacher named Sebastian Ritters manning the whole thing. The woman who was bullying Cassandra earlier said she was going to be there, so Maria challenged her to a fight as soon as she saw her.

The fight is vicious, but thanks to Maria's built in toughness and the anti-advice of Morgan, the fight ends in a draw and Maria gets to stay. Then thanks to Lily, she gets a pet cat, Snowy, along with a set of depressing and hypnotic cooking DVD's to watch to help her be more self sufficient.

Physical training begins and after 5 months of work, their training begins on using their weapons Pulse ability. Pulse being the main way to combat monsters, Gabriels sister dies in a Riftfallen attack, and is forced to leave Spectrum to be with them. Caleb, a childhood bully of Jonah joins the team in his stead and to Jonahs protests, and they continue their training after Morgan's team leaves.

Morgan gets a phone call just after training by her brother, Nick, to meet him outside of the school for a private conversation. Nick reveals to her that he was working for the Rosewall syndicate, but ended up being intimidated into joining a terrorist offbranch of the syndicate and was afraid to leave, saying that it'd be best for Morgan to consider him dead. Morgan gets upset as he walks off, but Lily encounters her and they make up for their spat over 5 months ago, Maria gets nachos.

A week later, Maria has her birthday just before the end of the year. After training, Maria heads back inside to find that her sister brought her a cake and wished to speak with her. We find out that both sides felt bad about the entire situation with Maria leaving the team, and also decide to try and make amends even if the situation was still rocky between the both of them, Lily gets Maria a cat sweater.

Morgan asks the head of Spectum, Chancellor Steele to consider assistance for saving Nick from being in the terrorist organization, Silent fall. But she is disappointed to find out that he only asks her to recuse herself and have him go to jail instead. They get an emergency signal and are requested to join their first mission.

They are briefed that while they aren't strong enough to wipe out the riftfallen in the area, that they could run evacuation on people who were currently trapped in a mall. They get on the helicopters and are deployed in the area. The mission goes smoothly until a mother reveals she left her son and husband in the mall, Maria decides to go get them.

The husband is dead, but thanks to her and Gale, they manage to get the boy to come with her after she finishes off some stragglers by herself. They are forced to sneak around the alleyways due to a resurgence in Riftfallen as Lily gives them a distress signal and requests for help, Maria too trapped to help her.
Lily attempts to stop a robbery of a store, only to find out that Maria couldn't come and she was vastly outnumbered. The leader of the robbers reveals that he is Wolf, the leader of Silent Fall. He explains his motivations and promptly knocks Lily out using his goons, and Lily is extracted from the mission. Maria encounters a huge group of monsters and tries to lure them to fight her in small groups while issuing a distress signal.

Help arrives and Maria and her team manage to get back to the extraction point with the boy safe, Maria goes to check on them before leaving herself.

3 days later, Caleb adopts a dog named Sasha and tells Maria to come see him and Jonah for a surprise later, Maria goes to pick Lily up from the hospital. Lily was disheartened by her lack of ability, and Maria is forced to attempt to give her some confidence. They head back to the dorm to a surprise party with drinks and ice cream, but are forced to sit at the kids table as a prank. Maria gets mad and leaves as Lily notices that Morgan is missing.

Morgan, later that night goes downtown to meet the leader of the syndicate, Stella Rousell. She explains that the leader of Silent Fall is a man named Elliot, and offers her a cell phone in exchange for her assistance in saving her brother, as Spectrum won't lift a finger for her. Morgan agrees before leaving to await her phone call to reveal what exactly she's going to do.