We had a pretty robust gym and training facility downstairs in the subfloors of the building. It wasn’t quite as opulent as the facility we had on The Rig, which had a lot of the tinkertech toys and the specialty stuff for brutes and the literal big guns. What we had here in the tower was anything but shabby by any stretch of the imagination, though. All the essentials of a proper and complete gym were present in sufficient quantity to service both teams here at East-North-East. They even had plenty of training equipment for people with low and mid-level brute ratings, which tended to be pretty niche in terms of specialty training equipment.

  I hit the locker rooms, washed off my makeup, and got into my costume. Mine was one of the flashier ones, but still within Youth Guard regulations. It was basically like a dance leotard. It was snow white with a high neck and full sleeves. Piping ran down the tops of the sleeves, similar to a sports uniform, in a color I was told was ‘Orange Flame.’ Across the breast was a flaming phoenix flying straight up, and a fist and palm meeting together in the Chinese martial arts tradition. The symbol and the name, Phoenix Strike, weren’t my first choice.

  PRT Marketing and Branding Division, ugh.

  It was fine. The name was fine. White was a bad color for a costume; I was constantly getting dirty, and it didn’t look good. The symbol was sorta stupid considering Kung Fu wasn’t one of the martial arts I professed to have any level of proficiency in. Today I’d be wearing MMA-style fingerless padded gloves for training. On patrol, I wore hand wraps. They were mostly aesthetic. I grabbed a belt that was a halfway decent stand-in for my utility belt. I wasn’t going to wear the real thing for training, or my helmet, for that matter.

  Chris–Kid Win–made my helmet for me. Real tinkertech, and it kicked ass. It enclosed my entire head from the neck up and was faceless and opaque. In addition to masking my identity by completely concealing my face, and protecting my head from impacts and bullets–I was thankful to have not had the opportunity to test that one in real combat–it also had voice manipulation programs, and I could see and hear through it perfectly fine through the sensors, interior displays, and relays. There was a neat, stylized bird head design on it, too, that matched my suit colors. Birds are cool.

  I pulled on my thigh-high compression leggings and gave myself a once-over in the locker room mirrors before heading out. I was a weird mix of Phoenix Strike and Morgan Rivera right now, but I think it was a halfway decent look. Five-seven, one hundred and fifty-five pounds of blue-eyed blonde. Melody and I had more than a passing resemblance to Victoria Dallon and Miss Dallon. Or did she resemble us? Anyways. GG and I differed in a few ways. She was a touch taller than I was, and more than a touch more voluptuous. I was nearly positive I outweighed her, though, and I was noticeably more muscular than she was. We both looked good, it wasn’t a secret, and it wasn’t as big a deal as people made it out to be. I flipped myself off in the mirror and headed out to the gym floor barefoot.

  Carlos was in the padded floor area, already dressed with a similar approach to what I was rocking, and Dennis was slumming it in shorts and a t-shirt, standing with him and chatting. I held a hand up in greeting and headed over to the two of them.

  I asked: “Not participating today, Dennis?”

  “Nah, I’m just here to stir the pot and cheerlead for whoever’s winning.”

  “How are you gonna instigate your poor team and insult us in the same breath? Whoever’s winning? What happened to team unity, or heck, even just picking a favorite?” I pressed him in a teasing manner.

  “I wouldn’t want anyone to accuse me of favoritism, of course. And I got a family thing soon, so I can’t be here long,” he replied.

  I bobbed my head and said: “Fair, fair.” I looked over to Carlos and asked, “Are we expecting anyone else, or is this going to be it?”

  Carlos smirked at me, saying, “Funny you asked, she just walked in.”

  “She? Vis-”

  He wouldn’t.

  I glanced over at the entrance.

  He did. Ugh.

  Sophia Hess was making her way over at a snail’s pace, furiously texting away on her phone and looking like she didn’t care what else was going on. I turned back and did my very best not to scowl. I did give Carlos a heck of a glare, and he reacted by crossing his arms over his chest and calling out: “Hey, Sophia!”

  I got it. She was technically a part of our team. She did deserve to come to training events and contribute to the team. And I wouldn’t have such an issue with her if she actually gave a shit. She wasn’t a Ward by choice. She got busted as a teenage caped vigilante and told she could join the Wards, or she could have a grand old time in juvie. She dragged her feet about everything, was always a drag on morale, and virtually always had a rotten-ass attitude towards everyone and everything. The one thing you could halfway rely on her to show up for was anything fighting-related. Guess we shared that in common. She’s still a bitch. But I won’t stoop to her level.

  “Hey, Sophia!” I called out in a similar fashion. Dennis gave me a look. He got my feelings on her pretty well. He raised a hand and waved in a very half-assed way.

  Sophia swiveled her phone closed and stuffed it into her bag, which she proceeded to drop on the mat a few feet away. Putting her hands on her hips, she regarded us a moment before speaking: “A clown, a zombie, and a knockoff walked into a bar…”

  I think I heard Dennis mutter: “Oh god” or something of the sort under his breath before retorting: “Clowns are funny, right? I’ll take it, even if it is lacking creativity.”

  “That’s Mister Zombie, or just Boss to you, missy,” Carlos said with a snicker.

  Sophia stared expectantly at me. I suddenly blinked and looked around like something had happened.

  “Eh?” She queried.

  “Oh, sorry. I think Dennis froze me for a second just now. Did I miss something?” I got a “pfft” out of Dennis and a tongue-click out of Sophia. Good enough. I never claimed to be funny. My banter game wasn’t great, but I sorta didn’t really care about it, either. Probably my background showing through.

  “So, Morgan, up for that rematch?” Carlos asked while rolling his neck and shoulders. I took the offered out.

  “Yeah, let’s get into it. Anything specific you want to work on today, or just want to do some freeform work?” I set into my own stretches, taking the express route in the interest of not giving more time for a certain someone to shit-stir.

  His response came quickly, along with a soft huff: “To be honest, I’m a little stressed and frustrated with school, and I’d like to just be able to take my mind off it for a bit. Freeform alright?”

  Totally understandable. I wasn’t huge into the philosophical aspects of martial arts or what I considered to be the bunk science, but it was true that you could get into a zen state while you were dedicating your attention and focus to an opponent in the ring or on the mat. We finished a short limbering session and squared off. Traditions could be important, and I went through the motions out of respect. Clasping hands and a bow. Goes without saying that Carlos returned it; he was a great sportsman.

  As we entered our respective stances, I sized him up. We’d fought a lot, but it was good to bring these things back to the forefront to remain mindful of them. Carlos was taller than me and had the reach advantage. He weighed more, although not to a dramatic extent. Small things mattered. The bigger picture thing here was our respective powers. We had some passing similarities.

  Powers are bullshit. They’re cheating on some level, or hell, many levels, but not every power is created or manifests or whatever equally. I was stronger and faster than the average person. Part of that was training and dedication to the gym. Part of it was my power. I wasn’t supernaturally stronger or faster. I blurred the line between a very high-echelon athlete in peak form and a ‘real’ parahuman. I could hit hard as hell, much harder than someone my size and weight class would, but in a ‘still constrained by anatomy and the laws of physics’ way. I couldn’t bulldoze through a wall or throw a car like Glory Girl.

  Carlos was stronger than I was. He was faster than I was. And he could fly. The so-called Alexandria package, just like Victoria: a Brute with flight powers. Carlos and I were both very durable, but he really outclassed me there. I’ve seen him fighting with an arm dislocated and a giant chunk of his tibia sticking out through his suit. I was pretty sure he still felt pain or had a sense for it that was abstracted, but he could fight through wounds that would incapacitate or outright kill people.

  I was…robust. I certainly felt pain, but tended to work and fight through it as a result of a lot of training and not an ability. I couldn’t faceplant off a third-story building and dust myself off the way he could. I healed pretty quickly. By pretty quick, I mean minor and moderate wounds in minutes and hours, and stuff that was like, life-altering in a week or less. I liked to think of it more like self-repair than it was regeneration.

  I’d seen videos online of some parahumans sprouting a new arm after losing theirs in the course of seconds, or even near-instantly. Not me, and not Carlos. Carlos had picked up a torn-off limb once and stuck it back on mid-fight, and it just… sorta worked? Thus, Sophia's trashy zombie comment earlier. A little nickname of hers that was mean-spirited in a way I didn’t approve of. I was very thankful for the fact that I’d never suffered a grievous wound like that in my career. A couple of broken bones, a few puncture wounds, and more bruises, cuts, and scrapes than I could count.

  We commenced our fight with a loud clap from Dennis. Carlos came in on the offensive, and I kept my hands up and loose and held him off with leg work. I was feeling him out to see how he’d been coming along, and there was certainly progress. I broke into a grin. I liked seeing people improve and grow, and he’d come a long way, thanks in large part to the regular training. I also just really and truly loved fighting. I was an adrenaline junkie, and even though I wasn’t going to get that rush from this kind of fighting, I was still having genuine fun.

  He kept trying to get into close range, and each time he did, I’d toe-step or shin-block his lower half. His first two victories over me had been largely because I didn’t understand his power, and his limits, or lack thereof. Submissions didn’t work on him. How are you going to get a submission victory on a guy who could ignore a fence post sticking through his abdomen, and who didn’t give a damn about having his arm dislocated? Didn’t work out so well. No, my lesson was simple: Traditional ways of stopping moves, attacks, and fights, and textbook plays weren’t entirely applicable. What did work was straight biomechanics. A bad angle or position to throw a punch was a bad angle. His muscles still had the same attachment points, and his bones and joints were rigid and generally within the same ranges.

  I saw him shift his weight. He was going to go for a kick. His knee started to rise into a snap kick. I stepped in and kicked the foot he was positioning before he could get a swing started, and he stumbled momentarily and stepped back on the defensive. I didn’t press the advantage; I still wanted to feel him out. He advanced again, and I went to kick his strong leg thigh. His arm came down low and blocked my kick, and he stepped into fist range while I was recovering.

  Good!

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  He threw a straight punch at my face. We weren’t going all out here and trying to hurt one another, but we established a while back that face and head strikes were acceptable if we both had the self-restraint to be responsible about it. I stood my ground to take the punch, grabbed his wrist in my hand, pressed the strike to the outside, and capitalized on the over-extension by shifting my grip into a grapple. I proceeded to throw him over my hip and into the mat flat on his back.

  Dennis let out a whoop, and Sophia grunted. I glanced over and saw that she was rather intently paying attention.

  Small victories. She saw me looking and crossed her arms over her chest.

  Carlos and I went another four or five rounds back and forth. I had him pegged pretty well and was able to counter most of what he was going for, but that wasn’t the point. The practice, building reactions so you didn’t have to think about them, and really, just cutting loose and having fun was more important. All of which we accomplished. He had a sweat worked up, and I had a bit of perspiration going as well. We bowed and clasped hands. Neither one of us had really struck the other terribly hard, and I was more than content enough to send him into the mat, which was more startling than painful.

  Dennis said his goodbyes and took off, and Sophia and I got ready to spar while Carlos leaned against a strength training machine. I bowed to Sophia, and she rolled her hand and made a ‘let’s get on with it motion.’ We squared off and engaged.

  Sophia’s style was a sloppy mess, and while she’d picked up a few things here and there, her overall strategy was just attack, attack, attack, and then attack some more. She was too headstrong to listen and take what I tried to teach her seriously. It was after the second time I’d flipped her onto the mat that I saw her scramble to her feet and, hoo, she was pissed.

  The next time I was about to get a grapple on her, she flickered her Breaker state momentarily. I was put suddenly off-balance, having expected to latch onto her, and a split second later, I took a hard elbow right to the mouth. The taste of copper flooded my mouth, and I dropped to one knee and wiped my lips with the back of my glove.

  “Sophi-” Carlos had caught what happened and went to speak up, but Sophia cut him off.

  “What’s wrong, Morgan? Did you forget what we’re here to do? We’re here to fight parahumans,” she said, snarling out the last bit. “You know, criminals and murderers with powers who aren’t here to score points on a scoreboard? That we’re supposed to win fights against?!”

  I could feel my face heating as I flushed with a mix of shame and rage. Leave it to her to bring that up to get a rise out of me. I clenched my fist, and I could acutely feel my power in my mind. Bubbling and roiling, churning like rapids. There for me to dip my toes into, or to dive headfirst.

  “You want me to fight you with my power, do you?” I asked in a quiet voice. I was so fucking pissed right now. The discussions I had with Jessica about learning control through practice popped into the back of my head, and I shoved them aside. Sophia had elevated her voice to practically a yell: “Yes! I want you to actually carry your own weight in a team fight for once! Prove that you deserve to be here and stop being such a fucking joke!”

  I curled my lip into a sneer and tapped into my power. I wasn’t diving entirely in, but I’d hop into the shallow end and see how things went. I wanted to hurt her for what she’d said, hitting me directly in my doubts as hard as she’d hit me in the mouth. I felt my power expanding out from where I kept it tightly wrapped up in my chest, and the effects were immediate. My gloves creaked as I formed tight fists, and I could feel my muscles bulging under my skin, and my guts twisting into knots as the adrenaline hit.

  My focus narrowed down to Sophia, and nothing else. Her posture, her movements, her tells. I launched myself at her fast. Maybe faster than I’d ever gone before. I wasn’t pulling punches, or to be more specific, I wasn’t pulling kicks. I closed the gap in the blink of an eye, and I saw her eyes widen before I launched into a non-stop barrage of combination attacks: all advancing, all hard offense designed to put her on the defensive, on the back foot, or to simply get knocked the fuck out. Spinning kicks chained together into gymnastic-looking maneuvers similar to what you’d see in showboat competitions. But make no mistake, the point wasn’t to look good here; it was to conserve and continue to build and maintain energy while pressing an overwhelming offense.

  I expected her to shift states rather than dodge. I don’t think she was fast enough and certainly not experienced enough to dodge even heavily telegraphed attacks like this, and the risk of taking a heel to the face was entirely way too high. She didn’t disappoint. I did my homework with my team; I knew their strengths and weaknesses. She was Manton-limited and unable to come back into solid phase with someone else inside her in her gaseous Breaker-state form. I wanted to make her feel like her power was a liability right now and not a strength. I was up her ass, almost literally. I kept attacking through her smoky, immaterial figure, and she kept doing her best to break away from me to revert back.

  “What’s wrong, Sophia!? Having a hard time hitting me with cheap shots all of a sudden!?”

  She jumped and glided through the air like a paper airplane, flying a good thirty feet and landing on top of a tall squatting rack. She snapped back into solid and eyed her surroundings to plan out her next move. I wasn’t letting her control the situation. With a flex of my thighs and calves, I leaped on top of the nearest of a line of heavy-duty treadmills and sprinted across the tops of the machines like a heat-seeking missile, and launched into a flying kick aimed square at her. She phased and jumped again, and I flew through her and landed with a roll and a slap of my foot on the rubber-matted floor of the weightlifting area.

  We played a game of cat and mouse, with her not able to get into a position to attack me, and me being unable to successfully land a hit on her in her Breaker state. We’d worked our way back into the sparring area. Carlos had taken up near the door and was keeping a keen eye on events as they unfolded, and I saw him fiddling with something at one point. I wasn’t diverting my attention to him and risk losing the edge on Sophia, or losing track of her. It was well lit in here, but she could still be hard to see if I lost track of her amongst the exercise machinery. I needed a way of knocking her out of her breaker state long enough to get her into a submission hold.

  “I can do this all day, Phoenix Strike. What are you going to do, chase me around until you get tired?” She taunted me from her shadow state. She planted a smoky hand on her hip and cocked it out to one side while casually fanning her face like she was bored.

  My power bubbled and burbled in my head, and I activated it again. I felt something I can’t accurately describe squirming inside my right forearm. I shook my right hand out and flicked it downwards to my side. There was a gross, wet slapping sound of something hitting the floor below me and to my right. And I could feel it. Squirming along the floor in ropes and coils. I knew it was going to be disgusting. It always was when this happened. I glanced down. Maybe a dozen feet of transparent, slightly pink worm-thing was leaving trails of slime on the floor and reaching up to where it was growing out of the back of my right wrist. I had a notion in my head of what it was capable of.

  Fuck it. And fuck you.

  I brought my arm back, feeling the mat slide under my appendage, and squeezed a muscle that shouldn’t be there in my upper forearm, then swung my arm forward at Sophia. My tentacle, for lack of a better description, lashed out like a whip, and when it should have passed through Sophia, instead it found purchase and wrapped around her, snapping her out of her Breaker state. She stiffened and fell straight onto her ass, then went flat on the mat. Yelling incoherently, she was flailing her arms around trying to get my tentacle off her. I dashed forward and jumped on top of her, my knees thudding into the mat on each side of her waist, and my left forearm pressed into her windpipe. I invaded deep into her personal space without even thinking about what I was doing, my face so close to hers that only inches separated the tips of our noses. I could smell her breath.

  “Tap out!” I yelled into her face, and it came out weirdly deep and growly-sounding to my ear. A long and thick string of saliva stretched down and landed on her cheek from my mouth. My long blonde hair cascaded down around us like stage curtains and was moving in a non-existent breeze. I saw a single expression flash across her face for a brief instant before she nodded and slapped the mat with her palm.

  My guts twisted and clenched, and it was like a light switch had been flipped in my head. I suddenly didn’t feel so good about my victory by submission and knocking her down a peg or five. My power was stuffed back in its box, and I rocked back up and off Sophia. I grabbed her under her armpits and hoisted her up to her feet without asking. Hair down and obscuring most of my face, I hoped it hid the way I was feeling right now.

  I got out “Sorry” before I turned and half-jogged to the locker room. I deliberately didn’t look at Carlos, assuming he was in the same place he had been previously. I also ignored the scratches and rips in the matting and the snail-trail slime on the floor on my way to the lockers. Slamming a bathroom stall open and latching it closed, I had just enough time to get the lid up and my hair flipped back over my shoulder before I was hardcore vomiting into the bowl.

  When that look had passed over Sophia’s face, I had a flashback of the look on Melody’s face as she stood in our bathroom doorway. One night, I’d had a particularly vivid dream-slash-nightmare and had jumped out of bed and run into the bathroom to splash water on my face. I was on edge and must have woken her up with the sound of me darting into the bathroom because she appeared in the doorway looking sleepy, and her calling to me startled me.

  I’d jolted and looked at her, and she got a look on her face, stammered something, and stepped back and closed the door. My confusion at her response was answered when I glanced in the mirror. My hair was slithering around, and my cheeks and eyes were surrounded by dozens of glittering black gemstones embedded in my skin. My eyes were entirely wrong, the sclera and irises shifting colors, and my pupils twisting, splitting, dividing, merging, and going through shapes and designs faster than I could track.

  I looked like a fucking monster.

  In the here and now, I couldn’t help myself, and I started sobbing between bouts of ejecting the contents of my stomach. Snot and tears joined the foul-smelling mix in the water as I rested my head on my forearms. Minutes passed, and I tried to control my breathing and work through some of the exercises Jessica had taught me to clear my head and lower my stress levels. I was still sniffling, crying softly, and resting my head on my arms on top of the toilet rim, a few flushes and minutes later. I heard the outer door to the bathroom partition of the locker room hiss and click closed, and quiet footsteps approached my stall. Raising my head and glancing under the stall door, I saw military-style boots.

  Ah, hell. Hannah.

  I reached up and flicked the stall lock off and flushed the toilet, but didn’t otherwise get up from the floor or my toilet perch.

  I sniffled and cleared my throat. “Come on in. Enter my shame domain.”

  Hannah entered the stall, closed the door, and leaned back against it with her arms crossed over her chest. She looked at me for a long moment but didn’t say anything. Her expression was hard to read, she was hard to read, even when she didn’t have her typical bandanna lower-face mask on. I was an ugly crier and knew I looked like shit. I got up off the floor, put the lid down on the toilet, and sat down, elbows on my knees and my face in my hands. I assumed that Carlos had called someone, maybe her directly, when things got ugly with Sophia and me.

  “Are you okay?”

  I ran my thumbs under my eyes, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. Nodding, I looked back up at her.

  “Yeah, I’m fi- feeling better.” I corrected myself mid-sentence. I wasn’t going to lie to her; I respected her too much for that. With a sigh, I asked her: “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to cause trouble or hurt anyone.”

  She tongued her cheek then asked: “Trouble? What trouble?”

  “With Sophia?”

  She shrugged slowly. “Passed her in the elevator on my way down here. She seemed totally fine to me, same as she usually is. I came down to see you when I heard you were here.”

  Is she playing with me? There’s no way she just happened to come straight here, and I’m certain Carlos was involved. What’s this about?

  “I mean the fight, Hannah. I’m not… Trying to be short or anything.”

  “It’s good that you all were doing some sparring and training on your own initiative. Carlos told me you were practicing exercising your powers? Did you lose control?”

  I frowned. Had I? Maybe a little bit of a mess and some mild damage to the flooring, but wear and tear were to be expected. Mats wore out and had to be patched or replaced, usually not due to training, but people being inconsiderate and wearing footwear or rolling equipment over them. Almost reluctantly admitting it to myself, I said: “...No, I didn’t. Lost my temper, I suppose, but I don’t think I experienced issues with my power.”

  “Losing your temper in training happens. If the training is stressful, emotions will get high, but stressful training is some of the more effective training.” A pause. “Carlos was concerned about you because he said you were pretty upset, so I figured I’d come to check in. I needed to talk with you about something as well, while you were here today, so it’s accomplishing two things at once.”

  Not quite what I suspected.

  “Yeah, um, what’s up?”

  “We’ve got guided tours for Winslow High on Friday. Dean was going to be part of the rotation, but he’s had a scheduling conflict come up. Can you make it on Friday? It’d be during school hours.”

  I thought a moment. I didn’t have any big exams or projects due Friday, partly the reason why we had been trying to make plans for the weekend. I could log my class hours in the afternoon or evening if I wanted to online, as I was all set up to be a hybrid student like all the other Wards.

  I nodded firmly. “Plan on it. Is this a cape event?”

  Hannah shook her head. “It’s not a hard rule either way, you can come as you like so long as you’re following protocols. If you want to represent the team and do the tour as Phoenix Strike, you can. Or you can just be in your civilian identity and do it as an intern. Just double-check you’re using the correct ID card, of course.”

  I rubbed my nose and laughed. “Yeah, that might make for some awkward questions why this lady says she’s an intern and her badge says WARDS in giant capital letters.”

  Hannah moved to open the door. “It wouldn’t be the first time it’s happened, and it’s always a mess when it does. Let’s not go there, unless you’re looking for a change of scenery. I do hear Tucson is nice.”

  It was so hard to tell when she was joking at times. I laughed, and thankfully, I don’t think I sounded nervous.