Papers and posterboard littered the floor of Pip’s bedroom as she sat in the middle of all her chaos, a cup full of paintbrushes, markers, and colored pencils in front of her. If she’d had normal pencils at some point, they’d been stolen by the school goblins who liked to cause trouble and distract her.

  She didn’t need a regular pencil, however. For a history presentation, she could be as creative as she wanted. Sure, she could have gone with a normal slideshow on the computer, but that was boring. Besides, computers were for watching porn, not doing schoolwork.

  Or in this case, watching videos of supers fighting.

  It was research, technically. She’d fallen down a research rabbit hole while trying to make the presentation for her History of Supers class. The subject was so simple—she could go and ask Grandma Thalia any question she wanted—that it was easy to get distracted.

  This could technically be considered relevant to her presentation, if she chose to go that route with the assignment. She wasn’t, but that was irrelevant. She was doing research, something she’d never done before, and that was a success in and of itself. Her teachers should be proud.

  The video finished with a super being thrown through a wall, only to get up and keep fighting. The next recommended video was another angle of the fight, filmed somewhere in a dense city center. The super in question—it wasn’t clear whether they were a hero or a villain considering they were in a simple pair of jeans and a T-shirt, which made her a newcomer—had a material manipulation ability, not entirely like Pip’s. It seemed to be metal related, though it was difficult to make out those details with the poor filming, the person behind the camera constantly ducking and hiding and shaking.

  She copied the video link before moving onto the next one, tabbing over to send the video to Florence.

  Pip: what about this one?

  It only took Florence a few moments to respond.

  Florence: can you be thrown through a wall?

  Pip: i think anyone can

  Pip: doesn’t mean they’ll survive it

  Florence: well i think you have your answer there

  Letting out a frustrated sigh, Pip clicked out of the playing video and continued searching. Trying to find good references for what her type of power could do was difficult. She had so many options, she knew that, but it was a matter of figuring out what would work for her.

  That was the problem with versatility. Just because you had so many options didn’t mean you could go every single route with it. If you wanted to be the best, and Pip did, she had to choose a route and stick to it. It made sense for that route to include weapons, but Florence was right, she wasn’t Athena, and she couldn’t be thrown through a wall and get up and keep walking like it was normal. As it was, if she was thrown through a wall, she’d have a hell of a time getting on her feet again.

  So either she needed to change her tactics, or figure out a way she could get thrown through a wall and keep going. She fought like a brawler, but that would only work against people her own size. And most of the brawler types were built like Athena, strongmen or strongmen-types. Pip wasn’t likely to get a growth spurt anytime soon, so what could she do to make herself stronger?

  She needed to stop looking at brawler types. There were other weapon users. Even Grandma Thalia wasn’t a brawler, she was primarily ranged, though Thalia had been an Olympic archer before the awakening. Pip didn’t have that skill set, but maybe she could do something else?

  Pulling the computer onto her lap, Pip searched for weapons-focused super fights. Unlike the brawler fights, these seemed to have just as many gym-fights as actual super battles. Curious, Pip clicked on one with an attractive, half clothed woman as the cover. (And that definitely wasn’t the reason she picked it.)

  Gym fights weren’t something Pip paid a lot of attention to, though they were similar to summoner battles. Fights done for a championship or prize, usually in an organized competition, though they were done just as often in situations like the Summoner’s Ring Pip went to. People who gathered to fight and prove themselves stronger, without tearing apart a city street or robbing a bank.

  Some of the bigger ones aired on TV, not unlike MMA fights. This wasn’t one of those.

  The woman summoned a pair of blades, the ring itself dulling the deadliness of her power. It was one of the technological advances that just didn’t make sense to Pip, but it had started with the Towers so heroes could train without killing each other. It's why Florence could blast fire at her without roasting her lungs from the inside.

  Her opponent, a large woman with biceps the size of Pip’s head, formed her own blade. Unlike the smaller woman’s, hers was crafted from materials around them, pulling plastic from around the room to form a two handed broadsword.

  Plastic manipulator, neat.

  Pip couldn’t decide what the younger woman’s weapons were made out of. Crafted energy, or a summoned material?

  A notification pinged on her computer and she ignored it, eyes locked on the screen as the two women began to trade blows. They moved like demons, trading blows almost faster than Pip could keep track of. Size had always been something to abuse, in every fight Pip had observed. But this woman was far smaller than her opponent, and she was winning. Darting in and out, ducking beneath blows, using her small size to her advantage. She danced around her opponent, and her shorter reach wasn’t a detriment.

  The larger woman cleaved down with her blade, and Pip could see the strength in the blow, her muscles rippling as she brought the blade down. It never had a chance to connect with the smaller woman. She leapt backward, somersaulting onto her feet and leaping back up faster than the larger woman could redirect her blade.

  She brought both blades down into the larger woman’s shoulders with a shout.

  A ref called the fight and the woman’s blades vanished, video ending with a flashing logo of some combat gym.

  Copying the link, she sent it over to Florence.

  Pip: i like this one

  Pip: she doesn’t fight, she dances

  Florence: okay ballerina ??

  Pip: that’s not even a ballerina, but okay

  She looked back down at the video, reading through the description to try and find the name of the woman. Naomi Otzacu.

  Pip jotted the name down in a notebook for later reference.

  The larger woman, Jill Scott, fell into the traps of a strongman or brawler. Not all fell into those traps, of course, but often immense strength came at the cost of loss of speed. Again, not always, but it was hard to be faster than someone less than half your size. Athena got away with it because she could not only fight and brawl, she could also manipulate the area around her, though it wasn’t her primary focus.

  Actually, Aunt Artemis was a better example. No one expected the glitter shifter to be such a dangerous threat, but when she could control an entire battlefield while sitting in a folding chair with a cup of coffee and never breaking a sweat? The criminal world had done their best to avoid coming to her attention after that.

  Pip couldn’t control the battlefield. Pip couldn’t hit harder than everyone else. She definitely wasn’t going to be smarter than everyone else. So she had to be faster and quicker than them.

  But how was she going to break the habit of diving straight into a fight like a brawler?

  Pip: i want to be able to fight like this

  Florence: good luck

  Pip: no seriously

  Florence: i was being serious

  Florence: you’ll have to be fast though

  Pip: i am fast

  Florence: faster than everyone else?

  She hated Florence sometimes. Of course she wouldn’t be faster than everyone else, not when speedsters existed. Damn speedsters.

  Pip: you make this sound impossible

  Florence: it kind of is tbh

  Florence: you know how many pyro heroes are out there?

  Florence: you have to find a way to make yourself useful, then you never have to worry

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  He had a point, unfortunately. She hated when he was right, but he was frustratingly good at this. She’d chalk it up to having two of the most tactical minds in the hero world as his parents.

  Maybe Pip couldn’t be the best at anything, but she could make herself useful.

  Before she closed her computer, her eye caught the notification on the corner of her screen. She clicked over, heat creeping up her cheeks.

  Khione: how’s our date coming?

  Khione, the evil witch that she was, had sent her a selfie. Hair pulled back, lips done in that glossy pink lipstick, snapped from above with a solid view of the top of Khione’s lacy bra.

  Evil. Pure evil.

  She wanted to drop everything and meet Khione for the night. But she still had work to do, and dammit, she wanted to try something out. Khione would have to wait.

  Pip: still working on it

  She shut the computer and leapt out of her circle of homework, leaving it behind. She could finish the presentation tomorrow morning before she had to present it.

  With Athena off at work, somewhere halfway across the country as far as Pip knew, it severely limited her options for a good fight. There were two others in the family who fought like Athena, she just hated having to go to them.

  Luckily, she didn’t have to go to both. One should be manageable. Hopefully.

  Each room along the hallway had a distinctive look, decorated for the inhabitant. Pip’s door had been painted to look like a stained glass window, with the help of Mai. Well, primarily Mai’s work. Amalia’s door had been painted pitch black with chalkboard paint so she could draw all over it. Theo’s door had half a dozen beefy men taped to it, which seemed pretty gay to Pip, but whatever floated his boat.

  Covering her fist in glass, she banged loudly on his door until it swung open so fast her fist nearly went into his face.

  “What?” he snapped.

  “I need to spar,” Pip said.

  “And you couldn’t have texted me?”

  “Just so you can ignore it? I don’t think so.”

  “What does Mum have to say about this?” Theo demanded, looking down on her like he was the older brother. It wasn’t fair. Just because he was taller didn’t mean he wasn’t still the baby compared to her.

  “I’m not grounded anymore,” Pip said triumphantly. “And I need to work out a new technique.”

  Those were the magic words. She really should have brought them out sooner. He leaned forward immediately, dropping the hostility. “What is it?”

  “I’m going to try dancing.”

  His face dropped into a deadpan stare. “Goodbye,” he said, shutting the door.

  Pip threw herself into the door frame, stopping the door with her shoulder. “Wait, I promise it’s serious. I can show you a video?”

  Theo paused before opening the door again. “Okay fine. Show me.”

  Walking into Theo’s room only reminded Pip why she didn’t like boys. Boys stank. Her nose wrinkled as she walked over to his computer, eyeing the pile of dirty clothes with disgust. “You really should wash your clothes.”

  “You should mind your own business,” Theo fired back. “When’s the last time I saw you in the laundry room?”

  Keeping her mouth shut, Pip googled the woman and clicked on the first video she found. It wasn’t the same fight, but the woman’s techniques were the same.

  Theo leaned in as the video played, caught in rapt attention. As the video ended, he nodded. “She’s good.”

  “That’s how I want to be able to fight.”

  His eyebrows raised. “But you’re a brawler.”

  “I’m not, though,” Pip said. “I can’t be. Not unless I can figure out how to get super durability like you and Galen and Mom.”

  “Yeah, too bad glass is more known for being fragile,” Theo said. “You’d need like, bulletproof glass. And that’s heavy as shit.”

  “The weight doesn’t bother me,” Pip said. In response, she summoned her shield, a massive piece of glass shaped like the typical medieval shield, only a few inches shy of her own height. She lifted it with ease, barely using her own muscles. She was strong, but that wasn’t what mattered. She could lift her own creations with her mind with minimal effort, it didn’t take any more attention than breathing.

  Theo reached out for it, grunting as he tried to lift the shield in his human form. He hardly got it an inch off the ground before it thumped back down, slipping from his hands.

  “I never realized your glass was that heavy,” Theo said, staring at the shield. “So what made you want to change your fighting style all of a sudden? You’ve been fighting like this for years.”

  “Just because I can beat all of you doesn’t mean I’m good enough,” Pip said. She brushed a lock of hair from her face, finding the poster on his wall easily enough. A poster advertising the Unity hero program. The same poster she’d had on her wall since she was eight years old, worn and faded from time. “I’ll go into the program as soon as I graduate, and I need to be able to keep up. And I met someone that made me realize I might not be able to if I don’t change some things.”

  “I see,” Theo said. “Is this your friend Dyiona told us about?”

  Heat crept up Pip’s cheeks as the words set in. Dyiona had told people about Khione. Not good. Very not good.

  “No,” Pip answered, wishing she could hide the blush warming her face. “Grandma Thalia brought me to spar with another legacy the other day.”

  “Is that why you didn’t join us for ice cream?”

  “That, and I had the Losers club,” Pip said. “So, you want to help me try this out?”

  He shrugged casually. “Sure.”

  Theo made his way outside to set up the sparring ground while Pip ran through the house to find Mai, letting her know they’d be using the sparring ground and to not worry. If she didn’t, there was a not small chance Mai would think they were getting attacked by someone and they did not need the heroes called down on their house. Again.

  Mai gave a small acknowledgement and Pip took off again, sprinting through the house and out the back door, where Theo already had everything set up.

  He stepped into the arena, hulking out as his body transformed. Galen could make his body stronger just by standing on bare earth, much like Athena’s power, but Galen could transform into a sort of earth golem. A monster made of stone and dirt, though he couldn’t manipulate either of those elements. He just punched like a son of a bitch.

  “How do you want this to go?” he asked, the words garbled slightly as they left his stone mouth. Pip wanted to know if his insides were also stone, but of course there wasn’t a good way to find out.

  “You can fight like normal,” Pip said. She stretched as they talked, limbering up. Yoga class functioned as her PE credit for school, and the moves she learned there were occasionally helpful. “I’m going to try and fight, well…” She stood up straight, looking at him. “Not like normal, I guess.”

  “I’ll go easy on you,” Theo said.

  “Please don’t,” Pip said. “You have the safeties engaged?”

  “Obviously,” Theo said. “Don’t want to freak Mum out.”

  “On your cue, then.”

  She took a step back, raising her fists into a guarding position. Her mind flashed back to the fight with Florence as she waited for him to call it. She had to be fast. Faster than the flames. Faster than the heat.

  No, not just faster.

  He called it.

  Repeating her move from the fight with Florence, Pip summoned her glass knives. She threw her empty hand forward, a blade spinning into existence on the imagined force behind the blow, striking against Theo’s shoulder.

  He grunted, already on the move. Hands balled into fists, he swung.

  “Dance,” she muttered. She needed to dance.

  She ducked, darting beneath the blow and under his arm. Behind him, she struck twice in rapid succession, kicking the back of his knee and the small of his back.

  He didn’t so much as take a step forward, unmoved by the strikes.

  “You’ll have to hit harder than that,” Theo said. Pip took a step back, allowing him to turn to face her and putting enough space between them that he couldn’t hit her as he moved. “Try hitting with that glass, maybe.”

  Pip let out a frustrated try. “I’m trying to be more delicate than that.”

  “Then why’d you hit me like that?”

  “The knees are a good place to take people out,” Pip said.

  “Yeah, but it would have worked better with a blade.” As if to emphasize the point, he wrapped his hand around the short hilt on the glass knife, ripping it from his shoulder. The wound bled for a moment, but not as much as it would without the safeties in place.

  The glass fell to the sand, where she quickly summoned it to her. This time, she kept it in hand, summoning a second to complete the pair. With one in each hand, she danced around her brother, ready to attack.

  With Florence, she’d never even been able to get into melee. If that was the case here, what would she do to deal with it?

  “What’s that smirk for?”

  Rather than respond, Pip gave her mightiest battle cry and ran forward. At the same time, she summoned her shield. Not in front of her, but behind Theo, slamming it into him from behind as she rushed at him.

  He let out a grunt as the shield slammed into him, shoving him forward and unrooting his footing. He stumbled, swinging a hand around behind to swat at the shield. In the moment his body turned, Pip leapt, springing across the space and slashing into her brother’s chest. Sparks lit from the scrape of glass across stone before she punched the second blade into his shoulder joint.

  He swung back around, throwing his entire upper body into the movement, but she was already gone.

  A wild grin shone from her face as she met his eyes from several feet away.

  “I didn’t expect that one,” Theo admitted. He glanced behind, hindered slightly by the blade in his shoulder, the shield still hovering in place. “How far from you can you summon that?”

  “Not sure,” Pip said. She dismissed the glass, fading it out of existence before forming it again in front of her. She slid the shield onto her arm, lowering into a crouch before she realized she was too short to do it like that. “I’ve never really tried.”

  He removed the blade from his shoulder as they spoke, the first wound almost entirely healed. He tossed the knife back at her; she caught it in the air and manipulated it into her waiting hand. It didn’t take much to reshape the knife, elongating it and turning it into a straight sword.

  “Maybe you should try,” Theo said. He dug his feet into the sand, leaning forward as he prepared for a charge, not unlike a bull. “You ready?”

  “Always am,” Pip answered, lifting her shield. She would take the blow this time, at least to see if she could get around behind him or stop him while being attacked head on. Naomi had been able to get around behind her opponent while charging, maybe Pip could do the same.

  Theo charged, spitting up sand behind him as he ran. Bringing her shield up to her shoulder, Pip prepared for the impact.

  He wound his fist back, upper body rotating as he brought the blow down into the center of Pip’s shield.

  A yelp escaped Pip’s lip as her body went flying beyond the arena protections, the momentum behind his blow too much for the telekinetically lightened shield.

  “Pip!” Theo shouted as she flew, his eyes wide with panic. “The greenhouse!”

  Oh fuck. Without time to think, Pip acted on instinct and grabbed the glass around her, wrapping her body in a shell moments before she crashed through the glass walls of Mai’s greenhouse.

  Glass screamed as it fell around her, but none of it managed to touch her past the thick glass armor she’d wrapped around herself. Even the impact faded out, vibrating through the glass rather than striking her with its full force.

  Unable to breathe inside the glass tomb, she dismissed it entirely.

  With a groan, Pip pushed herself off her back, dazed as she sat upright amid a pile of glass shards and spilled planters. Mai wasn’t going to be happy with this one. Neither was Athena, for that matter. Luckily Pip could fix it. Could she fix it before Mai saw?

  The back door slammed open, Mai’s stricken face illuminated by the harsh outdoor lights. She didn’t have to look hard to see where the commotion had come from.

  “Pip!” Mai cried, running forward.

  Shaking off the last of the impact, Pip pushed herself to her feet, refusing to let herself appear shaken or hurt. “Sorry, Mum,” she gasped, her chest heaving. “We were just sparring.”

  Theo ran up, dropping his stone form, pieces of rock falling off as he moved. “It’s my fault,” he said, staring at the broken window in horror. “I don’t know why she flew so far.”

  “Telekinetically lightened shield,” Pip explained. “No weight to absorb the impact.”

  “Oh,” Theo nodded, taking in the information. “That’s good to know. I like what you did there. Wrapping yourself in the glass was a good call.”

  Pip smiled, still able to feel the memory of the glass over her body. It was rough, very rough. Hard to move in. But sturdy, considering she’d hardly taken any injury, despite being thrown outside the safety ring. “Yeah, I like it.”

  “I don’t,” Mai said, planting her hands on her hips. “You’re going to fix this window.”

  “I will, promise,” Pip said. “But before I do…” She summoned the glass again, encasing her body in glass, forming a rough suit of armor around her body. If this worked right, maybe she could be a brawler. “Theo, why don’t you hit me again?”