The glass summon clunked as it walked across the floor, Pip directing every movement with her mind. She gritted her teeth, trying to change the joints, make them smoother, faster. Glass scraped against each other, grinding off with an ear biting noise, worse than chalk on a chalkboard.

  A grunt of frustration escaped her mouth as she let the summon stop, only for it to lose balance and crash onto its face. Glass broke and slid across the floor, only to be cleared up as she unsummoned the material.

  It wasn’t fair. Khione was so good at this without even trying. Pip spent months researching and trying to build summons, and she couldn’t get hers to move as smoothly as Khione’s did on a first try. It didn’t even matter that Khione had lost, her summon had just been so good. Even after losing, onlookers had complimented her, slapping her on the back and congratulating her on the effort.

  Not Pip, though. Pip could win fights, but not with her craft, because the craft wasn’t there.

  And she didn’t even have the time to get better at this.

  A knock sounded at the door, pounding against the wood. “Leaving now!” Mai shouted through the door. “You’re not missing super club!”

  “I’m coming!” Pip shouted back. “Just give me a minute.”

  There wasn’t enough time for everything she had to be doing. She needed to train, needed to figure out what changes she needed to make to her fighting style to make her a better hero, needed to get better at utilizing her glass. Then there was school, and keeping her grades up enough to not be grounded again. She didn’t have the time to train these supers, not the way they needed.

  She grabbed her shoes and took off, shoving her feet into the nearest pair of sneakers as she reached the front door.

  Mai tapped her hand against the steering wheel as Pip threw herself into the front seat, slamming the door shut behind her.

  “Pip…”

  “Sorry, Mum,” Pip said. She clicked the seatbelt on, looking over at her mother. Mai wouldn’t like this, it was part of Pip’s punishment for sneaking out, but Pip couldn’t keep this up. “Mum… I don’t know how much longer I can help the L.O.S.E.R.S.”

  “What?” Mai asked, backing the car out. “Why not?”

  “I have other things to focus on,” Pip said. “School. Training. End of semester is coming up fast, and then I only have another semester to get everything sorted before I go into the hero program. I don’t have the time, Mum.”

  “And what about the L.O.S.E.R.S?” she asked. “They’re your friends, Pip. You’re just going to abandon them?”

  “I…” Pip bit her tongue. She didn’t want to abandon the losers, not like that. “They need someone better than me to train them.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “I will find a way to help them,” Pip said, glancing over at her mother. “I don’t want to leave them hanging, Mum, I just… Being a hero is important to me. I don’t know what I’ll do if I don’t make it.”

  Even as her fingers tightened around the wheel, Mai let out a sigh. “You’ll make it, honey.”

  “I need to be sure,” Pip said. “I need to get better. I… know I have weaknesses, and I need to try and fix them. Or patch them. I have to be smart about my power, and I need time to be able to figure it all out. I don’t want to abandon the losers, but this is more important.”

  “More important than your friends.”

  “This could mean their lives one day, Mum.” Why couldn’t Mai just understand this? It wasn’t that Pip wanted to abandon these people, but she was stronger than them, and she had to stay that way if she wanted to be able to protect them someday. It was the family legacy, to protect, to defend, to be the strongest. Grandma Thalia was the single most influential hero in the world. Athena was one of the strongest active heroes in the world. And Pip could summon glass, and apparently she’d wasted her talents by focusing entirely on weapons and close combat fighting.

  How was she supposed to continue the legacy as things stood?

  “Okay,” Mai said softly.

  “Okay?”

  “You know I don’t want to stop you,” Mai said, then shook her head. “Well, you know I’d prefer you didn’t go into this line of work, but I won’t stop you. But you’re not a hero yet, Phillipa. You need to enjoy high school.”

  “How am I supposed to enjoy high school?” Pip demanded. “I’m in school for eight hours in a uniform, learning things I’ll never use day to day, and then I have to come home and do homework.”

  Mai side eyed her as she drove. “You know that’s not what I mean.”

  “I went on a date the other night?”

  “One you haven’t even talked about,” Mai said.

  “Mum!”

  “You can tell me things, you know,” Mai said. “I’m a cool mom.”

  “Please never say that again.”

  “I’m just saying, if you want to talk, you can talk,” Mai said.

  “I don’t want to.” Even as she said the words, she knew it wasn’t fair. The date had been fine. Khione had a great time, they made out afterward, then made their way home separately. It was a good date, by all reasoning, except she couldn’t stop thinking about how much better Khione was than her.

  It wasn’t that she was upset Khione was good. It was just… she was good so fast. Pip was supposed to be the teacher; she couldn’t teach Khione if she was already than Pip.

  She would just have to get better, fast. Somehow.

  Mai pulled up outside the gym, having been repaired on Carter generosity. With the gym fixed, Mai was allowed to supervise again, and happily carried gallons of Chinese food inside for the losers. Evidently, a few weeks away made the group appreciate Mai because cheers went up as she walked through the door, eager and hungry hands flocking to help her carry the food inside and set it up on a long white table.

  Leaving Pip with no reason to hang back, her help no longer needed.

  Which meant she needed to face Khione.

  Arms crossed over her chest, Khione tapped a foot against the floor as she glared daggers across the gym. Pip was irrefutably the target, but she glanced behind her anyway, hoping desperately someone else had incurred her wrath. No luck, no dice.

  Pip sprinted across the room, stopping in front of Khione with a squeak from her not so trusty sneakers. They just weren’t the same as the pair Florence had melted.

  “Uh, hi,” Pip said, ducking her head.

  “You’ve been ignoring me.”

  Okay, Khione was cutting straight to the chase.

  “I wasn’t!” Pip protested.

  Khione raised an eyebrow, accusatory. Pip didn’t really have grounds to be able to say she hadn’t been avoiding Khione when she hadn’t responded to her texts, or answered her calls.

  “You don’t have to tell me,” Khione said, already moving. She walked past Pip, brushing past her shoulder.

  “Ugh, come on!” Pip threw her hands up and spun around after Khione, sprinting to put herself in front of the girl. She didn’t want to ruin what she had with Khione, not over a summon. Not over something Pip had taught Khione how to do. “I’m sorry,” she said, holding up her hands. Whether it was to stop Khione, or a sign of surrender, she wasn’t certain. “I have been avoiding you.”

  “I know!” Khione cried, voice raising into a shout. Eyes turned their direction, trying to peer into their conversation. Turning away from the attention, Khione sniffed, the sound wet like she was about to cry. Was Khione about to cry? Pip had never seen Khione get emotional, what was she supposed to do about this. “Why? What did I do?”

  “You didn’t do anything,” Pip said. If Khione started crying, Pip wouldn’t be able to deal with it. She needed to cut it off before it could start.

  “Because you haven’t spoken to me since our date.”

  “I’ve been busy.”

  “Too busy to text me back?” Khione demanded. “I know training is important to you, but you could at least tell me that’s what you’re doing! You didn’t even text me back after our date the other night. You could have been murdered, for all I knew.”

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  “Oh, please,” Pip scoffed. “If someone tried to kill me, they’d get a glass knife to the eye.”

  Khione rolled her eyes, lips pressed into a tight line. Okay, so maybe that joke didn’t land the way Pip wanted it to.

  “Okay, I’m sorry,” Pip said. “I should have texted you.”

  “You should have.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Are you going to explain why you didn’t text me?” Khione asked, fingers tapping against her arm.

  “I…” Pip glanced around, wishing there was somewhere private to talk in the gym and coming up short. Half the eyes of the club stared at them, Mai’s included, watching them from the table full of chinese food. “Why don’t we go outside?”

  Khione opened her mouth, shut it again, and then answered. “Okay,” she said. “We can go outside.”

  Pip reached out for Khione’s hand, the girl pulling it away and taking a brisk pace as she angled toward the door. Great. Pip sighed and took off after her, taking a quick detour to her mother to let her know they’d be going for a walk before sprinting to catch up with Khione.

  Khione stood outside, hands deep inside the pockets of the leather jacket Pip had bought for her. With a chill in the air, Pip couldn’t help but wish she’d grabbed a jacket, but she ignored it as she walked up beside Khione.

  “There’s a coffee shop down the street,” she said, nodding to the sidewalk.

  “Are you bribing me?”

  “Would you complain if I did?”

  “Yes,” Khione snapped. “But coffee sounds fine.” She started walking, this time slow enough for Pip to easily keep up. An opening for her to talk, or apologize, beg for forgiveness.

  Which meant Pip would either need to come up with a convincing lie, or admit the truth. And lying would only hurt her worse in the long run. “I’m sorry for avoiding you,” Pip said, working up to the truth slowly. “It’s not that I didn’t have a good time on our date. I did! But I just… It made me realize how much more work I need to do.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Your summon was so good,” Pip said.

  She stopped in place, spinning to face Pip on the sidewalk, face contorting with anger. “You stopped talking to me over that?” Khione shouted.

  “It’s not that!” Pip exclaimed. “Well, it kind of is, but… It just made me realize how much work I need to do with my power.”

  A wild, bitter laugh escaped from Khione’s mouth before she cut it off. “You’re already better with your power than anyone else I know. And you’re mad that I could do this one thing?”

  “I’m not mad!”

  “You have issues, Carter. You can’t imagine not being the best, most powerful person in the room, and when someone else is better than you for once, you lose your goddamn mind!”

  “That’s not it,” Pip protested. “I just need to try harder. So I’ve been focusing on my training.”

  “You’re insane,” Khione said. “Fucked up and insane because you can’t even chill long enough to not compete with your girlfriend!”

  Pip’s mind went momentarily blank. “Girlfriend?”

  “Oh, fuck you,” Khione spat. She started walking again, forcing Pip to sprint to catch up with her. Apparently, beg for forgiveness it was.

  “That’s not what I meant!” Pip shouted after her. “I just… You never called us that before.”

  Khione slowed, gradually stopping once more. “Do you have a problem with that?”

  “With being called your girlfriend? No.”

  “Good.”

  “So… are we good?” Was that all Khione wanted?

  “I still think you have issues,” Khione said.

  “I probably do,” Pip admitted. Maybe it wasn’t normal to be so obsessed with being the best, wanting to win, but it wasn’t something Pip could fix easily. And it wasn’t a problem, not so long as it worked for her. “I’m sorry for getting jealous.”

  “I don’t even understand why you’re jealous,” Khione said. “You’re the one who taught me how to make a summon.”

  “You’re just so much better at it than me.”

  “Maybe because I actually took anatomy and biology seriously?” Khione offered. “Or maybe I’m just good at it. Who knows. You’re better with fighting than I’ll ever be.”

  “You could be,” Pip said, giving her an appraising look. “I bet you’re an axe girl. Put an axe in your hands, you’ll be a terror.”

  Khione snorted. “Sure, Pip. You’re still not getting me to pick up a weapon.”

  “Okay,” Pip said, a smile pulling at the corners of her lips. This was the Khione she wanted, the one she knew how to deal with, the one she shouldn’t have pissed off.

  They turned off the main road, cutting across a parking lot to reach the coffee shop wedged between a climbing gym and a phone store. Contrasting wildly with the rest of the shopping mall, the cafe had an old fashioned, cottage-like appearance and the scent of coffee and cinnamon heavy in the air as they walked through the door.

  A line extended from the counter, which they joined. Pip spent a moment staring up at the menu, items listed in cursive that twisted and shifted before Pip’s eyes before she gave up. They would have something chocolate and that would be good enough.

  Turning her attention from the menu, Pip looked around the room. A wall of knicknacks to their left, full of everything from mugs to pieces of jewelry to bags of coffee. In addition to the shelf wall, a poster board on the wall, covered in pieces of paper. She scanned across it, not really taking anything in until her eyes caught on a familiar logo.

  She ducked out of line, leaving Khione to keep their place and stopped in front of the sign. Amidst messages proclaiming yard sales and lost puppies, greenhouses and concerts, was a sign printed on waxy paper from the local super gym, Lets Get Meta. She’d never been, no point when you could access the training grounds at the New Denver Tower of Unity and had a training arena at home, and hated the name. Super was so much better than meta, when it came to referring to the powered humans.

  But it wasn’t the name of the gym that caught her attention. It was the sign they’d printed.

  Powered gym competition, the sign declared, printed in a bold, simple font easier for Pip to read. Fight, display your powers, and win a spot in the most well known meta gym in New Denver.

  Pip snatched the poster off the board, tearing it from the pin and spinning around with it in hand.

  “Hey!” the barista cried from behind the counter. “You can’t just take that.”

  “It’s a flier,” Pip said, holding it up. “Isn’t that the whole purpose?”

  “We have more over here,” the barista said, trailing off at the end, clearly defeated. Pip winced, but didn’t put the flier back. She would pin up one of the unripped fliers before she left, but this one was hers.

  “What was that about?” Khione asked, grabbing Pip’s free hand and pulling her in. “Not the Summoner’s Ring again?”

  “No, no,” Pip said, holding up the poster with a grin. This was her ticket to helping the losers and getting them the training Pip couldn’t give them. And, Mai wouldn’t be nearly so upset if Pip got them into the gym before leaving to focus on her own training. “It’s a super gym.”

  “So?” Khione shook her head. “There are like, hundreds of those.”

  “Not hundreds, but yeah,” Pip said. “But it’s not that.”

  They reached the front of the line, forcing them to order before they could continue talking. Once Pip paid, they migrated to the far end of the wooden countertop, waiting on an iced caramel mocha and a hot dirty chai respectively. Khione’s taste had surprised Pip, but only until she took a second to think about it. If chai was a person, it’d definitely be a hot, sarcastic one. Just like Khione.

  Once the barista delivered their coffees, Pip grabbed Khione and dragged her outside so they could talk without anyone overhearing. Not that they were talking about anything wrong, unlike the Summoner’s Ring, but sometimes people got sensitive about the topic of supers.

  “It’s a competition,” Pip said, waving the flier.

  “I know you love competition, but—”

  “That’s not it,” Pip said, cutting Khione off. “It’s not for me. It’s for you. For the losers.”

  Khione frowned, looking at the flier. “You expect us to, what, fight in this?”

  “Compete, but yeah,” Pip said. “It would be great. The prize is a spot in the gym for a year! Think of all the good it could do for the losers.”

  “We’d be graduated by then,” Khione said, shaking her head.

  “But we’re the only seniors,” Pip said. “The rest of them, they’d have at least a year in the gym, and once you have a spot, it would be easy enough to hold onto it. They’d be able to get the training they need to really be good with their powers.”

  “And how are they supposed to get the training they need to win the spot to begin with?” Khione asked.

  “Well, me, probably,” Pip said. That part was less ideal, but the amount of good she could do if she got them into this gym was far greater than what she could do with a few months of her full attention. Maybe she could get her siblings involved, and they could help her out? “I do have two brothers and a sister in high school, though. They could help.”

  “Would they?” Khione asked. “Because I don’t see them in the club now.”

  “I think I could get Mum behind the idea,” Pip said. “And if she’s behind the idea, she’ll be able to convince them.”

  “I don’t know,” Khione said. She looked at the flier again, nose wrinkled in that adorable way Pip couldn’t help but stare at. “Wouldn’t we be going against adults and stuff? Would we even be able to participate?”

  “I think it would say if you needed to be over eighteen,” Pip said, looking at the flier again. A number sat at the bottom of the paper, printed in dark ink. She pulled out her phone, dialing the number. “I’m going to call them.”

  “Wait, Pip, what?” Khione grabbed her arm, trying to stop her. “You need to talk to the group first.”

  “I’m just going to see if we can participate,” Pip said, pulling away from her. She put the phone up to her ear, listening as the phone dialed.

  “I swear to God, Pip, if you sign us up…”

  The line picked up, someone on the other end talking the moment they answered. “Thank you for calling Lets Get Meta. Would you like to make an appointment for a consultation?”

  “Uh, no,” Pip said, looking back down at the flier. “I’m calling about the competition. The one for the gym space?”

  “Of course,” the phone voice answered. “How many in your team? And the name?”

  “The Losers,” Pip said, stuttering as she searched for the actual club name in her mind. “Laymont Official Super Exercise and Refined Studies. How old do you have to be to participate?”

  “Eighteen, or have parent’s permission,” they said without missing a beat. “How many in your group?”

  “Uh,” Pip looked over at Khione, mentally counting up how many were active in their group, along with her three siblings. “Twelve?”

  “Perfect,” they said. “Is this a good contact number for the team?”

  “Yes?”

  “And what’s your name?”

  “Phillipa Carter…”

  The line paused for a moment before the worker laughed on the other line. “Hope you’re not one of those Carters,” they said. “All right, I think that’s all the information we need. We’ll message you shortly with more details.”

  “Uh…”

  The line went dead. Pip pulled the phone down from her ear, staring at Khione, who looked pissed.

  “You signed up for the competition, didn’t you?”

  “I didn’t mean to!” Pip protested. “They just didn’t give me any other options.”

  “You’re stupid.”

  “At least we know we can compete?”