Once Pip recovered from Violet's punch, which luckily hadn't been full strength or she'd probably be in a recovery room with a few broken ribs instead of just being winded, they made their way to a training room. Violet booked the room as Pip leaned against the wall, one hand still pressed to her side as she took in slow, gradual breaths. The ache in her side soothed but was still there, present when she moved too fast or tried to talk too much.

"A room opens up in ten," Violet said, pacing back over. She leaned back against the wall across from Pip, arms crossed over her chest. Her eyebrows knit together in concern, which Pip did her best to ignore. "You sure you want to do this right now?"

"I'm sure," Pip said, speaking evenly. As they spoke, she consciously circled her core, trying to both digest the new element added to it, and speed up the heeling process. Without any broken bones, it shouldn't take too long. "I want to figure out exactly what I got from you."

"No clue," Violet says. "If you're not more durable now, I have no idea what you would have taken. And I also can't tell."

"Your core is fine, though?" Pip wasn't especially familiar with power sharing, at least by experience, but she didn't think it was so… aggressive. Maybe she should have waited and been more patient, but she didn't think either of them were especially good at that. They'd rather be training or fighting than sitting in the dark meditating. Pip was more likely to fall asleep than not.

Violet shrugged. "Feels the same. Should I be able to feel anything?"

"No clue," Pip said. "That's probably a question for Canvas."

Violet shot a glance toward the door of the room they were waiting for, then down the hallway. "I probably have time if I ran but…" She shrugged again. "I don't really care that much."

"I'm sorry you're not getting much out of this," Pip said.

"It's no big deal. Canvas warned me that there's usually a limit to how much straightforward powers can get from power sharing. We're usually the ones doing the sharing, not the gaining. They've booked me an appointment with a healer type though, to see if we can increase my healing speed a bit. It's pretty human, in terms of things."

Pip nodded. Taking on a healer aspect was something most heroes tried to do; it freed things up a little bit in the field, so healers could focus on civilians, and gave them a bit more endurance. "Yeah, I need to do that too."

"Wouldn't you need to sleep with one first?"

The groan escaped Pip's mouth before she could stop it. "I really don't want that to be the only way I can power share."

"Why not?" Violet asked. "Doesn't sound like there's any downsides to me."

"Because I don't want to sleep around, I guess?" Pip shrugged, then winced as pain shot through her side. "It just seems so cheap. I don't want to use people."

"Is it really using people, though?" Violet asked. "I mean, if you're up front about it, I don't think it's a big deal. It's not like they're not getting something out of it too." When Pip made an inquisitive look, Violet elaborated. "Sex!"

"It's not just that," Pip said after a moment. She fiddled with the hem of her shirt, stopping just above the waistband on her leggings. "I just don't feel right about it. I want a good, long lasting relationship. Not just sex."

Violet chuckled, then shook her head. Her dark hair, which was chopped into a short pixie type haircut, fell across her face for a moment before she flicked it back. "Well, I suppose that's fair enough. I hope I didn't give you the wrong impression—"

"No, no," Pip said quickly, shaking her head. "It's not like you ever gave any indication of wanting to go on a date." She chuckled awkwardly and wrapped her arms around herself, forcing herself to stop fidgeting. How much longer did they need to wait for the training room? Couldn't the campus afford more training rooms, so they didn't have to wait like this?

"Dates aren't really my thing," Violet said with a shrug. She stared at Pip for a moment before pushing herself off the wall and pacing back to the door. Without windows, there was no way to peer inside, but she eyed it just the same. Her boots rang out on the floor as she made her way back. "Two more minutes."

"Great."

Those two minutes dragged on like an hour before the door finally unlatched and Damien stepped out ahead of the blue haired Jaise, who Pip only knew in passing. She realized she was doing a bad job at getting to know people and networking like she should be while in the program, but talking to people was hard, and she already had plenty of people to talk to. Still, she waved at them and flashed Damien a smile as they passed in the corridor.

The boy didn't return her wave, but that wasn't so odd for him. He was probably used to not using that hand so much.

Following Violet into the training room, she pulled the door shut behind them, the latch clearly clicking into place. She bounced on her toes once, the familiar thrill of the fight rushing through her. She was aware it maybe wasn't the healthiest emotion, if you could call battle thrill an emotion, but the prospect of fighting, no matter how meaningless, always excited her.

"How do you want to begin?" Violet asked, stepping into the middle of the room. She lifted her feet, running her hands along the soles as if she was in a basketball game. Pip had only gone to one of those, but it had seemed to be a common enough thing, though she wasn't entirely certain what it did.

Pip shrugged. "Could just spar," she suggested. "See what comes up?"

"Sounds good to me," Violet agreed.

"I should probably practice my kinesis," Pip sighed, stopping herself before she summoned her sword and armor. Her fingers itched like her skin was burning, but she didn't summon it. With a sinking sensation, she put the idea aside and prepared to focus on her kinesis instead of her weapon creation. If she was going to be a support hero, it was what she needed to work on the most. She couldn't be a brawler, not without a miracle.

"Why?" Violet asked, shaking her head. "I like your suit of armor."

"Yeah, well, I'm supposed to be a support hero," Pip said with a sigh.

"What, for the upcoming test?"

Pip shrugged noncommittally. "I can't seem to get my power to the place it needs to be for me to be a brawler."

"I thought that's the way you knew how to fight?"

"Yeah, but my power can't keep up," Pip said, the words like sawdust on her tongue, worse than the time she'd been dared to lick the tree in the backyard. Pine sap tasted terrible. "Having to be the support hero in our last test made me realize I should probably just focus on that."

"If you want, I guess," Violet said, shifting. "It just kinda sounds like bullshit to me."

Pip blinked. For weeks, everyone had been telling her the same thing. Not just weeks, but months. Florence had pointed it out over a year ago. She couldn't be a brawler. Her power just didn't work for the role, and no matter how much she tried to pound her power into submission, it was like hammering a square peg into a round hole. "What do you mean?"

"If you want to be a brawler, be a damn brawler," Violet said. "It's how you fight. It's what you're good at. I don't know that I've met another person as good with weapons as you are."

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Warmth flooded her cheeks, but she tried to keep her head on straight. "It's not just a matter of me being good with weapons. It's about my ability to split my focus. If we weren't relying on powers at all, sure, I could fight that way. I'm great with weapons, and I've been trained how to fight like a brawler since I could walk. But powers are our reality. In order to keep myself safe and have the durability I need to be a proper hero brawler, I need my suit of armor, and having to kinetically wield my armor and weapons splits my focus so much that I can't move at full speed, and then I'm not a good brawler anymore. I just… don't have the mental capacity to keep up with it all."

"Isn't that something you can work on?"

"I'm trying to work on it," Pip agreed. "And I'm getting better with my kinesis, but trying to move my body and my glass at the same time and same speed is difficult, to say the least. So, I've been focusing more on trying to learn the support role. That way at least I can still be a good hero, even if I can't be a brawler."

Violet nodded along before finally shaking her head. "Still sounds like bullshit to me. I want to fight you properly, Pip, brawler versus brawler."

A smile stretched across Pip's face. "I guess I can give it another go. At least for a spar."

Violet laughed and dropped into her ready position, fists raised. "Better summon that armor, Carter, otherwise this is going to hurt."

Violet pushed off the ground, hard, launching herself at Pip faster than any mere human could. Not as fast as a speedster, but still.

Instinct screamed to get out of the way, and the indecision held her in place for a moment. If she was going to play support, she could have glass barriers built in an instant to slow the strongman down, but if she was going to be a brawler, she needed to summon her armor.

This was exactly the sort of dilemma she was trying to avoid.

Moments before Violet reached her, with punches that would no doubt break Pip's ribs, she slammed her hands together and formed a shield. The shield was as large as she was, tall enough to hide her for a moment and take both blows Violet had ready.

The glass didn't so much as crack.

Pip made her decision. Glass formed around her like a shell, a second skin sticking to her. It wasn't pretty, not like the sketches she'd drawn in her notebook throughout the years, but she hoped it'd be functional.

Her height grew by several inches, enough to put her eyes to eye with Violet. In the same breath, she summoned a sword to match the insane height of the shield, outstretched in one hand. It was overkill, and that was putting it lightly, but it looked goddamn badass. No one could say that giant swords weren't fucking awesome.

It was more glass than she usually had summoned at once, and for a moment she doubted her ability to handle it all. The glass was heavy, and in order to use any of it, she had to keep a telekinetic hold on it constantly just to make it light enough for her to wield. This was the exact reason she'd been advised to go the support route. But she didn't have a chance to overthink it as Violet came at her again.

She grabbed her shield in one hand, dragging it to her shoulder and using it as a battering ram, slamming into Violet. One second, the girl was running at her, the next, she'd lost her footing. Pip didn't let up. The moment one foot lost purchase with the ground, Pip struck, sweeping down with the edge of her dulled swordblade.

It caught Violet on the ankle, knocking her feet out from beneath her. Before she could hit the ground, she summoned a sheet made of glass, catching her as if on a shelf.

That was one lesson Athena had drilled into her, though Pip had never known what to do until now. It was hard to tell when a strongman was just a strongman, or a grounded strongman like Athena, but one way to find out was to sever their connection with the ground. Pip had never been able to manage it with Athena, in part because her mother was so much stronger than she was, but also because Pip just didn't have the means of getting her off the ground.

Her chest heaved as she stood there, glaring down at Violet through the tinted visor of her knight's helmet, shield in one hand, sword in the other, and plate of glass still hovering in the air as if it had always existed there. She took a step forward, and surprise flashed across Violet's face.

"What?" Pip asked, freezing.

"I thought you said you couldn't manage telekinetic movement and physical movement at the same time," Violet said. She shifted upright on the plate of glass, swinging her legs over the side as if seated on a bench.

"What are you talking about?"

"Do that again," Violet ordered. She motioned Pip backward, and she took a step without thinking. The armor moved with her, as smooth as if it wasn't even there. She froze, eyes going wide.

How am I doing that?

She paused, focusing inward before slowly lifting her arm, keeping her power on but not consciously moving any of the glass as she normally would to. Instead of remaining in place or refusing to allow her to move, both her arm and the sword lifted as smoothly as though she was moving it naturally. Pip stared at the limb as if it didn't belong to her, lifting it up then bringing it down in a smooth arc.

Air whooshed around the sword as it sliced through the space in front of her.

"Try moving the rest of you now," Violet said, rising to her feet. "Jog in place, or something. Keep holding the sword and shield."

Pip obliged, jogging quickly in place. Glass tinkled around her like a thousand windchimes, but moved with each movement. It was as though she was wearing clothes made of glass, not hundreds of pounds worth of glass armor.

"What about this?" Violet asked, motioning to the plate of glass Pip still had in place.

Pip quickly extended her awareness to the glass shelf, finding she still had to manipulate it like normal if she wanted to move it. "That's normal," she said, twisting the plate in the air and standing it upright like a door. "Regular kinesis still." She then lifted her arm, watching the armor move without so much as a thought or moment of strain. "This is…"

"Is it super strength?" Violet asked, tilting her head curiously to the side.

"I thought that's not your power."

"It's not," Violet said.

Pip shook her head. "Then it's not super strength. Where would I have gotten that from?"

"No clue," Violet said. "I'm going to go grab Florence."

"Why not Canvas?" Pip asked, but Violet was already gone, sprinting out of the training room door as though her life depended on it.

Pip stayed in place for a moment, heart racing as she mentally inspected her power. If something had changed, it was minor, but the result was impressive. She moved as fluidly in the armor as she did outside of it, walking around the room with ease. The only difference was the fact that in her armor, she was several inches taller, something that threw off her depth perception when she began summoning small glass knives and telekinetically throwing them around the room.

There was still the usual matter of strain whenever she summoned and manipulated a piece of glass away from her own body, but the fact that she could do that and still carry around the suit of armor, shield, and sword like it was nothing made up for that entirely. It seemed that so long as the glass was touching her body, she could move it without issue.

She couldn't stop smiling as she moved through exercises she'd never been able to manage in full plate before. Whatever she'd done, whatever had unlocked inside her because of the addition of Violet's power, it had cleared up the biggest issue she had with her power. Her limits were still there, but this was no longer included in them.

Florence stepped through the door ahead of Violet and paused as his eyes landed on her. Pip lifted a hand, still covered in little pieces of interlocking glass, and waved. "Hi!"

Violet shoved him from behind. "Don't just stand there," she said as he stumbled further into the room, allowing her to pull the door shut. "Figure out what changed with her power."

"What did change with your power?" Florence asked, though not without shooting Violet a dirty look.

"I can move now," she said, twirling the sword as though it wasn't a foot wide and over five feet long. "Like, actually move."

Florence walked around her in a slow circle as she moved, following his every step. His eyebrows twitched, and Pip was struck with the sudden urge to challenge him to a rematch. They'd sparred once, close to a year ago now, and she'd lost. Things were different now.

She kept her mouth shut as he hummed thoughtfully. "And this happened after the power class exercise?" Pip nodded, and he pointed at Violet. "You were paired with her, right?"

"I told you that already," Violet said impatiently.

Florence ignored him, and asked Pip to explain further. She recounted what she'd realized about the change as quickly as she could, breathless by the time she finished.

Florence nodded thoughtfully. "It sounds like you picked up a bit of the kinetic side of Violet's powers," he said. To their blank stares, he continued to elaborate. "Vi, your power relies on kinetic movement and energy, correct?"

"That's it," she agreed.

"That's what I think you picked up, Pip. You took on a little bit of that kinetic power base."

"Shouldn't that just mean I hit harder?" she asked, thinking about Violet's power.

"No, no." Florence waved hand, clearly frustrated that they weren't getting it. "When you power shared with Khione, you didn't get an ice creation ability, did you? No, you got a tiny sliver of cold, so now your glass is heat resistant. It's like that, only with kinetic power. Instead of normal telekinesis, now you have kinetic telekinesis, or tactile telekinesis, so you can more easily move the things you can touch."

The smile that stretched across her face nearly stopped her from forming the next words. "Does this mean I can be our brawler for midterms?"

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