Lía nods once. "Increase by five percent," she says, because of course she has an exact number ready.
They both subtly lengthen their stride. I match them. The arena blurs a little more.
We pass another team; I catch a few startled looks when they realize the "baby" is keeping pace with two S-class Radiants without looking like she's dying. Half a lap later, I'm breathing harder, but it still feels clean. My muscles burn in a way that says working, not failing.
For the first time in my life, running with other people, I'm not counting the seconds until I have to peel off and pretend I need water.
Lía glances at me again. "Body check," she calls.
"Good," I say, and mean it. "Chest is fine. Legs are fine. Anxiety… still here, but quieter."
"Excellent," she says. "We will build on this."
By the time we complete the second circuit, sweat's prickling at my hairline, but I'm not gasping. No side stitch. No collapsing fantasy. Just that satisfying, heavy-legged feeling of used, not broken.
We slow to a coordinated jog, then a walk, breath syncing down together as our team marker pulses at the far side of the arena.
"Forge-01," Reyes calls from the platform. "Up front."
My heart kicks up again, but this time, it's more readiness than fear. I squeeze Lía's hand once, feel her squeeze back, and we cut across the arena toward her, all three of us moving in step.
Reyes doesn't waste time. She eyes the three of us the way a mechanic eyes a car that's either going to purr or explode, then taps her tablet. The grid under our feet hums.
"All right, Forge-01," she says. "Baseline scenario. No theatrics. You're escorting a civilian from Point A to Point B while the arena tries to make that annoying. Light hazards only, no live fire. Your job: keep the 'civilian' intact, don't wreck the field, don't wreck yourselves. Clear?"
A little hard-light mannequin pops into existence beside us. Neutral gray, "CIV" stenciled on its chest.
"Yes, Instructor," we say together.
Reyes lifts a brow at the chorus, types something on her pad that I'm 90% sure is "creepy twins + baby = hive mind??" and steps back.
"On my mark," she calls. "Three. Two. One. Go."
The world moves.
Panels ahead of us tilt up into low obstacles. Sections of the floor drop two inches, then four, creating trip lines. Hard-light "debris" flickers into being overhead. Nothing heavy, just enough to be annoying. Little hazard cones flash yellow at the edges of the path.
I expect chaos. I expect to immediately overthink and stall.
For a few steps, I kind of do.
My feet stutter once; I almost clip the edge of a panel before Leo's light spills ahead in a fan and shows the shadow of where it's about to lift, his aura brightening with each stride.
"Watch your right," he calls, easy. "Baby step."
I correct, heart pounding. Okay. Not dead. Civilian still upright.
"Sol, between us," Lía reminds me, that calm instructor voice she gets when she's trying not to spook me. "Stay close to Leo's left. I'll manage overhead."
I pull the mannequin in tighter, fingers biting into its hard-light shoulder. My Echo tugs at the edges of everything, too much noise, too many moving pieces. I force it down to "one," the way Kaur drilled: just motion, just pressure, nothing fancy.
The panel three steps ahead twitches.
"Left," I blurt, a half-second late. "Panel's going to kick your right foot, Leo. Half-step shorter."
He adjusts, but it's close enough that his boot still scrapes the edge. He huffs out a breath that's half laugh, half "okay, she's not wrong."
"Good catch," he says. "Try to call it one beat earlier."
"Overhead. Two, three, gap," Lía adds, smooth as ever. "Sol, keep the civilian between us. I'll clear the debris."
She raises a hand. Hard-light flares in precise, thin planes, each one appearing exactly where the falling pieces are going to be, not where they are. The first few chunks hit a little closer than I'd like; one glances off Leo's shoulder before shattering and sliding along an angled pane she's already recalculated.
"Sorry!" I yelp, tugging the mannequin sideways.
"Still intact," he says. "We're fine. Keep talking."
I swallow, let my eyes go a little unfocused the way Kaur taught me, tracking lines instead of shapes. The floor feels weird up ahead, a pressure shift, like walking toward a curb in the dark.
"Floor dip in four," I manage, more confidently this time. "Hearth-style, shallow, but it'll screw your ankle if you hit it full speed. Leo, you can bridge that?"
"On it," he says.
He drives his heel down as he hits the edge of the dip, converting the impact into a tight, radiant strip that solidifies across the gap. It's bright for a second, then settles into a steady glow as our momentum feeds it.
We cross without breaking pace.
The arena tries harder. Hazard cones flash red now; a side panel slides in, narrowing the path. A fake "explosion" pops off to the right, sound and light with no heat.
I flinch anyway. The mannequin wobbles; my grip slips for a second, and I have to scramble to keep it upright.
"Stay with it," Lía says. Not sharp, just anchoring. "We do not need perfection. We need continuous adjustment."
My Echo wants to grab everything now, rising with my adrenaline. I breathe, shove it back down. One. Just one. Motion lines, pressure changes. It's like radio static at first, then, slowly, a pattern.
"Path's going to choke in… six?" I say, testing the number as it comes out. "Three obstacles. High, low, then a fake-out hole. Go single file, I'll take rear."
"No," Lía says instantly. "Leo first. You second. I anchor."
We switch positions. It's not perfectly smooth; Leo almost clips my heel, I bump the mannequin into his back, but we don't actually trip.
He vaults the high obstacle with frankly unnecessary style, the flare at takeoff turning into a brief, blinding arc that makes the timing easier for me. He ducks the low one, plants a light-stepping blast over the fake-out so the panel settles just as his foot leaves it. I herd the mannequin through in his wake, mimicking his foot placement as best I can. Behind me, Lía raises a hard-light shield that curves with the projected path of a falling "beam," then collapses it a split second after impact so the field can reset cleanly.
Somewhere above, I hear a faint murmur as other teams and instructors notice we're not immediately eating pavement, even if we're definitely not gliding.
The arena, apparently offended, shifts again.
The last stretch reconfigures into a zig-zag of moving panels and low walls, hazard cones now blinking a smug orange. A timer blinks in the air: 01:30 and ticking down.
My first instinct is to freeze. Clock plus obstacles plus other people depending on me is the exact recipe my brain hates.
"We don't have to beat the clock," Leo starts. "First run—"
"Right," I say quickly. "We can just—"
But the pattern ahead snaps into focus: the way the walls line up, the rhythm of the panel loop, the exact spots where Leo's light could cheat the geometry and where Lía could brace the landing. My fear skids on the surface of it and, weirdly, loses traction.
"Actually," I say, mouth moving faster than my nerves, "if we cut diagonally at the third wall and use Leo's hard-light as a ramp, we can shave… like twenty seconds and avoid the panel cluster altogether."
They both look at me. This time I don't flinch away from it.
"Vector?" Lía asks, already turning her attention where I'm looking, eyes narrowing like she's running numbers.
I point. My hand only shakes a little. "There. Wall three to wall five. The panels between are on a loop; they'll dip if you hit them at the right beat."
Leo's grin spreads, bright and sharp. "God, I love your weird brain," he says.
He sprints for the line I called, each footfall feeding his aura until it's almost too bright to look at. At the last second he slams a step down, dumping the built-up energy into a curved strip of light that arcs from wall three toward wall five.
The ramp isn't perfect. We hit it a little off-center, and I have to grab the civilian with both hands to keep it from tilting. Lía drops a thin support plane at the far end, catching the ramp's edge and bracing our landing vector so we don't bounce.
We take it together, Leo first, then me with one hand on the civilian and the other windmilling for balance, then Lía, adjusting the hard-light under our feet so the dummy doesn't even wobble at the end, even if I definitely did in the middle.
The timer flashes 00:41 as we step, slightly out of breath and more than a little surprised, into the glowing circle marking POINT B.
Everything stops.
No more shifting panels. No more hazard cones. The arena lights return to neutral.
For a heartbeat, it's so quiet I can hear my own breathing and the faint hum of the dampener. Up in the observation ring, people are standing. Not lounging, not half-watching. Standing. I can make out Diana's silhouette pressed to the glass, both hands up like she's watching a horror movie and a championship game at the same time.
Reyes stares at us. Her tablet chimes softly. She glances down at it, then back up at us, then squints like she's not sure the data is real.
"Okay," she says finally. "Who wants to tell me how many times you've run that scenario in private."
"What?" I ask, genuinely confused. "This is our first time in this arena."
Leo, for the first time in the entire morning, looks a little nervous. "It's our first official team run," he says, holding his hands up. "We've, uh, never actually done this as a three-piece before. Might take us a bit to sync, so if that was too fast we can totally—"
"Shut the fuck up, Aranda-Navarro," Reyes says calmly.
He snaps his mouth shut so fast I hear his teeth click.
She taps her tablet again, like maybe it will show her a different answer this time. It doesn't.
"What's the record on that escort pattern?" she calls up to the observation deck without looking away from us.
A disembodied voice answers through the arena speakers. "Previous best, fourth-years, Team Strata-01. Two minutes twelve with minor environment damage."
Reyes's gaze flicks briefly to the still-pristine panels around us. "And Forge-01's time?"
"Uh…" There's a pause. "One minute forty-nine. No structural damage. Civilian integrity at ninety-nine point eight percent. One minor debris impact to Radiant Leonardo Aranda-Navarro at the start, one brief stability deviation on the civilian. No other friendly hits. No missed hazards logged."
The murmuring around the arena spikes, then cuts off when Reyes raises one hand.
She just looks at us for a long, assessing moment. I start to fidget.
"Um," I say finally. "Is… that bad? We weren't trying to break anything, we just… it was like a puzzle, and—"
"It was like breathing," Leo blurts. "I mean. Not that we think we nailed it, obviously there's stuff to improve, we just—"
"Interesting," Lía says, more to herself than anyone. "I did not experience time distortion. But I also did not consciously track every adjustment." She glances at us. "Flow state," she decides.
Reyes pinches the bridge of her nose, then huffs out a small, incredulous laugh.
"Yeah," she says. "That's one name for it. Civilian got love-tapped, Radiant took a rock to the shoulder, finish lacked style points… but from the arena's perspective, that was basically textbook."
She looks up at the observation ring again. "Someone get Moreno and Kaur on a joint call," she says, voice crisp. "And flag Director Aranda's office. Tell them Forge-01 just casually beat a fourth-year bracket record on a warm-up drill."
My stomach drops. "I'm sorry," I say automatically. "We can do it slower?"
Reyes barks a short laugh, actually amused now. "Vega, if you apologize for being good one more time, I'm making it your homework."
I shut my mouth.
She steps closer, tablet hanging loose at her side. "All right, prodigies," she says. "Here's the situation. On paper, I'm supposed to run you through the standard third-year coordination ladder for the next six weeks. In practice, that would be a waste of everyone's time and my patience."
She jerks her chin toward the rest of the arena. A lot of faces are pretending not to stare.
"You just hit a full-team flow state on your first official run," she says. "No prior joint training, no pre-scripted plan. That does not happen. Not like that."
Her eyes flick between us, sharp. "Echo in the back with predictive mapping, strategist on the flank with pre-calculated hard-light, Radiant front man improvising inside safe parameters." She snaps her fingers once. "That's stupid good. And stupid dangerous if it's not managed."
My brain buzzes, half terrified, half… pleased.
"So," she says, as if deciding something. "I'm making some calls. Effective immediately, your schedules are under review."
"Under… review," I repeat weakly.
"You are not touching the generic drills again," she clarifies. "Not until I talk to Kaur, Moreno, and the Director about what to do with three weird little synergy monsters who think that was just 'pretty okay.'"
Leo swallows. "Pretty okay plus room for improvement?" he offers.
"Stop talking," she says, but there's no heat in it.
She steps back, raising her voice for the arena at large. "Forge-01 is benched for the next block while I fix whatever the hell the admin office gave me," she announces. "Everyone else, resume the plan: coordination drills by team, zones one through four. Yes, you still have to do the basic shit. No, you cannot 'Forge-01 speedrun' your way out of it."
The background noise cranks back up as other teams scramble to their assigned zones. A few people still sneak glances our way.
Reyes drops her voice again, looking straight at the three of us. "You didn't do anything wrong," she says, like she can see the panic building behind my eyes. "You just did something I did not expect this early. That means I have homework now. Try not to break any more records in the next ten minutes while I'm on comms."
"Is that… an official instruction?" Lía asks.
"Yes," Reyes says. "Consider it your most difficult assignment to date. Be mediocre until lunch."
Leo makes a face like she's just told him to breathe water.
Reyes is already turning away, tablet pinging as she starts firing off messages.
I exhale slowly, my hand finding Lía's again like it's been magnetized there.
"So," Leo says after a beat. "We did… okay?"
Lía tilts her head, replaying the run in her mind. "We did not die," she says. "We did not injure the civilian. We did not damage the environment. Instructor Reyes did not yell except in a complimentary manner." She squeezes my fingers once. "I think," she concludes, "this was… acceptable."
My heart is still thudding in my chest, but under the nerves there's a fizz of something else, something that feels suspiciously like pride.
"For a first run," I say, "I'll take 'acceptable.'"
"Same," Leo agrees. "Next time we can aim for 'mildly terrifying.'"
Lía looks at him, then at me. "We already achieved 'mildly terrifying,'" she says. "The goal now is 'sustainably terrifying.'"
I laugh, a little breathless. "Forge-01," I say. "Sustainably terrifying. I can live with that."
Somewhere above us, Reyes is on the comm with our professors and the Director, probably yelling about schedules and liability. Down here, in the quiet eye of the arena, three of us stand in our little team marker circle, hearts pounding in sync, wondering how, exactly, "team training" turned into "welcome to the advanced section" on day one.
The rest of the cohort gets wrangled into normal-people drills.
We… just stand there.
Our FORGE-01 marker circle hums softly under our feet, then dims as the arena recognizes we're "inactive." My adrenaline is still doing little tap-dances in my veins.
"So," Leo says eventually. "We're benched."
"Temporarily," Lía corrects. "Until Instructor Reyes adjusts our training parameters."
"Which," Leo says, "I'm ninety percent sure is code for 'yell at a lot of adults while they argue about whose problem we are.'"
I shift my weight, feeling that post-run itch in my muscles. My body wants to keep moving. Standing still right now feels wrong.
My gaze drifts to the far end of the arena. Behind the main drill space, half-hidden by retractable partitions, there's a whole other zone. Less floor-grid and more… park. A towering jungle gym of reinforced bars and rings, climbing walls with shifting holds, rotating platforms at different heights, a hanging maze of hard-light hoops that flicker from solid to intangible in patterns.
A sign hovers above it, cheerfully unhelpful:
SKILLS PARK – INDIVIDUAL / TEAM FREEPLAY
USE BRAIN. USE SPOTTERS. DO NOT SUE.
I nudge Lía with my shoulder and nod toward it. "What's that?"
She follows my line of sight, eyes narrowing slightly. "The Skills Park," she says. "Optional practice zone. Obstacle courses, balance work, mixed-ability paths. Third- and fourth-years use it to refine coordination outside formal drills."
"So like… a playground for supers," I say.
"Yes," she says. "With more liability forms."
The urge to climb things like a sugared-up raccoon hits me so hard I almost sway.
Leo tracks our focus and brightens. "Oh," he says. "Ohhh, I forgot they opened that for third-years this term. Nice."
"Are we allowed…?" I start.
"We are benched from the drill rotation," he says, already clearly building an argument. "Reyes didn't say we had to stand in one spot and contemplate our sins. She just doesn't want us breaking any more arena records while she's on the comm."
"We should maintain warm muscle temperature," Lía muses. "Cool-down is important, but we are not at risk of overtraining with our current load. Light activity would prevent stiffness."
I look between them. "So… active rest?"
"Exactly," Leo says, seizing on the phrase. "Active rest in the fun zone."
My anxiety does a little twitch. "What if that counts as 'breaking records'?"
"We will not engage with timers," Lía says. "We will explore mechanics. Low pressure. No competitive intent."
I glance back at the cluster of basic drills: cone weaves, simple shield formations, Radiants doing controlled bursts at stationary targets. Then at the Skills Park, where a couple of upper-years are casually bouncing from platform to platform like it's nothing.
My muscles ache in that good way from the escort run. My brain, weirdly, is the calmest it's been in days.
"…Yeah, okay," I say. "Active rest. Exploration. No records."
"Scout's honor," Leo says, immediately raising a hand and crossing his fingers behind his back with the same hand.
I squint at him. "I saw that."
He grins unabashedly. "I am constitutionally incapable of being near cool equipment and not testing limits. But I promise I won't try to break anything. Much."
"Optimal compromise scenario," Lía decides. "We proceed. We self-monitor. If the staff intervene, we cease."
"See?" Leo says. "She said it. It's legal now."
We drift toward the back of the arena, out of the main traffic flow. Nobody stops us; most people are too busy not getting yelled at to worry about the weird Forge-01 triangle heading toward the playground.
As we get closer, the Skills Park resolves into more detail. There's a multi-level climbing frame that looks like someone crossbred a jungle gym and a parkour course: angled walls, handle-less ledges, gaps designed for short-range teleporters and jump-boost kids.
A series of floating discs hover in a staggered line over a low pit padded with smart-foam, clearly meant for balance and mid-air redirections. Off to one side, a suspended maze of hard-light rings cycles through different glows: green when solid, blue when intangible, orange when they'll shove you sideways instead of letting you through.
"Okay," I breathe. "That's… extremely cool."
"Right?" Leo says, practically vibrating now. "They didn't have half of this when we were first-years."
"Upgrades were implemented last year," Lía says. "To reduce unauthorized parkour on the library facade."
"That was one time," Leo protests.
"You were caught three times," she says.
"Allegedly," he mutters.
We step over the low boundary line into the Skills Park. A little holo pop-up blinks politely in front of us:
REMINDER: SKILLS PARK IS UNSUPERVISED.
USE COMM S.O.S. IF YOU BREAK YOUR FACE.
"Comforting," I say.
"Accurate," Lía says.
There are a few other students scattered around—two Hearth kids practicing aura projection while balancing on wobble-discs, a Veil girl phasing through alternating solid/intangible rings, a Radiant boy doing ridiculous flips on the higher bars like he's auditioning for some kind of powered Cirque du Soleil.
No one pays us much attention beyond a quick glance.
Leo looks at us, eyes bright. "Okay," he says. "Menu of options. We've got: climbing, jumps, aerial nonsense, balance tests, ring maze—"
"Start low," Lía says. "Foundational assessment. We can escalate if Sol's body and anxiety cooperate."
I consider the towering jungle-gym and the springy floating discs. "The discs," I say. "They look… less likely to murder me on the first go."
"Excellent choice," Leo says. "Beginner-friendly. Probably."
We head toward the line of hovering circles. They're roughly the size of dinner plates, arranged in a curving path over the smart-foam pit. Some are steady; others wobble in place, reacting to motion.
I step up to the first one, suddenly aware that this is my first time trying to do something like this after my powers woke up. My body feels… tuned differently now. I don't quite know its limits.
"Permission to spot?" Lía asks quietly, hovering just behind my shoulder.
"Yes please," I say instantly.
She positions herself to the side, close enough to grab me if I pitch sideways. Leo hops into the pit itself, hands up.
"I will catch you with my sturdy Radiant body," he declares. "Fall with confidence."
I snort despite my nerves. "That's not how gravity works."
"It is now," he says.
I take a breath, feel the dampener's quiet hum, and step onto the first disc. It tilts under my weight—just a little. My muscles adjust automatically. I'm aware of how my ankles shift, how my center of gravity slides.
It feels like the escort run, but vertical—my body responding before my conscious brain can freak out.
"Stable," Lía notes. "Weight distribution is good."
I step to the second disc. This one wobbles more, reacting to momentum. I throw my arms out on instinct. Lía's hand lands lightly between my shoulder blades, steady but not grabbing.
"Present," she says. "You are not falling."
I breathe out. "Okay. Next."
We find a rhythm. Step, wobble, adjust. Step, wobble, adjust. Leo shuffles along in the foam below, tracking my progress like a spotter at a gymnastics meet, throwing out occasional running commentary.
"Nice save. Ten out of ten. You're a natural. Disney+ obstacle course show, here we come."
By the time I reach the last disc, my legs are burning in that controlled way again, but I haven't eaten floor once. I hop down onto solid ground and laugh—startled and genuine.
"That was… actually fun."
"I recorded your balance data," Lía says, pleased. "Your micro-corrections improved by approximately thirty percent by the final disc."
"Translation," Leo says, "you were way less flaily at the end."
"Rude," I say, still grinning.
We rotate. Leo takes the discs next, bouncing along them with frankly rude ease, light flaring under each step to give him a split-second of extra stability. He overshoots one on purpose just to see what happens when he lands on the foam; it molds around him and then sloooowly spits him back up.
I can't help laughing. "Elegant."
"You're just jealous of my majestic descent," he says, climbing out and shaking foam bits out of his hair.
Lía goes last. She doesn't use hard-light at all—hands at her sides, posture upright, steps precise and measured. The discs wobble, but her adjustments are so small they're almost invisible. It looks less like she's balancing and more like she's negotiating a contract with gravity.
"You're cheating," Leo accuses.
"I am not outputting power," she says. "I am simply… practiced."
"Practiced at cheating," he mutters.
We cycle through a few more toys: a low climbing wall that shifts holds mid-route ("Look ahead, not at your hands," Lía coaches), a set of hanging bars that change distance unpredictably ("Use the light to make up the gap," Leo calls, flaring a platform under my foot when I misjudge).
Each time, there's that weird, easy flow—someone calls an adjustment, the others respond without question. I don't even notice when I start giving instructions too.
"Your left hand's going to miss that ring, Lía," I call at one point, feeling the pattern of the shifting maze more than seeing it. "It'll phase just before you reach."
She recalibrates mid-swing, fingertips brushing the edge as it flickers blue, catching the next one instead.
"Correct," she says afterward, dropping lightly to the mat. "Your predictive mapping is improving."
It's… fun. Not in the "we're the best, ha ha" way; in the "our brains and bodies all suddenly like being in the same room" way.
We do not notice the timers in the corner quietly logging our paths and sending them to the central system. We do not see Reyes, Moreno, and a couple other instructors up on the observation deck, watching what was supposed to be "active rest" turn into "three weird kids casually shredding intermediate and advanced park routes without breathing hard or arguing once."
We definitely don't hear the soft chime as three separate "park records" quietly update in the background.
All we know is: we're warm, we're moving, nobody is yelling, and for the first time maybe ever, "training" feels less like a looming disaster and more like a complicated game we're accidentally very good at playing together.
------
The problem with having fun is that you forget you're supposed to be careful.
We're laughing—actually laughing—as Leo hauls himself out of the foam pit again, hair full of smart-foam dust, and Lía notes, "Your dismounts are getting worse, not better."
"It's called experimenting," he says, gasping. "Science. Don't kink-shame my gravity tests."
My cheeks hurt from smiling. Aeternum's most prestigious arena, and we've turned a corner of it into a weird little playground.
"Last one?" I say, breath still high but not panicked. "Before Reyes realizes we're not quietly contemplating our life choices?"
"Last one," Lía agrees. "Then we stretch."
We scan the park. Our eyes land on the same thing at once: the hanging ring maze.
It's a lattice of hard-light hoops suspended over another foam pit, cycling through color states—green-solid, blue-intangible, orange-deflect. They shift positions on a slow, unpredictable rhythm, forcing you to plan three moves ahead or eat mat.
Leo whistles low. "All right, that one's above 'beginner-friendly' and right in the sweet spot of 'fun and ill-advised.'"
"High complexity," Lía says, examining the pattern. "Good for testing micro-coordination."
I bounce once on my toes, surprising myself with how eager my body feels. "I want to try," I say.
"Permission to spot," Leo says immediately, already stepping toward the edge.
"Granted," Lía says. "We'll move as a chain. Sol in the middle, one of us front, one rear. Minimize fall distance."
We line up under the starting platform. The first ring glows green, hovering just out of normal reach. Leo hops up first—hands catching the ring, body swinging easily. He hooks his knees, flips once because of course he does, then settles.
"C'mon, Archive," he grins. "You got this."
I jump.
In that split-second between feet leaving the platform and fingers finding the ring, I expect the usual hitch: that moment where gravity feels just a bit too strong and my brain throws up a what if we fall error.
It never hits.
Everything stretches instead. The ring seems closer than it should be. My hand knows where it's going before my eyes do. I clamp down, swing, and my body adjusts.
Lía follows behind me, movement clean and economical, taking the rear position like she said.
"Green, green, green," Leo calls, eyeing the next few hoops. "Then we've got blue–orange–green cluster. Watch the timing."
We move.
Hand over hand, swing after swing, the maze starts to feel less like a series of obstacles and more like a moving puzzle we're collectively solving. Leo calls colors and approximate timings; I feed in the way the patterns feel—how the air shifts around a ring just before it changes state; Lía adjusts angles, sometimes nudging Leo's foot with her own to shift his center of gravity a hair.
We hit the first mixed cluster. The ring Leo's aiming for blinks from green to blue just as he reaches. He swears, adjusts mid-air, and uses the momentum to snag the orange one instead, letting it shove him sideways onto a safer line.
"Route variation," Lía notes behind me. "New vector—Sol, follow Leo's path, not the original. Your arm span won't reach the upper line safely."
"Copy," I call, swinging after him.
The next two rings are green, easy. Then the pattern ahead feels wrong—too narrow a gap, timing off. The ring I'm supposed to grab flashes green but the air around it tastes—feels—off.
"Wait," I blurt. "Don't take that one, it's about to—"
It flips to blue mid-sentence.
Leo snorts. "Nice catch, Archive. You seeing the timing now?"
"Kind of," I say, swinging through. "It's like… the maze is humming before it switches. I can feel where the solid line is going to be."
"Use it," Lía says simply.
We keep going.
We're three lengths in when we hit the real problem: a bigger gap, a missing ring. There's an empty space where a green should be, leaving a stretch that would be a challenge even for Leo's long arms.
"Uh oh," he says, swinging once to test the distance. "Okay, that's… borderline. I can probably make it, but you'll—"
"I can do it," I say, surprising myself again.
Because in that moment the path ahead makes sense in a way that isn't just about muscles. I can feel the line between my hand and the next ring like a drawn thread. The space between sways in my perception, not as empty air but as something moveable.
I let go.
For a half-second, gravity reaches for me. The ring is too far and my hand is one beat too late. My old panic tries to scream you misjudged, but something else moves faster.
I don't think. I just… reach.
Not with fingers—with that same inside-hand I used in the cabinet, when Alice opened it with a flick. The space between me and the next ring tugs. The ring jerks sideways, just enough. My hand closes around it, perfect catch. I swing, momentum carrying me cleanly into the next rhythm.
"Nice save," Leo calls, not noticing the micro-lurch. "You're getting good at mid-air corrections."
"Output flare detected," Lía says behind me, but her tone is thoughtful, not alarmed. "But no visible construct. Possibly just adrenaline spike."
My heart is pounding, but not from fear. That felt right. Like I'd just nudged a cursor on a screen.
The maze speeds up its cycles, as if offended. Rings ahead flip colors faster, orange shoves building into little directional traps. We adapt. At one point, two rings in the next line go blue at the same time, leaving a gap too long to hang around for. If we hesitate, we'll all drop.
"Skip," I hear myself say. "We can't trust that line—there's a solid path up and over, two levels higher. Leo, you can anchor it. On three, go for the upper right."
He doesn't argue, doesn't even ask how I know.
"Call it."
"One—two—three!"
He swings up, legs pumping, and catches a higher green with a grunt. I release on the same count, aiming for the one I called.
This time gravity drops out completely.
There's no falling sensation. No lurch in my stomach. Just one ring, then an impossible stretch, then another ring in my hands that I did not mechanically pass through. It's like a camera cut. For a heartbeat I'm between—air around me thin and strange—then I'm where I meant to be, shoulders jolted by the swing, hands tight on hard-light.
I… popped.
Behind me, Lía's weight settles into the line exactly where she needs to be, rhythm never breaking. No one says anything. It feels so natural, folded into our motion, that my brain files it under "solid jump" and keeps going.
"New route confirmed," Lía says, as if the maze did the work. "Angle is cleaner. Better sightlines."
We flow.
The three of us move like we've been doing this for years: calling hazards, adjusting grips, trusting each other's timing without question. I don't notice the extra little nudges when a ring slides nearer my hand than it should, or the split-second blink where I'm at ring A and then I'm at ring C with no clear transition. My Echo hums at "one and a half," attention open but not grabbing, just… helping reality line up with where I expect us to be.
We hit the last stretch. The rings slow, colors stabilizing into an easy alternating pattern, like the maze is letting us cool down. The final platform glows invitingly.
We dismount one by one—Leo with a flip (show-off), me with a slightly less chaotic swing, Lía with a precise drop that barely disturbs the foam. We're all panting, grinning, hands tingling from the grip.
"That," Leo says, pushing his hair back, "was awesome. Can we do the higher route next?"
"Not immediately," Lía says, but her eyes are bright in that way that means she had fun too. "We should hydrate. Sol's hands will blister if we repeat without gloves."
I look down at my palms. They're pink, a little sore, but not shredded.
"I did it," I say, a little stupidly. "All the way across. Without falling."
"Of course you did," Leo says, like it was never in question. "You were reading the maze like subtitles."
"That is an oddly accurate metaphor," Lía admits.
We wander back toward the boundary line of the Skills Park, grabbing our water bottles where we left them in a neat little row. My muscles buzz, my brain is quiet, and everything smells like foam and metal and faint ozone.
None of us notice the tiny cluster of adults gathering at the edge of the main arena—Reyes with her tablet, Moreno with his insulated gloves, Kaur with her tired eyes, a woman in Hearth green who has the Head of House aura, and one more figure in a sleek dark jacket with a familiar solar crest at the collar.
None of us see the way the holo-display above the Skills Park quietly updates:
RING MAZE – MIDLINE
NEW RECORD: 04:03 – TEAM FORGE-01
ANOMALOUS POWER SIGNATURES DETECTED. REVIEW FLAGGED.
We just knock our bottles together like dorks, sweat cooling on our skin, and bask in the simple, wild joy of moving in a way that finally feels like our bodies and brains are on the same side.
Flow state. No panic. No graphs. Just us.
We're still a little high on it. Not the dangerous, manic kind, just that fizzy, post-adrenaline warmth where your muscles hum and, for once, my brain isn't immediately trying to make a contamination checklist.
We flop down on the edge of the foam pit, water bottles between our feet. Leo holds up his hand for a high-five on instinct.
Normally, this is where my brain would go: shared surfaces, sweat, unknown germs, wash wash wash.
Instead, I just… slap his palm. Skin to skin. Loud smack, sting in my fingers.
And then nothing.
No crawling sensation under my skin. No spike of nausea. No mental slideshow of what else that hand has touched. Just the echo of impact and Leo's stupidly pleased grin.
"Nice," he says. "Textbook stick."
I blink down at our hands, weirdly fascinated.
"…I didn't even think about it," I say.
"About what?" he asks.
"Contamination," I answer, the word feeling too small. "Usually my brain would be screaming at me to wash my hands or wipe them. It's just… quiet."
On my other side, Lía pauses with her bottle halfway to her mouth. Her jacket is unzipped, shoulders relaxed, comm band lying on the floor by the bottles instead of welded to her wrist. There's an almost-smile at the corner of her mouth that definitely didn't exist the first day we met.
"You do not feel the compulsion?" she asks, gentle but clinical.
I flex my fingers. "No," I say slowly. "Intellectually I know Leo's gross in the general 'boy' sense, but it doesn't feel like an emergency. Just… a fact."
"Interesting," she murmurs. "Internal threat models may be reprioritizing. Co-regulation effect is plausible."
I look at her more closely. She's different too. Less hyper-vigilant, not doing the micro-scans of every entry point; her gaze comes back to me instead of tracking exits like a radar. Even Leo looks… steadier. Still Leo, still sparkle, but his light isn't leaking constantly. It flares when he laughs, then settles, like he's actually in his body instead of half a step ahead.
We're all… looser. Like someone untied three knots.
"I like this," I blurt. "Feeling… calmer."
"Same," Leo says quietly.
"Also same," Lía admits, which feels huge.
We sit there for a minute, kicking our heels against the foam, the three of us just existing in a quiet, right-sized moment.
"That was the most fun I've had in this building," Leo sighs.
"Optimal training conditions," Lía agrees.
"Flow state with bonus parkour," I say.
We're smiling at each other when a shadow falls across the pit.
"Forge-01."
We all look up.
Reyes stands there, tablet in one hand, expression somewhere between exasperated and impressed. Beside her is Moreno in his insulated gloves, Prof. Kaur in her Forge jacket, and a tall woman in Radiant red and gold whose whole aura screams Head of House, will absolutely make you do extra laps.
And with them, like it's the most normal thing in the world, is Luciana.
Not in comfy clothes and bare feet like last night in the loft kitchen, laughing with Alice over curry and quietly refilling my plate. Director mode. Dark, beautifully cut jacket. Solar crest at the collar. Hair up, posture straight, presence dialed way up from "family dinner" to "global League command."
My brain does the disorienting double-exposure: the same woman who gently took my plate and said, Eat, mi niña, you're burning calories just by thinking, now framed by arena lights and datapoints.
We scramble to our feet. The triangle reforms automatically: Leo on my left, Lía on my right, me in the middle.
"Hi, Mother," I manage, voice a little higher than usual.
Something flickers in her eyes at that. Warm, proud. But her tone stays in that smooth, professional register. "Sol," she says. "Children."
"Hey, Mother," Leo says, trying for casual and landing somewhere between cocky and nervous.
"Good morning," Lía offers, as composed as anyone can be in sweaty training gear.
Reyes looks us over: scuffed hands, flushed faces, the Skills Park behind us. "Enjoying your rest block?" she asks dryly.
"Very," Leo says instantly. "Active rest. Hydration. Team bonding. No timers."
Moreno snorts. "Your comm bands would like to enter the chat."
He taps his wrist; a holo-pane pops up in front of all of us. It's a feed from the Skills Park. Three obstacle names, three familiar labels:
DISCS – BALANCE COURSE
WALL – DYNAMIC CLIMB
RING MAZE – MIDLINE
Under each, the same bright note:
NEW RECORD: TEAM FORGE-01
A little red flag blinks by the maze:
ANOMALOUS POWER SIGNATURES DETECTED – REVIEW REQUIRED
My stomach lurches.
"We… we weren't trying to—"
"I told you not to break any more arena records while I was in a meeting," Reyes says, pinching the bridge of her nose. "Apparently, I should've specified 'and the Skills Park.'"
"The Skills Park is categorized as an auxiliary resource," Lía says, because of course she's read the fine print. "Not part of the main arena protocol loop."
Reyes gives her an aggrieved look. "Did you just quote my own admin memo at me?"
"Accurately," Lía answers.
The Radiant House head chokes back a laugh.
Luciana has been quiet, watching. The version of her from last night, soft sweater and warm kitchen, hangs just behind this one in my head. Same eyes, different wattage.
She steps forward; the others shift just enough that she's at the center. Her gaze sweeps her kids first in pure Mom mode, quick checks of posture, breathing, micro-injuries. Then it settles on me.
"Breathe, Sol," she says gently.
I do, because apparently that's a thing I need external reminders for.
"Good," she says. "Now that we have oxygen in the conversation… we have some data to discuss."
Moreno flicks the holo to a more detailed view, graphs overlaid on the maze run.
"Echo signatures," he says, gesturing at spikes. "Two distinct events during the ring maze. Vector adjustment here, short-range displacement here. Both under the dampener cap, both within the Echo's internal tolerance."
Luciana looks at me. "Question one," she says. "Were you trying to pull from Alice and Diana in the Skills Park?"
I replay the maze in my head. The ring that slid into my hand, the non-fall jump where reality just… cut.
"I don't think so," I say slowly. "I wasn't trying to take anything new. The telekinesis felt like Alice, that one I already knew I had." I grimace a little. "The other thing, with the jump? That was… new. It felt teleport-adjacent. Probably Diana. But it slipped in through the movement. Correcting paths, not hunting power."
"Telekinesis from Alice," Kaur says, half to herself. "Probable teleportation Echo from Diana."
We all nod. That part's not a secret anymore; last night over dinner, they'd walked me through my preliminary Echo candidates like a very intense family board game. Diana's name had been on the list with a big "not yet triggered" note.
"Good," Luciana says. "So one known Echo and one first manifestation. No uncontrolled acquisition beyond expected parameters, just incidental application in a closed setting."
"Which is still new at that frequency," Moreno adds. "You weren't spiking or destabilizing. You used multiple Echo pulls mid-sequence and your physiology calmed." His eyes flick to my hands. "And your compulsions?"
I look down at my palms. Chalk, foam dust, probably a smear of Leo's handprint.
"They're… quiet," I say. "The OCD stuff. The contamination alarms. Normally I'd be mentally screaming for wipes right now. I can tell my hands are dirty, but it's like a notification I can swipe away instead of an alarm I have to shut off."
Kaur's attention sharpens. "Yesterday in Foundations you were doing constant micro-cleans," she says. "Sleeve wipes, finger flexes, checking your band. Now? Nothing. Even with new stimuli."
I nod, throat thick. "It's not gone gone," I admit. "But with them…" I jerk my head at the twins. "It's… manageable. Background noise instead of screaming."
The words land and for a second I almost do cry, just from the shock of the absence. My brain has been a crowded, blaring room for so long that the quiet feels unreal, like someone finally shut a door I didn't know was open.
"My therapist always said exercise can help with anxiety and OCD," I add, voice wobbling a little. "Burn off some of the static. I figured that was for normal people jogging, not… whatever this is. But it kind of feels like that? Like my brain finally got the memo."
Luciana exhales slowly. Not surprised. Confirmed.
"Maybe," she says. "Physical exertion can help. Your therapist is not wrong." Her gaze softens, then sharpens just a little. "But we also have data. Last night, after dinner, your resting vitals were markedly improved when you dozed off on the couch with these two abusing my streaming subscriptions."
I go red. "I was tired," I mumble.
"And safe," she corrects softly.
The word lands heavier than it should. Safe. Not the thin, brittle version from my old apartment, where "safe" meant triple-checking the deadbolt and trying to ignore shouting in the hallway. Not the nights of listening for footsteps outside my door and rehearsing what I would grab if someone broke in. Last night I did not get up to check the lock three times. I just… fell asleep. On a couch. With other people in the room. And nothing bad happened.
Is that what safe is supposed to feel like?
Then she shifts back into Director mode.
"Here is the problem," she says, addressing us but clearly including the staff. "On paper, you three are a third-year team plus an academically first-year Echo. The plan was: run standard cohesion drills, collect baseline data, maybe slowly ramp you toward competing against higher-ranked squads over the term."
She gestures at the holo list of records.
"In reality, on your first morning, unsupervised, you broke four internal benchmarks. Escort pattern, balance course, climbing wall, midline maze. No conscious coordination, no power spikes, and what appears to be measurable improvement in your collective regulation."
Radiant Head whistles under her breath. "I've seen twin synergies," she says. "But this is… new."
"We have never logged a triad like this," Luciana admits. "Cross-House, cross-year, Echo overlay, twin link, and mental health metrics all improving together. It is academically fascinating and administratively terrifying."
Reyes folds her arms. "So, we did what any responsible adults would do," she says. "We called more adults."
"Very responsible adults," Leo mutters.
Luciana's mouth twitches. "After consultation," she says, "we've made a preliminary decision."
My stomach flips. I feel Lía shift just enough that our arms brush; Leo's light brightens a shade like he's ready to throw a shield at the concept of bad news.
"First," Luciana says, looking straight at me, "you remain a first-year academically, Sol. Your Foundations, History, Control, all stay at year-one level with whatever accommodations you need. We are not pretending you've magically completed two years of coursework."
Relief makes my knees weak.
"Second," she continues, "from a field perspective, Forge-01 cannot stay in the standard third-year bracket. You will either break every drill we give you, sandbag until you're bored and sloppy, or drag the whole cohort into patterns they aren't ready for."
Moreno nods. "They're already compensating up. Records shouldn't fall this fast on 'casual fun' runs."
"So," Luciana says, "effective next week, your team training block moves."
Reyes taps something; our comms ping in sync.
A new line slides onto my schedule:
TUES / THURS – 08:00–11:00 — TEAM TRAINING (ADVANCED COHORT) – ARENA 1
My breath catches. The words blur for a second.
"Advanced… cohort," I echo. "As in…"
"Fourth-years," Radiant Head confirms. "Bridge students. World League track candidates. People who will not shatter if you accidentally set a new route time."
My heart lurches. Fourth-years. People who have been doing this for three full years. People who know what they're doing. I am a first-year who just figured out how to run without wanting to vomit. My fingers tighten on my water bottle until the plastic creaks.
"We are not throwing you into broadcasted brackets tomorrow," Luciana adds firmly. "Arena 1 is still training. Structured. Supervised. You will run fundamentals, but at a level that matches what you actually did today."
My lungs forget how to cooperate for a second. Advanced cohort. Arena 1. I picture stands, cameras, people watching me screw up in front of people who actually belong there. My breathing starts to go shallow at the edges.
Beside me, Lía's hand brushes my arm, deliberate and light. "In," she murmurs, so soft only I can hear. "Four count. One, two, three, four. Hold. Out. One, two, three, four."
I latch onto her voice like a lifeline and drag air back into my chest on her rhythm.
Kaur steps in, voice steady. "And there will be rules," she says, looking right at me. "No 'just seeing what happens' with every new Echo temptation. We will build systems around this, not ride your flow state until it breaks you."
"Echo protocols are already under revision," Moreno says. "Dampener settings, exposure limits, deliberate pulls. You'll be part of that conversation, Vega. Your feedback is data." He says it like an offer, not a threat.
My chest is still tight, but the air is going in again. Lía's thumb presses once against the back of my hand in a tiny, grounding circle.
"We are not punishing you," Luciana says, softer now. "You did nothing wrong. You were yourselves, together. The system was not ready. That is our failure to adapt, not yours."
My eyes sting. "We're not… too much?" I ask before I can swallow it. Too much power, too many problems, too much work.
"For this academy?" Radiant Head snorts. "Kid, there's no such thing. There's only 'needs better supervision.'"
Leo lets out a huff of startled laughter. Some of the tension bleeds out of Lía's shoulders; some of mine follows.
"It will be… a significant adjustment," Lía says quietly. "But correct. We are already performing above our bracket. Better to be challenged in a controlled environment than bored in a basic one."
Her calm, matter-of-fact tone helps. If she thinks we can stand in a room with fourth-years and not immediately combust, maybe we can.
Luciana's gaze warms. "You'll have support," she says. "Alice, Diana, your House heads. Myself, when possible. And"—her eyes flick between the three of us—"each other. Obviously."
Reyes claps her hands once. "In the meantime," she says, "the benching still stands. No more record-breaking during this block. That means no Skills Park speedruns, no 'accidental' escort times, no Echo experiments without staff." She levels a look at me. "Can you handle that, Vega?"
I think about the ring maze. About how good it felt. About my quiet brain, my unwashed hands, my body feeling like home for once. The idea of not chasing that feeling makes my anxiety twitch, but the memory of almost hyperventilating at the words "advanced cohort" is still fresh.
"I can… try," I say. "If they help me not get stupid."
"We will," Lía says immediately.
"Obviously," Leo adds.
"Good answer," Kaur says.
Luciana's official posture softens into something closer to last night's version of her. "Stretch properly," she says. "Hydrate. Ice anything that complains. Advanced or not, overuse injuries are not heroic."
She and the other staff step back, already murmuring, schedules and liability and paper trails lighting up their bands as they head toward the exit.
As soon as they're out of immediate earshot, Leo exhales like he's been holding his breath since the word Director.
"Well," he says. "We just got promoted and grounded in the same ten minutes."
"Efficient," Lía says.
I flick my comm back up, staring at the new line on my schedule. Advanced cohort. Arena 1. Fourth-years. World League track. The panic spikes again for a heartbeat—too big, too fast, too much—but this time it hits something solid and diffuses.
Leo on my left, making quiet, ridiculous faces at my comm like he can intimidate the schedule into being nicer. Lía on my right, fingers threading through mine, grip sure and steady.
Underneath the fear, something else rises, bright and sharp and unfamiliar.
Excitement.
"I think," I say slowly, "for the first time in my life, I'm… excited to be the weird problem kids."
Leo's grin comes back full strength. "Good," he says. "Because we're about to be a big one."
Lía squeezes my hand, the contact easy and unforced now. "Sustainably terrifying," she says.
"Sustainably terrifying," I echo, and for once, the future feels less like a cliff and more like a course. Complicated, dangerous, way above my old pay grade.
But still a course.
And I'm not running it alone.
⸻
We drop back down to the edge of the foam pit once the grown-ups clear out, like puppets with our strings cut. Reyes's "no more records" still rings in my ears, but the Skills Park's hum and the stretch of open floor are louder.
We start doing actual cool-down stretches: hamstrings, quads, the whole "don't walk like a ninety-year-old tomorrow" package, while we sip water.
Leo is the one who breaks the silence.
"It's weird, you know," he says, reaching for his toes and somehow still managing to look dramatic about it. "How meds for mental stuff don't work on supers. Like…" He grunts as he leans in farther. "I can't take ADHD meds, and Lía can't take anything for her anxiety. I imagine it's the same for you, Archive."
My fingers pause on my shoelaces.
Lía, folded forward in a perfect stretch, doesn't even sound winded. "Yes," she says. "Pharmaceutical interventions for conditions on the neurodivergent spectrum, such as autism, ADHD, OCD, generalized anxiety, lose efficacy or produce volatile side effects once powers manifest above D-class. Neurochemistry plus power signatures equals unpredictability."
"Basically," Leo translates, switching legs, "you get powers, you lose meds."
He stares up at the scaffolding for a second, jaw working.
"And I've always been… me, you know? Buzzing, distracted, doing ten things at once. Couldn't sit still if you staple-gunned me to a chair."
"Please do not staple-gun my brother," Lía says mildly.
"But now I feel…" He searches for the word, brows knitting. "Grounded, I guess. Less fidgety. Like someone finally put the right weight on my side of the see-saw."
She hums, considering. "My baseline anxiety feels attenuated," she admits. "Less background static. Fewer intrusive simulations of catastrophic failure."
I blink. "Wow. That's… a sentence."
She gives a tiny, embarrassed shrug. "Before you arrived, it was… loud," she says. "My brain would run contingency plans on every variable. Training, classes, family expectations, Rafe. I could manage it, but it was exhausting. Now it is…" She hesitates, searching for accuracy. "…quieter. In this configuration. With you."
My chest does that warm, fizzy thing again.
"And you?" Leo looks at me, swapping sides on his quad stretch. "You're the one who just raw-dogged a whole Skills Park without hand-wiping once. How's your brain feel?"
I stare at my hands, at the faint chalk and foam dust, at the place where my fingers are casually brushing the mat someone else definitely sat on.
"It feels…" I start, then try again. "You know how you said meds don't work on supers?"
They nod.
"This feels like what everyone says meds are like when they work," I say quietly. "The OCD is still there. I can tell when something's 'wrong' or 'dirty' or out of place. But it's not a fire alarm. It's just… a notification. I can swipe it away if I want."
I glance between them. "And the anxiety is still in there," I add. "But with you two, it's like… the volume knob got turned down. Or shared. You're holding some of it."
Leo's face softens in a way I don't see often. "Guess we're your extended-release weirdos," he says.
"Mutual," Lía says. "You appear to function as a stabilizing node for our powers and our brains. A living regulator."
"Great," I say. "I'm a walking, talking emotional surge protector."
"Extremely valuable tech," Leo says, bumping his shoulder lightly into mine. "Ten out of ten would protect."
We fold into the next stretch together, three idiots on the edge of a foam pit, touching things other people have touched, hearts still racing, brains strangely quiet. For the first time in a very long time, the thought that floats to the top of my mind isn't wash your hands or you did that wrong.
It's: I can live like this.
⸻
We're mid-hamstring stretch, bottles lined up in front of us, when a familiar voice cuts across the Skills Park.
"All riiight, my little statistical anomalies," Diana calls. "Report for carbs and celebration."
We look over.
She's striding across the arena floor, House Veil jacket half-zipped, tablet under one arm, something foil-wrapped in the other that smells like it came from a bakery and a bribe drawer. She stops in front of us, hands on hips, eyes flicking over sweat, chalk, and foam dust.
"Okay," she says. "Quick status check. No one's charred, no one's crying. Mother did not drag you into a secret basement lab. Excellent. That means phase two of Team Day may officially begin."
Leo squints up at her from a quad stretch. "Define 'phase two.' We kinda just got simultaneously promoted and grounded."
"Phase two," she says grandly, "is lunch. Followed by unstructured recovery. Because…" She taps her tablet and flicks a holo toward us. "You, my little chaos trio, have officially broken the adults."
Our comms ping; the same notice pops up on all three bands:
TUESDAY – TEAM DAY ADJUSTMENT
08:00–11:00 — Team Training (Advanced Cohort) ✅
11:00–REST OF DAY — FIELD DUTY: EXCUSED
Reason: Protocol Revision / Observation Review
I blink. "We… have the rest of today off?"
"From team blocks, yes," Diana says, clearly delighted. "It's Tuesday, which means normally you'd have afternoon sims, strategy lab, and a nice little 'let's poke the advanced cohort in controlled environments' workshop. Instead, congratulations, you three are officially 'too interesting.' They need the rest of Team Day to argue about you in meetings."
"Like… all of it?" I ask. "No more drills, no sims, no Echo poking?"
"Correct." She spins her stylus. "Kaur, Moreno, Reyes, and the House heads just rescheduled the whole advanced block for the afternoon. 'Protocol revision,'" she says, making air quotes. "Which is code for: 'We were not prepared for Sustainably Terrifying Trio, please allow us four hours to make new spreadsheets.'"
Leo flops back on his hands. "So, we didn't get out of class class," he says, "but we did break Team Day."
"Exactly," Diana says. "Tomorrow is back to normal Wednesday academics. Friday's scrimmage schedule is still on. But today?" She grins. "Today, your official duties are: eat, hydrate, don't explode, and try very hard not to set any more internal records when no one's supervising."
I feel something in my chest unknot. "That sounds… nice," I admit. "Suspiciously nice."
"It is absolutely a trap," she says. "A trap with fries."
She steps back and jerks her head toward the exit. "C'mon. Let's head to Caf South before the second years descend like locusts. Team Day lunch window is open, and I, as your appointed Assistant and Chaos Wrangler, am invoking my right to drag you there."
Lía glances at me, silent check-in: energy?
"I can do lunch," I say. "And… not-training. At least until my legs realize what we did to them."
"Acceptable," she says, standing and offering her hand.
I let her pull me up. Leo bounces to his feet beside us, rolling his shoulders, light still humming low and steady instead of sparking everywhere.
"Agenda," Diana declares as we fall into step around her. "For this blessed broken-Team-Day afternoon: food, debrief-that-is-secretly-therapy, maybe a nap, maybe very gentle VOD review if your brains can handle it. No arenas. No Skills Park. No impressing anybody except the cafeteria staff."
"Reyes already threatened me with homework if I apologize for being good again," I say.
"Excellent," Diana says. "New rule: you're allowed one 'sorry for being a prodigy' per week. After that I start charging in snacks and gacha pulls."
Leo groans. "That's extortion."
"It's assistantship," she says. "It's in the handbook. Probably. If it's not, I'll add it."
I lean closer to Lía and whisper, "What's a gacha pull?"
She gives a tiny shrug. "Some kind of game mechanic," she murmurs back. "Probability-based reward system? I have only read about them."
We both look up to find Leo and Diana staring at us like we've just confessed a felony.
"You've never rolled on a banner," Leo says slowly. "Either of you."
"This is a tragedy," Diana announces. "Add 'basic gacha literacy' to the long-term training plan. Strictly for cultural competency, obviously."
"For research purposes," Leo agrees solemnly.
We step out of the training complex and into the cooler corridor air, comm bands quietly updating to reflect our suddenly-empty afternoon Team Day. For once, my body isn't bracing for the next drill.
Team Day, half over. No more records. No more runs. Just lunch, weird safety, and the luxury of being a problem the adults have to figure out while I… don't.
⸻
"Um," I say, looking down at my palms as we reach the tower. "May I please wash my hands very quickly? Don't wanna eat with foam dust and chalk all over my hands."
Diana blinks, then leans in and sniffs me. Then she leans over and sniffs Leo. Then she angles toward Lía, pauses at the look she gets, and settles for sniffing near her shoulder instead.
"Yeah," she decides, straightening. "We're way past 'quick hand rinse.' You three smell like effort."
She taps her tablet. "And since y'all don't have team class for the rest of the day? Shower and then lunch." She grins. "I'll ping the kitchen, have the chef put something together, and we'll eat in Sol's suite instead. Like yesterday. Domestic sequel edition."
My chest does that warm flutter again. "Really? You don't have to—"
"I love bossing kitchen staff around," she says. "Let me have this. Also, it keeps Mother from swooping in with a twelve-course 'snack.'"
"That happened once," Leo mutters.
"Three times," Lía corrects.
Diana waves a hand. "Details. Come on, stinky prodigies. Tower time."
The walk back toward the towers is… easy. We're not rushing to make a block, no timers are ticking. Our footsteps fall into a lazy kind of sync. My comm keeps wanting to remind me of the now-empty afternoon; I keep flicking the notification away and grinning like an idiot.
Forge and Radiant sit closest together, two of the four House towers sharing a central lobby. Veil is farther off across the quad, past the courtyard and the admin cluster.
At the Forge/Radiant elevator bank, Diana slaps her band against the panel. "VIP lunch run," she tells it. "Forge family suite plus adjoining student suites."
The doors swish open. We pile in.
"I vote for something with fries," Leo says. "And protein. And maybe a dessert as a treat for not dying."
"I will eat anything that is not hospital oatmeal," I say.
"Copy that," Diana says, thumbs already flying over her tablet. "Chef's getting a brief. You two hit showers. I'll borrow Mother and Mom's and de-stink in their suite, because Veil tower is too far when I'm emotionally injured."
"Tragic," Leo says. "Thoughts and prayers."
The elevator dings at our floor. The three of us step out together; Diana peels off down the Forge "important people" corridor with a two-finger salute, headed for the bigger family suite Luciana kept when she stopped being "student in Forge" and upgraded to "runs the League from Forge."
Our connected doors are still propped open, Lía's suite to the left, mine to the right, the shared little liminal space between them feeling weirdly like a hallway in a house instead of fancy student housing.
Leo stretches. "All right," he says. "I'll go de-gremlin and grab whatever notes I pretended to take this morning. Meet back at Sol's in, like… thirty?"
"Twenty," Lía says automatically. "Lunch ETA is twenty-two minutes."
"Twenty it is," I echo.
They split, Leo toward Radiant tower access, Lía slipping into her suite. I pad into mine, kick off my shoes into the cabinet, and head straight for the bathroom.
The water is hot, the pressure perfect, the fancy soap smells faintly like citrus and something clean. I watch chalk and foam dust swirl down the drain, and the thought that flickers up isn't scrub harder, you missed a spot.
It's just: Good. Ready for food.
By the time I'm dressed again, soft academy sweats, hair in a damp braid, comm band back on my wrist, my suite feels even more like mine. The gold and navy, the big windows, the ridiculous kitchen that's apparently about to host lunch for four.
My band pings.
DIANA: chef's on his way up w/ food
DIANA: do not panic, you do not have to make small talk
DIANA: we will form a protective triangle around you if necessary
I laugh out loud just as the door chime sounds.
"Round two," I murmur, heading downstairs to open it. This time, not to be assessed, or ranked, or tested.
Just to eat.
With my team.
⸻
The door slides open and for a split second my brain does that mild panic thing, what if it's another administrator, what if we're about to get un-promoted, but it's just a man in a chef's jacket and hat, pushing a sleek service cart.
He pauses at the threshold, looks down, and calmly toes his shoes off by the door. Okay, says some tiny hyper-vigilant part of me. That's… a point.
He doesn't touch anything he doesn't have to as he comes in. No casual fingers on the wall, no hand on the back of the couch. He steers the cart straight to the kitchen island and starts unloading covered dishes with this almost ritual precision: one plate, then its mirrored twin, then the side dishes, everything set out perfectly symmetrical on either side of the island.
My heart does an actual happy little click at the pattern of it. Left, right. Left, right. Forks aligned. Glasses are equidistant from the edge. Sauce cups in a neat little line.
He catches my gaze, offers a small, shy smile.
"Miss Diana briefed me," he says, voice low and even. "Coincidentally, I have OCD as well."
My spine goes very straight. "Oh," I say, because my vocabulary has apparently fallen through a drain. "Um. Hi."
"Feel free to call upon me whenever you'd like food," he continues, like he's giving a tiny mission statement instead of changing my life. "I keep my kitchen and my hands clean."
He lifts one, and I notice the faint redness at the knuckles. Someone who used to scrub too hard, too often, and learned better techniques instead of less care.
"I am looking forward to seeing a super like you, like us, out there," he says. "Someone to look up to. Gods know I could have used it when I was younger."
Something in my chest twists, sharp and warm at the same time.
"I'll… try," I say, because anything bigger will make my voice crack. "Thank you. For… all of this."
He gives a little nod, like we've just sealed a pact. Then, true to everything he's just said, he wipes his hands once more with a fresh towelette, uses another clean wipe to touch the door panel, and rolls his cart back out of the suite, leaving nothing behind but the soft click of the latch, the faint citrus-clean smell, and a perfectly set table that makes my brain hum in a good way.
I stand there for a moment, just breathing it in. The symmetry, the care, the fact that someone in this building has the same wiring and still found a place for it.
"Okay," I murmur to the empty air. "Yeah. I can live here."
The connected door to Lía's suite clicks softly as she steps through, hair braided, comfy clothes on, Leo trailing behind her in a fresh shirt, still toweling his hair dry. Diana blips in a second later, comming herself through like a gremlin. They all slow when they see the table.
"Oh," Lía says, a tiny note of approval in her voice.
"Damn," Leo whistles. "We got the OCD deluxe set."
Diana grins. "Told the chef to go for 'neat, not sterile,'" she says. "Looks like he nailed it."
I slide into my usual spot at the island, fingers brushing the edge of my plate, exactly centered in its little universe. For the first time since arriving at Aeternum, lunch isn't cafeteria noise or hospital trays or energy bars wolfed down between crises. It's this.
My suite. My team. Food laid out with the same kind of care my brain's always begged for.
And somewhere down in the kitchens, another super with OCD who thinks maybe I can be something he didn't have.
I pull in my chair, look at the twins and Diana, and feel it again: right.
"Okay," I say, a small smile tugging at my mouth. "Let's eat."
⸻
Lunch turns into the kind of chaos that somehow works.
The food's exactly what my soul wanted: grilled chicken, roasted potatoes in satisfying little geometric cubes, a ridiculous salad where everything is chopped the same size, tiny bowls of sauce lined up like they've been through a QA check.
We eat in comfortable bursts. Talk, bite, talk, bite. Leo and Diana recap past Team Days gone wrong ("remember when you overcharged the sim and we blacked out half the arena," "YOU overcharged the sim, I just screamed supportively"), while Lía and I quietly assemble our plates in parallel, both of us putting everything in little sections without even planning it.
At some point Leo tries to flick a potato cube at Diana with a tiny beam of light. It ricochets off an invisible barrier Lía throws up on reflex and plinks back into his hair instead.
I laugh so hard I almost choke on my water.
"Betrayed by my own sister," he groans, fishing the potato out.
"Actions have consequences," she says, deadpan.
The afternoon blurs in the nicest way. We migrate to the couch, then the floor, then back to the couch. Diana confiscates my band long enough to help me set up folders, alarms, and a "Do Not Disturb: Medically Fried" status. Leo insists on showing me footage of past inter-league matches, pausing every thirty seconds to say, "Okay, that was cool, but the strategy was trash, don't do that."
Lía ends up halfway through drafting a color-coded study schedule for me "for when you are less electrically compromised."
Somewhere in there, time skips. The chef returns quietly around evening with "light dinner," which, in League-adjacent terms, means soup, fresh bread, cut fruit, and a little dessert situation arranged with the same careful symmetry as lunch. He toe-taps his shoes off at the door again, sets everything down, nods at me like still clean, still safe, and vanishes.
My brain purrs.
By the time the bowls are empty, and the dessert is reduced to crumbs, it's fully dark outside, and the loft is all warm gold and navy shadows.
"Movie night," Diana declares. "You all had an emotionally and physically ridiculous morning. The only responsible choice is to let your brains ride shotgun while your eyeballs look at explosions."
"Educational explosions," Leo says. "We can analyze tactics."
"Normal people call that 'fun,'" she says, already flipping through options on the TV. "Okay, votes: classic superhero flick, documentary about heroes being messy, or animated thing with good fight choreography and questionable physics?"
"Last one," I say immediately.
"Seconded," Leo says.
"Thirded," Lía adds, which makes all three of us pause, then grin like we just found a cheat code.
We end up with an animated hero movie that is absolutely not based on anyone real but has enough familiar beats that the twins keep making offended noises.
We rearrange the space without talking about it. Leo takes the armchair sideways with his legs dangling over one side. Diana claims the floor with a nest of pillows and a tablet for "assistant notes." And somehow, without any big announcement, I end up on the couch with Lía.
At first, we sit like normal people. Me, with my legs tucked up, her very properly upright with a throw pillow in her lap. Then the movie settles into itself, and so do we.
My feet drift sideways until they're near her thigh. She glances down, then at me.
"Cold?" she asks.
"A little," I admit.
She considers for half a second, then lifts the edge of the blanket and drapes it over both our legs. Her arm ends up along the back of the couch.
A few minutes later, when the movie hits a particularly loud sequence, I flinch at the sudden crash; without thinking, I tip toward the nearest solid thing, which happens to be her shoulder.
She goes very still.
"Sorry," I murmur, already starting to pull back.
Her hand lands lightly on my forearm, keeping me there. "It's fine," she says quietly. "Data suggests contact is… calming. For both of us."
So, I stay.
It's like lying against a warm, very tense tree at first. But then something in her eases. Her head tilts a little until it's resting on top of mine, our shoulders lined up. At some point, my legs stretch out fully, and she automatically shifts so our knees don't bump, blanket re-arranged with precision.
Diana glances up from the floor, clocks the new arrangement, and I see the exact moment she lights up like a Christmas tree. She doesn't say anything. And I don't notice as she slowly, slowly reaches for her tablet, flips the camera, and snaps a stealth picture.
Leo, from his armchair, catches the motion out of the corner of his eye. His gaze slides from Diana to us. On screen, animated heroes are yelling. On the couch, I'm half-curled into Lía's side, eyes drooping, my hand fisted in the edge of the blanket. Lía's head is tipped against mine, eyes still fixed on the TV, but her face completely unguarded, mouth soft. Her hand is resting over my wrist like she's anchoring both of us to the couch.
Leo's shoulders slump, fond and fatalistic all at once.
"Man," he mutters under his breath, just for Diana. "I really don't have a chance, do I?"
Diana doesn't stop taking pictures. "Not in the traditional sense, no," she whispers back. "But on the bright side, you are main cast in the slow-burn polycule of my heart."
"That is not a real thing," he hisses.
"It is now," she says.
The movie rolls on.
Two-thirds of the way through, the adrenaline of the day finally cashes out. I don't even feel myself fall fully asleep. One minute I'm watching a ridiculous rooftop fight, the next my head is a heavy weight on Lía's shoulder, my breath evening out. She lasts maybe five minutes longer before her eyes slide closed too, chin dipping slightly, her arm reflexively curling around me like a shield.
By the time the credits hit, we're a full puppy pile: me curled into her side, her cheek resting against my hair, our hands loosely tangled on top of the blanket.
The door slides open softly. Alice steps in, having let herself in with her 'important person' comm, a bag in one hand (probably something responsible like vitamins or extra supplements). She stops dead at the sight.
On the floor, Diana is half-sitting, half-lying on her stomach, tablet propped up, camera app open. She looks like a wildlife photographer who just found a rare species.
In the armchair, Leo is turned sideways, chin resting on his knees, staring at the couch with the expression of a man who has accepted his fate but is still a little in awe of it.
Alice presses a hand over her mouth. "Oh," she says softly. Then, louder, to no one in particular: "Wow."
Diana looks up, grinning. "Hey, Mom," she stage-whispers. "Look. Emotional regulation breakthrough."
Alice steps closer, setting the bag silently on the counter, eyes not leaving us. "This," she says, pointing gently at the two of us bundled together, "might be bigger news than the 'breaking every training metric in under a day' thing."
Leo snorts. "Tell that to the spreadsheets."
"I will," she says. "After I send your mother this picture."
"Traitor," he groans.
Diana makes an offended little noise. "Um, excuse you, I got the pictures. You can CC me."
Alice leans over the back of the couch for a second, just watching us breathe in sync, the way my fingers twitch, and Lía's hand automatically tightens around mine even in sleep. She brushes a curl off my forehead, careful not to wake me, then smooths a wrinkle in Lía's blanket like she can't not mom something.
"Let them sleep," she says softly. "Tomorrow, they can worry about advanced cohorts and world leagues."
She straightens, whispers to the other two, "You gremlins should probably get some rest too."
"Five more minutes," Diana says, even as she starts quietly gathering her things.
"Yeah," Leo agrees, not taking his eyes off the couch. "Just… five."
For once, nobody rushes them.
The world can wait.