I groggily woke to the first rays of sunlight peaking through the room’s window. I wanted to roll over and go back to sleep, but I had an awful crick in my neck that made that impossible. Why did I even fall asleep leaning against the wall? I wondered while idly rubbing at my sore neck with my off hand, something warm pinning my right arm to my side. I peeled my sleep crusted eyes apart and groaned with embarrassment when I realized I had fallen asleep on Elle’s bed. The other girl was still sleeping, her head lolled over onto my right shoulder. Thankfully, she’d left my shoulder drool free. I didn’t want to wake her, but the crick in my neck demanded I move, and the rumble in my stomach added its opinion. I reached over with my off hand and gently shifted her head to tilt the other way. She frowned a bit, and I swore she was going to wake up, but I managed to shift her to laying against the wall instead of myself.

Free from her weight, I tossed the blanket over us aside and— Wait, blanket? We didn’t… I groaned again. I hadn’t shut the door to our room when I came in last night, and someone must have come by, seen us asleep on the covers, and covered us in a blanket. That was annoying. Sort of nice, if I was being honest, but my irritation being caught in such a position outweighed it. My stomach growled again, prompting me to resume leaving the bed. I had unintentionally skipped dinner last night, and my stomach was making its displeasure known, but I needed to shower first. I grabbed some clean clothes from my suitcase and started towards where I vaguely recalled the closest bathroom was. Some time later, I swung back by our room to drop off my dirty clothes, feeling much more awake, clean, and absolutely ravenous. Elle was still asleep, which was somewhat surprising given the sunlight now streaming in through the window. Must be a heavy sleeper.

As I slipped back into the hallway, Faultline emerged from her office down the way. “Ah, June. I was just about to check if you and Elle were awake. Have you eaten yet?”

“Nah, but I was about to. Why?”

“Excellent,” she replied while making her way down towards me. “I imagine Gregor and Newter haven’t eaten yet either. We could arrange for some delivery before leaving for our training.”

My stomach protested the idea of waiting for food, and judging by her raised eyebrow, it hadn’t gone unnoticed. “I forgot dinner last night, alright?” I groused, annoyed by the look. “I ain’t waiting, so I’ll just go out.”

She regarded me for a moment with her calculating gaze, and I felt the urge to rub at the still somewhat sore crick in my neck. “We do keep some communal food on hand in the kitchen. The fridge and cabinets in the back corner are for the team—they have signs on them, so the club staff do not touch them. If the food is for everyone, then it will have a label on it. Perhaps that will suffice.”

I hadn’t known about that stuff yet, but even though she was being helpful, it still chaffed a bit to have her undermine my plans. “Cool, I’ll have some of that then.” I didn’t bother to wait on a reply, tossing her an errant salute as I left for the stairs.

“Begin.”

I cautiously stepped into the warehouse’s dimly lit main room, trying to inventory all the metal I felt while my eyes quickly glanced over what I could see. I started to tug the coins wrapped around me into the air, and promptly shrieked when I felt someone tap me on the back of the head. I whirled around and glared at Newter, who was clinging to the metal wall with his front pressed against it such that I’d tentatively pegged his pants button as a a wall fixture or something else equally innocuous. He gave me an unrepentant grin and a wave of his gloved hand, and I narrowly repressed the urge to make a metal rod and smack him upside the head with it.

“That’s a failure,” I heard Faultline announce over the building intercom from the manager’s office overlooking the work floor. “Reset, you three.”

“What the hell, man?” I growled at him. “You gonna give me a chance to actually get started?!”

“I’ll let you get further in next time,” he said with a chuckle. “Just had to do that at least once. God, the look on your face was priceless.”

“I said reset.” I flipped the bird over my shoulder in the direction of the office. “And that’s three laps around the building before the next round, Meteor.”

“Fucking worth it,” I grumbled, prompting more laughter from Newter.

“Get going, or I’m going to add on more.”

I threw my hands up in the air and stomped back the way I’d come. I sincerely debated just pretending like I’d run the laps, but knowing Faultline, she would probably be watching me through the building’s security cameras or something. If they were online anyway? Ah fuck it. May as well fucking run. I jogged the three laps—she hadn’t said I needed to run them—but by the time I returned to the designated start area, I was still a bit winded. I certainly wasn’t what anyone would call ‘indoorsy,’ but it wasn’t like I made a habit of jogging or anything. Or I hadn’t yet, at least. That was apparently one more thing Faultline wanted me to start doing. I didn’t see the goddamn point when I could fly, but she had argued cardio was good regardless and it was better to be prepared. I had kept an eye on Newter by his pants button while running, and he surprisingly hadn’t moved from his spot above the door. Shifted a little bit, sure, but he was still there. What the hell?

“Begin in 3, 2, 1, now.”

I focused on the hunk of wall Newter was still on, used my power to separate it from the rest of the wall, and rapidly wrapped him in a sphere like I had with Lung. I lowered the sphere to the concrete floor and only then did I step in and lift myself into the air. One down, one to go.

The room was laid out in what was more or less a grid with long metal shelves with wooden crates lining the area in regular intervals, creating walls of metal and wood that framed blank corridors. The wide open paths gave the illusion of security, but the wooden boxes weren’t precisely stacked, and even those that were more neatly laid out still left some smaller gaps that Newter could have used to hide, were he still in the game. Exercise. Whatever. It didn’t help that I had to get the flag in the center, while Gregor just needed to stop me. Still, if I can get my eyes on it, then I could pick it up using my coins. I flew up to the top level, which was roughly ten feet lower than the bottom of the manager’s office. Hovering over the crates to give myself some coverage from anyone on the ground, I started to move along the shelf while glancing around for the flag.

I found it and Gregor before long, rotating around the flag—really just some cloth Faultline procured—lying in a pile on the ground. He was moving in intermittent intervals and clearly trying to watch all around while being unpredictable. I hadn’t noticed previously, but he must have been wearing sweatpants or something similar, since I couldn’t feel anything on him moving. Still, I didn’t need my power to see he wasn’t looking up. With a smirk, I sent some of my coins to float over him and slowly lower down until they were over the flag while just out of Gregor’s line of sight.

In a burst of movement, I made the coins surge down and wrap around the flag, but the moment they touched it, I was whacked on my arm by something from behind.

“Failure,” Faultline’s voice intoned over the speakers.

I spun around and gaped at Newter, who was wearing shorts with a drawstring tie in the front. “What. The actual. Fuck. How did you…?”

“Do you know what you did wrong, Meteor?” I glanced over at the manager’s office. Faultline had an intense look in her eyes as she spoke into the microphone. Labyrinth was standing near her but seemed distracted by something above her, as she was craning her head to look straight up. Today wasn’t as good a day as yesterday.

“No, I don’t,” I said, trying my damnedest to keep my tone on this side of acceptable. “I trapped him.” I shot him a glance. “How did you get out of the sphere?”

He shrugged. “Didn’t have to. You trapped my pants, not me.”

With a thought, the sphere I’d made shot into the air and moved over to us. I unfurled the ball and stared when I saw Newter’s pants were stuck to the metal by a glue-like substance. Gregor’s power. “So when I felt you shuffling back and forth… That was you climbing out of your pants?”

“Your problem is you’re being predictable, Meteor,” Faultline said. “Your fight with Rune, then your fight with Lung and Oni Lee… In both of them you leaned on your air superiority, and you’ve told us about flying over Brockton Bay and sensing the metal on your opponents… It wasn’t hard to guess what approach you might take.”

“It… But… The capes in Pr—um, at our next job,” Woof, last thing I need is her getting on my case about operational security too, “won’t know how I fight!”

“Maybe this time,” she disagreed. “But what happens when you run into the same people again? And don’t think I didn’t notice how you focused on the capes. Don’t forget you’ll be running into more than capes on our jobs, and people without powers are still capable of taking you down. The point of training exercises like these are to practice and reinforce what works, yes, but it’s also somewhere for you to try new tactics, to experiment and see what else works. Our testing yesterday was solely focused on where the hard limits of your power are. You need more than power—you need tactics. Now… Reset. And this time, try something new.”

I could kind of see her point, but I still resented being called out in front of the team. I started back towards the entrance, grumbling as I passed by Newter. “Hey, you don’t get to complain! Your pants didn’t get totally ruined here!”

“I warned you this was likely,” Gregor called out from below.

“It was a necessary risk!” he declared, thrusting his hand into the air like a general inspiring his troops. “But we must still acknowledge our loses, lest we lose our humanity! These poor jeans had just gotten that perfect, ‘worn-in’ feeling. It’s a tragedy, I tell you!”

I shook my head, pushing away the small smile that threatened to emerge at his antics. I stepped off the top of the shelf and gently lowered myself down to the ground. Something different, huh? Alright then. I’ll give you something different. Let’s see you tag me through this, Newter.

A couple minutes later, Faultline signaled for us to start once more, and I tore more metal from the walls and began reshaping it. My initial idea had been to basically make myself into a tank, but my skin had crawled at the thought of being inside something dark and cramped. Instead I decided to take inspiration from those dome shaped climbing bars they had at playgrounds. Metal pulled itself into somewhat stocky bars, and I began to piece them together around me with enough distance Newter wouldn’t be able to tag me by hand, foot, or tail. The overall shape and organization was definitely crude, but it would get the job done.

My cage assembled, I pushed forward into the actual warehouse. I frowned when I realized the cage was just a bit too wide to walk down the aisles and had to pull in the shape a bit at the sides. Newter’s tail might be long enough to tag me through a hole now. Damn. There was nothing more I could do without making the holes too small for me to handle. I would just need to be wary.

Newter was nowhere to be seen, and I couldn’t feel any metal moving in the area. I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to feel Newter walking on one of the shelves or clinging to the walls or ceiling. Perhaps if he moved quickly enough to cause the metal to shake? Unsure, I kept a weather eye on my surroundings, including the areas above me. He had ambushed me twice now with success, and while Faultline had preached to me about changing things up, I had a feeling Newter wasn’t above sticking to sneak attacks—it’s what I would do with his power.

I started making my way further in, steering somewhat away from where the flag had been before on the suspicion they would have moved it. The further in I went without attack, the more paranoid I began to feel and the less confident I was my cage would hold off Newter. In hindsight, the cage would also make it more difficult for me to dodge any fluids Gregor tossed at me. My defense was more lacking than I’d hoped for, and I didn’t know where Gregor and Newter were. What could I do to overcome that?

A thought struck me. Could it be that simple?

I took one last look around to ensure Newter wasn’t already on top of me, ready to strike at a moment’s notice, then I broke apart my cage and started pulling more metal from the walls. My tank idea from earlier wouldn’t have worked because of my limitations, but the principle of covering all my bases still fundamentally worked. If I covered every area by sweeping it with sheets of metal, then I could use the sheets like a form of sonar when they hit something. Soon I had formed what amounted to a massive, incredibly thin comb that stretched across the warehouse with pines covering the entirety of each walkway. It would probably be easy for a regular person to just punch a hole through the metal with it all stretched this thin, but that would tell me exactly where my opponents were.

Giving my ‘comb’ a push, it started sweeping further into the warehouse. The paths that ran parallel to my comb would afford small areas of shelter from me, but it was easy enough to adjust the metal to extend in and cover those gaps as the comb passed by. The real weakness to this approach was I had started my sweep while partway into the warehouse, so if anybody was already behind me, then I would miss them. I watched my back, trusting the comb to cover the rest, and at the second parallel path, I felt someone break through the metal towards me. Too small to be Gregor—it was Newter again. I tried to wrap him in metal, but I had to move it slowly enough to not crush him, and it quickly became apparent he had taken advantage of my caution to slip out and away. I promptly brought the comb back towards me, this time at a faster pace, while readying my coins. I hit Newter again with the comb, and I promptly tore away enough of the comb to form a dome between him and the closest shelf. Either he reverses course and tries to break through again, or else he sips between the boxes and comes out somewhere right around…

There!

I saw the orange of Newter’s skin before I properly saw anything else. I sent my coins rocketing forward, and I pulled chunks from the dome in through the gaps on the other side. I heard Newter yelp and felt the pressure as he tried to slip past, but I managed to snag him in the metal I had torn from the dome before he could slip away. I pulled him and my coins out as gently as I could, tensely watching my surroundings to see if Gregor would come to assist Newter.

Newter was sticking his tongue out at me once I extracted him from the wooden boxes, and I stuck my tongue out right back. I began wrapping him in a metal cocoon from the neck down. “Don’t shout,” I whispered, “or I’ll have to cover your mouth too.”

“Want to keep things quiet, huh?” he quietly and salaciously replied. “I’ll try, but I can’t make promises if you have your way with me.”

“Omigod, shut up,” I hissed at him, hoping the relative darkness of the warehouse would hide the redness of my cheeks. “Fucking pervert.”

“Nothing wrong with it if everybody consents,” he added with a waggle of his eyebrows. I raised a piece of metal to hover near his face. “Okay, okay! Shutting up now. Neat trick with covering all the rows, by the way.”

“Thanks. Now be quiet.” I turned my attention back to the comb, fixed the hunks I had torn from it with more metal from the wall, then resumed searching for Gregor and—hopefully—the flag.

Before long, I felt something strike my metal and it swiftly melted before disappearing from my power. Holy shit, he can make an acid that burns through metal? The impact suggested the acid or whatever it was had come from further into the warehouse, but would he have chanced running through straightaway to throw me off his scent? I started flooding the area with chunks of metal from my comb and from the nearby walls, and sure enough, another batch of metal began to melt, this time closer to me than before. Most importantly, he was on the ground. With Newter out of the equation, I should be free to fly again.

Well, she didn’t say I couldn’t fly, I thought as I wrapped myself in coins and took to the air. I quickly moved to the top of a set of shelves nearby then touched down and stayed low while continuing to try and catch Gregor. Though I now had a much firmer idea of where he was, my attempts to catch him were proving fruitless, since he was melting swaths of my metal at a time. I was replacing it all as quickly as I could, but soon I would run out of metal from the room. Besides my coins the only other metal was the shelves themselves, and pulling from them would likely cause the boxes to fall and more problems from there.

He’s gonna reach here soon at his pace. That acid has to be safe to everything that isn’t metal, else there’s no way he’d be risking himself like this for training, and that means he can free Newter when he gets here. Faultline said I win if I get the flag, so how do I get it? I glanced at Newter once again and grinned, an idea coming to mind.

I moved quickly to arrange everything, and a few moments later Gregor appeared at the end of the aisle with Newter in it, standing at a T-intersection. He glanced at the wooden boxes floating high in the air over Newter, held aloft by some spare metal, then starting looking around for me. The flag was wrapped around his left wrist. “Meteor, you cannot win. Your attempt was admirable, but you cannot catch me or the flag.”

“I don’t need to catch you. You’re going to give it to me.” His head whipped in my direction, where I was just barely peaking out over the ledge. I slammed a piece of metal into the ground a few aisles over, and though he flinched, he didn’t look away. Well damn, alright then. Let’s kick it up a notch.

“Is that so?”

I tore the last of the metal from the walls all around the room and began to slam the ground repeatedly, marching each piece his way. “That’s right.”

He backed up a bit, putting more of the perpendicular aisle into his peripheral view, but kept his gaze locked in my direction. I sent a piece of metal flying at him from his right, and he negligently tossed some acid its way. “This is certainly a loud approach. What is to stop me from freeing Newter?”

I made the wooden boxes hovering in the air wiggle a bit. “Because I made the metal untouchable. There’s no dodging this.” I sent two more pieces flying at Gregor from his left, and he splashed them both with one shot. So he’s a good shot with that stuff of his. Good to know I can rely on that when we get on the job.

“Ah, this is possible.” The constant drumbeat of the banging metal was almost all upon us by now, forming a sort of crowd around us. I had never been to a sports match, but I had seen them on TV at sports bars, and the crowds had always sounded like a dull roar, even through the TV.

“Hope you’re ready,” I warned before dropping the box directly over Newter. Gregor threw acid at it, and I took the opportunity to lunge over the ledge towards him while throwing the rest of the boxes at Newter. The wind whistled in my ears as I plummeted towards the ground, and I saw the brief moment of indecision in his eyes. Would he call my bluff and shoot something incapacitating like glue at me, or would he decide he needed to protect Newter? The indecision was gone scarcely after had I acknowledged its presence, and he began chucking acid at the boxes in rapid fire while taking careful, measured steps backwards. I moved swiftly to close the distance, and he turned his hands on me, having apparently hit all the boxes flying at Newter.

He was too late. His hands were roughly yanked to one side as I removed Newter’s prison from elsewhere, and I covered his hands and bound them together with the metal I had snuck around his wrists from behind while he was too distracted from three other directions. I swiftly pushed the improvised cuffs into elsewhere while I made a controlled landing. I started covering him with metal like Newter to prevent him swinging at me while I approached to get the flag off, but to my surprise he actually started secreting his acid from the rest of his skin.

“Jesus.” He was drenched in acid. Those clothes had to be ruined now. “Bit overkill, don’tcha think?”

He shrugged as best as he was able with the cuffs remaining steadfastly stuck in one spot. “Until you have the flag, the match is not over.”

“Sure, sure.” He had managed to melt a decent chunk of metal, but I still had plenty left and began to form several heavy pillars above him. “So, I’m gonna guess you couldn’t melt through all of this before the impact broke a few bones.”

“You would not do that in a training exercise.”

“Duh. But if you were an enemy, then you would be free game.”

“Draw,” Faultline called out.

“The hell?!” I yelled out. “Why is this a draw? He can’t stop me from getting the flag!”

“True, but Newter could knock you unconscious. That would result in Gregor being badly hurt, however, so it is a draw.”

I whirled around, and to my surprise, Newter had somehow gotten closer to me. The lump of metal containing him lifted up and down in the air for a moment, and he smirked. “Nice of you to leave the bottom open. Couldn’t move while you had it all frozen, but after that?”

I flopped into a sitting position on the ground. “Holy shit.”

“Right? Would’ve been a pretty badass comeback, but I can’t spit that far, and you just had to get all wrath of heaven over Gregor. I’ll take a draw.”

“Reset.”

I glanced at each of the boys in something of dazed wonder before shaking my head and calling out, “I think I need a minute.” Jesus. These two… they’re in another league altogether.

No answer came from Faultline for a moment. “Very well,” she finally replied. “Release the two of them, then everyone take ten minutes before we resume.”

I freed them both but remained seated. “You two… You’re really fucking good.”

“Thanks,” Newter said, looking inordinately pleased. “Fret not, amiga. Someday you might be half as amazing as me.”

“Do you need anything, Meteor?” Gregor asked, stepping over with some concern in his eyes. “Some water perhaps?”

I huffed out a small laugh and let myself fall back onto the ground completely. These guys… “Yeah… Yeah, that’d be nice.”