6

---

I’m an athletic person, this much was never in question, I think, by anyone. I can run, I can kick, I can climb, and I can lift heavy things. I do not think it is fair to expect me to do some Wipeout bullshit on a whim, and yet that is the exact situation I find myself within. There used to be game shows like this that my dad used to watch – I distinctly recall sitting on the couch with him as a young child, watching reruns of Ninja Warrior while he tried to get me to sound out all the foreign names I couldn’t pronounce at the time, trying to develop my linguistic palette. I’m not sure how effective it was.

Either way, despite seeing the gigantic obstacle course in front of me for the past two hours, looming in the background like a wildfire on the horizon, I did not expect that I would be upon it, forced to prove myself to these strangers. I shakily put one foot in front of the other, and think to myself, in no uncertain terms, “this is bullshit”.

---

Blink’s hand is on my shoulder as I watch Puppeteer approach the course from the front end. “You know, you don’t have to finish it. You’re already in the group, we just want to see you try,” she says, presumably trying to make me feel better as my eyes scan everything I’m going to have to deal with at the end of this queue. I gently shrug my shoulders to try and get her hand off of me, and thankfully she gets the message and pulls away. “Did they give you a hard time about it?”

“No,” I answer. The rest of the Young Defenders are all sitting by the starting line, stretching, preparing themselves, while Puppeteer does a handstand onto the first obstacle and begins walking her way down with her hands. “I just don’t like being looked down on.”

“I don’t think anyone’s looking down on you, unless you mean, like, literally, because I’m not sure how we could get up really high there without looking down at you. But I think you didn’t mean literally,” she replies, which is I think her attempting to cheer me up with a joke. I glance out the corner of my eye at her crooking a hip out, leaning into her own arm. I bend down and touch my toes, keeping my head up to watch Puppeteer. “Don’t feel intimidated by Pup, she just likes to challenge herself.”

“I’m not intimidated.”

“Good! I promise, we’re all really nice. I don’t know what Ramp told you but don’t worry about him either. He’s nice too even if he’s kind of a dick sometimes.”

I glance at her, pulling my arms over my head, twisting my back left, then right. “You talk a lot, don’t you?”

“Should I stop?” she asks with worrying sincerity. Puppeteer easily navigates the first obstacle on her hands, a thin array of crisscrossing balance beams situated a foot above the ground. The padding is extra thick below her, but I don’t think she’ll fall, not even for a second. Part of it is because, clearly, she is or was a gymnast, and this sort of acrobatics is second nature to her, but also because I can see her “strings”, little vibrating strands of air wrapped from her fingers around everything she can find, mostly the supports of the obstacles ahead, cradling her in an impenetrable web with at least five or six points of contact. I look at Blink dubiously.

“I think you should probably go and get some stretches done if you’re going to go do the obstacle course with everyone else. Before you go, though, I’m curious – is this, like, a frequent event? You guys practice this every day?”

She shakes her head. “Not every day. But, like, once or twice a week. Sometimes we switch it up, too. Take a heavy lifting day to rearrange the course. A lot of it is just old gymnastics equipment that the big guys buy off of places that are closing down, or, like, school surplus.”

Part of me wants to point out to her that Philadelphia public schools could probably use the surplus, but I get the impression from Blink that the slightest amount of pushback would make her cry, so I keep it to myself. “And you’re not going to stretch?” I ask.

“Huh? Oh, I just got distracted by the other thing you asked. Yeah, okay, let’s stretch together! Do you do yoga, new girl?” Blink asks, turning towards me while I keep watching Puppeteer navigate the balance beams until she falls forward out of her handstand and into a normal stand. Blink turns her entire body sans her legs towards Puppeteer and claps, which nobody else seems to care about. Then, Blink bends herself backwards into a bridge, flattening her stomach out. “It’s really good for stretching.”

I do not look directly at her, because I would have to resist the urge to roll my eyes. I’m trying to silence my inner mean girl but Blink is getting on my nerves a little, so I just focus on the stretches I already know how to do. “No, I just play a lot of soccer. I’m going to be doing track at my high school, too.”

“Gosh, you’re so young… I bet activating was real scary. I mean, it’s probably scary for everyone, but, you know. Scary!” Blink replies absentmindedly, pulling herself back up, contorting her body in a way I find difficult to describe.

“Not a fan of talking about it,” I say, trying not to sound like a curmudgeon (big word for “an asshole”), so I throw on a “sorry,” at the end. There was a second obstacle, two walls next to each other that I assume you have to ascend parkour style, but Puppeteer has already made her way up it before I can even watch her do so. She runs across the top and doesn’t bother shimmying down the fake pipe that leads her back to ground level, just tying her strings around the fake roof’s protrusions and descending on her own lines, hopping down like she’s holding onto a rope.

“That’s okay! You don’t have to tell me unless you want to,” Blink replies, smiling at me. I bend back down and touch my toes again, eyes on the prize.

“Alright. I won’t.”

Have I been rattled? I keep thinking about how Rampart was trying to warn me – was that hazing, or just well-intentioned concern? I’ve had people try to get in my head before, during soccer games, but nobody’s had the gall to say to my face “I don’t think you can hack it” and it’s got me annoyed and angry and feeling all sorts of uncomfortable inside.

Puppeteer scrambles up increasingly tall chain-link fences, followed by some rusty looking wrought-iron fences that I watch her shimmying her way up, jamming her feet in between them to lock herself in place. She grabs hold of the spikes at the top and just vaults herself over like it’s the easiest thing in the world. I feel my face scrunching up in something that might be anger, or determination. I don’t like the feeling.

“Well, I’m gonna go get in line. I’ll see you at the finish line hopefully, okay, new girl?” Blink says, breaking the peaceful near-silence that I had lulled myself into with enough force that I nearly jump.

“Yeah. See you,” I reply. She jogs over to meet the rest of the Young Defenders who are waiting in line, and I’m left alone over here to watch and observe and learn what I can before it’s my turn. I could get closer, maybe even get friendly with them, but I’m an angry, hormonal teenager and I feel like stewing in this feeling is a better way to fuel myself for the challenge ahead. I’m not their friend yet. I’m only their comrade on paper. My locker is not decorated, and they don’t even know my name.

I’ll make sure they don’t doubt me.

Puppeteer swings from a series of ramshackle monkey bars, throwing herself on and off of ledges that she has to keep herself on with only her arm strength. All the prior obstacles looked at least surmountable to me with significant enough determination, but this one just strikes me as impossible, and yet she makes it look effortless. Obviously, it’s easy for her since her power is just purpose-built for mobility, so I’m left questioning how I’m even meant to compete in the same league.

Then again, even Playback and Crossroads and Gossamer are expected to complete the course. I’m sure it’s almost as easy for them, too. There’s no sound, no soundtrack, only the sound of feet and hands making contact with surfaces, slapping quietly. Puppeteer gracefully moves onto the next obstacle, a series of platforms at awkward angles and heights arranged in a loose stairwell, and makes a fool out of it. When your armspan is limited only by how far your strings are, it becomes easy to just pull yourself up to any surface you need to, I suppose.

She makes her way easily to the topmost platform and works her way back down by just straight up jumping. The platforms on the other end are all flat and stable and padded, but it’s still like a two, three foot drop vertically and pretty far horizontally, with plenty of room on each platform for her to duck into a roll and cushion her fall. One more jump, even further now, takes her back down to ground level, and then there’s just one last obstacle for her to surmount before it’s time for the next person in line.

I have to assume this last one wasn’t made with “gymnasium surplus”, given it looks straight up like a brick wall that was torn off of some disused apartment complex somewhere. Given all the places I see in north Philly, there’s a pretty high chance that it was, in fact, just ripped off of an apartment complex. Either way, a folded fire-escape ladder and some rickety looking pipes all seem to be extremely untenable ways for any normal person to make their way up to the “rooftop”. I suppose one could also simply, uh, grab hold of the bricks and haul their way up, but I don’t know if anyone here has the power set for that. I certainly don’t. Sure, my shark teeth could catch, but then I’d have to be biting my way up, and I think at that point I’d rather just use the fire escape.

Obviously, Puppeteer makes it look like a joke. She grabs hold of the fire escape ladder with her strings, plants her feet firmly on the bricks, and walks her way up. She doesn’t even bother actually getting on the fire escape platforms, just using them to secure herself as she climbs upward, skipping the stairs entirely to go faster. She climbs on each railing in turn, jumps off in a way that looks suicidal to anyone that’s not looking for her strings, and retracts her strings to pull herself upwards by them. I see the fire escape rattling from the force of the pull, but she makes it up to the roof faster than I think humans were designed to ascend fire escapes, and slaps a large red button.

“Showoff!” Playback shouts all the way from the starting line.

“What’s that? I thought I heard a little bitch complaining!” Puppeteer shouts back, loud enough that it echoes around the gymnasium.

“You’re getting slow, Pup!” Playback shouts, rolling his shoulders until they audibly crack, cracking his knuckles. Obviously, Puppeteer’s hand-walking stunt slowed her down at the front end, that was obvious to anyone with half a brain. If you normally walk that part, hand-standing it is definitely going to slow you down. “Got someone to impress?”

“Don’t you got an obstacle course to be doing?” she shouts back at him.

“Alright, if that’s how it’s gonna be…” he says, probably not loud enough for Puppeteer to hear him. Then, unlike her grace and acrobatics, he breaks into a dead sprint. I’ve never seen anyone sprint across balance beams before, but there’s a first time for many things, and this is one of them. He knows exactly where he wants to put each footfall, making the balance beams shake and rock while he treats them like a running track.

He takes the parallel walls with equal gusto, taking a footstep up the first one and springing off. He grabs an outcropping and hauls himself up into the narrowest sliver of foot space, and I notice something seems wrong but I can’t tell what, exactly. He jumps off to the other side of the wall, catching himself on a plastic bit of piping. One more jump, and he pulls himself onto the top of the walls. What is off about this? He’s performing exactly as he should be.

I glance to the fire escape wall as he works his way down the pipe, over to the fence jumping section. Puppeteer is just sitting there, cross-legged, watching him like a hawk, silently.

Then, I realize that everything Playback has been doing was silent. I have this realization about a fraction of a second before something that sounds like a gunshot rocks the gymnasium. While I’m looking around, ducking down, hands over my head in preparation to be shot, nobody else seems to be concerned. I peek out from over my hands, embarrassed, while a second explosive sound rings out, originating from Playback’s location. He vaults the fences without issue, shimmying his way up the wrought iron one, and moves onto the next obstacle.

“Quit it, you’re scaring the newbie!” Puppeteer barks.

“I need it to jump higher!” Playback shouts back.

“I can guarantee unless it’s loud enough to blow out the eardrums of everyone in here, it is not producing enough force to actually lift you up!” she counters.

“Shut up, nerd!” Playback shouts as he works his way across the monkey bars, one after another. Every motion he makes is unnervingly silent, like he’s sucking all the air and noise out of the equipment. If I looked away from him, my brain would probably have a hard time keeping track of where he was. He grabs onto the hanging ledges and doesn’t use any tricks to pull himself across, just upper arm strength. From there, everything is a formality, up the crooked platforms and down the jumps, rolling into them like a well-practiced traceur (that’s the term for someone who practices parkour, I think).

I don’t even bother looking as he works up the fire escape. He can do it, Puppeteer can do it, and I have no doubt everyone else can do it. It’s a foregone conclusion, so instead I begin walking over to the starting line with everyone else.

They part for me. “Newbie!” Blink shouts excitedly as I walk over, waving at me like we’re already best friends.

“You know, it’s easier to see from over where you were. You don’t have to come over here until you’re ready.” Rampart says, arms folded politely behind his back, stance straight and proper and military.

“Oh, I’m ready.” I say, reaching for the hand chalk that’s been set out and giving my hands a good dusting. Out of the corner of my eye, I watch Gale smiling at me, and I give a couple of short hops, boxing the air, trying to look enthusiastic about the whole trial. I guess, in a sense, I am enthusiastic. I’m ready to go. I don’t need to watch a bunch of people older than me show off, no matter how much I’m sure they want to impress or intimidate me. I crane my head around and notice a distinct lack of Gossamer, but don’t care enough to call it out. “Why, is there a line? Are you going to make me wait for you all first?”

Rampart shows a little bit of actual emotion in his following smile. “Not at all. Ladies first, after all.”

Crossroads chuckles at the back of the group. I think he says “Chauvinist”, but it’s too quiet to hear, and Rampart certainly doesn’t notice over Playback causing airhorn noises to blare out of his fingertips.

Blink walks up to the starting line, cups her mouth, and yells. “Hey, boss-lady, is it cool if the new girl goes next?”

“I was going to ask that…” Rampart mumbles under his breath, while I take my place at the starting line.

“Huh? Yeah. Sure. Show us what you got, newbie!” Puppeteer yells back.

I bend down, doing one last stretch, and tie my shoelaces.

---

I’m not one for tumbling, gymnastics, acrobatics, all things I abandoned at the altar of kicking and running and aiming with my forehead. Like most little girls, when I was young, I did those things, enrolled by my parents in an effort to teach me valuable life skills and keep me in shape. Of course I can somersault, of course I know what a balance beam is, and sometimes I can even cartwheel if I feel particularly motivated.

I shakily put one foot in front of the other, and think to myself, in no uncertain terms, “this is bullshit”.

The balance beams looked even from the distance I was at before, but from up close, they’re anything but. They’ve been propped up, slightly bent, some of them thicker and some of them thinner. There’s inclines and declines, each balance beam overlapping at least one other but usually two, and never at the very end of them. I have to step over the ones that intersect the middle of whatever beam I’m on, and several times, I almost fall, my arms splayed out for balance like a tightrope walker. I’m determined to not fuck up on this first obstacle, and I make my way across slowly and steadily.

Unlike them, I don’t need to be fast. I just need to prove I can do it. Doing it fast comes afterwards. I don’t turn back for gracious applause after I make my way off the sole balance beam leading to the end, an extremely narrow one at an incline that I really have to work my calves to get across. I don’t grandstand or do anything interesting. It is only me, and the obstacles ahead of me. It is only ever me, and the obstacles ahead of me.

There are only two obstacles that I’m really dreading, and one of them is right in front of me. I know being able to ascend two parallel walls, like in an alleyway, is probably an extremely essential skill for anyone who needs to move around a city by foot extremely quickly, but this just strikes me as impossible. The bricks are extremely fake, wallpaper that won’t give me any grip, and there’s plastic pipes and knobs like a rock climbing wall, painted in worn-out metal colors, silver and grey and rust red brown. The ledges are just wooden planks anchored in and similarly painted to look like granite or marble or whatever, built to mimic the appearance of window-sills. The space directly between the two walls is a foam pit, like the kind they expect you to fall into doing gymnastics, which sort of breaks the illusion but I guess is necessary for safety.

I look up, take a deep breath, and think. Really, it’s just a rock climbing wall that requires you to switch walls. From afar, it was more intimidating, because it was harder to see all the little handholds and crevices. I take a step back into the space between the balance beams and this, and run at a sharp angle so I can get a little more lead-up. I turn, try to propel myself up the wall, and just barely manage to skim the first ledge with my fingers.

I fall back down, my feet catching in the foam pit, nearly knocking myself down to my knees. I take a couple steps back and try again, and this time, I catch it, hauling myself up with both arms already getting ready to start screaming at me. There’s not enough space on the ledge to really pull myself into a standing position from below, only to use it as a footrest if I’m already above it, so I just treat it as another rock on the rock wall and move on. My eyes flick from object to object, scanning for handholds, limited in timing only by the lactic acid buildup in my forearms, if I’m remembering one of my old coach’s lectures correctly. I trace out a path and start working my way up.

Blink, over from the sidelines, whistles and claps. “Go new girl! You got this!”

I rest my feet on one of the ledges with the inch or so of room I get and shake one hand out, followed by the other. I know the goal is to jump across to the other wall, but I don’t think that’s feasible, and I don’t know if they’d actually set that up as a necessity – if I jump and fall, I’m breaking my ankles. I know it’s not flashy, but I just reach across with one arm and one leg, the other half of my body gripping for dear life onto the wall. I catch a handhold. It’s slow going, but I make my way up, stone by stone, my body heaving for breath, gulping down precious lungfuls of air that I haven’t needed before. It becomes simple on the way up again. I work my way onto the ledge that I am allowed, and then stretch all the way across to just barely grab hold. As I manage to pull myself onto the top, I take a second to feel accomplished before looking around.

It looks a lot worse from below. Up here, about ten feet high, I’d wager, it just seems about as daunting as a diving board. “What’s the situation if I fall off this thing from up here? Do I just try not to break my neck? This doesn’t exactly seem up to code,” I yell towards the end of the obstacle course.

“What are you, a safety inspector?” Playback shouts before Puppeteer has a chance to shut him up.

“Then you try to land in the foam pit while Gale slows you down! In the real world we can’t guarantee you belaying equipment for scaling buildings safely. You’re going to have to get comfortable with free climbing,” Puppeteer yells back.

“Sounds dangerous!” I shout.

“Being a hero usually is!” she replies. I don’t really have a counter to that, so I find the chalk on the roof that’s been set up and chalk up my hands. Descending the walls is a lot easier than ascending them, and the trip down is unremarkable. I hear Blink cheering as soon as my sneakers hit the ground and bite back the need to ask for her silence.

My arms ache, and my forehead is covered in a thin but growing layer of sweat. I wipe it off on the back of my forearm. Hopping fences is not an interesting challenge for me – my small feet, compared to everyone else here, are real good at getting in the gaps in the chain link, and scrambling over is a non-issue. The iron fence, consisting solely of parallel vertical spikes with the tips sanded down and padded, is obviously a harder challenge. Still, I can wedge my feet in at an angle, catching the bars in the arch of my shoe, and shimmy myself up until I’m rolling over the top. Easy peasy.

Next is the part I’ve been really dreading. There are monkey bars at every playground, but these ones have a slight curve to them, barely noticeable if you’re not close enough to see it. After going halfway, the gaps get larger, with every third monkey bar just cut off, and at the very end, every other one instead. I can still see in the sides where they just lopped it off and plastered over the holes and painted over it with silver colored paint. Then, after the monkey bars comes a bunch of ledges like on the parallel walls, but these are clearly intended to be climbed with hanging arm strength, not shimmied over by pulling myself on top.

My arms hurt just looking at the whole mess. I take a couple of steps back and do a running leap onto the monkey bars, grabbing onto them hard enough that I feel the skin on my palms ripping a little bit. I know how to handle monkey bars. I swing myself, rocking my legs back and forth, using my pelvis to give myself more momentum, and before I can psyche myself out, I scramble across.

One, two, one, two, left, right, left, right. My hand reaches out for empty air and I slip up, too caught up in the rhythm to remember the missing bars. I swipe at nothing and overcorrect, swinging my body around so that I can have two hands on the bar again. I grip, I squeeze, I let out a sharp, loud yell. I start swinging again, back and forth, trying to regain momentum.

My hands hurt so bad, but I’ve been gutted by a propeller. This is nothing. I just keep telling myself that – I’ve been gutted by a propeller, this is nothing. I’ve been gutted by a propeller, this is nothing. I am not going to let them get one over on me. I am not failing. Maybe I don’t want to be a hero, maybe I do, but if there’s anything I’m sure of, it’s that I’m good enough for them.

It should be my choice to stay or go. I let out another scream and start swinging. I reach out for the next bar and scrape it with my fingernails. I swing back. I swing forward. I get my momentum back, reach out, and grab hold. The next bar is closer, and my left hand grabs it easily. I stop and keep my momentum so I can use my left hand for the far away bar. I think that’s probably part of the game, here, that if you go with the natural rhythm, you’ll overwork one of your arms.

I swing and grab, and keep it up. One, two, pause. One, two, pause. By the time I get to the bars that are situated with every other one missing, I give up on grabbing, blood running down my inner arms in tiny trickles. Being able to have intimate awareness of my entire vascular system is extremely disconcerting, just adding another obstacle on my pile. I just rock myself back and forth and let go, throwing myself at the next bar and catching myself with both hands. Then the next, and then the next. In the distance, I see Puppeteer getting up, and try to ignore her. I vanish her from my periphery.

“You good down there, newbie? You’re bleeding!” she asks.

I do not have control over my emotions or my voice right now. Instead of saying anything reassuring, my face contorts into a snarl, teeth bared. I pull myself onto the ledges and feel my muscles shredding, fourteen year old girl arms not meant for this sort of upper arm workout. Puppeteer leans over the edge, and I see her casting out her wires, probably deciding to come down and save my life.

So I stop her, and scream. “Don’t look down on me!” I use as my kiai, feeling the effort ripping my throat. She pauses while I yank myself sideways, about to descend from on high to ask me to stop. I’m sure she wants to tell me that I’ve done enough for someone my age, that she’s very impressed, and don’t worry, Sam, you’ll train and you’ll train and one day you’ll be able to do it just like we do it.

I don’t want to hear any of that. Something in my abs blows a fuse like a circuit breaker being tripped, and a sharp taste fills my mouth. I pull myself to the next ledge, leaving bloody, smeared handprints mixed with chalk along the wood. The ache goes down to my nails, and I feel like my arms are about to rip themselves out of my shoulder joints. My inhale is shaky and unsteady. My eyes are unfocused and swimming. I have been gutted by a propeller. I have been gutted by a propeller. I have been gutted by a propeller. It becomes a mantra as the world stops being in focus for me. I say it again in my head. I have been gutted by a propeller.

Outside of the echoes of my outburst, the gymnasium is silent. When I look behind me, I see everyone else, having left the starting line and walked around the obstacle course just to watch my performance.

I hate that. I clench my teeth together like a vicegrip, digging the tips into my gums, trying to elicit a pain response that’s not from my arms or my core. My legs dangle uselessly beneath me. I hang there, pushing myself beyond everything my body is designed for, and begin to shake myself side to side like a pendulum. If I can’t shimmy across, I’ll throw myself across. I let go, in small, rapturous moments of micro-rest, hurling myself sideways an inch at a time, one, two, three inches. My nails dig into wood. Blood reaches the underside of my t-shirt.

Finally, I make it to the next obstacle, drop down, and buckle as a wave of fresh oxygen hits my lungs. My vision goes sparkly and my mouth immediately fills with saliva. Crossroads says something, but I don’t hear it, because I’m too preoccupied with slamming my red, wet palms into my knees and trying not to fall to the ground completely. My entire body begs for release, even though I’m resting, I no longer have anything to agonize over. I inhale, and it feels like my lungs are broken. My arms are limp, sliding off my knees and failing to protect me as I pitch forward and hit the ground nose-first, right into the padding.

I can hear Puppeteer and Playback both making their way down from the fake fire escape as quickly as they can. I can hear the noises of concern from the onlookers, and I can feel the wind from Gale pulling at me. “Get her upright, Pup.” Crossroads orders. Something thin and tight winds around my hair like a ponytail tie, and I am yanked upwards, my eyes dry and my vision blurred.

The saliva flows freely from the corners of my lips as I vomit directly into a bowl of swirling wind, taking the morning’s Wawa trip with it. My entire body convulses in rebellion against what I just put it through, and I feel my throat clench and squeeze as it propels bile and half-digested food up into my mouth and out into the world. How lovely – I ask not to be looked down upon, and my body betrays me by making me look weak and feeble (that means REALLY weak) in front of the entire team.

I can’t even say words against the tide. I just start yelling in between belches, my mouth repeatedly refilling with fresh spit. I remember once, after my mom got too drunk at a seder, that one of my relatives told me why it is your mouth gets all spitty and you get that weird feeling in your cheeks before you throw up. He said that it was a defense mechanism, your body trying to protect your mouth and throat from the harsh acidity of the stomach bile. I spit into the levitating sphere of vomit, and another wave comes up, this one devoid of food.

I spend a minute being babied, maybe two minutes, maybe five. I’m in enough pain that time has blended together into one incoherent mass. At some point, Gale floated away the remnants of my morning meal and stomach acid, and I try to take a mental note to thank her, but all I can do is instead mentally note to stop yelling. My throat is raw and ragged, and as Puppeteer lets my head down gently, her strings cushion me and form a lattice beneath me, manipulating my limbs so I’m splayed out like a starfish.

The daily obstacle course run comes to a momentary, inconvenient pause. The room is silent as it tends to be, its vastness absorbing even the sounds of everyone’s breathing. Shaking like a leaf, or an animatronic skeleton on Halloween, I get back to my feet.

“Alright.” I squeak, my voice hoarse and dry. “I’m ready to keep going.”

“Are you sure, new girl? You just threw up. I think you should stop.” Blink asks, reaching out to try and hold my shoulder. This time, when I shrug her off, it’s with more force, swinging my arm at her. She backs away faster than I can respond to, and my arm goes back to dangling at my side.

“My legs are fine. I’ll have enough arm strength to handle the fire escape at the end. Don’t patronize me,” I answer her, trying to crack my knuckles. It doesn’t look nearly as badass as I expected, I imagine. All it ended up doing was getting blood on my fingers.

“I’m not…” she starts, before a wall of semi-visible strands locks in the air across my face.

“Hey. Newbie. I don’t care what kind of protagonist syndrome you think you have, but you’re not going to take it out on my team,” Puppeteer chides me, glaring at me through her eyebrows. “Nobody’s patronizing you or looking down on you. Get that chip off your shoulder.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I say, as flatly and sincerely as I can manage with my hoarse-ass voice. “Sorry. I’ve got problems.”

“I don’t mind problems, I mind people who can’t be team players. If you can’t handle getting assisted by others, go be a street vigilante. Or go to therapy,” Puppeteer orders, and I really can’t fault her for it. Logically, everything she’s saying makes sense.

“I just don’t want help finishing this course. I can handle it. Apologies for the outburst, ma’am,” I reply. She retracts her strings, looks at me with what is easily identifiable as pity, and nods.

“Alright, everyone, let’s give the stubborn newbie her space,” she orders, backing everyone away with her wingspan. I pace in my spot and eye the next obstacle ahead of me, everything duplicating and fusing back together in my vision. I take a couple of steps back, begin running, and jump for the first platform.

I misjudge the jump, slip off the edge, and black out before I even hit the ground.

---

There are a lot of places I expect to wake back up in. My home, assuming that everything that happened in the past couple hours was some kind of dream, or maybe that my parents were alerted and would come to pick me up. Or maybe an infirmary, since I know there was one that I got shown during my little tour. Maybe they just left me there, or moved me to the side so they could do the obstacle course around me.

I did not expect to wake up atop the fire escape wall and its facade, lying on foam cushions, body propped up sideways, presumably in case I threw up again. From up here, I can see the entire gymnasium, its distinct lack of people, its vastness and enormity. I slowly prop myself up on agonized, bruised arms, straight purple lines going up and down their entire lengths, my hands covered in thin, weeping scabs that have been wrapped up in gauze.

I turn around to see the rest of the group sitting, talking, in hushed tones presumably to avoid waking me. Blink notices me waking up first, and waves excitedly, causing everyone else to turn around. Rampart stands up first, scuttling over to help scoop me off the roof’s floor and into a sitting position. I notice that there’s gauze and padding wrapped around my head too – did I hit that on the way down? I don’t know.

“Hey. I’m sorry if you felt like you needed to push yourself to prove yourself to me or something. I hope you can forgive me, hopefully as your teammate in the future,” he hush-speaks. “I have no doubt that if not for the age thing, you’d be just as able as the rest of us. That was really impressive. Really.”

“Save it. Apology accepted,” I say, remembering Puppeteer’s request to take the chip off my shoulder. I stand up and stretch, and my entire lower torso yells at me in protest. “We good?” I ask the group.

“Oh, yeah, Gossamer just has something for you!” Blink near-shouts. Playback elbows her in the ribs playfully.

“Don’t ruin the surprise, girl.” He whispers, loud enough that I can still hear it.

I’m not thinking about surprises, though. I’m thinking about the fact that I can’t smell my own blood anymore, which is nice. It was getting extremely distracting. I blink a couple of times as my vision refocuses on Gossamer’s green outfit approaching me. “Yeah?”

She hands me a stack of clothes, with what looks like a facemask on top. I take them into my weak arms and examine the mask, with its collection of non-useful holes, hard and durable looking. I wonder what it’s made of – resin? Plastic? It looks a bit like a dog baring their teeth. “I was making you a costume!” she cheers, and my face lights up into a tight-lipped smile.

“Oh. Cool,” is the only way I can exhaustedly respond. “Extremely cool. I’d sound more enthusiastic but I’m sort of out of energy. I don’t really see the shark theming though – it’s all brown and black and red? And the mask has a lot of holes in it.”

She giggles at me, and everyone else starts leaning in, except for Rampart, who is backing away to give Gossamer more room. “It’s not a facemask, silly, it’s teeth. You said you didn’t care for sharks, and Pup told me about your blood smell. I went and got one of those menpo, the masks that samurai used to wear, from our Halloween storage, and added hinges so you can open your mouth. You know, in case you really need to bite someone, it won’t restrict you”

I can’t help but raise an eyebrow, pulling apart the neatly folded clothes stack with my hand to examine it. “Wolf mask?” I ask dubiously, examining the mask from all angles, clasping it to my face, feeling it fit around the curves of my chin.

“How do you feel about the name ‘Bloodhound‘?” She asks. She puts her hands behind her back and tries to look as innocent as possible, swaying her hips from side to side. I take my time and think about it.

Everyone is looking at me. I bare my teeth in a sharp grin.

“Yeah. I can work with this.”

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