Dressed and up in the foyer before the sun was up again, the five of us barely stirred as we waited for Blackett's return. I found my eyes kept landing on Tem.

She was thin, small, maybe half my weight even, though I was back up to having some muscle on me again with real food and a gym available to me. Her silver hair hung straight down, parting with gentle curves around her face, like curtains which half-hid her eyes and forehead, and then met in a pair of braids on either shoulder, each ending with a silver tuft at her chest.

She was staring at the ground, too, as usual. She glanced up, found me staring, and then resumed boring into the ground, even more intently, face flushed.

God, she drove me crazy. I took a deep breath and focused on the others instead, deliberately trying to block her out.

Mage looked as bored and tired as I think we all felt. Even smaller than Tem, I had to wonder if she was even eighteen. Not that Exhuman powers seemed to care...Saga got hers when she was still practically a baby, if I remembered. I wondered if there were many actual babies who got put down for showing with powers, and realized, I'd rather not have that thought.

Mage had caramel skin and dark hair, wavy and lazily kept so it just looked like two large pools of hair draped on either side of her face. As I watched, she yawned lazily and scratched herself, before giving her armpit a subtle sniff. Very classy. Not like I cared, I was fine with people who were comfortable in their own skin, unlike some other girls in the room I could mention.

Jack was...well, Jack. Very tall, thin, smiling, eyes closed. His hair hung in his face a little, which I guess wasn't much of an issue if you could see with your eyes closed, but was kept shorter in the back. So...a deliberate design choice? Or maybe the stylist had just given up on the haircut when they got to his face and saw how creepy he was.

Finally, Tower. I think I liked him best, and liked him best early in the morning when he wasn't crushing my bones with his exuberance. Big, tall, some pudge on the belly, but powerfully muscled anyway. His head was basically bald, with just a thin layer of afro, fading to nothingness on the sides of his head. Otherwise, clean-shaven, with dark eyes and a wide nose.

Having finished my own inspections...I was bored again. Early mornings here really sucked.

It was still another several minutes before we heard the gate outside clang and all snapped to attention. Tower opened the door and stood severely at the side of the doorway, doorknob in hand.

In strolled Blackett, looking more tired and haggard than I'd seen him, and out of uniform, which was a first. In its place, a simple polo and pair of slacks, both still black of course. As Tower closed the door carefully behind him, he let out a sigh.

"Let's do some inspections," he said. The faces of the others brightened, and they moved towards the gym, me trailing behind them, and Blackett trailing behind me.

It really wasn't my place to ask, but I did anyway, because fuck it, I wasn't really a servant here. I didn't know what I was, but I wasn't that.

"Everything okay, uh, sir?"

He looked at me seriously for a moment and then seemed to decide to answer. The others were still walking, but even if their eyes were forward, it was obvious their attention was back here.

"I believe I mentioned to you that the XPCA is obsolete. The signs of that are showing more and more, day by day. Unless something can be done, the failure of the XPCA is inevitable."

"So do something?"

Tem gasped.

Surprisingly, and I think, for the first time, Blackett chuckled. Maybe he was just so tired his facade was cracking.

"I'm trying," he said, and it was obvious the conversation was over. With a smile, Jack held open the door to the gym's lower floor, a large empty room with padded floors and walls, and I passed through.

"I'll be a moment," Blackett said, and turned back.

The others moved to one side of the room where beneath one of the floor panels, they pulled out karate uniforms, not actually too different from our sleepwear. A robe-like top with a thick, stiff cloth belt, and a pair of pants, but all white this time. Possibly the only non-black clothes in the whole mansion.

And then I was back in high school as everyone around me began to strip out of their clothes, seemingly without embarrassment or concern. The locker rooms all over again. Except...mixed company. Nobody even bothered to move to the corners of the room, it was just...rip 'em off, I guess.

I tried not to look, keep my eyes on myself as I did the same, but…

Tem's skin was so white, she gave Saga a run for her money, and beneath the suit, she was definitely not all-there. I could see her bones in her ribcage, and her arms and legs seemed only just large enough to fit her elbows and knees in. She wasn't skeletal or anything just...unhealthy thin.

Mage, on the other hand, was as dark as Tem was white. The juxtaposition was startling. Then there was a pair of eyes in front of me, and I jumped. A half-naked Jack appeared inches from my face, smile in place, and then disappeared again, getting dressed like nothing had happened. My heart was racing from the shock, and I took the hint, and locked my eyes on the floor as I dressed. I heard Mage snickering behind me, but wasn't going to look up for anything.

'Cause, I mean, maybe next time, Jack would be fully finished undressing. That's not something I needed in my life.

A minute later, promptly, silently and with a smile, we were all changed and lined up, seated in a single row on a side of the room alongside Blackett, who had procured tea while we were changing, clinging to his cup like it was a lifeline.

"Tem, Chariot," he said, and then took a sip. "Tem, you may use whatever you wish so long as you do not damage the house. Chariot, sparring is to first blood only."

"I, uh," I watched as Tem stood and moved to her place in the room without hesitation, loose pants swishing softly. "I don't know how to fight without killing someone." I said.

"Electricity is tricky that way. But that's the whole purpose of this practice. You must master yourself if you are to be of use to anyone else. Do your best."

He gestured to Tower, who got up and pulled up the mat he was sitting on, digging around in the compartment underneath for a moment before coming back up with a full-sized first-aid kit, like, the size of briefcase...and a defibrillator.

I still sat frozen. There was no way this was okay. My lightning didn't just stop people's hearts, and defibrillating someone wasn't just, zap 'em and they're good, I'd learned just how painful and hard on my heart it was when I'd had to do it to myself. Lightning was...thousands of degrees hot. I could melt my way through metal like it was...well, a cold knife through cold butter, but that was still pretty insane. And I was just supposed to have a go at this fragile waif?

Like, yeah, I'd been fantasizing about kicking her ass all week, but that was just a fantasy. I didn't want to hurt her, especially now that I'd seen just how weak she was.

I heard Jack sigh and looked over at him. He wasn't there. Damn it.

I felt more than saw his arms grab mine and his legs hook into my gut as he rolled on is back and threw me into the middle of the room with some kind of judo. As I sailed in the air, I saw him on his back where I'd just been, smug smile fixed in place, but only for a moment before he reappeared in the gap between Mage and Blackett.

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I slammed onto my back on the padded floor.

I felt like no sooner had I landed than Blackett said "Begin."

I rolled to my feet, and where I'd been laying a small laser burned a hole in the mat.

I found myself moving quickly in the apparently empty arena, as cloudlike motes of light coagulated out of nothingness and, after half a moment, exploded into a precision laser beam, which burned a new black hole in whatever mat happened to be in the way.

"I thought you said no destruction?" I shouted at Blackett while I moved, half-unpredictably to try to shake the beams, half in reaction to a beam forming right in my way.

"I said no destroying the house. Padding can be easily replaced."

I noticed that the beams were coming from nowhere, anywhere in the room, but none of them were firing through me into the spectators. Of course, she didn't want to hurt them. I ran in their direction and dove behind the line of them.

"We're not part of the fight, bro," Tower said, looking back at me.

"Tell that to the bitch who's trying to vaporize me!" I shouted.

I saw the smile again as I was thrown back bodily into the room without even a moment to react. "Language!" he shouted as I sailed through the air.

"She's invisible! What am I supposed to do?" I shouted as I retook my feet, dodging another half-dozen beams aimed at where I landed.

"You are supposed," Blackett said with annoyance in his voice, "to fight. Now fight."

"I'll kill her, you idiot!" I shouted back, lasers now forcing me to kick off a wall to get enough height over them. From somewhere in the room, I heard a scream, and the lasers began pouring after me with even greater speed, size, and intensity.

"Shit, did I insult Blackett in front of you? My bad." I shouted back at Tem, wherever she was.

"Language," muttered Jack again.

"IT'S!" A huge hazy-looking cloud appeared directly in front of me, easily as large as my body. "MASTER BLACKETT!" screamed Tem's voice.

I dove forward, feeling the enormous beam annihilate the wall behind me, and felt some of the hairs on the back of my head vaporize with it.

"Oh come on! How is that not damaging the house!" I yelled, getting only a gance of the huge hole in the wall and dirt-turned-slag beyond it.

"Walls are replaceable as well," said Blackett with a shrug.

"Yeah, but there's no way that was going to just be first blood!" I shouted back, sliding narrowly under another set of beams, and then popping back up and arresting my momentum to keep from crashing into more.

"But you avoided it. Do try to pay attention, Chariot."

"So what you're saying," I said, whipping out my swords. "Is that it's fine to use lethal attacks as long as I don't hit with them? Against an invisible person?"

"Correct."

"And the fight is to literal first blood? I don't have to avoid getting hit?"

"If you don't bleed, I suppose."

"This is the stupidest fucking thing. I want you to know that."

"Language," insisted Jack. I could feel his frown behind his smile.

The room was big, but it wasn't that big. Standing in the middle, I could barely reach the short ends of the room with my blades. On my left and right, three blades each, spinning like propellers on a plane. I began to walk forward, blades chopping through the air, walking from one end of the room towards the other.

Lasers popped out of nowhere and blasted directly into me, but I just let them sink into my shield instead of putting in the token effort of evading them. Their stupid rules, their stupid game.

"Hey! That's...not...not fair!" I heard Tem say from somewhere in front of me, as I slowly advanced on her.

"Think you'd better forfeit," I said. "Not my fault if you run into a fatal attack if it's just slowly walking towards you."

"It's not fair that you're...you're laserproof!" she squeaked.

"Battles between Exhumans are never going to be fair," Blackett said.

Now that I wasn't bouncing around the room and was focusing on my powers, I felt like I could sense her again. Just as I'd somehow kept track of Jack while he whizzed all over the place, I got a feeling she was hunkered in the corner of the room in front of me.

"Wait!" I heard her say. She stood up and became visible, appearing behind me on my left, standing up from behind the onlookers. "I was hiding back here, I'm, s-s-sorry."

"Oh, I thought they were out-of-bounds? Or was it just me who gets thrown into the middle of the room for being over there? I turned off my swords and went to the far corner of the room while she gently and apologetically stepped out from the onlookers and regained the center of the room.

"Yes. My...my apologies. I was...frightened, by your...by your powers," she said. "S-shall we begin again?"

"Tem, you have some neat tricks," I said, reaching behind me and grabbing a fistful of the air behind me. "But you are a lousy ventriloquist."

Tem became visible in my hands as I hosted her from her hiding spot in the corner. Thankfully, I'd only grabbed the front of her robe, but I was pulling her hair down, which made her wince, and was possibly responsible for breaking her concentration and stealth.

The others 'oohed' and Tower laughed and applauded. Holding her there in the corner by her collar, lifting her almost off her feet, with her standing only on the tips of her toes...so light, she was shuddering and quaking.

Even with the power to put a hole in the wall bigger than I was, or to do that a hundredfold and annihilate a whole school, she was shaking like a leaf in my hands, avoiding eye contact, hardly even there.

I hated her so, so much. Everything about her drove me crazy. She looked like, even now, even in the middle of a fight, it was all her fault for getting caught.

Holding her, seeing her so pathetic in my hands, so freaking worthless, not even heavy enough to feel like I was holding a real person, I don't know what happened. I just snapped.

I punched her straight in the gut before I knew what I was doing. She choked and gasped and writhed in my grip, useless as ever. I hit her again, and this time, she threw up. She didn't eat much, and she turned her head and covered her mouth so she wouldn't get any on me. She gasped a few times, trying to wipe her face on her sleeves and suck in more air.

"S-s-sorry," she said, her eyes leaking from my blows and hurling.

It was exactly the wrong thing for her to say and do. I hit her another dozen times before Jack and Tower were on me, Tower pulling me off easily, while Jack appeared between the two of us and took the last few blows himself, only a deadly serious look on his face.

My hands hurt. I felt like I'd broken something, but a hundred times worse, I'd also broken someone. I didn't struggle as Tower pinned me to the floor and shouted at me. Mage and Jack looked to Tem, but whatever I'd done to her, it was more than they could handle, and a few minutes later, she was being loaded onto an ambulance, flashing red and blue lights before my blank eyes.

My hands were trembling. I didn't know why I had such issues with her, she'd done nothing but be nice to me, didn't know what it was about her that pushed my buttons so, didn't know I was capable of losing it like that. It was like when I snapped and went after Brick, but he...he deserved it. She was just an innocent girl.

I felt someone sit next to me and realized it was Mage.

"Knew you'd do that," she said.

"Why didn't you stop me, then?"

"She deserved it."

I looked at her, seeing her face illuminated in the red and blue flashes of the ambulance and the faint morning light. She was smiling at me with a smug grin.

"No she didn't. She's never done anything mean to anyone.," I said echoing my own thoughts. Arguing with myself.

"She's detestable. So pathetic. A waste of a life."

I stood up and faced her. "How can you say that about someone else? She's got as much right to live as anyone."

She shrugged. "I'm not the one who beat her up."

"And I feel bad about it. And you're telling me she deserved it."

Mage stood up as well, coming up to my shoulders. She gave me a sly look and then headed for the door. "Pretty smart hitting her so fast she couldn't cough up anything. Technically still wasn't first blood."

"You're sick," I said.

"I'm saying what you know. You have no moral high ground. You pulverized that girl."

"Shut up," I growled.

"Or what? You'll beat me too? Maybe I should be scared."

She laughed and left, making me feel a thousand times worse about myself for the visit.

It was hard to imagine possibly feeling worse about myself, but Mage just had to show up and let me know just what a horrible asshole I really was. If she weren't being antagonistic about it, and busy rubbing my face in my own shit, would I be just like her?

I didn't know. I didn't want to know. My hands hurt like crazy, and every time they throbbed, I wondered what part of her I'd hit with them, and how that part of her was doing. Probably worse than my hands, no matter how badly they ached.

Blackett appeared in the doorway, Jack behind him, a smile back on Jack's face again.

"Chariot, it's time to talk. Come to my office."

I fell in line behind the two, wondering if we were walking to my execution.

I wouldn't blame them, I definitely deserved it. I wasn't even that terrible an Exhuman, as it turned out, just a horrible person.