Heat slowly woke up in an unfamiliar place- it smelled strongly of rubbing alcohol, but she was lying in a bed, noises of people working echoing out from nearby. Heat tried to get up, only to find that her body was far too weak to move much, her attempt mostly just shifting her in place.

“Ah, you’re awake,” said a voice from nearby. Heat struggled to crane her neck towards the speaker, but they walked into her line of sight, revealing a man with thick eyebrows wearing a white stained apron and a little hat, his arms folded in front of him. “I’m your medic, my name is Michael. We’ve met before, but you were fairly concussed at the time, so you may not remember me. I’m going to touch you now in order to analyze your physical state; it may feel uncomfortable, but try to bear with me.”

Michael touched Heat’s bare arm, and like he had said, an uncomfortable probing sensation filled her body. It was over in a moment though, and Michael clicked his tongue before speaking.

“You’re damn lucky, you know that? You manage to have a major ritual of self-discovery while recovering from a concussion, you scavenged from a fallen town and only encountered a single Infected, and now you’ve fought off dozens of Infected and come out of it with nothing more than mana fatigue.”

Michael let out a sigh and shook his head before continuing. “Just for clarification’s sake, since you’re a jumper: mana fatigue is when you overtax your body using magic. It results in weakness and exhaustion, but your case is extremely bad thanks to your inexperience in even channeling soul magic, not to mention overtaxing Allison’s power boost in the process. Thankfully you should be recovered in… a few days or weeks.”

Heat took a deep breath, more to see how far she could push her lungs than anything else. She tried to speak, but her voice was strained. “I’ll recover over time, yeah? It’ll ease as I recover? Because I really don’t want to feel like I was run over by a- by Sally the whole time.”

Michael gave a small chuckle at that, nodding his head before leaving to deal with other patients, and leaving Heat alone with nothing but her sister (head-mate?) for company. Thankfully, they had something to keep themselves busy- their mind palace still needed to fully form; as it was, it was more of a concept with a few rooms outlined. Heat had this nice idea for a garden formed from their memories of plants and gardens, evoking the concept more than the literal interpretation, while Cold wanted to work more on the architecture itself, establishing what went where.

As the two were working, someone knocked on the door, and Cold took over the body to call them in. It was Sally, and Heat felt a little embarrassed at having compared her to a truck earlier. The other woman was large, certainly, but she was no ogre; she had a strong beauty to her.

“I heard you were injured,” said Sally, her voice quiet and her body language calm and composed. Cold nodded, explaining what Michael had told them.

“Your first mana fatigue is usually rough. But you two helped a lot during that battle, so try not to let it get to you. If you need help with anything, I’m in the next room over,” Sally replied.

“You don’t look very injured,” said Cold, to which Sally lifted up her shirt, revealing her padded-yet-muscled stomach- and a giant bruise, purple and ringed with yellow.

“After you jumped in, I figured it was a good idea, so I did too. But I’m not as quick as you are, so I took a lot of hits, and the Infected tend to be smarter when they’re in groups like this. Not sure why. Could you train me to be fast like you, once we’re both healed?” she said, lowering her shirt back down.

Cold asked Heat first, but the two were perfectly fine with that; a sparring partner other than Allison or Master Michael (it was so confusing having two people be named Michael, but it was a common name) would be nice, and getting to know their squad better would be a good idea. The fact that Sally was attractive and had nerves of steel had little to do with it.

The rest of the week was spent similarly, building up their headspace and chatting with Sally. Doctor Michael did the occasional checkup, and over the next few days, Heat and Cold’s body began to recover, at first enough to sit up, and eventually enough to walk around. Heat had a lot of fun debating philosophy with Sally- she apparently had an interest in the topic, and her concept of communal duty clashed interestingly with Heat’s concept of will to power. The two eventually made a daily habit of spending time together chatting about one thing or another while walking around the city. Finally, after thirteen days, Doctor Michael declared Heat and Cold fully recovered, and the two were practically dragged by the ever-stoic Sally towards the sparring arena. They unfortunately had to wait for Allison to finish sparring with another new recruit, but Heat was able to give a few good tips to the newbie in the meantime- when blocking was better than dodging, to not turn their back if they could help it even for a spinning attack, and to press their advantage instead of doing small strikes and then ducking back.

As Allison and the recruit finished, Heat and Cold geared up to spar with Sally, watching to see what areas she needed to improve in. The two gave a small bow to one another and began, circling around each other and waiting for the first strike. Not satisfied to give someone with super-strength the first attack, Heat struck out with a flaming jab, more to test Sally’s defenses than anything else. The larger woman blocked it with a forearm, then reached out for a grapple. Heat easily grabbed Sally’s arm, using the leverage to throw the other woman over her shoulder and grapple her from above, splaying Sally’s hand out and stretching her pointer and middle fingers just far enough to not break, but still be painful. Sally let out a loud grunt and tried to wriggle out of the hold, but her attempts to move only made the pain in her hand stronger. She finally sighed in defeat and stopped moving, tapping her hand against the ground twice, after which Heat let go of her fingers and helped her up.

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“How did you even do that?” Sally asked, wringing out her fingers to work through the pain. “I was about to grab you and suddenly you flipped me, and then I couldn’t move without you breaking my fingers.”

Heat gave a small laugh and answered, “It’s all about momentum! Your form’s not bad, but instead of following through with your attacks, you went straight for a grapple when I was already in the prime position to reverse it. You should have gone for more strikes, gone on the offensive to keep my guard up and stop me from trying to turn the tables, and only gone for a grapple when I gave an opening. That said, I’ll be happy to show you how to do that grapple.”

Sally and Heat took their positions and then Heat instructed the large woman in that particular throw and grapple, showing her how turning the opponent’s weight against them was much better than using brute force, and how precise applications of force could be even more debilitating than broad strokes.

Heat fought to keep the blush off of her face as she felt the other woman’s rippling muscles against her, though the dizziness of being thrown repeatedly helped.

Once Sally had gotten the throw down pat, the two resumed sparring; the other woman had taken Heat’s advice to heart, and her sheer bulk combined with her trying to fight aggressively made for an intimidating foe. However, she still wasn’t very quick, her bulk working against her, making her more easily telegraph her moves even as she tried to stay on the offensive. Eventually, Heat jumped back and shouted to stop.

“I know I wasn’t doing well, but I feel like I’m close,” said Sally with a small shake of her head.

Heat sighed and crossed her arms. “Unfortunately, your body type is working against you. Fortunately, while I’m not as skilled at it, I can help you with another style, one that you’ll probably do better at. I tend to be an offensive fighter; that’s part of how our fighting style works, we stay in a flow of offense and parries to keep our opponent off-balance. But you would probably be better off with a defensive style, one focused on counterattacks- thankfully, while it’s not the main focus of our style, we know enough to help you develop it on your own. Cold will take it from here.”

Heat ducked from controlling the body, letting Cold take over, their circlet changing to a band of ice and Heat’s own soul splitting out into her tiny phoenix form, watching Sally from over Cold’s shoulder.

“Alright, my turn. You need to focus more on reaction than action, on watching and waiting for your foe to strike so you can counter whatever they throw at you; it doesn’t matter if you’re that much easier to spot if they’re unable to stop you.”

Sally attacked Cold with a deliberately slow punch, and Cold demonstrated a block-counter to Sally’s solar plexus. Sally then performed the same attack back, first slowly and then at normal speeds; the two continued to work into the afternoon, helping Sally refine her technique. Finally, once she seemed to have a few basic counters down pat and could hold her own in a spar (albeit with Cold holding back a lot), Sally turned around and grabbed two cudgels, one for herself and one for Cold. Except Sally’s was more like a quarterstaff to compensate for her large size, and Cold had an idea.

She had been treating the cudgel like a bludgeon before, but it wasn’t- it was supposed to be an extension of her arm. And the one weapon that martial artists used the most, other than their own fists and feet, was staffs.

“Can you pass me one of the staffs?” Cold asked. “I think I might do better with a larger weapon.”

Sally nodded and silently put away the cudgel, trading it for another staff that she threw to Cold, who caught it midair. Cold took a few test swings, trying to get a better feel for the weapon, using it not like a two-handed sword as Allison had tried to teach her, but gripping it by the middle for speedy swings and spins. Sally looked on, her face almost as neutral as it usually was save for slightly raised eyebrows.

The two began to spar with a small bow, their weapons held at the ready. Sally made a ready stance, but Cold began to spin her staff, striking low and fast to take advantage of Sally’s height and bulk. Cold’s lessons to Sally about defense seemed to be sticking though, and Sally was quick to parry and counter their blows, her greater strength and reach allowing her to fend Cold off with heavier strikes and counters. Still, although Cold’s training with staff fighting was meagre, she was better trained in one-on-one combat than Sally; she swept her staff under Sally’s feet, just barely managing to knock over the giant woman with a single massive heave and swing her staff at the ground next to Sally’s face. However, instead of calling it quits, Sally heaved, her muscles rippling as she surged to her feet and charged. Cold struck Sally on the arm but she just ignored the blow, charging and readying a strike with a low growl.

“Sally, stop, that’s enough!” Cold shouted as she leapt back, but Sally ignored her. Cold struck out with two fingers, catching Sally in the solar plexus and sucking out her energy- not enough to cause harm, hopefully, but enough to stop her. The surge Cold felt coming in was… familiar, in its burning intensity; Heat was almost custom-built to control that fury, able to turn it into passion and intensity, but Cold could see why berserkers were so feared.

Heat had an idea, however. She leapt away from the body, her tail stretching back to just barely connect to it, and her avatar began to grow, engulfing Sally. With a mighty cry sounding halfway between a bird and a human, she began to spew fire upwards, burning.

Heat raged inside, turning anger against anger, converting the fury into heat and light so it would disperse instead of coiling around inside of Sally. She could see so clearly into the other woman now, how her rage and fury coiled inside of her, bubbling up with no easy release. How her strength was a secondary effect, her anger empowering her from a low frustration to a burning boiling point. Heat called in Cold, and together the two began the ritual that had become a very part of them.

Sally’s mind, layer by layer, was not split in two like theirs was. Heat and Cold saw a childhood of frustration, of being too sickly to play with the other children. They saw teenage years of determination to catch up, to surpass her peers even with her weakness. They saw adult years of struggle and strife, of fighting off the Infected at any cost.

Sally didn’t struggle with her anger very much- and in fact, they could clearly see that she wasn’t actually trying to hurt them, she was simply trying to win, and she would have calmed down once she did. She wasn’t a danger to anyone, not really- but she did still feel the frustration of losing control like that.

The sisters backed off from the ritual; if she wanted them to change her, it was her decision, not theirs. Not when she wasn’t a danger to anyone. By now Sally’s fury had been mostly burned away, and she would be coherent enough to think it over- and both sisters needed a break.

Heat and Cold emerged from Sally’s mental space, returning to their shared body. Heat, still a little over-energetic from the rage-consumption, took front, helping pull Sally to her feet. The larger woman still looked a little tense, but she shook her head and ran off, unwilling to look Heat in the eyes.