Young Defenders Training Facility, Meritas City. September 23rd, 2014, 15:30PM

  “You’re a loose cannon, Glory. Your actions could have led to citywide evacuation. You’re lucky you didn’t get yourself killed! Until you can rein in your behaviour, you’re barred from taking on any independent missions without a superior.”

  “Whatever.” Jessica Hale - Glory - mumbled to herself. The dressing-down she’d just gotten from Champion echoed in her mind as she walked to one of the training rooms. Honestly, she didn’t care all that much. It wasn't like independent missions were interesting most of the time anyhow; mostly dealing with two-bit criminals and community service, which was just boring. Slaughterhouse had given her an opportunity to let loose and throw hands like nothing else.

  But then she got careless, Slaughterhouse killed people after she got knocked into that crowd, Jessica got hurt - actually hurt - and some no-name reject had to butt in.

  She couldn’t get over it; that lanky, anxious, stuttering reject with the gross bone powers had taken down fucking Slaughterhouse? This was meant to be Glory’s big moment, but instead this nobody had rocked up and saved Glory from-

  The image of Slaughterhouse’s manic grin flashed in Jessica’s mind, from when she’d had her hands wrapped around her throat, that overwhelming pain burning through her body like a pulsing wildfire. Where all that ran through her mind was just the pain, and the primal, basic instinct to get away.

  She tried to put the memory out of her mind, shaking her head like she was trying to clear it away. But as she reached for the door handle to the training room, she realised her hand was trembling.

  “Fucking stop.” She mumbled to herself, clenching her hand into a fist. That got it to stop, at least. Taking a breath, she pushed open the door.

  The training rooms at the Young Defenders’ Training Facility were a thing of beauty. About twenty metres across, sleek, pristine, and designed to accommodate practically any possible kind of super. The windows showed the campus’s nearby park with students walking around, but Jessica didn’t pay it any mind. She couldn’t afford to, she needed to train.

  She tapped on the wall-mounted tablet near the door, which listed every kind of physical training a super could need: strength training, an acrobatics course, durability tests, flight courses, the works.

  She looked at the durability courses, eyeing the one that simulated an attack by firearms. She tapped it, setting it to the highest possible intensity setting, to make it feel like a super was in an active, high-stakes gunfight. With practice rounds, of course; though Glory knew they’d still suck to hit by if you couldn’t resist them.

  Perfect. She thought.

  She tapped the option, setting a delay so she could get herself ready. She wasn’t in her costume; trying to train in that would’ve been a pain. Instead, she’d opted for a simple black tank top with black sweatpants under a black and gold jacket with a golden star emblazoned on the back. She threw her jacket onto a nearby bench and tied her hair back into a ponytail, before stretching. This was all routine, she needed to keep herself sharp.

  But she felt off. Truthfully, she’d been feeling out of sorts since the business with Slaughterhouse, but hadn’t stopped to dwell on it.

  She took a breath, focusing, pouring her focus into her force field. With a shimmer, she felt it manifest around her; it adhered to her shape perfectly, as always, a slightly-golden veil that covered her entire body.

  She loved this thing. Glory was one of the very rare few people who had three distinct superpowers under their belt - point-one percent, she’d been told - and this barrier was one of them. It stuck to her body like a second skin, protecting her from pretty much any kind of conventional harm.

  But now, as she was stretching and getting ready, she realised she felt…nervous?

  She stopped. Why did she feel nervous? She never felt nervous. She was Glory, golden girl of the Young Defenders, what the hell did she have to feel nervous about?

  But as the timer for the firearms exercise counted down, that nervousness didn’t fade away. Instead, it got worse.

  Three.

  Two.

  One.

  She took a sharp breath in.

  In an instant, panels across the room - the floor, the walls, the ceiling - flipped open, revealing sleek black gun turrets. Immediately, each one started firing, homing directly on her, a deafening chorus of bullets being fired directly at her.

  Each bullet pinged off of the barrier harmlessly, clattering to the floor with a metal tinkling sound. Glory let out a sigh of…relief?

  She paused, ignoring the deafening hail of gunfire around her for a second as the bullets bounced off of her shield. Why was she relieved? Did she think her shield wouldn’t work, that it’d let bullets hit her? It was impenetrable, it wouldn’t-

  Then why did Slaughterhouse get through it?

  The thought cut through her mind like an ice-cold blade. Why had Slaughterhouse been able to get through? How had she been able to put her hands around her throat and-

  She tried to brush the thought off again, but she couldn’t, not this time. Something about that was sticking to her mind like glue.

  Why had Slaughterhouse been able to touch her? The sound of gunfire suddenly stopped. She realised, slowly, that she’d just been standing there, lost in her own thoughts, long enough for the turrets to run out of ammo. So now there was just this awkward silence as the turrets clicked and clacked, reloading.

  In that silence, Jessica realised she was breathing hard, like she’d done a workout already. But she hadn’t, all she’d done was get shot at, and that hadn’t even done anything.

  “Come on, Jess, get it together.” She said to herself, before clapping her cheeks like she was trying to wake herself up. She tried to shut out that uneasiness that sat in her stomach, jumping in place to warm herself up again.

  Three.

  Two.

  One.

  The hail of gunfire started again. Just like before, the bullets bounced harmlessly off of her shield.

  I need to move. She thought to herself, tapping into her second power and letting herself float. She’d never not love the feeling of flying, just floating off of the ground. People had always asked her what flying felt like and she never really knew how to answer; how would you describe what walking felt like when you’d been doing it all your life? Best she could ever describe it was that it was like she was just pushing herself around in a direction, off of the ground and into the sky.

  Case in point, she now stood floating about four feet off of the ground, the turrets still pointing and firing at her incessantly. With a smirk, she shot forward quickly, almost immediately crossing from one side of the room to the other in a burst; the turrets were barely able to keep track of her, a cloud of missed bullets scattering behind her.

  As she hit the wall on the other side, she quickly turned and rocketed to the wall to her right. She’d done it a thousand times; move, stop, move again. At this point it felt almost as easy as flying itself, even with the din of gunfire around her.

  She kept going, doing jagged airborne laps around the training room for a few minutes while the hail of bullets continued, bouncing off the walls every time.

  After a while, she stopped in the centre of the room about six feet in the air letting the bullets dance over her barrier. It almost felt like rain on a flat roof, hammering on her barrier without harming her. Each bullet bounced off, leaving little ripples on the barrier like pebbles being thrown into a pond, shimmering for a second before fading away.

  Normally, she’d find this calming. But her eyes kept darting around, trying to focus on the impacts. She couldn’t stop herself. She was trying to look for something, anything that would give her a reason for why Slaughterhouse had gotten through. Was there a weakness she couldn’t see? Some kind of opening she had never been made aware of? Was it something Slaughterhouse specifically could just do, a power she’d not seen before?

  She’d never felt like this before. But then, her barrier had always just worked. Slaughterhouse shouldn’t have been able to get through; hell, she originally hadn’t been able to. Until she suddenly had.

  Despite being covered in a full-body shield, for the first time in years - since her powers had first manifested - Jessica felt genuinely exposed.

  Her breathing quickened as her mind dwelled.

  This was getting her nowhere. Getting shot at wasn’t going to clear her head. She needed to hit something.

  The gunfire stopped, the turrets had run out of ammunition again. That was as good a time as any. She exhaled, shakily, before descending to the floor near the wall-mounted tablet and selecting the “Reinforced Punching Bag”.

  Immediately, the turrets flipped and retracted back into the panels they’d emerged from, leaving the training room empty, before with another whirring sound, the reinforced punching bag emerged from the floor. Though, calling it a reinforced punching bag was like calling a tank a reinforced bicycle. This thing wasn’t a bag at all, but a 6-foot pillar of pure metal and hydraulics, designed to be able to tank blows from people who had superhuman strength. That was Glory’s third power, the strength to let her to hit harder than any normal human, and even some superhumans.

  The sight of this reinforced punching bag made her remember the first, completely mundane punching bag she’d ever used, the one her mom got her the year her powers first manifested. She remembered the first punch, a relatively light tap, had sent the bag shooting into the wall like a rocket; when she and her mom had put it back, the second, much harder punch had caused the bag to explode.

  That memory made her scoff to herself as she stepped towards the “bag”. Getting into the proper position, she started with a light jab. The sound of her fist hitting the “bag” was a loud, booming clang, echoing through the room.

  Glory glanced up at the little LED display on top of the bag.

  1.6 tons.

  She smirked. Not bad for a light jab.

  She kept going, hitting the bag in a somewhat irregular rhythm, putting more effort into some punches, then pulling back.

  1.9 tons. 2.4 tons. 2.7 tons. 1.8 tons.

  This felt more like it. This felt therapeutic, cathartic even. Each punch felt like a weight off of her shoulders, each resounding clang felt like it was blocking out whatever anxieties were rolling around in her head.

  At least it normally did. Not today.

  No matter how much or how hard she hit this thing, she just couldn’t get the events of that night out of her head.

  Finding Slaughterhouse and kicking her from one side of the city to the other.

  CLANG!

  2.8 tons.

  Slaughterhouse breaking through her barrier, the feeling of her hand wrapped around her wrist.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  CLANG!

  3.0 tons.

  That pain, that unimaginable pain that Slaughterhouse had pumped into her body like venom.

  CLANG!

  3.3 tons.

  Being saved by that reject, making her look weak. How she’d looked down at Jessica, like she was trying to save her.

  CLANG!

  3.5 tons.

  That blazing, burning pain, the sound Slaughterhouse had made. She’d enjoyed making Jessica hurt.

  CLANG!

  4.1 tons.

  Jessica swore she could feel that pain creeping through her again. She could feel her heartbeat in her ears. She couldn’t hear anything else, just the deafening, rapid thump-thump, thump-thump like a jackhammer.

  Jessica let out a ragged yell as she punched the bag again, and she felt a burst of power erupt from her barrier and through her hand. The bag ripped off of its fixings with a grinding, tearing sound before rocketing away from her with a crash.

  The display flickered rapidly, erratically between a bright red “ERROR” and “7.9 tons”.

  She stood there, golden energy steaming off of her hands. She wasn’t looking at the bag, but down at the floor.

  Her hands were shaking, quivering. Her breath was shaky, ragged. Her mouth felt dry. Sweat was pouring off of her.

  Her chest felt tight, she felt that same nervousness from before, but so much worse, as if something was gripping her heart in a vice. Her hand went to her chest, she could almost feel her heart pounding against her ribs.

  She couldn’t hear anything but her own heartbeat in her ears.

  Even standing upright felt difficult, like her legs were about to give way.

  What the hell was wrong with her?

  “Jess?” A familiar voice blared over the room’s speaker, tinny and filtered.

  Jessica jumped, snapping out of her trance.

  “Jessie? You in there?”

  How did Maddie know she’d come down here?

  Jessica took a breath, trying to steady herself. Her hands were still shaking, her breathing was still unsteady.

  She floated off of the ground about a foot in the air, gliding towards the training room’s door. She touched down, reaching out to grab the handle.

  Her hand was still shaking.

  “Pull your shit together!” She growled to herself quietly. She wiped the sweat from her face as best she could, took a couple of slow breaths to try and keep it together.

  She pulled the door open. Sure enough, there was Maddie. She was a touch shorter than Jessica was, with wild shoulder-length black hair that always somehow looked both like a mess and perfectly styled, and a pair of black-framed glasses in front of her dark brown eyes. She was wearing a dark purple jacket over an otherwise pretty basic black ensemble.; shirt, skirt, shoes, the works. And as always, she had a mischievous grin on her face.

  Jessica had known Maddie a long time, about ten years. Though she’d never say it out loud, Jessica considered Maddie her best friend, and she always felt like she could tell her pretty much anything without judgement, even though she almost never did.

  But currently, Maddie was just staring at her, looking like she was inspecting her.

  “Hey, Mads.” Jessica said, trying to play it cool. But Maddie was still just staring up at her.

  Then she realised Maddie had that look in her eye, she was leaning in and squinting slightly like she was trying to focus on her.

  She was trying to read her.

  “Knock it off.” Jessica barked. “Not in the mood.” Maddie’s power was, as far as Jessica knew, some kind of mind-reading ability (Maddie always said it was “people-reading”, Jessica had always asked “what’s the difference?”); she could focus on someone and pretty accurately assess a lot about them. How they were feeling, their personality, even things that should be impossible like their medical history, with a genuinely scary degree of accuracy. She hated when Maddie tried to do it to her.

  “Are you ever in the mood…?” Maddie trailed off, looking past Jessica’s shoulder. “Jesus, what did you do in here?”

  Jessica turned around, following Maddie’s eyes, then realised what she was looking at. Not at the piles of discarded practice bullets.

  The reinforced punching bag. Designed to take hits from people with super-strength, Jessica had hit it hard enough to break it off of its fixings and embed it in the back wall of the training room.

  “Shit.” Jessica groaned. She’d lost control, hit the bag way too hard.

  She flew softly towards it, as Maddie followed behind her, her shoes clicking against the training room floor.

  “So…” Maddie asked. “What happened with Champion? Did he lay into you?”

  Jessica landed by the punching bag. “‘Course he did, the hardass.” She muttered, grabbing onto the end of the bag and pulling; the thing was taller than she was and likely weighed about a ton itself, but she easily ripped it out of where it had embedded in the wall and slung it over her shoulder like it weighed nothing at all. “Said I was a loose cannon-”

  “You are a loose cannon.” Maddie interrupted without missing a beat.

  Jessica just flipped her off. “And no more independent missions ‘til I can ‘rein in my behaviour’.” She continued, a mocking tone in her voice as she quoted Champion.

  “You mad about it? Is that why you came down here, to blow off some steam?”

  Jessica flew forward again before dropping the bag next to where it was meant to be, where it landed with a heavy clang.

  “Yep.” She responded, curtly. “How’d you find me anyway?”

  Maddie scoffed. “Whenever you get pissed off, you want to hit something. Did it help?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You lying?”

  “No.”

  There was a pause. Maddie’s eyes glanced Jessica up and down.

  “What?” Jessica asked, her eyes narrowed.

  “You look like you’ve had a panic attack.”

  That was like being slapped in the face. Maddie had a real talent, almost like a second superpower of her own: to somehow be both incredibly blunt and incredibly precise with her words, like a trained sniper firing a cannon directly into her chest.

  Jessica stopped dead in her tracks. Sure enough, her hands were still shaking. That sense of panic in her chest had lessened, but it wasn’t gone. She let out a grunt of frustration, trying to calm herself down.

  “Please, I don’t get panic attacks.” Jessica said, not meeting Maddie’s eyes, her voice slightly shaky.

  “Right.” Maddie wasn’t buying it. “So, the shaking, the breathing…”

  “Mads, please don’t try to do your mind-reading shit on me.”

  “I’m not.” She took a step towards her. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing is wrong!” Jessica spat. “I’m just…having an off day, that’s all.”

  Maddie scoffed. “‘An off day’? You don’t have off days, unless something’s seriously riled you up.”

  Jessica paused. She took a breath, trying not to lose it. “I’ve just… got shit on my mind after this Slaughterhouse bullshit, ok?”

  Maddie perched on one of the benches, pulling out her phone and scrolling through it.

  “You wanna talk about it?” She asked, not looking up. She knew the answer.

  “Nope.” Jessica responded.

  “Figured.” Maddie laughed softly.

  There was a pause. As much as she tried to keep up the bravado, Jessica was riled up; she had been since that night. She’d not slept well, either, which hadn’t helped.

  “So like, what’s the situation with this girl who took down Slaughterhouse?” Maddie asked, still not looking up.

  “That’s your next question?” Jessica asked, though she couldn’t help laughing a bit at Maddie’s sheer audacity.

  “Bitch, everybody’s talking about it, and I wasn’t there. You were.” Maddie said, looking back up at Jessica with a smirk. “Besides, I’m curious.”

  “You’re nosy.”

  “Don’t be a bitch, spill.”

  Jessica sighed, thoughts of that reject - ‘Skullgirl’ - going through her head. She sat next to Maddie, leaning her head against the window, staring up at the ceiling.

  “She’s a Young Defenders reject.” Jessica said, almost conspiratorially; she was keeping her voice low, even though it was just her and Maddie.

  Maddie raised an eyebrow, surprised. That ever-present grin on her face got wider. That was rare, it was hard to surprise her. “You’re kidding.”

  Jessica shook her head. “Nope. She was at the tryouts last week, so I was there observing. Mom said she did well, but not well enough. Nervous little shit.”

  ”You’re not a fan?” Maddie asked.

  “Fuck no.” Jessica said, aghast that Maddie even asked. “She was all quiet and raspy, could barely string a sentence together without sounding like she was gonna cry, then she fights Slaughterhouse and tries to boss me around? She had this gross friend too, who could spit stuff or something, she was useless. I don’t know who has the balls to get rejected, tangle with a supervillain, nearly die, and somehow still win.”

  “You mad that she stole your thunder?” Maddie asked, without missing a beat.

  That stopped Jessica dead in her tracks again.

  “I’ll take that as a yes.” Maddie said, still smirking.

  Jessica didn’t know why Maddie asked. That was a lie, she knew exactly why Maddie asked: she knew just by looking at her, and wanted to see if Jessica had figured it out.

  “You’re such a bitch.” she muttered.

  “And you’re predictable.” Maddie replied. “You always get shitty whenever someone beats you at anything you see as a competition. You nearly decked me when I got better test scores than you in middle school, and you thought those tests were for, in your words, ‘lame-o nerds’. I’m surprised you haven’t gone to this girl’s house to kick her ass.”

  “She’s in the hospital, Mads, I’m not gonna kick her ass.”

  “If she wasn’t, you would.”

  “No I wouldn’t.”

  “You’re lying~” Maddie retorted in a sing-song voice.

  Jessica flipped her off.

  “Anyway,” Jessica said. “you’re the mind-reader-”

  “People-reader.”

  Jessica rolled her eyes. “Whatever. What do you think of her?”

  Maddie just shrugged, still looking at her phone, flicking through different posts, videos, and images. A lot of it was the same few photos and videos. “Hard to read from videos and pictures, Jess. I’d have to meet her in person to get a clearer idea. At a glance, she seems skittish and anxious like you said, carrying herself like she doesn’t want to be looked at; probably an anxiety disorder of some kind. Seems comfortable enough with her powers though; don’t think she realises how potent they are though.”

  “‘How potent they are?’” Jessica asked.

  “Most people who can manipulate physical things - fire, water, energy, even just rock and stone - can shape it into some pretty wild things if they let their creativity run wild.” Maddie elaborated. “She can manipulate her own bones in a similar way, so if she put her mind to it she could do some gnarly shit with it, but it looks like she’s sticking to simplestuff like blades. Guessing she can heal too as a secondary power…”

  Jessica always found this impressive, so long as she wasn’t the target of it; the way Maddie could get so much information from so little. Glory had met Skye face-to-face and fought alongside her, and she wouldn’t have even considered half of this.

  “Something’s not adding up though.” Maddie said, looking up at Jessica. “If she’s that anxious, the hell made her tangle with Slaughterhouse?”

  Jessica pondered. Maddie had a point: that didn’t make much sense.

  “Maybe she’s, I dunno, more comfortable with the mask on?” She said, not confident in her own answer.

  “Comfort wouldn’t mean she’d be fine fighting Slaughterhouse to the point of nearly dying.”

  Jessica nodded, listening to Maddie go on.

  “So, best guess: something was driving her to do it. Could be the mask giving her confidence, sure, or there’s something else; a personal tie to Slaughterhouse, maybe.”

  Jessica raised an eyebrow. “You think they’re related?”

  Maddie shook her head. “Related, no. Connected in some other way, maybe? I’ve not got a lot to work off of, but it seems weird to throw herself at Slaughterhouse like that without some kind of reason. And that’s before we dig into her fighting her again, after she got beaten half to death.”

  Jessica just nodded along, slowly.

  “That,” Maddie concluded. “Or there’s something really wrong with her. Again, I’d need to meet her in person if she ever comes here.”

  Jessica scoffed. “As if. She’s a vigilante, she’ll get jail time unless she gets real lucky, and even then becoming a Defender is a lost cause if you get done for being a vigilante.”

  Maddie paused, still scrolling through her phone.

  “Unless they make her an offer now that she’s proved herself.”

  Jessica and Maddie paused, staring at each other. Then, Jessica burst out laughing. It was a genuine, guttural laugh, the kind where it hurts to laugh but it becomes impossible to stop laughing.

  She wiped the tears that were streaming down her face. “You have got to give me a warning before you make a joke like that again!” She said, barely keeping it together.

  But Maddie wasn’t laughing.

  “Please tell me you’re fucking with me.” Jessica said, suddenly more serious.

  Maddie shrugged. “I dunno, Jess. She did take down one of the scariest villains in America.”

  Jessica rolled her eyes. “Yeah but she needs to have some kind of presence, Mads.”

  “Says the girl with the sun shining out of her ass.”

  “Not what I mean. Look at you, you’ve got the whole ‘mysterious grinning catgirl’ vibe going with your costume. Miss ‘quiet and stuttery’ over there isn’t gonna cut it.”

  “Man, some of these photos make her look good though.” Maddie said, cutting Jessica off.

  Jessica felt anger rise in her stomach. “Show me.” She said, leaning over.

  Maddie turned her phone, showing her the picture; it was from right at the end of the fight, with Slaughterhouse lying on her back with Skye’s weird bone-spike-arm thing jammed into her chest.

  There was another one, of Skye standing next to Jessica as Glory, looking like she’d been dragged through a shredder and peeled off of the road, her left arm morphed into a massive bone-white blade. Jessica noticed that the focus of the photo was very much on Skye, and not her.

  Jessica couldn’t deny it, Skye looked awesome. She hated that. Why was she-

  “‘Why was she getting the focus and not me’, right?” Maddie said, leaning in. Jessica wasn’t looking at her, but she could hear the grin on her face. She wasn’t wrong, that was the worst thing.

  “Sure, you’re definitely not a mind-reader.” Jessica grumbled, sarcasm oozing from her voice.

  “Hey, don’t blame me for you being easy to read.”

  Jessica punched Maddie in the shoulder, trying to hide the small smile crawling across her face. Much as she wanted to, she couldn’t stay mad at Maddie. Likely because some part of her agreed with her.

  She stood up, stretching and putting her jacket back on.

  “I need to get something to eat. You wanna come with?”

  Maddie smiled, pulling herself off of the bench she was seated on. “‘Course I do.”

  The pair headed out of the side door, out into the campus proper. It was classic early-Autumn weather; bright, but colder than it looked, and the wind had a bite to it. The campus itself was busy, but mostly with staff rather than students; teachers and faculty were running around getting ready for the new intake of soon-to-be Young Defenders in-training.

  “Feeling in the mood for donuts?” Jessica asked.

  “Sure, but the place on-campus sucks.” Maddie responded. “Unless, of course, you want to fly us into the city?”

  Jessica looked at Maddie, who was batting her eyelashes playfully and giving her best shot at puppy-dog eyes.

  Jessica rolled her eyes, smirking, before fishing a pair of goggles out of her jacket pocket and tossing them to Maddie. “Sure, hop on.”

  Maddie smiled, strapping the goggles on before piggy-backing onto Jessica and wrapping her arms below her neck tightly, who locked her arms around her legs in turn.

  “Ready?” Jessica asked, making sure the sky above was clear. “Oh, and don’t throw up on me this time.”

  Maddie groaned behind her. “You bitch. Yes, I’m ready. Can you let that go? It was years ago!”

  “Never.”

  Glory squatted down like she was about to jump into the air, bracing herself, her golden barrier covering her and Maddie. Then, she rocketed into the air, clearing the buildings around them in seconds, the wind rushing through her hair. She could hear Maddie whooping from her back like she was a rollercoaster.

  For a second, she paused, hanging in the air about fourty feet up, looking down at the campus and the city. She felt Maddie shaking, cackling as she always did whenever they flew together.

  God, Jessica loved this. It helped her to forget things, just for a bit.

  But as she flew, a small part of her right at the back of her mind still couldn’t shake the events of that fight with Slaughterhouse. How she’d felt that horrific pain. How that reject had stolen her glory from her.

  But also what Maddie had said about Skye; Skye did look like a hero, battered and nervous as she was.

  Somehow, part of her knew this wasn’t over.