Pip rolled over, halfway onto Khione’s body as they lay on the cold hardwood floor in her bedroom. “You have to head home, don’t you?”

  “No,” Khione said. She propped herself up on her elbow, shifting her leg beneath Pip until she had Pip straddling it. “I don’t have to.”

  “Oh.”

  Khione’s eyes narrowed. “What? Did you want me to go?”

  “No,” Pip said, quickly shaking her head. She didn’t need Khione to misunderstand her again. She ran a hand along Khione’s bare arm, her leather jacket abandoned on the bed. There was a coldness to her body, not in a lifeless way, but the way a crystal cold settled after a good snow. “I was just planning on working on my suit of armor some more.”

  “Suit of armor?” She raised an eyebrow, surprisingly not growing upset the moment Pip mentioned her power and her goals.

  “My brother threw me through a glass wall, and I figured out I could do this,” Pip explained. “So now I’m trying to make it better. Make the armor better so I can move easily in it, but prevent the armor from growing weak.”

  “What’s the point of glass armor?” she asked. “Isn’t glass too fragile?”

  “Well, bulletproof glass is a thing,” Pip said. “I can make my glass stronger. Fortify it.”

  “Oh yeah?” Khione reached up, finger looping beneath the strap on Pip’s tiny black dress. She pulled it to the side, revealing the lacy top of the bra Pip would never normally wear. “What else can your glass do?”

  “I feel like that’s supposed to be an innuendo.”

  “Oh, it definitely is.” Khione laughed. She dropped her hand back, batting her eyelashes at Pip. “But you’d rather work on your suit of armor.”

  “That’s not…”

  “Rather work on your suit of armor than lose your virginity. To me.” She sighed dramatically and looked away.

  “It’s not that!” Pip looked down at Khione, bodies pressed together on the cold wooden floor, her knees aching against the hard surface.

  “But it kind of is that, isn’t it?” Khione asked, pulling away slightly. “I’m in your bedroom and you’re barely dressed and it’s all you can think about.”

  “I just… don’t know if I’m ready for sex,” Pip said, glancing away. It was silly. Her family was so open about sexuality, and Pip had known for years, and of course had sat through an all too uncomfortable conversation about safe sex. And she thought about it too. But… “I am ready to build a suit of armor.”

  “Okay,” Khione said. She sighed and pushed herself upright, forcing Pip backward and fully onto the floor. “Let’s build this suit of armor then. Then maybe you’ll be ready.”

  Pip snorted, then leaned across the floor to press a kiss to Khione’s lips. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  “Oh, stop it,” Khione said, pushing her back. “I’m just teasing you about this. I’m not upset.” Despite the words, she sounded upset.

  “Okay,” Pip said. She shifted her leg beneath her and sat cross legged, back settling as she sat on the hard floor. It wasn’t uncomfortable, simply stabilizing as she took a deep breath and placed her hands on her knees.

  “What are you doing?” Khione asked.

  “Cycling my core,” Pip said. “Didn’t get a chance to do it earlier.”

  “You have to do it every day?”

  “It’s just good practice,” Pip said, loosely shrugging her shoulders. She settled back into place, taking a deep breath and letting her eyes shudder closed. Cycling a power core was like meditating, only instead of clearing your mind, you focused on processing and understanding your power core. Pip had to wonder if meditation was invented for powers. Everyone thought that powers were new, a phenomenon of the past century. Personally, Pip had to wonder if powers had been around for all of history, coming and going and appearing as mythology and folklore.

  Jesus, Zeus, all those other men who were decided to be more interesting despite the obviously more interesting women around them. Supers. All of them.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  Khione shuffled, jeans rubbing loudly against each other as she moved around, settling solidly against Pip’s back. “I’ll join you,” she said. “Isn’t that a thing? Supers cycling their cores together? I feel like I read that.”

  “It is a thing,” Pip said, opening her eyes and peeking around her shoulder. Khione didn’t normally know super things; she must have been doing research lately. “Normally it’s for skill-sharing though.”

  “Explain skill-sharing,” Khione said. Not a question, a demand. A smile flitted across Pip’s lips as she leaned back against Khione, their spines pressing together. She adored the way Khione talked, marching through the world with a level of confidence not even all heroes carried.

  “Everyone only has one power, right?” She closed her eyes, letting the information find its way to her mouth as she connected with her core. With minimal focus, she awoke it, cycling through her power but not summoning it. “Well, obviously, humans don’t like being told limits, so people have been trying for years to figure out how to go beyond that for years. Figure out how to have multiple powers. Obviously, that’s not possible, but it has been discovered that certain powers and skills have some compatibility. Meaning, supers can sort of…share the powers. Bridge the gap between their powers. Some supers are more capable of skill-sharing than others. I, for one, am not very good at it.”

  “You’re not?” Khione shifted against her, moving again. Pip adjusted her posture again, correcting for Khione’s movement. In the darkness of her eyelids, she could almost see the power inside them as it swelled into the world. No summoned powers, just core cycling, the energy building like a light in the room. Khione managed it well, building the power gradually, not exploding it or letting it die out. Healthy management of her power core.

  “Not really,” Pip said. “Tried it before. It’s pretty common for heroes to at least attempt to learn a few skills from healers. First aid, stuff like that. My mom, of course, wanted all of us to learn those skills. Didn’t work, I’m terrible at it.”

  “It would help if you took any of your science classes seriously.”

  “Ha, right. So, anyway, we tried with a few more powers, ones that should have been more compatible with the whole glass thing. Didn’t work.”

  “All I’m hearing is that you’re bad.”

  “Thanks.”

  “No problem.”

  “It just happens sometimes,” Pip said. “Some supers are better at taking on skills than others. Some just aren’t compatible. I’m not compatible.”

  “Do you want to try?”

  “Try what?”

  Khione released a sharp sigh. “Try skill-sharing,” she said, and Pip could feel the roll of her eyes. “I mean, this sounds like it was years ago. Why not try again now that you’re older.”

  “And wiser?”

  “Don’t push it,” Khione said. “Just tell me how to do this.”

  Pip leaned her head back, racking her brain for the information. She’d dismissed skill-sharing as a possibility years ago, back when she’d failed despite being at the optimum age for a moldable core. “Expand your core,” she said, dropping her head against Khione’s shoulder. “I’ll do the same. You should be able to feel me.”

  She expanded her core as she spoke, opening it up to the person nearest to her. It was difficult to maintain, every instinct screaming against it. It was dangerous, putting your core at risk. Exposing it was a learned skill, something you had to work through ingrained fears to be able to do. Nonetheless, Khione managed it, feeling against the edge of Pip’s core with her own. “Do you feel that?”

  “I do,” Khione murmured, the focus in her voice leaving it distant. “Now what?”

  “Now you put it inside me—and no, I’m not trying to sound sexual.”

  Khione giggled, and her core contracted slightly before she managed to get a hold of it again. The muscles in her back grew tight, shoulders tensing against Pip’s as she fought to open her core back up and mesh it with Pip’s. To make it easier, Pip tried to handle the heavy lifting, meshing her power with Khione’s. Like a seat of colors, they formed a pallet, shades altering as they came in contact with each other, unifying as they mixed.

  “Now, cycle your core,” Pip murmured, the words harder to find as she focused on the set of cores cycling between them. Khione’s core, blue and white and splashed with pink like the Aurora Borealis began to move, energy moving slowly in an unstable circle. Pip joined it with her own core, shades of orange and pink that matched Khione’s own stabilizing the movement and giving it strength.

  “Woah.” Khione released the sound with a long breath, barely audible.

  “I know,” Pip murmured. The longer their cores moved together, the more she could sense. Pain, fear, things Khione didn’t want to acknowledge. Curiosity urged her to move into those sensations, but she resisted, sticking to the pieces Khione was willing to have open. Her sense of self. Pride. Confidence, not as sure as it seemed all the time. And then the power elements, cold, hardness, ice. There were similar elements to her own power. The hardness was a simple one. Glass and ice had a lot of similar elements. Perhaps…

  She touched against the feeling, wrapping herself around it before slowly pulling back. A gasp tore itself from her mouth, ripping through her with a burst of cold. She pulled back, startled, losing all control of her core as the new sensation wracked her senses.

  “Oh!” Khione exclaimed, jolting against her. She twisted around, grabbing Pip’s shoulder. “What happened?”

  Breathing hard, Pip opened her eyes, feeling as though she’d just walked through a winter storm. The cold sat deep, fading as she pulled her mind back from the feeling. Still unable to speak, she touched her core again, and sure enough, there it was… The cold.

  “I think I just got a little bit of you,” Pip explained, opening her eyes to find Khione staring directly into her face.

  “Really?”

  Pip leapt to her feet. It didn’t matter that it was well past midnight. They needed to go out to the training arena. “Come on,” she said, grabbing Khione’s hand and dragging her to her feet. “Let’s go try this out.”