Chapter Text
Henry didn’t even ask why she was packed when her found her. He just leaned against the porch post, watching her adjust the strap on her bag like she was preparing for a long hike. The air smelled of hay and woodsmoke, cicadas giving up their last songs as September slid toward fall.
“Paw,” Minerva said, chin set like a fence post, “drive me to the city?”
He studied her a beat, the scuffed knuckles, the chewed lip, the way she’d gripped her frayed and dirtied journal like she did when she was nervous. Then he took the keys off the hook.
“All right, Mini. Let’s go.”
They didn’t talk much on the road. Pines blurred into billboards, billboards into brick. Henry’s old truck hummed like a steady bassline beneath the quiet, and Minerva let her breath match it—inhale to the dashed white lines, exhale to the beat of the wipers. When the skyline rose and the air changed from pasture to pavement, she sat up straighter and rubbed her palms on her jeans.
“I’m askin’ her,” she said, as if he hadn’t already guessed.
Henry grinned faintly, eyes still on the road. “That’s my girl.”
He pulled up to Rosalyn Jackson-Bearblood’s Hero Training & Conditioning—the building with the green tin roof and the big windows that always sweated in summer. Martial flags hung along the entry corridor. Someone inside kiai’d; the sound cracked like a switch through hot air.
“You want me to come in?”
Minerva shook her head. “I got it.”
He kissed her temple anyway, thumb rough on her cheek. “Yes, you do.”
The gym smelled like effort: pine cleaner and old wood, canvas, a hint of liniment that stuck to the back of the tongue. Bare feet whispered across tatami. Pads thumped, mitts popped. Rosalyn stood near the heavy bags in a black gi, belt wrapped twice and tied perfectly. A halo of frizz had broken free from her bun—evidence she’d been working just as hard as her students.
Maw clocked Minerva at the door, took in the bag, the set of her shoulders, the way she didn’t flinch under the noise.
“You visiting?” Rosalyn said.
“I’m asking,” Minerva answered, not hedging. “I want more lessons. Not just drills from the kitchen or the yard. I need… I need to learn what I don’t know. Proper. Before anything else.”
Rosalyn didn’t smile. She didn’t rush her either. She just turned her whole body toward her the way she did when something mattered.
“You want to be taught,” she said. “Which is different from wanting practice.”
“Yes.” Minerva said before her nerves got the better of her especially since she didn't know what else she could do. Minerva knew she could matched anyone in raw muscle, but the lightning under her skin was a different story. Her family could spar, push, teach her to fight, but not one of them knew what it felt like to carry lightning in their chest and being scared to truely let it loose. She was surrounded by strength sure, but still felt like she was walking by herself. Even with her own practice where one misstep could do more harm than good...she still wanted to be a hero, but the thought of letting go sat in her gut like a weight.
She thought:
I've been holding it in this long...maybe I don't really need to use my quirk all that much...right?
It's because of that, she been holding back for this long. She'd practice her techniques using the bare minimum to keep the buzz in check.
Rosalyn stares for a moment, checking for any hesitation which Minerva hid well enough
“Shoes off. Bag down. Bow in. If you’re asking me as a student, you’ll do it right.”
Minerva’s throat tightened at the formality, but it settled her, too. She took her boots off, lined them with the others. Bowed at the threshold. The air felt cooler two steps in—like crossing into a church where the prayers sounded like breath and footsteps.
“Six months,” Rosalyn said, as Minerva came onto the mat. “Your father told me you were thinking ahead. Good. We’ll use them. I’ll put you with my senior students. You’ll hate it. You’ll thank me later.”
Minerva swallowed. “Thanking you early, then.”
“Don’t get cute,” Rosalyn said, but the corner of her mouth tipped up.
She clapped. “Break for water,” she called to the class, “then circle up.”
This month started with standing still.
It sounded easy and turned out to be the hardest thing Minerva had done in weeks. Horse stance, thighs on fire, big toes pressing the floor like anchors, breath dragged low into the abdomen until her ribs had no choice but to expand. Rosalyn paced around her with a metronome app ticking on the phone—tap, tap, tap—guiding breath to rhythm until Minerva felt the sound moving inside her chest.
“Where’s your weight?” Rosalyn asked.
“Heels,” Minerva panted.
“Then you’ll always be late. Mid-foot. Find it. When you move, the floor should feel you coming.”
A senior, named Cam, with a long reach, soft eyes, merciless form, tapped her knee with a rattan stick when it drifted. “Knee out,” he murmured. “Don’t let it cave.”
“Don’t talk to her like she’s made of sugar,” another senior, Priya, said, grinning, sweat slicking her temple. She had the kind of timing that made pad holders curse. “She’s a Bearblood. She’ll bite you.”
“I do bite,” Minerva allowed, jaw tight, and they laughed, but not unkindly.
They held stances until the metronome crawled across her skin like ants. Then, footwork lines. Tape on tatami: forward, back, thirty degrees, ninety, pivot, recover. Minerva learned to carry her center like a bowl she refused to spill. To place her foot instead of throwing it. To feel the floor as if it were an ally, not dead weight.
“Your quirk is a current,” Rosalyn said as she adjusted Minerva’s hip, fingers authoritative but gentle. “It will always look for a path. If your body provides a sloppy one, it will choose chaos. If you provide a clean outlet, it will listen.”
“Feels like wiring a house,” Minerva muttered.
“Exactly like wiring a house.”
By the second week, Minerva could breathe on the count without losing the line. By the third, she could step and exhale at the same moment, pressure dropping through her heel like a stamp. Her thighs never stopped complaining. She kept coming anyway.
Henry dropped her off twice a week and picked her up smelling like cedar shavings and sweat. He said little and handed her cooled tea in a mason jar as if he’d been planning for this version of his daughter since she was born.
“How’s Maw?” he asked one night.
“Deadly,” Minerva said, and then—unable to help herself—grinned. “Perfect.”
October was all about pads, mitts, and breakfalls.
The month tasted like leather and canvas, and mouthguard rubber, which made her tongue clumsy.
“Again,” Rosalyn said whenever Minerva’s hand flew before her foot. “You lead with grounded parts. Then the rest.”
Cam held pads while she jab-crossed and learned to keep her shoulder down. Priya made her stop every third combo to shoot a level change into a knee tap. “You’re strong, but you’re telegraphing. If I can read you, you’re already late,” Priya said, popping Minerva lightly on the forehead with the mitt. “Smaller wind-up, more intent.”
Between striking rounds, Rosalyn slid in the first layer of quirk work. Not blasting. Not even sparking.
“Charge your skin,” Rosalyn said, tapping Minerva’s forearm. “No more than a glow. Touch the pad without burning it.”
Minerva exhaled to the metronome, pulled charge up like a ripple, and tempered it to a hum under her skin. Though it gave her a slight headache, she shook it off. When her forearm brushed leather, the pad shivered but didn’t sizzle.
“That,” Rosalyn said. “Hold it through movement.”
It was like learning to sing while running. She could keep the hum steady while standing, then while stepping, then while stepping and punching. Minerva pulled her charge back before it could spark across Cam’s pads. The air prickled anyway, hairs lifting on his arm.
He gave her a look, and she muttered, “Sorry. Still can’t always stop it from reaching.”
He shook his hand out and grinned. “She really does bite.”
She wanted to laugh with him, but staggered when a headache cracked sharply behind her eyes; this was the first time she kept her quirk humming under her skin for this long.
“You dehydrated?” Cam asked, worried as he stopped midstep.
“No,” Minerva muttered, rubbing her temple.
Rosalyn clocked it immediately. “Log it. Everyone, take a break,” she ordered. Rosalyn follows Minerva to her bag, “If your body protests, it’s not weakness. It’s data. Treat it like you would a sparring partner.”
Minerva sat down and scribbled in her blue journal: Headache after three minutes hum. Behind the eyes. Dull, then sharp.
She told herself they were random, but deep down she knew it came from pushing her quirk too long. The longer she held the charge, the faster her thoughts sharpened, until the world moved like a reel. It was exhilarating. It was terrifying. A moment of recklessness...then she’d yank herself back down before it carried her too far.
Minerva winced. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry,” Rosalyn said. “Be precise.”
It was November with leaves scattered across the entryway, tracked in on shoes. The dojo grew drafty, windows frosting at the corners. Space heaters clicked alive, but the mats stayed cold underfoot until sparring warmed them.
Breakfalls came next. Minerva learned to meet the mat with intention: chin tucked, arm slapping the floor to spread impact. Forward rolls without posting her hand. It happened once, and that was more than enough for her.
Hip escapes, bridges, and how to make space when someone heavier decides the space wasn’t hers. Priya mounted, settled her weight like a sack of grain.
“Talk to your body,” Priya murmured near her ear. “It wants to help you. Give it cues.”
She learned that if she kept current steady in her arms, her reactions sharpened. When attempting to escape from Cam as his jab twitched forward, she saw it half a beat sooner, slipping before his glove made contact.
But the headaches grew sharper, too. Migraine flashes stung her vision, leaving silver behind her eyes. After one particularly long drill, she stumbled mid-roll, stomach turning.
“Sit,” Rosalyn barked.
“I can keep—”
“Sit, Minerva.” Rosalyn's eyes are squinting just slightly.
Minerva obeyed, fury curling in her chest. Rosalyn crouched beside her, voice calm. “Your nervous system is sprinting. It will cramp like any other muscle. Learn to work with it. Or it will chew you out.”
Minerva pressed her forehead to her knees, panting through the ache, and scribbled later: Flashes after six minutes. Reset needed. Don’t be stubborn.
Minerva burned these phrases into the notebook she kept in her bag: floor is friend; breath is a lever; hum not hiss and reset.
By December, nights fell fast. Henry’s old truck as it rattled down the roads, defroster humming, Maw’s facility glowing like a furnace against the dark.
Maw has been watching Minerva practice repelling things around the farm and decided to focus on this in her training this month.
They moved to the back room, where the ceiling hung low.
“Boundary work,” Rosalyn said. “Not walls. Not cages. You don’t have those. You have edges you can set, then move.”
They started with a square of tape on the floor. Minerva stood in the center of it. She felt weirdly vulnerable. Her stomach tensed up and it got slightly worse when Cam and Priya start to circle slowly around her.
"Put your palms up. Feel the air."
She does what she is told, though it did feel awkward all things considered.
“When they breach the tape,” Rosalyn said, “you push. Not them, the space.”
It sounded like nonsense until Minerva let the hum rise in her arms and treated the square like a porch she refused to surrender. When Cam’s toe crossed the line, she exhaled and sent a controlled pulse, not a strike, outward. The air tremored with a slight sparkle skirting the edge of the pulse. Cam blinked, rocked back half a step.
“There it is,” Rosalyn said, smiling faintly.
Minerva laughed, then winced as a headache flared immediately after.
Rosalyn’s answer: “You’ll learn to do this in bursts.
They played like that for ten minutes, creeping, testing. Every time Minerva overcooked it, Rosalyn cleared her throat; every time she undercooked it, Priya waggled her fingers, beckoning closer.
“Your intent matters,” Rosalyn said sternly. “Intent is an instruction. Tell the current what the edge is.”
“What’s an edge if not a wall?” Minerva asked, sweaty hair sticking to her neck.
Minerva swears she saw a twinkle in her Maw's eyes as she said. “A line you can move with you.”
The pulse clicked once—just once—like two magnets kissing and repelling at the same time. Minerva laughed out loud at the clean feel of it, at how it didn’t fry anything, at how it obeyed because she’d asked well. Minerva felt the headache come back, but it came as fast as it went. It made her eye twitch.
“Again,” Rosalyn said, smiling now. “Before your brain gets cute and ruins it.”
It was during break
They stayed until the hum under Minerva’s skin is starting to feel like a purr she could raise or lower at command. In her blue journal, although battered, she wrote: Starting to see movements faster. Pulsing is better. Headaches not so much.
Silas drove her back from the dojo some evenings, one hand on the wheel, the other flicking his coin at red lights. He didn’t fill the cab with chatter—just the low hum of some scratchy country station.
“You’re quiet,” Minerva said once, head leaning against the cold glass.
“You’re sore,” Silas countered, smirk tugging. “Different kind of quiet.”
She huffed a laugh. The pressure behind her eyes throbbed, dull but steady. “Feels like I got my skull run through a thresher.”
“You asked for hard, Mini. Don’t cry about the price.” He tossed the coin, caught it, and glanced at her. “And don’t you dare quit. You’re too much Bearblood for that.”
Minerva smiled despite the ache. “I wasn’t planning to.”
“Good.” He nudged her shoulder with his knuckles as the light changed. “Then sit there and be proud, even if it hurts. Pain’s just proof you worked.”
She let her eyes close, the rumble of the truck and Silas’s steady driving settling her bones. For once, the headache didn’t feel like punishment. It felt like progress.
January, the coldest month. Frost crawled the glass, heaters struggling. Exhales fogged like ghosts, but the tatami stayed cold under bare feet. The air hung still before sparring warmed it, every sound sharp in the brittle quiet.
Rosalyn started using her students as moving lessons.
“Cam, give her feints. Three to one. Priya, take her base every time she leaves it loose. Derrick, hand-fight. Evan, pace-control—make her chase and punish her for it.”
They cycle-spared. One minute each. No breaks. Every new partner brought a different problem. Minerva learned to read the shift of a shoulder, the micro-stutter of a knee that meant a kick, the way Priya’s weight rotated a fraction of a second before her hips followed.
Her head throbbed after the fourth partner. The steady current she kept under her skin to sharpen her reflexes began to feel like a drum against her temples. She shook it off, gritting through the ache.
“Your face does this,” Priya said, imitating Minerva’s grimace. “Like you’re chewing a lemon while doing math.”
“I am doing math,” Minerva said, panting, hands on knees. “And it tastes like lemon.”
“Make it taste like cinnamon,” Cam offered, chuckling, and Rosalyn pointed with the stick as if to say Exactly: you’re the cook, season it.
Minerva snorted, headache easing just enough when she remembered to pulse the current instead of running it nonstop.
They added a drill, Rosalyn called Catch and Send. Pads pressed on Minerva’s shoulders from both sides—pressure in, pressure out. She had to receive without collapsing, redirect without blasting.
“Take it into the frame, then send it,” Rosalyn coached, tapping the sternum. “Think hinge, not hammer. You are not pushing people—stop making them your focus. You’re organizing force. That’s different. Same as thoughts. Catch them, place them, send them.”
When Minerva managed a sequence—receive, step, pulse—clean enough to move Cam two steps without popping his collarbone, she whooped and clapped her own hands. The class clapped with her, not sarcastically. It felt like music.
Rosalyn put a broomstick in her hands and made her practice sliding her grip while keeping the hum even. No spinning tricks. No flourish. Just tone control through a shifting lever—the beginning of something she didn’t have a name for yet.
At night she fell asleep to a new sensation: not buzzing, not jangling, more like a wire warm with current running exactly where she’d set it. Quiet. Useful. Available. The headache dulled to pressure instead of spikes. Manageable.
February was when it got frustrating. Maw dedicated a whole week to losing.
Every round started from a bad position. Mounted. Back taken. Arm trapped under a knee. Eyes half-closed while a partner shook a focus mitt near her ear to simulate noise. If Minerva escaped, the next round started worse.
“Heroes don’t start on their feet in bright lights,” Rosalyn said, voice level, stopwatch relentless. “They start in holes.”
Minerva’s chest scuffed the mat enough to burn, cheek pressed into canvas until she smelled dust and sweat. Panic leaned over the edge of her ribcage like a nosy neighbor. She breathed in sets of four and recited the footwork lines in her head like psalms.
The floor is a friend. Breath is a lever. Hum, not hiss. Reset as needed.
When Derrick flattened her with a cross-face and she felt her eyes sting, Priya’s voice came through: “Count your exits. One. Two. Three. Pick one and go.”
She picked wrong twice and got choked for it. The third time she found an angle, pulsed sharp enough to buy herself half a breath without splitting her skull, posted on an elbow, and made just enough space to turn. The escape wasn’t pretty, but it was honest. Rosalyn nodded once like a clock striking.
They mixed in live-scenario rounds with a light quirk layer. An “office hallway” taped with choke points. Foam furniture for cover. Cam tossed a rubber ball at her head mid-step; she repulsed it away without looking and kept moving. Priya darted in with a fake knife; Minerva redirected the wrist with her left, pulse-sent with her right, then slid to an exit. It felt like threading a needle with her whole body.
On the worst day, she lost five rounds in a row and heard her own breath turn ragged enough to scare her. The headache flared hot, stabbing behind her eyes. She ripped her mouthguard out and crouched near the wall, elbows to knees, head down.
Rosalyn crouched too, not touching, not crowding.
“You asked me for this,” she said, voice gentler than it had been all month.
Rosalyn looks out to her students who are still working on their techniques without them.
“Teaching is not about giving you success. It’s giving you worthy failures until you can write a better answer.”
Minerva swallowed hard. “I know.”
“Then you don’t quit.”
Rosalyn could hear the sniffle that her daughter tried to hide, but Minerva nodded. She lifts her head and put her mouthguard back in. Stood up when back to the center and bowed. Took another hard round and lost. Took the next and escaped.
On the drive home, Henry didn’t ask how it went. He just handed her a cold towel he’d packed in a little cooler and turned the radio low. She watched brakelights smear red on wet asphalt and thought, not for the first time, that sometimes love sounded like a truck that doesn’t break down and a towel that smells like laundry line.
By mid-February, the ice had started to melt in patches outside, leaving wet earth scents sneaking into the dojo when doors opened. Rosalyn called for a full-floor circuit: striking, clinch, ground, boundary, rope work, breath ladders, then a quiet corner for quirk tone alone. Fifteen stations. Two minutes each. No talking between.
“Life will not ask you if you’re ready to switch gears,” Rosalyn said.
Minerva did her combinations smoother now, shoulder low, hip turning like a hinge. She ate a knee in the clinch because she got cute; she corrected on the next pass. On the ground she framed early and recovered guard. On the boundary square she adjusted pulse strength to match partner and space, not ego. On rope work, she learned to keep a charge in her feet so the fibers gripped without burning. On breath ladders, she found, for the first time, that she could drop her heart rate on command.
At the quirk station—a taped rectangle and a single metal pole—Rosalyn stood with a stopwatch.
“Instruction?” she asked.
Minerva closed her eyes. Let the hum rise. Opened them. “I set the edge at my forearms, three feet out. Keep the tone low enough to tickle but not rattle," Another breath, "If they breach, I pulse the space. I step before I push. I test before release.”
“Proceed.”
Cam moved first, smiling like a sibling trying to steal the last cookie. Minerva adjusted her elbow a fraction; his grin crooked as the pulse met his hand without biting. Priya tried to out-time her; Minerva let the other woman in a foot, then slid and pulsed and watched the surprise bloom into approval.
“Now me,” Rosalyn said.
Maw stepped in wearing the face she wore when no one was looking at her, soft around the eyes, strict around the mouth. She moved like a sentence without extra words. She breached. Minerva stepped. Rosalyn loomed again, and Minerva felt her own back flirt with the edge of panic—and then she breathed, sent the instruction to the current the way she’d trained, and pulsed the square clean without slamming her mother.
It landed like the click of a well-fitted drawer.
Rosalyn’s teeth flashed, rare and white. “There.”
They sparred then, mother and daughter. No drama, no audience, just the sound of feet and the slow, pleasant pain of effort. Minerva threw four clean combinations in two minutes and didn’t lose her base once. Rosalyn tripped her anyway because that’s what Rosalyn did, and Minerva laughed on the way down because that’s what Minerva had learned to do.
After class, while the seniors mopped and put pads back on the rack, Rosalyn sat beside her on the bench and handed her a bottle of coconut water.
“You have six months of work in you,” Rosalyn said. “You used my people well. You listened. You've been asking the current the right questions. I am so proud.”
Minerva blinked fast and took a long drink so her voice wouldn’t come out sideways and shaky; not from her quirk, but from the uneasiness in her chest. “Thank you for saying it plain.”
“We’re not done by a long shot," Rosalyn bumped her shoulder,"But what you’ve built now—that’s a practice you can trust. Hold on to that.”
Minerva nodded. The ache in her head was still there, but not sharp—just steady pressure she knew how to ride. For the first time, it felt less like punishment and more like rhythm.
“Feels like I’ve been walking barefoot on gravel and finally stepped onto a path that fits,” she said.
“Good,” Rosalyn said. “Keep your feet awake.”
The last night of February, Rosalyn asked Henry to come in and watch the final round. He stood by the door in his work jeans, hands in pockets, smiling like a field at sunrise.
Minerva bowed to the mat, to Rosalyn, to the class that had adopted her as one of their own. She ran the circuit one last time, not trying to impress—just making it honest. On the boundary square, she set her edges and moved them with her like the perimeter of a campfire. In the clinch, she used her hips instead of her arms and was rewarded with space. On the ground, she escaped without hurrying, the way you pull a splinter that breaks if you yank.
At the quirk station, Rosalyn changed the drill.
“Instruction,” she said.
Minerva looked at the pole, at the taped square, at the fans chopping air overhead. She thought of how the mat always felt colder than it looked, of how silence in the room could press louder than noise. She thought of the past months of Cam’s feints, Priya’s weight, Derrick’s grip, Evan’s pace, and how each had forced her to find a steadier rhythm. She thought of her mother’s voice, even now: set the edge, step with it, keep the current true.
She set her hands a hand-width apart and said.
“I keep it in my back so I don’t scare myself. Edge at two feet. Step with it. If someone touches me, I give just enough push, no more.”
Rosalyn’s eyes warmed. “Proceed.”
Minerva did. When she finished, small applause lifted from the doorway; Henry had gotten himself caught clapping without permission. Rosalyn pointed at him. “You can clap, Paw. She earned some noise tonight.”
Henry whooped properly then, and Minerva laughed so hard she had to bend at the waist. When she straightened, Rosalyn was there with a small, red, battered spiral notebook. The cover had sweat stains and coffee rings. On the first page, in Rosalyn’s handwriting: Practice Log
“Write what works,” Rosalyn said. “Write what doesn’t. Write what you think before you try, and what you learned after you fail. Six months down. License on deck.”
Minerva held the notebook the way you hold something both fragile and made to be used. “I’ll keep it full.”
“You better,” Rosalyn said, and then pulled her into a hug that pressed Minerva’s face into the clean cotton of her gi, sweat and soap and something like eucalyptus. For a second Minerva remembered being eight and furious at a tin cup, and the same arms around her then, too.
“Paw’s waitin’,” Rosalyn murmured against her hair.
Henry drove slower, leaving the city, like he wanted the red lights to last. Minerva sat cross-legged in the passenger seat, notebook open, writing in cramped lines that soaked ink fast.
“What’s it say?” Henry asked, eyes still on the road.
She read aloud, surprised at how steady she sounded. “Notes: Breath sits like ballast; edges travel with me; hum belongs in the back not the teeth; floor is not an enemy; if I lose, I am not lost; if I win, I am not done.”
Henry sniffed, which for Henry passed as emotion. “Sounds like your mama,” he said.
“Sounds like me,” Minerva said, and smiled at how right that felt.
They drove in comfortable hush and let the fields take them back. When the porch light finally found them and the night insects tuned themselves to the key of home, Minerva slid the notebook into her bag and flexed her hands.
They felt different. Not buzzing. Not shaky. Ready.
She stepped out of the truck and the gravel answered under her boots like it knew her name. She looked up at the sky and thought not of tempests or fireworks, not of drama or noise, but of a clean line of power running from the base of her spine to the ground and back again, available the way breath is available when you remember to ask for it.
Six months ago, she’d come to her mother and said: teach me.
Now the request lived in her bones as an instruction she could give herself:
Stand. Breathe. Set the edge. Move it with you.
She had her directions. She had her people. She had the kind of work inside her that did not need an audience to be real. She felt like she could really push her to do anything now.
“Night, Paw,” she said, circling the truck to kiss Henry’s cheek.
“Night, Mini,” he said, thumb smoothing an errant curl to the side. “Proud of you.”
She went inside straight to her room with a thought in her head:
What am I gonna do now?