"Keep your elbow tucked in," I tell Lily, trying to remember exactly how Multiplex showed me so many Sundays ago.. "Like, pretend you're holding a phone between your arm and your ribs and you don't want to drop it."

  She adjusts her stance, and I can see her overthinking it immediately - that little furrow in her brow that means she's calculating angles instead of just feeling the movement. Her right arm comes up into a guard position that's technically correct but so stiff it looks painful. At least she's trying, which is more than I can say for Tasha, who's sitting on the Music Hall's concrete steps looking like she'd rather be literally anywhere else.

  "I still don't understand why I need to learn this," Tasha says, for probably the fifth time this morning. "I'm not planning on punching anyone. That's what I have you guys for."

  "Because sometimes I'm not there," I say, and the words come out heavier than I meant them to. The bruises on my ribs are mostly yellow now, just ugly splotches instead of active pain, but they're still a reminder that I can't be everywhere at once. "And because knowing how to throw a punch means knowing how to not get hit by one."

  Maggie bounces on the balls of her feet like she's been mainlining coffee, which knowing her morning routine is entirely possible. "Can we spar for real now? I've been practicing the stuff you showed us last week and I think I'm getting pretty good at the whole ducking thing."

  "It's called slipping," I correct automatically, then have to dodge as she throws a wild haymaker at my shoulder without warning. "And you're supposed to wait until I say go!"

  The thing about teaching boxing when you've only been learning it yourself for a month is that you're basically just playing a really violent game of telephone. Multiplex shows me something on Saturday mornings in his actual gym with actual equipment, and then I try to recreate it in the lot behind the Music Hall with a bunch of teenagers who have zero fighting experience. Well, except for whatever back-alley scrapping Maggie's gotten into, but that's more "swing until someone falls down" than actual technique.

  "Sorry," Maggie says, not looking sorry at all. "But see? You dodged it! That means I'm helping you practice too."

  I shake my head but can't help smiling a little. The morning sun is already warm enough that I'm starting to sweat through my t-shirt, and there's a few neighbors out on their stoops enjoying the July weather. Mrs. Chen (no relation to Lily) from two houses down is actually watering her plants this time while obviously watching us, and I can see Mr. Perez in his window, coffee mug in hand.

  Some of them think it's good that we're learning to defend ourselves - Mrs. Miller actually brought us lemonade last week and told us about how her grandson's been taking karate classes. Others, like the way Mr. Kim shook his head and went back inside when he saw us setting up, clearly think it's depressing that kids feel the need to train for fights.

  I get both perspectives, honestly. Part of me wishes I could just be worried about summer homework and whether I'll be able to handle AP classes and superheroing at the same time.. The other part knows that ship sailed the moment I got shark teeth and decided to use them for something other than opening difficult packaging.

  "Okay, Lily, you're with me," I say, moving into a basic stance. "Maggie, why don't you try showing Tasha that combination I taught you? The jab-cross-hook thing."

  "I'm not participating," Tasha announces, but she does stand up and brush off her jeans. "I'm just... observing. For scientific purposes."

  "Whatever helps you sleep at night," Maggie says, already moving into position with the kind of enthusiasm that makes me worried for Tasha's safety. "Come on, I promise I'll go slow."

  Lily faces me with that same too-serious expression, like we're about to perform surgery instead of practice basic defensive movements. Her stance is still too rigid, weight distributed wrong, but at least she's trying. I throw a slow jab at her shoulder - telegraphed enough that she should see it coming from a mile away.

  She doesn't move.

  "You're supposed to dodge," I point out.

  "I was calculating the angle," she says, trying to keep things clear in her head. "I mean, like, don't you have to think about what you're doing? And I need to boost my arms a lit--"

  "No powers," I interrupt, glancing around at our very public setting. "Just your regular reflexes. And stop thinking so much. Your body knows what to do if you let it."

  That's what Multiplex keeps telling me, anyway. 'Stop thinking, start feeling.' Easy for him to say when he's been doing this since he was twelve, or however old the fuck. For those of us who spent our formative years avoiding physical confrontation like the plague, it's not exactly intuitive. I mean, I've definitely tackled other girls in the soccer pitch, back when... Oh, that feels bad, okay, we're moving away from that thought. Boxing. We're thinking about boxing now.

  If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  I throw another slow punch, and this time Lily jerks backward so hard she almost falls over. Progress, sort of. Behind us, I can hear Maggie explaining the finer points of punching to an increasingly exasperated Tasha.

  "No, see, you rotate from your hips. Like you're trying to twist open a really stubborn jar of pickles."

  "I don't open jars. I have Sam for that."

  "Well pretend you don't have Sam. Pretend it's just you and the pickles and you really want a sandwich."

  Amelia walks out of the Music Hall's back door, carrying a thermos and looking amused by the whole scene. Dressed nice. As Per Fucking Usual. Wait, I'm not mad at that. What's she saying? "-ow's the youth boxing program going?"

  "It's not a program," I say, then have to duck as Lily accidentally swings at where my head used to be. "It's just... practice. And you could join us, you know."

  She shakes her head, settling onto the steps next to her thermos. "I appreciate the offer, but I don't think boxing and whatever I'm figuring out are going to go together. Two very different motions."

  That's fair, I guess.

  "Besides," Amelia continues, "someone needs to keep watch. Make sure none of our observers get too curious."

  I hadn't mentioned the neighbors watching us, but of course she noticed. "It's good exercise, too," I tell her. "Will loosen your back right up. Aren't you tired being hunched over a sewing machine all day?"

  "No," she answers, and that's basically that.

  Lily tries another dodge, this one marginally better than the last. Her problem is that she's used to having something in her hands - rope darts, chains, anything she can whip around and accelerate. Without her tools, she looks lost, like a guitarist trying to play drums.

  "Stop thinking about it like a weapon form," I tell her for probably the dozenth time. "You can't dodge a punch the same way you'd dodge with your meteor hammer."

  "But with the hammer I can create distance while countering," she protests, miming the motion with her empty hands. "This just feels like... running away?"

  I feint left and tap her right shoulder before she can finish the thought. "Sometimes running away is the point."

  She makes this frustrated noise, somewhere between a growl and a whine. The thing about Lily is she's got amazing instincts when she's in her element - I've seen her nail impossible shots with her slingshot without even looking, just pure feel. But take away her weapons and she's like a fish out of water.

  "Look," I say, trying to think how Multiplex explained it to me. "Remember when you told me you learned the rope dart by just... playing with it? Like, no formal training, just messing around until it clicked?"

  "Yeah, but that was different. I could feel the weight, the momentum..."

  "So feel this. Stop trying to apply weapon logic to empty-hand fighting."

  She gives me this look like I just asked her to solve world hunger, but she tries again. This time when I swing, she sort of... sways? It's not really a dodge, more like how she moves when she's got her rope dart spinning, that natural flow she gets into.

  "That!" I say. "That was better. You moved like you, not like you think a boxer should move."

  "I did?" She looks genuinely surprised. "I was just thinking about when I've got the dart going in figure-eights..."

  "And your body knew what to do. You've got the instincts, they're just... weapon-shaped."

  A car drives by slowly, and I recognize it as belonging to Mr. Patel from the corner store. He waves, and I wave back, trying to look like a normal teenager teaching her friends self-defense and not a vigilante training her team for street fights. The distinction feels thinner every day.

  "Okay, try it again," I tell Lily. "But this time, pretend you're in the middle of a rope dart form and someone's interrupting your flow."

  That seems to click something in her brain. When I throw the next punch, she doesn't dodge so much as continue a movement she was already making, like I'm just another obstacle in her imaginary weapon pattern. It's unconventional as hell, probably would make Multiplex cry, but it works.

  "See?" I say. "You don't need to learn a whole new thing. Just adapt what you already know."

  "Huh," she says, and I can practically see the gears turning. Not in a calculating way, but in that way she gets when she's about to try something ridiculous with her slingshot. "So if I think about footwork like... maintaining momentum for a throw..."

  "Now you're getting it."

  Behind us, I hear a thud and turn to see Tasha actually threw a punch - directly into Maggie's waiting palm. Maggie's grinning like she just won the lottery.

  "See! I told you you could do it!" Maggie exclaims. "How did that feel?"

  "Like I just punched your hand," Tasha says dryly, but I can see a tiny smile tugging at her mouth. "Which, to be clear, I'm only doing because Sam will keep bothering me if I don't."

  "I'm persistent, not bothersome," I call over.

  "That's literally the same thing," Tasha shoots back.

  Amelia chuckles from her spot on the steps. "She's got you there."

  The thing about training in broad daylight is that you can't use any of the stuff that actually makes us dangerous. Lily can't practice accelerating her dodges or her fists, Maggie can't work on integrating force fields into her blocks, and I can't show them how to properly fight someone with, uh, knife hands. We're basically playing pretend, shadowboxing with our real abilities locked away.

  But it's still important. That's what I keep telling myself when Lily's fourth attempt at dodging ends with her tripping over her own feet. Most fights don't start with powers - they start with someone throwing a regular punch, and if you can't handle that, all the superpowers in the world won't save you.

  And it's still good exercise. But, like, there are Mr. Nothings and that one guy from the Pattinson's Pals, people who can just turn off your powers. And other people that Multiplex has mentioned offhand. And it'll be good for us to know what to do if we find them, or at least that's what I'm telling myself. If we find them, and if nobody involved has a gun, ha ha ha...

  I help Lily up, noticing how her hands are already developing calluses from our previous sessions. "Maybe we should switch to footwork," I suggest. "Boxing is like... thirty percent punching and seventy percent not being where the other person's fist is."

  "Those percentages seem made up," Lily says, but she moves back into stance anyway.

  "All percentages are made up if you think about it," I say, which gets an actual laugh from her.