An early morning ruckus could only mean one thing in the Carter household: one of Pip’s moms had made breakfast, and judging by the general lack of smoke filling the kitchen, it wasn’t Athena.

  Pip dragged herself out of bed, eyes heavy from the late night, but stomach rumbling and too dedicated to the idea of eating to go back to sleep. If she slept in too long, she’d be stuck with Poptarts or leftovers for breakfast. That was not the breakfast of heroes.

  Still wearing her hoodie from the night before, Pip barely had to dress in order to be acceptable in public, and stumbled down the stairs. She’d managed to wash the makeup off her face, but at that point had climbed into bed and passed out, despite her excitement over the deal with her mothers.

  In the light of day, however, the deal didn’t look so appealing. She had to get her grades up in order to get anything for herself, and the prospects were not good. Pulling up her grades on her phone as she made her way toward the dining room, she reaffirmed what she’d thought. She had Ds across the board. Not good. Why couldn’t she just be done?

  The shouting of voices assaulted Pip as she walked into the dining room, a large space lit from overhead skylights protected by an invisible forcefield. A custom wooden table filled the middle of the room, filled with people. While there were far more seats than there were people, the open spaces didn’t leave it feeling empty. Rather, the personalities seated therein swelled to fit the space.

  Also, a dog took up one of the empty seats. She sat politely, eating from a plate with her name on it, the clay marked with the imprint of little hands. Pip had made the plate in some art class in elementary school, back when her parents were trying to figure out if her power extended to multiple natural substances, or just glass.

  Just glass, as of ten years later.

  Pip slid into a seat, pocketing her phone and focusing on the food in front of her. There was a lot of it, with absolutely no theme. Lots of fruits and yogurt and some fresh veggies. Eggs, pastries, and a few breakfast meats. Some still steaming rice. A couple waffle quarters.

  Deciding against decisions, Pip took a bit of all of it, loading up her plate and diving in. She’d never felt bad about eating as much as she did. She was an athlete, and she needed fuel. Also, food was tasty. How could you not eat a lot of it?

  “Where were you last night?” Amalia asked, lowering the book away from her face to ask the question. Much like Pip, she resembled Mai a fair bit more than she did Athena, though the Carter features shown through in places. Unlike Pip, she had the Carter family height, already taller than Pip at fourteen.

  Pip shrugged, choosing not to answer around the berries in her mouth.

  “Mum sent us to bed early,” Emelios added. His dark hair curled around his ears, emphasizing a set of round cheeks. “But grandma and grandpa sounded pretty upset.”

  “You got caught, didn’t you?” Galen asked casually. He, along with his twin brother Theo, were the only two Athena had given birth to herself, and it showed. They were huge, not quite the seven feet tall Athena was, but they were certainly getting up there, and still growing. It wasn’t fair that boys got to keep growing after sixteen.

  “What? No!” Pip protested around a mouthful of yogurt covered in honey and walnuts.

  “You did,” Theo said without hesitation. “You’re a terrible liar.”

  “You really should work on that, honey,” Mai said, piping up from the end of the table. She sat together with Athena, the two sitting side by side and feeding each other pastries like they were newlyweds still in love. It was disgusting.

  “Shouldn’t you discourage your children from lying?”

  Mai shrugged. “I may not be a super, but I know enough about the hero world to know you lie often enough. Plus, if you know how to lie, you’ll know how to see through them. I’m looking out for you.”

  Pip scowled, something hard to do with a strawberry in her mouth. Agemenon, the family dog, attempted to sneak a piece of bacon from her plate. “I can lie,” she grumbled.

  “Right,” Theo snorted.

  “What line of work?” Galen asked, looking between Pip and Mai. “Don’t tell me you’re still on about becoming a hero?”

  “Not with your grades,” Amalia said.

  “Or height,” Theo added in.

  “Height has nothing to do with skill, drive, or power,” Athena said, soothing the table before a scuffle or a food fight could break out. “Pip is getting her grades in order, and the dedication to training has never been an issue. You are not going to be discouraging over a goal you all hold.”

  “Sorry,” Galen said before stuffing another bite full of rice in his mouth.

  “I can always tutor you, if you want,” Amalia said, sickly sweet.

  “No thank you,” Pip said, making a face at Amalia. “I have a plan.”

  “Hey, what does this mean for our nightly training session?” Theo asked, looking over at their mothers.

  “Pip will not be participating,” Mai said. “Not until she’s ungrounded.”

  Theo frowned, slumping down into his seat in disappointment. “That’s not fair to the rest of us,” he mumbled.

  She finished the rest of her meal in silence, glaring at her siblings who dared not believe in her. Just because she’d had terrible grades until now didn’t mean she wouldn’t be able to fix it. She just needed to talk to her teachers. And actually study for tests. And figure out what she could do for extra credit.

  This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  Fuck, that was a lot of things to do. But if it meant she’d be able to train seriously for the hero program and get to compete against other supers, she’d do anything.

  As it was, she thought she’d get in. She wasn’t the strongest, but she’d been training in weapons and martial arts since she could walk. Plus, she’d been working with her core for years and her control was excellent. But she wanted to be the best. She didn’t just want to be good, she wanted to be the best. She needed to uphold the Carter legacy.

  The Carters had been a massive part of the super world for the past seventy years, starting with her grandmother Thalia. Then her mother, aunts, and uncles. Then cousins. And now her.

  She did her best to carry that conviction all the way to school, making her way to talk to the first teacher on her roster. Mrs. Hanes, calculus teacher.

  Despite the subject she taught, she wasn’t Pip’s least favorite teacher. If it wasn’t for the fact that she tortured teenagers with math problems, she’d actually be a cool person.

  “Heyyy,” Pip drew out the word, leaning up against Mrs. Hanes’s desk as students filtered into the room.

  Mrs. Hanes looked up, a soft smile coming to her lips. “What do you need, Phillipa?”

  Despite the fact that Pip rarely used her birth name, it didn’t sound unnatural coming from Mrs. Hanes. Not the way it did coming from other teachers, or her moms, who almost always called her Pip unless she was in trouble.

  “I need to know what I can do to get my grades up,” she said, holding her breath for the response. Maybe it’d be something easy? Like staying after class and helping clean up.

  No luck, no dice.

  Mrs. Hanes eyes went wide, a sound escaping her mouth. She quickly covered her mouth and turned it into a cough, but Pip had a terrible suspicion she’d laughed. “Well,” she cleared her throat and looked down at her desk, neatly put together, with a stack of homework in the corner waiting to be handed out. “You could bring in all the homework you’ve forgotten to turn in so far this year.”

  Pip stared at her teacher, wishing she could shape her words and make them into anything else. Wasn’t there another super out there with that power? “Homework?”

  “Yes,” Mrs. Hanes said, her eyes sparkling with amusement. “Homework. I’ll even give you half credit for every piece of homework you bring in. Completed, of course.”

  “Mmm,” Pip hummed, turning away from the teacher and plodding away toward her desk. In a daze, she pulled out a notebook and a broken pencil, wracking her brain for where all that homework could possibly be. In her backpack? Her locker? Maybe it was on her desk at home, if she’d gotten it out with the intention of completing it. Or if she’d dumped out her backpack because it had gotten too full.

  What was the point of homework anyway? If she could understand what was being taught in class, why did she need to continue to prove it with extra work?

  Staring up at the chalkboard as Mrs. Hanes began to write out an equation, Pip realized she had no idea what they were supposed to be doing.

  A thump sounded through the room. Eyes whipped around to find Pip with her head buried in the textbook in front of her, letting out a muffled groan.

  *****

  By the time Pip got home, she was in despair. There was nothing she could do to get her grades up, at least not quickly. And the longer it took for her to get her grades up, the longer it would take for her to start preparing for her application to super school.

  She got an extra credit assignment from her history teacher, the only class she actually did well in, and only then because this semester’s class was on the History of Supers. Luckily, that went well with her own family history, so the project would be easy enough.

  Other teachers weren’t as helpful and receptive, and as much as she was bitter, she also understood. She’d just have to start actually trying in class, though calculus today had proved she had no idea what was currently going on in school.

  Pip threw her backpack on the bed and looked around. Maybe getting her grades up was possible?

  First step, getting her calculus homework together.

  Digging through her backpack, she found a crushed granola bar, some sparkly pens and highlighters, and a broken piece of pottery from the physical art elective she was taking. A few pieces of homework, wrinkled and stained, but not nearly enough. She stacked it by subject on her bed then slid off, making her way over to the desk.

  She couldn’t remember the last time she’d used her desk. Being a flat surface, it had become just another shelf in her bedroom. A few of her earlier summons sat on the shelf above her desk, along with Fredrick, who still needed to be moved to the success shelf on the far wall near the window, where the light could hit them and turn them into living stained glass art.

  She dumped a pile of laundry off the chair and sat down, leafing through papers. The more she found, the deeper her despair grew. There was just so much, and even if she could finish it all and turn it in, how much would it fix her grades?

  Homework successfully sorted, Pip took a step back, placing her hands on her hips as she considered it. She could do this. Heroes dealt with much more challenging work. This was, in a way, another form of training for her.

  But heroes also had to know when something was beyond them.

  “Mom.” Pip’s voice carried out of her room and through the massive Carter household. Voices piped up, telling her to be quiet, but she ignored them. “Mum!”

  Her phone vibrated in her pocket. She pulled it out, reading the first message on screen.

  Mum: we’re in the greenhouse, stop shouting

  She pocketed her phone and broke into a sprint, leaping down the last three stairs of the winding staircase and running through the dining room. She dodged Agemenon and Dyiona chasing each other through the large room, leaping over her younger sibling to reach the back door.

  It sat propped open, leading into the plant filled greenhouse attached to the backside of their house. Neither mother had particularly a green thumb, but the garden wasn’t doing terribly at the moment.

  Athena and Mai sat at a glass table that matched the glass walls of the greenhouse, two plates of food in front of them. Had Pip missed dinner, or was it a fend for yourself sort of night?

  Pip shook her head, ignoring the smell of food, and marched over to stand in front of her mothers.

  “Having trouble?” Athena asked, setting down her chopsticks for a moment. How she managed to use the utensils so dexterously with her large hands, Pip had no idea.

  “I want to renegotiate our deal,” she said.

  “Oh yeah?” Mai raised her eyebrows, sitting back in her seat in order to cross her arms over her chest. “Can’t uphold your end?”

  “No.” Pip went to cross her own arms, then shifted to placing them on her hips. She needed to stay confident. “I can do it. But… I think it might take a while.”

  “And?”

  “And is there anything else I can do to start training sooner?” Pip begged.

  “Anything?” Mai asked, raising her eyebrows.

  “Anything,” Pip said. She would do anything to be able to start training sooner. It was only when Mai’s eyes lit up that Pip realized she might have made a mistake. Once again.

  “In that case, there is the after school club for supers…”

  Pip groaned. “No, please.”

  “Why not?” Mai asked, playing innocent. “You wanted to interact with other supers.”

  “Yeah, but they’re… losers.” She did try not to be mean, but the super club at Laymont wasn’t exactly known for having the best supers around. If it was, Pip would be a part of it. Not to mention, they were literally losers. They had it on T-shirts!

  “They’re not losers,” Mai said, Athena coughing in response. Mai glared at her before turning back to Pip with a smile. “And thank you for volunteering to sign up and help out. They’ll really appreciate a more experienced peer joining their group.”

  Pip shut her mouth before any more protests could come out and walked away. She really should have stuck with just doing her homework.