Arcane | Haven't I given enough?

Chapter 1 - The things we had

Powder had been resting in her bed all day, tinkering with some brand-new projects and doing some hard-core thinking. One would call that laziness, but she would tell them it was quite the opposite. For all her dedication and work, she deserves a break now and then. That couldn't be called laziness.

She had trained for over half the day yesterday without the others. She wanted to show them all the next time they gathered how much she had been improving on her own. She didn't focus on training her aim or anything like that. She was already better than all of the others combined with that skill, especially Mylo. He should have been out there working out with her, but if he doesn't want to improve, Powder's not gonna be the one to force him to. He'll just be left behind.

They lived in a world where everything worked that way.

No, what she was trying to improve on was her hand-to-hand combat skills. Which Powder thought she was improving quite well! She was still the lowest on the scoreboard compared to everyone else, but they had more years on her.

Why did she have to be the youngest in the group? Mylo acted younger than her half the time, bragging nonstop and pulling reckless pranks. But no, if she did that Mylo would get all mad at her. He was so hypocritical!

It wasn't fair!

With all of those thoughts and emotions racing in her head, she stormed out of the room in which she was previously resting in, heading to one of their hideouts.

The girl was so worked up already that she couldn't bring herself to revert back to just tinkering. She had to get some of this anger out, and the smartest way to do that would be to get some training out of it.

Powder gave a swift punch to the machine, imagining it was Mylo's face she was punching instead. It retracted the part she hit and pushed out two new pieces just as fast as the last one had. She hit both sections with practiced ease. But it was too slow, so she didn't get many points for striking them.

This dragged on until the machine powered down, lights still on but no longer spurting out pieces left and right. She excitedly glanced at the scoreboard to check what her updated score was. Maybe being angry would help her achieve a higher score. Huh, she guesses that Mylo does have some helping aspects after all. Powder was feeling rather confident that round, so she was optimistic to see what had changed.

Her excitement slowly faded when she saw what had changed. The lighten-up scoreboard was only 2 spots above the bottom, still no better than any of her siblings.

Her arms dropped to her side, fists squeezed so tight that her knuckles were starting to turn white even with all of the new bruises on them.

How?! How was she still so far behind when she was constantly coming out here to improve? Age can't be all of it.

She was the problem, wasn't she? Powder always knew in the back of her mind that she could never beat any of her siblings, but she still tried nonetheless. It was all pointless in the end. She couldn't do it.

"Fuck this," she muttered to herself, with her head hung low in shame for her failures.

Powder stormed off the machine area and headed to the last drop to get herself something to drink. She didn't often realize how thirsty she was until after she got done with her training sessions. It was a problematic habit of hers but not one she could easily fix either.

Once she had made her way inside, she saw most of the regulars sipping away at their usual drinks. Some of them glanced at her when she walked by, but otherwise, no one attempted any moves against her.