(AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN…) TRAINING ARC

In the end, Taylor simply told them she needed time.

No one pushed.

That, more than anything else that had happened in the room, caught her off guard. She had expected pressure, or persuasion dressed up as concern, or at least some attempt to guide her toward the answer they clearly preferred. Instead, she was given space, and the lack of resistance made the decision feel heavier.

Her dad agreed with her.

He said it was something worth thinking through, something that would affect both of them, and his voice carried a firmness that left little room for argument. Taylor glanced at him when he said it, also caught off guard by the way he placed himself alongside her, as though her life and his had become something to navigate together again instead of in parallel.

No one disagreed.

That settled it, for now.

After that, things moved more easily.

When the conversation turned to what she could do in the meantime, training came up almost naturally, framed as something practical rather than strategic. Taylor agreed before they could go into detail, the decision forming with a clarity she had not felt about anything else in that room.

It made sense.

She knew how little she actually knew. The loops had taught her how to react, how to anticipate, and how to survive long enough to understand what was happening, but none of that translated into real skill. More often than not, she relied on trial and error, dying her way toward something that worked. It got results, but every attempt came with a cost.

If her life was going to continue like this, she needed something better.

She needed to be able to end a fight the first time it happened.

The only part that disappointed her came afterward.

Because she was not part of the Wards, the training would not come from the heroes themselves. That had been explained plainly, framed as protocol rather than reluctance, and Taylor understood it well enough. Even so, a small part of her had hoped to be taught by them. 

Armsmaster, in particular.

There was something about the way he approached things that appealed to her, meticulous and clinical in a way that felt reliable. She could imagine how that might translate into teaching, and for a moment she let herself linger on the thought before setting it aside.

What she was offered instead was still more than she had expected.

A PRT officer, trained, experienced, and more than capable of teaching her how to handle herself properly. It was not the same, but it was not something to dismiss either. When she agreed, it felt like stepping onto a path that, while uncertain, at least led somewhere concrete.

The first session came sooner than she expected.

The training room was larger than anything she had seen up close before, the space open and well maintained, with mats spread across the floor and equipment arranged along the walls in careful order. It smelled faintly of disinfectant and worn fabric, the kind of place that had seen constant use without ever slipping into neglect.

Taylor paused just inside the entrance, taking it in.

There was a weight to the place, something solid and unmoving that stood in stark contrast to everything else she had been dealing with. Nothing here shifted beneath her feet. Nothing reset. It was just a room, waiting to be used.

Her instructor introduced himself without ceremony. His manner was straightforward and focused, not unlike the PRT officers she had seen moving through the building, and there was no attempt to hide what they were about to do or dress it up as anything easier and quicker than it would be.

That suited her.

They began with the basics.

Stance, balance, and how to move without losing control of her center of gravity. It felt simple at first, almost insultingly so, until she became aware of how often her footing slipped or her weight shifted too far in one direction. The corrections came steadily, each adjustment building on the last, until even standing properly demanded more attention than she had expected.

By the time they moved on to anything resembling a strike, her muscles already ached. Yet, she did not complain.

There was something satisfying in the repetition, in the way each movement could be improved upon instead of abandoned. No resets, no starting over from nothing, just steady progress that carried forward from one attempt to the next. It felt different from the loops in a way she had not expected, less like surviving and more like building something that would last.

When she threw her first proper punch under supervision, she immediately understood how wrong she had been doing it. And how lucky she had been so far. 

The correction was brief, demonstrated once and explained just enough for her to follow. And when she tried again, the difference was clear. The motion became something more controlled, the force traveling cleanly through her arm instead of dispersing without direction.

That alone was enough to keep her going.

And time slipped past without drawing her attention.

By the end of the session, her arms felt heavy and her legs unsteady, the exhaustion settling into her body in a way that felt earned. Sweat clung to her skin, and her breathing came faster than she would have liked, but beneath it all was a sense of progress that made the strain easier to accept.

She had learned something.

As she left the training room, the tension that had followed her for days seemed quieter, pushed back just enough to give her room to think without immediately spiraling. The problems waiting for her outside had not gone anywhere, and neither had the loops, but for the first time in a while, she had something that felt like it might help.

Taylor adjusted her grip on the strap of her bag and started toward the exit, and when she returned the next day, she found that she was looking forward to it.