[color=lightgray][center][color=ivory][h1]ℭ𝔩𝔞𝔯𝔞 𝔚𝔥𝔦𝔱𝔪𝔬𝔯𝔢[/h1][/color][sup]Location: The Chamber of Reflections | Mentions: ---[/sup][/center][hr][indent]Clara Whitmore stood near the back of the assessment chamber, wishing—not for the first, nor even for the hundredth, time today—that she could be smaller again. Six feet tall without even summoning her armor, that's what the Order's doctor had measured, twice, as if disbelieving his own instruments.

Six feet, when she had been five-two her entire life. One hundred and eighty-something pounds of dense, corded muscle that had appeared seemingly overnight, replacing the soft, undernourished frame of a girl who had survived on adrenaline and stolen granola bars for three days after the 'barn incident'.

Her clothes—carefully chosen this morning, from the options presented to her by the caretaker the Order had assigned to her, after hours of second-guessing—felt like a costume: dark jeans that fit too well over legs that still didn't really feel like hers; a loose hoodie that couldn't quite hide the breadth of her shoulders; scuffed combat boots that seemed huge to her eyes, yet still felt too tight in the end.

"[i]You look like you're playing dress-up[/i]", her mother's voice whispered from the back of her mind. "[i]Pretending to be something you're not.[/i]"

She pressed her spine against the smooth steel wall and tried to take up less space. Tried to breathe quietly. Tried to look like she belonged here, among these people who all seemed so certain of themselves.

The chamber itself was beautiful in a cold, clinical way—all polished surfaces and pulsing concentric circles that reminded her uncomfortably of her father's abandoned dartboard hanging on the wall of their kitchen, by the fridge. The blue holographic light cast strange shadow, made everyone look slightly unreal.

Commander Mara stood at the center, like a statue forged from moonlight and sheer iron will. Her mirrored helmet reflected a dozen distorted versions of the recruits back at themselves. Clara had looked away quickly when she'd glimpsed her own warped face in that polished surface, avoiding another starks reminder of how much she'd changed.

Team pass or team fail.

The words settle into her chest like stones. She had been listening—of course she had, hyperaware of every word spoken, every shift in tone, cataloging threats and safe harbors the way she'd learned to catalog her father's drinking patterns and her mother's silences. 

The casual recruit towards the back had joked about flooding. The older man in the vintage costume—Mr. Callum, she thought she had heard—had spoken with the kind of steady authority that made something in her want to both trust him as well as flee. And then there was the pale one with the multicolored bangs, Sinclair? His intensity seemed to crackle in the air like static before a storm.

"[color=ivory][i]If I fail, I'll ruin this for everyone.[/i][/color]" The thought arrived with the weight of inevitability. Clara's fingers found the silver bracelet on her left wrist. Simple and unadorned, it was the only physical anchor to her powers besides the horn currently disguised as an ornate hair stick tucked into her braid. She turned the bracelet in a slow circle, once, twice, a rhythm that usually calmed her down. It didn't really work this time.

She had spent weeks preparing for this, weeks of jogging until her new legs didn't feel like they belonged to someone else, weeks of practicing her 'transformation' in the empty fields outside town where no one could see her stumble and fall the first dozen times her spine elongated and her legs multiplied. Weeks of reading every article from stolen newspapers about the Order of the Lake, about Commander Mara Hensley and her first responder background, about the eccentric billionaire founder who supposedly believed in 'real heroes'. Clara had memorized it all, looking for proof that this place was different. That here, maybe, she could be something more than the scared girl in the barn.

"[color=palegoldenrod][i]Why do you flee the race before it has begun?[/i][/color]" the Unicorn had asked her in that moment between dying and Awakening. She was still trying to answer that question.

Commander Mara's voice cut through the chamber again—something about the trial beginning soon, about working together. Clara's attention sharpened, her breathing shallow. She straightened slightly with a conscious effort. Shoulders back, chin up, eyes forward, that was what heroes did, right? They stood tall and didn't apologize for existing. They didn't flinch.

But her hands were shaking, so she shoved them into her hoodie pocket. A flicker of movement to her left, one of the other recruits shifting their weight, caused Clara's gaze to dark over instinctively. The woman in the red hood was silent. The two, seemingly siblings—must be nice to have one—stood close by together, one radiating intensity while the other literally radiating heat. The short blonde girl, shorter than Clara's old self had been, somehow made anxiety look like friendliness. There were others as well, whose names names she hadn't caught yet, all of them probably wondering why the tall girl in the back looked like she was trying to disappear into the wall.

"[color=ivory][i]Say something,[/i][/color]" Clara told herself. "[color=ivory][i]Introduce yourself. Be normal. They're not your parents, they're not going to—[/i][/color]" 

But her throat had closed up the way it always did when she tried to speak first, tried to claim space in a conversation instead of waiting to be addressed. So instead she stayed quiet, watchful, her pulse hammering against her ribs in a rhythm that had nothing to do with danger and everything to do with the bone-deep certainty that she didn't deserve to be here.

Except she was here. The Unicorn had miraculously chosen her, and she had—for the first time in her life—grabbed that affirmation by the proverbial collar and recklessly left her house for better pastures, no pun intended. The hair stick tucked in her hair seemed to warm slightly, a gentle reminder.

Clara took a slow breath, and this time managed to hold Commander Mara's eyeline when the silver helmet turned slightly in her direction during another sweep of the room. One second. Two. Then the commander's attention moved on, and Clara's shoulders dropped half an inch in relief.

She could do this, could stand here and listen, and when the trial started she would… charge forward on four legs and pray her instincts didn't get anyone killed? Try to protect everyone and inevitably fail because she had no idea what she was doing?

She brought her hands to her hoodie, pulling it tighter around her head. Team pass or team fail.

If they failed because of her, at least it would confirm what her mother had always known: Clara ruined everything that she touched.

The holo projectors hummed louder, a rising pitch that suggested something was about to begin. She felt one hand tighten around the bracelet, while the other clenched tightly in a fist. The light in the chamber shifted, seemingly transforming to take on the slight outlines of buildings that, to Clara's eyes, promised a world of hurt.[/indent][/color]