More importantly, two days later the elixir is done.

It will be like he and his sister are each getting nearly two thirds of the fruit, rather than half. 

It feels like he's drank a thunderbolt. He can't tell whether it's heat or cold that he's feeling but he knows it's intense. Tingling prickles spread out from his core along his madra channels, all the way to his fingertips.

When he feels his core, when he sees it in his mind's eye, nothing is different. It's hard to stifle the disappointment.

But perhaps it just needs more time to work?

It doesn't. His core doesn't feel brighter, the next morning, once the tingles have stopped. It doesn't feel deeper. It isn't any larger.

No difference at all, as far as he can tell.

But when he practices the empty palm, he can use it again and again. 

Four times as many times as he could before. 

Four times. 

His madra stores quadrupled overnight, and he didn't even notice.

It's his sister who points out exactly what that means. The fruit's aura was incorporated into both their spirits so smoothly they couldn't even notice. There will be no issues with instability, no time spent ensuring their spirits are not strained by being overglutted with power.

The fruit was exactly what the both of them needed.

He learns to fight, around his attempts to invent an Enforcer technique and perfect his Empty Palm. He doesn't learn well. He's starting years and years late, no matter how talented he is.

But everyone gets lucky occasionally. 

His sister is stronger, when she is using madra. His sister is faster, when she is using madra. His sister is more skilled always.

But she needs her madra to practice on her own time. So she doesn't use a lot of it, when sparring with him. It lets her actually get something out of it, as well. If she's too much faster and stronger than him it's not anything close to a real fight. It's still not very close to one, she's got twice the strength he does, and about as much more speed. He's not spending madra himself, during his fights- he needs to save it for developing his Enforcer technique and practising his Empty Palm. He's still not fast enough with it to use it in a fight with someone who's faster than him and have any chance of landing it.

One day, during a spar, Kelsa nearly trips on a root. She recovers nearly instantly.

Nearly.

Lindon suddenly uses his half-developed Enforcer technique as hard as he can, the madra gushing from his core like water from a spigot. He doesn't have long, using it this intently, but he needs the speed.

He forms an Empty Palm as quick as he can. Not quite quick enough, normally, to land a hit on Kelsa. It would simply be too obvious, his body too slow.

His Empty Palm strikes her core straight on. 

His sister is at the peak of Copper, likely days or weeks away from advancing to Iron. It doesn't matter. Her Enforcer technique gutters out, her limbs suddenly moving in slow motion. Lindon is, for a few moments, the only one with access to madra. When she's using a limited amount of madra and he's using none, she's twice as strong as he is. When she's using none, and he's using more than he ever has in his life, the balance is suddenly drastically in the other direction.

He punches her in the stomach again. Harder.

She falls to the ground in front of him.

He wins.

It's just once. At first.

Then it becomes occasional.

Never common. She has a whole realm on him. She has to trip, or he has to get very lucky somehow. But when you fight enough times, something like that will happen. 

He, a crippled Unsouled, defeats a Copper in a spar. And then he does it again. And again. 

Who cares that she defeats him far, far more often? He can do it at all.

He can do it at all.

A month later the Enforcer technique comes together. His body is sheathed in flowing wisps of blue madra, almost licking over him like flames. It gathers at his fists more than anywhere else, but it flows over his whole body. It's weak. Faint. Barely there at all, really.

With it active, he's stronger. More graceful. His body suddenly moves the way he wants it to, when he wants it to. It's incredible.

More than that, the pure madra racing over his body disrupts foreign madra. When his sister uses her Enforcer technique, her punches still have lingering phantom pain, like fire is burning inside his flesh, but less, and it eases faster.

And she's Copper. What would it be doing if he was Copper? Would her technique summon phantom pain at all? Surely a proper Enforcer's technique would, and most certainly a direct hit by a Striker technique, but- it should protect him somewhat from anything primarily spiritual in nature.

That's what pure madra is best at, after all. The only thing it's good at is disrupting spiritual techniques. It's the perfect counter to his clan's Path. If an Iron of the Kazan clan used a technique to strike him in the head with a mundane stone, he would keel over just as dead as if he didn't have any technique active at all. But a technique of just madra alone would have its effects blunted. It's his madra, after all- if it was distant from him and no longer in his control there would be risk of the technique being empowered by the pure madra, absorbing it and hitting him harder. But with it this close to his body, shaped by his family's Enforcer cycling technique to be something that infiltrates and burns, that subverts and erodes- well, that's a different matter entirely.

He can tell he's doing something wrong. His madra doesn't quite want to flow this way, he's forcing it in some subtle way he can't divine. It behaves more like water than foxfire, and more like mist than either once it's forced into the slightly unnatural shape from following a cycling pattern derived from his family's technique.

Maybe he can get it to flow around his body and hands like water instead?

He can't. He just doesn't have the madra capacity. 

Well. An idea for Copper. Or Iron. Maybe even Jade?

Someday, though.

But- how is mist different from fire? How does that change how he should be cycling this technique?

He's not quite sure. He makes tiny adjustments here and there, trying to feel his way towards something that works better. It doesn't work. Any perturbation from this technique feels worse.

He runs out of madra after another spar.

He doesn't care. 

He has an Enforcer technique.

His sister advances to Iron the next day.

He's happy for her, her really is. Just.

Well.

He didn't even get a chance to beat her! With a proper enforcer technique he's sure he could have won one bout in ten!

Now that she's Iron he can kiss winning any bouts goodbye. He won't even get to spar with her again for weeks. They need to be sure she won't accidentally kill him.