The Tinker of Fiction story setup and tropes but with Ar'Kendrithyst's LITRPG powerset instead of ToF's.
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Ar'KendWorm (Worm LitRPG SI)
- Thread starter Aetheron
- Start date
- Created
- Status
- Incomplete
- Watchers
- 44
- Recent readers
- 248
- Threadmarks
- 12
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Statistics (12 threadmarks, 24k words)
User Total Aetheron 12
Prolog
New
Aetheron
Flinger of Spaghetti, Recorder of Results.
- Joined
- Oct 20, 2015
- Messages
- 344
- Likes received
- 14,846
Given that he goes toe to toe with Batman on a regular basis, I suppose it shouldn't be that surprising that The Joker has the occasional moment of legitimate brilliance alongside all the crazy.
That doesn't really make it any less embarrassing to realize that I've let things 'going according to plan' lull me into a false sense of security. And that's above and beyond the absurdity of the plan itself.
I mean, in my defense, no matter how gently it's done, being woken up in a much younger body is… disorienting… to put it mildly. Coupled with the realization that the reason a caseworker was shaking me awake was that we'd arrived at my "distant cousin's" house and it was time to meet Mr. Hebert… Well, that train of plot has a whole lot of implications, many of which I have no interest in thinking about now, let alone immediately after being woken up.
Which led to me making agreeable noises and shooing 'Uncle Danny' off to work while I 'settled in' so that I could rush over to the kitchen and grab the toaster.
…I think I've been staring at this stupid toaster for a full five minutes now and it's finally starting to sink in that I have absolutely zero inexplicable urges to disassemble it, or anything else, to make a cthulhutech ray gun or whatever.
Yeah.
Letting my head drop onto the table with a sigh, I take a moment to mourn the death of The Plan and then get up to put the toaster back on the counter where I found it.
A Tinker— of Fiction or otherwise— I apparently am not.
Which might, admittedly, be for the best given how much like work being a Tinker sounds like.
Even if I would really really love to be able to build a portal to somewhere that isn't Earth Bet right about now.
Okay, okay… so I'll admit it. My disappointment is immense and my day is ruined.
Being on Earth Bet as a jailbroken Tinker sounded bad enough. Being on Earth Bet as a civilian sounds way worse.
I'm going to choose to be an optimist and assume I have a power, just not that power, but I mean… What am I supposed to do?
Point my hands at the wall and shout, "pew pew!?"
Nothing.
Put my hand on the wall and try to climb?
Nope. Not Spiderman. Or any kind of flight that relies on just thinking about going up either.
Happy thoughts?
…I'll put a pin in that one for some time when I forget this is Earth Bet.
Shout, "status!" and pray-
-the gods are listen…ing…
Oh.
Well then!
Once again ignoring the fact that that is not my name and all the many many things I was studiously ignoring about what the name Jane implies about my new situation… Why does that name sound so familiar?
Flatt… Jane Flatt…
Oh, wasn't that the daughter from that one story. What was it called? Arkenthingy?
A/N - So that's the elevator pitch: The Tinker of Fiction story setup and tropes but with Ar'Kendrithyst's LITRPG powerset instead of ToF's.
That doesn't really make it any less embarrassing to realize that I've let things 'going according to plan' lull me into a false sense of security. And that's above and beyond the absurdity of the plan itself.
I mean, in my defense, no matter how gently it's done, being woken up in a much younger body is… disorienting… to put it mildly. Coupled with the realization that the reason a caseworker was shaking me awake was that we'd arrived at my "distant cousin's" house and it was time to meet Mr. Hebert… Well, that train of plot has a whole lot of implications, many of which I have no interest in thinking about now, let alone immediately after being woken up.
Which led to me making agreeable noises and shooing 'Uncle Danny' off to work while I 'settled in' so that I could rush over to the kitchen and grab the toaster.
…I think I've been staring at this stupid toaster for a full five minutes now and it's finally starting to sink in that I have absolutely zero inexplicable urges to disassemble it, or anything else, to make a cthulhutech ray gun or whatever.
Yeah.
Letting my head drop onto the table with a sigh, I take a moment to mourn the death of The Plan and then get up to put the toaster back on the counter where I found it.
A Tinker— of Fiction or otherwise— I apparently am not.
Which might, admittedly, be for the best given how much like work being a Tinker sounds like.
Even if I would really really love to be able to build a portal to somewhere that isn't Earth Bet right about now.
Okay, okay… so I'll admit it. My disappointment is immense and my day is ruined.
Being on Earth Bet as a jailbroken Tinker sounded bad enough. Being on Earth Bet as a civilian sounds way worse.
I'm going to choose to be an optimist and assume I have a power, just not that power, but I mean… What am I supposed to do?
Point my hands at the wall and shout, "pew pew!?"
Nothing.
Put my hand on the wall and try to climb?
Nope. Not Spiderman. Or any kind of flight that relies on just thinking about going up either.
Happy thoughts?
…I'll put a pin in that one for some time when I forget this is Earth Bet.
Shout, "status!" and pray-
| Jane Flatt Human, age: 12 Level 0, Class: None Exp: 0/100 Class: -/- Points: 1 | |||
| HP | 119/120 | 160 per day | |
| MP | 150/150 | 200 per day | |
| Strength | 12 | +0 | 12 |
| Vitality | 16 | +0 | 16 |
| Willpower | 15 | +0 | 15 |
| Focus | 20 | +0 | 20 |
-the gods are listen…ing…
Oh.
Well then!
Once again ignoring the fact that that is not my name and all the many many things I was studiously ignoring about what the name Jane implies about my new situation… Why does that name sound so familiar?
Flatt… Jane Flatt…
Oh, wasn't that the daughter from that one story. What was it called? Arkenthingy?
A/N - So that's the elevator pitch: The Tinker of Fiction story setup and tropes but with Ar'Kendrithyst's LITRPG powerset instead of ToF's.
1
New
Aetheron
Flinger of Spaghetti, Recorder of Results.
- Joined
- Oct 20, 2015
- Messages
- 344
- Likes received
- 14,846
My excitement over the discovery of my powers burns hot and then flames out as I remember where I am.
I had a… Well, not a plan per se, but maybe something halfway between an idle day dream and a character concept for being isekai'd into Veird.
But this isn't Veird.
So even ignoring the fact that Earth Bet lacks the Theological underpinnings motivating Project Silver Angel, it's also, somewhat ironically given the hilariously dangerous things living here, a bit too safe and tame for the lofty heights my dreams aspired to given that it lacks a self-sustaining tide of more manageable monsters to grind up into XP to fuel my growth.
…Unless Nilbog's turf or Eagleton happens to be conveniently close by?
No.
No, Brain, I said no.
Even if that somehow panned out, using magic to generate non-magical force via !!SCIENCE!! in order to threaten to destroy two of the Veirdian moons if they don't knock it off with the Quiet War bullshit somehow seems less insane than effectively mooning Ziz.
Even if she's worse about it than the Veirdian Angels, Ziz is hardly going to give a shit about whether or not I think she's doing the Angel concept wrong. I mean for one, she's doing it wrong on purpose.
I'm just going to have to accept that I'll need to plan on being somewhat more frugal with my points to make every purchase count.
Which, given that I am currently both a very squishy human living in the next best thing to a warzone and probably going to be working primarily with Skitter means there's really only one reasonable choice for my first purchase.
Buying [Scry], I flop my squishy ass down on the couch and close my eyes. Hmmm… 'a place you have been or have seen.'
Taking a deep breath, I picture… uh… the front yard of the Hebert's house? I haven't really been or seen much else of Brockton Bay yet given that my case worker pulling into the driveway is as far back as I can remember as "Jane Flatt."
…If I can find a way to do it discreetly, I should try and find a way to at least confirm if "my" dad was named Erick. Maybe make one of those statues he was fond of as a memorial for him.
…and maybe one for the original Jane I seem to have replaced.
Assuming she was ever even real and that this body wasn't poofed into existence right as we pulled into the driveway. Was the case worker even a real person? Or just Q in a dress? I can't actually picture her face right now which I was chalking up to not paying attention at the time but…
Okay, no. I don't think I want to think about that anymore right now so, "[Scry]!"
My vision sort of doubles and suddenly I'm looking at both the inside of my eyelids and at the front door of the house.
Opening my eyes, I can see the ceiling and the front door at the same time but can only meaningfully focus on one or the other.
Looking left, right, up, or down pans my point of view around, but it takes me some practice to get used to doing it without also turning my head.
Once I do get used to it though, I look up and down the street trying to pick a direction.
I could flip a coin or- No, wait, I'm a duh.
I look up.
Crossing my fingers that Scry counts as 'having seen,' I recast [Scry].
Still looking up at the sky and ceiling, I now also look down at Brockton Bay from a thousand feet in the air. Assuming 'also look' really applies since I can still only focus properly on one viewpoint at a time. Everything looks pretty small from way up here though and… I suddenly have a newfound appreciation for the importance of the street name overlay on Google Maps because I have no idea which of those tiny houses is the Heberts'.
I take a moment to look around and make sure there's no cape fights happening enthusiastically enough to be visible from on high and when there isn't, as far as I can tell, I switch my focus back to the driveway and look around for a distinctive enough house to home in on.
Sadly, the houses all have that kind-of-samey thing going on that you get when a single developer does an entire neighborhood at once. One or two look like they have extra rooms that were added on later, and one neighbor even added a third floor, but none of them really stand out enough to pick out from the other tiny rectangles I see packed together from on high.
Hmmm…
I-
My view from the driveway winks out as the spell ends.
Well then.
Whatever, I was kind of done with that one anyway.
Taking a moment to focus on what I want to see, I try again.
Awesome! It worked.
I look down at the Heberts' neighborhood from about a hundred feet directly above the Heberts' driveway.
Paranoia briefly overtaking me, I spin my view full circle making sure there's nothing obviously terrible happening one more time before going back to looking down at the Hebert's house.
From here, I can kind of make out the hole in the front stairs I had to step over when I entered the house. Or at least I think that's what that dot is, the "eyeball" of the scry spell doesn't really seem to be able to squint very well and midday sun glaring off the heavy dusting of snow on everything is making it hard to look straight down right now.
I think Erick had some kind of combo vision enhancing spell that would probably help? I'll have to look into that at some point.
For now, I hurriedly switch back to looking around for landmarks from way on high and before that casting can lapse on me.
Now, if this works the way I'm hoping it does, then I should be able to… [Scry].
Gah!
Only my position laying on the couch making it physically impossible impossible stops me from lurching backwards as I suddenly find myself staring at the center of the Medhall logo from close enough that my nose would hurt if I was there in person.
Making a note to be more, or maybe less, specific in my thinking about where I want to scry from, I rotate my point of view until I can see downtown.
…I should have made a list of landmarks to find in advance, huh?
This might just be the mana-exhaustion talking, but the lower levels of Veirdian style [Meditation] are just fucking awful, I decide as I slowly sit up on the couch.
At least my paranoia around someone finding me while I'm [Immobile], [Blind], and [Deaf] is mostly focused on them doing something stupid because they think I'm, you know, dead. Having to hide under Taylor's bed or something instead of just pretending to nap would be even worse but even if I'm going to keep double checking every time I'm scrying the neighborhood, I'm pretty sure no one actually bothers Taylor at home until Leviathan wrecks it largely by accident and there's way too much snow outside for it to be May.
…wait.
Something about that last thought bothers me now that the mana-exhaustion-induced headache is tamping down on the enthusiasm I felt earlier for exploring the city and leveling up as fast as I could to buy even more spells.
Slowly plodding my way to the window, I confirm that yes, there is indeed a heavy dusting of snow on the ground thick enough to see even in the waning sunlight of 4pm.
Leaning my forehead against the cool glass, the urge to just stay there a while is strong but I force myself to stumble towards the kitchen and look for a calendar.
And, sure enough, it's open to the page for January rather than May.
Which explains both the snow and it being dark at 4pm.
It also, unfortunately, might explain why Taylor hasn't come home from school yet.
I am, I decide, going to choose to believe that my arriving around noon means there was nothing I could have done to stop The Locker even had I headed towards Winslow immediately instead of spending the afternoon spamming [Scry] to explore the neighborhood and then [Meditate]ing to recover my mana.
Hopefully nothing ever disproves that belief.
I mean, it's not like I had any idea where Winslow was– I only found it towards the end of my last Scry cycle– or what Taylor's locker number would be.
And that's assuming today is the third and not any other day in January.
Also, I'm apparently a twelve year old girl now and probably shouldn't be wandering a major city alone. Especially not one known for racial tensions and gang violence.
…Gods damn it, I'm still going to feel worse than I already do if it turns out I could have done something but didn't because I was too wrapped up in my own shit.
Working my way through the cabinets from left to right I eventually find the one with the cups and pour myself some water in the probably vain hope that at least some of my headache is from mundane dehydration.
Gulping that down, I walk over to the phone hanging on the wall and pick up the receiver.
Then I pause, fingers hovering indecisively over the buttons.
If it is the third, and 4pm, then there is absolutely fuck all I can do at this point and Taylor's going to be in the psych ward for a while until her brain adapts to all the new inputs.
…Unless this is one of the stupid fanfic AUs that dial the locker up to 13 and no one actually finds her to pull her out of the locker until fucking tomorrow?
Gods-fucking-Damn It, I'm a non-canon character. I can't take anything for granted, can I?
I dial 9-1-1.
I had a… Well, not a plan per se, but maybe something halfway between an idle day dream and a character concept for being isekai'd into Veird.
But this isn't Veird.
So even ignoring the fact that Earth Bet lacks the Theological underpinnings motivating Project Silver Angel, it's also, somewhat ironically given the hilariously dangerous things living here, a bit too safe and tame for the lofty heights my dreams aspired to given that it lacks a self-sustaining tide of more manageable monsters to grind up into XP to fuel my growth.
…Unless Nilbog's turf or Eagleton happens to be conveniently close by?
No.
No, Brain, I said no.
Even if that somehow panned out, using magic to generate non-magical force via !!SCIENCE!! in order to threaten to destroy two of the Veirdian moons if they don't knock it off with the Quiet War bullshit somehow seems less insane than effectively mooning Ziz.
Even if she's worse about it than the Veirdian Angels, Ziz is hardly going to give a shit about whether or not I think she's doing the Angel concept wrong. I mean for one, she's doing it wrong on purpose.
I'm just going to have to accept that I'll need to plan on being somewhat more frugal with my points to make every purchase count.
Which, given that I am currently both a very squishy human living in the next best thing to a warzone and probably going to be working primarily with Skitter means there's really only one reasonable choice for my first purchase.
Buying [Scry], I flop my squishy ass down on the couch and close my eyes. Hmmm… 'a place you have been or have seen.'
Taking a deep breath, I picture… uh… the front yard of the Hebert's house? I haven't really been or seen much else of Brockton Bay yet given that my case worker pulling into the driveway is as far back as I can remember as "Jane Flatt."
…If I can find a way to do it discreetly, I should try and find a way to at least confirm if "my" dad was named Erick. Maybe make one of those statues he was fond of as a memorial for him.
…and maybe one for the original Jane I seem to have replaced.
Assuming she was ever even real and that this body wasn't poofed into existence right as we pulled into the driveway. Was the case worker even a real person? Or just Q in a dress? I can't actually picture her face right now which I was chalking up to not paying attention at the time but…
Okay, no. I don't think I want to think about that anymore right now so, "[Scry]!"
My vision sort of doubles and suddenly I'm looking at both the inside of my eyelids and at the front door of the house.
Opening my eyes, I can see the ceiling and the front door at the same time but can only meaningfully focus on one or the other.
Looking left, right, up, or down pans my point of view around, but it takes me some practice to get used to doing it without also turning my head.
Once I do get used to it though, I look up and down the street trying to pick a direction.
I could flip a coin or- No, wait, I'm a duh.
I look up.
Crossing my fingers that Scry counts as 'having seen,' I recast [Scry].
Still looking up at the sky and ceiling, I now also look down at Brockton Bay from a thousand feet in the air. Assuming 'also look' really applies since I can still only focus properly on one viewpoint at a time. Everything looks pretty small from way up here though and… I suddenly have a newfound appreciation for the importance of the street name overlay on Google Maps because I have no idea which of those tiny houses is the Heberts'.
I take a moment to look around and make sure there's no cape fights happening enthusiastically enough to be visible from on high and when there isn't, as far as I can tell, I switch my focus back to the driveway and look around for a distinctive enough house to home in on.
Sadly, the houses all have that kind-of-samey thing going on that you get when a single developer does an entire neighborhood at once. One or two look like they have extra rooms that were added on later, and one neighbor even added a third floor, but none of them really stand out enough to pick out from the other tiny rectangles I see packed together from on high.
Hmmm…
I-
My view from the driveway winks out as the spell ends.
Well then.
Whatever, I was kind of done with that one anyway.
Taking a moment to focus on what I want to see, I try again.
Awesome! It worked.
I look down at the Heberts' neighborhood from about a hundred feet directly above the Heberts' driveway.
Paranoia briefly overtaking me, I spin my view full circle making sure there's nothing obviously terrible happening one more time before going back to looking down at the Hebert's house.
From here, I can kind of make out the hole in the front stairs I had to step over when I entered the house. Or at least I think that's what that dot is, the "eyeball" of the scry spell doesn't really seem to be able to squint very well and midday sun glaring off the heavy dusting of snow on everything is making it hard to look straight down right now.
I think Erick had some kind of combo vision enhancing spell that would probably help? I'll have to look into that at some point.
For now, I hurriedly switch back to looking around for landmarks from way on high and before that casting can lapse on me.
Now, if this works the way I'm hoping it does, then I should be able to… [Scry].
Gah!
Only my position laying on the couch making it physically impossible impossible stops me from lurching backwards as I suddenly find myself staring at the center of the Medhall logo from close enough that my nose would hurt if I was there in person.
Making a note to be more, or maybe less, specific in my thinking about where I want to scry from, I rotate my point of view until I can see downtown.
…I should have made a list of landmarks to find in advance, huh?
This might just be the mana-exhaustion talking, but the lower levels of Veirdian style [Meditation] are just fucking awful, I decide as I slowly sit up on the couch.
At least my paranoia around someone finding me while I'm [Immobile], [Blind], and [Deaf] is mostly focused on them doing something stupid because they think I'm, you know, dead. Having to hide under Taylor's bed or something instead of just pretending to nap would be even worse but even if I'm going to keep double checking every time I'm scrying the neighborhood, I'm pretty sure no one actually bothers Taylor at home until Leviathan wrecks it largely by accident and there's way too much snow outside for it to be May.
…wait.
Something about that last thought bothers me now that the mana-exhaustion-induced headache is tamping down on the enthusiasm I felt earlier for exploring the city and leveling up as fast as I could to buy even more spells.
Slowly plodding my way to the window, I confirm that yes, there is indeed a heavy dusting of snow on the ground thick enough to see even in the waning sunlight of 4pm.
Leaning my forehead against the cool glass, the urge to just stay there a while is strong but I force myself to stumble towards the kitchen and look for a calendar.
And, sure enough, it's open to the page for January rather than May.
Which explains both the snow and it being dark at 4pm.
It also, unfortunately, might explain why Taylor hasn't come home from school yet.
I am, I decide, going to choose to believe that my arriving around noon means there was nothing I could have done to stop The Locker even had I headed towards Winslow immediately instead of spending the afternoon spamming [Scry] to explore the neighborhood and then [Meditate]ing to recover my mana.
Hopefully nothing ever disproves that belief.
I mean, it's not like I had any idea where Winslow was– I only found it towards the end of my last Scry cycle– or what Taylor's locker number would be.
And that's assuming today is the third and not any other day in January.
Also, I'm apparently a twelve year old girl now and probably shouldn't be wandering a major city alone. Especially not one known for racial tensions and gang violence.
…Gods damn it, I'm still going to feel worse than I already do if it turns out I could have done something but didn't because I was too wrapped up in my own shit.
Working my way through the cabinets from left to right I eventually find the one with the cups and pour myself some water in the probably vain hope that at least some of my headache is from mundane dehydration.
Gulping that down, I walk over to the phone hanging on the wall and pick up the receiver.
Then I pause, fingers hovering indecisively over the buttons.
If it is the third, and 4pm, then there is absolutely fuck all I can do at this point and Taylor's going to be in the psych ward for a while until her brain adapts to all the new inputs.
…Unless this is one of the stupid fanfic AUs that dial the locker up to 13 and no one actually finds her to pull her out of the locker until fucking tomorrow?
Gods-fucking-Damn It, I'm a non-canon character. I can't take anything for granted, can I?
I dial 9-1-1.
2
New
Aetheron
Flinger of Spaghetti, Recorder of Results.
- Joined
- Oct 20, 2015
- Messages
- 344
- Likes received
- 14,846
"No, Ma'am. She goes to Winslow." I catch myself shaking my head even though the dispatcher obviously can't see me. "If they told me the sky was blue I'd look outside to check before believing them. The fact that they've managed to do less than jack shit about the bullying over the past…"
It suddenly occurs to me that I never actually checked year the calendar was for. Turning around to look- There's a giant of a woman standing right the fuck there holding a broom like a baseball bat!
"Who are you!?" She screams at me.
"Jesus fuck!" I lurch away from her only to slam into the wall, banging the back of my already aching head into the corner of the phone base thing as I scramble to bring the receiver back up to my mouth. "Help! There's a- ummm." My poor brain finally catches up with my eyes and the girl suddenly looks way younger and less imposing as I realize that being way taller than me is a lot easier now I'm somewhere shy of 5 feet tall. Add in that most of her 'bulk' is actually a winter coat, and that she has dark curly hair and glasses? "…Taylor?"
"Who are you?" She doesn't nod or anything, but a bit of uncertainty edges out the indignant anger in her expression as the broom dips, her arms no longer quite so tensed up for imminent violence which I choose to see as both confirmation and a good sign even though she's still asking questions I barely know the answer to. "What're you doing in my house?"
"I'm Jane," I tell her, taking a moment to rub the back of my head now that I'm no longer expecting her to try and attack me. Fucking ow. I make a mental note to move [Treat Injury] up a few notches on my build order. "…Your cousin?" I add when I realize my name doesn't seem to be ringing any more bells for her than it did me.
…Balls. Still nothing.
"Okay, hang on." I sigh. "I thought Uncle Danny said he was going to, like, call you and… Um, hang on, gimme a minute." I wave the phone at her as I remind myself I was using it."I was kinda in the middle of filing a missing persons report on you and-"
"You… what?"
"Yeah yeah hang on." I wave her off. "I don't think the 9-1-1 lady is allowed to just hang up on me until I confirm we're okay and there's no sense wasting any more of her day."
Taylor throws her hands up and stomps off towards the living room as I put the phone back up to my ear.
"Hi, sorry about that but I guess my cousin isn't actually missing." I frown as the phone remains totally silent. "Er- Hello?"
…alright, well, maybe Earth Bet's 9-1-1 operators are allowed to just hang up on you?
Putting the phone back on the hook, I frown as the whole thing just… falls off the wall. It only doesn't hit the floor because the cable connecting it to the phone jack is a little too short.
On the plus side, this does a lot to mend my opinion of Brockton Bay's emergency services.
On the down side… "Hey, Taylor? I think I broke your phone."
"So…" Taylor begins as she settles down on the front steps while we wait for the cops to come check on us. "You said your name was Jane?"
"Yup." I nod, squatting down to peer into the hole in the second step to try and make sure nothing lives in there. "Jane Flatt."
"And you're my cousin." She doesn't phrase it as a question, but I can hear the doubt in her voice. "Who I've never heard of."
I shrug, deciding it's probably safe enough to risk taking a seat on the other side of it. "I think the social worker lady said it's actually your dad that's my cousin but he's, like, old and stuff so he said I could call him Uncle Danny and calling you my third cousin once removed is… kind of a mouthful."
Wait. Old?
Danny is… not that much older than I remember being yesterday. And yet I'm definitely having trouble not thinking of him as this, like… ancient fossil. Did whatever forces conspired to put me here give me some kind of think-like-a-tweenager—
"…Social worker?" Taylor asks in a complicated tone that pulls me from my thoughts enough that I look over and see her making an equally weird face at me.
"Yeah, I'm sure she told me her name but like…" I trail off, remembering that I am in fact not sure she gave me her name. Or even existed.
"No, I mean…" Taylor's weird-facing intensifies. "You're not just visiting, are you?"
"Oh… no." I shake my head, grinning. "Nope. You're stuck with me forever now. Uncle Danny signed the paperwork and everything."
"What happened- that is… If you don't want to talk about it that's fine!" Taylor takes a deep breath. "But…"
"Ooooh." And suddenly the weird face makes sense. Okay then. Not how I planned on doing it, but I guess we're doing this now. "Yeah… I have no idea."
"You… what?"
"Everything before I woke up is just…" I bring my hands up the sides of my head and splay my fingers out in what is hopefully the multiversal sign for 'mind=blown' "Gone!"
"You don't remember anything?"
"Well, I mean obviously I remember how to talk." I laugh as something occurs to me. "And I remember stuff like what a cousin is, but I'm technically taking the social worker at her word that we're even related. I mean, it'd be kind of a weird twist if it turned out she was lying and I don't think social services is that hard up for placement options but..." I shrug.
For obvious reasons, I leave it unsaid that if it turns out the social worker was just Q in a dress or whatever then I can't imagine making me genetically related to Taylor would be any more difficult than anything else they obviously needed to be able to do for me to even be here at all.
Taylor frowns at me. "You seem… weirdly okay with all of this."
"It's kind of hard to miss what I don't remember." I frown as I realize that I also don't miss my actual life even though I should. That it at least bothers me that I'm not bothered is a good sign, I think, but I'm not ready to unpack that right now so I try to move on to the next oddity about my situation. "Honestly, the weirdest part is that I know amnesia only works this way on TV and yet…" I shrug.
We sit in awkward silence for a long enough moment that I opt to risk worsening my headache a bit further to set a [Scry] high above us to look for the cops. My head throbs a bit harder, but not so badly that I can't manage. Closing my eyes helps, weirdly enough, given that I'm still seeing either way. Maybe it's psychosomatic like how smiling can make you happier because your brain associates the action with already being happy?
Well, whatever the cause, I think it'll be easier to just keep my eyes closed and watch Taylor via another [Scry]-
…Oh for fucks sake. I was that close this whole time? If I'd known that, then I would have bit the bullet an hour ago and then I could have just bought Discipline instead of having this stupid migraine this whole time.
Still, better late than never? Mentally navigating the menus, I pull up Discipline.
A point spent, my maximum mana doubles, and I suddenly feel more… expansive? More me? Something's different at least, even if I can't say exactly what. Spiritual enlightenment was never really my thing, so I think I'll just go with 'and my soul grew three sizes that day.' Or two sizes since it doesn't triple my mana until I get it to level 10, but whatever.
Far more important is that my headache doesn't budge a fucking inch.
Because, as I belatedly remember, not getting mana headaches was a Scion of Focus perk, not Willpower. So it's Concentration rather than Discipline that would help here. Or it would, if Concentration hadn't been the second thing I'd bought today as soon as I got my first level up. Which means this already isthe reduced headache.
"Are you okay?" My active [Scry] having let me watch exactly what it looked like as I slumped forward and let out an annoyed groan, I can't really claim I'm surprised by the concerned tone in Taylor's voice as she looks over at me.
"Yeah," I grumble. "Thinker headaches are just... bullshit."
Taylor's mouth opens, closes, opens… closes. "...You're a cape?" She eventually asks.
"Yeah- Wait, no." I shake my head, correcting myself. "Capes have costumes and shit."
Taylor stares at me for a moment before humming in what I choose to take as agreement. "But you have powers."
"Yeah, but I'm pretty sure that's a new thing." I frown and start pulling my gloves off as a third explanation for my current state occurs to me. "Maybe it's a good thing I don't remember."
Taylor starts making that weird face at me again. "...why would that be a good thing?"
I pause in the middle of pushing up my sleeve to give her a look. "Think about how you got your powers."
Taylor shudders a bit before going eerily still.
"Yuuup." I nod pointedly at her before looking away so I can close my eyes again without making it weird. Weirder. "Apparently it's like that for all of us."
And now I find myself wishing I had a cup of coffee or something to sip at as a prop as I pretend to thousand-yard-stare off into the distance. Nothing I can do with the broken phone really has the same vibe and I briefly debate taking [Conjure Item] out of order just so I can at least summon an empty mug. Sadly, even if I got the spell to make a decent mug on the first try… I don't think quoting Tyrian Lannister from a show that probably doesn't exist on Earth Bet is the way to go here.
So I settle for embracing the weird instead and keep my actual eyes closed while holding my now bare forearm up to the 'eye' of my [Scry] spell.
"How-" Taylor finally chokes out only to stop again. "...Thinker?"
"Trump technically." I shrug as best I can while twisting my arm back and forth looking for any scars or other weird marks. "But yeah, I grabbed some Thinker powers and traded a headache for enough information to not freak out about being left with a bunch of strangers by social services."
…huh, taken individually, that's even all true. Technically.
"Grabbed? Wait, powers?" Taylor asks, emphasizing the plural a little incredulously.
"Yeah. Think of it like… uh… Dauntless?" I switch arms. "Only as a Grab-Bag cape so instead of him using charges to enchant his costume, I use them to reach back into the grab-bag for another minor power."
"That's-" Taylor frowns. "Okay, you say minor but- No, hang on. What are you doing?"
"Checking for scars."
"Scar- oh."
"Yeah." I let my arm drop and push my sleeves back down. "But whatever happened to me, it doesn't look like past-me slit her wrists."
"Riiight." Taylor looks deeply uncomfortable for a moment before going eerily still again. Even knowing it probably just means there's a horde of bugs in a basement somewhere doing all the awkward freaking out on her behalf, it's still a little creepy to see. Not that I have any room to talk, given that I'm staring at her with my eyes closed.
As if hearing my last thought, Taylor frowns. "Why were you doing it with your eyes closed?"
"Looking with my eyes bothers my headache more than looking with the clairvoyance power I took."
"Didn't you say your Thinker powers gave you the headache?"
"Yuuup." I nod. "But if being stupid stopped things from being true then Winslow wouldn't exist at all."
Taylor apparently doesn't disagree with that assessment and we lapse into another period of awkward silence.
Eventually, the cop car I've been keeping half an eye on from a hundred yards or so up turns the corner onto Taylor's street and I lift my arm to point it out.
"There's the-" Taylor and I both start to say, both pointing at the same cop car, and then both stopping at the same time as we realize what we're doing.
"...and then I was going to call back but I kinda…" I hold up the Heberts' phone to show the police officer the big crack running through the connector. "...broke the phone."
"I see." The officer nods. Fortunately, he looks amused rather than angry at me for wasting his time.
Unfortunately, his blonde hair and blue eyes annoy me. Nothing against him personally or anything, I just really could have done without having the awkward realization that anyone who sees my blonde hair and blue eyes is probably going to have the same suspicions about me that I do about him. This fucking town, I swear. City? Whatever.
"And you were home late because..?" He asks, turning to my cousin.
"I wasn't late." Taylor sighs, shooting me an annoyed look. "My cousin is just…"
"Taylor." I give her one right back. "It's dark out!"
"It's winter." Taylor turns back to the cop. "I take the 111 from Broadway all the way to Summer. Getting home a little after 4 is early for me."
"Broadway to-" I frown. "The school bus doesn't drop you off here at the house?"
"No…" Taylor looks at me like I'm the crazy one.
"...Cities are weird."
It suddenly occurs to me that I never actually checked year the calendar was for. Turning around to look- There's a giant of a woman standing right the fuck there holding a broom like a baseball bat!
"Who are you!?" She screams at me.
"Jesus fuck!" I lurch away from her only to slam into the wall, banging the back of my already aching head into the corner of the phone base thing as I scramble to bring the receiver back up to my mouth. "Help! There's a- ummm." My poor brain finally catches up with my eyes and the girl suddenly looks way younger and less imposing as I realize that being way taller than me is a lot easier now I'm somewhere shy of 5 feet tall. Add in that most of her 'bulk' is actually a winter coat, and that she has dark curly hair and glasses? "…Taylor?"
"Who are you?" She doesn't nod or anything, but a bit of uncertainty edges out the indignant anger in her expression as the broom dips, her arms no longer quite so tensed up for imminent violence which I choose to see as both confirmation and a good sign even though she's still asking questions I barely know the answer to. "What're you doing in my house?"
"I'm Jane," I tell her, taking a moment to rub the back of my head now that I'm no longer expecting her to try and attack me. Fucking ow. I make a mental note to move [Treat Injury] up a few notches on my build order. "…Your cousin?" I add when I realize my name doesn't seem to be ringing any more bells for her than it did me.
…Balls. Still nothing.
"Okay, hang on." I sigh. "I thought Uncle Danny said he was going to, like, call you and… Um, hang on, gimme a minute." I wave the phone at her as I remind myself I was using it."I was kinda in the middle of filing a missing persons report on you and-"
"You… what?"
"Yeah yeah hang on." I wave her off. "I don't think the 9-1-1 lady is allowed to just hang up on me until I confirm we're okay and there's no sense wasting any more of her day."
Taylor throws her hands up and stomps off towards the living room as I put the phone back up to my ear.
"Hi, sorry about that but I guess my cousin isn't actually missing." I frown as the phone remains totally silent. "Er- Hello?"
…alright, well, maybe Earth Bet's 9-1-1 operators are allowed to just hang up on you?
Putting the phone back on the hook, I frown as the whole thing just… falls off the wall. It only doesn't hit the floor because the cable connecting it to the phone jack is a little too short.
On the plus side, this does a lot to mend my opinion of Brockton Bay's emergency services.
On the down side… "Hey, Taylor? I think I broke your phone."
"So…" Taylor begins as she settles down on the front steps while we wait for the cops to come check on us. "You said your name was Jane?"
"Yup." I nod, squatting down to peer into the hole in the second step to try and make sure nothing lives in there. "Jane Flatt."
"And you're my cousin." She doesn't phrase it as a question, but I can hear the doubt in her voice. "Who I've never heard of."
I shrug, deciding it's probably safe enough to risk taking a seat on the other side of it. "I think the social worker lady said it's actually your dad that's my cousin but he's, like, old and stuff so he said I could call him Uncle Danny and calling you my third cousin once removed is… kind of a mouthful."
Wait. Old?
Danny is… not that much older than I remember being yesterday. And yet I'm definitely having trouble not thinking of him as this, like… ancient fossil. Did whatever forces conspired to put me here give me some kind of think-like-a-tweenager—
"…Social worker?" Taylor asks in a complicated tone that pulls me from my thoughts enough that I look over and see her making an equally weird face at me.
"Yeah, I'm sure she told me her name but like…" I trail off, remembering that I am in fact not sure she gave me her name. Or even existed.
"No, I mean…" Taylor's weird-facing intensifies. "You're not just visiting, are you?"
"Oh… no." I shake my head, grinning. "Nope. You're stuck with me forever now. Uncle Danny signed the paperwork and everything."
"What happened- that is… If you don't want to talk about it that's fine!" Taylor takes a deep breath. "But…"
"Ooooh." And suddenly the weird face makes sense. Okay then. Not how I planned on doing it, but I guess we're doing this now. "Yeah… I have no idea."
"You… what?"
"Everything before I woke up is just…" I bring my hands up the sides of my head and splay my fingers out in what is hopefully the multiversal sign for 'mind=blown' "Gone!"
"You don't remember anything?"
"Well, I mean obviously I remember how to talk." I laugh as something occurs to me. "And I remember stuff like what a cousin is, but I'm technically taking the social worker at her word that we're even related. I mean, it'd be kind of a weird twist if it turned out she was lying and I don't think social services is that hard up for placement options but..." I shrug.
For obvious reasons, I leave it unsaid that if it turns out the social worker was just Q in a dress or whatever then I can't imagine making me genetically related to Taylor would be any more difficult than anything else they obviously needed to be able to do for me to even be here at all.
Taylor frowns at me. "You seem… weirdly okay with all of this."
"It's kind of hard to miss what I don't remember." I frown as I realize that I also don't miss my actual life even though I should. That it at least bothers me that I'm not bothered is a good sign, I think, but I'm not ready to unpack that right now so I try to move on to the next oddity about my situation. "Honestly, the weirdest part is that I know amnesia only works this way on TV and yet…" I shrug.
We sit in awkward silence for a long enough moment that I opt to risk worsening my headache a bit further to set a [Scry] high above us to look for the cops. My head throbs a bit harder, but not so badly that I can't manage. Closing my eyes helps, weirdly enough, given that I'm still seeing either way. Maybe it's psychosomatic like how smiling can make you happier because your brain associates the action with already being happy?
Well, whatever the cause, I think it'll be easier to just keep my eyes closed and watch Taylor via another [Scry]-
Level up! +2 Ability Points |
…Oh for fucks sake. I was that close this whole time? If I'd known that, then I would have bit the bullet an hour ago and then I could have just bought Discipline instead of having this stupid migraine this whole time.
Still, better late than never? Mentally navigating the menus, I pull up Discipline.
| Discipline 1 Multiply your base MP by 2 Requirements: 20 Willpower Exp: 0/100 |
A point spent, my maximum mana doubles, and I suddenly feel more… expansive? More me? Something's different at least, even if I can't say exactly what. Spiritual enlightenment was never really my thing, so I think I'll just go with 'and my soul grew three sizes that day.' Or two sizes since it doesn't triple my mana until I get it to level 10, but whatever.
Far more important is that my headache doesn't budge a fucking inch.
Because, as I belatedly remember, not getting mana headaches was a Scion of Focus perk, not Willpower. So it's Concentration rather than Discipline that would help here. Or it would, if Concentration hadn't been the second thing I'd bought today as soon as I got my first level up. Which means this already isthe reduced headache.
"Are you okay?" My active [Scry] having let me watch exactly what it looked like as I slumped forward and let out an annoyed groan, I can't really claim I'm surprised by the concerned tone in Taylor's voice as she looks over at me.
"Yeah," I grumble. "Thinker headaches are just... bullshit."
Taylor's mouth opens, closes, opens… closes. "...You're a cape?" She eventually asks.
"Yeah- Wait, no." I shake my head, correcting myself. "Capes have costumes and shit."
Taylor stares at me for a moment before humming in what I choose to take as agreement. "But you have powers."
"Yeah, but I'm pretty sure that's a new thing." I frown and start pulling my gloves off as a third explanation for my current state occurs to me. "Maybe it's a good thing I don't remember."
Taylor starts making that weird face at me again. "...why would that be a good thing?"
I pause in the middle of pushing up my sleeve to give her a look. "Think about how you got your powers."
Taylor shudders a bit before going eerily still.
"Yuuup." I nod pointedly at her before looking away so I can close my eyes again without making it weird. Weirder. "Apparently it's like that for all of us."
And now I find myself wishing I had a cup of coffee or something to sip at as a prop as I pretend to thousand-yard-stare off into the distance. Nothing I can do with the broken phone really has the same vibe and I briefly debate taking [Conjure Item] out of order just so I can at least summon an empty mug. Sadly, even if I got the spell to make a decent mug on the first try… I don't think quoting Tyrian Lannister from a show that probably doesn't exist on Earth Bet is the way to go here.
So I settle for embracing the weird instead and keep my actual eyes closed while holding my now bare forearm up to the 'eye' of my [Scry] spell.
"How-" Taylor finally chokes out only to stop again. "...Thinker?"
"Trump technically." I shrug as best I can while twisting my arm back and forth looking for any scars or other weird marks. "But yeah, I grabbed some Thinker powers and traded a headache for enough information to not freak out about being left with a bunch of strangers by social services."
…huh, taken individually, that's even all true. Technically.
"Grabbed? Wait, powers?" Taylor asks, emphasizing the plural a little incredulously.
"Yeah. Think of it like… uh… Dauntless?" I switch arms. "Only as a Grab-Bag cape so instead of him using charges to enchant his costume, I use them to reach back into the grab-bag for another minor power."
"That's-" Taylor frowns. "Okay, you say minor but- No, hang on. What are you doing?"
"Checking for scars."
"Scar- oh."
"Yeah." I let my arm drop and push my sleeves back down. "But whatever happened to me, it doesn't look like past-me slit her wrists."
"Riiight." Taylor looks deeply uncomfortable for a moment before going eerily still again. Even knowing it probably just means there's a horde of bugs in a basement somewhere doing all the awkward freaking out on her behalf, it's still a little creepy to see. Not that I have any room to talk, given that I'm staring at her with my eyes closed.
As if hearing my last thought, Taylor frowns. "Why were you doing it with your eyes closed?"
"Looking with my eyes bothers my headache more than looking with the clairvoyance power I took."
"Didn't you say your Thinker powers gave you the headache?"
"Yuuup." I nod. "But if being stupid stopped things from being true then Winslow wouldn't exist at all."
Taylor apparently doesn't disagree with that assessment and we lapse into another period of awkward silence.
Eventually, the cop car I've been keeping half an eye on from a hundred yards or so up turns the corner onto Taylor's street and I lift my arm to point it out.
"There's the-" Taylor and I both start to say, both pointing at the same cop car, and then both stopping at the same time as we realize what we're doing.
"...and then I was going to call back but I kinda…" I hold up the Heberts' phone to show the police officer the big crack running through the connector. "...broke the phone."
"I see." The officer nods. Fortunately, he looks amused rather than angry at me for wasting his time.
Unfortunately, his blonde hair and blue eyes annoy me. Nothing against him personally or anything, I just really could have done without having the awkward realization that anyone who sees my blonde hair and blue eyes is probably going to have the same suspicions about me that I do about him. This fucking town, I swear. City? Whatever.
"And you were home late because..?" He asks, turning to my cousin.
"I wasn't late." Taylor sighs, shooting me an annoyed look. "My cousin is just…"
"Taylor." I give her one right back. "It's dark out!"
"It's winter." Taylor turns back to the cop. "I take the 111 from Broadway all the way to Summer. Getting home a little after 4 is early for me."
"Broadway to-" I frown. "The school bus doesn't drop you off here at the house?"
"No…" Taylor looks at me like I'm the crazy one.
"...Cities are weird."
3
New
Aetheron
Flinger of Spaghetti, Recorder of Results.
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"Soooooo…" I drag out the word as I get comfy on the couch. "I have a charge to spend."
"Uh huh." Taylor's tone sounds annoyed rather than excited. Enough so that I bother opening my eyes to look and find her staring down at me with her hands on her hips.
"...What?"
Taylors hands leave her hips to gesture in my general direction. "You're taking up the entire couch."
I glance down and yup, with the pillow behind my head my feet almost reach the other end of the couch. "Oh." I lift my legs up to make space for her until she sits down and then put my legs right back down so they're now resting on top of hers.
"...seriously?"
"I don't actually remember taking the correspondence course, obviously, but I'm like 95% sure that all younger siblings are supposed to be annoying brats." I answer as cheerfully as I can manage.
"We're cousins." Taylor grumps, trying to shove my legs off of her.
"Yeah." I agree, trying my best to keep my body rigid and my legs unmoving. "But I live here now. Your dad signed the paperwork, Sis."
Fortunately for me, while it still being January means that Taylor hasn't gotten very far along on her new fitness kick, I think Jane was a gymnast or… something? Also, now that I'm thinking about it, said fitness kick focused on running not upper body strength.
Unfortunately, it only occurs to me after Taylor quickly just… gives up that I'm dealing with a girl who's had learned helplessness beaten into her– possibly literally– for over a year now. And now I feel bad.
"Hey." I reach down and poke her. "So like, I'm pretty sure that what you need is a hug but we, like, just met and I dunno… this seemed like it'd be baby steps or whatever but if you want me to move..?"
Taylor sighs then goes still, but doesn't ask me to move. So… progress? Maybe.
"You said you had a charge to spend?" She asks before I can decide if I should move my legs on my own or not.
"Yeah." I opt to leave them where they are for now. "Or I guess five, really, if I've got a handle on how the diminishing returns works out. I've spent most of my charges so far trying to counter that so I get better growth long term. Well, to be honest I was mostly just trying to keep the headaches at bay but same difference." I shrug. "But yeah, I have one and I should get two more tomorrow and then probably another two- They come in pairs. So another two later on in the week, so that's five, but then that'll be it for a while."
Taylor stares at me for a while. "Uh huh."
"Right, so, I have three ideas." My stomach gurgles. Loudly. "…four ideas! But taking [Mend] to fix the phone and order pizza runs the risk of Uncle Danny having tried to call us and then wanting to know why he couldn't get through if the phone is working… or even just noticing that the phone suddenly looks brand new. So I guess we'll call that plan D?"
I look at Taylor, but even once she figures out I wasn't being rhetorical she just shrugs.
"Okay… so originally I was thinking I'd take this Animal [Husbandry] kind of power. I think it's meant for, like… cows and stuff, but it should work on your bugs too. Which, if it does, then I can take the Shaping and then Aurify powers too so I can make the effect cover the whole basement since only being able to rapidly grow a single spider to adulthood at a time is way less helpful than doing so with a bull would be. But yeah, even without those I think the two of us should still be able to frog march your spiders through a few extra generations worth of directed-evolution before spring?" I accidentally end my stream of consciousness babble in a questioning lilt as I realize that I very specifically avoided ever checking the basement for spiders. Opening my eyes again to look, I find Taylor still staring at me while making yet another weird face that I don't know her nearly well enough to interpret.
"Ummm… wait." I eventually add after a moment when she doesn't actually say anything. "Have you already started collecting spiders for silk production?"
Taylor nods, but the weird face just grows more intense and complicated looking as she does so. "You…" she starts to say before trailing off.
"...Me?" I prompt her when she doesn't seem like she wants to finish her sentence.
"Your charges are limited?"
"Sort of?" I lift a hand, palm down, and rock it back and forth in a so-so gesture. "I'll keep getting them for a good while…" I trail off as Taylor sort of deflates.
"You don't have to waste them trying to make me feel better about having a terrible power."
…Oh for fucks sake, woman.
I realize I said that out loud as Taylor frowns at me. "Hey!"
"Hey yourself!" I decide to just double down. "I know you're, like, clinically depressed and all but that's just silly." Taylor opens her mouth to object or something but I just raise my voice a bit and keep going. "Your power is awesome."
"I control bugs."
"No!" I point in her face. "I mean, yes, you control all the bugs. But the keyword there is all, or maybe control, but not bugs."
"...what?"
"You don't talk to bugs and ask them to do things. You don't set vague orders like go 'go over there.' You control them to the same degree I control my fingers." I wiggle said fingers at her. "And you do it to each and every single one of them in a… what? A couple city-block's radius?" Of course, the first time I am being rhetorical, she tries to respond and I have to deny her the chance by just refusing to shut up. "You are a biblical plague in human form."
"Also," I offer up as Taylor somehow manages to look both thoughtful and mutinous at the same time. "My powers are bad at Brute ratings." At least assuming they share the 'lead = anti-magic' issue of the source material. "So I'm admittedly rather fond of the idea of you keeping a Shelob or three in the basement to sicc on anyone that attacks us here at home."
"Shel- Oh…" Taylor frowns before her eyes widen. "Can you do that?"
"Uh… I mean, it's generally pretty frowned upon but like… Fleur."
"Not that- I meant making-" Taylor pauses, going eerily still again. "...should I be worried about being attacked here?"
"Not specific…ally…" I start to wave her off before making the mistake of actually thinking about her question. "Uh… well… I mean… hmmm."
"That's not very reassuring."
"No. No, it really isn't. Uuuugh!" I whine, fully embracing my newfound tweendom as I let myself go boneless. "I just wanted to imitate a lump and talk about my powers but nnnooooo… now we need to do threat assessments on the local cape scene and shit."
"There. There?" Taylor reaches over and pats my arm twice, doing an impressive Baymaxx impression for a girl who can't have ever seen the movie that doesn't exist yet.
"Yeah yeah, yuck it up, Miss Responsible." I stick my tongue out at her. "Alright. First up by virtue of being the most likely to fuck with us on purpose is Coil, aka Schrodinger's Existential Threat, who will absolutely try to use your dad as leverage against us if he catches wind of half of what we can do…"
"...can be a truly colossal bitch that puts Emma to shame but the real problem is that Coil put a gun to her head and forced her to work for him. So not only do we need to worry about her power sherlocking out our secrets out based on something absurd like how I phrase something unrelated, but we need to worry about her doing it in a timeline not even she remembers because it never actually happened."
"...How do you even fight that?" Taylor asks as my run down of Coil's whole shtick winds down.
"Mostly by trying to commit to staying off their radars until we're ready to deal with him. Which I guess means my idea to grab [Cleanse] and [Treat Injury] and start purging the local cancer wards is right out."
"That's…" Taylor makes another one of her weird faces but somehow makes it distinctively frownier. "What does 'ready to deal with him' even look like if he can just always pick the timeline where he wins?"
"Ah. Well. Generally speaking, there's a few ways to work around his power, mostly boiling down to four categories: luck, timers, indirect attacks, or overwhelming force." I hold up a hand and count off the options on my fingers. "Every time he uses his power, there's a small window where the divergence between his paths is small enough that attacking him in that moment will probably let you deal with both of him."
"Okay." Taylor nods. "So how do we know when he uses his power."
"I don't think we can. Not reliably anyway." I shrug as Taylor frowns even harder at me. "There are some tricks he likes to pull that make it pretty obvious what he's doing if you know what his power is. But, unless we catch him showing off by flipping a coin and getting tails every time, then there's no reliable way I know of to use our powers to tell. That's why I call that one luck. The other options all amount to trying to bypass that limitation via the magic of stalking, poison, or… well, blowing up the entire city all at once."
"We're not doing that."
"Obviously." I roll my eyes. "I keep all my stuff here too now. Plus, neither of us can actually even do that so if you can put away the judgey eyes, then we can debate the far more practical and relevant merits of committing just one eensy weensy murder instead…" I hold up my thumb and index finger as close together as I can get them without touching.
"Well, fine then!" I cross my arms over my chest and pout. "I promise not to resort to murder outside of the usual exigent circumstances.
"No murdering people!" Taylor pokes my leg.
"Fiiiine…" I poke her right back. "But for the record, turning him into a puddle isn't murder if I do it because he put a gun to my head. It's self-defense. Or defense-of-others if it's your head or Uncle Danny's."
Taylor looks like part of her wants to keep arguing, but after a moment spent glaring at me she eventually just nods with a huff. For all that we're apparently not going to actually tell him about… well, anything, Taylor can be remarkably practical when it comes to measures meant to keep her dad safe.
"Good talk." I mostly manage to avoid sulking or pouting. "On a happier note, despite not actually talking about my power ideas, I think we pretty much confirmed that I'm going with my second plan for now."
Taylor gives me a suspicious look that's totally unwarranted. "...Which one was that?"
"The one where the worst that can happen is my accidentally creating a new lake."
My other plan– unrelated to my powers and that I totally thought of in advance rather than coming up with just now as backdated justification– to inure her to my nonsense is clearly working because Taylor continues emoting rather than going still as she drops her face into her hands and groans. "Please tell me that the lake wouldn't be under our house."
"The lake wouldn't be under our house." I dutifully repeat back to her in as close a match to her own voice as I can manage. Imitation is not my strong suit, but judging by the look she gives me I think I pulled it off. "What? I keep my stuff here too. But on a, uh, totally unrelated note: Can you show me where the local library is some time so I can read up on what exactly an 'aquifer' is? All I know about them is that they're apparently a giant pain in the ass in Dwarf Fortress."
"Uh huh." Taylor's tone sounds annoyed rather than excited. Enough so that I bother opening my eyes to look and find her staring down at me with her hands on her hips.
"...What?"
Taylors hands leave her hips to gesture in my general direction. "You're taking up the entire couch."
I glance down and yup, with the pillow behind my head my feet almost reach the other end of the couch. "Oh." I lift my legs up to make space for her until she sits down and then put my legs right back down so they're now resting on top of hers.
"...seriously?"
"I don't actually remember taking the correspondence course, obviously, but I'm like 95% sure that all younger siblings are supposed to be annoying brats." I answer as cheerfully as I can manage.
"We're cousins." Taylor grumps, trying to shove my legs off of her.
"Yeah." I agree, trying my best to keep my body rigid and my legs unmoving. "But I live here now. Your dad signed the paperwork, Sis."
Fortunately for me, while it still being January means that Taylor hasn't gotten very far along on her new fitness kick, I think Jane was a gymnast or… something? Also, now that I'm thinking about it, said fitness kick focused on running not upper body strength.
Unfortunately, it only occurs to me after Taylor quickly just… gives up that I'm dealing with a girl who's had learned helplessness beaten into her– possibly literally– for over a year now. And now I feel bad.
"Hey." I reach down and poke her. "So like, I'm pretty sure that what you need is a hug but we, like, just met and I dunno… this seemed like it'd be baby steps or whatever but if you want me to move..?"
Taylor sighs then goes still, but doesn't ask me to move. So… progress? Maybe.
"You said you had a charge to spend?" She asks before I can decide if I should move my legs on my own or not.
"Yeah." I opt to leave them where they are for now. "Or I guess five, really, if I've got a handle on how the diminishing returns works out. I've spent most of my charges so far trying to counter that so I get better growth long term. Well, to be honest I was mostly just trying to keep the headaches at bay but same difference." I shrug. "But yeah, I have one and I should get two more tomorrow and then probably another two- They come in pairs. So another two later on in the week, so that's five, but then that'll be it for a while."
Taylor stares at me for a while. "Uh huh."
"Right, so, I have three ideas." My stomach gurgles. Loudly. "…four ideas! But taking [Mend] to fix the phone and order pizza runs the risk of Uncle Danny having tried to call us and then wanting to know why he couldn't get through if the phone is working… or even just noticing that the phone suddenly looks brand new. So I guess we'll call that plan D?"
I look at Taylor, but even once she figures out I wasn't being rhetorical she just shrugs.
"Okay… so originally I was thinking I'd take this Animal [Husbandry] kind of power. I think it's meant for, like… cows and stuff, but it should work on your bugs too. Which, if it does, then I can take the Shaping and then Aurify powers too so I can make the effect cover the whole basement since only being able to rapidly grow a single spider to adulthood at a time is way less helpful than doing so with a bull would be. But yeah, even without those I think the two of us should still be able to frog march your spiders through a few extra generations worth of directed-evolution before spring?" I accidentally end my stream of consciousness babble in a questioning lilt as I realize that I very specifically avoided ever checking the basement for spiders. Opening my eyes again to look, I find Taylor still staring at me while making yet another weird face that I don't know her nearly well enough to interpret.
"Ummm… wait." I eventually add after a moment when she doesn't actually say anything. "Have you already started collecting spiders for silk production?"
Taylor nods, but the weird face just grows more intense and complicated looking as she does so. "You…" she starts to say before trailing off.
"...Me?" I prompt her when she doesn't seem like she wants to finish her sentence.
"Your charges are limited?"
"Sort of?" I lift a hand, palm down, and rock it back and forth in a so-so gesture. "I'll keep getting them for a good while…" I trail off as Taylor sort of deflates.
"You don't have to waste them trying to make me feel better about having a terrible power."
…Oh for fucks sake, woman.
I realize I said that out loud as Taylor frowns at me. "Hey!"
"Hey yourself!" I decide to just double down. "I know you're, like, clinically depressed and all but that's just silly." Taylor opens her mouth to object or something but I just raise my voice a bit and keep going. "Your power is awesome."
"I control bugs."
"No!" I point in her face. "I mean, yes, you control all the bugs. But the keyword there is all, or maybe control, but not bugs."
"...what?"
"You don't talk to bugs and ask them to do things. You don't set vague orders like go 'go over there.' You control them to the same degree I control my fingers." I wiggle said fingers at her. "And you do it to each and every single one of them in a… what? A couple city-block's radius?" Of course, the first time I am being rhetorical, she tries to respond and I have to deny her the chance by just refusing to shut up. "You are a biblical plague in human form."
"Also," I offer up as Taylor somehow manages to look both thoughtful and mutinous at the same time. "My powers are bad at Brute ratings." At least assuming they share the 'lead = anti-magic' issue of the source material. "So I'm admittedly rather fond of the idea of you keeping a Shelob or three in the basement to sicc on anyone that attacks us here at home."
"Shel- Oh…" Taylor frowns before her eyes widen. "Can you do that?"
"Uh… I mean, it's generally pretty frowned upon but like… Fleur."
"Not that- I meant making-" Taylor pauses, going eerily still again. "...should I be worried about being attacked here?"
"Not specific…ally…" I start to wave her off before making the mistake of actually thinking about her question. "Uh… well… I mean… hmmm."
"That's not very reassuring."
"No. No, it really isn't. Uuuugh!" I whine, fully embracing my newfound tweendom as I let myself go boneless. "I just wanted to imitate a lump and talk about my powers but nnnooooo… now we need to do threat assessments on the local cape scene and shit."
"There. There?" Taylor reaches over and pats my arm twice, doing an impressive Baymaxx impression for a girl who can't have ever seen the movie that doesn't exist yet.
"Yeah yeah, yuck it up, Miss Responsible." I stick my tongue out at her. "Alright. First up by virtue of being the most likely to fuck with us on purpose is Coil, aka Schrodinger's Existential Threat, who will absolutely try to use your dad as leverage against us if he catches wind of half of what we can do…"
"...can be a truly colossal bitch that puts Emma to shame but the real problem is that Coil put a gun to her head and forced her to work for him. So not only do we need to worry about her power sherlocking out our secrets out based on something absurd like how I phrase something unrelated, but we need to worry about her doing it in a timeline not even she remembers because it never actually happened."
"...How do you even fight that?" Taylor asks as my run down of Coil's whole shtick winds down.
"Mostly by trying to commit to staying off their radars until we're ready to deal with him. Which I guess means my idea to grab [Cleanse] and [Treat Injury] and start purging the local cancer wards is right out."
"That's…" Taylor makes another one of her weird faces but somehow makes it distinctively frownier. "What does 'ready to deal with him' even look like if he can just always pick the timeline where he wins?"
"Ah. Well. Generally speaking, there's a few ways to work around his power, mostly boiling down to four categories: luck, timers, indirect attacks, or overwhelming force." I hold up a hand and count off the options on my fingers. "Every time he uses his power, there's a small window where the divergence between his paths is small enough that attacking him in that moment will probably let you deal with both of him."
"Okay." Taylor nods. "So how do we know when he uses his power."
"I don't think we can. Not reliably anyway." I shrug as Taylor frowns even harder at me. "There are some tricks he likes to pull that make it pretty obvious what he's doing if you know what his power is. But, unless we catch him showing off by flipping a coin and getting tails every time, then there's no reliable way I know of to use our powers to tell. That's why I call that one luck. The other options all amount to trying to bypass that limitation via the magic of stalking, poison, or… well, blowing up the entire city all at once."
"We're not doing that."
"Obviously." I roll my eyes. "I keep all my stuff here too now. Plus, neither of us can actually even do that so if you can put away the judgey eyes, then we can debate the far more practical and relevant merits of committing just one eensy weensy murder instead…" I hold up my thumb and index finger as close together as I can get them without touching.
"Well, fine then!" I cross my arms over my chest and pout. "I promise not to resort to murder outside of the usual exigent circumstances.
"No murdering people!" Taylor pokes my leg.
"Fiiiine…" I poke her right back. "But for the record, turning him into a puddle isn't murder if I do it because he put a gun to my head. It's self-defense. Or defense-of-others if it's your head or Uncle Danny's."
Taylor looks like part of her wants to keep arguing, but after a moment spent glaring at me she eventually just nods with a huff. For all that we're apparently not going to actually tell him about… well, anything, Taylor can be remarkably practical when it comes to measures meant to keep her dad safe.
"Good talk." I mostly manage to avoid sulking or pouting. "On a happier note, despite not actually talking about my power ideas, I think we pretty much confirmed that I'm going with my second plan for now."
Taylor gives me a suspicious look that's totally unwarranted. "...Which one was that?"
"The one where the worst that can happen is my accidentally creating a new lake."
My other plan– unrelated to my powers and that I totally thought of in advance rather than coming up with just now as backdated justification– to inure her to my nonsense is clearly working because Taylor continues emoting rather than going still as she drops her face into her hands and groans. "Please tell me that the lake wouldn't be under our house."
"The lake wouldn't be under our house." I dutifully repeat back to her in as close a match to her own voice as I can manage. Imitation is not my strong suit, but judging by the look she gives me I think I pulled it off. "What? I keep my stuff here too. But on a, uh, totally unrelated note: Can you show me where the local library is some time so I can read up on what exactly an 'aquifer' is? All I know about them is that they're apparently a giant pain in the ass in Dwarf Fortress."
4
New
Aetheron
Flinger of Spaghetti, Recorder of Results.
- Joined
- Oct 20, 2015
- Messages
- 344
- Likes received
- 14,846
Hearing a door opening, I quickly grab my rock off the table and glance over at… an empty patch of living room?
Oh, right.
Lamenting for the umpteenth time that I lack Taylor's capacity for multi-tasking, I switch my focus to the 'eye' of the [Scry] spell I left at the top of the stairs. Facing it in the same relative direction, I see Taylor sleepily making her way out of her room.
I suppose it's a good thing that I already know trying to engineer your own trigger event disqualifies you from having one or else I'd be really tempted to try and steal QA's next bud from that kid with the birds.
Shaking my head at the thought, I wave in Taylor's general direction and she waves back as she heads into the bathroom.
Putting my rock back on the table, I recast [Stoneshape] and-
Woo!
Oh for fucks sake! That stupid 'slowly' keyword is back.
Fortunately, quickly testing things out by making the rock roll itself around on the table confirms that while I now allegedly could control a bigger rock, the 'minor' amount of stone I actually have still moves at the slightly higher speed I got from level 2.
Granted, being able to move more 'stone' around isn't super helpful right now given I only have the one rock, but it does seem to mean that splitting the rock in half and trying to move both of them works a little better. I still lose control of one of them when they get more than a few feet apart but that's better than it happening almost immediately.
I hear the sound of a door opening again. Actually remembering to check my [Scry] spell this time, I catch Taylor leaving the bathroom with a grumpy look on her face and then heading down the stairs two at a time. That she does this while stepping around the various items on the staircase without looking could be written off as being familiar with the hazards in her own home, but I suspect may be an early warning sign for what I vaguely remember Tattletale mentioning as one of her tells. Sure, I only noticed because I was kinda looking for it, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't mention it.
"You need to look where you're going." I tell her as she reaches the bottom of the stairs.
"I thought we agreed you weren't going to mess with the house." She says at the same time, staring pointedly at the rock lazily roaming the table on its own. "Why is there a piece of the basement walls on the table?"
Her question having taken longer and thus being the most recently asked, I shrug and opt to answer rather than trying to start a staring contest with Skitter.
"Technically we agreed that I wouldn't make a lake under the house. Which I didn't!" I roll the two rocks to my hand, scooping them up and waving them at her. "This came from above the ground line–" If only because I sure as shit wasn't going to go any further into Skitter's basement than absolutely necessary– "and I can put it back when I'm done." Making sure to hold them out at an angle Taylor can see them, I have the two rocks smoosh themselves back into a single lump of stone. "I just didn't want to go outside in the cold and dark to find one."
Hazard of using magically exhausting yourself until you pass out as a way to avoid dealing with the issues inherent in trying to sleep in a new place. Going to bed that early means waking up early too. Or maybe that's just being a tween again? I vaguely remember being one of those obnoxiously chipper morning people the last time I was this age too. At least prior to puberty telling my body to knock it the fuck off sometime during middle school.
Wait…
I'm 12, not 8. Shouldn't I already be in middle school?
Also, don't girls start puberty earlier than boys?
...Ewwww.
"What?" Taylor asks, and I realize I said that last part out loud.
"Nothing important." I sigh. "Just a series of unpleasant personal revelations. The worst being that I might actually be a…" I pause to ham up my horrified shuddering. "A morning person." If true, there's no amount of [Cleanse] that can solve that.
"...Ewww?" Taylor says the right words, but I can tell from her tone that she doesn't actually understand my plight.
"Yeah yeah, I know." I wave off her obvious lack of concern. "I'm just being overly dramatic. Go back to peeing or whatever it was you were doing. I'll start boiling some water for tea."
"Riiight." Taylor nods, turning around and heading back up the stairs. "Thanks."
"You're welcome. And you still need to look where you're going!" I call after her, trying to balance being heard against not waking Uncle Danny up at the ass crack of dawn.
Taylor pauses on the stairs with a confused look on her face as she grabs the banister and leans back far enough for us to see each other with our actual eyes through the railings at the bottom half of the stairs. "No I don't?" She says, much more quietly. "You know I don't."
"Human beings need to look where they're going, Taylor." I roll my eyes at her. "Not doing it can make you look all… confident and stuff, but it also makes you stand out."
"...Tattletale?"
"Tattletale."
"Woo!" I cheer as the [Scry] spell I put above our latest resting spot pushes me over the edge.
"Got your…" Taylor pauses to gulp down air, bending forward to rest her hands on her knees. "You got your next set of charges?"
"Yuuup!" I do a little victory dance, only stopping when I notice Taylor is glaring at me. "What?"
"I think I hate you."
"Oh come on!"
"Just a little." Taylor amends, like that makes it better.
"Hey. I told you, your power is awesome too!"
"Not that." Taylor slowly stands up and starts doing the stretches we looked up online. "Okay, not just that. I just…" She waves an arm at me as I belatedly start doing the stretches too. "How do you still have so much energy?"
"Ohhh…" I nod, that makes more sense. "From what I can tell when I was checking myself out in the shower looking for any weird scars and stuff, I think past-me played some kind of sportsball or something. Cause this," I gesture up and down at my body, "looked athletic as fuck."
"Riiight." My cousin nods, but still looks annoyed.
"Hey." I stop stretching to kick her lightly in the shin. "All I mean is that past-me already did the exhausting part of getting into shape for me. Just needing to maintain it is easier."
"Yeah." Taylor says with feeling. "That's why I hate you a little bit right now."
"...Oh." I shrug. "Well. Ummm… that's… reasonable, I guess? But for the record, I reserve the right to throw all this back in your face later."
"What?"
"Don't you 'what' me, bitch. Have you seen your legs? They're longer than my whole body."
"No they aren't."
"I AM ALLOWED TO EXAGGERATE WHEN CHEERING YOU THE FUCK UP!"
Taylor takes my shouting in stride, just staring at me with an unimpressed look.
"No, seriously, I give it a month or two tops before you and your stupid tallness genes switch around who's struggling to keep up with who."
Taylor just hums noncommittally, but she does stop glaring at me quite as hard.
That settled, I call up my status menus and grab the next items on my shopping list.
Rereading the description on Telepathy, I eye my cousin and her obviously still somewhat grumpled mood and then decide to give her until we're both done with our stretches to finish internalizing the exercise-related implications of my barely coming up to her shoulder.
Only when her breathing has steadied and she looks like she's ready to start jogging again do I poke her. "Hey, Taylor?"
"...What?" She asks, still sounding a little annoyed.
"Are you actually mad at me?"
Taylor sags a little. "...No."
"Okay good, cause the power I want to try now comes with a warning that it might hurt if it turns out you really don't want to talk to me."
"...What?" My cousin's voice goes flat as she turns around to stare at me, her body doing that eerie stillness thing again.
"Nothing bad bad just… more Thinker headache stuff."
"Uh huh." Taylor hums doubtfully, but she stops resembling the emotive equivalent of a statue. "What are you planning to do?"
"Right, so, you know how Parahuman Studies say that actual Telepathy is basically impossible?"
"What? They do?"
"Yeah, I don't know." I shrug. "Apparently they think you'd need a brain the size of a house or something?"
"Then how do they think I control my…." Taylor trails off as she sees my widening grin. "No."
"Yes!"
"No." My cousin repeats herself.
I cast [Telepathy] and repeat myself right back without moving my mouth. =Yes!=
My huge grin slowly slides off my face as my cousin takes a deep breath and goes still again instead of responding.
=Hello?= I try again. =Can you hear me?=
My cousin nods slowly.
"Awesome!" I shout, pumping my fists in the air before remembering to use the spell. =Ahem! I mean… Awesome! Are you able to respond?=
"...You can't just hear what I'm thinking?"
"No?" I shake my head.
"You're sure?"
"Pretty sure, yeah."
"I… see."
My cousin stares at me for a moment.
"Ugh… whatever you're trying to do, I don't think it's working. You have to, like, really focus on wanting to send a thought out across the connection. Unless you need to have [Telepathy] too to be able to answer? That'd be kind of lame." I tap my chin in thought but all I really remember about the Telepathy in the story is that Poi mostly handled it and that the 'call quality' broke down after a couple thousand kilometers unless Erick used Orphiels as repeaters.
My cousin keeps staring at me but none of whatever she's trying to send gets through.
"Damn." I huff after another minute passes. "That sucks. I thought it was two-way and I could, like, keep you company at school or something." I sigh. "Well, at least I can tell you to call the cops if I get kidnapped or something."
Taylor scuffs her boot through the snow, emotion slowly bleeding back into her face. "You really can't hear what I'm thinking?"
"Nope." I sigh. "Not unless you've been like… Head empty. No thoughts here." I cross my eyes, tilt my head slightly, and let my tongue loll out of my mouth a little before shrugging. "This entire time."
=No. Mostly I was just panicking about you being able to read my thoughts.=
"Oh, I guess that's- wait." I blink, realizing Taylor's lips didn't move at all. =You figured it out!?=
I resume my earlier victory dance.
=Jane…= Taylor smacks her forehead.
=What?= I try to push along the sense of enjoyment I get from not needing to stop dancing to talk now. I have no idea if the spell works that way but I think Erick could do pictures eventually? Or maybe that was because Poi was a Mind Mage?
=...Nevermind.=
Oh, right.
Lamenting for the umpteenth time that I lack Taylor's capacity for multi-tasking, I switch my focus to the 'eye' of the [Scry] spell I left at the top of the stairs. Facing it in the same relative direction, I see Taylor sleepily making her way out of her room.
I suppose it's a good thing that I already know trying to engineer your own trigger event disqualifies you from having one or else I'd be really tempted to try and steal QA's next bud from that kid with the birds.
Shaking my head at the thought, I wave in Taylor's general direction and she waves back as she heads into the bathroom.
Putting my rock back on the table, I recast [Stoneshape] and-
| Stoneshape level up! |
Woo!
| Stoneshape 3, 1 minute per level, medium range, 20 MP Slowly move small amounts of stone and sand around you for 1 minute per level of Stoneshape. Exp: 0/300 |
Oh for fucks sake! That stupid 'slowly' keyword is back.
Fortunately, quickly testing things out by making the rock roll itself around on the table confirms that while I now allegedly could control a bigger rock, the 'minor' amount of stone I actually have still moves at the slightly higher speed I got from level 2.
Granted, being able to move more 'stone' around isn't super helpful right now given I only have the one rock, but it does seem to mean that splitting the rock in half and trying to move both of them works a little better. I still lose control of one of them when they get more than a few feet apart but that's better than it happening almost immediately.
I hear the sound of a door opening again. Actually remembering to check my [Scry] spell this time, I catch Taylor leaving the bathroom with a grumpy look on her face and then heading down the stairs two at a time. That she does this while stepping around the various items on the staircase without looking could be written off as being familiar with the hazards in her own home, but I suspect may be an early warning sign for what I vaguely remember Tattletale mentioning as one of her tells. Sure, I only noticed because I was kinda looking for it, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't mention it.
"You need to look where you're going." I tell her as she reaches the bottom of the stairs.
"I thought we agreed you weren't going to mess with the house." She says at the same time, staring pointedly at the rock lazily roaming the table on its own. "Why is there a piece of the basement walls on the table?"
Her question having taken longer and thus being the most recently asked, I shrug and opt to answer rather than trying to start a staring contest with Skitter.
"Technically we agreed that I wouldn't make a lake under the house. Which I didn't!" I roll the two rocks to my hand, scooping them up and waving them at her. "This came from above the ground line–" If only because I sure as shit wasn't going to go any further into Skitter's basement than absolutely necessary– "and I can put it back when I'm done." Making sure to hold them out at an angle Taylor can see them, I have the two rocks smoosh themselves back into a single lump of stone. "I just didn't want to go outside in the cold and dark to find one."
Hazard of using magically exhausting yourself until you pass out as a way to avoid dealing with the issues inherent in trying to sleep in a new place. Going to bed that early means waking up early too. Or maybe that's just being a tween again? I vaguely remember being one of those obnoxiously chipper morning people the last time I was this age too. At least prior to puberty telling my body to knock it the fuck off sometime during middle school.
Wait…
I'm 12, not 8. Shouldn't I already be in middle school?
Also, don't girls start puberty earlier than boys?
...Ewwww.
"What?" Taylor asks, and I realize I said that last part out loud.
"Nothing important." I sigh. "Just a series of unpleasant personal revelations. The worst being that I might actually be a…" I pause to ham up my horrified shuddering. "A morning person." If true, there's no amount of [Cleanse] that can solve that.
"...Ewww?" Taylor says the right words, but I can tell from her tone that she doesn't actually understand my plight.
"Yeah yeah, I know." I wave off her obvious lack of concern. "I'm just being overly dramatic. Go back to peeing or whatever it was you were doing. I'll start boiling some water for tea."
"Riiight." Taylor nods, turning around and heading back up the stairs. "Thanks."
"You're welcome. And you still need to look where you're going!" I call after her, trying to balance being heard against not waking Uncle Danny up at the ass crack of dawn.
Taylor pauses on the stairs with a confused look on her face as she grabs the banister and leans back far enough for us to see each other with our actual eyes through the railings at the bottom half of the stairs. "No I don't?" She says, much more quietly. "You know I don't."
"Human beings need to look where they're going, Taylor." I roll my eyes at her. "Not doing it can make you look all… confident and stuff, but it also makes you stand out."
"...Tattletale?"
"Tattletale."
Level up! +2 Ability Points |
"Woo!" I cheer as the [Scry] spell I put above our latest resting spot pushes me over the edge.
"Got your…" Taylor pauses to gulp down air, bending forward to rest her hands on her knees. "You got your next set of charges?"
"Yuuup!" I do a little victory dance, only stopping when I notice Taylor is glaring at me. "What?"
"I think I hate you."
"Oh come on!"
"Just a little." Taylor amends, like that makes it better.
"Hey. I told you, your power is awesome too!"
"Not that." Taylor slowly stands up and starts doing the stretches we looked up online. "Okay, not just that. I just…" She waves an arm at me as I belatedly start doing the stretches too. "How do you still have so much energy?"
"Ohhh…" I nod, that makes more sense. "From what I can tell when I was checking myself out in the shower looking for any weird scars and stuff, I think past-me played some kind of sportsball or something. Cause this," I gesture up and down at my body, "looked athletic as fuck."
"Riiight." My cousin nods, but still looks annoyed.
"Hey." I stop stretching to kick her lightly in the shin. "All I mean is that past-me already did the exhausting part of getting into shape for me. Just needing to maintain it is easier."
"Yeah." Taylor says with feeling. "That's why I hate you a little bit right now."
"...Oh." I shrug. "Well. Ummm… that's… reasonable, I guess? But for the record, I reserve the right to throw all this back in your face later."
"What?"
"Don't you 'what' me, bitch. Have you seen your legs? They're longer than my whole body."
"No they aren't."
"I AM ALLOWED TO EXAGGERATE WHEN CHEERING YOU THE FUCK UP!"
Taylor takes my shouting in stride, just staring at me with an unimpressed look.
"No, seriously, I give it a month or two tops before you and your stupid tallness genes switch around who's struggling to keep up with who."
Taylor just hums noncommittally, but she does stop glaring at me quite as hard.
That settled, I call up my status menus and grab the next items on my shopping list.
| Mana Shaping 1 Alter AOE in subtle ways, 10 MP + spellcost Requirements: 10 Willpower Exp: 0/100 |
| Telepathy 1, self, super long range, 1 MP per minute + Variable Communicate with the minds of people you know. 1 connection available per level. Unwanted connections are harmful to caster. Exp: 0/100 |
Rereading the description on Telepathy, I eye my cousin and her obviously still somewhat grumpled mood and then decide to give her until we're both done with our stretches to finish internalizing the exercise-related implications of my barely coming up to her shoulder.
Only when her breathing has steadied and she looks like she's ready to start jogging again do I poke her. "Hey, Taylor?"
"...What?" She asks, still sounding a little annoyed.
"Are you actually mad at me?"
Taylor sags a little. "...No."
"Okay good, cause the power I want to try now comes with a warning that it might hurt if it turns out you really don't want to talk to me."
"...What?" My cousin's voice goes flat as she turns around to stare at me, her body doing that eerie stillness thing again.
"Nothing bad bad just… more Thinker headache stuff."
"Uh huh." Taylor hums doubtfully, but she stops resembling the emotive equivalent of a statue. "What are you planning to do?"
"Right, so, you know how Parahuman Studies say that actual Telepathy is basically impossible?"
"What? They do?"
"Yeah, I don't know." I shrug. "Apparently they think you'd need a brain the size of a house or something?"
"Then how do they think I control my…." Taylor trails off as she sees my widening grin. "No."
"Yes!"
"No." My cousin repeats herself.
I cast [Telepathy] and repeat myself right back without moving my mouth. =Yes!=
My huge grin slowly slides off my face as my cousin takes a deep breath and goes still again instead of responding.
=Hello?= I try again. =Can you hear me?=
My cousin nods slowly.
"Awesome!" I shout, pumping my fists in the air before remembering to use the spell. =Ahem! I mean… Awesome! Are you able to respond?=
"...You can't just hear what I'm thinking?"
"No?" I shake my head.
"You're sure?"
"Pretty sure, yeah."
"I… see."
My cousin stares at me for a moment.
"Ugh… whatever you're trying to do, I don't think it's working. You have to, like, really focus on wanting to send a thought out across the connection. Unless you need to have [Telepathy] too to be able to answer? That'd be kind of lame." I tap my chin in thought but all I really remember about the Telepathy in the story is that Poi mostly handled it and that the 'call quality' broke down after a couple thousand kilometers unless Erick used Orphiels as repeaters.
My cousin keeps staring at me but none of whatever she's trying to send gets through.
"Damn." I huff after another minute passes. "That sucks. I thought it was two-way and I could, like, keep you company at school or something." I sigh. "Well, at least I can tell you to call the cops if I get kidnapped or something."
Taylor scuffs her boot through the snow, emotion slowly bleeding back into her face. "You really can't hear what I'm thinking?"
"Nope." I sigh. "Not unless you've been like… Head empty. No thoughts here." I cross my eyes, tilt my head slightly, and let my tongue loll out of my mouth a little before shrugging. "This entire time."
=No. Mostly I was just panicking about you being able to read my thoughts.=
"Oh, I guess that's- wait." I blink, realizing Taylor's lips didn't move at all. =You figured it out!?=
I resume my earlier victory dance.
=Jane…= Taylor smacks her forehead.
=What?= I try to push along the sense of enjoyment I get from not needing to stop dancing to talk now. I have no idea if the spell works that way but I think Erick could do pictures eventually? Or maybe that was because Poi was a Mind Mage?
=...Nevermind.=
5
New
Aetheron
Flinger of Spaghetti, Recorder of Results.
- Joined
- Oct 20, 2015
- Messages
- 344
- Likes received
- 14,846
I stare deep into the abyss.
The abyss stares back.
And by abyss I mean my new classmates who are, with only a few exceptions, all understandably staring at the new girl who arrived halfway into homeroom and then was asked to keep standing there awkwardly at the front of the classroom while the teacher embraced their OCD by making three quarters of the class shift down a seat to keep everyone in alphabetical order.
On the plus side, I reflect as I finally head towards my new seat, they didn't ask me to do any weird icebreakers or even introduce myself beyond a simple, "yo, I'm Jane."
On the downside… This puts my assigned seat in the front row. It also puts me between two girls that make me strongly suspect the universe is either taunting me for originally thinking I was in a Tinker of Fiction scenario or my social Qworker is doing some sort of weird 'all the tropes but not the power' thing.
I mean, sure, the athletic blonde girl giving off some serious Hermione Granger vibes to my left could totally just be some random extra. Even if being to my left means her last name must come very early in the alphabet.
But the girl that got shunted from the back row up to the front of the next column over… Well, how many black girls my age have both noticeable cleavage and a purple streak in their hair?
"Something on my face?" Said black girl, who I now realize I've been staring at in consternation for long enough that it's moving from awkward to rude, asks challengingly.
Clearly the only way out is through. "Yes," I nod, leaning in a little bit toward her as I do so and pointing at her face.
"Shit," she sighs, turning to the girl I'm going to assume is Missy until told otherwise. "Do I really?"
Probably-Missy frowns, looking her over. "No?"
"Her hair is purple!" I protest, before Probably-Aisha can do more than look annoyed with me. "Wait, does hair count as part of your face?"
"Please take your seat, Jane." The teacher calls out from her desk before anyone can answer me.
"Right, sorry!" I put my books on the desk and step around it to sit down.
The bell rings right as my butt hits the chair.
"Why even have me sit down?"
"So… are you two going to be my new, like, shoulder angel and shoulder devil all day?" I ask as my first period teacher takes my joining the class as an excuse to shuffle up who's sitting in which cluster of four desks and I end up sitting with the same two girls from homeroom. They're even in the same-ish relative positions with Probably-Aisha to my right and Probably-Missy across from me.
"What?" The other girl I don't know responds before either of them can, taking her new seat at the desk diagonally across from me.
"Nothing. The teacher just rearranged everyone's seats to put these two next to me in Homeroom too." I hold out my hand. "I'm Jane, the new girl, obviously."
"Hi Jane-The-New-Girl, I'm Ruth."
I grin at Ruth. Challenge accepted! I can totally out dad-joke an actual middle schooler. Probably. But first, I glance at the other two girls. "I never actually got either of your-"
"Miss Flatt." I startle, the teacher apparently being right next to me. "If you and Miss Herren could pipe down we have a test today. If you aren't familiar with the material, don't worry, we'll just use it as a guide for where you'll need to review to catch up with the rest of the class."
"Okay." I take the exam and wait for the teacher to move on before rolling my eyes. Don't know the material? It's fucking middle school algebra.
Sitting back down in my seat after handing in my exam, I glance at the clock. Class isn't even halfway over yet.
Looking around the room, I spot a few of the other kids flipping their papers over to start in on the second half of the test. Ruth is one of them, but Probably-Missy and Probably-Aisha are still working on the bottom of the first page so even if she finishes before class ends it would probably be rude to try talking to her.
Folding arms on my desk and resting my head on them, I put a [Scry] up above my seat to keep watch while I [Telepathy] my cousin.
=Taylor…= I whine into her brain. =I'm bored.=
=Not now, Jane. I'm taking a test.=
=Oooh!= I perk up. =Me too! Or I was, but it was really easy so-=
=Jane! I need to concentrate!=
=Right. Sorry.=
Activating [Meditation] I try to at least recover some mana.
I resist the urge to drum my fingers on my desk.
I resist the urge to start humming, barely.
I resist the urge to start kicking my feet, but only because I still cannot move while using [Meditation] at level 4.
I resist… fuck it. I break [Meditation] and cast [Scry] over where I eventually found Winslow the other day.
I cast [Scry] on… uh… [Telepathy]!
=What room are you in?=
=Jane!=
=What room are you in?=
=213! Now shush.=
I cast [Scry] just inside the big window at the end of the second floor and then from there I cast [Scry] about halfway down the long hallway outside of what turns out to be room 222. Backing up a viewpoint, I belatedly try to make out the room number at the end of the hall I started at… I can't actually see the whole placard but the second digit being a 4 instead of a 0 is good enough so I count out the rooms and recast [Scry] outside of… 215?
Damnit, one of those doors must have been a closet or bathroom or something.
But even if the angle is awful, I can at least see through the open doorway enough to cast my next [Scry] inside the doorway of 213 and… there's Taylor. One last [Scry] and I'm staring down at… fucking seriously?
The page is upside down, but is pretty clearly another fucking algebra test. I guess I can at least double check my cousin's work?
=...You forgot to carry the 2 on number 7.=
=Jane!= Taylor's face goes through a few odd expressions. =…That's cheating.=
=Taylor, if Winslow gave even a passing fart about academic integrity then they'd have made at least a token effort to stop the bullying from impacting your schoolwork.=
Taylor frowns at her exam for a moment but she does go back and fix her mistake so I take that as my winning the argument on being allowed to help and go back to looking over her test.
…Waitaminute.
Flipping back to the [Scry] point a few feet above my own head, I take advantage of the better viewing angle to look over at my neighbor's tests.
Aha!
Suck it, Local-Multiversal-Cluster!
You can conspire to keep me from asking them for their names all you want, but that is clearly 'Missy Byron' written neatly at the top of her paper and…
Ummm…
Okay.
I'm like 90% sure that gawd-awful doctor-like squiggle-thing at the top of Probably-Aisha's test is at least trying to say Aisha Laborn. I don't think I'd have been able to figure that out if I wasn't already pretty sure who she was but still…
Okay, maybe make that 80% sure?
I mean sweet RNGeezus, this girl's handwriting is worse than mine.
=…and if you're really that worried about them saying you cheated just tell the teacher you asked your cousin to start tutoring you.=
I cast one last [Scry], emptying out all but the last few dregs of my mana pool and adding another chunk of Winslow's hallways to the list of 'places I've been or seen.'
Woo! Yay spell cost reductions.
=Right… my twelve year old cousin is tutoring me in Algebra.=
=…I mean, I am?= I try to send a telepathic shrug over the connection. I assume it's at least somewhat successful since I get a distinct impression of Taylor rolling her eyes back at me without her actual eyes moving. =But yeah, would it probably sound more reasonable if you just, you know, never mention my age.=
=Yeah…= Taylor frowns. =Why are you so good at this anyway?=
=Think about that one for a second,= I hedge, trying to avoid outright lying to my cousin any more than necessary. I'd probably just tell her about the whole isekai thing if I didn't know QA, and by possible extension the rest of the shard network including Ziz and Zion, would be listening in. Sure, there's nothing saying they can't just pull the thoughts right out of my head just as easily. But there's at least a chance that my social Qworker made some manner of Blank or Invictus or whatever arrangements and slim odds are better than none.
=…Right. Sorry.=
Oh, gods damn it. Now I feel bad,
=Don't worry about it.= I send along another mental shrug. =Wherever I lived before, I think it's safe to assume they had a school system with higher standards than fucking Winslow."
=Well that narrows things down.=
=Ha! Yeah, I know. It doesn't even rule out the rest of Brockton Bay.=
A bell rings and it takes me a moment to realize it's back in my classroom rather than Taylor's.
Lurching to my feet, I wave my schedule at my classmates before they can all bolt out the door like they did after homeroom.
Or at least that was the plan.
Said plan is immediately put on hold as I sway on my feet, feeling a tad woozy.
"Are you okay?" Missy asks.
Task failed successfully, my classmates have all paused their escape attempts to look at me.
"I'm fine." I reassure them, grabbing the back of my chair to steady myself before adding: "Just stood up way too fast." It might even be true, even if the real issue is that I underestimated how lightheaded being nearly out of mana would make me. "Are any of you heading to… Parahuman Studies with Miss Greene next?"
"I am." Ruth confirms, and Missy nods along.
I turn to Aisha next but she shakes her head. "Naw, I got fucking Health class next."
"Ewww." I grimace reflexively before realizing I'm remembering high school health class. Though from the way Aisha says it and the look on Ruth's face I'm guessing it isn't any better here. "Wait." I glance down at my schedule and sure enough, I have Health class last period. "Is health class here the 'diet and exercise is important' kind or the 'if you have sex you will get pregnant and then die!' kind?"
"The fuck?" Aisha laughs. "Die?"
"I don't know." I pull on my backpack. "It's from a movie or something."
…a movie I won't name since it might not exist here.
"You watch some weird ass porn." Aisha grins, shaking her head as we make our way towards the door.
I almost manage to avoid laughing, only to spot the teacher visibly deciding he doesn't want to touch our conversation with a ten foot pole out the corner of my [Scry] spell. "Not that kind of movie."
"Oh!" Missy snaps her fingers. "Mean Girls!"
"Yes!" I point at her. It does exist!
"That doesn't not sound like a porno." Aisha grins, walking backwards off to the left so she can wave goodbye as Missy and Ruth head right.
I pause at the doorway briefly, hand half-raised to object, before realizing she's got a point and just wave back before turning to follow the others.
"Ugh." Ruth scowls at me as I catch up, shooting a weird look over her shoulder. "Did you really need to encourage the damn…"
"No, Ruth, oh my god…" I groan, holding up my hands to stop her latest racist tirade as we step into the classroom for Parahuman Studies. "Okay, ignoring the whole junk science thing for now, I'm just saying that clearly not even Kaiser believes that bullshit he's preaching."
Ruth glares at me doubtfully, but it's Missy trailing along behind us that lobs me the curious sounding softball. "Really?"
"Yes, really!" I look back and give her a nod of acknowledgement for her contribution before going back to staring at Ruth as I willfully pivot our entire argument a half step sideways. "Just look at Fenja and Menja."
"Fenja and Menja are white." Ruth hisses at me.
"Yeah!" I agree, rolling my eyes. "They're also both girls."
"...So?"
"So… He talks a big game but he can't really be that bent out of shape about 'the gays' if he's banging two of them." I steadfastly ignore the fact that plenty of people get off on the idea of 'fucking the dyke out of her' as that seems like it'd kinda be… well, devastating to my case. Also, I suspect, wildly inappropriate for a room rapidly filling with tweens. Not that calling out Kaiser's incest fetish is better on that front per se, but I'm ignoring that because I really want to hammer the iron of Ruth's obvious confusion and discomfort while it's hot, and so I add: "I mean, you do understand what a threesome is, right?"
"That's…" Ruth's mouth opens and closes a few times while her face looks more and more grossed out.
"Enough, Miss Herren." The teacher cuts her off before Ruth finishes changing gears, shooting us a look that makes me suspect Ruth's Empire wannabe sympathies have come up in class before. "You too, Miss…" She trails off, presumably realizing she doesn't actually recognize me.
"I'm Jane Flatt." I introduce myself with a wave. "The new transfer student."
"Ah, yes." The teacher, a Miss Greene according to my schedule, nods in recognition. "Please take a seat." She gestures broadly at the whole room.
"Oh, they're not assigned? Cool, I'll just…" look around and realize I'm the only one not already sitting down and there's only one empty desk left.
Right then. Off I go to sit next to Missy. Again.
Apparently the universe has decided that Vista and I will become friends and it isn't taking no for an answer.
Joke's on the universe though because my cousin is Skitter and she'd rather fist fight Cthulhu than deal with the teen drama involved in joining the Wards.
The abyss stares back.
And by abyss I mean my new classmates who are, with only a few exceptions, all understandably staring at the new girl who arrived halfway into homeroom and then was asked to keep standing there awkwardly at the front of the classroom while the teacher embraced their OCD by making three quarters of the class shift down a seat to keep everyone in alphabetical order.
On the plus side, I reflect as I finally head towards my new seat, they didn't ask me to do any weird icebreakers or even introduce myself beyond a simple, "yo, I'm Jane."
On the downside… This puts my assigned seat in the front row. It also puts me between two girls that make me strongly suspect the universe is either taunting me for originally thinking I was in a Tinker of Fiction scenario or my social Qworker is doing some sort of weird 'all the tropes but not the power' thing.
I mean, sure, the athletic blonde girl giving off some serious Hermione Granger vibes to my left could totally just be some random extra. Even if being to my left means her last name must come very early in the alphabet.
But the girl that got shunted from the back row up to the front of the next column over… Well, how many black girls my age have both noticeable cleavage and a purple streak in their hair?
"Something on my face?" Said black girl, who I now realize I've been staring at in consternation for long enough that it's moving from awkward to rude, asks challengingly.
Clearly the only way out is through. "Yes," I nod, leaning in a little bit toward her as I do so and pointing at her face.
"Shit," she sighs, turning to the girl I'm going to assume is Missy until told otherwise. "Do I really?"
Probably-Missy frowns, looking her over. "No?"
"Her hair is purple!" I protest, before Probably-Aisha can do more than look annoyed with me. "Wait, does hair count as part of your face?"
"Please take your seat, Jane." The teacher calls out from her desk before anyone can answer me.
"Right, sorry!" I put my books on the desk and step around it to sit down.
The bell rings right as my butt hits the chair.
"Why even have me sit down?"
"So… are you two going to be my new, like, shoulder angel and shoulder devil all day?" I ask as my first period teacher takes my joining the class as an excuse to shuffle up who's sitting in which cluster of four desks and I end up sitting with the same two girls from homeroom. They're even in the same-ish relative positions with Probably-Aisha to my right and Probably-Missy across from me.
"What?" The other girl I don't know responds before either of them can, taking her new seat at the desk diagonally across from me.
"Nothing. The teacher just rearranged everyone's seats to put these two next to me in Homeroom too." I hold out my hand. "I'm Jane, the new girl, obviously."
"Hi Jane-The-New-Girl, I'm Ruth."
I grin at Ruth. Challenge accepted! I can totally out dad-joke an actual middle schooler. Probably. But first, I glance at the other two girls. "I never actually got either of your-"
"Miss Flatt." I startle, the teacher apparently being right next to me. "If you and Miss Herren could pipe down we have a test today. If you aren't familiar with the material, don't worry, we'll just use it as a guide for where you'll need to review to catch up with the rest of the class."
"Okay." I take the exam and wait for the teacher to move on before rolling my eyes. Don't know the material? It's fucking middle school algebra.
Sitting back down in my seat after handing in my exam, I glance at the clock. Class isn't even halfway over yet.
Looking around the room, I spot a few of the other kids flipping their papers over to start in on the second half of the test. Ruth is one of them, but Probably-Missy and Probably-Aisha are still working on the bottom of the first page so even if she finishes before class ends it would probably be rude to try talking to her.
Folding arms on my desk and resting my head on them, I put a [Scry] up above my seat to keep watch while I [Telepathy] my cousin.
=Taylor…= I whine into her brain. =I'm bored.=
=Not now, Jane. I'm taking a test.=
=Oooh!= I perk up. =Me too! Or I was, but it was really easy so-=
=Jane! I need to concentrate!=
=Right. Sorry.=
Activating [Meditation] I try to at least recover some mana.
I resist the urge to drum my fingers on my desk.
I resist the urge to start humming, barely.
I resist the urge to start kicking my feet, but only because I still cannot move while using [Meditation] at level 4.
I resist… fuck it. I break [Meditation] and cast [Scry] over where I eventually found Winslow the other day.
I cast [Scry] on… uh… [Telepathy]!
=What room are you in?=
=Jane!=
=What room are you in?=
=213! Now shush.=
I cast [Scry] just inside the big window at the end of the second floor and then from there I cast [Scry] about halfway down the long hallway outside of what turns out to be room 222. Backing up a viewpoint, I belatedly try to make out the room number at the end of the hall I started at… I can't actually see the whole placard but the second digit being a 4 instead of a 0 is good enough so I count out the rooms and recast [Scry] outside of… 215?
Damnit, one of those doors must have been a closet or bathroom or something.
But even if the angle is awful, I can at least see through the open doorway enough to cast my next [Scry] inside the doorway of 213 and… there's Taylor. One last [Scry] and I'm staring down at… fucking seriously?
The page is upside down, but is pretty clearly another fucking algebra test. I guess I can at least double check my cousin's work?
=...You forgot to carry the 2 on number 7.=
=Jane!= Taylor's face goes through a few odd expressions. =…That's cheating.=
=Taylor, if Winslow gave even a passing fart about academic integrity then they'd have made at least a token effort to stop the bullying from impacting your schoolwork.=
Taylor frowns at her exam for a moment but she does go back and fix her mistake so I take that as my winning the argument on being allowed to help and go back to looking over her test.
…Waitaminute.
Flipping back to the [Scry] point a few feet above my own head, I take advantage of the better viewing angle to look over at my neighbor's tests.
Aha!
Suck it, Local-Multiversal-Cluster!
You can conspire to keep me from asking them for their names all you want, but that is clearly 'Missy Byron' written neatly at the top of her paper and…
Ummm…
Okay.
I'm like 90% sure that gawd-awful doctor-like squiggle-thing at the top of Probably-Aisha's test is at least trying to say Aisha Laborn. I don't think I'd have been able to figure that out if I wasn't already pretty sure who she was but still…
Okay, maybe make that 80% sure?
I mean sweet RNGeezus, this girl's handwriting is worse than mine.
=…and if you're really that worried about them saying you cheated just tell the teacher you asked your cousin to start tutoring you.=
I cast one last [Scry], emptying out all but the last few dregs of my mana pool and adding another chunk of Winslow's hallways to the list of 'places I've been or seen.'
| Clarity level up! |
Woo! Yay spell cost reductions.
=Right… my twelve year old cousin is tutoring me in Algebra.=
=…I mean, I am?= I try to send a telepathic shrug over the connection. I assume it's at least somewhat successful since I get a distinct impression of Taylor rolling her eyes back at me without her actual eyes moving. =But yeah, would it probably sound more reasonable if you just, you know, never mention my age.=
=Yeah…= Taylor frowns. =Why are you so good at this anyway?=
=Think about that one for a second,= I hedge, trying to avoid outright lying to my cousin any more than necessary. I'd probably just tell her about the whole isekai thing if I didn't know QA, and by possible extension the rest of the shard network including Ziz and Zion, would be listening in. Sure, there's nothing saying they can't just pull the thoughts right out of my head just as easily. But there's at least a chance that my social Qworker made some manner of Blank or Invictus or whatever arrangements and slim odds are better than none.
=…Right. Sorry.=
Oh, gods damn it. Now I feel bad,
=Don't worry about it.= I send along another mental shrug. =Wherever I lived before, I think it's safe to assume they had a school system with higher standards than fucking Winslow."
=Well that narrows things down.=
=Ha! Yeah, I know. It doesn't even rule out the rest of Brockton Bay.=
A bell rings and it takes me a moment to realize it's back in my classroom rather than Taylor's.
Lurching to my feet, I wave my schedule at my classmates before they can all bolt out the door like they did after homeroom.
Or at least that was the plan.
Said plan is immediately put on hold as I sway on my feet, feeling a tad woozy.
"Are you okay?" Missy asks.
Task failed successfully, my classmates have all paused their escape attempts to look at me.
"I'm fine." I reassure them, grabbing the back of my chair to steady myself before adding: "Just stood up way too fast." It might even be true, even if the real issue is that I underestimated how lightheaded being nearly out of mana would make me. "Are any of you heading to… Parahuman Studies with Miss Greene next?"
"I am." Ruth confirms, and Missy nods along.
I turn to Aisha next but she shakes her head. "Naw, I got fucking Health class next."
"Ewww." I grimace reflexively before realizing I'm remembering high school health class. Though from the way Aisha says it and the look on Ruth's face I'm guessing it isn't any better here. "Wait." I glance down at my schedule and sure enough, I have Health class last period. "Is health class here the 'diet and exercise is important' kind or the 'if you have sex you will get pregnant and then die!' kind?"
"The fuck?" Aisha laughs. "Die?"
"I don't know." I pull on my backpack. "It's from a movie or something."
…a movie I won't name since it might not exist here.
"You watch some weird ass porn." Aisha grins, shaking her head as we make our way towards the door.
I almost manage to avoid laughing, only to spot the teacher visibly deciding he doesn't want to touch our conversation with a ten foot pole out the corner of my [Scry] spell. "Not that kind of movie."
"Oh!" Missy snaps her fingers. "Mean Girls!"
"Yes!" I point at her. It does exist!
"That doesn't not sound like a porno." Aisha grins, walking backwards off to the left so she can wave goodbye as Missy and Ruth head right.
I pause at the doorway briefly, hand half-raised to object, before realizing she's got a point and just wave back before turning to follow the others.
"Ugh." Ruth scowls at me as I catch up, shooting a weird look over her shoulder. "Did you really need to encourage the damn…"
"No, Ruth, oh my god…" I groan, holding up my hands to stop her latest racist tirade as we step into the classroom for Parahuman Studies. "Okay, ignoring the whole junk science thing for now, I'm just saying that clearly not even Kaiser believes that bullshit he's preaching."
Ruth glares at me doubtfully, but it's Missy trailing along behind us that lobs me the curious sounding softball. "Really?"
"Yes, really!" I look back and give her a nod of acknowledgement for her contribution before going back to staring at Ruth as I willfully pivot our entire argument a half step sideways. "Just look at Fenja and Menja."
"Fenja and Menja are white." Ruth hisses at me.
"Yeah!" I agree, rolling my eyes. "They're also both girls."
"...So?"
"So… He talks a big game but he can't really be that bent out of shape about 'the gays' if he's banging two of them." I steadfastly ignore the fact that plenty of people get off on the idea of 'fucking the dyke out of her' as that seems like it'd kinda be… well, devastating to my case. Also, I suspect, wildly inappropriate for a room rapidly filling with tweens. Not that calling out Kaiser's incest fetish is better on that front per se, but I'm ignoring that because I really want to hammer the iron of Ruth's obvious confusion and discomfort while it's hot, and so I add: "I mean, you do understand what a threesome is, right?"
"That's…" Ruth's mouth opens and closes a few times while her face looks more and more grossed out.
"Enough, Miss Herren." The teacher cuts her off before Ruth finishes changing gears, shooting us a look that makes me suspect Ruth's Empire wannabe sympathies have come up in class before. "You too, Miss…" She trails off, presumably realizing she doesn't actually recognize me.
"I'm Jane Flatt." I introduce myself with a wave. "The new transfer student."
"Ah, yes." The teacher, a Miss Greene according to my schedule, nods in recognition. "Please take a seat." She gestures broadly at the whole room.
"Oh, they're not assigned? Cool, I'll just…" look around and realize I'm the only one not already sitting down and there's only one empty desk left.
Right then. Off I go to sit next to Missy. Again.
Apparently the universe has decided that Vista and I will become friends and it isn't taking no for an answer.
Joke's on the universe though because my cousin is Skitter and she'd rather fist fight Cthulhu than deal with the teen drama involved in joining the Wards.
6
New
Aetheron
Flinger of Spaghetti, Recorder of Results.
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Jane: Rude! Not inaccurate, but still.Ah, real threads, where @Aetheron stories go to die
"I'M HOME!" I announce at the top of my lungs as I shove open the front door.
"You're late." Taylor says without looking up from what looks like the homework she's doing at the kitchen table.
"What? No I'm not."
"It's dark out."
"Yeah, cause it's…" I start to trail off as what Taylor's doing finally clicks. "It's winter!" I finish way more enthusiastically, rushing over to her.
Finishing her sentence on the essay looking thing she's writing, Taylor sets her pencil down and then finally looks at me as I bounce in place next to her. "Did the bus drop you off in front of the house?"
"No!" I cheer, hugging her. "It was awful!" I laugh happily. "I'm totally going to learn how to teleport as soon as I can just so I can bop us to and from school."
"Don't waste-" Taylor pauses. "Actually, that sounds really nice."
"I know! Doesn't it?"
"Yeah… you can let go of me now."
I hug her tighter instead, pressing my face against the side of her head. "Taylor."
"…What?"
"You sassed me."
"…I did."
"I'm so proud of you!" I give her one last squeeze before finally letting go lest she resort to drastic measures like summoning a swarm of spiders to chase me off.
Skipping around the table, I pull out the chair opposite her and start emptying the various rocks I stuffed into my pockets during my walk home from the bus stop onto the table.
…Wow. I picked up a lot more of these things than I thought. No wonder Taylor got home first.
"What are you doing?"
"Admiring my rock collection."
After a moment's consideration I grab the pair of white ones I think are mostly quartz and set them aside for later.
Er.
I glance at the two white rocks I've segregated out from the others because they're prettier.
…Ruth can never find out.
Anyway…
Shaking my head, I cast a mana shaped [Stoneshape] and, ugh, 'slowly' have the other rocks all smoosh themselves together into a big lump. Once that's done, I have the lump flatten itself out and roll itself up over and over again a bunch of times like it's hands-free playdoh. There's probably a better way to do this and I end up needing to recast [Stoneshape] a couple more times before I'm done but eventually it's all marbled together well enough that I can't readily identify any of the original rocks anymore.
At which point I turn it into a thick stone bowl a couple inches deep.
[Telepathy]
=Hey, Taylor?=
"We're in the same room, Jane. You can just use your words."
=Could. Won't. Practicing.= At only 1 mana a minute, leveling telepathy is already exasperatingly slow enough without turning it off for no reason. =Speaking of which, can you put some bugs on the bowl?=
"Why?"
=I wanna do an experiment.= I grab the quartz off the table and confirm they count as a 'minor' amount of stone once they've smooshed themselves together. =But I'm kinda hungry so-=
"Ewww."
I look up as Taylor starts making gagging noises. =...Are you okay?=
"I'm fine, but I'm not watching you eat my bugs."
"Ewwww…" I shudder, unable to stop the mental image of spiders wiggling around in my mouth. "Why would you put that idea in my brain!? Take it back!" I try to telepathically shove the mental image out of my brain and into hers but just end up making us both start gagging. "Gah! That's disgusting."
"Okay, okay." Taylor tries again after we get our brains and bellies under control again. "Why do you want me to put bugs in your bowl?"
"Not in my bowl! Ugh. On the bowl." I point at the rim in a circle. "Like, around the edge."
"Fine, but why?"
"Because I want to know if I can make this—" I can show her the quartz and then put it in the bowl. "—heat up using friction." I split the quartz in half, making two discs, and start spinning them in opposite directions while trying to have them push themselves together but not merge. It makes a sound kind of like a coffee grinder but not quite as loud and I start to raise my voice to talk over it before remembering I wanted to use [Telepathy] anyway. =I don't want to accidentally set the house on fire if—=
"Please don't!"
=—it works too well.= Standing up I try to make the back sides of the discs not vibrate and the sound immediately stops but only because the discs stopped moving altogether. Shrugging to myself, I set them spinning again and head over to the fridge. =So let me know if your bugs start feeling hot, okay?=
The noise warbles a few times as I try to walk, 'talk,' and grind quartz all at the same time, but hopefully that'll sort itself out when I get the component spells to a higher level.
"Why-" Taylor sighs as a louder spike in the grinder volume cuts her off. =Why can't you just watch it.=
=I told you, I'm hungry.= I pull open the fridge and look at what we have to eat.
Hmmm… no, I don't want a sandwich.
=Do you… need to do your "experiment" at the kitchen table?=
I pause my rummaging to try and properly transmit the overwhelming sense of pride and approval I'm feeling over the fact that Taylor just somehow managed to mentally say her air-quotes out loud. Or whatever the equivalent term would be for telepathy.
Wait, there was a question in there too, wasn't there? Oh, yeah, um… =No..? The range isn't great but if you want to move the bowl down into the basement that should be-=
Oooh! Eggs! I grab the carton and pull it out to make sure we have enough.
=What? Why do I need to move it, it's your experiment.=
=Taylor." I begin in my most patient tone, even going so far as to turn around to give her my best 'are you for real?' face. =Where do you keep your spiders?=
"Ugh! Fine!" Taylor stands up and grabs at the bowl. I stop the grinder for safety reasons while she's carrying it and then go back to opening the egg carton which is half empty but even 6 eggs should be more than plenty.
=Hey, Taylor…= I call after her as she heads down the stairs. =If I make some scrambled eggs, do you want any?=
=...Sure.=
Nodding, I grab another two eggs out of the carton and set them aside next to the cheese and bbq sauce. Putting the carton back in the fridge, the cold air reminds me of what I was originally trying to test.
=Hey, Taylor…are my discs hot?=
=No.= I get a feeling of a finger pressed against something cool and then something warm from her. =They're a little warmer than the bowl, but not hot.=
=That still counts!=
I think?
…Maybe.
More !!Science!! is clearly required! Casting [Scry] on the basement, I resume the discs' grinding once Taylor sets the bowl down.
| Stoneshape level up! |
Woo!
Making sure to keep stirring the eggs, I check the updated spell description.
| Stoneshape 5, 1 minute per level, medium range, 30 MP Slowly move medium amounts of stone and sand around you for 1 minute per level of Stoneshape, OR gain fine control over minor amounts of stone and sand. Exp: 0/800 |
YES! Fine control! Fine-ally!
Down in the basement, my two quartz discs grind against each other a little harder but… Meh. The noise isn't any worse really, but I still can't really make them do it anything even vaguely approaching quietly without going so slow I may as well stop entirely. Which sadly means that won't be able to keep grinding XP once Uncle Danny gets home.
Embarrassingly, I giggle hard enough at my own stupid jokes to make Taylor look up from her homework for a moment before visibly deciding she doesn't want to know.
Silly Taylor, there is no defense against my love of over-sharing. Especially not when it comes to The Puns!
Well, hmmm… no defense other than the metaphor I used to explain my powers in Earth Bet terms not really covering the little blue boxes or the idea of XP. I'll need to elaborate at some point when I'm not busy cooking.
But soon! Soon there will be puns and exasperated sighing and it will be wonderful.
In any case, I guess this means I will need [Airshape] to muffle the noise and [Fireshape] to- Er.
=Hey, Taylor…are the discs getting any warmer?=
"Not really." Taylor shakes her head. "Maybe a little?"
=Meh.= I stop grinding the two stones together. =If this was going to work at all they'd need be getting hot way faster than this.=
I guess I'll need [Fireshape] after all. Or [Ward], but that kind of goes without saying given that [Ward] can do almost anything if you abuse it right… Wait, why don't I have [Ward] yet? Oh, right, because it, [Cleanse], and [Treat Wounds] all keep getting bumped down by things I can use now. But I think [Ward] might need to go on that list if only so I don't need to put a bunch of other things on it. Maybe that and [Blink] next level?
Eyeing the eggs and deciding they're done, I head over to the cabinet and grab a pair of plates.
"What were you trying to do, anyway?" Taylor asks as I start portioning out the eggs.
=I mean, eventually I'd want the quartz to melt so I can separate out the impurities but that's like… over a thousand degrees celsius.=
"Please don't burn down the house."
=Well, duh.= I roll my eyes at Taylor's interruption. =This was just proof of concept. And besides, if it had worked, then your bugs would've started dying way before the house caught fire. I kinda assumed I would find somewhere to make an oven outside or, like, way underground and then do the actual melting there but it doesn't seem like it's working so…= I shrug. =Moo point.=
"Moot." Taylor corrects me. "Moot point."
=No.= I correct her right back, carrying the eggs over to the table. =Moo point. Like a cow's opinion?=
O… kay… the blank stare Taylor gives me has zero recognition in it. I guess Mean Girls exists but Friends doesn't? Jeezus.
Unwilling to think about that any further, I slide Taylor's plate over toward her before just taking my seat and beginning to eat.
"Why are they orange?" Taylor pokes her eggs with her fork.
I shrug. =Because that's what color the cheese and barbeque sauce I used are.=
"You… put barbeque sauce in the eggs?"
I nod, enjoying the fact that I can take a bite of my eggs and continue to 'talk' anyway. =Of course I did.=
"But… But why?"
=Because otherwise they'd taste like eggs?=
"Right…" Taylor makes another one of her weird faces at me. "So…" Taylor pauses awkwardly. "...why are you trying to melt the quartz? You said something about impurities?"
=Yeah.= I nod, taking another bite. =Pure quartz is clear. The quartz downstairs is white because there's a bunch of other stuff mixed into it. My powers don't let me break down atomic bonds directly but I was hoping that if I could get it to melt then they'd either separate out naturally or I could spin it really fast or something to make them all move to either the middle or edge so I could just cut them off.=
Admittedly, the spinning part might need [Telekinesis] which would be another thing I'd need to buy if aurifying [Stonehape] doesn't let me lift it off the floor.
"Can't you just do the folding thing you used to make the bowl?" Taylor eyes her eggs one last time before finally stabbing a forkful and putting it into her mouth and chewing.
=I don't think so?" I shrug, recasting [Stoneshape] and then [Scry] anyway. =It's worth trying but the impurities I'm talking about are, like, microscopic so even if I got the quartz to look clear that way, I don't know if it would actually be clear."
Downstairs, I have the quartz press itself against the bottom of the bowl and then lift itself up until it forms a weird cross between a balloon and the lid of a pan over the top of the bowl. Then I try to will anything that isn't quartz to move to the edge of it. The result is… inconclusive, and just reinforces my decision to get [Ward] next level so I can try and make a gravity strainer.
"Ahh…" Taylor acknowledges, taking a second bite of her eggs without any of her earlier hesitation. Haha! Victory for Team Sam-I-Am! =What do you need the clear quartz for anyway?=
=I think I can make us "magic rings" that'll give us a minor Brute rating.=
Taylor starts to say something, but chokes on her food. =Seriously?=
=Yup.= I pause, trying to figure out a way to explain that they only last so many HP and Mana pool refills to someone who doesn't have either of those things, before realizing that I don't need to. =But like all Tinker-tech, the things break down after a while and the less perfect the crystal is the weaker the effect and the faster it breaks.=
=Oh.= Taylor swallows. "How fast are we talking?"
=One that's well made with a perfect diamond and all that? Years. The kludge I think I can make now? Weeks. Maybe days.= I shrug. =Or maybe it breaks the first time you put a big dent in the coffee table instead of stubbing your toe. I won't really know until I try to make one.=
Taylor hmmms thoughtfully. "I think there's one of those New Age shops on the Boardwalk that sells those 'healing crystals.' Would one of those work?"
"Maybe!"
7
New
Aetheron
Flinger of Spaghetti, Recorder of Results.
- Joined
- Oct 20, 2015
- Messages
- 344
- Likes received
- 14,846
I wake up feeling awful while Taylor's alarm clock blares its stupid noise.
I remember waking up in the middle of the night and trying to spend one more pool of mana to level up. I passed out before I could spend the points but this doesn't feel like I'm somehow still suffering from mana exhaustion.
This feels more like… Like I somehow managed to spend my HP pool in my sleep maybe? That shouldn't be possible, but: Status.
Okay.
So MP and HP are both full. So whatever this is, it's not that.
Probably.
Also, HP exhaustion wouldn't explain the nausea or why I feel like I wet myself even though my bladder is still full enough to be angry about it-
Oh.
Oh, for fucks sake.
I put a hand down my pants and it comes back wet and red.
"Nope!" I buy and cast [Cleanse] immediately. "Fuck absolutely everything about this being a girl bullshit."
I don't feel much better afterward, but I know it worked because my crotch is suddenly dry as the blankets ripple with a release of thick air. And… I don't need to pee anymore? I guess it works on the parts of the mess that's are still inside me too.
Which… Okay, in retrospect, that should have been obvious given that the spell's primary use is to remove poisons and tumors and stuff.
"What's wro- oh." Taylor leans over the edge of her bed, looking down at me as she turns off the alarm clock. "Do you need to borrow-"
"No." I shake my head at her. "I already bought a power to fix it."
"You… spent a charge to not have periods?"
"Yup."
Taylor stares at me for a moment. "I can't decide if I'm jealous about how nice that sounds or mad at you for how wasteful that is."
"Wasteful!?" I hold up the hand with blood on it. "My body is doing stupid shit without my permission!"
"Periods end, Jane. You said you only get so many charges."
I choose to blame the early hour and various hormones coursing through my body for how long I stare at her before realizing what she's saying and where the miscommunication was.
"Hang on." I shake my head. "Okay, two things. One, it turns out I underestimated how effective my efforts to improve medium term growth would be and I'll actually get at least another couple sets of charges over the next week before things taper off." Seriously, Clarity and Concentration combo hard as they start leveling up.
"But they will taper off?"
"They will. But! I didn't buy some kind of 'Jane doesn't get periods any more' power." I wiggle my bloody hand at her and then cast [Cleanse] again. This time I focus on making sure the affected cubic meter includes my upper body and rids my fingers of the remaining bloody evidence of what my body tried to do to me. "I bought that 'cleans the everloving shit out of anything' power I mentioned wanting anyway. I just picked it sooner than I planned to so I could use it to clean out all of…" I gesture downwards. "…that."
"Cleaning power?" Taylor frowns. "I don't remember…"
"It was one of the ones I mentioned for one of the other plans. I guess it's not really a cleaning power so much as a purification power but that one that I mentioned purges cancer?" I hold up my clean hand. "It also removes bloodstains, poisons, and… uh…"
I call up the box.
"...a bunch of other stuff I don't fully understand yet. Trash and radiation?" I shrug. I think that's what I remember Erick using it for anyway. "It might also clear out the obviously unnecessary hormones too judging by how I can feel my nausea starting to settle but that might just be my body's natural reaction to realizing I set it's stupid fucking 'but what if you want to be a teen mom?' todo list on fire." I frown. Clearly I'm not entirely done with being a grump-asaurus but I can at least start to see the humor in it all. "Well, insofar as anything involving powers counts 'natural' or… Well, whatever. It also clears out the crusties from your eyes and that white plaque crap that causes morning breath. Want me to do you too?"
I hold up my now clean hand again.
Taylor looks at me for a moment before shrugging. "Sure."
Reaching out, I boop her on the nose as I cast a manashaped [Cleanse] on as much of her as I can. "Boop!"
Taylor blinks, then blinks again as the thick air swirls around her. Finally, she runs her tongue along her teeth. "Huh."
"Yup." I agree. "It's more shower adjacent rather than shower replacement, but it's very effective at what it does."
Taylor and I stare at each other for a moment. "…I'll make us some tea?"
"Yeah, just… give me a moment. If the nausea doesn't fade I'll grab the other healing power I wanted and try to bludgeon my idiot body into submission before school."
"Jane."
"Yeah?"
"It's Saturday."
"Oh." I roll over. "Then I'm going back to sleep. If I feel better when I wake up maybe we can hit up the library and then go for our run in the afternoon? Maybe check out that place you found for our secret lair?
=So really, the only "problem" with having the power is that now I'm going to feel bad for not going to hospitals to cure cancer and MRSA and stuff.=
Looking over at the neighbor's house as Taylor and I jog past, the giant picture window that whichever developer built this neighborhood seems to have loved including has the curtains thrown open and the lights on. So I don't even need to cast Scry to add the upper half of their living room to the list of 'places I've been or seen' and can thus Scry later in the event one of Coil's minions starts sniping at us from that direction.
I'd call myself paranoid, but Coil's alternate timelines are a decent stand in for the proverbial invisible demon trying to eat my face.
Seriously, fuck that guy.
=MRSA?= Taylor pulls my thoughts back to the present.
=Multi… Resistant? Staffa…something or other? I don't know. Germs that laugh at modern medicine basically. AIDS would probably have been a better example come to think of it. But yeah, I think Cleanse can pretty much obliterate any disease that isn't just your own body failing to do something 'cause of genetics.=
The lights are off in the next house, so I throw a [Scry] at the window and take a brief glance inside from a better angle before cancelling it just in case I need to actually be able to see into a space properly for it to count. Same layout as a bunch of the others, though this one is full of cats and cat themed decor so I guess I found the local cat-lady?
=That sounds like a big deal.=
=Yup! Which is why I feel bad about not doing anything about it now that I can. I mean, yeah, there are all kinds of issues with doing it and… And! It's not even like I won't be doing it eventually, I just can't seem to convince my conscience to shut up about it.=
I repeat, fuck Coil and the stupid cauldron vial he rode in on!
I wouldn't be having any of this moral quandary if I could at least pretend the locals would stick to the unwritten rules. But noooo…
Though I suppose in fairness to Earth Bet– Ewww… I can't believe I just thought that– I'd just have ended up having a different, far lesser, moral quandary over whether or not it still counts as 'being a good person' if you're knowingly doing it for the amazing PR and networking opportunities? Not that I don't want to eradicate cancer. Fuck cancer! And AIDS and- Well, no, don't fuck AIDS that's how you get-
I am way off topic. What was I doing?
Oh. Yeah. Taking advantage of Taylor being good at coming up with valid logical reasons to justify decisions she's already made for emotional reasons.
=Speaking of which… Do you want to come with me when I eventually start hitting up hospitals?=
=I don't think a hospital would appreciate me bringing a bunch of bugs in."
=True.= I agree before sending her a mental image of me smacking her in the face with a cartoon fish. =But I bet they'd love it if you got all the bugs to leave with you.=
=What just- Why a fish?=
=You were fishing for compliments.=
=No I wasn't!=
=Taylor.= I make sure to transmit using my most patient of tones. =You calling or implying that your power is weak or bad is like a cheerslut calling herself ugly. The sheer absurdity of the statement forcibly elicits a 'no you aren't' response followed by a compliment.=
The next house has the blinds drawn on the picture window but one of the smaller ones to the side is only most of the way down and a light is on. [Scry]!
Incoherent screaming assaults my 'ears.'
Startled, I reflexively try to rear back and away from the noise and end up tripping over my own feet and tumbling into the snow. I land hard, knocking the wind out of me and only barely avoid banging my head off a tree by sheer dumb luck.
"Are you okay?"
I wheeze, not even managing to tell her I'm fine. =House to our right! There's a woman tied up and…=
I switch focus back to my Scry-eye but all I see is an exterior wall? What!? No! Get back in the house!
My Scry-eye hurtles forward, it's vision briefly going dark as it moves through the wall before-
"-on't you dare stop!"
=Nevermind!=
I cancel the Scry spell as hard as I can, leaving the woman and what I assume is her husband to their… fun.
"What-"
=Nothing!=
I climb to my feet and brush myself off, steadfastly ignoring Taylor's increasingly intense stare.
=You don't want to know.=
Taylor's demanding stare abruptly breaks as her eyes go wide and her cheeks start to redden. "Are they…" she goes still.
=Mmm... Hmm...= I nod.
"…with ropes?"
=Mmm! Hmm!= I start nodding harder, letting some of my upper body join in on the motion. =I told you you didn't want to- Wait.= I frown =You can't see with your bugs yet. Are you, like, exploring them while they-=
"Let's just go!"
"Yes please!"
The two of us resume our late afternoon jog, silently agreeing to never speak of this ever again.
Wait.
…Holy shit!
The Scry eyes can move!?
I remember waking up in the middle of the night and trying to spend one more pool of mana to level up. I passed out before I could spend the points but this doesn't feel like I'm somehow still suffering from mana exhaustion.
This feels more like… Like I somehow managed to spend my HP pool in my sleep maybe? That shouldn't be possible, but: Status.
| Jane Flatt Human, age: 12 Level 7, Class: None Exp: 463/2100 Class: -/- Points: 2 | |||
| HP | 120/120 | 160 per day | |
| MP | 488/488 | 510 per day | |
| Strength | 12 | +0 | 12 |
| Vitality | 16 | +0 | 16 |
| Willpower | 20 | +0 | 20 |
| Focus | 20 | +0 | 20 |
Okay.
So MP and HP are both full. So whatever this is, it's not that.
Probably.
Also, HP exhaustion wouldn't explain the nausea or why I feel like I wet myself even though my bladder is still full enough to be angry about it-
Oh.
Oh, for fucks sake.
I put a hand down my pants and it comes back wet and red.
"Nope!" I buy and cast [Cleanse] immediately. "Fuck absolutely everything about this being a girl bullshit."
I don't feel much better afterward, but I know it worked because my crotch is suddenly dry as the blankets ripple with a release of thick air. And… I don't need to pee anymore? I guess it works on the parts of the mess that's are still inside me too.
Which… Okay, in retrospect, that should have been obvious given that the spell's primary use is to remove poisons and tumors and stuff.
"What's wro- oh." Taylor leans over the edge of her bed, looking down at me as she turns off the alarm clock. "Do you need to borrow-"
"No." I shake my head at her. "I already bought a power to fix it."
"You… spent a charge to not have periods?"
"Yup."
Taylor stares at me for a moment. "I can't decide if I'm jealous about how nice that sounds or mad at you for how wasteful that is."
"Wasteful!?" I hold up the hand with blood on it. "My body is doing stupid shit without my permission!"
"Periods end, Jane. You said you only get so many charges."
I choose to blame the early hour and various hormones coursing through my body for how long I stare at her before realizing what she's saying and where the miscommunication was.
"Hang on." I shake my head. "Okay, two things. One, it turns out I underestimated how effective my efforts to improve medium term growth would be and I'll actually get at least another couple sets of charges over the next week before things taper off." Seriously, Clarity and Concentration combo hard as they start leveling up.
"But they will taper off?"
"They will. But! I didn't buy some kind of 'Jane doesn't get periods any more' power." I wiggle my bloody hand at her and then cast [Cleanse] again. This time I focus on making sure the affected cubic meter includes my upper body and rids my fingers of the remaining bloody evidence of what my body tried to do to me. "I bought that 'cleans the everloving shit out of anything' power I mentioned wanting anyway. I just picked it sooner than I planned to so I could use it to clean out all of…" I gesture downwards. "…that."
"Cleaning power?" Taylor frowns. "I don't remember…"
"It was one of the ones I mentioned for one of the other plans. I guess it's not really a cleaning power so much as a purification power but that one that I mentioned purges cancer?" I hold up my clean hand. "It also removes bloodstains, poisons, and… uh…"
I call up the box.
| Cleanse 1, instant, short range, 10 MP. Purge an area equal to the level of the spell in meters of all Toxins, Disease, Filth, and Corruption. Exp: 20/100 |
"...a bunch of other stuff I don't fully understand yet. Trash and radiation?" I shrug. I think that's what I remember Erick using it for anyway. "It might also clear out the obviously unnecessary hormones too judging by how I can feel my nausea starting to settle but that might just be my body's natural reaction to realizing I set it's stupid fucking 'but what if you want to be a teen mom?' todo list on fire." I frown. Clearly I'm not entirely done with being a grump-asaurus but I can at least start to see the humor in it all. "Well, insofar as anything involving powers counts 'natural' or… Well, whatever. It also clears out the crusties from your eyes and that white plaque crap that causes morning breath. Want me to do you too?"
I hold up my now clean hand again.
Taylor looks at me for a moment before shrugging. "Sure."
Reaching out, I boop her on the nose as I cast a manashaped [Cleanse] on as much of her as I can. "Boop!"
Taylor blinks, then blinks again as the thick air swirls around her. Finally, she runs her tongue along her teeth. "Huh."
"Yup." I agree. "It's more shower adjacent rather than shower replacement, but it's very effective at what it does."
Taylor and I stare at each other for a moment. "…I'll make us some tea?"
"Yeah, just… give me a moment. If the nausea doesn't fade I'll grab the other healing power I wanted and try to bludgeon my idiot body into submission before school."
"Jane."
"Yeah?"
"It's Saturday."
"Oh." I roll over. "Then I'm going back to sleep. If I feel better when I wake up maybe we can hit up the library and then go for our run in the afternoon? Maybe check out that place you found for our secret lair?
=So really, the only "problem" with having the power is that now I'm going to feel bad for not going to hospitals to cure cancer and MRSA and stuff.=
Looking over at the neighbor's house as Taylor and I jog past, the giant picture window that whichever developer built this neighborhood seems to have loved including has the curtains thrown open and the lights on. So I don't even need to cast Scry to add the upper half of their living room to the list of 'places I've been or seen' and can thus Scry later in the event one of Coil's minions starts sniping at us from that direction.
I'd call myself paranoid, but Coil's alternate timelines are a decent stand in for the proverbial invisible demon trying to eat my face.
Seriously, fuck that guy.
=MRSA?= Taylor pulls my thoughts back to the present.
=Multi… Resistant? Staffa…something or other? I don't know. Germs that laugh at modern medicine basically. AIDS would probably have been a better example come to think of it. But yeah, I think Cleanse can pretty much obliterate any disease that isn't just your own body failing to do something 'cause of genetics.=
The lights are off in the next house, so I throw a [Scry] at the window and take a brief glance inside from a better angle before cancelling it just in case I need to actually be able to see into a space properly for it to count. Same layout as a bunch of the others, though this one is full of cats and cat themed decor so I guess I found the local cat-lady?
=That sounds like a big deal.=
=Yup! Which is why I feel bad about not doing anything about it now that I can. I mean, yeah, there are all kinds of issues with doing it and… And! It's not even like I won't be doing it eventually, I just can't seem to convince my conscience to shut up about it.=
I repeat, fuck Coil and the stupid cauldron vial he rode in on!
I wouldn't be having any of this moral quandary if I could at least pretend the locals would stick to the unwritten rules. But noooo…
Though I suppose in fairness to Earth Bet– Ewww… I can't believe I just thought that– I'd just have ended up having a different, far lesser, moral quandary over whether or not it still counts as 'being a good person' if you're knowingly doing it for the amazing PR and networking opportunities? Not that I don't want to eradicate cancer. Fuck cancer! And AIDS and- Well, no, don't fuck AIDS that's how you get-
I am way off topic. What was I doing?
Oh. Yeah. Taking advantage of Taylor being good at coming up with valid logical reasons to justify decisions she's already made for emotional reasons.
=Speaking of which… Do you want to come with me when I eventually start hitting up hospitals?=
=I don't think a hospital would appreciate me bringing a bunch of bugs in."
=True.= I agree before sending her a mental image of me smacking her in the face with a cartoon fish. =But I bet they'd love it if you got all the bugs to leave with you.=
=What just- Why a fish?=
=You were fishing for compliments.=
=No I wasn't!=
=Taylor.= I make sure to transmit using my most patient of tones. =You calling or implying that your power is weak or bad is like a cheerslut calling herself ugly. The sheer absurdity of the statement forcibly elicits a 'no you aren't' response followed by a compliment.=
The next house has the blinds drawn on the picture window but one of the smaller ones to the side is only most of the way down and a light is on. [Scry]!
Incoherent screaming assaults my 'ears.'
Startled, I reflexively try to rear back and away from the noise and end up tripping over my own feet and tumbling into the snow. I land hard, knocking the wind out of me and only barely avoid banging my head off a tree by sheer dumb luck.
"Are you okay?"
I wheeze, not even managing to tell her I'm fine. =House to our right! There's a woman tied up and…=
I switch focus back to my Scry-eye but all I see is an exterior wall? What!? No! Get back in the house!
My Scry-eye hurtles forward, it's vision briefly going dark as it moves through the wall before-
"-on't you dare stop!"
=Nevermind!=
I cancel the Scry spell as hard as I can, leaving the woman and what I assume is her husband to their… fun.
"What-"
=Nothing!=
I climb to my feet and brush myself off, steadfastly ignoring Taylor's increasingly intense stare.
=You don't want to know.=
Taylor's demanding stare abruptly breaks as her eyes go wide and her cheeks start to redden. "Are they…" she goes still.
=Mmm... Hmm...= I nod.
"…with ropes?"
=Mmm! Hmm!= I start nodding harder, letting some of my upper body join in on the motion. =I told you you didn't want to- Wait.= I frown =You can't see with your bugs yet. Are you, like, exploring them while they-=
"Let's just go!"
"Yes please!"
The two of us resume our late afternoon jog, silently agreeing to never speak of this ever again.
Wait.
…Holy shit!
The Scry eyes can move!?
8
New
Aetheron
Flinger of Spaghetti, Recorder of Results.
- Joined
- Oct 20, 2015
- Messages
- 344
- Likes received
- 14,846
"This is the place?"
"Yeah."
"Well." I nod at the faded yellow sign on the chain link fence. "Zero points for guessing why the place is condemned."
"I think it was condemned before it burned down."
"Oh."
The two of us stare at the charred remains of a house. The way the dimming late afternoon light bounces off the snow to wreathe the place in shadows doesn't really help the aesthetic, but I suspect it may have just been a powerfully ugly house to begin with.
And yeah, now that Taylor mentions it, even the one side of the house that didn't burn looks pretty rotten.
"Do you think one of the neighbors was trying to remove the eyesore and accidentally made it worse?"
"...How would I know?"
"Fair." I cast [Scry] above the house, taking in a bird's eye view of the layout. And then! Then! I start shifting it this way and that to explore the house properly.
Holy shit, this is amazing! Look, Ma, I'm flying… Wheee!
"Are you okay?"
"...Huh?" I look over to find Taylor aiming what I'm starting to think is her concerned face at me.
"You kinda spaced out and then started giggling like a loon."
"Oh, whoops." I shrug slowly, giving her my best 'what can you do' face. "I guess it's a good thing I have no sense of shame." Turning back to the house, I point at where a dirty but largely intact bulkhead door is hidden behind the rest of the ruins. "I was just looking around and I'm thinking we put the entrance around back? Between that bulkhead door and the… I think it was a sunroom? Enclosed deck? Whatever. It'll give us some extra cover from any nosy neighbors if we end up needing to use the actual entrance for some reason. Or maybe we put it inside the bulkhead? You said the basement floor is built directly on top of some ledge, right?"
"I think so." Taylor shrugs. "None of the worms around here are able to dig under it."
"Perfect…" I rub my hands together in hammed up glee. "Is anyone watching us?"
"...No?"
"You don't sound sure about that."
"There's a woman cooking dinner near a window that I think could see us if she turns around."
"Where?"
"Behind us and to the left."
Floating the eye of my Scry spell over– Wheeee! – I spot the window pretty quickly. And the woman she's talking about. Spinning the eye around, I confirm that yeah, she'd have a clear view of us if she were to peek out the window. She would not however be able to see the back of the ruined house.
"Anyone else?"
"No."
"Okay then." I move the eye to just inside the window, hoping that even if I get too distracted to watch her I'll still be able to hear it if she starts calling the cops or whatever. Ooooh! Bonus! She's got the radio playing decent music.
[Telepathy]
=Wish me luck!=
I crouch down and, double checking that the woman isn't looking, cast [Blink].
The world flickers a deep midnight blue and then I'm suddenly at the back corner of the house. Staying low, I duck around the corner only to trip over something hidden in the snow. I manage to catch myself on the bulkhead to stop myself from falling over completely but, eyeing how much of the debris and other hazards I can see poking up through snow looks distressingly pointy, I decide against walking any further.
[Stoneshaping] a bit of the concrete from the foundation a bit past the other side of the bulkhead into a flat inch thick shelf just above the snow, I [Blink] over to it.
[Mana Shaping] another [Stoneshape], I open a hole in the foundation and turn my platform into the top of a short steep slide.
Ooof. A stench like death immediately assaults my nose. Not sure if the death involved is whatever died and started rotting in there or just my poor nose committing suicide, but that is rancid.
[Cleanse]!
The smell vanishes only to come right back as the 2 cubic meters of clean air I can currently make just end up mixing together with the rest of the air trapped in the basement.
Right then.
Leaning as far away from the slide as I can while still being able to see the floor, I [Mana Shaping] another [Stoneshape] to have a circle about a meter wide of concrete pull itself up out of the floor. Either because I'm in a hurry or because I've misjudged what constitutes a 'medium' amount of stone, I end up pulling up more than just the concrete.
Feels like… sand?
Whatever it is, my poor nose doesn't have time to deal with that right now so I just let it go and focus on getting the concrete in the middle to push itself outwards, displacing the concrete already there up and forming it into a thin wall encompassing the new hole and my slide. Then I immediately recast [Cleanse] because ewww.
1…2…3…4…5… I give the air a sniff.
Better!
I still [Mana Shaping] another [Cleanse] into the entire space to make sure I got it all because, again, ewww.
I also [Cleanse] myself on general principle.
Okay, now I can investigate the sand.
Pulling out my flashlight, I turn it on and peer at the base of my wall.
Yup, looks like a layer of packed sand alright. Well, this part here is pretty shaken up now, but I'm guessing it was packed down tight when it had a house pushing down on top of it. Probably meant to make the base flat or something.
The feedback I get from the spell when I [Manashaping] another [Stoneshape] on the next half meter-ish chunk of stone seems to confirm that theory. Packed sand followed by solid rock that is neither flat nor level.
…Non-porous rock.
As in rock that doesn't have a bunch of tiny air pockets to compact itself into.
So uh…
What do I do with it?
Not seeing any better options, I have the sand and stone all smoosh itself together into one solid piece and then repeat my earlier process of reverse-squeezing itself up the walls until I have a thicker wall around a deeper hole that is a bit narrower.
The original width of the hole was kind of excessive, so I could probably do that quite a few more times before it'd get claustrophobic in there but it still isn't really a sustainable disposal method.
Hmmm…
Option 1, I chuck it into the backyard behind me and hope no one wonders why there's a new boulder behind the house.
Option 2, I open a hole in my wall and push it out into the basement while my nose tries to commit ritualized seppuku.
Option 3, I… I… I've got nothing.
Option 2 sucks, but option 1's fail states include a higher likelihood of Skitter and I being shanghaied into the Wards so…
Another cast of [Stoneshape] opens a flat hole in the wall near the floor like a mail slot without a cover and then a second mana shaped one-
…Oh?
Wait. Aurify just magically unlocks at Mana Shaping five!? I thought I'd need to get it to 10 and then spend another point for that. Not that I'm complaining mind you.
I resist the urge to- Oh, who am I kidding? I cackle like a fucking loon as I [Aurify] the everloving shit out of [Stoneshape]. Fuck designating a specific lump of stone as my target. Everything is my target!
As the vague feedback I was getting from the stone under my control spreads out to include all the dirt, sand, stone, and such within 5 meters, I reach out with that sense and pull a piece of the greyish stone that was below the sand out from the wall. I want to say it's granite but that would be pretending I have any idea what I'm talking about which would be silly when better options exist. Namely, having a golf ball sized piece of it float up to me because the whole area is part of Stoneshape's effect now.
…I probably could have been doing this the whole time if I'd thought to include some of the 'empty space' inside the hole as being part of the spell effect when Mana Shaping it.
Deciding to just call that a 'lesson learned, I flatten and smooth out the piece of rock until it resembles a decent skipping stone and then stuff it in my pocket for identification later. Yes, Imaginary-Sheldon, I'm going to talk to The Rock People.
That done, I turn my attention to the next question on the list. Namely, why do I have two holes-
Aw, fuck. I heard it as soon as I thought it.
But still, focusing on my new sense, I confirm that yes, there is indeed a second shaft- Nope! …excavation pit? Yes, there's a second excavation pit already cut into the stone a few meters to my left. It's much narrower than mine, only a few inches or so across to mine's somewhat-less-than-a-meter-now but it continues down beyond the point I can feel and it feels like it has some kind of tube shaped thing in it that isn't stone but almost counts?
Weird.
It's gotta be some kind of pipe, so… plastic, maybe? Or metal?
Metalshape is one of those sorta-separate-but-derived spells that comes from Stoneshape if I recall correctly. Like how Blink X is a prerequisite for Teleport even though Teleport is still a base spell.
But why would there be a pipe… oh. Was this house using well water? I didn't think city people did that. Isn't the whole point of putting up with having that many members of the public around, all the freaking time, that you get to have them handle all of that water and sewer systems nonsense for you?
Well whatever! I guess I'll use that as my guide for how deep I can go before I need to worry about getting wet.
Pulling up some more stone from below, I flatten out my side of the excavation pit and form a ladder to climb down.
Then I close the fuck out of the vent in the wall I forgot I opened and switch to pulsing out a [Cleanse] aura because holy shit does that-
Oh…
Oh no...
…I swear, if I find a gods damned septic tank down here I am going to introduce some people to Phagar.
Yes, I know I could just [Cleanse] it out of existence. That's not the point!
Cities are supposed to have working infrastructure!
PRT Officer: <Nervously> "Ma'am, I'm being told to ask you why you're rolling a giant boulder down the street."
Jane: <Angrily> "BECAUSE YOU PEOPLE ARE TAKING TOO DAMN LONG TO FIX THAT GODDAMNED POT HOLE!!"
"Yeah."
"Well." I nod at the faded yellow sign on the chain link fence. "Zero points for guessing why the place is condemned."
"I think it was condemned before it burned down."
"Oh."
The two of us stare at the charred remains of a house. The way the dimming late afternoon light bounces off the snow to wreathe the place in shadows doesn't really help the aesthetic, but I suspect it may have just been a powerfully ugly house to begin with.
And yeah, now that Taylor mentions it, even the one side of the house that didn't burn looks pretty rotten.
"Do you think one of the neighbors was trying to remove the eyesore and accidentally made it worse?"
"...How would I know?"
"Fair." I cast [Scry] above the house, taking in a bird's eye view of the layout. And then! Then! I start shifting it this way and that to explore the house properly.
Holy shit, this is amazing! Look, Ma, I'm flying… Wheee!
"Are you okay?"
"...Huh?" I look over to find Taylor aiming what I'm starting to think is her concerned face at me.
"You kinda spaced out and then started giggling like a loon."
"Oh, whoops." I shrug slowly, giving her my best 'what can you do' face. "I guess it's a good thing I have no sense of shame." Turning back to the house, I point at where a dirty but largely intact bulkhead door is hidden behind the rest of the ruins. "I was just looking around and I'm thinking we put the entrance around back? Between that bulkhead door and the… I think it was a sunroom? Enclosed deck? Whatever. It'll give us some extra cover from any nosy neighbors if we end up needing to use the actual entrance for some reason. Or maybe we put it inside the bulkhead? You said the basement floor is built directly on top of some ledge, right?"
"I think so." Taylor shrugs. "None of the worms around here are able to dig under it."
"Perfect…" I rub my hands together in hammed up glee. "Is anyone watching us?"
"...No?"
"You don't sound sure about that."
"There's a woman cooking dinner near a window that I think could see us if she turns around."
"Where?"
"Behind us and to the left."
Floating the eye of my Scry spell over– Wheeee! – I spot the window pretty quickly. And the woman she's talking about. Spinning the eye around, I confirm that yeah, she'd have a clear view of us if she were to peek out the window. She would not however be able to see the back of the ruined house.
"Anyone else?"
"No."
"Okay then." I move the eye to just inside the window, hoping that even if I get too distracted to watch her I'll still be able to hear it if she starts calling the cops or whatever. Ooooh! Bonus! She's got the radio playing decent music.
[Telepathy]
=Wish me luck!=
I crouch down and, double checking that the woman isn't looking, cast [Blink].
The world flickers a deep midnight blue and then I'm suddenly at the back corner of the house. Staying low, I duck around the corner only to trip over something hidden in the snow. I manage to catch myself on the bulkhead to stop myself from falling over completely but, eyeing how much of the debris and other hazards I can see poking up through snow looks distressingly pointy, I decide against walking any further.
[Stoneshaping] a bit of the concrete from the foundation a bit past the other side of the bulkhead into a flat inch thick shelf just above the snow, I [Blink] over to it.
[Mana Shaping] another [Stoneshape], I open a hole in the foundation and turn my platform into the top of a short steep slide.
Ooof. A stench like death immediately assaults my nose. Not sure if the death involved is whatever died and started rotting in there or just my poor nose committing suicide, but that is rancid.
[Cleanse]!
The smell vanishes only to come right back as the 2 cubic meters of clean air I can currently make just end up mixing together with the rest of the air trapped in the basement.
Right then.
Leaning as far away from the slide as I can while still being able to see the floor, I [Mana Shaping] another [Stoneshape] to have a circle about a meter wide of concrete pull itself up out of the floor. Either because I'm in a hurry or because I've misjudged what constitutes a 'medium' amount of stone, I end up pulling up more than just the concrete.
Feels like… sand?
Whatever it is, my poor nose doesn't have time to deal with that right now so I just let it go and focus on getting the concrete in the middle to push itself outwards, displacing the concrete already there up and forming it into a thin wall encompassing the new hole and my slide. Then I immediately recast [Cleanse] because ewww.
1…2…3…4…5… I give the air a sniff.
Better!
I still [Mana Shaping] another [Cleanse] into the entire space to make sure I got it all because, again, ewww.
I also [Cleanse] myself on general principle.
Okay, now I can investigate the sand.
Pulling out my flashlight, I turn it on and peer at the base of my wall.
Yup, looks like a layer of packed sand alright. Well, this part here is pretty shaken up now, but I'm guessing it was packed down tight when it had a house pushing down on top of it. Probably meant to make the base flat or something.
The feedback I get from the spell when I [Manashaping] another [Stoneshape] on the next half meter-ish chunk of stone seems to confirm that theory. Packed sand followed by solid rock that is neither flat nor level.
…Non-porous rock.
As in rock that doesn't have a bunch of tiny air pockets to compact itself into.
So uh…
What do I do with it?
Not seeing any better options, I have the sand and stone all smoosh itself together into one solid piece and then repeat my earlier process of reverse-squeezing itself up the walls until I have a thicker wall around a deeper hole that is a bit narrower.
The original width of the hole was kind of excessive, so I could probably do that quite a few more times before it'd get claustrophobic in there but it still isn't really a sustainable disposal method.
Hmmm…
Option 1, I chuck it into the backyard behind me and hope no one wonders why there's a new boulder behind the house.
Option 2, I open a hole in my wall and push it out into the basement while my nose tries to commit ritualized seppuku.
Option 3, I… I… I've got nothing.
Option 2 sucks, but option 1's fail states include a higher likelihood of Skitter and I being shanghaied into the Wards so…
Another cast of [Stoneshape] opens a flat hole in the wall near the floor like a mail slot without a cover and then a second mana shaped one-
| Manashaping level up! |
…Oh?
| Mana Shaping 5 Alter spell AOE in better, subtle ways, 10 MP + spellcost Alter spell AOE in better, moderate ways, 30 MP + spellcost Aurify Unlocked Requirements: 10 Willpower Exp: 20/800 |
Wait. Aurify just magically unlocks at Mana Shaping five!? I thought I'd need to get it to 10 and then spend another point for that. Not that I'm complaining mind you.
| Aurify 1 Transform an AOE spell into a semi-permanent effect surrounding yourself, based upon the parameters of the Aurified spell. Increase an instantaneous spell to a 1 second duration in order to create an aura. Able to support 1 aura at a time. Exp: 0/10000 |
I resist the urge to- Oh, who am I kidding? I cackle like a fucking loon as I [Aurify] the everloving shit out of [Stoneshape]. Fuck designating a specific lump of stone as my target. Everything is my target!
As the vague feedback I was getting from the stone under my control spreads out to include all the dirt, sand, stone, and such within 5 meters, I reach out with that sense and pull a piece of the greyish stone that was below the sand out from the wall. I want to say it's granite but that would be pretending I have any idea what I'm talking about which would be silly when better options exist. Namely, having a golf ball sized piece of it float up to me because the whole area is part of Stoneshape's effect now.
…I probably could have been doing this the whole time if I'd thought to include some of the 'empty space' inside the hole as being part of the spell effect when Mana Shaping it.
Deciding to just call that a 'lesson learned, I flatten and smooth out the piece of rock until it resembles a decent skipping stone and then stuff it in my pocket for identification later. Yes, Imaginary-Sheldon, I'm going to talk to The Rock People.
That done, I turn my attention to the next question on the list. Namely, why do I have two holes-
Aw, fuck. I heard it as soon as I thought it.
But still, focusing on my new sense, I confirm that yes, there is indeed a second shaft- Nope! …excavation pit? Yes, there's a second excavation pit already cut into the stone a few meters to my left. It's much narrower than mine, only a few inches or so across to mine's somewhat-less-than-a-meter-now but it continues down beyond the point I can feel and it feels like it has some kind of tube shaped thing in it that isn't stone but almost counts?
Weird.
It's gotta be some kind of pipe, so… plastic, maybe? Or metal?
Metalshape is one of those sorta-separate-but-derived spells that comes from Stoneshape if I recall correctly. Like how Blink X is a prerequisite for Teleport even though Teleport is still a base spell.
But why would there be a pipe… oh. Was this house using well water? I didn't think city people did that. Isn't the whole point of putting up with having that many members of the public around, all the freaking time, that you get to have them handle all of that water and sewer systems nonsense for you?
Well whatever! I guess I'll use that as my guide for how deep I can go before I need to worry about getting wet.
Pulling up some more stone from below, I flatten out my side of the excavation pit and form a ladder to climb down.
Then I close the fuck out of the vent in the wall I forgot I opened and switch to pulsing out a [Cleanse] aura because holy shit does that-
Oh…
Oh no...
…I swear, if I find a gods damned septic tank down here I am going to introduce some people to Phagar.
Yes, I know I could just [Cleanse] it out of existence. That's not the point!
Cities are supposed to have working infrastructure!
PRT Officer: <Nervously> "Ma'am, I'm being told to ask you why you're rolling a giant boulder down the street."
Jane: <Angrily> "BECAUSE YOU PEOPLE ARE TAKING TOO DAMN LONG TO FIX THAT GODDAMNED POT HOLE!!"
9
New
Aetheron
Flinger of Spaghetti, Recorder of Results.
- Joined
- Oct 20, 2015
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"So, how was your day?" Danny asks as he puts his coat on the hook.
"Fine." Taylor looks up from her book briefly to shrug before going back to her reading.
Frowning as the silence stretches well past awkward, I sit up slowly so as to not break [Meditation] and look over the back of the couch at the two of them.
I wait for the conversation to continue.
And… wait…
And… wait.
Only, instead of continuing to talk, Taylor keeps reading and Danny starts to putter around the kitchen.
Well then!
Abandoning meditation, I stand up on the couch and put my hands on my hips to glare at Taylor. "Excuse me!?"
Danny startles, spinning around and obviously taking an extra half second to remember there's three people living in his house now before smiling apologetically "Sorry about that, Jane. I didn't see you there. How was your day?"
"Not you." I hold up one finger in a 'please wait' gesture as I step up onto the back of the couch and then quickly hop off of it to land in front of Taylor.
They tried to do this shit yesterday too and I let it slide then because yeah, 'fine' is probably being generous when it comes to describing how Taylor's typical day goes at that school.
I am not letting it slide today.
"Fine!?" I kick Taylor in the shin. "Your day was fine!?"
"Ow! Jane! What the-" Taylor tries to interrupt me but I just talk over her.
"You spent the entire day with me and all you have to say about it is fine!?" I kick her in the shin again before turning away and letting my hand fall as I stomp towards Danny to begin my demonstration of a proper answer. "My day was great, Uncle Danny! Taylor took me to the library. And then we went shopping on the boardwalk and I got a bunch of pretty crystals and some copper pipe for my art project and- MY BOOTS!" Spinning around, I race over to the stairs, scrambling up them on all fours to maximize the 'herd of elephants' effect. "You need to see my new boots!" I call over my shoulder through the railing as I go.
Grabbing the shopping bag with my new boots off of Taylor's bed, I spin around and head back, saving time by just leaping down the stairs.
…Ow? Okay, in retrospect that was probably not my brightest idea ever and should totally have hurt rather than just making my feet tingle briefly.
But also: Woo! Being able to regenerate HP and Mana later will net me a bunch of extra points of Meditation XP.
As an added bonus, the loud thump of my landing startles Danny and Taylor out of the weird staring contest they seemed to be having while I was gone.
"Behold!" I pull my new shiny black combat boots out of the bag and wave them around. "My boots!" Plopping myself back down onto the couch I pull them on and start bucking up the shiny metal buckles. "They have no laces and they make me, like, a whole inch-and-change taller than my shoes do. And!" I stand up and stomp into the kitchen, keeping a close eye on my feet because as hard as I'm hamming up my love for them I'm not actually used to walking in them yet and tripping over a flat surface would ruin my schtick here. "They make the best stompy noises when I walk around."
"That's…" Danny pauses briefly. "Very nice, Jane. Please don't break the floor."
"Oooh! Yeah!" I stop stomping to point at him. "I almost forgot to mention! They're steel toed too! So if any boys try to flirt with me I can break their shins!" I mime a kick. "Hiya!"
That finally gets a laugh out of Danny. "Did you two get up to anything else today?"
"Mmmm...Hmmm…" I nod. "We also went for our run. Which–" I glance at Taylor who's staring at me with a raised eyebrow and slightly widened eyes. "–Okay, I guess that part I'll allow you to describe as 'fine' since running around the block a bunch of times is basically just NASCAR but slower." Rolling my eyes at Taylor's blatantly obvious relief that I didn't tell Danny about any of the actually important stuff we did during our run, I vrrrrooommm around in a small leftwards circle to demonstrate the boring silliness that is NASCAR.
The rock lifts off the floor, reaches the edge of what I thought of as the spell effect, and then… keeps going?
"What? But…"
"Something wrong?" Taylor asks as she rolls over, leaning her face over the side of her bed to peer down at me.
I point to the rock floating in the air.
"...I thought you said you couldn't do that." She frowns.
"Yeah, I didn't think I… hmmm…" Suddenly suspicious, I cancel [Stoneshape] and-
The rock drops, bouncing off my forehead.
"...Ow."
Taylor lurches upright. "Did it just stop working because I-"
"Nah. My dumb ass just let herself get poked by the good-idea fairy."
Ignoring Taylor's amused snort, I recast [Stoneshape] at level one so that the entirety of the spell's effect is the rock with nothing left over. Then I will it back into the air.
The rock lifts off my pillow. It moves slowly, because level 1 and all, but it nonetheless floats its stupid rock ass up into the air where it has no business being.
"What the shit?" I glare at the rock, hovering above me. Not directly above my face this time. I can learn, thankyouverymuch. "Then why the fuck does [Telekinesis] even exist- oh, duh!" I smack myself on the forehead. "Not everything is made of stone, Jane."
Suddenly suspicious about how many of my other 'well, obviously I can't just do X' issues are self inflicted, I reshape the rock from resembling a golf ball into resembling a particularly short hotdog. Reaching up and grabbing the rock with both hands, I tug on it while willing it to remain still.
The rock doesn't move, even as I pull harder to the point of starting to lift my upper body off of my pile of blankets.
Cackling, I will the rock to rise, slowly pulling me into the air.
"Taylor, look!" I stage whisper, grinning at her as my face pulls level with hers and well aware that she's been staring at me the whole time. "I can-"
The spell ends, dumping me back down onto my nest.
...I can remember that using the level 1 version of the spell means it only lasts 1 minute.
Taylor leans her head over the edge of her bed again. "That didn't look even a little safe."
"Fuck safe!" I laugh. "I-"
There's a knock on the bedroom door. "Is everything okay in there?" The door opens and Uncle Danny sticks his head in. "I heard a loud bang."
"I'm fine!" I raise my hand and give him a thumbs up.
"Yeah, Dad. Jane's just… being Jane."
"Hey!" I scrabble to sit upright so I can glare up at Tayor properly. "Rude!"
"Ah." Danny just nods and goes along with his daughter's vicious slander. "Try not to break anything."
"Hey!" I shift my glare over to him. "I don't break things."
Taylor raises an eyebrow at me. "...The phone?"
I have no defense against such absurdly accurate statements so I make sure to keep my grumbling incoherent as I slump back down, crossing my arms over my chest. "Humph!"
Danny laughs. "Have a good night, girls." I hear the door close and then footsteps moving away.
Taylor's face appears above me almost immediately, one finger held to her lips in a shushing gesture.
Her other hand holds up 3 fingers, then 2, then 1. "No flying around on rocks, Jane."
"What!? Why not?"
"People would think you're Rune."
"That's…" I frown. "Gods damn it!"
"THE ITSY BITSY ROCK WYRM CLIMBED UP THE WATER SPOUT!"
The next five meters or so of my excavation pit slowly float upwards, carrying me all the way to the top.
Separating off a disc of stone from the top and attaching it to the edges of the excavation pit, I park my butt on the bottom of my slide and begin displacing the rest of the stone out into the basement through the wall. I'll eventually want to circle back and smooth it down against the walls and floor so that it'll be somewhat less obvious what's happened if someone happens to look through the giant hole in the living room floor.
Or maybe just wait until I can [Teleport] it away?
Ugh! If only leveling [Blink] wasn't so gods-damned boring when you have to do it in secret. In Veird, I'd be blipping my way to and from school but noooo… I had to get isekai'd to Brockton fucking-
Wooooo…
My [Stoneshape] aura doesn't expand.
…oooo?
Huh.
I guess the [Aurified] range is derived from the 'medium amounts of stone' rather than the spell level?
Well, I shrug, I guess I'll find out if I'm right next level when medium becomes large. Whatever the case, dropping that stupid 'slowly' keyword at least makes the process of pushing the stone out into the basement way faster.
Standing back up and stretching, I form some stone into a pair of loops to hook my feet in, just in case, and then have my stone disc float back down at full speed.
…Meh. It's definitely faster, but it's not quite at freefalling roller coaster levels of wheee yet.
Ah well.
"DOWN CAME THE JANE AND PULSED HER AURA OUT!"
Pausing my descent the moment I feel the bottom of the pit enter my aura's range, I connect the disc to the surrounding stone so it won't go anywhere and switch over to aurifying [Cleanse] for a few seconds to make sure I can, you know, keep breathing and whatnot, before switching back to [Stoneshape.]
Dropping my disc all the way down to the 'floor' of my excavation pit, I take control of the rock below me and…
Waitaminute!
=Taylor!=
Squatting down to eke that little bit of extra penetration depth out of a lower center of mass, I confirm that yes, that is a transition to a different kind of rock I can feel happening at the edge of my aura. A different kind of porous rock.
=Taylor, I did it!=
Grabbing all the stone above that transition line with my aura, I start floating it back up to the top.
"AND THE ITSY BITSY ROCK WYRM CLIMBED UP THE SPOUT AGAIN!"
=Did… what, Jane?=
=Okay, first of all: Rude!= I start shunting the next load of rock into the basement while I try to slather 'I am incredibly offended, but also entirely kidding' all over my next message to my cousin. =You know I can feel that judgey 'oh gods, what did she do now?' vibe you packed into that question.=
=You were the one concerned about accidentally making a new lake, Jane.=
=...Fair.= I send her an impression of me shrugging. =But no. What I did was got all the way down to the aquifer without hitting a septic tank.=
=That's… good?=
=Yeah. And the water layer is way further down than I thought it would be.=
Shifting my disc into a ring, I send her my viewpoint as I turn on my flashlight. Shining it down into a dark abyss, the cheap light's failure to illuminate it properly winds up doing a wonderful job of making it very clear that this is a hole I can't see the bottom of.
=Well that's terrifying.=
=Eh. Even if I somehow fell in, I'd probably survive unless I took a header.=
600 point absorption [Ward] for the win!
Despite being my most recent purchase via last night's level up, [Ward] is probably going to reach level 10 first. At the very least, immediately marking it as a favored spell with Clarity made getting it to level 6 so I could give myself a personal forcefield obnoxiously easy.
How did OG Jane's song go? Ward every morning! Ward every night! Uh… Ward Ward Ward, after every fight?
I'll… work on that last bit.
I mean, sure, [Ward] being so easy to power level makes assigning my other favored spell to Blink so I can get Teleport sooner so fucking tempting but… ce la vie! In this land that Registrars forgot, I can't just go get a quest to fix it later so I'm just going to have to suck it up and wait until I can favor Teleport.
=I was more talking about the fact that you did that in under an hour, Jane.=
=I mean… I worked on it yesterday too.=
=Yeah, for like 15 minutes.=
=Excuse you!= I pout. =I mean, yeah, now that you mention it I am feeling pretty wiped out.= Closing the hole in my disc, I cut [Stoneshape] and sit down on my slide again to rest. =But! Being painfully accurate is no excuse for calling my power a quickshot! Do I make fun of your lack of stamina when we're out running?=
=That's not…= I get a mental image of Taylor pinching the bridge of her nose while a distinct feeling of 'I don't want to know' blasts across the connection. =What I meant, was that I kind of assumed you were exaggerating about the lake.=
=Ooooh… yeah, no. Sinkholes are terrifying= I send her what I remember of that video online where this whole section of some street just suddenly up and drops out of existence, cars and all. =I do not want to cause one of… Oh, hmmm.=
Actually… that's not the worst idea for how to handle things if Noelle is already in Coil's base when I find it.
=Jane, no! Whatever it is, no.=
"Fine." Taylor looks up from her book briefly to shrug before going back to her reading.
Frowning as the silence stretches well past awkward, I sit up slowly so as to not break [Meditation] and look over the back of the couch at the two of them.
I wait for the conversation to continue.
And… wait…
And… wait.
Only, instead of continuing to talk, Taylor keeps reading and Danny starts to putter around the kitchen.
Well then!
Abandoning meditation, I stand up on the couch and put my hands on my hips to glare at Taylor. "Excuse me!?"
Danny startles, spinning around and obviously taking an extra half second to remember there's three people living in his house now before smiling apologetically "Sorry about that, Jane. I didn't see you there. How was your day?"
"Not you." I hold up one finger in a 'please wait' gesture as I step up onto the back of the couch and then quickly hop off of it to land in front of Taylor.
They tried to do this shit yesterday too and I let it slide then because yeah, 'fine' is probably being generous when it comes to describing how Taylor's typical day goes at that school.
I am not letting it slide today.
"Fine!?" I kick Taylor in the shin. "Your day was fine!?"
"Ow! Jane! What the-" Taylor tries to interrupt me but I just talk over her.
"You spent the entire day with me and all you have to say about it is fine!?" I kick her in the shin again before turning away and letting my hand fall as I stomp towards Danny to begin my demonstration of a proper answer. "My day was great, Uncle Danny! Taylor took me to the library. And then we went shopping on the boardwalk and I got a bunch of pretty crystals and some copper pipe for my art project and- MY BOOTS!" Spinning around, I race over to the stairs, scrambling up them on all fours to maximize the 'herd of elephants' effect. "You need to see my new boots!" I call over my shoulder through the railing as I go.
Grabbing the shopping bag with my new boots off of Taylor's bed, I spin around and head back, saving time by just leaping down the stairs.
| Fell for 35 HP damage! |
…Ow? Okay, in retrospect that was probably not my brightest idea ever and should totally have hurt rather than just making my feet tingle briefly.
But also: Woo! Being able to regenerate HP and Mana later will net me a bunch of extra points of Meditation XP.
As an added bonus, the loud thump of my landing startles Danny and Taylor out of the weird staring contest they seemed to be having while I was gone.
"Behold!" I pull my new shiny black combat boots out of the bag and wave them around. "My boots!" Plopping myself back down onto the couch I pull them on and start bucking up the shiny metal buckles. "They have no laces and they make me, like, a whole inch-and-change taller than my shoes do. And!" I stand up and stomp into the kitchen, keeping a close eye on my feet because as hard as I'm hamming up my love for them I'm not actually used to walking in them yet and tripping over a flat surface would ruin my schtick here. "They make the best stompy noises when I walk around."
"That's…" Danny pauses briefly. "Very nice, Jane. Please don't break the floor."
"Oooh! Yeah!" I stop stomping to point at him. "I almost forgot to mention! They're steel toed too! So if any boys try to flirt with me I can break their shins!" I mime a kick. "Hiya!"
That finally gets a laugh out of Danny. "Did you two get up to anything else today?"
"Mmmm...Hmmm…" I nod. "We also went for our run. Which–" I glance at Taylor who's staring at me with a raised eyebrow and slightly widened eyes. "–Okay, I guess that part I'll allow you to describe as 'fine' since running around the block a bunch of times is basically just NASCAR but slower." Rolling my eyes at Taylor's blatantly obvious relief that I didn't tell Danny about any of the actually important stuff we did during our run, I vrrrrooommm around in a small leftwards circle to demonstrate the boring silliness that is NASCAR.
The rock lifts off the floor, reaches the edge of what I thought of as the spell effect, and then… keeps going?
"What? But…"
"Something wrong?" Taylor asks as she rolls over, leaning her face over the side of her bed to peer down at me.
I point to the rock floating in the air.
"...I thought you said you couldn't do that." She frowns.
"Yeah, I didn't think I… hmmm…" Suddenly suspicious, I cancel [Stoneshape] and-
The rock drops, bouncing off my forehead.
| Crit for 5 HP damage! |
"...Ow."
Taylor lurches upright. "Did it just stop working because I-"
"Nah. My dumb ass just let herself get poked by the good-idea fairy."
Ignoring Taylor's amused snort, I recast [Stoneshape] at level one so that the entirety of the spell's effect is the rock with nothing left over. Then I will it back into the air.
The rock lifts off my pillow. It moves slowly, because level 1 and all, but it nonetheless floats its stupid rock ass up into the air where it has no business being.
"What the shit?" I glare at the rock, hovering above me. Not directly above my face this time. I can learn, thankyouverymuch. "Then why the fuck does [Telekinesis] even exist- oh, duh!" I smack myself on the forehead. "Not everything is made of stone, Jane."
Suddenly suspicious about how many of my other 'well, obviously I can't just do X' issues are self inflicted, I reshape the rock from resembling a golf ball into resembling a particularly short hotdog. Reaching up and grabbing the rock with both hands, I tug on it while willing it to remain still.
The rock doesn't move, even as I pull harder to the point of starting to lift my upper body off of my pile of blankets.
Cackling, I will the rock to rise, slowly pulling me into the air.
"Taylor, look!" I stage whisper, grinning at her as my face pulls level with hers and well aware that she's been staring at me the whole time. "I can-"
The spell ends, dumping me back down onto my nest.
| Fell for 3 HP damage! |
...I can remember that using the level 1 version of the spell means it only lasts 1 minute.
Taylor leans her head over the edge of her bed again. "That didn't look even a little safe."
"Fuck safe!" I laugh. "I-"
There's a knock on the bedroom door. "Is everything okay in there?" The door opens and Uncle Danny sticks his head in. "I heard a loud bang."
"I'm fine!" I raise my hand and give him a thumbs up.
"Yeah, Dad. Jane's just… being Jane."
"Hey!" I scrabble to sit upright so I can glare up at Tayor properly. "Rude!"
"Ah." Danny just nods and goes along with his daughter's vicious slander. "Try not to break anything."
"Hey!" I shift my glare over to him. "I don't break things."
Taylor raises an eyebrow at me. "...The phone?"
I have no defense against such absurdly accurate statements so I make sure to keep my grumbling incoherent as I slump back down, crossing my arms over my chest. "Humph!"
Danny laughs. "Have a good night, girls." I hear the door close and then footsteps moving away.
Taylor's face appears above me almost immediately, one finger held to her lips in a shushing gesture.
Her other hand holds up 3 fingers, then 2, then 1. "No flying around on rocks, Jane."
"What!? Why not?"
"People would think you're Rune."
"That's…" I frown. "Gods damn it!"
"THE ITSY BITSY ROCK WYRM CLIMBED UP THE WATER SPOUT!"
The next five meters or so of my excavation pit slowly float upwards, carrying me all the way to the top.
Separating off a disc of stone from the top and attaching it to the edges of the excavation pit, I park my butt on the bottom of my slide and begin displacing the rest of the stone out into the basement through the wall. I'll eventually want to circle back and smooth it down against the walls and floor so that it'll be somewhat less obvious what's happened if someone happens to look through the giant hole in the living room floor.
Or maybe just wait until I can [Teleport] it away?
Ugh! If only leveling [Blink] wasn't so gods-damned boring when you have to do it in secret. In Veird, I'd be blipping my way to and from school but noooo… I had to get isekai'd to Brockton fucking-
| Stoneshape level up! |
Wooooo…
My [Stoneshape] aura doesn't expand.
…oooo?
| Stoneshape 6, 1 minute per level, medium range, 35 MP Move medium amounts of stone and sand around you for 1 minute per level of Stoneshape, OR gain fine control over small amounts of stone and sand. Exp: 2/1300 |
Huh.
I guess the [Aurified] range is derived from the 'medium amounts of stone' rather than the spell level?
Well, I shrug, I guess I'll find out if I'm right next level when medium becomes large. Whatever the case, dropping that stupid 'slowly' keyword at least makes the process of pushing the stone out into the basement way faster.
Standing back up and stretching, I form some stone into a pair of loops to hook my feet in, just in case, and then have my stone disc float back down at full speed.
…Meh. It's definitely faster, but it's not quite at freefalling roller coaster levels of wheee yet.
Ah well.
"DOWN CAME THE JANE AND PULSED HER AURA OUT!"
Pausing my descent the moment I feel the bottom of the pit enter my aura's range, I connect the disc to the surrounding stone so it won't go anywhere and switch over to aurifying [Cleanse] for a few seconds to make sure I can, you know, keep breathing and whatnot, before switching back to [Stoneshape.]
Dropping my disc all the way down to the 'floor' of my excavation pit, I take control of the rock below me and…
Waitaminute!
=Taylor!=
Squatting down to eke that little bit of extra penetration depth out of a lower center of mass, I confirm that yes, that is a transition to a different kind of rock I can feel happening at the edge of my aura. A different kind of porous rock.
=Taylor, I did it!=
Grabbing all the stone above that transition line with my aura, I start floating it back up to the top.
"AND THE ITSY BITSY ROCK WYRM CLIMBED UP THE SPOUT AGAIN!"
=Did… what, Jane?=
=Okay, first of all: Rude!= I start shunting the next load of rock into the basement while I try to slather 'I am incredibly offended, but also entirely kidding' all over my next message to my cousin. =You know I can feel that judgey 'oh gods, what did she do now?' vibe you packed into that question.=
=You were the one concerned about accidentally making a new lake, Jane.=
=...Fair.= I send her an impression of me shrugging. =But no. What I did was got all the way down to the aquifer without hitting a septic tank.=
=That's… good?=
=Yeah. And the water layer is way further down than I thought it would be.=
Shifting my disc into a ring, I send her my viewpoint as I turn on my flashlight. Shining it down into a dark abyss, the cheap light's failure to illuminate it properly winds up doing a wonderful job of making it very clear that this is a hole I can't see the bottom of.
=Well that's terrifying.=
=Eh. Even if I somehow fell in, I'd probably survive unless I took a header.=
600 point absorption [Ward] for the win!
Despite being my most recent purchase via last night's level up, [Ward] is probably going to reach level 10 first. At the very least, immediately marking it as a favored spell with Clarity made getting it to level 6 so I could give myself a personal forcefield obnoxiously easy.
How did OG Jane's song go? Ward every morning! Ward every night! Uh… Ward Ward Ward, after every fight?
I'll… work on that last bit.
I mean, sure, [Ward] being so easy to power level makes assigning my other favored spell to Blink so I can get Teleport sooner so fucking tempting but… ce la vie! In this land that Registrars forgot, I can't just go get a quest to fix it later so I'm just going to have to suck it up and wait until I can favor Teleport.
=I was more talking about the fact that you did that in under an hour, Jane.=
=I mean… I worked on it yesterday too.=
=Yeah, for like 15 minutes.=
=Excuse you!= I pout. =I mean, yeah, now that you mention it I am feeling pretty wiped out.= Closing the hole in my disc, I cut [Stoneshape] and sit down on my slide again to rest. =But! Being painfully accurate is no excuse for calling my power a quickshot! Do I make fun of your lack of stamina when we're out running?=
=That's not…= I get a mental image of Taylor pinching the bridge of her nose while a distinct feeling of 'I don't want to know' blasts across the connection. =What I meant, was that I kind of assumed you were exaggerating about the lake.=
=Ooooh… yeah, no. Sinkholes are terrifying= I send her what I remember of that video online where this whole section of some street just suddenly up and drops out of existence, cars and all. =I do not want to cause one of… Oh, hmmm.=
Actually… that's not the worst idea for how to handle things if Noelle is already in Coil's base when I find it.
=Jane, no! Whatever it is, no.=
Last edited:
The Unicorn
Well worn.
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Jane, Yes. That sounds like a very cool scene, especially if it doesn't work
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Aetheron
Flinger of Spaghetti, Recorder of Results.
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"Good morning, Shoulder-Angel! Happy Monday!" Sliding into my seat, I wave to Aisha before turning to Missy and waving to her. "And to you as well, Shoulder-Devil."
Missy frowns at me, but Aisha starts laughing. "How the fuck am I the Angel?"
"Uh, no offence–" I turn back to gesture at her… everything, really. "–to your 'street cred' or whatever you cool kids call it here but have you seen Missy?" I Vanna White at the girl in question. "Total 'violence solves everything' vibes and-"
"Hey!" Missy protests, poking me in the arm. "I am not violent!"
"Okay, first: Ow!" I pout at her, rubbing my arm and hamming up how much her poke hurt as hard as I can before turning back to Aisha. "And yeah, I guess warrior angels are a thing too, but!" I point at Missy. "You'll notice she didn't object to being the Shoulder-Devil, just to the idea that violence was her only qualification for the job." I switch to pointing at Aisha. "Way more importantly though, your name starts with A and Missy's doesn't even have one."
"Byron, Missy!" The teacher calls.
"Here!" Missy answers.
Oh jeezus, that's how we take attendance here? Why are we even seated alphabetically then?
Whatever.
"Anyway… speaking of violently having things…" I poke Missy in the arm. "What gym-"
"Flatt, Jane!"
"Rude!" I mock-glare at the teacher. "We can't all be Aisha!"
Missy makes a face but Aisha starts cackling behind me as the teacher and I stare at each other.
Unlike the teacher though, I have a conversation I want to get back to, so I let her win this one with a sigh. "...Physically present!"
I turn back to Missy as the teacher moves on. "What gym do you go to?"
"I…" Missys' eyes widen a little. "I don't?"
Why is she… oh, whoops! She probably uses one in the PRT building. Right.
Re-direct question? Or tease the shit out of her?
…Both!
"Really? What do you do then?" I reach over and squeeze her arm. "Accidentally trip and fall into gun shows wallet first every weekend?"
"...Really, Jane?" Missy's expression of mostly-concealed panic relaxes into exasperation. "I just… exercise." She pokes my arm. "And you're one to talk."
"Yeah." I flex my arm as stereotypically as possible, inviting Missy to give it a squeeze. "And I want to stay this way. Hence talking to you about whether or not the gym you go to is any good."
I'm not actually sure if staying in shape really matters given the way my stats work, but I'm also not sure that it doesn't. And it's not like I've had any luck making a proper stat item. I know Erick used [Ward] for color masks and stuff but I'm clearly forgetting something because even having successfully narrowed down the correct shade of red for Strength, my best result only gave me a single point before shattering just as immediately and enthusiastically as all of its predecessors.
"Yo." Aisha calls out behind me as a foot, which I hope also belongs to Aisha, nudges my butt. "If you two are done-"
The bell rings.
Aisha sighs, and we all grab our backpacks and head to the door as quickly as we can to beat the rush.
Once the awkwardly long bell finally stops, Aisha tries again as we navigate the complicated task of fitting three tween girls who're all trying to be first through a standard adult size door without any casualties. "If you two are done fondling each other, my dad runs a gym."
"Really?" I have no idea if my acting skills are up to the task of pretending I totally didn't know that so I use my favorite spell: Distraction! "You know," I reach out and squeeze her arm, "if you were feeling left out you can just say so. I'm sure Missy would be happy to fondle you too."
"Jane!" Missy squeaks.
Ruth's voice cuts in from behind us before I can respond. "The fuck is wrong with you people?"
"Ruth!" I abandon Aisha's arm in favor of spinning around and pointing my finger at Ruth's face accusingly. A quick [Scry] aimed out the back of my head letting me keep heading towards class without the risk of slamming into a door frame. "There is nothing wrong with wanting to stay in shape!" Speeding up just enough that I can see all three of them. I give Ruth a quick once over and then side-eye Aisha as blatantly as I can. "Even if the girl who claims her dad runs a gym is the squishiest one here."
"Squishy?"
"Hey." I hold up my hands placatingly even as I continue teasing her. "I'm sure you give the best hugs."
"Squishy!?" Aisha doesn't seem to want to be placated. Uh, actually she might really be mad at me.
"Aisha." I drop the teasing tone. "I'm not calling you-" I stop, taking a deep breath in and then out before I can utter the word 'fat' near an already incensed tween girl. "I only meant that, like, out of the four of us–" I gesture broadly at our little group as I walk backwards into our Algebra classroom. "–we only have a single pair of boobs."
And unlike my cousin, I'm perfectly fine with this state of affairs.
…Though apparently Ruth and Missy aren't, given the way they're crossing their arms over their chests and glaring at me.
Well, Missy is glaring at me. Ruth is glaring at Aisha, which is, granted, pretty much their usual method of interaction for most of the short time I've known them apart from Ruth's eyes being aimed a little lower at the moment.
"So! As I was saying." I shrug 'helplessly' at them and recast my favorite spell. "My sister-cousin and I are looking for a gym."
Neither Ruth or Missy react at all, but Aisha squints at me suspiciously. "Hol'up… Your what?" She asks, her tone making breaking the others out of whatever silly tweenie-bopper self-esteem spiral their thoughts had gotten stuck in as they questioningly glance first at her and then at me.
Distraction successful!
"Looking for a gym." I repeat, willfully misunderstanding the question even as I feel the giggles threatening to crack my composure. "Is your dad's any good?"
The urge to telepathically blast banjo noises into their brains is strong, but I resist the impulse by reminding myself that doing so would be, you know, a terrible idea many, many, times over unless I want to join the crazy train that is New Wave.
"DOWN WENT THE JANE AND- Ugh." I gag. "Why does my hole smell like shit again?"
…PHRASING!
Double ugh! Why is my brain like this?
Locking my disc in place and switching my aura to [Cleanse] quickly purges the stench that's invaded my excavation pit. Sadly, it does nothing to purge my memory of my brain's uncomfortable word choice tendencies.
Re-engaging [Stoneshape] and riding my disc back up, I pay closer attention to the stone around me. I don't feel any cracks or gaps in the walls that would let the smell from the basement leak in, even when I switch to the version of the spell that allows for fine control in exchange for a much tighter aura. The wall does shift a little bit in a few places as I work my way downwards using that tighter aura to try to firm up the wall though so maybe this is a perception issue?
How would I even fix that? [Ultrasight] maybe? Or more likely some tier 2 spell that merges [Ultrasight] with [Stoneshape]?
Such informative. Many helpful. Wow.
Seriously, if I didn't already know what Ultrasight did that wouldn't explain a thing.
…Ugh, no.
Well…
Okay, so it isn't 1 HP per second like I expected it to be so… maybe? I'll put a pin in that one until I get home and can look over my projected build.
Not that I have the HP regen to support even that for very long unless I'm Meditating, but given how much of what I do involves looking around with [Scry]... being able to see better might be worth it?
Whatever. That's a future-Jane problem.
For now, hopefully the 'fine control' smoothing fixes whatever leak is letting in that smell.
On which note, ugh, I pause again to [Mana Shaping] a [Cleanse] before finally reaching the bott-
A couple meters above the transition line, I hear a splashy noise as my disc suddenly and, given that water is effectively invisible to my stonestense, without warning, plows into said water. Even though I was already slowing down, I can't react fast enough to stop myself and I can hear the now pressurized water fountain up around the edges of my disc, where it sprays all over me and- Oh gods the water smells even worse.
Moving my disc back up and immediately [Mana Shaping] another [Cleanse] before I even finish locking it in place—
Yeah, yeah. Whatever. Go away.
[Telepathy]!
=Hey, Taylor…=
=...What did you do?=
=Rude!=
=...What happened?=
=I went to the dig site on the way ho–=
=By yourself!?=
=–me from sch- Hey! What's that supposed to mean? I'm short, not a baby.=
=Uh huh. What happened?=
=Right, so, I uh… I found the water table a little sooner and far more enthusiastically than I planned to and long story short: Can you bring me a spare change of clothes?=
I feel Taylor sigh over the connection. =I'll be there in a little bit.=
=Awesome! Thank you.=
Doo dooo… Waiting for Taylor. Doo doooo…
Growing bored almost immediately and figuring I might as well make the most of my time, I go back to working on our lair.
Pulling the collar of my shirt up over my nose and digging out my flashlight out of my pocket, I shine it downwards as I spin my [Stoneshape] aura back up and shift the disc into a ring.
…Yup. That is definitely where the stench is coming from. Also, and this might just be my imagination, but I'm pretty sure the water is slowly bubbling too, which cannot possibly be a good sign.
=Hey, Taylor.= I send her what I'm seeing and, because misery loves company, smelling before closing the hole back up and recasting [Cleanse]. =I have a new theory on why the house was condemned.=
=That's…= Taylor abandons words in favor of sending me an impression of dry heaving. =That's lovely, Jane. Thank you for sharing.=
=You're welcome!=
Now… What to do about the water?
Starting with the simplest solution, I try just pushing my disc down without leaving any gaps at the sides.
It works, for a little while, but eventually the pressure pushing back slows me down and… Yeah, I'm not moving anymore.
Okay then. I guess this is the floor now?
Well, no. I want way more than just a few inches of stone between me and that stench.
Switching my aura back to the larger but less precise version, I pick out a spot about another meter up and have an arched doorway slide out of it and form into a new disc for me to ride upwards until I'm level with it.
"THE ITSY BITSY ROCK WYRM FLOWED OUT OF the… wall- Er."
Pausing my tunnelling efforts, I look upwards and double check that actually I'm facing…
Well, shit. I can barely see the light up there let alone tell which way is which from here.
Riding my new disc back up, I start re-forming the ladder on the slide side of the tunnel. Which, I guess I needed to do this anyway in case Taylor ever needed to get in or out without… me…
I pause, floating myself up further and looking at the slide coming in from the outside and leading directly to a giant hole in the ground.
Yeah… I have no idea what OSHAs rules are on things like this, but I am 100% sure this doesn't meet them.
Shifting the slide into something more like a step ladder or a steep staircase, I carve a fall hazard warning into each and every step. I also add some obvious hand holds along the side and… I'm still going to find some dumbass kid's body at the bottom some day if I don't fill this in, aren't I?
…Maybe [Ward] mixed with [Force Wall] to make a barrier that won't let anyone but me or Taylor in?
Or I can just suck it up and cast [Blink] the bajillion more times it'll take me to get [Teleport] and then we won't need an actual physical entrance.
Bah! I'll figure it out when I'm not freezing my ass off in soggy clothes and low on mana besides.
For now, I just lock my disc in place and wrap a temperature [Ward] around me set to a nice and comfy 70ish degrees.
Then I sit my tired ass down to [Meditate] because being OOM sucks.
Missy frowns at me, but Aisha starts laughing. "How the fuck am I the Angel?"
"Uh, no offence–" I turn back to gesture at her… everything, really. "–to your 'street cred' or whatever you cool kids call it here but have you seen Missy?" I Vanna White at the girl in question. "Total 'violence solves everything' vibes and-"
"Hey!" Missy protests, poking me in the arm. "I am not violent!"
"Okay, first: Ow!" I pout at her, rubbing my arm and hamming up how much her poke hurt as hard as I can before turning back to Aisha. "And yeah, I guess warrior angels are a thing too, but!" I point at Missy. "You'll notice she didn't object to being the Shoulder-Devil, just to the idea that violence was her only qualification for the job." I switch to pointing at Aisha. "Way more importantly though, your name starts with A and Missy's doesn't even have one."
"Byron, Missy!" The teacher calls.
"Here!" Missy answers.
Oh jeezus, that's how we take attendance here? Why are we even seated alphabetically then?
Whatever.
"Anyway… speaking of violently having things…" I poke Missy in the arm. "What gym-"
"Flatt, Jane!"
"Rude!" I mock-glare at the teacher. "We can't all be Aisha!"
Missy makes a face but Aisha starts cackling behind me as the teacher and I stare at each other.
Unlike the teacher though, I have a conversation I want to get back to, so I let her win this one with a sigh. "...Physically present!"
I turn back to Missy as the teacher moves on. "What gym do you go to?"
"I…" Missys' eyes widen a little. "I don't?"
Why is she… oh, whoops! She probably uses one in the PRT building. Right.
Re-direct question? Or tease the shit out of her?
…Both!
"Really? What do you do then?" I reach over and squeeze her arm. "Accidentally trip and fall into gun shows wallet first every weekend?"
"...Really, Jane?" Missy's expression of mostly-concealed panic relaxes into exasperation. "I just… exercise." She pokes my arm. "And you're one to talk."
"Yeah." I flex my arm as stereotypically as possible, inviting Missy to give it a squeeze. "And I want to stay this way. Hence talking to you about whether or not the gym you go to is any good."
I'm not actually sure if staying in shape really matters given the way my stats work, but I'm also not sure that it doesn't. And it's not like I've had any luck making a proper stat item. I know Erick used [Ward] for color masks and stuff but I'm clearly forgetting something because even having successfully narrowed down the correct shade of red for Strength, my best result only gave me a single point before shattering just as immediately and enthusiastically as all of its predecessors.
"Yo." Aisha calls out behind me as a foot, which I hope also belongs to Aisha, nudges my butt. "If you two are done-"
The bell rings.
Aisha sighs, and we all grab our backpacks and head to the door as quickly as we can to beat the rush.
Once the awkwardly long bell finally stops, Aisha tries again as we navigate the complicated task of fitting three tween girls who're all trying to be first through a standard adult size door without any casualties. "If you two are done fondling each other, my dad runs a gym."
"Really?" I have no idea if my acting skills are up to the task of pretending I totally didn't know that so I use my favorite spell: Distraction! "You know," I reach out and squeeze her arm, "if you were feeling left out you can just say so. I'm sure Missy would be happy to fondle you too."
"Jane!" Missy squeaks.
Ruth's voice cuts in from behind us before I can respond. "The fuck is wrong with you people?"
"Ruth!" I abandon Aisha's arm in favor of spinning around and pointing my finger at Ruth's face accusingly. A quick [Scry] aimed out the back of my head letting me keep heading towards class without the risk of slamming into a door frame. "There is nothing wrong with wanting to stay in shape!" Speeding up just enough that I can see all three of them. I give Ruth a quick once over and then side-eye Aisha as blatantly as I can. "Even if the girl who claims her dad runs a gym is the squishiest one here."
"Squishy?"
"Hey." I hold up my hands placatingly even as I continue teasing her. "I'm sure you give the best hugs."
"Squishy!?" Aisha doesn't seem to want to be placated. Uh, actually she might really be mad at me.
"Aisha." I drop the teasing tone. "I'm not calling you-" I stop, taking a deep breath in and then out before I can utter the word 'fat' near an already incensed tween girl. "I only meant that, like, out of the four of us–" I gesture broadly at our little group as I walk backwards into our Algebra classroom. "–we only have a single pair of boobs."
And unlike my cousin, I'm perfectly fine with this state of affairs.
…Though apparently Ruth and Missy aren't, given the way they're crossing their arms over their chests and glaring at me.
Well, Missy is glaring at me. Ruth is glaring at Aisha, which is, granted, pretty much their usual method of interaction for most of the short time I've known them apart from Ruth's eyes being aimed a little lower at the moment.
"So! As I was saying." I shrug 'helplessly' at them and recast my favorite spell. "My sister-cousin and I are looking for a gym."
Neither Ruth or Missy react at all, but Aisha squints at me suspiciously. "Hol'up… Your what?" She asks, her tone making breaking the others out of whatever silly tweenie-bopper self-esteem spiral their thoughts had gotten stuck in as they questioningly glance first at her and then at me.
Distraction successful!
"Looking for a gym." I repeat, willfully misunderstanding the question even as I feel the giggles threatening to crack my composure. "Is your dad's any good?"
The urge to telepathically blast banjo noises into their brains is strong, but I resist the impulse by reminding myself that doing so would be, you know, a terrible idea many, many, times over unless I want to join the crazy train that is New Wave.
"DOWN WENT THE JANE AND- Ugh." I gag. "Why does my hole smell like shit again?"
…PHRASING!
Double ugh! Why is my brain like this?
Locking my disc in place and switching my aura to [Cleanse] quickly purges the stench that's invaded my excavation pit. Sadly, it does nothing to purge my memory of my brain's uncomfortable word choice tendencies.
Re-engaging [Stoneshape] and riding my disc back up, I pay closer attention to the stone around me. I don't feel any cracks or gaps in the walls that would let the smell from the basement leak in, even when I switch to the version of the spell that allows for fine control in exchange for a much tighter aura. The wall does shift a little bit in a few places as I work my way downwards using that tighter aura to try to firm up the wall though so maybe this is a perception issue?
How would I even fix that? [Ultrasight] maybe? Or more likely some tier 2 spell that merges [Ultrasight] with [Stoneshape]?
| Ultrasight 1, 1 HP per minute. See clearly Purchase [Ultrasight 1] for 1 point? Yes/No |
Such informative. Many helpful. Wow.
Seriously, if I didn't already know what Ultrasight did that wouldn't explain a thing.
…Ugh, no.
Well…
Okay, so it isn't 1 HP per second like I expected it to be so… maybe? I'll put a pin in that one until I get home and can look over my projected build.
Not that I have the HP regen to support even that for very long unless I'm Meditating, but given how much of what I do involves looking around with [Scry]... being able to see better might be worth it?
Whatever. That's a future-Jane problem.
For now, hopefully the 'fine control' smoothing fixes whatever leak is letting in that smell.
On which note, ugh, I pause again to [Mana Shaping] a [Cleanse] before finally reaching the bott-
A couple meters above the transition line, I hear a splashy noise as my disc suddenly and, given that water is effectively invisible to my stonestense, without warning, plows into said water. Even though I was already slowing down, I can't react fast enough to stop myself and I can hear the now pressurized water fountain up around the edges of my disc, where it sprays all over me and- Oh gods the water smells even worse.
Moving my disc back up and immediately [Mana Shaping] another [Cleanse] before I even finish locking it in place—
| Cleanse level up! |
Yeah, yeah. Whatever. Go away.
[Telepathy]!
=Hey, Taylor…=
=...What did you do?=
=Rude!=
=...What happened?=
=I went to the dig site on the way ho–=
=By yourself!?=
=–me from sch- Hey! What's that supposed to mean? I'm short, not a baby.=
=Uh huh. What happened?=
=Right, so, I uh… I found the water table a little sooner and far more enthusiastically than I planned to and long story short: Can you bring me a spare change of clothes?=
I feel Taylor sigh over the connection. =I'll be there in a little bit.=
=Awesome! Thank you.=
Doo dooo… Waiting for Taylor. Doo doooo…
Growing bored almost immediately and figuring I might as well make the most of my time, I go back to working on our lair.
Pulling the collar of my shirt up over my nose and digging out my flashlight out of my pocket, I shine it downwards as I spin my [Stoneshape] aura back up and shift the disc into a ring.
…Yup. That is definitely where the stench is coming from. Also, and this might just be my imagination, but I'm pretty sure the water is slowly bubbling too, which cannot possibly be a good sign.
=Hey, Taylor.= I send her what I'm seeing and, because misery loves company, smelling before closing the hole back up and recasting [Cleanse]. =I have a new theory on why the house was condemned.=
=That's…= Taylor abandons words in favor of sending me an impression of dry heaving. =That's lovely, Jane. Thank you for sharing.=
=You're welcome!=
Now… What to do about the water?
Starting with the simplest solution, I try just pushing my disc down without leaving any gaps at the sides.
It works, for a little while, but eventually the pressure pushing back slows me down and… Yeah, I'm not moving anymore.
Okay then. I guess this is the floor now?
Well, no. I want way more than just a few inches of stone between me and that stench.
Switching my aura back to the larger but less precise version, I pick out a spot about another meter up and have an arched doorway slide out of it and form into a new disc for me to ride upwards until I'm level with it.
"THE ITSY BITSY ROCK WYRM FLOWED OUT OF the… wall- Er."
Pausing my tunnelling efforts, I look upwards and double check that actually I'm facing…
Well, shit. I can barely see the light up there let alone tell which way is which from here.
Riding my new disc back up, I start re-forming the ladder on the slide side of the tunnel. Which, I guess I needed to do this anyway in case Taylor ever needed to get in or out without… me…
I pause, floating myself up further and looking at the slide coming in from the outside and leading directly to a giant hole in the ground.
Yeah… I have no idea what OSHAs rules are on things like this, but I am 100% sure this doesn't meet them.
Shifting the slide into something more like a step ladder or a steep staircase, I carve a fall hazard warning into each and every step. I also add some obvious hand holds along the side and… I'm still going to find some dumbass kid's body at the bottom some day if I don't fill this in, aren't I?
…Maybe [Ward] mixed with [Force Wall] to make a barrier that won't let anyone but me or Taylor in?
Or I can just suck it up and cast [Blink] the bajillion more times it'll take me to get [Teleport] and then we won't need an actual physical entrance.
Bah! I'll figure it out when I'm not freezing my ass off in soggy clothes and low on mana besides.
For now, I just lock my disc in place and wrap a temperature [Ward] around me set to a nice and comfy 70ish degrees.
Then I sit my tired ass down to [Meditate] because being OOM sucks.
11
New
Aetheron
Flinger of Spaghetti, Recorder of Results.
- Joined
- Oct 20, 2015
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I raise my left hand. Be the me that raised her right hand instead!
[Blink]
The world flickers midnight blue as I blip upwards a few inches. Gravity, heartless bitch she may be, is at least impartial enough to still reach up and yoink me back down even when it's helpful, thus returning me to my starting position on Taylor's bed with a soft wumph.
[Blink]
Wumph.
Oh, come on. I stare at my left hand, still raised in the air. Be the me that raised her right hand instead!
[Blink]
Wumph.
Left hand is still raised.
Sigh… What is the point of mostly remembering how Ar'kendi-whatever teleportation spells work thematically if I can't apply it?
[Blink]
Wumph.
[Blink]
Wumph.
Ugh. On Veird I could at least do this in public. Could probably even grab a bunch of other freshly matriculated kids and play [Blink]-tag or something, but no… I had to isekai into Brockton fucking Bay.
[Blink]
Wumph.
Hell, even if I'd just arrived here sometime other than fucking Winter, then I could at least be doing this out in the woods or something.
[Blink]
Wumph.
Still my left hand in the air rather than my right.
[Blink]
Wumph.
Well, whatever. I'll at least be able to level [Meditation] on the way to school. Pretty sure that'll put it at the point where I can cast or maintain small spells while using it. No more needing to toggle back and forth between it and Telepathy!
[Blink]
Wumph.
[Bli-
The spell fizzles as the door opens, startling me out of my routine, but it's just Taylor.
"Shower's all yours."
"Woo!"
I [Blink] higher, shifting my arm and twisting my body as I fall so that I come down on my butt and then bounce myself off the bed.
"Woah, hey." She sticks an arm out before I can dash around her. "Just a heads up, I think Dad used it while we were out for our run so the water was already getting cold before I even finished." She tells me, casually murdering my enthusiasm while fiddling with the towel wrapped around her head. "Sorry." She adds a moment later as if that's going to help me.
"Sigh!" I announce, saying the word out loud because I know it annoys her. "I guess I'll just use [Cleanse] again- wait. Wait. Hang on." A solution slowly occurs to me. "Waitaminute!"
Cackling, I dash off to the bathroom and shove a [Mana Shaped] temperature [Ward] as far into the shower head's throat as I can before setting the knob all the way to cold and turning it on.
Cackling intensifying at the sight of steam wafting out of the water, I stick my hand in to confirm.
"UNLIMITED HOT WATER!" Well, only for the next 24 hours or so but actually I'll need to cancel it before then or Danny might notice but still!
I take a step back from the tub. Deep breath in. Deep breath out. Be the me who's already naked. [Blink]
The world flickers midnight blue as I blip the foot or so back to the side of the tub.
"Your power is bullshit!" Taylor tells me.
"Taylor!" I whirl around, hands covering my- Er… I look down.
Damn. Still fully dressed. Er… well.
Okay, Blink, I guess I won't be mad at you for not doing what I wanted this time.
"Excuse you." I move my hands to my hips. "I'm trying to practice blipping out of my clothes here."
Taylor raises an eyebrow. "With the door wide open?"
"...shut up!"
"Ruth…" I sigh. "None of that has anything to do with- Oh…" I snap my fingers, pointing at her. "I get it now."
"Really now?" Aisha's glare shifts my way at my half-feigned 'Eureka' moment.
"Yup." I nod, grinning back at her. "Ruth doesn't hate black people, she hates poor people."
"What!? no-"
"You do though!"
"-I don't!"
"Everything you were complaining about:" I count them out on my fingers "The crime, the drugs, the 'smell,'" I airquote that last one, rolling my eyes, "all of that is-
"Miss Flatt," Mr Vernon interrupts me. "If you must talk during class, perhaps you would at least like to talk about the problem on the board?"
Tossing a [Scry] eye near the board so I don't have to break eye contact with Ruth, I look over the equation he's pointing at. "Seven." I say loud enough for my voice to reach the rest of the class. "Also minus seven if you've covered that part of how x squared works."
"That part." Mr Vernon sighs the sigh of aggrieved educators everywhere. "Is today's lesson."
"Oh." I nod, finally breaking eye contact with Ruth to shoot the teacher two thumbs up with an apologetic expression that I keep on my face when I turn back. "Sorry, Ruth." I point at the board. "You should probably pay attention."
In deference to the teacher's obvious wishes, I ignore whatever spluttered objections Ruth raises in response and just put my head down on my desk to focus on the more important questions: Like what the heck am I going to do while my friends are all busy learning basic math?
With a sigh, I start running down my list of options.
=Hey, Taylor! You busy?=
=Very.=
=Nevermind then.=
Work on my story for English class?
…Meh. Not feeling it right now. Plus, I already have like… a week and change's worth of pages ready to turn in.
Hmmm… I eye my mana, basically full again from meditating on the bus. I guess I could explore the city? Between being able to maintain [Meditation] and my dumbass finally realizing I can move the stupid eyes around rather than just rotating them in place before recasting the spell, I can probably even do it without OOMing out again this time.
Reaching into my backpack, I pull out the notebook for computer class and flip to the pages at the back where I'm making 'a list of locations for a text based adventure game set in Brockton Bay' as cover for making a literal checklist of places to Scry.
Now… where was I?
Ah, right. The PRT building.
Shifting my head so it at least looks like I'm paying attention, I cast [Scry].
The 'eye' of the spell pops into existence just outside the front doors, and I float into the lobby through the front door and past the pair of troopers guarding it.
Looking around, the girl working the front desk is dealing with some lady who's complaining about someone stealing her son's Yankees hat. She seems weirdly emphatic about it considering her son is awkwardly standing there next to her wearing a Red Sox hat but whatever. Better you than me, Miss Secretary/Greeter-lady.
Oooh!
Really tall black dude badging through the employees only door! Is it Coil? I zoom over to get a better look.
…Probably not?
His badge doesn't have his name on it, but in retrospect I'm pretty sure Coil is supposed to be obnoxiously tall but freakishly thin and this guy looks like he eats linebackers.
Eh, whatever. I'm bored. Let's follow him to his desk just in case.
…Or not!
A few hallways and an elevator ride later I find myself rapidly backing the eye out of what turned out to be the men's room.
I'll just… follow someone else around today instead. Oooh! Is that Miss Militia!?
Okay, yup, that isn't even close to where it's supposed to be.
As my aura reaches the 'bottom' of the lair, it's immediately obvious that the doorway I made isn't even close to being in the right place.
Fortunately, my digging implement of choice being magic makes shifting the doorway, and the half-formed room behind it, almost 30 degrees so that it's properly opposite the ladder absurdly simple. As bad as creating a sinkhole under an abandoned house would be, I'd much rather that than potentially doing it to one of its occupied neighbors.
That fixed, now I can pull enough stone out of the space behind the door to fill in the pit below me.
I also try pushing the whole floor down further and, surprisingly, I get it to shift another couple inches so I guess some of the pressure must have bled out into the rest of the aquifer over the past 24 hours?
Of course, it's only after I waste a few minutes doing that that I realize there's a better way to handle this.
Shifting stone from just above the space my stone sense indicates is 'empty' of stone but is clearly full of something out to the edges and then down and around below it, I slowly shift the pocket of water up and away from the rest of the aquifer until it's an inch or so beneath my feet and forms the 'mouth' of my latest 'Rock Wyrm' as I ride it back up.
At which point I yeet the water out into the snow, push the stone out into the basement, and head back down again to grab another load of stone.
Hmmm… =Hey, Taylor?= I puff out my cheeks and frown, but choose to ignore the mental sigh I get in response in favor of asking my question. =How much room do you actually need for your spiders anyway?=
=Uh… not much, I guess? It's mostly a matter of keeping them from eating each other while I'm out of range.=
=Well on that lovely note… I think I'm done?=
"Thank you for choosing The Jane-way–" Uh… I'll work on that name. That one has some serious 'do not want' connotations given who my social Qworker might be. "--Express for all your shaft riding needs! Please keep your arms, legs, and tentacles inside the vehicle at all times!"
Fortunately, I'm saved from having to ponder the words that just came out of my mouth while I was distracted by the way Taylor's hand tightens on my shoulder as we ride the disc down to our new lair.
"You okay?"
"I'm fine." Taylor says in a tone indicating she's anything but.
Which, in fairness to her, a one meter wide tube feels a lot more cramped with two- Ah. Shit. I forgot she's claustrophobic or locker-adjacent-ophobic or- Muse on word choice later! Fixy fixy now!
Please don't be a crime against sanity.
Please don't be a crime against sanity.
Crossing my fingers, I make a light [Ward].
Well… it is producing light?
Taylor and I crane our necks up to stare at the weird cloud of glowing blue smoke that's angrily darting around above us as the disc continues bringing us downward.
In retrospect, thinking about the various ways Erick got it to go wrong while casting was probably the opposite of helpful.
Then again, Taylor's grip on my shoulder did relax a bit at some point. "...Is that better?"
"Well I'm not worried about the dark any more."
"Umm… yeah." I shrug. "On the plus side, that one isn't screaming so I'm going to call it a win.
"Is that what that was the other day?"
"I plead the fifth." If only because I have no idea what she's talking about. Well, that and I still don't want to give voice to the whole 'I isekai'd into your story with the body and powers of this girl from another story' thing I have going on. Which I'd kind of need to do to be able to explain how poorly Erick's first forays in lightwards went. "But here." I dig out my flashlight and hold it out to her, snagging the quartz 'terrarium' full of spiders with my aura and floating it out of her arms. "I'll trade you."
With my flashlight in hand, Taylor doesn't grab my shoulder again, but she does start doing that thing where she goes eerily still.
"...Don't you wander around the house in the dark all the time?"
"There are bugs everywhere at home."
"...Eww. Don't remind me."
"It's not that bad when you have complete control over them all."
"Uh huh. I'm sure."
"My point was that I can basically feel my way around at home using them as a map. But here… I found this chunk of rock by looking for where the bugs weren't."
"Ooooh… That makes-" An idea occurs to me. "Actually, let me try something."
[Telepathy]
"What are you-" she cuts off as I start trying to pipe the stonesense feedback from my aura to her. "...Woah."
[Blink]
The world flickers midnight blue as I blip upwards a few inches. Gravity, heartless bitch she may be, is at least impartial enough to still reach up and yoink me back down even when it's helpful, thus returning me to my starting position on Taylor's bed with a soft wumph.
[Blink]
Wumph.
Oh, come on. I stare at my left hand, still raised in the air. Be the me that raised her right hand instead!
[Blink]
Wumph.
Left hand is still raised.
Sigh… What is the point of mostly remembering how Ar'kendi-whatever teleportation spells work thematically if I can't apply it?
[Blink]
Wumph.
[Blink]
Wumph.
Ugh. On Veird I could at least do this in public. Could probably even grab a bunch of other freshly matriculated kids and play [Blink]-tag or something, but no… I had to isekai into Brockton fucking Bay.
[Blink]
Wumph.
Hell, even if I'd just arrived here sometime other than fucking Winter, then I could at least be doing this out in the woods or something.
[Blink]
Wumph.
Still my left hand in the air rather than my right.
[Blink]
Wumph.
Well, whatever. I'll at least be able to level [Meditation] on the way to school. Pretty sure that'll put it at the point where I can cast or maintain small spells while using it. No more needing to toggle back and forth between it and Telepathy!
[Blink]
Wumph.
[Bli-
The spell fizzles as the door opens, startling me out of my routine, but it's just Taylor.
"Shower's all yours."
"Woo!"
I [Blink] higher, shifting my arm and twisting my body as I fall so that I come down on my butt and then bounce myself off the bed.
"Woah, hey." She sticks an arm out before I can dash around her. "Just a heads up, I think Dad used it while we were out for our run so the water was already getting cold before I even finished." She tells me, casually murdering my enthusiasm while fiddling with the towel wrapped around her head. "Sorry." She adds a moment later as if that's going to help me.
"Sigh!" I announce, saying the word out loud because I know it annoys her. "I guess I'll just use [Cleanse] again- wait. Wait. Hang on." A solution slowly occurs to me. "Waitaminute!"
Cackling, I dash off to the bathroom and shove a [Mana Shaped] temperature [Ward] as far into the shower head's throat as I can before setting the knob all the way to cold and turning it on.
Cackling intensifying at the sight of steam wafting out of the water, I stick my hand in to confirm.
"UNLIMITED HOT WATER!" Well, only for the next 24 hours or so but actually I'll need to cancel it before then or Danny might notice but still!
I take a step back from the tub. Deep breath in. Deep breath out. Be the me who's already naked. [Blink]
The world flickers midnight blue as I blip the foot or so back to the side of the tub.
"Your power is bullshit!" Taylor tells me.
"Taylor!" I whirl around, hands covering my- Er… I look down.
Damn. Still fully dressed. Er… well.
Okay, Blink, I guess I won't be mad at you for not doing what I wanted this time.
"Excuse you." I move my hands to my hips. "I'm trying to practice blipping out of my clothes here."
Taylor raises an eyebrow. "With the door wide open?"
"...shut up!"
"Ruth…" I sigh. "None of that has anything to do with- Oh…" I snap my fingers, pointing at her. "I get it now."
"Really now?" Aisha's glare shifts my way at my half-feigned 'Eureka' moment.
"Yup." I nod, grinning back at her. "Ruth doesn't hate black people, she hates poor people."
"What!? no-"
"You do though!"
"-I don't!"
"Everything you were complaining about:" I count them out on my fingers "The crime, the drugs, the 'smell,'" I airquote that last one, rolling my eyes, "all of that is-
"Miss Flatt," Mr Vernon interrupts me. "If you must talk during class, perhaps you would at least like to talk about the problem on the board?"
Tossing a [Scry] eye near the board so I don't have to break eye contact with Ruth, I look over the equation he's pointing at. "Seven." I say loud enough for my voice to reach the rest of the class. "Also minus seven if you've covered that part of how x squared works."
"That part." Mr Vernon sighs the sigh of aggrieved educators everywhere. "Is today's lesson."
"Oh." I nod, finally breaking eye contact with Ruth to shoot the teacher two thumbs up with an apologetic expression that I keep on my face when I turn back. "Sorry, Ruth." I point at the board. "You should probably pay attention."
In deference to the teacher's obvious wishes, I ignore whatever spluttered objections Ruth raises in response and just put my head down on my desk to focus on the more important questions: Like what the heck am I going to do while my friends are all busy learning basic math?
With a sigh, I start running down my list of options.
=Hey, Taylor! You busy?=
=Very.=
=Nevermind then.=
Work on my story for English class?
…Meh. Not feeling it right now. Plus, I already have like… a week and change's worth of pages ready to turn in.
Hmmm… I eye my mana, basically full again from meditating on the bus. I guess I could explore the city? Between being able to maintain [Meditation] and my dumbass finally realizing I can move the stupid eyes around rather than just rotating them in place before recasting the spell, I can probably even do it without OOMing out again this time.
Reaching into my backpack, I pull out the notebook for computer class and flip to the pages at the back where I'm making 'a list of locations for a text based adventure game set in Brockton Bay' as cover for making a literal checklist of places to Scry.
Now… where was I?
Ah, right. The PRT building.
Shifting my head so it at least looks like I'm paying attention, I cast [Scry].
The 'eye' of the spell pops into existence just outside the front doors, and I float into the lobby through the front door and past the pair of troopers guarding it.
Looking around, the girl working the front desk is dealing with some lady who's complaining about someone stealing her son's Yankees hat. She seems weirdly emphatic about it considering her son is awkwardly standing there next to her wearing a Red Sox hat but whatever. Better you than me, Miss Secretary/Greeter-lady.
Oooh!
Really tall black dude badging through the employees only door! Is it Coil? I zoom over to get a better look.
…Probably not?
His badge doesn't have his name on it, but in retrospect I'm pretty sure Coil is supposed to be obnoxiously tall but freakishly thin and this guy looks like he eats linebackers.
Eh, whatever. I'm bored. Let's follow him to his desk just in case.
…Or not!
A few hallways and an elevator ride later I find myself rapidly backing the eye out of what turned out to be the men's room.
I'll just… follow someone else around today instead. Oooh! Is that Miss Militia!?
Okay, yup, that isn't even close to where it's supposed to be.
As my aura reaches the 'bottom' of the lair, it's immediately obvious that the doorway I made isn't even close to being in the right place.
Fortunately, my digging implement of choice being magic makes shifting the doorway, and the half-formed room behind it, almost 30 degrees so that it's properly opposite the ladder absurdly simple. As bad as creating a sinkhole under an abandoned house would be, I'd much rather that than potentially doing it to one of its occupied neighbors.
That fixed, now I can pull enough stone out of the space behind the door to fill in the pit below me.
I also try pushing the whole floor down further and, surprisingly, I get it to shift another couple inches so I guess some of the pressure must have bled out into the rest of the aquifer over the past 24 hours?
Of course, it's only after I waste a few minutes doing that that I realize there's a better way to handle this.
Shifting stone from just above the space my stone sense indicates is 'empty' of stone but is clearly full of something out to the edges and then down and around below it, I slowly shift the pocket of water up and away from the rest of the aquifer until it's an inch or so beneath my feet and forms the 'mouth' of my latest 'Rock Wyrm' as I ride it back up.
At which point I yeet the water out into the snow, push the stone out into the basement, and head back down again to grab another load of stone.
Hmmm… =Hey, Taylor?= I puff out my cheeks and frown, but choose to ignore the mental sigh I get in response in favor of asking my question. =How much room do you actually need for your spiders anyway?=
=Uh… not much, I guess? It's mostly a matter of keeping them from eating each other while I'm out of range.=
=Well on that lovely note… I think I'm done?=
"Thank you for choosing The Jane-way–" Uh… I'll work on that name. That one has some serious 'do not want' connotations given who my social Qworker might be. "--Express for all your shaft riding needs! Please keep your arms, legs, and tentacles inside the vehicle at all times!"
Fortunately, I'm saved from having to ponder the words that just came out of my mouth while I was distracted by the way Taylor's hand tightens on my shoulder as we ride the disc down to our new lair.
"You okay?"
"I'm fine." Taylor says in a tone indicating she's anything but.
Which, in fairness to her, a one meter wide tube feels a lot more cramped with two- Ah. Shit. I forgot she's claustrophobic or locker-adjacent-ophobic or- Muse on word choice later! Fixy fixy now!
Please don't be a crime against sanity.
Please don't be a crime against sanity.
Crossing my fingers, I make a light [Ward].
Well… it is producing light?
Taylor and I crane our necks up to stare at the weird cloud of glowing blue smoke that's angrily darting around above us as the disc continues bringing us downward.
In retrospect, thinking about the various ways Erick got it to go wrong while casting was probably the opposite of helpful.
Then again, Taylor's grip on my shoulder did relax a bit at some point. "...Is that better?"
"Well I'm not worried about the dark any more."
"Umm… yeah." I shrug. "On the plus side, that one isn't screaming so I'm going to call it a win.
"Is that what that was the other day?"
"I plead the fifth." If only because I have no idea what she's talking about. Well, that and I still don't want to give voice to the whole 'I isekai'd into your story with the body and powers of this girl from another story' thing I have going on. Which I'd kind of need to do to be able to explain how poorly Erick's first forays in lightwards went. "But here." I dig out my flashlight and hold it out to her, snagging the quartz 'terrarium' full of spiders with my aura and floating it out of her arms. "I'll trade you."
With my flashlight in hand, Taylor doesn't grab my shoulder again, but she does start doing that thing where she goes eerily still.
"...Don't you wander around the house in the dark all the time?"
"There are bugs everywhere at home."
"...Eww. Don't remind me."
"It's not that bad when you have complete control over them all."
"Uh huh. I'm sure."
"My point was that I can basically feel my way around at home using them as a map. But here… I found this chunk of rock by looking for where the bugs weren't."
"Ooooh… That makes-" An idea occurs to me. "Actually, let me try something."
[Telepathy]
"What are you-" she cuts off as I start trying to pipe the stonesense feedback from my aura to her. "...Woah."
Erebos_03_
Not too sore, are you?
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Exploit found? Actually find reading this story in one piece waaay better than in you snippet thread. Moar?