I wouldn't be surprised if it's enough to quirk her curiosity further.
What Rains You Bring (Worm/Diebuster)
- Thread starter CuttleFish2.0
- Start date
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I like how you expand on Lung some more. Too many use him as simply as a boss character for Taylor to beat. They don't try and go more into the person that is Lung, that is Kenta.
Sure, Lung's not a nice guy. He's rather more on the "bad" side of the scale.
But he's also an interesting guy.
Sure, Lung's not a nice guy. He's rather more on the "bad" side of the scale.
But he's also an interesting guy.
CuttleFish2.0
Friendly neighborhood cuttlefish
- Location
- Seattle, Washington.
Well....
No, no spoilers. I'll just say that this; we are entering a period in which the various ways in which things have well an truly gone off the rails should be more and more apparent.
- Location
- Madison, WI
I am re-reading this now, and I realized something. In 1.5 when Danny was trying to open an account for Taylor so she'll have her own money, did that fell through due to the bank robbery and they never tried again? Because if she has her own account and money she wouldn't need to ask for cash from Danny.
Ok, I have a question. Can Taylor fly? I don't know anything about Diebuster, but she has all these amazing abilities and it seems inconcievable that she can't fly.
Amberion
Mighty #9
Physics canceller can do anything, including, yes, flying. It's just a question of whether she thinks of it.
- Location
- Madison, WI
She probably won't need to fly with GG playing transport, and she's tough enough to weather the drop without being damaged... maybe when Leviathan shows up and punts her into the stratosphere she'll really really realize her need to be able to fly, and thus learned she could have done that all along.
Regarding flight, I figure Nono is either still working on making whatever flight controls she has compatible with Taylor's brain or keeping the full extend of her capabilities secret due to being on "I accidentally a planet" level.
That may need immediate remediation. Watch Gunbuster, then Diebuster.
The entities Nono was built to fight against are to Endbringers what Godzilla is to a gecko.
That may need immediate remediation. Watch Gunbuster, then Diebuster.
The entities Nono was built to fight against are to Endbringers what Godzilla is to a gecko.
CuttleFish2.0
Friendly neighborhood cuttlefish
- Location
- Seattle, Washington.
As it unlikely to come up in any sort of important way I'll let you know; it wasn't opening an account, but Danny went back a couple days later and took care of it. With everything that's gone on it's slipped his mind.
As for when we'll see Taylor fly...
That depends on how you define 'fly'.
Amberion
Mighty #9
I include levitation in that definition. Even wobbling slowly through the air at slower than walking speed is 'flying'.
CuttleFish2.0
Friendly neighborhood cuttlefish
- Location
- Seattle, Washington.
Then, no. Taylor will not be flying any time soon.I include levitation in that definition. Even wobbling slowly through the air at slower than walking speed is 'flying'.
Canonically Nono was capable of moving around in space at quite rapid rates. So that implies it's possible for her if certain conditions are met, though what those are, only the author probably knows.
- Location
- West Michigan
What about getting thrown around like a Team Rocket member?
Amberion
Mighty #9
you tease!
Nono: "Looks like Team Nono is blasting off again!"
Taylor: "Not helping!"
3.4
CuttleFish2.0
Friendly neighborhood cuttlefish
- Location
- Seattle, Washington.
*
3.4
*
Waking up Monday morning was something of a relief, it was irrational but just knowing that a whole day had passed without Lung going off on any sort of rampage had eased my mind more than any sort of rational examination of the facts had or ever could have. Now with that not so minor weight off my mind I was actually starting to get excited over the party Amy had invited me to. I couldn't care less about the party itself, there were few things I could imagine being less interesting than some politicians fundraiser, but the opportunity to meet more capes? That I was definitely looking forward to, even if none of them would know I was a cape. Honestly, it seemed a little unfair to meet them like that but I was going to take this opportunity. Besides, that seemed to be the running theme with my powers, unfairness. Even to myself.
It turned out that throwing random ideas at the metaphorical wall to see what stuck exactly was useless as I'd suspected it would be, at least in terms of helping to figure out anything at all about where to go next with my powers. All I was able to accomplish was distract myself for a couple of hours and confuse myself even more by repeating my earlier attempts at 'meditation.' I still had absolutely no clue what any of the various 'structures' were that I saw whenever I explored what I had taken to calling my 'mindscape,' not exactly original I know but it wasn't like I had anyone to impress with this stuff anyways. Explaining that place and the things in it would definitely have stretched me to the limit of my descriptive ability if I did was forced to describe them to someone else. Nothing there was, for lack of a better word, 'real.' When I touched things with my 'mental limbs' I got sensations like touching something with any part of my physical body, but at the same time I knew that everything was was malleable, or at least I knew they had the potential to be. When I gripped at a piece of any of the structures to try to push or pull it out of position or reshape it, it didn't exactly resist but there was no give; I had the feeling that it was waiting, as if on some signal it would jump into activity and give in to my desires.
It was equal parts frightening and frustrating; frustrating because I was aware that I should be able to alter something about the structures I saw but just couldn't produce any actual results no matter how hard I tried, and frightening because I didn't actually know for sure what the hell it was that I was looking at. Was this bizarro landscape my own mind that I was somehow seeing, or the computer stuff that controlled all the parts of my new body that I couldn't access, or something else entirely? I just didn't know, and so because of that I treated everything delicately even as I strained to test its limits. Nothing had happened though.
I didn't want to give up on figuring out my full capabilities completely, because that felt too much like failure or like admitting I was beaten, but my current options were limited. What I needed was a new way of thinking about the problem, like how I'd solved my issue in the fight with Lung, but I didn't even know what I was looking for at this point so how was I supposed to think about something I didn't even know about differently? I needed Nono. She had all the answers I needed but even though she was still around, seeing as we shared the same body,she'd spoken up less frequently in recent days. With her help I was sure that all the little secrets and hidden abilities of my new body could be unlocked in an instant but she'd kept quiet on that front before. I wasn't sure this time would be any different, and what if she had a good reason for not being upfront with all of this stuff? Was I ready to confront the full unvarnished reality of this situation that I now found myself in, whatever that was?
That was one question I did have the answers for, considering how long it had taken me to adjust to each new revelation: No, I wasn't.
Sure, I had accepted my situation but it was one thing to know acknowledge a fact intellectually and something else entirely to be confronted with the concrete demonstration of it. My experiments Saturday night had gone some ways towards showing me that.
It occurred to me in that moment that it was now 6:54:59 AM.
Shit! If I didn't want to be late for school, I needed to leave soon. Being late for school wouldn't have really bothered me except that Emma and the rest would only use it as future ammunition, not that they wouldn't just find something else, whether it was true or not, but I could at least control how I handled it. Skipping school sounded plenty appealing, but it felt too much like letting them win and even before I'd gotten my powers I'd promised myself I would never let them do that.
In just a few minutes I was downstairs grabbing an energy bar for breakfast and making myself a quick lunch, then I was outside and rushing off to the bus. As I ran towards my bus stop I reflected on how weirdly normal everything was; there was nothing which even hinted at the odd double life I was currently living. In the last few months my life had been changed irrevocably in so many ways; my powers themselves and all that they entailed, actually that mostly summed up the changes in my life. And yet every day I went to school and pretended I was normal, that I couldn't recall every word someone had said to me in the past three months with perfect clarity, that I couldn't do every math and programming problem in my head in the time it took to read them out loud. I was struck by the thought that I was holding myself back, almost limiting myself by attempting to keep up my normal life, but then what choice did I have if I wanted to keep my dad safe, if I wanted to avoid suddenly taking on all the world's problems and all the moral and ethical traps that lay down that road?. From what Nono had told me I now had the knowledge of a ten thousand year old empire in my head, metaphorically speaking, granted they'd regressed a bit but still it was a heady thought. Heady enough that I started hyperventilating, which got me a couple of strange looks until I got my breathing under control again. Technically I guess I had only been mimicking hyperventilation, given that I didn't think I actually breathed anymore, but it wasn't a conscious decision or anything.
Thoughts of what I was going to do occupied my mind until I got to school, then through the crush of students struggling to get to lockers and make it to class on time, and even through my morning classes. Even if I couldn't entirely cast off the now somewhat phony role of high school student I could at least start pushing myself privately. That thought only highlighted the fact that I had no real idea of where to start on this project either, beyond speed reading through math, physics, and chemistry textbooks. Of course those would cost money, which I didn't have, or require revealing some of my knowledge to a much wider pool of people, not something I was particularly eager to do. For the moment my best resource was the school library, and the city's public libraries. Given that I was already at school I figured I ought to at least check out that one first.
During lunch I headed for the library, reasoning that since I was a robot now I probably didn't need to eat and that it had the added benefit of being an unlikely location for Emma or her cronies to visit en mass. Winslow's library wasn't very impressive, only being a little larger than two classrooms put together, but it was better than nothing while I got started. Even if the library's size wasn't anything to write home about that didn't mean I knew where to find any of what I was looking for, which meant I needed the help of the librarian, Mrs. Stenson. She was a thin, severe looking woman in her early thirties with her dark hair cut short to just below her ears, and one of the few faculty around Winslow who actually seemed to give a shit and be competent at her job.
I made my way up to the front desk and waited a moment or two for her to finish up doing something with a stack of books and one of those wheeled metal bookcases before she turned and faced me.
"How may I help you, young lady?" From her appearance I always expected her voice to be high pitched and squeaky, but it was just normal.
"Um, I was wondering if the library had any copies of the physics textbook?" She raised one of her eyebrows at me, questioningly. "Uh, it's just that I was thinking of maybe taking it next semester and I wanted to get a head start… "
My voice trailed off at the end, but after a moment of silence she raised her arm and pointed to the near corner, to the right of the doors I had just come in through.
"All textbooks are over there, do you need the name or… " I nodded and she glanced off to one side, snatched a post-it note and scribbled hastily on it before handing it to me.
I thanked her, took the little yellow note from her hand and moved to where she had pointed, where all along the wall were a bookcases a little above waist height with several tables positioned right next to them. Finding the right book took a little bit, mostly because I wasn't actually paying much attention to how close I was to finding the one I was looking for and instead I got a little lost in just looking at all the textbooks the school apparently offered classes for.
Judging by the covers of some of the books it became apparent it wasn't just current books that the library kept, judging by how old some of them looked. Eventually I did find it though, and then sat down at the nearest open seat. There were only about fifteen people in the entire library and most of them were seated farther away where they weren't in the direct line of sight for the librarians. Of those fifteen people only two were sophomores, neither of whom were likely to say or do anything to me, while the rest were either juniors or seniors.
I opened the book and started reading. Like with almost every other subject, I understood everything I read as soon as I finished reading it without having to actually practice or test myself. Of course what I was working through right now was the most basic level of material and not likely to set off any revelations on the subject of my powers, but I'd done some testing when I first noticed my improved learning ability and whatever was actually going on in my brain it didn't let me skip actually learning the material as such. All my power seemed to do was shortcut the part where someone else would have to memorize and practice to teach their brain how to think through a problem. So now, once the rules for something were explained to me, my brain basically just 'rewired itself' I guess to take into account the new stuff.
Maybe this was why Nono was being uncharacteristically quiet? Not about this material specifically, but rather the process of learning for myself? I mean I'd kind of already figured out that the point was for me to figure out a lot of this stuff on my own, but what if instead of being a choice she was making this was the only way I could learn it safely? Maybe something about how this whole weird me being inside a practically magic robot body thing worked meant that I had to do a lot of the initial work for myself, even as my new body made some of that work trivially easy. If that was the case then I definitely needed to buckle down and get the basics down so I could move on to more complex and potentially more helpful material.
About halfway through the text something funny began to happen. Whenever I focused on a particular problem or idea, I could visualise a precise actual model of the behavior. It was like seeing double, similar to the way I could take in the entire city while still paying attention to whatever was going on in front of me. Nothing overlaid or obscured my regular vision, instead it was like opening an entirely new set of eyes I'd never known I'd had but that still felt completely natural to have. Like one of those computer models they show in science shows to explain something, except rendered in much higher detail and with, I suspected, more accuracy than anything produced by any non-Tinker computer. An interesting development, but I couldn't think of any way in which it would useful off the top of my head.
A ringing brought me out of my thoughts, it was the bell signalling lunch was over so I quickly put the book back in its place on the shelf and followed the others on their way out of the library. Nothing I'd actually learned today seemed of much immediate use to me, but it was at least the first step in what seemed to me to be the right direction.
I had Mr. Gladly next and I definitely wasn't looking forward to watching him suck up to the 'cool' kids for the next hour, enough so that I wished I'd actually checked out the textbook so maybe I could have kept working on it through class. Actually I was turning around to go back quickly and check out the book when I bounced off someone.
That was when I noticed that I'd apparently been surrounded by Emma, Madison, Sophia, and four other girls. They weren't crowding me, quite, but they were close enough that there wasn't enough space between them to easily slip through and past occurrences had taught me it wouldn't be smart to give them an excuse to get their hands on me. One again they talked about my like I wasn't even then, throwing idiotic and contradictory insults; all of it had long since stopped bothering me of course, but still that didn't mean I wanted to stand here for the next five minutes and listen to it all.
I wished I was somewhere else, that I'd paid more attention and managed to avoid this altogether, or that I could just make them disappear. Not actually disappear of course, but so I couldn't see or hear them and didn't have to interact with them at all. I wished it so hard that it actually started happening, only in the worst way possible. One minute I was staring past them, my eyes unfocused, trying to just ignore them completely and then the next I was seeing through them literally. Except that I wasn't seeing completely through them, I was instead looking at their insides.
I watched Madisons heart and lungs pump in their smooth steady rhythms, Sophia's muscles tense and relax twitchily like she wanted to pounce, I saw what was left of Emma's lunch; little mushy bits of apple, dissolving bites of peanut butter and jelly slurry, all slowly turning into a single sloshing mixture. I saw Jessica's eyes swiveling in the sockets of her skull, attached to the suspended lump of grey matter by tendrils of nerves, and April's sinuses filled with thick greenish mucus that slowly dripped down the back of her throat.
"God, look at her! Is she about to hurl?!" Someone shrieked, a gleeful laughter hidden by the words.
"Oh my God, she is!" Another voice answered. "Do you think it's morning sickness? Did the freak get knocked up?"
"Ewwww! What desperate loser would fuck that?"
"Well Hebert, did you pay some forty year old pedo to take your cherry?" Emma's voice, cutting through the chatter of the the others like a knife.
I threw up all over two people's shoes.
"OH MY GOD! YOU FREAK!"
"It stinks!"
"Ewwwwww!"
I closed my eyes and turned back around pushing past the two girls behind me, neither of whom even resisted, and ran for the bathroom. My eyelids blocked even my souped up eyesight but I somehow managed my way to the nearest restroom mostly by memory, after all I'd used more than a few of them as hiding places before and here I was back to old habits. After a few minutes of simply sitting knees to my face on top of the toilet with my eyes closed I slowly pried them open, fearful of discovering I had suddenly gotten stuck in x-ray mode. Thankfully only the regular, not-people's-insides world greeted me.
Several minutes later I extracted myself from the locked stall, exited the bathroom after checking no one was around and walked quickly towards the nurses office. I already knew I wasn't sick, given my new body I didn't even think I could get sick much less the other thing they'd mentioned, but I really wasn't looking forward to sitting in class while the others made snide comments in not quite whispers specifically so I could hear.
First the nurse was skeptical, probably thinking I was just some kid trying to get out of a test or something, but once I explained what happened and suggested it must be something I'd eaten she got became attentive. My little embarrassment must have already reached her through the rumour mill, and she was obviously of the opinion that I was pregnant. Given that two girls had gotten pregnant last year, it wasn't totally surprising she believed it but even ignoring my unique circumstances I was one of the least likely people to end up in the family way at this school. She didn't come right out and say it but once I'd calmed down enough that I was comfortable going back to class and was on my way out she started shoving pamphlets on me. She made like it was some a precautionary measure by repeating that vague platitude about how "a young girl should know her body," but there was the pregnancy one sitting right on top. By the time I got out of there the next class was starting anyways.
For the next two hours I had to endure the hurried whispers of most of the classmates and the occasional comment from one of the girls either in Emma's circle of friends or looking to get in. I did my best to tune it out as much as I could, but I can't deny it got to me a little, to have all these people whispering about me not so subtlety. Thankfully, it got better the closer school got to ending as most people lost interest in me and moved on to the stuff that actually matter, like who'd hooked up with who, which teacher was being a complete asshole today, or where they were going after school.
Before I left I went back to the library, checked out the physics book, plus a chemistry book, and ran to catch my bus. At dinner I considered telling Dad about my day, but then I wondered what exactly I could tell him was the actual reason for my throwing up and since I didn't really feel like lying I just kept my mouth shut.
I went to bed feeling thoroughly miserable, small and alone as I lay in the silence and the darkness of my room. Something seemed to touch my back and then I felt the weight of another body settling in front of me; two arms wrapped around me, and bright pink hair mixed with my own in front of my face as Nono pulled me close. I heard the deep thrum thrum thrum of our heart, and began I crying silently into her embrace.
A/N: Sorry for the delay on this piece but I made a breakthrough on an original project and that ate up my creative juice for a while. Next section should be done a great deal sooner. (probably sometime midweek or end of week at the latest, or so I suspect).
3.4
*
Waking up Monday morning was something of a relief, it was irrational but just knowing that a whole day had passed without Lung going off on any sort of rampage had eased my mind more than any sort of rational examination of the facts had or ever could have. Now with that not so minor weight off my mind I was actually starting to get excited over the party Amy had invited me to. I couldn't care less about the party itself, there were few things I could imagine being less interesting than some politicians fundraiser, but the opportunity to meet more capes? That I was definitely looking forward to, even if none of them would know I was a cape. Honestly, it seemed a little unfair to meet them like that but I was going to take this opportunity. Besides, that seemed to be the running theme with my powers, unfairness. Even to myself.
It turned out that throwing random ideas at the metaphorical wall to see what stuck exactly was useless as I'd suspected it would be, at least in terms of helping to figure out anything at all about where to go next with my powers. All I was able to accomplish was distract myself for a couple of hours and confuse myself even more by repeating my earlier attempts at 'meditation.' I still had absolutely no clue what any of the various 'structures' were that I saw whenever I explored what I had taken to calling my 'mindscape,' not exactly original I know but it wasn't like I had anyone to impress with this stuff anyways. Explaining that place and the things in it would definitely have stretched me to the limit of my descriptive ability if I did was forced to describe them to someone else. Nothing there was, for lack of a better word, 'real.' When I touched things with my 'mental limbs' I got sensations like touching something with any part of my physical body, but at the same time I knew that everything was was malleable, or at least I knew they had the potential to be. When I gripped at a piece of any of the structures to try to push or pull it out of position or reshape it, it didn't exactly resist but there was no give; I had the feeling that it was waiting, as if on some signal it would jump into activity and give in to my desires.
It was equal parts frightening and frustrating; frustrating because I was aware that I should be able to alter something about the structures I saw but just couldn't produce any actual results no matter how hard I tried, and frightening because I didn't actually know for sure what the hell it was that I was looking at. Was this bizarro landscape my own mind that I was somehow seeing, or the computer stuff that controlled all the parts of my new body that I couldn't access, or something else entirely? I just didn't know, and so because of that I treated everything delicately even as I strained to test its limits. Nothing had happened though.
I didn't want to give up on figuring out my full capabilities completely, because that felt too much like failure or like admitting I was beaten, but my current options were limited. What I needed was a new way of thinking about the problem, like how I'd solved my issue in the fight with Lung, but I didn't even know what I was looking for at this point so how was I supposed to think about something I didn't even know about differently? I needed Nono. She had all the answers I needed but even though she was still around, seeing as we shared the same body,she'd spoken up less frequently in recent days. With her help I was sure that all the little secrets and hidden abilities of my new body could be unlocked in an instant but she'd kept quiet on that front before. I wasn't sure this time would be any different, and what if she had a good reason for not being upfront with all of this stuff? Was I ready to confront the full unvarnished reality of this situation that I now found myself in, whatever that was?
That was one question I did have the answers for, considering how long it had taken me to adjust to each new revelation: No, I wasn't.
Sure, I had accepted my situation but it was one thing to know acknowledge a fact intellectually and something else entirely to be confronted with the concrete demonstration of it. My experiments Saturday night had gone some ways towards showing me that.
It occurred to me in that moment that it was now 6:54:59 AM.
Shit! If I didn't want to be late for school, I needed to leave soon. Being late for school wouldn't have really bothered me except that Emma and the rest would only use it as future ammunition, not that they wouldn't just find something else, whether it was true or not, but I could at least control how I handled it. Skipping school sounded plenty appealing, but it felt too much like letting them win and even before I'd gotten my powers I'd promised myself I would never let them do that.
In just a few minutes I was downstairs grabbing an energy bar for breakfast and making myself a quick lunch, then I was outside and rushing off to the bus. As I ran towards my bus stop I reflected on how weirdly normal everything was; there was nothing which even hinted at the odd double life I was currently living. In the last few months my life had been changed irrevocably in so many ways; my powers themselves and all that they entailed, actually that mostly summed up the changes in my life. And yet every day I went to school and pretended I was normal, that I couldn't recall every word someone had said to me in the past three months with perfect clarity, that I couldn't do every math and programming problem in my head in the time it took to read them out loud. I was struck by the thought that I was holding myself back, almost limiting myself by attempting to keep up my normal life, but then what choice did I have if I wanted to keep my dad safe, if I wanted to avoid suddenly taking on all the world's problems and all the moral and ethical traps that lay down that road?. From what Nono had told me I now had the knowledge of a ten thousand year old empire in my head, metaphorically speaking, granted they'd regressed a bit but still it was a heady thought. Heady enough that I started hyperventilating, which got me a couple of strange looks until I got my breathing under control again. Technically I guess I had only been mimicking hyperventilation, given that I didn't think I actually breathed anymore, but it wasn't a conscious decision or anything.
Thoughts of what I was going to do occupied my mind until I got to school, then through the crush of students struggling to get to lockers and make it to class on time, and even through my morning classes. Even if I couldn't entirely cast off the now somewhat phony role of high school student I could at least start pushing myself privately. That thought only highlighted the fact that I had no real idea of where to start on this project either, beyond speed reading through math, physics, and chemistry textbooks. Of course those would cost money, which I didn't have, or require revealing some of my knowledge to a much wider pool of people, not something I was particularly eager to do. For the moment my best resource was the school library, and the city's public libraries. Given that I was already at school I figured I ought to at least check out that one first.
During lunch I headed for the library, reasoning that since I was a robot now I probably didn't need to eat and that it had the added benefit of being an unlikely location for Emma or her cronies to visit en mass. Winslow's library wasn't very impressive, only being a little larger than two classrooms put together, but it was better than nothing while I got started. Even if the library's size wasn't anything to write home about that didn't mean I knew where to find any of what I was looking for, which meant I needed the help of the librarian, Mrs. Stenson. She was a thin, severe looking woman in her early thirties with her dark hair cut short to just below her ears, and one of the few faculty around Winslow who actually seemed to give a shit and be competent at her job.
I made my way up to the front desk and waited a moment or two for her to finish up doing something with a stack of books and one of those wheeled metal bookcases before she turned and faced me.
"How may I help you, young lady?" From her appearance I always expected her voice to be high pitched and squeaky, but it was just normal.
"Um, I was wondering if the library had any copies of the physics textbook?" She raised one of her eyebrows at me, questioningly. "Uh, it's just that I was thinking of maybe taking it next semester and I wanted to get a head start… "
My voice trailed off at the end, but after a moment of silence she raised her arm and pointed to the near corner, to the right of the doors I had just come in through.
"All textbooks are over there, do you need the name or… " I nodded and she glanced off to one side, snatched a post-it note and scribbled hastily on it before handing it to me.
I thanked her, took the little yellow note from her hand and moved to where she had pointed, where all along the wall were a bookcases a little above waist height with several tables positioned right next to them. Finding the right book took a little bit, mostly because I wasn't actually paying much attention to how close I was to finding the one I was looking for and instead I got a little lost in just looking at all the textbooks the school apparently offered classes for.
Judging by the covers of some of the books it became apparent it wasn't just current books that the library kept, judging by how old some of them looked. Eventually I did find it though, and then sat down at the nearest open seat. There were only about fifteen people in the entire library and most of them were seated farther away where they weren't in the direct line of sight for the librarians. Of those fifteen people only two were sophomores, neither of whom were likely to say or do anything to me, while the rest were either juniors or seniors.
I opened the book and started reading. Like with almost every other subject, I understood everything I read as soon as I finished reading it without having to actually practice or test myself. Of course what I was working through right now was the most basic level of material and not likely to set off any revelations on the subject of my powers, but I'd done some testing when I first noticed my improved learning ability and whatever was actually going on in my brain it didn't let me skip actually learning the material as such. All my power seemed to do was shortcut the part where someone else would have to memorize and practice to teach their brain how to think through a problem. So now, once the rules for something were explained to me, my brain basically just 'rewired itself' I guess to take into account the new stuff.
Maybe this was why Nono was being uncharacteristically quiet? Not about this material specifically, but rather the process of learning for myself? I mean I'd kind of already figured out that the point was for me to figure out a lot of this stuff on my own, but what if instead of being a choice she was making this was the only way I could learn it safely? Maybe something about how this whole weird me being inside a practically magic robot body thing worked meant that I had to do a lot of the initial work for myself, even as my new body made some of that work trivially easy. If that was the case then I definitely needed to buckle down and get the basics down so I could move on to more complex and potentially more helpful material.
About halfway through the text something funny began to happen. Whenever I focused on a particular problem or idea, I could visualise a precise actual model of the behavior. It was like seeing double, similar to the way I could take in the entire city while still paying attention to whatever was going on in front of me. Nothing overlaid or obscured my regular vision, instead it was like opening an entirely new set of eyes I'd never known I'd had but that still felt completely natural to have. Like one of those computer models they show in science shows to explain something, except rendered in much higher detail and with, I suspected, more accuracy than anything produced by any non-Tinker computer. An interesting development, but I couldn't think of any way in which it would useful off the top of my head.
A ringing brought me out of my thoughts, it was the bell signalling lunch was over so I quickly put the book back in its place on the shelf and followed the others on their way out of the library. Nothing I'd actually learned today seemed of much immediate use to me, but it was at least the first step in what seemed to me to be the right direction.
I had Mr. Gladly next and I definitely wasn't looking forward to watching him suck up to the 'cool' kids for the next hour, enough so that I wished I'd actually checked out the textbook so maybe I could have kept working on it through class. Actually I was turning around to go back quickly and check out the book when I bounced off someone.
That was when I noticed that I'd apparently been surrounded by Emma, Madison, Sophia, and four other girls. They weren't crowding me, quite, but they were close enough that there wasn't enough space between them to easily slip through and past occurrences had taught me it wouldn't be smart to give them an excuse to get their hands on me. One again they talked about my like I wasn't even then, throwing idiotic and contradictory insults; all of it had long since stopped bothering me of course, but still that didn't mean I wanted to stand here for the next five minutes and listen to it all.
I wished I was somewhere else, that I'd paid more attention and managed to avoid this altogether, or that I could just make them disappear. Not actually disappear of course, but so I couldn't see or hear them and didn't have to interact with them at all. I wished it so hard that it actually started happening, only in the worst way possible. One minute I was staring past them, my eyes unfocused, trying to just ignore them completely and then the next I was seeing through them literally. Except that I wasn't seeing completely through them, I was instead looking at their insides.
I watched Madisons heart and lungs pump in their smooth steady rhythms, Sophia's muscles tense and relax twitchily like she wanted to pounce, I saw what was left of Emma's lunch; little mushy bits of apple, dissolving bites of peanut butter and jelly slurry, all slowly turning into a single sloshing mixture. I saw Jessica's eyes swiveling in the sockets of her skull, attached to the suspended lump of grey matter by tendrils of nerves, and April's sinuses filled with thick greenish mucus that slowly dripped down the back of her throat.
"God, look at her! Is she about to hurl?!" Someone shrieked, a gleeful laughter hidden by the words.
"Oh my God, she is!" Another voice answered. "Do you think it's morning sickness? Did the freak get knocked up?"
"Ewwww! What desperate loser would fuck that?"
"Well Hebert, did you pay some forty year old pedo to take your cherry?" Emma's voice, cutting through the chatter of the the others like a knife.
I threw up all over two people's shoes.
"OH MY GOD! YOU FREAK!"
"It stinks!"
"Ewwwwww!"
I closed my eyes and turned back around pushing past the two girls behind me, neither of whom even resisted, and ran for the bathroom. My eyelids blocked even my souped up eyesight but I somehow managed my way to the nearest restroom mostly by memory, after all I'd used more than a few of them as hiding places before and here I was back to old habits. After a few minutes of simply sitting knees to my face on top of the toilet with my eyes closed I slowly pried them open, fearful of discovering I had suddenly gotten stuck in x-ray mode. Thankfully only the regular, not-people's-insides world greeted me.
Several minutes later I extracted myself from the locked stall, exited the bathroom after checking no one was around and walked quickly towards the nurses office. I already knew I wasn't sick, given my new body I didn't even think I could get sick much less the other thing they'd mentioned, but I really wasn't looking forward to sitting in class while the others made snide comments in not quite whispers specifically so I could hear.
First the nurse was skeptical, probably thinking I was just some kid trying to get out of a test or something, but once I explained what happened and suggested it must be something I'd eaten she got became attentive. My little embarrassment must have already reached her through the rumour mill, and she was obviously of the opinion that I was pregnant. Given that two girls had gotten pregnant last year, it wasn't totally surprising she believed it but even ignoring my unique circumstances I was one of the least likely people to end up in the family way at this school. She didn't come right out and say it but once I'd calmed down enough that I was comfortable going back to class and was on my way out she started shoving pamphlets on me. She made like it was some a precautionary measure by repeating that vague platitude about how "a young girl should know her body," but there was the pregnancy one sitting right on top. By the time I got out of there the next class was starting anyways.
For the next two hours I had to endure the hurried whispers of most of the classmates and the occasional comment from one of the girls either in Emma's circle of friends or looking to get in. I did my best to tune it out as much as I could, but I can't deny it got to me a little, to have all these people whispering about me not so subtlety. Thankfully, it got better the closer school got to ending as most people lost interest in me and moved on to the stuff that actually matter, like who'd hooked up with who, which teacher was being a complete asshole today, or where they were going after school.
Before I left I went back to the library, checked out the physics book, plus a chemistry book, and ran to catch my bus. At dinner I considered telling Dad about my day, but then I wondered what exactly I could tell him was the actual reason for my throwing up and since I didn't really feel like lying I just kept my mouth shut.
I went to bed feeling thoroughly miserable, small and alone as I lay in the silence and the darkness of my room. Something seemed to touch my back and then I felt the weight of another body settling in front of me; two arms wrapped around me, and bright pink hair mixed with my own in front of my face as Nono pulled me close. I heard the deep thrum thrum thrum of our heart, and began I crying silently into her embrace.
A/N: Sorry for the delay on this piece but I made a breakthrough on an original project and that ate up my creative juice for a while. Next section should be done a great deal sooner. (probably sometime midweek or end of week at the latest, or so I suspect).
- Location
- Madison, WI
Nice to see an update, I was just thinking about this fic last night, and now~
Though, ugh... school... sucks... so... much... -_-
I'm curious to see your reasoning at holding Taylor with inaction? I see that she doesn't want her bullies to win, but she's also not doing anything to stop them, while still wishing that they would. Speaking of which, at point of time is this now? Seeing Taylor "unlocking" a new ability is nice, both from reading the physics books and from the... x-ray, but having it mixed with the bullying antics certainly made the scene... well, not a feel-good scene to read.
Also, something I thought of during a re-read a while back, but didn't want to necro post; so when Taylor realized Nono essentially took her brain out and placed it in Nono's "body", doesn't that mean that Nono gave up her own body for Taylor? How come she's ok with that?
Though, ugh... school... sucks... so... much... -_-
I'm curious to see your reasoning at holding Taylor with inaction? I see that she doesn't want her bullies to win, but she's also not doing anything to stop them, while still wishing that they would. Speaking of which, at point of time is this now? Seeing Taylor "unlocking" a new ability is nice, both from reading the physics books and from the... x-ray, but having it mixed with the bullying antics certainly made the scene... well, not a feel-good scene to read.
Also, something I thought of during a re-read a while back, but didn't want to necro post; so when Taylor realized Nono essentially took her brain out and placed it in Nono's "body", doesn't that mean that Nono gave up her own body for Taylor? How come she's ok with that?
- Location
- Madison, WI
Assuming she doesn't fly into a rage at seeing "that weak pathetic Taylor daring to show her face in a nice party like this", and proceed to try public humiliation shit like push her into a banquet or dunk her in the toilet with Shadow Stalker playing rear guard.
- Location
- Portugal
- Pronouns
- She/They
Which could lead into awesome things with New Wave.
Czlyydwr Llrngwl
"Sell ya a door Learn gull," Czly/Celly for short
- Location
- Where the Beef is
- Pronouns
- Any
Ah, Taylor, if only understanding your new body was so easy as reading a few pamphlets...
"Well, Emma, it's a soirée for the rich and influential and the important parahumans. I'll leave you to think on this."
Taylor: "What do you mean THERE'S A MANUAL!?"
Nono: "... well, you never asked?"
CuttleFish2.0
Friendly neighborhood cuttlefish
- Location
- Seattle, Washington.
Same reasons in canon, except amplified. Anything she does will only ultimately be harmful for her.
We're a little under 3 days from the party.
Yes. Because AI's don't think like people.
- Location
- Madison, WI
By "she" I meant Taylor. I understand she was upset at realizing all of what was originally "her" is only her brain, but once she calmed down, how come she's ok with Nono basically giving up her (Nono's) body to her (Taylor), and now Nono only exist as a guest in her (Nono) own body, with Taylor in the driver seat.
CuttleFish2.0
Friendly neighborhood cuttlefish
- Location
- Seattle, Washington.
Ah, I understand. Well, she hasn't thought about it, that's why.