[LN] Thank Goodness We're Well-rounded Characters

[matchmadeinhell]

Kon was reading at relative superspeed. It wasn't at his usual brisk pace, because he found that the limitations of his powers meant he couldn't retain the knowledge for more than a few minutes at his usual speeds, so he had to slow it down a little, but he was still thumbing through far faster than some of the others were taking just to go through the study guides they'd quickly procured.

"Is it just the fact I'm reading this as superspeed or does this story make no sense?" Kon said, as he thumbed through page after page.

Another reality shard had fallen away and now that their brands had signaled it, it was time to go dimension-hopping. Fortunately, it was a very small shard in the middle of the wilderness in Siberia and the area of effect was spreading slowly, so they had time to prepare.

With his otherworldly wisdom, Manny had managed to help out on this one, communicating some clues about the world they were about to enter by flashing the image of a cover of a book.

A fairly terrible book. Apparently they were entering the world it was based on.

So they were doing their homework as they geared up to go and trying to make sense of the senseless.

"So what I'm getting from this is this is a world where you're not allowed to have more than one personality trait? I think? Under pain of death, you have to be a one-dimensional character."

Comments

[staff_and_wielder]

"I couldn't tell you," Nico said, slouching in her seat and glaring at her copy of the book. "I've read this page five times and I haven't retained any of it. My brain is rebelling."

She used to be able to read books she didn't like; that's what high school English Literature was all about, wasn't it?

"Uuugh."

[othersdestructive]

Raph wasn't even trying to read the book. He was trying to read the study guide. And failing.

And giving up, now he was giving up. Yep. Screw this. The others could do the required reading and he'd just crib their mental notes.

"That's it, I'm done," he said, tossing the study guide onto the nearby couch like it was trash. "You guys prep by doing the reading, I'm going to prep by arming myself to the teeth. Then we'll have all our bases covered. Just point me at what needs to be punched, okay?"

Raph snapped his fingers to get the attention of a yeti.

"Hey, Phil, did you guys put together that stuff I asked for?"

Phil the Yeti barble-blarged an affirmative, then briefly disappeared and reappeared again with a large bag that made a lot of clanging noises as he tossed it to Raph.

"Thanks! Now this is what I'm talking about!" Raph said enthusiastically as he opened it up and started pulling out various pointy implements and the leather holsters and belts and such that he needed to carry them all.

[mark_in_the_sands]

"Nico can point you at the things she wants punched," Cassie said, glancing up briefly from where she was holding herself in plank position over her copy of the study guide. "I've got my punching needs covered. And you guys are all way over-thinking this."

She finished the page she was on and brought her knees up under her so that she could sit up and give her core a break. "It's just literary bubblegum. I've read worse. Kon, I know you've read worse, because I read some of the books you recommended in those interviews you used to do, and they were terrible."

[matchmadeinhell]

"Nah, I never read any of those. Like so many things back then, they offered to pay me money to say I liked the thing, Rex told me to say I liked the thing, I said on TV that I liked the thing, then Rex embezzled the money that I got from saying I liked the thing. Mostly to pay certain sordid individuals he owed money to that wanted very much for his legs to get broken - magically and through no fault of their own, of course."

Despite his words, he didn't sound at all upset about this arrangement. It was what it was and Rex, for all his faults, had on very rare occasion shown a soft side and come through in a pinch. He just kept flipping through his book.

"It was a weird little system but it worked - he never touched the portion that I agreed with Supes would go to charity, at any rate. Anyway, I never read a single one of 'em. Just like I didn't eat half the snack foods my face got stuck on and didn't wear half the clothes I said I wore." He added, "The only time I ever even touched all the free sneakers I got from the shoe companies I was endorsing was the time I made a sneaker fort out of them. Then I donated them all to charity."

[morethanmyth]

The cafeteria was about as rowdy as could be expected, with people loudly talking and laughing and sometimes hooting and hollering. Music was blasting from somewhere in the crowd.

The Dauntless born found friends in the crowd, leaving the initiates to sit together. Nico, Cassie, Kon, and Raph wound up crowding in next to Christina, Tris, an Erudite boy, and one of the Candor boys that hadn't been hassling Tris.

The food wasn't bad at least.

"Have you never seen a hamburger before?" asked Christine as Tris picked at hers.

"No, I've seen one," she responded, "I've just never eaten one."

"Abnegation eat plain food," said the Erudite boy. "Plant-based diet with no sauces and a minimum of seasoning."

"What textbook did you swallow?" asked Christina.

"Nice to meet you too. I'm Will. Erudite."

"Of course you are," said Christina. "The only Erudite I've ever met that didn't talk like a walking computer was, well...him."

She pointed at Kon.

[matchmadeinhell]

"What can I say? In my case, it was beauty instead of brains," Kon said, slicking back his hair and posing in a way that looked like he was trying to make his face catch the best light.

They all laughed.

"There's a reason I transferred and it ain't the edgy new clothes. I've spent way too much of my life surrounded by brainiacs."

Like, actual Brainiacs.

[morethanmyth]

"Brainiacs! I love it. That's the perfect word. I'm so using that," said Christina.

[mark_in_the_sands]

Cassie thumped her chest a couple of times to dislodge the bit of hamburger that had gone down the wrong pipe when Kon made his 'brainiac' joke. She thumped Kon on the arm for good measure -- way to make your girlfriend undignified-giggle-choke in public, Superdork.

"Being pretty isn't going to help you much here either," she said, sticking her tongue out at him.

Even Rocky had a montage....

[morethanmyth]

Four got them up early the next morning by clanging a metal bar against the metal railing leading into their dorm.

"I want everyone in the pit. Two minutes."

[matchmadeinhell]

"Noooooooo," Kon said in a drowsy, whiny, high-pitched voice, sounding like a little kid, the moment Four was gone.

It got a few groggy laughs from the people around them.

Unsurprisingly, he was rapidly becoming the class clown, a role he was a natural for.

[mark_in_the_sands]

Cassie sat up with a jaw-cracking yawn, then rolled out of bed and stood over Kon.

"Come on, Sleeping Beauty, up and at 'em!" she said, far more perkily than she would under any circumstances other than being myths mean we don't need as much sleep. "Wake up, wake up, good morning! Anyone who needs a little extra motivation, stay in your bed, I'll tip you out."

Which she promptly demonstrated on Kon.

[matchmadeinhell]

"Woman, I will shortsheet your bed every night for the rest of our time in proximity with each other."

Kon getting dumped on the floor also got a laugh, especially since Kon just kept laying theere.

"Also, you underestimate my capacity for not caring about things. Like how hard concrete is."

[othersdestructive]

"You look like you want to spit acid in someone's eyes," Raph said to Nico as he busied himself with pretending to tie his shoes. He, Nico, Tris, Christina, Al, and Will had headed back to the dorm to change after practice.

In Raph's case, he'd gone back to pretend to change.

[staff_and_wielder]

"Ugh."

Nico threw herself face first down on her bed and waved him to come over to her side. She wanted to complain and she couldn't really do it properly in earshot of the locals without blowing their cover.

"They got worse," she said, flapping a hand in the direction of Kon and Cassie's beds when Raph got close enough to understand her through the muffling of her pillow. "I didn't know they could get worse, but they did."

And it was just the ice cream on top that she was jealous. She couldn't blame them for wanting to sneak off together. It was just that she wanted to sneak off with someone too, and couldn't.

Jerks.

[othersdestructive]

Raph came over and sat next to her.

"How is that even possible? They've already been a giant mush sandwich so far. And they're both the filling. No bread."

[staff_and_wielder]

"Kon just asked me if there was any way for them to temporarily drop the illusion I'm covering them with so that they can, and I quote, 'do the do'."

Nico raised her head briefly so that Raph could see how hard she was rolling her eyes before faceplanting down on her pillow again.

"So I hope we're not going to need them for anything this evening, because they are not going to be available."

Ugh.

[matchmadeinhell]

After getting info from a very irate looking Nico on how to handle the illusion thing and a quick but very informative stop to the infirmary, Kon met up with Cassie again in the Pit and grabbed her by the hand, pressing in close to talk in her ear.

"So, Nico explained how we can drop the illusions to do the do," and yes, that was the way he'd worded it to Nico, hence the irateness, "and I stopped by the infirmary and they gave me a goodie bag of birth control stuff in a surprisingly wide assortment of colors and flavors. I'm guessing a lot of people here go a little wild with the freedom."

That, plus some other handy things, like a giant blanket, were in the backpack he was wearing.

"Let's make like the wind and blow this joint." He paused and made that goofy face he did when he was thinking of a particularly naughty joke. "- and also possibly other things as well."

They didn't really need to sneak out or anything. Now that training was done for the day, they were allowed to move around freely.

[mark_in_the_sands]

"Then we are well supplied enough to use a couple for balloon sword-fights if necessary, because I hit up the infirmary while you were chatting with Nico," Cassie said with a smirk and a squeeze of his hand. The joke got an eye-roll of mock exasperation, and she playfully shoved him away.

"I don't know," she said, "I think if I reward you for that kind of joke, I'll never stop hearing them."

Which wasn't to say that she wasn't already pushing him toward the exit like a snow plow cleaning a street.

[matchmadeinhell]

Kon laughed.

"I can tell you're annoyed from your pushing-me-outside-where-the-nookie-can-be-had reflex. Always a sign of extreme annoyance and a total lack of attraction."

God, he'd missed this. Not just the sex but the lead up. The flirting and goofing around. The just...being together. Wanting and being wanted. All of it.

[morethanmyth]

The trainers - Eric, especially - had an unfortunate habit of pairing mismatched fighters together. People they perceived as weak with people they knew would probably beat the snot out of them.

Only Four tried to be reasonable about it, putting people who were nearly evenly matched together, yelling out instruction and corrections to both as they fought, and making it so even the loser might learn something.

Right now, Nico was paired off with one of the best fighters in the group of transfers, and what was worse, she was the kind of person that played with her food, wanting to wear her opponents down slowly instead of just ending things with a solid knockout punch.

[staff_and_wielder]

This fight was just one long exercise in exactly why Nico hated this place. She didn't care how important it might be to the story of this world, she was going to burn it to the ground the moment she had the slightest excuse.

"Aren't you done using me as a punching bag yet?" she snarled at the other girl, barely blocking the blow she got in response. Myth healing or no, getting hit sucked and she didn't care how many points she was losing, she just wanted to be done with this crap.

[morethanmyth]

"Do you need to stop?" asked Eric, sounding genuinely merciful for once.

[othersdestructive]

One thing they had to worry about was a butterfly effect. Make a few tiny changes here and it could spread out like a cascade and change even bigger things. Their presence changed the game even if it only happened in subtle ways.

That meant they had to make sure those ripples didn't cause any tsunamis.

Kon had warned them about a particularly dangerous moment, where Tris might wind up in trouble, and they opted to hang around and make sure it didn't lead to catastrophe.

So they tried their best to keep an eye on Tris and when it seemed the time had come, a night that Tris walked alone through the railed hallway next to the chasm, they waited nearby, peeking around the corner.

"I see 'em," said Raph, "at the other end. They're waiting to ambush her. I call dibs on dangling one over the pit. We can't both do it."

[mark_in_the_sands]

"All right, but only if you promise not to have too much fun," Cassie said, taking advantage of her ability to hover so that she could peek around the corner over her head. "If she goes over the edge herself, you get to be the root of the hanging line. I'm not helping you explain how you can apparently pull a grappling hook out of your butt."

She could totally explain away something that appeared to be flight but totally wasn't to a traumatized girl. Probably.

"Athena, this place is so stupid."

[othersdestructive]

And the fight was on. A group of masked attackers came out from the other end of the hallway, gagging her so her screams weren't loud enough for anyone else to hear.

To her credit, she fought like a banshee, clearly using what she'd learned so far from Four and Cassie, but she still wasn't experienced enough to take on several attackers at once, after being surprise jumped.

They hissed threats and horrible things at her, although one of them hung back, hesitant. They started to dangle her over the railing, and the hesitant one hissed, "What are you doing?! I thought we were just going to scare her, not actually hurt her!"

Tris managed to rip off that one's mask as he rushed in and actually tried to pull the others off her, revealing Al's wide-eyed face.

Raph was the one to reach them first, quickly kicking Tris' main attacker into the others, knocking the two most aggressive ones down, and grabbing her by the arm and yanking her back over the railing to safety in one quick movement.

He tsked at them.

"Well, what do we have here? You idiots know taking out the competition is the coward's way up the rankings, right? But hey, you being pathetic is why you're at the bottom of 'em to start with, so why am I not surprised?"

Al backed away, horrified, but the other two got up, prepared to fight.