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

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

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."

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"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."

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.

"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."

"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."

Edited 2015-01-27 09:42 (UTC)

"You're going to clank when you move if you're carrying all of that," Nico said to Raph, hiding a smile at the idea of building a sneaker fort -- which then turned into a grimace as she remembered that the guy who'd built a sneaker fort and then donated the shoes to charity had been enslaved by his government and made to do their dirty work. She tried to shake it off.

"Are you even going to be able to use all of that?"

She hadn't brought up their near-kiss. She wasn't planning on bringing up their near-kiss. She'd given it a lot of thought, and actually talking about it still seemed like a bad idea. Pretending that not talking about it wasn't going to blow up in her face somehow in the future definitely seemed like the way to go.

Edited 2015-01-27 10:33 (UTC)

Hey, if she was ignoring the near-kiss, so was he. Maybe it meant she hadn't noticed and had just waved off. He was fine with that.

"I'm a ninja. I know how to keep quiet and unclinky," he said with a grin. "I didn't read all of it but it sounds like the world we're going into has a bunch of cults based on vocab words and Manny made it clear the shard would be too small for us to detect easily and that the one cult that most of us aren't smart enough to get into probably has it. So if we're gonna have to go into the stupidly violent one until things make them intersect and give us a shot at it, it pays to be prepared."

He added, "Besides, you guys are all powerhouses with the magic and the invulnerability and flying and all that. How else am I going to keep up in a fight?"

He was the least powerful among them after all. Yes, his speed and agility were very enhanced compared to home and yes he had the teleportation power, but the former was nothing compared to the two supers, and the latter was far more limited than Nico's magic, since he could only do it in smoke or darkness. Her magical ability was nothing to sneeze at given how powerful and versatile the staff of one was.

Cassie made a face at the mention of 'cults', then shook her head.

"We're not going to be demonstrating the magic et al, so all you'll really need to compete with is the humans from that reality," she said. "Which isn't to say that you shouldn't bring weapons. It's better to have a weapon and not need it than need one and not have it."

She flipped back through the study guide and suddenly chuckled. "Hey, Nico, when you make me and Kon look like we're sweet sixteen, are you going to make us look like we did when we were actually sixteen? Because that was the age of really unfortunate hair."

She'd been growing hers out after years of wearing it in an androgynous crop, and Kon had still been taking his stylin' tips from the nineties.

"Hey listen, I lived in Hawaii. Having a fade kept my head nice and cool. Unlike the many little belts that didn't hold up anything, it was actually functional," Kon said, reading the last few pages of the book.

He tossed it aside like it was trash.

"Done. That was total trash. The Cliff's notes version: we're going to be in post-apocalyptic Chicago, for some reason they're split into factions, based - yes -" He pointed to Raph "- on vocab words. Probably some genetic engineering or weird social engineering thing. Everyone takes a test when they're sixteen to see which one they fit in with the most and get to choose whether to stay where they are or transfer. If you test as having more than one facet to your personality, you're divergent, and people try to kill you because you can think for yourself. Or something. And we need to all pick Dauntless - the crazy people who think being brave is all about showboating - because they're going to be brainwashed by Erudite - the brainy people - to attack Abnegation, the weird culty selfless people that have a thing against mirrors. So that'll give us a chance to infiltrate Erudite. We'll have to make the cut during training, though, they turn out all but the top few to be factionless, aka shunned and homeless."

A pause.

"And also maybe stop a massacre? Not that it's our problem but I'm pretty sure we can sabotage it without much extra work just by, like, existing there. Oh also the lead is a girl named Tris who wants to strike out on her own and protect people. She's kind of daring but also quietly vulnerable, trying to find her way and bildungsing the heck out of that roman. I think she's important to the events of her world so we're gonna have to make sure our presence doesn't knock her out of the running in Dauntless."

Edited 2015-01-29 08:25 (UTC)

"That is not going to be a problem," Nico muttered under her breath. She was only brave after she'd exhausted all other options; and while she wouldn't say that she'd never been dramatic for the sake of it with the Staff of One, she doubted that her style was particularly compatible with the Dauntless. She slouched further down in her seat.

"I'm for stopping a massacre if we can, but we should focus on finding the shard," she said, the corners of her lips tugging downward as if to join her stomach on it's journey toward the floor. "I'd prefer to cram it back where it belongs sooner rather than later."

"We can do both," said Raph. "If we can sabotage it discreetly in the middle of everything we do it. If not, we break cover. If this world doesn't have mutants or super-people, you two -" He nodded at Cass and Kon "- can probably clean up shop all on your lonesome while Nico and I get the shard to the door. Then you can superspeed your way there to join us."

He added, "We should be able to sabotage it without getting caught no problem, though. I can handle that part if we need to go stealthy. They're using some kinda mind control serum, right? I saw that part at least. They'd have to bring the serum to their HQ before giving it to everyone. Maybe all that serum can have a little accidental spill."

Edited 2015-01-29 08:58 (UTC)

"Sounds like a plan to me," Cassie said, hopping up to her feet and rolling her shoulders, intertwining her fingers and stretching her arms over her head.

"Anything else we need to prep before we get this show on the road?"

"The idea was aside from making us all look like normal human teenagers the spell's going to make people think we were always there, right? That means we have to blend when we talk so we don't break the illusion. So we all have to pick other factions we're pretending we're transferring from as covers."

He ticked off his fingers.

"There's Amity for the peaceful. They live on a hippie commune farming and singing songs and eat 'special' bread that keeps them all mellow. Abnegation, who all act selfless all the time to the point of having no personal identity - which is super healthy sounding - and feed the factionless and stuff. They don't believe in looking in mirrors because they think it'll make them vain but that sounds like a group of people hiding that they're all secretly vampires to me. Candor, the honest people, who are, inexplicably, often lawyers. Please don't ask me how that works. And Erudite, the smart people, who are actually pretty dumb because they think killing people will accomplish something. We should all pretend we had parents or mentors from who started in Dauntless and transferred out that thought we'd move in that direction, who taught us how to fight so we'd have an edge. You know, to explain the hero stuff. But we need to pick where we're pretending to be from."

Edited 2015-01-29 09:23 (UTC)

Nico smirked. This part was easy enough to answer.

"Candor," she said.

"Candor," Raph said at almost exactly the same time. Her smirk grew as she cast a look his way.

Edited 2015-01-29 09:26 (UTC)

He pointed at her, still grinning.

"Jinx," they both said, also at the same exact time.

Cassie cocked her head to the side and blinked at the younger teens, then cast a look under raised eyebrows at Kon. Was it just her, or were those two sharing some recreational eye-contact?

"I guess I'll go with Abnegation," she said. "And I'm set for someone to base my mentor off of."

Artemis wouldn't be impressed with this place at all, but no one could say that her training methods wouldn't prepare Cassie for whatever Dauntless could think to throw at her.

Kon was grinning a goofy grin.

"I'm going to say I'm from Erudite and then just be myself so they get really confused because I'm me. Then when they point out how dumb I come off I'll point out that's why I transferred, duh. And then they're the ones that'll feel stupid."

He gestured dramatically with both hands.

"It's the perfect cover."

Edited 2015-01-29 09:50 (UTC)

Nico huffed out a breath that, had it been any louder, would have been a laugh.

"Anything else you guys want to keep in mind so that it happens when I cast the spell?" she asked as she began picking at the nail of the smallest finger of her left hand. She was really trying not to get used to using a single nail for this sort of thing. Bad habits.

"Clothes. Make sure that instead of just turning me human it turns me human with clothes."

Even if it was an illusion, he didn't exactly want to be standing there butt naked as a human.

"Also, it's going to have to make me feel human, so when they touch me they're not feeling shell or leathery skin."

A pause.

"And I want spiky hair."

It looked cool, okay.

Edited 2015-01-31 10:02 (UTC)

"Yeah, you never did say if Kon and I were going to be going through this adventure with horrible hair," Cassie said, tossing a smirk in Kon's direction. "Otherwise, if you've got enough control over the spell, I'd say stay closer to our current physiques, just shrink us down a bit and add some puppy fat to our cheeks and such. It'll be easier to explain how strong we are if we look like tanks instead of the delicate teens we used to be."

"Delicate is not the word I'd use for us but she's right. Baby faces but we need to at least look like we bulked up a little younger so it explains us being able to use people as dumbbells."

Right now, he looked like a mack truck but that was a little too bulky for a sixteen-year-old. But his younger self, while cut, didn't look like quite as much of a powerhouse.

"Not as thick as this but close."

Nico sighed, head bowed her finger. Not that she wasn't happy that Kon had his girlfriend here, but could they maybe stop flirting endlessly with each other?

Blood glistened along the edge of her nail, and she grabbed the Staff from where it was propped against the table. "Keep all that in mind for yourselves, I've got other things to focus on."

Like one of the many events in her life that made her feel guilty and awful, to fuel the spell.

"Sixteen and nowhere else to be."

The spell kept Raph almost as short but just as muscular, making him look like a stocky little muscle machine, with nowhere near the height he'd had in the illusion he and Nico had been in together fighting the kaiju. But his facial features were exactly like they'd been then, his eyes staying mostly the same shape with the same bright shade of green. The chip in his plastron translated to a jagged scar on his neck and shoulder.

He keened a glance at a nearby glass wall decoration.

"Man, I am handsome no matter the species," he said, tilting his head back and forth to get a good look.

Also, he had clothes, which was important. The standard black and white pseudo-future clothes that Candor people wore, though Raph's had translated as something somewhat athletic-looking, a tight black top with white sleeves made of some strange future material, and black pants and boots.

Edited 2015-02-02 09:07 (UTC)

Cassie, meanwhile, had lost a few inches -- both in height and in hair.

"Yep," she said, fluffing her shaggy cut with both hands. "Awkward hair days are here again."

Her clothes, meanwhile, were baggy and gray and disguised what muscle mass she'd retained during her transformation. She frowned down at her skirt. "We're getting new clothes, right? Because this skirt is going to be a pain in the butt to fight in. Don't get me wrong, I can do it, but it's gonna be awkward until I tie it up."

She did kind of like the sweater, though. It looked almost like a boyfriend sweater -- a boyfriend sweater that had been worn shapeless and baggy on the boyfriend before she stole it, but a boyfriend sweater never the less.

"Yeah, we'll get edgy new duds in Dauntless."

Kon had the face he'd had around age sixteen but the build he'd had around seventeen, not quite linebacker muscular but muscular enough to convey the fact he could use an actual person as a bludgeon. To those who knew what Kon looked like at both ages, it might have looked strange but for anyone else, it would work. He looked believably like a sixteen-year-old blessed with very good genetics that had bloomed early.

The Erudite clothes especially worked out. He looked like he was born to wear the color blue. Or, well, cloned to. (Because he had been.)

As soon as he saw Cassie's hair, he did what any good boyfriend would and laughed uproariously. Then when he looked at his reflection in the glass and saw that he had the fade again he pointed at his own reflection and kept laughing uproariously.

Edited 2015-02-02 09:47 (UTC)

Nico looked...pretty much the same. Sixteen hadn't been very long ago for her, so most of the magic went into replacing her clothes. Even then, black and white played pretty heavily in her wardrobe, so it was really more of a change in the cut and style than anything.

"Happy with your new look, then?" she asked Raph as Cassie and Kon laughed at their own and the other's hair. "You should be able to fake changing clothes -- they probably won't have spandex jumpsuits made for you, but the illusion should swap them out for you."

She assumed they were going to be dressed in spandex in Dauntless. It sounded suspiciously like what she imagined the Initiative was like.

This was going to be awful.

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