[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

[othersdestructive]

The door closed behind them, looking like a perfectly normal door.

"Now what?" Raph asked Cassie and Kon. "Please tell me we can get to the hitting people part sooner rather than later."

Much as he had all his experience with his brothers, and much as he liked being stubborn to whoever was trying to lead him, they seemed to have the most idea of what they were doing with this. They also had more years of experience at this hero stuff than he and Nico did.

[mark_in_the_sands]

"We use our brands to look for the shard," Cassie said. "Nico's right, that's our first objective. We deal with that, then we can head off the massacre at more or less our leisure." She turned, eyeing her "troops" thoughtfully.

"Raph, you and Kon should head over to the Erudite compound and see if you can find out where they're keeping the shard. He's got a reason to be there, and you're the sneakiest of all of us. See if a smash-and-grab is viable. Nico and I will see about getting the lay of the land out here -- most likely routes between Dauntless and Abnegation, that sort of thing. We'll meet back here in, oh, three hours and trade information. Try not to do anything stupid, just because we're bullet-proof and Nico can cast us some new faces doesn't mean that we should put security on high alert."

[matchmadeinhell]

"Yes, ma'am," said Kon, snapping off a salute. Then he whispered behind his hand loud enough that it wasn't a whisper at all. "I missed seeing you get all take-chargey."

It got him all tingly.

And it had been quite a while.

[mark_in_the_sands]

"Yeah, yeah," Cassie said, tossing him a wink with far more confidence than she'd had with boys at sixteen. "Let's get this done and you'll get to see a bit more."

Even Nico rolling her eyes couldn't knock the smile off of Cassie's face. It had been awhile, and she was more than happy to encourage him.

[matchmadeinhell]

Since Kon was passing as Erudite it had been easy to bring in Raph to check the place out. They'd pretended they were distant cousins and that Kon was showing him around since his aptitude test had come up Erudite. Since all he had to do was pretend he'd tested for one thing and could still choose something different like Dauntless, it was the perfect cover.

It was fairly easy to scope out the place, especially with a ninja on hand and while he was loathe to admit it, his black ops training had come in handy. He was good at casing the place, assessing security in ways he wouldn't have even thought to think of back when he was your standard smacky-thuddy walking brick of a superhero.

He'd never be as smart as Tim, but he had finally figured out just a little bit how his squirrely little brain worked because now his could work that way, too.

Kon and Raph got back to the meeting place about the same time as the girls did.

"Unfortunately for us, smash and grab is nooo go."

[staff_and_wielder]

"Are you sure?" Nico asked, stomach sinking down toward her knees. She'd been hoping that they could cut this little adventure short. "Even with my magic?"

[othersdestructive]

"Technically, that's 'hex and grab,' which might be our only shot short of infiltrating but he means actually smashing and grabbing isn't going to work. Security's too tight," said Raph. "We've got two shots at this: seeing if we can magic it out and infiltrating Dauntless until it gets us in there."

[mark_in_the_sands]

"Let's finish pooling information before we start making plans," Cassie said. "We've got time yet. Kon, sit-rep?"

They'd grown up in this business together, and with Robin and his Bat-needs. The two of them had been trained long ago in the art of information-gathering and reporting back.

[matchmadeinhell]

"We've got multiple potential hiding spots, most of 'em behind huge steel doors or in huge steel vaults. All of those vaults look like they're armed with alarms and possibly other defenses like electrical defenses and even poison gas projectors. No mechanical locks - which wouldn't even be useful anyway because I don't have my TTK as a myth and it's not like any of us have a lock-picking kit. It all looks like retinal and fingerprint scanners. Brands were near useless. It maaay be in their facility but we barely got a read, let alone enough of one to pin down which vault or door. They also have their own security force and while it's small, they look well-armed."

He went on, "So we'd have to somehow figure out which door or vault - and the doors might also have vaults or more steel doors behind them - sneak in, somehow disarm the defenses, somehow break through, and get out with it before the security forces pin us down. Walls around the doors aren't sheet-rock or anything punchable either. I dug my fingers through the paint to see what was there. Not even concrete - it's all metal and it seems just as thick."

He gestured to himself and then to Cassie. "Right now you and I aren't as strong and durable as we are back home. Doors are too thick for us to do a quick Kool-aid man through. It'd take at least fifteen to twenty minutes, bare minimum, and that's if we don't mind breaking a few hand bones while we're at it. And while we're still bulletproof, that's enough time for the security guys to get heavier artillery. If they have anything like rocket launchers or neural stim darts, we don't have enough of our usual invulnerability to hold out."

He shook his head. "If we were back home, it'd be easy peasy, but we don't have enough oomph as myths since we lost powers instead of gaining 'em. Even with Raph and Nico on defense while we work, there's no way we can pull it off, especially if don't choose the right door the first time. The only possible smash and grab is - like Raph said - a hex and grab. Seeing if Nico's magic can pin down the right vault or lab and maybe do a little 'open sesame' spell. If that worked, we could maybe pull it off if I'm already inside the facility. If we know where it is, the defenses are down, and it's open, I can superspeed in, grab it, and get out."

He shrugged. "But that's our only shot at force. Otherwise we're gonna have to get control of one of the higher ups somehow to get a vault open and our best chance of that is going along with the story."

[staff_and_wielder]

"Well then, let's go try and force it," Nico said, squaring her shoulders and jutting out her chin. She'd much rather limit herself to one worry at a time, especially when pretend to be a reckless punch-em-up hero type was going to take so much of her energy.

[othersdestructive]

"Let's give this a shot."

They had to try to spread out in the area around Erudite's headquarters, lest they wind up looking like some kind of politically correct multi-faction gang. The divisions between factions were very plain to see and all of them hanging out together would've been noticeable.

Splitting up meant they had a continuous line of sight with each other, though. Raph could see Kon in the building, Cassie could see Raph, and Nico could see Cassie where she was hiding in an alley, ready to do her spells.

As soon as Kon was in position, Raph gave Cassie the agreed-upon hand signal.

[staff_and_wielder]

Nico waited until she saw Cassie's signal to plant her feet and hold her left arm out in the direction of the building, staring through her outspread fingers as she chewed on her thumbnail.

"He's picking up the pieces," she intoned with blood on her tongue. Hopefully, that should at least give Kon a good idea where the shard might be. Then they could worry about grabbing it.

[matchmadeinhell]

Annnnd nothing. No magical arrow leading the way, no doors spontaneously opening. Just nothing.

Eventually, when it was clear that she'd tried and equally clear it wasn't going to work, Kon came out and they reconvened in the alley.

"Nada. The only thing I can think of is maybe one of the Erudite people have it but it's not in the facility. Or magic might not work as well here."

[staff_and_wielder]

"It should have at least pointed the way!" Nico said angrily, leaning on the Staff. When it had been clear that the spell hadn't worked the first time, she'd extracted it from her arm on the assumption that being inside her body might be interfering with the spell. But it seemed that the spell had actually been cast just fine, judging by the drift of rose petals Nico had found herself in when she tried to cast it a second time. A second spell with different wording had resulted in the same non-result.

"The only things I know I can't do are cast the same spell more than once, raise the dead, or cast spells while standing in a circle of wizard ashes!"

What the hell. Why wasn't her magic working?!

[othersdestructive]

Raph briefly opened his mouth, then shut it.

"I'm not gonna ask how you know that last one." Clearly, some poor wizard had been set on fire and some bad guy had made it so she'd step in it. "But this is a different universe, right? Me and my brothers went to Dimension X one time and even the atmosphere and physics were different. We had to use these breathing filter things Donnie made and gravity was so weird we could walk over the edge of something flat and stick to the bottom of it rather than falling. Maybe this is something like that where magic doesn't work as well here."

[mark_in_the_sands]

Nico opened her mouth to argue, but Cassie waved a hand to forestall her.

"We know the illusions you cast over in our temporary home base reality worked," she said. "And it works well enough to accidentally create your weight in flower petals. Try stashing your staff inside you again, see if you can cast spells on purpose."

[matchmadeinhell]

"Maybe if we figure out the limits in this world, we can figure out a way around them."

If things were wonky it was possible they just needed to be creative to get around it.

[staff_and_wielder]

Nico scowled mutinously when Cassie waved her silent, but set her jaw and the Staff against her arm again.

"Get in here," she snapped. The Staff did as it was bid, no problem at all.

"See?!" It was all Nico could do not to stomp her foot like a little kid. "Something's weird and it's not my magic!"

[othersdestructive]

"Well, whatever's going on, it's not working," said Raph, "and that leaves us with only one option."

The sucky option.

[mark_in_the_sands]

"Yeah, and unfortunately we don't have time to work out what's going on with your spells and the shard if we're going to make that choosing ceremony thing," Cassie said. "Maybe it's something about the shard -- after all, if you could track it with magic, you wouldn't need the brand, right?"

She looked around at their mismatched clothes. "We should split up and arrive separately. Except you two--" she pointed at Raph and Nico. "--You're both from Candor, so you can stick close to each other."

And if anything went sideways, Raph could hold people off until Nico got her magic wand back out of her body and into the fight.

[matchmadeinhell]

"Sounds like a plan," said Kon. He pointed at Raph and Nico. "Yell really loud if you need help. Most of my superhearing is gone but it's still a little better than human hearing."

He added, "Then we'll all meet up again at the Sorting Hat and see about getting into Gryffindor."

[staff_and_wielder]

Nico glanced at Raph and shrugged at Cassie's theory as to why her magic kept sliding off the shard. It made sense, at least a little, unless he had a counter-argument.

She wasn't happy about it, but it made sense.

Kon's crack broke the tension enough to get a mouth-twitch from Nico.

"If only."

[othersdestructive]

Fortunately nothing unusual happened until the Choosing Ceremony. Raph and Nico entered with the rest of Candor, sitting in front of the sea of white and black in their section. In the center of the room was a platform with different bowls, each marked with the symbols of the faction, with something in them representing their faction. Candor had a bowl of glass, Amity had a bowl of soil, etc etc.

"Okay, so I may not have paid a lot of attention to this part in the study guide. We have to cut our hands with total disregard for passing diseases and let it drip into the right bowl, right? And Dauntless is the one with the coals?" Raph whispered in Nico's ear.

[staff_and_wielder]

"Yeah, and yeah," Nico whispered back. Go figure, the part with ceremonial bleeding had stuck in her memory. "Guess hemophilia is a thing of the past."

And hopefully the illusion would cover how quickly they healed from the cuts.

One of the other kids from Candor glanced their way, then cowered back in the face of Nico's stink-eye in return.

This was so stupid.

[mark_in_the_sands]

At least none of them had surnames starting with 'A' or 'Z'. It meant that Cassie had time to watch what the kids native to this reality did, so she could be sure to do it right.

When her named was called, she stepped forward and dripped her blood into the bowl of live coals. Fortunately, a couple people had already chosen Dauntless, so she was prepared when the entire faction began to hoot and holler like monkeys. Cassie resisted the impulse to roar back, or thump her chest with both fists -- best not to make people think too hard about whether or not they'd seen her around Abnegation.

She did thrust her clenched-and-healing fist into the air above her head though, before joining the crowd.