[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]

"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.

[staff_and_wielder]

Nico wasn't sure when she'd taken hold of Raph's hand, but she had to let it go when her name was called.

Okay. She had to do this. She had to do this and not look like she was walking to her own execution. She thrust her shoulders back and strode forward, refusing to look at the faces watching her. When she reached the dais, she almost couldn't bring herself to pick up the knife.

She hadn't used a knife to get at her blood since before her parents died.

God, she hated this place.

A quick cut and an almost quicker trip into the howling storm of Dauntless, Nico plopped down next to Cassie. The actual protagonist of the story was sitting on Cassie's other side. Nico tried to ignore her, and everyone else around her, at least until Kon and Raph joined them.

[matchmadeinhell]

Kon walked up and barely hesitated as he "cut" his hand (ie dug into it with his fingertip until it bled and made it look like the knife had done it rather than blunting the damn thing). He dripped it onto the coals.

Unlike Cassie, in response to the hoots and hollers of Dauntless, Kon turned around and did thump his fists on his chest, letting out a loud whoop that could have come from Peter Pan himself, louder than any whoops or hollers they could have made. Then he trotted over to them and was met by a sea of high fives. (And one instance of Cassie slapping his ass).

Dauntless was supposed to be brave. It was supposed to be free. While the books had made it clear that the idea of it had gotten twisted away from the way it should've been, Kon was brave and free and he wanted to establish his dominance in that area from the start.

So they weren't surprised when he trounced them in Dauntless itself.

That was how it had always been. He could fly. He could fight. He could crow.

[othersdestructive]

There was no way he could follow that up with anything more bombastic so Raph simply cut his hand and walked over to Dauntless, grinning but otherwise looking about as unphased by it all as he actually was.

[staff_and_wielder]

Nico had, through dint of elbows and general stubbornness on the part of all four of them, ended up in the middle of the other three. Part of her wanted to protest, but the rest of her wisely pointed out that protesting would be stupid. She had the least skill at hand-to-hand, and they were surrounded by people who showed affection (and probably just about every other emotion) with punching.

Oh yeah, and when this was over, they were going to celebrate by doing stupid things that could get them killed.

Yaaay.

[matchmadeinhell]

The ceremony was over before long and then they were urged to get up and the whole mass of whooping, hollering, we're-trying-too-hard-too-seem-edgy people made their way out of the building.

Despite the fact he was one of the loudest and rowdiest, Kon made sure to hover very close to Raph and Nico, lest anything unexpected get thrown their way that he needed to play human shield at.

Their first task? Climbing up the ruins of a building. Fortunately the girders were arranged in ways that made it only about as difficult as climbing a ladder.

"Boy, this looks tough," he joked to the other three as he jumped up an started climbing. "If only one had the ability to leap up one of these in a single bound."

[mark_in_the_sands]

Cassie pushed Nico ahead of her onto the building -- if the other girl fell (not likely, but it didn't hurt to be safe), she'd be able to catch her without blowing their cover with the power of flight.

"Don't look down!" she sing-songed, taking a moment to hike her skirt up above her knees in two handfuls of fabric which she passed back between her legs and then wrapped around to the front again where she tied them together in a knot. It gave Nico and Raph a chance to get climbing, plus there was no way she was going to spend the entire climb stepping on her own skirt.

[othersdestructive]

Raph didn't even break a sweat as he climbed the thing. Like Cassie, he made sure to let Nico go first. Just in case. That meant there were two people that could snag her if she fell.

It wasn't that she wasn't tough but Cassie and Kon were naturally at peak human (ish?) condition and he was used to four hour work out warm ups and occasionally hours of fighting at a time. Nico ran a little more average on physical condition.

[staff_and_wielder]

Yep. Already Nico hated everything about this.

She was a little better than she had been when she fell into this myth-based hero deal, what with Raph bugging her if she didn't show up and do some training once a day. This wasn't as bad as it could have been.

She was still climbing the outside of a building like a moron, though.

I hate this place, I hate this place, I hate this place...

[matchmadeinhell]

They got to the roof and eventually the whole rest of the crowd did with them.

That was when the train came. It started rolling around the bend in their direction.

"Oh, this is the fun part," Kon said quietly to the other three. "This is where we jump onto a moving train like a bunch of adrenaline junkie idiots."

The train started rolling through the station and the people who'd been born in Dauntless started jumping up and smashing the buttons that opened the doors, then jumping onto the train. With the doors open it'd be a little easier for the rest of them.

"Let's go!"

[mark_in_the_sands]

As Kon explained what they were going to have to do, Cassie raised her eyebrows at Raph. Once she'd caught his attention, she glanced significantly toward Nico, who was apparently too caught up in trying to decide if she should be horrified by the idea of jumping onto a moving train or indignant that such a thing was being asked of her to notice. Then back at Raph.

He was the one who'd been training her, he'd know best if she could do it or if one of them needed to scruff her.

For all that Nico had been doing this myth thing for longer than any of them, and had apparently been doing the hero thing back in her world, she didn't seem to have the same mindset that everyone Cassie knew in the biz did. She wasn't quite sure what to make of it, or how to fix it, or if it was something that needed fixing; but they needed her for this and that meant carrying her if that's what she needed.