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 got her!" Cassie called back over Christina's panicking. "You hear me, Christina, I got you! We don't have time for you to freak out right now!"

Christina wheezed, but she'd stopped flailing enough to grab onto Cassie's wrist with her other hand.

"Good girl! We're gonna swing you now, all right? Hold onto me until we get you up to roof height." She looked up at Kon. "Let's swing it, genius."

The three of them starting swinging from side to side, slowly at first but picking up speed an momentum as they went. It took a couple tries to actually get Christina onto the roof, but the grunting and struggling on her and Kon's side was all faked. They could do it all day if they had to.

Once Christina was up on the roof, Cassie braced her feet against the wall and pulled herself up along Kon's arm.

"Nice catch," she said with a grin as she pulled herself up across his shoulders. "You should hang around."

She clambered the rest of the way up and then braced herself to help him up too. Not that she really needed to brace, but good form was worth taking the time to practice.

"If you getting all handsy on me is a thing that happens every time I help you catch some falling damsel, I'll have to keep it up," he said as Cassie climbed up. He was grinning as she pulled him up. "'Cause climbing, groping...same thing, really."

Flirting like they'd only just met - like they had back when they were younger - was turning out to be kind of fun.

Kon bowed over, hands on his knees, pretending to catch his breath.

"You okay?" he huffed out to the girl they'd rescued.

"Thank you," she panted, as Beatrice helped her to her feet, "So much. So, so, so much."

"You're wasting our time over there," called out Piercing Boy. "Initiates, here. Now."

He spoke like someone falling off a building and nearly dying was a minor inconvenience. He stood near the edge of the building and gestured down to a hole in the roof of a building below.

"Alright, listen up," said the man. "I'm Eric, one of your leaders. If you wanna enter Dauntless, this is the way in. If you don't have the guts to jump, then you don't belong in Dauntless."

"Is there water at the bottom or something?" asked an Erudite boy.

"I guess you'll find out," said Eric menacingly. "Or not."

"We just jumped and now they want us to do it again?" Christina hissed to Beatrice and the others, sounding understandably put out.

"Someone's gotta go first, who's it gonna be?" asked Eric, looking at the crowd.

At least they hadn't chucked Christina off the roof for failing, like Nico had been half-afraid they would. Of course, maybe they were expecting her to refuse to jump again after what she'd just gone through.

Nico sneaked a glance at the girl from Candor, mostly ignoring Eric (she certainly wasn't going to volunteer to go first). Would Christina have died if not for Kon and Cassie? Would saving her change things, make it harder for them to get back?

Raph stood there, arms, crossed, not saying a word. Even with the myth healing, he was fairly sure Nico and him wouldn't stand a chance if there was just concrete down there. Even the Super Duo probably would sustain heavy damage at this height.

So being the good ninja he was and actually caring about survival, he opted to wait for someone else to go first, his expression blank and bored.

Cassie vaguely recalled from the study guide that Beatrice had been the first one to jump originally. She had her own victories outside of this story, she didn't have any reason to try and claim this one for herself.

She leaned against Kon in the back of the crowd, 'breathing heavily' from the exertion of the rescue, and waited for Beatrice to step up and go for it.

"What about you?" Eric asked Kon.

This was a good opportunity to back down when challenged. He needed to after stepping up and right over the line the last time he'd been challenged. Kon stood on tiptoe to look down in the hole.

"I'm gonna need a minute to stew that one over. Roll it around in my head a little bit."

"I'll do it," Beatrice said suddenly, before Eric could respond, stepping forward, and Kon ducked his head to hide a little smile.

She was staring at him and Cassie, with something a little like awe on her face - or maybe guilt. It was clear to see that their little dive to save Christina had affected her. She looked like she wanted to challenge herself. So she stepped forward, taking off her jacket, peering over the edge.

"Yeah, stiff, take it off," one of the other recruits, a Candor transfer, joked nastily. "Put it back on - OW."

The punch to the arm he got from Kon was less than subtle.

Beatrice slowly climbed up onto the ledge, looking down at the gaping chasm.

"Any day now, recruit," said Eric.

After steeling herself with a deep breath, she finally jumped.

"Atta girl," Kon muttered to himself.

Eric waited several minutes until a whistle came up from below. "Next."

Now Kon stepped forward.

"Oh, now you're not afraid, after the stiff already went?" asked Eric.

"What can I say? I'm a follower, not a leader. Monkey see -" He climbed up on the ledge, his back facing the drop, crossed his arms, and grinned. "Monkey do."

Unlike Beatrice, he didn't hesitate, flopping backwards with the kind of abandon that came of being born with flight. To him, there was nothing more natural than the wind in his hair and the feeling of free fall. It did take a lot of fighting his own instincts to not catch himself at the bottom with his flight though, but he managed to, landing in the massive net that was stretched out there.

Then, just to be a giant, giant dick, he shouted up loud enough for the others to hear: "HEY! THERE'S A NET DOWN HERE! COOL!"

Next to the net, Four - the man that'd tried to stop him from pummeling Eric, pinched the bridge of his nose.

"You're not supposed to tell the recruits that are left - never mind. Move."

"Whoops."

Kon hopped out of the net and walked over to where Tris was waiting.

Back up where the other recruits were, Eric was also pinching the bridge of his nose.

"How," said the other Erudite Boy quietly. "How did someone like him come from Erudite? How?"

"Next!" shouted Eric, sounding very agitated.

Nico so wasn't going next. She was going to let a few more people go ahead and jump off the dumb building so that she was somewhere in the 'not brave enough to go first, not chicken enough to go last' range, and then she was going to jump off into the net.

Good thing Kon called up about it, it at least meant that she wasn't going to have to catch herself on any other stupid climbing equipment.

She hunched her shoulders and glowered at the edge where other recruits were lining up to jump.

This was still freaking stupid.

"Next!" Eric called out.

"Eeeh, I waited long enough," Raph muttered. They knew for sure now that they weren't just going squish at the bottom.

"Pitiful," he said more loudly, as he walked over to the ledge. "Everyone's doing scared little bunny hops in."

"And you can do better?" asked Eric.

In response to that, Raph stopped a few feet short of the edge, gave the man an even stare, then flipped up to the ledge and did a handspring off it, grinning a wicked grin the whole time, briefly glancing over at Nico right as he went over the edge.

It hadn't been as complex a set of flips as he was actually capable of since he didn't want to play up his acrobatics too much until they started getting into training but it was enough to get the initiates all roaring with laughter and applause.

Even Eric had the smallest little twitch of a smirk tug at his lips, one that stayed there until the next whistle.

"Next!"

Edited 2015-02-09 07:26 (UTC)

Cassie put her hands on Christina's shoulders.

"Go on," she said. "Do it now before the fear settles in and you have to work harder to overcome it."

She pushed the girl from Candor forward, then shoved Nico into line behind the boy Kon had helped onto the train. She didn't want to leave any of those three up here with Eric. Really, she didn't want to leave anyone up here with Eric, but Nico was part of her team right now and Christina and the boy might already have 'unsatisfactory' stamps on them, so they got her extra attention.

Nico shrieked when she went over the edge, but Cassie could make a good argument that at least half of it was fury.

Cassie made a show of jostling for position with the rest of the recruits, but since they technically needed to impress while she just needed to pass, she mostly let them win. Unfortunately, being last netted her some personal attention from Eric.

"You aren't taking this seriously, recruit," he snapped, shoving her back when she stepped up to the edge. She let him shove her, for the sake of her cover, though that didn't stop her from narrowing her eyes. He was still talking, snarling really, but all she heard was the posturing of a bully who'd been humiliated and was trying to soothe his damaged ego.

On one hand, she could take it. On the other, she was an Amazon and she didn't have to take it.

(Diana could have sat through the yapping of the sad little man with nothing but pity for how he'd been twisted, but Diana wasn't here.)

"Let me show you how seriously I'm taking this, sir," she said, and tackled him off the edge of the building.

It was a long way down. Long enough for her to push away from Eric so that they landed in the net separately. Cassie bounced up first and crawled off the net.

"Thanks for showing me how it's done, sir!" she said, voice sugary sweet.

No need to humiliate him in public again, after all. Better to do it in private, where he could only gnaw his own liver.

Kon made a happy little whining noise deep in his throat, high-pitched enough to be amusing, but so quiet that only Nico and Raph could hear. It was really quite pitiful (and adorable).

"If one of you see me dropping to one knee to propose to her anytime soon on reflex, please stop me," he muttered to them both, his voice dreamy. "Because right now I wanna marry that woman, but I'd have to figure out how getting a mortgage works, and care about fiscal responsibility, and know what fiscal responsibility is, and I'm so not ready for that yet."

God, he loved her.

Nico rolled her eyes at Raph for sympathy. If these two were going to treat this like some kind of lovey couples-retreat, she was going to hurl.

"There's something you can stop me from doing, too," Raph said flatly to Kon, sharing in that eye roll with Nico. "You can stop me from throwing up in my mouth a little."

He elbowed Kon in the ribs and then froze in place for a moment, expression tense, making it clear something was wrong.

Then he very discreetly rubbed at his elbow with his other hand. Owwwwwww.

Cassie couldn't help but snicker as she fell in line with the rest of them. Someone had forgotten than Kon was mostly invulnerable. She winked at Kon, then schooled her face to a neutral expression as she waited for whatever their 'trainers' were going to throw at them next.

Eric glowered at Cassie but broke off to storm off and do...something. The man that had tried to break up Kon and Eric on the train remained.

"Dauntless born, go with Lauren," the man said, nodding to a blond Dauntless woman behind him. "Transfers, stay with me."

The Dauntless born initiates peeled off and left the rest of them standing there.

"Most of the time I work in intelligence but during your training, I'll be your instructor," said the man. "My name's Four."

"Four, like the number?" Christina said skeptically.

"Exactly like the number."

"What happened, were one through three taken?"

"You know, we're not in Candor anymore," said Raph with a slight eyeroll at the corny joke. "You don't have to say every single thing that comes to the top of your head."

"Maybe not to the instructors," Cassie said, because it was rather poor form to sass the people who were going to teach you how to survive. "But it might be a good idea if you want to get extra practice taking hits from the other recruits."

Four worked in intelligence, huh? That could be useful...

Four didn't seem pleased with any of them talking but with Cassie and Raph at least trying to get Christina to quiet down and be respectful, he didn't target them with his attention. Apparently, he was a bit more reasonable than Eric.

He did step forward to Christina, though. "What's your name?" he said in a tone that clearly implied she was in trouble.

"Christina," she said.

"Well. Christina," he said, leaning in close, his voice going very quiet. "First lesson you learn from me, if you want to survive here, is keep your mouth shut. Do you understand me?"

"Yes," she said quietly, embarrassed now.

"Good," he said.

It was clear from his tone that it was mean to be a lesson, not a threat from him, which said something about the place.

Kon looked sideways at Cassie, simply catching her eyes. It was the unspoken things you had to keep the closest eye on, the things that were implied, and what that implied wasn't good.

"All of you, follow me."

Cassie didn't glance toward Kon, but she did incline her head a few degrees in a nod. They'd known this place was awful coming in, but now the fun-and-games portion of their day was over. Time to get serious and start paying very, very close attention.

Four led the way, giving them a tour of the place. After passing through a tunnel everything opened up to a massive open meeting place, one that got light in from the glass ceilings of the skycraper the Dauntless headquarters was housed in.

In this meeting area, large groups of Dauntless people were whooping and running around animatedly, some of them dancing as several of them drummed on makeshift metal drums. Others were bareknuckle fist-fighting as others gathered around them, rooting them on.

It was a large and seemingly rather aimless ruckus.

"This is The Pit," said Four, "The center of life here in Dauntless."

Raph looked out at it all and made a face that was moderately unimpressed.

"That's almost as much fighting and partying that used to go on back home in the Lair with me and my brothers. Same general ruckus," he muttered to Nico. "The people fighting all have terrible form, though. Pitiful."

Edited 2015-02-10 07:26 (UTC)

Of course the center of life here was a pit. This whole stupid place was a pit. Just looking at the place where she was expected to spend she didn't even know how long under cover, waiting for some sign of the stupid missing shard made Nico want to throw up or cry or punch something, or all three.

She grunted in response, shouldered hunched up around her ears, fists clenching in the fabric of her stupid Candor clothes. She'd almost rather see everyone here dead than stay here a minute longer.

Her crankiness was palpable.

"Dude, you are going to have to give her the emergency chocolate way sooner rather than later," Kon whispered to Raph, his voice too low for Nico or Cassie to hear.

"Sssh."

Raph paused.

"Soon as this guy stops hovering over us."

Four led them to a vast dorm room with very utilitarian looking beds.

"You're going to be sleeping here for the next ten weeks," said Four.

"Boys or girls?" someone asked.

"Both," he answered.

That got snickering and comments of "Nice!" and "That works!" from both boys and girls in the crowd.

"If you like this, you're going to love the bathrooms."

Right in the view of the main sleeping area, without even a divider, was a massive bathroom. It was mostly clean. That was about all that could be said of it. There were large sinks with multiple faucets and shower heads over grated drains in the floor. And toilets all in a row at the walls.

No toilet stalls or shower stalls. No privacy whatsoever.

"You should feel right at home, Candor," he said dryly, "everything all out in the open. Now everyone get changed."

With that, he left them to it.

Edited 2015-02-10 07:44 (UTC)

Oh look: Hell on alternate Earth.

Nico was giving serious thought to tearing the Staff out of her arm with her bare fingernails and seeing how long she could maintain both a copy of herself and an invisibility spell. It might be worth it. She could duck behind the other three and summon the Staff there where none of the idiots native to this reality could see and just cast a couple quick spells and be done with all of this. She could go and look for the shard while a duplicate of her could fail all the stupid tests and she wouldn't have to be here anymore.

They quickly dibsed beds near one another. Without discussing it, just mostly doing it on instinct, Nico wound up in the middle with Kon on one side and Raph on the other (with Cassie on the other side of Kon) in a neat little row.

"Here," he said, taking something out of a little pouch and tossing it at Nico. "I was gonna save it for a really bad day but you look like you need it already."

It was a little bar of chocolate.

Nico reflexively caught the thing Raph tossed at her, and almost fumbled it to the ground when she saw what it was.

Chocolate. He'd smuggled chocolate here for her because he'd known this place was going to make her miserable. He'd figured that out and he'd tried to do something to make it better.

Something in her chest crumpled like tinfoil, and she had to cram the chocolate bar under her pillow and look at the wall to keep from bursting into tears. She dug her fingernails into her palms and tried to ride out the wave of swirling emotions because she couldn't cry here, not now, not in front of everyone.

"Thanks," she said in a small voice as soon as she could trust herself not to completely lose control.

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