[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

[mark_in_the_sands]

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.

[matchmadeinhell]

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.

[staff_and_wielder]

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.

[othersdestructive]

"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.

[mark_in_the_sands]

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.

[othersdestructive]

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."

[mark_in_the_sands]

"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...

[matchmadeinhell]

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."

[mark_in_the_sands]

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.

[othersdestructive]

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."

[staff_and_wielder]

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.

[matchmadeinhell]

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.

[othersdestructive]

"Sssh."

Raph paused.

"Soon as this guy stops hovering over us."

[morethanmyth]

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.

[staff_and_wielder]

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.

[othersdestructive]

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.

[staff_and_wielder]

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.

[othersdestructive]

"Don't mention it," Raph said, ""We got your back. Even if it gets crazy, don't forget that." "

He busied himself with grabbing some clothes and trying to look like he was changing when one set of clothes didn't even exist. Fortunately, the spell helped with that, pretty much absorbing the new set and magically changing it into what he was supposedly changing out of.

He seemed a little befuddled over how it worked so he kept his hands just sort of...vaguely moving.

"Can somebody tell me how zippers are even supposed to work?" he whispered. "How do you make both sides stick together? What should my hands be doing right now?"

[mark_in_the_sands]

Cassie tugged on the collar of her oversized sweater to block Christina's view of what she was doing with her hands, and brought her hands down sharply, as though she were unzipping something.

"Like that," she whispered back. The she pulled her sweater off over her head and began going about untying the knots she'd made in her skirt to keep it out of her way while she'd been climbing and running and jumping.

[othersdestructive]

He mimicked the hand gesture and the spell did the rest.

"Huh." A pause. "I'm gonna need help on the boots too when I get there."

[morethanmyth]

So far no one had been inclined to harass Cassie, probably because of the fact she was completely stacked, but Tris, it seemed, was fair game, most likely do to Abnegation's reputation for being modest and the fact that she was a little more self conscious, trying to cover herself with her clothes as she changed.

"Nice legs, stiff," said one of the Candor transfers, lewdly, very obviously staring - the same one that Kon had punched for joking about Tris taking her clothes off on the roof. A few of the boys sitting near him snickered.

Some of these same boys were, in fact, paying a little too much attention to any girls in the room that seemed self-conscious, like Tris and Nico and a mousy-looking Erudite girl.

[mark_in_the_sands]

Cassie had just stepped out of her skirt when the boy from Candor decided to go from leering to verbal harassment -- while she'd been too caught up in her team to notice the former, the latter definitely caught her attention.

She moved toward him like a shark on the scent of blood, grabbing him by the front of his undershirt and lifting him bodily up off of his bed.

"There are so many better ways to say 'please take my tongue, I no longer want nor need it'."

[matchmadeinhell]

Oh boy, looked like it was time to lay down the law. Kon was still shirtless as he walked over to join Cassie, making his physique very clear for all to see. Even dialed down, he and Cassie were still two of the tallest and most muscular people in the room, clearly more powerful than all the rest - just like they'd been among their age group when they'd been younger and smaller.

"Everybody, listen up!" he called out in a commanding voice. "It's time for some ground rules. What goes on out there, stays out there. I think we can all agree on that. But in here, with all this close quarters stuff, if anybody here gets handsy with anyone else without their express permission, is oggling, oogling, or otherwise eyeballing anybody else in an obvious and disgusting fashion, or is making creepy little comments to somebody, you're gonna deal with me and Cassie here."

He spread out his hands theatrically. "I know what you're thinking, 'yeah, they're muscular - and extremely good looking - but they're just two people, what can they possibly do?'"

With that, Kon threw a punch at a nearby column. He held back on the power, because at full strength he would've broke or at least put a huge impact crater in the thing, but he still used enough force to completely smash one of the wall tiles on the column, a feat that still took incredible strength - but at a high end human level. And he made damn sure lots of muscles rippled while he did it.

"We can do something like that. To your face. So no creepy stuff. Are we all clear?"

Quite a few people nodded in response, wide-eyed. Others gave a simple yes. The boy that Cassie scruffed squeaked out, "Crystal."

"Glad we're all on the same page," said Kon cheerfully. "I'm told good interpersonal communication is important."

As he went back to getting back to getting dressed, Tris stared at him and Cassie gratefully.

"Thanks," she said to Cass, quietly.

[mark_in_the_sands]

Cassie dropped the boy from Candor on the floor with a sniff and a toss of her head and moved back to her bed. She clapped Tris on the shoulder as she passed.

"You're welcome," she said with a smile. Then, to Kon as she passed, "you know we're going to have to do a repeat performance later when the people who were raised here come back here, right?"

A repeat performance wasn't going to be a problem of course, but people raised in Dauntless might give them a little more push-back.

[matchmadeinhell]

"We can take 'em without blowing our cover. Between the two of us and Raph. And Nico can dig us out of it if we get in over our heads."

He pulled on and started lacing his boots.

"Besides, they'll probably be a little more well behaved. This place has nothing close to proper military discipline, but anyone being nasty probably learned real fast not to be when they're all raised to take each other's heads off whenever they're pissed off at each other. And when you have a set routine with bizarre stuff like no privacy you just stop noticing it. It starts seeming normal after a while."

He knew that from experience.

"They're probably too used to it to react to it like...well, like I would've when I was younger."

His mouth twitched slightly.