[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]

"Sure I'd have complained too."

He nudged her in the side.

"But not for ten whole minutes," he teased affectionately.

[mark_in_the_sands]

" 'Can you stop while I can still eat carbs?'" Cassie whispered to Kon behind her hand. Yep. All that snark earlier had absolutely been caused by jealousy.

She was so glad she was out of that stage.

[matchmadeinhell]

Kon nearly snorted juice out of his nose and had to cover his smirk with his hands as well.

[morethanmyth]

"I know you Candors think you always tell the truth but Erudite can tell the truth because we have the facts," said Will.

From where he'd been sitting silently, down the table a bit, Four finally spoke up, his voice stern.

"I don't want to hear about your old factions," he interrupted, staring ahead sullenly. "You're Dauntless now."

"Were you a transfer, too?" Tris asked him, quietly and curiously. "Or Dauntless born?"

"What make you think you can talk to me?" he asked, voice sharp.

All of the others suddenly went silent, averting their eyes away from him.

Tris looked taken aback and for a moment it looked like she was possibly going to lapse into silence.

Then, in a fit of daring, she jibed, "Must be because you're so approachable."

Christina nearly snorted water out of her nose.

[matchmadeinhell]

Not wanting to see Tris in trouble or anything cruel directed at her, Kon spoke up, his voice much more sure and bold than Tris's had been.

Much more bold than Four's had been.

"That's bullshit, anyway," he said firmly, staring at his meal. "Forgetting where we came from."

[morethanmyth]

"Oh yeah," challenged Four. "And how's that? Faction before blood. If you wanted to be back there you should've stayed back there."

[matchmadeinhell]

"It's bullshit," Kon said quietly, calmly, "because the past is just as much a part of who you are as the present, and just as much a part of who you are as who you want to be in the future. You build on the things you used to be, learn from the mistakes, and let the parts that hurt make you stronger."

He finally looked up at Four, locking eyes with him.

"Denying that means denying who you are and it means throwing away the things that made you grow."

[morethanmyth]

"Is that so?" Four asked tensely, leaning forward at the table. "And what do you know about hurt making someone stronger?"

[matchmadeinhell]

There was a way to be honest about this without being truly honest. It took a twisting of the truth but it was doable. He could tell enough of the truth for it to have meaning.

It was a little intense for dinner conversation but Four was the one dragging everything down with his intensity anyway, because someone had apparently pissed in his Wheaties. Snapping at Tris and dehumanizing her by relegating her as so beneath him she couldn't talk to him was not on, even if she'd handled it gracefully with a witty rejoinder.

He was the one escalating it and with Kon knowing his history, he knew that escalating it further, in a certain way, would actually de-escalate it. Maybe it wasn't fair, playing on his traumas that he read about in a book, but nothing about this place - and any of the leadership in it - was fair.

"I know what my old man taught me," he said, unflinching. "With his fists. Every time I didn't live up to his very lofty expectations. Every time I failed a test he wanted me to pass - which was most of the time. Every time I just didn't do what he wanted me to do - and he wanted to control me pretty much all the time."

The rest of the table went deathly silent. Kon stabbed at his burger and briefly looked back at his meal.

"I learned to be brave enough to stand up to him in the past and that means now I've got the stones to stand up to anyone that gets in my face. Like, say, some musclebound lunatic that wants to dangle me outside a train 'cause I tried to help someone from my new faction. Maybe I'm not smart but I learned how to be strong."

He looked up at Four again, whose jaw was dangling slightly.

"And that means even if there are other things I can - and will - learn here, there ain't nothing Dauntless can teach me about being brave that I don't already know. Because there is nothing anyone here can throw at me that's worse than what I got from own father."

He stuffed a piece of burger into his mouth and went back to eating, now acting as if Four was beneath him. The others were all silent, jaws gaping silently. He nodded at Al and said casually, "Pass the salt?"

Al was too shocked to do it so Kon simply reached across the table and snagged it himself.

Four could not seem to find a response to that, he was stuck staring for a moment, a strange conflicted expression on his face. Not anger. It was something far from anger and it even started to change to grudging respect - at least not before one of the other Dauntless members came to tap him and lead him away on some kind of business.

[othersdestructive]

"I am lovin' this light dinner conversation," Raph said dryly.

[morethanmyth]

Now that it was over and Four was gone, Al, Will, Christina and Tris looked impressed.

"You two," said Christina, admiringly, pointing to Tris and Kon, "have a death wish."

Tris was staring at Kon in astonishment. "That was really brave. I mean, that you can even talk about it, that takes a lot of...I don't know. To survive something like that and even be able to talk about it..."

[matchmadeinhell]

Kon smirked, though his lips pressed together in a way that was still slightly rueful.

"I'm dealing with it. Got my old man put away for it. Luckily, I, uh, I had this mentor take me in. Someone who'd been good to me my whole life. Once he knew what was going on, he was furious. Good guy - one of the best people I know. He helped me turn out a lot better than I would've if my dad was the only one there - especially with no mom in the picture. He always knew I was probably going to leave the faction, though."

"I never knew," said Will, compassionately. The spell supplied what it needed. "I always thought your father'd done something else to get himself turned out factionless. Something sinister in Erudite leadership."

"Oh, I am sure he did something like that, too. He was about as awful a human being as he was bald, and you could probably see the sun reflecting on his head from space," joked Kon.

"Anyway," He nodded in the direction Four had left in, "He started it."

Kon raised his eyebrows. "Everyone in charge here seems to love playing at mister tough guy. They wanna push people around, act like that's what being brave means? Well then I'm not scared to push back. Been doing it since I was one."

Technically true.

"If they think that's actually tough, actually strong, they don't know what real strength or courage is. Real strength or courage is looking out for people, not tearing 'em down. It's even in the manifesto. 'We believe in ordinary acts of bravery, in the courage that drives one person to stand up for another.' Guess I'm the only one that did the reading. It's a pretty sad state of things when a student can take teacher to school."

[mark_in_the_sands]

" 'What makes you think you can speak to me?'" Cassie said in a passable if mocking imitation of Four's voice. "Oh, I don't know, the fact that you butted in and interrupted our conversation. Jerk."

She'd dropped her hand below the tabletop earlier in the conversation, resting it on Kon's thigh. She gave his leg a squeeze -- she knew how much of that was true, and how very literal some parts of it had been.

[morethanmyth]

"He probably has the attitude because he was first in his class," said Will. "I heard they tried to recruit him for leadership twice but he said no."

Somewhere in the distance a strange sound, like some of kind of horn blow sounded. After it did, all of Dauntless started banging their metal cups against their tables.

An older black man walked out on a balcony and spoke, his voice booming out through the cafeteria.

"Initiates, stand." He rested his hands against the balcony railing. "You have chosen to join the warrior faction, tasked with the defense of this city and all of its inhabitants. We believe in ordinary acts of bravery and the courage that drives on person to stand up for another. Respect that. Do us proud."

The cafeteria erupted into cheers and members of Dauntless started to walk over and lift the initiates up in the air in celebration, to have them all crowd surf.

[othersdestructive]

Raph gave the member of Dauntless that went to lift him such a severe glare that she actually took a few steps back.

It was probably best that people didn't touch him more than was necessary, given the spell.

"Don't even think about it," he said, sitting down to finish his meal.

[staff_and_wielder]

Nico was in the air before she could protest, but protest she did. The person who'd unceremoniously scooped her up got kicked in the head and the person she'd been passed off to was having an awful lot of trouble passing her on in turn, or even detaching her from their head and shoulders. From her startled and protesting perch, Nico snarled at the surrounding crowd of full-on Dauntless, trying to figure out how to get back down on the ground again.

[othersdestructive]

Raph looked up at the struggling Nico and hit two pressure points in the side of the member of Dauntless that was holding her, making them drop her to her feet again.

"You could've gotten rid of that one with a punch to the throat; you had an opening. But good kick to the other one's head. Very solid. You're learning."

And he was very proud of his student.

[staff_and_wielder]

Nico staggered when she landed, and latched onto Raph's arm for the extra weight, in case someone else got the clever idea to pick her up again.

"I didn't want him to drop me on my head, I was trying to get my feet under me first," she explained, a warm surge of something blossoming underneath the adrenaline at his words. "But thanks."

[matchmadeinhell]

Kon, in the meantime, had crowd surfed halfway across the room by now. He had his hands tucked behind his head as if he was having a chill day at the beach.

"Hey, people, it's your fused spines. Enjoy those back spasms."

He was not exactly a light man.

[mark_in_the_sands]

Cassie also hadn't had any particular objections to crowd surfing, though she was more spread-eagle than Kon to try and compensate for her spell-disguised weight.

"Careful!" she called out helpfully. "Bend at the elbows, dropping me is going to be fun for none of us!"

And anyone who tried to play grab-ass while she was up here was going to regret it, though that seemed less likely with every passing moment.