[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

[matchmadeinhell]

"Noooooooo," Kon said in a drowsy, whiny, high-pitched voice, sounding like a little kid, the moment Four was gone.

It got a few groggy laughs from the people around them.

Unsurprisingly, he was rapidly becoming the class clown, a role he was a natural for.

[mark_in_the_sands]

Cassie sat up with a jaw-cracking yawn, then rolled out of bed and stood over Kon.

"Come on, Sleeping Beauty, up and at 'em!" she said, far more perkily than she would under any circumstances other than being myths mean we don't need as much sleep. "Wake up, wake up, good morning! Anyone who needs a little extra motivation, stay in your bed, I'll tip you out."

Which she promptly demonstrated on Kon.

[matchmadeinhell]

"Woman, I will shortsheet your bed every night for the rest of our time in proximity with each other."

Kon getting dumped on the floor also got a laugh, especially since Kon just kept laying theere.

"Also, you underestimate my capacity for not caring about things. Like how hard concrete is."

[mark_in_the_sands]

Cassie had already moved onto the next slow riser, so she just laughed at him over her shoulder.

"Short sheet my bed and I might just take yours instead. I'm coming for you Christina, don't think that I don't see you!"

[othersdestructive]

Raph got up and stretched and then proceeded with fake dressing. Geez, people had to do a lot of this dressing and undressing stuff. It was so time consuming. He was used to being able to just hop out of bed and get on with his day.

"Now's the part where we start getting beaten with sticks. Who else is excited?" he said dryly.

That was how these things worked.

[staff_and_wielder]

Nico was excited!

No, wait, she was the other thing. The thing where she looked like she was reconsidering rendering everyone in Dauntless unconscious and going and hunting for the shard undisturbed.

Yeah, 'pissed off' was what she was. She also wasn't going anywhere until Raph or Cassie or Kon did.

[matchmadeinhell]

Kon finally got up and started getting dressed.

"Nicoooo," Kon urged her. "If I have to suffer you have to suffer."

He didn't want her or anyone else to get flack for being late.

[staff_and_wielder]

Nico shoved herself out of bed; muttering things under her breath that, had she had the Staff of One out and in her hand, would have made life in Dauntless a lot harder for a lot of people. Fortunately for everyone else, that wasn't the case, and her words stayed words instead of magical spells.

For now. No promises how long that would last.

She crammed her feet into boots and yanked red lines across her fingers lacing them up.

[morethanmyth]

Four was waiting for them out in the pit and so was Eric, sitting there in all his dickhead glory, looking smug.

As soon as they were there, Four started instructing.

"There are two stages of training," explained Four. "The first is physical: you'll push your bodies to the breaking point and master the methods of combat. The second is mental: again, breaking point. You'll face your worst fears and conquer them - unless they get you first. You'll be trained separately from the Dauntless-born but you'll be ranked together. After initation, rankings will determine what jobs you move into: leadership, guarding the fence, or keeping the factionless from killing each other."

"Rankings will also determine who gets cut," Eric chimed in.

"Cut?" asked Christina, confused.

"At the end of training, the lowest ranking initiates will be leaving us," explained Eric, that smug look still on his face.

"To do what?" asked Drew, one of the Candor boys that had harassed Tris their first day in the locker room.

"There's no going home to your families, so you live factionless," Eric explained casually.

"Why didn't we know that?" asked Will.

"It's a new rule."

"A new rule? Somebody should have told us that," said Christina, distraught.

"Why?" asked Eric. "Would you have chosen differently? Out of fear? If that's the case, you might as well get out now. If you're really one of us it won't matter to you that you might fail. You chose us. Now we get to choose you."

[matchmadeinhell]

Kon raised his hand like a third-grader until Four looked at him and said, "Yes?"

"Question: will we actually get trained to do stuff or are you guys employing that wonderfully quirky and spontaneous hit-the-ground-running teaching method you've employed so far?"

The initiates went very quiet and Eric glared but Four seemed inclined to actually answer.

"I'll be heading up most of your training," said Four. "You will be taught what you need to know but we do expect you to be adaptable. Members of Dauntless are bold. Daring. You should be throwing yourselves into this as hard as you can and we're not going to hold your hand on the way."

Other Tributes started to ask questions.

"I feel a training montage coming on," Kon muttered, so only his fellow myths and the little clique they'd attracted could hear. "A flailing, awkward, badly instructed training montage."

[mark_in_the_sands]

Cassie patted Christina's arm. "Don't worry, just try your hardest," she whispered reassuringly. "You can do it. We'll help."

She didn't have much confidence in Four or Eric's training, but she knew her and Kon's and Raph's respective skill levels. Assuming that no one hurt themselves in the process and they stuck together, she was fairly certain of their ability to get people up to snuff.

And hopefully they'd find the shard and hit the problem with Erudite early enough that no one would end up factionless at all.

[matchmadeinhell]

They totally had a training montage. The good part was, being myths and/or super-people, all of them had crazy good endurance. They had to fake that they were winded at things like running, and were able to keep ahead of the pack on anything that had to do with physical conditioning.

The downside was that wasn't all there was.

Kon knew how to fire a gun and he knew how to do it well, but it was very clear during practice at the firing range that he hated having to do it.

At least it wasn't sniping. He...he had done sniping more than anything. He didn't want to do sniping. No more sniping.

"Hate guns, hate 'em, hate 'em, hate 'em..." was his mantra all throughout target practice. The fact he was such a crack shot was why.

[staff_and_wielder]

Nico had never touched a gun before now, and its use didn't come naturally to her. But at least she wasn't alone in not being good at it: even aside from the non-Dauntless-born, it seemed that myth powers didn't compensate for this.

[othersdestructive]

Raph growled in frustration as he missed yet another shot.

"Dodging gunfire is easier than this," he muttered angrily, low enough that only Nico could hear.

[morethanmyth]

Over on the other side of Nico Tris had missed the target every time as well.

Will stared over at all three of them in amazement.

"Statistically speaking, at least one of you should have hit something by now, even by accident."

He wasn't trying to mock them, it was more that he was surprised by their terrible odds.

[othersdestructive]

Looking over briefly to make sure that Will wasn't trying to shoot at anything at the moment or pointing his gun somewhere dangerous, Raph dope slapped him upside the head.

"Hey, look at that, I just hit you."

[mark_in_the_sands]

Cassie looked up at the sound of Nico's appreciative laugh.

"Less sass, more constructive criticism," she suggested as Will rubbed the back of his head. She wasn't doing as well as Kon; her training had emphasized deflecting bullets more than firing them (though Artemis had put her through the basics of that, too. Bana were nothing if not practical when it came to weapons).

[matchmadeinhell]

Running was something the four of them had mutually agreed was the least pain in the ass part of this place. Myth endurance for the win. Although sometimes it was hard for Kon and Cassie to resist the urge to take flight.

It was during one of their long endurance jogs around the place that they finally got a close look at some of the factionless.

Four stopped them as he saw one of the Dauntless leaders standing there and since they had all been in the lead, they were right at the front of the crowd.

"Hey, what do you got?" asked Four.

"Factionless," said the man. "Not doing anything."

They were in dire, terrible condition. All of them filthy and half starved. The sounds of a baby crying range out from the crowd and Kon crossed his arms, muscles bulging as they tensed. There were definitely a few kids living there in rags, kids growing up with only a life of slave labor to look forward to.

Kon narrowed his eyes, keeping his voice low, his arms crossed.

"Worse than Suicide Slum," he said, shaking his head. "Why am I not surprised? This place is broken."

[mark_in_the_sands]

Cassie put a hand on his arm, less to hold him back than to ground herself. They'd come in here knowing this place was rotten, but it was one thing to know it and another to really see it.

Looking at it also drove home how much needed to be done here to fix this place. It wasn't just hitting the leadership over in Erudite over the head until they backed down; and reform on that level took a lot of work and a lot more time than she and the others could afford to spend here personally.

She looked around at the other Dauntless trainees, gauging their reactions, looking for those who appeared more sympathetic to the plight of the people before them. Best start changing minds as soon as possible.

[morethanmyth]

Tris looked troubled by it. She was one of the only ones that did. But that wasn't a surprise when so many of them were mindlessly obedient, mindlessly accepting the status quo.

She looked troubled. And thoughtful.

"Check it out, stiff," Drew the Dickhead Candor said to her quietly. "That's going to be your new family. Go say hi."

Now she looked even more troubled.

[othersdestructive]

With no hesitation at all, Raph dopeslapped him. Hard.

[staff_and_wielder]

Nico, near-simultaneously, brought her foot down hard on his instep.

She might not be wearing heels right now, but some things still worked without them.

[morethanmyth]

Tris looked at them both appreciatively as Drew hobbled away in pain, but then she looked back at the factionless again.

And she looked scared.

[morethanmyth]

It was after being trained quite a bit and after a lot of physical conditioning that they started to get pitted against each other in sparring matches.

"First jumper! Get in the ring!" called out Eric. "Last jumper, also in the ring!"

Tris nervously made her way into the ring, staring anxiously at Cassie the whole time.

[mark_in_the_sands]

Cassie flashed Tris a reassuring smile as she stepped into the ring along side her.

"Don't worry," she murmured quietly. "It's just sparring. Remember to tap out when it hurts and it'll be fine."

Tris had the basics down -- Four had managed to teach all of them that much -- but sparring would give her a better idea of what it felt like to hit and be hit.