Author: autokinetic | Bella likes school. She didn't use to like school one bit. Even when Renée was teaching her when she was in kindergarten (Renée refused to hear of skipping her past her opportunity to teach her only daughter), it was all - coloring and stupid kiddy books. She likes Renée. But she likes learning serious stuff more.
She devours classwork. She plays in the practice rooms and the gym. She loiters in the games room, fingers flying under strips of copper as she controls things, tries things. She loses to older kids a few times with each new game, till she figures it out, and then moving at the speed of thought means she's got the advantage. Bullying happens around her, but she's a girl - this shields her from much of it - and even though she adds up to faster and stronger than all of the other kids, she's still wearing an assistive device, she's still a cripple. That's fine with her; it keeps her out of the way of the nastier kids. She's not sure the Battle School people are looking for quite the right ratio of ferocity to other traits.
She plays the fantasy game, until she hears from other people that you can't win the Giant's Drink, and she uses this as an example in her statistics homework and never bothers with it again. What a stupid game. |
Author: pythbox | Speaking of the Giant's Drink, here's a kid playing it. He's sitting tucked into a corner of the games room with his desk in his lap, and every time his little avatar gets a new death, he giggles and tries again. |
Author: autokinetic | "Are you just trying to see if it repeats itself?" Bella asks, peering over his shoulder. |
Author: pythbox | "It's done like fifty and it hasn't yet," he says, grinning. "I wanna see what the next one is!"
His avatar sticks its head into a glass of fizzy pink liquid and takes a sip. The drink froths over, burning away flesh wherever the foam touches, until nothing remains but a tiny skeleton draped over the lip of the glass with pink foam dripping from its clean white bones.
The boy laughs. |
Author: autokinetic | Nobody clever enough to be in Battle School needs to be told that the drink game is rigged after doing fifty of it. Bella refrains from telling him anyway. "Why is that funny?" she asks instead, swaying idly with the rhythm in her thoughts. |
Author: pythbox | "Why isn't it?" he counters, glancing up at her to share his wide, cheerful grin. "I just like watching the little guy die horribly!" |
Author: autokinetic | "It's like the game was designed for you, then," says Bella, eyeing the boy with amusement. "Since that's all you can do in this section." |
Author: pythbox | He giggles.
"I'm trying to see if there's a pattern to how it kills me," he adds. "But so far there's not." |
Author: autokinetic | "I never heard of one. I quit playing after I heard it's rigged, though, so I haven't seen for myself." She stands on one foot. She does that sometimes. Balancing is easy when you can hold perfectly still solely by wanting to. |
Author: pythbox | "Why'd you quit?" he asks interestedly. |
Author: autokinetic | "I don't really think it's that entertaining to watch my avatar die a million times. I'd rather fly around in the practice rooms or read if I have spare time," she shrugs. |
Author: pythbox | "There's a whole rest of the game, though," he says, and he sends his avatar back for another death. |
Author: autokinetic | "The rest of it was all right, but any game where there's a part you just can't live through seems, I dunno, mean-spirited, it'd bother me to keep playing now that I know. I like books and stuff better anyway." |
Author: pythbox | "Yeah, I guess," he says. "What kinda books?"
Meanwhile, his avatar is weeping blood into a glass of what appears to be milk. He giggles. |
Author: autokinetic | "The homework stuff. Classic literature - old stuff that's barely English like we talk now. Sometimes stuff on psychology or modern novels if they're highly recommended or whatever else. I finished Utopia this morning. It wasn't very utopic, though, I was disappointed." |
Author: pythbox | "What was it instead?" |
Author: autokinetic | "There was all kinds of pointless stuff in. Like, you had to move houses every ten years. And worse than pointless stuff, like they had slavery. And people weren't allowed to travel, even just within the country, without a passport. I dunno, I think I could do better. But Sir More wrote it a long time ago." |
Author: pythbox | "Weird," the boy concludes, steering his avatar into another grisly death. |
Author: autokinetic | "Yeah. I'm Bella. What's your name?" |
Author: pythbox | "Nice to meet you, Bella!" he says brightly, ignoring the question. |
Author: autokinetic | "If you won't tell me what to call you it can't be all that nice, can it," she says. |
Author: pythbox | "Don't feel bad," he says amicably, "I'm like that with everybody." |
Author: autokinetic | "Why?" She clearly expects there to be an answer and for him to know it. She still expects people to be able to read their own minds, even if they can't read anyone else's. |
Author: pythbox | "Because I hate my name and I don't have a better one." |
Author: autokinetic | "Then you should make something up. Half the kids in my launch already have nicknames even if you don't count 'Bella'. And we only got here three weeks ago." |
Author: pythbox | He shrugs.
"I haven't found one I like, I guess." |
Author: autokinetic | "I guess it's harder if you hate your name that much." |
Author: pythbox | "Yep," he agrees. "You can call me whatever you want, anyway, I figure out all right when people are talking to me." |
Author: autokinetic | "Dunno." She peers at his avatar as its bones melt and it collapses into a puddle of flesh. "Suicide Watch, maybe, but that's just as long as the name I'm shortening and not very namey." |
Author: pythbox | "It's funny, though," he says cheerfully. "It'll do for now." |
Author: autokinetic | "Okay." Bella's done standing on that foot. She stands on the other, then decides that's boring and clings like a koala to an unused pole-shaped game console nearby instead, with one arm and one leg. She doesn't like to be still for too long, not when she can move so perfectly. "How come you don't like your name?" |
Author: pythbox | "Because my dad gave it to me," he explains, as though that's all that needs to be said about it and the rest is obvious from there. |
Author: autokinetic | "...And he has terrible taste?"
(Bella is six and has not had much time to get all her reading in.) |
Author: pythbox | "And I hate him," he corrects, without strong emotion. It's just a fact about the world. |
Author: autokinetic | "Oh. Well, at least you don't get leave to go planetside for another five or six years at the soonest?" |
Author: pythbox | "Yep!" he says brightly. "My favourite thing about Battle School is the miles of vacuum between me and home." |
Author: autokinetic | "I like being busy," says Bella. "I like my parents but I'm always away from one of them anyway, so two isn't so much different." |
Author: pythbox | "What do you like about them?" he asks. |
Author: autokinetic | "They're nice. They love me. They got me my exo," says Bella, letting go of her perch and landing on one toe to twirl. "They're just not all that interesting." |
Author: pythbox | "Trade you," he offers, and then snorts. "No way, I like you too much to stick you with mine." |
Author: autokinetic | "What do they do?" she asks. The game console next to him - not the fantasy game, some kind of infinite minefield puzzle that won't interfere with her ability to hold a conversation, opens up; she sits and starts skimming her coppered hands over the controls. |
Author: pythbox | "What's with the hands?" he asks instead of answering. |
Author: autokinetic | "The copper stuff? That's part of my exoskeleton," she says. "I'm sort of a cripple. This gives me superpowers instead. It's not safe for most people but it is for me 'cause telepaths can't touch my brain and take over the exo like they did with that one guy that one time that made it hard for me to get one." |
Author: pythbox | "Oh," he says. "Cool!" |
Author: autokinetic | "It is!" The puzzle game has ramped up to match her speed adaptively; she doesn't even look at her hands, just the screen. "I love it. I never take it off if I can avoid it." |
Author: pythbox | "I wouldn't either," he laughs. "Are you paralyzed under it, or what?" |
Author: autokinetic | "...No. I'm not. I don't have anything you could diagnose. But I'm so clumsy that I almost died. And now I never fall."
She misses a mine that comes from the edge of the screen at blinding speed; her avatar in the puzzle game explodes bloodlessly. She swaps the minefield skin to start looking for hazardous clouds in a three-dimensional skyscape instead and begins again. |
Author: pythbox | "That's awesome," says the boy. |
Author: autokinetic | "Yeah. I just think and -" She executes an unnecessarily showoffy sequence in the minefield; it hasn't 'figured out' for this iteration that she's faster than it is, yet. "I move. It was way easier for me to adjust to a battle suit than anyone else in the launch. I could compensate for the stiffness and any flashed parts and learn to move in zero-g without needing special muscle memory for it, I just have to know what to do. Some of them don't think it's fair but if I took off the exo it wouldn't be fair, either." |
Author: pythbox | "Fun," he says.
This time, for a change, he pours one drink into the other and tries the result. His avatar explodes messily all over the giant's table. |
Author: autokinetic | Bella's not looking at his screen, but she hears the sound effect. "There's one that makes you blow up?" she asks. |
Author: pythbox | "There is now!" he laughs.
And after a short pause: "Hey, you wanna do me a favour?" |
Author: autokinetic | "What is it?" |
Author: pythbox | "I wanna see the rest of the room," he says, "but I'm too slow, the Giant keeps squashing me flat. Think you could give it a try?" |
Author: autokinetic | "Sure." The mines adapt to her; one blows up her avatar and she abandons the console. "This game doesn't adapt the speed, just the content, if I remember right..."
She takes over his game. She dodges the Giant and looks around. |
Author: pythbox | The Giant's table occupies the center of a cavernous log cabin. There is food everywhere: sacks of grain piled against the walls, a whole ham hanging from the ceiling.
It's not easy to maneuver here, but it's possible.
At one corner, two sacks of rice lean together with a gap between them, a natural tunnel just the size of the player avatar. It's an inviting place to hide from the Giant's stomping feet.
'Suicide Watch' looks on with interest. |
Author: autokinetic | Bella doesn't duck in right away - she's not having any trouble dodging the giant, so she makes a complete circuit, and then she squirms through to see where the tunnel goes. |
Author: pythbox | It's dark under there, but the outline of a knothole in the log wall is just barely visible. That in turn leads to a short, twisting tunnel with grainy wooden walls, and from there the avatar falls into a skyskape of endless drifting clouds in peaceful pastel colours, with the Giant's cabin receding above them until it's nothing but a speck, and then nothing at all.
"Cool," he says. |
Author: autokinetic | "Want the controls back?" Bella offers. |
Author: pythbox | "Yeah! Thanks!"
Impulsively, he hugs her. |
Author: autokinetic | Bella does what it is normal to do with a hug: she returns it. "You're welcome!" |
Author: pythbox | Beaming, he returns to his game.
It's possible to steer his flight to some extent, aiming for specific clouds. Some are denser than others, and turn the whole world pink or blue or green until he gets out of them; some are light and wispy and only veil everything else for a little while. |
Author: autokinetic | "I wonder if there's a point to this part or if this is just what happens when you go off the rails," says Bella. She peers over his shoulder. The console to his left opens up. She tries this game too; it turns out to be more her speed than the minefield, with a space station she can arm and armor against little blinking enemy dots. Winning against the first wave of them earns her the right to name her station and save her progress. She calls it "Aegis". |
Author: pythbox | "It's fun!" he says gleefully.
When she saves her progress, he glances over. "Athena's shield?" |
Author: autokinetic | "Goddess of wisdom, shield," Bella controls her little laser array one handed long enough to tap her head, "my brain - I like the word." |
Author: pythbox | "Cool," he says, grinning at her.
In his game, his avatar is slowly morphing from a tiny mouse into a bird, brightly coloured like the clouds but with darker, more vivid shades. It takes him a little while to figure out the new controls, but then he's happily exploring his new environment, circling through the shifting clouds. |
Author: autokinetic | Bella's game has moments between waves when she's out of upgrade credits and she glances over at his screen. "It's not even presenting you with obstacles. It's just a sky of pretty colors. It's like a screensaver," she says. "I think I might've just won the game for you and it's a victory screen." |
Author: pythbox | He giggles. "I love it!" |
Author: autokinetic | "It's even more boring than watching your avatar die fifty times in a row," asserts Bella. |
Author: pythbox | "Sure," he shrugs. "To you, maybe."
His avatar's transformation is still not complete. The patterns on his wings are becoming more vivid, more complex; he has a long curling tail of green feathers flowing out behind him and golden talons tucked up against his blue-purple body.
He flies through a pink cloud that's shifting to orange. His next set of feathers grows out fiery red. |
Author: autokinetic | Bella shrugs and spends upgrade credits on commerce infrastructure for the Aegis so she can collect more in tariffs and buy shiny armor plating before the next round. |
Author: pythbox | His shape is more or less stable now, but he can control the colour distribution by choosing which clouds to fly through. For a while, he shifts schemes, repainting himself in every shade of the rainbow. But when he gets one he really likes—green head, blue body, purple tail, and wings like candle flames shading from blue at the front through yellow and orange to red at the tip of every feather—he starts navigating through the same cycle of colours over and over again, so he can keep it just the way it is.
A path opens up where he doesn't have to fly through any clouds at all. He takes it.
A glitter below him: light on water. An ocean, with a setting sun painting the wavetops red. He circles, now firmly under the multicoloured clouds. There's a cluster of mountains in the distance; an island? He heads that way. |
Author: autokinetic | "Oh, stuff," Bella says, as her new spherical defense web takes out a flock of enemies and depletes her electricity bank. She buys a new generator and starts setting up for a trade arrangement to get fuel on the regular; she wasn't expecting the web to be that expensive. |
Author: pythbox | "Stuff!" he agrees.
One of the mountains in the range turns out to be an active volcano. As he approaches, it erupts.
He dives into the fountain of fire.
His bird doesn't burn; it rides the lava stream up into the sky, cawing triumphantly. |
Author: autokinetic | "Maybe I'll beat mine too, if it's not stupid and rigged after all," she says.
She plays with her space station until she earns another save point, then stops and watches over Suicide Watch's shoulder. |
Author: pythbox | The sun dips below the horizon; the lava fountain reaches up as far as the clouds and lights them on fire, burning them away to reveal a skyful of multicoloured stars. Streamers of burning cloud fall into the ocean, leaving coloured streaks on the surface of the water when they finally burn themselves out. |
Author: autokinetic | "And maybe I'll grab some screenshots for desk wallpaper," she adds. "This is pretty." |
Author: pythbox | "It is!" he agrees. |
Author: autokinetic | Behind him there's another public desk. She sits at it, swivels the chair so she can look at his without losing hers in her peripheral vision. She logs in as herself (username Bella, password a long string of letters and numbers and symbols produced by keyboard mashing and reproduced by her equivalent of muscle memory) and boots up her game.
She knows where the Giant is; she was playing for a week and a half before finding out it was rigged. She goes through the mousehole, runs her mouse along the avalanche, and starts Giant-dodging, ignoring the drinks. She's seen the room; she goes straight for the tunnel out.
She gets clouds, too, turns into a sort of bird-person hybrid with wing-arms and hands peeping out from the feathers at the ends and a beak curving from her face, and she flies until she has a color scheme she likes (the color of denim, and copper) and then dives.
She doesn't find a volcano.
She finds a village, inhabited by more bird-people in every color.
"Neat," she says, pleased. |
Author: pythbox | "Guess it's different for everybody," he says. "Yours is cool too."
The next obvious thing to do is dive under the ocean, so he does. His bird swims a little awkwardly, but soon it adapts to the new environment, trading feathers for fins. It's dark under here, but not too dark to see, and he can chase schools of fish and wrestle with sharks. |
Author: autokinetic | Bella sets about meeting bird-people; they aren't very talkative, and she can't really talk in the game, although she can emote, and can get them to participate if she starts a project and makes their role in it clear. She has them digging a well in the village square when the message free play over takes over the screen.
"Rats, bedtime," says Bella. |
Author: pythbox | He laughs.
"Nighty-night, Aegis." |
Author: autokinetic | She laughs.
"Night, Suicide Watch."
She paints a path to her launch group and cartwheels all the way there. |