Table tennis. I can participate in table tennis. I don't have to risk reopening my stitches for table tennis. (The stitches had come out a while ago, but since the bone still ached my brain had trouble processing that). Sure, my opponent could hit the ball to one side then the other and I had no real recourse but by and rge I could just stand in the centre and ignore any ball hit too wide.
Rose was a demon at table tennis. Its one of the best sports for practicing telekinesis so naturally she was way better at it than anyone else. I had lost 5 games to her and it wasn't even time to switch partners yet. "It might help if you moved about a bit more" she taunted. "Moving hurts" I grunted. Not as much as it hurt st month, but that's bullet wounds for you. We rallied up to 50 hits before I finally missed the ball, yet again. "Switch" called the gym teacher.
Rose gave me a shit eating wink. "You know your power sucks" she teased. "My power sucks the fun out of things. I could have used it to win all sorts of ways. I didn't because there's more to learn from losing a fair fight than winning a fixed one" I protested. "Later loser" she replied tauntingly.
She moved one table up and I remained to face the next challenger. "Hi Jessica" I said. I briefly wondered how the hell teleporting was even going to help in table tennis. Was she going to try the teleport behind me and scream in my ear trick? Why bother? We were already close enough for her to cause temporary hearing loss without having to do so!
"Hi Jessica!" I said with forced brightness. She was somewhat of a dominating force in any game she pyed and I could be a real sore loser. "Cricket kidneys!" she squealed. "Huh?" I asked. "By the elder's gills Vanessa, I didn't even realize it was you until you opened your mouth" she excimed. "Well yeah, that's basically how my powers work" I replied evenly. "I was looking for you and everything" she added.
"Looking for me? Why? If its questions about the hunters I'm sick of hearing them and I'm not answering shit for any less than a grilled cheese sandwich" I said evasively. I served the ball. "Victoria's looking for you" she expined. Oh. That made sense. We were sort of friends? Not really but there were like a dozen good reasons she might want to see me.
"Oh, okay. I could swing by her pce after school I suppose" I said. The ball missed the table. "That's out! My point!" I seethed. "WHOA! Its only a game, jeez!" she replied. I sighed. "Sorry, I've just pyed Rose back to back with whats his name with the acceleration power…" - "Felix" - "Yeah him. Sorry, its nice to have a fair match for a change" I noted.
"You can kill a beastshifter with a single word! How is any fight fair with you?" she asked. "Because I'm not even using my powers" I stated. "Yeah, but no win ever counts because you could force someone to forfeit with a single word!" she cried. "But I don't. I stated".
"Why not?" she chuckled. "Because I wouldn't learn anything if I just used my powers to solve everything. While I was in the witch hunters facility my powers were bound. But because I was raised by a man who was immune to my power anyway, I take for granted that you shouldn't rely on a single trick. Sure I could beat you with mind control. But sometimes that doesn't work, so I need to be prepared for that eventuality. Therefore I fight you fair, and you have every chance to beat me, so next time I get stuck in a bad pce, I have one more trick that might help me escape" I expined
"How could being good at table tennis possibly help you escape an army of angry witch hunters?" Jessica asked sensibly. "I… haven't the foggiest idea" I replied. She stared at me in mild disappointment. "The point is, you can win, so please don't hold back" I said. That might have been a mistake. She didn't get any better fundamentally but she had way too much energy for the rest of the match which was almost as bad.
"So what did Victoria want?" I asked. "Oh, Charlotte got into trouble for telling her teacher that the witches who survived the civil war were cowards and should have kept fighting until ‘the good guys win’ and her Dad wanted you to tell her she's wrong" said Jessica. I let out an exhausted sigh. Well I was looking forward to watching Legend of Korra with three lesbians but I guess tonight was going to be a sisters' propaganda-101-tube marathon. Ugh! I'd probably have to invite Peter too. Shoot me now! (Actually don't, its very painful)
"Sure no problem" I sighed. In spite of the fact her power was almost useless in a table tennis match, she still beat me ten points to five. Which wasn't as comically bad as Rose but still… Maybe I should work on getting my stamina back up. Or go to one of the town's healers like Leah kept suggesting. That would probably smart. It also sounded like effort.
Jessica gave me a lift to Victoria's house, since she was going there anyway. Jessica's teleporting was more in line what I was expecting teleporting to feel like, aka absolutely nauseating. She couldn't just teleport to Victoria's house the way Victoria could. She had to also pass through a bunch of points on the way there. This was apparently a limitation of her ability to conceptualize space. Victoria and Elder Nichos could visualize a path between points of practically unlimited distance and therefore do it in one hop. Meanwhile Jessica needed to do something like 150 hops just to get across town to Victoria's house. Now to be fair she was able to do about four hops per second (or so she bragged). This gave me very bad motion sickness and I wound up vomiting in a shrubbery patch the second we arrived.
"You know, having experienced your driving I was almost certain you couldn't get motion sick…" ughed Victoria. "Its different when I'm not in control" I dry heaved. Victoria only ughed. "So what are you doing here?" she asked. "Peter wanted me to speak to Charlotte?" I replied. "Oh, right! She's not home from school yet. You can wait for her inside if you want" she said. "Thanks but I think I'd rather some fresh air" I gasped.
I sat down on the grass and watched Victoria expin advanced quantum physics theory (which was fundamentally useless for my power). Thank heavens my power didn't need any of that nonsense to be effective. Most powers are at least a little bit instinctive. However, studying real world subjects relevant to you power could often allow you to use it in new and interesting ways. Creatine manipution was a very common technique used by both beastshifters and general shapeshifters like Alice and it had only been discovered sixty years ago by a beastshifter with an entomology hobby.
Thankfully my power didn't need anything complicated. You just need to be able to tell a believable lie and most people won't even bother to resist what their ear never noticed needed resisting. I could also force the issue, but that tended to eat up my energy and I couldn't sustain that for long. I watched with pained sympathy as Victoria tried to expin what a vector is to a nine-year-old.
Charlotte arrived about ten minutes ter. "Big sis! What are you doing here?" she excimed. "Hey Charlotte. Your dad asked me to have a word with you about something. You okay talking inside?" I asked. Charlotte nodded enthusiastically. Doors didn't really lock in this town so I just pushed the front door open and led her inside. Peter was sitting on the couch sewing a barbie t-shirt back together. Something Charlotte had burst out of I guess?
The thing was in tatters, anywhere else in America they'd just trash it and buy a new one. But when acquiring new clothes is a mission from which some never return, an afternoon putting a few shreds of fabric back together with thread you got god knows where suddenly sounds like the lesser evil. It looked punk as hell. I wondered if Leah has any girly clothes she's burst out of then put back together…
"Vanessa!" yelled Peter. "Who? What? Where?" I gasped. "Ugh, I said what are you doing here Vanessa?" he grunted. "Oh, Victoria said you wanted me to have a word with Charlotte" I stated. "Um… yeah, if you wouldn't mind. Her room's on the second floor" he replied.
Charlotte's room looked like the bedroom of a child who had spent half her life in prison and then had to leave everything behind. It looked completely unlived in. She didn't have any toys, which I thought was sad. Maybe I'd buy her something next time I was out of town. Assuming I had the funds to cover it.
I sat down on the bed. "So, Victoria's told me you've been saying some pretty strange things in school" I said pinly. "Hm?" she said innocently. "Look, I think being raised in that pce, with those people might have given you a… warped sense of what's normal" I stated. "What do you mean?" she asked.
"Well, you've got to understand that those people had an agenda. Their tax payer funded job is to stop bad guys. And the problem there is that if there are no bad guys to stop, people might start to question what their purpose is. So its in their best interest to invent threats that they're supposedly protecting us from as a matter of job security." I expined.
Charlotte gave me a look. A dark and hateful look. "What are you saying?" she demanded. "The united states has always had a lust for power. In 1949 they invented a bomb that could wipe this town off the map and leave a sizable crater in the mountain. If they dropped one of those here, everybody in town would be dead in less time than it takes for me to snap my fingers. At the time of the bomb's invention, the states were at war with a country called Japan. Japan saw the writing on the wall and was willing to discuss surrender with the states and their allies, Britain and Russia".
"But the states had a deep, ideologically motivated hatred for Russia which I don't even have the time to get started on, so any deal which would have given Russia influence in the region was anathema to them. So they dropped two of these bombs, one on the Japanese city of Nagasaki and the other on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Tens of thousands of people were killed in an instant, and many more died of sicknesses never before seen on this world over the following days. And they told the Japanese government that if they didn't surrender to them and them alone, they'd keep on dropping these horrible, horrible bombs until nothing was left of the country but ashes!"
"Good people exhaust every opportunity to protect human life before they resort to such drastic measures. A good person would have accepted Japan's conditional surrender and compromised with Russia. A good person wouldn't have traded lives, even enemy lives for political influence. That wasn't the actions of good people. And if you look at the history of these united states, you will find a pattern of escation and callous disregard for human life" I said.
"You're lying!" yelled Charlotte. "Riddle me this: How do you know that I'm lying and the people who kept you in a cage for half your life were telling the truth?" I replied, loudly but coldly. "They wouldn't!" she cried. "Have you any way to verify their version of events? Or are you trusting them because they gave you lolly pops and ice-cream?" I yelled calmly.
"You're a communist, aren't you? You're evil!" she gasped. "Evil? EVIL? You want to talk about evil how about keeping kids in cages? In ANY other civilized country that would be unthinkably abhorrent. And a thousand armed guards? Guards armed with P90 sub machine guns? “The weapon that kills your enemy” as you so eloquently put it? In what world is that something good people do?" I shouted. "You're lying! They said there'd be liars trying stop me from protecting everybody. You're a liar! Your evil and a liar" screamed Charlotte.
I took a deep breath. This was getting me nowhere. "Charlotte… You need to calm down. You need to rex and calm down" I said as gently as I could. "NO! YOU NEED TO WAKE UP AND REALIZE THAT IF WE DON'T DO SOMETHING, EVERYONE IN AMERICA INCLUDING THE PEOPLE OF THE TOWN WILL BE SLAUGHTERED!" She screamed. "SLEEP!" I thought. I caught her as she fell and gently pced her on the floor. I didn't have the upper body strength to move her to the bed.
"How'd it go?" asked Peter. "Not well" I replied coldly. "Is she going to be okay?" he asked. I took a deep breath while I collected my thoughts. "Peter, she's been brainwashed by the best psychologists the US military budget can buy. She needs professional help, probably from someone who specializes in cult deprogramming" I expined. "What? That's ridiculous! Just erase the memories of being brainwashed!" he retorted.
"Messing with memories can cause permanent damage. I messed with my mother's memories too much and she's in a funny farm. She has symptoms simir to senile dementia with additional trouble seeing the difference between fact and reality. If I mess with Charlotte's memories that much, I'll likely damage her mind irreparably. No, this needs to be done the old fashioned way, and while I have some experience with how brains work because that allows me to use my powers more effectively, this is so far beyond what I'm capable of dealing with! You need an expert" I told him pinly
"Then find her an expert!" he cried. "Its not that simple. You're talking about kidnapping someone. Their disappearance would not go unobserved. Arguably we could offer them a contract and have them spirited away to the mountains for a few weeks and then use my power or principal Bck's to alter their memories once they'd done their job. But we'd need something to offer, namely money. And I'm washing my body in ice cold water because I don't even have the money for propane for my oven right now!" I yelled back.
"Then how do we get money?" he called. I let out a long, slow sigh. "I'm working on it…" I replied.
"I've seen injuries like this before. Were you shot?" gasped the school nurse. "Got it in one" I chuckled. "You should have come to me immediately, not relied on those butchers out there" she chided. She put her hands around my bullet wound and I watched it fade to a scar in real time. I chuckled. "I went to the first healer I found. I was hardly going to let myself bleed out on my way to something better"
"That's horrible! How could someone shoot a child!" she gasped. "I KNOW, RIGHT?" I replied. I mean I had been holding a gun myself at the time but still… I got up and tried walking. The bone, annoyingly, still hurt. "What's wrong" asked the healer. "I think the bone was damaged. It still hurts" I grumbled. "I'm afraid that won't go away any time soon. I can give you something to numb the pain, but that's it" she said apologetically. I considered it for a moment then shook my head. "I'll save the painkillers for if I ever break a bone or something. Daily use tends to lessen their effects and I'd rather have the effects at their greatest when I truly need them" I noted.
"As you wish. Will that be all?" she asked. I rolled up my sleeve. "This one too if you wouldn't mind" I said. She smiled and chuckled. "Hey listen" I said. I reached into my book bag and took out a little pstic baggie. "What's that?" she asked. "Avocado pits. I hear healers' powers also work for encouraging pnts to grow. Avocados sell for over three dolrs a pound. Do you think it would be possible to grow an avocado tree from these?" I asked.
"With the right grower sure, you could probably have an avocado tree by next summer" she said as the nasty pain in my upper arm faded away completely. I should have come weeks ago. Why hadn't I come weeks ago? Stupid father and his fear mongering about doctors…
"Is there any way it could be grown faster?" I asked. She considered my question. "I guess mad Emily might be able to help you, but I wouldn't go associating with her" cautioned the healer. "I'll decide who I associate with thanks" I replied tartly. She pced a hand on my shoulder. "Kid… there's injuries I can't heal. Please don't go rushing into danger" she said. "Your caution has been noted. However, if I can't find a stable source of income and soon, I won't be able to afford the medicine that stops me from wanting to die. Now where can I find this Emily?" I asked
Emily's house was almost as far from the town as mine was, and in a different direction so it wasn't even on my way or anything. I approached her door with a sense of dread. When I told Alice I was going to visit Emily and that if I didn't return by tomorrow evening to tell the elders where I'd gone, she had quite literally begged me not to go. But curiously, when I asked her why I shouldn't visit mad Emily, she didn't have an answer for me. Not even a rumour.
Her house was slightly smaller than mine, which was impressive in its own right. Like I literally had them build me the bare minimum size of log cabin to hold my limited worldly possessions, and I was only intending to stay there till I was eighteen and a judge legally couldn't order me home. This was someone's forever home which she had been living in for more than twenty years from what I gathered.
I walked up to her front door and knocked out most of "shave and a haircut". What's life without a little whimsy? A woman answered the door and my jaw dropped. Was this woman really a grower? She was built like a beastshifter, with great trunk like muscles. A hulking 6′1″. Her hair was short and streaked with grey and even a touch of white. She wore a sleeveless tank top which barely contained her massive chest. Her skin was leathery and wrinkled. Her mouth was set in a scowl.
Forget crushing a watermelon with her thighs, this woman looked tough enough to break one open with her boobs! Forget the hours walk to my house, this woman could probably carry me down the mountain, through the maze and all the way to the out of state mall where I'd taken Alice and Rose and Leah way back when. Damn, would Leah look this good in a few decades? Would Alice? Wait, Alice could shapeshift, she could look that good now if she was bored.
"HEY!" She yelled. Oh, right. Talking. "Sorry, what" I squeaked. "I said whacha doin on my property kid! she snapped. Oh her voice! Like glitter and gravel! "I… Hi I'm… Hi!" I squeaked. If she did turn out to be a mad serial killer or something, at least I'll die looking at a beautiful butch!
"The fuck do you want kid?" she grunted. I cleared my throat. "I um… cookies and coffee!" I said by way of expnation. "Huh?" she grunted. I opened the basket I had borrowed from miss Cooper to reveal freshly baked chocote chip cookies and a thermos of coffee. She raised her eyebrows. "Is this a prank?" she demanded. "No, its um… business!" I expined. "Huh?" she grunted. Okay, I was making a terrible first impression. I took a deep breath and collected my words. "I came over for a chat and a cuppa coffee" I stated.
Her head tilted sideways in confusion. "Are those… are those little bits of actual chocote?" she gasped. I nodded and smiled stupidly. She considered for a moment. "You know what, come right in" she said.
Her house was somehow smaller than mine and cked certain amenities like a tap or an oven. I mean mine were the definition of making do but…
She fetched a cheap looking porcein mug and pced it on the table with a single pte. I put a few cookies on the pte and filled her mug with tea. I used the mug attached to the fsk. "Got any milk?" I asked. "Nah, never liked the stuff anyway" she replied. "More of an oat milk girlie?" I asked. "What the fuck are any of those things?" she asked. Well, I suppose while it was entirely possible they could produce oat milk out here, maybe nobody had thought to. Something to talk to the elders about maybe.
I dipped a cookie in my sad, milkless coffee and took a demonstrative bite. She followed suit, the whole time staring at me like she was waiting for the other belt to strike. She chewed slowly then swallowed. "Its good" she grunted. I smiled and nodded. "It is, isn't it" I said. "So why are you sharing it with me of all people?" she asked.
"I heard you're the best grower in town" I said. She smiled savagely. "Maybe I am. What's it to you" she replied. I took my bag of avocado pits out of the basket. "These are avocado pits. I need you to grow some trees that usually take five years to fruit for a first harvest in two weeks" I stated. "And this is a bribe is it?" she asked looking at her cookie from both sides. "I prefer to think of it as a shortcut to making new friends" I replied with a diplomatic smile.
"You want to be my friend" she choked. "Isn't that how stuff works around here. You need something you make friends with the person who makes them and then when they need something from you you return the favour?" I asked. "Nobody wants to be my friend" she said bitterly. "How come?" I asked. "What, nobody told you?" she asked. "Nope. All the nurse would tell me was you were bad news, but she plum refused to give me any specific reason" I said.
"Ask your parents" she grunted. "I prefer to stay at least five hundred miles from either of those people" I said, my voice taking on its own dangerous lilt. "Do you not get on with your folks?" she asked. "No. No I do not" I said. "The elders then" she suggested.
"I would like to hear your story from you. No fnderization, no chinese whispers" I stated. "You say some weird stuff" she noted. I chuckled. "I suppose I do. What did you do to make everyone in town dislike you?" I asked. Her face fell and she seemingly aged a decade before my eyes. "I fell in love with a woman" she said. The statement hit me like a truck and hot coffee coated her sandy floor. She sadly stared at me, apparently used to this sort of reaction.
"Wait! The reason you're forced to live on the fucking fringes of town is because people take umbrage with you being a fucking lesbian" I yelled. "A what?" she asked. "A lesbian. A dyke. A daughter of Sappho. A friend of Dorothy. A woman who's only crime is loving another woman. They call you mad Emily and make you live in the shittiest house in town, MILES from anybody because you fell in love with a woman and had the GALL not to have a penis about it?" I ranted. She blinked twice in slow motion. "I mean its a bit more complicated than that…" she said awkwardly. This was clearly not the reaction she was expecting.
"WHAT COULD POSSIBLY MAKE THIS OKAY?" I screamed. She sighed and took another bite of coffee soaked cookie.
Emily and Marie were best friends since childhood. They had been joking about getting married since they attended Marie's cousin's wedding together when they were four. Emily had tackled a grown ass woman to catch the bouquet. (Well they used a great sprig of thyme here due to one of their weird traditions but the implication was the same I gathered). And she had given that sprig of thyme to Marie (which apparently counted as a proposal here?) and promised to marry her one day.
For many years they happily dreamed of the day they'd make good on that promise. The other girls got sick of their constant wedding talk (which was impressive, how much do you have to talk about a wedding before a 9 year old girl thinks you've gone too far?) and they were socially exiled to go py with the boys instead. Which was fine, Emily loved pying in the mud and Marie loved watching boys get upset when Emily beat them.
But then puberty happened and Marie started noticing boys. At first she thought she was safe. Marie noticed boys but none of them were capable of meeting her impossibly high standard. But then he came along. He was smart. Smarter than any of the teachers, maybe even smarter than the elders. And handsome. So handsome he had men wishing they were women so they could marry him. And charming. He had such an enrapturing wit about him that one could talk with him for hours and never grow tired or bored. It was love at first sight.
And though he could have any girl he wanted, for some reason he chose her. She started spending more and more time with him and less and less time with Emily. She was heartbroken because she felt her friend was slipping away from her. But ultimately what she wanted most was her friend's happiness.
But over time her heart grew lonely. That person that it had grown up around like a support beam, she could not imagine a life without. So she started showing up at his house to see her. She was tolerated for a time, but as the months went by the friend she couldn't imagine living without seemed to grow bored of her and asked her not to come by anymore.
It was only a few months ter that her old friend got married and Emily wasn't even invited to the wedding. She heard of it of course. He was adored throughout the town and his wedding was the rgest in over a century with basically the entire town in attendance. Unable to stop herself, she had gone to her friends wedding and when the elder had said "should any object to this union" she had a whole tirade about how she couldn't marry him because she was still her fiancee.
And Marie had ughed. Called her an idiot child who was still obsessed with childish things. And in a jealous rage she had taken that man and BEAT the ever loving SHIT out of him. After that she was branded mad Emily and the town came together to build her a home far away from any of them lest they catch her madness.
So… I can see why you're living in a shack on the edge of town" I noted. Emily only sobbed into her own bare arms. Her big, beautiful arms. Damn, Marie sounded like an idiot. "However, um… reasonable crashout!" I excimed. She turned to look at me, red of eye and snotty of nose. "What?" she sniffed. "Yeah, if some straight guy stole my lifelong best friend and fiancee they'd find him with a faith healer in upstate Deware" I stated.
"Why do you use all these weird words?" she cried. "Oh, I'm from out of town" I noted. "What?" she sniffed. "Yeah I've been in this town for like, six months and I didn't even go to school for the first four" I stated. "You're an… outsider?" she mumbled. "Is that a problem, friend of Dorothy?" I asked with a cheeky smile. "I (sniff) I guess not" she said.
"I promise your lesbianism is not something I'll ever hate you for. I love lesbians. They make everything better" I decred. She got up and walked over so she towered over me. She picked me up in a bear hug that buried my face in her cleavage. "Thank you! Thank you thank you! Its been so long… Its been so long since I had… Company…" she sobbed. I gently patted her side while I waited for my oxygen to deplete. I couldn't reach her back.
She dropped me abruptly. "Trees! You wanted help with growing trees, yes?" she asked. "Please" I said with a smile.
