i am swift and clever

[autokinetic]

Bella plays the fantasy game again now - it is less fun than flying, all raw physicality and poise, in the battle room, but it now compares favorably with a decent fraction of books. She plays it in front of her launch and the boys want to know where in the hell this setting came from.

"Go to the Giant's Drink and I'll show you," she says.

She bypasses the Drink for six boys. They drift through the clouds, but they don't find villages, or pretty landscapes - they just find parts of the game they've already been to.

"Don't look at me, that's the same way I got here," says Bella. She's teaching her bird-people the scientific method now, painstakingly, almost comically, by mime and enthusiastic gestures. They're getting it, a little; a pink-and-gray one has put a cup of water in the sun and a similar cup of water in the shade and is staring at them intently.

By the time Bella has been at Battle School for six weeks she has tried all the games in the game room, and most of them (apart from the newly fascinating fantasy game) are now only interesting if someone will play against her. Most people won't. She's got too much of an advantage over the controls, and even at Battle School, among what really is a better crop of brains than kindergarten, it's apparently too much to ask that anyone think faster.

Comments

[pythbox]

He just laughs.

[autokinetic]

"Well, I might run into a village that I can't get on board, but I don't think the antelopes are those people," says Bella.

[pythbox]

"What'll you do then?"

[autokinetic]

"Depends on what they're like. If they just don't want me in their village I can go around them and leave them alone. If they're mean and they attack my birds - or my antelopes or my whatever - then I get to try classwork in the game, I guess."

[pythbox]

"Fun," he says decisively.

[autokinetic]

"Yeah. I mean, they dress it up like a school, but we're glorified child soldiers. I won't be surprised if it lets me absorb like three villages and then throws one at me that is inimical to their survival. Bug-people," she says.

[pythbox]

"Too obvious," he says thoughtfully. "This is paradise. If it tries to trip you up, it'll be with something really vicious."

[autokinetic]

"Maybe. It knows I don't mind ragequitting, though," she snorts. "Or it should. It's just a game, if it's not fun I'll stop."

[pythbox]

Suicide Watch nods acknowledgment of this deep wisdom and signs on to the game at an adjacent desk.

His bird-fish is deep underwater, encountering fantastical creatures in the murky depths. He swims lazily toward the surface.

[autokinetic]

"I wonder if there's a way to do this in multiplayer," says Bella.

[pythbox]

"That'd be fun," he says immediately. "Maybe I could borrow your controls and screw around a little. Your bird people will think their new goddess has a personality disorder."

[autokinetic]

"I don't wanna share my avatar," she says. "Especially not if it confuses my birds. I like my birds." (Her avatar hugs the nearest bird, which tolerates this with good grace.)

[pythbox]

"Awwww," he says delightedly. "Okay, I won't. But multiplayer's a good idea."

[autokinetic]

"I have those," Bella says with dignity.

[pythbox]

"You do!"

[autokinetic]

Bella has many projects running concurrently in her bird village, since things go roughly in real time. She checks next on the birds who are learning to make paper. They have managed pulpy ragged-edged beige stuff, which Bella nods at approvingly; she doesn't know how to teach them to make anything smoother and it'll do. She's just about to start showing them how to paint when free play over comes up on her screen.

[pythbox]

"Aww," says Suicide Watch. "See ya!"

[autokinetic]

"Night!" she says, and she logs out and waves and travels back to her barracks in a rather balletic manner.

Bella does her classwork; after a few weeks the teachers have more finely distinguished ability from past training and sorted everyone into their semipermanent class levels and the difficulty ramps up. She flies around in the battle room, leveraging her cheater's exoskeleton to dance in the air like she can on a floor, to shoot straight and dodge beams with artful twists of herself. She notebooks about herself, at least half an hour a day even if nothing special happens. And she plays with her birds, and she works out that the antelopes were just threatened by the shovels and will allow river diversion after seeing mock-work done by nonthreatening trowels, and she builds a bridge between the villages.

[pythbox]

One day, while she's playing the game during a free period, a familiar fish comes swimming up the river.

[autokinetic]

She laughs; her avatar laughs too, as an afterthought, and she waves. She's not sure if it's him or just the game playing with her, but the reaction's appropriate for either.

[pythbox]

Suicide Fish waves a fin right back, and leaps over her bridge with a flick of his tail, splashing everyone in range.

[autokinetic]

Bella's birds and antelopes shake themselves off and look at her for cues. Her avatar points at the fish and then hugs a nearby antelope: that's my friend.

(She's got other friends, people who'll dance the battleroom with her, even one boy two years older who'll give her a run for her money in the tunnel table game, but none of them have made it into the fantasy game with her. Suicide Fish can be her fantasy game friend.)

[pythbox]

The fish leaps back over the bridge, higher now. There's much less splash and only a few NPCs get sprinkled.

At the apex of the third leap, his fins unfurl into wings, scales sprouting into feathers: he's a bird again. He circles the bridge once, and then dips his candleflame wings in salute.

[autokinetic]

Birds who are not bird-people are not equipped to hug. So Bella just waves again and goes back to what she was doing, which is figuring out how to make crawfish traps.

[pythbox]

After a minute or so, Suicide Bird lands nearby. He doesn't do much, just watches what she's up to.