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.

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[pythbox]

He caws a very giggly kind of caw and starts scratching at the dirt next to her message.

After a minute or so of trying and failing to replicate her readable letters, he hops onto SUICIDE, scratches it out with a sweep of his talon, steps neatly to the end of the word, and draws a crude pictogram of a shield. Then he points his beak at the revised message, points his beak at her, and stands next to it, preening.

[autokinetic]

There's a laugh-emote. So this is definitely Suicide Watch, not the computer playing tricks on her. Her avatar laughs and nods, and then scratches out all the drawing and crosses the bridge to see how the purple grain mill in the antelope village is coming along.

[pythbox]

Suicide Bird follows her over, taking to the air again but flying low enough to be visible on her display.

[autokinetic]

The mill is doing fine. It's time to take some antelopes up into the mountains to look for a good pass through the range and see what's on the other side. Suicide Bird can come too.

[pythbox]

He flies ahead of the expedition, and comes back laugh-emoting.

[autokinetic]

Eventually Bella works out a twisty path that the surefooted antelopes can take without the benefit of arm-wings like the birds. She's already been over the mountains herself, and there weren't any villages within easy flying distance, so she's going to colonize here. (The birds have recently laid a clutch of eggs and almost half the antelopes are pregnant; it's spring.)

[pythbox]

Suicide Bird circles the party, then flies ahead again.

Except that in midair, he levels out abruptly and drifts to a slow stop, wings flapping with purely automatic rhythm to keep him hovering above the ground.

[autokinetic]

Bella frowns and waves at him again.

[pythbox]

No response.

[autokinetic]

Well, she can fly too, she flies up and grabs hold of his avatar and pulls him down so he won't fly into the yonder forever.

His wings stop flapping automatically when she lands them. He just stands there, animated blinking at regular intervals.

And then his colors change. Silver first, all his feathers going at once, and then there's a line of dots down his throat, appearing one at a time.

Red red blue.

Bella has no idea how this is supposed to be happening, but it's clear enough. She logs off and shuts her desk and paints a path.

And she runs.

[pythbox]

The path leads her into unfamiliar territory. Unfamiliar and not densely populated. By the time she reaches the end, there's no one around except six yelling older boys and one yelling not-so-older boy.

Three of them have Suicide Watch on the floor while two stand lookout. The sixth and oldest is also on the floor, not visibly marked but screaming in pain loud enough to drown out the younger victim's quieter bawling. No one involved is emitting coherent words.

[autokinetic]

That's a lot of kids.

Bella's faster than them, and while she's not stronger, she does know exactly how hard she can force her hand into something without breaking any bones. Everyone else has to deal with instincts designed for conservatism in the savannah.

She bypasses the lookouts, tumbling in a sudden roll between them and springing up to strike one of the ones issuing the beating in the ear. She can't just haul them away, she's not that strong - but she can hit, she can straightarm that one in the ear hard enough to make his head spin and elbow the other in the nose hard enough to break it and force them back and then stand astride her friend, defiant, facing them all with her hands up and ready.

[pythbox]

Her friend curls up tight and weeps softly.

The screams of the oldest boy trail off; he jumps to his feet and points accusingly at Suicide Watch. "He got me!" he yells. "The fucking mutie got me with some kind of fucking mutie torture ray!"

Suicide Watch does nothing to answer this accusation. The other boys draw into a tight knot around their newly risen leader, looking warily at Bella.

[autokinetic]

"Get a teacher, tell it to him, I'll wait," says Bella levelly, not lowering her hands. (There are no female teachers. And fewer than two percent of the Battle School students are girls.) "I'll tell him what I saw, and I'll tell him how I knew to come here, too, how less than a minute ago I know my friend was playing on his desk and you've had him at least that long."

[pythbox]

Their leader is still not quite steady on his feet; he hangs back.

But one of the boys who was tormenting Suicide Watch has apparently not had enough yet, because he springs for her.

[autokinetic]

She's faster. She dodges his hands and punches him in the throat. The copper contacts on her knuckles leave little bleeding divots, but most of the damage is from the impact; he's going to have trouble breathing for a minute there. "Anyone else?" she shouts. "You want a six-year-old girl to beat you all up?"

[pythbox]

With a general snarl-and-mutter, the cluster of boys drags its wounded away and leaves them in peace.

Well. Bella might be in peace. Suicide Watch is still in tears.

[autokinetic]

She crouches beside him. "How bad did they get you? Do you need the infirmary? If you can't walk, I don't think I can carry you but if you took off your uniform I could maybe drag you on it." (She's gotten fairly accustomed to nudity since starting school here; little boys run around naked all the time and this was only funny for five minutes.)

[pythbox]

He whimpers and uncurls just far enough to cling gently to her leg.

[autokinetic]

"It's okay. It's okay, they're gone, I scared 'em off, the game told me where you were somehow," says Bella. He can clearly move; he's not bleeding much; he's probably not dying.

[pythbox]

He presses his face against her shin, sniffling.

And then does it again, and again, like a kitten who wants to be petted or an animal who doesn't understand how to move around an obstacle.

[autokinetic]

She tries patting his head. "It's okay," she says again. "They're all gone."

[pythbox]

"Hurts," he says at last, and he slowly lets go. "Be okay, though."

He looks up at her, and reaches up wincingly to touch her chin, then tucks his hand against his chest again.

"I'm. Think I'm a. Telepath," he says, slowly and with difficulty.

[autokinetic]

"Oh," she says. Well, she doesn't have to be scared of telepaths, even if the idea is weird to her. "Can you walk? You need to go to the infirmary."

[pythbox]

"Lemme try," he says, and starts laboriously climbing to his feet.