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]

"Nope," he says.

[autokinetic]

"You didn't - I don't know, telepath at it?"

[pythbox]

"I don't think so," he says. "Pretty sure I didn't."

[autokinetic]

"That's strange."

Here's the infirmary.

[pythbox]

"How would you even telepath at the game?" he asks distractedly. "It's not a person, there's nothing there to telepath at."

Oh, the infirmary. Good old infirmary. What a great place to be.

[autokinetic]

"Well, I don't know, there's all kinds of mutant powers. I know you can't telepath at me; I don't know if you can telepath at smart computer programs." She hands him over to a nurse. They don't ask too many questions at the infirmary. He just starts disinfecting Suicide Watch and inspecting him for broken bones.

[pythbox]

One cracked rib and a shitload of bruises.

"I can't telepath at you, but I can tell you're there," he says. "I was trying a little, when I was crying too hard to talk, but you're right, I can't do it."

[autokinetic]

"If you can even tell I'm there that's weird. I stumped all the telepaths they threw at me when they first found out I was a mutant," says Bella. "Maybe you're really strong."

[pythbox]

"I don't feel really strong," he snorts. "I feel like I just got the shit kicked out of me by a bunch of guys twice my age."

[autokinetic]

"I mean mentally strong," she says, petting his hair while the nurse spreads some kind of bruise-healing ointment on Suicide Watch's leg.

[pythbox]

"I know what you meant," he laughs, leaning comfortably into her hand.

[autokinetic]

"Your bird just started flying straight like you weren't there anymore, and I went up and pulled it down, and then your color scheme changed and it showed me a path color," she muses. "That's strange."

[pythbox]

"Weird," he agrees. "Maybe the game was pissed off I'd stopped playing it."

[autokinetic]

"We have to stop playing it all the time. We have schoolwork and battleroom practice and stuff."

[pythbox]

He shrugs, as much as he can without disturing the nurse's work.

"No idea, then."

[autokinetic]

He gets a needle stick above the cracked rib. They have pretty advanced medicine up there. "I'll write you a note to your launch coordinator to excuse you from the battleroom for four days," the nurse tells Suicide Watch. "You can walk, but no roughhousing or strenuous play."

[pythbox]

"Sure," he says blithely.

[autokinetic]

"If you need help again you won't be able to telepath at me, but you could try Qiaochu, he's in my launch and most of my classes and he'd be able to tell me where to go most of the time," suggests Bella. "And he's cool about me being a mutant so I don't think he'll mind you."

[pythbox]

"...Where is he?" he asks.

[autokinetic]

"Right now? Our barracks, unless he got up to pee."

[pythbox]

"Then can we go see him? I don't think I could find him otherwise," he says.

[autokinetic]

"Yeah, sure." She waits for him to put his uniform back on, then paints a path.

[pythbox]

Suicide Watch follows her.

If he's in any pain, he's not letting on. (He is.)

[autokinetic]

"Do you need to do any more leaning?" she asks anyway.

[pythbox]

Immediately: "Yeah."