watch me dance

[autokinetic]

Fractal makes commander. Bella doesn't replace him as toon leader - she's only eight and her commander still doesn't know how to use her - but Fractal's replacement, a vet traded in from Platypus who goes by Brighteyes for some reason, does. He spends a chunk of Flame's practice sessions every day putting Bella properly through her paces, and in their battles, he uses her like she was meant to be used: a dancing wildcard, too fast to hit, torpedoing herself into formations with laser precision and shooting from glorious whirling motion with the steadiest arm in school. Bella likes Brighteyes, and he tells her that when he makes commander he'll swap for her if he has to give up six soldiers to do it.

There is an announcement of a rules change: you are not allowed to perform the victory ritual without freezing or disabling all of the enemy.

This rule change is generally attributed to the antics of a Thomas "Sue" Sanderson, who coordinated his toon across the room without commander authorization and won the game before more than four soldiers, total, had been taken out.

It's a month shy of Bella's ninth birthday when Flame and Meerkat once again meet in the battle room.

"Freeze their mutie," Flame's commander tells everyone. "Don't look at me like that, Aegis." (People have occasionally started calling her this; she always picks it as her username or her space station name or whatever she's allowed to christen, and it's started to stick.) "You're not that kind of mutie, but theirs is. He can't do his hivemind shit once he's froze or he'll get iced. That's everyone's priority, clear?"

"Yessir," says each toon leader in unison.

They form up in the corridor.

Comments

[autokinetic]

She flinches.

"I can control it," she says. "It's like - you're knocking, but I don't have to listen." She swallows. "But knocking isn't all you do, is it, you have some kind of hivemindy thing, that's why I was supposed to get you first of everything."

[pythbox]

"Yeah," he says. "Okay. You remember I said, when I push at people, they can push back? I call that linking."

His free hand describes a back-and-forth line in the air, connecting two imaginary points.

"I can push stuff—I hit that one guy with pain, mostly, but I don't just yell what I'm feeling at my toon, that'd be stupid. I link them all, and I show them what I'm seeing and how I'm moving, and they show me the same stuff back," his hand now draws the spokes of a wheel, always returning to the same hub, "and then I tell them what I want us to do, and we do it."

[autokinetic]

"That sounds terrifying," says Aegis.

[pythbox]

"It's basically talking, but faster," he says with a shrug. "And there's some stuff that doesn't do too good in words—I can have my toon halfway across the room before somebody else would've been done saying 'split, bounce off the north wall, and form up on the east face of that star', because I just push the trajectory and they get it right away."

[autokinetic]

"But you could push whatever you wanted once they were linked up. And I bet that bully didn't invite you in..."

[pythbox]

"Sure," he says. "I can push whatever I want at anybody who isn't a wall like you. And if I want I can get up in your face and scream nasty things about your mother with my own two lungs." He grins. "Except you'd kick my ass right across the battleroom. That was great, the way you shut me down in that battle."

[autokinetic]

"Got froze for it, though," she snickers. "Did you just send the whole toon on an Aegis-hunt or something?" She shakes her head. "But the guy didn't act like you just screamed at him. Him and his friends started it, I don't blame you, but it didn't sound like you were just shouting at him."

[pythbox]

"Well, yeah," he says. "Shouting senses is different from shouting words. I've had some of my guys push it to me when they got a bump in practice, just to see, and it's like... I don't feel it like my own body is hurting where they hurt, same as I don't see it like my own eyes are getting what they see, but it still feels like hurt, or looks like seeing. It's just separate from what I'm getting as me."

[autokinetic]

"That sounds so strange. And can you do it to me, or does the wall stop you?"

[pythbox]

He shakes his head. "I can't touch you. Never mind pushing senses or concepts, I can't even push nothing at you, I just get wall."

[autokinetic]

"Okay." She relaxes. "So you definitely can't possess my exo. And they won't take it and I won't have to be a clay thing all the time."

[pythbox]

"I couldn't possess your exo any which way," he snorts. "I don't have mind control. I can shout all I want, doesn't make anybody have to do what I say."

[autokinetic]

"The problem with the exo is it doesn't need proper mind control for somebody to possess it. Somebody with proper mind control could be just as dangerous using anybody without an exo. They'd still be controlling the body at the speed of thought," says Aegis. "The point of the exo is to be suggestible, that's how it works, that's how that one guy killed sixteen people with someone who had a prototype on. If you could shout at the part of my brain that works it you could move me. But you can't."

[pythbox]

"...Pretty sure I couldn't," he says. "I'm a weird kind of telepath, I don't go into people's heads."

[autokinetic]

"You don't?" she asks. "What's the difference?"

[pythbox]

"I've had a telepath talk to me," he says, "when they were figuring out about my power, and it's nothing like getting words pushed to me. It's not even like getting thoughts pushed to me. It's like he just stepped into my head and made the words appear there. The way I do it... like I said, it's separate. What's in my head is still in my head, what's in their head is still in theirs, I'm just linking us up so they're getting some stuff from my head, and if they want they can show me some of their stuff back."

[autokinetic]

"Oh." She turns these pictures over in her head. "All right. Maybe even if there wasn't a wall you couldn't possess the exo. So that's two reasons they won't take it even if they find out, and they won't, so that's three."

She is much more relaxed now.

[pythbox]

He grins.

"That's good. I don't want them taking your exo. It makes you happy."

[autokinetic]

"It makes me alive. I almost died before I had it. You can see the scars a couple places -" She traces a line on her cheek, and another along her wrist. "If the exo goes, I get iced, I go to planetside school someplace, I walk around with a cane maybe or try to do without anything at all, feeling like my arms and legs and hands are cheap rentals, and if I live to to be fifteen it's because I never climb a flight of stairs and I definitely don't fly."

[pythbox]

"Yeah," he says, and he looks unusually serious. "I know. I don't wanna get iced either. Different reasons, same deal."

[autokinetic]

Aegis remembers. She nods.

"I got made toon second," she adds in happier news. (This is not secret; this sort of position is official and it'll appear as a little symbol next to her name in the standings as soon as Brighteyes submits the change.)

[pythbox]

"Congrats!" he says, all smiles again.

[autokinetic]

"It's cause I got you and the last toon second made a stupid mistake," she explains.

[pythbox]

"If I had an army with you in it, I'd make you toon leader," he says. "I'd make you lieutenant of however many of my best people were too many for me to link."

[autokinetic]

"How many's too many?" asks Aegis. "And Brighteyes says he wants me when he makes commander, too, maybe you get into a bidding war with him and somebody who likes flex maneuvers like Rabbit's commander." She's smirking.