#twig1.10

[katliveblogs]

I studied them.  Most were in uniforms, though Jamie was wearing pyjamas with shoes, an odd combination.  He’d left our room too quickly to get dressed first.  I’d never changed into my pyjamas, myself.

Gordon was hurt, and it showed a little in how he held himself and his expression, and Helen was a little rumpled, though unharmed.  Lil, oddly enough, seemed more together and comfortable than I’d seen her in a long time.  Maybe ever.

She saw me looking and hugged her bag of medical stuff to her chest, glaring at me over the top of it.

“You’re home,” I said.

She didn’t move, but the glare became a more perplexed expression.

“This.  It’s where you belong.  Or the Academy is, and this is a close second.”

She didn’t reply immediately.  Her eyes moved, taking in the surroundings.

“Yeah,” she said.

I don’t know if I’d say she belongs here, but a familiar environment does do wonders for the mental health.

“Sorry we’re not sticking around for longer,” Gordon said.

“I’m okay being anywhere I don’t have to worry about getting poisoned or stabbed,” Lil said.

“Just an hour or two more,” Gordon said.  “If Sy’s not wrong about the quarantine.”

“Trapping ourselves in here with skilled murderers,” Jamie said, “What could go wrong?”

“Corner the rats and hope they don’t bite too hard,” I said.

Really feel like these kids should be able to call on some sort of measure when they’ve identified and cornered the extremely lethal threat beyond “Gordon’s good at brawling”.

“Speaking of,” Gordon said.  His voice had dropped, which helped complete the thought.

We were further from the more lit dorms, now.  In less secure territory.  If we made it around to the front office, I would be very close to having completed a full circuit around the building.

Torn between making a bad “going in circles” metaphor and making a bad racing game joke.

[katliveblogs]

The phantom images were suddenly busy.  Enacting various scenes and scenarios.  Mary, anxious, making a mistake.  Mary intentionally making a sound to distract, then slipping closer toward me.  Mary setting a trap, a deadfall or a heavy object that held down a tripwire, impossible to see in the dark.

It was very possible that she didn’t just have weapons.  Poison, wire, any number of things could be stowed away in and around her uniform.  I liked traps, but they were hardly exclusive to me alone.

It was an approach that let her actively protect the puppeteer while keeping the right position respective to me and the man.

Lots of possibilities to narrow down. Ideally not by stepping into one of them.

If that was what she was doing.

I was visualizing her at the end of the hallway, or in one of the adjacent classrooms.  I wasn’t thinking about the yard.

I raised myself up, head snapping over to look into the window of the classroom beside me, past desks and chairs to the window that looked out into the yard.

Between the rain and the branches, there was no way to tell if she was there, moving around to circle behind me, or if it was just weather and gloom playing tricks with my eyes.

Think twice, Sy, I told myself, going back to thinking about Mary being at any one of the positions in a quarter-circle around me.  Right classroom, hall, left classroom, yard.

This is why Gordon gets on my case, I thought.  Spend too much time thinking, miss my chances.

Either that or act impulsively without thinking at all from what I’ve seen. Which is a pretty relatable struggle, being a “functional” person relies on a bunch of mental balancing acts that can come a lot less easy to some people.

She was watching, apparently secure in the idea that she’d spot me or confirm my location if I made a break for it.  I needed to disrupt that security.

Need to make a noise someplace I’m not.

I looked, peering into the windows, searching the classrooms around me.

Ah, there’s that classic stealth gameplay.

[katliveblogs]

But I still had an impression of where Mary was, even if I couldn’t pinpoint the exact location.  Given how much she cared about the puppeteer, how afraid she was of me, there had to be a comfort zone.  A certain range she might wander, where she could potentially keep an eye out for me while still watching him.

My head slowly turned.  End of the hallway.  Either one of the classrooms on either side, the last classrooms at that end of the hall.  Everything beyond that was offices.  More likely to be locked tight, too close to him, not close enough to observe me.

What else?

The yard?  I’d called it her territory.  She could look in the windows just as well as I could look out, and it gave her a lot of range of movement.

I started to imagine a Mary at each of those points.  A phantom image lurking in shadow, just out of sight.

The puppeteer was her weak point.  When he was strong, he could give her strength, centering her.  When he was weak or in danger, she cracked.  The brick I’d thrown at him had been aimed at her, in an abstract way.  That in mind, I was willing to bet that she was devoting more thought to how to protect him than how to catch me if I tried to break away and run.

Strings extended from him to the phantom Marys.  An abstraction of the fundamental hold he had on her.  They were strings that could snap, if given cause, but there was a resistance.  Tension.  Anything she did would always, always be prefaced by a concern for him.  A momentary worry.

That was the tool I had to use.

Gosh, imagining these possibilities and abstract relationships as a physical model is a heck of a mental thing to do. It makes some sense as a tactic for elevating subconscious understandings to a more conscious levels, but doing it this casually without tripping yourself up is super impressive, and arguably the first obviously superhuman thing Sy has done so far.

I could make out a heavy, low sound further down the hallway.  A large object being set down, a book being dropped.

What are you doing, Mary?  I wondered.

Given that she was preparing to go up against physically monstrous opponents, she could have any number of kinds of firepower up her sleeve still honestly.

[katliveblogs]

Except not in so many words.

Jamie was a hard one for me to guess.  I couldn’t slip myself into Jamie’s shoes and imagine what he’d say because Jamie would be the type to call up some obscure set of details.  He had a good memory, while mine was below average.  But Jamie would also have a sense of the building layout.  He could sketch out a quick map in that book of his, I could stare down at it, put all the pieces together, and start to imagine where Mary might have entered the building, where she might have positioned herself.

I tried to imagine the building as well as I knew it, but it wasn’t a complete map, and parts of it were nebulous, the scale not quite right.  I couldn’t draw a sharp picture, not a crisp image that stayed still in my mind’s eye.

I mean that’s still way fucking better than I can do. My spatial memory and imagination are practically nonexistent.

Then there was Lillian.  Not an Academy project, except she was, in a way.  She’d grown up with the Academy in mind, had spent some time at Mothmont, and went on to be one of the Academy’s younger students.  Her family wasn’t so wealthy that she would thrive regardless of what happened.  She’d had to throw herself into her studies, into our activities, just to secure her future.  The Academy had its claws in her.

Yeah, you’re all real fucked aren’t you.

Lillian would share something about the science of the clones.  Maybe explain how the trigger phrase worked.

…Or, now that I thought about it, she might surprise us and say something very human.  Something like, she was so cold around you, but she let her guard down around him.  She even cried.

Sy, couching it in this framework doesn’t actually change the fact that you’re the originator of the thought and that it’s clearly bothering you.

I imagined that as the moment I could pull the pieces together and get an idea of where Mary might be lurking.  I could formulate a plan and enact it.  But imagination was only imagination, and as much as it helped to put myself into others’ heads and look at things from set angles, I was missing pieces of it.  Jamie’s map, the extra tidbits that I could never come up with on my own.

Imagination as a way to trick your subconscious into working on predicting things is a pretty neat psychological trick. Although yeah, obviously actually having the rest of the gang around would be better than this emulated version.

[katliveblogs]

Gordon collided with him.  In the midst of the collision I saw the two pistols the eldest clone was armed with, saw Gordon reach for just the one, twisting it around in the clone’s hand so the barrel pointed at the boy, the trigger finger slipping away from the trigger.

Our Gordon.  A hero on paper, skilled, strong, fit.  But if anyone took him for noble, they’d be wrong.  A noble person didn’t take advantage of inches of height difference to slam their forehead into someone’s mouth.

I don’t know, you can be noble in behavior, but you can also be noble in goals, regardless of behavior. Not that Gordon is really either, but then he’s an abused child soldier.

The older clone shoved Gordon away.  He raised his pistol in the same instant Gordon did.  One aimed at the other.

Slowly, I found my feet, rising beside Gordon.

The glass had cut him on the way through.  That didn’t happen in the books.

“You had two guns,” Gordon said.

“Was going to shoot both ways,” the clone replied.

And as a bonus it means you can now have a proper standoff.

“We’re not here for you,” Gordon said.  “We’re here for the puppeteer.”

“That’s not his name,” Mary said.

“It’s a good enough name,” I joined in.  “You can’t deny he has control over you.  He pulls your strings, he decides what you do.  Uses you as bait.”

Another thematically appropriate argument for it being Mary in that image with the threads or whatever they are.

“And they don’t use you?” Mary asked.  “You’re not tied to them, these other orphans?  Would you give them up to save your skin?  Oh, wait, you don’t care about your skin.  Expiration dates, huh?”

I saw Gordon’s gun waver a fraction.

“Yeah, you forgot to tell them, huh?”

Ah, yeah you did kind of give her that one to use as a counter-tactic. No idea how Gordon and the rest are going to react. Hopefully soon enough with deciding that staying obedient to the Academy is untenable.

[katliveblogs]

“They’re Mary’s ‘brothers’, to Mary and the Puppeteer.  Mary is their sister.  It’s a little family unit.”

“I notice you called Helen a sister,” Jamie said.  “Interesting.”

“One isn’t related to the other,” I said.

“I seem to recall you going on at length about the intricacies of the human mind,” Gordon said.  “Everything impacts it on some level or something like that.”

“Okay,” I said, “Whatever.  Let’s joke around about Sy really wanting a family, deep down inside.  Mary’s situation has made me realize it’s what I really want.  It’s a yearning even.”

Deflect with sarcasm all you want Sy, it’s obvious the idea made an impression on you.

Hands settled on my shoulder.  Prey instinct, wham.  It took me a moment to realize it was because I saw Gordon, Jamie, Lil, and the smallest clone, but I didn’t see Helen.

Her arms wrapped around my shoulders from behind, and she hugged me tight, before leaning forward to give me a peck on the cheek.  Too perfunctory to be anything serious.

I didn’t move a muscle.

Helen must have done something real fucking ruthless at some point.

“I’ll be your big sister if that’s what you really want,” she said.

“Sarcasm,” I said, still not moving.  “I’m not sure what we are, but I don’t think ‘family’ is exactly it, and I’m really truly okay with that.”

She pulled away, giving me a rap on the head as she stepped over to Gordon’s side.  I caught a glimpse of a wry smile on her face as she gave me a sidelong glance.  For my benefit.  Her way of letting me know she’d been joking too.

Geez.

I mean it’s not like smiles aren’t for that purpose usually, it’s just not conscious but instinctual.

“We’re the Lambsbridge orphans,” Gordon said, as Helen leaned against the wall beside him, raising her hand to fix the placement of a strand of hair.  “That’s all we need to be.”

Geez Gordon, way to jinx everything.

[katliveblogs]

He shook his head.  “Last we saw, he was near the kitchen, sent this one after us, we were busy staying out of the way while the little one used all his bullets trying to gun us down.”

“The others had guns?”

“Have,” Jamie said.  “The oldest one has a gun, still.”

I nodded.

I mean Mary had one as well, it’s hardly that surprising. What is surprising is that they are apparently just shooting guns around the school and there’s still any element of keeping things under wraps whatsoever. Must be some pretty quiet guns.

Gordon started walking, and the rest of us fell into an easy formation around him.

“Um, have to backtrack a bit, but I wasn’t keeping up with the discussion,” Jamie said.  “You said the quarantine was arranged.  They’re searching the entire student body?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Us included?”

“Ideal world, we won’t be here,” I said.  “Even if we are, we can adapt.  But I wanted to pressure them, and this does that.”

Jamie frowned.

“Sorry,” I said.

“I’m not good at adapting,” Jamie said.  “Less than you three, anyway.”

Worried about your journal? Or perhaps it’s a more fundamental discomfort with yourself and the examination thereof? Seriously “I’m not good at adapting” is such an egg line.

“Sly is right, though.  The pressure we’re putting on them is a good thing,” Gordon said.  “That said, the ten year old very nearly killed me, this one was hard enough to keep from slipping away, let alone catch.  Helen wouldn’t put up a fight, and you, Jamie or Lil would die in two seconds flat if any of them got within arm’s length of you.”

Which makes splitting up immensely risky of course. Not that it’s likely to stop Sy.

[katliveblogs]

As we intersected, I spotted the smallest of Mary’s ‘brothers’, eight or so years old, with two knives in hand.  Red haired, flushed in the face, but with a very cold look in his eyes.  Those same eyes widened as I sprinted his way.

Surprise.

Oh yeah, they still thought you were dead right.

Almost unconsciously, he switched his grip on one knife around, so the blade pointed down.

I dropped to the floor.  Still soaked with the rain, I slid on the tile.

He leaped, to avoid tripping on me, and I grabbed one foot.  It slipped from my grasp, but I’d put him off balance.  He flopped over, belly hitting the floor.

Hey, that’s another physical confrontation Sy didn’t eat the painful end of!

Spry little bastard.  He was already on his feet when Gordon caught up with him.  Without slowing, Gordon slapped one knife-hand to the side, caught the other wrist, and slammed the kid into a wall.

The kid went limp.  Gordon held his wrist, letting him dangle.

The kid’s eyes opened, and he jerked his other knife hand, pointed at Gordon’s middle.  Helen’s foot went out, pinning it against the wall.

“Damn,” the kid said.

Too experienced to be fooled by the possum ambush I suppose.

I thought I might have seen a glimmer of fear in his eyes, but Gordon hauled him away from the wall, then cracked the kid’s head against it, hard.  He paused, watching, then did it again.

The knives fell from the boy’s hands.

“Lillian, got something to put him under, just in case?”

Lillian did.  She hurried forward, pulling her bag around in front of her to retrieve a syringe.  She squirted out almost half of it before jamming it into the boy’s stomach, depressing it.

Well at least they aren’t just bashing his head in.

[katliveblogs]

But seeing the globe, knowing it was a ruse, it forced a decision.  She had to figure out where I really was.  Was it a ruse, or was I leading her one way while slipping through to go after the puppeteer?

Given a fifty-fifty chance with no clue otherwise, the strings pulled her back to the puppeteer.

I passed the globe and the door it had touched, and felt a cool draft.  The excuse for the globe’s movement.  She’d slipped in through the window, had used it to make her exit, or both.

Ah, using the fact that she won’t risk you getting to the puppeteer to get her to yield so you can slip past.

I rounded the corner to the west side of the school, moving as fast as I could toward the dormitories and the Lambsbridge gang.

I want to point out the inconsistency of Sy going right for the gang after previously underplaying the value of doing so, but really it’s just the smart thing to do after it became clearer Mary isn’t going to let him get at the puppeteer.

Even just approaching the boy’s dormitory, I could smell the sickness.  Over a thousand students periodically venting fluids out of every orifice.  Looking through windows, across the corner of the yard, I could see that many lights were on in hallways, though not necessarily in the rooms themselves.  Staff doing patrols and making sure the students were alright.

🤢

I couldn’t quite see with the trees in the corner of the yard, but I saw motion.  Fast motion.

The other Lambsbridge members.  Running away or giving chase?

I only had a half-second to make the call, picking up speed, making noise as I ran.  A glimpse through two sets of rain-covered windows, past branches and leaves.

I saw Helen’s eyes, and I saw Gordon’s.

The focus, the killer instinct.

I picked up speed, running faster.  My feet were bare and wet, partially from water that had dripped off the rest of me, and the tile was slick.  I managed to keep my footing, but there were one or two points where I wondered if I was going to slip.  Approaching the bend, where my hallway met theirs at the corner of the dormitory, I could hear them.

Further Forty Forty flashbacks.

[katliveblogs]

Books could be slid across the floor.  A small object could be thrown to break something, but both were crude, obvious.  I wasn’t strong enough to throw or slide either all that far, the sliding book would make too much noise and the broken glass would be too cliche.

I mean really sound as misdirection is cliche in general in this situation, but I suppose allowances can be made for this being a world with less media.

My eye settled on a shape at the back of one room, barely visible as a silhouette against the vague light that made it in from outside, even against the paler background of the wall.

I darted across the hall, low enough to the ground that I had to put my hand down to touch the floor for balance and to keep my nose from smashing into the tile.

My heartbeat picked up as I made it into the classroom, moving amid desks and chairs.  There were windows, yes, but the only exit that didn’t threaten to cut me to shreds on the way through was the door I’d just passed through.  If Mary appeared in the doorway, I might well be done for.  Even if I did make it through a window, I wasn’t sure she couldn’t catch up to me.

The only defense was to do it fast and do it quiet.

Sy are you sure this is something you enjoy?

I headed to the corner of the room furthest from the door.

Teacher’s desk.  Nothing of importance.

But beside the teacher’s desk, next to the window, there was a globe, resting on a stand, fixed in place at the poles so it could spin.  The colors were rich, even in the gloom.  A third of the globe was dominated by a rich crimson, each etching of place name topped by a crown.  The independent countries were marked out in their own colors, paler, less saturated, scattered and patchwork.

I took it down and pried it free of the stand with the letter opener, then made my way back to the door.

You gonna roll this sad confirmation that imperialism is indeed still very much a thing here down the hall?

[katliveblogs]

Taking Root 1.10

This was what I lived for.  Literally speaking.

I knew my enemy now.  I knew where she was weak, where she was strong.  I knew how dangerous she was, and through all of that I could make assumptions about the others in the school.  I might have preferred to know where she was and interact with her from a safe vantage point, but this was the next best thing.

I knew that the best way to handle this would be to get to the puppeteer, Mr. Percy, and deal with him before anything else.  He was hurt, my odds weren’t that bad.  Once he fell, the others would fall.  I knew that Mary knew the same thing, and would react accordingly.  She knew I knew, and I knew that.

Nice, yet more insight into how Sy operates. And bringing up of the whatsitcalled game theory problem. Personally I’m of the mind that unless you are confident in your ability to out-think your adversary, you should pick in the most truly random way you can manage as a surefire way of equalizing your odds.

[katliveblogs]

Was going to at the conclusion of this,” I said.

“You described yourself as a villain.  You’re a liar, a cheat, a thief, a grubby killer.”

“Yet,” Gordon chimed in, “I believe him.”

Mary didn’t have a quick response for that.

Despite everything, they’re good kids Brent

“When I was asking about breakfast, about the little things that count,” I said.  “I was really asking if you felt loved, if you truly loved your… father, or whatever you see him as, or if it’s just something ingrained in you.”

“I think that’s my cue?” a voice said.  Not a confident one.

A female voice.

The headmistress emerged behind Mary.

Her hands clutched a piece of paper.

My thoughts moved so fast that they were a jumble.

Yeah, this plan was never really going to survive contact was it.

“La, re, tu, la, sun-”

I found my conclusion.

Left alone with the headmistress, the quarantine, our puppeteer had figured out what I’d done.

“They are not on your side!”  I called out.  “They are not with the Academy, Headmistress!”

He’d turned it around.

“-ro, ta.”

The eldest clone reacted, pulling the trigger.  Gordon’s reaction was a fraction of a second later, off-balance as he reeled from getting hit.  The clone was hit in the shoulder.

Well, that’s the progress in making them uncertain all eliminated probably. And also yeah you might straight up need to flee the school at this point depending on how good Percy is at selling the idea that you’re the assassin kids.

[katliveblogs]

A pistol went off, the bullet striking the doorframe where Gordon’s head had been.  It was almost too loud in the hallway where there was nothing to absorb the sound, the sound bouncing off the walls, an echo that played off the ringing in my ears.

The sick children around us screamed, panicking.  They leaped up from chairs and the floor of the hallway.

The screams continued as the children got in our way and obstructed our movements.  One tried to hide between me, clutching the back of my shirt, and made it hard for me to rise to a proper standing position.

It was a moment of stupidity that left me mostly in the front of everything as our third boy stepped out of the room he’d been hiding in, pistol in hand.  He wore a uniform, but he had a cloak and hood on over it, possibly to conceal himself better in the dark.

Ah no, just regular old misdirection to set up a tricky chaotic situation.

For all my talk about effective use and prediction of bugs’ movements when the box was shaken…

Again, it's a lot trickier when you’re one of the bugs.

“Oy!” Gordon shouted.  “Got your kid brother here!”

I saw the hesitation.  The pistol’s barrel slid away from me as his focus turned to Gordon and the youngest clone.

These children almost get shot an amount of times that I’d consider not the greatest.

I started to move, ready to kick up and try to knock it away or out of his hand, but the kid behind me still clung to me, and I immediately knew I wouldn’t make contact.

For an instant, I thought we hadn’t accounted for all the clones, but then he made a small sound of fear.  Human frailty, not maliciousness.

Gordon was heading for cover, still carrying his burden, turning his body and running almost sideways so the littlest clone was more between him and the gun-wielder.  The gun moved, wholly focused on Gordon.

One shot rang out, and the clone moved to reload.

I wonder how accurate guns in this setting are. Like with the implied crudeness of mechanical technology in this world they can’t be too precise, which would go some way to justifying these kids not being dead several times over already.

[katliveblogs]

The look in his eyes went beyond cold, and had become something else entirely.  Dead, empty, hollowed out.

That was how he had them kill the parents.  A kill phrase, a letter they were to read at a set time or something sent to the home.

Gordon fell, and the clone barely staggered, heedless of pain and injury.

Helen wasn’t a fighter, and the rest of us didn’t stand a chance.

The puppeteer was a manipulative bastard, one that could well be on his way out, and he might well have beat us with one fell stroke.

And that’s 1.10 done, with yet another cliffhanger. Mostly more of the same good stuff.

Now the question is how this is going to get resolved. I suppose it’s possible that Gordon is just going to die right here, but it seems kind of unlikely. I think either he’s going to get back up, which would kind of cheapen the cliffhanger, the rest of the gang are going to pull something miraculous out of nowhere, which would feel pretty cheap as well, or, and this is my favored prediction, Mary is going to be unaffected by the kill phrase, either because it’s individual or because she had the foresight to protect herself somehow, and end up helping the gang fight her brother off because she’s not ok with what’s happening.

[katliveblogs]

“I know you, Mary,” I said.  “I get you.  We’re the same.”

She faked a laugh.

I held the blackjack and letter opener, poised to throw the first and stab with the second.  The other clone had to be close.  He could well have his back to the same corner I was crouched beside.  Close enough to smell, if the smell of blood and puke hadn’t made the use of my nose impossible.

“Laughing, you don’t see it?  Tell me, did you have breakfast with him, Mary?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Often enough?  In the way you really wanted?”

A pause.

Glass shattered.

It’s something I take for granted a little bit, but the way Wildbow weaves together character interaction and action in ways that compliment each other really is quite skillful.

That was my cue.  I threw myself forward, out into the hallway.

Gordon was still mid-air, having leaped through one of the tree-branch and broken-glass windows that separated classrooms from the hall.  Glass and bits of wood danced around him, his knees pulled up to his chest to clear the wall beneath the window.

Not anything I’d expected, but it was something.

My shoulder hit the ground.  I’d planned to stab if he was close enough.  He wasn’t, so I threw the blackjack.  A little weight in a long, semi-rigid bag for smacking someone over the head.  It served as something to distract, to buy Gordon a fifth of a second as our teenaged assailant reacted.

Gosh, Gordon is really good at launching himself through things that most people would just bounce right off huh. Once more and I might have to start making Kool-Aid Man jokes.

[katliveblogs]

“We’re not going to put him in harm’s way,” Mary said.  “You’ll have to get through us to get to him.”

“Basically what I was going to say,” the older clone said.

“He puts you in harm’s way,” I said.  “What part of this is fair?”

“It’s none of your business,” Mary said.

“It’s exactly our business!  It’s what we do.  We do it to make money.  The definition of business.”

Wait, you actually get paid for this? Huh. I guess money is a good way to construct an additional layer of incentive for obeying.

I couldn’t see either of them.  I was talking to thin air, which was worse than it had been trying to talk to Mary in the furnace room.

“You’re the cleanup crew for a corrupt and distorted organization.  Child soldiers and killers.”

“I think any argument you could make against our group would apply double for your puppeteer,” I said.

Nice deflection Sy.

“Think so?  You don’t know us,” Mary said.

Something was off.

For someone recommending avoiding talking to me, she was doing an awful lot of it.

I raised a finger, pointing at the corner of the wall.  Very slowly, I moved my fingertip.  I glanced back at Jamie and Helen, then over to Gordon.

I got nods in response.  They got it.  Gordon leaned back, out of sight.

Mary was distracting us while the other clone approached down the length of the hall.

Unfortunately for Mary, Sy is intimately familiar with talking smack to buy time.

We didn’t have guns.  Much less guns intended to rip someone up inside.

But y tho