katliveblogs

[katliveblogs]

“And,” she said.  “He was hunting Genevieve.”

“Yep,” I said.

The lead girl gave me a look.  “Now you’re working for her?”

“With her,” I said.  “Not under her.  I see it more as a partnership.”

“Really now?  How did that come about?” goat-eyes asked.

“It makes a lot more sense if you think about the two of us being siblings,” I said.  “Even when we were on opposite sides, we got along pretty well.  Then I left the Academy, and here I stand.”

Given just how smoothly this lie flows, I’m yet again reminded that it’s very unclear why it isn’t the truth.

[katliveblogs]

The girl with the goat eyes was still staring at me.  The rectangular irises made for an interesting effect.  I quirked an eyebrow at her.

“Sylvester,” she said.

“Hm?” I asked.  “Yeah.”

“I’ve met him,” goat-eyes said, to the lead girl.

“Have you?” I asked.  “My memory isn’t the best.”

“I was one of the people sitting in the background while you were talking with Ronnie?  Before everything turned topsy-turvy?”

I shook my head.  “You have me at a loss.  I can think of ten things off the top of my head that that could apply to.”

“The start of the civil war?”

Oh dang, there’s straight up overlap between this group and that one. Not sure how easily Sy can bounce back from this.

[katliveblogs]

I looked over the group of girls.  There were about nine of them, and they moved as a loose crowd, each with a unique style.  I saw a few body modifications here and there, some unconventional hair styles, and very loose interpretations of Beattle’s dress code.  Skirts were hiked or rolled up to show more leg even while they wore jackets and coats that looked like the sort of jackets Mauer’s soldiers would wear in cooler months – oversized and prone to drooping over hands, even when they were rolled up two or three times over.

Makeup was often heavy, often chosen to accent the body mods.  One girl had a lone deer antler at the corner of her scalp, and makeup had been staggered so it seemed to blend into her brown skin.  Another girl with goat eyes lined heavily with eyeliner was staring me down.

The leader wasn’t modded so heavily, but she’d foregone the academy jacket entirely to wear a black sweater with a layered collar beneath a double layer of jacket and military jacket.  I’d thought about clothing as armor as I got ready in the morning, but the fashion choice there was akin to plate mail where it covered her, and there wasn’t much beneath.  Her top three buttons were undone and her skirt was hiked up higher than any of the girls.  Chance more than choice that I couldn’t see anything worth seeing.

But her attitude, I’d seen it on some drunks and some fighters.  She was spoiling.  For a fight, for trouble, for… anything.  She was the queen of her clique here, and the crowd at her sides and back were more armor, on top of the layers she wore.  It let her expose more throat and belly, metaphorically.  Baiting others in even as she looked for a morsel to bite at herself.

I’m interested to see how Sy interacts with this group of cool delinquent girls and how it contrasts with the one way back in arc 4.

Also I think this is the first use of “mods” and “modded”. Seems Wildbow is going with the common term over coming up with some more obscure setting-specific language.

[katliveblogs]

“If she went?  What if everyone from student council and Greenhouse Gang to the Rank and the girls on the rooftop was leaving?  They say something like they know people who know people.  You’ll get money, you’ll get lodging.  You just… grab your stuff and go.  And there are none of the Academy rules.  No restrictions.  You can room with girls.  You can be angry, drink, and tell the world to fuck off.”

“Except it’s all manipulation,” he said.

“Well, you know that.  Pretend you didn’t.  Pretend that your alternative would be to stay.  To do nothing except accept that you’d failed.  You would have to tell your mom that you did so badly, collectively, that the school was shut down.  Would you go?”

“I don’t know,” he said.  “But I don’t think I would.”

“No,” I said.  “But some would.  Enough would.”

Hm, this is a heck of a thing to steal from Genevieve. Not gonna be easy, but if it works Sy is gonna get to bolster their ranks real quick.

[katliveblogs]

“They’re a three out of ten on the danger scale,” I said.  “Barely worth rating.”

Well that’s not a very useful scale then Sy, if almost 30% of it isn’t worth using.

[katliveblogs]

“The stable is about to flood,” I told him.  “I want a good vantage point when it does.”

“It’s not a stable,” he said.  “It’s the Academy.  What they said before they started talking about stables, the Academy is closing.  They didn’t even talk about the students.  That bit at the very beginning.  We’re a resource to them.”

“You predicted it would.”

“But they’re hurrying it along!” Gordon Two hissed at me.  “Do you know what that does to me?  To my friends?”

“Yes, absolutely,” I said.

“If it was a slow death, then they’d cut us in stages.  Maybe I’d get dropped, I’d be able to go to Sprung, but I’d have a chance.  If they cut us all at once?  That’s a few thousand students who’re looking for a place elsewhere.”

“Oh, I know,” I said.  “And I know who and I know why.”

Seems in line with Genevieve’s methodology, to topple an Academy full of overlooked, bitter students, and then recruit from among them.

[katliveblogs]

“Nah,” I said.  “Simon.”

“You look like some of my cousins from New Amsterdam.  George, Thom, Westie?”

His tone had shifted.  He was begging for me to get it.  To let him go out with a semblance of pride.

Ah ok unrelated to Radham Mice Thom.

[katliveblogs]

I’d prophesied a future and the gun made it so.

Unless he threw me another curveball.

“You wouldn’t be Thom, would you?” he asked.

Would you look at that, two prophesies in a row! Although I’m not confident Sy remembers Thom by name, at this point.

[katliveblogs]

And if this rat-bastard was saying something bad about Lillian, Mary, and Jessie’s standards, well, I couldn’t brook that.

And here’s Sy being more concerned with the way their appearance affects others than with how they themselves feel about it again.

[katliveblogs]

“Even here the girls don’t have standards that low,” he said.  Contempt dripped off his tongue as he looked me up and down.

To his credit, I was a bit nettled at that.  I knew he would’ve said something like it no matter how I looked, but I was nettled.  I’d put effort into preparing for the day.  Girls liked me.  Mostly after they got to know me, but still.

Even Jamie had liked me, and he was a boy.

Sy would you please not. You know for a fact that Jamie was nonbinary, and that they presented as male at least in part due to not having a choice. Not to mention that using “even” there is really pretty heteronormative.

[katliveblogs]

The two men I was following were good.  I followed them as they followed Avis, and that gave me ample opportunity to study the pair.

Their choice of clothing and hairstyle were accurate enough to fool me.  If they hadn’t been actively following Avis, then I wouldn’t have given them a second look.  Overalls tucked into wading boots and a sweater for one.  Vest, shirt, and slacks for the other.  Their hair was messy, only nominally combed back or parted, and their hands.  Oh, thing of beauty, they had the calluses of hard manual labor.

That is pretty impressive. Less than it could be maybe, in a world where I’m sure calluses can be artificially created fairly easily, but still impressive.

[katliveblogs]

“So… that’s a yes?” I asked.

“I don’t dislike trains.  They make a good reference point for the flow of the city, when I’m measuring it all.  When people come, when they go, the time it takes them to get from A to B, with the station itself oftentimes being one or the other-”

“You like trains!  That’s so adorable!”

It is admittedly pretty adorable. Also kind of an autism stereotype, but in Jessie’s case it’s fitting and understandable.

[katliveblogs]

“How does one adroitly manage the topic of a late train, as someone regular who isn’t a passenger?”

“You’re dwelling on the wrong part of this.  Fray has arrived.  That she arrived late might be important.”

“Maybe you think it’s adroit, but they talk among themselves about the odd girl who gets uppity about the train being late, even though she has absolutely no stake in it.”

“Sy.”

“Jessie.  How can I trust an ally if she’s doing things behind the scenes that might hint at grave weaknesses or infirmity?  This could be the fulcrum point by which our partnership regains balance or careens into disaster.”

This is a level of pursuing the tangent that I’d expect from a homestuck character, honestly. It’s great.

[katliveblogs]

“Is this how you operate, Mary?” I asked.  “Is it a factor in how you’re put together?  When you’re really nervous about the day, you focus a little bit on grooming?  Armor yourself in fashion, arm yourself with the necessary tools, and find your center?”

“I was only nervous in the very beginning,” she said.  “Back when I didn’t know the Lambs.  Then again, when Percy came up, and when the Lambs split.”

“The very beginning.  That’s when you settled on your particular style.  Before then, we mostly saw you wearing the Mothmont uniform.”

“I started wearing lace and soft fabric, to hide the steel,” she said, smiling.  She touched my chest, over the heart.  “What’s your soft armor hiding?”

Well that’s an awfully conspicuous thing for a manifestation of your subconscious to say. Definitely still some things waiting to be uncovered in the vault, methinks.

[katliveblogs]

I wouldn’t admit it out loud, but I felt insecure.

All of these pawns were in play and few were wholly in my control.  I was playing a game I was less familiar with while a master sat on the other side of the board.  My only advantage was that Fray didn’t know she was playing against me yet.  I would give up that advantage soon, and I had to hope that we came out ahead in that particular transaction.

I’m not sure Sy has done much to articulate why they aren’t trying to play cooperatively with Genevieve. Given the argument they presented to Junior was a fib, it seems like they have a lot more goals in common than they do in opposition.

[katliveblogs]

“I took a gamble,” he said.  “I lost.”

“What kind of gamble?”

He gave me a one-shoulder shrug.  “Changed my pattern.  The underlying structure that makes me who I am, that tells my cells how to grow, what to do.  Another student told me they’d tweaked it so they didn’t need to sleep.  They weren’t that convincing, but I felt trapped.  I wanted to believe it, so I convinced myself.”

“You let them stick you with a needle, fundamentally changed your sleeping pattern, and it all fell apart.”

“We managed to do enough damage that any fixes do more damage.  There’s no point to wrestling with the problem, because I might fix one thing and break another, and then have to adjust to the new reality.  Better to dwell on dealing with it than to risk seeing more of the foundation crumble.”

“How do things stand now?”  I asked.  I was concerned it would interfere with him, me, and Fray tomorrow.

“I lose focus, go off rails, see things, and when it gets to be too bad, I dose myself to knock myself out.  Six days of being awake, with functioning steadily dropping nearly as much as it would for anyone, then two days of drugged unconsciousness, one day of the hangover from hell.”

Oh wow, that’s pretty damn rough.

It’s interesting that even with how easy gene editing is in this world, it doesn’t seem to be reversible at all. I suppose they don’t have the technology to analyze and replicate specific dna sequences, and so even if splicing or altering things is easy, they can’t actually tell specifically what they’re altering.

[katliveblogs]

“Good question.  The bit toward the end.  Marvin being a man of text.  You had an inkling before you asked, didn’t you?”

“People learn in different ways.  The tactile, the auditory, the visual.  And in different scopes, too.  The master and the jack.”

“Master and Jack?” Junior asked.

“The man who does one thing and strives toward perfection with it, and the person who can do a dozen related things and translate knowledge from one to another.  There are other bases to cover, other elements of learning and individual kinds of intelligence and whatever else, but- yeah.”

Hah, I’ve been saying Sy would be good at identifying and nurturing the natural talents of people! If it’s not already the plan, Sy definitely needs to consider taking on more of a mentor role to this rebellious group they’re constructing.