by P. S. Power
“Interesting. What has she been training you for?” The lilt to her voice indicated both that she suspected that might have been sex, as well as kind of hoping that was correct.
He rolled his eyes and sighed. Then tried to copy Eve Benson.
“See? I’m clearly not doing a good enough job yet. She’s trying to teach me how to infiltrate other realities, to go after The Adversaries? Anyway, here I am, already being called out in every single interaction I’ve had so far. Oops? Not great, is it? Then, to be fair, I only started this stuff a few weeks ago. Less than that, if you don’t count the three thousand years in the void I had, learning to line walk. That’s both a real thing and it isn’t, you know?” He looked down, wishing he had some food as well. If only so he could cover his shame by eating. Not that it wasn’t going to fade soon, but for the moment it was a real enough thing.
Hobbs had several small fruit that had been served still on the vine. Grapes, like what wine was made out of, he thought. Sweeter however than he was used to, from his world. Plumper as well, without having seeds inside of them. He’d tried some earlier and had been shocked to find that for himself. Most of the other things served weren’t like that however.
“Truly? That is a difficult task to set one. I have… Had my own difficulties, fitting in here. You speak the language well however. Both Timon and Taman have strong accents. You sound as if you could be upon the television here. That is a good starting place. What training have you received from your people so far?”
Willum, figuring that hiding who he was just wasn’t a thing that day, simply told on himself. After all, it wasn’t as if he could hide it effectively now.
“I… Um…” It was kind of embarrassing to talk about himself, but he did it, since seeming bold would work better than cowardly. “Sexual instruction, with both men and women. That… Doing things with men, or with anyone outside of marriage, that isn’t done where I come from. Then… Learning to eat different things. Insects, worms, that sort of thing, in case it came up. The food here is very strange, for instance. Not that it’s of poor quality, just in a style that isn’t what I’ve grown up with. I was also taught meditation and basic magic. Just making copies so far, it will take more training to really do it. I had to kill a man as well. The idea was to push into areas where I might have trouble, in case they came up.” It didn’t sound like much, but oddly enough Hobbs nodded, his face going blank for a moment.
“That is a good place to begin. Very well. You shall learn to fight, as well as practice such things. We don’t allow killing here, without orders being given first, so refrain from that, even if you see need. Bridget, will you see to arranging that portion of things for us? Get with… Lady Marcia, I think? She has that kind of skill.” The thing there was that Hobbs wasn’t actually certain on that score.
There had been hints to that end, but not anything solid.
The short, incredibly tiny, redheaded girl smiled at the man, nodding in an action that was just a little bit too large for it to be real. Except that it was. The girl just did a lot of things that way. A little too large for life. Going big with even the most common actions.
“Right! We should get going, Will. This part is… Well, not fun, but not bad, either. A bit boring, maybe?”
She wasn’t wrong, when it came down to it.
They went to medical, which was just a low, flat building, made of the same tan brick that everything there was. Inside the space it smelled oddly of chemicals, but his part in things wasn’t that difficult. They tried to draw blood, using a large, very sharp and strong needle, which bent against his skin. That got the man doing the work to snort and shake his head.
He was about forty, from his looks. His clothing was a soft blue and looked loose and comfortable.
“Well, that isn’t going to work then. So, we use a light based spectrometer. That isn’t going to be as complete, but we’re used to making do here.” That was just a strange square device, a lot like a handheld, which glowed brightly. It was placed against the skin of his leg, requiring him to disrobe. Bridget didn’t leave for that part, trying to pretend that, as his partner, she was needed.
Even if he was sitting on a strange bed, naked.
They did things like that for hours, which honestly wasn’t interesting. After that he took tests, on a computer. That part was fascinating, having never really done that kind of thing before. It took a few moments for him to understand how to do it, but he didn’t have to ask anyone how it worked. It wasn’t that hard. Some of the testing required him to memorize things, then fill in forms without looking back for reference.
Which was simple enough. He could call the information up inside his head, even when he didn’t recognize the sigils being used all the time. Then he was required to learn a simple language, which wasn’t that different than Standard, in how the verbs and conjugations were structured.
He was allowed clothing for that part, though interestingly the doctor mentioned it, not his partner. She was covertly looking at his body off and on. Which, considering she’d told him right off about Will from town, who wasn’t him as far as he could tell, just a man who shared his name, that seemed a bit off. After all, a proper young lady shouldn’t have been staring like she was. Or be in the room with him like that when he had no clothing on.
That was in a different world, however.
The rules in this one were different. Though, from the reactions of the man that was doing the first part of the testing, Bridget was kind of being odd. Nothing was said about it, but there were looks going on. The kind of thing that he’d noticed a few times in this new world so far. Mainly between Cin and Ms. Turner.
After that was finished, Willum was taken to a different building, where his strength, speed and other physical characteristics were put to examination. No one told him anything about what was going on. In the end Bridget was sent away, to sleep. He was fed, every six hours or so, which started to get old by the end of the third day. One of the people finally just made an odd sound and patted him on the arm.
She was commoner sized, about like his mother, being about the right coloration for Pine Creek, but in looks was more like the folk of Vagus. Her name was Doctor Burrows. From what he could tell, she was the one in charge of the medical things. That, or she was working toward that position, by force of will.
“Let’s do this then. Bridget, I have to run my report by Marcia. You might as well sit in, unless she says differently. Is that all right with you, Mr. Baker?”
“Sure. Call me Will though.”
That got her to smile and touch his arm. Her hand was soft and warm, he noticed.
“Call me Kiko, then. Please. Let’s go?” She smiled, walking away, but glancing back, looking at Will. There was a bit of hunger in the gaze. A thing that seemed almost flirting.
Except that, when he focused on her, the woman was thinking about his genetics and how some of what was part of his system could be used to make an army of incredibly powerful beings. That was a thing that she wasn’t going to do anything with, since it was too dangerous, but a part of her secretly wanted to try it anyway. She tamped that down as she walked, moving with good speed toward the head office.
Poor Bridget had been subjected to hours and days of some of the most mind numbing sitting and waiting for him to be finished with everything. It hadn’t been an exciting time for Will, either, but at least there had occasionally been things for him to do. A lot of the tests hadn’t even been about his skills, but rather designed to work out how mentally fragile he was. Bridget knew that portion of things, having been given a lot of the same tests herself over the years. Talking to her had been allowed, part of the time.
The invasion of Marcia Turner’s office was, to the Director’s mind, exactly that. They were sneaking in, possibly to attack her, while she was occupied on the phone. That came off of her at first, even as she also clearly understood that wasn’t the case at all. That part was really conflicted inside of her. She trusted both Doctor Burrows and Br
idget. At the same time her mind was constantly searching for a way that they might be betraying her. Going against the best interest of them all.
She wasn’t nearly as positive about him, of course. That part was fair to his consideration, however. After all, he’d come in being introduced as a spy. To Ms. Turner, that was both a problem and the best possible thing to have happened in his case. You didn't often introduce someone that way if it was supposed to be hidden.
The woman also wasn’t stupid. She understood that Kiko had been overseeing his testing, to find out what abilities he actually had.
So she made a triangle with her fingers, elbows on her flat, hard seeming desk, and smiled. It was a bit professional, but that was about other worries she had at the moment, not him in particular.
“So, anything interesting Doctor?”
The small woman, who really was nicely golden in color, with enough makeup on to seem like she was interested in being seen publicly, smoothed her long white coat. She moved forward, passing a small computer related amulet to the Director. A thumb drive, he’d heard the thing called in the past few days.
“A lot of interesting things, but nothing that jumped out as that unusual, power wise. His speed and strength are good, but not top end, really. He’s a lot faster than you are, but only about as strong. The mechanism for that is interesting however, since it’s more like what Bridget and Rachel have going on than how your body functions. His immunity to things is different than yours, but similar in effect. He’s more resistant to poison for instance. You functionally can’t be hit that way, but Will here would get that even less.” She paused, patting him on the arm a few times, letting her hand linger.
Then she shrugged as she waved toward the screen. That got the Director to do something that Willum wasn’t really able to see.
“So he’s tough, fast and strong. His endurance is high end as well. He has minor shape shifting abilities, mainly in his skin, hair and eyes. Our best guess is that he’ll be able to make himself look older or younger, rather than actually seem like a different person that way.”
Then the woman waved at the magical window. The computer screen, which was flat and held on a stand that appeared to be made of dark plastic. At least he thought that was the right material.
“His brain is a mess, of course. His language skills are off the charts, he has a very good, though not perfect, memory and his ability to focus for long periods of time isn’t something we can track in his case. His I.Q. was figured at about one-eighty, but that’s probably wrong. Considering that he took the test in a language that he’d only learned in the last month and comes from a different society, it’s probably closer to two-forty or so. His telepathic abilities, as well as the ones that allow him to move between worlds are the interesting portion, however.”
The woman behind the desk sat up a good bit straighter then.
“How so? The scores look like basic telepathy, and… Well, there’s nothing much here for the teleportation, which is sort of odd, I have to grant you.”
Kiki grinned fiercely then. It looked adorable, if he was going to be honest about it. The woman was clearly more than a bit insane, but other than that she was interesting enough.
“Ha! That’s it exactly! He has telepathic abilities, but there is nothing in his biological makeup to allow that to happen. The same is true of the teleportation. He demonstrated both to us, so we have data on it, but other than extreme levels of focus as they’re being used, nothing in his body or mind particularly changes from what anyone else might be doing normally.”
Will had to admit, that sounded wrong to him. Though he thought for a moment and nodded, since it might make some sense, once he considered the idea.
“It took me a long time to learn to do those things, but… What if they aren’t magic, or a power at all? What if normal people have the ability to do these things all the time, but simply can’t tap them for some reason. Say, lacking enough focus?”
That got a snort from the small dark haired woman next to him.
“Which is why it’s fascinating. Think about it, we might be discovering an untapped potential ability of the human mind. That’s incredible, don’t you think?”
It really was, to him at least. Marcia Turner nodded but sat back a bit.
“That is. So, outside of potential research programs, what about Will here? Class four?” She was leading with what she was saying, but Burrows, understanding her anyway, shook her head.
“Five. Even… It’s the combination of skills. The strength, speed, heightened senses, even the extra toughness, those would have him settled in at a registered class four. Add in the telepathy and that is going to go up. For instance, short of shooting him with a sniper rifle, you probably can’t sneak up on him with an attack. It’s a bit too obvious to try and hide. The teleportation is kind of static, in that he uses warps in the scheme of reality for that, instead of actual power. Brian is much higher level that way, for instance. So, I’d go with a C-five rating for him. Then, I’d also put him on Team One, at least part time. His…” She waved at him, as if that was going to explain things to the woman behind the desk.
She grinned at it, since it was basically Kiko commenting on his looks. In a positive manner, from what he could pick up.
The woman in command nodded then.
“All right. Special missions, Team One work and…” She tapped something on her computer, then grinned, a thing that went larger. “Okay, Mark and Rigs have both put in a request for you to work on their team. Cooking, baking, that kind of thing. You might end up doing television work.” Her face went blank then.
The curly haired, super powered, version of his aunt stared at Bridget.
“I want you in on that, Chambers. We have too many issues with people thinking that you’re an insane killer. You’ll need to be trained up with that. It will mean being with Will here a lot.”
The idea projected from the woman was so strong that it got him to smile. Hopefully that was charming. For one of the first times in weeks, he felt actually shy however.
“So that she can watch me? Wouldn’t it be better to farm that out to different people? Also, she has a… boyfriend, in town. We need to make certain they can see each other regularly. If she’s around me too much people might think the wrong thing. Then her Will might be forced to come and beat me for it. That should be avoided.” After all, in that case he’d be the one in the wrong, so fighting back wouldn’t be a good thing to do. That could end up with him being driven from the base.
Bridget looked away, but wasn’t unpleased by the idea. Marcia made a soft, half choking sound. Then she stared for a bit, wondering if Willum was using an advanced trick to get around being watched as well, or if the kid was trying to manage her. That, or, just possibly, was actually doing what he saw as his on base job, working for their team.
The trick to it all was that the boy wasn’t totally wrong in what he was suggesting. No one did that well on twenty-four-hour duty, after all. Even the people that didn’t sleep needed about half the day in down time. Otherwise their brains would eventually turn to oatmeal.
She nodded at him then.
“Good call. On all of it… Do the cooking things, both of you. Will, you’re with Hobbs at his command for combat training. Those two things will take up about half your day, more or less. Probably less. The rest of the time, I… I’ll have some missions for you. Things to help you adapt to this world. Come and get… Actually, I’ll send Cindy to you for that. Later. Right now, you get down time. It’s about ten in the morning, so…” She looked at the clock, which got Bridget to nod at her.
“Right. Time to drink some oil.” She turned to Will, then shook her head a bit. “Marcia and I both need a lot more calories than seems normal, so we have to drink oil a few times a day. More for her, since she doesn’t like food. It’s about as fun as it sounds like. I can break out one for you as well?” She was joking with him, but Doctor Burrows nodded, her head movement going large.
“That’s a good idea. His calorie needs are a bit more than yours Marcia. He has a sense of taste and feels hunger, which helps, but he’s also growing still. Half an inch in the last three days. I don’t know where that will stop.”
Will did, smiling as Bridget hopped up, with a good bit of spring in her step.
“At about six feet. Timon wanted to make sure I’d be able to blend into most of the other worlds. Giants are respected and thought highly of where we come from, but it seems to be done differently in a lot of other places.” Not that they didn’t have that kind of thing there.
Kiko patted him again.
“Oh? That’s interesting to know then. I’ll make a note of it. The only other thing of note is his first mode, which isn’t really one, but we might as well claim it anyway. His initial responses to things aren’t really muted, but have a longer inhibition delay on them than is normal. By about ten times over an average adult. It means he comes preloaded to count to ten when things happen. It doesn’t affect his reaction time, just the sense of emotional immediacy. Then, once a situation has passed, his emotions fade about fifty times faster than would be normal. So, he can go into a homicidal rage, but it would be harder for him to act in haste, or to hold on to the feeling.”
That was all interesting to know about, since it did describe how he’d been feeling pretty well, but Ms. Turner just sat for a while, then tapped the desk. That made a clicking noise, as if her finger was hard. Like metal or plastic.
“Okay… So, we can use him in sensitive areas then, as far as highly charged situations go? Crowd control, dealing with politicians…” It was a joke, he thought, but the Doctor seemed to agree anyway.
She turned to look at the tiny redhead who walked in, carrying three large containers, which from the labels had vegetable oil in them. It was a liquid, even though not hot. He’d seen and used some the other day, when baking. Instead of using lard or tallow for everything.
Opening the plastic containers was done for them, by Bridget, who winked at him.