Drawing
You weren't an artist, even if you've recently dabbled in cartography. However, every great person started from somewhere, and even as nothing more than a hobby, it would allow you to improve your cartography quality as well. And if you had it as more than just a hobby, working to draw commissioned art for people online, you could start making some money and relieve some of your family's financial burdens.
Hangman
It had been a long, long time since you'd played hangman, but you can't figure out what art you would learn from playing it. Tag had become 'complicated', though, and you could only imagine how Senior would change Hangman to make things difficult. Though... there was something off about the pencil, now that you took a closer look at it. (Art Learned: "Thoughtography", Art Learned: "???")Click to shrink...
Last time, she'd gotten both Hypercognition and Clairvoyance from Senior's game. "I'm down. What are the options?"
Senior waved his hand, and three tables appeared behind him. "See for yourself."
Taylor sighed. "Fine." She then got up and looked at the options.
There were cards on one of the tables, just as they had been before. Senior had offered to play bluff before, so that was probably going to be bluff again. The other two games were different, though, which supported an idea that she had; namely, that the games were there to teach her the arts.
Senior had said that he'd enjoyed playing games to teach instead of meditating, and Taylor figured that the games were there to teach her specific skills. Tag had taught her both Hypercognition and Clairvoyance, and she figured whatever skill backgammon had been supposed to teach her had been either Telekinesis or Clairvoyance. If so, then the game that bluff was supposed to teach her was probably another 'fundamental' psychic art. And the one that came to mind, now that Clairvoyance was something she already knew, was...
"... bluff is supposed to teach me how to use Telepathy?" she asked. Senior's smile might as well have been confirmation. Taylor was sorely tempted to just pick it then and there... and then, she restrained herself.
She had chosen quickly last time; too quickly. She'd left herself weak and weaponless for the tower; while Hypercognition hadn't been a waste, Telekinesis would have probably been the better first option, just as something to help her not die.
That was in the past, though, and she had telekinesis as both offense and defense now. That didn't mean, though, that she could still rush this decision. If the other arts were less 'fundamental' but just as powerful and useful, then she might end up regretting her decision.
She looked one of the other games. One had a picture of a stand and noose; hangman, if she was correct. The pencil looked a little odd as well; the pencil's tip looked to be made of some sort of crystal. Taylor wondered if this was also supposed to teach her telepathy but dismissed the idea. Other than bluff being the game Senior had designed to teach her telepathy, you didn't need to understand the other player's thoughts to be good at it. Senior would probably be tight-lipped about what this one taught her as well.
The last one had a roulette on it, meanwhile. Telekinesis could make the challenge trivial, but Taylor figured that Senior wouldn't let her cheat. She couldn't think of any psychic ability, though, that would help someone win at roulette. It was just gambling at the end of the day.
The part of her that wanted to just play bluff and get the ability to read minds grew larger, but she tempered it and instead tried to think. She knew that she could get telepathy here, but she also recognized that she'd gotten telekinesis without training, so she wasn't bound to get it this way. Bluff was something she could play with her dad if she needed to play against somebody else, and if she just off her Hypercognition and Clairvoyance, she'd have as much difficulty playing it as he would. The perfect ground to try and learn the art...
... no, she didn't even need to go that far. She knew that Magister could read minds, and she also knew that Magister wanted to teach her how to be a mage. If so, then Taylor could see and adapt to Magister's teaching style by Magister trying to teach her how to use telepathy. After all, Magister could drag her into an astral space just like Senior could, so there wasn't any real detriment to doing so other than losing Senior's teaching, which she knew was good. And that was something she could contact him for additional help if needed, for self-study.
The idea lodged itself into her brain. No, she wouldn't learn telepathy from here. She'd learn it from somewhere else to give herself more options next time she trained with Senior. If so, then the decision was between playing hangman and roulette.
"Senior," she asked. "What arts are hangman and roulette going to teach me?"
"I don't know," Senior said, a smirk dancing on his face. "It's not happened yet, after all."
Taylor rolled her eyes. "What arts are they supposed to teach me?" she asked somewhat waspishly in response to Senior playing dumb.
"What arts are they supposed to teach you?" Senior asked. "Well, that would spoil the fun, now, would it? And regardless, while they are supposed to teach you something in specific, what else you learn is up to your own imagination."
"... explain, please." Taylor said.
"Oh, you were right when you said that the game is bluff is supposed to teach you telepathy. It's a very psychological game, after all. But what else you learn is up to your own creativity and imagination. I'll make the game harder, wrinkle it to make you have to think on the fly, but your solution will be up to your own designs."
Taylor clicked her tongue. "So, with tag last time, I was supposed to learn Hypercognition, but not Clairvoyance?"
"You could have tried using Telekinesis to fight back against the simulacra," Senior said. "Or Teleportation to dodge them."
"Teleportation!?"
"Yes, though I would have been utterly surprised if you'd managed it. Really, I was expecting you to try to use Telepathy on me to get another view of the situation once I'd blinded you, or Third Eye to ignore the blindness entirely. Clairvoyance wasn't an unexpected solution, though."
Taylor pursed her lips. "So, they all have those 'wrinkles' in them that make me need to learn something new?"
"Precisely!"
So, Taylor would probably be walking away with two arts instead of one. That was nice, but it didn't help her make her decision. "Which one would you recommend; hangman or roulette?"
"Oh, I'm not going to make your decision for you." Taylor groaned. "However, I will give you some context as to what benefits each respective 'main' art will likely give you."
"... okay, go ahead," Taylor said.
"Playing roulette will give you an art dealing with obtaining information, but in far more depth than any one sense individually can give. It is an art I consider one quintessential for any psychic to have, if not every soul. It leads to powerful tools for reconnaissance as well, if not invasive tools."
Okay, okay, good. "And hangman?"
"The applications of that art are more... subtle. Many psychics would tell you that, even though it can be considered a foundational art, it isn't worth learning for anything more than a party trick. That being said..." Senior's eyes flashed. "It is an art that massively helps with learning arts of other paths; particularly, those that follow the Path of the Mage consider it a requisite for higher circles of combat and development. It aids in understanding, more than obtaining."
Taylor hummed. "Okay..." It sounded like Roulette was definitely better, at least in the short term. However, if it helped massively in learning the arts of other paths, then there was only one real option. After all, time was Taylor's biggest enemy right now, and if spending a little bit of time now would help her out more in the future, then she was more than happy to spend that time. "Let's play hangman," she decided.
Senior's eyes sparkled. "I'd hoped that you would say that." Figures. That being said, there was another reason she wanted to get the skill that would help in the path of the Mage. Magister still wanted to teach her how to use magic, and between Hypercognition, astral spaces, and now whatever skill that she was going to gain from playing hangman, she was going to end up with a lot of benefit towards doing so. The idea of resurrecting Mom played on Taylor's mind, and the sooner she could get toward that, the better.
Both she and Senior walked over the table with hangman on it, Senior waving his hand to dismiss the other two tables. Taylor picked up one of the odd pencils and sat down, Senior doing the same on the opposite side of her.
"I took the information from the recesses of your mind, but would you like a refresher on the game?" Senior offered.
"No, not really," Taylor admitted. Each person would think of a word, then write down a series of dashes corresponding to the number of letters the word had. The other person would guess letters in that word, and each wrong guess would add another 'limb' to a drawing of a hangman on the noose. If the hangman was fully drawn, the guesser would lose, but if they guessed enough letters to find the correct word, they would win. The challenge for the person who came up with the word, then, was thinking of a word hard enough to not guess, though the challenge was mostly on the guesser instead.
"Then, let's begin," Senior said. "I'll start off," he said, creating a series of dashes, a five-letter word. "Begin, Taylor."
"'E',' she started off; and so, the game began.
It was actually... well, a normal game of hangman, really. She went through the vowels, then the consonants, and she managed to guess the world ('clock') before the hangman was drawn.
"Excellent job," Senior noted. "Then, we shall switch," he said, erasing the results of the game with a wave of his hand
They switched sides, Taylor wondering what this was supposed to teach her. She came up with her word (a ten-letter word, 'Decathalon'), then made the dashes so that Senior could start guessing.
"'P'," Senior guessed.
"Nope," she said, drawing the hangman's head.
Or, at least, she tried to draw the hangman's head. Though the pencil worked perfectly fine when she was guessing, when she was supposed to draw the hangman's head, it stopped working.
"What the..." she muttered, trying again and again.
"Oh, a free guess? Well, don't mind if I do. 'Q'," Senior then guessed.
"No to both, no free guesses."
"Oh, that was part of the rules. I thought you knew, after all."
"Why would..." Taylor grimaced. Again, she'd been impatient. She should have figured there would have been some twist to this, and she hadn't let Senior explain. "Fine."
"Okay, so neither 'P' nor 'Q'. Thanks for the free guesses, by the way." Senior hummed. "'W'," he tried.
"No, again." Taylor tried drawing the head; no dice. "Is this pencil rigged or something?"
"No, we have the same pencil," Senior said, showing her his pencil. Taylor figured that he could have been lying, but she had no way to prove it. Either way, he had an advantage that she didn't.
"'R'."
Senior went through each letter of the alphabet except the letters for 'Decathalon', then guessed the correct letters in order. Other than confirming that Senior was a dirty, filthy cheater, she also could confirm that he was willing to let her win if she could actually make the drawing occur.
"Think of something else," Senior suggested. "Guessing is rather fun."
"I bet it would be if you actually guessed," Taylor accursed, to which Senior grinned and said nothing. She came up with another word ('cat', there was no point in trying to be clever with her words) and tried once more to draw the hangman. Once again, it failed.
Fine, this was the challenge of hangman. She looked at the pencil, then at Senior's pencil. No matter how hard she tried to figure out how it was failing to work, she wasn't able to succeed.
"Simple word, but fine enough," Senior said after guessing 'T', his twenty-sixth letter. "Would you like to switch."
"Sure," she said, except this time, she paid less attention to the game and more attention to the writing. Immediately, she figured something bizarre out, zooming in with Clairvoyance as much as possible to see the mechanical effects of the pencil.
Clairvoyance: 13 → 14
When Senior wrote the dashes and letters on the page with each guess she made, a shallow trail of crystal dust was left behind, likely mimicking the properties of graphite. When Senior drew the hangman, though, nothing was left behind. The page was exactly as how it had been before, even though she could see the marks left behind with her eyes.
Clairvoyance: 14 → 15
The closer she 'zoomed in', the more she realized that nothing was being added or removed to the pencil or paper when drawing the hangman. The section of the paper with the noose 'rejected' writing.
"Nice guess," she said, somewhat distractedly, at 'gigantic'.
"You're welcome," Senior said. "Your turn."
Taylor, though, didn't make the dashes immediately, instead pretending to think while she tried to idly draw the hangman. As she suspected, it failed. So, the pencils were rigged, but equally rigged. Senior was drawing anyway, though, so she had to figure out how to do the same.
Scratching into the paper just made it pop back out a second later. Tracing it with her finger didn't do anything either. She growled, feeling frustrated, then forcibly calmed herself down.
What did she know about this new 'art'. Other than what Senior told her about its benefits, virtually nothing. She only knew that it allowed her to draw without a... pencil...
... Taylor closed her eyes, just thinking. People taught these abilities to others, but someone had to have discovered the ability in the first place. She tried remembering each and every way she'd obtained a psychic art in the past.
The first was Hypercognition. She'd forced her mind to work faster, far faster than it had ever worked before. She had stressed it ridiculously hard. The second was Clairvoyance; it was less mental discipline, and more of her just maintaining an image of everything around her, and that image had started updating itself. Telekinesis, meanwhile, was just applying willpower to the forces around her, but nowadays, she had also started creating forces, imagining arrows with which to move objects around.
If so, then the key to psychic arts was in her mind. Thinking back to Hypercognition, she had forced herself to think faster, yes, but she'd been slowly directing her thoughts before that to maximize her reaction speed. Each level in Hypercognition made her better at doing that. Thought control was more important, not effort.
...
... ten minutes passed, and as they did, Taylor grew more and more frustrated. She tried using her finger now, as well as concentrating on making something appear under her finger as she did so. Nothing happened though. She tried method after method of just making a single circle, and nothing happened.
"This is... I..." Taylor growled, feeling frustrated.
"You're too tense," Senior observed, crossing his arms. "Your attempts are too rigid, too inflexible, too bereft of comprehension and understanding."
Taylor felt like punching him (she felt that a lot lately) but suppressed the emotion. However, as she did, she noted his words. While a bunch of them were just words to make her placid, the last one reminded her of Senior's description of the benefits of the art. Just drawing on things with her mind sounded... useless, really.
With the fact that she could technically achieve the same feat of drawing on things with her mind using telekinesis and a normal pencil, Senior's words about the art being able to help learning and developing magic made her think that it wasn't just tracing.
Taylor then sighed, before starting the game. Once more, Senior beat her and they switched once more. However, just as Senior was about to begin making the dashes, Taylor had an idea. Using telekinesis, she snapped both Senior and her pencils.
Senior blinked. "Throwing a temper tantrum?"
"No, just wondering if you actually needed it," she said, dropping her pencil fragments next to her.
Senior blinked once more, then smiled. "As it turns out," he explained. "I don't." He put his finger on the paper, and dashes appeared out of nowhere. "Guess."
At last, progress. Taylor made her guesses, but only haphazardly, instead focusing on Senior as he made marks on the paper. He didn't even need to trace the letters, they just appeared.
Taylor tapped her finger idly on the paper, trying to make a circle appear there, but failing. She felt like she was closer now, almost there, and that it would be possible for her to brute-force the art if she pushed. But Senior's words about 'overcharging' earlier rang in her head as well, and she figured that properly learning it without using willpower as a crutch would be better, in case she missed something else important.
Drawing... drawing... she had been practicing it a little bit over the week, reasoning that it was something a teenage girl would be expected to be good at. She hadn't gotten the art yet, but she knew she was getting close. If so, then she'd try applying what she knew about it so far here.
Drawing was, essentially, taking an image from your mind and tracing it on paper. To make the image look good, the image from your mind had to be sharp and accurate to human senses. Things like depth, texture, and perspective were common to human vision, and could reliably be recreated using specific techniques.
What made it hard, though, was all of the 'junk' that made the proper visualization difficult. Alongside muscular memory, most people had a poor image of what they wanted to draw in their head, just a vague fantasy and an idea of 'it'll look good when I finish it'. The image 'refreshed' every time a new thought came in, and she would have to 'remember' what she thought it would have to look like.
She'd been trying to fixate the image of a circle into her mind and project it into the paper, but it didn't work like that. More than that, it still wasn't that much better than using telekinesis on writing implements. There was nothing more to it using just mental imagery.
... understanding over obtaining... She assumed that Senior had been talking about information, so the art was about understanding information. If so, then it was more 'passive' than she thought, as if she'd let the art 'do the thinking'...
... and then Taylor realized something else. Some of the posts online she'd referenced for learning drawing talked about a state of flow, one she recognized as similar to Combat Flow, where you brought the image from your mind to the paper without any modifications, feeling as though you were a passenger along for the ride. Writers had it too, the story demanding to be written in a way, the author just being the medium to let the story out. Combat Flow gave Taylor more information, sure, but a lot of it was just instinct and doing what felt right.
Taylor took a deep breath, in and out, and then placed a single finger on the page. She didn't try to do anything simple; no, she observed herself passively, with mental distance. Her mind was active, both thinking about her insights and about trying to maintain mental distance. There was more it. Some thoughts were thinking about and controlling other thoughts. Some thoughts were about Hunter, Emma, Dad; idle thoughts that flitted in and out of her head now and again.
She saw her own mind; with a touch, she summoned all of the thoughts and let them flow into the paper.
New Art (Psychic): Thoughtography 8
Looking at what she appeared, she felt... strange. Technically, it was an incomprehensible mess of squiggles and doodles, as if a bored elementary school boy was trying to entertain himself during a long class. However, as she looked at it, she recognized it all as her thoughts. Those two sun-like objects in the corner were her and Emma; a piece of regret she'd never really let go of. Concentric circles represented her trying to observe her own mind. A spider web connected everything, thoughts to catch, control, and observe other thoughts. And then, there was the picture of a bent pencil at the center of it all, which made no sense but felt like it should.
"Not bad," Senior judged. "You made a lot of progress, haven't you? Ready to play?"
Taylor almost jumped having forgotten about Senior. "Y-yes, sorry."
They switched again, Taylor thinking of another word ('drawing', the idea was in the front of her mind). Taylor hadn't really gained any knowledge from performing the Thoughtography, but she knew enough about it to direct her imagination towards constructing a circle, before creating a floodgate to block everything but the circle from going through. Silently, a circle shimmered into existence where it was supposed to be.
Thoughtography: 8 → 9
New Skill (Pathless): Drawing 1
"Ah," Senior said, clicking his tongue. "There was no 'P', was there?"
"Nope," Taylor said smugly. "Sorry."
"Ah, well."
The game continued, and Taylor almost won. Because, while Senior was still 'bad' at hangman, he started cheating in a different way.
"'Drawinq'?" Senior asked, scratching his head. "I don't think that's a word."
"W..." Taylor looked at the dashes, confused. "That was a 'g', not a 'q'!"
"Looks like a 'q' to me," Senior commented. Taylor growled under her breath. Oh, this sucked. This sucked so much. "Looks like you need to correct it."
Taylor opened her mouth, then closed it. Remembering what she had done, she knew that she had put down a 'g', not a 'q'. Senior had altered it, somehow; that was what he was expecting her to do to revert it. Taylor suspected that if she didn't do so soon, they'd have to start another game (and honestly, Taylor was getting really tired of playing hangman).
Attempting to use Thoughtography over other instances of Thoughtography got her rejected. It was as if the symbol for 'q' was offended by her trying to overwrite it and shoved her away.
"Yes, thought-symbols aren't very keen to be overwritten," Senior observed. "After, you forced them into existence, and trying to do another on top of it will mess up the meaning it held, at the very least."
Damn it. How did Senior do it, then?
Taylor just kept poking at the letter, trying to get it to change, but it was stubborn. Oddly, Taylor felt like if she pushed it hard enough, far enough, she'd get it to cooperate. Maybe that was what Senior wanted.
Frankly, she didn't care. She disliked the letter, but warping it seemed... rude, in a way. It was like she was shouting over someone, getting rid of what they wanted to say, erasing it entirely and replacing it with something new.
She touched the letter 'q' and opened the channel to her mind. She could feel her own thoughts trying to escape now, trying to slip into the paper. She pushed back against them, simply feeling the letter 'q' at the tip of her finger. With force, she'd be able to warp it.
Instead, almost gently, she tried forming a connection between the symbol and her own mind, going the other way. She looked at it, thought about what it used to be, and what it represented now. An idea that was fought over, battered into submission. It was a symbol, a representation of an idea. It carried that idea with it.
Taylor took a deep breath and pushed against it lightly with Thoughtography. The symbol pushed back, but as it did, she got a stronger idea of what it was trying to say, the inherent meaning it held within it. She almost 'held' it with Thoughtography, getting to grips with every piece and portion of the letter. The meaning it held... the meaning that it held without wanting to. An amusing joke, a challenge for a student, an obstacle meant to be overcome.
Taylor was meant to overwrite it.
Instead, she accepted it, and let the ideas in it come into her, flowing through the channel back into her; and as they did, the representation itself left. And with that, once there was nothing left.
New Art (Psychic): Data Sponge 1
New Achievement Added: Let Me See Your Data!
Taylor felt dizzy, as foreign thoughts entered her mind; they were... heavy, in a way she couldn't describe, as if the level of consciousness within was at a scope she couldn't begin to understand. But second by second, it melded with everything else, and soon, she understood some of the thoughts that weren't supposed to be there.
"You..." Taylor said softly. "You predicted that I would get an art like 'Data Overwrite'. I got 'Data Sponge' instead."
Senior stared at her. He wasn't smiling.
"... this is bad," he muttered. "Data Sponge... did you get the achievement?"
"Yes?"
"... Taylor, do you trust me?" Senior asked slowly.
"A... a bit, yeah?"
"Then, will you let me redact your achievement?"
Taylor blinked. "R-redact?!"
Senior's lips were thin. "Data Sponge is a rare, but highly desirable art. I have it as well, but I obtained it when I was strong enough to defend myself. 'Achievements' are one of the mechanisms by which the creators of the ITP keep tabs on promising talents... information about those kinds of talent, unfortunately, fetches a high price on the market."
Taylor's mouth went dry. "I..."
"You found out information about me, didn't you? Information I hadn't intended to share? Information that was out of my grasp once I stopped using any Thoughtographic arts? Information such as the name of the 'Data Overwrite' art that I was thinking about while using it on your letter?"
"..."
"Your home dimension is not a pleasant place to be, but there are countless forces that would pay premium favors to the managers of the ITP to obtain information about who can erase records to a point where they can never, ever be recovered, even records which are not constructed by Thoughtography. They will travel here to collect you, assuming they don't pay extra to have you hand-delivered to them."
Suddenly, being whisked across dimensions by means out of her control was far less exciting. "G-Go ahead. Is it too late, though?"
"Not yet. My astral space dilates time to an extreme amount, to the point where the servers of the ITP are likely still processing the notification and will try to check it again for confirmation. Until you get a 'reward' for the achievement, you're fine."
"Then hurry!" Taylor snapped.
Senior walked forward and tapped both panels that had appeared (Taylor guessed that he couldn't read them, but he could see them), before closing his eyes and concentrating. A second later, the achievement message changed.
New Achievement Added: _____________________
They waited with bated breath for a few minutes. At last, another message reappeared.
Achievement Error: Reward Aborted
"Good," Senior said once Taylor relayed the information. "They'll flag your profile but probably won't go beyond that for now. Even a low-level Data Sponge can't do what I just did."
Taylor quickly realized what that meant. "You mean, Data Sponge interacts with these panels?"
"I highly suggest you don't do that," Senior said, pursing his lips. "I won't stop you if you intend to do so, but I saw the difficulty you had with digesting merely the letter 'q' that doesn't have a large amount of innate information behind it. Be very careful when you use this art, okay?"
Taylor wanted to laugh. Use this art? She felt like she suddenly had a brick of 24-karat gold lodged in her heart, and that anyone on the street could suddenly have X-Ray vision contact lenses. She suddenly wished that she had decided to be more of an asshole and just overwrite the damn letter.
"It's useful," Senior said, snorting. "Very much so. I don't use it much anymore, since it's somewhat invasive towards privacy and I'm not as curious as I used to be, but in your position, it will make learning even easier than it had been before. The Path of the Mage will take a mere fraction of time for you than it will for anyone else."
"So, there's a silver lining," she said, looking at the image of where the 'q' used to be. There wasn't a letter there anymore, just a blank spot. "What am I even capable of?" she said, feeling somewhat dramatic as she did so.
"Not much, but also a lot," Senior answered paradoxically, waving his hand and making the table disappear. "The more I interact with you, the more I realize how..." Senior hummed. "... intriguing you are. You've changed my expectations, Taylor. I fully expect you capable of making a friend."
Taylor wanted to groan. "But I... I can't. You recognized that."
"I recognized that what the training program considers 'making a friend' and what I consider 'making a friend' are two wildly different things, mostly in hindsight. Ask Magister about it," he then said. "I also agree with you, in that you are the biggest obstacle in your ability to make friends, though for different reasons than you believe."
"Hit me," Taylor said, frowning and crossing her arms.
"Very well; but first, Taylor, tell me why you think you can't make friends."
The reasons burst out. Her lack of beauty, her social awkwardness, her... well... her everything. Senior listened, not saying a word. In the end, she finished off with words that mirrored what she'd said to Brian earlier; those relationships, for everyone but her family, ended up just being deals that were mutually benefiting.
"Even with you..." Taylor said. "I doubt that you would care about me if it was for this training program. I... once I 'make a friend' or whatever, what else will you have me do. What do you get out of it? Out of me making a 'friend'." Taylor breathed heavily, even though she wasn't doing anything. "I... no. I can't make friends, I just... just can't. Even if everything about me improves, I know that I'll only be 'friends' so long as you get something out of it. Whether I satisfy your curiosity or something, I don't know, but once it stops, this stops."
"..." Senior didn't say a word.
"Well?" Taylor asked. "Is that true? Once you get bored of me, will you leave me alone?!"
"..." Senior closed his eyes. "Taylor... what is a friend to you?"
"I..." Taylor took a second to think of an answer. "Someone you enjoy spending time with for its own sake."
"And who is the 'you' that you refer to. When I speak to 'you', I speak to the consciousness of Taylor Hebert in front of me. Are friends merely referring to people I enjoy spending time with?"
Why was Senior being so pedantic? "No, I meant people in general."
"People, in the plural?"
"I..." Taylor shook her head, feeling as if she were in an English exam. "No, I define a 'friend' to someone as a person who enjoys spending time with that 'someone'. For its own sake," she amended at the end.
"I see. Assume that I magically never get bored of you, Taylor. Would you then call us friends?"
"I..." Taylor pursed her lips.
"Say, then, that you stop being interested in talking to me. Are we still friends?"
"... no?"
"But don't I still fit your definition of what a friend is?"
"Technically?" Senior would still enjoy spending time with Taylor for its own sake. "It has to be mutual, then?"
"And do you enjoy spending time with me?" Senior asked, a little pointedly.
"I... I don't know," she admitted. "I barely know you."
"Fair enough. For the sake of the argument, let's say that you enjoy spending time with me, 'for its own sake'. Now then, Taylor, if I was replaced with a replica of myself, a clone that could act perfectly like myself but had none of my genuine emotions, and you could never tell the difference... would the me deceiving you still be friends with you?"
Taylor had no idea where this was going. "Probably not."
"How do you tell the difference?"
"..."
"Do you read the clone's mind?" Senior asked. "Do you hold my clone by their throat? Or do you throw away the friendship based on nothing?"
"I... I mean, I wouldn't know you were deceiving me, right?" Taylor 'countered'. "And the friendship would be gone either way. So, I wouldn't be throwing it away."
"Did I said that I had died in this hypothetical?" Senior asked. "Being replaced doesn't mean I can't return."
"Then I..." Taylor rubbed her head, feeling a burgeoning headache.
"Why would you question that there would be a change in the first place? You wouldn't be able to tell, remember?"
"..." Taylor sighed. "What... what are you getting at?"
"What I'm 'getting at', Taylor, is that you can't tell whether I'm your friend or not. You cannot read minds, and even if you could, I could trick you. If so, how do you hope of proving or disproving your belief that you can't make friends if you wouldn't be able to recognize someone as a friend in front of you, even if they told you they were your friend."
Taylor opened her mouth, then closed it. "I... because I know that no one would want to be friends with me."
"How?"
"I—" Taylor shook her head. "I said how before. Because I'm ugly, and socially awkward, and—"
"I'm getting bored of hearing you prattle on upon deficiencies you claim to be true. You know they aren't."
... Taylor knew that Emma and the rest of the trio told her that, and while they were obviously bullies, the fact that no one really contradicted her about it felt like proof enough. And even then, Taylor could spend hours looking in front of the mirror and at her stupid belly, her stupid legs, her too-wide mouth, her bulbous eyes, her—
"Grow up," Senior said, flicking her forehead. "And stop wasting time worrying about how you look. Either fix it or ignore it."
"I - what?"
"I don't know what standards of beauty are in your human community, but I know that you're better off thinking of solutions instead of wallowing in self-pity. Of the people who are potential friends, do they mention your supposed 'ugliness'?" Senior asked.
"No, because it's rude."
"Then don't assume it's your 'ugliness' or your 'social awkwardness'. I don't see any social deficiencies beyond the one I set you to fix, nor do I see anything upon you that would suggest bad health."
"Then what am I supposed to do!" Taylor snapped. "How am I supposed to make a 'friend' if I can't fix myself?!"
"..." Senior said nothing. Taylor breathed in and out rather heavily.
"... what..." Taylor said. "What's actually wrong with me?"
"... trust. You do not trust anyone who can be your friend to be your friend, and because of that, you find it harder and harder to enjoy time in their presence. Wearing a shield upon your heart weighs it down, Taylor. Only when you leave yourself vulnerable, which you have done only by combat recently, do you open up to others, and only then for brief moments."
Taylor laughed hollowly. "Fuck that."
"But am I wrong?" Senior asked. "Your definition of friendship was practical, if not stringent. However, for one to truly believe them-self in a friendship, they must believe that the sensation is mutual. I do not doubt that you find it easy to enjoy yourself in other people's presence, to some degree. I doubt that you believe, Taylor, that they find the same, to the point where your preconceptions about yourself cloud your vision. Even if you had a friend, you would not recognize it."
"Fuck. That." Taylor repeated. "Trust? You want me to 'trust' again? To... to what, to be stupid and think that other people like me when they don't?"
Senior said nothing.
"... fine," Taylor said, seething. "Fine. I'll put my 'trust' in someone. I'll convince myself, somehow, that they really do like me. I'll make a friend, as you put it, even if it's only one-sided trust from me. But I know it'll only ever be one-sided."
"Trust does not work like that, Taylor. Trusting a fact is synonymous with believing or thinking that it is true. If, in your heart of hearts, you think that no one likes you, if you 'know' it will only ever be one-sided, then you will never be able to trust that someone truly likes you." Senior sighed. "But if you insist, then I will not force you. I hope to see you soon, Taylor."
The world around her turned into mist.
~
To train in the 'Psychic' Path, you must complete the task set by your mentor in the 'Psychic' Path
Task: 'Make a Friend' v2
(0/1) Person/Being You Reliably Enjoy Spending Time With
-(0/1) Person/Being You Trust to Reliably Enjoy Spending Time With YouClick to expand...
~
Taylor had fallen asleep straight after that. She had grown utterly, completely exhausted, and she hadn't even been able to brush her teeth, only barely remembering the following day.
So, it was more than guaranteed that returning to Winslow for the first time in two weeks, she looked like dogshit. Whispers and rumors followed her around, and the bullying returned to exactly how it had been before last fall. Sophia shoved her around, Madison found her sunken eyes prime real estate for mockery, and Emma... the less said about Emma, the better. She was just smirking at Taylor, as if nothing Taylor thought or did could change a single damn thing. After all, no one was on Taylor's side, even after she'd been sent to the hospital.
Oh, the teachers 'offered a shoulder', sure, but she also knew that they had ignored it when they could have stopped it. She wasn't going to throw herself at them to make them feel better. Assholes.
The way everything turned to normal was almost eerie in a way. No one seemed to notice or even care about her. Once or twice, she reckoned that some people's eyes slid straight off of her. Only the bullies seemed to notice her; in fact, they grew even more brazen once they noticed the pointed avoidance everyone had toward her. They talked about the locker, sure, but in a 'Man, I wish we'd gotten more than an extra week off' way than a 'Wow, is that Taylor chick doing okay?' way.
She simply had to start tolerating everything again. Class was boring, even more so now that she barely had to pay attention, with Hypercognition making it so that she only needed a fraction of her brainpower to keep up in class. She was also reticent to use any of her more 'tangible' powers like Telekinesis, Inertial Absorption, Thoughtography, or Data Sponge to try and entertain herself, in case something happened that she couldn't explain.
She was left with only a few things left to do.
Inertial Sense: 13 → 15
Clairvoyance: 15 → 16
Drawing: 1 → 4
At the very least, she was getting better now. Her humans actually looked like people (well, somewhat, at least), not fat blobs. She needed to learn a lot more, and she definitely would, but she'd have more time in class to practice than she knew what to do with. Once she could start turning that into money, she'd feel a lot better about returning to school.
But the day wore on, and soon, the final bell rang. Taylor fled before the trio could corner her, feeling happy that, at the very least, she hadn't completely wasted her time at school. Exhausted, she returned home.
It was only while watching an advertisement for a local animal shelter did Taylor remember what was going to happen later that night. Taylor excused herself, went up to the attic, and started pacing back-and-forth.
She'd been so engrossed in everything after meeting Senior again that her other task slipped from her mind. Taking care of Hunter's sister's animal thing, whatever it was.
Joy.
Worse was that she had no idea what to expect. She hadn't talked to her Dad about this at all, mostly because she had no idea what she would say. She also had no money to buy pet food, assuming it was an animal she could buy food for. What would the pet store stay when she wanted to buy food for an interdimensional animal thing.
Assuming it was even an 'Earth' animal, and not one of those dragon things Hunter fought. Taylor paled as her traveler's necklace swayed slightly on her neck, as she also realized that if she could bring interdimensional plagues to Hunter's world, the opposite was true. Was she going to give Brockton Bay alien measles or something?
Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, SHIT!
Taylor only now realized how stupidly dangerous this task was. Even if it was something like... like a cat or something, she was screwed because bacteria were a thing.
She opened her messages to type a message to Hunter to tell him to not send it over, only to re-read Hunter's message from last night, twenty-three hours and fifty-five minutes.
Heads up, Taylor, I'm sending the animal over. He's feisty, but you can handle him. If I've tuned the dimensional time ratio right, he should arrive around twenty-four hours after you get this message.
He'd already sent the animal, and it was already too late.
And he was feisty.
Taylor could only watch with dread as each of the five minutes passed. Hunter had probably 'tuned the dimensional time ratio right' after all, because twenty-four hours on the dot after the message had arrived on Earth, Taylor felt the view from her Clairvoyance twist and turn unnaturally.
Clairvoyance: 16 → 18
Even though she saw nothing wrong with her eyes, her Inertial Sense and Clairvoyance screamed at her about the void in the center of the attic. With a small pop, the void disappeared, and the animal appeared where the void had been.
It was a snake.
Taylor did not like snakes. Taylor also did not dislike snakes. However, this one was just sort of... creepy. The snake's scale coloring was mainly black, with turquoise eyes. It had thin silvery bands encircling it like a coral snake and was as long as one too at four feet. However, Taylor noticed, on its back, a large ropy scar, bright and golden, breaking through its scales.
For a few seconds, she and the snake sort of... stared at each other. For a second, Taylor thought that the snake's eyes were pulsing in a weirdly eye-catching way, but then she blinked, and the sensation fell away. The snake looked away, and Taylor got the strange sensation that it was... well, disappointed, though she didn't know how.
Yeah, definitely creepy; creepy, but manageable. Possible bizarre mind powers aside, it looked to just be some sort of large snake. She could handle that, couldn't she? Snakes ate rats and eggs, she knew that, and she could get eggs easily. All she'd have to do is lock the attic so that Dad wouldn't come here and make sure to block off all of the exits the snake could escape through. Tedious, but doable.
Maybe this task would actually be somewhat easy?
Then Taylor realized that the snake was slithering toward a rusty saw that Dad had accidentally left up here. With a flick of the end of its tail, the snake flipped the jagged edge of the saw to point straight up. Tensing, Taylor grabbed the saw with telekinesis and locked it in place so the snake wouldn't be able to do anything dangerous with it.
She quickly ended up regretting that decision.
The snake looked at her, and for a second, she thought she saw gratitude in its eyes, before it slammed its neck onto the saw, cutting straight through it along one of the silver bands. Its head tumbled through the air, landing with a soft thud a few feet away. Its body slumped over, and Taylor's mind went blank.
"That... what... huh...." she said, her brain struggling to understand what she was seeing.
A second later, something even worse happened. The snake's severed head evaporated, and its body began to wriggle. Suddenly, the stump widened, and two heads popped out, one with turquoise eyes and the other with bright green eyes. The head with green eyes kept the now-bloody saw in place, while the one with turquoise eyes slammed itself on the saw once more.
It was even worse the second time.
Seeing it regenerate again, this time with three heads, Taylor finally understood what she was seeing.
It was not a snake.
It was a hydra.
The three heads looked at each other, and Taylor realized it was wondering if it wanted to do it again. A second later, though, the hydra's jaws distended, yawning, before it curled around itself, three heads resting peacefully.
Taylor, meanwhile, did not feel peaceful. Taylor wanted to scream.
PathlessPsychicWarriorCombat Flow: (14/30) (Novice)
Cartography: (2/10) (Acolyte)
Ciphering: (1/10) (Acolyte)
Drawing: (4/10) (Acolyte)
What should she do?
[]: Contact Hunter for Help
You didn't know the first thing about taking care of a hydra. In fact, you really didn't want to know anything about taking care of a hydra. But you had no choice. If nothing else, you needed to contact Hunter to learn how to even feed this thing, much less make sure that it obeys your orders and decides not to tear you to shreds for your meat.
[]: Contact Magister for Help
It was high time you contact Magister. She'd probably badger you about the tower, but the tower was the least of your problems right now. You needed to learn stuff about telepathy and protecting your mind yesterday, much less as late as you were now. Getting any advice on handling hydras would be a great help too.
[]: Sponge the Saw
It was a long shot, but the art was called Data Sponge, right? Looking at it the right way, the blood splatter on the saw could be considered artistic, couldn't it? Honestly, you were kidding yourself, but maybe, by using Data Sponge, you could find out more about how the hydra thought and how to convince it to cooperate with you, assuming that was even possible.