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i am swift and clever
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Bella plays the fantasy game again now - it is less fun than flying, all raw physicality and poise, in the battle room, but it now compares favorably with a decent fraction of books. She plays it in front of her launch and the boys want to know where in the hell this setting came from.

"Go to the Giant's Drink and I'll show you," she says.

She bypasses the Drink for six boys. They drift through the clouds, but they don't find villages, or pretty landscapes - they just find parts of the game they've already been to.

"Don't look at me, that's the same way I got here," says Bella. She's teaching her bird-people the scientific method now, painstakingly, almost comically, by mime and enthusiastic gestures. They're getting it, a little; a pink-and-gray one has put a cup of water in the sun and a similar cup of water in the shade and is staring at them intently.

By the time Bella has been at Battle School for six weeks she has tried all the games in the game room, and most of them (apart from the newly fascinating fantasy game) are now only interesting if someone will play against her. Most people won't. She's got too much of an advantage over the controls, and even at Battle School, among what really is a better crop of brains than kindergarten, it's apparently too much to ask that anyone think faster.
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Someone walks up behind her while she's playing with her village in a public game room.

"How's the kingdom coming?"
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"We're having some trouble negotiating with the antelope-people who live across the river," says Bella, glancing over her shoulder and smiling at Suicide Watch. "Hi again. How's your 'scape doing?"

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"I can't die," he says, "it's the weirdest thing. I hugged a giant squid the other day."

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"Maybe it got sick of killing you?" suggests Bella. "I haven't tried dying. Not my speed. I just want to work out something with the antelope-people where we can divert a little river to irrigate all this purple grain the bird-people need without them shooting at my birds every time they show up with shovels."

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He laughs.

"So what's the antelope-people's problem?"
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"I'm trying to figure that out. So far my guesses are that they think the shovels are weapons or they need the river at its current strength downstream. So I'm sending an expedition downstream, see?" She has drawn a crude map for some attentive birds and is directing them to go thataway. "And I'm getting the blacksmith to make little trowels so they can show the antelopes what they're doing without looking threatening in case that works."

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"Awesome," says Suicide Watch. He comes closer so he can see her game display.

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Her expedition appears to get the idea. They set off. She goes and checks on the blacksmith, picks up a new trowel, and nods at him enthusiastically. He nods back and starts making more, and then she goes and checks on the foundation being dug for a bird-person school up the hill. "This is the best game, now," she says happily.

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"What're they digging up over there?" he wonders.

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"Well, they don't know it yet, but I'm going to have them put up a building and then herd them into it for classes, because they all scatter if they get rained on when I try to teach them stuff," says Bella.

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"Got it all worked out, haven't you," he says admiringly.

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"Yup. These are my bird people and they are going to be educated," says Bella with immense satisfaction.

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He giggles.

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"Eventually I'll work things out with the antelope people and then they will be mine too."

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"Is anybody not gonna be yours?"

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"In the game?"

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He just laughs.

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"Well, I might run into a village that I can't get on board, but I don't think the antelopes are those people," says Bella.

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"What'll you do then?"

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"Depends on what they're like. If they just don't want me in their village I can go around them and leave them alone. If they're mean and they attack my birds - or my antelopes or my whatever - then I get to try classwork in the game, I guess."

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"Fun," he says decisively.

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"Yeah. I mean, they dress it up like a school, but we're glorified child soldiers. I won't be surprised if it lets me absorb like three villages and then throws one at me that is inimical to their survival. Bug-people," she says.

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"Too obvious," he says thoughtfully. "This is paradise. If it tries to trip you up, it'll be with something really vicious."

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"Maybe. It knows I don't mind ragequitting, though," she snorts. "Or it should. It's just a game, if it's not fun I'll stop."

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Suicide Watch nods acknowledgment of this deep wisdom and signs on to the game at an adjacent desk.

His bird-fish is deep underwater, encountering fantastical creatures in the murky depths. He swims lazily toward the surface.
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"I wonder if there's a way to do this in multiplayer," says Bella.

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"That'd be fun," he says immediately. "Maybe I could borrow your controls and screw around a little. Your bird people will think their new goddess has a personality disorder."

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"I don't wanna share my avatar," she says. "Especially not if it confuses my birds. I like my birds." (Her avatar hugs the nearest bird, which tolerates this with good grace.)

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"Awwww," he says delightedly. "Okay, I won't. But multiplayer's a good idea."

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"I have those," Bella says with dignity.

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"You do!"

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Bella has many projects running concurrently in her bird village, since things go roughly in real time. She checks next on the birds who are learning to make paper. They have managed pulpy ragged-edged beige stuff, which Bella nods at approvingly; she doesn't know how to teach them to make anything smoother and it'll do. She's just about to start showing them how to paint when free play over comes up on her screen.

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"Aww," says Suicide Watch. "See ya!"

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"Night!" she says, and she logs out and waves and travels back to her barracks in a rather balletic manner.

Bella does her classwork; after a few weeks the teachers have more finely distinguished ability from past training and sorted everyone into their semipermanent class levels and the difficulty ramps up. She flies around in the battle room, leveraging her cheater's exoskeleton to dance in the air like she can on a floor, to shoot straight and dodge beams with artful twists of herself. She notebooks about herself, at least half an hour a day even if nothing special happens. And she plays with her birds, and she works out that the antelopes were just threatened by the shovels and will allow river diversion after seeing mock-work done by nonthreatening trowels, and she builds a bridge between the villages.
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One day, while she's playing the game during a free period, a familiar fish comes swimming up the river.

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She laughs; her avatar laughs too, as an afterthought, and she waves. She's not sure if it's him or just the game playing with her, but the reaction's appropriate for either.

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Suicide Fish waves a fin right back, and leaps over her bridge with a flick of his tail, splashing everyone in range.

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Bella's birds and antelopes shake themselves off and look at her for cues. Her avatar points at the fish and then hugs a nearby antelope: that's my friend.

(She's got other friends, people who'll dance the battleroom with her, even one boy two years older who'll give her a run for her money in the tunnel table game, but none of them have made it into the fantasy game with her. Suicide Fish can be her fantasy game friend.)
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The fish leaps back over the bridge, higher now. There's much less splash and only a few NPCs get sprinkled.

At the apex of the third leap, his fins unfurl into wings, scales sprouting into feathers: he's a bird again. He circles the bridge once, and then dips his candleflame wings in salute.
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Birds who are not bird-people are not equipped to hug. So Bella just waves again and goes back to what she was doing, which is figuring out how to make crawfish traps.

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After a minute or so, Suicide Bird lands nearby. He doesn't do much, just watches what she's up to.

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Her avatar can't talk, but she's been working on fine ingame motor control for a while; it's possible to draw in the dirt if you're fast enough. She's fast enough. After she gets a trap set up that she's confident will work, and nods at the birds (they're the ones who'll eat the crayfish; with this food source they'll be able to share some purple grain with the antelopes, who only eat plants) she writes HI SUICIDE in all caps.

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He caws a very giggly kind of caw and starts scratching at the dirt next to her message.

After a minute or so of trying and failing to replicate her readable letters, he hops onto SUICIDE, scratches it out with a sweep of his talon, steps neatly to the end of the word, and draws a crude pictogram of a shield. Then he points his beak at the revised message, points his beak at her, and stands next to it, preening.
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There's a laugh-emote. So this is definitely Suicide Watch, not the computer playing tricks on her. Her avatar laughs and nods, and then scratches out all the drawing and crosses the bridge to see how the purple grain mill in the antelope village is coming along.

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Suicide Bird follows her over, taking to the air again but flying low enough to be visible on her display.

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The mill is doing fine. It's time to take some antelopes up into the mountains to look for a good pass through the range and see what's on the other side. Suicide Bird can come too.

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He flies ahead of the expedition, and comes back laugh-emoting.

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Eventually Bella works out a twisty path that the surefooted antelopes can take without the benefit of arm-wings like the birds. She's already been over the mountains herself, and there weren't any villages within easy flying distance, so she's going to colonize here. (The birds have recently laid a clutch of eggs and almost half the antelopes are pregnant; it's spring.)

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Suicide Bird circles the party, then flies ahead again.

Except that in midair, he levels out abruptly and drifts to a slow stop, wings flapping with purely automatic rhythm to keep him hovering above the ground.
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Bella frowns and waves at him again.

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No response.

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Well, she can fly too, she flies up and grabs hold of his avatar and pulls him down so he won't fly into the yonder forever.

His wings stop flapping automatically when she lands them. He just stands there, animated blinking at regular intervals.

And then his colors change. Silver first, all his feathers going at once, and then there's a line of dots down his throat, appearing one at a time.

Red red blue.

Bella has no idea how this is supposed to be happening, but it's clear enough. She logs off and shuts her desk and paints a path.

And she runs.
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The path leads her into unfamiliar territory. Unfamiliar and not densely populated. By the time she reaches the end, there's no one around except six yelling older boys and one yelling not-so-older boy.

Three of them have Suicide Watch on the floor while two stand lookout. The sixth and oldest is also on the floor, not visibly marked but screaming in pain loud enough to drown out the younger victim's quieter bawling. No one involved is emitting coherent words.
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That's a lot of kids.

Bella's faster than them, and while she's not stronger, she does know exactly how hard she can force her hand into something without breaking any bones. Everyone else has to deal with instincts designed for conservatism in the savannah.

She bypasses the lookouts, tumbling in a sudden roll between them and springing up to strike one of the ones issuing the beating in the ear. She can't just haul them away, she's not that strong - but she can hit, she can straightarm that one in the ear hard enough to make his head spin and elbow the other in the nose hard enough to break it and force them back and then stand astride her friend, defiant, facing them all with her hands up and ready.
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Her friend curls up tight and weeps softly.

The screams of the oldest boy trail off; he jumps to his feet and points accusingly at Suicide Watch. "He got me!" he yells. "The fucking mutie got me with some kind of fucking mutie torture ray!"

Suicide Watch does nothing to answer this accusation. The other boys draw into a tight knot around their newly risen leader, looking warily at Bella.
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"Get a teacher, tell it to him, I'll wait," says Bella levelly, not lowering her hands. (There are no female teachers. And fewer than two percent of the Battle School students are girls.) "I'll tell him what I saw, and I'll tell him how I knew to come here, too, how less than a minute ago I know my friend was playing on his desk and you've had him at least that long."

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Their leader is still not quite steady on his feet; he hangs back.

But one of the boys who was tormenting Suicide Watch has apparently not had enough yet, because he springs for her.
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She's faster. She dodges his hands and punches him in the throat. The copper contacts on her knuckles leave little bleeding divots, but most of the damage is from the impact; he's going to have trouble breathing for a minute there. "Anyone else?" she shouts. "You want a six-year-old girl to beat you all up?"

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With a general snarl-and-mutter, the cluster of boys drags its wounded away and leaves them in peace.

Well. Bella might be in peace. Suicide Watch is still in tears.
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She crouches beside him. "How bad did they get you? Do you need the infirmary? If you can't walk, I don't think I can carry you but if you took off your uniform I could maybe drag you on it." (She's gotten fairly accustomed to nudity since starting school here; little boys run around naked all the time and this was only funny for five minutes.)

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He whimpers and uncurls just far enough to cling gently to her leg.

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"It's okay. It's okay, they're gone, I scared 'em off, the game told me where you were somehow," says Bella. He can clearly move; he's not bleeding much; he's probably not dying.

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He presses his face against her shin, sniffling.

And then does it again, and again, like a kitten who wants to be petted or an animal who doesn't understand how to move around an obstacle.
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She tries patting his head. "It's okay," she says again. "They're all gone."

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"Hurts," he says at last, and he slowly lets go. "Be okay, though."

He looks up at her, and reaches up wincingly to touch her chin, then tucks his hand against his chest again.

"I'm. Think I'm a. Telepath," he says, slowly and with difficulty.
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"Oh," she says. Well, she doesn't have to be scared of telepaths, even if the idea is weird to her. "Can you walk? You need to go to the infirmary."

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"Lemme try," he says, and starts laboriously climbing to his feet.

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She helps him up. "You can lean on me if you have to," she says.

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He leans on her.

But, with her help, he manages to both stand and walk.
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She paints a path for them to the infirmary (white red white) and takes him there. "Why do you think you're a telepath? What happened?" she murmurs as they go.

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"Most of the older guys, if I shit-talk them a little they think it's funny, they leave me alone," he says. "These guys I guess not. They started in on me. And then... it was like I was yelling in his face, but with my mind. Yelling how they were hurting me. But I guess he was too busy screaming to figure it out, because they all piled on me like they thought if they hurt me enough I'd stop."

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She's got her arm around him; she squeezes a little, not enough to hurt him where he's injured.

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He drops his head onto her shoulder briefly.

"Hey, thanks for rescuing me," he says.
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"You're welcome. Do you have any idea how the game knew to tell me?"

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"Nope," he says.

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"You didn't - I don't know, telepath at it?"

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"I don't think so," he says. "Pretty sure I didn't."

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"That's strange."

Here's the infirmary.
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"How would you even telepath at the game?" he asks distractedly. "It's not a person, there's nothing there to telepath at."

Oh, the infirmary. Good old infirmary. What a great place to be.
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"Well, I don't know, there's all kinds of mutant powers. I know you can't telepath at me; I don't know if you can telepath at smart computer programs." She hands him over to a nurse. They don't ask too many questions at the infirmary. He just starts disinfecting Suicide Watch and inspecting him for broken bones.

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One cracked rib and a shitload of bruises.

"I can't telepath at you, but I can tell you're there," he says. "I was trying a little, when I was crying too hard to talk, but you're right, I can't do it."
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"If you can even tell I'm there that's weird. I stumped all the telepaths they threw at me when they first found out I was a mutant," says Bella. "Maybe you're really strong."

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"I don't feel really strong," he snorts. "I feel like I just got the shit kicked out of me by a bunch of guys twice my age."

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"I mean mentally strong," she says, petting his hair while the nurse spreads some kind of bruise-healing ointment on Suicide Watch's leg.

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"I know what you meant," he laughs, leaning comfortably into her hand.

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"Your bird just started flying straight like you weren't there anymore, and I went up and pulled it down, and then your color scheme changed and it showed me a path color," she muses. "That's strange."

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"Weird," he agrees. "Maybe the game was pissed off I'd stopped playing it."

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"We have to stop playing it all the time. We have schoolwork and battleroom practice and stuff."

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He shrugs, as much as he can without disturing the nurse's work.

"No idea, then."
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He gets a needle stick above the cracked rib. They have pretty advanced medicine up there. "I'll write you a note to your launch coordinator to excuse you from the battleroom for four days," the nurse tells Suicide Watch. "You can walk, but no roughhousing or strenuous play."

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"Sure," he says blithely.

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"If you need help again you won't be able to telepath at me, but you could try Qiaochu, he's in my launch and most of my classes and he'd be able to tell me where to go most of the time," suggests Bella. "And he's cool about me being a mutant so I don't think he'll mind you."

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"...Where is he?" he asks.

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"Right now? Our barracks, unless he got up to pee."

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"Then can we go see him? I don't think I could find him otherwise," he says.

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"Yeah, sure." She waits for him to put his uniform back on, then paints a path.

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Suicide Watch follows her.

If he's in any pain, he's not letting on. (He is.)
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"Do you need to do any more leaning?" she asks anyway.

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Immediately: "Yeah."

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She puts her arm around him again. "It's not too far. I got to you in very little time running, it won't be more than a minute or two walking like this."

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"Okay," he says agreeably.

Leaning!
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They reach her barracks. She has a top bunk, second from the door on the left, and Qiaochu's diagonally one farther back from her. "Hey Qiaochu," she calls. (He's one of the kids who's resisted nicknames.)

"Hi, Bella," he says. "Who's he?"

"He goes without a name. I call him Suicide Watch. But I just rescued him from some bigger kids, and I want you to take messages from him for me if he needs rescuing again, okay? 'Cause I can't -" She taps her temple - "and you're usually around. Is that cool?"

"Yeah, yeah, I take your messages, I your answering machine," says Qiaochu. He's taken up more Battle School slang than she has. "You owe me, though."

"I owe you," she agrees.

"Suicide Watch?" snickers another boy.

"Sue," suggests a third. "For short."
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Sue laughs.

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"You want to go by Sue?" asks Bella, raising an eyebrow.

"Hurray, Bella found a girl friend," snorts the kid who suggested calling him Sue. "They can have tea parties."

"I just beat up twelve-year-olds, I beat up you you say tea parties again," says Bella mildly, dropping into slang for this purpose.
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"Sure," giggles Sue. "I Sue, I your girlfriend."

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"Fine, I braid your hair, no tea parties," says Bella, rolling her eyes not unfondly. "You can find Qiaochu's brain, tell him if you need your girlfriend to come dance on some necks?"

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"Yeah, got it," he says cheerfully, and gives Qiaochu's mind a little push. More of a nudge, really, a little mental hey-I'm-here.

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Qiaochu waves hesitantly and goes back to his geometry homework.

"Back soon, hauling Sue home now," Bella tells her launch, and she leads Sue out the door again. "What's your path color?"
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"Grey blue grey."

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Bella paints the path. "Hey, how d'you even log into your desk if you didn't have a nickname before I gave you one?" She doesn't fall into slang naturally, only when she's trying to slot into the social framework more deliberately than average. She drops it when it's just her and Sue.

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"I had some nicknames," he says. "My login name is HEYYOU."

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Bella giggles.

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Sue giggles back.

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His barracks is kind of far away going as slow as they are, but she gets him there. "You worried about anybody in there, need me to break another nose?"

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"Nah," he says easily. "Thanks."

And he hugs her.
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Hugs!

"See you in the game," she says. "If it keeps doing multi, anyway." And she waves and skips off.