RE: The Opulent Quarrel - Round One: Mademoiselle Primfel's
11-20-2023, 06:00 AM
(This post was last modified: 11-20-2023, 06:09 AM by Ixcaliber.)
Ms. Canchett, the arts and crafts teacher, and the (distinctly inhuman) human dorm administrator, frowned. “Nope, nobody of that name on my records.”
Will’s first instinct, after trying spelling out her names letter by letter and again the search came up empty, was that The Sophisticate had overlooked her actual enrollment into the school. For a minute she was filled with hope. They’d realize this was all a mistake, she wasn’t supposed to be here, and they’d probably let her go home.
She realized her error before she’d even completed the thought and thus didn’t have to consider the practical realities of how exactly she intended to return home.
But, she recalled, the nightmare known as Ms. Gibarti had known her by name. It followed that she had been enrolled here and so why wasn’t her name down on the dorm listings?
Not that she wanted a room as such, but she was thinking long term. She couldn’t imagine that anyone, no matter how morally bankrupt they might be, would want to capitulate to the whims of that omnipotent asshole. Which meant that in all probability that they were stuck here, and if that was the case then having the basic necessities of existence while they sought a way out.
Hell, it wasn't impossible to imagine that eventually they might graduate… or well some of them might graduate. Will had an advantage in this setting given that she was a child of privilege. She had some experience with the kind of thing that would be anticipated of her here. That said it was balanced against her natural disadvantage of hating doing as she was told. Maybe she could weaponize her intense hatred of The Sophisticate and his game to persevere through the mundane irritations of school life? Probably not.
Despite how unlikely the scenario of her graduation from this place, it kept returning to her mind. This was a school where they prepared young ladies to go out into the multiverse. Graduate and maybe she could do just that. Somewhere out there they had to have a more complete solution to her magically induced sense loss and given the opportunity she would find it.
Ms. Canchett made a gesture that Will was unable to interpret. Perhaps it wasn’t made for her benefit. Ms. Canchett was um… Will wasn’t sure how to classify her exactly. She was human-like in shape, but made entirely out of construction paper and cardboard and various pipe cleaners, rubber bands, lengths of yarn and pieces of stuck-on macaroni. And lots of glitter.
Her lips were pieces of bright orange felt that mimicked the movements of speech. Will felt it was probably strongly likely that they weren't necessary to whatever means Ms. Canchett had of speaking (magic probably) but was grateful for them anyway, even if their enunciation was a little sloppy.
Notably Ms. Canchett was wearing some sort of high technology headset that Will didn’t have the vocabulary to describe. From context Will guessed it contained the records that she was accessing, and it seemed to react to gestures she was making with the strings of beads that served as her fingers.
“Oh, there you are.” she said after a couple of minutes in wordless concentration. “Looks like you’re in humanoids, love. Sorry about the mixup.”
“Humanoids?” Will asked blankly.
“Yes, I know.” Ms. Canchett said with a sigh. “A completely useless designation. Humanoid covers such a wide range of species, varying massively in capabilities, lifestyle, vulnerabilities and diet. Ultimately it means the entire category is kind of a shitshoot, if you’ll pardon my language, and that nobody’s individual needs get met. Really both categories should just be lumped together, there’s no real reason that humans should have their own practically empty dormitory while the humanoids dorm is always at or over capacity. We multiversal entities love to consider ourselves above the whole human supremacy movement but hate examining our own biases.”
Ms. Canchett launched into this spiel so readily and with such enthusiasm for the topic that it would have made it difficult for Will to follow her even if she had been paying attention. As it was she was still stuck processing her categorization.
After a minute she got the impression that Ms. Canchett was expecting a response of some kind. “Okay, sure, but look, someone’s fucked up,”
“Language!”
“somewhere, because I’m human. Not humanoid.”
Ms. Canchett was staring off into the distance again, reading from her headset, Will presumed. She clicked her fabric tongue and shook her head. “Sorry, love, I’m looking at the scans and I’m afraid you’re just genetically distinct enough that you don’t qualify as human… legally speaking I mean.” She said apologetically.
“Genetically?” Will asked.
“Your genes.” Ms. Canchett said. “Your DNA.”
“I don’t know what that means.” Will said. “I’m just a regular human; I don’t think I have either of those.”
“Hmmm well okay let me just append a remedial sciences class to your timetable.” Ms. Canchett said making a whole series of gestures with her hands. “Without getting into a whole discussion neither of us has time to have, we did a scan on you when you arrived and it came back and said you are 90% human, which doesn’t meet the 95% or greater threshold to be considered legally human.”
Will was silent for a minute. It had blindsided her to be called not human but 90% was almost the whole thing. Why would that last 10% even matter? The best thing to do right now would be to disengage from this conversation, find her dorm room over in Humanoids, get her crossbow and equipment and then get to class and then work out what she was doing from there. But it wasn’t quite that easy to let it go.
“What’s the last 10%?”
“I can’t give you a precise answer here. This whole topic isn’t really in my wheelhouse. If you ever need a fingerpainting expert I’m your girl.” She paused for a laugh but there was none forthcoming and so she continued. “But from what is listed here on your scan it’s… some kind of fae?”
“Fae?” Will repeated back to her blankly.
“Like faeries, or the fair folk as my mum always called them.” Ms. Canchett said with a smile. “A low percentage like that you probably had some distant ancestor who had a bit of a fling with a fairy. That’d be my guess, unless you knew of anything more specific.”
Will said nothing.
Ms. Canchett made a circular gesture and then: “My my, look at the time. We’re both going to be late for class at this rate. Don’t worry I won’t give you any demerits for distracting me. That can be our little secret huh?” Ms. Canchett gave a conspiratorial wink. “Oh and the humanoid dorms are actually annexed to the main building.” She turned to look in that direction and Will had to presume she continued speaking, given the arm gestures she was making, but her lips were no longer visible so it was all lost on her. “Good luck Ms. Pell.” she said with one last glance back at Will before hurrying away.
Will just stood in silence for several minutes. Any attempt at thought was shut down by the impact of her revealed heritage(?) still hitting her. It didn’t seem like it could be true that someone in her family had fae blood. She was sure that something like that would have come up during her incident. Was it possible that in her encounter with the Strangler, it had got its dna on her and she’d absorbed it or something? She had no idea how this worked.
Or maybe it was possible this was a cruel prank from The Sophisticate? Just to mess with her for the hell of it. He seemed like he would, but he hadn’t even been able to pick her out of a lineup. It seemed unlikely that he’d be able to concoct the perfect falsehood to get under her skin so effectively.
If it was true did it mean anything? Did it change anything? It was only ten percent. It didn’t change who she was. It didn’t have to mean she was a monster or that they weren’t. If the one that had been identified as Völsung was to walk in here now, with her obviously fae companion, she wouldn’t hesitate to do what needed to be done, she was almost certain.
That did remind her though, she was supposed to be getting to her dorm so she could get her crossbow and other equipment. That much was without question. And oh yeah right, time was still passing. She really needed to move. With that thought in mind she turned to hurry off towards the Humanoids Dorm and crashed right into someone.
It took a minute for both girls to disentangle themselves from each other and get back on their feet. The other girl was a human, wearing a sash that read Prefect. She had long ice white hair and a distinctly unamused expression on her face.
“does it. I’m taking you to Madame Gibarti.” The prefect said, seemingly already having exhausted her patience with the oblivious girl.
“Sorry I didn’t see you there.”
“Mhm and I bet you just didn’t hear me either.”
“That’s right.” she replied tersely, trying to keep her temper in check. “Look I’ll go and see that monster again if I need to but can we just swing by the Humanoids Dorm first. I have equipment that I need for my lessons.” The prefect simply laughed in response.
“And on top of everything else you’re not even human.” She sneered. “Girls like you should stay out of where they don’t belong.”
Will punched her in the face. It was a mistake. A bad one. She knew that even as she was throwing the punch but it wasn’t like this was a decision she’d thought through. This was an instinctive knee jerk reaction to having to be in the same room as this awful girl. It wasn’t the first punch Will had ever thrown but equally fistfighting wasn’t a skill she’d ever really picked up.
On the other hand Prefect Yana had clearly considered herself untouchable, she’d have considered it unthinkable that another student would so much as grab her by the hand. Being punched was a physical impossibility. She folded like a sheet of paper and Will hurriedly stumbled over her collapsed form and off towards the courtyard.
She’d almost made it to the doors when a girl almost identical to Prefect Yana tackled her to the ground. She was hauled up by two identical Prefect Yanas, who had a slight cyan flicker to their bodies and an electronic hum that was completely inaudible to Will. The replicas dragged her back over to the original, who was up from the ground and stemming a nosebleed.
“Oh you just signed your death warrant, new girl.” Yana snapped. “Ms. Gibarti is my aunt and she gets very protective of her favourite niece.”
Will’s first instinct, after trying spelling out her names letter by letter and again the search came up empty, was that The Sophisticate had overlooked her actual enrollment into the school. For a minute she was filled with hope. They’d realize this was all a mistake, she wasn’t supposed to be here, and they’d probably let her go home.
She realized her error before she’d even completed the thought and thus didn’t have to consider the practical realities of how exactly she intended to return home.
But, she recalled, the nightmare known as Ms. Gibarti had known her by name. It followed that she had been enrolled here and so why wasn’t her name down on the dorm listings?
Not that she wanted a room as such, but she was thinking long term. She couldn’t imagine that anyone, no matter how morally bankrupt they might be, would want to capitulate to the whims of that omnipotent asshole. Which meant that in all probability that they were stuck here, and if that was the case then having the basic necessities of existence while they sought a way out.
Hell, it wasn't impossible to imagine that eventually they might graduate… or well some of them might graduate. Will had an advantage in this setting given that she was a child of privilege. She had some experience with the kind of thing that would be anticipated of her here. That said it was balanced against her natural disadvantage of hating doing as she was told. Maybe she could weaponize her intense hatred of The Sophisticate and his game to persevere through the mundane irritations of school life? Probably not.
Despite how unlikely the scenario of her graduation from this place, it kept returning to her mind. This was a school where they prepared young ladies to go out into the multiverse. Graduate and maybe she could do just that. Somewhere out there they had to have a more complete solution to her magically induced sense loss and given the opportunity she would find it.
Ms. Canchett made a gesture that Will was unable to interpret. Perhaps it wasn’t made for her benefit. Ms. Canchett was um… Will wasn’t sure how to classify her exactly. She was human-like in shape, but made entirely out of construction paper and cardboard and various pipe cleaners, rubber bands, lengths of yarn and pieces of stuck-on macaroni. And lots of glitter.
Her lips were pieces of bright orange felt that mimicked the movements of speech. Will felt it was probably strongly likely that they weren't necessary to whatever means Ms. Canchett had of speaking (magic probably) but was grateful for them anyway, even if their enunciation was a little sloppy.
Notably Ms. Canchett was wearing some sort of high technology headset that Will didn’t have the vocabulary to describe. From context Will guessed it contained the records that she was accessing, and it seemed to react to gestures she was making with the strings of beads that served as her fingers.
“Oh, there you are.” she said after a couple of minutes in wordless concentration. “Looks like you’re in humanoids, love. Sorry about the mixup.”
“Humanoids?” Will asked blankly.
“Yes, I know.” Ms. Canchett said with a sigh. “A completely useless designation. Humanoid covers such a wide range of species, varying massively in capabilities, lifestyle, vulnerabilities and diet. Ultimately it means the entire category is kind of a shitshoot, if you’ll pardon my language, and that nobody’s individual needs get met. Really both categories should just be lumped together, there’s no real reason that humans should have their own practically empty dormitory while the humanoids dorm is always at or over capacity. We multiversal entities love to consider ourselves above the whole human supremacy movement but hate examining our own biases.”
Ms. Canchett launched into this spiel so readily and with such enthusiasm for the topic that it would have made it difficult for Will to follow her even if she had been paying attention. As it was she was still stuck processing her categorization.
After a minute she got the impression that Ms. Canchett was expecting a response of some kind. “Okay, sure, but look, someone’s fucked up,”
“Language!”
“somewhere, because I’m human. Not humanoid.”
Ms. Canchett was staring off into the distance again, reading from her headset, Will presumed. She clicked her fabric tongue and shook her head. “Sorry, love, I’m looking at the scans and I’m afraid you’re just genetically distinct enough that you don’t qualify as human… legally speaking I mean.” She said apologetically.
“Genetically?” Will asked.
“Your genes.” Ms. Canchett said. “Your DNA.”
“I don’t know what that means.” Will said. “I’m just a regular human; I don’t think I have either of those.”
“Hmmm well okay let me just append a remedial sciences class to your timetable.” Ms. Canchett said making a whole series of gestures with her hands. “Without getting into a whole discussion neither of us has time to have, we did a scan on you when you arrived and it came back and said you are 90% human, which doesn’t meet the 95% or greater threshold to be considered legally human.”
Will was silent for a minute. It had blindsided her to be called not human but 90% was almost the whole thing. Why would that last 10% even matter? The best thing to do right now would be to disengage from this conversation, find her dorm room over in Humanoids, get her crossbow and equipment and then get to class and then work out what she was doing from there. But it wasn’t quite that easy to let it go.
“What’s the last 10%?”
“I can’t give you a precise answer here. This whole topic isn’t really in my wheelhouse. If you ever need a fingerpainting expert I’m your girl.” She paused for a laugh but there was none forthcoming and so she continued. “But from what is listed here on your scan it’s… some kind of fae?”
“Fae?” Will repeated back to her blankly.
“Like faeries, or the fair folk as my mum always called them.” Ms. Canchett said with a smile. “A low percentage like that you probably had some distant ancestor who had a bit of a fling with a fairy. That’d be my guess, unless you knew of anything more specific.”
Will said nothing.
Ms. Canchett made a circular gesture and then: “My my, look at the time. We’re both going to be late for class at this rate. Don’t worry I won’t give you any demerits for distracting me. That can be our little secret huh?” Ms. Canchett gave a conspiratorial wink. “Oh and the humanoid dorms are actually annexed to the main building.” She turned to look in that direction and Will had to presume she continued speaking, given the arm gestures she was making, but her lips were no longer visible so it was all lost on her. “Good luck Ms. Pell.” she said with one last glance back at Will before hurrying away.
Will just stood in silence for several minutes. Any attempt at thought was shut down by the impact of her revealed heritage(?) still hitting her. It didn’t seem like it could be true that someone in her family had fae blood. She was sure that something like that would have come up during her incident. Was it possible that in her encounter with the Strangler, it had got its dna on her and she’d absorbed it or something? She had no idea how this worked.
Or maybe it was possible this was a cruel prank from The Sophisticate? Just to mess with her for the hell of it. He seemed like he would, but he hadn’t even been able to pick her out of a lineup. It seemed unlikely that he’d be able to concoct the perfect falsehood to get under her skin so effectively.
If it was true did it mean anything? Did it change anything? It was only ten percent. It didn’t change who she was. It didn’t have to mean she was a monster or that they weren’t. If the one that had been identified as Völsung was to walk in here now, with her obviously fae companion, she wouldn’t hesitate to do what needed to be done, she was almost certain.
That did remind her though, she was supposed to be getting to her dorm so she could get her crossbow and other equipment. That much was without question. And oh yeah right, time was still passing. She really needed to move. With that thought in mind she turned to hurry off towards the Humanoids Dorm and crashed right into someone.
It took a minute for both girls to disentangle themselves from each other and get back on their feet. The other girl was a human, wearing a sash that read Prefect. She had long ice white hair and a distinctly unamused expression on her face.
“does it. I’m taking you to Madame Gibarti.” The prefect said, seemingly already having exhausted her patience with the oblivious girl.
“Sorry I didn’t see you there.”
“Mhm and I bet you just didn’t hear me either.”
“That’s right.” she replied tersely, trying to keep her temper in check. “Look I’ll go and see that monster again if I need to but can we just swing by the Humanoids Dorm first. I have equipment that I need for my lessons.” The prefect simply laughed in response.
“And on top of everything else you’re not even human.” She sneered. “Girls like you should stay out of where they don’t belong.”
Will punched her in the face. It was a mistake. A bad one. She knew that even as she was throwing the punch but it wasn’t like this was a decision she’d thought through. This was an instinctive knee jerk reaction to having to be in the same room as this awful girl. It wasn’t the first punch Will had ever thrown but equally fistfighting wasn’t a skill she’d ever really picked up.
On the other hand Prefect Yana had clearly considered herself untouchable, she’d have considered it unthinkable that another student would so much as grab her by the hand. Being punched was a physical impossibility. She folded like a sheet of paper and Will hurriedly stumbled over her collapsed form and off towards the courtyard.
She’d almost made it to the doors when a girl almost identical to Prefect Yana tackled her to the ground. She was hauled up by two identical Prefect Yanas, who had a slight cyan flicker to their bodies and an electronic hum that was completely inaudible to Will. The replicas dragged her back over to the original, who was up from the ground and stemming a nosebleed.
“Oh you just signed your death warrant, new girl.” Yana snapped. “Ms. Gibarti is my aunt and she gets very protective of her favourite niece.”
Heaven Help Us | Make Room!!!! | I'm Not Okay (I Promise)
Hang 'Em High | The Only Hope For Me Is You | Zero Percent | Early Sunsets Over Monroeville | DESTROYA | Demolition Lovers | To The End
Surrender The Night | Disenchanted | The Ghost Of You | Party Poison | Vampires Will Never Hurt You | The Jetset Life Is Gonna Kill You
Hang 'Em High | The Only Hope For Me Is You | Zero Percent | Early Sunsets Over Monroeville | DESTROYA | Demolition Lovers | To The End
Surrender The Night | Disenchanted | The Ghost Of You | Party Poison | Vampires Will Never Hurt You | The Jetset Life Is Gonna Kill You