I fell into a goddamn toilet! Everything but my socks are drenched in piss water! Hell it's a wonder I haven't f*cking flushed myself with how today is going. Flexing myself upwards at least lets me out. Oh, goody the mouths are back. A flex of will at least gets me back to human. I didn't soak through my clothes either, which is also good. I purposely let my concentration lapse for a second and I revert back to slime. Oh joy, I can't ever relax again. I turn myself human and open the door to the toilet to find one of the preppy girls looking around. Specifically one of the head Nazis bitches.
"Oh hey Taylor, I was hoping I'd find you here." I slowly blink. I bet this bitch didn't even know my name a week ago. "So I know you've been under a lot of stress lately, and I was wondering if you wanted to go with a party with me."
"You are a hypocrite and a jackal. Get away from me." I try and move past her but she grabs me by the shoulder.
"Taylor I don't think you realize what an opportunity this is." I breathe in and then out.
"Would I be correct in assuming that this is some sort of white supremacy thing?"
"Well, you see-"
"Because I don't have powers."
"So that little confrontation in the entry way was just a bit of play acting? Come on, I know how bad two weeks ago must've been."
"Yes. It was play acting. I was trying to trick Emma into taking the first swing on camera, but not get actually get beaten to death by my classmates. So I could go to the cops and sue the school. I was grifting!"
"But the locker-"
"I didn't get sh*t from the locker! It was another lie from Emma designed to ruin my life for..." I throw my hands up in an exaggerated shrug. "Reasons?Bad things do happen all the time to people, and almost nobody gets powers from it! Just ask everybody Oni Lee ever bombed." Almost mentioned the Empire there. Gotta remember who I'm talking to. "Hell, this isn't even a moral stance! If you tried to help me anytime before New years you might have fooled me. I was being shat on from on high by a black girl and her friends for over a year and none of you did sh*t! But now I might be the least bit useful, you suddenly want to be the bwestest of fwends.
"You are a hypocrite and a jackal. Get. Away. From. Me." She lets me leave this time, thank god. Past her two cronies guarding the door.
For my part I'm going to the office. I walk up with my phone, give it a once over of my drenched form, and walk up to the receptionist. "Hey there." She doesn't look up at me. "Ahem. So for the record, I need to go home and change. I'm soaked with toilet water." She doesn't look up.
"All absences need to be excused by a parent or guardian."
"Mom is dead, and Dad is driving to work without a cell phone. I wasn't asking permission though. I just got done with a major hospitalization. I was septic. I am not risking another infection. I will not be attending school in this condition." She looks up to speak to me, but then freezes when she sees the camera pointed at her. She tries to lunge for it, but can't do much from her chair.
"Delete that video right now!" I step back.
"Lady, what do you think 'for the record' means?" I stop the recording. She starts trying to yell at me, but I'm already walking out the door.
I take the city bus most of the way home and walk the rest of the way. Once there I start a load of laundry. Not leaving this water to stagnate in my clothes. I've had to throw more than my fair share of shirts away due to soda fueled mold.
Then I called Dad, he's probably in the office by now. "DockWorker's Union hiring office, Danny speaking." I swallow.
"Dad I think I messed up." He's silent for an uncomfortably long time.
"...tell me what happened." I tell him everything except that Emma was the ringleader. Also except for the fact I do have powers. That stays locked in a box forever with how messed up they are. After I'm done telling him the events of the day he lets out a big sigh.
"Almost none of that was ideal. Taylor how did you figure out people were going to say that you have powers?"
"Facebook." And it's even true. I looked it up to confirm they were going to start some sh*t, and I got a bunch of DMs from Emma threatening me about it.
"Taylor." He sounds disappointed.
"What?"
"Taylor, you need to stop keeping things from me. As your father I am on your side. If you found this out on Facebook then we already have all the evidence we ever need!"
"But, but..." But I don't want him to find out Emma turned on me.
"I'll be right there Taylor, then we can start putting a case together."
"Wait, could you call the school first? I'm technically skipping and I don't want to be in even more trouble for it"
"Sure thing."
*Click*
sh*t. Well I don't think I can keep my powers from him much longer. He's like a dog with a bone. Barking and chasing at anybody who wants to take it from him. He's been hounding the mayor to reestablish the ferry for over a decade now and that's probably never going to happen.
Back in the fake timeline the PRT troopers have finished getting statements from the students. Apparently they're employed by a supervillain by the name of Coil. Well I guess I know what's going on with the timelines now. They're his. There is just no other way to interpret that timeline split. I mean I suppose it's possible there were some wacky sit com level hijinks going on there, but I don't think so. I skip school before they can announce that it's cancelled for the day. I mean it's a pretty sure bet here, and if anybody but me did this they wouldn't get in trouble anyways.
Once I get home there, I start practicing with my powers. Not liking them isn't an excuse to get blindsided by them and oh, say, fall into a toilet because of it. My slime form is really straightforward. I'm made of slime now, through and through. Hammers can't hurt me, knives can't hurt me, but can still cut into me, I can reattach with any severed body part, they even flex to do it from both parts, and I am highly acidic when I want to be. That last part is a real zinger here. I dissolved through my bedding in seconds, and it took a minute or two to get through the floor. Probably does incredibly disgusting things to the human body. I also have an incredibly sensitive motion sense in slime form that replaces sight. I also don't transform my clothes when I'm a slime, so I have to be mindful of that. Now my mouths? Those are a bit more complicated. Given a half hour of practice I was able to make them speak, but not with all that much coordination. Well, they're all functional. Every single one of them has a distinct voice, but that might not matter so much when I have just so many of them. I can make them disappear as needed, or make more of them at any time across any part of my body. Though that last part may be because of my amorphous nature. Who knows. I certainly never tested it before surprise slime time. They each have an esophagus that goes to a central stomach too. Not sure how much that matters when I can just totally dissolve my food in my hand though. I'm also absolutely certain I'm missing something here though. Knowing how the type of power I seem to have goes though, I'm not sure I want to find out. It's almost certainly horrific, disgusting, or both. Crawler of slaughterhouse nine fame comes to mind when you think about biological powers like mine. I did find a silver lining to all this though. It's that I can apparently go back to human if I want it bad enough. And I don't mean weird slime sack pretending to be human, I mean honest to goodness solid human. With bones and everything! I have to manually turn slime mode back on after that.
Enough of that though. Dad just got home in the real timeline. Time to channel my nervous energy into tunneling to the center of the earth! See what happens, catalogue how long it takes to tunnel through the foundations, etc.
"Taylor, you still here?"
"Yeah Dad, where else would I be?" I call down the stairs.
"I don't know. Come with me into the study. I need you to show me everything you can." I go down to him. The study isn't all that impressive. It's just a small cramped room where Dad keeps his computer and paperwork. Nothing from work though, he stays late if he needs to get more done there. He motions for me to sit down.
I start logging in to Facebook only to freeze up when I remember that it's Emma's vitriol that I'll be showing him.
"Go on honey. I need to know what I'm working with here. We'll never be able to enforce the contract or make them stop if I'm working blindly." I continue and show him my private messages. When he starts looking through it I feel him radiating anger behind me. I shrink down in his seat as his grip on it tightens.
"Dad I don't, that is to say I didn't-" I stop talking as he looks down at me. His glower lessens.
"None of this is your fault kiddo. Don't ever act like it is. It's theirs because they choose to do it. Now is there anything else that we can gather that reveals them to be at fault?" I open up my school email. We spend the rest of the day gathering various electronic records to requisition and back up.
In other news the fake timeline ended about an hour after Dad got home. Took me between fifty minutes to an hour to dig through the foundations, and it looks like I can't digest stone. Just dissolve it and displace the refuse elsewhere. I can digest dirt though, which seems like it should be a lot grosser than the nothing I'm currently getting from it. Oh well. I'll probably never starve, so that's nice.
Perks gained this chapter
Fuel Production Facility (Starsector v1.2) (100CP)
A large facility dedicated to the production of fuel. By default, the production facility is configured to produce antimatter fuel, but this can be changed to produce alternative variants of fuel at higher volumes. A single facility is capable of producing enough antimatter every month to supply around 10 capital-hull ships without a problem, or around 3000 units of fuel.
