Nosuchthing — Roleplayer Guild

Wendy Lucker, & Ellen Nile

Ellen had a free period, so was taking advantage of it in order to catch up on the class she had missed this morning. It wasn't anything important, just biology, but she was given slack in the expectation that she would catch up on work she missed out on thanks to her strange schedule. Sure, she could have done it at night, but the night was mostly her time. She could do what she wanted then, read, game, even just wander about the halls if she wanted to. Right now she was just trying to enjoy the weather and maybe be somewhat productive during it.

There were benches and picnic tables a little way outside of the mansion's immediate vicinity, perhaps forty feet from the front door. They were sheltered out of the wind in the lee of an enormous rock, right now the sun was cast upon them, so she expected there would be some heat there, the sun hat would shield her from the worst of the light, and she could still appreciate the warmth. She'd just stepped out towards the benches, moving awkwardly thanks to her elongated tarsus, when her vision was suddenly interrupted, her hat was knocked off and she raised her arms to protect herself from...

What the hell was it? She batted uselessly against the strangely yielding material, then yelped in surprise as she felt a sharp pain, like a paper...

She fought her way clear of the enveloping tornado of what she now realised were sheets of paper.

"Jesus... Wendy?"

Well, Wendy just decided to find her way out, and explore Baybridge.

For one, Wendy herself couldn't find Jade anywhere.

And she didn't have any classes on Saturday.

Which meant that Wendy had the entire day to herself. She could go out of her way to find any number of people, and perhaps spar someone, but she was in that picturesque mood. She stepped outside, and reached into that brown satchel of hers. She grabbed her camera and looked through the camera's eye. All she saw were woods. There wasn't anything new around these parts. Not anything that she already took a picture of. She figured that she'd take a brief walk around the Fair Crest Woods....

Wendy walked all the way to the edge of the mansion grounds. There was a drop right in front of her, with a concrete wall. She waited for a moment, and tried to sense the wind. The last thing that Wendy wanted to do was get blown away. There wasn't even the slightest breeze. Which meant that it was perfect weather for her. 

Beginning with light steps, Wendy ran until she reached the edge of the wall, and jumped high up into the air. She eliminated her weight using her power to take the fluttering properties of paper almost instantly, which allowed her to use her momentum to go even further in the air. Once she had reached her apex, her skin started turning white as paper as it began to unfurl into a storm of several sheets of paper. Everything about Wendy started turning into paper slips, to her clothes, to her items. She just looked like she exploded into a cloud of paper. 

Just how she described it in the message board; liberating.

She flew up towards the sky, and... Oh Jesus Christ!

A sense of panic overcame Wendy when she felt a sudden gust of wind appearing out of no where that utterly blew her paper form away. She barely got any time to react. All she saw was herself flying backwards at high speeds. If she had a mouth, she'd be screaming right now. She was unaware of why she didn't transform back on reflex, but everything happened so fast that she forgot. 

While she was going back towards the Academy, she hit something and came to a stop...

After hitting said object, all the pieces of paper funneled into one solid form in the shape of Wendy.

"... Uuuuuuugh!" Wendy grunted in an unladylike tone the very second she had reformed. She grabbed her head in irritation, before she looked around just to confirm that everything was properly reformed (A recurring problem)... she saw that a few pieces of paper were fluttering about. The kind of paper that had writing on it. In other words, the kind of paper from one of her books.

Wendy immediately panicked as she telekinetically willed the paper into the air, as she opened her satchel, she placed it inside. She was going to arrange what goes where later. She let out a sigh of relief knowing that her books were okay. 

Though, there was that black-haired girl that she hit.

"Ooooh! Um. Are you okay?" Wendy said as she stepped over to her. She knelt down, and offered the girl her hand. She got a good look at her, and reeled back a bit. "... Ellen?" She asked. "Oh, I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to hit you!"

Ellen scowled, she hadn't been entirely surprised by Wendy's dramatic reaction, but she wished she hadn't recoiled quite so obviously. Ellen was aware that her appearance was a little disturbing right now, though she'd long since stopped reacting to her new appearance in the mirror. About one out of every three metamorphoses she went through resulted in significant physical changes, so seeing something else when she went to the mirror was simply part and parcel in her life now. She clambered awkwardly back to her excessively large feet.

"Yeah. It's me."

Wendy knew that Ellen was the school... "Special case." The one person who got the most unique out of all the powers. Changing powers every week... it's something that Wendy herself would love to experience, to be frank. Wendy herself was a power replicator and was perfectly content with her paper manipulation. Though, she could somewhat understand why Ellen disliked her ability.

Ellen realised that she'd snapped, but didn't apologise. It wouldn't be the first time today she'd received strange looks. Even in a school for metahumans, those with physical transformations were not the norm, not fixed ones like this anyway.

"It's okay, no harm done..."

Wendy nodded her head.

Right now this was probably the closest to an apology that Wendy would be receiving, and Ellen's look dared her to expect more. She liked Wendy, she was in the library almost as often as Ellen, and Ellen had the feeling that she only spent more time there because she only slept once a week. They weren't exactly friends, Ellen was two years younger, and they both had friendship groups their own age, but they got on well enough.

She glanced upwards, well, craned her entire head upwards, thanks to the fact that her eyeballs were fixed in their sockets now, it felt weird not being able to move them. With a wry smile, her annoyance at Wendy forgotten, she joked, "I guess you failed the pilots exam then?"

"Sorry," Wendy apologized again. "You know I turn into paper, right?" She said. "Well... sometimes the wind just... blows me away." She followed that up with awkward laughter as she scratched the back of her neck. "I thought I was in the clear, but I just got blown back into the school, heh...."

"Yeah I know."

The words I wish it was mine went unspoken, and Ellen was thankful that her new physiology made her expressions hard to read. She smirked at the joke, "oh yeah, there's no escape, you never get away from this place."

She retrieved her hat from the ground, ramming it awkwardly back onto her head, already she was squinting from the bright sunlight, tarsiers lived in the lush, shaded rainforests of the Phillipines, they weren't exposed to direct sunlight all that often. Therefore, Ellen was susceptible to it.

"You headed out for the weekend?"

"Yeah... well, no. I'm just going out for a quick walk through the woods." Wendy quickly answered. She reached into her satchel, and pulled out her rather fancy camera... for a middle-class family. A canon powershot, in fact. She held it in both hands, showing it to Ellen. "I wonder if there's any shots I can take..."

Other than looking expensive, the camera meant nothing to Ellen, although the very suggestion of expense lead to obvious conclusions...

"Wow, that is a serious camera... I guess you're pretty good then?"

"Not really...." Wendy dishearteningly said as she raised the camera up into the air some more. "It's like, one hundred dollars... I kinda want to buy a new one - Oh! But, thank you anyway." She said with a wide smile on her face.

Ellen craned her neck around towards her bag, and back, it was meant to be a glance, but she was already getting used to having to move her entire head to look at anything. She hadn't thought about what it might be like to watch her head rotate like the girl's in 'The Exorcist'. "Mind if I tag along? I've got homework but I can just do it tonight..."

The question really threw Wendy off guard a bit. Since... no one really goes along with Wendy's "nature walks." In fact, usually the students here just ignore her, and let her do her own thing. Which suits Wendy just fine. "Well, um, I'm going to be going through the woods, and...." She was trying to dissuade Ellen at first, but she merely took in a deep breath.

It's what Diana said - I need to get out more.

"... Sure you can come along." Wendy said with a cheerful smile on her face. "You just gotta keep up, I'm pretty fast while in my paper form."

"Uh..." Ellen looked at her feet, now far too long to fit any of the shoes she owned.

"I think I can keep up, I haven't had my assessment yet, but I'm pretty sure that right now I love the woods..."

"C'mon, let's go then!" Wendy cheerfully said as she started running towards the gates of the Academy. Right when she reached it, she briefly exploded into paper slips that kept her momentum going - reforming into her usual shape on the other side. She kept running with her camera in hand, expecting Ellen to keep up with her.

Ellen hadn't expected Wendy to simply start running right then and there, so she was already ten feet behind her when the other girl simply exploded into dozens, if not hundreds of slips of paper, sleeting through the bars of the gate. Ellen picked up the pace, and a few feet shy of the gate crouched, pouring everything into her lower limbs before allowing it to explode.

She'd expected to reach the top of the gate. She hadn't expected to clear it by ten feet. She landed awkwardly on the other side, but had been quick witted enough to roll with it, before scrambling back to her feet and sprinting after Wendy. It was a somewhat haphazard gait, hampered by the extreme length of her tarsus, but she certainly seemed able to pump speed out of this form when she needed it.

The morning light barely pierced the treeline above them, Wendy was taking slow and deliberate steps. Her sneakers cracked a twig underneath her foot, and she stopped when she heard it echo throughout the dense forest. She looked over her shoulder... this forest always bought her a sense of joy and excitement. One that she wishes that she could share with the world.

Though, she realized that she was getting lost in the moment, and that she had a friend with her... a weird, friend, but still a friend.

"Oh! Um..." Wendy said, trying to look for a subject. "How are your classes going?" She asked, honestly at a loss of conversation.

This was probably the longest conversation the two had had, excepting those about the occasional book. It felt awkward now, it was the same question her mom always asked when she went home, and Ellen was always reminded of just how little they had in common now, much as she loved her.

It had turned out that she did like the woods after all, her modified limbs might be awkward for walking, but combined with her weirdly wiry fingers they made climbing and leaping from tree to tree childs play. She dropped down beside Wendy, having stayed close enough to maintain a conversation.

"They're ok I guess, just sucks I get classes on Saturdays, but I sleep at like 12:30 on Fridays so I have to make them up."

Ellen grimaced, an interesting expression on a face with eyes the size of grapefruits. "I just wish it didn't have to be calculus. I feel like I skipped right through school and straight to hell."

Wendy gently nodded her head. She was doing pretty good schoolwise - being a scholar makes that easy. Still, she didn't want to come off as rude or anything.

"Calculus is hell, yeah, but you'll get used to it." Wendy shrugged. "I guess I just have problems with power training over education... Ms. Zhao is pretty rough." She kept her steady pace, looking over her shoulder enough so that she could also see what's in front of her with a quick turn of her eye.

"Maybe you just need a break?" Wendy asked. "I'm heading to the big Strong Gold Community opening tonight... you know; to take some pictures, eat some food. Maybe you want to come with?"

"Oh shit you have Zhao?"

There was a teacher like Lihua Zhao in every school or school-like institute, the kind of Instructor who could walk into a room and quell it instantly. She was known in Academy 61 as one of the hardest Instructors, with a sharp temper. She got results though, everyone knew you got Zhao if you were the best or the worst. She wondered what that meant for Wendy.

"With you? Uh... sure... aren't you already going with people though?"

Wendy's demeanor changed a bit when Ellen mentioned that. She hunched over a bit, grabbing that camera tightly in her hands. She looked at it for solace, before she let out a sigh.

"Well..." Wendy scratchhed the back of her neck. "Not really - I can't find my roomie anywhere, and.. I'm more of... lone wolf, yeah."

Shrugging again, Wendy said, "Besides, I'll enjoy the company - you'll enjoy the company - and that'll work out for both of us, yeah?"

Ellen wasn't entirely oblivious to the feelings of other people, and Wendy's were writ plain on her face. With uncharacteristic tact she didn't mention it, after all, she had been out by herself before she ran into Wendy. 

"I... I guess..."

She spoke half to herself, "Ah fuck it!"

Sure people would stare, but she'd look different next week, and otherwise she'd just lock herself in her room with her XBox. She still wasn't sure how she'd manage with her new fingers, but that could wait until tomorrow.

"I'd love to go!"
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