If Dirk had recovered his prize, there was no other event to actually indicate it, except that he was no longer a presence to avoid on the bridge, nor were there any more rumbles from the course-adjustment engines.
But either he had no victory to gloat in, or his compatriots weren’t suitable targets for said style of gloating.
Roxy was fine with this. She could happily dear with such facts at an indefinitely later date, perhaps the span of dates included ‘never’. On top of this blissful ignorance, Meenah was presenting different issues. If the troll was not clinging quite so tightly, not was the one to take to Jake’s attempts at counseling, she was less and less content to just stay in one location all day. Or night. She seemed to be abandoning the latter nomenclature slowly.
And behold, the engine room was quiet again, so there were no issues with using it as a play room, besides letting a 3 sweep old child play around deadly engines. The mitigating factors included that this child could simply *think* about not falling into something, and she wouldn’t fall in; in addition, the fact she was presumably immortal along with the other god-tiers on the ship. So Roxy wasn’t hugely worried about that. The engines would sooner break than the child.
Remembering previous events, Meenah was now expecting to be *trained*, which Roxy had no reason to object to.
The troll had some flexibility. Oddly, while she could almost touch the floor when she bent backwards, she couldn’t touch her toes bending forwards. Her hips twisted weirdly when she tried to do a front split – and as Roxy instructed said troll through the earliest exercises the human remembered learning, she ended up wondering if she had plucked the troll’s body from a universe on a perpendicular rather than a parallel.
How did she look – move – so much like a human under those clothes?
How had she not noticed this training with The Condesce? Or what … what what? Terrors? Had the ancient version of the troll been through to remold her body through training – or what feelings of revulsion must she have had when meeting humans the first time, these tiny parodies of the troll form?
While these thoughts never completely subsided, Roxy and her exercises could adapt. It was not weeks before the troll got her palms down to the floor in front of her toes, squared up her splits. Not in what the human would call record time, but faster than she expected Jane could have achieved it. Fast enough that Meenah’s gate would wobble as she walked – along with the complaint of aching – which meant she was overdue for strength exercises. While the two both agreed on the flexibility bits, Posture and Balance were a harder sell; the troll was already too used to flying, which took constant vigilance to prevent.
They needed a goal.
The most obvious one was the troll’s first show.
~
So, mere weeks into their training, props started to appear in one corner of the engine room – one at a time. Random things to try tricks with.
Roxy had, admittedly, never put an actual act together. Sure, she’d shown off to the carapaces back in the colony – who knew if she’d ever see *them* again – but this was to be a stage, makeshift as it was.
Roxy couldn’t make the whole thing appear at once, despite whatever godtier powers she had. But some boards one day, and some sheets another, and some paints and brushes to see what Meenah would find acceptable in a backdrop; for all the troll knew, they appeared by way of alchemiter and sylladex, and there was no real reason to let her think otherwise.
~
By the time the stage was assembled, the basics of their acts were figured out. The troll might be fine going up on performing alone – there was no indication of stage fright – but remembering a choreography didn’t seem to be one of her predispositions. Her solo act would me a mix of improvisation of the child sort, and Roxy’s quiet prompting.
Roxy *had* subjected reality to a bunch of possible outfits for Meenah to wear for this act. While she couldn’t convince the troll to use any of them during her act – admittedly, a lot turned out wizard themed. Then there were the considerations of a marionette-style act, but Roxy quickly dismissed the suggestion. The thought of pulling strings, even pretending to do so, was not one she wanted to reinforce, no matter who was doing the pulling. In the end, it was just her practice outfit, the one all the god tiers would be familiar with.
While Roxy didn’t have access to An Internet from the ship – probably for the good of everyone – she did always have her stash of archived youtub videos to draw on. Her own act, the second act, would be derived from moves gleaned from them. In the past, the had always been a little mad of how many of the acts she found fit to archive were for more than one person; that was obviously because she was alone in her thoughts that they should be reproduced, even when she had a coach in troll or carapace nature.
Her other misgiving had been how many were elevated by apparatus of some kind. Setting up an actual stage… this made more sense now. And gave her a direction to push her own personal training. The human’s act would be on canes. Legitimately. During her practice, she’d even been gently pushing herself downward with her powers of flight to increase resistance. Her forearms were starting to actually show muscle.
Not that mouth balancing trick that so many videos ended with, though. She just couldn’t bring herself to *that*. It was not something she could convince herself to surrender to gravity for, yet.
~
And finally, their duo act. Roxy was sure at this point it would come at the end, after her canes, which – if there wasn’t a long pause, which there couldn’t be, she’d want to give her arms a moment to recover during the act itself.
Which meant, after a quick costume change, she’d be prancing around the stage like an idiot. This she could do. It’s not like they were going to bother with a curtain for the stage, so setup was already going to be awkward.
Her sleek, cool, modern … post modern? Whatever title of style worked through the illusion of time. Her unitard costume thing of her cane act would be replaced with the training clothes the god-tiers were all used to, which supposedly belonged to an earlier time. With nobody managing backstage operations, Meenah’s improvised act would have started in this outfit, and she’d have a few minutes to get changed & otherwise ready for the third.
Roxy would, after a godtier-speed clothing switch, come back out to the view of whatever crowd had accumulated – this round of round of dress rehearsal had no open invitations, so she addressed empty walkway – dragging a mop and and a barrel, and start mopping off the stage.
“hokay errybody, thank ya all for lettin us stck our asses out at ya…”
Wait. Should it be more formal?
“thanks ya every one for letting us stick ar possteriors-“
No. They should already know something was up.
“…ar asses out in yer general direction for a few minutes – um. meenah?”
That being the cue, the troll’s horns pop up above the edge of the barrel. Gently, the girl takes the mop’s handle and nudges the horns back down, just for them to pop up again.
“meens…” The handle is dipped down into the center of the barrel – hopefully going impressively far, and seems to get stuck, to the point that Roxy can lift the barren entirely off the ground and not dislodge it. Despite this, she wiggles it a bit and manages to remove the handle a moment later.
The human then sticks her hand in.
Because somthing magenta and shiny seemed to stick to Roxy’s arm as she withdrew it – well, if you didn’t fount the troll’s horns, or face, or if you managed not to see hands and feet peeking out behind extra-long sleeves of a not-quite-right shade of magenta jello substitute that had an aura of gooiness. Meenah was pulled from the barrel bent backward, arms and legs pinned around Roxy’s limb, and somehow managed to get her belly to jostle like liquid as it popped from the barrel.
“we paus a sec for clappin…” Roxy would probably have to whisper this during the performance itself, because a few times the troll had bitten bored and allowed herself to slip off.
Roxy swung the goo covered arm in a wide arc over her head – she felt Meenah get a little lighter for a second, but it was forgivable – then rested the twist of troll on the stage.
The next bit of the act was pantomime. Roxy freed her arm, but her foot got stuck, the troll rearranging limbs in a different backbend to match. The human went through various motions, getting limbs stuck and unstuck (and at one point her face, but she’d never deny she wasn’t used to being sat on by troll butt in weird positions by now), putting more of her spine into the motions, until the troll had captured all her limbs.
Now the act was more mirrored; Meenah could not hope to balance herself like Roxy could at this point – even if she cheated and flew – so she balanced on as many of Roxy’s limbs as were available, trying to match Roxy’s movements as she slowly rolled over the floor, limbs pushing the troll upwards.
Eventually, enough of Roxy’s limbs have knees and elbows against the round that the magenta oozes off. Then for the last few moves, the act is more mirrored; facing each other, the human bends, and the troll matches at almost the same speed; Roxy isn’t really challenged by any of it, every twist tempered by what Meenah could reliably do at this point.
In the end, both are standing on their feet, spine nestled between the backs of their legs – pulling upright to standing, “an bow.”
The bow is a little less controlled than the rest, as the troll was now forced to look towards an audience that was not there instead of her coach, but it’s satisfactory.
There’s a clap.
~
The room… is darker. Noticeably darker.
“not bad. i mean, it’s still freaking me out a bit, but i’ve seen you do some freaky shit, but that just now was soul expression in the don’t need to kill anything way, so I can deal.”
The clapping – mechanical, almost keeping a beat – is coming from a perch on on one of the engines. It’s… another god tier, by the look of it. In red.
“uhhhhhh” There was part of Roxy that very much wanted to jump in response. At him? Away? Se wasn’t sure. She tried to stifle it.
“sorry, sorry. uh. hi, I’m dave, the time player you’ll meet in while. no, I meet you in a while, and you meet me now. right. you can confirm at least part of that, i think?”
He is on edge. Trying to look nonchalant, but he smells of nervousness. The database confirms that he’s a Knight of Time, and messing up the chronology of first encounters is well within his abilities.
Roxy takes a moment to realize that normally invoking her sprite database isn’t quite that easy. That can be considered at a more different time, though, “hi. dave,” the voice seems familiar, though, and that is a to-be-considered-immediately thing, “so wer meetin now, but iv heard that voice befor.”
“ah, yeah, i probably sound a lot like,” he pauses for a moment, swallows, “like dirk, yeah? just to put this out there, a different version of him sort of raised me. on earth. it’s a sburb thing.”
“wer mosyin r way over there right now,” Roxy glances over at Meenah. The troll’s still stuck, frozen, mid-bow. Maybe she’s moving the slightest bit? That checks out too.
“that you are. ok, forgive me, but time sort of has to progress for us to talk, which means I don’t have much of it. i’m hitching a ride from that earth to your session to pick up some shit. and, presuming the slightest bit of my plan is successful, riding back to earth on it too. i’m not messing with your timeline or anything – but i do have a big ask for y’all.”
“that sounds… p borring. honestly.”
“hey, I just had my show – one which you’ve told me to see, btw – i’ll get dinner quick, maybe play some cards with myself heading back after. don’t worry about me, time files. but the request.”
There was a good chance Roxy couldn’t take this stowaway kid down if she tried, she realizes. Time may be moving for them to talk, but it didn’t really have to if she were attacking. That fact form the database? Scary. Control of time was pretty overpowered.
“k, shoot.”
“dirk can’t be part of the attack. you gotta stop him.”
“wha… what does he do?”
“sorry, i can’t, i really can’t,” he’s wringing his hands, “i was asked, by you, to ask you to do this. and who am i to question a stable causality loop. even me saying ‘think about it’ is sorta ehhh. and that’s what I gotta say. i’ll … see you sooner? no. stupid. lov-“
Roxy thought he was starting to lose his composure – but suddenly the room brightens.
Meenah shouts something trollian excitedly, and hugs Roxy. “I did good? I did good?”
“ya did great hun,” the troll got a quick hug in response, “get changed and head fer the showers.”
It doesn’t take Meenah long to charge behind the stage backdrop, dumping her ‘jello goo’ outfit on the floor, and charge out again, in her usual godtier dress, flying up to the engine room exit. Or, at least, Roxy’s not thinking of her enough to register it as much time.
This. It’s stupid just standing here. The human flashes back to her own usual godtier outfit, and does what little stage cleanup there is to do.
The barrel thunks as she picks it up.
The fishes out a box of… playing cards. Just playing cards. The box printed red. Except for some scribbled writing on the back.
“plot device?”
Roxy rolls her eyes, and adds the deck to her sylladex.
____
In trying to find where this could go, this was what I wrote.
Part 1 of 2, The part where Roxy tries actual contortion choreography
Illustration by Jesseth ( https://tumblr.altamaranempire.com/ ).
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