Chapter 11: Chapter 10

It turned out taking it easy was the correct choice. I had to try for almost two hours to figure out how to walk- well it was one hour, but I had two bodies trying things. The experience was weird. I felt like I almost had the muscle memory of how to deal with my tail- but every time I tried to just let it do it’s thing, my brain would freak out and overcorrect the approximately 20kg weight.

 

Dealing with having two bodies was much the same. If I just didn’t think about it- which is much harder than you’d think- whichever body a given action was easier to do with was the one that would do it. I guess the brain’s autopilot is much more effective than I realized. Issues did arise when I tried to fully consciously control both at the same time. Although not exact, the best way I could put it was that I had 1.75 times more ‘focus’- so I could fully control one and almost control the other at one time.

 

One last odd occurrence: the cut on my thumb from earlier was bleeding, but the blood disappeared after a few minutes. I had forgotten about my self-inflicted wound in all the other things I needed to figure out. By the end of the hour of relearning to walk, it had healed- but I found no blood anywhere. Obviously, I thought about why that happened, but eventually I just decided to test how sharp my tail-ridge was again.

 

The answer was very sharp and I ended up cutting a bit deeper than I intended. This led to a bit of panicking- which was not localized to just that body- before I got out some medical supplies and bandaged it. Realizing I had once again gotten sidetracked, I observed some of the spilt blood as it started to… decay? While it was still a liquid, the blood started to have random and defined sections simply fade out until they were completely gone. Somehow more oddly, if a chunk in the middle of a droplet or pool disappeared, the rest wouldn’t fill in the space.

 

After that scatterbrained start to the morning, I decided to sit down at my desk and lay down on my bed and write a list of things to figure out about my Abilities. 

 

1. Figure out how to lay down properly.
2. Figure out how to sit properly
3. Figure out how to run.
4. Actually figure out how sharp the tail is.
5. Figure out how much range or motion the tail has.
6. Figure out how strong the tail is.

 

The first two were already in progress as I wrote. Laying down was easy- I just couldn’t lay on my back anymore in a comfortable way. Sitting was a bit more of a challenge as any chair that had a back would force me to curl the tail around to my lap, but still took up enough space to force me to the edge of the seat. I also tried looping my tail over the back, but putting your back against what was effectively a blade wasn’t the most comfortable. While sitting on the edge was not that uncomfortable, leaning back at a 45 degree angle to use the back was- but there wasn’t much I could do.

 

I put number three on hold because I didn’t want to try stairs yet, so I was left with the tail options. It took me a dozen or so tries to emulate the classic knife test of cutting though loosely supported paper, and it was like cutting through butter. The tip had a similarly sharp looking tip and was also easily able to stab through the paper. Now very conscious of the weapon I had, I tried seeing how much it could bend. The result was if I used my hands to assist, the thing could be rolled up into a weird cinnamon roll- and even at this extreme curl, all the scales overlapped enough to not expose any of the skin underneath. 

 

The final test of the group was a bit more challenging. My options were pretty limited in my attic: pulling my bed, pulling my dresser, or doing pull ups from the rafters. Standing on my chair gave me enough height to reach on the beams running across the room. The sight of myself hanging limp from my tail cracked me up enough to accidentally release and crash into the floor.

 

One of my hosts yelled up to see if I was ok and to tell me to quiet down as both bodies moaned in pain while stifling a chuckle. Attempt two went better- I still couldn’t keep it together, but I was able to stay hanging. Additionally, it was easy to pull myself up and down. I got somewhere around twenty reps in before deciding to stop- not because I was tired, but because I was bored.

 

My body that had been resting on the bed the entire time felt rested enough to try the stairs and some running, so I swapped places with myself and headed out. It was nice to be out in the world this early without carrying a backpack of letters. The city was quiet, and I was simply enjoying sitting under a tree near the tavern I lived over. I totally wasn’t sitting because the stairs had been rough to go down. In all seriousness, try doing a flight of stairs with a 20kg bag with your body feeling like it was the day after a hard run- it’s not fun.

 

After a couple more minutes, I was feeling better and decided to head over to one of the academy's fields that were open for general use. Over the course of the walk, I felt more and more confident and the soreness kinda disappeared from both bodies- my only explanation is that it was some magical BS relating to when you first get powers. I think one of my teachers might have mentioned that as a viable excuse for skipping class. 

 

I made a brief stop by the administration building to see if they were open, and they surprisingly were. It was trivial to explain my clothing situation, get some measurements due to the size of my tail, and get out. All said and done I was at the field at around 7:15, where the instructor for my fitness teacher was doing some stretches. I was debating finding a different field when they spotted me and waved me over. Begrudgingly heading over they asked if I was here for the extra morning training sessions.

 

To be honest, I had kinda forgotten about them in the past twelve hours- but since I was here I figured I may as well stay.

 

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“Ah see you got a new appendage. How’s it treat’n yuh.”

 

“Um, this morning was a bit rough… I was quite sore, but figured I may as well try getting used to it now that it’s here.”

 

“Huh. Though it ain’t likely, let's wait to really start for a few minutes and give some of the others a bit of time tah git here.”

 

Apparently waiting was the right choice, as another girl showed up after a few minutes- and appeared to have come intentionally. I had remembered seeing her during class, but we hadn’t talked. Apparently her name was Charlotte, and was in a similar situation to me: used most of her money to get here, works for The Academy to save up for whatever, and recently had her Abilities awaken.

 

As we did some stretches and a jog, I learned whenever she picked something up, it would lose about half its weight. This only applied to things she lifted off the ground- so if she tried to push something, it wouldn’t help. I lied and said that my tail was my only ability. It was probably better to keep the fact there were two of me a secret- I didn’t know of many Abilities, but that was definitely one of the more… odd ones. Who knew, maybe not letting that slip would help if someone tried to target me for some reason.

 

Since there were only two of us students, I got to know our teacher a bit more. He was a cool dude- trained and experienced with almost any weapon you could think of, and said he’s glad to learn any he wasn’t. He also had a wife who worked in the hospital, but I wouldn’t have met her during my stay as she worked in the magicless medical research branch.

 

His mention of weapons sparked a discussion on if and what weapons we’d like to learn. Charlotte was quick to answer the classic sword and shield. After a bit of thought I decided on the biggest practical sword I could, “I just always liked the idea of wielding a sword as big as me, don’t know why.”

 

“Like a zweihänder or claymore?” Charlotte quickly asked.

 

“A what’n what you say lassy?”

 

“Is that not what they’re called? Though I heard someone mention something like that, ha ha…”

 

I had kinda thought that being brought here wasn’t a one-off event, but I hadn’t expected such a quick encounter with another potential… traveler. I almost asked something to confirm my suspicion before deciding to wait and make sure- it was just as likely someone had been here before me and spread those terms wherever Charlotte had come from.

 

Our teacher- damn, I need to ask for his name sometime so I have something to call him by- recovered and casually said, “Well since you’re both not struggling with chatting while doing this exercise, I could bring a few practice weapons of those types and see how you like em’.”

 

Of course both of us hurriedly and repeatedly agreed that’s be a great idea.

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