The Katissa Chronicles Part 6: Pls no more food [Closed]

Time: Saturday, Week 5

Melissa stood at the entrance of the cafeteria, looking at the food set up on the tables with a look of fear, wishing she had the comforting embrace of a backpack of candy with her. If this was her first meal of the month, she would feel a lot better about the food - it did look pretty good. Almost as good as sweet, delicious candy. Unfortunately, she had been forced to leave it all behind, in the name of !!science!! Not the fun kind of science though, the kind with a lot of trial, error, and vomiting.

"I-I don't think this is such a good idea... I'll probably throw up a lot... You know what? I think eating candy is fine! Yup, perfectly fine, I'll just keep eating only candy for the rest of my life, no problem!" Melissa said to Katy, who had originally suggested the plan. She could survive on candy! Turning around, Melissa attempted to walk back out of the Cafeteria, to somewhere where she wouldn't have to spend the day throwing up.

Katy had been expecting the other girl to try and back out, and immediately snatched her hand. "Noooope," she said, shaking her head. "You aren't escaping that easily. Trust me, it won't be so bad! We'll start off with tiny little bites, so hopefully you won't have such a bad reaction to it." Tugging Melissa over toward the food, Katy waved her free hand at it. "I figure, you just take a tiny, tiny little bite of something, and wait. If you feel even a little bad from it, we wait for a bit until you feel a little better, and then try something else."

"There has to be something on this table which you'll be able to eat," she said. Well, she hoped that was true, anyway.

Melissa squirmed to try and escape, but failed, leaving her trapped. Well. Hopefully she would throw up enough that she would pass out and wouldn't remember anything the next day. Sighing, she looked down at the food, trying to decide which would at least taste the best. If she was going to throw up, she might as well get something out of it.

Putting a little bit of one dish that looked pretty good on her plate, she looked wistfully at the plate of cookies nearby. Looking at the boring, sugarless food on her plate, she reached out to attempt to sneakily snatch a cookie.

Seemingly satisfied that she had corralled Melissa into her experiment, Katy crossed her arms and frowned. She had not missed Melissa going for the cookies. "The cookies are there to see if they help you feel better after trying something that might make you feel bad," she explained. "I thought that maybe you'd be able to eat regular food if you ate candy and sweets in between. Y'know.. a bite of chicken, and then a bite of cookie. Some bread, and then some candy. Sort of balance things out so you get some regular food in you, but you don't hafta only eat regular food."

Katy was hoping they'd be able to find some sort of proper food that Melissa could eat without getting ill, but she was willing to settle for a compromise. It wasn't how Katy would eat, but hey. Some people ate their dessert first. Katy definitely didn't eat like normal people, but at least she ate proper food. She just couldn't see how Melissa was getting the nourishment she needed from candy alone.

Melissa looked at Katy with guilt in her eyes, and the cookie in her mouth. She had stuffed it into her mouth straight away, thinking that Katy wouldn't even have noticed. Too late to take it out now though, "Too late..." She said with an embarrassed smile. Although that didn't stop her from looking back and wishing she had taken too.

"Well I kind of do do that... I eat a months worth of candy in between each meal! So that's kind of the same!" She said, sitting down at a nearby table, looking at the food with a reluctant look, "Oh no! I think I feel sick, I really shouldn't be eating! I should go lie down and rest and eat moooore candy!" She said abruptly, trying one last time to get out of the situation she had gotten trapped in.

Katy sat down across from Melissa, resting her head on one of her palms, looking slightly perplexed. "If you really don't even want to try I can't make you," she said. "But what happens if we ever get some downtime from school and I want you to meet my parents or something? They'd expect you to eat what they cook," she said, with a shrug.

"I guess if I ever get the chance to go back home for a few days I won't be able to bring you along," she said, feigning resignation. "It's too bad, too. There's lots of Faunus around where my parents live." She heaved a dramatic sigh. "I bet the younger ones would've loved a new playmate."

Melissa twitched. Lots of Faunus? Meaning lots of ears? Meaning lots of ear scratching and playing around with Faunus?

"I think I feel better actually! Let's do this!" She said confidently, taking a bite of the food in front of her. She felt fine. For a few seconds. And then she felt extremely sick, though luckily she hadn't eaten enough to throw up. Yet. If this was a cartoon her face probably would've turned green, but instead it merely turned extremely pale.

"...Noooooooo definitely no!"

Katy reached over and pushed the plate of cookies toward the girl, doing her best to maintain a neutral expression. "That," she said with a tiny frown, "was.. fast. OK, quick, have one of those cookies and see if you feel better as quickly?" Katy hadn't been expecting such a fast reaction to the food. Of course, she had been told a few times, but she didn't quite believe it until now.

Katy looked at the various foods on the table skeptically. There had to be something here Melissa could eat.

Melissa shoved a handful of cookies in her mouth, munching them to pieces in a few seconds. They tasted good! But she didn't feel much better. In fact, she felt a little worse now that she actually had food to vomit out.

"Nup, I don't feel any betterr.. Buuut that was a good cookie! More! More!" She said, reaching out towards the plate of cookies, which had had shrunk greatly since she first got her hands on them. Maybe if she ate enough she could say she was full!

Katy glanced at the cookies, but didn't actually try to stop the other girl from taking them all. She figured Melissa wouldn't actually eat them if she knew she was just going to throw them up. "So," she said, raising an eyebrow. "How long have you been living off of nothing but sweets? It can't have been your whole life, right?"

Katy thought it had to be a mental thing; Melissa felt sick from regular food because she thought regular food would make her sick. Then every month her body needed proper food, so she was able to eat. Maybe, anyway.

Melissa thought for a while. When had it started? She had been eating sweets for most of her life, but when had she started eating exclusively sweets?

"I think it was around the time I started using aura actually!" Melissa said finally. That was when it had started, as far as she could remember, "When I started using my semblance, to be more specific." She added, munching on a cookie as she did, the amount left on the plate rapidly shrinking as she continued eating more

"Aura, huh."

Katy frowned and started chewing on her bottom lip. If it was an Aura thing, this whole experiment might not even work. "I hadn't considered it might be related to your Aura," she said, sighing. "Well, maybe we just postpone this test for now. I don't know enough about that stuff to try and work around it. I'll have to do some research first."

Aura was one area of training that Katy needed serious work in. Her own Aura was unpredictable at best, and she was only able to use it sometimes, almost always on instinct. Her Semblance didn't require any special effort either, because as far as she could tell it didn't really do anything.

Melissa shook her head, despite knowing that she would end up regretting it, "Nup, we came all this way, might as wellll keep tryin'!" She said, standing up and walking back to get several other kinds of food on her plate. Truth to be told, she had already tested this extensively, to no avail, but, well, Katy seemed to want to do this! Looking at the plate of food with uneasiness, she kept that in her kind to stay strong.

Katy blinked, eventually offering a shrug. "I mean, if you really want to. But we didn't come that far, it's only the cafeteria. You really don't hafta make yourself ill on my account," she protested. "Unless you know a way to turn your Aura stuff off?.. or.. something?" Katy really had very little idea how Aura worked. Could it even be turned off?

"Seriously, you can just eat the cookies or something. I'll feel bad if you get really sick." Katy wasn't sure how long Melissa would get sick for, but she didn't really like the idea of carrying a throwing-up girl back to her room.

"Umm... I dunno... Even if I could, I don't think turning off my aura would be a good idea..." Melissa continued in a more thoughtful tone, "Though... My semblance is usually working at all times... I could try turn that off?" She focused for a moment, and although not much had changed, she had stopped her ever ongoing use of her semblance.

She took another bite of food, and seemed to be fine. For half a minute. And then she felt the sudden urge to throw up again.

"...Nope... Didn't help..." Melissa said sadly, "Can I still play with the little Faunus?" She asked hopefully.

Katy offered a resigned grin. "Sure, if we ever go to my house you can still play with the little Faunus," she said. Katy figured she could just explain to her parents that Melissa's Aura left her with odd dietary needs. They'd probably understand. They both had plenty of experience with that sort of thing thanks to Katy, anyway. "If you bring some candy they'll all adore you, I figure."

Katy looked at the food with a frown. "I guess since this experiment was a bust we should find something non-food related to do?"

"Yay! Faunus are all cute, but little child Faunus are the cutest!" Melissa said happily, already looking forward to getting the chance to play with the ears of more Faunus. Younger Faunus also seemed to enjoy it more, and were more willing to let her, unlike older ones that always thought she was insulting them or something.

"If you want, I could show you where I get my candy at the Academy, since my parents told Beacon not to let me buy any! I have a candy supplier, someone who smuggles all sorts of fancy stuff into the school and sells them to students! He actually has his place set up nearby, and I'm runnin' low on candy!" She suggested.

Katy raised an eyebrow, sitting up. "You have a.. candy bootlegger?" she asked, sounding shocked. "Sure, meeting a person like that sounds kinda fun," she added. Katy got up from the table, looking slightly wistfully at the food. It was a shame to waste it all, but Katy wasn't feeling really hungry at the moment anyway. Ah well.

"Every time I hear about your parents it makes me dislike them a little more. They don't sound like.. nice people."

Melissa shrugged as she lead Katy outside of the cafeteria and around to the back of the building, "They weren't bad parents I guess... It's not their fault there was nothing they could do to help, they really did care... Until the end at least." She said casually.

Upon reaching a door at the back, she knocked several times, seemingly forming a pattern, and after a few seconds the door swung open, revealing a rather nondescript man. Without a word, he handed her a decently sized bag, and she handed in an amount of lien she had counted out beforehand, and just like that the door was closed again.

Opening the bag and showing the contents (lots of candy) to Katy with a grin, "This should last me off a week or so!" She said happily, despite the bag being full of enough for a normal person to eat for months.

Katy looked down into the bag, then back at the closed door and shook her head in wonder. "How did you even set up an arrangement like this? Why is it all so secretive? I mean, you said your parents told the school not to let you have candy but this seems a little extreme."

Katy wondered if that guy only dealt in candy, or if he was involved in other things as well. It might be nice to have an on-site vendor for ammunition to save trips into the city. Especially if she wound up getting kicked out of every single weapons shop there.

"Huh? What do you mean?" Melissa asked, confused. Wasn't it just a pretty simple arrangement? "That was just one of the people who manage the cafeteria, he's willing to help buy stuff for students from Vale for a small fee!"

Melissa shrugged, "Most people ask him to buy stuff like alcohol I guess? But he is quite responsible! You have to be responsible and of age to get stuff like that! And I guess it's really secretive now cuz of the Guard? It was pretty open before they came around!"

Katy nodded slowly in thought. If it used to be more open it definitely made sense how someone would even meet such a clandestine figure. The alcohol thing made a little bit of sense too, though Katy only occasionally drank. If Katy ever had the urge to go for a drink she could probably just go to the Faunus Pub in town, so she'd never have thought about getting someone to buy her alcohol on campus.

"This whole school seems a little.. off," she finally said, as if the statement answered most of her concerns. "It's filled with little things like this that I would never have expected to even exist. It's very different from my last school."

"So," she added. "Feeling any better?"

Melissa giggled - Saying the school was a little "off" would be a massive understatement. The whole school seemed to be filled with crazy, ridiculous people!

"You know, before this semester the school never had any Beacon Guard! After some dangerous, scary events though, they had to form the guard! And they're hardly even helping!" She said, giggling again, "I'm fine now, don't worry! I only feel sick for a very short time after eating food!"

Deciding it was time to change the subject from their failed attempt at finding what Melissa could eat, she spoke again, "Soo... Have they announced when your initiation is going to happen?"

Katy shrugged her shoulders slightly, trying to brush the question off. "It's soon, I think," she said simply. Se had sort of hoped it would get delayed indefinitely; Katy had never worked as part of a team before. She much preferred to work on her own.

"I'm sort of hoping something crazy happens. Like they count wrong or something, and there's an odd number of people. I heard I'll wind up on a team afterwards, and I'm not sure I want to. Having to live with a bunch of strangers isn't exactly my idea of comfortable," she said, with a frown.

"I was considering intentionally failing it just to avoid that situation, but that would probably get me kicked out of the school."

"They're only strangers if you keep them that way! Obviously all you need to do is talk to them so that they're not strangers! Though that's not working out too well for me..." Melissa said, sighing. Her team wasn't exactly friendly. There was Grumpy Boy, who was grumpy no matter how nice she tried to be, Leader Boy, who didn't seem to be very excited about being at Beacon, nor about making friends. And that other guy, but she hadn't had the chance to talk to him much.

"I think if you failed they'd let you try again later... But you should pass! Working with a team is important.. And stuff. Too bad you didn't arrive earlier, I think we would make a great team!" She said regretfully.