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

Arriving at the dorm, Melissa opened the door, peeking inside to see that no one was there, before walking in, closing the door once Katy had followed her in.

"I only have a few right now, just the ones I haven't watched yet, so I don't know which to watch either! I'll just randomly pick one I guess!" She suggested cheerfully.

Walking to the bed, she stopped halfway, "Umm.. Should we sit on the bed or the floor?" She asked. Maybe Katy had bad memories of beds now, after what had happened?

Katy blinked, offering another small shrug in response to the question. "The bed's probably more comfortable, but we can sit on the floor if you'd prefer not to mess it up or something." The last time Katy had been anywhere near Melissa's bed she had had a hurt ankle, and wound up almost getting covered in various kinds of food by Aoife's boyfriend. She figured the chances of that happening again were.. low.

Hopping onto the bed, Katy shuffled to lean back against the wall. Walls always made for the best places to lean against while sitting. Trees were nice, but too often they were weirdly shaped. Walls were flat and easy to ignore.

"N-No... That's not what I... Umm it's fine, it's not like I ever clean it anyways!" Melissa said, stuttering a little as she moved onto the bed as well. Taking out her scroll, she browsed to where she kept her movies, and flipped through them, picking one at random. Playing it, she put the device down on the bed and got comfortable.

"So..." Melissa started, as the movie's rather boring opening scene began to play, "You like to take naps a lot, don't 'cha?"

"Naps? Well, sure," Katy answered, already partially intent on the movie. "It's a lot of, um.. half-naps, I guess, though. I fall asleep, but I'm still sort of aware of what's happening around me so I can wake up quickly."

Katy paused, considering how to explain it. "It's sort of like how I am with food, y'know? I never know when I'll have to be awake for a long period of time, so I try and steal as much sleep as possible. Plus, it's difficult to nap when you're tense, so it kinda forces me to relax for a little while." She offered a small shrug, eyes still on the movie. "You don't strike me as the napping frequently type though, huh?"

Melissa blinked a few times in confusion. Sleeping while still being aware of what's happening? So like.. daydreaming...? Or maybe just like... not sleeping? Melissa had no idea how one could be sleeping, yet not be sleeping at the same time. It sounded like an impressive feat though.

"Nup! I usually don't feel tired enough to take naps! I wonder why..." She said energetically, just as she put more of the sugary balls of candy she carried around everywhere into her mouth. She paused for a few minutes, as an action fighty scene came on, but it ended quickly and she continued, "I know what you mean though! If the mighty God of Bicycle Helmets descends down upon the world to wreak havoc, we might all need to spend days running and hiding! You're really well prepared!"

Katy nodded slightly, sliding down slightly to get a better slouch happening. "My dad's way more intense about stuff like that, though. If I'm napping I can, like.. I can still hear and be aware of someone walking by, and wake myself up. My dad can sleep while walking, kind of. Everyone on his team can do it. So they'll walk single file, and the two in the middle will be napping while still marching, using the noise from the two in the front and back to guide them."

She frowned at the thought. It didn't seem very restful, but she could see how it might be useful. "So if they need to cover huge distances covertly, they can do it much more quickly if they force themselves to always be moving. Doesn't seem very fun though."

She bit back a sigh, remembering an argument she had gotten into with her father a while back. "He thinks I should be able to do that as well, but I've never been able to. I can nap, and I can be awake, but I can't really move while napping. It's weird, right?"

"Do you mean it's weird that you can't do it, or that the whole idea is weird? Because it sounds like it would be really useful! Kind of. Maybe? But people don't really walk long distances anymore... cars or motorcycles and stuff work just as well... Although those couldn't be used very well in a forest or when you need to be quiet... Cars are nice though, they make nice vroooom sounds and crash into stuff and blow up!" Melissa said. Realizing she had gotten sidetracked though, she refocused, "Huh? What was I saying? Ooooh right! I don't think it's weird that you can't do it, I don't think I'd be able to do it! But I do think the idea is weird, but weird in a good way!"

"I meant more that it's weird that he just expects I should be able to do it," she said with a frown. "I'm a sniper. I set up really far away and wait, and wait, and wait. I need to be awake to shoot, which means I'm awake to reposition. If I'm having to walk for so long that I'd even need to sleep something has gone terribly wrong," she explained.

Katy stretched her arms out, fighting back a yawn. Thinking this much about naps was making her want to take one. "Besides, my naps are fun. I can lay down anywhere and catch some sleep. What could be better than that?"

"Sleepin' is boring though! You don't get to do anything, you just lie there and do nothing! You don't get to run around, or jump off buildings trying to smash through to the center of the planet, you don't get to fly up into the atmosphere and explode, you don't get to sing a song about ketchup and you don't get to save the mighty benches of the world!" Melissa said. She paused, remembering something suddenly, "Oh. It's fun when you're tired though, because when you're tired nothing else is fun except sleeping! Or eating candy, of course!"

Blinking as she realised something else, she continued, "So do you take naps when waiting in your sniper perches?" She asked out of curiousity.

Katy blinked, shaking her head and responding in a fairly serious tone. "No, never when I'm set up on a job. I guess part of why I can eat so much food is my Semblance thing," she said, sounding a little confused. She didn't really understand how specifically it worked, just that it did. "I can set up and stay awake for days and days as long as I don't move around too much. If I stay very still I just don't get tired."

"If I had to guess I'd probably guess that all the extra energy from the food I eat has something to do with it, but I don't really know. It might be a complete side effect. What about you? You never told me about yours, except that it makes you get sick from food."

"Huh? Mine? Well... Mine isn't as cool as yours, but okay! Y'know how I can jump really high and survive high drops without a problem?" She said, waiting a moment to see if Katy acknowledged her, before continuing, "That's cuz I can sort of... move my aura around my body, I guess? If I focus it on my legs and feet, I can jump really high, absorb the shock of falling easily, perform powerful kicks and stuff. Or I could move it to my arms for stronger punches, or maybe my upper body to absorb a hit better!"

"I like keeping it focused around my legs though! Jumping really high is really useful and fun!" She added cheerfully.

"Huh. That seems way, way more useful than mine," Katy said. "You can actually, y'know.. do stuff with yours!" Katy fell silent as a bunch of explosions in the movie took place. Some of them looked like they could be pretty dangerous. "I wish mine was more like yours. It might actually be useful outside of very specific conditions."

"Yours is more useful for what you do though! It sounds really, really useful for a sniper, if you need to stay in the same spot for days! Mine is really only useful in close combat situations, it won't help me much at all if I'm being shot at..." Melissa said, scratching her head awkwardly, "Mine also leaves me really vulnerable... To concentrate that much aura in one area leaves the rest of my body unprotected by aura! And if I run out I can't really do much... A lot of the power in my attacks come from using my legs for a quick boost! If Soothing Mayhem runs out of dust as well, I'm practically useless..."

"Here's a secret... I'm actually kind of weak... I relied on my semblance for too long..."

"Hey, I bet loads of people fight using their Semblance only. It can't be as bad at you're thinking it is, otherwise we'd get warned against doing that, right?" Katy paused, frowning to herself in thought. "I mean, maybe that's why we work in teams, y'know? Need people to watch out for you when you start running on empty."

Katy thought about the way the other girl had described how her Semblance worked, trying to imagine the upward limits of what it could maybe do. "Maybe it's like a muscle, like how I explained studying the other day, remember? Maybe you need to be specifically working on it to make it even stronger. Like..um.. can you fall from higher places now than you could when you first started using it?"

"Oooh, I never thought of it that way! So if I get tired or bored or don't feel like fighting anymore, I can just take a nap and my team will do all the fighting for me? That sounds like a great deal! Although if my team gets tired and takes a nap I'd have to cover them... Hmm... Although I could just take a nap as well if they take a nap!" Melissa said with excitement clear in her voice at the prospects of being able to take a nap halfway through a fight whenever she got bored.

"I don't think more practice has helped make it stronger though... I'm able to move the aura about faster and with a bit more efficiency, but the strength of it really depends on how much aura I'm willing to use!" She added, "What about your semblance though? Are you sure that's all it can do? If you can store energy like that, maybe you can release it in bursts somehow?"

"Well, I didn't mean it quite like that, but sort of? More like, if you get tired or run out of energy in a fight your team is there to protect you while you withdraw. But maybe napping could happen too?"

Katy slowly shook her head, lost in thought for a moment. "I'm pretty sure it's all mine can do. It isn't perfect energy storage, either. It.. leaks, I guess? Or gets used regularly in small amounts. I'm not sure. But I need to eat regularly to keep it working. It's weird, though. My brother's Semblance was sorta like what you were describing. He'd glow so bright it was blinding. Like staring at the sun for too long." She shrugged. She didn't think the two were related, since she had never been able to do anything like that.

"But yeah. I dunno. I'm pretty sure mine just let's me stay still for a really long time. I've considered trying to push it to see if I can make it last even longer, but that would take weeks."

"Hmm..." Melissa put her finger on her chin, as if carefully pondering what Katy had said. In actuality though, she was watching the movie -a lot of explosions and fighting was going on. Although she had been trying to ponder at first, but the pretty booms had quickly distracted her. Once they finally stopped and another peaceful scene resumed, she continued as if she hadn't gotten distracted, and had merely been thinking, "Maybe you're thinking about it wrong! Maybe it's meant to leak! Maybe if you open the leak bigger you'll get super powers and super strength and then you'll be able to smash the planet into two pieces!"

"Or I dunno... Maybe something boring like immortality as long as you keep eating food." She added as an afterthought.

"Huh. Immortality would be nice, I guess. But I don't think it really works like that. It's a nice thought, though," she said. Katy wondered what was actually happening in the movie they were watching. It wasn't that she wasn't paying attention to it, it was that actions movies were usually fairly light on actual plot. If you didn't pay proper attention you could get lost pretty quickly, though that didn't make them any less interesting.

"Bleh. This is the kind of thing I think about when I'm studying, and I'm not supposed to be studying right now! I'll work it all out when I get to researching this stuff," she said. "I'm supposed to be watching a movie with you, not trying to figure out combat stuff. That's too much like work."

Realizing that apparently the other girl didn't seem to find talking about Semblances and Aura and stuff as fun as she did, Melissa refocused on the movie as well, "Sorry! The movie is kind of boring though! Not enough action and explosions and world shattering nukes and blood and booms and ice cream!" She said, despite the fact that the movie was probably more than 80% action.

"I don't mind talking about that stuff if you really wanna," Katy explained. "It's just.. it's all sort of stuff we need to know for fighting and stuff, so it's good to know about it. It's just.. not that exciting to me, y'know?"

Katy slid sideways along the wall until she was lying on her side. She couldn't really see the movie from this position, but she could still hear it. Finding common interests at a combat school was going to prove even more difficult, she thought. Everyone here was excited to be learning how to be great combatants, and Katy.. didn't really care. It was just something that had to be done.

Melissa shrugged, a rare wave of complete lucidity and sanity passing through her, "I get what you mean I guess... If I have to be perfectly honest, I don't actually like all this fighting that much myself. It's just... I dunno, a good distraction? And also it gives me the chance to feel useful, instead of just feeling like some sort of broken piece of machinery that was thrown away. Fighting... isn't really in my nature. Sure, I like to bluff and boast about breaking people's legs, but that's all in good humour!" She said, her tone somehow sounding cheerful despite how badly it the emotion meshed with her words.

"Soooo, what do you find interesting, then?" She asked.

"What do I find interesting? I'm not entirely sure," Katy confessed. "There are things I'd like to have been allowed to do, but that will probably never happen. Mostly I just read," she said, shrugging awkwardly. "I dunno. Most of the stuff I've been finding myself doing when I hang out with you and Aoife has been pretty fun. I've never really had friends before, so it's all kind of new to me."

Katy realized how depressing that must sound, and sighed. The last few weeks had really driven home how little of a life she actually had.

Grinning, Melissa noticed Katy sounded a little... depressed maybe? Regretful? One of those at least, and quickly reassured her, "Don't worry! Even if you had a boring life before, you can make up for it here at beacon! I'll make sure you don't have a boring moment here! Well.. Except when you're studying or in class... But aside from those times!" She said cheerfully.

"Yeah, I figure Beacon'll end up being a positive thing overall, even if I don't really want to be a Huntress," she said, nodding to herself. "At the very least, being here will force me to meet new people, right? I might start enjoying the work, or meet someone special, or any other number of things could happen. Four years is a long time, after all."

In a fair world, Katy would have wanted to open up her own shop somewhere instead of being a Huntress. But since that wasn't an option, Katy knew she'd just need to make the best out of the situation.

Melissa nodded in agreement, "Yup! Four years is a reaaaaallllllyyy long time! And that's assuming you succeed! If you fail, it might take even longer than four years. Maybe five! Or six! Or seven! Or a million! That's a lot of years..." She said, trailing off into thought.

"This movie is so silly!" She said suddenly, "Fire doesn't burn like that! If they can't even get the fire right, how can I believe that those aliens are depicted correctly? I can't! Now that I know those aliens are fake the movie just feels plastic to me! Like a bunch of clay figures running around burning each other! Don't you agree?"

Katy blinked, shuffling herself around to get a look at the movie. "Maybe it takes place on some, um.. other planet or something, and fire works differently there?" Katy frowned in thought. "Though if this movie has lost your interest, we could always do something else. Maybe try a different genre of movie? Or you could play one of your games and I could watch?"

Melissa shook her head, "Nooo, that wouldn't be very fun for you though! How about we play something we can both play? Like strip poker! Or some other card game, maybe, though others aren't as fun." She said with a teasing grin, trying to see how Katy would react. Would she agree? Blush? Brush it off? Melissa called this the 'strip poker test', and so far no one had passed it! Because this was the first time she had tried it.