Aegis rolls her eyes.

On a whim, he gives her mind a friendly nudge.

He looks back with confusion.

"You shouldn't be able to do that," Aegis hisses at Sue as soon as her jaw is free. "They gave me my exo because you shouldn't be able to."

"Do what?" he asks, confused. "I did the same thing before, and it didn't connect either time."

"I felt it this time!" She's still being very quiet, though fierce, as the commanders bow to each other. Maybe she can keep the exo if no one finds out. Sue's not planning to possess her body, right? Right?

"Maybe your power's getting so you notice stuff," he says. "And I'm just the only mutie around who's tried to touch you."

"It's not supposed to. They could only let me have it because I sat there wondering what was going on while telepaths threw everything they had at me. If you can touch my brain then it's not working and they might take it away and I'll get iced and I'll feel like I'm made of bricks all the time."

"Well, then I won't touch your brain," he says, concerned.

"And don't tell anybody that you can either and then everything will be fine."

"Okay," he agrees.

Next time she signs on to the game, there are no new additions from Sue anywhere in her territory. That's reasonably rare.

"I need to talk to you," she says, coming up behind him and planting her feet. There's a few other kids around. "Alone."

"Sure," he says easily, logging off in mid-haul and starting for the door. "Got a place in mind?"

"Empty practice battleroom?"

He nods affirmation.

"...Okay," says Sue. "What do you mean, what I can do?"

"To me, with your power, through my shield. I felt something and I'm not supposed to get anything and I have to know what I'm wrong about and how bad."

"So... do you want me to try pushing you again?" he asks hesitantly.

"Tell me what it is first?"

"Okay," he says. "I call it 'pushing' because it feels like," he lets go of one handhold and reaches out and puts a gentle pressure on her arm, "that, but with my mind. What I was trying in that battle, I wasn't pushing anything at you, I was just... pushing, like high-fiving somebody in the corridor when you walk by. Most people, when I push like that, they feel it, and they can push back if they want. You, it's like I try to push and there's a glass wall—I don't see it until I try, but I can't touch you, I just touch the wall instead."

"...But I felt something, there. Were you doing that before? When I rescued you from those boys...?"

"Yeah," he says, "when I was crying, before I said anything, I was shoving like hell on that wall, trying to tell you what was wrong. It didn't budge."

"And I didn't get anything then." She frowns, chewing her lip. "And you felt it the same way both times? Maybe I can just... feel the wall, now, feel it shaking if you push it."

"Maybe so," Sue agrees. "You wanna try?"

He shrugs, and 'pushes'.

"I can't feel anything this time," she murmurs. "What about on your end?"

"Same as before," he says. "You're a wall. Can't touch you."

'Nudge'.

"That sounds terrifying," says Aegis.

"It's basically talking, but faster," he says with a shrug. "And there's some stuff that doesn't do too good in words—I can have my toon halfway across the room before somebody else would've been done saying 'split, bounce off the north wall, and form up on the east face of that star', because I just push the trajectory and they get it right away."

"But you could push whatever you wanted once they were linked up. And I bet that bully didn't invite you in..."

"Sure," he says. "I can push whatever I want at anybody who isn't a wall like you. And if I want I can get up in your face and scream nasty things about your mother with my own two lungs." He grins. "Except you'd kick my ass right across the battleroom. That was great, the way you shut me down in that battle."

"Got froze for it, though," she snickers. "Did you just send the whole toon on an Aegis-hunt or something?" She shakes her head. "But the guy didn't act like you just screamed at him. Him and his friends started it, I don't blame you, but it didn't sound like you were just shouting at him."

"Well, yeah," he says. "Shouting senses is different from shouting words. I've had some of my guys push it to me when they got a bump in practice, just to see, and it's like... I don't feel it like my own body is hurting where they hurt, same as I don't see it like my own eyes are getting what they see, but it still feels like hurt, or looks like seeing. It's just separate from what I'm getting as me."

"That sounds so strange. And can you do it to me, or does the wall stop you?"

He shakes his head. "I can't touch you. Never mind pushing senses or concepts, I can't even push nothing at you, I just get wall."

"Okay." She relaxes. "So you definitely can't possess my exo. And they won't take it and I won't have to be a clay thing all the time."

"I couldn't possess your exo any which way," he snorts. "I don't have mind control. I can shout all I want, doesn't make anybody have to do what I say."

"The problem with the exo is it doesn't need proper mind control for somebody to possess it. Somebody with proper mind control could be just as dangerous using anybody without an exo. They'd still be controlling the body at the speed of thought," says Aegis. "The point of the exo is to be suggestible, that's how it works, that's how that one guy killed sixteen people with someone who had a prototype on. If you could shout at the part of my brain that works it you could move me. But you can't."

"...Pretty sure I couldn't," he says. "I'm a weird kind of telepath, I don't go into people's heads."

"You don't?" she asks. "What's the difference?"

"I've had a telepath talk to me," he says, "when they were figuring out about my power, and it's nothing like getting words pushed to me. It's not even like getting thoughts pushed to me. It's like he just stepped into my head and made the words appear there. The way I do it... like I said, it's separate. What's in my head is still in my head, what's in their head is still in theirs, I'm just linking us up so they're getting some stuff from my head, and if they want they can show me some of their stuff back."

"It makes me alive. I almost died before I had it. You can see the scars a couple places -" She traces a line on her cheek, and another along her wrist. "If the exo goes, I get iced, I go to planetside school someplace, I walk around with a cane maybe or try to do without anything at all, feeling like my arms and legs and hands are cheap rentals, and if I live to to be fifteen it's because I never climb a flight of stairs and I definitely don't fly."

"Yeah," he says, and he looks unusually serious. "I know. I don't wanna get iced either. Different reasons, same deal."

"Congrats!" he says, all smiles again.

"It's cause I got you and the last toon second made a stupid mistake," she explains.

"If I had an army with you in it, I'd make you toon leader," he says. "I'd make you lieutenant of however many of my best people were too many for me to link."

"How many's too many?" asks Aegis. "And Brighteyes says he wants me when he makes commander, too, maybe you get into a bidding war with him and somebody who likes flex maneuvers like Rabbit's commander." She's smirking.

"I can do my whole toon now, I don't know how many more," he says. "Maybe I'll just let 'em have you, so there'll still be somebody out there who can beat me."

"Why doesn't your commander have you syncing up as many people as you can, anyway? That's what I'd do if I had an army and you were in it. Everybody except me in a linkup, if they didn't like it they could transfer, that's how useful that is."

"It's the other toon leaders," he explains cheerfully. "One hates muties, one thinks I'm a bugger in disguise, and one's just scared of me 'cause I don't make sense."

"They close personal friends of the commander? He let his religious ones turn down battles on whatever Sabbath too?" she snorts. "If you could link me up and I didn't think the teachers'd ice me for it I'd go in a link if I had you in an army that was all mine. Doesn't matter if it's comfy unless uncomfy makes you worse, matters if it wins."

"It wins," he says, grinning. "But there's no point just winning all the time. Losing makes you learn more."

"Enh. I like almost losing for that. Best of both worlds," she grins.

"For games? Yeah. If it's the kind of game where winning happens, I mean, not like the minefield where it'll just throw them faster and faster until you die and the question is how long that takes."

"Oh. I don't," he says. "I don't even try to win unless I feel like it or there's something in it for me."

"Then why were you sending your toon Aegis-hunting?"

"Because it makes them happy to be useful, and I like my toon."

"Huh." She starts flying, idly. (Idly she only looks like a regular soldier in top condition trying as hard as possible, not like magic.)

Sue floats, watching her. It makes him happy just to see her in her element. He smiles.

"Commander'll probably chew me out if he finds out I was talking to you," observes Aegis.

"Same," he says serenely. "I don't care, do you?"

"Might get me bumped down from toon second whatever Brighteyes says. If he's mad enough maybe he trades me to Rabbit instead of asking queen's ransom for it, though. Rabbit could probably use me as good as Brighteyes."

Sue grins. "Wanna let him know, then?"

"Dunno. Might get bumped and not traded. If that happens I just put in for my own transfer, I think. I wonder if he'll find out if I don't tell him."

"There's a dozen ways to make him find out without telling him," says Sue. "If you want."

"I don't think I want. Commander doesn't know what to do with me - except let Brighteyes have me - but he knows other armies want me, he'll cripple anyone who takes one of his trades even if he's mad, then we lose a lot and I lose my aura, you know."

"Okay," he says. "Big secret, then. Let's get back to the bird game. I'm building you a castle way downriver, did you see?"

"Ooh, a castle," she says, grinning. She pushes off and flips through the air till she's on his side of the room again.

He does a slow launch and hugs her in midair.

"I'm Swan, yes, sir." She sends Sue spinning and lands neatly on the edge of the door and spins into the corridor. "What is it, sir?" she asks. She doesn't know this teacher, he might be for a more advanced class or a track she's not in...

"I don't know, I just know Beri wants you," the teacher shrugs.

"Is there a path color or are you escorting me, sir?" She punctuates all her sentences to teachers with sir. It placates them and means nothing except you seem to be the sort of person who expects to be sirred.

He keys in the path at the next junction: grey grey grey.

The mysterious 'Beri' has an office in a part of the ring Aegis has never been to before. The path leads her right to his door.

She knocks. And then stands at attention; it can't hurt.

"You wanted to see me, sir?" (Even without a visible rank he's some kind of sir; she's not even nine yet.)

Aegis sits. "Can I ask what this is about, sir?"

"Psych profiles are an integral part of student evaluations in the Battle School system," he says. "Can you tell me something you've been doing differently lately that might have affected our ability to get a good profile on you?"

"I think a lot of the other students took batteries of personality tests before they launched, but I was never set those tests, sir. I'm happy to sit them now if you'd like."

"That may not be necessary," he says. "In fact, analysis of the diary function in students' desk accounts is usually a last resort, but in your case it is also the only resort. And now that you have stopped writing your entries in a readable format..." He trails off and shrugs.

"What the other students are doing is not an avenue that's open to you," he says. "But we still need to know how you're doing, mentally. You clearly know how you're doing mentally. I don't think it's going to be impossible to work something out here."

"If you have questions for me about how I'm doing, I can answer them," Aegis volunteers. "I just can't do my own processing in front of readers like that."

"I don't suppose there's any chance you'll tell me why you stopped writing in English," he says dryly.

"So either you only just figured out that someone might be reading your journal, or you've had to do a lot of thinking recently about something you don't want us to know," he says. "And I don't think you only just figured that out."

"It's nothing about a change in my underlying psychology, sir," she repeats.

"Then you can keep it. Next question: what do you think of that worldbuilding game?"

"I - didn't know you watched it, sir, but I don't mind if you go on doing that, I'm proud of my little empire. I like the game."

"It's more interesting than what it was doing before," says Aegis. "I stopped playing before because it seemed like - space-filler. Reading was more fun, sir. And then when I found out you could bypass the giant - or at least me and Sue could, it didn't work for anyone else I helped - it got interesting again. Stuff I do lasts now. I know my birds and stuff aren't real people but I like them and I want them to have a nice place to not be real in." She pauses. "But I have no idea how the game knew I'd like that, so maybe it just guessed right on the first try."

"Between you and me," he says, "no one knows how that game makes its guesses. But it's usually right."

"Me and Sue are also the only people with the same environment, I think," volunteers Aegis, "even though he doesn't want to do nearly as much with the animal-people, and that makes it more interesting too. And the game showed me where to find him when he was getting bullied a couple years ago. It must be very smart, sir."

"Did it?" he says. "That's interesting. Tell me more about that."

"You didn't already know? It wasn't long after he showed up near my first village. Sue's avatar went idle and then the colors on its feathers changed, and it showed a path, and when I went there, he was there, getting beat on by a bunch of twelve-year-olds. There must be a report on this incident somewhere, sir, I took Sue straight to the infirmary and some of the twelve-year-olds probably went there eventually too."

"...I can do that, if you like, sir," she says. "Does the report mention that I closed my desk and ran straight there as though this were some kind of coincidence?"

"Let's not talk about that report," he says amicably.

"All right, sir. When I write my reports on the game how much should I assume you already know about what's been going on and the history preceding it, and how much should I spell out?"

"Assume that I've been watching your progress in the game, but not closely," he says. "Include whatever facts are necessary to support your conclusions, historical or otherwise."

"Yes sir."

"I think that's all for now," he says. "Run along and play."

Aegis muffles a giggle. She vaults out of her chair, and runs along, and plays.