Regulation 13 – There is no Acceptable Margin of Error with Edible Assets

Going to Chaisee’s place for dinner is the first thing all day that has actually had a transparent plan of what needs to happen and I grab onto that thought as hard as I can. There’s comfort in something finally having a script that I know how to follow, even more so as the pain in my skull inches up another few notches.

Step one – get back to a more populated area. This first step is the the most important one as staying in this mostly deserted area is practically begging for another… issue to crop up.

I still find myself rejecting what Chaisee sees as plain truth. I cannot think of the brineclaw attacks as a hit aimed at me as a hit. Not yet. I need to remain cool headed and that’s hard enough with the itching worry over Yilmaz that grows with each new supposed coincidence.

Step two – proceed to fall in step with other LAGOON residents once we’ve reached a populated area.

Don’t move too slow or too fast, either will make it clear that we’re out of place. Falling in step the right way will obscure where we came from from casual folks, but also give us the benefit of a more crowded area. Less likely for problems to crop up. If she’s treating this anything like how she treated the exam, then she’ll be right on the same page as I am. We’re likely to head for one of the artery hallways. If we get targeted again that will make it difficult to trace where the attack came from, but it’ll also give us options on how to respond and react and that’s something we’ve lacked thus far.

Step three – reach apartment. Enter apartment.

And then we’ll be set for at least a little while. Three easily scripted steps. I can worry about the impending social situation with this heavy migraine resting on my brow when we get there.

Chaisee trusts that I’m going to follow when she starts walking without another cue. She’s not wrong to do so, we went through the same Exam recently – so anything that worked there will doubtless work here. I fall in step a little behind her as we walk. She doesn’t speak and neither do I.

Times like this one are – I’ve been told – one of the things that set the LAGOONs as something Other compared to the rest of the world. I’ve seen it in play myself during my past failed Exams. In any other location our arrival to the more populated area would be heralded by a gradually increasing wall of noise – ambient music from various locations and phones, folks talking and shouting and being civilians. Here the defining sounds that rise to greet us as we fold into the artery hallway are footsteps and breathing and the shifting of clothing. It’s not that there’s a lack of cadets and Riptide Agents and more passing through the hallway – the space is so packed that Chaisee starts having to thread a path through bodies to keep moving instead of the straight march we’ve been doing. Merging into the press of the crowd is easy.

There is no being civilians here. LAGOON residents are not considered civilians in any part of the world. Training starts on entry to the LAGOON regardless of age and registry as a cadet – which is required to eventually make Riptide, which in turn is required to eventually become a teacher here for those interested in that – only solidifies that in the eyes of the countries below. Between four accidents in the transit system and now two brineclaws having been loose in the LAGOON in the span of less than a day it’s clear that something is happening.

Coincidences are rarely benign in our line of work.

So all of the communication is digital. Be it via phones or implants or bionics – the general feed for the LAGOON is filled with all of the chatter that other spaces would have as a wall of noise. On ordinary days there would have been a smaller wall of sound, folks chatting aloud if they’re not focused on the feed. But this is not an ordinary day.

And no one here is willing to be caught napping.

There’s already more than a dozen injured. The feed is easier to keep track of than speaking aloud in the hallways and if there’s going to be an official statement about the accidents or the brineclaws, the feed is where it’ll show up first. The announcement will come minutes later, but a few minutes is something we’ve all learned can make or break a situation.

I can follow Chaisee more or less on autopilot. Her tail and her mohawk are easy to see and track even with my skull trying to invert itself. This leaves me free to poke around on the feed through my eye.

Using my phone would be smarter, but that would also give away that I’m not at my best. And that? …Is something I’m not willing to risk.

The feed is full of memes and folks sharing information, plus panic from a few folks trying to figure out if the transit system is safe or not, and from a few cadets who want to very loudly proclaim that they have nothing to do with all of this because they failed the recent Exam and they don’t want to catch any blame.

And theories.

Those – aside from any alerts – are what I’m most interested in. I know my own theory; I’ve learned through the exams that sometimes others see things that I don’t. Or won’t, my brain helpfully adds with a reminder of the brineclaws and what I’m still not acknowledging.

One of those theories catches my eye: someone with the username PlayfulPwnderer shared a theory a few minutes ago in a cypher I don’t recognize. That by itself is enough to make me curious – someone not using any of the LAGOON taught cyphers? There are plain text responses underneath it that mean I don’t get the momentary joyful distraction of trying to figure out the cypher from scratch. But what they contain slow my steps long enough that Chaisee notices and I have to give her a thumbs up before we can continue moving.

PlayfulPwnderer’s theory is that McCrae is behind all of this. Someone’s shared a clip of McCrae shouting that we’d ‘all regret this’ as he was being dragged away with the blood still running down his face. While I don’t recall hearing the shout there are video clips from multiple angles confirming it. Most of those are paired with the meme that folks of made of my punching him – including one that has me labeled as “today and yesterday” and McCrae labeled as “the LAGOON’s sense of safety” that wrings a snort of amusement and agreement out of me.

My own theory hasn’t even reached a potential culprit. But McCrae has plenty of reasons to be lashing out like this. At Yilmaz’s friends, at me, at the LAGOON in general right now… What I know, the punch, the kind of bullets he used…

I shake my head to clear my thoughts and check the feed again. PlayfulPwnderer has deleted all of the posts under their theory that were in plain text and added a large, plain text warning that no one knows if access rights have been altered recently.

There’s no way for someone like me to check if McCrae’s access to the LAGOON feeds have been revoked yet or not. I don’t have the knowledge to sneak and check and I don’t know anyone who has the access normally. The possibility of it being McCrae hangs over my thoughts like a storm cloud. On the one hand if it is him then my home itself hasn’t turned against me. On the other – hanging all of my hopes on that is dangerous at best. I make a mental note to share this theory with Chaisee when I get the chance.

…It occurs to me, now, that this kind of thing might very well be the core of why Chaisee chose to invite me to her apartment specifically. Speaking aloud in public places – like say, an artery hallway – means anyone and anything can hear. The public LAGOON feed cuts that down to those allowed on the LAGOON feeds, sometimes filtered by cyphers and sometimes linking through to private feeds with the password and access code printed on an image to deter bots. Private feeds cut that number down in theory – but if you’re concerned about someone high ranking, those feeds can be checked as long as they’re routed through the LAGOON feed.

Our apartments, however, are practically sacrosanct. The LAGOON has sworn that we have privacy there.

Can that swear even be trusted anymore? If it’s not McCrae then…

I’m officially too distracted to monitor the feeds now – my mind turning and twisting over itself over and over with the potentials and realities – so I focus on following Chaisee. On occasion there are muffled swears or soft ‘oops, sorry’ that seem unnaturally loud. This hallway is more crowded than before but no less a display of focus and feed watching than it was. Tripping over tails or other appendages seems more and more an inevitability so I bring up my tail and wrap it loosely around my middle in a bid to spare myself the hassle of getting stepped on.

And now that I’m no longer focusing on something with all the power of ‘what are physical symptoms anyway’ the migraine lets out a hunting keen – sharp, piercing pain that makes me flinch. Angry talons pierce through my skull.

It’s too much pain all at once. My focus splits and scatters in such a way that the only thing I can do is mutely follow the bob of Chaisee’s pink and green mohawk and dig my teeth into the inside of my cheek. Time passes in a haze until she’s stopping in front of me and I realize that at some point she grabbed my hand and started leading me that way. I only realize this because she lets go so she can get her door open.

Her door makes a different sound than mine as it opens and the wave of chill that escapes is a relief, even if it prompts me to give Chaisee a questioning look. I cannot recall through the haze of migraine of ankylosaurs prefer cold or not.

In response she holds a finger up against her lips until she’s entered and so have I. Only once the door is shut does she speak again. “I overheat really easily. This armored back of mine holds in heat like it’ll never see the light of day again.” she huffs, soft and frustrated. “Easier to offset that like this.” a gesture at her apartment. “Plus – Maz an’ Rehema are happier in chillier places.”

I squint at her apartment. I can see the vague outlines of a lot of fuzzy things and enough pink and green that between that and her mohawk, I’m certain that I know her favorite colors now. It’s quite different from my own apartment – down to the extremely fuzzy pink and green carpet. At least I think it’s a carpet and not a rug.

Chaisee lets her tail drag across the soft carpet now that she’s at home and comfortable – which tells me that next time we’re fighting on the same side, I should watch her lower back more than anywhere else. Knowing where to protect on an ally is a relieving thing to-

“You are allowed to come in, you know.” Chaisee says, arching one eyebrow as she speaks. “Is the carpet intimidating? ‘Cause like, I promise that it’s not a mimic.” amusement threads through her words as she speaks, lips quirked like she’s trying to bite that down.

I don’t say that that sounds like something someone with a mimic for a carpet would say. Instead I take a ginger step forward off of the last vestiges of solid tile onto the plush creature that is Chaisee’s carpet. It’s impossibly even softer than it looked; I drop my gaze and stare at it. How? How is it softer than it looks? What manner of spells did she have woven into it?

Chaisee snorts and giggles. The sound is so abrupt that my gaze snaps up to her in time to see her clapping both hands over her mouth and speaking from beyond them. “I didn’t have any spells woven into my carpet.”

My tail puffs up to twice its size. “…I did not mean to say that aloud.” I say, slowly, and force another ginger step forward while I’m at it. “Please forget you heard anything of the sort.”

“I absolutely will not.” Chaisee glances at my tail and says nothing. “I will keep it between us though. The tail too.”

Said tail is currently flicking back and forth behind me so fast that I can hear it whipping through the air. I decide not to comment on it. Instead I take another few steps into her apartment and try to bite down on the way I can’t figure out how to feel steady on a covering so soft. It is, at least, something that takes a lot of focus once more. Am I attempting to sidestep the migraine? Absolutely.

Is it working? …Not really.

“You look like you’re expecting the floor to jump up an’ swallow you whole.” Chaisee says. “You’re safe here.” she smiles at me and adds – “You’re one of Maz’s closest friends and he ain’t here to look after us all. So we gotta look out for one another, okay.” I can tell that her expression is trying very hard to be encouraging.

And… it is encouraging to know that they – or at least Chaisee – are on the same wavelength as myself. The sentiment is enough to unstick my tongue so I can say “I’m unused to floors like this one.” before correcting myself. “Actually, I lack experience with them at all and I cannot get steady.” the correction is harder to get myself to say than the initial statement, but the important part is saying it.

“Want a hand?” there’s no hesitation at all in the question. I still give her a long look until she puts her hands up again. “I figured not. I wanted to offer. So – try walking right up next to my coffee table.” she nods at the space she’s talking about. “My floor’s less soft there because the carpet is thinner. An’ maybe that chair in particular.” this time she points, directing my gaze to a chair that’s a softer shade of green than the carpet beneath it. “My furniture tends to match my carpet, but I know there are folks around here that struggle with stuff that’s too soft.”

I don’t know her well enough to know if she’s serious about that last bit, though the fact that she has things planned out for that potential makes me feel like she might be.

“An’ now I have two whole questions.”

Chaisee holds up two fingers and I freeze mid-step. There are a lot of potentials lurking in front of the both of us for questions. They range from sarcastic to easy to answer. Two is a… low… number for folks who corner me with questions, as much as I’m used to that particular sort of action. I tilt my head in her direction and remain poised just in case I need to make a sudden escape.

…Right, a sudden escape with a migraine so vile it’s made seeing difficult. I could probably force my way through it if needed but the uncertainty remains just heavy enough that I feel myself tensing up.

“Is it alright if I call you Kali?” the first shoe drops and- what. A confused noise escapes me and I blink at her. “I know that you’ve also got Ice Princess but…” she trails off and falls silent.

“Yeah, go ahead.” I say once my throat decides to work, and I start walking again. She’s right – the floor closer to the coffee table is much less soft. Relief dances across my shoulders, loosens them up. I turn the request this way and that in my head. It’s the LAGOON standard for nicknames – one of those many other little things that makes us as Other when compared to the folks that live on the ground. Easy names to find on the feed and permission only given to specific other usernames. It’s a security feature and a utility all at once.

No one calls me Kali.

It occurs to me after a few minutes of silently picking my path across the floor – during which I reach the chair and stare at it for a long moment – that Chaisee seems to be waiting for something. Waiting for…? Oh. Right. The usual script for LAGOON standard nicknames includes sharing a guess at one back, doesn’t it? In my defense Yilmaz and I have never followed that convention with each other and he was the only person I really talked to. Silence blankets the apartment as I sit down and strive to recall the full of the LAGOON method of nicknames. There’s no way I’m pulling up the feed with my head like this. Chaisee’s name means I can’t use the latter half like she can mine. See and Isee are difficult to find specifically in the feed; the first is a word and the second a common typo. Both have multiple of the same letter. Which means… “Sehi for you?” I ask, frowning as I go over it again in my head.

Even with my vision behaving as poorly as it is, I can see the extra wide grin from here. “Yup! You’re good to use Sehi.” she gives me a serious nod. “Maz said you’d probably have trouble with the nicknames when you finally-” her expression crumples like a pile of dust before a windstorm. She shakes her head sharply. “Anyway! For the second… your feed tag is anonymized – all it says for your Moreau Base is feliform. So are you an obligate carni or a hyper carni? I do actually mean to feed you like I said, an’ the last thing either of us want is for you to wind up poisoned by me being a bad host.”

“Hyper carni.” I answer around the flush of pride that comes with having gotten the nickname business correct. I don’t comment about what she said about Yilmaz – it’s clear enough to me that she’s struggling with all of this, and I have no intention of making it worse. “Bugs are fine, most fruits and vegetables are as well. What is and isn’t doesn’t fit with the easy categories there.” I force the shrug. Trusting her with this information is harder than having tried to walk around on such soft carpet. It’s harder than acknowledging the very likely truth of those attacks. I want to claw the words right back out of the air as soon as I’ve said them and take refuge in refusing to answer beyond ‘meat’ instead.

Chaisee types something into her phone – when she got it out, I’m not certain – and then nods sharply and looks back up at me. “How are pumpkins, cucumbers, and papayas?” Right now, her stance and stare aren’t far off from what I saw during the Exam. Serious, professional, keen eyed.

“Pumpkins are full clear. Cucumbers are poisonous. I can have the flesh of papayas but not the seeds.” I rattle off in return, glad that she asked about ones I already know. Having to admit that I haven’t ventured that far into figuring out my own biology is far too much vulnerability for one day. Besides – I’ve just added to that because of cucumbers.

“Oh good!” Chaisee sets her phone on the counter so she can clap her hands. “I do have some meat but I’m hypo over here. Damn near obligate herbi. Though it always smells good…” she shakes her head sharply. “Anyway. I get loads of imported fruits an’ veg. Not LAGOON grown. Those were just the first three to come to mind, any of ’em on your favorites list? Maz was always saying you’d shar-” the ache comes back to her voice partway through that last sentence and she trails off into pained silence. That pained silence lingers over us both for a couple of minutes before Chaisee bustles into the kitchen with the air of someone who will find something to do and distract herself with, leaving me sitting alone on the chair she pointed out.

I wet my lips. There’s an emptiness left behind in the air that feels like I’m supposed to say something in response. Something more than just confirming if either pumpkin or papaya is on my favorites list. I don’t have a script for this. I try to think of one to use as a scaffolding and come up empty. Once more I find myself on footing that I’m unfamiliar with, without a script or anchor or Yilmaz to guide me at least long enough to keep me from pacing inside my own skull. Which is what I’m doing right now. Silence comes easy to me. My tail tip flicks back and forth as I lean back into the chair and make myself close my eyes against the migraine. Relief comes with the darkness and lack of looking at anything.

Sound floats across the apartment from the kitchen. Fridge opening, shutting, stuff being moved and plates being shifted and a steady little hum like even Chaisee doesn’t know what to say or do from here and is falling back on reflex.

“I…” I start without knowing what I even want to say. I decide that I’ll confirm pumpkin as a favorite since she asked that part directly. My mouth has other ideas. “I don’t hate you three.” are the words that leap out into the silence. My spine stiffens so quickly that I choke on an inhale. The sounds in the kitchen don’t change at all. Maybe she can’t hear me. Maybe – I don’t know. Maybe I can glue together a script to follow so I can say something better. Maybe- I’m still talking, actually. “I didn’t keep refusing to meet you three out of hatred or jealousy or anything like that. I don’t-”

I falter. The sounds in the kitchen have shifted a little, like someone’s messing around with the fleshy bits of fruit. Yilmaz has trusted them for years and right now there isn’t even a them so much as a Chaisee and I’ve already gotten this far. So I feel around for every scrap of countless echoed encouragements from Yilmaz over the years, for how Chaisee has been trustworthy and kind and considerate so far, for a reminder of my own strength. I take all of those and braid them together around the twine that is the struggle to think thanks to the migraine. Am I using said migraine for evil? …Maybe.

In the end, though, all of that only amounts to being able to blurt “Pumas are very solitary cats.” like a bit of trivia will explain away years of avoidance and refusing to meet them and there’s stressed frost on my tongue when I close my mouth. Pumas are very solitary cats? All of that gathering, for that? It feels pathetic.

Chaisee doesn’t respond for long enough that I have ample time to wish that her carpet actually would open up and swallow me whole. It’d be merciful to perish in the gullet of some fibrous mimic instead of continuing to sit here in silence with a mouth that won’t move and no ability to know if I was heard or not. Much less any knowledge on if I can even repeat what I tried to say. I have faced down fiends bigger than houses and not frozen up like this.

Social interaction remains my bane.

I’m wondering what the texture inside a fiber mimic with an exterior this soft would be like when Chaisee comes trotting out of the kitchen with plate and bowl in hand. I can’t read anything out of her face and her body language says nothing to me. The bowl is heaped with a salad while the plate has assorted cuts of meat (beef and lamb by the smell) and papaya slices alongside chopped up slices of pumpkin – all laid out artfully. She hooks the table with part of her tail and drags it closer as she approaches. Once the coffee table is where she wants it she puts the plate down in front of me and pulls up another chair so she can flop down onto it with her salad.

It’s all so easy, so normal, that maybe she really didn’t hear my blurted comment and I am – at least for now – safe from my own mortification. That pairs with being damned with not knowing if I can explain myself again, but no progress is ever made without a cost.

The plating really is artful – the beef and lamb are alternated and overlapping and surrounded by the papaya and pumpkin slices, which themselves are put together in the shape of a flower. All slices – no squares or cubes. It’s a lot of effort for a quick dinner and I can’t help but shoot Chaisee a quick glance to try and get a read on what she’s feeling and thinking.

She’s already watching me, brown eyes as unreadable as an oak tree. “You didn’t answer about favorites.”