Chương 31: Chapter 22.1: Pure E-Vell

Leanne and Vell cringed in unison as Doctor Montgomery turned and bent at the waist. Ill-fitting pants displayed an amount of plumber's crack that probably constituted sexual harassment, and the tight fabric displayed bulges in places both were pretty sure humans weren't supposed to have bulges. Doc Montgomery didn't let anything like resounding and immediate cries of disgust get in the way of him continuing his lecture.

"A balanced body is the key to a balanced mind, and a balanced mind is the key to complete understanding of your chi," Montgomery droned. He stood and faced his class again, much to their relief.

"While the pursuit of physical perfection, as I embody, is one avenue to this balance, there are others. Observe!" With a grand and sweeping gesture, Montgomery pointed directly at Leanne. She was halfway through shoving a massive cinnamon roll into her mouth, and froze mid-bite as all eyes turned to her. A little bit of frosting dripped off her lips and down her chin.

"This young woman clearly has an understanding of both ends of the physical spectrum. Her muscles tremble with barely restrained strength and power, yet she also knows how and when to indulge her body's basest desires with simple indulgence," Montgomery said.

"This is a path to perfection: understanding both the positive and negative aspects of your body and mind, and knowing when to feed one or the other, as she now feeds herself." Leanne remembered that this was the first loop and nobody would remember what she did now, so she finished eating her cinnamon roll. She had four more to go. Three, if she offered one to Vell, which could go either way. Leanne liked Vell, but she also liked cinnamon rolls, and Vell had plenty of opportunities to get his own cinnamon rolls.

Doctor Montgomery continued to rant, and Leanne continued to chow down, until the lecture reached its conclusion. The gathered students all too gladly packed up their things and left Montgomery's class. Vell tucked the last of his books back into his bookbag and waved to Leanne.

"See you later, Leanne," Vell said. Leanne gave him a polite wave and tossed aside her empty box of cinnamon rolls. The man sitting on the opposite side of her looked at Vell go, and at Leanne's trash.

"Why don't you ever talk when that guy's around?" he asked.

"You seem to like him well enough."

"Oh, he's alright," Leanne said, as soon as she was sure Vell was out of earshot.

"He's just part of that club Naomi roped me into, so I don't like to bother with him too much."

"That explains it," he said.

"I don't mind. You usually never shut up." Leanne punched her neighbor in the shoulder. Elijah liked to poke fun at her no matter what she did. He was lucky she found it so charming. Leanne gave him a kiss on the cheek to make up for the punch and they headed for their next class.

"You have got to just quit that club one day," Elijah said.

"Seems like every other day they make you do some crazy bullshit. You guys almost ruined Banana Day."

"In our defense, those were radioactive bananas," Leanne said.

"More radioactive than usual, at least." As Leanne had recently learned, all bananas contained a harmless amount of radiation. Unless, of course, they were cultivated near an improperly shielded particle accelerator, in which case they contained enough radiation to be fissile material. The casualties of the radioactive banana incident had been massively inflated by the fact that it coincided with International Banana Day, a holiday which the Einstein-Odinson academic body took very seriously for some reason.

The loopers had been forced to dispose of and then replace a large supply of banana's on short notice.

"We would have died doing what we loved," Elijah said.

"Eating banana's."

"You would have died pooping your own guts out," Leanne corrected. Radiation poisoning was a nasty way to go, and she'd seen more than one person fall prey to it in three and a half years of looping.

"Hmm, suddenly I don't want to be having this conversation anymore," Elijah said.

"Subject change. Are you going to be ready for practice today? You're a bit of a mess." Elijah thought about tussling Leanne's hair, and then recoiled upon seeing how greasy it was. Leanne didn't waste a lot of time on grooming for the first loop.

"I'll be ready to go," Leanne said. She skipped out on a lot of things every loop, but she always took practice seriously. Some would even say too seriously.

"Alright, Leanne's going to do her usual routine, the rest of you, line up and focus on defense," Coach Ewing shouted. Leanne's skill had already rocketed well past the point where Coach Ewing needed to, or was even capable of, coaching her. All he could do was let her do her thing and focus on the rest of the team.

"The Curie Academy team scored sixteen points on us last game."

"And we scored three hundred and thirty on them," another teammate, a woman named Miranda, called back.

"Leanne scored three-hundred and fifteen," Coach Ewing snapped back.

"The rest of you scored fifteen points after she got benched in the first quarter." For some reason, Ernest J. Ball, the inventor of Ballball, had included a specific rule forbidding mercy rules into the bylaws of his game. In spite of recent and numerous teams attempts to amend that ruling in light of Leanne's career two-hundred and seven game win streak, the best they could do was make sure Leanne stayed on the bench for most of the game.

While the Einstein-Odinson team hadn't lost a game since Leanne had joined, some of the other schools were starting to count outscoring them post-Leanne as a "win". Coach Ewing didn't even want to give them that satisfaction. He told everyone except Leanne to line up and start doing exercises. Leanne herself wandered over to a spare ball and decided to work on her spiking.

Scoring in Ballball was a simple matter of getting a ball to impact a certain portion of a goal post at either "pole" of the spherical, levitating field. While seemingly simple at first glance, the complex gravitational field of the spherical court made every throw follow an oddly curved trajectory. Leanne had long since mastered the art of curving the ball -and rebounding it off the skulls of her opponents when necessary- but she liked to keep the skills fresh.

Leanne never slacked off when it came to her Ballball skills. While her team occupied the northern hemisphere of the field, Leanne kept to herself on the bottom half, spiking the ball back and forth between herself and the goalpost. She practiced hitting wide, curved shots as well as simpler more straightforward spikes, staying on the move to emulate the fast pace of an actual game.

This kind of practice was much closer to the real deal for her than most people -she'd never faced an opponent fast enough to stand between her and a goal. Not yet at least. Leanne's parents had told her that there was always a bigger fish. Someone smarter, faster, and stronger than Leanne was waiting in the wings, somewhere in the world. Leanne never let her dominant performance be an excuse to slow down. If she wanted to stay on top of the world, she would have to earn it. Leanne spiked the ball once more.

As it flew, her eyes went cross, and a mild headache came and went. It suddenly struck Leanne that putting all this effort in was a major waste of time. She had never lost a game in her life, why worry about losing one tomorrow? She had earned the right to take a day off and relax. As those sudden urges to relax distracted Leanne, the ball she'd spiked flew straight back and hit her in the face.

With a comical "bonk", the ball narrowly avoided breaking her nose and ricocheted off her face before bouncing down to the surface of the spherical field. Leanne rubbed an aching nose and retrieved the ball. She considered this a reminder from the universe not to slack off. It was odd she'd even been having those thoughts. She regained her laser-focus and started practicing once again.

Between the rapid impacts of the ball, it was hard to hear the other members of the team practicing, but Leanne took a break to check in eventually. She found a chaotic scene as some members had given up on practice entirely and were packing up to leave, while others were practicing with renewed fervor. Coach Ewing seemed content to watch them do whatever they wanted, instead of imposing any semblance of order.

"What's going on, coach?" Leanne demanded.

"Oh, well, I figure since we've been on such a long winning streak, I figured we could go with a bit of a free-play period, let people do whatever they feel like," Coach Ewing said.

"We've got some room to grow, let's let people explore their potential a bit, you know?" The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings. Some of the most dedicated teammates Leanne had began to walk off the field, and some of the laziest good for nothings were going at their practice with fervent energy. Leanne's eyes narrowed. This was fucked up in a way that made her suspect the world was ending, but she couldn't be sure how.

Leanne decided to follow in her lazier teammate's footsteps and head off the field. She decided to check on one thing first.

"Elijah?"

"Yes babe?"

"Nothing, never mind," Leanne said. She turned away to hide a look of disgust. Elijah never called her "babe". However his brain had been scrambled, she wanted no part of it. Leanne skedaddled off the field and back onto the campus proper. Everywhere she looked things were in disarray, as some students -and some professors- walked out of classes, others began to shout obscenities and go on angry rants, while others still were openly weeping or laughing uproariously, both at nothing in particular.

The world had, in short, gone mad. Leanne wondered if any cults would form this time. She liked being in a cult, as she tended to end up god-queen or whatever title that particular cult used for their leader. Solving the day's problem came first, though. Becoming queen for a day was a secondary priority. A very close second. The dining hall, one of the looper's usual rallying points, was suspiciously empty. Leanne had suspected this place would be overrun with newly-crazy students looking to gorge themselves.

A few isolated gluttons occupied scattered tables, but the usual lunch rush was nonexistent. Leanne noted that as another suspicious factor. Food was usually the first thing crazy people went after.

"Hey, you, there you are," someone shouted. Leanne only vaguely recognized the voice. She turned to see one of Vell's roommates running at her, dragging a very reluctant-looking Harley behind him.

"You, yeah, you're one of those chicks who hang out with Vell a lot, right?" Cane asked.

"The one who doesn't talk much, yeah? Leanne?" Leanne gave a thumbs up. Cane breathed a sigh of relief.

"Okay, great, second question, do you feel alright in the head? Like, on a scale of boring to totally crazy, how is your brain right now?" Leanne shrugged. She was unsure how to respond. Cane took that as her being relatively sane.

"Okay, great, great," he said breathlessly. He'd been sprinting across campus trying to track down help for a while now, and he'd been dragging Harley most of the way.

"Because you guys are like weirdly good at solving problems and I kind of need some of that right now, and this chick is useless." Cane pulled on Harley's wrist and she slumped into the nearest seat. The usually bright-eyed and annoyingly energetic girl could barely muster the energy to look up at Leanne, and the minute she did so, Harley rolled her eyes and let out a disgruntled huff.

"This bitch doesn't even like us," Harley grumbled.

"And I don't like her. So what good is she going to be?"

"You see?" Cane said, gesturing angrily to Harley.

"She's all rude all of a sudden, and she hates everybody! That's not Harley!"

"Bite me, asshole," Harley spat. Leanne pursed her lips. She'd seen Harley get killed, or watch her friends get killed, dozens of times over, but she had never once been anything but an absolute barrel of optimistic, friendly enthusiasm. Something had turned her usually unflappably outgoing attitude inside out. She began to get the impression Cane knew what that "something" was. She pointed at him accusingly, a gesture he immediately understood.

"Oh, hey, I know what's going on, but it's not my fault, okay?" Cane said, immediately jumping to his own defense.

"I was helping one of my classmates test something out, and it kind of went sideways." As Cane said "it went sideways", his voice noticeably wavered. Leanne continued pointing, and Cane continued buckling under the bare-minimum pressure.

"He was testing this psychometric analyzer thing he'd been working on, and I was the control group, so I had this helmet on that was supposed to keep me from getting affected. He turned it on and then everybody else's heads blew up and I'm still a little fucked up about that to be honest, but when I tried to get help everybody had been all flipped and screwed." The story tracked with the average daily apocalypse, so Leanne didn't question it much further.

Having someone else with their sanity intact would be a boon, at least, especially since Harley was out of commission for the near future. The next question to deal with: why Harley had lost her mind but not Leanne. Cane had the excuse of the helmet, but Leanne hadn't been wearing anything on her head when this had all started.

"What do we do now?" The only answer to Cane's question was silence, followed by a heavy shrug of Leanne's broad shoulders. Leanne played the role of the team muscle, not the team brains. The other three handed the heavy intellectual lifting. Somebody ran past the two of them, screaming at the top of their lungs, and Cane sighed.

"I guess we should find Lee and Vell? Get the whole squad back together, and hope at least one more of them isn't crazy?" This time the answer to Cane's question came in the form of Leanne picking up Harley and throwing the tiny girl over her shoulder like a sack of potatoes. With the grumbling Harley secured, Leanne set out towards Lee's dorm room. Cane, assuming that meant yes, and lacking anything better to do in a world gone mad, followed.

"Are you sure you don't want to put her down?" Leanne shook her head. They were nearly to Lee's dorm now, and she still had Harley slung over her shoulder. The weight hardly bothered Leanne. Harley wasn't very big.

"Seems like she'd get kind of heavy after a while," Cane mused.

"You calling me fat, asshole?" Harley snapped. Leanne shook her slightly in an attempt to stop Harley from spouting further venom. It didn't work. Cane walked a few steps further away from Leanne.

"Sorry," he said, half-heartedly. The trio arrived at the door to Lee's dorm. Leanne tested the knob and found it was locked. She briefly considered kicking the door down, but decided to turn around and bend at the waist slightly to let Harley punch in the code to the door. It took some coaching from Cane for her to stop insulting him and put in the code, but she managed. Her brain-scrambled attitude hadn't made Harley completely useless.

Though it was buried beneath a mountain of abrasive self-centeredness and hostility, Harley still remembered that they had to save the day. With a loud beep, the door opened. The scene inside stood remarkably intact, given the general chaos that had consumed everyone on campus. For a moment Leanne wondered if Lee was even here, but soon enough she heard humming resonating from the direction of the kitchen. Leanne dumped Harley into a nearby chair and headed for the sound of the musical hum.

Lee stood in front of her small over, shoveling dollops of cookie dough onto a large baking sheet. Joan sat at the kitchen table, helping herself to another tray of cookies, already baked. Leanne nabbed one of the cookies before tapping Lee on the shoulder. The humming stopped and Lee looked up at Leanne with a broad smile.

"Leanne! How wonderful. I'd offer you a cookie but I see you've already helped yourself," Lee said. The cheer in her voice was infectious, in the same sense that a weeping sore was infectious: unpleasantly oozing and probably dangerous.

"No worries at all, darling, have as many as you like."

"These are like, crazy good cookies," Joan said.

"You should eat as many as you can, or else I'll get them first." Joan giggled. Leanne had met Joan maybe twice before today, but she hadn't struck Leanne as the giggling type. She'd likely been scrambled too, and Lee obviously had been. Leanne had never seen Lee this happy. Leanne grabbed Lee's shoulder once again and pointed towards the door. Catching on to her intent, Lee shook her head at the notion that they needed to spring into action to prevent the apocalypse.

"Oh, why bother," Lee said.

"Today's a wonderful day! Let's just enjoy it -and improve it with more cookies!" Lee stopped dolloping cookie dough onto the sheet and put it into the oven. As she finished the next step in her baking, Leanne picked her up and deposited Lee into the living room, to face off with Harley. The pint-sized roboticist was trying her best to sulk a hole in the chair.

"What're you looking at, princess?"

"Oh, I suppose that attitude change is unfortunate," Lee said, which only made Harley grumble more.

"But she's happy all the time, she can be grumpy for a day. I'm feeling great, and I deserve to!" Leanne rolled her eyes. The brain-scrambling had clearly cost Lee her empathy as well. Cane stepped up to offer a slightly more verbose explanation of the events.

"Lee, I get that you're happy, which is probably concerning given the circumstances," Cane said. If everyone's brains had been reversed, and Lee was happy, that meant Lee's default state was unhappy.

"But everybody's all backwards. A lot of people are suffering right now. You and your friends can help."

"Oh, let somebody else fix the problems for once," Lee said. She wandered back to the kitchen and grabbed herself a plate of cookies.

"I think I'm going to take the day off. I deserve a break, you know, we all do! Relax, have some cookies, and let somebody else handle the problems."

"Yeah, and I'm sure Vell will take care of it," Joan said.

"You can trust Vell with anything." Cane and Leanne shared a concerned glance. If Joan was reversed, then what she said now was the opposite of what she really thought. Both of them decided to compartmentalize that for later, as Lee carried on along the same thread.

"Oh, yes, Vell will handle it," Lee said.

"Vell's the nicest person I know." At this, Harley let out a bellowing, caustic laugh. It took Cane a moment to get over his surprise. Harley was usually more of a giggler.

"What're you laughing at?"

"Oh, it's great," Harley said.

"You guys are fucked."

"Why?"

"Because Vell Harlan is the nicest fucking person you know," Harley said.

"And now he's the opposite." There was about two seconds of delay before the realization struck Leanne like a ton of bricks.

"Oh no," she mumbled under her breath. Outside, a blue sky turned red. The laser grid, repurposed from the school's "the floor is lava" game, activated again, this time enclosing the island in a bubble of impassable energy. The already chaotic scene outside only became more panicked as the force-field imprisoned the entire school.

"Good afternoon students of the Einstein-Odinson academy," Vell's voice said. Even over the intercom system, Leanne noticed a new, harsh edge to his voice.

"You might be wondering what happened to the spineless coward who usually makes these announcements, and the answer is simple! He's not in charge anymore." Leanne put her head in her hands.

"I am," Vell's voice continued.

"As for what that means, well, still figuring it out, honestly. But if you want to start by throwing some tribute my way, maybe declaring your undying fealty to me, can't hurt. For now, nobody leaves -and I get to do whatever I want." The intercom fell silent. Leanne looked outside at the red sky, crackling with destructive power. One of their kindest friends had just become one of their cruelest enemies.