Fuzzy, Kenji, Julie, Sasha, Marco and Christina - Saturday, July 28th, 2074 - Evening - Blake Island

Fuzzy was definitely confused. She looked to Kenji whose face was impassive. She looked to Sasha who looked disgusted. Julie's face was still a mess of tears and snot and her eyes were red. Christina looked a mix of bored and frustrated in a way that only a teenager can perfect. Kenji walked away without saying a word.

"I don't understand," said Fuzzy.

"Why? Are you stupid or something?" mocked Christina.

"I'm not stupid," growled Fuzzy.

Sasha took half a step towards Christina and leaned forward.

"Look bitch, when we want your opinion we'll knock on your dumpster," mocked Sasha, acidly.

Christina audibly ground her teeth. Restrained as she was there was little she could do and doing anything but repeating your shame while being shamed while on the shame pole just meant asking for more time on it. However, the only students coming back tonight had just been Fuzzy, Kenji, Sasha and some troll student who they'd seen around, but had already been on the boat by the time they'd got there. Despite his size they'd barely noticed him since he was off on his own. So there were very few people to actually shame Julie and Christina.

"What happened?" asked Fuzzy.

"I called Christina a racist name and that is my shame," repeated Julie.

"I called Julie a fucking trog bitch," she snapped, "After she called me a knife-ear. Bitch, your ears are pointy too."

"You said it first," said Julie, sullenly.

Christina rolled her eyes and smiled nastily.

"Yeah? Prove it."

Julie couldn't and so she only looked away.

"Oh, I get it now," said Fuzzy, who sighed.

"How about you cut out the racist shit?" asked Sasha.

"She fucking started it,” she growled, "And did you ignore the part where she called me a knife-ear? She did it first. I was just giving as good as I got."

Sasha rolled her eyes.

"I wasted so much of my time with you last year," said Sasha, obviously annoyed, "And I know that you're exactly the kind of person to say that shit first. Fuck off with that prove it shit."

There was really no one else to witness the spectacle and so the shame pole just didn't have the same effect like it did when the entire student body was here. Sasha turned to go, but she paused as there seemed to be one last person who ambled their way towards them with long, ground eating steps.

It was the troll student, shadow looming large. He was huge and horned, over nine feet tall and muscular. Fuzzy turned and had to step back and crane her neck up to see him, but she’d never talked to him. He was older teen with horns that looked slicked back with no affectations. He was seriously ugly in a way that was distinctive with a large nose, heavy tusks and acne scars like the craters on the moon. The last of which was odd because no one at the school had acne, much less acne scars at all. So it seemed like he'd chosen to keep them. All over his body, there were small bone plates that stuck through his skin, which many trolls had. He was dark haired and his haircut looked new and short.

"I called Christina a racist word, and that is my shame," said Julie.

"I called Julie a racist word, and that is my shame," repeated Christina, exasperatedly.

Fuzzy noticed that Christina hadn't called Julie a trog again as it was a racist name that people called both orks and trolls, as they tended to be lumped together since trolls were so rare.

It was then that Kenji returned. He produced a small, wet, white cloth and after some gentle coaxing began to clean Julie's face of tears and snot. She began to shudder with new tears at the sudden kindness. Meanwhile the troll bent down to one knee in front of Christina, still very much taller than Christina, and leaned in.

"I don't think that's what you said before, Christina," he rumbled, moodily, "I heard exactly what you said. So why don't you say what you just said to me?"

It was Christina's turn to shudder. She didn't even bother to try and stare him down. So she looked away and licked her lips nervously while she pretended that the troll wasn't there.

"Hey, tall guy. What's your name?" asked Kenji.

The troll peered around Christina who turned her head in the opposite direction in a quick, sudden jerk as he nearly hit her with one of his horns.

"Hey, watch those horns," snapped Christina.

The troll pulled his head back a bit, but only a bit.

"My name is Marco Ivanoff," said Marco, as he ignored Christina.

Christina didn't seem to like this at all and focused a death glare on Marco.

"Hey Marco, I'm Kenji. I cleaned up my friend's face here," said Kenji, "I think this corner isn't all covered in tears and snot. Maybe Christina's face is dirty."

"Oh gross. Gross gross gross..." repeated Christina, her tone horrified.

Marco smirked down at the cloth.

"That's very kind of you," said Marco, "We're not allowed to touch people on the pole though. I think you can get away with it for being nice this one time since you acted out of kindness. That's allowed. We can also say whatever we feel like, but we have to remember that if we go on the pole people can say whatever it is they like to us. Though I am tempted to let Christina know exactly what I think of her."

"Groooooss..." whined Christina.

He flashed Kenji a smile and a thumbs up which Kenji flashed right back to him.

"They had to build a bigger pole for me when I got here you know," said Marco, "Not everyone likes it until they see what it does for people, but it tends to even you out. Some people really turn the hate up thinking it's all fun and games to torture someone who's helpless. Those people don't stay long off the pole and then it's their turn. It's all about empathy and forgiveness. It's not exactly traditional, but whatever. The staff is really proactive about this. The pole sees a lot of people in the first few weeks. They all act like spoiled little corporate nobility outside, but here, we're all the same. The shame pole actually mellowed me out once I stopped ripping it out of the ground."

Fuzzy noticed that the "pole" wasn't a thin pole, but one that was at least a foot in diameter and it looked firmly set into the ground. Trolls were strong due to their size and it seemed that Marco was no exception.

He looked back to Christina, who'd stopped shuddering and looked at him with eyes hard with defiance.

"Life is a lot better without hate, Christina. It eats you up inside. Aren't you glad I'm such a nice, respectable man who doesn't get mad easily?" asked Marco, calmly, "Imagine if I acted exactly like what you thought all trolls trolls are like?"

Christina said nothing but her eyes remained defiant, now mixed with open hatred for Marco.

"These two will be here tomorrow too unless they make up and apologize," said Marco, "And then they'll have to explain their racism to everyone else. Mother Bear takes magical safety seriously. Christina picks a fight with one of the most powerful students in the school..."

"Prove it," snapped Christina.

"You have a reputation," said Marco.

"Yeah," said Sasha.

"You broke the rules that we learned in freshman year," said Marco, "Allowing both of you to make up before this hits the rest of the student body is extremely generous."

He got to his feet and dusted off his knee. He stepped around Christina and looked at Julie.

"Like I said, life is better without hate,” he said, gently, “Unless you want to be up here like I was every day. If it gets too bad you come and talk to me.”

Julie didn't say anything, but nodded ever so slightly without looking up.

"I'm going to have some dinner. Nice meeting you, Kenji," he said.

"Likewise, Marco,” said Kenji.

Marco walked away. Christina let out a breath she'd been holding.

Fuzzy went home to her cabin. Kenji had mailed the bullet back home to Puyallup by courier, which had been far more expensive than the bullet. The knife and arrows had been checked into the school's security, to be given back when she was allowed to hunt. Puppy was allowed to do his business outside and then Fuzzy put her clothes back, grabbed a quick shower and dressed in the school uniform, because she really didn't have anything else so fine and easy to wear.

In a mirror in the bathroom, she checked her teeth. She'd never really had bad teeth before, but they'd never been great. But that was okay, because everyone's teeth were like hers, if not frequently worse. Now they were pearly white and straight, which deeply unnerved her.

"Seven-hundred nuyen," he whispered to herself.

That was when she allowed herself to cry. Not for Julie and Christina. That'd been nothing to her. And not for her teeth or the cost, which she'd never paid. That'd just been what finally set her off.

No, it'd mostly been for what she'd seen in the ACHE. Dead and dying addicts, starving people, desperate poverty and mounds of trash. She cried because in Puyallup, as much nuyen as she had now would have been a nest egg to really get started on the larger game so she could make even more. Five-hundred and fifty nuyen was a fortune back in Puyallup. But now a trip to this "moo-see'um" and some tasty meat buns took almost a tenth of what she'd made. And the dentist was more than what she had.

Everything was sad and expensive and overwhelming. And then she'd seen the artwork with all of its colors and beauty and all of the wonderful things there. It was all overwhelming and so she cried. But she cried in secret, because she learned that it was important not to show weakness to others. After all, weakness was just an invitation to predators. It was one of the first things that one learned in the ash wastes of the Puyallup Barrens.

Puppy snuggled up to her, squirmed into her arms and licked at her face. And she gasped in shock from the sudden, loving contact that he offered her. After hugging him and allowing him to lick her face a few more times, she laid on the bed while he snuggled with her and thought that maybe, she didn't have to cry alone anymore.

---

Time flew by since Fuzzy just had the one class on one subject at the start of the semester. That subject was magical safety, which was being drilled into her head. She'd been told that other classes would come later, but magical safety was so, as Mother Bear often said, "So you don't blow your fool heads off".

The next weekend came and went. Fuzzy didn't get any new clothes, but decided to stay on the island. Instead she walked the paths on the island. The island was only a square mile, but there were dozens of paths which kept her busy for the entire day as she explored the forest as well as the beaches surrounding the island. And of course, she stared out at the Puget Sound. Never in her life had she seen so much water and it fascinated her.

it seemed that Julian had come through on his promise to get her weapons back too, though she wasn't allowed to fire her bow anywhere near where a student might be for safety reasons. The entire southwest side of the island had been blocked off for her hunts. Not physically, but the border was shown in augmented reality and she was only allowed to use her flu-flu arrows until Julian and Mother Bear said so. They were deadly accurate within around thirty to forty feet, but quickly fell after that, which made them nice for retrieval and great for not accidentally shooting where she wasn't supposed to, like towards the school or the student cabins.

This system kept everyone else away from her and her away from everyone else while she hunted. Apparently solitude was often requested and the southwest part of the island was for students who needed solitude, though usually that was for development of their magic. And of course, the island's security staff and security spirits kept an eye on her, out of sight. Allowing her to have weapons and hunt was generous, but only while she was observed and away from people, and of course her weapons were turned in to Julian or one of the security staff if he was busy or not around. This Fuzzy didn't really care for as being unarmed made her nervous.

Unlike in Seattle the commlink that she had clipped to her ear wasn't constantly buzzing with activity and so she learned about this place and the outdoors. Mother Bear loaded a program onto her commlink and if she asked it the right question in the right way it would identify this animal, that tree, this plant or that sound. It was handy, and she liked learning about her new environment.

Sadly, "Is it tasty?" was not regarded as important information. Also the voice actor was the same as "Sammy the Salmon," and his voice grated on her nerves. It was for children, because it was assumed that adults could read and children could not despite the fact that adults might not want to read everything. It was a conceit of the educators who wrote the software all those years ago. Still, she figured out how to make Sammy's voice more normal sounding after much trial and error and that's when she truly began to learn about her environment.

She enjoyed these days to herself and sometimes, with Puppy too. People came with emotions and problems that were messy and complicated and it drained her to be around them for so long. She liked some of them and viewed others as allies, or at least potential allies, but it was tiring. And when she took Puppy on a walk with her, he loved to run, and then when he got tired he spent time in her arms. That was okay though. She was going to be outside a lot and if Puppy was going to be her dog he'd have to learn to be outside a lot too.

And that was how the next two weeks passed. She went to school, she spent time with Sasha and sometimes Kenji during meals, she hunted birds that the "Sammy the Salmon" program told her were okay to hunt on the weekends and otherwise enjoyed a near worry free existence for the first time in her life.

It was Monday after class when Sasha sat across from her at dinner. Tonight was some sort of fish dinner. Fuzzy didn't particularly like fish and so she went with something simpler. She stuffed her hot dog heavily with condiments, especially chili. Kenji sat with Julie sometimes now. He talked while Julie pretended not to listen and so he ended up performing a sort of monologue which he was surprisingly good at. Julie was still separate from Fuzzy and Sasha, but closer than she was before.

"Hey, I was looking for you on Sunday," ventured Sasha.

"Went on a long walk. Went hunting, walked Puppy, hunted some more."

"Oh, that makes sense. I didn't see you on the boat," she said, somewhat awkwardly, "Um...What kind?"

"I bagged two California quail yesterday," she said, "I would've gotten more but I've been working at shooting birds mid-flight with my new arrows."

Fuzzy knew enough now not to tell Sasha that she was sending the bird meat home to Rat Man. This winter was looking to be a lean one again and high quality bird meat would sell for quite a bit more than barrens bush meat, at least if Rat Man could find a buyer. There just wasn't much meat on your average bird though and there were a lot of kids, so it was becoming something of a project to keep them all fed.

"Isn't that really hard?" asked Sasha, "Killing a bird while it's flying?"

Fuzzy made a tight ring with her thumb and forefinger, about the size of an old United States quarter.

"The ones that I'm hunting have a kill area of about this big if I want all of the meat," said Fuzzy, "All while flying in a random direction at about ten to thirty feet away."

Sasha looked at Fuzzy incredulously.

"Did you enhance your shooting skills with magic or something?" asked Sasha, "No way does a normal person make that shot."

Fuzzy only took a bite of her chili dog. She didn't explain that she hadn't hit anything at all until this week and that at present, she only hit them one time in ten. Still, being able to was impressive, even by her standards. Though she was still working on aiming in a way that didn't harm the meat.

"It's all me," said Fuzzy, a little smugly, "Bow hunters can do that when they're good."

Sasha pursed her lips in thought and then suddenly looked strangely shy.

"So I was sort of hoping that we could hang out. The school is kind of lame to be at all the time even if it's got good hunting," said Sasha, "And I know that you're maybe used to hunting devil rats on an urban safari, but Ares has private hunting grounds in the arcology where I live. It's pretty big. And I guess that deer aren't that big a deal to someone like you, but maybe you could show me?"

This tempted Fuzzy. She wasn't allowed to hunt deer yet on the island and even if she could, she didn't know how to butcher one. But she knew from her AR program that she could get at least fifty pounds of meat off a full grown white-tail and that would be plenty to send back to Rat Man. More if she included bones, offal and blood, which she would, of course. And the antlers would probably make a good for Puppy so he'd stop chewing on everything.

Fuzzy was also tempted to spend more time with Sasha. She liked her friend and Sasha had been making increasingly less subtle hints about spending time together outside of the island. So Sasha, who seemed to sense Fuzzy's interest began to press.

"Yeah, it's a huge private hunting ground," she continued, "It's where a lot of Knight-Errant upper management go to blow off steam when they still need to be on-site at the arcology. But since we won the policing contract from the metroplex from Lone Star last year, that means it's not as busy as it used to be since everyone else is way more busy. We'd probably have the place to ourselves if I reserved it."

Sasha's smile grew wider as she grew more and more excited.

"Maybe you could teach me to shoot a bow?" she asked.

"I could," said Fuzzy, "But a deer is pretty big. It'd probably take all day to process."

Sasha's face fell a bit, but then she put her smile right back on.

"Oh, you butcher your own animals? Ugh, you're just like my dad," she said, a bit annoyed, but then she was right back to smiles again, "Well...I could probably get you an instructor to teach you...Us how to cook and clean an animal...Or I could just get someone to do that for us. That's pretty normal, right? Just a normal thing that normal people do...Normally."

It seemed like Sasha wasn't sold on that last part, but even Fuzzy understood that Sasha was really trying to get Fuzzy to spend the day with her. Fuzzy did need to learn how to do that but if she could get instruction on her own time, she wouldn't mind spending time with Sasha. The word "normal" was one of Fuzzy's watchwords lately, though. Sasha had been extremely forgiving when Fuzzy made a mistake and slipped up in conversation for some reason.

"Maybe I could learn with one of those programs on my commlink," mused Fuzzy.

"Or that!" said Sasha, obviously relieved, "Definitely that. That sounds so, so much better than spending hours carving up a dead deer. And that leaves more fun stuff for us to do after the hunt."

"Well..." said Fuzzy, slowly.

"We'll go hunting and hiking and I'll show you all around the arcology afterwards. You can even sleep over if you want."

"Sleep over?" asked Fuzzy, "You want me to spend the night?"

Fuzzy intuited that much, but she didn't really understand the full meaning of it.

"Yeah! It'll be great! It'll be so much fun, I promise. Pleeeeease?"

---

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