Nitoichi - Identities (Story)

Unity Tower, Skyway City, Saturday, October 11th, 3am

Annette turned over, slipping her slim legs from the bed and standing. She looked back to the bed, to the pool of blonde hair, the shapely back, the tanned skin. She's asleep, don't sweat it. Sure? Quite sure, I don't see what the problem is anyway. I don't want her involved, not yet. Your choice.

She slipped silently across the carpeted door and out into the lounge. She really needs to tidy up once in a while. Tell me about it. Annette cleared a space on the floor and sat down. Okay, here we go...

Meditation had always been easy for her, and she had spent long hours in her own mind, working to build her defences. Now she stepped in and opened everything up, all the doors, all the walls. There was nothing but darkness all around her until Nitoichi stepped out of the shadows. They sat down, in lotus position, facing each other.

"So, what do we do now?" Ni asked.

"I was hoping you could tell me, you seem to be in charge."

"Ha! You think so?" Ni grinned and leaned back, propping herself on her arms.

"You've been running around doing pretty much whatever you want."

"When you sleep, or let me out. Or let go." Ni smiled bleakly. "If you call that 'in charge' then I guess I am. I guess we talk. You learn to be more like me, and I learn to be more like you."

"And we meet in the middle. Okay. Where do we start?" Annette looked at Ni, and Ni looked back.

"Confidence," Nitoichi said suddenly, sitting up straight. "That's your real problem, it's always been your problem."

Annette nodded. "Yes, so... I've lacked confidence since I was a kid. I was fat..."

"You were never fat. You were plump, you didn't have much body definition. You were so not fat. See, that's my point, you're shy, you lack confidence in yourself. You always excused the fact that you just didn't want to talk to people by saying you were fat and they weren't interested." Ni sounded just a little angry and Annette began to lean back, unconsciously. "And that changed before you left school. Last couple of years of high school there were guys absolutely crawling all over you..."

"There so were not!" Annette broke in, looking offended.

"Jerry Manaheim, Darren Barker, Phil... whatever-his-name-was, there was even that jock, the football quarterback..."

"Gary? Gary Martlett? That was so going nowhere, he was, like eight inches shorter than me!"

"Hardly the point. They were there, and you were sunk into mental training and teaching yourself how to swing swords, and having a 'higher purpose.' Hell, look at what you decided to do to make ends meet, I mean, how geeky can you get? Shop assistant in a comic store? You might as well have painted a big sign on your chest saying 'not interested in relationships.' They'd have all seen it, they started being unable to look you in the face when you hit sixteen."

Annette hung her head. "Okay, okay, I'm a wallflower. What do we do about it?"

"Start listening to people? Lin, Richard, Dinah... Dinah, now there's a case in point. I mean, look at her." Ni raised her head and waved her arm in a somewhat over-dramatic and unnecessary motion. A patch of light appeared off to her right, the 'floor' of their dark, inner mindscape became the flagstones of the Galaxy Girl plaza, and on them stood Dinah Ewers.

Both girls looked at her as her image played out. She was walking. Just walking, nothing more. Even in this simple action she was all confidence, all dignity. Every movement showed her body off to perfection. Her hips swayed, her feet following a line which exaggerated the swaying into something both ladylike and erotic all at once. Poetry in motion, as the song said.

"She woke up in a swamp," Ni said, "with plants growing out of her. She learned to harness all of that, and she can do amazing things, but that's not what gives her power. She's learned to make her body into a weapon that's sharper than our swords. It's all down to confidence, and it's all learned."

"I can't do what she does," Annette scoffed. "She's... she's just, Dinah. I've not had her training, her life experience. I don't think I want either."

"You don't need it, ditz! But you can learn from her. You started. You went shopping and you bought that red dress. It took her ages, but you bought it. And you felt good wearing it, didn't you?" Annette nodded in reply and Ni grinned. "You enjoyed the attention, for the first time in years... first time ever. And now look how you're treating those kids in the shop. You're a damn hero, girl! They read about heroes all the time and when they get to meet a real one down the comic shop, she's a mouse. You'll shatter all their illusions."

"I'm not a hero, Ni," Annette replied, almost automatically. "You're the hero."

"I'm a psycho, girly. If I didn't have you to keep me in check I'd have been locked in the Zig by now. I don't take prisoners, I don't defeat criminals, I carve things up. The only time you can really let me off my chain is when we're fighting non-sentients, or it's really life-or-death."

"The Hellion..."

"Yeah, him, for example. The fight at the Towers on Wednesday. We didn't hurt any of those girls Richard has been looking after, y'know? I think we were trying to help them, actually, just before everything 'ported out. You can probably access the memories, if you want. I'm not hiding them any more."

"I'll do that... later."

"Frightened to find out what I've been up to?" Annette blushed slightly in response to the question. "Oh... want to be 'alone' for Thursday night with Lin? Fair enough."

Unconsciously, both girls turned to watch the image of Dinah again. She was sitting now, her posture perfect, a precise model of ladylike elegance, but with that added touch or erotic energy just waiting to be unleashed. "So, I let myself be more like you again," Annette said, "and I learn a few things from Dinah..."

"And I stop pretending you can't do without me and let myself go back to being the little sub-personality you draw on when you need to be a bit more of a cold, callous, heartless..."

"You aren't heartless! You might not be the glorious, perfect heroine like Lin, but you're not heartless. If you are, then I am, and I don't believe that." There was a hard edge to Annette's voice that stopped Ni in her tracks.

"Now..." Ni began. "Now, that's more like it. If you'd talked to me like that after the Samantha business we probably wouldn't be in this mess."

Annette grinned, a little amazed at her own reaction. Then her face straightened, her expression bleak. "Ni?"

"Yes, Annette."

"I'm not... You're not going to fade away are you? I'm not going to lose you?"

Ni blinked, looking surprised. "I guess I'll go if you don't need me any more."

Annette smiled. "Good, 'cos that's never going to happen. I like having you there to poke fun at me."

"Okay, I'll stay." Ni suddenly grinned a little mischievously. "On one condition."

"What's that?"

"That you let me poke fun at Lin sometimes as well."

Annette giggled. "Deal," she said, and the 'room' faded into total blackout.

Annette opened her eyes, took in a long breath through her nose, and allowed it to escape slowly through her open mouth. She did not need a clock to tell her that it was almost five in the morning. She stood and stretched. Joints popped.

"Is everything all right, Annette?" The voice came from what Annette assumed to be hidden speakers, but appeared to just float out of the air. It was quite low, BODICIA obviously did not wish to risk waking Linda in the next room.

"Dinah ask you to keep an eye on me, BODI?" she responded.

"I keep an eye on everything, Annette. You are not one to normally sit stock still in the middle of the floor for over an hour in the middle of the night. Also, your breathing and heart rate fell to abnormal levels. If it was not for my observation of your previous meditation sessions, I might have woken Linda and called paramedic drones."

Annette grinned. "I always knew I had good autonomic controls, but it's nice to have it confirmed. I'm fine, BODI. I just needed to have a long talk with Nitoichi."

"I was under the impression that you were Nitoichi, Annette."

"No... not quite, but we're getting there. Night, BODI, I'm going to get a bit more sleep."

"Goodnight, Annette. And say goodnight to Nitoichi for me, we do not want her feeling left out." There was a little edge of humour in the AI's voice, as if she was fooling with Annette.

"She won't be, BODI," Annette replied sleepily. "Not ever."

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Disclaimer: The above may be humerous, or at least may be an attempt at humour. Try reading it that way.
Posts are OOC unless noted to be IC, or in an IC thread.

Well written as ever, but I have a couple of questions about the story:

1. Wouldn't Annette be fearful of taking on too much of Ni's aggression? I'm only guessing but isn't this why she's split the too parts off? Surely the moment Ni raised the idea of Annette being more like her, Annette would have balked at it?

2. Would Annette really want to tell Bodi about talking to Ni straight away? As she's only just starting to come to terms with having a split personality surely she'd be keeping it to herself until she got it straight in her own head?

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[ QUOTE ]
1. Wouldn't Annette be fearful of taking on too much of Ni's aggression? I'm only guessing but isn't this why she's split the too parts off? Surely the moment Ni raised the idea of Annette being more like her, Annette would have balked at it?

[/ QUOTE ]

Annette believes, rightly or wrongly, that she needs some of Ni's aggressive nature since she's too passive without. She also believes, rightly or wrongly, that she can keep control of Ni. In practice, later events have shown that Annette isn't as in control as she thinks.

[ QUOTE ]
2. Would Annette really want to tell Bodi about talking to Ni straight away? As she's only just starting to come to terms with having a split personality surely she'd be keeping it to herself until she got it straight in her own head?

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, what you don't see before this was the RP'd scene where one of Zortel's characters, Juan Ross, got them together using psionics and had a nice long chat with Annette about the whole thing.

Also, Annette got sick early on of trying to hide her secret ID from people when she was terrible at it. She developed an attitude of "better to be honest." She had to be very practical fairly young, and has a pretty starightforward view on things. Besides, she knows Juan will report the whole thing, so there's no point in being coy.

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Disclaimer: The above may be humerous, or at least may be an attempt at humour. Try reading it that way.
Posts are OOC unless noted to be IC, or in an IC thread.