super speed and other exceptional abilities

[self_composed]

Wisconsin fast plants (so called because they are from Wisconsin, fast-growing, and plants) are the subject of Bella and Bridget's chosen bio experiment. It involves taking at least some measurements after sunset - Bella managed to find an exact specific experiment design that hasn't been done before, when she heard they were allowed to choose their own, and even though all it will determine is whether indoor plants without windows can "tell if it's night" even if you leave the light on all the time, she is slightly excited about this.

She meets Bridget there. They measure their plants in the lit room and the dark room, take pictures, and write down subjective evaluations of leaf droopiness. They leave.

They're about a third of the way to Bella's building when a man's voice behind them says, "Hello, girls."

Comments

[self_composed]

"You don't have any ability to suppress your power, do you?" Bella calls into the kitchen. "Even if you really wanted to?"

[regularsized]

"I don't particularly want to," she calls back, "but I did try once for the hell of it."

She reappears in the doorway.

"It didn't work."

[self_composed]

"What did you try exactly?"

[regularsized]

"Various mental configurations of wanting it to take a hike for a while," she says, shrugging.

[self_composed]

"But not, say, prayer or incense or putting yourself in a situation where being invulnerable would be worse than not under really high stakes."

[regularsized]

"I am definitely not ever going to do the last one on purpose," she says, "and the first two fall under 'too much effort for too little reward'. I'm not going to exhaust the possibilities of how to accomplish something I don't want to do in the first place."

[self_composed]

"Fair enough," Bella says. "I suppose at this point you have plenty of reason to believe it won't suddenly fail you under adverse circumstances."

She considers. "Your jaw muscles got sore when you bit your tongue - I wonder if you could cause them actual damage? Or if you just aren't strong enough to do that?"

[regularsized]

"From experience, although granted not experience trying to hurt myself, my muscles just stop getting more sore after a while."

[self_composed]

"Huh." Bella had been considering flicking a triangle of sore-jaw-muscles at Bridget to see if it would bounce off, but she doesn't really need that information and it might be noticeable. "What experience is relevant here, if not that?"

[regularsized]

"General exercise?"

[self_composed]

"Hm. Are you sure it's all muscle soreness, not tendons or something?"

[regularsized]

"I haven't made any intense effort to find out."

[self_composed]

"Did it hurt when I twisted your wrist at all? That would be mostly tendons."

[regularsized]

"Nope."

[self_composed]

"Inconclusive but suggestive. I suppose if someone else hits you in a place where any pain would be partially muscular that also fails to hurt though, so perhaps it's only internal exertion. Hmmm."

[regularsized]

"My best guess is that it's related to being able to build muscle," she offers.

[self_composed]

"Which I presume you can do? Or you'd be a stick."

[regularsized]

"Exactly."

[self_composed]

"Is there an unusual upper limit on the amount of that you can do - or the speed at which you can do it?" Bella inquires.

[regularsized]

"Not especially, that I can tell."

[self_composed]

"Have you done enough weight training or whatever that you'd have been liable to notice?"

[regularsized]

"No, I don't think so."

[self_composed]

"There's something you could try if curious, then. Hmm."

[regularsized]

"If curious and suddenly oversupplied with free time," she says dryly.

[self_composed]

"Hm? Aren't you in three classes that are well below your academic competence, and you do - origami? Was it origami?" Bella tries to fake forgetting nonessential things, when she remembers. "What else is taking up your time?"