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

[edgeofyourseat]

[But what if she's really into pain and doesn't know it 'cause she can't get hurt? That would suck!] he insists.

[self_composed]

[She didn't always have it, she developed it as a kid. Apparently she gets hungry, so if that were something she were into - which I hope you realize is ludicrously uncommon, especially at your level of intensity - she could starve herself for a bit and enjoy lovely abdominal agony. She has run tests, but not as many tests as I would expect you to run if you woke up with her power and were frantic for a loophole.]

"Hmm." Bella taps her chin. "What if you tweeze hairs out of your leg or something? Will they refuse to come out, or does it just not hurt when they do?"

[edgeofyourseat]

Alice is momentarily distracted by that thought.

It is kind of genuinely horrifying in a way that very few things are, until he remembers that Bella has magic pain powers, which makes it a little better, and then he remembers that he could have magic pain powers if he wanted to and could use them on himself, and then it's fine.

[regularsized]

"I have not in fact tried that bizarrely specific test," she says. "I do shed hair sometimes in the normal way."

[self_composed]

"Have you got tweezers?" Bella says. "I'm curious!"

She hits Alice with a comforting medium-square amount of "tension headache" flavor, as a screwed up long-distance substitute for a pat on the head. [There there. You are very unlikely to wake up with her power.]

[edgeofyourseat]

He hugs himself and grins, appropriately comforted. [I love you.]

[regularsized]

"I don't have tweezers," she admits. "Sorry to disappoint."

[self_composed]

"Rats. Hm. What else hurts but doesn't really injure... I assume you can cut your nails, right? Or they'd be ridiculously long. What about the nail that's still right over the nail bed? For most people any direct contact with the skin under the fingernail will hurt." Pause. "Am I being creepy? I am concerned that I am being creepy."

[regularsized]

"I am more entertained than creeped out by a long shot," says Bridget. "I will let you know if that changes. I used to chew my fingernails when I was a kid, post-miracle, and I never managed to hurt myself that way; does that adequately answer your question?"

[self_composed]

"Depends on how aggressively you chewed them."

[regularsized]

"Pretty aggressively, but then, I don't know how much chewing is usually enough to hurt."

[self_composed]

"Enough to get down to the pink. I encourage you to mess around with that if you care, but I'm going to file that under 'probably doesn't hurt'. Hmm. What if you sleep on a terrible bed for a week solid, or drink preposterous amounts of things like alcohol or coffee or other things that can kill you in quantity?"

[regularsized]

"I haven't experimented with either of those. How do you come up with these things?" she wonders.

[self_composed]

"I'm very creative," says Bella. "You are old enough to drink, right? I'm assuming. Perhaps you are an absurd prodigy with a PhD at age twenty."

[regularsized]

"Arguably I am an absurd prodigy, but not quite that absurd, no."

[self_composed]

"How old are you then?"

[regularsized]

"Twenty-six. I started my PhD when I was twenty, is that absurd enough for you?"

[self_composed]

"That is quite absurd," says Bella, congratulatory.

[regularsized]

"Thank you," says Bridget, amused.

[self_composed]

"So you can see if you can get a hangover, and if you can't, increasing attempts at liver poisoning would be fascinating, although I'll understand if you don't care to risk the latter."

[regularsized]

"I haven't experimented with hangovers, but I feel pretty safe in saying I don't get them."

[self_composed]

Bella chuckles. "I'm led to understand that you are lucky in this respect as in others."

[regularsized]

"Yeah, so I've gathered."

[self_composed]

"If you and something else experience a lot of friction, like if you'd fallen off my bike and gone skidding across the road, does it generate heat that simply fails to hurt you, or fail to generate heat at all? I think it would be obvious if you were absolutely frictionless, but in the same sense that your wrist failed to go past a certain point perhaps you don't generate friction past a certain point?"

[regularsized]

"Good question. I haven't investigated it specifically."