In Pure Genius, Tor circled around Jelly, who sat crossed-legged in the middle of the cube. He slid his fingertips over the surface of his Decapidisc.
“What’s that around your neck?” she asked.
“Never mind that. Jaycee put it on me while I train you. I’m the communications officer and you have to do what I say—”
“—Ohh, I know what it is. It cuts your head off.”
“Look, I’m in charge, here,” Tor fumed. “Now, try that again. It’s not me wanna kill it, as you said. Incorrectly. It’s I want to kill it. Use the correct first person singular pronoun, please.”
“I … want to kill?”
“Very good,” Tor clapped his hands together. Twenty panels on the adjacent wall lit up. All but one displayed a variety of adjectives.
Big – Small – Drunk – Sad – Fast – Mage – Elated – Drown
Jelly licked her lips and pressed her claws against the tile underneath her legs. She began to read them aloud, “Big… Small—”
“—No, no. I don’t want you to read them. I want you to tell me which one is the noun.”
“Noun,” Jelly repeated. “Like a thing word?”
“That’s right, like a thing word. Take a look.”
She scanned each of the words and landed on the sixth one. She turned to him and tried her luck, “Mage?”
“Well done, yes.”
“That’s me,” Jelly clapped her hand-paws together. The ends of her infinity claws clinked together, reminding Tor of just how screwed he was if he ever got into a fight with her. He cleared his throat and snapped his fingers at the tile.
The word Mage expanded, followed by a blank box.
“Can you give me the definitive definition of the word mage, please?”
“It is a girl God. Girl good with magic.”
“I guess that’s accurate enough. Good work.”
“Ha ha,” Jelly swished her tail in triumph.
“Right, let’s try something a little more advanced…”
“This is quite advanced,” Bonnie walked around the punch bag and traced her gloved fingers around the canvas, “Jitsaku is all about harnessing your oppressor’s anger and using it against them. You think you can do that?”
“I don’t care about my oppressor,” Jelly swiped at the bag and flung her infinity claws out, “I care about me. What does oppressor mean?”
“It means the bad guy, sweetie.”
“Not liking bad guys.”
“You don’t like the bad guys, you mean,” Bonnie said. “Didn’t Tor teach you anything?”
“Tor is a bad guy. He tried to kill us. Not wanting.”
JAB-JAB-SWUNCH!
Jelly smashed the bag with all her might. It flew past Bonnie’s face, lifting the ends of her hair over her neck, “Whoa!”
“Sonofabitch,” Jelly muttered and thwacked the bag once again, this time with her right foot, “Come and get it.”
Bonnie gasped. “Jelly! Where did you hear that word?”
“It?”
“No! The S-word.”
“Sonofabitch?” Jelly said with a cute nonchalance.
“Don’t repeat it, Jelly!”
“You said it earlier when we started.”
“Did I?”
“Yes.”
“Oh,” Bonnie failed to recollect the incident. She shrugged and allowed her authority to remain intact, “Well, whatever. Just do as I do, not as I say.”
“Huh?”
“No, wait—” Bonnie corrected herself and thought over the phrase, “Do as I say, and as I do.”
“Me confused.”
Bonnie exhaled and closed her eyes, “Just don’t say that word again, okay? No swears, please.”
“Jaycee and Tripp say rude words. One time, I heard Jaycee call someone a mother—”
“—Right,” Tor held his Decapidisc in anger, “Let’s get this straight once and for all. Where and when to use cuss words.”
A variety of colorful curse words appeared on the panels inside Pure Genius.
“Okay,” Jelly leaned back on her elbows and started up at the bank of tiles. She clapped eyes on an eight-letter word she’d not seen before, “Tor?”
“Yes, Jelly?”
“What does dick… head mean?”
The tile containing the offending word flashed as soon as the utterance left her mouth.
“Oh, uh,” he struggled with the literal explanation, “It’s, uh, a stupid person? A bad word.”
“Like a bad guy?” Jelly added with stern curiosity. Tor breathed a sigh of relief, thankful that he didn’t have to explain why boys and girls were different.
“Yes, yes, exactly. Like a bad guy.”
A cheeky grin crept along her face. She eyed him with salacious menace and pointed her infinity claw at his face, “Dickhead.”
“What?”
“You’re a dickhead,” she said. “A bad guy. And I know what a dick is.”
“That’s not funny,” Tor pointed to a four letter word beginning with “F’ on the next tile, “Okay, smart-ass. If you’re so clever, do you know what that word means?”
She turned to it and took a deep breath, “I know how to say it but Bonnie and mommy said I shouldn’t.”
“Good, I’m glad mommy said that.”
“Also, she said that’s what you can do to yourself if you go anywhere near her again.”
Tor punched the wall in anger, “God damn it.”
“Umm, you swore, Tor,” she laughed at his anguish, “I’m going to tell.”
“Please don’t—”
“—Please don’t knock the cups off, honey,” Wool watched Jelly press her chin against the surface of the table, “I mean it. Try to resist.”
Jelly looked at the five empty cups perched in a row. Her paws twitched, wanting to strike each one.
Wool tested the cat’s obedience, “Do not touch those cups. Remember what you did during the Star Cat Trials—”
“Miew,” the very thought of the needlessly violent competition made her thrash the first cup off the edge and onto the floor.
“I didn’t think you’d be able to hold that in,” Wool said. “But you need to learn to obey orders, honey.”
“I wanna knock ‘em all off.”
“Think of them as fingers,” Wool said. “If that was me hanging off the side of the building, I like to think you’d help me back up.”
“Mmm, no. My instinct wants me to knock them off. Make them fall.”
“Ignore your instincts, honey. Just look at them. Exercise some mercy. It’s a valuable tool to master.”
“Miew,” Jelly’s snorts of derision fogged up the side of the plastic cups, “No, no… don’t…” she whispered to herself, “Resist…”
“Don’t do it, Jelly.”
“Uhhh,” she growled and clenched her fists, “No, it’s no use.”
Jelly tore into the four cups.
SCHWIP-SCHWIP-SCHWAAP. Clunk.
The final cup spun around on the floor, providing the perfect denouement to her failure of the task.
“Sorry.”
“Why did you do that?”
“Because I wanted to. Rule number one. I get to do what I want, when I want.”
“I see Tor’s classes are working,” Wool spat with sarcasm. She picked the cups from the floor and returned them to the edge of the desk, one by one.