(A/N: Oh, my God! I think I underestimated the popularity of this story! Seriously, this had three or four reviews a few weeks ago and now it has almost twenty! Amazing how that happens.
I have read all of the reviews and their suggestions and while I do like them, I don't think I'll be doing too many of them (at least for now). Remember, this is Layla's story, not Ben, Gwen, or even Kevin's. Yes, they will play a part in this, but not a big one.
Just one thing I want to get off my chest, I don't like it when people hound me to update stories by leaving a review on an unrelated story. I'm not into censoring, but it does upset me when someone is more worried about "Ben 10" and using an unsuccessful "Pokemon" story to get attention. (You know who you are.)
One of the things that was brought up a couple of times was Layla's future husband and family. I might consider taking a break from the main story and writing a chapter that focuses on her kids and possibly Ken and Devin. But for now, that's not even the itinerary. It's not out of the realm of possibility, it's just not going to happen right now.
Also, I saw someone suggest that I should consider the possibility of a co-writer with all of this in order to update sooner. Believe me, I did consider it in the past, but I decided against it because I didn't like the idea of people telling me what they would change or do. I've said it before and I'll say it now, these are my stories and no one else's (except for the one that I did write with someone else but that doesn't count necessarily because we both published our own).
Anyway, with all of that out of the way, I really want everyone to enjoy this chapter. Before I let you go, I have to say this, warning: mental health issues such as eating disorders will ensue. Don't worry, it won't last the entire story, just this chapter.)
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Layla could not get her mind off of the simulation she watched or the idea of potentially being a Plumber herself. She knew if she did ultimately decide to become one, it would not happen immediately. She understood little about how to enlist, but knew enough to understand that it likely would take some time.
According to what Patelliday told her, there was a physical exam that had to be done in order to begin the basics of Plumber training. The main issue with that being her own physique, she was in worse shape than a cornstalk and probably weighed less than a four-foot long catfish.
If she wanted any chance of becoming a Plumber, she had to be healthier. She couldn't make herself taller, but she could try to get to a better weight. She had a goal in mind and wanted to get started on her aspirations sooner than later.
The next day, as per the usual routine, Bai-Obi would come to her quarters with food in hand. However, he was far less talkative than how he normally was with her, he was distant and slightly cold. She thought it had something to do with her questions the other day, but she didn't bother to ask because she did not want to irritate him.
She quickly got to work, picking and choosing which foods to eat and how much. She could read a little bit of the alien language the Plumbers used, but not too much. Fortunately, the device she watched holograms on had a translator built into it, which she used to read the packages.
To her dismay, only a small portion of the food was healthy - or what she understood to be healthy by human standards - which were only a couple of small appetizers. Furthermore, she discovered that her favorite meal, green twisted noodles coated in a cheese-like sauce that slightly tasted like honey, was not one of them.
She ate the healthy meals she isolated on her tray, one of which was a dark bluish-green meaty substance with the shape and density of beef jerky and the other was what she could only compare to a fruit cocktail. When she was finished, she still had an empty feeling in her stomach.
Her goal was not to starve herself, so she willingly opened another meal, one that was roughly about the same portion as the other two. She always had a fullness in her stomach after eating and did not feel like doing too much afterwards, but she didn't want that to happen now. She wanted to eat enough for energy, but not enough that she became sluggish.
She finished that meal and did not eat anything else, now that she had filled her stomach enough. Instead she got onto her hands and knees on the floor and stretched her legs as far as she could. She held herself up on her erect arms and started to bend her elbows as she did a push-up.
Exercises were something she rarely did and only knew how to do a couple of them, but she wanted to try to develop a little bit of muscle. She remembered the Plumbers from the other day, most of them were quite muscular and she figured that it was likely due to training, so she decided to practice.
She was not good with push-ups and knew she must have been doing them improperly, she stopped when her wrists and upper arms became sore. She maneuvered her body into a sitting position and started to rub her arms.
While she was still on the floor, she decided to do the next exercise she knew, sit-ups. She laid down and bent her knees, her hands slid on the floor as she sat up and laid back down. She repeated the process over and over before she eventually ran out of breath and stopped.
She stood up, only to be met with a pain on her lower back from the sit-ups. Her tailbone was sore, just like her arms, but not enough that she was unable to walk.
She was done with her exercises for the moment, although she might consider doing more of them later. She decided to sit down on her bed in order to rest her sore bodies for a while. It was only at that moment that she realized her stomach was suddenly hurting.
She heard the door open and Patelliday came into her quarters from his, "Hey, I have some time before my lunch's over and decided to come see you."
"I'm good," she smiled. She raised her arm slightly and flinched from a sharp pain due to the soreness.
He noticed her flinching and asked her, "Are you alright?"
She nodded, "Yes, I'm fine. I think I just slept weird."
She decided not to tell him what she had been doing before he checked on her. She didn't know if he would understand why she did it.
He seemed to accept her excuse, "Okay. Try not to move around a lot."
She smiled and laughed, "I will."
He looked at the time on the gauntlet of his Plumber suit, "Oh, my time's almost up. But, like I said, I'm just here to check on you and now I better get goin'."
"You can take some of that if you want," she told him, pointing at her food.
"I guess I have the time to grab myself a little snack," he smiled. He grabbed a package no bigger than a pouch of chocolate candies from her ration. "Mmm, mmm! Gracapil nuts, tasty!"
She personally did not enjoy them, they were small like sunflower seeds and covered a green fuzz. Whenever she ate them, she felt as though she had a hairball stuck in her throat.
He put the nuts into a container on his utility belt and looked at his gauntlet again, "Uh-oh! I'm gonna be late!" He ran out of her room in a hurry, "I'll be back later!"
She got up from her bed after he left and went to get the water she had on the table with the rest of her food. She felt something on the bottom of her foot, something she had stepped on by accident. When she lifted her foot, she discovered an object as small as a thumb drive, only bulkier and slightly cylindrical with squared ends.
She thought it might have belonged to Patelliday and that it likely fell out of his utility belt when he put his snack inside the container. She left her room with the object in hand, hoping that he might not have gone back to his duties yet, but he was not there.
She decided to try to catch up to him and return it, in case it was something important. The door to their quarters did not open automatically for her, only for him because of his uniform, she had to use a code to get out. Fortunately, she knew what it was, so that she could leave in the event of an emergency.
The door opened as soon as she put the code in, she looked down both sides of the corridor, but she didn't see him anywhere. There was only one other option, she had to leave the room in order to find him.
Although she was technically allowed to leave on her own, she did have to tell Patelliday where she was going first. However, he would often turn off his message receiver when he was busy, so trying to tell him would be redundant since he would not answer. So, she stepped out and began her search for him.
She had no idea which direction he might have gone in, so she was forced to make a choice with a fifty-fifty probability of finding him. The odds were not in her favor either way, but since she didn't know if the item he left behind was important or not, she made her decision by walking down the right side.
She felt skittish and somewhat embarrassed walking in a corridor filled with Plumbers. Patelliday once said the quarters they were living in were for families, meaning the Plumbers passing her might have families as well. While that made her slightly less afraid, it also didn't because these were individuals that could have as much experience as Patelliday.
She tried to ignore the Plumbers walking by her and focused on the reason why she left her room in the first place. All she had to do was find her adoptive father and return the item.
Before she knew it, she was at the end of the corridor and, once again, she didn't know what direction to go in. She wiped the sweat she felt on her palms on her pants and went down the left side.
Down this separate corridor, she realized that she was in a different section of the base living quarters. For one, the Plumbers suddenly started to look younger, their uniforms newer yet strangely not as durable.
Unlike the older Plumbers, who were careful not to walk into her, these people would walk or run straight into her, sometimes on purpose, and they would not apologize or help her. She had no courage to confront them about it, most of them were much bigger than her and although she had her powers, she did not want to do something she would regret.
The doors to each of the rooms she passed had been closed, until she came across one that was wide open, it looked like some kind of bathroom. She didn't want to intrude on anyone's private life, but she saw someone she recognized immediately, Bai-Obi.
She had never seen him without his white armor and in that room he wore an all black outfit that covered everything but his head, feet, and hands. It was very form-fitting and revealed something chilling about him, he was very lanky, almost skeletal; it made his pale skin seem ghostly sick. He stood over a sink, staring at his reflection in a mirror as his hands gripped the basin.
She didn't know what he was doing until she watched him swallow something from a small bottle he concealed in his palm. He covered his mouth a second later and emptied his stomach into the sink. He turned on the faucet to flush the vomit down the drain.
What he was doing scared her, he was purposefully torturing himself for reasons she didn't want to know. All she did know was that she had no desire to go to the extent he was doing with her own aspiration.
She was about to leave, but then her arm was suddenly grabbed by Bai-Obi when he realized he hadn't closed the door. He had a glint in his solid black eyes that made her stomach drop like a brick in the ocean.
"Do not tell Magister Patelliday anything about this!" he hissed. He released his grip on her arm, causing her to fall to the floor in shock, and closed the door.
She got up from the floor and ran away as fast as she could. She managed to retrace her steps back to the corridor she and her adoptive father lived on. When she found their quarters, he was there, about to go inside.
"Layla, what are you doing out here?" he asked. He saw her hyperventilating and crying and quickly ushered her inside, closing the door. "Sweetie, what happened to you? Are you alright?"
She showed him the item in her hand, "I wanted to give this to you. It fell out of your pocket."
He took it out of her palm, "I was actually coming back for this. It has several files of important information that I need for work." He ruffled her hair, "I appreciate the thought."
Ordinarily, she would smile and laugh, but she didn't. She still had what she experienced with Bai-Obi on her mind. She also had what she did earlier that day in her thoughts as well.
He noticed her change in behavior, "Layla, what's wrong? If there's something bothering you, you know you can tell me about it."
She swallowed nervously, her heart was racing, she couldn't keep it a secret from him. She started to tell him everything, what she did and what Bai-Obi did and said to her. She didn't want it to tear her apart by withholding it, it wasn't who she was.
She had no way to anticipate how he might react and she was slightly surprised when he embraced her, "Thank you for telling me. I promise, I will do everything I can to make sure he doesn't come anywhere near you."
"What will happen to him?" she asked, tears dripping out of her eyes.
"That's for the Magistrata to decide," he answered. "I'm glad you told me about what you did too. I don't want you to end up like him. I do understand why you did it, I really do, but that was not the way to become a Plumber."
She sniffled, "I know. I just… I just want to do something, I want to feel important."
He rubbed her shoulder, "You are important, sweetie. I can't help you become a Plumber, but I do know someone who can."
Her eyes lit up, "Really? Who?"
"Remember the officer from the other day?" he asked her. She nodded. "He's gonna be promoted next week to a training instructor. I talked to him and he said he would be interested in training you, on his own time, of course."
"When can I start?" she asked enthusiastically.
"After next week," he replied. "There isn't an exact time yet, that will be later, but it will happen. It will, that much I can tell you."
She was thrilled, her aspirations to become a Plumber were possible. For a long time she considered her powers to be a curse because they did nothing good for her, but she used them to help someone and that one act of kindness was about to reward her.
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Name: Layla
Species: Human/Ectonurite/Anodite (genetically 75% human and 25% Ectonurite)
Home World: Unknown
Residence: Plumber Satellite Beta
Age: 13
Affiliations: Plumbers, Zs'Skayr (formerly)
Occupation(s): Aspiring Plumber
Alias: Enigma, Sweetheart/My dear (by Zs'Skayr), Little Lady/Sweetie (by Patelliday)
Relatives: Patelliday (adoptive father)
Abilities: Matter Manipulation, Telekinesis, Quick Thinking, Stealth
Equipment: None
Appearance: She has pale skin, jet black hair, and purple eyes.
She used to wear a black sweater with black and white sleeves. She's since become fond of wearing a periwinkle shirt and a red, black, and white plaid jacket.
Personality: She used to be very timid and quiet, but has since become more open to others and developed a curiosity. She can't keep secrets to herself for a long time. She is very compassionate and helpful, always willing to save or assist someone. Although she scares easily, she is one of the few who is not afraid of Ghostfreak/Zs'Skayr.
Powers and Abilities:
She can manipulate multiple states of matter and change them into another (ex. turning solids into liquid and gases into solid).
She possesses telekinetic powers that allow her to levitate different objects and materials. She can also shape objects to make them more lethal.
She's shown to be quite skilled with stealth and has a quick reaction response.
Weaknesses:
If she's too weak or strains herself too much, it will cause fatigue, poor vision, body weakness, etc. It often leads to the point of her not being able to stand on her own power and ends with her collapsing.
She's afraid of the Circus Freaks and Zombozo.
As demonstrated with Wildmutt, any solids she creates are shown to not be very durable.
There's a limit to how much she can lift with her telekinesis and it will drain her of her strength if pressured too much.
She is incapable of keeping a secret.
Her perception of how she interprets something could involuntarily lead to self-destruction.
Interesting Facts:
The name Layla is of Egyptian/Arabic origins, meaning "wine", "intoxication", "night", or "dark beauty".
She doesn't need to use her hands when using her powers, but prefers to because it decreases the chances of a headache.
She has more experience with her telekinesis and matter manipulation than Hex and Charmcaster because hers are natural and theirs are not.
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(A/N: I know, it took another couple of months to update again, but do you see how much I did? It's a lot from my perspective! Especially since I'm in college.
I would've updated sooner if I wasn't working on six or seven chapters for six or seven different stories at the same time! Sorry, I've been bombarded with reviews and suggestions these past few weeks and that's made it a bit stressful. I love reviews, I really do, but not when I get five per week packed with things that I'm hardly considering right now.
Some elements of this chapter are slightly inspired by the song "Crazy" by Simple Plan. In it, there's a line that goes, "Diet pills, surgery, photoshopped pictures in magazines, telling them how they should be". This song was written ten years ago, but I think it still has messages that resonate to this day.
Anyway, I've been working on this for about as long as I've been getting bombarded with reviews and I'm beat. I'll see all of y'all when I can come back to this (which will hopefully be soon).