Gacha 29
*Back in the present*

Hieroglyph looked out over the massive city from on high, the thick blanket wrapped around her for warmth. In the far distance, she could see people swarming around a strange winged snake on the hillside, lit by unnatural lights created by steel boxes. Everyone had been happy about those boxes, though they freaked Cass out, the way they send shadows running everywhere.

She heard the wall open behind her. No, not wall, door. It was all very confusing, this strange world with barely any sand. By Osiris, the buildings weren't even shaped properly.

"Watcha doing?" her doppelganger asked, and Cassiopatra turned to see the unnaturally blue hair of one of her counterparts.

"Watching," Cass replied, trying to get a read on the girl. She'd decorated herself with metal rings, her hair had been dyed with some strange magical potion. Her new… what was the word again, domicile-buddy? Yes, that felt right. Her domicile-buddy had offered to dye Hiero's hair too, but she hadn't thought it to be safe.

Didn't these people understand anything? The measure of a man was found by how he looked. His clothes, his tools, the markings on his body. The kohl around a woman's eye wasn't merely decoration to be changed on a whim, it was a mark of status. Especially now, with over a dozen Cassiopatra's running around, it was their clothes and accessories that set them apart. If she had One's hair color, her clothes, and her jewelry, would she wake up in her body with her memories? In his strange world of stone, steel, and solid water "windows", anything seemed possible. By Osiris, perhaps it had already happened. Perhaps she'd put on an Egyptian dress and jewelry in the evening for a lark, and then woken up as Cassiopatra without remembering a thing?

"You know you can just grab a jacket if you're cold right? We're all the same size, even if that doesn't really make sense given diet and shizzle like that. You can totes rock my look if you want, instead of those rags."

"Not rags," Cass replied, focusing on the one word she actually knew. The weird dude with the shitty haircut had told her the words would come easily if she kept talking with people, but very few people around here were worth talking to. Almost none of them had pyramids. "Kalasiris"

"Well yeah, but it's obviously made for the desert? Just throw a hoodie over it, hoodies go with everything!"

"Blankie keeps me warm," she retorted, hugging the massive cloth to herself. It was the best part of this strange new world, better even than the device that summoned warm rain on command, or the massive wall-sized mirrors, or the indoor outhouses that did not stink.

"Well, I'm gonna go to the fire escape and grind the railing all the way down all fifty floors!" the girl said. "You wanna watch?"

"You'll die," Hiero replied. Osiris would find the other girl wanting. A sad fate. She would have to recruit the rest of the Runes to make a pyramid for the dead girl, just like she'd done back in the land of the Nile. Luckily, she would have help now, lots of pyramid-builders had been summoned by her new pharaoh.

"Nah, you see, Cinderhands told me a little trick this morning," the other girl said with a weird smile on her face. "Can you keep a secret?"

"A secret?" she asked.

"Of course you can, you barely say more than five words a day! Anyway, CH was dealing with a small worker's rights argument among the Chubsters, and turns out that, if you kill them, you get stronger!"

"Fatty's heavy. Good workout," Cass replied, wondering what the hell the girl was going on about.

"No, I mean, I'm like level six now! Just now, I crashed off of my board -on purpose mind you, I never fall by accident- and didn't even get any road rash! I'm way sturdier and stronger!"

"Uh-huh," Cass replied, turning back to the window again, looking at the city. From the top of the renovated Medhall tower, she could see just about everything. The big steel fortress in the water, the slightly smaller, less amazing steel fortress that was also in the water. The small lights in the streets below, wrecked iron carriages, the flying man with the glowing spear and shield. He wasn't Hellenic, for some weird reason. No, he was just a man pretending to be Hellenic, a native of this strange world.

"What, you've got the hots for Dauntless? I can probably set you up with Daunty if you want."

"I like Theo," she replied. She didn't, not really. Sure, the boy was nice, and unlike most of the people claimed to be attractive in this world, he actually had some fat on him. But more than that, the other Runes liked him, so she did too. If not, would she keep being herself?

"Awww, come on! It's your turn in two days right? We'll swap! You'll have more time to focus on learning the language!"

Cass looked away and harrumphed, staring off in the distance.

"Fine! I'll just charm him with my awesome skateboard skills! Just you watch, I'm the best!" the skater replied, grabbing her board and moving out of the door.

***Gacha***

"So the trolley will keep going, and you can't stop it, but you can change its course," Augustus explained, a long metal pointing stick holding a marker pointed at a whiteboard that, at the top of it, had the words 'De-Nazi-fication for dummies, Lesson 1'. "Now, If the trolley stays on course, It'll hit an innocent man of Peruvian heritage. However, if you flip the switch, the trolley will change course and smash into a Ku Klux Klan rally, presumably killing several of them. What do you do?"

"I uhmm… are the people at the rally wearing their outfits?" Kayden asked.

"Of course they are, otherwise you wouldn't know they were supporters of the cause!" Eins said, wearing a freshly pressed nazi uniform. Where she'd found a laundromat with the city in its current state, he had no idea.

"So uhmm… Do I know if any of my friends are at the rally? Because I'm not racist, but it'd be really awkward if we were watching a game and they'd be like 'Hey Kayden, did you kill Dave' and I'd have to tell them that I did to save some foreign kid."

"Wrong answer!" Augustus said, his tone low and forceful. "If they're wearing Klan outfits, that means they're horrible people, and therefore not your friends!"

"What if they're um, you know, uhm… from that, well, movie?" one of the other Runes, the one with the over-sized sleeves, said. She'd been bored, and was watching the class from the sidelines.

"Check for camera crews?" he suggested.

The girl nodded at him.

"Anyway, it's obvious isn't it? I use my power on the trolley so the Klan members can deal with the kid themselves!" Rune said.

A bar of metal above the girl's head started growing, touching a bucket of water and tipping it over ever so slightly, spraying the girl with a wet splash.

"Hey! No fair, you didn't splash her when she said her thing!" the girl said, pointing an accusatory finger at the adult woman in the school bench next to her.

"True," Augustus said, activating the other mechanism as well.

"This is ridiculous! As a mothe-"

Augustus glared at her, looking at a women whose alternate universe counterpart he'd once loved, before he met James Cameron. So similar, yet so different.

"So, let's try this in a simpler scenario! Two tracks, one of them with a skinhead running a dog-fighting ring, the other with an old lady.

"Oooh let me, I know this one!" Eins yelled, and Augustus effortlessly raised a single eyebrow.

"You let the trolley hit the old lady, because she's close to the end and won't miss out on much. Then you grab the skinhead and yell at him to tell you where his fighting-ring is!"

"You know what, not what I wanted to hear, but proactive about curtailing criminal and inhumane activities. I'll give it a pass."

"Yeah baby, I did it!" Rune yelled out, fist-pumping the air. "And I even get to watch the dog-fights!"

A sigh, a shift of the metal, another splash, followed by knocking from outside.

"What is it?" Max asked, after which two more Runes barged into the makeshift classroom, one of them holding a package behind her back. One and the new British one that kept making elaborate cakes for all occasions.

Sup boss, we got an idea that could totally help!

"What is it?" he asked with some apprehension, remembering the 'city-wide skate-park to replace cars' idea she'd come up with.

"Well, you know how our Egyptian gal keeps thinking that if she wears something else, she'll wake up a different Rune?"

"Where's this going?"

"Well, what if it's true? Instead of these stupid classes, we could just give Eins a new outfit!"

"Bullshit! No way, I wouldn't do that even if I wanted to change!" Eins yelled, wiping wet hair out of her eyes.

"I dare say you totally would mayhaps do such a thing," the British gal said. "Did'st not our fair queen, long may she reign, tell you to, and I doth quote her words 'Try not being such a fucking Nazi?'"

Eins pouted, biting her lip.

"Either way, I don't think it'll work," Augustus said. "Plenty of us are wearing outfits radically different from when we were summoned, and none of us have changed in that manner so far, so that plan's a bust."

"Yeah, no de-Nazi-fication by outfit for me!" Eins added in.

"What if we already have the pompoms with us tough?" Skater Rune asked, unveiling two big balls of glittery fluffiness from the package.

"You know what? It's worth a try. Eins, go get changed, then return to see if you do better that way!" he commanded.

"Butbutbut-"

"No butts! Get something dry to wear!" he commanded, glaring at the child with his dad-eyes.

The girl stood up, dripping wet and moping, and was led out of the room by three for her fellow Runes.

[Waffen-SS Rune is evolving? Waffen-SS Rune evolved into Cheerleader Rune?]

"Kayden?" he asked as the teenagers had left the room, putting his attention on the attractive and distracted woman. "Your answer to the problem?"

"Uhmmm… Hold on, let me think… Can I have some paper, or…"

"This is supposed to be easy Kay, I think you can do without."

"Okay, okay, uhm… I pull the lever and send the trolley to the skinhead? Cause he's the guy running the dog-fights, AKA Hookwolf, so it won't actually hurt him?"

Another sigh. "And if it's not Hookwolf?"

"Let it go to the old lady. I mean, he's obviously got a job, probably has a wife and kids that depend on the income from his puppy-mangling. Plus, if Hookwolf stopped running the rings, it's probably in the hands of one of the skinheads I actually like, you know?"

Palm met forehead, water met waifu.

"We've got a long way to go…"