Fly on the Wall

Foresta Academy was still a very strange place, in the most interesting of ways. It was like no other place that Lotte had been before. The place was crawling with gifted people, some that even looked odder than she did, which was quite the feat to accomplish. She still wasn’t all too familiar with the layout of the building, but she knew if she gave it time she would be well versed in the hallways of the old construct. What was she doing today? Well, she wasn’t teaching so she was busy exploring the grounds to familiarize herself. Her travels lead from one place to another until she reached the Ballroom, its layout catching her interest, as well as its emptiness.

The cloaked figure entered the room cautiously, creaking the door open first and then poking her head through. No one seemed to be around. It made sense when she thought about it. Most students probably didn’t think they were allowed within the room due to the unguarded bar. Surely there was a security camera somewhere to monitor and assure that no thefts were attempted. Either way, she embraced the wide open space. With no one here she could reveal her true identity, let her wings spread for a bit instead of cramping them behind her cloak.

Lotte threw aside her article of clothing, showing that she only had a pair of pants underneath, pants that looked loose enough at the legs to be a dress. With this body of hers she never felt it necessary too much clothing unless she wanted to conceal her identity. She didn’t really have the normal sexual organs of a human being, so it wasn’t like it was grotesque or anything, besides the fact that she was some sort of mutant bug abomination. As she began to wander through the room her wings stretched outward, in the same style as one would do with their arms after they had awoken.

Lotte’s compound eyes searched around the room with curiosity, locking onto the bar and soon after her feet followed. The bar itself reminded her of a simpler time in University, well technically it wasn’t a simpler time but she enjoyed thinking it as such. Oh, those were fun times, back when her studies weren’t her main focus anymore, drinking with strangers and hearing their stories. She wished she could return to those days, the days where she didn’t have to waste ten minutes of conversation explaining how she became a bug. She preferred to observe over explaining.

She reached the counter, eying the drinks and wondering how much trouble she would get in if she decided to just take one. What if she left some money behind to make up for the drink? Her labellum craved the taste of sugar and she wasn’t sure if she could resist its urge this time around. Her spindly hand rested on the table top as her good hand reached for the bottle that her collection of eyes had honed in on, now leaning over the bar top.

    ((sorry if I posted without asking))

    Dirk was outside, roaming around the school campus. Dirk hated downtime, but he acknowledged the fact that it happened from time to time. He remembered the quote "Learning makes a man fit company for himself as well as for others.", so as a seventeen year old his mind went straight to something that wasn't completely advisable, drinking. The more Dirk played with the idea, the more he wanted to try and have a drink. He tried to tell himself not to but his initial curiosity had not worn off yet. He sat down and thought about where he could easily find a bottle of alcohol, after a few minutes he remembered hearing his dorm mates talking about the ballroom and how it was usually empty. Logically, therefore, He had went to the conclusion that there would be alcohol stored there in a relatively available container.

    Dirk tried to sneak silently into the ballroom, his bulky frame hindering him. He successfully managed to open the door quietly and almost slither in, but after a few steps he tripped over a chair and caused a large "CRASH!" Upon knocking down the chair Dirk went and hid under the table where he thought he couldn't be seen. He shook from nervousness, what if he was found and punished for being after the alcohol or maybe even expelled. He was looking for a way desperately to get out. 

 

The teacher was so close, but yet only the tip of her finger could tap the neck of the bottle. It could be easily argued why she couldn’t just climb over the counter, but it was such a close proximity that she felt it was justified to continue her current strategy. Lotte was just able to make the bottle wobble, when she attempted to snatch it though, a loud crashing noise arose from behind her. Her arm quickly retreated and she leapt away from the scene in order to seem somewhat more innocent in her actions. There weren’t any security cameras here, were there? She scanned the room for the moment, looking specifically for the glare of a lens.

Lotte’s search went unfruitful, but for the time being it didn’t matter all that much. There was still someone within the room. Chairs didn’t just fall over by themselves, well that would be something she would have hypothesised before arriving at Foresta. Either way though, she began to roam closer to the seating area, analyzing the place for anything that seemed out of the ordinary. Her bottom mandibles began to click together as she squeezed through the gaps between tables, attempting to stop her labellum from flopping out. Her entire body could still smell the sugar and nectar in the air, making her all the more hungry. Her tiny set of legs on her abdomen clung to chairs she passed by, pulling them out slightly so she had a better view of anything that might be underneath. Her suspicion was that it was a student skulking around, a teacher wouldn’t hold any fear toward her, unless they were really afraid of bugs.

Her job didn’t make her feel obligated toward finding the individual since she actually didn’t know if students were allowed to roam around this room, no it was her own curiosity. She probably should have went to retrieve her cloak now that she thought about it, she was probably making whoever she was searching for terrified, who wouldn’t be? Her wings lowered, creating a sort of clear cape along her back, only it did not warp with her body.

Finally when she was at the center of the group of tables she ducked underneath them and searched around until her collection of eyes pinpointed a difference among them, a tiny shaking figure, she couldn’t make out too many details about him though. “There you are” she stated in her mightily heavy accent.

    Dirk was shivering as he had heard the lack of sound, it seemed almost eerie, as if he was about to be hunted. A few moments later he could hear a person's foot tap against the ground as the person walked. At this point he was looking for a way out, any way would have done for him. Then he heard what sounded like a mandible clicking, and then a curious shuffling of... wings? He resorted to using his right eye to find the nearest exit, which was most inconveniently placed across the room.

    As Dirk had pinpointed a quick exit, he heard a voice, the voice had said "there you are" in a heavy accent in which he perceived that he was being hunted down. He had figured that he had two options, one being to fight the unknown entity or the other being the need to flee. He chose the latter and burst out of the table, sending it flying. There was only one goal in his mind, it was to get out.

    Right as he burst out of the table he snuck a look over his shoulder at the person looking for him. What he saw was a human/ fly hybrid that was after him. Dirk, being the superstitious person he was, thought this was retribution for eating fourteen brownies earlier that morning. He puts on a new burst of speed as he runs toward the door.

Well her hypothesis was correct, it was definitely a student. Either that or an extremely tiny teacher, but that seemed somewhat unlikely. He turned out to be a sprinter though, terrified by the very sight of Lotte. Not an uncommon reaction, in fact he seemed quite justified in this situation, she did seem rather imposing. She was both an authority and a gigantic bug monster, the worst of both worlds. Was she going to punish this child? Probably not, but she was still interested in pursuing him. What was he doing here to begin with?

It would seem that Lotte was surrounded by tables, unfortunately her jumping abilities were nothing spectacular. If they were the counter from earlier wouldn’t have been an issue. Her wings weren’t going to help much either and she was no track star so cutting him off wasn’t going to be easy. Her tinier arms curled back into her abdomen as she began to ease her way through the maze of table tops to attempt to intercept the boy. There was no way to catch him with her natural abilities, she was going to have to think outside the box for this one.

“Wait! Lungs not as good as used to be” she called out as she continued to jog through the creases between tables, still a fair distance away from the boy. Though she was able to pick out a few physical features from him. Most notably his size, he was a tiny thing. Not terribly shorter than her though. “Go through door and possible three week detention.”

Lotte had a very selective interest in people, it usually applied to those that acted outside the norm since them would seem to be the most interesting. If there had been seven other kids hiding in the ballroom she might have ignored them and move on, but there was only one. Her mind was so twisted with curiosity she had to know the reasoning behind it, perhaps learn a little bit more. Might as well make some sort of impression, for all she knew this person could be a student of hers someday.

    As Dirk was sprinting he could tell the bug monster wouldn't be able to catch up to him, but also he wanted to put as much distance between him and what he assumed was a her. He heard her bump through the tables and snuck another look, she still seemed imposing to him, standing a little taller then he, but when he saw the second pair of arms close to her abdomen he knew he should have been surprised but he had seen plenty of that in the past when he was a captive of the government. As he neared the door he heard her say “Go through door and possible three week detention.”

    Dirk skidded to a stop, SHE was a teacher? His mind was racing at the possibilities, but then he thought what seemed like a reasonable idea at the time: she's probably trying to trick me. He tried to disregard the order when the doors closed in his face and wouldn't budge open. He banged on the door, and when the doors didn't open he put his back to the door. His left eye started to sparkle and soon after that a large piece of cooked bacon was hurled at her.

As he watched the piece of bacon fly at her, he cursed. "That should have been the focused light beam" He started to bang on the door again trying to open the door.

The bug creature continued to wiggle through the labyrinth of tables, the boy’s escape now seeming less likely now that he established that the doors were shut tight. She wasn’t sure how or why this was happening, perhaps it was one of those famous ‘lock-you-in’ doors she had been hearing about. None of that mattered however until the boy launched some sort of projectile strip of meat at her. The greasy stick of wavy meat slapped against her face, sticking to her hairs for a brief moment before she batted it off like a pesky fly. She ceased her pursuit, only being a couple feet away from the boy.

All of Lotte’s eyes honed onto her subject. The display of his powers drew in her interest even more. Not because of the oddity of it though, what he said in conjunction with the failure of his attack. Yes, something about what he spoke of sounded familiar, a study she had read once. It didn’t take long for her brain to find the data, almost like she was some sort of computer and all she had to do was briefly browse the memory files. It instantly clicked to her. She stroked her disjointed chin as she investigated the eye that had twinkled not a second earlier.

“Ah, know you. Were in testing for human enhancements. Failed experiment. Was offered to oversee, but no interest in genetics. Interesting. Should’ve figured you’d end up in place like this.” she mused over the connection they had, however small it may be. Lotte worked for the United States government science program and was offered quite a few positions given her background. If it was any other person they might have forgotten such a minute detail of their life, but not Lotte. Her brain was quite comparable to a super computer. Though, she did not remember the boy’s name, nor his number reference. Her memory was extremely good, but there were even some things she couldn’t shed light on in a second’s notice.

The teacher waved her hand and pointed toward the bar top with her frailer hand. “Come, we must talk. Test subjects are an interesting viewpoint” she offered rather pleasantly, though did not leave until the boy made his move.

    Dirk had watched the strip of delectable goodness slap her in the face and groaned in disappointment as it seemed to do nothing to her. He searched through his options, he could try the randomizer again but his instincts told him it wouldn't work. After a few seconds of furious debating within his head he finally decided to take a more political angle. As he studied his would-be adversary he took note of three things: The first would have been her eyes which seemed to be compounded, the next was her wings and their obvious uses, and the last were her second set of arms. He entertained the idea of talking his way out of the situation by complementing her about her wings, but right as he was about to speak he heard her say “Ah, know you. Were in testing for human enhancements. Failed experiment. Was offered to oversee, but no interest in genetics. Interesting. Should’ve figured you’d end up in place like this.”

    His mind raced as he processed the information that he had just gleaned form what he now assumed was a teacher. Now he studied her more carefully, wondering..... more like assuming that she had some connection with her that extended to more then the school, this was a connection to his past. As he started to open his mouth to ask one of the millions of questions he heard her say “Come, we must talk. Test subjects are an interesting viewpoint”

 

    Dirk ,now intrigued, followed her gesture to the bar top and stood there. He now needed to find out what role she played to know about his past.

The boy soon gave in to her commands, odd she thought it would take a bit more convincing than just that. Usually failed test subjects were revolted by the ones that experimented on them, but then again Lotte didn’t test on him. Though some test subjects were interested in knowing the purpose of the experiments placed on them. Although the boy hardly spoke a word still. The most he has said so far was muttering to himself about the failure of his abilities.

The teacher followed the student over to the bar top, swiftly investigating her pants as she walked. It would seem that a bit of the grease from the bacon had splashed onto the only article of clothing she was wearing. Unfortunate, she was quite fond of this pair and bacon grease wasn’t the easiest to wash. This was probably going to bug her for the remainder of the day and given her mind she wasn’t going to forget about it anytime soon. Unless the boy would raise a lot of interest and keep her mind constantly buzzing, which she had no doubts he would. Test subjects always had a more interesting perspective, much like the teleporting girl she test on before, whatever her name was.

Once they had both stopped at the bar top, she reached over the fine wood finish one last time to snatch the bottle she had been eying earlier. Her past fumbling had jogged it out of place just enough for her to grab it now. She placed the wine on the table and tossed a couple bills in the place it used to rest, assuming the value of the alcohol. Was she allowed to drink around students? She wasn’t quite certain, but surely it wasn’t that big of a rule. If anything she could get away with it this one time and use the excuse of not knowing to her advantage. Besides, it wasn’t like it was heavy drinking, it was a fruity bit of wine how drunk could she possibly get off of it?

Anyway, with that ordeal out of the way she began to try and pop open the cap on her drink, requiring all four of her arms to attempt it. Lotte was never a very strong person, being fused with a housefly didn’t help the matter. As she continued her attempts she hooked her eyes onto the student at hand. “Hrm, look less altered than imagined. Read that you were colossal failure. Eyes interesting colour, not natural. Wasted potential, should’ve run more tests” she evaluated as she attempted to recall the specs of the files she had read about the experiment. “Whoever worked on you was idiot, wasteful even.”

    Dirk hated her, almost to the point of where he wanted to strangle her, she obviously knew about him and his past, more so she probably had a leading role in the organization. He had heard her speak as if she was using him as an experiment. As he was walking to the bar top he stealthy equipped his brass knuckles, he resolved that if he did not get a satisfactory answer he would knock her out, then he shrugged philosophically, he might just knock her out anyway.

     As he reached the table he sat down and waited for the teacher to come and sit down near him. As she came by his location, he noticed that she was picking up some wine, expensive wine too. The next thing he heard was the pop of the bottle and the glub sound that wine makes as it goes into a glass. He turns around to see her drinking from he glass, she was a peculiar specimen, almost eerie, but e decide to listen to her story before he spoke.

    At that point Dirk heard her speak up and say “Hrm, look less altered than imagined. Read that you were colossal failure. Eyes interesting colour, not natural. Wasted potential, should’ve run more tests”. At that point he was about to explode, he didn't listen to what she said next. He stood up violently and provocatively  "You think I wanted to be there after a few months without too much human interaction! I was going CRAZY and you have the Freaking GUTS to say I, Of all people needed more testing!"

Lotte eventually gave up her attempts at opening the bottle with her mere fingers, they were far too weak. She eventually resorted to ripping the cork off with her ‘teeth.’ More like insect-like mandibles, she never chewed anything anymore since her system of devouring changed drastically with her transformation. She tossed aside the cork shortly after and held the drink underneath her chin by a foot or two. While when she was human she would have drank from a fancy glass, she couldn’t really sip on liquids anymore, not the same way anyway. Her bottom jaw spilt off down the middle and revealed her labellum. Her ‘tongue’ then slowly descended down the neck of her wine to absorb and collect the nutrients.

The fly continued to enjoy her drink until the boy jumped out of his seat, seeming to be rage filled by her words. Strange, she didn’t feel she had said anything wrong. Her insect tongue slowly returned as her eyes focused on the boys fists for a few moments. She was hardly intimidated, even though she was as frail as an actual fly, if worst came to worst the boy was going to be expelled for attacking a teacher. What was it to her if she got injured? She would still be alive afterwards.

Lotte placed the wine on the table, above everything she would hate to lose that. It was just the right amount of fruit and alcohol. As for the student, she returned to observing him. “Violent prone, not uncommon from subjects. Experiment run on volunteers, so assumed you did want to be there. Unless didn’t read contract and foolishly wandered in without background knowledge. Either way, sacrifice for science, we all make it” she retorted still unchanged in tone. As she spoke she lifted her skinny two pronged hand in order to further annunciate her point.

Dirk was at a loss for words, until he remembered that his contract had been for a single week. Now that he reflected on it he realized that he had seen the rest of the test subjects leave before he was released. "Sacrifice for science you say? Well Mrs. Bug lady I signed up for a small contribution, not a full on long term commitment!" He was now done complaining about his past... he needed answers and he needed them now. As he sat down he smashed his fists into the table causing the brass knuckles to stick in the table. He apologized slightly and then proceeded to go into an expecting silence.

While he was waiting he was thinking, not only about his past life but what he might uncover from what this lady would tell him. He hated this, at least he hated to be kept in suspense.....

Lotte observed as the boy released his metal knuckled rage against the counter top, the fist accessories digging into the table. The bug swiftly caught her drink as she saw it begin to spin off balance. Luckily she was able to save it before even a single drop spilled. Now that it was saved though, she craved for another taste of it. The concoction was just perfect for her ‘taste buds’, not that she had those anymore. Either way though, she couldn’t just start nipping at the wine every now or again since she needed her mouth for speaking.

The boy continued to speak about his outrage as though she was responsible for anything that happened to him. That was quite assuming of him to think that considering that if she was the head of the experiment the boy wouldn’t have gotten to Foresta to begin with. Besides that, she had no interest in advancing the human body, too much biology and not enough technology. Although his reasoning caught her interest. So, whoever was running the lab that this boy was under had been performing some sketchy practices. She knew someone who would like to hear about this.

“Not science’s fault. Scientist. Government pay good money to keep news from coming out. Story like yours cripple government funding. May be freak, but court and cash viable option. Compensation. Scientists like that don’t get jobs. Blacklisted” the human fly replied still in a monotone manner. “Don’t know what happened to you, but know that you’re free. Why matter now? What complaining going to do over reporting scientist conducting experiment?”

You could have seen the change of light in Dirk's eyes, both had changed from being full of the flames of anger to the cold, bleak look of a cave. "You've probably been baiting me into saying this much, but now I want to know what happened to you, I heard some indistinct things through the walls, something about a fly/ human hybrid test, preformed on a high ranking scientists. After I got out I looked at your old profile, at the time I wanted to kill you, in fact I was willing to go to some of my old friends to get you killed, but then I felt something like pity, I had seen that you were not recorded after a certain date. I made an assumption that something happened to you, so now..." Dirk then waved for the teacher to tell her story hoping she would elaborate because he knew he had no place asking her these questions and could possibly even be charged for harassment. Then he leaned back in the chair waiting for her to make her decision.  

The teacher’s hairy tongue entered the bottle once again to absorb some of the fruity and delectable nutrients. During the process, the boy began to speak out about her past, getting just about every single fact in regards to her wrong and trying to sound like he knew what he was talking about. The insectoid nearly swallowed her own tongue as it retracted back into her mouth and she roared with some sort of airy laugh. It kind of sounded like the clicks that a cockroach’s mandibles would make. She slammed the drink onto the table in her sense of hilarity.

Lotte’s compound eyes immediately honed in on the child she was talking to and she grew a bit of a grin on her buggy face. “Good one! Test subject attempts outsmart with bluff. Really could have asked me without need of secrecy. Human/Fly hybrid test stupid idea, gain nothing from. Worked in Germany, nowhere near America to begin with. Only move here because America have better offer, allow me work without restrains. Back in Germany, invent teleportation device. I test subject and fly got into test chamber. After, come out like this. That two years ago, long time since then. Moved on, did other tests. Mutation make for interesting research, though didn’t benefit much. Can see colours couldn’t see before though. Call them ultra-green and ultra-yellow. Not sure what for, but they’re pretty” the teacher spoke in a rather hurried and excited manner. Strangely enough, Lotte didn’t get very many opportunities to talk about her backstory, most people were either too disgusted by her to want to know and the rest held back because they thought it was something that haunted her and it was something she didn’t want to talk about.

“Enough ‘bout me. What else they do to you? Past records only tell so much. Run physical tests? Put you through obstacle courses? Lead scientist moron, want to know more about him” the creature mused again, seeming to have an endless set of questions waiting for the boy to answer.