Useless Without You (Worm Au/Dr. Stone Crossover)

Stone World 1.3

The silence stretched out between us after her unusual greeting, with only the quiet chittering of the bugs filling the air.

I felt like I had stepped into the middle of a fairy tale, ever since I had woken up for the first time back on that beach. There I was, stumbling about in the middle of nowhere with only the natural land to aid or hinder me, surrounded by the unmoving, ominously petrified forms of every other human being in the city. Beset by dangerous beasts, I was then spontaneously saved from certain doom by a mysterious stranger, who then led me to an equally mysterious but quaint home in the forest with their woodland creatures, and offered me breakfast. It was the sort of thing you'd never expect to be a part of in real life, and the atmosphere was all the more overpowering for it.

Hopefully I was only Alice in Wonderland, and not Hansel or Gretel.

There was a certain mindset you had to develop to be successful as a parahuman, in my experience. You had to learn to expect the unexpected. With powers that could make common sense go cry in the corner, nothing was every truly impossible, only improbable. Capes that were too easily caught off guard either ended up adjusting to it over time or were pushed out of the game.

One way or the other.

I hadn't been a cape for very long, but I could cheat. My power tended to suck the uncertainty and magic out of whatever I encountered, giving me answers before feelings of confusion or wonder even had time to settle in. It made adjusting and improvising in unexpected situations on the fly pretty easy. It was also kind of irritating, for a lot of reasons.

For one, waiting for other people to catch up to what was obvious for me made me restless, which had a tendency to make me snappier than others were willing to put up with. I could understand why, but knowing what was happening didn't do anything for fixing the issue, which just made me even less personable. I began every puzzle game with half of the picture already put together, and each successful addition I made would start a chain reaction until it eventually completed itself. After that, it was just a matter of sitting on my hands as patiently as I could while everyone else assembled their version manually, piece by monotonous piece. Anyone would feel tempted in that kind of situation to just finish it for them, you know? It wasn't just me.

As a result, mysteries that I had to actually work to solve were a treasured privilege for me. They were a reprieve from the undertone of impatience that had come to dominate nearly every aspect of my life, and they forced me to live in the present at normal speed, instead of skipping ahead. It was a big part of why I had trouble keeping my nose out of interesting things, even for my own good. I sniffed out brainteasers like boars sniffed out truffles, and with pretty similar motivations.

Waking up alone after being turned to stone, into a world abandoned to the passage of time for no discernible reason, was the biggest puzzle I'd ever seen. Every new bit of info just confused me more, instead of less. I hadn't even found the edge pieces, yet. The only thing keeping it from being the most fun I'd had since before I could remember was that focusing on it was also the only thing keeping me from breaking down over how scary my situation was; how real it was. When I was afraid for my life last night, it had been more real than ever.

But here and now? Nothing felt real at all. This enigma of a girl in front of me emanated such a surreal feeling of serenity that for a moment…

I could just about believe in magic again, for the first time since I got my power.

Which is why the first words blurted out by my traitorous mouth, after what was in retrospect a pretty awkward silence, were these.

"Are you a Disney princess, or something?"

Okay, I'm ready to go back to being stone now, please.

Ugh. Alright, so look. It's been a really emotionally draining couple of days, cut me some slack. Even the most socially competent person may have trouble filtering their words after going through what I've just gone through. Being able to tell the difference between fiction and reality? Absolutely a learned skill, I swear. If I wasn't at least a little mad, I wouldn't have come here.

Once again, it was damage control time for me. I plastered on a smirk to give the impression I was intentionally cracking a joke, although based on how strained it felt, it probably wasn't very effective. My cheeks were definitely starting to color out of embarrassment, too. Damnit.

I still couldn't see her eyes, but I imagined if I could have, I would have seen her blink. Maybe. She wasn't giving me a whole lot of body language to work with. Practically none, even. If I hadn't been so eager to push past what just happened, I might have even kept the silence going just to try and check if she was actually breathing. Instead, I took a seat in the grass across from her as casually as possible, and after a moment of hesitation, picked up the wooden plate when she made no protest.

"Right, so uh… thanks. For this. And for protecting me, last night? My name's Lisa. Nice to meet you." My words jumbled up to start with, but slowly became more composed as I caught my stride. She didn't physically respond in any discernable way, but the bugs positioned on the tree above her head began rearranging into a new pattern.

"I'm Taylor." Short and to the point, but she was noticeably limited on writing space, and seemed to be using the bare minimum of bugs, which was something I was appreciative of. Especially since we were going to start eating. I'd probably have to get over that sort of thing now, I noted to myself. This conversation would be a lot easier and a lot less awkward if she'd just talk to me, but I wasn't about to start prodding her for personal details immediately after meeting her. My first impression was already struggling to keep afloat as it was.

Still, her two-and-a-half word answer didn't give me any help with getting this conversation going. I picked up and fiddled with what looked like an attempt at a fork and knife fashioned from wood and stone respectively while I thought about what to say. In the end, my pondering lasted long enough for me to cut off a chunk of meat, which meant at that point I may as well take a bite and keep thinking while chewing. Procrastination, to the rescue.

As I did, I felt my eyes widen involuntarily. It was surprising how good it was. I had been expecting to rely on my empty stomach to convince me to choke it down, but instead I could tell effort had been put into cooking it all the way through without burning the outsides, and there were even traces of a fruity flavor added from what I presumed was berries rubbed onto it before it was cooked, maybe even marinated in it. Oh, and actual salt.

At this rate, I was going to end up spoiled.

I looked up from my meal to compliment her cooking, because there was no way I could mess up that as a conversation piece, only to see she still hadn't moved at all. Her food was still untouched.

If the first bit of good food I'm eating in two days, I thought suspiciously while side-eyeing the bug girl and still chewing my second bite, is ruined because it was poisoned, I'm going to be pissed.

I wasn't really all too worried. Poisoned food wouldn't have been handled with so much effort or so many valuable resources like salt.

"Aren't you going to eat yours?" I finally asked, after having finished my mouthful. "It's great, by the way. Seriously, thanks." Well, so much for not poking at potentially personal stuff. That didn't last me long. Still, her complete motionlessness was getting kind of unnerving, and doing absolutely nothing for my conversation skills. If there's one thing cold reading has shown me, it's that body language is half of the conversation by itself, whether you have superpowers to analyze it with or not.

"Yeah," was spelled out next, which lasted only a few seconds before becoming "hold on."

What happened next was difficult to find words to describe.

At first, nothing seemed to be going on. Then, a twitch. Easily missed for someone without my observational acumen, but clear as day to me. Then another. Slowly but surely, her still, limp body began rousing itself almost one muscle at a time. I felt like I was watching a corpse reanimate in slow motion. Life was pouring back into her, manifesting as the little unconscious tells that were so blatantly absent to me before building up until they started to become conscious movements of extremities, like her fingers and feet. Her lips twitched, and her slightly slack jaw pulled back together. Her lungs pooled with air with a long, extended inhale before visibly deflating again as she let her breathe out. Her posture straightened in increments, until she was leaning forward instead of back. Finally, her slowly raising arms picked up enough speed to feel natural as she reached for her own set of tableware. Her eyes were visible now, and I could see that they were closed.

It was simultaneously one of the most interesting and horrifying things I had ever seen.

I very, very carefully set my fork and knife down on my plate (I was going to need to wait for my appetite to come back after that) and just gawked, as she began clumsily picking at her meal.

What.

What was that?

Her bugs started to shift again to spell out new words. I was fairly certain I hadn't asked that out loud even with my faulty filter, but the look on my face was probably obvious enough.

"It's a power thing."

Well, I had guessed that much. I looked down from the words back at her, and immediately felt relief. Her face was still mostly expressionless, but I could absolutely read her body language now. She seemed to be pretty sheepish, maybe a bit embarrassed and shy. Almost as awkward as I felt, which was comforting in its own way. I was heading back into familiar territory now.

"Hey, no worries. A lot of powers do weird things like that. I was mostly just worried about how still you were being. So long as you're okay, its fine," I reassured. She seemed to relax at that, which was exactly the reaction I was going for. Success.

"Thank you," she replied. The words melded together again to become, "How long have," and another switch up to, "you been up?" She could still talk while eating, but I needed a second to swallow my food before responding.

"Oh, I only woke up yesterday, down by the beach. You caught me at the perfect time, it was really lucky." I shot her an easy smile. Her movements seemed to stutter for a second when I said so, but I couldn't guess why. It was gone again before I could try and make more out of it.

"Very lucky that,"… "You walked this"… "direction, in range."

"Yeah, I guess so, huh." It really had been. If I'd gone in any other direction, I might not have run into those dogs, but if I had, that would have been it for me without Taylor to save my butt. Apparently I had stumbled close by enough that she'd presumably seen me with her bugs. I could only guess that's how she was seeing things, of course. Her eyes hadn't opened up once.

I was afraid to ask my next question, but I couldn't put it off forever. What would I have found, if I'd wandered elsewhere? Or rather, what wouldn't I have found?

I decided to bite the bullet.

"How about you? How long have you been working on this place? Have you seen anyone else up yet?" My voice cracked a little on that last bit despite my attempt at phrasing it lightheartedly, but overall I was proud of how well I held it together.

Taylor's bugs were quiet for once, and much too still, even as her body kept moving. Her stature was heavy. We kept eating in silence for a bit, after that.

"Started walking,"…"three months ago." She paused again after that, visibly struggling with how to say the next part. I felt bad about bringing it up and putting her on the spot like this, but I desperately needed to know, even if by this point I could tell it wasn't what I wanted to hear.

I could never have prepared for what her answer actually was, though.

"But I haven't,"… "seen anyone for," … "3,700 years."