Work Text:
There were certain things everyone at Kadic Academy knew.
The cafeteria's pudding was suspicious on Wednesdays. The science building leaked whenever it rained particularly hard. Odd Della Robbia could turn virtually any situation into a disaster if given enough time.
And Herb Pichon was good at math. To the detriment of everyone with a pulse and ears, Herb was aware of this fact. Most students possessed the common decency to hide their accomplishments behind a thin veil of humility, while Herb seemed personally offended by the concept.
What Kadic did not know was that “William” was better at math than anyone else. His personality wasn’t much more than a calculator that could talk, so Jeremie really should have seen this coming.
Rain tapped steadily against the cafeteria windows, turning the grounds outside into a sea of mud and puddles. Students packed the room shoulder-to-shoulder, filling the air with conversation and the clatter of silverware.
The warriors occupied their usual table near the windows. Odd was attempting to balance a french fry on his nose, while Ulrich was pretending not to know him.
Despite the fact that most of his fellow warriors didn’t particularly like William’s clone, Jeremie was probably the only one that didn’t despite the clone on principle. Jeremie was trying—and failing—to explain a software problem to William's clone.
"Why doesn't it work?" the clone, Will, as Jeremie had taken to calling him, asked.
"Because the code is broken."
"Then why don't you fix it?"
Yumi snorted from behind the safety of her milk carton, suspiciously looking elsewhere when Jeremie turned to stare daggers at her. It was not Will’s fault that the fragment of a chip he had as a brain lacked the ability to problem solve.
"I am trying to fix it," Jeremie said shortly.
Will considered this.
"You seem frustrated."
This time Aelita was grinning, "Gee, I wonder why."
Before Jeremie could snap at her, he was interrupted by the arrival of Herb. Despite the fact that nobody invited Herb to speak to them, it had never stopped him before.
"As I was saying," Herb announced, despite not having previously been speaking to any of them, "the regional mathematics competition is next month."
Odd's eyes drifted shut. "Ooo, don’t care."
Herb ignored him. "I placed first last year."
Ulrich didn't even spare him a glance, pretending to be transfixed by the four fries that Odd was somehow balancing across the bridge of his nose. "We know."
"The judges said my performance was exceptional."
"We know."
"It was one of the highest scores in the competition's history."
"We know."
At last, Ulrich turned his head.
"What I'm curious about," he said, "is whether you practice these speeches beforehand."
Yumi pressed a hand over her mouth.
Across the table, Will looked between Ulrich, Yumi, and Herb.
"Speech?"
Herb frowned. "What?"
"You keep repeating information that everyone already knows."
For a moment, silence settled over the table. Odd made a noise suspiciously similar to choking. While Aelita tried to look away in an attempt to hide her snickering, Ulrich outright surrendered to laughter.
“Why are you laughing?” Will frowned. “I didn’t make a joke.”
"No, but it was still funny," Jeremie admitted.
"Oh."
Will seemed genuinely concerned.
Herb, meanwhile, looked as though he'd bitten into a lemon. "Forget it."
And with what minimal dignity he could muster, Herb turned and stormed away.
Jeremie watched on as Will’s eyes followed Herb’s back, until he disappeared into the crowd of students to go lick his wounds in peace. Or maybe he was going to go feel smart by talking to Nikolas—both options were likely.
A few seconds passed, and Will had still not turned back to Jeremie or their previous conversation. Even though Will’s program wasn’t particularly strong in terms of thinking/computing power, it had an unshakeable ability to complete tasks. If Will started a conversation, he would always finish it. Jeremie’s gaze melted from mild annoyance into intrigue.
Dare he say it, but was Will about to have an original thought?
"Why is he upset?" Will asked.
Odd finally lost his battle with self-control and dropped face-first onto the table laughing, which only made Will look increasingly confused. Jeremie wasn't entirely sure how to explain social etiquette to someone who had only existed for a few months.
"Herb takes math very seriously," he tried.
"Why?"
"Because he's good at it."
The clone nodded slowly. This appeared to make perfect sense to him. After all, people liked things they were good at. These were behaviors that the clone had seen, and they were behaviors that were logical: Odd liked skateboarding, Ulrich liked soccer, Aelita liked science, and Jeremie liked computers.
Will liked asking questions: questions about food, questions about why humans willingly rode rollercoasters, questions about how Odd ate enough calories to sustain a small village, questions about literally everything.
The clone tilted his head. "What is a mathematics competition?"
Jeremie paused, then began explaining.
In retrospect, that was probably where all of this started.
Two weeks later, Jeremie and Aelita were sitting in the rec room when Will wandered in. He walked like he didn’t quite know where he was going, or what he’d find when he got there. Jeremie had seen the clone play foosball before, and wondered why the program that kept him running had decided that foosball would help keep “William’s” cover.
Instead of settling at one of the tables, Will sat near Jeremie and stared at the massive book that was open before him on the table. He was almost tempted to ask what Will was thinking—out of pure curiosity!—but Will has spent twenty minutes staring at a stapler once, so Jeremie learned not to ask questions.
"What's this?" Will asked.
Without glancing up from the book, he said, "A practice test."
"For school?"
"For the math competition." Jeremie abandoned the problem he was on, and flipped a few pages back. He turned the workbook towards Will, showing him the first page of the section. The clone picked it up, and for several moments he simply read.
Jeremie met Aelita’s raised eyebrow from the next seat over. He shrugged in response—what can you do? It’s not like the problems were all that riveting anyway. Jeremie began contemplating whether he should slide over to Aelita and start sticking his nose into whatever she was doing on her laptop, when Will interrupted.
"The answer to number six is incorrect."
Jeremie froze. "What?"
"The answer key." The clone pointed to a page that Jeremie had not left him on. "You multiplied incorrectly."
Jeremie blinked. He checked the answer key, then his math, then Will’s explanation. Then he checked again.
"Oh." Shockingly, Will was right. Jeremie stared, and he could feel that Aelita was staring too.
The clone stared back—but he was not shocked, nor in disbelief. He was as utterly unaffected as always.
"Did I say something wrong?" Will’s face scrunched in confusion.
"No."
"Then why are you making that face?"
A short, uncovered laugh from Aelita had Jeremie’s ears turning red. "What face?"
"The face where your eyebrows disappear into your hair."
Jeremie looked down at the section he’d been working on. Will had solved six pages of advanced mathematics in under three minutes.
Aelita looked like she had something evil in mind, her smile curling just a bit too far to the right. "You should enter."
Will turned to her, classically confused.
"Enter what?"
"The mathematics competition next month."
Before Jeremei could discourage drawing any unneeded attention to their very bad clone of their very missing schoolmate, Will asked his favorite question. "Why?"
That was actually a difficult question. The clone didn't care about winning or recognition—half the time, he didn't understand why grades existed!
"You'd represent Kadic,” Aelita said. “And you’d get to go up against Herb.”
"Oh,” Will paused. "Would that make people happy?"
Jeremie sighed. "Probably. At the very least I think Odd and Ulrich would get a kick out of it."
"Then I can do that."
When the list of competitors was posted, Herb nearly swallowed his tongue.
"William?"
The clone looked over, backpack strap twisted over itself and being worn in spite of that. "Hello, Herb."
"You can't be serious."
"I am usually serious."
"No, I mean—"
The preliminary round took place on a rainy Thursday. Students from across the region had packed into the auditorium. There were about a hundred students competing, while the rest of the attendees were there for support.
Shockingly, a good number of students from Kadic came out to see the event—namely to see how badly Will would bomb it. William had not been a math enthusiast.
Odd had come because there were free cookies.
"Honestly," he said around his third cookie, "I support academic achievement."
"No you don't," Aelita whispered.
"I support cookies."
She nodded. "That sounds more accurate."
The competition began with a short announcement, then the students opened up their workbooks and jumped right in. Proctors paced up and down the aisles of competitors, watching for any suspected cheating or infractions.
Twenty minutes later, Will raised his hand.
The proctor that came to his side looked confused. "Finished?"
"Yes."
The proctor checked her watch, noting that only a third of the allotted time had been used. "Already?"
"Yes." Will paused, shoulder raising to his ears out of engineered social habit. "Was I supposed to wait?"
When the scores arrived a week later, the cafeteria erupted in shock.
First place: William Dunbar.
Second place: Herb Pichon.
While there were things that Jeremie would struggle to explain to William, once they got him back, this would be a story that he would recall with glee. He just wasn't sure what he'd be able to do if Will was moved into the upper-level math class while William was gone.