MyrtenRose
Knight of Rebellion
"Never mind, you suck."
“Whatever you say, man.”
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"Never mind, you suck."
“Whatever you say, man.”
"I don't give a crap about the Red Masque."
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If her uncle expected her to be embarrassed about him reading this he was, well, totally right actually, but she made no move to snatch it out of his hand even as her eyes got wider the farther she got down. He'd been the one who'd actually agreed with her that this whole weird not-rescue mission had been worth it, he deserved to see that the person on the other end, outside of the stakes of the literal world, wasn't so bad either.
The other Qrow heard the patter of footfall behind him as he neared the staircase, then felt the sting of a sharp pain as his counterpart pitched his empty flask hard at the back of his head.
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"Stick around. You don't have to help us, but I think it's about time you took a swing at fixing your screwup. You count an extra head in there, by any chance? Maybe anyone you might have a responsibility for?"
"Son of a..." The man grumbled, rubbing at the back of his skull after the thrown flask bounced off. He didn't turn around fully, just shooting a glance over his shoulder at his lookalike. Qrow's head tilted after those questions, eyes lifting up to the ceiling as if in intense thought...but after hardly a moment, they came back down to stare his other self straight in the eyes as he answered:
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Then he turned back, taking another sip from his own flask and started shambling up the stairs.
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"Does bein' part of the Tribe on this Remnant just mean drinking 'til you forget your entire personality, or what? Sheesh."
That was the exact dosage of gravelly snark that non-answer deserved, in his mind, though there was wry amusement in his huff as he rubbed the back of his hair sheepishly and tried to weigh whether it was even worth following up on the next train of thought it occurred to him to pursue; the one he'd honestly been kind of building up to with this wholeone sided and disappointingbuddy cop act. Had he asked himself that question a month ago, the answer would've been a hard no. They weren't them. Up was down here. With one major exception, he'd done a pretty damn good job of avoiding a majority of the emotional entanglements that had made Yang's time on Remnant Two such a nightmare experience. He wasn't looking to change that now.
He sighed, not even realizing how long he'd been staring into the sunglass stand's mirror as he peered over his shades at the dark, baggy, tormented eyes underneath.
"Shit."
Whether Vernal was still there or had wandered off to do something else while he spaced out, she felt a tap on her shoulder, and when she turned it was to a Qrow whose jaw was set so tightly his teeth ground together when he talked.
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"...Tell me everything you remember about Ruby and Yang."
There was a different air to the man now, the lighthearted jocularity he'd been espousing before little more than a drop next to the ocean of sheer despondency and self-loathing she was standing face-to-face with now.
"Please."
Such comforting notions were well and truly dissuaded by the shadow that befell Watts' figure from behind, not dissimilar from one of Emerald's stunts in how nary an aura in the room had warned anyone of when and from whence the tree of a man suddenly looming over him had appeared. He was huge; not quite the inhuman man monster they met on their arrival in Gorgon, but nevertheless a tall, chiselled wall of muscle in an athlete's shape, and as he pounded his knuckles off one another a pair of thickly plated bronze-colored gauntlets extending all the way up under the sleeves of his exquisitely fitted suit to his shoulders rubbed together like defibrilators, volatile coils of gold lightning jumping between the points of contact.
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"Should put some respect on that mouth 'fore I put that mouth around a curb, boy."
His words were a sneering, posturing taunt, yet the tone they were delivered in was of the same deathly calm as a garbageman who'd been on the job for thirty years and seen all there was to see as he looked down on the latest advancements in the world of garbage. His eyes were hidden behind two impenetrable glass rims, but it wasn't hard to imagine them matching the twitch of disgust settling across the man's lips in sheer acrimony as he sized up Watts's reaction without a stir.
Mercury and Emerald were already up, rushing to step between their old classmate and the tree of a man with two equally outraged expressions of different stripes, Emerald's eyes flared wide with a more familiar anger than the grimace with a view to violence Mercury wore (despite the cat still draped around his shoulders) as he gave the man a double-handed shove that didn't even make him step back.
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"NOT OKAY!"
"WAY over the line!"
"What did you just say?!"
Everything swirling around inside her had almost gotten her to snap on Emerald earlier. One honestly innocuous comment and she'd came close to exploding on a friend who really didn't deserve it. Some random stranger thug threatening her friend, her partner like that? This dude came far far closer to setting her off than Emerald did. All the exaggerated slowness, that lethargic mood, it all just seemed to evaporate in an instant as she whirled around on the man in pure anger. There was nothing shooting out of her eye yet but there was no denying that her single visible eye was burning a much brighter and intense shade of gold as she glared at the man. There were only two reasons she didn't actually attack yet.
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"What I just say about the vibes, my dude?"
They were black. Rather than colors, whites, or anything resembling the typical color composition of the human eye there were just two inky, infinite pools, a pair of silver rims possibly denoting the presence of pupils somewhere in the depths of that darkness. It was impossible to measure precisely which was stranger and more disconcerting to look at between that and the skin immediately around her eyes, which all their color appeared to have drained to and now somehow seemed to drift, shift and intermingle with one another over the surface like some sort of optical illusion, the exact midpoint between a kaleidoscope and rorschach test.
Despite the unnatural sight, the sentence accompanying it was all but casual; completely lacking in threat or any hostile intent. There should have been nothing to separate it from anything else Morgiana had spoken in her light, airy, head-in-the-clouds lilt.
Yet somehow, and in complete disregard of the symphony of cats still yowling to their heart's content, the voice was perfectly audible to everyone in the room. It didn't even sound raised, and none of her facial cues indicated she had done anything more than murmur another placid, sleepy sentence. Still, they heard it, and if abrupt, universal termination of their cries was any indicator so did the cats, all their voices quieting at once in the same moment the candles in the tent flickered before they all scattered back to carrying out their standard cat business.
The man was listening, though unfazed, yet to peel his eyes off Watts even despite Mercury and Emerald's efforts. "It's a precedent thing, Morg. Queen can't rule like this. Stuff ain't gonna pick up."
"Yeah, well, that's just like, your opinion, man." She smiled, as she finally stopped subjecting Neo to what had potentially been the most soothing mode of suffocation she'd ever experienced and drifted backwards, parting some of the illusionist's pinker hair and letting her more startling facial features fade back to normal. "You believe in the old way. Daddy's way. I believe in flower power."
She threw up the peace sign again, this time over one eye.
"Peep this."
As if to illustrate the point, she gently plucked the poppy out from her own ear and (if allowed) slotted it behind Neo's instead, smoothing her tresses back over it to keep it in place. Stretching out, she let her gown's soft folds billow around her, gravity letting the lavish material settle around her feet an finally cling to her form in full as she picked her way across the cluttered wasteland of a carpet towards them, appearing to viscerally enjoy its sensation on her toes.
"Yup."
She answered both queries in the same, sibylline breath, gingerly lifting her hands to either side of her as though gently trailing her way across a meadow of flowers. One alighted on Tyrian's head, giving his crown a tender, caressing ruffle, and the other held the unlit end of what she'd been smoking out for Cinder to take in her lips if she wanted; a sight which, if it transpired, was hilarious enough to finally break Mercury's concentration.
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"Oh, God. Cinder's gonna get so high."
Morgiana remained silent until she had passed Watts, Mercury, then Emerald in turn, one hand peppering the towering man's lapel with a flurry of slaps until he dutifully stepped backward with a sigh, observing...
...absolutely nothing, as his boss proceeded to just stand there, arms folded, and stare at Watts as intently as such a dreamy person could muster for the next ten to fifteen seconds, no break in the eye contact unless he did so.
"What am I peepin'?" The bodyguard finally grunted, dubious.
"Shshhhhhh. I'm figurin' him out. I'm knowing him." Her eyes narrowed in abstruse, targeted consideration, never once breaking her tranquil smile from Arthur's face as she tilted her head coyly and tapped an irregular pattern against her lower lip. "Almost there now."
She continued to stare.
And stare.
And staaaaaaaaaare.
"...Shit, man, maybe." Vernal admitted, even if he was just being as sarcastic as they come. "Haven't touched the stuff in weeks though, so hey, small step for progress." Granted, that was after quite some time drinking herself silly until Raven came by and she was sorely reminded why she had almost never touched the stuff while at the camp. The Qrow she knew had been there too, but barely aware of where he was or even of which direction was north, from the looks of it. It was as familiar as it was...pathetic, and she could only imagine she'd looked the same to that twink and the others. She'd never said anything about it to his face, never really confronted him about it, 'cause he'd been the best of them once. The strongest rule. That and, well, she had liked being the number two back then. Nearly as much pull but not nearly as much a target on your back for any upstarts. So she'd kept her mouth shut about it back then, and she hadn't broken that trend when she saw him again...but it did get her to stop following in his footsteps in that way.
"..." She thought about saying more, but decided against it. She turned away.
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She had indeed walked away, though not that far. Dressed fitting for the weather or not, that didn't change that it was real fuckin' hot so she'd gone to get some water. Vernal had barely finished her latest sip and screwed the bottle's cap back on when the tap on her shoulder came. Her eyebrows raised and she turned to face him. She was quiet for a few seconds after his please. The look in his eyes, the way he sounded, those were almost painfully familiar and she sighed softly. "Alright." She agreed, throwing a glance over her shoulder at the store owner. "Hey, another bottle for my companion here." The former maiden demanded, tossing some stolen lien on the counter. Once it was in hand, she casually tossed it over to him.
Her gaze shot towards the ground for a moment of weakness-
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-before she brought it back up to meet his with a second sigh. She didn't need to go on about how it wasn't a great story, so she didn't. "We, uh...grew up together. I was a little older than Yang, roughly the same age gap between her and Ruby. I don't know if they ever considered me the same, but to me they were more or less little sisters. There weren't really that many kids in the camp at the time, and when Raven left her kid there, I admit I had some of that childlike excitement to have somewhere closer to my age around. Kept it buried to myself, though. For the most part. Anyways, from what I learned later, Raven was all hung up on her own insecurities and doubts, didn't think she was up to task on being a single mom. She hoped that if the kid had a similar upbringing to the one she had, she'd turn out okay, at least, until the time came when she could break away and follow in her mom's footsteps, I guess. It didn't go to plan. Obviously." Vernal shook her head slowly.
"Their other teammate showed up one day, full of concern and more than a little pity for our Qrow. One thing led to another, don't ask me specifics cuz I sure as hell don't know, but eventually along came Ruby. Her mom left too, some time later. Dunno why with that either, only Qrow did and he was tight-lipped about it. So. Ruby was the pride of the camp, the chief's kid, basically a princess if you could even call somebody who lived the way we did a princess." She shrugged. "Treated like it, anyhow." She snickered, but it was a bitter noise, one that didn't have any amusement in it. "Yang...wasn't."
She took a longer sip from her water before continuing. "I suppose on some level Qrow cared, he did agree to raise her here but...he was too lost in the bottle most days, and the times when he wasn't, his attention was given mainly to Ruby, so for the most part he missed the worst that happened with Yang. The older bandits did what they could to mold her into one of them, but not the same way they did with me. I was born into the life, my parents respected among the tribe. But her? The daughter of somebody who'd abandoned them? They were far more harsh on her when her uncle wasn't looking, which was most of the time. She resisted, she didn't want to listen. Held out for so long, with the sheer balls it took to do that when it only got her more and more beatings. I tried to help her the best I could. I wasn't strong enough to stop them, and maybe because I was a kid like her or that I just wasn't as callous as them yet, I treated her with as much kindness as I could get away with. Advised her to stop resisting to spare herself pain, took her into the woods a few times at night, under the cover of darkness in secret to try and tend to the worst of her wounds...but she didn't listen. Kept at it. Until the day she didn't, when she finally snapped under the pressure."
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"And Masque, well, she saw what was happening and either adapted quickly to the situation, fitting given her semblance I suppose, or she made them only think she did. Personally, I think it was the latter. Either way, eventually, both of them leave. They disappear. One day I just woke up and both were just gone, and looking back I don't blame 'em at all. Lookin' back now, honestly, I just wish I'd...done more for them when I could have, that even if I was physically weak, my strength of spirit was strong enough to take a stand. Maybe that's just because of everything that's happened or it's something that has come from her influence, growing on me......cuz yeah, after they were gone and I stayed, the time soon came when we found the Spring Maiden. Ya know what happened then. With them both gone, I was the best choice left. I inherited the power and...more than just that." Vernal took a deep breath and drank the rest of what water was left before tossing it into a nearby trashcan.
"Never saw them again until we got dragged into all this when you guys came for us back at the camp. So...there ya go."
"I....I'm still trying to come to terms with Weiss and Maria and Yang telling me about the man Ozpin really is. You saw me at Salem's office. I got tossed in there like a wild animal. He was the only figure I could look up to. The only one that paid me any mind that wasn't simply scorn or disgust or...simple willful apathy. Growing up I was a total brat to get what I wanted. Being the boss's daughter didn't mean a damn thing other than people knew my name if I messed up. I needed to feel as if I had power over my life. That I wasn't going to just be the Bandit's daughter and nothing more. That I could be who I wanted to be and assert my authority over someone else. I wanted to be noticed so I took it out on the only person I could..." Ruby let the clear implication of who that was sit in the air for a bit. "I made her do whatever I wanted. If she didn't like it? I'd get her in trouble and they'd always take my word over hers. She was the outcast. The burden to us. I helped keep it that way." She looked over to her stump. "....I've been telling myself lately that saving us from the Beowulf was my only kind act towards her....but the more and more I think about it, I think I just didn't want to lose the only person who listened to ME."
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"So, I helped make my Yang what she is. ...To a certain point anyway. Ozpin's....modified her a bit."
"Right, well, I'll let you keep doing that while I finish talking" His eyes tilted back up to his accoster, and he spoke as if just how flustered he'd been a few seconds didn't entirely undercut his unfazed tone.
Whatever bravado, false or genuine it may have been, Watts had been displaying in the face of that threat vanished in a muddled look of surprise at just how quickly quite literally everyone else in the room took offense to that. Even Neo, had pulled her head up out of Morgiana's neck, her eyes not magically clear of tears but with a look that was quiet in a far different sense than it usually meant for her.
"...You all do know I am capable of handling myself, yes?" He asked, his voice very much wanting to sound dull and not really succeeding this time.
"Respect is earned sir. And in point of fact, while I'm not going to sit here and pretend I'm thrilled to be in this den of who knows what when we have important things to be doing, and I frankly find your boss weird, my words were true enough. I can respect a leader who cares about their people. I don't need to like someone to respect them. You, however-" he continued as his eyes narrowed "-I don't think I carry either for. Any good Atlesian will tell you to be feared is better than to be respected. But I've always been a bit of a shit Atlesian, so I have to question, what, exactly, you're fishing for here?"
Yet perhaps there was another way to get out of that shitty mood. Her expression shifted into an awkward grin as she eyed the unlit end before briefly glancing at all her friends...and then shrugged, taking the offering into her own mouth to begin smoking. She couldn't say she'd ever done it before, which explained why she nearly immediately coughed a couple times, but she wasn't going to let that dissuade her. She'd so gladly left home, eager to experience new things and live a better life, and this...this was one of those experiences.
Qrow's brow was in his hand by the end of it, fingers pinching the bridge of his nose where he leaned against the shop counter, his own bottle mostly depleted of its quenching contents.
"...Don't ever tell that story to my Ruby." He slowly grunted. "And definitely not my Yang."
It would've been easy to take the urgent, vigorously terse delivery of the statements as orders, especially given the gritty voice uttering them was one she was used to hearing them from. They weren't, though. The flicker of his eyes over in her direction was too earnest for that, the sorrow in them too sincere, for it to be anything but another, implicit plea.
The plastic bottle's crackling protest in his hand was his first sign he needed to climb right up on outta his head, and with a stiff growl he tilted his head back to splash the remainder of the water all over his face as a pallet cleanse. Hey, when in Vacuo.
"...There's something you could tell your old boss for me, though. You know, if it comes up naturally in conversation."
The words were casual, if gruffly spoken, but they were a light breeze to a hurricane in relation to his next statement upon pitching his own bottle in the trash.
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"Tell him he's a dead man."
It was a level of anger, of fervor, of caring about something that in all likelihood hadn't broken the surface of this world's Qrow Branwen in a long time, even if was plainly evident none of it was directed at Vernal herself. Truth was, he didn't have a damn clue how to help Ruby or Yang here. Maybe they couldn't be helped, maybe being rich meant Weiss just lucked out with the least damaging tragic backstory. He didn't know. Qrow had never really considered himself a particularly adept fixer of things.
What he did know was that there was something he could do that someone better should've done a long, long time ago.
"Could be tonight. Could be tomorrow. But I'm coming for him. Me 'n him, we're gonna square his debt. The easy way. He'll know when it's time. That's all."
Whatever happened, the world was gonna be better off.
He let that hang over the conversation for a few seconds, running a hand back through his hair and giving it a light tousle so water droplets went flying everywhere. Finally, he spoke again.
"So... the power. Changed ya, huh?"
His eyes shifted briefly in the direction they'd left Yang and Raven in, but the way they flitted back before the second was out said all there needed to be said about his actual worries there. Good luck to whatever tiny fragment of the ice queen passed on getting any kind of foothold in there.
Whatever bravado, false or genuine it may have been, Watts had been displaying in the face of that threat vanished in a muddled look of surprise at just how quickly quite literally everyone else in the room took offense to that. Even Neo, had pulled her head up out of Morgiana's neck, her eyes not magically clear of tears but with a look that was quiet in a far different sense than it usually meant for her.
"...You all do know I am capable of handling myself, yes?" He asked, his voice very much wanting to sound dull and not really succeeding this time.
It was hard to judge what exactly it was. Whether it was timbre, tone, the enforced curtness of the words themselves as they washed over his trio of defenders from behind or simply a desire to diffuse whatever was brewing born from a better-than-passing familiarity of both sides of the standoff. Whatever it was they picked up on, it prompted Mercury and Emerald to take a sharp, sudden look at one another before they turned, immediately realigning to affix Watts with two faces he knew very well from the halls of Beacon.
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"Oooooh, Art's gonna cryyyyyyyyy."
"He iiiiiisssssss. So cute, but so embarrassing. He's usually way better at being apathetic and distant than this."
"His chakras are totally out of alignment right now, brahs. But this man... this man's tears gush for joy." The thief queen delivered solemnly, still standing in between them and also just joining in on the hazing like she was one of the gang.
Watts leveled Cinder with the most judgemental look he'd ever given her when she took a puff of whatever the hell that was, but he didn't speak up in any actual objection
"Let's talk bidness. But first, might a gal propose someone alleviates the lil spitfire of her second most sacred of burdens before she busts a lung and smites us all off the face of Remnant with a cough?"
Her head tilted over.
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Or maybe it was just really strong...
Such comforting notions were well and truly dissuaded by the shadow that befell Watts' figure from behind, not dissimilar from one of Emerald's stunts in how nary an aura in the room had warned anyone of when and from whence the tree of a man suddenly looming over him had appeared. He was huge; not quite the inhuman man monster they met on their arrival in Gorgon, but nevertheless a tall, chiselled wall of muscle in an athlete's shape, and as he pounded his knuckles off one another a pair of thickly plated bronze-colored gauntlets extending all the way up under the sleeves of his exquisitely fitted suit to his shoulders rubbed together like defibrilators, volatile coils of gold lightning jumping between the points of contact.
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"Should put some respect on that mouth 'fore I put that mouth around a curb, boy."
His words were a sneering, posturing taunt, yet the tone they were delivered in was of the same deathly calm as a garbageman who'd been on the job for thirty years and seen all there was to see as he looked down on the latest advancements in the world of garbage. His eyes were hidden behind two impenetrable glass rims, but it wasn't hard to imagine them matching the twitch of disgust settling across the man's lips in sheer acrimony as he sized up Watts's reaction without a stir.
Mercury and Emerald were already up, rushing to step between their old classmate and the tree of a man with two equally outraged expressions of different stripes, Emerald's eyes flared wide with a more familiar anger than the grimace with a view to violence Mercury wore (despite the cat still draped around his shoulders) as he gave the man a double-handed shove that didn't even make him step back.
"What I just say about the vibes, my dude?"
They were black. Rather than colors, whites, or anything resembling the typical color composition of the human eye there were just two inky, infinite pools, a pair of silver rims possibly denoting the presence of pupils somewhere in the depths of that darkness. It was impossible to measure precisely which was stranger and more disconcerting to look at between that and the skin immediately around her eyes, which all their color appeared to have drained to and now somehow seemed to drift, shift and intermingle with one another over the surface like some sort of optical illusion, the exact midpoint between a kaleidoscope and rorschach test.
Despite the unnatural sight, the sentence accompanying it was all but casual; completely lacking in threat or any hostile intent. There should have been nothing to separate it from anything else Morgiana had spoken in her light, airy, head-in-the-clouds lilt.
Yet somehow, and in complete disregard of the symphony of cats still yowling to their heart's content, the voice was perfectly audible to everyone in the room. It didn't even sound raised, and none of her facial cues indicated she had done anything more than murmur another placid, sleepy sentence. Still, they heard it, and if abrupt, universal termination of their cries was any indicator so did the cats, all their voices quieting at once in the same moment the candles in the tent flickered before they all scattered back to carrying out their standard cat business.
"Shshhhhhh. I'm figurin' him out. I'm knowing him." Her eyes narrowed in abstruse, targeted consideration, never once breaking her tranquil smile from Arthur's face as she tilted her head coyly and tapped an irregular pattern against her lower lip. "Almost there now."
She continued to stare.
And stare.
And staaaaaaaaaare.
"H--he--hey!" She started. "It isn't that--that bad. I can--handle it." Even took another big smoke or two to prove it.
"Should put some respect on that mouth 'fore I put that mouth around a curb, boy."
His words were a sneering, posturing taunt, yet the tone they were delivered in was of the same deathly calm as a garbageman who'd been on the job for thirty years and seen all there was to see as he looked down on the latest advancements in the world of garbage. His eyes were hidden behind two impenetrable glass rims, but it wasn't hard to imagine them matching the twitch of disgust settling across the man's lips in sheer acrimony as he sized up Watts's reaction without a stir.
Mercury and Emerald were already up, rushing to step between their old classmate and the tree of a man with two equally outraged expressions of different stripes, Emerald's eyes flared wide with a more familiar anger than the grimace with a view to violence Mercury wore (despite the cat still draped around his shoulders) as he gave the man a double-handed shove that didn't even make him step back.
"Yup."
She answered both queries in the same, sibylline breath, gingerly lifting her hands to either side of her as though gently trailing her way across a meadow of flowers. One alighted on Tyrian's head, giving his crown a tender, caressing ruffle,
"H--he--hey!" She started. "It isn't that--that bad. I can--handle it." Even took another big smoke or two to prove it.
Oh god.
Maybe it was just her being a first time novice and completely unprepared but it hit her hard.
The annoying acrobatic maneuvering of the world's most frustrating midget did its job, Neo's boot smacking into the back of the skull and getting Nora to faceplant right into the wafflemix.
he pulled herself right out of there in an instant, though not without licking what remained of the mix on her face(mmmmm delicious), but once that was done her eyes shot to the side and using her peripheral vision.
With a fierce battle cry, she spun and whipped the bowl in that direction to splash the tiny annoyance with all the remaining mix.
She shattered once more as the telltale signs of her semblance's use scattered to the floor before dissipating entirely. Then within seconds she was in Nora's face, literally mere inches away from the brawler. Jumping up ever so slightly she sought to slam her knee right into the underside of Nora's chin and send her vaulting over the counter. Right into the mess of everything that Neo had carelessly kicked off in her initial sprint across the countertop.
"Hey, hey, hey! Hold on there, little miss. You're goin about it all wrong."
Blanche made his way over to Cinder and puffed out another trail of smoke himself.
"You don't gotta inhale it all at once like it's a race. Enjoying things like this...it's like enjoying the first sip of wine that you stole to impress the girl you'd been courting for days. You have to take it slow, savor it, enjoy it. " The hitman chuckled to himself before giving Cinder a hearty pat on the back.
"Give me a puff..."
"...no." She shook her head.
"No...?? What do you mean no??? I'd share with you!"
The faunus huffed as he reached for it.
"There's enough for you to pass around!"
She stepped out of his reach. “I said no.”
"Touch me like that again and I will freeze you solid and--"
"You won't."
The more psychedelic of visuals to spring out around eyes had gradually receded throughout her low stakes staredown with Watts, but whether it was a momentary lapse in judgment or not the second those words left Cinder's mouth they sprang back with an even greater trippy vividity than before, silver circles now pulsing with a thread of insistent amber that peeked out from the pools of black like the light of the sun emerging from an eclipse. It was still a long, long way from being outright threatening, but it did carry an unspoken vow of intervention were Cinder to show any inclination towards following through with that, an ethereal vacancy falling over the waify woman's face as a wave of something intangible rolled out over the room once more; only this time the lights flickered deeper, came closer to total blackness, serving to only better illuminate the rows of intricate runes and sigils scratched and scralled all across the lavish confines of the tent.
The display finally earned a gruff sniff of approval from her bodyguard, though it was evident from her disappointed sigh that the very act of having to lay down the law ran counter to her entire ethos.
"There have been wayyyy too many threats of violence bringin' down the mood in my inner sanctum in this past minute or two, baby birds. Okay? I know, I know, it's not your fault. I get how the dominoes fall. The establishment taught you to believe whoever makes the biggest boom gets the loudest voice, and the lesson stuck. But down here in the dark there are no dominoes, no booms, no establishments. And no lessons. Only peace, love, and the domain of Morgiana the Mystic. Which the fates have led you to for a very important reason today."
She kept that vacant, unnatural gaze locked on Cinder throughout the entirety of the words, eyes unblinking as they were unchanging, voice taking on a pitch and inflection that sounded like they came from another world.
"In case you're wondering, I'm just a borrower, sunspeckle. The well you draw from may be deeper and deadlier than mine, but mine's older. Brandish yours like a gun again and I will use it to seal you."
She held that gaze for a second more, deeper and more penetrating than even the one she affixed Watts with before all at once she brightened with a perky grin.
"Now quit being a bogart and bequeath the freakin' doob! I'll share with Sweet Tea if it's against your ethos, but for reals tho. Pick, puff 'n pass or we pray. For you."
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"She's right. Hold onto that thing much longer and the devil's gonna suck your guts out with a straw. You already went way too fast," Emerald chose that moment to inject, leaning over towards Cinder from the opposite side Tyrian did to hold out her hand coaxingly.
Morgiana's entire bed, cushions sheets pillows, Morgiana herself and all with a few surprised looking cats besides and also a literal anvil all suddenly went flying over the heads of everyone else, careening in the air straight for the bodyguard at surprising speed
They all crashed into him or the ground with a harmless shattering rather than any sort of cacophony of breaking wood and flying fur, their constitute shards of light scattering around the room before they faded away. Neo was lounging on the bed (that had clearly never moved from it's spot) on her stomach with her feet idly kicking in the air behind her and her chin resting in her hands with an angelic smile that really did a better job of selling that that totally hadn't been her than it should've considering the dearth of feasible suspects, probably due to the actual halo floating over her head
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"..................."
Now that much did catch her off guard, and she was silent for considerably longer this time with her stare angled away from him and towards the sandy ground with a contemplative frown. On one hand, yeah, Qrow had been her old boss...but on the other, did that really fucking matter anymore when the thing he was boss of hardly even existed now? Apparently it didn't to her, for when she met his eyes again, it was with an indifferent shrug. "Well I for one wouldn't bet against you. Yeah. Valkyrie's killer. Could end up 2 for 2 with that, the crime boss of Vale and the bandit leader from Mistral. Sure you wouldn't want to tell him that yourself, though?" She questioned.
"Pfft." She snickered. "I mean, yeah. The power itself definitely got to me a little. Ego boost for a while or whatever. Most of the other guys, yeah they were killers and thieves but not a match for huntsmen. But me? With the elements themselves bending to my will and more besides that? Oh yeah, that made me feel strong..." She trailed off, looking down at herself. "...but, nah, it was her that really got to me the most. She'd been kind, and stubborn as hell, and that spark of her that had remained when the power transferred to me, it kept both those traits. Everythin' I did after, there was a part of me that found it..." Vernal struggled to get the actual word out and ultimately didn't. Probably didn't even need to say it.
"Well, I tried to keep it buried. Never really managed to."
"I... I want to hope that means her plan worked, whatever it was. She was going after Ozpin directly, but.... Something, felt... wrong. Like it wasn't just Weiss' soul that touched mine"
He snorted at the prediction, though it was heavy brows and a clouded gaze he leveled down at the countertop as he pushed his shades up the bridge of his nose. Yeah, that was him. Fixing this hellhole the only way he knew how, one skull at a time.
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"Get the impression the jackass can't take himself seriously enough for that to fly. Nah. One way or another, next time I gotta look at that miserable mug for more than five seconds is when his time's up. I want him to know that. Know it's coming. I wanna get a good look at his eyes when I tell him to get up, that he's done. See how he takes it."
If he was being honest, he thought he had a pretty good idea already. But it wasn't like this guy hadn't already found new lows to sink to he'd never considered before even on his worst self-deprecating spirals, and maybe the washed-up bastard still had some surprises left in him.
"Maybe he'll just run. Doubt it, but at the same time it wouldn't surprise me. Guess we'll see."
"...You were the only one who tried."
It was a more haggard, pensive growl he came back to that with, not necessarily wanting to absolve the woman but feeling it warranted mentioning anyway.
"You were practically the same age they were. An age I sure as hell hadn't managed to untwist myself from their backwoods horseshit by, that's for sure. It's a closed community, y'know? Not sure anyone really gets how hard that is, when you're born to it. When ya grow up hearin' your folks say it's okay, when they keep telling you to be more brutal, more ruthless, make you believe the way they live is the right way and it's your god-given right to own whatever you can take from someone else... I mean, it's practically a cult when you get down to it." He snorted. "Then, eventually, you get outside the camp walls. See the kingdoms, how people actually live, realize what a loada crap it all was. But that doesn't make it any easier. And before you ever got the chance, you were still the only one who tried doing... something for her. Anything. Maybe not as much as you could've, but..."
He huffed, falling silent. He stared down at his hands for a few moments before he glanced up at the shopkeep and motioned for four more bottles of water, two extra for when the mother-daughter folk group caught up.
"I dunno. Maybe there was more of Spring already in there than you realized."
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...Shit.
He blanched, all the hard work the sun had carried done his complexion over the past weeks erased in a second.
"Shit, shit. Ozma's soul was already in Weiss's body when she died, however the hell that even happened." He was still a little fuzzy on that. "You don't think..."
His eyes inched wider still as he cast a leery glance back in the direction they'd come, clearly at least a little distraught at the thought he'd just had. It wasn't like the two disparate souls could've formed all that much of a link in so short a time, but...
"...This you attemptin' to butter me up or something?" She snarked, complete with amused chuckle.
Still was the only one of the three to stay when I could have run too.
"So, this other world of yours...you Branwens get out of the camp the same way?"
"I think you're askin' the wrong person."
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"It's called 'understanding'. Believe me, I know they don't speak much of it where you come from," he grunted, no reservations about meeting snark with snark as he accepted the bundle of waters from the man and paid him. "Look, I'm just saying that whatever your reason is for being here, whatever you're looking to atone for, I think you're on the right track. Closer than some, at least. Take it or leave it."
He unscrewed one and brought it to his lips, because god damn was this desert sun gonna kill his pasty faced goth ass faster and more efficiently than any Grimm had ever come close to touching.
"You want the Tribe friendly macho version? Maybe I just feel bad I almost twisted your head off your shoulders right before I murked Valkyrie. Yeah, think about it. That was almost you."
He was starting to realize maybe he just wasn't dealing with this whole 'Remnant Two' thing that well.
"Yeah. Worked out great for 'em."
"What, by walking?"
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If she was looking for a game of bandit snark ping-pong, he was happy to demonstrate why he was the regional champ ten years running.
"How'd ya piece that one together, Columbo?"
"The last natural Spring Maiden?" He subsequently deadpanned back. "Yeah, I must be crazy."
The advice, purely by itself, seemed sound but there was clearly something about what had just occurred that didn't sit right with her, if the look on her face was anything to go by.
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"Touch me like that again and I will freeze you solid and--" She cut herself off. Deep breath, Cinder, deep breath. Good vibes, remember, keep those up, she thought to herself.
"You won't."
The more psychedelic of visuals to spring out around eyes had gradually receded throughout her low stakes staredown with Watts, but whether it was a momentary lapse in judgment or not the second those words left Cinder's mouth they sprang back with an even greater trippy vividity than before, silver circles now pulsing with a thread of insistent amber that peeked out from the pools of black like the light of the sun emerging from an eclipse. It was still a long, long way from being outright threatening, but it did carry an unspoken vow of intervention were Cinder to show any inclination towards following through with that, an ethereal vacancy falling over the waify woman's face as a wave of something intangible rolled out over the room once more; only this time the lights flickered deeper, came closer to total blackness, serving to only better illuminate the rows of intricate runes and sigils scratched and scralled all across the lavish confines of the tent.
The display finally earned a gruff sniff of approval from her bodyguard, though it was evident from her disappointed sigh that the very act of having to lay down the law ran counter to her entire ethos.
"There have been wayyyy too many threats of violence bringin' down the mood in my inner sanctum in this past minute or two, baby birds. Okay? I know, I know, it's not your fault. I get how the dominoes fall. The establishment taught you to believe whoever makes the biggest boom gets the loudest voice, and the lesson stuck. But down here in the dark there are no dominoes, no booms, no establishments. And no lessons. Only peace, love, and the domain of Morgiana the Mystic."
She kept that vacant, unnatural gaze locked on Cinder throughout the entirety of the words, eyes unblinking as they were unchanging, voice taking on a pitch and inflection that sounded like they came from another world.
"In case you're wondering, I'm just a borrower, sunspeckle. The well you draw from may be deeper and deadlier than mine, but mine's older. Brandish yours like a gun again and I will use it to seal you."
She held that gaze for a second more, deeper and more penetrating than even the one she affixed Watts with before all at once she brightened with a perky grin.
"Now bequeath the freakin' doob, bogart. I'll share with Sweet Tea if it's against your ethos, but for reals tho. Pick, puff 'n pass or we pray. For you."
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"She's right. Hold onto that thing much longer and the devil's gonna suck your guts out with a straw. You already went way too fast," Emerald chose that moment to inject, leaning over towards Cinder from the opposite side Tyrian did to hold out her hand coaxingly.
"Yeah, you heard. You kinda did a whole thing and majorly stressed out the flow, so now go face the corner. Hey, anyone wanna throw stuff at Lance until he stands in the corner with me?"
She picked up a pillow and fired it at him to show it was okay, though he batted it out of the air with a scowl.
"This ain't happenin'-"
He barely ducked a half-eaten sandwich fired at his head by Mercury. With extreme prejudice.