TRP is a post-Great War AU RWBY RP set in Mistral City and Haven Academy with no canons, no rank claims, no maidens, and no god interference. We offer a progression system and site-wide events that change the setting based on player actions.
Post by Sinopia DeStellanova on Apr 19, 2020 0:02:43 GMT -5
It was that time of year again, if the never ending stream of advertisements were to be believed. The Vytal Festival was coming to town, and this was the first year Red would be able to watch it in person. Before moving to Vacuo she had no interest in the huntsmen bloodsport, but after it became important to get any information possible on anyone dangerous she might end up coming into conflict with. That was especially true in Mistral this year, given they were more likely to have the trainees in the tournament handle actual missions due to lack of other options. It was actually likely that a large percentage of the people that would be sent after them would be in this tournament. So, Red decided to splurge a little bit and buy some tickets to go watch in person, and invited Knight to come along if she wanted.
This was her first time going to something like this, so she wasn't quite sure what to expect. She had heard enough people bitching on the internet about exorbitant food and drink prices to at least know to come prepared. If they were charging that much for food, it seemed unlikely they allowed people to take their own food with them. Fortunately, Red knew how to smuggle goods places they didn't belong and had a semblance that let her cheat. All she had to do was use her semblance to hide everything they were going to bring inside of their bodies until they were past the checkpoint. It meant everything would get warmed up by their core body temperatures, but at long as she hid all of it right before they entered and took it out once they were through, it should be good enough. Though, she wasn't feeling risky enough to bring any chocolate or other candy that would melt easily. They also couldn't take more than what they could fit inside of them, but they didn't need that much food anyway. So, Red prepared some sodas, a bunch of popcorn, a few sandwiches for lunch, and some Skittles. That left plenty of room for Knight to bring along a few things if she wanted.
Red arrived early to try to get good seats, and while the seats she got weren't terrible, she wished she would have known she would have been in Mistral soon enough to pre-order some really nice ones. Oh well, they'd be good enough to see the action and to get a good idea of what each trainee was capable of. There was still about an hour before the first match was going to start, so she figured she'd take a look around the festival. It felt strange to be walking around and exploring like this without needing to think about escape routes or the most effective way to break in. She did anyway out of habit, but with how open this part of the festival was, it wasn't that hard to find a few dozen without really trying.
"What do you even do at these things?" she asked, popping a Skittle into her mouth.
The place smelled of freshly cut grass and sweat. There were numerous stalls lining the streets, several of them doing their best to cover those smells with the smell of food. It made her glad that she managed to smuggle some food in or this would be unbearable. The weather was nice. Sunny with a nice breeze, and warm enough that she would have taken off her jacket if she didn't need the hood to hide her ears. Mistral got lucky with the weather this year, but that was about the only thing Red found pleasant about the place.
Overall, she was finding the place louder than she liked, and the people obnoxious. Tourists were some of the most clueless, self-important people she had ever seen, and there were lots of them. More crowded than she would have liked to. The amount of people accidentally bumping into her backside was starting to put her on edge. She looked stoic, but with each time it happened, she looked stiffer and more on-guard than before. Determined to not let it ruin the day for her, she tried taking a closer look at some of the stalls.
"Holy shit, they really do charge 15 lien for a soda," she shook her head and looked at the game on the next stall over. It involved throwing baseballs at a target and had some cheap looking prizes for anyone able to. "What do you think? Think you can hit anything?"
She was mostly joking, but really, at this point she was willing to indulge any of the nonsense that was here. It was a unique experience and not one she may ever be able to have again. Might as well enjoy it for all it's worth.
This thing was so new and flashy and modern it must have costed billions of lien to construct. That wasn’t even counting the research and development costs, or the costs of shipping it around across the world and providing security for it. It was an unfathomable amount of money, enough to do any number of social goods. It could end all hunger in Remnant for a generation, for example. It could have also been spent ensuring that everyone had access to free medical care and never had to pay to go to a doctor again. It could have been spent to ensure that the next few generations of children could have gotten a guaranteed education with teachers who were actually professionally trained, and classrooms given the materials needed to facilitate learning like books and paper and pencils. [break][break]
It could have been used to rebuild the militaries around the world and train them how to deal with Grimm so that the frontier was finally consistently defended. It could have made transportation between urban centers both safer and more reliable for the masses, vastly increasing the ability to trade even within a kingdom. They could have put that into research and learned how to make the communication towers service an entire country rather than just elevating the capital, Argus, and everywhere in between that would revolutionize Mistral and indeed any other country that had a similar boon. That would have tangibly and immediately saved lives due to the limited Huntsmen Mistral had being used effectively rather than haphazardly and outlying villages being able to send for help in a reliable way rather than needing to send a messenger into the wilderness and hope he didn’t get eaten alive by Grimm before reaching anywhere important. [break][break]
Instead of doing any of those things, however, the four kingdoms of the world joined hands and instead built a floating gladiatorial ring encased in a mega stadium with all sorts of ways to make a quick buck. They had a moment of worldwide unity and used it to make a shallow cash grab to split the profits into infinity by pretending it was a monument to the global solidarity rather than a cynical capitalist cash grab. The fact that people ate that shit up even further infuriated her – because all it did was justify the decision to waste world-changing amounts of money on this of all things rather than any public good whatsoever. [break][break]
She didn’t know what she was expecting coming in, frankly, but seeing the entire setup in person for the first time was enough to make her face twitch. She didn’t know how much Red had paid to get those tickets, and the faunus probably didn’t want to know. Knight was dressed well enough to not stick out like a sore thumb, but not well enough that anyone would mistake her for anyone important. She wore a light blue nylon jacket over top a white turtleneck sweater, dark blue jeans, and a regular pair of gray and orange athletic shoes. She carried no weapons or metal with her aside from her keys today, because she saw no point whatsoever in even introducing the chance of being searched. On her head she had a gray beanie underneath a nondescript dark blue ballcap. Her body still hadn’t adjusted back to her home country’s weather and compared to Vacuo this place was absolutely freezing and Knight was still in the stage where she was constantly cold when her aura wasn’t actively on. [break][break]
When her partner asked what they were even supposed to do here, Knight just shrugged and scanned the crowd around them with a cold, gray stare. ”Cheer when your team is doing well, boo when they’re doing bad. Pick a favorite gladiator, see if they have any merchandise. Buy school gear,” she’d pause here to point at the multiple people around them in absolutely ridiculous Huntsmen Academy hats, jerseys, and other apparel. ”and then when your team wins, you win.” [break][break]
Knight could never turn off that last five percent of paranoia that had kept her alive all of these years, so in crowded places like these where people were naturally behind her and out of her sight quite frequently and people would move from out of her vision and touch her slightly to move past she was a bit more on edge than most others would be. When Red found a distraction in the form of an accuracy game where you threw balls at targets, Knight took the opportunity to get her mind off of the crowd and obliged immediately. ”Of course I can hit something.” she’d state confidently, and would sit in line behind someone attempting the challenge to be next. The young man who was doing it was okay, but not outstanding. It was a pin game where you were given two small balls and had to knock over twenty-one small pins styled to look like faces. Each time you hit one of them, you got your ball back. The guy managed to get six of them down with his first attempt, and eleven down on his second before running out of cash – it was ten lien a pop. [break][break]
Knight was next, and she passed over her ten-lien fee confidently and was given two tennis balls and set up shop about five meters away at the throwing line. She wound up the toss like a baseball pitch and fired off a powerful shot that landed absolutely nowhere close to any of the pins in the first attempt. It slammed against the ground near the ground in front of the pins, and then was redirected straight up before bouncing uselessly away from everything. The second pitch dinged hard against the top metal rung above the top row of the pins, and then ricocheted behind the structure without hitting a damned thing. Her turn was over, and she had hit exactly zero of the pins. [break][break]
”Okay, I lied.” she admitted, shrugging her shoulders and turning back to Knight. ”The ball was weighted weird, these games are always rigged.” she offered next, coming up with excuses as easily as she breathed. It wasn’t exactly a secret that her accuracy was substandard even with firearms, so it was no surprise to either of them that she had failed to hit anything with a ball.
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[attr="class","nikki103"]1066 words
[attr="class","nikki103"]ASCHE SYNDICATE
[attr="class","nikki103"]1066 TOTAL WORDS
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NOTES
B Semblance, D Weapons, C Dust Enhancement, C Durability, C Agility, D Stamina, D Exhaustion, D Martial Arts
Post by Sinopia DeStellanova on Apr 19, 2020 3:50:59 GMT -5
"You make it sound like so much fun," she replied dryly. "I can definitely understand why people look forward to it coming to their kingdom every decade for that."
She tired to get a good look at some of the jerseys around, and she still couldn't understand the incomprehensible combinations of letters. The ones in the past years hadn't been any better, and she was starting to wonder what these people had against vowels. The entire thing felt like they were trying too hard in her opinion. Even if it was supposed to be a mashup of the competitors' names most of the time the combinations were just nonsensical. How was anyone supposed to figure out that team TFVI from Vacuo two years ago was supposed to be pronounced 'Toffee'? Such an inefficient naming scheme.
Granted, after seeing how much money it cost to actually come here she was starting to understand why they were trying to hard.
Red kept squinting at people, as thought that would somehow make the letters make sense, while they waited in line. She tore herself away from that when it was Knight's turn to throw, but she briefly wondered if she should have pretended to not notice. The ball bounced sadly on the ground, and her eyes followed it as it rolled. She said nothing, just looked at the ball with a perfectly flat, stoic expression. After all that confidence she didn't need to say anything, and her face probably said more than her words ever could anyway.
Nodding at the excuse, she decided to put her own 10 lien forward. Unlike Knight, she had no form and not very much power behind her throw. She just kind of chucked it forward and hoped for the best, not wanting to put much more effort into it than that. She had never been that good at throwing things, and all of her recent aiming had been on very large stationary targets (mostly walls). She was fine with taking the bare minimum effort just to see what she could do. One of the balls passed between two pins, and might have hit something if she took any time to actually aim. The other hit the boards and fell to the ground. With a shrug, she moved away and put her hands back in her pockets.
"Yeah, definitely rigged."
Normally she liked to keep Knight more honest with herself, but for something like this she was willing to play along. Being here was already awkward in a lot of ways, and making fun of it was cathartic in its own right.
"I don't understand these names. Mer--" she paused. "Merlt? Biksen? Is that team called Satan?" She raised her eyebrows. A surprisingly spot-on name for a group of huntsmen trainees, but somehow she doubted she was saying it right. "I think my top criteria for deciding which team to cheer for is going to be whether or not their team name has vowels and is possible to read just by looking at it. I guess I should decide quickly since that's what you're supposed to do in a place like this. They got a list anywhere?"
Sarcasm aside, it was a good idea to get a complete list of all the Mistralian trainees and start putting abilities to names and faces. Her scroll was ready to take some notes and some good video too. Though she was a little concerned that her mind was already drifting back towards work. How did most people manage to have fun in places like this anyway? It was stressful.
Post by Alina Rybalka on Apr 19, 2020 18:49:32 GMT -5
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[attr="class","nikki101"]WE CAN ALL AGREE THAT VIOLENCE BREEDS VIOLENCE
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[attr="class","nikki102"]BUT IN THE END, IT HAS TO BE THIS WAY
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[attr="class","nikki109"]Red took her turn at the carnival game soon after and had about the same experience that Knight herself did. The game was rigged, and the number of shooting attempts needed to at least double for the entire thing to have a chance of success. At the mention of the ridiculous names, gray eyes actually paid attention to the letters on the stupid jerseys for the first time and she couldn’t make out the names either. BCSN was an abomination that even someone with dyslexia writing upside down in a foreign language could do better than, for example. Some were more obvious but were also not exactly the most awe-inspiring of names. KASH, for example, sounded like a cheap escort service more than a Huntsman team. BELL sounded like an alarm service, and MSRA was one letter off from a horrific skin eating disease. In response to the question about whether there was a list, the white-haired faunus filled the gap with talking as she scanned the area for one – there had to be a list somewhere, right? [break][break]
”Yeah, I’ve been doing some research on the ‘net about these teams.” Knight would note, and it would at least be mostly true. In order to better trash talk them on the internet, she had indeed looked up their online profiles to find ammo. ”Or at least Haven’s. There’s three years of trainees, and each one gets their own bracket. Haven’s projected to do really bad because they only have first years, while every other school has third years. Most of the other schools have these, uh, what’s the term… combat academies that are like below Huntsmen ones but are supposed to prepare you for it that most of the other schools have a ton of graduates from. Haven barely has any of those. They’re not expected to do super well because of it.” [break][break]
There it was. ”Found one.” She’d note, cutting herself off and switching thoughts entirely when she found what she was looking for. Knight knew she saw one of those digital screens that you could tap almost like a touch screen computer around the place, and she had located another one that was not super crowded and not blocked by the masses of people milling around. She’d point over at the digital kiosk, standing on her tip toes for a moment to do so. ”There’s a digital thing over there where you can look up profiles and schedules and stuff. First Year bracket is up first. I’d imagine they also had what the acronyms stood for in the system, because I have no idea what the fuck BCSN is supposed to stand for. Biscuit?” [break][break]
It wouldn’t have their semblances or anything, but it would have their names, photos, and a little blurb about them along with some usual stats like height, weight, hometown, and where they went to school. If they accomplished anything notable since enrolling, it would have whatever notable missions they were involved in as well. If not, the overview would be very basic. [break][break]
”Powers and stuff won’t be updated until later, because competitive integrity and all that shit. By tomorrow they should all be in, though, unless they didn’t use it for some reason today. The impressive ones will be later today in the Third-Year bracket, though. Those are the heavy hitters who had a bunch of time to practice and get good with them.” [break][break]
They had once stopped over at Shade Academy to rest on their way to somewhere or another and stayed about a week, and during that week at least for Knight her resolve to never be part of that disgusting system was solidified even more than before. It was nothing more than a glorified military school for mercenaries with none of the discipline and structure that one might expect from an institution that was supposed to train killers. They talked a tremendous amount of shit at first and then begged her to join after she beat the shit out of a few of them to leave her alone, and that only pissed her off even more. Once they graduated, there was no oversight whatsoever and Shade Academy let them loose on the world like a locust swarm to devour and kill everything in their path with their shiny new licenses that gave them the authority to make life or death decisions for any village they encountered along the way. It gave them the authority to use lethal force as they saw fit, with no oversight or investigations into their actions after the fact. Before she showed she was stronger than them, she was worthless. And after she showed her strength, their immediate response was to try and bribe her onto their side so they could take advantage of that strength and use it to their own ends.[break][break]
Huntsmen were an archaic and inefficient way of dealing with the global threat of the Grimm and had no business in the modern era whatsoever in their current form. The ideal and image of a selfless Huntsman risking their lives for the betterment of others that was a myth that aged like a gallon of warm milk kept in the shed at room temperature for six years in an open bucket. The Faunus War had shattered any credibility they had in all but the eyes of the humans and the faunus fortunate enough to never see one in action or delusional enough to think they can change the system once they get their own license to do whatever the fuck they wanted to whoever the fuck they wanted. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Giving trained gladiators that absolute power was a dumb as fuck decision no matter how you sliced it, and the fact that they made a giant sport of it to get the public to rally behind the concept was disgusting. It was a perversion of all the things a military was supposed to do, repackaged into a smaller venture where everyone involved could embezzle massive amounts of money and use it for vanity projects and passive income streams like the Vytal Festival where a one-time investment led to potentially decades of profits down the line with the public tripping over each other to give the oligarchs their money in the name of unity. [break][break]
Amity Colosseum truly was the monument to represent everything that Remnant has to offer in its current form.
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[attr="class","nikki103"]1064 words
[attr="class","nikki103"]ASCHE SYNDICATE
[attr="class","nikki103"]2130 TOTAL WORDS
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NOTES
B Semblance, D Weapons, C Dust Enhancement, C Durability, C Agility, D Stamina, D Exhaustion, D Martial Arts
Post by Sinopia DeStellanova on Apr 20, 2020 4:49:19 GMT -5
Red nodded, following along with the explanation of how this all worked. She didn't know very much about the academies themselves, just what came out of them. The exact details of how huntsmen were made was just never that important or something she was particularly curious about. None of it was surprising and seemed to mesh pretty well with that time they were briefly in Shade. As long as someone was rich and human, they could do whatever they wanted. She somehow doubted these combat schools were free, or even cheap, and if most huntsmen academies were drawing from them, then the pool of people they were drawing from had to be pretty limited. The only exceptions were people like Knight who could transcend some of those structures on strength alone.
However, she wasn't sure what to do about any of that. It seemed inevitable the more she thought about it. The strong couldn't relate to the weak. They didn't understand their struggles or what they had to think about to survive. This was true even of people like Knight who didn't fit that perfect mold of those in power. While Red could trust her friend not to be blatantly stupid or irresponsible when it came to most things, that tendency to just 'go' and take life as it came must have come from her ability to handle most anything life threw at her. Red was not the same. There were very few times in her life where she felt genuinely in control. Shade was a good example as well. A group of students had cornered her at one point to just 'talk' about Knight. While it never escalated beyond talking, she was certain it would have if she didn't spend the rest of the trip sticking really close to Knight. She only mentioned in the loosest and most vague of ways so they could roll their eyes and laugh at it, but it was a deeply unsettling experience and one Knight clearly did not understand. Nothing about her attitude changed, so Red always knew it was going to be something she had to be prepared for. She doubted Knight even knew that this was something she had to think about.
So they made strong huntsmen by taking them from pools of people with some kind of power and then unleashed them onto a world they could never hope to understand, and expected them to save it. But the weak could not fight Grimm. Red had no idea what anyone could do about that.
"Ah, great!" she made her way over to the kiosk and pulled up the teams. "Biscuit? That doesn't have an N in it though, and the C sound comes first."
She quickly went through the teams, taking pictures with her scroll at each one, figuring she could consolidate them into proper notes later. Standing at the kiosk for as long as it would take to take proper notes would annoy the other guests at best, and look suspicious at worst. This would let her get through it all in five minutes or less, and then they could look at it anywhere. Odds were all of this was going to go onto the internet after, but she wouldn't put it past them to try to change something. She wanted it as it was right now.
"It's 'Buckskin' apparently," she raised an eyebrow. "Ah, here we go. HARP. I can read that one, and they're from Mistral. You're supposed to root for the home team right? There, I now have a team and can play the gladiator watching game correctly. They'd better beat the ever loving shit out of that other team like proper huntsmen or I will have to be very disappointed." As she kept scrolling, she frowned. "Aren't they bothered by how much information they're releasing about them? Their enemies are going to know where to start looking for their families. Maybe their friends too depending on the kinds of hobbies they have. Some of these are more obscure and easier to track down than others."
No, she doubted they even thought about that. They were nothing more than quirky stories to make them more personable. The strong didn't have to think about being attacked. The strong didn't have to think about weakness, if they could even fathom having one in the first place. That was just the way things were.
Post by Alina Rybalka on Apr 20, 2020 21:52:05 GMT -5
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[attr="class","nikki101"]WE CAN ALL AGREE THAT VIOLENCE BREEDS VIOLENCE
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[attr="class","nikki102"]BUT IN THE END, IT HAS TO BE THIS WAY
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[attr="class","nikki109"]It was almost impossible to endure years of something like the Faunus War and the aftermath of that conflict and not have your view of the world changed. Being exposed to the fundamental inequality of the world at large did wonders for perspective, but unlike Red the white-haired faunus had always been more focused on a more macro level perspective of that inequality. One of the major things that had always frustrated her to no end, for example, was the fact that a state of war for the Council of Mistral only happened when facing off against other nations and the faunus. Those were the two wars that had occurred in the lifetimes of a good chunk of the population, and those were the only times when a normally too costly and burdensome military could be raised to defend the nation. [break][break]
The nation, of course, largely meant the capital. The everyday suffering and the very real war against the Grimm wasn’t a consideration, and it was a pleasure to know that when the capital begged the outskirts for help for the first time to mobilize against the temporary bandit blockade around the city… the frontier told them to fuck off and deal with it themselves. The center had always gotten all the Huntsmen, all the funding, all the people, all the resources. They stole from the people under their command and disenfranchised most of the kingdom in elections to decide national leaders. Because the only people that could vote in elections were citizens with proof of citizenship that could physically show up to the capital, that effectively made sure that the only voices that mattered were the citizens of that capital. [break][break]
Who cared about a Rochdale when it didn’t matter if it burned or stayed up? They couldn’t vote, and nobody would even notice they were destroyed if the news media didn’t pick it up. Even now, over a thousand people died and nobody gave a fuck because that was the hot news for like a week back in January and then nobody ever cared again. What reason did a citizen of the capital, with all the power consolidated in the entire kingdom, have to care about a random frontier village with only what – two thousand people at most? [break][break]
When Red asked whether they were concerned about sharing that much information, the inhale of breath into Knight’s nose was audible, though she didn’t so much as chuckle. ”I doubt it. This is just a photo op and a way to get famous quick for them, I figure.” She shrugged, because she didn’t much care for the perspective of the elites in situations like this. They didn’t matter for her purposes, frankly, because the only thing she would ever be concerned about is their relative power level compared to hers at the inevitable point when they came into conflict. [break][break]
Unlike Red, though, Knight didn’t really care to read most of the profiles. She would watch the fights, sure, but frankly she would tune out very quickly if the general level was too low. Frankly, the only fights she was actually planning to watch intently and for the full duration were the third-year fights to see if she could see how a variety of semblances worked at a high level. There was a minimum standard of skills that needed to be demonstrated in order for her to consider anyone a threat, and she wasn’t expecting that at all from first years – especially not from this crop of them. [break][break]
There was one of them that graduated early on that she did do some research on, but that one had fucked off from the capital and seemed to actually be taking missions far enough away that he wasn’t a concern in the short to medium term. Even in the long term, frankly, magnetism was not a semblance that Knight would have a lot of trouble with at any range. If anyone else at Haven was at that level, they would have also taken their licensing test early and fucked off… unless the goal was to punch down at people weaker than them without any expectations in terms of missions or any public good. The ability to just stay in and be top dog while having none of the mission expectations of a professional would be a sweet gig for the average lazy and corrupt aristocrat to relax in comfort for three years – so there was the chance that someone was taking that route. [break][break]
”The good matches won’t be for a while, and we can catch the highlights of the earlier ones the screens here I think.” She’d note, pointing at the occasional mounted television screen among the stands and in the seated dining areas that was now currently playing some sort of pre… pre-gladiator tournament show. Or something. ”I’d wanna explore a bit more, see what we can see while we’re here. After all, it’s not like this thing comes back more than once every… what, eight years?” [break][break]
So, this would probably be their only opportunity to walk around it. Even if it was a tremendous waste of resources, money, and manpower… it was done now and they were already physically present, so they might as well see what the place had to offer the common spectator in the process.
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[attr="class","nikki103"]889 words
[attr="class","nikki103"]ASCHE SYNDICATE
[attr="class","nikki103"]3019 TOTAL WORDS
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NOTES
B Semblance, D Weapons, C Dust Enhancement, C Durability, C Agility, D Stamina, D Exhaustion, D Martial Arts
Post by Sinopia DeStellanova on Apr 21, 2020 9:19:09 GMT -5
Something was wrong. She expected that coming here would be awkward, given what Amity represented and what they'd be watching. That was unavoidable. However, they were here for a reason. It wasn't about the matches or the spectacle. It wasn't about all the frivolous nonsense that both of them hated. For her, it was about optimizing their chances of success in the future. And maybe an excuse to spend the day with her best friend doing something that wasn't dubiously legal if not outright illegal (smuggling Skittles into the stadium to avoid the exorbitant prices hardly counted). That made it easy for her to ignore everything negative about this place. Clearly that wasn't true for her friend.
She wasn't sure what Knight's brain was stuck on, but she certainly knew what it was like to fixate on depressing, and often unhelpful, crap. Seeing Knight in that state was making her feel depressed too. Like she shouldn't have brought her along given it was obviously going to be uncomfortable. She knew that going in, and yet still insisted on dragging Knight along. Even though she just asked before buying tickets and Knight agreed without her even having to ask twice. It was a dumb thought, but it still made her feel selfish. Those were the kinds of dumb thoughts she was used to getting, and it felt strange to be on the other side. Fortunately, it meant she had a lot of experience dealing with it. Even if it was Knight that helped her through it a lot in the past.
Once she was done taking pictures, she put her scroll and hands into her pockets and returned to her friend's side. Despite all the baggage associated with it, she still looked up at the arena and smiled.
"You know, I've always wanted to see Amity Coliseum. It may be a waste of money, but it's a really fucking cool waste of money. There's so much new tech locked up in there, like--" she stopped herself as she realized she was going to start rambling about things Knight would probably not understand. "I mean, just think of what it has to do. It has to float despite being that heavy and carrying that many people. It has to be able to withstand huntsmen trainees who tend to be very careless with their barely trained power. It has to be able to be able to clean up quickly after matches so they can move to the next one. Hell, it can replicate the weather, and even have different, completely incompatible, patches of weather in different parts of the arena. Seriously, it's stuff you won't see anywhere else. I really wish I could take it apart..." she sighed. "I wonder if I could at least break into the engine room..."
The answer was no. The answer was so obviously no that it didn't require consideration. It was so obviously no that she was testing her limits of being able to say anything with a straight face. She didn't think for a moment that she could pull something like that off, especially not in an environment where her semblance probably wouldn't help her, but she still rubbed her chin like she was seriously considering it. Except that was part of the joke because Red did not rub her chin when she was actually thinking. She'd tap her fingers, pace, or sometimes kick something, but would never actually rub her chin.
"So..." she adjusted her hood and paused. "Thanks for coming with me to see it. Even if it's kind of a shitty thing when you think about it. I don't think we have that long before the matches start though. Haven students count as first years even though some of them are older than we are. We should still have plenty of time to walk around the place after."
She wasn't about to miss walking around the coliseum, but she also figured they should focus on actually seeing what those trainees they might run into can do. She was more than fine with getting the highlights for the rest and didn't have much interest in watching fights in general. It's not like those random trainees from Vale were going to be here when the tournament was over, so worrying about them, regardless of year or skill level, was pointless to her. Knight not wanting to watch the ones from Mistral flew right over her head because it was easy to misunderstand how they'd be treated given the weird state of Haven right now, at least in her mind. And wasn't it important to be prepared?
Post by Alina Rybalka on Apr 22, 2020 3:00:21 GMT -5
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[attr="class","nikki101"]WE CAN ALL AGREE THAT VIOLENCE BREEDS VIOLENCE
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[attr="class","nikki102"]BUT IN THE END, IT HAS TO BE THIS WAY
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[attr="class","nikki109"]Knight had never liked crowds. She hated people coming up behind her or touching her without her permission and that was just an unavoidable necessity when the place was as packed as this. It was frustrating, but it was something that she had to get used to if she wanted to live in urban environments again. Mistral wasn’t nearly as insufferably crowded as Menagerie, and she at least had personal space to be able to think in places other than the occasional private bathroom. Brothers, being in communal living for everything from bathing to bathrooms took a toll on her mental health and ability to decompress. Red had long been just about the only exception due to just how long they’d known each other, and basically the only other soul that could be present and Knight trust enough to actually completely let her guard down and relax. [break][break]
It felt good to be anonymous, though, especially after the negative publicity in Menagerie and the dangerous publicity in Vacuo. When you made a name for yourself over there as a good fighter, then people wanted to line up and fuck with you to prove themselves. The criminals wanted to put another tally on their list of would-be bounty hunters they killed, and the young morons thought that winning a fight would give them credibility and prestige. It was something that Knight had never understood and found disturbing more than anything. How the fuck could someone actively seek out and derive pleasure from fighting of all things? [break][break]
The entire purpose was to maim or kill your opponent, and while an artist can respect the form and skill of another artist when that art is literally killing that became something that became very unacceptable to practice as a hobby. Martial arts in its own right were cool, sure, but that was a mutually agreed upon training environment… not getting knifed in the street by the third punk that day in a populated area because you looked recognizable. She never killed any of them, but she wasn’t above breaking some bones to get them to stop annoying her by continuing to attack like gnats. Killing was reserved for either criminals they were hired to kill or those who attacked her that actually posed a threat to either herself or anyone she was travelling with. Some random teenager with a knife would just be disarmed and floored, but another fighter with the ability to actually damage her aura by any substantial amount would be fought against without restraint or concern for their safety – after all, they started it. [break][break]
The goal, if anything, was to get good enough that fighting was never required. If people heard your name and dropped their weapons, then you skipped the most dangerous part of the entire operation. The thought that someone would actually enjoy putting their life on the line was absurd and only present in those with no survival instinct and suicidal tendencies on top of that. Knight very much wanted to continue living and wanted to get out of this line of work before she got killed failing to win literally one time out of a thousand. Near peer fights were risky as fuck and were never attempted unless forced in any real scenario. [break][break]
Knight would nod along as her friend talked about the Colosseum. She didn’t dispute for a second that the structure itself was very impressive, and that the concept of a floating stadium was one that she would have decided was impossible if it didn’t actually exist. The logistics must have been a nightmare, for one. The redhead also decided that they were going back to see the matches rather than wandering around and skipping the first-year section, which was also fine. ”Yeah, that’s fine.” she’d respond absentmindedly, accepting being overruled without even the slightest hint of a fight. [break][break]
The fact of the matter was that Red bought the tickets, so she determined what they were going to do as a matter of course. If she wanted to watch the first years, that was fine, and she would do her best to fake enthusiasm the entire way to not be a downer. In most of her daily life, Knight was actually fine with ceding control and authority to people she respected and was more than willing to play along with just about anything at least for a little while to make them happy. While on missions she flipped that switch and became very domineering and aggressive, but outside of it that switch was firmly switched off and she swapped to a mixture of apathy and laziness. For as ambitious and relentless as she could be, she very rarely let that side of her show externally. [break][break]
Always being ‘on’ was fucking exhausting and she didn’t do it more than was necessary. It was much easier to slip back into laziness, which would be her base state if she didn’t have so much shit she needed to do. Working her ass off in Vacuo day in and day out in Vacuo had given her the credibility she needed in order to take a job that paid more for much less work in Mistral, and she took full advantage of that downtime to vegetate and pretend to be a normal person for once. It was bad acting, sure, but it was nice to not have to worry about getting knifed in the back or the ground opening up from under you to send you to the center of Remnant. [break][break]
A graphic showed up on the screens showing the students that would be participating in the next match, and gray eyes looked up as they passed to see the faces of Team KASH from Haven Academy, a big old versus symbol, and the faces of Team ARCT from Atlas Academy. The team leader of the Haven team was apparently pretty well off, given her last name was the same as a brand of decently popular alcohol throughout Mistral. She had seen it in the grocery stores, even, so she figured that would put her at the level of a mid-tier merchant family at least. [break][break]
It was the next flash of the screen that made the white-haired faunus stop in her tracks, though, because two faces she actually recognized very intimately came on the screen next. The camera had cut to the commentator booth and there they were, half of the famous Team Cobalt (CBLT). They were the only all-faunus team in Remnant during the time of the Faunus War, and went all across Vale and western to central Mistral clearing out the worst of the Grimm infestations for the faunus side. They had come in at one point right when the base that Knight was stationed at was being overrun a few months before the Battle of Fort Castle and saved their lives, frankly, with their abilities. [break][break]
She was always a bit bitter that they refused to turn their powers against the humans like the human side huntsmen did, and she was also always a bit bitter that weren’t more of them. The human side always seemed to have huntsmen, but the faunus side had one team for four kingdoms and much fewer solo operators than the other side did. The one on the left was the dark skinned and white-haired rabbit faunus Bianca Hunter, and the one on the right with the green bangs and golden hair was Theloria Shadecloak. The identification tags under their names, though, had Shadecloak as affiliated with Haven Academy. Knight knew who they were, just like every faunus who fought in Vale or Mistral knew who they were. They lost one of their members in the latest stages of the war, the pink-haired horse faunus Luna Lynn to liberate a decently sized village of a few thousand from a particularly nasty horde of Grimm, having much stronger types than anyone else would have even dared to fight against. Their team leader, the white-haired Orca faunus Caerwyn Erez, was the initial model and reason why Knight had pushed so hard to learn swordsmanship. After seeing her in action once, she thought it was cool as fuck and wanted to be just like her. [break][break]
She would have frozen for several seconds before continuing, though, because she didn’t expect to see a Haven logo beside one of their names. They were a Beacon Academy team, operating in the Vale. Every single one of them was from the Vale, and it made no sense for one of them to move all a continent away to set up shop over here. If it was any of them, though, it made sense that it would be Theloria. She was engaged to Luna when she died and took it about as well as anyone could have expected to take a loss like that. The rumor that Knight had heard around the time was that Shadecloak had both of her legs broken by a Beringel real bad during the fight, as well, which took her out of commission for months. [break][break]
Knight wasn’t the type to really think ahead and set boundaries in advance, preferring to take life as it went. Her jaw tightened noticeably, though, and as she looked down from the screen as it panned back to the coming matchup, she rolled her shoulders back and swung her neck back to audibly crack it as she started back towards their seats. Her voice when she spoke was low, and a rare form of serious. ”I think I just found my red line with this experiment.” [break][break]
If she was forced to fight against a Faunus War hero in order to justify a paycheck, she would just refuse the order and leave. She was not going to turn on old comrades in order to make money, those who suffered the same conditions that she did in order to try and make the world a better place. She had zero problem taking out oppressors and criminals, those who have strayed from any moral path and condemned themselves to a violent death with their actions. For those who had paid their dues fighting for the same cause that she did, though, and suffered just as she did in the pursuit of their loyalty to that cause? That would be an unforgiveable breach of fraternity. It was unfathomable to someone like Knight, who valued personal honor so much despite the fact that her own definition of that word failed to meet any population definition of the same. [break][break]
She didn’t see Team Cobalt as the living embodiments of gods like she did back then, but she also didn’t think for a second that the thought of fighting against them in anything other than friendly terms was something that she could ever live with. She disagreed with their choice to become and remain Huntsmen, to continue to affiliate with the organizations that had trained and equipped the demons that spilled a tremendous amount of faunus blood in the war without remorse… but that disagreement did not mean she wanted anything bad to happen to them personally. That disagreement was on the question of whether putting faith into the institution of Huntsmen Academies was a prudent and effective way to use their immense power and influence. [break][break]
Whatever that disagreement was, they could all probably agree that staying in Menagerie to defend a barren island that should be deserted was a tremendous waste of everyone’s time and that everyone’s decision to get the fuck out of that hellhole was a decision that enhanced their respective ability to enact change on the world. It was telling that out of the only all-Faunus huntsman team of the war, literally none of them saw the Menagerie project as worth throwing themselves into and moving in order to help move along. None of them committed to it, because all recognized how much of a fucking failure that a huge committal to that stupid concession would be. [break][break]
Maybe that was why they decided to go back. Maybe they thought they could change it from the inside, which was a naïve but understandable thought coming from the same team who refused to slaughter humans simply because they could have – instead turning the full might of their power to ensuring that Grimm infestations were taken care of when they threatened villages, bases, and other settlements across two kingdoms. Stupid and naïve, yes, but also admirable in its own way.
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[attr="class","nikki103"]2062 words
[attr="class","nikki103"]ASCHE SYNDICATE
[attr="class","nikki103"]5081 TOTAL WORDS
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NOTES
B Semblance, D Weapons, C Dust Enhancement, C Durability, C Agility, D Stamina, D Exhaustion, D Martial Arts
Post by Sinopia DeStellanova on Apr 22, 2020 14:57:22 GMT -5
It wasn't helping. Red shifted uncomfortably. She was never as good at this sort of thing as Knight was. Quirky anecdotes were hard to come up with, she wasn't any good at storytelling, it's not like she had any good stories to tell in the first place, and it's not like she was even that great at normal conversation to begin with, let alone something like this. Tugging at her fingers, she tried to think of something else to say, but nothing came to mind. Years of being with Knight made her realize that it was easier to laugh at how terrible the world was rather than cry or get offended, so she tried to do that whenever she could. She tried really hard.
Words could not express how glad she was that Knight wanted to come. Or was willing to come as the case may be. If her friend had said no, she might not have attempted to come despite how much she really did want to see Amity. Using Knight like this to cover her own weaknesses and failings just made the entire situation that much worse. She couldn't keep doing this. She couldn't keep expecting Knight to keep shouldering these burdens or dragging her to situations that just made her unhappy. Red wanted to apologize, but all that would do was demand further comforting and she couldn't do that. Not when this was her fault in the first place. She considered asking if they should just leave, but she was sure it would elicit a similar response. No, she couldn't ask for more help with feeling better. It wasn't right.
Crowds were always unpleasant, but they were never what she was worried about. Sure, every bump left her on edge, the collective sounds of their voices were giving her a headache, and all the movement made her feel dizzy, but she could handle that. It wasn't like she was going to involuntarily punch someone in these circumstances. No, what always got her was the noise.
As crowded as it was outside, she knew it would be worse inside the coliseum. Outside, noise would dissipate. Inside, it would bounce off the walls. Then, once the match actually started, it would get really loud because everyone would be screaming. That was the combination she was afraid of. Loud screaming. With how things were going, once they entered the coliseum proper, she considered suggesting that they leave. Even though she was finally inside, even though she could finally see this technological marvel from the inside in person. Even though she could touch it, even though she might never get another chance to do this, she still considered leaving. Once again, she decided to ignore the feeling and press on. Red didn't want fear to hold her back, for any reason. It's why she kept doing stuff like this.
Back on Menagerie, once she realized she had irrational reactions to certain situations, she intentionally sought them out. It always felt awful, and she wasn't even sure if it was helping, but she still tried. There was no reason to feel like this. There was no reason to react like this. Even if it left her drained and hyper vigilant, she felt like she still had to try. How else was she supposed to eventually be normal? That was one of the important goals she talked about with her father. All he wanted for her was the ability to have a normal life. Except she wasn't normal, so she had to fix herself. She tried really hard.
Those efforts largely ceased in Vacuo. Society was more chaotic there, less cohesive, and more open to trying things. She didn't feel especially weird there. There was less pressure to be normal as well, because Knight was strong and famous and no one expected someone like that to be normal. It was the first time since the end of the war where she felt like she could just be. That there was nothing wrong and nothing she had to do. Even the life or death situations felt comforting because it meant her reactions were entirely fair and not the slightest bit irrational. It was the only time in her life where she felt like she both had control over her life and reality actually matched her expectations.
All of that went back out the window once they moved to Mistral. Suddenly, they had to blend in more than ever and being seen as weird could cause legitimate problems. She hadn't tried anything yet, and that wasn't her goal this time. Red genuinely wanted to see Amity and didn't want the obvious discomforts to stop her. Even if she couldn't be normal, even if all those efforts proved fruitless, she still didn't want to be ruled by fear. So, she spent the early part of the day trying to do what people normally did at these events, and the rest trying to laugh everything off to prepare herself for what she was pretty sure would be the worst part.
It was hard, and even as they took their seats, she thought one last time about asking to leave. As people gathered, the murmur of the crowd was getting louder. People kept pushing, shoving, and bumping. All of it was uncomfortable, but she was holding herself together just fine. For a moment, she believed she could handle this, so she said nothing. Just watched in anticipation to see that really awesome arena in action.
Then the lights came on and the roar of the crowd washed over her, drowning her senses like a tsunami. 18,000 voices rang in her head, each of them getting more clear the more they screamed. Her pupils dilated and the lights from the arena started to burn. She could feel the hairs on the back of her neck stand up on end and her throat close up. The pounding of her heart started to fill her ears as much as the screaming of the crowd, and all of it felt like someone was taking a hammer to her head. She could make out the words of all of them, as her brain continued to try to process more than it could handle. People were shouting about how umbrellas were a stupid weapon, cheering specific names, how sick they were of seeing the desert biome, how scary the red one was, what the hell that kite was, how the smoke ruined everything. None of these things suggested these people were in any pain or that there was any danger. Nothing about this area should have made her think this. Yet all she could see in the blinding lights was everyone around her dying. With every stomp, it felt like someone was hitting the floor. With every name shouted, like someone just lost someone important.
All she could do was sit there, stiff as a statue. None of this was real. There was no reason to feel like this. Her breathing remained sharp and uneven until she realized it was happening. At that point, she stopped breathing entirely in a vain attempt to get some control over herself. Normally she would have tried to grab Knight's hand or something, but she had herself utterly convinced that she needed to stop doing that. Instead, she clasped her shaking hands and crossed her legs at the ankles to try to get them to stop. She wanted to leave, but she couldn't do that. It was too late and would defeat the purpose of staying.
There was one familiar voice that was also not screaming, looking straight forward, past everything while her eyes were unable to focus. Red tried to focus on that one, but she couldn't understand what it was saying. She could hear the words and knew what they meant, but trying to understand grammar, trying to understand more than just individual words, as painfully difficult. There was no context for any of them either. She had no idea who was fighting, who was commentating, or even where she was at the moment. She hated that she was relying on Knight again, but those words were about the only things that meant anything to her at all at the moment.
Red...Line...?"
Her voice was barely audible, choked out because she still wasn't breathing. It was the only thing holding back the tears at this point, and she didn't want to start crying. Her face was starting to turn red because of it.
All of this had been a worry in the back of her mind since she bought the tickets. Whether or not she'd even be able to watch in person. She never breathed a word of it to Knight however. It was rare that she hid anything from Knight, but there were two circumstances where she would be less than forthright with what she was thinking or feeling. The first was if she thought it would start a fight. Not with her, as non-confrontational as she was she wasn't afraid to fight with Knight, but rather with others. It was why she never mentioned that those people that 'talked' to her in Shade were being threatening, and only mentioned the minimum to make sure Knight was aware she was being harassed. The second was if she personally found it difficult to talk about. Normally this meant difficult to articulate, as finding the right words to describe abstract thoughts and feelings was quite the task for Red. In this case, it was because it was an aspect of herself she hated so much that even trying to find the words made her want to vomit.
Post by Alina Rybalka on Apr 23, 2020 17:38:28 GMT -5
[nospaces]
[attr="class","nikki98"]
[attr="class","nikki99"]
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[attr="class","nikki100"]
[attr="class","nikki101"]WE CAN ALL AGREE THAT VIOLENCE BREEDS VIOLENCE
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[attr="class","nikki102"]BUT IN THE END, IT HAS TO BE THIS WAY
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[attr="class","nikki109"]The opening match was a bore, frankly, and was a good showcase as to why she wanted to skip the first years. Neither team made any use of the environments provided to them or used any strategy aside from a vague ‘stand as close to the other team as possible before the start and then attack’. It was lazy, especially when they allegedly didn’t even know the semblances of the other team. There was something to be said for being able to fight multiple ways and not showing more than you needed to in an opening round of a tournament, sure, but that was precisely why she wanted to skip these matches. The trump cards that these teams had either wouldn’t be used or would be so pitiful that they wouldn’t be worth mentioning. [break][break]
She stopped paying close attention before the match even started, and instead surveyed the area and the people around her with cold, gray eyes. They were pretty far back and had a much better view of the giant multi-sided television screen above the arena than of the arena itself. Even the tickets this far back were well beyond the ability of normal people to get, and the friends and family of the competitors got arena-side seats along with the students. The real VIPs like the Council and the Headmasters got their own luxury boxes, so the people back here were just the affluent members of society who could blow like a thousand dollars on a day pass, or closer to ten or fifteen thousand for a festival-long pass. [break][break]
It wasn’t a surprising observation that the vast majority of them were human. Middle-aged and human was the general trend, with the only variation seeming to be old human and young human. The variance in attire was interesting, though, ranging from suits and ties to jerseys and obnoxious Academy themed hats and giant foam fingers. It was weird as hell, frankly, to be so devoted to people who they had probably never met or interacted with even once in their lives solely because of the fact they came from a school that happened to be in the same megacity as you. It wasn’t like anyone down there had even done anything notable, either, which was the worst part. [break][break]
They weren’t cheered on for what they did or any accomplishments they did. Rochdale was an abject disaster stuffed by the media and given far less attention than it should have been. The Haven Attack was a massive security breach that had a trainee betray their Academy for unknown reasons, which was also stuffed and drowned out of the news cycle much more quickly than it should have been with the narrative that it was just one mentally ill individual and the problems had been addressed. The Argus Limited mission was the only one where they even did anything useful, and even then, the bulk of the work was done by licensed Huntsmen at the capital. They were given the easiest job out of all of them, and while they managed to complete that job it still remained the easiest and least dangerous despite being the most celebrated. [break][break]
The noise still effected Knight, but it wasn’t to the same level. One of the skills she had acquired during the war is being able to filter out noise when it was deemed to be unnecessary by focusing on it. Her ears still rang, and it hurt physically, sure, but it didn’t disorient her nearly as much due to just ignoring the incoming useless information. She noticed Red acting strangely early but had known from earlier discussions that she largely wanted to be left alone even when reacting badly unless she initiated contact. It was an admirable goal, but since Knight was sitting to Red’s left, she initially just put her hand palm-up at the edge of her leg in order to be easy to grab if needed. [break][break]
It wasn’t exactly a secret that Knight was protective of Red, and her actions in the past had proven her willingness to intervene… usually a bit too much on behalf of her friend. It was one of the issues that escalated into the incident that got the white-haired wolf faunus kicked out of Menagerie, frankly, because her intervention when it came to physical bullying was countering violence with retaliatory excessive violence. Pull her hair, lose some front teeth. Knock over her books, get kicked down some stairs. It wasn’t limited to Red back then, either, but everyone she felt some loyalty from the war to. As the best fighter of the group, she was always the one to step up and fight everyone else’s battles for them the only way she knew how. [break][break]
It turned out that a lot of people didn’t like excessive violence being committed on their behalf, and it took Knight years to actually get out of that instinct to protect her friends with the only major tool she had in her disposal – fighting. It was a stupid line of logic to think she could just come in and punch away all of someone’s problems just like that, and it took her much longer than it should have to finally shed herself of the worst of that mentality. She had no problem leaving or offering support, but she wasn’t going to be patronizing and offer it if it wasn’t needed. [break][break]
There were some battles that people just needed to fight on their own, even if they ended up losing that battle in the end. It wasn’t pleasant to just stand by, unable to change the outcome, but she wasn’t going to actively make it worse and have Red pissed at her for making it worse than it already was with good intentions but negative actions.
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[attr="class","nikki103"]964 words
[attr="class","nikki103"]ASCHE SYNDICATE
[attr="class","nikki103"]6045 TOTAL WORDS
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NOTES
B Semblance, D Weapons, C Dust Enhancement, C Durability, C Agility, D Stamina, D Exhaustion, D Martial Arts
Post by Sinopia DeStellanova on Apr 24, 2020 12:02:42 GMT -5
None of this was real.
While she wasn't quite sure what 'this' referred to at the moment, the sensation was familiar enough that those words came to mind. This had happened enough times that she could normally identify it and stop it from getting too bad. Once it did get bad though, it was far more difficult to pull herself out. The sheer volume of times it happened, mostly because she ensured it would, meant some thoughts surfaced even if they didn't necessarily make sense to her at the time. None of this was real.
Right now, the thought felt intrusive, on the same level as the ones about Knight being better off without her that cropped up sometimes. Everything certainly felt really real. The lights of something really hurt her eyes, and the contrast between the light and the blurry moving darkness up against them really hurt. Her brain felt like it was going to split in half because of all the noise and how much it was having to process all at once. Red could still make out every word of every conversation going on around her, though the words themselves had turned to mush what felt like some time ago. Like she should know what all of this means, and sometimes she could make out a word or two if it aligned with something else in her mind, but for the most part it just sounded like gibberish. As if there were 18,000 people screaming at her in a foreign language.
For most of her life, screaming was a sign of something terrible happening. Red had watched so many people die and this noise was the same kind of noise that came with it. Watched. Being a small child on a battlefield she didn't belong on meant she could only watch. Watch as the people knew where shot or sliced. Watch as they were torn about by semblances. There was never anything she could actually do about any of it. If she tried to fight all she would do was die along with everyone else. What kept her alive through all that wasn't her ability to fight, or even run, but her ability to sit very still and avoid making any noise at all. She couldn't fight, but she was able to avoid being noticed so she could at least tell someone what happened.
And her brain was trying to convince her that none of this was real? She could hear it -- "st but if it shoots can" -- and feel it. The pain in -- "et some s" -- her head was real. The pulsing in her ears was real. "I’s aura is" -- so why was she thinking otherwise?
Red remained unnaturally still. Only her eyes moved as they darted around the room trying to figure out what was causing the screaming so she could determine if this was a suitable hiding place. She still wasn't breathing, and gradually she was starting to see black spots in her vision. That just made the writhing mass of dark figures in the bright light look like they had holes in them. It wasn't until she was having difficulty keeping her head up, something she had to do if she wanted to remain absolutely still, that she realized something was wrong and that she wasn't actually breathing.
Breathing. Yes that was -- "mly dou" -- important. Very important, just like how none of -- "old in h" -- this was real. That still made no -- "out of p" -- sense, but breathing did. She sucked in air sharply and unevenly, like someone that had been smoking for 60 years trying to blow into a balloon. While she was breathing again, her breaths were shallow and uneven. It wasn't enough and she felt -- "k like th" -- her consciousness fading still. Couldn't happen. Bad, definitely -- "you mea" -- bad. For a moment, she was able to focus on breathing. Poorly, but enough that her face stopped turning colors.
But breathing and none of this was real. They were familiar like -- "o stup" -- the feeling of the shivers going down her spine and -- "is this even all" -- the sound of gunshots in her ears. Sounds were being magnified far beyond what they normally would be. Even someone dropping a hard candy on the ground was enough to send a jolt through her system. There was something running down her face -- "id we wat" -- like cold rain except less. Except it was also warm.
Tears started rolling down her cheeks once she started breathing again. Her eyes started to feel hot in addition to over stimulated. But she was breathing, and that focus on breathing was bringing her back into her own body. It still felt like she was stuck under something, if only because her chest and body felt heavy. She could feel it. Her heart was pounding and she still felt like she was dying and that there was something horribly wrong, but she could feel it. Each beat pulsed through her arms and ears, and she could feel it. The wind and the rain she couldn't feel, just the feeling of cold and warm and wet. She couldn't feel stone or concrete or whatever else she was expecting, just something plush and something tile. She couldn't smell blood or feces, couldn't feel bodies or sounds.
Right, because none of this was real.
Where she was -- "oy the most abo" -- she still wasn't sure, but where she thought she was wasn't real. Her lungs, her heart, her fingers, those were real. The noises -- "What?" -- the splitting headache she was feeling, those were real. She just needed to focus on what was real. Breathe in, count to four -- "low fig" -- breathe out count to four. Four was probably real, and in that moment -- "anding arou" -- felt like something she could physically touch. Like it was a place or an object.
Focus on what she could see. Another sound -- "can't see wha" -- shot through her system as someone dropped their soda. It was orange. But not orange like her hair. It was -- "ate being wr" -- brighter and less red. But her hair was there and she could touch it, so she did. It felt weird because she was wearing gloves. But she was always wearing gloves, so that was fine. The man to her left -- "ear the smo" -- was also eating orange. Orange thing. Candy. She couldn't see much of anything, but that bright orange speck of something was assaulting her eyes hard enough that she could make it out from the amorphous blob that was everything but the bright lights on the stage.
The process continued. She could feel her breath in her chest, and then her stomach, and eventually she could wiggle her toes. First, she focused on trying to find orange, then red, then yellow, only choosing bright colors because that was all she could see. Gradually, she started to remember she was at Amity Coliseum, Knight was in the seat next to her and was very much not dead or dying. No one was. They were just a bunch of rowdy people trying to have a good time.
Unfortunately, knowing that was doing nothing for her headache, or the trembling, or anything else. If she stopped focusing on breathing for even a moment, her breathing became uneven again, her body started tensing again, and she started getting dizzy. As much as she wanted to see the arena transform (something she was realizing she had already missed) and to see what she could learn from the fight itself, she still couldn't do that as she was now. For a moment, she tried, pulling her hood tightly over her head while closing her eyes and covering her other set of ears, but as long as she was feeling like this, she knew the feeling would come back the moment there was a loud, unexpected sound. Everything hurt, the sound was still louder for her than it would be for any normal person, the lights were still too bright, and her clothes felt like sandpaper digging into her skin. Mentally cursing herself, she stood up and started moving towards the exit. A place she could easily find because she was pretty sure that neon green light was going to burn a hole through her retinas.
"I need to go to the bathroom."
Red had to force out the words, finding it difficult to speak while she had to be this focused on even just breathing. Her movements were clumsy, and she was finding it difficult to avoid tripping over her own feet. This inevitably angered the people she had to walk past to get to the exit, garnering her a few angry comments and a couple of kicks. It hurt, more than they probably thought it did, but at this point she just wanted to get out of here. From there, she looked for the nearest bathroom, locked herself in the closest stall, and tried to calm herself down. Her body was still shaking and she couldn't stop herself from crying. She just sat on the toilet, holding her head with her hood pulled tightly over her face to block out the light.
She hated this. Most people were able to sit in a loud room like that, as evidenced by how no one was tripping over themselves in a panic to get out of there. Yet, even after all this time, she still couldn't. It didn't matter how much she wanted to or how hard she tried, she just couldn't do it. Even in the best of circumstances with the best support she could hope for, she still couldn't do it. Pathetic. It was absolutely pathetic. Knight even took the time to come with her, so she was wasting her friend's time too. Just thinking about it made her shoulders hunch together more as she continued to make herself smaller. Shakily, she pulled out her scroll and sent Knight a single message.
"imn not sure why i thuoght ths was a good idea"
Well, she did it. She made it to Amity. The single most impressive waste of space to ever be developed, and something she had wanted to see since she was young. At this rate, the only thing she'd be able to see was how it handled disposing of bodily waste, because that was probably a difficult engineering problem too given it was floating.
Post by Alina Rybalka on Apr 25, 2020 23:27:35 GMT -5
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[attr="class","nikki101"]WE CAN ALL AGREE THAT VIOLENCE BREEDS VIOLENCE
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[attr="class","nikki102"]BUT IN THE END, IT HAS TO BE THIS WAY
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[attr="class","nikki109"]Gray eyes unfocused as the outstretched hand was not taken. [break][break]
It was frustrating this time, like it always was. It was something that she couldn’t actually help with, and that felt awful. The inability to effect outcomes was powerlessness, and it was an empty pit in her stomach that was all too familiar. When faced with a situation that violence and aggression was not a solution for, Knight as a general rule floundered and had no effective response. She didn’t know what to do, and due to negative feedback of intervening too much in previous episodes just did nothing. Her first course of action hadn’t worked, and she didn’t know how to come up with another that didn’t just take control of the situation and remove all choice from Red in the matter. [break][break]
There was a time, once, where the geniuses at Menagerie decided they found the perfect candidate. Knight was fearless, confident, and strong. She was a good leader that could potentially be molded into a great one and had motivation and diligence to spare. They decided her military experience and young age would make her a good role model for the younger faunus who didn’t participate in the conflict and could be the one to set them on the right path. They had extremely high hopes for her, and fast tracked her to Sergeant in the Menagerie Guard rather quickly and would have advanced to Lieutenant in record time had she actually been suited at all for that path. [break][break]
She was a failure in every respect, and a public one. Being put into a group of mixed youth too young or distant to participate in war and the older generation who stayed in Menagerie as law enforcement rather than fighting was a horrific mix for a young faunus who had just returned from very arguably the worst theatre of the war. The youth giving her so much attention made her unable to be alone and recharge under any circumstances, and the older generation trying to justify their own cowardice and posturing pissed her off so much she never failed to call out the action every time it came. The youth saw her mental instability and the older faction saw her complete lack of respect and inability to mentally disassociate from the Mistral National Guard and her status as a Faunus War veteran, and then and only then was there enough awareness that her meteoric ascent was stopped. [break][break]
The vaunted leadership skills had not materialized, and socially she was either antagonistic or aloof with little in between. She failed to work well in groups and seemed to always lance off to do her own thing in important missions even when ordered specifically to do something else by a superior officer. She trusted her own judgment over anyone else’s, which quickly made her supervisors sour on her. She was an excellent fighter, sure, but that didn’t make up for the day to day volatility. There was resentment for her unearned ascent for past accomplishments that they were not witnesses to, and her tendency to take the spotlight away from more conventional officers when it came to interactions with the public. [break][break]
Her firing was public before her exile, and it was a public affair. The entire capital seemed to know about it, coming out of their houses to watch the once vaunted prodigy from Mistral perp walked through the streets to get their badge and gun stripped. The public humiliation was supposed to humble the woman, but it instead just solidified her anger at what she perceived to be a broken system. The entire system that was set up was nonsensical and she wasn’t going to follow a stupid system for brownie points. [break][break]
She had the most combat capability and combat experience by far in the sector she worked in, and yet was always very low in the chain of command. Senior Sergeants and officers were given command on the tactics of how to do things, despite having little to actual experience with actual urban combat. Furthermore, the standards were stupidly inflexible and actually hurt performance. Why the fuck did she need to qualify and carry a firearm when she could make fire more accurate and more powerful shot without the telegraphed unholstering with a snap of her fingers? Why did she need to wear the bulky armor when her aura was stronger than any of their vests? [break][break]
People reacted with a more relaxed attitude when the officer came and knocked without looking like they were going to be in a firefight in fifteen minutes. People were willing to walk up and talk when there was no unnecessary projection of intimidation. What the fuck point was there of a completed patrol if you didn’t have time to interact with the community at large while on foot? Why did every interaction with the public need to be in a strictly law enforcement capacity? If they trusted her as Alina, then they would trust her as Officer Rybalka. It just made fucking sense to build trust at the individual level, but that wasn’t policy because the grognards at the top hadn’t stepped outside of their office since Menagerie was settled and had no conception of anything that was going on. The disconnect was the most frustrating part, and the pleas to just play along until she got promoted enough to make the necessary changes would have just led to decades of stupidity and inefficiency before she was able to make the fundamental changes that were required to fix that broken fuckery of a system. [break][break]
It wasn’t until Vacuo that she realized how powerless she was at any scale, because in the beginning Knight legitimately thought she was going to change the kingdom with her newfound freedom. That never materialized due to the complete ineffectiveness of one person at the scale of a country of millions and covering over a hundred thousand square miles. It didn’t matter how many bad guys she killed, because without proper direction they weren’t even important bad guys and at the scale of a small group of people she could only be in one place at once. The travel time killed any ability to effectively undertake multiple missions at once, with every target in a different place and so much time wasted tracking down their exact location in the endless desert. [break][break]
She didn’t improve the lives of anyone except for momentarily, and by the end of it wasn’t sure she made a positive impact at all. She lacked the power at the scale required to do so, and in the process had only enriched herself to the extent possible and profited from the death of others. The faunus had finally got the pay she had always wanted, but not the personal satisfaction of making a concrete difference. It was something that always bothered her, frankly, even if she had largely suppressed that disappointment by the present day. She lacked the power to fix social issues. She lacked the power to fix organizational issues. She lacked the power to fix political issues. She lacked the power to fix emotional issues. She lacked the power to fix mental issues. [break][break]
Just because she recognized this didn’t make it any easier, and the white-haired faunus didn’t even register the voice of her friend over the din of the crowd and with her eyes unfocused and staring off into the distance due to her own ineffective means of dealing with the feeling of uselessness she didn’t notice Red was even gone until it was too late. The sensation of her scroll vibrating jolted her back into the present, and she pulled it out of her front left jean pocket and replied back almost immediately: [break][break]
”Where are you? I’m coming.” [break][break]
Getting up and going through the crowd, she didn’t register the physical kicks of irritation nor the verbal jeering and bitching about the view being blocked. It was all drowned out into white noise, as the pit in her stomach just got worse and worse. Her friend was fighting an enemy that Knight had no capacity to help her fight against, and she couldn’t even properly support her friend in winning that battle herself. The frustrating disconnect of training hard and anticipating because of the war that martial prowess when developed to a keen enough edge would be the solution to all problems, and then the realization only after the war that it was the least important thing in daily life was one hell of a trip. She could barely keep her own demons at bay sometimes, especially when the nightmares prevented her from sleeping an entire night or even several in a row. When being lost in her own thoughts led to a downward spiral that she struggled to recover from, or when she disassociated from her own identity enough to feel as though she was a completely different person for a while. [break][break]
If this was a fight against the world, the world tended to win.
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[attr="class","nikki103"]1502 words
[attr="class","nikki103"]ASCHE SYNDICATE
[attr="class","nikki103"]7547 TOTAL WORDS
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NOTES
B Semblance, D Weapons, C Dust Enhancement, C Durability, C Agility, D Stamina, D Exhaustion, D Martial Arts
Post by Sinopia DeStellanova on Apr 26, 2020 4:42:27 GMT -5
The bathroom was helping. It was quiet because there was no one else here. Most people were likely still watching the match, and there were more men than women interested in coming to something like this in person to begin with. She wished she could have turned off the lights though. They were bright, and that low, barely noticeable, buzzing noise that fluorescent lights made was completely insufferable in her current state. Red thought about looking for a switch to turn them off, but she wasn't sure if attendees could even do something like that. Leaving the comfortable nothing of the stall walls for a chance to shut off the lights wasn't appealing when she was this dizzy.
It was taking her longer than she liked to stabilize her breathing. Every time it felt like she was getting close another sob came up that she had to muffle, so no one would hear it. Even though no one was here. I didn't matter, she didn't want anyone to know and had trained herself to be as quiet as possible, as well as how to get somewhere no one would see her if it wasn't as bad as this. At worst, people used it against her. Some people in that awful private school on Menagerie she managed to convince herself was a good idea to attend thought it was hilarious to drop their books loudly onto their desk because of this. At best, it put unnecessary strain on people and made them worry about someone as worthless as she was. Red never liked hurting anyone, and given her own tendency to spiral down bad trains of thought, considered making someone worry about her at least on par with punching them in the face. Even perfect strangers who would probably forget about her in two days.
"bathroom first left"
She considered not responding for that reason, but she knew Knight well enough to know that would make things worse, not better. Even when she couldn't think straight she knew better than to try something like that. It never felt like she could win. If she tried to lean on someone, she was putting an unnecessary burden on them. If she tried to handle it alone, she was making people feel useless or powerless. There were these catch-22s everywhere in life. What was she even supposed to do?
It always felt like she was fighting against herself in some way, and if not against herself, against something that wasn't actually happening. There were few aspects of her life she was ever able to control. Before the war, it was largely dictated by humans she could never retaliate against. During the war, humans that wanted her dead. After the war, a society she could never find a place in. Despite that, she had a tendency to try to do everything herself and blame herself for all the world's failings, even when it didn't make sense.
When she was very young, there was a group of human children that would make animal noises at her and pretend like they couldn't understand what she was saying. Rather than accept they were just being racist assholes, she thought she might be able to get through to them if she just got better at talking. She didn't consider herself very articulate and had difficulty explaining her thoughts, so this seemed like a perfectly logical conclusion to her. Even after practicing for months nothing changed. She still wanted to believe it was her and not them.
In her first encounter with a human huntsmen, she hid. It was absolutely the correct thing to do, even if it was difficult just sitting there watching everyone be torn apart by his semblance. She would have not accomplished anything as a ten year old trying to charge in and fight him, and by staying hidden, she was able to go back and report this to everyone else. They were able to adapt, change direction, and headed to Anima instead of further south like they originally planned. None of that would have happened if she hadn't returned, and they could have all very well died themselves. She knew that, but she could never shake the feeling that if she just tried a little bit harder then maybe all of them could have lived. Or at the very least, some of them.
The war itself encouraged that behavior. If her legs and arms didn't feel like they were going to fall off or she was getting a good night's sleep pretty much ever, she felt like she wasn't doing enough. Even though she was only eleven and couldn't fight, she really wanted to believe that there was something she could do. So she took on as much responsibility as they would let her have, which in turn made her even more stressed than she otherwise would have been. Her decision paralysis became stronger as she got more afraid of messing up, and it became difficult to keep up with basic bodily maintenance and her own health. She had so many dental problems after the war that it took several years of painful dental work to correct it all. Even then, some of her teeth just couldn't be saved. But she never felt like she was doing enough and always wanted to believe that there was something more she could do while everyone was dying around her.
After the war the guilt hit her even more strongly. Watching everyone die was hard. Hearing that someone she knew wasn't going to be coming back was hard. But at the end, she was still alive and they weren't. People that she felt would have been more valuable to society. People that didn't deserve to die. People that she really wished she could see again. Losing them was hard enough, and she still wanted to believe there was something more she could do for them. However, she had to cope with the fact that she was the one who lived on top of that. Like she had to somehow justify her existence and do that much more.
It was stupid and she knew it was stupid, but she could never fight off the thoughts. And then shit like this kept happening. She sent one more message not too long after the first that summed up her current feelings.
Post by Alina Rybalka on Apr 27, 2020 21:16:24 GMT -5
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[attr="class","nikki101"]WE CAN ALL AGREE THAT VIOLENCE BREEDS VIOLENCE
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[attr="class","nikki102"]BUT IN THE END, IT HAS TO BE THIS WAY
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[attr="class","nikki109"]It was going to suck getting home with bathroom floor gunk all over her jeans and possibly jacket, but it was doable. She fully expected to have to sit down on that dirty ass floor at some point. [break][break]
Red was completely correct to think that not telling Knight where she was would make it worse and not better, because the latter would instead go hunting all across the colosseum looking for her if needed rather than just giving up and waiting like another person might. Sitting back and doing absolutely nothing when it was personal choice was great, but when there was an issue the white-haired wolf faunus was always more restless than most. She still had no ability to help, but at least wasn’t causing other issues as a result of being informed. [break][break]
Her scroll buzzed again before she physically got there, and the woman would read but not respond to the last message before making it to the bathroom. When she got in, she tried the first stall on the left and found it to be locked. She leaned her right forearm against the door for a few seconds, her gray and orange athletic shoes plainly visible before starting to talk. [break][break]
”Hey, I have a confession to make.” she started, doing what she always did when confronted with this much helplessness and tried doing anything to make it better. It didn’t matter if it made sense or was just nonsense, as long as she felt like she was doing something. ”You know the chocolate milk that had a little left and you were wondering what happened to it? Yeah… I drank the rest of yours. Same thing with the last two donuts. I also admit under duress that I cheated and looked up strategies on the internet to win board game night.” The tone was one that most others wouldn’t notice but Red knew too well, the tone of someone who was doing their best to sound calm but wasn’t able to completely mask the stress and anxiety in their voice. [break][break]
Deflection never worked, but it was the only thing she could think to say in the moment. Admitting to meaningless transgressions was just the first thing that came to her mind, and she blurted it out even though it was nonsense. There was nobody else in the bathroom, at least she hoped, but even if there was it didn’t exactly matter. Public humiliation was something that bothered her much less than others, since she was more than willing to make herself look stupid in most situations to improve an outcome. [break][break]
”Ah, fuck. What do you want to do?” she’d exhale audibly and take her forearm off the door, then and start pacing outside of it. Two anxious people unable to do anything was objectively worse than one, but it wasn’t as if Knight had any tools to actually be of help. ”I can carry you out if you need. Can use my jacket to get away at some of the light. Can block the door for a minute, too.”
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[attr="class","nikki103"]516 words
[attr="class","nikki103"]ASCHE SYNDICATE
[attr="class","nikki103"]8063 TOTAL WORDS
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B Semblance, D Weapons, C Dust Enhancement, C Durability, C Agility, D Stamina, D Exhaustion, D Martial Arts
Post by Sinopia DeStellanova on Apr 27, 2020 23:24:10 GMT -5
Knight's arrival was somewhere between comforting and shameful. She still hated that she was putting her friend through all this, and it was absolutely her fault. If Red hadn't suggested coming, they wouldn't be here. She knew this would happen, but she still insisted on coming and dragged someone else down with her. In her current state, it was easy for her thoughts to spiral downward. She knew that they were about as based in reality as everything else she was experiencing in the arena, but that never made them go away. Sometimes she could pull herself out of it, but most of the time it resulted in spending the afternoon cleaning something.
This time, she was already thinking about how none of this was real, so it was easy to avoid the worst of it. Her mind didn't start running through every mistake she ever made. That already happened. Right now, she was here sitting on a really uncomfortable toilet in a bathroom that reeked of cleaners. Her feet were on the ground and what really mattered was getting her legs strong enough that she could stand up again. Unfortunately, fixating strongly on the present just made the idea that she shouldn't have come here at all that much stronger.
At least until the distractions, though it took her a moment to realize that they were just distractions in her current state. Well obviously Knight took her milk and donuts. What else could have happened? They're the only ones that live in that house and it's not like some tiny ninjas broke in because they were thirsty and in desperate need of chocolate. Cheating on game night did come as a surprise though and actually hurt a little bit. Red thought she was getting better at thinking on her feet without taking an eternity to do it, and that made her doubt how well she was actually doing. It was a stupid game and didn't erase her victories on earlier missions, but it still hurt.
"What, you mean the milk didn't go bad?" she said in a shaky mock shock. "And I'm claiming victory for that night then you bitch."
Normally she would have tried harder to steady her voice and make it sound like she wasn't upset, but Knight was the only one here and she was tired. She tried to force out a dry laugh, but it was hard to distinguish between that and her choking on the air.
"I'm alright." Red was clearly not okay, but given she still wasn't forcing her voice to be steady, it was just a poor turn of phrase rather than an attempt to lie. "I wouldn't mind trying to walk around during the next match. While most people will be in the stadium watching. You really don't want to know how much I spent on these tickets. It'd be a shame to waste them. Just...give me ten minutes." She paused, coughing and taking another deep breath. "...Maybe 20."
Her legs still felt like goo, so standing was out of the question, but she knew what Knight was trying to do. She knew that feeling of powerlessness well, and while she disagreed that Knight was powerless here, she also knew that feelings could be very irrational. After blotting the tears out of her eyes well enough to see, Red leaned forward as far as she could, even standing for just a moment using the walls to brace herself because her arms weren't long enough, so she could unlock the bathroom stall. If Knight wanted to come in, she was welcome to.
As much as Red knew she probably should go home, she didn't want to waste the afternoon. It was an odd feeling. There were several contradictory emotions pulling her in different directions. The desire to see Amity, the feeling that she was being cruel to her friend by being here, not wanting to feel like she wasted all that money, and feeling like she just wanted to go pass out in bed for the next day were all vying for control, and it was just making her head hurt. But she wanted to be strong and really wanted all of this to stop interfering with her life. That was the one thing that convinced her to at least try to stay a little longer.