[Alina Rybalka]

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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"]Times like this were always fucking awkward. On the one hand, Knight literally wasn’t even the one who got them into that situation in the first place but it was so clear that Dawn was hating her life the entire time there is was awful. The combination of large crowds and lots of touchy feely annoyance was obviously overwhelming but like what did she expect when she agreed to that in the first place? There’s only so much Knight could do to recover that situation and occupy that many people’s attention at once. [break][break]

Now she was getting the same tone of response that the village fuckup would get, monotone and detached just like her body language right now. She obviously didn’t want to stay, but there was only so much accommodation Knight was willing to do. While she offered to leave, the truth was that she would have absolutely resented her partner for forcing her to leave without getting their clothes washed. The food was nice, really nice, but wasn’t a necessity the same way clean clothes were. She legitimately didn’t mind leaving once the laundry was done, but the laundry needed to be done. [break][break]

It was this awful fucking limbo where they alternated being miserable, all because Knight herself was so fucking stubborn. The boat option they had was to Vacuo, and they went all-in on Vacuo rather than waiting for a boat to Mistral. She herself had pushed for this, because she didn’t actually want to go back to her homeland in that moment. Dawn thought it was weird because going home always seemed to be the end goal for the white haired faunus, but Knight had some really solid points that staying in Vacuo and getting some capital to start with was a good move. [break][break]

”I can’t continue to do this forever.” she started, stating the obvious. ”We’ve had enough money to go back to Mistral for a bit, now. Weeks at the least. There’s boats every month or so that would go that way. I’ve thought really hard about taking the next one, but decided against it.” [break][break]

”Logically, I know the image of home I have is gone. It’s a memory, because most of the people in that image are dead. Some of them just went missing, so maybe they’re alive, but what do I tell them after all of this time? Hey, I’m Alina and I ran the fuck away when things got tough and couldn’t hack it in Menagerie, please give me some cash to get on my feet in the capital? Fuck no. I’m not going there to leech. And what if everyone we knew there are gone? What if even the survivors got whacked by Grimm or bandits or whatever? What the fuck am I supposed to do then?” [break][break]

There was a heavy sigh, and dropped the subject as quickly as she started it. It just wasn't worth it right then... maybe another time it would be. ”Actually, forget I said anything. I don’t want to talk about this right now, it’s late as hell and I have a headache and they’re going to swarm our car as soon as the sun peeks over the horizon. If we stay up for much longer we’re both going to be dead tomorrow and that would make it absolute hell.”

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[attr="class","nikki103"]559 words

[attr="class","nikki103"]ASCHE SYNDICATE

[attr="class","nikki103"]5501 TOTAL WORDS

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NOTES

B Semblance, D Weapons, B Dust Enhancement, C Durability, C Agility, C Martial Arts, D Stamina, D Exhaustion

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[Sinopia DeStellanova]

Her fingers were already feeling tingly, but Knight's reaction was enough to send a jolt of lightning through her. She had to put her hands together to stop her from getting too twitchy. Dawn was already feeling exhausted and on edge from everything that happened, but now she was feeling embarrassed and guilty. Her complete inability to turn down food was stupid, worrying about people she'd never see again was even more stupid, but dragging someone else into her stupidity was just unforgivable. Knight seemed mad, or at least frustrated, and she had every right to be because Dawn kept making the same mistakes over and over again and never seemed to learn anything.

She looked down as she mentally berated her own incompetence and her mind continued to bring up every failure it could remember. Then, the conversation got more serious and it became clear that Knight was barely even thinking about what happened (though her brain would undoubtedly be arguing with her about that all night). These thoughts weren't helpful right now, so she had to push them aside. After taking a moment to steady her breathing and stop her head from spinning, she spoke up in a quiet voice, still staring at the ground.

"It's alright, we can stay here as long as we need to. You don't have to justify it to me."

It's not like she never asked why Knight didn't just go to Mistral. There was nothing they were doing here that they couldn't do there. Vacuo might have been rougher, but life was pretty hard for anyone that lived outside the kingdoms. There would always be people looking for helping hands to fill in the gaps that Huntsmen and the government chose to ignore. The answers Knight gave never made that much sense to her, but they didn't have to for her to understand there was something going on in Knight's head that was impossible to explain to other people. That was something she experienced regularly. It was hard for her to pinpoint and try to fix because her understanding of how Knight felt about home was so limited and contradictory. During the war, she seemed happy to talk about it sometimes, but then would get sad or act weird after. Knight seemed to love the place, but rarely had anything positive to say about it. That made it difficult to place what was going on in her friend's head, so she focused on her friend's words and did her best to make them money. Though, she was pretty sure money had nothing to do with anything and was just an excuse, it would still be useful at least. That and making sure Knight was at least as comfortable as she could be.

"We can stay. I can handle it. I just...probably won't be very chatty while driving tomorrow," she let a sound out of her nose that was between a sigh and a snort. "It's possible..." she paused and started tapping her fingers against each other, "that we could make some money here if you can tolerate it. They need a lot of cheap items. Like salt or leather. They'd pay a lot for them."

It wasn't unusual for her to suggest loading up on some extra goods to sell elsewhere. Her map had some notes on which items were likely to sell in a certain area based on natural resources and the tastes of the people that she referenced before heading anywhere. She normally played it safe because they couldn't exactly hoard anything because of the limited space in the car, but considering how excited they got about the salt in their food and bag she was carrying far more valuable things in, this seemed like a pretty safe bet.

"Not important now. I agree. We should sleep."

She shook her head and then nodded. With any luck, she'd be able to get more than four hours of sleep tonight. Probably not, but it was nice to pretend like she had any chance of sleeping.

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674/7726

[Wolfe]

XP Distribution:

Red: 77

293 + 77 = 370

Knight: 55

1197 + 55 = 1252