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 Alina Rybalka on Mar 29, 2021 21:16:54 GMT -5
[nospaces]
[attr="class","nikki98"]
[attr="class","nikki99"]
[break] [break]
[attr="class","nikki100"]
[attr="class","nikki101"]WE CAN ALL AGREE THAT VIOLENCE BREEDS VIOLENCE
[break]
[attr="class","nikki102"]BUT IN THE END, IT HAS TO BE THIS WAY
[break]
[attr="class","nikki109"]Gray eyes closed as she tried, in vain like always, the breathing exercises she was taught over and over as a child. Slowing and deepening the breath, making it come from the belly rather than from the chest was how it was done. In through the nose, out through the mouth. The issue was, with her eyes closed, all she could do was imagine what made her angry in the first place. [break][break]
The Council, the Cloud District, Haven, that dumb bitch Lunar… each of them flashed in front of her eyes in turn which only made her angrier, fists clenching and unclenching as she was again confronted with her own impotency in the face of institutional opposition. She hated reacting to things and hated being subject to the whims of those more powerful and more influential than she was. And yet that was where she stood, through no real choice of her own in the matter. [break][break]
Gray eyes opened and she still felt just as angry as before, and yet like always it managed to take the edge off. Sienna talked about infrastructure, but that wasn’t a concern for right now. ”Going back to the house would be stupid.” she noted, anger still tinging her voice. ”Going back to it the first time was stupid. If they weren’t so arrogant they would have set something up there after waiting until finding out where it is before doing the attack in the first place.” [break][break]
The wolf faunus exhaled audibly, then, and stopped the stride that had only just started. ”If we stay alive long enough, we’ll get the chance to hit back at some point. It’s unlikely that we’d get a second shot at it, so if nothing else we can learn from this and not make the same mistake they did.” [break][break]
”Doing rounds at this point is useless, especially because the cold will likely make my aura come back more slowly.” She closed her eyes again, then, for about three seconds. ”Office would be a dumb place to go. Guard posts are the best place right now, mostly because nobody would expect me to be there. It also means we’d be first to know if something wild happened tonight.” [break][break]
Left hand moved to the scabbard on that side, thumb pressed against the hilt of the sword. ”There’s a guard post at the East side that’s only a mile or three out from here. I can barely think like this.” she would complain, gesturing her right hand at everything around her. The cold that seeped into her bones, the trouble she had breathing with how shallow and angry her breathing was, and the hopelessness of the entire situation all wrapped into one.
[break]
[attr="class","nikki103"]457 words
[attr="class","nikki103"]KERCH KOZAKS
[attr="class","nikki103"]5816 TOTAL WORDS
[break]
NOTES
A Semblance, D Weapons, B Dust Enhancement, C Durability, B Agility, C Martial Arts, D Stamina, D Exhaustion
Post by Sinopia DeStellanova on Apr 6, 2021 22:38:34 GMT -5
Sienna remained just as stiff as before, her knees barely bending as she walked, though Alina's breathing exercises did remind her that she was holding her breath. She slowly released that breath through her nose, and started breathing a little unevenly again. Intrinsically, she knew that Alina wasn't upset with her and was simply upset because of all the stupid shit going on around them, but Alina was still more upset because of her. As much of her mind felt like a swarm of angry bees and she wanted to start organizing all those thoughts, doing so now seemed inappropriate. She could wait until after Alina rested, just like she said before. She really should have known better than to push this hard right now.
She nodded at Alina's suggestion. She wasn't sure if she agreed with it, but after all that she was afraid to argue and couldn't think clearly enough to think of a better suggestion. The sewers were the only thing that came to mind, if only because of her recent projects around making sure they were draining properly so the area would smell less bad, and making that kind of suggestion when Alina was already upset seemed like a bad idea. Given her wounds, it might cause more problems than it solved anyway.
That was quite a distance to walk though, and given Alina's recent behavior, she wasn't sure if her friend would be feeling up to it. She hesitated for a moment before speaking up, unsure if this suggestion would be taken well. Really, she had no idea what Alina was trying to prove with this walk, given she had now contradicted herself multiple times about it, so she wasn't even sure how to go about being helpful anymore. In the end, this seemed harmless enough that she took a deep breath and decided to offer.
"Would you like me to get a vehicle?"
Her tone was formal even by her standards. Letting Alina sit down would let her rest immediately, and having a vehicle nearby would let them escape more quickly should it be necessary. Getting one of the more armored ones that didn't look that armored from the outside would also provide some additional protection. It wouldn't take her long to grab one and bring it back, as much as she hated the idea of leaving Alina alone for even a few minutes. Normally she'd insist on driving, but if Alina really wanted to, she wouldn't object this time. She would, however, still try to open the door for her unless directly pushed away or told not to.
Regardless of whether or not they ended up taking a car or not, she had no intention of speaking unless spoken to. At least until morning.
Post by Alina Rybalka on Apr 22, 2021 18:42:06 GMT -5
[nospaces]
[attr="class","nikki98"]
[attr="class","nikki99"]
[break] [break]
[attr="class","nikki100"]
[attr="class","nikki101"]WE CAN ALL AGREE THAT VIOLENCE BREEDS VIOLENCE
[break]
[attr="class","nikki102"]BUT IN THE END, IT HAS TO BE THIS WAY
[break]
[attr="class","nikki109"]There was a change in the former soldier’s posture as she looked over to the horizon, almost as if she was frozen. Her eyes unfocused and she grimaced, and seemed to just zone out for about five to ten seconds before snapping back to reality. ”I think I get it now.” she said, tone urgent and disconnected from the previous frustration. ”I’m a fucking idiot for not realizing this sooner.” she added, actually lightly punching the wall next to her more to stretch out the arm than any real frustration. A smile started to creep over her features, then, because she believed she had finally figured out the answer to a question she had been asking herself for quite some time. [break][break]
”The reason why they do this. They have to do this.” She laughed then, bitterly. ”I’ve been thinking wrong this entire time. I see why, now. It’s not about me at all. It’s not about the Ground District or the Kozaks or anything we did or will do. It’s about them. It always has been about them. They can’t tell the difference between us and a bandit tribe, and never they never will.” [break][break]
”Part of the power that the Council exudes is that despite its short life, they have made enough changes and established enough credibility that people think of the Council itself as an inevitability. They can’t imagine a world without it aside from backwards into a monarchy even after such a short time, because that’s all we had. They don’t see it their reign as nearly that secure, though, which is how they stay in power. When they send these assassins after me, when they leak what happened and try to say it was me that struck first, the point of it isn’t to make me an enemy. The point of it isn’t to make us or the Kozaks into criminals. It doesn’t matter that it was us, it would have been anyone who was a rising group in the Ground District because they needed a scapegoat after the year they’ve had. The point is to make us into monsters, right at their doorstep, that Mistral must unite against. It’s the only way that the rest of their subjects would ever be able to view us in a way that wouldn’t make them ask questions about whether the way we are doing things is better.” [break][break]
”They have to do this to anyone who doesn’t play by the system. They have to do this in order to survive. They have to feed their people a world filled with darkness, and tell them that only by staying close to the light can they be saved. Their light. Their system. Their reasons. Because in that darkness, there are monsters.” [break][break]
She laughed, again, this time longer with the same bitterness. ”I’m a fucking idiot.” she admitted, once again. ”I really thought that I could keep us safe just by making us a hardened enough target to make it stupid to attack us, but they don’t need to attack us. They’ll parade that crippled huntsman and make him into a martyr, and use that to start squeezing the Ground District and cripple it for as long as we stay – daring us to make an aggressive move and start a civil war.” She punched the wall again, much harder this time. [break][break]
”We need to get vehicles. Vehicles and moving equipment. They weren’t ever planning on attacking us physically. They don’t need to, and soon I think they’ll be putting sanctions on me and any affiliates to prevent us from being able to do business in the Wind. Bank accounts will be frozen, maybe even tomorrow. Shit.” [break][break]
She hadn’t thought of that until just now, and it wasn’t like she could get ahead of it right now when the banks were already closed for the day. There was a pause, then, before panic turned into anger and anger turned into determination. It was visible across her face and body as it happened, too, until her mouth turned into a thin line and gray eyes refocused and shoulders squared to deal with what was to come. [break][break]
”Two vehicles. You’re going to take one and go to the main garage. I want an inventory of what condition every vehicle we have is in by tomorrow at dawn. I’m going to go get the documents ready to withdraw everything I have left in the banks in the morning, and we’re going to go straight to some contacts to see if we can’t squeak in before they freeze our ability to do so openly. They won’t attack tonight or anytime soon. They can’t risk losing two elite huntsman in the same mission.”
[break]
[attr="class","nikki103"]794 words
[attr="class","nikki103"]KERCH KOZAKS
[attr="class","nikki103"]6610 TOTAL WORDS
[break]
NOTES
A Semblance, D Weapons, B Dust Enhancement, C Durability, B Agility, C Martial Arts, D Stamina, D Exhaustion
Post by Sinopia DeStellanova on May 1, 2021 0:44:08 GMT -5
Sienna stopped almost the instant Alina did because of how hyper aware Alina's prior outburst made her of Alina's feelings and movement. The sudden change in demeanor didn't faze her outwardly, but it did leave an unpleasant feeling in her stomach. She knew Alina well enough to know that random laughter and smiling like this rarely meant anything good.
Exactly what they were threatening or why the Council might be afraid of them still went over her head, but she knew what a scapegoat was and why the Council would want one right now. Everything was going to shit right now (all in ways she personally thought were pretty predictable even with her lack of knowledge, but she supposed that was hardly relevant), and it was in peoples' nature to look for someone to blame when something went wrong. Of course the Council would want to shift that blame anywhere but on them. Which meant that Alina was indeed being overly optimistic earlier and that they weren't safe now. Worst part, they would likely never be safe and there wasn't very much they could do about that.
"I understand. Enough. I understand enough," she nodded, her voice still as cautious and monotone as before. "We don't have enough resources to conduct a large-scale evacuation at the moment. I will divert my focus to making that possible."
If it was only a matter of time before they'd be forced out of the area, then a large portion of her current plans and projects would be completely useless. She might as well divert all that attention to making sure she could get everyone out of here, with enough food, dust, and other resources to not immediately die and preferably maintain some amount of comfort, at the drop of a hat. Some parts would be simple, like she could move freezer out of the building she converted into a couple of the new transports and just make those the permanent freezers. Other parts were going to be far more difficult. She had no idea how she was going to acquire enough vehicles for this, especially since they had to be safe enough to not let everyone inside of them die if they were attacked or otherwise thrown around.
She hesitated for a moment, and not only because she was rolling how to make all of this possible inside of her head. Getting a report on their current resources would take time. They weren't huge by any stretch of the imagination, but there were enough that she would be gone longer than the few minutes she was initially expecting when she offered to bring a vehicle. She didn't like the idea of leaving Alina alone in her current condition. After a small pause and an even smaller sigh, she nodded. Alina would have enough trouble getting to sleep with this hanging over her head. Sienna could get to just about anywhere in the compound with in a few minutes, and Alina would have a vehicle to escape with and several ways to get her attention if something happened.
"I'll get you an exact count of what we have, what we can currently do, and my estimates on what we would need to evacuate everyone. Please contact me if something happens. Or if you're even worried something might be happening."
With that, she reluctantly turned to first bring a vehicle for Alina to use, then went off to make that report. It'd take awhile to do, so she really hoped that Alina would be able to get some sleep while she worked. Once she was done, she compiled the hand-written notes into a vanilla folder for safe keeping. Her handwriting was awful even in the best cases, so this was barely legible and riddled with spelling and grammar errors given how quickly she was trying to write it. Before heading back to the guard post Alina said she was going to, she made a detour to the kitchen to get some coffee, soda, and cinnamon rolls with powdered sugar and extra cinnamon. She wasn't sure if Alina would prefer the sweetness from soda or from coffee with more sugar than could fit in her mouth at once, so she brought both just to be safe. If Alina was sleeping, she wouldn't wake her up and would wait patiently until Alina woke up on her own. Once Alina was a wake, she gave her the slightly oil-stained notes to read over breakfast.
There wasn't anything too remarkable about them. They didn't have the resources to evacuate everyone yet, but she had some thoughts on how to do it. Vehicles would be nice, especially for transporting goods, but when she thought about it, an underground pathway under the walls would probably be more valuable to them. It worked well in Kerch, and she doubted the Council would expect something like that. It would lessen the amount of vehicles they needed at any given time to just escape as long as they were quiet and dug deep enough. Besides that, she took a moment to check maps for existing paths out of the city and provided a couple of crudely drawn maps from memory of paths she found when they were still working for Asche. They all had notes that she would refine them later. Investigating them now would take her too far from Alina.
She didn't speak right away, beyond making sure that Alina was okay and seeing if she wanted anything else, to give Alina a chance to eat and read. There was still a lot on her mind and it was preventing her from focusing. Or sleeping. She shifted in her chair and started swishing her coffee around in the thermos. Playing with her food was a common nervous habit, especially when she knew she was about to ask something really uncomfortable.
"Alina." She finally spoke up before Alina could finish going through her notes. "What about Mistral is worth saving? I mean, you said you wanted to avoid a civil war, and that you didn't want to have to burn it but...why?" She stared at her reflection unable to maintain eye contact. "Why don't you just burn the place down and build something better? You never have anything positive to say about it in its current state."
Post by Alina Rybalka on May 9, 2021 17:32:57 GMT -5
[nospaces]
[attr="class","nikki98"]
[attr="class","nikki99"]
[break] [break]
[attr="class","nikki100"]
[attr="class","nikki101"]WE CAN ALL AGREE THAT VIOLENCE BREEDS VIOLENCE
[break]
[attr="class","nikki102"]BUT IN THE END, IT HAS TO BE THIS WAY
[break]
[attr="class","nikki109"]And away she went. Back to collect the files, to organize the files, to get her identification and all legal documents in order to pack up all of her shit and be done with this failed experiment in the capital. She arrived at the guard post before Sienna, and promptly reassigned those within the guard post to patrolling. While she couldn’t go out and be of much help in being an early detection system, they could on the off chance that she was wrong and a secondary attack was coming immediately. [break][break]
When Sienna came back and handed her the notes, Alina would thank her and immediately move to the planning room with the maps inside and start planning their escape route. They’d only have one shot at this, after all, and if they fucked it up they all died. That was always the issue in high stakes missions, really, the fact that you could only ever fuck up once because death was the consequence of failure. Going out by one of the conventional paths was ruled out immediately. They’d be gunned down immediately, and that obviously wasn’t an outcome she wanted. Time passed by quickly as she sat in front of those maps looking through the notes, so much so that she didn’t know how long she had been there when Sienna spoke up and said something that made Alina look at her like she had just grown a third and fourth arm out of her forehead. [break][break]
”How many people would die if I did that? Somewhere between half and three quarters of all the people in the Kingdom live in the capital, and even if everything went perfectly the Ground, Wind, and Cloud Districts would all be heavily damaged by the end of it. Thousands of people would be used as human shields. Only a legitimate psychopath would start a war in an urban area this densely packed. I’m not going to be that psychopath.” [break][break]
With someone else she might have gone into reasons why it was a bad idea, but with Sienna she just left it as it was. Alina was comfortable with death and was more comfortable with the act of killing than most. Some would say, not without reason, that she in the past cared far too little about who died so long as that she benefited from the act. It would be something that she would always deny, and say that she always did her due diligence, but the fact of the matter was that it wasn’t true. For much of her life, she had killed simply because it was what she was ordered to do. Dressed up in philosophy and love for country, sure, dressed up in need to survive and put food on the table… yes. But the fact of the matter was that at this point the former soldier had a lot of blood on her hands. [break][break]
There was a huge difference between killing in a war, killing some scumbag who may or may be responsible for one particular evil, and annihilating potentially half of the population of the kingdom. That was a leap and a jump too far for her, and something she wouldn’t mind sacrificing some or all of the progress she had made in the past months in the Ground District in order to prevent. Contrary to at any point in her life aside from the War, she had a lot of people on her side. She had a lot of people that she had responsibility for, and were only able to survive because of actions she has taken and continues to take. To throw those away so certainly for an outcome that was unlikely at best to achieve any results would be unacceptable.
[break]
[attr="class","nikki103"]626 words
[attr="class","nikki103"]KERCH KOZAKS
[attr="class","nikki103"]7236 TOTAL WORDS
[break]
NOTES
A Semblance, D Weapons, B Dust Enhancement, C Durability, B Agility, C Martial Arts, D Stamina, D Exhaustion
Post by Sinopia DeStellanova on May 11, 2021 20:57:22 GMT -5
Sienna let a small sigh out of her nose when Alina went for the obvious answer. That was her fault for asking the question in such a ridiculous manner, but she wasn't sure how to approach the issue without just jumping right into it. Really, she wasn't even entirely sure how to put into words what was bothering her or what the hell she was even talking about. It made sense in her head, but that was basically gibberish when it came to language. Ultimately, she was more annoyed at that than she was at Alina's response.
"You know I don't like hurting people..." she spoke up after a moment of silence while spinning her coffee, "but..."
No, that was wrong. There was no but. She didn't want to fight anyone. Never did. Yet somehow, she ended up fighting a lot of people, both literally and figuratively. She didn't want to fight anyone, but other people wanted to fight her. That was the but. That was a line of thought she could follow. There was another short pause as she tried to mentally grasp that thread.
"My father used to talk to me, during the war, about how he tried really hard to prevent it from happening. But it happened anyway."
There was a longer pause this time. There tended to be any time she talked about her father or the war because she was so young when it happened. She didn't understand what she was doing or what she was getting into. No one even explained why it was happening or what they were really fighting for until it was nearly done. After the war, everyone that could have helped her process it all was dead, except for Alina who wasn't much older than she was. Because of that and her general difficulty with expressing herself, it was always difficult to find the words.
"Because whether or not we fought wasn't really our choice." She paused again, furrowed her eyebrows, and pursed her lips. "No, I think I get it now. For awhile I thought I might have been afraid of starting a war and was trying to avoid that, while also worrying that I might make the same mistake my father thought he did, but that's not it. Wars have two sides. It's not enough for us to not want to fight. If we're just a scapegoat then...if we left would they let us? If they left would they just get a new scapegoat? Would someone else have to suffer instead?
"Yeah, I think that's what's been bothering me for so long. I kept wanting to find a way to avoid hurting people. I think I found that third option. The options are be hurt, hurt others, or ignore people getting hurt in front of you."
Her voice got quieter and more bitter as she talked. Once she finished, she sighed again while spinning her coffee and her shoulder slumped. That really wasn't the answer she was hoping for, but it was all she could think of. It fit with everything she had experienced her whole life, from having to spend most of the day basically locked in a closet because her parents couldn't stay home and watch her and they had to worry about violence breaking out in her neighborhood. It didn't matter if she didn't want to fight, if someone wanted to hurt her, there wasn't much she could do to stop them. Then later in life she got the ability to stop them and she did. How many people did she and Alina kill in Vacuo? How many more did they hurt? But how many more were spared because they stepped in and fought instead of them? In Mistral, she avoided getting involved in much of anything for a long time to lay low. It hurt and she didn't really want to do it again.
Post by Alina Rybalka on May 18, 2021 18:53:13 GMT -5
[nospaces]
[attr="class","nikki98"]
[attr="class","nikki99"]
[break] [break]
[attr="class","nikki100"]
[attr="class","nikki101"]WE CAN ALL AGREE THAT VIOLENCE BREEDS VIOLENCE
[break]
[attr="class","nikki102"]BUT IN THE END, IT HAS TO BE THIS WAY
[break]
[attr="class","nikki109"]She was tired. From the fight, from the long period of staying awake, and from her body working overtime to both try and restore her aura and heal her wounds at the same time. She was more than content to let Sienna talk and use the opportunity to lean back and close her eyes for a second. The look of serene neutrality quickly turned into a grimace as she recognized the point, but Alina didn’t bother interrupting. There wasn’t an immediate point she could make to refute what was being said, because it was true. If the Council wanted a war, they’d get one regardless of what Alina did to try and prevent it. The silence after Sienna stopped talking lasted for over a minute before the wolf faunus opened up her gray eyes and focused them on her longtime companion. [break][break]
”I always did enjoy it. Power. I hated seeing things and not having enough power to stop it, to be forced under the heel of someone who could annihilate me with a wave of their hand. I never enjoyed the fighting itself, just as a means to remove evil. I think that power best used is done to avoid fighting in the first place, to be so untouchable that the other party doesn’t even try because they know it’s pointless. It works great on an individual level, and has kept us alive even in situations where we could have died. Sometimes that threat of mutually assured destruction is all it takes for someone to stand down, and if the Council is acting in their own self-interest then they won’t push too hard.” [break][break]
Her tone was flat and emotionless. There was no need to get angry at it, because she was speaking what she perceived to be the truth. Facts didn’t care about intentions, and she believed she had the situation pegged correctly. ”This isn’t like the War. They don’t have an endless stream of highly trained huntsmen at their beck and call this time. I could wipe out half the Academy in five minutes, and they have to know that by now. Even if they hard commit and win, they cause their own destruction by way of killing the generation stupid enough to sign up even amidst this shitshow. If they hard commit and lose, then I do that and get away. There’s no coming back from that. If they let us leave, they lose nothing and get to control the narrative and say whatever they want when we’re gone. They keep all their influence, their livelihoods, and power all together by threatening but not starting a conflict by threatening us with the same thing we threaten them with if an actual fight breaks out – the destruction of everything we give a shit about, except we have less people and less manpower and less resources. It’d be almost impossible for us to win at this point, only survive.” [break][break]
She shrugged, then. ”We don’t get to decide what’s right. We get to do what we think is right in the moment, and then shitheads who weren’t there and took no risks get to decide.” [break][break]
It was something she had been forced to accept long ago, lest she go insane. The amount of misinformation about the Faunus War was immense, and the propaganda was widespread even today. If she got into a fight with every time someone said some dumb shit about it that was obviously wrong, she’d never stop getting into fights. It was something she learned in Menagerie, and had to relearn in Vacuo. ”I’ll do my best to make sure we all survive. That’s the most I can do. If I’m wrong and the Council makes us choose between us and them surviving, I’m going to choose us.”
[break]
[attr="class","nikki103"]634 words
[attr="class","nikki103"]KERCH KOZAKS
[attr="class","nikki103"]7870 TOTAL WORDS
[break]
NOTES
A Semblance, D Weapons, B Dust Enhancement, C Durability, B Agility, C Martial Arts, D Stamina, D Exhaustion
Post by Sinopia DeStellanova on May 20, 2021 23:42:41 GMT -5
She didn't even notice the time passing or how long they had been sitting there in silence because she was so deep in thought. Enough so, that Alina speaking up again startled her, making her jump while her mind snapped back to reality. She listened in silence (and a bit sheepishly at first), only making a little bit of noise from the rhythmic tapping of her fingers on her coffee thermos while she thought. Sometimes she'd relax a bit and nod along as some of her worries were addressed, other times she'd tense up as she thought of something else. Once Alina was done talking, she stayed quiet for a little while longer and stared at the ground.
"Do you think I made a mistake not focusing more on my combat skills in Vacuo?"
If having one monster was enough to deter them from doing too much then surely having two would be better? If a concentrated strike or whatever else they might try would be less effective because someone just as scary could retaliate, then that would probably be more effective. The problem was, she couldn't even picture herself being like that. What would she even do? She didn't have any flashy moves or the like, no way to make impressive displays of power. It felt ridiculous to think about. Almost as ridiculous as the idea that she could close the distance between their abilities in less than two years.
What made it feel really awful though were the reasons she avoided it. Part of it was trying to focus on what would help Alina the most, which was fine. Part of it was because she really disliked fighting. For as much as Alina liked to claim she didn't like fighting, she didn't seem to have that much of a problem with it. Sienna on the other hand, had gotten them into a bit of trouble more than once because of a split second of hesitation. The idea of hurting people bothered her. In other words, her primary reason for her lack of focus there was because she was a coward who didn't want to do something uncomfortable and didn't think she'd ever measure up to Alina anyway.
"I doubt I could fight like you but..." she paused, feeling like she had to force the words out of her mouth. "I might be able to just...deal with people before they even know I'm there. I'd probably be good at it."
It's not like the idea of assassination never occurred to her before, it was just an idea she found extremely disturbing. Enough so, that she found it difficult to even say the words. There wasn't any point in bringing up in Vacuo because the majority of the people they went after had auras that weren't complete garbage. That wasn't the case here. The average politician may not have had aura at all, and if they did, it probably wasn't very good. She started spinning the thermos in her hands and felt her chest tighten. She continued staring at the floor, not wanting to make eye contact despite normally being particular about it.
"Not that I think we should retaliate now, or even try to fight them. Fighting them directly-- well, we'd probably just lose. But..." She let a long breath out her nose. She rarely stuttered or used filler words, but she was finding it difficult to talk at all right now. "It's always bothered me. Just-- I always felt like if I did the same things that my enemies did to try to stop them was that really-- was I really changing anything? Or just continuing all the bad things I was trying to stop? But now I wonder if I was just telling myself that to protect my sensibilities or so I didn't have to do anything difficult. I don't know what else I'm supposed to do. I don't want to just watch and let it happen, you know?"
Ever since Alina was kicked out of the Menagerie Guard, she had accepted that horrible feeling of powerlessness would probably never go away. If someone like Alina continued to experience it then everyone probably did forever. That didn't make it feel less bad in the moment though, and this entire situation was making her angry. A feeling she found almost as unpleasant on its own.
Post by Alina Rybalka on Jun 9, 2021 22:43:33 GMT -5
[nospaces]
[attr="class","nikki98"]
[attr="class","nikki99"]
[break] [break]
[attr="class","nikki100"]
[attr="class","nikki101"]WE CAN ALL AGREE THAT VIOLENCE BREEDS VIOLENCE
[break]
[attr="class","nikki102"]BUT IN THE END, IT HAS TO BE THIS WAY
[break]
[attr="class","nikki109"]”The ability to kill someone cold isn’t a quality anyone should aspire to.” [break][break]
She didn’t elaborate further because it didn’t need to be elaborated upon. It was something that everyone who served in the military on the front lines was at least tangentially aware of, because it was the main quality that people looked for when looking for snipers and other specialized roles where you were required to kill someone who posed zero threat to you and often didn’t even know you were there. When someone actively tried to kill you and you were in a mutual fight to the death with emotions spiked and adrenaline rushing through your veins killing was easy. Anyone could kill another person if that other person woke you up from a dead sleep and started clobbering you. It was survival instinct popping off and when flight was impossible you fought by default, and through military training you were pivoted towards fighting as the default as much as possible when those emotions were spiked through muscle memory so you wouldn’t just break down and flee. [break][break]
A sniper or someone in a similar role didn’t have their emotions spiked. They weren’t in any danger and adrenaline wasn’t rushing. They were killing people smoking cigarettes, relieving themselves in the woods, or just sitting there doing nothing and unaware that they were in any danger in an ideal situation. To kill someone with no emotion, no adrenaline, no nothing was rare. No matter how much bravado someone had, the act of actually killing someone popping a squat to take a shit in the woods was something that most people couldn’t do because it was unnatural and felt wrong to an average person. [break][break]
There was a gray area there, and it was something she and Sienna had discussed many times. That gray area was when someone with a semblance was involved. They had their emotions spiked too, and had adrenaline rushing through their veins so that it was very easy for them to kill… but were in many cases in zero physical danger. Someone with bad training or mindset, which was unfortunately most semblance enhanced combatants, would go way overkill no matter the situation and dismember anyone deemed slightly hostile simply because they could. They’d get their emotions spiked, panic, and default to gross overkill. [break][break]
Alina never killed someone without a purpose. She didn’t do it for fun, and she certainly never panicked and did it to someone who posed no threat to her unless there was a point. There was also never a point in her life that she had an issue with killing cold. At first it was out of necessity, because there was zero way a young teenaged girl was going to overpower an adult man with better equipment, training, and strength than you if he knew you were there. Filling him full of holes before he could react due to being occupied doing something else, though, like eating or using the bathroom or sleeping or whatever… the odds suddenly tipped well into her favor. [break][break]
The concept of honor to the wolf faunus was fucking stupid when it came to any fight in which she or anyone on her side had a chance of death. It was deliberately handicapping yourself in order to please a bunch of dead people who couldn’t judge you because they were dead anyway. Tradition was literally peer pressure from dead people. [break][break]
She was leaned back in her chair, head tilted up towards the ceiling with her eyes closed. ”Besides, we don’t even need to fight them now.” she started, ”Assassination wouldn’t change anything in the long run. It’d be spun as a cowardly attack by a weak enemy who had no other choice. If we wanted actual change, we’d have to kill so many huntsmen that they were forced to the table for negotiation.” [break][break]
She shrugged, then, after saying something so ridiculous that nobody in Mistral could have seriously done it while maintaining such a calm and disaffected tone. ”Standard war, in other words, which we absolutely can win given enough time and resources simply because Mistral has nobody else except for huntsmen and mercenaries. Fifty rifles could kill a weak huntsmen with moderate casualties. Fifty cannons could kill five weak huntsmen with zero. They don’t have a lot of strong huntsmen.” [break][break]
There was a pause, then, before Alina continued in a much more serious tone. ”I don’t think you made a mistake in priorities. The same logic applies to me. Running me down and preventing my personal escape isn’t very difficult, I’m not exactly fast. Smash a hole underneath my feet and it’ll take me a while to climb out of it. It wouldn’t be hard at all for them to send a strike team and surround me, and if they coordinated a decent team it’d be trivial to prevent escape and just whittle me down until my aura broke and then just continue blasting until I was dead. I can go in a fight, but I can’t actually leave it barring me driving a vehicle – which would be destroyed at the first instance of another semblance, killing everyone so there was no need to back out, or getting dragged out physically. The fact that I can be dragged out physically is a blessing, and not a luxury that most have.” [break][break]
”If I don’t have enough firepower to burn down what they send, then we will lose. With you there, though, a loss doesn’t mean death necessarily. If it was just me, if I lose I die. There’s no way I get out of a fight with someone who can break my aura or a mass of people large enough to whittle it down. I’m fucked at that point. It would only work once, likely, but one reset is all I’d need to make a plan and make sure I didn’t lose twice.” [break][break]
”Come to think about it, it also makes kidnapping kind of hard. Don’t really have to worry about you being a hostage or anything. That’s always a perk.”
[break]
[attr="class","nikki103"]1018 words
[attr="class","nikki103"]KERCH KOZAKS
[attr="class","nikki103"]8888 TOTAL WORDS
[break]
NOTES
A Semblance, D Weapons, B Dust Enhancement, C Durability, B Agility, C Martial Arts, D Stamina, D Exhaustion