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 Russet Bruin on Feb 25, 2021 5:18:08 GMT -5
It wasn't often that Russet was nervous.
She drove a bike around town, which was old enough to have little bike grandchildren, at breakneck speeds, and at least lately, she'd been making it a particularly dangerous habit of hers to stick out her neck to get civilians and clearly deficient Huntsmen alike out of tricky situations.
Fear was hardly a word in her vocabulary.
And yet, she was feeling antsier than usual, laying in her hospital bed, a whole district away from home. It was an oddly familiar feeling, at first, actually. A lot nicer than prison, but it felt similar, with the thin, flat, mattress, and the smell of chemicals in the air. The white walls and floors didn't do it any favors either.
Her face twitched a bit as, for a brief second, she almost expected one of the nurses to come by with her daily round of pills, before she remembered that she'd been off the dampers since she'd got out. Which was an unsettling realization, even though it didn't really have any reason to be- suddenly, she was feeling very much like she needed them again.
She knew she didn't. She never did, really- she half-remembered her cellmate, and her almost casual mention of her crimes. Infamous spree killer from about ten years back, she'd killed about a dozen people before turning herself in. Completely unstable. Or at least, she once was, long before Russet met her.
Twelve years on emotion dampers took the fight out of you.
She was just glad she was on them for two. Any more, and she might have wound up as hollowed out and dead inside as that former psycho. Which, to be fair, it was maybe for the best that she was kept drugged out all the time...
Regardless, she wasn't having a nice time waiting for the inevitable bad news.
She'd fucked up.
The boss had given her explicit orders to help track down, pursue, and assist in neutralizing, the Dust Ward Killer, and instead of doing that, she'd gotten sidetracked by a dumb Huntress and two dudes with more money than brains, then again by Pinky, Spiky, and Tits, the star trio in MBN's new hit sitcom, "Dumb Huntsman Is Bad At His Job."
So while Alina and Sienna were out stopping the bad guy, she was stuck getting beat up, trying to shot-block some morons from getting their first and only Darwin Awards.
She knew Alina was going to be mad.
Hell, she would probably be mad too, if she were her. She gave Russet the benefit of the doubt by putting her through her Iron Wolves training, and after she'd managed to prove that she could at least maybe be useful, she just went and threw it all away by being dumb and forgetting her objective.
What if things had gone wrong? Sure, there wasn't much that she could do that Alina and Sienna couldn't, and she'd be an idiot to think that her presence was some huge game-changer, but she had no way of knowing things would work out as smoothly as they did, especially after seeing that guy survive a moving car smashing into him.
So, leg in a cast, she lay in bed, figuratively kicking the hell out of herself, because she was too beat up to do it literally.
Luckily for her, Doc had gotten to her in time, and wasn't even that angry about the uninvited guests. As long as someone was reimbursing him for the door... And paying some exorbitant medical fees. Which, frankly, were just there to offer a solution that didn't involve him pressing charges against Spiky. She was a little miffed that she had to pay too, but fair was fair, and she did feel pretty shitty about bringing trouble back to his doorstep.
Either way, she was grateful. He'd patched her up and restored her Aura with his handy-dandy Semblance, and then sent her off to Mistral Hospital, for some more proper care.
And more expensive medical bills...
She just wanted to leave, and go do stuff, and be useful again. This shit was awful, there wasn't much that she hated more than sitting around, bored and alone.
She'd tried just walking out (well, limping out), but that hadn't gone very far before she was stopped and brought back to her room. Of course, attempts to leave ended completely when she got Sienna's message to stay put and rest up.
So she just lay there, in her bed.
Staring at the ceiling.
Waiting.
"Ughh... Stupid leg. Just had to go and fall in a hole, huh?"
Post by Alina Rybalka on Mar 2, 2021 21:04:13 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"]Overall, this month was a failure. [break][break]
Lunar had ruined any chance at an immediate alliance with the Artisan Guilds, and thus they expended all their resources for nothing. Alina wouldn’t be taking in any strays on combat missions anymore, but that was frankly her fault. Blind trust always bit her in the ass, and even though she wasn’t part of the Kozaks it wasn’t like anyone would listen. People would always trust the words of a huntsman trainee over her, because of course they would. Still, it was her error that caused the mix up to be possible in the first place. At the end of the day it was her fault, and she wouldn’t make that same mistake twice. [break][break]
She was still dressed in her work clothes, or more accurately her schmoozing in the Wind District clothes. It was a wool three-piece suit, dark gray with a mid-gray pinstripe with red lining running down the ensemble. The jacket was double breasted with a double back vent, two flap pockets, two inside chest pockets, ticket pocket on the right, peak lapels, and six buttons in the front with five on the cuff. The trousers had a squared front extension waistband, a flap watch pocket to the front, angled side front pockets and jetted back pockets to go with eight belt loops around the waist. The single-breasted waistcoat had paisley lining, a buckle back, two front jetted pockets, a double back vent, and a five-button front. [break][break]
She also carried around a lot more dust these days. She always carried around plant dust for the napalm, but now there was gravity dust for mobility and fire dust for igniting that napalm without her semblance. It was an adjustment she made to make herself harder to attack in the future, and that wasn’t going to be the only adjustment she made in the aftermath of that event. There had been some failures along the way that largely stemmed from her overconfidence, because it had truly been unfathomable that someone could take that much abuse from her semblance and still be alive before it happened. Hell, she still could hardly believe it. [break][break]
The wolf faunus was taking a detour to a Wind District hospital where Russet was posted up, the one favor the Artisans decided to give to the Kozaks for taking out the Dust Ward Killer. State of the art facilities with the best protection available, so much so that there was essentially no threat of someone coming in to attack Russet because she was associated with Alina. Well, best protection available was a bit of a stretch but there was nobody stupid enough to make an enemy of two factions with legitimate fixers in Mistral at the same time. It would be fucking suicide, and there wasn’t a soul in Mistral that would say otherwise. [break][break]
Alina was let in without a fuss despite the heightened security, because quite frankly everyone knew who she was at this point. It wasn’t a secret, especially with how often she was in the Wind District. She didn’t exactly have the look of someone who blended into a crowd, for better or for worse. It was actually kind of nice, too, because with advance warning she was coming the staff gave her a clipboard with Russet’s current condition and her room number and everything without needing to be asked. The VIP treatment and everything, which would be nice for as long as it lasted. [break][break]
Room 306. Third floor, sixth room. Easy. [break][break]
”Compound fractures. Must have hurt.” she’d say as she entered the room. ”Even with aura speeding the recovery along, you’re looking at about one week on the shelf and one week of pain before you get back to normal.” Gray eyes looked at Russet posted up on the bed as Alina sat down on the chair beside the bed. ”I’d like to start by apologizing, largely because my quite frankly stupid communications strategy didn’t hold up in practice. Turns out that relying on my aura to protect equipment like that isn’t a good plan, and that will be fixed. I understand that you lanced off to prevent some civilians from dying in the absence of orders, and even though it didn’t work out for you personally I want you to know you made the right call and I appreciate it.” [break][break]
The wolf faunus leaned back in her chair, then, and continued. ”Next time I’ll give out general directions and goals, because I won’t be able to focus on all the moving parts in a fight that tough again. Some people would have panicked in the absence of direction and did nothing, especially with how volatile that night was. You didn’t, regardless of how it worked out, and I appreciate that. If there’s anything you want on the outside they won’t let you have, I can arrange it to be brought.” [break][break]
She reached into her jacket, then, to pull out a carton of cigarettes, then. She got to the point of pulling one out before realizing that this was a hospital and smoking next to someone who was in bad enough condition to be in a hospital laid up in a bed was probably rude at best and replaced the carton in her jacket. Alina was never good at the emotional stuff, and frankly the thought of it after spending so long with only Sienna stressed her out much more than the actual fighting.
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[attr="class","nikki103"]911 words
[attr="class","nikki103"]KERCH KOZAKS
[attr="class","nikki103"]911 TOTAL WORDS
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NOTES
A Semblance, D Weapons, B Dust Enhancement, C Durability, C Agility, C Martial Arts, D Stamina, D Exhaustion
Post by Russet Bruin on Apr 13, 2021 8:00:44 GMT -5
The redhead stiffened up at the sudden voice from the doorway, causing her to tense her leg, and earn a sharp wince as a result. It was painful, but luckily, she was distracted from the pain by the little wave of dread coursing through her as she recognized the speaker.
Now, she had no clue why Alina had chosen to pay her a personal visit. None at all. But, given her previous experiences with higher-ups checking in on their rendered-useless grunts, her instinct was not one of high hopes. There was a solid chance she would just be booted from the Iron Wolves, best case scenario. Worst case, maybe Alina was so dissatisfied with her performance, she'd come to finish the job the hole in the ground had started.
Nobody needed a rusty blade, after all.
And she sure felt useless and rusty. Grey eyes were met with a somewhat startled and hesitant emerald, as Russet tried to figure out just how bad it was going to be. She had taken some fierce verbal lashings before, but she was a little worried about this one- she'd never actually seen Alina mad before, and she wasn't sure if this was it or not. It was an uncertain situation, and while normally you'd have to pay to shut her up, she was stunned speechless until Alina sat down and...
Apologized?
"Huh?"
Her mouth opened slightly as she just continued to stare at her boss, who was... Apologizing for bad planning, and thanking her for running off and disobeying orders? She wasn't entirely sure how to take it. This wasn't what she'd expected at all, by a long shot. Fuck. Okay. She couldn't just keep staring without saying anything.
"You're not mad?" It was the first thing she blurted out as soon as words stopped coming from Alina's mouth.
And she immediately regretted it, as she realized how dumb she probably sounded. It was just bewildering, hearing apologies instead of scolding for her actions. And then she felt bad for assuming Alina would react the same way Garrick's lieutenants would have- different people, different leadership philosophies.
"I mean-" Tripping over her words some, she only just caught Alina's offer, and in the haze of her confusion, managed to catch a glimpse of the carton of smokes in her jacket, which the Kozak leader seemed to contemplate for a moment. "Thanks. Sorry, I'm a little uh... I dunno, wasn't expecting this. Thanks." She smiled, just a little sheepishly, as she considered what she might want. Anything?
She wasn't entirely sure how to take that, either, honestly. Normally when someone said they could bring you anything you wanted, there was an implication that it would be something small. But she was pretty sure if Alina was saying it, she could very realistically bring her anything she wanted. Not that she could really think of an outrageous enough example that she might actually want in her hospital room.
Wasn't a whole lot she wanted, actually. Mostly just something to calm her nerves.
She still wasn't too fond of being stuck in a hospital room. Too much like prison, and the little flare-up of damper withdrawals was messing with her head. And making her nose itch, though she didn't want to scratch it with Alina watching her, because the last thing she wanted was for her boss to think she was a weird nose-picker or something.
"Huh... Anything I want? Hm... Think I could bum a cig?"
Post by Alina Rybalka on Apr 26, 2021 19:24:56 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"]”One thing I consider myself pretty good at these days is not getting angry over stupid shit. You’d have to try very hard and push quite hard to get me mad.” [break][break]
It was true, too. She couldn’t remember the last time that she was actually angry, largely because she considered the emotion to largely be beneath her. It was a weakness she once had that was exploited one too many times and she had worked hard to remove it entirely. It would take a significant amount of targeting and a significant amount of killing in order to cause her to see red when thinking about a person. It wasn’t something that she could voice, largely because it was not a sentiment that many could understand. Even with Alina’s warped perception of the world, she understood that the casual acceptance of many things that others would find impossible to stand was wildly abnormal. [break][break]
Letting people who were slashing at her throat with intent to kill happened occasionally and would continue to in the future due to the fact that she found most attempts on her life amusing more than anything. It was attacks on her subordinates that always bothered her, and the few people who tried that early on didn’t ever last for very long. The way she had always thought of it in her head was an attack on her own person was like a kitten trying to bash your skull in like prey – the intent might be there, it might actually be trying to kill you… but it can’t. It is physically incapable of doing such an act, so it’s amusing. When there is both a will to kill and a capability, it ceases to be amusing and becomes something that can’t be ignored. [break][break]
When Russet asked for a smoke, Alina reached back into her jacket and pulled out the carton fully this time. She positioned it so the end of the cigarette was in the palm of her hand and lit it with her semblance by increasing the temperature in that palm until it lit before handing it off to her subordinate. Alina then did the same thing with another one for personal use, because the difference between one smoke and two was much less than none and one. [break][break]
”I’ll arrange for someone to come by every few days with some resupply. Some grease and cigarettes won’t be hard to get inside every so often. Want any specific food?” the former soldier took a long drag from her cigarette, then, and held it inside her mouth for several seconds before exhaling and continuing with some suggestions in a casual tone that showed no hint whatsoever of breaking into a smile. It wasn’t exactly a secret that Alina liked junk food, and it wouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that she had a damn near encyclopedic knowledge of places to get the same. It was one of her few vices, along with smoking, but it was one that she was never ashamed about in the least. Better that than drugs. ”There’s this new jumbo sized burger place that opened up near the edge to the Wind District up on 54th and Orange, supposed to be as big as your head or something… actually no that’s probably too big. There’s another spot that has pizza wrapped up like a burrito, so you can hold it in your hand. It’s like inside out pizza that could probably ship out in boxes.”
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[attr="class","nikki103"]583 words
[attr="class","nikki103"]KERCH KOZAKS
[attr="class","nikki103"]1494 TOTAL WORDS
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NOTES
A Semblance, D Weapons, B Dust Enhancement, C Durability, B Agility, C Martial Arts, D Stamina, D Exhaustion
Post by Russet Bruin on Jun 7, 2021 5:31:58 GMT -5
"Oh. Got it." Huh.
It felt a little weird not getting yelled at for going off the written path. It was also a little hard to comprehend Alina's incredible patience and control over her emotions. Russet wasn't exactly the kind of person who was totally ruled by her feelings, especially after her stint in prison, but she was still fairly impulsive and temperamental at times.
Off-duty, of course.
Iron Wolves came first, and the training she got from them helped more than the dampers ever did.
It's easy to drug away anger issues and ego. Anyone with the right pills can do it. But the second the pills stop, so does the progress. You can drug someone until they're a shell of their old self, but that won't ever address the underlying issues. She'd stuck it out through the training because physical hardships weren't new to her; it was a grueling boot camp, but she'd had a grueling childhood, and a grueling adolescence. She learned early on how to take orders and get the job done, but what the Iron Wolves taught her was discipline.
It was inspiring, hearing someone brush off getting angry about something she'd have been punished severely for, running with Garrick's band.
Maybe she'd have that kind of self-discipline some day, if she kept up what she was doing, and stuck with Alina.
She didn't want to be anywhere else, frankly- didn't see herself doing much else. She was always a small cog in a big machine, except now the machine was stronger, faster, built better, and way more effective than the little trinket she worked for before.
This felt better. More worthwhile.
Still, she wasn't able to fully process what Alina meant when she said she didn't get angry anymore. It was doubtful that she ever would- she'd been through a lot, but nothing compared to her boss's war-time experiences. Even if she'd known the extent of those, she hadn't lived them. It was a foreign concept to her.
Up close, she seemed like she might just be an ordinary person. The same as anyone else, looking past her intensely neutral face and tone.
But there wasn't anything ordinary about Alina Rybalka.
It was a little overwhelming, the more she thought about it, actually. The close proximity to the other woman only served to better demonstrate just how far removed she was from everybody beneath her. It was powerful. Like standing in the shadow of a giant. Russet wasn't sure how Alina's mind worked, and frankly, it didn't matter. Just sitting there, next to her, was a little surreal.
Even the small things were remarkable to her.
She reached out to accept the offered cigarette, taking a moment to gaze down at the little cherry, burning away. Simple, but impressive.
Russet had a semblance too. She'd had it since she was a kid, even- it was such an ingrained part of her, by this point, that she couldn't think about life without it. But hers wasn't as raw and powerful as Alina's. Strong enough to burn through any obstacle. Breaking through any adversity to reach her goals. And yet, capable of something as delicate and mundane as lighting a cigarette.
She took a long drag, sighing it out. The itch in her face subsided with a wash of relief. "Thanks. Needed that, haha."
Food, huh?
Russet liked food. She liked food a lot. Maybe not as much as Alina, but when you go so long with so little, the second you find yourself within reach of all of the luxurious things you never thought you could have without stealing them off some rich guy's plate, you learn to seek those pleasures out whenever you can.
And Alina's descriptions made it all sound way too good...
She instinctively reached up to "measure" the size of her head with her hands. Which was dumb, because even without doing that, she had a pretty good sense for how monstrous a burger like that would be- even if the boss had already admitted that she had exaggerated the size a bit.
And a pizza burrito!?
That was like something out of a fairy tale. Probably made with magic or something.
"Ooooh... Damn, those are some good options... The burger sounds pretty good right now... Oh! Hey, you tried the pulled pork tacos over on Pine? That sauce they put on'em's addicting. Oh, and right next door's Ivan's fry stand! Just reopened this week. Man, I haven't ate there since I was knee-high. 'Member Ivan slippin' me and the other lil' punks all the dud fries at the end of the day. Not too bad, if you had enough salt."
Post by Alina Rybalka on Jun 13, 2021 20:44:50 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"]Mental note to arrange a jumbo burger being sent. That wouldn’t be difficult, and in fact the most difficult part of that operation was getting someone else entry into the hospital. She’d have to designate someone to do that and do the paperwork, because holy shit did people in the Wind District love their paperwork. In fact, that’d probably be the first line of defense for any potential assassins. The paperwork and the shrieking office workers if you tried to refuse to fill out the paperwork or filled it out wrong. [break][break]
”Nah, I haven’t had tacos in… years?’ [break][break]
It had definitely been a very long time, anyway. She tried to stay away from foods that had no clean way of eating lately since cleaning food off of a suit was kind of a pain in the ass. There was no dignified way to eat a taco, and she wasn’t sure there was a clean one either. [break][break]
”There was this one…” she started, but the vibration of her scroll stopped her. Pulling it out from her pants pocket, she held it up to her ear. [break][break]
”Alina here.” [break][break]
She didn’t say anything for fifteen to twenty seconds, then. ”Okay. Carry on until I get there.” Facial expression barely moved, but her shoulders rolled back before the end of the call and she cracked her neck. [break][break]
”Sorry, Russet. Duty calls. I’ll arrange for one of the burgers to be sent over. Things that are that big don’t tend to have the quality of more specially made ones, but the drop off isn’t bad and the novelty of having something that big is cool as fuck to have at least once.” [break][break]
With that, the wolf faunus got up from her chair and raised up her right foot to put out the cigarette she was smoking on the bottom of it and replace the partially used one in the carton so she didn’t get screamed at on the way out. Burning bridges over something that fucking stupid when she was the lesser party in the arrangement would be wasteful. [break][break]
”I’ll be back when I can, don’t do anything I wouldn’t do in the meantime.”
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[attr="class","nikki103"]365 words
[attr="class","nikki103"]KERCH KOZAKS
[attr="class","nikki103"]1859 TOTAL WORDS
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NOTES
A Semblance, D Weapons, B Dust Enhancement, C Durability, B Agility, C Martial Arts, D Stamina, D Exhaustion
Post by Russet Bruin on Jun 28, 2021 22:41:14 GMT -5
What!
She hadn't had tacos in that long!? How!?
Russet's jaw dropped, and she was about to go into a beautiful, poignant, speech on the incredible benefits of regular taco consumption, and the best places in town (aside from the taco stand on Pine) to get them, Alina's Scroll buzzed, which seemed to stop the whole room cold.
Not wanting to make Alina feel rude for taking what was probably a pretty important call, Russet settled for taking a couple of longer drags of her cigarette, staring up at the ceiling in thought.
Mostly, she was just thinking about how many tiles there were on the ceiling, and how big she could blow a smoke ring. Not very big- she wasn't good at it. But it was passing the time for the brief awkward silence as whoever was on the other end of the phone talked to Alina.
She wasn't offended that she was taking a call right then either, really.
Alina was important. Hell, she was still surprised she'd taken the time to drop by and chat at all, brief as it was. She really was an amazing leader. Looked out for her own. Handled business. Dependable, strong, and goodhearted. She was pretty great, and Russet was glad she'd stumbled across the Kozaks, in their early days.
Seemed like she had somewhere else to be, so Russet smiled, and waved off the apology as it was spoken. "Nah, no worries, Boss. Thanks for dropping by- and for the burger, I'm hype as hell for that. Hospital food sucks." She grinned, and watched as the Kozak leader headed for the door.
"Hehe, you got it. Best behavior. Seeya 'round."
Alina left, and the room was quiet and dull again. But at least now, she could smile and look forward to a huge-ass burger the size of her head. Was also nice to talk to Alina in a more casual setting for once. It was wild as fuck how she seemed like just a regular person, when she wasn't busy being a symbol of revolution or whatever. It was pretty cool.
She took another puff of her cigarette, and stretched her back as best as she could without disturbing her leg.