[Lily Finnian]

Lily swung through the trees like a natural as she made her way towards where the girl would be landing. She only knew Seiya by her name, and hadn't been able to pick her out among the other students. She had no clue what sort of disposition towards others she held, but it was likely not the greatest considering her placement amongst the roses. She heard a the not too distant sound of rustling below that roughly correlated with the direction the girl would have been landing, and altered her course to seek it out.

Unfortunately, she found herself on a wild goose chase, almost literally, as the rustling had come from a pheasant that had been startled from it's place in the bushes by some unseen stimulus. She decided that since the creature had fled in roughly the direction she was headed anyway, she would get a head start on lunch. The trees in this section of forest were close enough together that she could jump from branch to branch without assistance from her claw weapon. She was thankful for that, as the noise would disturb her hunt considerably. She followed it for a moment, thankful that she was downwind, only to realize belatedly that it was a bird and therefor not well known for it's sense of smell.

She followed from a distance, waiting until it settled down on a branch before closing that distance. As she jumped from one branch to the other, she pushed herself hard, activating her semblance and lighting up the lower branches. She leapt over the branch, one set of claws extended toward the neck of the bird, the other laying steady with the center of the fat branch that it perched upon. The moment her first set bit into its neck, the second set loosed. The sound of hissing and grinding as her claws were loosed may have startled the bird, so she hadn't wanted to take any chances. She fed herself enough line, so that she would swing back harmlessly, and even managed to time it well enough so that she caught the falling bird. She unfortunately wasn't so lucky with it's head, which conked her on the top of her head beak first. She felt a small trickle of blood roll down her forehead and cursed herself for her carelessness. For a brief moment she imagined what her brother and mother would say when she returned from the trial wood. That moment of entertaining bittersweet fantasy was crudely interrupted by a sick dropping in her stomach as she realized there would be no teasing nor beratement to be had for her when she returned home. She clutched the headless bird tight by it's neck as swung herself back up and tried to refocus on her mission.

Her mission, right. She stopped, breathing slowly as she closed her eyes. She listened for anything that might give her contemporary away. It took nearly a minute before her ears honed in on a distant methodical sound of metal impacting wood followed by wood and branches rustling as they in turn impacted the ground. Among the ambiance of the forest, this sound alone was unnatural. She began moving toward it quickly, jumping through the trees with increasingly familiar grace. Before she saw the girl, she found the trail of destruction she had been rending through a particularly dense thicket of thorny bushes and immature saplings. She found herself somewhat bemused, noticing that she had been carving a swath through dense vegetation in a line that ran nearly parallel to an animal trail some twenty feet off. Another of the benefits of traveling in the branches versus on the ground. She caught up to the girl quietly, calling out when she was above her spot in the choking weeds.

"That's a bad idea," she called as she jumped down. She attempted to use one of the branches in front of her to swing down to the ground, but the branch was rotten and her weapon exploded straight through the dead wood. What should have been a graceful dismount instead left her tumbling toward the ground off balance. Her fall was accompanied by a short surprised squeal before she righted herself and managed to put her feet underneath of her just before she landed on the path left behind by the pretty silver haired girl she'd seen briefly on the landing pad.

Her face was red as she slowly raised herself up from the nearly crouched position her sloppy landing had left her in. She awkwardly began reeling in her weapon, waiting for the soft grinding of her weapon to stop before saying"Th-The noise I mean. I could hear it from far off, grimm will too. Th-there's a trail over there," she gestured just behind her,
"Let's get there and then I'd like to ask for your help.

She then realized how she must look, leaping down from the trees holding a dead bird with a thin trickle of blood reaching down to her right eyebrow from where the beak had impacted her. Her face went a little more red as she added "I-If that's okay. I know you just landed and all, and wouldn't want to disrupt any plans you might have, b-but I can try to help you in return somehow..."

The way she trailed off at the end there was anything but confident, but Lily was having trouble maintaining mission focus now that she was face to face with another student who she would likely have to interact with in the future after this. The thought of barking orders didn't sit well with her, as she didn't feel like she was worthy of issueing commands to any of her fellow students, let alone those ranked higher than her in terms of capability.

[Seiya Estelle Sune]

Achieve nothing less than perfection.

The launch had gone by relatively successfully for a girl who was still mostly asleep when she was sent flying; Seiya's technique had been dangerous, naturally, and executed with the sole intention of getting back down to the ground and making forward progress into the forest. Her task by which she would be assessed was the assistance of other students, whose own motives she had not been told of beforehand and would need to figure out in the field. From the sound of it, there were only three groups present into which the participating first-year trainees would be grouped, with the Rose team being the one she fell into. The other two, the Dandelions and Orchids, were essentially the 'targets' the Rose team was looking for out in the forest, as their success during the twenty-four hour period was the only way those like Seiya could be given a passing mark.
It was an idea which didn't quite sit well with her. While it was to be expected that Haven would try and coerce a sense of teamwork and camaraderie out of its students, the young Sune was not at all impressed with the way it was going to be handled. Whatever the objectives of the other two teams, it was clear that a great amount of responsibility was being placed on everybody, with the Roses potentially having much more than the others. Time would tell the aspiring huntress, of course, but there would be no shaking the initial impression and sense of weight her own grouping had presented. Seiya was to be a backbone of the success of others -- who would all probably, desperately need someone like her.
It wasn't teamwork so much as it was charity. You just couldn't force these things.

Her plan was a simple one: she would use the early part of the day to try and scout out the forest to whatever degree was possible, committing key landmarks and details to memory before any potential stress or boredom could interfere; then, with this mental map Seiya would mostly patrol a single core area, and allow other students to come to her instead of wasting time wandering and moving without purpose in the vain hope of finding somebody else. The forest was rather big after all, and did not lend itself to being easily navigated under the constraints of time. Thus, by using her Semblance and picking a direction to travel, the plan would all come together by cutting a clean path ahead -- and behind, to lead back to her landing point if ever necessary -- and settling upon a suitable 'base' for the operation by midday.
Powering forward, both weapons flying ahead in harmony, the aspiring huntress made good on this plan, until a voice called out from somewhere hard to place. It was mostly behind, but kind of above, and moving in an obvious way. It was the voice of a young girl, and -- from the hesitant tone -- one who was quite clearly in way-the-fuck over her head.

Seiya came to stop, and with a slow turn of her head started staring daggers at the other huntress. She simply stood there for a while, looking, scanning up and down the other trainee, before finally holding out both her hands and bringing the Psychoarms screaming back home; the audible hum of the GDCS climbed in volume and in pitch with a spike, before settling back down to a complete quiet as the swords became comfortably inert. Another long glare preceded the shrugging of both shoulders and a small shake of the head, as the taller of the two of them begrudgingly agreed to the terms of the other.
"Fine," she half-groaned, whatever hint of animosity the lone word held being cut through by an all-too-typical tiredness. "Whatever, sure, go, lead the way. I can't refuse."

With two great big mechanical thumps, the telescopic blade of one of the two swords collapsed in on itself down into its short storage configuration, where it quickly found a place in one of the scabbards at Seiya's hip. A faint beeping from came from the bracelet worn underneath the sleeve of her uniform, as an inorganic thought forced itself into her head to assure her that, indeed, the weapon was where she'd put it. It was an annoyance which she rather literally could not function without, as the neural implant and all its associated equipment relied on nothing but communication to send and receive orders; sending thoughts out to her weapons was one thing, but Layla and Elma 'speaking' back was still a deeply unnerving and irritating side effect of her surgery.
"If you want to help me, just tell me your objective; don't try to bullshit me, either, I'm in no mood for it."

--

WC 806/806

[Lily Finnian]

Lily could tell immediately that this girl wasn't too happy with having been intercepted. She also seemed to be resigned to helping Lily. She felt guilty, but needed the help if she had any hope of having a functional camp up and running in the immediate future.

"We'll talk while we walk then." she tried to smile, but it was a strained one. She didn't imagine her first impression had been a very good one, and had heard that those were the most important, which didn't make sense to her like a lot of things regarding other people.

She turned away from the girl, toward where the animal path should be. She found a set of trees in the right direction and pointed her twin weapons at the base of each. She had to arc her shots somewhat, but she could feel the vibration come down the wire when they sank into the distant trees. Feeling that, reeled a little wire in as she shimmied the wires down through the foliage, the six sets or razor wire cutting their way to accommodate. From there, she crossed her arms, and began reeling her weapon in while pushing forward into the brush. This was not fully ideal, as the overgrowth was above her shoulders in places, and had tangled badly, but but cutting the base as she moved and with the mechanical assistance of her weapon she pushed through. When she came out onto the trail, she brought with her a choking mess of clinging vines and thorny brush, and took a moment to clear any plant debris from her hair and clothing. Following that, she took a low stance and gave a firm yank on her blades, collapsing the telescopic tips at the end of each prong. She reeled the prongs back in after feeling them pull free, not wanting to stress the small motor that reels her wire too much at the start of the day. It was built for endurance, but no point in testing the limits of that, especially after her stunt with the weeds.

"R-Right. So, the first thing I need to do is find a suitable location for a campsite. I passed a stream on the way here, so I think that'd be a good place to start.

She glanced around. She had seen one from above, but the seed clusters were harder to make out from below. It took a second to spot the right bark pattern. Light brown wood with thin darker brown splotchy patches in vertical strips. She jogged over to it and picked a few up from the ground below, before holding one up for her to see. "If you find any of these, let grab em. I'm gonna need a lot, but these trees drop a bunch so they're easy to collect in bulk. I-I'm getting ahead of myself though, that's for later. Shall we start off towards that stream?" She said, gesturing in the direction on the path they should be heading along the trail if they were to achieve that goal.

Afterwards, she felt a little bad. It felt wrong to be giving other students commands, she had always been the one deferring to others, most of the main exceptions being when she was on her own with one notable exception in her mind. Being in charge brought with it some sense of panic akin to the one she felt around new people. The two were compounding upon each other, so Lily scanned the trees around her. She could feel her breathing pick up, so she took a few steps down the path.

What if she made a decision that got this girl killed? Who was she to take the life of this total stranger into her hands? She concealed her shaking hands by turning her weapons blade side out and walking slowly. She had planned for this, so why was she feeling so nervous? Why hadn't she expected this guilt to follow? Was she so callous a person that she couldn't understand this was a person and not a puzzle piece to help her win this challenge?

She steadied her breathing. Her eyes flitted from tree to tree, scanning for any signs of grimm. She reminded herself that this was not the place for indecision. Her life was on the line as well as this stranger's. She realized belatedly that this girl might not know who she was. Lily had figured out this girl's name based on her being two students after her, Seiya, but there was no guarantee that she knew who Lily was. She turned back towards Seiya, having composed herself somewhat before saying

"I'm Lily by the way."

She wondered if she was meant to say something else afterwards like 'thanks for the help' or 'it's nice to meet you,' but any extra words dried up in her mouth so she turned away again and began walking once more.

[Seiya Estelle Sune]

'Forced' and 'fake' were the two words which stuck out most vividly in Seiya's mind in the presence of this girl, Lily. There wasn't anything immediately annoying or aggravating about her, to be fair, or about the impression which she gave, but there was no denying the impression all the same. Probably untrained, Seiya could only assume, or barely trained if at all; the set of large matching mechanical claws affixed to Lily's arms were not exactly indicative of a hunter-to-be who had been taught the ways of the martial arts with conventional, well-balanced and well-made weapons -- no, they were much more obviously robust, but almost crude, and lacking the sort of refined dignity which she had become so accustomed to back in Atlas. A huntsman or huntress was best fitted with marvels of modern engineering tailor made to supplement and bolster their skillset, not... well, not anything like claws. Not back home. The Atlesian wondered for a moment, and no longer, just how much her own expectations were to blame for the gut reaction of fiendish curiosity toward the sight.
Really, that sense of 'culture shock' wasn't ever going to wear off -- how could it?

As if to put the cyborg in her place, Lily promptly aimed her weapon up above to the canopy and launched the bladed components of her claws hard and fast on thin wires, digging deep and driving right through a carefully selected branch; as quickly and fiercely as her steel had found its mark, the wires retracted and brought her spoils down with them. Seiya directed her stare up toward the treetops and took a long look where the bundle of branches had once been. Not a clean break, of course, but it was clear that it didn't need to be; the viciousness of the tool of choice was quite clearly the point, and a surprisingly sophisticated ranged function did much to drastically -- though not totally -- improve the silver-haired one's opinion of her fellow student. Far behind tired eyes a brief flicker of mixed wonder and approval flashed, then faded, and a much more typical joylessness rushed to fill its place.
Well, she thought, they're better than completely barbarous, I suppose.

With a quick and almost-awkward explanation, Lily described her intent to prepare a camp early, and the necessary supplies which would make it happen. A particular type of wood available from the trees of the Haven forest was priority number one for this little exercise in base-building, it seemed, and Seiya gave a hushed, affirmative 'hmm' to acknowledge it. It was menial and guaranteed to be boring beyond all belief, but it was also a very straight-forward request for assistance. A simple objective was still an objective after all, and with a bit of luck the assistance could naturally steer any god-forsaken conversation toward the passing criteria of the group with yellow bands; that was the real prize to be sought in all of this, not only for the obvious benefit of information but for the absolutely delicious potential of her intuition that everybody else participating was useless and tasked with unimportant nonsense would prove true.
It wasn't anybody else's fault for being born awful and powerless, of course, but it was always their fault for keeping it that way. Lily, for all the unimpressive tactlessness she had shown, at least had a plan of attack, and it was not all that dissimilar to Seiya's own -- that was a good sign, she mused.

Forced and fake, but maybe just a little bit fearless to make up for it, and with at least a modicum of forethought to sensibly prepare.
A welcome surprise.

"I'm Lily by the way," the feline faunus said after a turn and a quick straightening of the self to regain composure.
"Seiya," she said in return, quietly and quickly, and almost imprecisely, following behind as the other then took charge to lead the way.

Yet again her gaze found itself turning skyward, and with a narrowing of the eyes settled on a tangled cluster in the green, similar to that which Lily held, hanging low and obvious and easily within her range limits. With a rather gentle toss, the still-extended sword was suddenly airborne and humming with energized Dust, and after an almost uncanny jerk twisted in place back to electronic life before stabilizing to a balanced float with its point aimed up; Seiya lined up the target with her index finger and gave a decisive -- and wholly unnecessary -- snap to set the Psychoarm unit soaring and slashing up in the trees. With four great big cuts, the flying weapon carved through the sticks and branches before quickly turning and re-orienting to catch them mid-fall with a skewering thrust. The sword descended back down to an awaiting hand, and was promptly made silent once more.
"You're looking for this shit," Seiya asked, holding the weapon out perpendicular to the two of them to show off her catch for affirmation, "right?"

--

837/1643

[Lily Finnian]

Lily smiled as Seiya offered her own name, and began moving forward. They weren't moving long before Seiya reached out and with a snap set the instrument of death to do it's work. Her eyes went wide with wonder, and she let out a small awed gasp as she watched it vivisect a number of small branches laden with the seed pods she was after. Ever since coming to Mistral, she'd been awed time and again by the impressive technological wonders the civilized world had to offer. This weapon was a fine example of that, and she allowed herself to forget the dangerous forest around her for a few moments as she gleefully watched the weapon do its work.

After the branches were downed, and Seiya had impaled each of them upon the point of her magical sword, Lily was stunned into silence for a moment before nodding excitedly.

"Yes!" she said with enthusiasm her voice was unaccustomed to as her eats flitted back and forth animatedly. She took a moment to release her weapon from it's deployed state. Quickly, both sets of claws began pulling back, until they reached up to her elbow along her forearm. Three thin rods of steel, razor's edge pointed out and hooked claws protecting her upper arms from any blade deflected by the vambrace style weapon now lined her arms. The rounded nubs that locked into place on her upper wrist now hung a few inches past her knuckle, with thin filaments of razor wire rounding the bottom half of the nubs, feeding back down into the track which typically housed the claws themselves.

With her claws safely stowed on her forearms, she unshouldered the survival pack she had stowed. She loosened the top flap, and rooted around in it's contents to produce a thin shiny square of nylon fabric. She unfolded it once revealing it as a lightweight backpack with woven cotton strings acting as both drawstrings to cinch the top of the bag and straps one could sling over their shoulder to carry it about. She pulled the top open, and gave the bag a quick shake open it up a little bit.

"This should be plenty for now," she said plucking seedpods from the branches and giving them each a quick shake as before depositing them into the bag. About one in ten had a solid pulpy core, and were useless to her. Some sort of genetic thing, she wasn't clear on the details but knew to drop only those hollow ones into her small sack. While she worked, she took some time to marvel at the sword which held the branches up for her to see. It had been quite impressive to see it in action, and she couldn't help but wonder if her own fighting methods would be sufficient to counteract a weapon that could hone in on her with such precision.

"This weapon is incredible. How's it work?"

She'd seen a lot of Xanthe's weapons, each of them an impressive work, but there was nothing quite so flashy to Lily's eye among the veritable arsenal that Xanthe had designed and Verne had tested. Her eyes fell onto the cybernetic implants, and wondered if the two were connected somehow. Had it been rude to ask? Was it inconsiderate of her to be prying into the workings of another student's weapon? These considerations caused the animated faunus's face to drop somewhat, as well as her ears.

"Y-You don't have to answer," she added, nervously as she tried to look incredibly interested in the rattling seed pod clusters. She really did have no read on other people, and had a lot of trouble speaking freely. When she got to talking without considering her words, she almost always regretted it afterwards. She tried to work quickly, hoping to free the girl's weapon of any useful material as fast as she could so they could get back to walking again.

[Seiya Estelle Sune]

Curiosity killed the cat. Or, in this case, could be- no; no, no, no -- not an appropriate expression.
Anyway...

It was always going to be a possibility, the aspiring huntress had conceded, that people would ask questions about the implant, or about the swords, or about how she had been accepted into the academy, or about any number of things. Maybe it was just the way people were -- it didn't matter. Lily, obviously impressed by the spectacle of a flying weapon, had asked, quite reasonably, the question after collecting her spoils from off the sword's blade, and just as quickly threw in some non-committal bluster to try and not impose upon her fellow student. Sure, it was kind of admirable, but it was just a little bit spineless all the same. To speak one's mind openly and without fear was, in Seiya's ideal world, the best thing for everybody, but it was so very painfully clear that most people still clung to decency and common courtesy even despite knowing that its presence only served to make the truth more apparent.
Lily had a question, and she wanted an answer. There was nothing wrong with that. But to the young Sune, there was everything wrong with trying to hide it.

"Dust. What else could- never mind, it's just Dust. Lots of it," Seiya finally said in return, releasing her grip on the weapon and allowing it to float between the two of them, as if it would somehow prove a 'point' being made. The girl cleared her throat and straightened up into a much more relaxed posture of arms folded and eyes shut, taking a long and deep breath then continuing:
"'The design specification and operational procedure of all Atlas-designed Psychofield prototype equipment is strictly classified. Personnel found breaching confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements may face termination of employment, court martial, legal action, seizure of assets and capital, imprisonment, extended monetary restitution, and any further disciplinary action as decided by the state council.' I can tell you the obvious, which I have, and nothing more than that; Atlas'd lobotomize me, and have me rot in a cell if I did."

The girl cleared her throat once again, before swatting the sword back out of the sky into a tight grip. That had been sufficient, right? Seiya was satisfied with the answer, insofar as it could be called an answer to begin with. Nothing good would come from violating her contract, after all -- not for her, not for Haven, not for Atlas. No, nothing good at all.
"You said there's Grimm nearby, right? Better get going."

--

WC 436/2079

[Lily Finnian]

Dust? Lily had to admit, she'd not used much dust in her time in the civilized world. Her eyes went wider as she heard this amazing weapon was possible because of dust. As she held the weapon between them, whatever point she may have been trying to make went over Lily's head entirely, as she was already back to admiring the weapon after determining that the question wasn't in fact, too insensitive.

As she stared enamored once again with the amazing wonders the world of man held, her companion began rattling off a string of legalise that the faunus could not comprehend. She looked puzzled, her ears flat and twitching somewhat in shameful ignorance. The few words she did recognize were troubling to say the least, and she decided that Atlas was scary in a way the other kingdoms didn't seem to be.

Before she could even begin to think of any way to begin asking for clarification, Seiya made the incredibly salient point that they were wasting time, and she nodded, chiding herself for her childishness when they had an objective to get done.

"Objective one will be to find a reasonable location for a camp. It should be defensible, in an area with several saplings nearby, and close to running water. Since we're already near a stream, we can start by following it a while. I prefer to avoid camping directly right on water sources if I can avoid it."

You never knew what dangers the water might bring. It was best to stay at arms length.

"Once we find a spot, I'll start arming alarms, and you can either leave once I finish that, or stay long enough for me to build a fire and find something to eat. We'll probably run into at least a few grimm on the way, so let's pick our battles and fight conservatively. We still have a lot of day ahead of us, no need to overextend early on. Most of the work will be easy enough to finish once my alarms are all set. I just hate working in the dark y'know?"

She realized she was talking just a little more than she needed to, so began walking down the path a bit towards the stream. She whispered a small thanks to the animals of the forest for beating a path to water for them, and felt a bit preemptively guilty that she would take a few lives from the forest in order to sustain herself, but that was a peace she had made with herself long ago.

[Jay]

XP Distribution:

Lily Finnian: 28 - 5% (no TWC) = 27
27 x 200% (event bonus) = 54
226 + 54 = 280

Seiya Estelle Sune: 20 x 200% (event bonus) = 40
26 + 40 = 66