etruatcaelum
the violence of human feeling
independent rp
salem - ozma - summer rose - oscar pinefrom RWBY
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[ @jocundcompany | emerald // cinder ]
The knock comes at an inconvenient time; Cinder, in the midst of plating the dinner they’d ordered up from the hotel kitchen, grits her teeth. If she has to skip a meal because Watts isn’t doing his job, she’ll kill him. Salem and her plans be damned.
Hazel glances at her without moving—a pointed look at her arm, his stoic mask fractured by the trace of a sneer that gives away his revulsion. She gives him an envenomed smile, draws her half-cape around her shoulder to hide all but the pale tips of her claws, and jerks her chin at the door.
He crosses the narrow room to answer it. Giant that he is, he blocks the entrance completely; but Cinder can see from the way his posture alters that it isn’t an innocuous visitor, and then he rumbles, “You,” and she knows.
Abandoning the room service cart, she strides over to set a hand against Hazel’s bicep with a warning pulse of heat; he shifts half a step sideways, and there—
Emerald.
More than a year, it’s been, since the last time she saw either of them. Relief digs in like a splinter of glass, shredding the hard little knot of suspicion that had formed when Salem told her what happened. That Mercury panicked, that his eyes had flared and both he and Emerald fled in the ensuing chaos; by the time Cinder awoke from the feverish haze of shock and pain that had consumed her after Ruby’s ambush, they were long gone.
A small part of her had feared they were dead. Everyone lies, even Salem, and Cinder had not been there. How could she take the witch’s word for it?
But—no matter. Cinder smiles faintly, half-lidding her eye as she studies the girl cowering in the hallway.
“Emerald,” she murmurs. And then, with a tap of her forefinger against Hazel’s arm: “Give us a moment.”
Hazel looks down at her, unimpressed. “She helped that boy escape, after what he did.”
“And I will handle it,” Cinder says calmly, “as I see fit.”
His gaze flicks down to her half-cape. That familiar spasm of disgust is less well-hidden this time, but he only says, “Hm. It’s on your head.”
Cinder smirks after him as he shoulders past Emerald; he plods down the corridor and hangs a left into the stairwell. Headed outside to brood in the drizzle of snow melting through the hard-light dome, then. Good.
“It was,” she says slowly, focusing on Emerald again, “audacious of you to return.” Brow arched, she holds open the door and gestures for the girl to enter; her hand, scabrous and black as midnight, slips out from under the cape. “Come in.”
#LEGENDS AND FAIRYTALES ( ic. )#THE CROWNED KNOT OF FIRE ( sc: cinder. )#SO DAWN GOES DOWN TO DAY ( alt. v: rnsm. )#[ <- laughed my head off abt this tag#rnsm defects. nothing gold can stay! ]#jocundcompany#[ also blog canon is#cinder slips in and out of consciousness the whole way back to evernight#where the light hit her left hand it starts to crystallize at the fingertips and that spreads#her arm is like solid white crystal up to her elbow by the time they get there#salem takes one look and cuts it off. immediately. before watts can get a single word out#then disappears into her laboratory with cinder#and doesn’t emerge until the next day#nobody bothers to explain anything to em & merc#(unless tyrian decides to fuck with them)#cinder’s down for the count for several days#& it’s like evening the day after arrival before it occurs to salem that#cinder’s little apprentices have no idea what the fuck is happening#which is when i imagine the eyes incident would happen in rnsmverse#but make of it what you will o7 ]
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starter call! for later today, or inbox bait if you'd prefer :3c
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On Revenants.
Grimm, being eusocial organisms, spend their lives in vast colonies known as hordes. The average grimm horde numbers in the tens of thousands, with territories spanning thousands of miles. For an established horde, the loss of an individual grimm is of little consequence; even several thousand slain grimm do not amount to a severe injury so long as the horde’s leys, the network of stigmergic marks and trails lacing the territory, survive.
It is therefore almost impossible to destroy a grimm horde. Before the advent of bombs and heavy artillery at the dawn of the Great War, it was impossible. Culling the grimm alone is insufficient; the horde territory must be razed.
The nature and inner workings of grimm hordes is completely unknown to modern scientists; in common usage the term ‘horde’ merely denotes a large regional population of grimm. No one, save for the grimm themselves, understands the existential threat mankind have posed to the grimm since the Great War.
A grimm horde is a highly sophisticated superorganism whose fundamental purpose is to know things. One of the things that every horde knows is that if it fragments, if the leys are degraded through the destruction of its territory, it will cease to know.
Nothing is more horrifying to the grimm than the threat of cessation, and a horde unable escape this fate may—at the very end—cling to the last remaining pieces of itself with such desperation to resist being riven apart that it becomes amalgamated: the many binding together into one.
The creatures thus formed are not grimm, although to the uninformed they appear to be so and there is no word for them in any human or faunus language; Salem refers to them as revenants. Before the Great War, they were extremely rare—victims of catastrophic earthquakes or volcanic eruptions—but widespread bombing and trench warfare throughout that conflict decimated hordes caught in the crossfires, birthing hundreds of revenants, mostly in northeast Sanus.
A revenant is the tormented, vengeful ghost of a dead horde, and it knows nothing except incomprehensible loss and rage. Unlike grimm, they are solitary creatures. The social instincts that bond grimm together into complex hordes are corrupted, in a revenant, into a desire to consume grimm, absorb them.
Like grimm, revenants have a physiological need for aura and prey upon humans and faunus to sustain themselves. But in the modern period, most revenants—having been borne of human brutality—are driven by a deep hatred for mankind, a vindictive malice that makes them profligate and sadistic killers. If one had to choose between death by grimm or death by revenant, the grimm, at least, offers the mercy of a quick ending.
Fortunately for humankind, grimm hordes do not often suffer revenants to exist; out of the hundreds born within the decade-long span of the Great War, less than a dozen still live. Most were slain by Salem on behalf of grimm hordes threatened by their predation.
The attempt by a group of wealthy Mistrali businessmen and political aspirants to found a new kingdom east of Mistral’s mountains began with a well-funded (and very well-publicized) extirpation project. Aggressive carpet bombing and teams of specialist huntsmen-exterminators drove the grimm ever further back: first carving out the safe zone for a new trading post called Kuroyuri, then pressing onward to lay the foundations for what was to be the great new city of Oniyuri. Until the tipping point came, and a monster rose out of the darkness late one night, rampaging through the Oniyuri construction site and slaughtering everything in its path as it stormed forth to lay waste to Kuroyuri.
Few survived. The revenant—for that is what the nuckelavee was—would continue to haunt that ill-fated plain for decades, disrupting grimm hordes across the region and massacring scores of independent settlements before it was finally slain by Team RNJR.
Strange folk tales arose among the residents of the plain during that time; the creature came to be known by a number of fearful epithets, among them the Messenger of Death and the Ghost That Eats. Titles such as these are approximate translations of the universal identifying marks grimm hordes use to warn each other of revenants; they entered into the regional vocabulary through Summer Rose, who learnt them from Salem and made occasional trips to the region to monitor the situation on Salem’s behalf.
#MAIDENS AND KINGDOMS ( hc. )#THIS DARK THING THAT SLEEPS IN ME ( hc: salem. )#[ points at the nuckelavee.#what if that was a horror story for grimm too.#the epithets are semi-canonical. btw#from an amity arena card#& DC/RWBY comics 😊 ]
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“I’ll manage,” she says. Not like she wasn’t already limping pitifully before. With a weak nudge to get them moving again, she adds with wan amusement, “Think the broken ribs win this round, huh?”
She’s cold. Everywhere, like it’s snowmelt running in her veins instead of blood. Without Qrow to lean on, she’d probably be down for the count, but as it is, she’ll manage.
They get about four steps—shambling—before her scroll rings, shrill in the weird quiet. Summer swears under her breath again and collapses Sundered Rose to hook the axe at her hip, fumbles for the scroll instead. It’s Tai.
Of course it’s Tai. She takes the call, fairly stabbing the button to put him on speaker, and snaps, “Status.”
“I saw the light–”
“I’m fine,” she snarls. “Headed for the tower. Qrow’s here. How bad is it down there?”
There’s a brief, tense silence, and then Tai says: “We’re getting people loaded onto the bullhead. Raven spotted another big pack headed this way. We’ve gotta go.”
“Fuck.”
“The watchtower,” he says grimly. “Twenty minutes.”
“Twenty,” she affirms, and hangs up, glancing at Qrow. “Fuck. Okay. We’ll have to get to the top, then.”
Qrow's stomach drops, and he has to look away from Summer for the moment of blinding white light, but doesn't close his eyes.
"Yeah, it should." He murmurs, watching ashes settle on the ground where the Grimm had stood. Even now, years into knowing her eyes held power in them, he was still always surprised by it when she used them.
"Do I need to carry you?" He assumes he does, her legs practically gave out under her and he was already all but carrying her, his grip having tightened when she turned her head towards the beast.
Qrow was willing to carry her, there was very little he wouldn't do for Summer.
#LEGENDS AND FAIRYTALES ( ic. )#THE WOMAN IS PERFECTED ( ic: summer. )#A DUET OF SHADE AND LIGHT ( v: beacon. )#qrowings
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cinder - [SELF ANALYSIS] How intelligent does your muse BELIEVE they are, versus how do they actually stack up next to others? What are the personal strengths and weaknesses of their minds and outlooks, compared to those of the people around them?
The fundament of Cinder’s self-perception is her belief that she is fated to suffer, that being subjugated and brutally punished for fighting back is her cosmic purpose; her outward arrogance is equal parts defensive posture and performance meant to conceal every part of herself that she considers to be weak or vulnerable. She careens wildly between over- and underestimating her own capability, and the less confident she feels in a particular area, the greater these pendulum swings become.
Intelligence is a sore point for her. As a child, she received only the most rudimentary education: she learned to read and write and do basic math at the orphanage, although not very well, and she gained a smattering of cultural and political knowledge during her time at the Glass Unicorn by sneaking newspapers the hotel’s guests threw away. But Salem taught her nearly everything she knows, and Cinder is acutely aware of this fact. She’s never escaped those first sixteen years of feeling ignorant.
On the other hand, she knows that she’s clever: given an actual teacher, Cinder is very quick on the uptake. She has an excellent memory, and she’s good at forming connections between new information and things she already knows. In particular, she’s a cunning strategist—though her tactics suffer badly whenever she lets impatience or anger get the better of her—and she has a keen social instinct; she’s good at figuring out where someone will break or fold if she applies pressure or provides a suitable lure, although genuine compassion flummoxes her.
She can turn on a dime from feeling like the smartest person in the room to feeling like the stupidest fool in the world.
There is no middle ground.
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Thought, learning and intellect headcanon asks for muses
[MENTAL CHATTER] Does your character have an ongoing inner monologue, or do they more frequently think wordlessly/in abstract?
[ENTANGLED] Does your muse experience synaesthesia? (eg. tasting sounds, or seeing colours in music) If yes, does this have any effect on their creativity or understanding of certain senses?
[ALOUD] Does your character subvocalise (sound out words in their head) when reading silently to themselves, or no? When reading fiction, do they “hear” individual voices for each speaking character?
[WPM] How quickly can your character type, read or write?
[MOTHER TONGUE] For bilingual muses: does your character think in one particular language more than another? Are there certain topics or themes that they may be more likely to switch to another?
[FOCUS] How well can your muse focus on their own thinking or study in the presence of distracting background stimuli (loud environments, background chatter, visual clutter…)
[OFF TRACK] Is your muse prone to letting their mind wander? To their detriment?
[INTEREST] Does your muse find it hard to learn about or remember details of subjects that don’t captivate their personal interest? Even if they might be useful or advantageous to know?
[AHAH!] Is your muse good at recognising patterns and putting information together to recognise correlations or solutions quickly? Or do they need others to spell things out to them?
[SEEING RED] How easily is your muse’s judgement or perception swayed by their emotions and state of mind? Are they most always cool and level-headed, or are they prone to rashness or switching stances quickly?
[JUMP THE GUN] What biases does your muse hold that impact how they perceive the world or choose to take in new information? Do their personal blindspots and preconceptions lead them to errors in judgement?
[RECALIBRATE] How frequently does your muse evaluate their own ways of thinking? Have they little self-insight/feel set in their minds for better or worse, or are they constantly questioning their own outlook? To the point of self-doubt, even?
[SPLIT SECOND] How decisive is your muse? How confident do they need to feel about the outcome of their actions, or how much pre-thinking must they do before they feel they can act? Do they trust in their own decisions?
[FOREIGN] How does your muse fare when presented with ideas, concepts or experiences that feel far outside their usual norm? How hostile, sceptical or inquisitive might they be when encountering new viewpoints?
[STUDENT] Does your character enjoy learning for learning’s sake, or do they only seek out knowledge when they specifically need to?
[NOTES] How does your muse track their ideas and thoughts, or things they need to remember? Do they keep written or voice notes, or do they just think/hope that they’ll be able to recall what they need later?
[SELF ANALYSIS] How intelligent does your muse BELIEVE they are, versus how do they actually stack up next to others? What are the personal strengths and weaknesses of their minds and outlooks, compared to those of the people around them?
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Send my character messages that you think will strike a nerve.
Whether the reaction be anger or sadness.
(meme originally made by avengingson, who has since deactivated)
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finally updated the timeline to reflect the 9.11 animatic :)
(see also: this post, which i'm sticking to.)
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Summer nods, slowly, the motion more an excuse to gather her thoughts before she begins; and then sighs out, “It’s going to sound pretty wild. Bear with me.”
In a way, she can’t begrudge Ozpin his fairytales. Didn’t they make his half-truths easier to swallow? Easier to comprehend?
“You know the stories about the Brothers?” she asks. “Two dragons who created the world and mankind and fought about it and then left us alone to figure it out ourselves. There’s a kernel of truth to that. Long ago, the Gods of Light and Darkness did exist, and they made the world that came before this one. And then they decided it wasn’t good enough, so they burned it all down.”
Pretty wild. That’s putting it lightly.
“Remnant is what survived. People—faunus and humans both—rose up out of the ashes again. The God of Light didn’t like that, so he prepared four relics, and chose a champion, and gave us an ultimatum. When those four relics are brought together, a door will open and the Brothers will return to judge whether mankind has redeemed itself, and if we are unchanged—if even one of us refuses to bow—then the gods will destroy us all.”
She grimaces. “The person you know as Ozpin is that champion. He reincarnates. Each of the huntsmen academies guards one of the four relics, and he has been trying to fulfill his task for a very long time. In… the short term, Salem’s trying to get the relics away from him. If they can be destroyed, that’s what we’ll do. Make it impossible to ever summon the gods.” A beat; a wan smile. “Sounds crazy, like I said. But that’s the synopsis.”
Cuts and bruises were all she got from Oz, night terrors and sore throats. Her family is safe, with Xiong gone, so that's something, but it brings Roxanne no joy. What now? Continue in Beacon and have Ozpin set her up for more failure?
Roxanne sits up straight, swings her legs over the edge of the bed until she's eye to eye with Summer.
Roxanne's no pawn, she'll always choose her own path. Broken? Not her.
With the way the moonlight floods in from the side, one half of Roxanne's face is lit up, her skin almost translucent in the pale light. The other cloaked in shadow, with only the amber glow of her eye visible.
She's no pawn. She's the wolf of downtown. She chooses her own path, always.
"Tell me."
#LEGENDS AND FAIRYTALES ( ic. )#THE WOMAN IS PERFECTED ( ic: summer. )#A DUET OF SHADE AND LIGHT ( v: beacon. )#valeanwerewolf#[ plot of rwby is so fucking whack. honestly.#also wrt cinder i tend to assume she does Know#but if she doesn’t i also can’t#imagine her hearing this and NOT being like#i think we should kill the gods. brfghk ]
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Sad Sentences, Vol. 7
(Sad sentences from various sources. Adjust phrasing where needed)
"I don't love you, so just accept it and move on with your life instead of making everyone miserable!"
"Battle scars are not always of the body."
"I don't think you're looking for somebody to prove you right. I think you're looking for somebody to prove you wrong - to give you hope."
"We're better off alone. We suffer alone. We die alone."
"All my life, I looked out and dreamed of being somewhere else. Now I realise how much I'll miss this view."
"I'm not as strong as you. I never was."
"You act like everybody's given up on you, but you've just given up on yourself."
"I love you. I wish I didn't, but I can't help it."
"Why is it so hard to do the right thing?"
"I want to be a good person, like you are."
"Why are you trying so hard to get rid of me?"
"Don't say that! You don't have to be alone!"
"Do you ever wish there was another way?"
"Why would you say something like that?"
"I'm obviously not okay."
"Haven't you ever done something in a relationship you wish you could take back?"
"Do you have any idea how painful it is to love you?"
"I know you're worried about me, and I also know that that kind of unselfishness doesn't come naturally to you, but I don't want your help."
"If everybody lies, then trust is not only unfounded and pointless, it's fictional."
"I like being alone - at least, I convince myself that I'm better off that way."
"Why do you value your failures more than your successes?"
"Why do you care if I'm happy?"
"You can't help me. No one can."
"Why don't you trust me anymore?"
"I've crossed a line, and I’m having trouble getting back to the other side."
"We're all going to die eventually."
"Every once in a while, I like to hear the voice of someone who's on my side."
"You don't need to depend on people who are going to let you down!"
"Does it ever get any different for people like us?"
"Don't deflect. You always deflect."
"So you have no expectation that any relationship you enter into will last?"
"I love you, I really do. It's just, somehow, it's hard for me to show that when you're here."
"People don't get what they deserve, they just get what they get. There's nothing any of us can do about it."
"I'm not a good man. Not anymore."
"They all hate me. You don't hate me, do you?"
"So many people think that when you're exposed to death and suffering every day, you become immune. It's quite the opposite."
"There's nothing worse than loving someone who's never going to stop disappointing you."
"This city makes people crazy."
"Any relationship that doesn't end in a breakup ends in death. Everything falls apart in the end."
"You must hate me..."
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Basically treason. Well, she’s not wrong, though Salem owes no allegiance to any Council and the question of Summer’s citizenship is complicated by the legal declaration of her death a few years ago; and Salem prefers to call it revolution, in any case.
Summer turns her head away while Roxanne laughs, and then cries, not wanting to intrude more than she already has. Only when the girl speaks does she look again, face composed and neutral. Pity aches in her chest, but she doubts Roxanne would appreciate seeing that in her expression.
“Not an assassination, no,” she says softly. “We’d rather keep him where we can see him. Besides, it’s bigger than just one man.”
Her hands fold in her lap. She tilts her head, considering her next words with care; very aware of crowding up against the boundary of what she can say without sounding crazy. Better, maybe, to answer the question put to her first.
Bluntly, Summer says, “Plan’s complicated and pretty long. Our end is revolution. I came to you because Oz,” a pause, “breaks people, and we’re trying to put a stop to that, and Salem believes in finding common cause where she can. I’m… opening a door. Whether you walk through it is up to you. We won’t trouble you further if you’re not interested.”
Another pause.
“But if you are, I can tell you the story.”
"Until he's stopped. What you suggest is basically treason."
Roxxie chortles. This feels like a fever dream, like some figment her brain made up to keep her from going insane. Maybe she's still in the warehouse, who knows? Maybe this is just the death throes, the last of her wits scraping up whatever's left of her frontal cortex to make her final moments more bearable.
"What's your plan? Wait on a roof, scout out an opportunity to assassinate him and get beaten half to death?"
Laughter bubbles up from deep within her stomach, her eyes a bright, glowing amber as mania overtakes her. Her cackles fill the room, likely echo in the halls outside, but Roxxie cannot stop them. She clutches her head, this was the funniest thing she's heard in who knows how long.
The laughter continues on, until it turns to sobs, turns to shrieks. Until her fingers dig into her skull hard enough to draw blood had she not lost her claws during the raid. Her arms were electric, static buzzing through her muscles that would not relax under any circumstance.
Just a pawn, just a piece on the board, ready to be sacrificed for the sake of a better move. That's all she amounts to, apparently.
It takes her a while to calm down, bouts of manic laughter and crying interspersed with one another.
"Too many kids died, huh? Good thing, I'm alive then."
Her eyes are bloodshot when she finally turns back to Summer, Werewolf glowing bright in the golden shimmer of her irises.
"What's your plan? Why did you come to me for this?"
#LEGENDS AND FAIRYTALES ( ic. )#THE WOMAN IS PERFECTED ( ic: summer. )#A DUET OF SHADE AND LIGHT ( v: beacon. )#valeanwerewolf
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A tight smile traverses her face at that. Leash isn’t the word Summer would have used, but Oz always was good at pulling strings.
“I know how Ozpin operates,” she says, shoulders lifting in a casual shrug, and tips her head to let her eyes catch the moonlight; a glint of pure white. “Y’ever hear stories of what a person born with silver eyes can do? The legends say we’re destined to lead the life of a warrior, that we’re meant for fighting grimm. First thing that came outta his mouth when he met me was ‘you have silver eyes.’ He bent a lot of rules for me and my team, back in the day.”
Different circumstances, but not too different. Summer doesn’t know and doesn’t much care to speculate when and why Ozpin had taken an interest in this kid; maybe he’d seen a useful tool to throw at the Xiongs, maybe his intentions were nicer than that—does it matter? He’s still landed Roxanne here.
Her lips purse. “One of the teachers at Shade is an old friend of mine, old enough to not be too happy about what Ozpin did to me. Teachers gossip, even when they won’t talk to the press.” Summer bounces her eyebrows. “Far as why it matters to me: I’ve seen too many kids die fighting his battles. He’s not gonna stop until he’s stopped.”
Roxanne's eyes fall as her fingers dig into the thick duvet Tereza had brought her. Her first instinct is to dispute it, she had forced him into sharing his intel. She had him by the throat with the threat of leaking her nighttime activities to the press and smear his school's squeaky clean image with bad publicity.
But the doubts had crept in early into her recovery. If Ozpin had wanted to keep her from going, all he had to do was suspend her and have Vale police take her into custody while he dealt with the fallout of her bloodhunt. Instead he had handed her a seemingly golden opportunity that landed her, well.. here.
"I started on my own, a year before Beacon. Smashing faces, taking names, that kinda stuff. So, no, not exactly true, but—"
She trails off. But what? The realization starts to dawn that it wasn't exactly normal to admit a no-name faunus with no prior education to Beacon Academy. She didn't even have any recommendations, no famous parents, didn't have to fake transcripts to cheat her way in. He just admitted her, just like that. Bile rises up in her throat, but she swallows it back down. The Wolf of Downtown, nothing more than a pawn in some human's political game. Pathetic.
"Well," she starts, "maybe he did. Fuck if I know. What's it to you? How do you even know about it? Ozpin's been keeping us on a leash about the incident, staff included."
#LEGENDS AND FAIRYTALES ( ic. )#THE WOMAN IS PERFECTED ( ic: summer. )#A DUET OF SHADE AND LIGHT ( v: beacon. )#valeanwerewolf
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Her eyes close. For a long moment she says nothing, grappling against the urge to just snarl again that she doesn’t tell lies, that she has never mounted an attack against Ozpin’s academies—not yet—nor ever killed a maiden who did not strike against herself first.
But why, indeed, should he believe her?
The grimm. The witch. The monster behind every fairytale. It had been a mark of Summer’s desperation that she believed, and even then her credulity had been a frail thing at first, fragile as gossamer.
“I have nothing but my word,” Salem sighs. “I keep my distance. Every time I have… tried… to be among people, Ozma has gone to great lengths to rid the world of me and mine. I cannot… prevent Ozpin from training children to fight and die for his cause. Most grimm in this world do not answer to me, and I would not command them to starve for mankind’s sake even if I could. I would not ask humans to die for the grimm, either.”
A beat. Then, rather flatly: “I have not been dignifying Ozpin’s war with my participation. Is that not reason enough?”
"You..." His voice wavers and breaks away as he watches her.
Part of him can see Summer in her, so tired and broken, just wanting to go home to the girls and stop fighting, stop going on missions, but constantly being told by him and Ozpin that they have to continue, that her eyes are too strong for her to stop fighting.
He clears his throat, having to look away from her. She looks so weak and frail in front of him now, speaking about a dead relationship, about her past with Ozpin, that it makes him pity her.
"You haven't given me a reason to trust you. You work with those creatures, you've attacked innocents, schools with children, killed people who are in the dark about all of this. Killed Maidens who are still learning about themselves, about their powers. Give me... Give me a reason to trust you."
#LEGENDS AND FAIRYTALES ( ic. )#THE MOON ALSO IS MERCILESS ( ic: salem. )#A DUET OF SHADE AND LIGHT ( v: beacon. )#qrowings
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She feels better—more in balance—the minute they’re moving. Hands slipped into the pockets of her skirt, Summer rocks off the bench and sets out at a clip just a bit too fast to be called a casual stroll.
“From what I hear,” she says, very dryly, “running away from ghosts doesn’t ever work too well. But the exercise might tire ’em out. Or… something.”
What does she know, she’s not an exorcist.
Fastest way out of the academy would be jumping over the rail of the little balcony they’d sequestered, but the Headmaster’s not keen on people doing that unless it’s an emergency. Probably because the first thing anyone thinks when they see people galloping down the sloped walls is where’s the war?
Reluctantly, she opts for the door. To be diplomatic.
“Worst case scenario,” she adds dryly, “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. Haunting people might be fun. You knock some stuff off the shelves, I walk through some doors…”
Qrow lets her pull away when she's ready, although truthfully, he could have sat there with her all night, if she wanted. Even if that would have been entirely uncomfortable for both of them.
He can't help the chuckle that escapes him as she starts to actual babble at him. The great Summer Rose, babbling nervously. Who would have ever thought?
"Sounds like a plan, Sum." He stands, stretching with a low groan. He's getting too old for this shit. Hopefully, everything will be over soon and he can retire.
Shit, what's he gonna do if he retires? It's not like he has hobbies.
"Maybe, for once in our lives, we can out run our ghosts. Worth a shot, anyway."
#LEGENDS AND FAIRYTALES ( ic. )#THE WOMAN IS PERFECTED ( ic: summer. )#I DO NOT FEAR IT: I HAVE BEEN THERE ( v: dawn. )#scareqrowbranwen
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“Chat, I said.” Summer hooks one leg over the other, fingers laced together around her knee, and scrutinizes Roxanne for a moment. Hard to miss that quiet spark of defiance, dim but not quite extinguished. “Not a euphemism.”
Although it was, she can admit, not an unreasonable assumption. Considering. Who else would break in here to wake the poor kid up at this hour but someone with enough skin in the game to carve out the Xiong Family’s pound of flesh? She grimaces. Cards her fingers through her hair.
Beginning’s probably the best place to start.
“No,” she says slowly, “I don’t much care what you did to the Xiongs and this city’s better for having ’em taken down. I’m, uh—here on behalf of someone else.”
And how much of that she gets into will depend a lot on whether Roxanne even cares to know. No sense getting into the details until she can be sure the kid won’t become a liability.
“Her name won’t mean anything to you, but it’s Salem.” Summer pauses, jiggling her foot in thought. “She has a… a problem with the way Ozpin runs that school of his. With all the huntsmen academies, actually, but Beacon’s the worst.”
Not that Summer’s biased, or anything.
“Turning a blind eye to things he shouldn’t,” she says. Pointedly: “Even when it puts his students in danger. Treating kids like cannon fodder, pawns to move on a chessboard. Way I hear it, he sent you after Hei Xiong. Alone. That true?”
A mysterious visitor in the middle of the night? Under normal circumstances, Roxxie would have jumped the woman already. Put her hands around that delicate neck and squeeze til the veins bulge and her face turns blue.
Instead she just stared.
Xiong was dead, as were most of his goons, so who was left? His boy? Hardly the authority that his father was, but given how his entire family had kicked it because of her, she couldn't begrudge him whatever desire for revenge he had. It's not like it mattered anymore.
Well, that was only half-true. Even if her life didn't matter any more, her family's did, Tereza's did. That should have been enough to light Werewolf ablaze for Roxxie to quickly deal with the intruder. Nothing came, no rage, no hate, no electricity buzzing through her limbs so she could tear meat from bone.
Roxxie chuckles. Bitter, mean-spirited, directed at herself.
Apparently all it took to bring the Wolf of Downtown Vale to heel was a broken jaw and a few sleepless weeks.
The doctors told her she was "lucky", because the sleep deprivation also kept her aura from recovering, which would have made a mess of her jaw had it been allowed to heal without professional care.
Her visitor didn't exactly seem like she'd be the type to enjoy subjecting others to electroshocks, but you never knew. Sometimes the meanest types were the ones who looked least like it.
Roxxie's eyes bore into Summer's, a faint spark of the golden rage she had once carried and as she tilts her head to the side, she asks:
"Come to finish me off?"
#LEGENDS AND FAIRYTALES ( ic. )#THE WOMAN IS PERFECTED ( ic: summer. )#A DUET OF SHADE AND LIGHT ( v: beacon. )#valeanwerewolf
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mostly i just want a sort of reprise of:
salem, with absolute confidence that ozma has some sort of master plan too clever for her to unravel: what are you planning? 🤔
ozpin, backed into a corner by the kids with tears streaming down oscar’s face: i don’t have a plan
except it’s:
salem, with absolute confidence in mankind’s capability to overcome even the most dire circumstances: well, of course they’ll mount a swift counteroffensive.
the kids, who have not slept more than a couple hours at a stretch since atlas fell, literally sprinting from one explosive crisis to the next: OUR PLAN IS “TRY NOT TO DIE TODAY”
you know how you can bamboozle skilled chess players by moving pieces at random tricking them into perceiving and trying to counter a strategy only to have their well-ordered defenses fail against pure chaos? yeah.
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Of course they’ll make it. Or they’ll die trying, but Summer’s not too keen on that idea, which leaves making it to the tower as the only choice. Easy-peasy!
(That thought snags in the back of her mind, spinning a loop around the detached part of herself that pays attention to this sort of thing, and Summer imagines herself crossing out easy-peasy with a thin red line. Pain and adrenaline makes her feel invincible, if she lets it, if she doesn’t watch herself.)
Her breath catches in her throat when she spots the grimm Qrow’s worrying about—and the body.
Dead. It’s too dark to see anything in detail but there isn’t enough left for it to be anything but a dead body, and Summer screws her eyes shut with a low hiss of pain at the ice-cold needle of light jabbing her retinas at the sight.
Fuck!
She hears the snarl, the scrape of claws, the thundering footsteps: when she lifts her head in that direction and opens her eyes, all she sees is pure, lifeless white.
It’s over in an instant. Summer swears under her breath, clutching her head as her legs turn to jelly; the glare always leaves her feeling hollowed out and freezing cold. But there’s nothing left but ashes.
“Fuck. W-well–” A cough, followed by a flinch. She croaks, “That should keep the others off us, rest of the way.”
"We'll reach the tower." Qrow mutters, trying to support her more to move them faster. He wishes he knew where his sister was. He had been against splitting up in any way, but was wishing Raven had gone with Summer right now, her portals would've been handy at preventing Summer from getting injured.
He eyes the back of a medium sized beowolf that has it's back to them quite far down a road as they begin to cross it, it's feasting on something and he can only hope it isn't one of his teammates.
Qrow quietly tells Summer not to make any noise as the make slow progress towards the tower, praying to whatever God is listening to them that it won't turn, it won't hear them and they'll pass it safely.
"Almost there... Less than 50 yards." He murmurs.
#LEGENDS AND FAIRYTALES ( ic. )#THE WOMAN IS PERFECTED ( ic: summer. )#A DUET OF SHADE AND LIGHT ( v: beacon. )#qrowings
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