ATTENTION
So at one point I realized that I'm writing about an ongoing series.
Yeah, it's a bit of a late point, but moving on:
That means I probably will deviate from the story at one point.
It hopefully will not be a huge deviation with too many differences, but deviations will be made. I vow that it won't happen until I establish all four characters, but that's really all I can promise. Probably some time during the Ball thing that Cinder's talking about.
So far we have a team of troublemakers. I don't know what I mean when I wrote that. Not a lot of authors know what they were writing about anything, though, so yeah.
I'm a bad person.
"Pulvis et umbra sumus. (We are but dust and shadow.)"
-Horace, The Odes of Horace
Some time earlier
Blake Belladona was staring at the screen of her computer.
Her fingers moved with furious grace, every single movement of the sinews and muscles which controls the direction of where her fingertips are going being executed with purposeful fury. Her eyes are blazing – although a part of her mind not engrossed in the fury of writing thought that it probably was just her staring at the computer with too much fury. This was the face of a determined writer. Every single movement had meaning to her.
She is going to write. She is going to create a masterpiece.
She stopped for a moment, stared at the words that she had typed on the screen, and screamed.
The wailing noise that came out of her throat was fit to make a banshee jealous, except that it wasn't completely horrible and doesn't make people deaf when they heard it. It was pure frustration, anger, and hatred mixed into one wail. It made a horrible screeching sound and petered off into the silent, empty room. Then she smashed her head into the laptop and tried to cry.
There were no tears, and her eyes did not became puffy or red. They didn't even mist up. It was just a cry of despair. She was horrible. Absolutely horrible. This isn't literature, this is-
"Blake!"
She was extremely glad that she didn't eat had anything to eat for dinner, because she probably would have shat her pants right there and then. It was Ruby's voice.
She's coming in.
She's going to see.
The miniscule, almost non-existent part of her brain that can still think rationally also thought: She has super speed.
The hinges very nearly broke, and that small part of her brain thought: "We're probably going to have to try and explain the door-knob shaped hole in the wall." And then a red blur streaked in, skidding on the carpet, in a stance that suggests an immediate display of excess sharpness and brutality. Her legs were bent and her center mass was lowered, like a spring that was ready to uncoil and release all of her energy-
What Ruby Rose saw, however, was nothing out of the ordinary. Their room appears to be fine. Their bunk beds were sagging on their unstable books, as it has been for the last few days, the corner of the rooms still smell suspiciously of rainwater, the windows closed and bolted. Clothes, such as her other pair of black shirt and pleated red skirt are strewn all over in the general area of her own bunk bed, and from what she can see, the same could be said for Blake's clothes in general, despite her general over-protectiveness of them. Well, for good reasons, since she is a faunus. It's habitual.
She uncoiled herself from her combat stance. "Blake? What's the matter?"
She couldn't really see a reason to be screaming like that. There is absolutely nothing out of the ordinary.
Give or take one faunus curled up on the computer screen protectively like a cat, but having just recently learned that her friend is one, she supposed that it might be what faunus do. Fauni. Faunuses. Things.
There were two sets of footsteps behind her, and Yang and Weiss showed up. They, too, had their weapons drawn.
"It's nothing!" wailed Blake. "Go away!"
Weiss stepped inside, sheathing Myrtlenaster as she did so. She wasn't wearing her regular dress, but neither were anyone else. It was almost time for evening assembly, so they had to show up in their school uniforms. Except for Blake, because she said she wasn't done with a thing.
"What have you been doing, Blake?" asked Weiss. She was cross, but then she was usually cross, and Blake got used to that. "We've been waiting forever for you."
"Barely 5 minutes, actua-" mutters Blake.
"Forever, I tell you. And then you scream for no reason and got us all worried. What made you scream, anyways?"
"Well, the exterminator promised that there would be a lot less rats in the room," said Yang. "Then again, it wouldn't be a problem with you. You're a cat-faun, you don't get scared of rats. So why are you curling up on the computer like that?"
Blake gulped. They noticed. Dammit! They're not normally this sharp!
"Is it the computer?" said Ruby. Then her eyes narrowed. "Is some freak harassing you over the internet?"
Yang and Weiss's eyes both narrowed, as well. It is worth mentioning that at this point their anger is directed at somewhere else other than her. For Blake however, the sign of their eyes narrowing is the sign of her demise. It speaks to the half-animal in her genes. When a predator spots its prey, its eyes narrows, her genes scream.
Ruby strode quickly over to the computer screen that Blake was currently covering with her body. "It's nothing! I'll- I'll be there in a moment! It's just this really engaging friend that I haven't talked to in a long while, okay?"
Yang tilted her head. "So then what's with the scream?"
fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck
"It's. Uh." Stammered Blake. "Excitement!"
Yang, Ruby and Weiss all stopped as one.
"Excitement," said Weiss, slowly. She stared at her with critical silver eyes.
"You're Blake," she continued, walking slowly, but more cautiously now, each stride composed and graceful, just like a lion before it closes in for the kill. In her case, it's composed and graceful because she's a fencer, but the analogy connected in Blake's mind anyways. "You don't get excited. You just usually consider things quietly before replying with a line or two."
"I-I have a life too! There's just some things I reserve the right to get excited about, okay?"
"She did get awfully excited about that one book," pointed out Yang.
"Yeah, and she wouldn't stop yapping about how incredible three-hundred and eighty shades of purple was, and how 'hot' it is, and that we should read it," retorted Weiss. "This isn't Blake. It must be an impostor!"
Blake let out a breath that she didn't realize she was holding in. Let her teammates go on with their strange speculations. It's fine, really. And by the looks of it, Ruby and Yang must both be thinking similar thoughts.
It'll be over soon, thought Blake.
"Um, Weiss-"started Ruby.
"The scream must have been from the real Blake," White continued.
"But I'm the real Blake. There can be no one but me."
"Then explain yourself standing right here."
"That's because I'm the real one."
"There are signs that you're not."
"Such as?"
"Well, the fact that you're talking at all is a starting indication."
"I'm defending myself!" spluttered Blake.
"You're talking in non-monotone."
"I'm flustered and annoyed! Go away!"
Blake's heartbeat began to subside the more ludicrous the accusations got. She'll just have to prove it was really her, which is easy enough, and then they can go to the evening assembly, and then she'll just have to rush back to the room and delete the paragraph forever from existence.
God bless.
"And the secret 'friend' that she was talking to must be the guy in the white tuxedo that Ruby fought!" she finished elegantly. "It must have been our locations, or our identity, or whatever, but the point is, we demand to see that message now!" Weiss triumphantly demanded.
SONOFABITCH THEY'RE GONNA LOOK
And even through her panicked brain, she can still see the sly wink that Weiss sent her way after flourishing her hands dramatically at her.
It was obvious that no one really believed the lies that Weiss had said. But teenage girls are teenage girls. They act in a certain way, and have certain interests, and what unites all teenage girls together is that when they have that certain interest there are likely no depths to which they wouldn't sink to. And it just so happened that she was in the same team as some of the most curious and investigative children of Beacon.
Ruby and Yang went from zero interest to becoming Weiss's wingmen (women). They didn't really care, they just really wanted to see what Blake was up to. She turned the tides on Blake so easily. Damn you, Weiss, whimpered Blake internally. Damn you forever.
"Well, we couldn't have any secrets of ours exposed to that madman," said Yang. 'That' mischievous glint is in her eyes again. Internally, Blake whimpered.
But not because of Yang.
Because Ruby, who was normally socially more dense than a bag of iridium wrapped in lead and soaked in molten gold, is picking up on her team's plan. She could see it. There's that glint in her eyes, as well. It so effortlessly became 3 vs 1. She's doomed, forever.
But at least she could delete the atrocity her fingers have given birth to before they ca-
Yang picked her up by the scruff of her neck the very second she turned and rushed for the keyboard. It was over for Blake.
"Let's see what our little spy's been working on, then," grinned Ruby, a touch maliciously for someone normally so sweet.
It's true, isn't it, thought Blake. Friends treat you that much worse than enemies. At least this man in the Tuxedo would kill you first before viewing the file. They're gonna let me live. The shame.
Blake made one last spirited attempt in order to break Yang's hold on her. But right as she entertained that notion, Yang simply hung her by the coat-hanger and left her there to paw desperately at the air. It occurred to Blake later that she could probably just have done smarter things than ineffectively claw the air, such as jumping off the hanger and outright smashing the CPU. It would've been worth it. But humans – and to a certain extent, fauni – would be blinded by their emotions to such an extent that they could do nothing but just claw ineffectively in despair.
She kept on screaming, but it was strangled this time because her collar was digging at her throat. So she sobbed instead, covering her face with her hands. It's over. Her cheeks are burning in shame, and the corners of her eyes wet themselves.
In the meantime, Weiss stared at the open Macrosoft Sentences on the laptop.
"oh no that guy iz scury" said one guy
"don wory he is slo he cannot-"
As Max stuck his slender pocketknife into the guy's neck,
he looked into the other guy's eyes and he uttered:
"gtg fast"
She tilted her head.
"Y'know," she said, after a moment's silent, after Yang and Ruby was able to read the short story that Blake wrote.
"I've actually seen worse," said Yang, before Weiss could finish.
The wailing stopped. "What?" said Blake, puzzled.
"Oh, there's this one guy back in high-school, smitten with me, only good at writing stuff, so he kept sending these obviously fictional accounts of him fighting overly glorified creatures of Grimm, or whatnot. It was all very boring."
"At least this one makes you slightly curious," said Weiss. "Of why you'd be intentionally using bad grammar and spelling."
"It's-" whimpered Blake. "It's a storyboard, I'm not done!"
"Well, that explains it, then," said Ruby cheerfully. "It's alright, Blake. Sometimes we just go through hard times, and then what comes out of our brains becomes really weird."
"We'll help you, if you want," chimes in Weiss.
"You can't help trash," moaned Blake. She's still hanging slightly uncomfortably from the coat-hanger, too mortified to even try to lower herself down from there.
"You're not trash!" said Weiss vehemently. "You're trying, so that puts you just above trash! You have a chance to be above it, Blake!"
She shot Weiss a withering glance.
"Okay, fine, a little bit more above trash?"
The withering glance continued.
"I'd put you on compost level, even. It's still useful to the environment."
"Weiss, st-"
The bell gonged.
The sun moved ever so-slightly lower in the sky, and it became four o'clock.
Their eyes met each other.
They're late again.
No more words were exchanged. They rushed out, in uniform, into an empty hallway with no students but themselves, leaving the room and its grandfather clock with nothing but silence.
But secretly, Blake smiled. Thank god she got out of that alive. Now to find a way to burn down that computer...
Tick, tock…
Tick, tock…
And just like that, time had stopped, and everything in the world turned gray and stopped moving.
Alex stared at the video. It didn't move. For that matter, he couldn't have fast-forwarded it, because when time stops, everything in the world stops, including his body as well as the video. He was stuck looking forwards at the exact angle his eyeballs were at before time stopped.
The video, which used to be colorful, now became entirely dappled in grey, although it is still more than possible to make out the figures in it. There were two girls in it, and one was suspended in mid-air, lashing out at the ground with what appears to be a roll of sausage. The other girl was also suspended in mid-air, having just jumped to dodge the lethal sausage and preparing a counter of her own using her pair of watermelons, albeit not the ones already attached to her body.
He stared at it as hard as he could. Time was stopped. He has all the time in the world. Paying attention to every little detail, his eyes absorbing every movement, every movement that was made, and every movement that the combatants on-screen is about to do…
And just as suddenly, the world moved again, the video played again, and his body could move again. And the blinding, painful headache returns.
"Ah! Damn!" he shouted as he clutched his head.
Time didn't really stop, of course. He just sped up his thought processes in order to make it look as if he stopped time for himself. How else could he have gone through so many videos and files in seconds, finding the weakness of every single young prospecting hunter or huntress in Beacon?
It's just painful. Very, very painful. Speeding up his thoughts to nearly light speed will burn out your nerve ends. It isn't as strenuous as it might sound at first, because the damage is multiplicative – do it once, twice, even ten times, and all that he'll get is a dull throb. At fifty, he'll start getting blinding headaches and flashes of light that bounce behind his eyes.
He just used it about a hundred times. He wanted to throw up and be part of the soil.
"Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. Fuck."
Despite being a relatively polite if debauched person, he had no aversions whatsoever to swearing, particularly since he's the only one in the cottage. So he wheeled himself over towards the medicine cabinet, just beyond the desk stacked with mountains of paper, and took out his remedy.
It sparkled. It shone red, yellow, white. It was Dust, pure quality dust, the kind of dust that they used to power up generators and power guns, explode at the slightest hint of movement, and -
He took a pinch of it and held it up to his nostrils.
Silence, around the cottage, as he took a deep breath.
The blinding headache had subsided a little. He's fine now, but only just. He really shouldn't spam his semblance so much in a single day, but he couldn't really help it, because the rest of his teammates are, while geniuses in their own field, complete morons on preparation and tactical strategizing. It isn't that they're in a rush, it's just that the faster that they can be done with preparation, the faster they can react to-
The headaches returned again, not as painful as before, but still enough to make him clutch his head and fall into the arm-rest of his wheelchair.
"… Aaaargh." Garbled noises.
He really, really should take a break.
So he wheeled himself outside of the small cottage and onto the dirt road that leads into Vale.
From the outside, the cottage looks modest – small wooden logs piled together in a neat manner, partially made out of cement blocks at the back, because of construction costs, and set against the far fringes of Emerald Forest. A small dirt path leads into a large road towards Vale. There were other houses surrounding it, but they are similarly simple and neat, although the farther Alex wheeled himself towards Vale, the more modern-looking the houses looked.
He stopped. His arms ached. Normally, he would wheel himself all the way to Vayle, but he really doesn't feel like exercising. He just wants to take a break.
So he did what no man on a wheelchair should have been able to do.
He stood up.
It's a misnomer, actually. He didn't just stand up the same way a person would stand up after being seated on a chair, he strained his arms and managed to balance on his good leg. His other leg remained limp, but then the wheelchair folded in on his other leg. It was like watching a piece of paper being folded – the contraption retracts into itself until it forms a brace-like mechanism on his other leg.
It's a good thing the roads are kinda quiet today, thought Alex. Most other people woud've freaked out.
The brace itself didn't fix his legs. It supported it, made it a little bit more than completely flaccid and limp, but he would still limp instead of walk normally and find it very difficult to kick a wall with the awkward contraption. Still, it allowed him to walk, if somewhat strangely, and he had long mastered the art of shuffling quickly on a single leg forwards.
But he wasn't planning on walking all the way to Vale.
He just stood on the side of the road for the longest time until a cab came by, bumped his head on the entrance, and paid him after he dropped him off at Vale.
Around half an hour later, he was sitting behind a table drinking a nice cup of hot chocolate, because coffee makes him antsy and more bitter and condescending than he usually is. Not today. This is a time to relax, to stop using his semblance for the rest of the day and hopefully prevent more brain damage. Taking a sip, he shifted uneasily in his wheelchair, having given up his chair to allow for an elderly lady to join whatever strange seminar that they were hosting on the corner of the café.
He closed his eyes, set down his mug, and rubbed his temples. God, he needed that.
Looking through the video footages of the students for weaknesses were simple. The headaches are slightly less complicated.
Compilation of all that data is downright brutal on him.
He enjoys his job, he really does. There's something about scrutinizing the weaknesses of other people, their strength, evaluating them with an unbiased eye and then creating the perfect scenarios to perfectly crush those strengths that empowers him.
It's selfish, and it's childish, but he's a scrawny young adult in a wheelchair. Not much else can give him motivation, because no matter how much movements group wish to believe otherwise, the majority of the disabled will remain disabled and weak. Having a strength distinguishes him. Makes him a contributing member.
Sadly enough, his team was really most of what he had.
But if there's something that he is genuinely happy doing, it is this:
The waitress approached his table, carrying a tray, a drink, and a fudge cake. She was wearing high-heels, and a maid outfit.
"Fudge cake and a soda, sir," she said in cheerful tones. "Ah, and the bill, as well."
He frowned, and remained silent, unmoving, hands clasped in front of his mouth and elbows on the table. It was as if the waitress didn't exist. The smile flickered. Was he not happy? Is something bothering him? But the waitress remembered her training, to not be too curious about her customers, and forged onwards. "Sir?"
"Ah, sorry, sorry," said Alex. His usual rough tones changed, the words now coming out more silky, more sophisticated. "Just taking in my surroundings, y'know? First time here, see."
"Ah," said the waitress. "And how do you find Vale and our Café?"
Alex grinned. "Can't really comment, you're really the only thing I'm paying attention to."
The waitress winked at him. She clearly was used to being flirted at. But she'll take it, this once, because Alex, despite being disabled and in a wheelchair, was actually rather endearing in a scrawny way. It's that permanently messy brown hair, she thinks.
"I'd better get out of your way, then," she said, smiling. Alex simply smiled as he paid the bill and watched the waitress go on her merry way.
He continued sipping his chocolate milk. All in all, that went about as well as he'd expect. It's fun to flirt a little, especially since his chances of actually getting someone is lower than the chances of someone flirting with him. He's a disabled person. He isn't going to be seen as a person, just an object of pity.
Finishing his fudge cake, he wheeled himself out into the evening streets of Vale.
The sunset, he had to admit, was wonderful. Even more wonderful were the girls out here, laughing and chatting with their friends, and as much as he'd like to hit on them, that'll interrupt their fun. That's simply ungentlemanly. Briefly, he wondered if him and his teammates could just spend a day relaxing instead of a day working their asses off.
He took a deep breath, and sighed.
"Not like work isn't fun, though…" he murmured under his breath, and smiled.
The clock gonged in the distance.
The clock gonged in the distance.
But Blake's work isn't fun.
She's tired. She's angry. She's sleep-deprived and the bags under her eyes might as well be bruises.
There are no clues in the library, no clues online, no clues on the street, and she's been trying her all to find more clues to look at, only that there weren't any. She's tired. She's sad.
And it never crossed her mind that the one time she was caught at her computer was the last fun she's going to have in a long time.
Alexander C. Taylor
Aflliation: ANMS
Specialty: Flirting and genius tactics
Combat Role: Tactician; Bait
Semblance: Hyperthought, Hyperawareness
Equipment: Wheelchair/Brace/Cycle, Gungnir (Spear/Railgun)
Keenly aware that he is disabled and therefore would be marked in society as inferior. Slight tendency to label. A genius in awareness and pays more attention than most people would've liked. Likes to flirt, because it's fun to see their reactions. Despite being disabled, he can stand up using his leg brace and limp around.
Despite being scrawny and 'nerdy', is told to be slightly cute and attractive.
If anyone was offended, do note that most of these chapters focuses on the world through a character's eyes. Alex's eyes see the world as such, and that is how I must portray.
Anyways I'm tired im sorry im like 2 weeks late it's really hard to flesh this guy out.
Okay gbye.