Paradise Lost
Chapter25, Painting the town Red
I do not own anything relating to either series. Seriously. What a shocker.
[PL]
Akira felt his scroll vibrate in his pocket once more, this time back to back with another notification. They had been coming in almost daily throughout the week, mostly from Blake and Yang but surprisingly Weiss and Pyrrha as well.
He answered none of them, of course, not even bothering to open them. He didn't know what to say to them, especially now that they, meaning Blake, were acting so suspicious.
What could he say that wouldn't incriminate him any further than he already had by revealing a small fraction of his combat capabilities?
He could tell by the way Blake worded her questions within the brief window he was able to preview her texts that she was getting more and more angry as time went on. Akira was dreading the weekend, because he would be up to his elbows with Team RPBY, however that was supposed to be pronounced.
The onyx haired teenager couldn't just ignore Ruby, however, who seemed to keep their communication a closely guarded secret as none of the others, namely Yang and Blake, had yet to bring up his supposed favoritism. The youngest member of their strangely named team seemed to know he was in the dog house with at least two members of Team RPBY and acted accordingly.
Perhaps it was the small box of ammunition he had Leopold pass off to her when she made a quick visit to Vale Tuesday night to restock that colored her actions, or the tray of snacks Haru and he made for her. He couldn't be sure.
The loud knocking at his cafe door would have spooked him had the light chime in the air not notified him that someone was approaching the doorway using a set of carefully hidden motion sensors secured to the outside entrances of Leblanc Deux.
Angry yellow eyes glared at him from the doorway, letting him know just how Blake felt about being ignored.
"I thought it was Thursday..." Akira mumbled to himself as he finally pulled his Scroll out to check the date and time, causing Blake to pound the door one more time before he could answer it.
"So you'll check your Scroll now, but ignore me the rest of the week? Is that how so called 'Family' acts?" Blake was quick to round on him the moment he answered the door, leaving Akira to school his face carefully blank as he took a step back to let her in.
Blake took all of a moment to glance around the shop, taking notice of the many different changes she could spot as well as the rather large, red eyed Raven perched in the corner of his shop, before turning on him with gusto once more.
"So what's your excuse, hmm?" Blake began again with a sarcastic tone, one she often took when mad or hurt, "Come on, speak! What's the matter, cat got your tongue?"
Akira remained silent, instead crossing his arms across his chest while maintaining eye contact, debating on how to proceed now that he had a good gauge on her mood.
She wasn't mad, she was furious.
"Between renovations and internal changes within my two businesses, I've been preoccupied with the beginning stages of opening a third business and starting the hiring process over once more." Akira eventually answered, his words spoken slowly so there was no room for confusion.
"I know how you work, Akira, don't act like I'm stupid. You've had plenty of time to send me even a single message back." The former White Fang member had calmed down slightly in the volume of her voice, but the heat behind her words remained the same, "I would have been fine with one saying as little as 'later' and you know it!"
Akira sighed, letting his arms drop before turning and motioning for the door, locking the deadbolt and hitting the light on the porch to denote his cafe being closed. He still didn't speak as he passed Blake once more and moved into the kitchen.
He motioned for a bottle within the cabinet above the fridge as opposed to one of his ever present cold brew coffees like Blake was expecting, a bottle filled with amber liquid that she knew for a fact was liquor of some sort. The two small glasses he retrieved from the same cabinet merely confirmed her suspicion as he stepped around the counter, took a seat at the bar and motioned for her to do the same.
Setting both glasses before either of their places, he poured a healthy amount of amber liquid in each of their glasses before capping the bottle and sliding it to the other end of the bar to be put up later.
He pursed his lips slightly as he stared into the liquid after lifting his glass to eye level before sighing once more and downing the liquid in one gulp, his face remaining as passive as ever as he did so.
"Go ahead and ask your questions, Blake."
After watching the light fade from his eyes a bit as he sat down, she almost didn't want to anymore. Keyword, almost.
[PL]
"Where did you learn to fight like that?"
Akira didn't answer right away, as that question could incriminate him in the eyes of his 'other' mother, Raven. Choosing the safest option, Akira shrugged his shoulders.
"Eight trials and a world worth of errors."
"That's... a weird way to word your answer." Blake was confused about his wording, but could tell by the steady drum of his heartbeat dancing in her ears despite the small distance between them that he spoke the truth.
"I make an attempt to not lie to those I care about, though some questions... might not get an answer you'll like." Akira turned his gaze in her direction through the fringe of his hair, crimson parting the ebony curls easily enough.
Blake noted the slight glow of his eyes in that moment, far more pronounced than she had seen previously. Swallowing the small lump in her throat, she broke eye contact and turned her gaze towards the small glass held aloft between her palms.
Taking a small sip of the strong smelling liquor, she was surprised to find it much smoother than the smell would have implied. It tasted faintly of cream and nuts, though she couldn't place where she had tasted them before.
"What exactly did you do to heal Jaune? His arm should have been removed with how much it was damaged, yet scans seem to show it functioning better than his other arm." Blake spoke over the rim of her glass, facing forward towards the coffee canisters resting on the shelves behind the counter rather than the target of her ire.
The raven in the corner seemed to perk up at this declaration, ever present in the corner of her eyes. It was striking to see a large bird with the same shade of feathers as his hair and eyes burning as darkly as his own. She turned her attention to the corvid fowl for a moment, her thoughts and gaze lingering a bit longer than she would have liked as her thoughts turned to legends of witches and familiars in an instant.
She shook her head slightly to dismiss the foolish thoughts of fantasy, instead focusing again on his lack of answer.
"Well?"
He didn't answer again for a few more moments, instead grimacing slightly as he poured himself another drink.
"I implanted a sliver of my Aura into his system, overrode his Will and forced my Aura through a closed circuit in his system to facilitate healing."
"You what now?" Blake didn't know where to start on just how bad that sounded, despite the results that the process produced. "How?"
"Very carefully." Akira shrugged his shoulder as he turned his gaze towards her once more, almost forcing her eyes to meet his out of instinct. "It was wholly unpleasant."
The implications of his explination did little to settle her nerves, or the morbidly growing curiosity at the possibilities of just what he could do. She tasted deceit in his words, but the overall message rang true, causing a shiver to tremble up her spine that left cold sweat in its wake.
"Is... is that your Semblance? To... take control of those weaker than you?"
"Yes, and no. I... for lack of a better word, subjugate."
[PL]
Raven, too, could hear the lies hidden within the truth of his words from her perch in the corner of his shop. He seemed incredibly skilled in the art of deceit from the way he carefully worded his words, acting almost as if it were an interrogation from how he utilized a nearly perfect poker face all the while.
Whatever it was that Akira had done during Beacon's most recent Initiation seemed to have stuck with the ebony haired Faunus currently accosting Akira deeply. By his and her description, Akira appeared to have healed a wounded student during Initiation, one that should have lost a limb by Akira's female companion's word.
One does not simply heal a crippled limb by doing what Akira said he did, even if his Semblance was what he claimed it to be. If she were a bad gambler, which she wasn't, she probably would have believed his bluff, but she wasn't Qrow, therefor she didn't.
That meant that Akira had a healing Semblance that wasn't what he claimed it was, or...
Perhaps it wasn't a Semblance at all.
Had, in the past, someone told her that she would have a magical son, she would have assumed she was questioning his manhood and changed their opinion accordingly.
Now, though? She could hardly contain her trepidation.
How, on the Brothers dead planet did her son gain the ability to wield the phantasmal power granted to exclusive few in the world and how did he keep it so skillfully hidden that she would have mistaken it for anything but what it was?
[PL]
Blake didn't ask any more questions for a long moment, instead staring deeply into the amber liquid still resting within the crystalline glass in her hands. The implications of his Semblance, if that really was the case, were staggering.
"How many?" Blake looked up, but only after downing the contents of the glass in one gulp,
Akira was silently impressed, knowing he could hardly do the same with a completely straight face. This obviously wasn't Blake's first rodeo.
"You're going to have to be more specific than that." Akira responded with an equally bland tone, though he could hazard a guess at what she was really asking.
"How many times have you used your Semblance?" Elaborate she did. There was an unasked question somewhere within the silence afterwards, one he would oblige her with.
This time, Akira pursed his lips and pretended to count in his head despite knowing the number he needed to say.
"Twice. Once on a child with the last name Strom after she was shot in a drive by a month or so ago, and the other on the blond you call Jaune."
That seemed to be good enough for Blake, her shoulders relaxing slightly upon hearing nothing but the truth in his words once more. She wouldn't forget the small flecks of falsity she detected within his words earlier from the slight fluctuation of his heartbeat, but she was content with knowing he hadn't used his so called Semblance on her.
It still made her question Akira and his motives a bit more than she would have before knowing what he was capable of, truly capable of. He played his charades well, but she could see beneath his mask better than she could previously, no matter how slightly it was. One's Semblance was an inner reflection of themselves, of who they truly were.
What kind of person would naturally wield the ability to make those weaker than himself yield to him? What did that say of his nature?
[PL]
Blake had left shortly there after, but not before mentioning she would be back the following morning for her shift. It was only a few minutes after her departure, however, that her blond teammate, Akira's 'sister', decided to do the same thing and force her way into the shop before he could lock the doors once more.
"Damn it, Yang." Akira hissed lightly as the door collided with his nose, though not before he was able to remove most of the momentum from the heavy slab of metal by catching it deftly in his left palm while clutching his face with his right.
"Oops, sorry Ak- bro," Yang hesitated on saying his name, instead falling back to a familial nickname, "I forget my own strength sometimes, my bad."
"It's fine. To what do I owe the late night surprise?" Akira lowered his hand away from his face, taking note of the small flecks of blood upon his palm before turning towards the counter to retrieve a napkin, "Here to interrogate me like Blake?"
"Pfft, naw, nothing like that," Yang tossed her hair over her right shoulder as she sauntered towards the bar, idly taking in the few changes she could spot within the small shop, "If you wanted to tell me you were already a bad ass Huntsman who didn't need no academy, you'd have told me."
"That's... way more mature of a response than I was expecting from you, I'll be honest." Akira blinked after a moment of silence, almost believing her at first if only for the genuine look of ease on her face, "I don't believe you, and I'm not a Huntsman."
Yang flinched lightly before her shoulders slumped, "Is it that obvious?"
"Yeah, but it's hard to gloss something by people like me." Akira shrugged his shoulders before assuming his position at the bar once more, the two glasses from the previous conversation remaining where they once sat. "Your shoulders are too tense for your face to be so serene."
The blond member of Beacon's Team RPBY laughed before grabbing the bottle sat between the two at the bar before pouring the two a glass of the amber liquid, not at all caring that her glass wasn't clean. Judging by the small lip stain on the rim of the glass, it was likely Blake's anyway.
"God damnit." Akira breathed heavily upon seeing how much of the liquid she had poured into his glass, already feeling the effects of the previous servings already. "That is a very generous amount for the potency of that."
"I'm a generous person, what can I say." Yang quipped before downing the large glass in what seemed to be one gulp.
There was a fire in her eyes when she coughed and a heavy burning in her throat, chest and face, but it was worth it. After regaining her bearings, she turned to him as quickly as she could without wobbling on the stool.
"What the hell do you drink, bro? This is way better than the stuff Uncle Qrow gets!"
"I'm not a cheap ass like Qrow either, Yang."
"...Good point. Now, are you gonna tell me what I want to know or am I going to have to beat it out of you?"
Akira just stared at her blankly for a few moments, not bothering to comment. The Raven in the corner did the same.
[PL]
There was nothing but the flurry of activity around them as Roman and Neo descended deeper into the bowels of the Industrial District, each uneasy despite their lazy but confident gaits.
"Get out of my way you lazy mongrel." Roman all but sneered as he swiped his cane in the direction of a White Fang Initiate who drew too close to the man in his route to deliver stolen goods to their proper storage. "I said get!"
The Initiate moved out of his way but not before mumbling obscenities under his breath about how his days were numbered, human scum kneeling, Roman eventually lost count of how many of the standard lines the recruit listed off.
He had obviously been listening to Adam closer than a few of the others.
Roman scoffed further before turning his attention back to his course while ignoring the light rapping of Neo's parasol on the back of his knees. Her constant attempts at dead legging him over the past few days had gotten old, but given him quite a bit of needed experience in strengthening his stance and gait a bit.
He expected nothing less from the devious wench, loathe as he was to care for her.
"Do you think the witch bitch will be there already?"
The blank look Neo gave him afterward spoke volumes.
"I was hoping she wouldn't, okay? Let a man dream?"
The blank look continued, and Roman began to sweat lightly under the strain of maintaining eye contact with a very obvious psychopath.
"We should drown her. Just throw her in the bay, bloop. All good."
Neo emulated a fish face after a moment of consideration before nodding sagely, almost as if she were agreeing with Roman.
Despite his glib, he didn't fancy another meeting with said witch so soon, the golden eyed bitch that waved her fire around like some kind of fire princess or whatever she was supposed to be. Roman didn't know, didn't want to know and didn't care where she came from or who she worked for, he just wanted her out of his Vale and he wanted it now.
Along with some chicken tendies and a good scrub to poke with his cane before pillaging their loot.
He had also realized in that moment that he shouldn't spend so much time cooped up with Neo playing video games in between large raids for Dust.
Neo shook her head sadly at the sight of what once was a somewhat gentleman thief, now turned into what she and her strange accomplice Medjed, who they have only met on the Net when playing games and chatting, called a 'meme lord'. She wasn't sure what that was supposed to mean entirely, but she... had a good idea.
[PL]
"Ah, it's about time you two graced me with your presence."
Things were not looking bright for the two, and they had only just entered the room. The large warehouse was mostly empty save for the 'witch bitch' was Roman kindly called her and her two stooges.
In all seriousness, Neo knew they weren't to be trifled with, but she couldn't help but loathe them all with every fiber of her rather minute body.
"I'm sorry, but the entire district was swarmed with black cats and other strange creatures, we had to take the extra long way around." Roman didn't sound very apologetic at all, and it showed when Cinder, the 'witch bitch', flung a fireball in their direction.
Either she was a terrible shot or it wasn't exactly aimed at them as it splashed to fireflies, quite literally, above their heads and dissipated before any damage could be done.
"Try to be sincere when apologizing to your betters, Roman." Cinder seethed before allowing the fire in her hands to fade.
Neither Neo nor Roman were as threatened as they first had been upon encountering the woman, but kept silent none the less. One by choice, the other because they couldn't be bothered to speak in the first place.
"Tell me, Roman, have you gotten word of any new... gangs, in Vale?" Cinder questioned with a false sense of befuddlement in her tone, knowing good and well that Roman was aware of all Gang activity within Vale. "Specifically, the group now calling themselves... the Rooks?"
Roman attempted to keep his look of knowing off his face, but the smugness and slight fear from his most recent encounter came through despite his valiant efforts.
"I take it from the stupid grin on your face that you do, then?" Cinder continued her false sense of confusion as she stepped forward once more, coming to rest just before the two still standing in the doorway, "Do you know their leader, then?"
Roman shrugged his shoulders this time, though he had a strong inkling on just who the leader of the organization calling themselves the Rooks really was.
That slick palmed son of a bitch who stole his hat and cane two nights prior before returning them to him the following morning. The only problem was that Roman was asleep when the items were returned, and he awoke with them on his chest.
That alone put a healthy amount of fear into Roman for yet another person in Vale, because it took one really sneaky son of a bitch to get the drop on him, of all people, while they slept. It didn't help that all security cameras within his particular warehouse had been sabotaged around the same time the warehouses had begun being raided at night.
"You just look constipated now, Roman, stop that." Cinder ordered upon seeing the look on Romans face shift slightly into one of discomfort, fear and whatever vestiges of smugness remained. "I want you to find him, and tell him to meet you here at eight o clock tomorrow night."
"And if he refuses?" Roman eventually questioned after trying to quell the urge to smack Cinder right in her pretty mouth for her unkind words aimed in his delicate direction, "Something tells me he'll refuse."
"Tell him if he refuses, someone higher up on the food chain is going to start snacking on all of the innocent little doe he lets frolic in his warehouses. I'm sure he will get the gist of what I'm saying." Cinder looked positively vicious when she delivered her message, and Roman knew in his gut she meant what she said.
You'd have to be a fool to not understood the barely concealed threat, and Roman had a feeling his would-be killer was no fool.
Roman also had a feeling he would be switching sides, and soon.
Neo and Roman left almost as soon as they came, each with a sinking feeling engulfing their stomachs. The taller of the two turned to his short and quiet resident psycho and sighed heavily before turning away soon after.
"Let's go get some coffee, hopefully the kid will still be up."
Neo didn't look very enthused to be drinking coffee so late, but a reminder that he was often seen buying ice-cream was enough to put some pep in her step.
Roman sighed and shook his head sadly at just how easy it was to get Neo to do something for him, mirroring the same expression she had pointed in his direction earlier without being none the wiser.
[PL]
Yang was far easier to please than her teammate, at least when it came to answering questions. She was much harder to please when it came to absolutely everything else, including trying to get her to leave his shop.
"It's midnight, don't you school kids have a curfew or something?" Akira questioned with a tilted brow as he continuously thought of ways to get the blond boxer to leave his domicile, "And a bed to call your own?"
"Well duh, but who follows a freakin' curfew? Do I look like some sort of nerd to you?" Yang was incredulous as she latched on to the bar, preventing Akira from hoisting her from her spot on her stool, "This is abuse, I'm going to report you to CPS!"
"Call the cops, they aren't going to do a thing." Akira intoned, though it wasn't without a slight grin he said this. "They might get a bit of a good view, but that's about it."
"A good view, huh? And I thought I was the pervy sibling here." Yang drawled as she once more shrugged Akira's arms from around her shoulders in his attempts at kicking her out, "Hands off man, you're giving me the wrong impression ya know."
"You see this, Yang?" Akira questioned, holding out an empty palm over her shoulder for her to see.
"Yeah?" Yang questioned slowly, seeing nothing at all in his hands.
"This is all of the fucks I have to give."
"Wow, you actually have more than me."