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"I don't think I like drinking." Rosé informed me the morning after our stint of debauchery. She had drank nearly her fair share. Enough to try it out and see how she liked it.
"You didn't even drink that much," I returned. It was in my court to defend the act and she had less than a handful of shots and a few sugary drinks. She hadn't been truly drunk. Just enough to get buzzed.
"But I still feel a little sick anyways, plus all it did was make me sleepy." True to her words she didn't get anything other than tired while Neo and I played charades at the bar. I wouldn't like it either if it just made me drop dead exhausted.
I shrugged my shoulders. "It's not for everyone. I rather enjoy the vertigo. It reminds me that I'm alive. It's like I'm a bug pinned to a surface. It forces me to be here, in the present moment."
In a lot of ways I was becoming a masochist. I endured Mother's torments with a certain pleasure and I took pain and discomfort in an easy stride. I was fond of it like an old friend. It gave me a degree of high because it was an intense feeling. When my nerves burned it felt good nowadays. A tingle or a quiver of sensation rocked my pleasure-pain confused brain no matter the touch.
I dunno.
Maybe something was wrong with me. But when you're in constant pain you learn to live with it and, if you let yourself, you can even enjoy it. What was the alternative for me? I could choose to be miserable I suppose. Or I could love my pain and embrace it. So that's what I did. The gods are cruel but you can learn to live like a dog pinned by the tail to the ground.
I read experiments about what happened to monkeys when you set up electric traps for them to run across. Sooner or later the monkeys figured out which tiles would shock them and would avoid them. But if you set it up so that the tiles that would shock them were random they wouldn't bother after a while. They would just give up. I rather thought of myself like that. Pain came more or less randomly so I was bound to be shocked so to speak. But I was starting to like the sensation.
Mother had pressed the 'cause pain' button so many times that it had just sort of broken and didn't work anymore. It became impotent because I was used to it and it didn't matter. She also had fucked with my pleasure center a little so now that was all out of wack.
"Well I don't think it's for me for one. How anyone can like it is beyond me. But you use substances, don't you, Cloud? You like them." My student observed my weakness. It was true. I had an emotional and physical dependency on drugs of various sorts. I felt a deep craving for those sensations.
And why shouldn't I? I may as well get my bang for my buck now while I was at it. It was unlikely that alcohol or smoking would kill me. I had other alligators to worry about before I drained the swamp.
"Don't pity me Rosé," I had too much of that. I had often been pitied before. By all sorts of people. I even suspected it in those closest to me. "I don't have the time or energy for it. Anyways it hardly matters. I'm a good huntsman despite that aspect of my life. I'm still dangerous even with it."
"So what happens now?" She asked. She was changing the subject at my terse telling off. She took the hint. She was a clever girl, this one.
"We go out hunting again. We'll check our trap and search for more and eventually we'll find the beast and kill. That's what happens now. Now we put in the legwork and use elbow grease."
"It seems… a little messy. Don't you think? There should be a faster way."
"Maybe it is a little," I replied, I agreed. If this could be sped up it would mean worlds and not just to hunters but also to the people they worked to save. "But we'll work as fast as we can. There's no shortcut to this. We have to find it by searching for it and we can only do that so fast."
"And if it's out there killing in the meantime? As you seem to think?"
"It's in the nature of the Grimm to not rest and to strike at humanity at every opportunity. I know of old Grimm that wait just outside of human settlements taking their time and watching for the moment to strike. This Grimm could be like that, just waiting. Or it could be picking off farmers. It'll do as much as it thinks it can get away with if it's a little wise."
"But not all Grimm have that wisdom. Some throw themselves at our walls and attack with abandon. This Grimm could be like that as well. And all the while we were drinking and relaxing. How could we? We have a responsibility. You said so yourself!" She had some heat to her voice. There was something like an accusation there. Was I doing enough? That was her point. But there was a lesson I could teach here. Some wisdom of my own to impart that would hopefully keep her alive.
"We can only do so much. We can't be everywhere at once and we can't kill every monster. To try would be suicidal. There's nothing to be done but our best and you know what?"
"What's that?" She demanded of me. So much spirit and fire in her that I thought it might leap out and catch me ablaze. But I stayed cool.
"We can't be like the Grimm and be unresting nor can we throw ourselves at them the way that they do at us. We have to take our time and be Cetra and patient. We have to be even smarter than them and you know what else? Sometimes we have to run away. Sometimes we have to give up. Sometimes there are battles we can't win and we have to not try and live to fight another day because if you say you're going to fight all the Grimm or die trying you will absolutely die. If my partner had given up and ran from a battle she knew - knew - that she could not win, she would still be alive. But she didn't. She died. She had that same attitude you do now of never giving up and never surrendering and she died for it. And after that she didn't save anybody else. You can't save anyone if you die and play by the Grimm's rules. You have to be smart, patient, and wise. Or not just you will die but everyone you could have saved will die. You have to think of the people you could go on to help and remember that you can't be everywhere at once and doing everything. People will die. You will lose. It's a constant uphill struggle and one day you'll come across something you just can't beat."
"So that's your advice to me? Give up? I'm supposed to be a hero," she returned after my long winded speech. I had to make this lesson stick. It was more important than any other that she could learn from me. It was this bit of wisdom which could save her life more than swinging a sword could.
"You're supposed to be a huntress. Heroes die. They do. I've gone on to save more people and kill more murderers than any other person who went to school at Beacon with me and probably every other school too. And it's because my partner made me run when she went off to die. If I had died then all those murderers would be loose and all the Grimm I have slain would still be around. All the people I have saved would be dirt right now. We can only do so much. We cannot wage total war like the Grimm can. We have to time our shots carefully. Do you understand me?"
Tyrian, Black, Cinder, Taurus, countless bandits, criminals, and monsters of all sorts would be out there this very minute if Pyrrha hadn't shoved me in that locker. I may never forgive her for that. But I had no choice but to live with it. I will never know how many people would have died if not for that moment. But it was probably at least dozens. I would go on to save dozens if not hundreds and thousands more before I finally kicked the bucket.
"Rosé," I began again when she looked away from me and sat on her bed in silence. "You will die from this job. In all likelihood. I will die from this as well. It will kill us. It's not really a matter of if, only when. That's what it means to be a hunter. You are fighting a losing battle and it will catch up to you. I don't want that for you. I'd like it if you would reach an old age. You will only do that if you pick your battles." I enunciated slowly. I let each word drip from my tongue. She reeled back a little.
"I thought that I…that you...your partner..." she trailed off. She stammered over and over - unable to finish her thoughts. I waited. I waited. But she never went on.
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Some officials from the warden's office came by and gave us the news which brought us to our next stop. They knew where we were staying and delivered us that piece of knowledge. The Grimm had indeed struck out at a farm house on the outskirts of town at night. It left footprints and a partially destroyed house behind and a whole family gone. We went out to investigate. Not that there could be much point. The monster was long gone.
We walked straight into the house through a giant hole in the wall and ceiling from where the Manticore had torn it's way in to the building in the night.
We found the bodies. Grimm didn't need to eat. They didn't hunt for food. They just wanted to kill. They wanted to kill people and that was all there was to it. They had no other motivation and no other purpose. They just destroyed our creations with true abandon. We found bodies inside of the house. There were five of them in total. Two parents of middle age and two little boys and a dead young girl. I didn't want to think about their ages. I wanted that to not matter.
I paced through where they had been attacked in the night and torn into while they slept. The father had been ripped in half and was laying in two pieces. A shotgun lay next to him where he had fallen. It had been a vain attempt to defend himself and he had indeed fired a shot off based off the splatter of buck shot on one of the walls near where the Grimm had torn it's way into these people's home. The mother had been torn limb from limb and most of the little girl was simply gone and could not be found.
Rosé threw up at the sight of the mess. My stomach was harder. I had seen and caused my fair share of gore. I had developed a touch of sterner stuff to my guts. I gazed hard at one of the little boy's glassy dead eyes and took a long drag from my pipe. I let the nausea hit me and elevate me as I took the scene in. Then I tapped the ash out of my pipe on some of the brick of the house and let the ash fall into a flower bed with crimson and blue roses. The garden was well weeded and tidy with gorgeous flowers that spoke of someone with a green thumb.
Surrounding the farmhouse was the orchard. Rows of trees forming an unnatural and artificial forest. Then there were crop lands. Filled acres of potatoes and corn. But around the house there were lovely flowers. These people had lived. What would become of their land now? A whole family had been wiped out as though by the snap of a set of godly fingers.
The gods were cruel or apathetic. Look at what they had wrought and feel despair. We were always losing in the battle against the Grimm. Occasionally we took a little ground but it was temporary. Kingdoms had risen and fallen over the courses of centuries. Civilizations had been wiped out over and over. The Grimm lived forever. They did not age. What kind of god makes man then makes the Grimm,? Or, perhaps just as horrible, makes the Grimm then makes man? Only a cruel god would do something like that. Only a capricious god would make a planet ruled by monsters with a few humans as playthings.
Rosé recovered from the sight of the grisly scene with time. She had never seen something like this before. The closest was probably the den we visited yesterday. She recovered her wits if not her breakfast. I managed to keep mine down with a degree of practice. The smell of the corpses was already terrible and it was now mixing with the stench of vomit but if I leaned down I could smell the flowers and marijuana. The flowers and the 'flower' both at once.
"This happened while we were drinking and blowing off steam. It's so meaningless now. We could have done more," Rosé stated with a devoid tone. "You could have prevented this. I could have done something, anything, even. Anything would have been better than this."
"We couldn't have known to be here - at this farmhouse in particular at that particular time," I warned her against what she was feeling. "Remember what I told you before. Be wise. The Grimm struck randomly and intelligently. We must be wary. The monster had every advantage of time and space over us."
We left the farmhouse with the corpses and the rose beds behind us. Someone else would bury the bodies. Friends or relations would already be notified and a mortician would be summoned. Those were the duties of the wardens, however. Our job was to stop it from happening again. We had traps to set and a long day ahead of us. I had a feeling Rosé would have sleepless nights in front of her as well. She would get used to it. I had. Maybe I'm not a good example of healthy coping mechanisms or dealing with grief or even as a person in general, though. Maybe that made me a good hunter, if not a good person. Maybe it is better if she struggles with it. A good person would and Rosé seemed to be a good person.
She trembled a little as we walked away from the farm house. What was it that she shook with? I wondered about it and watched her out of the corner of my eye. Was it Rage? Disgust? Fear? She trembled with something but she remained silent. I didn't press her on it. She would have to be strong and she would have to do it on her own. I could only show her the way and besides, she had asked for this, even if she hadn't known at the time what she had been asking for. No one really did when they talked about hunters. But she was determined to be one.
This was the sort of experience her peers at Signal and other combat training schools wouldn't get. They'd be trained in combat and they would know about their share of monsters as well. They would have the best tutors and years of time to absorb it all and become the best they could be before Beacon initiation. They would have all of that and more in all likelihood.
But with me she would get real experience. The sort that there would be no substitute for. I was tossing her into the thick of things and it was sink or swim time. This is the sort of thing which would let her surpass her peers with all their years and all their fancy tutoring. This is what would make her competitive with them.
She wanted to catch up. She wanted to do more whatever it took. She wanted to be able to make it into Beacon. This is what it would take. It was this that let me match then surpass my own peers who went to Signal and had that sort of training.
Wish granted.
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-WG
