Author's Notes: Happy Volume 7 kids. This update is brought to you by hype and the joy of DD214. *Laughs in civilian* I'm free, bitches.
Music Choices: Nightmare by Halsey and Santa Monica by Everclear
Eclipse
Chapter 16
The Dangerous Art of Punching Upwards Part II
Twenty-five years before STRQ….
"Fre? Psst! Fre!?"
Joan ducked through the warehouse, climbing over scattered cargo boxes and grumbling under her breath. It wasn't her favorite place to spend the night, but their options had been dwindling lately. Still, it had been better than the alternatives.
It wasn't warm in the warehouse, and her skinny arms were covered in goosebumps. Outside, the merchants and vendors that populated the winding streets of the souq were beginning to wake and attend to business as usual. She could already smell the beginnings of breakfast carried by the dry air wafting though the broken windows above. Her stomach growled, loudly.
Joan paused, listening intently as something clinked in the darkness. The warehouse was abandoned, but that didn't mean it was completely safe; the different factions that made up the criminal elements of Vacuo often laid claim to anything that sat vacant too long, turning it into quarters for their members, smuggler's hides, and thief dens. This one had been spared that attention so far.
She narrowed her eyes, squinting through the shadows. After a few moments of feeling watched, she looked up.
She didn't spot her friend immediately, until she heard the slightest snicker and zeroed in on the shadow laid out on the shipping container to her left. Joan huffed, putting her hands on her hips as she stared up at her.
"Yell louder why don't you?" her friend grinned down at her, like a well-fed street cat. "Oh no, Nwyfre! Where are you?!"
"Very funny, Fre, you're soooo clever," Joan rolled her eyes, placing her hands on her hips. "Hurry up! It's time to eat!"
Nwyfre smiled, slipping off the container and dropping next to her quietly, like liquid shadow. The other girl could move without making a sound, a feat that Joan had never been able to fully manage, no matter how many years of practice she gained on the streets.
"Yea, I know," Nwyfre smirked, before flashing a handful of several hundred lien at her. "Let's get something good for a change, huh? I'm starving."
Joan's mouth dropped.
"Woa, where'd you get all that?!"
Nwyfre shrugged, hiding a laugh as Joan ribbed her playfully.
"What? I found it," Nwyfre smirked, sliding it into her boot for safe keeping.
Joan paused, eying her friend skeptically. She had been wondering where she'd gotten to in the middle of the night.
"You haven't been running 'errands' again for the Talon again, have you?" Joan frowned, pushing shaggy blonde hair from her eyes.
Nwyfre rolled her eyes, groaning aloud.
"Oh my gods, Jo, no."
Joan's eyes narrowed as she gave her friend her best glare. Nwyfre's own flat gaze met her eyes evenly.
"You're lying," Joan huffed again, folding her arms.
"No, I'm nooot, ok," Nwyfre tugged irritably at her braids. "I didn't do anything for the Talon! I just picked a few pockets and got lucky. The merchants purses were little fatter than average."
Joan grimaced. Nwyfre made a face back at her.
"Why are you bothering to lie to me anyways? You obviously don't care what I think," Joan shook her head. "Keep your blood money."
"Ugh, why are you like this!" Nwyfre pulled at her braids, eyes widening with frustration. "Look, pride isn't going to keep you fed, Joan! And it's not fucking blood money, you snobby-"
"I've been feeding myself for a long time, Fre, so you can go sit on that one," Joan declared, waving her off.
"That's not what I'm saying, look damnit!" Nwfyre skirted in front of her, holding her hands out. "Things are getting rougher out here, ok?! And we're getting older, people aren't going to just keep giving us handouts because they feel bad for us! We need a faction if we're going to survive!"
Joan scowled, folding her arms. Her chest felt heavy. She knew the point her friend was trying to make, but she couldn't align herself with a group of people like the Talon. They were cruel. They didn't care who they hurt or how they got what they wanted; they were just thugs who terrorized the slice of Vacuo that they'd unfairly laid claim to.
"But why them, Fre?" Joan protested. "You say things are getting rougher, but they're the reason why! Everyone is terrified of them! If we need a faction, then there are better options!"
"Oh, yea sure, better options," Nwyfre tapped her chin facetiously. "Let me see! There's the sex traffickers! Oh, and then there's the Grimm baiters, and then there's the second rate losers that are all scared to death of the Talon – oh wait! Maybe, the Talon is the best option, because they aren't pedos AND they aren't pussies."
Joan stared at her friend.
"I'm not talking about a bunch of scruffy gangs," Joan said dryly, pulling a crumpled pamphlet out of her pocket. "You want to talk about the strongest faction? What about them?"
She shoved the paper into her friend's hand, who looked at it blankly before her lip pulled in disdain.
"Huntsmen? Really?" Nwyfre met her eyes again. "You want to lecture me about the Talon? And then you're going to turn around and suggest we what? Become one of these guys?"
A fair criticism, perhaps.
"Look, any group in Vacuo isn't going to be ideal," Joan insisted, pointing at the schools and Kingdom's listed. "But what about one of these other schools? We could get out of here! Get a roof over our heads, learn some skills! And maybe, if we're lucky, do something that actually matters."
Nwyfre stared at her in disbelief.
"Jo. Hunters are grifters that are just as bad as the Talon, no matter where they're at. Hell, they're worse. They don't help people, they take advantage of them. The only difference is that the law is on their side."
"I've met good Hunters," Joan shook her head. "I know they exist. And maybe they are mostly rotten here? But that doesn't mean they are everywhere else. However, I do know for a fact that running little 'errands' for the Talon isn't going to help you or anyone else in the long run. You're better than them, Nwyfre-"
"How the fuck am I 'better' than them?" Nwyfre scoffed angrily, folding her arms. "First of all, if you want to help other people, then you have to be able to help yourself first! And right now, that is something that is getting increasingly harder to fucking do! Aligning with the people who currently hold the most power is the most logical choice!"
Oooh, I'm Nwyfre, I'm pragmatic and mean – she is so full of it.
"Wow, that is some impressive mental gymnastics, I'll give you that; but let's be real here for a moment," Joan droned, bemused. "The people with the most social power are the one's on the right side of the law. Meaning the Hunters. You aren't doing this out some intrinsic need to be rational, or you would jump at the chance to pursue this over working with a bunch of outlaws and murderers."
"Why do you hate them?! Because they what? Break the laws? The laws are made up, Joan!" Nwyfre shouted, gesturing sharply. "The laws are not here to help you! The people who made them don't actually give a shit about them, either! They exist to keep people like us from taking the things that they stole from everyone else in the first place!"
"I don't hate them because of the stupid laws! I hate them because they fucking murdered Grey!" Joan balled her fists, baring her teeth back. Nwyfre flinched. "Do you remember that!? NO!? He was ten years old, Fre! He was just a little boy! And they murdered him and hung his body in the street for all to see! Because he what? Crossed them somehow!? Tell me that that is ok with you, and I'll buy this complete dung you are trying to sell!"
Nwyfre opened her mouth and shut it, grinding her teeth in frustration.
"You know it isn't," Joan shook her head. "You know that's wrong. And I know that you're scared of them, Nwyfre, but joining them isn't going to fix things."
Nwyfre blinked in shock, before her face changed in a flash, turning malicious.
"I am not fucking scared of them," Nwyfre hissed.
"Well then you're an idiot, because you should be," Joan proclaimed. "I know I am. But I'm not going to play their stupid games just because I'm scared. And if you want to be a part of all that, then I can't make you change your mind. But I want no part."
Nwyfre promptly snarled and stalked off, shoving her hands in her pants pockets as she slunk between the boxes.
"Fine! Screw you too, then!"
Joan winced, sighing heavily as she rubbed her brow in regret.
That….could of have gone a lot better.
...
Joan moved through the crowds, her long, faded brown coat concealing her shabby armor and the aged sword at her hip. Despite the aura of fear hanging over the market district there were still swarms of people out and about, shoving, yelling, buying and selling. A thousand scents clung to them and the dust ridden air, the heady perfume of the souqs of Vacuo.
She was so hungry she felt numb, and part of her deeply regretted rejecting her friend's offer to buy a hot meal. However, she hadn't wanted to encourage her; because if she kept working for the Talon, then Joan didn't want to know exactly what or who Nwyfre would turn into.
Nwyfre was Joan's oldest friend and ally in the cut-throat landscape that was Vacuo's drifter population. They had met as a couple of knobby kneed orphans in the thieving den that had scooped them off the streets. Joan had been five. Nwyfre had been around the same age. Joan didn't even remember her parents, but she remembered her. The other girl had always been a part of her life, and had always embodied the values of their circumstances much better than Joan had ever managed.
Joan had never really managed to weave into the fabric of Vacuo's underbelly with any sense of grace or pragmaticism. Even as a child, she had been the den's troublemaker, largely because she always stood up to their so-called caretakers. Namely a couple that the kids had fearfully called 'the Wests'.
The Wests were a vile man and woman in their fifties who had been charged wrangling the street kids, refusing them shelter if they didn't bring back enough ill-gotten lien or proved themselves useful to the people who claimed to care for them. The Wests had used every tactic in the book to manipulate them, from physical abuse to emotional. Nothing was off limits to those people, and they picked favorites to make the other orphans jealous and to make that child more dependent upon them; usually the meanest and strongest of the lot. One of those favorites had been Nwyfre.
Nwyfre hadn't been what Joan would have classified as a bully, but she had certainly terrified the other kids. Rumors abounded about her, whispered behind dust covered palms and over meagre bowls at dinner time. Part of this was due to the fact that she had radiated an intensity that a child should not possess, and had even frightened some of the hardened older kids with the things she said and did. She'd liked frightening them, in fact. She had thought that that was very funny, though she never actually laughed.
However, Nwyfre had distinguished herself from the other budding sociopaths by randomly assisting kids that could not directly benefit her. She would take care of the outliers, like Joan, or the sickly kids who struggled to keep up. In fact, Nwyfre had been the first to extend the proverbial olive branch one rainy day when Joan had been locked out of the den for mouthing off to the Wests again. Instead of leaving her outside in the suck, the other girl had snuck her inside and hid her under her cot until the morning. That had been the beginning of their bizarre friendship, and eventually led to the day where they both escaped the den to live on their own.
Joan was pulled from her musings when she noticed a merchant in the crowds before her, a loud, extravagantly dressed man clearly from out of town. He was making brazen observations about the local 'color', striding pompously after his tour guide who was, just as obviously, leading him into a set up. The tour guide was dressed conservatively, lacking the merchant's flair and proclaimed wealth, but he moved like a street predator as he wove liquidly through the crowds. Other members of the more observant Vacuo population were watching the pair with blatant amusement. The out of towner was beaming away, completely out of touch with the danger he was in.
Joan sighed, pulling up to a stand to pretend to look at the fake gold watches proudly displayed in the morning sun. A familiar looking faunus man tending the stall glanced at her, glanced at the out of towner, smirked and shook his head. Joan rolled her eyes and he laughed, still shaking his head at her. People thought she was a bit of a nut in this neighborhood.
Huffing, she slunk after the merchant and his tour guide, who turned down one of the souq's alleys where one did not go without a well-armed posse. Joan stuck her head around the corner, spotting the merchant's cerulean blue traveler's cloak instantly. Several other street wolves sulking in the shadows were sniffing towards the mark, their faces gleaming with hostility.
They met Joan's eyes and she gave them her best glare; one sneered and made a lewd gesture at her, while the others ribbed him and began to slink away. Joan smirked as they tucked tail and disappeared. Having a reputation as the local nut was occasionally useful.
After a breath, she trailed after the merry merchant and his guide. The side street was cramped with impromptu shops, carts and wares. It was a maze that was easy to get lost in unless you'd grown up there; streets branched off like tributaries, stairs suddenly appeared in shadowed alcoves leading to hidden dens and rooms where a person could buy anything. Joan kept a peripheral eye on her surroundings, following after the brazen voice of the man with too much money and too little sense.
A figure melted out of a side street ahead of her and she tensed, watching it as she ducked up against the brick wall to her right. A lizard faunus with a long red tail was following the merchant and his tour guide, a glint of steel shimmering in his hand. Joan watched as the faunus stalked on silent boots after the pair. She brushed her fingers over the hilt of her sword, considering her options.
There was the tour guide, there was this joker, and there was probably someone else a little further along. They would rob the merchant, and if he put up too much of a fuss, slit his throat and tuck his body into one of the hundreds of hidden alcoves where it would stay for too long. She didn't know who these men worked for, but she'd bet Dust that it was likely the Talon considering where they were. If she interfered, and the men got away, that would make her a target; not that she sort of wasn't already.
Suddenly, the merchant's voice came up short and Joan narrowed her eyes. Aura pulsed beneath her skin as she called on it automatically, and for a moment, she forgot how hungry she was; she forgot that she was tired, that she was sad about fighting with her best friend, and that she was scared. All she felt, all she knew, was an incredible, mounting fury; and in that moment, she forgot about doing the so-called logical thing.
Joan strode around the corner, and clapped eyes on the men threatening the merchant. The man was holding his hands up, eyes wide as the lizard faunus held the point of his knife under his chin.
"Please, just take it, I-"
"Ooh pwease take my lien – shut up," snarled the faunus, punching him in the stomach. "Giles, get his watch."
"Hey assholes!" Joan barked. "Take a fucking hike!"
The alleyway stilled, as the three thugs looked up in disbelief. They stared at her, before the tour guide's face lit up in amusement.
"Well well, if it isn't Vacuo's littlest paladin!" he laughed, his smile dangerous. "Boys, I guess we are done for! Better skip on home, eh?"
Joan drew her sword calmly as the muggers giggled in hilarity; one of them shoved the merchant to ground, who let out a pained yelp.
"Oooh what are ya gonna do, little girl? Spank me with your shiny toy?!" guffawed 'Giles'. "Get out of here, brat! Nobody likes a snitch!"
Joan focused on the Dust infused blade he was twirling between his fingers and grinned dangerously, causing him to pause; she focused her Semblance, feeling the object at a distance, grasped it and mentally pulled. The dagger swept out of his hand, cutting his fingers in the process before shooting at her; she caught the blade hilt first in her left hand.
"Nobody likes a man with a weak grip either," Joan quipped at him as he cursed, stowing his dagger in her belt. The 'tour guide' whistled, his face lighting up in wry delight.
"She's right, Giles, nobody likes that very much," tour guide laughed as Giles tried to stem the blood flowing from his fingers. "Oh quit fussing you big baby, it's a scratch – kill her, and have it done with."
"You're gonna pay for that, bitch," hissed the lizard faunus as he suddenly blurred towards her, activating his Semblance. Joan could feel his body's mass even as he diffused into smoke, darting past her. She parried instinctively and punched him in the gut as he materialized to strike at her.
The faunus wheezed, orange eyes bugging comically as Joan poured aura into her Semblance, mentally grasping him in an iron fist. After a brief, crushing pause, she flung him down the alley, and he rag-dolled into a stand covered in blown glass trinkets. Joan didn't pause to watch, spinning low as 'Giles' came in swinging manically.
Giles apparently had no shortage of knives, as he wielded two short, vicious blades in a flurry as he tried to get under Joan's guard. Joan deflected several strikes before taking a slash across her aura, right next to her throat. Giles had apparently taken it rather personally that she had insulted his grip.
"Cheating, bloody harlot I'll skin you!"
"Not like that you won't!" Joan declared and kicked his exposed knee. A satisfying crack filled the air, and Giles yelped, stumbling. Joan brought the hilt of her sword crashing into his temple. He fell like a sack of flour as Joan spun her sword, parrying a bullet that the tour guide had fired her way. He sneered at her, unafraid.
"You know, this has been fun kid. But I really have lost my patience," tour guide said.
The merchant had scrabbled to his feet and was trying to make a break for it, stumbling frantically; tour guide aimed his pistol lazily behind him and fired off a shot before Joan could so much as shout. However, a shadow rushed out of an alcove and deflected the Dust round, which exploded against the grey brick of the building to their right. Familiar green swords twirled in the dark as the figure stalked towards tour guide menacingly.
"Oh?" he smirked. "Is that how it is now, Nwyfre?"
Nwyfre stayed silent, sneering at tour guide's raised pistol.
"Tch. Wormy little coward," tour guide scoffed and shot at her as Joan charged him with a shout.
The bullet hit its mark and Joan skidded to a stop in horror, before realizing what had happened. The duplicate faded, as the real Nwyfre reappeared and buried a katana into the meat of tour guide's stomach, protruding from his back. Joan stared with wide eyes as tour guide mouthed in blank shock, staring into Nwyfre's face as she sullenly placed a boot on his chest and pulled her sword out. His body slumped to the ground, and the other girl didn't give him another look as she wiped the blood off.
"We need to go. Right now," Nwyfre turned around, zeroing in on the flabbergasted merchant.
Joan stared at the puddle spreading across the cobbles, the hairs of her neck standing on end.
"Dust, Fre, who was he?"
"A Talon officer," Nwyfre grunted over her shoulder as she approached the merchant.
Oh. Oh shit.
"I – thank you?" he offered hopefully. "You saved my life, I'm, please, whatever you want, I can get it for you!"
"Where are you from?" Nwyfre asked him, sheathing her swords.
"V-Vale?"
"Did you fly here privately?"
"I- yes, my company's airship-"
"Then get us a ride to Vale. Immediately," Nwyfre insisted, eyes jumping around the confines of the souq's alley.
The merchant nodded and babbled as Nwyfre led the way out of the dark alley, Joan trailing after them in a state of shellshock. They'd killed a Talon officer. There was no way there hadn't been witnesses, either; and now they were on the run, fleeing to a foreign Kingdom before they wound up dead in an alcove themselves.
"Holy shit," Joan murmured.
It's like the damn den all over again….
...
Nwyfre's fingers drummed a heartbeat on the armrest of the airship, staring out the window at the clouds passing peacefully below them. She had never ridden in an airship before. She had never even been more than ten stories off the ground in her life and had up until this moment refused to entertain the idea of doing so; because she had always been terrified of heights. To be fair, she had always been terrified of a lot of things; but heights was near the top of the list.
She glanced up at the peacefully snoozing figure across from her, her lip twitching in bemusement. Here she was stewing in anxiety and her daft best friend was completely laid out, unconcerned whatsoever that they had essentially set fire to their previous life and were now thousands of feet in the air flying into the unknown. She was honestly more than a little jealous that Joan could do that; but that was nothing new.
Nwyfre shook her head and turned back to the window. The man they had saved was extremely generous, and honestly, probably a little intimidated by them. However, he had promptly organized his stooges and pulled out of Vacuo within a few hours at most. Nwyfre only hoped that it was a fast enough response. The Talon had long claws, after-all. Nwyfre snorted ruefully through her nose.
I could have run this fucking city…
It had, probably, been a bit of a pipe dream. However, the Talon had been more than a little interested in recruiting her; and Nwyfre had definitely encouraged their courtship over the past several months, though she'd played hard to get. Advancement rates had been high, particularly for those with little conscious and enough ambition to claw their way up the ranks. Business was booming after all, and a power vacuum had been left by the collapse of the previous cartel. If Nwyfre had gotten serious, she could have quickly made a name for herself in the organization. One of their youngest officers had been fourteen at most after all, and she had only been an official member for a few months.
Nwyfre sighed, pulling her gaze from the dizzying void outside her window. Joan muttered something incoherent, her foot kicking as she frowned in her sleep. Joan was sixteen now. Nwyfre estimated that she was probably seventeen herself, but who could honestly tell.
She replayed the moments in the souq in her mind, studying the various angles and wondering if she could have played things differently; but off course, she couldn't have. One moment she was playing lookout for Oliver and his merry band of miscreants, pretending to not be sulking. The next, her dumbass friend was challenging them to a duel in the middle of Talon territory and basically committing herself to a suicide run for the sake a goofy mark who could lose a few lien and not even feel it.
Said dumbass had insulted her over her life choices not even five hours earlier, declaring her generosity was not generosity, but in fact 'blood money'. Despite this, things had proceeded in predictable fashion, and Nwyfre had irreverently thrown away any chance she'd had at becoming a prominent figure in Vacuo's vast, powerful underground.
Nwyfre stared in bewilderment at her oldest friend, briefly wondering how in the gods green world they'd ever teamed up in the first place. Nwyfre had always been the one to play her cards right, to play the game and play to win. She showed people what they wanted to see, and then promptly stabbed them in the back while they gloated over her. The world was run by cruel people, and loathe it as much as she did, she had told herself repeatedly that she accepted it; more than accepted it, she would play their game and rise above them, leaving them in the ashes of her wake.
Meanwhile, Joan did not play the game, ever. Joan hated the game. She'd always despised it, and railed against the worst perpetrators with a shining, impetuous rage that Nwyfre had never seen embodied in anyone before or since; and she inspired a similar since of righteous indignation in Nwyfre herself, like a carrier of some air-born brain fever that turned the hapless passersby into burgeoning revolutionaries.
The first time Nwyfre had even noticed Joan was in the midst of one of these furious declarations of injustice. Joan had been five. Nwyfre had, probably, been six. The perpetrators had been the Wests, the mealy eyed weasels that had been their abusers and caretakers a decade ago in a den in one of the worst slums Vacuo possessed in its extensive collection of terrible slums.
The Wests had refused to feed a little boy who had not picked any pockets or earned his keep for the day, as was tradition. Nwyfre and the other high earners had been watching this with some amusement as they tormented the boy, mocking him before his peers. But then, a very loud, very blonde little scrap of a nobody had marched right up to them and told them they were, in fact, vile.
No one could believe it. Nwyfre had watched in sheer amazement as Mrs. West cuffed the blonde, insulting and deriding her for stepping out of line and threatening to let her sleep outside as well. But instead of being cowed by this, as every other sane child in the vicinity would have been, the little blonde had puffed up, wiped her bloody nose, and declared that Mrs. West was nothing but an insufferable, greedy cow; and, in a moment of mad enlightenment, Nwyfre had genuinely laughed, for the first time in her short terrible life.
Everyone had stared in horror as Nwyfre cracked up, tears running from her eyes as she howled with mirth, even as she proceeded to completely get her ass beat; and again, for the first time, even as she endured a vicious beating, Nwyfre had not been afraid. She had both witnessed and been blessed by the prophet of madness, and lo, her name was Joan Arc and she would not abide to be terrorized by cruel adults, murderers, gangsters nor vile cretins of any sort.
Any chance of a standard, miserable life as a street urchin or street wolf Nwyfre had had up until that moment had promptly been ruined; and as she stared at her mad, dumb sleeping prophet of justice, Nwyfre realized that she was completely glad of that. Because in her gut, she had always known, that Joan was completely right; she was just much braver than anybody else, including herself.
The airship shook, and Nwyfre tensed immediately, glancing about her. However, the ship adjusted to the turbulence, climbing even higher into the clouds; carrying both herself and the slumbering mad woman into the future.
...
Nwyfre stared at the towers of Beacon, as if studying a mirage in the wastelands. All around her, rich, well fed children who for some bizarre reason thought they should slay monsters, darted and laughed with their friends. Nwyfre couldn't wrap her head around it.
These people think they can be Hunters? They look like Grimm bait.
Besides her, Joan was gaping in awe at the architecture, starry eyed. Joan had always been a sucker for tall buildings, considering Vacuo had a grand total of three. Nwyfre had always steered far away from them, with the single-minded devotion of a religious adept.
"Wow," Joan finally said, hefting her new, humble shield awkwardly. She had purchased it in Vale, with the last of their lien.
Nwyfre nodded.
"Well. We're here I guess," Joan smiled.
"Yep," Nwyfre nodded again.
"So, where do you think we go?" Joan peered around, trying to get a since of direction.
Nwyfre pointed succinctly at the building with the most people milling about. Joan glanced at her, smiling hesitantly; Nwyfre smirked, rolled her eyes, and waved her on.
"Well come on then, chicken shit."
"Oh, you are so full it!" scoffed Joan, jogging after her.
"Not full of chicken shit, at least."
"I beg to differ!"
I beg to differ, indeed…
...
Twenty-five years later….
The crack of Raven's portal had woken her immediately, and Nwyfre sat up, instantly alert as she observed the red and black vortex spinning in the twilight. Besides her, Ciara was stirring in her sleep, and would likely wake in a moment. Nwyfre spared her paramour a brief, fond glance before slipping out of their bed and pulling on pants; her swords were within reach, but she did not grasp for them as she waited, feeling a little uncertain.
Raven and Qrow had just started their new semester at Beacon. Nwyfre hadn't exactly expected them to reach out so soon, but it wasn't an unpleasant surprise. Raven's Semblance would make visiting the twins in person a snap, and Ciara had been quite excited about this, considering she had been pining for them since they had left the nest over a year ago.
After a few moments, a familiar dark head poked through the portal, crimson eyes finding her own in the tent's half-light.
"Hey mom," Raven started, clearly awkward. Nwyfre smiled at her.
"Hi," Nwyfre chuckled. "You can come in, we're dressed."
"Ok," Raven actually fidgeted, still half-way in the portal. "Um. So. There's some things we need to talk about?"
Nwyfre's eyebrows raised, before she drifted over to one of the fur rugs by the table near the bed. She sat down easily, gesturing to the low table as Raven hesitated to enter the tent.
"What happened?" Nwyfre drawled. "Come in already, you making me awkward now."
Raven huffed, an automatic response more than anything, before stepping fully into the tent. Nwyfre eyed her daughter, watching her body language which radiated anxiety. In the bed, Ciara rolled over before sitting up, rubbing sleep quickly from her eyes.
"Raven?" Ciara asked. "What is it?"
"Hi, ah. We've run into some…issues. That we think the tribes need to be made aware of," Raven started, her voice becoming more confident. Their daughter moved over to the table, taking a seat as Ciara hopped out of bed, wrapping her robe around herself.
"Issues?" Nwyfre droned.
"Yes," Raven nodded, her face serious.
She's always so serious. Life's too short to be so young and serious all the time.
"Such as?" Ciara shuffled over to them. "Here, do you want some tea love?"
"No, it's ok, thank you," Raven shook her head. "It regards the tribes in Saunus, particularly the skinchangers."
Nwyfre frowned. She had heard rumors, namely that some tribes had lost contact with their allies on the continent over the years; and several prominent members of the free people had outright gone missing in the regions near Vale, all skinchangers. Nwyfre had been meaning to look into it, but her time and resources were limited considering the situation in south Anima.
Ciara shared a worried glance with her.
"What's happening in Saunus?" Ciara asked, tilting her head.
"Well, the short version is that the King of Vale has been abducting skinchangers into his private service," Raven said, leaning forward. Nwyfre felt a cold pit growing in her stomach. "The longer version is that we've accidentally crossed paths with these people, because we tried to take some baby birds to a fucking shelter and got clocked as shifters ourselves-"
"You fucking what?" Nwyfre interrupted.
It's only been two bloody weeks, how do they get into trouble this fast?
"Dear, let her finish," Ciara nudged her. "Go on, Raven."
Raven hesitated, glancing between them before continuing.
"Well. Said baby birds were ah. Actually tribe kids? And now we're hiding them in our dorm room. And one of our Professors is assisting us."
Nwyfre stared at her daughter, the pit in her stomach changing to cold fire.
No.
"Baby shifters?" Ciara asked, horror bleeding into her voice. "Oh Dust, they must be so scared. Where are their parents?"
"Who did you tell about this?" Nwyfre asked urgently. "Raven, tell me you didn't go to Ozpin?"
"No, no not Ozpin," Raven shook her head. "He might find out, but not because we told him. And the parents are possibly in the castle. We were going to mount a rescue attempt, with some assistance?"
Ciara exhaled slowly.
"That-what? No. Absolutely not," Nwyfre gestured sharply. "This is way over your heads, and I need much more information! Who did you tell?"
Raven played with the feathers at her hip anxiously.
"Well I didn't exactly go out of my way to tell her, she just sort of saved my ass from being arrested and things have escalated-"
Noooo
"But she knows you, I think? And she suggested we all work together," Raven looked at her hopefully.
No, fuck no
"Do you know a Joan Arc?"
Ciara's eyebrows shot up as she looked Nwyfre's way. The Morrigan paused, before her face settled into a grimace. The cold fire in her gut was spreading to her limbs.
"Fre? What did you do?"
"Yes. I know a Joan fucking Arc."