Rogue Huntsman
Asleep
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"Sorry, I hope you didn't mind. I left the sink running in the room so I had to tell one of my teammates to turn it off."
Rain water poured down the windows around them. Dark, dreary panes of glass shook and shuddered by the storm just outside its reaches.
A flash of white light passed through as Anoel's silken voice graced the air of the room. Its resonance accompanied by the ticking of Beacon's highest tower, gears endlessly turning far above her in this vast expanse of a circular office.
"It is quite alright, Miss Anoel. Though, we are very well funded. You won't be here for long, so a small depletion of water won't put a dent in our budget," Ozpin replied, fingers interlaced against his chin with two supporting arms placed on the desk in front of him.
"Oh, forgive me," Anoel apologized, snapping her scroll closed, "I meant to say the shower. I left the shower running."
"Right…" Ozpin replied calmly, pausing for a moment.
Anoel only smiled innocently at the man and leaned back in her seat, slipping her closed ebony scroll into her pocket. She may have been wearing her short-shorts and t-shirt, but she was still in her element.
Only two ticks passed by from the gears above her as she crossed one elegant leg over the other, hands resting politely in her lap.
"Of course, to my…" Ozpin finally continued, clearing his throat for a moment, "proposition, if you will. I wish to ask you to do something for me."
"Nothing nefarious, I'm sure," Anoel commented, tilting her head ever so slightly.
"Nothing of the sort," the headmaster smiled, bringing his hands down to his desk, "I would like to hire you to gather information."
"Information," Anoel hummed, audibly mulling it over in a lighthearted voice, "On?"
"I believe a member of Sentinel has infiltrated my school," Ozpin responded evenly, his voice stoic and his eyes calm, "The pay for this exchange of intel would be…" he took a breath, smiling all the more, "quite lucrative. After all, we are very well funded."
"Sentinel. What makes you think a member's here in the school?" Anoel asked.
She's been at odds about what to think of the infamous cyber-terrorist group, especially since she obtained a fair amount of information from their actions alone. Not everything was released to the public, after all.
But…
Sentinel also rendered a lot of information useless once some of it does go public. She's lost quite a lot of revenue from their actions as well.
Leaving her on the fence.
"Let's just say our methods of intelligence gathering both break a few rules," the headmaster explained, "You can rest assured, I firmly believe this to be the case. A member of Sentinel is here."
"And what's stopping you from gathering this information yourself?" Anoel asked in response, her voice growing curious… but guarded.
"Because, Miss Anoel," Ozpin replied, gesturing to the surface of his desk and the scroll within it, "The digital world is Sentinel's domain. You, on the other hand, manipulate human contact exceptionally well. You can do what I cannot, in this case."
"Hmm, so it would seem," Anoel bobbed one of her boots up and down, something she actually threw on before coming here, "I suppose I can look into it. The pay would need to be rather steep, considering the danger of the task."
"I would expect it to be quite high, especially for someone in your area of expertise," Ozpin gave a small grin, a small satisfaction crossing his features as he stood from his chair, "It was a pleasure to meet you once more, Miss Anoel."
"The pleasure's all mine," Anoel replied with a smile, slowly standing as well as she made her way around her chair.
"Brief me at your earliest convenience."
"Sure, ironic choice of words by the way," Anoel dismissed as she clicked her way toward the open elevator, only casting a minor glance over her pale shoulder to the silvered man behind the desk, "Oh, and headmaster? You look good in lime green. You should hold your meetings with your fly down more often."
An amused smile crossed her lips as she disappeared into the elevator doors, turning around to give him a small wave.
"You're quite skilled with your words, I'll give you that," Ozpin returned the smile, respectfully standing until her full departure.
"Thank you," Anoel lowered her hand to her side, her smile remaining as she pressed a button on the elevator's control panel, "but I wasn't lying that time."
She gave him one final wave, pointing down with a cheeky smile before the golden doors closed completely.
"If only-" Ozpin glanced down, noticing quite the bright flash of his favorite underwear, "Oh my… I do look good in lime green."
Arex cradled her partner in her arms, softly petting her hair and ears down as she looked around the dark room. Kitsuki was still shivering, and every time she touched her pale skin she became painfully aware of the cold sweat shining across it.
No matter how much heat she pushed out to sooth her partner's fear, the shivers, the trembles, the quivers…
The tears…
They all remained.
Small hands gripped at the back of her sweater tightly, the cloth finally dry to the touch now, but that never mattered anyway. Her hair was still slightly damp, and when she turned her head to a sudden flash engulfing the room…
She wasn't sure if it was the water from her hair that melted into her sweater in that moment… or if it was from the kitsune shaking in her arms, trying to remain still.
Those delicate fingers only tightened when the thunder followed the flash almost immediately, the worst only to come from the storm in the sky.
What was she supposed to do? How was she supposed to do it?
What… could she do?
"Kitsuki, I'm going to reach for something. Is that alright?" Arex asked softly, her voice nothing but a hushed whisper.
The arms around her back tightened, the girl in Arex's arms pulling herself against her partner all the more. She was afraid.
"It's alright, I'm not going anywhere," Arex hushed, keeping her arms around Kitsuki's own back and holding the kitsune against her, "I promise."
Whatever close proximity they had remained, and it'll remain like that for the rest of the night. Arex just had to find a way to work around it.
She had no intention of leaving Kitsuki's side, not on a night like this.
So, with cautious and slow movements, Arex slowly removed one of her hands from Kitsuki's back. Immediately, the girl tensed up in her arms, but Arex quickly calmed the girl down by trailing that hand up and scratching the base of Kitsuki's ears.
To replace it, Arex drew some strength into her dry wing, the draped appendage moving up from her right side and gently reaching forward. She cautiously wrapped that around Kitsuki's back, replacing whatever missing comfort there with the soft pressure of her feathers.
Her other came around as well, wrapping around Kitsuki's waist to blanket the girl in a gentle veil of subtle warmth.
The hand she still had beneath her wing soon moved up, and as the kitsune breathed out slowly, she brought it up to gently rub Kitsuki's other ear. Switching the scratching she was doing previously to the same caressing touch.
Adding a small gradual shift in her wings to rub the kitsune's back, Kitsuki's breathing quickly turned to panting as the girl's forehead leaned heavily against the center of Arex's chest.
Lightning flashed again, but this time, Kitsuki's flinch was contained in the embrace of Arex's black wings.
"Relax, just block it out. Try to focus on everything I'm doing," Arex murmured, feeling the muscles in Kitsuki's back grow tense from the following thunder.
It was in that position, those actions, the two stayed. Arex kept her attentions up, massaging Kitsuki's fox ears from base to tip as she maintained the small movements her wings were making.
Slowly, Kitsuki's shaky panting began to grow more even, and over time, the tight grasp of her arms and tails began to weaken ever so slightly.
But it wasn't enough to block everything out. Lightning kept bringing Kitsuki back to the storm, thunder kept reminding her of its looming presence, and the rain a constant thrashing noise in the background of it all.
Even so, Arex kept trying. And as she distracted Kitsuki as much as she could, she finally managed to reach beneath her bed and pull out one of her storage boxes she kept there.
The box was already open, its lid still beneath the bed as she glanced through the contents inside it.
Electronics.
Extra parts for her scrolls, backup pairs of earbuds both wired and wireless, speakers, holographic projectors, sensors, cameras…
Her eyes finally found what she was looking for, tucked against the side of the box's wall. With the only hand she had free, she reached into the box and pulled out a wireless set of headphones.
"Kitsuki, I'm going to help you block out the storm, but you have to trust me," Arex quietly said, her massaging fingers slowing in their movements.
The kitsune's panting continued, but even in her blissful state, those shining eyes slowly blinked open. Two burning sunsets looked up into two irises of orange and flashing pink, colors visible, even in the darkness of the night.
"Do you trust me?" Arex asked hesitantly, her eyes staring into those orbs she knew only her partner possessed. The very same orbs she was growing used to, even with so little time having passed between them.
A nod was all she needed, anything to let her know for sure…
Kitsuki's eyes blinked away for a moment, but those irises glanced back as soon as they averted. The kitsune's skin was flushed, having been like that for a while now.
A redness had long since swept over her face, hair a tossed mess, but even then, Arex watched as Kitsuki slowly nodded her head.
Two fox ears rose ever so slightly, their fluffy tips flicking the air as the kitsune put whatever trust she had for now into her partner.
Those orange irises quickly burned gold, Arex nodding in return before reaching up and gently removing her fingers from Kitsuki's left fox ear. She took the headphones she was holding into both hands, keeping her golden eyes on Kitsuki's own all the while as she adjusted the band to fit the girl's head comfortably.
Then she slowly slipped the padded speakers over Kitsuki's human ears, rotating them to keep the cushioned, flexible band atop the kitsune's head from touching her fox ears. Half of Kitsuki's hearing suddenly grew muffled, certain background sounds all of a sudden suppressed…
But her fox ears and her heightened hearing still listened. The ears atop her head still heard the storm and its breaching winds outside.
"I'll make you a custom set when I can to accommodate your fox ears too," Arex whispered, her voice slipping into an apologetic tone as she finished situating the headphones into place.
Her words and smile got another small nod in return, and Arex turned her attention to her scroll, finally breaking that eye contact the two held. She quickly withdrew the device from her pocket and synced it to Kitsuki's speakers.
And in a few seconds, Arex selected her longest playlist and began shuffling through her songs, starting with one she figured the kitsune would be okay with.
"This band's got a pretty funny name, but the song's good," Arex continued, letting her scroll play on its own as its music filtered through the speakers nestled against Kitsuki's ears, "The song's called 'The Reason'."
Arex smiled, closing her scroll now and turning her eyes back to Kitsuki's own… they seemed to have never left Arex's face, or her eyes…
Arex's pale cheeks quickly burned at that realization.
"Come on, let's get you into bed," the ebony haired girl said, nodding up to the blanket dangling over the side of her mattress.
Kitsuki's grip suddenly tightened again.
"I'll be joining you," Arex elaborated, her blush deepening, "I told you, I'm not going to leave your side."
The kitsune's fox ears immediately perked up in return to that, whatever tight hold she held on Arex's body soon loosened and came undone, her arms finally pulling back from around the other girl's sides.
"You ready to stand?" Arex asked.
Golden-orange eyes glanced down for a moment and watched Arex offer the kitsune her hands, both palms there and… ready to support her.
Kitsuki's own hands came up as she sat back on her curled legs, placing her fingers softly atop Arex's own as the avian girl watched her carefully. Both wings tensed as Arex slowly lifted, pulling Kitsuki and herself up against the bed behind them.
Lightning surged through the room in that moment, but its thunder was forgotten in the music and the eyes Kitsuki kept looking back to.
Watching for a fleeting color to appear… only to flash away again and again.
But it kept coming back.
A color she didn't recognize.
The two stood now, less than a foot of space between one another as Arex tilted her head to the right, ushering Kitsuki into a small step in that direction. The kitsune followed, matching Arex's movements in a momentary dance before her dark-haired partner turned her and pulled back the blankets.
"I'll climb in with you, I just…" Arex glanced down and reached into her pocket, pulling out her closed scroll and laying it on the small nightstand behind her, "need to take these off."
She moved one of her legs slightly, a soft pull suddenly reminding Kitsuki that her tails were still wound around Arex's legs.
Her fox ears folded for a moment, but she knew Arex needed to at least get into sleepwear as well. She just… didn't want to let go. She couldn't let go, not when she was finally finding a way to calm down.
Instead, Kitsuki took a step closer to her partner, reducing the space between them to nearly nothing as she pushed her tails downward, pulling cloth with them before quickly reaching up again and wrapping back around Arex's now bare legs.
They needed to at least be holding something, anything. It gave her comfort, just knowing someone was there.
"T-that works too…" Arex muttered, feeling her sweatpants drop to the floor. The tingling sensation of Kitsuki's tails around her legs clouded her mind, but she bit all of that back in favor of helping the kitsune through the night.
Even if it meant staying up through it herself.
Slowly, the two moved onto the bed. Arex went first, crawling across the mattress as she lifted the blanket and offered Kitsuki her hand, her partner following soon after. The avian girl moved Kitsuki's pillow over onto her own bed for the kitsune to use, sliding hers over to her temporary side for the night before laying the inside of her wing out beneath Kitsuki.
"Tonight, you can… sleep in my wings…" Arex informed, her gaze falling slightly, "I-if you want."
Kitsuki was already crawling herself into place, resting herself down gently atop Arex's feathers before letting her head fall to the comfort of her own pillow.
"R-right…" Arex breathed out, sighing with a mental 'okay' as she pulled their shared blanket up, carefully lying herself down next to her partner.
Kitsuki then rolled over as soon as she did to face her, those golden-orange eyes seeking out her own before closing.
They were reaching the peak of the storm's strength now, thunder and lightning synchronizing to crash down from the sky as one powerful surge. There wasn't a delay between light and sound anymore… it was all right on top of them.
Arex did one last thing that night…
She reached up one more time and gently took Kitsuki's fox ears between her fingers, feeling the soft, velvety fur beneath her fingertips as she carefully massaged them once again.
She hoped it was enough to get her through, to let her sleep in this kind of weather, with this kind of fear.
Her favorite playlist played in Kitsuki's ears, her affinity worked as a comforting heater beneath the covers, her wings held Kitsuki in a soft embrace, and above all that, she was giving the kitsune's fox ears a delicate massage to sooth everything over.
Before Arex knew it, Kitsuki cuddled into her side… and finally lulled off into a silent sleep.
She followed eventually as well, after an hour of making sure the kitsune slept soundlessly in her arms.
"So," Seraphine slowly swirled the contents of her glass around, fingers and eyes tracing patterns on the polished bar as she did so, "will you re-open the Black Stallion over the weekends at least? It'll satisfy plenty of your patrons, including me."
"That depends on the manner of my current task," I replied, black-clothed elbows leaning into the wood before me as the bustling bar grew in noise.
The amount of people in here grew to a staggering number over the hour of me being here. It still wasn't midnight, which meant I'd be here for even longer than acceptably necessary.
The bartender that once stood behind this bar gave up on attending it, his once sleek brown hair now a tossed mess as he drank his depressions away at the far end of his own establishment. His suit was disheveled, his eyes a bleary blend of confusion and repression, and his gaze never seemed keen on looking anywhere but the square napkin wrinkled between his hands.
Who could blame him?
An infamous bartender walks into his place of business, takes position behind his bar, and starts serving his customers his drinks?
Not only that, but because of the phenomenon, his bar, for some odd reason, thus becomes a circulating gravitational magnet to all night-goers in the immediate vicinity of his establishment over nothing more than a whispered rumor spreading like wildfire?
The reigns were mine for the night, but I didn't want them. I was only passing the time while customers, several of which my own patrons, filtered through the doors to this wood-themed establishment.
It seemed people were hearing of the owner of the Black Stallion taking up a temporary position at another local bar for the night… and they didn't want to miss it.
A thousand stars fall from the sky in mere moments, and those are missed in fleeting seconds of blissful ignorance. Yet, they flocked here like Grimm to a grieving village…
All for what?
For this?
I slid a mixed drink down to a man sitting on one of the filled stools before me, his eyes lighting up as soon as it slipped across the clean surface of a sulking man's bar.
The liquid was gone in a few seconds.
"Oh, did you hear that?" Seraphine smiled, delicate lips pulling into an amused grin as she glanced up at me, "He practically groaned while releasing a breath, muttering the word 'ecstasy' as soon as he finished his drink."
"Ecstasy's often confused with small moments of pleasure refilling a void left by long periods of pain," I replied, pouring out seventeen glasses of varying alcoholic beverage before distributing four of them to customers across the bar in front of me.
The rest were picked up by waitresses approaching to deliver them to tables throughout the packed room.
I personally switched half of the scroll monitors dotted about the walls to livestreams of interest, most of which for entertainment purposes, while letting the rest stay on the news channel, for informational purposes.
This was where I'd be for a few hours, so I wasn't going to let that time be poisoned by poorly made decisions on other peoples' parts.
"Ecstasy can also be defined as pure moments of intense pleasure," Seraphine countered, her head tilting to cascade a flow of crimson hair over her shoulder, "Are you experienced in that area of expertise?"
Experienced? That was a relative term for anyone too inexperienced to understand the concept of perpetual learning.
There was no such thing as being experienced in anything.
You can experience something, then choose to forget it, yet… that still qualifies for being experienced, because you experienced something to a certain extent.
No…
What matters most are the experiences that permanently etch patterns and codes into your mind, forcing you to remember moments, sounds, visuals, smells, tastes… These are the moments that shred through doubt and uncertainty, replacing those fresh cuts with scars and eternal reminders.
Experience was for those who suffer most in their lifetime and the next. The worst of it only comes in moments of immense pain and solitude…
When you realize you're alone in a vast reality so potent with life.
It's already known in moments of blood-spilled chaos and unkindled malice, a madness festers in the soul of the accursed victim at the center of it all.
They say the same can be said for anyone.
This accursed soul rests in the middle of a crimson valley of arrows and broken blades, beneath mountains of sin and carnage, and before rivers of glistening rubies and floating roses, literally breathing the air of their own misery.
The stale air of war.
Few know of the feelings incurred by the wrath of war, yet even fewer know of the blood-soaked lands of the days following a war's end.
When the expanse of a dry desert becomes so drenched in the red essence of all those who perished to scepter and sword, laid waste by the merciless king of a throne-less crown…
You'd know true ecstasy doesn't come from the moments of induced, temporary bliss.
True ecstasy stems from moments of understanding and recognition, of realizing what you have and what can be taken away, and what you take for granted in your sick excuse of a miserable, peaceful life.
When you realize what you have means nothing in the waking expanse of time and death, and you find actual meaning in the few moments you find most precious to you in that revelation…
Only then do you ever experience the purest extent of that word.
Even if you're the last one left to feel it.
"More experienced than you'll ever know," I replied earnestly, lowly, but evenly. The sickness festering in my soul from Beacon Academy was finally dwindling, fading from my immediate consciousness as I breathed the clean air of my preferred environment.
A bar filled with a ruckus of intoxicated people, most with aura and few without, but all here to intermingle in an atmosphere of false, proximity-based atmospheric enjoyment.
Seraphine's mind took a trip into the nearest gutter, something I didn't bother changing.
My response held a connotation she didn't need to understand, few deserved to, so I let her shuffle her legs in the current rising heat of her cheeks.
Cleaning glasses and preparing drinks was easy, stirring them was efficiently quick and shaking them even moreso, but I had my own methods.
Nobody goes to the Black Stallion just to drink a few drinks.
They come to see the lights.
This bar was mine for the night, and it may not be under the same name my father gave the building I now own, but it was close enough in concept that the difference wasn't immediately precedent at all.
It was all mine.
My bright green eyes crackled with energy beneath the rim of my hat, the rest of my body following as all that aura channeled into the fingertips of my right hand.
Then with a simple touch to the bar's surface…
The air shattered around me.
Space broke into fragmentations of off-set strands of light as drifting panels of my own aura twisted and merged. All across the interior of the room grew an expanse of enkindled lime green glows, fragmented and fluttering like stars falling from the night sky.
Glints of light shined across panels and lines, interconnecting the ceiling and the walls with an untouchable display of luminescence. I branched my aura down to each table, twisting down in spires to touch base at the center of each one before emitting a grid of light across their surfaces.
And from that point forward… I had every customer in this entire establishment eating out of the palm of my gloved hand.
I shifted the tables to new positions, customers who knew what was going on set their own chairs aside and prompted the rest to do the same, and then everyone got clear.
The whole room fell into a self-rearrangement, pushing furniture into new areas while creating new constructs out of the solid light of my aura alone.
Game tables generated across the grids I created throughout the room and tables, the branches I pulled down from the ceiling receding as those grids took temporary residence on the planes they now resided.
A pool table of energy built itself up across two large tables in the corner, another mirroring it to its immediate right. I racked the balls for them, supplied the sticks and the cue ball, and let them play.
Other tables merged and generated separate games.
From Ping-Pong to poker, alongside all the necessities that pair with each one like playing cards and accessories, I filled the room with reasons to stay and spend money, reasons to freely allow oneself to be extorted in order to have the time of one's life…
All while intoxicated under the craft of my own making.
"You truly have a gift, Niro," Seraphine sighed, leaning her side into the bar as her gaze turned to the room.
The majority of the people within the bar cheered loudly behind her, most beginning to indulge themselves in what I built before them.
Whatever remained of the rest of them regrouped at open tables I set aside for those wanting to converse. And, unforgettably, I left all the lonely suckers I have here at the bar itself to nothing but the treats of alcohol.
They didn't need anything more than that.
The sharp crack of a racked triangle of pool balls breaking and scattering across a falsely-felted table tipped into the room before a flash of lightning glowed through the windows.
I could feel the energy of the storm manifesting outside. It was building above us, filtering into the expanse of the bar around me and into my senses as rain cascaded down upon the streets of the city.
"I wouldn't call it a gift," I replied, cleaning out a couple shot glasses with a white cloth behind the bar.
"Something out there gave you a miraculous power, something for you alone to use. If it's not a gift, then what is it?" Seraphine asked, turning to face me again as she rested her chin into the sanctuary of her own palm.
"An anchor," I replied.
It was what held me in place within this existential expanse of agony and happiness. But with all relations, there was always a tradeoff, a mutual agreement or respectful contract.
Or, in some cases, a forced cooperation through means one side has no ability to refute… or chance to change.
With this, it was far more detrimental than anyone here could ever imagine.
And they never will.
Anoel sat on the floor of the dormitory hallway, back leaning against the door to her own room as she played on her scroll.
It was here she's waited for an hour now, nearly two.
Music played softly through black earbuds dangling from her head, fingers tapping to whatever melody playing from her scroll as she split her attention between reading forums and the heat signatures within the room behind her.
The two inside had finally settled down, and after a little while longer, she felt their heart rates begin to level off and grow steadily slower.
They were finally sleeping.
She continued her amusements for a while longer, making sure they were comfortably deep into their slumbers before she finally got up.
One good thing after another, Ano was making sure her sister could live a life she could be happy to live. The warm soul deserved a life like that…
Even if the eldest didn't.
A soft click signaled the unlocking of the door, and a moment later, Anoel was inside the room and re-locking the door behind her.
It was time she got her own sleep, after all.
Aww, Anoel's playing the orchestrator while Arex is putting her shyness and reserved nature aside for the sake of her partner. There's a very deep reason why lightning terrifies Kitsuki, a major reason.
Obviously, it directly involves her past and why she's the way she is. That includes both mentally and physically.
When it's eventually revealed, you'll know what I'm talking about. And when you eventually do, you'll realize how detrimental this kind of chapter really was.
Even if, as of right now, it may just feel like sweet fluffiness.
Oh, and Niro's just being Niro again. But now you can see why people enjoy his bar! You know, other than his connection to the widely spanning Information Network spread out across the world of Remnant's kingdoms.
Incredible drinks and flashy entertainment, all made all the more potent when intoxicated. His patrons enjoy themselves quite thoroughly.
For now, Favorite and Follow.
I look forward to seeing REVIEWS for this. You'll be introduced to a LOT of concepts of mine. Feel free to give me your thoughts.
Cya XP