09: Monkey
Best freshmen initiation ever.
Especially compared to last year's "classmate bonding." Waking them up at four in the morning for a city-wide scavenger hunt and a free breakfast? Where's the fun in that? Nah, hunting down every last freshie in the middle of the day underneath the blazing summer sun while in full uniform is the best thing to happen in school so far, in Sun's honest opinion. He's got the power! Not something he really ever experienced as a rapscallion on the streets, so you can't fault him for running crazy on it a little, right? It's like running with scissors. YOLO!
Of course, it's not like he's forgetting his roots. The rules that he and his fellow Directors set up were pretty much made to be broken. So if the freshies wear their uniform like the good little faunus they are, they melt in the summer haze. If they bring out their big guns, Sun gets to play. And when they run like the overwhelmed wimps that they are… then Sun really gets to play. What are they really like when they're backed up against a wall? What kind of inner Grimm comes out when their humanity is stripped away?
Basically, how much can he trollolol them before they snap?
There's really one woman he wants to see lose her cool: Weiss Schnee.
…Bummer that Jaune already beat him to it.
Sun has yet to teach the young grasshopper the ways of the troll, however. Jaune was in the best position to milk it for all it was worth… and he chose suicide instead. Party foul. For real, though, the blonde was just the unfortunate final straw that shattered what was already an unstable energy construct of a weapon. Now he has the whole 'god of chaos' to live up to. Which, bee-tee-dubs, is hilarious.
Now, see, if Sun's the one to light the fuse to Weiss' firecracker, then he'll make sure that the conflagration is dragged out as long as possible. Look up 'nervous trainwreck' in the dictionary and you'll see Weiss' Bite Me portrait right there, complete with that haughty expression showing just how far she has a stick up her nether lands. All Sun has to do is wiggle the stick a little, maybe shove it in deeper, or otherwise get the spoiled brat to explode… and he'll be picking out all the secrets he needs.
Like exactly where the girl is hiding the Sea of Dragons.
Old Man Schnee can't be the one in possession of the war artifact. He's in the slammer. He's a war criminal, a merciless mass murderer forever sleepin' where the sun don't shine. Eye witnesses report that the powerful Sea of Dragons crystal disintegrated within his hands when he used it to end the Battle of Fort Castle—but who really believes that? It's just a cover story that war buddies made up to save the Grimm-damned life of their respected general. And while the idiots of Remnant might believe that they're safe from the draconic oceans that conquered their armies, Yang's Dragoness intuition just knows that her legacy's still whole, still well, and whispering softly to her to join the spirits of her kin within its deep depths of deepness.
Sun's still wondering how the hell a crystal can talk.
Or hold the souls of an entire Clan. Doesn't it get crowded in there?
Anyways, that stick up Weiss' butt is there for a very good reason. The world might not be able to get to General Schnee in the safety of his padded cell, but his daughter is young and exposed, occupied with saving the Schnee legacy and company from the shade he threw all over it. The girl is literally a ticking time bomb waiting to somebody to shatter her into a thousand pieces.
Yang's poised to strike. The legacy of her Clan hangs in the balance; she has an honor to protect, a species to save. The name of her family, her dark and troubled past, yadda yadda.
Sun? He's free from that, really. Nothing he needs to defend with his insignificant life. The only thing he has is his namesake—Sun Wukong, the Monkey King, the lowly street degenerate that scammed his way into the heavens. Story of his life, pretty much: he lives to play with danger, with the boys and girls waiting to explode and begging for release. Yang Xiao Long. Cardin Winchester. Blake Belladonna.
Little Miss Weiss Schnee.
10: Rooster
She'd prepared for the worst.
And this? Well, they couldn't say she wasn't expecting the hostility.
But can't she at least get a break? For maybe a minute or two? The second she steps off the train, she has six or seven upperclassmen breathing down her neck for the war crimes her father committed. Not her. Her dad.
Not her.
She did take up his "flag" after he was imprisoned. She knows that, considering his devastating misdeeds, she should have dissolved the Schnee Dust Company. The corporation's mostly dead weight anyways, seeing as her dear father used up most of its funds to commit heinous crimes against humanity. One of her crazy conservative aunts even advised that she marry herself off to rid herself off the curse of the Schnee last name.
The problem is that the legacy of Schnee used to carry such honor. In past decades, it was a title of integrity. To have it tarnished within the course of a single generation due to the cowardly actions of a misguided general was not something that she could allow. In her honest opinion, it was never a choice anyways. Her name is Weiss Schnee. It will always be Weiss Schnee. She'll be one of those celebrities who gets married but never changes her name, because the legacy of Schnee is not something she'd ever be willing to lose.
Though perhaps she should have foreseen that what was basically the equivalent of a combat high school would pretty much be the worst place to flee to if she wanted to avoid harm—or worse, judgment. Sure, there are mature individuals here. There are also hotheaded teenagers literally screaming for her blood because their hormones don't know any better. It's probable that those mature individuals want to see her punished too, but at least they're more subtle about it.
Not like the Malachite and her floating dead sister standing before her currently… which brings her back to being prepared. Because never in a million year could she expect something as horrificas this.
Something like teenage pride prevents her from blurting what the Grimm did you do to defile the corpse of your long-dead sister, because forget about honor, this is just propriety: once the dead are laid to rest, they're supposed to stay rested. She still misses her mother, but she's not mucking around with her mother's soul, or whatever bizarre energy construct is hovering behind Melanie.
Melanie directs a wry grin at Weiss. "This probs isn't what you wanted, but I know you totally need it."
Deflect. This she can do well: filling out the missing spaces in her mind while buying time with empty words. "A challenge between company rivals?" she scoffs, not even missing a beat. "This is hardly the time and place to hold a competition."
"This is totes the perfect situation," Melanie counters. "Schnee Dust Company versus Malachite Technologies. A large, open space that's pretty much asking us to do battle on it."
"That old debate again? My father demonstrated the superiority of Dust over technology during the war." {Great job distancing yourself from your father's legacy, dolt. Quick, talk about something else—} "Speaking of which, that… thing behind your shoulder." She places a finger on her chin and smirks coquettishly. "That isn't exactly machinery, is it?"
Well, it could be. In the same way that she utilized an energy construct fashioned entirely of glyphs to fight (and fail) against Jaune, the homage of the deceased Militiades Malachite could just be a holograph. Except one does not bring a digital being to a fight unless it is assured that it can remain tangible enough to affect the physical world.
…Weiss has a feeling that the ghost of Miltiades is much, much more than an artificial intelligence engineered from the wonders of Malachite technology.
Melanie settles into a fighting stance: hands out at her sides for balance, weight settling low in her hips to provide stability for sky-high kicks. "Come at me, Weiss," Melanie crows. "Let me show you how Malachite Technologies is changing the inner Grimm. Next, the world."
Weiss' hand strays behind her, reaching into her shadow. For just a second, she expects an empty void behind her, just as it's always been. It was there even when her furious father stood before her, demanding that she pick herself off the floor when she could hardly breathe from exhaustion. When he left her side for Fort Castle, she was more alone than she'd ever been; but it was what she was expected, because she was always prepared.
Except this time, another hand materializes from her shadow and clasps hers.
She sought asylum in the capital of Menagerie because a large portion of her company's investors were situated there. They would shield her from the hate. They would support her as she worked her way through three years of schooling, regaining the trust of Menagerie by starting from the bottom and working her way up to the top. She expected that yet still kept herself closed off emotionally. This was solely a business venture, an effort to reclaim the integrity of her family name.
She hadn't prepared for a certain Cat to worm her way into her heart anyways. There was no romance nor any Dog-like vocalizations of adoration when it came to Blake—just a constant faithful presence by her side. Usually silent, but ultimately supportive. But most of all, it was the existence of sisterly love, however faint, that cracked through the walls around Weiss' heart. Is still forcing her to open up, bit by bit.
She squeezes Blake's hand, feeling just a little more confident now that she knows her friend is right behind her. She drops into a polite curtsy, bowing her head momentarily before flashing the most predatory grin she can muster at Melanie. The little fragment of Dust crystal that she'd chipped off the larger Sea of Dragons this morning grows warm in the locket hanging around her neck as she hisses, "You asked for a battle? You've got it."
11: Dog
She doesn't have Magnhild with her, but that's okay. She once used a freakin' watermelon on a stick to break through a beaver dam clogging up her village's water supply, no lie, so the absence of her usual Exploding Confetti Hearts is no big, really.
Really, running away from a thug in red aviators doesn't even bother her. She ain't bovvered. No, really. Look at the face. Bovvered? Ain't. Bovvered. At all.
Him, though? Really, just because she yelled the back of yo' head is ridiculous and it looks like a baby bear's fuzzy bottom as she ran past is no reason to pull a red katana out of absolute freakin' nowhere and wave it over his head while chasing her and roaring the lamest threats ever.
Okay, maybe it's plenty reason. And maybe she legit wanted to rile him up, just for that extra boost of adrenaline in what was already a mad dash uphill towards school. She just didn't expect him to get so mad so easily. Or to send energy slashes out of his sword.
Seriously, does he have a battery attached to the hilt? Where is all that freakin' energy coming from?
Too bad she doesn't have Magnhild as her rocket-powered getaway. It'd be so much funner than running over rooftops, chortling and stumbling over her own feet as Fuzzy Butt's sword pops up between her legs like some messed-up version of… {No brain stop rambling.}
Hey—if he has a weapon, does this mean she can cheat and bust out her own moves?
She takes a chance, bounding across an alleyway in a detour towards larger streets. A street sign might work. Ooo, how hilarious would a STOP sign be? Considering the sharpness of her opponent's blade, though, it might—
{ACK SHIT—erm, I mean WHOOPSIES.}
A broad shockwave shaves her off the top of a building and sends her tumbling into a recycling bin below. She lands in a shower of aluminum cans and plastic bottles, which is great to cushion and minimize the damage to her tender complexion {aw fu—um, Grimm, not like I care anyways} but pretty much announces her landing spot to her pursuer.
Time to pick herself out of this shizz-hole and run. She rolls around until she's generally oriented towards the open top of the recycling container, throws herself up at the rim of the gigantic metal cube… and, because she's so freakin' short, barely curls her fingertips over the lip of the bin.
{Aw fuuuu…dge. This is not how I'm going to go out.}
Her wild imagination envisions her pathetic height reducing even more, so much that the square opening of sky above her shrinks away as the green metal walls press her into greater darkness, and the claustrophobia she'd long suppressed rears its ugly head—
A long, saving arm of salvation snakes over the lip of the recycling bin. Nora's jumped its bones before it's finished its descent towards her, scrambling up its length like a drowning pup clambering for the solid warmth of land. She lands on the pavement, shivering with a dark coldness that melts away the longer she feels the sunlight on her skin. That's good. That's—
"Don't like being caged?"
She takes half a second to get over herself before shooting a furtive glance at the hulking figure above her. "Not really," she laughs, though it feels more like she's hacking up a hairball than really releasing any sort of laughter. It's unspoken between the two of them that their claustrophobia arises from similar experiences of being Strays trapped behind human borders, so they leave it at that. She does feel a certain warmth towards him, however, especially when she notices his brilliant survival plan.
"That's cheating!" she blurts happily. "I like it."
"Not really cheating," the guy explains, reaching through the chink in his Boar-emblazoned armor to pull at his uniform. "The Directors only excluded weapons. They didn't say anything about protection."
Nora likes him. It really doesn't take much for her to make friends, which is one of her strengths. Or greatest weaknesses, depending on whoever's commenting on her life choices at the time. Ren tells her over their telepathic connection that all the backstabbing betrayals she's experienced by too many of her 'friends' would have embittered any other normal faunus. She just cheerfully retorts that she's long known she isn't normal.
Besides, she just knows that this one wouldn't hurt her. He's a Boar, for one. Aren't they supposed to be nurturing woobies on the inside? Plus his eyes tell an entire story that she can't read that far into, but that she trusts.
"Building up your defenses and protecting your uniform," Nora chirps, saluting him. "You, sir Boar, are cray-cray smart. Well, I've got to run. Got somebody on my tail and I wouldn't want to put you in dangeroooooh shiiiiiiizzle."
A wild Fuzzy Butt has appeared at one end of the alleyway, meaning that she needs to hightail it for the other end. She's barely pointed her feet in the right direction before the bovvered upperclassman brings his katana down in one fell swoop, conjuring a descending guillotine-like line of energy to slice her from above.
She's in the process of twisting her body around the recycling bin in the desperate hope that the metal box will take some of the brunt of the blow when the Boar shifts into high gear, sliding into her. One arm forces her onto the ground and one of his legs kicks her in the side as she goes down and her survival instinct kicks in at the post-trauma memories whirl into mind. She irrationally lashes out against the back of his armored shins, even as she catches sight of the Boar lifting his other metal-encased forearm to bear the brunt of the falling shockwave. His knees buckle at the force and she barely snakes out from under him as he crashes back onto his haunches, but in the end, he manages to break through the barrage and shrug it off. Not that that can be said for the bottles and cans around them that explode upward in shreds of aluminum and plastic confetti.
Light… if that she had been alone underneath that wave of energy…
And just like that, Nora's made a friend.
12: Boar
The stretch of his uniform pulled taut against his skin weighs heavily on Cardin's mind as he lifts one leg from its kneeling position. His armor, crafted by Malachite Technologies, is literally synched to his aura so that it expands as he puts on muscle as needed. It was given to him that day Melanie hired him to keep an eye on her sister, and Cardin had patted himself on the back at the time for finally scoring a job with a fairly fat paycheck and great benefits. Just one step closer to returning home.
He celebrated too early. Nine months after being hired and Melanie just fired him. Today. No paycheck, no reason to even be enrolled at this stupid combat academy… What is he even doing with his life anymore?
Maybe he'll talk to Sun. Taurus might be his Director, but the Monkey can actually be serious when the situation calls for it. And… Sun doesn't blink an eye when Cardin talks about his… unique childhood. If that's one thing that going to an all-faunus school is good for, it's that there are more opportunities to make friends.
Even if they're the ones also doing the hazing. Like battling in uniform? Seriously? As far as he can tell, no harm has befallen his school wear. Of course, he wouldn't be surprised to shed his lower gear and find he'd torn his pants right down the center.
More importantly, the little Stray beneath him doesn't seem to be harmed either. There's a little panicked craziness in her eyes, but she'll get over it. They all do with time. He checks her a second time, just to make sure she's alright, before standing again.
The girl's pursuer has a great body, Cardin can tell straight away, even though he's most definitely older. The scowl on his face is almost cute, as is the attempts at facial hair. He has all the makings of a future daddy bear, in fact… but Cardin's not sure he can get behind a man chasing after a smaller, unarmed girl. Not that her smaller size or female gender means anything. They're usually the crazier ones, actually. She probably made fun of his semi-beard or something. Still, he can't help his naturally protective side from backing up the disadvantaged party in this situation.
He steadies his breathing. The blow was not meant to be taken without armor, which means the dick standing in front of him pretty much challenged him to stick out his neck for the ginger he'd just pulled out of the recycle unit. No problem, especially since he has an inkling that she's a Stray like him. "You done?" he calls down towards Papa Bear, his voice as solid and confident as possible.
Papa Bear replies by bringing his katana up, its crimson blade already glimmering with another energy blast ready to let loose.
{Aw. That's not. That's not even fair.}
The girl shows how many flying fudges she gives for fair as she sidesteps around Cardin and straight-up charges at Papa Bear in a suicide rush. She's wearing the world's largest shit-eating grin and doesn't even flinch at the wide sheet of diffusing energy that blasts her way. She moves like a leaf in the wind around the humming disturbance, just barely saving the tip of her tiny nose as she dodges. Her back is still turned when Papa Bear swings yet again, creating a red wave of energy rippling her way. Cardin casts around for something, anything—he stabs his fingers down into the holes of a manhole cover, yanks the nasty metallic circle into a respectable grip, and sends it whizzing like a frisbee at her.
"Catch!"
The ginger doesn't miss a beat, a lithe arm reaching out and snatching the manhole cover out of midair before whirling about and blocking the shockwave with the makeshift shield. Or course, the two shockwaves were just a distraction for Papa Bear to close the distance between him and his target—but Cardin uses it to his advantage as well. With Papa Bear's attention focused on his fellow Stray, Cardin rushes in to punch him seven ways to Sunday.
At least, until she shoots a wink back at him, her lips mouthing one word: Down.
Like any obedient Stray, he listens. He practically throws himself onto his back to arrest his momentum, and in the meanwhile, the ginger just barely squeezes out of the path of the red katana. Just barely. As in she's practically still within the blast radius, her orange hair sizzling in the heat, the violently displaced air toppling her over until she reverse-somersaults to her feet.
She's almost… playing with Papa Bear. Baiting him to advance on her, dodging away at the last second… and drawing the opponent away from him, because Strays have a greater chance of escape when they split up. She's that kind of the Stray. The one on the run. The one who never wanted to be stuck on the human side of the war.
So not like him. Not like the faunus born and raised human. The one accepted and loved, even though he was faunus, because of who he was inside.
"Be a good boy and stay!" the ginger barks happily. And then she and Papa Bear are gone.
And he is left behind once again.
01: Rat
Ruby is, in fact, not dead. Slightly crispy around the edges, yes; but hey, her foster sister's a Dragoness who explodes on a daily basis, so she can totally take the heat! (She just wishes she'd remembered that Jaune might not be so fireproof before she'd thrown the bomb in his general vicinity.)
{See? This is why weapons are better than friends. Weapons don't die.}
She untangles her cape from the tree it's snagged itself in and drops to the ground quickly. The explosion threw her way too far from the impact site, so she'll have to take a super long detour if she wants to pick through the junkyard for the charred chunks of whatever's left of Jaune.
Didn't Yang say something about situations like this once? Something like…
{"Don't worry, Ruby. You learned from the best. I too like to end things with a Yang!"}
No, that wasn't it. It was more serious, like…
{"People aren't like weapons. It's harder to put them back together when you blow them up."}
But then again, it could be…
{"And this is why we can't have nice things, Ruby."}
There are a lot of Yang-isms in Ruby's mind. In fact, most of her childhood is filled with memories of her super awesome sis swooping in from the skies to explore the far reaches of Menagerie, or go over some basic combat drills, or offer tidbits of teenage wisdom. Or, during the war, to take a break from the battlefield and hang out with the normal Mouse in her boringly normal life.
Sure, Ruby saw what the war had done to Yang: made her the last of her kind, doused the fire in her eyes into a dull burn. She honored her uncle's word when he forbade her from joining the war effort and she was there for her big sis in those cold nights when the Dragoness needed to pretend that the war hadn't left bleeding burns all over her soul.
But as a result, Ruby feels left out, isolated from all the battle scars that all her Zodiac classmates had gained. …Is that a horrible thing to wish for? To want tragedy, just so she doesn't feel like an innocent child surrounded by war veterans?
Well, at least she's not the only one who didn't take an arrow to the knee. There's Jaune. He has pretty normal knees like her! He doesn't have shadows haunting his soul, darkness behind his eyes… he's got a clueless smile on his face, and he's got wings (what with all the explosions and flying and knocking himself out that's been going on around him lately). Sooooo naturally, Ruby's gravitated towards him a bit. They can be normal together, untouched by the war of yesteryear.
Well, provided that Jaune is still in one piece.
Okay, change of plans. Not that she really had any plans in the first place; since she's already affiliated with Yang, Ruby doesn't need to do any of this initiation stuff. Still, she wants to be part of the action, to fight and have fun, soooo she readily agreed when Jaune asked her to be part of Team Jaune last night. And she might have followed him into the subway this morning and lied about being assigned to the same train as he was. Anyways: return to junkyard. Find Jaune. Fulfill her role as part of Team Jaune by not blowing him up more than she already has and bringing him safely back to the Academy!
With this firm goal in mind, she takes a step forward and promptly runs into the solid abdominals of a really tall guy.
"Oof!"
It's like running into brick wall, except skinnier, like a brick tree. The brick tree doesn't move when she collides with him, so all her momentum goes straight back into a bounceback that sends her sprawling onto her butt.
"Ouchie. I am so sorry," she says, popping back up to her feet and brushing her skirt down. Ugh. The uniform is so thin and flimsy that she can feel the breeze between her legs. Why can't she wear her frilly, black-and-red combat skirt for school?
Like the brick tree guy she bumped into. He should be wearing the school uniform; instead, he's totally got a black-and-red getup going on too. And hey! Never mind that she's only fifteen and that this man has probably been in this world for twice as long as she has; he totally stole her rose motif! She should sue him for copyright; after all, it's not like he generates random showers of rose petals every time he uses his semblance, right?
Right?
"Watch where you're going," Brick Tree rumbles. Oooh, he's got horns on his noggin. Ox Clan? Wasn't one of the Directors an Ox? She tells her rambling mind to shut up, because he's got a hand on the hilt of a sheathed sword (that he wasn't supposed to bring). At least, according to Sun… but Sun was a Monkey, the conniving, mischievous, scheming Director of Eastern Dragon. Ruby bets that all the seniors brought their weapons along anyways.
Which is fine. Ruby loves meeting new weapons. She'd feel a lot less like running for her life if Crescent Rose was by her side, but in the end, her inner weapon geek wins out over her survival instinct. "Can I please see your sword?"
The man stares down at her impassively for a very long second. Well, he's wearing a mask, so she can't be entirely sure that he's actually staring at her, but at the very least he is angling his face in her general direction. After a very long second, he growls, "Everyone who's ever asked me that has ended up dead."
A thrill of adrenaline races through her blood at that. Oooh, witty! She's going to have to save that line for the next bimbo who asks how her tiny body can wield Crescent Rose. Maybe she should ask Yang to observe this Ox and pick up more clever battle quotes from him.
Or maybe she should pull out her trump card before he shows her the pointy end of his sharp stick. "I'm Yang's little sis, by the way!"
Brick Tree's hand hasn't moved from his sword hilt. Ruby gets the impression that he's a quickdraw kind of guy. Like, wham bam thank you ma'am. Or maybe more like slice dice well that was nice. Either way, the fact that his hand hasn't moved a millimeter during the course of their short-lived conversation means jack squat.
The Ox inclines his head forward like he's about to make a move, setting Ruby's flight drive on fire. Maybe he'll try to recruit her? That'd be nice. Despite already being part of Yang's pack, Ruby wouldn't mind if somebody at least tries to chase her.
"Okay," he rumbles.
Ruby tilts her head inquisitively, suppressing the need to flashstep away in a confetti burst of flower petals in favor of teasing his prey drive. "Are you going to hunt me?"
"No."
{Well, that was disappointing.} "Why not?"
Brick Tree finally relaxes, and with that goes her nickname, because he is very suddenly less of an inanimate statue and more of a normal faunus (albeit an old one, because seriously, he looks twice as old as she is!) "You've been claimed by Yang," he explains slowly. "My efforts will be wasted on you. I'm waiting for another."
Ruby nods. Okay, good enough of an answer. Question number two: "Waiting for who?"
The Ox glances down at her one last time before facing forward and becoming a waiting Brick Tree again.
"The one who'll set us free."
02: Ox
Adam is too old for this shit. That Rat girl was young enough to be his child, for Light's sake. (Though if anybody ever mentions that to his face, they'll find themselves abruptly missing a finger or three.)
But for his Cat, he enrolled within Zodiac Acaemy two years ago as a junior. He's still faking the whole school thing for her. Every day, he stuffs himself into a costume, sits in classes, and grinds his teeth when haughty old scholars recite battles and bloodshed and lives in terms of numbers and piss all over his cause, his goals, his revenge. When they blame his organization and curse his name.
When they curse her.
It makes his blood boil, when so many of his lowerclassmen pin the blame on Strays, sneer at the Cat that supposedly betrayed them all. But he knows to take his time, let his anger build and focus all that pent-up energy on the final goal. That moment will come soon enough; until then, he keeps his semblance in check.
If somebody had told the Adam of eight years ago that he'd come to care for somebody so much that he'd sacrifice his own wellbeing for her—and a girl several years younger, at that—he'd have skewered that unlucky bastard right then and there. (There had been a shitty secretary who'd called him her father once; he would not be having children any time soon.) But here he is, and here she is, and the plan craftily woven together by a clever Cat is finally coming to a head.
That she stays her hand over the final lynchpin unsettles Adam more than he's ever felt before in his life. And he's not a nervous bastard either. He trusts her—after all, she learned everything about this cruel and beautiful world from him—but he's been waiting, simmering semblance just barely boiling over, for years, and he still can't see why she's resting so much of her plan on a bumbling blonde of a shit.
Never mind. The moment the blonde Lemming fulfills his role, the second that Blake sets the plan into motion, Adam will unleash years of pent-up energy into the world. Hell will break loose. But until then, he'll bide his time, releasing steam in… other ways.
He spots a potential target minutes after the little Mouse toddles away. Yang's little sister didn't live through the shit of the war, so there was no point in engaging her. This new woman, however, has a heaviness in her step. Even without her weapon, clad in a stiff school uniform, she moves with confidence, clutching in her hands a… fuckin' loaf of bread?
He lands as aggressively as possible in front of the redhead, barring her progression up the narrow street. He turns his weapon towards her as an unspoken threat and is satisfied when she draws back, her hackles rising at the silent challenge.
He can't say that he didn't expect it, but when she lobs the oversized breadstick at his forehead like the wimpiest spear in all of Remnant, it catches him slightly off-guard. As such, he's half a second late to reacting as she rises over him in a powerful leap. He can't keep his mouth from curling up at the edges as he lashes out with his crimson blade, sending out a low-power shockwave to knock the girl off balance (after all, even he has qualms about attacking weaponless opponents). He gets over that when the redhead pulls a lunch tray out of fuckin' nowhere and reflects the force right back at him. He shrugs it off easy, but some force splashes onto the eaves of a rooftop above him, tiles and little flecks of shit that get in his eyes as he tries to pursue the girl.
The lunch tray won't last another shockwave, but he draws in close for the kill anyways, his sword hand itching to slice his sword right across the redhead's chest. At the same time, the girl throws her arms above her head as if tossing something into the open sky, leaving herself wide open and unguarded. He almost can't believe that she'd make such a move, especially when he isn't hiding his deathblow—
A fountain of pop cans explodes underneath him a second later, streaming straight upwards from the mouth of a soda machine in the street below. Vivid greens and neon purples explode all across his body, knocking his sword hand free of the hilt of his blade, soaking through his clothes and stinging his skin, and obscuring the eye slits of his mask instantly. He barely sticks his landing, blinded as he is. He's completely unprepared for what feels like a turkey-assisted punch in the gut. {What the flippin' fuck?} But he readily concedes defeat when she places a foot on his neck, raising his hands above his head.
"Your name?" he asks as she pulls him to his feet.
"Pyrrha Nikos. Tigress."
From prey to predator, with almost nothing going for her. He sees Blake's life story contained within this moment in Nikos, and for just the briefest of moments, he feels a hint of affection.
Before he brutally murders it and stuffs its corpse down the track to his ass.
"You've performed admirably, Nikos," he growls, moments before he lashes out with his blade.
There is no rest for the weary, even in times of supposed peace. He made sure to teach his Cat that: war never dies. And when Blake finally makes her move, the final straw that sends the world spinning back into chaos, Adam won't hold back.
Shadows will fall.
03: Tiger
Pyrrha waits for the older Ox to disappear before she pushes herself up into a sitting position with a wince. Her midsection aches from his blow; she is dismayed to find that he cut all the way through her jacket and dress shirt, straight to the tight thermal undershirt beneath. If he had really meant to harm her, this would have put her out of the action for good.
She is almost furious that he attacked her as she helped him. She had mercy and she paid for it… just like that blonde soldier.
She had not really felt the weight of those human soldier's lifeblood on her soul on her thirteen birthday. Her rage blinded her, adrenaline fueled her, and she saw only soulless humans attacking the defenseless Dragons at Fort Hospice. It was not until the conflict was over, when she trekked off by herself onto the bloody battlefield, that she came across a human soldier her age, shivering in the drizzle, barely propping himself up with a sword coated in golden dragon blood. He was already bleeding out, already half-dead, yet he still lashed out at her when she held up both hands placatingly.
He cried out a little as she stabbed him through. His watery blue eyes begged her for life until her knees gave out underneath her. She sat by his side as he turned his face to the sky and cried silently, unblinkingly, until the blood from his chest soaked into his flaxen blonde hair.
She has learned since then not to let down her guard. Cornered creatures, be they human, faunus, or Grimm, will still fight even amongst overwhelming defeat. It is this constant vigilance that protects her when the Ox draws his sword on her in a flash of crimson. She cannot dodge, having literally just pulled him to his feet. She recognizes this instantly as a lesson in the art of war, but she cannot help but feel resentful nonetheless as she skids backwards, her forearms smarting where she had concentrated her aura to shield herself against his blow.
The metal shells of spent soda cans still lie around her, so she uses several to build a wall of scraps to cover her escape.
Mercy has no place within the predator's heart whilst on the battlefield.
…But this isn't the battlefield. This is a city that does not deserve violence in its streets. Still, more and more often, Pyrrha finds herself plunged back into that heightened paranoia of combat. She had hoped that attending a battle academy would refine those reflexes into something that could be used for the civil resolution of conflict in the new world that post-war Menagerie now had access to. And while she knows that future is attainable, there are still reminders that drag her back into the guilt of her past.
The greatest of them being Jaune.
And butting right up against that is her instinct to protect the prey. It makes no sense to her, as she is a predator herself; but she remembers the rampant inequality of a war-torn country, where only the fittest survived, and remembers just as strongly her desire to protect. She protects Jaune of Lemming, yet at the same time she remembers that her mercy meant nothing to the dying human soldier. She protects and she kills and she kills and—
And she acts without a second thought when she sees some hotshot upperclassman trying to flip up the skirt of a frightened Rabbit. The Rabbit's speed is hampered by her efforts to hold her skirt down, while the pervert has some sort of wind-based semblance that gives him the upper hand… until Pyrrha uses her polarity to smack him up the head with a STOP sign.
Oo. He's not moving.
Oh well.
"Are you alright?" she calls, jogging up to the bunny-eared brunette. She scoops the STOP sign back up into her arms and, seeing as its twisted base will not allow her to return the sign to its point of origin, gingerly leans it up against a nearby store. "He did not hurt you, did he?"
The Rabbit shakes her head. "Lark… he just…" She buries her face in her hands, blushing furiously. "Never mind! I'm… I need to find Yatsuhashi."
Before the brunette can scuttle off, Pyrrha pulls out her scroll. "A friend of yours? What does he look like?" She pantomimes holding their scrolls together. "I will send a notification in your direction if I see him."
The Rabbit's pale face flushes an even more furious red when she stutters, "H-h-he's… almost seven feet of tanned muscle."
Pyrrha feels blood rising up into her cheeks. "Oh. I… Let's just trade contact info."
"I… thank you." The Rabbit shakes her head, as if clearing the blood from it. "I am so sorry; I haven't thanked you for…" She glances down at Lark's prone body while she produces her scroll from within her uniform. "I'm just… so embarrassed… but thank you!"
She puts a comforting hand on the smaller girl's shoulder, who looks as if she's ready to bolt at any second. "It truly is nothing to worry about," she grins, glancing over the girl's profile as her scroll registers her classmate's details. "I will see you again, Velvet, will I not?"
Velvet nods once—and then she's gone.
The Rabbit is the textbook definition of prey, Pyrrha knows for sure. What she doesn't know is where she, as a Tigress, stands.
04: Rabbit
She wears a different set of panties every day, okay?
{J-j-just stop giving me a hard time about it!}
Some girls have a thing for shoes. Others obsess over accessories or jewelry. She hears that a certain Dragoness spends two hours every morning grooming her golden mane. Is it so strange that her chosen article of clothing is her underpants? Nobody sees them anyways, so it's not like they can judge her on her horrible choice of style. It's a… safe fashion statement. Yatsuhashi doesn't mind, and nobody else criticizes her.
Well… up until last week, when Sky Lark took an interest to her last week. She's been running ever since.
She's been running all her life anyways, so it's not that bad, right?
"'Sup, little lady?"
Velvet squeaks a little when the upperclassman steps in front of her. He has the confident smirk that Lark wears every day, the predator's weight in his step of Pyrrha, and the strength contained within muscle like Yatsuhashi. Her mind immediately begins to analyze the street for escape options, even though he's wearing the school uniform unlike so many of the other upperclassmen she's seen so far. It doesn't matter that his impeccably-styled, electric-blue hair looks like it'd topple over at the slightest stir of a fight; this guy is dangerous.
"Hey, hey!" He holds up both hands in a placating manner. Empty hands. Slender fingers unmarred by battle. "I just want to talk. No weapon, see?"
"Why would you want to talk with me?" she snorts. Hair, fingers, unblemished skin, chitchatting during a combat simulation… he's used to comfort, to easy times. The realization stops her from escaping up and over him.
"You're pretty, I'm bored." He flashes a gorgeous grin her way. "Let me escort you back to school."
Her face is getting sunburnt from his blindingly brilliant smile. She swears that one of his teeth actually sparkles. She diverts her face to the ground instead and murmurs, "Aren't you supposed to attack me?"
"Nah. I prefer to take girls out to dinner before our first fight."
Her face might actually be on fire now. "I'm actually looking for my… my guy friend."
Blue Hair smiles knowingly at her slight hesitation. "Ah. Well, I'm also looking for a friend, actually. Want to search together?"
"Um. I'm fine alone," she says. He's persistent. He's a predator. The muscles in her legs coil as she prepares to takeoff, any second now; but she disciplines her reflexes and, in a civil gesture, offers him a hand. "It was nice meeting you… what's your name?"
"Neptune." He shakes hers firmly. For a second, she's irrationally terrified that he's the spoiled kind of rich kid who won't let go because he always gets what he wants… but he turns out okay, because just gives her this slightly wounded smile that's supposed to make her feel guilty before releasing her.
Her life before White Fang was full of those expressions, over and over again on the faces of a dozen different johns. She can feel the horrible bitterness of those memories contorting her aura, twisting the happiness in her soul, and hides it by ducking her head under the pretense of shyness. "I'm Velvet. Uh. I'll… see you around."
{Welp. Is that polite enough a farewell?} She's about to launch off when Neptune abruptly pipes up, "Your friend wouldn't happen to be the Lemming who blew himself up, would he?"
She freezes in mid-leap. If the shockwaves from the explosion had been enough to knock her off course from following Yatsuhashi by air, then how terrible had the site of impact been?
{A Lemming with a death wish. Make sense.}
"Is he…" {still alive} "…okay?" she asks.
"He's an 'agent of chaos'," Neptune grins, punctuating his sarcasm with air quotes. "But he did fly pretty far north. He probably landed right back in his dorm room to perv another day."
"Jaune's not a pervert," she snaps. She's a little surprised at her snippy tone, but she finds almost as surprising that she actually means it. Jaune's actions have been blown out of proportion only because he's interacted with so many heads of authority in a short amount of time: Weiss Schnee, Sun Wukong, Yang Xiao Long. Meanwhile, nobody's noticed the creep who's memorized Velvet Scarlatina's schedule so he can follow her around. Sky Lark helped her up once day when she'd tripped, caught a glance of her panties, and has been preying on her since. The blonde Lemming, on the other hand, had tried to make conversation with her on the airship, even when she'd been painfully shy. And he'd defended her against Lark in a deserted hallway when nobody was watching.
Not that she'd tell any of this to the rich upperclassman she just met. She hasn't even told Yatsuhashi. She was just going to keep running… because it's what she does.
"Jaune… he isn't, isn't he?" muses Neptune.
Velvet nods curtly. "He's a friend. B-b-but not the friend I'm looking for! Jaune's a r-really good guy, he just, just has an unfortunately bad rep."
She bounds up onto a rooftop above Neptune before she can shove her foot any farther into her mouth. She meant what she said, but she now realizes… she actually hasn't held a conversation with Jaune. When Jaune had intimidated Lark into backing off after he'd accosted her in that deserted hallway, she'd rushed off to her next class without thanking him. And their first meeting on the airship had been very one-sided, with her mostly staring at her feet silently; then it was cut short by Jaune's sudden need to puke his guts pronto.
Maybe she'll talk to him one of these days. He is a good guy, after all; she just needs to stop running.
05: Dragon
"No sightings of Snow Angel in the eastern section."
"I haven't seen any Ice Queen activity here either."
Yang snaps her scroll shut and turns to glare at Sun. "You had just one job. Just one. Don't tell me that you blew it up into a huge Weiss hunt."
Sun shrugs while unbuttoning and re-buttoning the third button of his shirt. "Hey, you told me you wanted to track her down. So I strategized, got some friends to help out."
"I don't need the whole school in on it," Yang grumbles.
As if to reinforce her complaint, yet another message icon pops up on Sun's scroll—one of several dozen that have been streaming into the Monkey's device for the past hour, each from Sun's network of watchmen specifically looking out for Weiss Schnee.
She easily could have caught Weiss by herself if she could transform into her Dragoness form and patrol the skies, using her keen eyesight to look for the Schnee's characteristically icy droppings. But now that she's the last of the Dragons, she has to be protected at all costs, yadda yadda yadda. And that means not publicly parading her body for all humans to see.
Basically rules and regulations. Ugh. She came to Zodiac to have fun, but it seems no matter where she goes, limitations and expectations follow her doggedly. Can't do this, can't do that, have to act like this… she's a grown adult, for Light's sake, yet the higher ups treat her like a petulant teenager at best and a conceptual legacy, something to safeguard and hide away, at worst.
Really, the government always seems to drop in at the worst times. Take this morning's delightful surprise, for example: just when she thinks she has the best fighting-freshmen-initiation-ever all planned out, she finds out that they've sent in a couple secret agents to supervise. Even now, she can feel their eyes on her, suspiciously controlling every aspect of what was meant to be an organic, chaotic experience.
In short, this blows. Really, they can't really fault her for developing a rebellious streak. Like transforming whenever the hell she wants and dating a street rat with the namesake of a Monkey general who almost conquered the heavens.
All that being said, at least she can agree with the government on one thing: there are some pretty nasty humans out there. Roman Torchwick is still somewhere out there; so for now, Yang can grudgingly accept that she needs to stay undercover. Even if it is within the capital of faunus country.
Sun's unexpected bark of laughter startles Yang out of her introspection. "Hey, Yang, check out this note from Neptune," the Monkey chuckles.
"If it's another picture of sleeping corgi puppies, I don't want to see it. Not now."
"No, it's—"
"I'm really not in the mood for pretty ladies, Sun. This might come as a surprise, but of the two of us, I'm not the one with my head always in the gutter."
"Hey! I take offense to that."
Yang shoots him a frustrated glare as he continues to button and unbutton his dress shirt. "If wearing clothes makes you uncomfortable," she snarks, "then you really shouldn't have made it a requirement for all the freshmeat to wear theirs."
Sun tugs at his azure-blue tie and scowls. "It felt like a fun extra challenge at the time. But no, you should hear this one out: Neptune just met another girl who stuck up for Jaune."
"And I should care about this… why?"
"This is the blonde who had a wet dream about you and him and shopping."
She's pretty sure one of her eyebrows just disappeared up into her hairline. "How does that even… Wut." She shakes her head. "Hold on a sec. Jaune. As in: Ruby's friend?"
"Yeah. Apparently Ruby was in the dream too."
She tries not to explode. She really does. Still, spurts of golden fire erupt out from the follicles of her scalp as she rounds on Sun and demands, "And Jaune is just running around, telling everybody about his fantasies?"
"Somebody's spreading it around. But probably not Jaune himself," Sun ponders, "since the story pretty much roasts his nuts over an open fire."
"Who?" Yang pinches the bridge of her nose. "It was Neptune, wasn't it."
"Well, ch'yeah."
Neptune Vasilias… is an interesting guy. He is, for one, pretty much responsible for transforming Sun from a street punk into the Director of a strategy-focused division at a combat academy. That being said, boys will be boys; Sun and Neptune are pretty much bros-in-crime, from 'harmless' pranks to hitting on anything with a nice booty.
Neptune also has a pretty good handle on the gossip grapevine, so he serves Yang as an informant too. So while she's not exactly sure how Vasilias pried a horrifyingly embarrassing wet dream from Ruby's weirdo friend, she trusts Vasilias enough to believe it's (close enough to) the truth.
"Before you run off to destroy my unfortunate underclassman," interjects Sun quickly, "you should also know that Neptune's heard some ladies saying Jaune's just been in the wrong places and the wrong times."
Yang snorts. "You were the one who pointed out to me Jaune was a panty-peeking pervert. Like, the moment he woke up from his week-long coma, he was checking out Ruby."
He flashes her his best shit-eating grin. "Nah, he really wasn't looking up her combat skirt on purpose, really. That was just me screwin' with him by messin' with you."
Yang whacks him over the head, her concealed gauntlets adding quite a bit more oomph to the blow than she'd intended. Sun takes it with barely a grunt, though he does stumble a couple feet forward. "Baka."
"You used the word." He mimes wiping a tear of pride from his eye.
"You asked for it."
"Now I just need to get Ruby to start calling you onee-sama."
"Idiot."
"An idiot leading an entire Direction of idiots," he muses. "So, remember that Tigress that rescued him before you burnt him to a crisp? Her roommate says he's actually too innocent to be a nympho."
"Is this the girl who left the faunus portion of her application blank?"
"Eh, she's probably one of those weird ones. Like chocobo."
"Chocobos don't exist."
"That's what they want us to think." He scrunches up the entire left side of his face in an exaggerated wink. "I'm just saying that Headmistress Goodwitch wouldn't have accepted her if she wasn't already awesome."
The caustic retort on Yang's tongue fizzles away the moment a gigantic spire of ice erupts into existence in the east. The frozen structure has the elegant appearance of a gigantic spiral staircase screwing its way up into the stormy heavens, but there's something else incredibly alluring about the tower, so irresistibly desirable, that her inner Dragoness manifests from her spirit, streaming out of her chest in a torrent of molten gold, before she can stop it.
She snaps into action straight away; can't let her inner Grimm free, not when she can barely control it. As is, she's barely able to reabsorb it, to force its attributes onto her own body to transform from faunus to dragon. As the dragon mind merges with her own, the sight of the spiraling tower grows to drown everything else out with the roar of an ancient ocean, the flowing warmth of its welcoming waters, and the future that was taken away from her.
The Sea of Dragons calls out to her from within the heart of Weiss Schnee, and the Dragoness in Yang won't hesitate to tear it straight from the heiress' chest.
Twenty feet of serpentine trunk launches above Zodiac, kicking up two-second tornadoes and showering the streets with reflected golden sunlight. Every aerial faunus who witnesses the sight, whether they be prey, pursuer, or random commuter, instantly clear the city's airspace at the unspoken threat of the flying Dragoness; after all, Remnant's greatest predator is on the prowl.
{"Yang!"}
The memory of a tiny redheaded Mouse clutching onto her snout blossoms into her mindscape. She had been beyond gone when she fled Fort Hospice; she was nothing but a snarling animal, only aware of her own agony, oblivious that she had left her entire Clan behind to die. But in the worst moment of her life, Ruby reached into that inferno and selflessly pulled Yang into her arms, and that's not something that Yang will ever forget.
Without Ruby, Yang really has no hope left.
On the reverse side, that means that, even with her inner Grimm roaring shamelessly into her mind, restrictive government agents be damned, just the memory of her little sis's voice brings about an inner calm that allows her to focus on the present, on her morality, on the part of her soul that makes her faunus.
She might not be as bloodthirsty as her Grimm counterpart, but even her faunus soul can sense that the spiraling tower of frozen waters before her was formed with the power of the Sea of Dragons. Her sharp eyesight picks out jagged spikes along the screw-like edges of the enormous drill that pierces the heavens; they closely resemble the armored plates of a dragon's backbone.
The roar of the distant ocean sings to her mind, crashes around her head, and drowns her thoughts in the comforting nostalgia of a lifetime ago. Another life, when the waters were warm and the sky was free and she was never alone.
06: Snake
Ren does not like the cold.
Some insane part of his psyche (Nora swears that it's really her consciousness over their telepathic connection) chirps, {Which is totally why you sent in an application to be guardsman to a girl with a chip of ice in her heart, right?}
But there was no greater honor than to serve the woman who wielded the mythical phoenix of lore as her inner Grimm, his parents had said, and so off he went… only to find that his charge had barely hit puberty and was a spoiled brat who got what she wanted.
Snakes might have a weakness towards cold; but they have sharp minds to compensate. Still, he can't claim full credit for culling the frosty bite of Weiss' temper, a trait she picked up from her furious firecracker of a father. She learned the hard way to hold her tongue and stay her hand: when Father Schnee obliterated the human armies at Fort Castle, using means that horrified even the citizens of Menagerie.
So if she's letting loose now, it's got to be for an incredibly significant reason.
{Or it could just be Jaune taking a peek in the heat of battle again.}
Somehow, he doubts that even the Lemming's unintentional depravity warrants a gigantic spear of ice stabbing up into the heavens.
{Maybe he started stripping this time.}
If he leaps his way up to the apex of the gigantic ice spear, will he find Jaune's naked body pierced through there? The thing is that Weiss wouldn't normally waste so much energy on such a simple boy. That's what Ren initially thought, at least—then she went crazy and froze the entire school campus.
Maybe she didn't actually learn how to stay her hand. Maybe she's just been bottling it up this entire time, and Jaune was the unlucky straw that broke her back, shattered the defensive holds she'd put up all those years ago when her father disappeared into the depths of prison.
No matter what kind of storm is going through Weiss' mind right now, he should hasten to her side. Not to protect her as a guard; she passed that point long ago. Not to act as a friend, either; she was raised by her beloved father to wall her heart off from the world.
Ren's purpose now is to act as a voice of reason. Somebody needs to keep her from obliterating her opponents.
Like father, like daughter.
07: Horse
Some cultures view twins as counterparts to each other. Yin and Yang, ice cold and red hot, a complementary duo. Others see them as two halves of a whole; neither is complete until one returns to the other. Both are deficient beings, incapable of true existence, until one concedes and the other takes charge.
And so Melanie Malachite was recognized as the true heiress to Malachite Technologies on the day that Miltiades Malachite died.
Perhaps they fought more than twin sisters should; they grew up as competitors, after all, both battling for love and attention when none was ever forthcoming. But when her rival choked out a few garbled words and expired in her arms, Melanie's life as a child ended and her reign as the Malachite's newest Horse began.
Somewhere deep in her heart, though, she harbored her sister's spirit. An imaginary friend, if you will. A silly persona or an integral counterpart, she couldn't say; but it stuck around to remind her of her past childhood, though she disciplined harshly into remaining hidden.
A couple years down the line, with the memories of her childhood rival put to an uneasy rest, Malachite Technology's chief engineer began alpha testing on a prototype device designed to fully control one's inner Grimm. Because one's inner Grimm only manifested separate from one's own body in times of extreme duress, the 'evoker', as it was named, was constructed in the shape of a firearm. To demonstrate to the public that the device was ultimately harmless, her father prepared propaganda by volunteering his only daughter, the next heiress to the company name, as the evoker's first user.
The cold steel tip certainly felt real under the tender line of her jaw. Blood, smoke, the coppery taste of red: she remembered it all. She might have even heard those last words choked out of collapsing windpipes. But she did what was expected of her and pulled the trigger.
Nobody expected a teenaged version of Miltiades Malachite to unfurl into existence over Melanie's head.
It was supposed to be a horse. A mindless spirit, like the phoenix that rose from the young Schnee prodigy, that Melanie would learn to tame into submission. Nobody—herself included—knew what to do with the ghost that hovered around, disappearing when she tired of it and reappearing when she used the evoker. She did know it wasn't a mirror version of herself, and she made sure that Mr. Xiong, the chief engineer, knew that thoroughly. Primarily, the implications that her inner Grimm wasn't a mindless monster, that it was still herself in faunus form, was downright offensive. However, it also looked exactly like the young lady that she envisioned Miltia to be had she continued to live, right down to the crimson clothing that covered its form.
That, and it preferred to fight with its hands; Mr. Xiong observed the slashing motions it made and programmed retractable claws into Melanie's evoker. It wasn't the stampeding steed that her father had envisioned, but with a year of training, Melanie learned to fight alongside her controversial Familiar all the same. It never showed signs of self-awareness, after all; it was simply an energy construct synchronized to Melanie's mind, thus acting as a second body. A complementary being that lent the use of its claws to her bladed kicks.
The war put development to the evoker project on hiatus for a couple years as technologies that could easily shift between close-combat weapons and long-range firearms prevailed. By the end of the war, the project would have died had not Melanie pushed for more publicity. She and a couple of her acquaintances, all children of her father's business associates and company investors, beta-tested the evokers before enrolling in the capital's combat school, where the highest market for evokers would likely be. Results were promising: Akihiko and his inner Grimm were a powerhouse to beat; and Coco used hers to accomplish tasks normally impossible for the faunus' humanoid physique. So the night that Melanie received her acceptance letter, she swore that all faunus would see the day when they could lead lives that balanced both a faunus and a Familiar.
Which is, of course, the night that her Familiar began to show signs of self-awareness, starting off by manifesting next to her without the use of an evoker.
She hired a bodyguard the next day. A bulky guy with no brains, really. Somebody who would follow the orders he was given and not question what he saw. Cardin Winchester served only as a second pair of eyes to watch over Miltiades Malachite, if she ever reappeared on Remnant.
The ghost chose a fine time to make a second unannounced return: on the airship to Zodiac Academy, in the presence of an idiot blonde. Thankfully, the boy's head was heaving his intestines into a garbage can at the time, so he didn't see a young crimson-clad teenager pop into existence from nowhere. Melanie played it safe anyways by kicking him in the face, hopefully eliminating the only witness.
Unfortunately, Winchester reported a couple hours later that he had seen Miltiades sparring—independently, without Melanie's presence or even awareness—with the same blonde witness. That instantly set off warning bells; why would a recently-awakened Miltia target Jaune Arc of Lemming, of all faunus?
She didn't have time for that, however. School initiation was approaching, and she had every intent to flaunt her Familiar to the combatants of the Academy. That said Familiar was establishing a sense of self at an alarming pace meant nothing; this was a revolution in the making, and the city of Zodiac, Menagerie, and all of Remnant would soon see just how much this evoker could change the world. …Only the combined forces of Weiss Schnee and Jaune Arc threw another wrench in her plans, and there went the evoker's grand opening.
Today was supposed to be the day. It's taken long enough for Melanie to get to this event, when she can finally announce Malachite Technologies' newest device. Today was supposed to be the day… And there's a twenty-story pillar of ice before her. It's so massive that it showers the surrounding blocks of city with a very light mist. It's visible from all points in the capital and was conjured from the sheer power and technique wielded by the Schnee heiress.
Is Melanie and her Familiar meant to be constantly be overshadowed by those around her?
She grits her teeth and stands her ground before the Ice Queen and her Shadow, standing side by side. Even in the face of brutal winter, she refuses to budge—and neither does her Familiar, who is thankfully cooperating as a silent ghost… for now. Should she attack so soon after Weiss' display of utter power? Should she make a snarky remark? Most of all, how can she turn this situation in the Malachite's favor?
"Do you still wish to do battle?" smirks Weiss. Melanie wishes she could close the gap between them just so she could kick that infuriating grin off Weiss' face, but the dark Cat would be too fast.
She could still go for Weiss' throat now. She could try to close the gap and engage in close combat. But that's what the Cat is for: she keeps them apart so Weiss can use Dust to obliterate her enemies in seconds. The black Cat is expendable, with ridiculous amounts of luck that keep her free from harm. Their luck is so legendary that it's said that every Cat that heralds from Menagerie have nine lives. Meanwhile, Melanie can take a punch or three, sure, but probably not the crushing weight of one massive ice piston.
And in the end, she doesn't even get to make that choice. A thousand spears of golden sunlight piercing through the light mist is the only warning they get before the flaming fury of a gigantic golden Dragoness drops onto the three of them.
08: Year of the Sheep
She had always been just a lesser image of her sister, an incomplete shadow only meant to complement the other. For the longest time, that was the only world she knew. She died and that was the only world she knew.
She continued existing even after she died, but was she happy? Was she even aware enough of herself to know what happiness was in all those years?
Now, it's still more or less the same. Even given her own (albeit temporary) form outside of Melanie's mind, she's still just another aspect of her sister. What can she say in protest though, really? Even she knows she had no soul. She can't really exist in the physical world of Remnant without it. So for now, she's nothing more than a persona, a spirit to enhance Melanie's combat technique.
But at least she had enough sense of self, of belonging to me and not her, to realize a chance when she saw it. On the airship. There had been one on the airship who had the potential for a limitless amount of aura. So much aura and nothing to use it; in the place of his inner Grimm was an empty human spirit that... that was basically what Melanie wanted her to be. Empty. No purpose other than acting in tandem and responding only to the soul it was bound to.
All of that aura going to waste… so she borrowed a bit. Tapped into it that first day, enough to manifest as her own being, as a real girl. To fight as herself. To pretend like she was her own being. To laugh, to cry, to deceive the blonde human into thinking she's a Sheep trying to help him because of the goodness in her compassionate heart, when the truth is that she has no Clan, has no heart, no soul, doesn't even have her own name.
Miltiades Malachite doesn't even exist.
She hasn't stopped leeching off his aura ever since, little tidbits at a time, under the pretense of unblocking Jaune's 'chakras.' He has so much aura, so much room in his heart, for a soulless anomaly like her. But it's not like it's been only a one-way exchange, that's for sure. She suspects that she might be acting as some sort of spiritual bridge between Jaune and Melanie. Melanie chalks up her sudden knowledge of human history to her own academic pursuits, but Jaune's definitely picked up some legwork that he previously had no access to. He jumps higher. Knows just how to twist and orient his body in midair in order to land safely. Went through the muscle memory of a roundhouse kick without previously having ever executed one before.
The important thing is that neither suspects her involvement. She technically doesn't exist, after all. Just another part of Melanie's mind to be suppressed, disciplined, and tamed. She's been a soulless puppet for years; why should anything change now?
But now, she can dream. Dream of a beautiful soul, of an overpowering aura, and of a life that can very well be hers and hers alone.
It's only a matter of time.