Back to Jaune we go.
If you experience positive psychotic symptoms don't ever use marijuana.
pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq
"You think this will help?" I held the marijuana cigarette out in front of me and picked at a bug in my ear.
Greens for sure weren't likely to help with the paranoid thoughts, a goddess had her fingers in my mind, for real, or the suicidal thoughts, besides. But it just might take the edge off the bugs or the shadows.
Neo took it back from me and lit it. She took a long pull as though to say, 'see, safe.'
I took it back and inhaled the smoke in my lungs, it was still burning from where she lit it, and I took a drag. Almost immediately the bugs in my face eased. They weren't gone per se. They were muted. I could still feel them crawling around behind my eyes and in the tips of my extremities.
I coughed.
"Oh shit," I exhaled. "That's good." I chomped on the cigar and Neo beamed. "I'm going to need a box of these, just to keep it at bay." I'd brought up some of my hallucinations and Neo had picked this up for me.
She was looking up at me expectantly.
"Thank you, Neo."
She grinned up at me even though I was sitting on the bed and she was standing. We were in a different dingy motel than the one in which we'd tortured Nickel.
The greens were good. I inhaled them and leaned back on the bed. If Neo wanted to kill me this would be the best time to do it. Instead she plopped up on the bed beside me. "Well, I'm hooked." A shadow jumped out at me from the corner of my eye and I just didn't care. I was so relaxed.
I factory reset the Don's scroll. It wasn't quite as good as the military grade one I'd had before, but as far as civilian ones went it was top of the line.
"I need to go to this Merlot's lab. Cinder's boss, Salem, has some way of controlling me. All my psychotic symptoms started then. Or… well, maybe not. I need to learn about it if I want to fight it. You're welcome to come with. Cinder probably won't be there, but it's on the road to her for me. I have to go."
I brushed my new diamond studs. I'd gone all in on my new identity, Cloud, Cloud Strife. My hair was done up spikey, and I had a half cape around my waist. I still had Pyrrha's cape around my bicep on one arm but on the other I had a single long sleeve, on my pauldron side. The dark blues and blacks of my new clothes contrasted with the bronze of my armor nicely. My half cape billowed around my legs when I walked and my blonde hair shifted in any breeze. I still had a pair of long gloves on beneath my gauntlets. They ran elbow length.
I'd gotten my sword repaired, too. The warp wasn't bad to take out and I was only without the blade for a couple of hours yesterday. I'd just waited outside the smithy while they worked. What was I supposed to do and where was I going to go without my sword? Nowhere fast. And I wasn't Ruby to repair it myself. I might have been able to buff it out with a whetstone, but why take the risk when my pockets were overflowing with cash?
My weapons would still give me away, so would my face, but I'd done what I could in terms of disguising myself. Unless my friends saw me face to face or weapon to weapon they wouldn't be able to find me.
Neo made a stabbing gesture with her right hand.
"There will be people to kill and torture. At least one person. Probably. If not there will always be more in Atlas."
She made a show of considering it, one finger on her cheek. I knew how lonely she was, though. Plus I was sure she liked taking orders. It was weird but then not really. She liked having a boss. And just so long as she had people to maim, she was happy. I think she was happier working with me than she had been in a long time.
What? A girl's gotta heist.
It was a coin flip where Cinder was heading next, Atlas or Vacuo. So I flipped for it. It came up Atlas. I'd start digging around there in Solitas after I was done with the Merlot thing. Depending, of course, on what I learned from his lab. It was closer anyways. And it maintained my future availability of options by being closest to Vacuo over here and Vale. It was closest to all three of the other kingdoms, really, depending on how you looked at it. And the closed borders meant little to me if I had Neo with me.
I roached the joint and stared at the slightly spinning ceiling. The softly rotating fan was a pleasure to watch as I laid back. I rubbed at my chest, moving my hand in light circles over the deep scars there.
I missed Ruby and her soft touch in those moments.
Neo nodded at length. A single small gesture I felt through the bed. I sat up and held out a hand for her to shake on it. She did, a wide glittering grin on her face. Her eyes swapped colors at that.
She was wearing new clothes, too. She had a cape with some collar straps and her collar was done around inside out near her breasts. The fancy shirt ended at her midriff before a pair of nice white pants. She wore a pair of much shorter heels than before beneath that. She had a set of long white gloves on as well, much like myself.
"We'll take a train to the South to this city, Shumi." I pointed out on a map with my scroll, "From there we'll ride on horseback to Merlot's laboratory, here near a place called Wutai. A few weeks max. Then we'll be back on the hunt for Cinder. Who'll probably go to Atlas. She has unfinished business with Ironwood anyway."
She nodded along acceptingly. She pointed at where I'd thrown out the cigarette.
"Yep. We'll need a ration of those. They really help. I don't suppose you know where to find more?"
She gave me a coy nod. Hiding a smile behind her hands.
"Fantastic."
pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq
She did indeed know where to find more.
A beefy guard waited outside a small house on the outskirts of Mistral. He was wider than me at the shoulders and had a few inches on me. At a glance I didn't feel the low hum of aura coming off of him though. He could be just withdrawn, at any rate.
Neapolitan and I walked up together. He gave us both a once over and we stood in silence. Then some other folks walked out of the house and he motioned to let us in. Controlling how many people were inside at any given time. Smart.
He held up a hand. "Your weapons." He had a slight accent. Atlesian, not unlike Weiss's but deeper and richer. "Leave them out here."
I pulled my harness off my back. Staring him straight in the eye the whole time. I didn't need Limit to kill him. I put them on a rack behind the gentleman and he stepped aside of the entrance.
Neo was let inside without any hassle, giving me a superior smirk as she twisted her umbrella in the rain. "Sure, rub it in."
She did. And even if she didn't, being without Crocea Mors made me uncomfortable. I was glad she was armed, if nothing else. Somebody to watch my back in a run down place like this was nice. And I always had Limit, just a short charge away.
We walked in on a place lined with jars and labels on them. Inside were greens of all sorts of names. Lemon Drop Haze. Blueberry Blitz. Lilac Diesel. They were all arranged on neat little rows on high shelves.
"Well I've got to hand it to you Neo…"
I was whistled at by a lanky dude in a 't' shirt.
I was coming from a place of ignorance and I couldn't exactly ask Neo how the place worked.
"You been in here before?"
"No sir," I answered with a smile. "How much am I allowed to buy?" Not what sizes did they come in, not anything else. What was the maximum amount of drugs I was allowed to leave with? They must have a limit to prevent resale. A closely monitored tight ship like this.
"Two ounces." That didn't seem like much. "And you gotta pay in cash, that is if no one told you."
"Not a problem. What would the-uh…" I gestured at him.
"Budtender," the Budtender said.
"Right. What would the Budtender recommend."
"For what? You wanna get high or you wanna relax?"
"Something to relax me," I told him.
"You want an indica, then. A bit mellower and a bit richer in the CBD."
He picked across the shelves. Staying away from things that had names like 'blitz,' or 'shard,' or 'rush.' He strayed towards the mellower sounding ones and distinctly avoided one which had 'panic' in its name.
"Lemon drop haze." He put his hand on one. "And...sunshine sherbet." He put his hand on another jar.
"Sounds good. An ounce of both, please."
He named a steep price. A couple hundred Lien. I whistled lowly. But the stuff Neo had given me was already wearing thin. The bugs were starting to come back and I needed relief. I could hear a low whispering too. That needed to stop. Fast, if possible.
I paid him in the cash requested without too much hesitation. The only other place I'd see real relief would be antipsychotic drugs. I didn't have the time to get a psychiatrist and as a huntsman I'd be forcibly relieved of my gear for potentially months.
PTSD was common amongst hunters and they couldn't have crazy ones running around. There were procedures in place for this that I was specifically trying to avoid. I just didn't have the time to get set up with something like that.
"You gonna need pipe-ware?" He asked.
I looked down at Neo. She rolled her pink and brown eyes and nodded. I could feel her aura against mine. Something cool with undercurrents underneath. An edge of something cruel.
"Yeah I'll need a pipe."
"They never just stop at one," he said with a smirk. Like he was sharing a closely held secret with me.
"One'll be good for now," I instead insisted.
"It'll be thirty extra for a pipe and if you want a grinder that'll be even more."
It sounded like a good idea so I took him up on it.
I paid him anyway, knowing he was gouging me. It didn't matter a whole lot to me at the moment anyways. He handed over two tins, a pipe and a grinder.
"Come back soon," he called at my shoulder. I stuffed the tins and paraphernalia into my pockets.
I took my weapon back from the man outside and gave it a once over. My serrated combat-camping knife, sword and shield all looked fine, just as I left them.
"Let's get out of this fucking town," I told Neo. "I'm done with this city."
I freshly ground up some greens while we were walking and put it in my new pipe. I took a long drag, like it was the first breath of fresh air I'd gotten in months.
She skipped to keep up with me. Making it look natural.
pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq
"You assume there's nothing I can do to you, child. No torment I can bring upon you. You are mistaken."
I was hit with the sensation of making up but I couldn't turn my head. I rose from the train-car seat.
-then I was abruptly back in the train-car seat alone for all the world with the sensation of waking up again.
She hit me with that sensation. That feeling of waking up five more times and over what felt like subjective hours. My face crawled with bugs and I wanted to scream. I felt like I was falling for hours and hours.
-I jerked awake. There was Neo across from me in the train-car. I took a moment to get my bearings. It had been torturous. The sensation of waking up over and over again.
I breathed hard and Neo looked over at me, something like concern etched in her face.
"She's getting better at it," I said. "She's getting better at tormenting me. Cinder's boss."
I looked out the train-car window and watched the scenery pass us by. I watched a couple a few aisle's down. The man jumped and slapped his body like- well like he'd seen a bug on him. I was all too familiar with the sensation. The feeling of insects crawling across my skin and things jumping out at me from the corner of the eye. I recognized it.
I looked across from me and saw Neo's eyes narrowed in concentration. Her smile was wide in sheer delight.
"Neo," I whispered. "Neo!"
She looked at me and the man stopped his jumping-jacks. Her focus wanted on whatever illusion she had crafted. Pink and brown shifted in her hair as she changed focus.
"For gods' sake you're like a child. I'll get you people to torture for real. Knock it off."
She gave me a brooding look but nodded.
"Play some games on your scroll. For goodness sake. Don't torture just to torture. Do it with purpose."
She made a faux-angry face at me.
"Yeah I'm mad. Stop it. When we find Merlot you get to do all the torturing, sound fair? Even though he's my dad or whatever."
She gave me an odd look at that.
"I think… I think I was born in a tank. There are images of water. Muffled people talking. I think I was born pretty much full grown with whatever they had done to me already done to me."
"I don't know what they did to me. I don't know what I am. But when we find Merlot you get to be first in line for hurting him."
"They said he does experiments on Grimm, that might mean… It might mean that I'm part Grimm. That means I'm a monster. And you get to go first against the guy who did that to me. Sound even? We square?"
She didn't nod or give me any gesture. She just sat in her typical silence.
"Look… whatever. Just stop fucking with people who don't deserve it. If you're going to work for me then you only get to torment the people I say so. We clear?"
She still made no gesture.
"I said 'are we clear?'"
She gave me one firm nod. Her eyes were wary in part. Like she was anxious of making a deal she didn't want to keep. Like I was some fae of myth contracting her into bondage.
"Good. I promise it won't be all bad. And when we get to Atlas we'll have to make a name for ourselves. Make people scared of us. It's just an intermission on the torture and heists. They're not over."
Maybe I was a little antsy too. I wanted another pull of greens. The bugs were starting to become a bit of menace. And I couldn't exactly take a hit while in the slightly crowded train.
And Hell, I was bored, too.
"Plus there might be bandits out here. You can do whatever you want to them, I don't give a fuck."
"Heard there was a big tribe of bandits too; the Branwens, you heard of them? Well I especially don't care what happens to them. Go nuts."
"With my luck I'm sure something will come up anyways. You'll get your kicks. Have I steered you wrong yet? That's what I thought. And I let you kill the Don even though I kinda wanted to. He threatened some disgusting stuff on my friends. I really wanted to snap his neck. Instead I let you cut him. That was grand, wasn't it?"
"So when I say you'll get your kicks in you better believe me. We just have to be patient for a bit. Play things smart and close to the chest."
"Otherwise Salem will get us," I exhaled. "Cinder and Salem both will get the two of us with impunity."
pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq
-WG