#like putting aside that none of Jaune's plan makes sense

[itsclydebitches]

Let's tally things up, folks!

Ruby's entire depression arc is "resolved" by a one sentence exchange wherein she just... decides she's better now? 'Is this the message?' Ruby asks, on her knees in front of a not at all subtle broken piece of glass. 'That I'm just supposed to give up?' and then literally the next moment she sees Crescent Rose, the weapon she's been flinching from because it represents all the failures she hasn't actually grappled with this season, and decides that depression and suicidal ideation are for losers. Let's go fight a randomly evolved cat!

The group still doesn't care about Ruby's Volume-long struggle. What are you talking about, evil kitty? Ruby's never been confused, or weak, or feeling like she's broken. We're oblivious to all that. That's why we follow her, because we can easily ignore everything that's going on in her life and instead just focus on ourselves. Didn't she have a breakdown a couple of hours ago about having to lead all the time? Should we really be announcing the moment she steps out of the tree that we expect her to be in charge again? ... nah, it's fine!

I guess the overall message is that any and every horrific act is excusable because you're just being yourself? Sorry we doomed a Kingdom and have actively helped Salem in trying to take over the world. The horrors we've enacted are good things though because it means we're being ourselves.

Ruby is conveniently the only Ascended who retains all her memories. Can't have the protagonist undergoing any kind of actual change, after all.

Neo throws herself into the tree despite that going against every iota of her characterization. Will we ever see her again? Who knows.

Is the blacksmith lady Alyx? I still have no idea.

Jaune is made young again, because of course he is. Love that they act like this is some curse he's suffered from - "It's been so long..." - and not an actual life lived across several decades. If I got stuck somewhere for twenty-ish years and then someone tried to magic me back to my 18 year old self I'd be like wtf? No? I'm not a teenager??? Will the show ever acknowledge that Jaune is actually an old man in a de-aged body now? I doubt it, considering this plot-line had no impact on his personality, skill, or outlook.

Also love that the brothers' story is treated like this wonderful tale of growth and exploration. The blacksmith is going on about how amazing it is that you don't know what you'll get when you create something, tone all fond for the demi-gods that have left her world to toy with new ones, and I just wanted one of the characters to start screaming about all the horrors they've caused. They killed an entire population in one fell swoop and have cursed two individuals for funsies, with the entirety of Remanent permanently under threat of annihilation if they don't meet the Gods' ambiguous standards of unity. Oscar didn't fall into the void because if Ozpin had been there he would have gone feral and attacked the blacksmith with his bare hands.

We're heading back to Remnant and Ruby still doesn't know that Jaune killed Penny! Ruby didn't even get her sword back. Or consider her in the tree therapy session. Why was killing her off necessary again? Oh yeah, Jaune angst🙃

We got a "when you're needed" from the blacksmith, so expect that time-skip in Volume 10. Can't wait to see how much important stuff the story skips over...

Also, this is so minor in the grand scheme of everything else, but I YELLED when Summer admitted that she'd lied about the mission. For nine Volumes these characters have been dragging Ozpin for every problem under the sun including, in Volume 7, for the mysterious disappearance of Summer, only for it to turn out that she LIED about where she was going and on whose orders, setting him up to take the fall when she doesn't come back. Who's going to have Qrow apologize to Ozpin for blaming him for years? Who's going to have Ruby unpack that her whole family is made up of liars and she was foolish to think that anyone, including Ozpin, could survive this war with a completely clean record? Hell, who's going to have Ruby simply tell anyone - including her sister - what she now knows about her mother's death? Not the RT writers, I'd wager.

Especially when they gave us a scene of Summer leaving on what she recognizes may be a suicide mission and leaves a token of affection for one daughter but not the other. Summer is Yang's mom too! Yeeeeeaaah the story is really bad about actually writing that.

Overall this Volume just feels like a colossal waste to me. The story ignored most of what was set up in Volume 8, introduced a world it didn't have time to flesh out, threw in an unnecessarily shocking story line about the hero trying to kill herself, 100% dismissed the ramifications of that, reset everyone so that none of the characters have to actually grow or change, and has now implied that all the plot important stuff - the Atlesians' survival in the desert, trying to ally with Theodore, Salem's next attack on Remnant, the development of most of our B Team, etc. - has occurred off screen.

The only thing this Volume accomplished was getting the bees together, which was something we should have had years ago. That admission hasn't changed their dynamic in any way, or introduced new conflicts (remember, no one cares about Ruby's breakdown, including her correct accusation that Yang has cared more about her girlfriend than her struggling little sister). It's just... there, not queerbaiting anymore, thankfully, but that feels like a very low bar to meet.

2+ months later and all I'm feeling is

#rwde #rwby #mymetas #suicide tw #also also a lot of the dialogue was just AWFUL #not Ruby's with the Blacksmith so much #but the Cat's? #Weiss'? #Jaune's? #god I was cringing through so much of that fight #'Nooooo these FEELINGS!' #like putting aside that none of Jaune's plan makes sense #(why is this hallucinatory Alyx suddenly helpful instead of ~evil~ like what the girls saw?) #(why would the smoke impact Neo if she supposedly has not connection to Remnant anymore - the reason the Cat can't leave?) #(why would feeling things fix possession when it's clear that the Cat feels SO MUCH via that broken heart?) #it was just awful to listen to #honestly highlights of the episode were Ruby looking cool going after Crescent Rose #and the newly introduced mystery of what Summer and Raven were up to #that's it #that's all I've got

[majoringinsarcasm]

The people saying Ruby is toxic and should beg for forgiveness for lashing out truly truly are not even listening to what she’s saying in the scene. “I’ve been in a bad place and I never lashed out the way she did.” Let’s take a walk shall we?

Weiss, her teammate and ‘BFF’ has implied and then outright stated she thinks it’s all of their faults that Atlas fell. She said “we” came up with a plan but Jaune hits the nail on the head when he puts the plan and it’s failure in Ruby alone. That’s how she feels. She thinks she is the reason the plan failed it was a bad stupid plan and it’s all her fault and here’s her teammate saying Yes that’s correct.

Blake and maybe more importantly Yang are out here making out in the forest while she, the leader, has to decide who to trust. She’s not upset that they got together she’s upset bc, in her eyes, they are relaxed enough to figure out their relationship, and bc Ruby is not in a mindset that would allow her to do that even tho she’s not in a romance right now, she once again feels like she HAS to be on top of things. She HAS to be the one to make the hard choices and pick a path and yell at the car because nobody else is going to do it.

And then there’s Jaune. Jaune who was once her first friend, someone she trusted and who trusted her in turn back when they were new leaders and still just were able to also be kids. Jaune who has lived a lifetime without anyone, who thinks he did her a huge favor by giving her Crescent Rose. Jaune and his make believe friends who he gave names and assigned them roles in his head just like everyone in the real world assigned Ruby a role in their head and they get Angry when she doesn’t Act or React the way they think she should.

Nobody meant to hurt her. Nobody knew that she was feeling this way. They didn’t know she was hurting so bad, they didn’t know how to help. But to Ruby they have time to place blame and find true love and spend who knows how long taking care of creatures that no longer want to stay in this one form. There’s time for everyone to have a cry and breakdown but her there’s never time for Ruby Rose to be less than perfect and THAT is why she says what she says. She Knows how to hurt them because she’s been watching and taking in all of what’s been happening.

But she’s also not in the headspace to be comforted. It feels similar to when Yang gave her little talk about Summer when they learned about the Hound. I don’t know if Ruby really wanted to hear that. I don’t think Ruby has wanted the can-do, push forward no matter what talks for some time now. She wants help. She’s tired. But there’s No Time for her to rest. But also she doesn’t know what will help her. She didn’t even have an alternate thing to be during the Herbalist smoke session. Her past self said she could be Whatever she wanted to be but she had nothing to even consider. Ruby feels trapped and stuck and she’s hurting and she’s angry and she’s tired of having to put her feelings aside bc she thinks she has to, bc that’s what leaders do. And she’s tired of it.

So no Ruby isn’t toxic. She’s not evil. She doesn’t need to Beg for forgiveness. She needs rest and she needs help but until she gets those things she’s going to be in this downward spiral. It’s not normal depression the entire fate of the world is going to be determined by Her Alone is the mindset she’s in right now. None of us have ever had that. So her lashing out at the people she loves in this way, the people she would protect with her life, makes complete and total sense. It HURTS bc we know Ruby in a healthy headspace would never think to say any of this. But she’s not in anyway near a healthy place so this is what they get. This is what she has to deal with.

When you are angry and depressed it’s not just the rest of the world that “has to deal with you”. This is what Ruby said out loud by imagine all the things she’s not said about herself.

#rwby 9 spoilers #ruby rose #like have y’all just not been watching this season #I know V7 and V8 aren’t faves of many but she’s been dealing with shit for a long time #since V3 #she’s not evil she’s hurting #it’s not OK to lash out but it happens #they are not going to drop Ruby bc she was mean to them #they are going to try to help now more than ever bc they realize what they assumed was her forever state is not the case

[megashadowdragon]

Notice how, in "The Lost Fable", whilst Ozma eventually came clean to Salem about the secret he'd been hiding from her (the nature and purpose of his resurrection), there's nothing throughout the Origins Episode to suggest that Salem ever came clean to Ozma about the secret she'd been hiding (that she was directly responsible for provoking the Gods into eradicating the rest of the original human race). It's entirely possible that across all his lives, Ozpin didn't know Salem's secret (not for certain at least) until Jinn showed it to him and Team RWBY during this episode's present-day setting. Think about that: during this episode, as if re-viewing the worst mistakes and losses of his long life in one sitting wasn't bad enough, Ozpin has also just watched conclusive and excruciatingly-detailed proof that the woman he loved is responsible for ending the world as he originally knew it and breaking the current world for millennia, and that all of this started because he died. Is it any wonder he was in the state that he was at the start of the next episode and reacted so badly to Qrow's rejection?! This also makes one feel even more that Qrow and Team RWBY were much harsher on Ozpin than he deserved in that moment.

According to Word of God, Ironwood's Semblance, Mettle, gives him the conviction to make whatever sacrifices he needs to achieve his goals. Semblances almost always stop working when the owner's Aura breaks, so after Winter defeated him, he saw Salem holding the item he'd sacrificed scores of innocent lives to protect without his Semblance. My God, What Have I Done? probably doesn't even begin to describe what he felt in that moment.

During the Initiation into Beacon, Yang uses her gauntlets to prolong her flight. At first it appears that she is just having fun but considering how she wanted Ruby to team up with someone else, so she can mature a bit, maybe she was ensuring that Ruby won't be able to reach her before running into someone else. Her looking for Ruby later was likely just to make sure her little sister was alright, along with seeing who ended up as Ruby's partner. At the very end of "Players and Pieces", Ozpin appoints Jaune as leader of Team JNPR, to his surprise while Pyrrha grins. Obviously she's proud of him, but there might be another element at work as well: as we later learn, Pyrrha rather dislikes being put on a pedestal, even as she does the best she can with it. As a result, Pyrrha could've been relieved that she wasn't made leader... because it's the kind of position that could've reinforced said pedestal, with the team looking to her to make decisions, among other things. Jaune's potential is foreshadowed very early on; aside from being the one of his group to have a plan and get everyone to follow (as the Awesome page notes) he manages to block a blow from the Deathstalker with his shield. This isn't much, until you remember he only just unlocked his Aura, had none of the physical conditioning the other recruits had, and yet was able to tank a blow from a large and powerful Grimm for a key period of time without falling. He does, in fact, earn his way into Beacon.

The Herbalist's insistent questioning of what Team RWBY are and demanding specifics all come from his role as an herbalist, a medicine man. When it comes to medicine, the dosage is everything; too much medicine is poison and too little medicine is ineffective. For the denizens of the Ever Ater, their roles in life is as integral to them as their vital organs. To make the proper dosage of medicine for the growgurt parfait, the Herbalist needs to know exactly who and what is taking his medicine. Asking what they are is like asking what their blood type is, any allergies they have, etc..

The Curious Cat's outright angry reaction while dispelling the Mushroom Samba created by the Herbalist makes more sense in context now that we know more about Alyx. It was after Alyx met the Herbalist, and likely had the same spell cast on her to speak with her inner self, that she became distrustful enough to poison Jaune and trick the Cat out of her promise to them. The Cat knew the Herbalist was responsible for Alyx's change and feared the same thing happening to Team RWBY.

Ruby and Jaune finally reach Meltdown status, but end up being horrifyingly toxic after spending years of subconsciously bottling up their feelings. You'd think a team of trained soldiers would notice all the signs of an impending mental breakdown - until you realize that Grimm-infested Remnant never needed to refine that skill. Every time a huntress started losing their grip, the stress would literally attract Grimm to their location, meaning other teammates could easily determine how bad the stress gauge was based on how aggroed the Grimm were. And if someone got angry enough to murder something, there'd be an endless slew of monsters to vent (or die to). Everyone on Remnant has exchanged their training in emotional awareness with monster-detecting awareness. Ruby and Jaune could only have this level of uninterrupted Meltdown here, on a whole different planet, which doesn't immediately react to their angst with 'karmic' monster attacks.

@kob131

#rwby volume 9 #tv tropes

[wu-sisyphus-gang]

Motion Sickness 40

pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq

Damn Jaune.

I thought.

And damn myself for getting comfortable.

It was a sad thought. One of valedictions rather than of true cursing.

But I started to like him…

It was a thought of denial, one born of protest.

I was saying goodbye to Ren and Nora. We cremated them and had a short ceremony. Long funerals were mostly frowned upon across Remnant for the negativity such things tended to gather.

It hurt, more than saying goodbye to my father ever had. These were my family. These were my friends and I'd never hear their voices again. Ren and Nora had no family for us to send messages too, though we would have. They had no ancestral homes to be buried at. They were orphans. All they had were Jaune and Pyrrha and they were gone now too.

I missed Nora's bubbly personality and Ren's stoicism. I missed sitting with them for meals. I missed watching them dance around the others' feelings. So obvious to the rest of us, they never had time to explore one another.

"Our time is fleeting," Ozpin officiated. "Time always seems short. Even to me." He gave an empty laugh. None of us echoed it.

He opened the cremation jar and emptied it into the wind. Jaune should have been here for it. Instead he was bringing the relic to Salem. He should be here to collect their weapons. Instead it was Ruby who held onto them during the ceremony.

Titania wasn't heavy but those weapons sure were. I didn't envy Ruby who seemed to want to carry them. Nora's hammer which Yang seemed content to hold on to for our travels was neatly folded up. She attached it to her belt and put it behind her. As the bruisers of our teams, Yang and Nora had been fairly close.

I received one half of Stormflower from Ruby. I wasn't sure what to do with it. I didn't need a gun but it felt wrong that they should never see use again.

It was wrong.

Jaune should be here to take it. He would know what to do with the weapons. Even if it was just to have them buried.

Amongst the mayhem and chaos Mistral represented Jaune had been like a rock. Sturdy and absolute. In every situation he'd known what to do. Real confidence had been in his heart rather than the false stuff he'd tried to show off freshman year. It was little wonder then, why Ruby lashed herself to him. And now it seemed Ruby was sinking and there was nothing I could do about it.

She was in love with Jaune, our problem child. As little as we knew what to do about Nora and Ren, we knew even less what to do about Jaune.

Ozpin was convinced Jaune was some kind of sleeper agent and not a full blown traitor which only seemed to make things more complicated. If he was a traitor I'd at least know how to classify him. Instead it didn't even seem to be his fault. Well it was and it wasn't. Ruby was fully in his camp but that was always going to be the case, dating or not. She believed in her friends. It was hard to find a fault in her for that.

So I didn't.

Instead I admired it. Arguably she should have been hurt the most, instead she seemed almost ready. Ready for what I wasn't sure. She was adamant that we'd run into Jaune again. It was hard to fault her instincts either. Not when they'd led her so far.

She also didn't want to be felt sorry for. I respected that, too. Lords only know that if it had been me, I'd be in pieces.

I packed Stormflower in my briefcase, carefully wrapping it in cloth. I clicked the briefcase shut over it and tried not to think about it.

"Hard to believe they're all gone." Blake leaned by the door of Yang and my room.  

"JNPR is over. Felt just like that." Yang snapped her fingers. "Could have been us."

I shivered. "It basically was us. But for a chess piece at initiation."

"I don't want to think about that," Blake confessed. "RWBY is still whole."

"The girl or the team 'cause my sister hasn't handled this the best."

"Right. Our team, I suppose," Blake elaborated. "But she traveled with them, right? She was close to them all. Not even counting Jaune."

"They called it Team RNJR or JNRR," I said.

"Sounds painful."

"Like when our team was fractured," Yang said pointedly.

"Right." Blake sounded sheepish. "Except we came back together."

"Did we?" Yang asked. Her eyes red, and not just from tears. There beat a rage filled drum in her voice and it showed in her eyes.

"Well…" Blake trailed off.

"Really? You want to do this now?" I asked.

"Why not now? Should I let the cuts heal only to peel off the scab again?"

"I suppose." I granted. I didn't particularly like it, though. Our friends were barely in the ground, so to speak.

"You left us Blake. You left me. I was as partner-less as Jaune! I thought I'd never see you again. And the worst part was it was your decision. You didn't want to be around me."

"I-"

"You didn't even ask me if I'd go with you!"

I felt like an intruder. On the outside looking in as I knelt by my bed. I wasn't of course. And I could almost feel both of them expecting me to take their side. Yang's aura flared, a bright light in the room where Blake's seemed to cowl in on itself. A darkness that layered over again.

"I needed space. I needed time! Sun-"

"So what? Sun's good enough and I'm not?!"

"For your information he followed me. He didn't ask for my permission, he just came with me. I almost stabbed him over it." Blake anxiously pushed some hair behind her ear. Her human ear. "What happened to you was my fault. Adam came for me."

"Your crazy ex you never told me about? I thought we were past not telling each other things."

"I was trying to keep you safe! To protect you!"

"It didn't work!" Yang waved her prosthesis in Blake's face. "Ignorance may be bliss but it's not safe."

Point Yang. I was in her camp for that one. I was certainly tired of other people deciding what was best for me. I was way past that. It's why I supported her when she demanded that Ozpin be open with us.

"I'm sorry! I just couldn't bear the thought of you looking at me with hatred in your heart." Blake was crying. "Over this or over anything."

"Blake…" Yang protested. "I'd never do that to you. I just thought we were at a point where we'd struggle together. Even through the Whitefang stuff. Your problems are my problems. The way Jaune and my sister did. The way Ruby and Weiss are."

"I thought you'd hate me."

"I'd never hate you, Blake. I couldn't pull it off." Yang's aura looked distinctly cooler. Blake rubbed one arm with the other and wouldn't meet Yang's eyes. Couldn't.

"Is everything alright in here?" It was Ruby at the door. She already had her duffle bag in hand. Aside from that she was wearing Jaune's old hoodie. I guess she's gone through his things now that he was gone and found something she liked.

"We were just talking about when Blake left us," Yang answered.

"Ah," Ruby mumbled. "And is it…"

"We're getting somewhere," Blake said. "Thank you Ruby."

Ruby hovered at the door a moment longer before she said, "well I should…"

"Of course." Blake murmured. "Whatever you need."

I watched her go before I picked up my things. "Weiss?" Yang asked.

"You fools," I muttered. I followed Ruby. She didn't want to be excluded. It was the opposite of what she needed right now.

"They didn't mean anything by it." I caught up to Ruby and took her by the hand.

"I know."

"With everything else that's going on they just don't want to bother you with it."

"I know."

"It wasn't anything besides that."

"I know." I didn't feel anything from Ruby other than a quiet patience. I didn't get the sense that she was annoyed or flustered. In fact, her aura seemed reserved too. I could still taste the cinnamon and roses.

"We're all just worried about you."

She nodded. "I know. I…" She was masking and I hated to see it. I missed her energy. Her aura barely extended beyond her skin. If I wasn't touching her I doubt I'd have been able to feel it. It was a silenced, withdrawn thing.

"Are you feeling better today?" I asked.

"Not really I'm -um…" she trailed off.

"You just miss them. I know," I breathed.

She nodded. "We all do."

"But you feel so much more than most. Don't be afraid to talk to me. Ever. Please," I begged.

She wiped her hand across her face and took some silvery tears. "Everyone's treating me like I'm made of glass. And I am… and I am, but…"

I nodded and waited for her to get a head on her emotions.

"I'm not any more than anyone else should be." She finished at length. "And they're fighting."

"Yang felt like she had to," I said.

"Maybe she did. She's a fighter. She…" Ruby trailed off again and wiped some more of her tears away. "I want to go to sleep. I just want to sleep this away." She mumbled miserably.

I kissed her forehead. The kiss was not quick but held no passion.

"That's depression."

"Is it?" She asked.

"Yes. Little energy. It can be a symptom."

"I guess if you look at it like a sickness…"

"It is a sickness."

"That's very Weiss of you." She gave me a giggle and I felt a tidal wave of relief. The noise was quiet and simple.

"Well thank you." I managed. She traced her hand over the skin of one of my arms and I shivered.

"You've got goosebumps," she murmured.

"Well-I…" I cleared my throat and mastered myself. "Have you finished packing?"

She nodded. "I'm all set."

"Then we're just waiting on Yang and Blake now."

"They'll be ready before it's time to leave." She mumbled again. "Weiss, about the plan..."

"Me going on ahead, you mean."

"Yeah. I really don't like it."

"Me neither," I whispered. "But it might be the only way to get through to Ironwood. And it's only assuming Ozpin can't pass a message on to him using code."

"But if communication was up and running, they could do it from here. You'll be the message bearer Weiss. And I don't want to be split up from you."

"I know. I know. I'll miss you too Ruby."

"I wish Jaune were here," she confessed. "He'd come up with a plan."

"I'm sure you do. I bet he would, too. He was cunning like that."

"Is. He's not dead."

"Of course, I only meant…"

"I know," She muttered again. I found myself touching her face. The tips of my fingers grazing her cheeks and I watched in a sort of sick fascination as she leaned into the touch. Eyes closed. "I'm worried about you, Weiss."

"I'll be with the greatest military force on Remnant."

"That doesn't make you safe."

"What does safety even mean? Salem has a long reach. We thought Jaune was safe. I promise I'll be as safe as I can be." She reached up and pressed my hand against her face at that.

"And you'll stay away from your father."

"And… yes. I'll avoid him at all costs."

"Your sister… is she nice to you?" Ruby asked. "I only saw a little back at Beacon. I wasn't sure what to make of it."

A difficult question. Winter was always distant but that didn't put her in the same category as my father or brother. Or even my mother.

"Yes, I think so."

"Stay with her, then."

"What if Ironwood only lets Oscar through, though?" I let an unbidden fear out into the wild. I wanted it to be dissuaded. "What if he keeps you all back?"

"He won't. He works with Qrow too. At which point…"

"Right. That makes sense." I breathed a sigh of relief.

"Plus if you talk about knowing about the relics..." She sighed into my touch. She let out a little humming sound and smiled for what felt like the first time in years, though it had only been days. "Everything will be okay."

I nodded. "Everything will be fine."

"Ladies." Qrow came in on mechanical legs. "I'm not interrupting something, am I?" His gait was too smooth, his strides too even. It belied his mechanical nature.

He seemed to be genuinely asking and I took a step away from Ruby as though caught in some act. "We were just…" I trailed off.

"We were just talking about the mission," Ruby said.

"Ah, the mission." It was Oscar. Or maybe Ozpin. Probably Ozpin. "There's always more to discuss, and if I may, more to discuss about Jaune."

"He has the relic," Ruby went on.

"That he does. And he is a cunning mind second to none. I'm sure, given enough time, he will learn to use the relic. Which, I confess, is a little terrifying. And he only seemed to be growing stronger from my perspective."

"When he was at Beacon he was so weak, by the time he turned he was the strongest of us. And you're right, it was like with each day he was getting better," I muttered. "Limit Breaker… it was aptly named. It seemed like he was pushing himself every single day."

"Yes. I'm afraid of what he will be in Salem's hands. You knew him best Ruby. I'd like a moment of your time to talk it over with you."

"The kid's smart but his options are limited. We weren't sure what his next move will be. Whether we should report him to the police or not." Qrow said.

"I'm… I'm not sure. I never thought he'd turn on us. Turn on me."

"Well, now that he did, we need to come up with a plan." Qrow grumbled. He took a swig of his flask. "Whether that's keeping a watch out for him ourselves or reporting him."

"Yes… the relic may already be in Salem's hands. You may be happy to hear the Malachite reported seeing him, acting and walking about. She gave up this information freely to us. She seemed afraid of him."

Ruby did seem happy to hear that. "Then we've confirmed he's alive? And Malachite is watching out for him?"

"Only smart of her. The kid was strong, and fast." Qrow muttered as an afterthought.

"Is. You all keep talking about him in the past tense." Ruby said with some heat.

"Of course, Ms. Rose. You still believe in his innocence, then?"

"You were the one who came up with the theory of him being a sleeper agent, weren't you?"

"Only as a plausible. It may be that he saw now with the relic as the opportune moment to strike at us." Ozpin said. "We had an interesting conversation before he left. On why I let him into my school. He claimed that I only let him in because I thought he was Salem's agent. It could merely have been mind games, but it was enough to make me doubt that he was acting of his own volition when he took the relic. His possible status as a victim in all this remains only that, a possibility. More importantly, however, if he were a sleeper agent that still makes him a threat to us. He is still allied against us."

"Jaune'll lay low. If he doesn't want us to find him then we won't. He's too smart for that," Ruby managed. I rubbed her back with one hand. Actually talking and being involved seemed to be doing her some real good. Who was I to shut it down? This was more energy than I'd seen from her in days.

"Then the relic is truly lost to us. We put out feelers just in case but…" Ozpin shrugged. "We'll have to manage to keep the remaining relics out of her hands. And an ear to the ground where Jaune is concerned. In the longest term, however, the relic of knowledge is perhaps the most dangerous relic she could have acquired first. And Jaune is very dangerous. As dangerous as any of Salem's other agents."

Ruby's fists tightened by her sides.

"A question, Ms. Rose?"

"I have questions for Jaune, not for you."

"My apologies, then."

"You need to face the facts kido. He killed two of his so-called friends."

"Qrow, now may not be the time…" Ozpin began.

"What is it you think you know about him that I don't?" Ruby demanded. "Why wasn't the opportune moment all the times we were alone together?"

"That's easy. He didn't have his hands on a relic, then." Qrow grunted. He seemed as angry as Ruby was. That he didn't catch Jaune before. That he was weaker now than he used to be.

Ruby bristled at her uncle. Fists clenching and unclenching by her sides.

"You think he saw he shot and just took it?" I asked. "That's what you think of him?"

"It's as I said, a plausibility. And being forgiving on him for it will do us no favors." Ozpin said. "Jaune is brutal."

"Jaune is kind!" Ruby almost shouted. "He is sweet!"

"You have another explanation for what happened then?" Ozpin asked.

"We don't. Not yet." I said. I was backing Ruby. Nobody deserved it quite like my partner did. She would have my back. She had Jaune's back even when the odds seemed stacked against him.

"Then I'm afraid we will have to operate as though he is our enemy. We can't afford the risk."

"I'll show you. I'll find what I need to to prove you wrong!"

"Ms. Rose I very much hope that you do."

pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq pq

-WG

#war of the roses #white rose #whiterose #whiteknight #white knight #lancaster #bumbleby #bumblebee #yang xiao long x blake belladonna #yang xiao long #blake belladonna #ffvii #ff7 #oscar pine #ozpin #qrow branwen #ruby rose x jaune arc x weiss schnee #ruby rose #weiss schnee #jaune arc #rwby #motion sickness #cloud!jaune arc #sephiroth!Jaune arc #altsemblance

[calliecat93]

Well we have a trailer folks... and it has left me terrified. In a good way. I have been hyped for volumes before, but MAN this kind of hope has me on edge. We know that we’re in for something massive, and I am afraid yet excited! The volume is planned to start November 7th (with possible changes) so we’ve got plenty of time to speculate. SO let us see what the trailer gave us and do some fun speculation about what may be happening. Remember, this is for fun.

We see Salem on a throne... and from how it looks, she may be inside the whale. You can see the teeth. Just to further this, here is a pic form a later point int he trailer.

Yeah. I guess she could be on top of it though, but I’m assuming inside and the Whale Grimm is like some kind of transport Grimm. We;ll talk more about the Relic later, though it does confirm at least to me that indeed Cinder will give it to her and it’ll put her back into Salem’s good graces. We’ll also talk about Cinder when we get to The Relic.

Over this, we hear Ruby talking. Salem is no longer hiding. Once she is done with Atlas she will turn tot he rest of Remnant. It sounds like Ruby is reasoning that they have to warn the rest of the Kingdoms. This could lead to them maybe trying to find a way to take control of Amity and finish it to restore communications. But... I also have another plausible theory.

Over the next few clips, we hear Ren and Nora talking. Ren is arguing that Mantle still needs them right this second, while Nora is arguing that the rest of the world is in danger. It sounds like the big conflict within the team si whether they remain to protect Mantle, or the rest of the world. Aka... whether they should abandon Mantle or not... just like they just fought with Ironwood about last volume... IDK though. I can’t see Nora doing that after how adament she was about Mantle last volume. It could just be them arguing on how to handle the two situations. But I do sense Renora drama incoming.

These likely all take place int he episode we already got sneak peaks for. My guess is that it’s probably episode 3-6. So we know that Yang, Jaune, Ren, and Oscar seem to be moving civilians and getting supplies. But what about Ruby, Weiss, Blake, Nora, and Penny?

It looks like they are up in Atlas. This might confirm my theory that they’re trying to get Amity running. Or it could be them trying to find Qrow and Robyn. Not sure. If I had to guess who they’re raising their weapons at, probably Ace Ops. I’ll talk about them later. Penny looks very taken aback, so if whoever the nemy is knows about Penny being the Maiden... yeah... nto good. But I am excited to see how Team RWBNP kick butt~

I imagine that Team YJRO and RWBNP will be happening int he same episode, or back to back episodes. If it’s the latter, the following scenes I believe will also be in the same episode as the previous image.

Chances are, Penny for whatever reason is reluctant to fight But some kind of ugly turn happens and she’s forced to go into Maiden mode. But it upsets her, and is why Ruby is hugging her. What would provoke it? Maybe something happened to Pietro. Maybe Ruby’s life was in danger. Maybe Ironwood appeared and said something to piss Penny off (like how she is meant to work for him, aka trying to reestablish his control). IDK. Either way, Penny’s gonna have a rough time.

Speaking of Ironwood...

He’s gotten a new prosthetic. This time black instead of grey. At this point, the only thing that’s still flesh that we know of is his head and like... one shoulder. The man is losing his humanity more and more, throwing away his heart. But you can also see Ace-Ops in another room. I am for certain that they are int here with Clover’s corpse. No, I don’t believe that Clover is coming back. Penny is the only dead character to return, and they explained hwy. Clover is dead people. I’m sorry, but he is. But it IS going to leave an impact...

We hear Ironwood get angry about one of his men (we don’t know who, but I am guessing Marrow) show concern about Mantle. It’s clear that Ironwood has deemed the city a lost cause and he could care less about it. Thus, his soldiers also have to not care about it. Harriet, Elm, and Vine look stoic... but something about Marrows expression to me conveys some sadness. Maybe it’s me hoping that he’s still going to have a change of heart since imo, he is still the most likely and has the best chance. I think that Clover’s death could push that, and maybe even the others even if they don’t want to say it. Or it could lead to their demise since it may just make them hate out heroes more.  We can only wait and see.

So finally, we come to the end of the video:

We hear Salem say that she has questions for the lamp... but she needs to find the one who can show her how. So it looks like Salem knows what the Relics can do, but not how to make them work. Interesting. So we see her hold the Relic to a Grimm. Now there’s been a lot of speculation about someone in the heroes getting kidnapped, mainly either Ruby or Oscar. After seeing this and going under the assumption hat this is some kind of hunter Grimm that can sniff anything out... I believe it’s going to be Oscar. Aside form Neo and Cinder, Oscar was the last to have the Relic for a long period of time. Also Cinder knows that Oscar houses Ozpin, which if she tells Salem will likely make her want him found even more. 

But I also doubt that Salem would send a Grimm alone to take Oscar. Especially if there are others there that can kill it. SO, let’s see... who would be a perfect person to send after the kid? I can't say for sure, Tyrian would probably be a good candidate. But if I can put forth another candidate...

Yeah, this may be Cinder's plot for the volume. Going after Oscar. I can absolutely be wrong, but IDT it’s implausible. She’s back in Salem’s good graces, so she’s either going to try and stay in it or eventually try to do her own thing again... you know,t he exact thing that got her into trouble to begin with. What'll his mean for Neo? FOr Emerald and Mercury if they appear? IDK. But I get the feeling that unlike the past few volumes, Cinder will score some kind of victory. Whether it be capture Oscar... or face down a certain little red. Eye for an eye, after all...

Anyways,t hat’s all we’ve got! Hopefully we may get osme more sneak peaks before November. IDK if they’re doing NYCC this year, but if so we may get more there. Regardless, the hype is real people. Gt ready if you want, but none of us will be ready for the chaos ahead.

#rwby #rwby8 #rwby spoilers

[play-read-write]

Adventuring/Birthday Party

Ruby’s birthday is going well when it gets interrupted by grimm. Now its up to team RWBY to stop them and still get back in time to open presents. (Just something for Ruby’s birthday and Halloween. 3831 words)

........

Ruby adjusted her cape over her combat skirt, a black and pink one with fake jewels put on it and a couple big ribbons, making sure it didn't cover too much. She'd put a lot of work into her costume and she didn't want to just hide it the whole time. As she did Weiss walked out of the bathroom behind her, wearing a very ostentatious dress of her own. "Wow, that's a big one." She says, looking at it in the mirror. 

"I like the helmet." Yang says, currently sitting on Weiss' bed in her pinstripe suit. 

"It happens to be from a classic opera." Weiss says as Ruby steps aside, looking herself over in the mirror as well. 

"It looks good." Blake gathers her own outfit as well and heads into the bathroom. "I'll just be a few minutes." 

"Thank you, Blake." Weiss says. 

"Hey, I never said it looked bad." Yang says, "In fact I said I liked the helmet. It's cool. Got horns on it." 

"I sensed sarcasm." 

"Nope... Okay maybe a tiny bit, but only cause it’s just so much. It does look good though." 

"Thank you. You look fine as well." 

"Oh, I'm always fine." Yang grins and adjusts her hat. 

"Ha ha." Weiss rolls her eyes. 

"I'm wearing a suit, of course I look good." 

"Well at least you're not lacking in confidence." 

"Why would I be when I look like me?" 

Weiss side-eyes her for a moment and then adjusts a button on her outfit in the mirror. It's then that Blake steps out and they all turn to look at her, seeing the heels, long skirt, and button up white shirt tucked into it, with a tie and a pair of glasses as well, and of course her signature bow to hide her ears. 

"Wow Blake, going for sexy librarian? Didn't expect that." Yang smirks. 

"No?" Blake says and looks down at herself and then at her team. "It's just librarian." 

"I think we're going to have to credit this to Blake herself as opposed to the costume." Weiss says. 

"What?" Blake raises an eyebrow. 

"Weiss just said it’s you that's sexy and not the costume." Yang laughs a bit. 

"I... it was only in response to your comment!" Weiss blushes a bit. 

Ruby chuckles. "You look good." She says. "At least we can all agree on that." 

"Thank you, I suppose." Blake says. 

"So, is everyone ready then? We can meet up with JNPR and then head down to the ballroom together for the party." Ruby says, looking at each of them. 

"Ready and waiting." Yang stands up. 

"I'm good." Blake says. 

"Obviously." Weiss adds. 

"Alright then. Team RWBY..." Ruby pulls out a long wand with a crystal heart on one end and a figure of a Crescent Moon on it and points it at the door. "Go!" She says and leads the team out the door... about three steps to the JNPR dorm, where she knocks. 

The door opens and Nora is there. On seeing them she opens it wider. "Oh, hey guys! We're almost ready." She says. 

Yang lets out a low whistle. "Sexy nurse. Nice." 

"I know, I ROCK this!" Nora says, pumping her fists, wearing a white skirt, stockings, and a top with a bit of a V in it and a red cross, as well as a white nurse's hat and a pair of white shoes. 

"Lots of white. Almost think that was one of Weiss' outfits." Ruby says. 

"I wouldn't mind if she wore that." Yang chuckles. 

"Oh, hush you." Weiss says. 

"Hey guys." Jaune then says, walking behind Nora wearing some heavy looking white armor and a helmet with a visor on it, his sword and shield at his side. 

"A knight huh?" Ruby asks. "Cool." 

"Yeah we decided to pair off for our costumes. I'm a knight. Pyrrha is a princess." 

"Ren's a doctor." Nora says. 

"Sexy doctor?" Yang asks. "To match a sexy nurse?" 

"Hey, eyes off." Nora says but grins. 

"Nora, are you going to let them in?" Ren asks then as he moves into view and sits down on his bed, dressed up in a long white coat and a stethoscope around his neck, putting on his shoes. 

"We're just waiting on you guys." Ruby says. 

"Just a minute!" Pyrrha calls out. "I'm almost... done." She says and there's a sound of a door opening as she walks out, wearing a flowing dress with puffy sleeves and a conical hat with a ribbon on it. 

"Ohh, pretty." Ruby says. 

"Thank you, Ruby." She gives her a nod. 

"Are we all ready then?" Ren asks as he stands again. 

"Looks like it." Jaune says. "Let's get going." 

"Teams, away!" Ruby says, pointing her wand again and beginning to lead the way down the hall. 

"Think we'll see many good costumes?" Yang asks. 

"I'm sure there will be quite the variety." Blake says. 

"It's Halloween, some will be great, some will be awful. Some will be impressive; some will be trashy." Weiss says. 

"As long as there's candy, cool costumes, and some weapons, I'll be happy." Ruby says, "And I still plan on having our own thing after! None of you are to forget my birthday party." She turns and walks backwards, pointing at them with her wand. 

"May evil befall those who forget a magical girl birthday party." Yang says with a chuckle. 

"Dang right." Ruby turns to walk forward again. Leading the way, they make it down to the ballroom, finding it already with people inside, orange and black streamers along the ceiling with matching balloons. Tables with punch, cookies, candy, and other snacks. And of course...

"Hey! They got a fog machine!" Yang says, noting the layer of fog covering the flower. 

"It's Halloween. It's allowed to be gaudy." Weiss says. 

"That's my birthday you're talking bad about!" Ruby protests. 

"Says the girl with rhinestones glued to her costume." 

"They are sparkly!" Ruby points her wand at her. 

"Your point?" Weiss crosses her arms. 

"This is pure magical girl awesomeness! Respect it!" Ruby says. 

"Alright you two, let's just get to the party." Yang says. "Oh hey, sexy cop." 

"Yang please don't make a joke about handcuffs." Ruby says. 

"Fine, but only cause it’s your birthday."

"Yesss, magic birthday powers!" 

"There's no such thing as magic birthday powers." Weiss says. 

"Really? Cause when I ask for extra candy cause it’s my birthday people always gave it to me." 

"That's not magic." 

"Close enough." 

"Well, we gonna chat about that or are we gonna party?" Yang asks. "Who wants to dance with me first? No volunteers? Eenie meenie minie... Nora! Let's kick it!" 

"Heck yeah! Party time." Nora cheers as she and Yang head out to the dance floor. 

"I'm gonna get some punch and cookies." Ruby says and heads over to the bowl. 

"Would you care for a dance?" Weiss asks Blake.

"Sure, why not." Blake smiles and they head out as well. 

As Jaune and Pyrrha head out to the dance floor as well Ren walks over to join Ruby at the punch bowl, getting himself some as well. "Happy Birthday." He says. 

"Thanks. Happy Halloween." Ruby says and takes a bite out of a cookie. "It's a good party isn't it?" 

"We haven't been here long, but it does seem to be." He says. "There are quite a few different costumes, aren't there?" 

"Totally. Some of them are pretty cool." 

"Yours is quite well designed as well." 

"Thanks. You make a good doctor. I'm guessing Nora picked it?"

"Yes, couples costumes were here idea. Though her original idea involved me not wearing a shirt underneath." 

Ruby chuckles at that. "Yeah that sounds like Nora. We had to veto one of Yang's costume ideas cause it was skintight. The character was cool, but the outfit isn't something you wanna actually wear." 

"Yes, there are a number of characters like that." He says and takes a drink, falling silent as Ruby does the same. After a bit he reaches over and gets a second cup of punch, holding it out as Nora then starts to come over and takes the punch, drinking half of it in one go. 

"Whew! What are you two doing just standing here? Come on and party!" 

"I'm not really much of a dancer." Ruby says. "Especially not in this dress." 

"But it’s your birthday! Aren't you supposed to have fun?" 

"I'm fine. Besides there's still the after party later. That's more my style." 

"If you say so." She says. "You though." She points at Ren. "It's dancing time." And she downs the rest of her punch. 

"If you want." He says and finishes his own before heading out with her as Weiss, Blake, and Yang come over. 

"Welp my dance partner ditched me. Who’s next?" Yang asks. 

"Not me." Ruby says. "I don't dance. You know that."

"What about you two?" She looks at Weiss and Blake. "One of you wanna dance with a good-looking gal?" 

"I would but she already said she doesn't dance." Blake says with a small smirk. 

"Ha! You got got." Ruby says. "Also, aww, thanks Blake." 

"I'd argue, but she is adorable." Yang says. "But still, that means it's Weiss' turn instead." 

"I don't remember agreeing to those terms." Weiss says. "Fine though." 

Just as they turn to head out though an alert goes off, every scroll in the ballroom beeping. They all pull them out and look as an announcement goes off overhead, Ozpin's voice coming over it. 

"Students and Faculty, we have an emergency situation. A number of grimm are approaching the city in mass, it is time we fulfill our duties as huntsmen and huntresses. You have received your missions. Airships are standing by. Good luck." He says and there's a click as it ends. 

"We're in the west, sector Seven B. Let's get our weapons and go." Ruby says and her team nods as they all run out, along with many others. Heading for the locker room they all grab their weapons. Ruby steps over to Weiss to speak with her for a moment, getting a nod in return. "Alright girls, let’s go get on an airship." 

"Right." They confirm and head out. Soon enough they're on an airship, still in their Halloween costumes as they don't take time to change. 

"I can't believe it, grimm on Halloween." Weiss says. 

"Well, they say that the holiday started because it’s the day grimm were most active. There's even myths of grimm made entirely of human bones coming out." Yang says. 

"That's probably one instance of a geist possessing an improperly buried skeleton blown out of proportion." Weiss says. "And an excuse for a holiday." 

"Whatever the reason, it’s the best birthday ever!" Ruby says. "I get to fight grimm, wear my Halloween costume, eat candy, and then get presents! It's awesome." 

"You do realize this is life or death, right?" Weiss says. 

"And you realize this is literally what we signed up to do right?" Ruby asks. 

"Yeah come one. Lighten up." Yang says. "We'll clear out the grimm no problem. They've got like, half the school on this job. It'll be a piece of-" 

"Wow!" Ruby says, looking out the side. "Is that grimm or an army?" 

"That is a lot." Blake says. "There must be hundreds of them." 

"I've never seen grimm like that." Weiss says. "What are they?" 

"I don't believe it." Yang says. "It's bone." 

"Skells." Ruby says. "I thought they were just myths." 

"Well they're here now." Blake says. "Let's just worry about killing them." 

"Right. Let's get out here. Team RWBY, go!" Ruby says and then jumps out the side of the Airship, her team following her. 

Firing at the ground she slows her descent, landing in a roll and bringing her weapon up, still in gun form. She immediately fires at the grimm, large skeletal beings, made almost entirely of the same kind of white bone armor as the grimm, with only spots of black flesh peeking through at the joints and inside their mouths, the eyes glowing red. Their limbs were long, with fingers almost as long as their forearms, and legs bringing them up to taller than most people. 

Her shots ring true, blowing the heads off of one, and then destroying another's spine. The one with its head gone falls and stops, but the other one collapses and begins to drag itself forward without its legs. At this all of the others then begin to move faster, now rushing at her as the rest land beside her. "They keep moving unless you take out the head. This is our sector; we have to stop them ourselves." 

She turns to Weiss. "See if you can freeze them in place. Go for the legs. They don't seem exceptionally strong." She looks at Yang. "Aim high. We need to take out the heads. If they get on the ground though we can crush them after." Turning to Blake then she adds, "Try to hit as many as possible. They're more solid than beowulves but their armor isn't as thick as a deathstalker. We should be able to take them out." 

Weiss steps in as Ruby speaks with the others. She raises a series of glyphs in front of them and her blade begins to glow a light blue, fog forming over it. With two fingers out she pushes her hands forward, sliding the glyphs along the ground. A thin sheet of ice formed under the grimm, freezing their feet. Immediately they stopped moving, letting out a sound between a rattle and a cry. 

"Go!" Ruby says and dashes in with a burst of speed, swinging her scythe high and tearing through the heads of a few of them. Already she could hear the ice cracking as the grimm began to break free. It wouldn't hold long but if they could thin the numbers it'd be a major help. Beside her Blake gave a hard swing, a slash of purple energy cutting through the skulls of half a dozen of them, and Yang lets out a volley of shots, destroying another dozen from the shoulders up. 

One breaks free of the ice next to her and lunges, but she slashes in return, cutting it in half. It misses as it goes past her, cutting through one of its own. However, with their heads still attached this only freed up their movement as well as one began to crawl at her and the other put its hands underneath itself, running on them like legs. Behind her two more try to grab her and she jumps to dodge them, then fires to give herself some spin as she cuts through all them around her, taking out their heads, and then brings her scythe down on one of the crawlers, before firing at the others. 

The shot however destroys the feet of a couple others, causing them to fall and begin crawling towards her as well, while others began to break the ice. A wave of fire burst in front of her, burning up the crawlers and a few others completely.

"Be careful. There's a lot of them." Weiss says and then turns and stabs one in the eye. 

"Turbo time." Ruby says and switches position, her rhinestone dress glittering in the moonlight as she switched cartridges and took a low stance, Crescent Rose pointed behind her. She fires and activates her semblance, swinging her blade as the burst of speed carries her forward. She cuts some in half, takes others heads of, dicing apart limbs and spines and skulls as she fires and slashes. 

As her cartridge empties she's standing in the middle of an empty area, grimm dissolving around her. That wasn't the last of them though, as there were still many more around, now nearly all of them having broken through the ice. 

"Ruby this isn't going fast enough." Weiss says. "We're thinning them but we're going to run out of dust before we run out of grimm." 

"Then we fight without dust." 

"This many?" 

"She's right." Blake says. "We can do a lot but there's probably still dozens of them here." 

"Is that all?" Yang says. "You guys are overreacting." She raises her foot, stomping one crawling on the ground towards her, and then fires a shot at another group doing the same. "Stupid things are even more annoying on the ground." 

Ruby blocks a hit from one and cuts it in half, then swings again to take out the head as she changes clips. "I know it’s annoying, but we have to keep going. Just try to conserve dust. We can do this. They're not very strong after-" She's cut off by a deep low rattling sound that reverberates through the air, causing them to shiver. 

"What was that?" Weiss asks, but they don't have time to respond as the grimm then begin to turn around and move away. 

"Are they running?" Yang asks. 

"I don't think so." Blake says as the grimm begin to gather in one spot, what's left of them stacking on top of each other. Their bodies snap in places, coming apart and reforming. 

Ruby steps back and regroups with the others as the grimm form together, now towering over them. Eventually it settles into a gigantic grimm, looking like a half of a skeleton, make entirely of the bones of the smaller ones. A skull made of dozens of other skulls glares down at them as red light forms in its eyes and it lets out a sound, one large cry made up of the synchronized rattling cries of all the others at once. 

"That is just disturbing." Yang says. 

"No, it's also very big." Blake says. 

"That's what she said." Weiss says, causing them all to look at her. "What? Is that not how it works?" 

"No, just not the time. Good effort though." Yang says. 

"Uh guys, it's attacking!" Ruby says and fires, propelling herself backwards as it swings one long skeletal arm.

Weiss in turn jumps through the fingers as Blake uses her semblance to dash out of the way. Yang on the other hand braces herself, taking the hit. She holds out for a moment before drawing a fist back and slamming into the finger that had caught her, shattering it and letting the rest of the hand go past. However as it does it begins to shift, the finger growing back as the bones rearranged. 

"Weiss, you did what I asked right?" Ruby asks. 

"Of course." 

"Call it in." 

"On it." Weiss pulls out her scroll and taps a few buttons. 

"What is that supposed to be?" Yang asks. 

"You'll see. In about three... two... one." Ruby says, and nothing happens. "Okay three, two-" A rocket locker goes flying overhead and crashes headfirst into the shoulder of the grimm. "Crap that was supposed to be dramatic. Oh well." She says and points her gun at the locker, firing a single shot. As soon as it hits all of the dust packed into it goes off, blowing the arm and half of the skull apart. "Boom! Ha suck on that!" She says. 

However, it begins to shift again, the bones moving as it reforms itself. It was smaller now, having less material to make itself out of, but still looked down at them. 

"Oh come on!" Ruby slumps her shoulders. "Fine. Freezerburn!" She shouts. Yang doesn't hesitate to jump into the air as Weiss forms the ice beneath her, landing on it to make a dense fog. The grimm, towering over the fog, looked down trying to find them. 

"Ladybug!" She shouts, and Blake dashes forward, slashing at the spine. She meets Blake's slashes with her own, back and forth, chipping away at it. As it tries to grab at them they jump and Blake comes down, slashing across one arm before Ruby comes down as well and cuts it off. It immediately begins to regrow, but Ruby calls out again. 

"Ice Flower!" She says and glyphs appear in front of her. She fires first at the stump, stopping the arm from regrowing, and then at the joints on the other arm. 

"Bumblebee!" She shouts and Blake throws out her scythe, Yang grabbing hold. Spinning hard she flings Yang at the grimm, smashing into it and destroying the other frozen arm. Now just a head on a spine the grimm was looking far less dangerous. 

"Ha! Gotcha." Ruby says and sticks her tongue out at it. "Nobody beats team-"

An arm bursts out of the front of the spine then, shoving itself into the skull and pulling out some of them before throwing a mass of bone armor at Ruby. Caught by surprise she barely manages to raise Crescent Rose to block. Instead of a solid hit though, the skulls cry out as the bones form around her and the arm shoves itself into the mass that holds her. A hand grabs her legs and she's yanked upwards, dropping Crescent Rose. 

"Ruby!" Yang cries out and fires at the grimm, but the bones thicken around where she hits to keep it from breaking. 

It raises Ruby up in front of its face and lets out its cry again as she hangs upside down and disarmed. 

"Well grr to you too." Ruby says, "But it’s my birthday and I have presents to open. So..." She pulls out her magical girl wand. The crescent moon on it pops out, dropping down as she points it at the skulls. "By the power of the moon, screw you!" And she pulls the trigger, the large crystal heart of dust glowing as it channeled all of its energy through the wand and blasted out, right into its mouth, before exploding outwards. 

It dropped her and she flipped to land on her feet as it began to crumble. The skulls not destroyed began to rain down, but without being connected to something they began to dissolve, as did the rest of the grimm. 

"By the power of the moon, screw you." Yang says. "Badass." 

"Hey, it was all I could think of." Ruby says. 

"Of course that thing was also a gun." Weiss rolls her eyes. "Where did you even get a dust crystal that large?" 

"Well..." Ruby gives a nervous smile. 

"Have you been going through my dust again!" 

"I was going to give it back!" 

"Speaking of going back, I think we're done here." Blake says. 

"Oh, right, we still got my birthday party!" Ruby says. 

"You ready to have the real highlight of the night; cake and presents?" Yang asks. 

"Always." Ruby grins as they turn and walk, pulling out her scroll to call for pickup. Time with her team, an action-packed night, and then presents and cake. Yeah, there may have been a grimm attack, but when it came to Halloween and birthday parties, she couldn't have asked for anything better. 

#RWBY #Ruby Rose #Weiss Schnee #Blake Belladonna #Yang Xiao Long #mine #my fanfic #Happy birthday Ruby!!!

[rwdestuffs]

Done dirty: Ruby

“Main Protagonist” my ass!

Ruby is supposed to be the main protagonist. She’s supposed to have this grand destiny she’s supposed to fulfill, and be the hero.

So why does it feel like she’s taking a back seat to everything important?

Take the Red trailer. We don’t get a whole lot for her, she’s jut there kicking ass. She’s tearing through those Beowolves like they’re nothing, and it’s some great choreography.

Then in Volume 1, we run into the first problem: She kicks the ass of Roman’s men without her weapon.

See, the writers have repeatedly said that Ruby is trash without Crescent Rose, and Volume 5 reinforced that. Not only is it something that is told, it’s something that contradicts what we are shown. Ruby goes gaga in a later episode over weapons, and that’s never brought up again. It would have been a great running gag, and a means to introduce the weapons that the main cast has to the audience in a natural way. Here’s a scenario: After Ruby cuts up those grimm while saving Weiss, she starts examining the weapon. To which Weiss begrudgingly answers the questions in a failed attempt to get Ruby to shut up.

“Ohh! Is this a Rapier mixed with a milti-chamber dust revolver so that you can use them for different effects?”

“Yes.” Weiss ground out.

“And it it made up of a steel-titanium alloy that makes it really durable?” (This part isn’t actually canon, but I think it would be neat if we knew what kind of materials these weapons are traditionally made out of).

“Yes.”

“Can I touch her?”

“What?- No! You can’t touch Myrtenaster!“

“Oh. So the weapon’s name is Myrtenaster?- That’s cool. You should see my sister’s weapons. She called them Ember Celica, and she made it so that they can look like ordinary bracelets when they’re not in use. They mix long-range shotguns with gauntlets, and they’re really cool!”

See that?- All of that could have been a conversation that Ruby could have had with Weiss. Not only would it have been natural, given Ruby’s love for weapons, but it also would have been a great way to introduce the weapons that the cast uses. We could have gotten a similar conversation (using different attitudes depending on the person) with other characters. It could have been a cool bonding moment. Ruby also apparently doesn’t have to prove that she can be a capable leader to Weiss. In this scenario, most would expect that the main leader would have to do something to prove themselves, and prove the person who doubts them wrong. But we don’t get that. All it takes to reinvigorate Ruby’s confidence is a talk from a teacher, and Weiss gets lectured by Ozpin. This could have also led into an interesting bonding moment, and show the differences between how Ruby and Weiss function, and how Blake and Yang function. But we don’t get that character interaction. Ruby gets further robbed of character interaction/development when jaune hijacks the plot to reveal that he’s putting his team in danger due to his lack of experience and reluctance to be trained because ego™. Ruby doesn’t even rush out to find Blake with her semblance, she just… stands there. Doing nothing. Some team leader. She also sides with Weiss on this, and since we never saw any bonding moments between the two, there’s no evidence to believe that the reason she’s siding with Weiss is because of a bond that they have.

Volume 2 also does Ruby an injustice. While the Food Fight has some moments for her (Like quoting Nixon for some reason), she doesn’t do much else. Because she’s not questioned while the team is visiting Mount Glenn, her motives are never questioned. She isn’t questioned on how she plans to accomplish her goal, or on how she would handle tough decisions. Ruby lacks focus in this volume, and the most she gets in terms of bonding with her team and character development is…

This scene… Which, while humorous, doesn’t really add much else. Ruby then uses her speed to defeat JNPR (And here’s a kicker: Assuming that the mess hall is the length of an average school, Ruby is actually only moving 10 Meters per second. She’s slower that freaking Hercule Satan!), and… That’s about it. Apparently she also confronts Cinder during the dance, but she hardly provides anything else. The Ozluminati don’t take any precautions because of this ‘masked intruder,’ none of them bother to check to see if their systems have any malicious hardware on it, they just sit around… With Ozpin probably literally dicking around in his dick chair.

(Why does it look like a dick?)

Volume 3 doesn’t add much. Outside of referring to Weiss as her ‘BFF,’ Ruby doesn’t actually do anything in this volume. And get used to that, because this is just the start of that trend. Ruby ends up taking a back seat to a lot of things, like Pyrrha’s first and final character arc, Yang’s framing, and some backstory for the villains. Ruby acknowledges Penny, and… Yeah. That’s kinda it. After that, she has a small breakdown on Pyrrha committing manslaughter (bot slaughter? mechaslaughter? droidslaughter?- Whatever), but that’s undermined by jaune taking Pyrrha aside to repeat the sentiment. Ruby’s words fall on deaf ears because she’s taking a backseat to Pyrrha’s arc. Normally, this wouldn’t be a problem, but in normal situations, Ruby’s motives, personality, and other aspects would have made her a character in her own right. And had this not been a rushed attempt to give Pyrrha some non-jaune related characterization before her death, Ruby taking a supporting role would have been normal. After everything, she ultimately defeats Neo (by using a weakness on Ice Cream Girl’s weapon), and watches Roman die. She feels no remorse, nor does she seem to have any real reaction. I mean… This is a young girl! And she just saw two people die right in front of her!- Yeah, Roman’s a villain, but his speech about surviving should have shaken Ruby up a bit. Maybe even force her to realize that some people aren’t bad for the lulz (that’s Cinder’s role), but that they do bad things because they’re in bad situations. Pyrrha’s death ultimately sets off her Silver Eyes, and then Qrow gives her the rundown on her newfound powers. This is where a lot of things start going wrong in a narrative sense for Ruby. She doesn’t question this. She doesn’t ask how they work. And she doesn’t ask how her mother could have been killed if she had this power. Then she sets off, knowing that Yang’s emotionally vulnerable, and that a lot of things went down the drain for her. Sure, Ruby has this grand destiny, but she doesn’t seem to leave a letter specifically for Yang. She leave a generic one for both Yang and Tai.

Volume 4 is where it gets obvious that the writers have likely forgotten about Ruby being, y’know… The first letter in the title. She takes a backseat to jaune’s angst, as well as the Renora duo’s conclusion to their backstory (Let’s face it; Ren and Nora have so little character to them, that they’re basically the same character). Ruby doesn’t comment on Penny’s death, she only acknowledges Pyrrha once, and her mentioning the family that she left behind to go on this quest that her uncle all but explicitly gave to her isn’t even mentioned. And when Ruby is about to finally acknowledge what happened, jaune steps in and is all “Nah, don’t worry about what you’ve done. You’re doing fine.” effectively robbing Ruby of any kind of development that she’d get by questioning herself and her decisions. She sends a letter home, and that’s it. She gives this monologue that genuinely feels that the writers only gave her because they realized, at the last minute “Oh crap! Ruby didn’t have a lot to do this volume!”- So they gave her that speech to make it seem that she grew, but it doesn’t actually feel like she grew.

Volume 5 rolls along, and by this point, we’re almost used to Ruby not getting any development. She isn’t questioning anything that Ozpin tells her. Nobody does. And she then learns hand-to-hand. Now, it feels as if the writers did this, as a means to try to say that they gave Ruby development, but they’re not exactly doing it right.

Yes, Ruby needs development. They acknowledge as much. But they don’t understand how she needs development. If they really wanted to teach her hand-to-hand, have Ruby be the one who suggests it. There’s a video that suggests that Ruby is afraid of her silver eyes, and it’s an interesting idea, albeit, not well-communicated. Here’s an idea as to how it could go down

Ozpin: Now, miss Rose, we will be needing to work on your control over your silver eyes.

Ruby (Frightened): My… My silver eyes?

Ozpin: Yes. Is there a problem?

Ruby: No! I mean, uh… How about I help Oscar train in hand-to-hand? I could use a bit of training without my weapon anyways. Heh heh…

And there you have it. Ruby trains in hand-to-hand because she’s afraid of her Silver Eyes. The last time she used them, a grimm dragon got petrified on top of Beacon Tower, and she fell unconscious for a long time. It would make sense had it been better-communicated to the audience if this were truly the reason why Ruby never once asked about them.

Ruby’s lack of development hardly stops there. She doesn’t get the fight with Cinder (You know… The fight that’s been foreshadowed by practically everything, from the opening themes, to Cinder’s grudge, to freaking episode one where Ruby foils Cinder’s dust heist), she ends up fighting Emerald while jaune’s revenge boner leads him to take on Cinder. That’s like Sokka fighting Ozai while Aang fights the random Fire Nation Soldiers. Jaune should have fought Emerald (While Emerald uses an illusion to make him see Cinder, or even Pyrrha as a means to taunt him), and Ruby gets to be the one to take on Cinder. Her Silver Eyes should have activated when she saw Vernal deplete Weiss’ aura. Because as far as Ruby knows, Vernal is the maiden, and seeing another maiden towering above a friend of hers that doesn’t have any aura should have triggered the Silver Eyes instead. The most she does is tell a speech to Raven that… didn’t really feel like a real thing. Most of the victories we saw on-screen rarely took teamwork, and mostly revolved around one moment of awesome that just undermined the threat of the grimm or big bad guys. She’s about as effective as a level five Bulbasaur in Inferno Cave.

Ruby is constantly taking a backseat to most moments that develop the much more interesting cast and jaune.

And once the story is all said and done?- What is she going to do? What is she going to do once the heroes defeat Salem, and the world is safe from the threat of the grimm?

Yang has some world exploring to do. Blake has equality to keep alive. Weiss has a company to run. Ren and Nora have each other……… What’s left for Ruby? What are her goals for after the adventure is over?

Nothing.

#rwde #ruby crit #done dirty

[texanredrose]

Omega’s Strength (Pt 3)

Yang startled awake at the sound of the door opening, pulling herself tighter into a ball. While the strength of her heat had reduced considerably, she still felt the vulnerability of being off center and naked clawing at her senses. Not to mention the idea of actually having to face Winter, knowing that she'd been rejected; she should probably feel a touch humiliated but shame came much easier, forcing her to close her eyes tight to keep the tears at bay. However, when she sniffled, enough scent got through her runny sinuses for her to realize it wasn't the Alpha who'd come to check on her.

Well, not that Alpha, at any rate.

"Are you awake?" She turned her head, blinking away tears and forcing her vision to focus on her teammate standing a few feet away from the bed. "Ah, you're conscious. That's good, I suppose."

"What do you want, Weiss?" Her voice was thick from either sleep or emotion- though more accurately a combination of both but she hoped that didn't seem readily apparent as she turned her head back. A moment later, her brows furrowed, and not because of the exasperated sigh that served as her teammate's response. Although her heat seemed to be winding down, she still had the heightened sense of awareness that came with it, and she should be reacting rather strongly to another Alpha's presence in her space, especially seeing as Winter's rejection had brought her sex drive to a stand still. Having someone else so close should be turning her into an angry, moody mess ready to defend herself, but she'd hardly registered the woman as a threat. Sitting up- and forgetting for the moment her own nakedness- the Omega looked over at Weiss, a frown on her lips. "Why..." It then occurred to her the very finite amount of explanations for that. Her anger flared, lips pulling back in a snarl as she inhaled deeply. There, beneath Weiss' own scent, she could pick up on the traces of another- hazy smoke and the tang of metal, with a hint of something that made her think of old books. "Blake."

"Of course. No offense to Ruby." The conscious omission of the other available Omega on board at present didn't miss Yang, but she rightly didn't care about that, silent fury burning in her eyes. It didn't take long for the woman to continue. "I suppose I owe you the truth." A look of concern flickered across her features briefly before she reached up, unhooking the sapphire pendant at the base of her throat that held both sides of her collar together. Pushing the fabric back and tilting her head to the side, Weiss revealed the dark splotch standing out against her skin, the teeth marks having already faded. Were it anything else, the bruise would be gone as well, which meant it had to be a mating mark. "We've been dancing around the idea for a while now. I'm... afraid the decision to mark each other might've been the catalyst to your heat; we'd agreed that mating wouldn't be wise, considering the circumstances, so this is just our... way of remembering what we're fighting for." Blue eyes flicked to hers, expression softening as a touch of warmth reflected in the woman's small smile. "We were going to tell you and Ruby, but your heat triggered the next day. We should've warned you and Jaune what we were planning; it just... didn't occur to us what could happen until it was too late."

"Yeah, well... good for you two," she said, and mentally she kicked herself for sounding so bitter. To be fair, some warning would've been nice and this whole fiasco could've been avoided... but it would end up just prolonging the inevitable. "You marked her too, right?"

"Yes. Why do you ask?" Weiss seemed genuinely confused, taking a few steps closer. Aside from being mostly immune to the Omega's lingering scent- though the extra ruffle to her skirt spoke to how powerful her pheromones were, coaxing a physical reaction regardless of her immunity to the call- the Alpha didn't pose a particular threat either, allowing her to approach, albeit slowly.

Yang's heat hadn't entirely dissipated, after all, and she could still become defensive if she felt threatened. "No reason... where's Winter?"

"Out to get some fresh air. It seems her training didn't prepare her enough." The woman shrugged. "Personally, I worried she was relying too heavily on past precedent, but she seemed confident she could remain professional." Her eyes darted down for a moment. "Could you perhaps... cover up a bit?"

A joke about temptation and prudishness lay in the back of her mind but she tossed it aside, gathering up some of the blanket and wrapping it around her shoulders. "I didn't think she'd make a habit of standing by an Omega's space while they're in heat. Doesn't seem very smart."

Instantly, Yang winced. She shouldn't be bashing the woman due to her own wounded pride. Winter tried to be fair and reasonable, went above and beyond; just because she didn't want the Omega as a mate, it didn't give her the right to lash out, especially not to the woman's sister.

"It's hardly a habit; Atlesian military personnel are in close proximity at all times during their initial training phase." Weiss, either ignoring her brief lapse or genuinely missing it, went about collecting up the Omega's clothes and folding them neatly. "It's a requirement for Alphas, Betas, and Omegas to remain in their... what's the word? It’s something like a dorm but not quite. Anyway, they stay together throughout the Omegas' heats, to prepare for the circumstances when supplies are limited or non-existent." Each article of clothing was folded and set on the dresser, prompting a niggling sensation in the back of Yang's mind to move it, but she ignored the impulse. That provided a good sign that her heat had truly come to an abrupt end. "I offered to be the one to look after you but she insisted she had the training."

"She probably didn't want to make Blake jealous," she said, flopping back onto the bed and throwing her arm over her eyes. Sleep would be impossible at this point but she really wanted some excuse to be left alone. "You're bonded now; you can't just go and take care of other Omegas."

"Blake would've understood," Weiss replied, picking up any trash littering the area and seemingly unable to allow herself to be idle. She paused at the waste basket, likely seeing the evidence of her sister's presence, before continuing with her sweep of the room. "She's been worried about you the past few days, you know."

"She's a good friend." Yang rolled onto her side, hoping she could avoid any further questioning or conversation. The younger Alpha had to know at this point that she'd tried and failed to bond with Winter; the last thing she wanted was consolation regarding the rejection. It didn't serve as a surprise or a deviation of what she'd expected, so she didn't need to be treated with kid gloves for her stupidly wounded pride.

In the end, the Omega had only herself to blame for this whole debacle.

"Yang." With a furrow to her brow, she looked over her shoulder to see Weiss watching her with worry plain on her face. "Whatever is running through your head right now, don't take it too seriously. You and Winter need to talk to each other properly before any decisions are made, don't you think?"

Immediately, she glared at the Alpha, growling out her reply. "It's none of your business. I'm not your mate."

That would become her mantra, something to help her get through the next few weeks. Weiss wasn't her mate, Winter wasn't her mate, she didn't have a mate and likely never would, and she didn't care. 

Perhaps if she repeated it often enough, she'd believe it.

"But you are my friend and my teammate, and she's my sister. I'm not entirely baseless in my concern." Weiss bared her teeth slightly in response, eyes flashing dangerously as a warning. She wouldn't follow through with it, of course, but the idea that she might seemed to be enough for Yang to divert her gaze. "I won't interfere because it's not my place but... please, consider what I've said. You both need to talk about this."

"Whatever." Rolling back over, she firmly ignored the Alpha's presence until eventually Weiss sighed, dropping any attempts to communicate. In her scent, Yang could pick up on the annoyance that seemed to perpetually shroud the smaller woman, especially during their early days at Beacon; she'd come to associate it with her sarcastic replies and rolling eyes whenever her newfound teammates did something she found ridiculous. Some part of her understood the Alpha's feelings because it was definitely Yang's fault for expecting more, allowing her instinct driven desires to put the thoughts into her head, but right now she just wanted to be angry with the world.

She'd have the rest of her life to be angry with herself.

Yang and Weiss hardly acknowledged each other. The Alpha ultimately retreated to wait outside the room, her continued presence beginning to evoke Yang's ire the longer she lingered. For a while, she laid about listlessly, mired in anger and self loathing, but it eventually gave way to a melancholic sort of acceptance. Even if they hadn't bonded, her heat seemed to be drawing to a close as she no longer felt the gnawing sense of need or desire clawing at the back of her mind or setting her on fire with every breath; she just felt exhausted, physically and emotionally, but her mind kept running. She thought about things she could've done differently, maybe, perhaps put up a bit more of a fight, proven she could still hold her own even with the desire to submit running rampant through her veins.

In the end, a useless exercise. She couldn't have done anything differently enough to spark a change in the outcome. Winter attended to her out of a sense of duty and nothing more and the Omega should be grateful she had such a staunch comrade, considering the odds they faced. Really, who was she to be upset? When they defeated Salem, Winter would have her pick of any person in Remnant. Yang didn't possess what it took to compete for the affections of an Alpha like her; fooling herself into thinking she had even a ghost of a chance considering her state had momentarily overridden that fact.

Eventually, she pulled herself from the bed, realizing that she'd slipped into the same bottomless pit of despair that she'd fallen into after the Fall of Beacon. She had two options: continue feeling sorry for herself or get back to trudging through the days, going from fight to fight. She would never have a bonded mate to rely on, true, but Weiss and Blake had each other, and Ren and Nora, too. They were her friends and they deserved the chance to enjoy their lives together, free of the looming threat Salem posed.

She went to the bathroom and gave herself a cold shower, scrubbing at her skin hard to dislodge her own scent and Winter's. Weiss already knew and Blake likely would soon but, beyond that, no one else needed to know. If Ruby found out she'd been rejected, she might very well try to confront Winter or, worse, try to convince her it was just a fluke. That things would work out, that something would change, but that wasn't how things worked at all, and she didn't want to break it to her little sister that some people who wanted mates just weren't meant for them.

When she stepped out of the shower, skin red and angry from the washing, Yang took a deep breath in through her nose, focusing on her scent. It had changed from before- not as potent, not as desperate- but it remained distinct, not layered with the Alpha's at all.

The room, on the other hand, told enough of the story for her to wince upon entering it again, shoulders slumping at the reminder. She'd tried pushing those thoughts to the very back of her mind- the look in Winter's eyes, the feel of their skin pressing together, the sense of completion- but just a whiff had brought it all back to the front.

Yang shook her head, a frown on her lips. It would take time to forget. While she hadn't mated during her heat before, she'd had some fun between Signal and Beacon, opting to get a little bit of experience under her belt before becoming bogged down in schoolwork and missions. Now, those brief liaisons felt like a whole other life, dim and hazy in her memory.

These memories would fade, too.

She moved about the room, her instincts warring with her sense. Normally, an Omega wouldn't leave whatever area they'd claimed as theirs until a day or two past the end of their heat, recouping lost energy and nutrition with the aid of their mate or having planned ahead for the miserable solo experience. Yang had neither and it would make the most sense to leave, try and force herself to get back into the regular groove of things as quickly as possible to put the whole mess behind her. However, the moment her gaze landed on her prosthetic, her heart clenched painfully.

She didn't want to leave. The sooner she did, the faster she'd have to forget that one moment when it felt like everything would be right. Once she'd reattached her arm, there was no going back, no pretending she'd almost had everything she'd thought she lost the first time she woke up in Patch with nothing more than a stump.

Yang growled, left hand clenching into a tight fist as she turned away and retreated to the corner furthest from the bed, sitting down with her knees up to her chest.

As much as it hurt, leaving would be her best option. But... she could delay that a little while longer.

Closing her eyes, she breathed in, Winter's scent still strong enough to linger, and she hugged her knees tight to keep the tears at bay. She'd get through this, just like everything else, and in two weeks or less they'd be back to the battlefield where the threat of life or death would help bury this scar beneath physical ones.

That seemed to be the only thing she was good for, nowadays.

Eventually Weiss came by with some water and food, leaving both just outside the threshold and retreating out of sight by the time Yang got to the door. For a moment, she couldn't register what had happened, why the Alpha wasn't standing there when the door slid aside, but then it struck her that she was expecting Winter to be standing there. Her sister at least knew that her presence wouldn't make things better and so hadn't stuck around the way Winter did.

Although she didn't feel hungry, she ate and did her best to breathe through her mouth between bites.

Yang left the Chief Engineer's quarters early the next morning. The events of the past twenty four hours had effectively ended her heat, bringing her sense of awareness back to its normal level. If felt strange, no longer having that primal force driving her every action, but she certainly didn't complain; being back in total control was a blessing she wouldn't soon take for granted. However, with her return to normal came a few undesired side effects, such as the shaking in her limbs from the abrupt, premature end to her heat and, of course, talking to Winter. 

She'd taken Weiss' words to heart and spent the past few hours drifting between consciousness and slumber, thinking about why the Alpha would put herself in such a situation in the first place. It just didn't make a whole lot of sense. 

Then again, Schnees were a funny bunch and not everything they did made sense anyway, and that couldn't be better exemplified than by the mating mark now adorning the younger sister's collarbone.

In the privacy of her mind, she could admit the twinge of jealousy nipping at her heart. Blake was her partner and best friend, true, but she'd always considered them equals in that regard. Both learning at Beacon together, both with some parts of their past they didn't like and wanted to change, both growing in step with each other even if it was in different ways, but now her friend had taken a route she couldn't follow. 

She was happy for the Faunus, too; she deserved to have someone to care for her the way Weiss did, someone so staunchly loyal and unfaltering. They would make a good pair and, once all the nastiness of the war was behind them, they could really explore their relationship together, and it made Yang that much more committed to seeing this whole thing through.

But knowing that this would be the first of many times she would be reminded of her inadequacy chaffed at her.

Shoving the whole thing to the back of her mind- she would properly congratulate Blake later, in private since it seemed that the pair weren't being very open about the status of their relationship quite yet, and they weren’t the sort to talk about those sorts of things out in the open anyway- the Omega turned and went up to the next deck, stopping on the landing to breathe in deep. 

Without the heightened awareness of her heat, picking out the Alpha's scent was more difficult, but she eventually caught it faintly leading towards the upper deck. Fifteen minutes of tracking later and she found herself in the open air of the ship's top deck, the night sky overhead bringing with it a distinct chill.

Winter stood at the bow, hands clasped behind her back as the breeze lightly teased her hair. Something about her uniform seemed unkempt but only a little, though that came as a giant red flag to the Omega. The fact she wasn't acknowledged until about five steps away also said something; the woman seemed so lost in thought, she turned around a bit too quick, as if expecting a threat before those blue eyes fell on Yang. Her posture relaxed a fraction but her expression remained impassive as ever.

"Yang." She blinked a few times before marshaling her thoughts, giving a slight nod. "It's good to see you out and about. I assume this means your heat has passed?"

"Yeah. Back to normal. My normal, anyway." She tried to offer a small smile but felt it fall flat, her gaze darting away briefly. "I, uh... thanks. For... helping me out. You didn't have to."

"Nonsense." Winter's tone seemed softer than usual, as if she was being entirely sincere. "It's the least I can do." The corner of her lip twitched and for a moment the Omega could almost believe she saw a bit of vulnerability in the woman's expression. "However... I'll admit I wasn't expecting you to mark me."

Immediately, several responses entered her mind, all vying to be voiced.

How could I not?

Why didn't you mark me back?

I would be lucky to have a mate like you.

I shouldn't have told you to leave.

But reality kept the words locked firmly behind her teeth. Winter was the sort of Alpha others aspired to be- strong, cunning, passionate, determined, the sword’s edge- and the sort of mate anyone in Remnant would wish for... and she was an Omega missing an arm, already proven to be unable to act as a protector or even keep herself in check.

The least she could do was take responsibility.

"I made a mistake. I was in heat and I wasn't thinking clearly." Her chin tilted down, as much to express her contrition as to hide her throat from view behind her scarf. "I'm sorry, Winter. I shouldn't have done that."

The Alpha stood stock still for a moment, nothing but the breeze rustling the nearby trees to fill the sudden silence, but she recovered quickly enough. "Of course. It's fine. I understand." Yang expected relief but she should've known the woman wouldn't be so crass, offering merely a tight smile with her words. "These things happen."

"Still, I am sorry." A sorry excuse for an Omega, she mentally amended, but left it unvoiced. No need to drive the knife any deeper.

"Please, don’t lose sleep about it." Winter turned, making to resume her post admiring the scenery. "I believe Weiss made some dinner a little while ago. There should still be some in the mess and you need to recover your energy."

"Did you already grab some?" Mentally, she cursed herself; they would both likely want and need time away from the other to forget those moments they spent locked together, when they almost completed a bond. Well... she didn't want the separation, but it would be entirely necessary for both her broken heart to start its mending and for the mark she'd left to begin fading. "I can bring you a plate."

"Thank you for the offer but I've already eaten," she said, back turned towards the Omega. Her posture looked more tense than before but she would probably relax once Yang was gone.

What a wonderful mess she'd made. Again.

"Alright." She started heading back inside the ship, trying to pretend like her shoulders didn't want to slump. "See ya around."

Yang went back inside and headed straight for the stairs, bypassing the mess entirely. Even if she needed to eat, food wouldn't satisfy her at that moment with her rolling emotions fit to burst, and she didn't want to be caught in such a compromised state. She'd already upset the balance within their motley group enough without adding anything further to the pile; the idea of getting either pity or a pep talk right then just made it all the harder to hold her tenuous grip on herself. 

Somehow, she managed to reach a safe destination, the door closing behind her the sign she could allow the tears to fall and the Omega cursed herself for being so broken in so many ways.

Because she hadn't gone back to the little room she'd picked out for herself back when they commandeered the ship. The one she'd used for the majority of their time traveling in pursuit of Salem's agents, where the majority of her personal effects sat- not much, but it kinda felt like a smaller version of the dorm room and she liked it- that should be her destination but that wasn't where she wanted to be at present. 

Instead, she found herself standing in the Chief Engineer's quarters once more, tears trailing down her cheeks as she went to the bed and quickly dove into the sheets. It probably wasn't advisable- her heat charged pheromones still drenched the room- but it was also the only reliable place she could indulge in Winter's scent.

The Omega shouldn't torture herself like this but, for a few brief moments, she forgot everything about how inadequate she would be as a mate, how the loss of her arm had irreparably damaged her, and how no one would want her.

And then it all came back and she cried even harder. She curled up in the blankets and fell asleep, quietly sobbing.

Yang avoided Winter whenever possible. It seemed like the courteous thing to do and the woman didn't appear keen on crossing her path, remaining conspicuously out of sight on the rare times the Omega braved the common areas. Yang spent most of her time in one of the training rooms next to the gym in the bowels of the ship's hangar, losing herself to the continuous rhythm of combat. It took the edge off her self loathing, allowing her to focus on the one skill she could still claim- at least, the only one that didn't pull a groan from her teammates. The Omega worked herself to the bone for hours before going back to her room and showering, spending the rest of her time playing the little handheld game the woman had given her to pass the time. It occurred to her to return it but, seeing as they were going on nearly a full week with no contact, she figured the Alpha would come get it eventually.

"Hey, everyone, come up to the bridge!" Ruby's voice sounded from the speaker overhead, excitement plain in her tone. "Professor Goodwitch's back!"

Yang sighed, getting up from her bunk and stretching. Well, she should've known she couldn't avoid the inevitable forever. With the game in hand, she went up to the bridge, bracing herself for what she'd find. 

The moment the door opened, lilac eyes snapped to where Winter stood, leaning against the farthest corner with her arms crossed over her chest and that perfect, inscrutable mask in place.

And... it hurt, a little bit. Here she was, pushing herself nearly to the point of exhaustion just to forget, and the woman appeared entirely unfazed. She didn't even glance the Omega's way.

Internally, she berated herself for expecting some sort of reaction.

Brushing it off as best she could, Yang moved to join the others, finally registering the excited chatter about the newcomers she hadn't even noticed yet. 

Four people stood behind her former professors, each outfitted in variations of the standard Atlesian military uniform and smiling pleasantly while Ruby rambled about their weapons, Goodwitch opting to direct the introductions to Weiss and Blake seeing as their leader appeared fully distracted. Yang immediately noticed their closeness, how easily they stood next to each other and invading the other's space without concern, and felt another stab in her chest. She shouldn't hold it against them and she didn't, not really, but there before her very eyes stood the sort of relationship she would never have and it chaffed at her. She made sure to stand a little bit further than usual from her partner to try and lessen the sting.

"General Ironwood provided us with the intel we needed and released team SNOW here to accompany us." The former Professor glanced over her shoulder and sighed. "They're newly graduated from the Academy but not officially assigned to a unit, so their presence with us leaves no paper trail. It will hopefully buy us the time we need to remain undetected while tracking down Salem's Atlas contact." Her sharp eyes landed on Yang for a moment, as if she could somehow read the turmoil of the past two weeks with just a look before continuing. "I'll leave the introductions to them. As soon as Qrow and Oscar return from their... side mission, we'll be ready to move out."

With that, she turned, likely heading off to her quarters or wherever Port and Oobleck had gone, leaving Weiss to try and rein in her excited partner while Yang stepped up beside Blake, crossing her arms over her chest. Somewhere behind her, she heard a soft rustle of fabric, as if Winter were moving too, but she ignored it.

"Hey, name's Yang. Nice to meet you," she said, looking for some sort of distraction. "Sorry about my sis; she's a bit of a weapons nut."

"Oh come on, I'm not that bad!" The younger woman whined. "I just- they have really cool weapons!"

One of the four chuckled, waving her hand in an easy going gesture. "Ah, she's fine. They are pretty cool." She smiled at Ruby's quick agreement, running a hand through short, midnight black hair before offering it to the blonde. "I'm Stryker DeLeon, the team leader. Heard we're going to be kicking a lot of tail on this mission."

"This isn't the sort of endeavor you've become accustomed to in the Academy," Winter said, a slight edge to her voice as she stepped up on Yang's other side. "You'll do well to remember that. The threat we are combating won't give much room for error, so take it seriously."

Before she could say anything, the scent tickling her nose prompted Yang to inhale, a frown coming to her lips. She supposed she shouldn't be surprised; of the four newest members to their ragtag crew, two were Omegas and the other Beta, but the woman standing before them reeked of an Alpha's potent scent. Much like Weiss objected fiercely to Ruby being designated their team leader, Alphas tended to challenge each other when joining a new social group, establishing a hierarchy that never failed to confuse Betas and Omegas, who tended to work well with just about anyone. 

Then again, it could easily be the presence of other military members that set Winter on edge, especially with the unspoken knowledge that these four had Ironwood's express consent to join the fight while the woman beside her had to abandon her post entirely.

Stryker put up her hands, not seeming concerned by the aggressiveness. "Too easy, Specialist. The last thing we want to do is put anyone in jeopardy through incompetence or laziness." She gestured towards the rest of her team. "I'm sure I speak for all of us when I say we look forward to working with you all in training and in battle." Deep brown eyes, so dark they may as well be black, landed on Yang. "Some more than others."

The wink that followed made her raise a brow. If she was of any sort of importance to Winter- a bonded mate, or even a temporary one- that would be a highly provocative gesture, one that would be hard to hold against the Alpha if she took it as a slight.

However, seeing as she was nothing more than a comrade in arms, Yang offered a brief chuckle. "Hope you have the stamina; we've been at this a while. Might take some time for you to catch up." She turned, not very concerned about how Stryker might take that as she held out the game. "By the way, here. Figured you'd want it back."

She didn't look the woman in the eyes- probably should've, but she was being a coward and the less she showed how broken up she was about the whole mess, the better for everyone- but saw the way the Alpha’s posture stiffened slightly before she sharply turned towards the door, just as it opened for Jaune, Ren, and Nora to enter. "Keep it. I should begin plotting our course and don't need the distraction."

As she brushed by them, Jaune gave Winter a curious look, lowering his voice as he approached the others. "What's her problem? She's moody but not usually this moody."

"I'll thank you to keep your rude remarks regarding my sister to yourself, Jaune." Weiss snapped, fixing the man with a cold glare that had him hunching his shoulders. "We're preparing to move out soon; as our designated pilot, she has her hands full being of use."

"I'm getting better." He weakly defended, gaze lowering in the way it always did whenever Weiss bristled like that. She still hadn't forgiven him for practically throwing himself at her during their early days at Beacon and Yang couldn't rightly blame her, though now she had a bit of a firsthand understanding of what he was feeling at the time. How ironic. "But, uh, I guess you guys are joining us, too?"

"Yeah, we're Team SNOW." The woman glanced at him, Nora, and Ren before an easy smile curled her lips. "Back over here we have Nigel, Oswald, and Wisteria. I'm Stryker." Introductions continued, with slight confusion splaying across the newcomers' faces when Jaune and Ruby identified themselves as the leaders of their respective teams- or, in Jaune's case, former leader. "Wait, Beacon doesn't have Alphas as team leaders?"

"It surprised me as well," Weiss replied, the Atlas native throwing a small smile at her partner. "However, I've come to see that there's a bit of wisdom in the practice. For the most part."

"Uh huh." Stryker nodded, though it showed plain in her face that she didn't quite understand. "And, uh, what makes you the 'former' team leader, anyway?"

"Oh, well, with Oscar being... like... basically Ozpin." The Omega shivered slightly, which Yang honestly understood. She still wasn't sure how she felt about the whole 'headmaster now living inside some kid's head' thing, either. "We figured he'd be better at the whole coordination thing."

"We're team ORNJ now!" Nora laughed, quieting down to tap a finger against her cheek thoughtfully. "Which, honestly, sounds better than team JNRR anyway, though I'm still not sure if that's how it's supposed to work, rearranging letters and stuff, but I guess it doesn't really matter now that we're not in school anymore. I mean, it's cool having a team name and all, but it's still pretty weird referring to ourselves like that, especially when we usually fight together-"

"Nora," Ren said, putting a hand on her shoulder. "We should probably help them find lodging."

"Oh! Right." She smiled, nodding towards the door. "We can help you pick out the best rooms. We've been all over the ship looking for cool stuff."

"Sounds like a plan." Stryker motioned for her team to follow, waving at the others. "Nice meeting you all!" Brown eyes landed on Yang, her lips curling into a wider smile. "And I'll see you around."

The Omega watched her go, thinking back to her time before Beacon and even during the school year. Back then, she might've flirted in return, at least a little, but felt no need to do so now. If anything, it was likely a fluke, perhaps the woman's quirky way of being friendly. 

When she turned back to her teammates, she noticed the slight worry in her sister's expression and the pinched annoyance on Weiss', the Alpha opening her mouth before being silenced by a look from Blake.

"They seem... like an interesting group," she said, choosing her words carefully as her ears flicked in annoyance. "I hope their presence makes things easier on the rest of us. We've got a long fight ahead."

"That's fine." Yang scoffed, cracking her neck and rolling her shoulders. "I'll take a long battle over sitting around doing nothing."

"Sis, are you alright?" Silver met lilac, concern flashing across the younger woman's face. "You've been kinda avoiding everyone."

No, I'm not, and being around Weiss and Blake is just making it worse.

"I'm fine." She did her best to flash Ruby a smile. "Just trying to get back into the swing of things. You know how my heat knocks me off balance."

"Yeah, but... you don't usually shut yourself in your room after heat."

"Things change, Rubes." Yang turned, heading towards the door. "I'm going to go train some more. My timing's still off."

She could hear something muttered low, a warning from Blake to keep her mate in check, and it seemed to work seeing as Weiss didn’t try to stop her. 

Instead of sticking around to play twenty questions about exactly how not okay she was, Yang went down the stairs, heading to the lower decks and cursing herself the whole way because she had no intention of going to train. While some part of her felt grateful Weiss hadn't said anything about her disaster of a heat, another part wished everyone knew just so they wouldn't ask, and yet another part hated that she now had to walk on these eggshells, too. Just being in the same room as Winter made everything difficult, and the close proximity of a newly minted bond stung almost as bad, but she had to put all that aside.

It didn't matter. She didn't want a mate, she didn't need a mate, and she didn't care that Winter rejected her.

Yet, when her feet finally brought her to a stop, she found herself standing in front of the Chief Engineer's quarters, biting her lip and trying to resist the temptation. After she'd left the last time, she hadn't been back, but now... she found herself unable to resist slipping into the room. 

Everything looked just like she'd left it except the bed, which had been made recently, with the extra blankets neatly stacked on top. Probably Weiss trying to be helpful in some manner- and she felt a brief flare of panic that she'd washed the blankets, removing any chance that their scents might've lingered. However, once she got close enough, she could smell the arctic bite of Winter just beneath her own, dull but still there.

Grabbing one of the blankets and throwing it around her shoulders, Yang sat down on the bed and turned on the game.

In her mind, she promised this would be the last time she'd subject herself to this torment.

#Elderburn #TRR writes #Elderburn Omegaverse AU #Omega's Strength #Monochrome

[mrfippstuff]

I’m going to talk about RWBY V4

Because why not?

A bit late to the party I suppose, but everyone is doing it and I do have some thoughts on Volume 4 of RWBY, so I thought I might as well get some things off my chest. I’ll be starting from what I disliked the most and work my way up from there.

Blake’s Story

To be perfectly honest I found Blake’s share of the volume to be somewhat unbearable, it doesn’t really offer anything new for her, it’s just a retread of what she went through the in the first three volumes: she runs away from something that troubles her and a friend has to pull her back and tells her she is wrong. She runs away from Beacon and her friends in a bid to protect them from the White Fang, but she heads straight to her parents? We learned a lot about Blake’s pre-Beacon life and the more I learned about it the less I like it, her and everything about the Faunus storyline. While I can’t say it exactly contradicts anything we knew about her, the reveal that she was the daughter of the then-leader of the White Fang and now-leader of Menagerie does not gel with what most people were thinking about her life. Most people thought she had to struggle and endure a lot for the fight for equality, but she grew up in a tropical paradise, in a giant mansion, on an island where the populations seems to entirely Faunus? The biggest problem with this storyline is that we never see any sort of racism against Faunus, Weiss, Roman and Cardin were the only people who showed negative thoughts against them, and even then it doesn’t feel like I think it’s supposed to. Cardin seemed like an asshole to everyone, Torchwick was too enjoyable of a character, and Weiss’ views seemed like they were retconned back in V2. She came to Beacon thinking that all Faunus were murderers and thieves and given the proper chance would join the White Fang without hesitation, then she later says she came to Beacon to make things right by the SDC Faunus workers? Even Menagerie, which we were told was overcrowded and kind of shitty actually looks great, easily one of the better looking and more scenic places in the show with tons of space to in the jungles to expand. Overall this makes the White Fang seem like nothing more than cartoon villain henchman who are villains just because the heroes need someone to beat up. There was a moment, however, where we were introduced to the idea that Adam was leading a splinter group of the White Fang, but that idea was killed not even a minute it was introduced.

Another issues is that Blake is the daughter someone who led the White Fang and is now the leader of the Faunus capital. The name “Belladonna” should be a much more known name, Weiss of all people should have called Blake out on that, but no one ever says anything about it, not even when her name was on screen of the Vytal Tournament for the world to see.

Blake and Sun also suffered as characters. Blake was just unpleasant in most of her scenes, being snappy and dismissive towards anyone who tried to talk sense into her, and while I would have understood this sort of attitude given the situation, the fact that they’re repeating the same arc for her won’t let me. Sun somehow got it worst because outside his last scene with Blake everything that come out of his mouth is terrible, it’s like the writers simply can’t write him as anything as being a shitty comic relief. I’ve mentioned it before, but the things I hated most about the SSSN vs NDGO fight was that it was nothing but bad jokes for the sake of them, and none of them hitting, and that seems to apply to Sun on his own. It’s like they made no effort to write him in any serious manner.

0/10 honestly.

Yang’s Story

At the end of V3, out of all the characters Yang had been unloaded with the most baggage. She lost her arm and she was left behind by most of the people she cared about, put that on top of previously established abandonment issues, she had the most work to do when it came to her own personal demons. Out of everyone, she should have been a gold mine of things to work with, but we got nothing from her. While the first scene with her was good at establishing where she was in life, all the issues she had were introduced, glanced over, and were seemingly resolved in no time. She more or less was given fifteen minute, and the only thing that really happened was that she was given a robot arm at the end of her first episode, and had it on by her second. That’s the exact thing I didn’t want to happen, and it really makes me think that the fact that she had lost her arm will never be brought up in any meaningful light ever again.

3/10 here.

Weiss’ Story

While Blake’s story was terrible, and Yang’s was disappointing, Weiss’ was boring and predictable. It went like I thought it was going to go, hit all the story beats I knew it was, and there was nothing I didn’t expect. Like Blake’s, it’s just redoing her previous story and adds nothing really new aside from Whitley, who seems like the most last-minute addition of a character I ever saw. The moment I saw him I more or less guessed what his role was going to be, just to be an obstacle in Weiss way who just happens to be a Jacques 2.0, and it just seems redundant, and I don’t expect anything much more than that from him. I actually even lowered my opinion of Weiss because of the time skip, since V4 was about 6-8 months after Beacon, but she spent all that time moping and staring out her window? She really did nothing during that time to further her own goals? She wants to run the SDC, but all she did during that time was be sad? It really makes me wonder if she actually has a plan for the SDC since she didn’t seem like she really worked for it, that she was just expecting it to fall into her lap.

Then there’s the summoned knight. On one hand, as a Jojo fan I appreciate her knight since it would make Weiss a Stand User (it’s just a great sword variant of Silver Chariot), but from a narrative perspective I hate it. Things like Dust, Aura and Semblances have always been vaguely defined, and the way Weiss’ powers work makes it look like it’s just magic and that she can do whatever the writers want. With what she had to start with, Weiss already had a very variable moveset, so there didn’t seem like there needed to be a power up like that, which seems like a separate power rather than a branching ability of what she already knew. Then there is tying it to her character development, but that’s something that should have been from the start instead of 1/3 through V3. They should not have introduced something like this so later into her character development if it was going to matter this much.

So 5/10 for her.

Honestly the WBY stories fell like filler for the most par with the obvious end goal of each one to get them to Haven and have them meet up with Ruby. Splitting up the team seems more like a novelty than anything else, like they did it because they could but never put thought into what to do with that. It’s just the tournament all over again. It presents interesting ideas, but the way it follows them up is a massive let down.

Ruby/RNJR/Oscar/Villains AKA Main Plot

While I disliked WBY’s part of the volume,I have to say I much more favorable view the actual plot part.

At first I was rather skeptical of Hazel, Watts and Tyrian,Tyrian in particular, but after his encounter in RNJR and Qrow, Tyrian is on a fast track to becoming a favorite villain of mine. He was an enjoyable character to watch and his interactions with the heroes were great, and the reveal that he has this fanatical worship of Salem to the point where her being disappointed in him is enough to drive him to tear-ridden lunacy was just fantastic, and it gives me high hopes for Hazel and Watts. This volume also did a lot in turning my opinion on Cinder around. I disliked her very much because she was always over confident and smug without me feeling that she really earned it, skulking in the shadows being vague and mysterious for the sake of it with master plans, even though most of her victories were more of a result of her opposition’s failures than her successes. They tried to play her as this all seeing chess master, but the writers but they had to stick her into the spotlight, but she was terribly boring and all the other villains around her were so much better than her. Then V4 comes around and she is the broken and mute cripple who struggles to even stand up, she is the bottom tier of Salem’s followers and is openly mocked by her superiors, and the Maiden powers she tore Beacon down for seemingly came with a devastating weakness she didn’t even know about. Back in V3 she said she wanted to be powerful and feared, but she is now the antithesis of that, even though Beacon was technical success for her, she ended up being the opposite of what she wanted, and I want to see where this goes for her.

Oscar was also something I want to see where it goes. This random nobody farmhand who seems to now share head space with one of the more mysterious characters in the show now being shoved into the plot could lead to some interesting things, and I like their interactions enough to see how this goes for them, and what happens with them and what this means for the both of them.

We also had a surprise moment with Raven and Qrow, and everything about that scene was gold. All I wanted from Raven was for her to be a piece of shit who ran out on her family because she simply didn’t want to there, and I was afraid that they were going to pull some “greater good” angle with her, but not did they do what I wanted them to do, but they also made her the leader of a tribe of bandits that go around and pillaging and burning down villages. Her entire conversation with Qrow makes me want to see her again and more of her view on the world and her relationship with the people in her past.

The remaining members of Team JNPR also each had great moments this volume. We saw Jaune’s own way of grieving regarding Pyrrha, and as a Souls fan I appreciate that his weapon is now just Ludwig’s Holy Blade, and while I would have liked to see how Ren and Nora were dealing with this loss as well, we were given a gold mine on their backstories and history together, and everything about this was fantastic in itself. Then through those flashbacks and the fights in the ruined Kuroyuri the show was able to take huge leaps to redeeming the Grimm as actual threats. The Nuckelavee is the kind of monster I wanted, this unsettling and powerful creature that is more than just a fodder mook, if they’re able to keep their monster designs on par with this, then I’d be fine with the heroes tearing through Beowolves by the dozens if we get more monsters like this.

There were a few problems, of course. I liked the globetrotting aspect of their journey, but seeing as how Weiss, Blake, Yang and Oscar all took much quicker ways to Have it loses its appeal real quick. The Relics is also a problem because it seems to instantly outshine the Maidens since they seem to be the exact same thing from a narrative view, and there didn’t seem like there need to be both at the same time.The Haven airships coming to find RNJR was also a bit of a cop out.

Then there is Ruby Rose.

I’ve already talked about this but I’m going to better explain my views. After V4 ended someone tallied up the total lines between each character, and they found out that had it not been for her closing narration, Ruby’s line count would have gone from most number of lines, to third, just below Blake and Jaune, which has led to some people complaining about Ruby’s role in the story and that Jaune was stealing the spotlight from her. Personally I don’t see it as this way, at least not entirely, since I don’t view the number of a character’s lines as a very important part of how much impact or meaningful they are in the narrative. For example, even though Sun comes in fifth almost every line he has is garbage and not worth the time watching him, and even though he is not in the top ten, I much more enjoyed Oscar’s side of the story than Blake’s, who came in second in line count.

I’m been rewatching Samurai Jack recently to get caught up with the new season coming up, and it makes me appreciate how much a character’s presence can speak for them without them ever saying anything at all, there is a lot of silence in those episodes, and more often than not Jack will have less lines than anyone else around him. “The Princess and the Bounty Hunters” is a good example of this, since Jack only show up in the last two minutes, he says nothing and you don’t even get a clear look at his face, but that one scene ends up being the heaviest and most tense moment in the episode because of how much weight he carries into the narrative.

Ruby’s problem isn’t that people are stealing screentime from her, it’s that she has little to none narrative presences by default, and this isn’t even a new problem. All the way back in V1 when she had her argument with Weiss, that seemed to put more focus on Weiss than her, and it wasn’t until the last few episodes of V3 did she actually start taking the initiative in the plot and had all those hero moments. For the most part she didn’t matter in V2 to the point where anything she did could have been done by anyone else and there would be no changes. The only time where Ruby’s actual character mattered was when she shared scenes with Penny, and those aren’t going to happen anymore, and while she did have those hero moments in V3, they feel more like she had them because she was the Default Hero instead of them being important to her, that she was given them because of course she’s doing all the cool stuff, she’s the hero so she gets them by default. I don’t even really like how they’re trying to set up this Ruby vs Cinder fight since that seems so default, when I’d rather JNR fight her instead.

Ruby Rose’s writing is less about other taking from her, and more about her just not being given much to begin with. You could remove Jaune, Nora and Ren from the show, but then Ruby would just be overshadowed by Weiss, Blake and Yang and their stories, and outside removing every other character in the show, that won’t make the writing for her better. She needs more narrative presence, she needs to actually be important and carry weight for the story, and until they stop writing her as the Default Hero and figure out what they want to do with her, any other changes they make won’t matter.

So main plot stuff gets a 8/10.

V1: 6/10

V2: 2/10

V3: 7/10

V4: Averages out to 4/10

Also a shout out the World of Remnant pieces this volume, since they were actually good. Back when WoR was introduced, I thought they were a good idea, RWBY had precious little screen time as is, so I this seemed like a good way to get around explaining things that the average person in-universe should know, but the ones were got in V2 and 3 were hit and miss, mostly miss. They either repeated information to the point of being moot or revealed plot important details that should have been in the show proper. The ones we got this volume were well informed, they told us details of everyday facets of this world, giving us what we needed so the show could dedicate itself to explaining on a more detailed level. I think we now know what the average informed citizen of Remnant should know, and I feel that’s what World of Remnant should try to accomplish.

#rwby #volume 4 #rwby4 #rwde #maybe

[asylum-miniatures]

Session 25 - Deeper Darkness

This week Vex couldn’t unfortunately make it, so this session we are playing without her and vex is just following as an observer.  I guess the adventures of Vex and Ozzy Ozbear (she named the bear Ozzy Ozbear) will have to be put on hold for now.

Part 1, a possible lead

Since last week we had all been getting exited about our plans.  The GM decides to throw a spanner in the works.  We get approached by Ninja-san and a new guy.  He’s quickly introduced as the royal spymaster Lennard.  At this point, I’m actually missing “Noun Verb-Noun” naming convention.  He explains that he’s had reports of something happening in the ruins outside of town.  He’s already sent some of his own people to investigate, but they haven’t returned so something is really wrong there.  We all start asking questions about the mission, but I feel my questions about “how important are these ruins” – AKA just have draspher blow them up – were the most pertinent.  He explains that he thinks they might have something to do with the coup, so he wants us to go and investigate, hopefully finding more leads for us to go on.

We head back to the barracks to gear up and roll initiative.  We decide the best plan is to get close then recharge using telons swift sleep speel.  We head out of the city towards the location marked and review what we know.  Four different people went in independently: a fighter named Talgen, the Wizard Aharwyn, a paladin called Sir Bradford and a ranger called Karakas.  Over the last four days they were all sent to investigate, and none of them have been heard from since.  We head east out of the city and eventually start finding large pillars by the roadside just as it goes by a large Ravine.  Its pretty big, several miles long, 30’ wide and so deep we can’t see the bottom in the darkness.  Its along here that the map points us, or to be more accurate its down IN the Ravine. We initially send Mee down to investigate and he rolls a natural 20.   We quickly ask draspher if he needs a light spell, he asures us that he has dancing lights, he’ll be fine.  We then argue about how exactly dancing lights works and how far it can go, but it’s all rendered mute when he gets down there and draspher points out he has darkvision:

Jaune – then why did he need dancing lights?

Mee spots a knotted rope going down to a sandy platform 80’.  While the rest of us argue how to get down (draspher volunteers to go down first, Ocelot suggests the people with cat boots jump down and I still say we bomb the canyon and bury them) Yolan notices the pillars have lots of graffiti.  A quick check he realises that there dwarfen runes, all giving general warnings to stay away.

Part 2, down into the dark

We finally decide to go down the rope, first Telon, then me, then draspher, then Ocelot and finally Yolan (he stayed behind to keep casting guidance on everyone to help with climb rolls).  Luckily, we all make it down safely.  Looking around we notice the bones of small animals dotted around the place.  We quickly spot a set of stairs going down in the dark.  Ocelot picks up a rock and, after getting someone to cast a light spell on it, he tosses it down.  It makes a few bounces before going down a crack but its enough to see several staircases going back and fourth down the side of the ravine. Before our arguments about the best course of action gets too far Telon spots footprints going down the stairs in the sand and goes down himself.  We go down in the order of Telon first, then Myself, draspher, Ocelot then Yolan at the back.  

As we go down, we start hearing a squeaking/hissing sound coming from somewhere around us.  Suddenly a shape leaps out at Telon at front, one comes out of the wall by me and draspher and a third from behind attacking Yolan.  Yolan immediately identifies it as a dire rat.  Not that it really matters, one activation of a destruction judgement and a swing of 11 damage leaves it a smear on the floor.  draspher follows up by firing an adhesive spittle and rolling a one.  I somehow manage to dodge out of the way on a narrow staircase.  Fortunately, Ocelot blows the rat away before draspher can try to kill me by “helping” more.  Telon up front shows off why he’s the group muscle by smacking a rat with a vital strike for 17 damage.  So much for that encounter.

With that done, I get to the most vital job.  Slapping draspher for nearly hitting me with his spells AGAIN.  He responds with a joke about being thankful he didn’t throw out a burning hands or fireball.  I tell him that if he pulls that crap again, I’ll throw him over the edge, and for good measure take the scroll of feather fall he’s been boasting about first.  We go down the stairs, and Yolan ends up slipping up on the loose sand and stumbles onto the guard rail.  Unfortunately, an ageing guard rail can’t hold up a figure wearing plate mail and it snaps like matchsticks.  Ocelot makes a risky jump down to grab on him, but he just can’t hold his weight and Yolan drops.  This means he has a first row seat to seeing Yolan tumble down to the bottom, taking 16 points of damage:

Ocelot – are you ok?

Telon – I’ve had worse, but this is not my proudest moment

Looking out, Ocelot catches sight of a steeple off in the darkness, and the vague shape of some kind of fortress dug into the rock.  Seeing this, he scrambles down the rest of the stairs to catch up with Yolan. Telon jumps straight down with his boots of the cat, while I combine my own set with a graceful leap to only take 1 damage from the fall, and draspher decides against taking the tricky climb to instead dimensional door straight to the bottom.

Now we are all down the bottom, which is to say Ocelot is actually on the staircase while the rest of us have landed behind it, we take a look around.  We are in a small courtyard just outside of some kind of Battlement.  Judging by the look of it, it must have been above ground on the surface before sinking to the bottom of the ravine.  Telon decides to try and bypass our usual arguing and goes straight for the door.  He is rewarded for his forward thinking attitude with a trap door at his feet, falling 20’ into a pit for a grand total of 2 damage.  Pulling himself up, he checked out his new surroundings.  At least he’s not alone down there, he’s got a couple of skelitons and a dead goblin with him to keep him company.  I quickly go help him out with a rope, and Yolan comes to actually pull him out, on account of my abysmal strength.  Of all people, its draspher who checks for and realises that theirs’s something moving down there (aside from Telon).  Telon turns just in time to see a dwarf skeleton moving slightly.  Suddenly something springs at him from his eye socketed, ANOTHER RAT!  Too bad for it, Telon is still in metal armour, and his sneak attack does nothing.  Luckily Ocelot runs over and opens fire.  Unluckily his gun immediately jams on the first shot.  It was all for nothing anyway as Telon literally just smushes it with 15 damage against a wall.  I disable the trapdoor, keeping it open while the others keep watch.  Ocelot hears something in the rubble surrounding them.  Looking closer, he can see that there are multiple rats moving throught the rubble, we might want to leave this area at some point soon.  Yolan finally finish pulling Ocelot up, and a quick examination of the trapdoor hole shows a small ledge we can use to get into the door.  While Ocleot fixes his gun, I disable the door and back off, as drasher uses mage hand to open the door.  

Part 3, the investigation begins

We move in to see the scene of a fight long past.  Three goblin bodies lining the walls, one of them pinned to the wall with a spear.  Telon leaps the pit and takes a closer look.  The room has two doors leading further in, and a fourth body that was previously out of sight.  He takes a quick look at the spear impaled one and realises the spear was thrown with incredible strength.  I jump over the pit as well (not one to be shown up) and I quickly realise, with what the GM calls my “ninja-senses” I realise there is a hidden door in the wall, which I immediately investigate.  Yolan goes across the pit on the safe part as “he’s happy with the size of HIS penis”, and goes to the right door, finding a blank corridor.

draspher announces “Mee and I have a plan”.  This immediately upsets Telon – not the fact he has a plan, he’s upset that that sentence is grammatically correct, and it really shouldn’t be.  He then comes out from under the stairs, shocking the GM that he never moved out from under there and laments he hadn’t realised as he would have had him be eaten by rats.  He immediately tries to pull the spear out of the wall with mage hand, but even with Mee helping he fails to move it.  Ocelot goes in and prepares to shoot anything coming into the room from the outside.  He then reluctantly adds a stipulation that he won’t shoot draspher (I think a part of all of us was disappointed he added that).  Telon goes to the other door and checks it out. He sees a corridor with another door down with a stone dragon statue next to it, and the corridor is blocked off by collapsed with rubble.  

I check the secret door, and realise the thing has a needle trap hooked up to the keyhole.  I disable the trap and I realise that the poison on said needle has long evaporated.  I open the door, and see the skeletons of three archers.  Three skeletons that don’t stay still, but instead jump up and attack me.  The first lashes at me but doesn’t stand a chance of hitting me.  The second tries to grab me, but I dive back just in time.  Ocelot immediately see me dive back and puts a bullet in the new head that appears, hitting for 13 damage and dropping it as his head turns mostly to dust.  Yolan moves up to the gap I left, and smashes one with his Morning star for 15 damage, leaving him without a head and dropping him instantly.  draspher, like any good party member should, ignores the fight and starts casting identify to figure out what the spear is.  Ocelot decides to secure the prerminter and closes the door behind draspher, just in time as he hears screeching and scuttling approaching the door.

Telon goes down the corridor he found (he’s deaf, so he can’t hear us.  That’s his reason/excuse for not coming) and examines the door and statue.  He finds a keyhole in its mouth, figuring that must be the mechanism that opens the door.  He’s so intent on examining it, he doesn’t notice the creature attacking him from behind. His first realisation is the feeling of teeth breaking on his iron boots.  He turns to see the rat nursing its jaw.  He just gives it a boot, smearing its guts over his boot and the wall.

Meanwhile I, like any good leader, immediately retreat from the attacking skeletons, and go behind my personal meat shield aka draspher.  This is so that I am not between the spellcaster and the things that need to die (or at least that’s my excuse on the official report, truth is I don’t want to get hit, and by this point I honestly don’t care what happens to him).  Yolan moves further into the room and quickly identifies that it as a skeleton, and tires to kill it with a bane strike.  Unfortunately, with a roll of 1 he misses and gets his Morningstar stuck in the wall.   Unfortunately, said meat shield decides to just go and help Telon with the door, figuring we’ve got the skeletons covered.  Ocelot moves in for an angle on the skeleton that’s attacking Yolan, and he gets to a point where he has a 50/50 chance to hit.  He manages to hit it for 7 damage killing it.  He then follows on his highest priority, and yells to Yolan “any decent loot?”.  Yolan checks, and with a natural 20 he finds 16 silver pieces, 9 gold pieces and each skeleton had a +1 crossbow bolt each.  He gathers it up and then goes to put an alarm on the door, just in case something tries to get in.

Part 4, advancing to future failure

As there finishing off, I decide to check out the other corridor.  Since it’s a big table, I make the mistake of letting Yolan move my mini.  This is the last time I make this mistake.  I go down, lighting a torch to light the way.  I get about half way down the corridor before I walk into something that smothers my torch.  It then eats my torch.  It then eats my arm.  It then eats me.

Luckily, while Yolan retrieves his mace, he notices the light in my corridor disappear, and goes to investigate.  He notices a shape making its way down the entire hallway, and a blurry shape in the middle.  With a chill down his back, he realises what it is, and shouts out “A cube just ate Jaune”.  Yup, I walked into a transparent gelatinous cube.  At the same time, draspher hears a noise from that direction, and comments to Telon:

draspher – I hear something, should we investigate?

Telon – you can, I have a key to find

So draspher runs out of the corridor, through the room and next to Yolan. As we point out, he’s managed to move into range to be eaten next turn.  Ocelot contributes by moving into range and tossing a grenade into the slime. Ocelot moves up, throws grenade in, uses precise blast to exclude me from getting hit.  He deals 9 damage to it, but it’s not enough to free me.  Meanwhile I fail my fortitude save and take 10 damage.  I am also paralysed for the next 7 rounds.

The slime notices more people come into to corridor and decides to eat them too.  It surges down the corridor, pushing Yolan and draspher out of the room by it’s sheer mass.  It then starts forcing it’s way through the doorframe to try and slam draspher.  Telon feels the bomb detonation and the slime impacting the doorway, so comes out the corridor to yell at the three stooge’s  

Telon – what are you idiots doing?

Ocelot – [signs at telon] something is eating jaune

This is enough to motivate him to help, so he goes over to pull draspher out of the way of the slime.  Draspher rolls a natural 20 to realise what he’s doing, disappointed as he was planning on burning me out with burning hands.  Once again, I am so thankful that Telon is here.  I can’t do anything except for check for traps in the slime.  The only thing I can to is argue what’s getting damaged by the acid I’m stuck in.  In the end we decide the only thing that’s really going to be damaged are my clothes.

Yolan yells out “Jaune, close your eyes.  I hear him, but am still completely paralysed, so I can’t even close them.  Yolan blasts the slime with a searing light spell for 18 damage.  Its now damaged to the point its no longer a cube.  Draspher follows up with a burning hands spell, burning it for 16 damage, and Ocelot tries to let loose, but it misfires, then has a near misfire which would have caused it explode.  Fortunately, its enough damage to cause it to fall apart.  The good news is that I’m free, the bad news is now I’m face down in a puddle of slime.

Part 5, water way to go

Now that’s the dangers over, Telon’s going back to figuring out the door.  He tells Yolan to deal with the healing while he looks for the key, with no luck.  I still can’t move, and takes another 10 damage from the acid I’m covered in.  Yolan pulls me out of the puddle, then gets to casting restoration which manages to remove my paralysis, while draspher cleans me up and Ocelot scoops up some of the slime to experiment with.  Once I’m up Telon yells at me to unlock the door for him and I go far more cautious about the dangers of this place, so I drag Yolan with as a bodyguard.  I’m still shaken from the slime, so I end up rolling a natural 1.  I decide it’s safer to just take my time and take 20.  

While I struggle with the lock Ocelot fixes his gun.  I also take a second to realise my “ninja-blade” is showing so I use my sleeves of many garments to get a change of clothes.  After much trying I find it’s no good, I can’t break the arcane lock, we’re going to need the key.   Ocelot gets bored of this nonsense with the door and goes down the slime-freed corridor and finds the first door on the left, choosing to just kick it down.  Yolan leave me (Traitor, your supposed to be my bodyguard) to help Ocelot, checking the door on the right to find just an empty room.  

After failing to kick it down, Ocelot takes note of the door.  Like the previous door, it has a stone relief but this one is shaped like some kind of dragon/fish creature.  He calls me over, and I try my luck with this door, finding it easy to crack.  Howerver, after my experience with the slime I back off and tell Yolan to open the door as I’m not risking it.  He does and finds a large metal keg, with pipes going up into the ceiling from it.  Ocelot takes a look as well and believes it must be the old castle water reserve.   Checking it over he taps it and finds its still full of water, and the top is blocked by some kind of metal bung that’s so rusted over he might be able to break it open.  He asks Yolan for help, but he just passes the buck onto Telon.

With a single swing, Telon smacks the bung apart with the butt of his weapon, and water spills everywhere.  Telon quickly checks the water flowing everywhere, but its not poisioned.  In face its in pretty good quality considering how long it must have been in there.  The pipe starts making an awful rattling as the water pours out, way too loud to just be water pouring out, even as the force increases.  Soon the entire corridor is filled with water and we have difficulty moving through it.  Then a creature makes its way out of the pipe.  

With an angry scream it fires a cone of acid, hitting everyone (except for me hiding well out of the way in the corridor), Ocelot dodging out of the way for half damage taking 4 while everyone else takes 9.  I take a look and decide the corridor is too crowded for me to go down, so I leave it to the others for now.  Yolan realises it’s a water Mephit and shouts out a warning that only magic can affect it.  draspher casts haste on us to speed us up, and Yolan uses another searing light, hitting it for 17 damage.  Telon then gets his turn, and slashes it twice beheading the creature with 25 damage and is quickly disintegrates into water, seeing it leave behind 5 small sapphire he grabs.  This also causes the water to stop flowing like crazy.  Yolan heals up telon while Ocleot checks out the empty room finding nothing.  He does realise it would be a perfect place to set up a camp for the night.  We decide to leave it there before taking the stairs up to the next level.

Embarrassments to the guild – 5, the bear, draspher getting mugged, draspher growing antlers in a magic school, meeting the king (2), falling down a pit,   Jaunes brave advances towards future victory – 11, when jess attacked in the night, the barn, the demons, the fear from Anubis and running from the dust jackal, the fight in the Whitewater compound both at the start and at the end (2), escaping the killer clockwork to talk down lady Ezrisha, at the end of the first training mission, going to get the guards rather than help with the poisoner, from the skeletons Times draspher did good – 3, The enlarge person spell, taking out a dragon, mending train tracks   Times draspher did bad – 7, ghost sounds through the glass window he had previously been told was too thick, nearly giving away the groups connection to southwater to a complete stranger, the antlers, getting mugged, announcing he was mugged by kids, announcing he was going after kids to beat the crap out of them, nearly hitting me with adhesive spittle AGAIN   Team members drilled over – 10, Vex getting shot in the back, Yolan getting a dragon dropped on him, draspher and Yolans spells backfiring, draspher getting mugged, Telon down a hole, I find a secret door filled with skeletons,  getting eaten by a slime, ocelot misfires (2) Terms confused/forgotten – 4.5, the guild name, the fact we had papers (.5), the collages, the tournament name, mr Quinn link

#ain't our fault #main story

[princessprospit]

Volume 4 rant/review time because I couldn’t stop thinking about it!

Oh boy where do I begin? The animation keeps improving which is really great! The characters faces are a lot more expressive, the character designs are great. The voice acting has gotten better, especially Ren’s.

Okay I love Jaune, I really do. It’s been great seeing him grow from vomit boy to strong precious cinnamon roll but I wish character development had been more evenly distributed this volume. I get that it’s hard with balancing 4 story lines at once. I wish they could have focused on 2 of the main girls one volume then 2 the next, both spanning over the same time period. Then development would have made a lot more sense and the story less choppy. There are more holes in the plot this volume than swiss cheese like goddamn. 

We’ve seen Jaune mourn and its great but I wish we got to see more of Ruby working through her feelings. She’s never even mentioned seeing Penny die then Pyrrha. Ruby is the main character of the show but shes had no development this season. She got one small bit of venting before it switched back to Jaune. I mean there’s still visual development with the fact that her cloak is all tattered and the crescent rose is scratched up so obviously she picked fights probably with Grimm and fought with anger instead of strategy.

Blake’s storyline was good but there were a couple things that bugged me. Like with Sun eavesdropping on her. Yes that was bad. Then she slapped him 3 freaking times. Like what??? Then it was never mentioned again nor was there any portrayal of Blake’s actions being wrong. Mama Belladona is precious and I love her. I thought it was hilarious that the White Fang plans were basically on a google doc that they forgot to take Ghira off of. Then Blake doing a complete 180 wanting to take back the WF made no sense. I’m sure it was only for the sake of convenience for everyone to go to Mistral for volume 5

Then there was Yang. I had really high hopes for her story and I really wanted them to show her rehabilitation and shit. Like the robot arm is awesome and all but it was too soon. and I understand there was a time-skip but we barely got to see any of her working through her trauma and PTSD. It felt like more of a cop-out to me. Also the whole thing with Yang needing to put on the arm to “be normal again” was kinda gross. They should have shown more of her story and her accepting herself as she is then putting on the arm out of choice rather than needing to be “normal”. And everything with Blake was never mentioned. Again, suddenly deciding to head to Mistral was way too convenient and there was no real build up to that decision. 

Weiss’s story was probably the most fulfilling out of all our leading ladies. I loved seeing her get angry and yell at the party and defend the people of Vale. Also it gave more insight on her motives in general to leave home and go to Beacon to become a huntress. It also seemed a little to convenient that she suddenly could fully summon. Her reason for going to Mistral made the most sense. Also I hope we get to see more Qrow and Winter interactions oh my god.

The best part of this season was obviously Ren and Nora. I looooove backstories. Baby Ren was so precious and you can see that he’s the perfect mix between his dad and his mom. He has his dad’s hair but his mom’s hair color in his streaks. And he has his mom’s eyes and according to her, her sass. Then you notice that his weapons are designed similar to his father’s dagger and his emblem is all over the village. And his outfit for this volume is similar to his father’s. Then we see his semblence and it reminded me of back in volume 3 when Nora was freaking out about the tournament and she suddenly turned monochrome and calmed down. Now we know that was Ren using his semblence to calm Nora and that makes it so much more precious. The Nuckelavee was so terrifying and I loved it. Definitely the best Grimm so far. I also thought it was cool that none of their fancy hunter/huntress weapons could hurt it but Ren’s father’s dagger killed it. Also that scene was so emotional I cried. Seeing Ren get that closure was great. It was a little weird that all of a sudden Jaune’s weapon became a broadsword but oh well. Apparently some people are angry that he was able to wield it and hold down the Grimm’s arm. It’s honestly not that unbelievable. I mean hes mentioned in other episodes that the shield is heavy but since he’s been walking with it all over Anima for months it makes sense that he would get used to it and be strong enough to handle it now. I mean he’s also become the tallest in the group and he seems more tough and broad shouldered anyway so it’s pretty reasonable that hes able to carry that heavy ass sword and shield then use that to hold the arm down. I may or may not have started freaking out when Ren and Nora held hands. It was just a really pretty and cute scene. 

Also QROW LIVES!!!!! I’m so happy about that. The scene where Jaune, Ren, and Nora were leaning on each other was great. Just that one scene held a thousand words. Ruby’s monologue was neat although lengthy. Then the after credits scene oh boy. That honestly surprised me. I got really excited though. I hope they explain how Oz suddenly got inside Oscar’s head.

Also I found it a little weird that Ruby is suddenly right handed when I swear there was another time where she was writing with her left hand.

Long story short, this volume had many flaws. It had many plot holes and there were many things that could have been done better. I still loved it because I love RWBY. I mean this was their first volume since Monty’s passing and I know it was probably really difficult to continue the show without him there to guide them. There’s nothing we can do now aside from hope that they learn from this and are able to improve their writing for the next volume and hopefully tie up some loose ends. I know I’ll be anxiously awaiting volume 5. Also crossing my fingers for bumblebee but I like blacksun too *shrug*

#rwby #rwby 4 #long post #dont mind my humble onion

[calliecat93]

RWBY V6 CH8 Review: Dead End

Last week, Kerry revealed that the finale would take place on January 26th, which since this week was a holiday, totals to a 13 episode season. It's one episode short from last year, but hey 13 is a standard number for an anime season, so fair enough. Also sorry that this took so long, I had... stuff happen with the blog the past few days. But it's fixed now, I posted Chapter 7 yesterday, and now it's time to cover Chapter 8! Lets get to it!

Overview

Team RWBY, Qrow, and Maria at at Argus' military base, but are denied access by the... bizarre twin guards. I think that they may be based on The Cards form Alice in Wonderland, and it'll be more clear why in a bit. The heroes are forced to play the Weiss Schnee card, and it gets the guards to agree to fetch their commanding officer. But to the ire of all the Winter fans out there... it's not her. Maria thinks that she knows who it is though, and they happen to be enemies because said CO put Maria on the advanced screening list for life for taking cashews on a flight. Sheesh. But hey, maybe Maria's right and she's dead! Funniest moment of the episode BTW.

The CO of the Argus base is an egotistical elderly woman known as Caroline Cordovan. She displays much of the attitude that we expect from Atlas characters. Egotistical, boastful, authoritarian, and sees Atlas as the greatest kingdom of all. She had already refused to help JNR, who are also there, and it's pretty clear that she's not going to help the group still. They try to reason with her by explaining that they know that Atlas isn't at fault for Beacon, but it only makes it worst. Cordovan DOES offer to take Weiss home if she's come to her senses... but isn't going to do the same for her friends of 'questionable nature' while looking at Blake. Wow, she's a racist. Lovely. When Weiss questions this, Cordovan slams the gates int heir faces. I agree with Maria's previous sentiment, she's a she-devil. I'm pretty sure that she's supposed to be the Queen of Hearts considering her personality, which would explain the guards being the Cards.

With the plan reaching... well, a dead end, Qrow calls it quits and goes to drink. So he obviously learned nothing form Brunswick! JNR just suggests coming up with a plan without him, pointing out that they still have Ozpin. Que an awkward beat and we cut to later... where Jaune punches a hole in his sister's wall. I hope she has home insurance. So yeah... JNR doesn't take the truth well. Even Nora is pissed off. I'm... mixed about this. It's very understandable for them to be angry and upset, especially considering they lost Pyrrha due to this. But it does bring up a minor critique I have. The response to Salem being un-killable and Ozpin not having a true plan have all ha done reaction: anger and giving up. Some took ti worst than others, but it's still the same. The only one who hasn't is Ruby, which helps but it makes the fact that no one is wondering 'well maybe we can win without killing Salem' or 'maybe we can ask Jinn if there's a way to defeat Salem and not destroy her' hasn't been brought up once. It gets annoying when, even though you understand why everyone is reacting the way that they are, no one has had any logical thought since and continue to spew in their negativity, like Qrow is. All I'm saying is let the reactions be a bit more diverse, if only to keep this from getting either predictable or just irritating.

Oscar tries to calm everyone down, pointing out that they aren't the bad guys in this. Jaune questions this however before storming over to Oscar, wanting to know if he had known about this the whole time. Even when Weiss tries to say he didn't, Jaune grabs the farmboy and slams him into the wall, questioning where his loyalties stand and even if it's even Oscar that they're talking to. Throughout, Oscar is clearly terrified and it only ends when Ruby calls out Jaune. To the paladin's credit, this get shim to realize what he's doing and is clearly horrified. He backs away before going upstairs, Nora and Ren soon following and wanting to be left alone. The RWBY girls also scatter, leaving a clearly distraught Oscar. Great for none of you to check if he's okay or not. Doing a bang up job ladies.

As the others go to get food, Ruby goes outside to an absolutely beautiful butterfly garden. She's trying to call Qrow to find out where he is, but she gets nothing and throws her Scroll in frustration. It's clear that all of this is beginning to get to Ruby, something that Maria, who had gone back there to avoid the yelling, sees as well. Ruby explains how with everything happening, she's at a loss of what to do. Maria can't help with that, or at least she can't without it defeating the purpose, but she does offer to help Ruby feel better if she's sick of not knowing about things. Yes my friends, we are FINALLY going to talk about the Silver Eyes! I have waited for this for so long!!!

When Ruby explains what she does know, aka more or less nothing Maria explains that there isn't much known about the bloodline. She was lucky as she was trained by her father, who we can assume was also a Silver Eyed Warrior. He taught Maria all that she knew and it led her to scoring higher on the Huntress Exam than any other applicant without having to even attend one of the academies. But if the Silver Eyes are so powerful, why are they so rare? Simple, they were hunted down and killed by Salem. This is why Maria took on a masked persona and hid things such as her name, to hide her powers and not be a target. Of course, we all know how that ended, and Maria credits her survival to both her training and her Semblance. The latter is revealed to be what she dubs Preflexes, which is more or less Spider Man's Spidey Sense. She can sense things before they happen and can be one move ahead of her opponent due to it. Awesome!

Ruby is all set to learn to vaporize monsters with her eyeballs... which earns her a bonk on the head. I guess Maria attended the Rafiki School of Mentorship. The Silver Eyes aren't fueled by the desire to destroy Grimm, it is powered by the desire to protect people. On every case where Ruby used the powers thus far (Pyrrha's death, Jaune facing Cinder, The Apathy), she did so because she was trying to save someone and it allowed her to freeze the Wythern and vaporize the Apathy.  Maria goes on to explain that where the Grimm were created by the God of Darkness, the light of the Silver Eyes comes form his brother, the God of Creation. How does Maria know this? Well remember in Jinn's vision when the God turned into the dragon for the first time? We saw a burst of light that vaporized the Grimm. I thought that was just the effects of the transformation.. wow I feel stupid! That is an awesome detail!

Now since the light only effects Grimm, any training that Ruby can get is going to be a trial by fire. But Maria does suggest that the young huntress can work to create a mindset that she can turn to in order to unleash the power when she needs to. But Ruby is confused by something. The light on works on Grimm, right? Well if you recall, Ruby was able to use it on Cinder back in Haven... IDK how she remembers this since Emerald knocked her out immediately, but still. Now we all know why that is, but Ruby doesn't. Which has Maria suggest that maybe there's something that the huntress isn't seeing. But anymore talk comes to an end as Ruby and JNR are informed that Oscar has gone missing. Well... shit.

Review

Of the episodes so far, it's safe to say that this may be the weakest. But only in terms of it being an exposition/build-up episode instead of an action episode or something along those lines. I can't call it bad though as a lot of good came out of this episode. The first half was pretty dang funny. Caroline is terrible, but her boastful personality makes her entertaining to watch at the very least. Maria was comedy gold here with her rant about the cashews and the 'Maybe she's dead!” line. Again, funniest moment in the episode. It's nice that we got to have a couple of laughs before the heavy stuff came back in because... haha, IDT we're going to be having many more light-heated moments in these last five episodes. Call it a hunch.

As I said, while I would like for the group to have some cold hard logic hit them already, Team JNR's reactions are completely understandable. Jaune especially. Really, he's got the most reason out of everyone aside form maybe Qrow to be angry. Remember, Pyrrha got killed because of this and even she wasn't aware of all the details when the whole Fall Maiden thing happened. We can argue about the circumstances all that we want, Pyrrha still died trying to do what was right, and ever since everything that Jaune has done has been to not let her death be in vain. So finding out that all of that was for nothing? I can't blame him for being angry or how he reacted. Am I defending him? Hell no. Oscar did NOTHING wrong. The way that Jaune manhandled him was horrifying and seeing this young kid clearly terrified was just wrong. But it still makes sense hwy Jaune reacted that way all things considered, and to his credit he DID realize what he was doing and stopped. And we find out that Oscar is gone, it is very clear that Jaune feels remorseful for taking his anger out on Oscar and of what could happen to him now. Out of everyone so far aside from Oscar, I sympathize with Jaune the most.

Who I have lost my sympathy for however is Qrow. He is just...a  mess. Brunswick was bad enough, but now? Look, I know how hard it is to let go of addiction, especially considering how bad of a mental state that Qrow is in. But after how his drinking caused him to be so out of it that he failed to realize that the kids that he's responsible for to get killed, it's becoming more and more difficult to feel bad for him. He SAW what his carelessness could have led to, and even now he hasn't learned. Because of it, Ruby has to be the adult trying to keep everyone going despite all the circumstances, and she has to try and find him on top of everything else. It's at the point where this can't go unaddressed anymore. Ruby or someone needs to give Qrow an intervention and outright tell him to stop. I imagine that it'll get ugly, but if something isn't done soon, then most likely Qrow is going to get either himself or someone else killed. It's time for him to stop the self-loathing.

Okay, lets try to talk about something more positive, like the Silver Eyes! First, I need to say this again. Maria has been a delight as a character and has just fit right in with the cast. Funny, sassy, practical, she's been a great addition and is the kind of character that Ruby needs to mentor her. I loved hearing some details about her past, like her relationship with her father and how she became a Huntress. It's exposition, sure, but it's used to show Maria's experience and wisdom. We learn more about a character that so far the fandom really loves, and it serves a purpose. We also see her intelligence as she pieced together about the source of the Silver Eyes powers just form Jinn's vision. She is very much what Ruby needs. She's an optimistic character, but also firm and wise. She can push Ruby in the right direction without being too harsh or too nice. Hopefully she sticks around after this season because she's such a welcome addition.

As for Ruby, she continues to be a bright spot in the season. She's trying so hard, but the weight is really beginning to get to her. She had to stop Jaune from physically hurting someone, is being ignored by Qrow and his unreliableness is clearly upsetting her, and she feels like she's letting everyone down due to how hopeless everything seems. She is meant to be an inspiring, hopeful figure and she is trying her damnest to be this way. After the initial plan went up in smoke, her first response is to comfort Weiss and again assure her that they won't leave her side. She's stepped up as a leader, but she's till a 16, maybe 17 if Lindsay can be believed, year old girl in a very difficult situation and with Qrow intoxicated and Oz gone, she has to be the adult. She has to look after everyone and keep them on track. She has to try and encourage them and not give up, and so far that doesn't seem to be working. This girl has so much pressure on her because everyone else has given up, and it's starting to weigh on her. Will this be the season where she breaks down? It's hard to say, but I do think that before the volume is over, we're going to see some kind of reaction out of her.

On the upside however, after so long, Ruby is finally learning about the Silver Eyes. She's asking questions. She's excited to learn to use this power. She actively WANTS to learn about it. This is what I have been hoping for ever since the end of V3. This is the moment where we are seeing Ruby beginning to go from a rookie fresh out of Beacon long before she was ready, to taking the steps to becoming the Huntress that she has always wanted to be. In light of everything and even with her doubts, Ruby has stepped up as a leader, has yet to give up despite how hopeless it looks, and is still determined to do what's right. Now she has a mentor to teach her to use her gift, something unique to her, and hopefully that can help ignite the will to continue on. Ruby's goal has always been to be a Huntress to help people, and overtime that has gone form naive ambition to seeing how dark the world can be, and wanting to do whatever is possible to do good because it's the right thing to do. Ozpin was right about what he said in V5, she truly is an inspiring figure, and this is why. Even in face of the hopelessness and everyone around her giving up, she hasn't. Will she? It's hard to say, but there is no doubt that no matter what tries to keep Ruby down, she'll face it and she will somehow pull everyone up with her. This volume, more than any other, has made that clear and I love it.

What helps that entire scene, of course, is both the setting and the music. The garden is absolutely beautiful, having a very calming atmosphere, which after the blowup was very much needed. The butterflies also added to the beauty and calmness. Apparently blue butterflies can symbolize change, and butterflies in general can symbolize life. You see it in anime all the time. It's perfect symbolism here as Ruby seeks to change herself and become a Silver Eyed Warrior, so it's a very welcome touch. And the music... gosh the music is so beautiful and serene. Jeff and Alex once more killed it, especially with the new renditions of Red Like Roses and This Will be the Day. Very nostalgic and it added to this being about Ruby taking that next step forward. Very well done!

Then of course we have the ending. Oscar is missing. For the moment, we will assume that he has left of his own volition due to the manhandling and the questioning of his identity, which was already a problem for him. And... is anyone surprised? I mean Jaune shoving him alone would be enough reason to leave. But the way everyone keeps seeing him as Ozpin, directing the anger at him even if unintentionally, and how no one seemed to care about how he's felt about all of this. Only Ruby ever did, and Qrow made sure to kill that. Of course he would leave. No one trusts him and now even he's questioning who he is and what to do now that it looks like they will inevitably lose. Hopefully he will be found safe and sound and will come back. And hopefully everyone will apologize, or Jaune will at the very least. For now, all that we can do is worry about his safety until Saturday roles around.

Final Thoughts

This may not have been the heaviest chapter, but it was still enjoyable. The first half was entertaining and did a good job of setting up the next obstacle for our heroes. The second half was very much emotional and Jaune's reaction was pretty much what we were expected. The exposition was welcomed and added to the scene instead of dragging it down. And of course we're left on a cliffhanger that is mean, but not 'Weiss just got stabbed' levels of mean. Overall, while it may be the weakest episode of the volume so far, I still give it two thumbs up! Great work!

#rwby #rwby6 #rwby reviews #callie reviews

[calliecat93]

RWBY V6 CH11 Review: The Lady in the Shoe

Man, we are so close to the end... it's felt like we've gone so far, yet not far at all. Was it really just back at the end of October when the volume started? It feels like it was so much later, yet not. Maybe that's my messed up state after Extra Life back in November speaking though. Be careful when watching 24 hour long streams kids, it can mess you up. But anyways, we've got both a mech battle and he long-awaited confrontation against Adam awaiting us, so lets not waste anymore time!

Overview

Weiss is, understandably, concerned about writing Cordovan and her giant robot. But Ruby reminds her that they've face plenty of things before, this is just one old woman... and her giant robot. On her part, Cordovan shows no restraint as she sends a blast at Ruby and her group, prompting Weiss to jump down and create a rock/ice wall. The group takes the moment to form a plan. Jaune deduces that the mech doesn't work well against small targets, probably being used more against giant undersea Grimm.... boy I hope THAT isn't hinting at something for later. JNR plans to be bait while Maria and Oscar keep the ship out of Cordovan's range so that it won't be damaged and let them find a weakness. Even Qrow finally pitches in, offering to use his bird form for a birds eye view. And in the meantime, Ruby and Weiss will face Cordovan directly? How? Well...

Anyways! With JNR going one way and the ship and Qrow the other, Cordovan's attention is split as Ruby jumps directly up, opening fire on the old woman. We proceed to get pure badassery as a rocking metal song plays throughout. Ruby is not holding back at all, shooting the mech's windshield and jumping through a series of missiles. During this, Weiss freezes the water and she and Ruby skate/jump across it while JNR keeps Cordovan's focus on them. Only problem is... Cordovan has Hard Light shields and she retaliates, provoking Qrow to attack the mech directly to get up close and find where the shield is being powered. When Ruby and Weiss try to attack, they get blasted, but fortunately Weiss summons her Lancer to get them out safely. Yay Summoning! I think it's the first time Weiss used it this volume too!

Ruby once more jumps at Cordovan directly, her scythe cutting into the front of it and pins her to a cliff. This lets Ren climb onto it as Jaune and Nora attack directly. Unfortunately, Cordovan gets back up and is able to knock Ruby off, though Weiss manages to catch her. Ren in the meantime finds the generator for the shields and he and Qrow proceed to shoot it, powering them down significantly. Nora continues to open fire, demanding 'her man' back. So rejoice Renora shippers! It's pretty much now canon verbally! Unfortunately Cordovan wings at her and while Jaune uses his Semblance to amp Nora's to take the hit, both are still knocked aside and get their Auras broken. Ruby and Weiss manage to get Ren and Qrow, but Cordovan destroys Weiss' Summon. All but Ruby land safely and she has to use her scythe to grab onto part of the cliff. Realizing that they're in trouble, Oscar and Maria make a move with Maria firing a missile... but Cordovan catches it and tosses it back, seeming to knock the airship down.

So... how much crazier can it get? Well we still have Blake and Adam to talk about! Which is also a badass fight! It's fast paced and both Blake and Adam are evenly matched. Even when Adam mocks her for running away, despite him running last volume, Blake continues to fight on without a hint of fear. She even loses her coat in the process.... which really she looks WAAAY better without it! I love the top! The fight soon ends up at a waterfall and continue to clash, Blake even managing to disarm Adam from his sword. It's an intense, fast-paced fight as Adam continues to paint himself as the victim, saying that none of this would have happened if Blake had 'behaved'. Umm... possessive much dude?

Unfortunately, Adam gets his sword back and knocks Blake down, calling her selfish and a coward. Blake simply says that he's delusional as Adam points at a scar of Blake's stomach. The same place that he stabbed her in Volume 3. He tries to strike her with his Semblance, but Blake blocks with Gambol Shroud... which sadly gets destroyed via the strike. Adam talks about how Blake isn't the first one to hurt him as he takes off the black cloth covering his eyes. Yes my friends, after six volumes and over five years of buildup,  we finally get to see Adam's face. It's not Silver Eyes. It's not red eyes. He has one normal blue eye... and the other is branded by a Schnee Dust Company logo. It looks... God... it looks painful. Without having to say anything, in one instance Adam's hatred against humans, especially the SDC, becomes very understandable. But Adam says that, even though he's been hurt throughout his life, Blake hurt him in a way that no one else ever did.. Why? Because she left him alone, and now he asks her how it feels to be alone before bringing his sword down once more...

...only for that Blake to vanish as the real one grabs what remains of her weapon. Yep, it was a clone. During this, she heard the sound of a familiar motorcycle and informs Adam that she's never alone. Cue the arrival of Yang, who jumps off Bumblebee, sending it directly into Adam! Sadly Bumblebee falls down the cliff and into the water, likely damaging it beyond repair, but it went out in the best way possible! Yang lands, telling Blake to catch her breath as she faces Adam, who... has no problems with this since he sees Yang as unfinished business to take care of. The two fight, this time Yang managing to get plenty of blows in and holding her own against Adam. She doesn't even use her Semblance as Adam keeps trying to use his, which Blake confirms is absorbing blows and using his sword to send them back. Kind of like Yang's, only unlike her he doesn't have to feel the pain to dish it back out. Cool, but as Yang points out is really cheap.

The fight continues on until Adam manages to push Yang back, causing Blake to look at her in concern. Enraged to see this, Adam charge sup his Semblance and sends one powerful slash directly at Yang. It pushes her back to the cliff edge, but... she blocks it. And how did she accomplish this? By using the robotic arm that replaced the very one that Adam dismembered her of in the first place. It damages it, but Yang is still standing and as she lowers it, she's not even angry or red-eyed. Her expression make sit clear that Adam isn't going to scare or away or overpower her again. She tells Adam to leave them alone, making it clear that this is his final warning to either leave peacefully, or be taken down. But Adam points out that Yang's hand is trembling, mocking her on if she's believes what she says or if she just wants to scare him away so she won't die protecting Blake. In response, Blake grabs Yang's hand. She tells Adam that Yang isn't protecting her, and she isn't protecting Yang. They are protecting each other. The episode ends with the two of them staring down Adam, ready to fight him for what may just be the final time together.

Review

Dear God, this chapter was plain BADASS. The entire mech fight was just awesome! The team's coordination is so solid. Everyone made a major contribution of some kind, and seeing them manage to hold their own against a GIANT ROBOT is just awesome. I especially love how Qrow FINALLY pulled himself together to make a contribution and how Ruby clearly gives zero fucks during all of this. She's not going to let Cordovan defeat them, and if that means directly facing missiles and the mech itself, she's gonna do it. Ruby is the best! And Jaune further showing his tactical abilities, everything that Ren and Nora do, and Weiss with her glyphs and her Summon were just AWESOME. And I gotta give Cordovan this, she is not to be messed with. She more than held her own and is certainly not one to go down easy. I can see how she got her position with her nerves, even if she's still an elitist bigot. And now with Maria having put herself in the fray, who knows how much worst it's gonna get.

So... my theory about Qrow getting arrested is dead at this point. I think Cordovan is going to be defeated, and there's going to be major consequences. Especially since we see the citizens scared and with Jaune's mention of undersea Grimm and them being right next to a coastline... yeah... either Cordovan's gonna die via Grimm, or someone higher up is going to court martial her. Then Ruby is going to have to face the Grimm for her trial by fire and use her Silver Eyes at full force to kill it with everyone else worn down. I also don't think the ship is damaged and Maria and Oscar will play some role in taking down Cordovan. No matter what happens, it's gonna be an intense ride, and I am looking forward to it immensely!

But of course, we have Adam and the Bumblebee pair to talk about now, don't we? First, Adam's face reveal. I think we all expected some kind of scarring... But I don't think ANYONE was expecting what we got. That brand... those scars... it is a level of horrific that I was not expecting, yet makes perfect sense. It makes sense why Adam hates humans so much. It makes sense why he wants to kill them so much, especially those with the SDC. It further demonstrates just how deplorable of a person Jacques Schnee is and why Weiss wants to change things. It is one of the biggest showcases of Faunus oppression so far in the show, and why so many in the WF resorted to such violent tactics. The buildup was very much worth it, and it tells us everything about Adam's past and why he holds such anger and hatred without having to show or tell anything else. The CRWBY absolutely nailed this reveal and the implications behind it, and I applaud their brilliance.

But this episode also makes it clear that while Adam's hatred against humans is understandable, he is still a bad person and none of his actions are justified. At least, not in regards to how he treated Blake. He has become a murderous extremist, caring nothing about improving Faunus lives but just murdering those who stand against him. The way he emotionally abused Blake and feels that he is entitled to her is creepy and disturbing and Blake has every single right to leave him when she did. The way that he has focused all of his hatred on her, hurt Yang, tries to murder her whole family, and stalked her to this point is terrifying, stalkery, and just wrong in so many ways. Adam is nothing but an empty shell filled with nothing but hatred and entitlement. All he cares about is his own feelings, not caring how hypocritical he is as he calls Blake out on running away (when he did last volume), selfish (when he stalked her and hurt others all because she left him because of his violent acts), and a coward (when he ran and has made others do his dirty work without giving a damn about the ramifications). He's no longer this freedom fighter fighting for Faunus rights, but a violent sociopath obsessed with making Blake suffer because he can't except that he has no one to blame but himself for all his suffering. And now, this is his swansong, and I believe that this may just be the end for him.

But as bad as Adam is, we get to see Blake and Yang shine through. Both of these girls suffered because of this one man. Blake was emotionally used, stalked, and nearly lost all her loved ones because of this one person. She's afraid of him, but she isn't running anymore. She faces Adam directly, calls him out on being delusional, and doesn't give him any sympathy when he tries to get it out of her via his scar. With Yang, she both lost her arm and has serious PTSD because she tried to protect her teammate, then her abandonment issues reawakened because of Blake being scared and leaving due to Adam. He is the cause of all of her suffering these past few volumes, and she's still scared. Yet she still fights Adam, holds her own, and even uses the new arm that replaced the one that Adam took to block his blow. And it is very clear that despite the fear and no matter what Adam does, she isn't going to fun. She's going to stand her ground, and Adam won't scare her off.

These two women who have suffered because of this one man are now standing against their abuser, together. Whether you ship them or not, this is a very beautiful moment. It shows Yang's devotion to Blake and how she will stand against Adam, no matter what he does to her. It shows how Blake is no longer running and finally understands that she doesn't need to protect everyone, but she can stand alongside them and they can look after each other. When Blake takes Yang's hand, there is a sense of mutual support and care between them as they get ready to face Adam together. Despite all that Adam did to break them down, they faced their demons, rose back up, and now here they are, standing strong. Will they kill Adam? It's hard to say, but if this is his end, then I can't think of a better way for him to go down then at the hands of the ones he hurt. We have more fight to go, and no matter what happens, it's gonna be epic.

Final Thoughts

The path to the season finale continues to be made of pure win. The fights were all great, we finally got one of the biggest reveals that we've waited for for years, and we have Blake and Yang ready to make Adam pay for everything that he's done. Only two chapters to go people, and IDK about you, but I am excited as Hell for what's coming up next! Whatever they dish out, it's gonna be worth it! Loved this chapter, and we shall see what happens next time!

#rwby #rwby6 #rwby reviews #callie reviews

[wu-sisyphus-gang]

Motion Sickness Chapter 18 Snippet

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“Ren’s been quiet.” Nora rode up beside me. We were following Ruby whose senses assured us that this was the direction her uncle was in. We’d passed a burning wreckage of forrest, the place where we were told his weapon had been found.

It had been a place filled with damaged foliage and burnt down and toppled trees. Some stretches of ground still smoked from dust cartridges used and discarded. However Ruby had made sure to stop me from organizing a search in the area and ordered us into the mountains. She was certain her uncle was there, even injured.

Ruby followed her heart upwards and I could only follow.

With anyone else, I’d say Ren was always quiet. This was Nora we were talking about, though. Nora. She was basically Ren’s and her own mouth piece. She knew, probably better than Ren himself did and certainly better than I did.

“You talked to him didn’t you,” she accused. She said it like I had killed someone. Which I had of course. Just not over this.

“We had a chat.” I hedged. People assumed that because of her talkativeness that she was also airheaded. But whatever air had been in her head had left through her mouth long ago and now it left behind whatever people had in their heads besides air. Brains, I think they called them.

“Really?!” She faked shock. “Well maybe I deserve to know what it was about. It is afterall, affecting our ability to talk to each other.”

“It was about you.” She was going to fake shock again. “Don’t play dumb. I just gave some advice about how I got with Ruby. I told him she really made the first move.”

“Do you think I haven’t made moves? I’m making moves over here.”

“He said he was scared.” Ren rode a ways behind us. He trusted his horse and had his eyes nearly closed in concentration. He was constantly feeling outwards for Grimm and danger.

Between him in that state and Ruby leading that left me Nora with space to chat.

“Scared of what. What does he have to be scared of? Isn’t it obvious how much I care about him?” She asked the world and not me.

“He’s afraid of you.” I tried to explain.

“He’s afraid of me? Why?”

“How should I know?”

“Well now you’re really being unhelpful. I think you’re doing it on purpose. He had no reason to be afraid of me. I love him.”

“He’s confused.”

She chewed her cheek hard. “Does he think I’ll just abandon him or something? We’re all we have.” She looked at me. “No offense.”

“None taken.” Genuinely. I was a piece of shit.

"I meant all we have to each other. No. I meant-"

"Seriously none taken." Really.

“So what does he really have to be afraid of? I’m willing and I know from listening to him in his sleep that he is.”

I had no idea what she was talking about. Ren may as well have been a ghost in his sleep back at Beacon.

“He’s scared of ruining what you already have.”

"That's ridiculous. Of course we'll ruin what we have right now. That's the point." She rode for a moment in thought. "Besides, we'll never have what we have right now again anyways. That's how time works, I think."

Thanks for the panic, Nora.

"I tried to tell him something similar." I defended.

"Ugh. You told him the opposite. Didn't you. You probably said something about having your cake and eating it too."

"I really don't think I did. There are some anxieties that mediocre dudes have that beautiful girls don't, is all."

"I knew it. You told him something sweet instead of seize the day and now he isn't seizing, Jaune. I want to be seized."

I wanted to protest the scary things she had told me but no. She was trucking along and I just had to keep up. "Have you tried just kissing him?"

She sighed. "No. But I've tried everything short of that. Should I?"

"He wants to kiss you. You want to kiss him. Just use some late night in your room. What are you waiting for? Tell him to come to you and you know he will. He's just scared.

"It's not that easy?" She tried. She sighed. "I'm scared, too. You know. He's not the only scared one. Besides, will you be okay with it? I mean, sure, we're not back at Beacon so it's less drama. But you'll be the odd one out in JNR. Are you okay with that? Anyways it feels like such a big leap."

"Seize your guy Nora. He wants to be seized by you."

"You're bullshit Jaune. You cheat." It was said with affection, though. She sighed again, even harder than before, leaning against her horse's neck a little. "Maybe I'm a little scared too. Maybe-"

"This is it!" Ruby called out behind her to us. Her heart and connection with her uncle had led us here. I gave Nora a parting look before I rode up beside Ruby and dismounted with her.

She pushed aside some leaves and foliage. She gasped and recoiled and I heard a low voice murmur her name from it. I peeked inside the hiding place. Half a person laid in there. They were tall and I do mean ‘were’ because if we sat him up now he'd barely come up to my torso. Though his torso was decently long, I suppose.

He had red eyes and dark, greying hair, and no legs. He had no legs at the mid thigh and he moaned a name I didn't catch but it made Ruby focus, so I assumed it was hers.

"Jaune, get the stretcher ready," she ordered me. I nodded along and walked back to where Ren had stopped his horse next to Nora's. I pulled the sticks free and put the mobile stretcher together to drag behind a horse.

"Give me a hand lifting him." I ordered Nora. She nodded and dismounted. "Ren, make sure I put it together right." He checked the stretcher and how it was attached to his horse. The last thing I wanted to give the already injured man was a concussion by dropping him.

In my head I couldn't stop thinking about how the man in the foliage had cauterized his own legs at the mid thigh. The asymmetry of it had me shook.

I grabbed beneath one arm and the man let loose a groan as Nora took the other. How the hell had he escaped while so badly injured from whatever had been strong enough to hurt him like this? Let alone make it this far from the sight of his battle?

It wasn't like he had won and then dragged himself all the way up here. Most Grimm left no sign of their defeat but the Nuckelavee was riddled with weapons which wouldn't disintegrate with it. There would have been a sign that it was slain.

He grabbed me as I set him on the stretcher. "It's not dead. I hurt it, though. It's all I did was hurt it. It's old as fuck and it’s not dead." He rambled at me deliriously. "How are you going to kill it, Tai?" Ruby shushed him softly.

Well I was going to use bombs but evidently that wouldn't work which means I'd need to use guns and swords. Probably with bombs. I strapped Qrow into the stretcher at the waist and beneath the arms. I pulled the leg restraints tight over nothing. Better that than have them flapping and dragging.

They hung in the air over the lopsided stumps. I recoiled when I finished and Ruby was there beside me looking down at her uncle with affectionate eyes. She brushed his dirty hair and whispered something to him which was none of my business to listen to.

"Jaune," she murmured. "Do you think it has a cave up here too? Near here? Where it would go if it was hurt?"

"I do." And I did. "I want to get some bombs ready." I moved over to my horse where I had some large dust crystals strapped and began to wire them together with copper and tape. Electric and fire. "I want to throw some of these at it when we meet. Then move in for the kill."

"Sounds like a plan." Did it? Was that enough? Did I really sound so collected? My voice shook to my own ears. "Ren!" She called out. "Lead us towards danger."

He closed his eyes and gave a firm nod. He and Nora were holding hands close by, both of hers in one of his. He remounted and I did too, trailing close to Ruby this time. "Tai's your father, right?"

She nodded as she remounted and I pivoted my horse beside hers as I tossed a bomb to Ren which he caught dexterously. I was saving most of the electric crystals for Nora. A big plan B.

"Taiyang Xiao Long. Yang's bio-mom named her after him when she was born. Then she left us."

"But you were both raised by your Mom? Something Rose?" Families were complicated.

"Can we talk about this later?"

"Right. Right. Of course."

Would there be a later? Old huntsmen were like Grimm. A lot grew with the experience that comes with age. How to kill better. How to use their semblances.

If Qrow only did a number on it, then I could only hope he's done enough to mean something. Hopefully half as much as it had done on him. Otherwise this was shaping up to be the fight of our lives. Or at least mine.

I breathed in and focused on riding. I reached out to my semblance and I must have been holding my breath and charging it because I wasn't empty.

"Found something." Ren declared, shortly after leading us off an animal trail into the path of something larger. Something which didn't care about following the footsteps of other animals because it simply wasn't.

He said it loud enough for me to hear over my musings and from behind him. Combat mode Ren (TM).

It was a puddle of Grimm blood. There was a stirring within that made my horse skittish as I rode up to it and from horse back I sunk my blade down into it. I squashed whatever 'life' was inside.

No question, then. We were on its trail.

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#rwby #jaune arc #ruby rose #lancaster #motion sickness #ruby rose x jaune arc #renora #nora valkyrie x lie ren #nora valkyrie #lie ren

[asylum-miniatures]

Entry 16 - a story of “heroes”

Just as a quick aside, something funny happened before we even began.  I ended up giving the DM, his wife, Draspher and Vex a lift to the DM's place.  as I was getting stuff out of the car, Draspher asked if he could take anything for me.  I told him to take himself, so sure enough he grabs himself by the lapels and starts walking backwards up the drive.  He then promptly slips up and falls flat on his back.  I now have physical proof Draspher can't carry his own weight.

For this session the GM decided to implement a plan he had in the works for a while.  This is the longest game he's ever run, and he was worried we were getting character fatigue.  To alleviate this, he came up with the idea of giving us a second character.  That way we could play someone completely different then swap out characters depending on the mission.  It would also give the secondary character plenty of down time to do their own thing.  To try and make a cohesive group, he decided to make characters for everyone, play the initial scenario then let players tweak them afterwards to suit their own playstyle.  This way, we wouldn't have, say, a party full of support with no fighters, or four different frontline fighters leaving players feeling redundant.  This idea was partially derailed when Sim and Yurian both gave him new sheets they wanted to play as, but I'll get into that in a minute.

session 16, Part 1, the setup

The scenario – spurred on by the idea of putting his bad eggs in one basket, the Guild master decided to expand the idea.  Instead of just problem members, what if he used criminals?  No one would miss them and they were easier to come by, all he needed to do was put a restraint seal on them and he would be all set.  Yes, that’s right, we're the suicide squad.

Jaune (me) – Lloyd One-shot, slayer, expert marksman and professional hit-man (deadshot)

Vex – Cereza Hepburn a rogue/witch with a protodragon familiar, magic hair, a gun and time domain ability's (bayonetta, I'll explain)

Sim – Isaac Whitefire, monk (no-one, I'll explain)

Occelot – pamala 'rose' lee, a half elf cleric (poison ivy)

Yurian – Khayren, a magus and the Guild masters plant in the team as secret minder (rick flag/katana)

Draspher – Jess, a Broken as hell monk/barbarian.  Here is how the conversation went when he first got his sheet:          Lloyd– you know how you normally play draspher?          Jess – yes?          Lloyd – dial it up to 13          Jess – but it's already at 17...          Lloyd – then keep turning the dial until you break it, and don't stop until I tell you to

If you're wondering why the group doesn't seem quite right, there is a reason.  Originally the three criminals we had worked alongside before (Jess, Rose and Isis) would make up half the group (Draspher as Jess, Ocelot as Rose, Sim as Isis), with the GM making a Felix Foust style necromancer sorcerer for Vex, either a martial master fighter or magus for Yurian to represent rick flag/katana.  Before the session though, Yurian started asking for a magus to play as, then provided a sheet.  Spurred on by this, Sim provided a sheet for a monk she wanted to play as, leaving the group without a rogue type for trapfinding.  Then Draspher sent him a message that vex wanted a protodragon familiar, so, he made a witch with two levels of rogue, then realised that this was essentially bayonetta, so he we went all out and gave her the guns.  

Now you may be wondering why I'm bringing this up.  Well I happen to be really good friend with the GM, and I've become a partial confidant of his, sometimes helping him with ideas or builds.  We had actually made the builds for Isis, Rose and Jess one afternoon ages ago.  He had let me in on this and I had been helping him with character ideas for a while.  I have also been painting miniatures of the characters, so I decided to go ahead and prepare a group of miniatures to properly represent everyone.  Unfortunately, I didn't hear that there had been changes to the line-up, meaning that I both lacked a miniature for these new characters that was appropriate, and the time I had spent looking for miniatures to represent them was now squandered.

That aside, time for the session to really begin.

Part 2, tied up

We all woke up, tied to chairs in a dark room.  Despite our best efforts, all we can do is jostle the chains.  The only thing we can tell is that the room is slightly moving, like we're on a ship or something.  Jess looks over and immediately shouts in joy at seeing her "flower friend".  Said flower friend tries to convince the rest of us she has no idea who she is, but a roll of 2 on her bluff fails to convince any of us.  We all also look in confusion when jess keeps suggesting that "the lizard hobo" had something to do with this situation.  Kharyen makes perseption checks and sees what we are all still armed and packing.  

Lloyd - "hey, eyes up here a*****e". 

Then suddenly we hear a voice in our heads, saying "right, they should be awake, prepare for drop".

The good news is the chains came undone.  The bad news is that the floor opened up.  The worst news is that apparently, we were in an airship, and now we are plummeting without parachutes.  And the only thing below us is a huge forest, very, very far below us.

(side note, on the trip over the GM and I were chatting and I successfully guessed first try he was planning the airship drop.  We had been chatting for years and he had mentioned he liked the idea of a stealth drop using rings of feather fall as parachutes, and he had tried to implement this right at the start of this campain, but swaggy had refused and draspher kept complaining he couldn't afford to pay back the ring if he lost it)

Now one of the problems of this scenario comes into play here.  As we all had new sheets, none of us knew what ability's we had or what items we had.  This resulted in a lot of panicked page turning.  Turns out the only party member with a feather fall ability and a featherfall spell was Cereza.  She immediately activates it.  On herself.  The rest of continue to drop, aside from me and Jess.  We both had the same idea of grabbing on to her, but unfortunately Jess was the only one strong enough to keep hold.  Khayren has cat boots on, so he'll be just fine while Rose takes one look at her HP a decides to just tank the damage.  Recovering after losing grip, but too far away to try again I decide to try it again on the only other party member close enough and with an ability to save me.  I swoop over to Issac and latch onto his back, hoping against hope that his monk slow fall can save us both.  I promise him that if he saves me here I'll make it worth his while, but he rolls a 21 on sense motive.  I manage to match it with a roll of 20.  I jokingly roll it again, treating it like a critical and I get a second, but the third roll gives me an 8, so not quite an instant kill but still close.  Meanwhile, with a new human backpack Issac decides to try and use a spare outfit to slow himself down, and then I roll another 20 on my strength check to stay attached.  I somehow rolled 3 20's in 4 rolls.

Times up for us though, time to see how well we survive.  Khayren lands softly only taking 20 damage, nearby rose lands so hard she makes a mushroom cloud for 63 damage, and is now stuck half way in the floor at the bottom of a crater.  Issac crashes against a tree and takes 29 damage, but slides to the floor safely.  Meanwhile the impact knocks off, then the fall through several tree branches and finally hitting the floor from 50' deals 25 damage total.  Some distance away Cereza finally knocks jess off, and she hits the floor for 25 damage, while she lands without any damage, but she now has no idea where any of us actually are.  Fortunately, a quick survival roll shows an extremely large mushroom cloud nearby, so we all meet up with rose healing us mostly with her channel energy ability.

We start asking around as a group if anyone has any idea what we are doing there.  We eventually figure out that Khayren and issac are the only ones who have done these missions before.  During the conversation Jess also mentioned she misses "the sploady man".  I immediately latch onto this realising she might mean "the mad bomber", and propose teaming up to collect the bounty on his head.  Khayren also remembers (dm explained through him) that the mission is that there is a compound around this part that has gone silent for a few weeks, so we were dispatched to investigate as we are entirely expendable.  Khayren also gets details on what's happening with the group.   We all have control tattoos branded on us, but he has an additional one that gives him control over ours.  At any point he could activate them to cause us pain, or hit us with a full charge blast to kill us if we get too out of line.  The tattoos have a secondary defence, in that if anything happens to him we have a week or two to get back to base to report or we die.  Finally, none of us actually know he's the one running us, we all think he's in the same boat so it's up to him to either keep it secret or to reveal himself.

Just as we start off towards the target, Cereza suddenly seases up in fear, what happened to her protodragon?  it was chained up in her lap and A quick roll shows it would have taken 65 points of damage if it just fell.  Luckily the GM just rules that the chains came off at the same time, but it was still a "oh crud" moment.

Part three, the lockup

We eventually get to a huge compound.  all the trees within 40' have been cut down, and the walls are covered in some kind of grease.  The only way we can see in is a huge set of doors with an equally large lock.

A quick check shows our best way in is through the front door, so Cereza starts to pick it.  It will take about 10 minutes to take 20 on it, so the rest of us explore our options.  Jess immediately starts trying to climb the wall, but the grease prevents her from making headway.  Isaac realises he has a grappling hook in his equipment, and quickly secures it at the top before climbing up and using a second rope to get to ground level, Jess quickly following.  As soon as they get to the other side Jess tries opening the door, but is just as quickly distracted by the chickens running around, and soon chases after them.  Noticing Roses irritation at her "friend" I offer to "take a job for her" and she seriously considers it.  While she decides I go looking round the edge while we wait for Cereza, but find nothing except more wall.  When Jess fails to grapple a chicken, she gets bored enough to use her 60' movement speed to charge to the door on the other side of the compound and Khayren uses gaseous form to slip through to the other side.  He teams up with Issac to investigate one of the buildings.  Seeing as neither of them are rogues, it's understandable they fail to spot the stinking cloud trap until they open the door springing it, surrounding them both in yellow smoke that leaves Khayren throwing up his guts.  Issac drags him out of the cloud just as, after much waiting Cereza gets the door open, and the others head inside, while I run back after having wondered off.  

Jess makes it to the other door, knocks on it, then idly comments "huh, no-one's there", then turns back, deciding to check on a well she saw before.  Now done with the door, Cereza scales a guard tower, finding only 2 heavy crossbows and 58 bolts she pockets, and a dried blood stain.  Rose meanwhile quickly identifies what kind of trap the two had sprung and sets about healing Khayren.  I then get back and rose bent over Khayren's yellow and puke stained form, with Issac standing sheepishly beside them in a similar shade of puke and yellow.  

Lloyd – I leave you guys for 10 minutes and this is what happens huh

I decide to follow my natural instincts as a sniper and check the other tower, finding similar crossbows and bolts but no blood.  I then pull out my rifle and get to scoping out the area.  It's at this moment rose and jess hear the sounds of screams coming from a nearby L shaped building. 

Part four, the punch up

Jess charges over and sees a woman holding a door shut as something tries to break through.  With a shout of "oh yeah!" She smashes through the window, Issac quickly following through the freshly made jess shaped hole.  The woman is terrified at this point, and dives under a table as the doors break, and a large four-armed gorilla enters the room.  For a chirstmas present, the GM had bought jess a tray for rolling her and Cereza's dice in as they had a bad habbit of drapping them off the table.  Jess's first attack roll she manages to miss the tray and send on onto the floor.  Jess can't carry her own weight and can't roll for crud it seems.

Issac immediately runs into the fight as Cereza gets there, having quickly scaled down from the tower.  She decides to go full rita repulsa on us, and makes her monk (issac) grow.  Against any other foe the gorilla might have had a chance, but and enlarged issac proceeds to flurry of blows, ORA him so hard his head explodes.  (side note, he rolled two 2's and still hit this thing).

The woman immediately turns to them

Woman – who are you

Jess – we don't know

Seeing the woman is injured, jess decides to try a heal check, and rolls a 1.  Rose then enters the room to discover jess has pulled this woman's trousers down and is attempting to jam her thumb up her prostate.  She quickly takes over the healing, but something seems really wrong with her.  

Woman – [turns to group] who are you? [turns to the gorilla] AAAA, WHAT THE HECK IS THAT

It seems like she can't retain memories of what happens to her.  Rose quickly identifies she's been poisoned and she's taken a nasty wound to the head which is surrounded by strange markings, but she can't identify what the poison is.  Regardless she uses a remove poison spell and the woman's ability to remember starts coming back.

While this was going on, Jess has started skinning this monkey with her bare hands, and keeps making rolls.  The GM starts getting annoyed so I run this plan I've had for a while.  I pass him a note saying (giggle and say nothing, when jess rolls I do nothing to her) and then show everyone but jess this note.

The woman explains she's one of the prison cooks, but she can't understand where everyone is, it's the middle of the day the whole compound should be jumping.  When quizzed about the lack of communication, she can't understand they send messages every day, why would they not have heard from them for three weeks?  The rising horror and sorrow this scene of a woman slowly coming to grips with the fact she's lost weeks of her life and has no idea what's happened to all her friends is promptly derailed when jess joyfully asks the GM what she found while ripping apart a gorilla with her bare hands.  She then gleefully writes down on her sheet the 10 pounds of monkey meat and the gorilla pelt she managed to remove from the battered body.

A quick check shows us that we are in the kitchen, and the mess hall is connected in the next room, but all we find in there is blood and chicken feathers.  we then decide to check the building the woman identifies as the warden's office, jess brining the poor cook with us solely because she wants help cooking the meat she just got.  

Part five, the stich up

We go over to the office, but as we approach Cereza spots a circle on the floor.  The cook explains that since the whole place is a prison, certain areas are of limits and are booby trapped to prevent escaped prisoners from activating it.  I quickly saunter over, explaining I've seen these kinds of traps before.  With a quick wave of my hands and a few magic words, I deactivate it before turning to jess and telling her to open the door.  She doesn't believe me for a second and decides to grab a chicken to throw at the door instead.  While she fails grapple rolls against poultry, Rose decides she rather likes my idea, so she uses a command spell to make jess walk open and open the door.  Sure enough, the four hidden crossbows take aim and fire, two impacting her in the chest and one is a critical hit and gets her between the eyes.  In retaliation Jess smashes the crossbows and makes her way inside.  

She quickly identifies this as the house of Elgan Ashford, and looking around she finds a letter describing the day to day mundane activity's that mysteriously stops part of the way through, several medals lining the walls and some gold in the desk.  She then takes is all, partially due to greed but also payback for us getting her shot.  She then helps herself to all the clothes in his cupboard as well.

She makes her way back and rose reluctantly heals 15 of jess's 35 damage, but she decides to leave the bolt in, if she takes them out jess won't learn her lesson.  We ask the woman more about the site, but the second she mentions a vault we have found our next destination.

Part six, the hold up

We quickly make our way over to the vault.  It's a large granite box of a building with no visible entrances.  Surrounding it on all sides are red warning signs in just about every language imaginable.  Jess checks all sides and finds nothing, before jumping on top and attempting to punch her way in.  While she's banging on the stone Rose uses a truesight spell to check the box herself.  The only thing she can find is an outline of a possible door, but it's the barest hint of one even with her spell.  What's more, there seems to be some kind of forcefield that is preventing jess's punches from actually making contact with the stone.  Jess comes up with the idea of rubbing the medals she stole from the office on the rock to see if that disables it.  It doesn't work, and both the GM and Jess are worried about the rest of us spotting her stolen goods.  I point out that the crazy girl is still covered in monkey blood and guts and carrying around the remains of a mashed gorilla skull, we've stopped trying to question what she's up too.  

While this is going on the cook gets a dazed expression on her face and makes her way to another building.  We all follow, Rose and jess deciding to give up for now to join us, as she makes her way towards a nice small house surrounded by various plants.  The woman just sits at a stool, completely devastated as the full reality of the situation occurs to her.  It finally occurs to us to ask her name, which we find out is Delbena, as we go snooping around looking for clues/goods to steal.  The building appears to be staff quarters, and is probably where Delbena was living before all this started.  Rose looks around and finds a cupboard full of homeopathic medicines and Cerezra opens a cabinet and finds 10 healing potions and a healer's kit that she splits 50/50 with rose.  I look for clues to what's going on and find a gold coin collection worth 80gp and a platinum broach I pocket while Delbena is still shell-shocked.  She is quickly broken out of her stupors by the sound of jess moving her bookcases, trying to see if there is anything hidden behind them.  This is the final straw, and she just collapses in tears at the sorry state her life has become.

We then realise that the miners' office was the first building Khayren and Issac tried.  We make our way over to see if we have better luck this time, Jess dragging a weaping Delbena since she stills wants fresh cooked monkey.

Part seven – the screw up  

We head to the offices and try to decide what to do.  Rose trys the door and the stinking gas trap activates again.  While Rose quickly leaves the area, Jess decides to jump on the roof (which is covered in the gas) and steals the flag off the flagpole.  I then suggest to her that she should try breaking in through the roof.  She agrees and immediately jumps up to do so.  While she does break a hole in the roof and dive in she comes across a problem.  The gas trap is pouring fumes inside the house as well as out, and now she has no way out.  She manages to hold out one round, but she quickly succumbs the next round.  Rose pipes up when she hears the sound of jess collapsing into unconsciousness.  She starts taking some major damage so Issac charges in, breaks down the door and pulls her out with only 18hp left.  Then she continues to keep taking damage from the gas in her lungs.  When she's down to 11hp rose casts remove sickness to save her.  She then returns the favour from the demonlord game, mouths a healing potion to spit down her throat.  She uses her entire stock to get her back to 45hp

We ended it on that point.  Since our GM was going on holiday soon, we decided to have another session the next week, so I've had to type this session up pretty quick. [/spoiler] Jess's new friends – 5, us four (rose was already her friend),Delbena

Times Jess needed healing – 3, the initial fall, taking the crossbow bolts, the gas trap

Lloyds future contracts – 3, the guy who dropped us out without a parachute, the mad bomber and jess

Blatant thefts – 5.5, 2 guard towers, wardens office, staff office medical supplies, staff office personal effects, the vault (.5 we tried but couldn't get in YET)

#ain't our fault #main story

[asylum-miniatures]

Entry 13 - reading up

part 13, checking in and checking out

Draspher wakes up groggily after having had the snot beaten out of him.  He looks around at me fuming while pacing around the dead crazy woman's body, Vex keeping a general watch out for trouble and Ocelot finishing off planting a knife one the civilian woman he shot.  It's at this point the town guard run up.  Draspher goes to meet them and explains how "he got roughed up by this crazy woman while we were chasing one of the escaped infected, don't know why she went for us with a knife but luckily Ocelot managed to shoot her".  As one everyone around the table goes silent and stairs at him, and then I start clapping.  That is the single first actually convincing bluff he has ever come up with.  It's so good the DM just gives it him without rolling for it.  The guards take pity on us and give potions of cure moderate wounds to the wounded.

Back at the temple, Sim decides to make chase.  She calls her new mount for their first ride.  Sure enough, we see a derpy looking bird carrying Sim and Yurion on his back, and a very disgruntled raccoon by its tail in his beak.

As we start to leave, draspher calls me over.  He explains about how he’s sorry about what happened, and that he won’t interfere with me in future fights unless I directly ask him to.  But now that that is past us, he feels we can both agree that mistakes were made on both sides, that we both have had moments of unreasonable actions but forgive and forget and let's move on, what do you say?

Jaune(me): ………. You glued a psychopath to my chest…………

The DM just breaks down at my complete deadpan tone, and despite some bickering (mostly on my part about how does he equate my knocking him out as equal to the constant getting us in trouble, which I'm usually the one trying to save him, and the fact he glued a psychopath to my chest as "we're even now")

We make our way to sayid library.  The DM has us roll initiative, and I finally get a high roll, typically not in a combat scenario.  I go over to the woman at the desk and ask where sayid is.  Apparently, he hasn’t made it back yet, so I ask where the smut section is while we wait.  Of course, this immediately razes alarm bells, we came to town with him and he went straight here, so somethings going on here.  OOC Vex expresses and interest in hitting on her.  Then immediately afterwards, Sim then come up and starts hitting on her, and she reciprocates (to vex's outrage and ire).  The librarian reciprocates the advances really, reciprocates, unusually quickly and sim was initially only bluffing, but now she's really getting into it. A quick spellcraft roll from draspher reveals she’s casting some kind of spell on her.  Ocelot waits by the door, Yurion starts reading books (fuming about her girlfriend hitting on a stranger) and vex goes, specifically to push sim out of the way so she can flirt, but something is really setting off her paladin senses, and eventually she gets the idea and a quick detect evil confirms it, she is evil as all heck. The librarian turns, recognising a holy servant she realises the jig is up, and screeches in an inhuman wail, her hair withering, and her skin and face turns corpse like

Part two, counter strategies

She immediately lunges towards Vex and Sim, claws out, but Vex wasn't completely taken by surprise while Sims armour saves her.  The two girls and myself are the ones closest to the counter, so we all take pot shots at her but the counter provides her cover that blocks us.  Yurion looks up from her book and using her vast knowledge skills, she recognises her as a greater ghoul, and as such is vulnerable to healing spells.  She immediately comes up with a plan to use the link spell to pass a healing charge through the gold bangle someone else is wearing to hit the ghoul.  Unfortunately, no-one is close enough to pull this off but the DM approves of her strategic thinking, so instead she moves in and decides to 'cook' a healing spell.  Not cast a healing spell when she attacks you understand, but cast one now and have to keep making concentration checks to hold onto it without losing the charge.  Ocelot immediately latches onto this idea, trying to take off his own bangle and use mage hand to levitate it over.  The DM immediately put a stop to that nonsense, so instead he just shoots and hits the counter.

On Drasphers turn summons a Compsognathus to pen her in while completely preventing Yurian from getting to her.  Seeing her exit blocked, the Ghoul drops further behind the counter top and casts glitterdust on her location.  This immediately blinds myself, vex and the dinosaur.  

I spend my next turn blind, helpless and yelling out like a three stooges sketch.  Vex spends hers kicking out to try and find anything (she only manages to find me for 7 points none-lethal damage) and sim tries to punch through the counter but has no luck.  I stumble back from the kick, now panicked about something trying to attack me.  Draspher asks the DM "Would a grease spell clear off the glitterdust" to the groups horror, and we as one shout out "NOOO".  

At this point three of us are surrounding the counter, I've stepped off in a blind stumble so I'm near some bookcases, Ocelot is still in the doorframe and Draspher has finally realised his mortality and is hiding far away between two bookshelves.  Unfortunately, an unseen force decides now is the time to act, and slams him into a bookshelf for nearly 20 damage (most of his health).  Realising something invisible is attacking him, he immediately casts glitterdust.  The question then comes up (to my horror), since he's casting it between two narrow bookcases, does that mean that Jaune (myself) is in the range of it?  Luckily for me (and drashers freshly fixed face) the DM decides that it doesn't and the form of a large air elemental becomes clear. Not that any of us go to help him.

Ocelot decides that guns aren't any good at all, so he decides to holster the gun, yell out a warning to Sim to duck, and proceeds to use his boots of springing and jump of Sims sholders to tackle the ghoul to the ground. He succeeds but has a very nasty surprise.  Previously he mentioned to sim that she wants to be careful about touching the undead when she's casting a healing spell on it.  The ghoul reaches us and with one touch paralyses Ocelot, before pushing him off and getting up.

Yurian takes this opportunity to push the blind and useless dinosaur aside to smash a healing spell in the ghoul's face (to the theme of shining finger from G gundam, curtesy of myself on the ipad).  Enraged by this, she calls out for her allies, and the door next to Yurion opens up to reveal three more zombies coming through.  Yurian manages to get a second healing spell off, reducing the ghoul to dust but not before she gets one last touch attack on her in retaliation, dropping her next to Ocelot while the zombies shamble towards them.

Luckily for Yurian her girlfriend Sim was there to save the day.  With a single flame pillar spell, she reduces all three zombies to ash.  She also sets the back of the BOOK SHOP on fire.  Draspher, upon seeing this immediately despairs.  He's so worried about burring the books he cares nothing for the giant air elemental that slammed him for almost all of his health. He immediately comes out with "I use burning hands to put out the flames".

After clarifying that burning hands only extinguishes the flames IT CREATES he instead summons three water elementals to put out the fire.  With that out of the way the party finally decides to deal with the air elemental.  As I go in to flank the DM has to assure me that this thing is part of the adventure module, he didn't design this to counter me but it's immune to flanking, sneak attacks and critical hits

Ocelot: .......DM

DM: Yes?

Ocelot: ......we've been rolling for Vex's criticals against that thing

DM: [head hits the table]

We quickly kill the thing.  Afterwards, Yurian and Draspher go to check the bookshelves for anything to do with the scarab king, Ocelot and Sim check the backrooms to the left and to the DM's surprising panic, vex and I go to check the back room on the right

Part three, only himself to blame

inside there are two gigantic figures.  The DM tells us they look like demonic bears (half the party insists on calling them bears after this) and they just happened to be in the middle of killing two of drasphers water elementals.  I fight my natural instincts (the paladin's aura of bravery helped) and we position ourselves at the door hoping to make a chokepoint.  Hearing our screams, the others race in, and Yurion rolls a 20 on the identify roll.  The DM describes the massive amount of resistances and damage reduction the two demons have, although in character she only has enough time to shout out "demons" and that’s enough for me.  I stand up, I face those demons, and I said "NOPE! NOPE, NOPE, NOPE, NOPE, NOPE" and I make for the door, attempting to drag the paladin with me.  IRL I even enact this scene, leaving the room, then re-entering to quickly "NINJA VANISH" before leaving again. Unfortunately, said paladin is now fully stoked to go slaughter some demons, and charges towards the first demon.

During this the DM is shaking his head, these things are way too strong for the party, he was expecting us to heal after the last fight or just run.  Not only have we as a group gone after them, we bunched up.  He's expecting a total party wipe at this point.  While he was panicking I remembered something, and after checking vex's sheet I point out one of her class features she hadn't used yet.  As his head lies in his hands, Vex charges up takes out half the first demons health in a single swing. For all their resistances, their DR is beaten by good aligned weapons, and I remembered that she had two smite evil's left today, as well as the divine bond weapon with just enough enchantment to give it holy.  It sliced through it like butter.

Sim follows this initial shot with a volcanic storm, just managing to hit both of them without hitting vex, and rolls a perfect 18 on the bludgeoning damage (6, 6, 6 against demons) and even gets 11 on the 2d6 fire damage (just gets over their resistance for 1 extra damage).  As I'm running out of the door I pass Yurion and Ocelot coming the other way.  It's around this point that it comes out that both of them are suicidal.  Both of them are tired of their characters (ocelot didn't use his skills or equipment properly so he kept using the revolver for around 4 damage a shot instead of his dragon pistol or his feats, Yurion was built for Knowledge skills but we had gotten fairly battle heavy and she felt left out) and want to re-roll, and they both came to the conclusion the best way of doing this is to throw themselves in front of danger until they die.  This means they are the only one's happy about this situation.

In the next round vex slays the first beast, and draspher has been spamming summoning spells to the point there are around 7 giant spiders in the room.  Every round he has them fire webs at this demon, never seeming to get the idea that they won't work at all, just like the tanglefoot bags.  (Every round looks like something out of one of his hentai's, a massive demon covered in sticky white fluid).  The second demons finally gets his go, and he makes it a nasty one.  He releases his breath weapon, which hits everyone (aside from me, I was one square out) for 6D6 damage.  The DM rolls surprisingly low, a few 1 and 2's in there, but it's enough to drop draspher into negatives and give everyone a chunk of damage. (funnily enough, most of drasphers spiders survived when he didn't)

Vex heals herself and charges in while Yurion heals Draspher back to full.  The demon responds with a great cleave with his 10' reach claws and almost the entire party within range.  He slices through two spiders and vex, but flubs it when he tries to hit Ocelot, who was disappointed in failing to achieve his own death again. While this was going on, I had run out of the door, noted some sparkly stuff in the ghoul ash, summersaulted over the counter and went out to the street.  My flight was not solely based on saving my own skin, I was looking for re-enforcements.  Unfortunately, a curfew did not mean the city was being regularly patrolled, so I had to keep running looking for help.  I eventually meet the captain and a few officers at the camp we had been at before, and I quickly get there help.

Just as we were setting off back to the store, vex had started slicing into the demon. He evidently decides a re-position was in order and uses dimensional door to jump to the other side of the room.  Ocelot then comes up with an idea.  Pulling out his spare powder horn and the laser gun (The DM describes it as a wand of scorching ray that also happens to be a gun, but we all know what it is) and tosses the powder horn under the demon's feet.  As he goes to look down at what that is, Ocelot shoots it and the explosion opens a hole in his stomach his organs fall out of.  You do have to remember though he has to spend a few minutes working out the flaws with his other plans with the DM so it wasn't quite the flash of brilliance.  His other plans failed because:  

a. you don't have a fuse on you to light it, b. you don't have anything to light a fuse c. lighting a powder horn with a dragon pistol will leave you with one hand d. you can't shoot gunpowder to explode with a regular bullet

The DM is simply gobsmacked about how easily Vex has torn through those guys, and I point out "remember, you made her sheet, I warned you giving her a +1 Keen Katana was too much to just start off with, you only have yourself to blame"

Part four, cleanup

Once the demon's dead, the others all start looting the place in the age-old adventurer tradition.  Yurion and draspher both get to looking through the books, Sim and Ocelot check the back rooms we didn't go into and find a trap door underneath a water barrel and Vex finds some masterwork artisans tools for the printing press she decides to pick up as a gift for draspher.  They find some notes about research regarding the plague, in particular questioning whether or not it could be the feast of dust, but disregarding it as the "sword" is still in place.

At this point OOC I realise something.  The demons were summons and there remains are going back to their own realm, the air elemental has no remains, the three zombies got burned up by fire and lightning and the ghoul is a pile of ash.  There is no evidence about any of this and I am bringing the captain of the guard and two guards straight to them.  We end the session as I am walking into the door.

Later on, the DM let me know that the demons pretty much failed there initiative rolls and missed a turn.  Had they rolled better, Vex's charge would have been met with two attacks of opportunities, they would both have used greater cleave/breath weapons to smack the entire party as we had bunched up and could dimension door to cut off our retreat/pin us in. It's only sheer luck that vex got in and killed one before it could do anything which left the other wide open.  I can think of so many scenarios that that encounter could have gone differently that would have killed all of us.  Also, fun fact elementals can't be flanked or critted, and both the ghoul and the demons could see invisibility, it's like this adventure path hates me.

Days in city – 1

Lives saved – 2.5, the Girl being mauled by his commander, the crazy homeless person that almost burnt and the nun we healed (.5)

Lives killed – 3.5, the one guy we pulled up to stab, the civilian that got shot (she went at him with a knife), the broken armed escapee that got shot and the libarian, who was a ghoul but I'm not sure how the city guard will take it

Vex’s Harem – 2.25, the Girl being mauled by her commander, the nun and a librarian who was really a ghoul

Times Drilled over by Draspher – 2, he convinced me there was a dragon in the desert and got me glued to the ground with a crazy infected woman ready to beat me to death

Times Drapher got drilled over (both his own and others fault) - 20, his adhesive spittle keep breaking (2), I knocked him out (his own fault), he got assaulted by an air elemental and no-one cared, nearly killed by demon breath, his spider webs did nothing (15)

Jaunes brave advances towards future victory - 3, when jess attacked in the night, the barn, the demons

#ain't our fault #main story