Stalwart Stand 8.2
"O child… It is verily refreshing to meet you this way."
"Oh fuck
off—"
You'd walked into this trial expecting… frankly. You don't know what you'd been expecting. A true challenge? A line of dominoes, set to fall over the moment you started battering them down? It could have been anything. But you had, at the time, been certain. No matter what. You'd overcome this crisis.
The first set of opponents, the Index Proxies and Grade 1 Fixers accompanying them, they'd been a warm-up, in hindsight. You hadn't been taking things seriously, let them whittle you down a fair bit before manifesting your E.G.O. and splitting them all in half. You'd once had to fight twice as many opponents of that caliber. That black-suited man had been a bit of trouble, but still hadn't been an actual problem
. Simply a nuisance, dodging your attacks in such a skilled manner. Even with their trickery, their hidden abilities and strangely uncharacteristic powers… no one could dodge the Great Split. And after that, the boss had been easy pickings, fluttering away into golden pages.
You'd thought that you were done. That you'd won the Book of Cogito fair and square. You'd dismissed your E.G.O., taken a brief knee.
And then the world had changed around you. A celestial bridge under a starry sky. Alarm had filled you, instincts screaming to turn around, but you raised your blade too late. And a hail of gunfire tore into you from behind. Not just gunfire. A Singularity—F Corp's. It ripped your skin open like paper, shredded your insides and let the actual
bullets hit even harder. Rarely before, had you ever felt such pain.
That was it. You were going to tear this fucking Library down, brick by brick. And extract that damned book from that scheming Director's corpse. No matter how much she looked like…
The thought was opportune. Your E.G.O. manifested shortly thereafter. The trio of Thumb-clad goons were all wiped out shortly thereafter in a single bloody strike. And that left only the woman in black. Pontificating with a look of familiarity on her face, looking as if she hadn't taken a scratch from your Great Split. Only the slightest ruffling of her coat indicated you'd hit her at all.
"How intriguing. You were capable of wielding that power so far in the past…"
She's been talking for less than ten seconds. And you're already sick of this cryptic nonsense.
"Why do you talk like you know me?"
The woman simply smiles, an eerie glint in her eyes. "I suppose I could explain it, given time. But I did not come out here merely to crush your spirit. No. I shall see your full power. I will match it. And you shall crumble."
You almost want to scoff at her arrogance. But something holds you back. Instinct: that this woman is as dangerous as they come. You've fought top employees of Wings, wielding Singularities as their armament, and while their gimmick was always powerful, always wielded with skill, they were always… singular. Specialized. Once you learned to work around it or power through it, they inevitably would die.
You get the sense that this woman doesn't have that problem. The massive pillars behind her, manifesting with a gesture, are certainly different from the Fairies she used before. You brandish Mimicry, mentally charting a route through the inevitable storm.
"Then let's start this for real," you taunt, gathering your strength. "You're all alone now. All your flunkies are gone. And you still think you can match me?"
A hum and another smile. The glimmering of an ever-lit lantern, and watchful eyes. "It is not completely concluded, now is it?"
…What a vivid dream. It was as if it was ripped straight out of your memories.
In retrospect, that woman had gone down easy for an Arbiter. You don't think it should've been that simple to bring down a true Arbiter of the Head. Must've been weakened, somehow. Degraded. You can't exactly put your finger on why or how. But you'd bet your life on it. Did, in fact.
Shit bet.
The way that woman looked at you was... it was just plain eerie. It was if she was looking at you, but simultaneously not. Seeing your afterimages, rather than your form. An eye facing the past...? She came dangerously close to breaking you. And she
definitely set you up for the next cycle to finish the job.
You roll out of bed, fumbling about a bit as you reach for Mimicry, leaning against the side. At this point, it's basically a comfort blanket. You weren't always quite this attached to your sword, but in recent times... well, it's familiar, if nothing else. You'll treasure the familiar, never let it go.
You lean over just a little too far as you straighten yourself, and wince as something twinges fiercely in your lower back. Trying to remember... you think it was where Xiao body-checked you. This whole 'not healing' thing's a real pain in the ass. And it's gonna get worse. You're not looking forward to that. Annoying in a different way is how arbitrary it seems to be, what will self-maintain and what won't. You know just enough about biology to know that clotting and scabbing are a kind of healing, and
that seems to be working just fine. But it goes no further than that. Just enough to stop you from bleeding out, and not an inch more.
More irksome is that, for all that the Singularities in your body have all decided to fuck off and turn off, that your
coat, of all things, seems to be self-repairing just fine, purging stains and mending its own tears. And on one hand, you guess that's good; you're fond of this old thing. Served you well over your career, had it augmented at a Workshop multiple times. But come
on. Not exactly what you
need right now.
...A walk will make you feel better, you think. You're also down for a scrap, itching to release some built-up pressure. Itching to
do something. And where else but the Backstreets of Mistral City? If they're anything like home, you'll run into someone, somewhere, that deserves to have their ass beaten into the dirt. And if they're anything like you've observed Remnant to be, they should fall before you without too much issue. So long as you're not sloppy and fight with your own mortality in mind. Also so long as you remember Glynda's advice, and not wantonly murder, you guess.
Yeah, that's your mind made up. You're going down.
Time to kick some ass.
On your way out, you remember something you saw the previous day, during your tour of campus, and figure it's worth a detour. Not far from the cafeteria was a dojo, a training grounds. Presumably, it's where the Huntsman students would spar, if not for it currently being off-season. And there, with a little more snooping around, you locate what you'd been looking for: an armory, filled with basic weapons of all kinds.
You recall the shocked reaction Yang had to your sword, and the increasingly worried looks people kept giving you as you traveled across Vale and Mistral. And you've decided you're kinda sick of it. It will not kill you to use a backup. In hindsight, you probably should've done this back in Vale, but in your defense, you honestly hadn't thought of it.
You almost scoff at the guns, mainly pistolly-one-handed types, before you remember the number they did on you at the Library, the sheer force behind Qrow's shotgun. And reconsider. Nonetheless, you still opt for just a simple greatsword. The weight's off, compared to Mimicry, but it's surprisingly close to the sword you used when you were still climbing the ranks. You strap its sheath to your back, cross from Mimicry.
If things get dire, you'll obviously break out the E.G.O. But you doubt that'll happen. So you'll rely on strength and a blade in the meantime, to avoid drawing too much attention to yourself.
And If Leonardo kicks up a fuss about you stealing a weapon from his storage room, you'll intimidate him into shutting up about it. No harm, no foul. You may trust the man to commit to his promises, but you do not
care about the man enough to make him feel good.
And with that, you start walking towards the lift that will take you to Mistral Below…
…right up until you notice the large crowd of angry businesspeople that's gathered, the construction tape surrounding the entrance, and the red-clad operator desperately trying to maintain order and explain the situation. The situation being that, apparently, the lift is broken, they're doing everything they can to fix it, etc., but…
Yeah. You won't be taking it today. But you're not going to give up solely because you'll have to do a little extra walking. You've got more determination than that. So you make a U-turn and head for the stairs.
An hour and many,
many, stairs later, you're starting to see why so many people were so upset about having to walk. Cause this? This is miserable.
Mistral's built on a mountain, and turns out those things are pretty damned tall. Which means getting about by stair just takes forever and is exhausting. Your legs were seriously aching by the time you reach the mere twentieth staircase, and the bottom, even something vaguely
approaching a bottom, is still nowhere in sight. Okay, well, technically it's always in sight, sure, farmland and forest out on the horizon and all, but it still felt like you had miles to go before you got there.
It's so bad you even started taking stupid risks and emulating a bunch of probably-mercenaries-or-Huntsmen. You'd originally thought them to be suicidals and were alarmed, since they were hopping off and down balconies and railings. But then you actually watched 'em fall, saw them hit the faraway ground with a roll or a flip or a bang and just… keep going. Either Aura was even more bullshit than you first thought, or these guys really knew how to fall.
You also know how to fall. And while those jumps were pretty hard on the knees, and finding good spots to hop off of that both had safe landing spots and wouldn't result in collateral damage was not
easy, they made your trip downhill so. much. faster. You're pretty sure you managed to avoid taking any permanent damage throughout, so you're happy with the results.
Won't work on your way back up, obviously. So you
really hope the lift's fixed by the time you're done down here.
That said. Mistral's Backstreets are about as dark and damp as their equivalent in District 23. The sun's still hasn't risen far, despite your hour of travel, so the mountain's shadow falls heavy over the houses and people who live here. Kinda like the towering stacks of apartments winding their way up from ground level, back in the City, except here the houses are simply farther apart, with ramshackle roofs and boarded up windows.
There's differences, of course. The ground here isn't paved, instead being muddy. Swampy. Your boots sink and squelch with every other step, making you put just a bit more effort into walking around. More noticeably, Mistral is just… dirtier than the City. Trash wrappers, broken shafts of wood and rock, scraps of cloth and paper…any kind of human refuse. You can find it strewn about the road. Not all of it comes from Mistral Below, either. You catch a discarded ice cream wrapper fluttering down from high above, clearly dropped from Mistral's heights. And the smell of shit, of trash, and of mold is faint but pervasive.
You suppose this does make a degree of sense. Behind closed doors, people stink. It must only be because of the Sweepers every single night that the Backstreets smell and look as clean as they do, for a certain definition of 'clean'. They do tend to be thorough in, well, sweeping. And in the Nests, cleaners and workmen are instead paid to do such menial labor, or so Carmen said anyway.
She claimed that the Nest's method is more humane, better for the people. You… you're not sure if you agree, but you're certain there has to be a better way to keep the streets clean without murdering every single person who's caught out in them. You've had to fight the endless tide of the Night of the Backstreets once. It was… unpleasant, and at the end of it, even with a mountain of Sweeper corpses and an ocean of Sweeper body fluid surrounding you and your terrified client, you still felt as if you hadn't made a dent in the waves.
Your thoughts are wandering. You've got better things to worry about right now. Like that pair of face-masked bandits cornering an old woman in an alleyway.
…Man, that happened
way faster than you expected.
People in Remnant, turns out, are
really squeamish about blood. Probably because of Aura and how common it is. Even people in 'violent' occupations (read: Syndicate robbers) don't have to see each other's insides that often.
You only figure this out after smashing both thug 1 and thug 2's Auras in one stroke and chopping an arm off each of them with a second. The old woman (who, turns out, is a Faunus with a pig's tail), screams hysterically at the sight, running past you and out of the alley before you can stop, console, or really say anything to her. The two thugs, turns out, pass out from shock.
…Hey, you listened to Glynda, at least. You didn't kill them.
You tamp things down nonetheless as you continue your pleasant trek through Mistral Below. The next couple of incidents don't come nearly as quickly as your first one, but they do come. And you exercise a bit more restraint with the trio of thugs shaking down a pawn shop owner, only bashing them over the skulls with a bare minimum of force. They might have brain damage for life, but at least they won't bleed out. The shop owner certainly doesn't react nearly as badly as the old lady, so you're pretty sure you're doing something right.
As the sun rising higher into the sky allows sunlight to fall on Mistral Below, you feel a sense of peace overcome you, watching the formerly dark and dull roofs and awnings become slightly less so, colors faded by time being brought back into prominence by the light. People start to fill the streets, heading on their daily routines. Few of them pay you a second glance, giving you an uninhibited view of Mistral's people.
…Mostly, all you can tell is that these folks are downtrodden, yet hopeful. Even though they consider their day-to-day lives to be lousy, miserable, many of them still have plans and dreams for the future. You wish you could say more, use the fancy words that Daniel so loves to spout at you, but… yeah. You'll have to content yourself with that.
There's also, as you eventually figure out, somebody doing a very good job of stealthily following you. You have no clue how long it took you to notice, though you started having a weird feeling about it about thirty minutes ago. From there, you tried to act casual while still watching your back, only to consistently find nothing there. And as the crowds started gathering, it became that much harder to watch your six.
Still, it only took one single slip-up for you to put a face to your suspicions. Or rather, a lack thereof. A particularly muddy bit of ground, where a footprint suddenly sprouted. Yet there was no foot to make the imprint, no leg connected to it, and no body visible. An invisibility cloak.
And from there, it wasn't too hard to find additional traces your invisible stalker. A bit of shimmering in the air, like a mirage. A passersby bumping into them by accident, and reacting with confusion. A brief passage through a spray of mist that they dashed through, showing hints of movement and nearly giving away the game entirely to everyone present.
That's the moment you decide to actually do something about it, turning off into the next empty alleyway. A dead end, as it turns out, with a dumpster on the side and trashbags overflowing. From there, you march to the end, pull out your Scroll, feign looking at an article (still can't read), and wait.
You hear a faint
squelch from right behind you.
What do…?
[ ] Write-in.
A/N: Wow this chapter ended up being way longer than I expected… well, so it goes.
Sadge. Thanks Golden Glory for the idea, but I'm still stuck on a page that would be, like,
Good.
That said. Stalwart Stand it is.
[X] Write in: Mistral apparently has a pretty big arena fighting scene, you decided to use it to blow off some steam while earning some extra cash on the side.
I also briefly wanted to note that I really liked this vote and was quietly hoping it would win. Even considered changing my loose plans for this chapter's default vote just to incorporate it in some way. If you guys can come up with neat stuff to do for these kinds of votes, I'm all for it.
EDIT: Forgot to mention: The power of Full-Stop Office's passives. Frankly, I'm understating it. Realistically? After weathering a decently competent Keter floor, Kali should go down without a chance to even
move against a Full-Stop empowered Floor of Philosophy. +6 Power to all dice on the first Scene is nothing to scoff at. Hell, it's entirely possible to shoot her dead
without Full Stop passives.
