Alternative title: How to overthrow corrupt capitalist corporations for the good of society and simple sanity
Decades after the Faunus Rights Revolution, saying that you're a Faunus on Remnant is still an admission to being a second-class citizen. Blake Belladonna would like to change that even if the White Fang's recent pivot toward violence may yet make it far more difficult than it needs to be. Those in power are not in her favor, the general public doesn't yet care enough to exert effort toward supporting Faunus rights, and overall, it sometimes seems like the whole world is working against her.
AN: For those who have a strong preference, there is a separate poll for which viewpoint (first-person, second-person, third-person, or the narrative vs. vote contrast seen in this OP) will be used for the quest. I'll retroactively edit the OP to match the winner after a few days. EDIT: Annnd looks like the hybrid won.
Knowledge of the potential planes in this quest (RWBY, MGLN, Fairy Tail) is not required, and all three settings will be AU to some degree to aid in that lack of requirement.
"Move up to the next car. I'll set the charges."
"What about the crew members?"
"What about them?"
Such a short exchange, yet every repeat within Blake's mind struck another blow to her hopes and dreams. It distracted her in a critical moment—let her fall to a body slam of all things, and forced Adam to save her from literally being crushed underfoot. Even when they were both blasted outside, Blake's head was half a continent away from the fight. She couldn't so much as focus on striking weaknesses instead of armor plating.
"What about them?"
She should've expected this when Adam didn't bother to review the crew manifests with her. Blake suspected she knew what he was thinking: as far as he was concerned, the crew members were acceptable targets. Every one of them were humans on the exploitative Schnee Dust Company's payroll.
"What about them?"
But killing the crew would harm the White Fang's fight for Faunus rights, not help it. SDC-controlled media demonized the White Fang no matter what they did, yet the White Fang was known to minimize collateral damage even on their controversial assassination missions. Anyone who drifted away from the SDC infosphere and their affiliates could easily realize how exaggerated the SDC's claims were; most of the White Fang's more recent recruits had been acquired that way.
"What about them?"
Changing that equation would dramatically reduce their potential recruiting pool and would slowly turn public opinion against Faunus rights. Quite frankly, the freight train's crew members literally weren't important enough to kill. It would let the SDC reframe the war as one of innocent everyman humans against fanatical Faunus rather than a workers' war against corporate exploitation.
"What about them?"
She couldn't let Adam undo what progress they'd made. The White Fang was growing, and at an increasing rate. Every new recruit was one who could potentially recruit one or two of their friends. She couldn't let Adam turn that positive trend into a negative one; the remains of their romantic relationship had more than demonstrated his ability to—don't think about it.
"What about them?"
Blake barely noticed when Adam's Semblance-enhanced strike disintegrated the SDC Spider Droid; she'd already hopped across cars and was steeling herself to do what she knew had to be done. It was difficult to force out so much as a single word from her throat.
"What about them?"
"Bye."
"What about them?"
She'd hoped to simply cut herself out of Adam's life and assumed that he would respect that choice. Cutting the train link with an Aura-infused blow could have been the work of an instant if she hadn't turned the strike into a slow, ponderous thing. She'd meant to communicate her regret through eye contact, wished for Adam to realize that she didn't want to have to leave him.
"What about them?"
She'd never know if Adam would have respected her choice, because that was when an explosive round caught her in the upper back and launched her beneath the train.
Blake awoke screaming. Finding out that she still had a throat to scream with was surprising enough to make her choke it off and fearfully scan her surroundings. Her multicolored, shifting, alien surroundings taken directly from the mind of a madman. Unless the gods truly were insane, she had the distinct impression that this couldn't be any sort of afterlife. The budding burning in her chest was concerning, but it didn't really hurt; instead, she had the feeling that it was the only thing keeping her alive in the space between worlds and what.
She glanced to her right and blinked at the alien world before her. The world she was now outside of. She chanced a look around herself and found yet another plane with wildly different geography and distributions of colored mana. Mana that she could use for magic, because that was also something she apparently knew about now and could use.
...Well, at least I know why I'm not dead.
She felt a hysterical laugh escape her throat. She'd known for a long time that her Semblance was that of a coward, of someone who would run away and let an expendable clone take a hit for her. She hadn't realized that it could stretch so far as letting her run to entirely different worlds.
No, no, she couldn't afford to dwell on such thoughts; she could already feel this place eating away at what little remained of her Aura like a Beowolf gnawing on a limb. She should focus on picking a world before this place went from chewing Aura to chewing her.
OOC Vote: What is the primary color of mana produced by your soul? Your soul will still produce other colors, but in lesser quantities; it won't be your primary focus. (Use standard X voting)
[] RedOnce upon a time, this might have been the easiest color for you. Now, though, the flames and destruction of Red remind you of the ugly direction that the White Fang appears to have pivoted toward. You'd prefer to specialize in something that you can lead rather than be led by.
...Also, we already have a quest for that.
[] Black
The SDC and other exploitative companies are only interested in their bottom lines, and they're used to having militaries to back them up. However, there's always a bigger monster—and that monster could be you. Metaphorically. You're trying to not become the sort of person who could be the villain in a fairy tale.
Black mana would let you inflict curses to hamper your enemies and all that they work for. Short-term curses could weaken your enemies for long enough for you to win the battle; long-term ones could harm the health and luck of increasingly large groups, including potentially the entire SDC when you're powerful enough. It also seems to have a heavy association with raw magical might: you could have a much easier time in full-fledged fights and in fighting off assassination attempts. That could be accomplished via blasts that force weakness or withering upon your enemies, draining the life from foes and taking it for yourself, harming yourself to do far worse to the enemy, or even reanimating the fallen. Really, you're starting to suspect that some fairy tale witches might have been based off wielders of Black mana…
[] Blue
Relatively low-casualty methods clearly aren't producing fast enough results for the poor and disenfranchised to stick with them, and a frontal assault would do even worse without significantly more power than the Faunus populace is willing to muster at this time. Blue mana would let you slip behind the metaphorical walls and begin introducing cracks in enemy defenses.
Forceful mind control would be beyond you for quite a while, but you might never need it. Illusions, shapeshifting, artificially induced twinges of emotion, forced Semblance usage or temporary Semblance copying, magical item creation, concealment, memory deletion or editing, computer control… if you want to topple a criminal empire without anyone ever learning your name, then Blue seems like the color to do it with. When facing off against mana-based mages, Blue mana should also let you learn how to negate or redirect enemy spells—at least, provided that you understand those spells almost well enough to use them yourself or you otherwise know an exploitable weakness.
Both colors could potentially let you control and hamper the Grimm, although you rather think that might be an absolutely terrible idea on your homeworld. Sufficiently large swarms or especially old Grimm are known to display dangerous levels of intelligence. Controlling them seems like an easy way to get that malevolent intelligence to focus solely on slaughtering you, to say nothing of what it would do to public opinion.
IC Vote: Once again, use standard X voting. All settings are AU to help ensure that prior setting knowledge will not be required.
[] RWBY Your homeworld, Remnant.
You don't think it wise to return just yet—which is good, because you don't think you can right now. Remnant doesn't seem to be one of the two worlds within easy view; you'll need to search for it again. You won't push the point right now. As long as he thinks you're dead, Adam is ludicrously unlikely to tell others of the "betrayal" you'd almost committed on the SDC freight train. Return before he has the chance to martyr you, and you'll be viewed as a traitor instead. Return later and your bridges in the White Fang may yet remain unburned.
You are a bit worried about the possibility of the 'Fang spreading something like, "Blake wanted to spare the crew that ultimately killed her!" Still, you're pretty sure they'll do that regardless of whether or not they think you're alive. Just replace a perceived success with "tried to kill her" and the message remains largely the same. It's not like you can do anything about it; you get the feeling that you'll need to spend a significant amount of time searching for Remnant before you can return.
[] Fairy Tail In the absence of an outside threat, it seems that people are even more willing to fight among themselves.
A world less advanced than your own, and with wielders of colored mana and magic rather than Aura and Dust. Oh, many of them use some Aura unconsciously to soften and strengthen physical blows, but they don't have full access like you do. The Wizards of this world also don't seem to have heard of "crippling overspecialization" and often only specialize in one or two types of magic. You can't really blame them, though; it seems as though they're manipulating mana through rote and practice, not by seeing and sensing it. You'll probably be able to learn how to wield magic in single-digit percentages of the time it takes them.
Their world also doesn't have Grimm, either, so you'll reluctantly admit that they might've come out on top. Half their villages don't even have walls! Oh, there are some magically infused monsters around, but none a tenth as bad as the Grimm. Any monsters dumb enough to attack a human settlement would soon find a large bounty posted on their head and dozens of Wizards from various guilds willing to take it down. Really, most of the military strength of the world seems to literally be mercenary. Mercenaries that are unusually attached to other members of their guild, mind, but it's still weird to see pseudo-Huntsmen and Huntresses motivated primarily by money instead of protecting people. Many job postings for Wizards aren't even related to combat at all.
Syndicates of criminal Wizards are common enough for them to have their own names—Dark Guilds—and you'll definitely want to avoid them. Slavery is thoroughly outlawed everywhere you look, but that doesn't stop illegal human(oid) trafficking and you're a prime target. At least you're pretty sure that traffickers are no longer a threat that can do more than temporarily inconvenience you. After all, you're now the greatest expert alive when it comes to running from your problems.
Theoretically, you could find and obtain some rather valuable items and magics lost to the world, but... well, that would involve delving into fortified ruins of varying stability and safety. Obscurity would be the best-case scenario for finding treasures. The worst would be automated defenses. You think the ruins would have both less risk and reward when compared to the other new plane you've discovered.
[] Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A plane of ruins—and ruin.
Well, now you know what the Grimm winning would look like. This plane has a staggering number of occupied worlds, the astonishing ability to travel between them in mere days or weeks, and an absolutely horrifying number of dead planets. Self-replicating autonomous war machines, explosives that render atmospheres outright unbreathable, devices that accidentally alter the orbit of the planet they're activated on, energy generators so powerful that they turned their world into a molten husk… it seems like the inhabitants of this plane have found a thousand and one ways to kill themselves and others. Modern governments try to avoid activating Lost Logia, the ancient machinery responsible for such destruction, and have laws in place to prevent the creation of similarly destructive objects. There's no denying that they are quite powerful, though; ruin-delving could be an exceptionally lucrative, if proportionally dangerous, career.
At any rate, it looks like this plane could teach you how to do more with your Aura than merely enhance yourself and your weaponry. They've found ways to turn Aura into far more efficient passive or active shielding, as well as what seems like a million and one ways to attack, restrain, and disable your foes with it. They can even fly—which seems like a great way to get shot down by opposing forces, honestly, but it might be a useful option. Their advanced technologies might also show you new methods of upgrading Gambol Shroud, your weapon—or, better yet, of remaking Gambol Shroud as an Intelligent Device.
Intelligent Devices are exactly what they sound like, and seem to be a major hallmark of this plane. They can assist their user with Aura-based magic, personal scheduling, minor self-care, and basically anything that a hypothetical sapient Scroll might be capable of. Most of them seem to be a bit dumb, though; they're sentient, but only just. At least they're relatively easy to acquire if you have the money.
Unison Devices are an even greater prize with their own Aura, the ability to independently cast spells, full intelligence, and a sort of devastatingly effective collaborative bodily control mode known as Unison. Unfortunately, UDs are rare, expensive on the black market, and with a demand far exceeding what little supply is generated by archeologists and ruin-raiders. There doesn't even seem to be any guarantee that you'd be able to perform Unison with one, which is an effective requirement for them being willing to be your partner; individuals capable of doing so are rare enough to be called Lords. Admittedly, that's an issue you can likely get around via mana-based magic, but doing so would require first finding a Unison Device in the first place. Both IDs and UDs should be able to link to your Aura in order to survive the space between worlds.
Also, child protective services might end up as your mortal enemies. This plane takes unaccompanied unknowns very seriously.
Author's Note: I would like to remind the audience that Blake is, like everyone else alive, an unreliable narrator.
Current age: 16
The White Fang was once a peaceful activist organization working for equal Faunus Rights, and was considered by many to be the chosen representative for Faunus Rights Revolutionaries after the war. Blake's parents, the former leaders of Menagerie before Blake's birth and the White Fang's founders, threw their still-significant political power behind the group. The distinction between former and current ruler took Blake years to understand; as former rulers and current advisors, it seemed like their wishes continued to become Menagerie law despite their relative lack of official power. How was that different from personally ruling?
(Shouting from the throne room was answer enough. They only held power so long as the chieftain still listened to them.)
Regardless, Blake was demanding to lift a sign and participate in White Fang protests by the time she was five years of age. Briefly. SDC-allied media played up the "child exploitation" angle and indirectly convinced her parents to bar her from attending further protests. She still helped by hand-delivering messages, distributing flyers, gleefully exploiting her best pitiful expressions, and whatever else she could convince others to let her help with. It wasn't until she was ten that her parents finally caved and let her start attending full-fledged protests again.
(She suspects it might never have happened if she'd told them about all the times humans tried to hurt her during her other activities. Their asinine resistance just encouraged her, though.)
She was twelve when the old leader of the White Fang stepped down and was replaced by someone who was reportedly far more aggressive. Confirming their stance took time; the White Fang reorganized into a cell structure soon after the new leader rose to power, and the White Fang's leadership stopped being a tenth as transparent as it once was. Her parents didn't even wait to see what the 'Fang would do in the future and publicly withdrew their support for the White Fang during its reorganization.
This… did not go over well. As far as Blake was concerned, it seemed like Blake's parents were retreating based on what people could do rather than what they'd done, and wasn't that the same argument used by horrible humans to insist that Faunus should be treated as thieves? Of course the White Fang's leaders should be kept secret; SDC-bribed cops kept arresting them! Were her parents really going to lounge around on Menagerie while other Faunus fought exploitation, biased laws, unfair and unbalanced courts, and worse? Because Blake had absolutely no intention of following them into complacency!
It took years of increasingly violent acts for Blake to even consider the idea that her parents might've been right to harbor misgivings. Members of the White Fang had made it quite clear that Blake chose their organization over her own parents, and that wasn't a choice Blake felt her parents would forgive. Not after all the horrible things she'd said to them during her departure, or her choice to run away rather than leave the White Fang. She'd be lucky if they'd be willing to even look at her.
Aura:
The staple of all Huntsmen and Huntresses, Aura is known as "The light of the soul." Aura can be compared to a video game HP or shield bar: as long as it persists, all incoming damage to the user will be dramatically reduced. Once an individual runs out of Aura, however, their fragile body will begin to take damage normally. Aura levels can be monitored by medical equipment or personal smart devices such as Scrolls, although trained users will generally know their approximate level even without that aid.
Aura can also be used to enhance personal physical capabilities or attacks from held equipment, protect items in contact with the user, and interact with Dust or Semblances in a large variety of ways. Despite her hatred of the SDC's masters, Blake does have to admit the Schnee Semblance is a good example of the possible variety: Dust and Aura can allow an experienced Schnee to do everything from launch fireballs, to summon obedient copies of fallen foes, to manipulate time.
Blake is not at that level. The White Fang's access to Dust has been in too sporadic for her to do any significant training with Dust/Aura/Semblance mixtures.
Semblance:
Remnant's Aura-users are capable of unlocking a single Semblance, or a unique ability that supposedly reflects who they are. Blake's Semblance is Shadow. Shadow allows her to create a short-lived clone of herself that overlays her current position at the time of activation. Blake is then propelled in a direction of her choice while the clone retains the position Blake was in at the time of activation. Clones seldom last for even half a second — approximately a fifth of a second is more common — before they blur into nothingness. Clones have no autonomy of their own; they may be moved by gravity, attacks, or other physical phenomenon, but they will not move of their own accord. Some White Fang members nicknamed her Semblance "Afterimage" due to this lack of autonomy and the short lifespan of clones.
Blake generally uses Shadow to avoid attacks, rapidly reposition, change direction even mid-air, "multi-jump," and disorient foes. Despite their unlock requirements, Semblance usage generally pulls from physical and mental stamina instead of Aura. An individual's usage of their Semblance may change or even grant additional abilities with practice, frequent usage, and/or increases in proficiency. Blake fully expects that the lifespan of her clones will increase over time; she's hoping that she might also be able to make them move small amounts in order to effectively echo her attacks and further disorient foes.
White Fang Combat Training:
Blake is comparable to an entry-level student at an upper-level academy for future Huntsmen and Huntresses. As such, she is capable of maneuvering and attacking in three dimensions and at velocities better comparable to highway vehicles than to anyone without unlocked Aura. She is adept at maintaining a continuous stream of high-speed attacks from various angles, but consistently has trouble doing any appreciable damage against highly armored opponents. That was Adam's job.
Unlike most students entering upper-level academies, Blake has significant experience in life-or-death battles without an instructor present to help ensure her safety after an Aura break. She is also very, very good at disengaging in Remnant's urban environments.
High-grade, highly-armored autonomous units have proven to be one of Blake's major weaknesses. Lesser units often treat her clones as yet more combatants in the moment before those clones vanish, and people are often disoriented by her Semblance without experience fighting her. High-grade units can instead correctly flag her clones as decoys and seamlessly continue their attacks.
Blake is experienced with firearm and explosive safety, knows how to utilize both, and feels she's gotten fairly good at gauging minimum safe distance from an explosive act of sabotage—or from SDC Dust containers used as improvised explosives.
Mechashift Weapon Proficiency:
Blake's weapon of choice is Gambol Shroud, a Variant Ballistic Chain Scythe. As with many attempts to quantify and categorize the weapons of Huntsmen and Huntresses, this name is not particularly helpful for describing its capabilities.
Gambol Shroud's sheath can act as a large, square blade not dissimilar to a cleaver. Gambol Shroud's pistol-katana component can be separated from this sheath to allow for assymetrical dual wielding, and the katana's orientation can be changed on-the-fly so that the katana's blade is either:
Parallel to the hilt and perpendicular to the pistol barrel (katana form),
Or perpendicular to the hilt and parallel to the pistol barrel (sickle form).
A long (reinforced) ribbon attached to the katana's hilt lets her utilize Gambol Shroud as a kusarigama — or phrased more simply, as a sickle attached to a ribbon of varying length. This is the source of the "Ballistic Chain Scythe" portion of Gambol Shroud's name despite the inaccuracy therein.
Like many Huntsmen and Huntresses, Blake frequently takes advantage of recoil from the gun portion of her weapon. Hitting an enemy with pistol rounds is generally a consolation prize; a more frequent goal is simply to add more force to her attacks or to extract her katana's blade from an enemy.
Non-traditional education:
Despite not attending a formal school within the last several years, Blake has kept up with her peers academically (mostly via book-studying and sporadic tutoring), personally designed and assembled Gambol Shroud, and knows how to maintain her equipment and clothing using pre-fabricated components with consistent construction. Blake has experience hunting her own food, purifying water, and generally surviving in Remnant's wilderness — temporarily. She does not know what to do with any of the non-edible parts of an animal, such as their fur, and she's pretty sure that knowledge of furs would be essential for long-term wilderness survival.
Blake knows what infrastructure is essential in a modern urban environment and what recurring trends can be exploited to evade pursuit. She can generally navigate the social aspects of criminal enterprises without issue, and knows how to disguise herself in Atlas as a lower-class Faunus or middle-class human. These disguises may not hold up to experienced scrutiny; Blake is honestly amazed that hiding her ears beneath a head-bow has proved so effective thus far.
Thriller, drama, and mystery novels aren't exactly the traditional mechanisms for learning about trends in public opinion, but they seem to be working out pretty well for her thus far. Unfortunately, these aren't exactly viewed as respectable qualifications no matter how many times she accurately predicts the civilian response to a White Fang mission.
Dust Novice:
Dust is the primary (and almost exclusive) fuel source for the entirety of Remnant. It is used for effectively everything requiring energy input to function—vehicles, firearms, explosives, household heating, power plants, Grimm hunting, everything. Due to its volatility, extracting Dust from naturally occurring deposits is dangerous and has a high rate of injury. One poorly-placed spark can set off a chain reaction that destroys an entire mine.
Dust naturally manifests in a variety of elemental categories, including (but not limited to) Combustion, Lightning, Ice, Fire, Water, Plant, Rock, and Gravity Dust. Synthetic Dust subtypes can also be made by combining other types of Dust in various proportions, but the volatile nature of Dust makes this an expensive and destructive practice.
The White Fang did not have large enough stores of Dust for you to regularly practice with it; you have enough Dust to operate Gambol Shroud as a firearm, but not enough to utilize any sort of elemental attack. It's probably just as well. Elemental Dust tends to be significantly rougher on weaponry, and high-grade weapon components aren't cheap.
Dust comes in crystal and powder form.
Planeswalk [Rank 1]: You aren't sure if it's a supercharged use of your Semblance or something completely different, but you can step outside the world and travel to a new one. You're leaning heavily toward it being another application of your Semblance; what else could it be? Still, doing so is exhausting, attempting multiple planeswalks in close succession could be lethal, and there's apparently nothing stopping you from entering a plane in mid-air. You hope it won't be as problematic with practice.
Unfortunately, you're no longer certain that you'll be able to Planeswalk at will. You don't have any evidence saying that you can't, but your sample size is comprised solely of your original planeswalk. There might be extra circumstances needed to activate it, you might need to marshal your will toward punching a hole between worlds, or something else entirely. You simply don't know yet and aren't willing to test until you're either forced to or you have a way to return to your current area.
Mana Sense [Rank 5]: You can see mana in moderate to high concentrations and sense it otherwise. You're still learning how to distinguish between the colors when it's particularly diffuse, but you've gotten much better at identifying the distance and direction of a specific mana signature with respect to yourself; this lets you potentially track those who are approaching from nearby, albeit with some dedicated focus to make it anything approaching reliable. Apparently, this ability also seems to grant you weird impressions of what a given magical effect actually does, with the impression strengthening the more you know about it.
Personal Mana Generation [???]: You don't have enough experience sensing or using mana to guess how much your soul produces. Your soul's mana feels mostly Black, though.
Black Resistance [Moderate?]: Contact with Black mana doesn't seem to be nearly as harmful for you as it is for everything else, although you do still take some damage. Wither, for example, leaves you feeling cold and weak in the affected areas.
Artifice [Rank 0]: You have a very vague idea of the very basics of constructing magical items, and a few examples to work from if you dedicate enough time toward thinking about recurring trends. You'll need far more practice and knowledge before you can actually build anything.
Black Mana Control [Rank 6]: "Control" is a bit of an overstatement at this level, but you can coax Black from your own soul to generally meander in desired directions. You can also tether increasingly large bundles of Black mana to yourself by continually releasing threads of Black, and have improved your ability to release increasingly small amounts of Black mana from your soul. Perhaps most importantly, you can infuse Black mana with your intentions and wishes to make it move itself slightly in accordance with your goals; this doesn't seem to work for anywhere near everything, but it's a technique that has made your life significantly easier.
Wither [Rank 3]: The rather harmful result of infusing a leaf with raw Black. Your experimental leaf rapidly dried up and crumbled. You also know that you can hit more than one target at a time—provided that they're close enough to each other—and could potentially hit someone in passing via a tethered bundle of Black. Withering a target animal seems to afflict them with both temporary phantom(?) chills and temporary weakness—or at least, that's what it does to you. You're now capable of Wither'ing at a touch and at no risk to yourself (at least, no risk from the spell).
Drain Life [Rank 4]: You can pull life from living beings in order to enhance yourself or your spells. Life from plants seems to only be good for enhancing your own health and defense, whereas life from animals is almost as versatile as raw Black mana. What actually constitutes "life" is still beyond your knowledge. Plants wilt and dry up, while the one animal you tested it on wound up looking like it had been starving prior to its death. Currently, this ability requires touch contact.
Dark Vigor [Rank 4]: You can repurpose Black mana to grant temporary strength instead of weakness. That strength comes at a price, however: if you don't force Black to only consume itself or drained life in the course of strengthening you, then it will use your own Aura as supplementary fuel. You're guessing that it will eat your body's energy if Aura has already been completely exhausted. Perhaps more importantly, you can redirect power away from granting actual strength in order to instead infuse your blows with Wither or Drain Life. This ability occupies a strange space between Constructs and Black mana control, and you suspect that both skills will be helpful in improving it. You aren't yet sure which would be more useful.
Dark Pulse [Rank 3]: You can release a pulse of Withering Black mana to affect everything in a small bubble around yourself. Prematurely halting, linking, and repurposing mana so released is currently the only way you can currently make a Black Cloak.
Menace [Rank 5]: The practice of using intent-infused Black to frighten a specific target with minimal splash or cost. Magical ability and/or Aura might convey additional resistance to this, but you've still been able to use it to terrify multiple incredibly unpleasant customers. (...It's totally killing intent.)
Black Mana Constructs [Rank 2]: The practice of building enclosed systems of Black mana specifically designed to last longer than standard spells. You're still garbage at it—all you can do right now is create a Black blob that happens to last a bit longer in the atmosphere than raw Black mana would, or a you-shaped cloak with the help of Dark Pulse. You're hoping to make spell-carrying cats with some practice, however.
Black Cloak [Rank 1]: With the aid of Dark Pulse, you can make a you-shaped (and incredibly expensive) cloak of Black mana around yourself that would wither anything that touches it. Since it moves as you do, it never actually comes into contact with you.
Curse [Rank 0]: You can't do it yet, but you're hoping to transfer your bad luck to people who deserve it. It would be easier if you had an example to work from; as it currently stands, it might take a couple days of trial and error before you manage to make any sort of curse at all, let alone one affecting something as nebulous as luck.
Blue Mana Control [Rank 1]: You can wrestle Blue mana into a general location and shape it with some significant trouble. It doesn't move on its own, but that doesn't mean it automatically goes where you want it to; it takes time, effort, and a relatively concrete mental image to direct it into something usable.
Cryokinesis [Rank 2]: You can pull water from the air and freeze it into fist-sized chunks, or simply freeze a preexisting body of water. You can't direct the freezing process just yet—it will continue to freeze water until the provided Blue is exhausted.
Hydrokinesis [Rank 1]: You can set up uncertain, wobbly paths of Blue to determine the rough direction that water will follow. This seems to be significantly harder without ready access to water.
Screech [Rank 0]: You now know that it's possible to produce sound via Blue mana, and have an example available for examination. Imitation would require additional examination of your Resonance Lacrima.
Charm [Rank 0]: An effect that seems to cling to the target and temporarily prompt uncharacteristic trust with the caster. You could probably imitate it with a few days of effort and a willing test subject, or significantly less time if you manage to get more examples to work from.
Worn:
White and black clothing: Your Aura has been protecting your outfit from tearing so far, but it can't entirely stop dirt and sweat from sticking. You're fortunate that it was designed not to stink without much more time spent in the field. Fairly unusual by local standards, but likely well within the range of what Wizards or upper-class individuals might wear.
The black bow that usually hides your ears is in your pocket at present.
Gambol Shroud, Lower Back: Your weapon of choice, a Variant Ballistic Chain Scythe. Currently armed with a clip that's likely nearly empty.
3 extra ammunition/Dust clips. With your usual fighting style, that number would likely last you an equal number of major fights. You could try to be more conservative with your ammunition usage, but your fighting ability may be severely hampered until you adapt to the change and moderately impaired afterward.
Messenger's satchel: Earned from your very first job on a new plane. May have been made from mildly magical materials.
Miscellaneous:
Lyrian Currency: 9 silver spits, 6 silver pieces [78 silver piece equivalent]: Mostly tied in a small rag to help prevent audible jostling.
Weapon Maintenance Kit: The oils, cloths, blade sharpener, and minimal replacement parts required to keep Gambol Shroud in working condition. You'll almost certainly run out of ammunition long before this runs dry.
Dry Rations [6 days]
Two perishable meals: Provided as a bonus parting gift from Elda.
2 Waterskins [2 days of water]
Wooden Dishware [Spoon, knife, fork, bowl]
Brown cloth travel bag: Equipped with strings that both hold it shut and let you wear it as a mildly uncomfortable backpack.
Wallet and pre-paid Lien cards: Enough money to provide two or three months worth of middle-class food, rent, and basic (civilian) necessities on Remnant. Completely and utterly useless on other worlds.
Bedroll: Earned from your very first job on a new plane. May have been made from mildly magical materials.
To be clear, Blake is never going to go full edgelord or eviiiilllll - that's no fun for me, either. I don't want this to be a quest where people feel like their non-preferred chargen option winning would be the end of the world. She'll likely still dabble in Black or Blue even if the other option wins, too.
EDIT: To be clearer, this is not a quest where Black is interpreted as an inherently evil color. Ambition and self-improvement are both interpreted as Black.
I'm kind of surprised we don't have White as an option here, though I will admit that a significant amount of my knowledge of MTG color theory is worse than thirdhand. Let alone what little knowledge of Blake's personality traits I possess.
I know....next to nothing about either new setting. Good times!
Regardless, Blue's "evasion/information/misdirection/don't-like-it-change-it" focus feels more "Blake" to me than Black's "Power-at-any-cost-preferably-a-cost-paid-through-somebody-else's-sacrifice" focus.
I'm kind of surprised we don't have White as an option here, though I will admit that a significant amount of my knowledge of MTG color theory is worse than thirdhand. Let alone what little knowledge of Blake's personality traits I possess.
Because while I'd prefer Blue myself, I am reminded of a fic where Sorin Markov pointed out to the narrator that while Black users may be feared, Blue magic users are distrusted given their ability to warp minds, memories and senses. Frankly, given her own issues with trust, I'd see Blake as more Black, mostly by way of self-sacrifice.
[X] Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha
You can make friends in either setting, but this gives her a shot at upgrading Gambol Shroud to a friend that stays with her, and won't judge her regardless of her appearance, attitude or colour affinity...much.
My immediate choice was to choose Blue Mana, but Blue and Red seem to be a lot more common in these kind of Planeswalker quests, and I would like to see what a Black-focused character would be like. Also, hopefully the reduced number of planes and starting power level will help avoid the problem with scaling conflict and pacing that Ignition had started to suffer from.
I feel like Blake would lean hard on the 'self-sacrifice' side of Black- it isn't particularly well-represented in MTG (they're still stuck on Black = evil), but it's an absolutely valid color interpretation that I wish would see more use. Also, since we aren't going to classical MTG worlds, there's no need to use actual cards (which as noted lean towards Black = Evil) and can avoid the whole defiling of the dead thing.
