HereComesTheSnow

Heroes of Beacon - the Next Chapter

it's a game doofus

Heroes of Beacon - the Next Chapter

what the fuck

Heroes of Beacon - the Next Chapter

luke can take care of himself

Heroes of Beacon - the Next Chapter

@Silvan Haven@Crimmy@Write

Girls are the strangest creatures. Nowhere else would you feel so content with getting mobbed, piled upon, and squeezed to half death than their embraces.

Fortunately, I'm a man of uncanny experience in these situations, so I knew how to survive a two-pronged deathclutch surprise attack. I have two younger sisters. I would be dust in the wind if I couldn't.

Granted, sisters could only do so much for preparing you for getting hugged by cute girls your own age. They were an entirely different swamping of the senses. Noticing softness, nice smells, warmth, that weird thing they did where your stomach felt colonized by butterflies...

No, Dawn using me as a piggyback ride and April hitting a suplex on me did not compare. Only in terms of surprise and disruption of balance was there a comparison, so I only knew how to survive, you know?

I didn't mind surviving hugs like these.

No, if I'll be honest, it was actually really nice. A good reward for a job well done...

And a staunch reminder of the exhaustion I'd been fighting off. Even as Bianca had clung to me, I felt the tension that had been keeping me focused in during the process of helping her wings recover fade, fade away, everything going slack once the job was finally done and I had managed a small return by patting her on the back. Once Beryl entered the picture, I was little more than a ragdoll in her arms.

That's a strong woman, you know. Her hugs are not things you could fight against if you were ever stupid enough to want to.

"You. Schwarz."

Our festivities, which at this point consisted of me shaking myself loose and Beryl poised to pounce upon Bianca with Gratia quietly watching, were brought to a halt as an unfamiliar person approached.

Well, unfamiliar to me, anyway. She regarded everyone else with some degree of recognition, and that accent sounded like Bianca's...

She was definitely a Huntress of sorts, if those massive guns on her hips were anything to go by.

"This is for you. Courtesy of Team Vivacious."

"Vivacious..." I repeated under my breath as I accepted the envelope, running through a list of team names under my head and finding no match. Maybe she was from Haven, as everyone else here aside from myself was?

"Uh, thank you." I said after a moment's scrutiny, inclining my head with as much politeness as my tired body could muster. For her part, her cool hazel gaze hadn't seemed to care one way or another that I was getting ragdolled around before this point, and she regarded me with a similar impassivity that I was privileged enough to receive from Gratia.

"What is this?" I asked, flipping the envelope over to discover that, yes, it was perfectly normal.

After the kind of ride the rest of today had been, surprise delivery included, I wouldn't rule out anything.

I could tell I was gonna pass out tonight.

Heroes of Beacon - the Next Chapter

What angst?

Heroes of Beacon - the Next Chapter

@Silvan Haven@Crimmy@Write

"With pleasure."

I stabbed down with the tack again, really digging it in the to get at that blood vessel for all I was worth. Presented with Gratia's impassive eyes and outstretched, bloodied palm, I pulled the tack free—

And before the wound closed, swiped my finger across the cut, feeling my own blood track against hers.

And the effects were nothing short of immediate. As if I had pulled a zipper shut, as if I had rewound time, the Gratia's hand knit itself closed in a manner I had seen so often on my own.

Gratia's hand healed.

I was right!

"Get it done." Bianca said, her voice brooking no dissent.

Well, far be it from me to not want to show off.

Uh, show off how good my bleeding is?

Just get on with it, me.

"You've got it."

I reached for a wing—

And realized my wound had closed.

These little pinpricks faded way too fast! It would take ages if I had to keep nicking myself!

As if sensing my distress, Gratia presented me with her cutlass, blade turned invitingly upwards.

"Ah, thanksssss!" I said, hissing in pain as I drew my palm along the edge. "That'll speed this up!"

I turned back to Bianca. "Ready?"

A solemn nod was my only response. It was now or never. I hadn't even stopped to consider if the injury being more established would change things, and by now, it was too late to.

I wiped my palm across a bare patch of her left wing, and waited.

At first, it looked like nothing was happening.

I scrutinized it harder, peering intently.

Come on...

Then there was a pin.

Transclucent, hard to see in the light I had against the mass of her wing—

Followed by another, then another, and then dozens of them.

My eyes widened.

The pins grew white, now fully distinct.

Then they became tufts.

Then they became down.

And then, some of them, amongst the others that had grown out less— were small feathers.

I didn't dare breathe.

Reaching my hand forward as if I were threading a needle, I took one of the largest that had grown, what would probably be a flight feather once it had fully recovered, and gave a soft tug.

"Hey... you feel that?"

It worked.

It worked!

Heroes of Beacon - the Next Chapter

@Silvan Haven@Crimmy@Write

Wow, if that wasn't forward I di—

Silently, hiddenly, I told the twelve-year-old idiot part of my psyche to shut it.

This was serious.

My other hand, formerly buried deep within the confines of my pocket, rose into the forefront of everyone's focus, a closed fist containing the answer.

"I should warn you right now: I'm only 95% sure that this will work. It's actually why I was here to see Priscilla in the first place."

Not that 95% sure wasn't on the higher end of the spectrum for me, but whatever. I had continue with explanations. I may not be the most prim and proper guy, but keeping three ladies waiting was poor form for anyone, especially with one in Bianca's state. Even me.

I opened my hand, revealing a simple thumbtack. In my hands, if I was right, it would be more like a year's worth of surgical tools.

"Long story short, she was..." I grimaced, remembering seeing all that red. "Heavily wounded by some Grimm trying to meet up with our team, enough to take her out of the fight."

I took the tack in one hand, turning the metal point about-face towards the skin of my own finger.

"When I was patching her up so we could get her out of there, though, something weird happened." I continued. "One of her wounds, and it wasn't an easy one to miss when you were there wrapping them all, it..."

I jabbed down, wincing as the spike of pain ran through my nerves, and pulled free a second after.

The wound, presented to everyone and on center stage, released but a drop of blood—

And then vanished right before their eyes, the skin patching itself back together without a trace in the span of perhaps a second.

"It did that." I finished, before launching straight into the next thought. "It healed exactly as my semblance allows me to. It disappeared right out from under me. So I got to thinking about why my regenerative ability got passed over, and that--"

I pointed to the blood on the floor, already beginning to dutifully evaporate itself away.

"--was what I came up with."

If any of them was looking at me like I had grown a few extra heads, I didn't notice, so I defended my argument in case they remembered that they rightfully should have been.

"The moment before I had gone after the scratch, I had accidentally cut myself on the blade I was using to slice up my hoodie. I think that my blood coming in contact, even if barely, with the wound, was what undid it."

I smiled a tad shakily, knowing the sort of stretch it seemed like when you said it out loud. Believe me, my self-consciousness was hollering at me to stop before I tested it, but I continued on, heedless as ever.

"It's the only thing I could think of, anyway. The two were back to back— and neither happened at any other point. I don't think it was a coincidence."

I smirked at myself. I had a chance to look cool here, and I was blowing it.

Typical.

"If you'll let me see your wings for a moment, though, we can put it to bed and know for sure."

We can know if I can help.

Heroes of Beacon - the Next Chapter

@Silvan Haven@Crimmy@Write

"Have a good day, Luke."

Dejected.

Defeated.

Broken.

Hopeless.

I felt my brow knit together, not out of anger, not out of disgust, but of pain. The pain of sympathy. The pain of empathy. The pain she was feeling was one I was viscerally familiar with. Was one I had struggled with before. Was one I had almost resigned myself to.

But I didn't resign. Somehow, some way, I found my way to keep fighting every day. I regained the fire in my belly, and forced myself all the way into Beacon and through an S-Rank mission.

And I wanted, selfishly in that moment, for her not to resign either.

It should be clear that I'm not talking about her wings. Those I had no experience with, those I never had, those I could never lose like she had. I hadn't even broken an arm before my semblance trivialized that sort of thing.

But that fire...

Try though she might, Bianca's words rang hollow in the ears of us all. Even to a bonafide idiot such as myself, it was obvious that her heart wasn't in them. She had lost that fire.

Her spirit was in tatters, just as much as, if not moreso than her wings. I'm no motivational speaker, nor an expert surgeon, so what I could do was limited. No matter how much I wanted to move heaven and earth for the sad, broken girl in front of me, there wasn't much I could do to help.

I clenched my fist and grit my teeth— and stopped.

My fist.

My hand.

I stared down at my hand again. Gazed intently at my thumb, eyes tracing the outline of a long-disappeared laceration.

"Not at all, Bianca."

Maybe there was something.

I looked back up to her, searching her eyes for a flicker of hope. My eyes then flicked to her wings, observing the damages once more, under a different light.

Extensive damage throughout, barely able to move. Torn musculature, torn feathers, torn skin. Yeah, a seven to nine year recovery and rehabilitation process looked about right to me. I tried to imagine my leg being similarly mangled, without the added delicacies that were part of a wing's existence, and could easily see a brutally long process.

She couldn't become a Hunter at that rate. She would be well into her late twenties by the time she could continue her freshman year.

That would make anyone not insanely dogged want to give up.

...But what if you could expedite that process?

What if those wings were back in proper shape?

What if they were ready to be used again?

What if they simply healed quicker than a timeframe of years?

I smiled.

"In fact, I think I might be exactly where I need to."

Heroes of Beacon - the Next Chapter

@HereComesTheSnow none of my classmates are pretty boys. Classmate now fucking around with instruments. Teacher arrived. Mock exam situation derped so printing new ones.

@Crimmy

You're pretty, boy

Heroes of Beacon - the Next Chapter

Sitting in the middle of a classroom during a holiday to do a mock exam and teacher is late. Got hit in face by classmate playing with wacky Chinese memorabilia.

@Crimmy

fucking taidan dude