HereComesTheSnow

Secundi Lux

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"Knock 'em dead, Fraulein!" Selma's unrepentant, cheerful voice called after the cloud of purple and white drifting away from their table, after she'd made a spirited showing of the flash of lighting that was her winningest smile to her teammates. The giant of a girl had answered it with a toothy grin of her own and a brazen thumbs-up, revealing diligently manicured nails in the process— normally, she was content to let her work wear them down, but a ball meant looking one's best. As Rivka caught the eye contact, and was turning to leave, the larger girl cupped a hand to her mouth and sent her off with a wink and one final stage whisper. "Remember, Hastan girls love a little spice!"

Spice, of course, that Rivka had in spades. Selma had been privy to the redhead she'd been smitten with over their first weeks at the academy; more than once the subject of the songs belted out in mezzo-soprano in the shower the next room over. With her old phone toasted by their trials in the subway, Selma had to admit— as much as it was confusing the first few times, it made for a very good substitute alarm clock.

Can't deny that kinda passion. She's gonna hit this place like a hurricane—

“Ladies, if I, or one of you don’t make it back from this, it has been an absolute honour.”

"Don't sweat it, babe!" She snapped off a sharp salute, mimicked to a tee from old military documentaries her brothers had often passed the time with back home. "You can count on me; we're all gonna make it!"

And as Aoife marched off into the void, into Rivka's wake, there were only three left. She took a moment to consider the two other girls, her final pair of irreplaceable sisters, and how they seemed. In truth, she didn't wanna leave either of them to hang out to dry— much like her, they'd both been clearly bored almost to the point of tears by the grand speech about commemorating this years class of recruits or whatever, dry tones and drier, dustier words that five generations of Ars Magi had probably heard before. For that, she could hardly blame any of them, let alone herself.

Crystal, however seemed tense— more than tense, actually. She was good at masking it, and the may people here she'd likely only see once or twice and then never again would likely believe her misdirection, likely believe she was carefully neutral about everything. But Selma, big dumb tree that she was— Selma saw how carefully she was breathing, the way her eyes had darted between her teammates every so often while the droning adults dominated the microphone, how introverted she naturally was already. She had to be hating this "being put on display" thing like hell itself— and she couldn't even freeze it over in response to not chewing gum.

As for her roommate...

"Never done the waltz, huh?" she repeated back to her roommate, meeting the gaze she noticed herself being pinned with inquisitively. Chie had been slaughtering herself all through their training, through every last bit of their studies, still not over their early-on mishaps. Her words to the contrary, that she didn't need to push herself to the point of burnout, and that what had happened was no fault of her own, had fallen upon apparently deaf ears. A girl like her... probably didn't wanna deal with some unfamiliar guys schmoozing her, if she had to guess. "Hmmm."

They both needed to take a breather, really... Something to get them relaxed enough that they didn't implode, either at the party or later on, behind closed doors. Something fun, even in this stuffy affair...

She shot the two a sly grin. "Y'know, you came to the right girl with this— Rivka may have her musician's sense for rhythm, but only yours truly has as much experience on the gentleman's end of a dance." She nodded once, twice, plan forming inside her head. she'd played this role many a time before in her dance electives at school—

She stood, rising to her full height smoothly, double-breasted navy jacket pressed clean and crisp against her torso, long legs concealed in the academy's golden trousers. Her strong shoulders, bolstered with pads beneath epaulets of aurum, filled the officer's top admirably even as she folded her arms and cupped her chin, emerald eyes sliding over to Crystal momentarily.

—and knew how to play it exceedingly well.

"I gotta say it's been a bit, though, so if you don't mind lending an eye and making sure I don't step on her toes..?"

An open invitation to tag along. She hadn't pried much into the other girl's affairs, not feeling it right to dig anywhere a person didn't elect to share unless it was life-threatening, but she'd seen clarity in her footwork thrice over before they'd even been pronounced Ars Magi. If she had to place a bet on it, Crystal knew how to dance, and with that diligence of hers, she knew it well.

Up to her if she accepted. She didn't want to leave the poor girl to her lonesome if she could help it. But as for the matter of the moment...

The hand then shifted to a fist as she made a show of clearing her throat, closing her eyes momentarily. These officers seemed just as bored with the affair as they were, so somebody needed to let everyone know how things were done around here— that they had standards, right? Definitely. It wouldn't due to just coast through this bit. It wouldn't leave the right impression.

It wouldn't have the spice.

Selma, Selma, Go Give 'em Hellma!

And then, she stepped forward and pinned Chie with a confident smirk, looking directly into the brunette's eyes. She extended a hand with careful, deliberate grace, opposite hand behind her back in a picturesque bow, leaning forward just enough that her gravitic roommate, so coy in her request, could take it as she rose with ease. Already, Selma had embodied the gentlemanly aura in her posture, all straightened shoulders and controlled decorum of motion, but then—

"Milady Masuzu," Her voice had dropped low, lower than either had heard from her before, into a cool, smoky contralto. "May I have this dance?"

She was gallantry.

Blades of Iron Roses: An Anime-Inspired Fantasy Knight RP

Gerard's horse, Horse, is about middlingly yoinkable. Very if your hair is black and messy.

Blades of Iron Roses: An Anime-Inspired Fantasy Knight RP

No worries, no worries
I"ll be getting a post up by the end of the week hopefully, need to catch up in a lot of games

Blades of Iron Roses: An Anime-Inspired Fantasy Knight RP

It should be the middle of the night now, right? If I recall correctly, we arrived at Daelantine in the late hours of the day/ early in the evening. I assume we rode effectively straight out from the Fort.

Blades of Iron Roses: An Anime-Inspired Fantasy Knight RP

Gerard Segremors

@Crimson Paladin@VitaVitaAR

"The Silver Stone, huh?" Gerard murmured, pensive furrow to the brow only deepening as hints beget yet more questions. It colored his tone, lending a thick smoke of contemplation to his voice. He mulled over the loose scrawling of the note, flipping the scrap of parchment between his fingers multiple times, as if each about-face would reveal a key to the deeper meaning. He wasn't getting far, and found his eyes wandering back towards the body of the guardsman, now laid fully upon the floor instead of slumped along the doorframe.

Abigail's eyes were keen not only to inflict wounds, as any in their her line of work would need to be, but also to analyze them post-mortem. By his eye, none of what she'd extracted from the single red line in the man's windpipe was incorrect, reaching the same conclusions he had in about the same time, give or take— in all honesty, probably a little more extensively than his evaluation. But nonetheless, every word was true. One clean cut, no signs of struggle or prolonged contact. He'd sooner expect this from an assassin taking a man in his sleep, or...

Suicide?

Seems unlikely, given the wider context. Then again, the Boars...

Having found no trace of the offending weapon left behind in the wound (a stretch to begin with), Gerard had rummaged through the man's uniform, seeking out a weapon, perhaps a well-hidden tattoo of the selfsame group of mercenaries— to no avail. In the place of things that would link back to what they'd already learned, was the cryptic note he now beheld. Why the Silver Stone? Was the shard headed there, or had it come? Was the perpetrator? Was there some deeper significance, beyond the first site of worship of the Moonlit Goddess Mayon? Perhaps built to honor the moment mankind knew of her deification, all he had known of the Hallowed Ground was passed on through legend and folk tale.

"Either of you ever been?" he asked aloud, holding the note up behind him to Sir Fleuri as he stared a flummoxed hole into the corpse. If he were a betting man? Surely his fellow knight, a man that had grown to strength beneath the tutelage of an honored Paladin, was the more likely of his current band to have visited personally. "I'm at a loss. My home is far, far closer to the Golden, as were most of my battles in the prior line of work. Never seen Lady Mayon's shrine with my own eyes."

As it stood, he had no working guesses how this incident and the Stone interlinked. While he was certain they'd end up investigating the eldest of shrines, he still felt they ought to have an idea of what they were looking for.

Blades of Iron Roses: An Anime-Inspired Fantasy Knight RP

Doog

Blades of Iron Roses: An Anime-Inspired Fantasy Knight RP

post soon, i’m an old man now

Advance on Distant Proxima (Mecha RPG)

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<<Solid copy, Odysseus. Currently loitering in local airspace until primary egress has finished. I'll be two clicks southwest of everyone until I follow you topside. Maintaining altitude at 1500.>>

The crisp, lightly accented tones returned as the Arthurian knight drifted in a lazy spiral outward from the previously marked AO towards his stated overwatch point, silver armor tinted red from the crimson glow of his beam saber. Beneath his helmet, the pilot's eyes scanned the seemingly featureless sands below, not affording himself the chance to metaphorically lean back behind the controls. Every so often, his gaze slid back again to the torn pile of scrap that he had felled, an unforseen threat that— if the amount of pings he had momentarily seen beneath them were any indication— were liable to repeat, potentially at any time.

Far be it from him to expect a welcoming party an entire star system away, but still, the military experience within the expedition team was paying clear dividends where things stood at present. Such being the case...

<<... No complaints from me.>>

Michael's pilot could only offer a strained acquiescence to his ribbing. That, combined with her performance (truthfully lack thereof) in combat, needed ironing out. A decidedly civilian element in the detachment, Stel... Nebula, it was. had what may well have been an orbital-grade Ferrari at her fingertips, bleeding edge tech from the far-flung facilities on Pluto— but it would amount to nothing if she couldn't leverage it. Her flight hours, from what he remembered, hardly scratched the double digits. Heavy simulation, but no live combat. No maneuvering its weight under duress, learning the response of mass to control.

<<Always next time. Mount up for atmospheric burn.>>

They'd need to hammer that lead pit in her stomach out, before it got her killed. Joint exercises were doubtlessly on the itinerary, and if they weren't they would be, now that the expedition team had seen combat. Castle or Zakharin would likely need to give oversight until she'd gotten used to her Orbital.

Maybe even he'd have to shadow her. Who knew? Good a kid as she seemed, they needed her up to speed and didn't have the time nor stage to wait on it. If that was how the chips fell, he knew how to play taskmaster.

As the skies were painted orange, first by smoke and the by fire, Konstantin watched each chariot rise toward the stars, the returning victors of this first conquest into foreign land, silver plunder in tow.

Once more he looked to the mysterious sands, many more untold battles and discoveries beneath.

And then, as the final blaze screamed into the heavens, the Knight rode back to the Round Table awaiting high above.

Secundi Lux

---

A low, almost rumbling chuckle rose from Selma's belly, as she took in turn the rod, then sandwich from her newly christened teammate. Aoife Sturmgaard, as she had grown to know in the weeks following their induction as Ars Magi trainees, was the queen of wave and storm. Normally still and placid, easygoing as the babbling brook at which they sat, but thrown into combat she was as the hurricane itself, the crashing waves that tore against the coast. In that sense Selma found a kinship that was almost impossible to ignore, even in the face of the natural awkwardness of having her as a late arrival to their motley crew.

Rod in her right hand, she took a moment to offer a small well wish towards the next life to the worm that writhed around the dangling metal hook.

It was nice to have another person that approached fights for the pure thrill of it— Rivka was one to enjoy herself, sure, but hers was a pursuit of beautiful symphony, an orchestra in motion, everything falling into its perfect place, harmonizing as she sculpted it. Crystal was a technician to the core, trained well and composed when it counted, but she seemed to not quite take the same joy, to feel less of the revelry Selma felt in a brawl. Chie, to her eternal credit, had clearly been making strides in Selma's watchful eye, settling in as the weeks of training and structured fostering of their abilities gave her a true base of skill to fall back on. She was still very much a work in progress— they all were, but Selma couldn't help but admit that she was probably the closest one here to a normal young girl when it came to mentality.

Sandwich in her left, she took a hearty bite, letting the tang of mustard explode over her tongue as it brightened the savory ham and nutty cheese between the bread, ponderously chewing.

On one hand, it would put her at a bit of a disadvantage as Ars Magi put themselves regularly in extraordinary situations, forcing a harsher adjustment in attitude than the others— but on the other, it also meant she was the furthest from forgetting her roots as one of the people they were pledging their lives to protect. That was every bit as important as being able to turn on killer instinct in Selma's mind. She'd been sure to try to remind her of that in the many nighttime chats they'd shared as roommates. She had her own strengths, things the rest of them could never do. Stuff like that.

But Aoife seemed to share the joy Selma took in battle. She did not require perfection, she had no need of second guesses. She flowed through the chaos and energy of combat, ebbing and rippling with it as though born for the clamor. It was an easy point of kinship, only fostered through the combat exercises the school had put the two through. One was the flowing river, taking the form of the ever-changing vessel of her combative context, a master of the field. The other was a sturdy mountain, in many ways unbothered and welcoming of all the war that its face beheld— an ever-present part of the field itself, laughing even as the world around it shifted.

With a single raise of the elbow and flick of the wrist, the big girl cast her line, turning to meet the Sturmgaard name's latest and greatest product with a gentle smirk.

"Every day. Like you wouldn't believe. Whenever we finish a lesson I wanna collapse onto a hay bale and not think for the next week." she said, plain as the morning slowly rising around them. The light of the stream, a dancing cascade of patterns in white against her emerald eyes, seemed to take a wistful tint. "At the very least, I wish I could tell my family so i could make sure I got it all right, y'know?"

Her left hand, freshly relieved of sandwich after transferring it to the mouth where it slowly retreated in behind her teeth, made a loose fist and rapped against her skull, sending moss-colored locks in a light sway.

"Ol' rohck brain don' work too goo', y'know?" she joked through proteins and carbohydrates with what seemed to be practiced clarity.

Taking a moment to finish her food properly, she then snorted.

"Hell, I was born missing home. It's why I wanted this, after all... Family's been wanting to go back to the Black Forest since long before me."

The wistful tint went somewhere far, far away for one, two, then three moments before blinking away as she returned to the present.

"We are, aren't we?" she agreed, a toothy grin blossoming into her cheeks as she playfully punched the smaller girl on the shoulder. "You an' I are must-see-TV, even compared to everyone else."

Sensing a tug on the rod, she leaned forward, gripping the reel.

"We're all gonna be great. With how long I take to learn things, I know for a fact that you four are wowin' everyone already. Wouldn't trade you girls for the world."

Advance on Distant Proxima (Mecha RPG)

poor stel