Location: The Wayfarer’s Retreat -- The City of Thorinn, Aetheria
This was quite a gathering.
Seele was used to large groups. Plenty of the raids she’d participated in were full-house clears, and she’d spent a considerable amount of time around strangers, who had only really remained strangers as long as it took them to get acquainted.
Still, this wasn’t her normal gig. Seele had never trailblazed new content before. Sure, she’d never been far behind, but arriving on day one to raid alongside seasoned veterans was out of her normal wheelhouse. In a way though, it was at least a bit familiar. None of them were new, but in the same way, none of them had ever encountered this dungeon before. Progression raiding was different, but perhaps it could still be exciting.
With graceful steps, Seele entered the Wayfarer’s Retreat and surveilled the players present. Sure enough, she didn’t recognize a single one, at least from personal experience. Plenty of them she’d seen plastered on various leaderboards for all sorts of content, both PvE and—she shuddered—PvP, but as best she could recall, Seele had never partied up with any of them.
Good, she thought happily. New faces. New friends.
In the back of her mind she had doubts, still, about coming to something like this. She wasn’t normally welcome at new content, especially brand new content, and it unsettled her a bit. Already she could hear the complaints. “Where’s your off-damage?”“Wait she doesn’t even have any healing spells!”Bro if this chick doesn’t start actually playing she’s getting kicked.”
No, no. No. She was being pessimistic. Seele was more than capable of contributing to this raid, and that aside, there were likely plenty of healers as well. This was going to go just fine, and if it didn’t, she was sure they’d get it eventually.
Not far away, a few of those distantly-familiar faces were converging. She recognized a couple of them as tanks—with somewhat unsavory reputations, she thought, but oh well. Others she didn’t know at all, but they were quickly making themselves memorable. One titan of a woman was making a show of drinking and cajoling with the red-headed girl. With them was another girl who seemed to be something of a chatterbox. That was nice, Seele loved listening to people talk. All of the wayfarers here probably had mountains of stories to tell, and were she a woman with less self-control, she might have just gone around asking after all of them. Mi...ssy... But there would be time for that later, maybe even in the dungeon itself. Perhaps they’d be split into smaller groups, which would certainly make getting to know her team easier. For the moment though, she took a seat at a longer table and set down a small woven box atop it. From within she pulled a small stack of sandwiches, along with a little hand-drawn sign that said: “Lesser feasts! All it costs is a smile!”
The buffs her food offered would be negligibly-minor, and might not last very long into the dungeon if they didn’t depart soon, but she liked to offer them anyway. Food could taste just as good inside Pariah as it did outside, and while Missy herself wasn’t much of a cook, Seele…well, alright, Seele had bought most of the recipes from low-level vendors, but darned if she hadn’t put the sandwiches together herself.
Full Name – Misao (“Missy”) Ito-Walsh Age – 18 It's...dark... Place of Origin – United States Occupation – Prospective University Student
A V A T A R
Character's Name – Seele Pathos Affiliation – Drox I'm...scared... Role – Buffer/Debuffer Profession – Traveling Physician Weapon of Choice – Focus Rings Domains – Enhancement, Protection, Dark -
P E R S O N A L I T Y
Forbearing Seele is the embodiment of the phrase “patience is a virtue.” She has to be, really, considering how much time she spends around newer players and rerunning familiar content. Whether someone is struggling to learn the game, or growing frustrated hitting a wall, or even being outright toxic, Seele takes it all in stride and tries her best to help the situation along. Even facing the toughest odds, you’d be hard-pressed to get so much as a defeated sigh out of her. Some people like that, other people, respectfully, can’t fucking stand it. Seele, of course, enjoys their company regardless. Missy...please... The Power of Friendship! Angel food cake is rich, and sweet, and sometimes it is just entirely too much. Seele is like that. She’s quick to make friends, and quicker to want to help those friends. She loves to talk with them, loves to be regaled with adventurous stories, and now and then she even loves to talk with them a little OOC. When it comes to most things, Seele is an open book—she finds people open up more easily that way. She won’t bat an eye if you call her “Missy” by accident, and she’s never turned away anyone who’s come to her with an out-of-game problem. Whether it’s raid bosses, homework, or trouble at home, Seele has always done her best to be supportive.
Idealistic, but not Blind While some people tend to believe that warm smiles and a bubbly personality equate to air-headedness, for all of the good and bad that Seele is, she is not naïve. Is she trusting to a fault? Yes. Does her patience render her unable to make the “hard decisions,” especially when those decisions might leave someone hurt or even just inconvenienced? Absolutely. Seele is keenly aware that supports are often seen as doormats, and can easily be taken advantage of, but that hasn’t stopped her from supporting even in the most blatantly deceptive cases. In her mind, she’d rather have faith and be wrong a thousand times than give up on someone and be right just once. Even if it’s just in a game, everyone can change, and grow, and be forgiven for their mistakes. Liar.
B E N C H M A R K S
Shackled The crux of Seele’s playstyle lies within her signature spell: The Shackles. When summoned, roughly a foot of ethereal chain binds her wrists. At first, this hampers her spell-power, but as she continues to cast, the chains will shimmer and crack. When they eventually break, the potency of Seele’s magic is increased dramatically, allowing for enhanced shields, buffs, and debuffs for a short duration. Once the effect ends, it must be started over. Larger spells quicken the chain’s deterioration, but may not be available during the empowered phase as a result. Don’t…go…
The Shield Behind You Seele won’t call herself a healer, but some of what she does could be called “proactive healing.” Seele can weave arcane barriers into existence with varying potency. Shields for individuals require less power to make effective, while larger, area-of-effect shields may take a more substantial toll.
Your Wings. Your Chains. The core of Seele’s spells are a range of buffs and debuffs. Where other casters would have made room for damage, Seele doubled down on utility. Speed, strength, spell-power, empowered weapons, she has something up her sleeve for just about all of her allies in one form or another. For her enemies, while she won’t be hurting them per se, they may find themselves struggling to hurt her party in kind. Curses of frailty, hexes to shatter resistances and bindings to anchor the feet; assailants will find their weapons brittle, their armor chipping, and their efforts dashed against the empowered might of her party. Missy…please…
The Best Medicine Is sometimes literally medicine. Seele’s life as a roaming support, especially one inclined towards aiding the newer or more unfortunate players, hasn’t yielded her much in the way of coin. She’s taken to herbalism as a means of keeping herself afloat, after all, all it takes to gather ingredients is time, and the effort to learn how to utilize them. While she has no talent whatsoever for poisons, her tinctures and salves have eased more than a handful of headaches and minor wounds. Anything much greater though, and she’ll be the first to direct you to a proper healer. It hurts…
Physical Description
Misao—though she’s gone by “Missy” for most of her life—is an unassuming girl with a prim, peppy disposition. Preferring vests and collared shirts, skirts and plain shoes, she generally wouldn’t look at all out of place at some mid-grade piano-recital, if she, you know, played piano. Tallish from her mom’s side, wiry from her dad’s, with eyes that might seem just a bit too big, and a smile near-constantly affixed to her face, if there was a single word to sum Missy up, it would be “approachable.” Mi...ssy... Seele resembles Missy for the most part, albeit a bit less well-kempt. Volumes of black hair like raven-down fall from the wide brim of her cap, all the way down to her knees, occasionally bound in tails of three or four, but most often left like a feathery curtain. Her attire strikes a fashionable line between “swamp-witch-chic” and “discount battle-mage,” with black robes and thick boots, gauzed sleeves and superfluous belts and thin ringlet strings that could not, really, be holding anything together, but which she would insist were integral regardless.
The standout to her ensemble would be the armored rings she wears on a few fingers of either hand, the catalyst for her magic and the closest thing Seele carries to a weapon. Claw-nailed, lined with runes, and marbled onyx and ivory, one might easily mistake them for jewelry. The foremost digits can be retracted, so that she can handle things without jabbing them. Missy…please…
Character Conceptualization
Seele made her debut in Aetheria a few months after Pariah Online’s launch, once the floodgates had opened and the famous and infamous wayfarers had begun chiseling out their legacies. Having always been what most people would refer to as “the mom friend,” it would have come as a surprise to no one who had known her—were she still in contact with any of them—that Missy chose to fulfil a supportive role. It hurts…
She would emphasize “support” over “healer,” as Seele decidedly doesn’t refer to what she does as healing. She supplies her allies with an arsenal of buffs, enhancements, and shields, and weakens her foes with debilitating curses, hexes and arcane devilry. “Weakens” is another important clarification to her, as Seele boasts just about no true offensive capabilities. No weapons, no fireballs or lightning strikes, nothing to directly chip away at that health bar. This was, of course, by design for her. She enjoys the challenge presented by her somewhat-inhibitive toolkit, but more than that she enjoys conquering those challenges with others—which is great, because she likely couldn’t clear any content on her own otherwise.
It took a while for her to grow into the peculiar playstyle she’d chosen, and longer still for her to convince others to give her a shot. Dungeoneers passed her by for more conventional healers, raiders would decline her applications almost instantly. She found tumultuous homes in random pick-up-groups, who were consistently surprised when she managed to get them through nearly unscathed; monsters would hardly ever scratch them, and her team found their weapons swung truer, their spells quickened. They would clear dungeons with brow-raising parses rivaling actual guilds, but when the time for glory came, Seele always stepped back and let her tanks and dps and the occasional off-healer take the spotlight and riches. Don't…go... Ironically, the home she found was in travelling Aetheria, offering aid to players and denizens who would accept her. She helped newer players transition into more challenging content, she helped moderate players gear up so that they could apply to guilds with more confidence, and a handful of times she even found herself substituting for missing supports in raids run by guilds with serious reputations. While most people had never heard of her, Seele’s name did find its way onto the short-lists of a fair number of higher-end raid leaders and dungeoneers, who knew they could rely on her to keep them up, and the enemy down.
Perpetually guildless—again, by design—Seele enjoys her humble life in Aetheria. She gets to meet all sorts of people, hear their stories and goals and help them on their way, make friends and experience Pariah’s content in fun and challenging ways.
Except for PvP. As Missy would say, “Frick PvP.” Missy…please…
Other Information
Signature
Shackled Seele’s signature spell, and the key to her somewhat strange toolkit. When cast, Seele’s wrists are bound by a pair of ethereal shackles. While chained, Seele’s spell-power is inhibited, and the effectiveness of her shields, buffs and debuffs are substantially impacted. As she continues casting however, this inhibition gradually wears off, until the chains eventually break, activating the spell’s second phase: Broken Chains.
Broken Chains For a short duration after the shackles are broken, Seele’s spell power is greatly increased, and a few of her spells become empowered, taking on new or heightened effects. As well, certain abilities can only be cast during Broken Chains and will immediately consume the effect.
Shields
Umbral Aegis Marrying her Arcane affinity for Protection with her Primordial affinity for Dark, Seele weaves a barrier of faint, deep-violet light, which can be applied to targets individually. Must be depleted or dispelled before reapplication.
Abyssal Embrace Seele’s shield takes on a vantablack shine, able to withstand significantly more damage. Additonally, a portion of the damage inflicted by Cursed Weapon is fed into the shield, not enough to permanently sustain it, but exceptional if used on a target about to do burst damage.
The Parasol Combines all active shields cast by Seele into a single barrier-dome. If no shields were active, Seele can empower it by sacrificing her own HP. This spell must be channeled, and once interrupted or depleted, it will consume the Broken Chains effect.
Buffs
Cursed Weapon Target’s weapon takes on a ghostly edge, sucking at the light as it flies. Provides a slight increase to damage that ramps up as the duration winds down. Refreshing resets the damage buff, rather than extending it.
Haint It’s there, in the corner of your eye. Something, in the dark. Affected target adopts a shadowy after-image, which will mirror their next attack.
All Your Shadows Applies Haint to all targets with the Cursed Weapon buff. Consumes the Broken Chains effect.
Thrill Moderately empowers a target’s strength, speed, agility or spell-power. Seele can further feed this buff by sacrificing some of her own respective stat.
Absolution Empowers a target’s strength, speed, agility or spell-power temporarily, equal to Seele’s own spell-power. Can only cast each buff once, and targets can not receive more than two empowered buffs each.
Debuffs
The Fivefold Path Seele applies one of five temporary debuffs to a target:
Denial Reduces target’s movement speed.
Anger Reduces target’s damage.
Bargaining Reduces target’s spell-power.
Depression Reduces target’s healing received.
Acceptance Reduces target’s defense.
Guilt Walk alone. Applies all five debuffs to a target. Afflicts Seele with empowered Acceptance, drastically reducing her defense.
Heavy Heart Seele greatly hinders a target’s movement speed. Requires her to maintain vision of the target.
The Anchor You are sinking. Ethereal chains bind the target in place. The Anchor’s strength is directly linked to Seele’s spell-power. This spell must be channeled, and Seele must remain stationary. When The Anchor is broken or dismissed, the Broken Chains effect is consumed....please...
Utility/Other
Promise Seele summons a ghostly chain, which pulls a willing target to her. Heavier targets require more effort to pull.
Don’t Leave Me Seele pulls all willing targets within a moderate distance to her. Can also be used to empower a single chain with her spell-power to attempt to pull a single unwilling target.
The Choice Seele channels to temporarily boosts a willing target’s defense dramatically, also numbing them to pain. However, the target will constantly lose health until the effect ends or is canceled. I can’t…
I Can Hear The Rain Seele additionally empowers her target’s damage, but their health drains at a much higher rate. As well, the effect cannot be canceled and must run its course, or be dispelled. Without dedicated healing, this may potentially kill her target. You have to...
Full Name – Misao (“Missy”) Ito-Walsh Age – 18 It's...dark... Place of Origin – United States Occupation – Prospective University Student
A V A T A R
Character's Name – Ciel Pathos Affiliation – Drox I'm...scared... Role – Buffer/Debuffer Profession – Traveling Physician Weapon of Choice – Focus Rings Domains – Enhancement, Manifestation -
P E R S O N A L I T Y
Forbearing Ciel is the embodiment of the phrase “patience is a virtue.” She has to be, really, considering how much time she spends around newer players and rerunning familiar content. Whether someone is struggling to learn the game, or growing frustrated hitting a wall, or even being outright toxic, Ciel takes it all in stride and tries her best to help the situation along. Even facing the toughest odds, you’d be hard-pressed to get so much as a defeated sigh out of her. Some people like that, other people, respectfully, can’t fucking stand it. Ciel, of course, enjoys their company regardless. Missy...please... The Power of Friendship! Angel food cake is rich, and sweet, and sometimes it is just entirely too much. Ciel is like that. She’s quick to make friends, and quicker to want to help those friends. She loves to talk with them, loves to be regaled with adventurous stories, and now and then she even loves to talk with them a little OOC. When it comes to most things, Ciel is an open book—she finds people open up more easily that way. She won’t bat an eye if you call her “Missy” by accident, and she’s never turned away anyone who’s come to her with an out-of-game problem. Whether it’s raid bosses, homework, or trouble at home, Ciel has always done her best to be supportive.
Idealistic, but not Blind While some people tend to believe that warm smiles and a bubbly personality equate to air-headedness, for all of the good and bad that Ciel is, she is not naïve. Is she trusting to a fault? Yes. Does her patience render her unable to make the “hard decisions,” especially when those decisions might leave someone hurt or even just inconvenienced? Absolutely. Ciel is keenly aware that supports are often seen as doormats, and can easily be taken advantage of, but that hasn’t stopped her from supporting even in the most blatantly deceptive cases. In her mind, she’d rather have faith and be wrong a thousand times than give up on someone and be right just once. Even if it’s just in a game, everyone can change, and grow, and be forgiven for their mistakes. Liar.
B E N C H M A R K S
Shackled The crux of Ciel’s playstyle lies within her signature spell: The Shackles. When summoned, roughly a foot of ethereal chain binds her wrists. At first, this hampers her spell-power, but as she continues to cast, the chains will shimmer and crack. When they eventually break, the potency of Ciel’s magic is increased dramatically, allowing for enhanced shields, buffs, and debuffs for a short duration. Once the effect ends, it must be started over. Larger spells quicken the chain’s deterioration, but may not be available during the empowered phase as a result. Don’t…go…
The Shield Behind You Ciel won’t call herself a healer, but some of what she does could be called “proactive healing.” Ciel can weave arcane barriers into existence with varying potency. Shields for individuals require less power to make effective, while larger, area-of-effect shields may take a more substantial toll.
Your Wings. Your Chains. The core of Ciel’s spells are a range of buffs and debuffs. Where other casters would have made room for damage, Ciel doubled down on utility. Speed, strength, spell-power, empowered weapons, she has something up her sleeve for just about all of her allies in one form or another. For her enemies, while she won’t be hurting them per se, they may find themselves struggling to hurt her party in kind. Curses of frailty, hexes to shatter resistances and bindings to anchor the feet; assailants will find their weapons brittle, their armor chipping, and their efforts dashed against the empowered might of her party. Missy…please…
The Best Medicine Is sometimes literally medicine. Ciel’s life as a roaming support, especially one inclined towards aiding the newer or more unfortunate players, hasn’t yielded her much in the way of coin. She’s taken to herbalism as a means of keeping herself afloat, after all, all it takes to gather ingredients is time, and the effort to learn how to utilize them. While she has no talent whatsoever for poisons, her tinctures and salves have eased more than a handful of headaches and minor wounds. Anything much greater though, and she’ll be the first to direct you to a proper healer. It hurts…
Physical Description
Misao—though she’s gone by “Missy” for most of her life—is an unassuming girl with a prim, peppy disposition. Preferring vests and collared shirts, skirts and plain shoes, she generally wouldn’t look at all out of place at some mid-grade piano-recital, if she, you know, played piano. Tallish from her mom’s side, wiry from her dad’s, with eyes that might seem just a bit too big, and a smile near-constantly affixed to her face, if there was a single word to sum Missy up, it would be “approachable.” Mi...ssy... Ciel resembles Missy for the most part, albeit a bit less well-kempt. Volumes of black hair like raven-down fall from the wide brim of her cap, all the way down to her knees, occasionally bound in tails of three or four, but most often left like a feathery curtain. Her attire strikes a fashionable line between “swamp-witch-chic” and “discount battle-mage,” with black robes and thick boots, gauzed sleeves and superfluous belts and thin ringlet strings that could not, really, be holding anything together, but which she would insist were integral regardless.
The standout to her ensemble would be the armored rings she wears on a few fingers of either hand, the catalyst for her magic and the closest thing Ciel carries to a weapon. Claw-nailed, lined with runes, and marbled onyx and ivory, one might easily mistake them for jewelry. The foremost digits can be retracted, so that she can handle things without jabbing them. Missy…please…
Character Conceptualization
Ciel made her debut in Aetheria a few months after Pariah Online’s launch, once the floodgates had opened and the famous and infamous wayfarers had begun chiseling out their legacies. Having always been what most people would refer to as “the mom friend,” it would have come as a surprise to no one who had known her—were she still in contact with any of them—that Missy chose to fulfil a supportive role. It hurts…
She would emphasize “support” over “healer,” as Ciel decidedly doesn’t refer to what she does as healing. She supplies her allies with an arsenal of buffs, enhancements, and shields, and weakens her foes with debilitating curses, hexes and arcane devilry. “Weakens” is another important clarification to her, as Ciel boasts just about no true offensive capabilities. No weapons, no fireballs or lightning strikes, nothing to directly chip away at that health bar. This was, of course, by design for her. She enjoys the challenge presented by her somewhat-inhibitive toolkit, but more than that she enjoys conquering those challenges with others—which is great, because she likely couldn’t clear any content on her own otherwise.
It took a while for her to grow into the peculiar playstyle she’d chosen, and longer still for her to convince others to give her a shot. Dungeoneers passed her by for more conventional healers, raiders would decline her applications almost instantly. She found tumultuous homes in random pick-up-groups, who were consistently surprised when she managed to get them through nearly unscathed; monsters would hardly ever scratch them, and her team found their weapons swung truer, their spells quickened. They would clear dungeons with brow-raising parses rivaling actual guilds, but when the time for glory came, Ciel always stepped back and let her tanks and dps and the occasional off-healer take the spotlight and riches. Don't…go... Ironically, the home she found was in travelling Aetheria, offering aid to players and denizens who would accept her. She helped newer players transition into more challenging content, she helped moderate players gear up so that they could apply to guilds with more confidence, and a handful of times she even found herself substituting for missing supports in raids run by guilds with serious reputations. While most people had never heard of her, Ciel’s name did find its way onto the short-lists of a fair number of higher-end raid leaders and dungeoneers, who knew they could rely on her to keep them up, and the enemy down.
Perpetually guildless—again, by design—Ciel enjoys her humble life in Aetheria. She gets to meet all sorts of people, hear their stories and goals and help them on their way, make friends and experience Pariah’s content in fun and challenging ways.
Except for PvP. As Missy would say, “Frick PvP.” Missy…please…
Other Information
Signature
Shackled Seele’s signature spell, and the key to her somewhat strange toolkit. When cast, Seele’s wrists are bound by a pair of ethereal shackles. While chained, Seele’s spell-power is inhibited, and the effectiveness of her shields, buffs and debuffs are substantially impacted. As she continues casting however, this inhibition gradually wears off, until the chains eventually break, activating the spell’s second phase: Broken Chains.
Broken Chains For a short duration after the shackles are broken, Seele’s spell power is greatly increased, and a few of her spells become empowered, taking on new or heightened effects. As well, certain abilities can only be cast during Broken Chains and will immediately consume the effect.
Shields
Umbral Aegis Marrying her Arcane affinity for Protection with her Primordial affinity for Dark, Seele weaves a barrier of faint, deep-violet light, which can be applied to targets individually. Must be depleted or dispelled before reapplication.
Abyssal Embrace Seele’s shield takes on a vantablack shine, able to withstand significantly more damage. Additonally, a portion of the damage inflicted by Cursed Weapon is fed into the shield, not enough to permanently sustain it, but exceptional if used on a target about to do burst damage.
The Parasol Combines all active shields cast by Seele into a single barrier-dome. If no shields were active, Seele can empower it by sacrificing her own HP. This spell must be channeled, and once interrupted or depleted, it will consume the Broken Chains effect.
Buffs
Cursed Weapon Target’s weapon takes on a ghostly edge, sucking at the light as it flies. Provides a slight increase to damage that ramps up as the duration winds down. Refreshing resets the damage buff, rather than extending it.
Haint It’s there, in the corner of your eye. Something, in the dark. Affected target adopts a shadowy after-image, which will mirror their next attack.
All Your Shadows Applies Haint to all targets with the Cursed Weapon buff. Consumes the Broken Chains effect.
Thrill Moderately empowers a target’s strength, speed, agility or spell-power. Seele can further feed this buff by sacrificing some of her own respective stat.
Absolution Empowers a target’s strength, speed, agility or spell-power temporarily, equal to Seele’s own spell-power. Can only cast each buff once, and targets can not receive more than two empowered buffs each.
Debuffs
The Fivefold Path Seele applies one of five temporary debuffs to a target:
Denial Reduces target’s movement speed.
Anger Reduces target’s damage.
Bargaining Reduces target’s spell-power.
Depression Reduces target’s healing received.
Acceptance Reduces target’s defense.
Guilt Walk alone. Applies all five debuffs to a target. Afflicts Seele with empowered Acceptance, drastically reducing her defense.
Heavy Heart Seele greatly hinders a target’s movement speed. Requires her to maintain vision of the target.
The Anchor You are sinking. Ethereal chains bind the target in place. The Anchor’s strength is directly linked to Seele’s spell-power. This spell must be channeled, and Seele must remain stationary. When The Anchor is broken or dismissed, the Broken Chains effect is consumed....please...
Utility/Other
Promise Seele summons a ghostly chain, which pulls a willing target to her. Heavier targets require more effort to pull.
Don’t Leave Me Seele pulls all willing targets within a moderate distance to her. Can also be used to empower a single chain with her spell-power to attempt to pull a single unwilling target.
The Choice Seele channels to temporarily boosts a willing target’s defense dramatically, also numbing them to pain. However, the target will constantly lose health until the effect ends or is canceled. I can’t…
I Can Hear The Rain Seele additionally empowers her target’s damage, but their health drains at a much higher rate. As well, the effect cannot be canceled and must run its course, or be dispelled. Without dedicated healing, this may potentially kill her target. You have to...
Kana’s first night at Ishin had not been too dissimilar to her first night in Kagoshima. A new home, a new bed, and hours of fitful sleep she could have counted on one hand. She wasn’t exhausted, thankfully; she’d grown accustomed to an erratic and stingy sleeping schedule through long stretches of brickish mattresses in roadside motels, or the passenger seat of her father’s car. Ishin was generous enough to give her a soft bed, warm sheets, and clean air, and so whatever restfulness was lost had been made up for quite well in comfort.
She’d been awake when Wakako left, tempted to ask if they might walk to class together, but she refrained. Her roommate had put up with her enough yesterday, and the last thing Kana wanted to do was repay Wakako’s kindness by being a burden, or clinging too tightly. Instead, once she was alone, Kana shuffled out of bed—folding the sheets without much practice,—donned her uniform, and gathered her materials into a small satchel she’d tucked into the duffle bag. On her way out, she took quick stock of herself in the dorm’s bathroom mirror, and frowned.
Hoped you might not recognize yourself just because you’re wearing a fancy uniform? she thought bitterly. One decent day isn’t enough to wash her out of your face. Sorry.
The map and instructions were clear, and Kana arrived at the classroom early, it seemed. Earlier at least than the teacher. There were already a few students there, faces she recognized from the day before—the put-off foreigner, the “kind of stiff looking guy” Wakako had mentioned, and the friendly, gelatinous Nadeshiko.
Wakako herself was there as well, sat beside Osamu. Kana smiled to her, waved, and noticed the seats were labeled. It must have been good luck, Wakako being seated next to the one person she’d known from the assembly, luck that Kana was hopeful for herself. Unluckily, she didn’t find her name near Wakako, or even Nadeshiko. A bit anxious, she checked the seats nearby the foreign girl—as quiet and unobtrusively as she could—but she didn’t find herself there, either. That wasn’t much of a consolation, Kana had been hoping for a seat near the back. Out of sight, out of mind. But as she continued to search, raking each row seat by seat, that anxiety built, and built, as she went on and on and on fruitlessly until at last there it was, and suddenly more than ever before she wished her name was not Mutsuki Kana.
Eli stared at him, waiting. He hadn’t given her an answer; she wasn’t sure what it was he’d given her, but it wasn’t an answer. A joke, maybe, Percy did that often and never subtly, always with a grin or a nudge of the elbow.
“Percy, this is important,” she said. “It’s about the new pilots. Have you seen them? Graham’s brought in nearly half a dozen and they’re all…outsiders. I don’t think any of them are even Alaskan. One looks a raider, Percy.”
Again her eyes went to the mechanic, and her mouth screwed shut. The worry had gotten to her for a moment, she’d nearly forgotten what was and wasn’t safe to say around nonessential personnel. It was one thing for her to voice distaste in Graham’s decisions to comrades, it was another for site employees to hear dissent from the pilots.
She sighed, and this time she chose her words a little more carefully. “It could be something worth discussing with one another.”
Kana nodded along to Wakako’s encouragement, and it did take, if just a little. It was the sort of assurance she’d been drip-feeding herself ever since she’d been accepted—You wouldn’t be going if they didn’t think you could cut it. And it was undeniably true, at least a little bit. Ishin didn’t seem like an institution interested in wasting time, especially not its own time. If there really wasn’t any chance she could make it through this, she wouldn’t have been on that train.
Still, like most of her thoughts, they didn’t really matter until someone else thought them, too.
Wakako was probably right about the faculty as well. Nekohara was not at all what Kana had expected of Ishin’s students, and she was upperclassman. Some—perhaps even many—of the teachers would likely be cold and hard and merciless, but Kana held out hope anyway that they might encounter some people of power and influence unjaded by their work.
The topic shifted. Kana tried to pull an image of Osamu from her memory, but the auditorium was a blur of anxiety to her now. She did recall her seatmates, the gelatinous and polite Nadeshiko, and the awkward yet well-meaning Shun.
“A couple,” Kana said. “I know there were a few people who didn’t seem to be getting along, but thankfully the people I sat by were nice. One was that boy, outside, who helped Nekohara back up. He…brought a pineapple with him.”
Slowly, she saw flashes of unfamiliar faces, picked out snippets of conversations she hadn’t really heard but remembered by broken piece-meal after the fact. Blue hair, white hair, sharp words and words of tender arbitration, a foreign girl with a hard face and a girl with hair like a squid. People were thrilled, and anxious, and angry or eager overjoyed to be here, to be something. Kana did not know these people yet, but she felt a sudden connection to them, a sort of pride and also worry, because despite Wakako’s assurances, the Supervisor had seemed intent that not all of them would last.
“I hope they make it,” Kana said finally, and though she had excluded the two of them, it was perhaps them she meant most. @Naw
Kana couldn’t help the shock—or the twinge of disgust—that twisted her face as Wakako explained the intricacies of her quirk. It was sympathetic, of course, and she cringed at the idea that her roommate might think she was disgusted by her and not the preparations she had to go through to get her quirk working, but it seemed as though Wakako understood. Perhaps she was even used to it; after all, how many people wouldn’t flinch at the idea of drinking dangerous chemicals, on top of god-knows-what-else?
She nodded appreciatively when Wakako suggested their quirks’ more finicky aspects were similar, but in truth, listening to the cannon’s explanation had her feeling grateful that all she had to put up with was pain. There were prospective dangers with her quirk, of course, but at the very least she never had to worry about drinking poison or eating metal, to say nothing of worrying about things exploding in her face.
Still, shock and worry aside, Kana found herself rather relaxed. She’d taken a seat on the bed she’d lifted, and while Wakako talked she had listened closely and almost forgotten herself. Her hands had stopped shaking, her heart, still hastened, no longer pounded against her chest like the feet of a rabbit. Her elbow still stung, but what was pain compared to anxiety? She was smiling, even, swept up in Wakako’s enthusiasm for what her quirk might do with a little practice, and her pride for what she could do already.
“I’d like to see that, when they let us,” she said, and did mean it. It had been years since quirks had been such a welcomed topic; back home her father had made discussing them practically taboo. Kana of course hadn’t spoken a word about her own quirk to anyone before Ishin had entered the picture, and so Wakako’s question stumped her, at first.
No, no. Don’t lie, you know exactly where your quirk is headed.
Perhaps it was the fact that, for the first time in a while, she felt like she had a handle on her nerves, but she managed to quiet her own thoughts before they could bring disaster back to fragile, tentative calm she’d mustered.
“Oh,” she said, surprised at the relative clarity of her own voice. “I’m not sure…maybe lifting two beds at once?”
Was that a joke? Had she tried to make a joke? Even in her own stillness she could feel herself cringing.
“Uhm…b-but, really, I don’t know. It might seem a bit…dumb, but I’m not really sure what I’m capable of. I guess I’d like to find out, here. I-is that wrong? I mean…Ishin is supposed to be…well, Ishin, and…”
Wow, you can’t go thirty seconds without trying to sabotage the conversation, can you?
Well, it was nice while it lasted. Kana felt her smile twitching. She bowed her head, cleared her throat.
“Sorry. I guess the…ah…speech, that the Supervisor gave still has me a little nervous. I guess we'll have to get used to imposing faculty, though, huh? I'm sure the teachers aren't any...warmer than he is.” @Naw
As the writhing, green hulk brought its limbs to bear against the party, Ianthe pulled her sword from its scabbard—and plunged it into the ground behind her. She kept an iron grip on the hilt, bracing herself with the very ground as leverage, and brought up her shield. Perhaps she’d underestimated the shoddy metal, or her own wherewithal, or the intangible yet undeniable effects of Luna’s music, but when that vegetable tendril came down upon her, it found her unyielding.
The impact shook her to the bone and took a chunk of wind from her lungs, but she weathered it. When the worst of the strike was behind her, she yanked her sword free and whirled the edge around to carve herself a path forward.
Baldur was thrown aside, the dragoon—well, Ianthe kept an eye out for her. Behind her, Artemisia had made weapons of the air itself, and behind the monster, Avaddon had begun an assault of his own, simpler in practice but no less effective in execution. A sword—at least, her sword—would be wasted if she used it trying to carve the Malboro apart for glory. She knew her place in this fight, and it wasn’t to wring the sap out of the wretched thing, it was to keep the others safe while they did.
“You fight!” she called back to Luna, but she could only spare a moment’s glance back to the anxious bard before instinct screamed at her to keep her eyes on the giant turnip that was trying to kill them all.
Ianthe weaved forward, shield ahead, trying to keep the thing’s attention narrowed. Big beast, it was, but a beast nonetheless. Vicious, dangerous, but single-minded. Easily distracted.
Kana found the dormitories pleasant, certainly more than she thought they would be. There wasn’t anything particularly extravagant about them, but beds and desks and closets, and above all, space and fresh air, were things she’d taken for granted before leaving Goshogawara. In Kagoshima, at least where she’d lived, everything was salt and brine, and the humidity that clung to the air carried the scent of the docks with it, which was something she’d never quite grown accustomed to.
Once they were inside, Kana was quick to close the door behind them out of habit. Reflex wanted her to lock it as well, but she figured that might have seemed strange.
Now you’re worried about being weird?
She silently thanked Wakako for carrying her bag, and shuffled it out of the way while her roommate surveyed the room for herself. Cozy, that was apt. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d thought of a place as cozy.
“Oh, no, this is wonderful.” Kana answered, pleased to hear the evenness in her own voice. Their departure from the public had done more for her nerves than she’d thought. Without the eyes and ears surrounding them, with the excess anxieties sheered away, she was quite surprised with how comfortable she felt. It wasn’t perfect, the jitter was still in her bones, and her heart was still just a bit too lively, but compared to earlier, she was practically calm.
Time to absolutely ruin it, then, while she still had the confidence.
“Thank you for…ah, humoring me. I’m sure there’s still plenty you want to go out and do, or see. I just wanted to get, uhm, grounded first, I guess. So, thanks—no, I already said that.”
She’d meandered to the window without realizing it, and nearly lost her train of thought, again, looking outside at the academy. It was still jarringly unfamiliar to her, and she worried that, just like the smell of Kagoshima’s harbor, the sight of Ishin would never quite settle with her.
“Anyway,” she said, pulling herself back. “My quirk isn’t…it makes me stronger, and…uhm, well, it sort of hurts when I use it. But I guess that’s the…point. I’m sorry, I’m explaining this really badly. I should just—”
Kana knelt down by one of the beds and got her hands underneath it. The mattresses were thin, the frames thick but manageably light. Altogether it was still too heavy for her on her own. She considered activating her quirk, but letting it build up on its own could take a minute or two, and while Wakako had proven to be an accommodating sort, Kana didn’t want to push her luck. So, instead, she braced herself, and then banged her elbow deliberately against the bedframe.
“Ow…” she muttered, but it wasn’t so bad, really. More pins than needles. Still, it was enough; she could feel it in her veins, or her muscles, or wherever the quirk made its nest within her, and for a few moments she felt decidedly bigger than her own skin. She managed to get the bed up, not very high, and more tilted against the wall than straight, but it was a good enough display, she hoped. The effects wore off quickly, and she lowered it back to a proper rest while she still had the means to do so gently, then got back to her feet.
“And that’s it, really. The more pain the more…that. I haven’t really done a lot of, uhm, conditioning. I’m not very good with pain. I guess that’s something I need to work on. But, sorry, I’m talking a lot. I do want to know more about you—your quirk, I mean. N-not that I don’t want to know more about you, too, of course.” She bowed her head. That too had become a fierce habit. “Sorry if that was rude. I didn’t talk to many people in Kagoshima, and I guess I’m a bit nervous, and I’m…still talking a lot. I’m sorry.” @Naw
Kana had figured she’d recognize Wakako’s mother when it finally came up, and she was right. Tanegashima Sanae was indeed who she’d been thinking of, and though she’d never seen the Warship Hero personally, the stories were plenty. She wasn’t just some local talent, she was the real deal, someone people admired from Tomakomai all the way down to Kagoshima.
Suddenly the resemblances were uncanny, albeit Kana didn’t have much to go on but a few pictures she’d only seen years ago. Still, now when she thought about the child of the famous Tanegashima, it seemed so obvious. Then, to snuff out even the finest traces of doubt, Wakako presented irrefutable proof: the cannon. Kana had seen plenty of quirks before, and it was hard to define, or at least adhere, to any idea of what a “normal” body was in a world where so many people—revered people—were decidedly abnormal. She wondered then whether it was rude of her to stare at the giant, metal artillery cannon extended out of her roommate’s stomach, but she was excited by the idea of getting to see it in action. Not now of course. Wakako was right, a demonstration here would have been…problematic, in the kindest word.
Still, she had questions. Did it hurt? Was it heavy? Did she just…carry cannonballs around with her? It would have made sense, given all the muscle. She tried to think to what she knew about Sanae, but the details were fuzzy, and perhaps Wakako had her own methods anyway. Just because she was Sanae’s daughter didn’t mean she had to do everything the same way.
Or maybe you just can’t understand why someone would want to be like their mom.
"So yeah, uh...how about you?"
“Oh…uhm…” Kana could feel the blood in her cheeks. She’d been paying perfect attention that time, she was just…slow. “I’m from G-goshogawara, in Aomori. It's not...super far from here. I mean, I was born there, but I lived i-in Kagoshima. That's farther, and there's lots of…boats. My, uh…uhm…”
Kana’s jaw twitched, she bit her lip to keep it shut. Her tongue didn’t seem to know how to make the right words, and her throat was being stingy with the air. It was like her body was protesting the idea that she might…what, be honest with someone? No. She was right to be careful.
You’re not being careful, you’re being a coward. And worse, you’re being very, very rude to Wakako.
“I’m sorry…” she said, finally managing to force her mouth open. “Could w-we go inside first? It’s very…ah…people-y, out here.” @Naw
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