Plank Sinatra — Roleplayer Guild

Dana Harada

Location: Driving to Olympus Academy
Interacting With: The wrong correct side of the road

Do the D.A.N.C.E., 1 2 3 4 5
Stick to the B.E.A.T., get ready to ignite
You are such a P.Y.T, catching all the light
Just easy as A.B.C., that's how we make it right

Dana would be glad to be in the safety of a school, with one parking lot and no other pesky drivers to inhibit her driving experience. Growing up in metropolitan Kobe, of course there was the blaring of car horns to be expected. But America...in America, it was not just the vehicles that honked, their drivers joined the cacophony! Their curses! Their foreign curses! She had a feeling that even if she grew to understand and utilize the basics one day, road rage technology in this place would continue to innovate along with the vehicles that caused it. 

Not that the open road couldn't be soothing when there was no one traversing it. As the trip from the airport in Salt Lake City to Olympus trudged on, Dana found herself needing to correct onto the right side of the road (something else she'd never understand; even the act of trying to pass someone on the left side of the road made her chest constrict) less and less while the roads grew more and more remote. There was a peace about the drive after a while, and once she'd managed to adjust her seat and turned on her DDR soundtracks, she found long stretches of tranquility broken by a few near mishaps. Even those, the daughter of Ares had learned to take in stride - "kamiiiiii-kazeeeeee" out a car window had the best effect in this country - until she achieved a quiet, almost meditative drive.

Meditation that found itself broken time and again with her dance mix.

Do the D.A.N.C.E., 1 2 3 4 5
Stick to the B.E.A.T., get ready to ignite
You are such a P.Y.T, catching all the light
Just easy as A.B.C., that's how we make it right

Dana Harada started to hum to herself, one hand confidently gripping 1 o'clock on the wheel while her other had occasionally counted off '1-2-3-4-5' out the window.

This was nice.

About one Justice, three Vocaloids, and half a Duran Duran later, Dana had parked her car between a Mazda Miata and a battered truck that sported not one, not two, not even three, but four car radios, one arranged at each corner of the vehicle's bed...as if lying in wait. That's...odd. They were so old, too...they had to serve some form of purpose for the car's owner. Dana had a feeling it would be beyond her, though.

Looking down, she smoothed out the light grey blouse she'd worn into the car until it stretched slightly lower down her pair of leggings. She normally wouldn't bother looking like she had just crawled out of casual Friday, but dressing up in a car could have easily been a recipe for discomfort, so she had decided to spend her first day in a slightly more utilitarian fashion. And speaking of utilitarian...this landscape! The campus was so clean, a small network of sidewalks cut off from each other like strands in a cobweb by the occasional bench and vast expanses of cleanly cut grass, so fresh that she could almost smell it through the car. There was officially nothing that could restrict her mewvement!

Instantly, she resolved to tell her father at the earliest convenience that this was a good idea after all.

Dana stepped out of the BMW and closed the door softly behind her. She would need to inquire about the living situation before dark, so she had time to set up her Guitar Hero paraphernalia, her dance pad, perhaps inquire about the basic standard of furniture...

And where people trained.

And where people ate.

Underneath her slim blouse, a familiar, husky growl rang in her ears.

Perhaps she would tackle her questions in reverse order, then.

Name: Slate Benjamin Negasi
Parents: Lauren Negasi, Amaranth Desire (name of birth father depends on Lauren's mood)
Age: 20
Gender: Male
Race: Human
Weapon: None. Slate's Semblance provides him with roughly five weapons in any combat scenario, and depending on the environment, potentially dozens. Instead of a weapon, instead, upon completion of Signal Academy at age 17, he received a Dust tattoo on each wrist, leading roughly a quarter of the way up his forearm. Each is in the shape of a golden crown, with long, wide points that appear more like flames than the head of a crown. Each is laced with a substantial amount of Lightning dust.

Semblance: Universal Battery- Slate has the ability to supercharge inanimate objects in his hands with some of his own Aura. This ability has made the need for a traditional dual-function weapon superfluous when he can get his hands on a cell phone and turn it into a hand grenade, or fight off an opponent with a bottle that has all the density of a cinderblock. He can also channel the Dust laced into his tattoos through whatever he charges up, creating a potent ranged game to his offensive repertoire. 

Personality: One would expect someone who grew up in Team Bastille's shadow to display overt disregard for authority and a zest for life that projects outwardly towards everyone around him. Slate Negasi is a more subdued personality, forceful but quiet. Never one with the temperament or desire to become a full time Huntsman, and with no desire to die in a field against creatures that he had no desire to learn about, he finds working with or against humans and Faunus a far more motivating pursuit. His level personality and capabilities as a fighter and actor lend themselves well to that type of investigation more than the wild antics of a Huntsman, and after his departure from Beacon Academy he found himself a budding undercover role that puts his talents to better use than killing Grimm ever could. 

He is also a bit more mercenary in his tendencies than a mainstream Huntsman would be; he's not the type to go around checking bodies to make sure everyone he was fighting was merely out cold. Even those in dire need of medical attention at a bust can find themselves neglected in favor of seeing the actual objective through to completion.

Despite his differences in philosophy and his up-and-down relationship with his rowdy mother, Slate does not particularly clash with Huntsmen or Huntresses when forced to work with them. In particular, surprisingly enough, on a handful of occasions he's even been able to work effectively with Benjamin Lloyd, his mother's old team leader from Beacon, and the Huntsman's cool head in a fight and eye for weaponry has made an impact on the adaptable style of the young Negasi.

Appearance: Slate very much takes after his mother in appearance, though his skin tone is slightly lighter than hers and his almond-shaped eyes have incorporated sapphire into Lauren's emerald, diluting into a distant teal color that betrays nothing. He stands at six-foot-two with a muscular build, muscles outlined and honed by regular workout. The same can be said for his reflexes; though not garish, his walk is quick and confident, often with both thumbs hooked through the belt loops of a pair of jeans. All in all, he would probably appear as more of an athlete than law enforcement, were it not for the large, immaculately cared for undercut on his head, recently grown out after a protracted period of buzzcuts. The hair has clearly been sprayed several different colors over the years, but since his departure from Beacon, it has been left a natural black at the base, with a pomaded top that is dyed a dark crimson in honor of his mother's teammate.

Slate's grins used to come often and brightly, but as an adult he uses the expression merely as another tool of the trade; even before he became used to faking emotion or camaraderie with people, the only people who could draw a genuine smile out of him were Lauren or the other members of Team Bastille. Despite himself and his best efforts to control his face, these smiles are always easy to catch onto. They appear begrudging, and he tends to look down when he casts them to disguise his habit of biting his lip - a trait inherited from his mother.

Biography: Born six months after Team BASL's graduation from Beacon Academy, Slate was bereft of the structureless, nomadic childhood that led to his mother becoming a car thief before she could even check a rear view mirror. Instead, the young Negasi was raised by a playful mother who did her best to ensure that her career as a Huntress would protect her son from a life of petty crime until a lucky parole. The caveat to that chance, however, was that Slate was born with a premature and painful awareness that there could one day be a mission that his mother, and his other three parental figures, didn't come back from in one piece. Contrary to a kid who would be inspired to join his mother in the field as soon as possible, the foreboding that Slate grew up into was slowly honed into a polite antipathy towards the Huntress profession, and though he enrolled in Signal Academy rather than any non-combat school, slowly more and more of the infamous Negasi behavioral problems began to crop up alongside immaculate grades, and by the time he left Signal at 17, Lauren finally sat down with her son and let him know in no uncertain terms that Beacon wasn't the kind of place he could be unsure about. You were in or you weren't.

After two semesters, Slate decided he wasn't in, and promptly dropped out of the academy. This didn't have much of a negative effect on Lauren - who had never intended to be a Huntress in the first place herself - but after her son failed to check in with her after a short duration of time, she began to try and look for him in the limited time between Bastille's missions. For ten months, her search for her son proved fruitless, but in the end it was Ben Lloyd who sighted Slate at a mercenary outpost in the deserts of Vacuo, providing muscle for a known anti-Faunus terrorist in the kingdom. When Ben moved in to apprehend, Slate caught sight of the veteran Huntsman and radioed in the location of his mother's teammate. A fight ensued, one which slowed Ben down for the better part of an hour as he tried to progress into the outpost. When he arrived at last, he found the rest of the terrorist's inner circle incapacitated or dead and Slate casually holding the man in a Dust-imbued headlock. When cornered, the young Negasi looked up at his maybe-birth-father and deadpanned, "Hello, Ben. I promise I left my badge on my other alias."

It turned out that, desperate for an outlet to help people that could function without the Huntsmen and the cowboy antics they represented, Slate had taken a job in a new deep-cover unit in Vale inspired by the famed Atlesian Specialists, and was performing jobs that required more long-term information gathering and milking suspects for what they were worth before bringing them in. Though outwardly Lauren seemed comfortable with her son's choice - and though, from what she managed to glean with her Huntress credentials, he performed his job admirably - nonetheless Slate soon began to find himself hampered. Over the next eighteen months, he discovered to his chagrin, more and more of his jobs had been drawing to an early arrest due to the interference of a certain four-woman unit out of Beacon Academy.

...Okay, so maybe some of the jokes his mother had taught him ended up sticking.

(soundtrack)

As fearsome as all manner of Grimm could be, there was still little as terrifying for a Huntress as the human element. When you started to wake up while tied to a chair, as Lorena Negasi found herself doing right now, with the knowledge that the person who normally left you in that position was also tied up with her back to yours, the natural response was to fire off an “oh crap” under your breath.

The second was to remember that you were still a Huntress, and take note of your surroundings.

They were sitting in a circular platform, roped off in velvet and raised above the left side of the bar. From here, the entire club that had once been Junior’s  could be seen pulsing with energy – speakers, lights, and bodies all pulsed and shook like arteries to some great heart. Junior’s club was old, having outlived even its previous owner, and the heart was by now black with corruption and old rot, but you would never know it from the lights and sounds of the night…was it night, now? It had been night when the two Huntresses arrived, but by now, there was no telling. The blood trickling down Lauren’s cheek from her head wound felt fresh, so maybe they hadn’t been gone so long, after all. If Ben and Sangue were still keeping perimeter watch…

Her eyes fell to those who qualified as VIPs in the club these days. There were only two tonight, the owners themselves – the Malachite twins, no older than Lauren and Amy but much worse the wear from aging. One had blue makeup caked over every hint of the crow’s feet that plagued her eyes, but all the look did was bring attention to it. The other’s neck was starting to grow spotty with age underneath her black choker. The rest were employees – there was a DJ with his back to the proceedings altogether, playing some banger with a heavy drum and a bass line that would have made Lauren peel off her jacket in delight two decades ago. Those on the couch with the Malachites were of a much more perceptive sword, and each had their eyes on the two Huntresses –  all handsome dressed in tight black t-shirts and jeans, all sitting up alert in their chairs; they looked as though they were ready to pounce…or perhaps ready for Lauren to pounce. Her eyes danced along the eye candy sitting beside the twin in the red dress, watching her stonily with one fist clenched, and she groaned softly to herself.

“Talk about a midlife crisis, bruh…” 

The words woke up her girl behind her.

“Lauren?” Amy asked, trying to turn her head as much as would be allowed. They had both been bound in one of two chairs, tied together at the backs with so many links of chain that the fence companies in Vale would probably be declaring bankruptcy protection within the year. “Next time it’s your turn to have a plan, we’re going to skip you and go back to the slacker. Fair warning.”

“Baaabe,” Lauren protested. “Tons of people walk through the front door of a nightclub. We’ve done it a thousand times.”

“Yeah…when we were twenty-five, not forty-five.” Amy smirked and rested her head against the back of Lauren’s, watching the people as Negasi herself had done a few minutes ago. She smirked to herself. “Babe.”

Lauren grinned, too.

The Malachites looked to each other – no doubt wondering why exactly their captives seemed so flirty during their moment of captivity – and one nodded to the other, as if acknowledging that she got to move in on their quarry first. Twins were the worst; they made for body doubles, revenge fodder, a backup leader for a criminal organization…you couldn’t do worse than having to arrest twins. When the acknowledged Malachite – the one with the ice blue makeup – stood up, the dark young man that Lauren had her eyes on stood too, walking over to the DJ and asking him quietly for something. Enhancing her senses would have driven Amaranth insane in the club, but she managed to catch a hint of “—sure that’s the best idea right now?”

“Trust me,” the young enforcer said, slipping a 100-lien note into the sound tech’s hand. “Tonight’s a night to be drunk. Now get outt—“

The rest of the sentence was cut off by the makeup-caked Malachite, whose accent made both women want to flinch. If all twins were a pain in the ass, then twins with Vacuan accents even more barbarous than Lauren’s made for the archetypical case.

“Uhhh, like—“ Amy rolled her eyes “— who are you ladies? What are you doing herrrre?”

“Melanieeeeee.” It was Lauren’s turn to roll her eyes and stifle another groan. “I think they’re Huntressesssss.”

How did the security people not shoot themselves dealing with this?

“Is that true?” Melanieeeee asked, turning back to the two members of Bastille. “Are you ladies Huntresses?”

Quiet reigned for a second before Amy sighed, cleared her throat, and muttered…

“Chatsworth.”

Lauren’s eyes widened for a second before she started to howl with laughter at the use of the couple's safe word. The twins were sharing clearly baffled glances with each other and turned back to the laughing Negasi, as if weighing their options. Then Melanie drew her fist back and slammed it hard into the side of Lauren’s head, so hard it made even the veteran Huntress’ neck jerk. Amy’s laugh died in her throat, replaced by a low, angry squawk, but Lauren still chuckled weakly and ran her tongue along the side of her mouth.

“Chats…worth,” she echoed, sucking on the inside of a cheek that would surely bruise before morning. Melanie went to swing again, but this time her fist landed with such a soft thud that Lauren wondered if her boob had been punched by mistake. When she rolled her head to the side, she saw that the young security guard from earlier had positioned himself quietly between Melanie and the two Huntresses. Amy’s eye was drawn to him too, and try as she might she couldn’t suppress a little smile. Miltia must have noticed.

“Melanieeeee…”

The soft, playful voice of the security guard drowned out Malachite’s twin sister, and he made a gesture with what Lauren thought was some sort of weapon –  when she blinked and regained focus in her eyesight, Negasi saw that it was actually a heavy bottle of champagne, complete with sparkler, and that the young man was holding one just like it. Melanie’s fist was still buried in his pectoral.

“Ow,” the guard had drawled, looking down. “And here I was going to offer you the first sip. Like a gentleman.”

“Meeeeeeelaniiiiiiiiiiie…”

Lauren’s fists clenched at her sides.

“Well, like…could you go and be a gentleman on the couch, Slate? We’re, like, really in the middle of something killerrrr.”

“Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeelannnnnnnniiiiiiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeee…”

“What!?” the makeup-caked twin finally snapped at her twin sister, twirling around on one thigh-high boot and stomping it impatiently. “What what WHAT!, Miltia!?”

“Whyyy are they smiling at our security guard?” the red-clad Malachite asked, pointing at Lauren. “And why does he, like, look like the girl you just clobbered?”

Everyone’s eyes drifted to the muscular man that Melanie had called Slate, then to Lauren, then back to Slate again. Recognition dawned in set of eyes after set of eyes. Melanie’s fist bounced slightly on Slate Negasi’s chest as he gave a shrug of his broad shoulders.

“Vale Police. Nobody move a muscle.” Slate Negasi looked around the VIP lounge before him and added, “Oh. And the champagne’s here.”

Melanie Malachite moved a muscle. Just the one, though.

In the time it took for her arm to even hint that it meant to draw back for another jab, the bottle of champagne in Slate’s hand had taken on a blue glow that was deep as it was eerie. The younger Negasi put his knee into Melanie’s diaphragm and pushed her back, winded, a few steps – long enough to raise both bottles of champagne, sparklers facing away from him, and channel a mild glow from his wrist tattoos directly into the eyes of both twins. Miltia fell with a little shriek, unconscious, but Melanie remained reeling on her feet. Slate turned to her and brought the bottle down like a mallet onto her jawbone, so hard that even Lauren thought that his Semblance-augmented bottle had taken on a leak. 

“Don’t hit my mother,” the BASL member could have sworn she’d heard, along with the pffft of someone spitting, but by then the guards had moved to box her son in and it was hard to tell one sound from another. She began shouting encouragement – “KEEP YOUR GUARD UP! DON’T BE AFRAID TO TAKE A HIT! REMEMBER WHAT I TOLD YOU ABOUT HUGGY WEATHER!” – but it was clear that, once again, Lauren’s son didn’t truly need her at all. Slate moved like death dressed in knucklehead chic – hitting another guard in the gut, same as Melanie, and then bringing one bottle down on his head. The glow from around them disappeared as he brought the same bottle rearing backwards into the chest of the enforcer to his right; it shattered, spilling champagne everywhere as the man dropped onto a chestful of broken glass, and in the time it took Lauren to lift her feet from the mess her son had plunged the jagged neck of the bottle into the soft neck of a gun-toting DJ. 

“You two…are idiots.” Slate dropped the bottle, and the body with it, and strode over to the DJ’s booth with the grace of a very worn out panther to turn the volume in the booth up to maximum. With any luck, any resulting noise from the reunion would be…somewhat muffled, and Lauren Negasi could be successfully counteracted in time to get everyone out. Satisfied with the momentary reprieve, Slate turend and moved to the chairs, fiddling with the chains, snapping links where necessary and unwrapping them where not. Slate’s captive mother beamed.

“Hey, kiddo.”

“Hi, Slate.” Amy smirked. “Dig the hair.”

“Ooh! Ooh! Did he change his hair!? Lemme see!” Lauren wriggled as she found her dexterity returning to her and twisted her upper body to look at her son’s hair – a well-kept undercut, as professional as such haircuts got, with a distinctly bloody hue to the top of the ‘do. She let out a squeak.

“It’s just like Amy’s!” she said unnecessarily, pushing chains off her with a rattle and bounding over to give her son a hug. Amy, for her part, gave him a clap on the shoulder with each hand and squeezed briefly – Desire had never been one for group hugs – and picked up a bike chain to begin binding Miltia Malachite’s hands. “So what are you doing here? This is a bit of a step down from stopping terrorists in Vacuo, or rooting out contaminated wine in Mistral, or…”

“Mom,” Slate interrupted, "I get that you’re happy to see me, and you…aren’t…totally unwelcome this time. But neither of you brought weapons, we’re still on the other side of the club from the exit, and we’re wrapping the biggest information brokers in Vale in bike chains. We can talk later.”

“You’re so seriooooous. We’ve been through worse than this. Did I ever tell you about the car wash mission, Slate?" Lauren asked, casually placing a foot on Melanie's back and pressing down on it while she pulled on the bike chain. The information broker moaned softly in pain, but otherwise did not stir.

"I don't need to hear about a car wash mission."

"Desire, was it you I brought on the car wash mission?"

"No. You wanted Ben to go."

“Yeah, but Ben didn’t go. He plead illness.”

“Probably scared of how slutty you looked in your ‘masterful disguise.’”

“Uhhhh, I got the job done and got out before anyone even knew that I wasn’t a real model. And dancers are sluttier than car wash girls.”

Slate groaned.

“Everyone knew you weren’t a real model because you were straddling the rear view mirror like it was a Clydesdale.” Amy smirked and rolled her eyes. “Your technique still needed a little work back then. Besides, everyone knows that car wash girls are even sluttier than dancers."

Lauren's nostrils flared.

"That is so not true. Car wash girls perform the same admirable job for all makes and models, to rich and to poor, and they do so without complaint no matter how little they're given to work with! Plus we have to spin signs!"

"Aside from spinning signs," Amaranth smirked, "every word of that could have been a metaphor for stripping. And now you're making me wonder why nobody's ever thought to spin signs at a topless bar."

This is going to be the last conversation I hear before I die.

“Mom. Other mom.” Slate broke off the back of one of the two chairs and then broke it in half again, snapping off pieces of wood until the pieces of wood resembled a makeshift, poverty version of Artorius and Lawnslot. Lauren grinned at the sight of them, even as her son snarled with barely disguised frustration, “Shut up. We’ll talk once we’re sure we’ll survive charging out of this club.”

“Alright! Over breakfast!”

…

“I don’t eat breakfast.”

…

…

“Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, baby.”

“Mom—“

“—Lauren—“

“If he’s not eating, his muscles are going to—“

“—Mom—”

“Going to—“

“Oh, god damn it.”

“Reeeeeeeeeee!”

“She’s attracting guards, Slate.”

“I know she’s attracting guards.”

Slate’s tattoos glowed, and he snarled again.

The shit this family gets up to.

Plank Sinatra Member

the reaper won't come when you're ready for him

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