Plank Sinatra

Persona - Academic Akrasia

Kimiko looked at the crew of the second bicycle with her head tilted, probably thinking something was slightly odd about Kazou's slow encroachment on Hitomi. It wasn't worth thinking something was odd about Hitomi; that was a statement as tried and true as the laws of gravity. She was a little surprised they didn't decide to have more fun with this and ride like she and Daisuke were, though.

It was like her parents always said, nothing could go wrong for you while your legs were wrapped around the head of a true companion.

With her helmet securely fastened around her mop of hair and heart-shaped face, Kimiko's face took on the ghost of a confident grin and pointed in the vague direction of the detective's office.

"DRU. His name is DRU, and he is the answer to all our prayers," the girl corrected, curling her pointed finger into a larger fist and bringing it down onto Daisuke's head, tugging on the back tufts of his hair insistently. "Hi-yo, Silver-kun. Bring me to my pet. Tonto rides beside us faithfully."

Buffy The Vampire Slayer

"Dana? Am I Dana? Am I dreaming? Snow Queen wants to have a conversation now?"

For a time, Victoria had been shadowed to an almost paranoid degree by her Japanese guardian angel; Dana had been alongside or ahead of the pale girl for the majority of their mile run around the track, and for a time Dana had contented herself with trying the rock wall instead of her normal chin-up routine while trying to eke conversation out of the other young woman. All her efforts, to this point, had failed; it was clear that Victoria was lost in thought, and on such occasions the best thing to do was adopt Dana's preferred strategy of sulking and walking away to do squats.

Said exercise were far more productive than trying to crack open Victoria's shell. If she kept at it, she'd be on pace to squat 2.5x body weight by the end of the semester. That still wouldn't prevent her from needling the other girl as she made her way over to the punching bag, a large canister of cold water in her hand. Irritating her charge seemed like fair recompense for being so cruelly ignored.

Grinning, Dana popped the lid of her Thermos open with her teeth and took a few healthy, refreshing gulps of ice water before dumping a small stream down Victoria's front and along her face.

"What do I think?" the Japanese girl shrugged, setting her drink down on the ground beside the punching bag and adopting her preferred stance. Turn just so, thumbs kept out of the fists...

"Don't care. We're not vampires. She won't be hunting us. Shouldn't be, anyway. If she is, we stop her. If she wants to hunt me? Eheh. Go for it, girl."

Dana started falling into a similar rhythm as Victoria, and for a third of a minute the girls batted the bag back and forth like a pair of kittens obsessed with getting a ball of yarn past each other. After that twenty second sojourn in the conversation, Dana caught the bag and peeked around it at the quiet girl.

"Orrrr maybe Danny's right, and she's okay. Who knows, who cares. Maybe she just...don't know. Doses up. Takes ketamine. Fights vampires. Maybe she needs a gentle walk home. What's her type, you think? Nerd? Football player? Bad boys? Bad girls?"

The grin poking out at Victoria turned downright wicked, and the bag swung back in the white girl's direction after a series of brief punches.

Heroes of Beacon - the Next Chapter

jer, you gotta keep on trucking man



make him proud

;___________;7

@Crimmy

for god and the kingdom, gold stripe........

Heroes of Beacon - the Next Chapter

@Write

"Who are you embarrassed of, your father or me?" It wasn't the way he would have liked to phrase the question, but using 'us' and grouping himself in with Gratia, Beryl, and Luke so soon as Bianca's 'inner circle' just felt like surrendering to a life of misery after only one shot had been fired.

He wouldn't give up after one shot.

He was a son of Atlas, not of Zephyr.

"Doesn't matter to me. I've met a lot of overeager parents today already," Jericho said casually, sipping at his cappuccino and tilting his head to look at the abashed birdbrain across from him. The smile on her face had been waxing and waning since he'd walked in, which was odd. Normally her irrepressible bubbly attitude bordered on the downright air-headed. To see her somewhat downbeat left said quite a lot about the state of her family. Not that he could relate - his family (obviously still being alive, a claim that Bianca had observed with skepticism but not actually treated as the joke it was, the goddamn moron) had always gotten along rather well, and the Mindaro household probably would have left him projectile vomiting and shivering on the ground with a gun between his teeth after a week of their endless hugs and kisses and squeals of joy.

But it turns out that, surprise surprise, Bianca "Things are bad all over, Ponyboy..." Nuit had a troubled home life.

I even miss Speer already.

"It's only one day," Jer continued. "One family day a year, maybe a semester if you're not lucky, multiplied by four years at Beacon. That's four to eight visits, maybe four hours tops, that's still only barely over a day of downtime you have to spend with him before you graduate. That's assuming you try avoiding him over the summers by staying with Gratia, or at some beach resort, or that space hotel Griese Experimental wants to hurl into orbit in the next few years. Then, after graduation, you can call him on his birthday, send him a card or two at holiday time, and wait until he craps out and say something nice at the funeral. Then you don't have to worry about him."

It might have been harsh calculus, but it was hard to want to shelter a girl from someone who could toss her millions of lien for a coffee shop after one speed dial. Hopefully the news of her dad's impending death would bring Bianca some comfort. Life was too short to worry about who you were forced to spend it with - unless that someone was Bianca Nuit, staring at you like you were carrying a pair of handcuffs and an adolescence full of repressed sexual tension for her to exploit.

Granted, she would be half-right in that assumption...but the last thing he needed right now was for her to see his handcuffs.

"Look, Bianca, if there's one thing I learned in my life at Atlas, besides marksmanship, infiltration, proper surveillance, situational awareness, pain management in the field, hacking, driving cars, flying airships, controlled descent without a chute, how to kiss a guy, how to clean, and how to cook, it's that there's nobody who can survive everything forever," Jer offered, trying to be helpful. "If I put five bullets in your dad's head, that rich old bastard would go down for the count. If your dad's bodyguards put five in my dad's head, even a trained specialist like him isn't gonna be shaking it off any time in the next year or so. I learned that there's no reason to be scared of any person, because that person can meet death just as quickly as I can, in the same number of ways that I could. So in the long run, they don't have any God-given advantage over me - or over you. So unless your dad's Semblance is actually being God-given, the worst he can do to you is cancel your Palladium card. And unless that really will kill a spoiled birdbrain like you, you've gotta goddamn relax. You're making my hair uncomfortable."

There. No one could ever say he hadn't been a little nice to Bianca Nuit now. He had given her good advice. That was his obligation as a 'good' person, over and done with.

This cappuccino really filled a hole. His glowing scarlet rune settled down slightly.

"You're welcome."

Heroes of Beacon - the Next Chapter

Boggle!

Heroes of Beacon - the Next Chapter

"Well, my whole family died in a tragic bird Faunus hunting accident, so it's been a little quiet," Jericho replied drily. "It's one of the dozens of reasons I hate you."

Granted, not that Family Day had been atrocious. The Mindaro parents were more acceptable company than Gratia, and their continued gratitude for something as minor as surviving a shopping spree alongside them was as sweet as it was wholly unnecessary. The twin land mines of unwanted affection that were Bianca and Beryl were as predictable yet unwanted as a sunrise was to a goddamn hangover, but there were much harder people to avoid out there. He...

He couldn't complain.

His cappuccino was ready; he heard his name being called in the lax tones of a barista looking to move a coffee off the counter. Jericho went to collect, and returned to take his seat. This time, he sat normally, and at least paid Bianca the courtesy of meeting her eyes for a second. She had an infuriating grin on her porcelain face. He knew he'd been too soft on her. Goddamn it.

Goddamn it.

"So what's up with you?" he asked, loathing himself as he did. "Sitting in a coffeehouse alone on Family Day is even depressing to me. Is there anyone else from the Second Estate that I'm going to have to work not to shoot today?"

Heroes of Beacon - the Next Chapter

@Write The only possible problem i can forsee for getting rid of GMs would if we have new people show interest in joining the RP. I guess we could all nitpick their CS as a group, but part of me can't help but think of how chaotic it may be if we're all trying to decide if there's room or not for them. I like everything else you've said and if you can come up with a solution for the problem I mentioned, or you're just sure I'm crazy and what I said isn't a problem, than I'm okay with it.

@Guess Who

I get your point. Stand by for rebuttal.

I disagree that we don't need a GM.

We need one, with Co's too.

We need a form of leadership for several reasons. Firstly, we need someone to blame when things go wrong settle agruments, have the final say in matters, and run a plot. Yes, I believe that having an overarching plot is important and I'll explain why in a moment. Also, as @Guess Who said, one of the importaint duities of a GM is to approve character sheets. Giving everyone equal option sounds nice in theory, but giving everyone equal power (ie true democracy) doesn't work in practice. History had proved that much. If we put it to vote and tie, or if we have a person or group that stubbornly hold out, we need someone with given authority to put their foot down.

I do believe that a an overarching plot is very important. It gives players the feeling of progression, and something to shake up the IC everynow and then, throwing a wrench in every body's plans. That element of unpredictability will prevent some feelings of the lack of anything important happening, which we have here now, and it can help provide and change players subplots, often for the better. We will need a GM and Co's to decide how this plot progresses. Obviously, players can still put in their input, and even change what will happen through their characters.

@Crimson Raven

This I disagree with.

Really, Beacon is a unique little clusterfuck of a game the likes of which I don't think I've ever seen on Guild. If there's any game that could prosper without a head GM or co-GMs, it would be this one, mainly because like @Write said, there wasn't much that the GMs actually did in the first place. There was no overarching plot, and really, Beacon has never needed one. Every attempt to do it - whether it be creating a villain team, trying to add little in-game world events along with the end of missions, or whatever - has been either ignored or collapsed in on itself because nothing was being done with it. Players just weren't interested. Instead, they flocked to their own little quests during downtime - like the dive for Sapphire's daggers, or a pizza night, or any myriad of events like that. In a game explicitly based on Volume 1, namely the mission and class aspect, there isn't room or a need for there to be anything bigger or more chaotic. Don't underestimate the ability of players to come up with shit to keep them motivated.

If anything, having a GM is what's tied up a lot of this game - the people who are able to keep moving at their own pace and go along the original schedule for family day are doing so just fine. It's the people who wanted to be at the race, for example, who are being held up because a GM isn't around to do anything for them. The mission antagonists who wrapped up their missions last go-around the fastest weren't GMs. I have a lot more respect for Lug than I did, say, a year ago, but he - and honestly, most of the staff - were making decisions that were responsible for a lot of the OOC conflict we had before we all came together and finally sang Kumbaya as a player base. The problem now is that even if we thought we could replace him, who would it be? Those same exact divisions had a habit of separating players into factions, or causing grudges that have only been patched up fairly recently. Hell, we all saw how chaotic it was when we just tried to select a new co-GM back in November. If democracy doesn't work for approving character sheets, how the hell are we gonna universally agree on a new team to run the game?

A GM team in the traditional sense won't work for this game, but neither do we need to have a universal democracy like you're suggesting, Raven. I think the better idea is to let teams handle their own in-house decisions in regards to characters - when to come together and tell someone they're being inactive, for example, with a stringent system in place and a series of mentions in the OOC so that everyone can see that the inactive player is being handled fairly and with due process. By that same token, if the players decide the teammate isn't working out after a certain amount of time, and someone comes along and registers their interest, any team(s) with a gap can view the CS that person puts up, and decide among the rest of their team if it's someone they'd want on the roster. At this point the players we have, even if we're an ornery fucking bunch who doesn't always get along, are mostly comfortable with each other - and especially with their teams, which is why I think that @Prince of Seraphs and @Forsythe were off the mark when they suggested disbanding teams.

If anything, we should cling to the team structure of RWBY and make it a central part of how the game moves forward from here - four-player teams, each team approving what's best for themselves and revoking membership based on inactivity. Then, when class time rolls around, we can select people to handle the challenges @Write suggested the same way we handle contest hosting now, and when missions roll around we can select missions and mission antagonists in largely the same fashion we do now. That way we can keep our own teams moving, invested in things they want to do, and still leave the power in their hands to create things to do that can get other teams involved if they so choose. I think that way, by sticking together with our teams and sort of self-managing ourselves maturely, we can keep our players active with other people we enjoy playing with and avoid a long, protracted flare up over who's taking charge in the OOC.

I love all of you fuckers even more than I hate all of you, but there's no way I would feel comfortable with any one person among us taking charge of Beacon. There's nobody here with the GMing experience, free schedule, and the universal respect to make it happen, and I think that realizing our limitations as a player base and sort of going it our own way as teams IC is an idea with way more merit.

EDIT: SORRY SERAPHS I JUST REMEMBERED IT WAS @LUCIUS CYPHER WHO SUGGESTED DISBANDING TEAMS NOT YOU I LOVE YOU SERAPHS

Heroes of Beacon - the Next Chapter

@Crimmy @Write @Silvan Haven @LokiLeo789

Well, no putting the bullet back in the chamber. The Mindaros had name-dropped him, as he had known they would, and Grat's inscrutable black eyes met the surly amber of Jericho's in a brief moment of searching; cool disdain met only with roiling aggravation. She turned her attention away from him after a second to look upon her parents with the doting eyes of an older daughter, but Jericho's had already drifted away from her to watch the new guy standing in the doorway, sizing each of them up. This time, it was their eyes that met, and he felt none of the spark of interest that he had felt with other Beacon students.

Geni Hung. The new team member.

The Fiordilatte was gone? Another solid lead destined for the process of sublimation, turning to wisps of air in his hand?

God damn it.

This was getting ridiculous.

"It's getting a little crowded in here," he said aloud, more casually. "I'll clear out for the team meeting. I'm going back on the docks to claim my bike, God only knows what tin disease-addled shack the crew here shoved it into..."

He trailed off slightly, grouchily, pushing himself off the wall with one foot. He put a cap on his irritation for the moment he actually saw his bike being molested and patted Valentinian and Severa on the back each softly with one hand.

"I'll see you all at -" Jericho raised his Scroll and waved it with a faintly dismissive eye roll "- coffee."

Maybe by the time they got there the polonium-210 he was going to put in Bianca's coffee would have done the trick. It wouldn't be very effective if you were judging the coffee on taste or presentation, but at least he wouldn't need to deal with a caffeinated Bird. What a sweet thought.

Jericho walked out of the room with a fluid, if hurried, grace, stepping aside for Geni Hung with a curt "'Scuse me, man" on his way out of the dorm and back towards the docks.

---

"Piper. Jericho." It was the third time he had repeated himself to the dockworker. "I don't know my team, I'm a transfer student. Atlas should have sent my paperwork."

"This shouldn't be that hard..." mused the dockworker, flipping through the Beacon roster on his clipboard after finally getting a sense of how badly Jericho just wanted to storm the collection area of the Beacon docks, find his bike and steal it. "Jack Orpheus, Jasmine Banks, Jayden Xiang-Delacroix, Jorie Ngo..."

"You skipped Je-."

"Ahh, here we go!" the dockworker said. "You're buried down here at the bottom in some footnote. Okay, Jericho Piper, Team Flapjack, special request approved by Professor Ozpin." Jericho's head had shot up in alarm. "Your gear's in Bay A4, just walk in and--"

"Walk that back for me. You said my team name?"

"Flap. Jack."

I'm jumping.

The docks are right there. God forgive me, I'm going to jump.

The end of his hair had gone a shade of mortified pale red.

"At Atlas, I was Team HJNS. It's a royal name. Special operations. I didn't come here to be a ğ͐ͬ̔ͣ̈́̍o͊͊ͤ̐͏d̽ͤ͐ͩ҉d͂̉ͫ̽͘͠a̋̈́ͪ̍ͦ̾͞͝҉m̑̒ͮ̾̄̐͘n̵ͤ͛̈́̀̐ pancake mascot."

It was clear that he was less intimidating to the dockworker now with a gang name like Flapjack.

"Kid, do you want to reminisce, or do you want to grab your bike?"

The knuckles on his gloved hand popped, echoing like the crack of a revolver in the morning air.

"Fine. 4A."

"4A."

Jericho began walking past the dockworker brusquely on the way to grab his motorcycle, trying to control his breathing and focus on the impending joy that would come with being on the bike ag--

"Hey, by the way, kid. Welcome to Beacon. It's no cakewalk, but an Atlesian tough guy like you shouldn't be too battered up, huh?"

A wolfish growl built up in Jericho's throat, and he whirled on one foot with his hand already reaching for one of the pistol holsters on his chest. Too late he realized that both of his guns had been stored on his bike to get it through Atlesian customs and into Beacon. This guy would be keeping both halves of his head today.

The hand that had flown so suddenly looking for a firearm curled up into a fist, one finger jutting out to point at the man accusingly.

He said nothing else, and even when he boarded his bike and began easing it towards the Beacon vehicle storage unit, the feeling of the vehicle underneath him didn't even make him crack a smile.

---

Bianca Nuit put down her phone and took a long, healthy sip of her cappuccino when the door flew open, shoved one-handed by a tall, dark-featured young man wearing a frustrated scowl and a girlishly long head of hair that glowed an angry scarlet on one side. He ordered a cappuccino for himself wordlessly before his eyes scanned the coffeehouse's inside. He found Bianca in no time - after all, when there was only one person staring at you with eyes like full moons and a jaw that hung open wide enough to fit a cannon in her maw, you didn't exactly need a goddamn lineup to pick her out of.

Jericho slung one leg over the pulled-out chair Estelle had occupied minutes before and sat down in it with a huff, putting up both legs along the two chairs to his side. He found Bianca out of the corner of his eyes.

"Don't you even look at me."

Heroes of Beacon - the Next Chapter

I want to hear @Lugubrious speak for himself. He's poured years into the game, and even my contrarian argumentative ass isn't gonna write him off unless he says he's gone.

But even if he's not interested any more, I say this game has a strong enough playerbase and bonds between teams that we could turn this fame into a communist utopia of an RP and run it as a group. It'd take some ironing out, but I think it's preferable to a reboot or letting the game die outright.

Star Wars: Empire Asunder

I'm interested.