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Heroes of Beacon - the Next Chapter

@Silvan Haven, @Crimmy, @HereComesTheSnow

I watched a tanned woman with an accent straight out of Mistral’s pearly gates walk up to Luke handing him what looked to be some kind of paper.

I won’t lie, especially since getting this new start. I was a little jealous. But all in all how mad could one really be? Luke got what I can only assume to be a great reward for an excellent job well done. I was too happy to give a damn at the moment and honestly, it felt great.

Another powerful flap of my wings and I was once again levitating, the muscle memory coming back to me of flapping every once in a while and using my semblance to repel me from the ground. It took some doing but all in all I was pretty sure of myself. I couldn’t wait to show everyone my new wings, they may have even trumped my old ones.

As it turns out Luke wasn’t only a magical healing machine, his blood did what nearly ten talented handmaiden’s could do for my feathers. God did that ever pay off. I made a mental note to take a picture on my scroll of my wings for later. I wanted to remember this moment for the rest of my life.

I couldn’t help myself after all though. I found my eyes wandering over to Luke’s hand. A fancy white envelope.

I looked around the room. Four people. If I had to, I could make a run for the envelope and escape.

huh.

I never realized how terrible of a person I was, or at least how I sounded. See, it's just that I'm a very curious girl.

I suppose that’s just one of life’s funny coincidences really. Just a way to poke you on the forehead and say ‘hey, look at that fancy envelope. You know, I think I know some girl who just got her wings back, and I know just how into fancy envelopes she is. That sure is funny, huh?’

Yes life. It is funny. But I wasn’t nearly uneducated enough to straight up ask about the enevelope. God no. I had more tact than that.

“Wow, fancy envelope. What's inside?”

…

I got lost in the moment of my wings that’s all!

Heroes of Beacon - the Next Chapter

Glad to put an end on that chapter. Stay tuned for some much happier Bianca for at least a long while.

Heroes of Beacon - the Next Chapter

@Silvan Haven, @Crimmy, @HereComesTheSnow

Do I feel that?

Oh I feel it.

Maybe it was a little fuzzy at first. Perhaps I hadn’t acutely pinpointed where it was coming from. But I dared not move or say a thing.

No, not until Luke had spilled his blood on my second wing.

I immediately took the intravenous out of my wrist and pushed it away. Standing up I felt my legs grow unsteady once more, for a fifth time today. But with a mighty flap of my wings, I steadied myself. I stretched them, it felt as though they needed it. The feathers sprouting forth from my wings pushed the bandages from my glorious wings. I flapped them once more, sending small papers and hospital supplies off of desks, scattering many small things, like my doubts.

I turned to Luke, scrambling to raise my gown. Truly, I felt like a princess once more.

I embraced Luke, knowing that he alone gave me everything I had lost once more back. It wasn’t a hug I was going to let him get out of too easily. Besides if Gratia saw me crying again, god knows what she’d say. I didn't say anything to him. Even though I wanted to say everything it felt like any amount of words would only serve to highlight how much I really wanted to say. But even with that conclusion having been made as I silently sobbed into his jacket, feeling how tired he was from the mission he had just ran through I felt I owed him something.

"Thank you Luke. I owe you my life."

My wings were outstretched to their limits, all feeling to them restored, every glorious plume returned to me, scrubbed from Vitoria’s grasp.

I don’t need support, nor do I need more time. Now I was ready for my life to take action nonce more. It was now that I felt I could fully become myself again.

I let go of Luke and walked calmly over Gratia, putting a hand on her shoulder.

”You can rest now Gratia, I’m sorry to have used you for support as long as I did. Thank you.”

I was finally back. What outfit would I wear for my return party? So many potential choices.

So many that would complement my wings.

I finally walked over to Beryl and gave her a heartfelt hug. ”I’m finally back, thank you so much Beryl.”

With another flap of my wings and a flexing of my semblance I was once more levitating in the air as I had grown so comfortable doing over the years. I felt like it was my first day in VGNB once more. Flying through all of Beacon.

I was back. Bianca Nuit.

“The Phoenix of Beacon.” I said aloud, albeit in a cheeky voice.

I found my humour today too it seemed.

Heroes of Beacon - the Next Chapter

@Silvan Haven, @Crimmy, @HereComesTheSnow

Disregarding the strangeness of the situation I watched carefully as Luke pinpricked his own hand. I watched as it healed itself.

I could see my feathers now.

Without another word on my end I turned around and lowered my hospital gown in order for Luke to be able to see the full extent of the damage. From the stem of the wings down to every last feather. The damage was terribly extensive. My gown still covered my chest, not that Luke could see it as I was turned away from him, but everything other than my wings were covered. Typically with this level of exposure, Gratia would say something, Beryl would tell me to get dressed, or cover me, I’d blush at least.

But nothing was heard other than the ceiling fan. It’s cold calculated cycling. It was tense.

I couldn’t wait much longer. 95% success rate.

Something like that can’t help but make you feel like the five percent. Would the five percent have survived the Dodici? Would the 95% have died in that office building? Was the 95% the percentage of people who could one day hope to become hunters? Or was that once more the five percent? Increasingly in my life I’ve felt like the five percent. Whether that be in wealth, friends, opportunities, But at the end of the day I had one thing I could hold onto still.

I was absolutely nothing special. I was a Faunus in a world of Faunus, an owl in a family of owls. I couldn’t find a date even with an application. I couldn’t get out unscathed from a mission that could aggressively be graded as B-ranking and I wasn’t even able to make myself stand properly anymore.

Therefore. I would not be the exception. I would be the normalcy and I would get to fly once more. There was nothing else that could be said on the topic.

I would fly.

"Get it done."

Heroes of Beacon - the Next Chapter

@Silvan Haven, @Crimmy, @HereComesTheSnow

What was that?

Not fear, nor anguish. It was something else in Luke’s eyes. I looked deeply into them and once he returned my gaze after staring at his thumb, I saw it clearly.

I felt a shooting pain in my back, where my wings rested as I stood up from the gurney and stood face to face with Luke.

“What do you mean?”

He probably just likes you.

No. This wasn’t that. I can see it in his eyes, it’s there right now! There’s no abject fear of breaking me, there’s hope. It’s hope and there’s nothing that’s going to stop me from grasping it.

I put my hands on Luke’s shoulders in order to steady myself. Carefully I steady my feet as they rest on the ground. I stare at Luke and it doesn’t even waver, not for a second.

S“I’ll do it.”

I don’t know what it is yet. It doesn’t matter what it is.

S“Tell me what I have to do and it’ll be done.” I felt my legs buckle, but I shot my hand out towards my IV stand. It moved drastically due to it being on wheels but this time I caught myself and didn’t feel the cold tile on my side once more.

I pushed myself to stand tall. Taller even than Luke, taller than Beryl, taller than Gratia and most certainly taller than I had been standing before. I was not going to let this chance at rising once more go by. Luke knew it too, by the look in his eyes. They were steady, as were mine.

It was time.

Bianca Nuit would fly once more and there was not a god damned thing in this world that would stop me from doing so.

Vitoria Dodici, my father, not even myself.

Finally managing to stand back on Luke’s level I felt a tear trickle down my left cheek and swiftly approaching was a second on my right. But I didn’t even pretend to care. I simply stood there in front of Luke awaiting instruction on what would have to be done in order to regain my wings. I felt my bottom lip quiver, but I steadied it. There was not a thing in this world that could slow me down now.

I fucking saw it in Luke’s eyes. And it was going to be mine.

"Let's do it now." I couldn't be more impatient. But now was not the time for courtesy.

Heroes of Beacon - the Next Chapter

@harinezumikouken

In the interest of Shiro's longevity.

Avoid Bianca for the harem. Mainly avoid Gratia but to that end avoid Bianca.

Heroes of Beacon - the Next Chapter

@Silvan Haven, @Crimmy, @HereComesTheSnow

”You’re…”

Wings.

He sees them.

What’s left of them.

What is left of them?

Shut up, he doesn’t care about that kind of thing.

How do you know?

He’s staring.

He is not.

Wouldn’t you?

You’ve insulted people for less than the disaster you are now.

"Bianca, right?

”Um, yeah Bianca Nuit. Former member of VGNB.

Former huh?

Tough break.

Shut.

Up.
“I’ve been told that I might be able to join a team, I guess. I’m not really in the… Right shape.

Right shape. That’s a joke.

You’re hardly even classifiable as a shape. You’re a mess who made her team risk their life and her own because she couldn’t hold her own in a fight.

“Doctor’s say I’ve got a long road ahead of me. At least seven to nine years of recovery and physio-therapy. But maybe one day I’ll join a team.”

Why won’t you just admit it?

Quit rambling and stop wasting his time.

You’ll never be anything. Ever. This was your last chance.

”But you know, I think that I might just get in there after all. What’s the point of staying cooped up in here while everyone else does their best to save the world while I waste away in this hospital room?

There isn’t a point. Not one that I can see. So it’s not what I’m going to do. I’ll just have to learn how to fight without my….

I’ll have to work around my…

Wings.

I’ll have to figure out a method of fighting that doesn’t involve my wings.”

My thought process was revitalizingly silent. There was no other thoughts, no doubts. Just silence. It was a refreshing silence.

By the time I had reveled in it long enough I realized I had left Luke out to dry, he and the others were looking at me waiting for something. It was the same look I got from the nurses, the same look Estelle gave me on my way in, Napoli gave me that look, even Vega when she saw what Bianca had picked up off the floor in the office.

But it wasn’t just one look, rather there were two, three, maybe even five looks interlaid within one another that created this complex emotion that everyone seemed to thrust upon me. It first started with Gratia. When a pair of black-clad arms wrapped gently around me, she pulled me into an embrace with her soft wool turtleneck, I could feel it against my clammy skin.

”You really are a fucking birdbrain, aren’t you, Bianca?”

Guilt, remorse, sadness, anger, hatred, fear, anguish. Not many could recognize such a vast range of emotion within Gratia’s sullen gaze, but I did. Perhaps it was because in the act of taking one life she felt more empathetic than ever. For it had felt she had ended not one but two people that day.

Yet here she was. Still holding on to some invisible hope.

But hold on she would.

“I’m sorry, you didn’t come here to visit me, I shouldn’t be taking you away from whomever should be so lucky to borrow your time today. Have a good day Luke.”

Heroes of Beacon - the Next Chapter

Excitement increases.

Heroes of Beacon - the Next Chapter

subtle excitement for Bianca to join JCBL

Heroes of Beacon - the Next Chapter

@Silvan Haven, @HereComesTheSnow, @Crimmy

I shifted in my seat as the scent of Gratia’s peaked interest in something was aroused. I glanced up, straining and holding my side, which was a favourite of Vittoria’s, what she saw however was an antenna. But, it wasn’t steel. No, rather, it was made of hair. How peculiar. It seemed to just barely twitch.

“Oh my.”

Bianca said silently under her breath. No wonder Gratia was so impressed. With such a specimen how could you not be? Perhaps it functioned somewhat similarly to my wings.

.
.
.

“Hi Luke.”

He can’t see me from where he is, his view is obscured by Gratia and Beryl. Though I can see him, just his face however. Probably for the best.

If he saw me like this that would be embarrassing. Although, I suppose this is the rest of my life. This constant visage of tiredness, my broken wings, disappointingly slim figure. It’s what I’ve been dealt. Gratia would tell me to play that hand. But it makes you think it might be worth folding.

“I heard your mission was rather difficult. Hopefully everyone made it out okay?”

They must’ve truly been out of my league. Word on the street is that they fought a Grimm so huge that it took all eight of them to kill it. Yet here I was, a single feathered bird who had been run through the streets of Mistral after fighting just one family. At what point does a hunter stop being a hunter?

At which point are they hunted?

These are my new questions.

Fuck. This had to change.