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Post by chrohn on Jun 22, 2016 14:02:46 GMT -6
November 9th
Far, far away from the recent events in the heart of Rift yet still within the confines of the city, in the Agricultural District to be precise, lay the old house covered in snow. Aside from the temporary addition of the white colored roof, the house was a deep, worn blue. It was adorned with a a sizable front porch that housed a rocking chair, railing and a (now dead) hanging garden. The door leading into the house was a wooden door that Chrohn had painted burgundy. To most, it was a house easily glanced over due to the size of it, on top of how it didn't exactly stand out. It was far from a large house, only having a single bedroom, two bathrooms, and a decently sized kitchen (for the size of the house) that melded into the fairly large living room that served more as an all-purpose room that housed a fire-place. Altogether, the house was about five or six-hundred square feet.
It was about mid-day, snow had stopped falling but the clouds in the frigid air still looked ready to burst and it was cold enough to keep the snow from melting. It was in this not-so-eerie silence that one could easily hear the young man chugging at away at his chores in his usual attire, with the only difference being that he was wearing all-terrain boots instead of his usual sneakers. In the background, a muffled radio could be heard. Chrohn had put it on earlier to make morning chore time less of a bore and and simply forgot to turn it off.
"Aaaaah, cold, cold, cold, cold, co-old," Chrohn cried as he rushed a load of fire wood indoors to the fireplace. His hands were freezing and his gloves could only hold back so much of the cold climate and snow before doing more harm than good as they started to get wet. After chucking some wood into the fire place to warm up the house, he plopped down on the couch after tossing off his gloves, knocking his hoverboard over as he did so, and started to rub his hands together in an attempt to generate some heat via friction.
As he lay across the couch, Chrohn closed his eyes and focused on the radio. Usually he had it turned to some music station, but after all of the distant commotion that was rather uncharacteristic of the local town, the young man was glad he put on the news for once.
It was sad, and to be perfectly honest, Chrohn had no idea what was really going on, but a whole hell of a lot of people had died the night before because of an invasion. He scratched his head as he muttered, "Why would people invade other people's space? I thought this was a time of peace, sans the grimm." The blonde sat up, shivering and letting out a small cough as he did so," regardless of what I thought, I guess I can count myself lucky for being out sick from work yesterday." After this bit of rambling to himself, he mostly continued in silence as he warmed himself up and dried off his gloves.
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Post by Lavender Rose on Jun 22, 2016 18:09:32 GMT -6
Lavender looked at her scroll before looking back at the cabin she was standing in front of. Was this really were an ex Vytal student was, sitting in the middle of nowhere while a war had ended just a few miles away? Figures, and now she needed as much new blood as possible, people, students, and hunters who could keep the world safe, from people who seek its destruction and the Grimm which were sure to follow such a bloodbath. So now she stood outside this young mans cabin, hoping to bring him back to Vytal to become one of the world's protectors. Well, hope was not that accurate. If she really needed to drag him to the academy herself, she could always just inject him with a bit of venom and just carry the resultant dead weight. Lavender had Skorpio on her right hip, and Sting was on her right hand. The large vial of venom Sting dipped into was on her hip just underneath the 3 inch needle of Skorpio. Her stinger was extended and curled up and over her shoulder, and she was in her standard outfit of a navy blue blouse and combat skirt, with long heeled boots on her feet. She walked up to the door and, instead of knocking, simply displaced herself through the door. In an instant the scorpion faunus disappeared from her location in front of the door and appeared on the other side of it. Looking around the house and finding her eyes on Chron she smiled. "Chron Van Strauss, am I right?" Lavender stood at the door, stinger curling around her shoulder and seperately colored eyes smiling coyly. "You're a tough man to find, but I have a request for you. To start with, be polite to a guest and get me a glass of coffee would you?" Her words dripped with false sweetness, her nickname of Poison well known not only for her use of the stuff, but also for her venomous words. She strode over to an empty chair and sat down, smiling sweetly at the man as her stinger rested in her lap, her purple venom dripping off the point. Truth be told, he probably recognized her. Lavender has been the combat teacher for six years, which means that she had taught Chron last year, and Miss Rose wasn't known for going easy on her students.
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Post by chrohn on Jun 22, 2016 18:44:19 GMT -6
It was silent, save for the crackling of the flames before him, and then it wasn't. Suddenly, there was someone talking to him. No knock on the door, no call through the window. Hell, he didn't even know someone was coming for him, or why they were here. While he wouldn't like to admit it, Chrohn did jump a little when the woman called out to him. The voice, upon matching it with the face of it's owner was definitely familiar. Chrohn could easily admit that he knew the woman, and care not much for her, but her name escaped him. She also got his name wrong, but when a near stranger pops into your home, a proper name was the last of Chrohn's worries.
He rose with a grunted,"sure", as he stretched out, cracking his back as he made his way to the kitchen for the kettle, strainer, water to boil and the coffee in question. Chrohn was silent for the most part as he dug through the cabinets to find everything, returning a few moments later with everything in tow, saying," Not really sure why I was so hard to find. 'Wasn't really trying to hide from anyone. It just happens to be that the best places to stargaze are far out from everywhere else." With that, he took to a squat before the fireplace with it's raging fire and put the kettle full of water in to heat.
"So, seeing as you are getting gunky stuff on my chair, uh....crap. Where was I going with that....." He paused, scratching his head before stoking the fire a bit,"...Anyways, moving on! I'd like to say my only two questions at the moment are: How do you take your coffee, for when the water is done boiling, and what is this request that you have for me?" Chrohn trailed off, staring at his front door. She didn't break the door down, he would've heard that. The woman didn't walk through the door, as he had it broken into him to lock doors behind him. So how did she get in, he thought. With this, he shrugged. Chrohn had never met anyone who could phase through walls, or heard of any that existed so it was outside of his realm of what was feasibly possible to do, so it was a possibility he had never have considered. "So, uh, yeah, for your coffee, cream? sugar? both? none?"
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Post by Lavender Rose on Jun 22, 2016 23:01:34 GMT -6
Lavander smiled at the boy, lifting her swinging her hand under her stinger to intercept the poison. After that she lifted the point slightly up to prevent it from dripping more of the dangerous liquid. "I take my coffee black, don't particularly care for cream or sugar that much. As for your other question, I'm here to bring you back to Vytal." At this her smile turned slightly more sincere. That was all she really wanted out of this meeting, though the ability to see how one of her students was making it on his own. Even though he should know her name, she figured it might be worth while to introduce herself anyway, though purely for dramatic effect. "Professor Lavender Rose, combat instructor. The world's growing more dangerous, Legion's launched a preemptive invasion of Rift, all in all the world needs more hunters, and you were a promising student." Lavender waited a moment, letting the compliment wash through the room before continuing to speak. She might be cold and not particularly care about the feelings of others, but that didn't mean she couldn't understand them. Lavender knew perfectly well how to stroke somebody's ego and when to do it. "You would become one hell of a hunter, so why waste your time gathering firewood out here in a cabin in the agricultural district? That's just a waste of talent, and a pitiful one at that. Had you stayed at the academy and trained, learned, you may have been able to fight here in this siege. Instead you wasted your time here in this cabin, complaining about the cold when you should be complaining about a particularly difficult fight you just had." The tone of her voice very rapidly shifted into berating, trying to pull a rise out of the boy purely for the sake of doing it. She tapped her finger on his chair, the pointed ring going over the edge and making small clicks upon impact. Lavender was known for many things: not being particularly forgiving; being extremely blunt and manipulative; and being one hell of a fighter. Among all the other various things she's known for, patience was certainly not one of them, so the wait was especially tiring to her.
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Post by chrohn on Jun 24, 2016 14:21:48 GMT -6
"Black? Alright," he said, with a bit of doubt in his voice. Personally, Chrohn had never really known anyone to drink straight coffee. To him, from the one time he actually tried it, he'd thought it tasted like dirt water at best. It didn't matter what "brew" it was, Dirt water would always be dirt water. So if Chrohn actually took to the aid of coffee, it was usually loaded down with creamers and sugar.
As she continued, it was the word "Vytal" that the soon-to-be gambler caught onto. Scratching his head, Chrohn chuckled weakly,"Oh yeah, that was a thing in my life. I must've been too caught up in my jobs and keeping the house in good condition." And he continued to listen as she spoke, breaking only to fix the coffee properly as the kettle started screaming. With this, he shuffled back towards the kitchen, using his gloves as oven mitts to hold the kettle while transferring it, to pour it through a fairly new filtering system that was filled with fresh coffee grains. And while he waited on the filtering system to work it's course and run the water through the grains into the adjustable container, he returned his attention to the woman in his house, chuckling a bit when she finished, but just before he went on to explain more in-depth,"I'm glad you thought so, but from what I saw from my peers, I wasn't too terribly outstanding. I personally thought I was middling at best."
As the instructor was talking with growing intensity, Chrohn started glancing upwards. Not towards anything in particular, he just had a tendency to stare into space whenever he started thinking. If I had stayed in the academy, I definitely would've had the skills, but... Chrohn was going somewhere with this thought, but that train left the station before he boarded. "I wouldn't necessarily say it's a waste of talent, I mean yeah I could definitely do more with hunting, but it's kinda hard to go stargazing at Vytal. There's too much light pollution, whereas here has almost no light pollution; and it's quiet and people don't bother me here." With the filter done, he poured the coffee into a mug and started towards the instructor.
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Post by Lavender Rose on Jun 27, 2016 2:29:54 GMT -6
Lavender rolled her eyes as Chrohn cast doubt upon his own abilities. Reaching out with her left hand to grab the cub of coffee, she lifted her stinger up and dripped a few drops of her poison into the mug. Pulling up her right hand she began stirring it with Sting, the pointed tip of the ring making small scraping noises whenever it hit the bottom. The poison made it quite unsafe for anyone but Lavender or someone with similar immunities to drink, though it added a unique tang to it that Lavender loved. Taking a sip, she smiled, her eyes closing for a moment as she let the taste calm her. Reopening her eyes, she remembered what she was here for and gestured her right hand towards the ex-student. Her semblance activated, and Skorpio vanished from her hip, the massive needle reappearing in his hand instantaneously. At this point, she now had to take it back by force or have it given back, as she couldn't just take an item from someone else with her semblance. Looking him straight in the eyes, she spoke in a determined voice as her mismatched eyes narrowed slightly. "Hit me with everything you've got. Don't worry about hurting me, if you manage to pull that off with a weapon you aren't trained with at your age then you should just skip Vytal all together and go straight into hunting. Let me see just how rusty you've gotten in your year away." Lavender stood, walked over to a nearby wall and leaned against it, continuing to sip her coffee. "That chair was comfortable, I'd hate to have you put a hole in it." She calmly took another drink from her coffee cup, bringing the glass down and holding it in her left hand. Her right was free, the pointed ring quite obvious upon her index finger, but she didn't enter any sort of fighting stance. She simply stood there, coffee in one hand and leaning against the wall of this cabin, as she waited for Chrohn to strike.
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Post by chrohn on Jun 27, 2016 8:16:00 GMT -6
He simply stood there as the teacher started on her coffee, stirring it with her stinger. The thought of this sent goosebumps over Chrohn's skin. If she used her drippy stinger in her coffee, what else did she use it in..., this thought was what was currently at the front of the gap year student's mind before her rapier suddenly popped into his hand. This caused the blonde to let out of small squeak of surprise as he stumbled back a few steps, and ended up on his ass, still trying not to fumble with the sword too much as he did so.
What the fuck was happening? Why is she throwing weapons at me?! How the hell did she do that? These were just a few of the thoughts that ran through Chrohn's head as he fell and looked back to the scorpion. "If I can't remember what I was using beforehand at Vytal, what makes you think that a random weapon would work?" he called out in a tone that was mixed between surprise and frustration. With this, he took a moment to catch his breath, regain his composure, and then Chrohn rose with the rapier still in hand. He stood there for a moment with eyes closed as he started to think once more. I have no idea how to use this at all. I mean, it seems light enough to swing around with ease, but I am positive swinging haphazardly would end up doing more harm than good, and not knowing how to use this properly won't be of any help. I just really wanna curl up and cry, and complain about the cold.
He took a deep breath, and opened his eyes once more. He seemed to be calm on the outside, but on the inside he was still terrified. He took up something that might have qualified as a stance, but only for a moment before dropping it. His mind blanked once more, and another thought popped in: How am I supposed to start a 'casual' engagement. I mean, yeah. She said give it my all, but...what if I don't know what my all is? With this, he shrugged and took up the mere semblance of a stance once more before he attempted to rush her. Attempted being the keyword, as the hoverboard that had fallen earlier ended up tripping him as he ran towards the teacher. That was definitely painful, but Chrohn wasn't sure what hurt more, his knee and parts of his upper body, or his pride.
He rose coughing, and followed up with taking on his stance with the sword once more before charging Lavender once more, this time avoiding the hoverboard. To start, he thrust low, aiming towards her legs, and followed up with another thrust towards her center. Both were terribly sloppy, and most likely easy to avoid.
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Post by Lavender Rose on Jun 28, 2016 8:00:41 GMT -6
Lavender, suffice it to say, was unimpressed. As Chrohn charged her and tripped over his hoverboard, she put a hand to her forehead and sighed. Really? I remember this kid being better than this, seems the year away really dulled his fighting instinct. Lavender rolled her eyes as he got up and resumed his attack, dropping the hand from her forehead and once more letting it rest leisurely at her side. She leaned down and set her coffee cup on a nearby stool, still looking not at all prepared for combat. Despite how terrible his strikes were, she had to give him credit where it was do. At least he knew enough about weaponry to try to stick her with the pointy end, instead of swinging it like a sword. With the low thrust her stinger whipped around and knocked the strike casually aside, the rest of her body retaining is nonchalant stance. When he followed it up with a strike aimed for the center of her chest, she reached up with her right hand, curling Sting around the dull edges of the weapon as her left hand came up and knocked the hilt from his hands. She released the blade as soon as she did that, sending the weapon flying through the air. Lavender readied herself to catch it with her left hand as she darted in and pressed sting against Chrohn's neck. Her red stinger curled over her shoulder and hovered just in front of his face, and as she caught Skorpio she brought it around to lightly press against his side. None of the weapons had enough pressure to cause harm, and her stinger wasn't in contact to inject her venom, but the sheer act was enough.
She glared at the boy, her eyes narrowing darkly as she pulled her weapons away and stepped back. "You're sloppy, if this were a real fight you'd be paralyzed on the ground and at my mercy right now, not to mention the hole that would've been in your side from Skorpio." She hefted the needle in gesture before slipping it back onto her hip. She reached over and retrieved her coffee cup, taking another drink. "You're form is terrible, you have no spatial awareness, you can't improvise, and worst of all you lack conviction in your attacks. Quit trying to worry about how successful your attack will be and attack. You can't hold back, and you can't second guess yourself. All of these issues could easily be fixed though, simply by you returning to Vytal, and despite them you do have potential. Just, try not to trip next time." Lavender walked back to the chair she was siting in previously and resumed doing so, being careful not to spill any of the coffee. "Listen kid, you have potential, all you have to do is try for it. Shoot for the stars you so enjoy looking at, you might just hit the moon. After all, the world could always use more heroes." Lavender's harsh face had lost most of its bite while she spoke, and she ended with a small smile upon her face. She did want Chrohn to return to Vytal, to make his way to becoming a great hunter. One of her jobs as combat instructor was to make sure her students were prepared for the world, and she couldn't do that if she went easy on them. So despite her harsh nature and judging attitude, she had them to force her students to be better, to get stronger.
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Post by chrohn on Jun 28, 2016 9:07:05 GMT -6
As his attacks were knocked aside, he felt nothing. Not anger or upset at how worthless his attempts were. When we caught the attack, that hurt his pride a little bit, aside from the slight bit of jarring that came from the sudden stop. With this, she'd disarmed him and pinned him down, with the stinger close to his neck. This was when he started to feel fear. Partially from how quickly everything had happened, but also from what was starting to happen before he was luckily able to repress it. Before his repression, the temperature had started dropping rapidly, paired with his own chest tightening up, making his breathing a bit difficult, along with a nebula starting its way around him. It was all of the rapid movement with how quickly the woman took him on that caused him to temporarily lose control before simply leaving the wall and floor around him with a light coat of frosting. For the most part, Chrohn had a sizable amount of control over his abilities, but being scared nigh shitless usually made that control moot.
He was regaining his breath as the woman started berating him on how bad of a performance he had put up, but his mind was elsewhere. Oh crap, I gotta find the towel. I don't need this shit melting and warping the wood and such. He looked around and found one that had been used earlier to clean up the tracked in snow tossed in the corner by the front door. As he rushed towards it, and came back to the wall with it in tow, listening all the while (kind of), he started working on rubbing out the frost.
"I mean, it's not that I haven't been wanting to return back to Vytal, I just got too caught up with work n'such, which surprisingly is not a violent method of living."
The frost was coming up, albeit slowly, and now that someone came back to remind him of school, Chrohn guessed it was time to go back.
"So, are we leaving today? Tomorrow? I mean, I don't have any pets or animals to take care of so I can pretty much leave whenever. Just let me grab clothes and my hoverboard and I'll be good to go." With this, Chrohn started scratching his head. I feel like I'm missing something. "Oh yeah, can you, or whoever's in charge of doing said task, call my job and let them know I'm going back to school so I need to go from full time to part time?"
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Post by Lavender Rose on Jul 7, 2016 9:02:57 GMT -6
Lavender shivered as the cold billowed from the boy, stepping away quickly before sitting down and berating him. When he asked when they would be leaving she smiled and rose, nodding curtly and strolling to the door. "The airship that brought me has been told to wait until I return before departing. We can leave whenever you are ready." His request caused her to laugh openly, and once it died down a simple shrug followed. "Of course, we'll be sure to inform your work that you are busy training to protect the world. Don't worry, we don't want you to lose a means of income." Lavender opened the door and stepped out, lightly setting her coffee cup on the closest flat surface, after draining the last of the slightly purple tinted liquid. Turning around as soon as she stepped out, she sent another chilling glare straight at Chrohn. Her voice was cold and harsh as she spoke, her face showing no levity at all. "I have one requirement, one that some of my students didn't follow. If you decide to fight others or hunt Grimm on your free time, go ahead. I won't stop you. The only thing you have to do, is win. Do be careful though, many of my students fought in the siege of Rift, and not all of them made it back to the academy. The world is a dangerous place, and picking fights on your free time could very well lead to your death, should you fail to follow my requirement to win." Despite the fact that some would consider the words-and the request-as humorous, Lavender spoke them with a dark and serious tone, containing not a hint of a joking manner. She told all her students this, in fact if he recalled his year he would've remembered it from his first class with her. Every year she told her students this, and every year some of them failed to do as she asked and died a gruesome death. It was her job to keep these kids alive, and if the only way to do it was make them terrified of losing, or rather what she would do to them if they lost, she would.
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