daybreakacademy | Oh, we could be the stars, falling from the sky [OPEN]

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Oh, we could be the stars, falling from the sky [OPEN]

Who: Masaki and literally anyone
When: Early September, wibbly-wobbly time
Where: Aube 1st floor, Aube roof, Training hall
What: Masaki arrives on campus, does a bit of stalking, buys way too much cake, and practices her archery like a good hunter.
Warnings: None, I think! Will add headings if needed.

A. Arrival... 1 & 2
[1]
A young woman in her mid-twenties with short reddish-brown hair stands in the hallway of Aube's first floor. She's arrived at Daybreak with nothing more than a large rolling suitcase being tugged along behind her. All of her clothes and worldly possessions are in there--at least the ones that she really wanted to bring. It's not much, but she doesn't look put out by that. She's bright and cheerful as the morning sun, greeting everyone she comes across with an enthusiastic "Good morning!" whether they live there or not. She might not have asked to come here, but she's going to make the best of it no matter what.

[2]
Arriving at her assigned room, Msaki finds that someone has clearly already been here. Aside from the standard issue furnishing, there's a few large boxes deposited in the middle of the floor. Curiously, Masaki approaches them and picks the biggest one to open. The box yields an ungodly amount of packing peanuts and styrofoam and... the breastplate of a suit of armor. Her expression quickly changes to mortified, and she shoves the antique looking thing back into the box and closes it.

She is absolutely not wearing that. Nope, no way, no how.

...But neither can she just dump it. Her clan would kill her. So her only choice is to start pushing all the boxes into the corner of the room--and maybe stacking them rather precariously. Maybe she'll make a tower and put fourteen potted plants on top of it and never touch it again.

B. Stakeout
It's late. Some nebulous time in the evening. The sun has gone down, but Masaki is up on the roof with a jacket, a pair of binoculars, and a bag of chips. It's a little chilly up here when the peak of summer has started to ebb away, but she's a woman on a mission... And that mission has her binoculars pointed towards... the Lumiere dorm? What the heck is she watching with those? And why? It's definitely a little weird.

C. Cake, Cake, Cake
It should be a crime to visit France and not try all the desserts and pastries that the country has to offer. That's the kind of thing that interpol should be cracking down on, honestly. Which is why Masaki is being a good citizen... and returning to Aube's first floor commons area with a bag of Soliel goodies. There's an assortment of tiny cakes that she starts pulling out and arranging in rows on the counter. Is she planning on sharing these? Because there sure is a lot of them. More than would be healthy for one person to eat... But for the moment, she seems to be just staring at all of them with the utmost deliberation.

And then she takes her phone out and starts taking pictures.

D. Nose to the Grindstone
Masaki is at a school, which means she should probably keep up with her lessons--the kind of lessons that the Quincy would be interested in hearing about. It only takes a little trial and error to figure out where the training hall it--a little but of getting lost in the Citadel, but it's no big deal. She's an adult that's very capable of asking for directions, and mostly capable of following them.

Once she's sure that she's in the right place, Masaki gets to work. There's a few targets on the far wall that she's aiming at, and she faces those with a sort of seriousness that's been absent for most of her arrival at Daybreak. She goes over the basics. Posture. Stance. There's a bright glow as a longbow made of radiance forms in her hand. She holds it up, putting her other hand to the empty string and drawing back--as an arrow of that same radiance forms with the motion. Deep breath in--and exhale. Her fingers release the arrow and the bolt of radiance flies with alarming speed at the targets, making a small explosion against the far wall.

She stops only a moment to appraise the result, and then fixes to fire another shot at a different target.

[I'll match whichever format you want to use, prose or brackets!]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

He's already there, actually taking the time to practice. It doesn't bring the joy of guitar or anything like that but if there's one thing that could be said about him it's that he's got the discipline to practice any skill he thinks he needs to. And with all that happens here, he definitely needs to.

He greets the lady with a smile and a nod, but doesn't otherwise interrupt, reaching back for another arrow and firing it off. It's only after a second glance that he notices she hasn't got a weapon at all. His brow goes up and he starts to ask when that bow of radiance forms and his skin starts to burn.

He yelps and stumbles back, his own bow dropping.

She greets the man when he greets her, polite as she ever is. The training room looks big enough for multiple people, so she doesn't think to mind him too much. He's here to practice archery; she's here to practice archery... Maybe they can swap tips or stories later?

It's the yelp that brings her up short, startling out of her focus at that cry of pain. She doesn't think to dismiss the bow until she sees his skin burning in the light of it. It's gone in a heartbeat, and she holds up both hands as if to show that the radiance is gone.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry--" she starts, saying the words quickly and repeatedly. There's a frantic concern in her voice, and her brows are knit together with worry. "That wasn't supposed to happen-- Are you okay?!"

Edited 2019-09-03 03:46 (UTC)

"Ay, no, it's okay," He manages between a hiss. "I'm okay."

It wasn't like it was a full-on blast, just a bit of peripheral from something smaller. He straightens out and looks over his arm. Just a burn, nothing melted through or anything horrific. He hopes his face isn't too bad-- only discoloration around where his markings would be on the one side.

"It's not you, it's... it's me. I'm not supposed to be around Radiance. I'm sorry. Let me just get out of your way." He just needs to grab his bow...

Oh, that looks... bad. Bad in a way that she feels very, very guilty about. Especially when he says that he's not supposed to be around radiance. She didn't have any idea that was something she'd have to be careful about... Especially here.

"No--it's okay! I can practice later," she responds quickly. "I didn't even think to check if there were any... uh... Radiance averse... people around? I will next time, I promise." Not that it does him much good right now, but boy does she stumble over what to call him. Would it be rude to ask if he's some kind of zombie? Probably. She already feels bad enough.

"Does healing magic hurt too? I can try to fix it, but I don't want to hurt you more."

"No, no, there's really not that many, ah, with that particular problem, we watch for ourselves." Two fussing people worried about another's worry. It's way too late at night for "later" to be an option for her for that matter.

"I don't actually know. I've never been healed by someone with Radiance." Always to Ekkehardt. Or in lieu of that, recently, to Hieke. His hands go up. "But it's okay! I can fix this no problem. It just might be a little, er, spooky? I think I've thrown you off enough for now. I'm fine. Trust me, I've handled way worse."

She's taking his dubious status fairly well besides the worry.

Masaki blinks at that. Spooky? Her thoughts go right back to zombies--or maybe ghosts? He's not a lich, he's too nice to be a lich. Maybe a vampire? Aren't those supposed to look more handsome?

"Oh, I'm okay with spooky! I live and breathe spooky. So if you're, like, a zombie or something? No problem! You can do whatever you need to do."

She'll just be here. Watching.

He makes a face immediately.

"Ugh, no, I'm not a zombie! Those things are gross and they don't have any functioning mind or soul, why do people keep-- no, okay, whatever, sure. Just... gotta make sure no one's around."

He looks, behind him and all around, just to be sure it's really them alone. Then he breathes deep. His markings light up, then the rest of him. It's a swirl of shimmering dust, going up in gold and leaving bones which cease their glow once it's over.

"It'll take me a minute. I have to pull on my power to shift but I'll be good as new...ly dead in a moment."

Edited 2019-09-03 09:13 (UTC)

Whatever Masaki was expecting, she looks surprised when he lights up in gold dust and dissolves into a skeleton. Magic is often flashy and over-the-top, but the beauty in the shimmering dust catches her by surprise. Especially coming from someone that's undead. They don't typically do visually pleasing... Usually. There's always exceptions.

"Wow..." There's a beat of silence. A moment of awe. "That was pretty. I was kinda expecting it to be something gross." It's hard to tell from her voice if that's a positive or a negative. Either way, she doesn't look upset to be talking to a skeleton now.

"So... Other people can see you, right? It's not just me?" He did say he had to make sure no one was around, but maybe that was just a kindness for her? So she didn't presumably run screaming from an empty room.

Awe is something he's not used to. He's seen fear. He's seen worse. He's seen people simply go along with it, used to magic already. Something about it makes him smile. Even as she pulls a softer laugh from him. He shakes his head.

"Not just you, no. I'm not a spirit. At least, not in that sense. This body is real and my soul is sticking with it until I'm done." Which he'll be putting off to the best of his ability. "It's not all pretty all the time but, despite the blight part, my kind's power is mostly good, I think. It doesn't come from bad intention. But some people don't like Skeletons. Thought I'd make sure." He looks at his own hands, turning them over as he sometimes does when the novelty of it strikes him again. He was lucky. In all his bad luck, he was lucky.

Another thought occurs that has him looking back. "Do you usually have that problem? Seeing things?"

"Yeah, since I was little. It was harder back then--telling the living from the dead. But at least if you're a kid and you tell someone about seeing people that they can't see, they just think you have an imaginary friend!" She laughs a little, mostly at herself. "They only start to worry when you tell them that your invisible friend is dead." At least her parents were kind enough not to scold her for that slip-up. It was brushed off as a phase and forgotten, and she knew better than to mention it around non-Quincies again.

"But it's really cool that I know a skeleton man now! Like a tiny gashadokuro, but a lot nicer. Do you have a name, or should I call you Skeleton-san?"

There's a soft noise of surprise when she admits to seeing the dead, his face going softer with sympathy. That sounds terribly difficult. He feels a pang again for every kid that's had to deal with this word's rules. But she's not a kid anymore.

"Ahah, it's really easier for me if people don't know I'm dead. Not everyone reacts so kindly. I'm Héctor. Héctor Rivera, and I have no idea what a gashadokuro is." He, unthinkingly, holds out a hand to shake.

"For that matter, if you have any tips on telling the living and the dead apart, I'd love to know because I'm terrible at it and I've been getting a lot of weird looks since I got back to earth."

"I'm Kurosaki Masaki! And a gashadokuro is a big skeleton spirit that likes to bite the heads off of people and drink their blood." She delivers this information rather cheerfully for how gruesome the answer is, and moves on without missing a beat.

There's a half second where she doesn't immediately react to the offered hand, but then she's reaching out to grasp it without so much as a flinch at the bones. It's taken her a little bit to get used to these Western customs, but she's almost a natural now. Her English and German are pretty good, too.

"I don't know that I can help much with your living and dead problem," she laughs a little in response. "You sort of get the hang of it after a while? The dead have a way of seeming displaced. They either look like they don't belong or they act confused or disoriented. They don't know what day or year it is, or they seem really insistent on one thing or another. That's why I didn't realize you were, uh... like this! You seemed really put together." For a dead person. As a skeleton, he looks pretty beat up, but that's another thing entirely.

Edited 2019-09-04 02:03 (UTC)

"N-nice to meet you," he gets out despite being jarred entirely by that horrific mental image. He gives her hand a shake, more nervous than she is.

He laughs. Put together. That is the opposite of anything he is.

"You didn't see me a year ago. I'm pretty sure I hit every single one of those checkpoints back then," He says with a wry smile. "But it's good to know I'm doing better at passing. Things have been going better. I've figured out the date and year and found a bunch of people just as strange as me." A joke. "And I've managed to find what I was looking for. But I can't really blame ghosts for being as stuck. It's harder when there's no one to really interact with."

He feels bad for those guys. But he feels bad for most kinds of the dead.

Despite his nervousness, Masaki seems more than pleased with his jokes. She grins widely and brightly, especially when he mentions meeting a bunch of people just as strange as him. That sounds really nice. She wants to meet those people, too.

"It is hard. I feel bad for them, too. I always want to do something to help them move on, so they can be at peace, but... That's not usually something I can help with, you know?" Except in trying to protect them. Keep them safe from daemons that would corrupt or eat them. "I'm not really cut out for ghost therapy."

Or so she says. She's probably better at it than she's willing to admit.

"Ay, that's the trouble isn't it? We're not all ready to move on. If we were, we wouldn't be here." And every call to move on wouldn't feel like being told to move out.

"Peace can mean so many things. But I'm sure they appreciate someone to talk to at all. A rare commodity in the ghost community." And every other group. He smiles to match hers.

Then he steps back a moment, breathing deep to draw power again. In moments, his previous dissolving reverses and he reforms. The burns are gone. It's just a sunken face and tired eyes to hint the truth now.

Edited 2019-09-04 03:41 (UTC)

"Yeah, that's true. It must be lonely with no one able to see and talk to you." In fact, that sounds pretty awful to her. She wouldn't like to be a ghost like that. Maybe she'll just try to talk to ghosts more if she sees them. That might be nice.

She watches as he shifts back, trying not to stare and generally failing. She's never seen something like that before. "Is it an illusion that you're doing? If I touch you, am I going to feel bones? Or is that actual skin?"

"Very," He says. He's gathered that from those he's met, from experience, from people who weren't even ghosts and times he just felt like one. Loneliness was universal.

He doesn't mind her staring. In fact, once reformed, he offers a knowing smile.

"It's real," He confirms. "I feel everything in each, so, no illusions." Which maybe makes it grosser but so it goes. "My blight is pretty rare. And being able to maintain this is something I had to practice. But it's all real. Would be a pretty sad illusion if I couldn't look a little more lively."

"An illusion that's not an illusion, you mean." She nitpicks at his wording, but it's all in good fun. He seems like the kind of guy that can take a little ribbing.

But aside from that, she looks to his bow and then back to him. "You were practicing archery, too, right? Do you want any help with that? I'm really good with normal bows, too. No radiance, I promise!"

He snorts and gives her a wry look. But as she predicts, he doesn't argue the point. He blinks in surprise then.

"Oh! Yeah, sure. I believe you." She doesn't seem like the sort who would want to fry him upon after her reaction the first time. He holds his bow out for her to see-- a scrapped together inelegant thing, covered in runes to make it lighter and useable.

"It's not a normal bow though. I can't build muscle or anything like that. I had someone build me this so I could use it anyway. I used to-- ha-- I would kind of just take my arm off and fire it with suspenders. My aim got pretty good like that, but it's not entirely the same as a real bow and arrow, obviously. It's hard not to worry about hitting the wrong thing." Or a person.

She takes a moment to look the bow over. It's... Well, it's not the level of craftsmanship and rune work that the Quincy clan commissions, but it's clearly well made. Someone put a lot of thought into this. She looks a little impressed.

And then he mentions shooting his arm like and arrow, and she looks both excited and dismayed. "What?! That sounds so cool! I should have asked about that before you changed back!"

She actually looks impressed, which pleases him. Peter worked so hard on that. He misses the boy-- though it's much safer this way with him back home-- and this remains the best reminder.

He grins then. "Hang on, hang on."

A third full shift would be much, and would leave him exposed out here but a partial could work. He lets his power light, focusing the energy around his arm, and it dissolves Fingers go to bone and the one sleeve is looser than it was a second ago. He pushes the sleeve back and pulls. The arm comes off just like that. Still grinning, he shoves aside his jacket to show his suspenders. Old fashioned, sure, but since he learned this trick in the Outlands it's become too useful for him to just discard them. Plus, it keeps his clothing together in a pinch with sudden shifts. He positions his arm with his remaining hand, pulling back. His stance really isn't bad at all. He's evidently done this a lot. And then he fires.

There is arm goes, flung across the range. As it soars, his hand opens, just in time to grasp the target's edge. A slight swing for momentum and it flips up to land atop of it all and wave back at her.

He's too good to her. Masaki barely knows him, and she's already sure of that much. Even though he's already gone through the effort to change back, he still expends the energy to show her his trick. She couldn't be more grateful.

Or more delighted.

Her eyes light up at the way he just pops his arm off like it's no big deal. And then the thing with the suspenders? Classic. And his form is so good, she wants to compliment him right then and there, but she's too enraptured with watching this display.

She steps back to give him some room, her eyes fixes on him and his arm arrow. When he fires, she follows the trajectory of the arm all the way to the target. It grabs on, doing it's little flip, and her grin only grows wider.

All at once, she's clapping enthusiastically, turning that grin back at Héctor. "That was so amazing! And so good! Your form was great, and your arm made such a good arrow!" She laughs a little at how silly that sounds. "How long did you practice to get it right?"

She encourages him, really. So rarely does he get to show off his favorite tricks these days. She breaks into applause and his grin grows even wider. Both he and his arm perform a bow respectively before he limps over to retrieve the detached limb. He spins it in his hand and jams it back into its socket, moving it a bit to make sure it's set right before he works his power to make himself whole again.

"Thank you!" he says, laughing too. He hobbles back and once again picks up his dropped bow.

"I'm not sure actually. It was hard to mark time in the Outlands. I noticed mis primos and I could come apart but it still took a bit of force until more time passed. Once my bones started loosening up, I tried separating them on purpose, seeing what I could control. My Tío one time wanted me to give him a hand, so I threw my arm at him for a joke." He laughs at the memory. And the aftermath of it. "One day during an attack on our group I just popped it off and shot it like an arrow. And it helped! So after that, I started practicing as regularly as I did taking myself apart or playing the guitar. It's only gotten me into trouble once, but it gave the time that was needed."

He finishes with a flourish that tells Masaki all she needs to know about his willingness to perform. She's going to remember that for the future. If she wants something with a bit of flair, this is clearly the guy to talk to.

The idea of just tossing your arm at someone for a joke sounds wild. She can't stop smiling. "That's so resourceful--and I bet that makes for a lot of fun practical jokes." There's something in her voice that tips a little more mischievous. She might already be thinking about ways that could be used for less altruistic means... Nothing harmful, of course! But not necessarily helpful, either.

"Have you ever tried anything like that? Tapping on things or making distracting noises? Or using it change things around behind someone's back while you're talking to them?"

It's fun, seeing someone so delighted by his tales and antics. He nods-- he likes to think he's resourceful, yes. Then he grins wider. Ah, the jokes. She is a fun one, isn't she? She's also given herself away. He'll be keeping an eye on this one.

He laughs, "Tragically, not as much as I'd like," He admits. "Keeping a low profile doesn't make for easing pranking with skeletonisms." He shakes his head and tuts. But then straightens, beaming.

"I've snuck into the kitchens when they were locked up though. And a few other places. My head comes off as well as anything else so I could watch concerts over fences or toss myself through a window. But you do make some very good points." He strokes his chin, considering them.

D - for Dat Actual Tag

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