Kapitel 86: Empathy
"So, what happened? We got to where Jaune was but you guys were all gone" Yang asked Ruby, who had just helped seat Arthur down on one of the free benches of the airship which was now filled with all the first year students ready to return to Beacon.
Ruby looked to Yang, mouth open rady to say something but closed it unsure as to what to say, her arms soon hanging limply as she bent over slightly "A lot, we got to where Jaune and he-qho-shall-not-be-named were where we watched Jaune kill an Ursa, but when we were about to leave we noticed Arthur was missing, Pyrrha found some tracks, we followed them, heard a loud BOOM! Ran there, saw Arthur riding a giant centipede like a bull, he went flying, the centipede was tackled by a tiger, Arthur began shooting lasers from his arm" she said, her arms flailing around to add some expression to her words.
"We got there started helping with attacking it, but it was really hard nothing seemed to hurt it. Then Arthur stabbed himself with a white dust crystal his arm went ZING! And started glowing white and then Feeeewwwwww" she held her hands as if she was holding a flamethrower, "He started shooting fire!" Ruby bounced excited, while in the background Nora perked up and said "Hans?".
"Then the grimm was like Screee! Sqwaaaa! Shrrrrr! And it began to disintegrate in a really bright fire, like blaaa…" she began to act as if she were dying like a grimm, petals beginning to fall from her arms as she quickly moved around to simulate the effect of the grimm disintegrating.
Yang along with Blake and the rest of team JNPR stared at her wide eyes in complete confusion, except Nora whose eyes were sparkling, "That, is, so COOL!" she screamed bouncing up and down.
"I know!" Ruby agreed, "Though… we did get a little nervous when the tiger walked up to Arthur, luckily it didn't tear his face off and him for lunch" she added, "There'd be no more tiger if that happened" she began to cackle menacingly as she spoke to herself, a ominously dark atmosphere around her, causing everyone to awkwardly laugh. "But get this! The tiger, could talk! It was so weird, it felt like someone was whispering in my ear the entire time, and it was really weird when you didn't see her lips moving at all, its like she just spoke with her mind, tel-tele-telekenisis I think it's called" she said pinching her chin unsure as to if she was right or not.
"Telepathy" Arthur fixed for her, "Telekenisis is lifting stuff with your mind. Pyrrha's polarity can be sloted into except it only affects magnetic metals, while telekinesis embodies everything, living or not." He explained to her, a smile on his face at Ruby's general naivety.
"What he said" she quickly piggybacked, "Then things got really heated, Weiss got angry, Arthur did something to the tiger grimm it said weird things that confuse me and walked away into the forest" she finished her little 'explanation' that was really more a summary than anything else.
"Your sister is quite… unique?" Pyrrha whispered to Yang, a smile on her face at Ruby's eccentricity.
"That's what makes her so lovable, wouldn't you say?" Yang smirked, "But seriously, did that all happen? I'd ask Weiss but she been giving Arthur, you and Rubes the stink eye since we got into the ship" her voice turned serious and slightly scared when she felt Weiss glare fall onto her.
"Yes, it was a strange thing really, the grimm from what we could tell singled Arthur out specifically, it was more than powerful enough to put pressure on us all if it simply ambushed us, but it instead opted to essentially abduct Arthur" Pyrrha said.
"Huh, even grimm have the hots for him" Yang joked getting an annoyed look from Arthur, "I'm kidding! I'm kidding!" she surrendered.
"Did, someone say tiger grimm?" Tigre asked, popping up next to Ruby out of nowhere causing her as well as everyone else to jump at the sudden new member to their conversation.
"Where did…" Blake muttered her bow and nose twitching having not noticed anything to indicate the appearance of Tigre.
"What?" Ruby automatically asked having not processed her question.
"I heard something about a tiger grimm" Tigre pointed to her ears which flicked slightly when she did, "Was it Byakko!? Was she here!? Please tell me she was here!" Tigre began to rapidly shake Ruby who had now gained a crown of spinning stars around her head.
"Tigre! Don't just disappear like that!" Flora shouted as a thunk filled the airship, one oddly familiar to Weiss as Tigre began to slide down Ruby before letting her arms go and bringing her own hands to nurse the rising bump on her head.
"But Floraaaa, they met a tiger grimm! It has to be Byakko! I just know it! I could smell her while we were in the forest…" Tigre's nose seemed to lock onto something as she began to sniff the air, her eyes soon locking onto Arthur at which point she disappeared from the ground appearing infront of Arthur who was too tired to even react to the sparkly eyed white tiger faunus.
"You smell like Byakko! Did you meet her again!? Was she as beautiful as I've heard!? Were her horns as imposing as a dragons maw!? What about her fur! Was it softer than freshly fallen snow!?" Tigre barraged Arthur with question after question not giving him a moment to even react to a single one, each question bringing her face closer and closer to Arthur, eyes sparkling and glistening even more after each question.
"Tigre! Not again!" Flora shouted, raising her leg into the air and bringing it down into an axe kick which in turn sent Tigre's head bolting downwards, coming ominously close to something precious to Arthur, her forehead impacting with the metal bench right between Arthur's legs with a reverberating ring of metal being hit, knocking Tigre out completely, the only evidence of her being okay being the excited smile and the mumble 'Byakko… so pretty…' followed by weak laughing.
"Sorry about that" Flora said with a sigh as she bent over and grabbed one of Tigre's ankles, "She gets a little 'passionate' whenever Byakko is involved" she explained lifting Tigre off the ground from her ankle and throwing her not so gently onto the bench next to Arthur.
Giving an awkward laugh Arthur said, "Don't worry about it" he said waving it off with one hand, immediately causing the other to fall limply to the side fully revealing the nearly pure black tattoo that encompassed his entire arm as well as the strange segmented fingers like scales had been layer upon each other with ominously long finger nails as black as the skin of his arm.
"Are… you okay?" Flora said, staring at his limp limb.
"I'm fine" he said quickly grabbing his limp arm and throwing it back over his lap, the slightest of twitches in his fingers causing him to breath a small sigh of relief.
"No you're not…" Another new voice joined causing all eyes to turn to her, as well as causing her to jump and quickly hid behind the hulking figure of Bean when Arthur looked to her. This being Skye Cornell, and her brother both having followed Flora after Tigre's disappearance from their teams side when Tigre's ears had rotated like a satellite and muttered the work "Byakko?", as if she was a dog that had just seen a squirrel.
"What do you mean?" Arthur asked confused at her words.
"You're lying…" Skye softly said, not even peeking out from behind Bean, her answer onfly confusing hi even more.
"Oh, it's her semblance" Flora answered, "Skye's got something called 'Empathetic Connection', essentially she can connect with and understand others emotions" Flora began to explain, "Essentially, she knows what you really feel, pretend to be happy while your sad, she'll know, pretend to be angry when your joking, she'll know" Flora let out a sigh. "You have no idea how irritating to have your emotions constantly out in the open without even being able to block it"
"That, seems really powerful" Pyrrha said, "I can see that being an incredible asset during battle"
"Oh, it's not, especially against grimm, fuckers have none" Flora not so elegantly put, "Even then just using it is hard on her, from what we've been able to figure out, her semblance is always active so she really has no rest from it. And the worst part is she explained it like her semblance was like a mist that filled whatever room she entered, collecting the emotions of everyone in the room and forcing it into her skull all at once" Flora explained, pity in her voice.
"It's not that bad in small groups but if there's lots of people, she needs to take a special medicine to alleviate the headache she gets from it, we actually need to get some more once we're back at Beacon…" Flora trailed off adding another note to her mental to-do list.
"That sounds painful… I can't imagine having to live like that every day, I would probably become reclusive after a while just to avoid it…" Arthur muttered a twitch in his eyebrows as a golden glow appeared in front of him, the page playing the scene of when he and Ashe first met, him a recluse living in a cave filled with mess and general uncleanliness.
Clearing his throat Arthur looked up to the group around him wanting to refute Skye's claim but failing as he knew she'd easily be able to refute everything he said.
"What did you mean by he was lying?" Ruby asked looking to the still hiding behind Bean, Skye.
Skye nervously peaked out from behind Bean's back her eyes first falling onto Arthur, causing a light flush to fill her face. While Arthur simply closed his eyes awaiting her to explain it to them, "Go ahead" he muttered, letting out a tired sigh.
Seeing his affirmation Skye retook her position behind Bean, "J-just that he-he's lying…" she reiterated, "H-he's, tired, in pain, worried, thinking, angry, intrigued and I think… p-planning?" she quickly listed, "Pain and tiredness being the strongest emotions"
Everyone went silent for a moment before turning to Arthur, "Is-is she telling the truth" She said kneeling in front of Arthur, sending a reproachful glance to Yang who had somehow found a nurses uniform, one of the more… revealing types. Seeing Ruby's gaze Yang shrugged and threw the outfit over her head, but quickly grabbed it when Ruby's gaze turned panicked as she mouthed, 'maybe later' to Yang who gave her a thumbs up.
"Yeah, guess so, keep having pulses of pain in my arm, probably the adrenaline alleviating and letting me experience my arm melting again" he groaned letting his 'I'm fine' façade fade, and grit his teeth, "Won't lie, it might also be because I stabbed myself with a dust crystal as well" he muttered through grit teeth.
"You what!?" Skye screeched! Diving from behind Bean arriving in front of Arthur, forgetting her previous shyness, "Where! Where did you do that! We need to care for the wound immediately!" she immediately grabbed his arm and began to turn it over, "This discolouration must be the flesh necrotizing if it gets any worse we may have to amputate…" she spoke to her self, ignoring the markings on his shoulders that showed the 'discolouration' was more of a tattoo then Arthurs arm dying and getting ready to fall off.
"I forgot to mention, she also spends most of her time outside of class in Professor Peridots clinic helping her with her research or caring for patients" Flora added, immediately sending shivers down Arthur's spine a he connected Kardia, Skye and amputation to a not so great memory from when he was first discharged from the infirmary for the first time.
While Skye was inspecting Arthur's arm, Yang walked up to Flora and whispered to her, "It me, or is she a little too shy around Arthur"
"Oh, that, she keeps saying it's a side effect of her semblance that it makes her connect more with certain people and makes her more attracted to said people" Flora began to chuckle, "But, between you and me, Skye really likes caring for others, and her semblance definitely affects her own emotions as well, but such that bad emotions attract her, she's something of a fixer upper, and I think Archie there may be a mix between her boy preferences and bad emotions" She explained.
"I met Skye during the introduction speech and I watched her head perk up the moment Ruby, blonde boy and Arthur entered the room, she was actually crying when she finally saw Arthur" she explained, "No idea what he's been through, but it's got to be big enough and strong enough that it struck something in Skye, when Arthur got to his first lesson a week after initiation it happened again, I teased her about it and somehow, I may or may not have caused her to get a crush" she awkwardly scratched her cheek. "Though, I only really got a good look at the boy who'd gotten her interest when we had the team fights"
"Blonde boy? You mean Jaune?" Yang inquired, while also pulling out her scroll and quickly increased the priority of one of the various headshots in the 'List'
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Alternate Chapter names: [Team FSBT join the conversation] [Blonde, rolls off the tongue, ladies love it]
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