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Who:Blake and Yang, Blake and whoever comes to visit her in the hospital.
What:Aftermath of Murder Plot, be warned.
When: Evening
Where: Fayren, in the place that Yang finds her wandering, half lucid and trying to find Weiss and later in the Hospital.
Warnings: Murder plot related, Blake took a beating. She is NOT pretty to look at right now.


Afterword:
Blake coughed and gasped coming back into consciousness. As soon as he did a hundred pin pricks of fire shot through her lips and she whimpered. The tag in her right ear throbbed but it was nothing compared to the bloody, deep gash that was still oozing blood where Battler had branded her. It was amazing she had ever regained consciousness at all.

And then slowly, things started to come flooding back. Her eyes widened, but her pupils were dilated with panic as well as agony now. "WEI - ACK!"

She couldn't complete her teammate's name. Could not talk at all really. Suddenly she leaned over and heaved. All of the blood she had swallowed was not agreeing with her. And no matter how much it hurt she couldn't stop herself from throwing up. She wondered distantly if she was going to die before she swooned, putting her head between her legs as she crouched there, the picture of an abused, dirty animal.

She gasped, each breath she drew hurting more than the last.

Weiss, where are you?

She could not lay down and die here. She forced herself to stand, using her good arm to lean against the wall of the alley way she was in for support. Where was her device? She'd get a message to Yang, Ruby...someone and tell them that Battler was a sick bastard and they had to find Weiss before it was too late. She didn't know why he had let her go, but she'd worry about details later.

When she found it she tried to type but her hands were trembling so bad that all she got was:


Text:
Baattt;er crazy. He's sIck. Attacked us. Weiss. Hurt bad. Ffffffing Weiss!



Hospital:
The ear tag had been removed. A simple puncture wound that was healing well. Thanks to a combination of modern medicine and her aura recovering the swelling around her mouth was looking better, though she might be left with a thin white scar or two. But what had kept Blake in surgery the longest was her arm. Battler had burned her thoroughly. Tissue was badly damaged and there would definitely be a terrible scar from that.

She tossed, fading in and out.

Comments

[koishi_komeiji]

Koishi leaned into Blake's hand, bowing her head a little bit, though she did turn involuntarily so her scar was not touched. "I know there's no good thing to say. But there are right and wrong things to say and my head is twisted around a rotating point balanced on a helix. So I don't always understand everything that's going on around me."

Her face darkened a little bit at Blake's next statement, her eyes quite literally dimming, the edges of her sclera slowly turning black. It would take a sharp eye to spot the subtle shift of her jaw and cheeks, though she was keeping it in check, her human mask remaining in place.

"I wish I had been. That swamp creature killed me awhile ago and I had to wake up in the hospital. It was really unpleasant and I don't let my guard down anymore." Her tone was cold. "If he had met me then he would have been the one in the hospital. Not you or any of the others..."

She had to stop, blinking and shaking her head, reaching up to rub at her left eye. "... No more hunting though. I chased down Adachi." Probably the first time Blake had heard her use a name. "He hurt Luke and Luke is just a little human. I can't stand it when humans hurt other humans without cause or reason. That goes for faunus too. You guys are supposed to hunt monsters." She had the strangest look on her face, her third eye open a sliver and staring blindly forward.

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Blake pulled her hand back a little taken about at the change in Koishi's mood. It was like the temperature suddenly dropped. She smiled a little uncertainly.

"What could you have done?" she asked. "He planned it all out before he acted. He knew each of us and how to hurt us."

And thanks to Blake, he had known about aura. She felt sick. He might have found out another way even if she hadn't talked about it, but it didn't cheer her up much. There was a reason why she was fighting sleep. The guilt eating at her didn't make for good dreams. She wondered if she should just learn to accept nightmares as permanant fixture in her life. She both wanted to sleep in her own bed and dreaded it at the same time. She didn't want to freak Yang out.

"Sometimes people are the monsters, Koishi," she replied, grimly, looking thoroughly miserable at the thought. There was a time she might have tried to deny it, but no more.

[koishi_komeiji]

What could she have done? That was a question Koishi didn't want to answer... though, all things considered, it might be best if she did. Especially after that comment about monsters. Koishi just shook her head. "Before I answer that, you should understand what a monster is. So you can understand what I mean."

"What he did was monstrous, but it doesn't make him a monster. Monsters are the way they are because they lack the free will to be something else. That's why it's okay for monsters to have conflict with humans and like creatures. We have a set purpose and it's often to oppose you guys. We can develop a sort of free will by learning to interpret our aspects and purpose in more flexible ways, but we are still bound by them. I am a monster because everything I do, and everything that I am is locked within what defines me. I don't have a choice."

Koishi reached up, rubbing her left eye with the back of her hand. There was something faint happening to the skin on that side around both the eye and her scar. "He's not a monster. Humans are thinking creatures capable of choice. They fight and kill each other over their beliefs and ideals but..." She winced. "Set up in a row with dripping ink and ivory domes... To choose to do something like that makes you something entirely different."

"We satori are cunning monsters. My claws can rip through wood and my teeth ca crush bone. My mental abilities can boil a human's mind and sear their flesh and rupture organs. I try my best to hide and walk away from fights. But if I see him..." She swallowed, dropping her hand. There were faint black lines around her eye. She kept it closed.

"I'm sorry. I'm just upset. My guise is even slipping."

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Blake listened to Koishi talk and absorbed it the best she could. Grimm were considered the monsters of their world. Did Grimm have free will? Who knew? Maybe some of the more ancient ones were smarter. Like some animals were smarter. But they still had no soul. They were still something other.

"Much worse than a monster then," Blake croaked.

For the first time, the Faunus wondered how old this girl actually was. Koishi seemed a lot smarter than the average child. She watched the eye. If she had not known that Koi was her friend she might have been afraid. But she had begun to except the eye as something that was just unique to the Satori, like animal aspects were to Faunus. She was more worried if anything.

She reached over to touch the girl's hand. "It's fine. If I saw him again, do you think that I'd let him walk away either?"

She didn't want to encourage the girl to go pick a one on one fight with someone they had just dubbed worse than inhuman, but someone who could boil minds and rupture organs would probably have a good chance of winning the fight.

I'm so sorry I thought I replied ;-;

[koishi_komeiji]

Blake would certainly be surprised if she found out Koishi's actual age. She was, after all, an adult of her species.

"But also redeemable in a way." She looked thoughtful. "Though redemption and forgiveness are very different things." She squeezed Blake's hand. "And if you see him you should call me and Miss Snow, Miss Gold, the Purple Thing, Miss White, or Sis, or Miss Cloak or... Anyone really. Even if he's really cunning and really strong for a human, he's still just one human."

"And a bundle of little sticks is always stronger than one big stick." A pause to rub her eye again. She opened it a little letting Blake glance a black sclera, the glow appearing much brighter as a result. "Of course, that's assuming the confrontation is direct. Sometimes it's better to discard honor entirely and be underhanded."

She sounded like someone who had seen these methods a few too many times. "Appearance is important to humans though so don't let them ever find out."

Re: I'm so sorry I thought I replied ;-;

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"Do you really think so?" Blake asked, feeling doubtful. There were other schools of thought. Like Fai's post. The general consensus was: don't fight Battler alone. But Blake didn't know if she could stop herself from getting involved if it came down to trying to save someone else. Even if he wasn't up to anything and she ran across him, he still needed to pay for Weiss. And everyone else. "It seems like someone all-powerful wouldn't have to subdue people before approaching them, so maybe you're right."

That was the disadvantage of everyone being from a different world. In Remnant she had been able to gather info on Torchwick and the White Fang. Not necessarily useful intel,but something was better than nothing. Here, people had no record.

Underhanded? Blake entertained the idea of knocking Battler out and tossing him to the monsters that Weiss had told her lived outside of the city. She wondered at her own thoughts because that was pretty dark....but so were the things Battler had done. And she'd do it herself in a heart beat if it kept him from torturing people.

"You seem very young to know so much about fighting, Koishi." Blake knew better than most that that didn't mean anything. Still...Koishi could go from innocent to surprisingly perceptive at times.

Storytime~ Also I don't know how Koishi is aceing her clarity rolls. But she is.

[koishi_komeiji]

"No mortal creature is all-powerful. Not even the moon-people and they're very, very powerful and scary. I heard all about the war they had with the youkai. The youkai lost. Badly. I've only heard stories though since it was more than a thousand years ago and my aspect hadn't been formed yet."

She seemed to have calmed down quite a bit, but she was still a little bit upset. Her left eye was clearing slowly, the black only tinging the edges. Though the looped heart that those strange arteries tended to make over her left shoulder remained absent.

She perked up at the question, tilting her head several degrees to one side. "Young? Heh. I get that a lot. It's because my eye and my brain aren't connected anymore. So I'm always living in the moment." She touched her scar. It was in the same place her elder sister's eye attached to her head. "Sometimes it's still hard to think. Even though it's been at least ninety years since it happened. Time can be a bit fuzzy, but I do remember my age. I just turned 415 and you were there and it was such a wonderful time. I'm glad I remember it. I don't always remember much anymore. Though everything before my head disconnected is crystal clear."

"Most of my knowledge comes from that time. It's easy to learn things when you can read minds. Sis and I left home after about fifty years or so and wandered the mountains in central Japan for two and a half centuries, give or take. We learned how to feed on human fear instead of flesh and physically subsist on lesser creatures instead. We learned how to interact with people humans in different ways. We learned to expand our aspects so we didn't have to act like monsters. And we learned the value speech and storytelling."

her eye was actually opened, almost fully, the edges splitting slightly, a small bead of blood forming in one corner. The surface was milky white. There was a visible scar on the lens where the cataract was much thicker, blocking out even the milky blue color. Oddly enough, she didn't seem to notice, though her tone continued to become more coherent.

"We learned about warfare too. We watched battles and read the minds of generals and soldiers, both the winners and losers. We read lots of books when we could get our hands on them. We pieced together ancient legends from battles that pre-date our time. You should ask sis about it sometime. I'm not that good at telling stories anymore."

Re: Storytime~ Also I don't know how Koishi is aceing her clarity rolls. But she is.

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Blake gave a start. She would have expected Koishi to say something like 'twelve' or 'fifteen' even. Four hundred and fifteen not so much. She tried to conceal it, but she was more than a little concerned with how the girl's eye was acting.

"You're...bleeding," she managed to say. "I guess if you've done it for over four hundred years you know best what you are doing, but is it really okay for your eye to be like that? If it messes with your head, is that safe?"

Immortal or not, how did the girl keep anything straight?

"Adam used to tell me stories," she said it without thinking and almost immediately regretted that she did. She did not want to think her old partner right now. One monster to deal with was enough. She swiftly plunged on. "I can tell you stories some times. If you'd like."

[koishi_komeiji]

"Bleeding?" She blinked, looking down at the organ. "Oh... It's open." Apparently she hadn't even noticed. "When it opens wide the corners split. Since its normally closed. But if it's open like this that means I'm being really clear now. Even though it looks like an eye, it's actually a part of my brain, kinda. Well, not anymore. Since it's not attached to my head. Also, it's 'blind.' But sometimes my head and eye work like they're supposed to."

A weak smile, the eye closing a little bit. "It doesn't normally open on its own. I can force it open but it makes me sick. It's safe either way but like this isn't an effort." She paused. "My head is going to fall off soon though. I'll be fine. Like ink swirled in water and then frozen. I'll wake up somewhere else. If you see my hat but not me, it mean's I'm there, okay Miss Shade?" She tilted her head a little bit. "Already colors are bleeding over and around."

Though, from that explanation, she simply didn't keep anything straight. Rather, she had adapted to chaos.

"Adam?" Her brow furrowed a little bit. She noticed Blake's internal cringe and didn't press. "I would like that. I bet you have lots of stories to tell Miss Shade. Satori Youkai are storytellers with lives and memories longer than humans. We keep them safe. It's built into who we are. So I would really like to hear them. I bet Sis would love it too."

At this point she was struggling a little bit, her third eye drawing in and dipping low, starting to shake. Her physical form was fading a little. The fact Blake had pointed out her eye was letting her maintain her mind for a little while longer.

Despite it, her smile seemed absolutely genuine.