come_sailaway | Let me tell you about a girl that I used to be [OPEN]

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Let me tell you about a girl that I used to be [OPEN]

Who: Ruby Rose & You!
What: Flowers and dealing with the aftermath
When: September
Where: Around the ship
Warnings: Possible child soldiery discussion as usual, death by hanahaki, loss of an eye/being permanently disabled by a death tax...
Notes: Feel free to flip me to brackets I am comfortable with either style. Flower effect prompts are all nebulously dated in the first half of the month, before Ruby remembers she has a Contract that lets her become immune to harmful plants lmao.

1. Same name same face but a different me [Catmint, around]

Ruby has cat ears. Two red-black ombre cat ears sticking out of her hair, and shortly after she first receives them she can be found looking at herself via a reflective surface in Playback. There is also a tail swooshing around her legs, poking out from under her signature fluffy skirt.

"...okay, see, this is harmless and kind of cute," she says aloud, patting at the ears, "but it also feels really weird when one of my best friends is an oppressed class for having these..."

But they do, in fact, look adorable on her, and there's nothing she can do about it, so... for a while, you can catch Ruby going about her day like this. The additions may even make some of her emotions even more obvious than usual.

2. Held on tight but she didn't understand [Protea]

Believe it or not, Ruby doesn't actually conceive of her Semblance as shapeshifting? For years, she's been under the impression it's simply a speed semblance, nothing more, nothing less. Despite the turning into petals, despite the changed mass distribution, despite... all of it.

And yet when her other shapeshifting abilities start going haywire... so does Petal Burst.

"Okay, this is just getting ridiculous!" she complains, loudly, after once again poofing into one of her three bird forms—the tiny red Steller's Jay, this time. But it could be the Jackdaw or Hooded Crow, at any other time. "I'm just trying! To go about my day! And I keep— whoa!"

There she goes, a swirl of red petals zooming down the hallway, absolutely not looking where she's going and with no way to stop before she crashes into something or someone.

It's chaos. Sometimes, she's stuck in Petal Burst form, unable to switch back until a collision or another sudden change. Friends may find Ruby landing on their head, shoulder, or hand, as one of her bird forms, though let her stay there at your own risk. She might transform again, or even grow thorns!

3. All the past that she's erasing [Forget-me-nots, amnesia]

The first time the forget-me-nots get her, it works the same way basic way it does most of the time—it makes her forget. Not everything, but enough. Ruby can be found out on the decks looking lost, and somehow more youthful and innocent despite the lack of physical change. Anyone who comes by will get asked something like:

"Um, hi! Is— is this ship going to Beacon? I-I thought we were getting an airship but I guess I must've got mixed up, hehehe."

Or: "Have you seen my sister? Realllllly long blonde hair? Like, this tall," she holds her hand about six inches above her own head, which is about two inches too tall for Yang.

The next time... it doesn't make her forget anything at all, at first. Not properly. Things slip her mind, and there's this nagging voice in her head. Wouldn't it be easier if she forgot all about home? Wouldn't it be better if she could let go of that burden entirely and just live her life here?

She ignores it. Even when she starts coughing up blue petals.

4. The love and heart that she's replacing [for Eleanor]

The voice only gets louder with every passing hour until Ruby can barely breathe, but despite the building pressure both literal and not, she refuses to give in. She may not fully understand what's happening to her, but she knows that the feeling is a lie, or at least, she knows that it finding it to be true wouldn't be worth what she's lose.

So she pushes on. She pushes on until, around the same time she finds poor, tiny-fied Eleanor and is carrying her back to the safety of her cabin, it becomes too much.

And three days later, she wakes up.

5. We all get lost sometimes, and we forget who we are [around]

Here's the thing: not long ago, Ruby was granted a Contract from the world of the Lost aboard. Multiple Contracts, actually, all relating to the plants as an element. One allows her to avoid the effect of any harmful plants, something she forgot until... well, now. From the day she wakes up missing an eye onwards, she keeps this Contract up as much as she can, enabled by her habit of carrying around rose emblem.

But there's another, too. She figured it out by experimenting with her newfound relationship to plant-life, after receiving yet another mostly empty package: she can reshape and manipulate plants.

Which is why, sometimes, when you walk into a room Ruby is in, you might find the ever-growing plant invasion... shrunken, somewhat. Pushed back to give you space to move around without getting too close. Playback, the gym, the library, scoops, sand dollars—wherever she might be, she greets people with:

"They grow back into position pretty fast," as if on cue, she puts her hands on her hips and gives a catmint plant that's trying to spread back out a disapproving look as she makes it withdraw, "but I just keep nudging them back again."

Maybe she's hoping it's a good distraction from any questions about the makeshift eyepatch over her right eye...

6. You're staring at a different face [sports deck, library]

Is it any surprise to people that know her that Ruby tries to get back to normal far too quickly? Only days after finding herself down an eye, Ruby tries to return to the sports deck. She clears some space around her by pushing the flowers back, goes to grab Summer's Thorn...

And then thinks better of it, grabbing for a training sword instead as she plants herself in front of the indestructible dummy. With a deep breath, she gets into stance, and then tries to practice blows.

None of them land where they're supposed. Plenty of them miss the dummy entirely, overbalancing her when they go too far and one time actually sending her falling to the floor. The training sword clatters away and Ruby slams her fists against the metal floor with a frustrated shout.

This keeps happening. She keeps trying.

The same applies to her attempts to get back to design work. Darcy's weapon is, thankfully, basically finished at this point and requires nothing more than paint and tests, but trying to work on her old designs results in a lot of frustration as she adjusts to the lack of depth perception. Every attempt to sketch or annotate feels ten times harder than it used to be and before long Ruby is shoving it all across the table so she can bury her face in her arms and try not to cry.

She'll adjust. Things change, they get worse, and she always adjusts. But realising just how much it's going to suck in the meantime...

7. Things are never gonna be the same [wildcard]

Find me at

bluecitrine or at artisticblueteam in the discord. Open to anything in terms of other people affected by the flowers.

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Watching the tiny warrior try to adjust to her new reality gives Valdis pause as she walks out onto the sports deck. She's known of Ruby, but never made time to speak to her or really interact with her at all. Valdis doesn't consider herself good with children, but Ruby carries a pain that Valdis just doesn't like being around, and ache far too similar to the one she herself carries. Loneliness and the idea that you have to carry everyone else around you.

"You're pushing too hard too fast," she says from across the deck. "You need to start at the beginning."

Ruby steadies herself on her feet, breathing heavily, grip on the training sword white-knuckle. Her head turns as if trying to look back at Valdis, but reflex has her trying look over her right shoulder. That, obviously, doesn't do her much good.

"I've been fighting ever since I was a kid. I know how to do this. I-I don't need—" She swallows, squeezes her good eye shut, breathes. "I can do this."

"Of course you can, but you have the start at the beginning."

Since she was a kid? As far as any non-immortal would think, Ruby still is a kid, and Valdis is immortal so Ruby might as well be an infant.

"Because you don't know how to fight with only one eye."

"But I know how to fight!" she snaps back, riding a wave of helplessness. "I-I should have— muscle memory and reflexes and I should know. How to adjust. I can't— I can't be back at square one. I can't."

She put in so much work to get this far already. And now...

Valdis ventures closer, trying not to flinch away from the pain Ruby is drowning in. It's more than just this new life she's adjusting to, it's years of a life spent being too grown up in a world torn apart by violence.

"Yes, you do have muscle memory and reflexes, which is why you aren't at square one and why it won't take you long to get back up to your past level. But you are different now and forcing your way through it will just frustrate you."

"Trying to do it any other way will frustrate me!" Ruby bites, a bitter eruption of impotent rage that all at once makes her realise just how Yang must have felt, when she lost her arm.

Sometimes bad things just happen, Ruby!

Ruby flinches. All the tension in her body fades away into a hopeless sort of sagging, the training sword limp in her grip. "I-I don't— I-I don't know what to do."

Valdis grabs a towel off the railing and rips it into strips.

"You rely too much on sight," she says walking over to hand one of the strips to Ruby. "Cover your remaining eye and rely on instinct. Start with forms and practicing balance. when you can do everything without any vision, then take off the blind fold and start from the beginning again, forms and balance. You'll be combat ready in no time."

There's a wave of complicated, bittersweet emotion that floods over Ruby in the precise moment that the words 'combat ready' pass Valdis's lips. (There is a green hair tie in her hair. There is a golden locket with a green power symbol around her neck.) Penny's voice echoes in her head, quickly followed by her own.

("How do you handle all of this?" Oscar had asked her, after she said the same phrase. "Who would ask for this?"

She gave him one of her speeches. Ended it with that ever faithful keep moving forward. Sometimes she misses how easy it had been to pretend it was that simple.)

Slowly, she takes the offered strip of fabric. Swallows. Breathes. "...I can't do this with my main weapon, you know. I-If I swing a Scythe around completely blind, people are going to lose their heads."

She stares at the piece for a moment, then sighs and tucks the training blade under her arm to free her hands to tie it over her face.

Valdis lets Ruby sit in her emotions, listening to her concerns both spoken and unspoken.

"Then you won't use your main weapon, you'll practice with something smaller against living targets. I...I have some training swords that have protective barriers on them. They won't cut skin or sever limbs, just cause bruises. You can borrow them if you like."

It's different from a scythe, but using a weapon she is less familiar with might prove helpful.

"...maybe." Maybe when she feels less utterly hopeless. Maybe when she feels less like she's going to cry just at the thought of how difficult re-learning to use Crescent Rose is going to be. "O-One uh— one thing at a time."

She finishes tying the torn towel around her head and breathes, trying not to trip into some kind of irrational panic. She gets a fresh grip on the training sword.

"Ruby."

Her voice comes from somewhere to the left.

"Listen to your surroundings. Practice forms until you can do them balanced without any sight."

From behind.

"Then practice them without the blindfold until you have the same balance, then move to a staff. Do some yoga too that will really help you be aware of your body."

From right in front.

"You are welcome to join Nobunaga and I when we practice in the mornings."

Ruby's breathing stays slow and steady. There are faint twitches of her head towards the sound of Valdis's voice as she moves.

"...I don't think I even know any yoga..."

"Well, it's good for balance and finding calm in the chaos so you should definitely join us sometime."

The girl seems calm enough.

"Now, go through a few forms."

When she starts moving through the forms, there's still signs that, even besides her new difficulties, swordsmanship was not her first specialty. She's got months of training with Summer's Thorn under her belt, but it still can't match up to the years of experience with Crescent Rose.

Touches of frustration still leak through, whenever she isn't quite on-form or keeping her balance steady.

Valdis watches in silence, she knows based on what she sees that Ruby is going to improve quickly.

"Just relax into it, Ruby. You've got this. You might ask Erin to spar with you a bit, she probably has some pointers too."

"I don't think that's a possibility until the flowers go away."

Not with how they've messed Erin up. She's sure she'll help her down the line, but right now she's got enough going on.

Right, Erin was really struggling right now and there's nothing she can do to help.

"I'll help you until she can."

It's the least she can do since she can't help Erin directly.

Ruby inhales, and exhales. She moves to a different set of forms. "...okay. You're um— Valdis, right?"

"I am, yes."

She really just assumed Ruby knew who she was, a tad rude of her.

"I apologize for not introducing myself."

Ruby tries to make a 'waving it off' gesture, which is a bit clumsy with a training sword in your hands. "I know names and faces of people who've been around a while, especially people close to other people I know. It'd just have been super awkward to get it wrong, heh."

"Well you got it right, so no worries."

Valdis continues to watch Ruby go through the motions, occasionally offering a critique and carefully giving pointers to where the girl might change her balance or weight.

"Your usual weapon isn't a sword, right?"

Ruby shakes her head. "It's the scythe. Before here, I'd never really used another type of melee weapon. I-I know all the theory, I know how to build them and how they work, but... Darcy and Erin had to teach me sword stuff."

"It's good to have versatility with weapons. I have not seen scythes used in combat before, so I would be interested in watching sometime when you are on better footing."

"Sure, I-I uh— I usually train with her during times when the deck is empty. Or against Erin or Shouji. It's riskier? Here? Since not everyone has an Aura..."

She shrugs, a little. At home you can swing a giant scythe around during training with minimal risk, here it's a bit different.

"But watching from a safe distance is usually fine."

"I'm very fast and also have a high affinity for self-preservation, so you don't need to worry about me. Just work on this every day and I'll be here to help when I can."

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