RWBYFanon v5
RPG World of Remnant => The Vale Region => Beacon Academy => Topic started by: Koop on August 27, 2017, 04:41:34 PM
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Way off to the side of the Beacon Academy docks is a garden. It's placed here because it sits on the cliff edge overlooking the lake and Vale, offering a nice place to relax and recuperate. It is also here because it puts a lot of distance between the school and the garden, which helps reduce the random explosions in the area. Of course, that's not why we're here. We're here to talk about Loaded for Bear, the local Dust shop.
Loaded for Bear. The focal point of conveniently timed plot explosions. Due to the nature of what it sells, it also happens to be a fair distance away from the school, but still within the campus grounds and still safe from surprise grimm. The structure itself is not that big, but it sports a basement that is nearly twice the first floor's size. The structure is built in the same style as most campus buildings but is heavily reinforced because people love explosions, but hate dead buildings. It also happens to be one of the busiest places on Beacon Academy grounds every Wednesday morning. Mia, the shop owner, has a weekly sale every Wednesday. Buy something, and get free waffles. Not from the box, either! It's amazing!
It was just about time to open the store. People needed Dust, and in a timely manner. But it was Wednesday. Waffle's favorite day. Waffle, a giant and adorable bear, sat outside just to the left of the still locked door, like a bouncer. Unlike most bouncers, this bear was sitting up and wearing an apron. A bear sized apron that says, "Do a Bearel roll!"Waffle yawned. It was early. The sun was bearly up.
Within, Mia was double checking the waffle irons to ensure an ample supply. Not that it matters. If anything goes uneaten will go to Waffle. Waffle loves them waffles. Satisfied, she finished up the last few things she needed and opened the store with a yawn, partially hidden behind a smile as she welcomed anyone outside. Except for Waffle. He is not allowed inside during Waffle Wednesday's because the waffle supply mysteriously disappears.
The interior of the store is split into two sections, the sales area, and the back room. The sales area looks fairly typical for a dust shop. Lots of dispensers on the walls with all manner of Dust. Countertops with a few Dust crystals and the like. The crystal supply is low in this store simply due to the predominance of powder Dust at the school. There is also a few snacks for sale because this place is basically a convenience store that sells gunpowder and bombs.
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A small feminine looking boy with red hair walked toward the dust store with sheet of paper right in front of his face and he clearly wasn't paying attention to where he was going just heading in the general direction of the store. If he maintained his current course he would walk directly into the wall of the shop in a few moments. As he walked he was muttering to himself about what he held in front of him. Anytime I use dust powder in the wings any attempt to use them for flight ends in all the dust igniting at once. I don't have enough room in them for containment. Maybe a crystal will work better. It will hopefully be more controllable. May actually last longer too. Failing that perhaps I can add the dust somewhere else and have it feed into the wings. But that would interfere with the scythe form. Dammit.
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Loaded for Bear was (unsurprisingly) rather famous around Beacon. Not only was it the most convenient dust store for students, it also had a bear. A bear. Having a pet bear tends to make one stick out a bit. As a result, Mia was rather well known around Beacon. Even if some only knew her as the "Bear woman". To the point where even Anastasia, despite not having been at Beacon for particularly long, was aware of her existence. And her bear, of course.
Normally, Anastasia very rarely needed to purchase dust - she didn't really have much use for it. She didn't really have any need to purchase any more for a few months at least. But hearing about Mia and her bear had given her an idea. An idea to execute when she wasn't meant to be working and providing security for Beacon of course, because she was a good employee. Well, that's what she would say if anyone asked, anyway. In truth, she had spent a few minutes trying to actually do her job before getting bored and wandering off to find something interesting to do.
And in this case, that something interesting was visiting Loaded for Bear. Nothing wrong with doing some dust shopping a few months early, right? She wanted to play with the bear, of course. But things could be more interesting still!
She was close enough to the store now. She could see the bear, even! She had, ahem, 'discreetly followed' (Anastasia was not a fan of the term stalking. Too many negative connotations, her stalking was perfectly innocent and harmless!) Mia around the Academy for a bit, so she had a good image to build an illusion off of. Slipping into cover nearby, she swapped her illusion out to an exact copy of Mia's appearance, and approached the bear. She was quite good at copying voices as well. Not perfect, of course, but hopefully well enough to fool a bear!
"Hello... Umm.... Hello, bear!" She said, standing a meter or so away from the bear. She had forgotten the bear's name. She had heard the name before, right? Pancake or something? No, that didn't sound right...
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Cobe was wandering down to Loaded for Bear. He had heard about the place from some other Beacon students, and read up about this "Waffle Wednesday", he decided (probably against his better judgement) to check it out for himself, besides he needed to restock on some of his Dust Crystal supply anyway. He got up very early (by his timing at least) to get there.
"Got up at 7 in the morning for this, this better be worth the trip"
He yawned as he spoke, and finally stopped short at the store, nodding his head towards the person in the bear costume, before heading inside. Once inside the store, he looked a lot more awake, and sniffed the air gleefully.
"The smell of Dust, the perfect pick-me-up in the morning."
He had a brief check over the Dust dispenser and Crystals on the nearby countertops, he then coughed, somewhat unintentionally, to make his presence known.
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Seeing his owner approach, Waffle stood up. Best way to eat waffles is standing up. However, when "Mia" approached him and awkwardly spoke, Waffle was suspicious. Why did she not have any waffles? Was it not feeding time? He didn't understand. He looked around briefly, wondering if the waffles had been hidden. Disappointment.
Slowly, Waffle turned to face "Mia" directly, a saddened look on his face. As sad as a bear face can be, that is. Of course, being a waffle loving bear, Waffle was not expecting the smallish boy to just walk right into him. He turned to face Revya, who just bounced off of a giant flurry bear body, with an inquisitive look. Temporarily fixated on his very important duty of guarding the door, he nodded in response to Cobe when the third newcomer walked past and entered the store. It was only temporary though because he quickly turned back to "Mia" and "spoke". And by "spoke", he made some low growling noises. Nothing aggressive sounding, mind you, but he did turn back and forth between "Mia" and Revya, unsure of the status of his waffles.
[In Bear]"Where are my waffles? I don't understand. Is it not waffle time? Why are you here without waffles?"[In Bear]
Inside, Cobe was the first person to enter, just a minute after opening. Mia was already behind the counter, organizing some various merchandise. A large sign on the wall advertised Waffle Wednesday.
Mia looked up when the chime signaled Cobe's arrival. She finished organizing whatever it was she was organizing then stepped around the counter and approached Cobe. She was of course, unarmed, but wore her usual attire. Of note, her left hair piece was barely attached. It was apparent that she got up late this morning, having rushed to get here on time. Still, she smiled politely as she spoke, seemingly unaware of her hairpiece malfunction."Morning! Whatchya need?"
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Cobe noticed the person next to him, she stood four inches shorter than him, was quite well built, and appeared to have a severe case of "bed-head", although he paid the latter not heed. When asked what he needed Cobe replied in a slightly upbeat tone, mostly from the fact he was properly awake now:
"Hello, just a quick question. Do you have Steam Dust Crystals? I know it's a weird question, but it's purely for the fact my weapon uses Crystals instead of Rounds."
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Unfortunately, Anastasia did not speak bear. From her perspective, the bear simply looked very confused. Was her disguise not good enough? Maybe it was the voice... She should've practiced that more! But she hadn't gotten close enough to really hear Mia's voice particularly well. Or maybe Mia spoke to the bear in growls. Bears couldn't understand human speech, right?
She made a few random bear-sounding sounds, with a few random gestures thrown in.
What was she trying to achieve here anyway? She probably should've thought this through before coming. Hopefully she didn't look too ridiculous making random rawr sounds like pointing randomly. Oh well, even if she did, it wasn't her reputation that would be harmed. Although this was rather tame anyway. She knew how to really ruin someone's reputation if necessary, and it was a lot more harsh than this.
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Waffle knew. But that didn't stop him. Still standing on all fours, Waffle moved slightly closer to "Mia", moving to her left side. This was standard following procedure for Battle Bears, which Waffle had cursory training in. He was often seen following Mia just to her left. It's very official. "Mia" obviously wanted him to follow her to the waffles, and that's what he would do. He paused only slightly to look at Revya, who had bumped into him earlier but seemed too interested in whatever he was looking at to care.
"Steam? Kind of uncommon for a crystal. I have some, but they're expensive. You'd be better off with a Fire and Water crystal, then a mechanism to create steam from them. If your weapon can't do that, however... While speaking, Mia motioned for Cobe to follow her and stopped in front of one of the display cases featuring a wide variety of crystals. "... I only have what's in here. Two crystals, one small and one medium. Dust is a better option, as it's only a little more expensive but its more effective."
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Dammit. She was late.
Anna had wanted to bring her Dust supplies back to nominal. To do so, she'd planned on getting up at 5 in the morn' before stalking the nearest Dust shop's entrance until it opened, attempting to avoid any and all extraneous crowds.
Well, that was the plan, anyway. What really happened is that she hadn't accounted for the fact that she'd killed a gargantuan swarm of mini-Deathstalkers, saved people at least twice, if not three times, as well as having blown herself up alongside the broodmother - if that even worked, on a reproductive standpoint. Regardless, she'd woke up at 5 'til seven, and by the time she was done dressing up and getting her hair back where it belonged, it was too late. And now here she was, walking at a brisk pace towards the nearest store her beat-up (veteran) scroll could find.
As she came within sight of it, she pulsed her semblance once to get a feel for the place and the path she'd need to take. She saw at least two people outside, along with a large, brown-ish mass. She weaved through the odd trio, guiding herself on the vague muttering of one, the weird growling from the other and the rather... not bad, but present smell of the last. She swung the door open, pulsed her semblance and zeroed in on the Dust dispensers, taking the empty knife phials out of her satchel.
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Crashing into waffle successfully pulled Rev out of his muttering as he bounced off and wound up on his arse. [color=#orange] "Well. I guess I'm here."[/color] scrunching up the designs he had been carryin and sticking them in a pocket that they very clearly poked out of and were just short of impeding Revya's arm he hauled himself to his feet and moved over to the actual door. At this point Revya had been an incredibly frequent customer at Loaded for Bear. Coming in almost every Waffle Wednesday with some new utterly asinine idea for a weapon that almost always went horrifically wrong and failed completely. One project he had been stuck on however was the installation of fire and kinetic dust into his mechanical wings so that he could actually use them for flight. So far he had made seven attempts at this function and had blown himself up seven times. 3 of which had left his wings completely inoperable for numerous days.
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Anastasia had had her fun with the bear - time to buy the dust she had come here for. Not that she really needed it, but might as well at least pretend to be productive, right?
One problem though - the bear seemed to be following her now. Would it be a bad idea to bring a bear inside a dust store? A building filled with a huge amount of a potentially very volatile substance? Eh, probably. Why would you keep a pet bear if you owned a dust store otherwise?
Entering the store (And not attempting to stop Waffle if he followed), she saw the real Mia was busy with a customer already. She positioned herself just in view of Mia, pretending to look at some dust displays as she did.
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The front door was not designed with Waffles in mind. The frame was slightly cracked even because Waffle once believed in the power of squeezing through the door. Waffle was not a small bear. He easily stood at 10 feet tall when on his back legs, and weighed over a thousand pounds. That door was not designed to accommodate these things. Waffle knew. When "Mia" entered the store, he paused and looked at the crack in the frame while recalling the time that it happened. It was horrible. Mia was so mad that Waffle didn't get any waffles for a week. Worst week ever.
And so, Waffle watched "Mia" enter the store, hopeful that she was going to get his waffles and bring them back out.
Letting Cobe mull over his thoughts about the Steam crystals and Dust, Mia excused herself before greeting Anna warmly as she arrived at the wall dispensers. "Morning!" Instead of directly asking, she left it at that and turned to the other two customers that had just arrived. She greeted the pair of them at once, but her inflection changed at the end. "Morni...ing?" Strangely, she saw herself standing in the shop, looking at some display filled with basic cartridges for weapons. Must be a lack of sleep or something. Regardless, she stared at "Mia" for too long.
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Anna replied to the - noticeably - warm welcome by a "M-Morning." of her own, although it was far more quiet and lacking in warmth compared to what she assumed to be the storekeeper's.
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Anastasia had to force herself not to laugh at Mia's reaction to her appearance. It was too good. Well worth coming for. But she had to stay serious and keep going with the joke.
Looking at the dust displays... She was honestly confused. In the past, restocking on dust had been a simple matter of, submit a request. Go to pick it up later. Done. But this store had all sorts of fancy dispensers and types of dust. Which was ice? Blue? Light blue? She had no idea. Maybe she was blind. Still... It gave her a good excuse to mess with the shopkeeper some more.
She approached the counter, keeping her face perfectly neutral, "Excuse me, where is the ice dust? And how do I use these dispensers? I'm sorry, I'm very new to all of this." She said, doing her best to imitate Mia's voice. It still wasn't perfect, but she thought it was decent enough.
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Mia had heard about Anastasia's semblance from her friend Kirkka, but truth be told, she was only barely paying attention at the time. Kirkka had been rambling on about many, many things and Mia had lost interest long ago. She was probably going over her grocery list in her mind when Kirkka mentioned the capabilities of this unique semblance. All that said, she remembers something about the conversation... just not the details.
The shopkeeper struggled with it but managed to keep her composure. For the moment. "Er, well, the dispensers are all labeled clearly at the bottom." She pointed to the wall of dispensers, being too far to accurately point out the labels themselves. They were quite visible if perhaps a little difficult to read from across the shop. "As for using them... you just attach the dust containers to the nozzle and press the button. The dispenser will fill the container until you release it or until it's... full." She squinted her eyes slightly as she struggled to recall that important piece of information she ignored a while back. Just who is this person and why does she look like me? She doesn't sound like me at all, though. Hmmm... Mia racked her brain some more while she maintained a strong focus on the imposter.
Waffle sat down, still staring at the cracks in the door frame. Deep contemplation was visible on his bear shaped face. Just kidding. He's a bear. He is thinking very hard about something though. Probably waffles. Or at least, waffles are a major player in his thoughts.
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"Thank you!" Anastasia called back, still trying to get the voice right. She turned back to the dispensers, looking for one labelled ice. She felt a little silly for asking - now that she had it explained to her, it all seemed very obvious. Well, better to ask than to just try to use it blindly and blow up the whole store or something.
She filled up a container with dust - it really was very simple - and brought it to the counter. She paused for a moment after placing it on the counter, feigning confusion.
"Err, your face seems really familiar, have I seen you before somewhere? Hmm... Maybe in an ad or something?" She asked, purposely moving her face closer, pretending to study Mia's face carefully.
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Having ignored everything happening around her as well as she possibly could, Anna counted her Dust phials - yep, everything was there - before turning away from the dispensers and heading towards where she remembered the checkout counter was. However, a brief pulse of her semblance revealed that there was already somebody there, so she patiently stood at the end of the counter, establishing the beginning of a line.
...Wait. She pulsed her semblance again, then started using her second stage continuously. Alrighty, then. Either the person who'd welcomed her had a twin, or this was one extremely rare occurence of a near-perfect lookalike.
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Mia instinctively nodded and smiled to Fake Mia's gratitude, then silently watched the imposter collect some dust as she returned to the checkout counter.
When Fake Mia came up to the counter, Mia raised an eyebrow in anticipation of the following conversation. She took a mental note of Anna following up and waiting in line before directing her attention to her double. "I apologize, but it's much too early for these shenanigans. But yes, you've probably seen me before. My name is Mia Brightspear and I run this shop." She quickly rung Fake Mia's dust cannister up and gave the total cost, wanting to be done with this conversation. But then she had a thought. Her register IDs people when they purchase goods from her store, to ensure they are a student or faculty member. Which means it should be easy to figure out who Fake Mia is as soon as she swipes her Scroll. She lightly motioned toward the scanner, expecting Fake Mia to pass her Scroll over it.
There was this one time where Mia made the world's largest waffle. And then Waffle ate it. At least, in his dreams he did. And she did. It is a recurring dream for Waffle, and if he were capable of lucid dreaming, it would likely be the only thing he ever dreamt of. Waffle gave a bear sigh and then checked his surroundings, deciding the best course of action was to not attempt to enter through the front door. He took up his post just to the left of the door, sitting down and then scratching his neck for a few moments out of boredom.
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"Shenanigans? Whatever do you mean?" Fake Mia asked, a little too innocently as she swiped her Scroll across the scanner. Unfortunately for her, she had no idea that the register would display her identity, otherwise she probably would have covered up the display with an illusion. She hummed quietly to herself as she tried to think of what she could do next with this little joke, twirling her fake illusion hair with her real fingers. It was a fun little focus exercise for her.
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"Yes, Shenanigans. With your trickery and such!" Mia kept her eye on the register screen when Fake Mia swiped it. She read the name silently, and it dawned on her, though a little too slowly. She recognized the name. It was definitely someone that Kirkka told her about... someone of mild importance... that was employed at Beacon... and... they did stuff...
Finally, she managed to recall some useful information. It was some kind of semblance that can modify her appearance, obviously. It was familiar enough to her that she remembered enough.
Disregarding that for a moment, she refocused herself and went back to customer service mode, smiling and bowing slightly as she thanked Fake Mia. "Well, thank you for stopping by! Please come again!" She waved at Anna who was standing patiently in line, hoping the copycat will get the hint and get out of the way.