InsaneJournal

“So how did you do that?” Root leaned very far back in her chair, staring at the catgirl who’d just got startled into a clone of herself. She didn’t seem all that bothered, but was just curious. Imagine what she could do with more than one of herself!

Take over the galaxy, that’s what.

"I..." Blake trailed off, and stared at the clone of herself. It wasn't the best clone she'd ever formed. Now that she'd been working on her semblance more she could do all kinds of things. This one was stationary and mainly stood there, like a statue.

"On Remnant there are some people who are gifted with the ability to access their Aura and use it to protect themselves. It's... within us and around us, acts like a shield against damage. When we use the power directly we each have a different semblance of our power. Mine is making shadow clones." She tried to explain, though she wasn't sure she was using the correct terms. Times like this were when she wished Weiss or Pyrrha were around. Both of them were better versed in the academics of this kind of thing.

“Aura?” Root spun around and crossed her legs. Perhaps the things that had been hardest for her to accept were some of these more magical abilities. Science she got. Computers she got. Sometimes she wondered if this was all some kind of simulation, like a video game. “None of that makes much sense to me sweetie, and I’m used to looking at the world sideways. Is that something you can teach someone? I can think of a few uses for a shadow clone.”

"It doesn't work that way, no." Blake shook her head. She wished she had a cup of tea, or anything at all to settle her hands on. Since there wasn't one, she folded them in her lap. Talking to new people always made her nervous, but at least they were on a subject that she could handle.

"Everyone's semblance is different, if you had the ability to use your Aura like I did, it would manifest a different way. Yang's, for instance, is... extremely powerful, and very unique to her. The harder she gets hit the stronger she gets. Ruby, hers is super speed. Weiss can create glyphs that do different things." She could list off a bunch of others, but she only really knew well the people on her team.

The clone near them finally faded out of existence, and Blake looked a little proud of how long it had lasted.

"Do you think it has something to do with personality?" Root tried to envision Shaw or Reese's Semblance. She could see Reese's being similar to Blake's. Melt into the shadows. He was the man in the suit after all.

Shaw would be straight up offense. And it would be hot. "I would love to be able to manipulate a computer with my mind. To truly be one with The Machine."

Blake wouldn't get it, but the in-joke pun pleased Root.

"It probably does. I... run away from situations. We've talked about that a lot, actually. Even my Semblance was designed to get me out of trouble so that I can flee the situation. And Yang is... everything's at 11." Blake twitched a bit at the thought. Yang, all charged up, was beautiful and dangerous, but the danger part was the part that still made her jumpy.

"When her Semblance activates her hair catches on fire and glows, her eyes go red... it's like someone dialed up the volume on her already over the top nature. And she's always been strong. She can carry around gigantic things without even sweating. Ruby is not that smooth suave cool or collected, her super speed works with that. The glyphs though, for Weiss, run in the family."

She shrugged, and added, "I don't think there's ever been something like that. But some Semblances are harder to spot than others. We can't all make a group of glowing monkey men like Sun."

"That's pretty useful." Root gestured at herself. "I'm an expert at disguise, and acting. I can disappear into a crowd, and turn into someone else. For a long time it was the only way to survive, when there was a machine that could track your every movement." She lifted her finger to her chin. "Sometimes, I think our machine had a sense of humor. One day, I was dressed as a bear, a french nanny, and a clown."

So Root thought that would make her and Blake kindred. "Well, my girlfriend isn't ever dialed up past... five. She can't feel the way most people do. Definitely not the way I do. But she still feels. And she's strong and kind of the blunt hammer to my scalpel."

She raised all of her eyebrows. "Glowing monkey man? There's a kink in there somewhere."

"I think that's us, but with some things reversed. Though she's not my girlfriend. We're partners, we work together on a team. But we're just friends." Blake said, shaking her head. "She's the hammer, though, and the one with all the feelings. My weapon is definitely better at... precision strikes. Most swords like it are."

She looked around, trying to decide if she wanted to get up and walk over to the bar. There was a 'barista' there that served things like coffee beverages, and she'd thought she'd smelled something like Chai there a few days back. Her hands were itching to hold onto something. "Sun claps his hands together and three more of him appear, but they're like... sparkling outlines of him. They aren't like my clones. Sometimes if I'm close enough to someone I can clone them, too. I used that-"

Blake's ears dropped, and she glanced away. "I used it recently to help Yang escape our school. What were you doing dressed up in those many costumes all in one day?"
“Just friends, huh?” Root gave Blake a knowing look. Like she knew where that kind of denial came from. Hanna…

“Trying to stop an evil artificial intelligence from taking free will away from humanity.”

"Just friends. I'm... my last boyfriend went even more insane than he was, previously, when I broke up with him. Masterminded an evil plot to take over my school, unleash soulless killer demon animals, set my library on fire, and stab me. Then he cut her arm off for good measure." Blake rambled out, in her cool, slightly sarcastic tone.

Then she added, while forming the hands on her lap into fists, "So I am between relationships at the moment. I don't know what an artificial intelligence is, unless you mean something like Penny."

“The first time Sameen and I met, I was torturing her for information. We weren’t exactly on the same side but it was kind of turning us both on.” That was probably too much information for anyone. Ever. “Luckily, I saw the light and I don’t actually torture people anymore. At least, not unless they hurt Sameen or someone I care about. Or anyone on this ship.”

And then they’d die. She casually patted Blake’s arm. “Your ex sounds like he deserves a good kneecapping. I can sic Sameen on him. Tell me about this Penny?”

"I... Uhm..." Blake blinked at Root a few times, "... She was turned on by it? You were turned on by it?"

That seemed like... a kind of crazy reaction to the things Adam had just put her through. Battle did give most people a rush, though, and torture had to be something similar to some people Somewhere. Adam probably enjoyed it, and that thought made her stomach churn. This wasn't a good topic, though if anyone was going to be sicced on Adam, it seemed like a safe bet to send someone like Root and her scary girlfriend.

Adam was her problem, though. Her and Yang's. "It's our fight. I'm sorry, but we have to handle him. And... Penny was made of metal. We only found out the day that Pyrrha accidentally used her Semblance too much at once. She controls the polarity of metal, it killed her. But Penny is ... was... unique, because she could use Aura. She had a Semblance."

Root eyed Blake, getting the impression that this topic was a little uncomfortable. And while Root liked to make people uncomfortable, this wasn’t the kind she usually went for. “I understand, sweetie. Some fights can only be fought for yourself, not for others.”

She leaned forward, eyes eager. “A living machine? Like an android? And it sounds like she was basically human, only made. Not born. And let me tell you, that is the dream.”

"I guess someone in Atlas seemed to think so," Blake replied, shrugging her shoulder. She was definitely glad for the shift in topic, though she didn't know much about Penny. "Penny was special, though. We thought she was human. A little... quirky, maybe. But until she was cut in half with her own ropes, no one was aware."

Though it did all seem odd now, looking back. The attack, all of the planning that had gone into it before then, the mysterious hands at work that weren't just Torchwick. First Yang, then someone with Pyrrha's Semblance against someone made of metal? Blake narrowed her eyes, "Maybe someone was aware. Someone who wanted the tournament to fail like that. There was a voice over the loudspeaker afterwards, but Weiss and I weren't in the arena. We were in the fair grounds."

“If she was killed by her own abilities, either she malfunctioned, or someone set her up,” Root replied. “There’s a rule we often go by, where I’m from. It’s called Occam’s razor - the simplest solution is often the right one. And from what you’re telling me, it sounds like sabotage.”

"We had a festival dance a few days before the tournament started. Ruby left early, dances have never been her thing. They aren't... really mine, either, but Yang made me go. But she fought someone up in the tower... restricted access areas. We never did find out what the intruder was doing." But what if that intruder had been Cinder, or one of her friends? What if they'd hacked their way into the school's records or something?

Root clucked her tongue. “Sweetie, something is rotten in Denmark. That just can’t be a coincidence. Pity we can’t…”

Couldn’t they? “What if we programmed the Holodeck to be your school, and enter all the data we have. We might find out something if the computer can logically deduce the missing pieces for us!”

"I don't know if we have enough pieces," Blake mused. She'd only been there for part of it, herself. Ruby had some of the other parts but she wasn't there. "I can help reconstruct the school easily enough, and the tournament grounds. But I don't know if we'd find anything more than what we already know. I don't know how any of that works."

But it sounded interesting, and reminded Blake of some novels she'd been reading lately, "I guess we could try to... be like Sherlock Holmes."

Root clapped her hands together, then pulled her PADD from the front of her shirt. “Let’s get to work. Why don’t we start with your school, and see where we end up?”