| Not the Ren They Know | ||
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Yang hesitates in the doorway, feeling just a little unsure of 1- what she might find there and 2- that this strange aquatic being might have up her...sleeve?fin? Whatever. So far she seems pretty trustworthy but there's very little basis for comparison, never having encountered of her kind before. Yang's logic? What else is there to do now but follow anyway? They've got to get answers somehow. She steps through the threshold, looking around openly. Nothing bizarre or dangerous looking here. It seems pretty much like any other welcome center. "Well, that's normal." She flashes a grin to Jaune in a presumably lighthearted and encouraging way. Jaune follows Yang and the strange... but friendly orange blue blobby thingie into the room. "Well, the town seems nice so far. But didn't you say we'd pass by the Town Hall?" Perhaps he wasn't quite paying attention when they walked through the arena. "Or is this in the Town Hall? The building didn't look all that... welcomey." He looks around the room, noting the rather... mundane decor. "So... What are we doing here again?" Serenity returns from storage with a box of facial tissues (protected from being scented in wintergreen, aspirin, and salt by a wastebasket liner) and finds the guests already arrived. "Hello again," Ren cheerily hisses, motioning them inward and toward the room with the free fins. "Would you like to come in and have a seat? I would be happy to speak of good news, managing the bad, and simply listening if you need such." "Uh, okay. Sure!" Yang says, deciding that trying to make too much sense out of what her senses are telling her right now is probably the worst idea so its best to put it far out of mind. As with everything else in life, she follows her favorite M.O. Just go with the flow. So she saunters her way over to a nearby chair and plops down like the good sport she is. "Soooo, " she begins, grappling for words, her hands clapping her knees. "Nice place you've got here. It's...cozy." Another smile. "Uh, so my friend Jaune and I were just wondering....maybe you can tell us something about this....What.....~exactly~ is going on? Your friend Big Blue mentioned something before. Convergence? You wouldn't happen to know any more about that...would you? Cause, it sorta sounded like we might be here for....a while." Jaune follows into the room as well, taking another seat as well. "Um, yeah, what she said." He frowns a bit, thinking back to the team he's now separated from. "N-Not that we're not grateful for your help, but this kinda seems like a bumm wrap." Serenity replies to Yang's remark with a smile. Ren's environment suit would not do the upholstery any favors, so Ren keeps the cloak of water from any chair and instead moves to 'kneel' above the black disk in a manner that puts Ren at eye level with the two. Ren nods to Jaune. "Indeed. As Kotal mentioned, your convergence with this world is an unfortunate circumstance that we must manage rather than solve." Ren motions out the sides. "There are a number of things about the functioning of this world that no one seems to know. I think it reasonable to suppose that your arrival here is not an accident, but we have no one to blame for it. I and nearly all of the residents have been taken from various universes and deposited here in this odd mishmash of a world." Yang furrows a brow, "So you're not native to this place either. Shocker." Yang cuts a worried look to Jaune to be sure he's getting all of this and that its sounding the same in his ears as hers...which is to say, not at all terrific. She's got a sinking feeling about this. The young woman scratches the back of her head, more than a little perplexed. "When you say -manage- Uh, Exactly....how long have you been here, if you don't mind my asking?" Jaune the troubled look on Jaune's face should assure Yang that, indeed, he's on the same page. No, it doesn't look like he's the lovable buffoon right now. "So... we're really stuck, aren't we?" he asks quietly, his hand gripping the pommel of his sword... not the grip of someone looking to draw it, but instead to draw comfort from it. "So what do we do now? How do people... deal with this?" He'd been making so much progress in Beacon. His team had respected him, were his friends. And now he's going to have to start this all over again? "No, I'm not a native," Ren agrees with Yang. "I was arriving on Earth, the human world, to begin an extended tour. I arrived somewhere else, much to my dismay and confusion." Ren frowns at Yang's last question. "Physics, it seems, is not well-behaved here. This includes small variations in the passage of time. But it's been well over a year." To Jaune, Ren nods. "There are some connected worlds to which stable passages exist. A sudden appearance in a random portion of the town suggests that yours is not among those. I can assure you," Ren says, looking from one to the other, "that people are still working with an enormous variety of approaches on the problems of communication and travel between worlds." Ren continues, "As for 'dealing', I'm no psychologist, but I believe that depression can be fought with altruism. There are likely a number of problems faced by other people here that could use your help." If Yang thought the outlook was seeming just a little dim, Ren's words have just plunged the last cinder of hope into darkness. "What?! Wait a minute! That can't be right, " She says, immediately alarmed and thrust squarely into the first text-book stage of grief. She leaps up from her seat, hands balled into fists as is often her manner of resolving conflict. "That's just not gonna work! My sister, my friends, my home- -EVERYTHING- is back on Remnant. I can't just -stay- here. There's gotta be a way....A revolving door somewhere. SOMETHING." Anything but reality at this point is sounding really, really good. Jaune's reaction is a bit more quiet than Yang's; A gripping of the arm of his chair, looking down at his knees in front of him, but the grief is still evident in his expression. Finally, he loosens his grip on sword and chair-arm, and he looks back up to Ren. "So then how do we help?" he asks, voice still rather quiet. If he'd asked that during Yang's outburst, Ren wouldn't have heard him. Maybe he can't be with his team, his friends, his... tutor, Pyrrha. But maybe, just maybe, he can still realize his dream here, and be the hero he's always wanted to be. Serenity regards the two sympathetically and rubs a fin edge through the beginning of the mane of gills before speaking again. "I am missing my family, too. I might be inclined to take unreasonable risks just to send them a message that I am alive and well," Ren admits, also quietly. "But that can't be helped. What can be helped is this world. It suffers more dangers from beasts and people than I think is reasonable for such a level of technology, and it suffers from a government whose best features are benign neglect, an autocrat who seems more mentally stable than some of the competition, and some talk of giving representative democracy a try. And it suffers from a weak or absent public support for the arts and education." Ren pauses, then motions an extruded fin edge toward the two and continues more optimistically, "While I may not be able to arrange employment myself, I would like to hear what you feel you might do for this world." Tear it to pieces until a way home is found? Punch a hole in the time space continuum? Yang's ability to get a grip on the situation on hand is slipping. The young woman's temper is beginning to flare and this is dangerously close to quite literally becoming a problem. "ARG!" Yang grips her head as it is on the verge of exploding, "No, that's just not GOOD enough! I can't leave Ruby by herself! None of this makes any sense and it's really starting to piss me off." Yang whips her head around to Jaune, her eyes flashing red for a fraction of a second. She points to him in an almost accusatory manner, "We're gonna find a way outta this. Just wait!" Jaune moves a hand to his sword again, considering Ren's suggested options. While he's not the best at it, certainly protecting from monsters is what he's best at of what is suggested. So he opens his mouth to begin to say something, but Yang's outburst comes first. He cringes even before her gaze slips to him. "I... but... What can we do? I mean... if Ozpin, Glinda, or Oobleck where here, I'd give any of them a chance, but... us? We're still in training. I don't know anything about different worlds, or transporting long distances, or... heck, I barely even know how things work on Remnant!" He sighs, looking down again. "I don't know what we can do to do that, Yang." He pauses for a moment. "But if there are beasts attacking the people here..." He looks back over to his classmate again. "Then isn't it our duty as Huntsman and Huntress, even in training, to help them out?" Through the doorway pokes the head of a rainbow-haired girl with a concerned look on her face, apparently investigating the outburst. Seeing that it, for now, at least, it seems to just be an emotional outburst, she just as quickly pulls back into the main room. Serenity shows one advantage of not sitting in a chair by shifting from tiny ripples to simply keep in place to a slight backwards drift from Yang. Ren glances up as Rayne checks in, giving her a concerned look but not saying anything. Ren returns eyes to Yang and says quietly, "You can be working on that way out and other long-term goals while taking more immediate action." Ren motions to the sides. "For example, I took up a secretary and public relations position while trying to find a way to apply rather unrelated skills in analyzing dance." Ren motions toward the two. "To begin with, I would suggest enrolling in school. Many people here would consider you to be still young enough for public primary school. I hope you'll agree that learning a bit more about your surroundings before taking action would be the reasonable course." Yang's gaze darts between Jaune and Ren as they offer counter points to her momentary loss of temper. This must be a very strange place indeed for she finds that both Jaune and the giant squid have the right of this. Freaking out isn't going to help anything at all. She can't help but worry about her little sister, though...its not like she can't take care of herself for a little while longer. She's not just a kid anymore, as much as she sometimes seems that way. Anyway, there's nothing to be done---yet anyway. Closing her eyes a moment, she draws a calming breath and lets go of her tensions on a soft sigh. Her body visibly relaxes "You're right," she concedes, nodding. "This is our job - even if it is in the middle of who-knows-where for who-knows-how-long." To Ren, she turns directly and grins sheepishly, rubbing the back of her head, "Sorry about that. Gotta a little....fired up, is all. We're cool now." She waves a hand as a show of good faith. Tempestuous though she may be, at least she's as quick to calm as she is to exploding. Jaune breathes out a sigh of relief. He's not been witness to Yang's anger personally, but he's heard tales. Yang's sister is his best friend that isn't on his team, after all. "So... going back to school... Well, I can't say that doesn't make sense." He frowns though, again not particularly relishing the thought of trying to find a new group of friends. Is he even going to find another nice, quirky girl to talk to? He grips onto his sword again, wishing at least that his team could have come here with him. But they haven't, and he lets out another sigh. "Well... I guess we don't have many options, do we?" Serenity doesn't have a need to hold any breath, but does remain watching Yang with a quiet uncertainty while she makes up her mind. As she grins, Ren offers a small smile in reply and relaxes while drifting a little closer. "I worry more when people are not upset at being uprooted from everything familiar," Ren admits. "Some have come from places worse than this." Ren then gestures to Jaune with his observation. "No, because of the mix of cultures and technologies here, you have a vast array of options -perhaps an absurd amount- and I don't even fully understand the city across the strait from this town. The difficulty is in understanding your choices. Hence the schooling." Ren adds curiously, looking from one to the other, "I was wondering about this training that you mentioned. Is this 'hunting' an action against people who can act in good and evil, or animals that cannot?" Yang scratches her temple, "Well, it started out one way and kinda turned into a little of both. But the grimm aren't -animals-, per se. They're kinda like....Oh you know, your average vicious, soulless, bone crushing beasts just begging for a whipping. " The young woman grins a she smacks a fist into her palm. "You guys have anything like that, we can take care of it." Maybe it will do good to get out a little aggression after all. Nothing can work off a day's tensions like taking out a few baddies and if in the process that should bring some good to this world, well all the better. School, on the other hand gives her just a little pause. She's not especially looking forward to that but if it comes down to it....oh well. "Isn't that right, hero-boy?" she winks and there's the barest hint of teasing in it. Jaune thinks back to his schooling, and instead more remembers what Pyrrha had told him. "Um, yeah, the Grimm are kind of... Soulless monsters. They, uh... are attracted to negative emotions?" He looks towards Yang as she winks at him. "Uhh... y.. yeah, sure. We can take care of them. You saw how I dispatched that Ursa, right?" That last part being more directed at Serenity, who was there for that brief fight. "Hhh... we might have something of the sort. I would advise caution in dealing with them, for your sake," Ren allows, frowning at Yang's answer before nodding to Jaune. "And I ask in such a specific way about the goals of your training because this world collects a wide variety of beings and collects people with a wide variety of notions about personhood." Ren motions outward. "Determining who has responsibilities and rights is not a simple matter of finding the right face shape or the right number of limbs. Even if a being lacks the ability to hold a conversation at the moment you check, that does not mean that the being is not a person. Of course, not all people have sunny personalities, either. In fights, you should err on the side of caution for the other's sake, too." Yang blinks, raising her brows at Jaune, "You took out an Ursa?" For a moment it seems as though she might doubt the authenticity of his story. Her expression is incredulous. Well, face it, she's not seen Jaune truly test his mettle in any real capacity before. Anytime they've been engaged in combat, she's been a little preoccupied beating things senseless to take notice of him. Hand on her hip, she whistles and uses her free one to give him a big thumbs up. "Nice." To Ren, however, she gives her words of caution careful consideration. She lets those words sink in and finds that she can draw parallels to other things. It's almost like dealing with the faunus back home, only, now there are literally infinite possibilities of different life forms they will have to judge with more scrutiny. She gets it. Yang nods, "I see you point. Thanks for the tip?for everything, actually. You're not so bad for a.....squid? - Not that I've ever met a bad one.....YET." | |
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