#prabhutv

He was on his third cigarette when Qrow saw the other person standing in the park. There was a thick fog in the air, and Qrow shivered slightly. He shouldn’t have been out here, and neither should the other person.

It had only been six months since his mother’s murder, && Mercury could admit to being impressed with the speed of his father’s work.

The losses were extremely significant to him - two missing limbs, over half his Aura permanently removed, && his body in a constant state of healing && degradation - but the gains, however minor, were not to be overlooked.

The loss of Aura merely allowed him to hone it to the quality of a fine chef’s blade - with less at his disposal, he was learning to make do with what he could. Two limbs short was teaching him the art of flexibility - when left alone without any means of travel, he’d learned how to travel with only his arms.

It did not outweigh the loss of his limbs, however. His most critical weapons lost would take years to relearn the use of, to establish the quality of his replacements.

A sound echos from above, the assassin’s head snapping up immediately from where he was repeating his own self-made workout. Someone was here. Not his father, if the sound was to be believed - the echoing cadence of this stranger’s steps was too even for a perpetual drunk like his father’s to be a match. Mercury swings down from his position, finding a better, more concealed location from which to observe his quarry when they inevitably entered.

The keypad to the bolt-locked door gave a fizzling sound, beeping in alarm before going silent. Thusly disabled, the door creaks open, allowing the stranger inside.

      the mask comes off mere seconds after she storms into his office. she throws it aside, welcoming the warm flow of sanguine down her cheek as opposed to the rash, blinding heat from within her. 

“I almost wanted to remain anonymous so you didn’t think of this as having been biased... but this is honestly too fun.”

The man, his aura alone immediately recognizable, crossed his hands upon a desk... Watts’ desk, to be precise. The sudden lights flickering to life revealing his face at last, if still obscured by is wide-brimmed hat. 

“You’re just so... deluded. Knowledge is nothing if you paint it to your liking, you know?”

He outstretches his lands, leaning back in the chair as its squeaks break the overwhelming silence of the office. “I invite you to tear the universe asunder, then. Break it down to every... last... bit, until it’s nothing but the building blocks of reality itself, and I implore you, Arthur... find me one heap of good. Find me one atom that is better than all the rest.”

“You keep throwing that word around... ‘better’...” He all but spits the word, making a show of shuddering even after he utters it. “A gun is great if you want someone dead, but I wouldn’t exactly trust it to effectively stir my cornflakes.”

“A doctor is who I go to when I need stitches, but not exactly who I call if the sink is clogged.”

“For something to be “better” it needs to have something that is not as good as it.”

“If you remove all the alternatives, then the “best” can be anything. If you want the best thing to hammer a nail be a brick, remove all the hammers. If you want the best thing to cook eggs with be a blowtorch, throw away the oven.”

“There’s a saying I believe has eluded you, maybe because you think it’s ‘cliche’, and that is “History is not determined by who is right, only who is left”.”

“Now, if I’ve made myself clear, then I implore you to stop using those words “better” or “best”. What you want is what you want. It’s not better, worse, indifferent or anything, it’s merely what you-- Well... actually, I’m still not quite convinced even you think that’s what’s best. You just know that it’s what ol’ mother dearest thinks is best.”

        “ENOUGH!”

        “You may be the one running the school, but I have had enough!”  Leonardo crosses the room to him, eyes full of fire and finger pointing at the snake in the grass.  “I will not be the weak link in this plan that you and Salem have!”  He teeth bared, hand shaking a loud and echoing crack resonated through the air had him staring.

What had he just done.

     The clock ticks meticulously, never missing a beat despite the loud voices coming from the other side of the room. Like Ozpin’s old office at Beacon, it fails to replicate any sense of relief in Ruby’s chest. It moves too slow. When she stares at the hands, she sees the globe of the world sitting at the edge of them, carried by the hands’ endless cycle until, finally, something knocks it off its balance.

     If someone asked her, would she like the world to stay the same, she once would have responded, no, because they needed change, and inaction terrified her the same way corpses watched its bones decay. She also believed she would be the one to change it.

     Now, all she wants is peace. Quiet. Her uncle wouldn’t need to yell with another man behind closed doors, and Pyrrha’s voice would finally leave her dreams. (And sometimes her head.)

     Ruby closes her eyes, leaning her head against the seat. She thinks of distracting herself with the same old game she and Yang plays, where they make up stories and play off of each other’s words, but her imagination merely flickers every time she tries. It’s not the same alone.

“ well. ” ahem. “ there are better ways to gain her approval. ”