The emotion dampening pills created a familiar but somewhat disturbing chemical calmness that made it much harder to feel any emotion at all. It seemed like any previous tolerance level had gone away due to lack of use in the past year or two, so that was good at least. The stuff was addictive as hell for those seeking a reprieve from their own mind, and it was also pretty damned expensive. It was much cheaper but more unsafe to just use painkillers to ease mental pain, because the brain didnāt differentiate between emotional and physical pain. It was more unsafe because without a physical wound the body built up tolerance to the painkillers and could develop a physical dependence on the stuff, which was not desirable. Furthermore, addiction to drugs tended to kill any reputation or sense of reliability that one had no matter what other conditions existed. It halted progression through any grief or emotional process temporarily and artificially due to a lack of will to face whatever the issue was, and the evasion of that emotional process just extended the depression and inner turmoil that one was already experiencing.
There was still a bit of residual tolerance, it seemed like, because some of the trainees and police seemed to be taking to it more strongly than the faunusā¦ or maybe it was due to the residual effects of previous heavy use. Something about a permanent chemical imbalance or whatever made it so after heavy use for any reason for an extended period the emotions never reached the same highs or lows again. Emotional dampers, frankly, were pretty standard fare for hunters and anyone who claimed to have never use one is either lying, an idiot, or never did anything remotely dangerous. Being faced with your own mortality in a hopeless mission was fucking terrifying, and it was dumb as fuck for someone to not take the chemical boost when it was available. Doping to win against other people is a dirty move but doing so against Grimm is par for the course because good sportsmanship and shit are ideas reserved solely for people.
A green cloak with its hood down covered most of her form, including partially the leather pauldrons on both of her shoulders. Brown trousers and boots alongside a dark leather jerkin over a green undershirt completed the ensemble alongside dark green metal gauntlets that ended in claw-like tips. She had two visible closed quivers on both sides of her hips with the tip of the arrow at the top of each quiver. The ship carried over a thousand arrows strewn around in various compartments over the ship, and she always carried two quivers on her person with a larger emergency one on her back when they encountered a lot of resistance. The arrows would look slightly different than the ones the trainees used, but not enough that a non-archer would notice. Carbon arrows provided more weight and durability at the expense of shrapnel when broken, which was a benefit rather than a negative in this case. Four-fletched arrows instead of three increased accuracy, particularly on the quick and instinctual shots that the faunus favored at the cost of power. A long and black western style longbow was slung across her back on the outside of her clothes, and Shade was playing around with her thumb release trigger as she strolled around the ship in a dead period between attacks.
She didnāt always use one of them, but consistency was much harder to do over long stretches of time and the faunus felt like it helped her with her left-handed shots a lot more. Arm fatigue was a real thing in higher draw weights, and a mix of sleep deprivation and arm fatigue was potentially deadly to everyone involved so measures to prevent both needed to be instituted. She had always preferred power, with heavier than average draws and heavier than average arrows that could either penetrate the target completely or snap into carbon shrapnel at worst on impact to cause extreme damage with each shot. The downside to opting into that was that extended fights were never her strong suit, and while she recognized that years ago and learned to shoot with her off handā¦ these long, multiday missions of being on constant alert was exactly the sort of thing she hadnāt done for over a year at this point. She was out of practice, frankly, and as the only hunter who could respond to this mission the fact of the matter was that if she failed in her job than everyone else died.
Not a terribly remarkable position to put a huntress in, but also representative on why emotional dampener abuse isnāt exactly the most uncommon thing among those hunters who actually undertook these missions on a regular basis. It prevented burnout and lessened the amount of time with any specific emotional trauma in the short term so the work could continue, which was generally the goal. Some of the trainees flat out avoided her when they could, and it wasnāt exactly hard to see that the faunus wasnāt some of their first choices to be on a mission with. That was perfectly fine and didnāt bother her, frankly, because being liked was never part of her job and being popular hadnāt been something she had cared about for years. Ā
A hands-off and criticism oriented teaching style was bound to be controversial, but at the end of the day the most important thing for each hunter was to develop their own way of doing things. Sure, she could teach all the archers to fight the same exact way she did and the more melee oriented trainees a dodge-based style, but that would also be a giant waste of many of their semblances which were flat out better than hers against Grimm. Courage collapsed much more quickly when one was simply following orders and directives that they were not emotionally invested in, and really emotional collapse made the physical collapse inevitable. Some may have very well wanted to be coddled more, but that wasnāt the job of a Huntsman Academy. If they wanted the hunter title and the responsibility that entailed, then they had to learn how to act the part. Mentally weak but physically strong hunters were the most dangerous breed that existed, and typically either burnt out or went insane within a year or two on the job due to inability to cope with the realities of the job.
A bit of turbulence made a veryā¦ audible noise come from one of the nearby rooms, and the faunus in no particular hurry went over just to verify that no actual damage had been done. It certainly sounded like a fall, and with aura there was next to no chance of injury for anyone involved. It came from down some stairs, and the huntress made no particular effort to disguise her steps. It seemed like whoever it was didnāt want to be seen, because the sounds of quick movement out of the room were heard before the faunus actually made it down into line of sight. There was a well-used notebook open on the table, and curiosity led Shade to actually look over to see what it was.
The first thing that she noticed was the handwriting was awful, and the pen was gone from its clip and the ink was fresh on another set of somehow actually worse than the initial horrific handwriting answer to the original question at the top of the page. The faunus shifted her thumb release to her right hand as she quickly changed the page to confirm what she already suspected, that it was Qiuāliās notebook that he had forgot for whatever reason on this table. Lots of notes, actually, it seemed like he was using this notebook for everything rather than having a separate one for every class like most people did. The second bit of handwriting she didnāt recognize, both because Shade so rarely required writing in her classes and because there was a disturbing amount of people at Haven Academy with horrific handwriting and questionable grasp of language that neither of these characteristics really narrowed it down very much.
There was an alarm that went off every time there was a Grimm attack, so there was no real danger of missing anything if Shade picked up the pen and decided to humor Qiuāli and whoever had wrote the last answer down and give her own. The original question was āWhat is true strengthā and the first answer was āNothing is true. Motivation fades, muscles shrifel, and one day we will all just die no matter what we did in life.ā
To be fair, it was a viewpoint that one might expect from a teenager headed to what might be their certain doom who had just discovered nihilism was a thing and wanted to seem profound and deep or whatever. There was an added challenge, here, because quite frankly if she wrote an entry too detailed the reader might not be able to figure out the meaning of it without a literal dictionaryā¦. Which she doubted he packed along with him. That ruled out anything above an elementary school level, and likely limited it to ten words or less. Solving existential questions within these constraints wasnāt exactly easy, but it provided a momentary distraction from the fact that she was going to have to go back to pulling double shifts shooting Grimm very soon from her break.
Picking up the pen, Shade skipped a line from the previous reply and decided what she was going to put down.
True strength is stepping up to do what no one else can when required needed.
Was there a simpler way to say āneededā? Probably, but she couldnāt think of one right now. Required was the first thing that came to mind, but it probably had too many syllables for this sort of thing so the faunus just ran a line through the word so that it would hopefully be ignored.
It wouldnāt be ignored. She drew two more lines through it to make it completely and utterly obvious that she wanted the word to be ignored, and then thickened each line to eliminate the word largely from sight. After doing that, the huntress would clip the pen back on the notebook and stroll back up the stairs from whence she came. One nevermore had already shown up during their travels, and which the police could handle lancers and other lesser Grimm the threat of more powerful Grimm required her to be hovering at all times to ensure that the delay between spotting the threat and the elimination of the threat was as small as possible to limit the damage that could possibly befall the aircraft. The thing was armored up, yes, but not enough to withstand an attack from something like a Manticore or a Giant Nevermore for very long.
