RWBYFanon v5
RPG World of Remnant => The Vale Region => Beacon Academy => Topic started by: Glow on April 16, 2019, 04:22:33 PM
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Inside one of the many training rooms at Beacon, odd clinking sounds met the noise of hits against a training dummy. Standing straight, a hooded woman stood a few meters away from the sturdy target – and oddly enough, with four chains extending out of her back taking turns to try and weave their way forward to impact it.
The figure was wearing headphones, the edge of them peeking out beneath the hood, but the rest of her features were somewhat obscured in her combat gear; somewhat reinforced jeans and a similar hoodie covered in little chains on their side. The clothing seemed a little damp; she appeared to have been working for a while, at any rate.
She would go through a pattern; the chains would start slowly hitting the dummy in sequence, then the process would repeat, sped up. This kept going until suddenly, one would veer off oddly, tie itself in the others, or even swing back around near the huntress-in-training to the point she had to block it. There was a quiet curse mumbled each time, and visible agitation in the now-hunched figure of Samantha Quartz as she attempted to get a handle of her chains again after her injury.
The damage done to her own body had been annoying, but she’d dealt with worse. What was grating on her nerves was the damage done to her implant. Unlike the rest of her body, the doctors didn’t exactly know what to do with it – even she’d had to figure it out through reverse engineering, but the large gash near the centre of the four circles had resulted in her not having perfect control of her chains anymore. It was like your arm randomly deciding to punch yourself one out of every ten punches; infuriating and possibly dangerous. It did only happen during fast-paced movements, but it was a very much ‘for now’ outlook in Samantha’s head; a tire will continue to deflate once its punctured, after all.
Another few misses and a sudden chain whacking her in her side brought out a slight yelp of surprise from the fox faunus, distracted in her own thoughts for the moment. The jolt back to reality brought along a frustrated growl from Samantha, before the four chains suddenly snapped forward to bind around the dummy, her semblance charging in their collective forms through the sound of their rattling before the dummy was constricted and torn apart with a screeching noise of her semblance release.
A few more moments passed, before Samantha let her fists unclench, one going to rub against her forehead.
“Shouldn’t lose control like that. In either sense…” She murmured to herself, tone slipping back to its usual neutral point as deep breaths brought her back to her senses, the chains continuing to rattle for a few more seconds before the rest of the stored energy dissipated. Letting them slowly coil back up around her body, she drew Staccato and Encore out of their sheathes, instead deciding to practise something she could control.
A little jolt of pain chaining up the metallic portion of her arm reminded her that might not be true too much longer. Gritting her teeth, she started up the motions nonetheless, determined to at least get something done during one of the rare times she had enough motivation to actually work on training.
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Anna was roaming the corridors of Beacon, looking for a good place to train. That's right. For once, she wasn't going to hole herself up in the library for the entire day. She was going to practice.
Not that she really needed it, what with her semblance and all, but there were some things she wanted to work out too. Throwing knives, generally refining her skill at manipulating her chains and, first and foremost, trying out the idea she'd had after the switcheroo. Mauve's weapons had been brutally efficient for her. This is why she was quietly walking forward with two 2-foot long steel plates in her arms, although her chains jingled a bit around her armored forearms every now and then.
As she was stepping past an ever-so-slightly ajar door, the clangs emanating from within stopped before turning into some loud, nightmarish screeching the likes of which she had never heard before. Not exactly knowing if something was wrong or not, she rested her head on the door and used her semblance's second stage. Even like this, her field of vision to the inside was rather small, but she was clearly able to see a small, possibly? feminine figure using chains coming out of her back to assault a helpless wooden dummy.
Now yes, chains coming out of someone's back were a mildly odd sight to witness, but the weirder thing to Anna was the chains themselves. They weren't just rattling, it was like the chains were emitting another, entirely different sound that she just could not quite put her finger on. The odd sound faded, though, leaving her to 'look' in wonder as to what exactly that had been.
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Samantha started up the movements of her twin blades, the weapons swung in an unheard rhythm as she practised. The pain in her arm quickly died down, and the motions got a little more fluid like they used to be, her breathing slowing as she calmed herself once more. Slowly, she started weaving in the chains to the motions as well - not quite the quick and decisive strikes from before, but more aimed for tripping or just simple annoyance to the invisible foe in front of her, building up a light vibration in each sword as she tried to work through the full practise she normally did.
Eventually, as she sped it up, one of the chains flinched slightly to one side, wrapping around her right hand and interrupting the motions - drawing a light sigh out of the woman as she let the charge dissipate from both weapons with a light, almost melodic high pitched noise ringing from the release of the vibrations. Standing there for a moment, she drew back on the charging portion of her semblance, deciding it was probably safer to avoid its use until she had a bit better control.
There was a brief delay as it went into effect, before she blinked in surprise at a nearby figure. Turning around without much warning, she tilted her head at the door and gave an awkward wave after a beat.
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The girl(?) started practicing again, swords coming and going. The chains followed suit after a small while, less jabbing like before and more swinging, much like Anna herself did when she attempted to wrap her own chains around an opponent.
...Again, there it was! Some sort of low, barely heard hum was coming from the swords! It felt odd somehow, like the noise didn't actually belong to the metal constructs. But suddenly, one of the chains veered off course and wrapped around its owner's right hand, seemingly against her(?) will as the practice seemed to come to an early end.
As the swings abided, the low hum was replaced by a soft, high-pitched series of much more audible harmonics that again seemed to defy the material they emanated from. What wa-
Anna's train of thought brutally crashed to a halt as the person made a turnabout, ripping an almost silent "Eep!" out of Anna's mouth. Her semblance stopped and she withdrew slightly, head pointing down to hide her face behind her locks of hair. Oh gods, oh gods, she'd seen her. What would she do now? What should she do now?
Gingerly, Anna pressed herself against the door to make it open a tiny bit more then puled her semblance. The girl - for her face was definitely feminine - stood there staring, a curious look on her face. In the meantime, Anna stood there for several seconds, mind and body frozen.
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Keeping up the slight head tilt, Samantha gave another little wave over to them as the other woman made an odd surprised noise. Were- were they alright? Had they managed to hit them in the crossfire or something? A slightly worried look crossed the fox faunus' face at the thought, and she straightened her figure, sliding her weapons into their sheathes.
"Uh, excuse me, are- are you alright?" They questioned, the worry similarly audible in their tone, along with their typical slight caution around new people. Nonetheless, it didn't matter how typically shy or reluctant she was to talk - she might have hurt someone, and she at least needed to make sure they were alright. Taking a few slow steps forward, they started walking over to the other figure.
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Anna's blank, deer-in-headligths 'stare' was interrupted by the sound of the girl's weapons gently sliding home. The voice that soon followed helped to dispel some of Anna's shyness, allowing her to answer a sheepish "I-I heard a weird sound..."
Oh, great. Just great. Could you possibly be more vague?
As the girl slowly stepped closer, every sound denoting the decreasing distance made Anna's entire body stiffen.
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It took a few moments for Samantha to realise what had been said, more preoccupied with trying to see if they'd hurt the other woman - and all they could see was hesitance in their stance, rather than any limping or blood. Once she actually realised she'd gotten a reply, they blinked, before making an 'oh' face with their mouth.
"Ah! Right, I- sorry, my... my semblance is quite, uh. Loud." She sheepishly replied, gently scratching against her cheek in a little nervousness. They hadn't meant to disturb anyone, but Samantha supposed their semblance might still be audible through the training walls - Akel at the very least tended to get annoyed at the sheer volume of it when activated, but there wasn't much to compare Akel's hearing to except her own in the first place.
"Sorry about that. Uhm. Hope I didn't disturb you or anything? I- well, I could show you what I mean at least, make up for it?" She continued. Offering to show the ability in action should make up for any kind of disturbance they'd created for the other huntress-in-training, right?
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The girl's reply at least succeeded in easing some of the tension in Anna, if anything. The fact that she seemed to share some of the shyness was pretty much a bonus, too.
But then she suggested showing the semblance, and Anna's face immediately turned to face her interlocutor's. Her hair, however, didn't move, meaning she now had a nose rising from a sea of bronze and copper. She was still quick to nod her assent, though the movement was smaller than one would expect from someone nodding excitedly - or at all for that matter.
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Samantha gave a small smile in reaction to the other woman's shy, if enthusiastic nodding, holding a quick thumbs up in reply as she walked back to the centre of the room, inviting them in. "Best shut the door." She stated, raising her voice a little to reach Anna.
The fox faunus held her arms out before clapping her hands loudly together, then keeping them grasped around something invisible within. She then stood semi-awkwardly still for a few moments, focusing on controlling the building energy in her hands - her gray aura gently starting to glow in resistance to her semblance's backlash - before taking a deep breath, pressing her fox ears firmly down against her head under the hood, and throwing her hands forward. A slightly screeched and far louder copy of the initial clap rang out, resulting in a blurred disturbance of air smashing into several of the targets in the room as a shockwave, impacting them with blunt force and sending them backward.
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After a short lack of reactions she could hear, Anna heard the girl turn and walk back to the center of the room, at which point she asked Anna to shut the door - which, after a brief 'oh, right, duh' reaction, she promptly did. Once done, Anna turned back to the lass' last known position and turned on her semblance at full power.
It started by a hand clap, rather loud. The girl quickly held onto something - most people wouldn't be able to see it, but Anna did. Within the bounds outlined by the girl's hands was a jumble of resonating sound, strengthening itself as every moment passed. And even as it did, the sounds around it gradually faded into nothingness, the pressure waves themselves dissolving before travelling but a few centimetres away. As the noise echoed in its ethereal cage, the girl's Aura started showing, a pale, barely-perceptible grey that surrounded her completely. ...Well, actually, not quite, from what Anna could see. Why was that?
Her train of thought was cut short as the once-upon-a-time clap was let loose, bursting forth into targets which were sent flying from the sheer impact.
Anna stood, wide-eyed and hair ruffled from the shockwave's reflections against the walls.
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The fox faunus took a second to breathe, before looking down at her hands, making sure her aura had handled the backlash properly. Her usually-hidden fox ears popped back up, swivelling around slightly, before Samantha remembered where she was and quickly pushed them back down against her hair as they were before, hiding them under the hood.
"Ah, uh, yea- there we go! Amplification of sound into a... kind of kinetic... sound wave? Half and half?" She explained, slightly sheepishly over her own lack of knowledge of the active portion of her semblance. "Blocks my, uh, sonar while using, but useful to make things all quiet!". Wasn't like people hadn't seen the Vytal Tournament; it was generally common knowledge what it did now, so no harm in explaining a bit.
"It's- well, not much, but it's mine, y'know? So, uh- does that, that help?" She questioned a little shyly, tilting her head.
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Anna's mind - and mouth - slowly lurched into function again while her semblance turned off. "...That was amazing! I could see the sound being kept in a defined zone, I could see the waves grow in power over time! None of it was allowed to escape and then BAM, it all flew out the front in an instant!
I heard you mention sonar, is there more you can do with your semblance?", she asked, having calmed down a bit.
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"Ah, uhm-" Samantha started replying to the babbled statement, looking a little bewildered for a moment at the excited description and just nodding along. "I, uh. Yea, strains the aura a bit but the longer it's contained or the more power I push into it, the stronger it gets, yea. Though really large blasts are a bit, uh, hazardous." She mused, furrowing her brow for a moment as she thought about the events of the tournament not long ago and the results of it. Still better than getting crushed, she guessed.
The faunus got brought out of her musing by the inquiry, blinking as she escaped the brief haze she'd been trapped in. "Oh, right! Yea, I- it sort of works by drawing in the waves I'd normally use for my sonar, I think? Or, well, draws from the same source, maybe? I'm not exactly sure, but passively I think the same energy I use just kind of... pulses about. Or I just hear things I could potentially use as sources for my semblance? More sensitive? Either way, it uh- it forms a kind of echolocation. Interrupted a bit during charging, but it's useful!" She explained, taking her time as she puzzled over her own abilities. She'd never fully grasped how the two interacted, barring that there was something there, but she was happy to try and communicate what she knew so far. Wasn't like it hadn't all been over television already.
The thought got another distant look out of the fox for a moment, before she pinched the bridge of her nose to try and snap herself out of it. This whole ordeal with her chains was bringing up too many bad memories, really.
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Anna listened intently at the girl's voice as she responded. "Maybe it absorbs sounds like when you want to amplify them but instead of containing them in a defined region, it just translates the sound directly to your head?" Truth be told, Anna knew nothing about how it was supposed to work. Sure, it had some similarities to her own semblance, but that was only some similarities...
The girl's short pause made Anna reflexively pulse her own semblance to see what was going on - was she just thinking or something else? Turns out, she was staring into the distance, which, while not exactly common for people in deep thought, wasn't exactly uncommon, either. "...Something wrong?"
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Samantha blinked at the other woman's words, tilting her head slightly in consideration. "Huh, maybe. Not a bad theory at all." She mused, avoiding the followup question for long as she could and only having to half-pretend to keep considering the current topic, before eventually frowning slightly and her neutral demeanour breaking a little.
"Ah, it's- it's nothing that bad, just. Got a bit banged up in the tournament by someone, my... implant got damaged, if you've heard about all that. Quartz girl and all that." She mumbled quietly, ears twitching slightly under her hood. "Since we don't exactly have a load of, uhm, bioengineers at Beacon available, there's a bit of a limit to what I can do to repair it, so they've been... acting out a little. Feels like my arms aren't quite. Listening to me."
She really wasn't sure why she was telling this to a practical stranger in comparison to trying to go over it with her team. Maybe it was the fact she seemed shy enough not to say anything, or somewhat trustworthy in her reactions; maybe it was just she didn't want to let her team down at all or bother them with her issues anymore. Either way, there seemed to be a lot of pent-up frustration in the fox faunus.
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After waiting patiently for the faunus to feel like talking about it, Anna FINALLY took the time to move the hair out of her face, revealing a slightly worried frown above her closed eyes. "Oh, really? I'm sorry, I didn't know, I don't watch the Tourney... But, um, would you let me try and help a bit?" Realizing that she still hadn't given her name or anything, she changed gears. "I'm Anna, by the way, Anna Fall. My semblance allows me to see." Taking a deep breath to shake off any anxiety that could've been building up, she marched on.
"By arms, did you mean your chains?"
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The fox faunus gave a slightly puzzled look at the very brief explanation of Anna's semblance, but gave a little hummed affirmative to being introduced. "Eh, it's part of the whole career and all that. Certainly can take a look, though no offense to you but it's more of the lack of appropriate reference that kind of makes it difficult to repair over knowing what's damaged. Took a bit apart, and the circuits are fu- uh. Messed up. Hurts a bit sometimes." She admitted at the end, letting the little titbit slip she hadn't been telling her team much. "And yeah. Had them so long it feels just. Weird to have them messing up like this."
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"Mmm. Lack of references can indeed make things harder, but I'd still prefer to do all I can. If I can even make it hurt a bit less, it's worthwhile to me." Now that Anna thought about it, those chains were part of her, huh? Not just some simple prosthetics, judging by how she spoke of them.
Gently laying all of her things down near the wall to her right, Anna then got back up and faced back the Faunus, eyes slightly open - staring at nonexistent details on the floor. "Could you try and use them like you normally do?", she very nicely asked as her semblance revved into high gear.
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Samantha fidgeted a bit, but gave a little shrug and nodded. Wouldn't hurt to try at any rate, she supposed. A complicated series of mechanics and electronics started to come to life in her back as small pulses of aura acted almost like nerve impulses down the chains in combination with the electronic signals, all four slowly raising up into the air before starting slow motions back and forth.
One of them suddenly seemed to almost spark, and one of the chains hovering flinched slightly unlike the others. Taking a closer look, it appeared to be somewhat simple - it was just blunt physical damage to the inner workings of the place where the chains attached to the implant proper, with electronics unconnected and some odd bits of mechanics damaged. The issue was, none of it looked simple to fix, and more importantly it wasn't like the design of it would even be familiar to Samantha proper, given how she got the implant.
It looked like the aura running through the implant proper, rather than controlling the fine movements of the chains, was almost trying to fix it up slightly - but didn't seem to be having any success on such a large area of damage, especially with several patchwork repairs done in the past for the implant by Samantha surrounding the area. It would explain how the implant hadn't broken down before if it had some function of auto-repair, but this seemed to be beyond its capabilities to repair. More disturbingly, the use of it seemed to be slowly wearing away at the implant and the auto-repair almost damaging further parts of it ever so gradually - even not the fully mechanical parts of it. And Samantha hadn't mentioned anything like that beforehand.
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Anna watched intently as the girl started moving and the chains slowly came to life. What was clear to Anna's Sight was that, firstly, the glow of Aura seemed different around the centre of the chain-donned back - sort of dimmer and paler. Alas, that was all she could see of the Aura.
The internal mechanics, however, were mind-boggling. She hadn't really concentrated on them last time she watched Sam go at it, but it was a complete and utter mess of muscles, nerves and small, stiff plates through which no blood flowed. Even if she couldn't see their inner workings, she could tell by the shapes that things seemed unrefined, almost hacked together in places. And even worse, the joint between the living and the lifeless seemed to be getting minutely worse with every passing second.
When the movements came to a halt, Anna stopped her semblance and spoke slowly, gently, intending to help over any thing else - choosing to leave out the degradation for now, as that would hopefully not matter in the long run. "Well, from what I saw, it's looking... odd. Things are a bit messed up as far as connections seem to go but your Aura's also acting weird around the spot." She paused, pensive on the matter of fixing the problems as permanently as possible. "Say, did you get some physical re-education for your chains after our got better? Sort of like how people who go through major physical traumas need to relearn motor skills."
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"Ah, uh, from what I... understand of it, the aura's used to control it to some extent?" Samantha replied, though hesitant - she never had been exactly sure how the whole thing managed to work, especially feeling a little of what the chains touched. Something about the statement would seem just a little off from what Samantha said, but it was close enough - the movements seemed to time in with the little movements of aura through the chains.
She paused at the suggestion, then gave a little shrug. "I mean, this is about the closest I can get to it. And it's... it's hard to describe, but there's just a feeling in my gut that something's wrong with the implant itself?" She mused, voice getting quieter in almost embarrassment at the flimsy evidence. She just got the feeling from somewhere that it wasn't right, though she didn't really know how she was feeling it at all or if she was just being paranoid - it had already caused some minor arguments in the VCVS dorm when she'd accidentally dropped or hit something and then tried to divert questioning from her teammates. "But, uh- it's, it's not a bad suggestion, but it's what I'm trying now, yea." She continued, quick to assure the other student she appreciated the help.
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Anna smiled softly a upon hearing the girl's tone. She dutifully listened to every piece of information she had to say and, after thinking on it a bit more, formulated a response. "By re-education, I don't mean doing things like I've seen you do - those movements are, as far as I know, too demanding for normal physical readaption. Plus, if Aura's involved, it's not just physical - there's probably a mental component to it as well."
She walked closer, stopping about an arm's length from where she'd last seen her standing - and heard her speak from. "What I'd tell you to do is try and concentrate on your chains, or rather limbs, as I understand it, and slowly work on small movements. Try to not only flex it like you normally do your arm, but also think about flexing it. Just like how, when I think about raising my left index finger and focus on what muscle is needed to achieve that, I'm almost doing it out of sheer thought alongside distinctly being aware of and feeling those muscles. The goal here is that if the implant itself can' be physically fixed any further, the Aura will do what the implant no longer does. Slowly but surely, muscle memory will return, in a way."
She slightly raised her eyes, probably pointing at a clavicle by now, and gently asked "Is what I'm saying making sense? I know this is mostly pure conjecture, but..."
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Samantha blinked a few times, before a little smile appeared on her face as she gave a small nod. "Nah, nah, you- uhm, you understand. It's what I've been trying to do! Knowing some specifics on it is useful. Thank you." She replied in a grateful tone, though her brow furrowed slightly again soon after.
"Really, though, it's just- it is somewhat odd. Like, for example-" She mused, drawing out Prismatic Performance again. Anna would see her aura quickly run through the weapon, and then the chain moving in a little pattern. "I hadn't thought about it, but I can manipulate the chains not connected to it fine. Like, uh- the ones on my hoodie, if I wanted to, really." She said, doing just that with a few of the loops. Unlike the chains, her aura seemed to act more normal around each, moving as she vaguely wanted it to - albeit without the same force as the chains on her back. Those seemed to have the aura run down it almost like through a channel, or forced somewhat; taking a closer look at the movements, it seemed almost unnatural and possibly slightly invasive in the way they reacted to her aura running through. Unlike the others, though, it was as if the aura was running directly through her body; the chains really were, somehow, another part of what composed her actual body.
It wasn't a common and possibly a slightly unsettling realisation, if Anna arrived at it.
"I just... there are a few improvements, but then it all seems to work backwards, you know?" The fox faunus continued, rubbing her forehead in exasperation. One injury was all it took to cause her this headache, really. It didn't seem like she even knew about the spread of the damage yet, either.
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Anna stood there for a few seconds after the Faunus finished speaking, then gingerly sat down. She was about to say that at least, it wasn't her actual flesh limbs that were acting out but held herself back just in time. "D-do you know if those that made the implant can repair or replace it?" Ah, there came back her stuttering. So much for that flawless streak.
She wanted to take one of the chains in her hand and have the girl try and move it a bit, but she had genuinely no idea on how to go about it, so sitting down was the next best thing she could figure out at the moment.
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The faunus cringed at the question, shifting awkwardly as she tried to think of a fair response to the question. "Somehow I... I doubt they'd be willing, even if they weren't dead." She slowly explained, taking her time to try and phrase it without making her newfound help feel bad. "As said, I- uh. It... I didn't get these voluntarily."
Honestly, she wasn't offended at all - hell, it was nice to have someone who didn't already know about her past for once. Kind of a novelty. Bit of hope for her future, too. She rubbed the back of her head, a sheepish look on her face. "It's in the past, but... yeah, no, they wouldn't be the most help. And the closest second isn't particularly promising either, though I'm. Looking into it." The woman continued, looking just a little shifty by the end of it.
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Ah. Well that made things a bit harder, didn't it. Anna stayed sat down in front of her interlocutor, two metal plates resting atop her knees, not really in the know as to what to do now.
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Samantha looked over at the other girl, who'd been trying to help her for no particular reason for the last dozen minutes or so and now looked somewhat dejected. Scratching the back of her head and looking a little awkward, she ran over her options, before just mentally shrugging to herself.
"Well, if nothing else, you let me rant a little, so don't feel bad or anything, y'know? Uh." She started, then took a brief look at the clock in the room and smiled lightly as it gave her an out. "And it's around lunchtime anyway, so want to grab some food?"
Thank god for coincidental timing to solve social awkwardness.