“Yeah this is just.... how my body reacts to caffeine,” Azure laughed lightly, hoping Clara would buy the lie well enough. It wasn’t a complete lie, her current state had been brought on by drinking coffee, after all. Of course, she knew it hadn’t been the coffee alone, there had been other factors such as her deteriorating sleep schedule and tendency to forget to take her meds when she was supposed to, but she figured the coffee had been the tipping point between her regular abundance of energy (of which she had an above average level of regardless) and a mild episode. Now she was stuck trying to figure out how gazelles related at all to their current topic of conversation. Not at all, she thought. And yet she had had some random comment about gazelles right at the tip of her tongue before she had kept herself from saying it. She really should think before she spoke, shouldn’t she?
   
Azure nodded along to Clara’s story, glancing up at her as she finished. She didn’t believe her rushed addition of reassurance, given the way Clara spoke of hyperfocus as though it were an ongoing issue. Azure didn’t mind, however, she wasn’t one to judge for that sort of thing. How could she when she herself had found herself obsessively preoccupied with a task for days at a time, working until someone physically stopped her?
   
“Yeah no, I get it. Totally.” She laughed once more, her tone amused. “Ya know, sometimes I get so in the zone when writing music that I’ll spend multiple days just playing and practicing. One time I was in the studio for like, an entire weekend until someone came in on Monday and told me to go home. Crazy thing is, I wasn’t even tired or anything, I just went home and kept working on stuff.” She chuckled slightly at the memory. That had definitely not been one of her finest moments, to say the least. Almost as bad as the time she thought it was a good idea to try to jump from the 3rd floor balcony of her hotel room into the pool below, and had ended up just hitting plain concrete. If it wasn’t for her aura, she was pretty sure her recklessness would have gotten her killed, or at least severely injured, that night.
   
As Clara called her scroll again, Azure kept her ear by the door, listening intently.
   
“Yeah there’s like, a kind of buzzing, yeah?” She said quietly. Unless she had somehow managed to descend into psychosis and was now hallucinating the buzzing, she is 99% sure that she can hear the sound of an object vibrating against a hard surface. She straightens up, trying the door handle. Of course it was the one classroom in the hall that was locked. She had tried this door earlier, she remembered, but had been deterred by its locked state. What if she hadn’t been? What if she had picked the lock or burst through the door to check the room? Then she would have never met Clara, nor gotten caught in a dust explosion. Maybe it was fate that she had been too impatient to mess with the locked door earlier. Ha, fate rhymed with hate and mate and date and late. She didn’t believe in destiny; or maybe she did? She didn’t know. It would be neat to have a destiny, she thought; it would make everything so much easier and more bearable, knowing that everything would happen for a reason and lead to a set conclusion. But alas, she didn’t think such a thing to be realistic. What was she doing again? Oh right, the locked door issue.
   
“I don’t supposed you got a bobby pin on ya?” She questioned Clara, only half joking. She could probably pick the lock if she needed to, but she was secretly hoping she would get to kick the door down. It would be much more fun, she thought. She had only kicked a door down once before in her life, despite giving off the appearance and attitude that she was the type of person to do so regularly. She could barely even remember what she had been kicking the door down for in the first place; probably something of questionable legality, she had been a little out of control in her younger years, after all.

“Yeah, something like that,” Azure replied to Prism, her tone playful as she stepped out of the way of the crescent attack. Having glanced over at Prism to answer her question, Azure had been able to catch sight of the white crescent in time to dodge. This could potentially leave her open to attack from Coconut, however she soon focused her attention back on him, as he was closest to her.

She smirked as the headstock of her guitar came in contact with his skull.
“Oh I’m more than just pretty good,” she scoffed, aiming another strike with her axe at his head. "I'm amazing." Hearing the crackle of electricity, she glanced over towards its source. Her eyes landed on Jocelyn just in to see her bringing up her rifle.

“Yeah maybe, but this might help.” She side stepped around Coconut, her hand reaching out to grab the back of his coat, pulling him in front of her to essentially use him as a human shield against the spray of bullets from Jocelyn.

“You know!” She called to the group as a whole, using wind to launch herself across the ring to Jocelyn. “I honestly might fare better if there were twice as many of you! Threes and fours are kinda my weak spot.” Her voice was filled with laughter, contradicting her action of swinging her axe at Jocelyn’s torso. It was true, once she got to five or six people her semblance had a stronger effect. With groups of three and four, she was uncomfortably outnumbered without the benefit of crowd control. At least with larger groups she would have been able to calm them all down enough for her to gain a more equal standing.

[Aura: 92%]

[Axe: 5% slashing dmg]

“Yeah no, junk food is probably my only source of food at times. It’s a good thing I like exercise, otherwise I’d be a literal couch potato.” She chuckled as she spoke, coloring in the chips in her black nail polish with her pen. The design on her hand was beginning to invade the rest of her arm. She spaced out while drawing a myriad of small spirals, completely missing Clara’s response to her gas mask comment. She only snapped back to reality when she heard the other girl muttering to herself. Somehow, this was better at getting her attention at the moment than an actual conversation. Soon followed the introduction. Azure had never heard the name Clara Meridiem before, she must not be in any of her classes. Looking at the girl, Azure was positive she hadn’t even seen her around campus before. Or perhaps she had; she was terrible with remembering names and faces. She could have had a whole conversation with this girl some other time and had forgotten about it. Would pen write on windows? What if she just wrote her name on every window? Would she get in trouble? Would people find it funny? It wasn’t even funny it was just stupid—lot’s of things were stupid. Like faunus oppression and people who wear skirts over jeans. Why skirts and jeans? Just pick one and be happy with it! Did Clara recognize her? Probably not. Sure Azure might have built herself a reputation of being that annoying person who plays guitar at two in the morning—and everywhere on campus—but she didn’t think this girl was in her building.

“Right. We were having a conversation.” She clapped her hands together once, turning back to face Clara as she focused back in on actually interacting with the girl. “Hello, yes, hi, I don’t think I’ve met you before. It’s a pleasure to do so, too. Are we in any classes together? I don’t think so. I really need to.....stop drinking coffee.....” her words trailed off again as she momentarily spaced out once more. Her brain was too busy thinking of everything at once to focus on coherent thoughts, hence the spacing out as she tried to find a thought to think about properly.

She was bored. Even with all the excitement this room held, she was quickly getting bored of it. It was the same scenery for to long and she needed to be somewhere different. Where that different place was, she wasn’t sure. But it needed to be new and it needed to be soon.

“Here. Come. Walk with me while we call it—that’s a great idea by the way. I should have- er-no-nevermind-” She cut herself off as she realized it wouldn’t have mattered if she had thought to call her scroll earlier, as she would have has nothing to call it with until now. “But yeah. Great idea. Let’s go. Sorry I’m....” she gestured vaguely, “energized.” Her tail was wagging in excitement as she spoke, she didn’t even seem to notice it was doing so. She should probably just leave this poor girl alone, instead of forcing her to deal with her inability to stay in one place for more than a few minutes.

The sound of heavy combat boots echoed through the empty halls; hurried footsteps, as though the owner of said combat boots had somewhere to be and were running late. However anyone listening would notice that while the footsteps seemed hurried, they seemed to be taking their time making their way down the hall. Various doors opened and closed, various things moved about idly. The sound of something plastic running against metal. A guitar pick against lockers. Quiet humming was coming from the hall, the type of humming that only occurs when one thinks they’re completely alone.

Another classroom door opened as Azure checked inside, scanning the area quickly for any sign of her scroll. She was certain she had left it in here—well, in one of the labs at least—but had yet to come across it. That was possibly due to the fact that her searches of each classroom weren’t very thorough. But how could she stall and be thorough in her search when she had better places to be? What that better place was, she wasn’t sure. But she needed to be somewhere, anywhere but where she was, and she needed to be going towards it. She needed to be done with this place and be somewhere new. She had been in one place for too long, the walls were starting to look boring. Why was everything so boring? See? Chairs. Chairs in classrooms. How typical. How boring. None of these chairs had her scroll on them. There were also lots of other things that weren’t on chairs. Like ducks and pianos and suitcases—well maybe suitcases could be on chairs if someone was traveling somewhere and needed to pack. She hadn’t traveled anywhere in a while which was funny because right now all she wanted to do was travel away from this boring hallway to somewhere new a fun.

“Right. Scroll.” Her scroll was nowhere to be found.

With a frustrated sigh, Azure left the classroom, closing the door behind her. She crossed the hall to the next room; the door was locked.

“No please don’t be like that,” Azure groaned, shaking the handle a couple times. She got down on the floor to peer under the door, trying to see if she could spot her scroll. No scroll, from what her limited vision could see. With another groan of frustration, Azure sat up, rocking back onto her heels. Maybe her scroll was in a different classroom. Hopefully it was in a different classroom. If only she could remember what lab she had been in earlier! Then maybe she’d be able to get her scroll and get out of the drab hallways.

Zoning out slightly, Azure picked up her plastic coffee cup from where she had left it, and took a sip. The logical part of her brain knew she should stop drinking the coffee before her current state escalated any further. But the other part of her kept forgetting to throw the coffee away.

Maybe she had thought her current meds were strong enough to counteract the caffeine. Maybe she had just forgotten to order decaf. Maybe the barista had messed up her order, and it wasn’t even her fault. But regardless of the why of the current situation, the what was that she was, for one reason or another, drinking caffeinated coffee. And she had quickly been reminded as to why she wasn’t supposed to have caffeine.

In short: Caffeine + bipolar ≠ anything good.
In short: Azure had forgotten this fact momentarily, and bought caffeinated coffee
In short: Azure, while not completely manic, was definitely feeling somewhat manic. And this was not helping her find her scroll.

Azure was pulled from her spaced out state at the sudden sound of an explosion echoing down the hall. The area around her shook with the force of the blast, Azure lost her balance. Large amounts of frost and smoke were spilling out into the hallway, momentarily obscuring her vision.

“What... the fuck?” She said as the air began to clear. She picked herself up off the ground somewhat, pushing herself up to her elbows, one hand raised to shield her eyes as she peered towards the classroom a little ways down the hall, where it seemed the explosion had emanated from.

“You better not have blown up my scroll!” She called to whoever was in the room. She climbed to her feet, brushing ash from her clothes. She had dropped her coffee in the surprise of the explosion, what was left of it was slowly leaking across the linoleum tile floor. No matter, it was probably for the best anyways.

Entering the room, Azure’s eyebrows would shoot up in surprise and amusement. Her navy eyes surveyed the area, taking in the large amounts of ice and ash. Well, this was much more exciting that drab hallways, she thought. Eventually, her gaze came across the girl sitting against a wall, coated in frost and soot. With a somewhat amused smirk flickering across her face, Azure crossed the room to where the girl sat.

“If I had to render a guess,” she announced as she approached, “that is not the proper usage of Dust.” Upon reaching the girl, Azure brushed a layer of soot off a nearby desk and sat down on top of it, her legs swinging slightly so her boots scuffed lightly against the floor. She drummed her fingers against the edge of the desk, momentarily getting distracted by the ash that was still swirling through the air. She watched it drift towards the floor, the only thought running through her head being ashes, ashes, we all fall down. A laugh bubbled from her lips at this because, of course, her lip tattoo said ashes; ashes and her upcoming album was called all fall down and now she was sitting in just that exact situation with ashes falling down while sporting ink that said exactly that and wasn’t it just hilarious?

Right, she had a purpose for being in here.

She glanced back over at the girl, her eyes scanning over her. She didn’t recognize her; it was likely she had never had any classes with her. Azure hopped off the desk, dusting ash from clothes. She lent down, offering a gloved hand to the younger girl, intending to help her to her feet.

“You got a name?” She questioned, “or should I just call you frost face?”

Azure straightened up from where she had landed during her attack on Prism’s feet, spinning her guitar in one hand like it was nothing. The only reaction her otherwise indifferent expression showed to Prism’s reveal of her wings was a slight quirk in on eyebrow.

“Well that’s a new development,” she noted, as though vaguely amused.

Azure watched the other two teammates join in, a cocky smirk dancing across her lips. So Prism was wanting to add an extra challenge? Well, it appears her plan had backfired. With her semblance being what it was, the odds were just perfectly in her favor. Multiple opponents--albeit a small number, that might make things a bit more difficult than had she been fighting five or ten others--and no allies who could fall casualty to her antics. Honestly, she couldn’t ask for a better set up.
Well, that was a lie. She would have preferred facing at least two more people-- three was pushing the minimum for what she could do.

“Well,” she mused, “two is a couple, three is a crowd.” She was somewhat cryptic in her statement--she couldn’t help it, she was a drama queen at heart--not further explaining her words as she strummed Renegade, launching herself up into the air once more. This time, she perches herself on one of the rafters in the ceiling, sitting down and crossing her legs; a casual position, she knew she had nothing to worry about.

She settled her fingers on the fret board once more, this time not to charge up a strike, but to play. She began strumming, using her thumbnail as she didn’t have a pick on her, recording the chord progression. After running through the short progression once, she would flick a switch on her guitar, Renegade playing back the recording like a loop box so she could switch to the melody, giving more emotion to the song. Said emotion was... not quite despair, but something akin to it. She spread it out throughout her teammates with the intention of disheartening them, wrapping the three of them in her semblance as the notes rang out. She wasn’t sure if it would work, three was such a small number, after all. It barely counted as a crowd, and there wasn’t much atmosphere to work with, not much she could manipulate. It was harder to provoke an atmosphere when there was none to start with.

Her goal was simple: get her teammates to freeze, to give up; that would make it much easier to attack them, if they were too disheartened to attack back

[Song. Start about 36 seconds in]

Azure laughed sharply. “Oh hon, I know I can take three people at once.” With her semblance being what it was, the more people Azure was fighting the easier it would be for her to use it. Three was a... painfully small amount, the smallest number she could even work with, but it would have to do. She dropped Prism’s hand, after noting the strength of the girl’s handshake, her face falling into a frown with it. She was only fighting one of them? Well, that wasn’t that exciting, where was the fun in that? Where was the fun in fighting just a single person? No, scratch that--half a person. This Prism girl was short enough that Azure was pretty sure she could just boot her like a football if she felt like it.

“Oh?” She arched an eyebrow. Did this girl really not listen to music that often? How could anyone live like that? ‘Well, that will have to change, won’t it?” She laughed as she spoke, as though speaking in a joking manner. However, she couldn’t be more serious. If this girl didn’t like music, Azure would make it her mission to change that. Even if it didn’t work, Prism should get used to hearing music daily anyways; that was what came with rooming with a musician, after all.

Azure watched the small box fold out into a weapon. She had to admit, it was much more portable than Renegade. But far less cool, she thought. What was the point of a weapon that could only be used in combat situations? Why not make it multipurpose like she had? She watched Prism get into a fighting stance with a cocky smirk across her lips. This girl was tiny! She probably wouldn’t even need to activate Renegade! She could just smack her with the flat side of the guitar’s body and send her flying!

After waiting a moment for Prism to finish situating herself, Azure twirled her guitar in one hand, activating it. The first thing to happen was the blades popped out with a click, extending about ten inches wide, running the length of the guitar body. Blue lights lit up around various areas on the guitar’s body: lining the pick guard, circling around the pickups and the various dials. A quiet humming sound, like that of a generator, could be heard coming from the guitar. Dark, midnight blue energy crackled up and down the strings of the guitar. She knocked her fists together, twice, in quick succession. The thick metal bracelets that lines her wrists began to glow with a white light, emitting a small beep sound, signalling they had paired with the guitar. Following the sound, the wide, white strips on the bracelets began pulsing with a black light. The result of this action? Renegade, now in axe form and sparking with dark blue aura up and down the strings, floated in the air in front of the wolf faunus. The faint black glow of gravity dust could be seen around the edges of the guitar, less so against the already black body of it.

Prism’s “challenge” worried Azure, however. If the goal was to just land a single hit, then that made it sound like that would be hard. How hard could it be to hit the girl? She didn’t let her concern show, instead keeping her cocky, arrogant grin and playing a brief flurry of notes.

“Alright then,” she called, “let’s see how this goes.” She loaded a crystal of fire Dust into Renegade, the bright orange glow filling up the strings like liquid being sucked up through a straw. Small embers began drifting off the strings; Azure played another set of notes, running up and down an F major scale in a four note pattern (playing notes 1-4, then 2-5, then 3-6, etc all the way up, then back down again) to set up her guitar, her fingers flying rapidly across the fretboard. She was tempted to play Eruption, by Van Halen, just to show off. But she didn’t think she was quite good enough at it yet to use it in combat. Running through the who scale, up and back down, took only a matter of seconds, and as soon as she was done she lifted her hand off the fretboard to strum an open chord, releasing a semicircle wave of fire at Prism.

[Aura: 100%]
[Dust: 10% burn damage-- usual damage (abt 5%) doubled due to her short charge up with the scales]

Azure didn’t need to change, she was already in her combat gear. That was one reason why wasn’t in uniform, she wanted to be combat ready at all moments. That, and the fact that she had always despised uniforms. Uniforms lacked one of Azure’s most valued traits: self expression. People couldn’t be themselves if they all dressed the same, it just forced everyone into an unrelenting sameness-- expressionless attire that left room for individuality. Azure had been given her uniform earlier that day, and had immediately discarded it. She wasn’t going to submit to the oppression of school uniforms anytime soon.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Azure mused, grateful for the advice. She didn’t want to feel nervous, she didn’t want to doubt herself, but when Aurelia came out on a horse, she couldn’t help it. Sure, she had gone up against Grimm three times the size and three times as deadly by herself, sure she had never been nervous during those fights--she was always too consumed by a dangerously large need for revenge to feel nervous, but this was different. Fighting people was always different. She had to hold back, she had to actually be careful, that would make it harder to win. Harder to prove herself. Maybe Aurelia was stuck up and annoying, but she was a person, as Azure had no grudge against people. Well, no grudge strong enough to yield results like that which could be seen when she fought Grimm. When sparring, Azure had learned to be more careful, make more precise strikes. Because when sparring, she had to make sure she didn’t actually hurt anyone; while their aura could protect them until a point, there had been multiple occasions where her and her opponent had decided to fight until aura levels had dropped to zero; or they’d gotten so engrossed in the match that they hadn’t been paying attention to their aura levels, leading to real injury as either her or her opponent’s aura completely depleted in the middle of the fight. She had a feeling that, despite the 15% limit that had been set, this fight would end up like one of those; with them too engrossed in the combat, too stubborn, to pull out when aura dropped beneath the limit. She had to be careful no accidents happened. Not again.

So when Aurelia came out on a horse--no, not a horse, a unicorn-- Azure realized that the only way she would be able to win this would be to give it her all. And she refused to give it her all in a match against another person. Needless to say, Azure was getting somewhat nervous about the match, only just now realizing what she had gotten herself into. Yet again, not thinking of the consequences of her actions until the hit her in the face. Typical. Her tail betrayed her steely façade, swishing slightly despite her efforts to keep it still. It was highly possible her semblance was leaking her anxities out into the crowd of other people in the arena, including Saffron and Aurelia.

It did give her some satisfaction, however, to be proven right. Aurelia’s fighting style was meant for specific situations, seeing as she seemed to revolve entirely around her semblance. It would be a lot harder to act as cavalry in a dense forest or deep snow, Azure determined. Aurelia was built for open plain fights. Azure glanced back at the pillars coating the floor of the arena with a smirk, she had been right to request the modifications. How rewarding.

Keeping her person layered over her nerves, Azure scoffed as she regarded Aurelia. “Knew you’d be terrain-specific. You may mock my informality but at least I can fight in any setting. A horse ain’t gonna be all that helpful in the ocean, eh?” As she spoke, she activated Rock and Roll before withdrawing Renegade from her back. The guitar jumped to life, the blades sliding out and the lights lighting up across the body as the faint black energy of the gravity Dust pulsed around the edges of the axe. A small beep indicated the axe had been paired with the bracelets. Azure spun the axe in her hand, before settling it into position as a guitar. In preparation, she slid a fire Dust crystal into the weapon. The strings began to glow red. Azure placed her fingers on the fret board and began plucking notes, charging up an attack as she stared across the space at Aurelia, daring her to make the first move.

Azure cast Saffron’s advice aside with a roll of her eyes. Of course she would win. She had to win. She had to prove herself, prove she knew what she was doing. She had to prove she belonged here. Azure had failed her first attempt to get into Beacon, and it’s easy to imagine what that would do to someone’s confidence in combat. Azure, upon failing, had grown skeptical of her skills, then, upon meeting the requirements asked of her, re-enrolled despite that. The fact that she had barely scraped by, barely gained entry into the academy, furthered her skepticism. She had taken said skepticism and used it to fuel herself. Maybe she wasn’t the best, but she had made it in, she had achieved one of her two life goals (the other being making it big in the music industry, which, while yet to happen, didn’t seem like too much of a stretch. Hopefully.) Now she just had to prove to everyone around her that she deserved the achievement just as much as they did, and winning a match against a girl like Aurelia, she thought, would be the perfect way to do that.

“Of course I’ll win. I’m a rockstar, I can do anything,” she joked. When needing to prove herself, she became a little too cocky and assured for her own good, even if was just an act; inside she was still uncertain she even deserved to be in the school, and therefore had to win to prove to herself above all others that she did. But she knew she couldn’t let her uncertainty show, thus the cocky persona she threw over herself. “And I don’t care what happens to her gorgeous face.” Gorgeous? Had she really said gorgeous? Great. It would be so much harder to fight someone when she was attracted to them. But damn the horse faunus looked like a literal angel. Sure, she was a snobby, stuck up angel, but an angel nonetheless.

As Saffron and Aurelia continued to discuss horses, Azure began debating whether or not she would actually manage in the match. Aurelia was a third year, clearly much more advanced than Azure herself. But Azure was hoping Aurelia’s formality would be a weakness. That was the main reason Azure shrugged off proper technique as much as she did, she found it limited what one could and couldn’t do. If she had to stand in a specific position to do a particular move, then would she really ever be able to use that move? What if a situation in which said move was necessary arose, but she had no time for proper footing or stance? Perhaps this wasn’t was using proper technique was really all about, but that was how Azure viewed it. Back in her old combat school, she had quickly grown sick of practicing moves over and over again, especially when a sparring match required that they only use the moves they had been taught. Azure had always found it much easier to improvise what she was doing than follow a set sequence. She hoped her spontaneity would throw the odds in her favor. If you can’t predict the next move of your opponent, it becomes that much harder to react to their attacks, and Azure liked being unpredictable.

“Alright, alright, we can have a limit of 15%,” she relented. Though she knew she would fight passed that limit, but she had to agree with the others to please them. Unfortunately for her, if her aura was to drop below the limit, she would be disqualified, even if she still wanted to continue. Any attacks she made after that would probably not count towards the match. But if Aurelia and Saffron didn’t have a way of reading her aura level, then maybe she could get away with continuing to fight...

Azure pondered Saffron’s question for a moment before answering. Yes, she had occasionally lived with families that had pets, but did she consider them to be hers? Not really, they’d just been one more member in a family that she was passing through. “No,” she answered, “I’d like to have one. Maybe a dog. But I’ve never had a pet before.” She looked around at the arena as they entered, it was a lot more simple looking than the ones she had fought in back in Atlas but she didn’t mind, it was practical.

“I think physical obstacles could add a nice challenge,” she said, eyeing the ring. Her fighting style wasn’t meant for any specific terrain, but if she had guess she would assume that Aurelia, with her perfectionism and formal nature, had a very specific fighting style, the type meant for certain types of situations. She was hoping adding in the uneven levels would throw off whatever Aurelia’s formal style was.

"And don't bother chasing them off," Azure added, "I like having an audience." Azure's desire for spectators was more than just her love of attention. While yes, she did enjoy people watching her and paying attention to her, and, given she fully intended to win this match, wanted as many people watching as possible when she did, she also had ulterior motives. Azure was an extrovert to the literal sense of the word. Someone who recharges energy by being around other people. For Azure, this was more than metaphorical energy. Her semblance let her draw strength from crowds; the larger the crowd, the stronger she was, especially if the crowd was interested and had high energy. Sometimes, the strength of energy and emotion mattered more than the actual size. A smaller cluster of enthusiastic people could have and equal, or perhaps even greater, effect on her than a large lifeless crowd milling about on the street. Azure knew Aurelia would have the upper hand in experience, she she had to manipulate the arena to play to all her strengths, and that meant keeping as much of as audience present as she could.