Xerxes Break (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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deercountry2021-11-05 03:47 pm
payingfordeliverance) wrote in deercountry2021-11-05 03:47 pm
Entry tags:
House Log 002: Be our guest
Who: A pile of Pandoras and a pile of RWBYs and perhaps some assorted close attachments
What: A mingle log in which two houses alike in dignity have a slumber party for great CR kickstart justice
When: End of the first week in November, before the month becomes established as a horrifying shitshow
Where: Pandora House, which still needs a cooler name
Content Warnings: Nothing in the log prompts; mushroom monsters are present if we feel like being rude.
Somewhere around the end of September, Xerxes Break made a joke about slumber parties explicitly because he knew it would make Qrow Branwen's life difficult and that struck him as very funny. Now, he has to make good on this and throw a proper one. You'd think this would count as the joke backfiring on him but no, no, it most certainly does not -- Break and his pack of feral Victorian teenagers all thrive on a good party in their own way, and having come from an old-fashioned world they are already quite busy preparing to hunker down inside for the wintertime. Unused to being able to pass long, harsh nights with things like television and video games, they have many activities at hand to indulge in, and Break has already been hard at work stockpiling food like some sort of rabid hobbit.
The house itself is warm and pleasantly haunted and cozy in a way that only happens in homes that aren't accustomed to things like electric heat -- there are piles of quilts and blankets scattered around most rooms, free for the taking if someone wants to wrap themselves up, and all the communal rooms have fires going in their fireplaces. The heat that radiates from those spots is the kind that can thaw out frozen bones in a way that nothing else can. And the feel of the house itself is...well, despite the various struggles of its inhabitants, it just feels like the house is daring to hope that it can be happy. After all, it sat abandoned and empty for a long time, the more terrible of the ghosts that haunted it always inevitably chasing away anyone who dared try to settle down here. Those ghosts are gone as of last month, and the fact that every single person living here is now getting a second chance at simply being someone has already begun seeping into the walls themselves. Although it's still early enough in the month that the intense danger November brings with it hasn't yet become widely known, the house feels decidedly safer than the outside all the same, with a faint sense of benevolent sentience hitting as soon as one walks through the door.
That's what you get in a house full of darkbloods (and Oz).
Food: Probably it's no surprise to anyone who knows Break that the kitchen is where that sense of protectiveness is strongest; this is the room he's taken over as his personal territory. Feeling much better with last month's homesickness finally easing up, he spends the day of the party cooking enough to feed the whole crew -- he's been learning to cook mostly in restaurants, so this is no problem. Having been warned that beef in particular is about to become scarce for the season, he's gotten a hold of a good chunk of it and has put together a big cauldron of beef stew, with potatoes and leeks and many, many mushrooms and things to round it all out. This is one of exactly two proper meals that Break has mastered already, given that the basis of a stew is to chop up exactly the right things and then put them in a pot, and the house smells more and more exquisite the closer you get to the kitchen. There's fresh bread, too, and though the loaves are still a little misshapen they taste just fine, and he's recruited Lysithea to help out with her wonderful baked sweets. Break will sneak away for further baking when he's in want of a bit of quiet, too, so expect further treats all night. Of particular note, in the wee hours when the house is getting properly chilly, he produces a wonderful warm drink: A big pot of (non-alcoholic) spiced berry juice, rich and red and warmed up with cloves and cinnamon sticks and slices of the last fresh oranges he was able to snatch up at the docks floating about inside. Victorians know how to do winter food, and why wait for the snow to really get going?
Movies: This is something new and exciting for the Pandoras. Bereft of any kind of proper screen, they've been taught to pin up white bedsheets against the wall in the parlor, and someone's omni has been recruited to project things onto it. Given the recent spooky season and some of the kids learning about Halloween, many of the movies of choice tonight are themed thus, such as Hocus Pocus and The Others. But someone having figured out how to search the omni has resulted in Beauty and the Beast, too, for something a little less creepy. This whole thing is super great. Who knew you could go to the theater without having to get dressed and leave the house?
Arts and Crafts: The other thing happening in the parlor is the coffee table being taken over by art supplies. The Alices like to make things, and have been amusing themselves lately putting together decorations for the house. We have paints, fancy papers with pretty patterns on, scissors, glue, glitter, the works. The sorts of art supplies you'd expect from a couple of girls who spent the bulk of their early lives locked, in some capacity, in a tower. It's something fun to play with while the movies are running. It is possible that White Alice may be working on painting swirly bits on an animal skull of some sort. Don't worry about it, it's fine.
Game Room: The house does have an actual dining room, nice and long and with high ceilings. Given that the kitchen with its huge wooden table is plenty big enough to eat in, they haven't bothered to use it as such. Instead, there's a table set up off to the side for board games and jigsaw puzzles -- and, more importantly, the bulk of the room is totally clear for things like indoor badminton and a ball made for kicking about. Possibly this is because Break spent all of September trying to convince himself it was silly to worry that the Alices had been eaten by something only to have them turn up in October and tell him of having been eaten by a giant fish, and he freaked out and decided he doesn't want the kids playing outside where the beasts are unless they have to. He is not telling.
Training: That said, weapons training simply needs to happen outside, and it's entirely possible that sooner or later it will come up that this slumber party is full of weapons enthusiasts and at least four of them, inexplicably, are scythe users. If that happens, there's a clear space outside in the backyard that Break has been using for his own drills, grass already trampled flat and a few nice sturdy posts that a blade has clearly been whacking away at. There's a nice stone wall around the property that will keep a great many of the unsavory creatures out, as some of the back used to be a garden which has long since grown wild, and Break has taken a hint from Gaze and set up several tall incense burners, too. If anyone is feeling in want of a midnight spar for some reason, this is where they can go -- but keep in mind that the wall won't keep the poisonous floating mushroom creatures out, and given that said garden has proven to be a mushroom oasis, the horrible little shuffling ones that induce hellscape hallucinations may be about, too.
What: A mingle log in which two houses alike in dignity have a slumber party for great CR kickstart justice
When: End of the first week in November, before the month becomes established as a horrifying shitshow
Where: Pandora House, which still needs a cooler name
Content Warnings: Nothing in the log prompts; mushroom monsters are present if we feel like being rude.
Somewhere around the end of September, Xerxes Break made a joke about slumber parties explicitly because he knew it would make Qrow Branwen's life difficult and that struck him as very funny. Now, he has to make good on this and throw a proper one. You'd think this would count as the joke backfiring on him but no, no, it most certainly does not -- Break and his pack of feral Victorian teenagers all thrive on a good party in their own way, and having come from an old-fashioned world they are already quite busy preparing to hunker down inside for the wintertime. Unused to being able to pass long, harsh nights with things like television and video games, they have many activities at hand to indulge in, and Break has already been hard at work stockpiling food like some sort of rabid hobbit.
The house itself is warm and pleasantly haunted and cozy in a way that only happens in homes that aren't accustomed to things like electric heat -- there are piles of quilts and blankets scattered around most rooms, free for the taking if someone wants to wrap themselves up, and all the communal rooms have fires going in their fireplaces. The heat that radiates from those spots is the kind that can thaw out frozen bones in a way that nothing else can. And the feel of the house itself is...well, despite the various struggles of its inhabitants, it just feels like the house is daring to hope that it can be happy. After all, it sat abandoned and empty for a long time, the more terrible of the ghosts that haunted it always inevitably chasing away anyone who dared try to settle down here. Those ghosts are gone as of last month, and the fact that every single person living here is now getting a second chance at simply being someone has already begun seeping into the walls themselves. Although it's still early enough in the month that the intense danger November brings with it hasn't yet become widely known, the house feels decidedly safer than the outside all the same, with a faint sense of benevolent sentience hitting as soon as one walks through the door.
That's what you get in a house full of darkbloods (and Oz).
Food: Probably it's no surprise to anyone who knows Break that the kitchen is where that sense of protectiveness is strongest; this is the room he's taken over as his personal territory. Feeling much better with last month's homesickness finally easing up, he spends the day of the party cooking enough to feed the whole crew -- he's been learning to cook mostly in restaurants, so this is no problem. Having been warned that beef in particular is about to become scarce for the season, he's gotten a hold of a good chunk of it and has put together a big cauldron of beef stew, with potatoes and leeks and many, many mushrooms and things to round it all out. This is one of exactly two proper meals that Break has mastered already, given that the basis of a stew is to chop up exactly the right things and then put them in a pot, and the house smells more and more exquisite the closer you get to the kitchen. There's fresh bread, too, and though the loaves are still a little misshapen they taste just fine, and he's recruited Lysithea to help out with her wonderful baked sweets. Break will sneak away for further baking when he's in want of a bit of quiet, too, so expect further treats all night. Of particular note, in the wee hours when the house is getting properly chilly, he produces a wonderful warm drink: A big pot of (non-alcoholic) spiced berry juice, rich and red and warmed up with cloves and cinnamon sticks and slices of the last fresh oranges he was able to snatch up at the docks floating about inside. Victorians know how to do winter food, and why wait for the snow to really get going?
Movies: This is something new and exciting for the Pandoras. Bereft of any kind of proper screen, they've been taught to pin up white bedsheets against the wall in the parlor, and someone's omni has been recruited to project things onto it. Given the recent spooky season and some of the kids learning about Halloween, many of the movies of choice tonight are themed thus, such as Hocus Pocus and The Others. But someone having figured out how to search the omni has resulted in Beauty and the Beast, too, for something a little less creepy. This whole thing is super great. Who knew you could go to the theater without having to get dressed and leave the house?
Arts and Crafts: The other thing happening in the parlor is the coffee table being taken over by art supplies. The Alices like to make things, and have been amusing themselves lately putting together decorations for the house. We have paints, fancy papers with pretty patterns on, scissors, glue, glitter, the works. The sorts of art supplies you'd expect from a couple of girls who spent the bulk of their early lives locked, in some capacity, in a tower. It's something fun to play with while the movies are running. It is possible that White Alice may be working on painting swirly bits on an animal skull of some sort. Don't worry about it, it's fine.
Game Room: The house does have an actual dining room, nice and long and with high ceilings. Given that the kitchen with its huge wooden table is plenty big enough to eat in, they haven't bothered to use it as such. Instead, there's a table set up off to the side for board games and jigsaw puzzles -- and, more importantly, the bulk of the room is totally clear for things like indoor badminton and a ball made for kicking about. Possibly this is because Break spent all of September trying to convince himself it was silly to worry that the Alices had been eaten by something only to have them turn up in October and tell him of having been eaten by a giant fish, and he freaked out and decided he doesn't want the kids playing outside where the beasts are unless they have to. He is not telling.
Training: That said, weapons training simply needs to happen outside, and it's entirely possible that sooner or later it will come up that this slumber party is full of weapons enthusiasts and at least four of them, inexplicably, are scythe users. If that happens, there's a clear space outside in the backyard that Break has been using for his own drills, grass already trampled flat and a few nice sturdy posts that a blade has clearly been whacking away at. There's a nice stone wall around the property that will keep a great many of the unsavory creatures out, as some of the back used to be a garden which has long since grown wild, and Break has taken a hint from Gaze and set up several tall incense burners, too. If anyone is feeling in want of a midnight spar for some reason, this is where they can go -- but keep in mind that the wall won't keep the poisonous floating mushroom creatures out, and given that said garden has proven to be a mushroom oasis, the horrible little shuffling ones that induce hellscape hallucinations may be about, too.
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Sometimes he engages in them just for the reaction. Her baleful looks are always glorious.
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A force to be reckoned with, Ruby Rose. At first glance, she's sort of amiably dim, but she's already seen straight through Break at least twice and can hold her own in teasing him back. Puns, is it. Yes, this is very good to know.
"This is such valuable information I daresay I ought to pay you for it, Mister Qrow. How about it, have you anything I might help you with in turn?"
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"Nah, this one's on the house." Because he will derive great second-hand entertainment from her gentle despair that another adult has been corrupted with the Pun Plague.
"Just be sure to tell me how it goes. Matter of fact, watch through Baltus. Her pouts are legendary."
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"A true pout, how wonderful. I have missed that. Of this batch the only one who really does it properly is Oz, and it doesn't count. He weaponizes it. Tch! Fiends, the lot."
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Qrow is particularly weak to her brand of puppy dog eyes, for one thing.
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Break shares this sort of weak spot and will complain accordingly when there are actual kids around, but honestly, he rather enjoys having it. He is a giant goober, such is life.
Baltus decides the roof is satisfyingly safe and rejoins them, though rather than curling up against Break as usual, he simply snuffles around in his mess of white hair for a moment before electing to lay behind the both of them and rest his head on Qrow's leg instead. Possibly he is just a reflection of Break as usual, happy to be with a person he's decided he likes. Possibly he can sense a little better than Break can that Qrow is feeling some kind of way, and might like to have a friendly and totally innocent dog to pat about it. Omens are terribly mysterious and Baltus keeps his secrets.
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He says that with nothing but fondness; even if one of Break's not-nieces is responsible for said feeling some kind of way, he's not mad at her about it. The whole reason he'd fucked off is because he's aware he's being an oversensitive baby about it. The dog on his lap is in fact a pleasant place to channel said unnecessary Feelings. He finds himself patting Baltus without even really thinking about it; it's nice, in its own way.
1/2
Just one, Baltus pipes up suddenly, allowing the both of them to hear him. He grins a horrible doggie grin beneath Qrow's hand. The pale one is yours. The dark one has chosen me to be her uncle.
There is a long moment of silence as Break digests this.
2/2
He makes a series of noises like a prissy cat who has accidentally stepped in his own water dish. Baltus fucking snickers, tail thumping rapidfire against the roof. Ahhh, it is always so rewarding to wait patiently for the best opportunity to fire these kinds of zingers at Break...!
"Uncle Baltus, I can't believe this," Break continues, sliding further back up on the rooftop explicitly so he can flop over in a fit of dramatics. "And here I was pleased she hasn't hissed at me in a while! I can't take any more rejections from this girl. My sad old squid heart is too tender for this."
He could keep going.
also 1/2
He snickers a little at Break's dramatic whining, grinning a little more cheerfully than he would've expected he'd be able to even ten minutes ago.
"Don't feel too bad, she's a teenager. Those are always a tough crowd."
He has gotten plenty of eyerolls from Yang over the years ... not to mention the rest of the group. The tragedy of becoming old is that your vibe becomes embarrassing to that age group even when you're being objectively cool. Rude.
i can edit this out if he would've mentioned sharon in the shelly thread btw
"....Wait, you had a daughter???"
Let's go with "mentioned her existence but didn't clarify"
The whining ceases immediately at this question, as does the snickering. Break remains where he is, though, content enough to be flopped on the roof. That's right -- for all that he's been drowning in the depths of these feelings in particular in this place, the only person he's opened up to about this bit is Lysithea.
"Not by blood, but -- you and I know perfectly well how little that matters, right? Mm...Lady Shelly's young daughter, Sharon. She thought of me as her big brother, as that's how they told her to call me when we met, but. I'd never have heard the end of it for many, many reasons if she'd ever found out how -- close I became to her mother, and...once milady passed, well."
If Qrow left their conversation about Shelly Rainsworth wondering if there was something deeper going on between this gleeful force of a woman and the wounded, feral swordsman she picked up off her doorstep one day, there's the confirmation.
sounds good o7
"...When there's kids in the picture, it's never as easy as just doing what you want, huh? You gotta overthink everything, even as they make fun of you for it."
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Probably she's well aware of what was going on between Break and her mother now. As he recalls, Lady Sheryl did not exactly beat around the bush when she explained what Shelly had meant to him, after that horrid little Baskerville girl heard him muttering her name and thought she may be able to use her to hurt him. But it really had been fun to hide it back then, in a way, and Break's voice is warm with laughter when he talks about it now.
"She's forgotten that bit in the years since, thankfully. Mm, but -- you see why I'm not afraid of your kids and their gossip. They're not going to be any worse than the Lady Sharon Rainsworth having gone into her Girl Mode."
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"Man, rich people always have so many rules."
Honestly, Qrow could not give a singular refried shit what society thought of a relationship he was in, and if he happened to be with someone who did, it'd legitimately be something of a dealbreaker for him? Qrow hates himself far too much to be able to tolerate a partner being embarrassed of him with anything remotely resembling grace.
"That's cute, though. That she had a puppy crush on you when she was little."
We shall refrain from talking about any puppy crushes Qrow might have had as a teenager freshly discovering proper affection for the first time, which are probably objectively cute to others but deeply mortifying to him. Ahem. Moving on.
"Heh. The kids never focused so much on my love life before we wound up in Deerington, honestly. Buuut I guess to be fair, we were kind of preoccupied before that."
What with endless unwinnable wars and Ironwood throwing himself chest first down a wholeass slippery slope to full-on dictator to worry about. Oh, and death, of course.
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Sensing the downward shift in Break's own mood, Baltus indulges in a big stretch and sidles over to settle in close, his snoot-laden head across Break's chest. Absently, Break rubs at his omen's ears, and apparently it helps because in the next moment he pulls an absolutely terrible face.
"Even though it'd likely mean she was off 'secretly' writing fairy tale romance novels about sad cursed swordsmen with long, snowy hair getting rescued from ruined castles by bird knights with magic feather cloaks that allow them to shapeshift, or some such poppycock."
Qrow will note the speed and absolute certainty with which Break is able to pull this extremely specific Sharon-built AU right out of his ass. If he assumes that this is because Break is speaking from experience, he is correct.
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"Man, a magic feather cloak would probably be more exciting. I just think about it, and it happens."
He chooses, perhaps somewhat out of self-preservation, not to ask about the cursed thing. Maybe Sharon was just into the occult, or something. Qrow would rather keep his own cursed nature firmly close to the chest for now.
"...Actually, that reminds me. Did you seriously climb your own house just to hunt me down?"
There's an oddly puzzled note to his tone; this conversation has been a pleasant distraction from what hurt his feelings in the first place, and he's having kind of a Moment about it? It's a little strange that Break actually cared what Qrow was doing up on his roof and come up to check on him rather than just ... leaving him a voicemail or sending Baltus up to fetch him. He's not really used to people being that invested in him.
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Break shoots an unseeing puzzled look Qrow's way in turn, mostly because he's not sure what there is to be puzzled about. Then again, it's been a long time since Break has been around someone who isn't actually trained to deal with him, hasn't it...? Qrow simply hasn't had time to learn that Xerxes Break climbing on stuff is normal, or any of his various other eccentric habits.
That's definitely what the problem is.
"Well, I might not've thought to, but Baltus spotted your shoes when we came looking for you," he explains helpfully. With a vague flap of his hand, he adds, "And then I thought -- well, he is a bird, so it would make sense for him to favor high places."
That he could have stayed on the ground and yelled at him does not seem to have crossed his mind.
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"I mean...I could've just flown back down, if you called."
Part of him is very tempted to in fact change back and fly away right now, honestly, so he doesn't have to face the concept of someone that isn't family or Ozpin caring about him. His face feels warmer than it should.
"Kind of a lot of effort to take just for some asshole ducking out of your party early."
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It's enough that he bothers to sit up again, to make sure there can be no further confusion here.
"I don't invite assholes I wouldn't be willing to climb to a roof for over to my parties in the first place," he says, almost sternly. His tone is in direct contrast to his omen, who takes the opportunity to roll over and curl up into a lap ball, with various noodle limbs sticking out at strange angles. "More to the point, anyone who is in my home is under my protection for the duration, and there are weird mushroom critters about these days. Of course I came to find you."
"Mrph," Baltus agrees, with a firm nod of his snoot. He punctuates the issue with a doggie snort. This is the way of things! It is simply how it is.
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But there's something that has a distinctly different flavor about this; when Break helped him out back in October, Qrow had just so happened to be there--smacked facefirst with a door and all.
Break had noticed his absence in a fun party with snacks and movies and kids engaging in raucous merriment, and rather than assume he'd just gone home or something, had thought to look for him, just in case. Nobody has ever really described him as under their protection before, maybe not even Ozpin, for as safe as he'd felt within Beacon's halls. He doesn't have words for how that makes him feel, beyond the general notion that he's Definitely Having An Emotion of some kind or another.
The words he's looking for are thank you, but he doesn't find them. Instead, he just kind of awkwardly pats Baltus's snoot for the sake of something to do with his hands, and half-shrugs a shoulder. Yeah, it's no big deal. It's fine.
"Heh, fair. ...Speaking of those mushroom things, guess we better go before they find us up here, huh."
A beat follows, and then he looks over at Break, who apparently climbed to the roof blind and evidently intends to get back down the way he came, and he's gotta ask--
"You uh, want a hand down?"
He does not mean he can take Break along with him as a bird.
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"Nah, don't worry about it," he says, with an easy shrug of his own. "It's only two floors, I'll jump."
Baltus proceeds to open his mouth, let his tongue loll right out, and make a horrible "mleaaaaaaaaaaaagh" noise. When Break tries to speak over him, the omen just gets louder, drowning out a variety of insistences that he climbed up here just fine and he'll get down just fine and he's survived a great many worse falls and so on.
"-- fine! Fine! I'll take a hand down!" he concedes at last, and Baltus placidly ceases his noise-making and scratches at his ear. "Geez! A guy runs afoul of a bramble bush one time."
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"......So he's really not into jumping, huh."
Qrow doesn't even need to fly down, it's just the easy half-assed way to do it.
"I mean, this really is basically nothing. This is the kind of height we'd use to teach Signal kids landing strategies."
This means nothing to Break, of course, but his tone carries the connotation that he would expect even a young child from his world to be capable of this.
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Baltus does not respond, mostly because he is giving Qrow the stinkeye for being an enabler. He makes no move to remove himself from Break's lap. Look, it's great that Break is recovering his independence lately and all, but there is a reason his handlers are always stressed and he's been increasingly a handful lately.
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for a moment there he was thinking maybe he has finally found a world in which jumping off roofs is in fact not something people make horrified faces about, but alas. Baltus seems to be dashing his hopes on that score. Does it occur to him he could just offer to catch him? Yes, but that's less fun.
"Look, I can show him. One second."
Before either of them can even think to maybe stop him, he jumps right off the fucking roof. But rather than just, you know, tuck and roll or something to break his fall like someone might if they fell from a height to hit the ground. He free falls for a moment, arms tucked at his side, before he pulls Harbinger off his back and fires a couple rounds toward the ground to propel some flips, reducing his overall velocity in the process, and then the scythe is used to generally steer himself in the correct direction before it's hooked on a nearby tree branch that's shed its leaves for winter, before propelling himself off of it for a final light landing on his feet. He doesn't even stumble when he hits the ground, knees bending just enough to cushion his own fall before he straightens back up.
"It's typically done solo, but I think I could manage taking you along."
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Shall we wrap?