video; un: ushiromiya (cw: mentions of house fires, arson, murder)

[entreats]

So for those not in the know, our house burned down last month.

[ What a way to open a post, right. And yet Ange manages to say it with something very close to a pokerface. Those who know her well may see something at its edges though. An annoyance that starts to bleed more and more into the girl's tone as she speaks on. ]

And not in the 'dumb accident' sense. No, it's because apparently it's socially acceptable in this place to come to someone's house and set it on fire, before bringing your friends inside to start murdering its inhabitants. [ Okay, yes. At this point it's not thiny veiled annoyance anymore. This is obvious annoyance that she doesn't bother to hide. ] And before anyone asks me if I'm alright— I'm fine. Totally fine. I mean, I half-turned into a beast back there, but it's clearly cool. It's fine.

[ It's clearly not fine. The sarcasm is thick.

Though Ange seems to realise that's not why she was supposed to make this message, and manages to snap herself out of passive-aggressive-ville for just long enough to sigh and sound a little bit more neutral as she speaks on. ]

Anyway, we want to rebuild the house, but that's obviously something we need help with. None of us are exactly architects.. I think. I've learned to not question weird Remnant hobbies. [ You never know what those Remnant people are capable of. ] Not to mention we'd need help with the actual physical rebuilding itself too.

We could use help from a lot of people, so if anyone would be willing to help, that'd be great.

Comments

[entreats]

They're never convincing me.

[ Please, Neo!! She's trying really hard over here to stand firm in the face of all this Remnant nonsense, okay!

.. then again, maybe she should expect this Remnant nonsense to come from someone who's also from Remnant.. ]

I'm a witch, you know. I'm just going to try and add a magical ward. It's so much more elegant, since it doesn't allow for dumb accidents where one of them enters the house in just the wrong way and accidentally falls into the death trap.

You know it's going to happen the moment anyone forgets their keys.

[ Don't get her wrong, okay. She loves her housemates.

But some of them are also quite.. special. The house has to be baby-proofed because of it. ]

[threelayers]

Actually, if the wards are 'smart' about who they target?
That totally sounds better than a pit trap if you want actually effective home defense.
I might have picked what I did because the idea of that sounded funny.

Because one of them absolutely would forget their keys.

My money'd be on Qrow.

[entreats]

It's definitely either him or Ruby. Those two are like two peas in a pod.

[ You can definitely tell who Ruby is taking after - though it's not like Ange knows Ruby's dad or mom, really, so it could be that there's a bit of them mixed in there too. But she can certainly see the Qrow-ness in some of Ruby's mannerisms. ]

And yet they're the two who are joking around the most about this stuff.

It's like they're masochists.

[ It almost feels weird to discuss this almost kind of casually with Neopolitan of all people.

On the other hand, the other has proven herself to be a whole lot more reasonable lately than certain other people Ange could think of, so maybe it makes sense that even conversations would end up being a little more normal. ]

[threelayers]

[Hah. Ruby had a lot of her father in her, but neither of them actually knew him, so maybe that'd remedy at some point. Who knew? He'd been in Deerington at least once, hadn't he?]

It definitely. Really. Kind of. Totally is true.
They both have a real masochistic side, but at least they usually know their limits.
Usually.

[...]

You know what?
You're actually a pretty good match for her.
She needs someone to keep her grounded.

[It was kind of weird to say these things about a person who for years she wanted to murder in the streets. Part of her still felt that pain, but it felt... strangely good to realize the humanity of her. To have her own humanity acknowledged.]

If I keep this up, I'm going to get mushy.
Brothers forbid that, so I'm going to grab some nails and hammer and be over soon.
Sound good?

[entreats]

[ Is it strange to hear that from Neopolitan of all people?

.. sure. Ange won't deny that. But on the other hand, considering how much she wants to try and ground Ruby, to do as much for the girl as Ruby does for her, it's kind of nice hearing it from someone else. Like her efforts are being acknowledged, or just the fact that their relationship definitely isn't one-sided on either end.

It's not something she will say anything out loud about either, since Ange also doesn't want to get all mushy, but she does sure feel it. ]

Sounds great.

I'll see you.