Board Thread:Role Plays/@comment-5865155-20141202042059/@comment-25464065-20141212210643

It took some time to return to Beacon, naturally. Rosa was still a bit worse for wear, and upon returning they were given permission by Ozpin to return to the school and make preparations. He offered a quick congratulation before returning to the small screen in his hands, likely a monitor on the other students. Elise found herself wondering how Sialis was doing.

Elise immediately parted from her teammates and headed directly for the showers in the locker room. She'd heard rumors - beautiful, endlessly hopeful ones - from her fellow freshmen that most of the dorms had connected bathrooms. This was her saving grace - Beacon's facilities were nice for being public, but the idea of being surrounded by a bunch of naked people in public was.......not fun for someone like her.

She took her sweet time under the hot water, breaking bits of dirt from underneath her nails and crunched into her hair. Thoughts of her mother - eternally old, as she could remember no color but grey occupying her hair, perhaps a bit more distant than most mothers - were gentle reminders of a life she left behind. And she thought of Henry some years ago, a confident smile and persuasive manner of speaking.

So persuasive, in fact, she'd given up everything just to be with him.

She paused underneath the shower head, hair in a dead drop in front of and surrounding her face and skull. Henry was probably still attending school here - he was probably a first or second year by now. Her teeth grated over her lips, creating a neatly curved indent along the sensitive skin.

The less she saw of him, the better, she decided. He wasn't her life anymore, neither was her mother - it was just her, and Rosa, and Glaukos, and Chartreuse, whether she liked it or not.

-

Utilizing the communicator given to her by Rosa, Elise was able to regroup with her team rather easily. The great structure at the center of the room - black and electric blue - resembled some sort of hybrid cathedral-bug-zapper, and she supposed that in a way her fellow students were the flies. The murmur and buzz in the air certainly supported that. There was still no sign of Sialis, however, and she was almost tempted to abandon the group and search for him.

To signify the start of the assembly, a pale blue screen suddenly expanded into focus on either side of the structure. The crowd immediately filled with cheers and yammering - mostly from the upperclassmen seated on the second floor - and polite, more contained applause from the nervous freshmen.

Ozpin stepped onstage and began to speak. When Elise turned, Glaukos seemed fully immersed in the speech. She tried to listen a few times, hearing faint buzzwords such as 'dedication' and 'skill', but in the end the rate at which her blood pumped through her ears was drowning out his already distant voice. It was then that he began calling the teams, starting with the owners of the black pawns, and seemingly jumping between the two colors and ranks of relics.

The screens displayed the next relic, giving the next group the heads-up to start moving toward the stage. Glaukos had to tell her when the white queen relic appeared on the screen, seeing as she was barely tall enough to see the screens at all and refused to be put upon someone's shoulders. A murmur fell over the crowd when the images appeared - one of the queens appeared to be normal, however the other had a small yet deep crack in the side of it.

When she stepped into the aisle between the mass of students and saw it, she realized with shock that it was the exact marking she left on the relic after clumsily falling on it during the fight. Their attention to detail was interesting, to say the least. The team moved quickly to their on-deck position before advancing in front of the entire school, and suddenly Elise felt very, very self-conscious.

And small. Though that was to be expected.

Ozpin turned to them from the crowd and peered up at the screens. Four pictures immediately appeared overhead - she quickly recognized her class picture taken before initiation, and assumed the others were as well. No huge changes from then to now.

"Elise Mindre, Glaukos Nerium, Chartreuse Nyanza, Rosa Steel." Though he announced them by order of surname, the pictures on screen moved differently until they created a different order - Glaukos, Rosa, Elise, Chartreuse. On stage they moved themselves accordingly so, Elise somewhat thankful that she wasn't next to Glaukos in the lineup as he would make her look even smaller than usual.

"The four of you retrieved the white queen pieces. From this day forward, you will work together as Team Green." The audience erupted in further applause and the usual upperclassmen cheering. Elise quickly glanced upward to see the initials float underneath their portraits. To her immediate left, she also noticed Chartreuse smirk with delight. Green was her color, wasn't it? I mean, her hair was.......and her name.....

Before Elise could complete the thought of Chartreuse leading the team, Ozpin continued.

"Led by...." A short pause. Chartreuse held her breath, and Elise began preparing herself for the ensuing bragging she would be doing in their dorm. Oh, did she hate bragging.

"Glaukos Nerium." Chartreuse's face immediately fell and Elise quickly looked to Glaukos, prompting her to lean forward slightly to see past Rosa. The next relic flashed onscreen, issuing a one-minute warning for the team to finish their business and head back into the crowd.

Call it intuition, but Elise had a feeling that this......was not going to go over well.