Travel to Menagerie

The reverberating thumping of the train kept Parc awake that following night. Not due to an inability to sleep, but more curiosity to the world racing by outside his window. Menagerie was warmer than Vale by a bit, not much but enough that there was a noticeable difference.

Blake lay by his side, warm beneath her blanket, snoozing away with her ears twitching every time a Grimm's howl would ring out. It resembled that of a Beowolf, though more coarse if that could be descriptive for an animal howl. Lifting one hand, Parc twisted his wrist and summoned out a thin, spear tipped silver chain. It snaked between his fingers, wrapping around his arm.

'I've been neglecting this,' he sighed, a wisp of little took his focus and pulled him back outside to focus on an oddly shimmering ball of blue flame drifting past. It was familiar, though barely. He'd read about them before setting off on this trip to Menagerie. Whisps, a unique type of Grimm known for its lure like blue barble flame. Like an angler fish, the Grimm would dig into the murky mire of Mistrals many swamps.

It was hard to see, though through squinting his eyes, Parc realized they'd entered some waterlogged section of the continent. With tall mangroves and the odd miniature firefly drifting about. Straining his focus to the whisp, he could barely see the telltale stalk connecting to the flaming orb that sank into the muck where its true body lay in waiting for prey.

'May be useful,' his chain twisted up his arm then tightened, wrapping him tight and causing his skin to buckle under the pressure. He released it soon after, the chain retracting back into whatever hidden space had been formed since he'd eaten that gem those weeks ago. When he peered through the window once more, the Whisp was gone, its light flickered out like it had never even existed in the first place.

"Should see if I can catch a few before heading back to Vale…" he mulled the thought, to say he'd been neglecting his powers over the Grimm was wholly accurate. Since coming to Remnant there had been little fighting, unlike in Kurome's world, Akame ga Kill, life on Remnant was relatively peaceful. He knew how limited that statement would become.

This war with Salem and Ozpin, it wasn't something that would just end easily and with a simple talk. It would be bloody and only one would come out on top. That's just how that type of story goes. He brought up his quest screen, focusing on the task telling him to kill Ozpin… Ozma, as it said. He knew it wasn't going to be Salem on the chopping block, not when his other quest involved him taking her ass for his own.

Parc sighed, hearing a puffy snore from his side, he glanced down to Blake and seeing her cutely twitching ears, pressed his hand between them and patted her into a more comfortable state of sleep. When they returned to Beacon, he had no doubt she and Kurome would become quite the good pair of friends. "Should find another collar I guess…" something told him that was going to be an indicator for whoever joined Kurome's little cult.

"Why does my back suddenly ache?" with a twitch coursing through his body, Parc let out another low grunt then rested his head on the cold glass window. There were still a few more hours till they got to the tip of Mistral's hook where they'd be getting the ferry to Menagerie. There was exceptionally little to know about Menagerie bar that it's a mostly inhospitable desert with the rest being of a more tropical climate and that it's the one near exclusively Faunus land on the entire planet.

Kuo Kuana, the largest city on Menagerie, haven to the Faunus, as people like to call it. Where human discrimination didn't roam free but Faunus did. It had been granted to them some years ago after the Great War, a gift, as the humans liked to call it. One they'd gotten for participating in the war. Now though, it was more a prison than a home. The years of discrimination, them being forced to be locked up on the island with the belief that what they'd gotten was a fair deal of uninhabitable landscapes and skin boiling sand.

Parc's thoughts dwindled away, replaced with a sullen want to sleep yet still, he couldn't find himself doing that. He heard a creak from the right, someone walking past the door to his and Blake's room. Could be Marigold, he thought. He'd bought her, her own room. The ones on the train just weren't large enough for two people.

She hadn't been taking the separation from Bleu well. The man was still firmly embroiled in her mind. Claiming her thoughts and worries like a prison warden. It would take time, he knew that. Didn't change his impatience to see her in better straits.

Biting down a yawn, Parc finally decided to lower himself besides Blake, letting the girl wrap herself around him and unconsciously clamber onto his chest as he covered them with the thin blanket they'd been provided, and slowly, he fell to slumber.

***

The water crashed against the hull of the ferry loudly. Leaving in its wake a trail of frothy white that faded swiftly once the ship had passed it by. Parc sat on one of the chairs laid around the deck close to the edge. Peering far into the distance of expansive blue waters. Nothing like the sky where the emptiness was air filled with the odd cloud. Out in the open blue sea, that emptiness was water, the clouds the odd reflections the sun would bring as it cast down over the water.

He turned his head, just slightly to the right and saw the mountainous island of Menagerie in the distance. The sun wasn't far from setting. No, it was already setting, that much was clear by the golden dusk lining the world. Fifteen hours by boat, thirteen and a half had already elapsed. Had they gotten the morning ship when they arrived in Feya, the city from which Menagerie connected to the rest of the world, it would already be midnight. Ultimately, they had missed that one, choosing to instead take the night ship. While a little more dangerous, it was also one that harboured enough guards that anything that attacked just simply wouldn't be a problem.

Further turning his head, he found Marigold staring wistfully into the distance. Her mind was blank and lost in thought, her thumb would jitter in a display of nervousness and insecurity. Parc hung his head and shook it, she didn't have a scroll. He'd asked her and she'd said no. Chances are she had Bleu's number in her head, so she'd be able to call him whenever and for whatever reason that may be.

He couldn't stop her there. It was disappointing, no doubt about that. It just meant he'd have to spend more time unravelling the strings Bleu had left tied up inside her. 'Maybe I'm doing this too fast.' Ripping a scab off doesn't make a wound heal faster. For Marigold it's been less than a week, barely even half of one since he'd single-handedly ended her marriage. It wasn't a gradual shift, but a sudden undoing.

'She's going to be sensitive for a while.' He could already tell, skittishness, reservedness, even lonesomeness and depression. She was bound to go through each of those back to back to back, one after the other.

Parc pulled his thoughts away forcefully, thinking like that was already exhausting him to no end. He twisted on his seat to get more comfortable as Blake rested her head on his shoulder, following his gaze over the ocean and often trailing to Menagerie where she would chew her lip and fiddle with her pants.

"You excited to see your parents?" Parc softly questioned.

Blake lifted her head and focused on him only to turn away and sit up. "Parent. My dad died a few years ago."

Parc's mind ground to a halt, just barely able to hold himself from exclaiming 'excuse me?' "O-oh, I'm sorry." He swore to god. If Summer was alive, what's to say Ghira wasn't?

"Don't be, we knew it was coming." Blake frowned, a mist growing in the corner of her eyes as she tried to force her lips to tilt up at the ends.

"What happened?" it was a twist to his plans. Without Ghira he'd have to change his plans, maybe Kali could get him to the White Fang? Did she even have any connections other than Ghira's history with them? He'd have to figure it out. Then again… A sparkle rose in Parc's eyes. Ghira, he wouldn't be able to get things out of him easily, not without a reason and a very good one at that. But Kali… she was a woman, a Faunus woman.

He'd already been thinking about how he could get Kali, but part of him didn't seek her completely, not when he thought Ghira was still there. Now though…

"Heart problems," Blake crossed a hand over her heart, fingers curling in to grasp her chest. "He had them since a child and things just sorta took a downwards spiral one day and well." There was something to her eyes, guilt?

Parc curled his arm around her, gripping her shoulder and tugged her closer to his body. Comforting her in her melancholic reminiscence.