apparently Jing Yuan refers to Akivili as Cloudstrider so now Lan is too

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apparently Jing Yuan refers to Akivili as Cloudstrider so now Lan is too
this is literally all i’m doing today
harry can be such a turd as teenagers go but there’s like genuine pride in me at the anger and shame he felt over the way his father & godfather bullied snape; that he said he felt sorry for snape, and that his instant reaction after exiting the pensieve was “of course i won’t tell anyone about this”. i like to think snape and harry would have made decent allies, maybe even cautious friends after the war; they have a lot of issues and traits (temperament, being bullied, an astounding loyalty to dumbledore among other things) that just ... it would have been great to see harry and snape talking as adults on equal footing.
but that’s what rp is for!
BEING A ████████ MEANS IT FOLLOWS YOU; death was always eyeing your retreat from his long, bloody history with your family. karma, maybe, for a life so short packed so full of crime in the name of SURVIVAL. however you try to reason it with death, he still makes his home in your family name. good, then, that he becomes a 'KENNEDY' — mislead death so that he may live and begin the decades long game of GHOST AND REAPER.
'HOME' HAS MANY DEFINITIONS: when asked what it meant, agent kennedy supplied this much, elaborated that he thinks it depends on the person. when pushed, he leaned back in his seat, and if someone who knew him were there, they would say he got that look on his face sometimes, like he was partaking in a moment of silence for something lost. and in return for patience, he gives an answer. says that he imagines in another life he would have moved back to the house he was raised in. he imagines that there, in a space filled to the brim with love, there wouldn't be a dedicated space for mourning. then, in a dismissive sort of nonchalance: would've been homeless if i stayed in raccoon city — guess i have something to thank them for after all.
meta on: combat and violence; how comfortable she is with both, the extent of her skills, who taught her what she knows, how far her morality takes her in life or death matches
zeri has zero traditional combat training of any variety. before the mining incident there'd never been anything that would urge her into violence; aside from the usual oppression faced in zaun, there was never really anything especially deserving of it in her orbit. but then homes were collapsed and it was as though it were on her: all that rubble and weight on top of her shoulders. for the first while of her targeting barons, she doesn't have her gun. it's just her & the sparkpack. it's a learning experience. all her life the lightning had been something that just came out how and when it wanted. with the introduction of the pack it became something she had to reach for more actively. pretty easy when you're pissed off but it still has it's hitches. there's nobody that can really help with such an unusual situation, at least not in zaun, so she's on her own in that regard.
it doesn't start with killing the goons; it starts with structures, just that and ushering people out. but the more they got in her way, the more zeri realized they really don't care. and so they really don't deserve to live. it's an unforgivable thing for zeri, the way they uproot people's lives like they're nothing more than fertilizer for the barons growth. it's easy to stop thinking of them as individuals and instead to start thinking of them as rotting limbs attached to a baron's trunk; to be pruned, removed before they infest what surrounds & you wind up having to cut away what's perfectly good to reach them. doesn't really bother her to kill because of how much life there gets to be in exchange for it.
for her it's always just been winging it. she'd seen bulbs blow at just a stray spark, devices burn out in her hands so to her it tracks that all she has to do is that, but with intent. when she gets the gun, it helps. specifically made to channel the energy into a concentrated burst; a little messy, she still misses but there's a lot of her lightning to go around. she's learning. pretty clumsy but she's quick, leans on that fact quite heavily a lot of the time. and worst case, if what she's found out through trial and error turns out not to be enough, or in the very slim chance she's not fast enough, she can always go back to old ways — take the jacket off and let nature do what it's always done best: destruction, uncaring of what's caught in it's strikes & what may burn out in the process.
meta 001: ekko's importance to her. what initially drew her to him and what keeps her at his side? if she could say one thing she disliked about him, what would it be? if she could change one thing about him, what would it be? :)
meta 002: what does love (familial, romantic, etc.) mean for her? is she flighty, does it scare her, or does she embrace it when it comes to her?
meta 003: define her relationship with the kids at the tree of life? she comes from a big family, but does she centers herself as a big sister/mother figure for them? what does her time with them do for her emotionally?
meta 004: what kept her from supporting her family illegally via organized crime? with her skillset, she might've been able to assume a seat at the chem-baron table or find herself in a great position in their organization, where she and her family could've lived a life of luxury in zaun, so, what prevented her from joining them?
meta 005: what does she imagine her ideal zaun to look like? what is she willing to do to get there?
zeri nation rise up lock in we're yapping this morning.
meta 001: ekko's importance to her. what initially drew her to him and what keeps her at his side? if she could say one thing she disliked about him, what would it be? if she could change one thing about him, what would it be? :)
when zeri meets ekko, it’s off the back of her rescuing forced laborers. which should leave her feeling high as a kite, right, because they’re safe, able to return home with minimal harm done to them, but instead she just feels disheartened. the cruelty, the fact that though she had won, technically, she was nearly too beat to even make it back home on her own. the words spoken ‘no one is innocent’. chembarons had started to rally against her, and in came the creeping doubt that she couldn’t save the people she wanted to after all. that those people who had looked at her with hope and brought her back in with welcoming arms at her true lowest ( bloodied, barely conscious, having accomplished what feels so little in the grand scale ) were wrong to. she’d been complacent so long, in a sense ( no one is innocent ); unable to do much more but cause blackouts, stumble over her own feet, force her neighborhood to make adjustments for her. never intentionally. so to not crush underfoot those who would hound them with the intent of keeping them low? it’s not that she doesn’t want to go home. it’s just that she knows if she were better, stronger, more in control then she would have more to show for all their faith.
when he zips in, zeri is prepared to fight mentally, but any strength she has left physically has fizzled out — she’s lucky, then, that he’s on her side. painted face, the guards had said. she’s quick to put it together, faster still to dismiss that she did anything special. it’s what they should all be doing. anybody who sees that is an ally of her’s. though she rejects his offer to work with firelights in an organized manner; she has a community. they deserve her full attention. these are the people who’ve surrounded and tolerated her for the entirety of her life. she licks her wounds, perhaps forces herself back out earlier than any of her family would like to see her up and about. but it becomes familiar, the way they meet when she gets back out there: either zeri gets there first or they do. she exchanges brief words with boy savior, blows off anything in an official capacity, but says that if they need her, if the people need her, she’ll be there. they’re on the same path — ekko becomes a constant, someone to walk beside her rather than to be shielded behind or a wall ahead.
she’s a drifting thing, bound by whatever strikes her that night. but in the end she values the strength of community, always stronger with another added, so she pops by more frequently, or leaves a note, or catches him briefly in the streets to let him in on what’s going down. it’s a strange thing when his mother starts stopping by the workshop, stranger still the way he doesn’t seem to care to join them when her mother invites his around. for zeri, those are precious moments: she had saved his parents, they get to just live now. she decides she doesn’t like the separation he has with them, being so centered around family herself. it’s a belief that carries on well into their continuing relationship. between family, anything can be worked out, thinks that at the end of the day any family would go to whatever length required to salvage what’s left. she would.
her family mingling with his leads to zeri seeking out ekko casually more often. it had been so long of her flitting in and out of firelight operations that he’s no stranger., he doesn’t join them for family potlucks, but she goes out of her way to find him, bring him what leftovers came of the event, or stops by and picks him up something. he’s part of her community in a distant sense, & her only ally against the barons. she wants to draw him in closer than that though. he’d be good for them. is already good company in the fight they’ve chosen. to her, ekko is zaun. what they should aspire to be. it’s easy for her to hold him against her heart, natural the way she integrates him more & more into her daily routine as time goes on. zeri feels it hard when that stops; like the world spinning out of tilt, vertigo after a particularly harsh zap. he’s gone, and it’s like going back to before : before the collapse, before her jacket had been fashioned & before those in her neighborhood looked at her with anything aside from caution. before she had stopped feeling alone.