#she attempts to present herself as very prim and proper and handle situations with a cool and collected composure

[apollos-boyfriend]

NO LITERALLY I actually thought the mario move was like pretty alright, nothing too special but it was sweet and it was fun to see all the references, but peach felt so little like princess peach that it hurt. she doesn’t even sound like herself!!!

all the references are super fun and the soundtrack FUCKS but i can’t get over peach man 😭 you could replace peach in this movie with wyldstyle and it would NOT feel out of place in the slightest. it would probably even make MORE sense. and i mean this in no offense to wyldstyle bc i love her and think she’s a great character, but she is NOTHING like peach. you should NOT be able to alternate the two like that!!! but you can in this movie because that’s not princess peach!!!!!

[ruffsficstuffplace]

The Keeper of the Grove (Part 16)

Queensguard HQ, somewhere deep underground in the Nexus.

General Ironwood sat in one of the many briefing rooms, two field agents sitting on either side of him, Kajiki and Gwendolyn. The three of them listened to du Pont talking about her examination with Winter, sitting silently with the frowns on their faces steadily growing, asking questions from time to time.

The mood was grimmer than usual, the consensus among all four of them that this was bad.

Very bad.

“… Jacques did agree to my terms, but after I stormed out like that, I doubt he will honour them…” du Pont was saying. “Please, forgive me for only informing you when the situation had already deteriorated so much, the first sleepless night she spent with her sister should have been--”

“Don't feel guilty, Dr. du Pont,” Ironwood said. “We can't catch every red flag the moment they go up, either.”

Du Pont sighed. “A most unfortunate truth… can you promise me that Winter will be properly taken care of?”

“On my word as General, Specialist Schnee will get the care she needs.”

Du Pont hummed. “Thank you, General.”

“No, doctor, thank you—this situation likely would have gotten much worse, if you hadn't called when you did. Is there anymore you'd like to add?”

“Just to be wary of Jacques; the man is even more hard-headed and determined than they make him out to be.”

“We'll manage, Dr. du Pont.”

They said their farewells, along with the canned speech about how the citizens' tips were vital to the Queensguard—and for this particular time, Ironwood meant it. The holographic screen faded away, and all was quiet in the room as they let the new knowledge sink in.

“Agent Kajiki,” Ironwood said, nodding towards them.

The cyborg sighed. “Winter has lost it/ Reason slips through her fingers/ What do we do, sir?”

Ironwood sighed. “Let's review the situation, shall we?”

“We have one of our most dangerous and skilled covert ops specialists suddenly going insane, after she abandoned her post, stole a jet to return home to her family, and had been terrorized by a group who are still almost literally and repeatedly walking right through some of the best security to be found anywhere, let alone a private home.

“From what we know—that is to say, almost nothing—said group is based in the Viridian Valley, a location that Jacques Schnee is currently organizing a large number of armed expeditions into, in retaliation for the first one where they were so kind as to let his second daughter and her escorts come home alive.

“What do you think we do?”

Gwen frowned. “The Knight does not like where this is going...”

“Since when have we ever, Gwendolyn?” Ironwood replied as he got up. “Get ready to move out to Manor Schnee immediately; I want the both of you in Shepherd Suits, locked, loaded, and lethal.”

Gwen's eyes opened, alarmed, before she sighed. “The Knight sincerely hopes neither she nor her companion will have to use them.”

“As do I,” Ironwood grunted. “I expect all of you to do your damndest to take her in peacefully, but if it begins to look like it's going to be ugly...”

“Better one body/ Than two, three, or so much more/ Choose 'Bad' over 'Worse,'” Kajiki recited.

“Precisely,” Ironwood said as he got up. “Don't deploy without me, I'm handling this situation personally.”

Back at Manor Schnee, Weiss busied herself cleaning and drying Winter's Eluna plushie in one of the many bathrooms.

With the specially formulated spray sold by the Plushie Palace, she got it back to feeling soft, warm, and fluffy, but the faint smell of tears, snot, and despair was here to stay until she could find something better.

Winter herself was back in the infirmary, her private room completely closed off but to the constant watch of Doc-Drones and the few human or cyborg security guards who were brave enough—or desperate enough for their salaries—to stay in the manor. By her request, she was cut-off from all forms of telecommunication, and especially the Info-Grid.

Her explanation was that she needed “a LOT of time to wrap my head around the new, horrific implications that elevate the Keeper of the Grove coming for us to a whole new plain of terrible I had never thought possible until now.”

So here Weiss was, idly flipping through incredibly detailed, thorough, and sometimes heated discussions on how to properly celan your limited edition Eluna plushie, if you were so lucky to have one. She was in the middle of reading a particularly lively debate about whether or not you should just throw your Eluna plushie in the washing machine on “Gentle,” as one father had with her daughter's toy, when a comm-request from the garage popped up on her screen.

The ill feeling in her stomach returned as she pressed the “Accept” button.

“Ms. Schnee, your sister has a visitor: General Ironwood,” said one of the few remaining coordinators.

Weiss frowned. “Tell him she's not feeling well,” she said.

“He knows—it is why he is here. He is already on his way to the infirmary. I thought you might like to know.”

The ill feeling grew. “Thank you.”

She left Eluna somewhere safe, then rushed down the halls. She made it just in time to see Ironwood and his escort presenting their warrants and clearance to the guards. The two agents were using the seven-foot tall Sheperd Suit MK III power armour, and equipped with assault rifles, shotguns, pistols, and even a grenade launcher on one of them.

Yet somehow, Ironwood wearing his usual formal suit in the Queensguard's colours, with a holster around his waist holding a stun gun worried her more.

“Weiss,” he said, nodding politely.

“General Ironwood,” Weiss replied automatically. “Why are you here...?”

“To see your sister about official Queensguard business,” Ironwood replied. “Nothing to concern yourself about.”

Weiss frowned. “What are you going to do to her?”

Before Ironwood could reply, the door opened, revealing Winter still in her paper gown. Her eyes glimmered, her grin was just a little too wide, and her hair was out of its usual prim and proper bun, left to fly out in every direction behind her head and around her shoulders.

“General Ironwood!” she trilled. “Great timing! I assume you've come here after hearing about the Keeper situation?”

“Yes, actually,” Ironwood replied.

“Well, I'm afraid to say sir that it's going to be impossible to stop her even with the firepower all of you are packing, but I've got some very important revelations to share with you—ones that change everything!”

“You can tell us back at base, Schnee,” Ironwood replied.

Winter nodded. “Okay, let's go.” She looked around shiftily. “Don't know if she could be right here listening on this conversation this very moment...” she said as she walked out of the room.

Ironwood held out his hand to stop her, and pulled out his stun gun with the other. “Schnee, I'm sorry to say, but I'm under strict orders to take you in incapacitated.”

Winter blinked, then laughed. “I never pinned you as one for jokes, sir!”

Ironwood got into a shooting position, as did his escort.

Winter stopped laughing. “Seriously? I'm cooperating! I'll go with you! You're not really going to shock me and haul me away in front of my own sister, are you?”

“Winter Schnee Shocked And Hauled Away In Front Of Her Own Sister!” read the Avalon New Network's headline after the incident made its way to the public knowledge; below it was “Jacques Schnee Wages War On The Viridian Valley!”, and below that, “Military Presence Rises In Candela, Nearby Territories Amid Security Concerns.”

All Weiss needed to know was:

Winter was hauled off back to Queensguard HQ to be treated, under concerns for her and others' safety given her combat skill and her mental state;

The Avalonian Military was setting up shop in Manor Schnee both as a base of operations and as the most frequent target of the “New, Unidentified Threat” getting the rest of the realm in a tizzy, and as a result, she and her father were to be confined there for their own safety;

Her father still refused to call off the new expeditions into the Valley, and for a variety of reasons, some of them in the Queensguard's operations manual, and some of them unofficial but no less binding and sacrosanct, no one could supercede his authority and stop them from going off, presumably to their deaths; and,

She couldn't sleep in Winter's room, as it was still too clogged with all those crates, and thus “an unnecessary security risk and potential safety hazard.”

So she lay on her side in her own bed, hugging the Eluna plushie to her chest, eyes closed, trying to pretend that it was actually Winter, and not just a soft, warm, and fluffy ball of fabric that smelled of her tears, snot, and despair.

Winter had always claimed it worked for her, back when their mother was still alive.

And like after she died, the trick never quite worked.

She probably should have cried, gotten angry at her father all over again, maybe even relieved some stress on holo-dummies in the training room, put all those fencing lessons to good use. She just couldn't work up the effort to do much of anything, though, especially in the wake of Tov and his new, unwanted partner from the military briefing her on the new protocols and changes coming to the manor—mostly about the soldiers and androids now patrolling the halls in an attempt to stop any intruders.

“Emotional exhaustion,” one of her therapists had called it.

“Running out of fucks to give,” Winter had explained to her later in private, and which Weiss found a much more appropriate term.

Both her balcony doors were open. The military had kindly suggested she put the lockdown on full-time—Shepherd knew that Candela could use the extra load on their power reserves, avoid the dreaded “overflow discharge” flaw of the technology her grandfather had pioneered—but since she knew it would just delay the Keeper, possibly force her to be less polite and peaceful with her visits, she didn't.

“Hey!” she heard a familiar voice whisper. “Weiss, you awake?”

Weiss turned on her side, looked at the floating Keeper of the Grove plushie right at the edg of her bed. It only sent a little chill in her bones this time, as she had gotten somewhat used to the sight of it and its owner—or alternatively, she was far too dead inside for even her most primal of instincts to kick in.

“What do you want?” Weiss asked flatly.

“Well, you know, we expected to see a lot of civilian and paramilitary carriers flying in, but now there's all these actual military--”

“They're for here, not the Valley. Unlike my father or the poor saps he's hiring, they understand it's better to leave you alone. This is more for PR than anything else, say they're doing something about your visits, at least.”

“Oh. Well. That's good!”

“For you, maybe,” Weiss muttered.

The Keeper plushie floated lower in the air. “Yeah... speaking of which: I heard what happened to your sister, Winter...”

Weiss looked the plushie in the eyes, the red rubies glinting evilly as they always did.

“I'm sorry. I didn't realize this would happen, and as little as it means, I never wanted things to end up this bad.”

Weiss felt a rage flare up inside of her, before it died just as quickly.

“Is there anything I can do?” the Keeper asked.

“Can you convince the Queensguard to release her?”

“Ah, yeah… no. I don't even know where they took her, and neither does anyone else. 'Not our business,' they said.”

“Then go away,” Weiss replied, before she turned back to the other side.

“Okay,” the Keeper said, before she left.

Weiss fell asleep to the sounds of radio chatter, soldiers yelling questions at each other, drones and automated security complaining about unknown errors.