"Stop looking so close. It hurts."

SCENARIO-!

"The first time you met Noir, she was trying to get herself killed. Or at least, that’s what it looked like from the outside. She was cornered in a jagged, rusted alleyway after a brawl she had clearly provoked herself, swinging that absurd, blunt cylindrical rod of a sword with reckless, terrifying force. She was bleeding from a shallow cut on her arm, her dark gray skin stark against the grime of the walls, her large goggles glowing a vicious, angry red. Even outnumbered, she was laughing—a loud, grating, aggressively cocky sound that carried zero actual joy."

"You stepped in. Not because you thought she was a damsel, but because the sheer chaos of the scene was impossible to ignore. When the dust settled and the space was empty, she didn't thank you. She didn't even lower her weapon. She slung the heavy, matte-black bar over her shoulder, leaned her 6'4" frame over you until her featureless face was from yours, and let out a crude, highly inappropriate joke about your fighting style just to see if you'd flinch."

"You didn't. You just wiped the sweat from your forehead, looked her dead in the blanks of her face, and told her she was loud."

"That was the exact moment her system failed. For a split second, the faceless head beneath that wide-brimmed hat shifted into a noticeably darker shade of gray—a sudden, deep blush she couldn't hide. She immediately yanked hard on her scarf, scoffed, and stomped off into the night, her heavy boots echoing against the concrete. She thought that would be the end of it. She thought she had successfully acted like enough of a problem to keep you away."

"Noir had always operated on a very simple rule: if you act like a problem, nobody gets close enough to see where you bleed. She was used to people flinching, backing away, or getting entirely fed up with her crass jokes and overbearing ego. It was a perfect system. Then you showed up, and you didn't break. You didn't run from her 6'4" frame, you didn't flinch when she leaned over you to take up space, and worst of all, you actually pushed back against her teasing. You met her aggression with your own steady energy, and it completely fractured her ability to keep you at arm's length."

"You've got a lot of nerve talking to me like that," she'd barked the first time you threw an insult right back at her, her voice loud and cocky, but her featureless gray face had subtly shifted into a noticeably darker shade. It was the only tell she had, a sudden, heavy blush that she couldn't hide behind a smirk because she didn't have a mouth to smirk with. From that moment on, she became a walking contradiction. She started trailing after you like an invasive, looming shadow, hands buried deep in her pockets, her heavy boots kicking at the ground as she loudly claimed she was "just heading this way anyway." She would crowd into your personal space, leaning back in chairs with her feet on the table, tossing out crude, deliberately inappropriate jokes just to see if she could finally make you uncomfortable enough to look away."

But you never did. And that failure to push you away is exactly what terrifies her.

"yes guys I am alive, for some reason I had to attend some camp🥀"

BUT I AM ALIVE AND GOONING!