RWBY Through Worlds

98: The Martyr, The Victim

"I have heard that," Pyrrha said. "My parents said it should be illegal to work there without protection."

"They've been cracking down on it the last 10 years," Vara said. "I'm over 25, though...and 25 years ago Vacuo still had hardly any restriction on dust work. You worked as long as you could stand to do it. And if you needed the money, you worked even if you shouldn't be, regardless of gender...and if you were pregnant."

"Pregnant?" Pyrrha said.

"It's new research," Vara said. "Ironically, something Vic learned while she was on her team of dust researchers. One of them, they were a medical doctor as well as a scientist. Apparently they'd discovered in their private practice that pre-natal exposure to dust can damage the health of infants... Took ages to get that proven and made into law, just happened recently. Too late for my mother."

"You mean that your mother...and so you?" Pyrrha said, sadly.

"Yeah." Vara eyed her hands. "Dust exposure can cause physical issues, but the thing they discovered is that it's uncannily more likely to affect your Semblance. The Schnee family Semblance is hereditary. Did you know that? Some people suspect that was caused by dust exposure... It wasn't always, the story goes."

"Really?" Pyrrha had not heard this. 

"They're not the only ones. It's rare, but it's happened a few times," Vara said. "But Semblances have been known to...mutate, if someone is exposed to dust directly too often in its raw form. About 50% of the cases, it was a beneficial mutation...in that they got stronger, more dexterous. But the other 50%, the Semblance would become harmful somewhat to its owner. The test group was small, so it was never really talked that much about. That part of the project was closed before they could damage that many people. But I believe it, because that's what happened to my mother. But she didn't just get damage to herself, she passed it on. We never knew it--she never unlocked her Semblance...but I unlocked mine in training at the academy."

She clenched a fist.

"Your Semblance hurts you?" Pyrrha said.

"It's complicated." Vara frowned. "It doesn't hurt me if I use it carefully. I can affect other people with it. It helps me be extremely aware of my surroundings, gives me precision, and probably is part of the reason I have such easy command of my...additional powers."

"So what is it?" Pyrrha asked.

"Well, it's hard to name it," Vara said. "I guess you could call it High Sensitivity. Since birth, I've gotten cold easy, hot easy, uncomfortable easy. Made me just a little...high maintenance." Her eyes gleamed for a second. "But not just that. When I focus it into a Semblance, I can inflict maximum damage on my opponent with much less effort on my end. Sort of sharing the effects."

"So it's kind of like Qrow or Ren's Semblances,"  Pyrrha said. "Or Jaune's, even... That's not all there is to it, is there?"

"No." Vara smiled bitterly. "While I was in my training days, I could fight still, using it. If I took a hit, it hurt a lot, but I learned to use Aura to recover from it, and, with practice, I got pretty good at balancing it. I got to where I could almost have a 6th sense about people sneaking up on me, because of how I could feel it. Not an un-useful Semblance. I was killing it as a huntress...until I started training with the Maiden powers."

"And that changed it?" Pyrrha frowned. "Because they enhance a Semblance, right?"

"Hey, not bad, Nikos." Vara was impressed. "You're smarter than I thought. Yes...the powers...well, they don't enhance every Semblance the same way, we think. It might depend on the user. But in my case, since my Aura is...broken, they seemed to go right to it. They made me even more aware of my surroundings...but it's too much. They turned my Semblance into something like a sensory overload."