Summer Rose was many things: A Huntress, a mother, and a wife are only a few of them. One thing she never was, is dead. And she's been hiding much more besides.
-
Going forward, links to content from Twitter (now X) will no longer be embedded. Pre-existing links should not be affected.
By Any Other Name (Worm/RWBY)
- Thread starter Miss Peacecraft
- Start date
- Created
- Status
- Ongoing
- Watchers
- 125
- Recent readers
- 0
- Threadmarks
- 7
-
Statistics (7 threadmarks, 28k words)
User Total Miss Peacecraft 7
Epsisode 0 - The Silver Trailer
- Location
- Oklahoma
Happy Nanowrimo!
-----
"It's not often I find a dead woman visiting her own grave."
He said it with all the weight and gravitas that one would adopt when commenting on the weather. I recognized the voice—of course I did. I'd spent four years at the man's Academy, after-all. Four years of subterfuge, theft, and lies, all while he watched me from on high, pretending like he didn't know who I was. Like he didn't remember my face, my eyes. Magic could only do so much, in the end. It couldn't change everything.
"You'd know a thing or two about that, wouldn't you?" I managed to retort.
He just laughed, a dry chuckle. "I would. I've visited my own grave more times than I count."
The stone cenotaph at my feet dominated my attention, lit by the bright yellows of the midday sun. It was clean, meticulously so. Someone came up here at least weekly to brush it clean and clip any growth around it, the kind of maintenance a groundskeeper would have engaged in if the stone had been anywhere reasonable. My fingers tightened on the head of my ax hanging by my side. I'd expected to fight my way here, cutting through any Beowulf or Ursa that stood in my way. But the forest was clear and quiet, with not a threat in sight.
"Tai…" I whispered, throat tight. How often was he…?
Ozpin approached, close enough to stand shoulder to shoulder but with enough space that he wasn't quite crowding me. His cane was loose, held in lax fingers. He was ready to move, if need be. I respected the readiness. "You've taken a risk coming here. Weren't you worried someone would see you?"
Of course I was, I wanted to say. This was a stupid idea, I wanted to shout. I was risking everything right now, for what? Petty nostalgia?
"Tai is at work. Yang is at pre-school, and Ruby is at daycare," I choked out instead, my voice as steady as I could manage.
I'd tracked each of them down without being seen. Each of their faces were burned into my mind: Tai smiling as he explained the minutia behind a concept his students found boring at best and outright offensive at worst, Ruby, laughing brightly as she played tag with a group of girls her age, Yang, hurling herself through an obstacle course with sheer focus written across her chubby face.
I took a deep shuddery breath and turned my focus back out, eyes fluttering open to focus back on the cenotaph before me.
My rose was carved into the stone, an exact replica of the emblem I'd worn throughout my time at Beacon and my short stint as a proper Huntress. My hand drifted up to the harness across my chest, the empty spot at the center where I'd worn it. Of course it was exact. I'd left it to my daughter. My breath caught in my chest and for a moment I wanted to collapse.
But I couldn't afford to. So I steeled myself, tore my eyes away from the stone with a considerable effort, and turned my eyes outward, over the ocean below the cliff where it rested.
"What about Qrow?" Ozpin asked quietly.
"You know he's in Mistral right now, same as I do." Qrow only ever went where Ozpin told him, these days.
"And Raven?"
"I don't care where Raven is."
We were silent for a moment, my angry words echoing between us. I was unwilling to break the silence, but equally unwilling to step away, no matter how easy it would be to just… leave him standing there.
Ozpin sighed. "Your husband believes you dead."
"Good. Don't tell him the truth." My voice caught on that final word. Truth. What a farce. "How long have you known I was alive?"
"If she'd killed you, she would have sent me proof. A final mockery of my failure." He hummed a moment, fingers tapping his cane thoughtfully. "Does she know you're here?"
I didn't know what she knew, not anymore. I was no longer in her inner circle, little more than another agent for her to toy with as she would. I was pushing things, just coming here. Pushing them more by checking on my family. I was risking a lot for so little. "How did you know I would be here?"
"Luck. I was in town to observe some of Signal's brightest students when I caught sight of you, out of the corner of my eye. Like a phantom."
I bit back a curse. I had seen neither hide nor hair of Ozpin in my initial recon. Was I that rusty? Had my daughters, my husband, blinded me to the risk? I drew a deep breath and held it for seven seconds. Let it out for five. Finally, I turned to him, just to curse how much taller he was than I. Even after all these years I wasn't used to glaring up at everyone.
"Then what do you want? Why follow me here?"
"Perhaps I wanted to check up on an old student. Is that so hard to believe?" He said sadly, eyes finally landing on me. They were old, so much older than the face they were set in. I couldn't meet them for long.
"There's always another angle with you," I said. "Don't try and convince me to leave her. You know I can't."
"I know you believe that, and I doubt that I can convince you otherwise." He smiled that sad smile at me, an achingly familiar one that brought memory spilling back. "Still, it's enough to see you again."
"...I can't stay. I'm already pushing it." My hands went to my shoulders and drew my hood back up around my ears, shadowing my features, as I turned from his gaze. "Don't expect to see me again any time soon."
"Before you go, I just want to ask you one thing."
I stopped dead, eyes locked on the forest before me. Something in me was warring against the steps I knew I had to take, the path ahead suddenly long and uninviting. "What?" I asked, my shoulders suddenly squared and tense like I was a petulant child again.
"Am I speaking to Summer, still?"
I grit my teeth. I knew where this was going, what he was going to ask. I should change, leave, attack, something.
Instead I just stood there.
"Or are you Taylor once more?"
The second name echoed in my head. A phantom tang of copper hissed against my tongue, the weight of a knife that wasn't there pulled against my hand, and I remembered the feeling of it plunging into a much older man's neck, a man who'd looked up at me the same old sad eyes as he bled out and died.
"...Summer."
I left him standing by my grave in a whirl of white and red petals.
----
By Any Other Name is a crossover I'll be working on this month to really test my chops as a writer. It's a bit more experimental than what I usually do, and touches on themes that are near and dear to me. I hope y'all enjoy it!
If you want to be kept up to date and watch me go bonkers as I write my brains out, go ahead and join my Patreon where you can also check out any as of yet unreleased TWNY chapters!
-----
"It's not often I find a dead woman visiting her own grave."
He said it with all the weight and gravitas that one would adopt when commenting on the weather. I recognized the voice—of course I did. I'd spent four years at the man's Academy, after-all. Four years of subterfuge, theft, and lies, all while he watched me from on high, pretending like he didn't know who I was. Like he didn't remember my face, my eyes. Magic could only do so much, in the end. It couldn't change everything.
"You'd know a thing or two about that, wouldn't you?" I managed to retort.
He just laughed, a dry chuckle. "I would. I've visited my own grave more times than I count."
The stone cenotaph at my feet dominated my attention, lit by the bright yellows of the midday sun. It was clean, meticulously so. Someone came up here at least weekly to brush it clean and clip any growth around it, the kind of maintenance a groundskeeper would have engaged in if the stone had been anywhere reasonable. My fingers tightened on the head of my ax hanging by my side. I'd expected to fight my way here, cutting through any Beowulf or Ursa that stood in my way. But the forest was clear and quiet, with not a threat in sight.
"Tai…" I whispered, throat tight. How often was he…?
Ozpin approached, close enough to stand shoulder to shoulder but with enough space that he wasn't quite crowding me. His cane was loose, held in lax fingers. He was ready to move, if need be. I respected the readiness. "You've taken a risk coming here. Weren't you worried someone would see you?"
Of course I was, I wanted to say. This was a stupid idea, I wanted to shout. I was risking everything right now, for what? Petty nostalgia?
"Tai is at work. Yang is at pre-school, and Ruby is at daycare," I choked out instead, my voice as steady as I could manage.
I'd tracked each of them down without being seen. Each of their faces were burned into my mind: Tai smiling as he explained the minutia behind a concept his students found boring at best and outright offensive at worst, Ruby, laughing brightly as she played tag with a group of girls her age, Yang, hurling herself through an obstacle course with sheer focus written across her chubby face.
I took a deep shuddery breath and turned my focus back out, eyes fluttering open to focus back on the cenotaph before me.
My rose was carved into the stone, an exact replica of the emblem I'd worn throughout my time at Beacon and my short stint as a proper Huntress. My hand drifted up to the harness across my chest, the empty spot at the center where I'd worn it. Of course it was exact. I'd left it to my daughter. My breath caught in my chest and for a moment I wanted to collapse.
But I couldn't afford to. So I steeled myself, tore my eyes away from the stone with a considerable effort, and turned my eyes outward, over the ocean below the cliff where it rested.
"What about Qrow?" Ozpin asked quietly.
"You know he's in Mistral right now, same as I do." Qrow only ever went where Ozpin told him, these days.
"And Raven?"
"I don't care where Raven is."
We were silent for a moment, my angry words echoing between us. I was unwilling to break the silence, but equally unwilling to step away, no matter how easy it would be to just… leave him standing there.
Ozpin sighed. "Your husband believes you dead."
"Good. Don't tell him the truth." My voice caught on that final word. Truth. What a farce. "How long have you known I was alive?"
"If she'd killed you, she would have sent me proof. A final mockery of my failure." He hummed a moment, fingers tapping his cane thoughtfully. "Does she know you're here?"
I didn't know what she knew, not anymore. I was no longer in her inner circle, little more than another agent for her to toy with as she would. I was pushing things, just coming here. Pushing them more by checking on my family. I was risking a lot for so little. "How did you know I would be here?"
"Luck. I was in town to observe some of Signal's brightest students when I caught sight of you, out of the corner of my eye. Like a phantom."
I bit back a curse. I had seen neither hide nor hair of Ozpin in my initial recon. Was I that rusty? Had my daughters, my husband, blinded me to the risk? I drew a deep breath and held it for seven seconds. Let it out for five. Finally, I turned to him, just to curse how much taller he was than I. Even after all these years I wasn't used to glaring up at everyone.
"Then what do you want? Why follow me here?"
"Perhaps I wanted to check up on an old student. Is that so hard to believe?" He said sadly, eyes finally landing on me. They were old, so much older than the face they were set in. I couldn't meet them for long.
"There's always another angle with you," I said. "Don't try and convince me to leave her. You know I can't."
"I know you believe that, and I doubt that I can convince you otherwise." He smiled that sad smile at me, an achingly familiar one that brought memory spilling back. "Still, it's enough to see you again."
"...I can't stay. I'm already pushing it." My hands went to my shoulders and drew my hood back up around my ears, shadowing my features, as I turned from his gaze. "Don't expect to see me again any time soon."
"Before you go, I just want to ask you one thing."
I stopped dead, eyes locked on the forest before me. Something in me was warring against the steps I knew I had to take, the path ahead suddenly long and uninviting. "What?" I asked, my shoulders suddenly squared and tense like I was a petulant child again.
"Am I speaking to Summer, still?"
I grit my teeth. I knew where this was going, what he was going to ask. I should change, leave, attack, something.
Instead I just stood there.
"Or are you Taylor once more?"
The second name echoed in my head. A phantom tang of copper hissed against my tongue, the weight of a knife that wasn't there pulled against my hand, and I remembered the feeling of it plunging into a much older man's neck, a man who'd looked up at me the same old sad eyes as he bled out and died.
"...Summer."
I left him standing by my grave in a whirl of white and red petals.
----
By Any Other Name is a crossover I'll be working on this month to really test my chops as a writer. It's a bit more experimental than what I usually do, and touches on themes that are near and dear to me. I hope y'all enjoy it!
If you want to be kept up to date and watch me go bonkers as I write my brains out, go ahead and join my Patreon where you can also check out any as of yet unreleased TWNY chapters!
Nice concept, career watched and all that jass
Bronze_Moose
Okay at Omake
- Location
- Port Angeles, Washington
Holy cow I was expecting Annette! 🤯
I look forward to further chapters!
I look forward to further chapters!
Episode 1 - Ghost
- Location
- Oklahoma
Her scythe thundered, a perfect reflection of the heart beating beneath her chest. Exhilaration, adrenaline, and sheer bloody-minded determination fueled her wild screaming run up the cliff face, a glimmering ladder of complicated glyphs giving her purchase she would never have on her own. Her shoulders, arms, and hands burned with the effort of holding up the massive weight beneath her, Aura and high-velocity gun shells filling the gap she couldn't bridge on her own.
Gunpowder and grimm-smoke trailed behind her as she laughed. The Nevermore she was carrying, the same one that had carried her and her partner—best friend, she squealed internally—to the rest of their companions squawked in something she approximated as rage, but she paid it no mind. Her scythe was hooked around its neck, her plan was in motion. The monster was as good as dead.
Another shot, the second to last in her magazine, saw her clearing the cliff ridge above. With laughter on her lips and the joy of success in her breast, she tensed to pull the final time, the final shot that would end it all for the monster she'd set her sights on.
But there, hanging upside down in the midday sun, she saw something that brought her heart to a screaming halt. A figure shrouded in white, hood drawn up to shadow their face and cloak fluttering in the breeze. Recognition, secondhand from stories passed down from father and sister, flashed through her mind.
Her scythe roared again. The head of the beast fell with one final scream, and she crashed to the ground atop the cliff in an undignified heap. She struggled to her feet, countless words warring for first spot as she untangled herself from her own blood red cloak. Cheers from below went unheeded as she crashed to her knees at the edge of the cliff.
The figure was gone, like it had never been there. Still, she asked her question as if the universe itself would answer.
"Mom?"
They'd been christened Team RWBY: Ruby Rose, Weiss Schnee, Blake Belladonna, and Yang Xiao Long. Ruby knew she should be excited, normally she would be bouncing off the walls while they redecorated their sparse dorm room, chattering the ears off her new friends and her sister, about everything they could possibly expect from the coming school year, and how it was everything she'd ever hoped for.
She hadn't expected to start the school year with a sisterly argument.
"There's no way it was mom you saw. That doesn't make any sense," Yang scoffed as she brushed a long lock of blonde hair out of her face.
"Then who could it have been! She was wearing a white cloak!" Ruby responded in kind, her voice petulant and upset. She coughed, smoothed out her frazzled black hair, and fixed her sister with an angry silver glare. "It was Mom. It has to have been."
Yang bit back an instinctive retort, turning in place as if to pace, but finding herself stymied by boxes and luggage. She just sighed and pressed a fist to her forehead instead. Ruby huffed when no more response was forthcoming, and turned to continue unpacking.
Her partner, Weiss, was studiously ignoring the fight. Instead, her pale blue eyes focused on meticulously folding a second suitcase's worth of clothes. She'd pulled her voluminous white hair up into a bun, keeping it out of her eyes as she worked. Ruby found herself wondering how she was managing to fit so many clothes into such a small dresser. She herself had barely managed to fit her own outfits in her dresser, and she'd only brought—
"Why can't it have been your mom?" Blake asked from her bunk, where she'd taken refuge. Her hands shot up in supplication as two pairs of eyes, one silver and one lilac, snapped to her. Her own amber eyes narrowed against them. "You two have been arguing about this for the past half hour. I just want to know what's going on."
"Yes, it's been… a lot," Weiss chimed in, voice as dry as the desert. "I don't want to get involved, per se, but if you're going to argue where we can all hear, you may as well fill us in."
"Because our mom is dead. She has been for the past eleven years," Yang said, with all the finality of a guillotine snapping closed. "Ruby was just… excited, full of adrenaline. She—"
"You don't know that she's dead!" Ruby shouted, closing in on her sister. "No one ever found a body, you and Dad told me that much!"
"That doesn't mean she's alive!" Yang hissed, looming over her younger sibling for all the good it would do her. Ruby was fierce, determined. She believed. "It just means there wasn't enough of her to bury!"
Tears shimmered at the corners of purple eyes, and Ruby's heated retort died on her lips. Yang wasn't angry at her, she realized. Yang just… couldn't believe it was Mom. Maybe it hurt her too much to imagine, or maybe she'd already come to terms with it and Ruby's insistence was only reopening old wounds. Her mind churned; was there a better track to take, a better way to convince her sister to help her?
The chime of a bell shook her from her thoughts, and in unison each of the four girls turned to stare at the clock set above the door to their dorm. For a moment, what it said didn't quite register. Nine am, on the dot. Did they have something to do at nine?
"We're late!" Weiss shrieked. "Our first day and we're late? This is what happens when you argue over pointless things!"
"Son of a—" Yang cut herself off as she turned and dashed for the door. "Come on, maybe we can still make it! Class isn't until 9:15, right?"
Blake leapt from her bunk, landing with catlike grace out in the hall just as her partner slammed the door wide. "Port's room is clear across campus. We'll have to move fast."
Ruby ran out after them, expecting to meet a crush of students also rushing to the first class of the day. But the hall was empty, dead. They were the only ones late? Oh that wasn't a good look for them.
Weiss was out on her heels, slamming into her back with a muted thump. "What are you doing, idiot? Move! I don't want to make a bad first impression because of you!"
"Stop fighting and run!" Yang interrupted the incipient argument, catching both of them around the shoulders and pulling them into a dash just behind their black-haired teammate. It was a good thing the halls were empty, otherwise they would have bounced off other students as well as walls and corners.
Still, Ruby couldn't help but laugh. This was the kind of thing she'd wanted from Beacon!
Yang's skin itched. Only a few days at Beacon and all she had was problems. Ruby, convinced she'd seen the ghost of a mother she only really had stories of. Weiss, jockeying for the leader position any time she saw a hint of weakness. And her own partner, missing at all hours of night. It was enough to drive a girl insane.
"All I'm saying is that she's distracted, Yang." Weiss tossed her hair over her shoulder, fixing her with an even stare. The scar across one eye rendered it angrier than Yang thought it was meant, but it made her grind her teeth nonetheless.
"So?" Yang asked as she stared out the dorm window. "She thought she saw her Mom. I don't blame her for being a little obsessed." Even if it was driving her insane.
Where the hell was Blake? She knew where Ruby was; doing extra credit with Professor Oobleck to make up for the class she'd slept through yesterday. But Blake? Here one minute, gone the next. Did the whole 'partner' thing mean so little to her?
"But if it's hurting the team?" Weiss insisted with a shift of the shoulders that read as extreme annoyance to Yang.
"Is it? Hurting the team, I mean." Ruby was at least here, she complained to herself. With a sigh, she let her head fall to the desk before her, forehead smacking into her incomplete homework. She couldn't think like this, not with her thoughts being pulled in a thousand directions.
"Maybe! She's too busy goofing or chasing this ghost to—"
"Hi girls!" The door slammed open, Ruby's cheerful chirp echoing through their tightly packed room. Before the door could snap shut she threw her bag full force at her desk and erupted into a blur of petals, rematerializing in her bunk with a big bright smile. "What did I miss? Where's Blake?"
Yang just grunted and brushed already dissipating rose petals off her shoulder and desk. "Just homework. And I don't know where Blake is, she didn't tell me where she was going."
"How was your make-up class with Oobleck?" Weiss asked, her voice… expectant. Yang's eyes narrowed at her. What could she possibly be thinking?
"He told me I had a really interesting outlook on the formation of Vale! I think maybe his class really is interesting, and not boring like my old history class at Signal. Professor Pink was such a boooooooore! She just talked and talked and she didn't even face the class half the time! Oobleck is all over the place but he's really funny, and…" Ruby droned on happily, regaling them with every thought in her head as she swayed in place.
Yang eyed the rope holding the bunk aloft with some trepidation. Ruby's sleeping arrangement… scared her, sometimes. Should she say something? Fix it? She shook her head. That wasn't important right now. Her sister was almost… too cheerful. She narrowed her eyes, just to perk up and smile as Ruby turned to her.
Weiss huffed, and Yang just knew she would have something else to say.
The door clicked open again, quieter than Ruby's violent entrance. Yang's eyes snapped around, finding the black-clad shape of her partner slipping in as softly as she could. Their eyes met for a moment, but no words passed between them. What would she even say?
"Hi Blake!" Ruby yelled, startling them both out of their little fugue. "Whatcha doin!"
"...I was just studying in the library," Blake said. "Things got away from me."
The bald faced lie sent a thrill of anger through Yang. She'd checked the library just an hour ago. She'd checked it high and low, taking into account her partner's noted affinity for high places. There'd been nothing, not a single sign. Blake might be sneaky, but surely she wasn't that sneaky.
"Oh! Also, also!" Ruby cut through her turbulent emotions like a knife through butter, leaning down over the edge of her bed with all the care of a particularly excited sugar glider. "Oobleck told me that the other academies are gonna be sending their Vytal Festival teams soon! We should tooootally go check out the competition when they show up!"
Weiss practically leaped from her seat, the chair clattering to the ground as she stood ramrod straight. "Already! That's too soon, I'm not—" She stopped, her eyes darting around the room at the surprised looks around her. "I mean, I'd forgotten about that in the rush of school."
Yang stood with a sigh and let the chaos wash over her. She wouldn't touch Weiss's weirdness yet, but… "Yeah, that might be fun," she said instead, watching Blake climb into her own bed out of the corner of her eye. She made her way over to Ruby and, with a single finger, pushed her back into her bed. Her sister just groaned. "But it's late. Shouldn't we get some sleep?"
"I agree. Our studies can wait until the morning," Weiss righted her chair with as much aplomb as she could muster, straightened her uniform skirt, and turned to her dresser. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I need the shower."
A chorus of boos met that declaration, and Weiss scurried into the bathroom followed by exhortations for her to be faster this time and to save some hot water for the rest of us!
When their nightly libations were finished—and Yang was done bitching about the back half of her shower being freezing cold—she was left to lay up, staring at the bottom of Blake's bunk and thinking. She wasn't even sure what she was thinking about, just that she wasn't sure what she was going to do. She had to get Blake alone, had to really talk to her, she just wasn't sure how she was going to do it.
Her heart caught in her throat when a bunk creaked. It settled when she saw it was just Ruby, climbing as quietly as she could out of the rickety thing she called a bed. It was hard to see her in the dark, but something was… melancholy about the way she stood. Her back was hunched, her feet dragged against the floor as she shuffled towards the window, and she heard a bit back sigh as the younger girl sat at her desk.
Yang sat up with a quiet groan. It's not like she was sleeping anyway. She shifted out of bed, shuffled silently up behind her sister and tapped her on her shoulder. To Ruby's credit, she didn't even jump. She just looked up at her with half-lidded silver eyes. Yang gestured with her chin at the bathroom, a silent question asked. Ruby nodded and stood, following her into the only somewhat secure room. A side light snapped on as the door shut, not bright enough to blind them, but just enough to see by. It was a small space, but big enough for the two of them to talk.
"Don't really see you in the glasses much anymore," Yang said softly, pointing out the red rimmed frames perched on her younger sister's nose.
"Didn't feel like putting in my contacts," Ruby murmured. "And you know I can't see without them. I'd have woken up Weiss."
Yang watched her sister for just a moment. She'd leaned against one of the sinks and crossed her arms. Her eyes were everywhere except on Yang, and her short black hair was mussed from her pillow. She hadn't even bothered to fix it yet, and the red mixed into the black was starting to fade and bleed. She hadn't even asked Yang to help her redye it.
"...This is getting to you, isn't it?" Yang said softly, sliding in next to her. Idly she wondered if she should go ahead and go get some more dye for her. "I thought you were excited?"
"I am, I just…" Ruby sighed, a frustrated thing. Yang wasn't used to seeing her like this. "I didn't really know her, so the idea of her watching me make it into Beacon was just so exciting!"
"So then what's got you down?" Yang asked, even though she knew exactly where this was going. For her part, the younger girl took a deep breath, the kind of thing you use to brace before a difficult movement in training.
"...Do you really think it can't have been Mom?" Ruby asked in a small voice. "I was so sure…"
Yang just nodded. She'd known that this is what it would be about as soon as she'd seen her sister stumble out of bed. One arm went around the shorter girl's shoulders, drawing her against her sister tightly. Her cheek pressed into her sister's hair as she sighed, thoughts spinning as she tried to marshal a response. Another argument would just make things worse, she knew she'd handled that poorly that first day. Lashing out like that had been… unacceptable.
Ruby took her silence as permission to continue. "Dad told me about the white cloak she always wore, you know? Maybe I just fixated on that, it's why I wear my cloak you know, but I really felt like she was there to watch me succeed. She was gone the next time I looked, but I just—"
Yang hugged her sister tighter. Of course. Ruby didn't remember their mother, she'd barely been four when she'd disappeared—died, Yang mentally corrected herself. A bit of kindness would go a long way here.
"Maybe she was, in a way," Yang started slowly, mind churning. "We know souls are real, right?"
Ruby nodded into the hug. "Yeah. Aura and Semblances are the reflection of our souls," she recited from memory. It was an old lesson, one hammered into them until it stuck.
"So… maybe she really was watching you," Yang said softly. She wasn't sure she believed it herself, but she would say whatever she had to to help her sister. "Maybe she was really there, or maybe it was something weirder, but… If you think she was there to see you succeed, then she was."
Ruby shuddered in her grasp, and Yang just drew her closer. This was fine. This was better than fighting, than arguing. It was better than the possibility that Ruby had been right. They stayed like that for just a few moments, long enough for Ruby's breathing to steady and for Yang to find a calm in the center of the chaos she felt her life had become. The split apart, words spent for the night, and
When they made their way back into their dorm, Ruby quietly climbing back into her bunk like nothing was wrong, Yang risked a peek into the bunk above hers.
Blake was missing again. She grit her teeth and slid into her own bed, vowing to confront the girl about it the first chance she got. How badly could that end up going?
Yang had a sinking feeling that she'd brought this on herself. Gunfire shot past her ear as she sent yet another mook flying, his body bouncing off a shipping container with a scream. One man's baton skittered off her gauntlet, and she crushed his mask with her fist for the impertinence. Adrenaline kept her light on her toes, dancing back and away from the assault of two more White Fang mooks.
A wave of ice swept them off their feet for their trouble, and Yang found herself face to face with Weiss. The white-clad princess was as unruffled as ever, and Yang took the sudden reprieve to take stock of where everyone was.
Nothing.
She didn't have eyes on Blake, Ruby, or that exuberant monkey faunus they'd picked up. Gunshots sounded in the distance, deep in the maze of shipping containers they'd pursued the White Fang into. She picked out the staccato rhythm of Gambol Shroud, the throaty roar of Crescent Rose, and an unfamiliar basso boom that she guessed belonged to their new ally.
"'How badly can it go?'" she quoted to herself. "Where do all these idiots keep coming from?"
"Does it matter?" Weiss asked, and Yang hissed. She thought she'd been talking to herself. "Are we here to support Blake or not?"
"Yeah? I thought she was—" Yang started to bite out, anger bubbling up at words that hadn't yet been taken back.
"I spoke in error," Weiss interrupted, punctuating her statement with a downward slash of Myrtenaster. "But now isn't the time for an argument, is it?"
Yang grunted, but she knew Weiss was right. She shook out her fists, cocking her gauntlets with a loud mechanical thunk. "Yeah. Let's go kick some ass."
They moved as one, Ruby's impromptu training exercises already burning themselves into their memories, into their limbs. Weiss went high, Yang low; the smaller, lighter girl leaping across shipping containers as the larger girl bull-rushed a crowd of Fang grunts who'd rounded the corner on them. She set her shoulder with a wide grin.
They didn't get a chance to move, a white glyph flashing into existence beneath them and freezing their feet in place. A moment later Yang crashed into them with all the grace of a running train. They scattered like bowling pins before her, and she spared them not a single second glance as she kept going. The sound of gunfire was getting louder, and if she didn't miss her guess…
They burst from the maze of metal on a scene of chaos. Ruby was a flickering blur of red, rocketing about on the steed that was her scythe. A collection of White Fang grunts and black suited human criminals scrambled to deal with the pinball of laughing terror they'd found in their midst, unable to land a hit before she struck them and was somewhere else.
And none of them had noticed the arrival of two more determined Huntresses.
Yang let a vicious joy enter her heart as she closed in on the melee. She would enjoy this.
She took a man bodily and hurled him into the man beside him like a flail. Their Aura's shattered and she left them lying like discarded bags of flour as she moved in closer to support her sister.
She caught a man in sunglasses with an uppercut that sent him flying and knocked his hat and glasses free. She felt Ruby's back strike hers, and on instinct she linked arms with her sister and spun. The younger girl shouted with effort as she was hurled like a rocket into two more men, the long haft of her scythe taking them in the necks and knocking them down into the concrete.
A line of fire roared into life behind her, cutting them off from a rushing assault team. Weiss landed beside her, leaping back down from her perch with the grace of an accomplished dancer.
"Things are picking up," Weiss said as Ruby ran back up on them. "I can't say I saw this kind of fight coming."
"Yeah, I wasn't expecting Roman Torchwick's guys to be here!" Ruby yelled as she spun to face them.
"These are Torchwick's goons?" Yang asked. "What's a bunch of human criminals doing with the White Fang?"
"Standing around asking questions won't get us anywhere," Weiss said. "If we find Blake and get out of here, we can stand around and theorize all we want."
As if summoned by the girl in white, Blake came tearing around a building, weapon in hand and her recent blond acquisition in hot pursuit. "What are you doing! They've got a—"
A spotlight snapped around and landed on the group, blinding them for a moment before the high pitched whine of a rotary gun spinning up above them. Yang picked out the outline of a bullhead through the glare of the light, and shouted, "Move! Get down!"
They ducked to the side, the group splintering to escape the withering gunfire. Yang landed behind a pile of containers with Ruby and Blake, while Weiss and Sun, she suddenly recalled, sheltered behind the same across from them. Rounds scattered and sparked off their cover and the asphalt around them, and Yang grit her teeth. She wasn't sure how to get out of this one.
"That's a VHI Heavy Rotary!" Ruby chattered, "Where'd they get their hands on a heavy gatling?"
"The Fang has a supplier with deep pockets," Blake managed through gritted teeth. If Yang judged the pained twitching beneath her bow correctly, the scream of the gun assaulting them was torture for the poor girl. "But that doesn't help us get out of this."
"I'll play possum, let you and Ruby line up a big hit. Maybe then…"
They didn't get a chance to refute Yang's suicidal idea. The gun whined and died, and a cocky voice called out. "Well, Kitty? Did that get you? Or do you have eight more lives to play with?"
They leaned out of cover, to find a man in a white smoking jacket leering down at them from the bullhead above. Orange hair swept out from under a black bowler hat, gloved hands clenched a cane, and a cigar burned away in his mouth. Beside him knelt a White Fang grunt, manning a truly massive machine gun.
"Roman! I already beat you once before!" Ruby shouted, charging out of cover to brandish her scythe menacingly. "Don't make me do it again!"
"Well, Red, if I recall correctly a certain witch had to come bail you out of trouble," Roman snarked. The gatling beside him tracked to Ruby.
"Roman! Why are you working with the White Fang!" Blake shouted, darting out to stand next to Ruby. "What do they need all that Dust for?"
"...Does it look like I care? They had money, and I had means. It's business, my dear." He waved a hand dismissively. "Business that you kindly need to get out of."
The barrels of the gun started spinning again. Yang hurled herself in front of her sister, arms crossed. Several glyphs manifested above them. The gun roared, Yang shut her eyes. The next thing she felt wasn't the sensation of high velocity rounds attempting to puncture her Aura. What she felt was a hand grabbing her by the scarf and hurling her away. She slammed into Blake first, carrying the other girl bodily into a shipping container. She opened her eyes to find…
The strange redhead her sister had met on the street earlier that day, standing imposingly in a swirl of… petals? Her sister, untangling herself from a graceless pile of Weiss and Sun, met her unbelieving stare with wide silver eyes. Yang nearly missed the array of swords unfolding from Penny's back as she reached out, her hand shaking with sudden nervous energy, to pluck one of the fluttering petals disappearing on the wind.
There was a muted roar in the background of her focus, her world focusing in on just that one petal. Bright green light made the colors strange, hard to pick out, but she recognized them nonetheless. White on one side, red on the other. She drew the petal close, her breath coming faster and faster as it slowly splintered and disintegrated in her palm.
"Yang? Yang! We need to go!" Blake hauled her up by the underarm, her shouts punctuated by the loud splash of heavy machinery crashing into the bay.
Yang just let herself be pulled along, the now six strong group fleeing the scene under cover of night. But all she could do was ask herself one question, one she saw reflected in her sister's eyes as she fell in beside her.
"Mom was alive?"
-----
I just can't stop bullying these poor girls, I really can't. This is too fun an idea for me to not really dig into.
If you wanna read Episode 2 - Lost early, it's already up on my Patreon, along with the return of my monthly poll system!
Gunpowder and grimm-smoke trailed behind her as she laughed. The Nevermore she was carrying, the same one that had carried her and her partner—best friend, she squealed internally—to the rest of their companions squawked in something she approximated as rage, but she paid it no mind. Her scythe was hooked around its neck, her plan was in motion. The monster was as good as dead.
Another shot, the second to last in her magazine, saw her clearing the cliff ridge above. With laughter on her lips and the joy of success in her breast, she tensed to pull the final time, the final shot that would end it all for the monster she'd set her sights on.
But there, hanging upside down in the midday sun, she saw something that brought her heart to a screaming halt. A figure shrouded in white, hood drawn up to shadow their face and cloak fluttering in the breeze. Recognition, secondhand from stories passed down from father and sister, flashed through her mind.
Her scythe roared again. The head of the beast fell with one final scream, and she crashed to the ground atop the cliff in an undignified heap. She struggled to her feet, countless words warring for first spot as she untangled herself from her own blood red cloak. Cheers from below went unheeded as she crashed to her knees at the edge of the cliff.
The figure was gone, like it had never been there. Still, she asked her question as if the universe itself would answer.
"Mom?"
They'd been christened Team RWBY: Ruby Rose, Weiss Schnee, Blake Belladonna, and Yang Xiao Long. Ruby knew she should be excited, normally she would be bouncing off the walls while they redecorated their sparse dorm room, chattering the ears off her new friends and her sister, about everything they could possibly expect from the coming school year, and how it was everything she'd ever hoped for.
She hadn't expected to start the school year with a sisterly argument.
"There's no way it was mom you saw. That doesn't make any sense," Yang scoffed as she brushed a long lock of blonde hair out of her face.
"Then who could it have been! She was wearing a white cloak!" Ruby responded in kind, her voice petulant and upset. She coughed, smoothed out her frazzled black hair, and fixed her sister with an angry silver glare. "It was Mom. It has to have been."
Yang bit back an instinctive retort, turning in place as if to pace, but finding herself stymied by boxes and luggage. She just sighed and pressed a fist to her forehead instead. Ruby huffed when no more response was forthcoming, and turned to continue unpacking.
Her partner, Weiss, was studiously ignoring the fight. Instead, her pale blue eyes focused on meticulously folding a second suitcase's worth of clothes. She'd pulled her voluminous white hair up into a bun, keeping it out of her eyes as she worked. Ruby found herself wondering how she was managing to fit so many clothes into such a small dresser. She herself had barely managed to fit her own outfits in her dresser, and she'd only brought—
"Why can't it have been your mom?" Blake asked from her bunk, where she'd taken refuge. Her hands shot up in supplication as two pairs of eyes, one silver and one lilac, snapped to her. Her own amber eyes narrowed against them. "You two have been arguing about this for the past half hour. I just want to know what's going on."
"Yes, it's been… a lot," Weiss chimed in, voice as dry as the desert. "I don't want to get involved, per se, but if you're going to argue where we can all hear, you may as well fill us in."
"Because our mom is dead. She has been for the past eleven years," Yang said, with all the finality of a guillotine snapping closed. "Ruby was just… excited, full of adrenaline. She—"
"You don't know that she's dead!" Ruby shouted, closing in on her sister. "No one ever found a body, you and Dad told me that much!"
"That doesn't mean she's alive!" Yang hissed, looming over her younger sibling for all the good it would do her. Ruby was fierce, determined. She believed. "It just means there wasn't enough of her to bury!"
Tears shimmered at the corners of purple eyes, and Ruby's heated retort died on her lips. Yang wasn't angry at her, she realized. Yang just… couldn't believe it was Mom. Maybe it hurt her too much to imagine, or maybe she'd already come to terms with it and Ruby's insistence was only reopening old wounds. Her mind churned; was there a better track to take, a better way to convince her sister to help her?
The chime of a bell shook her from her thoughts, and in unison each of the four girls turned to stare at the clock set above the door to their dorm. For a moment, what it said didn't quite register. Nine am, on the dot. Did they have something to do at nine?
"We're late!" Weiss shrieked. "Our first day and we're late? This is what happens when you argue over pointless things!"
"Son of a—" Yang cut herself off as she turned and dashed for the door. "Come on, maybe we can still make it! Class isn't until 9:15, right?"
Blake leapt from her bunk, landing with catlike grace out in the hall just as her partner slammed the door wide. "Port's room is clear across campus. We'll have to move fast."
Ruby ran out after them, expecting to meet a crush of students also rushing to the first class of the day. But the hall was empty, dead. They were the only ones late? Oh that wasn't a good look for them.
Weiss was out on her heels, slamming into her back with a muted thump. "What are you doing, idiot? Move! I don't want to make a bad first impression because of you!"
"Stop fighting and run!" Yang interrupted the incipient argument, catching both of them around the shoulders and pulling them into a dash just behind their black-haired teammate. It was a good thing the halls were empty, otherwise they would have bounced off other students as well as walls and corners.
Still, Ruby couldn't help but laugh. This was the kind of thing she'd wanted from Beacon!
Yang's skin itched. Only a few days at Beacon and all she had was problems. Ruby, convinced she'd seen the ghost of a mother she only really had stories of. Weiss, jockeying for the leader position any time she saw a hint of weakness. And her own partner, missing at all hours of night. It was enough to drive a girl insane.
"All I'm saying is that she's distracted, Yang." Weiss tossed her hair over her shoulder, fixing her with an even stare. The scar across one eye rendered it angrier than Yang thought it was meant, but it made her grind her teeth nonetheless.
"So?" Yang asked as she stared out the dorm window. "She thought she saw her Mom. I don't blame her for being a little obsessed." Even if it was driving her insane.
Where the hell was Blake? She knew where Ruby was; doing extra credit with Professor Oobleck to make up for the class she'd slept through yesterday. But Blake? Here one minute, gone the next. Did the whole 'partner' thing mean so little to her?
"But if it's hurting the team?" Weiss insisted with a shift of the shoulders that read as extreme annoyance to Yang.
"Is it? Hurting the team, I mean." Ruby was at least here, she complained to herself. With a sigh, she let her head fall to the desk before her, forehead smacking into her incomplete homework. She couldn't think like this, not with her thoughts being pulled in a thousand directions.
"Maybe! She's too busy goofing or chasing this ghost to—"
"Hi girls!" The door slammed open, Ruby's cheerful chirp echoing through their tightly packed room. Before the door could snap shut she threw her bag full force at her desk and erupted into a blur of petals, rematerializing in her bunk with a big bright smile. "What did I miss? Where's Blake?"
Yang just grunted and brushed already dissipating rose petals off her shoulder and desk. "Just homework. And I don't know where Blake is, she didn't tell me where she was going."
"How was your make-up class with Oobleck?" Weiss asked, her voice… expectant. Yang's eyes narrowed at her. What could she possibly be thinking?
"He told me I had a really interesting outlook on the formation of Vale! I think maybe his class really is interesting, and not boring like my old history class at Signal. Professor Pink was such a boooooooore! She just talked and talked and she didn't even face the class half the time! Oobleck is all over the place but he's really funny, and…" Ruby droned on happily, regaling them with every thought in her head as she swayed in place.
Yang eyed the rope holding the bunk aloft with some trepidation. Ruby's sleeping arrangement… scared her, sometimes. Should she say something? Fix it? She shook her head. That wasn't important right now. Her sister was almost… too cheerful. She narrowed her eyes, just to perk up and smile as Ruby turned to her.
Weiss huffed, and Yang just knew she would have something else to say.
The door clicked open again, quieter than Ruby's violent entrance. Yang's eyes snapped around, finding the black-clad shape of her partner slipping in as softly as she could. Their eyes met for a moment, but no words passed between them. What would she even say?
"Hi Blake!" Ruby yelled, startling them both out of their little fugue. "Whatcha doin!"
"...I was just studying in the library," Blake said. "Things got away from me."
The bald faced lie sent a thrill of anger through Yang. She'd checked the library just an hour ago. She'd checked it high and low, taking into account her partner's noted affinity for high places. There'd been nothing, not a single sign. Blake might be sneaky, but surely she wasn't that sneaky.
"Oh! Also, also!" Ruby cut through her turbulent emotions like a knife through butter, leaning down over the edge of her bed with all the care of a particularly excited sugar glider. "Oobleck told me that the other academies are gonna be sending their Vytal Festival teams soon! We should tooootally go check out the competition when they show up!"
Weiss practically leaped from her seat, the chair clattering to the ground as she stood ramrod straight. "Already! That's too soon, I'm not—" She stopped, her eyes darting around the room at the surprised looks around her. "I mean, I'd forgotten about that in the rush of school."
Yang stood with a sigh and let the chaos wash over her. She wouldn't touch Weiss's weirdness yet, but… "Yeah, that might be fun," she said instead, watching Blake climb into her own bed out of the corner of her eye. She made her way over to Ruby and, with a single finger, pushed her back into her bed. Her sister just groaned. "But it's late. Shouldn't we get some sleep?"
"I agree. Our studies can wait until the morning," Weiss righted her chair with as much aplomb as she could muster, straightened her uniform skirt, and turned to her dresser. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I need the shower."
A chorus of boos met that declaration, and Weiss scurried into the bathroom followed by exhortations for her to be faster this time and to save some hot water for the rest of us!
When their nightly libations were finished—and Yang was done bitching about the back half of her shower being freezing cold—she was left to lay up, staring at the bottom of Blake's bunk and thinking. She wasn't even sure what she was thinking about, just that she wasn't sure what she was going to do. She had to get Blake alone, had to really talk to her, she just wasn't sure how she was going to do it.
Her heart caught in her throat when a bunk creaked. It settled when she saw it was just Ruby, climbing as quietly as she could out of the rickety thing she called a bed. It was hard to see her in the dark, but something was… melancholy about the way she stood. Her back was hunched, her feet dragged against the floor as she shuffled towards the window, and she heard a bit back sigh as the younger girl sat at her desk.
Yang sat up with a quiet groan. It's not like she was sleeping anyway. She shifted out of bed, shuffled silently up behind her sister and tapped her on her shoulder. To Ruby's credit, she didn't even jump. She just looked up at her with half-lidded silver eyes. Yang gestured with her chin at the bathroom, a silent question asked. Ruby nodded and stood, following her into the only somewhat secure room. A side light snapped on as the door shut, not bright enough to blind them, but just enough to see by. It was a small space, but big enough for the two of them to talk.
"Don't really see you in the glasses much anymore," Yang said softly, pointing out the red rimmed frames perched on her younger sister's nose.
"Didn't feel like putting in my contacts," Ruby murmured. "And you know I can't see without them. I'd have woken up Weiss."
Yang watched her sister for just a moment. She'd leaned against one of the sinks and crossed her arms. Her eyes were everywhere except on Yang, and her short black hair was mussed from her pillow. She hadn't even bothered to fix it yet, and the red mixed into the black was starting to fade and bleed. She hadn't even asked Yang to help her redye it.
"...This is getting to you, isn't it?" Yang said softly, sliding in next to her. Idly she wondered if she should go ahead and go get some more dye for her. "I thought you were excited?"
"I am, I just…" Ruby sighed, a frustrated thing. Yang wasn't used to seeing her like this. "I didn't really know her, so the idea of her watching me make it into Beacon was just so exciting!"
"So then what's got you down?" Yang asked, even though she knew exactly where this was going. For her part, the younger girl took a deep breath, the kind of thing you use to brace before a difficult movement in training.
"...Do you really think it can't have been Mom?" Ruby asked in a small voice. "I was so sure…"
Yang just nodded. She'd known that this is what it would be about as soon as she'd seen her sister stumble out of bed. One arm went around the shorter girl's shoulders, drawing her against her sister tightly. Her cheek pressed into her sister's hair as she sighed, thoughts spinning as she tried to marshal a response. Another argument would just make things worse, she knew she'd handled that poorly that first day. Lashing out like that had been… unacceptable.
Ruby took her silence as permission to continue. "Dad told me about the white cloak she always wore, you know? Maybe I just fixated on that, it's why I wear my cloak you know, but I really felt like she was there to watch me succeed. She was gone the next time I looked, but I just—"
Yang hugged her sister tighter. Of course. Ruby didn't remember their mother, she'd barely been four when she'd disappeared—died, Yang mentally corrected herself. A bit of kindness would go a long way here.
"Maybe she was, in a way," Yang started slowly, mind churning. "We know souls are real, right?"
Ruby nodded into the hug. "Yeah. Aura and Semblances are the reflection of our souls," she recited from memory. It was an old lesson, one hammered into them until it stuck.
"So… maybe she really was watching you," Yang said softly. She wasn't sure she believed it herself, but she would say whatever she had to to help her sister. "Maybe she was really there, or maybe it was something weirder, but… If you think she was there to see you succeed, then she was."
Ruby shuddered in her grasp, and Yang just drew her closer. This was fine. This was better than fighting, than arguing. It was better than the possibility that Ruby had been right. They stayed like that for just a few moments, long enough for Ruby's breathing to steady and for Yang to find a calm in the center of the chaos she felt her life had become. The split apart, words spent for the night, and
When they made their way back into their dorm, Ruby quietly climbing back into her bunk like nothing was wrong, Yang risked a peek into the bunk above hers.
Blake was missing again. She grit her teeth and slid into her own bed, vowing to confront the girl about it the first chance she got. How badly could that end up going?
Yang had a sinking feeling that she'd brought this on herself. Gunfire shot past her ear as she sent yet another mook flying, his body bouncing off a shipping container with a scream. One man's baton skittered off her gauntlet, and she crushed his mask with her fist for the impertinence. Adrenaline kept her light on her toes, dancing back and away from the assault of two more White Fang mooks.
A wave of ice swept them off their feet for their trouble, and Yang found herself face to face with Weiss. The white-clad princess was as unruffled as ever, and Yang took the sudden reprieve to take stock of where everyone was.
Nothing.
She didn't have eyes on Blake, Ruby, or that exuberant monkey faunus they'd picked up. Gunshots sounded in the distance, deep in the maze of shipping containers they'd pursued the White Fang into. She picked out the staccato rhythm of Gambol Shroud, the throaty roar of Crescent Rose, and an unfamiliar basso boom that she guessed belonged to their new ally.
"'How badly can it go?'" she quoted to herself. "Where do all these idiots keep coming from?"
"Does it matter?" Weiss asked, and Yang hissed. She thought she'd been talking to herself. "Are we here to support Blake or not?"
"Yeah? I thought she was—" Yang started to bite out, anger bubbling up at words that hadn't yet been taken back.
"I spoke in error," Weiss interrupted, punctuating her statement with a downward slash of Myrtenaster. "But now isn't the time for an argument, is it?"
Yang grunted, but she knew Weiss was right. She shook out her fists, cocking her gauntlets with a loud mechanical thunk. "Yeah. Let's go kick some ass."
They moved as one, Ruby's impromptu training exercises already burning themselves into their memories, into their limbs. Weiss went high, Yang low; the smaller, lighter girl leaping across shipping containers as the larger girl bull-rushed a crowd of Fang grunts who'd rounded the corner on them. She set her shoulder with a wide grin.
They didn't get a chance to move, a white glyph flashing into existence beneath them and freezing their feet in place. A moment later Yang crashed into them with all the grace of a running train. They scattered like bowling pins before her, and she spared them not a single second glance as she kept going. The sound of gunfire was getting louder, and if she didn't miss her guess…
They burst from the maze of metal on a scene of chaos. Ruby was a flickering blur of red, rocketing about on the steed that was her scythe. A collection of White Fang grunts and black suited human criminals scrambled to deal with the pinball of laughing terror they'd found in their midst, unable to land a hit before she struck them and was somewhere else.
And none of them had noticed the arrival of two more determined Huntresses.
Yang let a vicious joy enter her heart as she closed in on the melee. She would enjoy this.
She took a man bodily and hurled him into the man beside him like a flail. Their Aura's shattered and she left them lying like discarded bags of flour as she moved in closer to support her sister.
She caught a man in sunglasses with an uppercut that sent him flying and knocked his hat and glasses free. She felt Ruby's back strike hers, and on instinct she linked arms with her sister and spun. The younger girl shouted with effort as she was hurled like a rocket into two more men, the long haft of her scythe taking them in the necks and knocking them down into the concrete.
A line of fire roared into life behind her, cutting them off from a rushing assault team. Weiss landed beside her, leaping back down from her perch with the grace of an accomplished dancer.
"Things are picking up," Weiss said as Ruby ran back up on them. "I can't say I saw this kind of fight coming."
"Yeah, I wasn't expecting Roman Torchwick's guys to be here!" Ruby yelled as she spun to face them.
"These are Torchwick's goons?" Yang asked. "What's a bunch of human criminals doing with the White Fang?"
"Standing around asking questions won't get us anywhere," Weiss said. "If we find Blake and get out of here, we can stand around and theorize all we want."
As if summoned by the girl in white, Blake came tearing around a building, weapon in hand and her recent blond acquisition in hot pursuit. "What are you doing! They've got a—"
A spotlight snapped around and landed on the group, blinding them for a moment before the high pitched whine of a rotary gun spinning up above them. Yang picked out the outline of a bullhead through the glare of the light, and shouted, "Move! Get down!"
They ducked to the side, the group splintering to escape the withering gunfire. Yang landed behind a pile of containers with Ruby and Blake, while Weiss and Sun, she suddenly recalled, sheltered behind the same across from them. Rounds scattered and sparked off their cover and the asphalt around them, and Yang grit her teeth. She wasn't sure how to get out of this one.
"That's a VHI Heavy Rotary!" Ruby chattered, "Where'd they get their hands on a heavy gatling?"
"The Fang has a supplier with deep pockets," Blake managed through gritted teeth. If Yang judged the pained twitching beneath her bow correctly, the scream of the gun assaulting them was torture for the poor girl. "But that doesn't help us get out of this."
"I'll play possum, let you and Ruby line up a big hit. Maybe then…"
They didn't get a chance to refute Yang's suicidal idea. The gun whined and died, and a cocky voice called out. "Well, Kitty? Did that get you? Or do you have eight more lives to play with?"
They leaned out of cover, to find a man in a white smoking jacket leering down at them from the bullhead above. Orange hair swept out from under a black bowler hat, gloved hands clenched a cane, and a cigar burned away in his mouth. Beside him knelt a White Fang grunt, manning a truly massive machine gun.
"Roman! I already beat you once before!" Ruby shouted, charging out of cover to brandish her scythe menacingly. "Don't make me do it again!"
"Well, Red, if I recall correctly a certain witch had to come bail you out of trouble," Roman snarked. The gatling beside him tracked to Ruby.
"Roman! Why are you working with the White Fang!" Blake shouted, darting out to stand next to Ruby. "What do they need all that Dust for?"
"...Does it look like I care? They had money, and I had means. It's business, my dear." He waved a hand dismissively. "Business that you kindly need to get out of."
The barrels of the gun started spinning again. Yang hurled herself in front of her sister, arms crossed. Several glyphs manifested above them. The gun roared, Yang shut her eyes. The next thing she felt wasn't the sensation of high velocity rounds attempting to puncture her Aura. What she felt was a hand grabbing her by the scarf and hurling her away. She slammed into Blake first, carrying the other girl bodily into a shipping container. She opened her eyes to find…
The strange redhead her sister had met on the street earlier that day, standing imposingly in a swirl of… petals? Her sister, untangling herself from a graceless pile of Weiss and Sun, met her unbelieving stare with wide silver eyes. Yang nearly missed the array of swords unfolding from Penny's back as she reached out, her hand shaking with sudden nervous energy, to pluck one of the fluttering petals disappearing on the wind.
There was a muted roar in the background of her focus, her world focusing in on just that one petal. Bright green light made the colors strange, hard to pick out, but she recognized them nonetheless. White on one side, red on the other. She drew the petal close, her breath coming faster and faster as it slowly splintered and disintegrated in her palm.
"Yang? Yang! We need to go!" Blake hauled her up by the underarm, her shouts punctuated by the loud splash of heavy machinery crashing into the bay.
Yang just let herself be pulled along, the now six strong group fleeing the scene under cover of night. But all she could do was ask herself one question, one she saw reflected in her sister's eyes as she fell in beside her.
"Mom was alive?"
-----
I just can't stop bullying these poor girls, I really can't. This is too fun an idea for me to not really dig into.
If you wanna read Episode 2 - Lost early, it's already up on my Patreon, along with the return of my monthly poll system!
- Location
- Sweden
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Dear Mom didn't manage to keep that secret for long after they where in any kind of danger, did she. At least we know she cares about them for real in some manner. High chance she is trading her servitude for Ruby's life unless there are some more significant AU stuff.
It didn't seem quite so simple during Summer's conversation with Ozpin though.
It didn't seem quite so simple during Summer's conversation with Ozpin though.
Episode 2 - Lost
- Location
- Oklahoma
"It was Mom!" Ruby shouted, her voice something between joy and disbelief. "It was! Do you believe me now?"
Yang, seated on her bed, hands kneading her temples like it would chase away the growing headache, just nodded. There was a gnawing void in her stomach, one she wasn't sure she could speak past. If she opened her mouth, would something horrible come out? She wasn't sure.
"But I thought you said your mom was dead?" Weiss asked. Her hair was a mess, her ponytail a ragged mess of knots. They hadn't had time to do anything more than sneak back into their dorm room. Sun had begged off, and Penny had just disappeared without a trace. However much Yang had wanted to find and shake the redhead for all the information she had, it just hadn't seemed worth the effort at the time.
"We thought she was," Ruby said, unable to stand still, nervous energy carrying her about the room like a red and black tornado. "But you saw it, right? The petals?"
"That's… what I wanted to ask about," Blake said gently from her seat beside Yang. "You're the only person I've ever seen produce petals with their Semblance."
Yang just stared down at the leather across her palm. Ember Celica was still securely strapped in its places. She thought that maybe, if she stared hard enough, she could still see the petal like it hadn't dissipated into stray Aura just an hour ago. She didn't need it here to describe it, at least. She thought of them every time her sister shot somewhere in a hail of red.
"White and red," she finally said. "Mom had white and red petals. Dad always said that's where Ruby got hers."
"It's not unheard of for visual elements to run in families," Weiss murmured. "But you're sure it was her?"
"Of course we are!" Ruby shouted, zooming towards her partner like a red rocket. On instinct, Yang reached out to pluck one of the petals from the air.
Weiss held up her hands in silent surrender, and Blake shifted in place. "It's a bit fantastical, isn't it? Your dead mother, returned to life?"
"Maybe she wasn't dead! Maybe she was just—"
Yang's knuckles cracked as her hand snapped shut around the bright red petal. Metal ground on metal as her gauntlet opened and whirred into place, her grip accidentally triggering the release mechanism. Every eye in the room snapped to her, and she took a shuddering breath. She couldn't bring herself to think about how Ruby was going to finish that sentence.
"Sorry. Just tired," she managed, collapsing her gauntlet and slowly removing both of the bright yellow weapons. "I don't think we're going to figure anything out tonight."
"It all seems… overwhelming, doesn't it?" Blake murmured. "The Fang working with Roman, and your Mother involved?"
"Yeah, at this rate I'm expecting something dark from Weiss's past to crop up," Yang groused with as much sarcastic cheer as she could manage. She plastered a smile across her face at the concerned glance Ruby leveled her way. "We'll figure this out sis. We'll find Mom, don't you worry."
She knew what Ruby needed right now, and it wasn't the coil of doubt and pain that she was angrily stuffing down.
"Okay! Let's get some sleep and make a plan in the morning!" Ruby cried, her face bright.
The wall next to them thumped, an angry voice echoing through the thick wall as their neighbor Nora shouted, "Go to bed! Some of us are actually going to class in the morning!"
Sheepishly, they did so, though none of them thought they would get a wink of sleep. Yang could hear Ruby vibrating from across the room, and even Blake and Weiss shifted in their sleep. Yang at least took solace in the fact that they were all there.
Thirty minutes later, her hands clenching and unclenching under the covers, she decided that there was no way she would be able to sleep. She was little more than a bundle of nervous energy and adrenaline. Silently, she swung out from her bunk, collected her workout clothes from a drawer she'd left open in their rush to get dressed for bed, and stole out of the room. She held the knob, shutting the door without even a click.
A few moments later found her in an abandoned training hall, lights bright enough for her to see but dim enough that they shouldn't catch any attention. If any teachers were prowling the halls for curfew dodgers, she would deal with them. But Blake never seemed to run into them, so Yang felt she was in the clear.
She'd left Ember Celica behind. Too noisy to carry out of the room, but she didn't need them for what she was about to do. Her hands came up in the first guard her father had ever taught her; straight up and down by her head, left hand leading and ready to snap into a jab.
She breathed, deep, marshaling what little control she could manage over her thundering heart. She closed her eyes; one of the first exercises she'd learned was to shadowbox, a way to learn to control her body and her movements.
She ducked and weaved, dodging the imaginary jabs and hooks of her father. She stayed her ground, weaving around her center of gravity, weaving her breath into the movement like it was second nature. Her shoes squeaked on the freshly cleaned floor as her imaginary opponent forced her to step back, the image of a taller, broader man invading her space filling her mind's eye.
So she moved instead. One step forward into a leading jab, duck the response, spin around the obvious feint, and throw a hook. She weaved back, bending out of the way of the shin-kick she knew would come in response. She was a blur of motion, acting as fast as the image in her head could move. Sweat beaded at her forehead as she worked, pricking at the corner of her eyes as she became a whirl of fists. She breathed deep, her heart moving slower than it had all week. Her spirits lifted even as her muscles burned with the exertion. A smile spread across her lips.
Unbidden, the image of a white and red petal slammed into her mind's eye, and suddenly she wasn't fighting her father anymore. She didn't know much about how Summer Rose had fought; all she had were pictures and half-overheard stories from her uncle and father of missions they'd gone on in their heyday.
Silver eyes flashed, and she spun out of the way of a massive ax swing, breath hitching in her chest and heart in her throat. Her feet slipped out from under her, and she barely caught herself in a tight roll, impacting the ground with her shoulder instead of her head. She came to a rest several feet from where she'd been standing. She went limp, her head bouncing off the cool floor with a dull throbbing ache that she barely noticed.
She wasn't sure how long she lay there. Long enough that her heart had slowed, that her breathing had evened. Long enough that the throb in her shoulder and head had dulled to a mere ache. With a groan, she levered herself up on her elbows and sighed.
"Maybe I'll stick to bag work, next time…" she muttered to herself as she stood to gather her things.
Class was nearly useless to them. Yang was inattentive, her mind whirling with questions when no one was looking, but a smile plastered on her face whenever anyone was. Ruby was focused, if only on sketches in her notes. Weiss and Blake tried to maintain a veneer of professionalism, though even they found it hard to focus on their immediate classes instead of on their worries about the apparent conspiracy they'd stumbled upon.
But a week passed, and finally they were ready to act. They'd gathered in their room like it was a war conference, each of their goals already laid out: Ruby and Weiss would go to the CCT so that Weiss could access Schnee Dust Corporation records, Blake would infiltrate a nearby White Fang rally to gather information, and Yang would go shake down Junior's, a shady club she had some experience with.
"Can I ask something?" Blake spoke up, as they got ready for the mission ahead. Yang fixed her collar with a critical eye, and nodded at her in the mirror. "I thought you and Ruby were half sisters?"
Yang smoothed out the beige and black lines of her outfit, using the repetitive action as space to collect her thoughts. "We are half sisters, just raised by the same woman. Ruby's birth mom, but…"
"Yang always just called her Mom. She was the best!" Ruby said as she hopped out of the bathroom, her red cloak over a lighter version of her usual outfit. "I don't remember her super well, but Yang and Dad and Uncle Qrow always talked about her, and we still sometimes trip over the stacks of her books and—"
"What happened to your birth mother?" Weiss asked as she picked over her hair in a mirror atop her desk. "You're only two years older than Ruby, right?"
"I don't think I really care what happened to her, now," Yang muttered softly. She'd been hunting Raven down with little more than a grainy photo to go on, but the resurgence of Summer Rose had her feeling… listless. She'd already grieved her, and now she was alive?
She took another breath and spun on her heel, arms out and a wide smile on her face. "So how do I look?"
"...You look like Yang?" her sister responded first, her head cocked to the side. "I guess the outfit is nice?"
"You look cocky," Weiss sniffed as she finished putting pins in her hair and buttoning her dress. "So, about like any other day."
Blake smiled, a tiny thing that nonetheless sent a thrill through Yang, almost enough to make her forget the current turmoil in her chest. "You look great. Ready for a night on the town."
Blake herself looked good, Yang mused. White and black looked good on her, and she made the long sleeves and tight pants look work. She mulled over a few compliments in her head. She didn't want to come on too strong, but she also didn't wanna sound weak. Maybe—
"Who's going out for a night on the town? Isn't it noon?" An annoyingly familiar voice said from her window, cutting through her thoughts like a knife through butter.
She spun on her heels to find a grinning blond boy hanging onto the side of their building, tan face leaning in their open window. Who'd even left that damn thing open! Yang shook her head with a sigh.
"Sun. Why are you listening at our window?" She said in a sickeningly sweet voice. She felt that now was a good chance to get out some of her anger.
"Uh," he started, eyes suddenly wide. They darted between the four girls in the room as realization slowly wrote itself across his face. "We just wanted to help, you know?"
"So you decided to climb up the outside of the building and open our window?" Weiss asked with a raised eyebrow.
Blake just shook her head in disappointment, catching onto what the other girls were doing. Sun, for his part, was sweating furiously. Yang could practically see the gears in his head turning as he tried to find some excuse, some reason for his actions.
"...Who's we?" Ruby asked without a care in the world, failing to notice the terror her team was wreaking on the boy at the window.
Yang leaned out of the window. She had to admit it was a good question. She paid no mind to Sun hurrying out of her way, her eyes locking onto the boy standing way down on the ground level. Blue hair, yellow goggles, and a red coat. The best word she could come up with as he waved excitedly up at them was garish.
"And you wanna help how, exactly?" Yang asked the boy still stubbornly clinging to their building.
"Well, you're going after the White Fang, right? Figured you could use a couple more bodies you know?" He said with a sheepish smile.
She turned to look at her team, propping herself up on the window with one elbow. Blake shared a glance with Weiss, and Ruby just nodded at her enthusiastically, black locks bobbing wildly with the energy behind her affirmation.
"Fine. Get in here, and tell your friend we're in room 310," she said with a dismissive wave. She snapped the window shut and turned to her friends. "Six heads are better than four?"
"We can cover more ground this way. If we split into groups of two we can—"
Two knocks sounded at the door, and Ruby spun on her heel with a shouted, "I've got it!"
Weiss just shook her head. "How fast did they sprint up here? Don't they check identification?"
"Well they are fellow students. It would be a bad look to stop them at the door when they're here to promote friendship between the kingdoms?" Blake asked with a soft, chiding tone. "Besides, they're here to help us. So play nice, okay?"
"When have I ever not played nice?" Weiss said with a flip of her hair.
"...So, Neptune huh?" Ruby asked her partner as they walked towards the massive CCT tower. It loomed above them, taller than even Beacon's tallest spire. Ruby wanted so badly to marvel at its construction, but she couldn't. Not yet. There was more important work to be done; like teasing her friend.
"Oh hush Ruby, you just don't understand," Weiss waved her off, even as her cheeks reddened. "Why don't you focus on the mission?"
They were winding their way through a not insubstantial crowd, all streaming either too or from the massive tower before them. It was still daylight, for another few hours at least, and Ruby found herself skipping with a light hum. There was something about the mission ahead that felt… good, for her. Like she was on the cusp of a discovery she didn't even know she needed.
"I can't! We aren't even there yet," Ruby said with a chuckle, skipping to the side to bump her partner with her hip. "Sooooo, you think he's cute?"
"Like you'd understand what makes a boy cute," Weiss shook her head, sarcasm coloring every inch of her statement. "You're too busy digging around in your scythe or cooing over other people's weapons!"
Ruby tore her eyes from where they'd landed on the rapier at Weiss's hip. She'd been admiring the delicate inlay work; there was hardly a tool mark to be found, and she was wondering how long they'd taken to do. "Well, weapons just make sense Weiss. Not like boys. Or girls."
"...What do you mean boys or girls?" Weiss asked.
Ruby just turned away from her partner, her own face suddenly red. "Well, I just don't get people sometimes! Like, you! You're just so, so—"
Her voice stopped, her eyes landing on one of the strangest sights she'd ever seen. A snowy owl, perched on a lightpost several feet away. Its feathers were bright white and unruffled, and a cascade of gray mottled spots marked its head and wings. Bright eyes, a color so very close to her own, drilled into her.
"Ruby? Ruby what are you—is that an owl?"
Said owl cocked its head at her as she met its eyes. Ruby cocked her own head at it. Why was an owl out this early in the evening? Her hand fumbled her scroll from a pouch at her belt; she needed to get a picture to show Yang! It really was a super cute bird, and unless she misremembered it reminded her of a few different owls she'd seen around Patch. Could one of them have flown over the water and made it all the way to Vale? That seemed—
A passing man struck her, his shoulder ramming into her and sending her scroll spinning out of her grasp. She squawked and dove for it, forgetting all her advanced training to chase the bouncing bit of electronics down the street, owl almost entirely forgotten.
It came to rest by someone's feet. Ruby stopped short as they plucked it from the ground. Recognition filled her; the tights, the dress, the short red bob, all came together as silver met green.
Penny Polendina smiled awkwardly, holding Ruby's scroll out to her like it was hazardous or radioactive. Ruby took it from her and checked it over for any damage. When she looked up, assured that the case was fine and she didn't need to beg her dad for a new scroll.
And Penny was missing, her bright red locks disappearing into an alleyway several dozen feet away.
"Wait, was that…?" Weiss muttered as she came alongside Ruby.
"Weiss I'll be right back go ahead and go make your call!" Ruby shouted as she threw herself forward, letting herself slip into the whirl of petals and speed she'd grown so familiar with.
"But going all the way to the tower was your idea!" her partner screamed as she left, but she paid it no heed. She had unanswered questions that needed answering!
"Penny!" she cried as she slipped back into her natural form, hitting the ground running. "Penny I just wanna talk!"
"No! It's okay! I'm sorry! I shouldn't be here!" Penny cried from somewhere in the distance.
Ruby's eyes snapped to her, across a narrow service road and hiding in another alley. "PENNY POLENDINA!!!" She shouted, picking up the pace and hurling herself into another rose-driven rush.
"Wait, Ruby there's—"
Ruby heard the roar of the engine beside her, and acted fast. She slipped out of her Semblance, just long enough for her feet to touch the ground. A single leap saw her clearing the top of the truck she'd darted out in front of. Penny had stepped out from the alley, hand outstretched and eyes wide in worry and shock.
Ruby sent herself rocketing towards the frozen girl with one last exercise of her Semblance. They impacted in a storm of red, the force sending the girls into a rough, uncontrolled tumble. Ruby grabbed the other girl, and with some exercise of force she managed to right their tumble.
Her hands hemmed Penny in, one on either side of her head, the girl laying on the ground beneath her with a shaky, shocked expression. Ruby heaved, her breath catching her chest from the effort of chasing down the surprisingly fast redhead.
"I'm sorry, I just didn't know what to say to you and I panicked when I saw you and I just didn't want you to be mad but you look so mad and I'm—"
Ruby silenced the other girl with a finger to the lips. "I'm not mad Penny, I'm just catching my breath. I wanted to ask you a question but you just ran away!"
A dank alleyway was not where she wanted to do this, but if it had to be the place then so be it. She sat up with a sigh, her knees planted in the concrete. She rolled off Penny and kicked up to a stand, offering a hand in aid to the girl still laying on the ground below.
"You aren't mad at me for disappearing on you?" Penny asked as she accepted the help.
"Well," Ruby grunted as she hefted the other girl up, "Just frustrated. I've been thinking about what happened that night a lot."
"It was really crazy, wasn't it? White Fang in Vale, a fight at the docks, and that Roman Torchwick guy?" Penny laughed, her hand behind her head.
"Right, it was. I just really wanted to know… How did you know where to find us?"
Ruby had something of an idea; she'd been mulling over the exact sequence of events in her head every night she lay awake under her covers. First, a massive storm of rose petals kicks up. Then someone grabs her and Yang and throws them aside. Then Penny shows up to absolutely annihilate the bullhead carrying Roman. Ruby didn't dare to think he'd died; she'd heard the ship crash in the ocean after all.
Her first thought had been that Penny had thrown her aside, but she'd tossed that idea pretty quickly. She'd felt the gloves, and they were thick leather things, entirely unlike the thin covers Penny wore across her palms.
"Well, I was trying to find you to help. I heard the commotion, but I was struggling to place where it was coming from." Penny shifted awkwardly as she spoke, like she knew something of what she was about to say was… bad. "But then someone asked me if I wanted to help you."
"Who? What did they look like?" Ruby asked as she threw herself into Penny's personal space. Her hands grabbed her by the shoulders, and she resisted the urge to shake the other girl. She didn't want to scare away one of her only friends!
"She was a little bit taller than you, and she wore a white and red cloak that looked a lot like yours. And, well…" Penny looked aside for a moment, gathering the strength to say what she needed to.
"What, Penny?" Ruby whispered.
"She had the same kind of eyes. Silver."
Mom, Ruby thought to herself. It was Mom, beyond a shadow of doubt. She'd been the one to bring Penny to them, the one to hurl them out of the line of fire.
She'd been there to watch Ruby slay the Nevermore.
The scroll in her pouch ringing shook her from her reverie. She huffed and ripped it from its home, turning her eyes from Penny for a single instant to check the caller ID. Weiss Schnee.
It was long enough for Penny to slip from her grasp. The girl ducked around her with an apologetic face, skipping backwards away from her as a car slid into the service road where Ruby had narrowly avoided her fate. Ruby turned, her scroll still ringing at her, a question on her lips.
"I'm sorry," Penny said, sad green eyes downturned. "I really do have to go. I hope you find what you're looking for."
A man in a black suit exited the drivers seat, one finger pressed to an earbud. The other hand reached out and opened the back door for Penny. As she leaned down to get into the car, Ruby caught a flash of metal beneath a tear on the back of her stocking. Confusion flooded her mind as two doors snapped shut, and all she was left with was questions and squealing tires, the car making a swift getaway.
And a ringing scroll. "Oh, crap, Weiss!" She hissed to herself as she finally lifted the thing to her ear.
"Uh, hello?"
"I got what we needed, no thanks to you. Where even are you?"
Ruby turned in place, trying to work out how to explain 'dirt alleyway' to the Schnee princess. A rat skittered away from her, hiding beneath a nearby dumpster and she thought better of explaining it at all.
"Why don't I come to you instead?"
"So, you ladies come here often?" Neptune asked with a wink and a winning smile.
The twins, identical girls in white, just huffed at the young man. Yang, for her part, just rolled her eyes. He was insufferable, and she couldn't work out for the life of her why Weiss had been so taken with him. Was she that starved for positive male attention? She figured Jaune didn't count, so it was entirely possible that her teammate was, in fact, that starved.
"Eyes forward Neptune," she said as she grabbed him by the ear. "Sorry girls. Are we good?"
She recognized the twins. Of course she did, she recognized just about everyone she'd ever gotten in a fight with. She couldn't for the life of her remember which was which.
The one in white—Miltia? Melanie?—just cocked an eyebrow at her, as if to say "Really, you wanna ask that?"
Yang glanced around the club, noting the still-destroyed sections cordoned off with yellow caution tape. She let Neptune go and gave the twin bodyguards her best honest smile, ignoring his hisses of pain.
"Have I mentioned how sorry I am for that? I'm not here for a repeat, promise."
The one in red—Melanie, she looked like a Melanie—sighed. "And how can we be sure?"
"...I have a trustworthy face?" She asked, pressing her index fingers to her cheeks to exaggerate her dimples.
She just got a clawed gauntlet at her throat and several guns brandished in her direction for her trouble. She rolled her eyes, still holding the wide extravagant smile. Neptune gulped beside her, like he hadn't been in life or death situations before. "Yeah yeah, I get the picture. I just need to talk to Junior."
"Last time you talked to Junior didn't go so well. Why don't you turn around and take your… friend, with you."
Yang decided to just call the red one holding her at claw-point Miltia for the sake of her own thought process. "I'm afraid that's not an option, sug. I've got a few questions, and he's the only one with the connections I need."
"Why do you even know these people?" Neptune whimpered from behind her.
She ignored him, her eyes narrowing at the group arrayed around her. Two Huntress-level combatants, and a not insignificant amount of fodder. She didn't know how well Neptune would do in a fight, and covering him would hamper her own game. Still, if she acted fast before this all fell apart, maybe she could get them out with a minimum of harm.
"Put your weapons down. If she was here to cause a problem, she'd have done it when you drew on her." A stern voice cut through the tension from the stairs at the back of the club. Junior himself, exactly as sharply dressed as the last time she'd seen him.
He was still sporting a black eye, though. And unless she missed her guess, his usually well-coifed beard and hair were scraggly and poorly taken care of. Getting his club back up and running must have been a pain in the ass.
Everyone around them shared a glance, before holstering their weapons and stepping aside. An unspoken conversation passed between the twins and Junior as he made his way to the bar, but he waved them off with a gesture. He waved Yang over, and she, with a stuck out tongue at the flunkies milling about, made her way to the long, neon lit bar. Neptune scurried after her, but she'd long since put him out of her mind.
"I was hoping I wouldn't see you again, I admit," Junior said as he made a show of checking over the glasses. "Can I get you something to drink?"
Yang just shook her head. "Not really, kinda on a time limit here."
"Oh, can I have a glass of milk?" Neptune chimed in, a glib smile across his stupid face.
Yang and Junior fixed him with the same unamused stare, just long enough for his smile to go awkward and a quiet apology to slip past his lips. "Ignore him, he's a stray," Yang said with an annoyed sigh. "I just need to know whatever you know about Roman Torchwick."
"Torchwick?" He leaned into the bar, a question written on his face. "Why do you wanna know about that jackass?"
"Cause he's causing us some problems, what do you think?"
"Why even bother asking, I can't stand that guy," Junior shook his head. "I ain't got much. He came in a while ago, paid for the services of some of my guys, and only one of them came back."
What went unsaid was what Roman needed those men for. Roman was at the center of a massive string of Dust robberies, but he couldn't come out and say he knew why his men had been hired out. She imagined Junior operated with a level of plausible deniability; he'd have to, to have stayed in operation this long.
Or maybe Vale's police just suck, she thought.
"Damn, you can't give me anything else?" She groused, putting on the air of the frustrated girl who'd lost her only chance.
"I could tell you what's in the news, but I like to think I lost to a smart girl," Junior said. "Anything else?"
She tapped the bar in front of her, wheels starting to turn. She knew Junior dealt in more than just personnel; its why she'd sought him out to ask him about Raven in the first place. Information was key in his world. It might be a long shot, but she figured she had to take it. For Ruby, if for no other reason.
"Hey, Neptune. Go wait with the bike."
"What?" He complained. "What if you need my help?"
She turned and leveled an unimpressed stare his way. For a moment it looked like he would protest further, but any further complaint died when Junior motioned with his chin, directing the young student to the door. He hung his head as he stood, kicking the ground and making his way out of the bar, hands stuffed in his pockets like a petulant child.
"Knew that couldn't be the only thing you wanted." Junior crossed his arms and leaned back. "So what do you need? I still don't know anything about that woman you asked about."
Yang just sighed. This wasn't why she was here at all, but she couldn't help but ask. "I wanna ask about a different woman. You heard anything about someone in a white and red cloak operating in Vale?"
"Not giving a guy much to go on," he sighed and made a show of racking his brain, staring up at the ceiling with his brows knit.
Yang rolled her eyes. She leaned forward herself, and twitched a hand as she set it on the bar. Mechanical clicks and the sound of metal sliding on metal filled the club as her gauntlet expanded, a reminder of exactly what she was willing to offer. Junior's eyes snapped down to the offending weapon, his throat working for a single moment before he regained his composure.
She smiled.
"Fine, fine. I haven't seen anything myself, but the one guy who came back? He told me he saw a short woman in a white cloak talking with Roman. He didn't get a good look, though; she had her hood up."
Yang's stomach fell out. Summer Rose was working with Roman Torchwick? She couldn't handle that right now, it was too much, she wished she hadn't asked—
She stopped. It was only a supreme effort of will that kept her from snapping the bar in front of her like so many twigs. She kept her face placid, serious. She couldn't let him see how it affected her, she had a reputation to uphold here. If she needed information again, losing it in front of him would make that so much harder for her. So she drew in a deep breath; seven in, hold, five out.
She was good. She wasn't hot, she was cold. "Thanks. Did he see anything else?"
"Mmmm, said she had a big ass ax on her hip. Other than that, nothing. That all? I'd like to finish getting ready for the night."
She just slapped the bar and stood. No more words were exchanged as she turned and left, several pairs of eyes watching her carefully as she left. That was fine. She could ignore them. She just had to figure out if she was going to share this information with Ruby, and the rest of them. It would destroy her, she just knew it.
She pushed her way out into the swifting cooling evening air, her teeth grinding as her mind whirled. What was she supposed to do?
Her brow knit. There was a noise, off in the distance. Like massive feet thundering down the road, undercut with screams of car alarms.
Blake rounded the corner, sprinting as fast as she could down the middle of the street. Sun was close on her heels, barely keeping pace with her. Neither of them bothered to say anything to her as they blasted past her, and she didn't get a chance to ask a single question when a massive machine rounded the corner after them. It blew past her just as fast as her partner had been running, fast enough that all she saw was a heavily armored and armed mech.
"What the hell was that!?" Neptune shouted as she whirled and sprinting at him and her bike.
"Get on the bike! You got a gun?" She shouted.
"Yeah!" He said, producing a folded rifle from his back.
"Good," She grinned as she gunned the throttle. "I needed something to hit anyway."
------
Next time, on By Any Other Name: With no leads left to follow, team RWBY is left with just emotional fallout and stress. Find out how they deal with it on my Patreon!
This weekly update thing is going okay so far. Nano, not so much, but I wanna keep the weekly updates coming as much as I can!
Yang, seated on her bed, hands kneading her temples like it would chase away the growing headache, just nodded. There was a gnawing void in her stomach, one she wasn't sure she could speak past. If she opened her mouth, would something horrible come out? She wasn't sure.
"But I thought you said your mom was dead?" Weiss asked. Her hair was a mess, her ponytail a ragged mess of knots. They hadn't had time to do anything more than sneak back into their dorm room. Sun had begged off, and Penny had just disappeared without a trace. However much Yang had wanted to find and shake the redhead for all the information she had, it just hadn't seemed worth the effort at the time.
"We thought she was," Ruby said, unable to stand still, nervous energy carrying her about the room like a red and black tornado. "But you saw it, right? The petals?"
"That's… what I wanted to ask about," Blake said gently from her seat beside Yang. "You're the only person I've ever seen produce petals with their Semblance."
Yang just stared down at the leather across her palm. Ember Celica was still securely strapped in its places. She thought that maybe, if she stared hard enough, she could still see the petal like it hadn't dissipated into stray Aura just an hour ago. She didn't need it here to describe it, at least. She thought of them every time her sister shot somewhere in a hail of red.
"White and red," she finally said. "Mom had white and red petals. Dad always said that's where Ruby got hers."
"It's not unheard of for visual elements to run in families," Weiss murmured. "But you're sure it was her?"
"Of course we are!" Ruby shouted, zooming towards her partner like a red rocket. On instinct, Yang reached out to pluck one of the petals from the air.
Weiss held up her hands in silent surrender, and Blake shifted in place. "It's a bit fantastical, isn't it? Your dead mother, returned to life?"
"Maybe she wasn't dead! Maybe she was just—"
Yang's knuckles cracked as her hand snapped shut around the bright red petal. Metal ground on metal as her gauntlet opened and whirred into place, her grip accidentally triggering the release mechanism. Every eye in the room snapped to her, and she took a shuddering breath. She couldn't bring herself to think about how Ruby was going to finish that sentence.
"Sorry. Just tired," she managed, collapsing her gauntlet and slowly removing both of the bright yellow weapons. "I don't think we're going to figure anything out tonight."
"It all seems… overwhelming, doesn't it?" Blake murmured. "The Fang working with Roman, and your Mother involved?"
"Yeah, at this rate I'm expecting something dark from Weiss's past to crop up," Yang groused with as much sarcastic cheer as she could manage. She plastered a smile across her face at the concerned glance Ruby leveled her way. "We'll figure this out sis. We'll find Mom, don't you worry."
She knew what Ruby needed right now, and it wasn't the coil of doubt and pain that she was angrily stuffing down.
"Okay! Let's get some sleep and make a plan in the morning!" Ruby cried, her face bright.
The wall next to them thumped, an angry voice echoing through the thick wall as their neighbor Nora shouted, "Go to bed! Some of us are actually going to class in the morning!"
Sheepishly, they did so, though none of them thought they would get a wink of sleep. Yang could hear Ruby vibrating from across the room, and even Blake and Weiss shifted in their sleep. Yang at least took solace in the fact that they were all there.
Thirty minutes later, her hands clenching and unclenching under the covers, she decided that there was no way she would be able to sleep. She was little more than a bundle of nervous energy and adrenaline. Silently, she swung out from her bunk, collected her workout clothes from a drawer she'd left open in their rush to get dressed for bed, and stole out of the room. She held the knob, shutting the door without even a click.
A few moments later found her in an abandoned training hall, lights bright enough for her to see but dim enough that they shouldn't catch any attention. If any teachers were prowling the halls for curfew dodgers, she would deal with them. But Blake never seemed to run into them, so Yang felt she was in the clear.
She'd left Ember Celica behind. Too noisy to carry out of the room, but she didn't need them for what she was about to do. Her hands came up in the first guard her father had ever taught her; straight up and down by her head, left hand leading and ready to snap into a jab.
She breathed, deep, marshaling what little control she could manage over her thundering heart. She closed her eyes; one of the first exercises she'd learned was to shadowbox, a way to learn to control her body and her movements.
She ducked and weaved, dodging the imaginary jabs and hooks of her father. She stayed her ground, weaving around her center of gravity, weaving her breath into the movement like it was second nature. Her shoes squeaked on the freshly cleaned floor as her imaginary opponent forced her to step back, the image of a taller, broader man invading her space filling her mind's eye.
So she moved instead. One step forward into a leading jab, duck the response, spin around the obvious feint, and throw a hook. She weaved back, bending out of the way of the shin-kick she knew would come in response. She was a blur of motion, acting as fast as the image in her head could move. Sweat beaded at her forehead as she worked, pricking at the corner of her eyes as she became a whirl of fists. She breathed deep, her heart moving slower than it had all week. Her spirits lifted even as her muscles burned with the exertion. A smile spread across her lips.
Unbidden, the image of a white and red petal slammed into her mind's eye, and suddenly she wasn't fighting her father anymore. She didn't know much about how Summer Rose had fought; all she had were pictures and half-overheard stories from her uncle and father of missions they'd gone on in their heyday.
Silver eyes flashed, and she spun out of the way of a massive ax swing, breath hitching in her chest and heart in her throat. Her feet slipped out from under her, and she barely caught herself in a tight roll, impacting the ground with her shoulder instead of her head. She came to a rest several feet from where she'd been standing. She went limp, her head bouncing off the cool floor with a dull throbbing ache that she barely noticed.
She wasn't sure how long she lay there. Long enough that her heart had slowed, that her breathing had evened. Long enough that the throb in her shoulder and head had dulled to a mere ache. With a groan, she levered herself up on her elbows and sighed.
"Maybe I'll stick to bag work, next time…" she muttered to herself as she stood to gather her things.
Class was nearly useless to them. Yang was inattentive, her mind whirling with questions when no one was looking, but a smile plastered on her face whenever anyone was. Ruby was focused, if only on sketches in her notes. Weiss and Blake tried to maintain a veneer of professionalism, though even they found it hard to focus on their immediate classes instead of on their worries about the apparent conspiracy they'd stumbled upon.
But a week passed, and finally they were ready to act. They'd gathered in their room like it was a war conference, each of their goals already laid out: Ruby and Weiss would go to the CCT so that Weiss could access Schnee Dust Corporation records, Blake would infiltrate a nearby White Fang rally to gather information, and Yang would go shake down Junior's, a shady club she had some experience with.
"Can I ask something?" Blake spoke up, as they got ready for the mission ahead. Yang fixed her collar with a critical eye, and nodded at her in the mirror. "I thought you and Ruby were half sisters?"
Yang smoothed out the beige and black lines of her outfit, using the repetitive action as space to collect her thoughts. "We are half sisters, just raised by the same woman. Ruby's birth mom, but…"
"Yang always just called her Mom. She was the best!" Ruby said as she hopped out of the bathroom, her red cloak over a lighter version of her usual outfit. "I don't remember her super well, but Yang and Dad and Uncle Qrow always talked about her, and we still sometimes trip over the stacks of her books and—"
"What happened to your birth mother?" Weiss asked as she picked over her hair in a mirror atop her desk. "You're only two years older than Ruby, right?"
"I don't think I really care what happened to her, now," Yang muttered softly. She'd been hunting Raven down with little more than a grainy photo to go on, but the resurgence of Summer Rose had her feeling… listless. She'd already grieved her, and now she was alive?
She took another breath and spun on her heel, arms out and a wide smile on her face. "So how do I look?"
"...You look like Yang?" her sister responded first, her head cocked to the side. "I guess the outfit is nice?"
"You look cocky," Weiss sniffed as she finished putting pins in her hair and buttoning her dress. "So, about like any other day."
Blake smiled, a tiny thing that nonetheless sent a thrill through Yang, almost enough to make her forget the current turmoil in her chest. "You look great. Ready for a night on the town."
Blake herself looked good, Yang mused. White and black looked good on her, and she made the long sleeves and tight pants look work. She mulled over a few compliments in her head. She didn't want to come on too strong, but she also didn't wanna sound weak. Maybe—
"Who's going out for a night on the town? Isn't it noon?" An annoyingly familiar voice said from her window, cutting through her thoughts like a knife through butter.
She spun on her heels to find a grinning blond boy hanging onto the side of their building, tan face leaning in their open window. Who'd even left that damn thing open! Yang shook her head with a sigh.
"Sun. Why are you listening at our window?" She said in a sickeningly sweet voice. She felt that now was a good chance to get out some of her anger.
"Uh," he started, eyes suddenly wide. They darted between the four girls in the room as realization slowly wrote itself across his face. "We just wanted to help, you know?"
"So you decided to climb up the outside of the building and open our window?" Weiss asked with a raised eyebrow.
Blake just shook her head in disappointment, catching onto what the other girls were doing. Sun, for his part, was sweating furiously. Yang could practically see the gears in his head turning as he tried to find some excuse, some reason for his actions.
"...Who's we?" Ruby asked without a care in the world, failing to notice the terror her team was wreaking on the boy at the window.
Yang leaned out of the window. She had to admit it was a good question. She paid no mind to Sun hurrying out of her way, her eyes locking onto the boy standing way down on the ground level. Blue hair, yellow goggles, and a red coat. The best word she could come up with as he waved excitedly up at them was garish.
"And you wanna help how, exactly?" Yang asked the boy still stubbornly clinging to their building.
"Well, you're going after the White Fang, right? Figured you could use a couple more bodies you know?" He said with a sheepish smile.
She turned to look at her team, propping herself up on the window with one elbow. Blake shared a glance with Weiss, and Ruby just nodded at her enthusiastically, black locks bobbing wildly with the energy behind her affirmation.
"Fine. Get in here, and tell your friend we're in room 310," she said with a dismissive wave. She snapped the window shut and turned to her friends. "Six heads are better than four?"
"We can cover more ground this way. If we split into groups of two we can—"
Two knocks sounded at the door, and Ruby spun on her heel with a shouted, "I've got it!"
Weiss just shook her head. "How fast did they sprint up here? Don't they check identification?"
"Well they are fellow students. It would be a bad look to stop them at the door when they're here to promote friendship between the kingdoms?" Blake asked with a soft, chiding tone. "Besides, they're here to help us. So play nice, okay?"
"When have I ever not played nice?" Weiss said with a flip of her hair.
"...So, Neptune huh?" Ruby asked her partner as they walked towards the massive CCT tower. It loomed above them, taller than even Beacon's tallest spire. Ruby wanted so badly to marvel at its construction, but she couldn't. Not yet. There was more important work to be done; like teasing her friend.
"Oh hush Ruby, you just don't understand," Weiss waved her off, even as her cheeks reddened. "Why don't you focus on the mission?"
They were winding their way through a not insubstantial crowd, all streaming either too or from the massive tower before them. It was still daylight, for another few hours at least, and Ruby found herself skipping with a light hum. There was something about the mission ahead that felt… good, for her. Like she was on the cusp of a discovery she didn't even know she needed.
"I can't! We aren't even there yet," Ruby said with a chuckle, skipping to the side to bump her partner with her hip. "Sooooo, you think he's cute?"
"Like you'd understand what makes a boy cute," Weiss shook her head, sarcasm coloring every inch of her statement. "You're too busy digging around in your scythe or cooing over other people's weapons!"
Ruby tore her eyes from where they'd landed on the rapier at Weiss's hip. She'd been admiring the delicate inlay work; there was hardly a tool mark to be found, and she was wondering how long they'd taken to do. "Well, weapons just make sense Weiss. Not like boys. Or girls."
"...What do you mean boys or girls?" Weiss asked.
Ruby just turned away from her partner, her own face suddenly red. "Well, I just don't get people sometimes! Like, you! You're just so, so—"
Her voice stopped, her eyes landing on one of the strangest sights she'd ever seen. A snowy owl, perched on a lightpost several feet away. Its feathers were bright white and unruffled, and a cascade of gray mottled spots marked its head and wings. Bright eyes, a color so very close to her own, drilled into her.
"Ruby? Ruby what are you—is that an owl?"
Said owl cocked its head at her as she met its eyes. Ruby cocked her own head at it. Why was an owl out this early in the evening? Her hand fumbled her scroll from a pouch at her belt; she needed to get a picture to show Yang! It really was a super cute bird, and unless she misremembered it reminded her of a few different owls she'd seen around Patch. Could one of them have flown over the water and made it all the way to Vale? That seemed—
A passing man struck her, his shoulder ramming into her and sending her scroll spinning out of her grasp. She squawked and dove for it, forgetting all her advanced training to chase the bouncing bit of electronics down the street, owl almost entirely forgotten.
It came to rest by someone's feet. Ruby stopped short as they plucked it from the ground. Recognition filled her; the tights, the dress, the short red bob, all came together as silver met green.
Penny Polendina smiled awkwardly, holding Ruby's scroll out to her like it was hazardous or radioactive. Ruby took it from her and checked it over for any damage. When she looked up, assured that the case was fine and she didn't need to beg her dad for a new scroll.
And Penny was missing, her bright red locks disappearing into an alleyway several dozen feet away.
"Wait, was that…?" Weiss muttered as she came alongside Ruby.
"Weiss I'll be right back go ahead and go make your call!" Ruby shouted as she threw herself forward, letting herself slip into the whirl of petals and speed she'd grown so familiar with.
"But going all the way to the tower was your idea!" her partner screamed as she left, but she paid it no heed. She had unanswered questions that needed answering!
"Penny!" she cried as she slipped back into her natural form, hitting the ground running. "Penny I just wanna talk!"
"No! It's okay! I'm sorry! I shouldn't be here!" Penny cried from somewhere in the distance.
Ruby's eyes snapped to her, across a narrow service road and hiding in another alley. "PENNY POLENDINA!!!" She shouted, picking up the pace and hurling herself into another rose-driven rush.
"Wait, Ruby there's—"
Ruby heard the roar of the engine beside her, and acted fast. She slipped out of her Semblance, just long enough for her feet to touch the ground. A single leap saw her clearing the top of the truck she'd darted out in front of. Penny had stepped out from the alley, hand outstretched and eyes wide in worry and shock.
Ruby sent herself rocketing towards the frozen girl with one last exercise of her Semblance. They impacted in a storm of red, the force sending the girls into a rough, uncontrolled tumble. Ruby grabbed the other girl, and with some exercise of force she managed to right their tumble.
Her hands hemmed Penny in, one on either side of her head, the girl laying on the ground beneath her with a shaky, shocked expression. Ruby heaved, her breath catching her chest from the effort of chasing down the surprisingly fast redhead.
"I'm sorry, I just didn't know what to say to you and I panicked when I saw you and I just didn't want you to be mad but you look so mad and I'm—"
Ruby silenced the other girl with a finger to the lips. "I'm not mad Penny, I'm just catching my breath. I wanted to ask you a question but you just ran away!"
A dank alleyway was not where she wanted to do this, but if it had to be the place then so be it. She sat up with a sigh, her knees planted in the concrete. She rolled off Penny and kicked up to a stand, offering a hand in aid to the girl still laying on the ground below.
"You aren't mad at me for disappearing on you?" Penny asked as she accepted the help.
"Well," Ruby grunted as she hefted the other girl up, "Just frustrated. I've been thinking about what happened that night a lot."
"It was really crazy, wasn't it? White Fang in Vale, a fight at the docks, and that Roman Torchwick guy?" Penny laughed, her hand behind her head.
"Right, it was. I just really wanted to know… How did you know where to find us?"
Ruby had something of an idea; she'd been mulling over the exact sequence of events in her head every night she lay awake under her covers. First, a massive storm of rose petals kicks up. Then someone grabs her and Yang and throws them aside. Then Penny shows up to absolutely annihilate the bullhead carrying Roman. Ruby didn't dare to think he'd died; she'd heard the ship crash in the ocean after all.
Her first thought had been that Penny had thrown her aside, but she'd tossed that idea pretty quickly. She'd felt the gloves, and they were thick leather things, entirely unlike the thin covers Penny wore across her palms.
"Well, I was trying to find you to help. I heard the commotion, but I was struggling to place where it was coming from." Penny shifted awkwardly as she spoke, like she knew something of what she was about to say was… bad. "But then someone asked me if I wanted to help you."
"Who? What did they look like?" Ruby asked as she threw herself into Penny's personal space. Her hands grabbed her by the shoulders, and she resisted the urge to shake the other girl. She didn't want to scare away one of her only friends!
"She was a little bit taller than you, and she wore a white and red cloak that looked a lot like yours. And, well…" Penny looked aside for a moment, gathering the strength to say what she needed to.
"What, Penny?" Ruby whispered.
"She had the same kind of eyes. Silver."
Mom, Ruby thought to herself. It was Mom, beyond a shadow of doubt. She'd been the one to bring Penny to them, the one to hurl them out of the line of fire.
She'd been there to watch Ruby slay the Nevermore.
The scroll in her pouch ringing shook her from her reverie. She huffed and ripped it from its home, turning her eyes from Penny for a single instant to check the caller ID. Weiss Schnee.
It was long enough for Penny to slip from her grasp. The girl ducked around her with an apologetic face, skipping backwards away from her as a car slid into the service road where Ruby had narrowly avoided her fate. Ruby turned, her scroll still ringing at her, a question on her lips.
"I'm sorry," Penny said, sad green eyes downturned. "I really do have to go. I hope you find what you're looking for."
A man in a black suit exited the drivers seat, one finger pressed to an earbud. The other hand reached out and opened the back door for Penny. As she leaned down to get into the car, Ruby caught a flash of metal beneath a tear on the back of her stocking. Confusion flooded her mind as two doors snapped shut, and all she was left with was questions and squealing tires, the car making a swift getaway.
And a ringing scroll. "Oh, crap, Weiss!" She hissed to herself as she finally lifted the thing to her ear.
"Uh, hello?"
"I got what we needed, no thanks to you. Where even are you?"
Ruby turned in place, trying to work out how to explain 'dirt alleyway' to the Schnee princess. A rat skittered away from her, hiding beneath a nearby dumpster and she thought better of explaining it at all.
"Why don't I come to you instead?"
"So, you ladies come here often?" Neptune asked with a wink and a winning smile.
The twins, identical girls in white, just huffed at the young man. Yang, for her part, just rolled her eyes. He was insufferable, and she couldn't work out for the life of her why Weiss had been so taken with him. Was she that starved for positive male attention? She figured Jaune didn't count, so it was entirely possible that her teammate was, in fact, that starved.
"Eyes forward Neptune," she said as she grabbed him by the ear. "Sorry girls. Are we good?"
She recognized the twins. Of course she did, she recognized just about everyone she'd ever gotten in a fight with. She couldn't for the life of her remember which was which.
The one in white—Miltia? Melanie?—just cocked an eyebrow at her, as if to say "Really, you wanna ask that?"
Yang glanced around the club, noting the still-destroyed sections cordoned off with yellow caution tape. She let Neptune go and gave the twin bodyguards her best honest smile, ignoring his hisses of pain.
"Have I mentioned how sorry I am for that? I'm not here for a repeat, promise."
The one in red—Melanie, she looked like a Melanie—sighed. "And how can we be sure?"
"...I have a trustworthy face?" She asked, pressing her index fingers to her cheeks to exaggerate her dimples.
She just got a clawed gauntlet at her throat and several guns brandished in her direction for her trouble. She rolled her eyes, still holding the wide extravagant smile. Neptune gulped beside her, like he hadn't been in life or death situations before. "Yeah yeah, I get the picture. I just need to talk to Junior."
"Last time you talked to Junior didn't go so well. Why don't you turn around and take your… friend, with you."
Yang decided to just call the red one holding her at claw-point Miltia for the sake of her own thought process. "I'm afraid that's not an option, sug. I've got a few questions, and he's the only one with the connections I need."
"Why do you even know these people?" Neptune whimpered from behind her.
She ignored him, her eyes narrowing at the group arrayed around her. Two Huntress-level combatants, and a not insignificant amount of fodder. She didn't know how well Neptune would do in a fight, and covering him would hamper her own game. Still, if she acted fast before this all fell apart, maybe she could get them out with a minimum of harm.
"Put your weapons down. If she was here to cause a problem, she'd have done it when you drew on her." A stern voice cut through the tension from the stairs at the back of the club. Junior himself, exactly as sharply dressed as the last time she'd seen him.
He was still sporting a black eye, though. And unless she missed her guess, his usually well-coifed beard and hair were scraggly and poorly taken care of. Getting his club back up and running must have been a pain in the ass.
Everyone around them shared a glance, before holstering their weapons and stepping aside. An unspoken conversation passed between the twins and Junior as he made his way to the bar, but he waved them off with a gesture. He waved Yang over, and she, with a stuck out tongue at the flunkies milling about, made her way to the long, neon lit bar. Neptune scurried after her, but she'd long since put him out of her mind.
"I was hoping I wouldn't see you again, I admit," Junior said as he made a show of checking over the glasses. "Can I get you something to drink?"
Yang just shook her head. "Not really, kinda on a time limit here."
"Oh, can I have a glass of milk?" Neptune chimed in, a glib smile across his stupid face.
Yang and Junior fixed him with the same unamused stare, just long enough for his smile to go awkward and a quiet apology to slip past his lips. "Ignore him, he's a stray," Yang said with an annoyed sigh. "I just need to know whatever you know about Roman Torchwick."
"Torchwick?" He leaned into the bar, a question written on his face. "Why do you wanna know about that jackass?"
"Cause he's causing us some problems, what do you think?"
"Why even bother asking, I can't stand that guy," Junior shook his head. "I ain't got much. He came in a while ago, paid for the services of some of my guys, and only one of them came back."
What went unsaid was what Roman needed those men for. Roman was at the center of a massive string of Dust robberies, but he couldn't come out and say he knew why his men had been hired out. She imagined Junior operated with a level of plausible deniability; he'd have to, to have stayed in operation this long.
Or maybe Vale's police just suck, she thought.
"Damn, you can't give me anything else?" She groused, putting on the air of the frustrated girl who'd lost her only chance.
"I could tell you what's in the news, but I like to think I lost to a smart girl," Junior said. "Anything else?"
She tapped the bar in front of her, wheels starting to turn. She knew Junior dealt in more than just personnel; its why she'd sought him out to ask him about Raven in the first place. Information was key in his world. It might be a long shot, but she figured she had to take it. For Ruby, if for no other reason.
"Hey, Neptune. Go wait with the bike."
"What?" He complained. "What if you need my help?"
She turned and leveled an unimpressed stare his way. For a moment it looked like he would protest further, but any further complaint died when Junior motioned with his chin, directing the young student to the door. He hung his head as he stood, kicking the ground and making his way out of the bar, hands stuffed in his pockets like a petulant child.
"Knew that couldn't be the only thing you wanted." Junior crossed his arms and leaned back. "So what do you need? I still don't know anything about that woman you asked about."
Yang just sighed. This wasn't why she was here at all, but she couldn't help but ask. "I wanna ask about a different woman. You heard anything about someone in a white and red cloak operating in Vale?"
"Not giving a guy much to go on," he sighed and made a show of racking his brain, staring up at the ceiling with his brows knit.
Yang rolled her eyes. She leaned forward herself, and twitched a hand as she set it on the bar. Mechanical clicks and the sound of metal sliding on metal filled the club as her gauntlet expanded, a reminder of exactly what she was willing to offer. Junior's eyes snapped down to the offending weapon, his throat working for a single moment before he regained his composure.
She smiled.
"Fine, fine. I haven't seen anything myself, but the one guy who came back? He told me he saw a short woman in a white cloak talking with Roman. He didn't get a good look, though; she had her hood up."
Yang's stomach fell out. Summer Rose was working with Roman Torchwick? She couldn't handle that right now, it was too much, she wished she hadn't asked—
She stopped. It was only a supreme effort of will that kept her from snapping the bar in front of her like so many twigs. She kept her face placid, serious. She couldn't let him see how it affected her, she had a reputation to uphold here. If she needed information again, losing it in front of him would make that so much harder for her. So she drew in a deep breath; seven in, hold, five out.
She was good. She wasn't hot, she was cold. "Thanks. Did he see anything else?"
"Mmmm, said she had a big ass ax on her hip. Other than that, nothing. That all? I'd like to finish getting ready for the night."
She just slapped the bar and stood. No more words were exchanged as she turned and left, several pairs of eyes watching her carefully as she left. That was fine. She could ignore them. She just had to figure out if she was going to share this information with Ruby, and the rest of them. It would destroy her, she just knew it.
She pushed her way out into the swifting cooling evening air, her teeth grinding as her mind whirled. What was she supposed to do?
Her brow knit. There was a noise, off in the distance. Like massive feet thundering down the road, undercut with screams of car alarms.
Blake rounded the corner, sprinting as fast as she could down the middle of the street. Sun was close on her heels, barely keeping pace with her. Neither of them bothered to say anything to her as they blasted past her, and she didn't get a chance to ask a single question when a massive machine rounded the corner after them. It blew past her just as fast as her partner had been running, fast enough that all she saw was a heavily armored and armed mech.
"What the hell was that!?" Neptune shouted as she whirled and sprinting at him and her bike.
"Get on the bike! You got a gun?" She shouted.
"Yeah!" He said, producing a folded rifle from his back.
"Good," She grinned as she gunned the throttle. "I needed something to hit anyway."
------
Next time, on By Any Other Name: With no leads left to follow, team RWBY is left with just emotional fallout and stress. Find out how they deal with it on my Patreon!
This weekly update thing is going okay so far. Nano, not so much, but I wanna keep the weekly updates coming as much as I can!
- Location
- Sweden
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Oh Ruby, you just keep on digging into Yang's abandonment issues.
On Yang's side though she really shouldn't keep Ruby from this. It's going to do neither of them any favours in the long run.
On Yang's side though she really shouldn't keep Ruby from this. It's going to do neither of them any favours in the long run.
Episode 3 - Expectation
- Location
- Oklahoma
"...Where the hell did Roman get a mech, exactly?" Yang huffed, hands working the throttle on her bike expertly as she wound her way through the streets with some effort.
Balancing three other girls on the back of Bumblebee wasn't exactly easy, even for her.
"He stole it from the Atlas military," Blake whispered, her chest pressed into Yang's back and her lips at her ear. "He was using it at the rally as a recruitment pitch."
Yang gunned it, threading the space between a series of cars as they made their way back to Beacon. She focused on the feeling of the girl at her back, the adrenaline and heat still burning in her gut. She needed anything she could to ignore the things Junior had told her. Beacon loomed in the distance, promising…
Promising what, Yang no longer knew.
"He stole from the Atlas military?" Weiss hissed over Blakes shoulder, her voice just barely cutting through the screaming wind. "How? Why?"
"To try and beat us up, I guess?" Ruby pondered from the very back. Yang could barely hear her. "He was chasing Blake, right?"
Yang leaned forward. Blake followed her. Her center of balance was all wrong, and she knew it was a wonder that she hadn't dropped the bike and spilled them out across the asphalt like discarded fruit. They didn't have a faster way to get back to school, and they had to make the last air-ferry. It felt petty in light of what had just happened, but somehow she was more scared of Glynda Goodwitch's reprimands than she was a house-sized killer robot.
"How useful could it be for them? We took it apart." Bravado filled her voice, and it wasn't even false. There was a certain confidence that punching a walking tank apart tended to give a girl an ego boost, afterall.
"We managed to handle it, four on one," Blake agreed. "But Roman still got away. Which means—"
"They can get their hands on more." Yang pulled through into the ferry lot, blasting past a truck that laid on its horn as she cut it off. She didn't have time to care. She jerked the throttle one last time, darting into the belly of the ferry just before it closed on them.
They were in. Ruby hopped off the back of the bike with a hum in her chest. "It was a fun fight though! We even got to practice the team attacks for real!"
"Where did you even come up with those names?" Yang asked with a laugh as she took her helmet off. Ruby just shrugged noncommittally, like they hadn't even been a thing.
"They just came to me in training!"
"I can't believe he had someone ready to save him," Weiss shook her head as she pried herself off Blake. Yang pretended she didn't notice the heiress' shaky legs. "With an illusion, nonetheless. And where they're getting so many bullheads I could not begin to guess."
"The Fang keeps several in rotation; rapid infiltration and exfiltration is extremely useful." Blake filled them in as she released Yang's midsection with a sigh. "I still can't believe them."
Yang rested her elbows on her motorcycle's steering column, letting the idling engine vibrate through her body. There was too much to think about, and even her half-victory could only sustain her for so long. "Did you girls at least get anything?"
Weiss shrugged as she cast a thoughtful gaze around the parking bay of the ferry. Almost no other vehicles this time of night, and anyone else taking the ferry back to Beacon would be up top taking advantage of the creature comforts on offer. Yang knew they had a coffee service, for example. It was dark, overhead lights flickering and just barely enough for them to see by.
Perfect for discussing what they'd just been through.
"I convinced an operator to send me classified data by claiming it was for a school project," Weiss said as she muted her scroll. "My sister and my father will hear about that shortly, but the data should tell us something."
"I found Penny! I had to chase her down, but I did manage to ask her how she found us during the fight at the docks," Ruby piped up. She was shaking with excitement, her hands up at her chin as she practically vibrated in place. "You know what she said?"
Yang had an idea. "What?"
"She said a woman in a white cloak who looked just like me asked her if she wanted to help us!" Ruby was suddenly in Yang's bubble, her eyes wide and her smile sparkling. "Yang, Mom was looking out for us!"
Or she just doesn't want us caught up in whatever shit she's been doing, Yang railed in her own thoughts. "Yeah, she sure is," he said out loud instead, ruffling Ruby's hair with a tired smile. "Looking out for you, more like. I was fine."
"You were not fine, you were in the same jam as the rest of us!" Ruby huffed, shoving a finger in her older sister's face. "Why I outta…"
"You outta what? You haven't beaten me in a spar… ever!" Yang finally stood from her bike, putting her hands up with the palms facing out. "Come on, throw a few."
Ruby laughed and threw a few jabs at the raised palms, ducking and weaving around Yang as she pretended like the smaller girl's blows were even hurting her. The levity was nice, and took her mind off the words that were still echoing in her head. Summer Rose and Roman Torchwick, in the same room…
"What about you? What did Junior say?" Blake asked, like she could hear Yang's inner thoughts. Yang caught her younger sister around the shoulders, tucked her under her arm, and pressed her knuckles into her hair. Ruby screeched and swung her arms, but her struggles were undercut by the peals of laughter.
"Nothing much. Roman paid him to use his guys for the robberies, but he said none of them came back," Yang lied. Neptune and Sun disappearing entirely was a blessing in disguise; she couldn't bring herself to be mad at them for not helping in the fight when it opened up a chance like this.
She just couldn't bring herself to tell Ruby. She'd rather throw herself into the sea than destroy her sister's smile like that.
Blake narrowed her eyes, and Yang thought they'd flash in the darkness for a moment. She stomached the pain of lying to her partner, and released Ruby. She thought it was probably best to play it cool. No one had any reason to suspect her, afterall. "What about you?" She asked, ignoring how Ruby grumbled and tried to put her hair back properly.
"Things fell apart pretty quickly," Blake said after a moment. "We weren't expecting Roman to be there, and once he recognized us things fell apart fast. But…"
"But what?" Ruby asked, having managed to properly rearrange her hair. "Did you hear anything useful?"
Blake just sighed and slumped against the bike. "Roman made references to a base in the southeast. I don't have anything else to go on."
"That's frustratingly vague. What are we supposed to do with that?" Weiss huffed and shook her head. "We're already pushing things, skipping curfew or barely making it back. We can't afford to just… disappear into the countryside on a wild Grimm chase!"
Yang couldn't help but chew the inside of her lip. She didn't know what they were supposed to do from here either. They'd exhausted every lead they'd found. With Roman in the wind, and the Fang more than aware of who they were and what they were trying to do, things had just gotten a lot harder for them.
The ferry shuddered around them, metal groaning as it docked at Beacon. Ruby popped up as the parking section of the ferry slowly shuddered open. "Come on, we won't get anywhere on empty stomachs!"
"How are you always thinking about food?" Yang asked with a small chuckle as she pushed her bike out behind her sister. "Such a tiny girl, such a huge appetite."
"This may be a blessing in disguise," Weiss mused. Yang turned to her with a questioning grunt, and she rolled her eyes. "We've been on the defensive for weeks now. Some time to reflect and relax can only be good for us."
Beacon loomed above them, a massive tangle of stone, metal, and glass. Yang couldn't help but wonder why those tall spires felt so very… cold, now. She'd marveled at them just a few weeks ago.
"...I can't believe I'm agreeing with Weiss," Blake started. Yang could feel her eyes boring into the back of her head. "But I think she's right. There's that dance coming up, maybe that's a good thing for us to focus on?"
"I'm right far more than you're willing to admit, Miss Belladonna," Weiss said with an upturned nose and a smile. Blake just laughed. "What do you think, Ruby?"
"Can't think, too hungry!" Their tiny leader said. "Last one to the dorm is… Something! I dunno, race you there!"
And then she was gone in a storm of red flowers, streaming ahead of the rest of them on a mad quest for what Yang could only imagine was far too many cookies for this time of night. "Son of a—Blake can you catch up to her? I have to park Bumblebee and I don't want her to eat too many sweets this late!"
"Got it!" Blake called back, already flinging herself ahead on a chain of clones.
Weiss rolled her eyes at their antics. "Would you like some company to the parking garage?"
"Nah, I'm fine," Yang put on some forced cheer. "Go get some food, don't wait up for me."
Weiss narrowed her eyes at her in an eerie mirror of Blake, and Yang had to fight back a gup at the naked suspicion on display. Was it that obvious she was shaking in her boots? Was the nascent anger in her chest that on display? Could her sister's partner really read her that well, after so short a time together?
"Very well, Xiao Long. Do try to not keep us waiting."
They parted ways, a silent sigh on Yang's lips. There was no way she could go eat like this, let alone go to bed. Her fingers were shaking, the mech just hadn't been enough to take her energy out on. Here, on the darkened grounds of Beacon, starkly alone save the carefully trimmed trees and meticulously kept lawn. Salt pricked at the corners of her eyes and she bowed her head at the weight of it.
"How could you, Summer," she muttered.
"Hey, have you seen Yang?" Blake asked, peeking around a library bookshelf at Ruby. "I haven't seen her all day."
"Uh," Ruby jolted up from the textbook she'd been face down in. The author she'd been asked to read for literature class was just so dull, and he had the worst opinions on everything! She'd tear all of his arguments apart if she could just muster the willpower to actually read his dreck. "No? I haven't even seen Weiss yet today."
"I'm right here dolt," Weiss said, coming around the same bookshelf. "We haven't seen her either."
"Did you check the garage? She was grumbling about her bike's transmission yesterday," Ruby said thoughtfully. Any excuse to take a break from the nonsense she was trying to read. What was the point of literature class if they only assigned boring stuff, she had to ask herself.
"I already thought of that. She wasn't there." Blake sighed and came around the corner. "It's just…"
"She's avoiding us," Weiss said bluntly. "We've only gotten a few sentences out of her in the past three days, surely you've noticed."
"So?" Ruby asked. "She's probably just busy. I know I am," she sighed and turned back to her textbook. "Do you have Professor Cobalt's literature class? I'm really struggling with the essays he assigned."
The ink swam in her vision, all blurred and distorted. She squinted at the page for a moment, trying to make it resolve into something that made some kind of sense. Her hands came up to rub her eyes, and when her palms made unimpeded contact with her face it came to her. She'd left her contacts out and worn her glasses to study!
"...Aren't you worried about Yang?" Blake asked as Ruby patted the table for her glasses. "She passed up planning the Vytal Dance with Weiss and now I'm stuck with it."
"Don't sound too put out Blake. And that's hardly the real reason you're worried, you—You wear glasses?" Weiss cut herself off as Ruby planted her half-rimmed frames on her nose with a smile.
"Yup! You've literally stood next to me while I put my contacts in in the morning, Weiss," Ruby prodded her partner with a half-smile. "How did you not notice?"
"...What I do or do not notice without coffee in my system is not why we're here." Ruby's smile widened at the bright red blush spreading across her partner's cheeks. "How are you doing, actually?"
"I'm okay, I think. I might fail Cobalt's class but that's fine. His books suck compared to mom's anyway…" She groused, arms crossed comically across her chest.
Blake and Weiss shared a glance, one Ruby saw despite the speed of it. "I'm fine, really. More than fine. My mom is alive! I don't know what she's doing yet, or why, but she must have a good reason."
"You aren't mad? That she seems to have gone out of her way for you to not notice her?" Weiss asked, one eyebrow lifted. "I would be incensed, personally."
"Like I said, she must have a good reason!" Ruby laughed. If it sounded forced to her friends, they didn't say anything.
"...If you're sure." Blake said with an odd tone that Ruby just couldn't quite place. "Have you thought about who you're gonna ask to the dance?"
"Not really?" Ruby closed her textbook; she was more than happy to take the excuse to put off the frankly mind numbing work. "Isn't someone supposed to ask me? I'm the girl, right?"
"That is how it's supposed to be done. Why—"
"Ruby!" Blake cut through Weiss's swords like her sword through an unsuspecting Grimm. "It's the modern era. Such expectations are not only outdated but beneath us. If there's someone who you wanted to ask, you should take the initiative. The worst they can say is no." Amber eyes darted over to the Schnee. "That goes for you too, Weiss."
"Rich coming from you, Miss Belladonna." Weiss rolled her eyes and turned to Ruby. "If you look in my desk, my notes on those collected essays should be in the top drawer. Go ahead and copy them, you won't learn much from that dreck."
"Thanks Weiss!" Ruby chirped as she jumped up and tucked her text into her bag. "Let me know if you find Yang? I really need to get this done. I can't have another late assignment!"
They waved, disappearing back around the bookshelf and returning to their lively debate. Ruby just shook her head and smiled. She'd thought those two would fail to get along, but the past few days of adversity had really drawn them together. The blossoming friendship brought warmth to her chest, the kind that brought a real smile to her face.
"Hey Ruby!" Jaune said as he slid in beside her just as she started walking out of the library. "Have you seen Weiss?"
She turned to say something, just to stop at the flowers he was clutching in two shaky gloved hands. "...Why?" She asked, mind turning.
She didn't mind Jaune, but even she was getting annoyed at his continued advances on her partner. Weiss would kill her if she was party to another attempt, and she'd just given her permission to copy her notes!
"I wanna ask her to the dance! The worst thing she can say is no, right?" He said, with the kind of confident grin only a teenage boy could wear.
Weiss is a lot more clever than no, she thought to herself. Out loud, she chose to politely deflect the boy. "No, I haven't seen her all day. Good luck though?"
"Thanks Ruby! I'll let you know what she says!" The blonde haired boy said as he split off from her, winding deeper into the castle in the opposite direction she'd seen Weiss headed. She breathed a sigh of relief; one more day she didn't need to worry about that particular time bomb going off.
But the talk of asking people to the dance echoed in her head. It felt like such a small worry, compared to what she'd been dealing with for the past several days, but something about it stuck in her craw. She couldn't begin to say who she would want to ask; She'd left Signal well before senior prom, and she'd ignored Yang talking about it as best she could. Her older sister took an awful kind of pleasure in embarrassing her sometimes.
She just couldn't get the image of wide, sparkling green eyes out of her head.
"Ah, Miss Rose. Exactly who I was looking for." Someone approached her for the third time today.
"Professor Ozpin!" She spun on her heel, surprise causing her to jump and throw a wild salute at the man. "How can I help you?"
"Can we speak in my office? I try to have occasional sit downs with new team leaders." He wore an easy smile, but Ruby couldn't help but feel picked apart under his gaze. She knew he was old, but sometimes he felt… really old, to her.
"Okay!" She plastered her smile back on. "Lead the way!"
"You aren't in trouble, if you were worried." The headmaster set a steaming mug of hot chocolate down on his desk, in front of where Ruby was anxiously bouncing a leg in her chair. "I know getting called to the office can be nerve wracking. I was a student once, you know."
He smiled, eyes mirthful behind his ever-present sunglasses, like he was making some joke Ruby just wasn't privy to.
"Are you sure? I'm pretty sure you were headmaster when my parents were going to Beacon," she said without a second thought. Her eyes went wide as soon as the words left her mouth, "Uh, not to call you old, but, I mean—"
Ozpin laughed, and her heart stopped thundering like a jackhammer. "It's okay. I might be the youngest headmaster in our Academy's history, but I suppose at this point I am old."
She couldn't place why, but that statement felt loaded. Like when Yang asked about her chores, or when Dad asked her how her homework went while she was tinkering with Crescent Rose. So, rather than answer and dig herself a deeper hole like she often did, she chose to just cradle her hot chocolate close and spin in her chair, taking in a slow view of the expansive office she found herself in.
The top of the tallest spire in Beacon, warm afternoon light spilling in through a massive window, all overlooked by a set of truly massive gears. She didn't quite understand them, but she knew Ozpin's cane also contained a set of gears. Now that she thought about it, so did her uncle's weapon. That was certainly a strange coincidence. Perhaps the cane also transformed? But what would it transform into? Could the gears be part of a kinetic energy storage mechanism? But to what end? Now that she thought about it, something of the sort could be applied to her own weapon, some way to store some of the blowback from her rifle rounds. But what would she use it for? Maybe—
"How has your team been getting along? I noted some… friction, early on. Not uncommon, but also something to keep an eye on," Ozpin asked, breaking her from her fantasies of mechanical design.
Ruby shook her head, and after a moment decided honesty was the best policy. "I don't think we got along at first. Weiss was sorta mean, and Blake kept running off. But we had a few long talks and I think now we're a really good fighting team. We even worked out a lot of combo attacks!"
"Hmm. You've had more chances to test that than most first year teams, I suppose," he murmured, staring out the window with a neutral expression.
"Uh. I don't know what you're talking about?" Ruby denied, only to curse her trailing upward tone.
"Like I said, Miss Rose. You aren't in trouble. I simply asked you here to check in on your progress, and to lend you an ear for any concerns you might have."
Any concerns echoed in her head, and nervous fingers tapped her mug with some trepidation. So many questions swirled in her head, and though she insisted she was fine to her team she knew she wasn't. A question had been bouncing around in her head for the past several days, one she just couldn't find an answer to. She kept telling herself that it was okay, but…
"...What would you say if I told you I saw my Mom?" She asked in a small, quiet voice. She was happy, she wasn't exactly faking that for Yang and her team, she just… she had her own concerns.
"First, I would ask you what you meant. Are you speaking metaphorically?" He turned to her, his elbows landing on his desk and his fingers steepling across his face.
"No. I mean, when I killed the Nevermore, I saw her watching from the forest below. Then she saved Yang and I from—" she choked back The White Fang, "—a bad fight."
"And you're sure it was her?" Ozpin asked. It was a question she was still asking herself, no matter what she said to Yang and Blake and Weiss.
But she knew it was her. All of the signs said it was. "Of course I am! She was wearing a white cloak, and I saw her petals! White and red, just like Dad said they were!"
"Hmm. Then let's say it is her," He said evenly.
"If it really is her… How is she not dead?" She asked. The question was largely to herself, but Ozpin was more than welcome to answer, she felt. "Everyone was so sure she was gone. I visited her grave every weekend before I came to Beacon."
"It's a bit… trite, I suppose, but a body was never found. Summer Rose wasn't declared legally dead until she'd been missing for several months," Ozpin sighed, his voice softening some from the Professorial tone he'd adopted. "Your father and uncle held out hope as long as they could."
She nodded, eyes misting. She knew what the last question she had to ask herself was. "Then… Why has she been avoiding me?" She barely realized she'd asked the question out loud. She didn't notice Ozpin stand and make his way around the desk.
He knelt before her and wrapped her in a hug, and she let herself cry on his shoulder. Here, above the rest of the school, where she could be sure her team and sister wouldn't see her, she let herself break.
She wasn't sure how long she'd been at it. All that was left was the rhythm of her strikes. Her knuckles ached through Aura and tight wraps. The heavy bag, two hundred pounds of sand hung up in leather by a sturdy chain, shuddered and swung under each of her strikes.
She'd started the afternoon with some manner of form—her footwork was clean, her strikes textbook, and her breathing smooth and controlled. But her mind refused to find a calm place in the chaos, the adrenaline and the burn doing nothing to stop the angry whirl of her thoughts. So she'd descended into pure brute force, striking the bag with everything she had on every blow.
"Yang."
Any awareness of the training hall around her had long since vanished, lost in the haze she'd descended into. The echo of her strikes rebounded, finding unhearing ears before she could hit again. She hissed as she put more force into it, punches coming faster and faster. Her shoulders, her back, even her thighs burned from the force, from uninterrupted work.
"Yang!"
A hand grabbed her shoulder, and she spun. Instinct took her and she whirled on her heel, a lightning quick fist aimed where she expected the chin of whoever was insane enough to interrupt her to be located.
But she was exhausted. She'd spun too far, she'd overextended. She was slower than usual.
A lithe hand found her wrist, redirecting the force with ease. The smaller, familiar form of the girl interrupting her spun, her back slamming against Yang's chest. Then she was flying, the ceiling and floor becoming a chaotic spiral of color as she crashed into the ground in a groaning heap. She rolled onto her back with a pained groan. Aura could only do so much, and it did very little to dull the embarrassment of getting thrown like a sack of potatoes.
Blake Belladonna, a deeply unamused frown splitting her face, appeared in her swimming view. "So this is what you've been avoiding us to do? Killing yourself in the gym?"
"I'm just training," she huffed. "I'm fine."
Blake sighed as she sat down. "Training is what we do with Ruby. This was just… I've never seen your face like that."
Yang remained flat on her back, trying as hard as she could to not audibly pant as the exertion of the past… however long caught up to her. The cool mat on her exposed back and arms was incredible. "I'm fine. Why'd you interrupt me?"
"Why'd you try and hit me?" Blake's voice was dry. Unamused. Hot shame raced up Yang's neck and across her cheeks.
"You startled me, that's all." The defensive tone that snuck into her voice was deeply unwelcome, in her opinion.
"You can't keep doing this. We need you." Blake whispered softly. "And before you get angry, I know I was doing the same thing. But…"
"But what? It's different when I do it?" Yang asked with a grunt, managing to lift herself into a seated position. Furious purple eyes found sad amber ones. "What else am I supposed to do?"
Blake shifted, moving so she was facing Yang properly. She was ready to get yelled at, ready for a proper screaming match. A fight. Something, anything.
Instead, Blake just took her hand. "I know what it looks like when someone puts a mask on. You're trying to stay cool and positive for Ruby, aren't you? But this is eating you up inside."
Yang's breath was knocked from her chest, and she tore her eyes away from Blake's, staring resolutely at her ruined, beaten sandbag. A line of sand slowly spilled from a rent in the bottom, proof positive of the destruction she wreaked on the leather, leather specifically treated to withstand Aura-trained fighters. "What do you know about it? How could you possibly understand?"
Blake shrugged. "Maybe I can't, not really. But… Did you ever wonder how I ended up at Beacon?"
"You left the Fang, right?" Yang answered easily. She'd come to terms with her partner's past, as best she could. There wasn't much she could do about it, and she was… She was good with Ruby, and that counted for a lot.
"But you don't know why I was with the Fang…" Blake trailed off, her fingers still entwined with Yang's. "I've been thinking about what happened, back at Menagerie, a lot ever since your mother appeared out of nowhere."
Yang's mind turned, her anger stymied by the honesty written across every inch of her partner; across her face, in the way she held her body, in the tremor of her voice. She shifted awkwardly, unsure of what to do. In lieu of her failing words, she just squeezed her partner's hand, unsure exactly where she was going.
"Don't tell anyone, but my father is the man who founded the White Fang, back when it was a peaceful protest group. He stepped down once people like Sienna Khan started gaining more sway, but… That's his legacy," Blake held up a hand, forestalling Yang's interruption. "But that's just backstory. Before I left to join the White Fang, I… I said some things. Things I regret saying, and I'm not sure I can take back."
"Have you…" Yang started, only to stop, unsure of how to ask what she wanted to.
"I haven't. I don't know what I would say. Maybe I'm afraid of what they would say to me." Blake just chuckled. "I'm not even sure what I'm trying to get at here. It feels so much smaller than what you're dealing with. I think I just wanted you to feel seen."
"...What do you think I should do?" Yang collapsed again, her strings cut. The ceiling was looking mighty inviting right now. "Everytime I think of Summer, I just…"
She couldn't explain the feeling. Like there was a raging inferno in her chest, and yet like every one of her limbs was made of ice at the same time. All she could do, everytime it happened, was plaster a smile on her face and make jokes until she could find an excuse to make her escape and burn the energy in any way she could. Anything was better than hurting Ruby.
"I don't know," Blake said. "I'm trying to figure it out myself. All I want to do is figure out where, exactly, the White Fang is hiding."
"Then what are you doing? I'll just do that."
Blake stood, and reached down for Yang with a soft smile on her face. Her breath caught in her throat as she hesitantly reached up to take the outstretched hand. She let her partner heft her up, putting a bit of effort in herself so the smaller girl didn't tip over.
"Right now? I'm helping Weiss with the dance. We could use your input on a few things, actually."
"...Yeah. That sounds nice," Yang said with a tired smile to match the one on her partner's face.
Maybe it would give her a chance to think about something that wasn't her second absentee mother. It'd been a while since she had a reason to wear a cute dress.
--------
Next time, on By Any Other Name - Old guilts and regrets are reckoned with.
Out now on my patreon! This is also the last couple of days you can vote for a December short!
Balancing three other girls on the back of Bumblebee wasn't exactly easy, even for her.
"He stole it from the Atlas military," Blake whispered, her chest pressed into Yang's back and her lips at her ear. "He was using it at the rally as a recruitment pitch."
Yang gunned it, threading the space between a series of cars as they made their way back to Beacon. She focused on the feeling of the girl at her back, the adrenaline and heat still burning in her gut. She needed anything she could to ignore the things Junior had told her. Beacon loomed in the distance, promising…
Promising what, Yang no longer knew.
"He stole from the Atlas military?" Weiss hissed over Blakes shoulder, her voice just barely cutting through the screaming wind. "How? Why?"
"To try and beat us up, I guess?" Ruby pondered from the very back. Yang could barely hear her. "He was chasing Blake, right?"
Yang leaned forward. Blake followed her. Her center of balance was all wrong, and she knew it was a wonder that she hadn't dropped the bike and spilled them out across the asphalt like discarded fruit. They didn't have a faster way to get back to school, and they had to make the last air-ferry. It felt petty in light of what had just happened, but somehow she was more scared of Glynda Goodwitch's reprimands than she was a house-sized killer robot.
"How useful could it be for them? We took it apart." Bravado filled her voice, and it wasn't even false. There was a certain confidence that punching a walking tank apart tended to give a girl an ego boost, afterall.
"We managed to handle it, four on one," Blake agreed. "But Roman still got away. Which means—"
"They can get their hands on more." Yang pulled through into the ferry lot, blasting past a truck that laid on its horn as she cut it off. She didn't have time to care. She jerked the throttle one last time, darting into the belly of the ferry just before it closed on them.
They were in. Ruby hopped off the back of the bike with a hum in her chest. "It was a fun fight though! We even got to practice the team attacks for real!"
"Where did you even come up with those names?" Yang asked with a laugh as she took her helmet off. Ruby just shrugged noncommittally, like they hadn't even been a thing.
"They just came to me in training!"
"I can't believe he had someone ready to save him," Weiss shook her head as she pried herself off Blake. Yang pretended she didn't notice the heiress' shaky legs. "With an illusion, nonetheless. And where they're getting so many bullheads I could not begin to guess."
"The Fang keeps several in rotation; rapid infiltration and exfiltration is extremely useful." Blake filled them in as she released Yang's midsection with a sigh. "I still can't believe them."
Yang rested her elbows on her motorcycle's steering column, letting the idling engine vibrate through her body. There was too much to think about, and even her half-victory could only sustain her for so long. "Did you girls at least get anything?"
Weiss shrugged as she cast a thoughtful gaze around the parking bay of the ferry. Almost no other vehicles this time of night, and anyone else taking the ferry back to Beacon would be up top taking advantage of the creature comforts on offer. Yang knew they had a coffee service, for example. It was dark, overhead lights flickering and just barely enough for them to see by.
Perfect for discussing what they'd just been through.
"I convinced an operator to send me classified data by claiming it was for a school project," Weiss said as she muted her scroll. "My sister and my father will hear about that shortly, but the data should tell us something."
"I found Penny! I had to chase her down, but I did manage to ask her how she found us during the fight at the docks," Ruby piped up. She was shaking with excitement, her hands up at her chin as she practically vibrated in place. "You know what she said?"
Yang had an idea. "What?"
"She said a woman in a white cloak who looked just like me asked her if she wanted to help us!" Ruby was suddenly in Yang's bubble, her eyes wide and her smile sparkling. "Yang, Mom was looking out for us!"
Or she just doesn't want us caught up in whatever shit she's been doing, Yang railed in her own thoughts. "Yeah, she sure is," he said out loud instead, ruffling Ruby's hair with a tired smile. "Looking out for you, more like. I was fine."
"You were not fine, you were in the same jam as the rest of us!" Ruby huffed, shoving a finger in her older sister's face. "Why I outta…"
"You outta what? You haven't beaten me in a spar… ever!" Yang finally stood from her bike, putting her hands up with the palms facing out. "Come on, throw a few."
Ruby laughed and threw a few jabs at the raised palms, ducking and weaving around Yang as she pretended like the smaller girl's blows were even hurting her. The levity was nice, and took her mind off the words that were still echoing in her head. Summer Rose and Roman Torchwick, in the same room…
"What about you? What did Junior say?" Blake asked, like she could hear Yang's inner thoughts. Yang caught her younger sister around the shoulders, tucked her under her arm, and pressed her knuckles into her hair. Ruby screeched and swung her arms, but her struggles were undercut by the peals of laughter.
"Nothing much. Roman paid him to use his guys for the robberies, but he said none of them came back," Yang lied. Neptune and Sun disappearing entirely was a blessing in disguise; she couldn't bring herself to be mad at them for not helping in the fight when it opened up a chance like this.
She just couldn't bring herself to tell Ruby. She'd rather throw herself into the sea than destroy her sister's smile like that.
Blake narrowed her eyes, and Yang thought they'd flash in the darkness for a moment. She stomached the pain of lying to her partner, and released Ruby. She thought it was probably best to play it cool. No one had any reason to suspect her, afterall. "What about you?" She asked, ignoring how Ruby grumbled and tried to put her hair back properly.
"Things fell apart pretty quickly," Blake said after a moment. "We weren't expecting Roman to be there, and once he recognized us things fell apart fast. But…"
"But what?" Ruby asked, having managed to properly rearrange her hair. "Did you hear anything useful?"
Blake just sighed and slumped against the bike. "Roman made references to a base in the southeast. I don't have anything else to go on."
"That's frustratingly vague. What are we supposed to do with that?" Weiss huffed and shook her head. "We're already pushing things, skipping curfew or barely making it back. We can't afford to just… disappear into the countryside on a wild Grimm chase!"
Yang couldn't help but chew the inside of her lip. She didn't know what they were supposed to do from here either. They'd exhausted every lead they'd found. With Roman in the wind, and the Fang more than aware of who they were and what they were trying to do, things had just gotten a lot harder for them.
The ferry shuddered around them, metal groaning as it docked at Beacon. Ruby popped up as the parking section of the ferry slowly shuddered open. "Come on, we won't get anywhere on empty stomachs!"
"How are you always thinking about food?" Yang asked with a small chuckle as she pushed her bike out behind her sister. "Such a tiny girl, such a huge appetite."
"This may be a blessing in disguise," Weiss mused. Yang turned to her with a questioning grunt, and she rolled her eyes. "We've been on the defensive for weeks now. Some time to reflect and relax can only be good for us."
Beacon loomed above them, a massive tangle of stone, metal, and glass. Yang couldn't help but wonder why those tall spires felt so very… cold, now. She'd marveled at them just a few weeks ago.
"...I can't believe I'm agreeing with Weiss," Blake started. Yang could feel her eyes boring into the back of her head. "But I think she's right. There's that dance coming up, maybe that's a good thing for us to focus on?"
"I'm right far more than you're willing to admit, Miss Belladonna," Weiss said with an upturned nose and a smile. Blake just laughed. "What do you think, Ruby?"
"Can't think, too hungry!" Their tiny leader said. "Last one to the dorm is… Something! I dunno, race you there!"
And then she was gone in a storm of red flowers, streaming ahead of the rest of them on a mad quest for what Yang could only imagine was far too many cookies for this time of night. "Son of a—Blake can you catch up to her? I have to park Bumblebee and I don't want her to eat too many sweets this late!"
"Got it!" Blake called back, already flinging herself ahead on a chain of clones.
Weiss rolled her eyes at their antics. "Would you like some company to the parking garage?"
"Nah, I'm fine," Yang put on some forced cheer. "Go get some food, don't wait up for me."
Weiss narrowed her eyes at her in an eerie mirror of Blake, and Yang had to fight back a gup at the naked suspicion on display. Was it that obvious she was shaking in her boots? Was the nascent anger in her chest that on display? Could her sister's partner really read her that well, after so short a time together?
"Very well, Xiao Long. Do try to not keep us waiting."
They parted ways, a silent sigh on Yang's lips. There was no way she could go eat like this, let alone go to bed. Her fingers were shaking, the mech just hadn't been enough to take her energy out on. Here, on the darkened grounds of Beacon, starkly alone save the carefully trimmed trees and meticulously kept lawn. Salt pricked at the corners of her eyes and she bowed her head at the weight of it.
"How could you, Summer," she muttered.
"Hey, have you seen Yang?" Blake asked, peeking around a library bookshelf at Ruby. "I haven't seen her all day."
"Uh," Ruby jolted up from the textbook she'd been face down in. The author she'd been asked to read for literature class was just so dull, and he had the worst opinions on everything! She'd tear all of his arguments apart if she could just muster the willpower to actually read his dreck. "No? I haven't even seen Weiss yet today."
"I'm right here dolt," Weiss said, coming around the same bookshelf. "We haven't seen her either."
"Did you check the garage? She was grumbling about her bike's transmission yesterday," Ruby said thoughtfully. Any excuse to take a break from the nonsense she was trying to read. What was the point of literature class if they only assigned boring stuff, she had to ask herself.
"I already thought of that. She wasn't there." Blake sighed and came around the corner. "It's just…"
"She's avoiding us," Weiss said bluntly. "We've only gotten a few sentences out of her in the past three days, surely you've noticed."
"So?" Ruby asked. "She's probably just busy. I know I am," she sighed and turned back to her textbook. "Do you have Professor Cobalt's literature class? I'm really struggling with the essays he assigned."
The ink swam in her vision, all blurred and distorted. She squinted at the page for a moment, trying to make it resolve into something that made some kind of sense. Her hands came up to rub her eyes, and when her palms made unimpeded contact with her face it came to her. She'd left her contacts out and worn her glasses to study!
"...Aren't you worried about Yang?" Blake asked as Ruby patted the table for her glasses. "She passed up planning the Vytal Dance with Weiss and now I'm stuck with it."
"Don't sound too put out Blake. And that's hardly the real reason you're worried, you—You wear glasses?" Weiss cut herself off as Ruby planted her half-rimmed frames on her nose with a smile.
"Yup! You've literally stood next to me while I put my contacts in in the morning, Weiss," Ruby prodded her partner with a half-smile. "How did you not notice?"
"...What I do or do not notice without coffee in my system is not why we're here." Ruby's smile widened at the bright red blush spreading across her partner's cheeks. "How are you doing, actually?"
"I'm okay, I think. I might fail Cobalt's class but that's fine. His books suck compared to mom's anyway…" She groused, arms crossed comically across her chest.
Blake and Weiss shared a glance, one Ruby saw despite the speed of it. "I'm fine, really. More than fine. My mom is alive! I don't know what she's doing yet, or why, but she must have a good reason."
"You aren't mad? That she seems to have gone out of her way for you to not notice her?" Weiss asked, one eyebrow lifted. "I would be incensed, personally."
"Like I said, she must have a good reason!" Ruby laughed. If it sounded forced to her friends, they didn't say anything.
"...If you're sure." Blake said with an odd tone that Ruby just couldn't quite place. "Have you thought about who you're gonna ask to the dance?"
"Not really?" Ruby closed her textbook; she was more than happy to take the excuse to put off the frankly mind numbing work. "Isn't someone supposed to ask me? I'm the girl, right?"
"That is how it's supposed to be done. Why—"
"Ruby!" Blake cut through Weiss's swords like her sword through an unsuspecting Grimm. "It's the modern era. Such expectations are not only outdated but beneath us. If there's someone who you wanted to ask, you should take the initiative. The worst they can say is no." Amber eyes darted over to the Schnee. "That goes for you too, Weiss."
"Rich coming from you, Miss Belladonna." Weiss rolled her eyes and turned to Ruby. "If you look in my desk, my notes on those collected essays should be in the top drawer. Go ahead and copy them, you won't learn much from that dreck."
"Thanks Weiss!" Ruby chirped as she jumped up and tucked her text into her bag. "Let me know if you find Yang? I really need to get this done. I can't have another late assignment!"
They waved, disappearing back around the bookshelf and returning to their lively debate. Ruby just shook her head and smiled. She'd thought those two would fail to get along, but the past few days of adversity had really drawn them together. The blossoming friendship brought warmth to her chest, the kind that brought a real smile to her face.
"Hey Ruby!" Jaune said as he slid in beside her just as she started walking out of the library. "Have you seen Weiss?"
She turned to say something, just to stop at the flowers he was clutching in two shaky gloved hands. "...Why?" She asked, mind turning.
She didn't mind Jaune, but even she was getting annoyed at his continued advances on her partner. Weiss would kill her if she was party to another attempt, and she'd just given her permission to copy her notes!
"I wanna ask her to the dance! The worst thing she can say is no, right?" He said, with the kind of confident grin only a teenage boy could wear.
Weiss is a lot more clever than no, she thought to herself. Out loud, she chose to politely deflect the boy. "No, I haven't seen her all day. Good luck though?"
"Thanks Ruby! I'll let you know what she says!" The blonde haired boy said as he split off from her, winding deeper into the castle in the opposite direction she'd seen Weiss headed. She breathed a sigh of relief; one more day she didn't need to worry about that particular time bomb going off.
But the talk of asking people to the dance echoed in her head. It felt like such a small worry, compared to what she'd been dealing with for the past several days, but something about it stuck in her craw. She couldn't begin to say who she would want to ask; She'd left Signal well before senior prom, and she'd ignored Yang talking about it as best she could. Her older sister took an awful kind of pleasure in embarrassing her sometimes.
She just couldn't get the image of wide, sparkling green eyes out of her head.
"Ah, Miss Rose. Exactly who I was looking for." Someone approached her for the third time today.
"Professor Ozpin!" She spun on her heel, surprise causing her to jump and throw a wild salute at the man. "How can I help you?"
"Can we speak in my office? I try to have occasional sit downs with new team leaders." He wore an easy smile, but Ruby couldn't help but feel picked apart under his gaze. She knew he was old, but sometimes he felt… really old, to her.
"Okay!" She plastered her smile back on. "Lead the way!"
"You aren't in trouble, if you were worried." The headmaster set a steaming mug of hot chocolate down on his desk, in front of where Ruby was anxiously bouncing a leg in her chair. "I know getting called to the office can be nerve wracking. I was a student once, you know."
He smiled, eyes mirthful behind his ever-present sunglasses, like he was making some joke Ruby just wasn't privy to.
"Are you sure? I'm pretty sure you were headmaster when my parents were going to Beacon," she said without a second thought. Her eyes went wide as soon as the words left her mouth, "Uh, not to call you old, but, I mean—"
Ozpin laughed, and her heart stopped thundering like a jackhammer. "It's okay. I might be the youngest headmaster in our Academy's history, but I suppose at this point I am old."
She couldn't place why, but that statement felt loaded. Like when Yang asked about her chores, or when Dad asked her how her homework went while she was tinkering with Crescent Rose. So, rather than answer and dig herself a deeper hole like she often did, she chose to just cradle her hot chocolate close and spin in her chair, taking in a slow view of the expansive office she found herself in.
The top of the tallest spire in Beacon, warm afternoon light spilling in through a massive window, all overlooked by a set of truly massive gears. She didn't quite understand them, but she knew Ozpin's cane also contained a set of gears. Now that she thought about it, so did her uncle's weapon. That was certainly a strange coincidence. Perhaps the cane also transformed? But what would it transform into? Could the gears be part of a kinetic energy storage mechanism? But to what end? Now that she thought about it, something of the sort could be applied to her own weapon, some way to store some of the blowback from her rifle rounds. But what would she use it for? Maybe—
"How has your team been getting along? I noted some… friction, early on. Not uncommon, but also something to keep an eye on," Ozpin asked, breaking her from her fantasies of mechanical design.
Ruby shook her head, and after a moment decided honesty was the best policy. "I don't think we got along at first. Weiss was sorta mean, and Blake kept running off. But we had a few long talks and I think now we're a really good fighting team. We even worked out a lot of combo attacks!"
"Hmm. You've had more chances to test that than most first year teams, I suppose," he murmured, staring out the window with a neutral expression.
"Uh. I don't know what you're talking about?" Ruby denied, only to curse her trailing upward tone.
"Like I said, Miss Rose. You aren't in trouble. I simply asked you here to check in on your progress, and to lend you an ear for any concerns you might have."
Any concerns echoed in her head, and nervous fingers tapped her mug with some trepidation. So many questions swirled in her head, and though she insisted she was fine to her team she knew she wasn't. A question had been bouncing around in her head for the past several days, one she just couldn't find an answer to. She kept telling herself that it was okay, but…
"...What would you say if I told you I saw my Mom?" She asked in a small, quiet voice. She was happy, she wasn't exactly faking that for Yang and her team, she just… she had her own concerns.
"First, I would ask you what you meant. Are you speaking metaphorically?" He turned to her, his elbows landing on his desk and his fingers steepling across his face.
"No. I mean, when I killed the Nevermore, I saw her watching from the forest below. Then she saved Yang and I from—" she choked back The White Fang, "—a bad fight."
"And you're sure it was her?" Ozpin asked. It was a question she was still asking herself, no matter what she said to Yang and Blake and Weiss.
But she knew it was her. All of the signs said it was. "Of course I am! She was wearing a white cloak, and I saw her petals! White and red, just like Dad said they were!"
"Hmm. Then let's say it is her," He said evenly.
"If it really is her… How is she not dead?" She asked. The question was largely to herself, but Ozpin was more than welcome to answer, she felt. "Everyone was so sure she was gone. I visited her grave every weekend before I came to Beacon."
"It's a bit… trite, I suppose, but a body was never found. Summer Rose wasn't declared legally dead until she'd been missing for several months," Ozpin sighed, his voice softening some from the Professorial tone he'd adopted. "Your father and uncle held out hope as long as they could."
She nodded, eyes misting. She knew what the last question she had to ask herself was. "Then… Why has she been avoiding me?" She barely realized she'd asked the question out loud. She didn't notice Ozpin stand and make his way around the desk.
He knelt before her and wrapped her in a hug, and she let herself cry on his shoulder. Here, above the rest of the school, where she could be sure her team and sister wouldn't see her, she let herself break.
She wasn't sure how long she'd been at it. All that was left was the rhythm of her strikes. Her knuckles ached through Aura and tight wraps. The heavy bag, two hundred pounds of sand hung up in leather by a sturdy chain, shuddered and swung under each of her strikes.
She'd started the afternoon with some manner of form—her footwork was clean, her strikes textbook, and her breathing smooth and controlled. But her mind refused to find a calm place in the chaos, the adrenaline and the burn doing nothing to stop the angry whirl of her thoughts. So she'd descended into pure brute force, striking the bag with everything she had on every blow.
"Yang."
Any awareness of the training hall around her had long since vanished, lost in the haze she'd descended into. The echo of her strikes rebounded, finding unhearing ears before she could hit again. She hissed as she put more force into it, punches coming faster and faster. Her shoulders, her back, even her thighs burned from the force, from uninterrupted work.
"Yang!"
A hand grabbed her shoulder, and she spun. Instinct took her and she whirled on her heel, a lightning quick fist aimed where she expected the chin of whoever was insane enough to interrupt her to be located.
But she was exhausted. She'd spun too far, she'd overextended. She was slower than usual.
A lithe hand found her wrist, redirecting the force with ease. The smaller, familiar form of the girl interrupting her spun, her back slamming against Yang's chest. Then she was flying, the ceiling and floor becoming a chaotic spiral of color as she crashed into the ground in a groaning heap. She rolled onto her back with a pained groan. Aura could only do so much, and it did very little to dull the embarrassment of getting thrown like a sack of potatoes.
Blake Belladonna, a deeply unamused frown splitting her face, appeared in her swimming view. "So this is what you've been avoiding us to do? Killing yourself in the gym?"
"I'm just training," she huffed. "I'm fine."
Blake sighed as she sat down. "Training is what we do with Ruby. This was just… I've never seen your face like that."
Yang remained flat on her back, trying as hard as she could to not audibly pant as the exertion of the past… however long caught up to her. The cool mat on her exposed back and arms was incredible. "I'm fine. Why'd you interrupt me?"
"Why'd you try and hit me?" Blake's voice was dry. Unamused. Hot shame raced up Yang's neck and across her cheeks.
"You startled me, that's all." The defensive tone that snuck into her voice was deeply unwelcome, in her opinion.
"You can't keep doing this. We need you." Blake whispered softly. "And before you get angry, I know I was doing the same thing. But…"
"But what? It's different when I do it?" Yang asked with a grunt, managing to lift herself into a seated position. Furious purple eyes found sad amber ones. "What else am I supposed to do?"
Blake shifted, moving so she was facing Yang properly. She was ready to get yelled at, ready for a proper screaming match. A fight. Something, anything.
Instead, Blake just took her hand. "I know what it looks like when someone puts a mask on. You're trying to stay cool and positive for Ruby, aren't you? But this is eating you up inside."
Yang's breath was knocked from her chest, and she tore her eyes away from Blake's, staring resolutely at her ruined, beaten sandbag. A line of sand slowly spilled from a rent in the bottom, proof positive of the destruction she wreaked on the leather, leather specifically treated to withstand Aura-trained fighters. "What do you know about it? How could you possibly understand?"
Blake shrugged. "Maybe I can't, not really. But… Did you ever wonder how I ended up at Beacon?"
"You left the Fang, right?" Yang answered easily. She'd come to terms with her partner's past, as best she could. There wasn't much she could do about it, and she was… She was good with Ruby, and that counted for a lot.
"But you don't know why I was with the Fang…" Blake trailed off, her fingers still entwined with Yang's. "I've been thinking about what happened, back at Menagerie, a lot ever since your mother appeared out of nowhere."
Yang's mind turned, her anger stymied by the honesty written across every inch of her partner; across her face, in the way she held her body, in the tremor of her voice. She shifted awkwardly, unsure of what to do. In lieu of her failing words, she just squeezed her partner's hand, unsure exactly where she was going.
"Don't tell anyone, but my father is the man who founded the White Fang, back when it was a peaceful protest group. He stepped down once people like Sienna Khan started gaining more sway, but… That's his legacy," Blake held up a hand, forestalling Yang's interruption. "But that's just backstory. Before I left to join the White Fang, I… I said some things. Things I regret saying, and I'm not sure I can take back."
"Have you…" Yang started, only to stop, unsure of how to ask what she wanted to.
"I haven't. I don't know what I would say. Maybe I'm afraid of what they would say to me." Blake just chuckled. "I'm not even sure what I'm trying to get at here. It feels so much smaller than what you're dealing with. I think I just wanted you to feel seen."
"...What do you think I should do?" Yang collapsed again, her strings cut. The ceiling was looking mighty inviting right now. "Everytime I think of Summer, I just…"
She couldn't explain the feeling. Like there was a raging inferno in her chest, and yet like every one of her limbs was made of ice at the same time. All she could do, everytime it happened, was plaster a smile on her face and make jokes until she could find an excuse to make her escape and burn the energy in any way she could. Anything was better than hurting Ruby.
"I don't know," Blake said. "I'm trying to figure it out myself. All I want to do is figure out where, exactly, the White Fang is hiding."
"Then what are you doing? I'll just do that."
Blake stood, and reached down for Yang with a soft smile on her face. Her breath caught in her throat as she hesitantly reached up to take the outstretched hand. She let her partner heft her up, putting a bit of effort in herself so the smaller girl didn't tip over.
"Right now? I'm helping Weiss with the dance. We could use your input on a few things, actually."
"...Yeah. That sounds nice," Yang said with a tired smile to match the one on her partner's face.
Maybe it would give her a chance to think about something that wasn't her second absentee mother. It'd been a while since she had a reason to wear a cute dress.
--------
Next time, on By Any Other Name - Old guilts and regrets are reckoned with.
Out now on my patreon! This is also the last couple of days you can vote for a December short!
Episode 4 - Guilt
- Location
- Oklahoma
How about a change of view?
-------
Seeing Beacon again was… hard. There were so many memories tied up in its halls, its towers. Some should even be happy ones. But, even here, high above it, winging along on gifted pinions, I felt only melancholy. Even flight, my one refuge this past decade, couldn't bring me any joy. All I could do was brace against the chill night air and observe.
Beacon was lit for a celebration, all blues and greens and reds. The air was full of music, raucous dance house stuff, pumped from the large meeting hall at the edge of the castle that had been converted for just this occasion. I could feel the bass in my feathers, even so far up.
It reminded me of my own first Vytal Festival, though that dance had been much more peaceful than this one was bound to be. I said a silent apology to my daughters and leaned into a dive.
I was no falcon, but even an owl could use gravity to her advantage. Wind rushed past me, the feeling of freefall in my gut a welcome distraction. I angled myself, making minor adjustments to my path as I aimed for a spire with a view of the library; our target for the night. I opened my wings, brought myself to a near halt, and shifted.
I alighted on the spire with boots rather than talons. A white cloak settled around my shoulders in place of wings. The weight of my equipment made itself known, an ax hanging from my belt, a comm in my ear, and pouches of extras.
"About time. Get lost up there?" A voice snarked through my earpiece.
I bit back a bitter sigh. Cinder. The current albatross around my neck. She was technically in charge of this mission, and thus, had a firm hand on my increasingly short leash. I knew I would pay for my string of interferences, but… I'd had no choice.
"You're all clear on the outside," I said, my voice flat. I couldn't let her think she had anything on me. "Or do you need me to come hold your hand?"
"Careful Summer, your girls are here. Wouldn't want to start anything, now would we."
I whirled, hand instinctively finding my ax as my attention landed squarely on the dance hall below me. The crush of people inside obscured most of my view, but my eyes found what I was looking for anyway. Cinder, in her guise as a visiting student, gazed meaningfully out towards my hiding place, before glancing back down at a blonde girl laughing at something a black-haired girl wearing a bow had said.
"Do make sure no one follows me."
Cinder's words barely echoed in my head. I knelt on my little outcropping, all my attention stuck on my eldest daughter. I wouldn't be able to tear myself away if I tried. She was laughing, spinning in her white dress around who I could only assume was her date, the mysterious black-clad girl whom she'd met in the forest. She'd grown so well over the years, every inch her father's daughter. Even here I could see his influence in her, in the way she held herself, the way she kept all of her attention on the object of her focus. Even the way she danced was the same; dorky and uncoordinated. If it wasn't for her partner—Blake, if I remembered the student roll correctly—catching her mistakes, I was certain Yang would have fallen on her face by now.
I let myself smile, a sad half-dead thing. I'd had to do that with Tai, every time we tried to dance. No matter how much effort he put in he could just never figure it out. I'd once asked him how he was so talented in a fight but tripped over his own feet in a dance. He'd just said he was clever like that.
The less said about Raven's talents on the dance floor, the better. And Qrow… was banned from most clubs for a reason.
"I'm sorry you're involved in this," I whispered to the open air. "I'd hoped… I'd hoped to have this figured out before you found your way into this mess of a conflict."
My fingers tapped the head of my ax, a nervous tic I hadn't been able to kick. My eyes slipped from Yang, roving over the assembled mass of students. I had one other daughter attending Beacon, where was she? She wasn't inside, she was—
Ruby was standing alone on a balcony, leaning against the railing and throwing a thoughtful look out over her school. Her dress was pristine, she wasn't sad, she was just… alone with her thoughts. Her body heaved, a full-body sigh that I felt from even this distance. The stark mirror of my situation struck a chord somewhere in my chest, and before I could stop myself I stepped off the side of the spire.
A twist of a mental muscle later wings caught the wind one more time. Silently, I dove down to the balcony and lighted on the railing beside my daughter with a ruffle of feathers and a quiet hoot. Best to just pretend to be a regular owl, I figured.
Ruby jumped and turned with wide eyes, but the shout died on her lips as she saw me. "Oh. It's you. Or do I think you're the same owl? It's hard to tell with animals sometimes."
I was, in fact, the same owl, but she didn't need to know that. She didn't need to know how much being this close to her hurt. Still, even with the tightness in my chest, I committed as much of her to memory as I could. There was fresh red dye in her hair, a brilliant underline to the rest of her still-black locks. Her eyes were brilliant mirrors of my own, even half-lidded and sad as they were.
My heart skipped a beat. I knew I laid claim to a share of that sadness.
"I should be in there with my friends," Ruby said suddenly, taking me from my thoughts.
I hooted again, quieter this time. It was all I could do without blowing my cover entirely.
"Have you got owl friends? Do owls… do birds have friends? I know crows have friends but—" she shook her head, clearing whatever errant questions had filled it. I remembered when she was just a baby, how easily she could get distracted. Some things just don't change.
"I didn't have anyone to go to the dance with," Ruby said, after regaining her composure. "I never really thought about it until a few days ago. I'm so much younger than everyone else."
I cocked my head, playing like I was listening but not understanding. Some part of me was furious, furious that Ozpin would let her into Beacon so much younger than any of the other students. But that part was small, tempered with the truth that I had no right to be upset on Ruby's behalf. Not anymore.
"And there was someone I wanted to ask, I just couldn't find her. I hoped she'd be here, cause all the other students from other schools are here but…" My daughter sighed again and hung her head.
I rotated my head, casting my gaze around the dance hall. No one had noticed Ruby talking to an owl, yet, too distracted with their partners. Good. Mercury and Emerald were nowhere to be seen either. I didn't need this particular aside getting back to Cinder.
…Somehow I wasn't surprised that both of my daughters had intended to ask other women to the dance. Tai and I had talked about it, and I supposed that Yang had to get something from Raven.
"What do you think I should do Mr. Owl?" Ruby asked softly.
I hooted, a note of involuntary indignity entering my voice.
"Oh, Mrs. Owl, I'm sorry! I just couldn't—What is that?"
I turned, following the arc of her vision to see Cinder sprinting across the rooftops, clad head to toe in a black leather catsuit. The light of the moon caught her as she leaped, clearing a gap and revealing a dainty domino mask across her eyes. How she intended to hide her identity like that I didn't know. She could have at least worn a full face mask or even a half mask.
Ruby leaped over the railing without a second thought, and I squawked and leaped myself, winging through the air and following Cinder from above. She'd gone through the effort of a costume change? She could have had this over and done within the duration of my conversation with—
The air shifted, a minor change in barometric pressure that nonetheless had me barrel-rolling to the side on instinct alone. A long metal cylinder filled the space I'd just left, hurtling through the air like a massive spear flung by a giant. Unless I missed my guess that was one of Beacon's student lockers.
It impacted the ground below, a massive crack of destroyed concrete reaching my ears. I risked a glance down, just to find Ruby plucking her massive weapon out of it. Did she intend to fight? Alone?
I narrowed my eyes and turned my attention forward. The library was close at hand, and I had to be far more careful than Cinder did. She was aiming to enter a balcony, her gaze fixed firmly on her prize. I swooped higher, aiming for the roof of the building. I landed on boots rather than talons and made my way to the roof access door. It would be locked, at this hour. Any other time I would do this more delicately.
I just didn't have any time.
Five strides took me to the door. Aura filled my limbs as I reached out and tore the handle from its housing, letting the door swing open to admit me. I ignored the stairs, hopping over the railing and falling through the tight spiral. I landed at the bottom of the flight in a crouch, my ax already leaping into my hands and shifting, collapsing into a lever action rifle.
Silently, I made my way out of the stairwell, rifle-shouldered. I wasn't sure what I would do from here, but… I would do what I had to, like always.
Beacons Library contained a small offshoot of the CCT Tower in central Vale, a way for students to contact family that might be too far away. I'd never needed it of course, but I'd accompanied Tai there before.
This wasn't my first time breaking in, either.
I stuck to the shadows, creeping along the service catwalks that hung above the banks of terminals. Cinder had found her way to the center console, a hum on her lips as she worked. A spare scroll slipped from her pocket, the centerpiece of the plan here in Vale.
Just as the scroll flickered to life, the stark image of a black queen across the screen, the door to the library burst open.
Ruby slid to a stop, her bulky rifle trained on Cinder. "Stop right there!"
"You must be Little Red," Cinder smiled thinly. "Charmed to meet you."
She moved, darting at my daughter like a flame-rimmed rocket.
Ruby fired, and my sights came up and snapped onto Cinder. My finger squeezed, just enough to find the bite point of my trigger. I followed the whirl of their battle, Ruby's massive scythe a silver, red, and black whirl of metal that could scarcely find an opening in between Cinder's black glass swords.
My sights were trained on Cinder, but something stayed in my hand. Reminders of old threats echoed in the back of my head as I tracked her. Fire burned in my right arm, phantom pain enough to put a spasm in my trigger finger and drag my sights off of Cinder. I hissed, dragging my sights back onto her with a monumental effort. My teeth grit against the sudden pain. My eyes ached. Sweat dripped down my forehead. Ruby was in danger now, but if I acted against Cinder…
I had to hope she'd called someone. I wasn't ready to move yet.
A glass blade sunk into a nearby terminal just as a familiar shape slipped into my range. A tall man, half his body a strange shadow in my power. Only one man I knew had that many prosthetics; General James Ironwood. I didn't wait around for him to see me. Ruby spun on her heel, surprised by the sudden noise. A rookie mistake, but one that perhaps saved her life.
Cinder took the opportunity to disappear, flinging herself out the window with a jaunty wave I knew was meant only for me.
I grit my teeth and make my way back up to the stairwell. Ruby was safe, that was all that mattered, I told myself. Still, I hesitated, Ruby a hazy sensation on the edge of my range. I clenched my right hand, fingers still shaky from half-remembered, decades-old pain.
I could go to her. With Cinder gone, her task complete, nothing was stopping me.
Nothing physical, at least. I swallowed thickly, a heavy weight settling in my gut. There was still work left to do if I had a shadow of a hope of speaking with my girls again.
Three people entered my range, at the top of the staircase where I'd made my rough entry. Rifles up, moving in formation. James had brought company, hadn't he?
I let my rifle shift back into an ax, the barrel extending into a haft as I shifted my grip. The buttstock folded down, a heavy blade folding out as I made my way up the steps. A bearded ax had more intimidation factor than a rifle, something I would have to rely on to make it out of here without having to kill anyone.
I let my Aura unspool as I took the last several steps. One of the riflemen had his hand to his ear, talking in hushed tones over a comm piece. My first instinct was to use my Semblance, control their sightlines, and force a sense of confusion onto the fight.
But that wasn't an option. James was just downstairs, and he would recognize the petals.
So would Ruby.
No matter how much I wanted to fight, no matter how much nervous energy I needed to burn off, I couldn't afford it. I'd gotten lucky, revealing as much as I had. So instead, I burst into a run, bounding up the stairs two at a time. I kept track of the rifle squad in my head, feeling them move as if they were an extension of my own body.
As soon as I found the top, I pushed. Instead of the enemy combatant, they were likely expecting, a screaming, hooting owl came rushing out of the ruined doorway. I spun through their formation in a tight spiral, forcing them apart in shouted surprise. My wings sprang open and I darted away into the night. I'd expected to dodge surprised gunfire, but to their credit, someone had trained them on proper trigger discipline.
"False alarm command, it was just an owl. No sign of whoever forced their way in." I heard as I made my way towards the abandoned industrial district.
I had to admit, Ruby's form was… good. The more I watched her fight the more I saw Qrow's influence in her style. I was glad he'd stayed a presence in their lives; I'd been worried he would disappear after I'd left. He'd been a mess after Raven had left us.
But thoughts of Ruby only conjured images of her fight with Cinder. Had I teeth to grit, I would.
Something had to change.
"Your youngest is feisty, Summer," Cinder simpered as I landed inside the abandoned, burnt-out warehouse we called home base. "And you were worried for—"
Petals exploded outward, red and white becoming a storm around me. A shape, a mass of petals in the shape of me, rushed towards Cinder as I sprinted forward at an angle to it, my ax already in my hands. It was an old trick, something I was well practiced at doing.
To Cinder's credit, she reacted faster than I'd expected. A lance of boiling glass erupted into motion as soon as I'd acted. But she'd fallen for my gambit, the projectile blowing a massive hole in the lump of petals I'd sent her way. It wasn't much of an opening, but her surprise was enough for me to act.
My off-hand found the tight leather material of her catsuit. My momentum carried us back several steps, and I slammed her against the concrete wall at her back. Before she could move another step, the blade of my ax was at her neck, pressed tight enough to spark her Aura to life. She grinned down at me, amber sparks highlighting eyes of the same color.
"They aren't supposed to be a part of this. I made a deal."
"And they weren't until they insisted on sticking their noses where they don't belong," Cinder whispered, uncaring the blade at her throat. She had a glass spear leveled at the back of my head, after all. I could feel the heat boiling off of it.
I just couldn't bring myself to care. She couldn't punch through my Aura in one hit any more than I could hers.
"Like your stunt on the roof wasn't purposeful." I was out of patience for her. Had been for a long time. "I've been around the block a few times. You crave attention."
It would have been child's play for me to sneak into the library while the entire school was distracted with dance, load the virus, and escape unseen. Yet Cinder had insisted that my one job was to fly oversight, make sure her path was clear. She believed that there was glory in what she did, and that left me to clean up after her.
"And what do you suppose this will solve?" Cinder laughed. "You're walking a tightrope, and if you slip it's not just your life on the line."
I hissed and released her. I hated to admit it, but she was right. If I did anything to Cinder, the blowback would fall on my daughter's head first, and then mine. The storm of red and white didn't let up, nor did the spear of glass leave the back of my head as I took a few steps back.
"I'm being kept in the dark, and I don't like it." I kept my gaze firmly locked on her. I was at a disadvantage in this fight, but I needed to look like I wasn't. "But that doesn't matter. I made a deal; stick to your end and I'll stick to mine."
Cinder smiled, a wide cruel thing that split her face yet never reached her eyes. Joyless; the smile of a predator. "You made a deal, but I never did."
I let my storm die down as two new people entered my range, my ax slipping into my holster. It was best to present as much of a united front as possible when dealing with Roman and his illusion-wielding sidekick. A thought Cinder shared, the heat of the lance disappearing from the back of my head.
"Rare to see you two in the same place," Roman chuckled as he strode in, cane hung jauntily from one elbow. "I'm not interrupting anything, am I?"
I kept one metaphorical eye on the small woman who was always at his side. She made a show of walking around us, finding a nice high place to sit like an uninterested cat. There was a strategy to it, one I was well acquainted with. Still, Neo did not need to attack. Not me, anyway.
"I'll leave you to it. I have more important things to attend to," Cinder said with a gentle wave, a smile still splitting her face. "Tata Summer."
Roman watched her go, uncharacteristically silent, his bowler hat tipped back by a single finger. As soon as she'd rounded the corner he turned to me, a smarmy look under his swoop of orange hair. "I was practically choking on the tension. What did you do, break up with her?"
I fixed him with a half-lidded glare. I had little patience for his… smarm. Maybe in another life. "What's the status on the last Dust shipment?"
"Business from the get? You're so boring," he sighed and replaced his hat with a flourish. "It's on its way to the southeast, same as everything else. Do you want any more details?"
That was as good a segue as any. Best to make it seem like a question related to work. "And it wasn't interrupted this time. You've been struggling with a bunch of first years."
"Now that you mention those brats," he shrugged, making his way to a small table, set out of the way of the center of the warehouse. The 'kitchen' as it were. "I just have to wonder. What's a woman like you even doing in a shit place like this?"
There was no use in lying with Roman. He would have already put together the fact that Ruby at the very least was my daughter. He was a fool, but he was an observant one; you don't make it this far for this long as a career criminal on luck alone. He had a good eye and better instincts.
But he'd also shot at my daughters, multiple times. A little resentment was warranted, even if they were out of his league. The security footage I'd found of Yang punching his little joyride apart had been quite the watch.
"I have my reasons. Once I have proof of receipt, I'll wire the payment to you."
I turned from him and made my way to the stairs at the back of the massive building. It was late, and I was out of words for anyone else. Better to sleep and try and recover. There was a hard few weeks ahead of me, after all.
"So business-like. No wonder you aren't on speaking terms with your kids," Roman called after me.
I stopped but didn't turn. He hadn't left my range, and his bodyguard was on the very edge of it. That put her nearly sixteen feet away from me. Enough time to react, if I had to.
"I did my research, after you pulled those girls out of the proverbial frying pan," Roman continued, putting on a show of fiddling with his cane. "You aren't the first dead woman I've ever worked with, you know?"
"Get to the point." I wasn't happy with how much he seemed to know, but if he wasn't going to start a fight neither was I. My work with Roman was near an end, but like everything else in my life how I handled that end was vitally important.
"You are the most joyless person I've ever met," he sighed. "Maybe I'm just curious. Why would you leave such a wonderful pair of babies? Even if one of them isn't yours."
He meant Yang. Of course, he meant Yang.
"Yang is more mine than you could know."
"So her name is Yang? Cute."
"Cute enough to wreck that flimsy mech you stole," and wasn't I just the proudest mother? Even if I felt a shot of guilt at the errant feeling. "Get some sleep. Your part in this isn't over yet."
"Okay, mom."
I ignored anything else and disappeared in a storm of petals. I needed out of there, fast, and the quickest way was the way I'd been doing it for years; hide in a cloud of visual misinformation and turn into a bird. Bare seconds later, I'd found my way to the top of the warehouse, once more a woman.
Roman had raised a question I asked myself every night. One I still couldn't find a good answer for. And, like every other night, I stared up at the moon and wondered, if I would find some kind of meaning in its shattered, ruined form. Here in Vale the questions burned ever louder in the back of my head, the worry coiled deeper in my gut, a companion I could never truly escape.
And with it came the cold certainty—I knew where my failure had started.
I just didn't know how to fix it.
-----
I always planned a Summer POV! She's not doing great, but I hope this answers a few questions. And if you'd like more answers, you can always head to my Patreon to read the next chapter:
The Girl Who Fell Through the World
-------
Seeing Beacon again was… hard. There were so many memories tied up in its halls, its towers. Some should even be happy ones. But, even here, high above it, winging along on gifted pinions, I felt only melancholy. Even flight, my one refuge this past decade, couldn't bring me any joy. All I could do was brace against the chill night air and observe.
Beacon was lit for a celebration, all blues and greens and reds. The air was full of music, raucous dance house stuff, pumped from the large meeting hall at the edge of the castle that had been converted for just this occasion. I could feel the bass in my feathers, even so far up.
It reminded me of my own first Vytal Festival, though that dance had been much more peaceful than this one was bound to be. I said a silent apology to my daughters and leaned into a dive.
I was no falcon, but even an owl could use gravity to her advantage. Wind rushed past me, the feeling of freefall in my gut a welcome distraction. I angled myself, making minor adjustments to my path as I aimed for a spire with a view of the library; our target for the night. I opened my wings, brought myself to a near halt, and shifted.
I alighted on the spire with boots rather than talons. A white cloak settled around my shoulders in place of wings. The weight of my equipment made itself known, an ax hanging from my belt, a comm in my ear, and pouches of extras.
"About time. Get lost up there?" A voice snarked through my earpiece.
I bit back a bitter sigh. Cinder. The current albatross around my neck. She was technically in charge of this mission, and thus, had a firm hand on my increasingly short leash. I knew I would pay for my string of interferences, but… I'd had no choice.
"You're all clear on the outside," I said, my voice flat. I couldn't let her think she had anything on me. "Or do you need me to come hold your hand?"
"Careful Summer, your girls are here. Wouldn't want to start anything, now would we."
I whirled, hand instinctively finding my ax as my attention landed squarely on the dance hall below me. The crush of people inside obscured most of my view, but my eyes found what I was looking for anyway. Cinder, in her guise as a visiting student, gazed meaningfully out towards my hiding place, before glancing back down at a blonde girl laughing at something a black-haired girl wearing a bow had said.
"Do make sure no one follows me."
Cinder's words barely echoed in my head. I knelt on my little outcropping, all my attention stuck on my eldest daughter. I wouldn't be able to tear myself away if I tried. She was laughing, spinning in her white dress around who I could only assume was her date, the mysterious black-clad girl whom she'd met in the forest. She'd grown so well over the years, every inch her father's daughter. Even here I could see his influence in her, in the way she held herself, the way she kept all of her attention on the object of her focus. Even the way she danced was the same; dorky and uncoordinated. If it wasn't for her partner—Blake, if I remembered the student roll correctly—catching her mistakes, I was certain Yang would have fallen on her face by now.
I let myself smile, a sad half-dead thing. I'd had to do that with Tai, every time we tried to dance. No matter how much effort he put in he could just never figure it out. I'd once asked him how he was so talented in a fight but tripped over his own feet in a dance. He'd just said he was clever like that.
The less said about Raven's talents on the dance floor, the better. And Qrow… was banned from most clubs for a reason.
"I'm sorry you're involved in this," I whispered to the open air. "I'd hoped… I'd hoped to have this figured out before you found your way into this mess of a conflict."
My fingers tapped the head of my ax, a nervous tic I hadn't been able to kick. My eyes slipped from Yang, roving over the assembled mass of students. I had one other daughter attending Beacon, where was she? She wasn't inside, she was—
Ruby was standing alone on a balcony, leaning against the railing and throwing a thoughtful look out over her school. Her dress was pristine, she wasn't sad, she was just… alone with her thoughts. Her body heaved, a full-body sigh that I felt from even this distance. The stark mirror of my situation struck a chord somewhere in my chest, and before I could stop myself I stepped off the side of the spire.
A twist of a mental muscle later wings caught the wind one more time. Silently, I dove down to the balcony and lighted on the railing beside my daughter with a ruffle of feathers and a quiet hoot. Best to just pretend to be a regular owl, I figured.
Ruby jumped and turned with wide eyes, but the shout died on her lips as she saw me. "Oh. It's you. Or do I think you're the same owl? It's hard to tell with animals sometimes."
I was, in fact, the same owl, but she didn't need to know that. She didn't need to know how much being this close to her hurt. Still, even with the tightness in my chest, I committed as much of her to memory as I could. There was fresh red dye in her hair, a brilliant underline to the rest of her still-black locks. Her eyes were brilliant mirrors of my own, even half-lidded and sad as they were.
My heart skipped a beat. I knew I laid claim to a share of that sadness.
"I should be in there with my friends," Ruby said suddenly, taking me from my thoughts.
I hooted again, quieter this time. It was all I could do without blowing my cover entirely.
"Have you got owl friends? Do owls… do birds have friends? I know crows have friends but—" she shook her head, clearing whatever errant questions had filled it. I remembered when she was just a baby, how easily she could get distracted. Some things just don't change.
"I didn't have anyone to go to the dance with," Ruby said, after regaining her composure. "I never really thought about it until a few days ago. I'm so much younger than everyone else."
I cocked my head, playing like I was listening but not understanding. Some part of me was furious, furious that Ozpin would let her into Beacon so much younger than any of the other students. But that part was small, tempered with the truth that I had no right to be upset on Ruby's behalf. Not anymore.
"And there was someone I wanted to ask, I just couldn't find her. I hoped she'd be here, cause all the other students from other schools are here but…" My daughter sighed again and hung her head.
I rotated my head, casting my gaze around the dance hall. No one had noticed Ruby talking to an owl, yet, too distracted with their partners. Good. Mercury and Emerald were nowhere to be seen either. I didn't need this particular aside getting back to Cinder.
…Somehow I wasn't surprised that both of my daughters had intended to ask other women to the dance. Tai and I had talked about it, and I supposed that Yang had to get something from Raven.
"What do you think I should do Mr. Owl?" Ruby asked softly.
I hooted, a note of involuntary indignity entering my voice.
"Oh, Mrs. Owl, I'm sorry! I just couldn't—What is that?"
I turned, following the arc of her vision to see Cinder sprinting across the rooftops, clad head to toe in a black leather catsuit. The light of the moon caught her as she leaped, clearing a gap and revealing a dainty domino mask across her eyes. How she intended to hide her identity like that I didn't know. She could have at least worn a full face mask or even a half mask.
Ruby leaped over the railing without a second thought, and I squawked and leaped myself, winging through the air and following Cinder from above. She'd gone through the effort of a costume change? She could have had this over and done within the duration of my conversation with—
The air shifted, a minor change in barometric pressure that nonetheless had me barrel-rolling to the side on instinct alone. A long metal cylinder filled the space I'd just left, hurtling through the air like a massive spear flung by a giant. Unless I missed my guess that was one of Beacon's student lockers.
It impacted the ground below, a massive crack of destroyed concrete reaching my ears. I risked a glance down, just to find Ruby plucking her massive weapon out of it. Did she intend to fight? Alone?
I narrowed my eyes and turned my attention forward. The library was close at hand, and I had to be far more careful than Cinder did. She was aiming to enter a balcony, her gaze fixed firmly on her prize. I swooped higher, aiming for the roof of the building. I landed on boots rather than talons and made my way to the roof access door. It would be locked, at this hour. Any other time I would do this more delicately.
I just didn't have any time.
Five strides took me to the door. Aura filled my limbs as I reached out and tore the handle from its housing, letting the door swing open to admit me. I ignored the stairs, hopping over the railing and falling through the tight spiral. I landed at the bottom of the flight in a crouch, my ax already leaping into my hands and shifting, collapsing into a lever action rifle.
Silently, I made my way out of the stairwell, rifle-shouldered. I wasn't sure what I would do from here, but… I would do what I had to, like always.
Beacons Library contained a small offshoot of the CCT Tower in central Vale, a way for students to contact family that might be too far away. I'd never needed it of course, but I'd accompanied Tai there before.
This wasn't my first time breaking in, either.
I stuck to the shadows, creeping along the service catwalks that hung above the banks of terminals. Cinder had found her way to the center console, a hum on her lips as she worked. A spare scroll slipped from her pocket, the centerpiece of the plan here in Vale.
Just as the scroll flickered to life, the stark image of a black queen across the screen, the door to the library burst open.
Ruby slid to a stop, her bulky rifle trained on Cinder. "Stop right there!"
"You must be Little Red," Cinder smiled thinly. "Charmed to meet you."
She moved, darting at my daughter like a flame-rimmed rocket.
Ruby fired, and my sights came up and snapped onto Cinder. My finger squeezed, just enough to find the bite point of my trigger. I followed the whirl of their battle, Ruby's massive scythe a silver, red, and black whirl of metal that could scarcely find an opening in between Cinder's black glass swords.
My sights were trained on Cinder, but something stayed in my hand. Reminders of old threats echoed in the back of my head as I tracked her. Fire burned in my right arm, phantom pain enough to put a spasm in my trigger finger and drag my sights off of Cinder. I hissed, dragging my sights back onto her with a monumental effort. My teeth grit against the sudden pain. My eyes ached. Sweat dripped down my forehead. Ruby was in danger now, but if I acted against Cinder…
I had to hope she'd called someone. I wasn't ready to move yet.
A glass blade sunk into a nearby terminal just as a familiar shape slipped into my range. A tall man, half his body a strange shadow in my power. Only one man I knew had that many prosthetics; General James Ironwood. I didn't wait around for him to see me. Ruby spun on her heel, surprised by the sudden noise. A rookie mistake, but one that perhaps saved her life.
Cinder took the opportunity to disappear, flinging herself out the window with a jaunty wave I knew was meant only for me.
I grit my teeth and make my way back up to the stairwell. Ruby was safe, that was all that mattered, I told myself. Still, I hesitated, Ruby a hazy sensation on the edge of my range. I clenched my right hand, fingers still shaky from half-remembered, decades-old pain.
I could go to her. With Cinder gone, her task complete, nothing was stopping me.
Nothing physical, at least. I swallowed thickly, a heavy weight settling in my gut. There was still work left to do if I had a shadow of a hope of speaking with my girls again.
Three people entered my range, at the top of the staircase where I'd made my rough entry. Rifles up, moving in formation. James had brought company, hadn't he?
I let my rifle shift back into an ax, the barrel extending into a haft as I shifted my grip. The buttstock folded down, a heavy blade folding out as I made my way up the steps. A bearded ax had more intimidation factor than a rifle, something I would have to rely on to make it out of here without having to kill anyone.
I let my Aura unspool as I took the last several steps. One of the riflemen had his hand to his ear, talking in hushed tones over a comm piece. My first instinct was to use my Semblance, control their sightlines, and force a sense of confusion onto the fight.
But that wasn't an option. James was just downstairs, and he would recognize the petals.
So would Ruby.
No matter how much I wanted to fight, no matter how much nervous energy I needed to burn off, I couldn't afford it. I'd gotten lucky, revealing as much as I had. So instead, I burst into a run, bounding up the stairs two at a time. I kept track of the rifle squad in my head, feeling them move as if they were an extension of my own body.
As soon as I found the top, I pushed. Instead of the enemy combatant, they were likely expecting, a screaming, hooting owl came rushing out of the ruined doorway. I spun through their formation in a tight spiral, forcing them apart in shouted surprise. My wings sprang open and I darted away into the night. I'd expected to dodge surprised gunfire, but to their credit, someone had trained them on proper trigger discipline.
"False alarm command, it was just an owl. No sign of whoever forced their way in." I heard as I made my way towards the abandoned industrial district.
I had to admit, Ruby's form was… good. The more I watched her fight the more I saw Qrow's influence in her style. I was glad he'd stayed a presence in their lives; I'd been worried he would disappear after I'd left. He'd been a mess after Raven had left us.
But thoughts of Ruby only conjured images of her fight with Cinder. Had I teeth to grit, I would.
Something had to change.
"Your youngest is feisty, Summer," Cinder simpered as I landed inside the abandoned, burnt-out warehouse we called home base. "And you were worried for—"
Petals exploded outward, red and white becoming a storm around me. A shape, a mass of petals in the shape of me, rushed towards Cinder as I sprinted forward at an angle to it, my ax already in my hands. It was an old trick, something I was well practiced at doing.
To Cinder's credit, she reacted faster than I'd expected. A lance of boiling glass erupted into motion as soon as I'd acted. But she'd fallen for my gambit, the projectile blowing a massive hole in the lump of petals I'd sent her way. It wasn't much of an opening, but her surprise was enough for me to act.
My off-hand found the tight leather material of her catsuit. My momentum carried us back several steps, and I slammed her against the concrete wall at her back. Before she could move another step, the blade of my ax was at her neck, pressed tight enough to spark her Aura to life. She grinned down at me, amber sparks highlighting eyes of the same color.
"They aren't supposed to be a part of this. I made a deal."
"And they weren't until they insisted on sticking their noses where they don't belong," Cinder whispered, uncaring the blade at her throat. She had a glass spear leveled at the back of my head, after all. I could feel the heat boiling off of it.
I just couldn't bring myself to care. She couldn't punch through my Aura in one hit any more than I could hers.
"Like your stunt on the roof wasn't purposeful." I was out of patience for her. Had been for a long time. "I've been around the block a few times. You crave attention."
It would have been child's play for me to sneak into the library while the entire school was distracted with dance, load the virus, and escape unseen. Yet Cinder had insisted that my one job was to fly oversight, make sure her path was clear. She believed that there was glory in what she did, and that left me to clean up after her.
"And what do you suppose this will solve?" Cinder laughed. "You're walking a tightrope, and if you slip it's not just your life on the line."
I hissed and released her. I hated to admit it, but she was right. If I did anything to Cinder, the blowback would fall on my daughter's head first, and then mine. The storm of red and white didn't let up, nor did the spear of glass leave the back of my head as I took a few steps back.
"I'm being kept in the dark, and I don't like it." I kept my gaze firmly locked on her. I was at a disadvantage in this fight, but I needed to look like I wasn't. "But that doesn't matter. I made a deal; stick to your end and I'll stick to mine."
Cinder smiled, a wide cruel thing that split her face yet never reached her eyes. Joyless; the smile of a predator. "You made a deal, but I never did."
I let my storm die down as two new people entered my range, my ax slipping into my holster. It was best to present as much of a united front as possible when dealing with Roman and his illusion-wielding sidekick. A thought Cinder shared, the heat of the lance disappearing from the back of my head.
"Rare to see you two in the same place," Roman chuckled as he strode in, cane hung jauntily from one elbow. "I'm not interrupting anything, am I?"
I kept one metaphorical eye on the small woman who was always at his side. She made a show of walking around us, finding a nice high place to sit like an uninterested cat. There was a strategy to it, one I was well acquainted with. Still, Neo did not need to attack. Not me, anyway.
"I'll leave you to it. I have more important things to attend to," Cinder said with a gentle wave, a smile still splitting her face. "Tata Summer."
Roman watched her go, uncharacteristically silent, his bowler hat tipped back by a single finger. As soon as she'd rounded the corner he turned to me, a smarmy look under his swoop of orange hair. "I was practically choking on the tension. What did you do, break up with her?"
I fixed him with a half-lidded glare. I had little patience for his… smarm. Maybe in another life. "What's the status on the last Dust shipment?"
"Business from the get? You're so boring," he sighed and replaced his hat with a flourish. "It's on its way to the southeast, same as everything else. Do you want any more details?"
That was as good a segue as any. Best to make it seem like a question related to work. "And it wasn't interrupted this time. You've been struggling with a bunch of first years."
"Now that you mention those brats," he shrugged, making his way to a small table, set out of the way of the center of the warehouse. The 'kitchen' as it were. "I just have to wonder. What's a woman like you even doing in a shit place like this?"
There was no use in lying with Roman. He would have already put together the fact that Ruby at the very least was my daughter. He was a fool, but he was an observant one; you don't make it this far for this long as a career criminal on luck alone. He had a good eye and better instincts.
But he'd also shot at my daughters, multiple times. A little resentment was warranted, even if they were out of his league. The security footage I'd found of Yang punching his little joyride apart had been quite the watch.
"I have my reasons. Once I have proof of receipt, I'll wire the payment to you."
I turned from him and made my way to the stairs at the back of the massive building. It was late, and I was out of words for anyone else. Better to sleep and try and recover. There was a hard few weeks ahead of me, after all.
"So business-like. No wonder you aren't on speaking terms with your kids," Roman called after me.
I stopped but didn't turn. He hadn't left my range, and his bodyguard was on the very edge of it. That put her nearly sixteen feet away from me. Enough time to react, if I had to.
"I did my research, after you pulled those girls out of the proverbial frying pan," Roman continued, putting on a show of fiddling with his cane. "You aren't the first dead woman I've ever worked with, you know?"
"Get to the point." I wasn't happy with how much he seemed to know, but if he wasn't going to start a fight neither was I. My work with Roman was near an end, but like everything else in my life how I handled that end was vitally important.
"You are the most joyless person I've ever met," he sighed. "Maybe I'm just curious. Why would you leave such a wonderful pair of babies? Even if one of them isn't yours."
He meant Yang. Of course, he meant Yang.
"Yang is more mine than you could know."
"So her name is Yang? Cute."
"Cute enough to wreck that flimsy mech you stole," and wasn't I just the proudest mother? Even if I felt a shot of guilt at the errant feeling. "Get some sleep. Your part in this isn't over yet."
"Okay, mom."
I ignored anything else and disappeared in a storm of petals. I needed out of there, fast, and the quickest way was the way I'd been doing it for years; hide in a cloud of visual misinformation and turn into a bird. Bare seconds later, I'd found my way to the top of the warehouse, once more a woman.
Roman had raised a question I asked myself every night. One I still couldn't find a good answer for. And, like every other night, I stared up at the moon and wondered, if I would find some kind of meaning in its shattered, ruined form. Here in Vale the questions burned ever louder in the back of my head, the worry coiled deeper in my gut, a companion I could never truly escape.
And with it came the cold certainty—I knew where my failure had started.
I just didn't know how to fix it.
-----
I always planned a Summer POV! She's not doing great, but I hope this answers a few questions. And if you'd like more answers, you can always head to my Patreon to read the next chapter:
The Girl Who Fell Through the World
Episode 5 - The Girl Who Fell Through the World
- Location
- Oklahoma
Once upon a time, there was a notion; that Remnant was alone in creation, a single world cursed to always wonder what else might be out among the stars. She wasn't ashamed to admit that even she would sit in her tower at night as a child, looking up at the stars and wondering to herself: Was mankind all that existed? Were they the only children of the gods? Or were there other gods and other men, wondering the same thing as they looked up into their own, alien sky?
She had put these questions away, of course, as her captivity wore on her. She had forgotten them when she fell into the arms of her savior. They never occurred to her during her rebellion. They were the concerns of children, and she had grown past them.
And yet, they came rushing back to the forefront of her consciousness as a golden beam of not-energy cut through her lonely castle like the thousands of tons of stone didn't even exist.
Rubble that would crush a lesser being instead halted in midair, power thrumming out through her fingers as she established a zone of safety. It was with curiosity that she stepped around a second beam, watching the way it passed through her domain with a detached curiosity.
The color was familiar, the way it felt was not. Like an absence of energy, something that destroyed not by force but by… stilling the energy around it.
"Strange," she murmured as she twisted her own power around her. In less than an eyeblink she was gone, slipping through space to appear in the court of her collapsing estate. She alighted upon torn stone, the dour landscape of her Grimmlands rent and blasted.
She turned her gaze skyward, and for just a moment her heart fell from her chest. There, hung like a star in her stormy, red sky, was a brilliant golden figure. He was too far away for her to make out his form, but she could tell he was masculine.
Light spilled out across her sky. A thousand different shades, intermixing and mingling in a chaotic stream of color. She turned from the god, and found pure chaos. A storm of hexagonal portals, each depicting a different world, a different scene of destruction. And from these portals poured people, people that she had never before seen. Though she was far from them yet, the bright colors of their battle-damaged garb was obvious even this far out.
The god lashed out at them, beams and waves of other, more indescribable power lancing at the assembled battlegroup.
Some fell, too slow to dodge the incredible power on display. She watched their corpses fall with little interest. The others, the faster ones, moved in a way that looked wrong to her. They were like a swarm of insects, reacting faster than a mortal should be able to. They covered each other with inhuman speed, erecting barriers in the nick of time or distracting the god with a shockwave of mighty power, leveled at an impossible angle to strike the god when he wasn't prepared.
Arcs of lightning skittered past her, aftershock from a deflected blow. With a twist of will and magic, her vision shifted and magnified. What being could lead an army such as this, that could threaten a god?
She was not sure what she was expecting. A human in skin tight silks, a dumb expression written across her face and two twisted wrecks that passed for mortals clinging desperately to her legs was not it. Tiny hexagonal portals twisted around her, cascading down her back like a mantle. Anything else was lost to the chaos of the battle, her impossible cloak and her army shrouding her from view.
But her attention had not gone unnoticed. A portal snapped into existence behind her, and she felt fingers brush against her brain, against her very being. They scrabbled, looking for purchase.
She turned to gaze through the portal, locking eyes with the twisted wreck of a young girl as she wielded her magic once again. A spell wove into being around her, an expansion of a common invisibility spell. Rather than bending light around her form to render her invisible to normal sight, it bent more esoteric energies around her very soul, temporarily removing her being from local space-time.
The girl's vacant brown eyes drifted away from her, returning to her foe as the fingers slipped off the newly erected barrier. The portal snapped closed, its purpose no longer valid.
She turned once again to watch the god disappear, and the girl and her army followed him through a new wild array of portals.
"Interesting," Salem murmured to herself. It had been too long since she'd seen something new.
Her Grimm had found precious little evidence of the short lived battle in her territory. A Harpy returned to her side with a scrap of armor in its talons. An Ursa brought a bloodied bit of fabric. Her Seers gave her only visions of ruined landscape and upturned stone.
She stepped through the ruined foyer of her castle, carefully stepping around rubble with instinctive grace. The worst of the damage had been cleared by her largest Grimm, but that was the least of her concerns. What was a castle compared to what she had just seen?
A slim, delicate hand went to her chin. Her initial worries remained in the back of her mind, but with time came clarity. There was little outside the power of the gods, and the two brothers often adopted many forms; she had seen the darker of the two adopt the form of a dragon, before. But there was always a tell; a common feature between every form.
The being she had seen resembled a golden man, to be sure, but he had lacked a distinctive pair of majestic antlers. In addition, she had never seen the god of Light wearing anything like clothing, let alone the white and yellow skintight material the deity-apparent that had ruined her castle wore. He had been a brilliant shape, features obscured by his own inner light.
"Answers bring only more questions," she mused aloud to herself. The Grimm working around her paid her no heed, preferring to move rubble away from her. "What manner of creature were you?"
The Seer floating by her side crooned, as if her words had brought something into reality. She turned to the floating, tentacled orb with a raised eyebrow. "Show me."
The red and black sphere that served as the Grimm's body flickered, as though smoke within it was dissipating. Revealed in the center was a scene from the point of view of another of her Seers, one she'd sent out to the outlying countryside on a scouting mission.
A flickering, hesitating portal, hexagonal edges fuzzy and indistinct, had seared itself into the world, like another plane was intruding in onto her own. Through it she could see more forms, people clad like the army she had seen waging an impossible war in her skies. They'd moved away from the portal, worried expressions written on their faces.
She watched three shapes stumble through, the portal snapping shut behind them with little fanfare. One moment it was there, the next it was gone entirely. Her view panned down, taking in three shapes she'd seen a scarce few hours ago. Two were still, facedown in the dirt. But the third, between them, was still moving. Struggling up on a single arm, the other a ruined stump, only to collapse face first into the dirt.
"Well," She muttered. "Let us not keep our guests waiting."
It was an extension of will that saw her winged servants turning in the skies, angling towards the three interlopers. A tightening of that will constricted their need to kill, their need to destroy; a difficult thing to control, but one she had some measure of practice with.
"And to think, my home in such disarray." she allowed herself a chuckle as she turned for the only intact staircase left in her castle. "I hope my guests don't mind."
The walk through her halls was as lonely as ever. Here, it was like no destruction had been wrought. Still, questions whirled. It was not often she worried for the life of a mortal, but she had exactly three chances to get the answers she craved, and they were each on death's door if her cursory examination through a Seer from miles away was to be trusted.
It was a lonely walk, but one she often insisted on despite the fact that her personal chambers were a single teleport away. It was the time to think that she valued; her Harpies would take time to cover the distance from her three prizes to the balcony outside her chambers. Time enough to wonder, and to gather herself.
How did the young girl control her army? Why did they dress the way they did? What manner of power did they wield? Had it been magic she would have been able to sense it, yet it had all felt as if a void in the world, empty passages between paragraphs of prose. It was not often she got to explore something new.
She threw the doors of her little used chambers open with a wave of a finger, power rocking them into the walls behind. Just as she strode through, already reaching out to open the door to her expansive balcony, her first Harpy landed.
It deposited a body with little gentleness, leaving it on the stone like a forgotten piece of driftwood. It landed on the railing behind, waiting for her verdict with what passed for bated breath among her monsters. She knelt before it, she found a young man, barely out of his teen years if she remembered the realities of mortality correctly. She rolled him onto his back and found…
Nothing. No breath lifted his chest. His lips were cold and blue, his eyes like vacant dull coals. This child had been for some time now. An extension of power invaded his mind, a poorly developed thing with little in the way of complicated connections or advanced development.
"A pity," she allowed the disappointment to pass. There were two more mortals, ones that were hopefully far less fragile. "Dispose of it."
Her Harpy chirped and descended on the corpse. It was gathered into scything talons sharp enough to cut steel and carried back into the sky. She did not care what was done with it; a sky burial such as this was more of a kindness than a mortal should expect in her land.
Two more Harpies arrived to replace the previous, each with precious cargo in tow. The first deposited a thin, almost emaciated man. Already this was more promising than the first; his chest was rising and falling with some regularity. She attended to him as the final, and perhaps most important piece was dropped. She could tend to the girl last; she often preferred the best for last as it were.
The man before her gazed up at the ceiling with glassy, unseeing eyes. His pupils were blown, dilated so far she wondered if he could see anything at all. A tendril of magic slithered into his mind, showing her something… ruined. His autonomous function was perfectly fine: his brain stem was intact and his nervous system continued to regulate his breathing and other such functions with ease. But the areas of higher function were…
It was like a wildfire had ripped through his brain. He wasn't a person anymore, he was a barely living lump of flesh. Yet there remained something interesting, a structure of brain matter she couldn't quite explain. She couldn't explain its function, and yet it was the only part of his brain that was pristine. Untouched, even.
A groan sounded behind her. The sensation of familiar fingers settled against her being, but they were thin, unfounded. Weak. She needed not weave a spell to avoid their grasp again.
She turned, leaving the man on his back where he laid. The girl, clad in stained silk, had managed to lift herself up using her remaining arm. Glassy, drooping eyes slipped past her, tightly focused one moment and drifting and weak the next. Dirty, grimy hair cascaded down a slack expression. Drool stained one corner of her mouth. Her silks were dirty and caked with blood. A ruined device of some kind collapsed from her back, breaking into so much debris on the stone of the balcony below.
And yet she found determination in the girl. "Now, you," Salem whispered. "You have something, don't you?"
The girl murmured, a mess of gibberish that she could not understand. She watched her try to stand, teeth gritted and limbs shaking.
She nearly managed, only to collapse into Salem's waiting arms.
"Be careful, dear," Salem led her into her chambers. "I have much to ask of you."
Salem turned her attentions to the fingers skittering across her mind as she laid the wreck of a girl on her unused, pristine bed. A tendril of magic found the same structure in her brain that she had seen in the man's. But hers was distorted, overgrown, pressing in on the surrounding structures with an insistence. It was here that she could feel the fingers extending from, weak and undirected as they were.
She wielded her magic for one final time, and the girl's eyes slid shut. The fingers receded into the tumorous growth. In all ways the girl grew still, a simple young woman sleeping off a bad night. Salem would have answers, sooner or later. She had time to wait, after all.
Time enough to deal with the one remaining loose end, still staring up at the sky from her balcony.
She had put these questions away, of course, as her captivity wore on her. She had forgotten them when she fell into the arms of her savior. They never occurred to her during her rebellion. They were the concerns of children, and she had grown past them.
And yet, they came rushing back to the forefront of her consciousness as a golden beam of not-energy cut through her lonely castle like the thousands of tons of stone didn't even exist.
Rubble that would crush a lesser being instead halted in midair, power thrumming out through her fingers as she established a zone of safety. It was with curiosity that she stepped around a second beam, watching the way it passed through her domain with a detached curiosity.
The color was familiar, the way it felt was not. Like an absence of energy, something that destroyed not by force but by… stilling the energy around it.
"Strange," she murmured as she twisted her own power around her. In less than an eyeblink she was gone, slipping through space to appear in the court of her collapsing estate. She alighted upon torn stone, the dour landscape of her Grimmlands rent and blasted.
She turned her gaze skyward, and for just a moment her heart fell from her chest. There, hung like a star in her stormy, red sky, was a brilliant golden figure. He was too far away for her to make out his form, but she could tell he was masculine.
Light spilled out across her sky. A thousand different shades, intermixing and mingling in a chaotic stream of color. She turned from the god, and found pure chaos. A storm of hexagonal portals, each depicting a different world, a different scene of destruction. And from these portals poured people, people that she had never before seen. Though she was far from them yet, the bright colors of their battle-damaged garb was obvious even this far out.
The god lashed out at them, beams and waves of other, more indescribable power lancing at the assembled battlegroup.
Some fell, too slow to dodge the incredible power on display. She watched their corpses fall with little interest. The others, the faster ones, moved in a way that looked wrong to her. They were like a swarm of insects, reacting faster than a mortal should be able to. They covered each other with inhuman speed, erecting barriers in the nick of time or distracting the god with a shockwave of mighty power, leveled at an impossible angle to strike the god when he wasn't prepared.
Arcs of lightning skittered past her, aftershock from a deflected blow. With a twist of will and magic, her vision shifted and magnified. What being could lead an army such as this, that could threaten a god?
She was not sure what she was expecting. A human in skin tight silks, a dumb expression written across her face and two twisted wrecks that passed for mortals clinging desperately to her legs was not it. Tiny hexagonal portals twisted around her, cascading down her back like a mantle. Anything else was lost to the chaos of the battle, her impossible cloak and her army shrouding her from view.
But her attention had not gone unnoticed. A portal snapped into existence behind her, and she felt fingers brush against her brain, against her very being. They scrabbled, looking for purchase.
She turned to gaze through the portal, locking eyes with the twisted wreck of a young girl as she wielded her magic once again. A spell wove into being around her, an expansion of a common invisibility spell. Rather than bending light around her form to render her invisible to normal sight, it bent more esoteric energies around her very soul, temporarily removing her being from local space-time.
The girl's vacant brown eyes drifted away from her, returning to her foe as the fingers slipped off the newly erected barrier. The portal snapped closed, its purpose no longer valid.
She turned once again to watch the god disappear, and the girl and her army followed him through a new wild array of portals.
"Interesting," Salem murmured to herself. It had been too long since she'd seen something new.
Her Grimm had found precious little evidence of the short lived battle in her territory. A Harpy returned to her side with a scrap of armor in its talons. An Ursa brought a bloodied bit of fabric. Her Seers gave her only visions of ruined landscape and upturned stone.
She stepped through the ruined foyer of her castle, carefully stepping around rubble with instinctive grace. The worst of the damage had been cleared by her largest Grimm, but that was the least of her concerns. What was a castle compared to what she had just seen?
A slim, delicate hand went to her chin. Her initial worries remained in the back of her mind, but with time came clarity. There was little outside the power of the gods, and the two brothers often adopted many forms; she had seen the darker of the two adopt the form of a dragon, before. But there was always a tell; a common feature between every form.
The being she had seen resembled a golden man, to be sure, but he had lacked a distinctive pair of majestic antlers. In addition, she had never seen the god of Light wearing anything like clothing, let alone the white and yellow skintight material the deity-apparent that had ruined her castle wore. He had been a brilliant shape, features obscured by his own inner light.
"Answers bring only more questions," she mused aloud to herself. The Grimm working around her paid her no heed, preferring to move rubble away from her. "What manner of creature were you?"
The Seer floating by her side crooned, as if her words had brought something into reality. She turned to the floating, tentacled orb with a raised eyebrow. "Show me."
The red and black sphere that served as the Grimm's body flickered, as though smoke within it was dissipating. Revealed in the center was a scene from the point of view of another of her Seers, one she'd sent out to the outlying countryside on a scouting mission.
A flickering, hesitating portal, hexagonal edges fuzzy and indistinct, had seared itself into the world, like another plane was intruding in onto her own. Through it she could see more forms, people clad like the army she had seen waging an impossible war in her skies. They'd moved away from the portal, worried expressions written on their faces.
She watched three shapes stumble through, the portal snapping shut behind them with little fanfare. One moment it was there, the next it was gone entirely. Her view panned down, taking in three shapes she'd seen a scarce few hours ago. Two were still, facedown in the dirt. But the third, between them, was still moving. Struggling up on a single arm, the other a ruined stump, only to collapse face first into the dirt.
"Well," She muttered. "Let us not keep our guests waiting."
It was an extension of will that saw her winged servants turning in the skies, angling towards the three interlopers. A tightening of that will constricted their need to kill, their need to destroy; a difficult thing to control, but one she had some measure of practice with.
"And to think, my home in such disarray." she allowed herself a chuckle as she turned for the only intact staircase left in her castle. "I hope my guests don't mind."
The walk through her halls was as lonely as ever. Here, it was like no destruction had been wrought. Still, questions whirled. It was not often she worried for the life of a mortal, but she had exactly three chances to get the answers she craved, and they were each on death's door if her cursory examination through a Seer from miles away was to be trusted.
It was a lonely walk, but one she often insisted on despite the fact that her personal chambers were a single teleport away. It was the time to think that she valued; her Harpies would take time to cover the distance from her three prizes to the balcony outside her chambers. Time enough to wonder, and to gather herself.
How did the young girl control her army? Why did they dress the way they did? What manner of power did they wield? Had it been magic she would have been able to sense it, yet it had all felt as if a void in the world, empty passages between paragraphs of prose. It was not often she got to explore something new.
She threw the doors of her little used chambers open with a wave of a finger, power rocking them into the walls behind. Just as she strode through, already reaching out to open the door to her expansive balcony, her first Harpy landed.
It deposited a body with little gentleness, leaving it on the stone like a forgotten piece of driftwood. It landed on the railing behind, waiting for her verdict with what passed for bated breath among her monsters. She knelt before it, she found a young man, barely out of his teen years if she remembered the realities of mortality correctly. She rolled him onto his back and found…
Nothing. No breath lifted his chest. His lips were cold and blue, his eyes like vacant dull coals. This child had been for some time now. An extension of power invaded his mind, a poorly developed thing with little in the way of complicated connections or advanced development.
"A pity," she allowed the disappointment to pass. There were two more mortals, ones that were hopefully far less fragile. "Dispose of it."
Her Harpy chirped and descended on the corpse. It was gathered into scything talons sharp enough to cut steel and carried back into the sky. She did not care what was done with it; a sky burial such as this was more of a kindness than a mortal should expect in her land.
Two more Harpies arrived to replace the previous, each with precious cargo in tow. The first deposited a thin, almost emaciated man. Already this was more promising than the first; his chest was rising and falling with some regularity. She attended to him as the final, and perhaps most important piece was dropped. She could tend to the girl last; she often preferred the best for last as it were.
The man before her gazed up at the ceiling with glassy, unseeing eyes. His pupils were blown, dilated so far she wondered if he could see anything at all. A tendril of magic slithered into his mind, showing her something… ruined. His autonomous function was perfectly fine: his brain stem was intact and his nervous system continued to regulate his breathing and other such functions with ease. But the areas of higher function were…
It was like a wildfire had ripped through his brain. He wasn't a person anymore, he was a barely living lump of flesh. Yet there remained something interesting, a structure of brain matter she couldn't quite explain. She couldn't explain its function, and yet it was the only part of his brain that was pristine. Untouched, even.
A groan sounded behind her. The sensation of familiar fingers settled against her being, but they were thin, unfounded. Weak. She needed not weave a spell to avoid their grasp again.
She turned, leaving the man on his back where he laid. The girl, clad in stained silk, had managed to lift herself up using her remaining arm. Glassy, drooping eyes slipped past her, tightly focused one moment and drifting and weak the next. Dirty, grimy hair cascaded down a slack expression. Drool stained one corner of her mouth. Her silks were dirty and caked with blood. A ruined device of some kind collapsed from her back, breaking into so much debris on the stone of the balcony below.
And yet she found determination in the girl. "Now, you," Salem whispered. "You have something, don't you?"
The girl murmured, a mess of gibberish that she could not understand. She watched her try to stand, teeth gritted and limbs shaking.
She nearly managed, only to collapse into Salem's waiting arms.
"Be careful, dear," Salem led her into her chambers. "I have much to ask of you."
Salem turned her attentions to the fingers skittering across her mind as she laid the wreck of a girl on her unused, pristine bed. A tendril of magic found the same structure in her brain that she had seen in the man's. But hers was distorted, overgrown, pressing in on the surrounding structures with an insistence. It was here that she could feel the fingers extending from, weak and undirected as they were.
She wielded her magic for one final time, and the girl's eyes slid shut. The fingers receded into the tumorous growth. In all ways the girl grew still, a simple young woman sleeping off a bad night. Salem would have answers, sooner or later. She had time to wait, after all.
Time enough to deal with the one remaining loose end, still staring up at the sky from her balcony.
Episode 6 - Meetings
- Location
- Oklahoma
It hasn't been a year yet! I'm still good, I'm still thinking about this one! Anyone else ready for more horrible mother content?
-----
"You're sure this'll work?" Yang asked, voice barely audible over the crackle of their fire. The southeast of Vale was a gentle climate, but even here the night wind had a bite to it.
Her sister hummed, an unidentifiable tool held over the internals of her scythe. Yang didn't recognize the assembly at hand, but her sister was a certified tinker. She'd probably added it when the older girl wasn't looking. "I don't know, honestly. Capturing the kinetic energy from my recoil isn't hard, but storing it is a problem. It would be so easy to just convert it to electricity, but then what am I gonna do with it? And then what happens if the storage medium is destructively disturbed? Maybe I could—"
Yang nudged the smaller girl, cutting off a second rant before it could begin. "No, not that. I know that'll work, you're the one building it. I meant the mission."
It was harebrained, barely planned, and extremely last minute. They'd received word they were cleared for a supervised mission, and Ruby had immediately dragged them down to the mission board. There, buried beneath a pile of milk-runs and things that would barely take them outside the city's walls, was a recon mission.
To the only place in the southeast anyone knew anything about.
Mountain Glenn.
"Of course it'll work!" Ruby whispered. "Blake said there was a base in the southeast, and where else would they put a base but underground?"
Yang checked their companions again. Oobleck was sound asleep, snoring away with his back to the fire. She had to imagine that keeping up his level of energy would lead to a man who slept hard and long, or maybe she just hoped. Blake and Weiss had both fallen asleep, Weiss from pure exhaustion and Blake from the heat and warmth of the fire. She didn't bother to stifle the fond smile as her gaze slipped past her partner.
"It's a slim chance," Yang allowed. She knew it was the best one they had, but she still felt the need to point it out to her over-energetic leader. "That place is infested with Grimm, remember?"
"It's supposed to be. That's why we're on this mission. They wouldn't send students to a place like that if they really thought it was overrun, would they?" Ruby responded without looking up from her work. Yang watched as she placed an extremely delicate looking wire somewhere deep in her scythe, her mind elsewhere. Would they send students, even supervised ones, to a place so badly infested? It was in their future job description, after all.
"Oh well. It's not like any Grimm that are there are gonna be able to stand up to us, right?" Yang threw herself backward with an exaggerated sigh, collapsing into her sleeping bag with her hands casually behind her head. "We're Team RWBY! We're kinda the best, you know?"
"Yeah, we are," Ruby said absently, her words slurred like her tongue was stuck out in focus. Yang was almost certain it was, given how common a habit it had been for her in her work. Neither Yang nor their father had been able to break her of the habit, and they doubted they ever would.
For a moment she just took in the stars; here, out in the wilderness, there was no light pollution to hide the vibrant paint-streaks in the sky. For years when she was younger, she looked up at the sky and wondered if her mother had found her place up there, looking down on her even after death. It was a memory tinged dark with frustration and anger. Yet, she couldn't think of much else, no matter how hard she tried. So instead, she pushed them to the side. There were better things to do right now, she could deal with her feelings later.
"Alright, I'll humor you. What are you trying to do, exactly?" She asked, rolling over to face Ruby again.
"Well," Ruby said without moving an inch from her focused hunch. "You know my overcharged rounds?"
"The ones Dad told you not to use?" Yang deadpanned. She knew the ones; the silver cartridges with red bands that Ruby kept stashed under her dresser. Her elder sister was content to let her believe they were a secret.
"Pssh, they're perfectly safe to use! I made sure to tune my baby to handle the recoil perfectly fine!"
She was hyper-focusing, drilling down into a project like it was all that mattered. Yang recognized it all too well. She hadn't turned, even at the obvious poke. They both knew why Dad had told her not to use those rounds; she'd blown the roof off the Signal machine shop making her first batch, and her second batch had nearly killed her when they shattered the internal mechanisms of her scythe. But she knew better than anyone else around Ruby that there was no stopping her when she fixated on one of her projects; that it was better to help her and make sure she was as safe as she could be.
She'd helped Ruby sneak tools into her room when Dad had grounded her, after all.
"Okay, okay. What do they have to do with this?" She said with a waved hand she knew her sister wouldn't see.
"Well, those rounds are really good for throwing me around the battlefield extra fast! But what if I don't want to go fast, but I still need something that powerful? I'd need to plant my scythe to keep from getting flung across the battlefield!" Ruby said, her tools still clinking away.
"You? Not going fast? Who are you and where's my sister?" She jabbed as lightheartedly as she could manage.
"So, I figured—What if I saved that energy somehow? So!" Ruby spun, her scythe clutched in her arms like a baby, expanded into its bulky rifle form. Yang took in the red metal of the thing in front of her, finding…
"You added another bolt?"
"Not another bolt, you silly goose!" Ruby ratcheted the mechanism under her open bolt assembly, a throaty click sounding from inside the weapon. "This activates my special, brand new, awesome adaptive energy control and storage array!"
Ruby, glasses perched low on her nose, a streak of grease under one eye, and her hair pulled back out of her face in a tiny ponytail. A wide grin split her face, one full of pride and joy.
"...Which does?" Yang asked hesitantly. Ruby's track record with her little experiments told her that the most likely answer was explode, and the prospect had her a touch nervous. Enough to scoot back in the dirt, like a few extra inches would save her life.
"Think of it like a really advanced gas blowback system, but instead of just letting the energy of the recoil bleed off into heat and kickback, it captures it! Then I can use that energy directly! Right now I've just got a kinetic battery system set up, but I should be able to build a system to convert that energy into electricity or heat or even more exotic forms of energy!"
"...What's a kinetic battery?" Yang asked, mind reeling. She was smart, but Ruby took it to a whole new level.
"It's obvious, isn't it? It's like a battery, but instead of electricity, it stores kinetic energy."
A moment of silence of passed between the sisters, broken only by the snores of their sleeping companions and the rustle of the leaves above.
"How does that… Ruby, that doesn't make any sense."
"Oh, Yang, you must be really tired. It's super simple, actually!" Ruby laughed at her, setting her scythe aside. "I'm sure anyone could figure it out easily enough, with enough time with the system."
Yang just shook her head as her sister went back to her work. She'd been saying that line as long as she could remember, and as ever, Yang found it rang hollow. She feared Ruby overestimated her intelligence; she remembered the one time the younger girl tried to explain how her special ammo worked, Yang had blanked out as soon as the equations on the blackboard reached the bottom.
"Have fun with that sis, I need to go take a walk. Nature calls, you know?" It wasn't quite a lie, it was part of the reason she was getting up to leave.
Just not all of it. She needed to think, to clear her head. Maybe if she was lucky, she'd stumble across what they were hunting for while she was out.
A long wander later, she fell face-first into exactly that.
"Zwei, slow down, wait for us!" Ruby called after the squat gray corgi as he charged deep into the wilderness.
"Did you see where she went?" Blake yelled after Ruby. They were charging through a copse of trees, together only by dint of the barking dog leading them forward.
"No! She said she was gonna go to the bathroom!" Even as she shouted this, Ruby couldn't help but kick herself. She'd been drawn into her tinkering again, and it had been hours by the time she looked up, her full toolkit scattered around her and Crescent Rose gleaming bright and new, the full details of what she'd installed blossoming in her mind—a full blueprint for her kinetic energy capture system, but fuzzy, hard to explain—before she noticed the position of the moon and the fact that her sister was still missing.
"This is just like her," Weiss huffed. "I can't believe she disappeared like this!"
Blake started in on Weiss, "Hey! She's been under a lot of stress and—"
"Girls!" Oobleck didn't shout, but the firm projection of his voice stopped them in their tracks. "Fighting amongst ourselves will not return our missing comrade to our sides! And besides, Zwei seems to have found something."
Their professor pointed past them, past an oak tree, where the corgi stood anxiously, nose pointed down into a deep, dark hole.
"She fell into a hole?" Blake muttered. "That feels… strange."
Ruby shifted, and adjusted her glasses so they sat better on her nose. She'd switched them sometime during her fugue, and they'd gone crooked during their run. Guilt nipped at her stomach like Zwei with his toys; she knew Yang was stressed, she knew her sister was struggling, and she'd let her wander off anyway!
"It's not surprising," Oobleck said as he approached. "Mountain Glenn's infrastructure is years out of date, she likely fell into one of the tunnels they expanded into close to the end."
"Could… she'll be fine, right?" Ruby asked quietly, gaming stilling a nervous stutter.
"Your sister is made of tougher stuff than that," Weiss responded, and behind the backs of their teammate and their professor, she leaned against her partner. "You're blaming yourself. Stop it."
Deft fingers unwound the tight grip on the haft of her scythe, the contact bracing. "But I could have stopped her. She left because I was too absorbed in working on my baby."
"And? Yang is her own person, you can't stop her from making mistakes like this." Weiss shifted, and Ruby saw her swallow words that would have been harsher. It was a step forward for the princess, she knew, but she was still anxious. Worried.
"I don't think she fell straight down," Blake was saying as she knelt by the opening. It was hard for Ruby to see in the dark at the best of times, but by the light of the moon and the stars, she could just about make out the girl pointing down into the hole. "Looks like whatever collapsed made a steep incline. She'll be fine."
Ruby squared her shoulders. She was the team leader, and team leaders didn't let guilt stop them from doing what needed to be done. She took a deep breath, and pushed down the piece of her quaking and wondering if Yang had just stumbled in the very base they were secretly hunting for, the piece worrying that her older sister had bitten off far more than she could chew.
"Okay. Let's follow her and get her out of there. But we should be ready for anything."
"Yes, indeed. Once more unto the breach, and all that," Oobleck clapped her on the back at that and smiled. "I see you're taking Ozpin's words to heart."
Ruby nodded, tongue glued to the roof of her mouth, before she leapt down, Zwei on her heels and her team at her back. Her hands tightened on the haft of her weapon as she fell, sliding down the rough incline as best she could, to absorb the impact at the bottom with her aura and a roll. Her team fell behind her, each landing as gracefully as her.
"Well, Miss Rose. Where to next?" Oobleck asked as he approached, hands still held behind his back.
She looked down and met her dog's eyes. Zwei yipped at her nod and darted off into the wide tunnel they'd found themselves in. She followed and called back, "We follow Zwei! Make sure you stay close!"
They were so focused, they barely paid any attention to the ruins they charged into, an entire underground forgotten as they went on the hunt for their missing sister. For a moment, just one, Ruby thought that everything would be okay. There were no signs of residency, they didn't encounter anyone as they ran. Zwei would lead them to Yang, and they would all laugh.
When Zwei found a collapsed White Fang soldier, groaning as she tried to reach for the shattered radio in front of her, Ruby's heart fell out of her chest.
"Look at it this way," Blake said as Weiss kicked the radio away. "She wasn't captured?"
Somehow, that wasn't as comforting to Ruby as Blake likely thought it was.
It was with my confrontation with Cinder fresh in my mind that I found myself winging through the night towards Vale's greatest shame. For all that it had been my job to interface with Roman and pay him for his work, I had been kept in the dark about what, exactly, the purpose of all of that Dust was. I had an eerie sensation, almost a premonition, born from long experience and a healthy level of pessimism. There were only two reasons a group would need quite that much Dust, after all.
But I couldn't focus on that right now. I needed to find my way into Mountain Glenn. I flew low over the forest, eyes darting about for any sign of human life. Tracks, a vehicle, anything. Half-remembered lessons told me that there had been ways in and out of the mountain during its heyday, and while the tunnels had been collapsed, Adam would have needed to clear at least one out to make it his base of operations.
Which made it very fortunate that I found a three strong patrol of White Fang operatives, strolling lazily down a beaten desire path as if they had nary a worry in the world. This far away from civilization, usually they really wouldn't have cause for alarm.
Sadly for them, I was here.
I descended from on high, wings giving way to arms as I crashed into their midst.
The first went down before he could bring up his aura, the butt of Sundered Rose crashing into his temple before anyone could so much as shout. The others were quicker on the draw. A tall woman swung at me with a long, sparking baton. I avoided her strike, preferring to go for the final man, who was scrambling for the radio on his belt.
Three blows shattered his measly Aura, and he went down for the count as I hooked the beard of my ax around his leg and yanked him off his feet. His head cracked against a root as I plucked the radio from his belt.
The woman lunged at me, stun baton aiming for my gut as she shouted wordlessly. If I was anyone, anything else, she might even have gotten me. But I could feel her every movement through my power.
I spun around her, knocking the baton from her hand easily as I slipped Sundered Rose back into its holster. I hammered a fist into her side, then a kick into the back of her knee. She collapsed in a heap from the pain, blunted though it would have been through her Aura.
I knelt on her back and reached down to take her radio as well. Absently, I crushed the extra as I slipped it onto my belt. "Where's the entrance?"
"Fuck off!" She grunted. "When we—"
"No. The entrance and you get to live." I ground the point of my knee into her spine, sparks of Aura flaring as I worked. "I'm only one woman; surely your compatriots can handle me?"
It was a standoff; my captive panting in the dirt with my knee digging painfully into her back, one arm twisted violently to dissuade any escape attempt. The light was dim, dim enough that I could only make out the stark white of her uniform and mask, and the bare flicker of a tapetum lucidum behind the visor.
"Clock's ticking." To drive my point home, I slipped my ax from its holster once again and dug the blade into the dirt by her face. "I'm getting impatient."
She huffed for a moment longer, before all the fight bled out of her. "Fine. See you if you fucking survive. You just follow the path until you get to the foot of the mountain, and the service door is behind a shrub."
"Thanks for your cooperation," I said as I shattered her Aura with a final knee twist and butt stroke from my weapon. I left her groaning where I left her and followed their path. I remained human, the cool night air on my skin bracing. I tapped a staccato rhythm out on my ax as I approached the mountain, thoughts spinning. My arm ached again, a pain that ended a few inches past my fingers. I ignored it.
What did I hope I would find? I didn't need proof Cinder was doing things behind my back, I knew she was. I was in the dark about her little black queen program, as much as I was in the dark about her intentions with Roman's stolen Dust. I knew that giving me the responsibility of handling payments was her way of taunting me, of dangling information I wanted just out of my reach.
I was really a creature of awful habit, wasn't I? Cut ties. I'm sorry. I no longer had the notes, lost in a battle a lifetime ago, but I remembered them like the day I'd received them. I'd cut more ties than I would care to ever admit, and every time I regretted it. They may not ever get to know me, but I could at least make sure they got to go home to Tai at the end of the day.
Absently, I clipped my pilfered radio to my belt and connected my earbud to it. Any information was good information, and any information was something else to think about.
My walk turned into a run when the radio crackled in my ear. "—blonde one. She's cornered in an empty storage room."
"Holy shit, there's more of them!"
"How much longer until the train is loaded?"
"Is that a fucking corgi?"
My run became a sprint. The path, the trees, the stars in the sky, they were little more than streaks of paint in my darkening tunnel-vision. I was already close enough to the mountain for it to dominate my vision. I've already picked out the carefully maintained shrubbery my victim mentioned when I approach. Opening the heavy metal service hatch, hinges suspiciously free of the rust of time, stalls me for just a moment, and then I'm rushing again, boots pounding down old steel and past broken fluorescent lights. My only clues about where to go were thin strips of portable emergency lighting.
The fuel for my sprint was the continued shouts over the radio.
"Get the train going!"
"We don't have enough dust onboard to-"
"Just do it!"
The gunshots and shouts over the line never ceased, and no matter how much I strained, I couldn't quite make out the sound of my girls. I had to assume that was a good thing, that the continued fighting meant they were still okay.
Until then, I had to do what I came here for. Even if I wanted to sprint for them, the best thing I could do was stop that train.
I came to another door, finally. My axe cut through the thin metal with a horrible scream, my Aura keeping me safe as I crashed through it. I emerged into a cavern, cut from limestone to make room for a massive train station.
And the train was about to leave.
I jumped, planted my feet on the railing before me, drew my rifle, and pushed. At the same time, I fired backward, and I became a white and red rocket aimed at the thick glass of the engine at the head of the line. I was moving fast enough that the shocked White Fang below couldn't react fast enough to fire at me, to stop me.
But the train was already in motion, and I missed my target. Decades of training barely saved me, as I twisted in the air to fire again and redirect my angle towards a window along the side of the train, several cars away from the engine. Just before I crashed through the glass, the compartment came into my range.
There was a familiar woman lounging on a crate.
I crash through the window and roll to a stop. The pink and brown haired girl lunging at me with a knife extended from her parasol is just an illusion; the real Neo was hiding behind a second illusion. My gun barks, and her illusions shatter into a storm of multicolored glass as she dodges out of the way at the last second. She stops with a gentle spin, parasol extended and twirling lazily on one shoulder.
"Neopolitan." I slipped three bullets from my belt pouch and push them into Sundered Rose's magazine tube, the sharp clicks echoing in the confined space. She circled me as I did so, eyeing me with something close to appreciation, eyes twinkling enough that I wonder if she's affecting it with one of her illusions. Was it strange for her that I could see through them so easily; I could imagine being fascinated by such a thing, or even frustrated. "Rare to see you so far away from Roman."
She just shrugged and gestured deeper into the train, before turning to look me up and down curiously. She was entirely unruffled, not a single brown or pink hair out of place, despite the rate at which she'd had to dodge. There was a question on her face as she slung her parasol across her shoulders and cocks a hip. The raised eyebrow just made it clearer; Why are you here, Summer?
She was a smart girl. She could figure it out. I stepped forward and brushed past her. I didn't have the time to deal with Neopolitan right now, not while we were on the track to-
She grabbed me by the cloak and pulled, hard enough that I stumble back into a hook kick to the face. There was no time to curse or question; I was already moving to bat away the parasol strikes, axe shuddering under the blows. There was an anger in Neo's eyes, but it was gone in between blows, replaced by focus and… joy?
I narrowed my eyes. Another fucking fight junkie. "Neopolitan, stop. You don't want this. Not with me."
She just blew a strand of hair out of her face and smiled. She winked and swapped the color of her eyes, and all I could do was sigh. My axe flips around, shifting into a rifle for long enough to fire a single round at her from the hip. It shattered against her Aura-imbued parasol, but it was distraction enough for me to close in and aim a cut for her gut.
It was for naught. She delicately batted it aside and spun to put a kick into my chin, exactly where she'd struck me earlier. I leaned back, swinging up with my axe as I do, her boot skidding against my cheek. It missed, the small girl freakishly flexible, enough to twist and catch the haft on her other boot and use it to launch herself up into the air.
She flipped, a beautifully graceful thing I couldn't help but admire for the sheer skill of it, and came to rest on the crate she'd started on with a flourish, crossing her legs and leaning back. She was grinning wide, and with another wink she waggled her eyebrows at me. It was obviously a clear attempt to pull me deeper into the fight. Anger bubbled up, anger at her refusal to take this seriously, fury at the continued danger to my family, anger at myself.
So I lashed out. My petals whipped into reality, becoming a thin swarm around us as I close in on her. Several petals batter her, whirling across her vision and rustling in her eyes to keep her from—
An illusion shattered into glass against me, a kamikaze version of my opponent. The shock, both at the sudden feeling of my Aura flashing and the fact that she'd already worked out an obvious weakness of my power. I don't have time to dwell on the vague sense of interest that piques before she was driving a kick into my gut. I barely had time to turn aside enough to bleed off the force and bind her leg with my axe. I have to distract her.
The petals whipped into her face, but another illusion hurled itself at me, this fake opponent blowing a kiss at me before shattering against a raised arm. The strike was enough to let her slip out of my grasp and swing at me again. I caught the parasol in my open hand and pulled her in, axe cutting down at her shoulder. But she turned, planted her back into my front, and flipped, hurling me away while remaining unharmed in place. I gritted my teeth against the pain of the slide, and I cursed myself. I was being soft on her, softer than I ever would have been at her age.
I stood and faced her, only idly noting we were back where we started. The story of my life. "Neo. Get out of the way and let me—"
A hydraulic hiss sounded behind us, metal grinding on metal as the door to the train car opened. Three girls entered my range and I froze, just as they did. I recognized the one in the center, how could I not? I couldn't breathe, my body refused to obey me. Neo just sighed and shook her head, bidding me a farewell with a simple wave as she stepped away into a simple illusion and vanished, leaping off the train.
I needed to run. I needed to move. I should leave, just like her.
I couldn't. I couldn't manage it. My daughter was right there.
"Go ahead girls. I can handle this alone." Yang's voice was hard as stone, a dam atop a lake of deserved fury.
They listened to her, stepping gingerly past me on either side. I couldn't spare them any attention, save what it took to note the withering disgust in amber eyes and the bewilderment in blue. I couldn't blame them.
Then they're gone, and I'm left with my daughter and a dusting of petals across the ground. A hand stayed at the proverbial lever of my Semblance, the pressure a comforting embrace.
We waited like that for what felt like an hour, but it must have only been a few moments. Yang's arm twitched, like she wanted to reach up for me, but couldn't bring herself to. Was she worried that, if she reached out, I would disappear again?
My feet moved without my consent. I turned, slowly, to take in my eldest. Last I'd seen her this close, she'd been barely a few years old, quietly sleeping in Ruby's crib, holding her baby sister close to her chest. She'd been ever so small then, so small I'd wondered if she would ever grow up. I'd hoped she wouldn't have to.
Now she's almost as tall as her father, but she looks far too much like her mother for it to do anything but hurt my heart. She takes after Tai in all the ways that matter, the two influences coming together to make Yang her own being, her own person. I smiled at her, small and sad. Here she was, feet planted and weapons ready to defend her home. And I'd missed it, all of it.
I couldn't help the sad smile that fell across my face. "You've grown so much, my little sun."
-----
And the fallout of that particular conversation can be found live right now at Patreon Dot Com!
-----
"You're sure this'll work?" Yang asked, voice barely audible over the crackle of their fire. The southeast of Vale was a gentle climate, but even here the night wind had a bite to it.
Her sister hummed, an unidentifiable tool held over the internals of her scythe. Yang didn't recognize the assembly at hand, but her sister was a certified tinker. She'd probably added it when the older girl wasn't looking. "I don't know, honestly. Capturing the kinetic energy from my recoil isn't hard, but storing it is a problem. It would be so easy to just convert it to electricity, but then what am I gonna do with it? And then what happens if the storage medium is destructively disturbed? Maybe I could—"
Yang nudged the smaller girl, cutting off a second rant before it could begin. "No, not that. I know that'll work, you're the one building it. I meant the mission."
It was harebrained, barely planned, and extremely last minute. They'd received word they were cleared for a supervised mission, and Ruby had immediately dragged them down to the mission board. There, buried beneath a pile of milk-runs and things that would barely take them outside the city's walls, was a recon mission.
To the only place in the southeast anyone knew anything about.
Mountain Glenn.
"Of course it'll work!" Ruby whispered. "Blake said there was a base in the southeast, and where else would they put a base but underground?"
Yang checked their companions again. Oobleck was sound asleep, snoring away with his back to the fire. She had to imagine that keeping up his level of energy would lead to a man who slept hard and long, or maybe she just hoped. Blake and Weiss had both fallen asleep, Weiss from pure exhaustion and Blake from the heat and warmth of the fire. She didn't bother to stifle the fond smile as her gaze slipped past her partner.
"It's a slim chance," Yang allowed. She knew it was the best one they had, but she still felt the need to point it out to her over-energetic leader. "That place is infested with Grimm, remember?"
"It's supposed to be. That's why we're on this mission. They wouldn't send students to a place like that if they really thought it was overrun, would they?" Ruby responded without looking up from her work. Yang watched as she placed an extremely delicate looking wire somewhere deep in her scythe, her mind elsewhere. Would they send students, even supervised ones, to a place so badly infested? It was in their future job description, after all.
"Oh well. It's not like any Grimm that are there are gonna be able to stand up to us, right?" Yang threw herself backward with an exaggerated sigh, collapsing into her sleeping bag with her hands casually behind her head. "We're Team RWBY! We're kinda the best, you know?"
"Yeah, we are," Ruby said absently, her words slurred like her tongue was stuck out in focus. Yang was almost certain it was, given how common a habit it had been for her in her work. Neither Yang nor their father had been able to break her of the habit, and they doubted they ever would.
For a moment she just took in the stars; here, out in the wilderness, there was no light pollution to hide the vibrant paint-streaks in the sky. For years when she was younger, she looked up at the sky and wondered if her mother had found her place up there, looking down on her even after death. It was a memory tinged dark with frustration and anger. Yet, she couldn't think of much else, no matter how hard she tried. So instead, she pushed them to the side. There were better things to do right now, she could deal with her feelings later.
"Alright, I'll humor you. What are you trying to do, exactly?" She asked, rolling over to face Ruby again.
"Well," Ruby said without moving an inch from her focused hunch. "You know my overcharged rounds?"
"The ones Dad told you not to use?" Yang deadpanned. She knew the ones; the silver cartridges with red bands that Ruby kept stashed under her dresser. Her elder sister was content to let her believe they were a secret.
"Pssh, they're perfectly safe to use! I made sure to tune my baby to handle the recoil perfectly fine!"
She was hyper-focusing, drilling down into a project like it was all that mattered. Yang recognized it all too well. She hadn't turned, even at the obvious poke. They both knew why Dad had told her not to use those rounds; she'd blown the roof off the Signal machine shop making her first batch, and her second batch had nearly killed her when they shattered the internal mechanisms of her scythe. But she knew better than anyone else around Ruby that there was no stopping her when she fixated on one of her projects; that it was better to help her and make sure she was as safe as she could be.
She'd helped Ruby sneak tools into her room when Dad had grounded her, after all.
"Okay, okay. What do they have to do with this?" She said with a waved hand she knew her sister wouldn't see.
"Well, those rounds are really good for throwing me around the battlefield extra fast! But what if I don't want to go fast, but I still need something that powerful? I'd need to plant my scythe to keep from getting flung across the battlefield!" Ruby said, her tools still clinking away.
"You? Not going fast? Who are you and where's my sister?" She jabbed as lightheartedly as she could manage.
"So, I figured—What if I saved that energy somehow? So!" Ruby spun, her scythe clutched in her arms like a baby, expanded into its bulky rifle form. Yang took in the red metal of the thing in front of her, finding…
"You added another bolt?"
"Not another bolt, you silly goose!" Ruby ratcheted the mechanism under her open bolt assembly, a throaty click sounding from inside the weapon. "This activates my special, brand new, awesome adaptive energy control and storage array!"
Ruby, glasses perched low on her nose, a streak of grease under one eye, and her hair pulled back out of her face in a tiny ponytail. A wide grin split her face, one full of pride and joy.
"...Which does?" Yang asked hesitantly. Ruby's track record with her little experiments told her that the most likely answer was explode, and the prospect had her a touch nervous. Enough to scoot back in the dirt, like a few extra inches would save her life.
"Think of it like a really advanced gas blowback system, but instead of just letting the energy of the recoil bleed off into heat and kickback, it captures it! Then I can use that energy directly! Right now I've just got a kinetic battery system set up, but I should be able to build a system to convert that energy into electricity or heat or even more exotic forms of energy!"
"...What's a kinetic battery?" Yang asked, mind reeling. She was smart, but Ruby took it to a whole new level.
"It's obvious, isn't it? It's like a battery, but instead of electricity, it stores kinetic energy."
A moment of silence of passed between the sisters, broken only by the snores of their sleeping companions and the rustle of the leaves above.
"How does that… Ruby, that doesn't make any sense."
"Oh, Yang, you must be really tired. It's super simple, actually!" Ruby laughed at her, setting her scythe aside. "I'm sure anyone could figure it out easily enough, with enough time with the system."
Yang just shook her head as her sister went back to her work. She'd been saying that line as long as she could remember, and as ever, Yang found it rang hollow. She feared Ruby overestimated her intelligence; she remembered the one time the younger girl tried to explain how her special ammo worked, Yang had blanked out as soon as the equations on the blackboard reached the bottom.
"Have fun with that sis, I need to go take a walk. Nature calls, you know?" It wasn't quite a lie, it was part of the reason she was getting up to leave.
Just not all of it. She needed to think, to clear her head. Maybe if she was lucky, she'd stumble across what they were hunting for while she was out.
A long wander later, she fell face-first into exactly that.
"Zwei, slow down, wait for us!" Ruby called after the squat gray corgi as he charged deep into the wilderness.
"Did you see where she went?" Blake yelled after Ruby. They were charging through a copse of trees, together only by dint of the barking dog leading them forward.
"No! She said she was gonna go to the bathroom!" Even as she shouted this, Ruby couldn't help but kick herself. She'd been drawn into her tinkering again, and it had been hours by the time she looked up, her full toolkit scattered around her and Crescent Rose gleaming bright and new, the full details of what she'd installed blossoming in her mind—a full blueprint for her kinetic energy capture system, but fuzzy, hard to explain—before she noticed the position of the moon and the fact that her sister was still missing.
"This is just like her," Weiss huffed. "I can't believe she disappeared like this!"
Blake started in on Weiss, "Hey! She's been under a lot of stress and—"
"Girls!" Oobleck didn't shout, but the firm projection of his voice stopped them in their tracks. "Fighting amongst ourselves will not return our missing comrade to our sides! And besides, Zwei seems to have found something."
Their professor pointed past them, past an oak tree, where the corgi stood anxiously, nose pointed down into a deep, dark hole.
"She fell into a hole?" Blake muttered. "That feels… strange."
Ruby shifted, and adjusted her glasses so they sat better on her nose. She'd switched them sometime during her fugue, and they'd gone crooked during their run. Guilt nipped at her stomach like Zwei with his toys; she knew Yang was stressed, she knew her sister was struggling, and she'd let her wander off anyway!
"It's not surprising," Oobleck said as he approached. "Mountain Glenn's infrastructure is years out of date, she likely fell into one of the tunnels they expanded into close to the end."
"Could… she'll be fine, right?" Ruby asked quietly, gaming stilling a nervous stutter.
"Your sister is made of tougher stuff than that," Weiss responded, and behind the backs of their teammate and their professor, she leaned against her partner. "You're blaming yourself. Stop it."
Deft fingers unwound the tight grip on the haft of her scythe, the contact bracing. "But I could have stopped her. She left because I was too absorbed in working on my baby."
"And? Yang is her own person, you can't stop her from making mistakes like this." Weiss shifted, and Ruby saw her swallow words that would have been harsher. It was a step forward for the princess, she knew, but she was still anxious. Worried.
"I don't think she fell straight down," Blake was saying as she knelt by the opening. It was hard for Ruby to see in the dark at the best of times, but by the light of the moon and the stars, she could just about make out the girl pointing down into the hole. "Looks like whatever collapsed made a steep incline. She'll be fine."
Ruby squared her shoulders. She was the team leader, and team leaders didn't let guilt stop them from doing what needed to be done. She took a deep breath, and pushed down the piece of her quaking and wondering if Yang had just stumbled in the very base they were secretly hunting for, the piece worrying that her older sister had bitten off far more than she could chew.
"Okay. Let's follow her and get her out of there. But we should be ready for anything."
"Yes, indeed. Once more unto the breach, and all that," Oobleck clapped her on the back at that and smiled. "I see you're taking Ozpin's words to heart."
Ruby nodded, tongue glued to the roof of her mouth, before she leapt down, Zwei on her heels and her team at her back. Her hands tightened on the haft of her weapon as she fell, sliding down the rough incline as best she could, to absorb the impact at the bottom with her aura and a roll. Her team fell behind her, each landing as gracefully as her.
"Well, Miss Rose. Where to next?" Oobleck asked as he approached, hands still held behind his back.
She looked down and met her dog's eyes. Zwei yipped at her nod and darted off into the wide tunnel they'd found themselves in. She followed and called back, "We follow Zwei! Make sure you stay close!"
They were so focused, they barely paid any attention to the ruins they charged into, an entire underground forgotten as they went on the hunt for their missing sister. For a moment, just one, Ruby thought that everything would be okay. There were no signs of residency, they didn't encounter anyone as they ran. Zwei would lead them to Yang, and they would all laugh.
When Zwei found a collapsed White Fang soldier, groaning as she tried to reach for the shattered radio in front of her, Ruby's heart fell out of her chest.
"Look at it this way," Blake said as Weiss kicked the radio away. "She wasn't captured?"
Somehow, that wasn't as comforting to Ruby as Blake likely thought it was.
It was with my confrontation with Cinder fresh in my mind that I found myself winging through the night towards Vale's greatest shame. For all that it had been my job to interface with Roman and pay him for his work, I had been kept in the dark about what, exactly, the purpose of all of that Dust was. I had an eerie sensation, almost a premonition, born from long experience and a healthy level of pessimism. There were only two reasons a group would need quite that much Dust, after all.
But I couldn't focus on that right now. I needed to find my way into Mountain Glenn. I flew low over the forest, eyes darting about for any sign of human life. Tracks, a vehicle, anything. Half-remembered lessons told me that there had been ways in and out of the mountain during its heyday, and while the tunnels had been collapsed, Adam would have needed to clear at least one out to make it his base of operations.
Which made it very fortunate that I found a three strong patrol of White Fang operatives, strolling lazily down a beaten desire path as if they had nary a worry in the world. This far away from civilization, usually they really wouldn't have cause for alarm.
Sadly for them, I was here.
I descended from on high, wings giving way to arms as I crashed into their midst.
The first went down before he could bring up his aura, the butt of Sundered Rose crashing into his temple before anyone could so much as shout. The others were quicker on the draw. A tall woman swung at me with a long, sparking baton. I avoided her strike, preferring to go for the final man, who was scrambling for the radio on his belt.
Three blows shattered his measly Aura, and he went down for the count as I hooked the beard of my ax around his leg and yanked him off his feet. His head cracked against a root as I plucked the radio from his belt.
The woman lunged at me, stun baton aiming for my gut as she shouted wordlessly. If I was anyone, anything else, she might even have gotten me. But I could feel her every movement through my power.
I spun around her, knocking the baton from her hand easily as I slipped Sundered Rose back into its holster. I hammered a fist into her side, then a kick into the back of her knee. She collapsed in a heap from the pain, blunted though it would have been through her Aura.
I knelt on her back and reached down to take her radio as well. Absently, I crushed the extra as I slipped it onto my belt. "Where's the entrance?"
"Fuck off!" She grunted. "When we—"
"No. The entrance and you get to live." I ground the point of my knee into her spine, sparks of Aura flaring as I worked. "I'm only one woman; surely your compatriots can handle me?"
It was a standoff; my captive panting in the dirt with my knee digging painfully into her back, one arm twisted violently to dissuade any escape attempt. The light was dim, dim enough that I could only make out the stark white of her uniform and mask, and the bare flicker of a tapetum lucidum behind the visor.
"Clock's ticking." To drive my point home, I slipped my ax from its holster once again and dug the blade into the dirt by her face. "I'm getting impatient."
She huffed for a moment longer, before all the fight bled out of her. "Fine. See you if you fucking survive. You just follow the path until you get to the foot of the mountain, and the service door is behind a shrub."
"Thanks for your cooperation," I said as I shattered her Aura with a final knee twist and butt stroke from my weapon. I left her groaning where I left her and followed their path. I remained human, the cool night air on my skin bracing. I tapped a staccato rhythm out on my ax as I approached the mountain, thoughts spinning. My arm ached again, a pain that ended a few inches past my fingers. I ignored it.
What did I hope I would find? I didn't need proof Cinder was doing things behind my back, I knew she was. I was in the dark about her little black queen program, as much as I was in the dark about her intentions with Roman's stolen Dust. I knew that giving me the responsibility of handling payments was her way of taunting me, of dangling information I wanted just out of my reach.
I was really a creature of awful habit, wasn't I? Cut ties. I'm sorry. I no longer had the notes, lost in a battle a lifetime ago, but I remembered them like the day I'd received them. I'd cut more ties than I would care to ever admit, and every time I regretted it. They may not ever get to know me, but I could at least make sure they got to go home to Tai at the end of the day.
Absently, I clipped my pilfered radio to my belt and connected my earbud to it. Any information was good information, and any information was something else to think about.
My walk turned into a run when the radio crackled in my ear. "—blonde one. She's cornered in an empty storage room."
"Holy shit, there's more of them!"
"How much longer until the train is loaded?"
"Is that a fucking corgi?"
My run became a sprint. The path, the trees, the stars in the sky, they were little more than streaks of paint in my darkening tunnel-vision. I was already close enough to the mountain for it to dominate my vision. I've already picked out the carefully maintained shrubbery my victim mentioned when I approach. Opening the heavy metal service hatch, hinges suspiciously free of the rust of time, stalls me for just a moment, and then I'm rushing again, boots pounding down old steel and past broken fluorescent lights. My only clues about where to go were thin strips of portable emergency lighting.
The fuel for my sprint was the continued shouts over the radio.
"Get the train going!"
"We don't have enough dust onboard to-"
"Just do it!"
The gunshots and shouts over the line never ceased, and no matter how much I strained, I couldn't quite make out the sound of my girls. I had to assume that was a good thing, that the continued fighting meant they were still okay.
Until then, I had to do what I came here for. Even if I wanted to sprint for them, the best thing I could do was stop that train.
I came to another door, finally. My axe cut through the thin metal with a horrible scream, my Aura keeping me safe as I crashed through it. I emerged into a cavern, cut from limestone to make room for a massive train station.
And the train was about to leave.
I jumped, planted my feet on the railing before me, drew my rifle, and pushed. At the same time, I fired backward, and I became a white and red rocket aimed at the thick glass of the engine at the head of the line. I was moving fast enough that the shocked White Fang below couldn't react fast enough to fire at me, to stop me.
But the train was already in motion, and I missed my target. Decades of training barely saved me, as I twisted in the air to fire again and redirect my angle towards a window along the side of the train, several cars away from the engine. Just before I crashed through the glass, the compartment came into my range.
There was a familiar woman lounging on a crate.
I crash through the window and roll to a stop. The pink and brown haired girl lunging at me with a knife extended from her parasol is just an illusion; the real Neo was hiding behind a second illusion. My gun barks, and her illusions shatter into a storm of multicolored glass as she dodges out of the way at the last second. She stops with a gentle spin, parasol extended and twirling lazily on one shoulder.
"Neopolitan." I slipped three bullets from my belt pouch and push them into Sundered Rose's magazine tube, the sharp clicks echoing in the confined space. She circled me as I did so, eyeing me with something close to appreciation, eyes twinkling enough that I wonder if she's affecting it with one of her illusions. Was it strange for her that I could see through them so easily; I could imagine being fascinated by such a thing, or even frustrated. "Rare to see you so far away from Roman."
She just shrugged and gestured deeper into the train, before turning to look me up and down curiously. She was entirely unruffled, not a single brown or pink hair out of place, despite the rate at which she'd had to dodge. There was a question on her face as she slung her parasol across her shoulders and cocks a hip. The raised eyebrow just made it clearer; Why are you here, Summer?
She was a smart girl. She could figure it out. I stepped forward and brushed past her. I didn't have the time to deal with Neopolitan right now, not while we were on the track to-
She grabbed me by the cloak and pulled, hard enough that I stumble back into a hook kick to the face. There was no time to curse or question; I was already moving to bat away the parasol strikes, axe shuddering under the blows. There was an anger in Neo's eyes, but it was gone in between blows, replaced by focus and… joy?
I narrowed my eyes. Another fucking fight junkie. "Neopolitan, stop. You don't want this. Not with me."
She just blew a strand of hair out of her face and smiled. She winked and swapped the color of her eyes, and all I could do was sigh. My axe flips around, shifting into a rifle for long enough to fire a single round at her from the hip. It shattered against her Aura-imbued parasol, but it was distraction enough for me to close in and aim a cut for her gut.
It was for naught. She delicately batted it aside and spun to put a kick into my chin, exactly where she'd struck me earlier. I leaned back, swinging up with my axe as I do, her boot skidding against my cheek. It missed, the small girl freakishly flexible, enough to twist and catch the haft on her other boot and use it to launch herself up into the air.
She flipped, a beautifully graceful thing I couldn't help but admire for the sheer skill of it, and came to rest on the crate she'd started on with a flourish, crossing her legs and leaning back. She was grinning wide, and with another wink she waggled her eyebrows at me. It was obviously a clear attempt to pull me deeper into the fight. Anger bubbled up, anger at her refusal to take this seriously, fury at the continued danger to my family, anger at myself.
So I lashed out. My petals whipped into reality, becoming a thin swarm around us as I close in on her. Several petals batter her, whirling across her vision and rustling in her eyes to keep her from—
An illusion shattered into glass against me, a kamikaze version of my opponent. The shock, both at the sudden feeling of my Aura flashing and the fact that she'd already worked out an obvious weakness of my power. I don't have time to dwell on the vague sense of interest that piques before she was driving a kick into my gut. I barely had time to turn aside enough to bleed off the force and bind her leg with my axe. I have to distract her.
The petals whipped into her face, but another illusion hurled itself at me, this fake opponent blowing a kiss at me before shattering against a raised arm. The strike was enough to let her slip out of my grasp and swing at me again. I caught the parasol in my open hand and pulled her in, axe cutting down at her shoulder. But she turned, planted her back into my front, and flipped, hurling me away while remaining unharmed in place. I gritted my teeth against the pain of the slide, and I cursed myself. I was being soft on her, softer than I ever would have been at her age.
I stood and faced her, only idly noting we were back where we started. The story of my life. "Neo. Get out of the way and let me—"
A hydraulic hiss sounded behind us, metal grinding on metal as the door to the train car opened. Three girls entered my range and I froze, just as they did. I recognized the one in the center, how could I not? I couldn't breathe, my body refused to obey me. Neo just sighed and shook her head, bidding me a farewell with a simple wave as she stepped away into a simple illusion and vanished, leaping off the train.
I needed to run. I needed to move. I should leave, just like her.
I couldn't. I couldn't manage it. My daughter was right there.
"Go ahead girls. I can handle this alone." Yang's voice was hard as stone, a dam atop a lake of deserved fury.
They listened to her, stepping gingerly past me on either side. I couldn't spare them any attention, save what it took to note the withering disgust in amber eyes and the bewilderment in blue. I couldn't blame them.
Then they're gone, and I'm left with my daughter and a dusting of petals across the ground. A hand stayed at the proverbial lever of my Semblance, the pressure a comforting embrace.
We waited like that for what felt like an hour, but it must have only been a few moments. Yang's arm twitched, like she wanted to reach up for me, but couldn't bring herself to. Was she worried that, if she reached out, I would disappear again?
My feet moved without my consent. I turned, slowly, to take in my eldest. Last I'd seen her this close, she'd been barely a few years old, quietly sleeping in Ruby's crib, holding her baby sister close to her chest. She'd been ever so small then, so small I'd wondered if she would ever grow up. I'd hoped she wouldn't have to.
Now she's almost as tall as her father, but she looks far too much like her mother for it to do anything but hurt my heart. She takes after Tai in all the ways that matter, the two influences coming together to make Yang her own being, her own person. I smiled at her, small and sad. Here she was, feet planted and weapons ready to defend her home. And I'd missed it, all of it.
I couldn't help the sad smile that fell across my face. "You've grown so much, my little sun."
-----
And the fallout of that particular conversation can be found live right now at Patreon Dot Com!
Brightstone
Feral Goblin
I hope she gets some sort of agency soon, because getting her shitty ending in Worm only to become a slave, then a million chapters of BTiS, likely ending in a pointless sacrifice? For *wiggly fingers* reasons? Why exactly is she assuming the girls are safe? If she saw initiation, then she knows Grimm still go after them. Cinder is gleefully doing so as well. As far as I know, Salem doesn't leave the Grimm Lands. What "safety" did she actually offer that made Taylor "My Way or the Highway" Hebert willingly give up control?