Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Jaune’s last thought as he steps through the portal that he and the rest of his friends hope will take them to Vacuo is, ‘man, it would really suck if this didn’t take us to Vacuo.’

He’s pretty sure that, in playwright speak, that’s called dramatic irony.

There’s a sensation, then, as he enters into whatever liminal space is beyond the portal, as if his body is being ripped apart, and recombobulated, and then ripped apart again, only to be spat out, unceremoniously, onto the cold floor of a dingy supply closet.

Jaune lands on his front, slamming against the concrete and being quite winded by the whole affair. He has to take a second to both recover, and get his bearings, because as much as he’s a Huntsman – and forty-years-old, despite Alyx reverting him to his younger, twenty-or-so-year-old body – he’d really been expecting to walk out onto the dunes of Vacuo.

That has, evidently, not happened.

Jaune sits up, shaking his head as he tries to get the horrid ache that’s taken up residence there all of a sudden out.

“Ruby?” He calls out as he stands, and opens up the door to the supply closet. “Weiss? Blake? Yang?”

There’s no response. Nothing at all.

Immediately, Jaune feels something, like a coiling snake burrowing its way through his gut. He does his best to clamp down on the feeling, even as he strains to hear anything over the heating unit, making a low rumbling noise.

It feels odd for there to be a heating unit in Vacuo, but Jaune does his best not to think about that as he steps out from his position, draws the still-broken Crocea Mors, dons the rusted shield, and walks into whatever building he’s ended up in.

It’s an upper-class establishment. That much is clear from Jaune’s quick perusing. After a few seconds walking, he gets the chance to look out of the back halls, and instead peer out at the main foyer.

It’s late in the evening. Jaune catalogues that immediately. He can see darkness out of the front windows, and the streets outside are barren of people. It’s… odd. He’s always heard that Vacuo has a fairly active nightlife, with people from all walks of life out and about well past sundown.

This, honestly, reminds him more of Atlas.

The cold had been the thing to keep people inside. Especially in Mantle, the heaters that kept the city from freezing turned off during the evening so as to conserve power during the last few months Jaune and the others had been there. Thusly, it had almost had the effect of a city-wide curfew, albeit an unofficial one.

That niggling doubt – that this reminds him more of Atlas than Vacuo – stands out amongst the rest of his thoughts, even as he makes to walk out, exit out onto the street, and see if he can’t recognize some landmarks.

Except, just when he’s about to do that…

He hears the sound of weapons meeting.

It’s something almost instinctual at this point. Jaune knows the sound of steel on steel. Would recognize it just about anywhere. He moves towards it, the half-blade of Crocea Mors spinning to a reverse grip in his hand, wielded almost like a dagger; a slightly more effective usage of the neutered length.

He hears voices, but they’re distant, faint. He hears a loud crash, like someone’s been thrown into a wall, and his steps speed up. He’s closing in on the battle, on whatever it is that’s happening.

He’s close, so very close…

There’s a door, shut. He tries to turn the knob, but it’s locked.

He can hear the sounds of combat stopping abruptly, which is the opposite of a good sign. He takes a step back, channels aura into his legs and shoulder, and charges the door with all his strength.

He crashes into the room, and tries to analyze the situation as quickly as he can.

That’s a bit hard to do rationally, however, given he’s just stumbled onto a murder scene.

There are three bodies, scattered about the room. Two are younger girls, who can’t be any older than fifteen. Another is an older woman, probably thirty or so years of age. She’s staring up at the sky, unblinking. It looks like her throat has been collapsed, judging by the indentation, and bruises.

And then there are two living figures. One is a young girl, on the ground beneath the other.

That other is a huntsman.

And he is about to die.

Jaune doesn’t know him. He catalogues that immediately. He gets the vague sense he might know the girl from somewhere, but she’s younger than his body by at least five or six years, maybe more. She could be anywhere from twelve to fourteen.

What matters, though, is that the Huntsman – a man with black, graying hair, holding twin maces – currently has two swords running straight through his torso, sticking out of his back.

He’s got moments.

Jaune’s moving forward, just as the girl yanks the swords out of him, and sends the Huntsman toppling to the floor.

There’s no resistance in his legs, which is not at all a good sign. Jaune’s there the moment he hits the ground, channeling his semblance, but he’s worried that he’s not going to be fast enough.

“What happened!?” He demands of the young girl, who he feels is probably not the aggressor in this situation.

She wouldn’t have been able to kill three people, and then defeat a Huntsman all on her own. No, more likely than not, she’d barely managed to fend off a rogue Huntsman herself.

He can see it in her eyes; the crazed, almost delirious look of a cornered animal. Ready to strike out against anything that might–

The girl swings at him, and Jaune directs enough aura to his face to tank the blow without having to stop channeling his semblance on the man below.

He might have poured a bit too much in, however, for as the girl’s sword connects with his face, it shatters, and sends shards scattering about the room.

The look of absolute shock on her face would be funny in almost any other scenario.

“It’s okay.” He tells her, trying to calm her down from fight or flight. She’s likely experiencing a trauma response, interpreting anyone or anything around her as a potential threat. “I’m not going to hurt you, but I need you to tell me what’s going on. Did this man attack you, or those women over there?”

There’s a moment, then, where the girl he’s looking up at seems… very familiar. He can almost make the connection, almost come to a conclusion, but before he can, the girl in front of him has let her blades – the one whole blade, and the other, just a handle with a small bit of metal still attached – slide out of her hands, and impact against the ground beneath her.

“I-I…” Her breath comes out shaky, horribly so. “I didn’t… I didn’t…”

“It’s okay,” He wants to assure her physically, offer some calming, soothing balm. “It’s going to be okay. I know this is probably terrifying for you, but please, can you tell me what happened?”

He can’t. He can’t offer that balm to her. He has to keep the man below him alive. Just in case something else is going on. Right now, he’s working off of incomplete information. If he keeps this man alive, he might be able to get answers from him.

He’s not going to fully heal him; not and risk him having the energy to start up some crazed killing spree again, but he can get him to barely alive, and keep him there.

Idly, he stops channeling his semblance in one hand, reaches down towards his scroll, and offers it out to the girl.

“Do you know how to call emergency services?” He asks her.

Her face pales. Jaune doesn’t know what to make of that.

“I-I… I don’t…” He breaths come out more as gasps, and she takes a step back, until she’s flush with the wall.

Jaune retracts his hand, shakes his head, and dials the number himself.

Usually, they pick up pretty quickly.

Except nothing happens. Nothing at all.

“…What?”

He looks down at his scroll, and…

‘This device is out of service range.’

That…

It makes some sense. Some. If Jaune’s in Vale – which would be the opposite of a good thing – then the CCT being destroyed by Cinder’s attack would be a pretty decent culprit for why he can’t contact anyone. It would also explain the absence of anyone in the streets, given that from what he’s heard, civilians have all but abandoned the city.

The problem with that, however, is that doesn’t explain why there had been so many people here, in this building, including ostensibly four civilians themselves.

He shakes his head, deciding to think about calling emergency services at a later date. He pockets his scroll, and finishes channeling just enough aura into the man beneath him that he hears his breaths begin to steady out.

He stops there, not wanting to give him anymore strength than that. He’s confident he could beat him, given he has no weapons – Jaune kicks both of his maces into the opposite corner of the room, just for good measure – and he’s got barely enough aura to survive the wounds he’s been inflicted with, but hey, better to play it safe.

With that, he stands, brushes the sweat off his brow, and turns back towards the girl.

She’s not calmed down. Not remotely. If anything, she seems to have grown even more panicked, which…

It’s sad, but it makes sense. The initial shock and adrenaline have begun to wear off, and now, she’s being faced with what happened, and having to rationalize it.

The people over there, those three women, could have very well been close with her. Perhaps family.

Jaune tries to do his best Yang impression, kneeling down in front of the girl and smiling supportively up at her. He… he still needs to know what’s happened. Needs to get the full picture.

He’ll have to ask her, despite how much such with likely hurt her.

“Please,” He makes his voice soft, and quiet, as much as he can. “What happened?”

The girl’s face scrunches up, like she’s going to cry more, but instead, she shakes her head, and tells him, “I didn’t… I didn’t mean to but I… I was training here, training so that I could get away, a-and she leapt at me, I didn’t mean it, but they would have taken it, my sword, and if they did, I’d… they’d have punished me, and hurt me, and I didn’t want to be hurt anymore, so I swung, and… and I didn’t mean to, I didn’t, but then Mindy, she was screaming, and Madame shocked me, and it hurt so bad, and I… I just reacted, I just wanted to stop the screaming, and the pain, and–”

“Hey, hey,” He takes her by the shoulders, trying to ground her as best he can. She’s rambling on desperately. “You’re okay. No one’s going to hurt you. I promise.”

“I-I…” She’s sobbing almost uncontrollably. Big, fat tears are spilling down her face. “What have I done, what have I done, what have I done, what–”

Jaune’s head is spinning. If what this girl is saying is true, then she…

…It’s not impossible. If the three dead women had been civilians, and this girl a Huntress in training… it wouldn’t have even been terribly difficult for her to kill them.

But all of this, it… it just doesn’t add up.

Jaune keys in, then, to the fact that the girl is wearing some kind of necklace. It seems… tight. Oddly tight, for something that, by all accounts, appears decorative.

Jaune’s protective instincts, only strengthened by his time in the Ever After, flare.

“That necklace…” He speaks out, and the instant he does, the girl seems to realize she’s still wearing it.

She clenches her teeth, and, with a raging fervor, madly grasps at the article, and tears it off of her neck. Jaune’s eyes widen as he sees scar tissue beneath it, in an almost perfect mirror of the necklaces’ dimensions.

Oh.

That…

“Who did that to you?” He asks, a righteous anger rising in his breast. “Was it him, did he–”

“N-No, the…” She bites down on her bottom lip, tears not having stopped spilling from her eyes. “She did, the Madame,” she’s pointing towards the adult woman’s corpse. “She… she adopted me, and I was so happy to get out of… but she… she put that thing around my neck, and it hurts so bad… I…”

Things are getting a lot more complicated all of a sudden. The dead woman had been abusing this girl? Torturing her with a shock collar?

“Wait, wait. Please. I know this is hard for you, but I need you to give me a clearer picture here. What happened? Why did–”

“She… killed them.”

It’s a new voice, and one that has the girl he’s trying to calm once again going into a frenzy. She backs away, further, as if she’s trying to meld with the wall behind her.

Jaune turns, and sees the Huntsman from earlier barely pushing himself up into a sitting position. It looks rather painful, and Jaune thinks about trying to heal him further, but… no. Seeing someone hurt hurts him as well, but it’s better than the man trying to continue whatever fight had been happening before.

Right now, he’s confident he can keep both of them from hurting the other.

“What do you mean?” Jaune asks, trying to ignore the girl whimpering behind him.

“She killed the Madame; the owner of this establishment, and her daughters.” The Huntsman explains.

“I didn’t mean to!” The girl screams, her voice cracking, her eyes wide, and panicked. “I didn’t mean to! Please! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”

Jaune feels a knot forming in his throat. Damnit, why couldn’t things ever be easy?

“She said they were torturing her.” Jaune tells the man, gauging his reaction. “That she was adopted by them, and…”

Jaune turns back towards the girl. “What did they make you do?”

“I…” the girl’s face contorts; unhappy memories, Jaune guesses. “C-Clean the floors, and the bedrooms, and greet customers, take them to where they need to go. W-Wait on them, if they needed it. Wash the sheets, and be there when called. I-If I wasn’t, I was shocked. I… I got shocked a lot, even when I didn’t do anything wrong, and Rhodes…”

The man, the Huntsman, his expression dims. Jaune gathers this must be Rhodes, then.

“He was trying to help me, to get me out of here. But he… he attacked me!”

Jaune’s expression shifts. Had this happened tonight, then? Had Rhodes come in to bust her out, and things had gone wrong?

That still doesn’t explain why they’d seemingly fought until this girl had all but killed him, though.

“Hold on,” Jaune shakes his head. Everyone is giving him half-truths. He wants to hear the candid reality of the matter. Although at this point, that’s beginning to seem like a bit of a pipe dream. “You saw that she was being abused, then? Is that why you offered to help?”

“I did.” Rhodes notes. “I first met her a few years ago–”

“Wait, years!?” Jaune interjects, unable to rectify that. “You saw she was being abused recently, then?”

Rhodes’ expression grows somewhat more defiant. “I saw that she was being abused all the way back then, but there was nothing I could do, other than try and train her to leave when she was properly of age–”

“Nothing you could–” Jaune finds his teeth grinding together. “She was a child! You saw a child being abused and you did nothing!?”

“She was the Madame’s legal ward, to try and take her away would’ve been against the law!”

The law. Jaune almost wants to spit. Yes, because that’s the be-all end-all of ‘good’.

He turns away from the man, silently fuming, and looks over at the girl yet again. She’s cowering, fearful.

“She killed people!” Rhodes yells at him. “She has to…” He lets out a grunt of pain, then, likely from trying to move when the wounds in his abdomen haven’t fully healed. “She has to answer for her crimes!”

Jaune hears it. He really does.

He even knows that he should perhaps listen to him.

But…

He looks back into her eyes. Into those desperate, terrified eyes.

And he can’t see anything but a little girl, bereft of anything in the entire world. A little girl, who made a horrible mistake, yes, but one who hadn’t meant to. One who’d been pushed to the brink by abuse for years, and had no one truly step in and try and help her.

He’s unwilling to be the same as the man beneath him, Rhodes.

“Do you want to leave here?” He asks her.

Her eyes are as wide as saucers, and it takes her a moment to really process what he’s said, but eventually, she nods emphatically. “Y-Yes!”

He nods his head. “Can you walk?”

“I can!”

“Then come on. We’re going.” He tells her, reaching down and taking up the non-broken blade that the girl had been using, and strapping it to his belt. He’s tempted to do the same with the man’s maces, but he doesn’t know the weapons well, and for all he knows, Rhodes might have some sort of tracking device for finding them installed within.

Weiss’ Myrtenaster had held such a device. Jaune’s not willing to take the chance this man doesn’t have the same.

Rhodes, for his part, seems furious.

“You… you’re breaking the law! If you leave with her, you’re abetting a criminal!”

Maybe he is breaking the law. But he’d seen firsthand what blind adherence to the law could do to people, had watched it tear apart Atlas, and Mantle, and the Ace-Ops. Had watched good people adhere to a broken system as that place tore itself asunder.

He won’t make the same mistakes.

“Maybe.” He answers the man. “But sometimes the law protects the oppressor, instead of the oppressed. Sometimes we must do what’s right, regardless of what the ‘law’ states is correct.”

“She killed them! Murdered them in cold blood! Do you really think helping her is right!?”

“Did you see it happen?”

He hadn’t. It’s obvious he hadn’t, from the way he freezes up.

Right now, it’s the girl’s word against… well, nothing at all.

And she says she hadn’t meant to. Says she’d made a mistake, had cried in front of him, desperately begged.

He’ll take her word.

It’s a risk, he knows that. But he can’t leave her to be carted away to prison. Not when she’s been a slave for, seemingly, years, tortured day in and day out.

She deserves a chance to be free.

He leads the girl out of the building, and closes the door behind Rhodes, even as he hears the man beginning to call emergency services himself. Jaune wants to laugh, and tell him he’s not going to connect, given Jaune’s scroll hadn’t been able to, but he doesn’t.

Instead, he and the girl make their way outside of the foyer of whatever hotel they’re in – on the way out, Jaune spots a ‘We do not serve Faunus’ sign, and can’t help but feel like that had been made illegal years ago – and out onto the street.

The thing that hits Jaune immediately is the cold. He’s shivering barely five steps out the door, and when he turns around, he notes the fact that the girl behind him is in a thin, white cotton outfit.

It’s doing a lot less than Jaune’s old Ever After outfit, atop which he has his armor.

He sighs, even as he walks over to her, and uses his semblance on her. He’s somewhat surprised to feel an aura course against his own. It’s… strong. Almost shockingly so, for so young a girl.

“There, does that help?”

The girl nods a bit sheepishly.

“Alright, we’re going to find somewhere to buy warmer clothes for the both of us. Do you know anywhere around here like that?”

He’s not surprised when she shakes her head, but it does cause him to let out a beleaguered sigh.

He really hadn’t signed up for watching over another young girl a decade after the last children he’d been looking after had drugged him, and left him to die in the Ever After.

Still…

He feels like it’s the right thing to do. And in the end, isn’t that what matters?

…Jaune thinks of Alyx and Lewis; one of whom he’d failed to save. He thinks of the Paper Pleasers; of his inability to help them, of his desperate struggle to protect them, even against their own wishes…

And he thinks that this might not be so selfless a goal at all.

He looks around, though, and finds his eyes narrowing. This place… it’s odd, but it feels somewhat familiar. Like he’s been here before.

Honestly, it feels like Atlas.

Except that can’t be. Atlas had, the last time he’d seen it, been set to sink into Mantle. It wouldn’t have survived such a thing. He knows it. They’d ran projections with some help from Whitley and Weiss that had showed it wouldn’t.

So, this can’t be Atlas…

Right?

Well, one way to find out, he supposes.

“Where are we, exactly?”

The girl behind him hesitates. “I-I… I don’t know the name of the street… I’m sorry…”

“That’s fine,” He rushes to assure her. “Do you know what Kingdom this is?”

She doesn’t seem to know how to respond to that. “U-Uhm… is this… a trick question?”

“No, I’m being genuine.”

“Okay… this is Atlas.”

Jaune feels his blood run cold; colder than it already had been.

“That… how is that…” He whispers, before clamping down on his suspicions. Now isn’t the time. He can question this girl more when… well, when they’re both warm, and somewhere safe.

The real problem, however, is the fact that Jaune can hear sirens on the horizon.

His eyes widen, even as the girl flinches, and looks ready to sprint full stop in the other direction.

He wants to say it’s not possible. He’d gotten no reception in that building, and Rhodes certainly couldn’t have been able to, either. Especially if they’re in Atlas, or a ruin of it. There shouldn’t be a signal to catch, given the CCT should have been destroyed along with the rest of the place.

And yet, the sirens only grow louder.

“W-What do we do!?” She asks him.

Jaune wants to protest to the fact that the universe keeps throwing him curveballs, but really, he can’t afford to at the moment.

“Follow me,” he tells her, and then he runs.

They run for a while, long enough that the sirens begin to dissipate into the background, and the adrenaline pumping through Jaune does the same. By the time they stop, Jaune is somewhat winded, but the girl he’s travelling with is downright exhausted. Honestly, he should’ve stopped them sooner, seeing how she’s on her hands and knees, retching as she tries to catch her breath.

“Sorry about that.” He tells her, shaking his head. “But for now, we should be away from them.”

She nods her head, recovering enough to bring herself up against a nearby wall, and slide down it.

…He realizes in that moment that, aside from the fact that she’s been abused, Jaune knows almost nothing about the girl beneath him.

“So,” He clears his throat as he sits down next to her, the two of them alone in an alley off of a side street. “What’s your name, kiddo?”

It’s very clear immediately that the girl takes offense to the term ‘kiddo’, but also that she is too terrified of possible retribution to say anything about it. Jaune makes a mental note not to call her that again.

“C-Cinder.” She says, and Jaune’s heart nearly stops.

“My name is Cinder.”

And suddenly…

Suddenly it all clicks together.

The odd sense of recognition he’d had when he’d first seen the girl. His scroll not getting signal, despite Rhodes’ own being able to manage without trouble. Atlas somehow standing after everything that had happened.

“Not where…

When you are needed.”

Jaune thinks he understands, now, just what the Blacksmith had meant.

He’s been sent back in time.

And by how young the Cinder beside him is, no older than fourteen, and possibly younger than that…

“Oh.” He mutters aloud.

“Well, that’s not good.”

/

The thing that keys Blake into the fact that she’s not in Vacuo is the cold.

It’s a frigid, biting chill, the kind that seeps into one’s bones and eats away at their energy. Blake’s outfit had been designed for the Atlas cold, and yet, even so, this is colder than she’s ever experienced before.

Not Vacuo, then.

Perhaps, she thinks in that instant, they’d been dropped back where they’d been before? Perhaps they lurk within the fallen Atlas, amongst the death and decay, and likely, the endless hordes of Grimm?

No. Blake looks up, and her surroundings are…

Familiar.

It is Atlas; or Solitas, perhaps, would be a better way to put it. Atlas is just one small piece of that massive landmass, upon which many facilities like this one had been erected.

Blake hadn’t known, however, that there had been any SDC mining colonies left, especially after what had happened to both Atlas and Mantle. She’d have assumed they’d be entirely cut off from the world, and fade away soon after in the icy tundra.

Perhaps it still will. For all Blake and her allies know, this might be a few hours, or a few days after Atlas had fallen. This colony might not have even received the news yet.

She searches around, briefly, for the others, but she had assumed they would have made some sort of noise – especially her teammates, all of them quite loud – by this point, so when she doesn’t spot them, she is not surprised.

She is perturbed, but not surprised.

She’s tempted to call out to them, especially to Yang, always to Yang, but before then…

Before then, she hears the screaming.

It’s faint. Distant. Likely a hundred meters or so from Blake’s position. They are the screams of a woman. Agonized.

She’s crying out for someone, or something, to stop.

Blake’s moving before her mind catches up.

She knows these bases. All of them built off of a single template. She knows the winding halls, the complicated routes one needs to take. She’s broken into many in her time, liberated them from both the inside and out.

Or, well, they’d called it liberation back then. Blake still thinks it had been the right thing to do, despite how complicated she’d eventually figured out life could be.

The screams are growing louder. Blake’s legs carry her faster, farther, more quickly. She has heard screams like these before. From her comrades in the White Fang, when they lost people, when they had to cradle their dead against them and weep. From civilians, from the few Huntsman missions they’d gotten to actually do in Atlas, when they’d arrived too late to save someone.

The screams of someone having lost something irreplaceable, and desperately begging for it back.

Blake pushes open a door to the main courtyard. She’s atop one of the walls that surround the sunken-in platform in the center. Along the walls with Blake are many figures, all of them faunus. Their eyes are dark, but they burn with a cold hate.

Even so, they are not moving. They are sat, passive, unwilling to act.

Blake has seen that expression so many times. It never quite fails to make her sick.

Finally, she focuses on the source of the commotion, and when she does, she sees–

A woman – a mother, so very young to be such – trying to break free from the grasp of two men in white uniforms. A young boy, being held by another pair of guards, and a third, more finely dressed man. His is an officer’s uniform, and one that Blake would know anywhere. The old SDC chief regalia.

And in his hand is a branding iron.

The young boy beneath him, who can’t be much older than ten or eleven, cowering, with tears in his eyes, begs. He begs, and the men holding him in place sneer.

They only hold onto him harder as the chief steps forward, and rears back to use the iron upon him.

Blake acknowledges, in some far-off corner of her mind, that she should perhaps think about this. That she should… she’s not sure. Weigh the consequences of her actions before committing to them?

She does not do this. Mostly because she has never been one to allow injustices to simply happen in front of her.

Gambol Shroud arcs upwards as she erases the distance, and with a single cut, she carves the heated iron of the brand in twain.

There’s no noise, no movement, nothing at all for a good second after that. It’s a long enough pause that the other piece of the iron, launched up in the air, has time to strike the ground, metal on metal. It gives off a dull ‘clang’.

Then the second hand ticks forward, and all hell breaks loose.

She’s moving before the guards holding the boy can truly process what’s happened. She draws Gambol Shroud up, turns it towards the blunt end, and smashes it into both of their faces.

They crumple to the ground, lacking any aura with which to protect themselves. That, or they hadn’t managed to get it up in time.

Blake doesn’t particularly care.

The chief draws a weapon; a small, low caliber Dust-pistol. Blake bends to the side, allowing the bullet to pass through where she’d been just moments prior, and then blitzes forward. The man swears, even as Blake takes him by the wrist, snaps the bones within it – oops, he’d had no aura, how silly of her – and then kicks him far harder than she’d likely needed to in the solar plexus.

He crumples to the ground, wheezing in shock and agony.

The guards holding the young woman – gods, she can’t be any older than twenty-five, and her son is at least ten – seem primed to try and use their hostage against Blake, but she’s faster. She doesn’t bother attempting to close the distance, instead drawing up Gambol, and, with deadly precision, firing rounds into both of their shoulders.

They reel back in pain, but both of them have had the time to mentally prepare themselves, and so both had their aura’s up. Still, it’s enough to let the young woman herself get free. She runs over to her son, takes him in her arms, and gets the both of them out of the way.

Blake smiles.

Smart girl.

Her expression dims back to one of icy determination in the next instant of time.

Both guards draw weapons, this time far deadlier than their chief had. Dust-SMG’s, used for culling Grimm as large as Beowolves from a safe distance. They’re powerful enough to rip through the aura of even a trained Huntsman or Huntress in seconds.

That isn’t really an issue for Blake, however, as these people know nothing about her.

They do not know her semblance, and so fall for the easiest trick in the book. Blake sets up a clone just as she dashes into shadow, and as the two unload on the clone, she gets behind them.

She slams their heads together with more force than had been perhaps necessary, and the two are unconscious mere seconds later, hitting the floor like sacks of grain.

All of that had taken Blake, perhaps, fifteen seconds.

She’s not even winded.

She can both hear and see just how shocked the Faunus on the railings above them are, who’d been furiously watching the attempted branding of that boy before. It’s clear many had wanted to do what Blake had, but none had held the skill.

A common practice, of course, by those in the SDC. This far out from civilization, there are no laws to protect oneself. The strong rule, and the weak suffer for it.

The original impetus behind the White Fang had been to stop such behavior.

Still, she sighs, shakes her head, and turns back towards the woman and her son.

“Are there any other guards in this colony?”

The woman nods her head. “T-There are seven more, I think? They’re below, in the mines. I don’t know, I don’t really–”

Blake nods her head, accepting that easily enough. These people won’t be safe until they’re dealt with, and anyone who’d worked with people like the ones that had just held a boy down to brand him…

They’ve made their beds.

Blake is just here to make sure they lie in them.

“Take your son up onto the upper platforms, and stay quiet. I’ll deal with them.”

Before the woman can argue against her, Blake is moving.

She heads into the bowels of the SDC compound, into the lower reaches, where the miners are kept, where they are often mistreated, taken advantage of; because those out of sight are also out of mind.

It makes Blake’s blood boil. This entire experience, in just a few minutes, already has that old righteous lividity churning to the surface. That same lividity that had drove her away from her parent’s passive, motionless White Fang, and towards Sienna and Adam’s more active variant.

She finds almost exactly what she’d expected to. Miners being forced to work in unsafe conditions, breathe in toxic fumes without proper equipment, and just in general work far beyond what is considered safe.

Her eyes narrow as she hears one of the SDC personnel shout, “Keep working, ingrates! You’re not being paid to slack off!”

One of the workers, a young man no older than twenty, collapses, and instantly, two guards are descending the metal steps towards him, their boots clanking on the ground.

Blake doesn’t know exactly what will happen when they reach the man.

No one ever will, though.

She wraps Gambol’s ribbon on a beam above her, jumps backwards, and uses the momentum generated by the return swing to fling herself upwards. The two guards have just enough time to see her coming, raise their weapons, and shout, before they’re slammed into the metal steps beneath them, headfirst.

Five.

She hears shouting, and then the telltale sound of a Dust-rifle sounding off just to her left.

It’s missed her, which is good. Her Aura’s up, so it would’ve only taken some of it away, but Blake would really rather lose none. She uses a clone, and takes to the shadows. She hears the exact moment when the clone disappears, and the five remaining guards begin to panic, thinking she’s disappeared.

Technically, to them, she has.

She raises Gambol, and aims at one of the guards. She takes the shot, hitting him in the leg. He screams out in pain, evidently having not had his aura up to block such, and then she disappears again.

Four.

This time, the guards are aware that she’s going to reappear, but then, knowing something’s going to happen and actually being able to do anything about it are much different things.

She comes up behind another guard, and chokes him out without the others noticing.

Three.

She moves like shadow, avoiding their lines of sight. A few of the faunus below, with their superior eyesight, are tracking her, but none of them call out, or try and sucker up to the guards by revealing her.

Silent solidarity.

Blake cracks another across the back of the head, and he hits the floor.

Two.

The last two are back-to-back, searching for her. But Blake is crafty.

She’s hanging from Gambol’s ribbon, hooked directly above them, on one of the mining instruments.

She fires two shots, one to each of their guns.

The two guards are disarmed, and shocked. They look up just in time for Blake to land on one, and then kick the other square in the chest. He buckles, and an uppercut is enough to knock him out cold.

She breaths out, before remembering that, technically, that guy she shot in the leg is probably still conscious. She makes her way over to him, dodges his attempt to shoot at her with a pistol, and knocks him out, too, with an elbow to the back of the head.

And then, finally, it’s quiet.

She takes a breath, then, a deep one. Looking up, she studies the faces looking back at her.

None of them seem to have any idea what to do.

That’s fair, Blake thinks.

“Follow me.” She tells them, and she starts for the surface.

Luckily, they do. As she opens the tunnel that leads back outside, she finds a good twenty or so figures on her tail. She nods, and makes the ascent, content in the knowledge that they’re not staying down there.

As she emerges up top, she earns another round of startled gasps, shocked exclamations.

“How did she…”

“Did she take them all out?”

“All by herself!?”

“Who is she!?”

Blake sighs out, trying to figure out what it is she’s supposed to do in a situation like this. That last part, the actual job of liberating an SDC mining camp, was something she’d done on quite a few occasions. It’s this part, the after, where the White Fang had to then deal with the logistics of relocating a good hundred people, that Blake isn’t quite so good at.

And yet, before she can truly think about that, a figure is approaching her. Blake turns, expecting a guard or some other combatant, but…

Instead, a young woman thrusts herself into Blake’s arms, and wraps her own around her. It’s…

It’s the woman from earlier.

“Y-You saved him, you saved my son!” She says, and she’s crying as she says it, unbelieving that such a miracle had occurred. “Thank you, I don’t… how could I possibly repay you?”

“You don’t need to repay me.” Blake speaks evenly, trying not to feel too awkward about all of this. Accepting praise also hadn’t been her job in the White Fang. She’d normally cleared out the moment the combat had finished. “I wasn’t going to sit around and let something like that happen.”

“Yes, but… who are you? I’ve never seen you before, did you… where did you come from!?”

All of those are good questions. Really, they are. And yet… the longer Blake stares at this woman, the more… familiar she’s beginning to look.

Her hair is long, and a crimson red. Her eyes are a pale blue.

Far more importantly, her Faunus feature is a set of black horns, sticking out of her head. They’re far longer than his had ever been, and yet…

“Before that, may I ask your name?” Blake inquires, far too curious, needing to know.

“My name?” The woman seems genuinely surprised to have been asked. Yet a moment later, she nods her head, and gives just that.

“My name is Evelynn.” She speaks. “Evelynn Taurus. Or… Eve works, as well.”

Blake does her best not to panic, or read too far into things. After all, this could just be a coincidence, or… or it could be that he’d had a long-lost sister, or cousin, that Blake had never had the chance to meet.

And yet, all of that goes out the window in the next moment.

For Evelynn calls her son over, to thank their savior, and when she does, she has him thank Blake.

“You’ll have to forgive him,” she says, chuckling as the boy hides behind his mother. “He’s a tad bit shy.”

“And…” She swallows on nothing, her throat impossibly dry.

“What’s his name?”

Evelynn smiles, not at all knowing the effect her words are about to have on Blake Belladonna.

“His name is Adam.” And Blake’s fists clench at her sides.

“Adam Taurus.”

Chapter Text

Yang’s first thought as she’s dumped out of the portal that she and the rest of those trapped within the Ever After had taken to, hopefully, Vacuo, is that she’s pretty sure Vacuo doesn’t have any forests.

Her second thought is that there’s a Grimm charging directly at her.

She dodges to the left, swearing under her breath and wondering just why she’s suddenly being thrust into this situation five seconds after arriving. She hadn’t even had the time to really identify the Grimm in question before having to throwing herself out of its way.

She does get the chance to study it now, and recognizes the Ursa Major. It’s no major threat (hah), not really, and she manages to fell it within ten seconds. It falls to the ground, slowly disintegrating.

And that’s when Yang hears the screaming.

In her opinion, this day could really be going a lot better.

She sighs, even as she begins to run towards the source of it, and stumbles out of the forests to see…

A village.

One that’s burning.

Yang’s complaints end about then, and she transitions into her Huntress persona mere moments later.

She’s running before too long.

As she’s closing in on the village, she’s trying to analyze where the screams are coming from so as to be able to rush to the aid of the citizenry immediately. The problem with that is she’s never really been the type on RWBY to do the analyzing.  Usually, she lets Ruby call out targets, positions, strategies, and then does the dirty work afterwards.

She’s a lot better at that than this.

Still, she has no real choice but to make do.

She vaults over the village’s wall, and attempts to get a scale of the destruction. There are fires all over the village, alongside fleeing civilians, and the occasional member of what seems like a village defense force. It’s a cobbled together group of barely-above-pedestrians, using half-a-century-year-old dust rifles to fend off the oncoming Grimm.

They won’t be able to stop them. That Yang recognizes immediately. Had she not been here, this village would’ve been wiped off the map.

It’s a good thing she is here, then.

One of the guards, a young man no older than nineteen or twenty, screams out in terror as an Alpha Beowolf closes in on him, the bullets from his rifle bouncing harmlessly off its bone plating.

Yang’s Ember Celica-enhanced fists have no such issues.

She sends the Grimm sailing backwards, crashing into a pack of smaller Beowolves, and also, importantly, drawing the Grimm’s attention towards her.

Good. Come to me. Pick on someone your own size.

An Ursa approaches her, swinging wide, obvious, easy, and she catches its arm, breaks it, and then does a backflip to kick the creature straight in the throat. It collapses, and the Grimm falls backwards.

“A Huntress!” She hears echo out from somewhere behind her. “There’s a Huntress here!”

Suddenly, the screams of terror begin to die down. They’re still present, but they’re muted.

Yang smiles. That’s half the point of Huntsman and Huntresses, to serve the role of superhero, and eliminate the fear that the Grimm feed upon.

It’s one of the major reasons that survivors from villages attacked by the Grimm are so rare. Without a semblance like Ren’s, the horror that a civilian would feel watching their entire life being destroyed around them would only amplify the fear they felt. And that fear would, in turn, attract more Grimm, creating a vicious cycle.

A Hunter interrupted that cycle. They’d arrive, defeat a few Grimm, and, crucially, raise morale. That raise in morale would result in less Grimm arriving.

A much less vicious cycle.

That’s what Yang’s aiming for, now. She strikes a pose, smiles as widely as she can, and announces loudly, “Don’t worry! I’m here now! You’re safe!”

The village doesn’t exactly cheer, but the screaming and yelling has stopped. It’s enough, hopefully, for the Grimm that Yang’s dealing with now to be the last of them.

It only takes her fifteen minutes to fully clear the village, and it only really takes that long because there are Grimm stragglers outside the walls. Yang doesn’t want to leave the village until the Grimm have been fully cleared out, so she instead lures the Grimm over by yelling and attracting attention.

Finally, though, when they’re all culled, the surviving villagers come out of the woodworks. It seems that nearly all of the villagers had managed to make it to safety in time, which is good, since Yang hates seeing people suffering.

She’s inundated with happy people, coming up to her and hugging her, practically worshipping the ground she walks on. She laughs, quite a bit awkward about it all, but clears her throat and asks if there are any people missing.

If she can act quickly, she might be able to save people who’ve been trapped, or buried beneath rubble.

Luckily, there don’t seem to be too many. Yang ends up having to punch a few wooden beams out of a doorframe to free a trapped family, and then break down a bolted door to get out an old man who’d believed them to be lying to him that the village had been saved. Eventually, though, the village is able to count its dead.

There had been deaths, of course there had been. But luckily, they’d been minimal. In a village of two or three hundred people, they’d only lost nineteen. All of them a part of the defense force.

That helps Yang feel somewhat better, knowing those men and women had signed up to defend this place with their lives, but hearing their families cry is no easier.

No sooner has Yang begun to relax, however, than does one of the men she’d sent to the top of the wall come running back down, with wide eyes and a panicked expression.

“What’s the matter?” Yang asks, wary.

“F-Figures on the horizon, ma’am!” He reports. “They’re armed! They look like bandits.”

Yang scoffs. Bandits are just about her least favorite people in all the world, and not just for the obvious reasons. People who would take advantage of others in their most vulnerable moments, who would enslave and sell human beings, who can’t contribute to society, who can only take from it…

Yang’s eyes narrow.

“Bar the gates. I’ll handle them.”

She moves towards the top of the wall, looking out on the path that approaches the village. Sure enough, there are people incoming, perhaps fifty meters out from Yang’s position.

She sighs, wondering what she’s done to deserve this.

Funnily enough, it’s only then, nearly thirty minutes after she’d been deposited here in this forest somewhere in the world, that she truly accepts the reality of the situation.

She’s on her own. Her allies aren’t with her.

She could really use Blake by her side right now for moral support. Or Ruby to give her a gameplan. Perhaps Weiss to have a straight man to bounce shitty jokes off of.

Honestly, she’d settle for Jaune, too. She definitely wouldn’t mind his semblance topping her up at the moment. She’s really not picky.

Yang lets loose a great sigh, and then leaps off the wall.

Bandits, she’s always found, are the kinds of folk who try and take advantage only of those weaker than them. They’ll bray and heckle, but they’re too cowardly to ever attack someone bigger or stronger than they are.

That means that all Yang should have to do is make a show of force, and these bandits will scatter.

She cracks her neck, stretches her arms, and then, with a great big motion, smashes her fist into the ground.

The earth erupts up and into the air, as if struck by a meteor. It shoots up dirt, and smoke, and little bits of ash. She’d used one of Ember Celica’s rounds to enhance the effect, but from the distance they’re standing at, Yang’s pretty sure the bandits won’t notice that.

When the dust settles, she sees that the bandits have halted, as predicted.

Now, to seal the deal.

“You get one chance.” She tells them, flaring her semblance so her eyes change to their crimson shade, and her hair glows with literal embers. “Leave.”

Quite a few of the bandits flinch backwards, but honestly, it’s less than Yang would’ve assumed. She watches as, instead of clearing out entirely, they instead clear a path. A trench opens up between their ranks – about fifty strong – and in the middle–

Yang gasps.

Because…

That’s her mother.

Raven Branwen stands before her, with a cocky smile on her lips and Omen strapped to her hip. She’s dressed in the exact armor that Yang’s always known her to wear, the somewhat ridiculous combination of plate mail and a skirt.

Ruby and Weiss would tell her that combat skirts are actually quite effective, and very ergonomic in terms of leg-maneuverability, but Yang still has her doubts.

Either way…

The thing that stands out the most is how young she looks.

The last time Yang had seen her, she’d seemed… broken. She’d cried, openly, ashamed of what she’d done. She’d apologized to Yang, and then…

Then she’d gone off on her own to who knows where.

So, either she’d really turned things around – in a bad way – in the last year or so they’d been in Atlas, or…

No. That’s not possible.

Not where; When you are needed.

…Shit, unless it is possible.

“Are you this village’s… guardian?” Raven calls out to her, and Yang tenses. “I don’t recall seeing you while my men and I scouted this place. Who are you? Where did you come from?”

Raven wants to talk? She’s not really sure why. She should have recognized her by now, surely?

…Things are already beginning to become clearer in her head, and she sighs as she realizes just what it is that’s likely going on.

That… is not good.

That’s very much not good.

Is she here alone? Is Ruby here? Where is Blake, and Weiss, and even Jaune?

“Oi, blondie, are you going to answer me?”

Yang keys back into the fact that Raven’s trying to get her to engage her in conversation. It’s actually a good thing, really. It gives her time to formulate a strategy.

“My name is…” Ah, shit. “Blake. Blake Belladonna.”

“Huh.” Raven sneers. “Not the name I would’ve given you, but alright, then.” Oh, I know the name you would’ve given me, Yang thinks. “Well, Blake, I’m sure you’re a great Huntress, but I’m going to give it to you straight; that village you just protected? That was our target. That Grimm attack was our doing, softening the place up, let’s say. Everything, and everyone within it, belongs to us. So, if you’d like to live, I’d suggest looking the other way.”

“Quick question; has that ever worked?” Yang’s honestly curious. “The whole ‘step aside and you shall live’ thing?”

Raven barks out a laugh. “No. But hey, can’t hurt to try.”

She draws one of Omen’s blades in the next moment, one that appears to be made of fire dust, judging by the deep red coloration. All around her, the bandits begin to smile, and jeer, evidently pleased to get to see their boss go toe-to-toe with a Huntress.

Yang sighs, even as she primes Ember Celica. She’s fairly certain that she’s not going to be able to convince Raven to back down, which means the only way to get her to leave this village alone…

Well, it’s to beat the shit out of her.

And hey, honestly, this will probably be good for her.

The Raven she’s familiar with really needed to get the shit beaten out of her more often when she’d been younger. It would’ve really helped her build character.

“Hey, so, before we start,” Yang makes a show of being casual. Really casual, knowing such will annoy her mother. “What’s your ‘I’m sorry, you’re way tougher than me, and I give up’ safe word?”

Raven snarls, and lunges towards her.

“Alright, we’ll default to pineapple, then.”

/

Weiss snaps awake inside of a dark, dingy bedroom in a home she’s never seen before.

Her mind whirls as she tries to process quite a few things. For one, she’d been within the Ever After, stepping through the portal to what they’d assumed would be Vacuo, surrounded by her friends, thinking all had been well, maybe ten seconds ago.

And now…

She pushes herself up off of the ground, and tries to get her bearings. The floor below her is wooden, but old, creaking. The walls around her are painted, but the color has all but faded, and in several sections the paint is flaking off.

She doesn’t recognize this place. Not at all. Maybe, in some far-off corner of her mind, she gets the vague feeling that a house like this wouldn’t be built in Vacuo.

More noticeable, however, and the thing that ultimately distracts her from thinking any further on that subject, is the smell.

There’s an acrid, almost rancid smell coming from somewhere in the house, and it’s one that Weiss recognizes, just as much as she’s trying her best to hope that this isn’t what she thinks it is.

She makes as little noise as she can, but pushes herself out into the hallway beyond her room. She can’t hear anyone else within the building, and it’s hard to say if that’s either a good or bad sign.

It’s a multi-story home, and it seems, as Weiss had thought, to be quite old. If she had to guess, she’d say about a century or so. The décor is all wrong for the current day and age – although given her upbringing, perhaps she knows less about that than most – and the trim of the wood, and other such details, feel older to her.

There’s another room on the top floor, and it’s this room that Weiss is making her way towards. That’s the room, after all, emitting the smell itself.

She breathes through her mouth, braces herself, and then pushes open the door.

Weiss finds what she’d expected to find, no matter how much she’d dreaded such an outcome.

The room itself is nothing special. The same color paint on the walls, the same flakiness, and the same wooden floors. But the differences between the two become more apparent when Weiss looks at the bed, and the figure atop it.

Namely, the corpse that’s laid there.

She swallows back on the bile rising in her throat, doing her best to prevent herself from vomiting. She barely manages it, almost entirely because she’s grown quite used to the smell during her time in Atlas, no matter how much that fact disgusts and horrifies her. Their primary job at that time had been trying to keep the city secure. But that work had also included attempting to reinforce broken lines, or solve Hunter-related crimes within the city. Some of which had been quite grisly.

She does her best to take in the facts of the situation. As much as she’d not had detective work on the agenda when she’d awoken that day, and as much as this entire thing makes her want to empty out the modest meal she’d had before they’d gone off in search of Neo and Ruby all over the floors, she’s been spat out in the home of a murder victim. At the very least, it’s a home containing a murder victim, which is a pretty good reason for Weiss to try and sleuth out what’s happened.

The man, and he is a man, she’s able to determine, seems to have been dead for several days already. His body has begun to decay, some of his skin and muscle melting into the bedding beneath him. There’s dried blood on the sheets, and, perhaps most damningly, a hole the size of a golf ball just off-center of the man’s chest, almost directly above his heart.

Weiss grimaces, but she moves closer, so as to get a better look.

The man’s face reveals little. His jaw is hanging open, which might suggest he’d died screaming, but could also be the byproduct of his body being left to rot here for days; perhaps the muscles holding his jaw had simply decomposed. His eyes are open, which leads Weiss to the conclusion that if he’d died in this bed, he’d done so awake.

She’s not the most experienced with this kind of thing, however, and the whole… dead body thing is really beginning to overwhelm her. She has to take a moment to retreat from the room, and steady herself. Breathe non-stale air.

It doesn’t help much. Not really. Even still, when she feels she’s gotten a good enough break, she makes to step back into the room, and continue examining the body.

Before she can, however, she hears a sound just behind her, feels a sharp point against the back of her neck, and goes deathly still.

“Hands in the air.” A masculine voice, young, but somewhat gruff, commands. “Now, if you would.”

Weiss swallows, but does as commanded.

“Drop your weapon, and then kick it towards me.”

Weiss instantly knows she has an opportunity to free herself. She does as she’s been asked; holding Myrtenaster up, and, subtly, in a motion that would look like nothing at all to anyone not intimating familiar with her weapon, primes one of the chambers. She drops it, and sends all her aura towards her legs.

When Myrtenaster hits the floor, the fire dust in the chamber ignites, and creates a localized fireball that explodes on the ground beneath them. Weiss hears her mysterious assailant curse as he’s forced to jump backwards.

Weiss has lost a good bit of aura due to tanking the brunt of the explosion, but she still likely has seventy-five percent or more. She reaches down, takes up Myrtenaster, jumps back to create distance between them, starts the process of priming her semblance, and–

Her eyes widen.

His face is less sunken in, livelier. There’s no five o’clock shadow along his chin, and he looks healthier. His eyes aren’t quite so bloodshot, and his breath doesn’t smell potently of liquor.

But even so, it’s so clearly…

“Qrow!?”

He has a similar reaction to her words, his eyes going wide, taking a step back, and looking right at her with a furrowed brow.

“You know me?” Qrow’s face scrunches up. “Huh. Guess my reputation precedes me for once. Not going to lie, that’s a good feeling. Even still, I’m going to have to ask you to not try that shit again. Put the weapon down, Miss. I’d really rather this not get ugly.”

“I’ll be keeping my weapon to myself, thank you very much!” Weiss speaks, some of her old haughtiness slipping into her tone. “Why on Remnant did you hold me up, anyways!?”

“Uh, because you were standing in a room with a dead body, lady?”

Okay, admittedly, now that Weiss thinks about it…

Wait, no!

“A dead body that’s very obviously day’s old!? That dead body!?”

Qrow visibly deflates somewhat. “Alright, fair.” He lowers Harbinger with a great sigh. “Who the hell are you, anyways? I’ve never seen someone to have hair that shade of white that wasn’t a Schnee, but somehow, I don’t think that’s it.”

What?

“You don’t… know who I am?” Weiss asks, her instincts flaring that something is wrong.

“Uh, should I?” Qrow cocks an eyebrow.

Okay… that’s not good.

Qrow not knowing who she is… Weiss isn’t quite sure what’s up with that, but she’s pretty sure none of the explanations behind such are good. For right now, she’ll assume that there’s something wrong with Qrow, and work from there.

In that case, if he’s familiar with Schnee’s, but doesn’t know her, then using her real name here would probably be a bad idea, as would utilizing her semblance.

She’s very glad she hadn’t managed to prime it in time before recognizing Qrow.

Still, she has to come up with a fake name. And quickly, without hesitating, if she wants to not be seen as overwhelmingly suspicious.

“My name is…” think, Weiss, think! “Ruby. Ruby White.”

Excellent. Great. Just peachy. That’s my name now. Incredible work there, brain.

“Ruby, huh?” Qrow actually smiles. “I have a niece named Ruby. Alright then, Rubes–”

“Do not call me that.”

“Too late, name’s stickin’,” Qrow ignores her complaints as he steps into the room alongside her, and takes a long, hard look at the corpse on the bed. “Since you were studying the body, give me your take on all of this.”

“It’s… not exactly my forte.”

“It’s not mine either.” Qrow admits, gesturing once more towards the body. “C’mon, surely you figured something out.”

Weiss sighs, even as she crosses her arms over her breasts and gives Qrow a basic rundown of what she thinks happened. When she finishes, she can see him nodding sagely, taking her words into account.

“I think a lot of what you’re saying there is pretty accurate, actually.” He tells her. “Course, without actually knowing who this is, you were never going to be able to grasp the full picture, but that’s hardly your fault.”

“Alright,” Weiss huffs, a bit annoyed that he’d wasted her time. “Then tell me, who was this man?”

“He is – was a Huntsman.” Qrow sighs. “A damn good one, too.”

That’s troubling, but then, good can mean a lot of things.

“How good?” Weiss asks.

“Good enough that he was one of Leonardo Lionheart’s personal guard for years.” Weiss’ eyes widen. “Yeah. Glad you get the picture.”

That’s not quite why Weiss had reacted, but she’ll let Qrow think that for now. It’s been… quite a while since she’s thought about Lionheart. To hear his name brought up in conversation…

A lot of little things are beginning to add up in Weiss’ head, beginning to paint a picture she’s fairly certain she doesn’t like.

“And Leonardo Lionheart… how is he?”

“Huh? Uh… fine, last I heard.” Qrow’s looking at her a bit funny. “I didn’t mean that Lionheart was attacked, and his guard died protecting him or something. This was an isolated event.”

Okay… okay…

No, it’s not okay! What does he mean that Leonardo Lionheart is fine!? The man had been dead and buried last time Weiss had checked!

Weiss breathes our hoarsely, trying to make sense of all of this without giving herself away more than she already has. Something is afoot, and while she’s curious about the nature of such, she wants to hold more cards than Qrow does in this scenario.

“Alright.” Weiss clears her throat. “I think I understand the basics of what you’re getting at. So, what exactly is your major point here?”

“What I’m saying is that whatever killed him?” Qrow points down at the body. “They would’ve had to be better. That, or they snuck in while he was asleep. But given the wide eyes, which you yourself noticed, I have my doubts.”

Weiss nods her head. “You came here, seemingly on alert. Did you think he would be dead?”

“It’s less that, and more that no one had heard from him in a week.” Qrow explains. “Honestly, I figured you’d have known that, and that’s why you were here.”

Ah, suspicion yet again. Weiss thinks that’s probably fair, given she did, technically, just appear in the middle of this house in the middle of, apparently, Mistral.

She wants to get the subject off of her, so she pivots.

“Do you have a suspect?”

Qrow, seemingly, does. He looks back towards the body, towards that wound through the man’s torso, and lets loose a sigh.

“The MO doesn’t add up, but the methodology does. That wound is similar to one’s we see coming up all throughout Mistral, and hell, even some parts of Eastern Sanus. That big-ass hole, straight through him. It takes a strong weapon to do something like that. And… well, one bastard has made it his calling card.”

“And who’s that?”

“Well, maybe you’ve heard of him.” Qrow speaks, turning back towards her.

“Asshole’s name is Marcus Black.”

/

Ruby really feels that after she’d gone through such a deep, traumatic, and emotional journey within the Ever After, she’d earned a more dignified entrance into Vacuo than landing face first on a toilet seat.

The contact hurts, for one, which is absolutely no fun, but for two…

Actually, it just hurts, and is super embarrassing. She doesn’t have much else to say except for that.

She shakes her head to try and lift the fog that had set in when she’d hit it, and looks around. She uh… doesn’t really recognize the place. It’s a cramped bathroom, maybe a meter wide, and a meter long? It reminds Ruby of an airship toilet, actually, except it’s quite a bit fancier than any that she’s been in.

That one they’d had while aboard their stolen airship from Argus to Atlas had been… really bad.

…Ruby’s not going to put any more time into analyzing a bathroom, she decides then. Instead, she rises, makes sure that Crescent Rose is strapped to her back – it is – and pushes her way out into…

A sea of people.

More than that, a sea of Huntsman and Huntresses!

Funnily enough, it clicks for Ruby exactly where she is, then. She recognizes the particular airliner she’s been loaded into, recognizes the large windows that look out onto the familiar city below, the fins that move up and down outside.

This is the airship that had taken Ruby from Vale to Beacon on her very first day.

This raises an awful lot of questions, none of which Ruby really has the mental capacity to comprehend. Her game plan for the day, after having gone through everything in the Ever After, had been to get to Vacuo, lie down on the closest bed, and sleep for one to two weeks.

That is, seemingly, not going to be an option.

She’s a bit salty about that.

Even still, Ruby’s sort of expecting heads to turn towards her, for them to look at her and point and say she’s way too old to be here, or something, but instead, aside from a single cursory glance from a few of the other hopefuls…

Nothing.

Ruby’s just… accepted.

She has half a mind to be offended. She’s nearly eighteen! She’s a fully-fledged Huntress! She’s fought against some of Remnant’s strongest bad guys!

…She’s also, technically, around the age she should’ve been had she not been moved up by Ozpin to actually attend Beacon.

So perhaps the people around her accepting her presence is fair.

It doesn’t mean Ruby has to like it.

…Hey, wait, hold on, Vale had been blown up!

Ruby, in what may look to those around her to be a fit of madness, uses her semblance to fly right over to the window, and looks out upon the city below her.

Somehow, someway, it’s unscathed.

Which is…

Huh.

Ruby turns around, sees that a few people are whispering, presumably about her, and thinks that maybe, she should just find a seat and sit down.

She does, and then, realizing that this ship isn’t exactly the fastest ever, she decides to take some time to ponder her options.

Or lack thereof, really.

Aside from throwing herself out of the vehicle at speed, Ruby’s pretty much just waiting for the airship to dock at Beacon. Once she’s there…

Well, that’s a good question.

Ozpin’s not going to be here, given he’s Oscar now – but then, Vale’s also not supposed to be here, and for that matter, Beacon! – but she might be able to talk with Professor Goodwitch, or Headmistress, she supposes.

…Yeah, no, Ruby’s totally lost.

She thinks, ponders, questions, other synonyms for thinks, for quite a while, until, eventually, she feels the ship jolt, and realizes they’ve docked.

The other kids begin getting up – and they really do look like kids! Is this how Yang had always seen Ruby? Because wow – and make their way towards the doors, apprehension obvious about the lot of them.

Finally, once they’ve cleared out, Ruby realizes that she should probably follow suit.

She tiptoes down the aisle, wondering how she’s supposed to deal with this whole… what’s that word Weiss likes? Debacle? Yeah. Debacle.

She makes it to the doors, steps outside, and…

Yep. There’s Beacon.

No giant Grimm wyvern attached to the central spire, turned to stone by Ruby’s eyes. No signs of destruction, or craters from White Fang Paladins. No bloodstains, or medical tents, or screaming or dead children who’d just wanted to make the world a better place.

Just… Beacon. As she remembers it.

Ruby finds her eyes tearing up, and she reaches up to wipe those tears before they can fall. It’s just… it’s a lot, being back here. It feels like she’s lived an entire lifetime since she’s last seen it.

…It’s probably way worse for Jaune, she finds herself thinking, then. With having been the Rusted Knight for so long, according to him nearly two full decades.

That… Ruby can’t even imagine. It’s still kind of weird, and it probably won’t ever not be, that her friend is the Rusted Knight. She can barely remember her mom and dad reading her the story of Alyx in the Ever After as a child.

Now… well, she’s lived through it.

“Excuse me, miss.”

Ruby practically jumps out of her cape, and turns towards the sound of the voice so quickly that she has to adjust mid-air to not hurt herself.

She lets loose a breath of relief as she lands, looking up at the man who’s just addressed her, and seeing, presumably, a Beacon attendant.

Ruby doesn’t know him.

“Oh, uh… hi!”

“Hello to you too, miss.” The man smiles, before pointing towards Beacon. “If I were you, I would make my way in towards the auditorium. It’s just a straight shot from here to the front doors and then from there, you follow the signs.”

Oh. Right. Ruby looks like a student.

“R-Right!” She salutes, before realizing saluting is weird, and then decides not to do that anymore. “T-Thank you, sir! I appreciate it.”

“Don’t mention it.” He chuckles. “Run along now. You wouldn’t want to be late for your very first day.”

“Definitely not.”

Ruby nods towards the man as he steps off, and enters into the ship that had taken them to Beacon. Perhaps he’d been the pilot?

Ah, well, he’s probably right, either way. Ruby’s not really sure what’s going on – maybe this is all some kind of illusion – but she doesn’t feel like she’s going to learn more about what’s happening by running away from it all.

So, for now, she takes a breath, squares her shoulders, and soldiers on.

/

“Sir.”

The Headmaster of Beacon Academy, Ozpin, looks up from the paperwork he’d been consummately avoiding actually working on, and into the eyes of his deputy, and first-year combat professor, Glynda Goodwitch.

She’s holding a tablet in her hands, one which she’s offering out to him, urging him to take it.

“What seems to be the problem, Glynda?”

“There’s been an… incident.”

“Oh? Did something occur here in Beacon, or perhaps aboard the transport ship?”

“The latter, sir.”

“Was anyone hurt?”

“Not that kind of incident. More… well,” Glynda clears her throat. “I’m sure I do not have to tell you that the Beacon student transport is equipped with a state-of-the-art SDC weight tracker?”

“To make sure that it doesn’t exceed a certain weight limit, I’m aware.”

“Well, during the flight, something… unusual occurred.” Glynda takes the tablet, which seems to show a video taken from inside of the transport. “Roughly seventy-three percent of the way through the journey, the weight of the craft… increased.”

Ozpin’s brow furrows. “By how much?”

“Roughly sixty-five kilos.”

“No small amount.” Ozpin notes. “It wasn’t a mechanical error?”

“No, sir. It wasn’t. The moment the pilot contacted me about the sudden shift, I checked the cameras for anything out of the ordinary. Look at this footage.”

Ozpin does just that. On screen, he sees the sped-up events of the entire ride from Vale to Beacon. It’s a rather boring thing, consisting, mostly, of children attempting to occupy their own attentions with either their scrolls or conversations between one another. Occasionally, someone stands to use the restroom.

And then, just as Glynda had described, something curious happens.

For after the restroom empties out, and should, by all accounts, be unoccupied…

Three minutes later, another figure exits out.

Ozpin’s eyebrows raise.

“I went over the footage.” Glynda tells him. “This girl was not a part of the initial boarding party, nor was she aboard the transport when it first took off. Given the sudden weight increase midflight, I was initially inclined to believe she possessed some sort of teleportation semblance.”

“I’m sensing a ‘but’, given your tone.”

“But,” Glynda proves him right. “Instead, a mere two minutes later, this mysterious arrival showed off what I believe to be her semblance.”

Ozpin watches as, lo and behold, the girl seems to use some manner of a speed semblance, rocketing forward and leaving a trail of rose petals in her wake.

Odd. A semblance somewhat alike to another he’d seen from one of his students. Not quite in usage, given hers had a much different application, but the residual effect, that of creating rose petals…

It’s just like hers.

“So, you believe we can rule out teleportation?” Ozpin asks.

“Indeed.” Glynda says, before sighing a moment later. “Except that makes much less sense, given that she did get aboard the ship somehow. A teleportation semblance at least explains that fact.”

Ozpin hums out under his breath.

“Interesting. What do you suggest we do, Glynda?”

“I would suggest that we apprehend this potentially dangerous young huntress, who has already shown a propensity to break the law, given she hitched a ride aboard one of our ships illegally.” Glynda speaks. She reaches up and massages her brow a moment later. “And yet, knowing you, I have a feeling what you will instead be doing.”

Ozpin smiles. “She does not know that we know. For now, I say keep a close eye on her… but allow her to continue along unabated. Have Peter or Peach watch her subtly, and make sure she doesn’t get up to anything untoward, but otherwise, let us see exactly what it is this ‘rose girl’ intends to do.”

Glynda groans, but nods her head. “Yes. I thought you would say as much.”

“Is that all, Glynda?”

“No. There is one more thing.”

“Concerning her?”

“Yes.” Glynda reaches across, seemingly to take back her tablet. Ozpin acquiesces, and she begins to skip ahead in the video, right to the last minute or so of footage, where the other students are emptying out. “At the very end, the camera managed to catch something particularly… disconcerting. I could not quite be sure if my eyes were deceiving me or not. I would like for you to take a look as well.”

Ozpin nods, and takes the tablet back. The video is set to move at roughly four frames a second.

The girl stands from her seat near the back of the transport, the last to do so. She makes her way forward, closer, ever closer to the cameras, and then–

Ozpin’s breath catches in his throat, just as his finger reaches down and pauses the video, freezing on that single damning frame.

And Ozpin feels something, then, that he has not in what feels like centuries. For so very long, he has been the puppet master, manipulating things behind the scenes. For so very long, he has known the answer to every question, every riddle; hell, been their origin.

But here, well and truly, Ozpin has been caught completely unawares.

Because their mysterious stowaway… this new piece on the board…

Has silver eyes.

Chapter Text

They’re being followed.

Jaune’s been unable to tell as of yet exactly by whom, but he can sense someone on the very edges of his periphery, can hear their footsteps stalking the rooves above and behind them as Jaune tries to both not panic Cinder, and get them to safety all at once.

He’s had so little time to process the fact that it’s Cinder who he’s rescued, who he’s saved from being imprisoned, before this had all begun, too. Barely a moment after Cinder had told him her name, he’d heard someone approaching their position in that alleyway.

He’d thought nothing of it, at first. Or, that is to say, he’d assumed it to be either a police officer, or perhaps an errant homeless man or woman. Neither of which would have been any threat to them. Not really.

But as Jaune moves them, gets them out of that alley and into another, when he hears those footsteps following, feels that presence moving in tandem with them…

He’s beginning to grow concerned, and it’s causing him to drag Cinder along just that littlest bit faster.

He doesn’t like this. This isn’t the kind of way that a law enforcement agency would trail them. This feels somehow more sinister.

“W-What’s going on?” Cinder asks him, already growing suspicious.

“Nothing is.”

Cinder seems to know he’s lying, but again, she’s too scared to call him on it. That doesn’t really do anything to make him feel better.

Cinder’s sword – or Rhodes’, he’s not had the time to ask – bounces unnaturally on his hip, in a way that he’s not used to. He has half a mind to draw it now, and call out to whomever it is that’s following them. Cut this entire thing off now.

He doesn’t, though, because he’d rather this not become a confrontation.

It’s likely that it’s a Huntsman or Huntress pursuing them. That would make the most sense. Rhodes had called in, someone with a semblance that allowed them to track Jaune’s and Cinder’s presences had caught onto them, and now, they’d be keeping track of their location to broadcast it to others.

Which meant that Jaune and Cinder needed to get away. And they needed to do so quickly.

Unfortunately, that isn’t exactly an option. The only real place that Jaune can think to go is Mantle, but short of hijacking an airship – and to be fair, Cinder’s already a wanted criminal, and he’s abetting her, so it’s not like they can be more wanted – he’s not really sure how they can get down there.

Jaune curses under his breath, which sets Cinder’s nerves off. She’s taking harsh, jagged breaths, and Jaune feels like a fool when he remembers that whether or not this is Cinder Fall, who will eventually become one of the strongest Huntresses that Remnant has ever seen, right now, she is a – likely – fourteen-year-old girl.

…He has to make a judgement call. Try and make their stand here, or try and make it to Mantle with an entirely exhausted Cinder slung along his back. She’s not had the time to rest, either, since leaving that hotel. She’ll be dead weight soon – probably already should be, if not for the last dregs of adrenaline still coursing through her now.

The answer is obvious, even if it’s not at all Jaune’s preferred route.

He brings them both to a sudden stop, turns towards Cinder, and tells her, “Stay behind me, okay?”

She nods her head, fear apparent in her eyes. They widen a moment later, full as the moon, and Jaune’s about to ask what the matter is when–

“Ah, glad to see you’ve finally stopped running! I must say, I do love the chase, but even I can tire of it eventually.”

Jaune’s blood runs cold.

He turns towards the sound of the voice to see a figure he hadn’t at all been expecting. He’s… younger. Much younger. There aren’t any scars on his face, and there are only a few of the ones he’d had adorned on his chest when they’d first met him, all that time ago, in Mistral. But evidently, he’s still the same, with that manic smile on his face, that tail swishing back and forth behind him.

Tyrian Callows looks at Jaune, and his smile grows wider, more feral.

“Oh, but how interesting…” Tyrian reaches up and points at him, chuckling beneath his breath. “You… you look like… quite many things, in truth. So very many. How… exciting.”

Jaune draws Cinder’s sword from off of his hip, gives it a few flicks around to try and get a sense of its balance – it’s completely different than Crocea Mors, which is a problem, given that’s what he’s fought with for going on twenty-odd years of his life at this point – before unfurling Crocea’s shield form and – leaving its shattered blade sheathed – taking a battle-ready stance.

“Oh?” Tyrian tilts his head to one side, like a dog might when it sees something it doesn’t quite understand. “How curious. Not going to ask who I am? What it is I’m here for?”

He knows. The problem, of course, is that he has no reason to know. He’s given up information about himself without even meaning to.

“I was already intrigued when you somehow entered into that establishment, and stole away one of our Goddesses’ potential enforcers, without my seeing a thing,” Jaune’s eyes widen, realizing in that moment that Salem had had her eyes on Cinder for far longer than he’d ever assumed. “But you react to me as if you know me. Tell me… do you know of my Goddess as well?”

He does his best to steel his features, to show no reaction at all. He’s already given Tyrian Callows, a terribly dangerous man, more information than he’d have really liked to. He’s already given him more than enough reason to be intrigued by him.

Any more, and… well…

He’d really rather avoid being an object of interest for Tyrian, of all people.

“Hmm… You’ve gone to such lengths to not react, to avoid reacting. But that in and of itself is an answer, young boy. It tells me that you do know our Goddess.”

Well, shit.

“How delightful, how positively delightful!” Tyrian claps his hands together, dancing in place like an excited schoolgirl upon learning her crush returns her feelings. “Oh, I look forward to finding out just how much it is you know. But, first, I suppose I really ought to fulfill my original mission in coming here.”

Tyrian steps forward, his wrist blades extending, his tail beginning to flick forward, like even from five or so meters out, it’s already trying to strike at Jaune.

“I will say this only once, and only because my Goddess has instructed me to not make too much of a scene if I can help it. Hand over the girl, and come with me.”

It is not phrased as a question.

“No.” He denies.

“Hah, he speaks!” Tyrian cackles, excitement filling him. “Here I was beginning to suspect you a mute! Oh, how fun, how fun! So much to talk about, but I am getting ahead of myself. If you will not move…”

Tyrian’s stance drops, so that his legs are wide, his posture lax, almost lazy looking.

It is the oddest battle stance that Jaune has ever seen.

“Then I will simply have to make you.”

And with that, it seems negotiations – no matter how pointless – have fallen through.

The only way this can end is with a fight.

Jaune’s not certain he can win this, in truth. Despite his time in the Ever After, during which he’d invariably seen combat, he’s still not had time to practice against more human foes. Jaune has no doubt that, against the older, more experienced Tyrian that he knows from the future – present? Ugh, this is already getting confusing – that he’d be beaten, and likely handily.

But this isn’t that Tyrian. The lack of scars on his chest confirms that fact.

So perhaps… perhaps he can win this after all.

No sooner has he thought this, than has Tyrian let out a howl, and charged right for him.

Jaune brings up his borrowed blade, and their fight begins.

/

Blake has about five seconds to get over the shock of finding out she’s, ostensibly, about twelve or so years in the past before an unnamed Faunus, gruff, with a large beard, grabs her by the shoulders with a mad glint in his eyes

“What have you done!?” He shouts at her, and Blake only manages to hold off on dislodging him forcefully because she can feel the lack of real strength in his grip. She could remove him with ease if she wished to. Likely the malnutrition and overwork affecting him. “Those guards, they… once they wake up, they’re going to come for us! All of us! And you… you!”

Blake nods her head, not denying that. “Yes, they will. Which is why we won’t be here when they do wake up.”

She sees several of the hundred or so Faunus gathered around her look rather shocked at that, and though Blake wishes she’d known how best to go about properly breaking this to them…

Well, that had never been her job. She’s going to do the best she can under the circumstances.

“Unless you wish to stay here, and deal with the fallout of these soldiers’ ire,” Blake raises her voice, to be heard by all. “Then you are going to be coming with me.”

“With you!?” One of them shouts out from the crowd, Blake can’t get a good look at them. “To where, exactly!? And who the hell even are you!?”

All fair questions. Only one of them can Blake answer. “Depending on our location on Solitas, we’ll either be headed East, towards Oaresberg,” a small port town that’s seedy enough to grant even obvious prisoners’ passage aboard a ship, if one has the lien. The White Fang had used it to ferry away SDC refugees during her time with the group, “Or West, towards Coldport,” a similar location to Oaresberg, and yet another location that had been used by the White Fang. “Once we’re there, we’ll take a ship North, and dock at Kuo Kuana. You’ll be safe there.”

There are cries of uproar at that, and admittedly, Blake can’t really blame them. She’s sure the lot of these people likely do live in Atlas, or at least had, before they’d decided to take on a job with the SDC, and be relocated out here. But the simply truth of the matter is that after this? After what Blake’s done?

They’re criminals, every single one of them, through no fault of their own.

It’s not fair, but then, life isn’t fair for the Faunus. The SDC will just claim them all to have been White Fang informants, or undercover operatives. During her time with the White Fang, Adam had gone on and on about how idiotic a thing that was for the SDC to do. He’d said such things only worked to push the desperate Faunus, already bereft of options, towards the White Fang; that such a move could only radicalize them.

Blake is inclined to agree. But then, perhaps the PR they would generate by making every ‘attack’ that the SDC’s mining camps suffered be the fault of the White Fang had been worth the radicalization of a hundred or so Faunus each time.

After all, the White Fang in Atlas had earned a terrifying reputation, even early on in their operations, when all they’d done had been to occasionally lift Faunus from out of genuinely dangerous working conditions in places like this one. The simple truth behind that had been that no one in the White Fang could tell their side of the story, and the SDC had been, and very likely always would be, the richest business in the world.

They’d never had any trouble getting their perspective told.

Blake sighs, even as the last bits of shouted disagreement die down among the Faunus surrounding her. She could explain her reasoning to all of them, but honestly, she’s not really sure it would matter.

…But Blake supposes that it can’t hurt.

So, she does. She tells them exactly what it is she’s just thought. She tells them of the unfair conditions that have been forced upon them simply by being born Faunus. She tells them of her past experiences with situations just like these – making sure to be as vague as possible, and not using the name White Fang, just in case there are any cameras recording this. She’s fairly certain that the White Fang hadn’t yet become militaristic at this point, which means she doesn’t want to give the Atlesian media anymore ammo than they already have.

When she finishes…

Well, it’s pretty much what she’d expected.

“And why should we believe you!?”

“Yeah, Atlas News says that–”

“This is the fault of people like you, who–”

“If we just kept our heads down, none of this would–”

It boils Blake’s blood, really. Issues with the Faunus always have. It had always been far too difficult for Blake to ignore anything regarding them, or the White Fang, even back during her time within Beacon.

So instead of just lying down, and taking their abuse, she challenges it.

“So what crime, exactly, did this boy commit!?” She bellows, and the crowds of Faunus go silent as she gestures towards young Adam, hiding behind his mother, Eve. “Well!? What was his crime that demanded the SDC’s goons bring him out here and brand his face!?”

“He…” His mother, Eve, has tears in her eyes as she answers. “He was trying to protect me. One of the guards, he… he grabbed me, and… he… he was going to…” Eve swallows, those same tears spilling down her cheeks. “Adam pushed the guard away from me, trying to protect me…”

Blake almost wants to snarl. It’s so common a story to hear. Especially in the more remote camps like this one. Physical abuse, sexual abuse… if there is no law, no true law, then the strongest reign, and their word becomes law.

No matter what that word might be.

“A young boy defending his mother from being assaulted!” Blake screams, and the fire in her voice only grows. “Is that a crime, where you come from!? Within the city of Atlas, would such be regarded as a villainous act, deserving of such a medieval punishment!?”

None of them answer, because they know the truth.

She can almost feel this radicalizing her again, just as it had so many years ago, when she’d been just a child. Twelve or thirteen years old, and already fighting on the front lines.

This place is a hive of scum.

Blake has half a mind to set it alight, and watch it burn.

…

She shakes her head. Such are thoughts for later.

“So, tell me, my fellow Faunus,” Blake shouts. “What was young Adam supposed to do? Sit and do nothing!? Continue to accept such treatment for years and years!?” She shouts, and she watches several of them flinch back, knowing she’s right. “Because the truth is, regardless of how ‘good’ we are, regardless of how much we ‘behave’, unless we do something about it, unless we stand up, and act, there will always be people like these.”

Silence meets her as she finishes her little speech. It had become somewhat broader at the end, but… she feels it’s hammered in her point, at least.

“Ma’am,” She turns towards Adam’s mother. “What’s the approximate location of this colony?”

Eve’s eyes widen. “Oh, uhm… we’re on the eastern edge of Solitas, about as far out from Atlas as you can be, if that’s what you mean?”

Blake nods. She turns back to the crowd. “We’ll be heading towards Oaresberg. I would advise you return to your quarters, and grab anything you cannot bear to leave behind. That includes anything that might identify you, or be able to be traced back to you. You don’t want to give these people more ammunition to track down you, or your families. If you can’t bring it, burn it. Anything otherwise nonessential should stay. After that, meet back up here in the courtyard. Dress warmly, the journey will likely still take a day or two.”

With that, Blake heads towards the downed guards, a plan already formulating in her head to slow them down from reporting in to their superiors. The SDC mining colonies have all been built with a brig to house prisoners, and right now, she’s planning on using that to her advantage.

She drags each unconscious soldier down a few flights of stairs – and if their heads bonk against every individual step on the way down, oops, how clumsy of her – and throws them each in a different cell. It’s appalling to her just how many cells there are. It’s normal for places far out from society to have jail cells, but usually, there are only one, perhaps two. Preparing for an outlying, emergency scenario. Something unexpected.

This colony has twenty jail cells. Enough for one-fifth the entire work force. The entire basement floor she’s in is just for locking up prisoners.

She wants to sigh at the disgusting racism on display; that, or be aghast at how they’d expected to have people resisting their tyrannical treatment, outright planned for it, but instead, she just shakes her head, throws the first guard into one of the cells – alongside a few rations so he doesn’t starve – and then locks it on him.

She repeats this until every single guard within the base is in a cell. She’s actually quite pleased that the SDC Chief wakes up while she’s dragging him down the stairs, and so she’s ‘ forced’ to rough him up to get him into a cell.

How tragic. Ah, well, needs must.

“You’ll never get away with this!” The man screeches out with a high, nasally voice as Blake shuts the cell door behind him. “The SDC will hear of this! You and the rest of those mongrels will be wrapped in chains if it’s the last thing I do!”

“Mhm.” Blake hums uncaringly, spinning his key ring – the guards only hope of an easy escape – around her finger, even as she turns around, and leaves the screaming man to his cell.

Finally, some forty-five minutes later, Blake makes her way out of the basement levels, and back out to the courtyard. When she arrives, she looks around, and sees many uncertain faces staring back at her.

“Right.” She takes a breath. “I’ll lead the way. Is anyone else here trained with a weapon?”

Three people raise their hands, all of them broad, older men. Blake imagines they’re probably veterans of the Faunus War some few years ago. She nods, tells them to come down, and has them take up Dust Rifles and Pistols from the pile of weapons the SDC soldiers had dropped.

“I’ll be leading the group, but you three will each cover a cardinal direction. Do not fire your weapons unless entirely necessary. If it’s a Grimm immediately threatening you, fire conservatively with the SMG or Rifle. Both are more than powerful enough to cut through most of their bone plate. If the Grimm is farther out, or you need general assistance, yell first, that sound will carry far less distance than a gunshot, and I’ll still hear you.”

They all nod, likely not having needed Blake to explain the logistics to them. Still, it makes her feel somewhat better, and from the looks of things, the fact that Blake seems to know what she’s talking about has the same effect on them, steadying their nerves.

Blake clears her throat, steps into the center of the courtyard, and prepares to address them all.

Before she can, however, she feels a hand grab her wrist. It’s a dangerous thing, catching a Huntress off guard, but Blake bites down on the instinct to turn and treat such as a threat.

It’s not a harsh grip, not at all.

When she looks back, she sees it’s Adam’s mother.

“Uhm… I’m sorry, it’s just…” She swallows visibly. “What should we call you? If we need to get your attention?”

It’s really a fair question, in all truth, but it does raise some complications for Blake.

Giving her actual name really isn’t an option. Sure, at Beacon, most of the children there hadn’t known her last name, but then, that’s mostly due to the cultural differences of being raised within one of the four major Kingdoms, or being raised on Menagerie.

Even when Adam had been a child, the Belladonna’s had already been the heads of the island for a few years. Using Belladonna as a surname would earn, at the very least, a few turns of the head.

And Blake can’t really afford that. At least not until she’s learned a bit more about her situation. About if she’s here alone, when exactly she is in history, what’s happened, and what she can do to possibly reverse it.

Still, she does need a name…

One comes to her, albeit a somewhat ridiculous one.

…Ah, well. It’ll be an inside joke.

“I’m not going to give you my name,” she says, and she watches as Eve deflates. “But if you want to call me something…” Blake smiles, the humor in the situation not at all lost on her. The way that her outfit is, at this point, almost more white than black.

“You may refer to me as Weiss.”

/

Alright, so, Yang had underestimated her mother a bit.

This thought occurs to her after their third real exchange, as Raven’s blade knocks her backwards, and sends her skidding away. She steadies herself, and the two face off once more, staring one another down.

Yang’s not losing, just to be clear, because that would be really embarrassing, but she’s also not winning nearly as hard as she thought she’d be.

She’d sort of figured that she’d be able to handle her mother at… what, twenty-five? Twenty-six or -seven? It’s kind of hard to gauge her exact age, but surely, without the Maiden’s power, she’d be able to take her?

Apparently, the answer is a bit more complicated than she’d thought initially.

To be fair to her, it’s also clear that Raven had underestimated her. She’s regarding Yang with an entirely different look, now. One like she’s both perturbed, but interested in a way that she wishes she wasn’t. Yang isn’t entirely certain what to do with that, but given that punching Raven in the face several times is beginning to look harder and harder, she feels like maybe they should just talk this out?

“So,” Yang clears her throat. “Had enough yet?”

“Surely you’re joking.”

“I figured you’d have picked up on that by now.”

Raven scoffs. “Making quips in the middle of a fight to the death. How asinine. Tell me, Huntress, just where exactly is it that you learned such horrendous habits?”

“Oh, y’know, little place called Beacon Academy.” That has Raven’s eyes widening somewhat. “Although it’s not like they taught me to make quips. I’m afraid that was all me.”

If it’s any consolation, Raven’s stance has softened somewhat. “You remind me of someone I know.”

“Oh? In a good way?”

“He’s an annoying, spineless pile of shit.”

“So, definitely in a good way, then?”

“I am going to enjoy killing you, I think.”

“Oof. Well, I tried.”

Their fight continues on.

Omen arcs up towards her, and Yang blocks the blow with her robotic arm. Raven clicks her tongue, and tries to adjust the angle as she activates the lightning dust in the blade to cut into the inner-workings of the arm, and overload it.

Unfortunately for her, Yang’s not just going to let that happen.

She uses the fact that her arm is incredibly smooth to allow Raven’s sword to slide right off of it as she changes her stance. Raven’s eyes widen somewhat, even as Yang pushes into her guard, and, after giving herself a second to wind up, smashes her left fist directly into Raven’s nose.

The hit isn’t enough to do more than rip some of her mother’s aura from her, but at the very least, it’s the first solid win she’s taken in this fight so far. Raven flies backwards, landing on her feet somehow despite it all, and seeming to take stock of the situation.

Her nose is broken, even despite the aura, but like the hard-ass bitch she is, she just reaches up, and, with a single motion, sets her nose back into place.

Yang grimaces somewhat, even as the bandits around them hoot and holler.

“Cheap shot.” Raven mutters, and Yang can’t resist.

“As opposed to sending Grimm at a civilian town smack dab in the middle of nowhere without any real defense? Is that an honorable shot in your eyes?”

Raven’s eyes narrow.

“I mean, I’m not wrong, am I?”

Raven’s back on her a second later.

They trade blows for the next minute or so. Yang’s current advantage, besides being better than Raven at extremely close range, which she’s struggling to get into most of the time due to Omen’s reach, is that she knows what Raven’s semblance and general move set is, whilst Raven has no such knowledge of her, other than what she’s gleaned so far during their fight.  

It’s probably the thing that’s letting her slowly edge her mother out in this battle, that knowledge, but such will only last a little while longer before her mother figures her out.

Which means that she needs to find a way to end this, and fast.

She’s fairly certain that, with a semblance-infused strike either to the diaphragm or face, she could take Raven out for the count. That would likely be enough to smash through her aura, and at that point, her mother would likely turn tail and run.

She’s still a bandit, after all.

The problem, really, is she’s not sure how to best take a hit to charge her semblance.

Omen’s quick, fast, and doesn’t stay in one place for very long. Yang had shattered her mother’s first blade, the fire dust blade, fairly quickly, but this lightning one she’s using now she’s being a lot more conversative with. Raven’s not making any broad, killer strokes anymore, instead aiming to slowly, steadily defeat her by method of a thousand tiny cuts.

It is, annoyingly, working. She’s confident Raven has no idea what Yang’s semblance is, but unknowingly, she’s using a perfect method to counter it.

…That’s making her mad, a little, but honestly, not enough.

And Raven’s winning like this. If she keeps this up…

…Yang has an idea. It’s a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea. But it is an idea.

…This village is going to owe Yang for the shit she’s about to pull!

So, as Raven’s blade arcs towards her, as it sails through the air on a collision course towards Yang’s head…

She doesn’t stop it.

Instead, she turns around on a dime, and allows the blade to barely miss her neck, coming within a hair’s breadth.

Pointedly, however…

Her hair is not so lucky. 

Oho, yep, Yang notes as she looks down, and sees a good 60% of her hair on the ground below her as she turns back around. That definitely worked. I’m very much mad now.

She feels her semblance activating, feels her remaining hair – which barely reaches down to the base of her neck – catch fire. She watches as her mother’s eyes widen, entirely unprepared for such a sudden shift in Yang’s ire.

Unfortunately for her, she’s not going to get a chance to regret it. Not in this fight, at least.

Raven raises Omen, probably preparing to take on a defensive stance while she studies Yang’s semblance, gauges just what she’s capable of in this state, but Yang isn’t willing to give her a moment.

She leans forward ever so slightly, puts one foot in front of the other…

And then she’s within Raven’s guard.

The ground behind her explodes just after.

Her mother’s eyes widen with the realization that no matter what her instincts are telling her to do, no matter what her muscles are flaring trying to attempt, she’s too late.

Yang snarls, primes her robotic arm with a shell from Ember Celica, and rears back.

It shoots forward in the next moment.

And yet, somehow, as the momentary panic on Raven’s face builds, as she struggles to find some manner of solution to this, some way to solve her predicament, as Yang’s fist is about to connect with her face…

A portal opens right in front of it.

Yang has half a moment to balk before she’s sent flying through, and lands…

Five feet behind Raven, in the exact same place she’d been before.

Flat on her face.

Silence fills the grassy field. A chill breeze blows through the clearing, rustling the leaves in the trees off in the distance, and causing the blades of grass currently interlacing through Yang’s fingers to shift and move as well.

And then, in the next instant, both Yang and Raven turn towards another once more.

“You…” Raven looks more shocked than Yang has ever seen her. In her defense, she doesn’t have quite as large a sample size to go off of as one might expect. “What…”

“Eheh…” Yang wipes some sweat off her brow, her Semblance already fading away.

“Why do I…” Her mother’s voice is barely above a whisper, evidently not wanting to reveal more than absolutely necessary to her tribe.

“Why do I have a portal to you!?”

Ah.

Yeah.

Yang supposes that would be a pretty good question, huh?

Chapter Text

“What did you mean?”

Qrow turns back towards her with a cocked eyebrow, evidently unsure of just what it is she’s trying to bring up all of a sudden.

They’re walking down the path leading away from the house that had belonged to the murder victim. His body will be collected and examined sometime in the next hour by a team of crime scene investigators summoned by Qrow. They’re clearing out to make sure they don’t get in the way of the professionals, who might find something that the two of them, not at all versed in such matters, might have missed.

“Earlier, in the house, when you said the MO didn’t add up… what did you mean?”

“Ah, right,” Qrow clears his throat. “Well, Marcus Black is a contract killer. Professional assassin, kind of an asshole, but he doesn’t kill for the reasons a normal killer will. Nothing is a crime of passion with him. It’s just cold, meticulous work. Normally, the people he goes after have pretty obvious causes of… well, being killed, I guess. Gamblers who’re so far in debt there’s no chance they could pay it off, trying to skip town. That’s a pretty common one we see. Then there’s sometimes reporters, or other people who might try and dig too deeply into some of Mistral’s seedy underbelly. That sort of thing. The key thing, however, is that Black isn’t an idiot. He stays out of the more heavy-hitting areas. He’s never killed a huntsman before. Not once. At least not that we know of, I suppose I should say. For him to suddenly murder one of Leonardo Lionheart’s former guards is just… let’s just say I’m having trouble wrapping my head around that.”

Weiss hums out, already feeling a potential motive forming in her head herself. “Is it possible that someone might’ve wanted those closest to Lionheart out of the picture?”

“If you’re implying that you think Lionheart might be in danger, then I’m way ahead of you.” Qrow smirks. “Told Oz– er, my employer,” Well, if Weiss had held any doubts about that – she hadn’t – then that slip-up confirms exactly who it is Qrow’s working for, “about this whole incident. Made sure he’d let Leonardo know what happened, and to beef up security. He’s not going to be leaving Haven until we’ve got a bit more information about what’s going on here. He couldn’t be much safer than he is right now.”

Weiss nods her head, uncertain of how to bring up the topic she wants to.

She can’t exactly say, “Hey, has Leonardo Lionheart ever shown signs that he might secretly be working for Salem, the evil witch of the Grimm who I shouldn’t know exists?”

Weiss feels like that would make for a pretty quick trip to being interrogated on the other end of Harbinger.

…She should probably start referring to herself as Ruby even in her own head, just to try and hammer home her fake name, but frankly, that would be very annoying. Instead, she’s just going to risk making a slip-up.

It’s not like she ever refers to herself in the third person.

…Actually, she had done that on occasion, during her more… colorful periods at Beacon, the memory of which will likely be keeping her up at night for the rest of her life through sheer embarrassment alone.

Qrow snickers at her. “What, eat a lemon or something?”

“Just… embarrassing memories of my childhood.”

“Oh, yeah. Been there.”

Weiss can imagine, knowing Qrow’s rather interesting history.

“What’s the plan for tracking this man?” Weiss asks, wanting to steer the conversation back towards seriousness.

“At the moment, there isn’t one.” Qrow admits. “We have a general sense that Black lives here in Mistral somewhere, but if you’re asking where he comes from, or what we could garner from that crime scene that might lead us to him, the answer is approximately ‘jack shit’.”

Weiss frowns. “That… isn’t particularly helpful.”

“Nope.” Qrow admits. “Which is why we’re going to wait in the nearby town until the coroner either turns something up, or we get other info.”

“Have you called in a general search for the man, then?”

“Something like that. Alright, then, Rubes,”

“Again, do not call me that.”

“Again, it’s sticking,” Qrow smirks. “What say you and I get something to eat, and talk more about what you were doing there in that house?”

Weiss’ brow furrows. “You don’t trust me at all, do you?”

“Uh, all due respect lady, would you in my shoes?”

Weiss thinks about it. How she would react if a heretofore unknown figure showed up out of nowhere at a murder scene, knowing her name despite having never met her before?

She determines rather quickly that no, she wouldn’t trust that person.

She sighs, but nods her head. “Right. I suppose such is only fair.”

Qrow’s grin grows somewhat more real, then. “‘Preciate it, kid.”

“Kid!?”

“What, you look like twenty, twenty-one, tops.”

Weiss blushes somewhat embarrassedly. “I’m actually nineteen.”

“There, see, not even graduation age back where I was from.” Qrow shrugs his shoulders. “Not personal or anything, just saying, you’re still a kid as far as I’m concerned.”

“And how old are you supposed to be, then?”

It’s a question that fits into their current conversation, whilst still, hopefully, providing Weiss with some much-needed clarity. She needs to know just where she is, chronologically. Needs to know what’s happening.

“Uh… twenty-eight?” Qrow’s tone is almost questioning. “Shit, probably not a good thing I don’t actually know off the top of my head…”

Twenty-eight… the Qrow that Weiss knows from her time had been around forty or so years old, which…

Which puts Weiss twelve years – at least – in the past.

She swallows on the lump that’s formed in her throat.

That… she can think about that more later. When she’s safe to properly process her emotions.

For now, she has to focus.

“Alright.” She clears her throat. “Then lead the way.”

Qrow does just that, taking the two of them to a small, seedy bar in a dismally quiet town somewhere west of the capital Mistral. It’s not too terribly far, judging by the fact that Weiss can just make out the tips of the buildings at the very top of the capital from the higher points in their small town.

“So,” Qrow clears his throat as he downs a pint of beer in roughly twenty seconds. “Mind tellin’ me what you were doing there in the first place?”

Weiss debates whether or not she should tell Qrow the truth of the matter – not all of it, obviously, but that she’d been transported from somewhere else and had ended up there without any such knowledge as to the how – for a solid moment or so. She ends up deciding on not doing that the next moment after.

The simple truth is that Qrow is perceptive. More than that, he works for Ozpin, and admitting that Weiss having been involved in a magical incident would, almost certainly, result in her being dragged back to meet the man that very same day.

She… she doesn’t hate Ozpin. She understands him, in truth, and can see why he is the way that he is.

Even so, she also doesn’t trust him. Not truly.

So, for now, she’ll keep her distance. Let their inevitable encounter – because no, Weiss is not foolish enough to think she can entirely avoid such forever – be on her terms, not his own.

Still, that means she has to make up a story. One believable enough that Qrow won’t instantly call her on it.

…Well…

“I’m a Huntress,” she tells Qrow, reaching into one of the pockets on her top and pulling out her Huntress license. Luckily, they’re not dated, which means Qrow’s not going to see the year being twelve years in the future and immediately call her out on her bullshit. “As you can see, I’m originally from Atlas, but circumstances led me to journey here to Mistral.”

“Circumstances?” Qrow questions, raising an eyebrow.

“Private circumstances, family related.” She tells him, hoping that will be enough to get him to back off. To her small surprise, he seemingly does. “I’m…”

She still needs a reason for being here. She still needs to come up with something concrete

…And then she has it, all of a sudden, thrust right into her hands.

Because in this singular case, she can be honest.

“I’m looking for someone. Well, someone’s, I should say.” Weiss tells Qrow, speaking from the heart. “Four other people, with whom I’ve shared a litany of experiences. I was… cut off from them rather suddenly. I have reason to believe they are all alive, but they’ve seemingly been scattered to the winds. I thought I would find them here,” a lie, but then, it’s a tiny one in comparison to the one she’s weaving right then, “But it seems I was mistaken. The only thing I truly found was that corpse.”

Qrow nods his head slowly, as if trying to decipher some hidden meaning behind her words, trying to see if she’s lying.

She is, but not entirely. She really is looking for her team, alongside Jaune.

His eyes narrow, his brow furrows, and then, some five seconds later, the man sighs, taps the bar, and yells out, “Bartender, another pint.”

The woman acquiesces, pouring one and sliding it down towards Qrow. Unfortunately, before it can make it all the way to him, the glass hits a snag in the wood of the bar, and falls off of it, shattering on the ground.

Qrow’s expression is one of resigned acceptance.

He ends up paying for the glass, despite the bartender’s insistence that he’d not been at fault. Given Qrow knows he is at fault, even if not directly, he tells the woman to add it to his tab at the end. She begrudgingly accepts.

Weiss watches the entire thing without much emotion, albeit she does wonder if every day is like this for Qrow. If his semblance is constantly activating at the most inopportune times, doing things like this.

She imagines such would drive her insane, if every little thing in her life went just a bit awry.

“Welp, this has been a day.” Qrow speaks to her again some two or so hours later, after having left to ‘make a few calls’, but probably actually transforming into a bird and flying off somewhere. Weiss doesn’t need to know. “I’m going to get some shut-eye. What’s your plan?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I hope you don’t take offense to this, but I don’t buy your story, at least not entirely.”

Ah.

“And?”

“And I’d really rather keep an eye on you, instead of letting you wander off somewhere while I’m asleep.” Qrow tells her, his visage one of suspicion. “That or stab me. Either or, really.”

Weiss groans. “And what would you have me do to assuage your concerns?”

Qrow bristles somewhat, as if he hadn’t quite expected her to respond that way. “Well, we could share a room–”

“Not happening.”

“Hey, I’m not some creep, alright!?”

Weiss shoots him a flat look, and Qrow looks away, somewhat flustered.

It’s almost funny how not-Qrow-like that motion is. The Qrow of her time wouldn’t have gone red at such a light insinuation. But this Qrow is…

Younger, more inexperienced.

Weiss sighs. “I’ll stay in the same inn as you, but we are not sharing rooms.”

Qrow runs a hand up the back of his neck. “I guess that works. Word of warning, I’m not liable for stabbing you if you try and kill me in the middle of the night.”

Weiss just rolls her eyes.

/

Ruby’s having a bit of a weird day so far.

That might be a small understatement, actually, but she feels like it captures the general gist of how things are going.

She’s also experiencing some rather heavy déjà vu.

“But I look amongst you, and all I see is wasted energy, in need of purpose – direction.”

Does… does he really give this speech every year? Ruby’s brow furrows.

Ruby had sort of assumed that such had been a thing just for them, for their class, but when she thinks about it, it’s an odd thing to say to any group of children striving towards their dreams.

She mentally shrugs, before zoning back in to Glynda Goodwitch telling everyone where to go, and how they’ll all be sleeping in one of the larger amphitheaters that night.

Good to know nothing’s changed at all.

Ruby goes along with it all somewhat begrudgingly. She’s gotten away with sneaking in – accidentally, of course – so far, and she doesn’t really want to blow her cover, even if she also very much does want to blow her cover, and try and gather some more information.

She sighs, all of this being just a bit too much for her, even as she finds a corner all to herself, and lays against the wall.

It’s an odd mix of loud and quiet in the room, after that. The entire place is abuzz with hushed whispers, occasional bouts of yelling or excitement that are quickly shushed, and just in general the kinds of things that Ruby had long since grown out of.

…Yes, she understands that she is, technically, the same age as all of these people, but quite frankly, she has lived quite a lot more than they have.

Well, maybe not all of them, given there are probably some people here who’ve gone through their fair share of rough patches, but she’s pretty sure in terms of scope, she’s got them all beat out, having fought in going-on four battles to determine the fate of the world now.

Briefly, however, as Ruby’s eyes scan the crowd ahead of her, she finds herself recognizing someone out of the corner of her eye. She turns, but…

They’re gone.

Or, well, not gone, not really. They’ve probably just laid or sat down, and thusly disappeared from view.

But to Ruby, they might as well be.

She sighs, even as she curls up with Crescent Rose within her arms – huh, them taking their weapons before initiation must’ve been a more modern thing – and tries to get some sleep.

/

The next morning, Ruby heads to the locker room early.

She does this mostly because she knows she does not have a locker, and so she wants to have some plausible deniability that she’d totally already visited hers, and had simply already finished when the others eventually arrived.

It works, or, well, Ruby thinks it works. She can’t really be sure.

Everything is the same as she remembers it being two years ago when she’d attended Beacon. The lockers are a different color, and the technology is evidently a generation or so behind, but it’s all there. The paint on the wall is a different shade, but…

Ruby shakes her head.

She can’t be… in the past, can she?

It’s just… a lot of things would certainly start adding up, if she is. It would explain how Beacon Academy still stood, despite falling. It would explain why the lockers look to be running on older tech, how all the student’s scrolls that she’d seen had been far older than hers – heck, why her own scroll has been out of service range, even – and it would explain why Ozpin and Glynda look…

Actually, in all fairness, Ozpin and Ms. Goodwitch both still look exactly the same as they had in her time – if this whole theory about time travel is even correct. Those two had always been kind of ageless in terms of appearance. Team RWBY had once held an impromptu – and not at all professional – meeting to try and guess the ages of the Beacon Academy Staff.

The only one they’d had a solid idea for had been Port.

Still, an awful lot of things are just… they’re weird. Too weird to be a coincidence, or at least, that’s what her brain’s trying to tell her.

…Well, she can think about these things later.

As she pushes off of her locker, she accidentally bumps into another girl, however.

“Ah, sorry,” Ruby apologizes, and the girl she’d bumped into, with dark skin and chestnut hair, nods without much emotion at her.

“It’s no problem.”

She’s gone in the next moment, and Ruby sort of awkwardly begins filing towards the exit, waiting on the announcement that will allow them to get out of there, and head out to the Emerald Forest.

Ruby’s been thinking about it all morning, and at the moment, her current plan is beginning to solidify into shape. She’s going to go along with initiation up until she’s landed within the Emerald Forest, and then she’s going to hightail it through there to Vale.

When she’s there, then… uh…

Well, she hasn’t really thought that far ahead yet.

Still, it’s something! And that’s better than she’d had a couple of hours ago.

So, when Ms. Goodwitch’s voice comes on the intercom to let them know to file out, Ruby’s the first one to do so. She follows the route she sort of vaguely remembers – and definitely doesn’t take a wrong turn, thank you very much! – out onto the cliffs overlooking the Emerald Forest.

It’s a beautiful view. Not quite so much so as Forever Fall, but striking in its own way.

Ruby’s smiling, which is quickly dashed by Ozpin passing right in front of her, and clearly investigating her while he thinks she isn’t paying attention.

Ruby feels a chill run down her spine, even as she shakes her head, and tries to reason with herself.

If they knew, they’d have arrested me by now or something. I’m fine. They haven’t noticed me. Not truly.

Ozpin goes over the basics of a landing strategy, and without a Jaune to have him explain that no, there are no parachutes, it goes remarkably quickly. Ruby smiles at the memory of her friend, and prays that wherever he is – hopefully here with her somewhere, because she could really use the advice, and the friend – he’s doing well.

Unfortunately, as she’s thinking about other things, Ozpin is finishing his speech, and activating the launch pads that will send them hurtling into the Emerald Forest.

The first of which Ruby is current stood on.

She doesn’t even have a second to realize her mistake. One moment she’s remembering the first time that she and Jaune had met – heh, vomit boy and crater face, what a pair they’d made – and the next, she’s sailing over the Emerald Forest, flipping end over end, screaming rather loudly in surprise.

/

To Ruby’s credit, she manages to right herself and land without any real problems.

She’s not happy about it, because she’s pretty sure she’d just embarrassed the ever-loving crap out of herself, but there’d been no other problems than that.

…Okay, that’s not entirely true. As much as Ruby had managed to make it to the ground just fine, she hadn’t managed to do so in a manner that had allowed her to keep track of where Vale is relative to her.

Which, y’know, had kind of been her entire plan.

She’d been counting on the launch to be able to catch sight of the city, and to then use that vantage point to plot a sort-of-route there in her head.

She has absolutely no idea which way Vale is.

She could try to climb a tree, but in all honesty, she’s not sure she’d get enough height to make anything out, especially with the canyon wall in the way.

No. Unfortunately, it’s likely far smarter for Ruby to instead stick to the ground for a while, and perhaps, even, to participate in initiation, despite her concerns.

She sighs, reaching up and rubbing her face with both hands.

Life had seemed to make sense for a while there, right when she’d exited out of the Tree within the Ever After, met the Blacksmith, talked, genuinely, about the kind of person she wanted to be.

And now, yet again, things have become complicated.

It seems they always must.

“Uh, you good?”

Ruby jumps, letting out a squeak as she draws Crescent Rose from off of her back, and deploys it in the direction of the new voice. The boy – and he’s just a boy – raises both hands in the air, clearly not having expected consoling a troubled girl to end like this for him.

“W-Woah! Easy!” He chuckles weakly. “E-Easy, really, I come in peace and all that.”

Ruby nods her head, sighing. “Sorry, just… got a lot on my mind.”

“Yeah, I can uh… I can see that.” He coughs, evidently feeling more than a little awkward himself. “So, uh… does this mean we’re partners, then?”

It takes Ruby’s brain a minute to even process the information that’s just been given to her. She’d spent the entire morning thinking specifically about avoiding this, and yet now…

Here she is. Part of Beacon’s initiation.

And she’s managed to, entirely accidentally, wrangle herself a partner.

Aw, phooey. Ruby mentally lambasts.

“You okay?”

“Er, yeah, I’m fine.” Ruby nods her head, trying to display some of her normal enthusiasm, and just not finding it. “Sorry. I’m not trying to be rude, just… dealing with some stuff.”

“Oh, yeah, no I get that.”

Ruby takes a moment, then, to actually take in his appearance; to get a gauge of her new ‘partner’.

The boy in front of her is wearing a ratty white shirt, which has clearly seen better days. He’s got long, saggy pants, three belts to hold them onto his hips, and the most bog-standard pair of knives that Ruby has ever seen, very clearly bought from a store meant not for hunting Grimm, but deer or elk.

If she had to guess, he comes from an orphan background. There’d been a few children in similar situations during Ruby’s time at Signal, although she’d not met any in quite the same straights during her time in Beacon.

Still, perhaps the most noteworthy thing about him is the shock of red hair atop his head, so warm it’s almost orange. Ruby feels like she knows it from somewhere, but again, she can’t quite place it beyond that odd familiarity.

Ah, well, there’ll be plenty of time for her to figure that out.

…Plenty of time she should’ve spent, and had been intending to spend, out in the world, looking for the others.

She isn’t some member of team… RDDD or something! She’s the leader of Team RWBY! She needs to find Weiss, and Blake, and Yang, and Jaune, too! She doesn’t have the time to be goofing off at beacon!

And yet, despite her wishes, she’s ended up with a partner.

Someone who’s relying on her. Someone whose position within Beacon – whose very dreams – now ride on her.

Hah… of course.

Nothing can ever be easy, can it?

Ruby takes a breath, then, before resolving to just… just keep going for the time being. She’ll make no big decisions, at least not today. For now, she’ll follow along, and do the rest of initiation.

And if she’s lucky, nothing big will happen. No one will jump out at her with big fangs and an evil laugh. No figures from her past will show up as little babies that she has to protect. Ozpin won’t suddenly call her into his office and decide she’s actually incredibly suspicious, and she’s under arrest for the rest of her life.

…That would suck.

For now, for this boy’s sake, she’ll keep going.

“Alright then, partner,” she plasters on a fake smile, clears her throat, and extends her hand. “I’m…” Oh, wait, crap, I need a name. Uh… “Yang. Yang Rose…enberg!”

Excellent job, Ruby. They suspect nothing.

“Yang Rosenberg?” The boy laughs, a rich, full thing that seems so very bright. “Helluva name. But then, who am I to judge?”

“Yeah,” she laughs awkwardly. “It kind of is.”

The boy nods his head, clears his throat, and then gives Ruby a winning smile.

That smile is rogueish, and as he shows it off to her, he points to himself with his thumb.

It is only in that instant of time, just milliseconds before he spells the truth out to her, that Ruby realizes who this is.

And realizes that yes, she truly must be in the past, indeed.

“The name’s Roman. Roman Torchwick!”

Chapter Text

Jaune’s vision is blurry when he, groggily, opens his eyes, and tries to take in his surroundings.

He’s… having trouble remembering just where it is he’s at.

What had he been doing? He’d been with the paper pleasers, and then…

Team RWBY. The Curious Cat. Neo. The Blacksmith.

Atlas.

Cinder.

Tyrian.

It all comes flooding back into him, and he tries to sit up, to stand, to draw a weapon.

Instead, he’s held in place by thick rope, wrapped in multiple places around his body.

Calm. He forces himself. Get your bearings, then worry about getting out of this.

The room he’s in is small – not a room, he quickly realizes, but the passenger area of a commercial bullhead. He’s tied to one of the chairs against the very back wall, as far as he could be from the cockpit, which is directly opposite him.

He can’t see anything through the window of the cockpit door, which has been purposefully darkened. That, or there’s a board of some kind attached to it.

Either way, Jaune can’t see through it. That’s the important part.

He scans for Crocea Mors next, before realizing that it would be incredibly foolhardy to leave his weapon anywhere within Jaune’s reach. More than likely, it’s in the cockpit, alongside…

Yes. He’s remembering now. It’s coming back to him, even past the fog hanging over his mind.

He and Tyrian had dueled within that alley. Dueled for a few minutes. He’d been good, but not quite as crafty as the Tyrian of Jaune’s time.

Jaune had thought he might even win.

And then…

Well, Tyrian had abused the fact that he had nothing to lose, while Jaune very much did.

He’d taken Cinder hostage, and then–

Shit, Cinder!

He scans the room again, and sees no sign of her. that’s not particularly surprising. If anything, separating the two prisoners is the smart thing to do in a scenario like this one.

It doesn’t mean Jaune has to feel good about it.

He lets out a breath, trying to keep himself from panicking. It won’t do him any good. The real problem with that is that he’s still dealing with the mental fallout that the Ever After had inflicted upon him, which means that in terms of mental stability… well, he’s lacking more than a little.

He struggles against his bindings, trying to find the weakest point. He’s able to isolate that the seat he’s tied to has a sharp-ish corner where the metal of the backing meets the plastic of the backrest. If he can grind the rope against that spot for an hour or two, he might–

“Ah, ah, ah. I wouldn’t, if I were you.”

Jaune’s attention snaps upwards, towards the door at the front of the bullhead.

Lo and behold, there stands Tyrian Callows.

He’s nursing a black eye, and what seems to be a bruised diaphragm, but other than that, he’s fine. Jaune hadn’t managed to crack the man’s aura before he’d taken Cinder hostage, and all but forced Jaune to acquiesce to his orders.

But he had been going even up until then, albeit barely.

He blames not being able to win against a much weaker Tyrian on having to use Cinder’s – or Rhodes’, again, he doesn’t know – blade. The balance had been entirely off compared to Crocea. Not terrible, but where Crocea is a straight sword, the one he’d been stuck with had been a curved weapon. It’s much more apt for flips and spins, the kinds of theatrics that Jaune’s more down-to-earth style has no space for.

It had hampered him rather severely.

Even so, given he’d had Cinder to guard, and she’d not been in any state to resist Tyrian…

It’s likely this outcome had been all but preordained the moment Tyrian had caught their trail.

“What do you want?” Jaune asks, hoping to get a bit more information out of the man. “Where are you taking us?”

“Oh? Us?” Tyrian tilts his head. “You believe you are not the only passenger aboard this flight?”

“I know I’m not. Cinder’s here as well, isn’t she?”

Tyrian smirks. “Indeed. Though perhaps you would’ve known as much, given I as much as told you I was there for her. She’s in the cockpit, handling her… injection a bit worse than you are, I’m afraid.”

Jaune’s eyes widen. “What did you–”

“Well, you’ve been injected with venom from the end of my tail.” Tyrian explains, seeming almost giddy. “So has the young child, as I said. I gave the both of you an antidote, but only enough to make sure that the two of you don’t keel over on the way to my Goddess’ domain. And that was all the cure I had. For my amusement, guess the only other place on Remnant you can find it?”

Jaune has some idea, as much as it concerns him.

“…The place you’re taking us?”

“Aha! Got it in one.” Tyrian gleefully squeals. “Yes. So, if you wish, for one, to survive beyond the next day or so, and for two, the girl to do the same, then you’d best sit still, and behave. Am I understood?”

Tyrian’s almost daring Jaune to go against his orders. He likely wants Jaune to.

Jaune won’t give him the satisfaction.

“Understood.”

Tyrian frowns. “Phooey. Well, alright. Let me know if you’d like to do this the more fun way! My goddess never specified how many fingers you had to arrive with when I told her I was bringing an extra!”

Tyrian heads back into the cockpit, and as he opens the door, Jaune gets a quick glance at Cinder.

Her face is pale, far too pale. Her features are pallid, and she seems extraordinarily gaunt. She looks… almost worse than Qrow had, when he’d been afflicted with the same venom on their way to Mistral.

It makes sense. Qrow had been a forty-something year old man. Cinder is a child. She’s smaller, which means the same amount of venom is going to affect her much more harshly than it does Jaune.

He bites down on his lower lip.

…It’s Cinder. Some part of his brain tries to provide to him. She’s a terrible person. We shouldn’t feel bad for her.

But that’s not right. Cinder will become a terrible person. But right then, in that moment, she isn’t.

The girl in front of him doesn’t deserve this.

She killed that woman and her daughters. Murdered them. Rhodes said as much.

She was being abused, Jaune argues back against his own self. Tortured day in and day out. Can you really blame her?

His mind doesn’t respond, but it doesn’t have to. Not truly.

Jaune’s conflicted enough as it is, even without its intervention.

But there’s nothing else for him to do. His only real choice is to settle in for the ride.

And hope he survives once they arrive at…

Well… wherever it is they’re going.

/

Blake had forgotten – and been quite glad to, in truth – just how cold it could get on the icy tundras that lurked outside of the major settlements of Solitas.

It’s the kind of cold that freezes one to their core, that has their bones feeling brittle, their muscles feeling weak. Blake knows she must project strength towards the others if she’s to lead them, knows that they must have someone to look to in such conditions, but by everything, she’s frigid.

As she makes it to the top of another embankment of ice and snow, she turns back around. Behind her, trailing by a good-few meters, are the one hundred or so figures from the SDC mining camp.

Most do not look particularly good.

The problem, currently, is that it’s too late for Blake to reassess her decision to leave when she had. They’ve been traveling for four or so hours now, which means that the colony is many kilometers behind them.

With how exhausted they are, it would likely take another five or six hours just to get back.

So, instead, she raises her voice, and calls out to them.

“We’ll stop as soon as we find a suitable clearing. Be on the lookout for anything that seems it could make a decent temporary shelter. That means caves, or even a relatively flat area.”

She gets a few nods, but mostly, the crowd of Faunus following her just shiver in place.

Blake turns back around, and keeps moving.

It takes another hour or so before they find something actually suitable. It’s not a cave, which would’ve very much been Blake’s preferred spot – but then, finding one large enough to house their entire group would’ve been difficult. It’s a flat clearing, and, when Blake shifts the ice and snow beneath her, she finds dirt and grass.

Had there been ice beneath them, they’d have needed to move. A fire would not have been able to be set up upon the ice, not and risk them falling in and dying within the frigid waters beneath. Dirt, however, they can settle on. It will allow them some small warmth in the night.

“We’ll camp here.” Blake announces. “We’ll dig out an area first, to shield ourselves from the wind, and then after that, anyone who knows how to make a fire, you may begin doing so within the cleared area. It will reveal our location for quite a distance, but ultimately, there shouldn’t be anyone following us. Warmth will be far more important than anonymity once the sun sets.”

There’s a general chorus of agreement at that, and Blake begins helping the others shovel snow and ice out of a ring that gradually grows over the course of two or so hours to be about ten meters in diameter.

It’s going to be used as their main area of bedding. Far too small to fit them all comfortably, but in the cold, the close confines will do good to keep each of them warm.

“Eat.” Blake speaks to them all. “Any food that you brought with you, eat it until you are well and truly full. You’ll need the energy for the rest of the journey tomorrow.”

Eventually, once that circle is dug out – they’d had to dig through a solid meter of snow and ice to reach the earth, but it honestly hadn’t been as deep as Blake had feared it could be – Blake hops down into it, and helps the others in lighting a fire in the central point. The walls around them will help with obscuring them from the wind, and will also keep their fire relatively covered.

They’d taken almost all of the emergency supplies from the mining camp, including the supplies that had been left for warmth in case of a power outage at the plant. Mostly, that consisted of fire dust and other such amenities, which could of course be used to light a fire. But given that they’ll be needing that dust for another purpose, they’re instead going to put another of the emergency kits inclusions to use.

Those being flint and steels.

Blake draws one of them out, scrapes off enough thin bark from one of the downed trees that their hardiest had felled to have some kindling, and sets to work.

She has a modest fire going within ten minutes.

Over the course of the next hour, things gradually relax. It’s clear that a large majority of their number hadn’t quite understood why it was that they’d stopped when they did. The truth is that the already cold temperatures will be dropping to well below freezing during the night, and the howling winds, not to mention much-harder-to-spot Grimm – which would blend in with the snow and rocks due to their black and white coloration, even with their watchmen having innate night vision – will make travel perilous at best.

It’s a far better strategy to simply hunker down, wait out the dark, and get up at first light.

In terms of supplies, they have a few emergency tents, all of which will be going to the ten or so children they have with them. Each tent should be able to fit a good five or so, which means that the other two tents can be given to those in the most potential danger of freezing.

That mostly means the elderly, and the sick. They don’t have much of either, but one or two people are clearly already nursing the beginnings of a cold. They’re given one tent to split, and eventually, the two or so older folk get the other. Their families get to rest in the tents with them.

That leaves the rest of them to toil out in the cold.

Blake rubs her hands together as quickly as she can, trying her best to retain warmth. She could burn her aura to keep herself from freezing, but the truth is that such is incredibly wasteful. Over the course of the night, she’d easily burn through her entire reserve, and then she’d be stuck without aura in the middle of the wilderness.

No. It’s a far better plan to simply be cold now, and have her aura in reserve in case anything comes up.

After all, Grimm roam these wilds unimpeded.

Still, as the minutes turn to hours, and the sun fully sets, Blake takes a look at their little encampment.

It’s small, and packed. There’s not a square centimeter of the place that’s not being taken up by someone, or their supplies. On top of the walls of snow about a meter in height, their guardsmen who’d volunteered to take the first shift, are watching the cardinal directions, their night vision more than enough to let them see for quite a distance.

Blake’s going to get a few hours rest, likely three or four, and then wake up to take over for them. Another three people have volunteered to take second shift alongside her, and then once the sun begins to rise, they’ll be making for Oaresberg.

It’s… Blake hesitates to call it a true plan, since there’s so much that could go wrong, but then, earlier that day, she’d been in the Ever After, dealing with the potential loss of Ruby, Jaune’s dwindling condition, her newfound relationship with Yang, Weiss doing her best to hold everything together, and…

It’s just… she’s got a lot to think about all of a sudden.

She lets out a sigh, even as she leans back against the wall of snow and ice behind her. She’s pushed one of the tarps they’d taken with them up against it so that she can sleep whilst taking up as little room as possible. What with the fire in the center, and the several other, smaller fires set up at intermittent locations, they already have very little room to work with.

Blake’s sort of expecting things to quiet down, then. She’ll get some sleep, wake up, guard the perimeter, and have to rouse everyone once the sun shows.

She’s not expecting someone to sit down beside her.

“Wha–”

“Sorry.” Eve Taurus holds up a hand to placate her. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

“It’s fine.” Blake’s too tired to pretend like that hadn’t made her jump. “Are you alright? Where’s Adam?”

“He’s asleep in one of the tents with the other kids.” Eve tells her, smiling despite the day’s events. “He was so worried about me; didn’t want me to leave his side. Hah…”

Blake smiles, too, only for her eyes to widen a mere moment later when she hears the sounds of sniffling.

She looks over and sees Eve is crying.

“I’m sorry,” She rubs at her eyes. “I don’t… I just… I keep thinking back to that moment, when they had the brand pointed at his face, and I… I just…” Eve purses her lips, trying to get control of herself.

It’s not really like her, but… Blake shimmies a little so that their hips are touching, and wraps an arm around Eve, trying to offer some comfort.  

“Thank you,” The woman shoots her a watery smile. “I just… truly, thank you. For saving my son.”

Blake nods, sort of awkward. “I would’ve done it for anyone.”

“I know.” Eve smiles at her. “I could tell. You have that look in your eye. You’re a hero, well and truly.”

Blake feels her face growing somewhat warmer. “I don’t…”

“Where did you learn to fight like that?”

It’s an odd, sudden question, not one which Blake had at all been expecting to hear.

“Ah, well…”

I learned much of what I know now from your son, about… six or seven years from now.

She can’t exactly say that, though, and so she doesn’t.

So, she goes with the truth, albeit leaving out a few things.

“I was taught by a variety of individuals. A figure I had an interesting relationship with, teachers in an academy setting, and several people with whom I was very close.”

Eve nods her head. “I assumed you were a Huntress.”

“I am.”

“I see.” Eve’s quiet a moment. “I just… seeing you take them all out so effortlessly, it…”

Blake raises an eyebrow. “What is it?”

Eve’s mouth hangs open, but no noise comes out. After a moment, she shuts it, and tries to hide the odd happenstance with a smile.

“Never mind. I’m sorry to have bothered you, Ms. Weiss. Thank you again for today”

The name throws Blake for a loop, before she remembers that that’s the name that she’d given to them all.

Already regretting that.

“It was nothing.”

“It wasn’t nothing. It was everything.”

And without giving Blake a chance to respond, Eve moves back over towards her one of the tents towards the center, likely where her son is sleeping.

And Blake is left alone, in the cold dark.

/

The Branwen Tribe breaks off from the village they’d been planning on raiding with a confused air about them.

That’s mostly due to the fact that Raven Branwen, their leader, is now walking side-by-side with the woman she’d been fighting to the death with not an hour ago.

Yang, for her part, really wishes this hadn’t been happening, either.

“So, uh–”

“Do not speak.” Raven cuts her off, her eyes set dead ahead, having not looked at Yang since they’d stopped their little tussle. “We will speak once we make it back to camp.”

This is all feeling kind of familiar, funnily enough. Yang had busted her way into the Branwen tribe’s camp and gotten a one-on-one – well, two-on-one, given Weiss’ presence – with her mother for the first time in her life.

She has a feeling things are going to go a bit worse this time.

Eventually, some thirty minutes later, the camp itself comes into view.

It’s a bit more pathetic than the one that Yang had encountered a decade or so from now – that’s weird, this whole situation is weird – but it’s imposing enough, she supposes, for what the people living there are.

A bunch of blustering weaklings, hiding behind one rather strong woman.

Raven’s tent is the only building – if such things can really be called that – in the whole camp that closely resembles Yang’s memories of the place. Obviously, the Branwen camp moved several times a year, but even so, that central tent itself is nearly the spitting image of the one Raven had invited her into a decade or so from then.

…Guh, weird.

“Men, you’re off duty until further notice.” Raven announces, and a round of cheering echoes out across the camp as they enter into it. “Cooks, start on dinner. Do not disturb me unless someone is dead, or needs to be.”

With that, Raven beckons for Yang to follow along behind her, and Yang, not wanting to start shit in the middle of enemy territory, sighs and follows along.

They walk into Raven’s tent, and Raven unlatches Omen from off of her hip, setting it down beside her as she sits down on the floor, adjacent to the table in the center of the tent.

It’s as clear a peace offering as Yang’s going to get. She’s abandoned her weapon – well, kind of – and is clearly gesturing for Yang to sit opposite her.

So, in the end, that’s what Yang does. She doesn’t take off Ember Celica, but then, she’s currently stuck in Raven’s camp, not the other way around.

One of them can afford to be somewhat blasé. The other can’t.

“Alright,” Raven starts, her eyes narrowing. “Speak. Who are you? Why do I have a portal to you?”

“Uh… well…” Yang really wishes the time she’d spent walking back here had helped her to come up with anything at all to say to her mother. As things are, she’s got a whole lotta’ nothin’.

“Not willing to speak?”

“It’s uh… complicated?” Yang offers.

“Then uncomplicate it.”

Yang scoffs. “Yes, because it’s totally that simple.”

Raven’s brow furrows in annoyance.

“In case you hadn’t noticed, you don’t exactly have many options here. I’ve extended my hospitality–”

“Oh, lighten up,” Yang groans out. “I get it; you’re big and scary.” Raven’s brow furrows further. “Just give me a second, jeez.”

“So that you can conjure up some lie?”

“Something like that, yeah.”

Raven snarls. “You really think you’re funny, don’t you?”

“I know I’m funny.” Yang corrects, enjoying the way her mother bristles. “There’s a difference.”

Raven reaches for Omen, and Yang holds up her hands in mock surrender.

“Alright, alright.” Yang sighs. “I’m just struggling to really articulate this to you. It’s uh… kind of hard to believe?”

Raven’s face scrunches up somewhat. “I’ve been told some things in my life that seemed entirely incredible. Things that seemed fantastical, otherworldly. Impossible. I have been proven wrong nearly every time. Believe me when I tell you that no matter what you say–”

“I’m your daughter from the future.”

And yes, just as Yang had thought, Raven does, in fact, look quite surprised.

“You… what!?”

“I’m your daughter, Yang Xiao-Long, from about…” Yang pauses to get a general estimate. “Twelve or so years from now in the future? Maybe more, maybe less?”

Raven just stares at her, her eyes wide, but her gaze blank.

“Helloooo?” Yang waves her hand in front of her mother’s face, which earns her a smack on the wrist as the woman forces her away. “Hey, was just makin’ sure you hadn’t passed out or something.”

“What are you…” Raven shakes her head. “Fine. So, you don’t wish to tell me the truth.”

Yang sighs. “No, I just did, like actually. Just now.”

“Yes, sure.” Raven spits. “How did you know my daughter’s name in the first place?”

“Because I’m her?” Yang offers.

“Yes, right,” Raven rolls her eyes. “How could I forget.”

“I’m getting the feeling you’re not going to believe me, even though you expressly just told me you’d believe me–”

“I said no such thing.”

“It was implied.”

Raven practically growls. “You’re no daughter of mine, that’s for sure. Perhaps that bastard brother of mine might have produced an insufferable whelp such as you, but I–”

Yang snickers.

“Would never have given birth to such a pathetic excuse for a Huntress.”

“Yeah, sure,” Yang just rolls her eyes. “Alright, what do you want to hear from me, then? I gave you the truth.”

“You told me a lie.”

“Okay, sure. I told you a lie, and I’m sticking with it.” Yang shrugs her shoulders. “Now, what are you going to do?”

Raven seems to consider that a moment. “I should by all rights have you beaten, stripped of your valuables, and thrown out of my camp. That or ransomed off to your family.”

“You’d have a hard time of that, given you’re my family, and you seem pretty cheap.”

Raven looks like she might pop a blood vessel. “But I am feeling generous. You may stay with us here in the Branwen camp.”

“You know, you can just admit that you want to keep an eye on me because you’re curious. You’re allowed to do that.”

Raven reaches up, massages her temples with one hand, and then says, “Y’know what? Get the fuck out of my tent.”

Yang holds her hands up in the air, shrugs her shoulders, and does just that.

/

The Branwen’s, it turns out, are quite the interesting bunch.

Interesting in this case meaning annoying, idiotic, but also, somehow, smart enough to know when to run with their tails between their legs.

Yang’s established a sort of pecking order around an hour after being kicked out of Raven’s tent. A few of the larger bandits had attempted to size her up, maybe try something with her. The first one to actually approach her had gotten his jaw rather clumsily rearranged, and since then, no one else had tried.

Good. At least they had self-preservation instincts.

…Yang’s currently debating just what it is she’s supposed to do now.

It seems easy to say that she should just leave. Wait until the middle of the night, hop one of the walls, and be so far gone that they’ll not find her. Of course, that idea goes out the window the moment that Yang remembers that Raven has a portal to her, and can thus access her at any time anywhere forever.

A rather inconvenient thing to have to plan against, Yang can’t help but feel.

So, no, running away is rather clearly not going to work.

She’d tried being honest. That had gotten her approximately nowhere. Raven might be a bit more open-minded than most people, knowing that their world contains magic, that there’s a queen of the Grimm, and that she’s well and truly immortal – or maybe she hasn’t had that realization yet? Yang doesn’t really know.

Either way, she doesn’t quite seem ready to accept that her daughter has popped in on her from the future.

To be fair, Yang’s fairly certain she wouldn’t have believed that either, had it not happened to her.

But… now what?

She can try and come up with some other lie? Maybe pretend to be her dad’s cousin or something? Yin Xiao-Long?

No, that still wouldn’t explain the portal to her.

Honestly, Yang’s surprised that Raven has a portal to her in the first place. She has one to Yang – this world’s Yang – of course, but to have a portal to her suggests that such a development had been less about Raven forming a bond with her, and more about, perhaps, their shared genetics.

Actually, when Yang thinks about it, yeah, that makes sense. It’s not like Raven had given a shit about her.

“I’m sorry.” She remembers Raven saying at the bottom of Haven, in the Vault of Knowledge, with the Lamp in her hands.

…

Yang sighs.

Just then, a figure sits down beside her. Yang mentally prepares herself to rough up some other idiot – maybe she’ll break this one’s arm? – before she turns to see who it is, and–

“Raven!?”

Her mother turns towards her with a narrow gaze, her eyes hard, searching for something in Yang’s own.

“I don’t believe you.”

“Uhm… yeah. You said that.”

Raven wrinkles her brow. “And yet, your story does explain certain things.”

“The whole portal thing?”

“I don’t believe you’re telling me the full truth… but even so, there’s a way we can confirm whether or not you’re telling me a lie.”

Yang’s eyes widen. “Wait, are you…”

Raven tilts her head to one side. “What? Am I what?”

Oh, right. Yang probably shouldn’t know about the Maidens, or the Relics, given those are like super-secret.

But also, it would probably lend some credence to the whole ‘I’m your daughter from the future thing’ too.

“Are you talking about the Relic of Knowledge?”

Raven’s eyes widen. “You… know of it?”

“I used it.” Yang speaks, telling her the truth. “In the future.”

Raven bites back a curse beneath her breath. “…No, I refuse to believe this. There’s always another explanation.”

Yang’s pretty sure she might be able to overwhelm her mother with facts, with knowledge she has, but at the same time…

She’s also not sure she wants to go giving Raven so much information.

As much as she’s her mother, as much as she’d apologized the last time that they’d met…

Well, she’d been about to raze a small town to the ground not even three hours ago.

Forgive Yang for perhaps doubting the woman somewhat.

“Fine!” Raven finally speaks, shaking her head. “The two of us will go to Haven alone. We will use the Relic of Knowledge–”

“Is this really worth using one of the questions, though?”

“Quiet!” Her mother slams her hand down on the wooden bar they’ve been sat at, and it cracks it down the center. The person manning it rather wisely takes a few steps back, whistling innocuously. “I am putting an awful lot of faith into you, ‘Blake Belladonna’,”

“Oh, that’s my girlfriend’s name, I told you, I’m Yang–”

“And I expect you,” Raven bowls right through her attempt at a correction, “to come along without complaint. Am I clear?”

“Uh… yeah sure.” Yang shrugs. “I’m down. Not like I’ve got anything else to do.”

“Good. We’ll leave once the sun sets.”

“Shouldn’t we leave tomorrow, when the sun’s rising.”

“We move in shadow. Unseen.”

“Wow, that might be the edgiest thing I’ve ever heard.”

Raven’s jaw is tighter than Yang had thought possible. “Do you want me to kill you?”

“I mean I’d prefer if you didn’t.”

“Then shut up!”

“Okay, okay,” Yang tries to calm the woman down, but honestly, she can’t resist tacking on one last little needle. “Oh, but uh… while we’re out in Mistral, lemme’ know if you see a cat faunus with legs for days and a killer ass. Cause that’s my girlfriend. And I miss her.”

Raven just lets out a wheezing sigh as she lets her head slowly droop down towards the cracked back beneath it, and then raises and lowers her head over and over, creating a staccato beat.

“What did I do to deserve another Qrow!?”

And Yang thinks, ‘perhaps it was trying to destroy a village, and either ransom off or enslave its people?’.

Honestly, in terms of comeuppance, her mom’s gotten off pretty light.

Chapter Text

Weiss awakens in the inn that she and Qrow had decided to stay in at the first light of morning, and instantly, she’s hit with a wave of nausea.

She has no real idea as to why, given she’d not ingested anything strange last night, nor had she done any odd exercises or maneuvers that might have upset her stomach, but as she begins to retch, she realizes that none of those things really matter if she’s going to throw up anyways.

She makes it over to the room’s trash can and unloads the meal she’d eaten the previous night into it. The vomit itself is a dark, murky color, and Weiss grimaces as she spits out the last of the mucus and stomach acid into the bin.

She’ll have to empty it into the toilet at some point. That… won’t be very fun.

She makes the putrid decision to handle such then and there, rather than wait. While she does, she thinks about what could have possibly caused such a thing.

She supposes it could simply be a random event, something caused by a variety of invisible factors, but it just doesn’t feel right, at least to her. Either way, as she pours the bin out, washes it, and places it back down in the room, she decides that she really doesn’t want to think about the logistics of her own vomit anymore.

So, she leaves the room.

As she exits, she’s greeted by the sight of Qrow Branwen balanced against the wall opposite her doorway, and she rolls her eyes.

“Sleep well?” He asks, very clearly having been up a while.

“Yes, as a matter of fact, I did.” Weiss tells him, and it is the truth, despite the throwing up debacle. “Did any information come in during the night?”

“Nothing major.” Qrow sighs. “We’ve got a trail, but its faint. Nothing more than a direction, and honestly, that’s pushing it.”

“Explain.”

“They’ve got footprints that lead north-northwest out of the murdered man’s house. They don’t belong to either of us, and there’re small traces of blood in some spots. The victim’s.”

Weiss nods slowly. “So… we follow?”

“We would, except the trail cuts off barely ten meters later, once the ground goes from dirt to undergrowth within the tree line. After that, who knows, he could’ve done a complete 180 and gone in the opposite direction entirely.”

Weiss purses her lips. “Not enough to follow, then?”

“No.” Qrow admits. “It’s not.”

“Are we planning on following it anyways?”

Qrow raises an eyebrow. “And what gives you that idea?”

“Because you think I’m somehow involved in this.” Weiss huffs out, letting her hands fall to her hips. “Which means you think I have some sort of lead that I’m not telling you about.”

Qrow truly is younger, because in that moment his face shows so much. He looks almost offended at having been caught, like a child being ornery about being caught with their hand in a cookie jar.

“Alright, fine, I admit it.” Qrow eventually grumbles out. “So? You got anything?”

“I don’t.” Weiss admits, “At the very least, I’ve nothing pertaining to Marcus Black.”

Qrow doesn’t look like he believes her, and Weiss can really only sigh. “But… I think we should investigate the place where the man’s trail went cold. Who knows. We might find something that they didn’t.”

Qrow seems rather doubtful. “You think you’re going to catch something that a team of trained professionals missed?”

“I don’t think I will,” Weiss clarifies, stepping by the man and moving towards the stairs that will take them out of the inn.

“But I just might.”

/

It takes them a few hours to make it back to the house of the victim, and by this point, the entire thing has been all but cordoned off.

It is, in all fairness, in the middle of nowhere, and so it’s not like such cordoning is inconveniencing anyone else. Even still, it fills Weiss with an odd sense of dread to see the crime scene blocked off, to know that a man had lost his life there no more than a few days ago.

She does her best to shake it off, and lets Qrow briefly take a look around.

“This is the trail,” he says, pointing to a line of evidence that does, indeed, head off in the north-northwest direction. “You just want to follow it to the end, or?”

Weiss walks up to the first footprint, and kneels down. It’s… a rather subtle thing, in truth. Even having a tiny marker indicating where the footprint itself is, she has trouble spotting it.

Weiss herself isn’t going to be of any help here at all.

But her semblance might still be of use.

It’s… very much a risk. But all in all, she knows that Qrow is someone she can trust. Despite how vulgar he can be on occasion, Ruby has always adored the man, and Weiss had begun to soften on him somewhat during their time in Atlas.

So, she decides that in order to get a tail on Marcus Black, she will do all that she can.

“Alright.” Weiss clears her throat. “Take me to the spot where the trail cuts off.”

Qrow hums out boredly, clearly not believing she’s going to be able to do much of anything at all. Even so, he does what she’d asked. He takes her to where the undergrowth of the surrounding trees begins, and lo and behold, right at the start, is where the trail runs cold. 

“This is it.” Qrow drones. “If you’ve got some trick to follow him, then now’s the time.”

“Indeed…” Weiss sighs. “I’m not entirely sure this is going to work, but it very well may.”

“Not sure if what’s going to work?”

Weiss looks over at Qrow, meets his gaze. “I need you to not make a scene of what I’m about to do.”

“Uh… I can’t promise that.”

“Okay,” Weiss groans. “Then at the very least, I need you to be hazy on how this happened when you’re asked about it later. I’m going to reveal something rather particular that I would prefer a minimal amount of people know about me. I assume you might have some certain things about yourself as well? Things you keep close to the chest for your own safety or assurance?”

She knows Qrow does, but Qrow doesn’t know that. Even still, it seems enough of a call out – that from his perspective will likely appear accidental – for him to consider her words.

Qrow rubs at the back of his neck with one hand, lets out a beleaguered breath, and then nods. “Fine. Sure. I’ll keep what I see to myself, provided you’re not actively dangerous.”

Weiss nods her head. “Alright.”

In the next moment, Weiss draws Myrtenaster, and spins it so that it faces the forest floor below her. Then, she stabs down, and channels her semblance.

Specifically, she channels her summoning.

She has her eyes closed in concentration as she does this, but she can hear as Qrow gasps, and, presumably, takes a few steps back. She gets the feeling he either recognizes what she’s doing, or has at the very least heard of it.

After all, the Schnee Semblance is rather well documented.

In the end, the creature she ends up summoning is an Ursa Minor. She’s done as such in the hopes that she’ll be able to take advantage of the creature’s sense of smell. After all, it had been that very sense of smell that had, in their time at Beacon, drawn an Ursa towards Cardin and Jaune once the former had been slathered in sap.

She’s never tried to get one of her summoned Grimm to lead her via something like this, but she figures an attempt is at least worth it.

As she stands, and the glowing, pale-blue Grimm looks down at her, awaiting her order, she instead turns back towards Qrow.

He’s looking at her with wide eyes, and a slack jaw.

“That’s… You’re a Schnee!”

Weiss huffs. “Yes, well, it seems you’ve figured me out.”

“Shit, I knew the hair was familiar, but…” Qrow shakes his head. “How the hell do you fit into the equation exactly? Didn’t Nicholas only have the one child? You’re only a decade or so younger than Willow, how are you–”

“My line is complicated.” Weiss says, for lack of anything else to say. She can’t exactly say she’s her mother’s daughter when her mother is, at this point, at most thirty-two or thirty-three. She’d already said she’s 19, which means that her mother would’ve been, roughly, thirteen or fourteen when she had her.

Which is an impossibility, given Willow Schnee had been a public figure her entire life, and the media had documented just about every day of it.

If she’d had a teenaged pregnancy, such would’ve made the news worldwide.

“Let us simply say that things are complicated. I will not discuss this any further.” She expects Qrow to attempt to get her to talk more about this later anyhow, but hopefully by then she’ll have come up with a semi-believable story. “Now, shall we see if this will work?”

“Huh… Ruby Schnee, then?”

“…Something like that. If you want to call me anything, however, then please continue to call me Ruby White. I do not need the Schnee name attached to me.” Weiss speaks, then looks up at the Ursa she’s summoned, and gives it an order.

It snuffles briefly, seemingly trying to pick up the scent. Weiss isn’t entirely sure what to expect. If a summoned Grimm would even have a sense of smell like a physical one, and whether or not it would be able to actually lead her along like she’s hoping it will.

And yet, as the Grimm sniffs the ground, it raises its head, gives a quiet growl, and then begins walking much more westward.

“What’s it doing?” Qrow asks, raising an eyebrow.

“I believe…” Weiss whispers out, almost uncertain.

“It’s telling us to follow.”

/

Ruby’s desperately trying to pretend like she’s not freaking out.

This is going… well, badly, really, but she’s trying, okay!?

“So, uh…” Roman scratches at the back of his neck as the two of them walk further into the Emerald Forest, towards where Ruby’s pretty sure the relics from initiation are supposed to be. “…Y’got any hobbies?”

“Oh, uhm…” Ruby’s blanking. “I like… people?”

That could not possibly be any further from the truth. Ruby is what her sister calls a ‘total introvert’, meaning that she would much rather sit in her room all day and adjust Crescent Rose’s specs than talk to another human being.

“Yeah, yeah, that’s cool.” Roman smiles, seemingly glad to have found a topic of conversation to stick with. “I’ve never really been all that good with people. Think you can give me some pointers?”

Ruby’s fairly certain that the blind leading the blind would have more success than whatever the hell that would be.

“Uh, well, let’s focus on initiation for now.” She does her best to smile supportively, whilst also divert the conversation in a way that she’d like. “Just to make sure you were paying attention, what’s our objective?”

“Huh?” Roman’s brow furrows. “Uh… we’re supposed to gather relics, right? And then at the end we get put into a team of four people or something?”

“Yep!” Ruby’s glad that things seem not to have changed. “Got it in one.”

“Oh, good,” Roman chuckles. “I was worried I was way off or something.”

They don’t speak as much as they make their way deeper and deeper, as the trees grow thicker and thicker. In here, the occasional signs of wildlife are their only real companions. There are probably students all around them, but they’re far enough away that Ruby can’t see or hear any of them.

Ruby knows she should probably try and talk to Roman. Try and figure things out about him. Learn when exactly she is in… time? History? Ugh, this is so weird!

Honestly, the thing that keeps coming back to her is how little she knows about Roman Torchwick. She knows he’d been a crime lord/gentleman-thief at around the age of twenty-eight or so, and she knows he’d died via being eaten by a Griffon – a mental image that she’s never been able to quite escape from or get out of her head – but…

Yeah, no, that’s pretty much it.

He’d had Neo, she supposes, and because of his death, Neo had decided they were mortal enemies. But she’d not known that he’d apparently once been a Huntsman when he’d been younger!

That’s a pretty crazy realization, even if it explains how he’d been strong enough to be able to hold off both Sun and Blake without much issue during their fight at the docks.

…Well, if she wants to learn more about Roman, she can probably just… ask.

“So!” Ruby suddenly blurts out, and Roman jumps in her periphery, evidently startled. She feels a bit bad about that, but continues on as if it hadn’t happened. “Where did you go to school before this, Roman?”

“Oh, uh…” The boy – and now that Ruby’s paying attention, she notices he really is a boy, probably a year younger than Ruby – seems rather flustered to have been asked as such. “Well, the truth is, I uh… didn’t go to a combat school before this one.”

Ruby’s eyes widened. “Wait, really?”

“Yep.” Roman seems quite sheepish about this, which is just… so different from the Roman Torchwick that Ruby had come to know during her own time at Beacon. “I uh… I grew up on the street, actually. Spent time in and out of orphanages all throughout Vale, and was even shipped all the way to Mistral a couple a’ times.”

“That… I didn’t know, I’m sorry.”

“Oh, no, it’s no biggie,” Roman tries to play it cool, but Ruby can tell he’s a bit embarrassed about the topic. “Normally I try and pretend not to be some orphan kid, but uh… well, I figure if you and I are going to be teammates, you’re probably going to know at some point, so it’s better I just tell you the truth than come up with some big ol’ lie, yeah?”

“I guess I just…” She pauses a moment. “Did your parents, uhm…” Ruby stops. “I’m sorry, I’m not going to ask about that.”

“It’s fine.” Roman looks down and away. “I’ll tell you about it later. Maybe. We’ll see.”

Ruby nods, and the two continue on.

The silence between them is no longer pleasant.

/

Eventually, they encounter their first Grimm.

It is, to be fair, not much of a challenge. A singular common Beowolf. About as easy as they come for a Hunter in training. Ruby’s content to let Roman handle this, mostly because she’s still trying to learn as much as she can about… well, everything.

And also, she doesn’t want to reveal Crescent Rose just yet. She’s pretty sure the teachers are watching this with cameras, and so far, she’s avoided having to unfurl her scythe for any particular reason.

In theory, she can keep that streak going for a while.

“You got it?” Ruby asks Roman, expecting him to laugh, bluster, and then handle the beast with ease.

Instead, he chuckles nervously under his breath – which still probably checks off the first category technically, if not quite spiritually – takes a step back, and then says, “Ah, well… maybe you can get it?”

Ruby frowns. “I mean… I could. Why though?”

“Well, I just… wanna’ see how my partner fights, that’s all!”

“I kind of wanted to see the same from you.”

Roman blanches. “Ah… well, okay, I guess.”

The boy takes a step forward, reaching down to his hips and drawing the twin hunting knives from off of his belt. Ruby immediately pegs his stance as odd. It’s not suited at all to taking on Grimm. Ruby would say it’s much more anti-personnel in terms of balancing.

He doesn’t have the stance to take a big hit, if necessary, like one might assume he would while fighting a Grimm.

Huh… weird.

Roman makes his approach, and the Grimm notices him. He flinches back at its initial growl, which is, uh… worrying.

No Hunter in training this far into their career should be intimidated by a common Beowolf.

“Alright…” Roman talks to himself under his breath. “Can’t be much different than a street fight. Dodge and weave… dodge and weave…”

What?

The Grimm charges him, and Roman’s stance, already far too shallow, becomes more so. As the beast lumbers after him, Roman stands his ground.

Which works for someone like Yang, or Nora, or Jaune, who each have weapons or styles that capitalize on the weight of the enemy, and then use it against them.

Two dinky hunting knives are not the weapons for such a strategy.

The Grimm is right on top of him, Roman swears out under his breath in what sounds like panic, and then dodges…

In.

Ruby’s seen just about enough.

Roman tries to block the Grimm’s strike on his left knife, but it’s clear that the hit is about three times as hard as he’d been expecting. It sends him hurtling to the right, and evidently shakes him rather heavily, for he doesn’t at all react as the creature rears up, and threatens to crush down on him with its right arm.

His eyes widen, he tenses up, fearing the worst.

The Grimm is bisected in the next instant, its body flying into the air as Crescent Rose already begins to transform back into its carry-form.

Roman looks almost flabbergasted.

The top half of the Grimm hits the ground a few seconds later, and then begins to dissolve into the earth.

Ruby is focused on other matters.

Namely…

“You’ve…” She looks back at Roman, her eyes hard. “Never actually fought a Grimm before, have you?”

Roman swallows in that moment, almost taking a defensive stance against Ruby, like he thinks she might lunge at him after such a realization. She notices that the hunting knife he’d been planning on using in his left hand, the one that he’d blocked with, has been broken, the entire top half missing.

The difference between a tool meant to hunt game, and a tool meant to hunt monsters.

“I…” Roman looks away. “I didn’t… I’ve… it’s…”

Ruby just waits, and although she feels a lot like Yang, placing her hands on her hips and tilting her head to one side, almost like she’s disciplining a young child, she really does need to figure out how a boy who’s never fought a single Grimm before has somehow made it into Beacon’s initiation.

…Actually, this is feeling rather familiar, now that she thinks about it.

“Did you…” She pauses, thinking about the cameras that might be hanging up around them. She decides to curtail that line of questioning, if only for a bit. “Did you get hurt back there?”

“Huh?” Roman looks down at his body, which is, thankfully, entirely unharmed. “No, uh… my aura protected me.”

Well, that’s good. At least he’s more experienced than Jaune had been when he’d gotten here.

It sort of raises the question in Ruby’s head of how Roman had managed to survive initiation the first time he’d arrived without Ruby. Perhaps he’d met someone else to carry him through initiation, and then improved after that? It’s certainly possible.

Either way, they do have to get moving. Initiation is on a soft time limit, that being when the relics in the clearing they’ve been set up within have all been exhausted. Once that happens, the rest of the students still making their way through the Emerald Forest will be…

Well, to borrow a phrase Yang uses sometimes, ‘shit out of luck’.

So, despite the questions lurking about the back of Ruby’s mind, she shelves them, and pushes them onwards.

/

Ruby doesn’t think they’ve been especially fast. If anything, she’s pretty sure they’ve been rather terribly slow.

And yet, as she and Roman emerge from out of the woods, and see the same ruins that Ruby and her future teammates had seen during their stint at Beacon, none of the other relics have yet been claimed.

Huh.

“Woah…” Roman sounds awed. “We were really the first ones here?”

“It seems like it.” Ruby mutters a bit awkwardly under her breath. “Although I’m not entirely sure how. We didn’t make great time or anything.”

Roman looks over at her quizzically. “How would you know? I thought we were pretty fast.”

Ruby knows, of course, because she’s been through this all before. That is, as one might imagine, not the best excuse, however, and so she laughs awkwardly under her breath, and says, “Just a hunch, I guess?”

Roman buys it. That, or he’s too caught up in his own obvious lies to be calling Ruby out on any of hers.

“Well, let’s grab some relics, and we’ll head back towards the cliffs.” Ruby tells him, and Roman nods.

Honestly, things are pretty quiet in that moment.

Ruby really should take that as a sign that something is about to explode.

That something, in this case, is a tree on the very edge of the clearing, and then, just after, it’s an Ursa Major, falling backwards out onto the grass, landing hard on the ground, and going deathly still.

Roman seems shocked, but Ruby’s just watching. She’s… not necessarily cautious, because she doesn’t really have anything to fear here, but…

Well, she’s curious, more than anything.

The figure that emerges from out of the trees is not quite the demolitionist that Ruby had expected.

She’d assumed that whatever it had been that had caused such an explosion, it would have had to hit hard. Either a massive weapon, or a particularly powerful Hunter. Someone with bulging muscles, or someone with a weapon that could very much compensate for a lack of bulging muscles.

And yet, the girl who steps out of the tree line then is scrawny. Not as much as Roman is, in all fairness, but about as scrawny as Ruby. She’s got dark skin, chestnut hair, and…

And she’s the girl that Ruby had bumped into back in the locker rooms, now that she thinks about it.

Said girl sees Ruby, and her eyes go about as wide as saucers. She holds her weapon up towards her – some kind of staff – as if thinking her a threat.

“W-Woah! Easy!” Roman shouts out, waving his hands above his head. “Just students, like you!”

The girl looks to Roman, then back at Ruby, and her brow furrows. Ruby hasn’t really moved. It’s funny, but somewhere around the fiftieth or so time that she’d had a weapon pointed at her, it had stopped bothering her.

She’s fast enough to avoid just about anything, and tough enough to take a hit if needs must.

Even if she’s really quite curious to know why this girl seems…

Wary about her.

“Pardon me,” The girl states as she steps towards them, curtsying in a rather old-fashioned way. “I mistook the two of you for… well, that doesn’t matter.” She clears her throat. “I do not believe we have met.”

“Oh, I’m Ruby.” She holds out her hand, trying her best to get rid of whatever bad impression she must’ve given the girl after they’d bumped into one another. She’d seemed friendly before, after all.

“I thought your name was Yang?” Roman scowls.

Ruby’s face blanches, and the girl in front of her doesn’t miss that.

“Oh, uh… yeah.” Ruby chuckles. “It’s uh… Yang’s my middle name. I used to go by it as a nickname, y’know?”

“Oh, okay.” Roman accepts that easily enough. “So should I call you Ruby, or?”

“Either’s fine.” Ruby says with a smile, trying not to be bothered by the massive mistake she’s just made, giving away her real first name. It probably won’t matter, but…

But she can see the way the girl in front of her grows even more suspicious of her, now that she knows she gave her partner a fake name. Even if Roman had fallen for the middle name excuse, this new arrival certainly hasn’t.

“So, uh…” Ruby rather desperately wants to pretend this hasn’t happened. “What’s your name?”

She thinks about that a moment, Ruby can tell. She might be ruminating on handing out a fake name of her own, which is weird, like, really weird, but then, so is travelling back in time, and Ruby’s got that on lock, so who is she to judge, really?

“Amber.” She says after a moment’s more deliberation.

“My name is Amber.”

/

“Are you sure about this, Headmaster?”

Ozpin smiles as Glynda glowers over at him, her referring to him as ‘headmaster’ more than enough for him to get the picture that she’s quite cross with him.

“I am.” Ozpin states. “If she truly is one of Salem’s, then I don’t believe she’ll be able to resist such tempting bait.”

“Amber is a child, Ozpin.” Glynda practically snarls. “Maiden or no, she is not some… tool.”

“I am well aware, Glynda. Which is why she will be monitored around the clock. We shall not give Ms. ‘Rosenberg’ a chance to try anything at all.”

Glynda nods her head, even as she sighs, and massages the bridge of her nose.

“You said that Summer Rose had no siblings. No family.”

“I did.”

“And yet, she…”

“Yes…” Ozpin hesitates. “I know.”

“What do you believe we should do?”

“That is a rather terribly good question, Glynda, and one I would be remiss to leave unanswered.” Ozpin thinks, his mind moving at a million miles a minute. He is so very unused to adapting in this day and age, his plans always made decades, sometimes centuries in advance. “But perhaps we are not the ones who should answer such a question.”

Glynda looks up at him, her eyes widening.

“You mean…”

Ozpin nods, already preparing to make the call the moment initiation wraps.

“…Perhaps hers is the exact opinion we need.”

/

“You four will form Team SNBD, also known as Team Songbird.”

There’s a collection of polite applause at that, and Ruby joins in, not at all one to not give credit where it is due.

After all, these are those people who’d made it past initiation. Those people who will be joining Beacon Academy’s first year class. Those who will have the chance to become Huntsman and Huntresses.

Ruby’s among them, once again.

So is Roman Torchwick, standing just beside her, with a beaming smile the likes of which seems almost alien on his face.

He looks… joyful. Well and truly.

Before she can think too hard about that, though, she hears as Headmaster Ozpin begins to announce the next team.

“Now, as the number of students that successfully managed to finish initiation this year ended up being an odd number, the final team will consist of only three members.”

That’s… what?

Ruby hasn’t heard of a three-member Hunter team. At least not one that had been that size initially. Of course, deaths happened on the battlefield, and many Huntsman teams decided to tough it out without adding a new fourth member if they suffered as such. But she hadn’t heard of one that had begun as a unit of three.

What’s more, she knows for a fact that there are an even number of Relics, given that Nora had counted them during their initiation.

There had been 32. Enough for eight teams of 4.

…Odd. Too odd.

Ruby smells trouble already.

Somehow, she has a feeling it’s going to involve her.

“Ruby Rosenberg, Roman Torchwick, and Amber Equinox. Please make your way up onto the stage.”

Roman almost bowls her over with how excited he is, which has a couple of people in the crowd around them laughing. If she’d been fifteen, like she’d been when she’d first arrived at Beacon, she probably would’ve pulled her hood up around her face, and then dashed up on stage to avoid any further embarrassment.

As things are, she shakes her head, smiles, and follows along behind Roman.

Amber takes the staircase on the other side of the room to make her way up, and meets them centerstage.

Roman stands in the middle, with Amber and Ruby on either side.

“You three will form Team RAR, or Team Rarity.”

Feels like a bit of a stretch, but I guess he didn’t have a ton to work with. Ruby mentally remarks.

“Led by…”

And then, Ozpin looks right at her.

“Ms. Ruby Rosenberg.”

And it is only then, in that moment, that Ruby realizes it.

She’d not said her name at any point other than to Amber, and Roman.

Which means…

Somehow, Ozpin had been listening.

“Congratulations, Ms. Rosenberg.”

Ruby feels it in her chest, that look in Ozpin’s eyes.

He knows. Not all of it, obviously, but she had not gone nearly as undetected as she’d thought. She’d simply been allowed in, an object of curiosity invited into Ozpin’s game of chess, on the off chance she knows the game.

And now…

Now, she has no choice but to play.

Chapter Text

Jaune is jostled awake by the bullhead encountering some manner of turbulence, and likely would’ve been thrown from his seat by how extreme it had been if not for the ropes still tying him down.

As things are, his head rocks forward, and then slams back against the metal behind him as he fights to right himself. Such is rather painful, but ultimately unremarkable, even if he does grumble beneath his breath.

Although…

He’s starting to realize that that’s not the only part of him that’s hurting.

His chest aches. His stomach aches. Everything about him aches.

Before he knows it, he feels bile rising in his throat, and despite his best attempts to contain it, it’s spilling from his lips and onto the floor of the bullhead below.

It jostles and moves with the swaying of the ship, which really isn’t something Jaune had wanted to have to experience today.

Idly, he notes that the vomit is an inky black in color, almost oil-like, something he’s not seen before.

…Perhaps it’s Tyrian’s venom? That might make some sense, he supposes.

He does still ache, and he has a feeling that that isn’t from the vomit. It’s something worse, something more insidious. The poison running through his veins is the likely culprit, and Jaune does his best to channel his semblance on himself, giving his inner organs as much of a boost as he can in the fight against the toxin within his system.

He doesn’t think he can root it out entirely, but he can at least slow down the degradation until he gets the antidote.

…If he gets the antidote.

Honestly, he’s not entirely sure why he’s been brought back to wherever it is that Tyrian’s going along with Cinder. He understands why she’d be brought back. She has, apparently, been selected to be one of Salem’s future enforcers for quite some time, entirely unknowing of such herself.

Jaune doesn’t know how such a selection process works, but then, he’s also not entirely sure he cares.

Perhaps Salem simply senses the malice and misery in the world, and flocks to it to find those most alike to her, most likely to join her cause.

…He’s thinking about Cinder’s condition, the last time he’d been awake.

He’d gotten that small look at her through the crack in the cabin door, as Tyrian had finished taunting him, and gone back to drive the bullhead. She… hadn’t looked good.

Depending on how long it’s been, she might be looking much worse, now.

She’s Cinder Fall. You don’t have to feel bad for Cinder Fall.

Jaune shakes his head, sighing, wishing the voices inside his skull would abate for a little while. He’d at least like to humor the idea that he hadn’t gone totally insane within the Ever After for a little while longer without them commenting on his every thought.

Even if she is Cinder Fall, even if the person she’d one day become had done so much harm, so much damage…

She hasn’t yet.

And maybe she never will.

Maybe that’s why Jaune had taken her with him, when he’d noticed someone had been tailing them. Maybe that’s why he’d fought to protect her.

Because maybe, just maybe, he can change her.

Hah… what a farce. His mind comments rather unhelpfully. You know why you took her. It’s because you wanted to help someone for once in your miserable life. You wanted to save someone, like you’ve never been able to before.

His own mind’s worst thoughts. Those that bother him when he tries to sleep, hound him within his dreams, and make their homes within his nightmares.

They’re not true, at least not entirely. He’d saved Weiss. He’d saved so many people in Atlas. And yet…

He doesn’t think about them. He can’t.

His mind focuses on those he couldn’t.

Pyrrha. Penny. The hundreds of civilians Cinder Fall herself had launched off into the Ever After, never to be seen again. The Paper Pleasers.

…Ruby.

She came back. He tries to remind himself. Ruby came back.

So had the Paper Pleasers. And yet…

Both cases had been his fault. No matter if the end result had worked out.

Those self-deprecating thoughts fade away as a particularly harsh rocking hits the ship, and Jaune can feel as the vomit from earlier soaks its way into his boots.

He grimaces, even as he does his best to clog his nose, and keep his eyes up.

In that moment, the door to the cockpit finally opens. Out comes Tyrian, a skip in his step like he’s on top of the world.

“Ooh, I’m so very excited! We haven’t had guests in so very long, why, I’m sure my Goddess will be more than thrilled to have the both of you for dinner in the dining hall this evening!”

Left unanswered is whether or not ‘have you for dinner’ means that they’re to be invited, or that they’re the main course.

Jaune’s tempted to try and fight his way out of this the moment that Tyrian walks within range of him – he seems utterly unbothered by the vomit that sticks to his shoes, which unnerves Jaune in a way he can’t quite describe – and begins undoing the ropes on his body, but in truth…

He’s begun to feel weaker over the course of the last few hours. Tyrian’s venom is working its way through his system, slowly shutting his body down. It’s something he could probably still fight through right now, but whether or not he could do that while battling Tyrian himself?

He’s not certain. He’s even less certain about his chances of survival out in the surrounding blackened expanse, filled to the very brim with the Grimm, in species and numbers he’s never before seen.

And, in all honestly, he’s not willing to abandon Cinder here to her fate, either.

In his time, she’d been made into an enforcer for Salem. But that was just it; she’d been made into an enforcer. The little girl he’d met in that hotel had certainly been unstable, but to call her the same as the monstrous megalomaniac she’d been in the future would be a total lie.

He’s going to do everything in his power to prevent that person being created in the first place.

And for right now, that means playing along.

As Tyrian unties him, he’s clearly positioned to take a hit, and dish one right back, expecting Jaune to resist. He appears disappointed when, instead of that, Jaune just looks up at Tyrian and asks, “Am I allowed to stand yet?”

Tyrian sighs, but waves his hand lazily, as if giving him permission.

He turns himself around, showing his back to Jaune in what must be the single most obvious piece of bait that Jaune has ever seen. He’s not quite foolish enough to fall for that, and so he simply gets up, stretches his back up, and follows behind Tyrian.

The man’s tail twitches with exasperation, and likely annoyance, too.

Tyrian is hoping for an excuse to cause mayhem, further harm.

It brings Jaune some small joy to deny him the opportunity.

Though that joy quickly evaporates at seeing just how bad Cinder truly looks.

Her face is white. Not pale; quite literally all color has drained from her skin. If she had not been breathing, barely, he’d have assumed her entirely dead.

His protective instincts flare, and before Tyrian can stop him, he’s placed both hands on Cinder’s body, and is pushing his semblance into her.

He’s not entirely sure it’s helping. Cinder’s breaths don’t get much fuller, there’s no returning color to her face.

But in the end, he hopes he’s done something, at least.

He receives a kick in the spine for his efforts, and snarls back at Tyrian as the man sneers down at him.

“I don’t believe I said you could do anything like that, did I?”

“She’s dying!”

Tyrian’s expression is the same as what one might experience having heard that a leaf had fallen from a tree. “And?”

Then and there, Jaune decides that one day, he’s going to finish what Ruby started with this asshole.

“Fine!” He growls out. “Get her to wherever the antidote is, and hurry, damn it!”

Tyrian cocks an eyebrow. “Antidote? Did I mention an antidote? I can’t seem to recall.”

Jaune’s heard just about enough.

He acknowledges, in some far-off corner of his mind, how stupid what he’s about to do is. But he can’t really stop himself either. He reaches down, takes hold of Cinder’s body, and walks right by Tyrian, and out of the vehicle.

“And where is the Rusted Squire off to, now!?”

He ignores the man. Instead, he runs his way up the modest landing strip, and towards the double doors that seem to lead further into whatever infernal castle they’ve found themselves in front of. He braces his shoulder with aura, and hits the doors hard enough to send one of them hurtling forwards, clearing the way.

“HEY!” He shouts, more than loud enough to summon the entirety of this lands Grimm right to him. “SOMEONE GET DOWN HERE!”

He’s not quite expecting an immediate response. He’s actually preparing to step further into the castle, continuing shouting until he’s heard, until someone answers him, irrespective of his own safety, but–

A cold hand finds its way onto his shoulder.

“There’s no need to shout, child.” A voice like chipped ice sounds off from behind him, one that Jaune recognizes from their trip inside of that Grimm whale, on their mission to rescue Oscar.

He turns, and there, right in front of him, is the Queen of the Grimm.

Salem seems almost amused.

Jaune’s breath catches in his throat, then. He tries to speak, tries to make any noise, but nothing comes.

“Ah, I see.” Salem reaches out, and presses her hand to Cinder’s forehead. “Hm. It seems she’s rather close to death.”

“…S-Save her!” He barely pushes out.

“Of course, child.” Salem chuckles. “I did not have her brought all this way to allow her to die on my doorstep. Worry not.”

And then, Salem flicks her wrist.

And Cinder screams.

Jaune has half a mind to drop Cinder then and there, such is his shock, and yet he holds onto her, even as her body convulses, and her screams grow more intense.

“What are you doing to her!?” Jaune shouts at Salem, and she doesn’t even blink, instead continuing with her ministrations.

“I am saving her. Observe.”

Just then, as Cinder gives one final, agonized scream, a pus-like liquid rises from out of Cinder’s nostrils.

Jaune feels he might’ve thrown up then, if he’d not done so just a few minutes prior.

It’s a mixture of many different fluids, that Jaune can identify immediately. It is blood, and mucus, and likely Tyrian’s venom all mixed into one horrible coagulation. He wretches as Salem curls the mixture into a sphere in the air, and then, with a lazy flourish, sends it flying out of the open doors, and off the edge of the airstrip that Tyrian had landed their bullhead upon. It sails off the edge, likely landing in the teeming fields of Grimm below.

And it is only then that Cinder’s breaths calm. This entire time, she has been unconscious, and that doesn’t change now, but even so, he can see what a relief it is to be free of that venom.

Jaune lets out a breath of it himself, slumping in place and leaning against the wall behind him. His arms are aching, but he doesn’t put Cinder down.

“Now that that’s settled…”

And then, the choice is taken from Jaune completely, for Cinder is levitated out of his arms by Salem’s magic, and then–

Agony.

Pure, raw agony is all that Jaune can comprehend.

It is like his lungs are combusting, like his organs are liquifying. Like the acid within his stomach has been strengthened a hundred-fold, and he’s feeling it eat its way out, through the lining, through his intestines, through his very muscles, skin, and bone.

Dimly, Jaune’s aware that it’s now he who’s screaming, but he can’t really be bothered with that right now.

He’s much more focused on the fact that he’s pretty sure he’s going to die.

“Who are you,” Salem asks, an eyebrow on her forehead rising as she suspends Jaune in the air, magics swirling about him, entering him and exiting him in waves that wrack him with pain, “To question me?”

He can’t speak. Can’t possibly answer that question. But then, Jaune’s fairly certain he’s not supposed to be able to answer.

He’s just supposed to suffer for the indignity that he’s caused Salem.

“Ah, my Goddess!”

And yet, Jaune’s saved from his torment by an unlikely source. For as Tyrian steps into the hall that Jaune’s being tortured within, Salem drops him like a sack of flour, as if she’s grown entirely bored of him.

“Ah, Tyrian.” She speaks, and the faunus walks over, kneeling before her in a dramatic fashion. “You’ve done well in retrieving little Cinder. I take it this man is the one whom you were referring to as the ‘tagalong’?”

“Yes, indeed! He was intriguing, very intriguing! He knew of me, even though I had never once met him before! Never so much as seen him! More than that, I think he also knew of you.”

Salem gives an interested hum, then. “He didn’t react as much as I’d normally expect at my appearance.”

“Aha, I knew it!” Tyrian giggles. “And, and, my goddess, look at the symbol on his shield!”

Jaune’s barely figured out how to breathe again before he feels Crocea Mors be unlatched from his waist, and suddenly the shield is floating away from him. He hears the sound of Salem grasping it, and, seemingly confused, stating, “This is no shield. It is a scabbard.”

“Ah, this button, my goddess.”

Jaune looks up in time to see Salem press the button on Crocea to unfurl it, and then watches the expression on her face…

Shift.

Where before she had seemed uncaring, almost bored, suddenly, she seemed intrigued, just as much so as Tyrian had before.

“This… symbol…”

Jaune does his best to put one hand beneath himself, and push his torso up and into a position where he can at least offer some paltry resistance. He doesn’t want to die lying down like a dog. At least let him meet Salem’s magics with his eyes open.

And yet, when he looks up once more, he sees Salem staring down at him…

Curiously.

“State your name, boy.”

Jaune debates whether or not he should lie. Whether or not he should try and finagle his way out of giving the Queen of the Grimm his real name.

But he also decides that in the end, he wants to live right now more than he wants to keep such a miniscule secret.

“Jaune Arc.”

Salem weighs that information a moment.

“This symbol… what is it to you?”

“That?” Jaune’s still sort of out of it, but as he looks up at Crocea Mors – altered, stained, with metals from Pyrrha, and adjustments from Pietro, and then with rust from years and years of wear – and the twin arches boldly emblazoned on its front, he finds he cannot lie. “It’s… the Arc family crest.”

Salem does not outwardly react to this information, at least not immediately. She looks back down at the symbol, studies it, and hums beneath her breath.

“How interesting. Do you have any idea the significance of this symbol?”

“I…” He doesn’t, and he’s been truthful so far. “Other than being my family’s crest? No… I don’t.”

“I see.”

The corridor is quiet. The only sounds being Jaune’s labored breaths, and Cinder’s gradually strengthening ones. She is still hovering in the air above Salem, being held there casually by her magic, as if such a display of power is nothing at all.

“Well done, Tyrian.” Salem finally speaks as she drops Crocea Mors, and allows it to clatter to the floor. “I will take young Cinder to her room. As for this man… you will take him to Watts, and have him given your antidote. After that… take him to one of the guest rooms on the twelfth floor.”

Jaune’s too exhausted to protest his apparent addition to Salem’s castle. Even as Tyrian takes him, and hauls him up off the ground, Jaune can barely so much as look Salem in the eye as she turns back to face him.

“Tyrian was right about you, after all, Jaune Arc.” Salem says, and then, in a way that does not at all comfort Jaune…

Salem smiles.

“You truly are… quite interesting.”

/

The first thing Blake does upon awakening for her shift in the dead of night is haul herself over the snow embankment, and vomit the previous night’s meal all over the snow.

It’s a rotting, oleaginous color. Something that almost resembles the wretched skin of the Hound that had assaulted them in Atlas. Blake wipes the back of her hand along her mouth, and looks down at it, trying to identify if the liquid is simply stomach acid, or something that she should be immediately concerned about, like blood.

Unfortunately, she gathers nothing about whatever the fluid is, and honestly, she doesn’t think she wants to carry a vial of it with her to have it analyzed, either. Instead, she shakes her head, tries her best to fully awaken her body, and then makes her way towards the north side of their formation to take over until the morning light.

Eventually, the sunlight does come, and Blake can stand from her position, and call on the others to help her wake their encampment. It takes longer than it should, nearly half an hour to get everyone up and ready to move, and then another half an hour unpacking everything, and getting it actually prepared to move.

But after an hour or so, they’re back on the road.

Or, well, the tundra.

Their journey is long, and harsh, and takes nearly seven full hours. It’s well into the afternoon before Blake sees Oaresberg on the horizon. When she does, she calls back to the rest of the group with that news, and is happy when a shout of joy rings up among them.

These kinds of journeys are difficult even for someone like Blake, who has spent her entire life doing such things. For a civilian, they are downright hellish.

And yet, they’ve not lost anyone. They’ve had to slow on occasion, but the benefits of taking people from a work camp is that even the older folks had been in a state where they could walk and move about freely. Someone out of commission can’t actually work, after all.

It’s clear some of them aren’t going to be wanting to do much moving around for a while after today, but still, they’ve made it, and that’s what matters.

“All of you, I ask that you wait here until I can secure us passage.” Blake announces, and the group seems antsy about that. “I understand you might be weary to be without my protection, but trust in those around you. They will not betray you. I should not take long. If I’m gone more than two or three hours without any response, then come up with another plan.”

She doesn’t anticipate being taken out of the game for any reason, but even so, it’s best to prepare them for the slight possibility. If she’s somehow accosted, or otherwise inconvenienced, she’s counting on those she’d chosen to guard the encampment along with her the previous night to be able to come up with a decent plan.

Blake tries to make herself look at least halfway presentable, and then heads into town.

Oaresberg is the same as it had been when Blake had last seen it. It’s a fishing town, mainly, alongside being one of the few ports that Atlas had that would actually ferry people to and from Menagerie. She just needs to find a ship captain willing to look the other way on the identities of their passengers while they make that very journey.

Of course, they’d be paying them a hefty sum.

That’s what Blake has, slung along her back. A sack filled with their collateral.

She scopes out the ships near the docks, and tries to identify anyone who looks like they might be in the business of shady dealings already. It’s always a risk, trying to find someone for something like this. One wants someone willing to ignore the law in favor of their own self-interests, while also one who isn’t willing to simply turn in the hundred or so prisoners they had aboard for a hefty sum of Lien.

Such is difficult, but luckily, Blake recognizes one of the older men at the dock.

He is younger, certainly. His lengthy white beard hasn’t yet come in – and in truth, it still has more than a bit of black peppering it – and his eyes lack that same edge, but he is, without doubt, the same man that Adam and Sienna had once worked with to get escapees out of Atlas in the past. He’d taken them alongside his normal goods to Menagerie, a place he’d been going to regardless, and thus, their relationship had always been a fruitful one.

Passage for the White Fang and its extras; a little extra lien for the ship’s captain and crew.

Whether or not such dealings are already happening now… well, Blake has her doubts.

But she wants to hope that she can count on him.

So, she makes her way over. She waits until he isn’t talking with any of the other crewman, and then approaches him directly.

He watches her as she closes the final few meters, his eyes scanning her, evidently wary.

“What can I do you for, Missy?” He asks in a gruff, but ultimately kind-sounding voice.

“I have a group seeking passage.” She tells him. “Around a hundred of them. They’re looking to sail to Menagerie.”

The man’s eyes widen. “Hah, then I’m afraid you’d best seek out a different ship, there, miss. This ships not meant for haulin’ people.”

Blake knows that. The large ship she’s looking at resembles the one she’d road alongside Sun with to Menagerie just after fleeing Beacon, albeit in much poorer condition. It is christened ‘Divinity’, and the difference between it and the ship she’d ridden in the past is quite obvious; it is rather clearly outfitted to haul cargo, not passengers.

Yet Blake has a feeling she can change the man’s mind.

“I’m not asking you to do this out of the goodness of your heart.” Blake explains, reaching back around to the sack hanging from her shoulder, and offering it out to him. “You’d be paid for the… added weight on your next delivery. And for keeping this entire thing under wraps.”

He scans Blake’s face for any signs of deceit, and then, seeing none, but evidently suspecting foul play, he looks down at the offerings within the sack. His eyes widen at what he sees.

Military Grade Fire Dust, that which had been within the SDC guard’s emergency kits. Along with that, there’re several crystals mined from the inside of dust mine itself.

That should, in theory, be worth a good hundred thousand lien, all told.

The man looks back up at Blake. His eyes are growing harder by the moment.

“And just who would we have the honor of allowing onto our ship, Miss…?”

“Weiss.” Blake gives her fake name. “And you’d be hauling those with nowhere else to go. Those who’ve done nothing wrong, but been labeled criminals all the same. Those,” Blake flexes her ears rather obviously, “Like me.”

The man understands what she means. At the very least, she knows he’s sympathetic to the Faunus’ cause. Blake watches as his features contort, as his mouth opens and closes, and he lets loose a great sigh.

“…Alright, missy.” He tells her, shaking his head, but smiling wanly all the same. “Call ‘em over, and be quick about it. They’re going to have to fit below deck, and they can’t be seen during the loading of the ship later today. They’ll be trapped down there for a week’s journey afterwards.”

“That’s fine. They’ll be happy to be moving at all.”

The man huffs out a breath, but nods his head. “Alright then. Guess we’ve got ourselves a deal.”

Blake nods her head, already stepping backwards, back towards the group. “Thank you, sir.”

“Hah…” He shakes his head.

“…Least I can do.”

/

Alabaster Rhodes sits within a dim interrogation room inside of Atlas’ main military compound. His arms are folded on the table in front of him, and his gaze is affixed to the back wall, directly opposite him.

To be clear, he is not a suspect in the current investigation. In fact, he’d come willingly in order to give his statement on the events that had happened within the Glass Unicorn. After all, he’d always been one to abide strictly by the law, no matter what the case.

“But sometimes the law protects the oppressor, instead of the oppressed. Sometimes we must do what’s right, regardless of what the ‘law’ states is correct.”

…Rhodes’ frown deepens.

In that moment, the door at the back of the interrogation room opens up, and in steps a figure that Rhodes is quite familiar with.

“Alabaster.” Captain James Ironwood of the Atlesian Military, and likely-soon-to-be-General, nods towards him, his expression grim. “I wish I could greet you with more energy, but I’m afraid the case you’ve brought to us has taken the wind from my sails.”

Rhodes nods back. “That’s more than understandable. It’s done much the same for me.”

“I read your report, but writing often doesn’t translate the minutia of these things quite as well as a direct interview. Walk me through what happened from your perspective.”

Rhodes does. Over the course of the next fifteen or so minutes, he lays out the crime scene, the victims, and the murderer herself. He lays out his take on events, and speaks of the surprise appearance of that other figure, the man with the rusted armor, and the broken blade.

“Tell me about this mysterious intruder, then. Cameras spotted both he and the girl running down an alleyway a few blocks from the scene of the crime. Ever since that sighting, however, it seems the two have entirely disappeared.”

Rhodes bites down on the inside of his cheek. “Damnit…”

“I understand your frustration. Believe me when I say it is shared. To allow a murderer and her accomplice to escape into the night undetected casts a rather harsh shadow upon us all.”

Rhodes shakes his head, “I should be blamed. I was too soft on Cinder when I should’ve focused on apprehending her above all else.”

“Alabaster, with all due respect, you thought of the child as a protégé; you can’t blame yourself for being human, and taking it easy on her. The fact that you were nearly killed for that kindness is another matter entirely.”

Rhodes nods his head, still feeling the ache in his stomach from where he’d been run clean through by Cinder’s blades – his own blades. If that man hadn’t arrived and resuscitated him, then he’s certain he’d have perished from such an injury.

And isn’t that just adding to the list of questions?

“You say he saved your life, correct?”

Rhodes is loath to admit it, but it is the truth. “Indeed, Captain. He had a healing semblance; or at least a semblance that could be used in such a way. It brought my own aura back from nothing, and kept me alive long enough for my system to start helping itself.”

Ironwood nods, writing something down in the margins of a folder he has splayed out on the table. “Interesting. Aura enhancement semblances are quite rare. We might be able to check against a list of all known users, and find a likely suspect given his appearance. In the case that we are able to narrow down a few candidates, would you be willing to look over their files for me?”

“Of course, Captain.”

“It’s much appreciated.” Ironwood clears his throat. “Now, onto the matter of this Cinder–”

“Actually, sir, there was one more thing.”

James’ eyes widen, but he nods his head. “Very well; what is it?”

“There was something odd about this man. He couldn’t have been any older than… twenty-one, twenty-two years old? But somehow, despite how youthful he appeared, both his armor and weapons showed wear and rust that must’ve taken years to build up. His sword, especially, had been broken down the middle. It seemed an old break. Decades old, by my estimations”

Ironwood nods his head, writing something else in the folder. “Anything else?”

“The symbol on his shield… I believe I recognized it.”

Ironwood’s eyes widened. “Truly?”

“It was the Arc’s family crest. You may know of Nicholas Arc?”

James Ironwood paused a moment, evidently to think.

“He’s… a Huntsman out of Vale, correct?”

“Mm. I met him just the once, while I was down there myself. But he left an impression. Not a larger-than-life figure in any sense of the word. The opposite, I’d say. He was no-nonsense, no heroics, and extremely by the book. Well, I say he left an impression, but in truth, I’d all but forgotten about him up until I saw that weapon the man was using. It was a near match for Nicholas’ own.”

“And yet this wasn’t Nicholas himself present, was it?”

“It wasn’t.”

“A relative, then?”

“That’s what I’d assume, Captain.”

Ironwood hums. “I’ll make some calls, see if I can’t turn up something about a rogue ‘Arc’ on the loose. You’ve done well, Alabaster. Thank for you taking the time to speak with me tonight, I know you’re still recovering from your injuries.”

Rhodes nods his head, and he can’t help thinking that he doesn’t deserve time to recover from those injuries. He’d been too late to save anyone, too late to stop Cinder from murdering those people, and then too soft to do what truly had to be done.

As he mentally berates himself, however, Captain Ironwood steps over to him, and places his hand on Rhodes’ shoulder.

“Don’t worry, Alabaster.” Captain Ironwood tightens his grip on his shoulder.

“We’ll make sure these fugitives see justice.”

“The both of them.”

Chapter Text

Raven, just as she’d told Yang she would, wakes her up in the dead of night, apparently entirely convinced that leaving to go on their trip to Mistral now is a good idea.

It feels entirely moronic to Yang, who’s rather used to moving about when she can actually, y’know, see, but hey, what does she know, right? Hell, maybe if she trips and breaks her ankle in the dark, she can at least tell her mom that she told her so.

Yang half wants to ask Raven is she intends to get them most of the way there via portal, but given that Raven’s just about the least social human being to have ever existed, she’s pretty sure her mother would rather die than have to awkwardly face Qrow or her dad.

…Or… maybe even Mom.

Or, well, her other Mom. Summer Rose, who she had, and likely always would, considered her real mother. She’d raised her, tucked her into bed as a child, made her feel cared for, and loved, and never once treated her differently despite her having not even been her real daughter.

Yang almost considers herself lucky that Raven had decided to run out on them. She’d gotten to grow up with an actual mother, instead of whatever the hell Raven’s whole deal generally is.

That reminds her, she hasn’t egged her mother on nearly enough this evening.

“So,” She clears her throat, and instantly, a scowl forms on Raven’s face. That alone has Yang smirking. “I know all about your semblance – y’know, being your daughter and all –”

Raven grimaces.

“But I can’t help notice that you’re not really using it right now, despite the fact that that would make our trip a lot easier.”

Raven opens her mouth, evidently to actually dignify that response, but then, she shuts her lips.

“The only person I actually have a connection with in Mistral right now is someone I’d really rather avoid getting into an argument with.”

“Oh, so it’s Uncle Qrow?”

“Do not call him that.”

“Uh, why would I not call him that; he’s my uncle.”

“He is not.”

“Uh-huh. Sure mom.”

“Fuck off.”

 Yang’s feeling much better now as they continue onwards.

“Okay, so… judging by the fact that we’re going to need the Spring Maiden, and yet it’s just the two of us walking along here… you have the Maiden powers, then?”

“I do.”

“It’s just… you weren’t using them when we fought. I didn’t think you had them.”

Raven scoffs. “Does a lion use all its strength when hunting a hare?”

“I mean, I’d think the lion would if it was getting its ass kicked, yeah.”

“You were losing.”

“I was biding my time. Waiting for an opportunity. I was completely fine.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, is little miss ‘panic portal’ going to claim she won that fight now?”

Raven snarls back at her, and Yang takes that as a win.

They walk on a while longer before the curiosity that’s been hanging about the back of Yang’s head for the last few days eats away at her restraint entirely.

“So, I uh…” Yang reaches up and scratches at the back of her neck, feeling quite awkward about actually asking Raven a real, meaningful question. “I assume things aren’t going well right now with you and the rest of your team?”

Raven looks back at her guardedly. “What are you getting at?”

“I just uh…”

She can’t exactly ask ‘has Summer died yet?’ because that would be a rather fucked up way of either A. bringing that topic back up, or B. giving Raven the knowledge that Summer is going to die.

She has a feeling that would fuck with the timeline a bit.

Still… she wants to know where she is in time. She’s yet to get an exact idea, and honestly, she knows less about when Summer died than she’d really like. She’d been… seven or eight? Maybe nine? It was hard to really quantify that time of her life.

She’d been so lost in her grief, and her inability to take over for her father when he’d been entirely lost in his own grief, and the fact that she’d been trying to focus on her own burgeoning skills as a Huntress, and her own mom, and…

And it was just… hard, thinking back on it, to really get a decent idea of the timeline of events.

…She could just bring her mother up?

“How are they, I mean. Dad, and Qrow, and Mom?”

“Mo–” Raven’s eyes bugged out. “Wait, do you mean Summer?”

“Uh, yeah?”

“She’s not your mother.”

Maybe it’s just because Yang had her death on her mind, but… that statement angers her. Sets her eyes alight with crimson fire, has her hands clenching into fists.

“Well, she certainly did a lot better at it than you did, so I’d beg to differ.”

Raven bristles pretty visibly at that.

“What the fuck would you know!?”

“I’d know an awful lot, given the first time I met you I was eighteen!” Yang shouts out, well and truly mad now, all those old insecurities bubbling up before she can cut herself off, before she can act reasonably. “Eighteen years of my life, and it was only then that I met the woman that birthed me. So yes, forgive me, Raven, for thinking that the woman who was there for me, who made me feel loved was my mother, and not the deadbeat who ran away!”

Raven snarls, then, pushing forward and gripping Yang by the shirt. She presses Yang against the harsh bark of a large oak tree, and gets right in her face.

And yet, when she looks like she’s about to unload on Yang, she instead… stops. The anger drains from her face, and a dull numbness overtakes it.

“They’re fine.” She speaks, letting Yang go and stepping away. “All of them. Off living their merry old lives. No need for me.”

Yang’s still hot, despite the fact that Raven’s cooled down to a low simmer. “What, feeling sorry for yourself?”

Raven glances back at her out of the corner of her eyes, sneers, and then asks, “Are you going to stand there all day?”

She’s tempted to not let Raven avoid this conversation, to force it, even if things might come to blows between them. But…

“Yeah, sure,” She spits out instead, pushing off of the tree and stepping back into their rhythm. “Whatever.”

They walk a while. Nothing of note takes place. The air is still. Silent. It would be somewhat tranquil, if not for the horrid atmosphere between the two of them.

And then Raven speaks again; quieter, almost faint.

“Were you being serious?”

“Huh?”

“When you said you didn’t meet me until you were eighteen.” Raven doesn’t look back at her, just keeps walking, as if this line of conversation is entirely casual. “Were you being serious?”

Yang has half a mind to respond sarcastically, but there’s a lilt to Raven’s voice that tells her that might not be wise.

“Yeah. I was.” She answers, and then, she decides to be very honest. “And it’s not like you were intending to see me, either. I went and found you.”

Raven is silent. It feels like full minutes pass by as they keep walking, her following close behind.

Eventually, she says simply, “Ah.”

Nothing else is said after that, not until the shattered moon’s retreat, and the morning sun’s rise.

/

They’ve been walking a while when Qrow speaks again.

“So… you’re a Schnee?”

“I do believe I answered that question.” She huffs out in frustration, both having expected Qrow to harangue her with questions, and having been entirely dreading it. “Yes, I am a Schnee. No, I will not be discussing this with you any further.

“It would make me feel an awful lot more trusting if you did.”

“Somehow I think you’re lying.” Weiss rolls her eyes, even as she tries to focus on keeping the Ursa that’s been tracking Marcus Black’s tail focused on its task. “You’ve been suspicious of me from minute one. All you’re trying to do is figure out more about me. Guilt isn’t going to work, let me tell you that upfront.”

“So, you acknowledge you have something to hide?”

“Doesn’t everyone?” She fires back, and Qrow is at least quiet for a few minutes.

Eventually, however, Qrow starts up again.

“Is Nicholas Schnee your father?”

She huffs out a breath, and decides, y’know what? She’s going to bullshit a backstory right this very moment.

“If you must know, yes, Nicholas Schnee was my father, although I did not know him well.” A complete lie, but then, Qrow doesn’t have to know that. She just has to play into what he already thinks, give him what he wants to hear. “You must know his first wife died just a few years after Willow Schnee’s birth?”

“I knew that, yeah. Whole world knows it. Was a big deal.”

“Well, suffice it to say, although my father never remarried, that does not mean he did not on occasion spend time with others.” She feels bad throwing her grandfather’s name under the rug just a tad here, but it’s for the greater good; she hopes he’d understand. “I was born of one such temporary coupling. I was kept a secret. Rather closely guarded. I did not grow up in the Schnee Manor, and was instead sequestered away. When I was old enough, I struck out on my own, tired of being treated like a caged bird.”

She could lace some truth into her story to make it sound more believable; to give it that edge that only something real, something palpable, could possess.

And Weiss truly had struck out on her own, growing tired of being her father’s heiress, just a piece in his massive puzzle.

It was a familiar part to play.

“Huh.” Qrow hums. “So, who was your mom?”

“How about this,” She rounds on Qrow, having had just about enough of this. “How about you tell me who you work for? Who your parents were? Every tidy secret you keep in that closet of yours, right next to the skeletons. Hm?”

Qrow takes a step back with every sentence, and by the time Weiss has finished, he’s got his hands up in mock surrender.

“Alright, alright, point heard.”

“You don’t get to act like I’m the bad guy here.” Weiss growls under her breath. “You’re the one who won’t stop digging into what I’ve rather clearly labeled something I’d like to not talk about.”

In a rather surprising move, however, Qrow runs his hand down the back of his neck – something she’s seen Yang do about a thousand times – and awkwardly says, “Sorry about that. Been an agent for a while now. You… sort of start to suspect everyone of foul play when you’re only hanging around scheming asshats.”

That…

Weiss can remember the ballroom shows that her father would put on sometimes in the Schnee Manor. When she’d been younger, they had been quaint, occasionally even fun. But that had faded the second that she’d made her first ‘friend’ at one of those events. A younger boy whose name had long escaped her.

She could remember the smile in his eyes, on his lips. The warmth he’d conveyed.

They’d talked of doing all sorts of things together, and then…

Well, then his parents had joined in the conversation.

Suddenly, they were talking about how Weiss and this boy were oh so clearly in love. Talking about dating plans, wedding arrangements, marriage, consolidation of the Schnee family fortune…

Weiss had been nine.

The boy couldn’t have been older than ten.

What had perhaps been the start of a burgeoning friendship – and hell, allowed to grow naturally, what very well may have been something that could have led to those parents’ goals – had evaporated in an instant. She’d never seen them again; her father having swatted them away like gnats for such behavior.

Weiss had assumed that a one-off. Something that had been odd, but not indicative of everyone.

Yet the longer she’d spent in high society, the more she’d learned that the people there are all the same.

So yes… she knows what it is that Qrow’s saying.

“Yes…” She speaks, barely audible. “I’ve lived through such experiences myself.”

“Yeah, I guess you would’ve, huh?” Qrow chuckles. “Bit of a different kind of assholishness for you, probably.”

Weiss can’t argue there.

They walk a while longer in silence, which is this time, at least, semi-comfortable.

Then Qrow speaks again.

“I have a sister.”

Weiss’ eyes go wide. “You… what?”

“I just…” He sighs. “You were right, earlier. You were saying that if I wanted to be digging into how you felt, I should be willing to reveal those same things about myself. Hell, I said that it would build trust, didn’t I? Well… I have a sister.”

Weiss nods her head; she knows this. Knows, likely, more than Qrow is going to tell her.

…But it’s a start.

“Go on.”

As the next hour or so ticks by, Qrow tells her much about his and Raven’s lives growing up. He tells Weiss how their parents had been killed early, how they’d had to scrap and fight and struggle for every bite of food, every single drink of water. How their lives had been irrecoverably changed by encountering a Huntsman out on a mission.

How they’d been sent off to a little place called Beacon Academy.

“And from there… well, it’s not much of a story.” He chuckles. “At least not one I want to share. So, y’know, touché and whatnot.”

“You had a team, then?”

“Yep. Was on a team with my sister, and two others. Complicated group; real complicated, in all honesty, but… well, I guess I love ‘em.”

Weiss smiles. “I feel the same way about those I’m searching for. It’s… there are a plethora of complicated emotions involved, but I love them all the same. I’d do anything to find them, and keep them safe from harm.”

“Seems we’re cut from the same cloth after all.” Qrow snarks. “Me, a young, orphaned bandit… you the bastard child of a billionaire,”

“Oi,”

“So similar.”

“Yes, yes, very funny.”

They end up settling into another period of silence after that.

Still…

Weiss doesn’t mind having Qrow hover over her quite as much anymore.

/

When Ruby steps into Team Rarity’s dorm for the first time, she damn near begins to cry.

She’s only barely able to hold herself together, which is a good thing, because she’s not entirely confident she’d have been able to convince Roman – let alone Amber – that such had no deeper meaning.

My eye was just… itchy!

Yeah, no, somehow, she has a feeling that wouldn’t work.

“Wow…” Roman looks around the room, one which Ruby had always considered big for a single person, but drastically too small for four. “It’s huge! You mean we get this whole space all for the three of us!?”

“How is that a surprise?” Amber arcs an eyebrow as she steps into the room, and immediately takes one of the beds for herself, without so much as asking the two of them if they have any preference. “We were told we’d be given dorm rooms as a team before initiation.”

“Ah, well…”

Ruby wants to chime in and defend Roman, given she knows he’d grown up on the street, and that these are, however modest, likely the nicest accommodations he’s ever had. But she also doesn’t want to go revealing Torchwick’s story to Amber.

It’s just not her tale to tell.

Still, Roman had given her that information quite quickly, so she imagines he’ll just inform Amber now.

“Just nicer than I was expecting I guess,” Roman chuckles. “Kinda’ thought they’d skimp out on us, y’know?”

Ruby raises an eyebrow as Amber hums uncaringly, already beginning to unpack her things.

So, Roman’s playing his cards close to the chest with Amber, then? She wonders if it’s the girls more… standoffish personality that’s caused such.

She doesn’t know anything about Amber. Not really. She knows she’s suspicious of Ruby – which possibly means she’s talked with Ozpin or another member of the staff? – and that she seems to be a bit cold, but then, that last trait lines up rather well with how Weiss had been when she’d first come to Beacon.

It’s kind of funny, but it’s almost nostalgic to have a roommate who’s acting like this.

…She probably shouldn’t encourage it, though, no matter how much she secretly finds humor within it.

“Amber, y’know, you could’ve asked if we were okay with you taking that bed before you did.”

Amber bristles visibly at that, her posture righting as if she’s shocked to have even been addressed for such a thing. “…Why?”

“Maybe Roman or I would’ve preferred that bed.”

“But I wanted it, and you hadn’t made any moves towards it.”

“I’m not saying you can’t have it. I don’t think either of us really mind?”

She looks over towards Roman, who, sure enough, shrugs. “Nah, I don’t care.”

“I just meant that we’re a team now.” She tries to explain. “And that means we should probably get used to talking with one another about these things. For example… well, I’m guessing we’re all going to need to shower each morning, right?”

Roman’s expression is well and truly shocked. Ruby has a moment where she realizes that he’s probably not actually gotten to shower regularly – or really bathe regularly – in his entire life.

“Of course.” Amber rolls her eyes, before arching an eyebrow. “Your point?”

Sheesh, she’s just like Weiss was.

“My point is that we don’t want each of us to be waking up trying to take a shower at the same time. That wouldn’t really serve any purpose other than to make two of us frustrated. So… we should talk about it. Go over how long we’ll need the bathroom in the mornings, and then work out a schedule. Stuff like that is what I’m talking about.”

Amber’s face, previously turned up, and haughty, gradually softens.

“…I suppose that’s not a terrible idea.”

“Uh, yeah,” Roman chimes in. “I agree. I… I don’t really need much time. I mean, I like the warm water, it’s nice, but I don’t need it, y’know? So, I can probably go for just ten minutes in the morning.”

“Take twenty.” Ruby laughs, and Roman’s eyes widen. “We shouldn’t have to rush. Classes start pretty late; we’ll have plenty of time to get up and get ready. Amber, how long do you think you’ll need?”

Amber seems to take a mental tally. “…Twenty-five minutes, give or take.”

Not really all that crazy, actually. I was expecting worse.

“Alright. For me, I’ll need about fifteen minutes. Roman, you can take first shower, then Amber, and I’ll go last. How does that sound?”

There are no complaints.

“That’s all I mean, Amber.” She turns back towards her new… teammate. “Just, y’know, working with one another. Making things easier for each other, instead of harder.”

Amber’s face contorts somewhat, as if she’s running some calculation inside her head. “You seem awfully familiar with this sort of thing.”

“Ah, well… I’ve been in teams like this one before.”

“Really?” Roman whistles. “Damn. You part of a gang or something?”

Ruby snickers. “No, Roman, I wasn’t part of a gang. I had teammates at… another, lower-level Hunter Academy.” Hopefully an academy that has such a system in place exists, or else she’s going to be caught rather quickly on her lie. “But anyways, we should probably get some sleep and prepare for classes tomorrow.”

“They start tomorrow!?” Roman’s eyes bug out. “Aw, man. I thought we’d have a few days, at least.”

Ruby’s starting to get somewhat…

Not suspicious, because that implies that she thinks that Roman’s up to no good. But she doesn’t. She believes Roman genuinely does want to be a Huntsman, and that he’s currently a good person.

Or, well, she hopes, anyways.

But even so…

There’s something about Roman that’s just not adding up.

…But she is, in all honesty, quite tired.

She can think more on that tomorrow, when her brain can comprehend complex thoughts again.

So, she asks Roman which of the beds he’d prefer – they’ve got some extra room given its just the three of them, and Roman selects the bed in the corner, which Ruby feels makes sense. That means she’s in the middle.

She’s pretty sure Amber would’ve been a lot more comfortable not sleeping next to her, given its clear she doesn’t trust her, but unfortunately for Amber, she, quite literally, chose her bed.

It is now time for her to, quite literally, lie in it.

/

Jaune fades into consciousness slowly, his vision blurring, swaying.

The room around him is built up of plum-colored brick, with burning torches on the walls, and the general stench of sulfur in the air. Jaune has half a mind to gag, but can’t quite bring himself to.

He’s just… exhausted.

It’s coming back to him, the why and the how. Cinder, Tyrian, and then…

Salem.

In the next moment, he’s up, and yet, all he manages to do is bend his abdomen before his entire body screams at him in protest. He slumps back against the headboard of the bed he’s in, and tries to get his bearings beyond the appearance of this room.

So… he’s in Salem’s base.

It is, as he’d already thought, pretty much exactly as he’d imagined it might be. All dark designs and evil atmosphere. It resembles rather closely some of the villain lairs he’d seen on TV when he’d been seven or eight, watching cartoons.

Except this is real.

And that is somewhat terrifying.

“Ah, you’ve awakened. Fantastic.”

Jaune recognizes the accented drawl, the utter disdain for other human beings, and just the general dickishness in that voice immediately. He turns to his left, and sees, just as he’d expected, Arthur Watts.

He’s younger, certainly. His hair’s still all black, without a hint of gray, and his moustache clearly hasn’t come in all the way yet. Still, Jaune would be hard-pressed to see him as anyone else.

“Vitals are relatively stable, and you even held together surprisingly well after the Mistresses… questioning,” Watts sneers. “So, I suppose you’re more durable than expected. Perhaps you and Hazel can create some sort of ‘club’.”

Jaune doesn’t have time for Watts’… everything. “Where’s Cinder?”

“The girl?” He arches an eyebrow. “In her room, a good-few floors down. You however are to remain here for the time being. The mistress wants you alive, and if you were to try and make it down so much as a few flights of stairs in your current condition, well… I do believe you’d collapse.”

Jaune doesn’t doubt the man’s words; he feels more than exhausted. It’s a torpor that seeps into his very bones, weighing him down. His body is almost begging him to just lay down, and rest.

“So, seeing as how you cannot move, I’ve been instructed to question you.” Watts says, and Jaune watches as he draws a tool off of his back. “I would advise you answer honestly; doing otherwise would serve no purpose other than to make me have to discipline you, and frankly, as a doctor, I’m more than well aware that torture is not at all effective in terms of gaining accurate information. Still, the mistress has a reputation to uphold, and I will act as she has bidden me to.”

In the next moment, Watts presses a button on the tool, and a blue bolt of electricity arcs between two points sticking out of it.

“Do you understand what I’ve said?”

“You’re going to interrogate me?”

“Something like that, yes.”

“Fine…” Jaune groans out. “Talk.”

“Ah, good. Well, then, first off, your name.”

“Salem already asked that.”

“Yes, she did. I was told to make you confirm it. If you gave a fake name last time–”

“Jaune Arc.”

Watts is rather clearly annoyed at Jaune interrupting him, but he looks down at something on what seems to be a miniature scroll on his wrist, hums, and then looks back up.

“Occupation.”

“Huntsman.”

“Licensed?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you possess such a license with you now?”

“It’s on my scroll.”

“Hm. Noted.” Watts types a few things into his wrists projected keyboard, then clears his throat and continues. “How did you come across young Cinder?”

Ah. The real questions.

“Just sort of stumbled upon her.”

“Do you expect me to believe that?”

“I don’t really have a better answer than that.” Jaune says, fully unwilling to admit the full truth, no matter what torture he might be put through. If Salem figures out about the Blacksmith, the Ever After, everything Jaune had seen, then…

Well, chances are she’s not going to use them for benign purposes.

And Jaune rather likes the Ever After.

Juniper, Somewhat, the Genial Gems… they’re all still there.

He’ll protect them if he can.

“The cameras outside the Glass Unicorn did not pick you up entering into the building.” Watts notes. “I have checked the camera feeds as far back as a month ago, and you have never been seen there. Added onto that, according to Atlas police reports, you are an unknown. They have no leads on you, despite your face being rather clearly shown in several video feeds scattered about the city. Which tells me that you are an enigma of some kind.”

Jaune opens his mouth, uncertain of what it is he’s supposed to say to this.

“Either you entered in from the sewers, which I myself doubt, given that there was no such residue or smell upon your person or your armor, nor any chemical readings that might suggest such a journey, or, as the Mistress believes… you are the result of some magical anomaly.”

Jaune uses every bit of willpower he has to resist reacting, to resist showing his shock on his face.

Salem… she’d been able to deduce such a thing so very quickly?

He supposes it makes sense. Aside from the Maidens, she’s one of only two people in the entirety of Remnant who can use magic. She likely knows the signs of it more than anyone.

“Magic?” Jaune still tries. “The hell are you talking about?”

Watts watches him a moment, his face unreadable. Jaune stares back, trying not to crack, or show weakness.

“I do believe Tyrian was wrong about you; you’re not near as bad a liar as he said, all told.”

“What do you–”

Watts’ electrical device comes down on Jaune’s left leg, and the pain is instant.

It’s hard to quite describe, because calling it pain feels… almost incorrect. It’s less painful, and more… wrong. It feels like his body is being given orders from outside him, his muscles spasming in all sorts of ways.

It does result in pain, of course, but that doesn’t seem the primary usage of the device.

“Gah,” Jaune grits out, his teeth chattering together, jaw clenched. “What was…”

“A device I invented. Anti-personnel, mainly meant to be used by civilians to incapacitate would-be attackers. I called it the Wattser. Unfortunately, that name did not catch on among our research team. They elected to go with the name ‘Taser’ instead. How utterly dull.” Watts sighs. “But, enough about that. I would advise you do not lie again. Else I will be forced to call in the Mistress herself, who very much still believes in the power of torture to gather information, no matter how many times I attempt to correct her.”

Jaune bites down on the inside of his cheek, not wanting to experience whatever the hell that taser thing is again.

“So, allow me to ask again,” Watts says, alighting the end of the taser with electricity.

“Just how did you come to know about young Cinder?”

/

It’s the shouting that awakens Blake from her slumber within the Divinity’s cargo hold.

Several of the other Faunus below decks are awake as well, hissing at one another in panicked whispers. Blake motions for them all to stay put – they can all see in the dark, and are more than able to make out her hand gestures, despite the complete lack of light – and makes her way up and out of the cargo hold, towards the deck of the ship.

As she makes it to the deck, she sees the crew of the ship running around, swearing below their breaths.

She finds the captain first.

“What’s going on?” She asks him, and as he turns back to her, he does so with a low laugh, clearly agitated.

“Another ship on the horizon. Thought they might just let us by, but they’ve kept speed with us. Just now, they raised their flag. It’s telling us to slow down, and allow them to board.”

“Pirates?”

“Worse. At least for us.” The man growls. “Atlas Military. Unfortunately, this is pretty normal in the seas around Menagerie; happens once every six or seven trips. The Atlesian Fleet here – which exists ostensibly for protection – will come on board, inspect the merchandise, and then let us through if we pass that inspection.”

Blake’s blood runs cold. “That… that inspection, does it include–”

“A trip down to the cargo hold to accidentally find a bunch of illegally smuggled criminals?” He looks down as Blake bites her bottom lip. “Yes, unfortunately, it does. And don’t act so shocked I guessed. It’s not that hard to tell missy. What’d the lot of ya’ do?”

“They didn’t do anything. I broke them out of an SDC mining camp. They were being heavily abused. The guards were about to brand a young boys face before I stepped in.”

The man’s lips peeled back in a snarl. “Gods damnit… and to think they call you animals. Alright, keep below deck, we’ll try to talk them out of searching the ship.”

“Do you think that will work?”

“Nah, not a damn chance.” The captain barks out a wan laugh. “Still, I’m not really sure what else there is to do.”

Blake considers that a moment.

“If you fail to convince them, what happens?”

“Well, they find your people, likely take control of this vessel, and sail us back to Atlas. My entire crew is arrested. Your people are, too. That, or they’re sent back to the mining camp they came from. Which is, as you can guess, probably worse.”

“So… if you can’t convince them, you’ll be arrested?”

“Probably, yeah. Why do you ask?”

Blake takes a deep breath, forcing her nerves down. “You talk with them. If that fails, then at the very least, I can deal with them.”

“You’ll–” The man’s face contorts in shock. “You, alone? Against an entire ship?”

Blake gives a small smile. “Not like we’ve got much choice.”

“Well, you’re either highly capable, or you’re insane. I guess I’ve got no choice but to bank on the former.”

Blake nods her head, even as she starts scanning the deck for somewhere she can hide. She doesn’t want to be forced back below deck. There’s only one exit out of there. Sure, she could also bottleneck the soldiers in, but…

Well, that would be putting the refugees within the hold at risk.

She’s not willing to do that.

Instead, she sets her sights on the crow’s nest, currently manned by a crew member.

“I’ll take point up there.” She tells the captain.

“A’ight,” He shouts up at the man in the Crow’s nest to come down, and gives Blake the okay to go up herself. Before she does, though…

She’s always been curious about something.

“If you don’t mind me asking… you’re human, right?”

The man eyes her. “I am. What of it?”

“Why would you go so far for us Faunus? There aren’t many who would.”

“Ah, well…” The man’s voice becomes weaker, losing some of its vigor. “Long story. The short of it is I was a soldier in the Revolution. On the wrong side, to be clear. I… did things I’ll never be able to make amends for. But… even so, I feel I have to try.”

Blake nods her head slowly. “That’s–”

And then…

Then Blake has an idea.

“Actually…”

The man turns towards her, and Blake flashes him a smile.

“I think I may have a way for you and your crew to get out of this with your reputations intact.”

Chapter Text

Ensign Elm Ederne of the Atlas Naval Fleet can’t help but wonder what the point of all of this is.

She understands, in theory, why they need ships patrolling the waters in and around Menagerie. It’s to protect the faunus ships from the Grimm, and to keep the seas safe from unsavory elements like pirates. It’s also to protect important trade routes and shipping lanes.

And yet, during her time aboard the ANF Cutter 13, she’s yet to see them really get up to anything of the sort.

Oh, they’ve certainly acted like they’re protecting trade routes or shipping lanes, but the truth is, outside of the very occasional culling of a Grimm that’s managed to get past the battleships further out at sea, all she and the rest really get up to is checking the cargo of one out of every ten or so ships that pass by.

And by checking, she means blatantly stealing from said cargo.

She herself has never actually participated in such actions, but she knows that the rest of the crew have no such qualms. If it’s food being shipped, they’ll each ‘sample’ it. If it’s dust or any other valuable, then one can bet that they’ll find a reason to make off with a decent chunk.

And the problem is, at the end of the day, those ships being checked by them can’t – or perhaps simply don’t – report such behavior.

And maybe it makes Elm a coward, but she doesn’t report it either.

She sighs, even as their crew starts to prepare to board the ship that they’re just about to come up upon. It’s around a hundred meters out on the starboard side, and Elm’s really debating whether or not she just wants to sit here and tell herself she’s not involved. Maybe if she doesn’t see the problem happening, she can pretend it isn’t happening at all.

Cowardice, plain and simple, but it’s the only real idea she has.

Unfortunately for Elm, she’s nearly 2 meters tall – she’d hit a bit of a growth spurt in her younger years – and made of pretty much solid muscle, which means that the captain of her little ship usually brings her along to act as a sort of faux enforcer.

They can’t actually threaten any of the crew aboard the ship they’re investigating, but that doesn’t stop the man from using her size and bulk to intimidate the other ship’s crew into staying quiet.

And just as expected, as they pull up next to the other ship, and tie themselves to it, her captain – a shrew of a man with a nasally voice, who looks like he hasn’t done a drill in going on ten years now, if his potbelly is anything to go by – calls her over.

“You’re with me, Ederne. You know how this works by now, do you not?”

She debates saying something. She usually does. She probably should, it’s just…

Well, she has a feeling all saying something’s going to get her is yelled at, and one of these days, discharged on false charges, and then she’s out a career.

So instead, she swallows, takes a breath, and says, “Aye-aye, sir.”

“Hmph.” The man harrumphs, his flat lips stretching into a broad smirk. “Good. Come along then.”

The two of them aren’t the only ones in the boarding party. Some of the other highly ranked officers aboard join the captain – likely just wanting to be able to select their own cuts from whatever is currently being shipped – and the rest as they walk across the metal bridge that’s folded out to board.

Elm scans the faces of the men and women of the ship they’re boarding as they make it across, and what she finds…

It’s odd.

Normally, the crews of the ships they board look… resigned. Accepting. They already know what’s going to happen, what’s going on, and everything in between is just putting on a performance for the sake of it. Elm’s captain and crew pretend like they’re not just there to rob them, the other ship’s captain pretends like they don’t know that Elm’s captain is going to rob them, and they go from there.

And yet the expression’s on the faces of this crew look… scared.

No, that’s not quite right. They look like they’re trying to pretend that they’re not scared. Like they’re doing their best to present a normal front, but they can’t quite manage it.

From the looks of things, Elm’s the only one who’s actually noticed. She thinks about saying something, but before she can, her captain has already started his spiel about ‘inspecting the cargo’, which means that Elm will just have to keep a lookout.

And yet, the other captain, a man with a salt and pepper beard and hard eyes, shakes his head ‘no’.

“I-I’m afraid I can’t do that, sir.” The man said. “I’d ask you return to your ship.”

Elm can sense something brewing. Her instincts have always been good, and even though nothing’s happened of yet, she’s already reached back towards her weapon – a standard issue Atlesian Sword, which she already knows is not something she’ll be sticking with – and takes ahold of the handle, ready for things to kick off.

“And who are you,” Her captain scoffs. “To tell me, a member of the Atlesian Military, about what I can and cannot do?”

“It’s just… there’s a bit of a situation on board, sir. S-Sick people below deck. Y’know how it is.”

“Ah, ‘sick people’,” The man turns back towards his officers as he makes air quotes, and barks out a fake laugh. “Yes, well, how about we go and see to these ‘sick people’ ourselves. You can lead us there, captain.”

“I’d really advise against that, sir!”

“I’ve just about had enough of your–”

And then another voice, dark, low, and sinister, cuts right through the others.

“Too stupid to take a hint, it seems.”

Elm tries to turn towards the direction of the voice. It sounds like it had to have come from above her, and yet when she looks up, she sees nothing but endless sky, and the masts of the ship they’re on. Her captain does the same, taking a step back and loudly yelling, “Whoever just said that, how about you come down here and try it again, hm!? See what happens!”

“Alright.”

Elm blinks, and suddenly, there’s a figure just behind her captain.

Her instincts flair at her, and yet, before she can try and push this new arrival away, they’ve planted their foot in the square of her captain’s back, and kicked him forward.

The force in that kick is far higher than what should be present there. It’s enough to send her captain – easily over a hundred kg – flying across the deck, and landing on the guardrail at the other end, nearly spiraling out into the open ocean.

Elm’s the only one who had been prepared for such an event, having foreseen something as off, and so as the others are still reeling, she’s charging forwards, drawing her blade off her back and swinging down with all her might.

And yet, despite that, their assailant lifts their arms, and catches Elm’s blade with their own.

Elm realizes in the next moment that this person is no ordinary sailor. Perhaps she should’ve guessed that the moment she’d sent her captain flying, but it is only in that moment, when Elm – who probably weighs the same as her captain, except built purely of muscle – is unable to bring her blade down on her opponent that she truly realizes how grave a threat she is.

It is a woman, that’s obvious from her general frame, and the sound of her voice. She’s shorter than Elm by nearly 30 cm’s, although she has two faunus ears – seemingly that of a cat’s – that twitch and react atop her head to give her slightly more height. She also wears a mask, but it’s make-shift, seemingly made of wood that looks almost freshly carved. She might’ve very well taken a chunk of the Divinity’s hull and quickly cut it into shape.

The woman’s frame is light, and not at all one she would’ve traditionally pegged as a body meant for fighting. She’s seen others like it, of course, in her time in the military, but…

Those had only ever been from Huntsman and Huntresses.

Those who had aura to substitute for raw muscle, who could fall back on skill and technique instead of brute force and strength.

Elm much preferred the latter, but in this moment, she can see the value of the former as well.

Elm is knocked away as one of her other officers – she forgets the man’s name… Marcus or something? – dashes forward with his own blade drawn, and attempts to spear their assailant on the end of it.

He’s too slow, however. The lady jumps up into the air, does a full backflip, and lands a good three or four meters away from them.

At that moment, all hell breaks loose.

The other guards who’ve come along to board this ship – the Divinity, Elm’s pretty sure it had been called – draw their guns, and aim towards the attacker. The Divinity’s crew swear under their breaths, and before Elm can shout out not to fire, that there are civilians aboard this ship, her own crew has already begun to unload.

The dust bullets hit the deck and go right through, causing a round of screams to come out from below. Their assailant swears, then, and blitzes to the side, causing the gunmen to aim away from the ship, and towards the water. Then, she jumps into the air, and transforms her own weapon into some sort of firearm.

She hits both soldiers’ shoulders with pinpoint accuracy, even knocking one right off the boarding plank. Elm swears and dives in after the man, worried he might not have enough strength to pull himself out of the water by himself.

She drags the man onto her back and swims on over to the emergency netting of their own cutter, then hauls the both of them on board. As she does, she occasionally takes peaks back at the battle, trying to see just what it is that’s happening.

What’s happening is that they’re getting completely slaughtered.

Their opponent, the Faunus Huntress, isn’t even trying to kill them. She doesn’t have to. Every time one of the soldiers go at her, she effortlessly disarms them, and takes them out of the fight. No matter what, it’s clear that alone, they’re outmatched.

But they don’t have to stay alone.

Elm looks towards the bridge of the ship, which, inside, holds the key to their salvation. A comms unit, one which she can use to contact the rest of the fleet.

It’s clear the Divinity has been hijacked by this woman, if the crew’s reaction had been anything to go by. They’d been terrified, likely under orders from this woman to stay silent, and try and get Elm’s crew to leave without finding her, and whatever the reason is that she’s chosen to hijack the vessel.

Elm hasn’t a clue what a Huntress would want with a random ship from the eastern edge of Solitas, but then, she’s never really understood the mindset of criminals much at all, so she supposes that tracks.

She ignores the battle itself, and rushes towards the comms unit. As she’s going, she hears the sounds of battle briefly stop, as if something has shifted, but keeps going.

And then, she has no choice but to look.

“Stop!”

Elm’s hand is on the door to the bridge when she turns back towards the battle, and her eyes widen at what she sees.

For there is the Huntress…

And she’s taken one of the crewmen of the Divinity hostage.

It’s one of the younger men aboard, his face pale, as if all the blood has entirely drained from his face. He’s trying to struggle out of her grip, but the Huntress is strong. She’s not budging an inch, even with the man hammering down on her arms.

“You,” She’s looking right at Elm. “Step away from the bridge. This battle is over. You are your crew have been defeated.”

Elm swallows, looking over at where the rest of her cutter’s combatants are. All of them are flat on the deck – hopefully knocked out – of the Divinity, not moving a muscle.

Elm curses under her breath, even as she refuses to back away from the bridge.

If she can just get in there… if she can contact the rest of the fleet, then…

Then they can prevent whatever this woman wants from happening in the first place.

They might be able to save many lives if her intents are truly heinous.

And yet… she’d be sacrificing many others. The lives of the crew aboard this ship…

“Do it, Ederne!”

The words shock her, and Elm turns to see her captain having pushed himself up, standing upon the deck of the Divinity, evidently recovered from earlier.

“This is more important than one man’s life! Call the order into the fleet!”

Elm feels her heart leaping within her chest; panic building inside of her. She looks to and fro at the many different pieces of the current puzzle. There’s the bridge, where the comms unit lies, then the Huntress, holding one of the Divinity’s crew in her grasp. Then her captain, with a mad glint in his eye, trying to convince her the man’s life is worth stopping this woman.

But is it? Can she – or even he – truly make such a decision?

Elm’s hands shake on the handle, even as, with a harsh breath, she slowly lets it go, and pulls her hand away, holding it up above her head in surrender.

“What the hell are you doing, Ederne!?” Her captain screeches.

And yet, as Elm takes a step forward, as she moves towards the front of the ship, where the platform to carry her onto the Divinity lies, she sees the Huntress in front of her smile.

It’s… an oddly real thing. It carries none of the sinister nature that she’s been projecting for the last few minutes.

It’s filled with… what seems almost to be gratitude.

“Smart girl.” She whispers.

And then, in the next moment, the woman in front of her evaporates into shadow, and Elm’s consciousness goes with it.

/

“I cannot believe that worked!”

Blake snickers below her breath as the crew of the Divinity go on and on. The captain, having tried to stop them from rabblerousing so much at the start, has evidently given up entirely, and now just sighs and shakes his head as he does his best to steer them towards Menagerie.

“I had no idea you had that level of… menace in you, ma’am!” The man she’d ‘held hostage’ earlier laughs. “I was actually scared, even when you told me ahead of time that you might need to do that if things got dicey!”

“That fear was crucial.” She tells him, and she’s honest. “I doubt you’d have been able to fool that woman with your acting chops alone.”

The rest of the crew guffaw at the extremely mild burn, even as the man himself acts like he’s been struck by a bullet, flailing backwards wildly as his friends hold him up, and laugh at his expense.

“You wound me.”

“Yes, yes, I’m sure.” Blake rolls her eyes. “In all honesty, that went as well as I could’ve hoped. I was worried there a moment when that woman,” Elm, Blake thinks, unable to get her mind off of who she’d just seen, that was Elm. “Made her way towards the bridge. I thought she might go through with it even at the expense of someone’s life. And if she’d made that decision… well, she rather quickly would’ve put together that our ‘hostage situation’ was a fake.”

“Ah, well, no sense worrying about it.” Another crew member states casually. “It worked out in the end, yeah?”

Blake supposes it had.

“Don’t mean to alarm you all,” the captain shouts out from his place at the wheel. “But if the lot of you want to get paid for this trip, I’d advise getting’ yer’ asses back to work!”

That seems to finally be the thing that finally gets the crew to stop celebrating a job well done, and return to their posts.

For Blake, it’s the first time she can really take a breath in over two hours.

First, they’d been planning what they’d do when they’d be boarded, then they’d had to plan the likely event that things came to blows. Blake had had to coach each and every member of the crew on how to act, to pretend to be terrified of her, to run at the first sign of trouble. Things had nearly gone badly too, once the actual combat had started. The men with dust rifles had fired off shots that had nearly struck the people below in the hold.

Luckily, none of the bullets had hit at an angle to properly travel below the deck, but even so, it had been a far closer call than Blake would’ve liked.

She makes her way back over to the captain, trying to keep herself steady, reminding herself that they’d done it, they’d pulled it off.

“Ah, Ms. Weiss.” He nods his head to her, and she nods back. “Excellently done back there.”

“To you as well.” She smiles. “You sold the idea of someone ‘scared of something they can’t tell you about’ quite well when you were talking to the captain.”

“Ah, well…” He scratches at his beard. “Wasn’t that bad. All I did was imagine him figuring out what was really going on. Rest kind of came naturally after that.”

Blake nods her head.

“So, they’ll be fine, then?”

The captain laughs. “They’ll be fine. We tied them up in the hold of their ship, but we turned on a low-grade transponder. It tells nearby ships that they need assistance, but not in a particularly urgent manner. One of the other cutters will probably find them within the day, but by then, we’ll be docked in Menagerie.”

“And then you and your crew can play the parts of a bunch of scared hostages, grateful to be free of my evil clutches.” Blake smirks. “But still… that’s good. I roughed a few of them up pretty bad.”

“Frankly, I’m surprised you’re worried about them at all, given everything the Atlas Military’s done to the Faunus.”

“It’s… complicated, but I happen to know that not all within Atlas are horrible people. In fact, most are perfectly good. But bad apples have a way of spoiling the bunch. And Atlas has more than its fair share.”

The ship captain nods his head. “Can’t say I disagree with ya’ there. Ah, well, if only the world could be simple, huh?”

Blake chuckles. “If only.”

“Alright, I’m going to focus on making sure we make it to Menagerie within the next few hours. You can probably head back down to the hold. I’ll have someone come get you if we end up needing you.”

Blake nods her head, and decides that yes, she has had enough of… everything for a while.

So, just as had been suggested, she makes her way down, down, beneath the surface of the sea. Into the depths of the Divinity.

And then she takes a well-deserved nap.

/

Yang’s really not sure what it is that’s happened, but suddenly, about five kilometers out from Mistral itself, her stomach feels like it’s going to burst.

She stumbles off of the forest path that she and Raven have been walking along for the past few hours and wretches rather painfully. She’s not really sure where the bile and vomit that emerges from out of her comes from, given she hasn’t actually eaten in around twenty-four hours.

Even still, when she looks down, she sees a rather putrid-looking black mass.

“Eugh…” She groans, wiping at her mouth and checking her clothes for any residue. It’s bad enough that she’d gotten her hair cut to neck-length – she’d need to get some work done to make it look at least somewhat normal in Mistral – but if she had had to walk around wearing clothes stained with vomit, too?

Well, let’s just say the Blacksmith and Yang would have been having words.

“You alright?”

Yang turns to see Raven peering at her from further down the path. She’s… she doesn’t look worried, but honestly, the fact that she’d stopped at all instead of just saying something like ‘only the weak would ever throw up, if you want to be strong, you need to never vomit again’ does at least warrant a serious answer.

“I’m fine. Not really sure what came over me just now.”

Raven hums out in answer, stepping over towards her and gazing down at the pool of bile.

“That… does not look particularly natural.”

“Yeah, tell me about it.” She stretches out her back. “Anyway, we should get moving, no?”

“…Yes, I suppose we should.”

It’s another two or so hours before they eventually end up on the cusp of Mistral itself. The capital looms above them, its towering structure something that Yang never gets tired of partaking of. It’s undeniably beautiful.

“Alright,” Raven interrupts her ogling, and Yang turns towards her mother to see her looking up at the highest reaches. “I’m going to enter into the city, head near Haven, and then set up a portal for you to follow me. Keep an eye out for it.”

“Are you going to fly up?”

“What?”

“Y’know… with your bird form?” Yang questions, and Raven’s eyes widen. “…I know about the bird form.”

“That…” Raven lets loose a harsh breath. “Never mind. Yes, I will be utilizing my corvid transformation. Await my portal. We do this quick and quiet.”

Yang nods her head, and in the next moment, she watches her mother’s body… change.

It’s an odd thing to see in real time, the magics at play that change her mother’s shape. Everything shrinks at first, and then some things elongate and stretch. It seems like it would be horrifically painful, but then, neither Raven nor Qrow have ever said anything about it being painful, so Yang sort of just assumes it doesn’t really feel like anything.

The transformation completes, and Raven wastes no time soaring up into the air, headed for the very top of Mistral.

Evidently, that’s to get them past those at the gates of Mistral, who might want to know why a wanted bandit chief is currently trying to enter into their city.

Which, in their defense, feels like a fair question.

Either way, while Yang waits for the portal to spawn, she decides to consolidate her thoughts on a lot of matters.

For one, where the rest of her team – and Jaune – might be.

Well… that’s a bit of a hard one.

She’s heard nothing of value that might point her in any of their directions. For all she knows, they could’ve been thrown into the city of Mistral itself, directly in front of her, and her chances of running into them would still be rather low. Remnant’s a big place, and unfortunately for Yang, that means randomly coming across four people probably isn’t going to happen.

No… she’d either need to make herself easier to find, or she’d need to keep an eye out for the others doing the same.

It feels like that’s the best she’s really going to come up with on such short notice, so when the portal opens up in front of her, she takes a breath, and steps through.

When she emerges, she finds herself in a familiar section of Mistral; just a half kilometer or so from Haven Academy itself.

And, far more importantly for their purposes, the Relic of Knowledge.

Which… does bring up an interesting question for Yang.

“So…” She murmurs as she and Raven begin trekking towards the school as quietly as possible, doing their best to stay entirely out of sight. “How did you get the Spring Maiden’s powers?”

Raven’s body flinches at those words, although she doesn’t say anything in response right away. If anything, she seems to be taking time to consider what it is she wants to say.

“How much of the story do you know?”

“I know that the Spring Maiden ran away a decade and some change ago – or, well, for me, for you I guess that might’ve happened pretty recently – and that you didn’t let anyone know that you’d become the new Spring Maiden. You told me once that what you did for the Spring Maiden was a mercy. Beyond that, though, I’m in the dark.”

Raven takes a deep, somewhat painful sounding breath.

“…The Spring Maiden ended up in my camp on accident. She was weak, barely there. I nursed her back to health, tried to train her up to where she would be strong enough to survive. In the end, though… well… they got to her regardless. She was dying, and I… I did what I had to do.”

Yang listens to the timbre of her mother’s voice; can hear the lacings of regret within it. It’s… more than Raven had been willing to admit the last time. But then, she’d kept to her bandit queen moniker the last time they’d spoken up until the very end.

The Raven in front of her, walking ahead of her, is being a bit more open with her. 

“Alright.”

“What, not going to call me a murderer?”

“Do you want me to?”

Raven doesn’t say anything in response to that. She just transforms back into a bird, flies on top of Haven, and opens a portal for Yang to follow her.

She comes out on the roof alongside her, and they look down into Haven’s courtyard together.

“It’s in there,” Raven points towards where the statue of Jinn stands inside of the main hall. “We’ll have to be quiet. It’s late, so no one should notice or even be here, but getting caught would be unfortunate.”

“Got it.” Yang nods her head. “You going in first?”

“Mm. I’ll portal you in once I’m ready.”

“Couldn’t you have just done all this on your own, and then used a portal to get me in at the end?”

Raven turns back towards her, and shoots her a look. “I could’ve, yes.”

Yang doesn’t really know what to make of that at first. But then… she thinks she might have some idea.

“Were you… trying to get some time to talk with me?”

Raven doesn’t dignify that question with an answer. Instead, she transforms, and sails off the edge of the building.

Yang can only sigh. It’s not like she’d expected her mother to be articulate about her feelings, but still.  

Eventually, a portal does open up, and Yang, again, steps through. She emerges this time directly in front of the statue of Jinn, which Yang only just remembers now they’d have to get to move.

“So, uh, what’s the plan here?”

“It’s a key.” Raven shrugs her shoulders. “That’s all. Lionheart’s is the only one that’s supposed to have the key, but I’m not an idiot. I copied it the last time I saw it.”

Yang actually finds that quite humorous. “You made a copy of the key that leads down to the Relic of Knowledge? Without him realizing?”

Raven reaches into her armor, and pulls out, lo and behold, the same circular-shaped key that Lionheart had once utilized. It’s definitely not as ornate as Lionheart’s, and it seems to be made of a simple iron instead.

“Took a piece of clay and placed it atop Lionheart’s key while he wasn’t looking, then sent that piece back to camp with a portal. Our weaponsmiths used one of our broken swords to make a fabrication out of the mold.”

“Huh.” Yang can’t fault her mother for ingenuity, certainly. “Have you ever actually used this before?”

“No.”

“Oh, so it might just not work?”

“I suppose it might not, yes.”

“Well, let’s hope it does.”

Raven just rolls her eyes, but there’s a certain fondness there that Yang doesn’t really know what to make of.

“You sound just like him.”

“Hm? Who do you mean?”

Raven evidently realizes she’s said that aloud, and instead clams up, turning away from Yang and making for the top of the statue, where she’ll need to insert the key. She does just that, and there’s a good five second period during which Yang thinks that this fake key Raven’s made isn’t going to quite do the trick.

And then the statue of Jinn begins to shift.

They’re lucky it’s a relatively quiet thing, the only real sound being that of the gears beneath the statue shifting and undulating. The statue itself moves out of the way, and the elevator down to the Vault of Knowledge is opened.

“After you,” Yang bows dramatically, and Raven just groans as she steps onto the elevator. Yang follows suit, and the two of them ride down aboard the elevator as the statue begins to slide back into place above them.

The trip down is spent in silence. It lasts around thirty seconds; during the latter half of which Yang gets a brilliant view of the actual room that houses the Vault. The intricate stonework, the beauteous trees that shed golden leaves…

Well, also the magical vault that contains a Relic capable of, in theory, giving her mother the truth of the matter; that she really is a time traveler from twelve years into the future.

That’s going to be a thing.

They make their way towards the vault, and Raven flexes the Maiden’s power at the entrance, which causes the Vault to begin to open. It’s a gradual thing, during which, apparently, Cinder had struck out at Vernal the first time, and then her mother and Cinder had fought.

Cinder had lost; one of the only defeats Yang had ever known the woman to take.

The vault stands open, however, and she can think such thoughts later. She follows along behind Raven as they step into what looks like a vast, endless desert. Her footfalls sink into the sand, and she does her best not to think about the impossibility of such a thing.

“Right…” Raven hesitates. “This is it; I suppose.”

“Mm.”

Silence fills the vault.

“You…” Raven’s voice begins.

“What?”

“…Nothing.”

Yang almost wants to laugh, but instead, she just shakes her head, steps towards the lamp, and says, “Jinn.”

Immediately, time begins to slow to a crawl. Raven’s seen this before, it seems, because she doesn’t react at all as the sands stop moving, as the winds of this ethereal realm stop blowing.

And then from out of the lamp rises Jinn, in all her blue, naked glory.

Honestly, Yang’s a taken woman, but she can appreciate beauty when she sees it.

And then, while her mind is busy coming up with stupid jokes, Jinn turns towards her, smiles, and says something she hadn’t at all anticipated.

“Ah, Ms. Xiao-Long. It’s been some time.”

It’s such a casual thing, but Yang can feel her mind racing, her pulse quickening as her thoughts quickly shift to account for the fact that Jinn knows her. Which…

That can’t be true. She’s never met her.

At least…

Not here. Not now.

And yet…

“How have you been these past few months?” Jinn asks.

It seems she very much has.

Chapter Text

Yang’s still sort of standing there, dumbly, a good five or so seconds after Jinn has revealed that she knows Yang.

Which, y’know, shouldn’t be possible, but she supposes she is dealing with literal magic here.

“You… know me?” She can’t help asking, doing her best not to glance at her mother out of the corner of her eye.

“Of course.” Jinn says this like it’s obvious. “It may seem to you that you have been displaced in time, but in all actuality, your move across dimensions has been wholly linear.”

Yang’s head spins just trying to grasp whatever the hell Jinn has just said.

“I… have no idea what that means.”

Jinn smiles. “Do not worry so much over it. It will all make sense in time.”

Yang doubts that, but she can’t really inquire further into such things without wasting a question.

“So… how many questions do you have, exactly?”

“As of right now, I currently have…” Jinn’s expression contorts somewhat oddly, like something has happened she hadn’t at all expected. “Hm… should I have two questions, or none, do you think?”

“That, uh… it’d probably be more helpful if you had two?”

“You are not wrong.” Jinn chuckles. “I was more so referring to the fact that the time you currently reside within holds two questions, and yet my current consciousness holds none. How curious. I suppose I hold some degree of freedom in this matter. Almost as if I can decide whether or not I wish to grant you another question. Though I believe there might be some stipulations on those questions put in place. How peculiar this is all turning out to be.”

Yang’s not really sure what the hell is going on. She’d sort of thought she and Raven would come in here, confirm Yang’s story, and then…

Actually, yeah, that had been it. Anything after that, Yang had just been planning on winging.

Instead, when she looks back at Raven, she sees her mother’s eyes are wide, and her mouth is open. It’s a subtle thing, just the barest showing of teeth, but even so, it puts into perspective how utterly dumbstruck she is.

Yang can’t exactly find it in herself to blame her.

“I… uh…” Yang looks back towards Raven. “How do you wanna’ do this?”

“You’re asking me?”

“This was your idea.”

Raven opens her mouth, then closes it after a second or two having not said a thing. “…You may ask a question first, if you’d like. She says she has two, and that’s enough for each of us to get one.”

“Oddly kind of you to share…”

Raven doesn’t say anything in response to that.

Yang’s just kind of rolling with the punches at this point.

In terms of questions she could ask, though… she supposes only one really comes to mind as being important enough. She clears her throat, looks up at Jinn, and asks, “Well… where are the others who were with me in… y’know…”

Jinn hums out under her breath. “Interesting… that question concerns the time you came from. A time which held no questions remaining. Thusly, I cannot answer.”

“That…” Yang sighs. “Fine. Sure. Whatever.” Out of frustration, Yang mutters, “Timey-wimey bullshit.”

Jinn chuckles. Yang is annoyed that she finds it as cute as she does. “My apologies. If I could, I would offer answer to the questions plaguing you, but alas.”

Yang nods her head, before turning back towards Raven and sort of awkwardly stepping back, giving her mother the metaphorical floor.

Raven stands still for an awfully long while after that; the expression on her face one of deep contemplation. Yang has some idea what it is she’s thinking about, but then, she could technically be wrong.

“Do you have a question, Raven Branwen?” Jinn calls out to her.

“…No. I don’t think I do.”

It’s Yang’s turn to be surprised. “What? But we came all this way so that you could–”

“You’re telling the truth.”

It’s enough to cause Yang to halt entirely in her speech, to look across at her mother and see the look of utter desolation writ upon Raven’s face. She won’t meet Yang’s eyes, staring off into the middle distance, into the spectral dunes beyond them.

“You’re really… actually from the future.”

So… Raven believes her.

That’s…

Yang’s not really sure what to make of that.

It had become her goal, but she’d certainly not wanted to reveal nearly that much when she’d first started battling against Raven to defend that village.

It’s… things are going to get far more complicated in the near future, Yang feels.

“…Yeah, I am.”

“Besides…” Raven speaks, stepping towards Jinn and asking, “You couldn’t answer the question I have in mind even if I asked it, could you?”

Jinn’s expression is apologetic. “No. I could not.”

“Then that’s that.” Raven shakes her head. “It’s better this way. If Ozpin or any of his ilk were to come here, they’d find the lamp exactly as they expected it, with two questions remaining. It’s like we were never here.”

Yang knows that’s just Raven justifying this to herself, but she’s not going to argue with her mother. That… well, she has a feeling they’ll be doing an awful lot of that come later on.

“So… what do you we do now?”

Raven doesn’t seem to know what to say, even as she turns away from the Vault of Knowledge, and makes for the door leading in. Yang follows, and as the two of them step out of the sandy dunes, Jinn retreats back into her lamp.

“I… I don’t know.” Raven speaks after being silent a while. “It’s strange. The very moment I saw you, standing guard in front of that village… something within me just… knew you. I realize now that that was likely my semblance, tagging you as someone I had a connection with, but…”

For Yang to hear her mother speak so softly is quite the anomaly. She sounds emotional, too. Not quite as much as she’d been the last time they’d talked in this place; within the bowels of Haven, but…

“In your time… how did you come to know of me?”

“Huh?”

“You said you did not meet me until much later in your life… but you knew of me before that, surely. Which means that someone will have had to tell you about me, correct?”

“Oh… yeah.”

Yang can’t exactly say ‘Summer died and I wanted someone to take her place so that dad didn’t completely shut down’.

“Uncle Qrow told me when I was… maybe twelve or thirteen?” She lies.

“I see.” Raven’s not looking at her as the two of them step onto the lift that will take them back upwards. “That… makes sense.”

Neither of them says a word until they’ve exited Haven, which Yang had really expected to be a bigger deal. She’d thought they might have guards or huntsman awaiting to intercept them. Instead, it seems as if they’ve gone unobserved.

Once they’re a good distance away, however, and have found a suitable place to hunker down, away from prying eyes, Raven just…

Sort of stops.

“…I never spoke with any of them again?”

“If you mean mom, dad, and…You would speak with Uncle Qrow sometimes. Whenever he went back to the tribe to try and convince you to come back. Or, well, that’s what he used to say, anyways. But… he was the only one.”

“…”

Raven sighs, a long, pained thing that seems to stretch for whole minutes.

And then she draws Omen, and slashes it across the space just in front of her.

A portal conjured by Raven’s semblance forms just in front of her, and Yang has half a moment to realize what it is that her mother’s about to do before she begins walking right towards it.

“W-Wait!” Yang grabs her mother by the shoulder. “What are you doing!?”

Raven looks back at her. “…Righting a wrong.”

“That…”

She thinks she knows what it is Raven’s planning on doing, but…

Before she can ask anything further, Raven has pulled herself free, and stepped right into the portal. Yang swears, but follows right behind, stepping into it and emerging…

Emerging out into a familiar forest.

It’s autumn, it seems. The leaves on and falling from the trees above them are rich golds, and auburns, gathering in great clumps upon the earth below. There are signs that someone has been out raking them together and storing them in big bags. Those bags have been loaded up beside the wooden cabin just ahead of them.

The wooden cabin that Yang had grown up in. Her home.

Raven sucks in a breath; her hands shaking at her sides. She’s… she’s evidently terrified. Yang hadn’t quite expected that, but…

In the next moment, she takes a step forward.

“Come on.”

Yang feels the need to correct this before it can go any farther.

“Wait!” Her mother does, luckily, stop moving. “Raven, this is a bad idea, telling dad about me… he’s not going to believe–”

“Who said I was telling anyone about you?” Raven looks at her out of the corner of her eye. “This… this is just me righting a wrong, as I said. As far as they need to know… you’re just a tagalong.”

Yang almost wants to laugh at the absurdity, or cry at the fact that she’s almost getting everything that she’d ever wanted as a child, and it had taken… what, a week here in the past? Maybe less?

…Yang would be there, too.

Not her, obviously, but the childhood version of her. She’d be… maybe six or seven? Depending on how far back she – also Yang, confusing – had been pushed. Little her would be perfectly content; happy with her mom and dad…

And now her mother is going to be coming back as well.

Hah…

Yang finds she almost envies the girl.

“Well?” Raven turns back towards the house, and is evidently psyching herself up. “Are you coming, or not?”

Yang can see just how panicked this is all making Raven. She can see the way her mother’s body is quaking, the way her left hand keeps seeking the handle of Omen, trying to find something to do with itself.

Yang can’t really decide how she feels about all of this. Not so quickly. Half of her thinks this is the dumbest idea anyone has ever had.

But…

…

“Yeah.” She eventually manages to squeeze out as she steps up beside Raven.

“I guess there’s no time like the present, right?”

And together, they make for the Xiao Long Cabin.

/

Weiss isn’t quite sure what to make of it when her Ursa suddenly stops moving, rears up, and begins sniffing at the air. A moment later, it sits down on the ground, and seems to be entirely content.

It’s not a behavior the summoned beast has shown at all over the course of the last few days they’ve been stalking through the wilderness of Mistral, tracking the scent of one Marcus Black. The entire time, the beast had kept its nose to the dirt, scarcely moving its sensory organ away for anything at all.

Weiss had, of course, de-summoned the creature multiple times in order to take breaks – so that her aura hadn’t gone completely kaput, or to sleep or use the restroom – but this…

“We might be close.” Qrow comments, and Weiss is inclined to agree. “Stay on your guard, I’m going to go scout out the surrounding area, see if I don’t see anything obvious.”

Weiss nods her head, and finds a tree with a decently-sized nook, one which she’s barely able to squeeze herself into if she leans forward ever so slightly. Then, she has her summoned Ursa take a guarding position, and lets herself… not relax, but at the very least rest.

They’ve been walking almost nonstop for the past few days. Of course, they’ve taken breaks on occasion, and they’ve had to stop to sleep, but Weiss is comfortable with saying that they’d spent likely thirty-six of the last seventy-two hours walking.

A grueling pace, even for professional Hunters. She has blisters running up the backs of her feet, and her knees are really killing her.

Still, they have to be getting close.

No sooner has Weiss thought this than has Qrow appeared once more in her clearing, evidently having just transformed back from being a bird by the feather still attached to his pantleg.

“Find anything?” She asks as she hoists herself out of the nook, pretending not to notice.

“I did.” Qrow nods, oblivious as well. “Small home about fifty meters northwest of here, I think that’s our destination.”

Weiss nods her head, and de-summons the Ursa she’s been using to track Marcus thus far. “I assume you can lead us from here, then?”

Qrow nods his head. “Follow me.”

He leads them through the dense trees and underbrush out towards a clearing, which overlooks a small hill, perhaps ten or so meters high. But that incline happens over quite the distance, to the point that it barely looks like a hill at all.

And at the very top, seeming almost out of place in the middle of nowhere…

It’s as Qrow described it; a small home. There’s nothing particularly worth mentioning about it. The walls are a grayish color, the roof is a darker gray, and it looks like it had been made to fit a single person, maybe two.

Weiss isn’t really banking on a career assassin having anyone in his home, however.

Perhaps a body or two – as much as Weiss is really hoping that’s not the case – but no one living, surely.

“How do you want to play this?” Weiss asks Qrow, wanting to get the man’s opinion.

Even twelve years younger than Weiss had last known him to be, he still dwarfs her in overall combat experience, and has likely done missions like this one, clear and breach, several times before.

Qrow’s eyes scan the surrounding area slowly. He takes in the hill, the sparse amounts of trees – there are leftover stumps, however, which tells Weiss that this used to be a more wooded area in the past, and that someone has been living here a while – and the home itself.

“I don’t like this.” He eventually speaks. “I studied this place from a lot of angles,” like the sky, Weiss knows but does not say, “And I could only find the one entrance. That’s not an accident. Guy like Marcus Black’s probably a crafty son of a bitch. It wouldn’t surprise me if he’s trapped the entrance. A lot of assassins are paranoid as shit; though in all fairness, probably for good reason. We are here to capture him.”

‘Or kill him’, is left unspoken, but no less heard. Weiss understands – as much as she’d rather not – that someone like Marcus Black existing is simply dangerous, and that he’s shown no tendency towards righting his wrongs all his life.

If they lose him here, then he’ll have the chance to go on and kill more people. And surely, one could argue that killing a professional assassin doesn’t actually stop anyone from dying, it just exchanges one killer for another…

But it might at least give someone else in the future a better chance if that assassin is not as good as Marcus is.

If they can stop him today, however that might be…

Well, that’s superior to letting him go, even if that means they have to bloody their hands.

Weiss finds it’s not too terribly hard to make her peace with that. She knows that Ruby and Yang might have a much harder time with such – and she’d seen what Penny’s death had done to Jaune, though that’s a bit of a different scenario – but in all honesty…

She thinks she’s prepared to do what needs to be done.

“The house is too small, as well.” Qrow continues, and Weiss snaps back into the present moment. “I figure he’s got a basement level. Place to store tools and weapons and whatnot. Other than that, though, I’m in the dark until we can actually get in there.”

Weiss nods her head. “I can summon a Grimm, and have them take point?”

“Eh, it’s an idea, but I don’t think a Grimm’s going to be able to accurately look out for things like pressure plates or tripwires. Let me lead, and you follow, got it?”

Weiss understands what Qrow’s saying, even if she doesn’t like it. It’s not at all his fault, but Qrow’s semblance is bad luck.

Having him lead into a potentially booby-trapped house feels like maybe not the best plan.

Still, it’s not like Weiss has any better ideas as of current, so she nods her head, and the two of them begin their trek up the hill, towards Marcus’ abode.

Or, well, they assume it’s Marcus’ abode, given that the trail ends here.

Qrow’s gesturing towards her with hand signals, and Weiss is actually semi-surprised to realize she knows them. They’re Atlesian military signals, which all of Team RWBY (and Team JNPR as well) had learned during their time training alongside the Ace-Ops in Atlas.

Qrow is evidently using them for her sake, given both she and her license had claimed Atlas as her home. Weiss is appreciative of that.

He gives a signal, ‘On me’, then another, ‘Stay Silent’.

Weiss taps him on the back twice, once for each command, to let him know she understands both.

Qrow nods, and then moves towards the home.

The door is, rather obviously, locked. Of course, they’re not going to let that stop them. Weiss is prepared to simply bust the thing down, but Qrow is craftier than that, and brings out a lockpick from within his coat.

Naturally, the first lockpick he tries immediately snaps clean in half, and Qrow looks like he wants to sigh, but is too focused on staying silent to break at something so small. He draws another of the backup lockpicks out, and this time, manages to unlatch the door within two minutes.

Weiss isn’t quite used to this level of espionage, whether she’d worked alongside Atlesian specialists or not. She’d never had to hunt someone down to a residential home before.

Qrow looks to her, waits for her to nod, and then slowly pushes the door open.

The house is dismally quiet; there’s not a sound at all, which does nothing to set Weiss’ nerves aright. Qrow is scanning the environment, checking each individual tile on the floor of what seems to be a kitchen before moving any further.

Weiss follows behind, making sure to adhere to Qrow’s route. As she enters into the home proper, she decides to take a moment to get her bearings.

The room they’ve stepped into is most definitely a kitchen now that Weiss gets a chance to truly check it. It’s small, with what seems to be only enough room between the stove and the wall opposite it for a single person to fit through. Still, despite the size, it has all of the regular amenities that someone might expect to find.

There’s half a deer carcass hanging from a hook at the end of the room, and a steak knife left out on the counter, with fresh blood still on it. Despite the bloody weapon, Weiss has a feeling that the carcass and the knife are connected.

It seems Marcus had been preparing freshly caught game when they’d found him.

And evidently, he must’ve seen them coming.

She does her best to communicate that to Qrow. She taps him on the back once, signaling to get his attention, and then taps ‘target aware’ into the man’s back.

Qrow gives the symbol for ‘acknowledged’ before stepping further into the home.

The kitchen leads into what seems to be a dining room, but it’s small, and it’s really more of a table, set with, to Weiss’ surprise, two chairs.

She points that out as well, tapping ‘two hostiles’ into Qrow’s back. Again, he signs back ‘acknowledged’.

And then, as they round the next corner, Qrow sticks a hand up in the air, universally meaning ‘stop’.

Weiss does, but can’t resist peaking around the corner.

And what she sees has her eyes widening.

Because on a chair at the opposite end of the room, tied up and unconscious, is a boy no older than seven or eight years old.

The boy isn’t wearing a shirt, and Weiss can see a variety of bruises running down his stomach. It seems he’s been rather heavily beaten, and that causes her blood to boil inside her chest. She can see that it’s doing the same for Qrow, but the man isn’t reacting, isn’t moving.

The boy himself is barely moving. He looks like he’s barely breathing.

…Weiss has to help him.

It’s a heat of the moment thing, really. Something that, looking back, she realizes had been incredibly foolhardy.

But in that moment, it’s all she can think about to try and save this young child from his predicament.

“Wait, Ruby–!” He hears Qrow hiss out, just as Weiss takes a singular step past him.

And then she hears a beep from just off to her left.

Some part of her subconsciously raises her aura, and Weiss is damned lucky for it, too.

Because in the next moment, the world explodes.

/

Ruby gasps awake in her bed, a rather unexpected wave of nausea overtaking her as she fights her way out from under the covers, and tries to make it to the bathroom in time to not throw up all over the floor.

Unfortunately, she’s not quite fast enough.

The vomit comes out black, and grody. It’s like nothing Ruby’s ever seen before, and it’s almost enough to cause her to wretch a second time, but she barely manages to hold herself together.

“Yo, what–” She hears Roman’s voice from behind her, before he suddenly goes silent, and then, “Oh. Uh… shit. You alright?”

“Yeah,” Ruby speaks, moving towards the bathroom already to both grab towels to clean that up, and to wash the remaining acrid taste out of her mouth. “Fine. Not sure what happened.”

“What’re the two of you babbling on about?” Amber grouches out at them as she gets out of bed, her hair all in her face. Then, she sees the vomit all over the floor, and her expression softens. “Oh. Are you alright?”

“Yeah. I am.” Ruby repeats. “Just… felt nauseous all of a sudden. Not really sure why.”

They each go back to their beds after that. Ruby doesn’t actually manage to get back to sleep, and after a half hour sat there, she realizes she might as well just get up and prepare.

So, she hits the shower, washes off some of the grime of both the previous day’s initiation, but also, far more relevantly, her time in the Ever After, and feels a hell of a lot better for it.

After that…

Well, she doesn’t really foresee being able to get up to anything of note, so she checks her scroll – which is out of service range rather understandably, given she’s gone back in time and her scroll is probably something like 8 whole operating systems’ ahead of where it’s supposed to be – and sees that she’s still got an hour before classes start.

She ends up taking a lap around the dorms in silence, before heading down to the cafeteria to get breakfast early. She doesn’t get anything too extraneous, given that she’d thrown up no more than an hour or so ago, but it’s enough that she’ll be fine until lunch. After that, she heads back up, makes sure her team is preparing properly for lessons – they are, but really, Ruby can’t stop focusing on how weird Roman looks in a Beacon uniform – and then leads them to their first class.

Honestly… she’s feeling rather nostalgic all of a sudden.

She’s really looking forward to it.

/

“Monsters! Deeeeemons! Creatures prowling through the night!”

Oh. Right. Professor Port.

Ruby is no longer looking forward to it.

Luckily, Port’s class is really only an hour and a half. Surely, yes, it’s an hour and a half of her life that’s she’s never actually getting back, but it’s not the longest thing she’s ever had to sit through, either.

So, eventually, they make it to the class that Ruby had actually spent most of her time at Beacon caring about.

That being Combat Class.

“Welcome.” Glynda Goodwitch, who looks a lot less comfortable standing in the center of the arena than she’d been when Ruby had first gone to Beacon, calls out to them all. “I assume you’ve already been given this speech by a few of your other teachers, but I will start by introducing myself. My name is Glynda Goodwitch. I graduated from Beacon Academy myself just a year ago, and took over from the previous combat instructor…”

As Glynda continues speaking, Ruby hears a few of her classmates whispering to one another at that, and Ruby’s pretty sure she knows why, too.

Because a new teacher means a teacher who isn’t privy to all of the tricks of the trade quite yet, which means their chances of getting away with doing things they shouldn’t be has gone way up.

Now, Ruby doesn’t think that, because she knows the absolute stone-cold bitch – she means nothing but respect by that – that Glynda Goodwitch becomes in the future. Ruby has a feeling that no small amount of that general aura is already present within her current incarnation, but she can see how others might make such a mistake.

She won’t be letting her team do the same.

“Now,” Ms. Goodwitch clears her throat as she finishes her speech – the latter half of which Ruby belatedly realizes she’d totally missed – and looks up at the crowd. “Today, and for the next two weeks, we will be doing baseline sparring. Getting an accurate measurement of where each of you stands in relative strength to the others. This means that each of you will be facing off in a sort of bracket where, if you win a duel, you can only face someone else who has won a duel. If you lose, you will only face someone else who has lost. Then, the next duel will play out the same way, until you have lost three duels total against your peers. At that point, you will be fully eliminated. This will, of course, take quite a while. Only half of you will be fighting today, so if you are not called upon, do not fret. You will battle tomorrow.”

Someone in the crowd raises their hand, and Ms. Goodwitch calls on them. “Is there going to be a winner at the end of this?”

“There will be.” Their teacher tells them.

Another student follows up, “Will they win anything?”

“Merit.” Glynda Goodwitch answers, and a few of them groan. Ms. Goodwitch actually seems somewhat amused at that. “Although you could perhaps ask a favor of the headmaster upon winning. Nothing major, to be clear,” Glynda cuts off the whispering before it can grow to a fever pitch, “but something within reason may be granted to you. For example, a month’s supply of Dust for your team, a trip out to a nice restaurant in Vale, or perhaps a free pass to use the forge with a relatively high budget.”

That last item has Ruby’s interest well and truly piqued. It’s been so long since she’s been able to enjoy one of her truest hobbies, that being tinkering around with weapons. One of the big reasons behind that had, of course, been that they’d had no real time, but the other had been that forging had been – and would likely always be – expensive.

Metal – or, well, the metals needed to make Crescent Rose not so much as dent after slashing through its thousandth Grimm – is the opposite of cheap.

But a trip down to the forge with Beacon itself paying for it…

Ruby finds herself sitting just a bit straighter in her seat; her eyes sharpening, her aura steadying.

Victory, at any cost.  

“We will be randomizing the names, and then calling you up when it is your time to fight.” Glynda had them all turn towards the giant screen at the back of the room, which had, in Ruby’s time, been considered totally normal, but seeing the way the students all point and gasp at it, Ruby imagines it must be a rather new piece of tech at this point.

Two virtual dials – a lot like the ones they’d used for the Vytal Festival – spin with a good few people’s names on them, and eventually come to a stop with an unfamiliar name upon one…

And a quite familiar name on the other.

“Bray Dannish, and Roman Torchwick,” Glynda calls out, and Ruby feels as Roman stiffens beside her. “Please make your way down into the arena.”

“Good luck, Roman!” Ruby does her best to try and cheer the boy on, given she can tell he’s nervous as he stands. He nods her way, looks back at Amber, opens his mouth, and…

Says nothing at all.

To his credit, it’s not like Amber had tried to say anything to him, either.

Yeesh. Ruby’s going to have to do some team-bonding sessions here at some point. Luckily, she’s pretty good at those. Comes with the territory of having been on a team with Weiss Schnee and Blake Belladonna. She has seen some shit when it comes to interpersonal team issues.

This is really chump change in comparison.

It’s as she’s thinking about this, momentarily zoning out, expecting the fight to last a while, that she suddenly hears the sound of Ms. Goodwitch shout, “That’s enough! Bray Dannish is the winner!”

Ruby’s eyes bug out, and she looks down to see Roman pinned under the much larger man’s body. He steps off of Roman, jeers at him, and then takes a step back towards the stands.

“Stay there, Mr. Dannish.” Glynda clears her throat. “You did well. You focused on your superior size, and used it to bring your opponent into an easy hold that he could not escape from. But do not grow overconfident. Your size will not always place you at an advantage against a smaller foe. As for you, Mr. Torchwick, I would advise either a heavier focus on physicality given your weapon’s short range, or a switch up in weapon altogether to fit more with your lithe frame.  You are floating in the middle. Commit to an extreme.”

Roman nods hastily, sort of panicky looking, even as Glynda calls up the next pair of fighters. Neither of the names that get called are Ruby or Amber, so she focuses in, firstly, on Roman, and making sure he’s alright.

“What happened?” She asks him. “I didn’t even see. I got distracted, and then… well…”

“And then I got my ass kicked?” Roman laughs. “Yeah, uh… my bad. Underestimated my opponent. Won’t happen again.”

Ruby nods slowly, sort of uncertain as to whether or not she buys what it is that Roman’s saying.

He’s just… been showing an awful lot of odd signs lately.

What with his knives in initiation, his confusion at their dorms, not knowing how to fight Grimm, his overall lack of skill, despite the fact that he’d made it into Beacon, getting absolutely destroyed in combat classes…

Ruby hates to say it…

But this is all starting to sound rather familiar.

Chapter Text

Ruby wins the tournament.

This is not even remotely a shock, at least to her. Some of the other first years, who’ve never seen her before, are a bit upset that some nobody managed to topple the very best of the best from Sanctum, Signal, and the other lower-level academies.

But Ruby is a Huntress. A fully fledged one.

It hadn’t even really been all that hard.

“Congratulations, Ms. Rosenberg.” Ms. Goodwitch tells her as she sheathes Crescent Rose, and slots it along her lower back. “As the winner of our mock tournament here, you may make a minor request of Beacon Academy. Have you come to a decision? If not, you have until the end of the year to make one.”

That’s quite a long time to plan, but then, Ruby supposes it’s not like they have any real time constraints for something like this. Even saying she has until the end of the year is probably just so she eventually has to choose something.

“I do, actually.” She smiles. “I’d like to take a trip down to the forge with my costs covered.”

Ms. Goodwitch seems to appraise Ruby somewhat differently after that, surprised she would be the type to request such a thing. Ruby doesn’t really look like the traditional smith.

“Alright, we’ll have that arranged for you, Ms. Rosenberg.”

“Thank you, Ms. Goodwitch.”

Ruby makes her way back to her seat, beside Roman, who’s in the middle between her and Amber. She listens as combat classes wrap up for the day, and then they’re sent off to have lunch.

“Damn, Ruby,” Roman looks blown away. “You’re good. Like… damn good.”

“Well, thank you,” She laughs. Normally, she might say something like ‘You’re not so bad yourself,’ but…

Well, Roman had been one of the few students to go 0-3 in their little bracket, taken out without winning a single duel.

Which places him at the very bottom of the totem pole.

“Yes, well, you did… adequately.” Amber sighs out beneath her breath as she walks in front of them, not turning around to meet their eyes. “I must admit that I underestimated you.”

Most people do. Ruby doesn’t really blame her.

She’s small, inoffensive, and young. She’s generally a pretty nervous person – though she’s been getting better with time – which makes her seem even less intimidating.

Usually, people get the hint when she whips out Crescent Rose, but some of them don’t even then.

Speaking of performances, Amber had done fairly well herself. She’d gone 4-3, placing her well within the upper echelons of the class. She’d rather clearly not been satisfied with that performance, but then, Ruby’s not certain Amber would’ve been satisfied with anything besides first place.

For the record, Ruby had gone 7-0, not dropping a single match.

Amber’s an awful lot like Weiss in that regard; always wanting to prove herself superior. Ruby doesn’t quite know why, but judging based off the fact that Amber had seemingly known who she was when she’d entered into initiation, she has a feeling she’s working with, or is at least in regular talks with, Ozpin.

Odd for a student.

Ruby has some theories on that, but for now, she’s staying quiet. Besides, she has something else she wants to get out of the way today.

A talk that needs having.

“Hey, Roman,” Ruby turns towards the boy walking along beside her, “Would you mind going out into Vale with me tonight? I want to buy a few pieces for the forge and I was going to ask your input.”

Roman’s eyes widen, but he nods after a moment, with a faint blush on his cheeks. “Uh… yeah, sure. Sounds good. Is Amber coming?”

“If she wants,” Ruby turns, “Do you?”

“No. I’m fine.” Amber tells her, although she seems oddly cagey for some reason. “I’ve other things to be doing. Homework assignments and the like.”

It’s a rather flimsy excuse, and idly, Ruby wonders if maybe Ozpin has forbidden Amber from going out with Ruby anywhere outside their supervision.

After all, she knows now that Ozpin is suspicious of her, or at the very least has eyes on her.

She’s not really sure what she can do about that, other than prove to not be a threat. She doesn’t so much fully trust Ozpin, but she knows they’re on the same side.

The hours tick by, and come the evening, she and Roman step out, and take a bullhead out into Vale.

It’s incredibly weird for Ruby, because there are an awful lot of shops that she recognizes, but just as many that aren’t there yet, or that will be totally replaced before she – or the her in this timeline, who she assumes exists? – grows up to be fifteen yet again.

Roman, on the other hand, seems in his element. He’s strutting down the street with a skip in his step, a swagger in his smile, and a nod towards every remotely pretty girl they pass.

Most of them don’t nod back, and she shoots him a raised eyebrow that causes him to stop.

“So, uh…” Roman has a habit of leading with nothing, just to get a conversation started, and Ruby is almost amused that she’s noticed that so quickly. “Do you want to grab a bite to eat or something while we’re out here, or?”

“We can if you’re hungry.” She supposes that would work. She does want to pick up some pieces for a weapon, but talking to Roman had been the real reason she’d gone out this evening. “Anywhere you know around here that you like?”

“Oh, shit, you kiddin’ me?” Roman laughs, and this time, he seems entirely confident. “Ya’ ever been to Jimmy’s Grill, on Second?”

“Can’t say I have.”

“Well then you can thank me later.” Roman’s eyes are alight with mirth. “C’mon, prepare to have your mind blown.”

/

To Roman’s credit, Jimmy grills a mean burger.

“Wa-ow,” Ruby moans out under her breath as she takes yet another bite into the dual patties of meat, the crunchy lettuce, the flavorful tomato, and the tangy mustard. It’s very simple, perhaps the most common burger she could possibly think to have ordered.

That does not at all mean it isn’t totally to die for.

 “Told ya’.” Roman smarms, already having wolfed down his first burger, and beginning work on his second. “Aw, man, I’ve missed this place.”

“Haven’t been by recently?”

“Haven’t had the mo–” Roman catches himself perhaps a millisecond too late, because Ruby’s caught his meaning already. “Ah… well, guess no sense in pretending otherwise. I’ve not really been able to afford actually good food in a bit. I told you I was an orphan, right?”

Ruby nods her head.

“Well… I’ve not exactly been staying in an orphanage, or anything of the sort. I’ve been living off the streets for… man… probably five or six years now?”

Ruby’s eyes widen, and Roman chuckles a bit weakly. “Yeah, well… it’s not so bad once you get used to it.”

“It doesn’t sound fun…”

“Well, it’s definitely not fun, but I managed.”

“How did you support yourself?”

“Ah…”

Roman’s not saying anything, and it takes Ruby a second to realize that he’d likely not supported himself at all…

Well, legally that is.

“Oh.”

“Yeah, uh…” Roman looks away, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand. “It’s uh… I’d really prefer if you didn’t tell Amber that.”

“I won’t.” She shakes her head. “I haven’t told her anything at all about you. I was waiting for you to say something.”

Roman’s eyes widen. “I… really? I just sort of assumed… the way she looks down on me…”

Ruby tries her best to smile. “If it makes you feel better; I think that’s just the kind of person Amber is. She’s looked down on just about everyone at Beacon so far, aside from the teachers.”

Roman laughs. “Yeah… I guess you’re right. I just kinda’… y’know, get used to seeing that kind of stuff out on the streets. People passing by, glaring or covering their wallets. Can’t really blame them for the latter, given I definitely took a few in my time. It just… it gets to you after a while is all.”

Ruby understands what Roman’s saying. He’s not quite coming out and saying that he thinks less of himself, but…

Well, it’s obvious to her.

She’d know. Jaune had been the same way coming into Beacon. And she’d felt that way within the Ever After for a while.

She’s familiar with the signs.

“Can I ask you something, Roman?”

“Huh?” He looks up at her across the table, a curly-fry hanging out of his mouth. “Sure, yeah, go ahead.”

Ruby looks around quickly, making sure there’s no one around who might overhear this.

“How did you get into Beacon?”

The expression on Roman’s face then is well and truly something. His skin pales, his mouth hangs open, and his eyes widen. He looks caught, well and truly, and to Ruby, that confirms what she’s already thought for quite a while.

Roman hadn’t gotten into Beacon on any of his actual merit.

“You…” Roman looks down at the tray in front of him, at the empty basket that had held his food, and breathes out a laugh. It’s a wan thing. Barely there. “You figured out already?”

She nods her head slowly. “I want to make it clear that I’m not going to rat you out. I’m not going to tell anybody either. Not even Amber.”

“Wha–” Roman’s shellshocked, probably going through a lot, so Ruby doesn’t begrudge him saying, “Why the fuck not!?”

Roman winces a second later when a few people turn to look at him, including Jimmy himself – or well, Ruby assumes the owner is named Jimmy due to context clues.

“Sorry…” He murmurs, still clearly antsy.

“It’s fine. As for reasoning…”

I’ve been through this all before. She can’t say, but feels nonetheless.

But also, more importantly, because she has a feeling that she knows what had been supposed to happen had she not been there on initiation day.

Roman would’ve managed to sneak his way into Beacon somehow – probably the same way Jaune had, with forged transcripts, if she had to guess. He’d have made it into the Emerald Forest…

And then he’d have been deemed unqualified to continue. Perhaps, even, his faked transcripts would’ve been found out. Or maybe he’d just not have managed to pass initiation at all, weighing another partner down; the same way that Jaune might’ve with anyone other than Pyrrha Nikos.

Either way, any Huntsman in training who can’t even combat a single Ursa is suspicious.

And obviously underqualified.

Yet that had not taken place. Because Ruby had been there. She’d been partnered up with Roman, and he’d made it through initiation without having to really battle against anything major.

It’s clear, at the very least, that he’s not incompetent. He’s likely had to fight for his life against other people on the street; muggers or other kids trying to steal the things he had.

But he’s nowhere near the level of even the worst students at Beacon.

“I’m worried about what might happen if you don’t stay here.” She says, and feels like that probably covers it.

Because she knows that Roman Torchwick, in the future, will go on to become a criminal. A rather potent one as well, with Neo at his side.

And that’s something she’d rather not let happen.

“You’re worried about me… but think me staying in a school I’m horribly underqualified for in a field that could easily lead to me being killed is the right way to go about things?” Roman raises an eyebrow at her. “I mean, I’m not complaining, just, y’know… questioning.”

“Well… what would you have done, had you failed in initiation?”

Roman seems surprised she’d asked. “Oh. Uh… well… I actually did have a plan. Not really a major one… or anything all that good. I was going to go off to Mistral. There’s a lady there, she uh… runs a crime network down there. This guy I know was planning on putting me in contact with her, and getting me a spot on her lower rung.”

Ruby… isn’t entirely shocked. “Who is this woman?”

“You probably wouldn’t know her. Name’s Little Miss Malachite. Not exactly a major player in Mistral, but she controls a district or two. Comfortable middle ground.”

Ruby doesn’t know her, no. She doesn’t know anything about her. But if she’s well known enough to be running things behind the scenes in a few districts, then Ruby might well be able to do some cursory scroll searches and figure out some things about her.

Of course, she’ll have to visit the CCT for that, given her own scroll is out of service range.

“I uh… I didn’t really want to, though. Lots of kids on the streets end up in organized crime. I happened to be pretty good at fighting, at least I thought so, so… I paid a guy with about six months-worth of stolen lien to get me some convincing-looking documents, and then tried my hand on making it into Beacon. Sure, I basically ate like a rat for that whole time,” He smiles, but given how emaciated the man looks, Ruby’s not all that amused, “But I thought… if I can just make it into Beacon, I’ll have a room, I’ll have an education, I’ll have food… it sounded perfect, honestly. Except for, y’know, the clashes with the Grimm. But I figured, eh, how bad could it really be?”

Ruby almost wants to laugh.

“Turns out it was uh… bad. I thought you’d call me on my bullshit immediately.”

“I thought something was up, but I wasn’t going to make any grand statements so quickly. But once you also showed a lack of skill against human opponents…”

Roman’s head dips.

Still, that’s a plan for later. For right now…

“Well, I’m definitely not going to make you resort to that.” Ruby tells him, offering him a smile. “We might’ve just been made teammates a week or so ago… but we’re still partners, aren’t we? That means we’re stuck together.”

Roman nods his head slowly. “You said you’ve had teammates before. Did you guys stick together?”

“Ah…” Ruby supposes that’s a fair question, given that she’s seemingly abandoned them to come to Beacon. “We got separated. I’m… looking for them, I guess.”

“Oh. Okay.” Roman likely has no idea what to do with that. “Well let me know if you want help with that, or something.”

Ruby giggles. “I will. Thank you, Roman.”

She… had actually sort of come up with an idea on that front.

It’s often been said that in a crisis scenario, when one has been separated from their comrades, that the best thing to do is to hunker down, and stay still. In essence, if everyone goes out looking for everyone else, then their chances of running into each other are far lower than if one of them goes looking, and the other four stay stationary.

Ruby knows for a fact that neither Yang nor Weiss will be the types to stand still and let help come to them. Weiss because the last time they’d been separated, she’d broken her way out of Atlas and nearly gotten ransomed off by the Branwen tribe, and Yang because last time they’d been separated, she’d done the same thing to go find her mother, inadvertently preventing Weiss from being ransomed off by the Branwen tribe.

Funny how that had worked out.

So, Ruby’s going to stay in place. Wait for the others to find her.

But in the meantime, she can certainly go about making herself more visible.

And she knows just the thing that might help out.

After all…

The Vytal Festival is being held this year.

But to get the maximum amount of exposure out of that, Ruby’s going to need to go quite far in the tournament.

Which means she’s going to need a good team behind her.

“Alright, Roman.” She claps her hands together, snapping the boy out of his ministrations. “You still want to stay in Beacon, right?”

“Yeah, I do.”

“Then the first thing you’re going to need is an actual weapon,” Ruby smirks, having been planning this all day. “Which is why I brought you out here. Sure, I wanted to have this conversation, but I also wanted to get your opinions on a general weapon-type we would be making for you.”

“You…” Roman’s eyes are wide. “You’re going to make me a weapon?”

“Yep.”

“You?”

Ruby scoffs. “Just because I don’t look like some kind of grease monkey doesn’t mean I’m not capable, thank you very much! I’ll have you know I forged Crescent Rose myself!”

“Wait, that crazy thing you use!? You made that.”

Ruby tries not to preen too hard. It doesn’t work. “I did indeed. Well, my uncle helped a bit during the designing phase, but all the actual construction was me.”

Roman nods his head, still seeming sort of out of it. Ruby can’t really blame him. This is likely quite a lot to take in.

“Alright… I guess it can’t hurt to ask for help, then.” Roman rubs at the back of his neck. “I don’t suppose…”

“I’d train you?” Ruby chuckles as Roman looks caught. “Consider it done. We can make it a team bonding activity. Have Amber join in.”

Roman’s expression dims. “I’d rather Amber not know.”

“Know what?” Ruby feigns innocence. “All she knows is that you’re not doing terribly well in combat classes, and that I’m helping you to improve.”

His eyes light up, then, and the smile on his face becomes a bit more noticeable.

“You… heh…” Roman shakes his head. “Alright…”

“When do we start?”

/

Jaune swallows on nothing as he stands before a set of double doors that will, in theory, lead into Evernight’s dining hall.

He’d been told to come, and so here he is. He’s doing his best to prevent himself from shaking, because that won’t help him.

But even so, he’s about to again converse with the Queen of the Grimm; with Salem.

He feels like such fear is more than warranted.

He swallows, making the decision that he’s stalled enough. Better to… well, if he’s to die, then better to meet it with some bravery, at least.

Hopefully it won’t come to that.

He pushes open the doors – which are surprisingly heavy – and peers through the gap created in the center of them as it gradually widens.

The dining hall is an impressive room. It’s colored the same way as the rest of Evernight; deep purples and the occasional stroke of violet. The ceiling is arched high in the air, hovering a good ten meters above. The center of the room has a long dining table, one which has six seats, and a seventh set up at the end of the table.

at the head of the table, in that seventh seat, is Salem herself.

Her other enforcers – Tyrian, Watts, and Hazel – line the seats to the sides. They’re all eyeing Jaune curiously, clearly wanting to know what’s about to happen as much as he does.

He hopes they won’t be bearing witness to his execution. He’d rather not give Tyrian the pleasure.

“Ah, Jaune Arc,” Salem speaks his name with a theatrical quality. “I’m glad you’ve arrived, and just on time as well.”

Jaune hadn’t meant to be on time; he’d not thought there existed such a concept in a place like Evernight, where day is identical to night – which makes sense, given the name – but he’s not going to say that aloud.

“Please,” Salem holds up a hand, and at the other end of the table, directly opposite her, a collection of violet rocks forms into the shape of a chair. “Take a seat.”

Jaune swallows, even as he steps forward, and acquiesces to Salem’s request. It’s not like he can afford to do anything else.

The plum obsidian is cold under him as he takes his seat.

“Good.” Salem’s smile betrays nothing at all. “Now, Watts told me that you and he shared a productive conversation. Would you care to inform us of what our newest arrival told you, Watts?”

The man stands, straightens his tie – as if anyone gives a shit – and then clears his throat. “Indeed, my lady. Mr. Arc was initially quite cooperative with me. He answered my questions about himself, and I confirmed the validity of all of it. I’ve yet to determine a point of origin, given his family tree is rather… dense, but I believe he would have grown up in the small Valean settlement of Domremy.”

Jaune’s almost impressed at how easily Watts had been able to gather such information. He supposes it makes sense. Watts’ virus had been the thing to ultimately win Cinder the battle in Vale, and at Beacon, taking over the Atlesian army.

Looking into the history of a well-documented, historical family like the Arcs is probably chump change for him.

“Unfortunately, I was unable to confirm anything more than that. There are results for a Jaune Arc, several in fact, throughout history. But of the seventeen, sixteen are long dead, and one is roughly seven years old.”

That would be his younger self, then. Still, Jaune is almost surprised he’d had so many namesakes among the Arc’s. Perhaps his father had named him after an old hero of their family?

Salem hums. “I see. So, what do you believe his origin to be, Watts?”

“I believe that you are correct, my lady; that this man is somehow magical in nature.”

Jaune does his best not to show his discomfort on his face. After all, the truth of the matter being revealed to Salem… well, it’s not good, that’s for certain. He’s not really sure what Salem could manage with access to the Ever After, but he’s also not planning on finding out.

“Well, Jaune Arc?” Salem turns towards him now. “Is that the case?”

Jaune’s had some time to try and come up with something. It’s a gamble. Actually, no, a gamble is probably underselling it.

It’s his entire life hanging in the balance. The lives of those from the Ever After; perhaps, even, from the Remnant he’s actually from.

But even so, he feels he has to try.

If he doesn’t, then they’re all forfeit.

So, Jaune clears his throat, takes a breath, and says, “I believe that I was taken here, to this land, via some sort of magical phenomenon, yes.”

Salem’s expression seems intrigued as she leans forward, taking a stance so very alike to one Ozpin might have that Jaune can’t help but see the resemblance.

“You… believe?”

“It’s…” Jaune does his best to project annoyance onto his face. “I don’t know what happened. I was in some strange, magical dimension. I was there with four others; their appearances I remember, but not their names. It’s like… coming here, somehow, has sapped away my memories.”

It’s clear from the expression on Salem’s face alone that she doesn’t outright believe him. “You say that you have some manner of amnesia, then?”

“Less amnesia, and more…” Jaune pretends to not know how to describe it. “I know myself. I know my body, my abilities, even something of my past. But I don’t know how I got here. I woke up in the supply closet of the Glass Unicorn about a minute or so from when I met Cinder.”

Salem looks to Watts, and the man gives a subtle nod, corroborating Jaune’s story via the Glass Unicorn’s cameras, perhaps? He doesn’t really know.

“After that, well, I saved the life of that man; Rhodes, I think. A Huntsman. Cinder nearly killed him.”

Tyrian giggles. “A shame, that. A witness left alive. Perhaps, mistress, I could remedy that–”

Salem holds up a hand, and Tyrian whimpers, but quiets down. She motions for Jaune to continue.

“I heard of the events that had taken place from Cinder, and decided I wanted to protect her. It… what she was going through there was horrible. I didn’t want to let her get dragged away to prison after that.”

“Even after she’d killed the Madame and her daughters?” Salem asks him.

Jaune’s not really sure why, but… perhaps he can just be honest for once.

“She told me it was an accident. At least, that she never intended to kill the first of them. That once it happened, she panicked when the Madame began to shock her. I believed her telling of the events.”

Salem nods her head, not saying anything else on that matter. “And so Tyrian caught you. He tells me you dueled him to a standstill. That you forced him to take Cinder hostage in order to claim victory.”

Jaune looks over at Tyrian, almost surprised the man had been so honest. Tyrian grins manically back at him, and Jaune grimaces.

“I did.”

“Hm. We will have to test that strength of yours here. I will have you duel against Tyrian and Hazel within the next week or so, so that I might get an idea of your skill personally.”

Jaune likes the sound of being alive for another week.

He less likes the sound of Salem involving herself in his affairs.

He’s getting a bad feeling.

He’s hesitant to ask such a thing, but in reality, Salem has as much as confirmed his safety, at least for the time being.

So… he allows his curiosity to win him over.

“You don’t intend to kill me, then?”

The look on Salem’s face is, briefly, one of abject surprise, before, in the next moment, she lets out a grand laugh.

It is something so anomalous that Jaune would have trouble describing it. It is in some ways a melodious sound, a human sound. And in other ways, it is discordance in its purest form. The windows rattle, and Salem’s enforcers are much the same, each of them wincing – aside from Tyrian, of course, who hums out contentedly – as the sound crescendos, and then finally, ceases.

“No, I do not intend to kill you.” Salem tells him. “You are a subject of interest, and someone whom I believe may even serve a rather crucial role here.”

It’s Jaune’s turn to be surprised. “What do you mean by that?”

“I would have thought that obvious.” Salem says, a wide smile on her face, but a challenging look in her eye, like she’s daring him to argue against it. “As of this moment, you are now a member of my Inner Circle. You will serve me, devote yourself to me, and follow my orders to the letter.”

Jaune’s mouth is dry. Entirely so. To a degree that feels wrong.

It’s Tyrian that interrupts, his laughter somehow less evil than Salem’s, despite how much more obviously heinous he is.

“Oh, oh, my goddess, may I tell him what will happen if he dares go against you?”

Salem sighs, but there’s a small upturning of her lips, as if Tyrian’s antics amuse her, even if she knows they shouldn’t.

“Go on, Tyrian.”

He cackles happily, sitting up in his chair and clapping his hands together.

“We suspected that you would not wish to serve the Goddess!” Tyrian announces, and instantly, Jaune feels his stomach dropping. “And so, we came up with a plan to keep you in line! If you disobey the mistresses’ orders, then it will not be you who pays for it…”

“It will be the girl, instead!”

Jaune’s blood turns to ice inside his veins. He can feel his stomach go cold, even as his brow draws down, and anger nearly blinds him.

And yet, through it all, he cannot look away from Salem, sat upon her throne directly opposite him, with a casual smirk upon her lips.

Jaune realizes that such is not an empty threat. Because even if the Cinder of the future had proven to be one of Salem’s fiercest lieutenants, a veritable force of nature…

As of now, she is just an experiment with potential. Just a somewhat skilled little girl.

One easily tossed aside.

Jaune’s jaw is clenched tightly, and his knuckles are white beneath the dining table.

“So, Jaune Arc,” Salem, again, says his name like it is so magnificent a thing. “Will you serve me?”

He wishes more than anything that he could say no. That he could deny Salem’s wants, that he could go against the witch queen; she who commands the Grimm.

And yet…

Everyone within that hall knows the truth.

“It’s not like I have any other choice, is it?” Jaune murmurs, and the sound carries across the room, causing Salem’s smile to widen ever so slightly. “Fine. I’ll be a member of your Inner Circle.”

And despite Jaune’s obvious hatred of her, despite the fact that she should be able to see the rage burning behind his eyes, Salem gives off the air of someone almost languidly pleased.

“A smart decision.” She mocks him.

“Welcome to the fold, Jaune of Arc.”

Chapter Text

The last thing Cinder can really remember is dying.

Or, well… no. Dying isn’t quite accurate. She’d just been in so much pain that she’d assumed, sort of by nature, that she’d been dying.

It’s odd. In all her time serving in The Glass Unicorn, the only thing she’d truly desired had been to be free of her confines. To strip away the necklace binding her to her stepmother’s control, and to finally, for the first time in her life, be free.

And yet… there’d always been another desire, hidden back and away from all the others. One Cinder hadn’t liked to acknowledge, but that had been there all the same.

She’d never been all that averse to the pain just… stopping either.

No matter what form that might’ve taken.

And then, of course, the moment she’d finally been freed, the moment some knight like out of the storybooks she’d read in the orphanage she’d grown up in had appeared to whisk her away…

Then, she’d been faced with the death she’d sought for so very long.

That had been her final thought before she’d succumbed. Anger. Fury. Lividity at the very world.

The fact that she’d finally attained it; that she’d finally been granted what she’d always wanted, that she’d grown from the tiniest spark to the coolest ember…

And then had her wick blown out. That man who’d come to corner them, who her mysterious rescuer had attempted to hold off…

He’d stabbed her in the back with… something.

And her consciousness had faded.

But…

She’s awake, now.

Her eyes still feel hazy. She has a feeling that something’s affecting her, although she knows not what. At the very least, she’s completely and utterly spent. She’d been run ragged for years and years without any proper chance to take a break, and now that she is, now that she’s laid out, it’s like all those aches and pains are surfacing.

Her legs her. Her ankles her. Her knees hurt. Her wrists hurt. Her fingers hurt. Her neck hurts. Her back hurts.

She’s so tired of hurting.

Just as she’s thinking this does the door to her room – seemingly a hospital or other medical area – open, and in steps–

Cinder’s breath catches.

He’s there.

Her savior.

“You–” She tries to lunge out of bed, but her entire body is alight with pain – or, no, that’s not right. It’s her chest, and her stomach most of all.

“Easy now.” Her savior steps in, urging her to lay back down, and applying enough pressure onto one shoulder to force her to do just that. “You’ve just begun to recover from being poisoned. I doubt you could seriously injure yourself by moving about too much, but it’s probably best you give your body as much time as it needs to recover.”

He’s right. Cinder knows he’s right; she’d thought as much herself. She’d just… gotten caught up in the moment is all.

Still… poison? Who would want to poison her?

It occurs to her, as she does her best to relax herself, and not lunge out of her bed again, that she doesn’t even know the man’s name. He’d asked her own, briefly panicked, and then they’d been running from that man with the scorpion tail – Oh, Cinder thinks. It had probably been him who’d poisoned her.

She thinks back, back to that moment, seeing her savior step before her, draw one of Cinder’s blades – the other of which Cinder had shattered across his aura – and prepare to protect her.

It’s… even now, having experienced it, she can barely process that fact. The fact that someone she’d barely met had stood before her, and been willing to fight to keep her safe… after years and years of being treated like nothing; no, worse than nothing…

She doesn’t know how to explain what she’s feeling, then.

“Are you alright?” The man asks of her, his eyes soft; kind. “You seem distracted.”

Cinder’s cheeks heat up somewhat, but she looks away, “Just… thinking about what happened before. That man with the scorpion tail.”

“Ah, him.” Her savior grimaces. “Yeah, that… I imagine that was likely pretty terrifying for you. Added onto, well, everything else you went through that day, too.”

Cinder had, somehow, almost entirely forgotten about that. About the fact that she’d killed the Madame, and her daughters. It… she hadn’t meant to. It had been… she’d…

“It’s okay!” The man rushes to assure her. “You don’t have to… I’m sure you’ve got an awful lot to think about right now, and I can’t really give you any easy answers. What happened… it’s not something you can just deal with easily. It’s likely going to haunt you for a long time. But if you want to talk about it, then I’m here, alright?”

Cinder nods her head, feeling somewhat warmer than she’d been in the last few seconds.

“…What’s your name?”

It sort of slips out, even if Cinder had been meaning to ask. She just… feels like there had probably been a better time to ask that than the moment she’d chosen, still reeling from thinking about what had happened back at the Glass Unicorn.

“Oh.” Her savior chuckles. “I suppose I never did introduce myself, did I? I’m Jaune. Jaune Arc.”

Cinder absorbs that information, trying to think about if she knows any ‘Arc’s’. In the end, she figures she doesn’t.

“Thank you.” She says, not able to look at the man, at Mr. Arc. “For saving me.”

“Ah…” He looks somewhat awkward about the whole mess. “Well… I wasn’t just going to leave you there. Not after… everything.”

Cinder understands. Or she thinks she does, anyhow.

And then, interrupting the admittedly awkward conversation before it can really find any ground to stand on, the door at the back of the room opens up.

And in steps–

Cinder’s blood runs cold. Her veins turn to ice. Her heart beats at a million miles a minute, and briefly, she thinks it might’ve stopped altogether.

A figure stands there, in the doorway, with her white hair done up in a fanciful design, one which almost resembles something Cinder might’ve seen the Madame wear. But similarities to human beings end around there.

The woman – Cinder thinks, thinks, she looks vaguely like a woman – does not step towards them, but hovers. She does not smile at them, but merely mimics the motions. She says something, but it’s lost in the haze that’s overtaken Cinder’s mind.

This… this woman, she…

“You’re frightening her.”

Cinder looks towards her savior, and sees the half-angry, half-controlled expression on his face. He seems furious, but also like he’s holding himself back, like being true to himself would land him in trouble.

Cinder knows the expression; she’s worn it much of her own life.

“Ah, but I seem to have forgotten the power of my own presence,” The woman speaks, and Cinder snaps out of her own head to see the woman chuckling. “You’ll grow used to the sensation, young one, I’m sure.”

Cinder’s fairly certain she doesn’t want to.

“You are likely confused as well, I assume?” The woman asks Cinder, and the palpable feeling of fear within Cinder at the very sight of her has diminished somewhat, to the point that she’s able to bring herself to nod. “Understandable. You were, after all, unconscious for your entire journey here. Very well, then. Allow me to elucidate the past few days that you have missed, and what your role is to be here.”

Cinder listens, and follows along with what the woman – Salem, she tells Cinder – is saying. In essence, she’s been being watched for quite some time. This woman had felt that she would make for a suitable enforcer to serve in her inner circle. She’s yet to be informed just what it is an enforcer in said inner circle actually does, but it sounds better, at least, than washing floors or cleaning hotel rooms.

So, Cinder doesn’t really have too many complaints.

As Salem explains, however, Cinder keeps gazing over at Mr. Arc every once in a while. His expression is guarded, surely, but where Cinder can read beyond that shielding…

She can see that he is unhappy with the things Salem is asking of her.

Cinder’s not terribly sure why. From the sound of things, Salem means to keep training Cinder, as Rhodes had, only more frequently, and she means to offer Cinder power, which…

Cinder does her best to stay rational when the woman says that; that she wants Cinder to play the role of some mythical Maiden, something she’s not explained, but which intrigues her. She says it will come with a power beyond Cinder’s wildest dreams.

And Cinder…

She has dreamed quite a bit.

There is a hunger within her, something that Cinder can’t quite describe. Something that has only ever grown, trapped within the posh interior of the Glass Unicorn, worked to the bone, until her muscles ached, until her bones cracked, until her spirit broke.

That hunger…

It calls out to the rest of her that no matter what she has to do, no matter what it is she’s faced with…

She should go along with what this woman says.

She needs it. She needs that power.

Because power… power might just be what finally grants her freedom.

“I’ll do it!” Cinder shouts, interrupting the woman’s monologue. She’d… admittedly missed quite a bit of the latter portion, and such does not seem to be lost on either Salem, or Mr. Arc.

“I see. Well, I was less offering, and more explaining what would be expected of you,” Salem rolls her eyes. “But your enthusiasm is noted. Once you have fully recovered from Tyrian’s poison, I will expect you to spend the majority of your days training, and growing stronger. It will be some time yet before I will expect you to take an active role within my inner circle, but even so… you have a certain pedigree to muster up to. Am I understood, girl?”

Cinder nods her head, that hunger within her breast dictating that she not even consider the fact that Salem is referring to her, talking to her, in much the same way that the Madame always had.

Like she’s lesser than her.

“Good. Very well, then.” Salem smiles. “I will leave you to rest. Jaune of Arc, I would advise you do the same. Stay no more than a few minutes, and then depart as well.”

And with that, Salem leaves, her feet never touching the ground beneath her, instead being held aloft by some unexplainable phenomena. The door shuts behind her without her having ever touched it.

And then it’s just her, and Mr. Arc.

Initially, the man doesn’t say anything. The scowl upon his face deepens, to the point that creases form in his skin. It’s clear he wants to say something – perhaps a lot of something’s – but he looks back to Cinder, sighs, and shakes his head.

“Don’t believe a word she says.” He tells her, pushing off of Cinder’s bed, and moving towards the door himself. “It’s… there’s more to all of this than she lets on. Don’t subscribe to her set of beliefs without first knowing what she’s asking you to fight for.”

Cinder… she nods her head, doing her best to ignore the voice coming from that hunger within her that tells her Mr. Arc is trying to hold her back.

He isn’t. He’s simply telling her to stay calm, and to not just jump right into this.

…Even if that’s what Cinder had been planning on doing.

“I really should leave though, but…” Mr. Arc turns back towards her. “Just… careful, Cinder. I’ll try and stop by when I can sometime later. Maybe tomorrow, if I don’t have the time to today. Rest well, alright?”

Cinder looks away, trying to ignore the heat rising into her cheeks.

“I will.”

Mr. Arc smiles at her. “I’m glad.”

He’s gone without another word.

/

The moment that the Divinity finally crests atop the shores of Menagerie, the moment that Blake’s feet touch down on the sands of her old home, she lets out a deep, satisfied sigh.

They’d done it.

She’d done it.

Obviously, Blake hadn’t succeeded alone, but had she failed, she’s fairly certain she’d have taken the entire responsibility on her own shoulders. She’d been the one to rip them from their lives in Atlas – whether those lives had been torturous or not – and she’d been the one to drag them halfway across the continent and then again halfway across the world.

And there had been… quite a few close calls.

The fact that they’d made it there in one piece is nothing short of a miracle.

Even so, they have.

And Menagerie…

Menagerie is a lot like Blake remembers it.

Of course, there are some differences. Restaurants in places where she’d expected others; guards not wearing White Fang masks, and seeming an awful lot laxer about just about everything. There’s a general air about the city that has Blake wanting to smile, despite it all.

They’ll be safe here. Blake’s sure of it.

She turns back towards the Divinity, where the crew of the ship are helping the refugees to move themselves, and their sparse belongings, out of the hold. It had been rather cramped down below whenever Blake had gone down, so she doesn’t think the fact that multiple people are stretching out, and laughing as they bounce around on the warm sands, is particularly odd.

She’d have been doing the same if she hadn’t had an image to maintain.

She’s not sure what it is she wants to do now, however. Everything had been… certainly not simple, because things had been anything but while Blake had been guiding the refugees through Atlas, and here to Menagerie, but at the very least, she’d had a concrete goal, and one she could stick to.

And now…

Now she’s left bereft of one.

It’s difficult to make sense of that. The fact that she’d been more at ease in a life-or-death scenario than she is now, with total freedom to dictate her next actions.

Because the truth of the matter is that Blake doesn’t really like being the ‘planner’.

Oh, she had, for a while. When she’d been back in Beacon, she’d come up with a multitude of different plans to prove that the White Fang had not truly been behind the dust store robberies, or then, after that had failed, to track down the White Fang themselves, and put a stop to their schemes.

…and then, after that had failed, to go to Menagerie and prevent them from hurting anyone else.

The only reason that hadn’t failed is because Blake had had help. Sun, her parents, and so many other people had helped her to stave off the radical White Fang’s influence on Menagerie.

And…

Because of that, Blake has grown to understand that it is perhaps best she takes part in operations only once things actually need doing. Planning, it seems, is not her strongest suit.

She’s just too… Yang would say hot-headed – which is rich, coming from her – but Blake would instead use the term ‘passionate’. She gets overwhelmed by her own emotions, and they prevent her from making more rational decisions in the heat of the moment.

…Okay, yes, that perhaps does make her hot-headed.

It’s as Blake is considering this, the fact that she has no idea what it is that she wants to do, that someone clears their throat behind her.

Blake turns, and sees, who else, but young Adam Taurus, and his mother, Evelynn.

They both smile up at her, even if it’s clear neither are entirely certain what it is they intend to do now.

Which she imagines is going to be a rather common thought amongst the newest arrivals.

Blake convinced that what she’d done had been necessary; stuck there, in the middle of one of the SDC’s mining camps, being worked to the bone and treated like garbage, something would’ve gone wrong eventually. Someone would’ve died. As much as it’s difficult to accept, relocating their entire lives to Menagerie is, likely, the safer option in the long term.

Even if it has left many of the people that she’d rescued from that SDC mining camp bereft of work, or home.

Hell, some probably still have family back on Atlas.

Blake sighs, but decides to think about those things later.

“Hello, you two.” She smiles at them.

Adam, seemingly still quite nervous, hides behind his mother, and whispers something – it sounds like “hello” – just as Evelynn rolls her eyes, and says, “Hello, Ms. Weiss.”

Blake decides that, given she’s known these people enough time, she should probably just… give them her first name.

It’s not like the name Blake is exclusive to the Belladonna family.

“My real name is Blake, if you were curious.” She tells them, and she watches as Eve’s eyes briefly widen. “I felt there was no reason to continue to hide such from you.”

“Ah, well…” Eve smiles. “I’m glad to hear it. It’s a wonderful name, Ms. Blake.”

Hearing the woman call her ‘miss’, when she’s obviously older than Blake, doesn’t ever stop feeling just a bit weird.

They talk of nothing of import as the last of the refugees make their way into Menagerie, and Blake has to briefly step aside from talking with Adam and Eve – the latter of whom seems to want to say something to her – to explain current happenings to the local authorities. The White Fang haven’t made themselves a real fighting force yet – for good or ill – but even so…

“Thank you for doing such a thing for them.” Her father, Ghira Belladonna, looking like he had when Blake had been just a girl, smiles over at her. “These people would’ve suffered greatly had you not come when you did. I only wish things could’ve gone differently. It’s in the faunus’ best interest to not incite conflict at the moment.”

She understands what her father is saying. She really does.

After all, when Sienna’s White Fang has risen out of the corpse of her father’s own, it had inspired fear in many people, earned the faunus some much needed respect.

But it had also led to an increase in racism, in hate crimes, and in all sorts of nasty things for the faunus the world over.

It’s difficult for Blake to truly weigh the consequences of such actions. Certainly, the faunus going through the worst kinds of abuse at the hands of people like the SDC had had their lives improved by the violent White Fang. But those who called the many cities of Remnant home, just trying to live their lives, likely had to do so with an increased risk of experiencing racially motivated incidents.

Complicated. Far too much so for Blake, even nearly twenty-years-old as she is now.

“Either way,” Her father clears his throat. “Thank you. I’m sure each and every person you’ve brought here would say the same, Ms…?”

“Blake.” She tells him, and gets some small amusement out of his own smile.

“Ah, funny. My daughter’s name is Blake.”

“Small world.”

“It really is.” Ghira chuckles.

After that, she retires to the beaches, content to try and work out her immediate life plan for the future. She is, at the moment, well and truly adrift.

She’s not alone for very long.

“Excuse me, Ms. Blake?”

She turns her head around to see Eve standing there at the edge of the beach, where the vegetation still grows, but is constantly at risk of being eroded away by the sand.

“What is it?” She asks, and Eve walks towards her, eventually sitting down a few feet to Blake’s left.

“I…” She looks up at the sky, at the sun hanging off in the distance, beginning its daily descent. The horizon is painted with many vivid hues, bright oranges and yellows and the subtlest hints of red.

It’s gorgeous. Blake’s never really been one to stop and appreciate such things. She should do so more often.

“I want to ask a rather massive favor of you, Ms. Blake.”

She turns her body somewhat, so that she can look at Evelynn a bit easier.

“Oh?”

“I…” Evelynn swallows, before turning to face Blake, as well, and placing her hand over her heart. “I want you to train me!”

Blake… had not been expecting to hear something like that. It catches her almost entirely off guard, has her wide-eyed and on the backfoot as Adam’s mother leans forward, and explains herself.

“I…” She swallows, “I’ve never been very strong. All my life, people have walked all over me. My husband… my ex-husband, I should say, was… abusive, in all meanings of the word. He was like that with me… but also with Adam.”

That… Blake hadn’t known that. She’d known that Adam’s childhood had been something he never liked to discuss, but…

She’d always figured it had been about his mother. After all, she knew what had happened to her.  In the White Fang, it had become somewhat of a custom for newer recruits to share their stories in the olden days. Back when things had been more personal, and less…

Less terrorist-y.

To encourage them, Adam had always been the one to step up first; to tell his own story.

‘My mother,’ he had told them all, standing in front of a crowd of fifty or so young kids, way in over their heads. ‘Worked in an SDC mining camp. She took me along with her because she didn’t have the money to house me while she worked. The mines didn’t pay nearly enough. Because of that, I was with her. I was there, every single day. Every day, I saw the abuses that our people suffered there. Every day, I saw the abuses that she suffered. And on one particular day… I was there when one of the workmen came up to me, and told me that she’d been killed by rockfall in the mines.’

Blake still remembers that. She still remembers what Evelynn’s fate would have eventually been in her time.

She’s changed that. Altered the flow of events on Remnant already in her short time here.

She could say she hadn’t meant to, but such would be a rather poor lie. She’d barely considered for a second whether jumping in front of Adam being branded had been the right idea or not, before doing just that. Certainly, she’d not known that had been Adam, not known that she’d been somehow brought into the past, but…

She’d make the same decision again, even knowing what she does now.

She’d saved Adam’s mother, and, likely, made it so that his life will be a far happier one.

That has to count for something.

She realizes she’s been zoned out while Evelynn has been waiting for her to respond.

“That’s terrible.” She tells her, and she means it, even if she feels a bit bad that she’d been distracted.

“It was. What was more terrible… was that it took me until he hurt Adam to want to do anything about it.” Eve laughs, but it’s a weak thing, barely there. “When it was just me… I sat and took it. Didn’t make so much as a squeak. That’s… how I’ve always been, I guess. Unwilling to put any effort in for my own sake.”

Blake doesn’t really know what she wants to say to that. Isn’t really sure how to respond.

“But y’know what? When I finally tried to leave, tried to save Adam from him… my husband tracked us down. He… I wasn’t sure what he was going to do. It was Adam who saved us. He called the police like he’d always been taught to. That landed his father in prison, and had him outfitted with a restraining order.” She reaches up, and runs her hand along her brow, massaging at her forehead. “I couldn’t do a thing. Didn’t. I was useless like I always am. And the same thing happened in that mining camp. Adam… he protected me, and when it came down to it, you had to save him. I couldn’t…”

Evelynn takes a breath, and Blake…

She just wants to listen. She wants to let her finish.

“I thought in that moment… I would do anything to save him from what they were going to do to him. I prayed to any gods out there, wished for someone to come and rescue him, and… and like some kind of guardian angel, you did.”

Blake finds her face heating up, being compared to a mythical figure like that.

“You arrived, just as I’d prayed you would. And you saved Adam from a lifetime of trauma, and pain, and… and so many other things. I couldn’t. I just… had to sit there, and watch as it was going to happen.”

“And I… I don’t think I could’ve lived with myself if that happened. If something like that happens again… if someone tries to threaten Adam, or anyone else that I love or care about… then I want to be able to do something about it.” Eve turns towards her, and though her lip is wobbling in fear, in anxiety…

There’s a certain fire in her gaze as well.

It reminds Blake of the flame that Adam himself had carried.

Perhaps that had always been in his blood.

“So please… you’re strong.” Evelynn tells her. “You’re the strongest woman I’ve ever seen; you… you made a miracle happen right in front of my eyes. I… I want to be able to be like you!”

Blake’s blush only deepens. Such words…

They’re not meant for someone like her. Surely not.

“…What you’re asking for,” Blake takes a breath, and then releases it with a great sigh. “It will not be easy. Likely, it will be the hardest thing you have ever done in your entire life. If you want to be able to fight – truly fight – then you will need to train to a degree where all other things must fall away.”

Eve meets her gaze, not looking away.

“This is not something you will be able to master in a few months. Maybe not even in a few years. This will take everything you are to accomplish. Is that something you’re ready to accept?”

Blake already knows what Evelynn’s answer will be. She can see it blazing behind her eyes.

“It is.” The mother of Adam Taurus tells her, her voice carrying not a hint of doubt.

And Blake just nods.

“Alright…”

And she thinks… she may’ve just found what it is she’s going to be doing for the next little while.

“Then let’s begin.”

/

Ensign Elm Ederne of the Atlesian Naval Fleet cannot help but fidget somewhat as she waits to be interviewed within one of Atlas’ top military facilities.

From what she understands, she’s going through what nearly every other member of her crew will go through within the next few days. The Atlas Military is looking to gather as much information as they possibly can about what had happened within both the SDC mining camp ‘C-14’, and aboard the Atlesian Trading Vessel, ‘Divinity’.

Because apparently, from descriptions, both incidents had been perpetrated by the same figure.

And that has, rather understandably, got quite a few people within Atlas nervous.

Elm is sat there, her frame entirely too large for the chair she’s occupying within the dimly lit room that she’s pretty sure would normally be used to interrogate criminals. Elm hasn’t done anything wrong, and she’s sticking to that.

Her superior officer can suck it, in her opinion, if he thinks that securing the safety of the Divinity’s crew hadn’t been more important than radioing in what had been happening to the rest of the fleet.

As she’s thinking such things, the door at the back of the room opens, and in steps…

Well, she hadn’t quite expected to see Captain – and, in a rather poorly kept secret, soon to be General – James Ironwood today.

“Ms. Ederne.” Captain Ironwood addresses her with a steady, calm tone. He steps towards her, offers out his hand, and shakes Elm’s. He doesn’t have a terribly harsh grip like some of the other military men she’s met in her life, and doesn’t seem at all intimidated – or emasculated – by the fact that Elm is a bit bulkier than him.

One would think in the Military, of all places, that having to seem tougher than some random muscly woman wouldn’t be that important a thing, and yet Elm has gone through scenarios time and time again where those serving alongside her in things like drills or sparring matches try extra hard not to lose to her.

Captain Ironwood seems like the type of person who’d notice ability first, and anything else a distant second.

Elm finds she likes the man’s vibe immediately.

“Thank you for coming in today.”

“Ah, well, they told me to.”

Ironwood chuckles. “I suppose they did. Well, allow me to set something straight; you’re here for multiple reasons, not just the listed one. Surely, we want your description of the perpetrator behind the C-14 and Divinity incidents, but we also want to ask you questions about the general conduct aboard your cutter, ensign.”

Elm sits a bit straighter in her chair – which makes a rather horrible rickety noise – as she turns the man’s words over in her head.

“If you don’t mind me asking, sir… Why?”

 “I want to hear your view on things before I say anything that might taint or otherwise alter your telling of events. Please, walk me through the events that unfolded just southwest of Menagerie.”

Elm nods her head slowly, not quite sure what to make of all of this, but in the end, she does just that.

She tells him of that day, how they’d engaged in a routine stop to ‘check’ the ship’s cargo. How they’d come aboard, and the crew had been acting strange.

“So, you noticed right away that something was off.”

“I did, sir.” Elm isn’t going to pretend like her superior officers hadn’t totally blown it to save them face. She’s not exactly their greatest fans. “I was going to alert my superior officers to what I saw as a potential threat, but they were too busy blustering, and attempting to…”

She holds herself. She likes her job and position within the Atlas Navy, as much as she hates the fact that her bosses have gotten away with the things they have for, likely, years now.

She wants to rat them out, but–

“If it’s fear of retaliation that stays your tongue, then know that anything you say here will remain confidential.” Ironwood speaks suddenly, and Elm’s eyes widen as she looks back up at him. “Suffice it to say we have our suspicions already about the conduct of some of the Atlas Navy’s officers. Go ahead, ensign.”

Elm nods, and then continues.

“They were planning on taking some of the Divinity’s cargo; either using the profits to line their own pockets, or if it was food, to eat it. It’s a pretty standard thing for them. They do it quite often.”

“How often?”

“Once a week? Give or take some variance.”

Ironwood jots something down on a clipboard beside him, and then motions for Elm to continue.

“After that… well, my superiors weren’t giving up, and that’s when the woman… shit I forgot the name I’m supposed to use.”

“The assailant has been given the code name ‘Black Fang’ in our database for the time being.”

“Right, so this ‘Black Fang’ lady, she shouts out at first… I think she called my superior stupid? I don’t really remember the specifics.”

Ironwood’s smiling. “That’s fine, ensign. Continue.”

“She landed on the deck… no, that’s not right. It was like she teleported. She was faster than anyone I’d ever seen. And frankly, I’ve seen some crazy fast motherf– er… people in the Atlas Military.”

Ironwood nods his head. “Describe her for me.”

“Lithe build; muscular, but not so much so to be noticeable. She had the body of a Huntress, honestly. She had two cat-like ears atop her head, black in color. Her hair was black, too. Uh… outfit was white with black pants, I think. Weapon was fairly distinctive though. Some kind of gun/knife/whip thing. Hard to describe.”

“I’ve read the reports.” Ironwood chuckles. “So, I can tell you that so far, the accounts I’ve read haven’t done a particularly grand job of describing it, either.”

“Well, anyways, she was wearing a mask, so if you want eye-color, or really facial features of any kind, I’m afraid I’ve got nothing. I don’t think the mask was something she had available, though. Looked to me like it might’ve been carved from the Divinity’s hull itself.”

“As if she took a chunk from the ship, and fashioned it into a mask?”

“Exactly like that, sir.”

“Hm.” Ironwood notes something else down. “Alright, then. Lastly, I’d like to discuss with you your decision to not call in to the rest of the fleet, and instead prioritize the lives of the crewmen of the Divinity.”

Elm squirms in her seat, feeling like she’s about to get chewed out by a superior officer. She’s always hated it, especially when she knows she’s in the wrong.

This time, however, she doesn’t feel like she is.

Maybe that’ll make it feel worse?

And yet, where she’d expected retribution…

“I must applaud your decision-making skills on this front, ensign.”

Elm’s eyes widen, and she turns back towards Ironwood to see him looking at her with an almost proud expression.

“Wha–” Elm shakes her head. “But I… I disobeyed the order of my captain… and I let the terrorist get away.”

“Both of those things may be true,” Ironwood speaks, and Elm feels a little wind be pulled from her sails. “But there are far more important extenuating circumstances to consider. For one, you had reason to doubt the validity of your superior officer’s commands. As such, in a time of crisis, it is understandable you may hesitate to follow an order that you personally disagreed with. Even had that not been true, however, I feel I must disagree with the fundamental logic of your captain.”

“In what way, sir?”

“In that if the man being held hostage had instead been an Atlesian soldier, perhaps the argument could’ve been made to sacrifice him to stop a potential threat. After all, that man or woman would’ve volunteered their life in the service of Atlas. But that hostage was not an Atlesian Military Soldier. They were a civilian. Just a crewmember of a cargo ship. In such a case, I believe his life takes priority over wanting to apprehend such a criminal. There are also many other reasons I believe you made the right call. For one, I don’t believe Black Fang intended to harm the crew of the Divinity at all.”

Elm’s eyes widen. “What… gives you that impression, sir?”

“For one, that she had no desire to be seen unless entirely necessary. She avoided conflict until it was clear that whatever it was that she was attempting to hide was going to be discovered. And even then, when combat commenced, reports say she drew the haphazard gunfire of some of ANF Cutter 13’s officers away from the ship, and potential civilian casualties, and instead focused those shots on herself. That leads me to believe that she did not intend for any real harm to come to the crew.”

“That… why would she…”

“Why would she not want harm to come to them? Perhaps she was simply not the type to want to kill. After all, the entirety of your crew came back alive, albeit with some minor injuries. The Divinity’s crew has, likewise, been found to all be accounted for now that they’ve docked and subsequently undocked at Menagerie. It’s clear that above all else, Black Fang would’ve preferred such a trip to be done quickly, quietly, and without anyone ever knowing it happened. An errant fatality is an awfully good way for people to start asking questions.”

“Do we know what she wanted? Or do we have any idea?”

“From the accounts of the crew of the Divinity, we know the woman threatened them into smuggling a good hundred or so faunus from the town of Oaresberg to Kuo Kuana, in Menagerie. Given she was also responsible for the event at C-14, it’s likely she was smuggling Faunus refugees from that very mine to Menagerie.”

“Couldn’t we simply cross check against records there, and then get those faunus back, sir?”

“Yes and no.” Ironwood tells her. “We could, if we wished, make a massive show over sending members of the Atlas Military to Menagerie, practically sending up a signal flare to the media that something has happened, and potentially creating scares of another faunus war being on the horizon in the hearts of both ours and Menagerie’s citizens. All of this just to drag back a good hundred or so civilians whom, I’ve gathered, were likely the victims of abuse under the SDC, and have thusly done quite literally nothing to warrant such a reaction from us.”

Ironwood sighs. “Or, we can turn our heads away, and pretend we do not see. We can accept that the Atlas Military got duped this one time. We can allow a hundred or so faunus to start new lives on Menagerie, and perhaps even assist their family members here in Atlas with relocating there if they require such assistance.”

“Why… go to all that effort?”

“Because public relations, you’ll find,” Ironwood smiles, “Are often far more important than results. And right now, the SDC can’t really afford any more negative press. They’re in damage control mode already. What happened at C-14 was bad, from what I hear. Quite bad. Enough so that even without any of what happened there getting reported to the general public, nearly all of the staff of C-14 are being blacklisted from the company, and a few may even face prison time.”

Elm winces. That… sounds rather bad.

“But they have a monopoly on Dust…”

“Oh, of course. The SDC themselves are at no real risk of being run out of business, or facing any legal trouble, even if they had a hundred more incidents like this one. The uncomfortable truth is that the SDC is as close to untouchable as any organization on Remnant. Every kingdom in the world relies upon them. But at the same time, having the SDC be known abusers of the faunus could create bridges that might one day lead to further strife for the members of the SDC’s board, and shareholders. Strife between them, and terrorist elements that are, as we speak, already growing within Atlas and Mantle. So, for the SDC, if they can sweep this entire matter with C-14 under the rug by allowing a few hundred faunus to escape Atlas’ clutches, then they’ll be quite glad to accept that, and even subsidize us to accept it as well.”

“…Forgive me, sir, this all seems a bit complicated for my liking.”

Captain James Ironwood lets out a modest laugh, then, before nodding his head. “I’m sure you’re no more confused than I was when I first learned of such things. But, enough about such complicated matters. I’ve a proposal to make to you, ensign.”

“Huh?”

“Seeing as how your superior officers, if I can manage it, will find themselves out of their positions in the near future, you will likely need to be reallocated to serve under a different ship. My proposal is that instead of bothering with such, you accept my recommendation to enlist in the Specialist Program.”

Elm’s eyes are wide. There are so many different emotions running through her in that moment that she barely knows how to process them at all.

But in the end, the thought that eventually occurs to her is…

“Why me, sir?”

“Because Atlas always needs more people willing to make tough calls in hard times. Because I think you’re the kind of soldier who can get those things done, and that, with Hunter training, you might even become quite the ace, yourself.”

Elm feels her chest puffing out just a bit, her ego unable to resist swelling up ever so slightly.

“And it’s also possible I have somewhat of a vested interest,” Captain Ironwood smiles as he stands from his chair, and begins making his way to the door at the back of the chamber, beckoning for Elm to follow. “After all, when I’m made General…”

“I’d like only the very best under my command.”

Chapter Text

Yang’s not hyperventilating.

She thinks that maybe, if she tells herself that enough times, it might actually be true.

The two of them, Yang and Raven, are stood about ten meters out from the Xiao Long Cabin. Right in there, in that home, Yang had spent the first 17 years of her life.

Now, she feels like a stranger walking up to it.

“I feel like I should say once again that I don’t think this is a very good idea.”

“Noted.” Raven sighs, clearly just as worried as Yang is, but having had an extra decade to learn how to best disguise her emotions whilst surrounded by killers and thieves. “And ignored.”

Yang hisses out under her breath, but stays silent as the two of them close the distance, and suddenly, they’re standing right on the doorstep of the Xiao Long cabin.

Again, Yang feels it needs reiterating that she’s not hyperventilating.

No matter what her treacherous lungs might try and claim.

Raven is stood there an awfully long time, her lower lip trembling, and her hands balled into fists at her sides. She looks like she’s a second away from turning around and running as fast as she possibly can in the other direction.

But there’s a certain… ‘pride’ in her expression that doesn’t seem to want to allow her to, that refuses to back down, that refuses to run away.

Then again, there’s a decent chance that’s spite as much as anything else.

And eventually, that spite seems to win out, because Raven steps forward and knocks on the door.

Yang winces, but she also can’t deny that at the same time, she does want to see her father for the first time in nearly a year and a half. Ever since she’d left for Haven, they’d only communicated over text once they’d made it to Atlas, and through Ruby’s singular letter.

But there’s another thought on Yang’s mind, someone else she thinks she might have the smallest chance of meeting…

If the timing is right–

“Just a minute!” A womanly voice shouts from within, and Yang’s heart just about stops.

It’s… It’s just like she remembers it sounding. She hasn’t heard that voice since she’d been a child, no more than seven or eight years old. And yet now, she stands at the precipice of seeing the person behind it, of getting to see their smile again.

Yang’s just not sure she can do it without giving away the future.

Because if she suddenly starts bawling, she has a feeling Raven might figure out what’s wrong.

And so, despite her wishes, despite the fact that every atom within Yang’s body wishes to reach out and say something, she girds herself, bites down on the inside of her cheek, and vows to remain silent.

She’s no one. No one important at all.

And then the door opens, And the person standing within it is so very familiar, like she’d walked out of Yang’s life a decade ago and shown up without any pomp or circumstance today.

Summer Rose, her mom, is right there in front of her.

And her eyes are wide.

“…Raven?”

Raven, in all honesty, isn’t handling things much better than Yang. The moment that Raven hears her name leave Summer’s lips, she can’t seem to keep her gaze steady, and instead stares at the wooden deck beneath her.

Summer looks between the two of them, and Yang can tell there’s something there that she’d never been privy to. Something that had, a decade ago for Yang, died along with summer.

But Yang can’t exactly ask any questions about that, given she’s supposed to be no one at all.

“Hey.” Raven says weakly, still not looking up. “Uh, it’s been a while.”

Summer looks almost flabbergasted. “You… you go off on your own for seven years, and that’s all you can say?”

Raven can’t seem to say anything. Too stunned, too ashamed. She stands rooted to the floor, And Yang can tell Raven’s doing the same thing she is; biting the inside of her cheek to remain silent.

“You abandon your family, your friends, your team, your home, your life, your husband and daughter, and…” Summer shakes her head, and idly, Yang ponders the fact that she doesn’t think she’s ever seen her mother like this. With this much… raw emotion hanging off of her.

She’d always seemed so controlled to Yang. So steady, so unflappable; almost unshakable. But here in this moment, she looks like she’s a kettle placed upon a stove, growing hotter and hotter, steam trying harder and harder to escape.

Like at any second, she might just explode.

And then, before that can happen, she bites her lip, tells the both of them, “Go into the forest, The spot with the three trees; you know what I’m talking about?”

Raven nods her head.

“Then go there, I…” Summer’s entire body is trembling. “I don’t want the kids to know you’re here. Yang especially doesn’t need this if you’re just going to run off again in an hour or so.”

“That’s just the thing,” Raven tries to interject, “I’m not, I’m–”

Summer places a single finger on her lips with an angered fervor, and Raven goes silent.

“I just said I don’t want Yang to know you’re here, did I not!?”

There’s a hurt in Raven’s eyes then, one which Yang’s fairly certain Summer picks up on. She doesn’t say anything about it, though. Just waves them off.

“I’ll go get Tai. He… he should be here for this too. I’d call Qrow if I didn’t think you two would try and kill each other the second you saw one another. Besides, he’s seen you fairly often. It’s been half a decade for the both of us.”

And with that, Summer steps back inside the house, and closes the door behind her.

Raven looks shellshocked.

Yang’s not entirely certain what to do, but then again Summer had told them to go and wait somewhere.

By the description of ‘the spot with the three trees’, Yang’s pretty sure she knows where they’re going.

Still, she doesn’t want to leave Raven standing here blankly like this.

“H-Hey…” She doesn’t know how she’s supposed to handle this. She’s good at consoling kids, but not emotionally reclusive adults. “Uh… are you ok–”

“I’m fine.” She spits out, and judging by the look in her eye, Yang doesn’t think her mother has ever tried to tell her a less convincing lie. “Let’s go. Follow me.”

“I know where we’re going.”

Raven holds for a moment, before continuing to walk.

“Right… I suppose you would.”

The area they end up in is a small little clearing about 30 meters out from their house. Close enough that kids could play there and still be heard if they were in trouble, but also far enough out that they could be loud and rambunctious that they wanted to be. It had been a favorite spot of Yang’s to come and train, and eventually, when she’d come of age, it had become such for Ruby as well.

It’s certainly different from what Yang remembers it looking like, but then, she both hasn’t seen it in around two years, and is seeing a version of it from going on twelve years in the past.

Even still, the titular three trees that they’d named the spot after stand tall, almost towering above the rest. Yang had asked her father about that one time, why these three are so much taller, and according to him, these are a species out of northern Vacuo, where the trees can grow double, and sometimes even triple the size of those native to Patch.

She’s lost in thoughts of the past, and so almost misses Raven letting out a shaky breath as they come to a stop.

“You okay?” Yang asks.

“Do I look okay?”

“No, that’s why I asked.”

Raven bites down on her lower lip. “I’m fine. Or at the very least, I’ll deal with it. Focus on yourself.”

Honestly, it’s not that bad of advice. Yang had only really been able to hold together because the Summer they’d seen had acted as she had. If she’d greeted Yang with open arms, or tried to offer her a hug or something – which, in all fairness, hadn’t been a likely thing – she’d have been a total mess of snot and tears.

Eventually, some five or some minutes later, two figures enter into the clearing with them.

Her mother and father, Summer Rose and Taiyang Xiao Long.

“It really is you…” Her dad sounds almost stunned. “Raven… you actually… you’re here.”

Raven nods. “…Yeah.”

“And uh…” Taiyang looks to Yang. “Who’s this, exactly?”

Raven looks to her, and raises an eyebrow. Evidently, she’s deciding to leave this up to Yang’s discretion.

Which is something she’d rather her mother not have done, but it’s a little late now to be thinking that.

“No one important.” She speaks. “Just… an ally of Raven’s, so to speak.”

Her dad looks pensive about that, And Yang can’t truly blame him. after all, admitting that she’s the ally of someone often referred to as the Queen of Bandits might raise some concern.

“I’m not a member of her tribe, if that’s what you’re wondering.” Yang decides to just clear up that potential misunderstanding right then and there. “I’m a huntress, licensed out of Atlas.”

That, at least, seems to calm both Summer and Taiyang down. Yang even holds up her license just to prove it to them.

Her dad, always easygoing, hums out under his breath. “How did the two of you meet?”

“Long story.” Raven cuts in. “For now–”

“Do you not have time to tell it?”

Yang winces at the tone in Summer’s voice. She looks over to see her mom eyeing her mother – and boy, that’s already growing a bit confusing – with something akin to distrust in her gaze.

“It’s not exactly an important story.” Raven tries to argue. “I… alright, fine, if you must know, she stopped the tribe from raiding a village west of Mistral. The two of us dueled to a standstill after I arrived on the scene. I was impressed.”

Summer doesn’t seem surprised. “Somehow, I thought as much. It seems the only thing you actually respect these days is combat ability.”

Raven bristles rather visibly at that, but as Yang had thought, she can’t actually dispute it.

It has been true for the longest time; the Branwen tribe only respects strength.

To hear that Raven had picked Yang up under such conditions is…

Well, it’s likely serving as confirmation for Summer. Confirmation that Raven hasn’t truly changed.

Yang’s honestly not sure if she has either. It seems more to her that Raven has come here in order to spite the Raven of Yang’s time, who’d sat back and done nothing while the world burned around her.

“Let’s all calm down,” Taiyang, rather clearly not used to being the mediating element, attempts to do just that. “Raven did come here. That’s something to be celebrated.”

“It would be if I had any faith she was staying for long.” Summer shakes her head. “I don’t want Yang to have to get her hopes up, only for Raven to run out on her again. That’s not fair to our daughter.”

Raven’s hands are fidgeting at her sides. “You don’t even know why I’m here.”

“Do I need to?” Summer asks, her gaze hard. “Really? After you refused to see any of us for seven years, after you turned Qrow away any time he came to speak with you, after you abandoned the both of us–”

“I’m here now!”

“And what does that matter when you weren’t there then!?”

Yang takes a step back, the energy in the clearing enough to cause Taiyang to do the same. This… there’s something there, just as Yang had suspected earlier. Something going on between Summer and Raven that Yang had never been privy to.

She has some… suspicions, although she’d really rather not think about such things.

She thinks that maybe she should walk away. This… it does concern her, Yang Xiao Long, but it also… doesn’t.

And yet, before she can, Summer is already speaking again.

“You want me to believe you, Raven? You want me to believe that there’s a chance in hell that you’ve, what, changed? Apologize. Apologize to Tai, and to me, and to Yang most of all. Apologize for the actions you took as the leader of the Branwen tribe, slaughtering hundreds of innocent people for some nebulous idea of power! Apologize for abandoning everyone who’s ever loved you just because you were too scared to be vulnerable, too scared to try!”

There’s naught but silence in the clearing after that. Yang’s biting down on the inside of her cheek, still feeling like she should be anywhere else. Raven, to her credit, hasn’t run away in abject shame, and is instead stood in the same spot.

Her face is pale, however. Her lower lip quivers. It’s clear she’s… not doing terribly well.

But then… then her lips part, and she steps forward. Her body seems to want to do so much more, but it’s caught between two extremes, and causing her to freeze up.

It is, in a way, a sort of running.

But Yang finds herself almost proud of the fact that Raven doesn’t.

That pride has a part of her wanting to scoff. Of all people, Yang’s fairly certain she shouldn’t feel proud watching her mother… what? Not run away in abject fear? Manage to stand her ground against her own terror at trying to live a normal life, at potentially making mistakes that they’ve all made, and will continue to make?

It feels almost reductive to say that she’s proud of Raven for that. Like she’s infantilizing the woman.

“Well?” Summer asks, and though she’s putting on a hard front, Yang can see this isn’t easy for her, either. Her jaw is clenched tightly, and her left hand is on the haft of her weapon, which she’d brought along with her, gripping it tightly. “What’ll it be, Rae?”

“…You brought Sundered Rose?”

“Of course I did! What was I supposed to just… believe you’d suddenly come to your senses!? I was half expecting you to attack us!”

Of all the things that Summer could’ve said, Yang feels that’s the thing that hurts Raven the most.

“I’d… Summer, I’d never attack you.”

“And why would I think that?” Summer asks, and Yang can see the tears building behind her eyes. “After all, Qrow says every time he goes to your camps, you threaten him until he leaves. Sometimes you draw Omen out and force him to! Why would I not expect you to threaten me, when you’d threaten your brother?”

“Because that’s different! That’s–”

“How is that different!? Explain it to me, because I–”

“Mom?”

Everyone in the clearing freezes, and, one by one, they turn to see the newest arrival. Standing there is…

Well, herself.

The her of twelve years ago.

That would make that her… around seven or so years old. Likely closer to eight at this point. She’s young – and man, she can’t ever remember looking that young – with her blonde hair drawn back into pigtails.

And she’s looking around at the multiple people in the clearing with abject confusion on her face.

“Sweetie,” Taiyang steps forward, kneeling down in front of little Yang. “I thought daddy told you not to leave the house for a while.”

“I know you did, but Ruby started crying and I didn’t really know what to do, so I was going to see if you were almost done, but then I heard shouting…”

She looks up at Summer, who looks guiltily down at the ground, and then over towards Raven and Yang both.

“Who are these people, daddy?”

Taiyang seems loathe to answer.

Yang can’t really blame her father that.

“They’re…” Summer’s voice isn’t coming. She can tell she wants to say something, likely something dismissive. Perhaps ‘no one important’, but something holds her back.

Perhaps, despite all she’d said, she still wants Raven to be a part of her life, nonetheless.

“She looks kind of like dad.” Young Yang points directly at her – adult Yang. “Is she daddy’s sister?”

Hah, leave it to little her to be so perceptive. Unfortunately, she’d really rather no one point out the similarities between Yang and her father, lest they start to notice the similarities between Yang and Raven, and then after that, Yang to… well, Yang.

That way lay serious changes in the timeline, and then, after that, likely a trip to Ozpin.

Which she knows she can’t put off forever… but she’d really like to put off for at least a while.

“I’m no one.” Yang says, putting her hands in the air. “Just a friend of Raven’s.”

“Raven?” Little Yang tilts her head to one side, and Taiyang winces. Instantly, Yang realizes that she’s made a mistake saying her mother’s name. “Isn’t that the name of uncle Qrow’s sister?”

“That… yes, it is.” Taiyang says with a desperate sort of chuckle. “It is uncle Qrow’s sister.”

“Does that make her uncle Qrow’s sister?”

That’s a question that Taiyang and Summer both don’t want to answer.

Raven, however, circumvents that entirely.

“I am.” She says as she steps forward, and it’s only the fact that Summer does the same, getting between Raven and little Yang, and preventing her from walking all the way towards her young daughter. “I’m also your–”

“Not another word.” Summer’s voice is as cold as ice.

Raven, wisely, takes a step back.

“My what?”

Yang looks between the four figures within the clearing with her own jaw now clenched. Taiyang, her dad, has his hands on little Yang’s shoulders, trying to offer comfort, but he’s looking between Summer and Raven uncertainly. It’s clear he wants to take a more active role here, but he also wants to offer his daughter comfort.

Summer, on the other hand, looks like she’s a second away from drawing Sundered Rose from off of her back and swinging the axe down upon Raven’s face. A broiling rage is set upon her face.

And Raven…

Raven looks almost lost.

She looks to little Yang, then to Summer, then to Yang – er, her – and doesn’t seem to know what it is she’s supposed to say. Yang doesn’t think she’d know what to say either in a similar scenario.

Eventually, though, she looks to little Yang, parts her lips, hesitates, and then says…

“I’m… your aunt, right?”

Little Yang’s eyes widen, and she smiles a moment later, nodding her head. “Yeah! If you’re uncle Qrow’s sister, then you’re my aunt! Nice to meet you, auntie Raven!”

Raven bites down on her lower lip hard enough that Yang fears she might draw blood. She looks up towards Summer, and Gods, but she seeks it. She seeks Summer’s approval. And yet instead, all she gets is Summer’s horrified expression; the woman in that moment realizing that she has forced Raven to hurt herself for little Yang’s sake.

And Summer looks disgusted with herself, like she’s reconsidering this entire thing. 

In the next moment, Raven turns around, so that she doesn’t have to look at her daughter’s face while she giggles about finally meeting her ‘auntie’.

“I’ll… be in town for a while. If you…” Raven’s voice catches.

She waits for Summer or Taiyang to say anything.

Neither do.

The three of them, former teammates, allies, friends and more, stay entirely silent, even as they all so clearly agonize over what’s just occurred.

But none say a thing.

Yang doesn’t want to, either. Honestly, this feels like one of those conversations her parents would have behind closed doors, one that she’d never been meant to hear.

Yet she has.

She’s not glad for it, despite how enlightening this has technically been.

Raven waits another five or so seconds as the wind rustles through the trees, but then, hearing nothing from any of the others, trudges away, even as little Yang, thinking she’s helping but very much not, shouts out for auntie Raven to take care of herself.

It hurts Yang to hear it, and she knows it must be so much worse for her mother.

She feels bad for her, despite… despite everything.

She nods to both Summer and Taiyang – who don’t even pretend to care about her enough to nod back, not that she can blame them – before catching up with Raven. If she spots the smallest hint of tears within her mother’s eyes…

Well, it’s probably a trick of the light.

/

It takes Weiss a second to even process what’s just happened as her ears ring, and blood drips onto the tiled floor beneath her.

She’d…

What had she been doing?

Where is she?

She looks up, and sees a familiar-looking guy with a beard trying to help her up. But Weiss can see another figure approaching from behind, a weapon in hand.

“Behind…” She manages to squeak out.

Qrow knows what she’s trying to say, luckily, and he manages to get his weapon up in time to block the man’s attack, then forces enough weight into the next attack to knock him back, so he’s a meter or so away from Weiss.

Weiss nearly blacks out entirely as she tries to force herself up and off of the floor. Her back is screaming out in pain, which she supposes makes sense, given she’d been practically flattened against the wall behind her thanks to the explosive that had just been set off.

She’s lucky, she thinks, that there hadn’t been any unusual objects in the way. She hadn’t broken her back like she could’ve had she slammed into something like a counter, or table.

She’d barely managed to get her aura up in time.

Yes, right… there’d been…

There’d been a young boy, tied to a chair. Weiss had rushed in to help him.

It had been a trap.

The kind of disgusting trap that only a heinous bastard would come up with.

Marcus Black, she guesses, is this man Qrow’s just sent backwards.

The two exchange words, although they don’t seem to be hashing out peace agreements. Not like Weiss can really tell, given her ears are still ringing.

She looks over, and sees that the young boy himself has managed to get free of a few of his bindings. Weiss is glad. Hopefully, he’ll get himself to safety, and they can fight without worrying about him.

Marcus having a hostage seems like it can only end badly.

Qrow gives one last parting glance towards her before dashing forwards, and locking his blade against Marcus’ weapon. It’s… a fairly simplistic thing. It reminds Weiss of Crocea Mors. It’s a completely straight-edged blade, with a squared off top, no point with which to stab, only edges with which to cut, without any mecha-shift involved. 

In his other hand, he holds some sort of hand cannon; likely the weapon he’d used to leave the bullet hole they’d found at the scene of the crime that had eventually led them here. If the size of the hole on the murder victim is anything to go by, it would likely hit hard, although just as likely not often.

That kind of payload more often than not required quite a bit of setup.

Neither are the kinds of weapons Weiss would choose for herself, but she can see how they could be effective in the right hands as Marcus Black wields them with deadly precision.

It is immediately obvious during the first few exchanges between the two of them that Qrow is the superior fighter in a straight one-on-one. It is also just as obvious that Marcus isn’t going to give him a chance to have a straight one-on-one.

He activates a trap within the wall as he steps back, and a sort of gas sprays out towards Qrow. It looks like he’s going to avoid it, but at the last moment his leg catches against a divot in the floor, and he trips right into the cloud. He doesn’t breathe it in, far too experienced to fall for such, but at the same time, that also means he isn’t being allowed to breathe while he exchanges blows with Marcus.

The latter doesn't seem at all worried about the gas, and if Weiss had to guess, he’s likely made himself immune to its effects entirely.

The young boy on the other side of the room however has no such immunity, and he hacks and coughs as the gas gradually begins to filter further out, beginning to fill the room they’re all stuck within.

Weiss swears out under her breath, realizing that she can’t afford to stay down now. On shaking arms and quaking knees, she forces herself into a kneeling position. If she doesn’t act, that boy will certainly die, and knowing how many traps Marcus has been able to pull out in just these first few minutes, he may have even more that he’s yet to unleash upon them.

That means that unless Weiss can join him, Qrow very well might lose against an opponent who’s fighting in a location he knows best.

Terrain, after all, is one of the most important aspects of battle.

After ten or so seconds, she’s able to stand, albeit she’s leaning rather heavily on the wall beside her. She sidles along it, attempting to make her way over towards the boy, who looks like he’s just passed out from the fumes.

Weiss curses, but manages to grab him, and brings him back towards where she’d been in the kitchen before. Hauling along extra weight probably isn’t good for her likely already injured body, but it’s not like she has any other choice.

When they’re clear of the gas, she sets him down. She gets her first real good look at the boy, and feels a strange familiarity with him. She dismisses the feeling a moment later, for such will do her little good if they die here.

She carries the boy out of the home entirely, and then, the moment he’s been moved to safety, she lunges back inside, looking to backup Qrow.

It seems she might not have needed to worry as much as she had. The two’s battle has stretched down into a basement level, one which both Weiss and Qrow had assumed existed. As she travels down the stairs – not being nearly as quick as she’d like to be on account of her injuries – She sees other signs of traps; darts embedded in the wall, spikes jutting up out of particular steps, even what looks like a hole for a double-barrel shotgun to shoot out of on the roof.

Weiss is fairly sure all have already been triggered, but even so, she moves cautiously.

When she arrives in the basement, she sees what she thinks is the end of the battle. Marcus is putting up a decent defense, but he is fighting one of the strongest Huntsman on Remnant. Even if Qrow will certainly grow more experienced over the years, it’s clear his skills had already been well in place at this point, ten or so years before Weiss had ever met him.

Finally, after another minute or so of fighting – which Weiss stays out of, just in case Marcus might attempt to use her a hostage, injured as she is – Qrow knocks Marcus’ blade from out of his hand, And his last ditch attempt to achieve any meaningful damage on Qrow falls flat when his hand cannon fires, and though it shatters Qrow’s aura on impact, it doesn’t injure him further.

Qrow disarms the man, slashing the hand cannon quite literally in half, and then points the blade of Harbinger directly into the man’s face.

“I give!” Marcus shouts, even as the blade inches closer towards him. “I give. I’ll talk.”

“We want the person who hired you to kill Leonardo Lionheart’s bodyguard.”

“I’ll talk, but not here. You get me somewhere I’m safe from retribution, and I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”

Qrow is rather clearly not happy with that, but he hisses out under his breath, even as he motions for Marcus to turn around. The man does, and lets himself be put into handcuffs by Qrow.

“When did you get those?” Weiss asks as she hobbles over.

“Got them from the crime scene investigators. Or, well, one of the officers with them, anyhow. Told them we were going to chase this guy down. They figured we should have ‘em in case it worked.”

Weiss supposes she can’t argue with that.

Weiss is still expecting Marcus to pull some final trick, have some big final play, but as they move up the stairs, and towards the exit, he does nothing, says nothing.

He… goes along with their plan.

Weiss’ eyes narrow.

She doesn’t buy it. Not for a second.

They exit out of the home, and Weiss looks around for–

“…Hm?”

Qrow hears her humming, and turns towards her. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s that boy. Where did he–”

A shot rings out, and Qrow gasps out in pain. Blood spurts from out of his left leg, and then again from out of his right shoulder as a second shot rings out as well. He hits the ground right as Weiss draws Myrtenaster, and points it behind her, expecting another trap, or perhaps a second assailant, but…

It’s the boy…

And he’s holding a gun in his hands.

“Hah!” Marcus Black cackles out, before drawing some sort of device out of his jacket with his cuffed arms and using it to snap the chain. “Excellent, Mercury! You’re a good boy!”

Weiss’ breath catches in her throat, even as she watches as the boy’s – Mercury’s – eyes gleam.

Weiss tells herself it can’t be him; this can’t be the Mercury she knows, can it?

She doesn’t have time to consider that. Marcus draws another weapon, this time a much simpler dust pistol, and points it right at Qrow’s head. Weiss feels her stomach drop, even as she forms a glyph and launches herself forward.

Luckily, Qrow isn’t out for the count, and is able to flip himself on his side to avoid the first shot. Such a thing clearly pains him, however, as he hisses out a grunt. He wouldn’t have been able to avoid a second shot, but Weiss is there in time for that, and her presence forces Marcus to instead aim up, towards her.

She’s faster, though. She has a glyph up both to block the shot and to bounce herself off of, then forms another behind her, bouncing between the two and building speed. She bounds into the air, forms another above her, and fires herself off of it down towards her opponent.

Marcus Black is a good assassin, perhaps even a half decent Huntsman in terms of skill, but it’s clear he’s never seen speed like hers before.

She dashes down, and slices at Marcus’ hand, trying not to grimace as her blade slices clean through his wrist, and severs the appendage there. Marcus Black bellows out in agony, even as he steps back, clearly in shock.

“Dad!” Mercury shouts, and he attempts to close the distance.

Weiss turns, wanting to tell the boy to get away, to get back, but before she can, she notices Marcus drawing something else out of his coat.

It’s a grenade.

Weiss’ mind processes what will happen in the next few moments far faster than it had ever done about anything else before. In the next second or so, Marcus Black is going to pull the pin on that grenade with his thumb. He is going to throw it forward, towards Weiss, Qrow, and even his own son, Mercury.

Among them, only Weiss has any remaining aura.

Mercury doesn’t seem to have his unlocked, and Qrow’s had been broken by Marcus’ numerous traps, and one final attack from his hand cannon. The explosion that had sent Weiss hurtling into a wall had certainly done a number on her own aura, but she still has around 30 or 40 percent remaining.

That would, likely, be enough to tank the grenades blast. Not comfortably, but she could manage.

The others can’t.

That means her only option is to stop Marcus from throwing the grenade in the first place.

Her means of doing so are slim, and it occurs to her in the next moment that her means of doing so nonlethally are nonexistent. The only ability that she has that can close that gap is the massive great sword of her Arma Gigas Summon.

Is she ready to take a life, she questions? Can she truly do that? She’s not sure. Doesn’t really know. There’d been a part of her that had realized, however long ago, that those White Fang that had fallen off of the train as they’d raced through the tunnels connecting Mountain Glenn to Vale had certainly perished, but that…

That had felt different. They’d struck nonlethally, never meant to harm them any more than necessary to stop the attack.

Those people had fallen afterwards. That had not been Weiss’ intent.

But now…

If she wishes to save Qrow, and Mercury, then her intent must be to kill Marcus Black.

So…

She does just that.

The Arma Gigas’ blade – the first Grimm she’d ever slain, the first Grimm she’d ever summoned – manifests into being, already beginning to swing towards Marcus Black. He seems to realize what is about to happen, and yet, like the utter bastard he is, he just reaches towards the pin on the grenade, wanting to at least take them with him if he can.

She feels just the littlest bit less bad about what’s about to happen.

But then there’s someone else, another figure, with their arms stretched out, trying to block the blow entirely. He’s not fast enough, can’t get the distance he needs, but–

But Weiss can’t stop in time, either. Too much force, too much adrenaline, she’s swung harder than she needs to, hard enough that she could be sure, absolutely sure, that Marcus Black would be killed in an instant, before he could pull the pin on that grenade.

She’d succeeded, but at a terrible, terrible price.

There’s a sound, then. A terrible squelching noise as the Arma Gigas’ blade carves right through Marcus, his own aura entirely spent. It bisects him at the waist, and without really meaning to, Weiss catalogues the exact minute that the man goes from a person, with thoughts and emotions, to an inert body without anything of the sort.

The swing is hard enough to send the torso flying up into the air. She doesn’t focus on it, though.

No, she has to put every ounce of herself into stopping the blade before it carves into someone else, too.

She tries. She tries so damned hard.

It isn’t enough.

The boy, likely realizing what’s going to happen, tries to move. He tries to get out of its path.

He almost succeeds, too.

Almost, again, isn’t enough.

There’s another squelch, this one far louder in Weiss’ ears. She feels that, no matter what happens, she will hear that sound in her nightmares for the rest of her life.

She looks over, her face frozen in abject mortification, and sees Mercury Black run through on the end of the blade.

Silence fills the space around them. The world feels still.

Weiss is numb.

Mercury looks up at her, and there is hatred there as much as shock. He looks towards his father’s corpse, separated into two halves, and then turns back to her with a look in his eyes like he’ll never forgive her. He reaches out, and places his small hand on the Arma Gigas’ blade, which has impaled the right half of his chest, coming close to bisecting him down the middle.

The blade dissolves as Weiss looks on, her entire being frozen.

She just… she’d not…

It had been to save him. To save that boy. To save Qrow, as well, of course, but–

She hadn’t…

But what she’d meant to do doesn’t matter. Not truly.

For once the blade fully dissipates…

Mercury Black falls all the same.

Chapter Text

Weiss blanks, then. Her brain might as well have shut off entirely for how she stands there, entirely uselessly, as Mercury Black bleeds out in front of her.

It is only Qrow screaming at her that snaps her out of it, and has her lunging forwards, already trying to come up with anything she can possibly do to save the boy.

She does her best to inspect the wounds logically, but it’s difficult for her logical thoughts to try and compete with her more emotional ones at the moment. Mercury’s bleeding rather heavily out of his stomach, and from what she can see through the rather sizable hole in his abdomen where the Arma Gigas’ blade had nearly cleaved through him, his intestines have been severed in a few places.

It doesn’t even occur to Weiss that Qrow had also been injured, shot twice in the leg and the back, until that moment. She looks over, her eyes wide and panicked, to see Qrow crawling his way over.

“I’m fine. Don’t think about me. Save the kid.”

Weiss is glad he’s not commenting on the fact that Mercury had shot him. Even if that’s true, he’s just a boy, maybe – maybe – eight or nine years old.

But he might very well be younger.

“Do you have medical training!?” Qrow grunts out as he pulls himself into a sitting position, which can’t be comfortable.

“None!”

“Then get out of the way.”

Weiss does just that, almost eager for Mercury to no longer be her responsibility.

“Do you have medical training!?” Weiss feels the need to ask, however.

“Do I look like it!?” Qrow fires back, grimacing as he peels back a bit of Mercury’s shirt to inspect the wound. “Fuck, I’ve got some, but I’ve never actually had to use it before. Luckily, we Hunters have a tried-and-true method for these sorts of things. It might not be enough due to the severity of his injures, but we can try!”

Qrow leans forward, places his hands on Mercury’s chest, and begins to speak.

“For it is through pain that we become what we must. Through this, we harden ourselves, until our wills are as steel. Infinite in retribution and unbound by regret, I release your soul, and by my being, unshackle thee.”

Mercury’s entire body spasms as a gray light erupts out of him, and luckily, it seems to be a rather potent aura. Not quite as much as Jaune’s or Yang’s, but it’s certainly much higher than Weiss’ or Ruby’s.

She looks down at the wound along his abdomen, and watches as it begins to close. The wound seals, and seals, and then…

And then it stops sealing, the boy’s aura fading away into nothingness.

“Shit!” Qrow curses, “It’s not enough! The wound’s too deep!”

Weiss feels her heart leap into her throat. “What do we do!?”

“We operate on him as best we can, and then get him back to civilization.” Qrow clicks his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “Fuck. You don’t happen to have a needle and thread, do you?”

Weiss looks over at Qrow helplessly, who, despite his own injuries, hoists himself up, and uses Harbinger as a second leg as he hobbles back into Marcus Black’s home.

“Keep pressure on the wound!” He shouts. “If he loses too much blood, then it doesn’t matter if we can seal it!”

Weiss nods, forcing her mind to steady itself as best she can. It’s… well, she hopes it will be enough.

She rips off her blue overcoat, and uses it to staunch the bleeding as best she can. Idly, she watches with a sick sort of fascination as the blood gradually seeps into the material, dyeing it a dark plum color.

Luckily, any further macabre thoughts are prevented by Qrow making his way back out far quicker than Weiss had expected.

“He had them out already,” Qrow explains to her as he sits himself down beside Weiss. “Must be a constant thing, sealing wounds.”

Weiss isn’t sure she likes the sound of that.

“Now… this is going to be rather hard to stomach, but…” Qrow sighs, then looks up at her. “I need you to hold Mercury’s wound open so that I can sew his intestines back up.”

Weiss does her best to avoid vomiting on principle, instead nodding with a grim determination hanging about her.

She’d never once harbored any thoughts for becoming a doctor. Such had never appealed to her, and blood had always been somewhat of a sore spot. Such feelings had dimmed with time – being a Huntress had a habit of leading one to seeing blood quite often – but even so, Weiss had certainly never wanted to be this close to an operation in her life.

After this, she’s fairly certain she won’t want to be ever again, either.

Still, she does what she has to. She bites down on her lower lip, steels her stomach – she’ll vomit when this is over, because thinking she can somehow hold this in is foolhardy – and reaches into Mercury’s abdomen, prying it apart to give Qrow room to work.

“Fuck me,” Qrow whispers as he kneels down, and sets up the light on his scroll to shine inside Mercury’s body. “And frankly, fuck you too, Oz. Easy job in Mistral you say, just go in and check some things out, you say. Fuckin’ asshole. Fuckin’ Semblance.”

Weiss doesn’t look as Qrow does the difficult work, but she cannot stop herself from hearing, even with her head turned pointedly away. The squelches and gurgles are somehow louder than anything else, even surrounded by nature, sat in a clearing with a forest just behind them.

About five minutes in, Qrow moves her hands, and Weiss gladly steps away, allowing the man to work on sewing Mercury back up. She tries not to look, but catches an errant glance, and…

Well, she’s held on long enough, she thinks.

So, she stands, gets as far as she can, and then throws up into the grass some ten or so meters away.

What feels like years later – but is, likely, only ten or fifteen minutes – Qrow sighs, wipes his forehead, and calls her over.

“Well?” She asks, her heart hammering in her chest.

“We’re going to be cutting it close.” He tells her, not mincing words. “I think he’ll make it, but I’d give him 55/45 odds, and that’s only because his aura’s tough. I’ll call ahead and have someone pick us up once I get signal, but this far out, it could be anywhere from three to twelve hours of walking between now and then.”

Weiss swallows. “Then we should hurry.”

“We should, I just don’t want to have to carry him, that could upset the stitches, and I’m in no condition to–”

A glyph spawns beneath Mercury, and lifts him into the air without jostling him.

“Oh, right.” Qrow laughs, somehow able to find humor in such a situation, when his hands are quite literally caked in blood, and his own body being held together by his aura and little else. “Schnee powers. Blanked on that.”

“Come on, then.” Weiss nods his way.

“We’ve ground to cover.”

/

“So, uh…” Roman clears his throat as the two of them step inside of Beacon’s forge, the room already hotter than it had been outside by quite a bit, without the forge even being in use. “I have absolutely no idea how you go about making a weapon.”

“You’re in luck, then.” Ruby tells him as she sets down the metals, screws, and different moving parts that she’d picked up to be able to build Roman’s weapon. “I do.”

“I know you said you made your own, it’s just…”

“Just?”

“I guess I just didn’t want to assume that would carry over to me.”

“For most people it wouldn’t. I happen to quite enjoy smithing weapons, though.” Although she hasn’t actually had the chance to partake of her hobby in… it has to have been at least a year and a half, maybe more. If she doesn’t count working on Crescent Rose, or upgrading the weapon, then she hasn’t actually forged anything in going on four years now. “Shouldn’t be much trouble. Although this will likely take a few sessions.”

Roman nods his head. “I guess I just… I kind of wanted to be able to say I made my own weapon, y’know?”

“You were using a pair of crappy hunting knives up until today.”

“Yeah, well, now I want to be able to make my own weapon.”

Ruby snickers. “Seems like a personal problem, buddy.”

Roman chuckles under his breath. “Well, at least you’re not getting my hopes up.”

Ruby’s about to nod before she thinks more about the idea. “…I guess I could teach you, if you wanted?”

“Huh?”

“I can walk you through the process.” Ruby says. “You’re not going to be able to do everything; some of this stuff is pretty advanced, but I can let you do the simpler parts, and show you enough so that you’ll be able to fix or upgrade your own weapon when the time comes.”

Roman’s eyes light up. “Nice! That’d be sick!”

A smile comes to Ruby’s lips. “Alright, come on over. We’ve gotta’ talk design first of all.”

The design stage of creating a weapon has always been Ruby’s favorite. Thinking up new ways to slash Grimm apart, to make her baby just that littlest bit better, or even to make huge, sweeping changes to its overall design… it always has her blood pumping.

The part where Ruby then has to turn those brainchildren into something that can actually function has always been Ruby’s least favorite, since pretty much every cool idea she’s ever come up with to upgrade Crescent Rose has died around there.

She’s still a little mad she couldn’t get the chainsaw edge on Crescent Rose to work.

Still, over the course of the next thirty or so minutes, the two of them hash out a basic design. Ruby hasn’t steered Roman towards anything in specific, letting him figure out what it is he’d like to use instead of pushing him towards Melodic Cudgel.

And what Roman eventually settles on…

“So?” He looks to her with an expression clearing seeking approval.

“It’s uh…”

Ruby looks down at the two and a half meter long great sword with some apprehension, especially the way that it can part down the middle and turn into a railgun.

It’s definitely cool, just…

“Excessive?”

Roman puffs up. “I think it’s neat!”

“Well, I mean, yeah, it’s definitely neat.” She admits, scratching at the back of her neck. “But a weapon this big is going to require you to learn to fight in a completely different way than you have your whole life.”

Roman evidently hadn’t thought about that.

“So… what would you recommend?”

“I’d say something with decent reach, but also something that’s light, and can be flexible in a lot of scenarios.”

“Like a sword?”

“A sword could work. A cane could, as well, or a rapier or staff.”

“Hm…” Roman massages at his chin. “A staff, huh…?”

Ruby is actually pretty curious about Roman’s sudden interest. “Are you thinking about using a staff?”

“Well, a guy I used to know wielded a bo staff. He was a tough son of a bitch, that’s for sure. Ran with the–” Roman looks down at Ruby, coughs, then looks away. “Well, he wasn’t on the right side of the law, I’ll just say.”

Ruby rolls her eyes.

“Anyways, the reason I was thinking about it was because I remember this one time he got disarmed, and instead of panicking, he just picked up a nearby metal pipe, and suddenly he was using that as a weapon just as well.”

“It’s a flexible style.”

“I guess it is…” Roman thinks for a while longer, leaning against the back wall of the forge. “…Maybe… maybe a staff, with a blade inside of it?”

Ruby’s eyes widened. “Like a hidden blade?”

“I suppose I could also use a cane, it’s the same general idea, isn’t it?” Roman shrugs. “Anything adaptable, like you said, that I can use in a variety of scenarios. I’m thinking a blade concealed inside a staff or cane.”

“What about both?”

Roman’s eyes widen. “Pardon?”

“I just thought… why not make it a staff that can shrink down into a cane, and then hide a blade inside the cane section.” Ruby points out. “You’ll likely want to invest in something that’ll give you some ranged options, but then, you’re on a team with me and Amber, and we both have range, so you could just be the melee guy.”

“Sounds good, although…” Roman coughs yet again. “I’ve uh… got some experience with firearms.”

“Do I want to know?”

“Definitely not.”

Ruby groans. “I’ll not ask, then.”

“But I think trying to incorporate that into the design would uh…”

“Complicate things?” Ruby chuckles. “Yeah, it definitely would. Too many mechanisms all in one space. Especially if you’re making a staff. I could make something that would be a one-time fire, like a spike on the end you can shoot off in a pinch, but that would be about it.”

“Can you do that?”

“The one-time spike? Sure. It’s just a coiled spring with a switch, not very difficult.”

“Then I guess I’ll take that too.” Roman scratches the back of his neck. “I just… you’re sure this isn’t too much? I’m not trying to–”

“I’m telling you that I enjoy this stuff.” Ruby chuckles. “Really. I like building weapons, and helping my teammate get a weapon is also directly helping myself, right?”

“I suppose, yeah.” Roman coughs awkwardly. “Just…”

“You can thank me later.” Ruby teases. “Maybe pay for the materials when I upgrade Crescent Rose at some point, how about that?”

Roman’s expression grows a bit brighter at that. “Yeah. Alright. I can do that.”

“Good.” She takes one of the pieces of metal sat there, and decides she’ll start with the hidden blade, first. It’ll be a thin sword; almost has to be, to fit within a cane/staff hybrid. “Then… do you have any ideas for names?”

“Huh?”

“Well, your weapon has to have a name.”

“Is that like an actual law, or just something you think?”

“It might as well be a law!”

Roman snorts. “Fine, fine. Uh… I don’t really know. I like melodies?”

Ruby’s eyes widen. “What?”

“Your weapon’s called Crescent Rose. Crescent ‘cause it’s a scythe, but rose because you’re, y’know, all rose themed. So, I like music and stuff. Figured Melody… something.”

“Melodic, maybe?”

“Yeah, I like the sound of that! Melodic, uh…” Roman hums out in thought. “…Foil?”

“Foil? Like a fencing blade?”

“Yeah. That’s kind of what the blade within is going to need to be, right?”

Ruby is honestly kind of impressed that Roman had managed to figure that out so quickly, and without any prompting. He seems to have a rather logical mind, then. He isn’t like Ruby, in the sense that she always wants to come up with something cool, and is then constrained by reality.

He sees reality, and then builds around those constraints.

“Melodic Foil…” Ruby hums, before smiling. “I like it. Has character.”

“Heh, you think?” Roman preens.

“Yep. Now c’mon, I’ll show you how to draw out a tang.”

“A what?”

“Just come over here.”

“Roger that, ma’am!”

/

Cinder’s not really sure what to think when she’s brought along with her savior towards a training room within Evernight.

She wonders just what it is this is for. Her savior has before mentioned that he’s going to be tested, that the woman who rules this domain, Salem, intends to see just how skilled he is…

She wonders if this is that. If Mr. Arc is going to fight.

When she sees two figures, one tall and burly, the other thin, lean, and scary, she thinks that she’s likely guessed correctly.

Her savior leads the way, and Cinder follows hesitantly. The scorpion man – Tyrian, she thinks his name is – disturbs her in a way that she can’t quite describe, and she’s yet to find herself capable of mustering up the strength to even be near him alone.

“Ah, the rusted knight arrives!” Tyrian bows dramatically. “How grand of you to join us.”

Mr. Arc says nothing, just stops and turns his back to the man, instead looking at the door, evidently waiting for something.

Cinder does the same, even if it makes her quite uncomfortable to have her back to the scorpion man.

Still, she’d have felt a lot worse about having her back to the mistress of Evernight when she floats into the room, her expression almost bordering on anticipation.

“Ah, you have all already arrived.” Salem’s lips turn up in the barest hint of a smile. “Good. Then we will waste no time. You know why you are here?”

“You want an accurate assessment of my abilities.” Mr. Arc says.

“Mm. You will be sparring with Tyrian and Hazel both. These matches will be to fifty percent aura on either side. That way you can do the both of them right now.”

Mr. Arc nods his head. “Who first?”

“It’s up to you.”

Jaune looks back, sighs, then says, “I’ll fight Tyrian first, then.”

“Ooh! I’m the favorite, did you hear that, Hazel dearest?” Tyrian leans up towards the other man, who just grunts out under his breath.

He also clears the arena, and Cinder, realizing that if they are to fight that they will need the floor, does the same. She… doesn’t feel quite as bad standing near Hazel. When he looks down at her, there’s a hint of something in his gaze that Cinder doesn’t quite know the meaning of.

But it doesn’t unsettle her, so she thinks that maybe it’s a good thing.

“Very well, then. Begin when you are ready.”

Tyrian launches himself forward, and Cinder takes a step back almost automatically. Her mind flashes back to that alleyway, where Mr. Arc had fought to save her from him, even when he’d just met her mere hours before.

The look in his eyes then… it had been something odd. Almost like Mr. Arc had been considering a thousand different little things, weighing his options.

Now, that look in his eyes is gone. Replacing it is a cold, almost calculating expression as he parries Tyrian’s first blow, letting it slide off of his shield to the left. Tyrian allows himself to move with his averted strike, and his scorpion tail arcs up, narrowly missing Mr. Arc’s face by the slimmest of margins as he dodges just in time.

He stabs forward, cutting across Tyrian’s aura and causing the man to hiss out. Tyrian somersaults back, giving himself some distance, and then hunches over, starting to circle around Mr. Arc like some sort of animal might its prey.

“He’s good.” The man beside her, Hazel, speaks out suddenly. “No wasted movements.”

Cinder looks over at him with confusion. “Are… you talking to me?”

Hazel peers at her out of the corner of his eye. “No.”

“Oh. I-I’m sorry.”

“You need not be.” He says, turning his gaze back to the fight. “You have done nothing wrong. Watch the fight. You will likely learn something.”

Cinder nods her head as she does just that, and she sees that even in the ten or so seconds she’d been talking to Hazel, things have already progressed.

Mr. Arc seems, at first glance, to be on the backfoot. He takes blows from his opponent several times a second, it feels, and Tyrian doesn’t seem to be wearing himself out, either. And yet, when Mr. Arc does swing, he does so precisely, and rarely misses.

“He’s… patient?” Cinder asks Hazel.

“Mm. He does not try and force an opportunity, like Tyrian does. That is not to say that his style is more effective. Merely that he is not being swept up in Tyrian’s rhythm.”

Cinder nods her head, her gaze narrowing. “Is he waiting for Tyrian to overextend himself?”

Hazel hums out, sounding almost impressed. “You have quite the eye yourself. Yes, I believe he is.”

“Then… scorpion guy– er, Tyrian, sorry…” Hazel’s got a tiny, almost absent smirk upon his face, however, so Cinder thinks she’s probably not in trouble. “Is he not worried he will overextend?”

“Tyrian is many things, but worried is never one of them. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he has a death wish, but it is more than likely that he simply does not care for his own body in any way. He will do anything he can to win a battle.”

Cinder frowns at that.

The next minute or so is all it really takes for the battle to be decided. Mr. Arc is striking far less often, but far harder, whereas Tyrian is hitting against his opponent’s aura every second, but with glancing blows. Finally, Mr. Arc surges forward, tackles the scorpion man to the ground, and places his sword against his neck.

“Oh, a shame, that.” Tyrian laughs, his stinger, too, pressing against her savior’s stomach. “It looks to be a draw, rusted knight.”

Cinder’s not expecting for Salem to offer up an opinion, but she does. “Actually, I do believe that is Jaune’s win, Tyrian. After all, a strike like that would kill you, and your venom would take a time to kill him in return. He very well may be able to cure himself of your affliction before perishing, and I think that uncertainty means it is his victory.”

Tyrian looks appalled at that as Mr. Arc gets off of him, and sheathes the nondescript steel sword he’d borrowed from Salem’s armory inside his rusted shield. Tyrian is glaring daggers at him, and Mr. Arc is sighing, clearly agitated.

If Cinder has to guess, he’s agitated that Salem’s decided to make him the target of Tyrian’s ire.

“Now, then, Hazel?”

The man nods his head as he steps forward, idly cracking his neck.

Cinder finds herself shaking as Tyrian steps out of the arena, and comes to stand just off to Cinder’s right.

“Hmph.” Tyrian sneers down at her. “You seem afraid, girl.”

Cinder looks away, unwilling to say anything in response to that.

Hazel and Mr. Arc’s fight is a lot quicker. That’s mostly because Hazel is in a different weight class to her savior. He does his best, but they’re both close range fighters, and he has no method of striking out against Hazel that doesn’t involve getting close to him.

And anything close to Hazel seems to be well within his domain.

“Hazel claims victory, then.” Salem hums as she steps up. “I suppose that makes sense. You seem to be a middle ground between your two opponents. Not quite as fast as Tyrian, and not quite as strong as Hazel. You are, however, far stronger than Tyrian, and far faster than Hazel.”

“It just doesn’t matter when Hazel can bearhug me.” Mr. Arc wipes sweat from his brow, seemingly not too angry about being beaten.

“No, it does not. Even so, I have seen enough here today. You, Jaune of Arc, will be in charge of Cinder’s training.”

Cinder’s eyes widen, even as she feels a surge of vigor within her breast. She looks over towards her savior, and sees him nodding resolutely, before looking to Cinder as well and giving her a small smile.

“You will begin tomorrow. She will be tested against Tyrian and Hazel herself within the next few months, so I would recommend you do not go easy on her.”

Mr. Arc grimaces, but nods all the same. “Noted.”

“Very well, then. I leave you in charge of everything regarding Cinder’s training. I would advise you do not disappoint me.”

And with that, Salem turns, and moves out of the room.

Tyrian and Hazel both go next, seemingly unbothered, and suddenly, it’s just Cinder and Mr. Arc left in the space.

“Hah… so I’m training you, huh?” Mr. Arc chuckles. “Can’t say this is how I thought my life was going to be like a month ago, but they do always say reality is stranger than fiction.”

“Mr. Arc?”

“It’s nothing.” He lies to her, and it is very obviously a lie, but Cinder will not call him on it. “And just call me Jaune, honestly. I’m only… I’m only six or seven years older than you, right?”

It’s odd, because it seems like the truth, but the way the man says it makes the statement sound almost comical.

“Well then, I suppose we should start slow, and work our way up. First off,” He walks over to one of the stands off on the opposite side of the room, and draws a straight sword from off of it, casually chucking it towards Cinder. She catches it, and tries to adjust to its weightiness. “Show me what you know.”

Cinder nods her head, takes a breath, and then charges forward.

Chapter Text

Patch is…

Well, it’s a bit weird for Yang to suddenly be back in her childhood hometown, and have it actually be her childhood hometown.

There’s that pizza place that had gone out of business when she’d been fourteen still serving customers just off the main road. The arcade hadn’t yet become obsolete by home consoles and scroll games.

Hell, the carwash that had been uncovered as a front for the local mob is still there.

Yang’s not really sure if she should report that…

Eh, she can think about that later.

Right now, she’s got something more important on her mind.

Namely her mother, who has, ever since they left the Xiao-Long cabins radius some few days ago, yet to truly respond to anything Yang’s said.

Of course, she’ll give one-word answers, like “yes”, she’s listening, and “no”, she doesn’t want to talk about what happened.

Yang tries not to let it bother her. From what she’d seen…

Well, it’s clear the problems between Raven and her mother and father had gone a bit deeper than she’d originally suspected.

The two of them are currently staying within a hotel in Patch, the very cheapest they could find for the purpose of staying as long as they can manage. It’s shitty in terms of quality, but eh, it’s got two beds and clean mattresses, so Yang’s choosing to ignore the stains all over the walls.

They don’t look like blood, which is really only a mild positive given all the other very gross things they could be instead.

She’s very glad she doesn’t have a blacklight, to put things another way.

Still, those days pass by slowly, and without either of them getting up to anything. Yang had been on guard about leaving Raven on her own for the first few days, worried her mother might up and disappear the second Yang let her out of her sight, but after a while she’s started to relax.

So, she decides she can take a minute just for herself as well. The first order of business is getting her hair cut into something resembling an actual style. Her mother had cut her hair to her neckline, which means that either she’s going to be waiting two to three years for her hair to grow back to the length she’d had it at before…

Or she’s going to style it as is.

The latter wins out, mostly because she needs to show her face to people within those next few years.

So, the next day, Yang goes and gets her haircut at her old childhood barber. She wonders if the man – Giuseppe, with a handlebar mustache and a unibrow – has started cutting little Yang’s hair yet? If he’s gone through that very, very disastrous first haircut.

She’d unlocked her semblance that day, and nearly burned the man’s shop down.

The memory is a happy one of bygone days, even if they’re likely not so bygone in this timeline.

Still, she enters into Giuseppe’s, and decides to get her hair cut into a bob. The man fusses with it just as much as she’d always remembered he had, tutting under his breath at all of her split ends, and the horrible condition of her hair.

In her defense, she’d been in a war, and then a magical realm, and then had her hair chopped off. She’d not really gotten time for his recommended daily conditioning.

Still, Giuseppe salvages it as best he can, and by the time Yang’s finished with her cut some forty or so minutes later, she’s looking back at herself with a mid-length bob cut, and finding that she doesn’t hate it nearly as much as she’d been worried she might.

Of course, it’s not her first choice of hairstyle, but accounting for the fact that she’d had half her hair taken from her against her will, she looks pretty damned good.

“Thanks, sir.” She tells him as she pays for the cut, and then adds a sizable tip. “Y’know, you should quit those things. They’re bad for your health.”

Giuseppe, smoking a cigar that he doesn’t know will lead to him developing lung cancer in seven or eight years, scoffs out under his breath. “Yes, yes, believe me, my wife won’t let me hear the end of it.”

“Well… maybe take this as a sign to listen to her.” Yang can’t exactly come out and say the truth, but if she can someone save her childhood barber from an early grave, then… “Just think about it, alright? They have nicotine gum and stuff like that, don’t they?”

Giuseppe sighs, but nods his head. “I’ll think about it, Miss…?”

“Yang.” She tells him, seeing no reason to lie.

“Yang, hm?” Giuseppe grinds his cigarette into the ash tray on his desk. “Huh. More common name than I thought.”

She smiles as she makes her way out of the barber shop, hoping that she’s inspired some change in the man, but knowing that, realistically, she hasn’t.

She’d tried though. And maybe that’s enough.

When she arrives back at the hotel, she enters into their shared room to find Raven having just gotten out of the shower. Yang turns her face away, mostly because her mother has no concept of modesty at all, and earns a dry hum from Raven for it.

“You got your hair done?”

“I did.”

“It looks…” Raven trails off. “Weird.”

“Wow. Thanks mom.” Yang tries not to actually allow her mother’s words to affect her. “Very cool thing to say.”

“I didn’t mean–” Raven snarls. “You wear your hair almost exactly like I wear mine; or at least it seemed like you did during the brief time before I sliced it off. It’s like staring at myself in the mirror, and seeing a completely different hairstyle.”

Yang sighs, supposing that she can accept that excuse. “Yeah, well, in the future, the word you’re looking for is ‘nice’.”

Raven scoffs, but gets dressed all the same. It’s a bit weird, sharing a room with her mother who is, at most, only eight or nine years older than her.

Still, eventually, Raven dresses, and tells Yang she’s going to go out to get something to eat. Yang nods her head, tells her that she’s planning on showering, and does just that.

She showers out the loose hairs from her head that the barber had cut, and then puts some product in it to make it poof out a bit. She’s taking some hints from how Blake had done her own hair in Atlas, and she’s finding herself quite liking it, truth be told.

It occurs to her as she steps out of the hotel room some thirty or so minutes later, however, that her mother hadn’t exactly told her where she’d been planning on going. So it is that Yang ends up wandering around Patch, wondering just where it is her mother might choose to go for lunch.

It turns out she has no idea. Yang’s favorite restaurant – a pizza place close enough for delivery to their cabin – does not contain a Raven when she enters into it to check, but it does contain two slices of pepperoni pizza and a cola, which she downs with a satisfied hum before heading back out to continue searching.

And then, of course, things get weird, as they always must these days.

Because she finds where she next searches…

“You.” Summer Rose, her mother, looks surprised to have found her. “You were with Raven.”

“I…” Yang doesn’t really know what she’s supposed to say in this scenario. That’s mostly because there are about a thousand things going through her head in that moment, many of them less than helpful. “Yeah. I was.”

Summer nods her head, seeming perturbed. “I see. Do you… know where she is right now?”

“I’m looking for her as well.”

“Who said I was looking for her?”

It’s odd to see her mother so defensive. “Uh… you, just now?”

Summer parts her lips, seemingly to speak, but she closes them a moment later, looking down and away from Yang. “You say you’re a Huntress, yes? Licensed out of Atlas, was it?”

“Yeah.”

“Show me.”

Yang isn’t surprised her mother doesn’t trust her. She reaches into her back pocket, looks down at her ID, realizes it says her name on it, and then grimaces.

It’s a patch job, obviously, but she quickly goes into an editing tool and blocks out her name with a white bar. It’s obvious it’s been tampered with, but at the very least her mother won’t suspect her of either A. altering the space time continuum, or B. stealing her daughter’s identity.

Which feels unfair, given it’s her identity, too.

She shows her mother the ID, and sure enough, Summer’s brow furrows.

“Your name is blocked out.”

“I’m aware.”

Summer chuckles coldly. “I suppose I don’t exactly trust you, either.”

She hears Summer’s words, but she couldn’t be more wrong.

There’s no one on the entirety of Remnant, barring her team, that Yang trusts more.

“So, believe me?”

“I believe you. I don’t trust you, but yes, I believe you are a Huntress.” Summer sighs. “You’re quite young to be fully licensed.”

“I went to an academy for a year before something happened. Ended up roaming around the world with my team, before getting our official licenses a year or so after that.”

It’s practically no information at all, but it hurts her more than she’d thought it would to have to hold back on telling her mother, well… everything.

Because she’d gone to her mother’s grave often; told her of the many things that had been happening at Beacon on the few breaks they’d had. She remembers telling her about getting to be on a team with Ruby, telling her about Weiss and Blake’s spats, and the docks, and how maybe, maybe, she had thought Blake to be a little pretty.

She smiles just thinking about it, then feels an equally potent sadness remembering that the woman standing before her feels nothing but suspicion towards her.

But she can’t say a word. There are things at stake more important than her own feelings, Yang knows that, but it doesn’t make this any easier.

“Any ideas where Raven might have gone?” Yang asks Summer.

“I’m surprised you’re asking me.”

“I don’t know what her life was like here.” Yang states, and it’s the truth. It’s hard for her to imagine Raven being in Patch, and yet, she knows for a fact that Raven had lived here for over two years. She would have had to have had places she liked, or favorite locales. “I figured you’d know more about her than I would.”

Summer hums. “You’re honestly probably right. I suppose there’s a diner down the way that the three of us always liked. Maybe she’ll be there.”

It’s as good as any other idea Yang might be able to conjure up, so she goes along with Summer as she leads Yang through Patch, and towards a somewhat rickety looking wooden building.

It seems to be a mom-and-pop diner, the kind of place that no one outside of the immediate town it’s located in would have ever heard of. And yet, it has quite the crowd built up around it, with people sitting at the outdoor tables and being served rather delectably smelling meals.

Yang has literally just eaten, but she’s somehow getting hungry again.

Summer leads the two of them inside, and lo and behold, sitting in a booth at the back of the restaurant, sipping from a tall mug of coffee and looking like absolute shit, is Raven.

Summer halts in place, staring over at Raven who has yet to see either of them. Yang wonders just what it is that her mom’s thinking, even as she shakes her head, takes a steadying breath, and makes her way over towards the booth.

They approach, and Raven sees them coming. Her eyes widen as they lock onto Summer. She swallows visibly as Yang takes a seat beside her – trying to offer Raven some semblance of comfort – and Summer sits across from the two of them, on the opposite side of the table.

“Summer…” Raven mutters out. “What are you doing here?”

“Is that what you have to say, Raven?”

“No, I–” Raven growls out beneath her breath. “No, I didn’t mean anything by it, I was just…”

Summer sighs, throwing Raven a bone. “I know. You weren’t expecting me, and you’re surprised I’m here, right?”

Raven nods her head, eager to explain herself and get Summer off her back.

“Why are you here? I’m not upset, to be clear, I’m glad to see you, it’s just–” Yang doesn’t think she’s ever watched her mother fumble over her words quite this hard. “I thought when I left, you…”

“You thought I’d just let you go again?” Summer says it in a tone so very svelte and soft that Yang, again, feels like she really shouldn’t be here. “After I finally got to see you?”

Raven swallows. “I…”

“Would you like me to leave?” Yang finally builds up the courage – or perhaps the willpower – to ask. “If the two of you would like to have a private conversation–”

“No!” Raven suddenly shouts, far louder than she likely intended given the fact that the surrounding tables all look over at her. “I… no. Stay.”

Yang nods her head, and the others around them lose interest quickly. “Alright. I’ll stay.”

Summer looks between the two of them oddly, then. She doesn’t seem to know what to make of the fact that Raven so very obviously needs Yang’s presence. In all fairness, Yang’s really not sure what to make of it either.

Her mother has never seemed this vulnerable before. But then… she also doesn’t think she’s ever seen Raven in a scenario where she has more on the line, either. Even the Relic of Knowledge the first time around had been…

Well, she’d not needed or wanted it. To take it would have been to invite Salem’s attention, which had been the entire impetuous behind her working alongside Salem in the first place at Haven.

To get the eldritch woman to leave her alone.

“Alright,” Summer clears her throat. “I’ll just come out and say it, then. Tai and I talked about what happened. About seeing you again.”

Raven leans forward, hanging on every word.

“He wanted to let you back into our lives.” Summer speaks, and Raven’s entire being seems to spark. “But I’m not quite so sure.”

Raven’s expression tenses right back up. “What do you mean?”

“What I mean is that I’m not sure the person who’s sat in front of me right now is the same person I once knew.” Summer explains, and with every word, Ravn shrinks down just a bit in her seat. “Do you know how many nights I lied awake hoping; praying that one day, you would come and show up on our doorstep, begging our forgiveness? Too many for me to even count. That happened a lot in the first year or so. Raising Yang was difficult, and it was even more so when I fell pregnant with Ruby. I wanted nothing more than for you to come back. We even sent Qrow out to go and get you. We thought that if you heard about Ruby; and about how much we needed you, that you might return.”

Raven’s staring down at the table in front of her, unable to look up.

“Do you remember what you said to him, Rae?” Summer’s tone indicates that it is a rhetorical question. “Do you remember what it is you told him?”

Raven does. That’s obvious. She can’t bring herself to say it, though.

“You told him to ‘get the fuck out of your camp’.” Summer states. “That ‘the two of us weren’t your concern anymore’. Do you remember that, Raven?”

“I…”

“Well?”

“…I remember.”

“Hm.” Summer nods her head, her expression dim. “Do you know how long I cried that night? For so very many nights? It wasn’t just the hormones from the pregnancy. I was gutted. Tai tried his best, and so did Qrow, but I was a wreck for weeks. I wanted Qrow to take me along to see you, I thought that maybe I could convince you if I went along, but… he wouldn’t. He told me that you were too far gone. That he didn’t want to endanger me for nothing.”

Raven says nothing.

“That was half a decade ago, Raven. And since then, apart from Qrow’s reports, I haven’t heard a single word from you.”

“…What do you want me to say, Summer?”

“What do I want you to say?” Summer almost laughs. It isn’t a happy thing. “You tell me, Rae. What do you think I want to hear?”

“…I…”

“Is that it? You don’t know? Or do you know, and you just can’t bring yourself to say it.”

Yang, again, really wishes she weren’t here for this.

And then, it feels like time repeats itself. Yang watches her mother – her biological mother – look up at Summer. She watches as a thousand different emotions pass by her face, as she tries to rationalize a decade of bad decisions, and…

And then it’s all she can manage to just say, “I’m sorry…”

And Summer’s face warps as well. Her visage, previously stoic, cracks down the middle. Her hands crumple into fists. Her knuckles almost go white.

“Why… why couldn’t you have just said that so many years ago!?” Summer suddenly utters, seemingly devastated. “Why did you… what is it with you!?”

“I don’t know, I…” Raven shakes her head, tears gathering in her eyes as well. “I don’t know. I’m a fuck-up, Summer. I’m not… I just don’t understand how to…”

Summer’s lips quiver as she tries to speak, but she ends up shaking her head, letting out a horrid breath of sorrow.

“It’s… it’s not alright, Rae. Qrow was just as fucked up as you, but somehow, he managed.”

“He wasn’t as–” Raven goes to shout, but again, the people around them are looking right at their table. “Let’s take this outside.”

“We haven’t even ordered.”

“Are you really hungry right now?”

Summer just blankly nods, accepting Raven’s words.

They end up walking for a good five or so minutes, until they’re along the outer edges of Patch, before Raven continues speaking.

“Arguing about which of us was more fucked up is pointless,” she says, and Yang can’t help but agree. “But you’re… you’re right. Qrow was able to adapt. I’ve…”

“You did.” Summer’s voice is small. “You did, but then… but then you ran away.”

“I…”

“Why?” Summer asks, and it seems to shake her, finally getting to ask. “I’ve had that question sitting in the back of my head for nearly a decade now. I think I deserve the answer, Rae.”

“It’s… because I was terrified.”

“…Is that all?”

Yang grimaces, taking a step back away from her two mothers. She… can’t really blame Summer her words, no matter how brutal they are.

“It… this was…” Raven looks to Summer. “I never… growing up, Qrow and I did whatever we had to do to survive. That included killing people, robbing others, and… and some worse things. Some things I’ve never really been able to get out of my head, no matter how hard I try.”

Raven lets out a shaky breath. “I can’t… I saw Yang, when she was born, and I looked down at her, and I just… I knew, in that moment, that with me there, she…” Raven bites her bottom lip hard enough that Yang thinks she’ll draw blood. “She’d end up like me. Or…”

Summer gapes at that, clearly not having expected such a response. “Why would you…”

“I don’t know!” Raven shouts out, and she looks down at her shaking hands a moment later. “I don’t even know, Summer! I’m not… that person, that weak, ineffectual idiot who ran away from you all those years ago, I… I barely even know who they were anymore! That’s not me, that’s not… I…”

“Is that why you came back?” Summer asks, and she sounds almost hopeful. “To make things right?”

“I came to right my wrongs.” Raven tries stepping forward, and, when Summer doesn’t step back, she takes yet another. “Summer, listen to me… I know you don’t want to let me back into your life so easily, and I…” Raven looks down and away. “And I can’t really blame you for that. I think if it were me in your shoes I’d think the same thing.”

Summer doesn’t say anything. She just listens, and watches, even as Raven takes a step forward every second or so. The distance between them is closing.

“I’m not asking you to accept me right away. I’m not asking for you to let me tell Yang the truth, or… or for things to go right back to the way they used to be between us, but…” Raven stops three paces from Summer, and stands right there. She doesn’t get too close, doesn’t try to push further.

In that moment, Yang thinks that maybe, just maybe, her mother has grown as she says she had.

“Please. All I ask is a chance. Let me prove myself to you. I just want to be a part of your life.”

Yang can tell by the expression on her mother’s face alone that she’s utterly dumbfounded. Her hands shake at her sides. Her eyes, gleaming silver in the midday sun, finally let loose the tears that have been building within them.

“Gods damnit, Rae,” Her mother laughs as she reaches up, and wipes at her eyes, at her cheeks. “Why? Why did you have to leave?”

Raven steps forward, then again. A single pace separates them. A single step; inches.

“I’m sorry.”

“…Again.”

“Huh?”

“Say it again.”

Raven parts her lips, and nods her head. “I’m sorry, Summer.”

“Tell me you won’t leave. Promise me. You’ll stay right here, and you won’t go again.”

“I’ll never leave again. And if I have to, then you’ll know exactly where I’m going, and for exactly how long.”

Summer wraps her own arms around her body, crying into her own forearm.

Raven closes that final bit of distance.

“I promise.” Raven whispers, even as she tilts Summer’s face up.

And then Raven kisses Summer.

And Yang’s brain sort of short-circuits around there.

Oh.

Oooooh.

Oooooooohoh.

Huh.

Yang has absolutely no idea what to do with this newfound information.

Eventually, the two part, and Summer looks up at Raven with an expression so complicated that Yang doesn’t even bother attempting to parse its meaning.

“I… I’ll talk to Tai. I’m not letting you back in, not yet, but… I’ll see if… well…”

Raven just nods. “I’ll be here. I’m not going to leave.”

“Where are you staying?”

Raven gives Summer the hotel, and even their exact room number. Summer jots it all down, and then nods, wipes at her eyes again, and steps back from her.

“I…” She tries to say more, Yang can tell, but nothing really comes. “I’ll call you when I can.”

“Alright.” Raven says, and she looks like she’s both on cloud nine and utterly gutted. “I’ll be waiting.”

Summer nods to her, and then – seemingly having forgotten Yang had been there in the first place – gives an incredibly curt and professional nod towards her as well.

And then she departs, making her way back towards the Xiao-Long cabin.

There’s a space of one or two minutes, then, where neither she nor Raven say a single word.

Mostly, that’s because Yang just hasn’t found the words to accurately say what it is she wants to.

She feels this is fair, given she’s just figured out her mom, dad, and mother had all been in…

“Oh my god.” Yang mutters eventually, shellshocked. “You were in a throuple.”

Raven turns back towards her with a raised eyebrow. “You didn’t know?”

“I didn’t–” Yang spits out angrily. “I’m sorry; of course I didn’t know! You disappeared! How was I supposed to know!? When would I have figured this out, mom!?”

Raven winces, as if to give Yang that one. “I guess that’s fair. If you must know, then yes. Things were rather complicated back at Beacon. I and Tai–”

Yang shivers uncomfortably. “I really don’t want to know.”

She thinks her mother will back off, then. After all, it makes sense that she will. She has no reason to go any further, at least not in Yang’s opinion.

And yet, Yang has been blind to something her mother has been growing increasingly annoyed about. The fact that she’s been the source of Yang’s teasing, and that she’s been unable to get one back at Yang at all.

So, in that moment, when she finds something that genuinely perturbs her daughter?

She takes no prisoners.

“So,” Raven plants her hands on her hips, a cheshire grin growing on her lips. “Your father and I got into a relationship in… perhaps our third year of Beacon?”

“Stop!”

“It was nice. Mostly a physical thing, of course,”

Yang starts walking away, content to leave her mother there, but the woman chases behind her.

“So, there we were; having messy, sloppy sex–”

“Stop!”

“When one day Summer walks in, and suddenly she can’t meet my or Tai’s eyes!”

“Stop it!” Yang starts running, but her mother is just as fast as she is.

“I thought it was a normal thing; she caught your father with his–” “Don’t!” “In my–” “Aah!” “But I soon realized that Summer was in love with Tai as well when I caught her staring at him.”

“Mercy! Please!”

“So, I suggested we have a threesome–”

“Oh my god, I will do anything–”

“But then Summer kissed me, and I realized she was also in love with me, too,”

“Okay that’s actually sweet–”

“This happened while your father was railing me–”

“Gah!”

Maybe this isn’t over. Maybe Summer and Raven haven’t made their peace nearly as much as it seems they have, but…

For now, Yang supposes, this is better than seeing her mother without any life in her at all.

…Sort of.

“And so, the three of us realized that we all just sort of wanted to make one big fuck pile–”

Yang wretches.

Chapter Text

By the time they get back to Mistral, Weiss Schnee hasn’t slept in nearly twenty-seven hours. That had, in all fairness, not really been her intention. They’d been caught up in chasing Marcus Black, and had found his cabin after some twelve or so hours of being awake. The entire affair with him had taken about thirty minutes, and then keeping Mercury alive long enough that they could get him back to Mistral, or his aura could take over and heal him, had meant that neither she nor Qrow had been able to sleep.

Then again, with Mercury in such a state, Weiss isn’t really able to bring herself to shut her eyes. She… she feels she needs to be there.

What she wouldn’t give to have Jaune there, by her side.

…For his semblance! She means for his semblance, so that he could heal Mercury! That…

Ugh. She’s arguing with herself. She must truly be exhausted to be reduced to such.

She’s sitting with Qrow in the back rooms of one of Mistral’s many hospitals, up on the emergency floors. The smell of cleaning solution and iron both mixes into the air, which she knows is because of the caked-on blood that she hadn’t managed to work off all the way when she’d washed her hands earlier.

It… gets into places. Under Weiss’ fingernails, into the divots and wrinkles in her skin. Poor Qrow’s likely got it much worse than her.

They must look ghastly. The nurses and doctors don’t seem to mind, however, and Weiss supposes that if someone got used to dealing with these sorts of things every day, they might not balk so much.

Weiss is very glad that she isn’t accustomed to this, despite the fact that it would be helping her in the here and now.

“You alright, kid?”

She turns to see Qrow looking down at her out of the corner of his eye. It’s got bags under it, and with the perpetual crow’s feet that he seems to have, well… it makes him look an awful lot more haggard than he actually is.

“I’m… coping.” Weiss admits.

“Yeah.” Qrow hums out, looking bored on the surface, and yet Weiss knows him well enough from their time in Atlas to understand that he’s likely worried for her sake.

“I’ve never killed someone before.” Weiss says after a while, sort of just… deciding to rip the bandage off. “I’ve taken actions that have led to people dying before, but… I’ve never aimed my weapon at someone with the intent to kill them, and then accomplished that feat. It’s…”

Weiss pauses, her thoughts a jumble of differing emotions and ideas.

“I don’t really know what to think. I shouldn’t feel… bad, should I?”

“Hah. Well, that’s a complicated one.” Qrow sighs, and it’s only then, in a moment where an older Qrow would’ve assuredly reached for his hip flask, that Weiss realizes this Qrow doesn’t have one at all. “I’m probably not the best person to be having this conversation with. I’ve… I don’t know, gotten used to it, maybe? I’ve killed a few dozen people at this point. None of them good people, mind you. The reprobates of society. Murderers, kidnappers, slavers, those sorts. Or, well, when I had a choice. I did some fucked up shit as a member of the Branwen’s, but… well, I’d rather not think about that at the moment, so let’s not.”

Weiss nods.

“But it’s funny… no matter how terrible a person is, when you take a life… when you watch that life drain from out of someone’s eyes, leaving behind a pile of meat where a person used to be… it does something to you. I don’t know how to describe it.” He laughs, a tired thing. “Like I said, I’m not really the person for this.”

“I appreciate you putting in the effort.” She tells him, straightening up a little. “It is… kind of you.”

“Ah, well…” Qrow rubs at the back of his neck. “You remind me a bit of my sister, actually.”

Weiss bristles immediately. “I what!? The bandit leader!?”

Qrow barks out a laugh. “I meant more that you’re both haughty and headstrong, not that I think you’re going to go off and start a bandit tribe. I just… I wanted you to know I was looking out for you.”

“…Thank you.”

“Mm.” He coughs into one hand. “Listen, kid – er, Rubes. I know this is going to sound dumb as hell, but… don’t blame yourself for what happened to that kid.”

The contents of Weiss’ stomach turn to ice. She sucks in a breath, and finds her throat is barren of any moisture.

She tries to speak, maybe to make some silly excuse, like she’s fine, but she can’t. She gives up a moment later. There’s just no point, is there?

She hears that sound again; the squelching that had echoed out inside her skull the moment the Arma Gigas’ blade had struck Mercury’s side.

It sickens her, makes her want to wretch into the nearest bin. She stands, makes her way over to one, and heaves, but can’t manage to get anything out. Nothing comes.

To be fair, she hasn’t eaten anything all day.

Qrow’s there, behind her, supporting her. “It wasn’t your fault. The adrenaline, the moment, the lives at stake… you couldn’t have made an accurate decision in that moment on how much force you needed, and not even I could’ve stopped my blade in time to save that kid. He was running right for you, right at a weapon mid swing. That’s not on you.”

Weiss, intellectually, knows that Qrow is telling the truth. The simple fact of the matter is that Mercury had endangered himself recklessly; but can they really blame him when it had been his father who had been about to be killed?

She doesn’t think she can; just as much as she’s sure they can’t be blamed for doing the deed itself.

She eventually recovers, wiping at her mouth with the back of her hand. It comes away clean. She hadn’t managed to vomit up anything at all.

It brings back the thoughts of the black goop she’d thrown up the other day in the hotel she and Qrow had been staying in. It had seemed so… odd. She decides then that once she’s gotten some rest, she’s going to let herself be examined here; see if there’s anything wrong.

There likely isn’t, but… well, one can’t be too careful, Weiss thinks.

The door at the front of the room opens, and in steps the surgeon who’d been assigned to Mercury’s case. Weiss’ heart practically stops, even as she shoots forward, dimly aware of how crazed she must look running on fumes.

“How is he!?”

The woman gives an exhausted looking smile. “Stable. Barely.” She stresses the word. “But I do believe he’s going to make it.”

Weiss damn near collapses to her knees; all the tension of the day – and night, and morning, and day all over again – catching up with her.

She cries quietly into her hands, the relief too much to bear.

“That’s…” Qrow lets out a breath. “That’s good to hear.”

The doctor steps towards Qrow. “He owes the two of you his life. If you hadn’t sewn him back up, well… I don’t think he’d have made it. Hell, if it had taken you another five minutes to get here, I’m not sure he’d have made it.”

Possibilities trek through Weiss’ skull, thoughts of them being just a bit slower, or just a bit less fortunate. She forces herself to eject them from her brain, to not even consider them.

They will accost her when she lies down to rest regardless. She might as well free herself of them for now.

Weiss and Qrow both discuss such things – Mercury’s condition, the circumstances that had led to their arrival, the disheveled state of both she and Qrow – for ten or so minutes, before a light comes on, the surgeon sighs, and tells them she’s got to get back to work.

After that… well…

The world kind of crashes down onto the both of them.

Weiss barely has the energy to make it down the steps to the lobby, let alone to make it to a hotel to crash for the night. Instead of getting to do that, however, they have a lot of paperwork to fill out – official Hunter business, insurance related, which is going to be complicated given Weiss doesn’t have any.

Luckily, upon seeing Weiss hesitate on filling her form out, Qrow sighs, sets down his own clipboard, and fills hers out for her.

He’s letting her use Beacon’s insurance, apparently, and putting the entire mission down under his name. It’s… quite kind of him.

Qrow really is just as Ruby had always said; a total softy underneath all those manufactured spines.

Weiss makes an appointment for the following morning, before the nurse tells her that if she just wants blood drawn, she can handle it right then and there. The perks of being a Huntress, apparently, is being given preferential service.

It doesn’t seem all that fair to the people who’ve been waiting in line, but…

When Weiss thinks about it, taking five minutes to get some blood drawn is probably a better idea than having to come back tomorrow.

Especially when her gameplan for tomorrow is to sleep, and then sleep some more.

So, she goes and gets blood drawn. It doesn’t take very long, and the nurse tells her that they’ll contact her with information regarding the results within a week or so. Weiss curses as she realizes she doesn’t actually have a scroll capable of taking calls, but again, Qrow steps in, offering his own number.

Weiss doesn’t like that nearly as much, but after Qrow promises to not eavesdrop on any private conversations with a doctor – which, in all fairness, is a rather scummy and un-Qrow-like thing to do – she acquiesces, and thanks him.

“Don’t mention it, Rubes,” he says as they exit out of the hospital, before pausing, seemingly intrigued. “Although, actually…”

He turns back towards Weiss, and shoots her an amused eyebrow.

“What’s your name? Your real name, I mean. It’s not Ruby, am I right?”

Weiss grimaces, not in any position to be coming up with fake excuses right now. She’s tired, she wants to go home – her home doesn’t exist anymore, but home in this case means surrounded by those she loves – and lie down. Then, she wants to promptly forget all about everything else going on.

Yes, that sounds heavenly.

Less heavenly is the whole coming up with a fake name that’s actually believable…

Or…

She could…

No, that’s stupid. Asinine. Completely ridiculous…

…

“Weiss.” She says, planting her hands on her hips. “You can call me that.”

“Hah.” Qrow seems amused. “Like the Schnee brat? Weiss Schnee? You’re saying they named two of you Weiss Schnee?”

“Whether or not you believe me is your business,” Weiss tells him, stepping right by him and making for the nearest hotel. “I’ve held up my end of the bargain.”

Qrow doesn’t say anything for a few seconds as he follows along behind her, but eventually, he sighs, and shakes his head.  

“Sure. Fine. Whatever, ‘Weiss’.”

And Weiss smiles…

It’s good to hear her own name out of someone’s mouth again.

/

The next day or so is spent falling into and out of sleep repeatedly. Weiss ends up being out of commission for nearly sixteen hours, give or take, but when she finally does get up for real, it’s well into the evening.

“Ah, sleeping beauty awakens.” Qrow smirks at her as she enters into the hotel lobby, though judging by the cup of coffee that he’s nursing, she has a feeling he can’t have been awake much longer than her. “You feeling more human now?”

“Mm.” She pours herself a cup of coffee as well, and then sits down on one of the couches opposite him. “Ugh. My head hurts.”

“Yeah, that’ll happen when you fuck up your sleep schedule. I’m pretty much perpetually fucking mine up, so I don’t get the headaches as much anymore.”

Weiss grunts out in acknowledgement as she takes greedy sips of her coffee, until she’s finished the entire mug in just under two minutes. It helps that it’s not too terribly hot, having evidently been sitting around a while.

If anything, it’s a little colder than she’d like, but she really does need the caffeine at the moment.

“So, wanna’ head down to check on the kid?”

She hums out to confirm that, and then stands when Qrow does.

“He’s probably not going to be awake as of yet, but who knows, weirder shit’s happened.”

“You have a way with words.”

“Thanks, I get told that a lot.”

She rolls her eyes, but she’s grinning against her better judgement.

The trip down to the hospital is about a kilometer. Not too bad for either of them, Hunters, but then, Weiss’ legs are really crying for relief, and she’s putting them through yet another sprint.

Well, they’re not in any hurry this time, at least.

Unfortunately, Weiss is an awful lot more tired than she should be, and so when a family of three walks towards her, evidently expecting her to move out of the way, she’s just not all there.

She collides with the – presumably – husband, and sends him to the floor. One would expect her to be the one knocked over due the difference in height and weight between them, but Weiss is a Huntress, and aura is a hell of a drug.

“I’m so sorry!” She winces as she reaches down, and offers a hand to the man. “I didn’t mean to– I wasn’t watching where I was going–”

“It’s fine, it’s fine,” The man chuckles good-naturedly. “It’s no trouble at all. I think we’re all a little out of it this evening.”

Right. It’s… probably six or seven at night. The sun will be setting shortly. It feels like the morning for Weiss given she just woke up, but…

She turns, and looks over at the rest of the family standing there. The mother is a rather mature looking woman with brown hair and pale blue eyes. She has a look that screams wealth to Weiss, who has seen more than a few people who’ve dressed just like she is.

There’s also a certain… confidence in her stance, however, that to Weiss says she might also have once been a combatant of some kind. Interesting, but not overly noteworthy. There are many Huntsmen and Huntresses around the world, and even more soldiers.  

“Ah, but where are my manners,” The man coughs into one fist. “My name is Jim. This is my wife, Carmel, and my daughter, Trivia.”

Weiss looks down at the final member of the family, and sees a young girl, maybe nine or ten years old, looking up at her with a sort of… distrust feels too extreme. More wariness, Weiss will say.

“Hello, there,” She kneels down, and offers out a hand to the young girl. “My name is Weiss. What’s yours?”

“Ah, I’m afraid Trivia is very shy,” Carmel, the wife, says, and Weiss feels a bit bad about imposing on her then. “But I’m sure she’s delighted to meet you, aren’t you, Trivia?”

From the expression on Trivia’s face, then, the brief flash of fear followed by a curt and quick nod, Weiss already feels herself building some… apprehension about these three. She’s been around wealth long enough in her life to know these types of people by feel alone.

The kinds worried only about appearances.

It’s evident in the suave outfits all three have on. It’s evident in the tailored suit that Jim has on; emblazoned with the symbol of the company who’d created it on the front, an establishment she happens to know charges well into the five-figure range for a single piece of apparel. It’s evident in the necklace of real pearls that Carmel wears around her neck.

It’s evident in the way that Trivia, young Trivia, says nothing, does nothing. The way that she stays entirely silent.

It’s not immediately worthy of alarm, not truly. Trivia is likely just acquiescing to her parents’ requests to stay silent and largely out of sight. It’s not exactly great parenting, but then, Weiss wouldn’t really know great parenting if it hit her squarely in the chest.

So, for now, she’ll allow them to get on their way.

“Well, I apologize again for bumping into you, and I apologize to you as well, Trivia, for stressing–”

And then Weiss’ eyes widen.

Because Trivia, the girl beneath her…

Her eyes have suddenly changed color. They’ve gone from the brown they’d been before…

To one brown, and one pink.

And that…

That has entirely different alarm bells going off in Weiss’ head.

Because she knows those eyes.

No sooner has Weiss’ expression shifted, however, than has Jim rounded on his daughter with a snarl, and grabbed her by the collar. Weiss takes a step back, stunned by the complete turn in behavior from the man, but she’s still close enough to catch his fevered, hissing whispers.

“Why aren’t you wearing your contacts!?”

Trivia shakes her head in abject fear, and Weiss is about a second away from stepping in, stopping all of this, when Qrow places a hand on her shoulder.

He taps Atlesian Morse into her back.

Wait.

Weiss doesn’t want to wait; she wants to rescue this poor girl from–

Watch. Qrow taps into her back this time, and Weiss… it’s choppy, and Qrow can’t properly communicate with her in a subset of language he’s only ever learned for use in combat scenarios, but she thinks she knows what Qrow is saying.

Pay attention, keep track of their abuses.

Weiss nods subtly, even as Jim keeps speaking.

“Don’t you see!?” He hisses out, barely audible. “You’ve frightened this poor lady with your freakish abilities! This is why we tell you to wear your contacts!”

Carmel kneels down beside her husband as well. “Why didn’t you wear them.”

Trivia hastily makes some signs with her hands, which, to Weiss, indicates that she’s not shy, like they’d said, but likely mute. That… yes, that adds up. If this is who Weiss thinks she is…

How odd, that she would run into two antagonists from her life. That she would meet a young Mercury Black, and then, a few days later…

“Oh, Neo made you do it!?” Jim reaches up, and, to Weiss’ horror, smacks his daughter across the face. “Don’t give me that garbage, Trivia! Your imaginary friend can’t control you!”

Weiss has had just about enough of this. She knows what Qrow is saying, to watch and record moments of abuse so that they can report this, but she’s not about to sit by and watch this happen, either.

Yet, just as Weiss moves in to give them a piece of their minds, the two stand up, and are suddenly all smiles yet again.

“Our apologies for our daughters’ behavior.” Jim chuckles out, but the sound is so incredibly fake that Weiss wants to spit at it. “She has a very… overactive imagination. You’ll have to excuse her.”

Weiss is biting down hard on the insides of her cheek, even as Jim clears his throat. “Well, we should probably be going. Quite the busy day today. It’s been nice meeting you.”

The sentiment is not shared.

The three move to walk away, but as they do so, Weiss meets Trivia’s eyes one final time, and in them…

In them she sees something she never thought she’d see from Neopolitan.

A look of purest defeat. Of begrudging acceptance. Of total subservience.

And Weiss decides that enough is enough.

“How dare you treat your daughter like that!?”

She’s not quiet about it. Several other people on the opposite side of the street turn to see what all the fuss is about, and Qrow winces visibly, even as he takes a step forward, preparing to back her up if this gets ugly.

Jim and Carmel turn to her with shocked expressions, but there is anger in the both of them. Much more extreme anger from Jim’s side, but a cooler, more dangerous fury on Carmel’s.

Just as before, she thinks this woman is a former combatant. She gives nothing away.

“Who are you to tell us how to raise our daughter!?” Jim calls back, evidently fuming.

“A better person than the two of you, evidently! Not that that’s all that difficult!”

Jim steps towards her, or makes to, if not for Carmel stopping him with a hand on his chest.

“Ignore her, darling.” She speaks, evidently the cooler head amongst them. “We’ve no reason to listen to the opinions of some… harlot.”

Weiss bristles, but she refuses to rise to their insults. It’s clear they want that. Maybe to get Weiss screaming at them, or to attack them. Then, they can sue her into the ground, and force her to let this all go.

She’s not going to allow it.

Not when it wouldn’t just be her paying the price.

“Fine. But this isn’t over.”

“Hah.” Carmel turns away without a care in the world. “I do believe it is. Come along, darling.”

The family disappears beyond a corner, and Weiss does her best to unscrew her jaw. She turns to Qrow, holds out her hand, and tells him, “I need to borrow your scroll.”

“Who are you calling?”

“Who else? I’m calling child protective services.”

Qrow cackles. “Not one to fuck around, are you?”

“Of course not!” Weiss harrumphs. “They’re clearly abusing their poor daughter. Did you see how she was reacting? They called her a freak!”

“They said she had freakish powers.”

She levels a death glare at Qrow, and the man raises his hands in surrender.

“Hey, I don’t disagree at all. I’m just saying if you want to nail these assholes, you’re going to need to do it the right way. These kinds of things are hard as hell. If you want, I can keep an eye on them, and report the truth to the ones who go and investigate them. Unfortunately, in most cases, the children don’t stick up for themselves. It’s not exactly surprising. Those are still her parents. Whether they’re assholes or not. She’s never known anything else. And those services aren’t great on the kids either, even if she does get taken from her parents. Often, they end up in the foster care system, which…” Qrow sighs. “Which I wish was a lot better than it actually is. I’ve heard some horror stories is all I’ll say.”

“Hmph.” Weiss plants her hands on her hips. “I’m not letting them take advantage of her! I’ll adopt the girl myself if I have to; they’re not going to get away with what they’re doing!”

“You sure you don’t have enough on your plate, kid?”

“I can handle it.”

“Suuure.” Qrow rolls his eyes. “We’ll pretend I believe that. A kid is an awful lot of responsibility. I’ve seen someone realize just how much responsibility a bit too late to make a decision otherwise, and… regret it, let’s say.”

Weiss knows he’s talking about Raven. But she isn’t Raven, and Vanille is no ordinary girl.

One day, she’ll become one of the most powerful women in all the world, and play a large part in why both Vale and Atlas will fall to the Grimm.

Preventing her from becoming that person will, effectively, save hundreds of thousands of lives.

“Alright, c’mon, we’re off to go visit the kid, and then I’ve got a phone call of my own to make.”

“You’re not going to let me call child protective services?”

“I’ll do something better than calling them, trust me.” Qrow tells her, winking. “But for now, let’s see the kid. That’ll ease your mind a little, no?”

Weiss sighs, but agrees that it probably will, yes. She straightens out her outfit, takes a breath, and then nods.

“Alright… let’s go.”

Chapter Text

Weiss and Qrow arrive at the hospital some ten or so minutes later.

Weiss is distracted thinking about Neo, or Trivia, and her family, and the abuse she’d seen her taking. It has her irritable, and the fact that Mercury is waiting for them is not helping even remotely.

She takes a breath as they board an elevator to the intensive care unit. Mercury’s doing better, but he still needs around the clock service for his injuries, and to make sure that his body is properly adapting to his newly unlocked aura.

They arrive to find Mercury awake, and while Weiss makes to enter into the closed-off room immediately, Qrow places a hand on her shoulder, stopping her.

“You sure about this?” He asks, and Weiss is initially uncertain as to Qrow’s line of questioning.

“Should I not be?”

“You can probably answer that question on your own, Weiss.” Qrow states, sighing. “Whether or not we did what we had to, we killed his father.”

Weiss… now that she thinks about it – and she’s not sure how it had managed to evade her thoughts beforehand – they very much had done that.

“There’s a pretty good chance that kid’s going to scream at you, that he’s going to blame you. I’m asking you whether or not you think you can handle that.”

“I…” Weiss swallows. “I don’t know if I can. But… at the same time, I’m responsible for what happened, aren’t I?”

“There’s no need to punish yourself, kid.”

“I’m not punishing myself–”

“Easy to say that.” Qrow stares her down, not letting her get away from this. “But I don’t think you’re telling the truth. You want to apologize to the kid for what happened, don’t you?”

Weiss… she had wanted to do that, yes. And when Qrow says it…

It sounds ridiculous.

To ask a child forgiveness for murdering their parent, even if that parent had been a world-renowned assassin, is…

Well…

“Just…” Qrow sighs. “Don’t take anything the kid says personally. It’s not your fault that you did what you had to do. If Marcus Black had lived a fraction of a second longer, he’d have killed me and the kid with that grenade. You had no choice. But he’s not going to be able to see that.”

Weiss nods her head, takes a breath, and then steps inside the room.

Mercury Black, who will one day become one of Cinder’s, and then Salem’s, lieutenants, is talking quietly with a member of the nursing staff about something that Weiss cannot hear.

He seems… not happy, but he’s also not livid, or depressed. If Weiss hadn’t known any better, she’d have said he looked relatively calm.

She’s certain there are feelings much less so lurking beneath the surface for Mercury.

Once she fully steps into the space, however, Mercury’s eyes turn towards her.

And everything about him changes.

His lips peel; his brow draws down. His eyes narrow, and his breath catches. He snarls as he sits up in bed, and the only thing that prevents him from jumping to his feet is that same nurse he’d been talking to before, keeping him in place.

“YOU!” Mercury screams, and it is a sound that has Weiss taking a step back. “Murderer! I’ll kill you!”

Qrow is there beside her, once more supporting her. He steps forward, and says, “Weiss saved your life, kid. Your father was going to kill the both of us with that little stunt.”

“Shut up!” He screeches, his voice cracking, tears already running down his face. “I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you!”

Qrow sighs, but shakes his head, and backs off. He places a hand on Weiss’ shoulder, and nods towards the door with his head.

“It’s done. There’s nothing we can do. Let’s go.”

Weiss… she isn’t willing to accept that. It… he has to understand. She had done what she had to, for his sake.

“Mercury, listen,” She steps forward, ignoring the way Qrow tries to stop her. “Your dad would’ve killed you, he–”

“I don’t care!” He shouts, screams. “At least he’d still be alive! You killed him! You did it!”

The machines at Mercury’s side, monitoring his heartrate and other such measurements, are all spiking. The nurse who’s keeping Mercury in place presses a button, and immediately, two other nurses filter into the room. They hold Mercury down as the other nurse comes over, and starts pushing Weiss towards the door.

“What are you–”

“I’m sorry, ma’am, but for his sake, I’ll have to ask you to step out.” The nurse speaks the words, and it’s clear she is apologetic, at least. “He can’t be expending energy like this, and if you’re here… it’s only going to be worse.”

“That… yes.” Weiss nods her head slowly, and it’s difficult, really, to comprehend. “I… I understand.”

She allows herself to be taken out of the room by the nurse and Qrow, and then watches as the door shuts behind her. She hears Mercury still screaming, calling her a murderer, a killer…

His father had been all of those things, too, and yet… can she blame a child for not wanting to see the faults in their family?

Weiss had been the same, once upon a time.

“You okay?”

She looks up at Qrow, with a weary expression on his face, and feels a question on the tip of her tongue.

“Why is it always like this? Hard, and bitter?”

Qrow laughs, then, even as he leans against the opposite wall, and runs a hand down his face.

“I don’t know, kid… I don’t know.”

/

The next couple days are relatively quiet for Ruby.

She spends the majority of her time building Roman’s weapon, and then guiding him through the process. She’s happy to find that Roman’s a quick study, and that he’s not just coasting off of having her as a partner, either. He does his best during their evening sparring matches, although Amber has, for the moment, chosen to exempt herself.

Ruby admits to being somewhat bothered about that. She gets the feeling that Amber’s absence is on Ozpin’s orders – he can’t trust Ruby, given she just popped up out of nowhere – but…

Well, for now, she’ll focus on her first problem.

“So?” She asks Roman as he holds the inner blade of Melodic Foil in his hands, flicking it about and testing the weight. “Does it feel right?”

He hums out under his breath, evidently unsure as of yet. “I think so. It’s light; way lighter than I expected.”

“That’s what they’re made for. Of course, normal foils are also incredibly fragile, but as hunters, we can channel our auras into our blades to prevent them from snapping and breaking.” She explains, given that Roman’s likely not familiar with these concepts. His knives had, after all, snapped clean in two during their time in the Emerald Forest. “So, I’d advise getting a handle on that.”

Roman laughs. “Yeah, I guess that’s fair. You mind walking me through that?”

She doesn’t at all, and she does over the course of the next hour or so. Roman doesn’t exactly take to these things like a fish to water – Jaune, for example, had been a veritable sponge for new information, going from entirely incapable to able to hold his own against other hunters in training in just a few months – but she’s proud of Roman’s growth by the end of the evening.

“Keep practicing with those aura exercises I showed you. It might be a few weeks before you see any progress, but until then, we’ll use your foil only for form exercises, and not hit it against anything.”

“Probably a good idea, yeah,” Roman chuckles, before suddenly his eyes widen, looking at something behind Ruby. “Oh, uh… hey, Amber.”

Ruby’s eyes widen, but by the time she’s turned around, Amber’s already retreated back into the main building.

“Man, she’s kind of skittish, isn’t she.” Roman chuckles, rubbing at the back of his neck. “I don’t know. Feels like we just have a two-person team sometimes.”

Ruby can’t really argue against that. She agrees with the sentiment as well; she, too, would like for Amber to join them in some of these activities.

She’d not gone out to Vale with them – which, okay, Ozpin probably told her not to travel outside of Beacon, with Ruby there or otherwise – or joined them for forging Roman’s weapon, or the subsequent training with that weapon.

She doesn’t sit with them during class, or at lunch. She, for the large part, ignores nearly everyone in Beacon Academy.

Ruby…

Well, honestly, this isn’t really her forte. Getting someone to come out of their shell seems more like Yang’s thing. She’d gotten Blake to let go of the White Fang hate boner – that’s a terrible turn of phrase, but it’s what Yang had said about it at the time – and go to the dance.

Ruby’s not quite equipped the same way. She’s an introvert; quiet, and even as a leader, she’s much better in combat than she is on a day-to-day basis.

In combat, she can fall back on her instincts, which are, from what everyone says, usually quite good, and issue orders to the others based off of that.

In a dorm room, trying to deal with a frankly suicidally obsessed teammate, she’d had to rely on her sister to solve the problem.

She sighs, even as she calls training for the night, and she and Roman return to the dorm.

Amber isn’t there.

“It feels like she’s avoiding us.” Roman turns to Ruby. “I’m not crazy, right?”

“You’re not crazy.” Ruby confirms, her brow furrowing. “I think I know why, too.”

“Going to tell?”

“Did I tell her about your baggage?”

“Touché.”

She smiles, even as Roman decides to take an early night. She should probably do the same, but…

Well, she wants to solve this problem before it can become more of a problem.

Amber seems like a nice, if not somewhat snooty, girl.

And she’s met one of those in her life already.

She’s her closest friend.

Thinking about Weiss has Ruby smiling, but she also feels, once more, a longing in her gut. She wants to see her teammates.

She doesn’t even know if they’re here with her. That thought… it haunts her late in the evenings, as she lies down to sleep. It sticks with her whenever she grows happy, and weighs down her every step.

The idea that she’s here all alone.

She does her best to dismiss it. After all, they’d all gone through the portal that they’d thought would be taking them to Vacuo. It makes more sense to think that the others, too, have been scattered.

It’s just… worrying is all.

She groans, even as she decides to explore Beacon’s grounds, wondering if she can find Amber before she turns in for the night. She’s not in the dorm common room, or in the cafeteria. She’s also not in the first year’s training hall, which had been the other place Ruby had thought to check.

She decides to check outside, and makes her way towards the fountain in front of Beacon Academy.

She’d been dubbed crater face on this very spot, she finds herself thinking, as she takes in the statue that stands just beyond it. Here she’d made friends with Jaune, and become a lot more confident as a result. Here, she’d first met Weiss, and ‘exploded’. Here she’d first met Blake, and the girl had totally ignored her.

Speaking of being ignored, this had also been the place that Yang had abandoned her so that she could come out of her shell.

She should probably thank her for that whenever they meet up again, because it had been a successful gambit.

Even if Ruby had most certainly not been happy with her sister at the time.

It’s as she’s thinking about such things that she notices a figure sitting in the gardens, which she can just barely make out from where she’s sitting. Brown hair – she thinks, at least; it’s dark out – means that it could, potentially, be Amber.

So, Ruby closes the distance, and sure enough, when she makes her way over there some thirty seconds later, she finds Amber sat alone, looking out over Beacon’s gardens.

It’s not quite as nice as it had been during Ruby’s era, having evidently seen either some budget increases, or some students who’d care to keep it maintained in the future, but still, it has a charm to it.

“It’s a nice night.” Ruby says, trying to start a conversation, and she winces as Amber jumps in place, spins around on a dime, and points her staff right at Ruby.

“You…” She doesn’t lower the weapon. Her eyes harden.

“I’m sorry.” Ruby raises her hands in surrender, trying to show she means no harm. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

Amber bristles, seemingly at the insinuation that she’d been frightened by Ruby’s appearance – even though it had been criminally obvious, so Ruby’s not sure who she’d been trying to hide that from – as she straightens out her posture, and then says, “It’s alright. I was just leaving.”

“Amber, wait!” Ruby stops Amber before she can get too far. The woman – or girl, Ruby supposes – halts in place, but she’s antsy, Ruby can tell. “I just… you’ve kind of been avoiding me, haven’t you?”

Amber’s eyes widen. Ruby’s not really sure what it is she knows, what Ozpin’s told her, but…

Well, she just wants to clear the air.

“Can I ask why?”

She has a pretty good idea as to why, but she wants to put the ball in Amber’s court, so to speak.

Amber, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to want to answer. Ruby can’t fault her for that if she’s right on what’s going on.

“It’s complicated.”

“Can you uncomplicate it?”

Amber glares back at her.

“I’m sorry, it’s just…” Ruby sighs. “We’re supposed to be teammates, aren’t we?”

Amber’s expression becomes almost guilty, then, and she looks down and away from Ruby.

“I… there’s just…”

Ruby doesn’t try and speak again. She gives Amber a chance to say what she wants to say.

It takes a while, but she does in the end.

“…I want to.”

“You…”

“I don’t…” Amber’s hands clench into fists. “Do you honestly think I like this? Dancing around you and pretending you guys don’t exist?”

Ruby hadn’t really thought about it, but when it’s put like that… no, she can’t imagine Amber does.

“I was so excited to come to Beacon, you know.” Amber’s voice is small, almost absent, but Ruby can barely hear it. “My mother went here. So did my grandmother. I’ve been preparing to come here for my entire life. And yet… when I finally arrive, I’m…”

Put on a team with someone she can’t trust at all. Ruby thinks but doesn’t say. Someone who just suddenly appeared aboard the transport ship, without any rhyme or reason.

As if by magic.

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, Ruby.” Amber turns back towards her, and then she scoffs. “If that’s even your real name.”

“It is.” Ruby says, though whether or not Amber would believe her… “I’m not… things are complicated for me. I can’t really give you any easy answers. I’m…” She sighs. “I guess that’s probably not helping you to feel better, or like you can trust me, is it?”

“No. It isn’t.”

Ruby can’t do much about that. “There’s a lot going on for me, too. Just like I’m pretty sure there’s a lot going on for you. I’m not asking you to trust me, but… couldn’t you at least hang around with Roman and I when we’re in school, in the lunch room, or in classes? It’s not like I could make a move to attack you there.”

Ruby realizes how stupid she’s just sounded when Amber takes a step back. She’s just implied she might try and attack Amber in a scenario where they aren’t being watched.

Just like this one; the two of them alone in the gardens, late at night.

“Not that I’m going to attack you!” Ruby rushes to say, before wanting to smack herself in the face. “Ugh. I… I just…”

“It’s…” Amber hesitates. “I don’t think you’re going to attack me, either. But I’ve been told to be wary of you; that you might try and get me to let my guard down, that…”

It doesn’t surprise Ruby to know that Ozpin is telling her not to relax. The man is paranoid, but given everything she knows, for good reason. He’s watched civilizations rise and fall and been at the heart of many of them. He’s likely dealt with his fair share of spies and traitors in his time.

Ruby can’t blame him for suspecting her, either.

“Maybe just…” Ruby hesitates. “Come down to the forge and chat with us some days? Or the lunch room? You could join us for training on the roof. You came to check in on us earlier, didn’t you?”

Amber nods her head slowly. “I… I was…”

“Lonely?”

Amber grimaces. “I wasn’t lonely.”

So, she’d been lonely, then.

“It’s alright. It’s not like I’m saying you’re weird. I’d be lonely too if I was distancing myself from my teammates like you are.”

Amber huffs. “I just… I’m caught between my duty and my wishes. And I’m beginning to realize that I never truly wished for this duty of mine in the first place.”

To someone without any knowledge of the secrets of Remnant, that phrase might not have meant anything. But to Ruby, who knows quite a bit about things like the Relics, and Magic, and Maidens…

She wonders if the latter might have something to do with Amber’s current predicament.

Could she be a maiden? Perhaps a candidate to become one, like Pyrrha had been?

Ruby mentally groans. This is all too complicated for her. Espionage, sneaking around, worldwide plots about taking and passing magical powers between people…

She’s meant to hit monsters really hard. That’s who Ruby Rose is.

She’s content to leave the conspiracies to Blake.

Unfortunately, Blake’s not here – although Ruby’s sure that wherever she is, she’s likely getting involved in something she shouldn’t – which means that Ruby has no choice but to involve herself in this.

And she does want to. Amber is supposed to be her teammate. While that doesn’t mean as much to Ruby, who already has a team, she can tell it means a lot to Roman, and to Amber as well.

She’s not going to let her throw that away out of fear.

“Well… think about it, okay?” Ruby asks her, walking past her and placing a hand on her shoulder. “I can’t tell you exactly what’s going on with me, but I get the feeling the same goes for you, right?”

Amber nods, albeit slowly.

“But I think Roman would like a team. And I think you would, too.”

“That…” Amber sighs. “I will… consider it.”

Perhaps that meant she would talk to Ozpin about the matter instead. Ruby doesn’t have enough information to really guess…

But that’s fine. She doesn’t need any more.

“That’s all I ask.” She says as she starts making her way back to the dorm. She is tired, after all. “I think we can make a great team.”

Amber doesn’t respond to that, but Ruby hadn’t asked her to. She leaves the girl behind as she departs for the evening.

Hopefully, a new day will bring new tidings.

/

Amber Equinox would describe herself as an opinionated person.

Others would call her rude, or cocky. She likes to think of it as simply knowing the skills that she possesses, knowing what it is that she’s capable of, and not shying away from the truth.

The Fall Maiden’s fire, burning within her breast, does not help in keeping down her ego.

It’s rather difficult to not grow somewhat haughty knowing that you are one of the most powerful people on Remnant. Surely, yes, she has no doubt that someone like Qrow could best her, but then, he’s been a Huntsman – or she supposes she should say a combatant, given he’d started his life out under less-than-ideal circumstances – his whole life.

Amber knows for a fact, however, that she is the strongest girl in Beacon’s first year class. That is a given. She can’t exactly bring out the Maiden’s power, however, and so she’d not been able to prove herself during that inane competition at the start of the year.

Her team leader, Ruby Rosenberg, however, had done just that.

Or, well, if Ruby Rosenberg is her real name, which Amber has some doubts about.

She’s skilled. More than skilled, she’s good. She’s been there when Ozpin and Glynda have discussed the girl’s abilities. They call her a prodigy, years ahead of her classmates in terms of skills.

Ozpin even goes so far as to call her an already fully fledged Huntress.

Amber wants to laugh. Ruby’s not better than her, she just doesn’t have to hide herself away like Amber does.

Or… well, she doesn’t have to hide her skills.

It’s obvious to Ozpin and Glynda also that Ruby Rosenberg is up to no good.

Or at the very least, that she is an object of suspicion; one to have a close eye kept on at nearly all times.

She knows for a fact that while the school doesn’t have any cameras in the Team Rarity dorm, they do have a few listening devices, in case Amber would be attacked by Ruby, and there’s a camera on the wall opposite the door to their dorm room, in case Ruby ever decides to try and follow her out after she’s left the dorm as well.

It’s an invasion of Amber’s privacy, obviously, and it’s a part of the reason why she’s done her best to not stay within the room any longer than she has to. Knowing that every word she says within that room is being listened in on is…

Well, certain things aren’t meant for anyone else to hear.

And it agonizes her to know that Roman’s words, clearly not meant for anyone outside their team, are being heard and recorded by Ozpin and the other teachers.

Ruby… well, she might not like it, but she understands why they’re spying on her. But Roman’s just a normal, average Huntsman in training. He’s nothing special – if anything, he’s weak – and she’d say he’s a good guy at heart.

This whole… espionage thing is really beyond what Amber would like to be involved with.

“Enter.”

She does just that, stepping into the office of the Headmaster of Beacon, Ozpin. She knows he has to have a first name – or a last name? – but he’s never given any indication as to what it is.

So just ‘Ozpin’ he remains.

“Ah, Amber.” He smiles at her like it’s a nice surprise to see her, but she has a feeling he’d known she’d been there for a while via a camera of some kind set up outside, or in the elevator. “It’s good to see you. What can I help you with?”

She doesn’t really want to waste time. It’s never been her thing.

“I’d like to spend time with my teammates.”

Ozpin’s expression is complicated, then. He gives a low hum, even as he sits up in his chair, and places both hands on the desk in front of him.

“I would advise against that.”

“I know.” Amber answers before Ozpin can get it into his head that she’s an idiot. “I understand that Ruby Rosenberg can’t be trusted.”

“Then…?”

“I am saying that while I don’t think she can be trusted, she is not telling me to trust her.” Amber states, and Ozpin’s brow furrows. “I talked with her just twenty or so minutes ago. I was sat outside in the gardens. She approached me without attempting to attack me, or to do anything else.”

Ozpin sighs. “Amber, I believe we have told you not to leave Beacon outside of regular school hours.”
“You did.” Amber doesn’t apologize. She already feels enough like some kind of caged bird. She’d really rather not feel more like one. “I went out anyways. I can’t be confined to this building for four years, sir.”

“That…” Ozpin sighs. “I suppose you likely can’t be. Know that I am only trying to keep you safe, Amber. If she’d utilized her speed semblance, she likely could’ve killed you before you even realized she was there.”

“And then the power would’ve gone to someone entirely random,” Amber shrugs. “Which I don’t think is what anyone who is after it would want.”

It’s a flimsy excuse; Amber would still be dead, and she doesn’t think Ozpin only cares about the power. He cares about her as well, but it’s… well…

She doesn’t know if he cares more about the power than her. Some days, she thinks he does.

“But we talked. She mentioned that she wants the three of us; our team, to hang out more. That she wants us to engage in traditional team bonding. I agreed with her, even past what you’d told me.”

Ozpin takes a breath, then. “Why?”

“Roman Torchwick, the third member of our team, is just a boy. A boy whom you’ve admitted you hold no suspicions about.”

“There are reasons one might suspect him, but…” Ozpin nods his head. “He could not fake his lack of skill. I doubt he is in any way a threat. But that does not mean Ms. Rosenberg could not turn him against you given proper time–”

“Headmaster,” Amber interrupts, unwilling to listen to such a theorem. “Do you honestly believe this Ruby Rosenberg to be working for her?”

Ozpin stops, and seems to consider it.

“…If the chances of it are even one in a hundred, Amber, I would rather play things safe.”

“So, you admit it’s unlikely?”

“I will.” Ozpin sighs. “We have been listening in on their conversations in the dorm. Ms. Rosenberg sounds and acts, for all intents and purposes, like an average, if gifted, seventeen-year-old Huntress-in-training. I simply worry that such is an act.”

“I am willing to take that chance, sir.”

Ozpin looks at her, and it’s one of those moments where Amber cannot possibly guess what it is he must see. Is he witnessing someone from his past, someone who’d made that same proclamation, and paid for it with their life?

“If you have made up your mind, Amber, then I will not stop you. There would be no point.” Ozpin speaks, and he’s right; Amber will make this happen even without his support. “But I would advise caution. You may think you know someone… but sometimes the people around you will surprise you in the worst of ways.”

“I will keep that in mind, sir.”

“I pray that you do, Amber.” Ozpin speaks, but his voice is absent, and when he stares at her, he does not seem to see her.

“I pray that you do.”

Chapter Text

She comes at him fast, and Jaune’s mind catches in on itself.

The first of her blades comes down at his left arm, and he parries it. The second attempts to cut at his neck, though he evades that strike, too. He sees an opening, and, knowing that she has overextended herself, decides to treat this as a learning opportunity.

So, Jaune leans back, and then headbutts Cinder hard enough to send her toppling to the floor.

His own forehead stings rather harshly, though that’s probably nothing compared to what Cinder is going through. He’d have been less willing to do that to someone in a training match if his semblance hadn’t had the capabilities to fix concussions – which is something he and his team had discovered in Atlas, and never really had much of a chance to utilize – but since he does have that…

Well, he’s not opposed to teaching Cinder a rather painful lesson.

“Be careful,” He winces, channeling his semblance on himself and Cinder as he kneels down and places a hand on her shoulder. He can utilize his semblance without touching someone, but it’s far more trouble than it’s worth. “Not to overextend yourself. You attacked me with everything you had, fully showing your hand. When both of your attacks missed, I struck out at you with one of the weapons I still had remaining.”

Cinder nods her head, groaning out under her breath as she massages her skull. Jaune feels a little bad, honestly.

“Sorry for that.” He rubs at the back of his neck once his semblance has finished healing the damage some few minutes later. “I kind of got carried away.”

It’s hard for Jaune to admit, but…

He’d seen Cinder coming at him, her blades drawn, her eyes glowing not with the Maiden’s fire, but with that sunset orange they always had, and…

And he’d seen the Cinder he knows. He’d seen the Cinder who’d broken Vale, and Beacon, and Atlas. He’d seen the Cinder that had killed Pyrrha, and Penny.

This isn’t her, but…

In the heat of the moment, he’d mistaken the Cinder of the present for her.

Cinder isn’t saying anything. Jaune… well, he’s pretty sure that Cinder doesn’t think she’s allowed to comment on anything that he’s doing. In all fairness, a month ago that would have likely gotten her shocked fairly badly if the scar around her neck is anything to go by.

But still, Jaune does want to hear her opinion, and so…

“You can tell me what you’re thinking, you know.”

Cinder’s eyes widen as she looks over at him. She’s still not saying anything.

“I’m not going to get angry to hear what you have to say. In fact, I’d prefer it if you talked with me. I know you’ve not had great experiences with authority figures in the past, but… if you’re not understanding some parts of the training, or if you are understanding certain parts but think I’m harping on them too long, I want you to tell me, alright?”

Cinder looks down and away, her face somewhat hot. Probably embarrassment and the heat of battle wearing off.

“I… I don’t have any problems with what you’ve taught me thus far.”

“That’s good.”

Cinder nods her head. She still seems… perhaps not uncertain, but hesitant.

“I…” She looks over at Jaune, opens her mouth to speak, and then closes it. “I am thankful.”

“Hm?”

“You are taking the time to train me, even when I am sure you have other things you would rather be doing.” Cinder explains, twiddling her thumbs. “Thank you.”

“Oh.” He laughs. “Don’t worry. I don’t really have anything else to be doing here at Evernight, so taking time to train you isn’t a problem at all. If anything, I’m glad I get to be the one to do it, and that I’m not leaving you to Tyrian or Salem.”

Cinder shivers, likely at the thought of being left to train under Tyrian. He can’t blame her for being glad that’s not the case.

“…Thank you for getting me out of the Glass Unicorn.” She says, and Jaune’s eyes widen, but when he makes to interrupt, she continues. “Thank you for not leaving me behind.”

“Well… I wasn’t just going to let Rhodes take you away when I heard what happened. I didn’t think it would be right.”

Cinder’s not meeting his eyes.

“Most people wouldn’t care.” She says, and while Jaune can’t find fault in that…

“Well… I did.”

Cinder doesn’t seem to know how to respond to that. There is no ambient noise in Evernight; no crickets, or bugs, or people walking around or talking. It’s just silent.

But after a long while of that silence, Cinder speaks again.

“Thank you for caring.”

And Jaune… he thinks that that’s probably enough.

/

Blake stands off to Eve’s side as she slashes down with the wooden training sword in her hands. Sweat is beating down her brow, and dripping from her face as she pants for breath. Even still, for her first week of training, she’s holding on a lot better than Blake had thought she would.

She’s already been training for two hours. Most newbies would have called it quits an hour ago.

But Eve, it seems, doesn’t know when to quit.

She needs to take a break, though, but Blake doesn’t want to make it seem like her effort is unappreciated, either. So, she takes a page out of Adam’s book back from when he’d been training her.

She distracts her.

“How’s Adam been doing here in Kuo Kuana?”

That’s enough to get Evelynn to lower her blade, turn back towards Blake, and wipe the sweat from off her face.

“Oh.” She smiles at Blake as she hands her a water bottle, and then downs the entire thing in one go. “He’s been doing well. The other children haven’t exactly taken to him as much as I’d hoped; he’s a bit of a loner, but even so, the teachers say he’s an attentive student.”

Blake smiles at that as well. Adam had enrolled in a civilian school, one of the only ones present on all of Menagerie. The class sizes are, for that reason, a bit out of control, but it’s better than doing nothing at all.

…Maybe Blake can try and make a difference there? She’s already made the decision to stay in one place and try and hear news about the others, especially when someone with her figure and fighting style is probably a wanted woman in Atlas, and thereby the world over.

So, she’ll hunker down, stay quiet, and absorb as much information from the outside world as she can.

But she’s getting off topic.

“That’s good. I’m glad to hear it. How about you? How have you been handling moving here to Menagerie?”

Eve takes a moment to think about that. “Better than most people, I’d assume. I didn’t have anything that I was leaving behind; no family or friends back in Atlas. I know there are quite a few who are trying to work out how to get their families here in Menagerie. Apparently… the Atlas government is going to be helping with that.”

To Blake, it makes sense why they’d do such a thing. Sweep the entire event under the rug without anyone making a fuss, and they can pretend like nothing had ever happened. That’s better for the SDC – a wealthy business within Atlas – than having their wrongs exposed from the mining camp Blake had hit, and so they’ll go out of their way to allow this to all silently fade away.

That’s just business, unfortunately; albeit in this case it happens to aid them.

“But I’ve been doing well.” Eve states. “I wasn’t sure what we were going to do in terms of housing, but Ghira Belladonna… I don’t know if you’ve met him?”

Blake finds some small amusement in the question. “We’ve run into one another once or twice.”

“Ah, good. So Ghira Belladonna decided to give each one of us an apartment in a complex that’s being built. It’s supposed to finish construction a month or two from now. Until then, we’re all staying in the hotels on the coast here, free of charge.”

That sounds like her father. It has Blake smiling. She knows, of course, that said decisions, such niceties, had been a part of the strategy that Sienna had instilled in him to recruit people into the White Fang, even when she’d only been his right-hand woman. Sienna had always had such a knack for those kinds of things; recruitment, raising and keeping morale high.

Treat the people well, and they’ll be more willing to give back when things are asked of them.

Still, her father had only ever used such methods without any thought of getting anything in return. Sienna had at the time never mentioned recruiting from those assisted people, and perhaps, in the beginning, she too had only done it to be kind.

Blake can’t say she knows exactly what Sienna Khan had once thought when she’d been a young woman, only seventeen or eighteen years of age.

It is as she’s thinking about Sienna that someone clears their throat from behind Blake. She turns around, curious, and her eyes widen when she finds…

Well, the woman herself, standing right before her.

It’s incredibly nostalgic to see Sienna like this. This… is almost exactly how she’d looked when Blake had been growing up. She’d been like a big sister to Blake; a calming, reassuring presence, and someone who genuinely believed in the righteousness of the White Fang’s cause.

Bitterness and failure had sunk their fangs into her eventually, but here and now, the woman standing there, smiling at Blake, looks almost awkward.

“Hello, there.” Blake does her best to pretend like she doesn’t know precisely who this is. “May I help you?”

“Ah, right, my apologies,” Sienna bows – bows, which is so unlike her that Blake instantly realizes she must want something. “My name is Sienna. Sienna Khan. I’m a… well, I guess I’m not really much of anything at the moment.”

“Don’t you work for Ghira Belladonna?”

“Oh. I guess I do that, yes.” Sienna responds a bit awkwardly. It’s clear her ability to give grand speeches and inspire hundreds of White Fang soldiers has not yet developed. “I didn’t expect you would have heard of me.”

“Your name came up when I was speaking with him.” She lies, and she does it so casually that Sienna doesn’t pick up on it at all. “Did you need me for something, Ms. Khan?”

Sienna goes red again, clearly having forgotten she’d been asking for something. “R-Right, so, the thing is, uhm…”

She steps up towards Blake, rubs at the back of her neck, and then, bows so that her front half is almost perpendicular with her legs.

“Please, train me!”

Really, looking back on it, given that she’d been in the middle of training Evelynn when Sienna had walked up, she perhaps should have expected her to say as much. Still, the very thought of her training Sienna, the woman who’d been a big sister to her for most of her life, is just…

Well, it’s a bit hard to comprehend.

Her mouth is hanging open a little dumbly, and Sienna seems to think she’s going to say no, because her expression drops.

“I think that’s a wonderful idea.”

Blake turns around to see Eve smiling over at her, seeming quite confident in her words. “You’ve been teaching me, after all, and I think Sienna’s probably a bit better than I am, right?”

Sienna, sensing the opportunity, speaks up. “I have prior training, and am decently skilled with a whip.”

Decently skilled is perhaps an understatement. Sienna had mostly retired from the battlefield once being made leader of the White Fang, but at the height of her ability, she’d been able to match Adam evenly, and occasionally even defeat him in straight up one-on-one’s.

She’s not quite as good as someone like Cinder, or Qrow, but in just a few years she would be a significant jump up from a hunter-in-training like they had been during their time at Beacon.

It feels like an easy yes, at least separated from what Blake knows. Sienna’s a good fighter already, and, while likely unable to measure up to Blake in her current state, probably could make it to where she’s at within a few years.

Blake’s not entirely sure what to think, however, when she does factor in what she knows. Training Eve… it’s different from offering those same services to Sienna. Eve isn’t going to grow up to be the leader of a terrorist group in a few short years. She isn’t going to grow up to be a woman whose actions – whether justified or unjustified – will lead to the deaths of hundreds, perhaps thousands of humans and faunus alike.

Sienna will. If history goes unchanged – and in all fairness, it might very well not, given their presence in the past…

Training her, making her better…

Is that the right thing to do?

“U-Uhm…” Sienna seems quite nervous, evidently seeing Blake’s hesitance. “I promise, ma’am, I won’t shirk my training, and I won’t give up if I don’t see immediate results. I’ve been trained by some of the best here in Menagerie, and while that probably doesn’t measure up to your own training, I–”

“Enough.” Blake sighs out, even as Sienna does just that, standing ramrod straight as she awaits Blake’s words.

“…We’ll start with sword forms. I’m not as familiar with the whip, and learning something as basic as a blade is never bad for your overall skill.”

Sienna’s eyes practically light up, her smile beaming.

“Yes, ma’am!”

Blake sighs, shaking her head, even as Sienna runs over to the rack of training weapons, and draws one from off of it. Evelynn smiles as she sees that, chuckling under her breath at Blake’s somewhat haggard expression.

“If it matters, I think you’re doing the right thing.” Eve tells her.

And Blake…

She can only laugh weakly.

“I certainly hope I am.”

/

Yang isn’t going to say her life is simple at the moment, mostly because that would be completely false, but things have… calmed down, if that makes sense?

She’s with Raven, as she has been for the last little while, chilling out in Patch. At the moment, she’s looking into a mirror, trying to decide if she should stick with her current short hair, or go through the pains of allowing it to grow out over the course of the next year or so’s time.

She decides that she’s not going to decide, and steps away from the mirror. The outfit she has on is nothing special – just a crop-top with a jacket overtop, and jeans. It looks good without taking any actual effort, which is Yang’s favorite kind of outfit.  

She exits out of her hotel room to see Raven waiting for her.

“So?” She questions as her mother starts for the door. “Nervous?”

Raven glares back at her, but she doesn’t say anything to the contrary. Yang allows her some time to speak if she wants to, and sure enough, five or so seconds later, Raven replies.

“Yes.”

It’s more honesty than she’d anticipated, but then, she and her mother have become… not quite close, but they’ve started to understand one another. Raven understands that Yang’s the type to needle without meaning any harm, and Yang understands that Raven’s the type to bury her true feelings underneath a few layers of cynicism and snappiness.

They’re making it work, despite how difficult it can sometimes be.

“Well… I’m happy for you.” Yang states as she pushes herself to catch up with her mother, so that they’re walking side-by-side on their way to the Xiao-Long cabin. “I know how terrifying this all is for you. Or, well, I can guess.”

Raven nods her head, again not denying the truth.

“Have they told uncle Qrow yet?”

“No.” Raven sighs. “Although I’m sure knowing him, he’ll decide to show up the moment I get any foothold in here and totally ruin everything.”

 “That does sound like him.” Yang says fondly.

Silence stretches between them for the next little while. Yang is… well, admittedly, she’s curious about a certain something, and she feels like she might as well ask.

“So… what do I do?”

“Hm?”

“I just…” Yang scratches at the back of her head. “You’re trying to live with Mom and Dad again, yeah?”

Raven eyes her, and after a moment, she gives an affirmative hum.

“So… what do I do, then?”

“Ah.” Raven seems to understand her line of questioning now. “You’re asking where you’re supposed to live.”

“Yeah, I mean, I’d normally find a place to stay, but I’ve got about fifteen lien to my name at the moment.”

She really wishes she’d been kidding, but honestly, fifteen’s probably a bit high of an estimate.

“And you don’t think Summer and Tai are going to suddenly invite you to live with them.” Raven summarizes her thoughts rather aptly. “Given to them, you’re just some random huntress. Right. That… is somewhat troubling.”

“I mean, I am a huntress, so it’s not like I can’t find work. I just didn’t really intend to be randomly traveling around, killing Grimm like some kind of lone wanderer.”

Raven snorts. “I can tell you from experience that it sucks quite a bit. We had a year or so long period during our last year at Beacon where we were sent on a mission to north Vacuo. Long story short, we were looking for someone, but that ended up dragging us the whole way across the Kingdom. We basically became local legends, but despite the stories they tell of us, I can guarantee you we were having an awful lot less fun than they thought we were.”

“I mean, I’ll do it, I’d just rather not.”

“I can just ask if you can stay.”

“Yeah, I don’t really want to… impose?” Yang feels weird saying that she’d be imposing in her own home. “Ugh. Why does my life have to be this complicated?”

“I can’t tell you the answer to that one, unfortunately.” Raven smiles. “…I could probably convince Tai to make you a small place.”

Yang looked down at Raven with one eyebrow raised rather highly on her forehead. Raven just shrugs. “He built the cabin, after all. Took him no time at all, either.”

“All by himself?”

“Nah, me and Summer helped, but I found out I was pregnant about a month into the building, and so they both refused to let me do anymore work after that.” Raven has a gentle smile on her face. Yang gathers that those are good memories, despite everything. “Put in a little elbow grease, and he’d probably let you build it not too far away.”

“Eh.”

“Don’t just say ‘eh’, like I’m supposed to be able to decipher what that means.”

They bicker for a while, even as they approach the Xiao-Long cabin proper. They step up towards the door, but it opens before they can knock, and standing there in the doorway is mini-Yang.

“Auntie!” She rushes forward, and wraps her arms around Raven’s waist. “You’re back!”

Yang looks over to see her mother with a complicated expression on her face.

“It’s… good to see you as well, little one.” Raven pats the top of mini’s head awkwardly, and Yang has to fight back a snort. “Where are your mother and father?”

“Upstairs!”

“I see.” Raven is clearly waiting for mini-Yang to stop hugging her. This has not yet happened. “Er… don’t you want to go see what they’re up to?”

“Nope. I want to hug you!”

Yang smiles at her mother’s obvious distress, and it is made all the better because Raven can’t snap back at her. After all, mini-Yang’s sensitive ears are right there.

Eventually, some thirty seconds later, mini-Yang pulls back, and lets them come in.

The house is… well, it’s the house she’d spent the majority of her life in. The same cabinets in the kitchen that had been built way too high. The same stairs that had been built just a little bit crooked. The same television that had, when Yang had been a teenager, stopped showing color on the right half of the screen, something that none of them had ever been able to figure out the reason or remedy for.

Yang is smiling, and Raven…

Well, she looks a bit lost.

“It’s…” Raven opens her mouth, and then closes it. “It looks the same.”

“Yeah. It does.” Yang notes. “C’mon, you wanted to go see them, right?”

They ascend the stairs, and find Summer and Taiyang discussing something in their bedroom. Luckily for Yang’s sanity, they’re fully clothed, and they look up when Raven and Yang enter into sight.

“Oh.” Summer stands. “I didn’t… I’d have come down to greet you if I knew you were coming.”

“It’s fine. Yang let us in.” Raven speaks, before clearing her throat and asking, “What were you discussing?”

“Ozpin wanted me to come by Beacon to investigate a student he thought might be suspicious, but he called me just a little while ago to let me know that that’s apparently not as much of an immediate concern.” Summer states. “He still wants me to drop by when I have the time, but I told him I might be busy for a while, and he said that was fine.”

Yang’s happy to hear that Summer’s willing to put time aside for her family. She supposes this isn’t quite the same as shelving them to go off and fight against Salem. Checking to see if a student is… actually, Yang doesn’t know why Summer, of all people, would be called in, but eh, that’s not really her business.

Whatever. What Yang is saying is she’s glad Summer isn’t going off and getting herself killed.

That… she doesn’t quite remember when that happens, but she is very, very intent on not allowing it to happen in the first place.

It’s a part of the reason, though she hadn’t been able to say it to Raven without revealing the future, that she’d not wanted to go too far away from Patch. If Summer goes off on that mission without Yang realizing it…

…She’s not going to let that happen. She refuses.

Even if she has to build a house for herself here just like her dad had so that she can keep an eye on them all… she’ll do it.

“Oh,” Summer looks over at Yang, and she smiles. “I’ve only just realized that I never got your name.”

“That’s right.” Taiyang, her father, does the same, his smile just as sunny as it’s always been. “You helped Raven to get her head on straight, didn’t you?”

“Oi.” Raven hisses out.

“Yeah, uh, I did.” Yang chuckles. “It’s… it’s kind of funny, actually.”

And yet, despite all of what she’s said, she doesn’t want to lie to them. She doesn’t want to lie to her mom and dad. She’s lying enough already.

She can’t tell them everything, of course, or even most of what she knows, but…

She can give them one single, solitary truth.

“My name’s Yang, too.”

/

It’s been about a week since they’d finished processing the paperwork on the Marcus Black case, and Weiss is, officially, done.

Her body is tired. Her mind is tired. Her emotions are tired. Her spirit is tired.

She wants a break.

She is not being given one.

“So, I figured I’d cordially invite you to investigate Mistral’s seedy underbelly with me, in the hopes we catch the bastards who called in this hit on Lionheart’s guard.” Qrow finishes, crossing his arms, and tilting his head to one side. “Well?”

Weiss groans. “Why me, exactly?”

“Mostly, if I’m being honest, because I want to vet you a little further. You’re good; damned good.”

Weiss is flattered, but… “I set off that bomb in Marcus’ place and nearly got killed.”

Qrow nods.

“I nearly killed Mercury, I exploded at that family the other day, I’m someone you’ve fully admitted you can’t actually trust… what makes you think I’m… what even is this?”

“I’m vetting you.”

“For what!?”

“Because I think you might have what it takes to join a…” Qrow purses his lips. “Rather exclusive club, so t’ speak.”

Oh.

Weiss put the pieces together admittedly a lot later than she probably should’ve.

Qrow thinks she’s good enough to join Ozma’s – or at this point Ozpin’s – inner circle.

Which…

Well, she’s having a hard time believing that, truth be told.

“And what about all of what I just said?”

“I can go through point by point, if you’d like?”

Weiss nods, and so Qrow does.

“That first thing’s inconsequential.” Qrow starts. “Sure, you fell for that trap when you saw the kid tied up, but that’s not the kind of thing you’re going to fall for a second time. In the future, I’d bet you’re going to be twice as careful in a place like that, and you’re not going to buy the sympathy card a second time, am I right?”

Weiss… can’t actually deny that.

“The second one isn’t your fault.” Qrow continues. “Kid running at your sword mid-swing is in no way on you. You were doing what had to be done. Even if he’d died – as fucked up as it is to say it – that would not have been your fault.”

Weiss doesn’t like Qrow’s tone very much, but she begrudgingly nods her head, allowing him to keep dissecting what she’d considered ‘failures’.

“I don’t think anyone on the planet is gonna’ get mad at you for being upset some parents were abusing their daughter, kid. That had me mad as well, I was just hidin’ it.” Qrow tells her. “And before you go saying that the fact you exploded is a problem, yeah, it is, but you were working off of, what, a day’s rest after a double-all-nighter?”

Weiss, again, can’t actually argue against that.

“And as for me not being able to fully trust you… yeah. That’s why I’m vetting you.” Qrow says this like she’s an idiot, and honestly, she feels like one. “Kid, I’m not saying you have to. Go off on your own if you want, I know you’ve got people you’re looking for. But I will say that the guy I work for has got quite the information network. He can probably find those people you’re looking for.”

…Shit, Qrow’s right on that front, too. If she could get access to Ozpin’s surveillance, or Ironwood’s through Ozpin…

Yes, that would likely make finding her allies much easier.

Her leg raises and falls in a staccato rhythm as she thinks things over. It… has all the hallmarks of a good plan, and yet she’d really not wanted to get involved with Ozpin so early on. She’d held no delusions she could hold out forever, but…

…But when she thinks about it, does she have any better options?

That’s the thought that pops back up in her head over and over again. Does she have a better option. She can’t help but feel that no, she doesn’t.

And if she doesn’t…

Weiss Schnee takes a breath, and then, with a beleaguered sigh, looks Qrow in the eye.

“Where do we start?”

/

“So?”

Ruby looks excitedly at Roman, who’s holding his new weapon, Melodic Foil, in his hands. It’s evolved somewhat from the design stages – as all weapons do – but it is, still, the same cane/staff/sword combination they’d been planning on creating from the start.

And from the giddy grin on Roman’s face, Ruby thinks he’s very much a fan.

“Holy crap, Ruby!” He laughs heartily. “This is incredible!”

“I’m glad you like it.” Ruby states, before turning to the third member present within the forge. “Amber, your thoughts?”

“It’s…” She hesitates a moment. “Intricate. Well designed.”

“I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“Bug off.” Amber rolls her eyes, and both Roman and Ruby laugh at that.

Things have been looking up in the week or so since Ruby had her serious talk with Amber. They’ve been… not exactly a team, but they’ve started in that general direction. Ruby is quite pleased, all things considered.

“So,” Amber clears her throat. “Now that you have an actual weapon, Roman, you will need to learn to utilize it. Tell me, what former experience do you have with a foil, staff, or cane?”

“Uh…” Roman thinks for a moment too long.

“Oh, gods.” Amber groans. “You really are hopeless, aren’t you?”

“Hey, I’ll have you know Ruby thinks I’m improving by leaps and bounds!” He turns to her. “Tell her I’m right!”

He is right, just… not as right as he thinks he is.

He has been improving, and quicker than Ruby had expected. But she’d also been hyping him up a bit to keep him motivated, pretending like his rise has been meteoric, and not just… good.

Still, she’ll play along. There’s no harm in it. “Roman has been doing quite well, Amber. Perhaps you can join us for our training sessions?”

“I…” Amber ponders a moment. “I suppose I can do that.”

It’s good to see Amber being truer to herself, even if it’s probably against the advice of Ozpin. She seems to be uncertain about what she’s doing, but doing it anyways.

Ruby’s proud of her, even if she’s not sure she should be.

She knows she’s not on Salem’s side, but another person in her same scenario very well could’ve been.

She can’t argue with what Ozpin says, even if in this case he’d been wrong.

Still, Ruby does her best to focus on her plan.

For the moment, her primary goal is raising her team up to be strong enough to qualify for the Vytal Festival. It’s being held in Atlas this year, which means that there will be fewer teams chosen from Vale, given the hosting Kingdom has a much larger percentage of their own teams, mostly down to budgetary restrictions.

And given they’re first years, and Roman is akin to where Jaune had been around this same point in his first year…

Yeah, it’s not going to be an easy task.

Still, Ruby’s confident she can win the whole thing is she can make it to the Vytal Festival itself, and winning the Vytal Festival is bound to draw enough eyes onto her to get people talking.

And hopefully, by getting them talking, she can get her allies to hear about her.

It’s risky, of course. It’s taken her this long to realize it, but one of the other things that had probably prevented Ozpin from just having her arrested had almost certainly been her Silver Eyes.

And Salem, who will certainly have someone watching news of the outside world, will most likely spot her as well.

And while that’s worrying…

Well, it’s a price she’s willing to pay to meet up with Weiss, Blake, Yang, and Jaune once again.

So, she takes a breath, claps her hands together to draw her team’s attention, and lays out her plan.

“Alright, Team Rarity!” She starts. “Over the course of the next seven or eight months, I plan on making us the best of the best here at Beacon Academy! We’re going to get selected to go to the Vytal Festival, and we’re going to strut our stuff on the world stage!”

Roman raises his hand. “Question.”

“What’s up?”

“Uh… what’s a Vytal Festival?”

Amber smacks her forehead with her hand, and lets out a beleaguered sigh.

/

It is an auspicious day in the Kingdom of Atlas, inside Atlas Military Headquarters, within the confines of the court stationed there. Today, a hearing will be held that will determine the future direction of Atlas.

And Elm Ederne isn’t really sure why she’s here.

Of course, she’s been brought along as aid to General– er, Captain Ironwood – but it’s going to be General in like three hours, so eh – and to serve as a witness to some of the abuses that the current Admiral – Admiral Browning – has been continuously allowing to occur under his command.

But she’s an Ensign. Or, well, she had been, until she’d been taken in as a candidate to make Specialist. She’s in her first few weeks of training still. She doesn’t think she should be present at one of the biggest events in modern Atlesian history.

Today is the day that Atlas’ current general, General Hawthorne, is going to have his title stripped away from him, and given to Ironwood.

The writing has been on the wall for a while now. General Hawthorne is an old and bitter man, with graying hairs on his face and an attitude that had really only flown during wartime. He’d been Atlas’ General for going on thirty or so years now, and had primarily earned that position due to his accolades during the Faunus Right Revolution.

Of course, such accolades only continued to look worse as the years went by.

Where once the Faunus Rights Revolution had been a bitter topic, something seen as a failure of Atlas, it was now being looked at as a major win in the world’s history; the challenging of bigotry, and the victory of the oppressed. Those who had fought in that war against the faunus were being looked at far more negatively.

And General Hawthorne was, in those ways, just about the worst of the worst.

He took a firmly anti-faunus stance on almost all matters, only supporting their presence in the workforce where the SDC and its partners were concerned. He had been in favor of discriminatory laws, fought hard to keep faunus children from having places in Atlesian schools, and was, just in general, pretty much regarded as a huge piece of shit.

Hey, that wasn’t just Elm’s opinion. The people around the barracks were very much not fans of the guy.

His hardline approach had begun to seem more and more hairbrained in a society where the greatest threat the Faunus truly posed was wanting to be paid equally to humans, and wanting to be allowed the same freedoms as humans were. To Elm, at least, those seemed like pretty easy asks.

To people like Hawthorne, they were genuinely problematic requests.

Elm didn’t understand that; but then, she didn’t understand bigotry at all. If someone else wanted to do something that wasn’t hurting anyone else, then frankly, they could do it as much as they damn well pleased in Elm’s eyes.

Some people just had nothing better to do with their lives. It was kind of sad.

It had been, up until a few weeks ago, an almost surefire thing that Ironwood would be taking over for Hawthorne, and ousting the man from his position entirely.

And then the ‘Black Fang’ incidents had occurred.

That woman who’d attacked the SDC’s mining camp, and then subsequently fought Elm and her crew aboard the Divinity, had given Hawthorne and the other anti-faunus councilmembers ammunition when it was most needed. Had such not happened, their chances of emerging from out of this hearing with their jobs would have been zero.

Now…

As much as Elm doesn’t want to admit it, the chance existed.

Finally, after what has been a nearly thirty-minute wait, the people who will be officiating the hearing – five of Atlas’ councilmembers – enter into the room. The soldiers within the hall all rise, Elm included, and sit back down once they’ve been dismissed.

“Right.” Councilor Sleet, who’s been in his position for nearly fifteen years already, and is seen as both a moderate and the de facto leader of the council, clears his throat. “We are gathered here today to review the conduct of those holding both of the Atlas’ Militaries top positions; General Hawthorne, and Admiral Browning.”

Both men stay seated at the front of the room. General Hawthorne is under review for more general matters, and his overall conduct. His views are seen as backwards, and behind the times.

Admiral Browning, on the other hand, is under review for heinous misuse of the Atlas Navy’s forces. Multiple officers now have been caught committing the same offenses that Elm’s own captain and crew had been, and because of that, it’s suspected that he himself has been allowing these behaviors to go unchecked.

“To begin with, we’ll allow Admiral Browning to take the stand in his defense.”

The man does, but over the course of the next twenty or so minutes, Elm hears very little of actual substance. Admiral Browning is unable to more than make excuses, and many figures around the room seem to already be making their minds up on him.

Elm knows then and there that Admiral Browning will not be leaving the room with his title.

The next person to go up is General Hawthorne, and unlike Admiral Browning, there is a certain… sureness to the man’s gait. He walks to the stand, lays out a few pieces of paper, and begins to orate.

“Ladies and gentleman of the council; and distinguished guests who have come here today. I thank you for being here on this historic eve.”

He gives a short introduction. He even personally addresses Captain Ironwood, nodding his head to him, and saying it’s a pleasure to see him here.

Elm doesn’t like it. The man seems much more… confident than Elm had expected.

“Now, allow me to set the record straight.” General Hawthorne clears his throat. “I am, by many members of the council, seen as a war hawk. Someone unwilling to let go of the past; someone unwilling to allow those demons of yesteryear to disappear back from whence they came.”

“But I come before you all today with the knowledge that the warnings that I have continuously espoused have been confirmed.”

Elm’s brow furrows. Beside her, Ironwood’s does much the same.

“I have spent the last three decades of my life decrying the modern movement to allow the faunus into our fair city, and many have called me a bigot for such. A racist. A dogmatic mad man. And yet, I ask each and every one of you to look at the facts of the situation; to look at what occurred within one of the SDC’s mining camps just a few weeks ago.”

So, that’s his play. Elm thinks, build fear of the faunus in the council, and then try and keep his position off of that.

It is, unfortunately, not the worst idea. Two members of Atlas’ council are known to be… while Elm can’t call them racist, she can at the very least call them opinionated in terms of the faunus. They are the kinds of people that could be easily swayed to Hawthorne’s side.

He’ll have to do very little to convince them, and the other two members of the council that aren’t councilman Sleet aren’t exactly paragons of virtue, either.

Suddenly, Elm’s an awful lot less sure of things than she’d been at the start of the day.

“Three weeks ago, a faunus woman, codenamed ‘Black Fang’, attacked and assaulted the C-14 mining camp owned by the SDC. The actions she took led to multiple members of the guardian force there being heavily injured, and one even developed an infection that led to his limb having to be amputated.”

There’s a muttering at that which Elm doesn’t like at all. Especially given that Hawthorne isn’t mentioning the fact that the soldiers at C-14 had been found guilty of many, many offenses by the SDC, who are famously… lax when it comes to enforcing the law.

“She illegally extradited one hundred and three faunus who’d been working in the camp to Menagerie by hijacking a civilian ship, the ‘Divinity’, and got into a skirmish with members of the Atlesian Navy. Of course, had the Navy’s standards been up to snuff, I’ve no doubt they could have captured the terrorist before she could do further damage. Unfortunately, my comrade here, Admiral Browning, has been quite lax in enforcing military doctrine upon his own soldiers.”

Ah. He also means to put blame on Admiral Browning as well. It’s underhanded, and judging by the way that Browning is looking up at Hawthorne with a shocked expression, unanticipated, but it does make him look better by proxy.

He’s a shrewd man, Hawthorne, but he’s defending himself an awful lot better than Elm had initially suspected.

“But I feel the need to ask, my fellows; how long will it be before such a thing repeats itself?”

There’s a general murmur, then, that spreads about the room.

“Black Fang went uncaptured, and these sorts of incidents are rarely one-off events. How long will it be before Black Fang reappears, and takes out another mining camp? How long will it be before the price of Dust, unable to be mined safely, increases? How long will it be before we have to raise our prices, and our foreign allies are suddenly much less keen to work alongside us?”

It’s catastrophizing at its purest. Black Fang hasn’t been seen or heard from since the initial attack, and from what Ironwood tells her, he’s not expecting that to change.

Yet Hawthorne is attempting to drum up fear of the faunus in order to justify his own views.

The unfortunate thing, however…

Is that it’s working.

All around the room, Elm can see people beginning to whisper amongst themselves. Looking left, then right, communicating in hushed tones.

This…

Elm hadn’t at all anticipated this.

“Many people see me as a racist. As a bigot. Someone who has allowed dogma to dictate his senses.” Hawthorne echoes his own words from earlier. “But I am here to remind you all of a simple truth; it was not thirty years ago that the faunus were considered enemies of mankind. While so many of today’s youth have ignored this, and while so many of you seem to have forgotten… it is my job, as someone who works to protect and safeguard the citizens of Atlas, not to forget the grave threat that the faunus can, and will, cause.”

“Black Fang will only be the first. Mark my words, the faunus will only grow more and more restless, more and more daring. In but a few years–”

And beside her, in a move that completely shocks Elm, Captain James Ironwood shoots to his feet.

“It is the very policies you have instituted as both General, and a member of Atlas’ council, that have led to the faunus of Atlas growing more and more fevered, Hawthorne!”

There is a brief uproar as the entire room swivels to watch Ironwood. He’s leaning forward with his arms on the table underneath him, glaring across the room at Hawthorne, who looks, in a way, almost smug.

Elm doesn’t like that. Not one bit.

“Captain Ironwood,” Councilman Sleet clears his throat. “You have not yet been called upon to speak.”

“No, it’s fine, councilman.” General Hawthorne, in a move that only makes him look steadier, raises a hand to wave off the council. “If James has something he wishes to say, then I shall allow him to do so.”

Captain Ironwood has always been unwilling to sit back and allow bad things to happen. It’s normally a very good character trait, but in this singular instance, it’s making him look unofficial, and it’s only reinforcing Hawthorne’s own image.

“Members of the council, I urge you not to listen to what General Hawthorne is saying.” Ironwood straightens his posture, standing at attention. “He is doing his best to influence you by telling you only the facts that will enhance his position, but the truth of the matter was that the conduct undertaken by the members of the SDC C-14 mining colony were abhorrent. From what was caught on camera, they had been about to brand a young faunus child with a hot iron before Black Fang stepped in.”

There are multiple gasps, and other such reactions, around the room. General Hawthorne, even, seems shocked.

Or at the very least, he’s quite good at pretending to be shocked.

“Then I am glad that she succeeded in stopping them. I do not hate the faunus. I am merely cautious of them.” Hawthorne claims. “But do you not think that the things she saw there might lead her to believe that all of the SDC’s camps might be doing such things under the surface?”

It’s… an annoyingly good point. If one camp had been like that, could others? Elm herself has doubts that there aren’t other mining camps doing the same things, abusing their authority in a place without any.

“And do you not think your conduct as General of Atlas has brought about such behavior?”

“I fail to understand your line of questioning, James.” Hawthorne raises his head, almost looking down at Ironwood. “I have only ever adjusted my conduct and policies to account for the threats the world will face.”

“A ridiculous notion, and you know it, General. The faunus are people like you or I. They simply wish to be treated with the same respect that you or I are. And for the last ten years, it has been your policies continuously stirring unrest amongst the faunus populations here in Atlas. The White Fang, a peaceful activist group, has seen more and more of its members come under attack during their protests. Rocks are thrown. Slurs are hurled. And nothing is done to combat this. Even the guards sent to, ostensibly, police such things more often than not only seem to be there to prevent the faunus from fighting back against such treatment.”

“Such are the risks of protesting. I myself have attended many protests in my time, and I have the scars to prove it.” Hawthorne probably had; he might’ve even been protesting against faunus rights. That sounded like something he’d do. “Do you believe we can police the beliefs of everyone in Atlas, James?”

“No, but we can police those who go out of their way to antagonize ordinary men and women, just trying to improve the quality of their own lives. Those who throw stones, those who assault the faunus in the streets. They should be dragged off to jail, not allowed to walk away without anything happening to them!”

“I don’t disagree. In fact, I’ll look into implementing such laws in the near future.”

“You’ve had years to do so! And yet conditions for the faunus in Atlas have only grown worse under your tenure! Half of the shops in Atlas refuse to serve the faunus!”

“And? If a man owns an establishment, he is allowed to deny service to anyone he wishes.”

“Such is only the case in Atlas. In Vale and Vacuo, laws are already being put in place to make such illegal! And the beginnings of such policies are being implemented in Mistral as well!”

“And I see that as a gross misstep of government. Who am I to decide how my citizens live?”

“You are one of the members of the Atlesian Council, and their General! It is to you that they look for example! And the example you’ve set is that which they have followed for thirty years, now. That of bigotry and hate. That of someone who has been fighting a war that has long since ended. It is for that very reason that Atlas requires new leadership. It needs a new set of eyes. A new core of values.”

“And on that, we are in agreement, James.” Hawthorne is still smiling. “In fact, given that Admiral Browning has clearly shown himself to be incompetent, I believe there exists a solution to both of our problems; I would propose that James Ironwood take up his place as Admiral of Atlas.”

Elm isn’t the only one shocked at such a notion. It had been such a poorly kept secret that Ironwood would be given the General position for months now that many had been accidentally referring to him as such in the halls. And yet, now, Hawthorne suggests to keep his own position, and to grant Ironwood Browning’s.

The worst part is that several key figures in the room don’t seem all that upset about such a plan.

“Hawthorne…” Ironwood grits his teeth. “You are living in the past. This Kingdom needs a future.”

“I believe you look too far ahead, James.” Hawthorne gazes back at him, an assured expression on his face. “This Kingdom needs someone with their eyes on the here and now.”

Councilman Sleet asks for quiet, and the room does, eventually, still once more. The damage has been done, however.

Another twenty or so minutes pass as the councilmen deliberate, and they readjourn to give out the different rulings on the two matters they’d proposed that evening.

“Firstly, on the matter of Admiral Browning being removed from his position as Admiral, effective immediately. Those in favor shall raise their hands.”

Normally, there are seven council votes. Five for the regular councilors, and two more for the General and Admiral positions. On account of both being under trial that evening, however, they’re both unable to vote.

That means there are only five votes.

And of those five, all of them raise their hands to strip Browning of his position.

Former Admiral Browning leaves the court room, and will likely have another trial set up in the near future focused on the consequences of his continued allowances of breaking military protocol.

“Next, on the matter of General Hawthorne being removed from his position as General, effective immediately. Those in favor shall raise their hands.”

Councilman Sleet had always been a done deal. He’s a moderate, but he’s also someone who expertly reads the shifting of the tides. Someone able to see the way the world is headed.

And he knows the world is moving towards the future. His hand goes up.

One other does the same, belonging to a councilman that Elm doesn’t know the name of.

But…

Three people leave their hands down.

Elm’s eyes widen, even as Councilman Sleet, despite having been outvoted, clears his throat, and then says, “In that case, General Hawthorne will continue on as General of Atlas.”

There’s a commotion at that, at least, which tells Elm that not everyone in the room has fallen for Hawthorne’s backwards logic. Yet the fact of the matter is that a good many of them are silent, content with Hawthorne keeping his position.

And that…

“I call for an emergency vote, councilman.” General Hawthorne raises a hand. “To replace Admiral Browning. After all, the seas around Menagerie may grow far more difficult to maintain in the near future if others like Black Fang show their faces.”

“That…” Councilman Sleet sighs. “Very well. All in favor of an emergency vote?”

Four people, the only one abstaining being Sleet himself, raise their hands.

“Would anyone like to nominate a candidate–”

“Captain James Ironwood.” General Hawthorne turns back, and the look on his face is…

It’s victory in its purest form.

“I think he’d fit perfectly into the role.”

Ironwood himself can only glare back at Hawthorne, but he stays silent as the votes are tallied.

“Very well, then, with by the power vested in this council, we promote James Ironwood to the position of Admiral of the Atlesian Navy.”

There’s a smattering of applause at that, but Ironwood seats himself immediately. There’s a look of disgust upon his face. Elm’s not entirely certain what it is that he’s disgusted with. The system, the people, or Hawthorne himself?

“This…” Ironwood takes a deep, unsteady breath. “This is bad.”

“Sir?” Elm can’t help but ask.

“I was under the impression that the majority of those serving on the council held more moderate views, and yet… both Dew and Lilac were easy for Hawthorne to sway. Easy enough that I believe they must’ve been on his side from the beginning, and were only looking for an excuse to back him.”

Elm doesn’t know who Dew and Lilac are. Obviously council members, she’s just not sure who.

“But Dennings… surely, he was a veteran of the Rights Revolution, but… he’d always expressed such regret over his time. I always assumed… but perhaps he was turned as well by Hawthorne’s remarks about the future. That utter bastard.”

Hearing Ironwood losing his cool like this… it has Elm unnerved, has her swallowing on some spittle.

“Sir… what do we do now?”

“I,” Ironwood sighs. “Will likely be sent to the waters just outside Menagerie. No wonder Hawthorne was so keen to see me promoted to Admiral. If I’m not here in Atlas, I can’t get in his way to enact more of these racist policies.”

Ironwood just shakes his head, running a hand down his face.

“I hesitate to say it, Specialist Cadet, but… The future of Atlas, perhaps the entire world…

“Is now in flux.”

End Part 1

Chapter Text

Start Part 2

Ruby Rose, leader of both Team RWBY and Team RAR, takes a breath as she allows Crescent Rose to sag in her grasp.

All around her, the world practically explodes.

“James Gatz has been defeated by aura loss!” Ms. Goodwitch shouts out. “The winner is Team Rarity!”

Shouts of disbelief, of sorrow, and even some of rage echo out from the stands around them, where students from all years of Beacon Academy have come to watch the match. She imagines that the latter two types of shouts are mostly those who’ve bet with friends on the outcome of this very match.

Almost all of them, Ruby imagines, will have chosen the far more experienced Team GTSE, but then, a couple of people among Beacon’s students have started to see the truth behind the rumors.

That the upstart first-year team looking to make it to the Vytal Festival is as legit as they say.

“Team Rarity, you have won Beacon’s mock tournament,” Ms. Goodwitch herself sounds like she can’t quite believe what she’s saying, but it’s the truth. A first-year team – one comprised of only three members – has beaten all comers, including fourth year teams with an extra person on them, to take the prize. “And thusly, you shall be the final team representing Beacon Academy in this year’s Vytal Festival.”

Behind her, Ruby hears both Amber and Roman cheer. The former is a lot more understated than the latter, but it’s a present emotion nonetheless. Even Ruby can’t help but smile as she wipes the sweat from her brow.

It had not been easy to be chosen. They’d been lucky in their first year – Team RWBY had been lucky, that is – with the Vytal Festival being held in Beacon itself. Nearly every team from Beacon had had the chance to compete. After all, no one had been about to complain about bloat to the roster of competitors among the sponsors of the Vytal Festival, who had been more than willing to allow a few first-year teams to get their butts kicked if it meant they could advertise their products for another few hours.

It’s down to the price of sending so many students overseas, in truth, that causes foreign rosters to be much smaller. A collection of five or so teams, mainly third and fourth years, can fit on a single long-range bullhead. The thirty-two teams that Beacon has in its entirety would have filled even the transport ship that had ferried them from Vale to Beacon, and would have still likely needed a copy of that vessel on top of that.

It just isn’t feasible.

Which is why Beacon, and the other academies who aren’t hosting the festival this year – Mistral and Vacuo – will be selecting a few of their best teams, and sending only them.

Beacon had also offered a final slot to a team chosen by a tournament style bracket. Any team could enter, with the only price of failure being shame.

Which, as team GTSE is currently figuring out, is not nothing, judging by the utter hazing they’re currently getting from the other teams about losing to some ‘cocky first-years’.

Ruby can’t help feeling a bit bad about that, given she’s a fully-fledged Huntress, who has fought against people a helluva lot better than even the fourth-year teams here in Beacon. On her own, she could’ve maybe stood a chance against some of the second- and third-year teams, and with Amber and Roman at her back, well, it had been a bit one-sided, honestly.

“We did it!” Roman tackles Ruby from behind, lifting her up in the air and swinging her back and forth. “We actually did it!”

“Put her down!” Amber groans. “You’re embarrassing us!”

Ruby isn’t all that worried about how they appear, especially not at a time like this. They’ve just won a trip to the Vytal Festival, after all, where they’ll have all their reasonable expenses covered by Beacon themselves.

It is not at all an unfortunate arrangement, so Roman’s excitement is appropriate.

Ruby can tell that Amber is just as excited; she’s just a lot better at hiding it. They have, after all, spent the last eight or so months grinding their butts off to make it here.

And now they’ve arrived.

That doesn’t feel half bad.

“Lighten up, milady,” Roman mocks Amber with the name he’d come up with for her… two or three months back? Ruby’s kind of blanking on it at the moment. “You gotta’ celebrate things like this. Why don’t we go down to Jimmy’s or Mick’s?”

“What is it with you and fried food?” Amber scoffs, and Ruby prepares to listen to her teammates bicker with one another for what will likely be thirty minutes for perhaps the thousandth time.

And she had thought Weiss and Blake bad…

…Actually, Roman and Amber really only ever argue. They never run away from the team, blow up sections of the docks or Vale’s major highways, or get themselves involved with the business of any terrorist organizations.

So, actually, maybe Amber and Roman are better.

It just doesn’t feel like it at the moment.

“I actually agree with Roman.” Ruby smiles back at her teammates, causing them to halt their argument. “Maybe we could go somewhere else, though, Roman.”

“Uh… y’wanna go to Mike’s, maybe?”

“How are Mike’s and Mick’s different places?” Amber wonders aloud.

“I’ll forgive your blasphemous words against the gods of food this singular time.” Roman fires back.

“How about,” Ruby prevents the argument from even starting. “We go to somewhere I want to for once?”

Amber and Roman both seem rather interested about that. Ruby has done her best to be friendly with them, but in the end, Roman and Amber… they aren’t really her team. She’s come across a bit more mysterious than she really intends to.

And that has had the unintended side effect of the two of them reading into just about every suggestion that Ruby actually posits herself.

“Sure, I’m down.” Roman shrugs. “Where would you want to go?”

/

They end up traveling quite a ways away from Beacon in the end. The place Ruby’s going had, after all, been a place she’d gone to when she’d been a kid, visiting Vale for the first time. They’d had to enter from the front gate, which is directly opposite Beacon in terms of position on a map.

And a few blocks past that front gate lies…

“This…” Amber shakes her head minutely. “This is just a Mistralian place. This is literally the exact same as what Roman was suggesting.”

“No,” Ruby turns back around, smiling at Amber’s annoyance. “This is a place I suggested, which means it’s different.”

“Do they serve pizza?” Roman asks.

“Yes, they very much do.”

Amber groans.

So it is that thirty minutes later, they’re sat around a half-pepperoni pie, sipping sodas, and talking about completely inane things.

“There’s no way that you unironically think pineapple belongs on pizza.” Roman shoots at Amber, who rolls her eyes.

“Of course you’d have such a reductive view. It adds a certain sweetness that a pizza can greatly benefit from. I find it goes quite well with ham.”

“I’m sorry, a ham and pineapple pizza?”

“Indeed.”

“That’s… I’m pretty sure that’s a crime, Amber. Like if you’re arrested in the near future, at least I know why.”

Ruby’s gotten quite used to her teammates bickering at this point. It’s an almost comfortable thing for her. She’s already finished her three slices, and is sipping at her drink when her teammates remember that a world exists outside their arguments.

“Oh, right,” Roman clears his throat. “So, we’re going to Atlas, yeah?”

“You would know these things if you paid any attention.” Amber rolls her eyes. “Yes. We’ll be going to Atlas next week. We’ll be staying there for a week before the tournament begins. Apparently, General Hawthorne has instituted some kind of quarantine procedure? Ozpin didn’t sound too terribly happy when he announced that.”

“Why do you always call the Headmaster just ‘Ozpin’,” Roman shoots her a look. “You do realize that’s weird as hell, right?”

Amber coughs into one hand, slightly red. “I’ve no clue what you’re referring to.”

“Riiiight.” Roman looks to Ruby, raises an eyebrow as if to say ‘can you believe this?’ – Ruby breathes out a silent laugh – and then changes the subject. “So, what are we doing while we’re there?”

“Other than competing in the tournament?”

“Well, yeah, I kind of figured that was a given.” Roman shrugs. “I mean, c’mon, we’re good, but we’re probably not winning the whole thing, right?”

Ruby has something to say about that, but she decides to hold her tongue.

“And I doubt we’re going to want to watch the entire time, so what are we doing during our downtime?”

“Ah, so that is what you meant.” Amber rolls her eyes. “Always about slacking off with you.”

“Oh, sure, says the woman who gets a massage once a week.”

“I-I’ll have you know that massages are great for–”

Ruby zones her team out yet again, smiling despite how annoying it might seem to anyone else. For Ruby, however, it only serves to remind her of home; of Team RWBY, of Weiss, and Yang, and Blake.

…She wonders where they all are, and if they’re here like she is.

Hopefully, during the Vytal Festival, she’ll be able to put her name out there, and really attract some attention.

That way…

They’ll find each other again.

/

“Excellent, we’ll stop there for the day.”

Both Sienna and Eve pant as they allow their stances to slip. The former does so far more efficiently than the latter, but then, she’s also been training as a combatant for a good ten years already.

Eve, on the other hand, only has around eight months to her name.

Blake pats both on the backs as she hands them bottles of water. Sienna takes hers with a nod of thanks. Eve practically lunges for it, before taking greedy gulps. Sienna chastises her for that, letting her know that she might throw up if she takes in too much liquid so soon after working out so hard.

Blake isn’t sure if that’s actual knowledge, or a personal anecdote, given she’s never dealt with such herself, but then, she supposes that it doesn’t really matter. Eve takes smaller sips after that, and she and Sienna briefly discuss what they’d learned that day.

That has Blake smiling – an expression that many can’t notice at all. The fact that Eve is doing as well as she is given that she’s only been at this for eight months is staggering. She isn’t quite at the level of Jaune, who’d gone from a complete novice to the level of the average huntsman-in-training in the same time, but Blake feels that Eve would do done just fine if placed into some of the early-year classes at Signal, for example.

Blake is proud of her, even putting aside the fact that Eve’s her student.

She’s planning on packing up for the day; calling it and heading back to the apartment that she’s been staying in for the last few months.

Except instead, she hears someone clear their voice on the edge of the clearing, and turns to see…

Well, her father.

Ghira Belladonna is probably, to anyone else, quite an intimidating figure. He’s a veritable giant, standing an easy 7 feet tall, with a brooding expression almost permanently etched into his visage. He’s stood there, his arms crossed in front of his chest, in a way that might make anyone else think that he’s some terrifying figure.

Nope. Complete and total teddy bear.

Well, he’s definitely a former fighter, but in terms of personality, he’s a softie.

“Hello, Mr. Belladonna.” She bows her head, doing her best to give away absolutely nothing about the fact that this is her father. “May I help you?”

“Ah, I was actually here for Sienna, but now that I’ve arrived, perhaps you can, Ms. Blake.”

That has her intrigued, honestly. It’s not the first time that Ghira’s come to her with requests; She’s helped around the village with a few tasks, whether that’s sawing down trees out in the jungles beyond Kuo Kuana, building houses in and around the city, or even going along with fishing boats to act as security.

It’s been paid work every time – and well paying, in comparison to how much she might expect to make elsewhere for the same gigs – so Blake’s definitely not opposed to more.

“I’m sure you’ve heard about some of the recent… shifts happening in Atlas, correct?”

Blake… she’s heard about it, and she’s been concerned. She had, as much as she might like to pretend, not been the worldliest eight-year-old when she’d been younger. Thusly, she can’t say that what’s happening right now hadn’t happened in her own time, when she’d been younger.

But she thinks she remembers hearing about a General Hawthorne being ousted around this time. Being blamed for racist treatment towards the faunus. He’d been treated as a scapegoat by both the Atlas Council, and the SDC as more and more abuses came out of the woodwork.

And yet, it seems that such had not occurred.

And Blake doesn’t know what to make of it.

It’s not like she likes General Ironwood. Even before he’d gone against them in Atlas, he’d allowed the abuses of the faunus to continue under his watch during the first few years of his time as General. Now, of course, a rookie General fresh into his position likely doesn’t have the pull necessary to completely alter policy, but still, he’d never been especially outspoken about faunus rights.

But she’s getting distracted.

“I’ve heard.”

“Then you might know that there are several policies in the works right now in Atlas that, if put into place, will likely only make things worse for our brothers and sisters on Solitas.”

Blake hasn’t heard as much as he probably thinks she has. She’s been focused on training Eve and Sienna, enjoying allowing herself to have some simple days for once in her life.

Of course, she had known that such wouldn’t last forever. She’d just been content to let it last for a bit. It seems it’s come to an end, now. It had been nice while it lasted.

But now she has work to do.

“Tell me about them.”

“Simply put, proposals that were being put in place to up the wages of faunus workers, and had received generally positive support from the people of Atlas, are now being halted in Atlesian courts.” Ghira begins, clearing his throat. “Hawthorne is not entirely to blame, as much as I’d like to put it all on him. The SDC had been moving to kill these bills for well over a year now, and it was their refusal to allow them to pass that stalled it for so long in the first place.”

Blake shook her head. “I don’t entirely understand; if Hawthorne was going to allow the bill to pass a year or two ago, why isn’t he doing so now?”

“Because he’s taken a platform.” Ghira sighs. “He’s thrown his bag in with the racists and the bigots of Atlas, who make up, I’m afraid, a rather sizeable portion of Atlas’ population. It’s empowering the very dregs of society to say things that have been on their minds for years, but that they didn’t have the courage to say when such was frowned upon. Now, they’re calling faunus rabid animals again, just like they did after the war. Hawthorne is, by not saying anything, saying everything. He supports these people, even if he can’t admit it.”

“I don’t mean to demonize the entire people, of course. Only thirty-seven percent of people in Atlas support the bill being shot down, but among that number are some of the wealthiest people on Solitas. Without significant pushback from the sixty-seven percent, which he has so far not received, nothing will change. Or, worse, things will change, but only backwards, setting faunus rights back years.”

Blake nods her head slowly, feeling a disgust building within her chest. “What do we plan to do?”

“We’re going to go and protest in the streets of Atlas.” Ghira explains, clearing his throat. “We will show up as the White Fang, and do what we’ve always done; give voice to those faunus who do not have one.”

Blake can’t help but doubt how effective a protest is going to be on this issue. She’d grown up during a more accepting time, but even then, they’d been generally scoffed at.

“That…”

“To clarify, I’ve no illusions such will in any way convince Hawthorne, or those who’ve already made up their minds to hate us on principle.” Ghira states, and Blake’s brow furrows. “But we can, at the very least, show the people of Atlas that we are reasonable. That we are not rabid animals. We are people, just like they are. Hopefully, that will cause further bills like this one being shot down to be met with more fervor from that sixty-seven percent, putting pressure on those in government to look towards the future, and not the past.”

“And you want me to come along?”

“I do.” Ghira sighs. “Because as much as I’d like to pretend otherwise; there’s always the chance that things will go badly. The only reason I want you to come is to protect the people going to protest. Not to attack anyone or cause a scene.”

Blake knows what he means. Don’t shoot anyone, basically, which is a fair warning given that, as far as he knows, she’s shot a lot of people.

She doesn’t like this. Again, there’s just… a hint of something on the air. A hint that something’s not as it should be.

And yet, what can she really do?

The answer to that question is rather obvious.

Go along, and do the best she can to prevent anything untoward happening.

“Alright.” She looks up, and meets Ghira’s eyes.

“When do we leave?”

/

Yang wipes the sweat from her face as she finishes killing the last of the Nevermore hanging about the skies of Patch.

To call it a thankless job is false, given that the entire island counts on its Hunters to come out and cull the migratory Grimm populations every once in a while, but it’s also a job that Yang knows many people on the island don’t even know exists.

That’s down to just how well they do it, to be fair. A Grimm hasn’t broken through to the actual settlement of Patch in thirty-three years, and even a decade from now, in Yang’s time, that hadn’t changed.

Still, she’s being paid, and paid work as a Huntress on Patch is hard to come by, so she’s not going to complain too much.

Her father’s lucky he’s a teacher, and can thusly make a steady income. Mom – er… Summer – doesn’t quite have the same luck, but then, it seems like she earns a little stipend from Ozpin to help support the family.

Yang supposes that makes sense, given she’s one of the world’s foremost weapons against the Grimm, and, at this point, perhaps even the world’s foremost. Keeping her happy means keeping her willing to take on work.

She doesn’t blame Ozpin for what happened to her mom. That would be foolish. But… she does blame Salem, and her people. Ruby had been the one to say it.

The Hound, back in Atlas…

…

It doesn’t matter, that’s not happening this time.

She puts such macabre thoughts out of mind, and focuses back in on finishing up for the day.

The purge of the islands Grimm is a monthly event. It could, likely, be done bimonthly, or even less often than that with no real issues, but then, the island likes to keep things one-hundred percent secure.

And monthly cleanups do that, whether they’re a little excessive or not.

Yang heads back to Patch proper, and gets her paycheck. It’s not a ton, but it’s a lot more than she’s earning sitting around on her ass wasting the days away, and frankly, she could use the chance to keep her skills from rusting – outside of sparring with Raven every once in a while.

She makes her way towards the Xiao-Long cabin in no real hurry. Her ‘house’ – it’s really more of a small apartment that she’d had her dad help her build – is around fifty or so meters from it.

She steps in, changes into something reasonable, and takes a shower. It never does get as hot as she’d like it to, but then, she can’t really complain given that she’s not actually paying a water bill.

She makes her way over to her parents’ house, walks into the front door, and is met with what looks like a meeting between the adults of the household.

Taiyang, Summer, and Raven are all sat around the coffee table in the center of the room. They don’t seem nervous, or otherwise upset, so Yang thinks that whatever they’re looking at can’t be that big of a deal.

“Ah,” Raven sees her first. “Yang.”

“Who’s–” Summer looks up, sees her, and smiles. “Ah, other Yang.”

They’ve taken to calling her that – Summer and Taiyang – given that she shares a name with their daughter. She can’t help feeling a bit salty about that, given that Yang’s been called Yang for an awful lot longer than Yang’s been called Yang!

…Oh, gods, none of this makes any sense.

“Ah, come in.” Her father is always polite, even with strangers. It’s funny, she’s seeing a new side of Summer – her mom – now that she’s not her daughter.

She’s actually a somewhat suspicious person, and while she’s kind, she’s also fiercely protective. She’s the slowest of any of them to fully trust her, whereas young Yang and Ruby – which is weird, it’s really weird – have taken to her quite easily.

“We’ve been invited to the Vytal Festival.” Raven wastes no time. “By Ozpin.”

Clearly, the latter part is what matters more to her mother, albeit Yang finds herself interested as to the Vytal Festival portion as well.

“You do realize you’re staying here on Oz’ lien, right?” Summer gives her teammate/lover a deadpan stare. “Like, he’s paying you a wage for existing.”

“Hah, right. Like that’s a totally altruistic thing for him to do, with no ulterior motives at all.”

They get into a quick verbal spat, which Taiyang smiles through with the patience of a saint. Had… this been what Summer had been like before Raven had left?

Yang’s not really sure she can meld the mental image of Summer from her childhood around this one.

“Anyways,” Taiyang eventually continues, seeing as the other two aren’t. “Ozpin has invited all of us to come and attend the festival alongside him. I believe he’s also hoping that Summer will be able to inspect that student he was interested in, so as per usual, Oz does have an ulterior motive.”

“See, Tai agrees with me,” Raven shoots at Summer.

“Oh, right, because Tai agreeing with you is for purely altruistic reasons, and not just because he wants to eat your a–.”

“Guys.” Tai hisses out, and Summer and Raven both grumble under their breath as Yang and Ruby – little versions – look over cluelessly.

Yang raises an eyebrow at her father, and he just chuckles below his breath.

“They’re uh… feisty?”

Eventually, Summer and Raven both stop arguing about nothing at all, and the four of them start discussing how they’re going to get to Atlas.

“We’d be going aboard Ozpin’s personal shuttle.” Summer explains. “Taking that to Atlas, the six of us, presuming that you want to go, Yang.”

She nods her head. “I’d like to. I’ve nothing else to be doing, certainly.”

Summer hums out in acknowledgement. “Then we’d go, watch the festivities, take some time for me to investigate this new student that Ozpin’s got his eye on, and then come on back.”

“Sounds good to me.” She shrugs, then looks to Raven. “You?”

“Eh.” She seems to want to complain for complaining’s sake, and Summer rolls her eyes with a groan. “I’ve never been a fan of the tournaments. Kids suck at fighting, too. It’s infuriating to watch them get cheered on for the most basic shit.”

“The tournaments aren’t really for the hunter populations, Raven.” Summer glares. “They’re for civilians. It’s a show. Makes them confident that we’ll be able to protect them from the Grimm, nurtures international relations; hell, you’d know all of this if you’d ever paid attention in world history!”

“Oh, we’re getting back on my case about world history, now?” Raven scoffs. “I told you before, and I’ll tell you again–”

The two start going off on another rant, and Taiyang, sensing that he’s not going to be able to get a word in edgewise, stands from the couch, smiles over at Yang, and gestures towards the door outside.

Yang follows him, and the two of them step out.

“It’s been great having Rae back,” Taiyang says, and despite what had just happened, she can tell he means it. “Summer’s been over the moon about it, though you’d never be able to tell with how much they’re at each other’s throats. I think Summer feels like Rae has to prove herself, and I think Raven’s a little angry that Summer won’t just… trust her, y’know?”

Yang nods her head. “Sounds complicated.”

Her father laughs. “You don’t know the half of it. Still, I was thinking; you’ve never met Raven’s brother before, have you?”

Her eyes widen as the topic of conversation suddenly shifts towards uncle Qrow. Obviously, no, she’s never met him in this time…

And she can’t give away how badly she wants to see him, either.

“Nah, can’t say I have.” It’s difficult to reign in her emotions, but she’s had practice with it these last eight or so months. “Why do you ask?”

“Well, he’s been on an extended mission in Mistral for a while, hasn’t even answered his scroll. I don’t even know if he’s had time to check it. For all I know, he doesn’t even know Rae’s back.”

That… actually, yeah, that sounds like Uncle Qrow. He’d probably broken his scroll, had to get a new number, and then totally forgot to tell people about it.

That had happened three times in Yang’s life. Each time her dad had freaked out and assumed he’d died, only to be relieved when he’d call into Ozpin and learn that he’d just tripped, and his scroll had flown out of his pocket and into a sewage drain or something.

Having bad luck as a semblance is, from what her uncle tells her, pretty much just like that sometimes.

“Well, I’ll tell Oz to contact him, let him know about Rae and to come to the Vytal Festival. Hopefully he’s finished up matters over there with Lionheart.”

That name… brings back memories.

“What’s going on with Lionheart?”

“Oh, one of his bodyguards was assassinated.” He father sighs out. “Bit of an ugly business, but Qrow’s one of the best at tracking things like that. Hopefully they got the guy, but I don’t really know.”

Yang nods along, looking out at the forest beyond the Xiao-Long cabin. She can see her tiny little house a way away.

“When are we leaving?”

“Sometime within the next few days. Maybe I’ll just call Oz now, see if he can’t patch me through to Qrow.”

Yang nods her head. “I’ll leave you to it, then.”

The man nods, and brings his scroll out. Yang begins the trek back towards her abode, and thinks about their upcoming journey.

There’re a few things on her mind, but chief among them…

This is a chance to search for the others. And…

Maybe, she should try and make a scene when she gets there. Get on video, be obvious. Attract attention.

Yeah…

She thinks that might just work.

/

Weiss isn’t really sure what it is, but there’s something… off about Qrow when she sees him next, after she’s finished preparing for the morning’s activities.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” She greets, and the man jumps in place, before shaking his head.

“Ah, well…” He ran a hand down his face. “Just uh… got some news.”

He runs her through what he’s learned. It’s… well, admittedly, it’s an awful lot of information to have suddenly thrust upon her. Raven has returned to Team STRQ? She’s gone back to Summer and Tai?

And she’s been with them nearly eight months now!?

That…

Weiss doesn’t know everything about Ruby and Yang’s childhood, but she’s fairly certain that hadn’t ever happened. After all, Yang had said she hadn’t met her mother until she’d gone and found the Branwen’s camp.

It did have one question on the tip of Weiss’ tongue, however.

“How did you not know your sister had returned to your family until now if this happened eight months ago?”

Qrow seems rather angry about that as well. “I got a new scroll! The last one got EMP’d by Marcus Black while you were busy being blown up! I chased his ass down that stairwell, and he fuckin’ threw a smorgasbord of random bullshit at me! And of course, people just happened to forget to give Summer or Tai my new number, so they’ve been textin’ my burnt-out scroll for months, thinking I had gone dark for a mission or somethin’.” He growls. “Fuckin’ semblance.”

“So… your sister, Raven… she’s back?”

“From what they’re saying, and they’re not really the types to bullshit this.”

“How is that possible?”

It’s an accidental thing; Weiss hadn’t at all meant to say it. Yet it slips out, and Qrow responds by barking out a laugh. “Look at you; asking the right questions. I don’t know. Ain’t got a clue.”

He sighs, before heading down to the hotel lobby, and then walking outside. She’s pretty sure he just wants to take the conversation elsewhere, and so doesn’t complain.

They end up continuing their conversation at a bakery nearby, which has croissants that Weiss is quite taken with.

“I don’t know,” Qrow speaks around bites of a glazed chocolate donut. “Whole thing’s just weird to me. It’s not like I hate my sister or somethin’, I mean, we’re siblings, I can think she’s a fucking idiot and still love her, y’know?”

Unfortunately, yes, Weiss does know. She’d felt her father had been an evil man, corrupt and unscrupulous, and yet, even so, she’d never stopped loving him in some distant, far-off corner of her heart.

How cruel such bonds can be.

“But…” Qrow shakes his head. “I don’t get it. She was a recluse for a good seven years, and then just… shows up one day, like nothing happened? I guess I just don’t think this happened because she suddenly grew a conscience. That or a spine.”

He groans, before taking a mighty swig of coffee, and then exhaling.

“Alright. Second order of business,” He points to her with his pinky. “I got an invite to the Vytal Festival, apparently Oz wants Summer to investigate a student.”

“Hm. Is there a reason?”

“I mean, there’s always a reason, but if you’re wondering if I know what it is, then no. He didn’t say. Which is pretty much the usual with him.” Qrow rolls his eyes. “I wish he would put a little more faith in people, but eh, that’s just Oz. You get used to it.”

“Alright. When will you be leaving?”

“You mean when will we be leaving?” Qrow cocks an eyebrow at her.

“Wait, I’m going?”

“You are indeed.”

“Because…?”

“Because I think you’re more than good enough to join our little peace-keeping force.” Qrow states, and before Weiss can get a word in, “And as for why you’ll give it a chance, it’s because you owe me about fifty for covering your ass over the course of the last eight months. You do realize you’ve been on Beacon’s insurance for all our jobs, yeah?”

Weiss breathes out in a huff, but she can’t actually argue against what Qrow is saying, despite very much wanting to.

“And I take it that means I’m meeting with Ozpin?”

“You are indeed.” The man smiles, and Weiss groans in response. “C’mon, think of it like a vacation. We’ve been slumming it up in Mistral doing boring ass reconnaissance work without finding a single thing.”

“That and failing to save a child from her abusive parents…” Weiss mumbles glumly.

Qrow winces. “Don’t… don’t blame yourself, kid. Those cases aren’t… ugh.”

It’s clear the man isn’t really sure how to phrase this.

“It doesn’t help that the child’s mute. She can’t speak for herself, and while she can write notes, she can’t properly respond to people’s statements in real time. It means that her parents can spin the entire narrative on us blowing something minor out of proportion. I called in the best people I could, but they haven’t been able to turn up much of anything on those guys so far. It’s a suspiciously low amount, to be honest.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that they might have criminal connections.”

That makes Weiss even less happy, knowing she has to leave Neo – or Trivia Vanille, as they’d learned during their very brief, very one-sided court appearance – with a pair of abusive, potentially criminal parents.

“I’m not giving up on her. Especially not after hearing that.”

“I’m not going to ask you to.” Qrow smiled back, but it was a weak thing. “I’ve got some people working behind the scenes to find some more dirt on those two, but especially with them being as guarded as they are, it’s not going to be a quick process.”

“Nothing ever seems to be.” She groans, running her hands down her face, and then looking up at Qrow. “Fine. Maybe I could use a break.”

“Hey, that’s the spirit.” Qrow smirks. “Alright, we’ll be heading out sometime in the next few days. In the meantime, though, we’ve got cleanup on the Jensen and Bjergsen cases…”

Weiss and Qrow become lost in their own conversation, and gradually, the day seems to start filtering by. Eventually, they pay, and leave the bakery.

Yet on their way out, they happen to miss the figure watching them from afar, listening in on their every word, before disappearing out of sight.

/

Jaune’s fingernails are digging into the fabric of his top as he struggled to keep his cool.

Across from him, beaten, bruised, and bloodied, Cinder is being ‘tested’ for the first time by Tyrian, at Salem’s behest.

Calling it anything other than a massacre would be giving Cinder too much credit.

He doesn’t mean to diminish his student. She’s come damn far in just eight months. But that doesn’t mean she’s suddenly ready to compete against Tyrian Callows, a man who is already among the strongest Huntsman on the face of Remnant, and someone who has only grown stronger in the last eight months, since Jaune last fought him.

If anything, Jaune would say that he’s taken his ‘loss’ to Jaune as a personal insult, and has been training excruciatingly ever since. It shows in how quick his movements are, how brutal his counters are, how unrelenting his combinations are.

Jaune’s not sure he could handle him at this point. He had, of course, been training over the past few months, but he’d been far more focused on doing his best to not die, while also keeping Cinder alive, to worry overly much about his own condition.

Tyrian, clearly, has no other such concerns but strength.

And he’s unleashing it on Cinder.

Her weapons have been knocked from her hands, her lunch from her stomach, and her will to keep going from her soul. Jaune’s already told himself that damn the consequences, if Tyrian tries anything else, he’s jumping in there and protecting her.

Her aura had broken a while ago, but Salem hadn’t allowed the battle to conclude.

“Will an enemy combatant stop when her aura is broken?” She had said.

It’s a fair thing to say, in theory, but Cinder is fourteen – maybe fifteen, actually, her birthday has never really come up – years old, and Tyrian is at least thirty-something. Maybe even older than that.

To say that she’s outmatched based purely on experience is an understatement.

Luckily, before Jaune throws himself at Tyrian – and then does his best to throw Tyrian out a window – Salem steps in, and calls the match.

“We’ll stop things there.” She speaks, and her voice gives no room for questioning. Tyrian backs away, bows his head, and then, as if he’d done nothing at all, casually exits the room.

Jaune glares daggers into the man’s back as he goes. Tyrian, in a bid to further piss him off, turns back and winks at him.

One day. Jaune swears. One day, I’ll wipe that smirk off your face.

“Excellent work, Jaune of Arc.” Salem turns back to him. “You’ve done well to train young Cinder. She’s rather capable.”

“I’m glad.” He grits out between his teeth. “I’d like to attend to my student now, if that’s fine?”

Salem hums out in amusement at his blatant dislike. He’s not really trying to be subtle about it, to be fair.

Salem doesn’t need him, but he’s pretty sure she’s committed to him at this point. He is, after all, just another experiment in her eyes. An errant comment isn’t going to get him terminated.

If anything, the fact that he doesn’t try to prove himself to her seems to almost have her more interested in him.

This had not been the plan.

“Well, Mr. Arc,” Salem steps past him, looking at him out of the corner of her eye as she stands parallel with him. “What’s stopping you?”

He bites down on his bottom lip. Salem’s essentially saying he’s afraid of her, and that’s the reason he hadn’t just gone over and healed Cinder to begin with.

And damn it, but it’s true.

Jaune wishes he could overcome his own self-preservation instincts for Cinder’s sake, but the truth of the matter is that instinct is a powerful thing. It’s easy to say one’s not afraid.

It’s a lot harder to actually be not afraid.

Still, he doesn’t address her as he steps by her, and kneels down at Cinder’s side. His semblance is coursing over her a moment later.

“I’m sorry I hesitated.” He tells her, shaking his head. “How are you feeling?”

Cinder just groans, and Jaune feels worse.

He can’t keep fearing retribution from Salem every time he makes a decision. He’s the Rusted Knight for goodness’ sake.

“You’d be better off focusing your semblance on her core.”

Jaune practically springs into action, his hand on his blade as he turns on a dime, looking up at Salem, standing above him with an absent expression on her face.

“What are you–”

“The core will heal her extremities in time.” Salem speaks. “But if she has sustained any injuries there, her body’s function will be far too focused on those to bother with anything else. Tyrian was instructed not to break anything. None of her injuries will persist beyond a few days.”

Ah, like that makes it all fine.

“My semblance reinforces her aura.” Jaune states. “It’s less that I’m healing her, and more that I’m supplying her with the means to heal herself.”

“Ah, I see.” Salem seems intrigued about this, bending down so that she can see more closely the affect that his semblance is having on Cinder. It makes Jaune supremely uncomfortable. “How interesting. This almost resembles the fortification magics of old.”

Jaune’s expression falters. “The… the what?”

Salem hums out a note of amusement. “Worry not.” She smiles at him, and that does nothing to make him feel better. “Such does not concern you. Don’t you have someone to be focusing on?”

He does just that, focusing back in on healing Cinder. He can’t help noticing that Salem hasn’t left, however, still hovering there at his shoulder.

“What… are you still doing here?” He asks hesitantly. He doesn’t want that to sound confrontational. Cinder could pay for it if she takes it as such.

“Because she is someone who has caught my interest, Jaune of Arc. The same as you have.” She smiles, then, a look in her eye like she has him all figured out. “A man of magic, from an untold dimension.”

His eyes widen, but before he can question Salem’s seeming knowledge of him…

“Ah, but I’ve been distracted. I originally stayed behind to let you know that I have a mission for you.”

He nods his head slowly, having long since expected to be doing things like this. He just hopes he’s not going to be hunting anyone down.

“What kind of mission?”

“Reconnaissance, and, if such goes well, perhaps even retrieval.” Salem speaks. “You see, rather recently, Watts brought something to my attention. It was a video uploaded on some newfangled website… the point of which I still do not grasp, but that is beyond me at the moment. In my day, we had more important things to be doing than wasting away in front of a screen.”

Jaune’s not really sure what to think about the fact that Salem is, essentially, an old codger yelling at clouds.

Just an exceptionally dangerous, sociopathic old codger.

“But I digress,” She summons a scroll seemingly out of thin air – it had to have been on her person somewhere, not that Jaune had been able to tell – and activates it, a video popping up. “This was uploaded by a student at Beacon Academy a few days ago. Apparently, it was an upset where a first-year team managed to defeat all comers, and make it into the Vytal Festival. Have a watch.”

Jaune doesn’t like… really all of this, but it’s not like he has any other choice. He takes the scroll, and presses play on the video.

The person recording – likely a student – is not at all the world’s best cameraman. If anything, Jaune would put them bottom five. They barely seem to be able to focus on the action as the fourth-year team – Jaune presumes, based off what Salem had said – is slowly picked apart by the smaller, less experienced first year team.

All of their members are at least passable, but one of their members is dragging. The other two – a three-man team? – are carrying him a little. One has dark brown hair, and darker skin. The other has black hair, and–

A breath catches in Jaune’s throat, one he does everything in his power to suppress. He cannot, will not, give anything away with Salem right there.

He’s lucky she hadn’t been looking at his face. If she had… she’d have seen the look of utmost shock there.

Because as the battle concludes, as the audience erupts into cheers, boos, and shouts of anguish – presumably having lost bets – the camera zooms in on that final member.

It zooms in on the face of Ruby Rose, eighteen or so years old, exactly as Jaune had last seen her.

It’s her. No doubt about it.

That confirms it, then.

He’s not here alone.

The others had come through.

It fills his heart with hope, even as that hope is dashed against the rocks a second later.

“My mission…” He turns to Salem, handing her back the scroll. “What is it?”

“You will be going to Atlas in the coming days. Tyrian will be accompanying you.” She tells him.

“Cinder?”

“Why, she’ll be staying here, of course.” Salem seems to take some glee in Jaune’s grimace, then. “After all, she needs to recover, not be dragged across the world, does she not?”

He doesn’t dignify that with a response.

“Once you have arrived in Atlas, the two of you will be attending the Vytal Festival as civilians. While you’re there, you’ll investigate this new…  piece on Ozpin’s board. If at all possible, you will retrieve her, and bring her back to me. There are a few things I wish to learn from her.”

Immediately, Jaune decides that no, he will not be doing that. He’ll need to find some method of protecting Ruby, he’ll need to–

“Oh, and don’t go failing now, Jaune of Arc.”

Salem looks down to Cinder, who’s seemingly fallen asleep on the floor, the fight having taken everything out of her, and leans down. She places her hand on the side of Cinder’s face, and runs her fingers through the girl’s hair.

Cinder mumbles quietly, leaning into the touch.

It sickens Jaune. The way that this monster pretends to care.

The way that Cinder seems almost to believe her.

“It won’t be you,” Salem says as she meets Jaune’s gaze, “That will be paying the price if you do. Am I understood?”

Jaune seethes. It’s all he can do to grit out between closed teeth, “You’re understood.”

Salem takes a sadistic glee in his inability to oppose her, in her total power over him, even as she leaves the two of them behind.

And Jaune is left in the training room with his unconscious student, his hands balling into fists, his knuckles white.

Because he can’t succeed. He refuses to succeed.

But if he fails…

He looks down at Cinder’s peacefully sleeping form…

And he bites down on the inside of his cheek.

Chapter Text

The flight from Beacon to Atlas is to be a rather lengthy one. Even in their high-speed passenger bullhead, it’s still a journey that’s going to require two legs, with a stop for fuel in between. It will take roughly twenty-six straight hours of travel to arrive in Solitas.

And Ruby is… well, she’s bored.

Being on a flight with nothing to do but talk to people – which she’d done for the first three hours with Roman, but is now sick of – read a book – which she does not do – or sleep – which she isn’t tired enough for – just doesn’t lend itself well to… being Ruby Rose.

She lets out a lengthy sigh, and thinks briefly about trying to rest her eyes anyways. All around her, many of the third- and fourth-year teams going along with them are doing just that. Amber had fallen asleep the second they’d gotten on the plane, being a relaxed enough person to manage that, and Roman had concocted a plan to stay up all night and sleep through the entire flight, which hadn’t worked out that well. Instead, it had resulted in Ruby having to talk to her manically tired teammate as he slowly and utterly exhausted himself.

Eventually, he had fallen asleep, but Ruby’s the one worse off for it.

“Would you mind if I sat down here, Ms. Rosenberg?”

Ruby’s eyes widen, and she turns to see Professor Ozpin standing next to her, gesturing towards the empty seat beside her.

She’s… not unwilling to talk with Ozpin, but she’d really rather not. Still, her options are to decline, and make the man even more curious and suspicious about her…

“Sure.” She smiles, employing her other option. “What can I do for you, headmaster?”

“Oh, nothing.” He chuckles as he sits himself beside her. “I was simply curious as to how you feel you will be doing in the upcoming Vytal Festival.”

“May I ask why?”

“Oh?” There’s a twinkle in his eye as he turns to her. “Do you not believe my interest to be benign, Ms. Rosenberg?”

Ruby frowns, uncertain as to what the man is getting at. There’s always an angle with Ozpin, and to try and fool herself into thinking there isn’t would be… well, foolish.

“I guess I’m just curious.” She shrugs. “You picked me of all people to come and talk to.”

“Well, you are quite likely the most skilled first-year student we have ever hosted at Beacon Academy.”

“That…” She can’t exactly deny it. She doubts that Beacon has played host to a lot of fully-fledged Huntresses pretending to be students.

“You need not explain yourself, Ms. Rosenberg.” Ozpin interrupts before she can make a fool of herself any longer. “We all have our secrets, and you have proven to be a true leader to Team Rarity.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“I would simply ask you where you feel your ceiling is in this tournament. Do you believe you can claim victory over the entire event?”

“That’s my goal, sir.”

“And an admirable goal it is indeed.” Ozpin speaks. “I confess that I was not entirely sure as to Mr. Torchwick’s abilities at the start of the year. I felt that on many other teams, he would have floundered; left by the wayside as the team around him refused to slow in order to give him the help he needed.”

“Roman’s a member of my team.” Ruby speaks. “I wasn’t just going to leave him behind.”

“Mm. And that speaks to your character.”

“Uhm, Headmaster… why is it that you really wanted to talk to me?”

Ozpin’s expression shows just the smallest bit of shock upon its features. He settles a moment later, shaking his head with a tiny smile.

“You are rather perceptive, Ms. Rosenberg.”

“Thank you, sir, but…”

“If you must know, I came over here to learn your goal.” Ozpin explains. “After all, I do not believe it is any secret for me to say that you were not on our planned roster of first-years at the start of this school year.”

Ruby shakes her head, seeing no reason to lie. “I… wasn’t.”

“And yet here you are, a student of Beacon Academy, and heading off to represent it in the Vytal Festival.” Ozpin has his eyes set forward, not looking at her. “I would like to know why. Or, I suppose I would like to know where it is you’ve come from most of all, but I doubt you will grant me such information.”

He’s guessed correctly. “It’s not… I can’t tell you.”

“I assumed so, Ms. Rose. You’ve no need to explain yourself to me.”

Her eyes widen, and she turns to see Ozpin looking at her out of the corner of his eye.

“Am I correct in assuming that to be your name? Your real name?”

Ruby swallows nervously, not entirely certain how she wishes to handle this situation.

“That…”

“You need not confirm it.” Ozpin looks away, and Ruby can breathe again. “I’ve had my suspicions ever since the beginning of the year. Even during initiation. I would also assume there is a reason that you cannot tell me why you have chosen to go by a different name?”

She nods.

“Then I will respect your privacy. All I ask is that you inform me at least partially on the truth of the matter; what are you really after here? What is your goal in and around the Vytal Festival. Tell me this, and I will do nothing to impede you.”

Left unsaid is that if Ruby does not, he will likely do something to act against her. She can’t exactly blame him for being cautious, not when the lives of his students, and for all he knows, the very world, might be on the line.

So…

Perhaps she can just be honest with the man. Just a little bit.

“When I ended up on that transport to Beacon Academy, I…” She purses her lips. “I was separated from a few very important people in my life. I haven’t seen them since. But I have reason to believe they are still alive. Somewhere. I felt that by winning the Vytal Festival, I might be able to broadcast myself to the world, and make at least my position known to all of them.”

Ozpin doesn’t seem to have suspected such an answer. To be fair, it is a touch unusual. The idea that she’d go to all this effort just to look for somebody.

“If that’s the case, I could always ask some of my allies to aid in your search, Ms. Rose.” Ozpin speaks. “You need not do this alone.”

It is both an offer of assistance, and a hidden grasp for further truths. Ozpin is offering to help her, which she appreciates, but he’s also trying to learn more about her situation.

And at the moment, Ruby doesn’t want that to happen.

“Thank you, but I’d like to keep this relatively innocuous for the moment.” Ruby smiles over at him.

“I understand.” Ozpin says, and though he seems a touch disappointed, he does not push her further. “Know that I am here if you require assistance, Ms. Rose. After all, you are a student of Beacon Academy now. And I am always accessible to my students.”

She gives a far realer smile, then. “I do appreciate it.”

Ozpin hums as he rises from out of his chair, seemingly content. But a moment later, he freezes, and looks back down at Ruby.

“A word of warning, however.”

“Hm?”

“Your plan is well and good, but be mindful that you do not put your name out there for those far less… scrupulous to find. Those who might be interested in ones such as you.”

He gestures towards the glasses on his face, and the insinuation is clear.

It’s also something that Ruby hadn’t even considered.

Because of course, Salem will be after those with Silver-Eyes, and she plans on broadcasting herself all over the world. She’ll figure out about her, that’s almost assured.

Of course, how had she not considered that? She has Silver-Eyes, and such will be rather obvious, especially on a giant jumbotron, or on video in interviews after her win.

If Salem discovers her – assuming she hasn’t already – then…

“Thank you for your warning, Headmaster.” She nods her head. “I’ll be sure to keep it in mind.”

“I’m glad.” Ozpin speaks. “Know that I will not allow harm to come to you, but I would ask you not put yourself in a situation where such would be made easier.”

“Gotcha.”

The man smiles, and then he’s gone, disappearing into the front section of their ship.

And Ruby…

She’s alone with her thoughts.

Alone with thoughts of her plan, and how she might need to make adjustments. Alone with thoughts of what she might be faced with.

And all the while, Atlas grows ever closer.

/

They’re not exactly riding to Solitas in style, but then, Blake hadn’t really expected them to be.

The cargo plane they’re hitching a ride on had been willing to let the Belladonna family and their guests go with them for free. Her father simply isn’t that kind of person, however, and so the pilots and crew are being thoroughly compensated by her father for their loss of cargo. It makes Blake smile to see her father as he’s always been; endlessly kind and generous.

The plane rocks with turbulence every few minutes, and Blake’s finding it rather hard to focus on the hardcore smut in her hands. She lets out a pained sigh as her attempts to read through a paragraph about the main character being railed on a dresser get interrupted for the third time, and decides that she can read this later. She places it back in the bag she’s brought along with her, looks up, and studies the fifteen or so people who’ve come with them.

The people she recognizes are Ghira and Kali, her father and mother, and then a younger version of herself, which is very confusing. Then there’s Sienna, Eve, and a young Adam, who Eve had brought along due to not wanting to be apart from her son.

Blake can’t really blame her.

The others… some of them Blake can remember. Old friends of her family’s, or other people with likeminded ideals to her father. This is, after all, going to be an organized protest. But a lot of them are mere familiar faces, ones for whom names have long since fled Blake’s mind.

Still, the bulk of that protest will be made up of the faunus of Atlas and Mantle. Likely more the latter than the former.

Their chances of actually making it up to Atlas with the current political landscape as it is are low.

Eve’s sat to her right, letting a sleeping Adam rest on her shoulder. It’s funny, seeing Adam like this. He’d always been so independent, even when he’d been just fourteen or fifteen, back when Blake had first met him.

Yet… she wonders if that independence had been a forced thing. If he’d always secretly just wanted a shoulder to lean on, and to sit back and let others take the reins. If anger had blinded him to peace.

She supposes that’s more a rhetorical question.

“How are you?” She asks the woman with a whisper.

“I’m alright.” Eve answers. “Nervous, I suppose?”

“You didn’t have to come with us.”

“But I wanted to.” Eve speaks, looking down at the floor with some embarrassment in her gaze. “All my life, I’ve been unable to do anything for my own sake. Just… just for others. I guess this is more of the same, but…”

“You’re doing this for the faunus.” Blake smiles. “That’s for you, too, you know.”

“Yes, I suppose it is.” She chuckles, but quiets down as Adam briefly stirs, presses himself a bit into her arm, and falls right back to sleep. “…I hope everything goes well.”

“It will.” Blake’s not just saying that for nothing, either. The worst that had ever happened during their protests had been a few people being carted off under false charges, and being held a few days’ time before being released, or rocks being thrown and some people being minorly injured.

Now, Blake doesn’t believe their actions will change anything, but they should all come back to Menagerie fine.

“I hope.” Eve speaks quietly. “I just have a bad feeling is all.”

Blake’s… not exactly a superstitious person. If anything, she relies far more on logic than on vibes, as Yang does. But even so… she’d felt a similar sensation as they’d been thinking about leaving Menagerie for this protest.

“I’ll be there.” She tells Eve, reaching across and placing her hand atop the woman’s, smiling supportively for her. “Nothing’s going to go wrong.”

She’ll hold herself to that. There’s a certain vulnerability there in Eve’s expression. Blake doesn’t want to betray that. It’s faith. Faith in her, and in the words she’s said.

Her pupil believes in her.

And she’s not going to let her down.

/

The civilian airliner that they’ve booked to fly to Atlas is rather packed with people.

Yang’s almost impressed at how many. Then again, she supposes this is a time of peace. She’s spent the last two years of her life on her Remnant in a time of calamity and strife. Things had definitely not been normal.

But here, there are parents and children alike, no Huntsman – other than them – aboard to guard the craft in case of Grimm. Nothing at all.

Yang can’t quite help but be a bit nervous about that, despite knowing that she probably doesn’t have to be. No Grimm in the world is fast enough to keep up with a plane, and as long as they’re not accosted during their takeoff or descent, they’ll be fine.

It’s not a short flight to Atlas, in that it’s going to take two trips and the better part of an entire day to make it there, so Yang had initially thought that she’d sleep through as much of it as she could.

That sort of goes out the window the moment someone taps on her thigh, and she looks down to find…

Well, herself, actually.

Little Yang.

“Hey, there.” Yang – er… Big Yang – speaks. “What’s up with you?”

“Nothin’!” Her little self giggles, clearly and obviously up to something, and probably something she shouldn’t be, either. Yang would know. “I just wanted to see what you were doing.”

“Oh, well, if you must know I was planning on sleeping.”

“That’s cool.” Little her smiles. “You want to talk about stuff?”

Yang’s not sure how the little version of her missed the part where Yang said she was planning on sleeping, but she apparently had. She’d be more impressed with that if she wasn’t also a little annoyed.

Still, it’s hard to stay mad at a kid, and it’s even harder to stay mad at a kid that used to be you.

“Alright, sure, kid, what do you want to talk about.”

“I’m not a kid!”

“Sure.” She quips at the seven – maybe eight at this point? – year old. “What do you want to talk about.”

Little her looks left, then right, then left again, like she’s about to cross a street, before leaning close to Yang.

“Can I tell you a secret?” She whispers in a very loud way.

“Sure,” Yang plays along, leaning in close as well. “What’s the secret?”

“You have to promise not to tell.”

“I won’t tell.”

“Okay…” Little her looks left, then right, then left again. Again. “I saw auntie Raven kissing mommy and daddy!”

Yang’s eyes widen however briefly, because those aren’t really the words that she’d been expecting to hear from out of little her’s mouth. She’d been expecting… she’s not really sure. Maybe a schoolgirl crush? She’d been head over heels for that one guy around this time… Danny, maybe? Or perhaps that she’d cheated on some homework. She’d done that a lot.

Nope. She’d caught her ‘aunt’ kissing her mother and father.

Yeah, that’s uh…

“I see.” Yang has no idea what she’s supposed to say to this. “That’s uhm… is that good?”

“Yeah!” Little her gives a toothy smile. “That means that Auntie Raven’s going to stick around!”

Yang gives a silent sigh of relief. “That’s good, then. I’m glad to hear it.”

“Mm.” Little Yang looks around for a third time. “You know, Mommy really wanted Auntie Raven to stay.”

“Hm?”

“Well, when she first visited, and then left, when mommy got back home, she cried a whole lot.” Little her’s words have Yang’s eyes widening. “Me and daddy tried to be there for her, but she was… kind of mad and sad.”

Yang nods her head slowly. “…Yeah. I get ya’, kid.”

“I’m not a kid!”

Yang snorts, glad for the change in tone. “I get ya’, adult.”

Little Yang puffs up proudly. “Yeah!”

She can’t help but laugh at her smaller self’s want to be a ‘big kid’ as they say. Yang knows for a fact that being a kid’s pretty damned nice, however, what with the no expectations and total freedom. Being an adult’s got some positives, but…

Well…

“Don’t grow up too quick, kid.” She ruffles the girl’s hair. “And treasure having your auntie with you.”

“I will!”

“Mm. Good.” She murmurs below her breath, even as she leans back against the seat behind her, and does her best to zone out entirely.

/

Weiss is just glad to finally be sitting down for what feels like the first time in eight months as she and Qrow board their flight to Atlas.

She lets out a weary sigh, allowing the tension of… everything to finally leave her body.

Qrow has the window seat, and she’s sat beside him in the middle. The seat beside Weiss is empty, and she’s hoping it’ll stay that way. If it does, she’ll move over once they’ve taken off, and give the both of them some extra space.

“It’ll be nice to see everyone again.” Qrow remarks as he looks out the window. “Although I’m still not sure about this whole Raven thing.”

“I can’t say I blame you. Nor can I say what I’d be feeling in your situation.” She’d gone through something that could be called somewhat similar, what with Winter defecting from Ironwood after being with him for so long, but the scale of time is completely different. “Do you believe she’s really changed?”

“Hard to say. Guess I’ll just have to see her to find out.”

Weiss can’t argue with that.

She prepares to settle in for the flight as their captain comes on and says that they’ll be taking off shortly. The moment their wheels leave the ground, Weiss lets out a quiet sigh, finally letting herself relax.

Of course, it’s around there when she hears a choked noise from beside her, and turns to see Qrow with a shocked expression on his face.

“Uh… Weiss?”

“What’s up?” She raises an eyebrow.

Qrow just points beside her.

Weiss’s brow pulls together, but she follows Qrow’s suggestion, looks over, and…

Her eyes bug out.

Because sitting there, casually waving towards her from the seat directly to her left, is a ten-or-so-year-old Neopolitan.

Who’s apparently decided to come with them…

…Without either of them having any say in the matter.

/

“Will you be gone long?”

Jaune hesitates to answer that question at first. It’s a fair question for Cinder to ask, and a fair thing for her to be curious about in general. After all, whether she knows it or not, he’s her only true ally among the denizens of Evernight.

“I shouldn’t be.” He tells her, doing his best to smile for her sake. “Not longer than half a month or so.”

Cinder nods her head slowly, but it’s clear she doesn’t like this. Jaune can’t blame her that. He doesn’t much like it either.

“Why do you have to go?”

“Because Salem told me to.” He answers honestly. “And…”

Salem’s expressly told him that he is not to reveal the fact that Cinder’s fate is in his hands. He’s not going to risk telling her and something happening while he’s out. He won’t.

No matter how difficult it is.

“Well, there’s just a few things I have to do.”

“Okay.”

He looks over towards the bullhead they’ll be taking – a smaller, high-speed model that had apparently been a prototype out of Atlas, stolen by Watts at some point – and sees that Tyrian has fired up the engine. How that man has a pilot’s license Jaune doesn’t know, but then, he also knows for a fact that the man can pilot one, given he’d flown the three of them – himself, Jaune, and Cinder – back to Evernight after the events at the Glass Unicorn.

Still doesn’t make him thrilled to be stuck in an enclosed space with the man for half a day – Evernight actually being fairly close to Atlas.

“Be safe.” Cinder tells him, and he smiles down at her, before reaching out and ruffling her hair. She takes a step back, clearly mortified judging by her bright red cheeks, and he can’t help but laugh.

“I will be.”

As he boards the bullhead, he turns to see that the doors to Evernight proper are ajar, and within them stands its queen.

Salem looks at him with an undisguised intrigue. She looks at him with a sort of pondering air. Jaune looks away, not wanting to see any more of her than he can help.

That she has some vague interest in him is bad enough.

“This is your captain speaking,” Tyrian comes on the intercom as Jaune sits down in the back, not at all wanting to be in the same compartment as the man. “We’ll be flying to the City of Atlas, although I’m afraid we don’t exactly have the clearance required to land, so we’ll have to… hm… improvise when we get there.”

The man cackles to himself at what can really only barely be called a joke, and Jaune just groans and shakes his head.

Already, he knows this is guaranteed to be a nightmare.

Chapter Text

Atlas is, rather unsurprisingly, cold.

In a weird way, it’s almost nostalgic for Ruby to get out of the bullhead and suddenly be hit in the face with gale force winds that feel like they could freeze magma solid. Her time in Atlas hadn’t ended well, but she’d enjoyed the first half a year or so that they’d spent there, before things went up in smoke.

Perhaps that’s the odd emotion she’s feeling; why it almost seems like she’s walking amongst the ruins of a long-gone empire, suddenly brought to life.

For her, that’s exactly what it is.

“Please form a single file line,” A man in an Atlesian uniform that Ruby doesn’t recognize – but then, it isn’t like she knows everyone in Atlas, especially not a decade prior to when she’d been there – calls out to the students exiting their bullhead. “You will be scanned in through our arrivals system, and have your baggage briefly checked.”

Now this is new; and judging from the look of aggravation on Headmaster Ozpin’s face, not at all a welcome addition.

Ruby would like to pretend she’s worldly enough to know whether or not this had happened once upon a time in Atlas, but if it had, no one had spoken of it, and, all in all, she can’t pretend to know enough about this stuff.

So she has no idea if this is new for eleven years ago, or genuinely new.

She’d been too focused on searching for information on her team, or training, to worry about the politics of other Kingdoms.

“Surely, you do not need to go through so exhausting a process for students of Beacon Academy.” Ozpin steps forward, flanked by Glynda on one side. “They’ve all been personally vetted by myself and the other teachers amongst Beacon’s staff for years, and have shown no signs of trouble.”

“It’s not my call to make, sir.” The man shrugs. “I’m just doing what General Hawthorne’s told me to.”

“Ah, Hawthorne.” Ozpin says the man’s name like it’s a curse. “I’ll be speaking to him about this.”

“I’m sure he’ll be more than willing to speak with you later, but unfortunately he’s quite busy.”

Ozpin just sighs. “Yes. How surprising.”

His tone indicates that Ozpin is being sarcastic.

“Fine. But you will demonstrate whatever methods you wish to check my students on myself and Glynda before laying a hand on any of them.”

Thus begins roughly a half an hour of bags being unzipped, pockets being unfurled, and a rather select subset of their students being picked out of the crowd for ‘random checks’.

“You, come with us,” Two guards step up to a fourth-year student, who doesn’t back off at all. “You’ve been randomly selected to have your baggage double-checked.”

The reason why is obvious.

“Oh, yeah?” The student – or perhaps Ruby should say the faunus student – squares his shoulders and spits out, “Try me.”

His teammates look ready to back that claim up, too. They step forward with their hands balled into fists, clearly barely holding back fury.

The guards, not backing down either, draw their weapons, pointing them directly at the students.

“You will stand down immediately, or by our authority you will be–”

“Enough of this!”

Everyone in the room halts what they’d been doing the moment that Glynda Goodwitch raises her voice. She steps forward with a snarl, drawing her riding crop from off of her hip and yanking the Atlesian guards’ weapons from out of their hands with her semblance. She holds them up in the air above her, and gets right in one of the men’s faces.

“Point a weapon at one of my students again,” She hisses out between clenched teeth, looking at each and every one of the now cowering guardsmen, “And I guarantee you will regret it.”

Ruby’s impressed, and she’s not the only one. Several of the third and fourth years nod approvingly, and one particularly brave woman wolf-whistles. Glynda’s still a first-year teacher, and she likely hasn’t shown this side of herself very much. She’s not had as much chance to be the stern disciplinarian without a Team RWBY to really be… well, stern with.

But if there’s one thing that Ms. Goodwitch cares about more than her students endangering other people, its other people endangering her students.

The guards swear out under their breaths, and some of them seem willing to actually escalate the situation, but before both sides can come to blows…

“Gentleman!”

The person who’s just shouted out commands the attention of every member of the guard within earshot. They stop on a dime, turn towards it, and salute.

And Ruby sees why a second later.

The man who steps into their little section of the landing bay is both tall and wide. He’s slightly shorter than Ironwood, but not by much. His outfit is much the same, however, albeit with a few modifications.

He’s wearing a long coat the same as Ironwood had, but his is lined with fur around the collar. His hair is longer, and a much browner color. He is graying in places, however, and so Ruby thinks that he must be at least fifty years old, if not older than that. He has medals strapped to the left breast of his uniform – what seems to be fifty or more of them.

On his face, perhaps most notably about him, is a large scar running down his left eye. It looks like the kind of thing that might have taken his eye, and yet, no, the eye is there, and doesn’t seem blinded by the wound.

Ruby can’t tell if it’s Grimm in origin, but then, she doesn’t really have time to focus on the scar before the man is suddenly face to face with Ozpin, and offering out his hand.

“Ozpin. It’s been a while.”

“General Hawthorne.” Ozpin’s always been a polite person, but the handshake he gives to Hawthorne is brief, curt, and has nothing behind it.

“I see my men are giving you grief.” He looks towards them, and they all shrink away.

“They seemed to be rather… focused with the students they picked out at ‘random’.”

“Ah, well, unfortunately, randomness can appear at times to have an agenda.” The man chuckles in what Ruby’s pretty sure is supposed to be a good-natured way, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Nonetheless, it seems you’ve all been searched enough. Guardsman, escort the students of Beacon Academy to their hotel. Students of Beacon Academy, know that you are restricted to the grounds of Atlas Academy and its surrounding facilities for the week, until everything’s been settled.”

It’s clearly not what Ozpin wants to hear, but the man is evidently happy enough to get his students out of this scenario in the first place, and so nods towards Hawthorne, allowing the guards to start escorting them forward, deeper into Atlas.

All the while, Hawthorne looks on at them. Even as Glynda Goodwitch – still hovering the guards’ weapons over her head – exits the room. Even as the students follow after her. Even as Ozpin, the last to go, gives a subtle look of distrust back at him.

He does not look away.

He will not show his back.

It is only after their group has left that room, and is being escorted to their destination, that Roman leans over towards her and mutters, “That guy’s kind of an asshole.”

Ruby snorts.

“Yep.”

/

Technically speaking, ferrying people about in the back of a cargo freighter is a perfectly legal method of transportation. Especially so when the pilot has the proper papers, and has documented the entire process, making no secret of this.

Then again, one wouldn’t know it given the welcome the fifteen or so people who’ve flown from Menagerie to Mantle get when they land.

“Yes,” Ghira Belladonna huffs out darkly below his breath as he allows the dozen soldiers who’ve come to search them for ‘contraband’ to do their work. “The hospitality of Atlas on full display.”

The guard checking her father clicks his tongue against the roof of his mouth as he finishes checking Ghira, and finds nothing on him. Blake had half expected him to try planting evidence, given how obviously corrupt they are already, but perhaps they’re not quite solidified enough in their positions to perform an action that could turn the people against them.

“State your name and business.” One of the other guards, a younger-looking man, speaks, and Ghira harrumphs.

“You’ve read it on the manifest, have you not? We’re here to protest the abhorrent treatment of the faunus here in Atlas.”

The man doesn’t say anything, just looks down at the paper, looking it over, and then sighs.

“Fine, you’re free to go.”

“I wasn’t aware we’d done anything wrong.” Kali, her mother, places a hand over her mouth, always an expert at the ‘innocent’ act. “Our apologies for inconveniencing you, officers. I’m sure you’ve important work to get back to.”

Blake can’t help the way her lips upturn ever so subtly. Her mother had become a lot more mellowed out by the time that Blake had eventually returned to see her after Beacon, only occasionally showing signs of the fiery woman that she’d been when Blake had been just a child. It’s good to see her like this again; the yang to Ghira’s yin.

Yang.

It’s a somewhat sudden change in thought process for Blake, but…

Well, sue her, she’d had a girlfriend who she’d finally confessed her feelings to, and lived in blissful happiness alongside her for a day before Ruby had nearly died, the cat had nearly killed them, and then they’d been ripped apart and sent hurtling around the world to different places.

So yes, Blake’s still a bit hung up on Yang.

It must be an obvious thing, because she soon finds her mother, Kali – who doesn’t know she’s her daughter, but isn’t the type to just let someone suffer in silence – has come over and bumped her on the shoulder with her own.

Blake is startled out of her own head and turns to see her smiling over. “Cat got your tongue?”

“Casual racism.” Blake jokes. “Very humorous.”

Kali, as Blake had known she would, chuckles at that. “I’m afraid I’m not going to let you change the subject quite so easily, Miss.”

Blake chuckles. “Am I that obvious?”

“Hey, even the illustrious Black Fang has to have some weaknesses, no?”

It’s an incredibly odd thing for Blake to hear from her own mother’s lips. Odd, and a touch painful; not that she can show such on her face.

“I suppose I must.”

“So?”

“Hm?”

“So, what’s on your mind?”

“Ah.” Blake isn’t really uncertain as to whether or not she wants to tell her mother; she definitely wants to. It’s more… should she? Is it too much information to provide to her mother? “I… I’m just missing the person I love; I suppose.”

“Ah. A boyfriend?”

“A girlfriend.” Blake says, somewhat embarrassed, even knowing her mother would never judge her for such. She’s never really had a preference for guys or girls. She considers herself equal opportunity. Bisexual is a way more boring way of saying things. “She… we were separated due to circumstances outside our control. I just…”

“Miss her?”

“Mm.”

“You’ll see each other again.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“Because if you long for someone, they’ll assuredly come back to you.” Kali speaks, and she says it with an almost secretive smile.

“Is that how that works?”

“Well, not exactly,” Her mother rolls her eyes, “But as long as you keep her in your heart, and continue to search for her, I’m sure you’ll find her.”

Her mother’s always been a much more optimistic person than Blake has, in truth. That’s not to say she’s expressly… pessimistic, she just tries to be objective about things.

And the objective truth is that the world is a big place. Her chances of meeting Yang without knowing where she is, and without making a show of herself – or Yang doing the same – isn’t very high.

But then…

She can always make a show of herself.

Not now; not with their band from Menagerie doing their best to stay under the radar until the protests, but while she’s there…

Well, such things will assuredly be filmed. Likely played on the news as a sign that the faunus are ‘totally unreasonable’ for asking for equal rights and treatment. Blake’s seen this all before, and knows what the SDC and the news networks it sponsors will try to spin their actions as.

But while on tv, who knows? Yang might very well watch it.

And if she sees Blake as a part of a retinue from Menagerie…

That might give her the hint she needs to find her.

Blake will stand at the front of the crowd.

Her initial plan had been to sit back, and essentially act as the eyes and ears of their contingent. To be there in case shit hit the fan. But then, if she’s front and center, she can do that job just as well.

Yes.

It’s a plan, then.

Now, she just needs to put it in action.

/

Yang’s almost managed to forget the level of sheer chaos that comes from a family with young children trying to do… well, anything.

“Yang! Yang get back here!”

“But there’s a horsey!”

“I know, but you need to stay with us.”

“Mommy! I hurt my foot!”

“I’m sorry, my little rosebud. Where does it hurt?”

“My big toe.”

“Ah, okay, let mommy kiss it be– YANG GET BACK OVER HERE!”

Yang – or, uh, adult Yang – is currently watching all of this with a raised eyebrow.

“Huh.”

Taiyang rushes over and gets Yang, preventing her from running over to the horse that’s giving out rides for what seems to be a rather exorbitant price. It’s the kind of display that would seem out of place at any other time but the Vytal Festival.

There are all sorts of attractions, however. There are booths with carnival games – things like ball throwing, bb gun target practice, and throwing rings on bottles – stalls for food or entertainment, and even more obscure things, like fortune-telling and shops selling out-of-Kingdom merchandise.

Beside her, Raven seems to be doing much the same thing she is; observing. There’s an awful lot going on, but something that immediately jumps out to Yang is a bit less obvious to the average festival-goer.

There are a lot of Atlesian guards present.

It’s nothing too major, in all honesty. It’s a number that Yang’s seen before during her own time in Atlas.

The reason it stands out to her, however, is that the last time she’d been in Atlas, the entire Kingdom had been preparing for a war they’d not even been certain they could win. Things had, therefore, been on quite a high alert.

And certainly, the Vytal Festival is an important event, but…

“They seem oddly on edge.” Raven says exactly what Yang’s thinking.

“Yeah.” She notes. “You know what’s going on?”

“If I’m going purely on what I read on the news? Then it’s some mixture of new policies the general here has implemented. They can’t exactly put every citizen under the same quarantine that the students and staff from other schools are coming in under, but they can make sure they’re being watched at all times.”

“Why? Do they suspect an attack?”

“You’d think.” Raven shrugs. “But nothing I found suggested that such an event was going to happen. From what Summer and Tai are saying, Hawthorne – the guy in charge – is just a bit of a paranoid piece of shit.”

Yang’s never been all that well versed in history, but she’s pretty sure this Hawthorne guy had been taken out of power when she’d been a kid. Whether or not such had already happened at this point…

She doesn’t know.

“What is it?” Raven notes her look of consternation.

“Nothing.” She lies. “So where are we headed first?”

“We’re off to go see that student Ozpin wanted Summer to investigate, I think.” Raven tells her. “Though we’re dropping the tykes off first with Tai at the hotel.”

Yang nods, and they do just that over the course of the next thirty minutes. It probably shouldn’t take that long, but then, wrangling children is a tall task, especially when one’s trying to get them to do something they don’t want to.

“We can go see the horsey later.”

“But I want to see the horsey now!”

Taiyang, a beacon of patience and love, smiles over at Raven, Summer, and adult Yang as he tries to keep little Yang from collapsing in a sobbing fit over not getting to ride on the earlier horsey. Ruby is playing with a loose tooth in her mouth.

Overall, it’s a real fun time.

Eventually, Summer, Raven and Yang exit out of the hotel and make their way towards Atlas Academy, where the students and staff of Beacon are being put up for the time being.

It’s not a short journey, and it’s made even longer when they’re stopped every few seconds by guardsman to ask them the purpose of their ‘visit’.

“My name is Summer Rose.” Summer always says, and a few people recognize her via just her name. It’s a bit of a cool thing for Yang, seeing just how famous a Huntress her mother had been back in the past. “I’m off to meet with Headmaster Ozpin of Beacon Academy for private business.”

It’s after they’ve been stopped for the third or fourth time that Raven growls, annoyed, and pulls them to the side.

“Let’s not bother with this shit anymore.” She hisses out.

“What do you mean?” Yang asks.

Raven draws her blade, slashes down, and a portal of red and black swirls into place right beside her.

“Oh. Right.” Yang mutters. “I always forget you can just do that.”

“It’s been a while since I had access to it.” Summer chuckles. “I admit that I nearly forgot myself.”

Raven mutters something under her breath, then, but gestures for them to go on and step through. Summer goes first, followed by Yang, and Raven comes in last.

Ozpin seems a bit surprised by there suddenly being three more people in his room. Yang can’t really blame him for that given they just sort of… showed up.

“Miss Rose,” He clears his throat, trying to recover from being so surprised. “I admit I wasn’t quite expecting you so soon.”

“We were being held up every few meters it felt like,” Summer shrugs. “It felt prudent to just let Raven take us the rest of the way.”

“Yes, I can see how it might be.” He looks towards Raven, and Raven meets his eyes.

There’s no love lost between those two, it seems. Raven’s not quite glaring, but it’s also clear she’s very much not a fan of Ozpin. Ozpin, for his part, doesn’t seem to have much trust in Raven either, for he’s keeping her well within his line of sight.

“Regardless, it is good to see you both again.” Ozpin says, and then he looks towards her. “And who might you be?”

“I’m Yang.” She tells him, though she doesn’t move to give a last name, mostly because she still hasn’t really come up with a good fake one. “I’ve heard a lot about you from Raven and Summer.”

“Hopefully good things?”

“Mostly.” She quips, and Ozpin does smile, so that’s good.

“Well, I suppose that will have to do.” Ozpin swipes his hand down his coat, and then stands. “Summer, if you wouldn’t mind, I’d normally take some time to speak more with you, but I’d like to get your opinion on the student in question before any more time passes.”

“Because the Vytal Festival is coming up?”

“Exactly.” Ozpin nods his head. “And because I am nearly certain that, benign or not, she wishes to do something involving it. I’d rather know if such is a threat before a situation where such knowledge would be required.”

“Understood.” Summer nods her head. “Then lead the way.”

They step out of the room, and Yang gets her first look at Atlas Academy as it had been a decade before she ever arrived there. It’s a bit surreal to walk down the same hallways that are just painted different colors, or to see uniforms a bit less advanced, but certainly still of the same line, to the ones that she knows.

“That’s right,” Summer turns to her, smiling. “I had forgotten; you said you got your license here in Atlas, right Yang?”

It’s really not that much information to disclose, but she really would’ve rather not had it said within Ozpin’s hearing. She doesn’t distrust him, especially not when compared with Ironwood, but she’s not his hugest fan, either.

“I did.” She tells her mother, again upset that she can’t be truly honest with the woman who’d raised her. “I got my license here after an incident with my place of education. My team and I roamed around the world a while, and eventually settled here.”

“How interesting.” Ozpin cuts in. “I’ve never heard of you, Ms…?”

“Just Yang.” She smirks at the very poor attempt to learn her last name. She can’t divulge it.

Or, well…

“I’d say you could call me Yang Xiao-Long, given I’ve been living with them for the last while,” She jokes, and Raven’s eyes go wide for just a moment before she catches herself. “But given there’s already one of those around, I think that would be a bit confusing.”

Ozpin laughs. “Yes, it would.”

“My last name was Brown.” She shrugs her shoulders, having come up with… well, nothing good, but something to at least prevent Ozpin from being suspicious. “I’m not sure you’re aware of the common reason kids get given such a name, but…”

Ozpin nods, now seeming apologetic. “A name given to children whose parents are unknown. Seeing as we live in a society that celebrates color, and brown is the amalgam of all.”

It’s a rather fanciful reason to be given a rather drab last name, but Yang supposes that if she really had been an orphan, she’d have likely appreciated such.

She feels a bit bad to be pretending to be someone she isn’t just to get Ozpin off her back, but she doesn’t want him looking into her too deeply.

“Rather self-explanatorily, I’ve never much cared about my last name.” Yang tells him. “So, call me whatever you want.”

“Then for now, I’ll simply refer to you as Ms. Yang.”

“I’d appreciate that, Headmaster.”

Their journey isn’t much longer. They arrive at a room numbered high into the triple digits, and Ozpin gives the door a single knock. Yang waits off to the side alongside Raven and Summer, and eventually, someone answers the door.

This is the first mindfuck that Yang Xiao-Long receives in the span of thirty or so seconds.

Because standing there, at most seventeen years old, is Roman Torchwick.

Yang’s lucky that Ozpin’s in front of her, unable to see her face, and that both Summer and Raven are discussing something as well, because it takes a good three seconds for her to screw her face back on straight.

“Ah, Mr. Torchwick, it’s good to see you.”

“You as well, teach.” Roman looks back behind him, into the room. “Uh, did you want to talk to Amber?”

“Your other teammate, actually.”

“Ah, okay.” He turns around, and calls back, “Yo, Ruby! Headmaster’s here for you.”

It’s… hard to really describe what goes through Yang’s brain in that moment when she hears Torchwick say that name. Of course, the vast majority of her labels it, immediately, as a coincidence. Another person named Ruby. How rare could such a thing really be?

And yet, as Roman backs away, and another figure appears in the doorway, smiling up at the headmaster with some wariness, Yang’s heart just sort of… stops.

“You wanted to see me?” Ruby Rose, her sister, asks Headmaster Ozpin.

“I did, Ms. Rosenberg. I have a few people here I’d like you to–”

“Ruby?”

Her voice comes out small; almost afraid. She wants so badly to be right, but… it can’t be. She can’t have just… stumbled upon her.

…right?

And then Ruby turns to her, and the look in her eyes is much the same as the one in Yang’s own. Total shock.

“YANG!”

A moment later, her sister utilizes her semblance to blaze forward, and smashes into Yang’s chest, nearly bowling the both of them over.

And everything else just sort of… falls away.

Nothing else matters.

Ruby’s there. Yang’s found her.

She hugs her sister hard enough that for a moment, she’s a bit worried she might crush her. Of course, given that Ruby’s doing her best to crush her back, she’s not all that concerned.

Unfortunately, it takes Yang more than thirty seconds too long to realize that she and Ruby have just made some rather glaring mistakes.

Because as they pull apart, still smiling dumbly at one another, it is to see the others, Ozpin, Summer, and Raven, all looking at them in varying degrees of shock. The most shocked of them is Raven, who’s able to put the pieces together – knowing Yang’s her daughter from the future, that this girl’s name is Ruby, and that they’re close – and knows just who Ruby is.

But most worrying of all is Ozpin, who looks between the two of them with something…

“Ah, ahem,” Ruby clears her throat, stepping back, red in the face. “So, uh…”

She looks around at the others, seemingly just having realized what Yang had before.

“We’re acquainted?” She tries.

“Yes, Ms. Rosenberg.” Ozpin smiles knowingly.

“I think we’ve all figured that out by now.”

Chapter Text

Ruby seems to have realized what it is that’s happening as the five of them – Summer, Raven, Ozpin, Yang, and her – make their way to a conference room nearby to have their little ‘chat’.

She’s realized that this is an interrogation, and that the less information she gives up from here, the better.

Yang knows they could tell the truth, and likely, eventually, be believed. But she also doesn’t quite know what, exactly, would happen if they told Ozpin everything. Surely, he’d likely remove pieces like Hazel, Watts, Tyrian, and Cinder from Salem’s board within a few years’ time, but then…

Well, Yang and the others would lose any advantage they had. Specifically, she’d no longer have the knowledge of who exactly Salem’s planning on using against them, and when said plans are going to be put into place. As things are right now, Yang knows that in roughly a decade’s time, Beacon Academy will be the victim of a terrorist attack orchestrated by Cinder Fall during the Vytal Festival, and that the White Fang will likely be involved in assisting that effort.

And perhaps having that knowledge is worth more than anything else.

She just hopes that Ruby’s on the same page with her.

Except, for the moment, things are slightly more complicated. There are a few reasons as to why.

For one, Raven knows.

It’s obvious by the way her gaze flits back and forth between the two of them, and even more obvious in the way that she’s paying attention to every little thing Ruby says.

Well, that and she’s glaring at Yang, as if upset that she’d not mentioned this to her.

Yang will have to explain later that she’s keeping her cards close to the chest for a reason.

Ozpin seems to be sticking to the edges of the room, not saying anything or giving himself away. He’s doing his best to just watch and absorb information.

Summer, on the other hand, is doing the majority of the questioning. That’s bad for Yang and Ruby, mostly because Ruby is stunned to see their mother again, and is making mistakes because of it.

“So, Ozpin tells me that you’re first years, and yet you’ve qualified for the Vytal Festival.” Summer asks her.

Ruby nods her head. “Y-Yeah. It was difficult for my team, but we managed to make it in the end.”

“Any particular reason why you wanted to qualify?”

“Well…” Ruby looks to Yang, asking a question with her eyes. Yang doesn’t like what she’s planning, but at the same time, perhaps honesty would aid them in this case. She gives her a subtle nod. “I wanted to get myself on TV, actually. I wanted to make myself obvious to my friends, who I’d been separated from.”

Summer’s eyes widen, and Ozpin’s do as well. This is, clearly, not the reason they’d expected. Yet neither seem upset about it.

“And is Yang here,” Summer looks back over towards her, smiling, “One of those friends?”

Ruby nods her head. “Yeah, she is.”

“What happened that led to your separation.”

Ruby shakes her head. “I can’t say.”

Summer seems willing to let that pass, but Ozpin isn’t nearly as much so. “What do you mean, Ms. Rosenberg?”

Ruby opens her mouth, and hesitates, unable to come up with a lie so quickly.

Luckily for her, Summer is the one to step in.

“She doesn’t want to answer, Oz.” Summer smiles over at him. “But she’s been cooperative with everything else so far, and if Yang trusts her, then so do I. There are plenty of things you don’t plan on telling her, aren’t there?”

Ozpin sighs, but nods his head. “I suppose you’re correct, Summer.”

Ruby smiles over at mom. “Thanks.”

“It’s no problem, sweetie.” Summer smiles, and Yang catches the moment where that word hits Ruby, where she stumbles, however briefly, and tears build within her eyes.

It’s not her fault; Yang would’ve been a wreck in that same situation, but they really can’t afford to be giving up any more information than they already have.

“I also wanted to ask… this is somewhat more personal, but…” Summer sighs, running a hand up and down the back of her neck. “Your family, those who you inherited your eyes from.”

Ruby’s eyes widen, and show off the silver coloration quite well.

“Are any of them alive?”

Ruby is silent for a moment after that. It’s clear she’s uncertain as to what she wants to say.

“No, I’m sorry.” Ruby shakes her head. “They… I’m sure that just like your own, they were hunted down.”

Summer nods her head slowly, letting loose an aching sigh. “I… figured as much. Even so, I’m so very glad to meet you, Ms. Ruby. I… You’ll think me silly, but…”

And then Summer looks up, and Yang’s eyes widen.

Because there are tears within her eyes as she looks into Ruby’s own.

“I thought I was the only one left.” Summer smiles, almost on the verge of tears. “It’s… very nice to know I’m not.”

Ruby doesn’t know how to respond to that, but she opens and closes her mouth a moment before eventually nodding her head.

“Yeah.” Ruby says, and there are tears in her own eyes that she’s trying to prevent from spilling out. “Same here. I… I also thought I was the last.”

And she’d had good reason to think that. After all, in their time…

She had, to their knowledge, been the last. Or at the very least, the last to still retain their powers, given that Maria had been alive, but long-since blinded.

“So, the others you’re missing,” Summer clears her throat. “Who are they, if I might ask?”

Ruby looks to Yang, and Yang bites down on the inside of her cheek. It’s… not exactly something they want to be revealing. Of course, Ozpin’s resources could assuredly aid them in locating their friends, but…

“You are debating whether or not you wish to tell us.” Ozpin speaks out all of a sudden. “Is there a reason that you shouldn’t?”

“There is.” Ruby nods. “It’s just… it’s hard to gauge, really.”

Ozpin nods his head slowly. “You have given us more than enough already, Ms. Rosenberg. If you’d like, you can return to your team now.”

“Ah,” Ruby sounds surprised at that, “If… if you’re sure?”

“I am.”

Ruby stands up, and walks past Yang. As she does, she meets her gaze, and they share a brief nod.

They’ll talk later, just the two of them.

Ruby exits out of the room, and Yang is suddenly left with the feeling that it’s her who’s now being interrogated. Everyone turns towards her.

“I don’t suppose you’re going to answer that question instead of her?” Ozpin asks, evidently knowing the answer already.

“No.” Yang shakes her head. “It’s… there’s a lot going on. But we’re on the same side here. Or, well, I think we are, anyways. I don’t know that much about you.”

It’s a lie, but she hopes it’s a believable one. She needs Ozpin to not suspect the truth about them. He’s already been provided with more than enough evidence to come to the proper conclusion, but lending them aid is the sheer fact that people travelling back in time is a completely bizarre phenomenon.

It certainly won’t be Ozpin’s first guess as to who they are.

That’s about their only advantage.

“I understand.” Ozpin turns to Summer. “Did you realize anything about her?”

“Other than that we’re obviously related in some way?” No. I can’t say I did. She’s the spitting image of my mother and grandmother. Then again, so am I.” Summer laughs. “I’d say we’re pretty closely related because of that. She also seems to have been named after my great aunt Ruby, just like my daughter is. Other than that, though, I don’t really know what to make of her. I knew that my mother had extended family, but well… I’d always thought they’d been hunted down completely.”

“As had I, Summer, as had I.” Ozpin runs a hand down his face. “This is good news, however. A second Silver-eyed warrior, and more than that, a highly advanced one as well, at least in terms of her weapon. I don’t know if you watched the video I sent to you,”

“I haven’t had the time.”

“That’s fine. Watch it at your earliest convenience if you wouldn’t mind. You’ll see that she’s quite skilled; more so than any other first-year I’ve had at Beacon, and if I’m being honest, she’s already better than you were in your fourth year.”

Summer’s eyes widen. It’s not at all a fair comparison to make, given that as good as Team STRQ had been, they’d not been tested in the same ways that Team RWBY had been before they’d graduated.

“And you say she just… showed up?”

“All evidence we have points towards that.” Ozpin sighs, before looking up at Yang and Raven. “Raven, Yang, if you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to have a private word with Ms. Rose.”

Summer, of all people, takes offense to that. “Oz, Rae can be trusted.”

“She has yet to prove that fact to me, I’m afraid.” Ozpin speaks, not looking away from Raven’s face.

“It’s fine, Sums.” Raven calling her mom a pet-name will never not be weird to her. “Frankly, the feeling’s mutual.”

Summer groans out in exasperation, evidently annoyed at both Ozpin and Raven for being unable to get over themselves when they’re trying to save the world. Then again, Yang’s not exactly being forthcoming with her own information – for good reason, but even so – so she supposes she can’t blame the man.

They exit out of the room, and it’s not long before they’re out of earshot, and Raven’s pulling Yang aside into an adjacent hallway, finding someplace they can talk one on one.

She’d expected as much.

It takes maybe a minute, and Raven’s damn near feral by the time she drags the two of them to a stop, rounds on Yang, and says, “That was Ruby; as in our Ruby, right!?”

Yang’s not really sure when Ruby had become Raven’s even a little bit, but then, she supposes the woman has, somewhat, become a bit more homely. And perhaps Ruby’s rubbing off on her.

It doesn’t take very long. Yang knows from experience, given she’s seen it happen about a thousand times. Weiss certainly hadn’t been the first person with a grouchy demeanor to fall to Ruby’s infectious happiness.

“Yeah.” Yang nods her head. “It was.”

Raven swears below her breath. “Fuck me… how many more of you are there?”

“Three more.”

“Who?”

“You wouldn’t know any of the others.”

“Try me.”

Yang rolls her eyes. “No.”

Raven clearly doesn’t like that answer. “Why?”

“Because there are some things that I’m choosing to play close to the chest.” Yang admits. “If I tell you everything about the future we came from, then like it or not, things about it are going to change. The advantage I and the rest of us have is that we know what’s going to happen before it does. If I just hand you information…”

Raven sighs, running a hand down her face. “Shit. You’re like fuckin’ Ozpin.”

Yang glares. Despite that, she can’t… technically disagree. Ozpin had been similar in that he’d held things close to his chest for what he’d presumed to be the benefit of others. It’s just…

Well, it’s a lot easier to say from her own perspective that her reasons for doing such are entirely airtight, while looking down on others for doing the same.

…Shit.

“Maybe.” She admits. “But the future we come from is… well, not a lot of important things actually happen for a while.” She thinks of Summer’s death, which will happen, likely, within the next year, if not sooner. “Well, mostly.”

“Explain.”

“There’s…” Yang shakes her head. “There’s a lot that I’d have to tell you that I can’t really afford to, alright? A lot of things that would make you act different, that would… that would limit how effective any one of us might be.”

Raven doesn’t seem to know what to make of that, but Yang knows it’s the truth.

Because Raven has shown already that she’s willing to abandon the world if given a pretty shitty reason. Give her a good one – protecting Summer Rose from dying – and Yang’s pretty sure they’d never see her – or Summer, if Raven can help it – again.

And as much as Yang doesn’t want to admit it…

Her mom had been one of the strongest Huntresses of her day. She’d served as the tip of the spear against Salem during Team STRQ’s heyday, according to Uncle Qrow.

They’ll need that strength. Because without it… with just them…

Vale had fallen.

Atlas had fallen.

Thousands of people had died.

The world would have likely gone with them.

Yang would much rather let her mom sit on the sidelines and never do anything at all. It’s just…

She’s pretty sure that’s not an option. Not really.

Because Summer Rose is who she is. She’s the kind of person who, seeing an opportunity to save the world, will take it, even if there’s a 99% chance that she’s never come back.

“Fine.” Raven bites out, clicking her tongue. “Then what’s the plan now? With Ruby?”

That… “I don’t know.”

Raven barks out a mirthless laugh. “Yeah, I probably should’ve seen that coming. You found out she was here all of thirty minutes ago.”

She’s thinking about trying to bring Ruby back to Patch with her and the others, but then…

The less time she and Yang spend near one another, the better their chances of remaining undiscovered likely are. Summer hadn’t realized it immediately, because, y’know, jumping to time travel the moment you meet some people who look kind of like your daughter’s might in a few years is weird, but…

Ruby and Yang hanging around little Ruby, and little Yang, would be…

Well, it wouldn’t take a genius to start drawing some comparisons as the two started growing up, so to speak.

But that’s planning for later. If Ruby’s happy with where she is in Beacon, then Yang’s plenty happy to let her stick it out there for the time being. She’s already on Ozpin’s radar, so it’s not like her dropping out might save her from that, and…

Well, she’s managed to locate Torchwick. Having an in with the gentleman-thief that Cinder eventually employs might be big.

And that does count for something.

Yang rubs at her temples as she lets out a low groan. “Why does this all have to be so complicated?”

Raven guffaws, even as she leans back against the wall behind her, and remarks, “Yeah, welcome to Ozpin’s little club, kid. It’s bullshit the whole way down.”  

/

Weiss is really doing her best to remain perfectly calm as she and Qrow step through Atlas’ security checkpoints, past dozens of armed guards, and out of the airport proper.

Somehow, someway, no one has noticed the third member of their little ensemble.

And isn’t that just something.

Neo’s semblance-based illusion breaks with the sound of shattering glass, and she’s just casually standing beside Weiss, like it’s no big deal that she’s here in Atlas, with them, and not back in Mistral with her parents.

Oh.

This is…

This is a kidnapping.

Except they hadn’t actually done anything! Neo had just… tagged along!

They’d not even known anything had been up until they’d already been in the air, aboard the flight. That had, obviously, been her intention, because she’d not revealed herself until they’d taken off.

“What do we do!?” She hisses out at Qrow, who seems to be going through similar emotions to her.

“How would I know!?” Qrow looks around, scanning the immediate area. “You think I’ve ever been a part of an accidental kidnapping before!?”

“I don’t know, it seemed like the kind of thing that might’ve happened to you, with your stupid semblance!”

“As much as I’d like to deny the truth in that, I kind of can’t.” Qrow sighs. “But no, this has not happened before.”

Weiss turns back to Neo, and is a moment away from bombarding her with questions – ‘why are you here, did you tell anyone you were going, did you pay for a plane ticket, oh my gods, do you know what you’ve done’, those sorts of things – but before she can…

She sees Neo shrink down on herself.

And Weiss’ entire demeanor shifts.

She realizes that she’d likely turned to look at Neo with an angry expression on her face.

She’d probably reminded her of her parents.

And Weiss…

She never wants to do that.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.” She smiles for her, and Neo relaxes, but only a bit. Weiss curses her own lack of forethought even as she turns around, and looks for a distraction. “Uhm… would you like something to eat? You’re almost certainly hungry, aren’t you?”

Neo hesitates a moment, before nodding her head, and Weiss lets out a sigh of relief.

“Alright. What would you like?”

Neo points towards a stand that’s been set up for the festival, only a few meters away. Weiss looks over, and sees the sign for ‘frozen treats.’

“Ice-cream?” She questions, and Neo gives an emphatic nod. “That’s not exactly healthy, you know.”

Neo pouts at her, and Weiss gives in immediately. “Fine, fine. Let’s go.”

Neo skips along, recovering from her earlier flash of panic. Weiss is glad, and Qrow watches on with a quiet chuckle.

“Energetic little thing, isn’t she?”

“Indeed.”

They make their way over towards the ice-cream stand to find that Neo has her face pressed against the glass lid, looking down into it at the multiple flavors, and also the other items, such as ice-cream sandwiches, cookie-sandwiches, and popsicles.

Weiss doesn’t quite like to admit it, but Ruby has somewhat converted her to certain cookie-based items, and cookie ice-cream sandwiches are one of those things.

“I’ll take one of those,” She points towards them, and the guy manning the stall smiles and gets one for her, handing it off to her.

“And what would your daughter like?”

It feels like the entire world crumbles under her. Weiss’ eye twitches. Her breath catches. Before her brain can catch up with the rest of her, her lips have peeled back, and she’s growling out an, “Excuse me!? I am twenty years old!”

The poor man before her has no idea what he has done. “Uhm…”

“She is eleven!” Weiss points towards her, and Neo hasn’t even budged from looking at the ice cream flavors. “At least!”

“I… er…”

“Do you actually believe I’m her mother!? Seriously!?”

The man’s face is pale, and his eyes are wide.

Before Weiss can explode on the poor man any further, Qrow pushes her out of the way, laughing casually. “Sorry about her, she’s had a rough day. Whatcha’ want, pipsqueak?”

Neo glares up at him, clearly not a fan of the name, but points towards the mint-chocolate-chip.

“We’ll take two cones of that, then; two scoops each.”

“Will do!” The guy manning the ice-cream stand serves them as quickly as he can, so as to get Weiss as far away from him as possible.

It works, given that they walk away, with Qrow and Neo nursing ice-cream cones, and Weiss biting at a cookie-sandwich.

“The nerve of some people!” Weiss hisses out below her breath as she bites into the ice-cream with rage.

“How…” Qrow’s watching her eat with a mixture of awe and disgust. “How are you biting into that?”

Weiss looks over at him. “What?”

“Never mind,” Qrow shakes his head. “So, uh… Trivia,”

Weiss’ eyes widen, because it’s been long enough that she’s totally forgotten that Neo’s name is actually Trivia Vanille, and not… well, Neopolitan.

Trivia looks over at them curiously, mint ice-cream coating her face from where she’s ravenously consuming the sweet treat.

“Why’d you sneak on board our flight?” Qrow asks.

Neo’s expression shifts, then, like she’s a little uncomfortable. Weiss might be tempted to let her run away from their question, but…

She’s curious, too.

“Here,” Qrow brings out a notepad, which has the insignia of the Vytal Festival on it, telling Weiss that he’d just bought it. Clever. “You can write down what you think in this, if you’d like?”

Neo nods her head; reaching out and taking the notepad. She hesitates a moment before scribbling down something on the page.

‘You were kind to me.’

Weiss hates the fact that she’s so easy; that that’s all it takes to have her heart lurching inside her chest.

“Yes, but that’s–” Qrow starts, but before he can say anything else, Neo’s begun writing again.

“No one else has been. Ever.”

Qrow’s heart visibly softens. He lets out a long, pained sigh, before running a hand down his face, and then saying, “Alright, kid. I get it. You can stay”

Trivia’s eyes light up, and she surges forward, wrapping her arms around Qrow’s back, and causing the older man to chuckle under his breath.

As Neo pulls away, Qrow asks, “But what about your parents?”

Neo shakes her head, before writing ‘They won’t care about me. They never have.’

And Weiss…

It makes sense, in theory. And yet, having been in a complicated family all her life, coming from a position where she’d fully believed many of her own family members had never cared about her…

She’s simply not so sure.

/

In a dim cellar off a backstreet of Mistral, a matriarch’s scroll rings.

It is not one of her public facing scrolls, and so immediately, she knows this must be important. She reaches out for it, and takes it up, checking the caller id.

And the name she sees there…

“Carmel,” Little Miss Malachite, leader of the Spiders of Mistral, smarms into her scroll. “It’s been so long. How have you been?”

“I’ve no time for pleasantries, ma’am. There’s a situation.”

It’s not at all like Carmel to be so… standoffish, and so Miss Malachite drops her sweeter than sugar attitude in favor of being her authentic self. “What is it, then?”

“I’m calling in a favor,” Carmel speaks into her scroll. “We’re all owed one by the organization, aren’t we?”

Little Miss Malachite smiles. “And you never did use yours. Alright, I’m listening.”

“My daughter’s been kidnapped.”

Little Miss Malachite’s eyes widen. This… hadn’t at all been what she’d expected to hear.

“Do you have a likely suspect?”

“I do. Two people. A huntsman named Qrow Branwen, and a woman whose name I don’t know.”

“Branwen…” Miss Malachite hums. “He’s a high-ranker in Headmaster Ozpin’s little clique. Normally as strait-laced as they come. You believe him to have had a hand in kidnapping your daughter?”

“It’s complicated. I’ll be by with the details in a few hours. But I have reason to suspect they’ve taken her to Atlas.”

“All the way out there?” Little Miss Malachite huffs out. “You’re lucky we do right by our girls, Carmel. I’ll have some of my associates in the area put the word out, and we’ll see if we can’t locate your little girl, hm?”

“Thank you, Miss Malachite.”

“Nonsense,” She speaks, staring down at her nails.

“Even if you hadn’t still had a favor, I would’ve done this for you. Matters of family, are, after all…”

“Personal.”

/

It’s late in the evening by the time Ozpin retreats to his room. He does so with his thoughts a veritable whirlwind, his mind adrift.

There are so very many things to be thinking about. Hawthorne’s blatant turn towards anti-faunus conspiracy, Ruby’s likely relation to Summer, the fact that she and Summer’s own guest had known one another…

And the fact that somehow, some way, Raven had known something about those two.

He had been able to see it in her face, after all. The wide eyes, the looking back and forth…

Yet something isn’t adding up for him in the same way it had for her.

Is he missing a piece of the puzzle, perhaps? Unable to draw the proper conclusions without it?

Perhaps.

He knows for a fact that Raven’s not going to be revealing what it is she feels to anyone, of course. That’s simply not the kind of person she is. She’s almost like him, in a way, although that’s not a flattering comparison for either of them.

Still, for the moment, his mind mainly focuses on these new additions to the board. Onto Yang, and Ruby, and the fact that he now knows for a fact there are more of them. More mysterious figures who’ve come from out of nowhere.

There’s a strange air about them; an air of something that Ozpin hasn’t felt since the very dawn of humanity.

He can feel the hints of magic hanging about them.

He’s just not quite sure why it feels so very…

Nostalgic.

Chapter Text

Their landing is, in Jaune’s eyes, suboptimal.

The smoke that’s still rising from the wreckage of the bullhead they’d taken to get to Solitas – which is where they are right now, in the middle of a cold, snowy field of nothing – is likely to draw some kind of rescue party in. Their job is to not be there when that happens.

The real problem is that Jaune has been paired up with the man who is quickly becoming his least favorite person in all the world.

“So,” Tyrian giggles as he walks just ahead of Jaune, then behind, then ahead again, constantly undulating. “This child we’ve been sent to fetch, you certainly seemed oddly bothered about it when you saw her.”

Leave it to Tyrian to notice something that even Salem herself hadn’t. Luckily, on that front, he at least has an excuse.

“Forgive me for not wanting to kidnap a child.” He glares at Tyrian out of the corner of his eye. “I’m not quite as morally bankrupt as the rest of you seem to be.”

Tyrian cackles at that, as if the fact that Jaune has gotten on him for his lack of morals is a hilarious thing. He laughs hard enough that he falls to his knees, and then into the snow below them, holding his stomach like the laughing is painful.

Jaune thinks that Tyrian must’ve been scientifically created in a lab somewhere to piss him off.

It’s certainly working.

“Get up,” He growls out, hauling Tyrian to his feet.

“Ah, ah, ah,” Tyrian smirks. “Careful, Rusted Knight, you wouldn’t want to upset me, would you? I could always tell my mistress that you’re being unruly. I imagine she’d believe me over you, and punish your little… student appropriately.”

So that’s Tyrian’s play, then? To be such an annoying asshole that Jaune messes up, and gets Cinder hurt? It fits with what he knows about the man, in all fairness.

Still, Jaune’s been curious about something for a while now. He decides to just ask.

“You keep calling me that.”

“Hm?”

“The Rusted Knight.”

“Well, of course! Have you not seen your armor? It matches rather perfectly to the description of the Rusted Knight from ‘The Girl Who Fell Through the World’. You’re just missing the helmet to complete the look!”

“I’m surprised you’ve read it.”

“Oh, I did a long time ago.” Tyrian speaks, with his lips curled up. “When I was still me, truly.”

“What happened?”

“Hm?”

“To make you… not you.”

“Oh, well,” Tyrian chuckles. “Perhaps I’ll tell you later. For right now, you said yourself we have ground to cover, no?”

Jaune grunts out in acknowledgement, and the two of them do just that.

The problem, really, comes in when a bullhead passes over them. That’s to be expected; they’d thought the smoke from their crashed bullhead would draw attention. But they’d not thought that the people in said bullhead would spot the two of them in their white coats, with white hoods, very much looking to not be seen.

Instead, the bullhead touches down fifty meters or so in front of them after doing a few circles overhead, and a few people get out of it.

Instantly, Tyrian is itching for a fight. Itching to just kill these people and be done with it.

Jaune isn’t willing to allow that. These are good people; they’d stopped to help those in trouble, he’s not going to let them be massacred for it.

“Hey, there!” One of the them calls out to Jaune and Tyrian. “You fellas alright!?”

“We’ll manage,” Jaune calls back, gesturing for Tyrian to stand down. The man sighs, as if not killing people pains him, but lets Jaune take the lead. “Controls suddenly dipped out on us midflight. We were trying to make it out to a settlement for a job in East Solitas.”

“Ah, I getcha,” The man approaching takes their appearances in. “What’s with the arctic camo?”

“We were hired to track down a voracious killer out in the wilds just west of Oaresberg,” Tyrian suddenly interjects, and Jaune’s a bit unnerved at how… normal he can make himself sound when he wants to. The crazed tone is gone, and his speaking cadence itself is completely different. “Some bastard who’d been preying upon people in the dead of night. We were going to set up outside Oaresberg, and try to catch the culprit there.”

“Really?” One of the men standing there grimaces. “I hadn’t heard there was a villain like that near there; I’ve got family in Oaresberg.”

“Only two victims so far. Both older men. Homeless, from what we hear.”

Tyrian’s making up a story on the spot, but Jaune’s actually fairly impressed. It’s a hard story to fact check, given that jobs like this are, traditionally, not communicated to the public, and instead told in confidence only to Hunters setting out to solve the problems themselves. A hardened killer taking people out in the middle of the night could breed panic, and panic is a dangerous thing to have building in a frontier town on Remnant, what with the Grimm a constant threat.

Jaune had already set them up as Huntsman, and Tyrian had played along. Added onto that that as much as Jaune wishes it hadn’t been the case, the homeless are often left out in both the literal and proverbial cold, and no one takes particularly good care of keeping track of them.

Tyrian’s story, as false as it is, would be hard to find fault with.

At least this explains how he’d managed to sneak his way into Mantle back when they’d been holding that event for Robyn Hill.

He can, when he wants, put on the air of someone with sanity.

“Oh, that’s good,” The man sighs in relief. “Not that they’re dead, to be clear, but that it wasn’t either of my cousins.”

“I understand.” Tyrian sighs, shaking his head. “Unfortunately, I doubt we’re going to be getting anywhere at all now. Our supplies went up with our bullhead. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think someone had it out for us,” Tyrian flashes his Faunus tail, before raising an eyebrow at the man who’s come to pick them up, also a faunus. “Whatever reason could there be for that, I wonder?”

The other man hisses out in anger. “Those goddamned bastards in Atlas… they’ve always hated us, but they didn’t used to be so obvious about it!”

Yet again, Tyrian has invented a story. And again, it’s something that’ll be difficult to actually test. After all, he’s using the recent reports of higher faunus racism in Atlas as a piece of their cover story, but he’s smart enough to do so to a faunus himself. But the officers of Atlas, even though the story is a fabrication, would deny such a tale even if it hadn’t been. Thusly, there’s no fact checking against what Tyrian is saying. The captain of the other bullhead now seems completely on their side, if he hadn’t been before.

It’s genius, as much as it’s terrifying to know that Tyrian is this intelligent when he’s got his mind set on something.

“Come on, we’ll give you a lift back to Mantle. Least I can do.”

“Uh, captain,” One of the other men brings up sheepishly. “I don’t mean to be rude, but… shouldn’t we at least check ‘em for ID at least?”

Jaune senses the smallest, most insignificant shift in Tyrian’s body language. It’s something that the others aren’t privy to, but Jaune can tell.

Tyrian’s going to kill them if Jaune doesn’t prevent that from happening.

“That’s fine,” Jaune gets in the middle before anything can start. “My friend here’s not licensed, but you can see mine.”

He brings out his scroll – it’s a model far too new to exist, but then, he’s ostensibly a Huntsman from Atlas, so who would question them having the latest tech? – and pulls up his ID. There’s no date on it, and so it still serves as confirmation that he is, in fact, a Huntsman.

And of Atlas, as well.

The captain smiles and nods at seeing it, before looking back at the man who’d questioned their validity. “That good enough for ya’, Thomas?”

“Aye, sir,” The younger man nods. “I wasn’t tryin’ to be rude or nothin’, just–”

“You were just being careful.” Jaune smiles. “We understand. And we appreciate you giving us a ride like this.”

“Alright, come on board, you two. We don’t have clearance to fly into Atlas, but we’ll take you back to Mantle, and you guys can make your way up from there.”

“Appreciate it, sir.”

“Nah, least I can do for a couple of Huntsman out to keep people like us safe.” The captain smiles back at them as they climb into the bullhead, and take seats near the back.

Jaune is sat next to Tyrian.

It’s as unsurprising as it is unfortunate.

And yet, as the bullhead takes off, and they lift into the air, Jaune has a feeling that the sickness coursing through him isn’t quite so much from travelling through the air.

/

Ruby’s still sort of reeling by the time she gets back to her team’s dorm room.

She’d found Yang.

She’d just… walked up to Ruby’s door, alongside her mom, and Raven. They’d all seemed on good terms with one another, which had surprised Ruby a bit, but everything else had sort of gone out the window once she’d found Yang.

Obviously, she’d not been going by her real name, and she’d been lying pretty heavily while Ruby had been being interviewed by her mom. Gods, but it had hurt to have to lie to her, of all people. There are few people in the world that Ruby trusts explicitly, but Summer is most certainly one of them.

And yet she can’t show that trust. Not really.

Because they’re… well, in a way, they are wrong.

Their existences are wrong. The fact that they are here, present in this time, is wrong.

Wherever – or whenever – the heck ‘this time’ even is.

She’s lost in her head when someone in her room calls out to her, and it takes her until the third call of “Ruby!” to turn her head, and see that Amber’s been trying to get her attention.

“Bwuh?”

Excellent start, Ruby, excellent start.

“What was happening just now?” Amber asks. “Roman said that you got called away by Ozpin. I was in the bathroom.”

“Oh.” Ruby scratches at the back of her neck. “Uh… I… got vetted by some people Ozpin brought along, I think?”

“You think?”

“Okay, I got vetted by some people Ozpin brought.”

Amber seems rather intrigued about that. “And you’re still here.”

“Yep.” It takes her a second to realize what Amber had really been saying. “I told you; I’m not trying to hurt anybody.”

“I…” Amber looks away, seeming caught. “I did believe you. It’s just…”

“You don’t have to apologize for being smart, Amber. Trusting me completely wouldn’t have been all that good an idea.”

Amber seems to agree, but not in a way where she doesn’t still feel bad about it. Ruby moves to cheer her up, stepping close to her and opening her arms.

Amber rolls her eyes, but closes the distance between them and meets Ruby in the center for a hug.

It’s that scene that Roman, seemingly having just finished taking a shower, exits out of the bathroom to see.

“So, uh, does someone wanna’ fill me in on what’s going on here, or?”

Ruby giggles. “It’s nothing, really.”

“Both myself and Ruby are objects of interest for the upper staff of Beacon Academy, to put it simply.” Amber says, and Ruby’s surprised Amber’s even saying that much. “For that reason, Ozpin has had people keeping an eye on us especially.”

“Oh, so that’s why you just call him by his name?”

“I… yes. It is.”

“Huh, neat.”

That, it seems, is that.

“So, uh…” Roman scratches at his neck. “We’re like… trapped in this building for another few days, right?”

“Until the end of the week, yes.” Amber sighs. “Hawthorne’s keeping us quarantined for some reason. You’d assume it’s because we’re unknowns that have training with weapons and the skill to use them, but then, Ozpin’s reasoning should overwrite that; we’re all Hunter’s in training at Beacon. We’re not going to go on a killing spree.”

“I think he probably wants the extra time to go over the files of everyone who’s arrived.” Ruby says, and there are no real points to guessing who he might be vetting in particular.

“You mean he’s checking the files of all the faunus students, right?”

Ruby nods her head, suddenly glad something like this hadn’t been around when she’d been going through her first year with Blake. She’d have likely been pulled out of her room in the dead of night, and locked away, never to see any of them again.

“Yeah. If I had to guess, he’s trying to see if any of them are connected with faunus rights organizations. Things like that.”

Roman’s eyes widen. “I hadn’t even realized those existed.”

Oh. They might not yet at this point. Ruby hadn’t really considered the fact that the violent White Fang had been a relatively new phenomenon even as recently as their time in Atlas. If Blake as a child had been able to participate in protests from before they’d become aggressive…

Then yes, where they’re at right now likely does predate the violent White Fang.

Time will tell whether or not they’ll do even worse, now, in a world – or an Atlas, Ruby should perhaps say – that seems like it might treat them far more harshly.

“I’ve heard that there’s an organization based in Menagerie that fights for Faunus Rights.” Amber brings up. “The White… something. Fang, maybe? Anyways, they’re a small activist group. Not many members. I think they might be coming here for the festival. At least, I heard a few guards talking about a protest scheduled for later this week.”

“Are we going to be free by then?” Ruby asks, wanting to help out if she can.

“I don’t think.” Amber sighs. “And now that I think about it, that does sound like an awfully good reason to keep all other Kingdom’s students under lock and key. Keep them under control during the protest, and prevent them from going down and showing support. Make it so that no one with training might be down there to physically stop the abuses that some might hurl at them.”

Roman seems surprised at that. “Abuses? What do you mean?”

“I mean that the protestors aren’t likely to be treated very kindly.” Amber sighs. “Atlas was chief among the Kingdoms fighting against faunus rights during the initial revolution, providing the bulk of the manpower. They also continue to employ faunus in lower-paying positions than humans, and abuse those workers. I’m not saying that all of the people of Atlas are like that, to be clear. I’d imagine it’s less than thirty percent of people that are seriously racist. But that’s a much higher chunk of the population than you’d find anywhere else in the world. Thinking of things purely in terms of numbers, it’s not so hard to picture a few people throwing rocks, perhaps, at the protestors, or even worse. There was an incident just after the faunus rights revolution where a former soldier from in the Atlesian corps shot and killed thirteen faunus factory workers.”

It isn’t a story that Ruby’s ever heard, and that fact scares her. “Was this not well reported?”

Amber actually laughs. It is not a kind sound. “Of course, it wasn’t. It was an SDC factory, and if you know anything about the SDC…”

“They wouldn’t let reports of that kind of thing get out.” Ruby mutters sadly.

“It was pretty widely reported in Menagerie, and you can find articles written about it from newspapers in faunus circles,” Amber explains, “But those are hard to find outside of specially ordering them. Anyone who didn’t specifically want to know didn’t have the chance to learn about it.”

“And a lot of people prefer keeping their heads buried in the sand to knowing the facts, regardless. Damn.” Roman leans back against the wall behind him, running a hand down his face. “Shit’s heavy.”

“It very much is.” Amber sighs. “The unfortunate truth of the matter as well is that people in Atlas genuinely are, for the most part, well meaning. But they’re being propagandized against the faunus every day without even knowing it in the news cycle, which does everything it can to demonize efforts to play for further faunus rights for the sake of SDC profits. After all, the faunus totally have everything they could ever want, what with their subpar working conditions in Atlas, and an island that is eighty-percent desert to go back to if they don’t like them.”

Ruby has known, of course, that Amber is a rather pessimistic person simply from being on a team with her for the last eight or so months, but…

“You… seem oddly affected by this stuff.”

She sighs. “My grandfather was a faunus. Or, well, the man my grandmother remarried. I learned all about these things because my mother was raised in a household that actually cared. So yes, I am, for a human, oddly affected by this stuff.” Amber shrugs. “Frankly, I think everyone else should be a bit more affected by it, but hey, who am I to know anything at all?”

Ruby gets the feeling this isn’t the first time Amber’s tried to tell people this. And that the previous people she’d told probably either hadn’t believed her, or had pretended to care without actually doing anything about it.

Which…

Does give Ruby an idea.

“Well… would you want to go to that rally?”

Amber shrugs. “I would, but we’re trapped here, aren’t we?”

“Well… How about we sneak out?”

“Huh?”

“You want to go, right?”

“Yes, but–” She grimaces. “That’s against Hawthorne’s policy.”

“Ah, Hawthorne, schmawthorne.” Ruby waves a hand in indication of how much she cares about the man; which is not at all. “We’ll get out, attend the rally, and be back before anyone notices a thing.”

“Uh, not to be a party pooper,” Roman brings up, “can’t we get kicked out of the tournament for this?”

Oh. Yeah.

They probably could.

And even if Ruby has found Yang, there’s still Weiss, Blake, and Jaune to find. Being on TV would be a great way of doing that. She doesn’t really want to give that up.

But this is important to Amber. And frankly, knowing the crap that the faunus went through way back when, Ruby wants to be there too!

So…

“Eh, we won’t get caught.” She gives the same dismissive gesture she’d used for Hawthorne. “Like I said, in and out, super easy.”

“You seem awfully confident in that.” Roman raises an eyebrow.

Of course, Ruby’s confident. After all, she has so many successes in this field. Like when they’d gone to the docks… and blown them up. Or when they’d gone to that White Fang rally… and caused an incident that had cost millions in lien in damages to Vale’s highway system. Or when they’d gone after the White Fang in Mountain Glenn… and gotten the tar kicked out of them and nearly let Vale get invaded.

…That’s really not even all of them, is it?

Huh.

Maybe Ruby should be less confident?

…

…Nah!

It’ll be fine! Seventh – or eighth, she’s not counting – time’s the charm!

/

It’s the dead of night when Blake snaps awake, her eyes instantly scanning her surroundings to get an idea of the scenario she’s in.

She’s in unfamiliar territory, what with her and the other 15 or so faunus that had come with them all shacking up together in a rundown hotel in the slums of Mantle. It’s owned by a corroborator of the White Fang, or, if not that, then whatever it is the organization that will one day be called the White Fang is called now. He’d graciously loaned them a few rooms to stay in for the next few days, before and after the rally.

And yet, Blake doesn’t focus on the stains on the ceiling above her, or the cockroaches that can she can see skittering along the wall to her left.

No, she focuses in on the sound of activity below her.

It’s not entirely odd for a hotel of all places to see business well into the night. Hell, it shouldn’t even be anything to worthy of note.

But then, Blake considers herself to be a rather paranoid person. Or at least, that’s what she tells herself as she pushes herself out of bed, and rises to her feet.

In all actuality, she simply has a bad feeling.

She grabs Gambol Shroud from off of the dresser beside her, as well as her fashioned mask from out of the drawer, and dons both. Then, she pushes her way out into the hallway.

Her footsteps are silent; trained to be that way from years and years in the White Fang. She presses her ear to the wall beside her, seeing if she might be able to pick up on any voices coming from below.

She doesn’t hear anything expressly, which is also odd. If someone had entered into the hotel to check in, they would be talking with a receptionist. Or, well, in this case, they’d be talking to the owner, given that this place, like most faunus-run businesses on Solitas, is far too poor to actually have any employees.

She can still hear movement below. Is it impossible that a customer had simply come in and was now looking around for someone to serve them? No.

Is it unlikely? Moreso than some form of foul play?

In Blake’s eyes, yes, it is.

She creeps down the stairs, taking them slowly, refusing to make a sound. If this is what she thinks it is, then she can’t afford to screw up. There’s the smallest whisper, then, before Blake hears the sound of a liquid being poured out onto the ground.

For her, that’s enough.

Where she’d been going slowly before, she breaks into a sprint now. The people below it will hear her, but not quickly enough to do anything about it if she’s right.

She hears them hurriedly whisper something about a half second before she rounds the final corner, and Blake begins to take in the scene before her.

There are four men, all wearing ski masks, holding containers of a vague fluid. Judging by the fact that they’re pouring it all over the floor of the hotel, Blake has a feeling she knows exactly what it is.

Something flammable.

She is moving a moment later.

Whoever it is these people are, they’re not trained. Barely fifteen seconds have passed by the time Blake has taken out all four of them. Three of them she’s knocked unconscious, but the unlucky fourth is still awake.

“Where’s the owner?” Blake questions first, because she’s yet to see the man so far.

“W-We knocked him out, he’s in the supply closet!” The man grunts out in pain as Blake bends his arm a touch too far.

“Alright. Who hired you?”

“W-What the fuck are you talking about!?”

“I’m asking who hired you to burn this place down.” Blake doesn’t mince words. She’s not feeling particularly merciful at the moment, given that her parents, and both of her students are sleeping without a care in the world in their rooms above her. If she’d not woken up, all of them could have very well been killed in such an attack. “You’ll answer me.”

“No one hired us! We’re just… just doin’ this shit f-for kicks, y’know, just for–

Blake slams the man’s face down into the gasoline-covered tile more than hard enough to shatter his nose.

She has a feeling she doesn’t need to repeat herself.

“W-We don’t know!” He spits blood out of his mouth onto the floor, panting out in fear. “Some suits came down and gave us the job, but we don’t know nothin’ more than that, alright!?”

Now that Blake doesn’t doubt. Anyone looking to hire someone to essentially commit mass murder would be an idiot to give either a name or a face to the people they’d hired. Likely, they’d gotten nothing more than a payment, and a threat that if they didn’t do what they’d been paid to do, they’d be the ones suffering from it.

But forgive Blake if she’s not exactly feeling sorry for the bastards.

It’s easy, in moments like these, to understand exactly how Adam had ended up as he had. Blake can’t deny that the temptation exists for her to bash this man’s face in a little more, or perhaps to bend his arm just slightly further. She can’t deny that this world doesn’t feel like it has it out for them.

But she’s supposed to be better than that. She’d promised herself she would be when she’d run away from the White Fang in the first place.

So, she sighs wearily, before chopping the side of her palm against the back of the man’s neck, and knocking him out cold.

She stands, and makes her way over to the supply closet.

She finds the owner of the hotel beaten, and battered, but alive. He’s conscious, but with duct tape covering his mouth.

“This may hurt.” She tells him curtly, and before he can wonder what she means, she’s ripped it off his lips.

“Gah!” He flinches. “Warn a guy, would’ya!?”

“It would’ve been worse if I’d told you to brace yourself.” She puts the duct tape away, just in case it has fingerprints of any collaborators on it. She’ll be bringing these people to the police, as much good as that will likely do. “What happened?”

“If you mean with them, I don’t even know. Only one guy came in at first. Thought he was just a customer, y’know? But he walked up to the desk, asked me if the ‘item on the ground’ was mine, and when I went to check, he batted me over the head. I feel like a bit of an idiot now, falling for that.”

It’s not the man’s fault that he’d had faith in another person to not beat him over the head with a blunt object. Unfortunately, he’ll likely carry the trauma of what’s happened tonight for the rest of his life.

“Nothing else about them? No names?”

“Nah, I was out. Didn’t wake up til I heard ‘em screamin’, I guess that was you?”

“It was. Did you tell anyone that we were staying here? Anyone at all?”

“No, no. Course not. I ain’t stupid.” The owner groans. “I mean, you always hear it’s getting worse, but to have something like this happen? Man, fuck. What is Mantle comin’ to these days?”

Blake doesn’t quite know either.

And that scares her.

Still, if he’d not told anyone, and the men who’d tried to burn this hotel down had been hired by ‘suits’, then…

Blake can’t quite be sure who it is that’s hired these people…

But she thinks she has a pretty good guess.

Chapter Text

When Yang awakens that next morning, she does so in a hotel room all on her lonesome.

They’d gotten three rooms; one for Summer, Tai, and the children, one for Raven, and one for Yang. Frankly, Yang’s pretty sure the only reason that Raven hadn’t bunked with the others had been that there’d simply not been enough space.

Yang, on the other hand, is the spare. The extra.

She doesn’t feel quite as bad about that as she would’ve yesterday, given she’s finally found one of them.

She’d finally found Ruby.

The thought makes her giddy, even as her stomach gurgles angrily at her for reasons unbeknownst to Yang. She staggers to the bathroom, suddenly almost overwhelmed by the feeling.

And then she proceeds to vomit into the toilet.

It takes her a moment to remember the last time this had happened. She’d been trudging along the forests of Mistral alongside Raven, and then…

Then she’d puked up a black, oily substance, the same as she has just now.

It’s gross, but… she grimaces, before reaching over towards the counter of the bathroom, and taking up one of the little shampoo bottles. She empties it into the sink, then looks away as she scoops a bit of her own vomit – eugh – into the bottle, before sealing it.

She then washes her hands not once, not twice, but three times. Even then, she still feels unclean.

Still, this has happened twice now. The first time, she’d been willing to write it off as an odd one-off thing, but this time, well…

She doesn’t like it. She doesn’t like it at all.

She’s okay with going through something disgusting if it means she can have answers.

She cleans off the outside of the bottle, before placing it on the counter and taking a shower. She still doesn’t feel entirely clean after getting out, but it’s better than it had been, at least. She breathes unevenly as she washes her shorter hair, feeling on edge what with the sudden reappearance of that odd, black substance.

She exits out of her hotel room some twenty minutes later with the black liquid in her pocket, and finds Raven waiting for her.

“Yo.” She remarks, and Raven nods back at her.

“Your aura fluctuated.”

Yang’s brow furrows. “What?”

“I mean that earlier, your aura briefly blipped. I felt it across the link via my semblance,” Raven explains. “I came to check in on you, but your aura stabilized after that.”

Her aura had… dipped? Noticeably enough that Raven of all people had come to check in on her?

That…

Yang purses her lips, debating whether or not to tell Raven about the black vomit she’d expelled yet again.

But when she thinks about it… aside from Ruby, Raven is likely her only real ally in this world at the moment. Even if she still carries a bit of… hesitation towards trusting her birth mother.

“You remember when I threw up when you and I were making our way to Mistral, eight or nine months back?”

Raven nods her head, but her expression darkens. “I do. Did it happen again?”

“Yeah,” She sighs out. “And I don’t have any clue why.”

“You didn’t do anything to upset your stomach?”

“Aside from get excited about Ruby? No. It’s… random, or at least it feels like it.”

Raven grunts out under her breath, seemingly also trying to think about this. “What do you want to do?”

“Well, I dredged some of it up.” Yang shows Raven the bottle of gross, oil liquid. “Figured I could at least get it looked at.”

Raven nods her head grimly. “We can walk down to the urgent care near here. I’ll show you the way.”

Yang nods, before realizing that there’s something a bit odd about that. “You know your way around Atlas?”

“You really think this is my first time here?” Raven turns to look at Yang out of the corner of her eye as they walk over to Summer’s room, and she knocks on the door. “We were Ozpin’s problem solvers. We got sent just about anywhere there was a problem, and let me tell you that Atlas was no exception.”

“Didn’t you get pregnant when you were like…” Yang does some mental math. “How old even are you?”

“Twenty-five.”

Yang snorts at the obvious lie. “Yeah, okay.”

Raven flips her off, but then quickly retracts the offending finger as the door to Summer’s room opens, and a sleepy Yang is there to greet them.

“H’lo.” She yawns out. “Did you guys need mom and dad?”

“Not really.” Raven answers her, and though Yang is heavily amused at how soft Raven’s voice is towards mini-her these days, she doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t want to ruin the vibe. “When they wake up, just let them know that Big Yang and I are going out, alright?”

Yang doesn’t really like that her name is Big Yang, but given it’s just about the only thing they’ve got in terms of descriptors…

“Okay.” Mini-Yang smiles up at her, before leaning forward and hugging Raven. “Have a good day, auntie Raven!”

Raven’s lip quivers for a moment, before she reigns herself in. “Thank you. You as well.”

The moment the door shuts on them, Raven’s turning away, and trudging down the hallway towards the stairs. Yang isn’t sure if she’s supposed to stay silent, or say something, but for once, she gets the feeling that being her usual self – aka poking at her mother with needling words – would be a not so good idea.

Raven’s been… different these past few months. Of course, anyone would show some differences going from living amongst bandits, killers and thieves to having a normal, healthy homelife, but still…

She’s soft, now, as much as she tries to pretend that she’s not.

“Where to?” Yang decides to break the ice, and Raven snaps out of her own head, seemingly having been lost in thought.

“We’re headed west. It’s within walking distance.”

Yang nods her head, and allows Raven to guide them.

The city of Atlas is, as one might guess, a rather populated place. There are several major districts, with the one that Team RWBY had spent the most time in being the military district, where Atlas Academy, alongside Atlas HQ, had been located.

Currently, they’re set up in a much broader district. If Yang had to name it, she’d probably call it the civilian district.

There’s a bit of everything here; as high-class as it all is compared to somewhere like Vale. Atlas is pretty much a perpetual rich neighborhood. There are grand mansions dotting every street, bougee hotels, and stores that have their products marked up nearly three to four times what they’d be worth anywhere else, just because they’re a part of certain ‘luxury brands’.

It’s all status to these people, and just from being here a few days, Yang’s already starting to figure out how they’d gotten Weiss as they did when they’d first met her at Beacon.

They travel for a few minutes before arriving at the urgent care, and Yang tells them what’s been happening. When she mentions that her vomit had been black, the woman examining her pales, and quickly rushes her into the exam room to be checked.

Yang’s a bit worried at first, and a bit concerned when they start testing her in about seventy different ways, up until the woman, thirty or so minutes later, comes back with some rather bewildering results.

“Nothing?”

“As far as I can tell,” the woman shakes her head, clearly doubting the validity of her own findings. “There’s absolutely nothing wrong with you. Normally, black vomit is a sign of internal bleeding, and is a major problem; potentially life threatening. But… well, the solution you gave to us is… odd.”

“In what way?”

“If anything, I’d say it compares more closely to something like necrotic tissue than anything else I might normally expect. Except for the fact that, like I said, there’s nothing really wrong with you, as far as we can tell based on the tests we’ve run.”

And they’d run some tests, to put it bluntly. Put things in places that Yang had never ever wanted things.

“This might be related to your lifestyle as a Huntress, perhaps? You might’ve been injured in a way that affected you internally, led to some internal bleeding, which your body then healed up thanks to your aura.”

“I haven’t taken any hits recently. I’ve basically been out of the job as of late.”

“Then I’ve no idea.” The woman admitted, shaking her head. “I’m sorry. I’ll transfer you to another hospital on a recommendation if you’d like, but–”

“No, no, it’s fine.” Yang shakes her head. “If you don’t see anything wrong with me, then I’m game to keep going. I had this happen a few months ago, too.”

“You did?” The woman seems more intrigued now. “So, this wasn’t an isolated incident?”

“No.”

“That’s troubling. I’ll ask that if you can afford to, take the records the receptionist will hand to you to your local practitioner, and have them monitor your overall health over the course of the next few months. Make sure nothing’s wrong that I missed.”

Yang nods her head, and she and Raven exit the clinic around twenty minutes later. All in all, they’d been there about two hours

And Yang’s mind is moving at a mile a minute.

“What do you make of that?”

“Almost nothing.” Raven grunts out. “But if you ask me? You travelling through time and suddenly having these weird phenomena happening to you? I doubt they’re unrelated.”

“Yeah…” Yang mutters.

“I wish I could disagree.”

/

Weiss awakens that next morning to a pressure on her chest, which is odd.

She opens her eyes, and nearly has a heart attack when she sees Neo – or Trivia, she should say – sleeping on top of her stomach, with her arms wrapped around Weiss’ body. She covers her mouth just in time to stifle the yelp she’d been about to let out, but unfortunately, it’s not enough to keep Trivia from waking up.

The girl looks up at her blearily as she blinks her eyes rapidly, trying to fight against the sleep that’s threatening to overtake her once more.

“What are you doing here!?” She hisses out, looking to her side at the bed that Trivia had supposed to be sleeping in. “You’re…” She takes a breath, calming her rapidly-beating heart. “You scared me. I apologize.”

Trivia’s eyes briefly widen, before they sink in on themselves, and she pushes herself up and off of Weiss’ chest. Immediately, Weiss recognizes her mistake, but when she goes to reach out to Trivia, she’s already gotten off of the bed, and plodded her way back over to her own.

Weiss bites down on her bottom lip, feeling like a horrible person. She’s done that twice now, gone a bit too harsh onto Trivia.

It’s… it’s not Trivia’s fault that she’s clingy, and a bit odd. It’s also not expressly Weiss’ fault that she’s jumpy whenever the girl is clingy, and a bit odd when around her.

Neo has done some rather frightening things to all of them.  

“Trivia,” Weiss calls out to her, forgoing her own sleep to make sure the girl doesn’t take what she’d said too hard. She doesn’t want her to think that Weiss finds her scary. “I didn’t mean that you were scary. I meant only that I hadn’t expected you to be laying on top of me. You surprised me is all.”

Trivia looks back at her with what seems to be doubt upon her features, and Weiss bites down on the inside of her cheek.

“Are you okay, Trivia?”

The girl takes a moment, but she nods her head. It’s… not the most convincing motion in the world.

“It’s okay if you’re not. You don’t have to lie.”

This time, Trivia nods a bit more fervently, before seemingly growing frustrated, and reaching over towards the nightstand beside her bed. She draws her notepad that Qrow had bought her from off of it, turns on the light beside her – which briefly causes Weiss to squint, having grown quite used to the dark – and begins to scribble something out.

It takes her thirty or so seconds to write down the full thought she wants to communicate. Thirty seconds where anyone else would have been able to have a full back and forth already. Weiss has only been around Trivia for a few days, but she can already tell that such drives the girl crazy.

Because she’s a talker; Trivia. Despite the fact that she can’t actually speak, she has so much to say. She’s just been forced to play the quiet, demure, innocent maiden by her mother and father for their sakes for years, and she’s clearly aching for some form of connection.

And it makes Weiss sick.

Neo turns the notepad, and let’s Weiss read.

‘I’m okay. I just thought that’ the next few words are crossed out several times, to the point of being entirely unreadable. ‘I was cold.’

It’s clearly a lie. Or a half-truth. Weiss feels even worse at having woken the girl up, and made her feel like she hadn’t wanted her.

“Okay,” She pretends like she believes Trivia. “And…” She debates whether or not she should say what she’s planning on saying. Eventually, she just goes for it. “Is that the only reason you came over to sleep with me?”

Trivia’s eyes widen, and though Weiss does feel bad, she isn’t quite willing to back off here. She wants to know the truth. And she hopes that Trivia will be willing to tell it to her.

She looks down at the notepad in her hand, and places her pen against it a few times. Eventually, she starts to write. It doesn’t take her as long this time.

She’s nervous about showing Weiss what’s written on the paper, however. Weiss is curious, but she’s not going to rush her. Not after everything.

Trivia looks away, even as she thrusts the notepad into Weiss’ stomach, almost knocking the wind out of her.

Weiss takes up the notepad, and reads from it again.

‘I never got to sleep with mom or dad. They never wanted me to.’

Weiss’ heart breaks just a little, then. She manages to keep her emotions in check, not showing how much that hurts her to read.

Because she knows.

She knows what that feels like.

Weiss had not gone to school as a child. She’d instead been tutored by some of the very best minds in Atlas, taught everything she’d ever need to know about things such as business, etiquette, and how best to support her older sister. Eventually, when Winter had given up the title of Heiress, Weiss’ lessons had shifted away from supportive aspects, and begun to focus more on leadership.

Weiss hadn’t hated any of her teachers. They had always been the very best at what they’d done, and that meant that they’d not just known how to teach their material, but how to keep a student engaged with the material as well.

But even so…

Weiss had never really known warmth.

The mansion she had spent almost every waking moment of her life in had always been too cold for her liking. It had always failed to provide Weiss what she really needed.

The maids, the butlers; Klein and, during the early days, Winter… they’d tried their best to give her an actual home life, but the truth of the matter had always been that Weiss hadn’t had a family. Even her older sister had begun to take out her frustrations with the company, and their parents, onto Weiss as she’d grown into a teenager.

Looking back, she understands that it’s not fair to blame Winter for that. She’d gone through a fairly similar period when she’d first gone to Beacon.

And yet… it’s not like it had been Weiss’ fault, either.

They’d taught her everything she’d ever need to know regarding the SDC, and her role in it. But they hadn’t given her the one thing that humans so desperately required.

Interaction. Stimulation.

Love.

It sounds corny, but science had come to understand more about the human mind, and condition. Things like skin-to-skin contact, hugs, kisses, warmth… these things are important to a humans’ survival. A baby can’t truly grow without receiving love, affection, and warmth.

She’d had nannies, and maids, and butlers. People who’d been there for her. They’d been there, and they’d been present, and attentive, and tried their best…

But she’d also lost just about all of them over the years. Whether that was in the form of people who’d decided to get jobs elsewhere, or people who’d been fired from the manse, or even a few people who’d been killed in the attack that had taken a few of Weiss’ aunts and uncles, curtesy of the White Fang.

From her family, her real family, though…

Weiss is fairly sure she can count the number of any of those things – signs of affection – she’d ever received as a child from them on one hand.

So…

She understands just how damaging a lack of them truly is.

“I see.” She murmurs, and she watches as Trivia looks down at the floor below her, not meeting Weiss’ eyes.

…

“If you’d like…” She swallows her fears, and her hesitations. If there’s one thing Weiss had told herself so very often as a young woman… it’s that she would be different.

If she has children one day… then no matter how busy she might be, no matter how hectic her life may become…

“We could sleep together?”

She won’t be like them.

She won’t be like her own family.

Trivia looks up with such naked hope that Weiss again has to bite down on the urge to sob right away. She nods her head slowly, almost hesitant, despite how much she clearly does want to.

“Alright, well… bring your pillows and blankets over.”

Trivia nods her head, even as she turns around, grabs the items Weiss had been talking about, and then scuttles over as Weiss lays back down in her own bed. She hesitates, before climbing in beside Weiss.

Trivia’s rather meticulous, it turns out, about setting her pillows up just so, and then fidgeting to get them in place correctly. She does this several times, until, eventually, she’s seemingly satisfied. She looks over at Weiss, then, and…

Her eyes, normally pink and brown, go white. Weiss hasn’t seen it before, but…

It feels like vulnerability from the normally unflappable Neopolitan. Vulnerability – or perhaps honesty – from a girl who just wants to be loved.

Weiss won’t spit on that. She doesn’t know how anyone could.

She opens her blanket somewhat, so that Trivia can snuggle into her if she wants. She won’t force her, or even say anything to lead her believe she has to. She just wants Trivia to know the option exists.

It takes the girl a moment to really drink in the offer, but slowly, steadily, she adjusts herself so that she’s within Weiss’ reach. She doesn’t move any further.

Weiss isn’t quite sure what to do.

Should she reach over, and take hold of her? Should she try and offer comfort? Or should she believe that this is as far as Trivia wants her to take things?

She doesn’t know.

But…

She thinks about her own time as a child. How afraid she’d always been of her father, and mother. How that fear had almost extended to Winter on occasion.

She thinks that, if any of them had ever reached out to her…

She might’ve thought it a trap, and given them an opportunity to prove it hadn’t been one.

So…

She slowly, carefully, reaches towards Trivia, giving her all the chance in the world to pull away if she wants to.

She doesn’t.

And eventually, Weiss’ arms settle around Trivia’s body. She hesitates for just a moment before pulling the girl in closer.

She hears Trivia’s breaths momentarily stutters, and thinks she’s made a mistake, but then… then she settles in, and leans back into Weiss’ hold.

She looks up, directly into Weiss’ eyes, and there are tears in her own. She smiles, but it’s a weak thing, before she leans forward, and presses her wet face into Weiss’ chest.

And that’s where they lay for a long time after. Weiss’ dares not make a move. It’s not until five minutes later when Trivia’s breaths begin to even out that Weiss realizes the girl has fallen asleep.

Weiss looks down at her, only able to see the top of Trivia’s head, but…

She sees the young girl looking so very small, so very trusting.

And Weiss decides in that moment that she’ll protect this girl, no matter what.

She won’t let anyone make her hurt again. Not when she’s put such faith in her. She refuses.

And if she sees herself in Trivia…

Well, that’s neither here nor there.

/

They touch down in Mantle to little fanfare, and Jaune takes a moment to get his bearings.

Things are… well, they’re a lot better off than they’d been when Jaune had last been there, which is somewhat humorous, given that everyone is currently up in arms about the state of Atlas, and how it has, apparently, gone to the dogs.

But things actually seem much more hopeful than they had when last Jaune had been in Mantle.

The people walk around with life in their eyes. The walls guarding them from the Grimm beyond their borders seem maintained, at least somewhat, and are roamed by guardsmen. The heaters are much newer, and haven’t been allowed to slip in terms of overall effectiveness. If anything, Jaune would say he actually feels warm.

Of course, that warmth leaves him when he looks over, and sees Tyrian strolling along beside him without a care in the world.

“What’s the plan?” Jaune asks, knowing the man likely has one.

“Well, we’ve got to get up there,” Tyrian points up at Atlas, hanging above them in the sky. “Or perhaps, more specifically, up there.”

This time, he’s pointing at Amity Colosseum, where the Vytal Festival is held. Jaune feels his stomach drop as he looks up at it.

They have… well, not so great history with Amity.

Pretty much everything they’ve ever tried to do in and around Amity has failed.

But those are thoughts for another day.

“And how are we going about that?”

“Well,” Tyrian walks so animatedly that several people passing by them have to give his arms, wildly swinging, a wide berth in order to not be knocked over. “We could always commandeer a bullhead and crash it up top, stick with the classics,”

“I get the feeling they’d suspect something was up,” Jaune rolls his eyes. “Any other brilliant ideas?”

Tyrian laughs. “Oh, several. But you don’t seem like you’d like most of them, and unfortunately, my goddess has informed me to try and keep you relatively calm during this expedition.”

Jaune’s brow furrows. Salem had told Tyrian that? Why?

Is she trying to actually convert him to her side, instead of simply keeping him there by force?

Or is Tyrian just fucking with him? That’s just about as likely, to be honest.

“Well, actually,” Jaune’s remembering back to what Weiss had told him about how they’d gotten into Atlas. “I do have a way in. As uncomfortable as it might be.”

He informs Tyrian of his plan – aka to use the same method Ruby and the others had used to get up to Atlas while they’d been there – and expects the man to balk, or laugh. Tyrian is, annoyingly, completely down to recreate the plan, and even seems excited.

Which is to say that they’re going to be loading themselves into pneumatic tubes, and blasting themselves up to Atlas.

Frankly, Jaune just hopes he’s small enough to actually fit.

Getting in is the only real hard part. Tyrian’s evidently in favor of busting their way in, and making a big show of everything. He also suggests sneaking their way in, but Jaune…

Well…

“I have a stupid idea.” He turns to Tyrian.

“Ooh, ooh!” The faunus laughs. “How stupid?”

“Very.”

“Let’s do it!”

/

Fifteen minutes later, Jaune and Tyrian step into the Snow Shoe Shipping building; a subsidiary of the SDC, and where the pneumatic tubes they’ll be taking up to Atlas reside.

They do so without any doubt on their faces. Without even stopping to talk to the woman at the front desk. She, to be fair, doesn’t try and stop them, either.

That would be because they’re wearing outdoor work vests – the bright yellow-green ones – and carrying a ladder between them.

It is, by far, the dumbest thing that Jaune has ever done in his entire life. They’re pretending to be workmen who’ve come to fix something. People who fade into the background, go completely unnoticed, and ultimately disappear without any pomp or circumstance, never to be seen again.

Jaune just wishes that Tyrian would stop smiling and waving at everyone they pass by.

Unfortunately, Jaune doesn’t actually know where he’s going. He’d just sort of hoped the distribution center – he thinks that’s what this is – would really only have so much room for things in it.

But then… would it be so odd for them to ask where they’re going?

“Excuse me,” Jaune asks of the next person they pass by, who stops and smiles at them. “Sorry to take up your time; which room has the pneumatic tubes in it? We’ve been sent to work on something in there, but we got turned around.”

“Ah, they’re finally fixing those fuckin’ things, eh?” The man laughs. “Glad to hear it. Can’t believe how long it took for them to actually send anyone out.”

Tyrian’s the one to interject this time. “Well, you know how Atlas is these days about actually getting anything done.”

“Tell me about it.” The man rolls his eyes, before pointing. “It’s down that hall; straight back, and then the second left.”

“Thank you.” Jaune and Tyrian both tell the man – which never stops feeling weird to him, it’s unnerving just how normal Tyrian is capable of seeming – as they start making their way down the hall.

“No problem. Hope you guys have good luck with that!”

Jaune nods back, feeling a bit bad that whatever problem the pneumatic tubes actually have isn’t going to be fixed.

They enter into the room to find it deserted, which is just about the best news that Jaune could’ve asked for. It feels like things are lining up a bit too well for them, but then, everything in here looks like it mostly works automatically, and only requires someone to come in and check the systems every once in a while.

Jaune’s a bit upset that his luck is at its best when it’s actively benefitting the person trying to destroy the world. It feels just a tad pointed.

“Well…” He walks over to the pneumatic tube, which travels all the way to a different facility up in Atlas.

“Up and at ‘em, I suppose.”

Chapter Text

If anything, it’s far colder up in Atlas than it had been down in Mantle, despite the fact that the upper city is doing an awful lot better for itself in terms of wealth.

That mostly comes down to the fact that Mantle is a walled city, and thusly, the heat that the heaters give off ends up largely staying put within those walls, causing the entire area to be a few degrees warmer than it would be otherwise.

Atlas has no such advantage, and what’s more, it’s a good kilometer in the air. Things tend to get colder the higher up one goes.

Jaune finds himself looking back towards Tyrian, who’s just shucked off his work vest into the nearest trash bin, much as Jaune himself has. They’d experienced little resistance, and been lucky enough that the Snow Shoe Shipping company’s Atlas building had been – while not abandoned – understaffed.

They’d only had to duck around a few workers on their way out, and once they’d exited out of the building, well…

They’re home free, now.

Jaune’s almost wishing they got caught.

Still, he knows that while he can afford to have such thoughts, Cinder isn’t quite so lucky. He has no doubt that Salem would be petty enough to kill Cinder for his perceived failure, even if he isn’t around to actually be shown that failure, in the case of them somehow being captured.

Which means he can’t let that happen.

Cinder… she might just be one girl, in a sea of people, but if he can keep her safe, then…

Gods, but he feels like a fool sometimes for caring so much, no matter what his teammates might say about that being a positive trait.

“Where are we headed?” He breaks himself out of his own head.

“Nowhere for the moment.” Tyrian tells him, chuckling to himself. “Unfortunately, we’re on break for the next little while, until the Vytal Festival kicks off.”

Jaune’s brow furrows. “We’re going after her… after the Vytal Festival’s started? That doesn’t seem wise.”

Not that he’s complaining, mind.

“Well, we can’t now,” Tyrian begins to explain. “Because all of the students from other academies are being vetted by Hawthorne to make sure they’re not members of any faunus rights groups, or really suspicious in any way,”

Jaune scoffed.

“Which means they’re under constant surveillance. I doubt even the two of us would be able to get the girl more than 50 meters out of her room before we were brought down.”

The smile on Tyrian’s face unnerves him; like the man thinks his own potential death is a humorous thought.

“Funnily enough, she will be under the least watch in the stadium itself.” Tyrian tells him. “While the amount of personnel will no doubt be much higher, no one will be paying much attention to one young, innocent huntress-in-training amongst a sea of people who need protecting from all sorts of potential… threats.”

It makes a sick sort of sense, in truth. While it might seem antithetical to try and kidnap Ruby during the Vytal Festival – which is still something Jaune’s not actually going to let happen, to be clear, he just doesn’t have a plan to prevent it yet – there will be so many people that keeping track of any individual becomes a damn-near impossibility

As Tyrian says, oxymoronically, she will be at most vulnerable amongst a sea of guards, surveillance, and Hunters from all over the world.

“Alright.” He nods his head, trying to pretend that getting a look behind the curtain of this whole villainous espionage stuff isn’t getting to him a little. “For now, then, what’s our plan?”

“I figured we’d eat,” Tyrian says, clapping his hands together. “Why, there was just the most delightful restaurant near that place you picked young Cinder up from; what was it called again?”

A chill runs down Jaune’s spine at that, and he hisses out in anger as he brushes past Tyrian, trying not to let the way that man gleefully cackles get to him. It’s… difficult, to put things lightly.

Though, inadvertently, Tyrian has told him an awful lot just now without perhaps meaning to.

The fact that Tyrian had found a restaurant he liked near The Glass Unicorn – assuming he’s not full of shit, which is a very real possibility – means he’d likely spent a great deal of time in the area. It hadn’t been his assumption that Tyrian would be the one put in charge of gathering Salem’s potential recruits, but…

Well, he can ponder such things later. For now…

Tyrian’s suggestion isn’t half bad.

“Fine.” He grunts out. “Where to?”

“Come, come!” Tyrian giggles excitedly.

“It’s just down the way!”

/

“Okay, everyone, let’s go through the plan one more time.”

Roman raises a hand beside her.

“Yes, white rabbit?” Ruby asks him.

“I feel like my code name is demeaning.”

“Oh, be quiet already.” Amber groans.

“Yeah, listen to brown fox.”

“She’s just saying that because her name’s way cooler!”

“Ruby’s called red mouse.” Amber raises an eyebrow. “That’s not cool.”

“Yeah, but she’s happy with that name!”

“Alright, fine; Roman, what do you want your codename to be?”

“White ninja!”

No one says anything.

“I thought it was cool.”

“And that’s why we didn’t let you rename your weapon.”

“Hey, ‘Phonograph of the End’ is a great name!”

“Yeah,” Amber snorts. “If you’re twelve.”

“Guys,” Ruby interrupts before these two can get into yet another argument. “Let’s focus in on the here and now. We’ve got a hotel to sneak out of!”

“Right,” Roman sighs. “…Okay, but can I be white ninja, or–”

“Fine, you can be white ninja,” Ruby rolls her eyes. “Now, hotel. Focus.”

“Right,” Roman coughs into his hand. “Okay, so… how does that work, exactly? I’d assume our rooms are being watched pretty much 24/7, no?”

“I’d also assume as much.” Amber agrees. “Always plan around your enemy being far more capable than they might actually be. It’s possible all they have is a few cameras set up in the hall, but let’s assume they have one pointed directly at our door. Given who we are,” Amber nods to Ruby, “I’m fairly certain we’ll be given a bit of extra surveillance.”

Ruby grumbles, having somehow not thought of that.

Her sister has always said she’s a bundle of positivity, but also a very obvious bundle of positivity. So, yes, she’s really not good at this espionage stuff. It’s about as far from out of her wheelhouse as possible.

“Uh, I mean,” Roman shrugs. “If we just have to get past a camera, that’s not that hard.”

They both turn towards him, and Roman coughs into one hand.

“This is your criminal past coming into play?”

“I stole from people to eat, Amber,” Roman hisses out. “I wasn’t a criminal for the fun of it!”

“Why do you know how to get around cameras if you only stole to eat?”

Roman raises a single finger, before said finger wilts.

“That’s not important,” Roman coughs out.

“Oh, yeah, okay.” Amber scoffs.

“What is important is our methodology here.” Roman barrels right through Amber’s interruption. “For right now, we’ll head out for a normal walk. We pace around, we try and casually notice some cameras. If we spot them in some places, and not others, we can map out a route. Then, maybe, we just so happen to get lucky with certain cameras dipping out where others don’t.”

“Why would they dip out?”

Roman coughs. “I may or may not have a method for making that happen.”

Ruby’s eyes widen. “Is it… a technological thing, or?”

“Nah,” Roman rubs at the back of his neck, seeming awkward. “It’s my Semblance, actually. Not a particularly useful one most of the time. It lets me short out electrical devices, open some very, very basic electronic locks. Basically, anything you could do with a 9-volt battery and some copper wire, just a bit more subtle. I think I should be able to turn off a few cameras before they spot us.”

Ruby’s not quite sure why Roman seems so glum about his Semblance. “Well, it certainly sounds handy!”

Roman reacts at that rather obviously. Ruby’s not really sure why, to be honest. Not everyone can have super speed, or super strength, or the Schnee glyphs. Some people get more narrow semblances. But Roman’s is obviously a rather powerful utility semblance.

Yet he seems surprised by the fact that she’s complementary of it. How odd.

“Well, anyways, we’ll do as Roman suggested,” She turns away from the others, looking towards the door. “We’ll investigate the halls that lead towards the entrance, find the cameras, and plot our route for tonight when the rally takes place!”

The others all nod – it takes Roman a second to snap from out of his brief stupor, but he does nod – before they follow her out the door.

But Ruby, in her excitement, misses the warmth in Roman’s face, the way he looks down at his hands, and smiles, just a bit surer of himself.

/

Blake tells Ghira about what had happened that next morning, separate from the others. She’ll inform Eve and Sienna in a bit, but she doesn’t want to scare poor Adam.

“What!?” Ghira, evidently, hadn’t at all expected something like this. “They… they were going to burn the hotel down?”

“They were pouring gasoline on the floor,” Blake nods her head, feeling that disgust from before building back up within her. “They’d planned on killing all of us in our sleep without alerting anyone. What’s more, I’m fairly certain they were hired by someone in the government. They mentioned ‘suits’ giving them the job.”

Ghira is evidently having a crisis in that moment, for he looks towards his Blake, and Kali, standing a ways away near the front entrance. He takes a breath, a deep, pained thing, and runs a hand down his face.

“…What should we do?”

It’s odd, to have her father ask her the plan for this situation. Then again, this is before Ghira had really officially cemented himself as the leader of the White Fang. And perhaps, because of that, he’s yet to fully come into his role.

Blake won’t judge him, either way.

“I would say that continuing on with our protests at this point would be dangerous.” She admits to him.

“And yet, not protesting is almost certainly exactly what they wanted from us when they took such an action.” Ghira growls out. “They intended to either kill us, or scare us into leaving, and getting out of their hair.”

Blake doesn’t disagree. Honestly, as horrible as it is, it’s not as if this is her first experience with terror tactics. She herself had been a part of some of Sienna’s White Fang’s first operations against the SDC. They’d done… while nothing this dark, some rather harrowing things in the name of progress.

“…We’ll protest regardless.” Ghira breathes out in a rush, and Blake’s eyes widen. “We can’t say that our lives are more valuable than any of those people here in Atlas, who are being trodden on and abused. We can’t allow some of Hawthorne’s proposed policies to go through. It would set the world back decades.”

Blake admires how much spirit her father is showing in that moment, even if she can’t help but worry for him.

“But even so, I’m going to be telling everyone in the group about this, and sending back everyone who wishes for it.” Ghira reveals, and Blake agrees with the plan. The children, at least, should be sequestered away. “I myself will stay, and…”

“I will as well.” Blake reassures him, and Ghira laughs out in a breath of relief.

“I didn’t want to pressure you, but… well, I think the chances of something happening to me are significantly lower with you here.”

She nods her head.

“The rally is tonight, correct?”

“Mm.” Ghira runs a hand down the back of his neck. “It’ll be difficult to get everyone out of Mantle by then.”

Blake nods her head, feeling a bit of that same worry that her father’s feeling flooding through her. She wants to offer him some manner of assurance.

“Sienna’s likely quite capable of defending the others.” She tells Ghira, and watches him grow the slightest bit concerned. “I know you think of her more as a daughter than an employee…”

Ghira looks away, caught. Blake has to resist the urge not to laugh. “But you should put your faith in her. I’ve been her teacher now for quite a while. I’m confident she would’ve been able to handle those same men from last night. I doubt we’d be able to get our people out of Mantle in time for the rally anyways. Instead, they should stay in a populated area, with witnesses all around, and Sienna watching them. Meanwhile, the rest of us will go to the rally, and then we can all leave together in a few days, once the Vytal Festival starts up.”

“Hah…” Ghira runs a hand down his face. “Why does this all have to be so complicated?”

“I’m afraid that when you chose to fight for the rights of the oppressed, you signed up for this.”

“Yes, well, I can tell you that I didn’t think I was signing up for anything.”

Blake laughs, and her father just rolls his eyes.

/

The others take the news in varying states of shock. Of course, they’d have to have noticed the lingering stench of gasoline that had filtered through the hotel, but they’d have likely written that off as something that had happened outside.

Now, they know the truth.

“Wait, but…” Eve shakes her head, seemingly unable to reconcile the facts of the situation. “Why would anyone want to…” She checks on Adam, who’s currently talking at the other end of the room with Blake, the two of them being looked after by Kali. “Why would anyone want to kill us!?”

“Because they know the effect we might be able to have.” Ghira grunts out. “Because they do not want to risk us potentially disrupting their efforts to paint the faunus as monstrous animals.”

Eve scoffs, as if the very thought disgusts her. “Why? Why are people so… so…”

It’s a question that Blake has asked herself so very many times. How could people be so stupid, so shortsighted, so hateful? She’s never heard an answer that actually satisfied her, and as far as she’s concerned, she never will.

Most of the time, the people actually peddling such false ideologies don’t even believe in them. They’re simply grifters looking to make a quick buck off of a group of idiots. The annoying part is that it works often. Far too often.

Still, her attention is focused, mainly, on Sienna, who doesn’t seem thrilled when Blake gives her the plan.

“I was supposed to be at the rally,” Sienna argues, and Blake had seen this coming. “Not…”

“Not protecting the people that you care about?” Blake raises an eyebrow at her, and Sienna looks caught. “I understand you’re frustrated, and believe me, I am as well. But you will have a job that is equally as important as my own. You’re protecting people. There’s no higher calling, Sienna.”

The girl scoffs, looking away. It’s clear she’s not thrilled about this. But the fact that she’s so annoyed also means she’s accepted what she’s going to be doing.

Blake isn’t worried about them, to be honest. She’s more concerned about the protests. The worst that Sienna and the others might face is some racism on the streets – which is, to be clear, not at all minor, but it’s less bad than, say, an IED that might be planted in a garbage can.

Blake’s very much hoping it doesn’t come to that, but then, she doesn’t have quite as much control over the world as she’d like to.

“Alright, Myself, Blake – er, adult Blake,” Ghira clarifies as his daughter tilts her head in confusion, “alongside Anders and Alistair’s groups, will be going to the protests. Sienna, you’ll be in charge of taking care of everyone else.”

“I…” Eve steps forward, clearly perturbed. “I’d like to go with you all.”

Blake steps in immediately. “I can’t allow that.”

“But–”

She places a hand on Eve’s arm. “Evelynn. Adam needs you.”

Her mouth opens, shuts, and she lets out a heavy breath. She nods her head in the next moment.

“I just wanted to be able to give something back for once.”

Blake can more than understand where Eve’s coming from, alongside her frustration with again being thrust to the side, needing to be protected. That had been something Blake had been figuring out about Eve; her reasoning behind wanting Blake to train her in the first place.

“You will be. Even if it’s just to Adam himself. You’ll be keeping him safe.”

Eve nods, still a bit glum, but she doesn’t seem quite as upset as before.

“Alright,” Ghira clears his throat. “For now, we’ll start preparing to leave. Everyone…”

“Safe tidings.”

/

There’s a knock at Yang’s door later on in the evening, and when she opens it, she finds her mother stood there in the doorway.

“What’s up?” She asks.

“Let me in.”

“You could be a bit nicer about it.”

Raven stares at her flatly.

Yang just rolls her eyes, but lets her in nonetheless.

Her room quite literally hasn’t been touched in the few days they’ve been here now. Outside of the shower, and her bed, nothing else has been so much as moved. There’s a television, a temperature unit, a dresser she could put her clothes in, and an old phone that’s hooked into the wall.

“What’s up?” She asks again.

Raven, as per usual, wastes no time. “There’s a rally for the faunus being held down in Mantle. Wanna go?”

Yang raises an eyebrow. She’s not nearly as doubtful on her mother’s capability to be a good person these days, but forgive her for not thinking Raven Branwen would be the champion of faunus rights.

“Why would you care?”

“Specifically?” Raven turns back towards her, before giving a cocksure smile. “Because General Hawthorne told us to leave the event to his people. And frankly, if Hawthorne doesn’t want us to go, I think we should. Shitting on what he wants is funny.

Yang can’t really deny that, knowing what she does about the man.

And honestly, given who’s she’s chosen as her girlfriend and partner…

“It would just be us, given that Summer and Tai are taking the girls out to see some of the sights tonight. I figured we could chat about things while we’re there.”

Rather obviously, Raven wants to talk about Yang’s future, or at the very least, to learn more about Ruby, and the others who are here in this time. Yang can’t really blame her for that – she’d probably be doing much the same in her shoes – but she’s also not going to say too much.

“Yeah. Sure. I’ll go.” Yang makes her way towards her suitcase, preparing an outfit for the night, smiling to herself all the while.

“My girlfriend would smack me if I didn’t.”

Raven hums. “Strange.”

“What’s strange?”

“You said that like it was a bad thing; I just sort of assumed you’d be into that.”

Yang rounds on Raven with a red face.

“Oi!”

/

When she and Trivia exit out of their hotel room that morning, they emerge to find Qrow waiting for them.

The man seems to get off on standing against the wall opposite Weiss’ door with his arms crossed and one leg up. She’s pretty sure he thinks it looks super cool, and that the pose makes him seem edgy and mysterious.

It doesn’t, but Weiss doesn’t have the heart to ruin that for him.

“Alright, so,” Qrow clears his throat. “I still haven’t managed to get a chance to meet up with my sister, who is apparently back with us, but I think she’s going to have no choice but to see me later tonight, unless she finds some other bullshit excuse to skip out on me.”

Given that Raven had already done so several times, that’s not particularly unlikely.

“But for now, how about I finally introduce you to the guy I work for?” Qrow asks, and Weiss is somewhat surprised at that.

“Ozpin?”

“The very same.” Qrow nods his head. “I’ve been talking about bringing you into the fold, and I think he’s ready to finally hear me out. Like you asked, I haven’t told him about your whole… situation.” He gestures to her hair, and she gets the idea that he’s talking about being a Schnee. “But you’re probably going to want to tell him that at some point.”

“I will eventually.” Weiss confirms. “Just not immediately. Besides, I’d like to get to know this man before I commit to anything.”

“Right, yeah, I suppose that’s fair.” Qrow chuckles, before seemingly remembering that Trivia’s present at all. It’s not hard to forget, given she can’t exactly make noise, and she’s not at all the type to really assert herself. “Oh, Trivia. Uh… well, I guess you can come with us, though you won’t be able to join in the meeting itself. Is that fine with you?”

Trivia nods her head quickly, seemingly more than willing to accompany them on what will likely be a fairly mundane trip. Still, Weiss has already been able to figure out that Trivia’s the kind of girl who appreciates being able to feel included. So, Weiss is more than willing to go out of her way to do just that.

They exit out of the hotel itself a few minutes later, walking together for a bit before Trivia, in her boundless excitement, breaks off from them and begins investigating things in front of them. Never too far that either she or Qrow have to worry, on the bright side, but Weiss would still rather she stayed closer.

“She’s rather rambunctious.” She mutters, and beside her, Qrow laughs.

“More than a little, yeah.”

“…I can’t say this is where I thought my life would be going a year or so ago.”

“What, in Atlas, having accidentally kidnapped/adopted a young girl?”

“Yeah, that about covers it.” Weiss sighs out, and Qrow laughs at her pain.

“Hey, your life’s going a lot better than mine was at the time. When I was your age, my sister ran out on her husband and wife.”

“Wait… husband and wife?”

“Oh, yeah, she was in a throuple.”

“Huh. I… had no idea.”

“I don’t know why you would, given I’ve barely told you about them.” Qrow snickers, and Weiss has to remind herself that she’s not supposed to know anything about them beyond what Qrow’s told her, which…

Which she’s having trouble distinguishing from the things that Ruby and Yang had said to her, once upon a time.

Suddenly, she feels Qrow tense beside her, and though she feels something might be wrong, Qrow relaxes a moment later, as if whatever it had been had dissipated. Weiss is content to leave things there, only…

“Listen to what I’m about to say and don’t visibly react, alright? Keep walking as you normally would.”

“What?”

“We’re being followed.”

Weiss eyes widen, but luckily, she’s able to keep her outward reaction to something that’s purely front-facing, and thusly, anyone behind them won’t have been able to see it.

Still…

Her brow furrows. “By who?”

“I have no idea.” Qrow admits, even as he uses the reflective windows of a storefront that they’re passing by to see those following them in the reflection itself. “Huh. Couple of local thugs by the looks of things. Don’t seem like government suits or anything, which is sort of what I assumed.”

“What?” Weiss narrows her eyes. “Why would people from the government be following us?”

“Well, two reasons. One, I’m pretty much Oz’s number one problem solver, and Hawthorne’s still wary around Ozpin because he knows there’s more going on, but Oz hasn’t been willing to fill him in on some of the more… big picture elements at play in the world right now. Two, I figured they might be following you.”

Weiss scoffs. “Why would they care about me?”

“You’re a Schnee, aren’t you?”

The idea isn’t a terrible one when Qrow puts it like that. He thinks she’s from Atlas, after all, and though she is, she’s very much not from this Atlas. He probably thinks she fled from the Schnee Manor at some point, and that the people following them might be trying to identify her.

But no, that’s not the case.

“Alright, then why else would they be–”

Suddenly, someone barrels into Weiss’ chest, and she has a half-moment of purest panic before she looks down, and realizes it’s just Trivia, having come up to wrap her arms around her waist in a hug. She looks up at Weiss and smiles; all teeth.

Weiss can’t help but melt at that look, and the stress of knowing they’re being followed goes with it. Not all of it, but–

“What?” Qrow turns around suddenly, gazing behind them, and Trivia seems rather confused.

“What’s wrong?” Weiss asks him.

He gives a haggard breath, before turning back towards her, and saying,

“They’re gone.”

/

Two men duck into an alleyway a minute later. The first stands lookout, leaning against the wall and watching for anyone coming or going.

The other brings out a scroll.

It doesn’t take long for the person on the other end to answer, and when they do, it’s with an amused hum.

“I’m taking it you have good news?”

“We do, Miss Malachite.” He confirms.

“We found the girl.”

Chapter Text

Jaune had been fairly certain that ‘sneaking in’ to a building by wearing a green vest and holding a ladder was to be the dumbest thing he’d done that day..

This… this might be dumber.

“And what would the two of you like this evening?” The waitress asks, smiling down at the two of them.

“I’ll have a sirloin, cooked rare,” Tyrian speaks, and Jaune can’t help but think that Tyrian taking his stakes rare is the least surprising thing he’s ever heard. “Alongside the house Merlot.”

“Alrighty then,” The waitress writes Tyrian’s order down. “And you, sir?”

“Uh…” He looks down at the menu in front of him. “…The same thing he’s having. Medium on the steak, please.”

“Will do.” She bows, before making her way back towards the kitchens.

Jaune eyes Tyrian over the table. “What’s your game, here?”

“Oh?” Tyrian places a hand over his heart. “Why do you believe I have some game at all?”

“Because you’re you.” Jaune speaks, and he feels that’s more than fair in terms of reasoning. “So, what’s with the fancy restaurant?”

“You don’t believe I simply have particular tastes?” Tyrian gasps. “Why, Jaune, I’m offended.”

He very much does not like Tyrian calling him by his name. Not at all.

Their food arrives rather quickly, which Jaune hadn’t expected. Perhaps being a high-class restaurant means the food’s fast-tracked, or something along those lines? Jaune doesn’t really know.

It’s annoyingly good food, too. A single bite has his mouth watering. He’s not willing to admit how good it is; not and give Tyrian any credit for bringing them here, so he takes bites in silence.

Eventually, however, someone else walks towards their table. She’s an older woman, perhaps fifty or so years old.

“Ah, Tyrian,” She chuckles. “It’s been a while. How’ve you been?”

“Good, good.” Tyrian, once again, manages to act like a completely normal person. “Like I said the last time, my work takes me to many different places around the globe. I do quite like this place, but alas, duty calls.”

“Believe me, I understand.” She chuckles. “My husband’s a Huntsman, and he gets called all over all the time.”

Tyrian and the new arrival chuckle in unison, and Jaune just looks at them with a bit of disbelief.

“But still, Tyrian, you called ahead earlier and said you’d be bringing someone special.” The woman wears a teasing smile, reaching out and smacking Tyrian on the shoulder playfully. “Is this him, then?”

“He is indeed.” Tyrian plays the part of a suitor that’s deeply in love, and Jaune just stares across the table, totally dumbfounded.

“Wha…?”

“Ah, Jaune, you’ll have to forgive me,” Tyrian places a hand on his heart. “I informed the owner here about our relationship without asking you.”

…What is happening right now?

This… had Tyrian really brought him all the way out here solely to fuck with him?

Actually, no, scratch that. Of course he’d done that.

And Jaune has to play along now, doesn’t he? Or else Tyrian will send back a report to Salem.

That utter…

He grimaces somewhat, before looking up at the woman and giving her an easy smile.

“It’s nice to meet you, ma’am.”

“Hah, I haven’t been called ma’am in a while.” The woman laughs. “I think you’ve picked a good one, Tyrian.”

“Oh, I know; isn’t he just the sweetest?”

Jaune lets out a beleaguered sigh.

It’s all the energy he really has anymore.

/

“Are we forgetting something?”

“I’m pretty sure we’re not.”

“Hm…” Ruby hums out under her breath. “I guess I’m just being weird, then.”

“Camera’s down.”

Ruby nods her head at Amber, and the two of them follow behind Roman as they make their way down the hall at a normal walking pace.

To be fair, they’re not being stealthy. Roman had said first thing that them walking around like they had something to hide would be about a thousand times as suspicious as them just… walking.

Which, when Ruby thinks about it, adds up.

So, that’s what they’re doing, despite the fact that just walking past a bunch of guards gives her the heebie-jeebies. She knows the only thing that matters is that Hawthorne doesn’t have proof of them sneaking out, and thusly, as long as they’re not on camera, they’re fine.

But… ugh, espionage is not her thing.

She’s said this a lot, but she feels it bears repeating.

“So…” Amber brings up. “How long is the camera going to be down.”

“A few minutes, maybe?” Roman shrugs, as if he’s not really sure. “It’s basically a pulse that restarts the camera. It has to go through its bootup sequence again, find the place in the recording that it left off… it takes a minute or two. Not enough to do anything major, but just for sneaking by it?”

“It works perfectly.” Ruby laughs. “Nicely done, Roman.”

“Yeah, well…” He rubs at the back of his neck, smiling smally. “I’m glad you guys seem to see more use in it than I ever did.”

“Are you kidding?” Ruby chuckles. “Sure, I imagine it’s not much good in a straight fight, but in a scenario where we have to gather intel, or sneak into a highly-guarded base? Your ability will more than come in handy.”

They’d have killed for something like Roman’s semblance when they’d been trying to sneak their way into Atlas HQ. All the crappy distractions they’d had to make would’ve been a lot easier.

Although now that Ruby thinks about it, she wonders if Roman’s semblance would do anything to Penny?

Probably not, and just in case such would hurt her, Ruby doesn’t want to try it, either.

…Penny.

It’s an odd thing for her to suddenly think about. Her friend who’d fallen in the line of duty. Who’d become a human, who’d gained a life, only to lose it thirty minutes later.

Ruby hasn’t thought about her in… months, honestly. The last time she had had been in the Ever After. She’d been too busy to have much time to think about her. They’d been training Roman, coming up with team attacks, and plans to make it far into the Vytal Festival.

But…

“Ruby?”

She snaps from out of her own head to see Roman looking down at her with concern.

“Huh?”

“You alright?” he asks. “You just looked kind of out of it.”

“Ah, well…” She supposes that in this case, she can just be honest. “I was thinking about a friend of mine. She was… she was killed about a year ago.”

Amber and Roman’s eyes widen. “That’s terrible.” The former speaks. “You say this happened just a year ago?”

“Mm. Only a month or two before I joined up with Beacon.” It’s hard to remember exact periods of time when the Ever After is involved. None of them are quite sure how long they’d been there. Several weeks is their best guess. “She uhm… well, she was a very special girl. Penny was her name.”

Roman and Amber share a look between them that Ruby can’t identify, before Roman steps forward and opens his arms up.

“Ya’ want a hug?” He offers.

It’s funny, then, that it takes him offering for Ruby to realize that yes, she very much does want a hug. She giggles lightly as she leans forward, and wraps her arms around Roman. He hugs her back, but gently, as if worried he might break her if he hugged too tightly.

Amber stands a ways away, awkwardly bouncing from foot to foot.

“You can join the hug too, y’know.” Ruby offers.

It’s an awkward thing, the way that Amber sort of… hobbles her way over to them, and wraps her arms around them. She does so very loosely, without any real strength in her grip.

Ruby finds it hilarious.

“Hey, aren’t we trying to sneak out right now?” Roman brings up.

“Oh, shit, right!”

All in all, it takes them roughly ten minutes to escape the confines of their hotel.

Escape might be too harsh a word. Really, they walk out to very little fanfare, and no one puts in any effort to stop them.

Ruby begins to think she might’ve put in a bit more effort in terms of this ‘escaping unseen’ thing than she’d really needed to, up until Roman lets out a sigh of relief.

“Man, that was too many cameras.” He shakes his head. “Why would anyone be that paranoid?”

“Because of kids like us?” Amber supplies, and Roman doesn’t seem to know what to say to that.

“Alright, guys.” Ruby clears her throat. “We’ve got two hours until the rally starts! We get to Mantle, attend the rally, and we make it back before anything knows what happened!”

Amber and Roman both nod, although a second later, Roman’s eyes bug out.

“Hey, hang on…” He mutters below his breath. “Does anyone know how to get down to Mantle?”

Ruby raises one finger, before that finger wilts over the process of five or so seconds.

Because while she’d known how to get down to Mantle in the future – where they’d been fully fledged Huntsman who could take out military hardware for use on jobs – she very much does not know how to get down to Mantle as a student with zero lien to her name.

Huh.

“Welp…” Ruby mutters under her breath.

“I think that might have been the part we forgot about.”

/

All in all, the rally is a much humbler thing than Blake remembers attending as a child.

That probably has something to do with the fact that she’s over twice the height she’d been at seven or eight, when she’d first started attending her family’s rallies. Now, as an adult, she can realize just how much heart has been poured into them, to make up for the lack of a budget.

The signs in the protestor’s hands aren’t mass-printed off, but individually painted and drawn on. The pamphlets they’re handing out have clearly been written by someone without any actual knowledge of design. It’s also clear that they hadn’t chosen a particular area for the rally ahead of time. They’d just picked a street that looked occupied and began setting up.

Seeing the behind the scenes of what had seemed to a child to be a highly-choreographed ballet… almost makes Blake appreciate her father’s work more.

He’d had so little to work with, but he’d put in everything he possibly could. Not for himself, but for others.

Her heart swells with pride, even if it dims somewhat to know she can’t truly share it with him in a way that matters. Praise from a woman he’s met recently won’t mean as much as praise from his daughter.

And besides… the Ghira Belladonna of this timeline isn’t her father.

But such are wasted thoughts as of right now. She has a job; to protect the people of the rally, and watch for any bad actors who might be attempting to ruin it.

Honestly, as much as Blake is worried, she doesn’t think that anyone’s going to intervene here. A bunch of visiting faunus being the victims of an arson attack is easy to get rid of, in terms of a story for news outlets. It’s much more difficult to cover up a politically motivated assassination in the middle of a bustling street.

For that reason alone, Blake’s confident nothing will happen.

But she’s not taking chances.

She checks the ammunition loaded into Gambol Shroud for perhaps the thirteenth time. It’s a bit of a nervous tick when she has nothing else to do with her hands. In another scenario, she might break out a volume of Ninjas of Love, perhaps, but given that the later installments haven’t actually been written yet – and those have all the good scenes – and that she has a job to do, that’s not really an option.

So, Blake sits, and she watches.

She’s not expecting anyone to interrupt that.

But someone does.

“Ah, Ms. Blake,” She turns, and sees her father walking up to her. “I was wondering where you’d gone off to.”

Currently, she’s standing at the entryway of an alley close to where the rally is going to be held. She’s not going to stay there long, however. She’ll take to higher ground once the event is in full swing.

She tells Ghira as much, and the man chuckles. “I appreciate that you’re taking this so seriously, but I wouldn’t be terribly concerned. An attack in public would be foolhardy, and would only serve to galvanize public opinion in our favor.”

Hah. So, her father’s also put that together, has he?

Maybe, even still, she’s not giving the man enough credit.

“Still, I wished to ask you something.” He clears his throat as he looks back towards the people still setting up. “Do you believe protesting to be meaningless?”

It’s an incredibly odd thing for her father to suddenly ask her, and the first thought Blake really has is, “Why do you ask?”

“Ah, well, suffice it to say I got the impression when I was first discussing this with you that you didn’t actually believe this rally would do much good.” Ghira speaks, and Blake can’t quite remember what her exact reaction had been back on Menagerie, when he’d first briefed her on the idea, but… she might’ve seemed dismissive, perhaps? “Am I correct in my insinuation, Ms. Black Fang?”

She chuckles lowly at her government-given code name, before thinking more deeply about the question itself.

“…No. Not meaningless.” She eventually settles on. “But on its own, with nothing else to accompany it, a peaceful protest like this one serves little function.”

“Oh? Might I ask you to elaborate on that?”

She can, although, perhaps in this case, she might use the same argument that had convinced her when she’d been a child.

She doesn’t believe in much of what Sienna and Adam’s White Fang had taught her anymore. Much of it has proven itself to be mere dogma; the ravings of people who desired only to get even with those they felt had wronged them.

But some things…

“There’s a proverb from Vacuo that I heard when I was younger.” She speaks. She remembers the exact way Adam had put it at the time. It’s almost funny. Those words still ring out in her mind’s eye. “I feel it applies to the current situation rather aptly.”

“‘To threaten violence without potential peace can be only ever war.

But peace without the threat of violence is far too easily ignored.’”

Ghira’s eyes widen somewhat, and Blake clears her throat. “It was first said just after the execution of Malik the Sunderer. I’m sure you know he was a brutal tyrant who ruled over Vacuo for nearly thirty years. During his reign, he was known for executing political prisoners by cleaving them in half with a single strike, which is how he earned the name ‘Sunderer’. “

Ghira nods, evidently knowing the history. Blake’s not surprised.

“Less well known was the fact that he was a resourceful tyrant. He used his armies to subjugate different tribes of Vacuo one at a time, taking them on in order from weakest to strongest. He was cunning, as well as cruel, and once he took over those tribes beneath him, he put them to work bolstering his armies, as well as enriching his Kingdom. Vacuo had great supplies of silver, gold, and many other precious metals beneath its surface, not to mention Dust itself. He created great labor camps, and forced those he’d taken into his Kingdom to work, or die. Eventually, almost all of Vacuo was under his domain. Ironically, the reason that Vacuo stands united as a singular Kingdom today, and not as a series of disorganized tribes, is likely due to Malik’s efforts so long ago.”

“Progress can come from evil, as much as good.”

“Mm. But back to what I was saying; during the reign of Malik the Sunderer, several people rose up to attempt to advocate for peace between their tribe, or set of tribes, and Malik. They did so without outside support, without threat. They were easily silenced. Whether by being killed, imprisoned, or simply ignored entirely, and eventually subsumed into the Kingdom.”

She’s telling the story somewhat differently from how Adam had. He’d done so from a position of anger; seeing in Malik the same qualities he’d seen in the many humans who’d wronged him. Knowing what she does now about his branding, and his childhood – everything he’d gone through – she cannot much blame him that.

“And yet, Malik was overthrown. He was defeated, and by a group very similar to the last few. How did this happen? It happened because the group that eventually overthrew Malik did so by amassing force, first. They gathered a small army, took the fight to one of Malik’s many mining camps, freed the people there, and then issued their proclamation. That they would no longer toil as slaves for the will of a tyrant. It rallied many other camps to their side as the news spread, and they wasted no time in utilizing force to free the people; to liberate the lands of Vacuo. Eventually, Malik, too, was thrown from his throne, and beheaded in front of the Ziggurat that would one day become known as Shade Academy.”

“So, I see. That is your perspective, then?”

“It is.”

“And do you believe our scenario alike enough to that which the people of Vacuo suffered under Malik?”

“Perhaps not.” Blake admits. “Things are not so dire at the moment. But, at the same time, I’m not exactly sure how far away from such a reality we find ourselves. Certainly, the faunus working in the mines for the SDC are paid, but they aren’t paid well. And faunus prisoners, those who’ve broken laws in Atlas, can be worked without pay as a means of servitude. Penal labor. It’s effectively slavery, just for prisoners.”

“Many people would say those who’ve broken the law deserve no such payment.”

“I assume you’re simply challenging me ideologically, and not agreeing with such a position?”

“Hah. Of course not.” Ghira chuckles at the absurdity, and Blake allows herself to smile. “I merely want to hear your thoughts.”

“I suppose I would argue against those people by asking ‘do you truly believe everyone who’s ever been imprisoned is guilty?’ Would someone like Hawthorne really only lock up truly guilty faunus? Or could he start arresting people like us, trying to spread the word of his actions, but without weight behind our words to counteract them.”

Ghira nods his head, and Blake lets out a sigh. She’s allowed herself to become partially lost in the same arguments that had once radicalized her.

It’s different, now. She knows from going down that path that such will not end well. But what she’s proposing – peace with the threat of violence – is not what Sienna and Adam’s White Fang’s had become.

Theirs had been only ever war.

And her father’s… far too easily ignored.

She means to strike a middle ground.

“I appreciate your words, Ms. Black Fang. And know that I will take them to heart. But I must argue that we are not without our fangs.” He smiles, then, and she can see some of the warrior he had been, once upon a time, in that expression.

“We have you, after all.”

She breathes out in mirth. “I’m glad you have such faith in me.”

“Those who came aboard the Divinity spoke rather highly of you.”

“Yes, well, those aboard the Divinity didn’t actually see me fight, aside from the crew.” Blake rolls her eyes. “…Even so, yes, you do have me. I only hope I won’t be necessary.

“Hah.” Ghira barks out a laugh. It is mirthless.

“As do I.”

/

The trip down to Mantle is easy; Raven flies down, and then portals for Yang to follow.

It really is a radically overpowered ability.

“Y’know, if you were a friendlier person,” Yang raises an eyebrow. “Then that would likely be the strongest semblance of all time.”

“Well, I think the caveat was given to me on purpose.” Raven remarks boredly. “C’mon, not far to the rally.”

Yang nods her head, and together, the two of them start down the semi-busy Mantle streets.

It’s odd, in Yang’s opinion, to see Mantle so… alive.

The last time she’d seen it, to be fair, had been after nearly a full year of neglect, a government lockdown, and multiple terrorist attacks. So perhaps she’s judging the place a bit harshly.

But even so, she’s just… glad to see people out and about in Mantle. Glad to see faunus gathering around a heater. Glad to see faunus discussing something amongst themselves by a nearby bar. Glad to see faunus…

Actually, when Yang looks around, she realizes she’s pretty much only seeing faunus.

It’s not everybody; the ratio’s more like 5:1. But that’s a helluva lot more than it is up top in Atlas, where Yang would say it’s likely skewed more 10:1 in favor of humans.

And it paints a slightly damning picture about societal issues. A picture which Yang is likely only going to be seeing more of in the next few hours as the rally really kicks into high gear.

Systemic racism really isn’t within Yang’s purview. But it’s within Blake’s, and that means Yang’s going to put in the effort to think more about it; to consider the issues at play.

She just wishes everyone else in the world would put in any effort at all.

“What’s wrong?” Raven asks her.

“Huh?”

“You look like you ate something sour.”

“Eh. Thinking about racism.”

Raven snorts. “What a thing to say.”

“Yeah, I guess that sounds kinda’ weird.” Yang grumbles. “I guess I just… it never really occurs to you how lucky you have it until you meet someone else who wasn’t so lucky.”

“Mm.” Raven hums out. She doesn’t say anything else, but in all fairness, her childhood is pretty close to being as bad as one could be.

She’d been reared in a bandit camp, raised to adhere to their moral values and code, and then had likely been taken advantage of as she’d been honed into a monster, only truly seeing the light when she’d been…

“How old were you when you and Qrow went to Beacon?”

“Hm?” Raven seems surprised by the question. “…I don’t know exactly. The nurse said we were ‘around sixteen’ or so, but she said it could’ve been a year either way. Qrow’s younger than I am. I’d say I was sixteen, he was fifteen.”

Yang’s eyes widen. “I… never knew you guys went early.”

Raven barks out a laugh. “Yeah, well, we didn’t really have much choice in the matter. We were the best in the clan, so we got sent to attend the Huntsman school. Age wasn’t really a factor that we were all that worried about. Hah. We nearly got turned down because Qrow was too young. But Ozpin pulled strings. You know how that is.”

“So, Ruby wasn’t the first fifteen-year-old to attend Beacon, then?”

“Not by a longshot.” Raven shakes her head minutely. “Part of the reason I’ve never much trusted that bastard. I don’t doubt he’s got the world’s best intentions at heart, but that’s just the thing. There are a helluva lot of people in that world that Ozpin couldn’t give two shits about. He’d throw Summer, Tai, Qrow and I into a fire without hesitation if it bought this garbage heap another few months to live. And I wasn’t okay with that.”

“…But that wasn’t why you left, was it?”

Raven doesn’t look at her. She sighs, eventually, reaching up and running a hand down her face.

“Nah. I’d love to say I had some deep reason for the shit I did. But no. I was just a fucking coward. It’s easier to say that, now that I’ve faced that shit, and put it to bed.”

Yang’s glad, even if she’s not sure what to do with the ugly feeling welling up within her.

…

“How do you feel about Ruby and Yang?”

“The tykes?” Raven seems caught. “…I don’t think much about them.”

Yang snorts.

“What?”

“Uh, mom, all due respect – which isn’t much, to be clear – you adore the both of them.”

Raven’s face actually goes a bit red at that insinuation. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Uh-huh,” Yang just rolls her eyes. They round a corner, and they’re there; the street the rally has been set to take place at.

“Sure, you d–”

And it is in that moment that Yang’s entire body just… stills.

Because…

There she is. Standing right there, maybe ten meters in front of her. Her hair’s grown a bit longer, and her ears a bit fluffier. Her eyes seem somehow brighter, but maybe that’s just because she hasn’t seen her in so long.

But… none of that really matters.

It’s her.

It’s really her.

It’s Blake.

Chapter Text

Yang pushes past a few people – she mumbles out apologies to them, but she’s too focused to stop – as she closes the distance between herself and Blake. Her girlfriend hasn’t noticed her, hasn’t seen her. She’s looking the other way, at someplace else.

Yang doesn’t just want to just surprise hug her, since she’s a former White Fang agent, and she’s liable to get an elbow in the gut for trying.

…Eh, worth it.

Unfortunately, Blake’s ears are a bit too good to miss someone walking up to her from behind, and she turns, her brow furrowed, expecting, perhaps, to meet someone unsavory.

It’s clear that Yang had not been the expectation, for her eyes go about as wide as saucers.

“Y-Yang!?” She almost sounds like she’s begging. Begging who? Yang’s not really sure. The universe, perhaps, to make it so that this isn’t a falsehood, or a lie, or a beautiful dream.

Yang decides to nip that in the bud before it can cause Blake any doubt. She leaps forward, wraps her arms around Blake’s stomach, and lifts her into the air.

“A-Ah!” Blake squeaks out, a rather undignified noise.

Yang’s too excited to care. She spins the both of them around, laughing jubilantly as she squeezes Blake against her. Gods, but it feels so good to have her in her arms again. It had been…

…It had been nearly a full year, now.

“Yang!” Blake half-gasps, half-laughs. “It’s you!”

“That’s my line!” She realizes she’s crying, and that’s dumb, she shouldn’t be crying. Ugh, she’s so lame.

Blake, still suspended in Yang’s arms, and held up in the air, chuckles under her breath as her own eyes tear up. She reaches down with both hands, and places them on Yang’s cheeks. She wipes away the tears that have fallen from her eyes, before asking, “Are you going to put me down so I can kiss you?”

Y’know what? Blake drives a hard bargain.

She sets the girl down, and is immediately beset by a passionate kiss. Yang is very much a fan. She’s completely lost in Blake’s lips, and her presence, and the fact that she’s getting a little hot, and what had they been here to do again, because frankly, it’s feeling less and less important by the moment, up until someone clears their throat behind them.

Yang breaks off from Blake, still kind of bewildered, to see her mother raising an eyebrow at her.

“So,” Raven clears her throat. “I’m taking it this is your girlfriend?”

“Ye-ep.” She pops the ‘p’, because frankly, she’s in a good mood. “Uh, Blake, this–”

“Wait, is that your–” Blake cuts herself off, but Yang chuckles.

“Yes, that’s my mom.” She states. “And yes, she knows.”

Blake’s eyes bug out. “What do you mean she knows?”

“I mean she knows that we’re time travelers from the future.” She tells her, and Blake looks equal parts confused and flabbergasted. “Uh, it’s kind of complicated. Basically, she figured me out without my meaning for her to, and then she used the Relic of Knowledge to check the truth.”

“Ah.”

“Yeah, it’s uh… well, it’s a thing.”

 “I’m taking it you’re here to take part in the protests?” Raven asks, and Blake nods her head.

“I’m essentially the person guarding the protests.”

“Hm.” Raven hums out. “That’s good that you thought ahead on that. Honestly, half the reason I showed up was to bust the asses of any of Hawthorne’s men who might come.”

Yang shoots her mother an eyebrow. “Are you like champion of the weak all of a sudden?”

“Wasn’t she a bandit queen?” Blake squints.

“Yeah, that’s why I’m so confused.”

“I just want to fuck with Hawthorne, to be honest.” Raven shrugs. “Guy’s always been a tool, but he’s really taken it up a notch as of late.”

“That he has.” Blake sighs out, running a hand down her face. “And unfortunately, I believe that’s my fault.”

Yang’s brow furrows. “What do you mean?”

“Have you heard about ‘Black Fang’?” Blake asks, looking a bit embarrassed.

“Uh… no?”

“I have.” Raven grunts out. “It was in the missive that Ozpin gave Summer. Something about a faunus revolutionary that Hawthorne’s been using as a reason to say that the faunus are evil or something.”

Raven stares at Blake a moment, seemingly noting some things down about her.

“…And her description just so happens to match up rather well to your own.”

Blake nods awkwardly. “Yes, well…”

“Oh, shit, you’re like some masked vigilante now, protecting the people from tyranny and oppression?” Yang smirks at Blake. “That’s kind of hot.”

Blake coughs into one hand, her face crimson. “Well, I’m… glad?”

Raven snorts. “Keep it in your pants for a bit, kid. You’ve got shit to do.”

“I do?”

“What, you’re going to let your girlfriend guard the rally alone?” Raven eyes her. “Somehow I doubt it.”

“…Alright, fair.” Yang turns to Blake. “Am I good to uh…”

Blake smiles. “Yeah. Sit with me, we can talk.”

“I’ll just…” Raven trails off. “Leave you two to it, I guess.”

Yang nods her head, and Raven heads out, taking up position on the wall of a building a few meters away, leaning against it and shutting her eyes, one hand on the scabbard of Omen. Yang’s figured out by now that her mother is entirely obsessed with looking cool at all times, so her edgy pose is almost certainly for that reason.

Still, she has some explaining to do to Blake.

“So,” Her girlfriend beats her to the punch. “You and your mother are…”

“Not enemies?” Yang barks out a laugh as they take a ladder in a nearby alleyway up to a roof that Blake’s chosen as a lookout point. “Yeah, surprised me a bit, too.”

“She seems rather mellowed out.”

“Well, having an actual support structure around you instead of shunning them and living amongst thieves and murderers your entire life will do that.”

Blake hums out in amusement. “You haven’t forgiven her, then?”

“Hm?” Yang turns back. “What gave you that idea?”

Blake’s brow creases, but she shakes her head. “Nothing. Don’t worry about it. I haven’t run into anyone else. Have you?”

Oh, right, that. “I found Ruby, actually.”

Blake’s eyes widen. “Seriously!?”

“Believe it or not, she’s here representing Beacon Academy in the Vytal Festival.”

Blake laughs. “Well, that’s… not what I’d have guessed.”

“Yeah, me neither.” Yang snorts. “I mean, she has a Hunter License. It’s not like she needs the diploma or something.”

“There has to be a reason she stuck around. Perhaps she thought that by appearing in the Vytal Festival, she might be able to attract our attention?”

“Well, I guess if we want to find Weiss.”

“Who knows,” Blake chuckles. “Maybe she’ll randomly end up in Atlas, too.”

“Somehow, I don’t think we’re going to get quite that lucky, Blake.”

“I don’t know,” Blake leans towards her, her head on Yang’s shoulder. “I feel like the luckiest girl in the whole world right now.”

Yang blushes, despite the fact that that line had been so corny that she’d nearly cringed. Oh, gods, she’s becoming a hopeless romantic, isn’t she? Blake could ask to call her ‘little baby-boo’, or something, and she’d go along with it with an enthusiastic smile.

Ugh. Teenage her would think she’s so lame.

…Well, teenage her can suck it. Blake’s worth it.

“Well, uhm…” Yang clears her throat, trying to ignore the amused expression on Blake’s face as she stares up at her, eyes partially lidded. “That’s nice. I’m glad to hear it.”

“Yang?”

“What’s up?”

Blake’s smile takes on a less teasing form, and gets a bit more serious. “I really missed you.”

Yang laughs, feeling those earlier tears threatening to make their way back onto her face.

“Yeah… I really missed you, too.”

She leans forward, Blake’s lips approaching hers, and is seconds away from sealing the deal when…

“Hey, Yang!”

She jumps in place, as does Blake, turning towards the sound of someone calling out her name. She looks over and sees…

“Ruby!?” Yang shouts out, trying to pretend like she hadn’t been about to make out with her girlfriend in front of her baby sister.

“Ruby!?” Blake shouts out, doing much the same.

“Blake!?” Ruby shouts out, wondering, likely, how the hell Yang had found Blake in the middle of Atlas.

“Uhm…” Roman Torchwick, who Yang remembers once more is her sister’s teammate, coughs into one hand awkwardly. “So… should we find another roof, or?”

Their final teammate – Amber, Yang thinks she remembers – just groans.

“I’m surrounded by idiots.”

/

It’s around twenty minutes after that that the rally itself starts.

Yang’s not really nervous, so much as she’s expecting something to go wrong. She’s confident that they can handle whatever that might be, but the fact of the matter is that the chances of this going off without a hitch feel drastically low.

Below her, Ghira Belladonna has begun to draw a small crowd as he begins orating on the treatment of the faunus in Atlas. Mostly, the crowd consists of faunus themselves, but there are one or two humans among them. He’s inviting any among them who wish to protest for better rights to stand with them.

That’s… not exactly safe, especially with what Blake’s just told her about how their hotel had nearly been burned to the ground by a bunch of punk-ass gangsters. Taking in anyone from a crowd is a good way to get stabbed in the back.

“That’s why we’re here.” Blake states, leaning over the edge of the roof, but only just, so that someone on the ground would have to be looking at her to spot her. “You see a flash of anything metal, tell me. I can make it down there faster than anyone can draw a knife or a gun, and my father has aura. He’s not a fool, he’s got it up right now, and will likely be keeping it up the entire rally.”

Yang grimaces. “That’s exhausting; consciously keeping your aura up for hours?”

“It’s better than risking being killed.”

“You’re not wrong; I was just saying.”

“Mm.”

It’s funny, in that moment, how it all just sort of comes back to them. They haven’t really worked alongside one another in a Huntress capacity in… a year, almost? Yet they’re just as in sync as they’d been in the Ever After.

Speaking of in sync, Ruby and her team… definitely aren’t. They’re not terrible, to be clear, but despite Blake having Ruby and the others helping out down at the rally by providing closer support – handing out fliers and stuff while being ready to act in case of an emergency – they’re not being quite as subtle as either of them had hoped for.

“Oh my god, Roman’s flirting with that woman.”

Blake looks over at what Yang’s just pointed out. “…She appears… to be almost twice his age.”

“He might be into that?”

“He’s a minor.”

“Oh, yeah.”

Blake rolls her eyes amusedly.

Ruby is handing fliers out with far too much enthusiasm, and drawing eyes from all over the place. Ghira, at least, seems pretty amused about the whole thing. And having a few humans around, helping them out, will probably help with optics.

Yang would be down there, but then, she’s a bit too preoccupied with Blake, and wanting to be with her.

Hey, sue her, she’s being selfish for once in her life!

Amber, the last girl, is the only one actually doing the job that had been requested of her. She’s handing out fliers, talking quietly with people, and keeping Ghira and the other members of the White Fang within sight at all times. She’s good, and likely has some experience in similar scenarios. Perhaps she’s dealt with needing to escort a VIP around before?

Still, time passes, as it has a tendency to do. Yang’s surprised, come fifteen minutes later, however, that… nothing has happened.

Other than the crowd growing a bit larger, and other than a few people having verbal disagreements among themselves in that crowd – mostly from Roman’s really, really shitty attempts at flirting – nothing’s happening.

Another fifteen minutes pass. And then another.

Yang’s honestly starting to get a bit bored, all things considered.

Blake, however, seems almost… unsurprised.

“As much as I’d been dreading them taking action against us, I should’ve been willing to give them more credit.” She sighs, both in relief and something else. “They’ve not built up enough of a position in Atlas to move against a peaceful protest like this without sending the faunus of Mantle, and those people who aren’t racists, up in arms.”

Yang nods her head, sort of getting what she’s saying. “So… nothing’s going to happen?”

“I’d say that’s fairly likely, yes.” Blake notes. “It would be far smarter for them to just ignore us, and pretend like nothing happened. Of course, that doesn’t mean we’re going to assume that. We’ve still got a job to do.”

“Of course.” Yang nods her head.

And they do. Sit there, that is. For another hour and a half. By the time it’s ending, Ghira’s rally has drummed up a bit of a fervor in the lower sections of Mantle, albeit one that will, likely, be entirely ignored by Hawthorne and his men.

That’s probably part of the reason they hadn’t done anything, either. To take action against the White Fang would be to legitimize them, and their position. And at the moment, they’re just a group of non-native faunus peacefully protesting. They’d done so in the shadows; looking to remove them from play entirely via the arson attempt, but after that had failed, they’d been content to allow this to happen.

Ghira’s doing his best to encourage others native to the area to protest themselves, but Yang has doubts that even a tenth of the people who’ve shown up today will do such a thing.

…But eh, maybe that’s not so bad. They’d seen about six or seven hundred people so far that day. If two hundred of them said they’d protest, and only twenty actually do…

Well, that’s more than the White Fang had started this protest with.

So perhaps, small, incremental changes are what’s really needed in order to change society.

Eventually, Ghira announces the end of the rally, and Blake lets loose a sigh of relief as people begin breaking off.

No incidents. Nothing at all.

Yang’s almost suspicious, even if they have a perfectly legitimate reason not to be.

“Okay,” Blake coughs into one hand. “Well, for now, we’ll help with disassembling everything.”

“After that?” Yang asks, curious.

“I would like to talk to Ruby for a bit. I haven’t seen her in a while” Blake’s face goes a bit red. “But then… I was thinking… we could spend some time together? Just the two of us.”

Yang’s face is just as red. “Uh… I’ll have to talk to Raven, first, but–”

Blake nearly collapses in a fit of giggles at that, and Yang doesn’t even know why.

“What?”

“You realize you basically just said, ‘Let me ask my mom’, right?”

The redness on her face is now a bit more from shame than anything else.

“Oh, be quiet.”

/

To say that Weiss is already a bit tuckered out by the time they make it to Atlas HQ is an understatement; she is exhausted.

If it hadn’t been sleeping alongside Trivia – who hogs the covers like a damned fiend – or the fact that she hasn’t actually taken a break in eight months, it had been the fact that they’d been followed on their way here, and then, when they’d finally gotten to Atlas HQ proper, they’d had to go through about fifty guards, each of them wanting to know who they’d been and what they had been doing there.

By the time they’re stepping up to Ozpin’s office – or, well, hotel room, actually – Weiss is pretty ready to go to bed.

Unfortunately, she instead has to be on her absolute best form in terms of keeping things under wraps. Because if she isn’t, she risks accidentally outing herself as a Schnee, or, worse, as a time traveler.

…Well, one of those is a bit less likely, but still.

Qrow knocks, and suddenly, there’s Ozpin, looking… actually, he’s not really looking all that much younger. Then again, he’d always had that air to him, like he could’ve been anywhere from thirty to sixty, and Weiss wouldn’t have been surprised.

“Qrow, it’s good to see you. And you must be Weiss?”

She nods her head. “I am. It’s good to meet you, Headmaster.”

“Likewise. Come in, we can…” His eyes trail down to Trivia. “…I see you picked up someone while in Mistral.”

“Yes, well…” Qrow sighs. “It’s uh… complicated.”

Ozpin breathes out in amusement. “Come in. You can explain just what you mean.”

They do just that. Ozpin’s room is clearly a bit nicer than any of the hotel rooms that she and Qrow have been staying in of late. It’s got a bar, a full couch in what is basically a living room, and a separate bedroom with an ensuite bath.

Weiss is trying not to be jealous of the fact that she’s been staying exclusively in small, cramped, cheap hotel rooms for months now. …She’s trying. She won’t pretend it’s working.

Qrow tells Ozpin what they’d agreed that they would tell him. She’s lucky that Qrow’s holding to his end of their little bargain, which is to say that he’s yet to say anything about her abilities as a Schnee. She appreciates that, even if with the white hair, she’s not exactly subtle in terms of lineage.

There aren’t a lot of people with naturally white hair.

“And this young girl…”

“Her name is Trivia.” Weiss explains. “She’s mute.”

“Ah, I see.” He smiles down at Trivia, who nervously nods to him. “I had thought you rather unusually polite for a child your age. Well, even so, it is nice to meet you, Trivia.”

He holds a hand out to her, and Trivia, evidently not having expected that, hesitates a moment before offering one of her own, and shaking Ozpin’s.

“If you wouldn’t mind, however, I need to have a discussion with Mr. Branwen and Ms. Weiss. I have called over a nice young woman named Glynda. Would you mind going with her to see some of the sights around Atlas while we discuss things?”

Trivia takes a moment, before looking up at Weiss. She smiles to the girl, indicating that’s fine, and she had nothing to worry about, and Trivia nods her head after some deliberation.

Glynda Goodwitch – who is evidently quite young, now, maybe twenty-two or twenty-three? – arrives a minute later, and takes Trivia out of the room. She waves goodbye to Weiss and Qrow, and they both wave back.

Once she has exited, Ozpin wastes no time.

“Now, have you had time to read my report on the going’s-on in Atlas?”

“I read it on the flight over.” Qrow nods. “So, Hawthorne’s the one in charge, huh?”

“Focusing on that, first?” Ozpin chuckles. “Alright, we can work our way up to the harder sections. Yes, Hawthorne’s essentially used his stance of anti-faunus sentiment to gain a foothold where he otherwise lacked one just a year ago. As much as I wish the world were not a place where that is a legitimate strategy, well…” Ozpin shakes his head. “You and I both know I had another candidate in mind to be general at this point.”

“Where is Jimmy, anyhow? Haven’t seen him at all.”

That at least confirms for Weiss who they’re talking about, although it’s not like that would’ve been terribly difficult to figure out via context clues.

“He’s been made Admiral. He’s currently patrolling the waters just off of Menagerie, culling the Grimm populations there. Or, well, that’s the stated reason. Of course, it’s really so that Hawthorne can make whatever moves he wishes to without anyone getting in the way.”

Qrow groans. “Man, for once, I’d just like it if something worked out without us having to work so damn hard.”

“Well, there is one matter that has fallen into place without your intervention.” Ozpin smiles knowingly. “Your sister has returned to Summer and Tai, and has, from what I’ve seen, reintegrated herself with them.”

Qrow frowns. “I was sort of looking to not talk about this, Oz.”

“I know,” Ozpin smiles. “That is precisely why I am bringing it up myself, as you would not on your own.”

“What’s there to talk about?” Qrow grunts out. “So, Raven found it in herself to come back? Big whoop.”

“I believe,” Ozpin clears his throat. “That she was convinced to do so by a young Huntress.”

That, at least, has Qrow’s attention, and Weiss will admit that she’s at least a bit concerned about this as well. Mostly, because she’s pretty sure that Raven hadn’t been a part of Yang’s life at all when she’d been a child.

Which means either Weiss’ actions here have somehow caused Raven to go back to her family…

“That young huntress,” Weiss leans forward on the couch. “What’s her name?”

“I do believe her name was Yang.” Ozpin states, and Weiss uses everything that she has to not react. She’s pretty sure it’s not going to hold for long. “Although she was cagey with information, so perhaps she has simply come up with a false name. Albeit if it is false, taking a name from a girl she likely sees all the time is a rather lazy way of hiding things.”

Weiss… her breath’s caught in her throat, and her heart is hammering in her chest. She knows she can’t react, because she doesn’t have enough information to go off of. Yang – if this is her Yang, and signs are pointing towards it being her – had seemingly been cagey with Ozpin.

Weiss doesn’t expressly distrust Ozpin. In fact, among their number, she’d say she’s the most trusting of the man, simply because she can in a way understand why he is the way he is. They’d all seen what had happened in Atlas. Why he takes the precautions he does.

But at the same time, she’s not going to go behind Yang’s back and give out more information than she’d want her to.

“I see.” She tries to maintain a steady façade. She’s not really sure how long she’ll be able to manage that, but she’s going to attempt to escape from this conversation without finding herself on Ozpin’s radar. “That’s interesting. From what Qrow has told me, he did not at all suspect that his sister would return to the fold.”

“He was not the only one.” Ozpin admits. “I also suspected that she would not return. Her departure was… messy, to say the least. She made it rather clear at the time that she wanted nothing to do with any of us again.”

“Which was total bullshit,” Qrow groans. “But she did say it.”

“Okay, so,” Weiss clears her throat. “Why am I here?”

“Ah, right.” Ozpin clears his throat. “Qrow, it seems you have escaped this conversation for another half hour or so.”

“I’m very glad.” Qrow admits.

“Well, then. Your name is Weiss, correct?”

“Weiss White, yes.”

Ozpin seems amused by that. “Your name is the old Atlesian word for White, followed by the modern basic for White?”

“I am aware, sir.” Weiss feigns annoyance. “Those who named me were not particularly imaginative about it.”

The man chuckles. “Ah, well. Such does not matter. Qrow has told me that you are quite a capable field agent. That together, the two of you worked in tandem to take down Marcus Black, a famed Mistralian Assassin, and even rescue his son from a life of abuse.”

They… had done that. Only… “I didn’t have much to do with that particular case.”

“Bullshit,” Qrow cuts in, eyeing her. “You tracked the asshole. Once we were there, yes, you fell for the trap, but that’s a mistake any rookie’s going to make when faced with a kid tied up and bruised. The fact that you got your aura up in time to not get splashed across the back wall says enough about your capabilities on its own.”

She grumbles, annoyed to be having this conversation again. As much as she likes to pretend otherwise, her father had instilled in her a sense of perfectionism from a young age, and she’s kept to that ever since. She’s unwilling to take credit for such a poor performance.

“Plus, when the kid shot me, you took out Black, and even managed to help me perform emergency surgery without losing your lunch.”

Weiss eyes him. “I threw up moments after you finished.”

“And that’s fine. You’re allowed to throw up when it’s over.” The man states. “Point is, that mission could’ve, perhaps even should’ve been a disaster. Instead, we walked out of it, the both of us, and saved the kid, too.”

“Well, that’s quite the glowing recommendation from you, Qrow.” Ozpin turns towards her, massaging at his chin. “Are you a Huntress, Ms. White?”

“I am.”

“Licensed?”

“She is.” Qrow nods. “Confirmed it myself.”

That’s obviously a lie, given that her name wouldn’t show up in any current databases, but she appreciates that Qrow is covering for her, even from Ozpin. She’d… almost expected him to sell her out, and she feels a bit bad about that now.

“It seems you truly do have Qrow’s trust.” Ozpin smiles. “I must say, in all my years of knowing him, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him defend someone quite as vehemently as he defends you.”

“I know skill when I see it.” Qrow shrugs his shoulders. “We would be fools not to invite her into the fold; assuming, of course that you’re willing to fight against some admittedly nasty people, and risk your life for the sake of the world.”

Weiss almost wants to laugh. “You’re certainly selling it rather well.”

“Qrow is not lying to you. This is not at all a job for the faint of heart. Many of our very best agents have met their ends in the field. I cannot guarantee your safety if you choose to fight alongside us. And yet, I can tell you that if you do fight, you will be working towards a world where children will no longer need to be raised to fight monsters at all.”

It’s a rather heavy pitch, but it’s not like Weiss can’t see why. Fighting against Salem Is exactly what they’re saying it is; a death-sentence in all but name.

And yet…

“I’ll do it. I’m not just going to sit around and let other people fight the battles that need to be fought. I’m also not enough of a fool to believe that this wouldn’t eventually involve me, anyways. And, in all honesty, I owe Qrow more than a few favors.”

Qrow rolls his eyes. “You don’t owe me squat.”

“We can beg to differ on that.” Weiss dismisses his words.

Ozpin chuckles, but nods his head after a moment.

“If you are so sure, and Qrow speaks so highly of you, then I do believe I would be foolish to not at the very least tentatively consider you as a member of our inner circle.”

Weiss nods her head, having seen such coming for quite a while.

“If I may, allow me to ask you, Miss White. A way of starting to speak about the… complications of our world.”

The man coughs into one fist, before leaning forward with a smile.

“What is your favorite fairyt–”

In that instant, Ozpin’s scroll begins to ring.

It seems odd for Ozpin’s scroll to ring at so inopportune at time. Weiss had figured he would likely have the thing on silent.

From the look on Ozpin’s face, it seems he had thought the same. He stares down at his ringing scroll, and his eyes briefly widen.

“They would not call unless…” His lips turn downwards into a frown. “Pardon me, Miss White. I need to take this.”

She nods her head, feeling the smallest bit of nervous energy beginning to bubble up within her chest. There’s just… something about all of this that has the hairs on the back of Weiss’ neck standing up.

“Is there a situation?” Ozpin answers his scroll, and though Weiss can’t see the person on the other side of the scroll, she can just barely hear the outline of their voice through the scroll’s receiver.

They sound almost panicked.

“What!?” Ozpin suddenly shouts out, before reaching up and pinching his brow with one hand. “What happened to the one– Already carted off? Damn it! I– yes, I will speak with Hawthorne, and look to prevent this from becoming a major news piece. The Kingdom does not need this.”

Ozpin closes his scroll, and the look on his face is harrowing. He seems perturbed, not as much as he had looked when Beacon had been under attack, but…

Well, it’s close.

“What’s wrong?” Qrow stands from the couch, hand on Harbinger. “Is there something–”

“There is nothing a Huntsman can do, I am afraid,” Ozpin shakes his head, before walking over towards the window of his room and staring out of it, as if trying to get his thoughts in order.

“There’s… been an incident.”

He turns back towards them, and his tone is grim as he delivers the news.

“A faunus just murdered a human in the streets of Mantle.”

Chapter Text

Something's gone wrong.

Jaune’s not really sure what it is, given that he and Tyrian have been eating dinner for the last hour and a half, but it’s obvious in the general murmur of energy as the two of them step outside the restaurant they’d been dining at, and back into the Atlas air.

Things are tense.

“Oh?” Tyrian tilts his head to one side, almost curious. “Well, it seems as if something has happened.”

Jaune won’t mention the fact that for a moment there, he’d been pretty certain Tyrian had been to blame. It just kind of fits, given he’s… well, Tyrian.

“Let’s go ask them!” Tyrian declares, happily skipping past Jaune’s reach before he can grab him and prevent him from doing that. He steps over towards two Atlesian soldiers, it seems. “Excuse me, could someone tell me what’s got everyone in such a tizzy?”

“Huh?” One of them takes a single look at Tyrian, then at his faunus tail, and his eyes narrow. “Shouldn’t you know?”

“I’m afraid I was at dinner with my partner here,” Great, Jaune’s being identified as Tyrian’s partner in public. Awesome. “And didn’t get to hear the news. What is it that’s occurred?”

“One of you people,” The man practically spits out, and Jaune’s brow furrows. “Killed a human in cold blood because they felt like it, apparently. Fuckin’ animals. Now I’d suggest getting the hell out of here, before I find a reason to bring you in, too.”

“Ooh, frosty.” Tyrian rolls his eyes as they step away, entirely ignoring the obvious racism that had been on display. “Well, doesn’t that sound interesting. A human murdered in cold blood?”

Jaune grimaces. “‘Interesting’ isn’t the word I’d use.”

“Well, to each their own,” Tyrian giggles. “I for one find it absolutely hilarious. What poor timing, right before the Vytal Festival. Why, I’m sure security will be even higher now.”

It’s the truth, and Jaune finds himself swearing under his breath as he realizes it.

It’s better for Ruby, and hell, it’s better for Jaune, too…

But for Cinder…

Why do you even care? Some part of him asks for what must be the fiftieth time. She’s a criminal already, and she’s only going to grow worse. She clings to us purely because we saved her. She would not bother with us had we not.

And isn’t it out job to save her because she clings to us? Jaune argues back, and the voice is silent, because he’s talking to himself. He… really should see someone about that. He’d been all alone in the Ever After for so very long… he’d started to lose it a bit.

Still, if he fails here, then Cinder will suffer. He already knows that.

Maybe he shouldn’t care, but he does.

He can’t succeed, but he can’t fail.

What a horrible conundrum.

/

Come the end of the rally, Ruby’s totally exhausted.

She’s spent the better part of three hours talking to everyone who’s come up to her, discussing faunus rights and the benefits of working towards a united future. She’s handed out fliers, pamphlets, and even directed a few people to others who’d known these things better than her.

She’s helping the people who’d set this all up – Blake’s parents, it seems, which is weird given that adult Blake is here, and little Blake is apparently somewhere off in Mantle with the others – take stuff down, fold up tables and chairs, package up signs, and do other miscellaneous things.

It’s not exactly fun, but it’s rewarding to feel like she’s a part of something; that she’s made a difference.

Of course, things can’t stay good. Ruby likes to pretend like they can, but honestly, she knows the truth.

Ghira’s scroll rings, and he looks down at it in some confusion.

“Hello?” He picks up. “Sienna, are you–”

The expression on his face pales, and his eyes widen. “Slow down, what happened? …What!?”

Blake and Yang both turn towards the man, and Ruby’s walking over, wanting to know what’s going on as well. Amber and Roman are just behind her.

“You… that…” Ghira shakes his head. “We’ll be right there. Try and stay calm. Stay where you are. Where were you again– 8^th, got it. Alright, we’ll be there.”

Ghira hangs up, shakes his head, breathes out an exasperated breath, and then turns to them.

“There’s a situation. Sienna needs us.”

Sienna Khan? Ruby supposes it makes sense that she would be there, given she’d been a founding member of the White Fang. But…