Crescent Rose jerked back behind the building, dodging a volley of autocannon fire. Dammit, this mission was impossible! They gave her a heavy assault panzer for a stealth infiltration mission. Might as well ask her to take a brass band along with her.
Okay, she had an assault panzer. Time to make that work for her. Readying both of her own heavy autocannons, Rose jumped back around the corner, targeting both of the enemy panzers that thought they had her pinned down, the mix of armor-piercing and high-explosive rounds hammering into her foes, shattering their armor, smashing vital systems and leaving them smoking wrecks. Before she could move on, the cockpit hatch on the left wreck opened and the pilot stumbled out, collapsing on the ground, blood pooling under his body.
Rose stood there, frozen in shock for half a moment before continuing on. There was no time to waste; the clock was running and there was only so much time before the window of opportunity recon had spotted ran out. Time enough to mourn the fallen later, especially fallen enemies. She hurried on, pushing the assault panzer to the limits of its speed, knowing she was doing unholy things to it that the techs would be furious about her for later.
Finally, she lumbered around the corner of a ruined office building, her objective in sight. Unfortunately so were four enemy panzers, who opened fire as soon as she was in sight. Under the weight of the enemy's combined heavy autocannon and rocket fire, her panzer fell to the ground a broken, burning ruin.
MISSION FAILED
"No duh," Ruby Rose muttered to herself as she pushed the NI headset up on her head. Instead of being strapped into the cockpit of an armored humanoid fighting machine, she lay on the bed in her room, the devastation that was a standard teenage girl's bedroom strewn around her.
Well, almost. Instead of posters of pop stars, Ruby had panzers on her walls. A cut-away diagram of a Claymore-class panzer decorated the back of her bedroom door. Gaming magazines were strewn across the bedroom floor, the articles about Sparta heavily thumbed.
"Ruby Rose, come eat your breakfast now!" Mama Raven yelled up the stairs. "You're running out of time to make your train. If you miss it this time, you can walk to school, I'm not driving you!"
"Yeah, Rubes, come on," Ruby's sister Yang yelled. "And there's even waffles this morning if you're fast enough."
"Waffles!" Faster than should have been humanly possible, Ruby grabbed her school uniform jacket, her feet pounding down the stairs. Sliding into her seat at the table, she noticed one face missing. "Where's Mama Summer?"
Raven scowled. "She didn't get home until almost five A.M. Rough night at the ER." She relented with a sigh, "I'll just be glad when she gets off this night rotation. "
Yang looked up from her plate at her mother. "We miss seeing her too, mom."
Raven laid a hand on her Yang's shoulder, giving it a squeeze. "I know, Yang. It still hurts to see her stumbling in the door, exhausted like that." Now Raven's eyes grew hard as they turned to her other daughter. "And I'll bet you were playing that damn game again.
Ruby sighed. It never paid to hide the truth from Raven, it always made her madder when you did. "Yeah, I was. I found a new way of trying that one new mission that everyone says is impossible and-"
"Enough." Raven's voice cut across Ruby's babble sharply. "I don't mind you playing that game, Mrymidon or whatever' it's called. But school comes first, okay?"
"It's called Sparta, and yea, school first, I get it, I get it. I just... I want to be the one to crack this mission, okay? It'll be a big boost to my rep on the boards." Ruby was busily scarfing down her waffle; didn't Mama Raven understand how important this was?
Raven shook her head as she sat down to her own breakfast. "I didn't have time or money for video games growing up. You girls are spoiled."
"Meh, it could be worse," Yang shrugged. "Could be like Emerald, who's sitting in jail right now."
Her mother paused, the coffee cup almost to her lips. "And what did this 'Emerald' do to land herself in jail?"
"Stole money from the school, including the money band had raised to go to a competition," Ruby answered, flipping through her phone. "And then tried to knife a cop when they went to arrest her."
"Ruby, no phones at the table or it gets taken away, you know the rules. And yes, I know it could be worse. I just... I just don't want you two doing some of the stupid things I did growing up, understood?" Raven took a deep breath; her therapist had said it was important to engage with both her daughters, talk to them even about trivial things. "You may think it's silly, but it's important to them," she'd said. "So, what's so maddening about this mission that you two are both obsessing over?" She shrugged. "I'm trying to understand this thing, okay?"
Ruby and Yang shared a look. They both knew the tone that said Raven was trying something from her therapist, and Summer had said they had to be supportive of Raven, so... "It's a really challenging pre-built mission that popped up a couple of weeks ago. You're alone, in a heavy assault panzer, on a mission that's more suited for a recon panzer, and you've got a limited selection of equipment," Ruby answered, giving Raven a smile.
"Rigged setup, got it. And it's not set up as a no-win scenario, is it? Then the solution is to cheat harder than the game is cheating." Raven looked up as the pair of them stared at her, and laughed. "I don't mean cheating cheating, I mean that you have to find the thing whoever built this mission didn't think of when building it. Find a loophole, find a weakness that you can exploit. And you two need to go," she added, glancing at the time.
The sisters ran breathlessly into the station, barely arriving before their metro train left. As they found their seats, something caught Ruby's eye. "Hey, check who's riding the train this morning," she said quietly, jabbing her sister with her elbow.
Sure enough, Weiss Schnee was sitting across from them, eyes fixed on her phone, hunched down like she was trying to hide in plain sight. "Well look what we have here. The princess riding the train like everyone else. Wonder what she did to get that fancy car of hers taken away."
"Yang, that's rude!" Ruby hissed.
"What, she's always going around with her nose in the air, like she's better than everyone else. Might do her good to get taken down a peg or two."
"I can hear you two, you know," Weiss snapped, lifting her eyes to look at Ruby and Yang. "And aren't you the two half-sisters with the deadbeat dad who's in jail, hmm? When's his next parole hearing anyway?"
"Hey!" Yang yelped, rising from her seat before her sister grabbed her arm. "Yang, we don't need to get kicked off the train. And that was really mean, Weiss."
Weiss sniffed. "Fine. I apologize." She turned back to her phone.
"But seriously, what's got you riding the train today? Usually, a car drops you off at school." Yang craned her neck, trying to get a peek at what had the white-haired girl so fascinated. "Hey Ruby, looks like she's trying to crack the same mission you are. Good luck, princess, everybody and their brother's trying to figure that one out."
"You play Sparta, Weiss?" Ruby smiled at Weiss; it seemed strange that the normally aloof girl should do something so... normal.
"D-Doesn't everyone?" Weiss was flustered; she wasn't used to just chatting with people like this.
"Well, yeah, three-quarters of the school. It just seems out of character for you.. You're such a stuck up goody-two-shoes teacher's pet bookworm, right?" Yang gave Weiss a big grin.
"I am not stuck up!" Weiss snapped, then deflated. "Am I?" she asked softly, slumping in her seat.
"You don't talk to anyone, you don't hang out, do clubs or any other after-school stuff, your assignments are always on time and you do extra credit even though you're acing every class, so yeah, you come off as really stuck-up," Ruby answered, counting things off on her fingers.
"I... My mother expects me to excel in school," Weiss answered with a sigh.
"Doesn't mean you can't have friends and fun, though. Hey, why don't you come sit with us at lunch today? It's got to be better than sitting alone like you always do," Ruby said, smiling at Weiss.
"I don't know," answered Weiss. "I, uh, I usually look stuff up on my phone during lunch."
"You mean you surf the Sparta message boards at lunch like Ruby does if we don't stop her," Yang laughed, eliciting a "Hey!" of protest from her sister. "Come on, sit with us. We're trying to get a team together for tournaments. Ruby's sort of our leader, she's really good at thinking up tactics and stuff."
"You're a tactician?" Weiss gave Ruby a look of disbelief. "I have a hard time believing that from a dolt like you. I want to see your game stats. What's your game ID?"
"Cr-Crescent Rose," Ruby stammered, embarrassed.
Weiss's thumb stopped mid-motion, her mouth open. "You're Crescent Rose?" she shrieked, some of the other passengers giving her an annoyed look.
"Y-Yeah, but keep it down, Weiss. Why, what's wrong, I'm not that good," Ruby muttered, wrapping her arms around herself.
"Not that good? Not that good?" Weiss's voice was rising even as she fought to control herself. "Maybe not on the global rankings, but have you looked at just the regional leaderboards? I've been fighting you for the top spot for months," she finished bitterly.
"Awesome!" Yang cheered. "If you're both that good, imagine what you could do if the two of you teamed up. You'd be invincible!"
"I don't think so!" Weiss snapped, turning her head to look out the window and ignoring the sisters for the rest of the ride.
Lunchtime found the sisters sitting at their usual table in the cafeteria with their best friend, Blake. Ruby was staring at her phone, her eyes wide. "Guys, Weiss had a point this morning. Look at my stats on the regional leaderboards. I'm looking pretty awesome. My biggest rival is somebody named-"
"Myrtenaster." Weiss stood there, holding a lunch tray in her hands. "And before you ask, yes, that's me. May I join you?" Blake scooted over to make room, and Weiss set her tray down, stabbing her salad with a fork.
"So what made you decide to join us, Weiss?" asked Blake.
"What Ruby and Yang said to me on the train. I'm not stuck up, nor really, it's just... my mother pushes me very hard to excel in everything. And I do mean everything."
"So it's gotten to be a habit to push yourself," Yang said, shaking her head. "Sounds like you could use some downtime and some friends, princess."
Weiss's head drooped. "Please stop calling me that. I hear people calling me that all the time, and it really bothers me."
"Okay, 'Myrtenaster,'" Ruby said with a grin, making Bake and Yang laugh and bringing a hint of a smile to Weiss's face.
"But seriously, Rubes, if we seriously want to start kicking ass in tournaments, we've got to find a fourth. Four-person teams are where it's at, not solos or doubles. Eyes on the prize, sis, eyes on the prize," Yang said, punching her sister in the arm playfully.
"I know, it's just that most of the good players I know are already on a registered team, or nobody we'd... Say that again, Yang," Ruby replied, staring at Weiss as her voice trailed off.
"We need to find a fourth?"
"That's not it."
"Four-person teams are where it's at?"
"Not it either."
"Eyes on the prize?"
"That's it! Or, not quite." Ruby tapped away busily at her phone. "Yesss, not eyes on the prize, eyes in the skies!" she cackled evilly, looking up at her confused friends. "Remember that impossible mission everyone's been beating their heads on? I've got a new angle on it, maybe even cracked it."
"So are you going to share? Or keep it to yourself?" Weiss gestured at Ruby's phone with her fork. "I assume that's what you've been so busily looking into on your phone?"
Ruby leaned forward, gesturing the other girls closer. "The trick is, taking drones. But not the normal combat drones everyone takes as distractions. Instead take recon drones, stealth drones if you're feeling extravagant."
"The mission does have a very high equipment allowance," Blake muttered, going over the scenario in her head.
"And since it's a heavy assault panzer, it can mount a really big drone rack, for maximum coverage," Yang added, slapping her hand down on the table.
"Not too many drones, I think," Weiss spoke up now. "Enough to give you good coverage, plus some for spares, but limit the number deployed or you'll run a higher risk of being detected."
"I think we have a plan, ladies!" Ruby's eyes were alight with excitement. "The Vale Vixens strike again."
Weiss sniffed. "'Vale Vixens'?" That's your team name? Seriously?"
"Got any better suggestions, prin-uh, Weiss?" Yang growled, stopping herself mid-word from using the hated nickname.
"I don't have to have a better suggestion to know something is terrible!" Weiss shot back.
"Weiss, Yang, easy. Okay, the name could be better, but it's good enough for now. So, meet up after school and number-crunch this thing?" Yang and Blake nodded, but Weiss seemed unsure. "Weiss, something wrong?"
"Am, am I invited? I... I've never really had friends to hang out with before," the white-haired girl murmured, embarrassed. "What would we... do?"
"In this case, sit around, talk about Sparta, and probably end up playing a bit. And I say she gets to join the gang, even if she doesn't join the team," Blake answered, propping her chin up on a hand and looking at Weiss.
"Motion seconded and carried. I kinda like the idea of having our own pocket princess," Yang added, laughing."
"Don't I get a say in this?" Ruby whined.
"No," Blake and Yang chorused.
Yang whistled as she looked up at Weiss's townhouse. "Nice digs, princess. Your mom must be loaded."
"It's family money. She divorced my father several years ago, got full custody of us, and now pays a CEO a hefty salary to run the company, plus other people to keep him honest." Weiss sighed. "My mother's solution to just about any problem is to figure out how to most effectively throw money at the problem. Wait here, I won't be but a minute." It was almost ten minutes before Weiss returned, clutching a shopping bag. "Sorry, my brother caught me. Lately, he's been looking for excuses to get me into trouble with Mother."
"Ratting you out, eh? That's siblings for you," Yang laughed, quirking an eyebrow as she tried to peer in Weiss's bag. "Wow, your rig's kind of old, Weiss."
Weiss stared at her shoes, embarrassed. "Mother... Mother doesn't let me buy video games, she considers them frivolous. I had to save up to buy this with cash. It's the best I could do."
Ruby elbowed her sister in the stomach hard, annoyed with Yang for making Weiss feel bad. "Hey, you do what you can, right? And if nothing else, I've got a spare headset that might work with your unit that you can have. Come on, I think my and Yang's house is closest."
Raven was typing away at her laptop in the living room as they walked in. "Who's this?" She asked, her eyes narrowing as she saw Weiss. "You know I don't like unexpected guests."
"Her name's Weiss, we know her from school, mom. Is Mama Summer up?" Yang asked, stepping around the coffee table to give her mother a hug.
Raven returned the hug with good grace. She hadn't ever been much of a one for hugs, but Summer liked hugs, so Raven hugged. "She's in the shower at the moment. Touch her coffee and die were her words. Are you planning on playing that game of yours?"
"Yeah!" Ruby whooped. "I've got a new angle on that mission that everyone's been trying to crack, the one we talked about this morning, remember?"
"Rigged setup, I remember. Just make sure not to get too sucked into it, she always likes seeing the two of you before heading to work." Raven stood, closing her laptop and looking at the four girls. "Alright, I'll take my work into the office so the four of you can have the living room. But you will spare some time for Summer before she goes to work, understood?"
Ruby and Yang ran upstairs and returned with their NI rigs, Ruby remembering to bring her spare headset for Weiss. "I don't know if it'll work, but we can try it, right?"
Weiss turned the headset over in her hands, looking at it. "It's wonderful," she whispered. All the gifts she could ever remember getting were either practical or so generic that it was obvious that little thought had been put into them. To be given something, even second-hand, that was just for her was... Tears welled in her eyes, and she wiped them away, not caring if the others saw her weakness or not.
"Hey." Weiss looked up to find Ruby's silver orbs meeting her pale blue. "You really don't get to have a lot of fun, or have friends, do you?" Weiss shook her head, not trusting her voice. "Well, you have three friends now, and we are so totally going to kick ass together, got it? Now let's take a look at that mission, shall we?"
"And if we take a pair of medium autocannons instead of heavies, we can-" Ruby stopped mid-sentence as an orange light began to flash in the corner of her vision."Hold up, gang, someone's paging me." She 'reached' for her real arm outside the virtual reality created by the neural interface, lifting her headset to find a woman who could have been her twin, or maybe her older sister looking down at her. "Hi, mom. Sorry, we were, um distracted when you got out of the shower."
"It's okay. I see we have someone new around; another lost soul?" Summer Rose smiled at the daughter she'd never expected to have. "Get everyone up and around; Raven's making spaghetti, and it should be ready in a few minutes."
"Yay, spaghetti!" Ruby roused the others, and they all trooped into the dining room.
Raven snorted as she set the big bowl of spaghetti down on the table. "Any luck with that mission?"
"You could say that," Weiss answered with a smirk.
"Mission?" Summer asked as she sat down at the opposite end of the table from Raven. "Oh, that game you're all into. Did they add something new?"
"Mm-hm," Ruby mumbled around a piece of garlic bread. At a glare from Raven, she set it down on the edge of her plate and started getting herself some spaghetti, loading it down with sauce. "The update last week added a new mission that was really hard, so hard some people were saying it was impossible."
"Ah, that's what's had your head even deeper in the computer than usual lately." Summer shook her head. She'd never had access to computers or video games growing up, so she just didn't get the attraction. "The four of you were trying to figure out how to beat that mission."
"Not just trying." Weiss smiled smugly pulled out her phone and passed it to Summer, who gave it a puzzled look. "We beat it. And the first person on Remnant to beat the 'impossible mission' is Crescent Rose, also known as Ruby. I was second."
"I suppose that's impressive. Does it get you anything?" Raven asked.
"Are you kidding me?" Ruby squealed. "When someone does something like that, an announcement goes out over the whole game. Everyone who plays Sparta now knows the name, Crescent Rose. Before I logged out, I was getting tons of messages, asking me how I did it, inviting me to join tournament teams. It's awesome."
"Congratulations, I suppose. So now what?" Raven shook her head. Surely she'd never been this enthusiastic over something this trivial when she was Ruby's age.
"Now we start practicing and fighting as a team. The Vale Vixens have a fourth now, so we can start working our way up to the big time, real tournaments, the kind with cash prizes. College money, you know."
"I see." Summer gave Raven a look that didn't need words as she started to pass Weiss back her phone. They both gave a slight nod. The idea of paying for college by playing video games didn't quite make sense to either of them; they'd have to research it a bit before letting their girls get too attached to the idea.
Just as Weiss's fingers were touching her phone, it rang, startling her and making her drop it. She picked it up and took a deep breath as she saw the caller ID. "It's my mother. I'm likely to be in trouble for not being where she expects me to be." No use putting this off; she forced a smile as she answered. Her mother couldn't see her face, of course, but it would help put Weiss in the right frame of mind. "Hello, mother. How are you?"
"You weren't here when I got home, Weiss. I don't remember there being anything on your calendar for this evening."
"No, mother, I'm just hanging out with some friends."
"I see. And is there some reason you took that silly machine with you?"
"We were playing Sparta together. And one of my friends got a global achievement; she was the first to beat a mission people were calling impossible. I was second."
"Notable, then, in its own way. Well, I didn't imagine that ridiculous game would ever help you make friends, but I don't see any harm in it. We'll talk more about this when you get home, but don't be too late."
Weiss put the phone away with a confused look on her face. "That was suspiciously easy. I think I will be in some trouble when I get home."
"We've been harboring a fugitive, have we? Wouldn't be a first time," Raven laughed.
"That was just your drunken brother. And all he'd done was make a pass at his CO's not-quite-legal daughter," Summer snarked, and the two older women shared a laugh for a moment. "Now, seriously, Raven, you do remember what today is, don't you?"
"I have no idea what you're talking about, Summer dear," Raven replied archly, taking a sip of her wine.
"It's our anniversary. And you know what that means," Summer said with an impish twinkle in her eye as Yang facepalmed and Ruby rolled her eyes at the ceiling, muttering "Not again, mom."
"Fine." Raven glared down the table at Summer. "Let's get this over with."
'Raven, will you go out on a date with me?" Summer asked, lifting a forkful of spaghetti into her mouth.
"Sure," Raven answered, and the timing couldn't have been more perfect. Summer spat out the spaghetti in her mouth, pounding herself on the chest as she reached for her own wineglass. Ruby started making gagging noises even as Yang yelled, "What the hell, mom?"
Weiss glanced at Blake sitting next to her, who shrugged in confusion. "I don't understand, am I missing something here? Aren't the two of them married or something?" Weiss said quietly.
Not quietly enough, though. Summer had just caught her breath, but now she and Raven looked at each other and both of them lost it completely, howling with laughter as their daughters sat there looking mortified. "No, Weiss, Summer and I aren't married or 'together' or anything. We just both made the same mistake of sleeping with the same man, who got us pregnant and then bailed," Raven said, lifting her wineglass in salute. "To Taiyang Xiao Long, who stuck with me just long enough to get his name on my daughter's birth certificate and ran."
"To Tai, who promised to make me my favorite dish in celebration when I told him I was pregnant, went out for ingredients, and never returned," Summer answered, lifting her own glass to match Raven's.
Raven looked down into her glass, her voice sad and low. "Tai promised me the moon and the stars, even talked about getting married. But Yang was a difficult birth, and I was out of it for a while afterward. By the time I knew what was going on, he was gone." Yang didn't say a word, just reaching out to take her mother's hand. "Summer and I lived our whole lives in Vale, raising the daughters Taiyang abandoned with us. We never had a clue the other one existed until we both got called to the courthouse on the same day."
"We meet in the park outside the courthouse while we waited for our hearing," Summer sighed, silver eyes meeting her daughter's matching orbs. "We got to talking, realized Ruby and Yang shared a father and decided to introduce them to each other. Ruby had just turned five, Yang was seven at that point, and they took to each other immediately."
"Then we show up for our hearings, which were with the same judge at the same time, and he tells us something we already knew, that our daughters shared a father. What we didn't know was that while Tiayang may have been a shitty human being, he wasn't exactly broke. And then the judge proceeds to award us the maximum child support the law would allow, backdated to birth, with interest, penalties, fines, fees, etc, etc. Somewhere in the middle of this, Summer sees Taiyang hunkered down at the other table, trying to keep us from noticing him. She hands Ruby to me, marches over to Tai, backhands him right in front of the judge, and then marches back over and takes Ruby back."
"Tai's lawyer raises a protest about me smacking him, and I tell the judge I don't care, I'll take whatever he wants to hand down, even a bit of jail time if he wants, it was totally worth it," Summer added with a grin. "Then Raven pipes up with, 'If they want, Ruby can stay with me, get to know her sister some more.' The judge looks at us, looks at Tai, then back over at Ruby and Yang, who were getting along like a house on fire, and says 'I don't think that will be necessary, Miss Rose. I don't want to put a damper on them getting acquainted.'"
"And in the middle of dinner that night, Summer asked me out on a date. I said no. And asks me again every year on the anniversary of the day we met, and I always say no," Raven finished with a sigh.
Summer chewed her lip for a moment, then met Raven's red eyes with hers. "So what made you say yes this time?" she asked timidly, afraid of what Raven might say.
"Because at this point, all that's missing is a pair of rings and a piece of paper, and I can't imagine me and Yang's life without you and Ruby in it. I figure, I don't know, one date won't hurt," Raven answered, taking a larger sip of her wine than she meant to.
Silence fell across the room, and it was Ruby who spoke first, softly. "You never told me you hit him, mom." Raven winced, realizing that there was probably a reason Summer had never mentioned that to Ruby.
"I... it wasn't something I meant to do when I marched over there. I just wanted to look him in the eye, one last time, but when he looked up at me, I couldn't help myself. I still don't know how I feel about that moment, even after ten years. But I don't regret knowing him, because that gave me you," Summer said, rising from her chair and giving her daughter a hug.
"To family, no matter how they come to be that way," Raven said, lifting her glass in toast again."
"To family," everyone chorused, raising their own glasses.
It was later than Weiss expected by the time she made it home and she crept through her front door with no small amount of trepidation. The sounds of a cheering crowd came from her mother's home office, and she decided to investigate.
Her mother was sitting at her computer, watching what looked to be a Sparta tournament. "You're home late, Weiss."
"I'm sorry, mother, I-"
"You have nothing to apologize for, other than not giving me a call so I didn't worry." Willow paused the video she was watching and turned to look at her daughter. "I decided to look into that game you're always playing. I didn't realize how popular it was; whoever created it must be making a fortune."
Weiss shrugged. "The game's free to play, and nobody really knows who makes it, it's hidden behind shell companies. There are people trying to find out who makes Sparta and why, but nobody has actually been able to prove anything. I suppose it adds to the allure."
"That does add a certain air of mystery to the whole thing, doesn't it? Now I see you need a neural interface setup to play the game, can I see yours? I've never seen or used one and I'm rather curious." Weiss sighed and bowed to the inevitable, setting her rig and the headset Ruby had given her on her mother's desk, wincing at the tape holding the controller unit's case together. Willow frowned. "This looks rather battered and worn; how long have you been playing?"
"Th-three years. I bought the unit second-hand then, and I've been doing my best to keep it working. Ruby, that's one of my new friends, gave me that headset this afternoon. It's still better than the one I had," Weiss added, trying to keep the bitterness out of her voice.
"Mm." Willow turned the controller unit over in her hands, thinking. "Well, I suppose if it's getting this worn out, it's probably time you got a new one. Nothing, what is the term, 'bleeding edge' I think, but good enough to play with your friends."
Weiss had her phone to her ear as the doors of the Vendo-Mart slid open before her. "Yes, mother, I understand. No, having the house to ourselves is fine tonight. Klein will be there to make sure we don't misbehave. Yes, Ruby got carried away that one time, but no damage was done and she has promised to behave herself in the future. No, probably a lot of ranked play, trying to improve our team rating. We're doing well, but new teams still have to prove themselves. I'll talk to you later, then." She put away her phone with a sigh, scanning the ranked arrays of vending machines.
"Mom still got you on a short leash?" Yang asked, poking her head out from behind a machine.
"Not as short as it once was, but still shorter than the one your mothers keep you on. How did their latest date go? I didn't want to ask at school; someone might get the wrong idea." Ah, here was a rare treat; this machine had a large bag of Weiss's favorite brand of corn chips. Usually, all she could find were the snack-sized ones. If she exercised some restraint, this bag would last her several days at home.
Yang gave an exaggerated shudder as Weiss retrieved her chips from the machine. "They're not really talking about it, but I think it went okay. I mean, we've all been living in the same house forever, but to have the two of them actually dating and stuff is just really, really weird." Yang looked around for a moment, dropping her voice low. "I think Ruby saw something, something they're trying to keep private. She's been really secretive lately."
Speak of the devil, here came Ruby and Blake through the front door of the Vendo-Mart, chatting animatedly. "Sorry to be late, guys, Blake had a thing today and I tagged along. Ooh, a big bag of those awesome chips you like, Weiss. Are you gonna share? Pleasepleaseplease," Ruby wheedled, her eyes lighting up at the sight of Weiss's prize.
The white-haired girl arched an eyebrow at her team leader. "No, but there is another one of these in the machine. That way you can have some to take some home with you."
"Yes!" Ruby shouted, pumping her fist and running off to find the bag, Yang laughing as she raised her hand for a fistbump, Blake meeting her with a sigh. "Everything cool, kitty-cat?"
"Everything's okay. Just a routine meeting with my caseworker. She's still pushing me to put myself in the genetic database, to help me find my real parents, but I'm not sure about it." Weiss grimaced in sympathy; Blake was a foster kid, stolen from her parents at the age of five, and was going to age out of the system eventually.
"I get it. And remember, the invitation to stay with us still stands. We wouldn't have offered if we didn't mean it, okay?" Blake nodded, a touch of pink coming to her cheeks as she moved off to find her own snacks.
The four of them strolled through the streets of Weiss's neighborhood, Blake and Ruby in front, Yang and Weiss trailing behind. Suddenly the sky darkened, as the scattered clouds overhead coalesced into dark, brooding stormclouds Blake looked up with a grimace as thunder began to roll. "Looks like we'd better hustle to your house, Weiss." Weiss nodded and the four of them started running.
Globs of inky black liquid, some of them big enough to fill whole buckets, began to plummet from the sky. The spatter from one struck Weiss on the cheek, and she wiped it off with the sleeve of her jacket. Something about the liquid just felt wrong somehow, made her skin crawl. As the four of them watched, the globs started to flow together, forming writhing black pools that sent a shiver down their spines. Some sort of, creature was the best word any of them could think of, started to push its way out of a nearby pool, pulling the liquid from the pool into itself. It was all gaping jaws and claws, its body an inky black, a bony plate on top of its head. The creature's red eyes looked at them, and it opened its mouth to shriek a hunting cry at them before it charged.
"Run!" Ruby screamed, matching words to action as she grabbed Blake's arm and started running back the way they came.
"Where are we running to?" Weiss yelled, fighting the urge to glance behind her, fearing what she'd see.
"The Vendo-Mart! Those things are built like a fortress!"
"Sounds like a plan, sis!" Yang didn't even stop running as she snatched up a shovel some workmen had left leaning up against a newly-planted tree.
Another one of those creatures jumped up on the hood of a car, shrieking at them, and Yang bashed it upside the head with her shovel, sending it tumbling to the ground and driving the blade of her shovel into its body before it could regain its feet.
Blake's eyes widened as the creature's body began to evaporate into smoke. "What the hell are those things?"
"Trouble," Ruby said, looking up at the roiling clouds above. "And I don't think it's going to be stopping anytime soon. Lots of people are going to get hurt, we need to find a way to fight back. Come on."
Hours later, the girls crouched behind an overturned police car, staring at the immense, gorilla-like monster occupying the road between them and the Vendo-Mart. "Sis, I don't think I can kill that with a shovel," Yang whispered, her hands tight on the shovel's handle.
"What about a shotgun?" Weiss asked, gingerly pulling one from the hands of the mangled remains of the police officer in the front seat of the car.
"Weiss!" Ruby hissed. "That's stealing or something!"
"So?" the white-haired girl asked, checking to see if it the shotgun had any shells left before searching the body for more. "She doesn't need it anymore, and if we could ask her, she'd probably tell us to take it to protect ourselves." Weiss started sliding shells into the shotgun one by one. "Ruby, things have gone straight to hell in a rocket-powered handbasket. If those things are here, they're all over the city. And I for one am a firm believer in being as heavily armed as possible in a situation like this." She racked the shotgun, a determined look in her eye. "Now, do we see what else we can scrounge, or do we run like rats?"
"Do you even know how to shoot that thing?" Yang asked, giving Weiss a questioning look.
Weiss gave her a withering look. "You just saw me load it, didn't you? Back in Atlas, I had a boyfriend for a while who decided to show me how to shoot, thinking it would impress me. He got really angry when his 'itty-bitty little angel' turned out to be a better shot than him. One moment." Weiss reached back in and pulled out the fallen officer's sidearm and lifting the body to check for spare magazines. "She didn't have a lot of ammunition left. You did good, Officer Adele Mundy. We'll take it from here," Weiss whispered, closing Officer Mundy's eyes and doing her best to arrange the body.
"I know how to shoot, too. One of my foster dads was a gun nut," Blake whispered, and Weiss passed her the pistol and the one spare magazine she'd found. Blake ejected the magazine, checking how many rounds were left before grimacing and sliding the spare magazine in its place.
"Guess that leaves me this," Ruby said, hefting what looked like the mutant offspring of a crowbar and a pickaxe.
"Where did you find that?" Yang laughed.
"The trunk. I think there's more ammo, too. You guys didn't think to look there?"
A quiet check of the trunk yielded not only more ammunition but a bulletproof vest, which went to Ruby by a vote of three to one. (Ruby wanted to give it to Yang.) "So now what?" Weiss asked, once more peering around the car at the monster.
Ruby started to open her mouth, only to start fishing for her phone as all their phones got a message at the same time. "It's from the Sparta game," she said, puzzled
Yang frowned as she read the message on her phone.
FROM: Sparta High Command
TO: Panzer Pilot Yang Xiao Long
CITY OF VALE UNDER HEAVY ATTACK BY HOSTILE FORCES REPORT AT ONCE TO VENDO-MART NEAREST YOUR LOCATION FOR IMMEDIATE REPEAT IMMEDIATE DEPLOYMENT
"Why does it want us to go to the Vendo-Mart?" Yang asked, only to be met with shrugs and blank looks from the others.
"Like any of us would know!" Weiss hissed. "Well, we were planning on going there anyway, right? But how do we get past that thing?"
"Leave that to me," Blake whispered, taking the mutant prybar from Ruby and sneaking around the corner and out of sight.
Minutes later, there was a crash around the corner and the gorilla-monster shuffled off in the direction of the noise. The three remaining girls shrugged and dashed across the street to the Vendo-Mart, taking cover among the vending machines. "Now what?" Weiss asked, her shotgun leveled at the door.
"We wait for Blake," Ruby muttered, not even noticing that the machine she hid behind was loaded with cookies.
"But-"
"We. Wait. For. Blake."
Fortunately, it wasn't long before the prybar waved around the corner, Blake following behind. "Sorry to take so long, I pried one of those great big hanging neon signs off a building for a distraction and it attracted a lot of attention besides the big guy. Man, these things are dumb. So any clue about our mysterious orders?" The others shook their heads and shrugged. "So let's grab some supplies and find a bolt-hole."
Blake walked over to a machine that sold trail mix and nuts, figuring that was better survival food than candy or chips. She raised the prybar, but before she could bring it down, red warning lights began to flash. "Shit, the alarm's still on!"
"Who cares?" Weiss said. "Survival situation, right? Let's just take what we need and go. We can always plead extreme circumstances, right?"
Before Blake could answer back, a voice came over the intercom. "All pilots report to launch positions. All pilots report to launch positions."
"Launch positions? What are they talking about?" Yang spread her arms wide, accidentally whacking one of the machines with her shovel, cracking the glass. "I don't see any panzers here, do you? This is some code-head's idea of a joke!"
"Guys, the slushie machine's goone." Ruby's voice came from the back of the store.
"Geez, Ruby, it's the end of the freaking world and you're worried about the freaking slushie machine," the blonde replied rolling her eyes.
"It's what's in its place that you need to see." The slushie machine was gone, all right. Behind where it had been was an elevator with the Sparta logo on it.
"Well, this is mysterious," Yang said, then shrugged and reached for the button.
"Yang, don't!" Weiss hissed. "We don't know where that goes!"
"I dunno, probably to the basement where they keep the stuff to restock the machines, right? Gotta be safer than here."
"All pilots report to launch positions. All pilots report to launch positions," the voice on the intercom repeated again as the elevator doors opened.
"See, a nice normal elevator. Nothing to worry about, princess," Yang laughed, taking up position at the back of the elevator. "Come on, I'll be they have tons of cookies, Ruby."
"Cookie!" Ruby said with a laugh. "Right now all I want is somewhere safe to take a nap."
Blake and Weiss looked at each other and shrugged, then joined the sisters in the elevator.
When the elevator stopped, the doors opened on a cavernous room, a walkway stretching into the dark. Lights came on, and the four of them stood there, awestruck at what they saw.
"Are those...?" Weiss asked, not believing what she saw.
"Panzers," Ruby whispered. "Real panzers. What the hell?"
