A storm is loosed upon the sea,
whose eye is stained with tears.
A wretch Hell-bound and bent on blood,
the makings of the fearful's fears.
The tide it stole away her grace,
the depths, they wouldn't claim her.
A toil begat by father's blood,
this path was laid before her.
Redemption borne by brigand's blood,
a blight upon the darkness.
The pact embraced, a road unsought,
the Maiden of Death won't be unwrought.
Her wrath is known throughout the black,
the gardens of death she is tending.
Vengeance is her only ward,
beware the blood red rose's thorn.
My mother sang this song as she placed me, barely born, into a basket and set it into the surf of the ocean, destined to sojourn to another land mass of Remnant.
In the basket, along with me, was a black and white mask with an intricate rose and thorn design, the red blood of my father slowly running down the face of the mask from the rose at the center.
Along with the mask was a small piece of parchment bearing five small words that would, in time, determine the rest of my life.
My mother watched as I, too young to understand anything of the dark ritual that had just taken place, floated away in my small raft towards the horizon and my unknown destination.
As she watched, a single tear appeared at the corner of her left eye and slowly traveled down the side of her face. Even though she felt its short path and knew that it would leave a mark; she did not brush it away or stop its journey.
At last, once she could no longer see my makeshift boat, she spoke in a hoarse whisper, "Goodbye my daughter. She who is doomed towards the same darkness as your ancestors all were before me. She who is doomed to the power of the darkness, and the curse that keeps us from the jaws of the beasts of Grimm. She who is doomed to forever wander the barren earth, searching for that which can never be found by our line; doomed to never know happiness in your life."
The necessary words said, my mother added a final note to her sad song, "Goodbye, the only light I ever knew, goodbye… my Thorn" and turned away, slowly walking back towards the burning village behind her, and the giant Nevermore circling above the blaze.
-Ruby Rose-
Receiving a whistle blow to the ear is not as pleasant as it is giving one, especially when one is deep in a pleasant dream about cookies, puppies, and dancing jelly beans.
"Wake up, my little lump!" Yang shouted into my face once I was sitting up in my suspended bed. "Whaa? I'm mm 'wake already. Wha' time is it?" I asked my sister, "Time for you to get up, lazybones. If you don't hurry, you'll miss breakfast!" Yang replied, "it may have been a weekend night last night, but that is still no excuse for not getting a full sleep."
I slowly rolled out of my bed, rubbing the crumbs from my eyes, 'got to stop staying up so dang late on the weekends' I thought to myself as I pulled on my school clothes.
"Wha?! Yang! You wake me up with a whistle and just leave Princess snoozing? Not. Fair." I complained when I saw that Weiss was still asleep in bed. "I figured I'd leave that job to you, Rubes." Yang called from the bathroom.
I voiced a complaint in the form of a groan, but still stomped over to the heiress' bed and poked her in the cheek.
Getting no reaction from the white haired girl, I poked harder, 'what's with her?' I thought as I shook the other girl's shoulder.
"What? What? I'm awake!" the heiress practically shouted as she came at last to life. "Monday. Morning. Breakfast. School." I stated as Weiss' eyes widened and the heiress got herself ready to go in time to join me in pursuing the rest of our team towards the mess hall.
We got our breakfast in due time as it had turned out that Yang had gotten us up early, which earned her a couple of glares from Weiss and I, and sat down at our table.
"Okay, I did NOT get enough sleep last night." I said, knowing full well that I was stating the obvious, "Well that wouldn't be a problem if you wouldn't stay up until one o'clock in the morning with Jaune and Nora having a sugar high, you dolt." Weiss replied crossly.
"Ah, let her figure out the stuff not to do on her own, Weiss. If she doesn't learn on her own, she won't learn it at all." Yang said through a mouth full of egg, "besides, you should concentrate on-"
"Hey girls," Blake cut in, uncharacteristically staring across the nearly empty hall, "What is it Blake?" I asked, surprised that the book that she had brought was now completely forgotten next to her plate. "Who's that?" she asked, pointing to one of the far tables.
We all looked across the hall to where Blake was pointing, but couldn't see anything out of the ordinary. "Where?" Weiss asked, also confused, "Table in the corner, no, not the far corner," the Faunus replied, "black cloak, hood up. They haven't moved an inch or eaten any of their food as far as I can tell."
I looked to where Blake had indicated, and finally spotted the person that she was referring to; the person did indeed have a black cloak on with the hood up over their head so as to hide their features, but the image still didn't come across as intimidating or out of the ordinary enough to catch attention.
"What about them?" I asked, very much confused, "They aren't moving or eating, maybe they aren't hungry?" I thought out loud, trying to rationalize the image.
"What about them caught your attention?" Weiss asked, "They were there yesterday and the day before, they've been doing that every morning for a week now; all they do is just sit there and slowly wave their fork over the food, not eating a bit of it, but the strangest thing is that I can't see what's beneath that hood." The Faunus girl explained, eyes never leaving the strange person sitting in the corner.
At that, we finally understood Blake's unease. "Can't see? Strange… maybe I could go and talk to them? Find out who they are?" I ventured.
At that, Blake ended her long stare at the hooded figure, turning to instead give me a curious look, then looked to Yang as if to say, 'I don't think it's a good idea.'
My sister had just the opposite impression, "That might work, but that guy straight up gives me goosebumps just looking at 'em" she stated, emphasizing her point with a little shiver.
I just shrugged and stood up with my tray, assuming that I was given permission by the blonde to try my luck at being amiable; but before I could take a step, Weiss grabbed my arm, "Ruby, I am going to have to side with Blake on this subject." She stated in a worried tone, "Oh, relax princess. Shady person with a hood on sitting in the corner? How bad could it be?" I replied with a slight hint of sarcasm as I strolled over to the cloaked person and sat across from them.
I noticed right away that the person was a girl from the slight figure and cleavage pushing out the front of her shirt, the next thing that I noticed was that the girl truly hadn't eaten any of the food before her, despite the fact that it looked delicious and was likely getting cold.
"Uh, hi!" I started, trying to get some conversation going to ease the awkward situation, but I was completely unprepared for the girl's harsh response, "Who are you and who paid you to talk to me?"
I was taken aback by that, "w-wh-what?" I stuttered, "I said, who are you… and who paid you to talk to me? It's not hard to understand."
"I-I understand what you said, I'm just not used to such a harsh question after just saying 'hi' is all." I replied, coming back to my senses, 'well, definitely not the friendliest person I've ever met.'
"Would've thought that 'hooded, shady person in the darkest corner of the room' would make you less inclined to investigate and prod into someone." The girl shot back with a bit of venom in her voice.
'Waaaay not the friendliest person. Maybe even less than Weiss when we first met.' "well, you never know about people you don't know. I mean, I used to be the exact same way, and now-"
"now you're the most popular little bitch at Beacon? Is that the way it went? Because if so, I've heard those stories more times than I care to count." The girl shot with much venom in her voice, stopping me short.
"N-no, not the most popular, just I-I have a couple of friends now, and-and I am not a little cuss!" I retorted indignantly, offended by her language.
Her hood rose up slightly, as if the occupant was looking at me for real now.
"Wait a second, aren't you a bit young to be attending Beacon? How old are you?" she asked, sounding confused now.
"Wow, nothing but questions? Kind of thought it'd be the other way around." I replied with a hint of sarcasm, "Yes and only one of them have been answered. Start with who you are, why you are even talking to me, then why you're in Beacon for your age."
I guessed that it was the only way that I was going to get any pleasant-ish conversation out of her. So I sighed, took a breath, and tried to look the girl in the eye.
"My name is Ruby Rose, leader of team RWBY here at Beacon. I was allowed to attend Beacon as a full student by Dr. Ozpin after I singlehandedly defeated a group of armed robbers during one of their raids. That is why I'm here, attending Beacon. I came over to talk to you because I decided it would be the best way to put my team's nerves at rest as you were really creeping them out." I gestured over my shoulder towards my team.
The hood moved to the right a bit, making it seem like the girl was looking over my shoulder at them.
"The Faunus girl was unnerved by me because she couldn't see what's under my hood. Not surprising." She said simply, leaving me simply dumbstruck, "How could you figure out that Blake's a Faunus?" I asked incredulous,
"Almost no teenage human females wear bows anymore but for the most girly girls, and even then only at the back; your friend Blake doesn't fit the first one I can tell, and the bow is placed wrong for the second, so it's easy to determine that she's hiding either canine or feline ears. Also, she's giving me an intense eye-fucking right now. Things are simple to figure out if you observe, Sherlock."
To that I just sat there, not able to respond or get my head around how easy it was for her to just pick out little details that amounted to a big, surprising picture.
She was quiet for a while after, then spoke up a bit, "Team RWBY, huh? Guess I should apologize a bit for being rude, kinda admire you guys for all the good you've done."
That really surprised me. Good that we've done? Admire? Apologize? From what I knew of this girl, even though I knew so little about her, saying those things seemed entirely out of character for her.
I had to take a second to collect my thoughts for a response to that, then I knew exactly what I wanted to ask her to do to apologize.
"I answered your questions, so you answer mine and I'll consider that an apology. Fair?" I asked her.
For the record, she just snorted at first, then, "Fine, that's fair. What do you want to know?"
I was entirely bursting with questions, but I decided on a few good ones.
"Okay. One, why are you so rude to people right off the start? Two, why can't Blake see your face past your hood? Three, what weapon do you use? And four, who are you?"
She scoffed when she heard the second and third ones, but made no reactions to the other two that I had, making me wonder what she was feeling under that hood, and even more what she looked like under that hood.
At first I thought that she wouldn't answer me, but then she began, "Alright then, fair is fair's fair." She said and heaved a sigh,
"The reason that I'm rude to people off the bat is because every time, but for one solitary case, that people have tried to talk to me, it was so that they could find a weakness and exploit it to its extent."
I cut in then, "Surely that can't be totally tr-" she cut me off before I could finish,
"It's true alright, and I'm guessing that it's not just from them, but also me. Touchy subject. Don't want to talk about that area. Next question, the reason that your Faunus friend can't see my face is because when I'm in shadows, nobody can see me. Literally, nobody. The reason for that goes back to the exact same touchy subject as before. Third question, I use a lotus voidblade katana and twin custom dust revolvers. Last question."
She heaved an even larger sigh at this one and said, "My name is Thorn."