One more try ya say?
Disclaimer: RWBY belongs to Rooster Teeth.
Rise of the Lunar Rose
The country of Vacuo was many different things depending on the person being asked: To some it would be a hellish prison that offered nothing but death, to others it was a proving ground where the theory of "Might makes Right" is made manifest, the strong are welcomed into the fold as a brother in arms while the weak are thrown to the mercy of the elements.
For Ruby Rose, it would be like looking out at the opportunity for a fresh start on her training as a Huntress, something that had faced derailment due to run-ins with the White Fang, teenage drama that sometimes bordered on the cliché and obscenely stupid, to her own blooming romance with a Faunus boy that was very much her opposite.
"Wow, he always made Vacuo sound like a death trap. But it doesn't seem too bad from up here." The crimsonette-haired reaper would gaze outside the window of the Bullhead that her Uncle Qrow had managed to charter through various "connections" as he so eloquently mumbled between swigs from his flask, although the young girl had her own suspicions on whom to thank for being able to fly there in relative comfort. "It reminds me of a sandbox, just a lot bigger."
The silver-eyed girl would try and picture her silver-maned friend running through the open desert, hollering in joy at the wide expanse of freedom as his younger self romped through the sand and let out a small giggle as his amber eyes shined with the light of hope.
"It must've felt nice, to run free and feel the wind through your hair." Ruby would sigh despondently as her mind recalled fragments of her early childhood, her father hovering nearby as she dared to explore the expanses of a playground only to be snatched up off the ground and into the loving (if a tad overprotective) arms of Taiyang Xiao Long. "Honestly, would it have killed him to let me skin a knee every-so-often?" She would let out a huff of annoyance before reaching up from her seat to hit the "call" button as she stared down into the empty glass of strawberry milk, something that brought together her love of strawberries with the milk that was sure to help her grow into a much taller (and assuredly lovelier) woman.
"Another refill ma'am?"
The stewardess for their flight had started the day with a perky smile as she greeted the young reaper, her Faunus friend, and her less than sober uncle Qrow when they boarded the Bullhead that had carried the three of them away from Beacon Academy. "Yep, can you also bring in a bag of cookies please?"
She would hand over the empty glass while giving a grateful smile even as the exasperated woman simply gave a quiet nod before heading further back, giving Ruby a clear view of the empty seat behind her dozing uncle and feeling a slight pang of concern for the young man that was supposed to be resting there.
"Where would he go, we're in a plane..not exactly a lot of places for someone in his condition to go!" The silver-eyed teen would sigh as she recalled their one (and only) visit to the rehab doctor that had been responsible for his treatment, as well as the disastrous conversation that followed it.
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Ruby would be sitting patiently beside her silver-haired companion inside one of Vale's most prestigious rehabilitation centers, marveling at the pristine white walls decorated with paintings designed by snooty people with names that only someone like Weiss could pronounce while her uncle tried to both flirt with the receptionist and deal with the paperwork for her Faunus friend.
Although judging by the man's body language, it didn't exactly seem like the latter was at the top of his priority list. A fact that was further cemented by the sight of the clipboard slowly floating in their direction.
"Hey! What're you doing?" She would whisper this before scampering from her seat and retrieving it from the air and running it back to him, trying her best to ignore the startled looks of everyone else inside of the facility. "You shouldn't be using your Semblance so freely right now Bálor, your body's still trying to recover from the surgeries you just went through!" Ruby would pout in concern as her silver eyes looked down at the wrapped stump, underneath which lay a steadily recovering hand with his surgically reattached fingers while doing her best to look into his remaining amber eye without flinching.
"I may be missing an eye, and my hand may be a little out of sorts right now, but that doesn't make me some sort of powerless invalid." The wolf Faunus known as Bálor Moonlight would give a cheeky smile as he carefully propped the clipboard on his crossed leg, a pen in his still properly able left hand and begin to fill out the usual medical paperwork even with the feeling of concern permeating from her gaze. "C'mon now Rubes, take a seat before your uncle decides to finally stop flirting and actually be a concerned adult.
Ruby would sigh and plop down in the seat next to him, making sure to watch as his hand worked its way slowly across the various lines of the form he was working through. "You're writing with your bad hand, aren't you?" The crimsonette would receive only a grunt in affirmation as she watched him struggle to keep his words on the line, his brow furrowing as she watched on in silence. "It's okay if you need help, you could just whisper the info in my ears and I'll write for you-"
"I told you that I'm not an invalid!"
His outburst would cause her to flinch, not expecting him to be short with her after everything that they had endured up to that point. "I didn't mean to make it sound like you're weak, but I'm watching you break a sweat doing this and it's killing me not being able to help."
She would lean over to see that he had just barely managed to write out his full name in deliberately blocky letters, and her heart broke as she noticed how hard that he was gripping the pen. As if he were trying to prove to both her and himself that he was still useful despite being maimed.
"It's okay to accept help from the people who love you, it doesn't mean that you're weak." The silver-eyed teenager would calmly remove the pen from his hand, making sure to give an affectionate squeeze before taking it and the clipboard from him and looking down at the long list of questions that needed to be answered. "Now let's make our way through this nice and slow, especially since this is the first time I've seen half of these words." She would furrow her own brow as she read through the more complicated questions, wondering how her dad managed to get through these without having a brain fart.
"I'm guessing your mom was the one who usually handled this end of the process, funny thing about parents..you really don't think about the help they give you until they're not around anymore." Bálor would frown in thought as he watched the red-hooded Huntress filling out what she could, using her scroll to help fill her in on what she didn't understand before finally looking over at him with a curious tilt of the head. "It's amazing how far you've managed to get for being so young, your folks must be damn proud of you little Rose."
Ruby would give a small smile before glancing over to see what Qrow was doing before answering him, twirling the pen in her hand absentmindedly as she saw him still trying to make headway with the olive-skinned receptionist. "I'm sure that my dad is proud now, but back when I first told him that I had gotten accepted into Beacon. He was more than a little bug-eyed at the thought of his little girl headed there two years early." She would giggle to herself as she remembered how flabbergasted that Taiyang looked when she gave him the good news, while his voice may have radiated "Proud Papa", she could see the twitch of apprehension in his eye the longer their conversations carried on.
"What about your ma, surely things between you two can't be so awful that you're not on speaking terms." The wolf Faunus would look down at the form, deciding to whisper a couple of much-needed answers and breathing a sigh of relief as the pen in her hand began moving and filling in the blanks.
"I honestly don't remember too much about my mother, she passed away while on a mission back when I was younger." She would bite her lip as she looked down at the form, whether it was due to struggling with a difficult word or just avoiding finishing answering his question was something she couldn't pin down. "Yang and my dad always spoke well about her though, and it's because of her that I have such a soft spot for cookies." The crimsonette would suddenly turn to face her friend as she started spinning the pen once again. "Now c'mon, we've still got a lot of headway to cover and you need to start giving me some answers."
After a little bit of trial and error, looking up things on her scroll, and a few painful admittances on his part, the two teens would breathe a shared sigh of relief as both amber and silver eyes looked down at the complete paperwork.
"Are you sure you don't wanna sign on the dotted line yourself? I promise that I'll only keep the clipboard still." She would place the clipboard back down on the young man's leg, carefully placing the pen back into his not-so-dominant hand giving a reassuring squeeze. "Just one more time, for me?"
The wolf would sigh in slight annoyance at having to once again force a proper signing out of his weak hand, but slowly begin making the block letters that made up his name. "Now we've just gotta go see just what kind of prognosis the good doctor has for me." With one last strain of effort on his part Bálor would set down the pen, smiling tiredly as Ruby calmly took the forms back up to the receptionist without interrupting her uncle's flirting before going over to the water cooler and filling up a paper cup and carefully walking it back to him.
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Noise.
Noise was the one constant that kept the mind of Bálor Moonlight running at a constant pace as he stared down at the 3-D diagram that was to be his newest weapon, something to replace the inherited blades that he had taken with him to Beacon Academy almost a year ago and that he destroyed nearly two months into his tenure there.
"I think this might actually be a winner." The wolf Faunus would smile proudly as he stared at the digital diagram of the sword that was being projected before him: a two-handed broadsword whose blade could split apart and reveal a shotgun for him to blow apart his enemies with the flick of a switch (and a loaded Dust Crystal in the hilt.). "By God I've finally done it, now I just need to find the materials to build this motherfu-" A tap to his shoulder would snap him out of his reverie as he spun around quickly to face his potential attacker, only to find a mildly annoyed crewman gesturing for him to remove his headphones.
"Only authorized personnel allowed back here buddy, back to your seat ya?" The crewman would be less than thrilled at the wolf's repeated intrusions into the cargo hold, and judging by how slowly and deliberately he was chewing his gum, the poor schlub was at his wits end. "How did we end up babysitting a couple of fucking kids and some drunk anyhow, planes like this are reserved for dignitaries and military types."
The silver-maned Huntsman in-training would crack a grin as he levitated his headphones back on his head with only a minor slip-up, shrugging his shoulders and sauntering off.
"Let's just say I got friends in high places."
He was used to acting like a smartass, ruffling the feathers of those around him to keep his interactions with others to an absolute minimum. (Even if it meant that he had seen Goodwitch often enough that he could make an educated guess at her bra size on sight alone.) And while he had managed to alienate a good chunk of his peers to the point where even the good-natured Pyrrha Nikos would watch him with sharp-eyed caution, Ruby Rose had persisted in trying to gain at the very least a "hello" every so often.
"She's so strange, I tried everything short of physically shoving her away but Ruby persisted..like a bad case of bed bugs." He would wince at the terrible comparison that had gone through his mind, knowing better than to compare his cookie-loving cohort to something that was a result of extreme filth and uncleanliness. "I'm gonna regret using this word-even in my own fucking head..She's a cuddlebug." He would stop walking and shudders as a stewardess passed him by, carrying a bag of chocolate chip cookies and knowing exactly whose seat she was headed to and stifling a laugh as he thought up another sugar in the gas tank joke.
"Still, she stuck by me when I was at my most impetuous." He would grunt as another jolt of pain ripped through his still-mangled hand, wanting nothing more than to ball a fist and punch something with it. "Even when it came to THAT day."
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He could only sit on the examination table and let his jaw hang in a stupor as the doctor's words were left hanging in the air, even as Ruby tried to give his good hand a squeeze and Qrow seemed to be slightly perturbed by what he'd heard.
"Mind running that one by us again Doc, I think the kids are having a little trouble comprehending what you're telling us" The usually soused veteran knew damn well that they had heard the same dire prognosis, but as a good teacher would know, there was something to be said about repetition helping to drill the point home.
"Well Mr. Branwen, as you can-and the children can see: the damage to Mr. Moonlight's hand is quite tremendous indeed, and while modern medicine can heal the superficial injuries to the skin, I'm afraid that there's very little we can do to restore proper functionality."
Just hearing the words come out of the esteemed professional's mouth was like having another nail hammered into the coffin that held his dream of being a Huntsman, he had endured litany of nightmares just to make it into Beacon after things went pear-shaped at Shade.
After he had hurt his dearest partner.
"I'm getting a goddamn second opinion." Bálor would growl in annoyance in as he slid off the table and back onto the floor, his hand tingling as he tried willing it into a fist which turned into a sharper pain as he grew angrier at the reality of his dream being taken from him. "I'll even take a fucking robot arm from one of those Atlas machines if it means I can fight again!"
The doctor would sigh tiredly as the wolf Faunus continued to rage at the news he'd been given, he wasn't the first person to go nuts upon receiving life-shattering news.
"Dammit kid, get a hold of yourself!" Bálor would snarl in annoyance as Qrow once again spoke up, his amber eyes meeting the veteran's red ones even as he felt Ruby's concern wash over him like ice water "You really think Atlas needs the bad press that comes from a punk trying to play Frankenstein with their little tin men?"
The wolf Faunus would roar in anger as various papers and materials swirled about in response to his telekinetic Semblance, flinching as he felt Ruby grasping his injured hand and causing him to yowl in agony before pulling away and glaring at her in hatred.
"It can't get any worse than it is now!" Bálor would look around at the individuals surrounding him: a doctor who had used cold, hard logic to bring an end to his dream and send his world into a tailspin. The drunkard who was somehow a lethal force to be reckoned with, the younger Faunus had yet to see a wisp of this technique outside of his usual behavior. Then there was the red hood who decided to take a chance on a not-so-big, nowhere near as bad wolf, even now as he tried to project an air of contempt, those silver orbs still held on to the light of hope. "I..I can't afford to fail..not again."
He couldn't keep the sobs from breaking free; not only had he thrown the type of tantrum that spoiled children would be proud of, but now he was weeping like a widow that had received horrible news and not even Ruby's gentle embrace could soothe the wounds that this prognosis had caused.
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Qrow would grumble as he felt someone shaking his shoulder gently, doing his best to swat away whomever was trying to disturb his rest only for the shaking to persist.
"Ugh, gimmie another five minutes Summer. Those berries aren't going anywhere." He would sigh tiredly as he returned to chasing the mythical creature known as sleep, only to feel his eyes opening to the sight of the lovely stewardess that had keep the sweet ambrosia feeling his glass. "Whaddaya say sweetness, one more for the road?"
She was less than enthused at his request, keeping her smile placid and professional as she took his glass. "Sir, I was coming to inform you that we'll be landing soon and to put your tray back in its upright position."
The older Huntsman would groan tiredly as he sat up to deal with his tray, taking a moment to look over at his niece, the best of his students and perhaps the closest thing to a daughter that he could hope for, given his current situation.
"She's a lot like you Summer: kind-hearted, full of energy, sees nothing but good in the world. I know she's gonna be something special." His feelings of admiration and pride would die upon looking over at the boy sitting beside her, talking in hushed whispers even as a gleam of excitement twinkled in his amber eye. "As for the company she keeps, that would probably merit some motherly intervention."
His blood would boil upon remembering the last conversation he and Ozpin had prior to leaving Beacon.
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"He's a danger to anyone who gets near him, for crying out loud Oz you're the one who's had the most contact with him." He would pause to take a drink from his flask, ignoring the look of disapproval he got from Goodwitch. "Now he's talking about replacing his hand with a robot's, which even if it somehow manages to take, still leaves him with a janked up eye!"
Beacon's headmaster would sigh as he looked down at the paperwork that had been dropped onto his desk an hour before Qrow decided to pay a less than timely visit to his office, Ironwood and the council were already on his case when it came to finalizing security measures for the Vytal Festival and this was the last thing he needed to worry about.
"I understand where your concerns are coming from, and I agree that Moonlight's actions are indeed troubling to say the least." The silver-haired man would stare into his coffee, seemingly weighing his options even as his reflection stared back at him in mirrored contemplation. "But I can't help but think that your opinions are being colored by past prejudices, especially considering how involved he's becoming with a certain someone." Ozpin would raise his eyebrow as the scythe wielder's gaze hardened in response to what was being implied.
"If you can see that much, then do the right thing: send the kid back to Vacuo, let him rehab and go farm grains of sand or whatever they do in that sand trap!" His grasp on the silver flask would tighten as his mind flashed back to days gone by, of a time where his team was still whole and the future was still one of hope. "What happened back then, it shouldn't have..if I had just stayed with her." The flames of anger would be smoldered by sadness, his expression becoming crestfallen as he returned the flask to his pocket.
Ozpin would sigh, knowing full well where the other man's mind was and feeling sympathetic towards Qrow's plight.
"Well, there is one thing we can try"
Qrow would raise an eyebrow of skepticism as the headmaster slid a rather fancy and official looking packet of papers in his direction, the scythe-user picking them up and perusing them calmly as he felt the beginnings of a smirk.
"Heh, this just might be your craziest scheme yet Oz"
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Qrow would shake his head as he turned away to give the pair their privacy, after all it wouldn't be much longer until this mess was settled and done with: The wolf would return to stalking his desert, and Ruby would return to life as a normal Huntress in-training, just in time to lead her team to victory in the upcoming Vytal Festival.
"Much as I hate to admit it, the kid seems like a good egg. But with that busted hand, his chances of being a Huntsman are shot." He would sigh as he removed the weathered photo of Team STRQ from his pocket, his eyes zeroing in on the girl in the white hood. The girl who saw fit to call a bad luck charm like him "friend". "Just gotta make sure this thing goes smoothly, then I can go over and drink this one away just like the rest of my nightmares."
I'll be honest, I was real hesitant about writing another RWBY fic given how Volume 4 went down (even though I have four other fics based in that continuity.) but with the Volume 5 trailer dropping today, and the prospect of a double-whammy of a V5 premiere AND Yang Character short on the 14th. I had to try
As for where this fits in on what I have detailed on my profile page, it's an AU where V3 hasn't happened...yet, as for this continuing...
We'll see...