Her teammates were beaten and her dress was stained with her own blood. Still, Weiss Schnee couldn't be upset. They just won a hard-fought victory and she found herself surrounded by most of Blake's hometown.
"What happened to you guys?" Blake asked as she was standing in front of a pair of Faunus, probably her parents.
Weiss responded with her best attempt at humor "You should see the other guys." Which earned her disappointed headshakes from the other former students of Beacon. "...what?"
Ruby spoke up with concern "You almost died, Weiss."
"SHE WHAT!" Blake and her parents responded.
Weiss took a deep breath "I'm fine, Jaune was able to heal me. It still it feels like something else should have happened. And it's weird, but I'm finding this crowd comforting for some reason."
Blake responded, "Maybe you need to rest."
"Maybe I should, but not before introductions." Weiss incited "is this lovely couple your parents?"
"Ohh right." Blake said, "this is my mother Kali and my father Ghira the chief of Menagerie."
Ruby silver eyes grew big and they seemed to start to sparkle. She made a gasp of joy before singing "You never said you were a princess." Which got a decent laugh out of the gathered crowd. Blake however just blushed and stammered.
"Well it's a pleasure to meet you both," Weiss said with a curtsy. "We have a lot of catching up to do Blake,
"I think she has a concussion..." Yang muttered from the back of the group which earned her Nora's elbow to the stomach.
"In all honesty, I feel great. Jaune's healing powers are amazing." She looked around and thought to herself why do I feel right at home? Maybe it's because the team is finally reunited?
"Still, this was a hard fight and you lost a lot of blood," Ruby said.
Ghira asked, "Who exactly is this?"
"Oh, I forgot this is the rest of my team Weiss Schnee, Yang Xiao Long, and our team leader Ruby Rose."
Kali squealed "This adorable little gumdrop is your leader?"
Ruby gave a big smile and nodded. "I was allowed to attend Beacon two years early. I would love to tell you about it but right now..."
Ren added, "We just finished a brutal battle that we barely won."
Blake and her family all worried. Kali asked, " And are you all okay?"
"Nothing permanent." Ruby said before glancing at her sister "Nothing new anyway."
The crowd started to part for the group of weary heroes. The seven teenagers, Oscar and Qrow started to walk off to where they were staying.
"Who's the pipsqueak?" Blake asked.
Weiss responded, "Oscar, he's kind of a long story."
Weiss took one more look back at the big crowd of Faunus. Something kept stirring in the back of her mind. A buzzing about something that she wanted, no she needed, telling her to reach for it, despite not knowing what it was. She didn't find the experience unpleasant, just confusing. The best she could do for a description of how she was feeling was somebody welcoming her home in a language she doesn't speak. She kept these concerns to herself, her friends already had a lot to deal with tonight.
"Your parents are nice," Weiss said with a yawn.
Blake smiled. "Yes, they are. Maybe you should all visit Menagerie when you get the chance."
The buzzing in the back of Weiss's mind became slightly louder. "That might be a good idea."
That night Weiss slept restlessly as she dreamed about herself as a child, probably barely 4 years old. But something was different about her. She wasn't the reserved young lady she remembered being, she was playing in the snow. She got a good look at herself in her reflection in the ice on the frozen pond. Her outfit was simpler than any she remembered owning. She realized that there was no scar on her face. Most surprisingly, she had a long gray and white thick fuzzy spotted tail.
"Why do I have a tail?" She muttered in her sleep.
The dream shifted and she was now slightly older and in the hospital. She felt cold,
for some reason. She looked down, the tail she had in the last dream was gone "Why don't I have a tail this time?" she asked herself. She could hear her parents arguing outside.
"This was sick Jacques. I can't believe you actually did that to her!" She heard her mother yell.
"I had to," her father bellowed "I should've done it a long time ago. She was one of those freaks."
"She's still one of them, even if you got rid of the evidence." Her mother retorted coldly.
Weiss woke up sitting straight up and she gasped a few times.
Over the next few days, it became clear that the buzzing had to do with part of her identity. But it remained just out of reach. Every time she looked into the mirror she felt like it wasn't really her looking back. Then one day, she heard Ozpin explain the gift of knowledge.
"So it could answer any question we have?" Weiss asked, "even about ourselves?"
Unfortunately his response, which was still bizarre hearing this little kid speak with Ozpin's voice, was, "It can only answer three questions every 100 years."
"That's pretty steep just for knowledge." She answered. She was puzzled by the thought probably for the best, there are more important things to worry about than my identity crisis.
"Are you alright?" Blake asked.
Weiss lied "Never better."
One night, when Weiss couldn't sleep, she was up looking at her scroll. She kept finding herself drawn to Faunus related sites. She had to make sure the safe such was turned up to the maximum, not that that skunk tailed girl wasn't cute.
"The white fang homepage." She whispered to herself before sneezing causing her to click the link by mistake. Her eyes widened before she saw what she was looking at. The website was a relic. Nobody had updated it in years. It still talked about upcoming group picnics and ping pong tournaments that happened even before she came to Beacon. "Our new leader " was scrolled above a beautiful tiger faunus in hot pink Comic Sans and followed by some emoticons.
The pictures of the members and families all where unmasked with huge goofy genuine grins. She saw a couple of fox twins sharing their family recipe for chicken pot pie. A huge panther's book recommendations. Everyone looked so normal and happy, even Adam Taurus was smiling in the picture he was in but he was the only one in a mask. Weiss couldn't help but laugh out loud. "Hmm... I wonder if Blake is on here."
She was on the sight alright. She won a Karaoke contest with "These boots are made for Walking." Weiss clicked the "more Blake" link, and was greeted with recruitment pinups."No way." Weiss giggled as she looked at her friend posed seductively in a black bikini, thigh high boots and a white fang mask with a banner reading "The White Fang needs you." overhead.
Then there was the train to Argus. To keep the civilians safe they had separated the back of the train so they could fight the Grimm. They won, but the train was derailed and lay broken in the snow.
The team, Qrow, Oscar, and an old lady were standing out in the cold. In the center of the gathering was a massive blue woman, Jinn, the gift of knowledge. Ozpin had lied, that seemed to be a common occurrence lately, as she still had one more question to answer after the one Ruby had asked. But Weiss was not even daring to speak at all. Could she blow it on something that was probably simple in the grand scheme of things, even if it was driving her up the wall?
"It's okay Weiss." The genie spoke up. "You're not the first one to worry about wasting one of my answers." The other teenagers looked at her, Ruby looked like she was about to say something but Jinn cut her off. "I know all the questions anyone even thought about having me answer. Weiss, it's far from the worst but I think we both know you don't really need to ask it. Yes, Blake, I could cheat the rules like this. But I'm not going to. I try to only cheat with questions I raise. Ohh, Yang, I would love to tell you some good ones but you all will be frozen solid before we even get halfway thigh with Nora. "
After they reached Atlas Weiss almost had it, the answer was just barely out of reach. She was too tired to keep dwelling on it so she just collapsed into the bed. Only to shoot right back up. "I'm a Faunus!" The words and the truth behind them where simultaneously strange and comforting.