A dark, purple haze cast its hue on everything in sight.
Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock.
Ruby crept up the stairs, each step breaking the dead silence of night with a loud creak. The air itself felt malevolent, as if the entire house wanted its occupants dead. The second floor was so close, but seemed to be getting further away with each step.
Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock.
She reached the familiar hallway, leading to both her room and her parents' room. No, as of recently, her parent's room. Her tiny legs drove her to her door, but as she looked inside, she knew it was too large to for her to sleep there alone. Not tonight. Not after everything that had happened.
Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock.
A tear formed in the corner of her eye. Whether it was from terror or sorrow, she had no idea. After all, one could hardly expect a four year old girl to be able to process emotions that an adult would have a hard time dealing with. Ruby closed her door gently and trudged across the hallway into her dad's room. She heard a faint, persistent metal shriek that grew louder and louder as she approached the door.
Tick tock, tick tock, tick…
The sound of shattered glass murdered the clock.
The door opened slowly. Ruby gazed inside, even though some part of her knew she shouldn't have looked. The fan spun lazily, the extra weight on one of the blades causing the entire assembly to slow down with each rotation. Ruby's mouth opened wide, and she felt pain as her knees buckled and smashed against the floor. Beneath her, she could hear someone smashing down the door.
"Taiyang! What the hell do you think you're doing! You have a daughter!"
The sound of desperate footsteps hammering up the stairs echoed through the house. Ruby's furious uncle bounded through the hallway, proving once and for all that crows bring nothing but bad luck. He looked at his brother-in-law, horrified, his expression only growing darker as his eyes fell to stare at the trail of tears falling down Ruby's face.
"...Uncle Qrow? Why?" Ruby sobbed, reaching for her uncle.
Qrow looked deep in Ruby's eyes. The room started to dissolve, the purple background eating the walls and furniture.
"Why, Ruby? It's simple." Qrow's red eyes glowed brighter and brighter with each word, until light enveloped the entire room. Crimson tears trickled down his face. "Your father died because you weren't enough for him."
Ruby's eyes slowly opened. A familiar buzzing filled her head, and she looked up at the ceiling for a solid minute, trying to remember where she was. If the lumpy couch she was sprawled across was anything to go by, she'd managed to stagger back to Qrow's house after all. She staggered over to the sink and grabbed a dirty glass off of the countertop, spinning the blue tap and placing the cup underneath the nozzle. The glass overflowed, but Ruby let the water run a little longer, enjoying the cold sensation on her hands. Shakily, she brought the water up to her mouth, cursing as some spilled out of her mouth and onto her shirt. After stumbling into the bathroom and emptying her stomach, she struggled to recall the events of the previous night.
There was that bottle of whiskey that Qrow had tried to hide in the basement, the brown paper bag, the abandoned alleyway… she shrugged, realizing quickly that she didn't care enough to bother thinking harder, not that the hornets flying around in her head would have let her. Her thoughts were cut short by the sound of the front door being slammed shut.
"Kid! If you're drunk again, I swear to god..." Qrow wasn't in a very good mood. It only worsened when he looked down and saw the half-empty whiskey bottle lying on the floor. "Hey! I was saving that for after the meeting with Ozpin and Glynda!"
"Well, technically I'm not"- Ruby's voice was stopped by a bout of dry heaving -"drunk."
"Well… I mean… Dammit, Rubes, you're starting to turn into me."
"Aw, come on, I look up to you!"
"Why exactly did you choose a thirty-nine year old alcoholic as your role model?"
Ruby's face darkened and she looked down. "Who else was I going to use?"
Qrow winced and his expression lightened up. "I didn't mean that. Look, you're only fifteen years old. You're too young to drink, and you're way too young to drink half a bottle of whiskey in one sitting."
"Well, if you wanted me to stop drinking, " Ruby's eyes picked up a mischievous look, "You should hide your booze better."
Qrow rolled his eyes. "I swear, you're gonna be the death of me."
"If you're finished, I'm gonna go back to sleep. My head's buzzing like crazy."
"Heh. I remember when I got hangovers."
"How do you avoid them now? You're drunk more often than sober."
"If you never go sober, you never get a hangover. And if you take that advice, you'll end up grounded until Winter finishes freezing hell over."
"Who's Winter?"
"One of the reasons I was hiding that whiskey."
Ruby laughed, winced as the action made her head spin, and crawled back onto the couch. Closing her eyes, she groaned and tried to fall asleep.
"Hey, kid."
"What?"
"You've been doing really good at Signal. Like, years ahead of the rest of your class good. Play your cards right, and I might be able to convince Ozpin to accept you into Beacon ahead of schedule."
Ruby picked her head up from the coach, looked up at Qrow, pinched her arm hard, and looked again. "For real? You'd do that? Even though I'm only 15?"
Qrow grinned when he saw Ruby's expression. Hook, line, and sinker. "First, though, I want to make sure you won't get kicked out the moment you get there. If you're drunk every other day, you won't last long."
Ruby groaned when she realized what he'd done. "Dammit, Qrow, you got me. I'll stop drinking, " she lowered her voice so that Qrow couldn't hear it, "at least until initiation, anyways."
"What was that?"
"Shut up and let me sleep."
The dull sound of buckshot bouncing off of steel rang out into the forest. Yang frowned as Raven lunged forward, drawing her sword and deflecting each individual pellet.
"That's a neat trick." Yang ducked as the sword eviscerated the air directly above her head. "Even with my aura, that attack would've killed me if I hadn't dodged." She retaliated with dual strikes from Ember Celica, the second attack blowing herself backwards to avoid Raven's counterattack.
Raven's mask covered her sneer. "If you hadn't managed to dodge, you wouldn't have deserved to survive it."
Yang and Raven circled each other slowly. Yang casually fired a few rounds of buckshot at her mother, each round deflected with equal indifference. Each studied the other's movements carefully.
"Your form is sloppy. Have twelve years of training taught you nothing? Perhaps I should have left you with your father."
Yang's eyes flashed red and she lunged at Raven, screaming ,"They've taught me enough to know how much of a bitch you are!". Raven just shook her head and cartwheeled backwards.
"Don't be so aggressive. Any half-decent opponent could have killed you a dozen times over. Really, it's pathet-" Raven was cut off by Ember Celica smashing into her stomach.
Yang grinned and jumped over the horizontal slash, denying Raven her revenge. "Guess that makes you less than half-decent."
Raven's eyes narrowed and her face hardened. "Brat, you are about to learn where you get your temper from."
She stabbed her sword into the ground, the blade sinking with the crunch of shattered
rocks, and lunged at Yang. The pair's fists cracked against each other a dozen times, before Raven high-kicked Yang's jaw twenty feet in the air. Yang groaned but managed to right herself, grabbing and spinning herself about a tree branch. She landed on another tree, and opened up on Raven with explosive dust rounds. Raven rolled her eyes, dodging each bolt with exaggerated grace. Yang jumped down and punched the trunk as hard as she could, dislodging the roots and sending the entire tree plummeting towards Raven. The black-haired warrior rolled her eyes again and ducked to the side, but blinked when her daughter wasn't behind the tree as expected.
Yang ran up the tree as it fell towards her mother, jumping over Raven's line of sight. The blonde's eyes flashed red and she slammed her fist into her mother's skull as hard as she possibly could. Raven went flying, slamming into and uprooting several trees along the way. Yang didn't lower her guard, as she could tell from the impact that her mother's aura was still going strong. Her caution proved well-advised when Raven flew back into the clearing with a murderous look in her eye.
"You know, if I wasn't so pissed off right now, I'd almost be proud," she seethed as she pulled her sword from the ground. The red running across the blade flickered in the sunlight as she pulled it up, changing from blood-red to hellfire. Raven's eyes locked onto Yang's as she sliced her sword through the air and created a portal, which she quickly jumped through.
Crap crap cra- Yang though as she turned around, forced to clap her two gauntleted hands together to catch Raven's blade, before it sliced Yang in half down her middle. She quickly ducked out of the way of the sword, not even having time to look at the blistered mess her hands had no doubt become. If it wasn't for her aura and her gloves, it was unlikely Yang would still have hands. The portal opened again and Yang turned around once more, only to get a sword hilt to the back of her head as Raven emerged where Yang had been looking earlier. Her vision swam, but she could feel her mother grab her around her chest and put the blade of her sword against her neck.
"Don't expect me to do the same thing twice, especially if it fails the first time. Stupid mistakes like that lead to death." Raven released Yang and removed her mask. Yang thought she saw the ghost of a smile on her mother's face, but it was quickly exorcised.
"If I was an idiot I'd almost think you cared." Yang grinned slightly, concealing her disappointment over her loss.
"I'd hate for all the work I've been putting into you to be thrown away because of your stupidity. You take after your father too much."
"Should I be offended or proud?"
"If you knew your father, you'd know the answer."
"Care to enlighten me?"
"He doesn't matter anymore. You are the daughter of the Tribe."
Yang's face hardened and Raven knew she'd struck a nerve. Still, it was hardly in her nature to be subtle or sensitive.
"I'd be able to put the Tribe first even if you told me who he was. Why can't I meet him, even once?"
Raven sighed. Yang's persistence annoyed her, and it created a rather uncomfortable problem. If Raven were to tell Yang the truth, she'd likely blame herself for what became of her father and become weaker in combat as a result; however, if she found out on her own, Raven would risk losing Yang's trust, and more importantly her support. I could always lie to her...but if she found out, that would piss her off even more.
The stalemate was broken by a voice from across the clearing. "Hey ladies, hope I'm not interrupting anything."
"Vireo… now is not the time." Yang said in a warning tone.
"Look, this is actually pretty serious. I've got the reports from that Atlas convoy raid, and it didn't go as well as you hoped it would, Raven."
Raven frowned and gestured for him to go on. Yang growled and walked back to the Tribe's camp, punching a few trees along the way. She had been pestering her mother for answers for weeks now, and if she wasn't going to get anywhere by asking...then she'd have to resort to other means. She entered the camp, and rather than head to her tent, she looked back over her shoulder and popped into her mother's tent. Tearing the room apart, she found exactly what she was looking for: her mother's scroll. Opening it up, she looked at the last people Raven had contacted.
Qrow, Vireo… who was Ozpin? Yang clicked on the strange name and read some of the conversation. It looked like they were arguing about her—whether or not she should go to a place called Beacon. Why was this Ozpin so interested in her?
Yang grinned and she took out her own scroll, checking the map for how close Beacon was. It was only about a week's journey on foot; factor in Yang's speed, and the travel time got cut down to a few days. This "Beacon Academy" would soon have an unexpected applicant.
Yang just hoped that her fellow students wouldn't slow her down too much.