Chapter One
Again
Four pairs of eyes snapped open and their lungs took in massive gulps of air.
Formerly bright silver eyes snapped open.
For anyone else, waking up and not being able to see would have sent them into a panic as they tried to figure out why they were suddenly blind.
To Summer, she only had to remember to stretch out her senses to get a feel for where she was, a room she hadn't seen in several years, a room Nova hadn't seen in several years either.
It was the smell of it which triggered the repressed memory, the scent of pine, petrichor, and linen which was so decidedly their home on Patch.
The standard items of a shared double bedroom pinged off her Aura, the colours lost in translation, just grey shapes in her mind as she read the returned pulses.
She had no idea how she managed to get back to Patch as her last memory was of Menagerie and reporting to her team about her meeting with Salem. Her team had placed their hands on Rei and been surrounded by a blinding light.
Re'iyah.
The tiny Grimm didn't ping off anywhere on her senses. She twisted her arm behind her back, searching for the smooth black gem embedded behind her heart. It responded in kind by resonated under her touch, notifying her she was safely stored inside with a quiet yip in the back of her mind.
She wrested herself from her bed, shaking off morning woes. If she somehow ended up on Patch, then there was a good chance her team was with her. That light must've teleported them here with her.
Nova's bed sat directly next to hers, and while she wasn't pinging off her pulses, she could definitely feel and smell her sister was in the room with her.
She was still sleeping like the usual lump of useless she was whenever she had time off, this time without a companion to share her warmth with.
Summer crawled onto the bed, careful not the shift the springs too much to wake up Nova before she was in place. She planted herself on her sister's waist, finally causing her to stir from her slumber.
"Wake up." Her command managed to pull Nova from her dreams, her sister's hands automatically reaching up to grab her hips and dance along her thighs. She hummed at the feeling, then frowned as she realised she was feeling two flesh hands on her skin and not one of flesh and one of metal. "Nova."
"Wha-a-a-?" Nova slurred through her morning fog. Summer grabbed Nova's right arm, inspected it with her hands, lacking her occulatory facilities to check. Flesh, muscles, sinew, and blood thrummed under her hands as she roamed about to find the supposed melding point of metal and flesh.
It wasn't there.
"Nova." She repeated her name, but continued to get incomprehensible responses. Taking a revolutionary method, she pinched the skin of Nova's right hand hard, shocking her as pain lanced up an arm previously devoid of such a feeling.
"What the fuck?" Nova sat up, shifting Summer onto her lap and grabbed her new flesh arm, staring at it in amazement. Subsequent pinches and scratches revealed it wasn't a dream and her metal arm was gone, replaced with her original. "How?"
"I don't know." Summer sounded as her usual self; droll and unmotivated.
Nova turned her attention from her arm to her sister. Summer sat eye to eye with her, even sitting on her lap. "You're small again."
Summer blinked back, running her hands down her front, checking the size of her breasts. She looked down her nightshirt, immediately realising she couldn't see them. She instead took off her shirt, drawing it over her head and tossing it to the side, letting Nova check for herself.
"There's nothing here Summer." Nova traced Summer's skin where she knew she should've had at least some scars. There was no cosmetic surgery extensive enough to cover Summer's scars. It wasn't makeup either as the skin warped and moved just as the rest of her.
This body had never sustained the same treatment it should've.
"Scroll." Summer demanded, reaching for the one resting on the bedside table. She handed it over, not being able to read the time and date on the lock screen. Nova took it without a word and turned on the display.
24/6/81
The 24th day of the 6th month in the year 81 after the Great War.
"No...not again." Nova threw her head back onto the bed, roughly tossing the scroll aside as if shoving it away would make her delusions true. Summer jostled around, back to sitting on her sister's waist, still shirtless. "Wake me up when reality starts making sense again."
"Answer or I start nipple twisting." Summer hovered her hands above Nova's breasts, ready to torment until she got answers. Nova cracked a violet eye open, daring her to try before she noticed Summer was still blind.
"We're back home, back in the summer before we started Beacon. From the looks of it, we're back in our original bodies. Bianca's theories 1 and 2." Summer felt Nova caress her face and fingers probe under her eye. "Not entirely original it seems."
"Be happy Salem decided to let me live instead of killing me as she'd done with our mother and her predecessors. You, Kara, and Bianca were both restored to your originals forms, and so was I, with a few modifications."
"So Salem sent us back to our original dimension, after agreeing to a ceasefire with the Hunters?" Nova couldn't remember much more than the white light as it overrode the rest of her senses. "And after you agreed to help her?"
"You think I understand the inner workings of an omnipotent goddess? Maybe she tried to eliminate all of us at the same time and Bianca did something to interfere? Or maybe she was on her period and decided to screw with us? Or maybe it was Ozpin deciding he wanted to be Commander again?"
"We did get transported here when we all decided to touch Rei at the same time?" Nova's, now back to Yang again, hands idly massaged Ruby's legs during their conversation. "Speaking of which…?"
Rei manifested briefly in Ruby's hand before being placed back into safe storage, only able to form a quick and sad whimper at being forced back into her kennel. It was for her own safety. Neither of them could remember if Tai or Qrow were in the house.
"Okay, so it wasn't some weird shared dream with the rest of our team." Yang suddenly dug her nails into Ruby's thighs, drawing thin rivulets of blood. "I still don't like how you went off to meet with Salem alone without telling us."
"My original plan was to use my remaining eye in an attempt to kill her. Instead, I sacrificed the eye to her while gaining something for my Hunter. If I succeeded in killing her, great, but if I failed, then I'd be dead."
Instead of reacting in anger to her plans, Yang pulled Ruby down for a hug, trapping her with her strength and drawing her head down to her shoulder. She shifted the covers about until they both lay under them.
"You need to stop martyring yourself. You're no good to the team dead." She carded her fingers through Ruby's crimson hair and pressed her tighter against her body.
"I was doing what I thought best for my Hunters, as a good Commander should've done. I had the ability and opportunity to stop a war before it really got started." Ruby closed her eyes, the altruism of Yang's actions slowly lulling her back to sleep.
"Good for the Hunters, but shit for the team, and horrible as a wife, lover, and sister." Ruby chuckled at her profanity, silently updating her protocols for 'good lover' and 'good sister'. They clashed with her prerogatives as High Commander, but her team would be there to fix those if she ever took command again.
Ruby was almost asleep again when Yang's hand brushed against the gem on her back, sending a shiver up her spine and another yip echoing in her head.
"That's where Rei is stored." Yang nodded, returning to her meaningless task of exploring her team leader's body for changes. Other than the eyes and the gem, and the lack of scars, nothing else seemed out of place on Ruby's younger body.
"You know, it was fun meeting our younger selves. Hope they'll be able to continue without us, especially little Red." Ruby didn't reply, not having much of an opinion of their interactions. "Do I have a black little extra anywhere on my body?"
Ruby cocked her head, begging Yang to explain.
"Just hoping Salem or Ozpin had the decency to attach Serenity somewhere on my body. She was nearly rebuilt in time for the liberation. Now it's back to square one." Yang sigh, blowing a strand of her hair off her face as she burrowed into her pillow. "Weiss isn't going to be happy until she's back up and running."
"We won't be able to see her until Beacon." Ruby remarked. Both of them knew it to be true, unless Weiss scheduled a surprise trip to Vale and could somehow justify it to the megalomaniac of a sperm donor she had as a father. "Can't message either Weiss or Blake."
The numbers of each scroll they knew by heart but those were Hunter registered scrolls and wouldn't be handed out until Beacon. Weiss was stuck in Atlas and calling her through the SDC would set off her father. She'd have to call Signal and then reach them through Tai, which would set off questions none of them wanted to answer.
Blake, on the other hand, was homeless somewhere in Vale, but was resourceful enough to realize the Fang had more than enough bullheads she could steal and commandeer one to Patch. It would give them the starting frame to Serenity.
"Blake should be here within a few days, but before that, I'd like to actually check out the dimension we're in and confirm were in our original one. I wouldn't put it past Salem to screw with us because we interfered too much."
It would've turned out nicely for Salem. Cripple Summer and use Rei to eavesdrop on SKBN, and when they were all together, wipe them from that existence, returning everything to its status quo. She was the one with the fetish for balance after all.
"You won't be checking anyone out." Yang snickered, watching as Ruby fumbled about for her discarded shirt. "You're blind as fuck."
"I will hurt you." Ruby's threat became less enforceable as she smacked into the corner of the door frame, forgetting to turn her pulses back on, sending Yang into guffaws.
Showering separately wasn't an option after Ruby slipped and nearly concussed herself on the tiles. After Yang managed to pick herself up from laughing too hard, she realised Ruby was completely hopeless in the shower as she couldn't tell shampoo from body wash.
While she could've just sat outside and handed Ruby the proper bottles, no one ever denied having someone to clean those pesky hard to reach places. Yang traced the black cracks breaking through the skin of Ruby's back, the epicenter of them being the gem embedded behind her heart.
Thankfully, neither Tai nor Qrow seemed to be home to question why Ruby and Yang were together in the bathroom in the first place. Qrow was off flying with his little birds and Tai was probably finishing up his semester as professor at Signal.
Ruby spent a good few minutes reacclimatising to their home, mapping and rememorising, converting her visual memories to colorless blobs in her mind map. She could've used Rei, but didn't know when Tai or Qrow could drop by unannounced find a Grimm sitting obediently on Ruby's head, acting as her eyes.
"We're gonna have to teach you how to fight decently if you want any chance of gaining admission to Beacon for next semester." Yang plated some breakfast for Ruby as they sat around the small dining table.
"My impromptu interview with Ozpin is in a few weeks. I'll have to learn how to kick his ass before then. I doubt he didn't have anything to do with sending us back here, even if Salem denied having spoken with him since some length."
"He might not take kindly to a Signal student trying to maim him."
"This Signal student will steal his cocoa and blacklist him from any chocolatier in the country." Yang highly doubted Ruby had enough pull to leave Ozpin without his addiction, especially with how much of Beacon's funds were appropriated to 'miscellaneous' usage throughout the years.
The Mt. Glenn Project had been solely funded from them and Summer almost strangled Ozpin when she found out.
Ruby scarfed down her breakfast as quickly as she could skewer the scrambled eggs, eager to get out to the field and test the limits of this body with the new constraint of her lack of vision.
Yang followed her example, rushing to meet Ruby out in the large field behind their house. Crescent Rose and Ember Celica remained up in their rooms as they needed to figure out how Ruby would take in her surroundings before they added bullets and blades.
"Rei's not going to join us?" Yang took her spot across from Ruby on their unofficial sparring grounds.
"I'd rather not reveal to the world I have a pet Grimm I need to use to go about in the world. She'll come out in private, but I don't want her getting hurt or have to use her as a crutch." Yang nodded along, following her reasoning.
"You're going to run out of Aura eventually if you keep having to pulse your Aura to map your surroundings, and I have nowhere near the amount to keep transfusing you. I feel weak as a kitten."
Ever since they woke up, their mental instincts demanded their Auras to maintain a shielding around their bodies, even if it sapped their exponentially smaller pools to do so. To someone like Yang, who usually didn't feel the drain with her ocean of Aura except when taking Ruby's shells, or an excited Weiss, her shielding was taxing.
"I have no other option, and you know eye transplants won't take." Ruby sank into a meditative trance, trusting Rei to keep the worst of Summer at bay. Sending her pulses out as far as they would go, she could sense the trees all the way down to the blades of grass.
Yang, on the other hand didn't register on her senses, instead leaving a large blank void in her 'vision'. It was just the nature of her Semblance to absorb even the smallest impacts, included any Aura sent her way.
"You're going to have to drop your Semblance or you won't register." Yang's Aura almost reluctantly pulled off her skin and returned to her ever expanding reserves, a tapping foot slowly growing its size.
Another pulse had Yang showing up but the vision dropped almost instantly. The task of sending pulses out didn't take much concentration, but it pulled Aura from her.
Instead of sending out pulses, Ruby tried to maintain a shell of Aura about twenty metres around her. A command to Yang had her crossing the threshold of the shell multiple times as Ruby struggled to sense Yang when she stepped out of the shell.
It would create a superb proximity alarm for any projectiles or hostiles coming at her, but she couldn't sense anything inside the shell.
But the shell took much less Aura to maintain than the hundreds of pulses needed to paint a picture, and took less Aura still than maintaining an Aura shield, having to make the shell permeable instead of the usual solid.
She didn't want to think how much Aura it would take to maintain a distance shield. It was the only thing holding her back from simply spreading her Aura out in all directions and reading the returned pings. Yang didn't have the Aura needed to fuel that endeavor, not now, nor in the near future.
If she could maintain the twenty metre shell with little more than a thought, then she could theoretically maintain a series of shells at set intervals, shortening the distance between them the closer they formed to her body.
Calculus came in handy after all and she couldn't help but compare it to Reimann sum and integral as she tightened her grip on her Aura and thought fondly back to Weiss smacking her with their math textbook when she refused to learn the subject matter.
Simpler times.
The outermost shell remained at twenty metres, the second at ten, the next at seven, five, four, three, two, one, and then another few acting as second skins until they reached her shield, morphing to fit her body.
While standing in place, the shells held up miraculously well.
Another order to Yang had her running back and forth between the shells as Ruby analysed the readouts from the shells. She could tell exactly from which direction Yang was coming from, the speed as she impacted each subsequent shell and the angle she was coming from.
If, however, she applied her Semblance to the neurons firing rapidly in her brain, she gained a greater understanding of the shells, able to nearly predict Yang's future movements and more accurately understand how Yang was moving through them.
Thank you Neo.
This was going to take a while to get used to.
At least Weiss wouldn't be the only control Huntress on the team anymore, and that brought a smile to her face.