Time for chapter 2, started the day before I'm supposed to upload it!
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...please be merciful.
Narration.
Emphasized narration.
"Dialogue."
"Whispers."
'Thoughts.'
"Muffled speech."
I couldn't remember any of the early events of my previous life's fifteen years, no matter how hard I tried. I thought this to be a sad thing at times, wondering what my life used to be like.
I now know that this was a blessing in disguise, because…
'This is fucking boring.' I think to myself as I lie in my crib, a plastic mobile overhead. 'How the hell did this use to entertain me?'
Now around a week or two old, the shock of dying and being reborn is slowly starting to die down. Pun intended.
'Jesus, I really am a Xiao Long now.' I groan at my own pun, coming out as a light gurgle due to my vocal cords still being… unusable.
Hey, I'm a baby, not a pediatrician. So sue me.
Looking to the left, I saw my twin sister, Yang. A formerly fictional character, now my sister. This was insane, yet now I had to accept it as reality.
It was also incredibly awkward considering that I used to ship her with people.
'I feel like that's going to bite me in the ass someday.'
Seeing as I can't do anything, I relax and ease off to sleep.
I wake up, and the sun's still not out.
What's on my mind however are the terrifying pairs of red eyes looking down on me.
'Holy shit!' I mentally scream, trying not to shout out or start crying.
She's not trying to make a move however, she's just... watching. Judging… for some reason.
"...smart." She remarks, stepping away and heading out of the room.
'What was that?' I ask myself, unable to come up with an answer.
The next few days passed without much issue. Other than a lack of control of my voice, eating habits, sleep schedule, legs and… bowel function, it was mostly normal.
I still had to act the part of an infant however, as to not raise suspicion, so I acted like my sister, who definitely didn't have an additional fifteen years under her belt.
Waking up halfway into the night due to an airplane engine of a child screaming into your ear is never fun.
I also had a… unique encounter.
Summer Rose.
I don't know what it was, but she… unnerved me. She was odd, and seemed to shift personality when only the three of us (Yang never left my side) were in the room. However, once my dad entered the room, she shifted back to a very Ruby-like persona.
That had me thinking however.
Raven, my mother, left Taiyang, allowing Summer to step in and produce Ruby.
I'm wondering if the same thing will happen since I'm here.
"So here's my nephew."
I'm brought out of my thoughts as a lightly gruff voice speaks from directly above me, the air now tinged with the obnoxious smell of alcohol.
"Qrow, don't get too close to them. I don't want you poisoning them with the obnoxious smell of alcohol." Tai scolds him.
'God dammit, that's what I just said! Don't steal my puns!' I mentally shout at Tai, oblivious to the fact that he didn't hear it.
"Er... right, that would be bad." Qrow says, no longer craning over the two of us.
"You think?" Raven remarks, a tick mark appearing on her forehead.
"Now now, let's not be hasty." Summer says, quickly trying to defuse the situation. "He stopped, and nothing bad happened. So it's fine."
'No it's not! For fucks sake, this crib now smells like cheap beer!' I cough to make my point.
"See, even he agrees." Raven remarks.
I notice my sister's face start to scrunch up. 'Oh hell no!'
I quickly blow over her face. My breath isn't much better, but admittedly, it could be worse. Her face softens, and I feel drowsy again.
'Right, lungs smaller than a baseball. Time for another nap. At least I won't get woken up halfway through.' I think to myself as I pass out.
I wake up and am immediately hit with vertigo, a slight nauseating feeling passing as the wind brushes against my face.
'Wait, wind!?'
I open my eyes, various colors I haven't seen in weeks passing me by. Looking up, Raven's face is visible past her armor, a determined yet strained look on her face.
It finally clicked in my mind. 'She… left.' I should be surprised, but I can't, as I had a feeling this would have happened anyway.
'Why did she take me though!?'
Raven dashed between the trees, her hair whipping around behind her. She eventually starts to pant however, and is forced to stop eventually, resting against a tree,
"Nine months… little physical activity… Qrow would be having a field day right now." She said,
"If I weren't pissed off, I would."
Raven quickly turns around, one hand holding her odachi, me in the other. My uncle drops down from one of the nearby trees.
"Not exactly hard to follow you, you just said why. Plus the kid's preventing you from turning into a bird." He said, grinning, before dropping said grin and glaring.
"So, why did you decide to leave? I thought you were serious about this."
Raven frowned, her grip around me tightening. "Don't kid yourself, I never intended to stay this long. The twins were just so that he was too busy to pursue me." She said.
Qrow raised an eyebrow. "Then why did you take him? I would have expected you to see him as a liability." Qrow responded.
"Well, I want to have a successor."
Qrow's eyes widened and immediately drew his scythe. "Sorry, but that's not happening. I'm not letting him turn into another murderer like the rest of the tribe."
Raven chuckled. "Attacking a woman when she has a handicap, how oddly 'tribe-like' that is."
"Don't compare me to them. I learned from my mistake, made a commitment, and stuck with it. More than I can say for you."
"You're really looking for a fight, huh?" She said, entering a stance, a little awkward due to my added weight.
Qrow giggled at the look on her face as she noted that fact.
'I'm not finding this amusing!'
As the two were about to charge, a loud growling noise erupted from the nearby bushes.
A Beowulf lumbered out, the twin huntsmen deducing that their aggression between each other had attracted it.
Qrow planned to put one between its eyes, before the rest of the pack followed.
The three humans in the clearing shared a thought, 'shit.'
"Truce?" Raven requested, prompting Qrow to chuckle.
"You asking me for help? What's next, am I going to hear about a pig getting hit with a Bullhead?"
Raven merely shuffled me in her arm, a deadpan on her face.
"...deal, but I'm doing this for the kid, not you."
Raven nodded, and charged along with her brother.
Around a dozen Beowulves approached, the alpha sticking to the back, observing the two.
They went down easily enough, Qrow's massive scythe cleaving through one, shifting back into a sword and bisecting another from head to crotch, before bending as a shotgun blast shredded a third. Meanwhile Raven was having a bit of a more difficult time, but I noticed something about her.
She was intentionally letting some get past her. To Qrow.
'Is she trying to kill him!?'
"That should work." She muttered, audible only to the two of us, before turning back to the way she was originally heading, and leaping off a Beowulf into the trees.
"Keep quiet kid, we're going to be going pretty fast." She said to me, before the trees disappeared, and the bright blue sky was visible.
I then noticed the top of the trees were now below me.
Looking up, I saw an oddly familiar black bird rapidly flapping its wings to gain altitude, it's talons holding the top of the bundle I was in.
To put my current emotions simply…
'Thank god that I haven't eaten since my last change, because there is not enough fear in the world to describe how terrified I am right now!'
As more trees were becoming less visible, I also noticed Raven was beginning to slow down, and fly in more of a straight line.
'Oh. Well this isn't so-'
Then she began a nosedive.
My reaction was a mess of garbled mental cries and curses.
At the speed we were now travelling, the foliage was now a sea of green, melding together to form a verdant scene as if I was looking at a ruffled bed from a level point.
It actually managed to distract me from my fears, long enough for the adrenaline rush to take its toll, and knock me out.
I opened my eyes as a shaking feeling jostled me awake. Noticing we were back on the ground, and Raven was back on the ground, I breathed a sigh of relief.
Looking around, I noticed we were still in a forest of some kind, but the foliage had begun to look different, hinting that we were no longer in the same forest.
'And if she's bringing me to the Tribe, we're on a different continent as well.' I remarked.
Eventually, we arrived in front of a large wooden gate made of sharpened logs bound together.
Raven whistled, waited a few seconds, and whistled again, a pair of masked bandits exiting their covers behind a pair of trees, a Fox and a Beetle respectively.
"Who are you?" The fox asked.
"Really, you don't recognize me." She responded, a deadpan on her face.
The fox's posture relax suddenly. "Raven?"
"No shit, Mauve. How's Myrtle?"
"...I had my doubts, but it's really you. Hey, open the gate, Raven's home!" Mauve called up to the gatekeeper, who poked his head up and waved to Raven before pulling on a lever, the gate lowering and allowing us passage.
"We can catch up when my shift ends. Until then, you should check in with the chief." He said, Raven nodding at the suggestion.
As we entered the camp, heads turned to look at us, smiling and waving, Raven reciprocating with her free hand, causing many to divert their attention to her unused arm and me by extension.
I could also hear people commenting.
"Is that a child?"
"Quick, run to your father and tell him Raven's home."
"Is that Raven!? Hey, Raven!"
Raven waved to them as well, approaching a large tent with a red top, the guards stepping aside for her.
"Raven?" A male voice said from the back.
"Hello chief." She responded, prompting the man to heartily laugh.
"Oh come on, is that any way to greet your father?"
Post-Chapter Author Note
So, I should probably lay some things out first.
Raven is in her 20's at the moment, so she's not as mature as she in the show. Same with the rest of STRQ.
Next chapter should be her meeting with the chief and Lance's first few years.
If you want to help influence the story in any way, be sure to leave a review or send me a PM. The latter will be responded to within a few hours or less, and the former within a day.