October 1, 2016:
Finally got a new chapter out. Damn, staying in a deep, dank cave in the middle of a box canyon in the middle of nowhere really doesn't do all that much to get you past writer's block.
So yeah, I don't own RWBY, that's Rooster Teeth's stuff, and I don't own SU, that's Rebecca Sugar and Cartoon Network's stuff. Don't touch it. You might break a character or two. Tends to happen in those shows.
This fanfiction is completely not-for-profit (I think) so enjoy and please don't sue.
That night, I stood in a neverending field of roses.
As far as my eyes could see, crimson, pink, white, and gold battled in an unmoving war over color dominance on a plane of green stems and leaves. Overhead there was a clear, blue, nearly cloudless, picture-perfect sky. I looked around, seeing nothing but the same scene in every direction.
Then, suddenly, I realized that I wasn't alone in the sprawling expanse of flowers. Well, realized would be the wrong word for it. It was like there was no one there one second, and in the next instant the field was filled with people.
There were two groups in the field with me. To my left were people, young men and women, all wearing crisp, clean red, white, and black uniforms. Beacon uniforms. At the front of the crowd stood three girls. The first, youngest, and shortest, with shoulder-length dark hair that turned red at the tips, gave me a wide grin and an enthusiastic wave. The second, a girl with long, white hair bound into a side ponytail, gave me a friendly nod as her arms were crossed. The third, and the tallest of the bunch, with a veritable mane of flowing blond hair gave me a cheeky grin and a wink and a playful thumbs-up.
Ruby Rose.
Weiss Schnee.
Yang Xiao Long.
My friends. My teammates. My partners. My family at Beacon Academy.
I looked to my right. Instead of crisp and clean uniforms, they all wore dirty, worn uniforms and gray-white masks reminiscent of the Creatures of Grimm. Instead of a mix of humans and faunus like the Beacon group, they were almost all faunus. At the crowd's head stood an intimidating man with flame-red hair, a long black trenchcoat, and a chokuto with a rifle sheath in his gloved offhand.
I knew him. Adam Taurus. A monster.
He grinned a feral, viscious grin filled with malice and pointed his weapon, Wilt and Blush, directly at me. He fired, causing Wilt, the chokuto, to fly out of Blush, the rifle sheath. As if in slow motion, my eyes caught his wrist flicking and the sword starting to tumble like a wheel through the air. On instinct, I dodged, and it flew past me. I tracked its motion as it went, and saw as it flew into the crowd of Beacon students.
I gasped in horror as Ruby and Weiss and Yang scrambled to dive out of the way, only for a luckless student to be gored on the scarlet blade. None of them were paying attention to another threat that made itself known.
Grimm.
From my right, a horde of the things rushed past, blind and unthinking in their savagery and rage, moving around me as though I was a stone for the waves of Grimm to break against. They surged forward, so many of them that I couldn't see any of my friends, classmates, and peers.
But I wouldn't need to.
The only thing I would need to perceive would be the horrible, mangled screams of the bright young warriors of Beacon Academy being torn asunder by the very monsters they'd been tasked to hunt and kill, mingled with the snarls of the monsters themselves, along with the deranged cackling of one White Fang bull faunus.
CRACK! BOOM!
A sound akin to a cannonball slamming through the wooden hull of a pirate ship reverberated throughout the tiny beach house, disturbing my sleep. I hastily shook the nightmare out of my thoughts with a shudder and looked over from my place on the couch to investigate the noise. I was surprised by what I saw.
A little greenish-teal orb was buried within the wooden floorboards of the beach house, and its entry hole was a jagged, rough thing in the middle of the ceiling. I raised a brow at it as four cylinders hovered out of the main body and separated into two neat halves. The cylinders pulled the little orb out of the floor and it appeared to be resting on them like feet, despite the fact that its body wasn't connected to the "feet". It wobbled and waddled on them as it made its way to the Warp Pad in the mouth of the temple.
I leapt up as soundlessly as I could to the second floor before attempting to jostle Steven awake.
"Huh... Wha?" he groaned. He blinked his eyes a few times. "Blake? What's going on?"
"Down in the living room, there's an orb-looking thing just sort of walking around."
"What? Show me!"
The little orb- kinda looked like some sort of robot of sorts- was still waddling over to the Warp Pad, yet it had a little hairline crack on its surface, oozing some sort of luminescent green fluid with little blue triangles floating within the liquid. It wobbled with what looked a bit like a limp, and it swayed like a drunkard, heavily impeding its progress.
"What is that?" Steven asked from beside me.
"Looks like some sort of robot," I replied. It was almost to the Warp Pad at that point. I jumped up, using my Semblance to create a clone in midair, then flipped and kicked my shadow clone to the ground, just hard enough to let it stay stable and corporeal for a little bit longer. It landed with a meaty thud, right in the way of the robot, right as it was about to step onto the aquamarine, multifaceted circle.
Steven dashed in right after that and basically tackled the robot, catching it and holding it immobile in his arms. I collected Gambol Shroud and joined him.
"What should we do with this?" he asked. I thought for a moment.
"It looked like it was trying to go somewhere through the Warp," I reasoned, "so maybe if we follow it through, it'll lead us to its creators, or something."
"Good idea! Let's do that!" Good idea, indeed. There's no way that could possibly go wrong.
I shook my head, then stepped onto the Warp Pad, allowing my clone to disappear as I passed it. Steven watched it for a second before falling in line with me and gently setting down the little spherical robot. Almost immediately when it came in contact with the surface, a pillar of opaque, brilliant blue light enveloped us and a feeling of weightlessness overtook me. I gasped in surprise before I got a hold of myself.
"Woo!" Steven yelled excitedly beside me. "Pretty cool, right?"
"It's... really something," I answered as nonchalantly as I could.
"Just make sure not to poke your head out of the stream! It's really cold out there!"
"Noted."
We floated for a moment more, before weightlessness abruptly gave way to uncaring gravity and I promptly fell on my ass.
"Oof," I groaned. I looked around. Our surroundings had completely changed. Wood and damp cave stone metamorphosed into jagged, ruined, curved stone pillars and the wooden flooring turned into almost mirrorlike flat blue stone. I could see the night sky, with billions of twinkling stars lighting up a black void, and I could see the reflective surface of an ocean, with nary a wave in sight to break upon whatever we were standing on. Arranged in a circle around a much larger, heavily damaged, Warp Pad were a dozen and some change more, around the same size as the one we arrived on. There were also dozens upon dozens more of those little robots running around and a few were still warping in from some of the Warp Pads. They clustered around the central Warp Pad, liberally spraying more of that green ooze that leaked from the first one all over the pad.
The robot in Steven's arms squirmed and fell to the ground, leaving one of its legs in his hand. It limped to the Warp Pad, which was now completely covered in the green substance. The robots fell away, leaving the stuff behind, which appeared to harden for an instant, before shattering away and vanishing, leaving behind a pristine, undamaged Warp Pad. Steven let out a gasp, and I raised a brow at him quizzically.
"It's the Homeworld Warp..." he mumbled. Homeworld... What did he mean by Homeworld?
Suddenly, the Homeworld Warp lit up a brilliant white, and when it fell away, a figure with bright green skin, lighter green, triangularly shaped hair, and bulky artificial limbs was left standing on the pad. With another gasp, Steven pulled me behind one of the pillars- damn, he was strong for his size- and tried to make himself scarce.
Holy crap, who the hell was that?
The figure looked around before giving the pad it stood on a couple of stomps, as if testing its sturdiness.
"Hmm," the figure said in a grating, nasally, detached voice- that was distinctly feminine. Four of her fingers- which were little green worm-looking things that freaking floated in the air as if they were connected to a hand- floated into the outline of a rectangle and an octogonal holographic screen appeared between the fingers. The display showed bits of information in green and she used her remaining finger to navigate its interface. "Log date: 3 1 2," She continued. "This is Peridot, performing Earth hub maintenance check." As she said this, one of the robots crawled onto her shoulder, perching there like a pirate's parrot very much would.
"Peridot." Steven muttered, almost reverently. "Her name is Peridot..."
"Warp repair a success," Peridot continued, "All seventy-nine flask robonoids deployed and accounted for. Preparing to locate and manually reactivate Kindergar-" She gasped as the robot from the beach house crawled up to her leg, attracting her attention. Steven stayed as silent as he could, but I could easily hear his small "aww" as he saw the little robot and its master.
However, Peridot was having none of it, and placed a metallic foot onto the little sphere, slowly squeezing it until it popped, with a sound akin to a water balloon exploding.
"Eep!" Steven yelped, but it was luckily pretty quiet.
"Now to access the domestic warp," She said to herself, walking down the stairs of the large Warp Pad. "Huh?" She suddenly exclaimed, grabbing at something that was stuck to the base of the pad. "Huh."
She gave one last cursory look around, and we hid behind the pillar again. I heard her say, "This site may have been compromised." I heard her footsteps retreat back onto the Warp Pad and heard her place some sort of green object onto the pad, which started beeping. Out of my periphery, I witnessed the pad glow once more, and when the glow subsided, I saw a little green stone beeping for an instant before it detonated and the robots deactivated and fell to the ground, dead as doornails, like some sort of EMP effect.
Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl were all waiting for us when we finally got back.
Oh, they were also glaring daggers at me from the moment the two of us warped in. Shit. This was gonna take some serious explaining, on the double.
The second we warped back into the house, Pearl and Amethyst practically tackled Steven and smothered him with their hugs. Garnet managed to stay back, but only just barely keeping herself from joining Steven's other guardians.
"Where have you been?!" shrieked Pearl. "We came back and you were gone! We've been worried sick about you!"
"Yeah, dude!" Amethyst added. "Don't scare us again like that, bro!"
"And you," Pearl spat at me, "Why were you with our Steven? Why did you drag him out of the house? What did you do?"
I held up my hands defensively. "Whoa, calm down, Pearl. We noticed something strange and decided to investigate."
"Yeah, Pearl!" Steven readily came to my defense. "There was this orb-lookin' robot that crashed through the roof and we followed it..." He faltered for a moment. "To the Galaxy Warp... We found a new Gem, guys."
Pearl, Amethyst, and even Garnet gasped at that. "Another Gem. All the way over here. On earth," Garnet said.
"She said her name was Peridot," I answered, "she said she was here to check on something called the 'Kindergarten'."
Pearl and Amethyst looked like they were about to say something, but Garnet placed her hands on their shoulders and simply stated, "We're going to go investigate. You two will get some sleep."
"Sounds like a plan!" Steven replied. "Today's just about chewed me up and spit me out." He yawned, and started to climb the stairs up to his bed. The Crystal Gems stepped onto the Warp Pad and teleported away.
"Yeah, I'll go do that, too." I unceremoniously dumped Gambol Shroud onto the table and leapt into the comfy, feathery folds of the makeshift couch bed.
I only dreamt of a void that night. The most restful sleep I'd had in a while.
I woke up to the sound of something scratching at the screen door. I rose from my hobbled-together bed, rubbed the sleep out of my somewhat crusty eyes (ugh, that's so damn gross), and trudged to the door. It creaked open at my insistence.
"Ugghh, what do you... want...?"
Standing in front of the door was a giant, rose-colored lion with a cotton candy pink mane of luscious, primal hair.
Oh shit.
I let out a yelp, activated my Semblance on instinct, and backflipped away from the off-color alpha predator, landing in a crouch and keeping a wary eye on it. However, it seemed decidedly nonplussed by my startled reaction, and seemed content with sniffing my shadow clone and staring at me before barging through the doorway, which it seemed entirely way too big for. It then completely ignored me in favor of leaping all the way to Steven's bed.
"Hmmm, is he looking for Steven?" I muttered as quietly as I could. I looked around.
There! on the fridge! A pair of notes stood on the pale white door, held there by magnets. I skulked over to them, reading one after the other.
" 'Steven, we've gone to figure out some things about what happened last night. Stay safe, keep an eye on Blake, and don't get into trouble. Pearl.' "
" 'Good morning, Blake! Sorry, but I have to go and take care of some stuff with my dad at the car wash, so you'll be on your own. I trust that you'll take care of yourself and not get into too much trouble, and have a good time! I left you a twenty on the coffee table, in case you wanted something to eat. I read the note to the left of this one, so be sure to get rid of this one when you're done! :) . Steven.' "
Hmm... Okay then.
"Hey," I called to the lion (dear God I hope I won't get mauled), "If you're looking for Steven, he's not here right now. Check the car wash." Come on, was I seriously talking to a wild animal?
At least he seemed to understand. He kinda made a little grunting sound, and headed out the door. I breathed a deep sigh of relief when he left, and slid down to the floor. I took a moment to get my wits about me and realized that I hadn't eaten breakfast yet. I looked at the clock. 3:45 PM. Damn. I missed lunch, too. I pushed off of the floor and collected my things and the twenty and headed out the door.
The doors to the Big Donut swung open stiffly, as if they hadn't been oiled in a while, but not quite enough to rust. My boots squeaked on the linoleum tiled floor and the air smelled like it should- like there were a thousand calories packed within every cubic inch of it. A platoon of various coolers, coffee makers, microwaves, and dispensers lined the stucco walls of the establishment, and a small counter was the only thing separating the staff half of the store from the patron half. Behind the counter stood two employees: one was a lanky punkish-looking teenage guy, about my age, with burnt-orange hair cut into a haphazard mohawk and obnoxiously large gauges in his earlobes, and the other was a more... compact blonde girl with a no-nonsense expression on her face. The guy was talking to her about something that didn't look too important, and she appeared to be half listening to him and half somewhere else.
The doors made a little chiming, ringing sound as I pushed them open, and it got their attention. The guy just stared at me, his jaw nearly hitting the ground. The girl was kind of doing the same before she shook herself out of it.
"Welcome to the Big Donut!" she said, "You look like you're new around here. I'm Sadie. How may I help you today?"
She sure sounded pretty freakin' peppy. I glanced at the menu before replying, "Gimme two of anything that's sweet and hot, plus a coffee. Black, please."
Sadie nodded, then went off to collect the stuff I'd ordered. Meanwhile, the guy finally decided that it was time to speak.
"Uhh, hi... M-my name's Lars."
"Blake," I replied.
"Do you... come around here often?"
I raised an eyebrow. "Is that supposed to be some kind of pickup line?"
"Nononono, that's not what I meant! I mean, are you staying in town?"
"Yeah, with a kid named Steven Universe."
He kind of grimaced at that. "Oh, him. Anyway, do you think... I dunno, maybe we could... hang out? Sometime?"
Sadie finally came back with my breakfast. I thanked her. "Maybe. I'll think about it," I told Lars. I thought about it for a second, then shot him a quick wink. Maybe Yang'd approve. I suppressed the urge to giggle like mad when his face almost turned a beet red, and left the store.
I sat on the edge of the boardwalk pier with my legs hanging off the side over the water. I idly swung them back and forth while I munched and snacked on doughnuts and sipped my coffee. It was oddly relaxing, just sitting there, enjoying the sights, sounds, and smells of a sleepy town, eating a doughnut and drinking a cup of joe.
I sighed in near contentment. Really the only thing that would make this morning better would be if I could take my bow off. Thing kind of chafes after a while. Really don't want to expose myself like that though. I just tried to ignore the suffocating feeling over my feline ears and enjoy the day.
Which is why I tried not to murder something when a small group of people about my age decided to sit down and talk to me.
A darker-skinned girl sat herself down next to me, saying, "Hey, so you're new around here, huh? My sis told me you'd stopped by the ol' family business yesterday. Just wanted to welcome you to Beach City! I'm Jenny!"
No, Blake. No homicide today. Bad Blake; stop it.
"Blake," I replied.
"Nice to meet ya, Blake," came a smooth voice with little inflection from my left. Its owner, a boy with casually windblown, tossed-around hair and opaque sunglasses and a red windbreaker over a simple tee shirt, extended a hand to me. "I'm Buck."
Well, what was I gonna do? Leave someone's handshake hanging like an asshole? I shook his hand.
"Same here, Buck," I politely said.
Over on the right, another boy, this one pale with blue eyes and platinum blond hair styled into a point and wearing a hoodie, sat down. "They call me Sour Cream."
"So, you're Steven's friend, right?" asked Jenny.
I nodded. "I'm staying with him right now."
"How long are you staying in town?"
"For the foreseeable future."
"Oooh! You wanna hang out?" piped up Jenny. "We don't have much to do today, and maybe you wanna hit the town?"
I thought about it for a second. Then I realized that it was probably a bad idea to get on the Gems' bad side. Then I realized that Pearl still wouldn't like me either way. Eh, what was a few more burst blood vessels for someone in the verge of a stroke 24/7?
A couple hours later, Buck, Sour Cream, Jenny, and I were crammed like sardines into some sort of pizza delivery car. The roof was off, and the wind brushed against and caressed our faces as it flew past while we cruised along the road. Jenny was driving, and she put on some sort of punky heavy rock song on the car's stereo.
So far, we'd grabbed some more snacks and we went to a little party that someone had decided to throw somewhere out of town, for no good reason. We had decided to bail at around 5 PM, and were now headed back into town.
"O. M. G., Blake!" exclaimed Jenny. "That party was wack! How did you know that the punch was spiked?"
I'd heard one of the partygoers mention that he'd added a little 'somethin' somethin' ' to the punch easily with my faunus ears. "I figured. Party that size means that someone was bound to spike the punch."
"Good instincts, Blake," Buck complimented.
"Hey, so where are you from, if you don't mind me asking?" inquired Jenny.
"Somewhere... very... far from here."
"Oookay, cryptic answers aside," Jenny continued, "You're a student, right? What school do you go to?"
I frowned at that. "Why do you ask that?"
"Just a little bit curious, ya know? I think we'll be hanging out a lot more often from now on, so I wanna know more about you, you know?"
I chewed my lip. Ah, what the hell. "Beacon Academy."
"Neat," Buck noted. "We go to Beach City High. What do you study?"
I pursed my lips. How would I phrase Huntsmanship to a society without Grimm? "... Nothing really major, but I dabble in... uh, martial arts and hunting," I finally decided on saying.
"That's cool," Sour Cream remarked.
"Yeah... It's pretty cool," I muttered.
The car finally came to a stop, right at the Big Donut café, where the paved road met the sandy beach. This was where I got off.
"Hey, so I'm DJ-ing a rave tomorrow," Sour Cream said, as I was stepping out of the car. "Do you wanna come, or something?"
Hmmm... "...Sure, why not? Sounds fun." I shot him a grin and a wink, then stepped onto the beach.
"See you at ten!" Jenny called as she drove the pizza car away.
They seemed like nice guys. I think I might actually spend more time with them.
Steven was back by the time I'd entered the beach house. The lion was with him, too. He was sitting on the couch, which was bereft of my appropriated blankets and pillows, and the lion sat on the hardwood floor at his feet. The boy was smothering himself within the massive animal's equally massive mane, and the big cat appeared to be merely tolerating Steven's attention.
He heard the door creak open, and his face shot out of the fluffy rosy mane. "Hey Blake! Did you have a nice day?"
"Steven," I answered. "Yeah. I hung out with some guys from around town. Guy named Buck, a guy named Sour Cream- which is a pretty weird name- and a girl named Jenny."
"Oh yeah!" he blurted out. "Those are friends of mine! Hey, did you get to meet my lion, Lion, yet?"
"I did, in fact. This morning. He left before we could really hold a conversation."
"Well, come on over here! Go on, don't be shy, he doesn't bite."
The lion, Lion, sniffed at me like a bloodhound when I came near. He glanced above my head, at my bow, then gave my hand a friendly lick.
"Aww, he likes you!" Steven remarked.
"I guess I'm more of a cat person," I quipped. Dammit Yang. "Sour Cream said that he was going to perform at a rave tomorrow at ten, by the way."
"Oh! That's cool. Maybe we could check on that later then."
Suddenly, the Warp Pad lit up in a pillar of brilliant light; when it cleared, there stood Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl. They looked haggard and tired, but their body language was notably on edge and nervous. What had gotten them all worked up?
"Blake," finally said Garnet. "Come with us. We need to talk."
Uh oh.
AN: In between procrastinating from procrastinating from week-long school projects, I finally managed to throw this up out of my mind-mouth. I'm not really proud of it, since it more or less is meant to set up the next chapter, but I hope you enjoy.
I feel like I might need to explain the title though. I was kind of going for a punny title, since the episode Steven's Lion was about Lion, a cat, and since Blake's a cat, and a huntress, well... yeah. Not the best title in my opinion. If you want to suggest a new title, by all means put it in your review or a PM.
Remember that the review section is for comments and criticism, folks! if you want me to answer a question (that doesn't give away like a dozen plot points, like seriously) log in and post a review, or PM me.
Thanks! See you around!
-AnonymousInsomnia