A/N: So I honestly could not think of a way to expand Shaya's... escapades in that village to a full chapter, plus I've been wanting to make some more progress towards further scenes in the future, so I'm going to be revisiting that in a flashback later on. For now time skips are going to occur as Shaya grows up... in a sense.
Also, really sorry about the huge delay, and sorry in advance for any future ones. I'm a senior in High School so I don't have much time to think about the story.
Good news though, my friend and I have came up with enough of a bullet point plotline that we should have this going to post volume 3 no problem once I hammer out the finer details.
Chapter 4: New Friends
1 year later
"What do you mean I can't go with you!?" Shaya cried indignantly at her Father. They were both in his office and he calmly sipped from his mug as she continued. "I wanna visit Uncle Ironwood."
"Shaya, this is a very important meeting, not a friendly visit. Neither of us will have enough time needed to keep you company and I don't trust his men to be compassionate enough for you." Ozpin responded. "Besides, Qrow will be the one taking care of you while I'm gone, he's finally going to get to introduce you to his nieces. Doesn't that sound better than sitting in a hotel room doing nothing for a week?"
Shaya rubbed the back of her head in thought for a moment and was going to answer when the elevator door ding'd and out strolled an only slightly intoxicated man with black hair and red eyes. Shaya's immediate reaction to his presence was to jump straight up onto his now outstretched arm.
"Mr. Qrow!" She was met with a playful glare.
"Hey! What did I say about calling me mister? It makes me sound old, besides what happened to that nice little nickname you had for me?" He asked back to the girl sitting on his shoulder. She was surprisingly heavy, if not for his aura, he wouldn't be able to hold her up for long at all.
Shaya scratched the back of her head. "Daddy doesn't like it when I call you 'Drunkle, Guardian of the Liquor Cabinet', he says it encourages alcoholism." It was at this point that Ozpin spoke up.
"Now now, I never said that I didn't like it, in fact I think it's quite fitting." He said with a smirk. "I merely told you that he'll probably never quit his habit once he's gotten a title to stick from it."
"Hey, I'm doing better. Haven't gotten completely wasted for about 4 months now."
"That's only because your tolerance has gotten stronger."
"You don't know that." Qrow dismissed with a wave of his free hand. "Anyway, so am I taking the little munchkin here to Patch or what? Taiyang's going to go out on that job pretty soon and if I'm not there within an hour of him leaving he's gonna kill me." He asked as he poked a finger straight at Shaya's face, who tried to bite said finger, only for him to pull it away at the last moment. She crossed her arms in a huff and muttered in agreement.
"Alright then. Shaya, I promise you I won't be too long on this trip, but in the meantime how about you make some more friends besides the students at my school, maybe pick up a few hobbies besides training and fighting?"
Shaya smiled at him before standing up straight (still on Qrow's arm) and doing a salute. "No promises!" She happily exclaimed. Ozpin chuckled as he pulled his daughter from Qrow's shoulder, onto his own. The three then began their trek to the landing platforms, with Shaya supplying idle chatter the whole time.
Qrow and Shaya stepped up to the door of a rather large home in the middle of a forest, now farther from Beacon than Shaya had ever been previously, and she could definitely feel that discovery in her nerves.
Qrow looked down at her with a reassuring smile before opening the door and stepping in with one of his... poorly worded announcements.
"Yang! Ruby! I'm back, and I brought a daughter!" He announced to the entire home, receiving a panicked 'WHAT?!', the sound of something falling, and a yellow and red blur shooting down the stairs. The yellow one shot straight into him, while the red one floored Shaya.
"WE HAVE A NEW COUSIN?!"
"WHO IS HER MOTHER?!"
"QROW! THE RED ONE IS TOUCHING ME!"
Qrow laughed to himself before lifting up Ruby, who dragged Shaya up with her in a death-grip hug. "Easy now, she ain't my kid, a friend asked me to look after her. You might wanna let go Ruby, she looks rather uncomfortable." This caused Ruby to actually look at the face of the one she was bear-hugging, and saw two violet eyes deadpanning at her as the tip of a furry tail drew closer and closer to her own silver eyes.
"Release me, demon, or you will lose an eye to this spear of fluffy death."
Ruby's eyes went wide and she immediately let go, causing Shaya to fall to the ground with an audible thud as she hadn't landed on her feet, which led everyone else in the room to wince.
Shaya brushed herself off, no worse for wear, and extended a hand to the two girls handing off of Qrow's arms. "Hello, I am-"
"Shaya here is going to be staying with us while her Dad is off on a business trip in Atlas, I expect we'll be on just good enough behavior for me not to get an earful when he gets back, got it?" Qrow introduced her while cutting her off.
The previously yellow blur stepped up to introduce herself, her hair was a mixture of light brown and blonde and was a bit longer than average. "Sup, the name's Yang. I like your eyes, got a fierce look in them." She was shoved down by a jumping Ruby.
"I'm Ruby, one day I'm gonna be the world's greatest Huntress!" This got her a fierce and friendly handshake from the monkey-tailed girl.
"Well then, you're going to have some competition for that title. Tell me, what's your semblance?"
Qrow chuckled to himself. 'This is going to be a long week.'
Over the next few days, the 7, 8, and 9 year old girls bonded extremely well. Between the 3 of them they found common ground in their love of 3 things, fighting, games, and food. The first dinner they had shared left the two sisters awestruck at Shaya's appetite until Qrow had explained to them that she was abnormally strong, and that she needed to eat a lot in order to maintain that strength.
It made sense to them, since they knew that Ruby could eat as much sugar as she wanted because she would burn it off with her semblance. It was interesting to Shaya to learn that Yang hadn't found hers yet, but Ruby had.
Them sparring went pretty much nowhere, since Shaya was pretty much the only one there with an actual fighting style, and she was scared of hurting either of them.
They loved games, but they stopped playing hide and seek since Shaya could always tell where they were based on smell and hearing, they actually blindfolded her one round and she still found them, despite falling down the stairs.
Shaya was surprised to find that they had also played video games, as according to her father not nearly as many girls played video games as boys did, and that little tidbit annoyed her as she fell in love with them. She'd even made a good friend online.
"Can I log in on my account so I can introduce you guys?" She asked her new friends, who answered her in the form of nods. She quickly logged into her account, named SuperShaya, and sent a voice chat invite. The other player quickly joined.
"Hey, Shaya, you haven't been on in forever. I was starting to think that I was gonna have to finish that castle without you." Came a slightly squeaky boys voice.
"Sorry Arc-Knight, my martial arts practice has taken up a lot of time so I just forgot. I'm actually at a friends house right now so I still can't play but I wanted to introduce them to you. Oh, and if you finish that castle without me, I'll burn it to the ground." Ruby had a contemplative look on her face at that response.
"Wait, aren't castles normally made of stone and br-"
"Burn it. To. The. Ground." Shaya repeated herself clearly. "Anyway, figured you could add them and we could all play together at some point once I went back home. Their account names are Crescent-Rose and OutWithAYang." The second username drew laughter from the other side of the speaker.
"Oh my Oum that is a terrible pun, I love it. Anyways, I'll add them later, I've actually got to go soon Shaya, but have fun at your friends house." With a click the voice chat ended, and the 3 continued about their miscellaneous activities for the remainder of the day as well as until the day before Shaya was going to be brought back home.
"Ruby, are you sure it's okay for us to do this?" Shaya asked the hooded girl as they walked through the woods. "We're kinda getting pretty far from the house."
"It's fine, I left a note in case Yang or Qrow get worried, besides, they always encouraged me to go and explore new things, and I've been curious about this path for a few years now. It seems really familiar." The crimsonette replied as she continued to do a half-skip half-jog down the trail. They eventually came to a clearing that had a run down dull red shack in the center. "Woah, this is cool!" Ruby called out as she ran forward and into the shack
"Ruby! I really think we shouldn't be here, this place doesn't smell right!" Shaya shouted as she ran after her. When Shaya would be older thinking back on this, she would recognize that smell as the smell of death and decay, the smell of grimm.
Inside the shack the place was in shambles, but Ruby wasn't seeing that, she was seeing a potential club house or fort. Everything was torn up and the paint was peeling off the walls. She looked off around all the corners of the room but one, which Shaya had gone to investigate. Ruby found an old farming scythe leaning against the wall and was about to reach for it when she heard a low grumbling coming from the other corner of the room.
"Geez Shaya, if you were hungry you could've..." Ruby's words caught in her throat as she turned to look towards her friend.
Shaya was standing there, frozen, nose to nose with a very large and hungry looking Beowolf. "Ruby, you need to run, you need to go get Qrow." Spoke the petrified girl in a rather calm tone.
The wolf leaned down and sniffed at Shaya several times, before looking over her shoulder and seeing Ruby, and the Beowolf did something that would confuse anyone that heard about it. It ignored Shaya, going around her as a stream of water would around a stone, and bolted straight for Ruby.
"No, RUBY!"
"GET AWAY FROM MY SISTER!"
What happened next was something that occurred so fast that Shaya couldn't even follow it. There was a flash of light and suddenly fire had spread all throughout the shack and the Beowolf had been sent flying through a support pillar, and among the smoke and debris falling Shaya had been able to discern one final detail of the situation before part of the scaffolding collapsed on top of her.
Blonde hair and golden fire.
A/N: So glad I finally got that update out, and what a hell of a turn it took eh? Sorry if this feels kind of rushed but I really just needed to get this fucking chapter done with.
