RRC: Yeah, this is probably going to be a rather empty little spot from time to time, as I've been updating almost daily. As I spread my updates out more as time goes on we may see more here, but for now emptiness.

New land, New friends, New Beginnings

I blinked as the orange faded from my view, what I had eventually figured out to be my aura. I looked around to see Ruby looking worriedly over myself with Yang sitting nearby and seeming to have come out of it just a second ago herself. Over watching all of us from the opposite couch was Qrow, with his massive scythe resting across the back of it within easy reach if necessary. Arms on his knees, he peered intently at me as Yang began to stretch her limbs. I spoke up before he could ask anything "How long have we been out?"

A quick glance over my shoulder by him, probably to tell the time. "You've been out for two hours in total. Ruby was only out for maybe ten after forcefully jumping in, and you two woke up five minutes after her. I wasn't able to get a clear idea of what had happened from her, something about a giant monster and an army of skeletons. Perhaps you could clear things up?"

He was polite. His tone was neutral. The fact remained that that wasn't a question. It was an order, one I would respond to or face the business end of his weapon. No thanks. I coughed and shifted uncomfortably under his stare. "So… we were partially correct. I can have my aura unlocked, as proven." I paused a moment and concentrated briefly to let orange wisps of power emanate from my arms before letting them die back down. "However, the process was a bit more… convoluted then simply unlocking it. Yang and I were dragged into a shared mindscape of sorts, and after some time talking and exploring it, we eventually found my, for lack of a better term, darker half, the black emotions humans constantly repress. Ruby popped up after we settled the terms for who would have control via combat, she got kicked out halfway through, then Yang and I murdered my darker half."

Yang nodded along at all this, agreeing before scowling. "He was a dirty fighter." I just turned towards her and blinked.

"I'm a dirty fighter. Fighting clean and sandbagging your shit gets you hurt and/or killed, and he was "my darkness" of course he was going to fight like a cheap motherfucker." Wait, crap, Ruby was in the room… and looked confused. Qrow meanwhile seemed quite irritated, but once again he was interrupted, thankfully by an inquisitive Ruby. "Uh… what do those words mean?"

Oh hell no, I'm completely passing the buck on this one. And the best way to do that was… "Ask your father. It's a type of thing you can only learn from parents. Long held tradition of humanity regardless of where you are." I was completely spouting bullshit, but she seemed to buy it with a bit of awe in her eyes.

I could see Yang let out a sigh of relief while Qrow, while not pleased, was less tense, probably because I passed the buck to Taiyang and not him. That crisis averted, I turned back to Qrow. "So yeah, essentially we fought, we won, and now I have exclusive ownership of my soul. And I can tap into my aura. And possibly my Semblance, but probably not for a while. What happened on your end?"

Qrow leaned back, now that the worst of it was over. "Yang's aura, and what we can now tell was your own, flared up massively at the end of her speaking the words to unlock one's soul. We couldn't see anything for a moment, Yang herself has a massive amount of Aura at her disposal and it seems you do as well, but once we could see, both of you were unconscious, covered in a thin sheen of your respective Auras. You were connected by what seemed like a globe formed by the melding of your auras. After some time it seemed as if a darkness, similar to that of the Grimm was mixing into the globe, though only a bit. At that point however my beloved niece," Here he glared at Ruby, who eeped and zoomed behind the couch and hid behind me and Yang.

Qrow took a deep breath to calm himself down. "My beloved and soon to be in big trouble niece thought it would be a good idea to inject her aura directly into the globe to try and help you. While according to your story she did, it was incredibly reckless, and I almost panicked when she was forced out before finding out that she was mostly fine, just a bit spent in terms of Aura. A few minutes after, the black of your aura faded away, then the connection brightened before breaking. You two then woke up."

Huh, so it was a literal battle for our souls. Joy. I'm a little worried about what would've happened if I had lost… probably nothing good, but I don't want to dwell on that. I reached an arm stiffly and cracked my neck to get rid of a few kinks before stretching my entire body before pausing as something hit me. I looked down at my legs. My completely healed legs. "What the…"

Qrow seemed to notice, and chuckled. "As I said, Aura is used to heal ourselves. You could heal an injury like that relatively quickly with some simple training on how to apply it. You two were channeling enough aura between you that one of you could have been terminally ill and you would have been the healthiest people alive when you finally ended the connection." I still felt kind of exhausted though… A feeling mirrored by Yang as she groaned and slumped over, stress bleeding from her body. She didn't seem surprised however, and my curious face caused her to speak up.

"Unlocking someone's aura normally is an intensive procedure. What we just did went so far beyond normal I have no idea what to classify it as. Who has an adventure in their soul for Dust's sake? And not even my own soul, nooo, it had to be in the soul of someone from a completely different dimension!" Qrow blinked at that.

"Wait, when did you find that out? We hadn't told you before…" Qrow was severely underestimating how much time we had spent. After pointing out that fact and explaining all that we had discussed in a brief summary, he nodded thoughtfully.

"Interesting. It at least saved us some time. I guess we should go back to the original point here however, and that was you staying until you recovered from your injury. As that is no longer necessary…" Ruby stepped in at that point, blurring back around the couch to gesture frantically at me.

"He can still stay here! He has literally nowhere else to go, and he seems like a good person! Besides, Yang and I could teach him how to fight like a Hunter in our spare time!" Wait wait wait what? Oh hell no.

"Ruby, I don't want to be a Hunter. I am in no way shape or form prepared to become one, and I sincerely doubt you'd be able to train me up to being one in your spare time. Besides, so long as I stay within Vale, I shouldn't need to fight right?" To that, not just Ruby, but Qrow, Yang, and Zwei all gave me deadpan looks. Seriously, how smart is that dog? Wait, scratch that, I'm calling bullshit, he shouldn't be giving me that look, he knows barely anything and he's a dog damnit!

Yang was the one to speak this time. "Orion, for the briefly short time I have known you, in the past few hours of you ending up here, you've been attacked by beowolves, injured by said beowolves, and almost died to the darker part of your soul in the process of the supposedly simple procedure of unlocking your Aura. You have the worst luck I have ever seen or heard of, of all time." Oh don't you get started with me!

I turned towards her and pointed a finger accusingly. "Bull! Ruby saved me, and you both helped me, so it wasn't all bad! Hell, you even kissed me!" Yang just seemed highly amused, Ruby was blushing, and… fuck I can't believe I said that. A sudden pressure which I judged to be Killing Intent began to emanate from the opposite couch. I slowly turned back to see Qrow with a tranquil smile on his face, eyes closed, with his scythe in his lap, and a MASSIVE AURA OF DOOM SURROUNDING HIM. I gulped.

"I'm sorry, what was that last part?" Fuck. Can't outrun him, he'll now if I lie… wait I have an idea! Probably stupid but it'll buy me time!

"Zwei!" The dog perked up and jumped happily into my lap. Qrow just quirked an eyebrow at that, it's not like the dog would be of any help to me in this situation according to his point of view. I put my most serious face on as I leaned down towards the dog. "Zwei, I will give you a dozen dog treats when I wake up if you knock me out right now." He seemed to consider this, before barking an affirmative and jumping to headbutt me in the jaw. Hard. I began to fall back, spots forming in my eyes, and my last sight was a stunned Qrow, a horrified Ruby, and a laughing Yang.

That went better than I expected… Also ow.

I blinked awake some time later, my jaw still a bit sore. I was laying down on the couch, apparently I had been moved. A soft chuckle alerted me to the blond girl sitting in the couch across from me, studying some electrical device. A scroll I think it was called? Regardless, she seemed highly amused, but at least Qrow wasn't there.

"You're awake. Didn't think you'd be out long, but an hour was long enough for you to get lucky it seems and Qrow had to go talk to some of his fellow faculty members. Ruby was worrying over you for the first ten minutes, until I told her I'd keep an eye on you. After that she had wandered off to her room with Zwei, probably to do maintenance on Crescent Rose since she used it earlier. How are you feeling?"

I groaned, sitting up and rolling my shoulders. "A bit stiff, and my jaw aches a little. That dog of yours hits FAR harder than he has any right to, you know that?"

Yang shrugged at this, collapsing her scroll and pocketing it. "Dad wanted to make sure that Ruby and I would be protected while he was out on missions and Uncle had his own job, so Zwei was our guardian of sorts. He was supposed to buy us time to get a hold of help if something bad happened."

I nodded. It made sense. From what I could remember, Yang had almost been killed when she was younger, so having someone, or I guess in this case some animal, watching over them was a massive worry for Taiyang, especially considering how reckless the sisters are. I spoke up again as I arched my back to stretch, turning my body to face her. "So, what's the plan? Am I staying here or I do need to find someplace that'll put up a bum for a bit?"

Yang shook her head. "No, you'll be staying with us, at the very least until you get a job. You can help pay rent if you want to keep staying after that, we have a guest room. In the meantime, however, we will be training you to at least survive. Uncle Qrow will help teach you aura when he's not at school, I'll be teaching you hand-to-hand myself, and decent odds that Ruby will be making you a weapon. You may not have noticed, but she paid close attention to you when we were trapped in that little 'war of the souls'."

I groaned, both at her final words and at the mention of training. Leaning forward, I placed my face in my hands. "I thought I said earlier, I'm not going to train to be a Hunter. I have no wish to at all, and it sounds fairly dangerous."

I heard movement and looked up in time to see Yang plop down next to me, leaning back on the couch. "And you're not. However, bad luck seems to follow you as much as good, and we invested a lot into saving you once, we really don't want to have to do so again. Look at it more as precautionary measures than Hunter training if it bothers you that much."

I grumbled, palming my face again. "Stupid rotten luck… I don't really have a choice do I?"

"Nope. Besides, look at this way. It'll be fun!"

I deadpanned towards her. "Right, fun when Ruby is obsessing over the perfect weapon for me, Qrow will be killing me with death glares while teaching me, and you'll be beating the crap out of me."

Yang threw her head back and laughed. "Oh relax, I'll be nice. And Qrow won't death glare you, I talked to him while you were out and explained that I kissed you and you didn't reciprocate. I'm kinda hurt you didn't though, I thought you said I was hot?" Oh she wants to play like that then?

"Well, little sun, I was terribly shocked last time you did it. I assure you next time I will fully reciprocate in kind when you attempt to make out with me." She wasn't expecting that calmly delivered line, judging by the sudden blush on her face. I threw my head back and roared with laughter as she, thankfully lightly, punched me in the shoulder.

"Sh-shut up! That was adrenaline letdown, I wasn't in my right mind!" Too bad Xiao Long, you pushed me first!

"I'm hurt, you claim insanity when you kiss me? I'm all depressed again now." I snickered as I said this while she glared at me, her eyes slightly taking a red tint. Whoops, right, still a touch young, that's enough of that. I raised my hands defensively. "Peace, peace! I don't need to try and deal with an angry Yang!"

She huffed before smiling and standing. She gestured at me to follow her and I did so, walking down a hallway. We passed by two rooms, one with the door open to show Ruby bent over some paper with a pencil in hand, sketching furiously. Zwei was curled up on her bed, snoozing peacefully. The other room was closed, but a painted flame made me guess it was Yang's. Finally we reached another room that Yang pushed open. It was rather spartan, only holding a dresser, a bed, a little end table with a lamp right next to the bed, and an empty closet. Still, plenty of room. She gestured around it as I walked in, taking a seat on the bed as she turned to me.

"Well, this will be your room while you stay here. It isn't much, but you were a bit of an unexpected guest-turned-friend."

I shook my head. "It's fine. Despite my little hour nap, I'm still a bit tired, probably from first using aura and expending as much as I apparently did."

She nodded at that, heading for the door. "It's also rather late, so you should get some sleep. Tomorrow is the first day of the weekend, so I'll head out with you and we'll see if we can't find you a job." At that, she gave a parting wave before exiting, closing the door behind her.

I kicked off my shoes, turning and rolling into the bed. I closed my eyes, and began to slow my breathing in an attempt to let sleep claim me as quick as it could. I drifted in and out before passing into the realm of sweet unconsciousness.

AN: And there we are, the end of the first day! Only took me about 15,000 words, but eh, what can you do. No real specific thoughts this time, just a bit of a finishing touch. Next chapter I'll be heading out into Vale with the girls in an attempt to find a job! Along the way I get to see discrimination first hand of the faunus, and I already know I won't be quiet about what I see. I might also run into another member or two of the cast, we'll see if I can come up with a good excuse and who may be a good person to run in to as of now. Till next time readers, please review!