Mother's Wish
Chapter 7
Morning comes and while everyone else is wide awake Ruby and Weiss have yet to wake up or at least are too lazy to get out of bed. The others wait not wanting to wake or rush them. Finally, Bayard leaves to get food, leaving Blake and Yang in the lobby.
Yang sits back in her chair and smiles. "Do you think there is something between those two, Blake?" She laughs as she says it knowing just what Ruby thinks of her dear Weiss.
Blake just looks at Yang for a moment. " I think it would take a miracle for either of them to tell the other how they feel." With that Blake stands, "I'm going to go wake them up now so we can get started." Blake turns and walks up the stairs the the room Ruby and Weiss were given the night before.
Up in their room, Ruby finds herself holding onto Weiss again as she was the morning before and blushes. "Again... if she wakes up while I'm doing this she'll question why and... and I can't lie about something like this to her." Ruby gets up and quickly gets dressed. As she does, someone knocks on the door. "Um, just a moment, I'm getting dressed."
A slightly muffled voice come through the door "It's Blake. I just came to see if you were awake." Ruby hears Blake walk away and decides to wake up Weiss.
As Ruby and a newly awakened Weiss go down to the inn lobby, Bayard walks back in holding two large bags. "Ahh good, everyone's up! Now we can eat and then get started." He places the bags on the table, pulling out bread along with other breakfast foods. As the five of them eat they notice that Weiss is having a hard time.
Ruby moves close to Weiss. " Weiss are you still worried about the mission?" The look on Ruby's face is concerned but hopeful.
Weiss looks at her and after a moment smiles. "Somewhat but I think that it will go quite smoothly, as long as we do everything correctly."
When they finish eating they leave the inn to find that the storm from last night is all but gone and only a small amount of rain is still falling. As they make their way out of town, the trees become thicker until they are completely in the forest, the town completely out of sight. "Ok, so you know the mission. Find them, kill them, then go back to the inn when you're done."
The further the four go, the thicker the trees become along with the large amount of dead leaves that litter the forest floor. "So how are we going to find them anyway?" Yang is the first to speak, with a slightly annoyed tone. "They only told us to come here and kill some grimm, and they gave us a whole forest to search through." They continue walking in hope of finding their targets.
_
Albus' home.
Albus lies in bed trying to sleep away the winter like he always does. It is around this time that he thinks back on what happened after graduating from Beacon and soon after the war starting. He thinks back to humanity's full force attack on the grimm that killed almost all of them. In fact, there were few grimm left after the war that most hunters were forced to find other work. Only around 300 hunters remain active throughout the whole planet of Remnant... however it could have easily gone the other way and what would they have done, if they had lost the war? Would the remaining hunters be treated like outcasts as if they caused it or would they be treated like fallen heroes?
He sighs, "Well, no use thinking about it now." As he lies there, still wearing his boots to keep his feet warm, he hears a crash on the outside of his wall. He runs outside to see Kanika leaning on his wall.
Kanika points to her right. "U... ursa, I didn't have my gear and... I thought I could still take it... but," Albus sits her down.
"Just sit here and let your aura do what it will". He turned to the ursa; it was large with heavy bone armor and spikes jutting out from its back and elbows, the armor on its skull is chipped on the sides.
Albus doesn't have his gear and it's bitter cold, but he doesn't care, his blood is boiling. Albus is hard to truly anger but hurting some one he cares for is one of the ways to do it.
Albus charges the ursa with no weapon. He jumps over and onto it as it swings then grabs it's shoulder and petrifies its upper arm. After all of this, he jumps off. As the ursa swings its arm trying to free it from the stone, Albus jumps onto its head causing it to lose balance and fall on its back. It falls and Albus jumps above it landing his heel on the armor plate covering its head. He flips over and brings one more kick onto the same spot shattering the head piece. The ursa tries to stand but is kept down by the spikes on its back. Albus walk to the head, grabs the forehead and petrifies it.
Albus runs back to Kanika who is still sitting on the ground, she has a soft black aura around her and the cuts on her arms are slowly fading away. " Kanika? Are you going to be ok?" He offers her a hand. She takes it and stands before almost falling back down.
"I think I'll be fine but I can't stand, it got my leg pretty badly." Her right pant leg is torn off under the knee and a few large cuts still remain. "Could I stay with you for a while until I feel a bit better?"
Albus helps her walk into his house and sits her down on the couch. He sits down next to her and looks at her leg. "Aura can only heal so much in a short time... you may be unable to walk for a few days but you should be fine afterward."
Kanika smiles "Well I guess I owe you now, don't I?" She sits back. "Didn't something like this happen before Albus?"
Albus moves her so she is laying down on the couch and then sits across from her. "Yes I think it did, you got pissed, ran in and came back all torn up."
As the two of them go on about their past Albus, who for as long as he can remember has had a thing for Kanika, forces himself to stay quite about it; a time like this might seem right, but if he's going to act on this he needs to be sure. The two of them have known each other since childhood and if it doesn't go well, it could ruin everything.
Ruby and team
While Albus fights the ursa, Ruby and the others finally find their targets -minus a few beowolves and the deathstalker.
"Hey, Ruby, you ok?" Yang runs over to Ruby after they finish, her weapons folding in as she hugs her. "You were awesome, sis."
"That's all good, but we aren't done yet, we missed four beowolves and there's no trace of the deathstalker." Weiss sits down by a large tree and the others follow her.
They sit in silence, none of them talking and hardly moving. The fight took a lot out of them and they need a short break before looking for their final targets.
Heavy foot falls sound just before a surprise attack. "MOVE!" Blake shouts as she jumps up and draws her weapon, blocking one strike but another hitting her upper left arm, leaving a deep cut down to the bone.
Yang runs and catches Blake as she falls to her knees holding her arm. "Blake! Blake are you ok?"
Ruby and Weiss cover them as Yang picks up Blake. "You get Blake back to town and get Bayard, he might be able to help." Ruby shouts as she blocks an attack.
Yang starts to run then turns back to Ruby and Weiss. "You two better be safe when I get back!" She turns and keeps running.
As Ruby and Weiss fight off the wolves they get pushed farther and farther from where they were, until they're at a small open clearing. Here they quickly finish the wolves in time to dodge the stinger of a deathstalker.
"Weiss, are you ok?" Between her and Weiss sits the deathstalker, trying to decide who to attack first.
"I'm fine, now concentrate we need a plan." She ducks under a swing, "Any ideas Ruby?" Quickly, she flips backwards away from another swing.
Ruby fires her gun, launching herself at the deathstalker and taking off one of its legs. As she lands, she slips when the snow gives way revealing ice underneath. "Weiss! Make it break the ice around it, we can sink it!"
Weiss dashes to Ruby while the enemy is turning. "What do you mean? How will that work."
"Look." She pushes the snow away to show more ice, "We are on a frozen lake,if we can break the ice around it then the ice won't be able to hold its weight and will sink."
"Hmmm. That might work, but it will be very dangerous, lets move." Weiss gets in front of the deathstalker. It slams its claws at her and the first strike cracks the ice while the seconds breaks out a large chunk. This keeps up until there is only a small section of ice still holding on. "This turned out a lot better than I thought it would."
"I didn't think it would go this well either." Ruby says as she readies her scythe.
"What?!"
"Nothing" Ruby says quickly as she moves onto the last bit of ice. Just as the stinger comes down she leaps away, the ice breaks and the force of it hitting the side of the now free floating ice block makes it flip, sending the deathstalker into the water.
"Yay, it worked!" Ruby tackle hugs Weiss before picking her up and spinning her around.
"Ok, ok, Ruby that's enough. Get off! Let;s go meet back up with Yang she should be back soon." Weiss turns to where they came from in the wood and Ruby runs ahead.
"Come on, Weiss" Ruby turns quickly on her heel to face Weiss who is around twenty feet away now.
"I'm coming but I'm not going to run like you. Whoaaa!" The claw of the deathstalker rips up the ice behind Weiss and drags the piece down as it falls again. "RUBY!" is all Weiss gets out before she falls into the water. Ruby watches in horror as Weiss goes underwater, banging her head into the sharp ice before disappearing below.
"Weiss!" Ruby undoes the clamps holding her cloak on and lets it fall, 'it will only slow me down under water,' she thinks to herself as she runs, firing her rifle and launching herself into the air. She throws herself back down and into the water after Weiss, 'I can't believe I let this happen, Weiss can hardy swim if I don't get to her she'll...' She mentally slaps herself. 'I can't think like that,' she can see Weiss now and the very faint glow of the deathstalker's tail. She grabs Weiss around the waist, opens her mouth and shares what air she can before beginning their ascent upward. As they near the surface, Ruby starts to run out of air. They start to fall slowly back down when Weiss grips her rapier tightly. A glyph forms under them and launches them out of the water and onto the ice.
Ruby scrambles over to Weiss and starts pushing on her chest, desperate to get the water out of her lungs. "Weiss! Weiss you can't leave I need you... I promised I wouldn't let this happen, not again." Ruby noticed Weiss had a gash on her left eye, likely from when her head hit the ice. It looked bad enough to leave a scar.
Weiss coughs and spits up water before sitting up. "Ruby? What? How did we?" she coughs again then shivers. "It's freezing out here."
Ruby grabs her cloak and picks Weiss up. "Ruby what are you doing!?" she folds her arms in trying to stop from shivering.
"Look, another blizzard is coming in, we don't have time to get back to town so we need to find somewhere to stay until it calms down." After some searching she finds a small cave on the side of the frozen lake.
With some logs Ruby cut down they manage to get a fire going by lighting it with Weiss' fire dust. With their clothes drying above the fire, Ruby and Weiss are wrapped in the only thing that is dry, Ruby's' cloak. "Hey Weiss."
Weiss turns away from Ruby with her face slightly red. "Yes Ruby."
"Do you think we'll make it out of here?"
"Of course we will, I'm sure this will blow over soon enough."
Ruby turns back to the fire. "I hope so."
Back in town
"YOU CAN'T EXPECT ME TO STAY HERE WHEN MY SISTER IS OUT IN THE STORM!" Yang yells at Bayard, who is blocking the door from her and Blake's room.
"I know how you feel but if you go out there right now we might lose you too. He sighs then continues, if not for that", stay here for Blake. She's going to need you when she wakes up." Yang stops for a moment then calms down and sits next to Blake's bed.
"Fine, but if anything happens to them I'm blaming you."
Bayard turns to the door. "I'll go out and look first thing once the storm clears." He leaves the room.
Yang turns to Blake and grabs her hand. "I'm right here Blake." She spends the whole night like this until morning when Blake wakes up.
End
Note: Ok so I wanted to get this out before the release of volume two but that just didn't happen. Now as I have mentioned I have a new story that will come out at the same time as this chapter and I truly hope that you will enjoy it.
~Glynda
