VIII
Silver sat quietly against a stump on the edge of his and Ruby's camp as he waited for the sun to come up. It had been four hours since he relieved Ruby of her turn at night watch and he was starting to grow restless. Over the past few days they had made good time traveling on foot and were within only a few miles of their scheduled meeting point with one of Qrow's contacts. Once at the meeting point they would be taken onto a fishing boat that would bring them within a mile of New Vale, where they would board a small rowboat and sneak their way into the city's port district. The traveling so far had been fairly calm with little to no Grimm activity as they made their way to the coast. However, Silver could not shake the feeling that their luck was slowly beginning to run out. With Mistral being a war torn kingdom, Grimm attacks had become a daily occurrence in many of the smaller outlining towns and villages the further one got from the larger cities. Of course the most the two companions had seen of the monsters was a lone Beowolf here or there and the occasional wondering Ursa.
After a few minutes of waiting in silence, Silver stood and collected Chimera, switching it to its assault rifle mode before sliding a magazine into its receiver. The young faunus was in the process of gathering the rest of his belongings to go wake Ruby when he heard some rustling in the bushes behind him. He spun around, dropped to one knee, and aimed his rifle at the bush. He prepared for the possibility of a Grimm lunging from it. Instead, however, Ruby walked calmly out of the bush. Silver sighed deeply as he lowered Chimera and shook his head slowly.
"You know I almost shot you in the face, right?" Silver questioned Ruby with an annoyed tone.
The young woman ignored Silver's question as she walked past him and plopped down on a nearby stump. She looked up at the sky with her large silver eyes. She sat like this for a few moments before glancing over to Silver and tilting her head.
"You know what I've been wondering for a while?" Ruby asked curiously.
"No…what?" Replied Silver, his tone still slightly annoyed.
"Most Faunus have only one animalistic trait, correct?" Ruby continued.
"Yeah, what of it?" Silver answered, seeing where this conversation was about to go.
"How come you, your sister, and most of her team all have more than one trait?" She asked, turning to face Silver before she leaned back on the stump.
Silver stood silently as he thought of the best way to answer the young woman's question. It was a question he had been asked many times before, and she was not wrong to ask it. Most Faunus did indeed only have one animal trait and it was odd to see a Faunus with multiple.
"It's a mutation." Silver finally answered after a few more moments of silence. "Some believe it's just a simple genetic mutation that a very small percentage of Faunus have. Amber, Yamabuki, and Rose all have tails and ears. I have ears, claws, and cat like eyes." He continued, pointing up at his ears with a clawed finger.
"A mutation?" Ruby asked as she looked Silver over slowly with an intrigued sparkle in her human eye.
"Yep, a mutation." Silver replied with a slight shrug. "I believe the last time a study was done about it they found that not even one percent of all of us have it. It just so happens to be that you've met four Faunus with that mutation." He finished before approaching the log that Ruby sat on.
Ruby looked away towards their camp silently, almost ignoring the large Faunus that approached her. Silver couldn't help but be amazed at the young woman's beauty as she sat reflectively before him. Qrow had mentioned Ruby a few times over the years but he always talked of her like she was still the young girl that she was before the war. However, the woman that sat before Silver was anything but a little girl. She fit her athletically slim figure like a glove.
Her black hair that usually sat comfortably on her shoulders danced in the wind gracefully before resting in front of her robotic eye. Ruby brushed her hair back out of her face to expose the scars that covered the area around her right eye. After a few moments of staring at their camp she shot a glance at Silver, her robotic eye flickering as the sun reflected off of its lens.
"It still hurts sometimes." Ruby said before placing her right hand over her eye. "In fact, it keeps me up some nights. Even after all these years I still get this intense throbbing pain in the area around it as if the shrapnel was still lodged in there. Do you still feel pain from your injuries?" She questioned Silver, looking at him with sadness in her gaze.
"Every moment of my life." Silver replied, rubbing his false arm.
A moment or two passed in awkward silence between the two before Silver cleared his throat to talk.
"I don't know the full extent as to why you decided to leave Vale. Hell, I don't fully understand the reasoning in going back. But, if it means enough to you that you'd get that old bird of an uncle of yours to pull a favor card with me…" Silver trailed off, trying to think of something witty to say.
Right as he opened his mouth to continue, the trees across from the pair started to rustle and move violently. Silver spun with his weapon raised, ready to engage whatever was causing the large trees to rustle. Ruby leapt up from her seat, quickly transforming her Crescent Rose II into its mode. Silver edged closer to the young woman before whispering gently.
"Can your eye see anything?" He asked, glancing at his companion.
Ruby closed her human eye, allowing her robotic eye to zoom its vision into the area of the movement. After a few seconds she titled her head in confusion and nodded.
"It's a large Grimm. However, I've never seen one like it before." She reported to Silver.
"Oh? Describe it. It's important that you describe what it looks like." Silver replied nervously.
"It's reptilian in nature. Other than that it's hard to really describe what it looks like." Ruby said as she began to mirror Silver's nervous body language. "And it is looking right at us." She continued.
Silver quickly grabbed Ruby's arm and began to pull her to start running, a look of fear flashing across his otherwise calm face.
"We have to move, now." Silver said as he pulled at her arm harder and broke into a brisk jog to allow Ruby to catch up to him.
"Why? What is it?" Ruby asked as she caught up to Silver quickly.
"A Basilisk. It's a rare Grimm that even the most experienced teams of Huntsmen rather not face." Silver replied, looking over his shoulder as his fear deepened.
A moment later the large Grimm crashed into the clearing, knocking over trees as if they were a pile of toothpicks. The beast stood fifteen feet high and around twenty feet long. It had long black spines on its back, a whip like tail, and razor sharp claws at the end of long legs. It let out a high pitched roar and instantly gave chase after the pair. Despite its large size the creature was fairly fast and within a matter of seconds it was close enough to lash out after Ruby and Silver.
Ruby barely managed to leap over an incoming swipe when the Basilisk snapped its sharp teeth at her. The Grimm came alarmingly close but Silver appeared almost as a blur in midair to deliver a punishing kick to snout of the beast. He landed gracefully before unloading an entire magazine worth of bullets from his weapon into the armored hide, stunning the creature. This gave the pair enough time to get a little more distance between them and their pursuer, which they used as an opportunity to kick their speed into high gear.
After a few minutes of running they came to a small beach with a pier whose condition was so poor that it seemed as if the whole thing would fall into the sea if even a leaf dared land on it. Silver turned to face the area in which the Basilisk was still before loading a fresh magazine into his rile. He grinned playfully before glancing at Ruby.
"I guess we have no choice but to fight. I got to say, there is no guarantee that we will survive this. However, if we do…" He paused for a moment as he thought about something to say in order to reassure his companion. "If we survive this I'll take you out for a nice dinner."
"Don't make a girl a promise you can't keep. I would have guessed you'd know that by now." Ruby replied with a wolfish grin.
Silver could feel his blood begin to boil as the excitement over the quickly approaching battle filled him. He nodded before yanking the charging handle back on his rifle and gave Ruby a wink.
"And you should know just from knowing my sister that you should never challenge a Morrigan." Silver replied as the Basilisk slowly approached the pier. "And this son of a bitch is about to learn that lesson the hard way." He continued with a mean grin and his cat ears pressed back.
