The Second Step: Chapter Nine

Dragon's Child: Part 2

A/N: This chapter is based off of the "Mob Princess Nora" theory floating around TV Tropes. I couldn't resist incorporating it into my own tale, mostly because Monty Oum liked it so much.

Also; be prepared for an extra long chapter next week. It'll probably be double the common length of other chapters and as such may take two weeks to complete. Yes, next week is a special. But feel free to enjoy this week's work.

And finally, I'd like to give a shout out to my friend Chas1881 and his story "A Spark In The Darkness." It's the same basic premise of picking off right after Volume One, but focuses on Sun Wukong as the lead character. It's a pretty unique idea, and it kicks up the romance rather quicker then my story. Totally worth a read.


(Wednesday)


Training ground Ten was a fairly normal arena. Concrete flooring and hanging lights, with a small detachment of Schnee built combat robots for live fire target practice. Unlike most other training grounds though, Ten also had narrow, 6' by 6' concrete blocks mounted on pneumatic pistons imbedded in the floor which could be raised or lowered to create a custom maze or the schematic of a building. It was referred to as the 'Electronic Variable Organization Training System.'

Nora called it the Stove room.

Ren examined the current configuration of concrete walls as he and Nora walked in. It appeared that the Schnee bots were already organized within the maze, no doubt to prevent him and Nora from determining the difficulty of the training event they would have to endure.

'Okay Ren, get your head in the game. You and Nora are ready. Finish this, and you two will be one step closer to freedom and inheritance. In five years time, you and your families will be sipping piña coladas in some unmarked equatorial villa making twenty percent from a Mistral bank, and Alvin Cassern will be rotting six feet under.'

"Hi uncle Stu! Hi uncle Billy." Nora waved at two men, one rail thin and old and tall, the other also thin and tall and rather young, both sitting on the room's bleachers, and neither actually their uncles. They were Stuart Redding and Billy Dufresne, the right hand man of Alvin Cassern and the highest ranking enforcer of the Cassern mob family respectively. Nora hopped over and embraced them both tightly enough to have them begging to be put down and allowed to breath. "What's up?"

Uncle Billy straightened his tie, a sour look etched upon his face. "Nora, as you are well aware, we've been sent here to assure Mister Cassern that-."

"That you are doing well in school. We don't want your godfather to think his little princess is slacking off." Uncle Stu cut across Billy. It seemed that Billy had forgotten himself again, as Ren observed the light glare that Stu sent his companion and the resulting shade of white Billy turned in fear. Stu may have been old, but you didn't get to be old in their line of work without picking up a few connections. Or learning some inventive ways to kill people. "How's the school-life treating you? Make any new friends, Nora?"

Nora was practically bouncing...actually, scratch that, she was bouncing. "Oh everyone one here's so friendly. There's team RWBY and Jaune and Pyrrha, and the teachers. Ooh, I forgot team CRDL, they're jerks, so we get to beat them up!"

"Hahaha, that's great Nora." Stu ruffled her orange hair in a patriarchal way. "You like what they teach you?"

"I blow stuff up!"

Uncle Stu chuckled again. "I'll take that as a yes. Well, you two are here, so let's get this show on the road." Uncle Stu pulled a large suitcase like device off the floor and set it on the bench next to himself. Opening it, he brought up a map of the maze. "This is your course. You are to get here-," he pointed to an small room towards the back, "-and retrieve a package, and then leave. The fewer robots you alert and allow to live, the better your score. Got it?"

"Got it!" Nora declared.

"Yes." Ren replied. Uncle Stu pulled out a note pad. Uncle Billy aimed a light glare Ren and checked his wristwatch. Ren dusted off his arms. And Nora giggled, not because anything funny had happened, but because the three men would wonder if anything funny had happened and if they'd missed it. It was a great way to confuse people.

"Alright, who's up first? The little lady or our golden boy, hmm?" Uncle Stu shifted his glances between the Atlan and the Valian.

Nora raised her and and started jumping up and down. "Me, me, ooh pick me! I'm flexible!" She cried.

"Nora!" Ren face-palmed, then decided that it wasn't worth it. "Sure Nora. You go right ahead," he said.

"Yay!" Nora bolted to the front of the maze and with a "Tata!" jumped in.

Uncle Stu and Ren shared bemused and exasperated looks and shifted their gazes to the box computer that was monitoring Nora's progress. With a key tap, uncle Stu armed the robots. "All robots armed" flashed across the screen.


In the maze, Nora took the left fork, moving to a doorway. With practiced ease she shot a grenade into the room, both destroying the robots inside and alerting every single robot in the maze to the presence of an intruder. As it were, Nora didn't particularly care, but really wanted to get through the maze. So when a robot rounded the corner, Nora pulled out all the stops.

The robot had both arm blades extended, and Nora quickly went in for the close range hit. Magnhild extending into its hammer mode, she swept the legs out from beneath the machine and altered directions, delivering an over the top pound to the cranial unit. The robot's head was simultaneously crushed and exploded.

The next machine was far more lucky. Nora merely used it as a springboard to get up and over and deliver another devastating headshot to the robot behind it. Then the springboard bot had the misfortune to try and reengage the tiny girl with its Gatling hands, and when Nora ducked low to the ground, it only succeeded in missing every shot and destroying the two bots behind Nora's second kill. Then Nora smashed it's left side into the wall.

And so ended the terrible life of that particular robot, whose aim was as good a ghost sniper named Leonard.

Nora collapsed Magnhild and started firing into the next robot line. Outside, Ren and Uncle Stu watched in fascination as Nora demolished the small army. The hallway fight climaxed with Nora launching a robot high into the air, and then using it as a bounce board to send herself straight down for a ground pound. The poor robots were obliterated as the blast send compressed shrapnel throughout their bodies.

Three smart robots took that moment to launch themselves at Nora as she was still recovering from the earth strike. With a lunge, two hurled themselves at Nora and were subsequently hammered into the wall. The third rolled and ducked under Nora's swing however, and delivered a hard, two-handed sword strike to her gut. Nora's Aura fled from her weapon and coated her body at the last minute, but the strike sent her flying into the far wall of a maze bend.

"Nora!" Ren shouted in horror. Uncle Stu made a dispassionate mark on his notepad. Uncle Billy resisted a chuckle.

Back in the maze, Nora staggered to her feet. With barely a moments hesitation, the robot switched to Gatling hands and unleashed a barrage of lead, two more aligning to the sides of the first and following it's lead. Nora's Aura took three shots for her before she stepped behind the corner. Their line of sight now removed, the Schnee bots disengaged their Gatling hands and switched to blades.

Nora took a few calming breaths before pulling out her Scroll. The indicator read out at halfway down. Any more direct hits would probably kill her. Nora gulped and thought about her options. Her mind returned one:

Fight.

Nora switched Magnhild back to its gun mode and loaded forty millimeter canister. For anyone not in the know, forty millimeter canister is essentially a cannon class shotgun round, and Nora had several.

Nora turned the corner. The grenade chamber advanced to prime position. 'Clickety.' Nora pulled the trigger.

BOOM!

The nearest robot had been all of five feet away and it was now everywhere between six feet and sixteen feet. The robot immediately behind it collapsed from the buckshot embedded in its torso. The third made a logical decision, and though it was in binary, a laymen's translation would probably end up something like this: 'Screw this, I'm outa here.'

Nora still blew its head off.

The pink lover rounded the corner. The package was around the next bend, but two robots were both waiting for her at the entrance. With a directed blast, Nora reduced them all both to assorted pieces of scrap and slag.

Nora stepped to the corner... And halted. Her danger sense was screaming at her. Her instincts roared at her that the room ahead wasn't as empty as it seemed. Impulse and logic told her to step inside. She could see the package, a briefcase, right inside the room, on a partially raised concrete block.

Nora gulped, then swapped in a grenade round loaded with Lightning Dust. She pulled the trigger...

CRACKCRAKKAK!

The lightning engulfed the edge of the room. Nora strolled in and stepped over the smoking, burning and in some cases melting corpses of the robots that had been arrayed on the wall towards the hallway in. The briefcase seemed to sparkle in the light, beckoning the pink lover. With a triumphant giggle, Nora grabbed the briefcase and screamed, "GOT IT!"

Of course, Ren, Uncle Stu and Uncle Billy had been watching from a camera that had been shadowing the girl and subsequently had to cover their ears from the suddenly loud shriek. The walls went down, revealing the smoking, ruined corpses of the robots Nora had slain and the upright and gleaming shells of the robots that she had alerted, but hasn't managed to run into yet. Nora, naturally, was unperturbed.

Ren rolled his eyes at the display of casual distruction Nora had inflicted. The girl just never knew when to be stealthy.

"So uncle Stu, how'd I do? Hehe." Nora bounded over and bent over the computer to see her "Uncle." Uncle Stu slipped his notes under the box computer and smiled at his employee's favored goddaughter.

"You did alright Nora. It's certainly was a show." He smiled warmly at her. Ren remained sitting for a moment in an attempt to calm his racing heart. Nora always had a penchant to make him worry. Of course, he had the evoked the same feelings in Nora , but he didn't know this.

Uncle Stu typed a few commands to the robots, some cleaning up Nora's mess and other moving to take their positions. A new maze quickly rose into place. "Alright Ren, same rules as before, just your turn now. I hope you do well."

"Heh. Forbor'll probably just hide." Uncle Billy muttered.

Ren twitched spasmodically, fighting himself. Nora was less reserved. "What did you say asshole!" Magnhild expanded in her hands. "You take that back!"

Uncle Billy leapt to his feet, his hand disappearing into his coat to grab his concealed guns. Uncle Stu didn't get up, but put a hand on his arm. "Now now Billy, I think you owe mister Lie an apology. Don't you?"

Billy went a shade of white typically reserved for bed sheets as he remembered whom he was in the company of. Gulping, Billy sat back down.

"Billy, I thought I mentioned an apology."

Ren fought to keep a smirk off his face. This was too good to be true. Billy Dufresne, the best enforcer to ever work for Alvin Cassern, was being made to apologize. Oh he was so enjoying this.

Billy sat back down and mumbled something. Uncle Stu leaned in. "What was that?"

Billy looked at no one. "My apologies."

Stu prodded him. "Come on, say you're sorry to mister Lie."

Ren could almost hear Billy's teeth grind. Nora had subtly pulled out her Scroll and was videotaping the event.

Billy swallowed hard. "I'm sorry mister Lie."

Uncle Stu slapped him playfully. "Now was that so hard kiddo. Well now, now that that's out of the way, why don't you say we get down to business. You know the rules Ren, lets see you run the course."

Ren smirked


The course began easily enough. It was a simple maze, turn left here, right there, go straight on. The first robot Ren encountered was too slow to alert the others. Driving Stormflower into its head was enough to stop it.

The next two were sufficiently avoided by scaling the wall and hiding in the room on the other side. The fourth one was the interesting fight.

Ren met it in a room. Instead of calling its fellows, the robot opted for the quick fight first, alert later. Ren drew out both Stormflowers and began. The first blow was a long handed left jab with the robots fore-blades, which Ren deflected with his right Stormflower. Turning the momentum of the block into speed, Ren spun on his heels and buried the submachine-gun's knife into the robots neck.

The machine retaliated with a leg sweep that took Ren down and caused him to lose his grip on the neck embedded gun. A curb stomp was blocked by Ren's Aura reinforced hands, and an application of bullets from his remaining gun sent the machine sprawling, and now free to stand, Ren directed another burst into the Schnee-bots chest.

Retrieving his right gun, Ren sprinted from the room. The robots were quick to respond to the sudden burst of gun fire, and cries of "Identify yourself!," were heard. Ren slipped smoothly into the now emptied briefcase room, and with the acknowledgement of his presence there, the robots deactivated the walls went down, and Ren was complete.

The test was over. And the results were about to be posted.

Ren hoped he passed.


The Emerald Forest creaked around Pyrrha and Jaune, the wind whistling between the tall trees and bringing a third character, the forest itself, into the narrative of their lives at that moment.

Jaune eyed the long shadows of the forest with trepidation. "Are you sure that their aren't any Grimm out here?"

"Not any around here," Pyrrha answered. "The Grimm avoid places where they died. They know to fear where they die. At least, for a while." Pyrrha stepped over a fallen log and pushed a branch away from her face. Jaune had the instincts to duck under the whiplash. "I'm sorry."

"Don't mention it." Jaune took a moment to activate his Aura. The two returned to their silence, and Jaune reflected.

So much had changed in all of three days. Pyrrha ran away, then came back all scared of herself and trying to avoid fighting. And now they were back to awkward silence. The little soldier walked in front of him. Looking at her, it was so strange to see her without her shield. Pyrrha varied herself straight and strong, but something about her seemed unbalanced when she didn't have her shield. Jaune shook himself when a shadow jumped in the wind, the leaves rustling to the air's movement.

Jaune allowed himself a mental shrug. Maybe it was because of what he knew now. Pyrrha seemed so different because he saw her differently. He didn't see the helpful woman that had trained him and was training him for the Vytal Festival. He saw a soldier that had worked through so much and seen so much more then he had. Looking at her was a constant reminder of how much people hid from each other, and from themselves.

'How long was she afraid of what she'd done?' Jaune wondered. 'Did she always fear that she'd lose it and just kill people, or was that new?'

Creeeeaaaak, SNAP.

Jaune got a branch across the face. Again.

"Ack! I'm sorry." Pyrrha grabbed Jaune's arm and pulled him back to his feet. Jaune blinked a few times and put his hand to his cheek. Shockingly it came back dry. He wasn't bleeding. "You got your Aura up in time. That's good." Pyrrha gave her teammate a slight smile. "You're getting better at that."

"What, beating branches in single combat?" Jaune arched an eyebrow.

Pyrrha blinked, and then chuckled a little bit. "You're Aura control is improving. It takes a while for most Huntsmen to get that little trait down."

"Cool. Wait, Huntsmen?" Jaune folded his arms in confusion. "What's that mean?"

Pyrrha opened her mouth, and then realized that she didn't quite want to explain that particular aspect of how Aura affected women. "Just forget I asked. Okay."

"Pyrrha." Jaune said. "Really?"

Pyrrha rolled her eyes and hid a light blush as Jaune came up alongside her. "Well, its kind of embarrassing. I mean, would you answer questions if I asked about...well, your manhood?"

Jaune went a shade of pink that Nora would have found adorable. "Um, well. I...I don't know. Maybe? Wait, no." Jaune and Pyrrha stopped walking and just stared at each other. "Well, I guess, I don't know. Can we try?"

Pyrrha was now a shade of red that matched her hair. "Uh, well, okay." Pyrrha gulped and decided 'screw it.'

"Okay, the first thing you should know is that women have to deal with a number of bodily functions that men don't. Primarily, menstrual cycles and menopause. Now, normally woman have to deal with this on a very irregular basis, a few days off here, a few days early there, and after long enough you just run out. When Aura gets involved though, you can get a very regular, super regular even, and lighter periods. We don't experience menstrual cramps, no PMS or headaches, and we can even suppress our monthlies with some training." Pyrrha's face donned a smirk. "You really don't want a PMSing woman with Aura on your case, now do you?"

Jaune had long since moved from pink to violet from embarrassment. He gulped, and coughed into his hands. "That's, uh, interesting. And this helps develop Aura control how?"

Pyrrha turned her hands upside down. "We'll dealing with a regular cycle of pain and bleeding. We typically activate our Aura in response to pain, and because Periods are regular, we develop instincts to avoid the pain. In time, this translates to combat." Pyrrha gestured with her hand. "Problem is, Meiosis is just a cellular process that produces eggs. So while we don't have to deal with the negatives of the menstrual cycle, we never get a reprieve." Pyrrha winced. "There you go. That's how we do it."

Jaune nodded lightly. "Yeah. Pyrrha?"

"What?"

"If the chance ever comes up, remind me to never be gender-swapped. Please."

Pyrrha nodded. "Okay."

The two got back to walking through the woods. "And Pyrrha?"

(Sigh) "Yes Jaune?"

"Lets never speak of that again."

"Agreed."

The silence returned again, but now slightly less awkward. Jaune started whistling to himself. Pyrrha rubbed the back of her head. "So...how you doing?"

"Okay. You?"

"Fine." Pyrrha glanced at Miló. "Oh yeah. About weapons and Aura. I guess I said-."

"Actually Pyrrha, I think I'm good for today." Jaune waved off the question. "But thanks. I'm just a little, yeah know...Aura'd out."

Pyrrha chuckled against her own will. "Okay Jaune. If you say so."

Jaune looked Pyrrha in the eye. "Yeah. Let's go with that." Jaune smiled.


Ren stood quietly off to the side and watched as Nora happily chattered at him, while Stu and Billy went over the videos of their runs. Stu hmm'd and ah'd a fair bit. Billy spent most of his time either glaring at the screen or sending dark looks at the two he had tested. The air seemed to press in on Ren and try to smother him. The ground almost rolled underneath his feet. Nora's voice grew more distant with each passing moment, and Ren wondered if he was dying.

"Ren. Ren? REN!" Nora put her mouth to his ear and shouted. Ren was knocked out of his anxiety induced vertigo and dragged, surprised, back into the real world. "Don't you think we did well?"

Ren gulped and swept the nonexistent dust from his arms. "I think we did well Nora."

Nora positively beamed. "Oh come on Ren. We've been through worse. You remember the train robbery? And the Grimm hunt on Van Spira? And dinner with my parents? We'll be fine."

"You shouldn't assume these things Nora."

"Ren." Nora smiled sweetly and put a hand on his shoulder. "We're best friends. We hunt darkness spewing monsters for fun and profit. I have a grenade launcher and you have machine pistols with knives attached. We have mobs connections for Gods sakes. We'll be fine."

"Ren passed, Nora failed," Billy called over.

The two students twitched like they'd been shocked. Stu slapped Billy for his callousness, though some rational part of Ren's mind deduced that Billy had been waiting to say something like that all evening. Just something to kill their mood and shock them.

It was sick humor, but to the one who said it, it was probably the funniest line in the whole world.

Uncle Stu reached under the bleacher bench and pulled out a brown paper bag. Unwrapping it, he removed a sandwich and ate it. Ren and Nora stared at him, breathing slowly, trying to keep calm. Ren was managing, if poorly, but Nora was shaking. It wasn't visible, but Ren could almost feel her Aura jittering against him. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her against his side. Nora leaned into him.

Time drew out like a knife. Ren and Nora had spent some long times together, and even seen some truly hard sights, but here was the longest time they had ever spent together, and it happened to be a moment that would define their lives. That being said, the time between Billy saying that Ren had passed and Nora hadn't and the time when Stu finished his sandwich was only five minutes.

"Well Ren, I can't say that I wasn't surprised with the performance you gave us, but I have to admit, I can see you doing well in our business. We have particular need for men like you, especially men who operate like you do. We need guys like you for our business." Stu danced quietly around the name of his "business". It was common that the people employed in this business used such vague and non-incriminating phrasing. It let them weasel out of problems easily enough.

Stu pointed at Nora. "Sorry Nora. You'll good with the guns, but its just not what we're looking for. We need people that can get around with a low-profile. You'll a great girl, but, well, we need someone that can do well at the same time. You're just not good enough." Stu packed the box computer up and stood up. "We'll be reclaiming your tuition in a few days. Give yourself sometime to say your goodbyes. Have a nice day." Stu got up and left at that, leaving Ren and Nora standing, shocked and scared. Billy stood and followed the elder man, but not before sneering at Ren and Nora.

"Knew you two weren't worth our time." Billy left, and finally Ren and Nora were alone.

The two remained there for a while. If you asked Ren later, he would have said that he and Nora just talked about their futures. That's what he would have said. He would have said it because saying that for almost an hour, Nora cried into his shoulder and he cried with her, wouldn't have been believable. He'd say that he wasn't worried about what would happen to him, because no one would have believed him if he said he was terrified. Ren would have said that he immediately began planning a way to fix it so that Nora had her inheritance by the end of the month, because no one thought that Nora had a brain orderly enough to conceive the crazy plan that they were to implement the next day.

He'd have said a lot of things that weren't true, if only because they were more believable. Because how believable is this:

"Hey Ren. You think we can steal my inheritance?"


Jaune and Pyrrha navigated the hallways of Beacon Academy, Pyrrha now toting her rediscovered shield, checking the clocks on their scrolls regularly to see how much time they had to curfew. Nine o'clock was the cut off time, and anyone out after then was liable to be sent to detention.

8:56 rolled around and Jaune and Pyrrha beat the clock to their room. Pyrrha unlocked the door, and was greeted with a strange sight. Ren and Nora were in the same bed, and while that wasn't quite strange, it did get the quality of the odd when she noticed that they were pouring over a large paper with numerous crude scribbles that looked like building schematics. "What are you two doing?"

Nora looked up and waved at the returning leader and soldier. Ren didn't look up, but cocked his hand in greeting.

Jaune looked at the crude map and at Nora and Ren. "Okay, what is it?"

"What's what?" Nora asked.

Jaune tapped the map. "Why do you have a map? What's going on?"

Ren looked at Jaune and earnestly said, "Nothing, what-so-ever."

Jaune hooked a finger over at Pyrrha. "We thought she had nothing, and what happened? We were chased by half the schools girls."

"Only a couple. Maybe six at the most." Ren shrugged, but Nora winced. "There really is nothing to worry about Jaune."

"We're planning a robbery on a mob-boss's house." Nora said this with such candor it took Jaune a moment to fully realize that she wasn't joking. Pyrrha had been pulling out a pushing kit for her shield, only to notice the complete silence that had engulfed the room. Ren just face-palmed.

Nora smiled a little, one part relief, two parts sheepishness. "Well, its a long story. You sure you want to hear it. Okay, GREAT!" Nora spoke out without waiting for an answer, and with such vigor that Ren almost threw his hands up in exasperation. But silently, he was quite glad that at least she had the bravado to come out with this.

Jaune and Pyrrha exchanged a slightly freightened look and nodded. After Pyrrha's little revelation yesterday, no one on Team JNPR was prepared to ignore the facts of the others.

Nora began. "It all started about three years ago when me and Ren met for the first time. We were on a train that was being robbed and Ren showed up to try to help. Turns out we worked together pretty well. So I took him home and introduced him to my family, and then I told him that we were mobsters. You should have seen his face, it was so shocked. Actually, it looked a lot like your faces, right now."

Suffice to say, Jaune and Pyrrha were shocked.

"Ren took it pretty well. And then he said he wanted in. He said he wanted the money, but I think my feminine charms really won him over."

"Keep telling yourself that Nora."

"Anyway, he said that he wanted to help me get out of the mob, something about it being bad for my moral center, and said that I could make a pretty good living off of my earnings if I put them into a bank and saved up. So we hatched this scheme to take my inheritance and invest it in a bank in Mistral. Then we'd be able to move out and live in some nice little villa by the ocean. And we'd sip margarita's all day and make love all night and live without a care in the world." Nora's voice grew increasingly disillusioned. "We'd be a king and queen and no one would ever hurt us and we'd live happily-."

"Nora." It was quiet, but Ren still said it.

Nora gulped and blushed a little, actually ashamed at the realization of what she was saying. "Um, anyway, well, we...we can't do that now. We were being tested to see if we were good investments for the mob, to see if we would be useful with a Beacon education, but I failed the test. My godfather is going to rescened my funding in a few days, so now we're planning in extorting the mob into giving me my tuition."

"You left out the part about how I was trained to destroy the mob Nora."

"Oh yeah, Ren wants to destroy the mob in Vale because they extorted his family and he wants revenge. It's pretty cool, what he does." Nora cupped her chin between her thumb and forefinger. "Is that all Ren?"

"That's all Nora." Ren looked up from the map and turned his attention to Jaune and Pyrrha. "So, do you believe us?"

Jaune and Pyrrha blinked and looked at each other, then at the Atlan boy and the mob princess. "You're not joking?"

"Nope." Nora's face developed a smile that grew as the silence stretched on.

Jaune and Pyrrha shared another look and finally the soldier girl looked at the two opposite them. "You need to rob a mobsters house."

"Essentially, yes." Ren answered.

Pyrrha smiled a little. Jaune groaned and muttered, "what is with this team?" and Nora's smiled got even larger.

"Well, we're your teammates. Count us in."


A/N: if I'm honest, this chapter didn't turn out like I hoped it would. But it turned out, and honestly, I think the story flows pretty well. I hope you all enjoy this chapter.

Next time on The Second Step; the exciting and massive conclusion to "The Mob Princess and the Tong Boy" arc. If I can call it that.

Please, read and review.