Shattered Feelings
Volume I - Chapter X: In the Dark Pt. II
Disclaimer: I do not own RWBY.
Yang punched the White Fang terrorist (rights activist gone wrong, whatever) in the face for all the troubles he caused them.
"What's your deal, man?!" Yang shouted at the guy, her hands on his collar.
Pyrrha looked at the building Blake had disappeared over. She said tentatively, "Yang…?"
"What? Do you guys just attack random people to make a point now?!" Yang demanded, ignoring Pyrrha. "Look, I've got nothing against the Faunus but I do with the White Fang, especially now!"
So yeah, Areyn was feeling pretty awkward at the moment. It had been a good few minutes since Blake had somehow acrobat her way across a damn building—and it had been enough time for Yang to pummel the White Fang dude and for Pyrrha to investigate the building.
Areyn paced beneath 'Blake's building'. She pretended to investigate the ground for clues to where Blake had disappeared to, not that she expected to find anything when Pyrrha couldn't. 'No signs,' Pyrrha had said, 'nothing'.
Pyrrha breathed out chilly air. "What do we do now? Blake has gone...absent. We have a member of the White Fang—do we hand him in?—and we can't risk calling the authorities because we're breaking the laws anyway just by being here! Also, it's after curfew." She added quietly to herself, "What were you thinking, Pyrrha?"
Great, now Pyrrha was hyperventilating and talking to herself in third-person. There went Areyn's most reliable person and proxy leader.
Areyn walked over to Yang.
"Random person?! That's the daughter of the last leader of the White Fang you've got there—and a traitor to all of faunus-kind. I wouldn't call her a random person," the messenger spat. "Get your hands off me, human!"
Closer up, Areyn could see the scales lining the messenger's face—or the visible parts, anyway. It was kind of...disturbing.
"What?!" Yang said incredulously. "Stop lying through your—wow, really sharp—teeth, man!"
"...He's telling the truth," Areyn said. "And those are sharp teeth, wow."
Scary, more like.
"But…" Yang trailed off. "It doesn't make sense. Blake—"
"Ghira Belladonna was the last leader of the White Fang, before Sienna Khan," Pyrrha supplied. "Blake's last name is Nightshade."
Yang frowned. "But Blake—"
"It's Blake Belladonna, actually," Areyn said thoughtfully. "I mean—what type of idiot applies to a school knowing that their name is registered as associated with a terrorist organization?"
Well, canon-Blake, apparently, but canon-Blake wasn't the Blake Areyn got so that little fact was irrelevant.
"What I meant to say is that Blake isn't a faunus," Yang said, not sounding too happy about being cut off twice. "That's a big problem, isn't it?"
Pyrrha frowned. "Ah, Areyn told me—well, she told me that Blake was a faunus. But, that came from left-field and with no proof…"
Areyn felt the attention shift to her, which was definitely not a good thing. "What?" She thought fast. "I mean—why are we standing around talking about Blake when we could be searching for Blake? This...uh, this sounds like a fundamental misstep in priorities if you ask me."
Wow, big words there, Areyn thought. Go me!
Yang looked at her, an eyebrow raised. "Did you seriously just try to pull the 'divert attention to other things' move on me? Areyn, I have a hyperactive, trouble-making,and weapons-obsessed prodigy for a little sister—I know these things." Yang paused. "But you're right."
Yang dropped the White Fang messenger like a sack ton of bricks. "Look after him for me. Thanks."
Areyn pointed at herself. "Me—?"
Yang was already racing down the street on Bumblebee. How did she even get on her motorcycle so fast?
"I'll run around the back," Pyrrha said, freshly motivated.
She looked at Areyn, then at the messenger. Apparently thinking that Areyn couldn't handle some random grunt with almost no fighting experience (which, to be fair, Areyn couldn't), Pyrrha raised her hand. Makeshift handcuffs—really just cobbled together pieces of metal—attached themselves to the messenger and magnetized to a warehouse. The messenger tugged and pulled to no avail.
Pyrrha ran off.
"Well," Areyn said. "All I have to do is sit here and wait? Great. This is actually really great. Totally. Fabulous. Super" The night sky did not bother to respond to her, to no one's surprise.
"Do you always talk this much?" asked the messenger, glaring at her and pulling at his 'handcuffs'.
"..." Areyn squatted to the messenger's level, though she made sure to keep her distance. "Actually, I don't like talking much. I find people pretty objectionable. Now, talking to myself on the other hand…"
"Or about yourself, huh?" the messenger said.
"Well, I do have a bit of an ego," Areyn admitted. "But then, it's totally been getting crushed into a tiny little ball, little by little, at the moment so like...It doesn't count?"
The messenger did not look impressed.
Areyn tried a different approach. "Look—uh…"
"I'm not giving you my name. I'm not stupid, Huntress."
"In-training, actually. Involuntary training. Don't call me that, it leaves a sour taste in my mouth." Areyn sighed. "Fine, I'll just call you 'M&M'. M&M, what's the big deal?"
"Big deal?" M&M had stopped struggling. Maybe he'd given up. Or maybe, just maybe, Areyn might be good at this negotiations stuff.
"I don't get it. Joining an insane cult and going around murdering people…"
"Why does everyone assume we murder people?" M&M groused. "That just makes us as bad as you."
"...I've never murdered anyone before." Heck, the most violent thing Areyn had ever committed herself to was gaming. "Hey, isn't it a bit questionable to put humanity as a whole inside the same box?"
M&M ignored her (very reasonable) point. "Sometimes, sometimes, we do what we need to do to make a change but that's it. We take down a few warehouses, destroy a few Atlesian Knights—"
"—steal a few crates' worth of dust, team up with a few unsavory humans, etc. etc. I know," Areyn said breezily. Wait—
The messenger—M&M—burst out of his handcuffs.
Areyn really had to talk to Pyrrha about the durability of the metal she chose, because clearly, it wasn't very effective! Areyn stumbled back.
A dagger appeared in M&M's hand. "I'm so sorry about this."
Areyn fell on her butt. "Really? Really?"
"Look, you're really not supposed to know some of the things you just said—and the White Fang recently had a change of authority, in Vale anyway, and we're all still adjusting." The worst part was, M&M did look sorry and genuinely upset. "This new guy, yeah? He isn't a big fan of the pacifist route."
"Man, what a shame. He's probably planning a coup too…" Areyn really hated her mouth sometimes.
"Stay still and this will be fine, probably—I mean, I don't plan to ki—"
Too late—M&M thrust the dagger into Areyn's chest. Well, Areyn assumed he was aiming for the chest. It landed somewhere in her stomach instead, because Areyn just couldn't resist trying to scoot away.
Areyn totally didn't (she totally did) scream. She managed to muffle it down a bit with her hand though—the last thing she needed was to want to die because of embarrassment.
M&M stumbled backward. His back hit the building. "Oh gods, I didn't—I did. I should run—why am I not running?"
Areyn felt her Semblance activating.
It had been a while since it'd been launched in full-scale—and it wasn't a sensation Areyn missed.
Because before the damn thing started healing her, it broke her. The pain after everything—the pain during the recovery phase—was the worst.
Her stomach burst into smoke and rolled back into her body. It would reform itself again and again until Areyn was 'better'.
A dark shadow landed behind M&M. It knocked him unconscious with the rounded hilt of—something.
"Oh. Hey, Blake," Areyn said queasily. Her vision was getting spotty and she felt lightheaded, like she was walking on clouds in fucking space. "Hey, which parts did you hear with those ears of yours? Because I might need you to forget some of them.
"Also," Areyn added, because it was very important to the conversation, "Has Remnant done space yet? Is that—Is that something Earth can actually win at?" She giggled randomly.
Blake stared blankly. Areyn stared right back—
—Well, until she passed out. It was a little hard to stare at Blake after that.
"...Areyn? Areyn." Areyn felt someone shake her.
Areyn drapes her hand over her face. "Shaddup, I hate bad dreams…"
"..."
"..."
"..."
"Wait!" Areyn flopped over—her stomach still hurt like hell—and called out to Blake. "You— ...You are not leaving after I went through all of this shit."
Blake turned around. "Areyn—"
"No. Shut up. Literally everyone on the team knows about your little secret now—which, by the way, no one cares about—and they know about your last name. The only thing you've got to hide is—well, actually, that's a pretty big deal…" Areyn paused. She tried to sit up and ended up falling on her back. "But you owe me for getting me stabbed. That's important."
"...You were stabbed?"
"Yeah, by that White Fang guy—I thought you were there."
"No—I was…" Blake looked away. "Sorry."
Areyn raised an eyebrow. But that shadow, it was Blake—wasn't it?
"Whatever." Areyn couldn't be bothered to use her brain at the moment.
"They...know?"
"Yeah, well, M&M wasn't the quiet type."
Areyn touched her stomach and flinched. She was going to have to tell Pyrrha to cancel their lesson plans for a good, oh...week or so. (Wait—that was it? Areyn wondered if she was becoming a little too used to pain. Was she turning into a masochist? She hoped not.)
"Oh," Blake managed. She stood there awkwardly, the sun rising behind her.
Areyn groaned. The sun was rising? How many hours did she spend knocked out? More importantly, how many people saw her?
So. Embarrassing.
There was a revving engine coming towards them. The engine came to an abrupt stop. "Hey, Areyn, we—Blake?!"
Yang didn't bother parking her motorcycle—leaving Pyrrha to do the work. The blond stormed up to Blake. She pointed at Blake's chest and glared. "You!"
Blake had the decency to flinch.
"Yang, how do you—how do you park this?" Pyrrha struggled to keep Bumblebee upright. "And please, go easy on Blake. I'm sure she's had a traumatizing experience last night, we need to treat her carefully. Not to mention, well, the accusations and such…"
"I thought you went somewhere else…" Areyn said. She was pretty sure Pyrrha had gone separate ways from Yang.
"We found each other. There's only so much of the Industrial District you can search, after all."
"Yang—" Blake started.
"Don't 'Yang' me! I'm tired and exhausted and hungry and sleep-deprived and exhausted and you—"
"You said exhausted twice and tired is a synonym to exhausted anyway…" Blake couldn't help muttering. She shivered and hugged herself, head held low.
"I was worried, you idiot!" Yang raised her hand.
Blake flinched, really flinched this time.
Yang paused, hand hovering above Blake's shoulder. "Uh...You okay there?"
"Yang, you know Blake doesn't do physical contact," Areyn said drily. "It's an introvert thing."
"Huh. I'll never understand any of you." Yang brought her hand to her waist. She cocked an eyebrow. "So. What the hell were you thinking?"
"I…" Blake stared at Yang blankly.
"I think you were scared," Areyn said. She smirked. "Look, I get it. When you're on top of the world, you're most scared of falling—and you were, weren't you? I mean—I bet it was the first time no one around you knew about you being a faunus."
"Areyn, not now," Pyrrha said quietly.
"Sorry, I got carried away." Areyn really hadn't meant for the words to slip out of her mouth. Oh, what a traitorous mouth she had…
"That's what you were worried about?" Yang asked Blake incredulously. "Come on, who's even a racist anymore?" She rubbed her chin. "I mean, besides Marron Jhacks and Sulfur Walter and—and Weiss and—you know what, I'm going to stop there."
"It's worse in Mistral. Common, really," Pyrrha said unhappily. "Completely backwards—in my opinion."
"You guys are really not helping," Areyn told Yang and Pyrrha flatly.
Yang examined Blake—she stepped into Blake's private space. "I still don't see any faunus features, y'know."
"...under the bow," Blake muttered.
"What was that?"
"It doesn't matter." Blake walked away from Yang. "I—I appreciate that you don't care, I do, but it's not...I'm not going to…"
"It's your right to privacy," Pyrrha reassured Blake. "We can be adult about this. Yang, Areyn?"
"Yeah, yeah." Yang waved off Pyrrha's concern.
Areyn nodded mutely.
"I do have to ask though, Blake—You don't have to answer," Pyrrha said. "I know why you'd choose to hide your faunus traits—but I don't see why not. In fact, more faunus visible in the effort to defend Remnant against Grimm would do wonders for public opinion…"
Blake turned on Pyrrha. "I've tried, Pyrrha. I tried to make things better. It didn't work." Blake's voice cracked. "Nothing works."
And really, what could someone say to something like that?
Yang decided that avoiding that altogether was the best way to respond. She shot a finger-gun at Blake. "Well, don't worry, Blake. We got you back. We've got your back. (That was a great line.) And we're gonna be in everything together."
"Hn…" Blake peered at Yang—scrutinizing her.
"And we can start by figuring out what the White Fang are doing sending guys to talk to the biggest crime lord in town."
Blake turned pale. "...Tha—That's none of our business."
"I wholeheartedly agree with Blake," Areyn said eagerly. "That's a big no-no."
"We can always report to the authorities," Pyrrha suggested reasonably.
"No," Yang said.
"...No." Blake glowered.
"Meh." Areyn shrugged.
"Yes, perhaps Team ABYN can report themselves to the authorities."
Areyn nearly got startled shitless by the air shuttle that was silently landing on the ground. She groaned when she saw who it was. They were doomed.
"Glynda?" Yang asked, dumbfounded.
"That's Professor Goodwitch to you, Ms. Xiao-Long." Professor Goodwitch didn't walk off the shuttle. She stood rooted there, hands behind her back. "I do hope all of you are ready for kitchen duty and at least a week long's worth of detention."
Pyrrha's mouth dropped open. She started sputtering—sure signs of another hyperventilating session.
"Great," Areyn groused. She wobbled to her feet—and puked blood. "I'm fine, I'm fine." She tried not looking at the weird black tar mixed into the blood.
Pyrrha gave her that concerned look.
"I'm fine, really," Areyn said. She walked around in a little circle. "See? Perfectly fine." It hurt like a bitch.
Glynda only narrowed her eyes.
Yang looked at them—Blake in particular and tried for a grin. "Hey, I guess I did say we're in everything together…"
Blake crossed her arms, an unimpressed eyebrow raised—but a smile threatened to form on her face.
"Score one for Yang," Yang said. She winked.
A/N:
I was reading Transformers: More Than Meets the Eyes while writing this (amazing comic, stunning plot and characters)—and it rubbed off on me. The chapter is way more character-interaction heavy than I first planned and the dialogue has taken priority (like it would in a comic). Fascinating.
Reviewer Responses
The Wizardrous Magicman: I actually….have never watched any episode of Spongebob fully. Which is a bit of a shame, because one of the creators of Spongebob came from my dear old town. So much for town pride, eh? Anyway, do you have any more fanfic recs (doesn't have to be from RWBY)? I've been running dry for a while now. And how's your recovery going? :)
Mew Shadowfang: Rocket-launcher shield, actually—though not a very good one. I concede that you have a point (I had thought about a sniper-rifle)—too bad Areyn already spent 200 li on a crappy rocket-launcher shield, huh? And yes, I like to think characters grow the most through suffering, hehe…
stormingknight: Fixed the numbers. And I'm glad you enjoyed the work! (Ah, you have a valid point for the uniform, btw—I can think of a few counter-points (identity, identifying, not wanting to be seen with Torchwick without his mask, etc.) but the truth is, I didn't think that through too much, lol. I'll have to avoid similar mistakes in the future.)
merendinoemilliano: *thumbs up*
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See you guys next chapter. ~ Aros