Chapter 12: A Breach of the Heart


The next morning started off like most any other day would have at Beacon for Rex. He woke up, completed his hygiene for the day, dressed himself, and had a simple breakfast of coffee and fruit. The only difference in this day was he was eager to get through the morning quiet, so he could finally reconvene with his team and show then that he was, well, not dead. In the middle of his morning meditation however, he heard sirens going off in the city,

He looked up from his calming state, quickly pinpointing the sound to mainly the southeast quadrant of the city. He groaned. "That's where their mission was supposed to take place… did things go haywire again?" he muttered to himself as he got up.

He reattached his blades under his sleeves and cloak, dusting the slightly tattered dark cloak off a bit as he got up. He checked over his person one last time and swore to himself. Not much in the way of dust, just a few vials of burn dust were all he had on him. Oh well guess it would have to do. He took off to the Beacon air docks in a full sprint.

When he arrived there however, he noticed that only one bullhead was around and preparing for takeoff. He sprinted over to it, shouting for it to stop. Thankfully it seemed to him that his shouts were heard over the engines, as the rapidly rising ramp suddenly stopped, and descended once again, allowing him to quickly hop on before the ramp rose once more and snapped shut behind him.

"Whew, that was a close one, thanks for stopping to let me on-" He cut himself off as he turned around, dusting himself off. He was staring face to face with Team JNPR, and their mentor Sanguine.

They mutually stared at each other for a minute, him in surprise, and them in shock.

"Ummm, what?" Nora looked at him quizzically.

"I... we thought you were dead." Sanguine muttered in surprise.

"How… how did you survive… Blake seemed pretty convinced you were gone…" Jaune of all people questioned.

Ren was silent, having only two eyebrows raised far higher than Rex had ever seen them lifted, and Pyrrha was unusually quiet, seeming to be trying to process who had just hopped aboard their bullhead.

Rex awkwardly rubbed the back of his neck. "Well, to answer your question Jaune... I kind of was, but I caught a second break. I was found by Atlas, and they patched me up… thought I guess just patched up would be a bit of an understatement." He gave a halfhearted grin. "I kind of was out of action for more than a week, and had to get rehabilitated for another, I only just got back late last night, I haven't even gotten to see anyone except Ozpin since I arrived." He half lied, not wanting to give away everything at once.

"Interesting. And just how did you managed to survive what most surely was a harrowing and lethal experience?" Sanguine asked.

"Well, truth be told I really shouldn't have survived. But when you fight the person I did, you never expect a second chance if you make a mistake anyways. Thankfully he got sloppy and didn't properly kill me off, I managed to hang onto the last vestiges of life just long enough for Atlas to stumble upon me and repair me to a drastic degree." He tapped his eye a bit as he said this, the glass making a faint clink, which resulted in a small gasp from Pyrrha.

"That's... that's terrible!" Pyrrha cried out. "I've never seen someone have to sacrifice a piece of their humanity like that in order to survive."

"Yes well, given my options this is the least of my problems now. I don't much like it either, but I'll take a bit of glass and metal over difficulty in combat any day." Rex responded.

"If you don't mind me asking." Ren finally spoke up. "Who was it that you were fighting that left you in such a dire state?"

"Well, more white fang then I could count, and one of their higher-ups. The notorious Adam Taurus. Not my first time fighting him, but this time he got the better of me." Rex responded quietly.

"Hmm, I see." Ren responded, seeming content with the answer but also falling into thought.

Rex opted to ignore any further questioning, remembering the urgency of the situation, thankfully the bullhead had been flying into Vale the entire time. "Alright, we can chat about everything later, one thing I need to get out of the way is what is happening? The sirens sound like the ones they save specifically for Grimm warnings, is the city under attack?"

"No idea." Jaune responded. "I redirected the bullhead to the city to figure out what was going on. Seemed more important than the village patrol we were supposed to head to today."

"I approve, good split decision making. Now, let's pop open these doors and see what we can see…" Rex hit a button near the side hatch of the bullhead, letting it slide open and revealing the morning sunlit city passing by below them. He could see smoke pluming up less than a kilometer away from them, on the very far southeast quadrant of the city. "Well, looks like we have a bit of a breach on our hands. And from the looks of it, its going to get out of hand fast. Ill tell you what. Ill hop out here and stop any Grimm trying to make their way further into the city, and reconvene with you all at the source of that smoke if at all possible. You all get there ASAP and see what's going on, with any luck my Team is at the source of this and already working to mitigate the damage. Oh and do me a favor, don't tell them I'm alive if you would, I'd like to have the honor of revealing that to them myself."

"Of course. We can do that." Jaune affirmed. "But… how are you going to get down there without forcing us to stop and delay longer?" he asked.

"Simple, I have a full supply of aura, and a few extra add-ons now, I just jump." Rex replied with a smirk. And before any further questions or objections could be made, he hopped out of the side of the bullhead, entering free fall for 100 meters or so, before digging his quickly extended blades into the wall of a building next to him to slow his fall, still having a hard impact on the concrete below and going into a roll to mitigate the damage to himself. He winced a bit even still. "Ok, maybe not going to do that so much in the future" He muttered to himself as he recovered, shaking the shock from his system. Even with his augments, aura, and slightly slowed descent, that impact packed a wallop. He dusted himself off quickly with one hand, extending his other blade shortly after, and took off to engage the first of the Grimm that were already rounding the corner, time to really get back into the swing of things.


The five of them watched him jump out of the bullhead and land below, with varying levels of shock on their faces, well, shock on all of them but hers. Nora thought that looked amusing, like something she would do, but she couldn't just let him one up her like that right out of the gate, she had to even the score, and the bullhead was nearing the smoking ruin that was becoming more clear to be a blown open tunnel underneath the wall of Vale.

She could see a whole slew of Grimm at the epicenter of it all, surrounding what she could just barely make out to be their sister team RWBY, surrounded by Grimm. A massive King Taijitu exploded out from the recently formed hole in the ground, looking down menacingly on the 4 girls on the ground. This was her chance, she had to do this. The bullhead finally turned just enough for her to have a clear shot at the giant black serpent, and she whipped out Magnihild from her back and extended to hammer form with lightning speed. She could feel her semblance pumping through her body, the excitement in her muscles building. She gave a sly grin that Ren next to her immediately knew was the sign of something crazy, backing away slightly.

"Let's do this!" She shouted, immediately jumping out of the bullhead and firing off 2 rounds from her hammer, throwing it under her to accelerate herself. A moment later, she came rocketing in at the Taijitu, throwing her hammer over her head and slamming down onto the beast with enough force to smash the concrete underneath its head when she forced it into the ground. The force of the blow counteracted any downward force she had from the fall however, and instead of hitting the ground behind it, she froze in the air for the moment, a small shockwave emitting from the impact zone as the great serpent was instantly killed. It slowly began to evaporate as its second half emerged from the hole, furious. It screeched at her, but she just grinned back at the beast, even as other Grimm began flowing out of the hole behind it. This was going to be a fun day.

She quickly back stepped to avoid the Taijitu's head crashing down on her, the fangs finding only concrete. She quickly slammed her hammer horizontally across it's mouth, knocking it to the side in a craze and shattering both of its upper fangs. Quickly switching her weapon back to a grenade launcher, she blasted several rounds into the horde of enemies set before her, watching them explode and evaporate in a matter of seconds. She frowned as her weapon clicked, she had to reload already? But there was just so many more Grimm to kill, she didn't want to have to stop to reload. She gave a small groan and opened her grenade launcher up, stocking it with more and more grenades. While she was doing this the rest of her team finally arrived to help back her and their sister team up. They quickly fanned out, Jaune being left to his lonesome quickly as Ren, Pyrrha, and Sanguine all picked up targets immediately and chased after them. Pyrrha seemed to stay close to Jaune however, keeping herself on the defensive instead of going after larger groups of enemies. She shrugged, more for her, she thought.

It didn't take long for more enemies to rush her, she and Ren teamed up after he took a few out himself. They began to work in tandem, just like they had used to thousands of times before, she laid down a barrage of grenades as Ren rushed forward, using the explosions as cover to close the gap. As the smoke cleared, several Grimm were still standing in front of him, and even more still emerging from the hole in all directions. Ren gave a quick burst of fire from Stormflower, before he made several diagonal strikes through a few Beowolves and Creeps that strayed too close. She came running up behind him as he ducked down, a large wave of Grimm trying to collapse on him. She used him as a springboard, projecting herself several meters in the air, "Hammer SMASH!" She yelled as she came slamming back down to earth, blasting all the Grimm away from them, the concrete underneath cracking and twisting under the force. Thankfully Ren knew exactly what she was going to do, and had quickstepped backwards and put up a small aura barrier to protect himself from the concussive blast.

He gave a swift nod to her, before he took off to engage some more Grimm, Nora followed right behind him. "Wait for me! You can't just take them all!" She shouted after him.

He just gave a calm smirk back to her and he jumped into the fray once again, hacking and slashing into the ranks of Grimm that kept emerging from the hole. Nora was happy that she was going to get to have a lot of fun today.


The minutes seemed to stretch on for hours. Blake had been fighting since they had exploded through the ground and into the streets of downtown Vale. Not the best finish they had ever had to a mission, but also far from the worst, at least this time everyone was alive… She winced a bit at that, and had a small misstep in her form that forced her to jump away from a swiping Beowolf, instead of punishing for the lengthy windup the beast had given the swing.

'Don't think about that right no Belladonna, do what he would want you to do, and stop thinking about it. Be more aggressive, punish every mistake, don't try and go for absolute safety all the time or you will never learn your limits.' She thought to herself. She lunged back at the beast, easily lopping its head off with a quick slash across the exposed neck of the beast. She received no time to rest however, as several Beowolves and an Ursai made to try and surround and enclose her. Maybe it was time to try out something new, test her limits and employ some new strategies.

She clicked the pistol on Gambol Shroud, letting the rounds switch from standard to a burn charge. She slid it out of the cartridge and held it in her hand as they closed in around her. She shut the pistol back, gripping it tightly, and letting them get far closer around her then she ever would have let them before. At the last second, before they struck, she jumped high in the air, leaving a flaming dust clone when she was previously. When the Grimm came mindlessly crashing down onto it, the clone exploded in a fireball, engulfing all of the Grimm in the immediate area and forcing others to back away in fear. Now was her time to strike.

While still in the air, she unleashed a volley of flame charged rounds from Gambol Shroud. The Grimm cowered in fear as fire seemed to rain down on them from the sky, only stopping when she landed on top of one of them, sinking her blade deep in its back, and slashing across the back of the same Ursa that she was standing on. Yanking the blade out quickly while her enemy was still stunned, she hopped from Beowolf to Ursa, to Boarbatusk. Any Grimm that was in her way she cut through before they had a chance to react. "Don't give them a chance to strike and they can't harm you… that's what he always said, and this is what he would do now." She muttered to herself quietly. She stabbed another Beowolf in the face, and slashes another deeply across the chest, not even waiting for them to fall as she moved on to her next victim.

She sank her blades into a particularly large Beowolf, hopping off it's back and dusting herself off as it evaporated in front of her. He heard some clicking behind her however, and when she whirled around, she was faced with a Deathstalker almost as large as the one that all of team JNPR had worked together to take down during initiation. She was partially gripped with fear, she had no idea how to take it down by herself. She couldn't pierce its armor and she didn't have anything like Nora's hammer that had enough force to stun it, nor did she have a good way to get at its stinger unless… she would have to bait out it's attack to get onto it, then figure out a way to latch on without getting thrown off by the wild thrashing that was sure to follow. She really wished she had a partner for this. But a quick survey around informed her that the rest of her team was busy dealing with an Ursa Major, JNPR and their mentor, as well as Sun and Neptune were busy trying to contain the horde at the epicenter of the breach. Several other teams were arriving, including Velvet's team, and some of the teachers, hell even Mercury and Emerald, the foreign students from Haven were there. But if she didn't keep this Deathstalker from running free it would surely move to the others and the defense would begin to crumble before it was fully contained.

She took a deep breath and stepped forward, she had to at least try. She teased it, just out of the reach of its pincers, gaining only a few swipes at her for her attempts to get close. She couldn't seem to bait out the tail swing. It only took her a minute more, but the constant dodging and evasion tactics, while familiar to her, felt like an eternity because she had no way of countering to end the fight. Finally, she got into a position far enough away from the swing of its claws, but close enough to not make the massive scorpion move forward. It swung the tail down, impaling itself into a clone of herself and into the concrete below, getting stuck for a moment. This was just enough time for her to latch onto the stinger as the beast pulled it back out of the ground. She nearly got thrown off in the first few seconds, as it quickly realized it pulled more back up with the stinger than it intended. She wrapped the ribbon on the end of Gambol around the bottom of the stinger, just below the joint between the stinger and tail. She then began hacking away at it, over, and over, and over again. The beast's resurging thrashing with each successful swing made the next that much harder, but she powered on.

Eventually her efforts were rewarded, and the stinger finally lopped itself off, and cracked and impaled itself into the beast. However, while it pierced the armour, it wasn't a deep enough plunge to kill the beast immediately, instead the beast went into a deadly rage of screeching and thrashing. Her ribbon no longer had a large bulb to keep herself steady, and slipped off the tail in a matter of seconds, she was sent crashing into a nearby wall, dazed and hurting. The Deathstalker, thrashed about, drawing the attention of Sun and Yang.

"Blake!" They shouted in unison, Yang abandoning the rapidly falling Ursa Major, and Sun leaving his position at the Breach. The two of them put themselves in the way of the thrashing Deathstalker, Yang and Sun working quickly to put the thrashing beast down, Sun boosting Yang over the wild claws and allowing her to deliver a finishing blow onto the stinger, plunging it deep enough into the head of the scorpion to make its thrashing finally cease. She hopped down from the rapidly disintegrating carcass and rushed over to her teammate, were Sun was already crouched down, checking on her.

"Blake, are you alright?" Sun's hazy hand waved in front of her vision. She was dazed. She didn't think anything was broken. Nothing felt like it was broken. After a moment her aura managed to kick in, righting her vision and snapping her back to her alerted state once again. She got up carefully, with the help of both of them.

"That was really impressive that you managed to take on that Deathstalker by yourself, Im even more amazed that cats really do seem to have nine lives. That hit into the wall looked like it hurt!" Yang joked slightly.

She wanted to groan, that this wasn't the time for jokes, but really this was an excellent time to try and lighten the mood somewhat, but they still had a job to do, and even though she was still slightly jarred, she would have to ignore it and keep going…until she finally looked into the sky, and saw a massive ship slowly floating over the Breach sight, Atlesian Knights swarming down in droves. They were already rapidly clearing the streets of remaining Grimm, and Glynda made a very audible crack with her riding crop, forcing the shattered concrete back over the breach, and sealing it away.

Everyone seemed to breath out a massive sigh of relief in unison. It was over, finally. All their effort was worth their while. She finally was able to relax; this day had been more then she could have ever expected from their mission.


The four members of team RWBY stood looking out over the city of Vale, the sunset casting long shadows over some parts, and leaving others in a golden hue.

"Well, I'd say that's a job well done team!" Ruby said cheerily.

"That is such an understatement and you know it." Weiss retorted.

"I mean, we still don't know why the White Fang were in those tunnels… or why they had such an insane plan in the first place." Blake said.

"Yeah, but we stopped them, and we've put Torchwick behind bars. I would say that's a pretty good nail in the coffin right there." Yang said.

Ahh Torchwick, it felt good to deliver that kick to his face on the train. It felt even better to Blake that his crime spree was over.

"And look on the bright side, I think this proves that we are more than ready for the tournament in a week's time." Weiss said.

"True, and, if he were here… I think Rex would be proud of us for what we managed to accomplish today." Blake said somewhat sadly.

"Yeah, we did learn a lot from him…" Ruby trailed off. "But that's not the important thing, the important thing is that we aren't putting his work to waste! We can only get better from here, and we can prove that by winning the tournament!" She piped up, cheery once more.

"Yeah!" Yang said in ascent. "…After we sleep. Today was tiring," She gave a yawn as she said this.

"Yes, please" Weiss said.

"Agreed." Blake murmured.

Ruby's scroll suddenly vibrated, and she pulled it out quickly reading the message. "Looks like we can't sleep quite yet team, Ozpin wants to talk to us. He says its urgent."

The four of them just sighed, and trudged their way to Ozpin's office, their rest would have to wait.


Ozpin looked at them expectantly as the four of them entered his office. Blake was too tired to try and read his facial features, a simple smile was all she could make out, she did her best to look attentive however. An elbow to the side would surely come from Weiss if anyone was slouching when talking with Ozpin.

"It's good to see you four this evening." Ozpin began. "Now, normally I would give a formal debriefing from a mission as interesting and hectic as yours turned out to be, but I can see the bags forming under your eyes and after a day of fighting you all just want to go to bed, don't you?"

The four of them nodded in affirmation, sleep was on all of their minds at the moment.

"Well I can't just ignore it outright because I do have some things I need to tell you, first excellent work. While it was shaky in terms of the actual mission in the end, Bartholomew has already given me a full report of the mission, and I will say you all more than exceeded expectations." Ozpin continued.

"We had… a great teacher." Weiss said quietly. "We are just trying to show that his sacrifice was not in vain."

"And indeed you are doing an admirable job of showing it. I have no doubt you all will be top contenders for the Vytal Festival Tournament with skill such as yours. And that brings me to my other topic for the evening. Your mentor. I know you may not like it, but there must be mentors assigned to all teams for the tournament. As such we have found a… suitable replacement." Ozpin said.

The elevator opened quietly behind them, were it not for her Faunus hearing, Blake wouldn't have even known it had opened at all, nor would she have heard the furtive clicking of boots lightly treading on the glass floor behind them. Blake's eyes widened, those heel clicks sounded dangerously familiar to her. They weren't the clicks of high heels or combat boots, those were old fashioned leather boots, she knew it just by the sound. She didn't want to believe it; she knew only one person in all of Beacon who wore boots of that type.

"And if you will turn around, you may meet him." Ozpin said with a smile.

Blake, as well as the other three members of her team, snapped around with lightning speed. Dark leather boots, black combat pants, navy shirt hidden behind a tattered black backed and white inside cloak. His hair was shorter than before, only the top had any real length to it. He had a small smile on his face, the only thing that set her off was the long scar down the right side of his face, from his chin to above his eye. His steel grey eyes looked a slight bit bluer than before. She wanted to scream, cry, yell at him all at the same time.

"Evening girls. I'm… I'm back." He said as calmly as he could, but Blake could detect a hint of nervousness in his voice.

Ruby was the first to react, speeding over to him and latching onto him like a leech. "You're alive!" she squealed.

Rex seemed surprised at the attack by the youngest member of the team, managing to free one hand from her death-grip and ruffle her hair lightly. "Good to see you too Ruby." He said happily.

Yang and Weiss both hesitantly walked towards him. "Your alive… but… how?" Weiss asked.

"Long story short, Atlas salvaged my dying body and fixed me up." Rex said quietly. "Ive been out of it for the past two weeks."

"I see, and… let me guess, in typical Atlas fashion, you weren't allowed to contact us, were you?" Yang asked.

Rex nodded. "Until yesterday, I didn't even have a scroll, and even then it was locked out of most all functions." He said sadly. "Believe me, if I could have you all would've been the first to know I was alive and kicking. I just wish I could've been there sooner. Unfortunately, I showed up at the breach after most everyone had packed out, only a handful of people and soldiers were there when I had finished cleaning out the city of any spare Grimm. I'm sorry it had to come to playing with your hearts. I hope you can forgive me for that."

Rex looked up from the three in front of him, and Blake realized he was staring at her now. She had yet to move, or do anything really, since she had turned around. "And Blake, what about you, can you forgive me? It must have hurt you the worst." Rex said quietly. Ruby finally slipped off of Rex's arm, sitting on the floor. Her other three teammates and Rex silently watched her as she slowly walked over to them. He heels clicked on the glass with each step, until she came to a stop in from of him. She stood there, looking into his eyes. She could make out the glassy robotic look of the one with the scar through it, and wanted to know more, but that would best be saved for somewhere else. He looked far older just looking back at her, like he had aged several years in two weeks.

She had a thousand different answers to give him for how she felt right now, ranging from livid to overjoyed. She could only think of one way to answer him that would cover both adequately. She slapped him across the face, leaving a red mark where she hit on his right cheek. "Don't ever do this to me again… but I forgive you." Tears welled up in her eyes, and she hugged him immediately after.

"I promise; I won't ever let this happen again." Rex responded, embracing her back.

Ruby stood back up next to Weiss and Yang. "Uuuuh, is it getting awkward yet?"

Yang looked around for a clock, eventually realizing the massive one in Ozpin's office existed. "3..2..1.. Ok now it's getting awkward." She mumbled, before turning to a sneer. "And I am so going to use this against Blake."

"Oh come on, let her have this Yang, she's been working harder than any of us." Weiss retorted.

Yang sighed. "Yeah, your right… but I'm still totally keeping this on the backburner."

"I guess it can't be helped" Weiss muttered.

Blake could hear the entire conversation but couldn't care less. She was just happy things were looking up again. And maybe tonight she could get some answers on the many questions she had.


Rex sat in the rooftop that night, as he usually did. Contemplating the day's events like he usually did. Today was a good day, he had helped protect the city, gotten himself situated back in Beacon, and been finally reunited with his team, albeit that slap Blake had given him had smarted, but he probably deserved that when he really thought about it.

He was surprised when a familiar face came and sat next to him, her furtive approach unheard by him until she was extremely close. "Oh, hey Blake. I figured you would be passed out by now after everything that happened today." He said quietly, looking at her as she sat down.

She looked beautiful in the pale moonlight. Her skin reflecting the faint glow, and her eyes holding a small image of the moon in each iris. She was in her yukata, having seemed to come up here without bothering to change. Her hair blew gently to the side in the night wind.

"Can't sleep. I had too many questions, and I know where you hang out every night, so naturally I just wandered up here… And… I brought you something." She held his satchel up, passing it to him.

"Oh, wow thank you!" He said setting it in front of him and sifting through his things quietly, checking to make sure everything was there. "Im amazed you kept everything. I kind of figured it would get lost and forgotten on the wayside if worse came to worse.

She locked eyes with I'm when he looked up. "Never. I would never throw that away, or anything in it. Especially not after going through it."

"Ah, so you did look through it… You went through everything, didn't you?" He asked.

"Yes, I did. I didn't want to, but my curiosity got the better of me in the end." Blake said quietly. "I'm sorry if you didn't want me to do that."

"No no. I was honestly hoping you would. This is rightfully your things should I ever have to part ways with it. You were only doing what was best, and from the piecemeal of videos I was given to sum up what happened today, as well as all the training data I looked over, you have more than put it to good use. I'm proud of you for that." He said.

He could make out a faint blush form on her cheeks from his praise. "I only did what I would have thought you wanted me to do. And in the end it paid off."

"Speaking of which…" he pulled out a little blue notebook, the same one she had looked through a week prior. "You looked through everything, how much of this did you end up reading through."

"Every single page, some multiple times." Blake replied evenly.

"I see, so that means you read my personal thoughts on the four of you, didn't you?" He asked.

She blushed again. "Yes, I did. And that's something that's been bugging me a bit ever since. I never expected for you to have those feelings for me. I had just never really considered it before. Then I read it and your words were so sincere and caring… I didn't really know how to react at first."

"Ah. I see. I understand Blake, don't worry about it." He said, downplaying it pre-emptively.

"Wait. Im not finished." She said. He looked up at her in surprise. Tilting his head slightly.

"I didn't know how to react at first." She said. "But knowing that you cared that much for me gave me the drive to get back on my feet and actually do something again. To be honest, I had thought that love just wasn't something for me. I never felt much for Adam after he changed for the worse, and Sun never felt like he cared as much for me on a deeper level so much as a superficial one. At least, he doesn't seem to on the same level you do. And, I think because of that, I've always gravitated towards you whenever I needed guidance, help or really anything I wasn't sure about." She sighed. "Oh dammit I went off on a tangent… what I mean to say is this: I want to give you the chance. You are the only person I think I could ever truly love. It will be hard, but there's no one else I would rather give it a shot with. So please, give me the chance as well, I know im difficult at times too, but we have both been through far worse, and I think this will work." She gulped a bit at the end, nervous herself.

"Wow, that was my biggest fear, was that the feeling wasn't mutual in any way. Really the biggest problem was getting both of us to sit down and talk about it… I want this to happen Blake, nothing about your personality would ever dissuade me from trying. So, let's start now. Maybe keep it under wraps from everyone else if we can. We can reveal everything to them when we've worked through the kinks in the path, but I don't know that there will be many of those now. We've been through too much, both together and apart." He responded.

She smiled. "Right as always. Then starting right now," She leaned in close, her lips gently meeting his.

Rex was surprised at first, but leaned into the kiss, her lips warm and soft. After a minute She pulled back, a small smile on her face. "Right now, we try and make this work as one, instead of two paths close together." She said.

"Agreed." He replied. "And I look forward to every minute of it."

She scooted close to him, leaning on his shoulder and interlacing their fingers. Behind them, a certain blonde had also been awake, and had snuck up behind Blake not long after. She gave a quiet fist pump in victory as she watched them kiss, before furtively going back down to their dorm, making sure not to disturb anything along the way that would alert them to her presence.

Neither of them ever noticed her, trapped in their own little bubble, content for once to just be in one another's presence, and letting their other cares and worries drift away for a short time, as they watched the moon rise over Beacon tower.


A/N: Hello everyone once again. I really enjoyed writing this chapter, as this is the real beginning of the actual Romance planned in this. Granted there is still a lot of story to go mind you. This will not be finished for a while, as i intend for this story to expand long after the events of Volume three. Speaking of which, on that account, With the announcement date of Volume 4, besides the outfits, i wont be changing or adjusting anything about my planned story unless it fits conveniently into my story somehow. So after Volume 3, all canon events that come with the release fo Volume 4 in the fall (this story will still be in progress when it releases) will not occur in this story. Just getting that out of the way. Beyond that once again leave a review on what you liked, what you hope to see, any more Points of View i could to from any characters, as well as what i could do better. I made some very subtle hints as to future villains i have created for this story in this and the previous chapter. if you can figure out who or what then good on you , let me know if you think you got it. Other than that, have a great week everyone!