2 Days Before the Outbreak

Sun was glad that Blake was back. He was overjoyed to hear that she had broken the hypnosis that psycho, Adam, had her under. He was happy for her.

But he couldn't help but be disappointed by the circumstances. He wasn't angry or depressed. But he was disappointed.

"Hey, man, you okay?"

"Huh? What?" Sun was snapped out of his trance. He and his team were stood near the wall of the dining hall, waiting for a good time to take up the Hickory brothers' offer of barbeque, when they spied Blake walking in with Yang, Weiss, and a Faunus kid.

"You wanna talk about it?" Neptune asked him, Scarlet and Sage backing him.

The Faunus put on his usual, carefree image. "Heh heh. What's there to talk about? I'm great." He gave an overcompensating thumbs up.

His team didn't buy it.

"Y'know," Scarlet jumped in, "it's okay to be upset."

"Who's upset?" Sun kept insisting. "What do I have to be upset about?"

"It's okay to wish you and Blake had gotten back together," Sage assured his leader and friend. "You two had a good thing going before everything went down."

Sun pulled back his facade. "Guys, I'm fine. It just wasn't in the cards. I really don't wanna get into it."

His teammates glanced to one another.

"Whatever you say, man," Neptune replied. "Just know that we're here for you."

Sage chimed in, addressing his whole team "And also know that we have an hour and a half until we need to be loaded up and on the airship to Vale. So if you want a plate of food, now's the time."

Sun took a deep breath and let his confident persona take over again, for real this time. Vacuo barbecue and taking down a White Fang lieutenant. That should get my mind off things.


4 Days After the Outbreak

"How did this happen?" Ruby demanded. "How did it get through our screenings?"

"I don't know," Jaune answered.

The two were stood outside the line of quarantined cells. Ren and his physicians were inside them, sealed in hazmat suits, taking diagnostics on the infected patients.

"It was a routine mission," Jaune explained. "They were taking down a lieutenant. He wasn't a major player. He was just causing trouble for deserters. He was dead and they were on their way back within forty-eight hours of touchdown in Vale. We screened them. They showed no signs of symptoms we've been monitoring for or pathogens we're unfamiliar with. Seventy-two hours later, they became symptomatic. Another twenty-four after that, it's getting bad."

"Is it the same one from the Devil's House?" the scarlet Huntress asked.

"We don't know, yet. Yang and Blake are on their way now to confirm or deny. But I hope to God it's not."

"No…" the two leading Huntsmen heard from behind them.

They turned to see exactly who they were waiting on, led here by Nora. Weiss came along as well.

Blake was in frozen shock, her eyes unblinking and her ears stiffened and erect. "No…" she muttered before her knees gave out, Yang catching her before she could fall.

Yang's expression wasn't much better. The entire Devil's House experience replayed in her head as she looked upon the weezing bodies, their skin mottled with small black splotches and a light, black fog emanating from their ears and mouths.

"That's it," she confirmed.

It felt as if gravity had doubled upon everyone hearing those words.

"Why are only three of them affected?" Weiss asked after a moment.

"That's the elephant in the room," Ruby replied. "Why is he okay?"

Behind the glass of the last cell to the right, Sun was stood, leaning against his palms on the glass. His skin was spotless. His eyes were normal. He was the image of health.

He was panicked.

"Blake!" he cried out from inside, upon seeing her arrive. "What's going on? They're not telling me anything! Yang! Weiss?" He started pounding on the glass. "What's wrong with my team?" He moved to the wall between him and the next cell. He banged against it. "Neptune! Scarlet! Sage! Talk to me, guys! Please! Talk to me!"


9 Days After the Outbreak

"Found anything?" Yang asked her new combat partner, voice muffled under her respirator.

"Nothing," Weiss stated as she finished scanning through the files on the local server for the White Fang. "I found a folder titled 'Grimm's Breath.' But it's been wiped clean. No trace I can find of what was in it. Might be worth taking the machine. I'm sure someone can dig them up." She started unplugging the PC. "Anything in the physical files?"

"No." Yang reported. "I found some ash on the floor. Somebody burned something. Probably exactly what we're looking for."

"How long until their reinforcements show up?"

"Not long. Let's clear out and hit the next outpost. We've gotta find something that can help us, and we've gotta find it fast."


13 Days After the Outbreak

"How many?" Nora asked.

Jaune stared off at the entire section of the medical platform designated for quarantine. "Flynt, Octavia, and Yatsuhashi round the list out to thirty confirmed cases of Grimm's Breath."

"Grimm's Breath?"

"That's all we've found on it: the name. Scary shit. And we still don't know how it originates. We can't see it in the bloodstream until the symptoms start to show. We assume it's airborne, based on Yang's report of the Devil's House. But, even with mandatory usage of respirators in the field, we're still getting infections. To be safe, we're quarantining entire teams when one shows. But that means we have less field operatives searching for answers. And they and our medical team are still coming up empty-handed, as is."

"Jaune, we'll find something," Nora assured him. "We've survived worse before."

"Have we?" Jaune asked.

She didn't have a definitive answer for him.

"That's not why I called you, though," he changed the subject, "not just for me to unload my worries onto you."

"What is it?" the redhead asked.

"Ren's working himself to the bone trying to figure this thing out. I appreciate his devotion, but he's slowly killing himself. Can you try talking him into some sleep? Maybe a full meal & a shower? He's not listening to me. He might for you."

Nora's gaze drifted off to whatever point Jaune's was on before. "I'll do what I can, but Ren doesn't give up on something easily."

"Thanks, Nora."

As if summoned, Ren marched up, disheveled & unshaven. "Coco and Fox started showing."

There was a long beat of silence as the information sank in.

"We're up to thirty-two confirmed cases."


17 Days After the Outbreak

"Do you want to end up like your friend?!"

Weiss could hear her blonde teammate carry out the interrogation in the other room, as she scanned through the outpost's files.

The last week had been, day in-day out, the same. They'd hit an outpost & turn the place upside down to find a cure for the Grimm's Breath epidemic. They'd report what minuscule findings they'd get and hear who contracted the sickness that day. When the number hit twenty, Yang started questioning the officers personally.

They were at forty-four confirmed cases now.

Weiss hated that they'd resorted to this, but they'd come up with nothing else any other way. So she'd simply step out of the room and let Yang work.

"I killed him and I killed every one of you mother fuckers from here to Vacuo who's given me nothing! You'll just be another on the pile to me!"

The canine lieutenant screamed. He panted. There was a strained stutter. "W-w-why don't… y-you join me?"

There was a struggle.

Weiss drew her sword and charged into the next room.

A gunshot.

She entered the room to find the Faunus slumping over to the ground. The top half of his skull was missing.

Yang was readjusting her respirator to her face, Ember Celica still smoking.

"Are you okay?" Weiss asked.

Yang refastened her mask and took a breath. "Yeah. Yeah I'm okay. He tried to pull my mask off. Made me kill him before I could learn anything."

Weiss lowered her blade as something clicked. "Maybe he did tell us something after all."


18 Days After the Outbreak

"He's infected," Ren reported.

He was finally taking Nora's advice to get a full night of sleep when Weiss and Yang showed up with the corpse and a theory. He dutifully performed the autopsy and some additional testing before presenting his findings to the panel of Ruby, Jaune, Nora, Weiss, and Yang.

"I found the same viral anomaly in his blood as I did with samples from Team SSSN."

"I thought he must've been," Weiss stated, confirming her theory. "Why else go for the mask?"

"So they saw us coming and sacrificed one of their own to get to us?" Jaune guessed.

"I don't think it's that simple," Ren replied. "We were wondering why there were some Huntsmen who weren't infected when the rest of their team was. What's the one similarity between all of them?"

Yang went over in her mind the few off the top of her head: Sun, Velvet, Neon…

"They're all Faunus," Weiss answered first.

Ren nodded. "They are infected. They're just immune to the symptoms. Faunus can carry for the virus, but it's designed to only affect humans."

"But what about Teams NDGO and BRNZ?" Nora asked. "There aren't any Faunus on their teams."

"Their last missions before infection were rescuing Faunus refugees," Jaune reported. "The White Fang could be infecting their whole force with this thing as we speak, turning every soldier into a bioweapon."

Yang remembered back to what they found in the Devil's House. "Adam said something about Nari's brother being a failure. He was symptomatic."

"He's been perfecting it to get it to where it is now," Weiss added. "And I've heard what they can become from Yang's report of the Killer Bee mission."

"That's not even the scariest part here," Ren warned. "If NDGO and BRNZ were infected by refugees who carried the virus-"

"Then our entire Faunus population could be infected," Ruby spoke up from the back of the room.

Jaune turned to her. "You've been quiet 'til now. What're you thinking?"

Everyone turned to hear what she had to say.

"I think we need to put the Sanctuary under lockdown. Quarantine all Faunus to that platform until we know how to combat this thing."

No one liked the idea, but no one had a better one.


19 Days After the Outbreak

Yang was there when the lockdown took effect. She stood by as armed Huntsmen in gas masks rounded up all of the Faunus who hadn't already been quarantined, herded them to the cramped Sanctuary platform, and locked the gates behind them.

Yang was there because Blake was among them. She went ahead to try and see her before she'd lose the ability to.

She wasn't soon enough.

The order was carried out quickly. A hold of the hand and a promise everything was going to be okay was all she had time for before Cardin, of all people, stepped in and pulled her away off of the platform.

As she was escorted away, she built up the guts to say it, the sentence she'd felt but never spoken. The sounds of the lockdown drowned out the words. The mask concealed her lips.

By noon of the day after the order was given, the Faunus population was sealed off from the rest of New Beacon. Yang stood by and watched as the future became more and more unknown.


21 Days After the Outbreak

It had been three weeks since Team SSSN had returned from a routine mission in Vale.

It had been three weeks since Sun had doomed his team. That's where his mind kept taking him. He knew it wasn't rational, but he couldn't help but feel guilty.

They were sick, probably dying, while he sat in perfect health.

Sun knocked on the wall between him and his closest teammate. "Neptune… I don't know if you can hear me, but I thought I'd take you up on that offer."

No response.

"You guys were right. I was upset. I was upset about Blake. I figure now's as good a time as any to get it off my chest."

No response.

"I've bounced between plenty of women in my time, even after the shit went down. May, Nebula, Velvet, Neon." He laughed. "Oh man. Remember that one? I was not prepared for that girl."

No response.

"I was good at flirting. Not so good at commitment. But Blake... there was something about her, y'know? We weren't together a long time. A couple of months. And we didn't get very far. I let her set the pace. But something about us… it felt right. I've always been a runaway, but she gave me something to stick around for."

Sun chuckled again. "All this time later, she's still got me spouting off this poetic shit like fuckin' Romeo and Juliet. Sounds like a line you'd come up with."

No response.

"Y'know, even back then, I always had a feeling this would happen. I hoped what we had would be strong enough… But I always had a feeling she'd be drawn to Yang in the end."

He'd been holding back the feelings since Blake showed up at New Beacon four months ago. Finally those pent up emotions let themselves be known.

"I just… when she came back, I hoped we'd get a second chance. I hate being hung up on some girl from nine years ago like a fucking teenager. But I hoped… I hoped I was wrong all those years ago."

The raw emotion died down, transforming into something more solemn. "But then I saw the two of them walk into the Sanctuary like that. And I'm happy for them. The shit I've been through is anthills compared to theirs. They deserve to be happy. And I'm happy for them. But I'm not happy."

No response.

"Thanks for being there, man."

Sun suddenly saw Ren appear in his peripheral, leading several Huntsmen past his window; six of them, all in hazmat suits. Two by two, they pulled along three empty stretchers. They were going towards his teammates' cells.

The team leader leaped to his feet and rushed to the window to try and get a better look.

"Neptune!" He called out. "You okay?" Scarlet? Sage!"

No response.

"Guys! Talk to me! Ren! Are my friends okay?"

It was some time before they passed by his window again with the stretchers.

This time, they weren't empty.

Sun's heart sank when he saw the three sealed body bags being wheeled off. Ren lagged behind them and stopped in front of Sun's door. The expression on his face said all he needed to.

Sun's gaze lowered as everything set in.

Scarlet David.

Sage Ayana.

Neptune Vasilias.

"AAAAARRRRGH!" Sun let loose an anguished shout. He turned to the wall of his cell and slammed his fists into it, punching until his knuckles bled.

The pain could not compare.

A/N: I'd be lying if I said my choices with Sun weren't inspired by the reactions to Volume 6 from people who shipped Blake and Sun. They had a good thing. It's natural to wish it would've played out differently. I admittedly have been more subscribed to Blake and Yang since Volume 2, hence my choices with them in my works. But after seeing how Black Sun fans felt after Volume 6, I kept thinking, 'How would Sun feel?'

It's one of my favorite improvised additions to this story so far.

Anyway, I'm open to criticism, but I'll request that it be contructive (What can I improve? What am I doing well with?). And I will request that the criticism not be based solely on which ship I decided to go with. That doesn't really help my writing skills develop... or my decision to feature said ship. (I'm definitely not speaking from experience here.)