A/N: K, so I wrote this while listening to 'Wings' by Jeff Williams from the RWBY Soundtrack, (while in the middle of class. Sue me. .-.) so apologies if the chapter seems a little gushy XD. Also, if I don't update soon, it will be because my angry RenxNora-shipping friends threw me out of the window in our high school. Enjoy!

-Rafen

Black Dragon

Chapter 9: Dulce et Decorum Est-Part 2

"Bella gerant alii. Tu felix Atlas, nube." (Let others wage war. You, fortunate Atlas, marry.) –King Matthias the Lionhearted, 213 AD

Her

Wow. That was…a thing. I can't figure out where I got the courage to kiss Ren from, but I certainly like it. That date was amazing, even if the waiter was a little stuffy. Oh, well. As a side note, I saw around twenty people there that were or are on a White Fang hit list. …It's probably not a good idea to go there too often…

I sit there on my bed for a while, thinking. It's not too late in the night, and I really want to pay back Ren for the dinner. I turn on his laptop on his desk, thanking the gods that he doesn't have a password on the thing. I ignore his large library of games, instead opening up Horitech Designs.

The blueprints for a few new ideas are there, and I quickly flip through them all. I decide not to use the helmet, seeing as it totally didn't go with his flak jacket design. However, the rest of them seemed to be pretty doable. I wonder if the forge is still open right now?

I plug my scroll into his laptop, downloading the blueprints with a light ping. It takes less than a minute for the interface, proving to me the advantages of Horizon Electronics over Fruitcup. Honestly, that stuff is just overpriced garbage. Then there's the fact that Fruitcup uses underpaid Faunus labour…

Okay, in my defence, I never actually killed anyone while raiding their factories. Granted, I blew up a few generators, but I don't think many people got irradiated from that…

I open the door to our dorm, scroll tucked in one arm and a concealed Gambol Shroud in the other. I had already changed back into my normal clothes, the black sleeveless dress seeming a little too formal for a jaunt to the forge.

I've got half an hour until Ren gets back, so I resolve to make the most of it. I sprint off to the foundry, thoughts of my dreamy partner filling my mind. I breeze past a pair of Faunus being bullied by some assholes, and I decide to intercede just a little. Just as one guy is about to throw a punch, I go ahead and 'accidentally' trip on him. Of course, with my repertoire of dirty tricks from Adam, it's him that falls rather than me. The two Faunus run while the guys' backs are turned, and I give them a little salute before faking apologies to the fallen bully.

My good deed for the day done, I continue on my way. There's a small crowd congregated in the cafeteria, and I can hear cries of 'March on Menagerie' and 'Death to the Fang'. Oh dear. This is escalating faster than I thought.

I start jogging, these protests and mobs giving even more reason to be prepared. We haven't yet started work on new gear for me, but I can tell that we'll need to do it quickly.

I walk into the forge, which thank the gods was still open. There's nobody working there, but it's nothing major. Most of the machines here are automated, anyways, and I'm good enough to be able to do this myself.

I plug my scroll in to the moulder, the form rearranging itself via some form of techno-sorcery. Okay, fine. Not as much tech-sorcery as nanobots, but close enough. I select the shoulder plate file, and a few kilos of molten titanium come pouring in from above. I then select a vial of blue Dust, for protection against Aura-based attacks. I add to that a small bit of my own special blast-dampening mix, spreading it across the forming pauldrons in an even layer. Another mass of titanium covers it up, and the machine blast-cools the armour with a spurt of nitrogen.

I repeat the same for the other pauldron, making sure not to add too much Dust and accidentally cause a fission reaction. Honestly, why the hell are they letting teenagers handle something so unstable? I mean, I'm fine with it, but then there are the idiots like Cardin…

Even with small quantities of Dust like this, the entire room would be levelled. Imagine if someone accidentally set off a few tonnes of it! A city could be wiped straight off the map, a nation crippled.

I wipe these thoughts from my mind as a quiet tone from the machine signals the armour's completion. A pair of steel grey shoulder plates is ejected, landing softly in a cushioned receptacle. I pick them up one at a time, placing them inside the painter and thinking for a moment. Now I know he wanted mostly green, but personally I think a bit of black would work wonders. Then there's the question of camouflage, with black being more efficient unless we're in a forest…

I make up my mind, punching in my selection with a little smirk on my face. The machine starts up, rotating nozzles spraying the Dust-infused paint in even coats. It bases the plates with grey first, following it up with a few layers of black. I made sure to keep the profile of the armour low, to reduce radar and infrared signature. The black coating also helps, I having used a bit of black Dust to enhance evasion. It's finished off with a few streaks of green, just to keep Ren happy and to improve protection.

Another, slightly higher tone is emitted and the plates pop out. The whole thing took about twenty minutes, a testament to the efficiency of modern technology and the willingness of Beacon to spend all that is humanly possible and then some. I can't help but feel bad that I'm here to take advantage of this, while there's Faunus elsewhere that are being used to make these machines. But I'm doing this for our survival, not for any selfish reason. Nope, I'm definitely not doing this to get Ren to like me better…

This done, I happily take the plates and walk back to the dorm. Oh, Ren is just going to love this. Now all I need to do is find some way to package it…

I stop by the Academy store, purchasing a Beacon t-shirt in what seems to be his size and wrapping the shoulder pads in it. The pauldrons are light enough to carry comfortably, and small enough that it's not too obvious under the thin fabric. I grab a bit of spare green ribbon, tying the package off with a flourish.

I've still got five minutes before Ren gets back, so I quickly run up to the room. I swipe my Scroll without paying much attention, and dash to my desk with my eyes on the package. A gift isn't complete without a card, as far as I know, and I hurriedly slip out a piece of paper and pull out a marker.

I scrawl a quick message on the paper, thanking him for the dinner and hinting at the gift. I messily doodle my signature underneath, and after a bit of thought seal it with a light kiss. There's still a bit of lipstick on me, so it leaves a rosy image next to my writing. I fold the paper in half, and on the reverse draw a quick and shoddy approximation of a black Lotus flower on it. That is his symbol, right?

I hear a knock on the door followed by the beep of the lock and I act swiftly. I place the gift on his desk with utter (in my opinion) precision, then practically leap onto my bed with a book in hand. I flip open to my bookmark, hastily pretending to be deep in thought. The door slides open slowly, and I do my best to look like I didn't just spend the past half-hour making a gift for my partner.

A distinctly feminine laugh resounds through the air, and I look up in confusion. There's a flash of red embraced by black and yellow, and I do my best not to give a little smile. It seems like Pyrrha and Jaune's little date turned out better than they expected, judging from the redhead's lilting laughter and Arc's nervous grin.

I pretend not to be watching as Pyrrha gives Jaune a little kiss and skips away, our glorious leader standing there with a face as red as his partner's. Okay, now that's just adorable.

Pyrrha happily goes out the door, saying something about needing to talk to Weiss, and Jaune makes a beeline for the washroom, leaving me all alone in the room. I close my book with a sigh, looking absentmindedly out the window and wondering when Ren will return. It's been a little more than forty-five minutes now, and he's still not back yet. Perhaps he got delayed?

My overactive imagination starts dreaming up ways that Ren could be slowed, ranging from traffic to getting attacked by Grimm. Much to my chagrin, the latter option seems to be much more prevalent in my mind. I fight it back, though, futilely trying to convince myself that nothing's wrong.

When the door beeps, it takes all of my effort not to throw myself at it and shower it with kisses. Instead, I calmly walk over and pick my book back up, resuming where I left off. It slides open, and I pretend to be lost in my book while barely looking up through my peripherals. I see Ren walk over to his desk after giving me a short nod, examining the gift and opening the card. I see him reading the message, and he does a double take at the 'sealed with a kiss'.

His cheeks go red, but he continues to unwrap the present. He carefully undoes the bow, unfolding the shirt and holding up the armour plates to admire with a small gasp.

I look up hesitantly, him still in shock.

"Uh…d-d-do you like it? Sorry if the colour's a little off…"

He turns around, a wide smile on his face. Before I know it, he embraces me in a little hug, crossing the distance between us in a blink of an eye and a beat of the heart.

"Blake, I love it. Thank you so, so much…"

My eyes go wide for a second as he hugs me, my instincts telling me to resist and run away. My brain, on the other hand, rolls its figurative eyes and tells my instincts to go die in a hole as I relax and just enjoy the feeling of his arms around my body.

He's warm, and I can feel the hints of tightly wound muscles under his charcoal suit. I die just a little bit inside, and I want to be here forever. I close my eyes, taking a deep breath and burying my face in his shoulder. It's so romantic, even though I doubt he thinks of it that way. I don't care, though. For now, the world can end all around me and I don't think I'd notice.

"Aaaaawwwww!"

Ren and I immediately let go of each other, glancing at the door with horrified and slightly embarrassed looks on either of our faces. The portal is open, and an evilly grinning Pyrrha is on the other side. Jaune pokes his head out of the bathroom, the same evil smirk on his face. I shoot him a glare of pure loathing, and he lets out a loud EEP before ducking back in.

As soon as the bathroom door slams shut, we start cracking up.

"Who could have known he could make such a…er…feminine sound?"

Pyrrha is laughing the hardest, surprisingly, although she does try to defend him for about a second before breaking up into giggles.

"Oh, come on. It wasn't that girly, was it…? Okay, yeah it was."

We eventually let Jaune out of the bathroom, convincing him to exit after promising not to kill him. I had my fingers crossed behind my back as I said that…not like anyone else knew. For the record, I totally wasn't gonna kill him. Granted, I definitely felt like maiming him just a little for interrupting my private time with Ren, but with his partner in the room in might not have been the best idea.

Wow. I really need to stop reading those romantic novels.

One week later…

"Alright class, so remember! Tomorrow, we will be going on a field trip to the forest of Forever Fall, so wake up early and pack your weapons! Class dismissed."

We walk out of Professor Peach's Biology class, our minds still trying to understand the drivel that he spouted about stigmas and ventricles. Ren seemed to comprehend most of it, although judging from the little doodles that he made in the margins of his notes he was as bored as the rest of the class.

Aside from the teacher's standard load of bullshit, however, I managed to retain some approximation of consciousness. Or, rather, I managed to stay awake long enough to catch the words 'tomorrow' and 'field trip'. For the majority of the class, however, I had my eye on a certain corner of the room. More specifically, team CRDL. Aside from the standard Faunus-bashing that came from them, the bunch of thick-skulled losers seemed to just love bullying Pyrrha and Jaune. …Okay, mostly just Jaune. Pyrrha got pulled in whenever she tried to defend her knight in shining armour, usually throwing off another of Cardin's hairbrained schemes to shove him in a locker.

The other night, however, I overheard Pyrrha and Jaune having a rather private moment on the roof. Not the 'romantic' private, but the more 'this is a serious situation and I don't know if we can handle this anymore' kind of private. In my defence, Jaune is pretty damn loud when he's moaning self-piteously. I can't judge him, of course, seeing as Ren and I both didn't really make it into Beacon. Pyrrha definitely did, however, but she seemed to take Arc's big announcement pretty well.

Of course, Jaune neglected to take into account the fact that team CRDL's room is almost directly under their little section of roof. I usually took the one above the library, in order to avoid difficult situations such as this one. But as for Jaune, no such luck. He and Cardin appeared to become best of friends over the past few days, although their relationship appeared to be remarkably similar to that of slave and master, respectively.

Judging from my experience in that line of work, I'd have to say a certain plate-armoured boy decided to blackmail our fearless leader. It certainly is a juicy bit of information, one that Jaune would probably not like to get out. Part of that 'deal' must have been to alienate Pyrrha, something that appears to be working rather well. I haven't seen the redhead and the blond talking for days on end, something that doesn't happen very often.

This is something that Jaune has to deal with on his own, though. Granted, Pyrrha's training has definitely helped him improve, but he's still not good enough to deal with bruisers like Cardin. I'm still worried, though. If Jaune doesn't get smart soon…this isn't going to end well.

This field trip is going to be our first for a while, and given the recent incidents involving the White Fang, there's a chance that all this shit might start boiling over. After all, in the wilderness of Forever Fall, anything can happen. Including, perhaps, a pair of Faunus terrorists absconding with a train car full of Dust.

I shudder as I try to repress the memories, leaving Ren to place his hand on my back reassuringly with a small smile.

"You okay?"

Since that night downtown, we've certainly grown closer together. We're not exactly 'together' together, but it's probably for the best, at least for now. I smile back, unable to keep unemotional in his presence.

"I'm fine. Just something unpleasant from my past."

He takes a moment, thinking carefully.

"The train in the forest, right? When you left the Fang?"

I give a little nod, grimacing a little as I stand up with my bag slung over my shoulder. Ren packs up his laptop, standing with me before we walk out of the auditorium.

We walk over to our dorm, dropping our notes and textbooks off before exiting again and trying in vain to navigate the hallways. Once or twice I'm tempted to draw Gambol Shroud and try to hack my way through, but I settle to scanning the crowd for temporary openings and pathways.

Eventually we manage to get down to the caf, getting waved over to a free table by Yang and Pyrrha. Jaune is nowhere to be seen, although Ruby and Nora seem to be in the middle of a cookie-eating contest. Weiss is busy polishing her rapier and pontificating about the sins of the White Fang for the umpteenth time today.

All in all, normal stuff for team RYSN. I half-lead, half-drag Ren to the table, shying away slightly from the hammer-wielding maniac. I'm slightly less afraid of her now due to a little talk from Ren explaining the situation. However, I'm still pretty scared of her damn hammer and trigger-happiness with the grenade launcher. Granted, she's from Valhalla and theoretically neutral in the event that she figures out what the word 'allegiance' means, and her connection with Ren makes her a strong ally. True, a deadly and disturbing ally, but still an ally.

I ditch my bag in a chair and make my way to the line, perusing the selection of 'food' that graced the menu today. Ozpin seemed to have randomly messed around with the budget, investing heavily in the forge and library while skimping on the food and housing. Or, perhaps, Goodwitch managed to get her hands on those regions and ensured that they were up to human rights standards.

After a moment of indecision choosing which way to die of food poisoning today, I select the tuna sandwich with a small salad on the side. The machine processes my order, directing me to the receiving counter. Ren orders a cup of hot water, busting out a pack of instant noodles from somewhere in his bag.

"Emergency stash," he says with a grin.

I roll my eyes and take the sandwich from the grumpy serving lady, thanking her and walking back to the table. Weiss seems to have finished her ranting, going back to normal heiress mode and polishing her rapier to gleaming perfection.

I take a seat, taking a single tentative bite of the tuna and doing my best not to rage at this unholy abomination in the form of fish. Instead, my eye is drawn to the main entrance of the caf. Team Asshole walks in, a staggering Jaune stumbling along in front of them under the weight of their textbooks. Cardin mutters a joke that most likely involved Faunus, his team laughing along and Jaune faking a chuckle.

He dumps the books unceremoniously on a table, collapsing into a seat for a moment and almost passing out. Cardin kicks him out of the seat and rattles off the team's orders, and Jaune limps into line with a single sad look back at Pyrrha.

Pyrrha is downcast, her normally bright eyes dull and red-rimmed from lack of sleep. Jaune doesn't notice, but during the nights I can occasionally hear her faint sobs and see her chest heaving as she cries. Call it my curse, alongside the rest of my Faunus heritage.

After seeing that depressing scene that looked like it was ripped straight out of one of my romance novels, I steel my resolve. Fuck it, this heresy has gone on long enough. I'm going to get Pyrrha and Jaune back together, and tomorrow's just the perfect time to do it. All I'm going to need is a bit of manipulation...

Hopefully, Pyrrha will forgive me. Hopefully.

Hmm…how should I go about this? Ah. Perfect. Jaune has a soft spot for Pyrrha, as evidenced during his fight with Dove Bronzewing. Now if I get Cardin to target her during the field trip, Jaune's bound to leap to her defence! Now all I need to do is get Cardin pissed at her, but not so angry that he starts a fight right here.

Hmm…Pyrrha's far too depressed right now, so I doubt she'd do anything rash enough to merit payback. Given how touchy Cardin can be about his hair, however...I can make this work. Granted, he's not Yang-level about it, but I can tell that he puts quite a bit of effort gelling it up every morning.

When Cardin's back is turned, I scribble a quick insult on a piece of paper in a crude approximation of Pyrrha's round, flowing script. I fold it into a paper Dustplane, sending it soaring across the cafeteria. It almost gets intercepted by Velvet's long floppy ears, but makes it to its destination of CRDL's table in one piece.

I quickly usher Pyrrha and Ren out of the room, not wanting them to catch any flak from Winchester. Just as soon as we exit the caf, I hear a loud bellow of futile rage and insulted manhood. Oh, this is gonna sting.

"NIIIIKOOOOOOOS!"

I give a little smirk, and thank the Gods that only I could hear that. I guess Faunus hearing has its good side, too. Pyrrha mutters something about going on ahead, and I can already see the tears starting to form. I give her a pat on the back and an encouraging smile, but she seems to be too immersed in her sorrow to notice.

Sighing, I turn to my partner.

"So…I managed to book us the firing range later tonight. You up for some target practice with your new toy?"

He gives me a predatory grin, before nodding and starting to walk faster.

"Oh yeah. I'll see you there, then."

Hey! Just because we're not together doesn't mean we can't do things together, right? I admit, firing shots at targets downrange isn't exactly the most romantic thing, but we are training to kill monsters, after all. And given the recent uproar, I think making sure we survive is the most important thing. Death may not be a barrier to love, but it sure is a rather difficult obstacle. And there's no-one that I'd rather jump it with other than Ren.

Okay, so I lied. I managed to have a brief spurt of inspiration during Commtech class, so I came up with this. The 'informational intermissions' may still occasionally be uploaded, usually as a fallback just in case I don't get Wednesday's update up. Saturday shall ALWAYS see an update, even if I have to pull an all-nighter on Friday to do it.

ZecoreZecron: Yeah, I was quoting the Gravemind, the monument to all our sins. Apologies for the nightmare fuel LOL, but I hope you enjoyed the story!

Delta (I think that was you anon reviewing, I'm not too sure :P): The BR is overpowered! *whines when BR beats my carbine spamming* And I actually used the name of a real Italian restaurant in Toronto, so sorry for the lack of creativity on that part XD. Gioranna's is also really good too, although I've only been there once.

Vieltrien: Indeed. I'm a guy. I couldn't resist.

FaintQuill: Thank you for your kind words, and I'm glad you enjoy the story. Stay tuned!

CCWYMetroid: I couldn't resist that little bit XD. To actually visualize the car, think the Ferrari 458 Italia with the Xbox colour scheme.

Shadic1978: Thanks for your reviews, and I apologize for the slight delay in the update. Best of luck in your own writing!

Until then, read, review, and ENJOY!

-Rafen