The Intriguing Case of Ruby and Red
Chapter 14
Of Necessities and the Ramifications of the Butterfly Effect.
I don't own RWBY. Finished this one last night and figured that I'd post it a day early, given that I've posted a day late a couple times in the past.
Blake was in the library, poring over the notes that they had on Torchwick, the White Fang, the Dust shipments, and every minute detail, trying to find something, anything, that could help her figure out what they were planning, why they were working together, what the endgame was. And the most terrifying thought of all: What if…?
Her thoughts were cut off by the sight of a red dot dancing amidst the information. She tried to ignore it, tried to find a way to keep her attention from going anywhere but the information, but whoever was behind the laser pointer clearly knew just how to make a nuisance of themself, as they kept successfully bringing her attention to the laser. Finally, sighing in frustration, she got up and began to follow the laser to wherever the owner was trying to lead her.
When she found the source, she was only mildly surprised to see Yang with the pointer finger of her mechanical hand extended while her thumb pressed down on the side of the hand. The space to where she was pointing, meanwhile, was occupied by the red dot of a laser, confirming her suspicions.
"What?" she asked irritably, narrowing her eyes, before shaking her head and blinking rapidly when they tried to shut on her.
"Not here," Yang said seriously, "Let's go somewhere a bit more private for this."
Unable to think of a response to get her to go away, Blake nodded, silently following Yang as she led her to an empty classroom.
Once they were there, Yang shut the door behind her, taking Blake's hands in her own as she led her to the lector's table and sat down on it.
"So, what's so important that…" Blake began, only to be cut off.
"Blake, sit down before you fall down," Yang said in a soft voice, concern obvious in her tone, "Please."
Blake didn't want to sit down. She wanted to leave to go back to researching, yet, looking at Yang, her eyes filled with genuine worry, she half-acquiesced, leaning against the table, which seemed to be enough for Yang, who let out of soft sigh of relief that, were she not a faunus, Blake would have missed entirely.
"Blake…" Yang began slowly, "We've all been getting worried about you. You're not sleeping, you're barely eating, and you're basically falling to pieces doing nothing but going over what we've gathered on the White Fang and Torchwick."
"Someone needs to be looking for something that could help us figure it all out," Blake retorted, "Everyone's been so busy with that dance tomorrow that nothing's would get done otherwise."
"Blake, You're going to get yourself killed if you keep this up," Yang stated firmly before softly adding, "Trust me. I know what I'm talking about."
"You're overreacting," Blake replied just as firmly, locking eyes with her partner, "The important thing is finding Torchwick and putting a stop to him and the White Fang's activities. No one else seems to be getting that."
She had not expected the unmistakable sound of Yang's arm being detached, which caused her to break eye contact just in time to see Yang holding her arm in her hand, gesturing at Blake with it as she said, "I need you to listen to me. I uh… I haven't told this to anyone before."
"You don't have to…" Blake began gently, only to once again find herself cut off.
"I really do," Yang said tiredly, placing the arm on the table, "I'm going to tell you about when I first met Red."
"What?" Blake asked in confusion. She had thought that this was going to be the story of how Yang had lost her arm. "I thought that she and Ruby were your sisters?"
"They are," Yang said, "Red, though… She didn't first show up until a couple years after Ruby was born…
"When we were little, Ruby and I had our dad, Taiyang, and our mom, Summer Rose. She was basically Supermom, baker of cookies and slayer of monsters. One day, she went out on a mission and… she didn't come back. We all took it hard, but dad… He just sorta started going through the motions. He still took care of us, still tried to make sure we had everything we needed, but he just wasn't himself. Ruby, though? Ruby was always marching to the beat of her own drum, talking to herself and just off in her own little world, but when mom died, she started acting weird.
"She started talking to herself more and more," she explained, "And sometimes, she just get cold. Really cold, to the point that it could be a warm spring day and she'd just start shivering a little. She needed a lot more attention, so I started making sure she was doing alright. I made sure she got extra with our breakfast, lunch, and dinner, made her cookies from time to time, and whenever she was having one of those days, I'd try to make sure that she had an extra blanket and I'd tell her some of the stories mom used to tell us. I tried, but it just wasn't enough…
Yang paused, seeming to be trying to find the right words. "There was a reason that our dad had basically shut down," she said, "Our parents were on a team. Our dad, our mom, our uncle… and one more person. You see, Summer wasn't the first love Dad had lost. The first was my mother, the woman who gave birth to me. One day, she left and never came back…"
"Why did she leave?" Blake asked gently.
"That's the question that kept me up so many nights," Yang said, rising from her seat and taking a piece of chalk to the board, "I wanted to know why she'd left us, so I started asking around for any information I could find. No one had any word of her or where she went. Then, one day, I found something. I thought it was a clue, something that could help me find my mom… So, I waited until Dad had to go to work, loaded Ruby into a wagon, and headed out to find her.
"We went a long way, further than we'd ever gone. Ruby had stopped talking to herself and I thought she was asleep. I was exhausted, covered in cuts and scrapes, but none of that mattered to me. We'd finally made it. And then… Those red eyes… We were a toddler and a dumb little girl who didn't even have the energy to scream. We would have been easy pickings and I kept thinking that it was all my fault. But the Grimm were acting weird. They started getting antsy, though, as if they were on the verge of panicking. Even with that, a Nevermore showed up and lunged for Ruby. I had a rush of adrenaline kick in and I got her out of the way but…" She put down the chalk and ran her hand along the connector for her arm. "Well, you get the picture.
"That was when I met Red. Suddenly, the Grimm were less scary than what I was feeling at that exact moment. I turned to see Ruby was fine, but she wasn't Ruby. Her eyes were glowing the way that Red's eyes glow and she suddenly had a sickle that she used to slice its eyes when it circled back, which got it to back off. Before that day, I'd never even heard of Grimm cowering, but there they all were, flinching away from her. That was when our uncle showed up, tearing through the Grimm as fast as he could just to get to us. He used part of his cape to wrap my cut and the rest is history. If not for him, then Ruby, Red, and I might not have made it back."
"Yang, I'm sorry," Blake said gently, "But I'm not going to stop looking into this."
"Don't," Yang said, reattaching her arm, "I don't want you to quit. I haven't. I'm still looking for something, anything that can tell me anything about my mom. But if you don't take a break, you'll burn yourself out and get yourself into more trouble than you can handle."
"I can't afford a luxury like that," she said shortly, rising to her feet.
"It's not a luxury," she replied, "It's a necessity."
"I'm not a little kid, Yang," she retorted, her fatigue, fear, and frustration finally pushing its entirety to the fore, "I need to figure this out because no one else can or will!"
"And if you don't get rest, you'll just get yourself hurt!" Yang said as she unconsciously activated her Semblance, pushing Blake into the table with her left hand, "What do you think would happen if Torchwick or his henchwoman showed up in here?"
"I'd fight them!"
"You'd lose!" Yang shouted back, pushing her back again.
"I can handle them!"
"You can't even stop me using one hand!" Yang replied, pushing her again.
Blake got up again and saw Yang moving closer, her eyes still red. She tensed up, making herself a smaller target while raising her arms, only to be shocked as Yang wrapped her arms around her in a gentle hug, her Semblance deactivated.
"Please, Blake," Yang said softly, her voice barely a whisper, her words meant only for Blake's ears, "I'm not asking you to stop. Just please get some rest. If not for yourself, for the people you care about."
She released the hug and pulled back, her hands trailing down Blakes arms slowly before stopping at her hands for a brief moment. When she broke contact, she slowly walked away, leaving Blake to process what had just happened as her eyes trailed behind her partner's retreating form.
"And if you do decide to go to the party tomorrow," Yang noted sweetly, "I'll save you a dance."
With those words and a wink, she left Blake to think on it all, leaving the choice entirely up to Blake.
To say that Pyrrha was confused would have been an understatement of colossal proportions. Pyrrha Nikos was utterly baffled. Jaune was racing around the dorms and the common room like a maniac with the devil behind him. That he was being chased by Red answered one question, yet raised more.
After Jaune had passed the Team JNPR dorm yet again, Pyrrha fought back the all-encompassing sense of loneliness that Red caused as naturally as breathing and placed her arm in front of the girl, causing her to stop.
"Red?" she began.
"Pyrrha," Red replied cordially, waiting for her to speak.
"What are you doing with Jaune?"
"Hunting," Red replied, sounding as if she were simply talking about the weather.
"Why?" she asked. She was certain that whatever the answer, it was going to be an interesting one, at the very least.
"Sport."
That one was surprising.
"You're… hunting him… for sport?" Pyrrha asked, not certain that she understood.
"Partly," Red replied, "Partly for attention."
"What did you need attention for?" she asked as Weiss raced past with Myrtenaster and what appeared to be a net gun.
"Discussion with you," she replied, "Jaune had elaborate plan. Was stupid. Cutting out unnecessary steps. Replacing with own. Plan had more steps. Rubber duck would have been involved, but plan scuttled by earlier questioning."
"What?" she asked, at a complete loss for words.
"Jaune had a plan that Red thought was idiotic," Weiss said, dragging a netted Jaune behind her without any strain as she approached the red duo that was also a trio, "He wanted to make a fool of himself for reasons he'll explain in private."
"Do I even weigh anything to you?" Jaune asked.
"If we're being honest, you're lighter than you look, but heavier than I expected," she replied, before handing the net gun, which the net was attached to, to Pyrrha, looking the redhead in the eye as she said, "I believe this belongs to you."
Pyrrha could feel her cheeks heating up, but she took the net gun and said, "Thank you." Turning towards Red, she asked, "How do I…?"
"Lever where safety is on handgun," Red replied. "Push, then pull."
"Thank you." Pyrrha did as Red instructed and, in a blur of motion, Jaune was released from his titanium mesh prison, at which point, Pyrrha handed Red the net gun and helped Jaune to his feet.
"Work here is done," Red noted, putting some sort of miniature gas canister inside of the base of the net gun.
"Can I keep the net gun?" Weiss asked, "I like the weight and the utility."
Red handed it to her, before saying, "Reminds me. Have team gifts. Remind to give later."
When the pair returned to their dorm, Pyrrha led Jaune into the JNPR dorm and shut the door behind her softly. "So…" she asked carefully, "What was this plan of yours to make yourself look foolish?"
"My plan was to publicly ask Weiss out poorly with a badly-tuned guitar so that I would make a complete and utter idiot of myself," he explained, "Because I wanted to make a point to you."
"What point was that?" she asked, completely thrown off-balance yet again.
"The whole plan was to get Weiss to publicly destroy me after the disastrous attempt so that you could understand that I wasn't going to ask you out so that I didn't have to wear a dress," he said, not noticing her shock, "I had planned on asking you to the dance earlier, but then I made that bet and thought you'd think that I was doing it to get out of the bet. I didn't want you to think that I was asking you for that reason, so I was going to humiliate myself, then go to the dance in a dress regardless."
"You… were going to ask me?" she echoed, stuck on that point more than she was on the plan, itself.
"Well, yeah," he replied, and she could see a slight blush dusting his cheeks, "I mean, you're my partner, my mentor and, most of all, you're my best friend. There's no one I'd rather go with. Making the bet was me running my mouth without thinking of how it could sound until after the fact. So, Pyrrha, would you go to the dance with me?"
"I'd love to," she replied with a wide smile on her face.
"Great!" he cheered, "No, I've got to talk to Silver about a dress. What kind are you getting? I don't want our dresses to clash."
"What?" she asked, "Jaune, you don't have to…"
"Too late!" he replied, "I've made up my mind. So that you don't even entertain the idea that this is me trying to get out of the bet, I'm wearing a dress to the dance and no one can stop me."
"And five, four, three, two, one…" said the white haired man in the pristine lab coat, before a series of mechanical clocks went off in unison, playing a wound-up orchestra. "Bravissimo!" he cheered, before hearing a knock on his door. Given how loud the knock was, he smiled cheerfully before saying, "The door is open!"
"Salutations, Father!" Penny said with a bright smile on her face.
"Salutations, daughter!" he greeted just as enthusiastically, "And how has your day been?"
"It has been sensational, Father!" she replied, "I learned that there is going to be a party tomorrow! May I please go?"
He paused in thought. Complex calculations were his specialty, and he needed to be certain that his precious daughter would be alright. He still resented that James had managed to bring his daughter into the military the way he had. So, it fell to him to keep her well-being in mind. He ran the numbers, though he suspected that she had done the same before coming to his makeshift office. One particular variable had his attention, however.
"I presume that Taiyang's daughters will be there?" he asked with a twinkle in his eye, "I recall you offering glowing praise when it came to Ruby Rose, in particular."
"She had not factored into my calculations. *hic*" Penny said.
To this day, he wasn't sure why she hiccoughed when she lied. There was nothing in her core programming that caused it, and he knew for a fact that she hadn't learned it from anyone. He supposed that it was probably one of those little things that happens. He suddenly remembered that she asked him for something.
"You can go to the party, if you wish, Penny," he said with a slight chuckle, "But do take your guards with you. I'm sure that Steel and Stahl could probably benefit from being exposed to fresh air once again. If you take your partner with you and claim that this is so that you can learn more about human interactions, you might even be able to get Ironwood to let you go."
"What about my other teammates, Father?" she asked.
"They haven't been given leave, yet," he answered honestly, "Miss Soleil has, and she is the one Ironwood personally appointed to you." He paused as a thought came to mind. "Now, how about we make sure that your swords are still in one piece. I know that Ironwood has been having you run some training drills today. After that, we'll both go to Ironwood's office and tell him that you are going to that dance, and then, after that, we will find you the greatest dress that suits you that we can find!"
"Yes, Father!" she replied, a smile on her face as she presented her weapons. Even if Ciel would definitely not enjoy it, Penny was looking forward to attending her first party and seeing her first and best friend once more.