"Daddy, daddy, is he going to stay with us?" the little ginger girl asked with unrestrained excitement.
The black haired boy rubbed his eyes, completely and entirely baffled by the predicament that he woke up to. One minute he was following refugees, his feet bloody from running and his clothes scorched, next he was staring back into the intense blue eyes of a girl peeping over the edge of the couch he woke up on. Her 'daddy' stood just behind her, one hand on the her shoulder.
"Well..." the short yet stout man started, pondering his thoughts as he stroked his trim beard. "I think we should."
The girl gasped. Her reaction was patted down however by an arm that reached over the boy's head from behind the couch. "But what about his family?" asked a woman's hushed voice.
The father nodded with great somber. "He was one of the few that made it out... his village was way out there."
"Then he probably doesn't have any documentation. Can we take him in?"
The two adults stood up and took their conversation over to a table just in the other room, their manner worried and quiet, afraid to further frighten the boy or their daughter. The two children were left alone together, and the girl took her chance to introduce herself.
Throwing her elbows onto the seat cushions and pressing her hands into her cheeks, she whispered delightfully "I'm Nora!"
The boy simply rolled over with his blanket and hid his face into the couch backing. Tears welled up in his eyes and before he knew it, the fabric beneath his face was soaked.
"What's wrong?" Nora asked confused, head tilted and eyes squinted.
The boy took a long minute to find the strength to speak, and only then his voice was still but a croak. "My mom, my dad, my grandma, my friends..." his throat clenched once more, and the tears just poured harder.
"Hmmm..." the girl hummed. "I don't understand what's going on really, and people keep whispering around me, and I don't get it, and it's making me wonder if they're afraid that maybe if they speak too loud, then my ears will explode, or maybe they're just hiding something from me" the girl babbled in total innocent seriousness, "but anyways, I don't know about your parents, but I can be your friend!" She lowered herself again, hiding most of her face using the couch as cover, eagerly awaiting his response.
She got none.
"So... I'm Nora! What's your name?" she asked awkwardly.
He kept his face hidden along with the small puddle forming in the crevices of the fabric, but found no reason not to tell her at least that much. "Ren" he growled.
His entire body felt lighter and warmer, but when he went to crane his neck, everything hurt. "Ah... ah... ah..." he breathed.
"Ren, your awake" smiled Nora.
Deja vu hit hard as Ren found himself lying on a couch, wrapped up in a blanket, with Nora on her knees at his side, he felt he had lived this moment before, but couldn't remember where off the top of his head. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes, but was still very tired.
Then his eyes jerked open. "Wait... I need to tell everyone about the factory-" he started, frantic to complete his task, but Nora pushed him back into the couch.
"Don't worry, everything's been handled, they know about the factory, and we even got some blood in you..." she assured him. It seemed to be her job to sum up events to those who slept through them she noticed, like how she did for Jaune and Pyrrha the year before.
He relaxed, though not entirely calmed, though he could just fall asleep again if he wanted to. That fact that enough had transpired without his awareness didn't help his mind. "Pain..." he mumbled. He needed to get that fact out of the way, a fact he felt the most need to state. Well, that and ask for "morphine?"
Nora's lips clenched together even harder to make a bungled smile. "Silly," she whispered, "we already gave you some. Glynda said though that we should only do enough to ease the pain, not get rid of it, because when you get off of it, well..." she made a pained face to demonstrate how he would feel, which made Ren chuckle, which made Ren hurt.
"Better some than none..." he stopped. Moving his arms around, he felt underneath the sheets before looking abashed to his partner. "Why am I naked?"
Nora painfully laughed herself, her eyes turning red with grief, answering "because everything you were wearing was soaked in blood..."
Ren pulled out his arm and cupped the back of Nora's head, pulling her in to his chest. Every step hurt, but seeing Nora upset made Ren feel only worse. "Shh, shh, shh" he shushed, padding her hair. "I'm okay, I'm okay..."
"Liar, it's not okay" she cried softly into his shoulder.
"But I'm still here."
"Yeah, but you're so hurt!"
He pulled her head a little aways so that he could look her in the eye. "Then next time," he said, "will you come with me, and be by my side? Together we can do it..."
She stared back at him, rubbing her running nose. "Of course. Together..."
"That's right, together..." he reassured her, and pulled her forehead to his bandaged one. "I promise."
In the moment they shared joined together, Ren didn't want to admit that he almost fell asleep, and would've if Nora hadn't sat back down to her more restful position, sniffing just a little. "Thank you" she smiled. A quiet laugh, "I should be the one helping you though, do you need anything?" she asked as she blushed.
"Food" he didn't hesitate to answer.
"And the moment's gone..." Blake remarked with disappointment. Pyrrha, drinking her orange juice at the doorway of the living room next to Blake, nodded in agreement.
"Almost went somewhere that time" Pyrrha added.
"It was fantastic while it lasted."
Nora's face went beet red and tried to hide it by drooping her face and looking away, perfectly silent, but failed miserably. Ren felt some annoyance, but had his priorities, asking "food is still an option though, right?"
At that moment, they could hear the door to team RWBY's apartment opening up, along with Ruby's full volume voice that seemed to have forgotten the time of morning it was.
"I brought fast food!" they heard her say.
"Are you serious Ruby!?" they heard Weiss greet back. There's nothing more sensible than stopping to get tacos after a possibly deadly mission. That is if they're assuming the task was dangerous, and that Ruby got tacos. Some sort of breakfast food would've been more appropriate, thought Pyrrha, something like pancakes, thought Nora.
Blake and Pyrrha looked to each other, "I guess we should see what they found" asserted the redhead.
"Should we bring Ren?" asked the other. They all looked the person in question and saw him dead asleep again.
Nora nodded her head to and fro. "You go ahead, I'll watch him."
Back in the other room, Ruby's mood jumped from calm to a ill temper instantly, and felt the strong urge to defend her actions, declaring "If I'm going to be forced to stay awake, I need food dammit." She dropped the bag of burgers on the kitchen countertop carelessly. "Dig in you ungrateful... people that are... ungrateful." Stomping past Glynda and Weiss to the table in the center of the living room, she threw down the machine finger with equal parts pride and fury, expecting everyone else there to appreciate what they were looking at, of which they didn't. This bothered Ruby.
"It's a finger" keenly observed Yang. Ruby rolled her eyes.
Picking it back up, she waved the digit in the faces of everyone, especially Blake and Pyrrha once they got back in the main room. "You see this?"
"What are we looking at?" Weiss snapped, quickly tired of her partner's condescending tone.
"It's a finger! A robotic finger! A finger like what Penny has!" she articulated the finger repeatedly from being straight to bent as she said this, making it look like Ruby was but a child playing with a toy.
Jaune was the first to ask the obvious question of "what now about Penny and robots?" All in the room looked to Ruby to expand on what she knew.
Ruby however looked confused. "What do you mean? You mean like how Penny is a robot?"
"What!?" shouted everyone who wasn't Ruby.
"You knew this!?" inquired Pyrrha with ire. This information could've been useful to her in the last tournament, and thus the thought that Ruby never thought to tell her struck a nerve. Regardless, this reveal of info made her fight with Penny did make more sense in hindsight she thought.
"And you didn't tell us!?" Weiss screeched.
"Wait..." started Ruby, "I thought you guys already knew."
Yang rubbed her temples to give her hands something to do that didn't involve hitting her sister. She spoke slowly, countering "how would we have known, Ruby? You think that we would maybe assume something like that? Well, you shouldn't have, because news flash, amazingly human cyborg android things are not something that people just... jump to as a state of being for a person, that make sense?"
Ruby didn't have a counter point. Trying to move on, she continued. "Anyways, not that it was that big of a deal, but now it is since-"
"Human robots are a pretty big fucking deal" Ben interrupted. Everyone nodded in agreement.
"Anyways, as I was saying, we found this finger at the location Ren found. Nothing else. And when I say nothing else, I mean they cleared out everything and only left empty tables, everything except this. That asshole over there-" she pointed to the guy they knocked out in the basement, still unconscious by the door right next to the guy Ren brought back, "-was one of two guys they left to clean up the trivial stuff."
"What happened to the other one?" Glynda asked, reasonably concerned.
With indignation, Jaune admitted their failure to apprehend him, saying "his name was Perry I think, and he faked being knocked out, and when we left to check the basement he had made a get away in a truck parked down the street."
"So I believe it's safe to say that if they didn't know we were on to them before, they know now. Now, with knowledge of this 'finger'-" Glynda said with dubiousness, "and the fact about Penny's identity coming to light, it seems we have more questions now than answers. If I may Ms. Rose, what else do you know about Penny? Like whom made 'her'-" she spoke again with uncertainty of whether or not it was really accurate or not to regard Penny as a person, "what is she capable of, or what is her purpose?"
Ruby thought for a moment, casual in how she held herself, which did not reflect the attitude shared by the rest of the occupants of the room. "Well lets see, Mr. Ironwood and some scientist made her to be the first artificial and synthetic being to produce a aura, plan to market more of her type so that less huntsmen and huntresses have to be... put in the way of danger or something like that, or... they want to work out some kinks I think, prove to the public that she's combat ready, then mass produce synthetics like her. Yeah, it's pretty cool, she's all like metal underneath, and weighs like... alot, but anyways, most of the time she isn't allowed to roam free..."
As Ruby explained what she knew about the android, everyone else slowly found themselves a sit to fall into, put their heads into their hands, and contemplated everything they knew.
"Ruby, shut up" said Weiss, eerily calm as she did so.
Pyrrha raised her face from her hands, almost whispering "aura is the manifestation of one's soul, a projection of a living being's sentience and life, and they managed to make a android with a soul?"
"You can't do that, can you?" Blake asked to no one in particular.
Ruby looked over the crowd of thunderstruck faces and couldn't understand the fuss. "I- I don't get it, what's the problem?"
Ben, feeling a bit overwhelmed with the revelations he's been through in one night, pardoned himself from the room and found himself back in his team's apartment. There they waited for him patiently while eating cereal, unsuspecting of the news he was about to lay upon them.
"So, are they letting us in on the loop?" asked Sandell, the largest of team BNSH standing at a moderate six foot three and being the only one to wear armor.
Ben sat down with a long sigh and a wide and exasperated expression. "Whoa boy... I hope that... you guys are... open minded... to what I am about to... tell you... see..."
South of Atlas, in what one would only describe as a empty desert of snow, ran a convoy of a dozen tractor trucks due south west at about fifty miles per hour. Rushing past the rear of the pack, Perry raced his tractor truck to the front on the right side, pulling up to the head truck and matching speed. Rolling down his window, Perry looked out to his left to see Roman, map in hand, roll down his own window.
Shouting over the gushing, freezing winds, Perry addressed Roman with "we were discovered." He wasn't proud of it, but his boss would want an honest account of actions.
The master thief sighed in disappointed frustration. "It's fine, you weren't followed though, right?"
"No, but they have Chet. They'll question him no doubt." The vehicle pulled to the right pretty hard, but Perry pulled it back in control.
The other thought for a moment, hand to his chin before looking at the map again. "It's a good thing you caught up with us when you did."
"Oh?"
"Yeah, we're not going to the 'plan b' hideout. I've been thinking about this for a while, and Chet getting caught and our location being discovered gives us just the right excuses." Roman looked at the map again, then hung out the window and pointed south, the direction they were more or less already heading, shouting "up a few miles we'll turn for the abandoned docks instead of the hideout, should take us a day's drive. From there, we'll sail south west to the abandoned continent, land on the east coast. I'll call in some assistance and we'll get picked up and moved to headquarters."
They ran over a bump in the terrain, launching them up from their seats into the air briefly, but it had no effect on their train of thought. "How well do you think that's going to blow over, honestly?"
Roman studied the map again. "Well Perry, the puppet-maker is probably going to be kept there," he chewed on his thumb as he pondered the others, "the mercenaries are going to be moved to... Mistral, yeah-"
"-What about us?"
"I think we'll be relocated to Vale again, except in the south eastern region this time. Dante's been itching for that area to be mapped for a while now, so he'll put me in charge of that. Or maybe Vacuo? We lost quite a few airships in the last raid, so they might want me to oversee the fleet reconstruction. Cinder can't stop bitching about the need for air power and some birds told me that there's a bit of disorganization in Vacuo since the schism, so we might get manager position." Roman stuffed the map into the glove compartment and lit up a cigar for himself, musing the possible tasks Cinder or Dante might drop on him.
The faunus gave a sigh then a shiver. "Okay, fine, those are possibilities, but how do you think it will blow over? You know, at headquarters?" Less than savory thoughts creeped into Perry's head, thoughts such as the punishment for failure.
The other shrugged. "Oh Cinder will be pissed. For sure. Let's see... oh what the fuck Perry!? I'm not having this conversation anymore, I'm cold! Get in the back of the pack and we'll continue this talk on the boat tomorrow, ok?" Roman didn't wait for the response before rolling his window up and folding his arms to maintain some semblance of warmth. Looking over, his driver gave him a look of cold bitter resentment for letting all the cold in. Roman understood, but didn't care what he thought. He instead paid mind to his current situation. He was happy he was finally leaving Atlas, the cold bitter hell it was, but didn't look forward to what headquarters had in mind for him. Who knows he thought, Cinder is probably not even on the continent, but he can only hope that when he gets there, Dante will send him away on an errand as quickly as possible, and he could only hope it's something Cinder wanted done. He could only hope.
-End Chapter 21-
So funny confession, probably the hardest part about writing for me is whenever I hit a scene where a character is in a bed, tired, asleep, or any form or prelude to unconsciousness as just the thought of it, seeing as how I am a really empathetic person, will make me tired, which makes writing harder :P. No worries though, more to come!
So if you lovely people feel up to it, I'd like to hear what you look forward to seeing in the future of the Atlas story arc in the comments. I have a fair bit in the way of plans, and it's kind of a problem actually, as I need to trim down on what I want to focus on lest the story get too bloated. So basically, if you're looking forward to any social developments, to the combat of the tournament, fun shenanigans in Atlas, the bad guys actions, the good guys actions, St. David's Day, voice what you're interested in, and what you guys suggest will shape the next several chapters quite a bit, or rather a lot, so... yeah. Good times. Alright, thank you for reading and I'll see you next time ;)
P.S: User 123james4, I totally get what you feel, I mean, I feel like I see Leivve everywhere in the comments in and youtube, it's pretty funny. It helps that his user icon never changes.