Four very tense individuals stood in the office of Beacon's headmaster. There was the man himself, who - quite unusually - didn't have his mug of coffee with him. There was General Ironwood, who had been called up in regards to the breach in security regarding his soldiers. Chess was there, of course, because she had been the one to fight the intruder.
Finally, there was Qrow, because Chess had clearly known the intruder, and from what Ozpin could gather it seemed to be the one who assaulted Amber. This necessitated Qrow being there to find out everything they could on the assailant.
All three of the adults stared at Chess as she shrunk into a ball on her chair. Every now and again they would hear a gentle sob coming from the area she was seated.
"Miss Chessur."
She looked up at Ozpin, and all the headmaster could see was a broken, lost little girl. Despite this, he continued saying what needed to be said. "You clearly know this attacker. We need to know who she is, and what she is planning, if you know it." Chess simply shook her head, tucking her head down into her chest again. Qrow began to get impatient and started forward while speaking.
"Look kid, I don't care if she killed your damn parents or something, this is bigger than you! This is about the safety of the wo-" The veteran Huntsman was silenced as the three adults felt the temperature in the room suddenly drop, quickly going to below freezing. Snow seemed to appear out of nowhere, forming a small blizzard, and as two of the adults prepared for a fight with whoever was doing this, Ozpin merely raised an eyebrow.
Chess suddenly looked up at Qrow with a look of pure, unadulterated hatred. Even Ironwood looked unnerved. When she spoke, her tone was almost as cold as the blizzard surrounding them.
"Bigger than me? Bigger than me?! YOU HAVE NO IDEA! NO IDEA WHAT SHE DID!" She was approaching Qrow, screaming the words at him to be heard over the snowstorm that was raging inside the small office.
"We've all lost people! GET OVER IT!" Qrow screamed back. Suddenly, the snowstorm stopped, and Chess was right in front of Qrow with a neutral expression on her face.
"Lost people?" She let out a small, hollow chuckle. "There's only one person I've lost."
Suddenly, a swarm of cards was slamming into Qrow from every side, and before he could even begin to transform his weapon into the signature scythe, he felt his Aura rapidly dropping. Then, just as quickly as it had started, it stopped, with Chess holding one arm up and a torrent of cards behind her. She looked directly into Qrow's eyes and what he saw chilled him to the bone. This wasn't the broken, lost little girl any more. This was a killer. This... This was a monster.
"I lost myself." With that, Chess went to swing her hand down and finish him. Suddenly, a hand grabbed her wrist and stopped her movement before it could kill Qrow.
"I think that's enough, Miss Chessur." Ozpin didn't sound angry, just... tired. She looked between him and Qrow for a long second, before sighing. The cards fell back into her clothes, burying themselves where they couldn't be seen. She sat down, looking every bit as tired as Ozpin sounded.
Ironwood was still on guard, and Qrow was as far away from her as physically possible in the small office. Ozpin simply sat in his chair and started talking once more.
"Miss Chessur. I will make this very simple and easy. Do you know her name, her plans, or her whereabouts?"
"No, no, and no. If I did, I'd be killing her instead of talking with you." Ozpin sighed.
"Miss Chessur, how do you know this intruder? Is she someone from your days as Lady Luck?" As Chess shook her head and opened her mouth, she was cut off by Qrow.
"WHAT?! SHE'S LADY LUCK?! GOD DAMMIT OZ, DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHAT SHE'S DONE?!" Qrow was furious. This was Lady Luck. This killer, who had been inches away from killing him, was dating his niece. Yang needed to know. She needed to get Ruby far away from here.
"I'm aware she was a criminal, yes. However, now she is one of my students, and is no longer on that career path."
"God dammit, Oz, she's killed HUNDREDS!" At this, Ozpin's eyebrows raised slightly as he turned to her.
"Is this true?" Chess waited a second before speaking.
"I haven't killed anyone who hasn't tried to kill me first." Seeing Ozpin's frown, she relented. "But yes. That number is probably in the low hundreds. People really don't like it when you keep taking their money through gambling, but hey. A girl's gotta get by somehow."
Qrow looked ready to explode, Ironwood watched on with interest and caution, and Ozpin simply sighed and rubbed his temples with his fingers.
"Qrow. You are not to tell anyone about this. Including your nieces." Just as Qrow looked ready to interrupt, Ozpin levelled him with a glare rivalling Chessur's before continuing. "James, the same goes to you. Miss Chessur, you never did mention: is this intruder someone from your days as Lady Luck?" Chess shook her head. "Then where do you know this woman from?"
There was a long moment of silence, before Chess shook her head once more, and began to speak.
"I'm not going to tell you the whole truth. That's too personal. But I'll tell you this. She made me into a killer, a weapon. She changed who I am at the core... She changed my soul." At this, Ozpin tilted his head.
"What makes you say that?" Chess held up a hand before her in response.
"She unlocked my Aura just before she started... changing me. When she first unlocked it, it was a bright green. Then, as she... did what she did... it changed. Now, it's this." As Chess flared her Aura, the three men could see it was a shade of purple so dark it was almost black. "She changed my soul, which in turn..." As she trailed off, Ozpin finished the sentence.
"Changed your Aura." She nodded. "Hmm."
There was silence for a minute, before Chess spoke.
"What now?" Ozpin was roused from his thoughts.
"Well, I believe you have somebody waiting for you, and your missions are being assigned tomorrow, so I would suggest you get some sleep. James, You should perhaps check all is right with the CCT, and run a thorough system check on everything from personal scrolls to your main defense grid. Qrow, I'm going to need you to go back out into the field and try to find any information on who the intruder is, and who she has with her."
They all nodded, with some looking less satisfied than others, and left the office via different ways. Qrow flew out the window in his avian form, Chess evaporated, and Ironwood took the elevator. Sighing, Ozpin leaned back in his chair.
"Why can nothing be simple?"
Chess didn't bother to go back to the dance. Instead, she decided to avoid the team until tomorrow. Evaporating, she appeared in her apartment in Vale and headed straight for the liquor cabinet. Pulling out several bottles, she uncorked a bottle of vodka and immediately started taking large sips. She didn't plan on enjoying the alcohol, not tonight. No, tonight she just wanted to forget everything.
She knew that Ruby would know where she was, but Chess had only ever evaporated Ruby to and from the apartment, so while Ruby had indeed seen the apartment, she had no idea how to actually get there.
An hour and a half later, and Chess was on the verge of passing out. Looking at the almost empty bottle of vodka in her hand, she shrugged and finished it before placing it next to the other bottle she'd gone through. Falling onto her bed, the steampunk girl almost immediately passed out, and began to dream.
A dream of so long ago.
"Is she ready?"
"Yes. You know, I can't imagine what she would think if she knew you were doing this. I really am doing you a large favour."
"Oh Arthur. I'll make sure to make it worth your while..."
"Stop. I will call in my favour when I deem it necessary. Do not try and seduce me like I'm one of those two pets you drag around."
"Hm, very well. I'll handle the Aura. You start the procedure when I give the signal."
"Very well."
Footsteps.
She started to cry.
"Shh, this won't hurt. It's what comes next that may... sting a little." A cruel smirk. Mirth shining in glowing amber eyes.
"Get on with it." A roll of the amber eyes. A hand, placed on a small chest.
"For it is in passing that we achieve absolute power. Through this, we become severed from the weak to become a beacon of radiating fear. Infinite in power and unbound by death, I release your soul, and by my hand enslave thee."
A small pause, a green glow.
"Start the procedure."
Then, for so long, pain. Indescribable pain.
Days? Weeks? Months? It didn't matter. A very, very long time, with nothing but agony.
The girl felt herself slipping away. Her soul, changing. Her mind, breaking.
She was going insane.
Her name...
What was her name again...?
Gasping, Chess bolted upright to a sight she'd seen a few times before. Sighing, she began to undo the work she'd accidentally done during the night.
It was only the nights when she had nightmares that she woke up to a room filled with ice and snow.
She looked at her scroll, which miraculously hadn't frozen during the night, and saw it was a few hours before she needed to be back at Beacon. Once she'd gotten rid of the ice, she sat down on her couch, and stared at the wall for a few seconds.
Then, she began to cry.
As tears rolled down her cheeks, she couldn't even do so much as think. Chess just wanted to curl up into a ball and stop existing, if only for a little while.
She didn't really know how long she sat there, sobbing into her knees, but she looked up at some point and realised she needed to get ready to leave. Chess slowly got up from the couch, made sure she looked normal, and went to the kitchen. As she ate a quickly-prepared breakfast, she thought of what she'd say to the team, and to Ruby. Sighing, she accepted the truth of the matter. She couldn't tell them, couldn't tell her. Not without more questions being raised, questions that she didn't want to answer. That wouldn't stop them, not all of them. Blake and Ruby might accept it, and not pry, but Weiss and Yang wouldn't stop until they got answers.
Answers which they wouldn't like.
Shaking her head to clear it of negative thoughts, she sighed once more before evaporating, leaving her apartment.
As she appeared back in the dorms, she arrived just in time to see Ruby putting a dog in a backpack.
Wait, what?
"You know what, I'm not gonna ask." At this Ruby turned around so fast that if she'd kept going there would've been a mini-tornado.
"CHESS!" Leaping at her girlfriend, Ruby instantly crushed her in a hug. Or at least, she tried. She didn't really have the strength to crush someone in a hug, despite wielding a giant metal scythe. Chess simply laughed and pulled her girlfriend in for a kiss. Feeling Ruby relax in her arms, she pulled back after a few seconds and grinned.
"Hello, little Rose." Ruby blushed and hugged her once more before suddenly pulling back and hitting Chess in the shoulder.
"WHERE WERE YOU?! Me and Blake and Weiss and... okay maybe not Yang but anyway the three of us were looking all over for you and we couldn't find you so we went to Ozpin and he said that you might need some space but I remembered about your apartment but I didn't know how to get there and I was so worried and is that alcohol I sm-" Before she could continue any more with her insanely long rant Chess covered Ruby's mouth with a hand.
"Not right now. We're late for the mission assignments." Ruby's eyes went wide and suddenly she grabbed Chessur's hand and bolted at the full speed of her semblance. Quickly getting used to the sensation of travelling nearly the speed of sound, Chess looked at her girlfriend as they sped through the halls...
Right before Ruby took a corner too hard and left a Chess-sized dent in the opposite wall.
Deciding that she didn't want to die by the time they got there, she quickly let go of Ruby's hand and evaporated in front of her, picking up the red reaper as they collided. Before Ruby could even try to get down, Chess evaporated them both into the back of the main hall. Putting down her girlfriend, Chess smirked at the massive blush on Ruby's face before leading her over to their team and JNPR. While Weiss and Yang looked at Chess with suspicion, JNPR and Blake merely looked with curiosity. Disregarding all their looks, Chess stood next to Ruby and began to focus on the front.
No matter what she did, she couldn't shake a feeling that this mission wasn't going to be good.
Author's Note:
And that marks the end of the Act. The next Act will focus primarily on the Breach, and possibly on some of Chessur's past. As such, it may end up being shorter than this, I honestly have no idea.
Chess doesn't remember a lot from this 'procedure', because she's suppressed the memories. Not REpressed, SUPpressed. She knows they're there, she just doesn't focus on them, EVER. They're what drove her insane, and visiting those memories is dangerous to her already fragile mental state.
As always, hope you enjoyed, and feel free to review and/or PM any questions.
Sm0key out.