GrimmKaiju writes:

A good support chapter but it makes me wonder. What dose Neo think of all of this? She is bound to be watching everything that's going on but she doesn't know the whole story behind it. It would be an interesting detail if she asked Fox about it. And If he did try to explain it how would the others react if they found out. All in all a good chapter.

Bookah replies:

That's a darn good question. Won't it be interesting if that happens? *winks*

idkidc85 writes:

This story is really neat, very well written.

Bookah replies:

Thank you! I'm glad to hear you are enjoying it!

Ridgepeak

There was quite a bit of construction going on when the truck pulled in. A few locations along the main road still held burnt out husks in the process of being dismantled, but in most cases rebuilding had already begun, and in a few cases were well along.

Coco turned to watch a tall clock tower as she drove the vehicle through a small, open square. A statue near its base had been smashed, leaving it anyone's guess what once had been enshrined there, though the statue on the other side of the tower's shattered door was still intact, and likely a match. Light spilled out through the doorway, revealing that, though not touched by fire, the building the tower was built on had collapsed completely. The square had several burnt out buildings in various states of repair, and the pavement itself was pitted and cratered. Even the clock's face was gone.

She slowed the truck to a stop, leaning out the rolled down window. "It's a good thing they build with stone here. I don't think that building would be standing if it had been wood." She frowned. "What kind of grimm could cause that much damage?"

"To be fair, much of the damage to that one was a huntress."

Coco whipped her head to the side as she saw Velvet flinch at the unexpected voice, then immediately sought the source. Through narrowed eyes she spotted a middle aged man approaching from the Faunus' side of the vehicle. Both women watched him cautiously as he stopped a few feet away from Velvet's open window. "Help ya?"

Velvet's muscles were knotted, her knuckles white as she glared at the man. "What do you mean, a huntress did this?" Coco quickly reached over and settled a hand on Coco's forearm, feeling a bit worried as the woman flinched at the touch, but then released a bit herself when Velvet shook her head a bit and reached her other arm across to place her own hand gently atop Coco's.

The man held his hands up a bit defensively, though his face showed little sign of worry. "Don't get me wrong. She didn't do it intentionally. In fact, we're grateful for her help. If she hadn't come along we'd probably have lost the village. It's just that the grimm she fought were a bit prone to throwing her at things."

Coco exchanged a glance with Velvet, then slipped her hand off the hare faunus' arm. She opened the door on her side and got out, walking around the front of the truck to meet the man. Velvet joined her as well not a moment later, carefully looking around and watching everything while Fox and Yatsuhashi slipped out of the canvas covered back to stand alongside of Velvet. "Don't you mean throwing things at her?" Coco asked.

"Nope. I mean throwing her at things. I was hiding upstairs in that building there watching the whole thing." He pointed at a building alongside the square, gesturing towards an upper window with a divot of broken rock alongside of it. "Baringal nearly smashed her right through my wall at one point. Tough girl."

Coco grunted. "Aura covers a multitude of sins. What'd she look like?"

"She wore black with red highlights, just like her hair. Bit red cape. Used some sort of strange scythe."

"Ruby!" Velvet shouted. She whipped around, fixing Coco with a hopeful expression that nearly took Coco's breath away as she did the little fidgety dance that had been conspicuously absent from their lives for far too long.

Coco quickly whipped out her scroll, bringing up the photo that Velvet had given all of them. "Is this her?"

The man peered a moment, then grinned. "Ayup. Outfit's different. The new one doesn't make her look so… young. But that's definitely her."

Coco nearly went over as Velvet suddenly tackled her with a hug. She steadied herself before she could fall over, and wrapped her arms around the woman, feeling excited for the first time in weeks as tears soaked the side of her neck.

The local took this in, and gave a large, gape-toothed smile. "Friends of yours, I take it."

Out of the corner of her eye, Coco saw Yatsuhashi cock his head. "Friends? Plural?"

"Oh, yeah," the man nodded. "She was the first one to show. A couple of moments later some more showed up. Two hunters and a huntress. The men were about average in height. One wore green and had a streak of pink in his dark hair. The other was a gangly blonde in armor. The girl was an itty-bitty thing, but you wouldn't know it, seeing her waving around a giant hammer like it was nothing."

The descriptions sounded familiar, but Coco couldn't quite picture anything. She patted Velvet on the back, then gently pulled away from the girl. "Velvet?"

Sniffling, but with a big smile, Velvet turned back to the man, wiping at her eyes. "You said a hammer? Armor?"

"Yeah. And the green kid used some sort of handguns and them martial arts moves from over on Anima."

Coco was startled as Velvet's ears suddenly twitched, perked upright. "Nora, Jaune, and Ren." She spun back to Coco, wide-eyed. "Team JNPR!" Then her expression faded, and her shoulders and ears both slumped a bit. "Well, what's left of it."

"What's left?" Coco asked, concerned.

Yatsuhashi settled a gentle hand on Velvet's shoulder and caught Coco's eye. "Pyrrha Nikos."

Coco felt herself flinch. "Oh. I hadn't realized what team she'd been on."

"It's alright," Yatsuhashi commented. "Velvet was always more interested in the first years than the rest of us." He patted the girl's shoulder. "Anyway, this is good news. Not only are we on the right track, but we now know that Ruby's not alone after all."

"And doing pretty well, in fact," Fox commented. He gestured to the village around them.

"Saved us, that's for sure," the local man agreed. "If it weren't for them, we'd have been done for."

Coco turned back to the man. "How long ago was this?"

"A week. They stayed long enough after the fight to help look for the missing, then kept right on going to wherever they were headed. We tried to reward them, but they simply took a little food and dust and said that was all they needed."

"Do you know which way they went when they left?"

The man thought a moment, then shrugged. "No, can't say as I do. But ask around the gates. They should know. Ain't but three roads that lead away from here, and you'd've come down one of them."

"Thanks." Coco turned back towards the truck. "Climb in. Let's find an inn for the night. We have a lot to talk about."

"Best inn in town that's still open is three blocks that way," the man offered, pointing down a street. "In fact, it's where they stayed the night."

Coco swung open the door of the truck, then paused. "Thanks again."

"Don't mention it." The man chuckled. "No, do mention it. Maybe they'll give me a free beer for the referral."

Coco grinned and climbed in, starting the truck.

Coco's first priority after entering the room at the Inn she would be sharing with Yatsuhashi was a shower. Yatsuhashi, it seemed, had the same basic idea, disappearing through the door to the bathroom before she'd finished dropping her pack on the queen size bed.

"Hey!" she hollered, dashing after him and jerking the door open before he'd finished closing it. "Whatever happened to 'ladies first?'"

The big man grinned at her, then shucked his shirt. "Isn't a leader supposed to see to the needs of her people before her own? I need a shower badly."

Coco frowned, then leaned forward, inhaling deeply. "Yeah, you're right. You do need a shower badly."

"Meanie," Yatsuhashi stuck his tongue out at her as he slipped out of his pants a leg at a time.

"Hey, you brought it up," Coco grinned, enjoying the view as he finished disrobing and turned the water on. "Besides, it's not like I'm a rose garden right now."

Yatsuhashi chuckled. "I'll admit you are a bit fragrant right now."

It was Coco's turn to frown. "Chivalry is dead."

"Ayup." Yatsuhashi stepped into the tub and pulled the curtain, switching on the shower head. A cloud of steam immediately began pouring out of the top of the shower.

"Cad."

A moment later Yatsuhashi grunted in surprise as she stepped in through the curtain. "Coco?"

"You wash my back, I'll wash yours."

Yatsuhashi laughed. "I'm not sure that's entirely fair."

"True," Coco grinned. "Your back is bigger. But that's alright. It'll even out when you wash the front of me."

A twinkle entered Yatsuhashi's eye, and he bent down to kiss Coco's lips. "Maybe I'll just start there," he responded when they broke apart, his hands immediately reaching up to begin.

Coco felt a warm smile form on her face. "I can live with that."

It was a pleasant shower indeed.

An hour later the four had gathered around a table in the inn's small restaurant. A warm meal that none of them had needed to spend time preparing over a campfire using reconstituted food had gone a long way to correct a host of ills, as had being clean and dressed in fresh clothes for the first time in weeks. The mood was good, perhaps even celebratory. Even Velvet seemed to have come out of her shell, laughing at some of the jokes.

Once the meal was finished, however, Coco cleared her throat. "So, we have a decision to make."

Velvet immediately perked both of her ears up. "I know. Now that we've learned Ruby has help, do we keep going, or do we go back home." Her face scrunched, looking almost angry. "Obviously we continue following her, and help her stop the W. Fang."

Coco lifted a placating hand. "No one's going to disagree with you about helping her and stopping the Fang. The problem is something else." Coco turned her head to Yatsuhashi. "Just before we came down here, Yatsuhashi went out and asked which gate Ruby used to leave town."

Yatsuhashi sighed, and turned to face the other two. "She left using the gate for Beowolf Bay."

"So we're headed to Beowolf Bay then, right?" Velvet's voice sounded worried.

Coco reached out gently and placed a hand on Velvet's shoulder, feeling the girl twitch a little at the contact. "We could. But the supply route the White Fang is using heads to Oak Harbor. Even with the truck we found, we can only hit one of them."

Fox grunted. "Do we double the strength and size of Ruby's current team? Or do we try to shut down a pipeline no one else knows exists?"

"Exactly." Coco nodded.

"We can tell the authorities. Someone from the Atlas military. They could handle it." Velvet's expression was a mix of determination and desperation.

Coco kept her voice gentle. "We could. If we found one. And if they were willing to chase it into Mistral's territory."

"Unlikely," Yatsuhashi reminded. "I've been listening in every time we've been in a village. People are scared of Atlas. The last thing they saw before the towers went down were Atlas robots attacking citizens in Vale."

Velvet looked down at the table.

"There's another consideration." Fox weighed in. "Neo."

Velvet glanced back up. "What?"

"Neo's still after Ruby. We haven't heard from her in a couple of days, but we already know she can somehow hide on the truck with us. My guess is she rides up top somewhere and then uses her little magic trick to disappear when we stop. So if we head after Ruby with the truck…"

Coco watched Velvet sigh, covering her eyes. "We take her straight to Ruby."

"If we follow the route the White Fang has been smuggling their weapons on we could potentially take away much of what they plan to use against Haven Academy. And that, in turn, would make Ruby's job easier."

Velvet slowly nodded at Fox' logic, but she frowned. "I don't like this," she muttered.

"I know," Yatsuhashi gently rested his hand on Velvet's other shoulder, giving it a squeeze. "But will you accept it?"

The Faunus shook herself. "I'll have to," she sighed. "It's the right call."

"Sorry," Coco whispered. She frowned as Velvet's face grew heavy again, her eyes elsewhere.

Two steps forward...