Time stood still for seconds before Ruby heard the gunshot go off. Instinctively she turned around to see what had happened, and she immediately went into a frenzy. She watched as Weiss started to fall back onto the ground, the gunshot that Ruby heard moments before indicating that Weiss was hit, but where she was hit, it wasn't known. Ruby saw Cinder out of the corner of her eye, a gun held in her hands. It caused her blood to boil, sending her into a fury at the audacity that this woman had for shooting her girlfriend.
With no regret in her heart, and burning rage pushing her forward, Ruby aimed her gun at Cinder, and pulled the trigger, letting loose two rounds that pierced the crew's true target right between the eyes. The results of her actions killed Cinder instantly, and their job was unofficially done. After watching Cinder die, she ran over, pulled the gun away from her hands, and threw it into the bag with the other guns that they collected before.
Now that they had everything with that settled, Ruby turned to check on Weiss. She ran towards her companion and noticed that Weiss' wound was, fortunately, in a place that wouldn't kill her. Unfortunately, Weiss would need to be treated now, and Ruby couldn't do so at the risk of someone sounding the alarm.
"R, what the hell happened? I heard those gunshots from down here," Blake called out to Ruby from inside the vault.
Ruby was stuck in a real bind, she needed outside help, forced or otherwise. "W's been hit, and it looks pretty bad," Ruby said in response, before turning her attention towards the crowd. "Who here knows how to stitch up a wound?" Ruby doubted that anyone would respond, they'd all be looking out for their own hides after all. She decided that a little force was needed to properly motivate them. "If no one fesses up and decides to help, then I'll start shooting everyone in here one by one until you're all dead, is that what you want?"
After that little detail, it didn't take long for someone to stand up, hands still raised in the air. For Ruby though, she was fortunate that the mask she was wearing was concealing her face, because it was full of surprise when she saw her mother standing up in the crowd. "I'm a nurse," Summer Rose said, her voice full of terror.
It didn't take Ruby long to regain her composure and point her gun in Summer's direction. 'I can't believe I'm pointing a gun at my mother,' Ruby thought to herself before speaking up. "Get over here and start to stitch my friend up. If you remove the mask, I'll kill everyone in here, then kill you, same goes for if you try anything stupid."
Summer approached Weiss and quickly got to work assessing the damage, while Ruby still kept watch over the rest of the crowd, who was beyond terrified by that point. By that point, Blake and Nora had come back up the stairs and were in the main corridor with Ruby and Weiss. "Y, S, we're up in the lobby with R and W, get ready to meet us out front," Blake said over the headset.
"Alright, we'll be coming in hot, police are starting to crowd around front of the building to wait for you guys, though we'll give them a warm welcome," Yang replied.
"R, we need to get W and get going," Blake said to Ruby. Ruby nodded in response and formulated an idea. It was an improvisation idea, but still, it was a good way to get everyone out alive as best as possible.
She stood up and pointed her gun at Summer. "You're coming with us." In an instant, Summer stood up, leaving Blake and Nora to help Weiss move out of the building. As they moved towards the front doors, they gave Yang the signal to move forward. "V, get your rifle cracking, Y, bring everyone in. B, you ride with Y, I'll take W and our 'guest', and jump with S, N, you ride with the other N, ok?"
"Got it," Blake said as they heard tires screech out front. "Let's go!"
They opened up the doors and ran outside, seeing their rides providing a barrier between themselves and the police. What really drew their attention was that Sun, Sage and Neptune were all riding in Insurgent military assault transports, and that Sage was hanging out the top of the one in the back on what appeared to be a chain gun.
Blake and Nora helped Weiss to the front vehicle and pulling Weiss in. Ruby then gestured for Summer to get into the back of the vehicle with Weiss, before following her into the vehicle. Blake jumped in with Yang afterwards and Nora ran up to Sage and Neptune's ride and joined them. At that point, they started to drive away so that they could get out alive.
"Alright, saddle up back there, it could get a little bumpy!" Sun called out to Ruby and Weiss.
*Insert "Move Bitch" music here*
As Sun drove on, Ruby looked to Summer, who didn't know what to do at that point. "You'd have a better chance of getting out of this alive if you continue to help my friend here," Ruby mentioned, giving Summer a reason to help Weiss some more.
With that motivation in mind, Summer knelt down next to Weiss and looked to take the mask off. "What was it that I said? Don't pull her mask off, got it?"
"She needs air, the mask is keeping her from getting that," Summer said. "You want to help her, she needs to get some fresh air, else she'll pass out and that won't help anyone."
"Fine, but don't try anything," Ruby replied, though she doubted that Summer would do anything considering she had a gun to her head.
Summer then went to pull the mask off, only to find that it was Weiss who she was working on. The memory of that ride she gave had filtered back into her head, and questions were piling in alongside the memory. As much as she wanted to ask about it, she couldn't with Ruby pointing a gun to her head.
"Move bitch, get out the way!" Sun shouted up from the front.
Summer felt behind Weiss to check for an exit wound from the gunshot. When she didn't feel one, she knew that the bullet was still stuck inside of her somewhere. "The bullet is still inside of her, so I'm gonna need some help getting it out of her."
Weiss who had been silent up till that point, looked over at Summer, and grabbed at her collar. "Then get this damn thing out of me!" She cried out in pain.
"Hold her down, this is going to hurt her and the more she moves, the harder it'll be to get it out," Summer said. As Ruby was about to help, she, along with Summer, was jerked towards the front of the vehicle when Sun slammed into the side of a cop car, plowing right through them. "Can you please try to keep us from being bounced around in here?"
"Sorry, bitch wouldn't move out of the way," Sun replied.
"Ruby, it's Velvet." Ruby heard over the headset when Velvet called to her. "Ren and I made our escape and are heading out to the rendezvous point. How's it going with you?"
"Oh, you know, trying to pull a bullet out of W, while S is driving like a maniac!" Ruby replied.
"You try driving while getting shot at by the cops!" Sun shouted back.
"Sun, please be careful, ok?" Velvet pleaded with Sun.
"I'll do what I can, but that's about it," Sun replied.
In the back of the Insurgent, Ruby was holding Weiss down, using her body weight to keep Weiss' upper body still. Summer was straddling over Weiss' lower half to keep her still while she pulled the bullet out of Weiss' side. She tore at the suit right where the wound was and pulled an emergency kit out of her bag. Pulling out a line of string, needles, a long set of tweezers and some alcohol, Summer handed some stuff off to Ruby for her to handle.
"Do you know how to attach thread to a needle?" Summer asked.
"I've had to stitch up bullet wounds before, so don't worry about what I know or don't know," Ruby replied as she worked on getting the needle and thread ready to go. Summer was taking a lighter and using it to disinfect the tweezers so as to avoid an infection, and she poured some of the alcohol over Weiss' wound to disinfect it there as well. As soon as she did, Weiss' screamed out in pain when the alcohol burned at her exposed wound.
"Ok, make sure she's held down tight," Summer began to say. "This is going to hurt a lot."
With a careful and swift hand, Summer plunged the tweezers into Weiss' bullet wound, forcing a scream from the white haired woman. It hurt Ruby to hear her love cry out in agony like she did, but Ruby knew that it would be much worse should she have the bullet still lodged into her side. They were fortunate enough that the gunshot didn't hit anything too vital, but Weiss would be out of action for a week or two at least while her insides repaired themselves.
Ruby had a hard time keeping Weiss' from thrashing about, it was hard to prevent someone from doing what their body instinctively wanted to do. "I almost got it," Summer said as Weiss was thrashing about really badly. "Just keep holding her down and we'll be fine." Weiss certainly made it hard for Ruby to do that, she was much stronger than most people actually believed she was.
Another painful few minutes later, and Summer held up the object of all their worries, the bullet that had lodged itself into Weiss' body. The tweezers were covered in blood, as was Summer's hand, but it did nothing to faze the nurse. She threw it onto the floor of the Insurgent before reaching for the string that Ruby had prepared. By that point, Ruby was trying to comfort Weiss, who was whimpering in pain and on the verge of losing consciousness.
What Ruby failed to notice until that point, was how smooth the ride had become. Somehow, during the chaos of removing Weiss' bullet, Sun had managed to escape the cops, and he was driving them over to the rendezvous point. Summer was still stitching up her wound, but it all was a complete blur to Ruby, who was worried that Weiss wouldn't make it. It was a stupid though, since she knew that Weiss was tough, but seeing her in such pain, a bullet wound in her side, Ruby just couldn't help it.
After a while, Ruby saw that Weiss' wound was patched up, that Weiss looked much calmer than she was before, and it sent relief shooting through her body. "I'll be fine, don't worry about me alright?" Weiss mentioned since she knew that Ruby would be fretting over her well being. They had only known each other for months, been in a relationship for maybe a month, or just past a month by that point. Despite that, they knew so much about each other that it seemed like they could read each others thoughts.
"Alright," Ruby replied as she watched Weiss move into a comfortable position with her head on Ruby's lap. Summer just sat awkwardly in the back, her hands wrapped around her knees holding them up to her chest. Ruby knew she wouldn't try anything, if she did then the speed at which someone would kill her would be extremely fast. Still, Ruby wanted to get the chance to explain things to her mom in a better way than at that moment.
By the time they had reached the rendezvous point, everyone else was waiting eagerly for them. Blake had told everyone to keep their faces covered in case their hostage was still with Ruby and Weiss, and she held her gun close to her chest once she saw the last vehicle approach the meetup. Once it was parked, Sun hopped out and walked to the back, where he met up with Blake as she aimed her gun in the back. She knew that Ruby and Weiss were in there, but that wasn't why she was aiming down that way.
As Sun opened the doors, they saw Weiss resting comfortably on Ruby's lap, her mask taken off, and Ruby leaning up against the back of the front seats. Summer was up against the side of the vehicle, and immediately noticed the gun trained on her. She became frightened, but when Blake ordered her out of the truck, Summer complied.
Weiss grumbled as she moved from her original position and towards the back of the truck so that she could speak with everyone, Ruby moving to join them as well. She saw that Blake was holding a gun to the back of Summer's head and pushed her to her knees, and that was when she had to stop what Blake was doing.
"Stop," Weiss called out, though she sounded much weaker than she normally did. Hearing that, Blake was surprised that Weiss would think that way.
"Wait, you thought I was gonna kill her?" Blake asked. "I was just gonna keep her away from everyone else so that we can decide what to do with her in a more private manner."
The problem with Blake's idea, was that Weiss had already made up her mind on what they were going to do with Summer. "Put the gun down, she's free to go whenever she wants."
A collective chorus of confused 'whats' and other reactions filled the air, before Weiss silenced them with a whistle. "She's free to go because not only do I owe her for saving my life twice now, but because I know that there is at least one person here who would be distraught over that happening."
Instead of an explanation behind why Weiss said what she did, Ruby turned to her, squeezed her hand, and then walked towards Summer. She all but ripped the mask off of her face and dropped down to her own knees to wrap Summer up in a tight hug. "Hi, Mom," Ruby whimpered as she felt her emotions rise up and spill out all over the place.
Summer, for lack of a better term, wasn't doing much better herself. When she saw Ruby's face for the first time, she was shocked. As soon as she heard Ruby call her mom, the dam broke, the flood of emotions rushing through. She wrapped Ruby up in as tight of a grip as she possibly could, refusing to let go as she cried into her shoulder.
Seconds later, Ruby and Summer felt another person wrap them up in a hug that knocked them to the ground, courtesy of one Yang Xiao Long. The three of them had become an emotional mess of bodies that were surprised to see each other after so long apart. As everyone watched the scene unfold, Weiss forgot about the pain, her heart soaring with happiness at seeing her girlfriend feeling so overjoyed at the sight of her mother.
Ren walked over to Weiss, one question on his mind. "So, I guess this is someone that Ruby and Yang both know?"
"She's Ruby's mother, Yang's step-mom," Weiss answered. "It isn't fair to either of them if I say that we kill her in cold blood, and I doubt Ruby would ever forgive me if I did go through with it."
"Alright, if you think that's best, then I'll go with it," Ren mentioned. "We just have to make sure that she won't say a word about this to anyone."
"Somehow, I doubt that we'll have to worry about that," Weiss said as she watched Ruby and Yang sit on the ground with Summer talking amongst themselves. Weiss then stood up fully, grabbed a stack of cash from the bag that held the money, and walked over to the three of them, hoping to get a chance at thanking Summer personally for what she has done by saving her life. She hated having to interrupt the reunion, but she needed to say her peace before to long.
Coughing to announce her presence, Weiss saw Ruby, Summer and Yang all look up at her, their eyes colored red and puffy from all the crying that they were doing. "I really hate to interrupt, but I just wanted to say thank you, for saving my life, both today and the other day."
"Wait, when did this happen?" Ruby asked.
"After what had happened in Paleto Bay, she drove me back to the city as I was walking down the highway," Weiss replied. She then presented Summer with the money as a show of thanks. "I know you may not want to be given stolen money, but for helping us out, when you really didn't have to do so, I wanted to show you that we aren't truly bad people, and that we are thankful for what you have done for us. Please, take this."
Summer, after a few moments of deliberation, gave in and grabbed the money from Weiss' hand, taking a moment to silently thank Weiss for the gesture.
Moments later, a car pulled up to the meeting, and everyone was put on alert. Blake, Nora and Velvet each raised a gun to aim at the car as it approached, but when the driver stepped out, Ren pushed the guns down after recognizing the face from the other day. Weiss then looked over to see Agent Ozpin standing at the edge of the car, interested in speaking with her.
She gingerly walked over to the man in order to give him a few parting words. "So, I suppose congratulations are in order," He began to say. "You not only successfully eliminated an enemy of the state, but also did so without drawing any attention to the possibility of fowl play."
"You knew that we would after all," Weiss rebuked. "If you didn't think we could, you wouldn't have asked us to do this job in the first place.
"True, but actually seeing the fruits of your labor are different than knowing it will happen," Ozpin retorted. "Regardless, your team held up your end of the agreement, and thus I plan on doing the same as a result. All medical costs of your injured companions will be covered by the agency, they will be cared for without the worry of anyone coming to arrest them, and no questions asked. Fortunately, one of your friends is already being let out of the hospital as we speak, and the other is under intense care until we can determine if it is safe for us to allow her to receive her treatment from home."
"Then we are in agreement," Weiss replied. "Should any complications arise, I'm sure you'll give me a call."
"Of course," Ozpin said. "Oh, and Weiss, good work." With that, Ozpin climbed back into his car and drove away from the meeting.
Once Weiss walked back over to her crew, Velvet spoke up. "What was that all about?"
"Just ensuring that our arrangement would be fulfilled, especially now that our end of the deal is complete," Weiss responded. She then noticed Ruby, Summer and Yang approaching them. "Well, I think it's time we all go home, I'm sure some of us have quite a night ahead."
"Yeah, my bed is calling for me, it wants to have a night of good fun until tomorrow," Neptune said. As they all made their way towards the different vehicles that Lester arranged for them to drive back into the city, Ruby walked over to Weiss instead.
"Weiss, thank you," Ruby said. "I really appreciate you sticking up for my mom like that."
"Anytime, Ruby," Weiss replied.
"We were wondering, would you like to join me, Yang, Blake and my mother for dinner so that we can catch up?" Ruby asked.
"I would love to, though I don't know how well my body will cooperate me if we go out," Weiss answered.
"Well, we were thinking of just staying at your place while we ate since you have enough space for us, and so that you were comfortable with that gunshot wound," Ruby mentioned.
Weiss smiled as she wrapped her arms around Ruby's neck. "Well then, of course I would love to join you guys, so long as you take care of me tonight."
Ruby grinned, and then gently picked up Weiss bridal style and walked her over to the car. "Anything for you, Princess."
AN: Well, this took a lot longer than I wanted it to, but hey, it got done, and in time for RWBY Volume 3!
Before I go on I wanted to say thank you for your understanding at the public service announcement from last week. I couldn't just sit by and not say anything about it, so thank you for bearing with the non chapter, and I hope this actual chapter makes up for it.
Now, to begin, I have started working on a new story titled The Other Side. I mentioned it during the PSA but now that I can actually talk about it some more, I really want you guys to check it out because it's going to be a really great story. There's only 3 chapter out right now and in total there are going to be 21, which have all been outlined, as well as a few having been written already. Please do me a solid and check that story out.
Next set of news, we hit 600 follows on this story! Holy crap I never thought that this would be possible, but here we are. I couldn't have done it without you guys, and it's because of you that I continue to write, and I just enjoy seeing all of the love that you guys have for what I do.
Which leads me to this. On November 7th (which is a saturday), I am going to be participating in the Extra Life charity event! The event is a 24 hour video game live stream where people can donate money that will go towards different children's hospitals all over the U.S./world. I unfortunately won't be streaming the full 24 hours due to other commitments that I have, but during the day I do plan on streaming for a few hours. My goal that I have set for myself is to try and raise $250 dollars from this event, but I can't do it without you guys. If you guys would go and check out the stream when I do my part, then I would be eternally grateful to you guys, and I would try to give out some things to make it worth you while *cough-a story you want me to write for yo-cough* so please go and support me as I try to raise money for kids.
Extra Life details will be expanded upon within the coming days.
Thank you guys for reading this and I hope you enjoyed this chapter. Remember to follow/favorite/review, and spread the word about this story, and all of the stories that I have worked on.
-Noble