Hey, guys. Sorry this was late, some familial problems arose last week, and I was greatly lacking in motivation, but thankfully now I can do this story again. In addition, it was Thanksgiving week, and my WiFi also decided to quit on me, so I wouldnt be able to post it, anyway.
BUT. I am actually a chapter ahead, now. I also hope to some power that I can get the new RWBY Grimm Eclipse at some point! It looks beautiful and it looks so fun! And for those who have seen the episode for this week, who else was impressed by Mercury? I now feel bad that I killed him off early. His fighting is awesome.
But that's not what you're here for! You're here for Thorns! And so I shall give it to you!
P.S. Try to spot the RvB reference!
The crowd went silent, and even Ruby and Taiyang stopped fighting and watched with growing realization what exactly just happened.
Yang checked the back of her head in sudden worry, dreading what she would find—or wouldn't.
Her hands found nothing. Her hair, most of her luscious hair, was just sheared off by Summer's sword. Her hair was only about chin length now.
Watching her stepmother come to a horrified conclusion, Yang herself regressed to a much more furious and primal state where rage ruled her mind and body. Albeit temporarily, her body acted of its own accord, and she began to walk forward, teeth gritted, heat simmering off of her form.
"Summer, watch out!" Someone shouted from the outside of the arena, "Her Semblance in fueled by her rage!"
Summer cursed herself quietly for having not asked. She remembered when Yang was six or seven, she would constantly get into fights at school, if only because Ruby was being bullied. She should have known; Semblances were influenced by a person's upbringing, and to a certain degree, genetics.
So Yang's rage and toughness were her greatest weapon...and made her the most dangerous person in the room.
Yang's speed, however, had not necessarily increased, however; as she sprinted at Summer, she moved the same speed she had been before. Moving for a haymaker, Yang's punch was parried and deflected when Summer timed her guard right and her gauntlets slid harmlessly along the sword's pristine white blade.
Yang roared and reeled back, then threw her next punch, again being deflected by Summer's sword. But this time, she had preparation to back her up.
As she spun with her arm thrown haphazardly outward, she backhanded Summer hard enough to knock her off her feet and send her flying.
The Rose smashed into the wall and found herself winded and unable to move. Yang was approaching fast.
"HRAAAGH!"
Yang whirled and braced herself, catching both of Taiyang's huge hands with her smaller, more-feminine-but-still-pretty-big-for-a-girl hands.
And, to her father's incredible surprise, holding him back.
"Combatant: TAIYANG Aura rising. Combatant: YANG Aura reaching critical levels."
Yang's rage clouded her mind, making her forget that her father's Semblance allowed him to absorb one's Aura and restore his own with it, which was the reason he preferred a mixed martial artist style of grappling and kickboxing as well as punching.
Yang's attention flicked to Taiyang's shoulder, where Ruby vaulted over in a flip, nicking his shoulder with her hidden blade and landing behind Yang in a crouch.
"Combatant: RUBY profile updating..."
The lights along Ruby's arm flashed red several times.
"Combatant: RUBY Semblance updated: Aura Absorption."
The assassin's arm flashed green and then turned blue once again. She stood up and whirled toward Taiyang just as he threw Yang to the ground forcefully.
"Combatant: YANG eliminated by Aura depletion. Remaining Combatants: RUBY of Team: RED. Combatants: TAIYANG and Combatant: SUMMER of Team: BLUE."
"Beat 'em down, Ruby!" Weiss yelled above.
"Make Sarge proud!" Ruby heard Blake cry from the stands, "Get a win for Red!"
Ruby smiled. Blake was so cute when she cheered.
Taiyang lunged for her just as she jumped into a backflip over him. She landed on her hands and launched into a back handspring, stopping on her feet in the center of the arena. Summer appeared behind her, emulating her move with Taiyang's help.
Assuming a neutral combat stance, she prepared for her mother and father, who were both charging at her, attempting to sandwich her between them.
Taiyang drew near and swung for a right hook, and behind Ruby, Summer was sweeping her pistol around to shoot her.
Ruby spun, one arm reaching up and grasping Taiyang's wrist, the other clutching Summer's wrist as she pulled the trigger. They did not expect Ruby to redirect their own attacks around herself to hit each other.
While Taiyang was merely hurt and stunned by the explosive bullet hitting him in the chest, his fist smashed into Summer's face, prompting her to tumble over and lay still.
"Combatant: SUMMER eliminated by friendly fire, Aura depleted."
Ruby didn't let the opportunity go to waste. She heeled her father in the shoulder with her palm, following with a punch to his other shoulder. Taiyang swung a clumsy fist at Ruby, who ducked beneath it and whirled, drawing her now-unfolding scythe at the same time, and hit him in the back with the flat end like a hammer.
Taiyang flew at an unworldly speed and hit the arena wall so hard it shook the ground. Gravity peeled him from it and he collapsed to the floor, defeated.
"Combatant: TAIYANG defeated, Aura depleted. Combatant: RUBY is victorious. Winning team: RED."
Ruby looked behind at her mother, who now lay sprawled on the floor after being accidentally punched by her husband. Ruby knelt beside her and asked if she was okay.
"Only a possible concussion. I'll be fine," Summer rolled over, her vision clearly swimming, "Good to know my husband can hit when it counts."
"He's a teacher at Signal. Of course he can." Ruby was about to help Summer to her feet when she felt hands on her arms spin her around and close around her waist, then gasped in pleasant surprise when Blake's lips pushed against her own. She kissed back and lingered in contact with the Faunus for another few seconds—well, probably more like twenty, thirty seconds—before Blake released her.
"You're so pretty when you fight," Blake sounded like she herself was on an adrenaline high despite not being one of the fighters.
"Well, finesse is my specialty," Ruby smiled and briefly poked Blake's nose, causing the cat to shake her head reflexively. The red girl giggled, prompting a new grin from Blake.
"So you must be the girlfriend I've heard about."
Ruby looked at her mother, who must have gotten up, because she was standing behind the currently-connected couple. Blake blushed and pulled away from her lover, though she was unsure why she had, feeling as if her arms were without purpose as long as Ruby wasn't wrapped in them.
"Y-yes, ma'am," Blake stammered, hands crossed at her waist, "I am Ruby's girlfriend. Blake."
"You don't need to be so awkward, girl," Summer replied, a smirk painted subtly on her face, "She's my daughter, and you've got enough X-chromosomes to be someone's daughter, too, so we aren't getting kids outta you anytime soon."
"Mom!" Ruby yelped unexpectedly and uncharacteristically, staring in disgust and embarrassment at her mother, "You don't need to say things like that!"
"Hey, I'm just trying to reassure her. That's usually the main concern when a girl starts dating a boy, and she can't quite do that, so I'm fine with the two of you together."
Blake smiled at the last part of the sentence, thankful that Ruby's mother was okay with it. One less person to please. And she had a sense of humor, too.
"But I hope you're treating her well," Summer warned, making her swords gleam with a single toss of her hips, "Or I may have to do some gardening, in which you're the weeds. And believe me, I know what to do with a hoe."
"MOM!"
"I would never hurt her."
Summer nodded understandingly. "Good. Now scamper along. I know you two have been waiting for a bit too long, so...go."
"Thanks, Mom," Ruby waved and pulled Blake away, and when they were out of earshot, Ruby twined her fingers with Blake's and closed her other hand gently around her girlfriend's upper arm. "And here I thought Yang got her pervertedness from Dad."
"She didn't?"
"I kinda wonder how I'd never heard that kind of talk out of Mom. It might just come from her being protective of her daughter, but she didn't know I'm gay until...until that. Unless Yang told her. But even then, I wanted to be the one to tell my mother..."
Ruby's words slowly grew more and more faint, until she was no longer actually speaking, murmuring so lowly that even Blake couldn't hear.
"Hey, at least it's past," Blake said as the couple ascended the stairs and reached the exit, "And besides, she's fine with...with us. So what does it matter?" Blake stopped, pulled Ruby in front of her, and pushed against her lips with her own.
Ruby somehow nodded while in the midst of kissing and shrugged. They disconnected their mouths and rested their foreheads together, hidden around a corner.
"I'm feeling a bit of a..." Ruby began searching for the right term, and found one soon enough as she spoke quietly to her lover, "Craving, Blake. The carnal kind." She placed two fingers on Blake's chest and began walking them like legs up to Blake's neck and then her chin, where she gently pinched Blake's chin between her curled index finger and her thumb. "All the excitement has my mind and heart racing, and both of them want you, without..."
Ruby tugged on Blake's shirt. "These."
Blake grinned. "Well, let's go. Plenty of fun to be had, especially for us."
Ruby laughed and the two of them rushed off at a walking pace, eager to reach their room and bed, where they would find themselves engrossed in each other for some time and where nobody would dare bother them as long as they were inside.
Yang sat on the couch in the living room, pouting in needless anger, her ill temper still seething as she twirled the now-chin-length locks with her finger.
Weiss wandered back into the room holding a tray with two mugs on saucers, as well as an ornate little pot. She set the tray on the coffee table and sat down on the couch beside her girlfriend, whose only distraction from her lost hair was Weiss herself.
Weiss picked up the teapot and poured the hot brown liquid into each mug—hot chocolate, a delicious drink and now her favorite dessert of all, thanks to her strong, smoldering sweetheart, who introduced it to her on the train ride back into Atlas.
Apparently, the sight of it pulled Yang's head from the lack of her hair and toward the mug being gently pushed into her hands by fingers covered by long, loose yellow sleeves. Which, as Yang noticed, belonged to her, as did the shirt they belonged to.
"Hot chocolate...in Mistral?" Yang wondered, not so much as a complaint as much as a confused question.
"Yes, why?"
"I'm just saying, hot chocolate is usually reserved for when it snows..."
Weiss glanced toward the nearby window looking out over the valley behind the major. She smiled and pointed out the window.
"Well, I'll be..." Yang said, smiling as she watched snowflakes falling from the sky, realizing she was looking at the first snow of the year for Mistral. The only kingdom that didn't get snow was Vacuo, but that was a desert, anyway.
Weiss, too, was mesmerized by the falling snow, hypnotized in the way that each of the unique little snowflakes fell in their own unique pattern, like unique people, going through lives on their own unique paths...
Fluffy golden curls brushed against her cheeks, and she turned her head to meet Yang's gaze. Her violet, faintly-red irises watched Weiss in return, and she looked down to find that Yang was on her hands and knees. Weiss was sitting crosslegged, still cradling her hot chocolate in her covered hands.
"I couldn't do that with long hair," Yang said, and Weiss reached up and bounced one of Yang's curls on her palm. She giggled, amused, finding the new hairstyle adorable.
"I'm glad. I'm kinda in love with these...these coils you're getting," Weiss toyed with her girlfriend's vertical, spring-like bangs and hair.
"You...you are?" Yang seemed surprised, and Weiss nodded with a grin, truly adoring the way Yang's coils bounced.
"Yeah! They're fun, they bounce when you walk, and you look so much cuter with orderly hair!"
Yang's face lit up and laughed, hugging Weiss and smiling happily. The blonde lowered herself atop Weiss's lap and rolled over, the back of her head resting between Weiss's thighs. She looked up at the ceiling, or, rather, at the face obscuring her view of it.
"I love you," Yang said serenely, her eyes sparkling, "I'm so lucky to have you as my girlfriend."
Weiss leaned down and nuzzled Yang's nose and kissed her forehead and giggled again. "I love you more."
"No, I love you more~" Yang denied lovingly.
"No, I love you mmmm—" Weiss's playful argument was silenced by an upside-down kiss on her lips.
"I win!" Yang teased, putting her head back on Weiss's lap.
"Aw, no fair~" Weiss whined without true complaint, "You cheated!"
"All is fair in love and war, Weiss..." Yang began, putting her hands on the sides of Weiss's face and placed another kiss on Weiss's lips, "And fortunately for both of us, this is love."
And so the two of them cuddled up with each other on the sofa, watching as the snow fell outside to mark the coming of winter to the kingdom of Mistral. Kisses were shared between the lovers, and in mere minutes, Yang's arm was looped around Weiss's delicate waist as the couple slumbered between the heat of the fireplace and the cold of the snow, a candle and a snowflake, melting into one other, just like the very things their nicknames were derived from.
In the darkness, two red spheres watched.
A blade was held to her throat, and Summer trembled in terror.
"P-p-please...h-h-h-help..." Tears rolled down her cheeks.
And suddenly, Summer was gone, and now Peridot knelt beside a bullet-filled corpse.
"Mommy!" She wailed, trying hard to shake her dead mother awake. "Mommy!"
The image faded and was replaced by a weeping Jaune, holding his fallen, beloved Pyrrha. His bloodshot eyes looked up.
"Monster. Horrible, heartless, fucking monster."
The venomous snarl was the last thing he said, for now he lay on the black ground beside Pyrrha, his shattered shield atop of him and the limp, pale, bloodied form of Winter beside him.
"You are a machine. You are more machine than even me."
The corpses of Ruby's fallen friends disappeared, and now Nickelle stood before her. She was mangled. She was missing an arm and the artificial flesh on half of her body. Her jaw was gone, leaving her cybernetic teeth in clear view, and she stood on gangly, hideous legs that were made merely from wire and metal plates.
"At least I want to be human." Nickelle's mangled body did not inhibit her speech, as she used a speaker anyway. "You are nothing but a machine, a drone, whose only purpose is to hurt. Maim. Murder. To rip apart that which does not agree with you."
Before Ruby's horrified eyes, Nickelle suddenly rusted and fell apart, leaving behind nothing but a pile of oxidized scrap metal.
"R-Ruby..."
Blake sobbed in fear, her hands and feet bound. Tears streaked down her cheeks and dropped onto the massive blade at her throat, where they sizzled and evaporated into steam. A massive, shadowy, armor-clad arm held the hilt. Those ominous red orbs floated just above her head, in the darkness.
"H-h-h-how c-c-could you f-fail us, Ruby? Why?" Blake whimpered helplessly, "Why?"
SSSSSCCCCCHHHHHWIIIIINNNNNGGGG!
The unmistakable sound of a blade drawing across someone's flesh accompanied the horrified image of Blake's throat being torn asunder, and with that the Faunus's body fell limp as a pool of blood spread from the carcass at Ruby's feet, but it didn't stop until she stood in a bloodbath up past her ankles, and all around her, the corpses of her friends, the bodies of the thousands upon thousands of men and women lay in the blood, too, and the blood continued to rise, rise, rise until she was submerged, and she kicked and tried to keep her head above the blood but she couldn't breathe, couldn't swim, couldn't escape the blood she spilled and she was drowning in it, she couldn't breathe, couldn't escape, and the corpses screamed at her words synonymous with murderer and she couldn't breathe, couldn't escape from her torment—
Ruby leapt out of bed, screaming, "Stop! Stop! Make it stop!"
She wrapped her organic hand around her metal hand and ripped it from the stump and threw it across the room. The prosthetic lay in the corner as Ruby turned away from it and fell to her knees, sobbing, pleading with some invisible being to end her anguish as she covered her ears with her arms in a vain attempt to drown out the screams of the dead people in her head.
She felt someone pull her into a hug, and kisses followed, and whispers from a soothing voice, and Ruby opened her eyes and for just a moment imagined that Blake's throat was severed and feared that she hadn't truly awoken until the image disappeared and was replaced with a completely healthy Blake.
SSSSSCCCCCHHHHHWIIIIINNNNNGGGG!
She couldn't get the sights out of her head, or the feeling of drowning. She couldn't rid herself of the sickly sweet stench of the red, iron-rich liquid. She could still hear the blade's echoing hiss as it sundered flesh. She couldn't stop trembling in fear as she helplessly watched Blake die over, and over, and over. She wept in a panic and just pleaded with nobody in particular to make it all go away.
Before she knew it, she was being cradled again, her head resting on someone's chest, one arm around her head and the other around her shoulders, a hand stroking her hair calmingly. She sniveled and tried to take deep breaths as a voice she didn't feel like identifying instructed her, and eventually she regained control of her thoughts.
Ruby was rocking back and forth, resting on someone's lap, and it was a very alluring prospect to her to just sit there for the rest of the night and rock like a child in her mother's arms. But alas, she didn't allow herself the luxury. She lifted her head and looked at the person holding her.
"Hey," Yang said softly, "You okay, Ruby?"
Ruby took a ragged breath. Her head hurt. Probably the hyperventilating. Her chest hurt, too. Her hand shook like it was shivering.
"I-I-I th-think so," Ruby lied. She was exactly the opposite.
"What happened?" Yang's caring lilac eyes stayed in line with Ruby's, filled with utmost concern.
"I-I-It was nothing. A nightmare. Nothing more."
"Seriously. Tell me."
Yang's eyes panned across the room and the blonde's sharp eyes collared the prosthetic hand sitting in the corner.
"You ripped off your own hand."
She got up and picked up the hand, but when she returned to Ruby with it, the brunette stared at it with an apprehension she had never seen before.
"Get it away from me."
"What? But it's your ha—"
"GET IT AWAY!" Ruby snapped, and then it flew across the room, blade out, and buried itself in the wall beside the open doorway, where another couple of figures stood, stunned.
Nickelle, and Blake.
"B-B-Blake!" Ruby stammered, completely ignoring the surprise on Yang's face.
But Blake looked strange. She looked like she wasn't staring longingly at her girlfriend. She looked horrified by the bewildered girl with the sweaty skin and the stump for an arm who just screamed as if she were insane.
"Blake!" Ruby got up and moved to try and embrace Blake, but Blake backed away.
Ruby understood now. Blake was afraid. Afraid of the mad assassin with whom she shared a bed.
And she couldn't blame her, really. Even Nickelle was giving Ruby a wide berth.
"I...I..." Ruby looked down at the floor. She had nothing to say. Nothing she could say that would convince them that she wasn't clinically insane.
And with the way Ruby's brain automatically resorted to imagining Blake being soaked in blood whenever she looked at her, she herself couldn't be quite so sure of her own sanity, either.
So she fell to her knees in a hunched position, fully realizing she was now a madwoman in their eyes, and cried.
Did you find it? I'm sure you did. Now, for the record, this last section was meant to be in the next chapter, but it felt like it fit better in this chapter, instead. So, I apologize if it feels like it whips the steering wheel from "heartwarming" to "gut-wrenching." Other than that, I wish you all a good night/day!
P.S. AGAIN: Feel free to check out my latest story, Monkeying Around! It mainly involves transformations and I do have multiple chapters planned, so feel free to check it out!
