So, this is probably me heads-in-the-cloudsing super hard, since we have three Volumes to go (hopefully that won't involve another thing like the Jaune incident to SLOW THE STORY TO A GLACIAL PACE) but I'm almost assuredly gonna do that RNBY-RKS (the S isn't the one you think) in Musutafu sequel I mentioned like six months ago (ask Apathy, they'll probably mention me daydreaming about it already). It's gonna be Fun because you can bet your sweet ass that there's gonna be absolutely no attempts to pretend they're gonna go to UA. Be fuckin' around wondering how they got roped into helping a kid who mumbles a lot go there yes, but not actually join the school (because why would they?).

- X Ilia X-

Ilia stood in the living room of Chieftain Belladonna's house, awkwardly watching the duo sitting at the table with some sort of paperwork. The blonde girl's red eyes flicked up from it so often that she might as well have been ignoring it entirely, the grip on her pencil growing so tight a cracking echoed across the room.

Ilia hadn't realized that Blake had been promoted to the leader of a squad. Maybe that's why she was being transferred to Vale? Blake had requested her to join Squad Blake?

Ilia couldn't help the happy grin that split her face at that idea. Blake trusted her enough to request a transfer, and then come all the way out-

The thought was cut off by the sound of a snapping pencil. The blond teen threw it down and stood up, pacing, "I can't do it."

"We need to pass it i-"

"Not! Now! Pyrrha!" Each word was accompanied by a stomping step, "Ruby's hurt! She's lying up there-"

"Fine," Blake said, stepping down the stairs, "Mom says you can go see her, if you want, just don't wake her up."

"Good," she said, storming past Blake and up the stairs. Blake gave a sigh, patting the white haired boy on the shoulder.

"Are you alright?"

"Yeah," he nodded, "is Ruby ok?"

"She's fine," Blake said, "Do you want to practice with me while we wait for her to wake up?"

"Sure!" he said, jumping up and grabbing the wooden swords and handing one to Blake. He looked at Ilia, tilting his head. Then he asked something that caused Ilia to lock up, "What're you?"

"What?" Ilia asked.

"Blake and Kali have cat ears," the kid said, "and there are people in town with fins and stuff. What'd ya have?"

"Oh," Ilia said, "I uh… well, I'll just show you."

Ilia's skin changed, turning bright purple and cracking a small smile at the boy's giggle, "I wish I could do something like that."

"I'm sure your trait is good too," Ilia said. What he said next, however, caused Ilia to stop.

"Oh, I don't have one!" He said, smiling, "but it'd be cool if I did!"

"Don't have…? You're a human!?" Ilia hissed, skin turning red.

"Yeah…?" The human said, "We all are… at least, I think Pyrrha and Yang ar-"

"What do you mean!?" Ilia cut him off, turning on Blake, "What are they doing here!?"

"They're my team," Blake said.

"Adam's letting humans into the Fan-?"

"I'm not part of the Fang anymore," Blake said, cutting off Ilia.

"What?" Ilia said, a bubbling building in her stomach. Not part of the Fang anymore?

"I'm not-"

"I heard you the first time," Ilia snapped, hand drifting towards Lightning Lash, "You betrayed us!?"

"It's not like that," Blake started, pushing the boy behind her, "Don't-"

Ilia lashed out, her whip cutting through the bo-ken and hitting Blake's cheek, "You-!"

"Ilia Amitola!" Kali yelled, coming down the stairs, "do not pull out your weapon in my house! And don't attack my DAUGHTER in it!"

"I-" Ilia started.

"Put down the weapon," Ghira said, coming down after his wife, "and just listen to Blake."

Ilia's eyes jumped around the room, everyone watching her. The silver haired human was staring at her, a curved sword in his hand defensively.

Finally, Ilia lowered her weapon, "Fine."

"Yang!" Blake called, "Can you come down?"

"We're coming," the brunette croaked, limping down the stairs with one hand around the blonde's neck.

"Are you alright?" Blake asked.

"Yeah," she said, "just a bit worn out. What's up?"

"I… I wasn't entirely honest with you before," Blake said, "about my past."

"Oh," Ruby said, "Ok. What didn't you tell me?"

"Before coming to Beacon," she was going to Beacon!? "I was a member of the White Fang."

-X Ruby X-

Ruby blinked slowly, her exhausted brain ruffling through itself. She shouldn't have cast Last Testament, she barely had enough energy to pull off Esuna and a fourth tier Cure back to back on the best of days, adding Last Testament to the equation was dumb, and every part of her body was busy reminding her of that simple fact. So instead of responding to Blake, Ruby's eyes jumped to Kali, "D-do you have anything for pain?"

"What type of pain?" Kali asked, "and you shouldn't be moving! You should be resti-"

"Put me down on the couch," Ruby croaked to Yang, who nodded and did so, "there, resting. Muscle aches, head- if it ends with 'ache' I'm dealing with it."

"Ibuprofen it is," Kali said, handing a couple of pills over to Ruby alongside a glass of water, "and this isn't really restin-"

"White Fang," Ruby muttered, just as much to jog her memory as to drown out the chiding. She'd spent too much time during the last week laid out, "White Fang, White Fang… I think Eraqus moved a book called that from the Librarium… uh…"

"How the hell," the girl with red skin growled, "do you not know what-"

"Oh!" Ruby's eyes lit up and she jerked forward far too quickly for her body's liking, sending her groaning and wrenching, "Uhg… sorry, sorry. Aren't they the big Faunus rights group, or did something change while I was away? Because you looked… well, you looked scared to say that. And you gotta have been if you hid it from me last time."

It wasn't meant as a barb, just a plain statement of fact and only after Blake winced and recoiled did Ruby realize it could have been viewed as one. Ruby pushed herself over the edge of the couch to grab Blake's hand lightly, ignoring the protestations of Kali and her body. The black haired girl looked up, "Sorry I lied."

"About what?" Ruby asked. What had she lied about?

"No more secrets," Blake said.

"Oh…" Ruby shrugged, "Don't worry about it. That's-"

"Back on topic!" The red skinned girl snapped.

"Things… they did change, while you were with Eraqus," Blake said, "the Fang got… it got more violent. Protests got less peaceful-"

"We did what he had to!" The girl yelled.

"We never had to start fights at protests!" Blake shot back, voice raising as she stepped away from Ruby and Riku, "We didn't have to attack innocent civilians!"

"They worked for the SDC!"

"And if they weren't who were!?" Blake snapped, "Any of the other poor? They're like us, desper-"

"They are nothing like us!"

"They don't make the policies!" Blake continued.

"But they don't hesitate to take advantage of them!" Ilia said, "My dad was as smart as any of them, my mom as good a cook! But we don't get the jobs as chefs or accountants, we're forced to work in unsafe mines for long hours until something goes wrong and we DIE for them and people like Jacques Schnee say we should be thankful for that! That he could give those jobs to people from Mantle, or robots, or-"

"Jacques is almost assuredly a sociopath," the bear of a man said, "I dealt with Jack Frost for years, he's always been in it for himself and nobody else. Don't use him as a justification for actions Ilia."

-X Ghira X-

Ghira didn't flinch as Ilia's eyes jumped to him, calmly meeting the chameleon Faunus's blazing glare. Ilia's grip on her whip grew tighter, and Ghira prepared for her to lash out, "I need you to calm down."

"Calm down!? calm down!?" Ilia snarled, her weapon audibly groaning, "Why should I calm down!?"

"Because we've already had one Grimm attack, and while miraculously nobody died I really don't want to test our luck twice in one day," Ghira said, "and you are causing negativity. You're scaring Riku."

The boy peered out from behind his mentor, who was holding a strange black club with an E extended from it, pushing herself up and gingerly gripping her side. Despite the clear pain in her face, the sweat pouring down her brow, her silver eyes were steeled.

"It'll be alright, Riku," Ruby said running a hand through the boy's hair. His blue eyes jumped around them as he gripped his sword.

"Did I do something wrong?" He asked softly.

"No," Ghira said before anyone could say anything, "You didn't. Drop your weapons, both of you."

Ruby gave him a look, before resting the the club next to her. After a minute, Ilia's grip on Lightning Lash faded. Ghira nodded, "Now, we're going to sit down and talk about this. Am I understood, girls?"

Blake nodded, sitting next to Ruby as Ilia sat down across them. Tension from Kali bled as they sat down together, and he offered a hand for comfort. They were going to have to be arbiters in this.

-X Blake X-

Blake watched Ilia carefully, hand drifting towards Master Defender. The Keyblade sat in her hand, and once again, she marveled at how light it felt. It was well balanced in spite of that, and in defiance of all logic, had cut into the Reaver's skin like water.

The blade hummed, hilt becoming hot, before Master Defender vanished from her hand in a flash of light and reappearing a foot above the ground, nearly sending Ruby into fit as she reached out to grab it before it hit the floor… and instead recoiled in pain, barely throwing her head into the bucket Kali pushed into her hands at the last second and giving a loud retching. The Keyblade hit the ground blade first with a heavy thud, tipped over and lay there, unmoving without so much as a gash in the floor.

Blake's hand dropped onto Ruby's shoulder before running in circles along her back. Clearly, whatever accord that had let her pick up and wield the blade against the Grimm had ended there too. At least for now.

"Sorry," Blake said, carefully picking up the Keyblade and returning it to the spot next to Ruby's other side before the process could begin again. Ilia's glare broke for a second, staring at the sword in confusion.

"How-?" Then the glare resumed, meeting Blake head-on, "Whatever. What are you doing here?"

Blake bit her tongue before the lightly barbed snark of 'visiting my family' could slip out. Instead, she met Ilia's eyes and asked, "Why can't I be here?"

"You're not one of us anymore!" Ilia snarled, "You're a Huntress!"

"So?" Ruby croaked, finally coming up from the bucket, skin pallid. She really, really shouldn't be up, "What's wrong with her being a Huntr- Urg!"

Ruby cut herself off, diving back into the bucket as another wave of bile rose. Blake finally cracked, "Can you just go lie back down?"

"What?" Ruby croaked.

"You're not helping anyone by sitting here throwing up every few seconds," Blake said.

"I'm," Ruby gritted her teeth, balling up her fists around the bucket, "I'm your partner and team leader. I'm not leaving! Not when someone is gonna look down on you for the decisions you made!"

Blake's mouth fell open as Ruby forced herself up, stepping towards Ilia like their was a ten pound weight on her back. Ilia stared at her, eyes wide and skin flashing as Ruby dropped the bucket and nearly tipped over, only Yang and Ghira moving to catch her saving her.

Despite that, the girl still looked Ilia in the eyes, "So what, exactly, is wrong with Blake being a Huntress?"

-X Kali X-

Kali watched her daughter's partner nearly collapsed with a tired sigh, even as Ghira caught her alongside Yang. Rising behind them, she silently prowled behind Ruby as she croaked out, "So what, exactly, is wrong with being a Huntress?"

A question Kali would ask herself in a moment, but for now... "Nothing."

Kali's palm touched the side of Ruby's head, her fingers splayed out Ruby's face and for the first time since Blake and her had moved to Kuo Kuana while Ghira continued his circuit ten years before, Kali activated the full force of her Semblance. Like an old muscle that hadn't been used in a while, it came with pins and needles.

Black energy rose off her arm like glowing smoke, starting at her shoulder and swiftly making its way down her arm. Ruby's pale skin reflected the black energy as it reached Kali's hand, her brown hair lifting from the smoke-like weave.

And then Ruby's eyes rolled up into the back of her head and she fell into Yang's arms. Kali waved her arm in a sharp motion, clearing the pins and needles as Yang looked up at her with wide eyes, that quickly narrowed, purple turning red, "What'd you do to her?"

"Just knocked her out," Kali said, "I can't stand it when people put themselves so low on their list of priorities. She can barely move, she should be, needs to be, resting. Can you please bring her back upstairs, Yang?"

"Yeah," Yang nodded, before lifting her sister up and carrying her up the stairs. At the top, she stopped, "and… Thanks."

"You're welcome," Kali said, before focusing on Pyrrha, "Can you take Riku outside?"

"Sure," Pyrrha nodded, taking Riku's hand, "Come along, we can-"

"Get ice cream?" Riku asked, "Me and Ruby kinda got interrupted before it could happen."

"If it's open," Pyrrha said, grabbing her sword as they stepped out into the sunny Menagerie. Kali watched them go, before swinging her eyes back to Ilia.

"Now," Kali said, just the right amount of poisoned honey in the tone of the woman who had once been the head of her husband's bodyguards. Ilia locked up, staring at her, "What's wrong with my daughter being a Huntress, please, I'm dying to know."

"I- uh- I-" Ilia gulped, sweat pouring down her face, "It's… Huntsmen didn't do anything when my parents died!"

-X Ilia X-

Ilia looked down, incapable of meeting any of the three Belladonnas' eyes. The childish admittance coming with a burning in her gut, but she didn't stop, "Sure, they started excavating the mine, but they just… they didn't do anything about the conditions, or even finish it! They just got the- the-"

Memories Ilia had desperately kept buried rose up in spite of themselves. The morticians hadn't been able to completely hide the damage, not in time for Ilia, their only living relative, to come in to identify them or for the burial. She, at least, had tried her best before the first. There had been black sheets covering their bodies, and she had only exposed their faces because that was all she had time to patch up.

It hadn't been enough. Nothing would have been enough, because her father was missing an eye. The empty socket had been stitched closed, but Ilia could still tell that-

Ilia was broken from the memories as Kali reached down and wrapped her arms around Ilia. Seconds later, a heavy, large hand, so unlike her dad's but with the same soft care, landed on her shoulder. Tears had begun to stream down her face at some point, her skin having shifted in tone to grey.

"Why'd you do it?" Ilia asked, begged, Blake, who had risen from her seat on the couch, "Why'd you leave the Fang? Why'd you become a Huntress?"

"I just…" Blake said, "I can't support the way the Fang's going anymore, Ilia. I'm sorry, but… killing people, kidnappings, assassinations- they're not making us equal, they're just making them scared of us."

"Then what are we supposed to do?" Ilia demanded through her tears, "We tried peace-"

"For less than a generation," Ghira said, "change doesn't come easily, Ilia, and it doesn't come quickly. But fear does, and you don't get to choose how people react with it. People might decide to crack down on Faunus harder, or even view this as an outright declaration of war. I saw the Faunus Revolution, Ilia. You don't want a repeat of it, no matter what the most extreme elements say."

"We can do this peacefully," Blake said, taking Ilia's hand, "Please, Ilia.. you're my friend, I don't want to fight you over this."

Ilia met her eyes, "We're still friends?"

"Of course we are," Blake said, "It's… what happened with Adam doesn't have anything to do with you. I realized that our relationship was… it was toxic, and that he was lying to me. But you're still important to me."

"He wants me in Vale for some reason," Ilia said, "I thought it was because of you, but…"

"That's… that's weird," Blake said, frowning "probably something to look into. Can I give you my Scroll number, so you can tell me when you get there and know?"

Ilia hesitated. If she did that, she'd be a traitor too, to what was supposed to be her family. But, something about the calming grip on her shoulder from Ghira, the hug from Kali, and Blake holding her hand…

She had a family here.

"Yeah," Ilia said, nodding, "Yeah."

-X Pyrrha X-

The ice cream shop, was, in fact, opened in spite of the three foot deep by nine feet wide hole in front of it. Pyrrha glanced around, doing her best to cover Riku's eyes from the still decaying bodies of the Grimm. The inky skin was all gone, leaving cracked and worn carapace the only reminder of the attack that had harassed Kuo Kuana.

Two kids were amusing themselves by kicking them into the hole Ruby had made with her last attack. Looking around, Pyrrha didn't see any adults around, "Where are your parents?"

"Dad went to get more wood for the roof," one said, pointing to the roof Braig had spent much of the battle sniping from. Parts of it was broken, the taloned claws of Reavers having ripped the long beams apart. The sniper hadn't been particularly subtle either, his boots having cracked others or, in one or two outstanding cases, wrenched the ones damaged by the Reavers from their nailing. And then there was the spot where he had flipped a Reaver over and kicked it down the roof.

That wood would have to be replaced because there were six holes embedded in the thick slab. Bone had been there, before the Grimm had died. And that wasn't getting into the damage to the buildings from the shards of bone Ruby had sent flying with that last attack. Shattered windows, walls that looked like someone had unloaded a grapeshot into it. There was little denying the effectiveness of the attack, but many questions too.

What or who, exactly, had Ruby Rose fought that found her feeling she needed an attack that devastating? Was there a chance they would have to face it?

And if so, did Pyrrha Nikos have anything in her roster that could effectively eliminate it? If it was covered in something ferrus, maybe. Or maybe she should literally start carrying around a grapeshot canister or the like. Something for an extreme blast, if her years of experience didn't win her the fight.

"How can I- oh, hey, little guy!" The moose Faunus said, smiling at Riku, "Here for that ice cream?"

"Yeah," Riku nodded, and Pyrrha reached for her wallet, only to stop as he raised a hand.

"I can't-" Pyrrha started.

"No, you misunderstand," the guy said, laughing, "Your uh… friend?"

"Friend," Pyrrha agreed.

"Your friend paid last time," he said, "but I didn't have time to give her and the little guy their ice cream before… well, that happened. So pick something out for a medium or I'll jot it down somewhere so I won't forget it. I run an honest business."

"Thanks," Pyrrha said, "Do you have pineapple?"

"Pineapple?" Riku said, sticking out his tongue.

"Oh, yeah. Pretty much the only thing I don't have to import the ingredients for," he said, heading into the back, "well, that and other tropical fruit. What about you, little guy?"

"Chocolate chip!"

-X Raven X-

Raven's eyes scanned across the crowded people, before she rested her hand on Vernal's unharmed arm, "Vernal's in charge until I get back. If I come back and you haven't listened to her, or she's dead, there will be hell to pay, am I understood?"

A spattering of nods greeted her and Raven nodded to the injured second-in-command before jumping in the back of the cart next to the armored corpse. The man in the driver's seat nodded, before moving them forward. Raven puckered her lips as she slid on the helm, staring at the black heart on the armor.

As much as she despised it, she was gonna have to hope Ozpin knew what the hell this beast was.

- X AN X-

And so ends our fun times in Menagerie. Now we can FINALLY HAVE A GODSDAMNED TIMESKIP