Hey Everyone! It's been my policy not to do notes on FFN, but this is important. Due to upcoming content, hinted at starting in this chapter, I've changed this story's rating from "Teen" to "Mature". I apologize if you go invested in this story with the expectation that it wouldn't cross this line, but this is where my muse has taken me, and I will be adjusting the rating to fit the story, rather than trying to shoehorn the story into a rating. No, this does not mean this story will start including smut or anything, just elements considered a bit too much for a "Teen" story. If you'd like more information on this, I recommend looking into the version on AO3 (Archive of Our Own), where I do include notes with each chapter. In the meantime, this note will be removed in a few weeks, once I feel satisfied that the regular readers all are aware of this change, and aren't caught too off guard by it.
Thank you. I now return you to your regularly (un)scheduled story.
The instant the sun went down, Ruby Rose took off.
Sure, she wasn't that far from the apartment - she'd been edging her way towards it the entire time she was "working" - but given the potential danger her sister was in? Ruby pushed her superspeed as hard as she possibly could.
She wasn't supposed to do it so openly, but desperate times and all that. Besides, all the people on the street would see would be a red blur; they'd probably chalk it up to a crazy asshole going way too fast on a souped up motorcycle. Granted, she wasn't aware of a non-magical person - let alone the motorcycle itself - that could survive the G-Forces behind making a hairpin turn at around 270 miles per hour.
And it was a good thing she retained such a high degree of magical maneuverability. Enhanced Soul Form durability or not, if she collided with something at this speed, it would end her time on this world far more dramatically than the first time she died.
Honestly, at this speed, it didn't even feel like running anymore. She felt more like an angry comet, streaking a few feet above the ground, scattering rose petals instead of ice crystals.
Which… probably had a lot to do with the fact that certain physical constraints, such as friction, seemed to be entirely irrelevant after she activated her superspeed. She'd even ran across the surface of a river, once.
Maybe with enough practice, she could eventually learn to just… run on air? Flying would be incredible.
In the meantime, clearing the almost 3 miles between her starting position and the apartment in less than a minute was pretty incredible on its own.
True to her word, Blake was already there, with a black beret covering her cat ears.
"Couldn't get out on time?" Ruby asked.
Blake shook her head.
"Mrs. Cordoven is still talking my ear off. I'm trying to get her to leave. She's... not impressed with my choice of headwear. Apparently her husband was a Green Beret. But at least she's finally talking about him."
Ruby guessed that the pained expression Blake wore here was because she had to wear a more polite mask back at the office.
"So…" Ruby shifted her weight, "do you have it?"
Blake nodded, and pulled a silver chain out of her pocket. Dangling at the end was an amethyst pendulum pendant, with a bright yellow hair wrapped tightly around it. It was already tugging gently towards the east.
"I already cast the spell." Blake said. "Let's get going."
"Alright," Ruby said, "hand me the pendant and hop on my back."
Blake shook her head.
"It won't work very well at the speeds you move at. It'll take too long to find her. But I have a plan." Blake pulled out a map, walked up to Ruby, and began pointing things out on it. "You can drop off clones of me here... and here. The tracking spell isn't the most accurate on its own, but with three points of reference, I can draw out almost exactly where she is on the map, and we can go straight there."
"Alright, good plan." Ruby said. "Hop on."
The Blake beside her nodded, and Ruby felt another Blake's weight climb onto her back, wrapping her legs around her waist and her arms around her neck.
In base form, it would have been rather unwieldy for Ruby to carry someone so much taller than her like this, but since she was in Soul Form, the extra weight hardly registered.
Still, she didn't go quite full speed with a passenger on board. The extra weight hurt her maneuverability, and Blake was already split into three, which meant each part was at less than half strength. Accidentally breaking a Blake would cost them valuable time, and worse, leave Blake at reduced strength for a while… and if they were going to have a fight on their hands…
Well, they needed every advantage they could get.
Still, it took only seconds to reach the first intersection Blake had pointed out. Skidding to a stop, she felt a Blake push off of her back, without losing the weight she was already carrying. A quick glance told her that the extra Blake was fine, but now that she was in four different parts, Ruby elected to slow down even further.
Another painfully slow sprint to the second location, and the process repeated. Now there were five Blakes; the point where the combined strength of all Blake's copies started to get weaker than if there was just one of her. Sure, at a smidge under one fifth strength, Blake was still much stronger than an average human, but in Ruby's superpowered hands, she felt… fragile.
The Blake on her back unfolded the map in front of her. Three pencil lines were actively tracing their way across the map; undoubtedly the work of the other Blakes. They converged at a single point, and Ruby's feet were already moving before she realized where, exactly, she was going.
"Really, the docks?" Ruby asked, trusting in Blake's sensitive hearing to understand her over the wind. "There's no way I would have overshot that!"
"Well, I didn't know that!" Blake grumbled back. "How was I supposed to know how far east she was? If she was closer, you would have overshot her!"
Ruby groaned, only half-focused on dodging the rush-hour traffic. When did dodging cars at 80 miles per hour with tall buildings zipping by on either side start to feel so painfully slow to her?
"Blake, dismiss your clones so I can speed up!" Ruby grumbled.
"No, Ruby, what if they move her? We want to do this right the first time, instead of going on a wild goose chase!"
"But I could have already been there!"
"Ruby, I'm just as worried as you are, but the right way to do things is carefully. Especially in our line of work! You want your soul to survive long enough to eventually meet your sister and mother in the afterlife, right?"
"I…" Ruby sighed. "Okay. You're right. I'm sorry."
Tense silence and rushing wind permeated the next two minutes. Given that the lines on Blake's map weren't being redrawn remotely, Ruby felt safe in assuming that Yang wasn't moving. Good. That'd make things easier.
As Ruby approached the docks, she felt Blake become a little bit more solid. She wasn't any heavier or anything, but when there were fewer clones, something about Blake felt more… substantial.
The map disappeared, and Blake tapped her shoulder. Ruby took this as a signal to skid to a stop, and Blake hopped off.
"Are you at full strength?" Ruby asked.
"Yes. Finally shoo'ed Cordo out. A mere 15 minutes overtime." Blake let out an exasperated sigh as the beret disappeared into shadows. "But we probably want to go in quiet. Don't want to scare them away."
"I was thinking the same." Ruby nodded. "They shouldn't know we're coming, but…" she gave an uneasy half-smile, "The right way to do things is carefully, after all."
"Good to know you're still listening to me." Blake mussed her hair in an imitation of Yang, causing Ruby to squirm back. "Don't worry. It will be okay. We're going to get Yang out of this safely. Any enthrallment will probably crumble the instant she's told to be anything other than friendly to you."
Ruby took a deep breath.
"Okay. Not a big deal. Just going in like big damn heroes to save my sister. Quietly."
Blake nodded, then gestured for Ruby to follow her up onto a stack of shipping containers. Ruby followed, doing her best to do so silently. The extra hearing and enhanced reaction speeds were a valuable asset in keeping their noise levels down, but still, she wasn't exactly silent. Blake was probably making about as much noise as a mouse would have made scrambling along the metal surfaces, but Ruby? The noise of her footfalls still seemed cacophonous, even if the noises were almost certainly drowned out by crashing waves and containers creaking in the wind.
She was stealthy enough, but Blake made it seem like an art form.
Following the pendant in Blake's hand, they made their way to the edge of the docks, and an excitable feminine voice got steadily louder, clearly caring nothing for stealth.
"And then you were, like, 'Do you have any idea who my mom is? Leave!' and that one guy was all 'noooo, I'mma try to be a hero!' But then you were like, 'Bam!' and you fired that warning shot and I swear he crapped himself! He must not have known who your mom is. I mean, I don't either, but those other guys seemed really scared, so I guess she must be some kind of big wig somewhere-"
Blake suddenly stopped ahead of her, crouching low against the top of the container. Ruby followed suit, peering over the edge and taking a look. What she saw made her heart skip a beat: Yang.
But something was off. Yang was… remarkably relaxed, despite having her shotgun hoisted over her shoulder. Yang was never that comfortable around guns. Always approached them with a level of awestruck discipline. Not like she was… a schoolgirl looking at her crush or something.
Ruby followed Yang's half-lidded eyes, and her blood boiled at what she saw. Soulsense told her that there was something very unnatural about this person - this woman who had been talking the whole time. She must have been the one who abducted Yang. The one who was… puppeting her along like this. The vampire. Ruby tensed. She wanted to grab her by those stupid pigtails and smash her around like-
Blake's hand was suddenly on her shoulder, and she gave Ruby a look. Not yet. It said silently. Ruby nodded back.
"-anyway, all I'm saying is, you were incredible tonight, babe." The vampire approached Yang, and threw her arms around her shoulders. "Best pet I've ever had. Can't wait to figure out what else you can do. All this excitement has made me… hungry."
The vampire forcefully pulled Yang into a kiss, and with the wave of nausea and revulsion Ruby felt at the idea of her sister being forced into something like that against her will… Ruby couldn't stop herself. To hell with the consequences.
"Get the hell away from my sister!" Ruby shouted as she flew across the docks, slowing down just enough that she didn't turn her fist into paste as she punched the vampire away from Yang. Her whole arm still throbbed under the amount of force, but the vampire had it worse as she skipped off the concrete twice before slamming into a metal shipping container.
"Ruby!" Blake shouted, horrified, from where they'd been hiding, but Ruby ignored her.
"Come on, Yang! Snap out of it!" Ruby said as she tugged gently on her sister's hand, but her expression only seemed to grow more vacant.
"What the hell? Reapers?!" The vampire snarled. "There's a treaty in place! You can't do shit! Get the fuck out of here!"
"I don't care what you think I can or can't do!" Ruby shouted back. "I'm not going to let you hurt my sister! This is personal!"
"Hurt her?" The vampire laughed. "No, no, no. You got it all wrong! She likes it! She's into it! Aren't you, Yang?"
"Yes, mistress." Yang said with a hint of wistfulness.
"I didn't even ask her to call me that outside the bedroom." The vampire whispered conspiratorially, adding in a wink.
"I… what?" Ruby asked, looking back and forth between them, confused. "No, you did something to her!" The panic within her was growing. "Release her, or I'll make certain you don't live long enough to regret it!"
Another laugh from the vampire, and Ruby was vaguely aware of Blake's distantly approaching footsteps.
"You can't do shit." The vampire said, grabbing an armful of small boxes. "Especially not with her here. I know your 'rules'. Yang, honey? Take care of these pests! Kill them if you can. Don't let them chase me. Find your way back home when you're done."
"Yes, mistress." Yang said, swinging the shotgun into a firing position.
Blake's footsteps increased pace to a full sprint.
"Yang! Please! It's me, Ruby!" She said as Yang pointed the shotgun directly at her.
"Sit down, shut up, and don't move." Yang said, eyes watering and pain evident in her voice. This was it. This is what it would take to break whatever weird mind control Yang was under. Ruby would just stand her ground, give the real Yang something to fight for. She took a step forward. Yang would never-
There was a deafening "bang" as something shoved Ruby out of the way. She turned to see Blake standing next to where she had been, chest torn open by the close-range blast from the shotgun. She stumbled, grasped at her bleeding chest, looked Yang in the eyes, her ears pinned down and her expression full of betrayal. Then she fell, vanishing into shadow before she could hit the ground.
Ruby swallowed thickly as she dashed off to find cover, eyes welling with tears.
Apparently, Yang would.