Chapter Thirty-Three
Shifts
"So, you gonna keep seducing her or what?" Weiss posed the question once Yang wandered off to tackle her newest enemy, a shit-eating grin threatening to split her face off. Pyrrha took a moment to remember the quick sequence of events after Yang threw her into this room, a blush to match her hair scorching her face. A similar heat spread across her body when she dared a glance to Blake, the woman smirking devilishly with her ears curling to match.
She squeaked when Blake pounced onto her again, Weiss ignoring her pleading looks and giggling at the sight. The same shiver soared through her again, this time unimpeded by the initial shock of the first one. Blake shifted slightly on top of her, barely moving, but even that movement sent tantalizing pleasure shooting up her spine. A primal part of her mind resisted the rebellion her body demanded, whispering to accept the hedonistic desires it demanded.
Every moment the voice increased in volume and she struggled to keep her whimpers contained, but with her eyes shut she never noticed Blake move to assault her neck with careful nips and tantalizing licks, her yelp of surprise melting into a shameful moan when she found a particularly sensitive spot on her jugular. Her hands searched for purchase, scratching at the bare mattress, unable to decide how to react to this blatant seduction attempt.
"Stop!" She first thought she finally managed to make her voice work, but the clarity and urgency of it belied her desires, her gaze drawn away from Blake to Weiss. A noise of disagreement shortly followed, making her think Blake protested the interruption, but a sense of horror snuck up on her when she realized she had made the sound.
"Okay, not what I expected." Weiss gently pushed Blake back down to Pyrrha's lap, pulling the younger girl to a seat right after. She still ended up with a stupidly attractive woman with obvious wants on her, but at least she could string a coherent thought and ignore the tempting voice to yell at Weiss of all people for the interruption and have Blake continue to manhandle her. "But I don't want you regretting anything, or feel pressured cause there's two of us."
"But..." Again she answered before her brain could stop her. Summoning the last of her ebbing will, she shoved her blush away, taking note her hands moved from the bed to rest around Blake's waist, almost as if making sure she didn't leave before she finished what she started. Ruby's notebook training may have helped with the control over her blood, she realized, her polarity control instinctively manipulating it down. "Thank you, but I'm old enough to know what I want and I trust you two from the little time we spent under your tutelage."
"As much as I hate to turn down a threesome," Pyrrha again started to blush, but only slightly, just figuring out that Blake would allow Weiss to join in on her fun. "But we need to get a few things out of the way first."
"Hold up." She tightened her grip around Blake who laid her head on her shoulder and smiled, not saying a word, and this time, she knew why. "What sort of things?"
"Porn cuts out a lot of the important stuff of sex and gives a really, really narrow view on it." Weiss clambered onto the bed to sit next to her, crossing her legs and removing a familiar orange book Pyrrha recognized from her forays into bookstores. She had one hidden under her pillow, a different volume, but they had no reason to know that. "This is a bit more accurate, and the Ninjas of Love series Blake likes is better, but they still miss a few things."
"So we're just gonna start with a few basic things." Pyrrha nodded along with this, both excited they weren't turning her away and relieved they knew what they were doing instead of rushing in with abandon as she'd been about to do. "The first question is always the hardest: have you ever had sex before?"
The blatant question short-circuited her for a moment until Blake nipped at her neck again, the sudden kiss of lips on skin restarting her brain. She definitely wanted it to happen again, the slight glance of sharp teeth igniting a fire within her. A whispered growl escaped through her teeth and she moved a hand keeping Blake in place to bury it in her hair instead, the woman releasing a tantalizing breath instead of a hum.
She managed to shake her head, not trusting her voice to answer without any shaking or stuttering.
"You answered the second question of whether you're attracted to women if that shiver I saw meant anything." Weiss casually stated without so much as blinking, smashing through Pyrrha's socially established barriers and preventing her usual reaction. "The third question would usually be if you know what you like 'cause even virgins know what they like, but we'll leave that for the next question. What are your reservations about having a threesome as your first time?"
She vastly appreciated the wording on the question, asking directly instead of assuming she had none. The professionalism threw her a bit, Weiss practically throwing these at her, but what did she know, her only experience coming from her book, that she carefully kept wrapped in a different cover, and the scant amount of time she got to herself whenever none of her teammates occupied their room.
Too many close encounters drove her to the showers more often than not.
"No, not really." She surprised herself with how steady she managed to keep her voice. "Do you know if I was close to anyone in your dimension before I, you know, bit the dust?"
"Jaune, but that was before Ruby manipulated your team into a schism and he never did anything from what I know. He got sappy after you died so maybe you two were one of Beacon's secret couples and we never noticed but I doubt that. Pretty sure he wore a dress to the Vytal Dance after losing a bet to you when you attended alone."
"Well, that's… a little sad actually." Not to be vain or anything, but she knew she was one of the more attractive women in Beacon. To hear no one had asked to dance with her struck a blow to her self confidence. Maybe she needed to do the asking if people were too scared of her. Coming from Mistral, she understood being a junior Champion intimidated most, but still… someone had to have the guts to ask her.
They were Hunters for fuck's sake, not civilians with the time to worry about their personal lives!
"We just need to make sure you're not doing expecting anything beyond sex, and maybe a closer relationship to the team." She distilled everything down to make sure she fully understood what she wanted to get into. One of Glynda's lessons harkened back to her about communications, example after example thrown at them when intra-team communication failed and often lead to a death or a severe misunderstanding leading to the team shattering.
The former command-apparent team of STRQ eventually broke up after their personal relationships failed, leading one of them to desert her team and escape to Vacuo, the two to remain as shadows of their formers selfs, and the last to fall in a terrible accident. Ironically, their legacies grew up to take up the position of command with impossible levels of success even with their leader dying to secrets best buried deep. War molded them better than any training provided by Beacon, stripping them of their innocence and demanding perfection.
"Weiss, I died in your dimension, probably with more regrets than I can count." She shrugged, idly carding her fingers through Blake's hair and migrating them to her ears without noticing, daring to dance around the meeting place between scalp and fur. Blake displayed her appreciation by scratching up her waist, sending goosebumps screaming across her skin. Another moan followed shortly after, making her shake her head to clear her thoughts. "I'd like to at least go into the Tournament with one less of them."
Blake suddenly tightened her hold on her.
"She means to tell you you won't be dying this time around."
Pyrrha released a dry chuckle at Weiss' translation, letting her sorrow show in her pools of emerald. "Blake, most of the Beacon Hunters are wound so tightly it's a miracle they can get up in the morning." She continued her unattentive ministrations, Blake becoming increasingly more emotive with her movements on top of her, slowly wiggling her hips in a distracting manner. "They know something is happening during the Tournament but no one knows what."
"You're an A-rank so you'll be told after the Dance," Weiss replied, fully aware she held equal authority to Yang in subject matters concerning the Hunters, having managed Ruby's Hunters during her internment, Yang trusting her with decisions as long as they all knew what they each planned. She expected Blake would do the same with her newly discovered armada of clones, relieving some, if not most, of the paperwork their bureaucracy generated.
She still had no idea how she managed to slog through , her desk often overflowing with stacks of paperwork. Sometimes they just disappeared when she nodded off for a quick nap, only for it to return to another spot completely filled out, the penmanship perfect and machine-like to prevent her from guessing who dared help her.
Cute, but if no one wanted credit for the work then she had no obligation to repay them and she knew very well the type of reparation Blake usually demanded.
Then again, she didn't have Ruby to make tuna cookies of all things anymore. She'd miss the divine dessert she could crank out with seeming ease, her chocolate chips a delicious treat after tumultuous engagements. Maybe she could persuade Yang to make a batch, for old times sake, and maybe allow Blake to turn some of them into her fish monstrosities. "Try to put it off for now. Nothing you can do about it at this point."
Pyrrha nodded and decided to push them along a bit. "Maybe I need a little help to forget about a few things." She emphasized the word with a purr, Blake answering her call by pushing her down and making her giggle. Her chest piece suddenly felt incredibly tight but Weiss moved before she could reach, pinning one of her arms down and wrestling with the many ties and clasps.
Another dome of glyphs scattered around the room, reinforcing the previous set to ensure their privacy, the fourth question forgotten.
NO LEMON FOR YOU
Pyrrha collapsed onto the bed out of breath, a fine sheen of sweat plastered across her glowing skin. Her glorious hair billowed around her, forming a crimson halo with a golden tiara still nestled in the center, unshaken from her rigorous activities. Weiss made sure to keep it there, enjoying the look of it, stopping whatever shenanigans they happened to be in to fix it. Pyrrha quickly learned to minimize her head movements, translating it to the rest of her body.
The rest of her attire lay scattered across the room Blake and Weiss subjected her to a varying array of pleasurable activities with her as the centerpiece, the duo tag-teaming to give her the best first time she could've asked. They cared beyond anything she expected, even with the talk they shared before anything started and halted her growing libido, attending to her every need and making sure she enjoyed everything.
Blake sometimes pushed a little too hard with tendencies she normally reserved for her team, but the experimentation gave her a better grasp of her likes and dislikes. She firmly enjoyed the vanilla play and delved into the pair's more esoteric fetishes, discovering the three of them shared similar wants.
Weiss quickly apprised her many Hunters fell along similar lines and she felt slightly relieved her deviances weren't too outside the norms.
Blake nuzzled into her shoulder, curling into her side and basking in the afterglow, her hair a tousled mess Pyrrha vastly enjoyed touching, finding it to resemble thick fur. Everything about these two just made her want, but they refused to let her, satisfying all of her needs and going even further, teaching and caring. Nothing came close to preparing her for this and she laughed light-heartedly.
"Hmm?" Weiss hummed, patting down her messy hair and moved to sit to her other side from her place near the end of the bare bed. She sat with a satisfied sigh, admiring the beauty they managed to snare and share a few hours with introducing into the decadent world of debauchery. A sense of happiness came across her, watching her lay there without a care in the world wiped away a part of the guilt from letting her die in their first dimension.
A different guilt soon settled in from taking advantage of someone so pure but she rationalized it away with helping her discover herself, though Blake and her did most of the discovery and heavy lifting, not that either of them complained.
"So that's what sex is like?" Pyrrha lifted only her head from the mattress, unwilling to disturb Blake's rest. She still sounded worn out, but Weiss found her eyes glittering with unconcealed joy and she'd happily work her over again if she felt she could keep her attraction to her from growing.
Back in her first Beacon, she'd been so repressed by her family and their obligations she barely understood her crush on Ruby, believing that was just how friendships developed. She hadn't had friends before other than Bast and that was a poor example of one. Eventually, she started a relationship with Yang of all people after discovering what she felt wasn't a simple friendship by reading her orange book.
The crush on Ruby remained, of course, eventually pulling all of them into a relationship and she never looked back. Pyrrha alone stirred something within her and she desperately hoped it was nothing but a rebound from losing Ruby. She forced a giggle, Pyrrha smiling at her reaction, but Blake instantly caught her mimicry and frowned for only a moment.
"No, but that's what sex is like with us at least. I can't speak for any future partners and their skills though." Weiss boasted, a subtle hand-sign telling Blake she'd handle whatever she thought she saw. Blake chose not to respond, interlocking a leg between Pyrrha's and attempting to mold into her side, causing the redhead to wrap an arm around to embrace her. She tried not to read into it too much but Blake looked… content at the moment. It could've just been the post-coital glow combined with a healthy dose of envy.
"Have you had many partners or is that improper to ask?"
"Not talking usually leads to more problems than not, even if they may seem improper to ask." Weiss stretched a few sore muscles, relishing the release in tension throughout her body. Finding out what Pyrrha liked put a strain on her, her Aura rushing out in a flurry and abating the delicious soreness. "The partners we've shared include your team and Glynda, and you know, each other."
Blake squeaked when her pillow abruptly moved to a seat, her instinctive growl subdued by her old injury. Weiss scratched idly at the same spot on her cheek where she received her gruesome injury though she believed it only added character after she got it patched up. Yang's arm bothered her but she tried to not let it affect her beyond the occasional twitch and pinch to ensure the irrational part of her mind that she still had an arm, and Ruby, of course, gave no fucks concerning her body since she transferred over with all of her injuries and never let them affect her.
She loved tracing the many scars on her body and recalling how she gained each of them. Most came from her time in the White Fang black site and the prettiest of them were the Lichtenberg figures across the left side of her torso. Though her torture stripped her of her mind and ruined parts of her body, she carried her back to Glenn with a few new additions. They practically commanded the medical bay to inspect and care for her, discovering the numerous depravities she had gone through.
Yang and Weiss threw up and she subsequently threw them out to heal her body, still unaware of the monumental change to her mind.
"As in Professor Glynda Goodwitch?" She curled to reposition around the shocked Pyrrha, using her lap as a pillow, grabbing her hands and moving them to her ears, automatically incurring head scratches. Weiss nodded in confirmation, joining her to rest on her lap and stealing one of her hands. "And my team? That's weird with how they're acting now."
"War and your death changed them, and they also grew up. They weren't the green eighteen-year-olds they were now, but seasoned veterans with little compunctions. Good people, but silly little inconsequential things faded away into the background." Weiss answered, indulging in the pillow talk.
"Ren and Nora barely survived their argument about Yang's relationship with the Fourth, and Jaune is barely talking to me as it is." She frowned at the turn of events from a few weeks ago, inwardly wondering how exactly she ended up in a bare room with two women in her birthday suit after getting convinced to participate in a threesome with them, AFTER accusing one of their wife of murder, a thought that didn't hit her at the moment considering Yang didn't seem too perturbed by not only the accusation but the subsequent series of events. "Aren't you concerned how Yang will feel about this?"
"She was here when this entire thing started and left so maybe she just isn't attracted to you." Pyrrha thumped her lightly on the forehead for that, receiving a boop on the nose for her trouble so similar to Nora's usual ones. This one felt different and she instinctively grabbed it between her lips, wiggling her eyebrows seductively.
"Yes, so maybe I'll have to go hunt her down after a shower." She replied glibly, pressing a chaste kiss to the invading digit before returning it to its owner. Weiss instantly ripped her hand back to her chest, staring up at her with fearful eyes. Blake manhandled her hand into hers after a moment, leaving Pyrrha confused. "What'd I do?"
Weiss made to answer but Blake shushed her, leaving the comfort of her red pillow to reach down and find her scroll among her discarded clothing. She pulled up her messaging app and fell back onto her pillow, showing her scroll to Pyrrha after tapping out her thoughts. She's afraid of liking you.
"You're afraid of liking me?" Weiss facepalmed after Pyrrha read Blake's words out, hiding her shame behind her palm. "You're the one who said this was supposed to be nothing but sex."
"I know, I know."
"Am I simply your rebound from Ruby?" Pyrrha whispered out, gently pushing away her blockade to stare down at her glittering glaciers, daring to use the Fourth's name while in the private quarters. Blake came to her rescue, pulling her chin to the side to draw her attention away. She propped herself up on elbows and before Pyrrha could realize what she wanted, she wrapped an arm around her neck and pulled her into an upside-down kiss.
Weiss started flipping between relief that it wasn't just her with an attraction to the stupidly beautiful redhead and horror that it wasn't just her with an attraction to the stupidly beautiful redhead! She wasn't even sure if it was an attraction in the first place and not some misplaced guilt from letting her die and now helping her out, or some thrill because she was new and different.
"That's one way to answer I guess." The position strained her neck but the reward more than made up for it with enthusiasm. Blake disengaged the kiss with a knowing smile, falling back down to face her new object of affection. With Ruby gone, she had carte blanche on finding whoever she wanted and propositioning them.
"Yang and I were her rebound from Ruby so it's not that. As for me, I'll need to go and have a chat with her while you two discuss… something, I'm not really sure. I need a walk more than anything to get my thoughts together." Both Blake and Pyrrha watched her gather her casual wear from her duffel bag, dress without glancing back at them, and leave with barely a fix to her ruffled appearance.
Pyrrha laughed cheerily once she left, finding the entire situation beyond ironic. Blake couldn't join in on the show but let her appreciation and similar mindset show with a wide smile, closing her eyes and again guiding Pyrrha's hands to her hair. She frowned when the hands didn't do anything, cracking her eyelids open to find an amused Hunter grinning down on her with an annoying twinkle in her eyes.
"Let's make one thing straight." She didn't immediately react to her words, lulled back to a nap-like state by the comfort until a sharp flick impacted on her forehead, her eyes snapping open at the indignity with slitted pupils breaking through her golden irides. Pyrrha, however, cared little, satisfied she got her attention. "I'm not Ruby, and I have no intention of replacing her."
Blake nodded, not in any way deluding herself.
"Your team has taught me to be frank with my thoughts and, at least with you, I will." She took a deep breath and gathered her ideas before speaking, finding the best way to deliver her next part. "I like what Weiss and you did with me, but I'm not in any way ready for anything beyond that. She made it quite clear this wasn't supposed to be anything but sex, but I can clearly see something went wrong."
Blake tapped out a message for her to read. Somewhere between your third and fourth orgasm. She received another flick for her cheeky comment, but nothing further, Pyrrha accepting it as part of her personality and banter in an attempt to lighten the mood.
"I've never been in a relationship and while I'm not willing to immediately jump into anything, we can work on it, understand?" Again Blake nodded and Pyrrha sighed, reminded of the most vicious injury the Faunus sustained during the war even though none of it remained on her regenerated body. "Usually two people start dating before they have sex but I see you enjoy throwing the book out the window."
Blake childishly blew a raspberry and she understood the faux pas of her words. No way would she ever dare subject a book to such treatment, even a completely hated one.
"That's not what I meant and you know it." She booped her on the nose like Nora so often did with her and Weiss recently did that started this whole in-depth conversation. To think an innocent action led to all this! "You can start by taking me to the Dance as not to be crude, but you're out of a partner."
Contrary to the expected response, Blake broke into a wide smile and prodded her to go back to caressing her ears. Being open suited her just fine and removed the unnecessary chaff of courtship. Person meets person and expresses attraction should be what the entire start of a relationship should be, not, as her favorite book and fanfiction series liked to play around with, entire novels dedicated to some socially designated dance of coy signals and uncertainties.
Ruby died.
End of story.
She refused to sulk and believe in the extremely low chance she managed to somehow survive Yang's matter deconstruction. Neo probably had some method of resurrecting her but also had nothing to gain from it, already responsible for wiping out all of Ruby's ancestors. Her trick with her Aura was just that, a sick trick designed to have them lower their guards and enable her escape.
What she wanted with Ruby's scythe mystified her, but the weapon held nothing but memories. She couldn't pick up the cursed scythe and Yang could barely lift the thing to carry it. Better for the psychopath to wield it and maybe put it to use. It didn't deserve to gather dust as an ornament on their ship, not with the effort put in on its redesign.
A deep-seated purr erupted from her chest against her will and filled the room, Pyrrha quickly learned she could modulate the sound depending on where she scratched the ear or if she scratched only one at the time. "You're also going to have to teach me your most used hand signs if I want to talk to you without a scroll all the time."
She barely registered the nod, Blake lost in her own world until Pyrrha uttered a magic word and had her attention again. "Shower?" She giggled the whole way, pulled by an enthusiastic Blake, thinking she could get used to this. Never having a romantic relationship before set her expectations fairly low, Blake already having shattered her expectations with her duo performance with Weiss.
Knowing she'd been married at one point didn't turn her off at all, if anything, it made the entire situation better, her chosen partner aware of what made a relationship succeed. It removed one of her worries of fumbling around blindly with an equally amateur lover, Blake open to chatting without restrictions and armed with a plethora of experience. The reservation of replacing Ruby still sat with her, but she'd cross that bridge during dinner. Delaying brought around nothing good. Knowing she could die at any moment liberated her and brought her a moment of happiness she could work with to extend further. She found little to worry about until then.
Actually, her biggest worry right now was finding something to wear as Blake had shredded her skirt and sash with an almost sadistic enthusiasm. Something to think about later. Blake could always run into her room and grab a set of clothes but her team would then wonder what happened to ruin them in the first place. She wasn't quite ready to tell them anything, especially with the whole uncertainty of it.
She barely remembered entering the gym, lost in a haze of thoughts. The whole mess started with Blake dabbling in her psychological warfare to screw with Pyrrha and knock her off balance. No, not even then. This entire thing started with even further back than Ruby's death at the black site.
Without that Ruby would still be whole, not a shade of her former self. Immeasurable strong, she accidentally brushed a still healing bruise on her back, wincing at the pain, amending her comment: impossibly strong. It took three of them, two of them higher ranked Hunters, and still they failed in a straight fight, Ruby running circles around them and keeping them at bay with her hurricane of summoned rose petals.
Even Yang's shields, practically impervious to everything save an empowered Crescent Rose artillery round, staggered against the resonating storm. Blake found out first when more than half of her clones perished to the brutally efficient and devastating physical shield, each petal devoted to one of their Auras to better rip through them.
A yelp of surprise echoed around the shower area when she shattered the tiles under her fist, groaning at the lance of pain shooting up her arm as she broke the skin on her knuckles. She should've expected it, Ruby always flexing her resources to their maximum potential, but nothing prepared her for fighting survival instinct.
She embodied annihilation better than Yang's Semblance, tearing their counterattacks to pieces without batting an eye, and as much as she wanted to label the thing she fought as something inhuman or lesser, she couldn't shake the terrifying rationality that came with only fighting part of Ruby rather than her as a seamless machine. Commander Ruby alone wielded tremendous skill and Hunter Ruby displayed immense potential before her pruning, so to have another piece of her show similar talent shook her.
She suppressed a shiver with an angry growl, moving her knuckles back to their place and searing the wounds shut with a blast of Aura. A scowl marred her face after inspecting her hand, the recent memories of her fling with Pyrrha chasing away the dour thoughts and bringing her back to the object of her ire.
Herself.
Despite setting the boundaries clear for Pyrrha, she crossed the threshold first like a child experiencing a crush. The panic at Pyrrha's reaction to her accidental boop stirred her the wrong way. Booping noses, at least between the team, signified their affection for each other and it became more than hugs and kisses after Blake's injury.
Pyrrha's return kiss startled and confused her. Her previous forays with Glynda and the remainder of JNPR never moved past a goodbye in the bedroom, all of them returning to relaxed friendship. It helped relieve the stupendous pressure from the war for all of them and prevented two of their most talented teams from melting down. Never in all of her trysts did she find any of them attractive beyond a physical sense and, by Ozpin, Neo, and Salem, she hoped the same with Pyrrha.
Blake had the freedom to chase whoever she wanted, free of her obligations to Ruby. Yang and her still influenced her decision of any partner she deemed appropriate, but she gave her approval by participating, and in the end, the decision remained with her. Yang might take some convincing and had no qualms of not doing anything with Pyrrha.
Their entire agreement stemmed from the mutual sharing and agreement of partners, each of them respecting the other and willing to listen. She jumped the gun a bit with Pyrrha, but Yang hadn't vetoed her. And now she needed to go apologize for her transgressions and discuss what exactly had happened. The shower knob squealed under her tight grip as she twisted it, running a hand through her hair and squeezing water from her now gray hair.
She ignored the questioning and appreciative looks she got as she strolled to her locker, drying her hair and body roughly with a towel and then tossing it into a passing hamper. Spinning her lock open she found her discarded clothing and pulled them on, trying not to think about where she picked them up from before leaving her room. Her white jeans and tee felt cheap and dirty, reminders of her mistake.
Every Hunter parted around her when she marched through the halls, afraid of drawing her ire for a perceived fault. Her gray hair curtained a face hidden behind confusion, baleful glue eyes just barely letting her know where her legs took her.
It didn't prevent her from impacting into the metal half of a certain cyborg, falling onto her ass in the middle of the pathway to the mess hall. The pain didn't register, the indignancy of the situation pushed it away, for the time being, a red spot appearing on her forehead. Several Hunters patiently watched from outside the blast radius of Weiss, snacking on popcorn and waiting for the inevitable explosion.
"Fucking hell. What're you made of, metal?" She rubbed the stars from her eyes, parting her messy hair to look up at the wall she walked into. Her blurry vision cleared with a few blinks and she found herself staring up at an offered hand, taking it without question.
"That's partially true." General Ironwood pulled her to a stand with a grunt of surprise at the deceptive amount of muscle packed into the small figure of the girl he once trained at the behest of Jacques' pressure on the Council. He struggled to find much difference between the girl from then and the women in front of him save for the shorter hair. "And you cut your hair, and got married. Missed the invitation."
"General." Weiss carded her fingers through her hair in an imitation of a comb, fixing the mess of a bird's nest with a few pats. Shorter hair made the entire process of dealing with it twenty times shorter and could be fixed by waking up rather than the few hours it took when it fell to her ass. "You know how Hunter weddings are. Rarely planned and over when the other partner answers."
"You've known me for how long, Commander Schnee? I think you can call me James, or Dad if you wish." A similar twinkle of amusement entered her eye and Weiss resisted the urge to slap him, narrowing her eyes to figure out exactly what this man knew about her.
"Been talking with Yang, I see." She beckoned him to follow her into the mess hall, her audience both disappointed and relieved they hadn't witnessed her temper blow. Her appearance threw the Hunters gathered in the cafeteria, so used to seeing anyone on campus in uniform. Sometimes they saw other teams while out in the districts or while in the dorms, but never on weekdays during class hours.
"She's very… open to say the least." James answered, taking his meal and sitting across from her. "I wasn't expecting to see her when I walked into Ozpin's office. She can't be older than eighteen."
"I think she's a few months younger than me," Weiss replied, stirring her food around and still thinking about what stuck with her before James interrupted her. She gratefully accepted it, willing to forget about anything to do with Pyrrha until Yang found her, which would take about all of five minutes with the many Blakes keeping track of their every movement. "Beacon confirmed her placement with a supermajority of votes."
And yes, she definitely saw Blake watching her in the locker room from a mirror.
Jame's scroll confirmed her musings but she failed to find the Blake hidden in the hall with just a glance. Finding her among the mess of students offered nothing but a pat on the back and the very moment she took her eyes off spelled her disappearance.
"Yes, the why is still confusing me but she claimed to have the qualifications."
"Is it her age that's throwing you, that's she's my wife, that she's Qrow's niece, or that she's another of Beacon's S-ranks you knew nothing about?"
"All of them." He answered after a brief reflection. "Ozpin and I had an agreement to share our forces and that included information, and I'm only now learning about three of them." He amended his statement after Weiss coughed suspiciously. "Four of them?" She nodded. "You're both only eighteen. That's young to not only achieve S-rank but also marry, especially with the relationship you share."
He removed his scroll, narrowing his eyes suspiciously at the timing of the packet of information about the Vytal Tournament.
"Blake is always watching." She answered without a prompt. "Accept she's always watching."
"She's one person." He protested, glancing around him to find Beacon's new and elusive spymaster.
"She's an S-rank with near limitless Dust supplies, due to my company, and the ability to create clones." She deadpanned, enjoying the face fault from him. "There's very little she doesn't know about Beacon."
"And I thought Qrow was a problem." He scratched at his ever-present 5 o'clock shadow, the years of his position showing in the lines on his face. She spotted the tell-tale signs of graying hair on his temples and her gaze dropped to his chest, following the lines of metal pressed against his vest. "Qrow never shut up about his niece, your wife, when she was small. Loves to bring up her whenever he has the chance. He still has pictures of her and your Fourth in his wallet."
"Yeah, we married young," Weiss replied to his earlier comment, munching on a bowl of ice cream she retrieved from somewhere. He was fairly confident she didn't have that on her when she moved to the table. Qrow had a similar miraculous ability to pull crowbars from behind his back, and his rational mind refused to ask how he did it. "Haven't run into many problems even with the polyamory. Our sister team nearly shattered when they learned of it."
"Why? While it's not something usually waved about in the open, weirder relationships have happened. I'm still not entirely sure how Qrow and Winter ended up together." He pushed his finished meal aside and settled for drinking a cup of coffee.
"Oh, no. They seemed fine with that aspect." She waved dismissively. "The rift formed after they learned the Fourth and Yang were cousins." She waited until he took a sip of his drink, James descending into a coughing fit and thumping his chest. "Two of them took it well. The other two, not so much."
"You-" Another couch interrupted his reply. "You can't just drop that on people and expect them to be okay with that. I-" Another cough and Weiss let herself smile at his struggle. "I know we Hunters have more leeway but that's still questionable."
"I think the Fourth released a memo for people to, and I quote verbatim, fuck off and mind their own business. Blake never understood her unwillingness to curse so I think most of her memos were done by her instead."
"How-?" She interrupted before he could ask.
"Legion of clones, James, legion of clones." They fell into a companionable silence, observing the many Hunters milling around them. She recognized the aura of wartime preparation among the few in the know, some of the A-ranks deciding for themselves to ready instead of taking the chance to rest before the Festival. James reached into her jacket and caressed the handle of his pistol, taking relief in the worn wooden grip.
The last time the Academies marched to war spelled an end to the peace he so craved. While never sanctioned by agreement between the four of them, they silently chose to ignore those deciding for themselves. He lost many skilled and able Hunters to both sides of the conflicts, countries and factions forgotten in the war for the rights of the Faunus.
Too many times a report crossed his desk to notify him a former member of his Hunters had perished in a skirmish, disavowed as they were to prevent any potential accusations from reaching them. Raven Branwen generated a storm of complaints with her defection, Beacon losing its only other S-rank. His intel put her somewhere in Vacuo under Kaldwin's command.
Her daughter replaced her easily enough and brought with her three other S-ranks, one who replaced Ozpin as Commander and the daughter who replaced him as Headmaster. Weiss, surprisingly, joined them up there in the ranks, rising deceptively quickly. She barely fought against one Geist the last time he tested her and to have her suddenly become so powerful spoke to her potential.
He knew almost nothing about the Fourth except for her donation to the Hunters, a fortress of all things, though even that barely scratched at the surface. To have an unregistered bastion off-grid made him unwell, the Fourth planning for this encounter the moment she assumed power. Weiss and Yang spoke of her with reverence and it wasn't faked or forced.
The two genuinely believed her to have deserved their respect. Even his knowledge of her name came from the random slips the team offered. Expected, with the way they shared a team and relationship. Her full name came from the Memorial Stone, a one 'Ruby Rose'. That was all he got, Qrow turning away his questions with a dismissive grunt.
Yang rising to S-rank failed to surprise him, not with the way Qrow never shut up about her, always extolling her training.
The last member of the team stumped him for a few days once he learned of her placement. Ozpin protected her from his threats of prosecution for her time in the White Fang, and blatantly flaunted his charter in his face, expounding the fact Hunters received immunity for any past crimes if the commanding officers deemed them skilled enough to warrant inclusion in the forces. While little evidence ever pointed to any actual crimes, her position as Taurus' second granted her immense insight into the organization's workings.
He cursed as the very woman entered the mess hall, summoned by his musing apparently, a scroll held under her arm while she communicated with her hands. Weiss turned to see what caused his reactions, similarly cursing for her luck, but refused to move from the spot, finding it too troublesome to avoid her.
A pineapple hair shaped young adult in another dimension sneezed, interrupting his cloud watching.
A redhead walked beside her, unmistakable a Nikos with her brilliant crimson hair and stunning emerald eyes, attempting to shape her hands into the more common hand signs used by the Hunters. He paid her less attention though, drawn to the indigo painted on the former White Fang's second's shoulder, displayed proudly.
Unlike most women, Blake owned a spartan amount of clothing, her entire ensemble tailored to her figure with personal motifs. Most of her set contained featureless clothes specifically set aside for black missions, but she managed to find something not manufactured from reinforced kevlar.
Pyrrha chose to abandon her usual attire, Blake dressing her in a pair of form-fitting leggings that had Weiss subconsciously licking her suddenly dry lips, and a plain tee with her emblem embroidered in the lower front corner, claiming her as her own. She still had her gold circlet keeping her hair back, but she looked an entirely different person, a heavy burden lifted from her shoulders.
She groaned when they spotted her from across the room, hiding in her arms and embracing the cool metal of the table. The school uniform worked against her, hiding Pyrrha's figure from her perverse eyes. This new outfit did nothing to hide and everything to emphasize why Blake chose to stake her claim with her shirt.
Which meant she had approximately thirty seconds before Yang showed up.
"What do you mean this is 'down'?" She heard Pyrrha say to Blake as the pair approached their table, her hand curled downwards near her hip. The mute shook her head, smiling at the effort it took her to learn "I'm following exactly what you showed me."
"You can't move your hand at all," Weiss answered before Blake had to open her messaging app again. "How have you two talked about anything after I left?"
"It involved a lot of guessing on my part." Pyrrha furrowed her brows. "I think she just let me stumble around blindly before remembering she had a scroll." She invaded Weiss' personal space at Blake's prodding, wrapping her in a soft hug. Everything the smaller woman attempted to shove away from the last few hours rose in a fury, freezing her in her seat, "Blake told me why you ran out and I want you to know I have no intentions on replacing your leader."
She didn't answer for a few tense moments, Pyrrha feeling slightly betrayed from following Blake's urges. Blake reassured her with a hand on her shoulder, nodding her head. She might not understand how she read everyone, but she trusted them both enough for them not to play with her. Weiss needed space when she left, but now she needed to ensure she stuck to her word and spoke to them about what frightened her so.
"You're not the problem you d-," She caught herself in time, catching the look of pity from Blake. A smaller part of her wanted to smack her for daring to feel anything for her when she started this whole affair with her rampant lust, but the other part couldn't blame her 'cause she made her own choices. The pity, though, she could do without, but she let her get away with it… for now.
Her lack of voice gave her just that extra bit of pity from her she could leeway in return.
"My issues are with Yang, not with you."
"Well, Blake's decided to keep me around," Pyrrha answered, fingering the emblem stitched on her borrowed shirt. "Nothing permanent yet as I told her we'd see where this takes us, but I'll be around more often than not."
Weiss didn't answer, choosing instead to glare at Blake and asking a question in return. Ruby read her like a book, but she needed an extra sign thrown in here and there to ensure her message didn't disappear into the ether.
"Blake, I know Ruby made you her spymaster but that doesn't mean I sometimes don't want to tell Yang certain things myself."
Blake shrugged, keeping her gaze rather than looking away, head cocked in her usual manner expressing her curiosity and amusement.
"Yes, I know you were following me, and no, I don't appreciate the shadow. We're in Beacon, not on Cassus."
Blake's amusement grew when James and Pyrrha ping-ponged between the two, only able to hear one half of the conversation. Many of their forces despised their form of communication, seething in anger, and then resolving to learn the intricacies of Basic Sign Language. They quickly found manuals for learning it in their lockers, courtesy of the Ladybug duo to increase their operational power.
"Yes, I know that's how you care but maybe I wanted to talk to her alone and work this out."
She shifted her weight and moved her hand to her hip, wiggling the finger of her other hand in chastisement.
"Yes, I know we're a team and we share everything, but I didn't think you'd move on so quickly." That comment made Blake frown for an almost imperceptible second and Weiss instantly knew she made a mistake. Whether or not Blake moved on relied solely on her and her alone, not anyone else. She had chosen to marry Ruby and believed in her after all of their forces had written her off for dead.
Just like Ruby, Blake embodied a near idealistic realism few could match, so knowing Ruby died, and had no chance of a return, despite Neo's shenanigans with the scythe and Aura, rewrote her.
She moved on, and Weiss didn't want to believe it. She fought with the idea, her loyalty keeping her grounded to Ruby, but against the onslaught of Ruby's wife and spymaster, her irrational mind stood little chance.
"Ok, fine." She relented, understanding Blake would always do what she thought best for the team, a stubbornness and care learned from Ruby herself. She might not have the wealth or glyphs to throw at problems, or strength to move mountains, but she already proved she could kick both of their asses with her brand of style, and taking care of them after everything certainly fit her well. "I'm still going to need to talk to Yang anyways."
Blake pointed behind her and she twitched, provoking a silent and mocking laugh from her teammate. She didn't need to turn around to know Yang was there with a face-splitting smirk.
She hated Blake sometimes.
AN: Yes, yes, I know I've been slacking. Honestly, graduating from college into a COVID-19 world completely threw all of my plans. I find myself streaming video games, writing odd things (not this fanfiction piece even), and exercising more. Maybe I'll choose to focus on this piece after this upload, and maybe, just maybe I'll get the next chapter out before my birthday, but until then, enjoy this chapter. Leave a follow or favorite, and definitely drop a review. I live off of those.
No joke.