Chapter Thirty-Four
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Weiss and Yang disappeared off in some direction after they left the mess hall, taking their private conversation away from her prying ears. Blake dragged them back to the dorms, signing out one of the first things she taught her, making her quizzically look back at her. She didn't protest when she grabbed her hand and fitted her fingers into the correct hand sign, but she realized too late Blake answered her own question instead of helping her repeat it.
She received a poke to her forehead in response, Pyrrha enjoying the slight height she had on the older woman. Blake grimaced at that, wiggling her ears so they brought her attention to them. With the ears, they stood evenly, but she wouldn't hold her to it. At least she finally found someone who nearly matched her in height rather than the oddly short team she had. The men barely matched Nora's height, and even she only reached her eyes.
A tug on her hand ushered her forward to enter the main hallway, Blake refusing to release her from her urgent hold. A few stray Hunters loitering in the common room gave the pair prying eyes but wisely chose not to anger or comment on the pair. Blake alone posed a threat few could match and Pyrrha made more than enough of her peers cringe with her martial abilities, not to mention her Semblance.
Another hand sign she just learned passed through her vision and she barely caught it before Blake pushed her to her room. She turned back briefly to make sure she understood properly, getting a nod in return before Blake waved her hand dismissively, disappearing into her room to prepare.
Her team greeted her when she stepped through the threshold of the door, looking up from whatever work they happened to be caught in. Nora sat on her bed, comfortably nestled between several pillows and scratching away with a pencil on a sheet of paper. Ren lay next to her, propped up against the headboard, reading a book.
"Welcome back," Jaune spoke to her after removing the headset, previously occupied with the homework he always left to the last minute. No amount of persuasion ever seemed to get through his head, Nora keeping him in check just enough to prevent him from doing his work the morning of or during the class period it was due. "So what'd you learn?"
Her eye twitched at the casual way he addressed her. Leave it to him to forget about his actions from weeks ago when he practically tore their team apart. Ren and Nora made up for it by not bringing it up, but she saw how Ren flinched every time he looked at her. He didn't need to bring up the schism to know they still stood on the same side, and with the return of RWBY, the same rift would reopen again.
She ignored him, moving to the locker she now kept tucked away against the far wall of their room. Ruby beat the lesson to always have their armor and weapons at the ready as high priority missions often came with no warning where every minute counted. While this certainly wasn't what Ruby might've qualified as a mission, keeping the spymaster of Beacon waiting wouldn't bode well.
"I learned a lot." She replied brusquely, dialing in the combination and revealing her secondary armor set. Jaune waited for her to continue talking, spinning a pencil between his fingers idly. Ren deserved a bit of an explanation with his willingness to stick by his ideal, and her's to an extent, so she brushed a finger against the emblem stitched in the lower corner of her borrowed shirt, angled to show to only his half of the room.
He immediately clamped a hand on Nora's mouth when she also noticed the subtle stitching in the shirt, a shade of black just barely different. She flinched back when Pyrrha glared at her through narrowed eyes, wisely keeping silent. In more ways than one, she commanded the team despite Jaune's appointment as their leader, her skill keeping them in line.
"Anything you're going to tell us or…" He trailed off, missing the interaction between his three teammates, staring up at the ceiling. Again Pyrrha ignored him, slipping a kevlar vest designed to restrict her chest over her shirt. A pair of vambraces with attached gloves clamped the ends of her long-sleeved tee, running armor from her fingertips to her elbows and capping off into a sharpened spike.
She happily took the idea from Ruby, noting how useful they proved as both armor and weapon. Her version however added articulated plating to better protect her. A set of armored leggings provided minimal plating to her legs, molding to her muscles to protect the most vital joint, joined by a skirt made from strips of armored fabric to harken back to her tournament set. The other set suited her just fine for everyday spars but left her exposed in some areas.
"Where're you going?" He finally took notice of her after a few seconds of silence, attention taken away from drawing random figures from the cracks in the ceiling. Whatever words he wanted to say next caught in his throat, the imposing figure of his partner completing her ensemble with a matte black metal helmet with a red plume. "Do we have a mission?" He gulped audibly when she placed the helm on her head, masking her face in shadows and only letting her emerald eyes pierce through the darkness.
"I have a date." Her reply caught the three of them by surprise, but only Jaune reacted with a face fault. She grabbed her go-bag and slammed the door shut with noticeable force, expressing her mute discontent. The force she put into it shook the few drawings Ren had taped to the wall and tipped Jaune backward over the seat he'd been reclining in.
The last thing she heard before knocking on Blake's door was him fumbling for words as he scrambled for his footing to chase after her. A hand pulled her from the hallway into the opposite room just before the door she came from opened back up. Jaune stood there in his casual wear, unable to figure out where she went, and took off towards the landing platforms, still pulling on one of his shoes.
She didn't protest the treatment, Blake slamming the door shut to isolate them. Her outfit, however, took her breath away and she seriously wondered how exactly she missed this and instead focused on Jaune of all people. While colored in a similar shade, her outfit had minimal armor plating. Fitting material shrouded her entire form and left nothing to her imagination, not that she needed to imagine it in the first place.
Where she had armor for front-line protection, she had pouches and sheathes strapped everywhere, the glint of knives daring to break the monotonous color with a shine. Blake made her appreciation of her look known, a dull purr reaching her ears and causing a shiver to race through her. Blake snuck a hand under her helmet and rubbed her check, Pyrrha trapping it there for a moment longer until she got her fix.
"Yes, yes, I know." She didn't need a translation, Blake finding it far too amusing to deny the touch deprived woman. Beacon, while an Academy for the training of officers and specialized teams, was also a finishing school, home to mostly young adults with more problems than a math textbook. Hormones messed up teenage years, but adulthood complicated everything beyond.
Blake never finished normal school so when Weiss asked her to balance her army's budget, she got a quizzical look and then a laugh of ridicule she swore she could hear. Computer science aside, she barely used anything beyond basic arithmetic to ensure her clones had access to any needed funds, usually stolen. The ideas of credit, debit, accounts payable, liability, etc. never occurred to her, each of her cells operating alone and responsible for their operations.
In that same manner, Weiss never learned weapon and armor maintenance until Ruby and Yang forced a needle and thread into her hands and made her do her own repairs. Schools never taught the practical concepts, leaving that to the parents and guardians of students.
Unfortunately, no one on Team RWBY had any reliable role models in their lives, forced to make do with each other. Tai made the best guardian, but his responsibility to Signal kept him from their lives 10 months out of the 12. Everyone else chose to either ignore them, in the case of Weiss' biological donors, or left them to their devices to learn themselves, Raven. Blake's parents had no access to them so also couldn't help them out, but she liked to think they'd have helped if she let them.
"So where are you taking me?" Blake beckoned her to follow and she obeyed, leaping from the window to a tree branch conveniently placed underneath the ledge. She instantly noticed how quiet Blake stepped when compared to her. While not in the clunky armor based on old Greek legends, her footsteps sounded silenced, but when compared to the rumored assassin in front of her, she might as well have been a jet engine.
If Blake didn't have her hand in hers she wouldn't see her form, something about her Aura or Semblance pulling the shadows from the slowly setting sun until she disappeared. Another pull had her follow the figure in black downward, free-falling until they hit the ground. Her Aura tanked the fall and she thanked Professor Glynda for her lessons in reinforcing their bodies to survive anything short of planetfall.
Her partner ran ahead of her and looked back, almost urging her to chase after her. Her blank faceplate revealed nothing, her mouth and nose covered and replaced by a relief in the metal, only letting her eyes peek on through, gold burning the darkness away. The teasing glint had her stifling a laugh and sprinting to keep up with her new… she toyed with a few words to describe Blake.
She certainly instructed her in field combat so she could be called teacher, but that made her a tad uncomfortable. Calling her a friend cheapened the relationship they started today and while Blake and Weiss both hadn't expressed anything beyond the short pillow talk they shared before the latter went off to chat with her wife, a concept she still couldn't wrap her head around, though the shower afterward relaxed her immensely.
Blake hadn't said anything, not that she could, but she hadn't instantly kicked her out after their session. The light touches she got reinforced her to keep coming back and she wanted them to continue. She liked the attention of the older woman and yes, she understood she had to share her with two other people but after she attempted to make Jaune notice her before the great schism between the two sister teams, she deserved a little more than the attention of just one person.
A potential death sentence hung over her come the Vytal Tournament so she wanted to take what she could get before taking the final long nap. Ruby already proved age didn't matter when destiny came calling, succumbing at well below the average mortality age of Beacon Hunters, though her destiny came twofold, dying at the hands of one her teammates to save this planet from a worse fate at the hands of her disturbed alter.
Fate and destiny mystified her on a good day, the convoluted lines of human lives drawn across and interwoven together. This RWBY replaced this timeline's original and irreparably changed everyone's fate, everyone's destiny to suit their leader's plans, plans designed with knowledge of events already past to prevent a terrible catastrophe so great they chose to leave their Remnant to burn to instead save this new one.
Nothing else short of the total annihilation of their world prompted a complete reset for a team willing to go so far as to kill their leader to accomplish her goals. She knew that in her heart of hearts, her fate guiding her to the team as a shoulder for at least one of them to cry on until they either moved through Ruby's death with her as a rebound or she stuck around long enough to make something permanent.
Destiny laughed at her and she followed diligently, eventually ending up in a hangar with an impressively sleek craft the team must've put an absolute ton of work into, compact engines attached near the fuselage with windswept wings hiding the turbines. It certainly looked better than the run of the mill bullhead.
She stepped into the main fuselage and pressed the button to close the ramp behind her. The craft lifted moments after and she sat down on one of the cargo net seats, taking in the massive amount of storage space shoved around the seating and beddings. A pair of bunks flanked the hallway into the cockpit, all of them immaculately made but only one with a readily made go-bag, never to be used again.
A quiet thank you escaped her lips as she passed her late Commander's bunk, suddenly feeling less than adequate standing in this craft, her, a measly A-rank initiate next to the near god of a Hunter Commander. So many knew little to nothing of her history, the struggle and turmoil of a woman broken carrying the burden of Vale's protection on her shoulders, leading Beacon through a war so devastating it destroyed everything in the end.
She scrambled into the co-pilot's seat when Blake sharply angled the craft away from Beacon, falling into the cradle of a seat. Blake removed her faceplate and stuck her tongue out playfully, making her sigh at her attitude. The rare smile creeping on her made her smile in return, the feeling infectious. "Where are you taking me?"
A blue hologram popped into existence on the center console, making her jump and grip her sword at the bright appearance. "I'm currently assigned to a Grimm extermination mission at a location 23 klicks to the northwest." The speaking didn't help calm her racing heart down until Blake spun her seat and reached over to rest a hand on her. She pulled up a virtual keyboard, a screen popping up to display her message.
This is the artificial intelligence of this ship, named in honor of our late leader.
Pyrrha poked a finger through the hologram, looking around to see a bunch of laser pointers around the cockpit. "You know, most people don't take hero worship this far." She said after a moment of observance, gaining a pout from her partner, complete with ears plastered down, but she barreled on. "I think it's cute."
That got a frown from Blake, her hackles rising at the patronizing pity thrown her way until a spray of water shocked her from her state, Pyrrha mischievously smiling with a spray bottle in her hands. "It was under the console." She simply replied, Blake eye twitching comically, vowing to hide Yang's books somewhere else on the ship to make sure she panicked. Or maybe she'd arrange an accident with some scissors and her hair, just to show her displeasure.
"You know, normal people take each other out for dates to restaurants and cafes," Pyrrha spoke after Blake forced herself onto her lap, cuddling into her shoulder and placing her legs on the side console. "Not on Grimm extermination missions."
Blake threw her head back and looked over at the keyboard she used earlier. Her scroll remained locked into the center console to ensure the pilot didn't accidentally get distracted. Though they designed this one personally, the security feature of a Hunter scroll prevented any unauthorized usage, but Yang implemented an override just in case all their scrolls failed. Not that she couldn't hotwire the ship given an hour.
She decided on working with the few hand signs Pyrrha knew and then completely forgot not everyone took to learning a new language easily, but eventually Pyrrha figured out the first part of her sentence with the number of pointed fingers and looks. "I only understood 'you' and 'date'. Sorry." Blake didn't look too put out with her little understanding, resorting to taking one of her hands and drawing the letters with a finger. "Oh, 'choice'. So this is your choice for a date?" Blake nodding, satisfied she understood her message. "Do I get to decide where we go on the next one?"
Blake shrugged.
"Is that an 'I don't care shrug', or an 'It's your choice shrug'?" She indicated the latter with two fingers. "So you don't take me on dates I want?" She shook her head this time. "But I can take you on dates I want?" She nodded, extremely satisfied by her taking stock in this understanding they had by her ravenous smile. "This is a show of power from you isn't it?" She shook her head again, Pyrrha rolling her eyes in exasperation at the pace of their conversation. "You're enjoying this far too much."
She got a kiss on her helmeted cheek for that.
"Why can't you just say you want us to be equal instead of this…" She waved her hand about, getting a return swat to her shoulder. The atmosphere outside darkened around them as the ship roared to its destination, Blake flicking on the HUD with an extended finger, immediately retreating into Pyrrha's tender hold right after. The rapidly descending sun ensured them a twilight environment, a mission Pyrrha hadn't yet attempted, relegated to the high C or low B rank missions with an accompanied veteran Hunter. "What're the mission parameters?"
Blake punched in another sequence of codes, again stretching in her seat to reach the keyboard. Pyrrha paid more attention to the taut muscles coiled under her top than anything, holding back a whimper at the rippling steel cords of her shoulders and arms. A tap to her helm disturbed her thoughts, successfully bringing her attention back to a smirking Blake, more than aware of her gazing.
With her daydreams interrupted, she turned her eyes to look at the screen, picking out the most important bits of the assignment. The A-rank classification barely registered, Blake already providing an overwhelming amount of support. The more important aspect lay with the number and types of Grimm reported, a pair of Taijitu and Creeps each with a possible Geist in the area. Alone, an A-rank could eliminate one of them, but a full team should easily handle this. While she didn't quite make up a team, Blake counted for 3 just by herself.
"I expect some help on this." She prodded, Blake nodding against her neck. A shimmer of Aura spread across her skin until her entire form wavered with a green sheen. Her question caught in her throat when another Blake emerged from the one in her lap, stretching the green shimmer until it completely transferred to the new copy. "Hmm, that's useful."
Nothing betrayed the two Blakes apart, each clad in the same outfit matched with identical eyes and ears.
"How do I tell the two of you apart?" She asked after failing to find the slightest difference, chewing on her bottom lip with worry she might make a mistake and have the real Blake die when watching over her.
The new Blake shook her head in response, taking a seat at the pilot's console and bringing up the keyboard again.
You don't.
The short answered stunned her for just a moment before righteous confusion and anger welled inside her. "But you're just a clone. What if something happens to the real you and you need help? Or what if I don't want to talk to a clone but the real thing?"
The Blake in her arms stiffened making her think she overstepped a critical line. The sudden primeval growl startled both the clone and her, forcing her to shrink in and look away lest she burn under Blake's amber gaze.
More tapping after a period of silence, combined with Blake forcibly moving her chin to look her way, saw her reading another message.
I am Blake and Blake is me.
She furrowed her brows under helm at the cryptic words but refused to dignify her with an answer. The absurd idea the two Blakes shared sentience or equality sat uncomfortably on her chest, pressing down with a vicious and unforgiving force. The clone denoted an expendable asset, a tool for the real Blake to use. She wanted to talk to and hold the real one, build a relationship with a permanent construct, not a tangible creation of Semblance.
Am I the real Blake?
The obvious answer to that question had her shaking her head, a slight chuckle escaping at the funny notion the clone believed itself real.
Is she the real Blake?
"Of course she is," Came the immediate answer before she could stop and think, her brain activating just a second too late when Blake wrenched her face down and pressed her forehead to hers, searching for understanding in those glistening emerald orbs. "She's real…right?"
Even I don't know if she's the real Blake.
"But then how does your team tell you apart?" She cried indignantly, betrayed by the women she grew to care for in an extremely short time. "Surely the Commander knew which was real and which wasn't."
Again she received a head shake but with a reply.
The only difference between a clone and the real Blake is my agreement to be a clone and her agreement to be the real one. We share all of her memories, whether by report or experience, and while I don't have the same resilience as the real one, I still feel.
She frowned after finishing the paragraph, tightening her hold on the person or thing masquerading or being Blake. "So if I stabbed you here," she started, pressing a finger above her heart, "you'd either burst into Dust or bleed and die?"
Blake answered with a raised eyebrow, Pyrrha sighing dejectedly at her inability to communicate verbally. Her next words caught in her throat when Blake pressed a knife into her hand and moved the point of it over her heart. She looked up to see what possibly could've prompted this, searching for anything in her golden eyes or for anything on the screen but found the first closed as if accepting her choice, and the clone silent, observing their interaction with nothing to show it cared what happened either way.
"Clone, answer me truthfully." She got a puzzled look in reply and then nod telling her it listened. "Is this Blake a clone? And don't give me a shrug or a so-so answer. I'm asking for the truth here."
With a face carved from stone, the clone nodded.
She thrust down without an ounce of hesitation, the search for an answer driving the knife down into Blake's heart more so than her hand. A shuddering gasp of surprise escaped Blake's mouth, the panic mounting within her that she made a mistake and that the clone lied to her. No blood escaped from the wound, a sigh of relief escaping from her in turn. Instead, a trickle of glowing gray Dust tainted her fingers before disappearing into the ether, the body of the clone following suit, a coalesced burst of wind sweeping across her and the cockpit, drying the tears trickling down her cheek. A choked laugh echoed around the cockpit, Pyrrha descending into a fit only interrupted by both sobs and gasps of relief.
Blake, the clone created a minute earlier, pulled her unresponsive body from the seat and wrapped her in a hug, running her hands along her back in a comforting gesture. She kept her standing, supporting her weight and ensuring she didn't completely become unresponsive. Pyrrha would hate her once she learned why she subjected her to this test of faith, but she needed to show her the way the team operated. Not in the actual mission sense but in the way the formerly four of them interacted with each other.
Maybe she should've eased her into the revelation of the great clone fallacy. A sweat drop rolled down the back of her head when Pyrrha essentially squeezed mercilessly and attempted to smush her out of existence, unaware the force she used made her reach into Yang's Semblance to protect her organs. Other than that little caveat, she relished the desperate hold the younger girl kept her trapped in.
Pyrrha stopped her combination laugh-sob, calming down into a ball of sniffles with her face shoved into the crook of Blake's neck. She gently pushed away but remained in her hold, wiping away her tears with her palm. Blake caught her chin between her hands and held her gaze, her thumb helping with the tears, brushing whatever remained.
An unspoken apology passed from her, Blake holding her and placing a kiss to her forehead. She then brought her back into her hold and removed her helmet, placing it onto the seat and running her fingers through her fiery hair. The tears abated after a few moments, Pyrrha pushed her away entirely this time and sat back down on her seat, playing with the plume on her helm.
"We better have landed or I'm going to hit you." She bit back icily, Blake letting her go without a word. "And I'm going to talk to Yang and Weiss about this, and THEN we'll talk about this sick psychological experiment." Blake hit a button and the cockpit door slid open, gesturing for her to walk out. Pyrrha gave her a questioning look, standing up and looking behind her.
She only noticed now she couldn't feel the motion of a moving aircraft.
"When did we land?" Blake shrugged and she resisted the urge to smack her. "You're doing the scouting, I'm doing the charge."
Blake nodded, another clone stepping out from her clone body in a shower of bright embers, moving without an order. She then removed a vial of light blue Dust from a pouch and ate the contents, tipping it back and forcing it all down in one go.
Pyrrha watched in stunned bemusement until she removed another vial and handed it over. Her first instinct told her to decline, but she'd never seen this dark grey, almost black Dust before. Gravity Dust, as rare as it was and strictly controlled, was a bright pulsing purple.
"I'm not eating this." Blake shook her head after she handed it over, mimicking the movement to spill some onto her hand to see the contents of the vial. She did just so, grainy and dry dust spilling into her palm.
"These are iron shavings." Blake nodded, stepping into the fuselage and forcing her to follow to continue their conversation. "What do you want me to do with these?"
A few punches and kicks to the air got the message across.
"I haven't tried fighting with these, and I'm not giving it a field test until I try and use it in the arena."
Another set of deadpan looks.
"No, I don't trust you to protect me, not after the clone thing, so go and find the Grimm nest so I can kill it and talk to Yang and Weiss about this."
She pouted, replacing her faceplate. A shiver of terror raced through Pyrrha when she turned to stare but the playfulness in her eyes washed it away.
A rustle in the trees next to them made her draw her sword, crouching instinctively behind her shield. The midnight sky darkened the area sufficiently, but she made out the silhouette of the previously made Blake clone sticking upside-down to a branch with a pair of stalwart glyphs, exchanging hand signs with the Blake next to her.
She resisted the urge to facepalm. Everything about the quiet partner she decided to get entangled with pressed against her nerves, especially with the latest stunt. Blake couldn't give her a full day of happiness and exploration before ripping it viciously into shreds.
Blake pushed her forward, drawing her blade and spinning it into its pistol configuration, receiving a silencer after she reached into her interdimensional pockets.
They stepped into a clearing between the trees and Blake ordered her to stop with a raised fist. The eerie silence betrayed the usual vibrant summer night, a sudden crash from her right springing them into action.
The Blake clone from earlier disappeared into a shower of sparks when it shoved her down and sacrificed itself to the enormous Taijitu barreling at her. The snake screeched when the burning Dust scattered across its skin, effectively blinding and searing a good portion of scales. The first Blake slammed a foot down onto its jaw while it writhed and kept it in place with a glyph, unloading a full mag into the soft underside of the mouth before she could do any more than blink.
Before she could stand however, a Creep barreled from the darkness and crashed into Blake, a scream of denial from her cutting short when she burst into several blades of air, viciously cutting across the creature's beak and legs. She barreled into the Creep and continued to press the advantage, shield bashing the Grimm away from her. It whined angrily, shaking off the attack and charging in a stampede. She dodged and rolled to the side when it thundered by her, slashing at the thick skin near its underbelly.
Her mind raced, remembering Professor Glynda's many lessons on Grimm anatomy, her body automatically remembering where to hit. The adrenaline drove her forward, leaping back to stun the Creep with another bash and transforming her sword into her javelin. She drove the overglorified spike into the skin just behind its skull mask, a spot where the armor thinned. Much like the Taijitu, the Creep fell dead with wisps of dark energy coiling into the air.
She hadn't seen Blake move! One terrifyingly massive Taijitu lay dead or dying at her feet and she hadn't participated in that fight, sending clones, Semblance constructs only able to take a couple hits, to deal with them. She hesitated to call it a fight, Blake ending the entire interaction with three precise moves if she counted when she shoved her aside to save her.
"Well, what do we have here?" A male voice echoed from the other side of the clearing and she stood up, gripping her weapon with more force than necessary. She didn't want another surprise to hit her blind. Blake reloaded her weapon without batting an eye, not turning to the voice but checking to make sure she managed alright.
Pyrrha instantly knew she already knew about the presence.
"We got sent to pick up some Grimm and we find some mighty fine Hunters." The male stepped from the treeline and brandished the standard assault rifle, pointing the barrel in their direction. Blake might survive a bullet with how quickly she moved, but her armor could only withstand a few without damaging its integrity. They trained without bullets for a reason. "Whaddaya say boys, think we can ransom them off?"
A set of cheers erupted from all around them, each person stepping into their sights, confident in their superior numbers. While their leader didn't wear any recognizable insignia, the grunts wore the immediate apparent masks of the White Fang. She chose to remain quiet.
"Hey, boss, I got this one on my cereal box." She spun around, her hair flying freely about, her helmet forgotten in the dirt after the fall. Why didn't she add an Oum forsaken chin strap? "I think she's famous or something."
"Oh good, we'll get extra for her." The boss examined her partner, raking in the body she got to know intimately a few hours ago. "The other one will have to do as tonight's entertainment."
The sickening inflection he put on the last word brought bile to her mouth, making her reach to Blake with both a steadying and comforting hand. The growl she got in response started her, but she realized far, far too late it wasn't meant for her but for the rapist scum in front of them.
Time slowed comically when she turned to face him, bringing up her weapons to defend herself. A shadow crawled up behind him and she relaxed just a tad, relieved Blake sent more than just one clone into the area, but her blood instantly turned to ice when instead of knocking their attacker out, Blake sliced his throat and sprayed lifeblood onto the grass.
A wordless shout rippled around them and she failed to realize she made the sound until Blake shoved her down and behind her shield, and kept her there, another clone materializing from her form and joining the original in taking precise shots at the thugs before they reacted, seven in total ringing in abrupt soundwaves that jarred her ears and refuse to leave her in peace.
She stayed on her knees until Blake pried it away, placing a hand over her eyes to keep her from seeing the carnage, pulling her to her feet and ushering her back to the ship. She childishly batted the blindfold away and successfully found a corpse at her feet, the man's mask shattered with a crimson hole in his forehead, dead brown eyes staring into nothing.
Her higher mental functions shut down and she collapsed into a heap, thoughts of death, shock, and betrayal passing through her mind. She knew no more, Blake hoisting her onto her shoulders and briskly jogging back onto the Ruby.
A team of clones appeared from the tree canopy and went about cleaning the scene, a pair gathering the bodies and the masks separately, and another pair gathering dead branches and leaves for the pyre. She deposited Pyrrha on Ruby's bunk, sweeping her go-bag onto the floor and ransacking it for Dust vials, downing two immediately to prevent this body from failing. The three clones she created after the counter-ambush strained the piece of Yang's fragment dedicated to this clone and almost led to her disappearance.
A clone detached from her back and she gasped sharply at the drop in her reserves, the exponential increase in creation cost forcing her to lean down and rest heavily on the bed. Her breathing leveled out while her clone spun the engines and shot them back in the direction of Beacon. She retrieved a basic life support field guide and struggled through her blurry vision and weakness, waiting for the Dust to circulate and disperse through.
Pyrrha breathed weakly but steadily, her pupils reacted to her flicking the lights off and on, and she flinched normally to pain stimuli. She threw the booklet away and collapsed on the bed across the aisle, observing Pyrrha with a thousand-yard stare. A quick shake of turbulence interrupted her and forced her to begin sending messages off to Yang about the mission details, and to Monty, immediately requesting a therapist for mental shock and trauma.
Mission complete. Two Grimm eliminated, other two Grimm potentially captured by White Fang, seven tangos from ambush eliminated, Nikos unconscious and in shock, no injuries, returning to Beacon, Mt. Glenn procedures activated
Short but detailed enough with the complete account of the mission. Yang would get a more detailed report along with the transcript once they landed, already having written most of it down to prevent any irregularities or misremembrance. The scrolls recorded the nearest few meters around the carrier for accuracy and veracity for any legal cases for Blake to make quietly go away.
The Ruby slowed after she finished the main section of her report to Monty, writing down only the last part of the rather quick mission. She went through her first human kill alone during her time in the White Fang, Adam brushing her aside and practically ordered her to suck it up after she accidentally pushed a guard off a speeding train. The screams of the tortured man hung around every once in a blue moon, keeping the worst of her tendencies in check.
Adam's response drove her away from the Fang and to Beacon where she found a good couple years of honest work defeating Grimm instead of continuing Adam's crusade against mostly innocent people. Commander Ruby managed to paint people egregiously with her black and white vision, and she followed her orders, considering those who harmed innocents or allowed for the persecution of people unequally.
Really just the racist Councils, Cinder's minions, and Adam's White Fang.
Where she went after the war was Yang's jurisdiction, and even in the very likely scenario she valued her opinion, she couldn't decide who was innocent or not after the years of tunneling on those three factions.
Copy. What happened to the security net around the Fang's movement? You have a thousand willing clones scattered around Vale and Remnant.
A thousand clones looking for an organization of 100,000 in a country with a population of nearly a billion. I'm not omnipotent, but I try my best.
How many Grimm can we expect during the invasion if we extract the probability of just one fireteam capturing two to four per day? She pulled Weiss into the group conversation. Is it going to be a repeat of our first invasion or a lesser one like the second dimension?
It's still over a thousand Grimm coming to assault the stadium with nearly Adam's entire organization. Beacon can handle the Grimm, but we only have us and Raven to throw against the human army. Ruby at her prime massacred a battalion of two thousand, and almost died in the process as her Semblance tore her apart. Raven might match that, but unless they decide to fight in a tilted battle, even Yang's Supernova is useless.
Can you not reenact the defense of the Bay of Vale? Yang asked.
Not against the thousands of strike craft. That was against Atlesian Airships, several times larger and slower craft. Maybe if I can recreate Ruby's petal storm with glyphs but I don't have the time or Aura pool to stretch that around the floating arena without inflicting casualties on us or accurately striking the invasion force.
How much do you think Ironwood's Airships can take before they fall, and how many Hunters will we have with the other three Academies at the tournament? Weiss asked, no doubt having pulled up a spreadsheet to begin crunching the numbers.
Ironwood is bringing over ten thousand droid personnel with his twelve Airships. Assuming those are fitted with point defense and flack batteries, they can realistically take down a good thousand strike craft or a hundred flying Grimm. Combined with our four Airships ferrying people from the stadium down to Glenn, we have maybe an hour for complete evacuation before the thing falls. Yang replied, compiling a group of papers on her desk to get a complete overview of the Tournament. When talking about Hunters, Ironwood is bringing over a thousand of his Hearth veterans and just under two hundred prospective participants. Nikos is expected to bring around the same number, Kaldwin is bringing around five hundred from the last time we spoke, and we can potentially get away with stockpiling four thousand.
That's… not good. Blake summed up their thoughts concisely. With only around 6000 Hunters, most of which had never seen the reality of brutal guerilla warfare between humans, the chances of avoidings a massive loss of life among them dropped massively. The 10,000 droids in Ironwood's possessions would hold the line against the onslaught of strike craft and Grimm to a point, but anything beyond that required Hunters willing to attack humans.
I'll have to give no quarter assignments to our S-ranks. With us three, we have eleven, counting Raven, Qrow, Tai, Neo, James, Winter, Nikos, Kaldwin, thirteen if we count the last two's successors being there. Fuck.
We can't afford to defend Beacon or the CCTS tower with those numbers.
No, we can't. A thousand of my clones might make a difference, but if the dragon, or worse, makes an appearance, I'm not suited to taking massive flying armored beasts down. My clones are still setting up for Project Lucifer.
Does Qrow still really think we don't know about it?
Yes, and he'll remain thinking that until this entire unpleasant business is over. Beacon will fall if it has to. I'll send off a message to each Academy's acting head explaining why the entire network is down if it does fail, but my priority here is avoiding a massive loss of life.
Agreed/Copy. Weiss and Blake answered, signing off from the conversation for now. Ruby made plans to leave Beacon nearly empty, deeming the target of the tower insignificant if they could get ahead of Cinder's destruction of it. With the Relic removed and still in Weiss' possession, Salem's incentive to drive Cinder to attack it dropped to near zero, assuming she knew she had the Relic.
A timely appearance on camera as the proctor for the Tournament with the Relic as a laurel would eventually get back to her. If that failed then they had Neo in their back pocket.
She hoped.
Frankly, the mercenary had no reason to help them other than Ruby's memory, and short of leveling the continent after deeming the real Neo was among them, fighting her would cost not only their lives but everyone else's. Ruby's death stood as a testament to the force overwhelming required to remove a nightmare.
Also, what the fuck did you get Pyrrha involved in? Came Weiss' response after Blake set the craft down in their hangar. A salute ended her existence and she disappeared in a shower of water droplets.
We went hunting as a date but stumbled into a White Fang Grimm capture squad. She saw me kill all of them and then dropped unconscious.
I'll get the smelling salts and a warm shower running.
She's clean, just shaken. I'll need you to help explain a few of my 'other' assignments. It's one thing to hear in passing about my missions, another to see me kill in her defense.
Weiss didn't deem an answer necessary and left her hanging. She picked Pyrrha back up, this time in a bridal hold, and bound away from the hangar, managing to lock the craft with the trusty theft deterrent of a missing scroll. Not that any Hunter dared mess with that after Yang updated their ranks to have a pretty S next to their names.
Dusk had fallen entirely while she tapped away with her messages and her clone directed them back home. A few teams saluted her as she passed but she only spared them a nod of acknowledgment, devoted to ensuring Pyrrha made it to a safe location. Beacon had an infirmary, but with how the rest of the teams practically killed themselves in preparation of something occurring around the time of the Vytal Festival, another body with no issues for a nurse to take care of beyond bed rest seemed like overkill.
Weiss opened the windows the moment she heard her land on the branch, beckoning them in. Blake instantly noticed Weiss had changed the sheets of their main bed and obtained a cot from the supply closet. She placed her unconscious package onto it and began working through the intricate series of straps and clips keeping her armor in place.
Weiss handed over the smelling salts and she waved them in front of her nose, getting a small response. Another pass had her violently flinching and spasming, Blake keeping her locked down onto the cot with a pair of restraining arms.
Pyrrha came to in a different place than she remembered and instantly jumped into attention, her body lashing out in attack mode against the perceived threat of the ambush squad. Her chest felt much lighter without her armor and she instantly panicked, fiercely fighting against whatever held her down.
Her vision cleared from the black unconsciousness and she saw a worried Blake hovering above her, her blank faceplate cast aside so she could see her face. The panic abated once she saw the familiar room of team RWBY, Weiss crouched on the other side and dabbed a cool compress to her forehead.
"You fell unconscious after the Fang ambushed you," Weiss answered before she could voice her question. Flashes of their encounter ran through her mind, unconsciously sitting up and brushing aside their carry ministrations. Everything happened so fast she barely remembered everything, their rather clumsy encounter with the Grimm turning into a scene from a horror film.
Before this, she never thought she'd ever come across the darker factions that existed around Vale, almost assured of her safety as a Hunter. That illusion shattered the moment her skirmish with the Grimm ended. While she handled the fight against the Creep well enough for a new A-rank against the tanky lizard thing masquerading as an imitation animal and took a little help from Blake to prevent her timely demise from a constrictor, the battle against humans made her reevaluate everything.
Her past tourneys never came anything close to the utter helplessness and terror that gripped her at that moment. Those fights were almost scripted, having a set time to start, clear arena, and rules of combat. This stripped her of her safety and everything she tried to learn from Ruby's notebook instantly forgotten. The guns, the dark, Blake's hand on her shoulder, the words those assholes said and the shit they implied…
Blake instantly moved in to hug her tightly after noticing the tears building in her eyes, letting her sob and heave her heart out. She clung desperately, barely noticing Yang enter the room and sit by her side, a calming anchor just barely out of reach. Weiss began fussing over the odd cut she didn't notice and swiping them with alcoholic pads to prevent any nasty Grimm infection complications. She had nothing too major, the worst stemming from Blake's shove and tumble into the ground.
"You-, they-." She hiccuped between her words, unable to form a coherent thought. Weiss pried the two apart and forced her fingers into a position she didn't know yet, telling her 'safe', and then making sure she understood, repeating the same word over and over, holding her hands and shaking them to ensure she remembered.
An ounce of laughter echoed from her lips when a black ball of fur snuggled onto her lap and wriggled about until it found a comfortable spot. It wiggled its tail enough to beat a trench into her leg, flattened its ears cutely, and stared at her with unnerving red eyes. She pushed through the worry threatening to send her spiraling back into an uncontrollable mess after realizing the little puppy shared too many similarities to creatures of Grimm.
"She knows," Yang answered, just a tad too close for comfort as if waiting to yank the tiny Grimm from her at the slightest provocation. That drew a frown from her until she noticed Blake's hand resting on her pouch of holding stuffed with about a gazillion different knives. Her stomach sank when she looked up and found a white glyph shimmering barely in existence above her head. "Rei won't hurt you."
The sudden presence of three massively overpowered Hunters at the edge of causing her irreparable harm froze her for the millisecond it took to pet the Grimm instead of strangling it as her training and instincts demanded. She, instead, chose life and pet Rei, the puppy sinking into her ministrations and purring in a weird growl amalgamation.
RWBY's attack positions dissipated in the blink of an eye and the tension that hung in the air let her breath, her lungs screaming in relief. Blake pet her in turn and she batted it aside after the condescending context of it broke through the fear and demanded a response. Their actions shook her to her core, but like many of the things she saw over the last day, she shoved them deep down until someone else brought it back up with a vengeance.
Yang slapped her on top of her head before she slammed the doors shut on them. "Rei was Ruby's pet and is now ours. You hurt her and I can't promise Blake won't eviscerate you." Blake smiled creepily.
"Yes, like she did on our mission." She trailed off in a deadpan, the fear gripping her tightly and shaking her body. The tremble didn't escape Weiss and she sat down on her other side and again forced her hands into the 'safe' hand sign.
"She knew nothing about the presence of the Fang there. This wasn't some sick test to teach you a lesson or get you accustomed to killing." Yang spoke, carefully watching the woman piece herself together with duct tape and grit. She admired the will it took to press onwards despite the crippling emotions warring inside her. If only she knew how much special 'training' she had in store for the next two weeks.
"No, she just had me kill a clone to see if I trusted her." The sarcasm dripped from her voice and Weiss instantly facepalmed when she heard what Blake did. Yang skipped over to a desk and removed a spray bottle from her go-bag, Blake instantly retreated to hide under the covers and hissed at the incoming threat, all of them laughing at the turn of events, even Pyrrha, forgetting her ire.
"You don't get away that easily." Yang threw back the covers and avoided the claws swiping at her, wrestling the paltry attacks with ease. Blake fought for the blanket while avoiding the sprays of water sent her way. They danced around in circles in a tug-of-war much to everyone's amusement, Rei abandoning her place on Pyrrha's lap to yip angrily and demand their attention.
They continued their dance until two pairs of glyphs anchored them in place, Yang succeeding in spraying her face and receiving nothing more than a set of three claws marks to her check. Despite the loss in regal appearance with her hair plastered to her forehead and water trailing down, Blake smiled rapturously, licking the faint trail of blood on her claws.
Yang paused once she noticed and touched the injury, pulling away with red liquid staining her fingers, the two observer's laughter tapering off, Pyrrha following Weiss' lead. "You cut me…"
Blake nodded proudly. "I see you figured out how to bypass my shields." She played with the blood, spreading it across her palm.
"You can congratulate Blake later, however…" Weiss manipulated her glyphs to swing Blake underside down and received a glare coupled with a squeak of surprise. "You, on the other hand, get to hang there until Pyrrha decides to let you go. You do not- put a rookie- through your clone test-." Weiss shook her with every break in her sentence.
"You mean she did this with all of you?" Pyrrha interjected, brows furrowed in disappointment and confusion. "And what did you do?"
Yang answered her first. "Ruby didn't care. I think she understood first that Blake multitasked with her clones and considered them part of her and vice versa." Pyrrha conceded the point, remembering what Blake communicated in the ship. "After she explained that, and also showed us how her clone network communicated, we kinda accepted it. The real Blake shows up for the most important things though."
"So I had the real Blake, I hope, when your wife and her seduced me and had their wicked way with me?" Pyrrha continued with her deadpan from before. "And you're… okay with that?"
Yang threw away the spray bottle and engulfed Pyrrha in a hug, the younger woman welcoming the manhandling. She peered over Yang's shoulder to see Blake giving her a thumbs-up, still trapped in her prison and she took it to mean that yes, the real her was present for the few hours of bliss earlier in the day. A clone managed to perform admirably well in keeping her safe on the date cum mission "Yes. While I consider her mine and vice versa, she's still her own person. Though the guilt did eat at her and she came crying to me right after."
"I did not cry!" Came Weiss' indignant response. "I came running to you because I liked her, not because she was terrible or she scared me."
"And what did I tell you?" Yang arced an eyebrow.
"That I could like and date anyone I liked as long as you could do the same with our mutual agreement," Weiss repeated what Yang told her over their meeting. "But Pyrrha is free to refuse any propositions, but that's all dependent on if she even wants to stay around after Blake's clone test."
Free enough to wiggle in Yang's hold demanding her release.
"Hold the scroll." Yang eventually relented her hug and released her back to bed. She spent a few seconds patting her hair back in place from Yang's tousling and looking around to Weiss and Blake in confusion and then to the blonde again. "I barely agreed to date Blake and she has a lot of movie and exercise dates to pay for to make up for the clone bullshit."
Blake repressed the blush of shame with ease, only a smidgen of red tinting her cheeks. The blood must've started rushing down from her suspended position and, while the temptation to break the glyphs called sweetly, it did wonders for her spine and back, tiny pops of pressure releasing in relief. The notion of paying for a date in a functioning society escaped her with the near permanent presence of war, but she could find money somewhere.
With the expansion to Glenn, the privatization efforts, and the planned move of the headquarters from Mantle to Kuo Kuana, the usual profit from the defense and mining magnate went away quicker than Ruby after a freshly baked tray of cookies. Though she was reasonably sure Weiss thought she didn't know about that last one.
Silly woman, thinking she was safe by hiding her papers and will in an empty ice-cream container. Like she didn't know about her decision to hand over the company to the Belladonna family. The lack of faith in both her and Yang stung just a bit but most of them probably wouldn't live to see beyond the Tournament. She'd drop a few post-its here and there to suggest leaving something to Pyrrha in case none of them made it.
She'd like the knives.
"That's why you're free to refuse," Yang answered glibly, reaching into her bag for a set of lighter clothing and throwing it at the redhead. "Now go and change so I can punch you in the gym, I mean, so you can punch something in the gym. Blake, your report on my desk in the next two hours. Weiss, please make me some tea after I finish up. I have Tai demanding an audience and I really don't want to deal with him."
"You guys do know I have a team, right?" Pyrrha couldn't suppress the twitch when she failed to get an answer.
AN: See, I thought it'd get this out around my birthday (June 9th) but I'm lazy and like to play video games. I'm doing a few League of Legends casts here and there and playing video games on stream, slowly building up my cred. Oh, and slowly finishing up this story with only a couple more chapters until the end. Potentially working on a sequel but might just tie off the entire series. Let me know what you think and how I can improve by dropping a review!