Chapter Thirty-Five
Sanity
She returned the offered clothing after realizing Yang blew her out of the water in terms of chest size, the shirt practically hanging on her lighter frame. Yang let her go with an order to meet her at the gym after she escaped to her room to avoid Blake's verbal or, to her great shame a shiver roared across her body, a physical punishment.
Nora pounced on her the moment she stepped into their room, sending her careening in a circle to avoid falling. Unfortunately, the past couple hours failed to completely relax her and she flipped her assailant over and slammed her onto the carpet, kneeling heavily onto her spine to ensure she couldn't move.
The black rage faded after Nora gasped out her name and she took stock of the situation, Jaune and Ren staring at her in shock. The tension faded from her muscles and she released her hold on Nora, letting her stand to her feet. Ren shook his surprise away first, glancing at her questioningly before asking, "How was your date?"
"Surprising." She almost moved to her locker before remembering RWBY stole part of its contents, subtly manipulating her to return to the room. Before she knew it, she'd be keeping her entire wardrobe in there and moving in just to stake claim to her stuff. "Blake took me to kill some Grimm so that was nice."
Three distinct things happened after her words. Nora instantly squealed and demanded to know absolutely everything and anything, Jaune face faulted and ended up on the floor, and Ren smiled but the confusion remained as he blatantly stared down at her lack of armor and change of clothes.
"Then what was the surprising bit?" He gestured at her shirt and then her locker while she picked up Nora and casually placed her aside. "The part after the date when you lost your armor or the scratches on your face?" She slapped a hand on her face and found a bandage Weiss managed to sneak on without her knowing across her nose. Great, now they cared enough to patch up the small injuries. How much more before they ambushed her between classes and pulled her into missions?
"Oh, no." She shoved that thought aside for now, content she could ask and punch Yang for answers once she escaped her team's questioning, moving to her dresser and retrieving a pair of shorts. Her armor weighed heavily and had no place in the relative quiet of Beacon. "We got ambushed right after we finished taking out the Grimm but Blake handled them." She finished abruptly, doing her best to keep her voice from hitching.
"Them?" Ren bound from the bed and carefully grabbed her shoulder to turn her around, standing on the balls of his feet in case she reacted violently again. She recoiled from his touch, unshed tears brimming in her eyes, and spat, "Yes, the White Fang! Fucking assholes thought they could have some 'fun' with us so Blake..."
Ren got the gist of her unfinished sentence and watched her practically fall apart in front of him, aware that even moving closer to her might provoke a similar situation to Nora, who immediately stopped wincing at Pyrrha's brutal response to her greeting and kneeled by the door in silence.
Memories of the mission flashed in front of her eyes, horrifically slowing when their assailants leveled their guns, her imagination supplying the sickening grins of lust and wanton wrath behind the stylized masks. A chill in her chest sent goosebumps spiraling over her skin, the terror gripping her tight until Jaune made the mistake of placing a rough hand on her shoulder to help her stand and spoke words of admonishment to Ren and Nora for not helping.
The terror instantly transitioned into a controlled panic with a decade of fighting experience twisting his hand until he either flipped over or allowed her to shatter his wrist. He didn't get to choose as she lashed out with an elbow to viciously slam into his femur and send him head over heels to land upside-down in a heap near the wall. She deliriously finished with a screaming, "Don't fucking touch me!"
Ren moved away without a sound with arms raised in the universal sign of surrender, respecting she had an issue revolving around men, her encounter during the mission, and sudden touching. He escaped with nothing but a flinch because he spoke first before daring to touch her and he chalked up Nora's situation to surprising her after a potentially traumatic mission.
Speaking of which, he needed to make sure Yang shoved Pyrrha into some therapy that didn't include punching things until they magically resolved. Seemed to work with Yang and her regenerating bulwark of Aura but he worried for his slightly less powerful, but still the most powerful on their team, teammate.
"I'm here if you need to talk or train." He kicked Jaune to make sure he kept and just because he spent the last hours whining about Pyrrha's date until Nora threatened to hit him with her hammer. She kindly informed him about Pyrrha's almost blatant flirting and then hit him anyway for being a dense idiot. Pyrrha had the freedom to date whoever she wanted and if Blake made her happy, or at least less hostile, she had her seal of approval.
"Can I come with?" Nora disappeared into the bathroom for a second and changed into her workout clothes before she could decline. She still carefully avoided infringing on her space but she practically vibrated with energy.
"If I can pretend you're Blake until my misplaced anger goes away then sure." They left Ren to close the door and handle Jaune, hearing him start to repeatedly punch his blonde teammate and berate him for chasing their redhead away.
The possessiveness from him stemmed her anger from growing and fought against the rising tide of shame. She had ignored her team by not telling them of her date and further by keeping Ruby's death a secret. The guilt warred with her wants until she let the latter win, almost relishing in her newfound relationships with the rest of team RWBY. She, as an A-rank, would have much more to deal with during the hidden Vytal Tournament objective than her team. Though she'd have to punch and ask Yang how differently ranked Hunters operated when conflicting orders came from command.
"So what did Blake do to get you so hyped up?" Nora interrupted her train of thoughts as they filed into the locker room, bouncing on her feet and circling her to get her attention. She watched Pyrrha change from her armored leggings and admired the body on her. Since her admittance to Beacon so tried to keep pace with the goddess made flesh as an underling to a mentor, even if they started as equals, technically. Her career as a junior Champion in Mistral gave her a head start she didn't get as a small-town girl.
Pyrrha met her eye briefly before dropping down to the woman's midriff, a mental facepalm echoing in her mind bringing up feelings long repressed so she acted normally among her teammates. She couldn't shake the notion of Nora watching her intently and greatly ignored when she flicked a tongue out until she remembered the death sentence hanging above her.
"Because she made me kill one of her clones in a sick test of trust." She removed the light undershirt keeping the heavy armor from chafing, leaving her in a sports bra accenting the defined muscles of her abs and shoulders. "And I also learned she sent a clone on our date which hurt but then I learned she sends clones on everything except for the time Weiss and her double-teamed me. Still trying to wrap my head around that one."
She shut her locker after removing her tiara, cleaning it from the few specks of dirt that managed to cling to it from her mission. Nora remained frozen when she passed her so she poked her a few times in her arm to get a reaction from her. When that failed she pushed her against the row of lockers and pinned her in place with her superior height.
The mischievous part of Pyrrha drove her forward and the smaller part Blake kinda broke during their mission wanted to mess with Nora who barely managed to lift her gaze to meet hers. Pyrrha leaned in just enough to make her intentions clear, smirking viciously when a sudden panic entered her eyes. She attempted to move her head left and right only to find a prison of arms keeping her trapped.
"Pyrrha…" She heard the audible gulp and watched a bead of sweat trailed down from her headband. Wasn't that supposed to catch sweat before it escaped from the hairline? She tied her hair back in a ponytail to prevent just that but Nora had such appealing orange short hair. Two of those adjectives weren't strictly necessary at this very moment but she disagreed. "What're you doing?"
"Trying to snap you out of your shock." Her brows furrowed in confusion and she wondered why this locker room was so empty even at midnight. Most of Beacon seemed intent to train to exhaustion and she desperately wanted to find one of Blake's clones and punch it. Of course, with Blake occupied with Weiss and keeping clones away in case she massacred another one, she'd have to do with a paper, tape, and a marker. Anyways, her confusion continued after realizing Nora was still frozen and refused to move at her rather obvious intentions. "I was going to kiss you but I think I misread you."
She released her enclosing stance and Nora breathed easier, relieved at her freedom from her encroaching friend and disappointed from her now retreating friend. Pyrrha couldn't quite read the look in her eyes or the cute whimper that escaped from her mouth but she'd have to engineer sometime.
Now she knew how Blake felt all the time.
"Why?" The short question stumped her and she suppressed the part of her that wanted to screw the consequences, and the waiting Yang, and steal a kiss, at least on her cheek.
"Because I find you attractive. I have for a while." The brusque response got nothing in reply from her friend and she choked briefly at the fumes escaping from Nora's ears at her revelation. Instead of attempting to reboot her again, she hoisted her on her shoulder and paraded onwards to the gym.
She found Yang doing something to a punching bag and when she turned around, despite her best attempts to move quietly, she saw a crude depiction of Blake drawn in marker, complete with cat ears, taped in the bag with tape.
The sudden sense of paranoia overtook her and she examined the ceiling to find the Blake that managed to pluck the thought about this very thing from her head. Yang watched bemused as she set Nora to rest against the wall and rampaged across the training area tearing it apart in search of something. Nora's presence, especially as a potato sack on Pyrrha's shoulder, surprised her but she rolled with it.
"You're not supposed to tear up the gym on a date, or in general." Pyrrha dutifully ignored her and the sweatdrop growing on her temple and scared the Hunter on duty at the desk by ransacking his workplace and searching for the elusive Faunus. She started accosting the few other Hunters around them until Yang physically wrestled her back to the area she commanded earlier. "Or bring Nora into it but it's not your first threesome. What did you do to her?"
"Excuse me, what?" That jarred Nora from her shock-induced coma and she took stock of the situation, Pyrrha attempting to eviscerate a punching bag with her glare alone and Yang cracking jokes while wrapping her knuckles in bandages.
"You shush. I need to find the Blake that managed to figure out my plans with the paper and marker and tell you." She continued on her rampage and tore at the mats to access the floor to check if she wasn't listening in a secret hideyhole. Nora watched perplexed, still digesting the information of Pyrrha and a threesome.
"She had a threesome with Blake and Weiss after the lecture." Yang finished her wrappings and punched the air a half dozen times with a few kicks thrown in. "And then Blake took her on a date to kill a few Grimm." She then spoke directly to Pyrrha, watching her finish checking the immediate vicinity thoroughly. "And regarding Blake, she's always watching. I've given up trying to find how she does it."
Pyrrha narrowed her eyes at the defeat and cracked her knuckles. "And regarding Nora, I tried to kiss her. She… didn't want to."
"Eh." Yang shrugged uncaringly. "Her loss."
Pyrrha settled into her stance and replied. "I'm going to punch you now." That was all the warning she got, scoffing at her threats before Pyrrha slugged her heavily on her cheek. Pyrrha grinned victoriously when Yang spat a glob of blood, a matching grin forming on her lips.
"You're a lot angrier than I thought," Yang replied, sweeping a leg behind her opponent and pushing away, jumping away to avoid a return punch and flipped backward to maintain her footing.
"I have a lot of misplaced aggression!" Pyrrha threw caution to the wind and closed the gap between them with a fervor Yang didn't think she had, a blazing fury melting the jade of her eyes into a wildfire capable of igniting her fighting spirit. A stray hair danced freely as Yang dodged one punch and then blocked the following kick, yellow Aura rippling across her arm. She ate the energy and counterattacked with a palm thrust to Pyrrha's chest, forcing her to dodge. She continued answering, "You're just a convenient outlet."
Ruby would've had her hide for carrying a conversation while fighting, even while sparring, but not everyone had the benefit of the quality therapy from Beacon when they needed it. Pyrrha would have to wait until tomorrow. She managed to convince Angela to see Pyrrha instead of her tomorrow, not that it took much effort. Something about bringing her in before the long term trauma could set in.
"Oh please." Yang flexed the fingers of her hand, having hit improperly and taken more damage to prevent Pyrrha from taking the full brunt of it. She wasn't about to scare away the closest thing she had to an equal in straight combat. Weiss hated fighting her in close quarters, Blake never stayed in one place long enough to hit her true body, and the less said about Ruby the better.
Did it make her guilty of liking the redhead?
Just a bit.
"You'd kick Blake's ass handily. You have more experience in close combat than her and you're driven to get back at her for the mission." Yang specifically rebounded one of her kicks with a dose of her shields, Pyrrha spinning back the other way and dropping on all fours to avoid Yang.
"Isn't Blake an S-rank?" Nora asked for them both as Pyrrha returned to attacking Yang, observing which attacks she blocked and which she dodged. The adrenaline surged within the blonde and she moved with a sheen of fire coating her arms. Pyrrha yelped and reinforced her shields, the pair sharing a grin before disengaging.
"Yes, but -" Yang blocked a spin kick of all things and relished the energy surging into her core from the impact. Pyrrha instantly took note she blocked the more direct strike but dodged the skimming punch aimed at her shoulder. They traded blows for the next dozen minutes, Pyrrha testing again and again, Yang catching on after the third set. She telegraphed a couple of her blocks, Pyrrha catching on in return and grinning rapturously. "Blake never fights fair. If you ever think she is, you've missed something."
She tanked another explosive hit from the redhead, blasting back with a concussive shell of Aura and sending her tumbling across the mat to collide heavily against the wall next to her teammate. She wiped away a trail of blood leaking from her lips but the smile remained plastered, turning vicious and wanting. "Then again, Hunters aren't supposed to fight fair to begin with."
"Good point." She grabbed control of the punching bag by the metal hook and chains, and after a struggle with gravity unlatched it from the supporting beam. The crude caricature of Blake made her remember a quote from something, maybe a movie or a meme Jaune showed her. "You're not wearing any metal. Shame."
"I'm not that dumb -" She managed to get out before Pyrrha swung the punching bag, beating one motherfucker with another motherfucker. Yang flew into the wall next to her, and despite the padded mat, she heard a definite crack of the concrete. Or her spine. Either or. "Pretty sure Blake can't hit that hard."
Her previous anger dissipated into the air and she started giggling riotously, all of her energy spent on manipulating the staggeringly heavy bag filled with sand. That took much more than she assigned to the task and the operation demanded near double, siphoning until she could lift the 45 kilo weight. Funnily enough, the weight disappeared once she put the force into it, much like if she'd physically picked it up and winded it into a swing.
"You're very lucky I can overload my shields or that might've broken something." Yang joined her in laughing lightly, a partially broken rib preventing her from taking a full breath. She coiled up and rested on her shoulder, slamming enough Aura into her chest to dull the pain enough to eventually drag herself off to the office and deal with her irate dad. "Scratch that, you definitely cracked at least one rib."
"Suck it up, Mrs. I-just-lost-to-an-A-rank." She placed her chin on top of Yang's head and enjoyed the ambient heat wafting off the strands of gold. Her extra bit of height and Yang's injury gave her the advantage here.
"Yeah, keep believing it Miss I-used-Aura."
"You never said I couldn't." She edged a hand closer to Yang's and received a comforting grip in reply. "Not bad for a first date, though I wish I got to punch the bag more instead of, you know, throw it at you." The bag rested dilapidated with sand seeping through a break in the material, Yang's shield reacting and pushing against the force in response. If that was what happened to a tough polyester, then she was glad she hadn't put her entire weight into her punches. Her skin might've torn at the violent feedback from her shields.
"Not that I want to interrupt your moment but I came here to train." Nora interrupted the moment after Yang snuggled into the crook between her neck and shoulder, closing her eyes to enjoy the snuggles and focus on preventing the fracture from breaking further apart. I was just a small crack from the pain and the amount of Aura her rib devoured with each passing second.
A few hours and she'd be right as rain, and maybe she'd pop a vitamin I or two to help. "Yeah, I'm tapped. Can't even go back to Weiss or I'm going to actually break it." She staggered to a stand using the wall as support and winced when she jostled the injury, a growl making Nora flinch and her eyes glittering a savage amethyst.
"Yang…" Pyrrha stopped her and bent down to place a kiss to her cheek. Yang placed a hand on the invisible mark when she pulled away, a smile threatening to break the grit of her teeth. "Thanks. I needed that." She stopped at the exit door to the gym, pressing it open on the bar and standing in the threshold, "You have therapy at 1300 at Monty Memorial."
"I thought this was therapy." Pyrrha deadpanned and instinctively blocked a punch from Nora, wincing at impact to her misplaced forearm. Nora grinned until Pyrrha slugged her in the kidney and followed with a knee strike she blocked with her cheek. She sprawled across the mat and her shielding rippled at the hit, a bruise reddening quickly. "This feels pretty good."
"That's an order from your Headmaster, Pyrrha." She nodded at that, reluctantly accepting the help. It wasn't her prerogative to refuse the orders of her superior and the care of a friend. Still not entirely sure where they stood but 'friend' was a safe bet. Blake might've warranted being called a girlfriend or a lover, same with Weiss to a lesser degree. Yang, while Weiss' wife, didn't hold a grudge other than punching her, and helped her work through this… confusing mess.
Punching things wasn't a permanent solution but it sure felt good.
"And you better not think of avoiding it," Yang called out, sticking her head back in. "If we could make Ruby go then you don't stand a chance."
"Go and do your paperwork!" She laughed on the way back, a satisfied smile threatening to fatigue her cheek muscles and leave them sore. At least Pyrrha felt better after this short stint even if she paid the price of minor discomfort. The small peace she granted to the younger woman made it all worth it. Sure she wanted the date to last longer than the few minutes of punching and kicking interspersed with talking. Ruby, somehow of all people, had the most socially normal definition of a date with her bloodstained and aggressive usual mindset that conversely made everything else she did tamer in comparison.
Her office beckoned and she made record time after grabbing a sweatshirt from her locker. She staggered a couple of times and rested against a wall or bench to catch her breath, prodding the rib with tendrils of Aura and sealing the fracture with a crystallized form. Very useful for breaks and patch jobs assuming the Hunter had the Aura to spare after squashing the pain.
Velvet ambushed her in a hug and she was never more thankful her shields repelled the relative soft force. Coco pried her off after profusely apologizing for her teammate and dragged her along, Velvet beaming at the manhandling. They were a cute couple.
She rested again against the elevator car on her way up, humming along to the same repetitive tune. She liked that song as it was a constant in the buildup to the clusterfuck of the Tournament ahead, one thing Ruby and Ozpin refused to change in the collective years her team had occupied Beacon. Weiss almost murdered her leader when she heard the same tune played across Mt. Glenn, prompting a chase that left rose petals strewn across the campus.
Good times.
Unlike the one waiting for her when the doors opened up, her dad toying with a familiar orange book and tapping his foot in the air. He dog-eared the page he read and set it aside, standing from his seat on the couch and stretching before saying, "I've been here three hours, Yang." A subtle smirk brought down the growing dread. "Of course, that was after you sent me to Glenn."
"Shut up. Pyrrha just broke a rib in a spar and Blake is getting punished for traumatizing her." She walked over to her desk and found a bottle of ibuprofen, downing four to take the edge down. Her stomach disagreed with the dry pills but she powered on through, holding him up as she inhaled a bottle of water. "And I declined a foursome to do work, and guess what? I have more paperwork!"
"Breath." Tai interrupted her after she ranted about her spar barely helping with mounting stress, all on top of still attempting to figure what exactly Ruby had hidden away in the mass of papers. Orders from more than three months filed down in the districts and Glenn, moving and assigning Hunters and materials in the coming weeks. For whatever reason, half the Hunter teams dispatched to the border districts and vanguard were suddenly requisitioned to the districts surrounding the military districts, almost cocooning the bases from supply lines.
Blake thought Ruby wanted them to take the initiative and cut the Council's influence underfoot by securing supply lines and shifting the blame to the White Fang. Weiss vetoed that idea instantly, bemused Blake had acquired over a thousand masks in the span of a few months, but cited avoiding a civil war. Sometimes her vigor to carry out Ruby's order backfired. She immediately countered by attempting to send out countermands to return the teams and found a spray bottle quickly deterred her from pressing the button.
The standoff lasted a few minutes until Rei snatched her scroll and weaseled under the covers.
Weiss and Yang wanted to just keep the mandates in place, especially given their failure to swing the Council elections their way. Blake's failure to assassinate her targets, or rather forced choice to leave them alive, made this incredibly apparent. Ruby wanted the military bases isolated from the Hunter forces to prevent collateral, pinned down in case the election or assassinations went wrong.
A contingency plan for one worst case, but the orders continued beyond the election date, keeping the Hunters there and moving interior ones to secure the border. Others ordered teams to fortify Beacon and others still removed the rotating roster from Beacon for the week of the Festival, relying on the contingent assigned to the Arena for security. She wanted Beacon undefended, the cost of Hunter lives too worthwhile to discard for a building.
Weiss argued against it, mostly due to the costs associated with building another one if the first one fell until Blake agreed to dispatch a dozen fireteams of her clones to at least make the Academy a challenge to take.
Tai interrupted her again with a first grasp on her shoulder and pulled her into a hug, her ramblings petering off until she collapsed bonelessly against him. She let a few tears trickle down unheaded. A laugh sputtered from her and she wiped her face clear, pushing him away.
"You haven't hugged me in a long time. I also forgot what having a parent felt like." She shoved another Aura iota into her chest, the pain continuing to recede as the drugs started working. Her metabolism demanded an increased intake but her liver and kidneys were near shot at the regime the war demanded. Her new body came with rejuvenated organs to offset the damage but sometimes she wished her old body back as defunct it was with a missing arm. She'd still have the tolerance for the random crap required to keep moving.
"Hey, you sent me off to supervise Glenn, little dragon. I completed everything short of installing a pair of autocannons before I heard you returned and somehow became Headmaster." He replied, smiling sadly. "The three funnel gates were strengthened and all of the flack batteries and kinetic artillery were mounted. Glenn has enough firepower to repel the Atlesian armada."
"I didn't send you off to Glenn. Ruby had the order ready before we… I… she died." She gulped a ball the size of her heart down, the disapproving gaze from Tai making it all the harder. "The stubborn idiot planned around us leaving Beacon and generated orders through the Tournament."
"That's not how most people describe her. Blake's gone to town on her cult of personality and made her out to be a genius" Tai raised an eyebrow when she laughed derisively. "What?"
"Ruby was many things but a genius? No." She leaned against her desk and stared down onto her school, the lights of the landing pads blinking in the distance. Tai settled onto the desk by her side. "Weiss and Blake are geniuses with their work. Me, I'm just an engineer. Ruby?" She laughed again and Tai frowned at the lack of self-confidence and respect. "She had a one-track mind and the bullheaded determination to see it through." She led them through the hell of Qrow's fall and the restructuring of Glenn afterward only to fall herself and rise so much stronger, personally taking the worst missions to spare the Hunters the death of a team. Scars marred her every time she stepped from the base but still she surged onwards, serving and protecting wherever needed, flying across Vale and ending threats.
"Still, we managed to outlive her." Tai offered, pulling her into a side hug. She didn't resist this one, latching onto his shirt and letting tears pool in her eyes again. "I miss her." Those three words brought a rack of guilt with them. Ruby might've ignored him as a father figure but she loved him. He trusted her with Ruby, to watch over her while they attended Beacon. It was her responsibility to call him once a week and tell him how they were doing, and she failed in even that simple task after a while.
"Me too." Yang clamped down on her Aura cores for the next question. "Are you mad at me?"
"I was never mad at you." Tai denied, shaking his head. "Really sad she died, disbelief she actually had you do it, more disbelief you actually went through with it, more sad she didn't trust me enough to tell me about her condition, but never mad at you." She realized halfway through that she stopped breathing until he finished, waiting for his reaction. "I was disappointed just a little bit though."
"Oh?" Yang asked, still nestled into his shoulder hug. "Why?"
"Because you're my daughter Yang, and so was Ruby." She leaned away and her eyes narrowed at the growing implication but she wanted him to say it to her face rather than hide behind fancy words. "You weren't supposed to fall in love with her."
"Yeah." She answers simply before elaborating, wiping away the tears with the palm of her thumbs. Her hair sparkled with embers as she lost control over the tight grip on her cores, further shortening it to her shoulders. Weiss noted the reversal of her iris color months ago while in isolation, her rageful crimson swapping with her calming amethyst. She liked it, reminded of Ruby's connection to Rei, not that the pup noticed.
Rei out of all of them didn't seem to notice her missing master, content to accompany any of them with no reservation. Ruby used her for her eyes so what semblance of sentience governed the Beowolf cared nothing or she let nothing show in her mannerisms. She still curled up on their bed, still played whenever Blake wrestled, and beyond their time in Mantle, she remained in her small form.
Yang quickly learned to not ask her to morph into her biggest form after the tank of a shadow used her as a tennis ball. No bone plating or claws, just coalesced darkness in the vague shape of a four-legged animal with ears and piercing eyes. Her shield prevented any damage she might've done but the slobber remained. She didn't even know Grimm could slobber! Granted, it was more like a grey slime but... same concept.
"I didn't plan on it but it did." Yang conceded, sighing theatrically. "Everything got confusing during the war. I liked Blake for the longest time in Beacon but I fell for Weiss during Glenn." She trailed off and lost her train of thoughts before returning on a tangent. "Hmm, that's wrong actually. Blake threw us into a room and then locked us in after shouting we couldn't leave until we confessed to each other. She was already with Ruby by that time."
"And how'd they end up together?"
"Ruby made her a cookie asking her on a date after Weiss figured out what she was feeling for her." Yang laughed again, remembering the squeal that had Hunters scattering to find the Boarbatusk in the base only to get run over by a storm of rose petals. Blake instantly found out what the weight of her tiny leader felt like when traveling at near the speed of sound. "Weiss crushed on her during Beacon but who can resist me really?"
"The mutual attraction explains why the relationships work for you and Blake and Weiss, but not what happened with Ruby." Tai sighed dejectedly, shoulders slumping. "I raised you two as sisters."
She said nothing for a long while, watching the campus lights flicker as bullheads flew in the night. "After Ruby… changed, she lost all of her societally developed morals. The Fang broke her completely and Ruby died, but the part of a Commander that protected the innocent stayed and protected her in turn." She let him digest that for a moment. "When Blake rescued her, she remembered everything before but she had no concept for those memories so when she remembered she loved me... she just loved me, uncaring about the societal governed norm as it didn't interfere with the base principle that kept her alive."
"So when Ruby died-." His words caught in his throat and the great monster of grief reared its head again, his heart falling into a deep pit and pulsing with a cold that had him wanting to curl up under the covers and suffer in silence. "She lived again as a different person, a psychopath with no And you couldn't stop loving her? I raised you better than that."
She chuckled at his disappointment. "There's only so many times she can accidentally kiss me before I stop forgetting to reinforce the idea that she shouldn't." She shrugged when he slugged her shoulder in jest. "Most of the time we focused on subdividing her protection into different classes so that she didn't accidentally decide someone was a threat when they weren't. She also had this weird inability to lie and practically threw herself into the line of fire."
"Then a part of her survived her death, and bled into her reborn form."
"Yes, she was always going to be Ruby as some fragment that let her regenerate and fight through what the Fang did to her." Yang agreed before the smile turned upside-down. "But a part of her shut down. She never hesitated to send squads into almost certain suicide if she couldn't personally go with them, trained until I had to literally drag her off the field, and on the field, fuck."
The memory washed over her and Tai parted the curtain of hair enclosing her, flinching when her turbulent pools of lilac jumped to him before swirling away in a torrent of crimson. "She led a mission when the Vale Council dared move against her orders to remain within the borders." She gulped down the fear, goosebumps racing along their skin. "The troops moved on the ground to avoid detection on the rail, sea, or air but Blake found them and our team deployed within minutes. We thought it'd be a company, a battalion at worst, but we found a brigade, 2,000 infantry and support moving without care, confident in their number superiority."
She nudged the garbage bin closer to him with her foot. "She gave them a choice: to either return home or die. Now, first, we all thought she was joking, just holding it above them like a threat but when they refused, oh damn. Try imagining fighting someone who can move at ten times the speed of sound and who can freely send blades of Aura ripping through armor. Fuck. We blinked and half the troops lay dead cut in half and Ruby looked like she hadn't even moved! And when she looked at us, those dead silver eyes of her. I don't think I've ever been afraid of her before then." Her voice petered out near the end and Tai wisely kept quiet, eyeing the bin beneath him in case his stomach violently disagreed with her words.
"But she never stopped. Some of them ran back and those she spared but most were so shell shocked and angry they fought against her on instinct and still she killed them." She eyed the bin this time, bile tainted her tongue. "When we asked why she replied they threatened the peace and that it was better to kill a few to prevent the deaths of the many. Better a thousand die so the next time the Council doesn't send six thousand. She chose to kill soldiers as a message for the Council. Now those were cut and dry deaths but when the guerilla war started Ruby struggled to characterize between the Fang and civilians. Those with masks died when we raided their bases but a few always slipped away as she refused to accidentally kill civilians. Soldiers, she pushed the line a bit, but she never hurt an innocent. She'd rather let one of her Hunter die than hurt one."
She brushed her hair back and watched him, leaning back on the desk on her arms. The weight of her past life lifted off and she felt better than she had in a good long while, the catharsis cleansing the heavy burden of her leader's death. "Pyrrha got a glimpse of the wartime Blake when she pulled their ass from the fire. A few Fang tried to ambush them and Blake protected her. Unfortunately, she saw it all so Blake's in the hot seat and I paid the price. Still could've been worse, right Blake?"
"Blake?" Tai asked, looking at her confused.
"Yeah, she's been doing my work behind us since we sat down." Tai turned in place to see his daughter-in-law tapping away at the digital desk, quietly completed digitalwork diligently. She looked up when she was mentioned, blinking to express her boredom and amusement while flipping a pen so much like a knife. "Weiss let you go in the end."
Ren came by to make sure Pyrrha got therapy after she blew up in their room, and Nora and her are still sparring. She's slowly telling her the few things she learned but I repeated the code of secrets to prevent them from going beyond the team. Almost lost a clone when she spotted me on the ceiling but needs must. She missed a few words with how she switched between one-handed signs and dots-and-dashes.
"Right. We both know you let yourself get spotted. Even Ruby only ever guessed where your clones were." She thought for a moment, hemming and hawing. "Have you kissed and made up yet or do I need to sneak out to see her? Did she tell you she kissed me on the cheek?"
Blake threw a knife at her without looking. There wasn't any rage or jealousy associated with it, just a reminder for Yang to remember who she talking to. She knew everything that happened on this campus and the gym wasn't an exception. Beacon was her home until Yang and Ruby decided it needed to fall. They never lasted though. Anyways, she'd always have a home on the Ruby and with her team. A place didn't make a home after all, not with their dimension hopping and timeline traversing.
Even Ruby left in the end.
"Eh, you're just jealous." She dropped her shields and let the knife nick the same cheek Pyrrha graced a kiss with, catching it during the act, a drop of blood trailing to her chin. Blake signaled once and then blew a raspberry. "Only a bit, but you're not keeping her for yourself. And you dad," She caught Tai before he could ask or answer anything. "She's dead and I loved her. Stop whining or I'll send you back to Signal."
"Isn't that Qrow's jurisdiction now?"
"Oh please, he avoids work and dumps most of it on me 'cause he knows that I know how the entire Festival will go down. Blake helps with the paperwork 'cause she knows it better than I do."
"So you're going to kick me out if I keep pressing you on this?"
"Yup!" She replied far too cheerily for him. "You might be my dad but I grew up. I lost and loved and I'm beyond happy you're still alive in this timeline, but I'll quote Ruby here that your morals only govern your actions. What we do in our private time isn't your jurisdiction as we still adhere to the standard Hunter chain of command, and even if it was, remember," she hugged him, "I'm not your Yang. I'm older and different. I've loved and lost and fought and lived and almost died, and now I'm trying to prevent this timeline's generation from going through the same. This is going to be hell, dad, and if you can't set aside what I had with Ruby to fight with me then I will. I have seven S-ranks if I count you and I'm expecting to lose half of them."
Blake smacked her after she finished laying the smackdown onto, expressing her dissatisfaction with how Yang let the power get to her head. She might've been the Headmaster and the might behind Qrow's reign but she was trying a little too hard to channel Ruby's ultimatum personality. Instead of admonishing her further, she activated the holographic screen to display her message. Forgive her. She's stressed and Ruby threw too much at her to complete. We lost Beacon along with the Coliseum. 40,000 people died. Even knowing it's coming, we're expecting to lose thousands of Hunters, all the Atlesian Droids, and a few of their Airships.
The weight of the next weeks returned with a vengeance and her core did nothing to abate the pressure, thousands of lives resting on her shoulders. Even saving ten thousand lives was better than losing the entire amount but those thirty thousand left sand in her mouth. The robotic droids she wrote off, money unimportant in the long term of saving human lives and preventing the same disaster and Blake had the tower covered with her clone army. Her pride however warred against Blake's kind words, "I don't need you defending me Blake."
"You have no idea how proud I am of you right now," Tai replied and then smacked her on the back of her head much like Blake. "You're living up to your name, little dragon, but you're falling into the trap of power your mother did." She tried hard not to think about that but trying not to think of something only made it fifty times more difficult. The resentment of getting compared to Raven, the mom who, granted, abandoned her for some very valid reasons, joined the weight of impending failure. "She thought herself too good to ask for help."
Ruby didn't wield power alone, Yang. Blake chimed in helpfully. She helped with more paperwork than Ruby knew about, wielding her clones with impunity to prevent her leader from overloading. Ruby never stopped her from stealing her work, accepting her reports for what she approved, rarely reversing some decisions. She liked to think of it as one of the ways she expressed her care for her. We need Tai to coordinate evacuation if he doesn't want to fight directly. He's good with people or Ozpin wouldn't have recommended him. I remember I was an angsty thing in my teens.
"Oh please. This entire team is a clusterfuck of angst and drama." Yang swiped the screen away and chills shook through her cores. A quick inspection revealed nothing other than Ozpin's odd green Aura gluing the fragments apart, though that was an approximation rather than an actual mental image. Ruby's description of what a mental mindscape was escaped Angela as no one other than her could create and enter one.
Neo sneezed.
I'm kicking you off handling the higher ranks for this. Yang protested until Blake threw another knife, this time at her foot, forcing her to hop and dance. You're impartial. He's your dad.
"And you have your parents attending as the royal family of Menagerie! You're telling me you can detach yourself from your family when the time comes to either defend them or pursue an objective?" Yang argued before she remembered what happened in their first timeline. "You're biased anyways as your former mentor is leading the attack! Last time you focused on Adam and he almost killed you!"
"Enough!" Tai thundered and Yang cowered from the patriarch, scattering to hide behind the desk from the illusionary dragon towering over them. The shimmering gold scales reflected the light filtering through the gears. Why the first Headmaster installed the lights above them, she'd never know. "Look! I don't care who's managing which Hunters or why Blake won't say a word to me but you're professionals. The entire command structure screams of nepotism so Qrow will handle the movement of the S-ranks. Yang can handle the protection of the visiting dignitaries and I can handle myself."
They both nodded at his words.
"Good, now I'm handling myself out of here so you guys can work whatever this is out." He stalked to the elevator and mock saluted before the doors closed. They watched the elevator travel down until it came to the lobby.
"Alright, that's done and dusted." Blake stared at her for a long time and then held a hand up for a high five. Yang grinned impishly and swung about the desk, returning the five on the way. "So what'd you need to tell me?"
The holographic screen returned and she hesitated, fidgeting with what had just been flagged by the system she created to ferret information whenever their names popped up. She retrieved Weiss' profile and navigated to the lowest directory, Yang's breath hitching slightly. The timestamp was from fifteen minutes ago, tagged with a note at the very bottom for both of them to sign along as witnesses.
"Weiss' will." Yang gently pushed Blake aside on the wheeled chair. The last time they signed, and Blake pulled up an older copy from when they punched into this dimension to compare, she left them as the primaries. A program scanned the two and highlighted the difference, zooming in on the beneficiaries. Her genetic core screamed and raged with an inferno hot enough to sear the rest of her fragments down and keep them in place. Weiss' core tried to surge in return with a blizzard, Blake's attempted to multiply and blanket it, and Ruby's eroded against it with speed, but the dragon roared with fury and stampeded across the conjoined cores. "She removed us from it."
She's planning for the worst.
"Blake, we're practically immortal. You can never die with your clones, it takes a nuke to get through my shields on max, and Weiss remains in her cocoon most of the time." Yang answered immediately.
We thought Ruby immortal. That struck a chord through her heart and she begrudgingly admitted she was right.
"Blake, I swear, if you find a decommissioned nuclear warhead and point it at me just to prove a point, I'm going to get you a ball of yarn, a scratching post, a litter box, and a collar." Blake started replying with a hand sign but Yang batted it down. "Actually, scratch that. You'd like the collar. I still don't want to sign on this. It feels wrong."
You can sign mine right now if you want. Maybe it'll make you feel better. Blake stood from her chair and stretched. She leaped up into the gear works and banged against the wall, reaching into a hollow before returning with a packet of papers.
"Let me guess, you're also updating your will to leave everything outside the team?" She took the papers and rifled through the top sheets, staring at the beneficiaries that were decidedly not her or Weiss. She sighed and ran a hand through her hair, chasing embers down the length. "Blake, I can't do this."
You said half of the S-ranks will die from the projections Weiss and I worked on, and as far as I remember, I'm an S-rank.
"And you'll try your fucking hardest to make it through this shitshow of a siege or I don't know what I'll do!" Her hair erupted into a curtain of flame, sucking the light from the air around. Blake challenged the roil of angry purple behind a set of enforced shields, pupils narrowed and afraid. "I already lost Ruby and I'm not going to lose you too!"
Yang. Blake warned and a clone dropped from the gears to slug Yang hard in the face. Normally that wouldn't do much against the juggernaut but she slammed enough force into it to lift her from her feet and send her flying into the cracked wall. Why ruin another wall when someone had so graciously ruined one already? That and continuity. I am a Hunter!
This part she typed out and added a dozen exclamations points to get her message across.
She thought that after the violent contact with the wall Yang would calm down but the rage in her only intensified. Blood poured from her palm and lips are she clenched both tight enough to break the skin, part of her reigning the overpowering emotion within. The berserker bloodline wrestled for control, fighting against Blake's retort to keep her alive at a selfish cost.
"I don't give a flying fadoodle about your job at this point if it keeps you with me." Blake ignored the profanity substitute and danced away from the shotgun blast sent her way. The shot was more like a shell from a mortar, overcharged with a temperamental Aura on the brink of a full storm.
Weiss would smack her for the selfishness after everything Ruby taught them. They needed to put themselves ahead of people for the better of Remnant because almost no one other than their organization did. Law enforcement did what they could but they focused on internal crime and the military was cannon fodder to Grimm, their unempowered weapons and bodies less than adequate for avoiding and returning damage.
Surprisingly good against Hunters.
Blake kneed her in the stomach to get her attention, the force dissipating against the monumental shields with a wash of virulent and acrid yellow. Maybe fighting Yang at the start of her berserker rage wasn't the best idea. She backpedaled when another shotgun shell destroyed the wall behind her… on the other side of the room.
Weren't shotguns supposed to be useless confetti beyond 5 feet or was that just the video game logic talking?
She decided on a different strategy and leaned against the desk as sexually as possible. Yang's attitude immediately switched, eyes dilating wide as she traced the arch of her back and came to rest on the delectably taunt derriere. A heat coiled beneath her core and it wasn't part of the usual mess of emotions. She stopped breathing when Blake wiggled her butt and the lack of oxygen dimmed the flames surrounding her.
The ache of need superseded the rage after a short turmoil, already hurting from the time she missed Weiss and her having fun due to the endless march of paperwork. Without conscious thought, she rushed forward and hugged Blake from behind, kissing her neck and working around to find the vein of lifeblood pulsing beneath the skin.
Blake purred under her ministrations, changing in intensity when she found her weak spots, melting when she latched onto an area just below her human ears. Yang continued her ministrations, hands working down the armored clothing Blake favored recently while trailing butterfly kisses and occasional bite along her throat. She traced the outline of the plate keeping her weapon attached, Blake shuddering under her touch.
Keeping Blake's attention occupied, she drew her arms along the length of hers and trapped them in her iron grip. Blake hummed in response but didn't fight the hold, playing along. She took the chance to play with the ribbon trailing from Gambol, wrapping it around Blake's wrists to bind them more securely. The steel wire enforcing the ribbon ensured she couldn't wiggle her way out without losing a hand.
Blake resisted her hold after she trailed further down her body and nuzzled against the collar of her turtleneck. She smiled against the crook of her shoulder and neck, biting down to keep the laughter inside when Blake suddenly found her movement restricted. The sudden struggle only endeared her and she spun her around to sit her at the desk. Her eyes narrowed and chased away the sexy glint in them when she abandoned her grip on her shirt and kissed her.
Her eyes slipped close and she lost herself to the soft sensation of Blake's lips, still unscarred from their many battles. A moan bubbled as Blake swiped her tongue at her lower lip, asking for entrance she gladly provided.
Their tongues met and Blake groaned and writhed against her, the feeling replacing the violent fire within her with smoldering passion, setting every inch of her skin tingling. A dull throb coalesced in her and she used what little functioning brain cells she hadn't burnt to pull away harshly. Blake scowls when she smirks at her and her libido wails at her for not shoving the temptress and having her wicked way.
"You can't seduce your way out of here." Yang grinned viciously and her eyes flickered between the two primary colors. She pressed against her captive and Blake wrapped her extremely toned legs around her waist and trapped her in return, distracting her momentarily. "But know this, Mrs. Belladonna-Rose-Xiao-Long-Schnee," Blake shuddered when she said her full last name and bucked beneath her, a breathless silent moan washing over Yang. "I'm mad. I'm pissed. If I lose one of you then I'm retiring and if I, Ruby forbid, lose both of you then I will annihilate myself with your bodies."
That threat halted Blake's token struggles. Whatever passed through her mind escaped her but her eyes dimmed vastly. She hummed, hiding the turbulent realization that she had planned on dying in the chaotic mess of the assault, either taking Adam or Neo with her. Clones could only do so much against a man whose Semblance countered all others and a woman potentially older than time itself with a penchant for illusions. Her face gained ten years on it in a moment and Blake didn't need to speak. "We're not that old Blake."
Blake wiggled and managed to open up the holographic messaging screen with her nose before Yang took pity and released the binds. We've lived more in five years than most do in twenty. I'm tired.
"You miss her." Yang didn't wait for an answer, picking up the discarded will and sighing grandiosely. She fetched a pen from a drawer and signed with a flourish, putting the entire thing behind her for now. "Why is Weiss' will digitized while yours is on paper? I know you don't trust technology but I don't know why she doesn't."
She's the richest and most powerful woman on this planet. If she dies without a will backuped to the SDC lawyers then all hell- She caught herself before Blake smacked her again for the comparison. Then the will gets contested by the dozens of cousins in the family. Everyone in Mantle knows Jacques disowned Winter so anything can be contested. This will sets her up with five million in a trust. She'll be fine.
And we both know Weiss. She'd rather have me snoop around and find it rather than give you a copy directly, and she knew you'd come up here after your spar, and she knows I always have at least three clones watching since the sauna incident.
The less said about that, the better.
Yang handed the will for Blake to file into the secure archive bunker. "I know I can't ask for your word to survive this, but you know what's at stake if you die." Blake nodded and she left it at that. This was Ruby's ultimatum talking, what she trained them to do. To win or salt and burn everything left. Maybe not in such bleak words but the concept was the same. Ruby destroyed the Fang and the Vale military whenever they crossed her and never gave up anything without taking triple in worth away.
Yang won no matter what Blake decided to do in the end: retiring or dying.
Either this war ended on the day it started or she'd personally find and kill both Cinder and Adam.
"You know if Weiss dies I'm marrying you, right?" Blake laughed at her words, trying another knife to chase both of their doubts away.
This was better though. Ruby planned they might have to fall during the battle, either from the massive influx of Grimm or the need to sacrifice themselves to prevent a worse catastrophe. The Lucifer Protocols could easily be stretched to encompass the entire team. She loved playing with cryptic clues here and there and Weiss would enjoy getting placed into the directive.
Mantle had given her the title of Angel after all, but even some angels had to fall in the end.
"This is it then? Our final farewell?" Yang joined Blake sitting on the desk and watched the lights of the districts stretching out below them, all of them unaware of the decisions just made in this office. The pair sat there in companionable silence, the minutes ticking by as a night delivery landed at the pads and offloaded cargo. "What about Pyrrha? I know you like her and so do I."
I'll cherish what time I have with everyone and if I die then I die knowing I lived life to the fullest.
"You could've been a princess, an actual princess, and lived your life in splendor."
And I never would've met you or Weiss or Ruby.
"To our final battle then..." She ignited a ball composed of all of her Auras and rested it upturned on her thigh. Blake leaned in and rested her head on her shoulder, grasping the hand and letting the flame of their Auras encase their entwined hands, surging Aura forward to match hers equally. "To peace on Remnant."
"Where the fuck have you been taking me over these last three months?" Ruby knew nothing of the world outside Neo's mindscape, trapped to meditate on her soul and surprisingly intact inner world. That was nothing more than a blank slate containing a broken map of Remnant and the shattered remains of the Doors.
Neo visited a couple of times a week, incessantly badgering her into a poker game with cards she freely manipulated into her favor. She played mute every time she came by, avoiding her questions with the ease of Blake avoiding being seen. Oh, she knew a few things here and there when the mindscape expanded with an increase of Aura influx so Neo was playing with rapidly increasing her power. Not that she could confirm this as her Aura core was kept outside this mental representation.
The time spent here in solitude did her a world of good, discovering she no longer had to deal with her chained alter ego. That revealed the disappearance of the alter ego Team RWBY created to act as a mask against the public and left her feeling… whole.
She still didn't like only having one voice in her head.
Neo materialized in front of her after her question, pulling them both to sit on cushions with a table between them. She snapped for fingers purely for show and a cup of hot cocoa appeared on her side.
"Your team is back in Beacon." She took the offered drink and noticed it was at the perfect temperature to sip comfortably. How kind of her benevolent captor. "Two of them, the white and black one, aren't planning on surviving the battle."
She raised an eyebrow at that one, wondering if she pressed them a little hard in their Hunter training to drive her rather overzealous ideals into them. That was both the Commander and Mask talking, one totally unrepentant at what she'd done and the other admonishing her for making them rely so much on her. Great, now she had two voices that were definitely her own tormenting her for her past mistake.
What was this called?
Guilt?
Grief?
Guief?
And the funny part made it through too.
She scowled and Neo laughed, the sound of chimes echoing about the infinite mindscape. She tried hard not to think about that part too much. How normal people dealt with this thing called a consciousness was a wonder. Having Mask or Commander there to guide her simplified the process but she'd absorbed both of them into a new primary personality that also borrowed from the first Ruby, without the homicidal and angsty parts.
"And what do you want me to do about it?"
"Nothing." Neo smiled cheekily. "Just thought you'd like to know."
"You're speaking to me." She pointed out, watching the demon over the top of her cup, indulging in the rich dulcet of quality chocolate. "Will you tell me your plan now?"
"Sure. You can't stop me at this point so why not?" The pinkette shrugged and she filed away the notion subverting her physical body in case she betrayed her. Perhaps they had enough in common to squash the other down for a few minutes, but this was her body and fighting against that sounded pretty difficult. "I've been gathering Maidens."
She blinked at the piece of information so brazenly dangled in front of her, two humanoid shapes coalescing at Neo's side. One blew together in a hail of snowflakes reminding her of an incensed Weiss and the other burst into existence much like Yang in her berserker rage.
"Did you kill the holders?" She cared little for who held the Maiden powers in the end. Any of her team could hold their own against any of them so they offered nothing except more power. Still, it wasn't worth getting wrapped up in legends when they had the duty of protecting Vale. Hypocritical with the way she chased after Ozpin and Salem but they were threats and she was dead.
"No." Neo summoned a familiar gem and she reached for it instinctively. She caught it after Neo unexpectedly threw it at her and she searched the contents within to find the soothing red eyes of her pet Grimm, only to find nothing. "Blake has your pet. I borrowed this, a god created energy receptacle, by promising to dance with Weiss at the Vytal Ball."
She didn't bother asking why she offered to dance, quick enough to understand she'd hand over control of her body for the night. "Why didn't you trade your weapon?"
"I traded that for your weapon." Crescent Rose appeared above her and conked her mightily on the head, pulsing a familiar and comforting crimson. Her scythe vibrated in agitation, admonishing her wielder for abandoning her to this creature for months. She soothed it by explaining she didn't know Neo had her in her possession and promised to use her during the battle.
The original Ruby talked to her scythe all the time.
She consoled herself that this was perfectly normal.
"I need to wear a connection to your soul so you can possess my body and dance with Weiss," Neo explained, shooing away the two Maiden spirits to leave them alone again. "As to why I traded away a few things, I needed both the gem and the scythe. You may have noticed your soul isn't fractured in two anymore?"
She nodded, aware of this occurrence after the months of self-reflection.
"I wanted to use half of your soul to destroy Ozpin and the other half to destroy Salem but you kinda went and died so that screwed with my plans." She wasn't apologizing for that. Not when all of Remnant might've fallen casualty to an overpowered Ruby with their combined Auras, abilities, a grudge, and a team potentially not capable of going through with Prune.
Trust but verify.
"So I went out and gathered Ozpin's fragments and dumped them into that gem." She held a hand out for the gem and she tossed it back, knowing she could summon it if she didn't. "Part of a soul to kill the other part."
She didn't understand or even claim to understand half of this soul business but she had no choice but to play along with the hellion's deranged schemes. At some point, she thought Neo might've cared for Ozpin, maybe even loved from the short dialogue the two shared, but here she was, planning to use a part of him against him.
"And you're sure this is going to work?"
"Nope!" Neo replied far too cheerily, summoning them a plate of chocolate chip cookies she couldn't turn down. She grimaced for a second until the hilarity of this situation overtook her and she laughed. She was supposed to be in a nether zone after dying but here she sat in an imaginary realm, sipping cocoa and arguing with an immortal about the technicalities of a soul.
Fair enough Neo, fair enough.
It felt nice to laugh again.
AN: Hi everyone! What's this? A chapter in less than a month? I know, right? I've been in a writing mood and haven't done anything else over the last week. I've been writing, writing, drawing, and you can now find me on Reddit at u/thatVermilionRose . I might make a subreddit for updates for my writings and for you guys, my readers, to chat and ping me with reviews. Please enjoy and leave one here though. I love to hear from you guys. Oh, and I remembered to add a Ruby/Neo interaction since the last one was in checks back... wtf Chapter 27!