A/N: *best Ruby impression* This is fluff. FLUFF!
But it's also a part of the story I've been wanting to get around to for awhile now, especially as tensions continue to rise within and around Ruby's family and more emphasis is placed on what it means to be not only a Gem, but, say, a Homeworld Gem or a Remnan Gem. And, well, I never pass up a chance to round out Yang's character a little. She's so forceful she can come across as pretty one-dimensional otherwise.
So anyway, I decided it was time to do On The Run, and that's what this is! I hope you enjoy!
Farther From Our Goal
The air had taken a turn for the cooler, but Ruby resolutely pulled on her jean shorts anyway. Long pants were for suckers. Besides, it wasn't like it was cold—it just wasn't sweltering anymore. Vale's summers weren't especially hot in the first place, at least in the north, so as August drew to a close fall's approach was palpable. It was definitely hoodie weather, though, Ruby decided, or at least it would be until it got closer to noon.
Zwei matched her pace going down the stairs, the tips of his ears bobbing with each bounding step down. Momentum took over and he beat her to the bottom, trundling off towards the kitchen in eager expectation of the bacon which Ruby had smelled even in her bedroom.
There were three people downstairs, as there should have been, but after a moment of slightly-blearing squinting and blinking, Ruby realised they were the wrong three.
"Hey, Dad!" She hugged him, and he embraced her tightly in return.
"Morning, rosebud. Sleep well?"
"Yep!"
"Notice you don't ask us about our sleep hygiene," Qrow drawled. "That's hurtful, Tai."
"Yeah! We sleep, too!" Yang was behind the kitchen counter, leaning next to the stove with a pair of little tongs in her hands. The sizzling cast-iron pan beside her had earned Zwei's undivided attention. He sat before the range like a worshipper at a shrine.
"As a hobby," Taiyang said dryly, lidding his eyes, unimpressed. "You don't ask me how my gardens are."
"How are your gardens, Tai?" Qrow asked mockingly.
Tai stared him down flatly for a moment, then smiled brightly. "Well, most of the late-season growth is coming in nicely, but the rabbits have been going after my lily bulbs again…"
"We've got cayenne if you need it!" Yang called from the kitchen.
"I think they might be starting to build a capsaicin tolerance," Tai said. "I'm pretty sure I'm just seasoning them at this point. But I'm not having as much trouble with borers anymore, at least! I'll probably still soak my irises for good measure, but…"
Qrow turned a pleading look on Ruby, who shook her head and walked right past, patting him genially on the arm. "Hang in there, tiger," she urged softly, grinning.
"Surrounded by people who love to mess with him, and he never learns not to take the bait," Yang sighed as Ruby took a seat at the counter. She turned the bacon in the pan. "Maybe next century."
"Where's Ozpin? I know he's not upstairs."
"Haven." The humour in Yang's face faded. "Figures we mentioned it enough to Scapolite that she might take the risk of going there on her own, if she's hurt bad enough."
"She won't, will she."
"Nah, not a chance. But Lionheart knows to keep an eye out now. Probably doesn't know why, but I doubt he got his job by not listening to Oz."
"He's retired. Why would he have any say on who's in charge of Haven?"
Yang just looked at her, raising an eyebrow.
"Yeah, okay. So Dad's here to…?"
"Eat breakfast, see my wonderful daughter, and use my non-threatening humanity to ask around the city after Scapolite while Qrow keeps looking for Peridot." Tai slid onto the stool next to Ruby, grabbing the half-drunk mug of tea which sat there.
"How do you know she's even on the continent anymore? Oh, thanks Yang," she added as a plate of bacon and toast appeared in front of her.
Yang muttered something that sounded like "no problem!" around the toast slice jammed into her mouth. The thumbs-up did the heavy lifting on letting Ruby translate.
"She hasn't tripped the motion sensor we put around the Emerald Forest warp, so we're assuming she can't have used it," Qrow said, leaning back against the counter. "'Course, with the whole ninja thing, that's a hell of an assumption. Best we could do, though. The only other warps this side of the Divide are at Beacon on the other side of a barrier she can't bust through anymore, Merlot's island on the other side of Forever Fall and a lot of choppy water, and here. Assuming she's not crazy enough to try and sneak into our back yard, odds are she's still right under our noses."
"She probably wouldn't risk the pass on foot if she's trying to lie low," Tai agreed. "And since she's injured, she's probably sticking to populated areas for safety's sake, even if it puts her at greater risk of exposure."
"So what's our job for the day?" Ruby asked, glancing at Yang. If everyone else had their tasks, she must be going with the Ametrine.
"Resting," Qrow said, giving Yang a hard look.
"What?" Ruby protested, dropping her bacon back to her plate. "Why?"
"'Cause someone's been sneaking out pulling double shifts at night. You know. Night. When there's no sun," Qrow emphasised. "So Yang gets to stay here and make like a solar panel."
Yang rolled her eyes mightily, but said nothing. The inevitable argument must have played out while Ruby was still asleep.
"But I can still—"
"You need rest too," Tai said firmly. "I know you're made of tougher stuff than your poor ol' dad, but I don't want you pushing yourself. Why don't you spend some time hanging out with Weiss? You know she's not going to have as much free time once school starts." He grinned at her. "Besides, I'd like to actually meet this small, pale stranger you had a fateful encounter with at some point."
Ruby flushed. "You—you will!"
"Maybe even before the wedding invites go out," Yang quipped.
"Yang—stop—talking!" Ruby hissed, leaning forward and cutting her hand across her throat.
Qrow, meanwhile, waved a hand in front of Tai's unseeing eyes, then slid the man's plate beneath his frozen hand, poised with a piece of bacon ready to eat. "Damn, Yang, I think you broke him."
"Not my fault he didn't think through the implications," Yang scoffed.
Mid-morning found Ruby nudging Yang's door open, a book held to her chest. The Ametrine wasn't there, but one of her windows was open. Ruby pushed the sash up a little further and crawled through it onto the wide, sturdy plank bolted to the underside of the sill. It formed a shallow ramp that ended just past the gutter of the garage roof, the end of the board propped up by a brick tightly wedged in place. On the shallow slope of the roof, Yang was stretched out on her back on a smooth, patterned rug whose colours had mostly faded, holding a handheld game system above her face and tapping the buttons frantically.
"Hey," Ruby greeted her.
"'Sup." Yang didn't look away from her game.
Yang hadn't been able to get away with making too many alterations to the garage roof—she wouldn't have gotten away with any at all if this half of the roof weren't hidden from the front of the house. But in addition to tacking down the rug and installing the makeshift ramp, she'd put in a set of brackets just the right size to hold an old-fashioned cooler, which Yang reached out to blindly with one hand, popping it open and grabbing a can of soda she tossed to Ruby.
Ruby fumbled a little, but managed to catch it without dropping her book. She gazed at the can ruefully. "Thanks." I can't open it for awhile now, but…
"Yup." Yang had continued to play one-handed, somehow, but her other hand and her attention now returned to her game.
Ruby set her book and soda down next to Yang and reached for the newest and biggest addition, an awning that laid flat against the roof most of the time but could be cranked upright to shade a little over half the rug. Whether Summer would have approved of this alteration was irrelevant; it had been added when she was long gone, after Ruby's first bad sunburn had sent Yang into a panic spiral over statistics on skin cancer.
It had not, of course, occurred to any of the Gems that the easy answer was to keep Ruby from climbing around on rooftops, or that most eight-year-olds were not allowed to do that in the first place.
Ruby settled down cross-legged in the shade and cracked open her book, finding her page quickly. The sounds of Yang's game soon faded into the background, but Ruby had trouble focusing on the pages in front of her. She'd left off right before a good part, too, so she knew she wasn't bored with it, but she kept having to jump back a few sentences and re-read, and even then the words didn't want to soak in.
"No Weiss?" Yang asked abruptly.
Ruby looked up, slightly relieved. "She's got piano today."
"Can't hang out anyway?"
"There's not really time after her lesson and before dinner and she always practices before she goes. Which is kinda weird because she's gonna have to spend an hour practicing anyway, and why does she go out for lessons? She's got a piano at her house, and she's rich, but she walks to this music store downtown every week."
"Artists are weird. Maybe her teacher won't come to her."
"I dunno."
"Why's she walk? Walking's lame."
"Makes it harder for people to force a schedule on her if there isn't a car waiting."
"Mm. Teenage rebellion in the 1%. Beats the other version, I guess."
"Yeah."
Yang didn't say anything else, so after a bit, Ruby went back to struggling through her book.
"How's the game going?" she blurted out when she couldn't take it anymore.
"Maxed the score out half an hour ago."
"And you're…still playing?"
"Nothing better to do."
"You could…play a different game?"
"Nah."
"Okay."
Ruby didn't even try to go back to her book this time, drumming her fingers against the page and pursing her lips, fighting the urge to say something but having no idea what it was she was trying not to say.
"How are Gems created anyway?" she blurted out, just as Yang jabbed Start with her thumb and announced "I gotta get out of the house."
They blinked at each other. Yang set her game down and rolled over onto her stomach, propped up on her elbows.
"'Kay, I'll bite," she said. "Why 'how is Gem form' all of a sudden?"
How is Gem… Ruby mouthed, confused, then shook her head. "U-um, Scapolite and Peridot, they both made a pretty big deal about how Gems are made to do specific things, which, I mean, I kinda knew? But the way they said it made it sound almost…religious or something. And they said the Diamonds are their—your—our?—creators, but Diamonds are Gems too, right? And I just…" She shrugged, biting her lip. "I don't know. When I think of Gems, I think of people like you. But you didn't just appear out of midair. …Did you?"
"No." Yang looked away and frowned. "I'm not sure the questions you want answered are the ones you're gonna get answered if that's the question you're asking. Gah. What I'm trying to say is, how we're made doesn't have much to do with how we end up. I mean, even physically." She shifted her weight left and held out her right arm, Gemstone glinting. "Look at this. I'm supposed to be an Amethyst, for crying out loud. Who ever heard of a yellow Amethyst?"
"But who decided you were gonna be an Amethyst? How did they try to make that happen? How did that not happen?" Ruby scooted closer. "Peridot said something about Gems emerging from something called the Prime Kindergarten. Is that where it all happens? Where Gems are born? Formed?" she corrected herself hastily.
"Prime Kindergarten?" Yang wrinkled her nose. "That makes it sound like there's a secondary one. As far as I know, there's just the one."
"Yang," Ruby pressed, bouncing anxiously in place.
"Alright," she relented. "Chill. I was getting around to it. Actually…"
A smirk worked its way over the Gem's face.
"Yang?" Ruby said again, a bit more warily this time.
"Why don't we get around to it? Warp over with my bike, do a little drive-through tour of the ol' Gem factory, huh?" She flipped her hair, preening. "I can show you the very spot the greatest Quartz on Remnant emerged."
"Mom?" Ruby asked, only half-joking.
Yang opened her mouth to retort, then paused, narrowing her eyes. "You're putting me in a very awkward position, shorty."
"Hey!"
"What? You're short. Get over it."
"Oh, I'm gonna! I'm gonna grow up taller than you and you'll be stuck the same size forever, so there!" Ruby stuck out her tongue.
"There's not enough milk in the world to give you that much of a boost, widdle Wosie."
"Oh, you wait and see. You just wait and see."
Ruby couldn't say she wasn't expecting what she saw when the warp glow faded, but only because she wasn't sure what she had expected. Cliffs of pale stone reared tall all around her, forming a deep canyon which was darkly shadowed even as the sun crept higher. The cliffs were pockmarked with small holes, like someone had gone a little trigger-happy with a core-sampling drill.
She stepped off the warp, Yang moving slower behind her as she manoeuvred her motorcycle down the platform's steps, and approached the nearest cliff. She held out her hand next to one of the holes, measuring it. It was perfectly round, about two inches across. Ruby furrowed her brow, then looked down at her Gemstone in realisation.
"Yup." Yang had come up beside her, wheeling Bumblebee along as easy as Ruby pushing her pedal bike. "Welcome to the Quartz section. Us grunts, not the officer-types, they're back thataway, all the Agates and Jaspers and other Chalcedonies. It's silica all down the wall, though." She rapped her knuckles against it.
"So your—our Gemstones, they just come out of the rock?"
"Yup. There's a ton of excess energy that burns off the first time we try to form bodies, and it kinda just—" Yang made a loud, breathy pow! noise, flicking her fingers to mime a Gemstone going flying. "Boom. Newborn Gem. Aw, come on, don't gimme that look."
"What look?" Ruby asked, half-seriously. "I'm not giving you a look." More accurately, she didn't know what the look was, as she couldn't decide whether to be impressed at the fact that emerging Gems had to laser their way out of solid rock or start giggling at the fact that they apparently launched themselves free like some kind of self-firing potato gun.
"It's metal as hell!" Yang insisted, pulling an injured face that suggested Ruby's had reacted more to the comedic side of the story. "I'd like to see you bust your way out of the freaking planet on sheer willpower."
"No thanks, I'm good." Ruby bent down, peering inside one of the holes. "So what kinda Quartzes would have been coming outta here?"
"Oh, y'know, Amethysts obviously—though I'm like, way further down towards the end—here, put this on." Yang handed over the helmet, causing Ruby to make a face, but she followed Yang in straddling the motorcycle and put it over her head regardless. "Smokies…I think there were some microcrystallines in the mix once Homeworld upped production…"
She revved the bike once and then they were off, speeding in a way that would have alarmed Ruby if she didn't go this fast on her own on a regular basis. Heck, the helmet would only have to do its job if she got sloppy; she could just turn into petals if Yang lost control. The Ametrine was probably in more danger than Ruby was.
"Y'know, like Agates that didn't get enough time to develop bands, or Cherts and stuff," Yang yelled over the noise of the engine and the wind whipping past. "Real bottom-of-the-totem-pole stuff, I guess a lot of 'em ended up joining your mom even though some of them were literally made to fight her. Talk about backfiring!"
"And Rose Quartzes!"
"And Rose Quartzes! Not sure where you guys came out. I don't really visit the Kindergarten a lot!"
"Why's it called a Kindergarten?"
"Oh, I know this! It's an overly literal translation. It's where new Gems are grown, so, it's literally a garden of kids. Just, the kids aren't really kids. And it's a rock garden. You know, thinking about it, I bet an organic came up with the name. I don't think Gems even have a word for children, just the newly-emerged."
"Close enough?"
"Eh." Yang shrugged, pulling a sharp turn into a curve barely worthy of the name, but Ruby imagined driving in a straight line got boring after awhile. "Ooh, we're in Amethyst country now. You want me to pull over when we get to my—to—the spot I came out?"
"You can say hole. I wouldn't've made fun."
"And somewhere back in Vale, Qrow is disappointed in you for that."
"But my dad is proud. Hey, where are we?"
"Y'know that northwest continent shaped like a dragon we all pretend doesn't exist? This is why we pretend it doesn't exist. Place really took the brunt of the colonisation effort. The Kindergarten, lots of quarries, some old Gem ruins the Rebellion couldn't find a use for… Oh! Here's me."
Bumblebee slowed to a stop, pulled over a few feet away from a cliff. Yang waited for Ruby to get off the bike before she did the same, taking the helmet back and hooking it over the higher handlebar. "Home sweet home."
"Which one?"
"Mmm…" Yang frowned, squinting at the cliff face. "That one," she declared, pointing at a spot a few feet over Ruby's head and off to the left. "Behold!"
It was just another unremarkable hole in the rock, identical to all the rest; Ruby wasn't even sure how Yang knew she was right. But the Gem's proud enthusiasm was infectious, and Ruby grinned. "The birthplace of a legend!"
"You know it!" She put a hand on her hip. "Man, the Diamonds would be kicking themselves so hard right now if they knew what they'd missed out on."
But Yang's grin started to fade as she looked longer at the cliff face.
"Well, I say that, but really they're probably happy not to have to deal with me. Since I'm off-colour and all. You know Amethysts don't even have cool element powers? That's all my Citrine side, but it wouldn't make a difference to them how great the mix is. I'm not what they wanted."
"Yang…"
"No, don't get me wrong," Yang said hastily, holding out her hands defensively. "I don't care what Homeworld thinks about Gems like me—no, that's not—I don't care what they think about me. Gems like me…look, all the other Gems in this section? They emerged before the war was over. Maybe the Rebellion fought some of them. Maybe some of them joined up. Or…y'know, maybe they all came out a little slow-cooked on one side, like I did. What'd Scapolite say? That I was 'lucky I wasn't shattered on emergence'?"
"Oh." Ruby breathed in sharply, looking over the holes in the cliff with new eyes. "You think maybe they were…broken?"
"No telling." Yang shrugged. "All I know is I've never seen another Ametrine, and neither of the Amethysts I've met came from this patch. Even after I found out I was some kind of mistake, I never put two and two together until Scapolite spelled it out. I think…maybe I just didn't want to make that connection."
"I'm sorry," Ruby said, which felt entirely inadequate, but what else was there to say?
"Hey, look on the bright side," Yang said with a bleak sort of humour. "I'm one-of-a-kind in more ways than one." Her gaze was distant. "You know, I was almost none-of-a-kind. Almost got myself pulverised into gravel right here in the Kindergarten. Wouldn't that have sucked?"
"How?" Ruby asked, frowning. "Monsters?"
"Nope. The illustrious leadership of the Rose Rebellion." At Ruby's shock, Yang cracked another grin, far more at home on her face than the wan smile of earlier. "Oh yeah. They weren't expecting me, and I was expecting worse of them. See, I don't know how it works exactly, but somehow we all emerge already knowing a few things, like what we're supposed to be and do and which Diamond we're supposed to serve, and my batch got seeded just late enough that even if there hadn't been a big ol' stranger-danger alert going off, I had this little voice in my head telling me the Rebels were the bad guys…"
Amethyst—well, she was supposed to be an Amethyst—Quartz, she decided. She was definitely a Quartz. The important matter of her nomenclature settled, Quartz settled herself behind an outcropping of rock, one of the few that hadn't been hewn smooth to the ground. An obvious hiding place, even with the camouflage of her grey and dusky-violet uniform, but it was also the only one available on short notice, and they were coming closer. She could hear their voices echoing off the cliffs of the Kindergarten; they weren't even trying to be stealthy. Enemies of the Diamonds, of Quartz's Diamond, and they walked right in bold as anything like it was their own turf!
Maybe it was, whispered a doubting voice in her mind. Quartz was supposed to have been surrounded by the other Gems of her batch when she emerged, but she'd been alone. She'd been all alone for weeks, with no squad and no target and no orders. And she'd still be alone if these Gems cornered her, one against three, and she didn't like the sound of those odds. She needed a plan.
"Alright," said the smallest Gem, all shades of red and dark pink, her hair curling softly around the line of her jaw. The Gemstone revealed by her armoured gown was deep red and round—a Carnelian, maybe? Quartz couldn't see it well enough to be sure. "This is the oldest part of the Kindergarten. The control module must be somewhere close by."
"Underground, usually," the tallest Gem put forth. "The access will be concealed—Homeworld wouldn't have risked any native sentients stumbling into the nerve centre of the most important facility on the colony." He was an odd one, green all over except for his silver-grey hair and the very dark red of the cloak cowled around his neck and falling back over his shoulders. She couldn't see his Gemstone at all, or that of the last Gem, a grey-and-black specimen whose piercing red eyes were easily visible even at a distance. Like his compatriots, he wore a red cloak over his armour.
Rebels, that was what the cloaks meant. Important Rebels, to be captured if possible and destroyed if not. Still no squad, still no orders, but Quartz had targets now, and it was like having a weight lifted from her that she hadn't even noticed was there before.
"Strange being back here," the grey Gem said, looking around with a searching gaze. Could he somehow feel Quartz watching them?
The green Gem glanced at him. "I hadn't realised you'd been here before."
"Came here on a few…errands."
"Ah. A pity none of them involved the control module."
"If they had, we wouldn't need to look for it," the red Gem pointed out. "I mean—we wouldn't need to need to—we wouldn't—there wouldn't be a mission to find the module because we wouldn't need the module. Yeah." She rubbed at her forehead, either utterly oblivious or deliberately ignoring the green and grey Gems' matching raised eyebrows. "Look, just—Ozpin, head that way. You know what you're looking for."
'Ozpin'? That wasn't any kind of Gem. But the green Gem reacted as if it were his designation, smiling and giving her the very shallowest of bows. "As my lady commands…"
"Oh, do not. Just do not. Go away." He did so, chuckling, and vanished down one of the narrower, twisty furrows that were common in the oldest parts of the Kindergarten, from when the land was overgrown and space was at more of a premium. "Qrow, you work over there, and I'm going to see if this little cut-off leads anywhere."
"You got it. Be safe," the grey Gem—Qrow—instructed.
"Aren't I always?" The Lady (which in context must have been a respectful form of address, but was certainly a foreign word and one for which Quartz couldn't place the exact translation) turned and slipped through a break in the rock. Qrow watched her go for a long moment, then finally faced the direction she'd indicated to him and began strolling towards Quartz's hiding place.
"Wait. What do you mean lady sounded weird to you?"
"It's nonspecific and gendered. Didn't really translate well into Adamant." Yang spread her hands helplessly. "Gems call important Gems things like Clarity and Radiance and Perfection, not lady. I mean, I got the gist, I knew it meant she was a big deal, but still. Weird."
"Adamant…?"
"Oh, that's the name of the Gem language."
"But—but!" Ruby pointed at her accusingly. "You don't speak the Gem language!"
"Nope, sure don't."
"Then how the heck did you know all that!?"
"'Cause I used to speak Adamant, right after I emerged." She tapped her temple. "That whole info-imprinting thing, remember? Only it turns out none of that gets imprinted all that deep. You're still supposed to learn things the normal way, and because you already kind of know it, you learn faster."
"So why don't you know Adamant now?"
"Uh…it might be the case that…late-emergers like me are how we found out that even the general-knowledge imprints aren't built to last." She looked slightly embarrassed. "See, they figured that since I came out of the ground knowing Adamant—like they all thought they did—it was more important to teach me organic languages than to help me practice something I was already fluent in. I didn't even realise I was losing my Adamant until it was already basically gone."
Ruby almost asked why she hadn't just tried to relearn it, saw the uncomfortable expression on Yang's face, and backed down instead.
"Anyway, Qrow was coming right for me even if he didn't know it, and I was pretty sure that was a bad thing. So…"
Quartz picked up a rock. A nice, hefty one, though it felt a little weird to think about using another stone as a weapon. Still, she guessed that made them kin in an odd sort of way. It wouldn't mind helping her out.
One by one, that was the way she'd do this. She'd pick them off as opportunities presented themselves, quiet, tactical, and then she'd have three Rebel officers as her prisoners! Her Diamond would be so proud! Of course, Quartz didn't actually know where she'd find her Diamond, but surely she would find Her. It just might take a while. How big could the planet really be?
He was getting closer. Quartz gripped her rock tighter, shifting, tensing. Closer…closer…
He walked past her hiding place, utterly oblivious to her presence. With a surge of triumph, Quartz leapt from the lee of the outcropping and hurled herself at his back, bringing the rock down.
"I guess you could say it was a lucky shot."
Oh, she didn't know this feeling. She didn't like this feeling.
Qrow had tried to turn, hearing or maybe just sensing movement behind him, but all he'd ended up doing was leaning into her attack, and the rock had made impact not with the dull thump Quartz had expected, but with a clear, pure ringing sound.
His eyes had gone very wide, shocked, afraid, and his form had shuddered and it had been horrible. A jagged line cracking open over his body—light spilling out—he'd tried to stumble back, opened his mouth to shout or to scream and then—
And then—
Quartz stared down at his Gemstone where it lay in the dirt. A deep fissure cut in from one of the cabochon's rounded edges, or what had been an edge before it had chipped off, shedding a trail of coarse grey powder. It was dark, and not only in colour. It looked…lifeless.
The rock slipped from her numb fingers, landing on the ground in a puff of dusty soil.
He'd been a Pearl. A Pearl. She'd attacked the ultimate non-combatant. She'd—she'd shattered him.
Slowly, she bent down, picking up the Gemstone, turning it over in her hands.
"Who are you?"
She'd allowed herself to become unforgivably distracted—either that, or Ozpin had the quietest step known to Gemkind. His voice was the first and only warning she had of his approach, and when she turned around to face him she found him much closer than she'd expected, just a few yards away. The light caught on his dark glasses as he tilted his head, narrowing his eyes—brown eyes, how did he have so many different colours on him, what was he, a Moss Agate? That didn't feel right, but nothing about him pinged instant recognition. Maybe if she could spot his Gemstone…
"It's generally considered polite to answer questions posed to you," he informed her mildly, "so long as they aren't too invasive."
"You're the ones who came into my place," Quartz said lowly. "I'm feeling pretty invaded right now."
"Your place?" Ozpin seemed to relax at that, smiling a little. "Goodness, you're newly-emerged, aren't you? I see Lady Rose's continued interest is well-founded after all."
"Is that why you're here?" Quartz demanded. "Scoping out the opposition? What're you planning to do, huh? Get to the others before they can emerge? Take them out?"
"…Even if we were willing to condone such methods, the fact is that we are here precisely because Gems like you are still emerging, even though the Kindergarten should by rights be empty." Ozpin's expression turned more serious. "You seem quite agitated, young one. Are you alright?"
The Kindergarten…empty? No. That was impossible. Sure, she—she knew she was the last of her batch to emerge, but someone was always the last. That was just how it worked. And, yes, it was true that there were an awful lot of holes and not very many smooth places that might or might not be sheltering forming Gems, but…but…!
"You're lying," she said, tightening her grip on Qrow's Gemstone. She imagined she felt it pulse in response, like it knew what she had done and what she meant to do. What she had to do.
"What are you holding there, young one?" Ozpin asked her gently.
Might as well make the only play she had. It hadn't been on purpose, but it had happened. Maybe she could use it to bluff her way out of this.
"Your Pearl." She held it up carefully, concealing as much of the undamaged part as possible—no reason for him to believe she hadn't shattered Qrow with deliberate, deadly precision, rather than accidentally bashing just a little too hard at a weak point. "What's left of him, anyway."
Ozpin's eyes widened like Qrow's had before the end. Then all at once his face went blank, utterly neutral, a cold, flat stare that revealed nothing. "And just what is left of him?"
There was something…unsettling about his calm, even tone, but he hadn't come at her, so Quartz figured she was doing well so far. "An empty rock. Cracked right through." She lifted her chin, jerking her head to indicate somewhere behind him. "If I were you, I'd grab my lady and run before I got the same."
"Is that so?" His voice had gone quite soft, and she could just detect a faint tremor in it. She smirked.
"I consider myself a sensible Gem," Quartz said, lifting one shoulder in a shrug. "And that's the sensible thing to do."
Peculiarly, Ozpin took a deep breath as if he were about to speak, only to release it again, very slowly. Well, someone's gone native. "I will give you one chance…this chance…to surrender peacefully. We do not shatter Gems as punishment here. Whatever your sentence, you will survive Lady Rose's judgement."
"Do you hear yourself? I'm a soldier. I can take you, rebel!"
A brief, tight, brittle smile. "Under other circumstances, I would find your posturing amusing."
Oho, so he knew how to play the bluffing game, too. Time to up the ante.
"It's just too bad your Pearl wouldn't listen to reason," Quartz sighed, shaking her head. "Maybe you'll be smarter than he was. And hey, as long as you're alive, who knows? Maybe you can order a replacement."
Ozpin did not react. He actively did not react. Not a blink. Not a twitch. Quartz found herself taking a step back, and wasn't quite sure why.
Her boot barely hit the ground again before Ozpin moved. His hand darted to his waist, pulling free a strange metal cylinder with a lever on it; he pushed the lever, extending the device into—a cane?
Quartz drew breath to mock him for trying to threaten her with a stick, except suddenly said stick struck her end-on in the chest, knocking the air from her and knocking her off her feet, flinging her backwards. Ozpin's reach wasn't that long, how had he—had he actually closed the distance between them that quickly?
Yes. Yes he had, she realised as he closed with her again, wielding the cane like a sword. She took a heavy hit to her ribs and managed to catch another on her forearm. Quartz kept her feet under her this time, better braced, but the blows hurt, and the one she'd blocked jarred her arm out of position, a strange numbness traveling down to her hand. He'd hit her hard enough to disrupt her projection, like an organic pinching a nerve, and she could only watch as her fingers opened without her permission, Qrow's Gemstone tumbling to the ground.
Ozpin glanced at it, the sight of the cracked stone cracking his mask a little too, shades of anguish and fury playing over his features. Quartz didn't waste her time pitying him, pulling back her other arm and launching a punch towards his throat—the only target she could easily reach that wasn't clearly armoured.
She still wasn't fast enough—he saw her, his free hand whipping up palm-out and closing around her fist, stopping it dead. His cane batted her more sluggish left arm away, leaving her wide open for the solid kick that struck her centre-mass. Quartz thought at first that his grip on her would keep her standing, but he released her just as the sole of his boot made contact, and once again, she went flying, wrenching a cry of shock and pain from her.
The impact stunned her, blanking her mind for a split-second and leaving her limbs limp. This time, she could hear Ozpin's approach. And he was walking towards her, like he had all the time in the world. Like she was already finished.
No, she thought. Not yet. Not on the same rock I came from.
Quartz started to move, to lever herself upright, only for her back to hit the ground again as Ozpin's boot came down on her chest.
"Get off!" she snarled. She raised her arms to make him, and his fingers closed around her right wrist, punishingly tight. She went to claw at his arm with her other hand instead, but it was still weak, and before she could find purchase—
Quartz froze, realising his cane was gone. His cane was gone, but its handle wasn't, and Ozpin's fingers were on the lever. The end where the shaft would emerge was aimed squarely at her Gemstone.
"Enough," Ozpin ordered, the word almost a growl.
She remembered how quickly the cane could extend. Could see in her mind's eye the speed and force with which it would strike her. She'd be shattered instantly. Looked like she was finished, after all. But damned if she was going to give her killer the satisfaction of her fear. Quartz stared him down, refusing to look at his weapon, resisting the urge to shut her eyes and pretend this wasn't real. She set her jaw tightly against any pleas or sounds that might try to escape, and she waited for the end.
Despite her resolve, Quartz couldn't suppress a flinch at the sound of the cane extending, and she cursed herself vainly as her eyes snapped shut. Then, processing the fact that she was still alive, she opened first one eye, then the other, as the first one could see nothing but the blunted tip of the cane poised less than an inch away. One sharp jab, and she'd discorporate.
"Enough," Ozpin said again, his voice softer now. Weary. His eyes were still cold and hard, his face still terrible and remote. "You may be ignorant of our laws, but I am bound by them. You aren't going to die today. But I will never see you freed from stasis. An eternity of missed moments—I wonder if a quick death wouldn't be kinder."
"You wouldn't know kindness if it bit you," Quartz hissed.
"I know less of kindness now than I did an hour ago, when my friend was still alive." His hand tightened on her wrist. His voice had gone sharp again, detached and contemptuous. "A pity for all of us you did not stay your hand."
He drew back his cane, tensed to drive it home—
"Ozpin!"
Bad guy or not, she had to hand it to him; the Gem pinning her didn't lose his balance even though he froze mid-motion. Quartz dared to tilt her head enough to see Lady Rose a few paces behind Ozpin, to her right. One closed pinkish-red hand was clasped against her chest, the other curled protectively around the first.
"It's alright, Oz. You can stand down."
"Stand down," Ozpin echoed, nearly inaudibly, then "Stand down? You'd have me let her go."
"Yes."
"You don't know what she's done."
Lady Rose shook her head. The motion sent light sparkling off the tear tracks on her cheeks. "I know what she hasn't done."
"She shattered Qrow." Ozpin's voice was doing the shaking thing again, which Quartz now knew was in fact a Bad Thing. His weapon was still positioned to take Quartz out.
"Did she tell you that?"
"And I saw him—only briefly, but…" The cane wavered. He dropped Quartz's arm, turned his head to look at the other Gem. Quartz weighed her odds of escaping and found them wanting. Maybe if the Lady convinced Ozpin to get off of her, she could risk making a break for it.
"I saw him too, not-so-briefly, on my way to help you." Lady Rose held out her hands, revealing Qrow's Gemstone. To Quartz's shock, it was whole and smooth, the missing chip returned seamlessly to its proper place. It shone with an inner lustre to match the iridescence on its glossy surface. "You see? She was lying, or else she was as mistaken as you were. She's young, isn't she? She might not have realised he wasn't beyond saving." She bit her lip, examining the Gemstone again for herself with an anxious eye. "Well, not for a Rose Quartz, anyway. He's fixed now, Oz, I promise. Qrow's going to be fine."
"Despite our new friend's best efforts," Ozpin murmured, turning his chill regard back to Quartz, who flinched as much from surprise as unease; she might as well have stopped existing once his attention had turned to the other rebel.
"Weren't you always the one admonishing me for rushing to judgement?" Rose Quartz stepped closer and put a hand on Ozpin's shoulder. "You're better than this, teacher. Neither anger nor fear may rule you. If our roles were reversed, I know you would counsel mercy."
It took Quartz's jumbled imprints a moment to place the word, teacher; it was an old one, not part of the list of terms and phrases she'd been expected to know. Its effect on Ozpin was startling. The hollow mask guarding his features seemed to melt away by increments, emotion and life bleeding back into him as Rose Quartz spoke. Slowly, the tip of the cane drifted away from Quartz's face, finally coming to rest on the ground beside her instead. Now maybe she could—no, he'd feel it if she tried to move, and she'd be right back where she was a minute ago.
"Qrow is whole," Rose Quartz reminded Ozpin, taking his hand in one of hers and placing Qrow's Gemstone in his palm. "So what was her crime? Riling you is unwise, but hardly illegal."
"She did assault and discorporate him."
"She's a newly-emerged, indoctrinated mess of impulses. She might even have thought it was self-defense."
"Hey!" Quartz protested. She froze as the other Gems turned to look down at her.
A lot of the remaining tension in Ozpin drained away then, as he gazed down at her with hostility swiftly giving way to something almost…curious. He hummed softly, thoughtfully, then at last took his weight from Quartz, backing a few steps away as Rose Quartz approached her.
"Let's get you up, then," she said, bending down and stretching out a hand. Quartz stared at it, bewildered. "You're an Ametrine, aren't you? I'm Summer. He's Ozpin. We're not going to hurt you, I promise."
Quartz's—Ametrine's?—eyes darted over Summer's shoulder, towards Ozpin. He was no longer looking at them, instead directing his attention at the Gemstone in his hand. She saw his mouth move with words too soft for them to hear.
"Ozpin isn't what you'd call a trusting soul," Summer said, following her gaze. Ametrine still hadn't taken her hand, so Summer lowered herself to the ground beside her, crouching on the balls of her feet. "He's never completely opened up to anyone. I'm not sure he ever will. But he comes close with me and Qrow. I think if he lost us both, he might just shut down entirely."
Ozpin seemed to sense their scrutiny, glancing over and meeting Ametrine's eyes, his own narrowing slightly in clear distrust. His fingers closed securely around Qrow's Gemstone.
"We all lost a lot of people in the war—the one your imprints keep prodding you to try and win for Homeworld. We pushed on because we had to, because otherwise we'd lose everything, and everyone who'd already given their lives would have died for nothing. But the war's over now."
That got Ametrine's attention, blinking at Summer in confusion. "Over?"
Summer smiled sadly. "Has been for almost two thousand years. We're at peace." She got a distant look in her eyes, then, murmuring again, "We're at peace. We can stop."
Slowly, as much from her own trepidation as to forestall any kind of reaction from the others, Ametrine sat up, wincing at the peculiar strained feeling in her body. "The—the things. In my head. The imprints?"
"Out of date. The instincts they're trying to instil in you—they'll fade with time. If you let them."
"They're really loud," Ametrine admitted in a near-whisper. "I didn't notice it at first because everything they told me made sense, but I was alone and there wasn't any fighting and I couldn't do what I was supposed to."
"That's okay," Summer assured her. "I know it's very hard to think past what you're told at first, but the more you do it, the easier it'll get, and the quieter your imprints will seem until one day? They'll be gone. Even Gems who follow the imprints lose them soon enough. It's natural."
"But aren't I supposed to do what they're telling me to do?"
"Listen to me." Summer reached out and took Ametrine's hands in her own, leaning forward. "The people who wanted those things from you aren't here anymore. There's no one left to anger or disappoint by ignoring them. Why don't you think about what you want to do? Try new things, see if there's something you enjoy. You're a Remnan Gem. A Gem of Free Remnant. And that means the only person who gets to decide your future is you. You get to choose who you want to be and how you want to live." She glanced over at Ozpin, who had maintained his distance but was watching them sidelong. The expression on his face had softened again, to something that was either admiration or approval or something in-between.
What was the relationship there, Ametrine wondered, when Ozpin called Summer lady yet Summer called Ozpin teacher? She'd told him to stand down, but he hadn't obeyed until she'd talked him down. Who was in command? Who was the real threat to her? If she only knew Ozpin's Gem type, she'd—
…She'd know nothing more than she did now. Because it…didn't matter?
"Why don't you come with us?" Summer suggested. "There's plenty of room back at Beacon—that's what our base is called, Beacon. It's where we live. You could meet other Gems there. Some of them were like you, Gems that emerged after the war."
Ametrine expected Ozpin to jump in and protest, but he remained silent.
"I know this must be scary, but maybe once you learn a little more about this world and about us, you'll feel better. What do you say?"
"What could I say? I had no idea what was going on, and exactly one person was offering to help me out. There wasn't really anything I could do but go for it."
Ametrine had been at Beacon for three days, and in that time she had learned three things:
Ametrine was one of the only Gems on Remnant who hadn't made up a name for herself.
Summer was very nice, and Ametrine liked her.
Ozpin was also very nice, but Ametrine did not like him.
"He smiles all the time," she complained to Summer once. "How do you know when he means it?"
"Think of him like a really overwrought piece of classic literature," Summer suggested. "Hard to read, but worth it."
Ametrine crossed her arms. "Think I preferred it when he was threatening me."
She also learned, soon enough, that she was one of very few people who spoke to Summer like that. Ozpin was far from the only Gem who called her Lady Rose, and the others who did treated her like the next-closest thing to a Diamond.
"Well, no." Summer winced. "It's not that bad. If they were treating me like a Diamond, they wouldn't talk to me at all unless I talked to them first."
But for being in charge, Summer sure did seem to prefer fading into the background. She also seemed to have a lot more spare time than Ametrine thought she should, not that the younger Quartz was complaining—Summer was spending most of that time with her, which gave her this weird kind of warm feeling in her chest even as the guilt started to creep up on her.
"Oh, Ozpin's used to handling the day-to-day on his own," Summer said airily, waving a hand around. "He's got a knack for administration. Just goes to show how little a Gem's type has to do with what they're really good at. Have you given any thought to what you might like to try doing?"
Ametrine hesitated. "Maybe I could start with fighting monsters? I know it's not really breaking the Quartz mould. But you need Huntsmen, and maybe I'll be a good one."
Summer put a hand over Ametrine's. "I'm sure you'll be a great Huntress, if that's really what you want to do. Remember, you can always change your mind later!"
Ametrine wouldn't be the first to change her mind, she knew. Gems had been losing their zeal for hunting for a long while, and once she'd learned what the monsters were—who they had been—she couldn't really blame them. But it had left Beacon short-handed at a time when it really, really needed not to be, and from what she could tell from the numbers, there hadn't ever been enough Gems to make a substantial dent in the monster threat. That didn't stop Summer from trying, though. Ametrine wouldn't let it stop her, either.
Ozpin, however, had other ideas. Naturally.
"You want to go out hunting with her," he repeated, giving Summer a level stare from across his desk. She'd summoned her armour in preparation for going out; he had dismissed his, and Ametrine found him vastly less threatening in the absence of plate and mail. "Alone."
"I want to assess what she already knows about fighting," Summer explained, putting a hand on her hip. "And I want to give her a chance to see if this is something that she finds engaging before she pours all her time and energy into combat training."
"A fair point," Ozpin conceded. Ametrine snorted softly from her position behind Summer. She doubted he was giving much consideration to her time and energy; it was whoever would end up training her that he was concerned about wasting on her. Especially if that someone ended up being Summer, who had made Ametrine promise to stay out of the conversation.
So she was staying as far back physically as possible without completely ditching Summer: leaning against the front edge of Rose Quartz's desk, which sat opposite Ozpin's on the massive top floor of Beacon Tower. Clockwork rumbled and churned overhead, strangely muted. Rosy red light spilled between the moving cogs, tinting the room warmly from overhead in addition to the sunlight spilling through the giant glass clock face to Ametrine's left.
Mechanical technology, apparently, was the future, even though it was inherently less advanced than the sort of tech the Gems had brought with them. Something about reliability or sustainability, Ametrine had only sort of been listening. Ozpin had been the one talking, him and some manic Sphene (one of the Gems who was actually cool around Summer, she'd learn his name eventually) who kept referencing things like the Gamma White Energy Crisis or the Epsilon Yellow Resource Deficit. Yawn.
"So we're agreed," Summer said briskly, clapping her hands together. Ozpin frowned minutely.
"I'm sure I don't recall saying any such thing."
"Fortunately, I don't need your approval." Summer smiled. "I'm here to inform you, not to ask your permission. Commander."
"Lady," Ozpin replied with a faint, rueful smile and a concessionary tilt of the head.
Summer reached out and tapped the edge of the little box on Ozpin's desk. Qrow's Gemstone gleamed against the cloth lining. "If he re-forms while we're gone, bring him up to speed, will you? The last thing we need is a senior Huntsman brawling with a new recruit."
"Or for the Hunt to learn its newest recruit nearly killed said senior Huntsman, when inevitably people start asking after the casus belli," Ozpin added dryly. "Of course."
"Maybe if he'd watched his back better," Ametrine couldn't help but suggest, earning a plaintive look from Summer (which shut her up) and a stony one from Ozpin (which made it really tempting to keep going).
Then, to her surprise, Ozpin shook his head, that strange little smile coming back to his face. "He really should have, shouldn't he? Take care out there. Call if you need backup."
"Did you?" Ruby asked.
"Pfff. No. Summer straight-up easy-moded me—took me out to Patch. Didn't even break a sweat."
"…Gems don't sweat."
"You know what I meant!"
"Come here," Summer had said, ducking under a tree branch and waving for Ametrine to follow. Still riding the high of her first successful hunt (even if Summer had done most of the heavy lifting), Ametrine didn't even think of protesting, practically bouncing along after her. And now:
"Here we are!" Summer spread her arms wide and beamed at Ametrine, turning to indicate the view as a whole.
"Oh wow," Ametrine breathed, stepping closer. They stood near the edge of a cliff overlooking a verdant valley. She could see a stream cutting through the dense thicket of trees below.
"Isn't it gorgeous?" Summer lowered herself to the ground, her feet dangling over the edge of the cliff, her cloak fluttering gently in the breeze. "This is my favourite spot in the whole world."
"Right here?"
"Right here. Listen to that, do you hear it? Birds and bugs, leaves and water, and just…quiet." She took in a deep breath, as if savouring the air, then let it out in a huge, satisfied sigh. "I just like being here. Away from the bustle at Beacon or the organic settlements. I think I could be happy for the rest of my life, if I got to spend it here."
"So why don't you?" Ametrine asked, sitting down next to her.
"Oh…" She shook her head. "My Rebellion, my Gems, my Hunt. I can't just walk out on it all."
"Didn't you literally just walk out and leave someone else in charge?"
"Well. Yeah, but…"
"But what?"
"I have responsibilities," Summer protested.
"Which you've been blowing off for days to hang out with me. Not that I'm complaining, but clearly the Hunt doesn't fall apart when you're not around." Ametrine's eyes widened as her words caught up with her. "I'm not trying to say you aren't important! I know you are! But you…you actually hate being in charge, don't you?"
"Hate…" Summer furrowed her brow. "No, I don't think that's it. I don't really have any problems leading, but…especially as time goes on and the organics build up their civilisations, there's so much…politics, and deal-making, and treaty-signing—we had to draft an entire code of laws for Remnan Gems, and we have to tweak them constantly because of things we overlooked or organic rules or customs we forgot to allow for or couldn't allow for because they didn't exist a thousand years ago, and—"
"And you hate it," Ametrine finished.
"I'm good at it."
"But wasn't that part of why you started the Rebellion? So that Gems could do what we wanted, not just what we're good at?"
"I…"
"Summer…you keep asking me what I want, but what do you want?"
Summer stared at her. Then, very softly, she laughed, something like wonder spreading over her features.
"So you're the one who talked Mom into stepping down!"
"I don't think there was anyone who could have talked your mom into anything. But I guess I made her think about it more seriously. A few years later, she announced she was officially turning the Hunt over to Ozpin. She kept hunting, obviously, we all did. But she never really spent a lot of time at Beacon after that. Neither did I. She asked me to come live on Patch with her, and we started building her dream house." Yang paused, then clicked her tongue ruefully. "It did not go well."
"Maybe we should have gotten a Bismuth to help," Qrow said, looking at the sagging wooden frame. "Or a—I don't know, do we even have carpenters?"
"Shut up! We got this!" Yang smacked his shoulder, getting a narrow-eyed look in return.
"Watch it, pipsqueak."
"You don't scare me, old man!"
"Hey, hey, no fighting!" Summer called from where she was crouched down, peering at the foundation.
Qrow rolled his eyes. Yang smacked him again.
"Hey!"
"I heard that! Yang, no hitting!"
"He started it!"
"The hell I did!"
Yang crossed her arms, tossing her hair. "Probably trying to make up for how he went down like a bitch when we met."
"You jumped me from behind!" Qrow objected.
"Still kicked your ass!"
"If I were a philosophical Gem," Summer said calmly, standing and brushing the loose earth and dust from her skirt, "I would make a profound statement about foundations and the strength that comes from working together in harmony. I'm not, and we suck at laying foundations, and I think we got some of the angles wrong on the frame. I think we need an organic. Maybe someone who's actually built a house before."
"Whoa, hey," Qrow protested. "We did the physical labour part just fine!"
"Yeah! It's the whole—math-y, planning thing that tripped us up! We don't need an organic, we just need an obsessive nerd with a basic understanding of physics and a talent for drawing straight lines."
"Huh," said Summer, exchanging a glance with Qrow.
"What you needed," Ozpin stressed, "was common sense and a flat surface."
"Well, would you look at that!" Summer said brightly, beaming at the much more promising proto-house before them now. "Hey, while you're here, do you think you and Qrow could get together with some of our engineers and set us up with a warp?"
"Isn't that going to infringe on your desire for solitude?"
"Who said anything about solitude? I'm going to have Yang with me—and Qrow, if he agrees."
"He will," Ozpin assured her. "There's no power in the universe that could keep him from your side."
Summer smiled fondly. "I don't deserve him."
"You're partners. I don't think it's for either of you to decide whether you deserve each other. That die is already cast."
"Well, they're not going to stop hunting, and neither am I for that matter, so having a way to get around quickly seems like a good idea. Besides…" Summer bit her lip. "I thought the Commander of the Hunt might appreciate a shorter commute."
"What," Yang said loudly, dropping the beam she was carrying.
"Shit—Yang, what the hell?" Qrow demanded, struggling to yank his foot out from under the heavy length of wood without dropping his own armload of building materials.
"You don't have to stay," Summer hastened to add, "but…you're family, Oz. S-so, whether you choose to live here or not, this is your home too."
Ozpin failed to reply.
"Maybe you could at least come visit?" Summer suggested half-heartedly, her face falling.
"Summer." His hand settled on her shoulder. "Of course I'll stay."
Oh, Yang realised, seeing him smile. That's how you know when he means it.
"It was a little rough at first, all of us getting used to spending so much time together without anyone else around—especially with me being new to the family and Ozpin not being around half the time. But we figured it out eventually. Worked out old grudges…"
Yang hit the ground hard, trying to tuck into a roll but just a little too slow—that damn cane was at her throat again, and in a moment she'd hear the all-too-familiar command to—
"Yield."
"Ugh, fine," she groaned, rolling her eyes.
Ozpin retracted his cane and bent down, offering his hand. "Your reaction time is getting better. You'll be dodging that attack easily soon."
"You think so?"
"Have I ever lied—"
"Yes."
"—to spare your feelings before?" He narrowed his eyes in acknowledgment of the hit, but kept smiling. Yang could spot the fake smiles about as well as anyone could by now, so it was with a smirk of her own that she replied.
"Good point. Since when have you given a crap about my feelings?" She clasped her hand tight around his and let him help her up.
"…built up routines…"
"No, don't!" Qrow hissed, catching Yang's arm before she could knock on Summer's door. "It's tea-and-cookies-quiet-time, remember?"
"Oh, shoot!" Now that Yang listened, she could hear the gentle clink of a teapot's spout against the rim of a cup. "I forgot she had a new book."
"Last one in that series she's been waiting on all decade. So unless it's life-or-death…"
"Yeah…I'll just come back later."
"Stop whispering outside my door!" Summer called, annoyed.
"…made a home." Yang smiled. "It's all she really wanted, you know? Your mom. She just wanted to be together with the people she loved most."
"And she was." Ruby touched her Gemstone. "She got to live her dream for four thousand years."
"I'm not saying it was always paradise. But it was ours. It is ours," Yang said, putting an arm around Ruby's shoulders. "And we're gonna do everything we can to keep it safe."
Ruby hugged her. "I love you, Yang."
"Love you too, Rubes."
Luck. It was pure, dumb luck that had gotten her this far, and Scapolite knew it.
Well, luck and the Record. She'd worked out how to look things up in it now. It knew exactly where every warp on the planet was, and when she'd had a twinge of pseudo-memory about the one on Patch, it had been able to tell her about the day of its construction, that it was made by Rebels as a closed-circuit warp—one-way to Beacon and back. She wasn't about to risk teleporting right into enemy hands, even if she could work out how to make Beacon's warp take her somewhere she'd be safe. There was just too much risk involved in getting there in the first place.
She knew the forest warp was being watched, so that left her best and only option of getting out of Vale quickly sitting on a little island to the north. And that was where dumb luck came in. It was getting harder and harder to use her powers to shield herself from view, so rather than risking the red forest (and were trees supposed to come in those colours? She wasn't convinced) she skirted its edge, slipping through the alleys and shadows of the city until she had a clear shot to walk along the coast, just close enough to the treeline to duck under for cover when she heard wings overhead. Usually they were only gulls. She saw a few little black birds, but couldn't say for sure if they were even the same kind that Qrow had turned into, let alone if they were the Gem himself. Still, better safe than sorry.
Eventually she reached a point where she couldn't put off the inevitable any longer. It was the closest point to the island that she could reach on dry land. Scapolite shrugged off her coat, wrapped it around the Record, and walked into the sea.
It was eerily like being trapped inside her own cracked Gemstone. Cold, lonely, indistinct, without a single fixed point to count on besides her own vague self-awareness. The focus it took to keep herself moving in a straight line in spite of the lack of landmarks and the powerful tug of the current was intense, and in a way she was grateful. It meant she didn't have room to think.
When at last she reached the island, she barely had enough strength left to kick herself back to the surface, realising too late that she probably should have used her coat to lash the Record to her body rather than holding it. Flinging herself onto the beach, she heaved in deep breaths just to ease the terrible pressure on her chest, dirty white sand clinging to every inch of her.
I made it. For the first time she could remember, Scapolite felt a fierce, defiant flare of triumph. I made it!
She laughed aloud, pounding a fist against the sand as she shouted her victory to the sky.
What the Record couldn't tell her, she discovered sometime later, was much at all about the other continents. It offered up records of actions and conversations centred around far-off places, but it seemed to know little about the world outside of Vale—and little more about the parts of Vale that lay outside the valley itself. Maybe it had a limited range, Scapolite mused, with an odd twinge of wounded pride. Perhaps her Gemstone had only enabled it to learn and report things that happened nearby.
So she decided to take a risk, pulling her coat back on and fastening the Record into place. She stepped onto the warp and willed it to take her as far away as possible. Somewhere the remains of the Rebellion would never look for her.
Scapolite winced at the sudden brightness lancing into her eyes, raising a hand to shield them as they adjusted. A warm wind blew against her skin, bringing with it—more sand. Or dust, or dry, coarse earth—it was kind of difficult to say what this exciting new variety of gritty particulates was, but it was all she could see for quite a distance. Well, that and rocks. Lots of those. She stood in a small courtyard at the top of a long set of stairs, the eroding ruins of some once-grand structure fallen all around her.
"You asked for this," she reminded herself, then paused. Salt?
Maybe it was the residue on her skin—and, eugh, she had chalky white patches on her now, how had she not noticed that before?—but Scapolite could swear she smelled the sea. If she could find it, maybe she'd find some plant life or something that could shelter her while she worked out the next phase of her plan. Or the goal of it, for that matter. Right now the entire thing was one word long: survive.
She set her shoulders, determined, and began to descend the stairs.
A/N: Last chapter: scared Ozpin. This chapter: scary Ozpin. Next chapter: *checks notes* uh looks like a strong chance of no Ozpin, actually. So much for the rule of three.
Flashbacks are a formatting nightmare, ngl. Page breaks? No page breaks? Centred text? Italics? agghghgh anyway I was not actually planning for Summer to appear in person so soon, much less to be such a strong presence! I had no idea what to do for her characterisation and I feel like that probably shows a little, but at least that'll make it less jarring when she inevitably turns up alive in canon and immediately contradicts her thousands of fan versions...? Still, Yang has her backstory now, which hopefully adds a bit more dimension to her relationships with the others and context for her reactions to Blakolite, Pennydot, and the whole notion of Homeworld and the Gem War. And, honestly, it was kind of nice to take a break from rising action! Although now we have the matter of where Blake is and what she intends to do…
Next chapter should *theoretically* see the anticipated(?) return of Jaune and Pyrrha, who have languished too long in the background. Next chapter also actually owes slightly more to RWBY than SU by way of plot, so there's that. As always, reviews are always appreciated, as is your readership! Thanks for sticking with me! See you next time!