The collective noun for the Huntsman/Huntress social group in RWBY canon seems to be "Huntsmen," but I find that Hunter is a much better gender-neutral alternative. Hence, anytime someone says "Hunter(s)" in this fic, they're referring to a mixed group of Huntsmen/Huntresses or the social class as a whole. Or someone who's nonbinary, but I don't think there's any canon enby folks as yet, except that one ship's lieutenant on the boat to Menagerie, and even then, I'm pretty sure their VA was the only one that said they were.
Also this fic is mostly just my way of coping with the V8 ending, so while I do have it generally roughed out (especially the first fourth), there's not quite a set plot as yet. Basically, its wish fulfillment given literary form and I'm gonna let that take me where it takes me, while making sure that there's still enough scaffolding not to leave my readers feeling cheated.
Maybe it wasn't exactly the most subtle of things, to walk up to Beacon's auditorium in a group of five people, but subtlety wasn't really on the menu right now. They were all desperately clinging to whatever shreds of normality they could project, but the fact of the matter was that things weren't normal. If they weren't scared of the information getting back to Neopolitan somehow, all five of them would have still been collapsed in a corner somewhere, clinging to each other, crying, screaming, grieving, processing. There was so much that they didn't know, so much that could have gone wrong now that they were gone. The other side of the portal –what had happened in Vacuo? Was everyone okay? And what about the other other side –Qrow and Winter and Marrow and Robyn, were they alive? Dead? What about Ironwood? The rest of the Ace Ops?
They didn't know –and whatever had happened to them after falling made it impossible to find out.
Still, they hadn't gotten their Hunter licenses by dwelling on what-ifs. Focusing on negativity brought Grimm, and right now, they needed to focus on their mission, which was to blend in with other first-years and seem as normally normal as possible under the circumstances, when they had just come from what was basically a warzone not two hours before. Sure, that normality might be enhanced if they didn't clump together as one focused group, but Jaune couldn't bear being separated from the others right now, and he was pretty sure that Team RWBY felt the same. They might come from two different teams, but they were all part of the same group –no, the same family. Being alone was unthinkable, not now, not after everything they'd been through, everyone they'd lost.
The auditorium was just like how he remembered it, but he and Team RWBY weren't where they were before –they plastered against the far wall, on one side of the doors, trying to avoid the crowd rather than scoot up close towards the stage. It was weird seeing the other students in the room again, all of them seeming so…young. They were here with bright eyes and hopeful faces, when everyone that Jaune and the others had been dealing with for months had been cowering and broken under the looming threat of the Grimm –and their eldritch, undying mistress.
The feedback system hummed for a moment, and Ozpin cleared his throat.
"I'll…keep this brief." he said, pushing his spectacles up his nose.
"Weird to think that that used to be someone else." Yang muttered in an undertone to the others. Jaune knew exactly what she meant: the green clothes, the cane held in one hand, the short fluffy spikes of hair –that could so easily have been Oscar in another fifty years or so, minus the paler skin. It was weird to think that that had been Oscar, once upon a time –well, someone just like him, anyways. That the man on stage was someone who had suddenly heard a voice in his head one day, and slowly grew to become the next incarnation of Ozma. It really was weird, because Ozpin had been Ozpin for so long in Jaune's head, the person he'd seen whenever he'd imagined the voice in the back of Oscar's head or the man that had married Salem. It was a bit unsettling to think that the man on stage right now wasn't the man he was thinking of –that this was essentially a skin that Ozma wore, however respectfully and carefully.
Well, if they had their way, this would be the last host Ozma had, Jaune thought as he met Ruby's eyes and they both gave a significant nod. The Ozpin that they knew had been fighting for humanity and Faunus since before recorded memory, trapped in an endless cycle of pain, defeat, betrayal, and failure that couldn't even end with his death. When Salem was gone, he could finally pass on to the rest that he deserved. They owed him that much, even after all his mistakes.
"You have traveled here today in search of knowledge, to hone your craft and acquire new skills, and when you have finished, you plan to dedicate your life to the protection of the people." Ozpin continued. "But I look amongst you, and all I see is wasted energy, in need of purpose, direction."
"Think we should tell him?" Blake murmured as confused whispering broke out among the crowd of students. Her ears swiveled and twitched slightly, probably trying to catch any sign of trouble before it hit them.
"He might know what happened to us." Ruby said. "I vote we give it a go."
"You assume knowledge will free you of this," Ozpin continued, heedless of their plotting. "-but your time at this school will prove that knowledge can only carry you so far. It is up to you to take the first step."
With that extraordinarily brief speech over with, Ozpin left the stage as Glynda stepped up, reminding them to gather in the ballroom and that initiation would be tomorrow.
"Yeah, and he might not believe us." Yang continued from where they had left off, frowning as the dismissed students began to mill around, gathering into groups to talk or heading out to the ballroom. "Plus –and like, not to diss the man with an industrial-grade Dust bomb in his cane– but he didn't really do much to help with the Breach and the Fall and everything."
"A lot of such business is conducted behind closed doors." Weiss sniffed. "He may have done more to prevent those disasters than we ever knew. Still, Yang, you have a point. While Ozpin is an important ally to have, we should remember that everything after Beacon hasn't happened yet. He initially fended us off with lies and half-truths because his expectations have been betrayed often enough that Ozpin takes he who plans safely, plans alone to the next level. Granted, we made mistakes of our own, but trust is still a reciprocal relationship. We haven't proven ourselves to him yet, so he will not trust us like he did after he returned in Atlas. Trust is a risk, and right now, Ozpin has no reason to take that comparatively enormous risk on us –five young and otherwise unremarkable students."
"There's also the risk of anything we tell him getting back to Ironwood." Blake said, her ears flattening back, and they all stiffened. "Ozpin might not trust us right now, but he does trust his old friends. And anything Ironwood knows, Arthur Watts will know."
"And anything Watts knows, Salem does." Jaune said, his fist clenching. "Damnit. We can't tell Ozpin anything that might get recorded and hacked."
"I think Ruby should be the one to talk to him, if anyone does." Yang said, gently bumping her sister with her hip. "You've got silver eyes, so he'll be more willing to trust you, and since you fell with Neo, it'd make sense to her that you came back. She wouldn't suspect anything of you going to visit the headmaster."
"Yeah…I guess we'll have to wait and see." Ruby said, her mouth drooping slightly in a frown. "We should definitely try to talk to Ozpin later, but right now we've got other stuff to focus on. Jaune, you said that Pyrrha unlocked your Aura for you –do you still have it now?"
Jaune looked down at his hand and directed Aura into it. A white-gold glow shifted across his fingers, and they all relaxed. While unlocking his Aura for him had been an integral part of forming the bond between himself and Pyrrha, there was also the non-zero possibility that Neopolitan would be waiting for them in the forest, and with him unable to maintain a defensive Aura…
A chill slid down Jaune's spine. He could imagine that, bleeding out on the ground in the forest as Pyrrha desperately tried to hold Neopolitan off without really even knowing who she was…
He shook his head. Now was not the time for distractions.
"Ruby's right. We should concentrate on forming our teams, so Ozpin won't have to switch us around later after we talk to him." he said aloud. "I've got Aura, so even if Pyrrha doesn't catch me, I won't, uh, go splat."
They all laughed, albeit weakly.
"A lot of this is gonna depend on how we're launched and where we land." Ruby continued, shifting from foot to foot restlessly as the crowd started to thin out. "We should try to keep an eye out for where our partners fall –well, except for Jaune. Weiss?"
"I can easily use my glyphs to intercept you –but do we want to make it that obvious that we're looking for each other?" Weiss asked. "Remember, the teachers have cameras in the forest, and we acted…significantly different, up until recently. Don't you think Ozpin will be a little suspicious if the endearingly clumsy and naïve girl that fought off Torchwick suddenly becomes both competent and serious?"
"Hey!" Ruby squeaked, ignoring most of the context in that statement. "I was competent before!"
Weiss's icily raised eyebrow seemed to indicate disagreement.
"Ugh," Ruby growled. "-well you had a stick so far up your butt-"
"Okay, okay," Yang laughed, nudging between them. "We get it. We all need to act like our old selves here. Uh, more or less –I don't think anyone will care about the missing bow, right Blake?"
"I don't know what I was thinking." Blake grumbled, running a few fingers over her velvety left ear. "And yes. I found you the first time, Yang, so just keep firing Ember Celica and I'll follow the sound. Ruby, Weiss, you can track each other's flight path and then head towards each other once you land –maybe keep your eyes squinted so that if you see someone else, you can close your eyes and not partner up. Jaune…"
Grief spun a tight net around Jaune's heart and squeezed as he glanced to the side and saw vibrant, fiery red hair tied back in a ponytail. Pyrrha looked opaque, but he knew her, knew the restless, half-afraid hope in her green eyes as they flickered over the auditorium and the students leaving it. She wanted to find friends here, be normal here. He looked away before she could see him watching her and swallowed thickly.
"Yeah, I know." he said. "I need to practice meeting Pyrrha."
They'd all been through a lot since they graduated Beacon, but when all was said and done, Blake was the best at reading faces. She was the best at sniffing out lies, seeing what people really thought underneath the surface, because she was an ex-White Fang member, and had been fighting in serious combat scenarios for much longer than any of the others. Blake would be able to tell from the tics and small twinges on his face whether or not he was selling a believable first impression.
"You're not going to keep from having a strong emotional reaction, you know." Blake murmured quietly as she turned a page in the book she was pretending to read. Yang and Ruby had already laid out their sleeping bags in the middle of a large group of people, far away from the entrance doors. Weiss was a delicately calculated distance away, enough to stick to the haughty and aloof demeanor that she had initially come to the school with, but not too far that she wasn't without the support of her team. Blake and Jaune were currently leaning against the far wall, pretending to read by the light of Blake's candle. As long as they kept their eyes mostly on the pages and turned them once in a while, nobody would be able to tell that they were doing anything else.
"I know." Jaune said. He still couldn't help looking up every thirty seconds or so, scanning the ballroom for that achingly familiar flash of bright red hair. Blake nudged his knee with her own, providing a sort of nonverbal comfort.
"Since you're not going to be able to mute it, you should try transforming it." she said in a voice almost too low to catch. "The important thing here is that you don't know her. Pyrrha's just some girl on the front of your cereal boxes, and even then, you barely remember that. She is not a celebrity, not to you, so the second you seem awed or excited or, gods forbid, that you recognize her, she's going to shut down and back off. You need to keep that under wraps."
"I know." he said again. He listlessly turned a page. His voice trembled. "Its going to be so hard, though…i-its Pyrrha…"
Blake shuffled closer, offering comfort by leaning her body against his. Blake didn't really do soothing words or reassurances –she let you know she was there in a physical way, reminding you that you weren't alone with a tangible sense of touch rather than the words she was so used to being deceptive.
"Weiss won't forgive me for this, but maybe flirt with her." she suggested after a moment, chuckling quietly. "Like you did before, right? Then when you look at Pyrrha and react –and you're going to react– you can stammer out something about her being pretty or whatever, and then Weiss can shriek about you aiming too high, and then you can fumble in that way you do and act like you don't know who Pyrrha is at all."
"Hey." Jaune said with a sulky pout, his shoulders hunching. "What do you mean fumble?"
"Jaune, you know exactly what I mean."
He grumbled jokingly, and Blake's body quivered against his as she laughed under her breath again. She leaned away once more, withdrawing the warm and thoughtful pressure of her body: they both pretended to turn their pages, leaving a few seconds in between so it wasn't obvious that they were copying each other.
"Any advice for not- not acting like I know her?" he asked after a few minutes. Blake hummed contemplatively.
"Recognition usually comes with a widening of the eyes, and any form of a double-take or stepping back." she said. "So avoid doing that. Don't squint, though, because then it looks like you're trying to remember her from somewhere. Its alright to look startled, but only for a few seconds. Don't call her by name until she or Weiss tells you who she is, obviously."
"Obviously." Jaune agreed, feeling like he would have very much missed that particular cue unless Blake told him to avoid it. It was just so hard, being able to see Pyrrha again and knowing he couldn't touch her, hug her, do anything without coming off (and deservedly!) as some kind of touchy-feely creep. She didn't know him, she wasn't even his partner, not yet. He was a complete stranger to his partner, his greatest friend, the one who had given him his first kiss –and when they first met again, he was going to have to ignore her, pretend he didn't know her, when his heart was screaming at him because this was Pyrrha, alive and in front of him again.
But still, he needed –they both needed this. He couldn't imagine how horrible it would be for Pyrrha to show up at Beacon and not have Team JNPR, not have Nora's wild exuberance or Ren's quiet, unyielding support. Maybe he counted in there too, but he was mostly just…there. He was Pyrrha's first friend, the first person to see her for who she was –he was basically just the gateway to all her other friends. And he was okay with that, because he was her friend, and Jaune had learned ages ago that being the most important…wasn't important. Sure he wasn't the coolest or the strongest or the smartest, but you know what he could be?
Good enough.
And that was enough.
"Any other tips?" he asked. "Because I…you're right, I'm going to have some kind of reaction when I see her, and I don't…I don't want to ruin Beacon for her. If she sees me faking, she'll be even more freaked out than if I was some super-fan or something. And I- we need to have Team JNPR."
Something visceral, horrific tingled down his nerves as he thought of not being part of his team, of not having Nora and Ren and Pyrrha at his side. It was an all-over prickling like he'd lost gallons of blood all at once, like his Aura was being ripped right out of him. All respect to Yang, the very idea of being without his team made him feel like he'd lost an arm. Imagining being without them was like trying to jam a puzzle piece into a completely different puzzle, or a square peg in a round hole. It just didn't compute. They'd saved each other's lives together, they'd nearly died together, they'd discovered all sorts of world-ending secrets together. They were closer than family.
"You're not very good at acting." Blake said –not without sympathy– as she turned a page. "Anything more complex might be a bit much for you to remember and properly enact. Keep a lid on whatever reaction you have, and ask Weiss to cover for you. She's dramatic enough, she'll be an excellent distraction."
If Weiss possessed Faunus ears or an auditory-enhancing Semblance, Jaune had no doubt that she would have rolled over and pierced them with a patented Schnee glare at Blake's jibe. He laughed nervously at the thought.
"So how are we doing the watch?"
"You and Weiss have the first shift." Blake said, glancing towards the nest of sleeping bags that they'd laid out in the off-center of the room. "Assuming Neopolitan does come to Beacon in order to eliminate us, she'd probably show up towards the middle of the night and not the beginning. Midnight and dawn attacks are usually the work of melodrama –if you want to catch someone groggy and unawares, you do it in the small hours of the morning before dawn, sometime after midnight. Presuming she appeared roughly the same time we did, she'd also need that time to compose herself, make whatever excuses she needed to to her boss or associates, and sneak into Beacon. Given her Semblance, she wouldn't have a problem with security, but she still needs to get here. That's going to take time."
"I have an excuse to stay up, because I'm a novice and still not sure I'd get accepted into Beacon." Jaune said slowly, following her reasoning. "Weiss doesn't really, but people are restless all the time, so it's not suspicious if she stayed up late. I'm used to tanking, so I can cover Ruby and the rest of you if something happens, and Weiss's Semblance and Dust mastery should be able to keep Neopolitan at bay."
"Exactly." Blake nodded. "You can tap out around midnight, and then Ruby will wake up and share her shift with Weiss. That's the time of the most danger, and it'll be much safer if Ruby's already awake to deal with or dodge anything Neopolitan has to throw at us. Between Ruby and Weiss and their Semblances, even with how nimble Neopolitan is, she won't be able to lay a finger on them. Weiss will give up her shift about 2 AM, and Ruby and I will cover things until 4 AM, when Ruby will go to sleep and Yang and I can finish out the watch. That way, we'll all get some sleep and be in an optimum position to counter anything Neopolitan comes up with, whether tonight or tomorrow during initiation. Got it?"
"Got it." Jaune nodded, closing his book. "Well, uh, guess we should turn in then, right, Blake?"
She smiled faintly and leaned over to blow out the candle.
"Right. Goodnight, Jaune. See you tomorrow."
Weiss rolled over in her sleeping bag and tried not to let her expression quiver. She wasn't even that far away –a mere meter or so, barely out of reaching distance. And yet, it felt like a gulf of a thousand miles had opened up between her and her team. They were over there, and she was over here, as befitting the icy persona that she had come to Beacon with. Her hair was down, and she was in her old white nightgown, in the white sleeping bag emblazoned with the Schnee logo. She felt isolated, with a shell of ice distorting and cutting off the images of her friends, surrounding her and keeping her suspended in crystalline nothingness like a fly in amber.
She couldn't believe that she had ever clung to this sensation, believing it a sign of superiority, of safety.
Jaune was on the opposite side of the clump of their friends, facing the doors with carefully slitted eyes. Between the two of them, they should be able to keep a fairly good lookout, even if lying down and pretending to be asleep –or at least trying to sleep– limited their field of vision. She worried about him –the thought of somehow pretending not to know Ruby, or Blake, or Yang, cut her to the quick. She couldn't imagine it, and she could only imagine how much worse it would be for him, since Pyrrha had died.
Blake and Ruby plummeting through the void, unable to even cry out as their lifeline is cut and they plunge down, too far, too fast, blackness closing over them before she can cast her glyphs, leaving only Gambol Shroud behind-
Weiss choked and squeezed her eyes shut, clenching her fingers on the hem of her sleeping bag. That didn't happen. That didn't happen. She and her team are together, and even in this strange new world, even in this perversion of the way things had been, they still had each other. They weren't gone –they were together. They were together. She had her team.
Even aside from her duty as sentry, she was afraid to sleep. If she awoke, what would she find? She'd heard that the ill and dying had such beautiful dreams –was this nothing but a dream? A cruel, paradisial dream in which Beacon was whole and everyone that she, that they had lost were alive and whole again? Waking up from such a dream as this would be enough to shatter her heart completely, destroy her soul and leave her gutted. She was willing to dream eternally if it meant staying here, with them, with her team, with her family. Selfish and spoiled Atlesian she was, she was willing to throw away any and every chance of returning to the real world –the world that very well might be doomed without them– if it meant staying with her teammates.
Weiss couldn't bear the thought of opening her eyes to the sight of herself falling through the endless black.
Alone.
All she could ever sing of back in Atlas was loneliness, and Weiss would get herself thrown out of Beacon for reckless endangerment if Neopolitan dared to show her shapeshifting face here in an effort to take away Weiss's partner. She would do what she couldn't in the central location Ambrosius had made, and she would defend her partner and her team to the death, if need be. Neopolitan may have been motivated by the fires of vengeance, but Weiss had the icy fury of protection and possessiveness at her side.
She didn't give a damn about Neopolitan's so-called motivation, her desire for Torchwick to stay alive. Weiss had no patience for someone who stayed so willfully blind: Beacon was the only thing protecting Vale, and criminals had their territories, so Neopolitan, willing or otherwise, had been working to destroy her own home. Did she think that someone so recklessly destructive as to eliminate a Hunter Academy would stop there? Did she think that she and Torchwick would be able to find a hole to hide in?
They thought themselves survivors, and if they were survivors at the cost of everyone else, they would take that payment with a smile and a wink. Weiss despised people like that. Her father was like that.
That smarmy crook Torchwick strutted around like he thought the whole world was his stage, and he'd probably thought that it would be curtains down for anyone who didn't take Cinder's –and though her, Salem's– side. He was only putting himself at the end of the execution line, though, and he had no right to complain –Neopolitan had no right to complain– when he had died because of it. If he wanted to be on the side of those that would destroy the world, he was an adult who had made that choice and would live –or die– by it. Live by the sword, die by the sword, and criminals like him lived in the moment, lived for the thrill of their ill-gotten-gains.
If the whole world was a piece of theater and Torchwick wanted to burn it down –well, in Weiss's opinion, he'd best get off the stage.
She sighed and unclenched her fingers. Even after all her time with Blake, Atlesian sentiments still crept through. Emotions weren't as logical as that, and criminals like Neopolitan were not in the habit of accepting accountability. She and Torchwick had the right to trample over the wailing people of Vale during the Fall of Beacon, and any retaliation on Ruby's part, even as self-defense, was an injustice. That was what fueled Neopolitan's lust for revenge –the loss of Roman Torchwick, whatever he had meant to her, and the perceived crime of Ruby's involvement in his death. Because Neopolitan cared for him, his death was wrong, and because Ruby had been present, it was her fault, not –oh, Weiss didn't know– his fault for participating in a massacre on top of a Hunter Academy. Neither he nor Neopolitan could have been stupid enough not to expect any retaliation whatsoever.
Ugh. She wasn't going to think about those two anymore.
Weiss opened up her mind to the hall around her, listening to the murmur of conversation along the verges before the other students bedded down, those still awake rustling and shifting, the occasional cough or yawn. It was strange, so strange, to think of herself so young again, alongside all the youths around her. These were children, and she was –she had been– a licensed Huntress. She had been through things that these bright-eyed teenagers couldn't even imagine, and yet here she was with them, huddled in a sleeping back on the night of initiation.
She wondered what tomorrow would bring, if they all lived to see it, if Neopolitan didn't come and they weren't forced to fight. Would she and Ruby be able to partner up without suspicion? Would Team RWBY be formed once again? And what about Team JNPR, with only one member who knew of the grim future to come? Jaune was just as alone as she was, right now, with his real team torn away from him and nothing but his friends to ease that loss. Pyrrha, Nora, Ren –they weren't the ones that they knew, anymore. Nora's skin was pale, unblemished, and she had been nothing but bounding exuberance from where Weiss saw her across the room, not tempered by the sting of loss and the growth of personal wisdom. Ren was quiet, purposeful, moving without the self-confidence and peace that he had gained after so much turmoil, without the understanding gifted to him by experience. And Pyrrha…
Pyrrha…
Tomorrow couldn't come soon enough. Weiss waited on tenterhook as the hours passed and the sounds of sleepy conversation faded out, as all but the most restless of students dropped off, and even those who were awake stared silently, a knot of tension churning in their stomachs for tomorrow-
Rustling to her left.
Weiss's eyes snapped open, but she turned her head slowly, as though stirring in her sleep. Her hand drifted down under the unzipped edge of her sleeping bag, to where Myrtenaster laid at her side.
Then she relaxed, because it was only Ruby, shuffling quietly in her sleeping bag as she dragged herself over, like a caterpillar, to lay beside Weiss –a process complicated by the weight of Crescent Rose folded up inside her sleeping bag.
"What are you doing?" Weiss hissed, however, and Ruby smiled, laying down beside her.
"The watch changed." she murmured, wiggling a little to get comfortable before stilling. "Jaune's sleeping now…or he's gonna try, anyways."
"Hmm." Weiss agreed softly. They'd set watches before, apparently, when they were traveling through Mistral –it must be hard, willingly dropping your guard and trusting others to alert you if or when danger came. You were putting your life in their hands, and such thoughts easily stood between you and sleep.
Still, this was them. Jaune had once been a part of Team RNJR, and besides his trust in his friends, as callous as such a thought might be, if Neopolitan came, Ruby would likely be her one and only target. Jaune had no reason to fear personal attack. The rest of them were collateral because they stood in the way of Neopolitan's revenge, because they would die before they let harm come to their friend, not because Neopolitan considered them targets.
Ruby was safe enough scooting over to join her like this –she was Neopolitan's prime target, and thus Neopolitan would come to her directly, which meant that Ruby's need to watch over the others was lessened. At this point in their relationship, it was also plausible that the shy and sweet Ruby would wiggle over to try and befriend or apologize to the haughty heiress, or sleep beside her in some mute form of bonding.
"Why do you think we came back?" Weiss asked, staring up at the ceiling. The question had drifted out of her without any real thought, but as she said it, she realized that that question had been burning at her all through the day, ever since she had come to herself with a gasp and realized that she stood on Beacon's grounds. Blake had been her savior, tentatively stepping over with her black ribbon still clutched in one hand, ears flicking with agitation that did not show on her teammate's face. Blake had been the one who stopped her from assuming that this was all some cruel dream, had been the one to hold her as she wept the silent tears she had been taught to cry, further hidden beneath the shadow of her own luggage, Blake had been the one to reassure her that we can do this, you're not alone as her heart ached with separation and grief and a confusion that was far worse than both.
How had they come here, and why?
Why here, why now?
"I don't know." Ruby whispered back, honest as she ever was. Her cherubic face scrunched up as she looked at the ceiling with Weiss, before glancing over to make sure that no one was creeping up on them. "Jinn will know though, right? She's the Spirit of Knowledge. She has to know."
"Just because she knows doesn't mean we'll like her answer." Weiss grumbled, rolling her eyes. "It could be something horrible. Knowledge is a curse as much as a gift."
"We'll get through it." Ruby replied softly, still scanning the room, ready for any danger. "Its us. Its Team RWBY, and Jaune, and all our friends. We're not going to let things end up that way again."
We might not have a choice. Weiss wanted to say, but didn't. She knew as well as Ruby that even the most perfect plans could fail, that even with all their struggling, they could fail. She knew it with Atlas and all that had happened therein, she knew it with the most painful of hindsight as she looked back at their scurrying around during Beacon's days of operation, trying to stop Torchwick and the White Fang and always coming so close to seeing the bigger picture, but always missing it by a hair.
But they were different now, strong. They knew things that they had not. They had strengths that they had not before, allies that they had not quite yet made.
"Do you think we should tell Ozpin?" Ruby asked in a small voice after a few minutes.
"I…think we should wait until we see what Jinn has to tell us." Weiss murmured. "It's not that I don't trust him, but we need to have all the available information before we make such an irreversible move –what if whatever happened to us is temporary? What if it has changed something that we don't know about? We need to be able to give him the full picture before we ask for his aid."
"I want to trust him." Ruby whispered miserably. "I want him to trust us like he used to- like he will, after everything. But I don't know if the Ozpin right now will ever trust kids like us like that unless everything does happen."
"He is an adult, a master of many Hunters, head of a school, and we are inexperienced children." Weiss said quietly, closing her eyes. "Would you trust us, in that position? Without showing our hand entirely, what credentials can we give him that he'd believe? Ozpin trusted us in Atlas because we had been comrades-in-arms for some time, and we had all learned from our mistakes. We had learned the cruelest of lessons, that sometimes there is no answer and that the adults we trust are not as strong as we think."
"We learned that we shouldn't have expected as much from him as we did." Ruby agreed. "What happened in Atlas –Ironwood turning on us, the chaos in the city– that's happened to Ozpin way too many times to count. After we felt the same desperation and helplessness, we could understand his perspective and why he did what he did."
"Likewise, Ozpin learned –likely through Oscar– that running from his mistakes only compounded them." Weiss said. "He realized that trust was a risk, and if he never took any risks, he would inevitably fail. After fighting alongside him for so long, we had proved to Ozpin that we were worth that risk."
"Yeah, and now none of that ever happened." Ruby finished with a frustrated sigh. "I'm just some kid with silver eyes that he has to look after until I'm strong enough to stand against Salem on my own, and the rest of you are just students."
"Modest of you." Weiss murmured, the corner of her mouth curling upwards, and Ruby growled playfully, nudging her with a bony elbow.
"You know what I mean."
"I do." Weiss said. "You do realize that we're going to have to find some way to practice secretly, right? You're not supposed to know how to use your silver eyes yet, and none of us are supposed to be graduate level yet either."
"Ugh." Ruby whined, pulling her sleeping mask down briefly over her face in a fit of pique, kicking her legs against her sleeping bag. "We're gonna have to hold back in initiation so muuuuch…"
"And continue holding back as the year progresses." Weiss noted with a resigned sigh. "You, I, and Yang are all known quantities, whereas Blake and Jaune were at least raised outside of the kingdom's conventional radar, so they can be less subtle. Still, being too skilled will draw eyes and unwelcome attention, so even they will have to pull their punches."
"Not really a problem with Jaune." Ruby giggled, and Weiss rolled her eyes again, this time fondly.
Conversation petered out after a while, which was fine. If she and Weiss sounded too talkative, Neo would notice that they were awake, and less alarmingly, so would the teachers stationed at the edge of the room to watch out for students getting into trouble during the night. Ruby was fine with laying back and trying to, well, just process everything that had happened in the last few days.
It had to be some kind of cosmic joke that not even a week ago everything was fine, and the worst thing they had to worry about was Tyrian running around Atlas and what steps they should take to move forward regarding Salem.
Gods, Penny hadn't even been the Winter Maiden for more than three days before she'd died.
Three days.
Gods, it had to be some kind of joke, that Penny only lasted three days –that the burden of the Maiden's powers killed her that quickly. Penny was strong, experienced, and had the help of all her friends, and she still-
Well, not this time. Ruby wasn't going to let it happen.
Right now they had to focus on the immediate problem: staying together. It'd be impossible to plan things safely if they were all mixed up onto different teams –it was already going to be hard enough to involve Jaune. They needed to make sure that initiation went smoothly and that Team JNPR and RWBY were formed, and also that Neopolitan didn't kill them while they were out in the Emerald Forest. Following that, they'd be able to plan for the future, because however skilled and sneaky Neopolitan may be, even she couldn't hack her way into Beacon. In the dorms, they'd be safe, be able to plan without the risk of anyone listening.
Neopolitan needed dealing with, that was their biggest problem. All the others, Cinder and Watts and Lionheart and even Salem herself, none of them were ready for a Team RWBY (plus Jaune) from the future. If they wanted, they could ambush Cinder, get Lionheart arrested, warn the kingdoms about Watts, prepare for Salem's assault on Beacon, all of it –but Neo knew as much as they did. She could adjust to their new plans and all of the bad guys' old ones, or at least, all those involving Cinder. Neo could warn her allies about, well, everything.
The question was, what would Neo actually do?
Ruby didn't know her nearly enough to tell. She wasn't like Blake, who had been in the criminal underworld, or at least underworld-adjacent, and could predict patterns and methods of various ne'er-do-wells. She didn't know Neopolitan at all, either –before Atlas, the only time she'd seen Neo was at Torchwick's side as his mute henchman. Henchwench. Whatever.
In any case, the whole transpositional-thinking, "put yourself in their shoes" thing didn't really work with Ruby, not with Neo and those like her. She couldn't imagine not caring about other people, and when she did, she couldn't help but think of exaggeratedly evil mustache-twirling cartoon villains. Everyone had to care about other people at least a little, right? How could they possibly not? How did that- how did that even work, if they didn't?
Well, she knew Neo was vindictive. Ruby was on firm ground with that one –she hadn't realized at the time, hadn't put all the pieces together back when they were fighting in the Central Location, but Neo probably was out after her because of Torchwick dying. Now, Ruby was very adamant that that wasn't her fault: she didn't kill Torchwick directly, and even if she'd had the opportunity to…she probably wouldn't have. Ruby could acknowledge now that sometimes…sometimes killing your enemy was all you could do. Sometimes that was the only way to save everyone else.
But that fight hadn't been like that, not at all, and being actually fifteen, not used to a grown man trying to kill her and set fire to Vale, Ruby had been not at all mentally or physically prepared to kill him in return. In the back of her head, she'd wanted to try and subdue him, knock him out or something and then try to destroy the virus on the ship, but Ruby knew now, and was even dimly aware back then, that such a plan probably wouldn't have worked –and not just because she wasn't a hacker. Grimm were soaring and wheeling everywhere in the sky around them, and it probably would have been only a matter of time before they attacked, and Ruby didn't know if she could have defended herself and the criminal's unconscious body at once. She wasn't sure how much she would've wanted to, or tried.
So yeah, maybe Ruby might've gotten him killed regardless of what happened on the airship, but she never, and Ruby meant never, would've swung for his head with her scythe. She wouldn't have deliberately gone out to kill him. That wasn't who she was, and that was why now, with the future unrolling before them in a way they could actually see, Ruby was planning to deal with him non-lethally, and potentially even non-aggressively, in order to win Neo over to their side.
Ruby wanted to save everyone. Was that practical?
Nope, not even a little bit. She knew that.
But if she didn't reach for it, if she didn't try –who would? Torchwick and Neo were like Emerald, in way over their heads and desperately looking for a way out before they became collateral damage. They probably didn't even want to be there in the first place, unlike Emerald, who had followed Cinder out of a sense of loyalty and a desperate need for affection and family. Maybe both Torchwick and Neo were bad people, and Ruby certainly didn't like either of them, but –well, her team's options were sparse. Neo had almost certainly come back like they did, and if she had? They were going to have to deal with her.
They could…they could try and kill her, just quietly and simply end the threat that Neopolitan posed.
Or, they could try to convert her, and save even more people. Ruby knew how important a spy or a mole could be, and she naturally gravitated towards the option that didn't end in death.
The tricky part would be convincing people, both the rest of Ruby's friends and Neo herself. That was the real sticking point –if Neo was as petty and spiteful towards anyone who betrayed her as she was towards Ruby, then Cinder might very well already be dead, and it'd be a lot easier to point out that unless Neo wanted to face Salem on her own, it'd be worth her while to switch to Ozpin's side. But if criminality and criminal loyalty made Neo disgusted with the very idea of working with good guys, Ruby really had her work cut out for her.
Guh. This was all future problems, and Ruby really wished she could leave them to her future self, but she knew better. She was a leader. She had to keep working on the problems everyone else expected to deal with while the others took breaks, so she could keep the momentum going and help them generate ideas. Ideally, when they all woke up tomorrow and went to initiation, Ruby would be able to toss out a few watertight ideas that they could run with and more fully discuss in their dorms later.
Ideally.
Her mind was kinda blanking on that.
The problem was predicting or adjusting for what Neo would do. Ruby just didn't know her well enough, and with her friends and teammates' lives on the line, Ruby could hardly afford to mess up. Everything else was almost easy by comparison: Ruby knew where Jinn was, she knew that Jinn had two questions left, and unlike Neo, Ruby also knew who the Spring Maiden was. Hypothetically, Ruby and the others could open the Vault of the Spring Maiden and ask those two questions, probably something along the lines of "What happened to us?" and then, depending on the answer, another question regarding what they might do for the future. That was a very easy way to solve a lot of their problems, assuming that this all wasn't some wishful thinking on her part as she died.
No. Ruby was still alive. Jinn's story about Ozp- Ozma and Salem, it had made it very clear that there was an afterlife, and if Ruby was in the afterlife, she would've been in a world where her mom was still alive.
Not that- not that there was any proof that her mother wasn't still alive.
"Take…the…girl!"
Ruby shuddered and exhaled shakily, closing her eyes and hugging herself. She couldn't imagine being like that, covered in the black essence of Grimm, having it eat away at who she was, at her very body –that was a living death, that was what it was, something so cruel only a monster could have thought of it. Ruby hadn't asked for her silver eyes –none of them had, so why such relentless persecution? How could any of them have done something worth Salem hunting them down like that, devising such tortures for them? Ruby hadn't, her mother hadn't, and Miss Calavera-
Well, Miss Calavera had lost her eyes due to Salem. The legend of the Grimm Reaper still wasn't enough, though, and Salem had been hunting silver-eyed warriors for centuries. Miss Calavera wasn't enough.
Nothing would ever be enough to justify such malice, such inflicted suffering.
Ruby exhaled shortly and opened her eyes again, her expression furrowed as she rolled over onto her back to stare up at the auditorium's high ceiling. It was a good thing she was on watch –she was so tense, sleep would have been nearly impossible. Stress about Neopolitan, about everyone back in Atlas/Vacuo, about what they were going to do now, about what they were going to tell Ozpin…it all kept swirling around and around in her brain, like she was trapped on a nightmare merry-go-round.
The hours crept onwards, with Weiss occasionally shifting or resettling beside her the only marker of time. Ruby didn't dare light up her Scroll, display to the whole room that she was still restless and awake, even if Neopolitan hadn't showed up and it seemed unlikely that she would. If it was Ruby in that position, if someone had taken Weiss away –for example– she certainly wouldn't attack them in a room full of trainee Hunters, but then again, she wasn't nearly as sneaky as Neo was. Ruby's Semblance was good for sudden attacks, sure, but she left a very tangible trail more often than not, and Crescent Rose wasn't subtle as a weapon either: if she wanted to cut through a person's body, now that she was fifteen and tiny again, she'd have to fire a bullet for added momentum, and that was the very opposite of sneaky.
With the dead hours of the night, silence had fallen over the auditorium like a lead blanket. It was so quiet that Ruby could actually hear Weiss's Scroll buzz gently against her hip, breaking the silence for half a moment only before Weiss stopped it. Pale blue eyes rose to Ruby with a hint of trepidation, and Ruby smiled, wiggling closer in her sleeping bag and reaching out for Weiss's hand.
"We'll be here when you wake up." she murmured as Weiss's thin fingers twined almost desperately around her own. "I promise, Weiss. This isn't a dream. We'll be here for you."
Gratitude melted through Weiss's eyes, but she still had to pause and swallow a little before letting go, and then with extreme reluctance. Ruby patted her sleeping bag one last time before wiggling away, inching towards Blake, Yang, and Jaune. As she half-expected, Blake's yellow eyes snapped open the second Ruby came close, upmost ear flicking to a point. Blake slept lightly, and she was used to being in combat scenarios where even a second of groggy awakening could mean the difference between life and death.
"Shift switch." Ruby whispered to her, and Blake hummed, rolling over onto her back as her tense shoulders relaxed.
Ruby sighed morosely as she laid down with them and saw Weiss's sleeping bag, alone and isolated away from their little clump. She couldn't wait for initiation to be over so they could go back to being a proper team, so they could stop pretending that they didn't know each other and didn't care.
"You okay, Ruby?" came Blake's soft voice.
"I thought I'd be happy, being at Beacon." Ruby whispered back. "I thought…"
She couldn't express what she had thought. That now they were back at Beacon, back at the beginning of everything, somehow everything would be all right? That they'd be able to enjoy their childish days as Hunter trainees, as students, and not worry about Cinder and her allies circling like vultures? Fat chance of that –instead of sleeping the blissful sleep of an excited fifteen-year-old ready for initiation tomorrow, Ruby was as awake and tense as she'd been when she kept watch for Team RNJR out in the wilds of Mistral.
She heaved another enormous sigh instead of expressing all that.
"I just wish we could find out what happened to the others." she said, her eyes starting to tear up even as she fought her reactions down.
"We can ask the Relic, if we really need to." Blake replied soothingly. "And I'm sure the others will be fine. We're more than just a couple of teams now, and I trust them. You should trust them to be strong too."
Ruby swallowed the lump in her throat and nodded. Wherever they were, whatever this was, she couldn't help Uncle Qrow and the others right now. She couldn't reach them. She needed to focus on the people she could help, the people she could save, and worry about her r-remaining friends and family later. Jinn would know. Jinn could help.
She shuffled uncomfortably under her sleeping bag and stared up at the ceiling as she waited for the night to pass.
Ruby was tense, stressed, restless –Blake didn't really blame her. The burden of leadership was a heavy one, and Ruby had a tendency to pull even more weight onto herself –she wanted to help too much, wanted to help everyone that crossed her path, and even as Blake admired that, she knew that there had to be limits. Ruby couldn't perform well tomorrow if she spent her time tonight tied up in knots of anxiety and stress as she worried about what would happen, what might happen, what had happened. Blake did her best to calm Ruby down, remind her to be in the moment and be alert for any trouble.
Eventually, when Ruby calmed down enough to stop fretting about all the things that they couldn't currently help, Blake had time to focus on her appointed task. Her cat ears swiveled and twitched gently every few moments, trying to track any and every sound, listening for footfalls, for the hiss of steel inside a scabbard, for any sign that Neopolitan was here. Use her Semblance all she liked: even Neopolitan couldn't block out the sound of her movements. Blake might not be a bat Faunus, but she could still hear things sooner than Ruby, and hear quieter things with perfect clarity as well.
She only heard the whuffling and snores of the other sleeping students, the natural sounds of breathing and shifting made large by this cavernous room. Perhaps every half-hour or so, there'd be a false alarm as someone got up to use the bathroom, but those were groggy shufflings accompanied by yawns, or grumbling about being woken up by their full bladder. Would Neopolitan be clever enough to mimic that? Could she? She hadn't spoken at any point before, but was that choice, injury, or something else?
Blake wasn't risking it. At any sign or sound of movement, her ears flicked in that direction, pinpointing the noise until she could identify whether it was moving away or towards them. And if it was moving towards them, she found a way to shift herself, slowly inching her way around until she could keep an eye on them until they passed by. Maybe Neopolitan could finagle her way into Beacon, but even with her Semblance, Blake doubted that she could bring allies.
As far as she'd been able to tell, Neopolitan was allied with Cinder out of necessity, now as well as when they had met in Atlas, and from what Blake could tell, it had not been an equal partnership. That meant that Neopolitan would have to convince Cinder, somehow, that entering Beacon and attacking Ruby would be the best course if Neopolitan wanted backup, and with how arrogant Cinder was, Blake doubted that was possible. Torchwick, perhaps, because Neopolitan was close with him in some way and according to Ruby, that was reciprocated, but even then, even if it was a matter of Neopolitan saying "Come with me" and he'd follow, that was still highly unlikely. Neopolitan wouldn't risk bringing him so close to people that had managed to kill him before: she'd utilize her own Semblance and her own skills to the fullest to minimize risk.
Of course, that was on the assumption Neopolitan would attack them. She seemed like a careful and canny woman, which meant that the risk assessment of attacking a Huntress trainee in a room full of other Hunters, with teachers and professionals ready to come down like a ton of bricks at the slightest sign of trouble, was probably too much for her. Assuming that she really, truly wanted Ruby dead, she'd have plenty of time to attack: Ruby would have to leave Beacon eventually, have to go out to the city and be decidedly more vulnerable than she was right now, in the middle of her allies.
Still, it was possible that Neopolitan would attack right now, relying on that certainty of safety to give herself an opening. Her Semblance was very well-suited to assassination, and if she struck fast enough, she'd be able to kill Ruby and slip out of Beacon with only alarm and tragedy left in her wake.
The real risk would come –not tomorrow, but later today, Blake thought with a glance at the shadow-shrouded clock at the other end of the auditorium. If she was out to kill someone attending Beacon –not that she would ever do something so horrific– she'd definitely pick initiation as one of the prime times for it, followed closely by a nighttime assault on the chosen target's dorm. During initiation, students would be scattered in an environment filled with enemies. They wouldn't even run to someone screaming for help, in all likelihood, because they universally expected to be attacked by Grimm and knew that the teachers would be monitoring them via cameras. They felt simultaneously safe and at risk, and would be focused on their appointed task of surviving and returning to the school.
Such an environment was an assassin's paradise. Just because the teachers had cameras didn't mean that they could reach into the forest instantaneously at the first sign of trouble, and if you knew where the cameras were, you could avoid them until you reached your target, then strike and retreat before the teachers could retaliate. Someone with a tangible illusionary Semblance like Neopolitan could even disguise themselves and their attack as a Grimm, make it seem like nothing but pure, horrific accident that had taken a student's life.
Well, that wouldn't happen if Blake had anything to say about it. She wasn't about to lose her friends, and she certainly wasn't about to lose Beacon. Not again.
"Hey, Blake?" Ruby asked after a while.
"Hmm?"
"What are you gonna do about…you know…" Ruby's voice faded, then came back again bravely. "Adam."
Adam.
Yes, he was still alive, wasn't he? He was still a high-ranking member of the unified White Fang, still probably frothing at the mouth over her escape and swearing his eternal vengeance. After having faced down that monstrous Hound and what amounted to the entire might of Atlas, after seeing wave upon wave of Grimm loom in the air as they swarmed Atlas and Mantle both –he really wasn't the threat he had been, back at Beacon, back in Argus. Blake had grown up, grown out of the dependence he had conditioned her into. She'd dealt with bigger threats than him.
"I'm not sure." Blake said honestly. "I…"
She trailed off. Her thoughts spun and danced like leaves in a wind, scattered, unconnected. What would she do? It wasn't like Adam was not a threat, but she also wasn't the scared 17-year-old that had first crept into Beacon, defensively hunched in on herself like a snapping turtle and ready to bite anyone who disturbed her secrecy. Those days were over. Her team had coaxed her out of her shell, and she had learned to stand strong by herself –and perhaps most importantly, to let others stand with her.
She missed Sun. She hoped he would come for the Vytal Festival, and that they could be friends again.
"I don't know." she said. Her thumb rubbed absently over her palm. "I'd…like to deal with him before the festival, but I don't know where he is or how to do that. I don't…"
Didn't think she was capable of killing him, or didn't want to? Adam had pushed her into it before –she'd never killed anyone before him, or at least, not killed anyone deliberately and by her own hand. Falling buildings, explosions, Grimm…maybe humans had died, maybe people had died due to the decisions that she'd made while on missions for the White Fang, but she'd never had to see it before killing Adam. Never had to feel it.
Blake knew, she knew that if she "took care" of Adam, it would have to be his death. If he was arrested, Cinder or her minions would whip up the flames of hatred all throughout the kingdoms, somehow. Racially charged situations like that were delicate at the best of times, and when his allies –he'd probably be allied with them by now, if it meant the White Fang helping Torchwick steal Dust– were already involved with him, they had the power to make it exponentially worse. The best thing Blake could do for him, for anyone, was to kill him.
"I'll deal with him." she said firmly, before the silence went on too long. "Whatever else that happens, I'll deal with him. I can do it."
"You shouldn't have to do it alone." Ruby whispered back, which made tears briefly warm Blake's eyes. She blinked them away quickly, not needing the blurry vision.
"I know." she said hoarsely. "Thank you, Ruby."
Yes, for her team, she could kill –she would kill to protect her friends, her family. Maybe Blake wasn't the starry-eyed girl that she had been on the shores of Menagerie, the girl that would have seen Ruby as a kindred soul, the girl before Adam came…but, well, they didn't need that girl anymore. They had Ruby. Blake could become the person she hadn't had when she was in Ruby's place, the person that could shelter and protect her and allow her to spread that light, that hope, as far as she could. Nothing ever stopped Ruby, nothing ever kept her down, and Blake was going to make sure that that stayed true.
They protected each other. That was how Team RWBY worked.
"Assuming that he comes to Beacon, we'll be ready for him." Blake murmured, closing her eyes to better hear. "I could even lay a false trail, draw him into an ambush…maybe at Mountain Glenn…"
That was something, wasn't it? Had Adam been there, in those tunnels with them? Blake couldn't imagine him being there and not immediately barreling towards her, but then, he was one of the highest-ranked of the Vale chapter, and who else would he have trusted to work with Torchwick? It would be working under Torchwick in everything but name, though, and she knew that'd make Adam gnash his teeth, but again, who else would he trust to perform up to his excruciating standards?
Blake winced as her ears twitched for a reason other than to gather sound. No, call them what they were –restrictions, rules, confinements imposed upon her in order to make her feel small, weak, and useless. Every time she failed to please him, to enact something so minimal as a standard he set, he had more weapons with which to chip away at her self-esteem. Adam deliberately set her up to fail: he was no different with the people around him, always whittling away at their independence and making them feel pleased to rely upon him, to push him up onto the bloody pedestal of corpses he so viscerally desired.
Well, she wouldn't let him push her around anymore. Blake had gotten older, stronger, smarter. If, when Adam met her again, he'd be in for a rude awakening if he thought to control her like he used to.
That didn't mean she wasn't still scared of him on some level. Adam was a powerful, Huntsman-level foe, and even though she had been licensed and working as a Huntress for some little time, she was back in a younger body, and with that body –even though she had just as much muscle mass, even though she had practically the same muscle mass– came a sense of vulnerability. There wasn't a scar on her belly from Adam's blade anymore, her hair wasn't short anymore, she felt weaker.
She wasn't, of course. Just because the physical evidence of her trials had vanished didn't mean that they weren't there, as evidenced by Jaune's unlocked Aura. Aura was the soul, and though they may even be in different bodies, their souls were the same. Blake had still endured everything that had made her strong.
She could feel the familiar prickle of anticipation and anxiety mixed as the hands of the clock twirled in ultra-slow motion, counting out the minutes and hours. Dawn was creeping up on them –they'd passed midnight, and now it was the new day and every minute, every second, brought them closer to initiation, closer to the true first test of their abilities and unity in this strange new –or would that be old?– world.
Ah. Initiation.
"Ruby, you'll have to run out in the morning when everyone's waking up and drop off our weapons in our lockers." she murmured, and Ruby rolled over to look at her.
"Me?"
"Your Semblance lets you dissolve at a molecular level, according to Penny." Blake said, ignoring the tight twist of grief as she thought of their friend. "You can technically drop the weapons right inside the lockers, and you can do it fast enough that any cameras in the locker rooms won't notice anything wrong, especially if you pop up in the center of the room like you're too excited to wait."
Ruby chuckled sheepishly, adjusting her sleeping mask. Blake wondered if she'd forgotten about the cartoonish Beowolf eyes on the front, and shivered a little at the memory of the Hound.
"We need to try and avoid causing any suspicion that we came back." Blake continued. "Maybe it'll be fine if Ozpin finds out, but right now we know that any information he learns won't stop at him. Until we warn him about Watts or take steps to deal with it on our own, we have to act normal."
"Which means we wouldn't have our weapons with us when we went to bed." Ruby sighed. "I guess it didn't matter about us taking them with, because with so many people storing them in the lockers last night it won't matter if the cameras couldn't pick us out specifically."
"Exactly."
"Alright. I'll try to sneak down tomorrow –er, later– while everyone's shuffling off to breakfast." Ruby said, and then brightened. "Save me a stack of pancakes?"
"With obscene amounts of syrup." Blake promised. "And if you're not back in five minutes, we'll come down after you, armed or unarmed. Yang and Jaune can keep their weapons, since he's a supposed rookie and hers collapse down into bracelets."
"Yay for reinforcements." Ruby sighed, and Blake narrowed her eyes at her.
"You're a target now, Ruby." she said softly as the brunette's careless expression immediately crumpled. "As far as we know, you're the only target, aside from Yang, that Neo would be after. Please don't disregard that."
"I'm sorry." Ruby whispered back, her expression contrite. "It's just…its Beacon."
I expect to be safe here. I want to be safe here.
Those thoughts hadn't saved any of them before.
"I know." Blake temporized, and sighed. "We'll have plenty of time to relax our guard once we get a better handle on what's going on."
Ruby gave her an encouraging smile. They spent most of the rest of their shift like that, passing soft-voiced ideas back and forth, tempering each other's idealism and pessimism in equal measure. They might not be proper partners, but they made a good pair. They made sure to stay as quiet as they could, aided by Blake's catlike hearing, but it looked like the staff members keeping watch were as tired as they were –the teachers were mostly here to stop students from having a discreet little tryst in the corners of the auditorium, or prevent attack on the furthest possibility that someone here was a target. After all, Weiss Schnee was attending the school, and if the criminal group was sufficiently ruthless and skilled, Hunter trainees always made for good ransom.
Neopolitan did not show up.
Blake didn't know whether to take that as a good sign or a bad sign, but regardless, she made sure to stay close to Ruby when her shift ended and they had to nudge Yang awake. Yang wiggled closer too, lying protectively alongside her sister's sleeping bag as she pushed some of her voluminous hair under her head as a pillow, improving her direct line of vision.
"Home stretch." she said, eyes flicking over to the clock that she couldn't see in the dark.
"Home stretch." Blake agreed. Ruby was already asleep, the long tension of the night and the subconscious reminder that she was fighting later serving to clothesline the young Huntress into the land of slumber even when she was still tense, still ready for an attack. She had to get sleep while she could, otherwise she would falter in battle. Ruby was trained to know that, even if she didn't quite have the body that she'd had up until a few hours ago.
A few hours ago…
Blake wanted to shiver, to hug herself, but she was trained better than that. Gods, how strange it was that not even a full day ago they were in Atlas, that a mere few hours ago she'd been 19, that she'd been worried about fending off Ironwood's increasingly insane plans and somehow balancing that with Salem and her army, that she'd been worried about Emerald and whether or not she had actually, truly changed sides, that she'd been frantic about all the people down in Atlas and the Vault and the Staff and-
Being back here, in Beacon, was such a disconnect. She kept expecting something horrible to happen, kept expecting some enemy to burst through the walls and attack them all. It felt like she was cut adrift and swirling down a turbulent river without ever hitting rocks, tense and expecting a blow that never came as she was ruthlessly pulled along by a force she couldn't fight. The tension, the anticipation, the dread was almost worse than if something did happen.
"Kinda trippy, huh?" Yang said softly after a few minutes, apparently paralleling her thoughts. "Being back at Beacon."
"I keep expecting someone –something– to attack us." Blake replied, exhaling shortly and trying to bring herself under control. Just because everything in the past few days had been one disaster, one catastrophe after another didn't mean that would be the case now. "Its…disconcerting to think that Cinder and Torchwick are really all we have to deal with right now."
Yang snickered.
"Man, what a world it is when we're "only" dealing with two Hunter-level criminals and their mad scheme to take down a city." she whispered back, grinning ruefully. Blake smiled for a moment, before it drifted away with a sigh.
"Don't you think this is…suspiciously convenient?" she asked, and Yang hummed.
"Not really." she said after a few moments. "Suspiciously convenient would be us being here alone. Suspiciously convenient would be if Cinder keeled over dead the second she stepped into Beacon. Suspiciously convenient would be if everything fixed itself without us having to get our hands dirty."
"This situation can only have a net positive for us." Blake argued. "We're back where we started from, and we know everything we have to in order to change everything bad that happened. If that's the case, why did Ambrosius tell us not to fall? Why did he call it a 'dire warning'?"
"I get it." Yang said, rolling over slightly to look at her. "You're worried. This does seem a lot less, uh, dire than you'd think, falling from a dimension-warping magic abyss and all. Maybe there's just a catch we haven't noticed yet. Or maybe Ambrosius didn't actually know what would happen if we fell, and just assumed it'd be bad. I mean, how often has he done something like this before?"
"Never, one would hope." Blake murmured. The idea was enough to give her a headache.
"Yeah. Well, we're here now and nothing will change that." Yang said with a gusty sigh of her own. "Let's just focus on handling what we can handle."
"Yeah."
There was a long moment of silence, before Blake spoke again.
"Yang-"
"Gimme a time and place, and I'll be there to smash his face in with you, arm or no arm." Yang answered immediately. "Heck, so will Ruby and Weiss, if you give 'em the chance."
Blake closed her eyes and chuckled softly. She didn't even have to ask.
The night passed without incident.
Neopolitan did not arrive.
When dawn broke and the students began to stir, Yang and Blake shook the others awake, and the group huddled together for a quick strategy meeting while the other students were distracted rolling up their sleeping bags and getting ready to face the day. Plans were explained, weapons were handed over, and preparations were made.
Initiation loomed, but Team RWBY (and Jaune) were ready for it.