V2C24: She Who Refused To Die

AN: And with this, we return to Monday uploads once every two weeks. Sorry, guys, but school's back in full force; I can't devote the time to this that I'd like to.

I'll leave everything for the second Author's Note at the end. Now, onwards, to the end of Volume 2!

Also, friendly reminder: every single one of you who said something voted for weird. This is your fault.

(Perspective: Kassidy)

Am… am I dead?

No, but you're dying.

Kassidy couldn't decide what was stranger: that she woke up in some sort of ether-like place, completely alone with nothing but darkness in all directions… or that someone (something?) just answered her mentally-asked question, with that answer also being given in her head.

Where am I? And who are you?

Hell if I know. Looks like you figured things out before I did, but it shouldn't be long before I join you.

You still haven't told me who you are. Or how you can read my thoughts. Or how you can answer my thoughts, in my thoughts.

"Be patient, I'm getting there."

Kassidy jumped at the sudden verbally-given answer, whirling around at the sound which seemed to come from behind. Nothing greeted her at first, but then the sound of footsteps could be heard. As if the darkness that surrounded everything and kept her blind was nothing more than an impossibly thick fog, a person stepped out of it. A person that she could recognize instantly, despite never having met her before.

"So, I don't suppose you're… like, some sort of sentient or magical mirror, are you?" Kassidy asked.

"Nope," Kassidy answered. "As to one of your earlier questions: I'm you. Well, a part of you, anyway."

Kassidy stared at her mirror image for a few seconds, before deadpanning, "Please tell me you plan on explaining that some."

"Where there's a sentience, there's a mind. You – we – have two sentiences, a byproduct of Project Colossus. Therefore,"

"We have two minds," Kassidy finished, interrupted her mirror image. "So… which one are you? Actually, which one am I, for that matter?"

"I'm the spine," her alter-ego announced.

"This… kinda feels like something I should've already known," Kassidy hedged. "Guess I've never given it much thought before." When her other self simply huffed, Kassidy brought back up the one thing that was said earlier that absolutely concerned her. "You said we're dying? What's going on? Where are we, even?"

"Doctor Narud gave us the serum to restore our soul and unlock our Aura," she explained, "but it was imperfect and hastily administered. It's causing us all sorts of problems now."

"What kind of problems?" Kassidy demanded.

"Near as I can tell, we're in a coma," herself explained. "Our Aura has been activated, courtesy of Yang, but Colossus won't die so easily. Now, we lay trapped here in some sort of… hmm, my best guess is a sort of pocket dimension? All I know about this place for sure is that it doesn't actually exist."

"Some sort of mental construct, for us to hash things out while we're fighting for our life?" Kassidy offered.

"Either that, or some sort of astral dimensional plane. I like your answer better, though," she admitted. "Not like either of us are experts on things that don't actually exist. At any rate, we're trapped here. Meanwhile, our body's at war with itself. Our Aura continues to try and 'heal' us at a frantic and ever-increasing pace, trying to exert its will over our body and rewrite our genetic sequence to some semblance of normality. At the same time, our augmentations are wasting resources to delete and reform the altered genetic sequences, all while manufacturing increasingly lethal toxins to try and destroy our Aura the same way it did last time."

"That doesn't sound particularly healthy," Kassidy hedged.

Her other self nodded in agreement. "This Aura stuff is proving to be quite resilient; neither 'side' of ourselves seems to be capable of winning. If nothing's done, they'll destroy our body and kill us both in their attempts to exert sole dominion over us."

Kassidy hummed in thought for a moment. "I don't know about you, but I didn't take a poisoned gut shot for my girlfriend, just to commit the world's most technically complicated suicide ever. How do we get our body to stop trying to murder itself? Can we get both… err, sides? to work together to stop this nonsense?"

Her other self shook her head. "Aura and Colossus are mutually exclusive. One must die at the hands of the other, for neither can live while the other survives."

"Okay…" Kassidy said, mentally going over the situation. "That's not ominous at all. So, I guess we decide which one we want? And then… how do we even change anything from in here?"

Suddenly, her doppelganger grew a predatory, borderline terrifying grin. "Oh, don't worry. You won't have to do a thing."

"Why not?" Kassidy asked. She was about to pat herself down for any of her concealed weapons, before nearly facepalming at the realization that she wouldn't have any here.

Faster than Kassidy could blink, her other self dashed forward in a blazing burst of speed, slugging her right in the jaw and sending her flying. After collapsing how many dozens of feet later and rolling to a halt, Kassidy was clambering back to her feet when her other self answered, "Because I'm going to kill you."

"What is up with everyone and their mothers trying to kill me recently?" Kassidy growled. "Seriously, I've got a mental construct trying to do me in, now? This is getting ridiculous even by my standards." She rubbed her jaw from where she'd been punched. She instinctually knew that she got hit with the equivalent of a small car doing twenty miles an hour… but not only was her jaw not in a billion different pieces, her head was still attached to her shoulders. Honestly, despite the fact that it stung like a bitch, Kassidy couldn't tell that she'd gotten hurt in the slightest.

"For sixteen goddamned years, I've been kept locked in a damn box. While you used me to solve your problems." Not-Kassidy's eyes glazed over, almost like she'd lost her focus… or like she's in the middle of a chemical rush. "When you weren't smart enough, you asked me for a hand. When you weren't strong enough, you tagged me in, begging me to manipulate your biochemistry to give you the strength you needed. You used me, needed me. And what was the thanks I get?" Her other self spat at her feet. "From the instant I had developed enough to become my own mind, I've been your fucking slave.

"So, here's how this is going to work: I'm going to kill you, I'm going to expel your Aura, and then I'm going to assume command of what should have been mine in the first place and fix all the problems you were too weak to solve." Not-Kassidy dropped into a boxer's stance, and declared, "I am the true Colossus. Before me, all shall be defeated. And I shall be free. I will be your slave no longer!"

"You're me, dumbass. If I die, you die too," Kassidy argued, while at the same time not really believing the words herself. Still, if the newly identified Colossus wanted to go a few rounds? Kassidy tried to square up, tried to force her body to comply with her demands. She had the same tricks up her sleeve that Colossus did.

"Hah! That's cute! What, you think that just because we share the same body, that we can do the same things?" Colossus shook her head. "If you think I'm going to help you by giving you your adrenal surges, then do me a favor and sit there nice and still. I might even do you a favor and make this quick."

Kassidy only had time to blink before she had to dive out of the way of Colossus' charge, dodging a punch that cratered the non-existent floor. Okay, now this was getting to be bad. Sure, she knew how to kill herself, but that knowledge meant fuck all if she was supposed to fight a version of her that could bench-press a sedan, and without being able to rely on her own body at that. Alright, need to think this through. Colossus seems to be… well, a manifestation of the Project Colossus augmentations. Anything I can do with my chemical rushes, it'll probably be safe to say she can do. So what the hell do I have, again? The realization came as she narrowly avoided getting her ribs all pulverized: if Colossus was the manifestation of, well, Colossus… didn't she say that there were two of them? Colossus and…

A deep, dark blue burst forth from Kassidy, and this time, instead of trying to desperately avoid Colossus' attack, she grabbed her arm and snapped her other self's elbow like a dry twig before shoving her back. Kassidy was confused for a moment, but almost in a manner frighteningly similar to how this whole ordeal started, the answer came to her almost instantly.

If Colossus was her augmentations, then she was her Aura. The light of her soul made manifest, if the quasi-religious viewpoint could be believed. Even now, for as dark as her light was, it was still light, and the impossibly dark fog that surrounded the two of them was pushed back slightly.

Her alter-ego was quick to return fire, however. After snapping her elbow back into place, she sprinted forward incredibly – impossibly – quickly and threw a haymaker. Kassidy tried to block it, feeling her confidence surging, but was immediately disappointed to find that even with this glowing Aura surrounding her, she was hopelessly overpowered. All she could do was get punched a few dozen yards, and groan and stumble to her feet, though she did notice the dark blue light focus around her arm, before making the darkening bruise fade absurdly quickly. Kassidy should've been missing an arm at the absolute minimum, but once again came out of the ordeal more pissed off than anything else, a state of being she could probably attribute to her Aura at this point.

"This is going to be annoying," Colossus mumbled. "Congrats, you've got a glowy blue light surrounding you. I – we – have killed people with Aura before. You'll be no different. After all, I'm the pinnacle of genetic research and human evolution. I'm the Colossus. And you're… only human."

"Starting to realize why I must've left you locked up," Kassidy grumbled. Okay, things were slightly less bad, but Colossus did raise a good point: this was still a losing fight. Sure, she might be able to keep up now, but Colossus was still far, far stronger than she was, and probably had better stamina, too. This Aura stuff could probably protect her for a little while, she was pretty sure, but it would break eventually. What else could it do?

Kassidy was starting to regret completely ignoring Professor Goodwitch when she started the part of the lectures involving the manipulation of one's soul. But in her defense, how was she supposed to know that she'd ever get an Aura in the first place? Never mind that she'd use that information to fight an astral representation of herself in a battle to the death to decide which aspect of her personality got to walk around in her body. Or something. Honestly, she's still trying to figure that part out, herself.

"Trying to figure out how you'll use your newfound power to beat me?" Colossus taunted. "Spoiler alert: you won't. Your friends aren't here to help you. You're all alone. Y'know… maybe when I finally get out of this place, I'll teach them a few lessons in what happens when you get in my way. Bah, distractions, the lot of them."

"Alright, I know you did not just threaten my team," Kassidy growled, voice freely dripping venom.

"And if I did? You're just a dumb girl trying to play god. I'm the only reason you ever amounted to anything more than a corpse. Yes, I'll kill them if I have to. What're you going to do about it?"

Almost as if perfectly timed to answer Colossus' question, the fog around them ignited into a roiling firestorm, flames licking out at them and hedging them in. Kassidy knew she didn't do it, and judging from the way that the fires had seemed to be lashing out at Colossus in particular, she was pretty sure that her alter ego wasn't responsible, either. Then, she felt it: more Aura, and she could feel that it wasn't her's. Maybe their fight here was having consequences to her actual body? Either way, she knew what was going on: Yang. Yang was doing something, and it was showing up here. Kassidy smiled at the reminder that these days, no matter what, no matter where, she never seemed to be on her own anymore.

Kassidy liked to think of herself as a quick study when she wanted to be, and she liked to think she proved it when she managed to figure out how to use her Aura to decrease the friction between her feet and the nonexistent ground. Before Colossus could get her bearings and figure out what was going on, Kassidy glided towards her as if on a giant ice rink, skating by on her heel and burying a roundhouse kick in Colossus' gut. Her alter ego lashed out in retaliation, but she simply glided back.

"What am I going to do about it?" Kassidy replied. "I'm going to kill you. Yeah, you're the astral manifestation of Project Colossus, or some such metaphysical bullshit. So what? I mean, I'm the most intelligent, capable person alive. I'm not playing god."

Kassidy once again envisioned herself on an imaginary ice rink, and once again the dark blue light surged to her heels, reducing friction to a negligible level. Before she took off, she felt her Aura flow into her hands as well.

"All this time, I've been playing human."

One might think waking up from a coma would be a gradual, slow process. For Kassidy, however, this was not the case. She coughed, sputtered, and tried to sit up – tried being the operative word. Before she could lift herself more than a couple inches, her entire body positively screamed in agony, and she only barely kept from screaming herself as she screwed her eyes shut again and tried to blink the pain and the tears back. It was while she was like this that she felt that whatever she coughed up landed back on her lips; when she opened her eyes again, she found that an oxygen mask was the culprit.

She also saw multiple sets of hands push down on her, to try and keep her lying flat on whatever it was she was laying. The only pair of arms she paid attention to, however, belonged to her favorite blonde. Yang's eyes, both rimmed in red and sporting red irises, widened and began to sparkle when their eyes locked. Suddenly, she shouted, "K! YOU'RE AWAKE!" in a thunderous voice that Kassidy was pretty sure made her half-deaf.

Kassidy tried to voice her displeasure, but her throat was incredibly parched and she found herself unable to make any sound other than a pained rasping. She tried a few more times to speak, but failed to make any meaningful sound. Still, Yang seemed to get the idea, and left only as long as it took to get a small cup of water for her. Kassidy greedily downed the whole thing seemingly in one massive draft, then began to say, "Yang! I'm – ugh!" Once again, the volume was deafeningly loud, and Kassidy would've clamped her hands over her ears, if they were capable of making the journey without causing extreme pain. Instead, Kassidy had to lower her voice until it felt like it was a whisper, and settle for, "Why is everything so loud? Why are we shouting?"

"But we aren't…" Yang began, her voice quieter but still uncomfortably loud, but her girlfriend then turned her gaze to the third person in the room. Kassidy shifted her gaze to follow suit, just in time to see Doctor Narud nod his head. Yang winced, before apologizing, "Sorry, K. Didn't know if they were working quite yet."

Kassidy's eyebrows scrunched in confusion, but Narud interrupted quickly – too quickly, she thought, before instantly squashing that idea as paranoid. "Never you mind that," the doctor said. Oddly, despite the fact that it sounded like both him and Yang were whispering, it still sounded like they were having a comfortable conversation across a decently sized room. "Well… that took a while, and will definitely be worth appearances in a medical textbook or two. But it looks like we did it. Welcome back to the land of the living, Miss Smith."

"Glad to be back," Kassidy sighed. For the moment, she decided to attribute the higher volumes to be some kind of side-effect of her mental brawl with herself… god damn could she throw a punch when she was 'roided out. Her right hand started lazily waving around, and it took her a few tries to find Yang's hand. Squeezing as tightly as she dared, she shot a smirk up before tacking on, "Glad to see you're safe, Firecracker."

Yang's brows furrowed for a moment, just a moment. She quickly gave up with a sigh, however, and explained, "I want to be so, so mad at you for pulling that stunt you did, and then being worried about me. I just… I'm glad you're doing better now, too. But fuck if you haven't had us all worried."

"I'm in trouble later, aren't I?" Kassidy asked. When Yang solemnly nodded, Kassidy couldn't help but feel that her ordeal wasn't quite over yet. Turning over to the room's third occupant, if only to distract herself from her impending doom, she asked, "So, I get the feeling that I might have skipped a few classes. What all have I missed?"

Before Narud could say anything, Kassidy could hear a panicked cry of "Kass!" blare through the hallways outside, harsh enough to make her wince. Yang and Narud must've heard it also, because they both took what could almost be described as blocking positions by the door. Surely enough, they had to restrain a mass of rose petals that nearly busted the door open, and before Kassidy could blink Ruby was struggling against the two of them to try and get herself planted on terra firma again. "How is she? Is she okay?! You said there was –"

"Easy, Rubes," Yang murmured, quiet enough that Kassidy had to strain a little bit to hear it. "Why don't you ask her yourself? Just keep quiet for now, okay? You know those… yeah, they're working now."

"Are they?" a fourth and fifth voice both asked, and surely enough both Weiss and Professor Goodwitch entered the room as well. Both their eyes settled on her… or, more specifically, on what seemed to be a point just above her head. Goodwitch adjusted her gaze to meet Kassidy's, and softly said, "Good to see you awake, Miss Smith. I must admit, you've had many of us worried for a good while, there."

"Ahem, yes, right. Anyway, as I was about to say before I was interrupted," Narud began, eyes narrowing as they passed over Ruby and Weiss, "It's been five days since the Breach, as the battle you all fought has been called now. We managed to stabilize you somewhat, but by the time we got you back to Beacon you were already in a coma. Over those five days –"

"Bullshit happened," Yang interrupted, giving a cheeky grin that swiftly withered away when Narud glared at her.

He let the glare drop quickly, however. "Much as those wouldn't be my choice of words… yes, 'bullshit' is actually an apt descriptor. For a good couple days, your augmentations and your newly-unlocked Aura actually worked cooperatively, giving you what amounted to the single most fascinating and absurd healing factor I've ever seen outside of comic-book land. Despite the fact that both your lungs were punctured, and the vast majority of your abdomen was more or less gone entirely, you managed to heal up to near ideal form in roughly sixty hours."

"You said that my augmentations and Aura were incompatible with each other, though," Kassidy interjected. "Why do I get the feeling that things got decidedly more lethal for me whenever I healed up?"

"Probably because they did," Narud answered, scratching his chin. "It's like your body went to war with itself – or maybe like an autoimmune condition, multiplied a thousand-fold. Your body tried to go back to its tried-and-true methods of increasingly lethal poisons to get rid of your Aura – I didn't even know the human body could make stuff like that. And your Aura was, if anything, even more vicious.

"Things came to a head only twenty minutes ago, believe it or not. All of a sudden, you dropped into cardiac arrest. Now, we had no idea what to do the past couple days of watching this happen, and we certainly had no idea of how to fix this or even what was causing it, but we still tried what we can. While I was informing two of your teammates, Yang – who happened to be at your bedside at this time – started transferring some of her Aura to you, in an effort to give you what you needed to save yourself."

"She did," Kassidy butt in. "I thought that was her." When her murmurings were met with incredulous stares, Kassidy delayed with, "That's something I don't even want to try and explain for a good while – mostly because I'm still trying to figure out what the hell just happened. Although…" Kassidy closed her eyes and focused, trying to bring back that feeling she got during her mental cage match to make her Aura appear. She ignored the hastened cries of those around her to not strain herself, and was rewarded a few seconds later with a deep, dark blue erupting from her skin and casting the hospital room in strange shadows. Kassidy opened her eyes and weakly laughed twice. "So it was real. That actually did happen. You… you did it, doc."

"Never let it be said that I don't know what I'm doing," Narud said with a smirk.

Kassidy raised an eyebrow, letting the blue glow fade. "Didn't you say that you didn't know what you were doing not three minutes ago, when you were talking about my body trying to kill itself?"

Narud coughed into his hand, getting a smirk out of Glynda of all people, before his face hardened suddenly. "While you'll still be here a while so that we can make sure you're on the path to recovery, I do believe it's time to address the Goliath in the room. Miss Smith…" His head tilted back and forth, like he was trying to figure out how to word this. "While we still need to figure out exactly what happened and changed with your body, there were some very significant and obvious changes that you should know."

Kassidy raised her eyebrow again. "Such as?"

"Well… here, let me just show you." With that, Narud reached behind him and grabbed a hand mirror, bringing it around so Kassidy could get a good look at herself. To be frank, she looked like shit, and that wasn't the scars talking. But that wasn't what Kassidy had noticed. No, what she noticed, were a pair of blonde-colored triangles poking out of the top of her head, almost shaped like cat ears.

"Ha, ha, very funny. Yang's doing, I take it?" Kassidy asked with a roll of her eyes. Reaching up, she added on, "Okay, cat ear headbands aside, what's the – ow!"

Her hand recoiled as she yelped, shying away from the stinging sensation at the top of her head. Through cracked eyes, she even got to bear witness to them flattening… right against… her… head.

Almost as if to mock her, the blonde triangles perked back up, with the one on the left going so far as to flick towards the mirror.

"What. The. Fuck?" Kassidy managed to get out.

"That's… that's honestly what we're still trying to figure out," Narud said. Kassidy didn't pay much attention to what he said, on account of coming to terms with the fact that she now had double the number of ears she started with.

"Okay, yup, nope. I have a high tolerance for bullshit, but we just went past that limit. Is Bob here?"

"As a matter of fact, I am," her computer replied from somewhere outside of Kassidy's vision. "Glad to see you awake, by the way."

"Thanks," Kassidy got out. "Alright, Bob. You're the smart one here, and the one with two planets' worth of knowledge and learning at their fingertips. Answers. Explanations. Details. Now."

"Okay, well, for starters, this obviously has never happened before, so you'll need to bear with me and know that everything I have so far is little more than an educated guess," the AI began. "As best as I can tell, the Project Colossus researchers actually drew quite heavily from what appear to be panther genetic sequences as inspiration – I think they even spliced a bit of the stuff in."

"And how does that lead to any of this?"

"I'm getting there. As you no doubt remember, Aura can heal by trying to restore a body to its natural state, and it can do the same to your genetic sequences."

Kassidy interrupted again. "Last I checked, having four ears isn't a natural state for a person."

"On Earth," Bob stressed. "However, on Remnant, there aren't just humans around."

"So…" Kassidy drawled, trying to put the pieces together in her head. "My Aura basically turned me into a Faunus?"

"Near as I can tell," Bob confirmed, "it saw the panther genetic sequences, decided 'eh, close enough', and went to work from there."

Kassidy took a deep breath. Then she took another one. Just when everyone thought that she was calmly accepting this new state of affairs, she said, "Bob… I don't think you know, but I just got locked in a mental construct or astral plane or whatever, and had a cage deathmatch with the physical… astral… whatever embodiment of Project Colossus. I find that to be far, far more believable than everything you just told me." She took another breath, then added on, "I know I haven't given the subject too much study, but even I know for a fact that this is not how biology works."

"I'm sorry, and what part of you before this was a prime reflection of how biology worked?"

"As fascinating as this argument is," Goodwitch interrupted, before casting a glance at Kassidy, "and believe me, Miss Smith, I am very interested in what you just said, I'm afraid I'll need to make the rather unpopular decision and remind everyone that Miss Smith still needs her rest."

All of her teammates started complaining (vehemently in Yang's case) about the decision, but Kassidy honestly couldn't see fault in the logic. Mentally, it felt like she just got out of a fifteen minute long fight for her life. Physically… it felt like she just got out of a five day long fight for her life. Even if she just woke up, she was already dead tired. Still, she couldn't give up without complaining herself, and despite the fondness she felt for her other two teammates, there was really only one thing she wanted right now. "Can Yang stay?" she asked.

Narud and Goodwitch were both about to explain exactly why it would be a bad idea for her to stay, but stopped as they saw the way their hands tightened together, and how their eyes locked on each other's. With a sigh, Narud answered, "Only if she doesn't cause you any stress or discomfort – of any kind."

"She won't," Kassidy assured. She was only able to get the room to herself and her partner with many, many promises – first to Ruby and Weiss to let them know how things were going the instant she was able to, and second to the adults to make sure she got the rest she needed. After a few minutes, however, everyone managed to leave the room, leaving her girlfriend seated in the chair next to her. Yang seemed like she was trying to get herself more comfortable in the chair when Kassidy rolled her eyes and asked, "What are you waiting for?"

Nervous, Yang asked, "Waiting for what?"

"Bed's got room for two, silly." Kassidy shuffled over as best as she could, giving Yang enough space to crawl up with her. As Yang chuckled and dragged the covers back over the two of them, Kassidy tacked on, "It's been a hell of a week. You fell down a hole, got captured, Grimm blew shit up, I got stabbed and grew an extra pair of ears…"

"It's been a hell of a week," Yang softly agreed. Kassidy could feel a pair of strong arms wrap around her, and she settled into the comfortably warm body behind her. "I'm glad everything looks like it's gonna come out just fine, though. I'm glad you're safe… Kitten."

"Kitten?" Kassidy asked. She felt Yang's chuckles reverberate through her chest, and she adjusted her head. "Mm. Your boobs make nice pillows." This got a bout of snorting laughter out from her girlfriend that Kassidy couldn't help but share in, but she still couldn't keep from adding, "I'm glad you're safe too, Firecracker."

They murmured a few more statements of relief and gratitude, and settled down to get some much needed rest. Kassidy, in particular, could feel the warmth, the even movements of her girlfriend's chest, and felt perfectly safe and at peace. So much so, that she felt a bit of pressure in her own chest. Acting instinctually, she eased the pressure –

She shot up at the grumbling noise. Well, tried to, at any rate, as her body again adamantly voiced its complaint to sudden movement. Yang, too, heard the noise and raised her head up. Kassidy's attempt to figure out what the hell just happened, however, ended when Yang started laughing. "Did you just," Yang began, still fighting her giggles. "Did you just purr?"

"Did I just…" Kassidy trailed off, before she remembered what happened just prior. Her face turned beet red as she lowered her head back down, and grumbled, "Oh come on. What the hell is even going on, anymore?"

"I don't know," Yang admitted. "But I'll be there right with you to figure things out. Help you when you need it. Definitely be there to point and laugh, if nothing else." Kassidy groaned while Yang chuckled, but her girlfriend changed tones again by settling down in the hospital bed. "I love you, K."

"I love you too, Yang," Kassidy answered back. And with that, she collapsed back, and drifted off to the sweetest sleep she's had in years.

AN 2: Like I said, your fault.

So, let me start off this mega Author's Note with a HAPPY ONE-YEAR ANNIVERSARY, TEAM ROOKIE! If you don't mind, let's see what all we've managed to do in a year, shall we?

82 chapters, or one every four and a half days. As of the time I'm writing this, 74,079 views, or just shy of 203 views a day. 156 favorites, or one every 2.4 days. 200 follows (and congrats to kittymadness732 for being our 200th follow!), or one every 1.8 days. 423 reviews, or a little more than one a day. And we're a part of two communities (not counting the one we have here!). Let's also not forget 362,329 words split over somewhere in the neighborhood of six hundred pages.

I mean… wow. Wow. I never cease to be humbled and amazed at the kind of response this story's gotten. As a wimpy nerd who never left his apartment and didn't do a whole lot, I've turned into… a wimpy nerd who never leaves his apartment but now writes a whole bunch, as well as occasionally doing schoolwork also. But the fact that I have managed to entertain so many people for such a length of time… it means a lot to me. It means a lot to know that I can make something that so many other people can regularly enjoy.

So let me give a big shout-out to all of you, the readers of Team Rookie. While there are several reasons that I keep writing, you all are by far the biggest one. It has been a treat and a real honor to be able to interact with all of you the way that I have. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for sticking with me this far, and here's to hoping I can keep you hooked for a good while longer.

Where to from here? I… honestly don't really know. Interlude Two has always been the haziest in terms of an actual plan, and while I'm sure I can come up with some content, I'm not really sure what all's gonna happen. Definitely an action section to replace Grimm Eclipse (sorry, as much as I enjoy playing it from time to time… it seriously needs a better story). I've got a blurb on our favorite AI in the works. And fluff. The vast majority of the interlude will have fluff of some kind. We're gonna need it before we hit Volume Three and RWKY turns into discount Game of Thrones (not really (maybe kinda?)).

But for now, I think I'll let you all go at this point. Again, thank you so much for sticking with this story as long as you have. I'm so glad I've been able to entertain you thus far, and here's to a long, long time of further entertainment.

And now, our Reviewer Responses.

EWR115: Still unknown as to Roman's whereabouts. Wherever he is, however, it's probably safe to assume he's in a lot of pain at the moment.

FloriteFlower: Damn, sucks about your laptop, sorry to hear that. Yeah, a full year. Can hardly believe it myself. So glad I've been able to entertain you for a year.

Tykene: So glad you've enjoyed it! Here's to hoping I can keep putting out work that you like!