Pers received Yang and Ruby from the back of the tent. She was fixing something, what looked to be drone of some sort
"Hello, What do you want and if you're selling anything, I don't want it" she said immediately without turning to look at them
Ruby looked at Yang, who just hinted at her to keep going
"Hey. We heard you can … well, fix us some furniture"
"You probably heard well or you probably heard wrong. Did your sofa break or something?"
"We just need to get some furniture and someone at Shade told us you were the right person to get some"
"Huh. Then you heard right"
Pers then finally turns to look at her customers, leaving her tools and drone on the table before stepping forth. She was slightly shorter than Ruby, almost around the same height as Oscar, but sported a dyed purple hair and protective goggles, presumably for welding, all of which contrasted with her darker skin and even darker clothing
"You two aren't from these parts. Vale, right?"
"Yeah"
"Hmm. So you're the girl from that end-of-the-world broadcast right?"
"Yeah, its us"
"And blondie on the left is…"
Yang then stepped forth
"Her older sister"
Pers was about to say something, but then caught on to Yang's robotic arm
"Oh! How did you get one of those?!" she said
"Ironwood sent it to me after Beacon"
"You're one lucky bastard, these haven't even been released yet. So, you said furniture right, umm….End-of-the-world girl? I can't remember your name, sorry"
"It's Ruby and yeah"
Pers vaults over the counter to go towards the left side of the tent
"Hmm. The most "furniture" thing I can offer might as well be survival gear. Sleeping bags, ropes, bags. Here, have this"
Pers immediately hands Ruby some sleeping bags
"Alright. That covers your sleeping and stuff. Anything else?"
Yang steps forth
"Yeah. Something to stash stuff in"
Pers immediately hands Yang a shelf, or at least the parts to it
"There. Should suffice. This all amounts to … a couple thousand Lien" said Pers, heading back
Ruby would pull out her scroll to do the wire transfer payment. It turned out to not be that easy. Due to their defection from Atlas, Ironwood had frozen Ruby's bank account. It was virtually the same as being broke, but way worse, since she now was charged with defection
"So….You guys paying or will you be handing me back my stuff?" said Pers from behind the counter, but then noticed Ruby's scroll
"Wait a minute...Now I know where you both come from"
Pers pulls out a shotgun from beneath the counter and points it at both of them
"Who sent you here?!" asked Pers a bit frantically
Yang prepared her shotgun gauntlets but Ruby held her back
"Nebula sent us here, she told us you could fix us some furniture" said Ruby, strangely calm given the situation. Or at least that was the impression
"Well. Tell Nebula to kiss my ass. I don't sell to fugitives"
"Well, I'm going to serve you something, alright" said Yang
"Oh, like what? A broken leg like that guy on the Vytal Tournament?"
Yang flares up her Semblance and jumps forth, pushing Ruby aside, but Pers shoots a hardcast slug right on the disengage button of Yang's robotic arm, leaving her vulnerable for Pers to throw a punch right on her face and stopping her on her tracks, not before Yang managed to use her other hand to push Pers back a bit, hitting right on her goggles
"That was the warning shot. Now...get out of my store"
Yang reluctantly picks up her robotic arm while Ruby drags her outside
"Ruby, let me go!"
"No, Yang. We can't go back for now"
"I said let go!"
Yang flares up her aura again and breaks loose of Ruby's hand
"Yang...you're not thinking clear right now. Maybe, we can go talk to Theodore and solve this"
"Well, I'm thinking as clear as a crystal right now. And I say we go back there and … sort this out. We need that stuff, we can't have Nora and Oscar just sleeping on the floor, you know?"
"Yeah. I know. But we can't just take stuff by force. We just got here and we don't know anyone other than Nebula or Velvet and if we want a chance at defeating Salem and those caped people, we need these people's trust so we can get their help"
Ruby then pauses and continues
"And it doesn't help one bit that you let your more violent nature take over…"
"What was that?!" Yang yelled at Ruby, clearly angered, now that her eye color had changed
"You heard me, Yang. This is the type of stuff that got us here in the first place. You doing you, being a violent brawler, looking for a fight wherever you go"
"Oh, now I am a violent brawler?! What about you then, Ruby? In case you didn't notice, things haven't exactly worked in our favour. All of this happened because YOU disagreed with Ironwood and because you felt that you needed to get yourself involved in whatever Ozpin is doing against Salem"
Ruby gets noticeable angrier and reaches out for Crescent Rose, as Yang reattaches her arm
"And if I'm honest, all of this happened because of you. You failed at Beacon when you let Pyrrha die and Adam got away"
Ruby pulls out Crescent Rose as she begins walking towards Yang
"You failed at Atlas when we had to bail out at the last minute after Cinder reappeared and took the Lamp to Salem!"
Yang finishes reattaching her arm and prepares her weapons as she walks towards Ruby
"And you failed here, when you got all those civilians killed just to blow the Grimm away. All you have been is an incompetent failure of a leader"
Ruby then screams at Yang and charges at her, Yang prepared to take on Ruby, expecting her to use Crescent Rose to attack
Ruby would swing Crescent Rose at first but then, using an opening on Yang's attack, quickly dodged using her Semblance and struck a punch on her liver. However, Yang also managed to punch Ruby on the center of her chest. Thanks to her experience, Yang recovered rather quickly, but Ruby struggled for a second before recovering
"Well. Yeah. I might have failed. But we did achieve something. We got out of Beacon alive...We managed to fend Cinder off long enough to get those civilians out...and even if that desert thing didn't come out as well as I thought it would…"
Ruby then clutches her fist
"We still prevented greater damage from being done, Yang! If that is being an…"incompetent failure of a leader" then yes, Yang! I'm an incompetent failure of a leader. But I'm still trying to improve that"
Yang jumped right on to try and hit Ruby with her right punch, but she then dodged to the left then slammed her stomach with her knee. She then realized everything
"Alright...I can see where you are getting with this...ouch"
"Yang, are you okay?"
"No, I'm not. Ouch…. You really got better at this" said Yang, recovering from Ruby's knee slam to her stomach
"Come on...We should get back to Shade and tell the others. We can think better together"
Ruby helps Yang get up so to walk as the both get back on their path to Shade
Back in Shade Academy, Weiss was looking out of the window while the sun was setting. It was all looking like an apocalypse yet, the semblance of peace that people projected was unnatural. Nora, Oscar and Penny were all lying unconscious on the floor, while Jaune and Ren had gone out on their own to see if they could find something to stay up-to-date. But that wasn't her concern.
Willow and Whitley were nowhere to be seen. Weiss has been cut off from them ever since they left with Ruby to get the staff. Not at the portals, not at the desert. Weiss hasn't seen Willow nor Whitley and has begun to fear the worse. Did they get stranded at Atlas? or worse, did they get captured by the caped invaders in Atlas?
Someone is knocking at the door. Weiss turns frantically
"Umm. Weiss...Can you open? Its us. We are carrying...a heavy box and really cant open"
Weiss quickly gets to the door and opens. It is Jaune and Ren. Jaune steps in closely, until he suddenly gets trapped between the door frame and the box
"Ahh...Backtrack, Backtrack!" Jaune says, obviously being kind of squished
Ren and Jaune move back out and bring the box
"Okay. What are you guys bringing?" asks Weiss, obviously confused and curious about the box as Jaune and Ren place it next to a wall and enter
"Well. While Ruby and Yang went to that girl that Nebula mentioned, we met up with Coco. She guided us to this woman named Ki...umm...Ren, you say it, I really can't pronounce it correctly" Jaune replied, coughing afterwards
"Kijani. She's a blacksmith here at Vacuo that Coco knows well. We went to Kijani's shop with Coco but... now we have one big debt" said Ren
"What? Debt? Why?" says Weiss, closing the door before a thud preventing her from doing so
"Who is this now?" she asked to the new unexpected visitor
"Ruby. Can you open the door again? Sorry" said Ruby
Ruby came in, carrying Yang on her shoulder
"Oh no. Are you guys okay, what happened?" Weiss asked
"We had a fight…" said Yang, sighing
"Was it with the girl Nebula told you?" asked Weiss
"Not quite. We fought between ourselves" said Ruby
Weiss sighs
"Just put Yang somewhere then tell us what happened, since we apparently have one huge debt out of nowhere" said Weiss as she went to attend Yang
"Wait, so you guys too got caught by Ironwood's stuff?" said Ruby, referring to the asset freezing of before
"Ironwood's stuff?" asked Weiss, a bit perplexed
"Yeah. Apparently Ironwood froze all of our assets. Bank accounts included. Guess its kind of what we get for being on a search list" said Ruby
Everyone turned to look at Ruby
"What?!" everyone yelled at once