"Blake calm down they're fine they're literally dragons they'll be fine stop panicking there's nO NEED TO PANIC–"
"You're more panicked then me!" Blake barked in response to Weiss's frantic state.
Upon returning to the clearing, Ruby and Yang seemed to have vanished. "How long were we gone?" Weiss asked, scanning the area for any sign of them.
"No more than 20 minutes, I'm sure.." Blake replied. Weiss noticed her bow twitching. She must have been listening intently to try and see if Ruby and Yang were still in the area, a smart idea. But sadly, even Blake's cat ears couldn't find them. It was as if they had never been there in the first place.
Weiss sat down on the grass. This was quite the puzzle.. Why would they just up and leave? With what had been going on lately, both those girl had enough sense not to hide in the bushes to leap out to scare their girlfriends. And if they'd had to run off because of an intruder in the clearing, surly they'd have gone straight to Weiss and Blake to warn them, right? Right?
"Do we just.. Go back to the inn?" Weiss said in a confused tone, to no one in particular.
Blake furrowed her brow and scoffed. "They're around, they're SOMEWHERE." She stared up at what little of the sky she could see between the foliage of the redwood sized trees. "They must've went dragon again, and took a flying break. Yeah. Yeah that's it." Blake didn't seem to sure of her own words, but Weiss sensed she was trying to calm down the situation. That was nice of her.
"How long so you think it'd take us to die here if we just waited for them? Three days? Maybe two if a pack of rabid animals showed up?" Weiss sighed as she spoke.
"Be quiet." Blake said.
"I was just wondering–"
"No, be quiet, I think I hear something.." Blake faced her palm at Weiss in a shoving motion.
Weiss shut her mouth. And listened. She didn't hear anything odd.. Actually, she didn't hear anything at all except her and Blake's breathing. That, that was a good thing! That meant the animals in the area still sensed dragon! But, where were they then? And wh–
[[WEISSSSSSS!]]
Weiss had started to stand up, but doubled over when that ear shattering voice invaded her head. "Ow! Volume!" She yelped.
Blake gave her an odd look, but Weiss ignored it. How did telepathy work again? Could Weiss think her thoughts back to Ruby? Or did she have to reply verbally, like she usually did? [[Finally! It's so hard to aim from this high up..]] Ruby said. Weiss turned her head to the sky. She couldn't see where Ruby was, but she let out a breath of relief knowing she was in the same vicinity at least. [[It's just, there are people nearby? I don't think they're bad, if they are me and Yang will destroy them. But uh we panicked. And flew into the trees. Sorry.. I tried to tell you as soon as you stepped in, but, it's hard to aim my thoughts from up here.]]
Weiss had so many questions. What did she mean by 'people'? How many people? Was Yang right next to her? Were they gonna come down soon? How had their chat gone? Did they make up? They were on the verge of tears when Weiss saw them left, she wanted an update on that situation! Weiss glanced up at Blake, and saw her expression making a variety of interesting changes. Yang must've got in touch with her.
"Oh, hey!" A voice sounded from behind Weiss. She immediately whipped around to pinpoint its source, her hand zipping to her sword. The person in question raised their hands in surrender. "Whoa! Hey, hey its me!"
Nora.
Weiss kept her hand on her sword. Nora put down her hands, and rested one on her hip, cocking her head with a warm smile. "You're pretty jumpy, you know that?"
"So I've heard..." Weiss mumbled.
"What are you doing so far out into the forest alone at a time like this? It'll be dark soon." A note of worry crept into Nora's voice.
Alone? But what about Bla– ...That little sneak! Weiss's eyes darted around, but Blake was nowhere to be seen. She must have instinctively fled at the first sense of Nora's presence. Weiss couldn't blame her, but still, that stung a little...
"You're alone too." Weiss sheathed her sword.
"No I'm not, Rens right there!" Nora pointed back at the trees. A hand poked out of the brush and waved. Ren stepped out a second later.
"I didn't want to interrupt." He said.
"Aw, feel free to next time! More friends around is always nice!" Nora smiled and took hold of his hand. Ren gave a stoic nod, but Weiss could tell he was happy. "Are you on a quest?" Nora turned her attention back to Weiss "You really shouldn't do those alone.."
"No, no, I'm just–" hanging out with my dragon friends in the woods "–taking an evening stroll." Weiss avoided looking Nora in the eyes.
Nora raised an eyebrow. "And you got this far, huh?" She shook her head. "Me and Ren were following the compass again, it suddenly flared up a little while ago. But maybe that was you?" Nora squinted at Weiss suspiciously. "It flared up the day before yesterday too, a bit after you left. I went by your inn room the next morning to ask about the flares, though you were to busy running to get my message."
Since the compass used the magic signature of dragon scales, Weiss could assume it 'flared up' whenever a nearby dragon went from human to dragon form. That would make a sudden burst in data for it to collect. But, Nora said it happened the day before yesterday. Ruby didn't do that yesterday. And, Yang was at the inn all night, and hadn't gone dragon until just today. Was there another dragon around? Or perhaps Weiss was overthinking it. Maybe Ruby's sudden switch off of her weird semi dragon form had messed up the compass. Yeah. Yeah that was it. There wouldn't be another dragon around. There couldn't be.
"Hello? Earth to Weiss?" Nora stepped close to Weiss and poked her nose. Weiss made a tiny high pitched yelp, causing Nora to giggle.
"You really ARE jumpy." Nora smiled. "And don't think for a second I'm buying the 'evening stroll' thing." Nora thought for a moment, and then gasped. "Are you going to turn into a dragon? Can I see? How does it happen? Does it hurt?"
"I, I already told you I'm not a dragon!" Weiss raised her hands in front of her in mock surrender.
Nora was about to prod more, but at that very moment, something fell and smacked into the ground right in between the two girls, scaring them both. Actually, it wasn't someTHING. It was someONE. Ruby. Ruby now laid in between Weiss and Nora, having face planted into the ground below. She groaned softly.
"...Oh my god are you alright?!" Nora was first to react. Ruby lifted a hand and gave a thumbs up, face still firmly placed against the floor.
Weiss stared at the fallen Ruby. Was this, a good time to introduce her to Nora..? Hey Nora, this is my girlfriend, who just survived a fall from a half mile tall tree~! ...as if. Weiss's mind raced, but she couldn't come up with a good excuse as to how Ruby would have survived that fall.
Ruby popped her head up, and covered her nose. It was bleeding. She tried to hide it, but it was obvious due to the red seeping out of her fingers. "Hallo!" Ruby said, her voice muffled by her stuffy nose.
Nora blinked. "...hi." She shook her head and re-brought up her smiling hyper upbeat face. "Are you a dragon?"
Ruby must not have been expecting that question, because her answer was about as bad as it could be. "whhhuhhh iiii doh! doh! doh dragods here! I'm humad, completely, uh, dormal humad! I like sleeping in beds and eating things with metal sticks!" She panicked.
Nora's mouth dropped open in awe. "Oh my god you ARE!"
Weiss was confused. Wasn't the hatred of dragons a, universal thing? Nora was excited to be in the presence of a 'dragon'. Was it only royalty that feared dragons so much? Because all the 'the princess has been kidnapped by a dragon' stories? Or perhaps Nora was just weird.. Yeah, there's no way all those fearful gazes Ruby had gotten when she'd saved Weiss in that first town they went to were just a localized thing. Duh. Everyone hated dragons. Nora was just weird.
Well to be fair, if Nora was weird for liking dragons, Weiss was double weird for DATING one...
"Even if I WAS a dragon, which I'm not, I couldn't tell you because people hate dragons!" Ruby tried to give an excuse, refusing to make eye contact with Nora as she stood up. Oh, it seemed her broken nose had healed mid sentence. Huh.
Nora nodded, playing along with Ruby. "Oh of course, I wouldn't DREAM of pressuring you in to changing your form right here. It hurts a lot to change, doesn't it?" Wait was she–
"Hurt? No it doesn't. It's just a poof–" Ruby covered her mouth and gave Nora a wide eyed glance.
Nora grinned. "I'd make a great con-woman~!"
Ruby started backing away ever so slightly. "If uh if i was a dragon you wouldn't tell anyone right?"
Nora smiled "Of course not! Every dragon we've met has been the same, so worried about us telling people and just wanting to live in peace."
Wait WHAT "Is it, really that easy to meet dragons?" Weiss barged into the conversation.
Nora made a half squint "Ehh, it helps when you have a tracking compass, so I'm not sure if we're a fair example."
"Why don't you,,, hate them? Everyone hates dragons! Even I did before!" Weiss couldn't help but spill the words out of her mouth before her brain had time to process them.
Nora shrugged. "I've never personally seen a dragon attack anything other than a castle. The only places they ever 'attack' seems to be directly royalty doesn't it? And I mean, anyone who attacks a corrupt kingdom can't be ALL bad, right? At least I think so." Nora tilted her head. "Everyone keeps telling stories about how dragons ravage villages, but no matter how many people I ask, no one has ever been attacked by a dragon unless they were in the line of fire pointing at a castle. Seriously, think of all the attacks you know about. They're all by-products of attacking a castle! So I'm thinking, either lots of dragons are royalty hating maniacs, or, they just really hate castles."
"Hmm, castles ARE infuriating.. To many walls, makes me want to knock them all down. What kinda place needs 7 walls?" Ruby said to herself.
Weiss stayed silent. Blake had said Yang's fire didn't burn when Yang didn't want it to. If there was no malice, there was no need to hurt. And, the fire that Weiss herself and Ruby had caused seemed to have had no living casualty's. But there were ALWAYS burned victims in the dragon attacks in atlas. The nearby villages, the castle itself, once in a while a dragon would go insane and start trying to rip away at their defenses. Burned victims, every time. What would make a dragon so angry, that they'd go on such a murderous rampage like that? It couldn't just be that they hated royalty as a whole, or that castle walls were annoying. No, there had to be something else. ...It was as if Weiss was trying to assemble a puzzle, but she didn't have all the pieces to complete it.
[[...Hey Weiss. Uh. What should we do? Knock her out?]] Yang's voice broke Weiss out of her train of thought. Weiss shot a glare at the trees. She wasn't sure where Yang was, but, the general concencianse was that she was up there somewhere.
Nora noticed Weiss looking around, and tilted her head. "Something up there?" She asked.
"No, no. Just spacing out." Weiss shook her head.
Nora swayed on her feet silently for a moment, and then asked a question. "Do you, wanna head back with us?"
"We, we uh, have something to do.. Out, here... Finish our walk, Yeah...!" Weiss tried to give an excuse.
Nora wasn't buying it. But, Ren got the message, and tapped Nora's shoulder to let her know they should leave. Nora's eyes were glued to Ruby as Ren pulled her out of the clearing.
Weiss breathed a huge sigh of relief when they were gone. "Well THAT was stressful."
Ruby lowered her head and apologized rapidfire. "I'm SO sorry I didn't mean to fall I just wanted to get closer to talk with you but the branch snapped and I fell and she SAW me oh no she's not gonna tell anyone is she oh my gosh i–"
"Ruby!" Weiss barked. Ruby stopped speaking, and looked Weiss in the eyes shyly. "Its ok. We couldn't have known she'd be here."
Yang hopped down next to Weiss, landing cleanly on her feet. Blake seemed to materialize behind Ruby out of thin air, but Weiss could assume she'd jumped down quietly as well. Blake and Yang had played it a little smarter than Ruby, and jumped from low branches, not ones a hundred feet directly above Weiss as Ruby had.
"Yeah ok we're definitely leaving tomorrow. Hell, even I'VE never handled a 'we know you're a dragon' that badly!" Yang winced at Ruby.
"Are you guys ok? Did you talk it out?" Weiss asked, immediately going back to her previous demeanor.
Yang blinked "Huh? Oh! Yeah, yeah we talked. We've always been close, but, even close people have secrets sometimes. We're cool now."
Ruby nodded. "I'm still sad she didn't tell me, but, I think I might have kept it secret too if we'd just been reunited after 2 years and the first thing Yang did was expose our dragon secret to some random stranger." Ruby rubbed the back of her head. "Sorry about that.."
Weiss laughed a little to herself. Ah, how stressful that must have been for Yang, to immediately have her secret exposed the second her sister hugged her for the first time in two years.
Blake coughed to draw attention to herself. "We never did test the blanket thing."
...Ah
She was right. That was their entire reason for coming here today, and they hadn't even done that. And now they couldn't even use this clearing, because Nora knew where it was! Great.. And if they left now, they'd just barely make it back in time to get back into the city gates before they closed for the night..!
After some panicked running, by a hair's breadth they made it. Finally inside the walls, panting, Yang made a suggestion. "How about.. Huf, how, how about we DON'T do that again.. Hhhhh..."
The walk back to the inn was peaceful. Yang and Blake chatted, with Ruby piping in at random moments. Weiss had had her full of adventure and stress for the day, so she stayed silent, lest she be included in their weird little arguments about which foods stuck to walls best. As they were walking, they passed a board with human bounty posters stuck to it. A normal thing in a large city, many wanted men and women. They all looked pretty scraggly. Weiss would have ignored it, but a splash of color caught her eye. Red? She stopped, and took a closer look. Hm...?
A wanted poster with Ruby's face shrouded by her red hood stared back at her.