Ilex rolled Miss Jwai around in his hands, his maintenance tools and other bracer laid out on the bed before him. He was proud of his weapons of choice, having always liked the idea of having literal tricks up his sleeves. Blades, grappling line, Dust, ignitors, a miniaturized flamethrower and now, after what happened with the Alpha Beowolf, a high-intensity flashlight. With so much and more crammed into such tight packages, keeping them clean and functioning was critical.
For a long time, Ilex found the task of maintaining his bracers to be tedious. There were other things he would have much rather have been doing, and the only reason he'd developed a regular schedule was to avoid being chewed out by Professor Goodwitch anytime one of the mechanisms would seize up in a sparring match. Over time, though, he'd found a sense of catharsis in the act, a way to quiet the gnawing deep within. It didn't work anymore.
No matter how much he tinkered, no matter what he distracted himself with, Ilex was lonely, and he knew it was his own damn fault. Sure, he'd grown up in Atlas and started combat school in Mistral, but that didn't preclude him from making friends in the two semesters he'd been at Beacon. That, he'd screwed up all on his own. With all his flirting and general… sleaziness, he'd only left himself with a handful of people even willing to talk to him: Carmine, for whom "willing" was a stretch; Rhys, for whom "talk" was a stretch; Aspen, who'd disappeared without a trace and seemed intent on ignoring him anyway; and, to an extent, Ruby, who he really only knew through Aspen. None of them could really be counted as a willing acquaintance. Ilex sighed. He didn't know if this was what he deserved, but he wouldn't dispute it if someone told him he did.
While resetting the grappling line's trigger, Ilex's fingers slipped. The small hook shot out, digging into the plaster over the desk and just above Carmine's head. The human stiffened, halfway through manipulating the rods of his own weapon. Flinching, Ilex waited for an inevitable outburst that never came. Instead, Carmine slowly reached up, dug the hook out of the wall, and tossed it back over his shoulder.
"Uh, thanks," Ilex said, slowly reeling the line back onto the bed. "Sorry for interrupting you." Carmine only grunted in response, probably only barely hearing the apology over the music in his headphones. Ilex frowned. Sure, everyone he'd seen or talked to had been in a bit of a funk since Beacon, but he'd have expected that to make Carmine more irritable than ever. Truth be told, they'd barely spent any time in the same room in the last week, and Ilex had gone out of his way to avoid pissing him off. The idea of Carmine just brushing off almost getting hit by Ilex's grappling line was almost laughable. "Hey, is… Is everything alright?"
Carmine didn't stop his work, not even to spare a glance back over his shoulder. "What the hell do you care?"
"No, I just…" Ilex bit down on his tongue. What did he care? Carmine had never liked him, and he'd never liked Carmine. Come the end of the semester, their team would drop out of Beacon and they'd never see each other again. Did the semester's end even matter anymore? The school was going to be out of commission for a while and, at this point, it didn't seem like Aspen was going to be coming back. There was no point in pretending that his and Carmine's status as partners was anything other than a formality. "Never mind. I'm sorry for bothering you."
Ilex carefully wound the grappling line back around its spool, pointedly ignoring Carmine pulling off his headphones and turning to look at him. When the line was fully stowed away, he reseated the hook and activated a sliver of Wind Dust on the housing to pressurize it.
"What are you doing here, Ilex?"
Ilex looked up and slowly raised his bracer. "Maintenance?"
Carmine scowled. "I can see that. I meant, what are you doing here in the hotel? In Vale? I know your family's rich enough to pull strings and bring you back to Atlas, so why haven't you left already?"
Ilex's gaze fell to his lap. Nothing Carmine said had been wrong. He just had a fundamental misunderstanding of Ilex's situation; his parents wanted him in Vale, at Beacon. Nothing would have convinced them to bring him back, not even a terrorist attack. "I wanted to stay," he lied. Well, it wasn't a total lie. There'd always been the chance that Aspen would come back and… something would happen. Good, bad, whatever. Something. Something that would never come.
Carmine stared at him for a few seconds, then scoffed. "Right. You wanted to stay so you could go Grimm-watching, is that it?"
Ilex grimaced. So, Carmine had figured out what he'd been slipping out to do. In his defense, Ilex had also killed some of them, and so was helping keep Beacon clear for reconstruction. It just… wasn't all of them. Setting Miss Jwai aside, he stared down at the mattress. "When was the first time you saw a Grimm?"
Ilex figured Carmine would take it as a rhetorical question, so receiving an actual answer surprised him. "Honestly? I don't remember." Ilex frowned and looked up at his partner, fining him staring at the ground, a far-off look in his eyes. "My father used to take my sister and I out with him to watch my… uncles kill them. Told us that we needed to get used to it because it was going to be our job to hunt monsters some day. First time I saw one up close, though, was on my tenth birthday. My father woke me up before dawn, told me that I was going to be a man before the sun rose. He took me out to the woods and threw me into a pit with a Beowolf and a sword." Carmine's hands were balled into first, and the muscles up the entire length of his arm were flexed tight. "Didn't even have my Aura, and I was barely strong enough to cut into its hide. Killed it, though. All on my own. When it was all over, we had a huge breakfast and presents just like every other birthday before. That was the last time we did that."
Ilex bit his lip. That was… That was a lot to take in. He'd made a few assumptions about Carmine's family life before, but he'd never volunteered even remotely as much on his own. For a moment Ilex thought to ask why Carmine had shared so much but decided he'd pressed his luck far enough. "I'm sorry to hear that. It doesn't sound like you had an easy home life."
Carmine grunted, coming out of his stupor to turn back to the desk "I didn't ask for your pity, and I don't want it either." He didn't deny it, though.
Ilex sighed. "Right. I just didn't really want this to turn into a contest to see who has the most childhood trauma." Carmine paused in his work, but Ilex stopped focusing on him. "I was… I was…" Some sort of block settled on his tongue. What the hell was he doing, forcing himself to relive this for Carmine of all people? The guy hated his guts and couldn't care less about what happened to him when he was a kid. Still, backing out after Carmine had already spilled his own guts didn't feel right.
Ilex took a deep breath. "I was six. My parents brought me to Mistral to meet a supplier because the CEO had a son around my age, maybe a couple years older. Niall. I…" Golden eyes, deep green hair, and cocoa skin; colors Ilex had never before seen brought together so perfectly. "…don't remember much about him. We somehow managed to sneak out of his parents' mansion so we could go play in the forest. I guess that's something he'd done before and, growing up in Atlas, I'd never really seen trees before and was excited." Ilex licked his lips, finding them suddenly dry. "We went too far out and suddenly there's a Beringel roaring at us." A shadowy mass blocking out the sky, hot breath washing over him, the roar of a thousand blizzards. Ilex scrunched his eyes shut, trying to stop his hands from shaking. "I never saw what… I never saw what happened to Niall. I only heard him screaming as I ran. His scream was…" It was the same scream I heard from Aspen the night of the Battle. Ilex shook his head, loosing the thought from his mind. He took another breath to steady himself. "However he died, he died in agony. I somehow managed to get away long enough for the huntsmen acting as security to find me, but… I've been terrified of Grimm ever since."
There. His deepest shame exposed. He wasn't sure if he was expecting to feel a weight lift off his chest, but he didn't exactly feel like crawling into a hole and dying, so there was that. Carmine didn't say anything right away, and Ilex almost wished he would ridicule him or say something derisive. That, at least, would make things feel normal. He knew full well, however, that "normal" had died at Beacon.
"Why tell me this?" Carmine finally asked, still not turning around.
"I guess…" Ilex picked up Miss Jwai and spun it around in his hands. "I guess I wanted you to know that I'm trying. I don't want to be the weak link too terrified of the Grimm to fight them." It was paradoxical, really. For as little as he wanted to be a huntsman and for how unlikely it was they were going to stay together beyond the next few weeks, he really did want to be his best for Team… whatever it was they were.
Carmine snorted, drawing Ilex's attention up. "You idiot." Carmine picked up his weapon again and resumed tinkering. "Everyone's afraid of the Grimm. You're not special."
Ilex stared at the human, dumbfounded, before stifling a laugh. It wasn't quite the same Carmine from before Beacon, but Ilex figured he could live with close enough. "No, of course not," he said once he'd composed himself. "How foolish of me to think that I was."
Carmine's scowl at the jab was practically audible, but Ilex paid it no mind. Everyone, huh? Ilex's eyes drifted to the corner of the room, where a mass of blankets and pillows had been piled together to make a crude nest of sorts. Rooms had been assigned by partners, meaning Rhys had been given a double room to himself. The poor kid hated being alone more than anything, though, and so he'd promptly moved in with Ilex and Carmine. While isolation might've frightened Rhys, Ilex couldn't imagine him ever being afraid of Grimm. Hell, almost being eaten alive hadn't even stopped him from going out to help keep Grimm populations down.
Beside the cushy nest was a large black duffel bag. Ilex's good mood faded. It had been delivered a few days prior, and they hadn't needed to open it to know what was inside. It was very clearly the bag Aspen had collected Grimm bones in. Bones she'd been making armor out of. Sure, they were soulless creatures and the bane of his—and Mankind's—existence, but that was just grisly. No, there was definitely no way Aspen was afraid of Grimm. In fact, Ilex doubted she was afraid of anything at all.
Which left Carmine.
Any other day, Ilex would have laughed off the idea of Carmine admitting being afraid of something, even the Grimm. Sure, it made sense that he would have a "healthy fear" of them, but he wouldn't have said that out loud. Which, to be fair, he hadn't said that explicitly. The implication was enough, though.
Man, today had gotten weird.
Ilex picked up a disposable cloth to wipe some gunk off Miss Jwai when a knock on the door interrupted the silence. He paused to glance at Carmine but, when his partner didn't move, Ilex set his things aside again and hauled himself off the mattress. It wasn't Rhys knocking—it wasn't nearly frantic enough—and it had been days since anyone had come to talk to them about Aspen and Beacon, so he was admittedly curious about who it could be.
He nearly lost his grip on the door when he opened it. "Holy shit. A-Aspen?" Carmine stirred behind Ilex, but he couldn't peel his eyes away from her. She wore the same black hoodie from the first time they'd met and her hair was just as messy, but now she gave off a vastly different energy. Her shoulders sagged, she had faint shadows around her eyes, and she hid her hands in her pockets. Mantis and Tawny were there as well, and they didn't look much better.
Aspen's eyes flicked between Ilex and Carmine, and she opened her mouth to say something. It took her a few starts and stops but, like an octopus from a jar, the word slowly fell out. "Hhheeeyyy."
Behind her, Mantis coughed into his hand. "Mind letting us in?"
"Uh, yeah." Ilex stepped away from the door, casting another glance at Aspen as he turned back into the room. He couldn't tell if he was thrilled or disappointed to see her again. He didn't want to be a huntsman and never had. It hadn't been the end to his career that he'd been planning on, but the Battle of Beacon and Aspen's subsequent absence had promised an end. And yet, there was something compelling about her. She was confident, never questioning herself, and that had pushed him to do things he'd never imagined before her. With that confidence gone, he wondered if he'd ever feel like that again.
Aspen and the two hunters followed Ilex in, Tawny pausing to make sure the door closed behind them. Carmine cast Aspen a wary look from where he stood beside the desk, one which Aspen returned. Carmine acting suspicious of her was nothing new, but Ilex had never seen Aspen acknowledge it in any way. Another reminder that things had changed.
"Where's Rhys?" Mantis asked, stretching his neck out to look around the room, as though Rhys might be hiding somewhere behind the beds. To be fair, he had done that before—multiple times, in fact—but there would be no way Rhys would still be hiding if there was any sign that Aspen had come back.
"He's down at the pool, swimming," Ilex answered, hastily cleaning up his tools. He was pretty much done with his maintenance anyway. He looked over at the hunters. "What's going on? Where have you all been?"
Mantis frowned and sat down on the end of the other bed. "It would be easier if we only had to explain everything once. Do you have a way to get in touch with him?"
"Do we really have to wait?" Ilex asked, throwing his arms out to the sides. "I doubt he'll even care that much." The only answer he got was a glare from Mantis. Leaning against the wall outside the bathroom, Tawny just smirked. "Fine," Ilex said with a sigh. Grabbing his scroll off the bed, he typed out a short message: Aspen's back. "There. Happy?"
"Is he going to get that?" Tawny asked, entering the conversation. "I don't mean because he's deaf, but if he's swimming…"
Ilex shrugged and tossed the scroll to the side again. "I got tired of not being able to get in touch with him, so I bought him a wristband that connects to his scroll. It's waterproof, so he's got no excuse for not getting the message." He crossed his arms. "Now, can you at least tell us why the people investigating Beacon were asking about Aspen?"
The girl in question stiffened, but Mantis ignored the question entirely. "Have you all been keeping up with your studies?" he asked instead.
Ilex exchanged a puzzled look with Carmine. "Uh, not really. No. The school kinda got attacked by terrorists and overrun by Grimm. I figured studying wasn't really a priority."
Mantis had a stupid, smug look on his face. "Reconstruction's coming along from what I've seen, and it sounds like Headmistress Goodwitch is trying to get things back up and running ASAP."
"We're still a team, then?" Carmine asked.
Mantis nodded, prompting a pang of guilt in Ilex's gut. He looked at Aspen and, while it was clear she was already in the know about this, it was impossible to tell what she felt about it.
A pounding on the door ended the exchange. Being the closest, Tawny moved to answer it, only to nearly be bowled over by a panting and sopping wet Rhys. He quickly found Aspen and, arms wide and an even wider grin across his face, leapt toward her.
Rhys yelped as his head jerked back, tail flicking water up between his legs. Suspended off the floor, he growled impotently and flailed about in an effort to free the fistful of hair Tawny had latched onto. After a moment's struggle, she dropped him back to the ground and spun him around. "Dry off," she ordered. Rhys tried to look defiant, but the woman was far more intimidating and he soon scurried into the bathroom to obey.
The room fell silent. Ilex stared at Tawny, mouth agape. Holy hell. The most Tawny had interacted with them before was when she'd been looking for Aspen the night of the Battle. Sure, she'd been a little intense but, aside from then, she'd seemed to be content to stand on the side and let Mantis do the talking. She was, by no means, a large woman, and while Ilex had caught glimpses of her weapon, it still shocked him to see her hold someone her own size up by their hair. He glanced at Aspen. Are all Vacuan women like this?
When Rhys stomped back out of the bathroom, he was noticeably dryer. Water still seeped out of the openings in his wetsuit, but nothing could really be done about that without taking it off completely. A few drops flew out into the room when he thrust his arms out to the sides, an indignant request for Tawny's approval. The woman rolled her eyes and nodded. Arms still out, Rhys spun around to face Aspen once again. He was more cautious in his approach this time, simply walking up to her and wrapping his arms around her. She did nothing to resist the contact, though the look on her face made it clear that she did not entirely enjoy it. Ilex thought to chastise Rhys, but decided to keep his mouth shut. Rhys had missed his partner, plain and simple. There was no need to interrupt their reunion.
When it did end, though, Carmine spoke up. "Great. We're all here. Can you tell us what's going on now?"
Pushing himself off the bed, Mantis waved Rhys further into the room so he could address everyone. The younger Faunus plopped himself onto the bed near Aspen and looked up attentively, thumping his tail on the bed. Mantis watched this behavior for several seconds, perhaps wondering if it would stop soon, before deciding it wouldn't and clearing his throat. "I know there have probably been plenty of rumors about Aspen's whereabouts in the last week, so I'll address those first. After the attack on the festival, Aspen, Tawny, and myself were taken into custody by the Atlesian military. Given Aspen's abilities and the nature of our arrival at the Festival, there were questions of whether we were involved in the attack. To be clear," he said, looking at each of them in turn, "we were not."
Ilex nodded. He'd said as much when he and Aspen had come across Ironwood on the colosseum. Besides that, Ozpin had enrolled her and put her on their team after just one fight. It had been a problematic fight, sure, and maybe she should have been arrested for it, but Ozpin would have arrested her if she was a real threat. It shouldn't have taken them a week to figure that out, so Ilex could only assume there was something else they weren't being told, something that had happened after they'd evacuated. It might've explained Tawny's insistence that night.
"Now," Mantis continued, "Beacon may not be up and running quite yet, but that doesn't mean you get to take a break. Your team was already behind when we were assigned to you, and not just in your studies. You missed your first mission because you were down a member." Ilex wanted to point out that pretty much everyone missed their first mission because Team RWBY drove a train into the city, but Mantis somehow picked him out and stared him down before he could. "That ends today."
Ilex glanced at Carmine, stomach twisting with nervous energy. This was unexpected but would explain why Mantis had been insistent that they all be together. Ilex hoped they wouldn't be killing some giant Grimm or anything like that.
Mantis reached into his coat and pulled a large black scroll, the kind the school staff used. Opening up a file, he turned the scroll around, two faces on its screen. "These are Emerald Sustrai and Mercury Black. I believe you know them already."
Carmine stood up straighter, but it took Ilex longer to put the pieces together. "Oh, shit," he said, pointing at the scroll. "That's the guy Aspen fought!"
Mantis nodded and turned the scroll back toward himself. "They were also involved in the attack on Beacon. The woman who orchestrated the attack was killed during the fighting, and Atlas and Vale are working together to root out the White Fang leadership involved. That leaves us to track down these two."
"Okay, but why, though?" Ilex asked. "Why send a group of students to find them instead of, like, actual trained huntsmen or military?"
Mantis crossed his arms. "Time is of the essence here, and it's already been a week since the attack. We believe they're still in the city and don't want to spook them, so no military and, while you're right that a capable hunter might be able to eventually track them down, Emerald's Semblance allows her to manipulate someone's perception of reality. They need a team for this, and Aspen is uniquely suited to finding them without giving away her position. Aspen?"
All attention turned toward the girl. Almost reluctantly, she stepped away from the wall. "I can sense their Aura," she said slowly, signing for Rhys. "I can sense any Aura. Each one has a unique… texture. The closer I am to a person or the stronger their emotions, the more powerful the sensation."
A dozen questions entered Ilex's mind—not least of which was why they were only learning about her Semblance now—but Rhys leapt up with his own question first: |What does my Aura feel like?|
|Beeswax,| Aspen signed.
Rhys grinned and started feeling around himself. Beeswax, huh? Ilex hummed to himself. Now he was wondering what his Aura felt like, and whether it had something to do with why Aspen was only okay with contact from certain people.
"Keeping things on track," Mantis said before any other questions could be asked, "Your team will be taking point on this." He pulled the black scroll back out and sorted through some of the information. "The government has passed along some potential leads, including known meeting points for the White Fang and warehouses connected to the criminal Roman Torchwick, who also had a hand in the attack. The four of you will move from location to location and—I cannot stress this enough—stay undetected until you find Emerald and Mercury. When you do, you'll move in and apprehend them. Tawny and I will monitor your team from a distance and will assist you if we feel it necessary." He fixed them all with a hard glare, even Aspen. "Again, to make it clear, you are on your own for this mission, so keep it quiet, keep it contained, and don't let it spill out into the streets. People are still on edge from the attack on Beacon, and we don't need them panicking because a group of students got reckless trying to take down a gang of criminals. Any questions?"
Ilex raised a finger. "Uh, yeah. Does all this mean we finally have a team name?"
"Any mission-related questions?"
"That was—"
"Great." Mantis said, ignoring Ilex entirely. "I'm sending the rest of the information to your scrolls now."
Sure enough, Ilex's scroll pinged to let him know he had a notification. When he opened it up and saw their team name included, he couldn't help rolling his eyes. Of course they were going to be one of those teams. Carmine didn't have much of a reaction to the information, but Rhys responded much more enthusiastically. Bouncing with excitement, he held up a hand to Aspen for a high-five, one she returned after a moment's confusion. Mantis watched all this with a smile on his face before slipping the black scroll back into his jacket.
"Get your gear together, Team GREI. You've got a mission."
And so, Team GREI joins Teams RWBY, CRDL, and SSSN in the Hall of Teams Named After Their Leaders. Shout out to Recycler for pointing out that super-obvious name to me when we were trying to figure it out.
On a more serious note, we got some more insight into Ilex and Carmine's lives and why they act the way they do. Speaking of, when Ilex said he wasn't planning on comparing childhood trauma, that was 100% me speaking through the characters. Carmine kinda did his own thing this chapter apart from what I'd planned, so it was interesting to see where that went.
Anyway, I think that's enough talking, both from me and in the story. I promise, next chapter will have some action. 'Til then. Au revoir!
