AN: Hey guys. Sorry this took a little longer, but I had to wrap up the end of the semester and stuff. We're actually heading into the final stretch of Volume 1, which I am super excited about.

I actually want to go over something that I've been meaning to clarify about some of Aqua's abilities, specifically about her Curaga spell. It is not an all-powerful magical heal that can treat all wounds. In order to avoid making it too overpowered, it will have some restrictions. Basically, it will heal any injury that the human body can naturally recover from, but do it instantly. It will close wounds and stop bleeding, it will reset broken bones, and it will cure fatigue, but it can't fix something that your body can't naturally recover from. For example, it someone loses a limb, it will close the wound on the stump, but the limb will still be gone. It can't heal nerve damage, since nerve cells don't regenerate, it can't cure scar tissue, so wounds healed with Curaga will still leave a scar behind, and it can't heal burns.

I just kept forgetting to clarify this.

Anyway, on with the chapter! Enjoy!

Chapter 28

With a bright flash, Team RWBY and Aqua found themselves back in the familiar territory of the RWBY dorm room. The light coming in through the window told them that it must have been morning. As soon as they were sure that they were back home, Weiss and Blake instantly collapsed to their knees. Whether it was from exhaustion or relief, Aqua couldn't tell. Probably a little bit of both. Just to be on the safe side, Aqua cast a Curaga over the whole room, so any lingering fatigue should have been solved. Weiss and Blake tensed up as the spell was cast.

"Magical healing," Aqua said to the girls when they looked up at her questioningly.

"Of course you can do that," Weiss said. "Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why heal us now? We're safe."

"Well, it looks like it's morning, so we were gone all night without any sleep. I figured you were exhausted. Especially after all that fighting. Plus, you probably wouldn't be able to get to sleep anyway with all the questions you have. I figured I'd heal you up, explain things, and then let you skip today so you can get some sleep."

"…Thanks," Blake said.

"You know, I don't even think you told us the whole story of your adventure before you came to Remnant," Ruby said.

"Yeah, why didn't you tell us Terra was such a hottie?" Yang asked.

"Yang!" the rest of the group yelled at her. She just shrugged like it was the most natural thing in the world to say.

"So, how much of the story do you want to hear?" Aqua asked.

"…Please, start at the beginning," Weiss said. Aqua took a deep breath.

"The beginning, then. Well, my earliest memories are of training in the Land of Departure with Terra and Master Eraqus."

"Eraqus?" Weiss asked. "That was your old last name."

"Yeah, I didn't actually have a last name before coming here, but since I needed one, I just used his name. He was the closest thing I had to a father, and he and Terra were the only family I ever knew."

"So, you don't remember your parents?" Blake asked. Aqua shook her head.

"It was just the three of us. Until a few years ago, when another Keyblade Master came to our world with his apprentice." Aqua's fists unconsciously clenched at remembering the day Ven came.

And who brought him…

"Who were they?" Ruby asked.

"The apprentice was Ven…" Aqua said. "…And his Master was Xehanort." The girls gasped, as even Blake and Weiss, who weren't as familiar with what evil that man had done, had still gotten a glimpse. "When they arrived, Ven had no memories, and Xehanort left him with us. We were told it was a training accident, but it was actually because Xehanort had ripped his heart in two."

"But why would he do that?" Ruby asked, shocked.

"Remember when we were with Mickey, and I said that Xehanort tried to summon Kingdom Hearts by sacrificing Ven? That was his first attempt. When it failed, he left Ven with us and decided to wait a few years before trying again. That day that he brought Ven was the first time I had met either of them. Ven became very close with Terra and me. He was a few years younger than us, so he basically became like our little brother. We didn't really think much about Xehanort after that, and just kept training like normal. That was, until Terra and I were chosen to take our Mark of Mastery Exam, with Xehanort visiting so he could watch…"

"…And after diving after Terra, I sent him back to the Realm of Light, and woke up in a Forest on Patch," Aqua finished her story, being met with silence from the girls. Ruby had started crying towards the end of the story when she learned that Ven had been taken over by Vanitas and his heart had been lost, and she was bawling by the time she learned what happened to Terra. She was being held by Yang, who wasn't doing as good of a job keeping it together as she thought she was. Blake was stoic as ever, but Aqua could tell that she was being affected by the story.

Mostly because Weiss was clinging to her and bawling her eyes out.

"It's just not fair!" the white-haired heiress cried, with Blake awkwardly patting her head.

"Why?!" Ruby cried. "Why did he have to be so evil?! What did you ever do to him?!"

"Some people just do bad things," Blake said.

"And honestly, things got better for me almost immediately," Aqua said in an attempt to cheer the girls up. "After all, Yang was the one that found me in the forest. It's where I met Ruby and Qrow, too."

"Qrow is your husband, right?" Blake asked.

"Yes."

"W-was it love at first sight?" Weiss asked, sniffling, possibly inspired by how many times that happened in the worlds she visited.

"No," Aqua answered bluntly. "Honestly, when I first met him, I thought he was an irresponsible drunk."

"Until you met Dad," Yang muttered bitterly.

"Yeah. Anyway, the day I met them was also the day Ruby awakened to her Keyblade. I stayed to train her, and we all became a family pretty quickly. Qrow and I started dating two years after we met, and we got married a year ago."

"So I take it Branwen was his last name?" Blake asked.

"Yes. I believe Weiss already pointed out that Branwen is the name of a Mistralian bandit tribe. His twin sister is the leader of the tribe, but Qrow left after he graduated from Beacon. I've actually only ever met Raven once, and that was when she kidnapped Ruby for her Keyblade."

"What?!" Weiss yelled.

"It's true, she did," Yang said through grit teeth. "And the worst part about this is that Raven is the woman that gave birth to me."

"What?" Both Blake and Weiss asked this time.

"Ruby and Yang have different mothers," Aqua explained. "Raven was Yang's, and Ruby's was named Summer."

"Well, we can guess what happened to Raven, and I'm assuming Summer is…" Blake said.

"…Yeah," Ruby said sadly.

"When Raven took Ruby, I awakened my Semblance when I went to go rescue her," Aqua said. "It's entirely a coincidence that my Semblance happens to look like the Schnee Family's. I wasn't even born on Remnant." Weiss looked down at the floor for a few seconds before bowing deeply.

"I'm so sorry," she practically whispered. She flinched when Aqua placed a hand on her shoulder.

"It's fine," Aqua said.

Just then, the door to their room shattered.

"ALRIGHT, WHO'S IN HERE?!" Nora yelled, brandishing her hammer. "AND WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH…" she blinked at seeing Team RWBY and Aqua pointing their weapons at her. "Girls? Professor?" she asked.

"NORA!" Weiss screamed. "WHAT IN THE WORLD ARE YOU DOING?!"

"It's really you," the ginger said quietly, lowering her hammer. "Guys! It's Team RWBY!" She shouted out the door. "The professor's with them!"

"Really? It's them?" Jaune asked, poking his head in. "Oh, I'm so glad to see you!"

"Yes, we were really worried," Pyrrha said, also stepping into the room.

"Why were you so worried?" Ruby asked. "What's going on?"

"Ruby, you've all been gone for two weeks," Jaune said. "You just disappeared."

…

"WHAT?!"

"Well, while I'm glad to see you all are safe, I do have to ask what exactly happened to you," Ozpin said to the four girls and one professor standing in front of him. "When you all suddenly vanished two weeks ago, I feared something terrible had happened."

"We're sorry we vanished like that, Professor," Ruby said. "We didn't really have a choice in the matter."

"Well, wording it like that makes me think you were kidnapped," he said.

"Not exactly," Aqua said, rubbing the back of her head. "It's actually related to what I told you when we first met."

"About other worlds?"

"Wait, Professor Ozpin knows?" Yang asked.

"He kind of tricked me into revealing it to him," Aqua said.

"'Tricked' is such a malicious word," Ozpin said playfully. "I would rather you refer to it as 'deducing it'. But anyway, I take it to mean that you left Remnant?"

"We did," Aqua answered. "I'm not sure how, but we were sent away from Remnant."

"Did you visit another world?"

"Not exactly. We were in the Realm of Darkness and the remains of worlds that the Heartless swallowed up."

"Where we met a two-foot-tall talking mouse with a Keyblade and helped him lock a giant door," Weiss said nonchalantly.

"…I'm sorry?" Ozpin asked.

"We met n old friend of mine named Mickey Mouse. He's a Keyblade wielder like me, and like Weiss said, he's a two-foot tall talking mouse."

"…Is he a mouse Faunus, but just very short?"

"No, he's just a mouse."

"…The outside world sounds like a very interesting place," Ozpin said. "To be honest, since your disappearance occurred just after that business with Mister Winchester, we had actually begun to fear that his father had something to do with it. I see now that is not the case, but I must ask how you left Remnant? And what took you so long?"

"We actually don't know that," Aqua reported. "A portal just appeared in Team RWBY's dorm room and swallowed all of us up. We don't know where it came from, or even if it was a person at all that summoned it. And we didn't know we had been gone that long, either."

"Yeah, for us it felt like only a few hours," Ruby said.

"Fascinating, if a bit troubling," Ozpin said. "From this, I think we can assume that time flows differently in the Realm of Darkness than it does here. But that leaves the question of where that portal came from? And could another one appear?"

"Honestly, I don't know," Aqua said.

"I suppose we'll just have to keep an eye out in the future if we don't know what caused it," Ozpin said. "In regards to where you've been, I suppose you will just have to say you were all on a special assignment from me, and we are sworn to total secrecy."

"Will that work?" Blake asked.

"It will have to do."

"Thanks, professor," Ruby said.

"Don't thank me just yet. You have two weeks' worth of work to catch up on." The shoulders of all four girls slumped. "You are dismissed. I will have Glynda send you your work later on today."

"Ruby, I need to tell you something," Aqua said after they left the headmaster's office.

"What's up?"

"Do you remember that I hid Ven back in the Land of Departure and used my Keyblade to transform it?"

"Yeah."

"If anything happens to me, I need you to make sure you recover my Keyblade."

"What?" Ruby asked, shocked. "Mom, don't talk like that!"

"Relax, I'm not planning on going anywhere anytime soon, but I need to start preparing just in case. If anything happens to me, it'll be up to you to wake Ven up, and you'll need my Keyblade specifically to do it."

"But where would I find him?" she asked.

"I transform the Land of Departure into a castle. He's hidden in the very top. The castle is special. As you climb up its floors, it erases your memories until any intruders forget why they were there in the first place. When Remnant is returned to the Realm of Light, I'm sure Master Yen Sid would notice. He might show up in person, or he might send Mickey or Sora to come investigate. Just tell them what I just told you, and they'll be able to help you find it."

"Okay," Ruby said sadly. "I'll do it. But don't make me have to."

"I won't," Aqua said with a smile, pulling Ruby in for a hug.

"Okay, I have a feeling this is going to be a problem," Yang said, standing in front of the absolute mountain of papers in front of them.

"How did we miss this much work?" Ruby asked.

"It is the end of the semester," Weiss said. "It makes sense we have a lot of work to make up. Beside, this doesn't look like that much."

"What about that one?" Blake asked, pointing to another, identical mountain of papers on the other side of the room. Ruby started crying, while Weiss made a small sobbing noise, and Yang grabbed her hair in anger.

"Oh, you've gotta be kidding me!" the blonde yelled. "There's no way we can get all of this done!"

"We're going to have to," Weiss pointed out sadly.

"I vote we rest today, and start it over the weekend," Blake said.

"I second that," Ruby said.

"Me too," Yang chimed in.

"Wait, it's Friday," Weiss commented, pulling out her scroll. "I vote we go to Vale."

"Why?" Yang asked.

"Because, they should be setting up for the Vytal Tournament today!" Weiss said excitedly. "Let's go!"

The other three teammates looked at each other, and then nodded.

Blake had to admit that seeing Vale all done up for the upcoming Vytal Festival was a treat, even if the actual event itself was still months away. There were streamers, balloons, and signs welcoming the tourists to the Kingdom. It was a pretty rare sight, all things considered.

Even rarer was seeing her partner so excited.

"Oh, the Vytal Festival!" Weiss said happily. "This is absolutely wonderful!"

"I don't think I've ever seen you smile this much, Weiss," Ruby said. "It's kinda weirding me out."

"How could you not smile?" Weiss said to their leader. "A festival dedicated to the cultures of the world! There will be dances! Parades! A tournament! Oh, the amount of planning and organization that goes into this event is simply breathtaking!"

"You really know how to take a good thing and make it sound boring," Yang commented.

"Quiet you!"

Blake's nose perked up at the delectable smell of fresh fish, letting her know that they were near the docks.

"You know, when I agreed to take a day off before we did our homework, a trip to the docks wasn't what I had in mind," Yang said.

"Ugh, they smell like fish," Ruby complained, holding her nose.

Yes, they did. Wasn't it wonderful?

"I've heard that students visiting from Vacuo will be arriving by ship today," Weiss said. "And, as a representative of Beacon, I feel it is my solemn duty to welcome them to this fine kingdom."

"Translation: You want to spy on the competition," Blake said.

"You can't prove that!" Weiss said quickly.

Blake kept up a joking tone with her partner, but deep down, she couldn't help but feel guilty. Ruby, Yang, and their mother had shared literally world-shattering revelations with them, and here Blake was, still too scared to tell them that she was actually a Faunus. She didn't even have the excuse anymore of thinking that Weiss was racist, since she joined the rest of their friends in defending Velvet from Cardin.

Soon, she told herself. She'd tell them soon and hope for the best.

"Whoa…" Ruby's voice took her out of her musings. She drew her team's attention down the street, where they saw a storefront with a broken window and smashed-in door. Yellow caution tape surrounded the area, and there were still two police officers on the scene. The team cautiously approached them.

"What happened here?" Ruby asked the officer out front, a slightly portly man with a mustache.

"Robbery," he answered. "Second Dust shop to be hit this week. This place is turning into a jungle."

"That's terrible," Yang said with a sigh.

"They left all the money again," his partner commented, drawing Ruby's attention.

"Yeah, just doesn't make a lick of sense," the first officer said. "Who needs that much Dust?"

"I don't know, an army?"

"You thinking the White Fang?"

"Yeah, I'm thinking we don't get paid enough."

"The White Fang," Weiss said, her voice oozing with venom. "What an awful bunch of degenerates."

Blake's eye twitched.

"What's your problem?"

Ruby and Yang could only watch uncomfortably as Weiss and Blake's fight continued well into the night after they returned to their dorm, any thoughts of making up their schoolwork having been long forgotten. For some reason, as soon as Weiss brought up the White Fang, Blake immediately got defensive, and started arguing with her. They were briefly distracted with chasing down that monkey Faunus (as ill-timed as it was), and then that weird Penny girl, but then Weiss decided to start comparing the boy to the White Fang, starting the argument back up again.

Now, Ruby really didn't agree with Weiss's assertion that the boy was the same as the White Fang just because he happened to break law while Faunus, but she couldn't get a word in edgewise.

Besides, Blake was covering all those bases, but the sisters just couldn't figure out why the black-haired girl was jumping to the White Fang's defense. It was one thing to call Weiss out for prejudice, but the White Fang were terrorists.

…Weren't they?

"I don't understand why this is causing such a problem!" Weiss yelled.

"That is the problem!" Blake yelled back.

"You realize that you're defending an organization that hates Humanity, don't you? The Faunus of the White Fang are pure evil!"

"There's no such thing as pure evil!" Blake yelled in Weiss's face. "Why do you think they hate Humanity so much? It's because of people like Cardin, people like you, that forced the White Fang to turn violent!"

"People like me?" Weiss asked, supremely offended at being compared to Cardin.

"You're a racist!" Blake yelled, as if it was obvious.

"I'm a victim!" Weiss defended.

"How?! In what way are you possibly the victim here?!"

"The White Fang has been at war with my family for years," Weiss said, her voice lower, but the anger no less present. "War, as in actual bloodshed. My grandfather's company has had a target painted across its back for as long as I can remember. And ever since I was a child, I've watched family friends disappear. Board members executed. Entire train cars full of Dust, stolen. And every day, my father would come home furious. And that made for a very difficult childhood."

"Weiss, I—" Ruby said to try to comfort her. That really was a terrible thing for a child to have to live through.

"No!" Weiss yelled, rejecting Ruby's comfort. "You want to know why I despise the White Fang? Why I don't trust the Faunus? It's because they're a bunch of liars, thieves, and murderers!"

"Don't act like your family is blameless!" Blake yelled.

"What do you mean?!"

"Why the hell do you think the White Fang have targeted your family, Weiss?! It's not for no reason! Your father has used and abused Faunus for years, and it was time somebody fought back! And it's not just him! Humanity has treated the Faunus like they were the dirt beneath their feet for as long as anyone can remember!"

"What are you saying?" Weiss asked, narrowing her eyes.

"I'm saying that if we had been treated with some god damn respect from the beginning, we wouldn't have needed the White Fang!"

Silence fell over the room. Everyone in the room had heard the same thing.

Blake said "we". Why did she say that?

Blake clearly realized what she had said, too, as her eyes widened in shock and she bolted out the door.

"Blake, wait!" Ruby called after her. "Come back!" She followed her out the hallway, but Blake was already gone. She stepped back into the room, to see Yang glaring at Weiss.

Blake ran all the way to Beacon's main courtyard, standing in front of the statue of a Huntsman and Huntress posing victoriously over a Beowolf. She couldn't believe she had done that. She let herself get so worked up over Weiss that she…

She sadly reached her hands up to the bow on her head and unraveled it, letting her cat ears free.

What had she done? She might have blown her biggest chance for redemption just because she let some spoiled brat get to her. A noise behind her make her jump, reaching her hand for the handle for Gambol Shroud.

"I knew you'd look better without the bow."

So, this was more of a transition, as I was able to show a little bit of Aqua explaining things to the team, and tie it into the events of the Stray. I decided to alter the dialogue a little bit for Weiss and Blake's fight, as I always found Blake's lines in particular a little cringey, same with the fact that she never pointed out that the SDC is notoriously terrible to its Faunus employees. Weiss gave off the impression that she thought the White Fang, and Faunus in general, hated her so much for no reason. That hatred didn't form in a vacuum, and Blake missed the opportunity to point that out.

I also need to ask, why exactly do the rest of Team RWBY wait for two days before looking for Blake? She runs away on Friday night, and they don't go looking and apparently don't even talk about what happened until Monday? Why?

Now, I also need to address a review left by a guest by the name of Dyna-Man 21. I will not be able to incorporate your idea into Volume 1 for obvious reasons, but if I use it, I will have to alter things. Specifically, the fact that Aqua would not share with Pyrrha what happened to Ruby back at Signal. It's Ruby's story to tell, not hers. But I do like the idea, and might incorporate it in Volume 2.

So, next time, we'll be wrapping up Volume 1, and we will see a certain someone again. Hope you guys like it!

As always, thank you guys for reading, and I'll see you all next time!