The Grey Freelancer of Remnant

Chapter Six

"Recovering One"

To Headmaster Ozpin, From Councilman Julius Aurelius:

Dear Headmaster, James Ironwood has proven to be a stalwart ally in these trying times. His men have proven most useful in curtailing the criminal epidemic that has been sweeping over Vale as of late. The most grievous example of which would be the recent incident on the highway. Most interestingly, it seems a clue to our UNSC investigation was found among the wreckage; the pieces of a rifle completely foreign to Remnant in its design, but matching quite nicely with the specimens found on the crashed ship. However, it seems this one was modified for the use of a huntsman, with dust-powered rounds and transformation mechanisms still plain to see, even if most of them had been destroyed. Surely you have nothing to do with this troubling revelation, my dear Headmaster?

They were screwed. Royally and utterly screwed. Or at least they would be if anyone found out that Wash was not, in fact, sick, but rather lying wounded in his dormitory, swathed in bandages and basking in the green glow of his healing unit, which Ruby had been kind enough to repair during her last mechanics class while his body, and aura, recovered.

How they had not been found out was still beyond Wash though. Their flight back to Beacon had been... tense, to say the least. The main source of that tension, he had no doubt, was his unconscious form slumped against Yang's shoulder as they made their ascent in the last Bullhead heading out of Vale. Weiss had had to pay the pilot to see that he made a quick stop at Beacon before heading on his way, a fact which she was reminding them of to no end. But even worse than Weiss' complaints was Ruby's constant fussing.

It reminded him of mission early in his time at Freelancer when he'd been shot in the chest and rammed with a warthog. Luckily, Maine had been there to flip the warthog on its side and snap the neck of the offending gunman, and York's healing unit had kept him stable n the flight back to the Mother of Invention, but it had been Carolina, his team leader, who'd stopped by every day to make sure he was okay. Things had been different then, simpler; they had all believed that what they were doing was right, and each one of them would have laid their life down for any other, or at least so they thought. But that had been before. Before Maine's injury, before the ... before a mysterious agent in black showed up and upended everything.

With not much else to do, he found himself thinking of the past a lot. The healing unit was good, but fully repairing major injuries would take some time, and none of his teammates had even the slightest bit of medical training so here he was, with nothing else to do but think. And assure Ruby that his injury was not, in fact, her fault, but that was besides the point.

"Hey, Wash," a familiar voice roused him from his thoughts. It seemed Ruby and Pyrrha had found some time between classes to come and visit him.

As soon as they'd made it back to their dorm, they'd all sworn to keep what had transpired down in Vale secret, so naturally Team JNPR knew within the hour. In fairness, that was mostly Jaune's fault, as he bumbled through the door with a guitar to ask Weiss to the dance, but nonetheless...

"Hey, guys," Wash replied.

He remembered how horrified Pyrrha had looked when she'd first seen him. And, bleeding from a massive gash on the chest and covered in myriad cuts and bruises, it wasn't hard to see why. But she was here now, looking so very like Carolina...

"How are you feeling?" she asked.

"My chest doesn't burn quite as bad and I have full feeling in all my extremities, so, all in all... not bad."

Pyrrha giggled but Ruby seemed as though she was about to cry. "I'm so sorry!" she suddenly burst out, flinging herself at Wash and giving him her tightest hug.

Wash couldn't suppress the yelp of pain that went out at his wound was irritated and Ruby quickly backed off as though she'd been struck. "How many times do I need to tell you, it's not your fault. You weren't even there," Wash assured her.

"That's the problem!" Ruby exclaimed, "I should have been there, I should have been with my teammate, I should have kept you safe."

Wash grimaced. "You can't control everything, Ruby, and this... this isn't on you. Blame The Me- the man who did this to me, blame Torchwick or the White Fang, but not yourself."

"The man who did this... Ruby told me you've met before," said Pyrrha.

"The docks," Wash responded, with a grimace as his wound flared up in pain. "We fought at the docks."

"He tore through all of us," Ruby added. "He was massive, and wearing this white armor like nothing I've ever seen." Ruby had an encyclopedic knowledge of weapons and armor from all across Remnant; clearly it perturbed her greatly that she didn't recognize either of The Meta's, almost as much as it irked her that that one person had torn through he entire team and then some.

"How are South and Cadell?" Wash asked them, quickly diverting from subjects that could become... uncomfortable.

"Fine, but Ash knows something's up," answered Ruby, "Cadell says he's been questioning them almost non-stop since they got back. Apparently he was awake when they got back to their dorm."

That wasn't good. Wash only knew Team ASCH's leader in passing, but seemed like the type that wouldn't hesitate to report someone for violating the rules, and they had violated just about every rule they could, plus a few extra.

"Well... what are we going to do?" Asked Wash. here was, after all no other question to ask.

But Ruby had no answer for him, neither did Pyrrha.

Wash let out an indignant huff. "I'm losing my mind just lying here," he confessed.

Suddenly, Ruby turned stern. "No! You are staying put until your wound is all healed up!"

Pyrrha seemed shocked at Ruby's sudden mood shift, almost as shocked as Washington. "It's bad enoguh that you got hurt," she continued, "but all those innocent people... they didn't sign up to robots and scary criminals, but they got hurt anyway!"

"Sometimes, there's collateral damage," Wash said sorrowfully. "It can't always be helped..."

"No!" the red-clad huntress exclaimed again, "we're huntsmen! It's our duty to protect the weak but... is it our fault? Did we cause that, that chaos on the highway?"

"Ruby..."

Suddenly, she bolted back through the door from whence she'd come, pushing past Pyrrha with a shuddering sob that Wash could see she had fought with every ounce of her being to keep in. He sat up to follow her, but let out a small cry of pain a lance of white hot agony pulsed through him again. Pyrrha was by his side instantly. She gingerly sat down beside him and put a hand on his arm. "Are you okay?" she asked worriedly.

"I need... to speak with her!" Wash managed, through gritted teeth.

"You need to rest," she insisted.

Wash let out a groan as he fell back into his bunk. "I feel like everything is happening all at once. My team is scattered, we're suspected of not only breaking the rules, but criminal activity, and I have a fifteen year-old team leader who hangs the deaths of dozens of civilians on her shoulders. Weiss and Yang are trying to play it cool but their acting is worse then... well, you wouldn't know him. And who the hell even knows where Blake is? And what am I doing while my team is in peril? Sitting here, doing nothing."

Wash turned to see Pyrrha's emerald eyes blinking back at him. "Sorry," he hastily corrected, "that was a lot."

"Oh, no, don't be sorry," Pyrrha hurriedly assured him, "it's alright. I understand what you mean."

"Your just... easy to talk to, I guess," Wash mumbled on.

"I've actually been told I'm something of a wallflower," confessed the champion of Mnstral.

"You? No way. You're smart, quick-witted, and the best fighter in the school," Wash was in disbelief.

"It's kind of you to say that, but I'm also a champion of tournaments, a mascot of cereals, I've been on the cover of magazines and the people I go to school with know that. Well, most of them do," she gave him a quick smile. "When you live your life on a pedestal, everyone thinks that you're too good for them, that they'd never have a chance at anything with me. No one ever sees me as a person, a fellow student, someone to approach; I'm just some unattainable miracle girl. It makes making friends a bit more difficult than you might think."

"Oh."

'Oh, I'm sorry. You're wounded and I'm dumping all my problems on you, I'm sorry," she shot up to her feet in a panic.

Wash gave a low chuckle. "No, no, by all means. Heh, now you're starting to sound like me."

"You're easy to talk to too," Pyrrha admitted, echoing Wash as an embarrassed flush crept up her neck.

Just then, the door slammed open and Yang burst in. "Wash!" she exclaimed, "we need your cooking, stat!"

"Do you really think that'll help Ruby?"

"What? Ruby? I'm talking about Blake," responded a befuddled Yang. Only then did she seem to register that Pyrrha was there. When she saw the champion in training knelt down beside her teammates bedside, hands intertwined, a mischievous spread over her features. "Wait, what's going on here?"

Pyrrha snatched her hand away as though she'd been burnt. "Nothing!" she responded, too quickly.

Before Yang could continue, Wash interjected. "What's going on with Blake?" He slowly got up to his feet, stretching out his back and shoulders, which had gone from doing far too little for far too long.

"Uh, are you sure that's wise?" Pyrrha asked concernedly.

'I've had worse," Wash brushed off her concern.

Yang raised an eyebrow disbelievingly. "Really? You've had worse than that?"

Wash grimaced. "You have no idea."

When Blake returned to the dorm, she found three of her teammates waiting for her. They were sat on their bunks and ll staring directly at her. "What is this?" she asked, fearing she already knew.

"A friendtervention!" declared Yang, trying to lift the mood. But, when she saw her teammates all turn and give a sour look, she rescinded. "Alright, misread that one," she conceded.

"We're worried about you Blake," Weiss said, much more seriously.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, to be frank, look at you," responded Weiss.

"Excuse me?"

"What she's trying to say is, you're looking worse for wear," Yang salvaged, "a lot worse for wear."

It was true. There were pits beneath her eyes and her hair was as unruly and messy and any of them had ever seen it.

"You barely sleep, and you hardly eat," Weiss went on. "That's not healthy. And, quite frankly, your grades have been slipping too."

"You think I care about grades!" exclaimed Blake. "There are people, dangerous people, out there. People's lives are at stake! Wash almost died! And some people did die!"

Ruby turned away ashamedly, but no one seemed to notice.

"We know," Yang assured her. "And we're all still trying to figure out what Torchwick is up to. Thanks to you and Sun, we know their operating around southeast Vale"

"And the Schnee company records singled out Vale as the primary target of dust robberies over the last few months," added Weiss.

"Don't forget about the missing military tech too," Yang reminded them.

"But there's still so much we don't know!" protested Blake.

"Blake... you won't be able to find anything if you can barely stay awake," Yang told her. "All we're asking is that you take it easy for one night."

"Wait... what do you mean?"

"We... think you should come to the dance," Ruby told her, speaking up for the first time.

"What!" exclaimed Blake.

"It'l be fun," Weiss assured her.

"Fun?" Blake seemed dubious.

"Yes, Yang and I will make sure of it," Weiss promised.

"We're planning the whole event!" Yang said, bubbling with excitement.

"When did this happen?"

"Team CFVY's mission went longer then expected, so we've stepped up," Weiss informed her.

"Speaking of missing..." Blake had not failed to note the absence of one of her teammates. "Where's Wash? Isn't he supposed to be bedridden?"

Just then, as if summoned by his name, Wash burst though the door, a grey apron with the words, "the world's okayest chef," written on it in yellow over his chest, and a plate of simmering cod paired with mashed potatoes and boiled asparagus.

"What. The-"

"I made you some food," explained Wash.

Blake's expression hardened. "Are you trying to bribe me with fish?" she demanded

"Uh, is it working?" Blake scowled. Wash pivoted. "Uh, it wasn't my idea."

Blake turned on Yang, immediately knowing whose it was. Yang smiled in response and gave her a mocking wave.

"So, uh, what do you think?" Wash asked her, proudly brandishing his savory platter.

Blake stood up. "I think this has been a colossal waste of time," she decided, before turning on her heels and storming out of the room. As she closed the door behind her, she turned and said, "I'll be in the library," before disappearing off on her own once again. As the door closed, the only sound left in the room was the sizzling of Wash's meal.

To be Continued...

(A/N: Sorry I didn't leave an author's note at the end of the previous chapter, I was really trying to get that one out quick, once I got back on it, that is. I cannot apologize enough for the hiatus of late and make no excuses, but I'm back now, and better than ever. I can't wait to continue this story, nor can I wait for you all to see it. All the best now.)