Happy New Year!

And woo, surprise chapter for everyone to enjoy ^.^ It's short, I know, but I literally just went through my list of chapte3rs, picked one at random and tried to finish it, and the one I picked was this one.

Chapter 2

"Thank you so much Aureo."

Peeking over, Six watched Aureo and her...'father' talking with a frown hidden behind her crimson hair. The word still felt wrong. Everything about this entire situation was just so wrong. She ignored Charlie's attempts to get her attention, her mind working away to figure out what the hell had happened.

She knew she'd been shot. She also knew from the fact she'd coughed up blood that the shot had penetrated her armour and gone through one of her lungs, perhaps shrapnel had shredded both her lungs. Whatever the case, she knew she was going to die. And yet, she most certainly wasn't dead.

Raising a hand, she felt for her aura, her...'soul' as Rena had put it, watching it shimmer with a red tint over her skin as a protective shield, a cloak against the world. According to Charlie, it was basically a cool forcefield that stopped 'Gwimm' from hurting people. How exactly her soul was capable of such a feat she had no idea, but since she was the fish-out-of-water here, she rolled with it.

It was also responsible for healing her injuries, though Aureo had remarked that hers must have burned brighter than most when Rena unlocked it, since she shouldn't have survived her wounds. Perhaps the original Summer who lived on this world before Six took over was originally meant to die, but instead, Six's soul took over her body or something? She always was tenacious, constantly getting back up despite being knocked on her ass more times than she could count travelling the Mojave, so maybe where the original Summer died, she survived?

Shaking her head, she lowered her hand again. Those sorts of questions wouldn't get her anywhere. She knew her father planned to enrol her in a school called Signal, all to get her to learn how to control her aura, since it apparently made her practically a dinner-bell for Grimm, and not the cool shotgun type, more the 'Come eat me!' type, literally.

It certainly explained why only a very select few had their auras unlocked, turning every person into a beacon for Grimm was a very bad idea. She'd gotten a crash-course in general subjects like what the Grimm actually were, how humanity now lived mostly in four large cities, though there were villages much like the one she was currently inhabiting, things of that nature.

A whistling sound caught her ears, though not her regular ones. Reaching up hesitantly, she ran a thumb over the top of one ear. Apparently, her mother was a 'Faunus', a species which had animal traits. To put it simply, they were blessed with certain features. Her own was a pair of fox ears, they gave her greatly enhanced hearing, far better than regular human hearing.

Of course, that also came with downsides, like high-pitched whistles inaudible to human hearing being able to agitate her, but the benefits seemed to outweigh the negatives. She twitched her ears around to locate the sound, peering in that direction. After a few moments, a large aircraft came into view, though it was still quite far away. She opened her mouth to tell her father she could see the 'Bullhead', but then amended her words, father was still too uncomfortable. "Rena, I can see the Bullhead."

He turned and looked at her with a frown, then looked up and across the horizon, spotting the aircraft after a few moments. He didn't make mention of how she'd addressed him, but Six could already tell that he wasn't happy to be called by his name. Well, sucked to be him, she'd call him father when, or even if, she ever felt comfortable doing so.

She didn't even remember her actual father thanks to Benny shooting her in the head, but it still just wasn't something she was comfortable saying yet. When Charlie tried to jump up and wrap his arms around her neck, presumably for a hug, she side-stepped him, though stuck an arm out and caught him so he wouldn't fall to the floor.

Hey, she might not like physical contact that much, but she wasn't heartless.

The Bullhead ride to Vale was quiet, interspersed by Rena's attempts at conversations.

It was clear he had absolutely no idea how to handle her, since in his mind Six was overlapping with what Summer used to be. She, of course, had no idea how Summer used to act, nor would she bother trying just to placate the man. She was busy making her Aura jump from one hand to another.

It was honestly...amazing feeling, almost like a warm fuzziness under her skin, but one she could move at will. If she bunched it all up in her hands, it was like wearing a power-fist, the feeling you could punch anybody you wanted without care. When she asked, which Rena took the opportunity to respond happily, he explained that Aura was usually a lot less amicable to being moved around, but that presumably because she could so clearly feel the difference between 'what little she knew' and how she was now, she was able to grasp her Aura far easier than somebody who was used to feeling their Aura.

It was during this that he accidentally mentioned semblances, which was a whole other bag of tricks Six really didn't feel comfortable dealing with. Apparently, thanks to the fact Aura was a manifestation of a person's soul, their Semblance was an ability gained which reflected the person in some fashion. There were exceptions, the Schnee family had a hereditary semblance, one passed down from parent to child, which made no real sense to her, but she rolled with it.

Rena apparently had never unlocked his, perhaps due to bad luck or simply lacking enough of a deflectable attribute for a Semblance to manifest. Her mother didn't have a semblance, though Rena explained that she also didn't have an unlocked aura, thanks to the fact she lived in Mistral.

That was one thing that pissed Six off something fierce, the Kingdom names were the same as the names of the Capitals. That meant you had to specify as to the 'City of Vale' versus 'Kingdom of Vale', which was just so unnecessary. But it wasn't that important, what was more important was...school. That sounded...interesting. She'd read a few holotapes which referenced stuff like classrooms, stuff like that, but the closest she'd ever come to attending a school was raiding the Goodsprings schoolhouse for loot, since there were a few books in there she had leafed through on her travels.

On one hand, it was probably her best, most efficient way to learn about the world she was now in. On the other hand, it probably involved a bunch of other snot-nosed brats around her current physical age, 13 according to Rena, which she didn't know if she'd be able to put up with, especially not for the four years it'd take to reach Beacon age.

That, on the other hand, sounded awesome. Beacon was supposed to be a fairly exclusive school if Rena was to be believed, only taking in the top of the classes from combat schools, the others going to lesser-known Academies in the other kingdoms, or simply staying on at Signal for their advanced classes. She already knew she wanted to get in, if only so she could say she did it.

Her life in the Mojave was dominated by challenges, so why not kick this one off with a bang?

As they flew over Vale, Six would never admit it, but her jaw dropped.

It was massive! The Strip, heck, she doubted even the entire NCR would be able to fill the space inside of those walls! "It's certainly impressive, huh Sum?" She didn't take her face away from the window, her eyes darting around as she looked at, well...everything. There were bullheads flying around, and on the streets a bunch of cars drove around.

She knew a few of the richest Brahmin barons in the NCR had working cars, but the amount driving below them blew those cars out of the water. And the people! On every street people walked around, nary a weapon in sight. Even on the Strip itself, everyone at least carried a .22, unless they had a bodyguard that was. But people here, they didn't have even a single weapon.

Brushing her hand by her hip, she tapped the hilt of the short-sword Rena had given her. Apparently that was her weapon, what she'd trained with during their travels. it was...nice, she supposed, but not quite what she wanted from a weapon. She was used to using Super Sledges, Service Rifles and other weapons like that. She'd used a machete every so often when the mood took her, but for the most part hadn't really used bladed weapons.

She would have been happy to at least have a single-action as a sidearm so she could dual-wield, but that was a no-go, apparently she wasn't allowed a ranged weapon until she hit 16, which was bullshit. She didn't say anything, but she already began making plans to at least cobble together a pipe pistol she could use, just something to give her a ranged edge over her opponents.

Considering everybody had Aura anyway, it wasn't like she was at risk of killing someone. Or at least, everyone in combat school. If she was ever disadvantaged, pulling a .38 and firing a shot or two to make her attacker break off sounded like a solid idea. Sure, it'd piss Rena off something fierce, but that didn't matter, not if she wanted to win her fights.

The Bullhead pulled a turn at that moment, making her stomach do a flip as it banked for a landing. "Come on Summer, let's go." Rena stood up, extending a hand for her to take. She looked at his hand, at him, then hopped up from her seat and walked off the Bullhead. Even if she wasn't so uncomfortable about her whole situation, she was 13, she wouldn't hold anyone's hand, biological father or otherwise.

Maybe the old Summer would have, but she was not the old Summer, she was Six. She did feel a little bad that she had essentially just stolen the body of Rena's daughter, but sometimes things just happened, there was no point dwelling on it or trying to be a good daughter, not when she wasn't that kind of person. Now if she was being paid to be his daughter, she'd at least give it a shot, but she had no incentive to even bother, so in her eyes, the effort just wasn't worth it.

Six then had to wait somewhat impatiently as Rena followed her off the bullhead then started to head through the school, giving away that he'd been there before from the way he knew with too much confidence which way to go. After only a few turns and one set of stairs, they had arrived at the headmaster's office, with Rena giving a brief knock on the door before entering, Six following in behind and giving the room a quick scan.

There was a set of pistols on a shelf, though from the fact they were attached to metal rods and clearly just on display told her either they were old weapons that the owner didn't use, the headmaster was a collector of old crap, or he had symbolically hung up his weapons to train the next generation. The man himself definitely lent credence to that third option, since unlike Rena, who still had a toned and fit physique, the man was definitely putting some weight on and spending more time in a chair than was healthy. Not so much that he was fat, the man definitely looked like he could still hold his own, but he wasn't in anything approaching peak physical condition. "Ahh, Rena, a pleasure to see you back in these esteemed halls. I heard about what happened, and you have my sincerest condolences."

Listening as the pair conversed, Six frowned, though she neatly hid it behind her hair. Four years with a man who was biologically her father, learning to fight 'Grimm', literal incarnations of negative emotions with a level of bloodlust that would apparently make a deathclaw squirm. Honestly, she wasn't too sure that she'd be able to handle such a...normal-sounding life.

Ever since Victor had dragged her to Mitchell to get her braincase put back together, it had been one action-packed event after another. From battling Powder Gangers in Goodsprings to wiping out a group of bandits in Primm, then to Nipton, Novac and beyond, fighting her way through New Vegas and not really stopping until she had won. The NCR and Legion were chased off, and nominally New Vegas was hers, not that it meant anything to be holding what was basically a wreck at that point. "Lien for your thoughts?"

Blinking, Six shook her head. "Just thinking about what I want to do. I get that I need to learn to protect myself from the Grimm, but I don't know if hunting Grimm is what I want to devote my life to." Rena and the headmaster looked at each other for a moment, prompting her to frown and look away. "What if I wanted to open a bar or a bakery or something instead? Since I'd be in Vale it would be as safe as anywhere else anyway."

The headmaster spoke, which surprised her as she expected Rena to be the one who would convince her, he was a Huntsman after all and likely wanted to know she would have the best training. "Young Summer, you have a prodigious level of aura, and, well, if I may share a secret with you?" Blinking, Six waited patiently for him to begin anyways, smirking as he sighed in defeat. "You have silver eyes. That is an exceptional trait, one that has widely been believed to be linked to great warriors, ones the Grimm fear devoutly."

Glancing at Rena, Six noted with interest that while uncomfortable, he didn't seem surprised by what the headmaster said. "You know about this?" Her father simply gave her a nod. "Right. So, silver eyes are 'believed' to be some kinda special trait that usually results in said silver eyes being great warriors against the Grimm. Guess what they say about silver being the bane of evil is correct then."

"How about this. You are already enrolling in the academy, that much is set in stone, an untrained aura user, especially one with as much aura as you possess, could be dangerous to both herself and those around her, and as such you must be trained in using it appropriately. However, I would also like to give you a chance to hone your skills against the Grimm, to see exactly how capable you are of fighting them. Perhaps once you come face-to-face with a Grimm, you might feel a desire to hunt them." Six tilted her head to the side, then grinned as she realised what the headmaster had accidentally implied.

"I'll be sure to hunt them like a good little animal."

That was honestly a complete accident at the end there, alluding to 'animalistic instincts'.

Sorry this took ages to come out, anyone who knows me knows my attention span can be measured in seconds and minutes usually.