Big Issues
AN: A quick shout out to merendinoemiliano for their encouraging review, as short as it was. I'm glad you're enjoying this twist on RWBY.
Emotions Run Rampant Part 1
Another sparing class with Professor Glynda Goodwitch and once again when Pyrrha Nikos fought, she won. There were a few who could give her a challenge but not everyone had their shot against the Mistralian Champion yet. Today's fight had been Pyrrha going solo against team CRDL and they could barely touch her in spite of the fact that she was now at least equal in weight to Cardin Winchester. There were more than a few in the audience who winced when Sky had been knocked to the arena floor only to have roughly two hundred and fifty pounds of Pyrrha- without armor- landing on his back... in heels.
Then again, Dove was taken out by Cardin not looking or caring where he swung his mace and Russel was clotheslined by Pyrrha's spear. The finally of the spartan knocking the team leader high into the air with repeated attacks before grabbing the boy and slamming his head and shoulders into the arena floor, then kicking him in the head when he bounced up while performing a back flip to catch her sword and shield as they fell.
Overall, she made it look easy to defeat the all-male team, perhaps not as easy as Denko had done earlier where he never even used his weapon to defeat them. But it was a victory none the less.
"And that's the match." Glynda announces as Cardin managed to rise to his knees and one hand as his right arm held his ribs in pain.
"Ugh, Lucky shot." The large team leader groans before falling onto his side, all but passing out.
The teacher looks at the boy with little concern as there were no visible wounds since his aura broke. "Well done Miss Nikos. You should have no problem qualifying for the tournament.
"Thank you, Professor." Pyrrha smiles as she stands tall but with controlled pride. She had plenty to be proud of, being a four-time tournament champion in Mistral before attending Beacon, getting a sponsorship from Pumpkin Pete's Cereal, being at the top of her class in sparing in one of the most renowned combat schools in the world, and most recently maintaining her strength, flexibility, and most of her speed in spite of nearly doubling her weight in just a few months. Though if she were to be honest with herself, she was getting a bit close to outgrowing her current combat gear.
"Alright, now I know that's a tough act to follow but we have time for one more sparring match." Glynda checks her large, black scroll before looking up at the stands filled with students. "Any volunteers?" While most of the students looked eager for a shot in the ring, the teacher noticed one that wasn't paying attention, instead she was intently looking at a book.
"Miss Belladonna?" Calling her name had the immediate effect of the girl sitting up straight and slamming the book shut, her eyes wide in surprise. "You've been rather docile for the past few classes." She saw the girl turn away. "Why don't you- "
"I'll do it!" Another boy shouts out from the crowd with his hand held up in the air.
Glynda adjusts her glasses a bit as she focuses on her volunteer. "Mercury, is it? Very well, let's find you an opponent." She starts typing on her scroll to find someone who hasn't fought for a while.
"Actually, I wanna fight…her." The grey-haired teen drawls before pointing down at Pyrrha.
"Me?" The girl in question was surprised.
"I'm afraid that Miss Nikos has just finished a match, I'd recommend you choose another partner." Glynda wasn't about to throw students at each other when one was fresh and the other had already fought.
"I'll give it a shot." Anya stands up before the Spartan warrior could voice any objections. Mercury didn't look happy as he grunted, shrugged, and walked down to the arena.
"You may begin." Goodwitch announces from the side as the lights dimmed over the watching students. Both Mercury and Anya stood in similar stances, ready for any action but waiting for the other to make the first move. A few moments of this were too long and so it was Mercury who began the bout.
He ran forward and delivered a sweeping heel kick at the shorter girls' head, an attack that was blocked by Anya's gauntlets and redirected up into the air while she used the force to drop and spin, taking out his supporting leg. Mercury was quick to turn his fall into a twisting escape on his hands before flipping to his feet, ready to go again.
This time it was Anya who charged, using the broad edge of Sinners Punishment to cut through the air towards his chest. Mercury responded with a kick to that arm that stopped the attack dead as well as her momentum before kicking with his other leg, once again his metal boot met with metal gauntlet. A few more kicks to either side of the girl ended the same way, even a flurry of kicks at different levels on the same side did nothing to faze her or stop her from blocking each with ease. The last kick actually had to be called off when she shifted a bit so that the sharpened edge would have made contact with his leg above the boot. Anya was quick to respond to him being slightly off balance from aborting the attack and delivered a kick of her own to his chest that pushed the boy back a fair distance, an edge of his boots scraping the floor and releasing a few sparks.
Mercury stood up straight and gave a little frown "Hm." With a shrug.
Up in the stands, Ruby turned to Emerald. "Hey, you friend's doing pretty good." She says with a smile before turning back to the fight, missing the other girl rolling her eyes.
Mercury went back on the offensive with an impressive leap with a twist to build momentum, partially powered by a gunshot from his boot into the floor itself. The resulting kick was deflected by a bladed gauntlet but he'd apparently planned on that happening and easily transitioned into a sweep that was avoided with a quick back step. From his low to the ground position, he leapt back up into the air aiming for her head which she had to block, the force visibly jarring her. Another jumping spinning kick had Anya diving away to avoid the attack and hoping to get into a better position.
She didn't have long to wait as Mercury was on her once again before she could rise to her feet, forcing her to cross her arms to form a bladed shield to defend herself from an impressive series of forward kicks that pushed her backwards. The boy changed tactics and performed an alternating pattern of roundhouse kicks, testing her defenses from either side before shifting the angle of on kick to her left side at the last possible moment to bypass her block and kick her other hand. The result was her arm having enough force to stab into the floor of the arena and leaving her open on that side.
Mercury's leg lashed out again to take advantage of the opening only to find the kick blocked due to Anya removing her arm from her weapon and taking the full force without the metal to absorb the blow. She pushed back quickly to throw him off but he retaliated by using her push to kick out from the other side, forcing her to lean back to avoid the metal boot to the head yet still finding the time to push up on his foot to throw the taller man off balance and forcing him to stumble back a bit to get his feet back under him.
Anya took that moment to thrust her arm back into her gauntlet and yanking the blade from the floor. Then she charged at the boy who still had his back turned, she crossed her arms with the blades out and ready for anything he might try. Mercury practically stepped onto her arms with one leg before planting the other leg next to its match and firing both guns at once. The resulting blast wasn't enough to stop Anya's charge let alone his weight pushing off to put some good distance between them. The dark girl maintained her charge, expecting him to retaliate in some way.
"I forfeit."
That was not what she was expecting at all and she aborted her attack, stopping her run just after passing the taller fighter. "That's it?" Anya wasn't happy. Back in Vacuo she was used to spars not ending until one of the fighters' aura broke. Giving up wasn't an option they had without punishment.
"What's the point, you're years ahead of me. We're obviously leagues apart." He was quick to dismiss. Anya scowled as her weapons retracted and put her hands on her hips to show her disappointment.
"In that case, Anya Eaglewing is the victor of the round." Goodwitch announces with some annoyance as even she wasn't a fan of students giving up early. Now her focus turned to the grey clad boy. "Next time, you might want to try to put in more effort with your matches and I don't care what year they are in."
Mercury turned to leave, raising his left hand in acknowledgement, "I'll be sure to do that." He walks away from the arena.
The bell signaling the end of the class rang out. "That is all for today!" Glynda raises her voice for everyone to hear her even as they began to grab their things to leave. "The dance is this weekend but you all have your first mission on Monday! I will not except any excuses!"
Blake looked up when she noticed that her team had left her on the bench alone and were waiting for her, she'd gotten lost in her notebook again that was filled with all of the data on the White Fang's activities as of late and what she knew before leaving them. That didn't stop her from continuing to read as she followed them out of the classroom. Team RWBY didn't even seem to notice Emerald standing just outside the door as they walked by, Blake still with her nose in her book.
Mercury followed shortly after and stopped by his partner. "Learning is so much fun!" He mockingly smiled.
Outside of the building, Team SSSN were standing near the entrance and chatting when Team RWBY exited, with Blake trailing behind reading from her notebook and barely paying attention to what was going on around her. That was when Sun Wukong noticed the dark themed faunus and ran to catch up to her.
"Hey Blake! You, uh, doing, okay?" He asks, briefly touching her shoulder to get her to stop and look at him.
She turns to face him, lowering her book and revealing how tired she looked to the monkey boy. "I'm fine." She says, doing little to lower his concern for her.
Sun clears his throat a bit. "So, I hear there's this dance going on this weekend. Ah, sounds pretty lame but you and me, I'm thinking not as lame, huh?" To most this sounded almost rehearsed, probably the best that the Vacuoan born Haven student could come up with on his own and he was NOT going to get any 'tips' from Neptune.
"What?" Blake was not amused. In fact, she looked annoyed at even the thought of the dance made worse by the bags under her eyes.
"The dance, this weekend. Do you wanna go or what?" Now Sun sounded more like himself.
Blake narrows her eyes as she begins to turn away. "I don't have time for a stupid dance. I though you of all people would get that." She marches away, not bothering to look behind her to see the crestfallen look on the blondes face or how he slumped in despair. That didn't mean that her team or other friends didn't watch the whole exchange. Ruby and Itazura looking at the blonde faunus with sympathy, the latter's ears twitching.
Back in Team RWBY's dorm room.
"You what?" Blake almost yells.
"We want you to go to the dance." Ruby explains again for her teammate.
"That's ridiculous!" Blake crosses her arms. Now that the sun had set outside, the stress of the day of normal classes had compounded the effects on the cat girl, her eyes showing deeper bags than before wen she rejected Sun's offer to go to the dance together.
Yang sat next to the subject in question on the girls' bed. "Blake, we're worried about you. This investigation is starting to mess with your head."
Weiss holds up a hand to tick off a list of issues with her teammate. "You can't sleep, you hardly eat, and to be honest, your grades have been suffering." Leave it to the most studious of the team, and probably their entire year to bring up their grades. The part about her food intake, while normally wouldn't be too much of a concern for a girl of her current size, Weiss had first hand experience with what happens when she refused to eat normally with the Big Issue chemicals in her system and she was afraid that her teammate would crash and burn because of it. Her distracted and exhausted state would only make things worse for the girl.
Now Blake was really getting angry. "You think I care about grades? Peoples' lives are at stake." She emphasized that by raising a hand towards the window.
Yang pushed her hand down and looked at her directly, eye to tired eye. "We know and we're all still trying to figure out what Torchwick is up to." Blake breaks the eye contact to look to the floor.
Ruby interjects. "Thanks to you and Sun, we know they're operating somewhere out of Southeast Vale."
Weiss raises a finger as if she were in class, even sitting straighter than normal. And the Schnee Company records singled out that Vale is the primary target for Dust robberies in the past few months."
"Don't forget about their missing military tech too." Yang adds, not sounding particularly impressed with Atlas' security if something like a Paladin was able to be stolen.
Blake crossed her arms again. "But there's still unanswered questions." She tries to plead.
"Blake, you won't be able to find anything if you can't keep your eyes open." Ruby tells her, inwardly being reminded that her dad had told her almost the same exact thing when she was designing Crescent Rose.
"All we're asking is that you take it easy for one day." Yang almost sounded like a mother when saying that, even pointing a finger at Blake when doing so.
"It will be fun!" Weiss jumps in, sounding cheerful for once. "Yang and I will make sure of it."
Yang pumps her arms in the air, making the bed bounce thanks to her impressive strength combined with her growing girth, the shaking forced Blake to uncross her arms for better balance even if her bottom heavy weight made the part of balancing much easier when sitting. "Yeah! We're planning the whole event!"
"Excuse me?"
"Team CVFY's away mission lasted longer than expected." Weiss begins to explain.
Yang picking up where her teammate left off. "So, Weiss and I were asked to pick up where they left off. And now we can make sure that you have the perfect night."
Weiss took control again. "And once it's all over, we can return to our search, rested and ready." She was even smiling proudly.
"So, what do you think?" Ruby asks with wide pleading eyes, trying to be too adorable to be refused.
Blake's eyes shut for a few seconds before she glowered at her friends. "I think this is a colossal waste of time." With that she walks to the door and opens it and pauses. "I'll be in the library." She informs them before leaving.
Yang let's out a heaving sigh of disappointment. "Great."
"She can't keep going like this." Weiss voices her opinion.
Thankfully, a knock at the door helped to interrupt their depressing thoughts. It turned out that Jaune was trying to ask Weiss, who had answered the door, to the dance in song. Complete with a guitar. That was something that the girls didn't know he could play. That fact didn't stop the Ice Queen from rejecting him bluntly and slamming the door in his face.
"All my life boys have only cared about the perks of my last name. Besides, I already have a date in mind." Weiss says smugly at the end the beginning sounding resentful.
"Date or no date, none of this will matter if we can't get Blake to go."
On a rooftop of the Beacon dorms, Jaune and Pyrrha clashed swords once again in one of their private training times. The blonde having gotten over his utter dismissal surprisingly fast, thanks in no small part by more than a dozen prior rejections to even do homework with Weiss.
The pair of swords clashed and locked, Jaune was gaining confidence as he pushed his partner back, surprising himself that he was even able to keep up with her for a time in combat. That confidence took a massive blow when the heavier girl suddenly dropped and spun to sweep his legs out from under him while he was stumbling from the lack of pressure from her own sword. Jaune landed on his backside and was a bit slow to rise, his armor was starting to get more than a little snug now that he'd bulked up from both muscle due to his combat training and the extra weight by the Issue hitting the school.
"Well done!" Pyrrha laughs as she sheaths her sword on her back before helping the taller boy to his feet. "Your sword play has improved immensely."
Jaune brushes of his clothes and armor of some dust with his hands. "Couldn't have done it without ya."
"So, are you ready to move onto aura?" She was hoping to help her leader discover his semblance, training him to maintain his aura in combat had taken surprisingly little time. She believed that it was no doubt in no small part due to his large amounts of aura to start with. The only other person that she knew with comparatively large reserves was Yang, the brawler using that endurance to push through whatever attacks her opponents launched at her before crushing them with her immense strength. More than a few weapons and armors actually had to go to the forge for repairs thanks to her. Same with Nora when using her hammer.
Jaune rubs the back of his head with embarrassment. "I'm actually thinking maybe we just skip aura tonight. Might just go on a jog or something."
She wasn't deterred and kept her encouraging tone. "Come on, I know you get frustrated but you must keep trying. I'm sure that we'll discover your semblance any day now."
Jaune looks to the roof, his mind in other places. "That's not it. It's just, it dumb." He sighs in some frustration.
"What is it?" Pyrrha asks, hoping for clarification to help her friend. She closed the distance between them and put a comforting hand on his shoulder. "Jaune, you know you can tell me."
"Its… Weiss."
"Oh, what about her?" She tried to hide her depressing thoughts with a smile.
"I asked her to the dance and she shot me down. Big surprise, right?" He chuckles a bit at the familiar feeling of being rejected by the heiress, not that he cared about her money or family.
Pyrrha strained to sound supportive. "Well, I believe the saying goes, 'There's always plenty of fish in the sea.'"
Jaune perked up at the thought, even starting to sound like he was about to laugh. "That's easy for you to say, you've probably got guys clamoring over each other just to ask you out."
Pyrrha chuckles nervously at the reminder of her fame. "You'd be surprised."
Jaune turns away and walks towards the door, somehow managing to put on a confident swagger that he normally never had. "Oh please, if you don't get a date for the dance, I'll wear a dress." He laughs, not seeing the saddened expression on his partners face.
In the dorm occupied by Cinder, Emerald, and Mercury.
"And finally, Pyrrha Nikos." Emerald says.
"Ah, the Invincible Girl." Cinder played being impressed.
"She's smart but I wouldn't say invincible." Mercury says from his place laying on the floor reading a comic book.
"Do tell." Cinder smiles. The pair on the floor dropped their own smiles, Emerald becoming slightly nervous.
"I wasn't able to fight her myself to see what she's got. But she was able to make those CRDL fools look like chumps. They weren't able to get a single decent hit in unless she allowed them to." The assassin never looked away from his comics.
"Those four aren't anything special." The thief scoffs.
"But you were able to fight someone interesting, weren't you?" Cinder was hoping that her underlings were able to gather better intelligence on their own even if her primary target for the week had been missed.
"Some third-year girl from Vacuo jumped in. So, we scrapped for a bit." He was quick to dismiss her.
Emerald saw the slight frown of disappointment on her leaders' face. "Her name is Anya Eaglewing. How she fought didn't seem anything special but she knew how to make him back off with those cleavers on her arms."
"You know I could have taken her easily."
"You were too focused on her to watch your aura levels." She smirks at his shocked expression and catching the smirk from Cinder.
"Go on." Cinder waves a hand towards her protégé.
"I noticed that almost the moment the fight began his aura levels started dropping slowly, even before they started fighting. It wasn't much but it was happening."
"I didn't notice anything." The assassin tried to save face even dropping his comic to the side.
"It was slow, but I think she has some kind of draining semblance. Something with a wide area of effect." Emerald expresses her idea.
"Hmph, she wouldn't last a minute if I was actually trying."
"With the way that she was holding her own against you, I wouldn't bet on that."
"Well boss, you shouldn't have any problem taking her out." Mercury was confident in Cinder's abilities, both old and new.
"Hmm… interesting. Maybe she could be 'convinced' to help us. If she has that kind of power, she would be most helpful for our cause." Cinder was as confident as ever. "Besides, it's not about overpowering the enemy, its about taking away what power they have. Something that girl seems to be able to do quite well. Add her to the list."
Emerald inputs a few commands into her scroll to add to the list of high-profile people to watch and target. "What about Nikos?"
"Might as well add her to the list as well." Cinder smirks despite showing some caution with her plans.
"I have another to add to the list." Emerald says, pulling her boss from her own thoughts.
"And who would that be?"
"His name is Denko Mori. The leader of Anya's team." The thief immediately answers.
"I heard about him but what makes him so special?" Mercury had returned to his comic.
"When I had to go make 'friends' with some of the other students, they showed me a video of him fighting the same team that Nikos did today."
"Those guys are trash. Kicking trash to the curb isn't something to be proud of." He dismisses while Cinder watched their interaction with some amusement.
"You never saw the video. If Nikos made those guys look like fools, Mori made them look like they had picked up their weapons for the very first time." That got Cinder's attention, making her wave her hand to gesture for the girl to continue. "The guy never used his own weapon against them, making them hit each other and even using one guys weapon against them all. He barely even took his hands from his pockets to fight them."
"Now that does sound interesting. Was his semblance something to help with that?" Cinder smiles.
"That's the thing. I asked his teammate, the faunus, about that. She denied that it was his semblance."
"So, what is it?" Mercury was getting impatient and had finished his comic.
"She never said what it was. Just that he doesn't like to use it because it would make his fights too easy to win, he likes the challenge. And if he ever used it, we'd know."
"Hmm… that's not the most helpful information." Cinder was disappointed. "Did you happen to get ahold of this video?" Emerald shook her head no. "Fine. Add him to the list as well, maybe we can find something on him and maybe the rest of his team by the time our plan comes to fruition."
"I hate waiting." Mercury complains as he flops back to the floor.
"Don't worry Mercury, we have a fun weekend ahead of us." Cinder's near ever present smile grew at the thought of her plans coming together so well so far. Even making sure that she and her partners were given a small dose of the chemical agent to help conceal themselves within the student populace was more than enough of a trade to remain off of the faculties radar. Even having their records to say that they had a mission during most of the outbreak before it was locked down and catching the tail end of it was more than enough to convince the school nurses when they ran their little tests.
In the ballroom…
"I need you to pick a tablecloth." Weiss slaps down two samples onto the wooden table that Ruby was slumped over, still worried about Blake. She'd been taking a small break from helping to set up for the dance all day for the next day.
Ruby looks at the small squares and to the expectant smile of her partner. "Are they both the same?" She couldn't see any difference between them.
Weiss sighs as she pulls back her samples and makes a fist, crumbling them in her hand. "I don't even know why I asked." She walks away with her nose in the air.
Nearby, Yang carried a speaker that was nearly as tall as she was and nearly twice as wide as she is, her recent weight gain putting her at roughly double what she'd come to school with now. She sat the speaker down yet the thing was still heavy enough to send a shockwave through the floor that made the chair Ruby sat on and the table she was leaning on, jump an inch, the young team leaders' weight not hindering their brief flight in the slightest. All that happened to her was her corset slightly groaning from the stress of containing her jiggling tummy. It was likely that she'd have to size up her clothes in the next week, again.
Many of the students had found themselves putting on a bit more weight than normal as of late, no doubt thanks to so many of the teens finding ways to bring snacks in. Maybe it was their resolve crumbling like a cookie after so long with a strictly watched diet, or simple teenage rebellion. Either way, weight was being added to their frames faster than ever and no one seemed to know exactly why.
Her sister walked to the table with a proud smile and clapping some dust from her hands. "So, have you picked out a dress yet?" She asks with her hands on her hips.
Ruby rolled her head on her arms to face Yang. "What's the point? Who cares about the dance if Blake isn't going?"
"Oh, don't worry, she's going." Yang was confident that their teammate would come tomorrow. The blonde looks over to see Weiss adding more decorations and quickly becoming frustrated. "Weiss! I thought we agreed! No doilies!"
Weiss rushed to point a finger into her face, forcing Yang to back up a step to avoid being poked in the face. "If I don't get doilies, you don't get fog machines!" Their stances seemed a bit odd as their stomachs nearly touched, something that they were constantly having to adjust to when getting in close proximity. While the shorter girl didn't have much going on around her stomach, the taller one certainly did, almost looking as if she were pregnant with the way so much of her weight accumulated there.
"Your dance is going to have fog machines?" Neptune asks as he and Sun walked into the ballroom to check out the decorations. Salmon colored sashes stretched across the walls from the ceiling while clusters of light blue and red balloons were scattered around on banisters, tables, around door, and even hanging from the chandeliers.
Weiss' attitude did a complete reversal as she steps closer to the blue haired Haven student with a smile and her hands clasped in front of her. "We were thinking about it." Even her tone seemed almost teasing and embarrassed.
"That's pretty cool." He responds as Sun walks by.
"You ladies all excited for dress up?" The blonde faunus asks complete with finger guns and a smile.
Ruby blows a razzberry. "Yeah right!"
"Laugh all you want." Yang shakes her head to shake some of her mane back over her shoulder. "I'll be turning heads tomorrow night."
"What are you two wearing?" Weiss turns to the boys.
"Uh, this." Sun answers with disbelief as he gestures at his clothes.
Neptune was quick to step in from of his buddy and hold a hand up to block the view of the blonde further. "Ignore him, for he knows not what he says."
Sun pushes his friends arm down, even pushing him a bit with his shoulder to get his point across clearer. "Hey I may have moved to Mistral, but I grew up in Vacuo. It's not exactly a shirt and tie kind of place."
Yang looks at him with crossed arms and deadpan expression. "Yeah, we noticed." It was hard not to notice as the boy rarely if ever buttoned his shirt at all, leaving his chest and stomach bare to the world. The Issue had softened his muscle definition but the strength was still seen and he had yet to grow a gut like his friend.
Sun's whole demeanor changed to one of being unsure, emphasized by him scratching the back of his head and losing his smile. "So, what does Blake think about all of this? She still being all… you know, Blake-y?"
"Obviously." Weiss scoffs and crosses her arms.
Ruby lifts her head form her hand as she was still leaning on the table. "I still can't think of a way to change her mind.
"Guys, trust me. Blake will be at the dance tomorrow." Yang states confidently as she had done before. Her confidence in her plan spread to Sun, a small smile gracing his lips at the hope of seeing her tomorrow. The brawler left the large room shortly after with a plan in mind.
In the library of Beacon…
Blake sat in front of the holographic terminals, typing away and studying the screen as carefully as her sleep deprived mind could. There weren't many students in the expansive room with her and nearly all of them had the manners to keep their voices low so they wouldn't disturb the others.
A red dot appearing on her screen immediately drew her attention to it from the usual green toned screen that was designed to only allow the user to see the actual display from a certain customized angle. The red dot bounced on the screen a few times, her eyes tracking it all the way to where it left the screen and settled on her right hand.
Looking behind her for the one causing the disturbance, she found nothing but students minding their own business and deeply invested in whatever research they were doing. Turning back to her screen, a few seconds into typing a new search item and the dot was back on her hand. That hand quickly became a fist as she turned to look around, giving up as to not give her tormentor the satisfaction of her frustration.
Once again when she turned back to her screen, the red dot appeared and wiggled around, drawing her attention until she closed her eyes in anger, slamming her fists on the table and jumping to her feet to confront whoever was doing this to her. Still, her raised fist found no one, though she didn't seem to notice that her rear had nearly knocked the chair over in her haste.
Now the dot was on the floor. She stared at it for a moment before sleep depravation and frustration took over and she followed the light, even trying to stomp on it a few times as it led the disguised faunus through the library to one of the many tall shelves.
She tracked the light around one of the white decorative pillars and found herself running into something soft. Someone soft. "Hello~~~!" Yang practically sang in her face, her face in a grin as she put her laser pointer away in a pocket.
"What?" Blake didn't have time to step back to separate their soft bulging curves from each other when Yang grabbed her by the wrist.
"We need to talk." Was all the blonde said before dragging her teammate away.
Ren had just exited the showers wearing little more than his pink towel around his waist and carrying his small bag of bathing materials when Jaune grabbed him by the wrist "We need to talk." The blonde says before pulling his sole male teammate back to their dorm, barely slowing down enough for the quiet boy to grab his clothes as they passed.
Back in their dorm room…
"Ren… I'm just gonna come out and say it. You are one of my best friends. These past few months I feel like we've really bonded, even though you don't say much. I mean, you're really quiet. To be perfectly honest, I don't know that much about you personally, but darn it- I consider you to be the brother I never had!"
Ren sat next to him on the bed, still covered in only his towel and the layer of pudge spilling over the edge of the pink material. "And I you." He looks to his clothes on the hanger on the nearby door.
"Which is why I wanted to get your advice on… girls." Jaune's request made the quiet boy sit up even straighter than normal as his eyes widened.
"Girls?"
I just… don't know…" Jaune was oblivious to Ren reaching for his clothes. "How to… girls. Um, I guess what I'm asking is how did you and Nora…?" The question made Ren freeze and snap back upright and stumbling for words.
"Ahem!" Nora coughs and draws their attention to where she was sitting on her bed with a book on her very plump lap and headphones on her shoulders and laughing nervously. "We're not actually together, together.
"Nora! I said headphones on!" Jaune points at the short girl.
"Oop!" The Valkyrie slipped them audio devices over her ears once more and began tapping her legs in time to the music as she read, enjoying the feel of the ripples across her skin.
Ren turns to face his leader. "Jaune, what is this all about?"
The blonde sighs as he looks to the floor, something he found himself doing a lot lately. "It's Weiss. I'm completely head over heels for her, and she won't even give me a chance. She's cold… but she's also incredible. She's smart, and graceful, and talented, I mean, have you ever heard her sing?" He smiles at the memory of hearing her melodic voice echoing in the hallway or an empty classroom. "I just wish she'd take me seriously, y'know? I wish I could tell her how I feel. Without messing it all up."
"Then do it." The voice of Pyrrha cut through the room, the girl standing in the open door still in her armor and filling most of the doors' width with her own body.
"Ah, wha-? "Jaune stammers, not having expected his partner to show up so suddenly.
She took a few steps into the room they shared. "Tell her exactly what you've just said. No ridiculous schemes, no pick-up lines. Just… be honest.
"But?"
"Jaune, you can't get it wrong if it's the truth." She says with a smile. She watched as his confidence rose once more, a common effect of her words to him.
"You're right." He nods and stands up. "Thanks, Pyrrha." He starts for the door and waves to his near silent teammate. "Good talk Ren!" The boy raises a hand in turn as the team watches their leader leave.
Ren made a quick move to grab his clothes and get dressed in the privacy of the teams' bathroom while Nora watched as the thick Spartan slowly wander to her desk. "Practice what you preach, Pyrrha."
In an otherwise empty classroom…
Blake paced around the teachers' desk on their podium while her blonde teammate sat cross-legged on the desk, her belly filling much of the gap between her legs and resting on them. "Yang, if you're going to tell me to stop, you may as well save your breath."
"I don't want you to stop. I want you to slow down." Yang replies, sounding far more mature than normal as she watched the faunus pace in front of her.
Blake stopped with her arms crossed. "We don't have the luxury to slow down." Her pacing began anew once she finished speaking.
"It's not a luxury, it's a necessity." The blonde counters.
Once again Blake stops, as if she were too tired to walk and talk at the same time. "The necessity is stopping Torchwick!"
"And we're going to." She leans over her soft stomach to pat a spot on the desk in front of her, feeling the large orb of her gut pushing the smaller lumps on her chest higher than normal. "But first you have to sit down and listen to what I have to say." The girl sounded so much like a mother convincing her child that Blake barely even glanced at the door before complying.
"Fine." She mutters as her pillowy rear made the wooden surface much more comfortable than it normally would be to sit on.
"Ruby and I grew up in Patch." Yang begins her tale. "An island just off the coast of Vale. Our parents were Huntsmen. Our dad taught at Signal, and our mom would take on missions around the Kingdom. Her name was Summer Rose." Blake almost didn't register the past tense as she watched the blonde drift into a content memory, her round face graced with a soft smile. "She was like super mom, baker of cookies and slayer of giant monsters" Yang clenched a fist as if cheering for the woman with a proud smile.
But as fast as it appeared, the smile was gone. Replaced with sadness. "And then, one day she left for a mission and never came back." Her head dropped to stare at the floor, still morning the loss of her mother. "It was tough, Ruby was really torn up, but I think she was still too young to really get what was going on, ya know?" She looks up to her partner to see the sympathy in her amber eyes, even as her own glistened with unshed tears from bringing her past up.
"And my dad, just kinda… shut down." Yang looks to the side, honestly not wanting to relive those times in her head but pushing through. "It wasn't long before I learned why. Summer wasn't the first love he'd lost. She was the second." Yang's eyes closed, "The first, was my mom." Blake's eyes went wide at the revelation.
Tears threatened to fall from the blonde as she looked up. "He wouldn't tell me everything but I had learned that the two of them had been on a team with Summer and Qrow. And that she'd left me with him just after I was born. No one had seen her since." Once more her eyes closed at the painful memories yet she knew that she was skipping many of the details of those times.
"Why did she leave you?" Blake spoke for the first time since Yang began.
"That question…" Yang sighs, almost sounding twice her age doing so. She slid to the edge of the desk. "Why?" She stood up to the chalkboard, not looking at her friend. "I didn't know the answer but I was determined to find out. It was all I thought about." She hung her head in shame. "I would ask anybody I knew what they knew about her." She takes a piece of chalk in her hand and starts making lines on the slate.
"Then, one day. I found something." She remembers clearly when a picture frame holding an old team photograph had fallen and shattered. When she went to clean it up, she found another picture hidden behind it. "What I thought was a clue that could lead me to answers. Or even my mother."
Her memory changed to when she began her search, "I waited for Dad to leave the house, put Ruby in a wagon and headed out." She remembered that day far too well. Her hair done in two tails that sat over her shoulders tied with yellow ribbons, the brown tunic shirt and darker brown pants she wore. Her oversized and loose orange socks that draped over her little brown shoes. How Ruby was curled up for most of the trip sleeping in the red wagon in her skirt and hoodie, already wearing her iconic red cloak.
"I must have walked for hours. I had cuts and bruises, was totally exhausted. But I wasn't going to let anything stop me. When we finally got there," She remembered the run down and abandoned looking shack in the woods she'd found. "I could barely stand. But I didn't care. I had made it."
Fear crept into her tone. "And then I saw them. Those burning red eyes. There we were, a toddler asleep in the back of a wagon and a stupid girl too tired to exhausted to even cry for help. We might as well have been served on a silver platter." Her tone shifted to self-loathing at the memory of her actions. How the Beowolves had jumped at the chance of easy prey.
"But, as luck would have it." Her voice became relieved. "Our uncle showed up just in time." She remembered the amount of worry the man had on his face, the relief that he had that none of the Grimm had gotten to them, the anger he had for both himself and their father for not keeping a closer eye on the girls… how much she cried the rest of the week as her actions came back to haunt her in her sleep. The nightmares were even enough to force the men of her life to ease her punishment since she couldn't escape it when she slept.
"My stubbornness should have gotten us killed that night." She hung her head in shame and likely wouldn't be the last time she would do so simply remembering her actions. Blake turned to slip her legs off the desk.
"Yang…I'm sorry that happened to you… and I understand what you're trying to tell me," Blake began, not noticing that the blondes face had begun to scrunch up in frustration the more she talked. "But this is different! I'm not a child, and this isn't just a search for answers, I can't just- "
"I TOLD you, I'm not telling you to stop. I haven't. To this day I still want to know what happened to my mother and why she left me. But I will never let that search control me. We're going to find the answers we're looking for, Blake. But if we destroy ourselves in the process, what good are we?"
Blake turns her head away and closes her eyes, frustration clear on her face. Her eyes snapped open. "You don't understand! I'm the only one who can do this!"
Yang turned on her heels with anger evident in her now red eyes, staring straight into Blake's amber orbs. "No, you don't understand! If Roman Torchwick walked through that door, what would you do?" She points up the stairs at the back of the room.
"I'd fight him!" Blake responds as if it were obvious, fists clenched at her sides.
"You'd lose!" Yang shouts while giving Blake a hard shove, not just pushing the girl into the desk but making the heavy piece of furniture move a bit from her strength and Blake's weight hitting it.
"I can stop him!" Blake retaliates, trying to push Yang back by the shoulder but barely making the taller girl budge.
"You can't even stop me!" Yang shoves her back, this time sprawling the faunus across the desk before stalking closer as she tried to pick herself up.
Blake closed her eyes and flinched, expecting another attack, but receiving a tight hug instead. "I'm not asking you to stop. Just please, get some rest. Not just for you, but for the people you care about." Yang let's go and walks away leaving a wide eyed faunus behind.
Yang made it to the stairs leading to the door before she spoke again. "And if you feel like coming out tomorrow, I'll save you a dance." She says with a wink before leaving the room.
Blake was left at the teachers' desk to think and sigh, not even noticing what Yang had drawn during her story, a bird-like head with a pair of interlocking gears that formed the face and eye. She didn't even seem to notice the setting sun through the windows.
Somewhere out in one of the school courtyards, Jaune was walking down one of the paths with a single white flower in his hand and his confidence at an all time high as he searched for Weiss Schnee.
Just as e was about to turn a corner, he heard his target shout "Neptune!" Quickly he his behind the wall to listen in, maybe find a time to ask her with complete honesty.
"Oh, hey, what's up?" The tall, blue-haired boy asks as the much shorter girl nearly skips up to him.
"I know that this is a little, unorthodox but… I wanted to ask you something." She never noticed the knight peeking around the corner behind her. Her embarrassment showed as she wrung her hands behind her back and scuffed one foot into the ground, not able to look the boy in the eye. "Would you… like to accompany me to the dance tomorrow?"
Jaune never stayed long enough to hear his response as he dropped the flower where he once stood and ran away, all of the confidence he had going to find her had been lost with that budding plant.
When Yang had left the classroom and her partner behind, she never noticed the pair of eyes watching her. Yet those eyes turned to the sole occupant of the room through the window, waiting for her to pass through the door alone.
AN: You know, I thought it was hard enough hearing Yang tell that story the first time. But having to write it down and filling it the parts that can't be seen in the show... But yes, this chapter followed the canon pretty closely but things will be pretty emotional for the next chapter or two... maybe three before I even get to the dance, depending on how long the chapters turn out to be.
As you may have noticed, Anya got her time to shine a bit instead of Pyrrha fighting Mercury this time. I do like these little teases before the big reveals. As always, reviews are welcome to let me know what you think of how the story is going, point out things I might have gotten wrong, etc. Constructive criticism will help me improve my writing. Also, artwork has been posted on my DA page, most of it being added into the chapters there for better visualizations if my writing didn't convey the descriptions well enough.
The next chapters should come quick enough as I have them pretty well planned out. Until next time!