Man, life is demanding. I am, however, still alive and creating. Feel like the last couple years have been a giant case of writer's block that I've been trying to push through. Fingers crossed I finally have the hang of things again.

But, you know, I've watched a bunch of movies since the last update. First that come to mind I really recommend are Everything, Everywhere All at Once; RRR; Thor; Doctor Strange; Batman; the new Top Gun; Sonic 2; the Bad Guys; the Northman; Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent; Lost City; West Side Story; Moonfall (because it's so bad it's amazing); Princess Mononoke; others I can't recall. I love going to the theaters and watching movies good and dumb.

Also gotten into reading more since I take long bus rides for work. I want to read ten books this year, gotten through five already. Need to pick up the pace a bit.

When she first saw Orion, Neo had stumbled back and fallen on her ass. Jaune hadn't bothered to hide his smirk.

Now, after several days to get used to their new addition, she still looked over her shoulder suspiciously frequently, like a skittish bird that kept seeing something out of the corner of its eye. Honestly, he didn't blame her for the paranoia.

If she had shown up with a giant monster that defied all expectations (a monster which could also talk and think like any other person) and told him that the beast was their newest ally… well, Jaune wouldn't be too trusting, either.

By all metrics, however, Neo had taken Orion's addition remarkably well. After some wide-eyed panic, he had managed to convince her that the deathclaw was here to help. The usual bullshit explanation that he was a human whose semblance had turned him into a monster was accepted. Remnant was a world where a lot of things could be explained just by adding the word "semblance" into your sentence.

"What, like another hour?" Jaune asked their little pilot. "It feels like it's been forever already."

Neo held up her middle finger. Then she flashed three fingers, followed by forming her hand into an "o" shape.

"Hm. Thirty minutes," Orion concluded. "We're making good time."

The deathclaw sat curled up in the back of the bullhead, idly tapping the wickedly pointed tips of his claws against the floor, forming a sporadic pattern of little dots and scratches in the metal.

Orion's departure from New Refuge had been hard for Jaune to watch. Everyone lined up to say their goodbyes and wish him luck; a few children even broken into tears and hugged the deathclaw's legs, asking him not to go.

And Jaune had taken the brunt of more than a couple nasty glares. To the people there, he was a stranger who had come and taken their greatest protector and good friend away on some dangerous wild goose chase.

Orion shifted to try and get comfortable—a futile effort in that small cabin—before settling into another lopsided squat. He fidgeted with his pair of tough leather pants, tanned and skinned hide from some bear or other unlucky creature.

Jaune's mouth tilted into a whisp of a smile. Something about a deathclaw wearing pants always managed to amuse him.

"Hey," he asked Neo, "are we there yet?"

She gave him another middle finger, and he almost managed to feel lighthearted.

As the odd alliance made their way, a familiar group steadily followed their footsteps. RWBY and JNPR (sans the J) made their way out the grieving and scarred city of Vale and into the countryside. They mingled with the lines of refugees that went both ways—people fleeing Vale for safety in some country cottage and people looking for safety behind the walls now that their farms were shredded by trespassing hordes; everyone clung to what valuables and items they had, be it bags of food, stacks of books or the hands of friends and families.

They took roads less traveled. They crept through the alleys of the city; then they strode along the cracked tarmac streets that led beyond the great walls; then they transferred to the old, cobbled paths people had made in times before machines; finally, they trekked over the dirt trails created by no tools other than the feet of unorthodox travelers.

All the while, they followed Blake and a map she had marked up with landmarks. She had drawn an "X" at their final destination, but she herself wondered if she shouldn't have marked it with a "?"

It was at a bend in a river, far from the city proper, past even Forever Fall and Mountain Glenn. A place out of sight and out of mind for just about everyone else on the continent.

"A lot of little towns are totally off the grid," Blake said, "not even on any maps officially. These are the places people go if they don't want to pay taxes… or if they don't want to be found."

"Or if they want to start a new life?" Pyrrha added optimistically.

"Well, maybe that too."

Days dragged by, and Ruby didn't expect the first leg of their journey to end with an armed showdown. They had spent hours battering away countless branches and tripping over in mud. Then, out of nowhere, Blake told them all to stop.

And now three people with rifles glared at them through ferns, bushes and thin trees.

"Who are you!?" one of them shouted.

"You hunters?" asked another. "Got the outfits and weapons for ones" Ruby held Crescent Rose in her hands, blade dug into the ground. For now. "Cus we didn't call in any problems. Don't have to worry about any Grimm here. We're fine."

Ruby collapsed her rifle and threw it back over her shoulder. With a wave, she told the others to disarm as well. She cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted back: "Yeah, we're hunters! We're…

"What's our excuse?" she whispered hurriedly.

Blake stepped up on a log and shouted, "we've been dispatched from Vale. We're just combing the woods and contacting different settlements to make sure they're okay!"

Yang hopped beside her partner and said, "yeah, you heard what happened to Vale, right?"

The armed people stared at them in a silence broken only by forest leaves rustling in the wind.

"Yeah," said one man in the group. "Yeah we know." He shook his head. "But we're fine here! We got no problems, so go away!"

Ruby glanced to Weiss at her side; they both nodded. If they knew about a nearby Grimm invasion, wouldn't most people welcome a bunch of huntsmen and huntresses?

"We have to!" Blake insisted. "It's our orders, find every settlement around and check in with them!"

"We'll just hang around for a day!" Yang said, "just long enough to scope things out and make sure everybody's okay—"

"No!" shouted the front man again. "Turn around and go right back where you came from, wherever that is!"

Blake scowled.

"Think they're that kind of paranoid people who camp out in the woods to avoid the government?" Pyrrha whispered, peering cautiously at their counterparts and still holding her shield.

"Maybe," Ruby said. "But I think they're just hiding something." She grit her teeth. "We should just tell them that we're looking for Jaune—"

"And out our true intentions?" Weiss replied. "Someone as paranoid and secretive as him certainly won't leave much of a trail, if any. Let alone people who are willing to talk about him."

Ruby tightened her metallic fist so hard the joints creaked. "Then they're just getting in our way."

Weiss tried to set a hand on her friend's shoulder, but Ruby just shrugged it off.

Blake and Yang were whispering to each other, wondering what was best to say next, when Ruby shouted, "Just let us come through and look around! Then we'll check off on our map that everything's okay!" The strangers opened their mouths. "If we can't mark off this area as safe, then we'll report back to the city and they'll send the troops in to secure it!"

The strangers snapped their mouths shut and clutched their rifles.

Ruby stuck to her guns in a more figurative sense. "Come on, we're just a bunch of kids!" Everybody had been dismissing them as just that: kids. A bunch of twerps in over their heads. Ruby had never liked being called that, especially not after the things she had been through and accomplished. But hey, couldn't she take advantage of it? "You really think we're gonna hurt you or something? We just want to make sure there are no Grimm in the area!"

The men whispered amongst themselves. Ruby had half a mind to just use her semblance and blast past them. A bunch of civilians, they couldn't stop her even if they tried. Not for a second could they slow her down. She could run and search the place and get what she wanted and nobody would be strong enough to—

"It ain't our choice to make," one of the guards shouted back after an excruciatingly long several seconds. "Let us call this in and we'll have our higher ups give the word."

Ruby crossed her arms.

I could take them, she thought. I could totally mop the floor with these…

She sighed and looked down at her feet.

These people just trying to defend their home.

Weiss set a hand on her friend's shoulder.

"That was a good argument," Weiss said. "Or, more accurately, a good bluff."

"Hmph."

Ruby had impatiently kicked her boot against a mossy rock for a few minutes as they waited for the townsfolk's answer. Weiss kept her hand on her partner's shoulder the whole time, and Ruby was pretty sure it was because she knew that she wanted to speed through the town herself.

"Come on," Blake said with a scowl. "They're stalling, at best; they're probably gathering more people to threaten us away with. Or they're getting around—"

Whatever the resident pessimist was about to say next got cut off when a radio crackled. One of the men brought it to his ear, and a static-riddled voice carried some message Ruby couldn't here. The radio turned to silence.

"Alright," he said, "just don't stay long and don't mess with anything!"

"Newness" steeped the village. Certainly, all the buildings and clothes the people wore looked old, rehashed or otherwise repurposed: people wore shirts half made out of patches, walls of houses comprised half-rotten wooden pallets covered with raggedy tarps and even the food people ate was old, such as unidentified brown gloop being spooned out of a can or a strip of dark jerky someone was munching on, as tough and dry as a chunk of a tire.

But it all felt like a start. People carried bundles, cut wood and chased after children with an energy like that of a new hire at a business. Hard work, but opportunity and excitement.

The hunters walked by a crew of men and women hauling a huge pile of logs on a tarp; they spied a field in the distance being cleared and tilled by a cohort of proto-farmers; what ramshackle buildings they saw seemed temporary in nature, and the piles of cut logs and stones beside them promised new foundations.

Ruby got the impression that sometime relatively soon, this quasi-refugee camp would turn into a proper village, a nice little place.

She also noted that many residents looked unnaturally, unhealthily pale; many had bright red sunburns as well, their skin scalded by that big ball of burning gas so far away.

The guards they had met in the woods escorted them with their old rifles that half a chance of misfiring now that Ruby got a good luck at them. She could easily take the guards on by herself, and she along with her friends could subdue the whole town with ease.

She sighed and rubbed her face with her human hand.

Weiss leaned beside her and whispered, "Is something wrong?"

Ruby stuffed both hands—metal and flesh—into her pockets. "I just… never used to think this way. About who's strongest, who can beat who."

I wonder if this is how he always thinks. It isn't nice.

The din of chatter and work around the camp slowed and turned to nothing as the group came in. Ruby saw a couple—some human teen and a fox Faunus—who were laughing and chatting. The two saw all of them and shut up, then quickly got up and shuffled away. Most others followed suit. When people eyed them, they dropped whatever word or look they had previously had; instead, a gloom of suspicion fell on the town as everyone looked at the hunters who came in. Ruby ignored the cautious gazes and hushed whispers. She felt a tug at her heart, however, when she saw a mother and father usher their kids into a tent, looking back at them distrustfully.

"Sheesh," Yang said under her breath, "no hospitality for strangers here."

"These people must have a rough history," Blake said just as quietly. "If they're this suspicious of outsiders."

They stopped before the largest and most 'complete' looking building that the town yet had: a squat barn-like structure with one wall dominated by a huge door. A fireplace crackled in a pit, surrounded by logs and stools. It must have been some sort of communal area.

Curiously, a big nest-like bunch of branches and blankets lay at the back of the room. Ruby ignored it, rationalizing that it was a pile of kindling for the fire.

Instead, they focused on the few people there: some older citizens, a graying man with a rifle who looked like he might be a huntsman and a stiff woman with one arm in a sling. None were happy.

"Welcome," said a spindly old man, the oldest there by far. "I hear you've come here from Vale to look for Grimm." He gestured to the rifle-armed man. "But Josiah here can take care of them, not to mention none of us are strangers to monster fighting. This region is safe."

"We won't be long," Pyrrha said. "Grimm attacks are on the rise. Vale itself was attacked and has faced significant damages. Now is the time to err more on caution than anything else." She bowed her head. "Respectfully."

The old man nodded politely. "Well, go on back to where you came from and let people know that this neck of the woods is doing just fine."

"Actually," Ruby said, "we'd like to look around the area ourselves a little, just to make sure there are no Grimm or tracks of them."

"I already told you there are none."

Ruby swallowed. The air felt brittle. She had never been to a place where she was so intensely unwanted.

"Listen"– Weiss crossed her arms –"we're not exactly happy to be all the way out here. Just let us survey the area and then we can go back and say, 'the forests are clear; there's nobody out here who needs help.'"

There's nobody out here.

Those were the key words in that statement, the promise of anonymity.

The woman with one arm in a sling cleared her throat. "I can escort them around, if they insist."

The elderly man scowled.

"Well," Pyrrha said, "that was less than a great day."

The teams had trudged through the forest—eyed warily the entire time by a group of guards from New Refuge—and found nothing. No Grimm showed up (although there were certainly enough cracked trees and rents in the forest floor to showcase where brutal fights had occurred), along with no sign of their real target.

"Jaune's nowhere, not even tracks," Pyrrha sighed and pitched her tent. It had become thoroughly impossible to convince the townsfolk to let them stay or to talk to them any further once they had confirmed there were no Grimm, so here they were: making camp in the middle of the woods.

"Well hey," Nora said, "look on the bright side! Literally!" She pointed up. "No big city lights to mess with the stars. Good views at least, right?"

"I suppose that's true," Ren said, adding a little bit to the fruitless attempt at positivity.

Ruby collapsed onto a log and tried to massage her calves after all the hiking. If she weren't so tired, then she would have been mad. Instead, she was just bitter.

She acknowledged to herself that it was a little selfish to let the others ready the fire and pitch the tents while she sat on a log—but hey, what does it matter?

She wrapped her cloak around herself as the sun's residual warmth faded away, leaving the cold of the night to come and sneak up on her and elicit a shiver. A chilly breeze breathed on the back of her neck. It was late fall already, and they'd been crunching on brown leaves the entire day. Soon enough, they'd be crunching through snow, too.

Ruby furrowed her brow. If they didn't find a lead soon, then they couldn't very well wander around in circles during the winter hoping for the best. She couldn't justify pushing her friends through that without a real goal.

No, she decided. No, I won't go back to Vale empty handed. I won't let Qrow get his chance to say, 'I told you so' and then grab me by the ear and yank me back to Patch. I won't. We're going to make this work.

She just wished she knew how; if only an actual plan could match her bravado. If only these stupid villagers in this stupid town that's not even on the map just told them what they wanted instead of keeping obvious secrets. If only Blake could work her magic on them like she had on Jaune—

Ruby looked at her teammate.

Blake had never thought Ruby of all people would ask her to go on a stealth mission like this. That is, to eavesdrop on civilians, break into their homes and go through their things for anything that might be useful.

Blake had done a few missions like this back during her time in the White Fang—perhaps more than just a few—but now it felt different. She was a huntress after all; she had gotten a little used to the 'hero in the limelight' life that her time at Beacon had swept her in to.

Now, she stalked by a patrol with bright flashlights. She slipped around their gazes and slunk into the town itself.

The night enhanced the village's ramshackle nature, with shadows clinging on to all the debris, piles of building materials and half-finished foundations. Dark tents squatted in a nearby field, clustered all together with an occasional glow indicating that some insomniac had found a candle to keep them company for a little while.

A thin stream of smoke whispered up out of the slim chimney in the town's central hall. (More of a large hut, to be honest.) Thin rays of orange firelight cut out through gaps in the hall's door and windows, stretching across the ground and other buildings like a hot knife had sliced through reality, so vibrant in the dark night.

Blake crept around a tent (from which she heard some inhumanly loud snores) and ducked behind some stacks of wood which had recently been cut and sanded. She peered at the hall and hoped there was something of note there. Otherwise, she would have to try the much more dangerous and possibly fruitless plan of just rooting through peoples' stuff in the tents.

This stupid ribbon will only make my hearing worse, she thought as she unfurled and pulled off the black silky fabric. Her ears twitched in the cool night, and she shivered.

Blake tilted her head and listened. She caught the faint whisper of voices drifting from the cabin. She also heard something, something quiet but unmistakable: people moving who did not want to be heard, who were trying not to make much noise but were clearly not experts in subterfuge.

Blake narrowed her eyes; she stopped her hand, which instinctually crept towards her blade. No, she thought, this is a town of innocent people who are just being difficult.

Instead, she knelt—slowly, so as not to alert eyes to her unnaturally shifting shadow—to her hands and knees. Her ears perked, her eyes narrowed, nothing got past her.

As the not-so-quiet stealthers approached, she differentiated two distinct sources: two people, walking close to one another, scuffling by dirt off the main path. She craned her neck just around the pile and spied at her would-be pursuers.

She had to stop herself from audibly sighing, although she could not stop her eyes from rolling.

A teenage couple—it looked to be a human boy and a fox Faunus girl—crouched and shuffled along under the dark. The girl giggled as her boyfriend playfully tickled her, and she held up a finger over her mouth. Blake's keen ears picked up what she thought was a whispered, "Stop it!"

The kids continued past, probably to spend an intimate few hours behind a tree or something. Blake refocused on the mission.

She first quickly observed the ground before her, just to make sure she wouldn't step on anything particularly loud. The only thing close to an obstruction was a battered old paint can filled with fistfuls of nails and screws.

Good thing she didn't knock that over, since it'd be so loud that—

She glanced a second time at the paint bucket before she moved on, purely because the mind is a fickle thing that likes to evaluate and reevaluate one's environment in tense situations like this; even the most mundane of objects become worth a second, subconscious check.

Her Faunus eyes scanned the can's labels, and she recognized the lettering just enough to freeze when she turned away, for it took her a second to process what was written there. She checked again and read it in the meager moonlight:

Zim's Regulation Paint

And just below the brand name:

Finest pigments and colors in Mountain Glenn

And to the side of that, in tacky stylized cursive:

#1 rated local business!

Blake shook her head and remembered the letter Jaune had gotten. They had thanked him and his team for fighting the White Fang, for driving them out and keeping their secret. Could it be that these people had been at Mountain Glenn? Scavengers? They must have recently moved here. What was their secret?

Weighed down by questions, she lightly padded outside her cover.

Her target, the central shack, got larger as she got nearer. Both literally, insofar as her perception made it out to be larger, and somewhat figuratively: the objective of her subterfuge missions always seemed to be especially looming, always made her heart pound a little bit the closer she got to success. This was hardly the most high-stakes mission in terms of mortal consequences—she felt confident she could easily slink away from these folk and into the night woods—but it certainly had high stakes in terms of this mystery they were left sitting with. Were she caught, then their only lead on where that idiot went would be gone.

Along with their best lead on just who the hell he really was

Blake snaked her way to the cabin and the voices inside. She pressed against the wall and raised her head just barely level with an open window and strained to see through her peripheral vision (for she didn't dare to expose any more than the corner of her eye).

Ten people gathered around the fire, with one man by the entrance, a man who struck her as familiar. One of the two people that had met with Jaune at the fair and given him that letter.

A flare in the fire drew Blake's attention. Her suspicions were validated when she saw the Faunus woman from the fair—rabbit ears sticking up from her head—throw another log into the flame.

Besides the two of them, there was the elderly man that had taken point in badgering them to leave as well as several others like the woman with the sling and the old huntsman. She surmised this to be the council of this little town.

"And with Orion gone, we're more exposed than ever," said she with the sling.

Well, well, well.

"I don't think we should be registering with Vale just yet," said the huntsman. "Or getting any freelance hunters. We're still too early on to be accommodating outsiders."

"I'm just saying," said the woman with the sling, "that we shouldn't exactly make this place hostile to hunters who may otherwise be willing to help."

"Of course," said the Faunus, "these people were hardly here to help. I doubt they were sent from Vale."

"Indeed," said the elder. "They were Jaune's teammates, no?"

The Faunus nodded. "That they were. I bet they were looking for him."

"So, he told them about us?"

"I don't think so," said the woman in the sling. "He gave us his word, and his word is strong."

Blake silently scoffed.

"Yes, but if he's close to those people, he might have made an exception," the elder said.

"They might have found the letter we gave him," the Faunus said. "Perhaps he left in a hurry. Perhaps trying to play dumb and hostile wasn't the best idea, if they already know that we know."

"They might just decide to run and tattle on us to Vale," the gruff huntsman said. "Though I suppose we're early enough in the construction process to uproot and move again. The survivors of Mountain Glenn can endure one last exodus."

Blake's eyes widened. So, it was true, then. These people had been at Mountain Glenn. The reports of additional gunfire from his teammates that Jaune had shot down—describing them away as trick echoes of the cavern that he, with his experience, could tell them not to worry about—were actually true.

But why the hell did he decide not to tell anyone about them?

"And if we get integrated into Vale's network," the Faunus said, "then Orion couldn't call this place his home, could he? Nobody else would accept him. They'll all just think he's a monster, because they don't understand. They don't know what help he's been; they haven't seen how good he is."

"Or worse," said the elder, "they could try to use him for their own gain. After all, just about no one Remnant is as strong as he."

Blake's eyes narrowed. Another dangerous 'somebody' that Jaune had neglected to tell them about.

"Well, what would we even tell them?" said the woman in the sling. "Yes, your friend came by here and left. No, all we know is that he's heading to Mistral?"

Got you.

"Even if they threaten us," said the elder, "even if they try to tell Vale, even if they beg, we told Jaune and Orion each that we would keep their secrets. Even to his friends. He warned us especially against telling his friends. I suppose he was right to assume they would be on his heels."

So, he really is trying to run away from us, huh?

"I just don't fully understand why he's trying to abandon them," the Faunus said. "Teams RWBY and JNPR are incredibly strong, and they seemed to have quite the bond."

"Things change," the elder said with a weary shrug. "Goals change. Allies change. It isn't our place to judge him."

Oh, but I'll judge him plenty.

The council meeting veered away from Jaune after that. Instead, they got to talking about boring and practical matters like how many shovels were available, how soon they could start generating electricity and when the new hunters in training might be able to shadow their teacher on treks through the forest. Blake dutifully stayed and listened for any last hints.

She was glad she did.

"And for our last point of order," said the Faunus, "I wanted to bring to conversation something that's been nagging at me this entire meeting:

"Jaune and Orion's third. While I trust those two absolutely, that woman with them… she was off. Jaune herself seemed totally dismissive of her."

Blake dug her nails into the wood of the cabin wall.

"I don't trust her either," said the woman in the sling. "She carried herself with bravado, a kind of arrogance, like she detested Jaune, all of us and even Orion when he revealed himself to her. Clearly, Jaune had kept her out of the know until then."

"Jaune called her a temporary ally," said the elder, "just someone with whom they shared goals. Obviously, just by the way she carried herself, despite not looking it at first, she's real huntress material." He scratched the scraggly white beard that brushed out from the tip of his chin. "I didn't really want to say this, considering it was told to me in confidence"– he sighed –"but Jaune told me he had every intention of killing her the moment they had defeated Bishop."

Murmured disapprovals and frowns quietly seeped out of the others gathered there. Blake scowled.

"Jaune…" The woman in the sling sighed. "I have to admit that I've not fully trusted him. He's… disconnected. You can see it in his eyes whenever he talks about fighting, about killing. In one way or another, he's managed to rewire a normal person's sense of morality. Life means less to him."

So even these people don't trust him. What a bastard.

"Orion trusts him," the Faunus affirmed. "He trusts him because of their shared experience, because he saw him firsthand fight the most evil person on this planet." She tiredly hunched over and clasped her hands together. "We just have to have faith in what Orion feels that maybe we can't feel."

The council meeting veered off from there into mumbles and assents. No one else really had much to say. Blake felt the nervousness clouding up the room like smoke, a smog that wafted out of the window and hit even her.

This is bad, she thought, worse than I already believed.

"Alright… was he living a whole damn second secret life while he was with us?" Yang sat among teams RWBY and NPR around a simmering bed of coals. Red cracks in the embers illuminated them dully, providing just enough light not to trip over themselves but not so much to fully give away their position. Every shadow was darker and murkier, like someone had splashed an ink-wash over them.

Ruby picked up a thin, long stick and poked the embers absentmindedly.

"Someone named Orion, probably an ally from Vacuo, he came here to pick up," Blake said, "and some mystery girl he took along the way. An enemy."

"Sarah?" Yang asked.

"Perhaps," Weiss said, "but I didn't get the full impression that he wanted to murder Sarah from what I saw. Plus, I wouldn't mistake her for a second as someone who's not dangerous, like these people did." She pinched the bridge of her nose. "Why couldn't he rely on us the way he's apparently relying on them."

"I think he's afraid," Pyrrha said, "he gets scared easily."

That drew everyone's attention.

"What do you mean?" Weiss said, "nothing scares him. He's taken on hordes of Grimm without blinking."

"No"– Pyrrha shook her head –"I don't mean like that. He isn't scared of monsters or fighting. He isn't even scared of dying, not really. What scares him is loss. Any of us getting hurt, now that is his nightmare." She undid her ponytail and let her hair flow down freely, running her fingers through the long strands to get out any knots and a couple fallen leaves. "I can guess that he wants to leave us behind so that he can take this on by himself… with people he thinks are stronger."

"Or more expendable," Blake added.

Pyrrha nodded.

"Even these people caught it," she continued. "I told you all from the very beginning not to trust him. That there's something more to him.

"And I even held back, for his sake, because I pitied him. I was an idiot to do that. Back at the docks, I saw him rip a man's head off with that stupid chainsaw he had, a man who had surrendered—defenseless. That's the sort of violence that made me leave the White Fang.

"I gave him the benefit of the doubt, but he never stopped lying to us, never stopped hiding things from us."

Ruby jammed the stick deeper into the coals; the disturbed embers belched up a glint of fire and a wisp of smoke.

"We…" Nora shook her head. "At Mountain Glenn, he… he really did more than just hurt people there. He… he didn't hold back. At all."

"He's told us before," Pyrrha said. "The place he's from…"

"Doesn't matter," Blake said with something like a growl. "We shouldn't even be chasing after someone we can't even trust, someone who abandoned us."

Ruby tossed the stick onto the embers, and she watched as it caught fire and flared.

"That councilor put it well," Blake continued, "when she said that he just doesn't value life—not really."

Yeah, Ruby knew, he really doesn't, does he?

Oh nyo, secrets unravel into more secrets

Also, I feel like my writing style is still evolving. I reviewed some old chapters and think I used the whole 'split dialogue across paragraphs' thing too much, was sort of inspired by the Giver. I also never really liked putting down the 'they thought' or whatever to represent characters' thinking, but I read the Haunting of Hill House and that was actually included quite uniquely and brilliantly in the prose. Just figuring stuff out, having fun. I also will always aim to use a diversity of punctuation and syntax in dialogue, which usually isn't structured too interestingly.

And, of course, never use the oxford comma.