Well, in order to not make people wait too long for the sequel to Origin of Darkness, here's the first chapter. This story as a whole will be more introspective than Origin, and the writing style's a bit different to make that work better. Also, this story will be far more focused on Bumblebee, even though there will still be White Rose as well. I'll try not to make this story take as long as Origin did, but I can't guarantee anything. With that said, enjoy, and let me know what you think!
Chapter One: From Sun to Shadow
When most people say 'man, what a week', they mean that their office job was a bit more busy than usual, or something. When I say it, I mean that I had to fight off hordes of monsters of darkness in a village in the north, then attacked a criminal hideout in the desert with a gunship, got arrested, got busted out of prison by some mercenaries, fought a terrorist leader in his penthouse and burned it down, and then went back home to fight even more monsters of darkness, as well as more terrorists.
And that's not even getting into the two months or so I spent wandering around all over the world, blundering into trap after trap because I had no idea where I was even going, or what I was supposed to do.
I guess that sort of thing is just par for the course for a Huntress, but this was like, my second real mission. I don't think anything is going to top this anytime soon. Then again, given the current state of the world…we might be in for a rough ride yet.
At least my teammates and I got a few days of rest after our last big fight. It's a bit hard to really relax when you know half the city is in ruins, but we manage. Well, most of us.
Ruby and Weiss are certainly making the most of their time together. They were only apart for a few days, but the way they seem to be glued to each other makes it look like they hadn't seen each other in years.
Not that I'm not happy for them, mind. And it's not like they don't deserve it, either. All of us do, after everything we've been through.
But there's one person in our four-girl band who's been a bit of a recluse for the past few days, and it's that person I'm now making my way towards.
I know where to find her, of course. There's this one spot in the garden, out of the way and hidden behind some shrubs, but always bathed in sunlight in the late afternoon and early evening. No one ever really goes there, except Blake.
The solitude gives her peace of mind, apparently. And, granted, sharing a room with me, Ruby, and Weiss, directly across the hall from our fellow troublemakers in Team JNPR, I can understand her wanting to get some breathing room every now and then.
But since we came back from our mission, she's been secluding herself more and more. It's not the first time she's done that, either, and just like last time I'm assuming it has something to do with the White Fang.
I make my way around the school and step into Blake's sanctuary. It's a sunny and warm afternoon, the kind of afternoon that people normally enjoy. To me, the idea that the atmosphere could be this pleasant just days after a horrific battle feels a bit odd, though.
Blake's reading a book, or at least pretending to. I know her well enough to recognize her fixed gaze, as if she's trying to set the book on fire with her mind.
"Most people who are reading move their eyes, you know," I say.
Blake blinks and looks up. She gives me one of her patented faint smiles and says, "Really? You'd think I'd know that by now."
It's a good effort on her part, I'll grant her, but I know that she's really just trying to prevent me from asking her about herself. Too bad for her, then.
I sit down next to her and stretch, closing my eyes and letting the sun warm me.
"So, whatcha thinking about?" I ask, opening one eye to look at Blake.
She sighs. "Everything. I mean…I still can't really believe that the White Fang are in so deep with Cinder that they'd openly attack Vale. And to think that, after we met Weiss's father, I was actually hoping that things might begin to improve down the line. After this attack, though…I don't think anti-Faunus sentiment has been this strong since the uprising. I'm even noticing it here at Beacon. So is Velvet."
She shakes her head in frustration and looks at me. I can see the sadness in her golden eyes. "Can you believe that? She and I have been fighting the White Fang, helping people evacuate, and still there are people, people who know us, who go to classes with us, looking at us funny like we might decide to blow up the school, or something."
"Well…Jacques did contact your father, didn't he? Maybe between the two of them, they'll be able to…I don't know, come up with some good PR, or something?" I say, unsure of what else I could do.
"The SDC and PR aren't exactly a good combination, though, are they?" Blake asks. "I can barely begin to believe that Schnee has changed, and I doubt most other Faunus will look at him any more favorably. And the Humans…well…"
I'm not really sure what to say. Blake's grown up with prejudice, I haven't. And there's no denying that things are looking grim.
At moments like these, I always wish I had some of Ruby's optimism. She might sound a bit naïve from time to time, but she has a kind of conviction to her that makes you want to believe her. And, given her cool new Grimm-slaying powers, it's actually pretty easy to go along with her positivity.
I, sadly, am not that special. I don't have supernatural optimism like Ruby, and I'm not related to anyone particularly important in the current conflict like Blake and Weiss are. Not that I always want to be in the spotlight, or anything, but I have to admit that not having anything particularly special to my name is a bit of a bummer. Well, unless you count having a mysteriously absent mother as something special. If so, I'd like to trade it for something better, thanks.
Still, with or without supernatural optimism, I refuse to let Blake sit here and mope on her own. I'm her partner here, dammit, so I'm going to be there for her whether she wants me to or not.
"So, what would you like to do now? Unless you're going to tell me that sitting here scowling at a book is your favorite pastime?" I say.
She slowly shakes her head. "I don't really know, actually."
She closes her book and fixes her gaze on one of the shrubs instead. "Last time, I wanted to figure out what the White Fang was up to, but this time I already know. And last time, I was afraid we'd be kept out of it because we're only first-years, but since we're among the only people who know the full story, I doubt they'll be sidelining us now."
She looks at me. "I guess I'm just nervous because I don't really know what to expect. I want to do something that will help us stop Cinder and Adam and Torchwick…but I don't know what."
I nod. It makes sense that she'd be worried about that. On the other hand, though…
"So how are you feeling after spending four days doing nothing but mulling it over, again and again?" I ask.
"Like I'm losing my mind," she nearly whispers after a short pause.
"It's not really in you to let it go, though, is it?" I ask. "Just like last time, you're letting your worries consume you."
"…Yeah."
"Right then," I say, getting up and dusting myself off. I extend my hand to Blake. "Then let's go and a get a drink in the cafeteria."
She blinks in confusion and I grin at her.
"Well, getting a drink always helps me get my mind off things. Mostly exams and homework, really, come to think of it. And it works even better if it's with a friend."
She smiles back at me, another one of those faint smiles. Coming from Blake, though, especially when she's in one of her gloomy pensive moods, that's incredibly high praise, and I always love seeing it. It means I'm getting through to her.
She takes my hand and allows me to help her to her feet.
"By the way," she says as we begin to walk away. I give her a questioning look. "I do assume you're paying."
Now that I've gotten Blake out of her spiral of overthinking, at least for the moment, our drink in the cafeteria turns into several drinks instead. I can feel my wallet cry out in pain with every new one we order, but I don't consider a single lien to be wasted. By the time we head back to our room, we're both in a pretty good mood, and I have good hopes that I can keep that going at least through dinner.
"You know, Russell, I really think they should start banning those animals from attending Huntsman Academies."
The line is spoken clearly enough for me to easily pick it up, and I know that Blake, having four ears, will definitely hear it as well. That, of course, is exactly Cardin's intention, because when I glance at him from the corner of my eye, I can see him and Russell smirking as Blake and I walk past.
"Yeah, you'd think that everyone would realize by now that they're just a bunch of terrorists," Russell replies.
I begin to turn around to tell them off, but I stop when Blake grabs my hand.
I give her a questioning look, and she subtly shakes her head with a dark look in her eyes. I squeeze her hand to show her that I understand, but it pisses me off all the same.
The video of our arrest in Vacuo had made it clear to everyone that Blake was a Faunus, something she'd managed to keep a secret from just about everyone except us and Team JNPR before we left. Not only that, the news article had also revealed her connection to the White Fang's founder and former leader, Ghira Belladonna.
Cardin and his friends had always been giving at least Velvet a lot of crap over her Faunus heritage, but Velvet was far too restrained to fight back.
Blake, too, had too much self-control to turn the entirety of Team CRDL into a smear on the wall.
Right now, I wanted nothing more than to do just that, but aside from being very cathartic, it didn't look like Blake would appreciate it very much.
So, unable to do anything else, I just shoot Cardin and Russell a murderous look and keep on walking. All of the work I'd put into getting Blake in a better mood would probably have been for nothing now, as this kind of crap was exactly what had her down in the dumps in the first place.
As we round the corner, out of sight of the two assholes, Blake says, "Just leave them. They're not worth the trouble."
I shake my head. "Maybe not to you. When I get insulted, I fight back. You know we're stronger than them. Hell, after everything we've done in the past months I'm pretty sure any single one of us could fight all of Team CRDL and win."
Blake gives me a troubled look. Somehow, I get the feeling that look is trying to convey a lot more than what I'm understanding from it.
"It's not that simple," Blake says eventually.
"Sure it is. It's not like they can really do anything. I mean, we'll probably get a massive detention, but won't that be worth the satisfaction of shutting them up?" I ask.
Blake stops walking and looks straight into my eyes. Now I'm absolutely certain that I'm not imagining things. There is something incredibly important that I'm missing, but for the life of me I can't figure out what it is.
I guess Blake can see the confusion in my eyes, because she sighs and looks away. "Let's just…change the subject, okay?" she asks.
She sounds so disappointed that it's almost painful. And I still have no idea what I did wrong.
I can't sleep. My conversation with Blake keeps going through my mind, but no matter how I try to spin it, I just can't see the problem. It frustrates me, because I don't think Blake would have been disappointed if she didn't think I could understand her meaning. It's probably something incredibly obvious, then, but what?
I check my scroll — my new scroll, after Adam destroyed my old one — and grimace when I see that it's a quarter to three. I've been lying here staring at the ceiling for nearly two hours at this point. Well, screw it, then.
I hop out of bed and sneak out of the room, heading towards the cafeteria. If sleeping isn't going to happen anyway, I might as well go somewhere I can get a drink and pace a bit. After all, I doubt anyone will be out and about this late.
As I expected, the cafeteria is empty, lit only by a few dimmed lights that brighten marginally as I walk by. I get myself a drink from the vending machine and sit down at one of the tables. If someone walked in now, it would probably look a bit sad, but whatever.
While I slowly sip my drink, I think back to the afternoon, when I sat here with Blake. It had actually been pretty easy to get her into a better mood, all things considered, but after our run-in with Cardin and Russell, she'd stayed distant for the rest of the evening, possibly more so than she'd done earlier. Worse, I'm pretty sure that it was me, not Cardin and Russell, who'd really made her gloomy again.
But all I had done was tell her that she should fight back, right? And, as far as I'm concerned, there's nothing wrong with defending yourself, either verbally or physically, against idiots who try to hurt you. I've done that all my life, and though I've gotten my ass kicked for it on at least one occasion, the pain of the beating never outweighed the sense of satisfaction I got from fighting back. Hell, even Ruby, Miss Idealism herself, would gladly fight against anyone trying to hurt her. And I knew Blake does as well, so then what's the problem?
"Usually cats are the nocturnal ones, you know."
I blink and look up at Blake. I hadn't even heard her approaching while I was lost in thought.
I smirk at her. "Trying to turn the tables on me for this afternoon?" I ask.
She smiles and says, "You did say having a friend around helped you take your mind off things."
She sits down opposite me and looks at me. "Besides, I get the feeling I'm the reason you're sitting here in the dead of night."
I nod slowly. "Well…yeah. You seemed so disappointed earlier when I said you should fight back, and I just…don't understand why."
She studies my expression for a moment, and I can tell she's thinking about something. I don't want to interrupt her train of thought, or anything, but I can feel myself getting a bit flustered by her staring at me so intently.
Eventually, Blake seems to reach a decision. "It's not so much that you told me to fight back. I get that, and to a certain point, I agree with you. It's the justification you gave for doing it. We're stronger and they can't do anything about it," she says.
"What does it matter if we're stronger or not? They're trying to pick a fight, and as far as I'm concerned, they can have one," I reply.
"Being stronger than them means that there's nothing to lose from fighting them. It lowers the threshold. If you thought they could actually overpower you, and you fought back then, it would be brave because you're taking a risk. If you know that they can't hurt you…then why bother fighting at all? For the sake of pride? I don't think you're insecure enough for Cardin or his friends to get to you, so what do you gain from beating them up, other than the 'satisfaction' of beating up someone weaker than you?"
I'm not sure what to say to that. I understand what she's getting at now, or at least I think I do. But I hardly consider kicking a bully's ass to be equivalent to using violence to get your way.
I guess Blake can see in my expression that I'm not completely convinced, because she goes on, "How far do you go with these things? We took it to the extreme when we attacked the Smuggler's Retreat. Even though we were influenced by the Guide at the time, we still decided to kill a large group of people to get back at different people who had attacked a village."
I cock my head. "Is that what you're afraid of? That I'll take my own version of justice too far?"
"Yes. No. Maybe."
She sighs. "Small things, just like what Cardin and Russell were doing, were the start for me. Humans insulted me for being a Faunus, and I fought back. And like the stupid little girl I was, I thought it worked, too, because the Humans I beat up became a lot more careful around me and other Faunus. They stopped insulting me and picking on me. When more and more people in the White Fang began saying we should become more forceful, I agreed because I'd seen it work."
She gives me a dark look. "Not counting psychopaths like Adam and Redhorn…how many Faunus who are in the White Fang right now began their journey by using justified violence? How many of them are still conflicted about what they're doing, but going along anyway because they see no other solution? They're just regular people who got pushed too far, but they're prepared to kill all the same."
She looks away and takes a deep breath. "I thought I'd caught myself in time, and stopped myself from going down that same path…but then we decided to attack the Smuggler's Retreat, and we even felt justified in doing so. We said 'they started it, not us', and wiped them off the face of Remnant. Influenced by negative energy or not, the choice was our own. The capacity for doing that was our own. It just served to prove that I still hadn't learned anything."
"What we did in Vacuo was wrong, there is no doubt about that," I say.
I can still see the streams of machinegun fire raining down on the people crawling from the burning hideout in my mind, and I'm pretty sure I'll have that image burned into my mind for as long as I live. But even so…
"But standing up for yourself isn't wrong. I wasn't going to kill Cardin and Russell. I just wanted to…"
"It doesn't matter," Blake cuts me off. "The point is that I don't know where the line is anymore. Ever since Vacuo, I've been questioning myself, questioning all of us."
She looks at me, and I can see the desperation in her eyes. "Yang, I've seen people go down the wrong path from 'justified' beginnings. And of all people I know now…you are the absolute last person I want to see that happening to."
"Because you think I'm the most likely of us to go there?" I ask, feeling a bit hurt that she would think that.
Blake vehemently shakes her head. "No. Because you're the person who's most important to me."
I blink stupidly. Blake's face is glowing, but she doesn't avert her eyes.
"Oh," I say eloquently.
Normally I'd probably have a joke ready, but right now I can't think of any. I do notice that I suddenly feel much lighter than I have any right to.
For a moment we just sit there, staring at each other. I'm pretty sure that's supposed to be awkward, but somehow it isn't. We just…don't really need to speak.
She smiles one of her faint smiles, and I smile back at her.
"We should probably go back to the room and get some sleep," she says.
I nod. "Yeah. Yeah, let's go."
We get up and begin to walk back to our room. Somehow, I get the feeling I'll be able to sleep pretty well.
Like I said, a bit more introspective than before. There hasn't even really been any hint of the main plot yet. I know a first chapter is supposed to draw you in with a good hook, but the thing is, this is a sequel. If you're here, you're already ~140k words invested. The main show will definitely resume, don't worry. For now, though, I just wanted to write this moment to set up the beginnings of the ship, which will receive quite a bit of focus while the main plot is being handled. Anyway, I'll cut off my rant here. Feel free to let me know what you think, and see you next time!
