The Color of Passion Chapter 4: Until Next Time, a rwby fanfic

Quick Note: Plot-wise, this is technically more like a bonus chapter. Hopefully you have as much fun reading it as I had writing it. :)

…

Later:

…

The broken moon shone down upon the city of Vale as Red and Yang gradually made their way back to the airships that ferried students to and from campus. It had been a long day, but the fact it was a weekend was a big help; both brothers were ready to get in some quality lazy time. As they walked, Red occasionally took out his brand new inhaler and looked at it, wondering if, or when, he might need it. Doctor Nightengale said it was only meant to be a short-term solution, so it was a tiny canister; only good for 4 uses. Better keep an eye on that.

In the midst of a lull in the crowd noise, Yang spoke, "Hey… can I ask you a question?"

"You just did."

"Har." Yang stepped in close, almost conspiratorially, and said, "What do you think of Weiss?"

Red looked up at the taller boy, eyes narrowed, as he tried to puzzle out the question beneath the question. "There are a multitude of ways I could answer that. What exactly are you referring to?"

"Give me a summary, I dunno," Yang shrugged.

Red sighed, then scratched his head as he tried to piece together his opinions on his partner. "Well… for starters, he's come a long way from the uptight rich kid he started out as. I'm sure I don't have to remind you how he was when we first became a team…"

"No you do not," Yang chuckled. "That guy would argue with me if I said the sky was blue."

"'The proper term is azURe, you uncultured swine!'" Red raised his voice an octave to imitate Weiss, and they both laughed at the crack. Mainly because they'd had that exact exchange less than a week after they started classes; Weiss was that bad. "But seriously, he's a lot better. In many ways, he's… kinda turned himself into the 'proper teammate' he claimed he wanted to become after the incident in Port's class."

"Oh yeah, that. He still sore about struggling against a Boarbatusk?"

"Only if you remind him."

"We all gotta start somewhere."

"As far as Weiss is concerned, he should be leagues ahead of all of us. Personally, I'd say he's right where he needs to be."

"Next to you…?"

They'd just crossed a street when Yang let that comment slip, and Red stopped and gave his brother a look. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Yang scoffed and crossed his arms, "Are you seriously gonna tell me you haven't noticed how Weiss acts around you? That guy is inches away from holding your hand when you're walking down the hall together."

"…" Red could only blink at that.

"Watch him next time, you'll see what I mean."

"You think… he likes me? Like… likes me, likes me?"

Yang put a hand to his ear, "Wow, I can hear your old language arts teacher crying out in pain~"

"Oh, screw you!" Red laughed and punched Yang lightly in the gut, then shook his head. "Shoot, I… I never realized…"

Yang rubbed his stomach with a wince (oof!), then shook it off and threw his arm over Red's shoulder. "You, dear brother, miss out on a lot of things when you're lost in your own head. Speaking of which… how're things going with your shrink?"

"Dr. Jade? Fine. Other than bringing to light how easily I get riled up and goaded into acting before I'm ready, she's gradually getting down to the root cause of my trauma. Thing is, working my way through it is gonna take several more sessions than either of us expected."

"…You're not getting billed extra for that, are you?"

"Actually… she said my fee was being covered by an outside financier. The only name I got was C.W."

Yang had to stand back and pick his jaw up off the floor at that news. The glimmer in Red's eyes told him everything, and he spoke of it no more. Besides… both were sure Cardina would hate that they knew it was her. Guilt does funny things to people.

As they approached the tarmac, Yang leaned in and pressed the issue. "So… Weiss?"

"Weiss," said Red.

"I know we never really talked about your preferences before, but… are you gonna… consider it?"

"Responding?"

"No, crocheting him a set of fucking mittens. Yes, responding!"

"OI!"

Yang grumbled, then reluctantly pulled out 5 Lien from his pocket and handed it over. Stupid swear jar…

"Well…" Red paced a bit, holding the back of his head with his hands as he stared at the sidewalk. "I've never really thought about… other guys before. Or even girls, if I'm being honest."

"First time for everything."

"Where do I even start?"

"I'd say start by seriously thinking about how you might react to each one on a deep, psycho-logical level. See if you like the idea of getting up close and personal with either a nice set of jugs or a decent rack of muscles, and then you'll be on the right track. Personally, I'm not too picky-"

Further conversation was cut off as Yang's device gave a ring, and he quickly answered it. Red could just make out Blake's face on the screen, but he tuned out so as not to eavesdrop. Yang and Blake often tried to have private conversations at rather inopportune times, and Red had made it a habit to keep out as often as humanly possible. They usually involved specific magazines that could be found at specific shops, or specific videos brought inside the dorm using specific black bags because they went against specific rules… that kind of thing.

As Weiss was fond of saying… 'they were on a team with pigs.'

This particular conversation was over quickly, and Yang looked puzzled. "He said… he and Weiss are having a private conversation and he… wants us to wait about 45 minutes before we go inside…?"

Red blinked audibly. "What could those two possibly have to talk about for so long?"

Yang made an exaggerated shrug, then resumed walking to the transport. "All I know is the lunchroom has a late-night snack counter, and I don't feel like hanging around the city any longer. Shall we head back?"

…

Ugh… it's so boring in here!

The young woman stretched her arms over her head and yawned, but she didn't have a lot of space to move around. It had taken more time than she would have liked to clear even this much space in the container, so she had no reason to complain. Still, coulda brought a video game or something. Why'd it have to take so freaking long to get to Vale by cargo ship anyway?

She seriously considered sneaking out and finding the engine room just to turn up the speed, but decided against it. She wasn't ready to be spotted just yet, and swimming home was out of the question – she was a monkey Faunus, not a fish. Besides, Nep already had strong words when she told her about this plan. No sense in stirring up the proverbial Rapier Wasp nest.

Sunny Wukong grunted as she peeled yet another banana, scratching under her left tit with her tail as she listened to the mutterings of the crew outside. It wasn't anything out of the ordinary, but she mainly wanted to hear those magic words, 'land ho!'

They probably only said it in cartoons, but what the heck. A girl can dream, can't she?

The banana only occupied a few seconds of her attention before Sunny went back to her Scroll, idly looking over the various plans and announcements for the 40th Vytal Festival. There would be a ton of attractions, visitors from all over Remnant, and of course, loads of contestants for the Festival Tournament. That, as would be expected, was the main reason Sunny herself wanted to arrive early.

Hmm… one of the booths advertised was supposed to be selling banana-based deserts. Might need a second shipment of 'em.

Sunny suppressed a belch, then went for another of the long, yellow fruits.

…

[SYSTEM ONLINE – GOOD MORNING, PERCY]
[RUNNING DIAGNOSTICS. . . OKAY!]
[BEGIN STARTUP SEQUENCE]

"Just wondering, uh…"

"What is it now?"

"The kid… is it supposed to be a boy or a girl?"

"You can't tell?"

"Not really, no…"

[MOTOR CONTROLS – OKAY!]
[AURA NETWORK – OKAY!]
[SENSORY INPUT SYSTEMS – OKAY!]
[LOGIC CIRCUITS - . . . MINOR ERROR, PLEASE SEE TECHNICIAN]

"Before we loaded it onto the ship, the Doc referred to it as her 'son.' I think we can safely call it a boy."

"Ah, okay. It's just… with that bobbed hair and the skirt, it's hard to be sure."

"I get what you mean, man. I dunno why it's the trend nowadays for boys to dress up like girls, but they're all over the freaking place. And now we got a robot-"

[ALL SYSTEMS ONLINE]

"Sal-u-tations! I am Percival Polendina, but you may call me Percy!"

The two guards grunted in confirmation, but otherwise made no move to interact with the boy who was not a boy. Percy, as he preferred to be called, smiled as he looked around the landing site: City of Vale, southeast quadrant, 4 clicks east of the bay. 70 degrees Fahrenheit, 50% humidity, light breeze from the southeast, varying speed. Atlas Military airship nearby, Lancer-class, equipped with anti-Grimm armaments and currently being refueled. No sign of the General. And nobody was making preparations to depart yet, either on land or in the air.

"Are we waiting for someone?" said Percy.

The guard on the left responded first – 5' 4", 214 lbs, elevated blood pressure, slight limp in right foot – "We're to wait here until General Ironwood arrives, then we're supposed to escort you around the city before setting up base near Beacon."

Percy gave a cheerful salute, "Understood!"

[PRIORITY – AWAIT GENERAL JANE IRONWOOD'S ARRIVAL]

With the questioning done, the guards resumed chatting between themselves. Percy could clearly make out what they were saying, but decided it would be rude to listen in. Mother had not finished installing all of his behavioral protocols, but that was one of them; respect the privacy of others.

[PRIORITY – AWAIT GENERAL JANE IRONWOOD'S ARRIVAL]
[PRIORITY – AWAIT GENERAL JANE IR|]
[PRIORITY – AWAIT G|]
[PRIORITY - |]
[PRIORITY – RELIEVE FLUID DISPOSAL CONTAINER]

Percy waited until the men were facing away from him, then turned and quietly began searching for a safe place to 'urinate.' Most humans did not like the sight of each other's waste disposal parts, and he did not wish to ostracize himself so soon for revealing his own. There were bushes nearby, so he went there. 2 minutes 15 seconds later, his fluid disposal container was empty. And the bushes were now properly hydrated.

[PRIORITY - ]
[PRIORITY - ]
[. . . NO PRIORITY FOUND]

Hmm… odd. Was he supposed to be doing something? Oh well, that must mean he was free to explore the city on his own. How exciting! He would be sure to apologize to the guards later if he did, indeed, depart without leave. They would likely be worried about his well being, and might even get in trouble because of him.

To the west lay the shipping docks of Vale. Surely there was something interesting to see there.

…

Yang and Red found themselves loitering in the lobby of the dorm building, nibbling on their junk food as they waited out the remainder of their time. It had only been half an hour and Yang was already chomping at the bit to burst in and annoy the rest of their team, but Red had put his foot down and stopped him.

"Back in town… you made it sound like you've considered guys before," said Red as he finished off his Twinkette.

Yang took a sip of his can of Good Grapes soda and blinked, "…I did?"

"I believe 'I'm not too picky' were your exact words."

"Ah, that." Yang took a moment to chug the rest of his drink, then crushed the can, tossed it into the nearby bin, and let loose a 9.5 outta 10 semi-epic brap for the ages. "I… have been known to show interest in multiple varieties of decently attractive peoples."

"You prefer both? Guys and girls?"

"You refer to someone who is Bisexual. If I understand the terminology right, I'm closer to Pansexual – if it has a pulse, I'd probably bone it."

"Somehow I doubt that's the proper definition of the term."

"…And you're probably right, but it's the only one I know, so screw it."

There was a lengthy pause right after that, but at least Yang wasn't too keen on dropping in on their teammates anymore. Red tried not to imagine his brother acting on such a claim – a large number of 'things' had a pulse, mind you – but it was tricky. Instead he focused on Weiss, and tried to imagine what it would be like to… let him get closer. Maybe let him hold hands as they walked down the hallway. Maybe… a few other things.

Oddly enough, he didn't hate it as much as he expected.

"It could be worth a try," Red mused mostly to himself.

"Attaboy. If Weiss heard you say that just now, he'd probably faint," Yang added with a smirk.

"He's not that bad… is he?"

"Twenty Lien says Blake walked in on him jerking off to you."

"No way."

"Bet."

"Fine. You're on. Now about your apparent 'interests'…"

"Eh…" Yang suddenly got kinda quiet, looking into the middle distance with a thousand yard stare. "I… don't really want to talk about it."

"You're the one who wanted to talk about this stuff in the first place, numb-nuts," Red shot back. "Don't leave me hanging now!"

"Oh alright already, sheesh. I… may have taken a fancy to… another guy… while I was at Signal…"

Red leaned in, grinning in spite of himself. "Keep talking~"

"I, uh…"

It was odd to see Yang Xiao Long, of all people, acting bashful, but here they were. Red's curiosity was fully activated and he would not rest until he found out what sort of mere mortal could get under his bro's skin like this.

"I don't wanna say his name. Privacy thing, you know."

"Uh-huh, sure. Is he someone I know?"

"Not personally, no. Unless you talk to way more people than I'm aware of."

"So he's at this school. Is he in our class?"

"He's a second year. We got together right before he graduated."

"Ooh… Not a lot of second year teams I know of…"

Before Red could get any further with either his questions or realizing their 45 minutes were up, a voice called out to them from the main entrance – Velour Scarlatina, followed by the rest of his team. They all took a few moments to congratulate the brothers on their victory over team CRDL (again), as well as general well-wishes that were quite common for the friendly rabbit Faunus.

Wait… Vel was a second year, and Yang did go out of his way to help him back-

"Well hello again, Goldilocks~" The deep, silky voice of CFVYs leader, one Cocoa Adelle, pulled Red's attention away just long enough to see the brown-themed boy give Yang a sultry wink over his shades.

Yang, in return, locked his eyes on the side wall as his face turned a deep red that almost matched Red's jacket.

As team CFVY made their way upstairs, Yang rubbed his neck and stared after them, muttering, "He did have a chocolaty aftertaste…"

Red's jaw hit the tile floor.

…

Designation: Remnant-6971 (Genderswap World #17)

Type 1 Common World
Class 5 Population – 70/30 HF (Human/Faunus) Ratio
Grimm Threat DETECTED

Environment: GREEN
Integrity: GREEN
Culture: YELLOW
Dust/Aura: GREEN
Deviation from Standard: 33%

Special Note: While this is not the first world we've found where everyone's gender is reversed from the standard, it is the most interesting. Most of these readouts are so different to what I'm used to seeing that I'm gonna have to dive a bit deeper to discover the actual differences, maybe even schedule a day to make contact with the locals.

Oh, there was also an odd reading after the first scan that seemed to interest Rain, but as usual that girl never tells me anything. Guess I'll have to look into it myself.

…

Cardina Winchester rarely, if ever, felt good about her decisions. But ever since that issue with the boy, she'd started having a much better sense of her own self-esteem; not only did she personally pony up the funds to cover his therapy sessions, Cardina had even started a few herself. Her days as the School Bully were coming to an end.

Granted, the therapist she was seeing wasn't anywhere near her type, but that wasn't the point. She was trying to improve herself (she woulda said 'fix' but that was a no-no word in Mr. Ashens' office).

The tall young woman held her hands over her head as she gradually made her way along the halls of the dorm, quietly moving through an empty wing. Beacon had a lot of students, but nowhere near what it was built to handle – quite a bit of space on the campus ended up unused most of the time, and she'd discovered this area in particular a few weeks ago. It was a good place to go and get away from it all for an hour or two.

Personally… there was another room she'd rather visit. And a pair of arms she often fantasized about throwing herself into. Fantasies that would completely destroy her reputation if another living soul found out about them. Fantasies that also involved a silver-eyed face diving into her open cleavage, willingly this time.

That, however, was borderline impossible; Ruby 'Red' Rose was rumored to be gay, according to various trusted sources around campus. He was dead center on the radar of the Schnee brat, and everybody knew that he and the walking Chocolate Bar were the school's biggest fruit farmers.

Dammit.

Ah well. Maybe she'd consider getting a girlfriend instead – Russelle and Dove sure got on well, which was handy in combat but irritating during downtime. Gods it was hard to be around them when they started making eyes at each other.

Sighing as she walked, Cardina rounded the corner and stopped; one of the doors in this hallway was ajar. And there was some kind of light flickering inside, along with a faint humming. It didn't look like any kind of electrical malfunction; someone was in there.

But this wing was supposed to be empty.

Moving as quietly as her casual wear would allow, Cardina hugged the wall and crept closer to the door, straining her ears to listen for any intruders. The likelihood that it was some kind of burglar was quite low, and any idiot who decided to break into a freaking Huntsman Academy was signing his own death warrant anyway. She almost wished it was a bumbling burglar, since that would give her an excuse to demolish somebody's face and not get in trouble for it.

As she came closer, the light faded and did not return. Absolute silence reigned.

Moving carefully, Cardina bumped the door open with her foot and winced as it creaked loudly. The room was as barren as all the others in this wing, all windows shut and locked, but her eyes were drawn to a spot on the floor.

It was fully dark in the room, but that spot… was somehow darker than dark. Like a spot of pure black that sucked in what little light could reach it. Curious, Cardina leaned over and felt around the carpet until she found something hard and rough, like a small rock. Probably just a couple of centimeters long.

What she picked up was a stone that looked like the blackest ever Dust Crystal in existence. Even bringing it out into the dim light of the hallway revealed nothing new, even its general shape. In fact, it was hard to tell the thing was even Dust – she felt no energy or power from it. At all. Still… this blackness had to be unique somehow, right? If nothing else, it might fetch a good price at the old lady's Dust Store over in town.

Where this thing came from or how it ended up in there was not important right now. Time enough to worry about that later. Cardina hummed to herself as she plopped the strange black Dust Crystal into her shorts pocket, then continued with her walk.

…

Author's Note: The end… for now.

As a quick aside, I'm well aware that the MCU, in particular Dr. Strange 2, has fully devoted itself to the multiverse theme. So before anybody gets any ideas, let me make myself perfectly clear: I quit the MCU after Infinity War and haven't looked back since. I've personally been working on my RWBY multiverse for quite a few years now, and not one single piece of it is either copying from or exists because of any MCU movies (my main inspiration was actually the comic book Spider-verse, ftr). Just wanna make sure we're clear.

That said, I hope you enjoyed the first look at our boy Red and his gang of hooligans. I have a lot of stuff to write in the near future, but there is a good chance I'll be getting back to this world for a sequel at some point… I mean, it's part of the Paradigm multiverse now. That's gonna change something major in the flow of canon events to come. Probably a lot of somethings.

=^..^=