Since I've been absent for nearly a year, I figured I'd give those of you who are still here another chapter right away. This chapter, unlike the last one, was fun to write. I hope it's fun to read as well. Be sure to Read and Review. Every bit of criticism, both positive and negative, can help me as long as you can give me pointers as to what is good and what needs improvement. Don't be afraid to hurt my feelings. If I want to get better, I'll need to be able to deal with criticism. No one gets better from just being sung their praises. (But don't hesitate to do that, either, of course…) Enjoy!

Chapter Thirteen: Back On The Road

"The ferry is down there," Blake said.

She pointed at a large dock in the distance, a long way away from the cliff we were standing on. Four weeks had passed since we escaped from the White Fang base in the swamp. Dr. Oobleck had gone back to Vale, and we hadn't heard from him since he left our group. While we'd been making our way south we'd stayed off the main roads between Mistral and the villages that were spread around the landscape of Anima, and stuck to the smaller forest paths that fewer people knew about, just to stay out of the White Fang's sight as long as possible. After all, we hoped they would think we were going to Vacuo. It wouldn't be good if they realized what we were really up to.

Traveling off the normal roads, though, also meant more encounters with Grimm. We didn't run into them as much as we did in the swamp, and it was a relief that these Grimm were the ones we were used to again, like Ursai and Beowolves, instead of the lizards whose names I never managed to pronounce, much less remember. How Weiss managed to do it was a mystery to me.

Speaking of Weiss, not much had changed between us during the time we'd been on the road. She was still not very willing to discuss her family with me, although she had mentioned a few things about her father and sister after I'd questioned her enough when were actually supposed to be sleeping. Despite nothing really changing between us, though, something else was beginning to change in me.

Weiss had been raising my heartbeat for quite some time, but now my thoughts were becoming more…well…they weren't very...clean? Don't get me wrong, these thoughts weren't exactly new to me. I may not be the most mature person, but, well, I'm a teenager just the same. What bothered me was that these thoughts were coming more and more often lately, and there weren't that many opportunities to do something about them, if you get what I mean. So far it hadn't distracted me during any fights, but what if they started to? Worst of all, I couldn't really tell anyone about it either. Yang would make stupid jokes, Blake was quite withdrawn lately, probably because we were heading to Menagerie, and Weiss was the source of my 'problem', and besides she'd probably consider it inappropriate or something.

I shook myself from my thoughts and tried to judge the distance between us and the docks. From what I could tell it would take us at least two more days to get there, since we had to find a path down from the cliff and then follow it until we got to the docks. We could jump down, of course, but without our scrolls and with the forest dense enough to block the sky, it would be difficult to find out if we were going in the right direction. We'd been taught some basic navigation on the light of the sun and the stars, but I wasn't really very good at it yet even without anything blocking my sight.

"How are we getting onto the ferry, anyway?" Weiss asked. "We don't have any money to buy tickets."

"I guess we'll just figure that out when we get there," Yang said with a shrug. "We've dealt with worse things than not having money lately."

"We should get moving," Blake said. "The quicker we get there the better."

Weiss looked at her with a sad gleam in her eyes. Out of all of us, she seemed to be the best at understanding how Blake felt. Funny how the person she had the biggest fight with was now the one who knew what she was going through better than any of us.

We turned away from the cliffside view and began walking along the path we'd been traveling on before. This particular path had apparently been abandoned long ago, but it had once been a trade route for smugglers heading from Menagerie to Mistral and the other way around during the Faunus Rights Revolution. Increasing Grimm attacks caused the smugglers to find other routes and this path was left to nature. In many places, it had become so overgrown with weeds that we had to guess where it had once been, but so far we'd been pretty successful at it. Soon we arrived at a narrow path that snaked its way down the cliff.

"They used this path for smuggling?" Yang asked disbelievingly. "How did they manage to get anything up or down here without dying?"

"Who says they didn't?" Blake said softly.

Yang paled. "I'm sorry, I…"

"It's okay. It's hard for anyone to really know what we've gone through over the years. I'm too young to know everything that's happened, but there are many paths like this one. I know that a lot of smugglers died from accidents during the war, but it was their only means of survival. They needed the money and the supplies from the smuggling or they would die," Blake said.

Yang still looked troubled. "Yang, it's okay. I'm not mad," Blake reassured her.

"Still. You're one of my best friends. I don't want to make things harder for you with any dumb remarks," Yang said.

"You? Not wanting to make any dumb remarks? I never thought I'd see the day," Weiss said slyly.

Yang looked her. She seemed a bit annoyed at first, but then she grinned. "Hey, I can totally be tactful when I want to be," she said confidently.

Even Blake smiled lightly at that, and with slightly better moods we began walking down the perilous path. Hey, that could be a good title for a story or something. Not for the first time, I was happy I had my teammates with me on this journey. Despite all the danger we'd gotten ourselves into, and would no doubt get ourselves into again, I liked this 'quest' a lot. It felt like all of this could come right out of one of my books. Here we were, on a mission to save the world. It doesn't get much more epic than that, does it?

But for us, it might be a bit different than for the heroes in my books. At least they knew exactly what they were up against. They knew what kind of evil they were fighting, and they had at least some idea of what to do against it. We didn't know what the White Fang and Cinder were planning. I guess we weren't even sure if Cinder had anything to do with it, considering that Adam had been leading us on from the start.

I was shaken from my thoughts by a loud screech.

"Nevermore!" Yang shouted, readying herself for a fight.

I looked at the forest, still far beneath us, and above it I saw the Grimm. It was huge, at least as big as the one we'd fought in the Emerald Forest long ago, and it wasn't alone. More Nevermores, both big and small, were rising out of the trees. How had they been able to hide themselves there?

I unfolded Crescent Rose, but I immediately knew I was in trouble. The path was far too narrow to properly fight on, so I switched into sniper mode and began shooting the Nevermores as they approached us. Blake joined me in shooting them, while Yang and Weiss were patiently waiting for the Grimm to come closer.

When the lead Nevermore swooped in to attack with its talons, a move that was doomed to fail from the start since there was no room to overshoot, Weiss stabbed Myrtenaster into the cliff wall and a pillar of ice shot out and encased the bird.

I didn't hesitate and used Crescent Rose's recoil to boost me up to the Grimm, landing on its back and using it as a launch pad to leap even higher up to the second one I unfolded Crescent Rose into her scythe mode as I flew towards the Nevermore, hooking the blade around its neck to cut off the head. Strange how much easier this was now than it was when I first fought a Grimm of this size.

Meanwhile, Blake had used Gambol Shroud to create some steps for Yang to get up to the first Nevermore, which was still stuck.

I pushed myself off the Nevermore I had beheaded, its body already disintegrating around me. I fell directly towards a somewhat smaller Nevermore beneath me, and quickly switched Crescent Rose back into her sniper mode.

When the barrel hit the Nevermore directly between its eyes, I pulled the trigger and used the recoil to make a backflip towards my friends on the path. I wasn't close enough to make the leap, but I fired Crescent Rose again for a little extra boost that allowed me to safely land next to my teammates.

"Showoff," Yang said with a smirk.

She'd finished up the first Nevermore, and now the four of us were facing a whole swarm of smaller Nevermores that came flying towards us. "Wanna have a little competition?" Yang asked the rest of us.

"You're on," Weiss answered with a smirk.

I was surprised that she seemed so willing to compete, but it made me happy. "I'm not gonna lose either, you know," I said.

"Me neither," Blake added with a grin.

Seeing her actually smiling for a change fired me up even more and I began to track and shoot the smaller Nevermores out of the sky, followed by my friends opening fire as well. Weiss used fire Dust to throw small fireballs at the Grimm, while Yang used Ember Celica to punch rocks towards them. Blake simply used her gun.

Among the sounds of gunfire and Dust fireballs, I could hear Yang keeping count of her kills. I grinned widely and began to fire faster. No way was I going to allow her to beat me with this as well. Losing to her in video games was bad enough.

About two minutes later, the last of the Nevermores went down to a shot from Blake.

"Eighty-five," Yang said proudly.

"Eighty-six," Weiss said smugly.

"Ninety," Blake said even more smugly.

"Rubes? Don't tell me you beat me too," Yang pleaded.

"I have…" I began, pausing for dramatic effect, "Eighty-nine. Blake wins. I guess you get to pick dinner tonight."

"What?! I lost?! What and how?!" Yang exclaimed. "You must have cheated. Those two big ones don't count, you know!"

I smirked. "I didn't count them. I wanted to give you a chance," I said sweetly.

That wasn't, strictly speaking, true, but even without the two big Nevermores I still had eighty-seven kills, two more than Yang, so it didn't change anything.

"Ugh, I can't believe my little sister beat me," Yang grumbled.

"Don't let it hurt your ego, Yang, you did just fine," Weiss said.

"Thank you, Weiss, I…"

"Just slightly worse than the rest of us."

"I hate you."

"Sorry, I couldn't hear you over my eighty-six kills."

"I double hate you."

The banter between Weiss and Yang went on the entire way down the mountain. It was fun for the first ten minutes or so, but after that it began to get annoying.

"Can you please stop this?" I begged them as we headed into the forest the Nevermores had come out of.

"Not until Weiss admits I'm a superior person," Yang said stubbornly.

"Honestly, I thought Ruby was the little sister," Weiss mocked her.

"Please leave me out of this," I groaned as the volley of insults started up again.

"Just let them have their fun," Blake said, "After all, neither of them is as good as I am."

"What was that, kitty? Are you going to rub it in now as well?" Yang asked her acidly.

"I said no such thing. I'm just stating that I have ninety kills. Do with that info what you will," Blake said with an emotionless face.

"It just won't stop…" I muttered as we headed deeper into the forest.

Despite my annoyance, though, I was also happy that after everything we'd been through over the past weeks we could still act like the friends we were. It seemed liked that was the one thing untouched by the entire mission and I hoped with all my heart it would remain that way.


A couple of hours later Yang, Weiss, and Blake had finally stopped trading insults and we now walked in silence. The light that filtered through the trees was beginning to fade, so it was most likely getting dark out.

"We should probably find a place to camp out soon. It's starting to get dark and you know what happened last time we had to look for food in the dark."

About a week ago, we had been traveling through a dense part of the forest as well, and by the time we began to realize it had gotten dark we could barely see where we were going. We'd managed to get a fire going by cutting a tree down, but then we had to look for dinner without lights. We'd normally use our scrolls as torches, but Adam had destroyed them in the treetop base so in the end we'd crawled around, blind as bats, looking for food.

All of us, except Blake. Blake, who turned out to have a twisted sense of humor. We'd spent upwards of two hours looking for anything edible, only to have to make our way back to camp in the pitch darkness emptyhanded. When we got back, Blake had been waiting for us with a selection of mushrooms and herbs she'd found, as well as a bunch of bugs she assured us were edible.

Yang had been complaining about that all night while Blake calmly ate the mushrooms and stared at her. Back in the present, Yang shot Blake a dirty look and got a sweet smile in return.

We headed off the path and soon came across a small clearing. It wasn't much, but it was big enough to camp out for a night next to a small fire. We had to, because our sleeping bags had also been lost in our escape from the treetop base. Keeping warm with Aura is fine when you're awake, but when you're trying to sleep it's a lot harder.

"I'll go look for firewood. Weiss, can you help me? Blake and Yang, you're in charge of the food."

The others nodded. "Oh, and Yang? Blake gets to choose dinner, so be nice to her if you don't want to eat bugs."

Yang grumbled something in response, but she followed Blake into the undergrowth just the same. Weiss walked over to me. It was the first time in days we had some time alone, so when she stood next to me I gave her a quick kiss and said, "Okay, let's find some firewood."

I grabbed her hand and pulled her with me into the forest.

"Do you think we'll find anything on Menagerie?" Weiss asked me as we searched for any wood dry enough to burn.

"I hope so, especially for Blake's sake," I answered.

"I'm amazed she's doing this," Weiss admitted as she picked up a short branch. "I don't think I could face my past so readily."

I turned around to face her. "Why not?" I asked her. "Is it really that bad that you can't face it?" I went on a little softer, as if somehow the forest might have heard me otherwise.

Weiss looked troubled. "It's not that, but…it's not very pleasant either. I just…don't feel like I know my father anymore and I don't really know what to expect if I'd go back. Would I find the kind man I love, or would I find the cold businessman he became?" She shook her head. "It's so strange to see someone you love become more and more twisted into a shell of their former self. Blake went through that as well, but she's facing it now, while I'm still reluctant to even talk about it."

As she was talking, I had moved closer towards her. When she finished her sentence I wrapped my arms around her.

"You're talking about it now, though, aren't you?" I asked her.

I let her go to see her reaction. To my surprise, Weiss smiled lightly.

"That's because you're with me, you dolt," she said. "Maybe…maybe one day soon I'll tell you a bit more about my past. Who knows, it might even help me deal with it a bit better."

I grinned at her. "I'm always here to help my girlfriend," I told her.

"I know you are, and you have no idea how much that means to me," Weiss said softly.

I kissed the tip of her nose. "I think I have an idea," I said with a wink. "Let's find some more firewood and head back to camp. Yang's probably going to complain all night if we're late," I went on.

Weiss smirked. "I think I can deal with that."

With that, she wrapped her arms around me and kissed me in a way she'd never kissed me before. All sorts of feelings shot through me that would ordinarily not feel nice, but now somehow they were. Weiss let go of me and stared into my eyes, something which made my heart beat even faster than it had already been doing by the kiss alone. Thoughts I really shouldn't be having at this point shot through my head.

"We don't do this often enough," Weiss said so softly I barely heard her.

"No…we certainly don't," I replied stupidly. I couldn't think of anything else to say. Weiss's eyes just took all the words away from me. With great difficulty, I managed to tear my eyes away from hers. This was not the time and the place for…things, although I knew this night was going to be a huge pain for me unless I got a chance to sneak away for a bit.

Forcing my attention on the wood on the ground I managed to calm down my heart a bit while I looked for wood. I knew Weiss was feeling the same things, probably even thinking the same things as I was. Was it right? Wasn't it too soon to even think these things? For now, it didn't matter. First, we'd have to get to Menagerie. We'd see how things went from there, both with the mission and with my…feelings.


"Took you guys long enough," Yang said when we got back to the camp. "Were you getting your freak on, or something?"

I felt the blood rushing to my cheeks when she said that, but fortunately for me Weiss wasn't so easily flustered.

"In a forest? Are you insane? That's much too uncomfortable. I'll wait for a better chance, thank you very much."

"So you would do it, if you had a chance?" Yang asked, her eyes narrowing slightly.

"Is that a problem? If I recall correctly, you were the one saying how we at least don't have to worry about unwanted pregnancies."

Yang opened and closed her mouth like a goldfish one dry land, but I probably wasn't looking much better at that moment. I knew Weiss was just messing with Yang, but the thought was far more appealing than I had ever thought possible. I quickly put down the firewood I had in the circle of stones Yang and Blake had put together.

"Weiss, can you light it?" I asked.

"She certainly lit your fire," Yang grumbled, angrier at having her own words used against her than the notion of me and Weiss…doing stuff.

"I can, but I'm almost out of fire Dust. My ice Dust is just about out as well after that scuffle in the afternoon. We should probably get up early tomorrow and try to reach the ferry by nightfall."

"We can make it, I think," Blake said as Weiss lit the fire. "But we'll have to leave an hour earlier than normal. I'll take last watch so I can wake you up. I know when we'd have to leave."

We all agreed to that. Over dinner, we mercifully didn't revisit any uncomfortable topics. Yang's enthusiasm for them seemed to have been doused by Weiss. Instead, we talked about movies and books we knew. It was something to keep our minds off the things that lay ahead. To just get a night of relaxation that we might lack in the days to come. I didn't know what lay ahead, but I did know that I wouldn't want anyone else with me to face it. Especially the girl I could now, somehow, call my girlfriend.

And here we end another chapter. Not as long or heavy as the previous one, but important nonetheless. I'm honestly quite interested to know what you think about these developments. Don't be afraid to let me know! I hope to see you in the next chapter!